Chapter Text
When Stolas found out what happened, it took Blitz, four nurses, and mild sedation with threats of something stronger to keep him in his hospital bed. As the drugs flowing through his veins calmed the prince down, Blitz sat next to Loona in the chairs along the wall, squeezing her shoulders reassuringly as she nursed her pounding headache with an ice pack.
One of the doctors had checked her out and determined that she had a concussion, and reassured them that despite all the blood in her hair, the cut from the impact wasn’t too bad – heads just bleed more than the rest of the body. The injury didn’t need stitches, so the doctor cleaned it, put some gauze on it and wrapped Loona’s head to keep it in place, and told her if she took it easy, she’d be fine. Blitz was relieved, but it did nothing to cut through the rage boiling in his gut.
“When I find Striker, I’m going to rip is f*cking lizard ass apart, bit by bit,” he growled. Loona winced at his volume and Blitz whispered an apology, rubbing circles into her back. At that moment, Moxxie and Millie hurried into the room, quick to arrive in an emergency as always. Millie took one look at Loona and immediately sat on her other side.
“Oh my Satan! What happened, honey?” she said, louder than she probably should have. Blitz put a finger to his lips to signal for quiet, but right then Loona’s text tone sounded and the hellhound flinched underneath Blitz’s hand. Loona moved the ice pack, pressing it over her eyes and didn’t bother checking her phone.
“Striker,” he said to Millie. “He hit her upside the head.” He looked between M&M, his chest tight. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Of course, Blitz,” Moxxie said in a low voice. He rarely dropped the formality of ‘sir,’ so it was obvious just how worried he was. “We were going to stop by to visit his highness today anyway. Why did Striker attack Loona?”
“Octavia.” Stolas’s slightly slurred voice came from behind Moxxie, and the imp couple turned to look at him. Stolas drew in a deep breath, fighting the drugs trying to drag him into low-level la-la-land. “Striker took her. He took my Via. We have to get her back.”
“Oh crumbs,” Moxxie said, while Millie swore for real. “Of course, your highness, we will do everything we can.” He turned back to Millie and Blitz, immediately in planning mode. “Okay, what do we know? Why did he take Octavia, and what do we have on his location?”
Blitz started rattling off information. “He killed the private Goetia doc and nabbed Octavia while she was doing the full moon ritual for Stolas. He incapacitated Loona, but did not take her, so he specifically wanted Octavia. What we don’t know is why he took her or where they went.”
“Ransom?” Millie suggested. “The Ars Goetia are very wealthy. It would make sense if he took Octavia so he could collect ransom for her.”
“If he asks for ransom, I will pay it,” Stolas said. The prince’s eyes were slightly unfocused from the sedatives, but he seemed determined to be part of this conversation. “I don’t care what it is: money, assets, whatever. Nothing is worth more than my Via.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that, your highness,” Moxxie said, tapping his chin. “Even if we did know where he was hiding out, it might not be the best idea for us to go at it alone. We may be good at what we do, but Striker easily held his own against me and Millie. Having Blitz in the equation would likely give us a huge advantage, since 3 v 1 favors us, but it doesn’t seem wise to hinge Octavia’s life on that. We’ve made the mistake of underestimating Striker before – we cannot do that again.”
“So what do you suggest, then?” Blitz asked.
“I say we go to the authorities,” Moxxie said. “The Ars Goetia has very powerful soldiers at their disposal. Striker wouldn’t be able to stand against an army. Not to mention more people on the lookout around the Pride Ring increases our chance of finding–”
At that point, Loona’s text tone went off again, pulling a deep growl from the hellhound.
“Someone shut that f*cking thing up,” she groaned.
“It’s your phone,” Moxxie said, and Loona glared at him as Millie pulled Loona’s phone out of her discarded jacket. She looked at the screen and her eyes widened.
“Guys,” Millie said suddenly. “It’s Octavia.”
All eyes flew to Loona’s phone screen, where the name ‘Via :p’ stood out on the notification in large white letters. Blitz’s eyes widened as Stolas jerked his head towards them, yelping at the pull on his burns.
“Show me!” he demanded, his voice strained. The imps moved to Stolas’s bedside, where Millie opened the message. Stolas made a choked noise and his remaining feathers burnt a deep red so hot that Moxxie, who was closest, screeched in surprise and flinched away, gingerly rubbing his stinging elbow. Stolas didn’t even have the presence of mind to apologize. The message was a picture of Octavia. She was propped against a wall, tightly bound in blessed rope, and her head slumped forward like she was unconscious.
