A/N: So I told myself I wouldn't post anything here until Possession was complete. Whoops.
This is based on the lovely Sapphireswimming's Sacrifice, suffix here s/10008824/1/Sacrifice. Go read it; it's fantastic and this will make a lot more sense.
If any of you play Exalted, you may recognize some things in here as well.
XXXXXX
Danny woke.
He wasn't sure what had woken him, but that was not unusual. After some staring at the rush patched ceiling, he decided that since he was awake anyway, he might as well get a drink of water.
He folded over the blanket so as not to lose any bodyheat and padded down the stone steps as quietly as he could. The stone was cool on his bare feet, and the house was silent; even his father's snores having faded to a soft distant rumbling. He began making his way to the old well.
On deciding to return to the ancestral city, his parents had chosen a building they had spotted on their initial forays into it as a base of operations, and then, when the process of deciphering ancient scrawl and exploring and restoring the area had begun to stretch on for months, a home.
It was made of the same aged white stone that was ubiquitous in the city, plant scarred where thick curling vines had been cleared, and built like a miniature fortress; four walls with an extra room on top of each corner enclosing a courtyard with a well and the remains of what had probably been flowerbeds, capped with terracotta tiled roofs that flared out and up at the tips. A large amount of said tiles had fallen or simply gone missing.
Its architect had probably not intended for it to be such a bastion. From what his parents could gather from the tiled floor insets it had been some kind of villa, or perhaps an upmarket inn. It clearly had been repurposed; while the wooden boards that had once barred the windows had rotted away, the rust around the nail holes that had held them there remained.
Danny tried not to remember the skeleton Jazz had inadvertently found in the cellar, perfectly preserved in the dry cool dark amidst broken wine racks. It had been clutching a bottle.
The well water was still and dark, reflecting the full moon almost perfectly. The light from it was bright enough to cast shadows and almost seemed to make the stone glow; as he leaned over it looked like his hair had been bleached white.
He set about winching the bucket up, scattering his reflection into a thousand distorted pieces, before dipping the cup that had been chained to one of the post holding the well's little roof up into it and taking a long draught. It was ice cold, but all the more refreshing for it. He quietly lowered the bucket back in so as not to make a splash.
He looked up at the sky. It was completely clear; the band of the celestial river stretching clear across it. The very night air seemed filled with enticing potential, and the stones under his feet felt as if they were thrumming with quiet pent up energy. What kind of potential or energy, Danny didn't know, but he suddenly realized why he was awake.
He shifted from foot to foot. His room was too confining, and besides, he was too, too… something to sleep. He wanted to run. He wanted to explore. To see what the rest of the city was like.
He was halfway to the as yet uncleared vines in one corner of the courtyard before he remembered it was exactly this which had caused him to go into the old temple and get hit with what felt like indoor lightning. He paused, and then shrugged and began climbing. The stars were out, the moon was better than any torch he could hope to have, the air was just that perfect balance between warm stillness and cool breeze… who knew when a night like this would happen again.
He scrabbled across the orange tiles, dropped down to the road below on the other side, and began wandering down the silent empty streets, a wordless elation and satisfaction filling him. He idly brushed his fingertips along the pitted wall to his left as he walked. He felt like nothing could touch him. He felt completely at home.
He blinked, and the world was different.
What had been a still, calm intersection was now a busy thoroughfare, although for some reason it didn't seem as busy as it should have been. Throngs of strange creatures walked and slithered and flew, often entirely through buildings as if they were completely not there, the stream breaking and reforming around him, completely ignoring him. He spun around, gaping.
That there was something that looked like a ball of feet, rolling across the ground like tumbleweed. Those three hooded figures in black conversing near an empty doorway that had been the entrance to a shop in its past life seemed more hood than figure. There was a flock of mouths with bat wings, and was that a dragon!? That it was, or something that seemed very much like it, long and sinuous and carrying a scroll in its mouth with the intense focus of a messenger that will absolutely not be stayed about its business. He watched as it wound its way across the sky and disappeared from view.
Colours seemed brighter, even as the world seemed slightly out of focus, like the surface of an oil slick. He felt no fear. Everything seemed so much more normal than the sharp, dull place he'd left. It felt like he'd been blind and now wasn't.
Everything made sense. There was only one explanation for it.
Oh. I'm dreaming.
He decided to just roll with it, and turned left, ignoring the occasional glance or whisper from the things that he passed or passed him. He took his time, taking everything in, occasionally pausing to examine anything that caught his eye, like the fact the broken windows seemed to have a strange not quite there glass in them, and the strange glowing orange balls a vendor that looked like thousands of pieces of paper stitched together had been selling. It had chittered and pressed one into his palms, and he had somehow managed to understand, or at least guess, its intent.
free sample on the house yes yes be seeing you later patron
As he was chewing it; it was sort of like a fruit in its sweetness if you removed the seed and rind and stem and basically anything that could possibly identify it as a fruit, he caught sight of his reflection in the not glass and moved in for a closer look. His eyes were glowing green, and his hair was that same lunar white; he tugged it down in front of him to get a better look, taking another bite. His clothes had changed too; they resembled his pyjamas but were black and white and shifted oddly in their colouration as he moved, like light and shadow. Huh. And that was all he really thought of it before moving on.
