[ All told, this should hardly come as a surprise.
For the small sliver of his unlife during which Godfrey had attempted to coexist with him, he had known Gale to have a sort of pride about him. This hadn't bothered Godfrey at the time - indeed, it had seemed well-earned that Gale should consider himself clever, for he was so, and had worked to be so. Back then, in those early days of a correspondence, when one can turn the human flesh of one beloved to gold with a gaze, it had certainly seemed to him that Gale was often the most clever, most brilliant, most charming in any room he entered.
So it would always seem, for unknowing kine laying eyes on the impossibility of kindred splendor for the first time.
He seethes to think on it now - and to see that pride rear before him now. To see Gale, embarrassed and scrambling, trying to retain his poor impression of a man who had loved in this lifetime. Godfrey does not lay eyes on him; his attention does not lift when Gale slams his hand against the table, rails against Godfrey's assessment even as it tightens around his ankle.
But his face hardens. His nose screws like the snout of a wolf biding his time. ]
[He clenches his jaw once more, teeth grit as he struggles to force himself to regain some level of restraint.
It is at least partly successful. Though Godfrey will not look at him, Gale's gaze remains trained on the pale-haired man, and even taking their circumstances into consideration, anger looks foreign on him, out of place. If nothing else, that alone would be proof of how Gale had ruined him.
Heartbreaking. This was never what he had wanted. Should he ever be released to find his way to hell, surely some version of this would play a part in his eternal torment.]
... you were trying to share and spread your faith, too close to the heart of their territory for comfort. I was only meant to deter you, make you doubt— I had intended to do so with philosophy. We spoke for less than five minutes before it was plain to me that you would not be shaken. I should have left it there, said you were harmless and forgotten all about you— but I was selfish.
[He can admit that freely now. He'd made his peace with it years ago.]
Any efforts to deter you were cast aside early. I continued to seek you out because I enjoyed our conversations.
[Everything that took place after that... that was all his fault, as well.
He finally averts his gaze, drawing back up to his full height and closing himself off as the frustration he had worn so openly recedes.]
I am glad that you kept your faith. I never doubted you would. It will serve you well now.
[ You can hear the bitter smile in his voice; his faith, the desiccated joke that it is. His faith, that venomous viper, all stinging teeth and spraying toxin. That hearth he'd turned into an inferno, an all-consuming blaze in his gut.
His shoulders slump against the back of his seat with a derisive snort, his chest trembling with low, amused chuckling. The smile feels foreign on him now.
He betrays himself again. Naturally would Gale think such a foul thing worth preserving; it had always been nothing but a blade that would be turned against him. If ever he'd had any concept of its power to heal and protect, he had been expecting too much to think that it would return to him now.
Godfrey still does not turn his head up to see him. Instead, his eyes roll upward, glaring to him through his eyelashes, his smile stretching to vicious excess. Silence roars in the room, penned in by Gale's charm.
Until Godfrey begins to speak. ]
I bound myself to perdition for you.
[ The words are seething from him through tightly-clenched teeth. Rage flashes just below the surface of his voice. His nose wrinkles like the muzzle of a wolf. ]
You disassembled me for your foul brood. I complied in my own destruction to please you. And still--
[ Godfrey's head twists to catch his eyes, like a serpent, flashing and dangerous. His tongue begins to move too quickly in his mouth, his heart pounding in his ears. ]
--still, you would presume to lecture me. You would tell me of love.You, a man who only knows matters of a warm heart when he eats them- you, whose hand was in mine as I turned my back on everything. You. You who has given nothing but to those who would rot this world from its core. You--
[ Godfrey does not shout - he is not the sort of man who lets the clap of thunder seep into his words. His is the rumble of thunderstorms to come; the gradual, earth-shattering crack of long-frozen hearts of ice. Godfrey takes a harsh breath. ]
You did not love me. You did not even understand me. You don't know the meaning of the word.
[The insistence erupts from him without his giving it permission; he turns sharply back towards Godfrey and stalks towards him, fingertips dragging against the table as he stops just short of where the man is actually bound and seated, and there's heat and hurt in his gaze as his eyes seem somehow sharper than before, irises once golden brown now tinged red by the surge of frustration.
Compared to Godfrey's palpable rage, he is still restrained, but barely— tears prick at the corners of his now clearly inhuman eyes, and there's a tic above his jaw that shows just above the line of his neatly-kept beard.]
This is no lecture, Godfrey. Believe me, you would know full well if it was.
[His refusal is all but hissed, though he can hear his own voice threatening to become thick with emotion once more. When it came to interrogations, he was generally considered to be the best their clan had to offer— sharp, clever, cool, calculated, but he feels none of that now.
These are hardly the usual circumstances, in his defense.]
I will not begrudge you your anger, because it is rightfully yours, and I have wronged you— irrevocably, I am well aware— but it was never my intention to harm you! Exactly the opposite— and you cannot tell me what I did or do not feel, because it is clear you do not understand me. I am not so far from human. We come from you! Not every one of us who is condemned to such a life loses their very soul.
[His face is mere inches from Godfrey's now, and he does not know when he had chosen to lean down; it had happened without his realizing, as though getting closer and declaring himself where he could not look away would make things stick.]
