Re: [log: antique store - daniel/claire/louis]
The deity enjoyed the many teeth and the dark eyes of the handsome animal with his animal hungers. It was not of the coterie that told those who thirsted not to drink. He made the want, and it was for other gods to slake the thirst. Daniel's shifting eye along the flow of blood was noted, and his gaze was matched, still cool and bluish on this end. "Tempting, isn't it?"
It would have continued to press on that weak point if the Bellatora had not risen to her full height and filled the room with her presence. It cocked its head as she spoke of humanity, of memory and the fear of forgetting. "You are from a long line, but in the grand scene you are small. You think I fear being forgotten? My accounts were settled millenia before your god supposedly built his earth. My people were never those of unending worship and empires monolithic. I and my fellows shared faiths among the small sparks that felt them, and built our worlds from the belief of those who never needed to choose a single faith to put their hearts in. Your jealous god and his covetousness, only he asks that." It rolled its shoulders. "I need no worldwide flock. I bring plagues and spoil what grows and watch the dead. I keep my word, and I fulfill promises. Your god can say no such thing, when none have ever heard him speak."
Then she was off on a tear, and the air shimmered with power and heat. The deity did not flinch, but felt raw power bearing down on it.
In its shell, it seemed to become more dense, more rooted to the ground, the flesh heavier than rock, the shadows at the corners of the eyes as deep as the dead. The god filled out Louis, every inch, like wind in a sail. "Battle?" Finally it actually seemed a little peeved. "I have seen more blood than your friend" a gesture to Daniel, "Could drink in a hundred lifetimes. I have built wars and seen them fought. I have swallowed the souls of dead men. You think I am some coward who shirks the war? I was banished to the kingdom of Ishtar's sister and won the dead world from her, took her and her domain and added both to my spoils. I could last until that world crumbles, Bellatora. I could last until your end of days."
A little of the dark, heavy cloud rolled away, faded left the thing looking more like Louis, less like the dark pall that had momentarily blotted out the rest. The thing paused, pulled its head back. "Bring me your crucifix," it said. "Try to - what was it? Untiwst me. I would hardly mind. But all you will accomplish is to shred his soul."
It folded long fingers together, and looked to Daniel. "I have no real investment in a battle over a shell I did not choose," it said, back to amiable discourse, as if the monologue about war had been part of a completely different conversation. "I might even help you. Fancy that. I am hardly some misbegotten child of light that leapt from heaven to hell when a battle went poorly. You won't send me back from whence I came - I come from here. This world is my world. But this body need not be." A shrug. "Some civility, though. I might appreciate it. And no more meddling in my affairs until this thing is resolved. Unless, of course, you would like to see him whither as I do. You would accomplish his death, and nothing more."