It was, after all, a dream.
He was licking the last of the juice from his fingertips when he spotted something dark and clawed crouched on the bar of an old hanging shop sign that was clearly on its last legs; blurred by time into illegibility, connected only by a single chain that was half rusted through. It swung in the breeze, and as he watched the shadowy thing leaned down and began to chew at the sole remaining connector.
He felt a flicker of irrational anger at the action. Before he even fully registered what he was doing he was cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting up at it.
"Hey! Quit it!"
It paused, and somehow managed to look both guilty and not sorry at all, bobbing its upper body in an obsequious bow that had only a small mocking edge.
yes, your excellency, of course, your excellency
He turned away and continued… patrolling, that was what he realized he was doing, feeling the eyes of the thing on his back all the way down the street. He kicked a rock and sighed. Gone was his previous good mood. He'd probably have been a lot more satisfied with that answer if he didn't know for a fact the decay spirit would be right back at it as soon as he was out of sight.
Besides, there were bigger battles to fight than over a single shop sign.
His path became more purposeful, his feet striding towards the source of disturbances that seemed to ripple through the stones of the city itself, the barest of tremors in a spider web but still a concern. He hopped fences and jumped across roofs, bare feet making no sound even as he sped up and started to run.
The crowd began to thin until it was gone entirely as he reached the outskirts of the city, and he got there in record time, not even out of breath. It was a courtyard that had once been a marketplace, white pillars lying fallen around the perimeter. Grass was shooting up through the cracks in the worn marble, and he tensed and began scanning the area from his position in the shadows of one that had miraculously stayed upright. Something was definitely here, he could just tell.
A pair of glowing green eyes shifted across from the quad. They were attached to what looked like a dog, if a dog had ever been as tall as a man at the shoulder and made not from flesh and blood but moss and twigs and earth, with massive thorns for fangs. The hand that had been lightly resting on the pillar unconsciously tightened on the stone as the thing howled, something that was more summons rippling out through the world than sound, and then dipped it's head and bit right through the stone, jaws slipping through it as if it were water. Where it bit, he could see, or was it feel, the stone weaken, existing cracks widening and new ones forming as relentless roots squirmed their way into them and pried them open. He could see the whispering grass snakes that had arrived in response to the call worm their way in and out of the surrounding structures, and strangling weeds and vines and yes, grasses, began to grow where they had not, faster than they should, even as the dog of unbroken earth clawed and chewed at the base of a half broken pillar which finally gave up and fell entirely.
That previous anger came back in a surge, and his fist curled as it settled into something hard. This wasn't natural growth, which he didn't like at the best of times but put up with. This was a deliberate attempt to break down his city further.
He stepped out into plain sight, glaring at the dog with burning eyes, his entire presence filling up the now small seeming arena with i am here i am back i am angry did you think I wouldn't notice. The grass snakes fled to the shadows, watching with flickering tongues.
The dog broke off from its industrious destruction and looked to the source of the challenge; its eyes shifted into a rageful scarlet and he was slammed full force with a great and terrible hatred as it growled low and loud and made the stones quail and quiver. Their respective underlings sidelined, he bared his teeth back and let green fire coalesce around his fists; this was an old and shared enmity between their types.
The fight started without warning as its jaws snapped shut like a trap on the air where he'd been. The bite had been a feint, however, as the dog followed through with a headbutt that catapulted him straight through the pillar he had been hiding behind. He skidded along the ground, digging in his fingers and the balls of his feet into the flagstones to stop his movement and sprang forward, delivering a werefire fueled uppercut to the dog's jaw that sent a couple of its thornteeth flying. Weak as he was, prayerless as he was, this was his turf. He had the advantage.
He hoped.
The dog snarled and swiped at him with a frying pan sized paw that he dodged by inches. It pressed the advantage and attacked and attacked with relentless fury, leaving him no room to counter if he wanted to also avoid being hit. In the end, it managed to clip his side, scoring bloody red… red? that wasn't right… lines deep into it.
The pain seemed to bring him to his senses, or draw him out of them. The middle of a fight is a terrible time to have a wait, what the hell am I doing revelation, and the dog's massive left paw slammed into him, pinning him down. He instinctively struggled at the grip, grasping what he could reach of the appendage and trying to burn it with that same fire.
The dog was clearly in pain as the mossy fur was scorched off, but the pressure crushing his chest only increased. Jaws rushed for his throat, and he closed his eyes…
And nothing. Danny opened his eyes, and the world was duller. The outlines of things were sharper. And he was in his room, panting, half upright and coated with sweat.
Just a nightmare.
He rolled over, making to fall back asleep, and winced as his side twinged. He pulled back the blanket and pulled up his pyjama shirt, twisting against the pain to try and see the source of it.
Three bloody, angry red, half healed furrows on his side.