If you knew even a fraction of what I have done, what I have endured in my efforts to keep you safe, you would not doubt that I know well the meaning of what it is to love, and given the chance, I would suffer it all again if it meant keeping you from their grasp— but your being here means that it was all for nothing.
[ It had been long nights alone with the Society's libraries that had let him piece together the truth of what had happened to him.
He'd spent a short while proceeding as many initiates to the Society of Leopold do; he had spread himself over many tomes, trying to map out these new and unknown borders of his world. He had thought himself sure of where they lay, when they had suddenly, violently extended into the darkness, and he realized that all he'd been looking at was a murky ditch. For if vampires crawled the night, what else did?
The Society had some answers. He found the existence of further horrors, for the Society hunters could not afford to ignore such terrors whilst they focused their fire on the children of Cain. They moved below him like the shadows of Miocene horrors, their huge bodies parting waters far beneath his feet. Werewolves, and their fight against the Great Wyrm. Wraiths. Changelings, and the dreams they infested. On and on those borders stretched, just beyond him as soon as Godfrey believes he feels them below his fingers. It was not long before Godfrey made the sensible conclusion - that he would never know - and moved to what he ought to be learning.
Each new piece a horror, a fresh pit in his stomach. He'd remembered sitting in front of those books, staring sightless at words that threatened to choke him. All that had happened to him, written in ink and bound in cracking leather.
He had faced down his share of night-creatures since then. These dark and lonely moments had been fire in his chest then. Kindling for a great inferno; a chugging and violent engine pushing him through them, that it may not be done to another in his place. He had not been daunted, and he had not been broken.
Gale circling the table and standing imperiously at his side of it puts every one of those pits in his stomach anew. He does not sense his words laced with blood-power, but that does not mean it does not pull him. Godfrey squares his shoulders as well as he can, and feels his arms tighten around the back of his chair again. ]
One walks in the light of Christ - but not as a fool.
[ It seethes from him - an attempt to reclaim lost ground. ]
Perhaps I was once such a man as you wish your words would now touch; the sort foolish enough to believe the scorpion as he tells me how inert his drooling tail is.
[ It would gladden Gale to think that he could do such a thing. It would gladden Godfrey even more to grab his resolve to make good on those words in both hands and wrestle it back. He sucks a breath down to the pits of him and feels the engine flicker. ]
I am he no longer. I never will be. And whether you are yourself one of the slithering vipers in this pit, whether you have simply spent so long among them that you consider yourself one - it makes no difference.
[He stands firm, an austere figure with harder lines than he had worn during those evenings he had spent with Godfrey above ground; they have both changed over the last decade, for how could they not, and Gale does not feel it was for the better in either case. His mouth pulls into a thin line, and he finds himself feeling an urgent need to reclaim some semblance of control, of neutrality; in any other case, it would not have mattered who sat at this table, he would have done his job to the letter and felt very little about it, because to allow himself to do anything otherwise would be opening himself up to be disciplined all over again.
Godfrey, as ever, makes him want to break all the rules, even when it spells nothing but trouble for him.]
You do not have to believe me. I've done nothing to earn your trust. I do not expect you to.
[His response is cool, terse as a more guarded expression becomes his mask, a vain attempt to hide the hurt and the frustration despite the fact that it's far too late to pretend he feels otherwise.]
That does not make it any less true. If it had meant your safety, I would have been fine to accept that you thought me a monster. The tragedy here is not that you have come to hate me— it is that I failed you. You were never meant to walk in this world.
[ Naturally. Naturally Gale would retreat back into cool reticence. He'd baited Godfrey into reacting, and react he had. Gale had no reason to persist in the facade of emotion any longer; one small concession, a sweet taste of superiority, and he could go back to being the cool and reasonable half of the conversation. He could pantomime that pedestal as much as he wanted - it couldn't change the nature of him. He could do nothing for his own bloodlessness; he'd been dead too long. Bloodlessness and callous manipulation was all that he knew.
Anger wells up in him then. Anger with himself. He should have been better. Never again, he had told himself - and he had engaged again. Godfrey should have kept his silence, and he had not. He had been fool enough to engage with him on his own battleground.
No more.
He feels it just as he most needs to; the white-hot love of his God, brewing in the bottom of his chest, beginning to well up into something he can use. Thunder in his chest. He lifts his chin to look at Gale in his face, closer than he's been since-- ]
I adjure you under penalty, Ancient Serpent. In the name of the Judge of the Living and the Dead.
[ It's a low, simmering thing. No warmer than a campfire to combat the dead chill in the room, centered in Godfrey's very lap.
A deterrence. ]
In the name of your Creator. In the name of Him who has power to consign you to Hell.
[ Before long, the simmer grows to a boil, its temperature rising steadily with his voice. ]
To depart forthwith in fear, along with your savage minions--
[ Godfrey pulls his arms and feels the magical chains wither.
[It is not enough to make the chill vanish entirely, but Gale can feel the shift even so, feel the ripple through the air as that heat rises within Godfrey himself, comes to a boil.
Then the man is on his feet, and if Gale's heart could beat, it would have stopped in that moment.
For the space of a single breath, the man towers over him— an impressive feat in itself, given Gale's own stature— but even softened towards Godfrey as he is, he is not such a fool as to remain within easy reach. Though the man's rage is well-deserved, Gale will not be able to help either of them if he allows himself to be smote here.
