Of Duty, and Innocence.

[Sadism]

"You shall find for me enough blood to fill a living person," the Ashfiend had rumbled at length, words hollow and echoing across a great gulf of purposes and endings. "Untainted and unspoiled."

A week had come and gone since that meeting, since those words had been spoken. A week of watching and lurking, sliding from shadow to shadow, rooftop to rooftop as he stalked those that seemed as if they could fit the bill. More than once, he'd lost track of why he hunted the unaware citizens of Myrkentown. Instead of marking those that would provide him with what had been demanded, he'd lost himself in idle speculation, imaginings and curiosity playing out the lives of those who'd gained his attention. Part of him needed to understand, to know who these people were. Why they had made the choices they had made. Why they were able to interact with each other as they did. The humanity of those on the streets below his perches baffled him.

He'd surmised that the answer was quite obviously within those that he watched so carefully. A part of him – long since lost and only now resurfaced as something so twisted – knew these oddities had to be genetic anomalies. With unbridled delight he had taken more than a few of those that had caused him to question their humanity. With sheer euphoric joy he had worked to dig up the answers, too eager for revelation to be bothered with worries such as pain and – inevitably – death.

How it frustrated him that those who had been so gifted with the opportunity to bring great truths to the public, were so weak of body as to be unable to endure. They tainted his search. Ruined his findings. And once the body failed and could no longer sustain life, the answer was no longer within the test subject. Even now, it made him seethe.

It was after one such examination that he had settled upon the peak of a rooftop, knees hugged to his chest as he rocked back and forth rhythmically. The ruined wings – raw flesh wet and exposed and oozing – arced behind him, skeletal fingers reaching for the heavens above in mockery of prayer. The single eye stared into the distance, lost in contemplation and obsessive thought, digging through the layers of chaff that he had acquired through the week. It was the sudden change of something in his peripheral vision that snapped him from his reverie, his head whipping about abruptly to focus on what had drawn his attention.

A slow smile curved thin lips that were revealed on the side of his face not concealed by the straight, black hair that never seemed to move no matter how he twisted and turned. Slowly he unfolded – flowed – into standing. Under the layers of leather straps that compromised his attire muscles twitched with excited anticipation.

“Yes. Yes. I should have seen it before. It's perfect. So perfect. They will be untainted and unspoiled. They always are.â€

[Jirai]

Constable Alla Breve was nearing the end of her patrol. It had been a quiet night - a boring night, some might have said, but not Constable Breve. She was quite content for things to remain quiet, for the streets to stay safe. Unlike her partner. Constable Henderson had been grumbling all evening. Alla had largely ignored it, as was customary for the often taciturn woman. Handing her lantern off to the younger Constable, the Constable bent for a moment to adjust a boot. As she straightened, a glint caught her eyes, movement where there should be none. Above her.

"See that?" She hissed at her partner.

"What?" Henderson sounded slightly irritated at having his grumbling monologue interrupted. He was not stupid, though, and his eyes widened as he, too, caught sight of the shadow-thing that dove towards the Orphanage. "By the One-God, what is that?"

He was speaking to Alla's back, though, the older woman already having spun around to race for the doors of the Orphanage - to alert the Constables stationed there, to get the children out of the way of -whatever- it was.

Henderson stared in bewilderment for a moment before fumbling for a whistle whose piercing noise would soon fill the streets.

[Sadism]

Long, slender, pale fingers reached before him, aiming for the windowsill that would give him a hold on the buildings exterior so he could work his way inside. Only the fingers did not reach that windowsill; the shrill cry of the whistle pierced the haze of sadistic delight that flooded his mind, snapping that vibrant red iris to the streets below. It threw him off: disrupted the flow of events he had envisioned. And more importantly, it knocked him from his course. Only a sudden realization that he was still in flight brought his focus back to the building that was rushing towards him. The threat of hard impact did not bother him: already he was twisting in the air. Already the wings had ripped themselves apart violently, wetly, and altered themselves to become long black tendril originating form his shoulders, reaching out like some giant spider's legs for the wall. They cushioned his impact, and in the breadth of a second, his fingers had altered too. The tips had elongated, sharpened, and become talons that now dug forcibly into the side of the building.

Time was running short, if that whistle belonged to the sort of person he believed it did. An old, dusty memory surfaced. A glimpse of a past that was not his own, from the eyes of a man that was not him; had never been him. At the same time, it was. That, however, was not what he thought about as he scurried across the face of the building. Callisto had intended to work from the top down, killing the adults on the lower floors last. He had wanted to leave nothing but a building full of inexplicably bloodless corpses, so neatly disassembled and lovingly arranged. Now, however, his nights fun had been interrupted.