This time, it took all three imps, six nurses, and a much stronger sedative to keep Stolas in bed.
Once Stolas was chemically pacified, the imps returned to the phone, where a couple more messages had appeared since they saw the picture.
8:27 PM - If you want baby bird back in one piece, deliver $15,000,000 in cash to 666 Hellbrush Avenue, Pentagram City, Pride Ring by midnight tonight. More instructions to follow.
8:27 PM - If I see any cops or assassins at the drop off point, the birdy princess will learn first hand what a blessed bullet tastes like.
“I’ll pay it,” Stolas said quietly before Blitz had even finished reading. Even when halfway sedated and rapidly becoming sleepier, the bird still read easier and faster than him. “There’s a safe in my study. Combination 0-8-4-5. There should be enough cash there.”
Blitz wanted to ask him why the f*ck anyone would ever need that much cash on hand in their house when Millie cut him off.
“Your highness, Striker just gave us his location. We should try to blindside him at the drop off point–”
“No,” Stolas said, steadfast. “If he sees you, he will kill Octavia. I’m not risking my child. Do what he says. Give him the money and have a civilian drop it off.”
The decision was made. Blitz pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Who the hell is supposed to do the drop off if none of us can?” he asked. “We don’t f*cking know any civilians trustworthy enough to carry that much cash and not run off with it.” Stolas was quiet for a moment.
“They just need to look like a civilian,” he said. Blitz blinked.
“What?”
“Shapeshifting spell,” Stolas explained, his voice getting weaker. Blitz could tell the drugs were kicking in fully – Stolas was struggling to keep his eyes open. “Then he won’t know it’s you.”
Blitz almost laughed at the idea.
“It takes a lot out of you to just make a portal to the palace. How are you supposed to conduct and maintain a spell like that in your condition? It’s not like Loona can help, she’s kind of out of commission right now.” He gestured to Loona, who was currently curled up across all three chairs, quiet snores rumbling in her chest.
To his surprise, Stolas raised a hand and ripped a portal into the air, the effort immediately making his eyes drift shut. He squeezed them tightly and forced them back open. Blitz peered through the portal, seeing Stolas’s bedroom on the other side.
“There is a box on the bookshelf,” Stolas said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The case on the far right, third shelf from the top, between two books on botany and the history of pirates.”
Blitz gave him an odd look, but passed through the portal anyway. He went to the book shelf and found a small box nestled between two old books, just as Stolas had promised. He pulled it free and brought it back to the hospital room without looking at it. As soon as he set foot back in the room, the portal blinked out of existence, and Stolas sighed, relieved of the exertion of holding the spell.
“What do we need this for?” Blitz asked. Stolas closed his eyes.
“Open it,” he murmured. Blitz looked down at the box, noticing Asmodeus’s sigil carved into the lid for the first time and furrowed his eyebrows.
“This is a weird time for a sex toy, Stolas,” he laughed.
“Not a sex toy.” Stolas’s voice was fading, his eyes still closed. He’d definitely be out in the next minute or so. Blitz opened the box and blanched at its contents. It was a bright orange crystal, glittering in the sterile overhead light. The magic radiating from it was so strong that Blitz couldn’t fathom how he didn’t feel it through the box. Blitz’s mouth fell open.
“Definitely not a sex toy,” was all he managed to say.
“Asmodean crystal,” Stolas whispered. “Can make… human disguises. Striker won’t… recognize…” He trailed off as he finally lost his fight for consciousness. His head drifted to the side and his face went slack as the sedatives dragged him under.
Silence hung in the air as Moxxie and Millie stared at the crystal in Blitz’s hands. Millie’s eyes went wide with excitement and somewhere in his shock Blitz remembered that Millie was a gemstone nerd. He held it out to her.
“Go ahead. Take it, Madame Stoner,” he said quietly. Millie gladly did so, getting lost in the task of examining it from every angle, squeaking happily. Blitz just stared at the sleeping owl, a rock sitting uncomfortably in his stomach. Moxxie eyed him, concerned.
“Are you okay, Blitz?” he asked. Blitz swallowed hard.
“Why did he have that?” he whispered. Moxxie shrugged, looking deeply uncomfortable.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But his highness was right. Striker likely doesn’t know much about humans, so regular humans will just look like odd sinners to him. Human disguises are our best bet. We need to figure out how this crystal works.”