He vanishes, just for a moment, disappearing into mist before coming into view on the opposite side of the room, every muscle in him tense, realizing full well he may have to defend himself.]
How long have you been working towards that?
[He's likely been praying his chains away for hours, Gale thinks.]
Godfrey. I wish to help you leave this place alive. I cannot do that if you finish me here.
[ That, as though his efforts had been some parlour trick; the result of a child's afternoon with a sketchpad and crayon box.
He might have kept his head high at any other juncture of this terrible conversation. He may have been able to remind himself that Gale and those of his kin had no understanding of his power; they had to look down their nose at it, lest they see how crushing and severe it truly is.
This wisdom no longer reaches him; the conversation has reached its fever pitch. Blood is roaring in his ears, and each minute is a second.
Gale reconstitutes at his back. Godfrey turns, and for a frigid second, falls still as stone. He hears Gale's voice before he realizes words had been spoken.
In the next instant, the table flashes in his face, flipped and sent sprawling in one fast motion by Godfrey, before he can surge forward and get his hand around his throat. ]
You--
[ He wants to resist the urge to crush his throat in his hand. Godfrey wishes he could. Instead, he feels its stillness beneath his hand, and finds new fury in his own younger stupidity all over again. His fingers begin to tighten. ]
You have done nothing but drag me into this darkness. [ Godfrey's anger does not push him to shout; the words continue to seep from him, slow and strained, ] I worsen for every moment I spend here, infected by this disease. You are a noose around my throat.
[He has no need for breath, but he still feels pain, and his body still remembers what it was like to breathe, still reacts accordingly when the larger man's hand closes around his throat— firm and without crushing, but Gale knows it would be a simple thing for him to do the latter, can feel the strength coursing through him as his fingers tighten.
It wouldn't kill him, perhaps, but the pain would be excruciating, the recovery agony even when aided by magic.
For the first time, there is not only hurt and upset in his gaze, but fear, even if only for a moment. A brief flicker of it crosses his face as he reaches to grab onto Godfrey's wrist with both hands, letting his own surprising strength be felt as he makes an effort to stay his grip.]
Please.
[His voice is strained; he may not require air, but that tightening grip around his throat makes it difficult to force anything out regardless.
As though he has the right to ask Godfrey to grant him clemency. He knows he does not.]
This isn't— it isn't what I wanted—
[What little color he possessed has drained from his face entirely now, his back against the wall, but before he can struggle to say anything more, the door on the opposite room flies open despite having been locked after his arrival. It swings wide, hitting the wall behind it, and a dark-haired woman glides into the room with as much urgency as though she were intending on joining the pair of them for tea— but as her gaze comes to rest on their current predicament, she sighs heavily.]
"You two simply couldn't wait to get your hands on one another, could you?"
[She makes a broad gesture with one hand; it forces Godfrey to release his hold on her magister, sending him through the air so that his back slams hard against the opposite wall, forcing space between the pair of them.
She smiles, and there is no kindness in it.]
"Aren't you happy to see one another again?"
[Gale's gaze narrows sharply as he stumbles forward a few steps, clasping a hand against his throat where the sting of Godfrey's threat remains, a choking gasp preceding his words as he struggles to regain full use of his voice.]
You... you arranged this. Of-fucking-course you did!
[ All else - insult, indignity, the man whose throat is crushed between his hands - is cast into shadow as she bursts into the room, a star-point of roiling blood magic. The wound from which the spiritual ill of all around him festers. The new and worthy focus of his unparalleled, cold, single-minded fury. He would have thrown Gale down himself, had she not thrown him away first.
Instead, he and the wall fall quickly away from his hands, and he is cast between the helpless legs of the upturned table, crushed gasping against the opposite edge of the room. His delicate, golden cross spills from his button-down and spins helpless against his broad chest, glinting in the shadowy bowels of this nightwalker nest.
Brandishing it, though normally possible, would mean pulling the chain over his head. Ducking his head down from the wall, drawing his hand far enough over it to pull the chain free, holding it aloft. Godfrey's faith was a tarnished thing, but it was strong, and it could be channeled through even this smooth little cross of gold. Not so now. Mystra holds him against the wall with immense strength and negligent effort, as though cupping a firefly in her hands.
He cannot stride, but he can wiggle.
Achingly, he folds down his ring and pinkie, holding them in place with his thumb. He peels his arm from the wall. He musters that golden light into his chest.
He takes a breath, and he speaks, projects the rumble of his chest through as much of the little chamber as he can, his arm trembling all the way up; ]
In nómine [ Two fingers against the very center of his forehead, ] Pátris--
[ The more he drives himself, the easier it gets, though by gasping shreds instead of the centimeters he may have dared to hope for. Godfrey takes a breath and, teeth grit, moves his fingers down to his sternum. ]
Et Fílii, [ Right shoulder, ] et Spirítus Sancti--
Edited (no godfrey you were right the first time) 2024-07-25 20:32 (UTC)
[The woman watches his efforts without so much as batting an eye; she does not appear threatened, only bemused as Godfrey struggles to fight against the force of her spell. She appears untouched by Gale's anger, as well; she walks past him without so much as acknowledging his rage, her every movement fluid and made with purpose, coming to a full stop a few feet in front of their captive. She lifts a hand and gives a twist of her wrist; the moment she does so, Godfrey can feel his own throat tightening, constricting as she limits the airflow to his lungs.]
