Nightmares and violent shapes
the state of dreaming
has left me numb

Sadly, his opponents are becoming worthless, useless. They crumble beneath his growing mass, and when he feels them quake, shatter and splinter below the bombardment of his muscles, it offers a minute pleasure. Nothing lasts long enough to please him entirely.
The next chosen tree is thicker, heavier and taller, reaching above his crowned skull and looking down upon him with blooming leaves that promise him warmer days in the future. He doesn’t care. The majority of the children within the Dragon’s Throat aren’t built to fight him. He believes they would crumble at his might, quiver and shake when his footfalls move the earth. Bone strikes bark, and with cloven hooves digging into the rotting foliage that he walks upon, there is only a leaning of the challenge before him. Triumphantly, it holds his weight as his sternum drags against it’s body. Spitting in his face, telling him that he isn’t powerful enough to take it down. Even his teeth aren’t jagged enough to rip the flesh from the tree with his rage, and he knows better than to try.
He moves away from his position atop the thin tree, sliding away with his pride dragging along the longest hairs of his tail. Written across Hobgoblin’s face is plain amusement, and for a moment does he think about what it would be like to tear it off with a strike of his cloven feet. Pain clenches his heart momentarily. A good warlord must know his boundaries.
Weaknesses do always seem to show themselves at the worst of times, and when he finds himself preoccupied with snarling in Hobgoblin’s now smug direction, the recovering health of his ears lets an old friend’s voice go unnoticed. It’s a low click, courtesy of his lips, gives out the final alarm.
There’s something about Kid that pushes his buttons, whether it be that the boy had been the first to see him truly cry, had seen the inner workings of a man destined for greatness crack and crumble when under pressure and scared, or it was that the boy had a thing for appearing at the wrong times. Either way, it makes his ears draw back, turning fast, lifting his lengthening tail from the ground and holding it higher, his head following suit as he rises into a taller position. Had his friend been this small in the past? Or was it that in his new robust, aging body he’d forgotten that soon enough, he would tower like the trees, that not everyone, like his father, are giants?
Behind, Hobgoblin’s widening jaws bare more teeth, a threatening reminder that the hunter does not simply forget the prey that got away. Zhu chooses not to care.
Lines build and gather across his youthful features, moon eyes hard, studying, attentive as they go over Kid, looking for some sort of change. Nothing out of the ordinary. With speed, they alter themselves into a snarl, nose rolling backwards as he assesses the situation. Was he an idiot?
“No.”
In years time, his voice would be thicker, holding more depth and louder volume with an air of superiority, but now, his vocal cords aren’t there yet. No matter how assertive he attempts to sound with the annoyance paint to his words, now better formed than before, it isn’t perfect.
And as if on cue, Hobgoblin’s body is broken before their eyes, and within a few short seconds, is constructed into something new. Crying black holes in place of real eyes stare with amusement into the boy, as if looking for his soul, looking for something to take. “He’s Ma’s. Hobgoblin.” His tone is shifting back into a more relaxed setting, but doesn’t let his tries at asserting dominance fade. “Wrong things?”
A question presented as if there is never a single thing about the rougarou, loaded and waiting for the wrong response.

OOC: Shifts into his Wendigo form when mentioned

"Talk."

zhu