“It’s in the grimoire.” Blitz looked up, seeing that Loona had rolled over on the chairs to look at them. Her mascara ran down her cheeks in trails, like she’d been crying. “There’s a page on human disguises. You can use the crystal as a power source.”
“Thank you, Loona,” Moxxie said, snatching the book from where Blitz had left it on the floor. He joined Millie and they went to work as Blitz kneeled down beside his daughter.
“How are you doing, Loony,” he asked.
“Everything f*cking hurts,” she grumped. She closed her eyes, breathing pointedly through her nose and out her mouth. Blitz watched her quietly for a few moments until she looked at him again. “Don’t f*cking die,” she said. “If you die, I’ll find a way to bring you back just to kill you again.”
Blitz couldn’t help but laugh. He brushed a strand of Loona’s hair aside, an action that would normally elicit a hostile growl, but Loona merely sighed at the touch.
“I will always come back for you,” Blitz said, looking her dead in the eye. “I promise. Always.”
Such a blatantly mushy and sentimental statement would’ve normally pissed Loona off, but instead, a small, comforted smile appeared on Loona’s face as she closed her eyes.
“Thanks, Dad,” she whispered.
Between the three of them, they were able to work out how to use the Asmodean crystal. It took a bit of trial and error, one of the attempts literally turning Blitz into what the living world called a mermaid, but by eleven o’clock three humans were staring at each other in the back of the I.M.P van.
Moxxie pulled spare clothes from one of the boxes in the back of the van as Blitz examined his reflection in his phone camera. His bright red eyes were striking against the tan of his skin and the lighter peachy shade of his scars. He had dark fluffy hair, cut into an epic mohawk and thick eyebrows, above which his circus insignia stood out black on his skin. He grinned, noting that his teeth were mostly human, although the canines were large and sharp.
“I look like a modern day dracula,” he said, hunched over – his high stature as an imp meant that he was a rather tall human. “Not gonna lie… I’d do me.”
“B, that’s gross,” Millie laughed. While Blitz would stand out in a crowd of humans, Millie’s human disguise was a more subtle kind of beauty. Short dark hair framed her big curious eyes, and she had a cute, pointed nose and thin, shiny lips. Her heart tattoo stood out on her dark brown skin, so unlike her usual red. She looked so different, but when she grinned, it was all Millie.
“Blitz, your scars and tattoo are going to give us away,” Moxxie said. Compared to Blitz and Millie, his human self was incredibly pale, with white blonde hair to match. Weirdly enough, his eyebrows were almost as dark as his eyes, and freckles dusted lightly over his nose and across his cheeks. He and Millie were both much taller as humans than imps, but their heads only brushed the van’s ceiling, so they knew nothing of Blitz’s tall person agony.
Blitz touched the mark on his forehead. “What exactly do you expect me to do about that, Mox?” Moxxie threw something at him and he caught it. It was a bandana, noticeably not covered in horses. He groaned. “You want me to wear this? It’ll cover up my amazing hair!”
“So?”
“So! I never get to have hair, Mox! Now I need to cover it up?”
“Cover up the scarred side of your face, too, while you’re at it.”
“f*ck you, Moxxie,” Blitz spat, but he did as he was told, tying the bandana around his head very goofily so that a long strip trailed over the right side of his face. Moxxie tossed Blitz a very un-Blitz-like jacket and some old sneakers, and offered a hoodie and a pair of boots to Millie. He had stolen the shoes off some humanoid sinners on their way here.
“Millie, your voice is also super recognizable, so maybe try to suppress your Wrathian accent a bit if you have to talk.”
“Good idea, babe,” Millie said with a nod. Moxxie gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“Okay, so here’s the plan,” Blitz said. “Millie and I are going to make the drop, while you, Moxxie, are going to stay by here as backup. If all three of us go in, Striker might think something is up. Two is probably the most we can get away with. We should leave the crystal here, as well.”
“Got it,” Millie said with a grin.
“Sounds good,” Moxxie said. He grabbed a long distance rifle while Millie and Blitz each slipped a couple of knives up their sleeves and in their boots – they couldn’t walk in visibly armed. Blitz looked at Millie, matching the determined expression on her face.
“Let’s go.”
Moxxie had parked a few blocks away, so Millie and Blitz had to drag the heavy duffle bag of cash from the palace between them for over half a mile. With how heavy this sh*t was it was perfectly reasonable that two people would have to make the drop.