"It's almost endearing, really, your determination to try. Don't over-exert yourself. I have great plans for you."
[Behind her, Gale grits his teeth before taking a few steps forward, uncertain of what she may pull, uncomfortable with just how close she is to Godfrey. All those years ago, this was exactly what he'd wanted to avoid.]
Mystra—
[He says her name in a warning tone, but she cuts him off before he can say more, laughing as she looks back over her shoulder.]
"You should be thanking me. I intend to let you keep him as a pet. I could have easily flayed him alive, but I thought even you deserve a little something now and then."
[Her gaze turns back to Godfrey, cold and haughty, a cruel smile turning her lips upwards.]
"Your pretty words are useless against me. Who do you think you're dealing with, my husband?"
[Gale's fingers curl into white-knuckled fists. No matter how angry she made him, neither he nor Godfrey would benefit from his lashing out without thought.]
She would not do the same to him. Godfrey sees this for what it really is. She attempts to cast aspersion over his faith. In so doing, she does the opposite; were his words truly so useless, she would not be expending energy to crush his throat just to protect her ears from them.
And here Godfrey proves another boon of mortality. Gale had no living lungs to starve; his own had long since stopped, likely atrophied black in his chest. A Cainite did not contend with lungs which hungered for air. When boots were put to neck, more often than not, they were their wearers, not beneath their treads. Such vulnerability as a true mortal human experiences is what has built the civilizations that the Cainite parasitizes, grows fat upon. They have been dead too long to remember what wonders a flash of mortal peril does for one's ability to innovate.
Godfrey's lungs begin to scream in a matter of seconds. He feels them seizing in his chest as his throat closes. His face grows hot as they bicker uselessly. Godfrey's head pitches, golden strands falling before his brilliant eyes as he watches the woman before him, pale and swanlike throat flashing in fluorescents as she turns to emasculate her husband.
He waits. He bides his time. He holds that golden light in his chest as his head pounds.
Pushes it to his extremities. Feels his fingertips aflame with it, beneath his skin.
She turns back to him and speaks, Godfrey snarling soundlessly at her.
Then, he endeavors to make her regret standing so close.
One of his hands snaps to catch her face, bursting with morning light across her lips, fingers pinching the hollows of her dead cheeks.
[The howling scream that follows slices through the air like a knife, ear-splitting; Mystra recoils and wrenches herself away from him, staggering backwards. All of that elegance of hers vanishes in a moment; she snarls, the sound more animal than anything even resembling human, and she clutches the side of her face to cover some of the marks that have been seared into her flesh, though it's nowhere near enough. The smell of burnt flesh hangs in the air, and she lets out a low hiss before collecting herself, drawing back to her full height and squaring her shoulders despite her injuries.]
"You impudent wretch. Not even going to try to control your cow, Gale? Perhaps I should silence his voice permanently—"
[She raises a hand with nails catching the gleam of the fluorescent light above, and there is no mistaking the crackle of magic that moves through the air, a promise that she will do far worse than simply sink her claws into him— but too quickly for the human eye, she is intercepted.
Gale stands between them, his back against Godfrey's chest despite the fact that the hunter had attacked him mere moments before, and he raises both hands with his wrists crossed, arcane fire bursting into being before his palm and aimed directly at Mystra, challenging her.]
You will not touch him.
[His voice is firm and unwavering, his gaze molten steel as he stares her down.
She stares at the both of them before letting out a peal of cold, mirthless laughter, tossing her head back as it builds.]
"At least now you're being honest about choosing him over me."
[ Two things about Tertiary Gwilym; he is always prepared to die, and he has no interest in submitting to the protection of the man who broke him. One in his position can live no other way.
Gale might as well not exist between them, for how Godfrey stares Mystra and her mending face down. He takes no perverse joy in the cloying stink of what he's done, and nor in the rapid erosion of her disgusting facade. He takes it all in, in stolid and stern silence, and he knows that he was right. If she didn't fear him before, she knows now that she should.
And he knows what Gale means to do; keep the peace between his prisoner and his vile wife, that hideous mockery of womanhood. He would have him slink away behind him like a coward. He would have him shut his mouth while they pantomime their pathetic imitation at matrimony.
Gale would have power over him where none exists.
Godfrey watches her, his seafoam eyes clear in the shadow the fluorescent lights draw his face in. With low, meticulous promise, he utters; ]
He cannot stop me forever.
[ Godfrey's hands curl into fists, knuckles hard against the wall, and he lifts his head. ]
Keep me here, and I will remind you why they name you Trembling Ones.
Edited (wording tweak) 2024-08-13 21:45 (UTC)
THROWS OFF MY SHROUD ONCE MORE, 2025 the year of chris' resurrection
[Gale's interjection is low, hard-edged; he does not look back at the man behind him, never letting his gaze stray, unwilling to turn a blind eye to Mystra for even the barest fraction of a second. In this moment, Godfrey could do anything he liked to her and he would hardly bat an eye; any affection he had once held for the creature before them had faded decades past, and in its place there is only resentment, reproach, anger that now wells up within him, boiling-hot rage that fuels the flame at his command.
It burns fiercely before him, but he does not unleash it— the temptation is strong, but he is not so far lost to his own anger that he does not know what risks remain. Mystra herself is but one woman, but there is an entire clan waiting to descend on them should things get out of hand.
