mean he wants to give all that to Roy, though.
“Sneathen Vrache.”
“Watch your language.” He turns obediently right (well, north-east, the Dark Fae have an oddly precise sense of direction-giving) and stops in his tracks.
“Imschalle Trezimon.”
“No shit,” Shane mutters, staring up at the creature. It looms over him, a towering thing of spindly legs (two injured, he files away) and shiny black body, wreathed in eerie silence, and all five of its eyes swivel down to stare at him.
Unbidden, a smirk steals over his lips, because damned if this isn’t the first interesting thing he’s seen in years. Oh, this is gonna be fun.
He starts to run, uncloaking his power as he does, the constant sensation of being tamped down vanishing at last from the back of his mind. It races through him, the magic making his veins sing, his hands tingle, his eyes flicker. He runs towards the creature and then up one of the alley walls, hardly noticing the way gravity warps itself for the turn, and unsheathes his sword as he goes.
One of the Soul-Thief’s arms lashes out at him, and he dodges midair, a gust of icy wind catching him before he falls, bearing him up swiftly enough to wrap a hand around one of the Soul-Thief’s legs.
That’s a mistake.
The thing’s arms are coated in some kind of acid, some gelatinous gloop that starts burning as soon as he touches it, and he doesn’t even retain the presence of mind to swear in an interesting language as he drops it, collapsing to the ground. “Motherfucker, I’m going to kill you for that!”
The acid isn’t just painful. Even as he watches his fingers burn, melt away, corroded by the sticky stuff. His hand withers as the flesh burns away in searing pain, skin falling to the ground, muscles and blood withering to bone.
Wow. That actually hurts.
For a second, it almost feels good, a flare of pain when he’s been cold, unfeeling for so long, but shit, he can’t let this go on, no matter how interesting the sensation.
His eyes blaze, briefly lighting up the alley with blue-white light, and his hand covers itself in ice, hardening, dulling the pain to the point of the usual frozen ache he feels, well, everywhere. He flexes his hand, hearing the ice chip and crack, little pieces of acid-riddled ice flaking off to land on the alley floor. It’ll require a healing—fuck, with how much his hand hurts, it might require a re-making—but for now, he can make do with the ice hand, the decay halted by the quick freeze.
Shane bares his teeth and lets loose with a blast of raw power that knocks the Soul-Thief off its many legs, bowling it over to land against a fire escape. It scrabbles madly at the iron to haul itself upright. “Sorry,” Shane snaps, patience waning drastically after the pain, “bet that stings like a bitch. Hell, if you’re not more polite, I’ll get a can of Raid.”
The Soul-Thief flips over with speed that really isn’t fair, feet clawing at the asphalt with a screech that burns the ear.
With the hand that’s mostly ice Shane draws his sword, transferring it to the still-living flesh of his right hand. “Should’ve stuck to wherever the fuck you came from. Can you even talk?”
The thing screams at him, but it’s wordless, at least as far as he can tell. “Guess not. Maybe if you’d been less of a bitch I’d have just squashed you with a giant shoe, but you’re just asking for pain.”
One of the arms flails at him, something that looks like a needle-sharp stinger extended, and Shane moves so fast the world blurs in front of him, spinning around and striking out with his sword arm, shaving a long slab of armor from the arm, enjoying the way the thing writhes and thrashes as the sword turns every part it touches to ice. “Yeah, well, I don’t like what you did to my arm either. Live with it, bitch. Or bastard.”
Probably not a line of questioning he wants to pursue, really.
Putting far, far to the side the question of whether the Soul-Thief has a dick or not, Shane twists his sword, wrenching it free, and the suddenly brittle arm of the thing shatters into two pieces. Not as effective as it is on humans, then, where a single nick is enough to turn the entire body to ice. That’s all right. It’s no fun without a challenge, and the Soul-Thief is down to three arms.
“Still one up on me,” Shane grunts, narrowly avoiding another swat of the stinger. If it hadn’t been for the way it knocked Roy unconscious, he’d have been tempted to let it try and zap him, just to hear it freak out in surprise. Then again, the noises it’s making are overwhelming enough as it is.
He flexes his newly constructed ice hand, wiggling it around until it more or less settles into the shape of his actual hand, or what his hand would be if it weren’t currently so much damaged bone and sinew.
As a test, Shane tries to freeze the Soul-Thief with a sheer act of will. It’s more difficult than touching something, than letting the cold inside him spill out for a change, but it’s not exactly hard either.
He takes a deep breath, easier said than done while he dodges three acidic limbs whipping around at the speed of sound. Mentally, he forms the power into a lance, a spreading, infectious thing impregnated with all the ice he can muster, and hurls it at the broad center of the great teetering thing.
It has about the same effect as throwing a ping-pong ball at a meteorite.
“Okay.” Shane’s voice wavers a little, his eyes blazing again, hand gripping the hilt of his sword more tightly than ever. “You want to fucking play? Let’s see you dance.”
He drops the tip of his sword to the asphalt, and ice spills out, slicking the ground for a good three hundred yards in every direction. The Soul-Thief slips, legs skittering madly, and fails to catch itself, toppling over to hit the ice with a crack of shattering…body? Ice? Hard to tell.
Shane dashes forward, feeling the wind rip past him even for such a short distance, feet never slipping as he runs forward, sword outstretched, to deal the final blow to the downed, doomed creature.
His sword meets something hard with a blaze of light, so bright it sends him flying back, one arm thrown over his eyes. “Bastard!” he chokes out, blinking furiously as he twirls the sword one-handed. “Playing possum, huh? I’ll—”
His vision clears, and the next words die in his throat as he sees exactly what’s interspersed itself between him and his prey. His mouth goes abruptly dry, and he stammers, “D-Drake, what—”
If he had to put a name to the emotion on Drake’s face, he’d be hard put to think of anything besides weary disappointment. Drake winces, but nods. “Shane.”
I was doing something. Probably something important. “You look good. I like that shirt. Want to rip it off you.”
“For the love of God, can’t you think of anything except—”
“You?” Pain flares behind the smile spreading across Shane’s face, and he welcomes it, embraces it as the best thing he’s felt in years. “Probably not. I don’t try. Say, can we get back to this in like twenty seconds? I’ve got a mark to bag.”
Drake shifts, and just like that, Shane knows, just knows that there’s trouble. “I can’t let you kill it.”
