“Such indeed was her image, that neither could Shakespeare describe, nor Hogarth paint, nor Clive act, a fury in higher perfection.”
Mercy. The word slips away from her like ice before the flames of hell when the monster dives for Shrike.
Mercy. It dissolves to dust and nightmares when the beast beats upwards and tries to take with it one of the most violent parts of her soul.
Mercy. It's gone when Shrike screams her rage and the beast still beats upwards heedless that it takes with it the prophecy of its own death, the death of its kind.
Violence rises up in the wake of the memory of mercy, of forgiveness, peace. Hate and rage and lightning fill her up now. They gather in super-novas of blood-lust just below her skin and her soul screams for vengeance, for a holocaust of these creatures, for the eradication of all of them. The bits of her hate gather and pool like the blackness over her head and bits of the storm are no longer the bird's but hers (just as all their blood and bones will belong to Calliope).
The hate gathers and gathers and gathers and soon Calliope is a black-hole of fury and when she screams the clouds above her head are alive with light. Her vision narrows and she only sees that marked beast, only sees the pulse of its organs and the rage in the flailing of Shrike. Everything is else is black nothingness. Her universe begins with the monster carrying away her sister and it ends on the way she can already taste the blue storm-blood of the bird on her tongue.
Above the storm coagulates like heated ore, heavy and thick enough to drown. Blood leaks from Calliope's nose and the capillaries of her eyes burst until her gaze is only lightning and blood, lightning and blood. The strain of the storm only inspires her, only quickens her unicorn hooves to chase down that bird that will suffer, will die, will regret that it took from her idea of mercy.
Her hooves quicken more and the bird still flies and the storm still gathers in cracks of lightning and roars of thunder. And for a moment the monster pauses, feeling perhaps the weight and fury of this new storm and knowing that it belongs to a monster greater than it, that it belongs to Calliope.
When it falters, when its heart beats that one final throb and Calliope screams that one final cry to war the storm explodes and the supernova of hate in her bones explodes and the world around them is white, white, violent white. And all Calliope can think as her vision fades to black, black, black when the white fades and the storm dies is that she would die a million times and kill a million monsters to save Shrike from loosing a single drop of blood.
Then there only the blackness, broken up by the electricity in her blood that stutters into her heart as her magic begs it to beat again. Just a few more times, her magic whispers to her, if only to smile at the memory of that too bold bird falling in a death spiral to the ground when the storm struck it straight and true through the heart.
Over and over her magic chants to her and Calliope's heart thrums weakly driven on by hate and fury and rage alone.
But oh! Oh! The flesh is weaker than the heart and the world remains dark and empty but for the thready beat of her heart.
@Raymond @Shrike @Pavetta