Mystra's lip curls upwards, wearing her disdain plainly as she shifts her weight to her back foot— not retreating, not in full, but her gaze has narrowed harshly as she appraises the pair of them, lingering on their prisoner. Even free from shackles, he was still that— one hunter against an entire compound of their kind.
He could hurt her, perhaps even slay several others in his efforts to escape, but she is confident that he could only get so far should he try. Some of the Tremere were expendable, surely.]
"I'm almost curious to see how much you can manage before you're shackled once more, hunter."
[Gale clenches his jaw. The man in this room is not the Godfrey he had known, and certainly will have no appreciation for any effort he makes to see him spared, but he will not see Mystra bait Godfrey into an even more impossible situation than they have already found themselves in. Not when he had fought so hard to keep Godfrey from such a fate.]
Mystra—
[She cuts Gale off sharply, her hand dropping away to show where her flesh has begun to mend, slowly knitting itself together even as the searing marks from Godfrey's grasp remain.]
"You would truly let him kill me where I stand, wouldn't you? Perhaps I should give you exactly what you wish for— let you keep your little pet."
[It's enough to bait him into a snarl of his own; even without her stating her terms, he can imagine exactly what sort of thing she has in mind.]
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no subject
For the small sliver of his unlife during which Godfrey had attempted to coexist with him, he had known Gale to have a sort of pride about him. This hadn't bothered Godfrey at the time - indeed, it had seemed well-earned that Gale should consider himself clever, for he was so, and had worked to be so. Back then, in those early days of a correspondence, when one can turn the human flesh of one beloved to gold with a gaze, it had certainly seemed to him that Gale was often the most clever, most brilliant, most charming in any room he entered.
So it would always seem, for unknowing kine laying eyes on the impossibility of kindred splendor for the first time.
He seethes to think on it now - and to see that pride rear before him now. To see Gale, embarrassed and scrambling, trying to retain his poor impression of a man who had loved in this lifetime. Godfrey does not lay eyes on him; his attention does not lift when Gale slams his hand against the table, rails against Godfrey's assessment even as it tightens around his ankle.
But his face hardens. His nose screws like the snout of a wolf biding his time. ]
Had you not succeeded, I would not be before you.
no subject
[He clenches his jaw once more, teeth grit as he struggles to force himself to regain some level of restraint.
It is at least partly successful. Though Godfrey will not look at him, Gale's gaze remains trained on the pale-haired man, and even taking their circumstances into consideration, anger looks foreign on him, out of place. If nothing else, that alone would be proof of how Gale had ruined him.
Heartbreaking. This was never what he had wanted. Should he ever be released to find his way to hell, surely some version of this would play a part in his eternal torment.]
... you were trying to share and spread your faith, too close to the heart of their territory for comfort. I was only meant to deter you, make you doubt— I had intended to do so with philosophy. We spoke for less than five minutes before it was plain to me that you would not be shaken. I should have left it there, said you were harmless and forgotten all about you— but I was selfish.
[He can admit that freely now. He'd made his peace with it years ago.]
Any efforts to deter you were cast aside early. I continued to seek you out because I enjoyed our conversations.
[Everything that took place after that... that was all his fault, as well.
He finally averts his gaze, drawing back up to his full height and closing himself off as the frustration he had worn so openly recedes.]
I am glad that you kept your faith. I never doubted you would. It will serve you well now.
no subject
[ You can hear the bitter smile in his voice; his faith, the desiccated joke that it is. His faith, that venomous viper, all stinging teeth and spraying toxin. That hearth he'd turned into an inferno, an all-consuming blaze in his gut.
His shoulders slump against the back of his seat with a derisive snort, his chest trembling with low, amused chuckling. The smile feels foreign on him now.
He betrays himself again. Naturally would Gale think such a foul thing worth preserving; it had always been nothing but a blade that would be turned against him. If ever he'd had any concept of its power to heal and protect, he had been expecting too much to think that it would return to him now.
Godfrey still does not turn his head up to see him. Instead, his eyes roll upward, glaring to him through his eyelashes, his smile stretching to vicious excess. Silence roars in the room, penned in by Gale's charm.
Until Godfrey begins to speak. ]
I bound myself to perdition for you.
[ The words are seething from him through tightly-clenched teeth. Rage flashes just below the surface of his voice. His nose wrinkles like the muzzle of a wolf. ]
You disassembled me for your foul brood. I complied in my own destruction to please you. And still--
[ Godfrey's head twists to catch his eyes, like a serpent, flashing and dangerous. His tongue begins to move too quickly in his mouth, his heart pounding in his ears. ]
--still, you would presume to lecture me. You would tell me of love. You, a man who only knows matters of a warm heart when he eats them- you, whose hand was in mine as I turned my back on everything. You. You who has given nothing but to those who would rot this world from its core. You--
[ Godfrey does not shout - he is not the sort of man who lets the clap of thunder seep into his words. His is the rumble of thunderstorms to come; the gradual, earth-shattering crack of long-frozen hearts of ice. Godfrey takes a harsh breath. ]
You did not love me. You did not even understand me. You don't know the meaning of the word.
no subject
[The insistence erupts from him without his giving it permission; he turns sharply back towards Godfrey and stalks towards him, fingertips dragging against the table as he stops just short of where the man is actually bound and seated, and there's heat and hurt in his gaze as his eyes seem somehow sharper than before, irises once golden brown now tinged red by the surge of frustration.
