Angel Tongue

duo

There was pandemonium.

The frantic rustle of footsteps on the floor, the tearing of fabric-Isaac feared for a fleeting moment-of the tapestries, the screaming of the ball's attendees, these sounds filled his mind. All around him, people began to run, stampeding towards the back of the room and away from whatever just pulverized the formerly sturdy set of doors. Masks were flying about the air. The women were clutching at their dresses, the men holding their hats in place as they tried to outpace the others.

Isaac though, could not move. His common sense told him to get as far away as he could, but his curiosity egged him on and kept his feet firmly rooted.

The pulverized wood from the door which had gone up into a thick cloud slowly subsided and revealed the gate crasher. Isaac would have expected a gaggle of men with arms like boulders, maybe even wild beasts, to come forward once the dust had all gone down. But he was wrong, for when the dust subsided, standing in the center of the former doorway was a single man.

Isaac faltered, and so it seemed did the crowd. The noise and uproar quieted, and once more, everyone was frozen standing stock still. The man outside the hall did not bother to take down his hood, which cloaked it face in a way that nothing could be seen but a shadow. Nor did he move to remove his coarse woolen traveling cloak. No, he just stood still as a statue.

Taking another tentative step forward and adjusting his hold on the poker in his hand, Isaac called out, "Who are you? What do you want?" His voice rang through the silence as he spoke, echoing as the sound bounced off the stone walls. He winced a little upon hearing its echoes, suddenly uncomfortable.

The man in the shadows simply stood in his place. No words of response came from his mouth.

Another step. "Reveal yourself!" Isaac brandished his 'weapon'. By now, the poker had lost its red glow, seemingly chilled by the presence of this intruder.

The man took a step forward, mirroring Isaac's action. He bared his teeth, the only part of his face illuminated by the lamps throughout the room. A low, chilling growl came from his lips, the sound not unlike that produced by the lions that often came with the traveling fair Isaac had visited numerous times in childhood.

"I said reveal yourself, now!" At the last word, Isaac's voice faltered. The man had raised a rough hand to the top of his hood. It stayed there for a moment, before tipping the hood back and letting a collective gasp ring through the hall.

If he were to be asked to describe what lay in front of him, Isaac would have been at a loss for words. This was because once the hood fell down, the man started to change. He could have been bald man with thick eyebrows, or a long-locked youth with none; Isaac could not tell, for the man seemed to be everything at once.

Isaac blinked twice, unbelieving of what his eyes were seeing. This had to be a dream, right? And yet, it was real and clear as day. The stranger's hands had begun to turn the color of charcoal before spreading to his neck and his face. His skin had adopted the texture of tree bark and his eyes had started to cloud, as if a cataract had formed then and there. Beneath his clothes, his muscles rippled before ripping through the fabric, exposing gnarled knots of fiber and bulging veins. He opened his mouth, his rows of teeth, filed into points exposing themselves, and roared.

The entire room seemed to ripple from the roar, everyone (except Isaac, strangely) was blown back.

"A beast!" someone in the back declared, and a state of alarm overtook the crowd once more. The stampede that had stopped a while ago suddenly started up once more, and Isaac almost fell when a particularly animated man grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed past him. All around, men were stepping on each other, kicking at each other, almost trampling one another, eager to leave before any sort of supernatural harm could fall upon them. The man-no, the beast though, now twice the size of a full grown man, did not look to be affected at all by the ensuing chaos. Screams took over the room, some high pitched and some not but all the same in their alarm and fear. Even then, the beast stood his ground, staring straight ahead, right-Isaac realized with a chill in his spine-at the host of the ball. The poker in his hand dug deeper into Isaac's skin, close to creating gashes as he tightened his grip even further. Isaac looked up and returned the beast's cloudy stare, and at once it felt like all the blood in his body had frozen. If there had been any doubt before of what the beast's purpose the crashing the party was, there wasn't any now. Isaac was his purpose. The intensity of his gaze gave it away.