what sounds better? revenge or popcorn?

[blacklisle]

Post your character. Post a prompt or leave it blank and let others post a prompt. Find your prompts here. Tag. Enjoy.

[ lfdsh ]

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[the_infant_death]

Claudia's sigh, as she put away her book, was not entirely kind. But she folded up her book, and took the paper to examine the sketch. It was not badly done: he lacked practise but he had a fair eye. With a vampire's ability to mimic, he might yet be an artist of note.

"I have seen those, but never close," she told him, after a moment. "I am more familiar with the ground-dwelling creatures." The ones that ran on all fours, or even bipedal, once they gained enough food.

[jukebox_hero]

He nodded, "Yeah, the demo-dogs will hunt in packs, but they still have to communicate with each other, these bastards swarm, like a hive-mind. If you've ever seen ants strip something clean it's like that, just..." His brow furrowed, trying to figure out how to explain what he meant, especially given as how he'd experienced it and hadn't just watched it, and the only thing he could finally come up with was: "Worse."

He shook his head then, "You whack enough of the dogs and the rest will retreat." Or so he'd had explained to him, once, "But not these guys. They'll keep coming."

[the_infant_death]

"They are all of a hive-mind," Claudia answered, absently, before returning the paper to him. "It is like a fungus. A sprawling network of roots, deeper and more widespread than mortals guess at. These that fly, and the...dogs. And those which walk. But they are stupid, as animals are stupid. They can be deceived, and they do not hunt the dead."

She sat still and without fidgeting, an unnatural state for anyone who looked as young as she. "But they did not devour your flesh, nor use your body to feed new fungus. How peculiar."

[jukebox_hero]

"Yeah, some of them act more like a hivemind than others, though. I dunno, maybe it's higher brain functions knowing when the risk isn't worth the reward."

He gave a short bark of a laugh at the statement that they hadn't eaten him, hitching the side of his shirt up. The scarring was still there, spanning his side, from ribs down, though it wasn't as deep as it had been at first, "They definitely ate some of it." A shrug, "And I don't know that what I am now isn't just another piece of the hivemind." That was something he'd thought about more often than he probably should have, and part of why he was terrified that he might find himself back in that red-lit otherworld again by accident.

[the_infant_death]

"Some, but not all, and there is no larvae in your lungs." Claudia tipped her head a bit. because that she could definitely be certain of. "Perhaps, perhaps... I have always wondered how much vampiric blood is needed for a transformation...."

And yet no-one had an answer for her, no-one could tell her...or was willing to tell her. She could transform no-one but those small as she, and that she did not do, because what use would it be? Why condemn anyone else who could not help her to this hell that was her eternal existence? Eddie, now. He was useful.

"I think you would be robbed of reason, did you belong to that fungus," she concluded, firmly, and passed the paper back to him.

[jukebox_hero]

"You'd think that, yeah." He replied with a nod, "But I figure it depends on what Vecna wants, and I haven't actually been back since, might be I'll turn into some kind of zombie if I end up back there again, hive-mind like the rest of them."

He slid the page into the back of the sketchpad, already working on something else on a new page, "I don't know if I'd prefer that to the alternative, or if any of it's actually what would happen, I might be wrong about all of it." He didn't think he was, at least not fully, but he also didn't want to risk finding out, either.