Compared to Godfrey's palpable rage, he is still restrained, but barely— tears prick at the corners of his now clearly inhuman eyes, and there's a tic above his jaw that shows just above the line of his neatly-kept beard.]
This is no lecture, Godfrey. Believe me, you would know full well if it was.
[His refusal is all but hissed, though he can hear his own voice threatening to become thick with emotion once more. When it came to interrogations, he was generally considered to be the best their clan had to offer— sharp, clever, cool, calculated, but he feels none of that now.
These are hardly the usual circumstances, in his defense.]
I will not begrudge you your anger, because it is rightfully yours, and I have wronged you— irrevocably, I am well aware— but it was never my intention to harm you! Exactly the opposite— and you cannot tell me what I did or do not feel, because it is clear you do not understand me. I am not so far from human. We come from you! Not every one of us who is condemned to such a life loses their very soul.
[His face is mere inches from Godfrey's now, and he does not know when he had chosen to lean down; it had happened without his realizing, as though getting closer and declaring himself where he could not look away would make things stick.]
If you knew even a fraction of what I have done, what I have endured in my efforts to keep you safe, you would not doubt that I know well the meaning of what it is to love, and given the chance, I would suffer it all again if it meant keeping you from their grasp— but your being here means that it was all for nothing.
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He'd spent a short while proceeding as many initiates to the Society of Leopold do; he had spread himself over many tomes, trying to map out these new and unknown borders of his world. He had thought himself sure of where they lay, when they had suddenly, violently extended into the darkness, and he realized that all he'd been looking at was a murky ditch. For if vampires crawled the night, what else did?
The Society had some answers. He found the existence of further horrors, for the Society hunters could not afford to ignore such terrors whilst they focused their fire on the children of Cain. They moved below him like the shadows of Miocene horrors, their huge bodies parting waters far beneath his feet. Werewolves, and their fight against the Great Wyrm. Wraiths. Changelings, and the dreams they infested. On and on those borders stretched, just beyond him as soon as Godfrey believes he feels them below his fingers. It was not long before Godfrey made the sensible conclusion - that he would never know - and moved to what he ought to be learning.
Each new piece a horror, a fresh pit in his stomach. He'd remembered sitting in front of those books, staring sightless at words that threatened to choke him. All that had happened to him, written in ink and bound in cracking leather.
He had faced down his share of night-creatures since then. These dark and lonely moments had been fire in his chest then. Kindling for a great inferno; a chugging and violent engine pushing him through them, that it may not be done to another in his place. He had not been daunted, and he had not been broken.
Gale circling the table and standing imperiously at his side of it puts every one of those pits in his stomach anew. He does not sense his words laced with blood-power, but that does not mean it does not pull him. Godfrey squares his shoulders as well as he can, and feels his arms tighten around the back of his chair again. ]
One walks in the light of Christ - but not as a fool.
[ It seethes from him - an attempt to reclaim lost ground. ]
Perhaps I was once such a man as you wish your words would now touch; the sort foolish enough to believe the scorpion as he tells me how inert his drooling tail is.
[ It would gladden Gale to think that he could do such a thing. It would gladden Godfrey even more to grab his resolve to make good on those words in both hands and wrestle it back. He sucks a breath down to the pits of him and feels the engine flicker. ]
I am he no longer. I never will be. And whether you are yourself one of the slithering vipers in this pit, whether you have simply spent so long among them that you consider yourself one - it makes no difference.
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Godfrey, as ever, makes him want to break all the rules, even when it spells nothing but trouble for him.]
You do not have to believe me. I've done nothing to earn your trust. I do not expect you to.
[His response is cool, terse as a more guarded expression becomes his mask, a vain attempt to hide the hurt and the frustration despite the fact that it's far too late to pretend he feels otherwise.]
That does not make it any less true. If it had meant your safety, I would have been fine to accept that you thought me a monster. The tragedy here is not that you have come to hate me— it is that I failed you. You were never meant to walk in this world.
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Anger wells up in him then. Anger with himself. He should have been better. Never again, he had told himself - and he had engaged again. Godfrey should have kept his silence, and he had not. He had been fool enough to engage with him on his own battleground.
No more.
He feels it just as he most needs to; the white-hot love of his God, brewing in the bottom of his chest, beginning to well up into something he can use. Thunder in his chest. He lifts his chin to look at Gale in his face, closer than he's been since-- ]
I adjure you under penalty, Ancient Serpent. In the name of the Judge of the Living and the Dead.
[ It's a low, simmering thing. No warmer than a campfire to combat the dead chill in the room, centered in Godfrey's very lap.
A deterrence. ]
In the name of your Creator. In the name of Him who has power to consign you to Hell.
[ Before long, the simmer grows to a boil, its temperature rising steadily with his voice. ]
To depart forthwith in fear, along with your savage minions--
[ Godfrey pulls his arms and feels the magical chains wither.
And he stands. ]
--from this servant of God.
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Then the man is on his feet, and if Gale's heart could beat, it would have stopped in that moment.
