The Witching Time of Night
A/N: Dreadmoon belongs to Wayward and is used with permission. There are also more than a few Lovecraftian references in this ficlet.
Morninglord first appears in the story "Planetfall" and later in "Devil is a Loser".
"What happens when the lights go out?" Morninglord murmurred, and in his mind's eye, he sucked out Dreadmoon's optics, gently bit off the primary optic cables between his needle-sharp mandenta. "What happens when power fades, when the metal goes dormant? What is below the metal?"
The night sky did not answer him, nor did the lurking Seekers who thought he did not know they followed him. He smiled to himself, knowing that he alone of those out tonight would truly understand what he did. But now Aldebaran was above the horizon, and there were rites to be done so that the One Who Dwelled in the Yellow City never turned its face upon Cybertron. Old rites, older than Cybertron, wrested from the vast library at Caelano. But simple rites, ones he could do with but himself and a good vibro-blade.
A pity it would probably be confiscated in the morning. His Decepticon captors had no idea what of his tools to take away, so they always wound up taking the wrong items.
He turned his face up to the sky and raised his hand to catch the flung starlight. The very air hummed with the energy of times long-gone that danced down from the air on wings of light, and his lips parted as if to drink deep from the well of stars. Inside his mouth, the words written on the back of his mandenta itched and writhed, begging to be spoken.
But he did not speak them. He closed his hand around a fistful of chronal energy and turned full-circle, casting a ward between him and those who watched him. They could still see, but they could not interfere, not even those who watched from the other side of the well. His circle drew forth more intensity from those, but of all those who watched him, only one was of a power to not fear him.
And that one sometimes wore the tattered, wretched saffron robes and the diadem with its citrine center-jewel. That one was a god, who guided mortals down paths of his own amusement, and that one had whispered in his audial so long ago that Morninglord no longer remembered which which words that one had spoken and which words he had learned himself.
He drew the blade out now and turned it on, felt it hum in his hand, kissed the edge of the blade. It cut into his mouth, drew forth sparkling fluids that did not resemble any lubricant of Cybertron's creation.
"Let us begin."
End