Delta 2: Jefferson City Shindig

Yaksha's fury continued to roll off in palpable waves, as many of his hairs returning to him as possible once the opponent made their move; the sword was hardly a small target, and Yaksha's ability account for and adjust in the face of very sudden changes was well known. He brought them towards himself, slamming into the ground around him in a manner like spider's legs, and causing him to rise further into the air, his wings spreading outwards as he folded his hands over his chest. He waited, with the poisonous patience of a snake waiting to see if someone they had warned off would enter their strike range, or leave.

Taptaptap. Yaksha's clawed fingers began to click and gently touch against the chitin covering his form. He watched with that quiet malice as the creature stepped out from a portal to a realm that he was beginning to grow sneakingly certain he knew the location of. He quietly squashed the reaction of revulsion and disgust that his very instinctual DNA screamed at him, at the sight of another demon using hollows as his plaything. He listened intently, letting that horrid demeanor hiding behind an urbane voice speak its poison.

Taptaptaptaptap. His wings twitched and flexed here and there, his body seeming to elongate and warp in places, looking like a wax mannequin left a little too close to the heat. As his fingers continued to press against his hip, that surface alone seemed to remain solid as the rest of him began to run and blur, white and red mixing into something that looked like it belonged in a horror film, or some horrid nightmare of time immemorable. His head had sank into some horrid blob that had no discernable anatomy, except for that one fucking clawed hand, tapping away at a single solid ridge of bone. As the mass of hollows feeding upon one another seemed to turn into a pool of tar, Yaksha himself looked as if he were reverting to little more than wax.

TAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP No longer did the sound seem to be coming from the fingers, or any single portion of Yaksha. It was as if every single cell making up his body was vibrating at some frequency, or creating the sound of something desperately, patiently, calmly insisting to be let out. There was no force or passion behind that tapping sound, just a sense akin to a low-grade irritation that was not going to go away on its own. An itch that would quietly beg to be scratched until it was finally satiated. A persistent longing, for something that one couldn't even properly define. And still that horrible white churning mass seemed to be differentiating, evolving before the Vandenreich's very eyes.

Tap. Flap. Tap. Flap. Those wings, originally of leathery flesh and sinew like a dragon's, seemed to be retracting into the mass, only to be replaced by strange feathery wings that jutted out at impossible right angles, stiff and unyielding in a way that looked almost robotic. They shouldn't have been able to sustain the flight of any creature, much less one as massive as Yaksha, but physics hardly seemed to play a part here anymore. Yaksha was furious for the first time he could truly remember since becoming a vasto lorde, and every single soul within his being was telling him the same thing: That this was the only opportunty he'd have, in any meaningful capacity, to sever the destiny between demon and hollow, to leave the two free to go their own ways.

Taptap. Taptap. That strange, wretched sound continued, but now it had a strangely purposeful, rhythmic sense to it. Like someone was pounding out material on an anvil, turning pure raw potential into reality. Like somewhere, deep inside that mass that Yaksha had become, they were ripping out gobbets of not-being and turning them into being. Slowly, methodically, Yaksha was rewriting himself, as if he were trying to scribble in the margins of his life's story. A grotesque, and wholly impossible offense of the concept of the cycle, before the very eyes of the Vandenreich, as Yaksha smithed a new self. Now, strange shapes that resembled nothing moreso than halos seemed to be jutting from his shoulderblades, and around his torso.

Tap. TapTAP. Tap. TAPtap. No less purposeful, but now far more arrythmic, the creature seemed to be pulling its very being and impression from somewhere else. It was almost as if it were holding up the image in its minds eye for comparison to the current image it was working on, and trying to figure out the next step. Hands jutted from the mass, two of them, both remarkably human in appearance; five fingers, fully-defined joints and knuckles, a strangely smooth texture that almost made it seem like he was carved from marble. And perhaps it wasn't in fact an anvil, pounding out metal into shapes, but a chisel, excising the needless portions to be stowed away for later use, to become something else.

TaptaptapTAP. TaptapTAPTAPTAP. Faster and faster, as time went on, like the artist was growing more comfortable with their canvas, more pleased with the image in their imagination and how it'd transfer to reality, one could see it in real time now, those globs of white much solidifying and becoming something else. There was now a very real sense that they were seeking out particular points, then applying force with the precision and pinpoint accuracy of an icepick. Or a chisel. Ripping off bits of Yaksha, and now there were in fact scythes, two of them, wickedly sharp and with those same curious halos resting at the ends. One for each hand, and now it truly was looking like whatever this thing was, it was a work of art, not just some haphazard monstrosity, or even some organic weapon of mass destruction as Yaksha had been. This was something horrifying in its perfection, beautiful in its purpose and care, something that put the idea of a creator starkly in one's mind.

The difference was, this creator was creation, one and the same.

THWAP. THWAP. THWAP. One by one, heads popped forth from the mass that was now looking far more defined and realized, far more like something made by a mind that was either diseased in its depravity, or inflicted with a clarity that would have had them branded a witch in nearly any epoch. Each one appeared with a resounding noise not unlike that of a bell tolling, their expressions perfectly human, emotion clear to be read in those features. They were unmoving, unchanging, but each one encompassed mankind perfectly. They spoke a million words without ever opening their lips.

They were unbearably, crushingly, soul-searingly disappointed.


Tap. CRACK.
Not an anvil at all, not a statue, but an egg. The sudden understanding came in a flash of insight to everyone present as the last of the creature revealed itself, its lower body nothing more than a feathery mass similar to that of the wings it had formed a moment ago. Yaksha's hairs were gone, all retracted into this -thing- in some manner that the eye could hardly even notice with everything else that was going on with his body. This creature, this -thing- that had never existed in the history of man and could never exist after this one perfect moment, twirled both scythes with a slow, strange motion that was almost stilted in its performance, like it was getting used to the idea of using tools. Like a newborn, testing out walking for the first time.

"Do not speak of them as if you have any place within their numbers. I have come to guard them and bring them to the place I have prepared. You have no place in my Eden. Be still your forked tongue, for there can be but one snake in the garden. Your rebellion against my Heaven shall end here and now."