For the space of a single breath, the man towers over him— an impressive feat in itself, given Gale's own stature— but even softened towards Godfrey as he is, he is not such a fool as to remain within easy reach. Though the man's rage is well-deserved, Gale will not be able to help either of them if he allows himself to be smote here.
He vanishes, just for a moment, disappearing into mist before coming into view on the opposite side of the room, every muscle in him tense, realizing full well he may have to defend himself.]
How long have you been working towards that?
[He's likely been praying his chains away for hours, Gale thinks.]
Godfrey. I wish to help you leave this place alive. I cannot do that if you finish me here.
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He might have kept his head high at any other juncture of this terrible conversation. He may have been able to remind himself that Gale and those of his kin had no understanding of his power; they had to look down their nose at it, lest they see how crushing and severe it truly is.
This wisdom no longer reaches him; the conversation has reached its fever pitch. Blood is roaring in his ears, and each minute is a second.
Gale reconstitutes at his back. Godfrey turns, and for a frigid second, falls still as stone. He hears Gale's voice before he realizes words had been spoken.
In the next instant, the table flashes in his face, flipped and sent sprawling in one fast motion by Godfrey, before he can surge forward and get his hand around his throat. ]
You--
[ He wants to resist the urge to crush his throat in his hand. Godfrey wishes he could. Instead, he feels its stillness beneath his hand, and finds new fury in his own younger stupidity all over again. His fingers begin to tighten. ]
You have done nothing but drag me into this darkness. [ Godfrey's anger does not push him to shout; the words continue to seep from him, slow and strained, ] I worsen for every moment I spend here, infected by this disease. You are a noose around my throat.
THROWS THE LID OFF MY COFFIN
It wouldn't kill him, perhaps, but the pain would be excruciating, the recovery agony even when aided by magic.
For the first time, there is not only hurt and upset in his gaze, but fear, even if only for a moment. A brief flicker of it crosses his face as he reaches to grab onto Godfrey's wrist with both hands, letting his own surprising strength be felt as he makes an effort to stay his grip.]
Please.
[His voice is strained; he may not require air, but that tightening grip around his throat makes it difficult to force anything out regardless.
As though he has the right to ask Godfrey to grant him clemency. He knows he does not.]
This isn't— it isn't what I wanted—
[What little color he possessed has drained from his face entirely now, his back against the wall, but before he can struggle to say anything more, the door on the opposite room flies open despite having been locked after his arrival. It swings wide, hitting the wall behind it, and a dark-haired woman glides into the room with as much urgency as though she were intending on joining the pair of them for tea— but as her gaze comes to rest on their current predicament, she sighs heavily.]
"You two simply couldn't wait to get your hands on one another, could you?"
[She makes a broad gesture with one hand; it forces Godfrey to release his hold on her magister, sending him through the air so that his back slams hard against the opposite wall, forcing space between the pair of them.
She smiles, and there is no kindness in it.]
"Aren't you happy to see one another again?"
[Gale's gaze narrows sharply as he stumbles forward a few steps, clasping a hand against his throat where the sting of Godfrey's threat remains, a choking gasp preceding his words as he struggles to regain full use of his voice.]
You... you arranged this. Of-fucking-course you did!
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[ All else - insult, indignity, the man whose throat is crushed between his hands - is cast into shadow as she bursts into the room, a star-point of roiling blood magic. The wound from which the spiritual ill of all around him festers. The new and worthy focus of his unparalleled, cold, single-minded fury. He would have thrown Gale down himself, had she not thrown him away first.
Instead, he and the wall fall quickly away from his hands, and he is cast between the helpless legs of the upturned table, crushed gasping against the opposite edge of the room. His delicate, golden cross spills from his button-down and spins helpless against his broad chest, glinting in the shadowy bowels of this nightwalker nest.
Brandishing it, though normally possible, would mean pulling the chain over his head. Ducking his head down from the wall, drawing his hand far enough over it to pull the chain free, holding it aloft. Godfrey's faith was a tarnished thing, but it was strong, and it could be channeled through even this smooth little cross of gold. Not so now. Mystra holds him against the wall with immense strength and negligent effort, as though cupping a firefly in her hands.
He cannot stride, but he can wiggle.
Achingly, he folds down his ring and pinkie, holding them in place with his thumb. He peels his arm from the wall. He musters that golden light into his chest.
He takes a breath, and he speaks, projects the rumble of his chest through as much of the little chamber as he can, his arm trembling all the way up; ]
In nómine [ Two fingers against the very center of his forehead, ] Pátris--
[ The more he drives himself, the easier it gets, though by gasping shreds instead of the centimeters he may have dared to hope for. Godfrey takes a breath and, teeth grit, moves his fingers down to his sternum. ]
Et Fílii, [ Right shoulder, ] et Spirítus Sancti--
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"It's almost endearing, really, your determination to try. Don't over-exert yourself. I have great plans for you."
[Behind her, Gale grits his teeth before taking a few steps forward, uncertain of what she may pull, uncomfortable with just how close she is to Godfrey. All those years ago, this was exactly what he'd wanted to avoid.]
Mystra—
[He says her name in a warning tone, but she cuts him off before he can say more, laughing as she looks back over her shoulder.]
"You should be thanking me. I intend to let you keep him as a pet. I could have easily flayed him alive, but I thought even you deserve a little something now and then."
[Her gaze turns back to Godfrey, cold and haughty, a cruel smile turning her lips upwards.]
