Яikyn

"Gladly," is my quick retort from the ground, his threatening expression ignored for the desperation driving my actions, "I’ll just be taking that, and then I’ll be…"

I’m close enough to feel the blue stone against my lips already, close enough that maybe, just maybe, this won’t be my fate today. Unfortunately, I’m also just close enough to get full detail of each gray, wizened hair on his ancient head when he picks it up in his craggy lips, and an odd, magical pull begins to do flips all through me.

It’s almost hot, but not really, more like the memory of it, and it dances, and writhes; it never seems to stop moving through my veins. My companion, worried by the odd sensations reaching through our bond, tentatively approaches me, his eyes half widened by fear, for me, for us, and the rest by curiosity, captured from truly saving me by the lure of this rare chance to witness a God’s magic at play.

Suddenly the movement of the magic stops, but when it does, I’m not me. Not anymore, anyway, quite suddenly pressed far inside myself, in a prison of handsome flesh and strong bone. Perhaps the worry manages to burrow its way out of my golden eyes as my head shoots up, my gaze locking with this old man’s; the ache of age fills my joints, and a heady sigh at the sudden pain escapes my body. The sound of the wind muffles, the shape of his green eyes blurs, as does the rest of the world, and, for no reason I can imagine, I feel very, very tired. Accompanying this weariness is a newfound wariness of an opponent I might have mocked seconds before; an even match, now, if my entire body is as useless as it feels just standing here. Were I the truly thoughtful type, I might spiral off into a wonder as to how dangerous he might seem were he in my body, and I his…

However, that weariness is a small ember of the magic racing through me, which quickly blooms into a flame, before I am suddenly cast from that gloriously warm, inner light, to the shadows about it. Here, here is where the old man dwells, the fire always flickering near, where he might see it, and know it is warm, and might comfort him; here, where the light almost reaches, but dies, and leaves no warmth in its wake. I recognize the feeling which consumes me (not the elderliness, which is obvious, but the emotion), having felt something akin to this desperate darkness in the shortness of my life.

Grief, grief so deep and illogical that it is forced away, becoming loneliness, and the cold, an expanse which grows the longer one lives, and the more that they lose; he had walked out into the chill, wreathed about the comfort of closeness, afraid of the flame which had burned him, as I had only recently done, myself. Unlike this man, though, I had not lived here for long, or been scalded quite as badly by the light pulsing at its heart, because the ache in my breast which exists when I am Rikyn, young, free, and lost, is nothing compared to being this husk of a being.

The clamor of the stone against the ground begins to stir me from this feeling, the first thing to leave being the first to arrive; I now longer feel like my knees are dust and gravel mocking what used to be joints. The clarity of the vision of the real Albrecht returns, and the wind again whispers, and howls, in ways I might never have heard it, had I not temporarily been unable to.

The haunting song of the wind beguiles me as the spell concludes its binding; finally, I’m me, when my body answers my bidding, and my muzzle descends, and sweeps the stone away between my shoulder, and the bronze plating protecting it. When I look again at the old man, its not condemnation lining my face, as there might have been had it been anything other than a magical, God given rock.

It’s… something much warmer.

Duir’s mouth literally slips open, his steps stayed from where he’d been planning to hurl himself between me and the elder, if he had to; while he’d been too little to do much the last time I’d almost killed the geezer, he’d certainly not stand idly by, this time. That he might not have to, however, his mind gently probing my emotional status with even further disbelief ringing through our bond, softens his expression into one of pure wonder as to what had happened in the last forty-five seconds.

I guess I’d be an asshole too, if I lived like that all the time. Not that I’m telling him sorry, or anything.

I just won’t threaten him anymore.

Much.

"Watch where you are going, yeah?" I sarcastically jibe, an ear flicking back in feigned irritation, not quite sure what to do with this sudden understanding of a guy who, only ten minutes ago, I would likely have knocked out again without much prompting.

[ OOC: Lol and now he's all confused. Your post was awesome btw! <3 ]

there's no place to hide down here