“When I find out who you are,â€

[Jirai]

On the street, the whistle blew. More Constables would be on their way. Henderson let the whistle drop from his mouth, clawing the crossbow off his back. Unfortunately, the shadow-thing had made it inside the window by the time the weapon was loaded. But it must come out again, he reasoned. And, as it happened, it did - and far sooner than Constable Henderson had expected. He sighted down the weapon and fired.

Inside, it would not be too difficult to determine just which room the creature was in. The screams of the children were clear enough. Constable Breve, along with the Constables that had been stationed at the entrance, burst through the door to see that blackness sliding back out the window - with two children. Without a second thought, she launched herself at the window, grabbing wildly at the children.

[Sadism]

The night could have only become worse if someone with the skills that could really hinder him showed up. The two constables that interrupted him now were as gnats buzzing around his head and dancing through his line of sight. Irritants best squashed if only he had the time to squash both of them. In time they would get what they deserved. He would find them - who they were, where they lived - and he would destroy both of them in the most painful fashion he could surmise.

There was little time for him to sit and contemplate just how he'd disembowl them. Callisto had stopped in the window-sill long enough for the tentacles not responsible for holding onto the the children reforming into wings that would let him glide away, and now two events occurred that made his night go from bad to worse.

As he turned to glance back in the window, as he began to draw another tentacle from within himself to deal with the constable that sought to keep the children from him, something tore through his chest. The matte-black leather straps wound about him were hardly worthy of being called armor when put up against a crossbow bolt, and the metal buckles that were strewn at random point across his chest were hardly sturdy enough to deflect a shot.

The bolt shredded his chest with ease, spraying splinters as it came out the back of him and buried itself in the window's frame. For a half moment, Callisto stared at Constable Breve, shocked. There was no blood that came from him, and perhaps to their dismay, he did not collapse. What Callisto did do was shriek.

The sound was more than inhuman, rising swiftly ini pitch until it hit an octave that would injure ears under prolonged exposure, and possibly shatter glass if it climbed any higher. Relentlessly he shrieked his fury, and in his rage, one of the tentacles that held a child rose up and swung at Breve with the child, using the poor orphan as some weapon.

It was a feeble attack in the end, for Callisto did not linger to see if the blow landed. Wings forgotten, he launched himself out the window and left gravity to do it's thing, pulling him to the ground. Let Henderson - who had fired the shot - witness this fall and notice perhaps that Callisto was glaring at him from that single eye, shrieking the entire way.

There was a transformation in the plummet: both wings arched over Callisto's back and shaped themselves sharp-pointed appendages not too unlike a scorpions. Even his face altered itself, his bottom jaw dropping and elongating, creating a gaping maw soon filled with too many needle-thin teeth.

Henderson was going to die, if Callisto could strike true.

[Jirai]

The bolt pierced the creature as Constable Breve raced in - only to catch a blow across her face, a blow that sent her stumbling just long enough for the shadow-thing to escape through the window. The side of her face already beginning to swell up, the Constable reached the window in time to see Callisto swooping down right at her partner.

Down on the street, Constable Henderson saw the thing - and its pointy teeth - coming right at him. "Oh shit, oh shit!" Dropping his crossbow, the mail-clad man threw himself to the side and the ground, praying that he might avoid dying, since he was fairly certain that he was not going to avoid injury.

[Sadism]

Wingless as he'd made himself, and considering the speed of his 'descent' and the distance remaining to the ground, Callisto was dedicated to his attack. Those...extensions from his shoulders struck the ground hard enough to spit up bits of rock and dust, biting into the ground where the Constable had been only a heartbeat before. The keening, ear-piercing shriek receded to leave ears ringing in it's wake.

Callisto jerked his head towards the man to catch his scent, sniffing quickly. "I have your smell. You're going to see me again."

Jack-rabbit quick, he was darting towards an alleyway and the deeper darkness it offered. With the rest of the constables rushing about in the orphanage, it seemed very likely he could lose them.

It burned him that he couldn't have lingered to kill some of the constables. Next time. For now, he needed the two children he had. Lingering meant more constables, and more of a chance for one of them to stop him.

[Jirai]

Henderson was stunned to find himself still alive after the Thing disappeared.

The area would be busy for a time, Constables swarming the area to make sure it really WAS gone, the orphans checked and double checked to find that only the two had disappeared.

And Constable Breve's report would be on Calomel's desk come morning.