"Your pretty words are useless against me. Who do you think you're dealing with, my husband?"
[Gale's fingers curl into white-knuckled fists. No matter how angry she made him, neither he nor Godfrey would benefit from his lashing out without thought.]
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She would not do the same to him. Godfrey sees this for what it really is. She attempts to cast aspersion over his faith. In so doing, she does the opposite; were his words truly so useless, she would not be expending energy to crush his throat just to protect her ears from them.
And here Godfrey proves another boon of mortality. Gale had no living lungs to starve; his own had long since stopped, likely atrophied black in his chest. A Cainite did not contend with lungs which hungered for air. When boots were put to neck, more often than not, they were their wearers, not beneath their treads. Such vulnerability as a true mortal human experiences is what has built the civilizations that the Cainite parasitizes, grows fat upon. They have been dead too long to remember what wonders a flash of mortal peril does for one's ability to innovate.
Godfrey's lungs begin to scream in a matter of seconds. He feels them seizing in his chest as his throat closes. His face grows hot as they bicker uselessly. Godfrey's head pitches, golden strands falling before his brilliant eyes as he watches the woman before him, pale and swanlike throat flashing in fluorescents as she turns to emasculate her husband.
He waits. He bides his time. He holds that golden light in his chest as his head pounds.
Pushes it to his extremities. Feels his fingertips aflame with it, beneath his skin.
She turns back to him and speaks, Godfrey snarling soundlessly at her.
Then, he endeavors to make her regret standing so close.
One of his hands snaps to catch her face, bursting with morning light across her lips, fingers pinching the hollows of her dead cheeks.
And it squeezes. ]
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"You impudent wretch. Not even going to try to control your cow, Gale? Perhaps I should silence his voice permanently—"
[She raises a hand with nails catching the gleam of the fluorescent light above, and there is no mistaking the crackle of magic that moves through the air, a promise that she will do far worse than simply sink her claws into him— but too quickly for the human eye, she is intercepted.
Gale stands between them, his back against Godfrey's chest despite the fact that the hunter had attacked him mere moments before, and he raises both hands with his wrists crossed, arcane fire bursting into being before his palm and aimed directly at Mystra, challenging her.]
You will not touch him.
[His voice is firm and unwavering, his gaze molten steel as he stares her down.
She stares at the both of them before letting out a peal of cold, mirthless laughter, tossing her head back as it builds.]
"At least now you're being honest about choosing him over me."
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Gale might as well not exist between them, for how Godfrey stares Mystra and her mending face down. He takes no perverse joy in the cloying stink of what he's done, and nor in the rapid erosion of her disgusting facade. He takes it all in, in stolid and stern silence, and he knows that he was right. If she didn't fear him before, she knows now that she should.
And he knows what Gale means to do; keep the peace between his prisoner and his vile wife, that hideous mockery of womanhood. He would have him slink away behind him like a coward. He would have him shut his mouth while they pantomime their pathetic imitation at matrimony.
Gale would have power over him where none exists.
Godfrey watches her, his seafoam eyes clear in the shadow the fluorescent lights draw his face in. With low, meticulous promise, he utters; ]
He cannot stop me forever.
[ Godfrey's hands curl into fists, knuckles hard against the wall, and he lifts his head. ]
Keep me here, and I will remind you why they name you Trembling Ones.
THROWS OFF MY SHROUD ONCE MORE, 2025 the year of chris' resurrection
[Gale's interjection is low, hard-edged; he does not look back at the man behind him, never letting his gaze stray, unwilling to turn a blind eye to Mystra for even the barest fraction of a second. In this moment, Godfrey could do anything he liked to her and he would hardly bat an eye; any affection he had once held for the creature before them had faded decades past, and in its place there is only resentment, reproach, anger that now wells up within him, boiling-hot rage that fuels the flame at his command.
It burns fiercely before him, but he does not unleash it— the temptation is strong, but he is not so far lost to his own anger that he does not know what risks remain. Mystra herself is but one woman, but there is an entire clan waiting to descend on them should things get out of hand.
Mystra's lip curls upwards, wearing her disdain plainly as she shifts her weight to her back foot— not retreating, not in full, but her gaze has narrowed harshly as she appraises the pair of them, lingering on their prisoner. Even free from shackles, he was still that— one hunter against an entire compound of their kind.
He could hurt her, perhaps even slay several others in his efforts to escape, but she is confident that he could only get so far should he try. Some of the Tremere were expendable, surely.]
"I'm almost curious to see how much you can manage before you're shackled once more, hunter."
[Gale clenches his jaw. The man in this room is not the Godfrey he had known, and certainly will have no appreciation for any effort he makes to see him spared, but he will not see Mystra bait Godfrey into an even more impossible situation than they have already found themselves in. Not when he had fought so hard to keep Godfrey from such a fate.]
Mystra—
[She cuts Gale off sharply, her hand dropping away to show where her flesh has begun to mend, slowly knitting itself together even as the searing marks from Godfrey's grasp remain.]
"You would truly let him kill me where I stand, wouldn't you? Perhaps I should give you exactly what you wish for— let you keep your little pet."
[It's enough to bait him into a snarl of his own; even without her stating her terms, he can imagine exactly what sort of thing she has in mind.]
You will not make him one of us!