The building Striker chose was an old abandoned bar that had seen one too many territory wars. The front windows were shattered and the door hung crooked off its hinges. Millie touched it to move it out of the way and it fell right out of the frame. Dust flew up in clouds when it hit the ground, sending Blitz and Millie into coughing fits.
“Satan, this place is a piece of sh*t,” Blitz murmured.
“Where are we supposed to drop this?” Millie asked. As per Moxxie’s advice, she kept the Wrathian accent out of her voice – It was very odd to hear. Blitz scanned the torn up booths and flipped over tables for any sign of Striker, but his depth perception was f*cked with half his face covered up.
“The text said to drop it in the back room,” Blitz replied. He took a step forward. Glass crunched beneath their stolen shoes as he and Millie carefully made the trek to the back of the bar, watching for movement in the shadows. Millie pushed open the door to the back room, and it creaked loudly in the silence. The room was lined with shelves, the alcohol that once occupied them long since stolen, and a large table stood in the middle. Blitz eyed the room cautiously, then looked back at the main room they had come through.
“Is it just me, or is this place really f*cking creepy?” Blitz hissed.
“It’s not you,” Millie said. Not sure what else to do, the two of them laid the duffle bag on the table. “What do we do,” Millie said in her fake voice. “Do we just leave it?”
“I don’t think we have a choice.” Blitz hand dipped into his sleeve, grasping the handle of his knife. “Come on, let’s head back through. Keep your eyes peeled.”
They crept out of the back room and began weaving through the fallen tables when suddenly the world turned upside down.
Blitz swore as something wiry wrapped around his ankle and yanked it out from underneath him. He fell to the floor, broken glass cutting into his skin. The wire dragged him back and suspended him in the air as something heavy crashed to the ground nearby. He flailed helplessly, dangling upside down just a few inches too high for his hands to touch the floor. Millie swore and ran out of his field of view. Adrenaline flooded his veins and it took several panicked seconds for him to realize –
“Is this a f*cking snare trap?” Blitz screeched, rotating slowly. All he could see was the hallway they had come from. “Millie! Get me the f*ck out of this!”
“I’m trying!” He rotated enough to see her fiddling with a rope tied to an enormous refrigerator, above which there was a gaping hole in the ceiling. Blitz groaned. That must’ve been the counterweight.
Millie just pulled out her knife to cut it when a figure stepped into Blitz’s field of vision. His heart pounded and he opened his mouth to shout out a warning, but it was too late – Striker had her in a chokehold, a cloth pressed over her mouth and nose. She struggled a bit before going limp. Striker let her go, and thankfully she was still breathing when she hit the ground.
“Striker!” Blitz screamed. He silently prayed for Moxxie to appear, and then Satan granted his wish in the twisted way he always does that kind of sh*t. Moxxie was in an unconscious pile by the front door, a nasty cut in his hairline.
“I gotta say, this was not the worst plan I’ve ever seen,” Striker said, pulling the Asmodean crystal out of his pocket. Its glow illuminated the dark room more than the light of the full moon from the entrance. He threw the crystal on the ground and crushed it beneath his foot, and in a blink, Blitz, Millie, and Moxxie were imps again. “Unfortunately for you, I’ve been watching that f*cking owl for a while now. It wasn’t hard to figure out what his rooster buddy sent him.”
“Where is Octavia?” Blitz growled. Striker smirked, grinding the shards of the crystal beneath his heel.
“Baby bird’s safe, no need to worry about that,” he said. “It’s sweet that you care, though, given that your blueblood bird bitch don't want to f*ck you no more.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Blitz snapped, and Striker laughed.
“Why do you think the f*cker got the crystal?” He tapped his ear, his grin widening. “I’ve been listening in on everything that motherf*cker’s been up to. He doesn’t give a sh*t ‘bout you. He never did.”
“Like I’d listen to a f*cking word you say,” Blitz snapped. “Let Octavia, Moxxie, and Millie go. You have your money, and you can do whatever you want with me. Just let the others go.”
Striker tapped his chin, like he was thinking it over, then stared at him with those luminous ringed eyes.
“Nah,” he said. “I think I have a better idea.”
When Stolas woke up a few hours later from his drug induced nap, he was shocked to find that his burns didn’t hurt all that much. As lucidity slowly set in, he looked down at his completely bandaged left arm and did what he hadn’t dared to since he arrived at the hospital – he moved it. Slowly and carefully, Stolas lifted his arm, bending it at the elbow until his hand was right in front of his face, and wiggled his talons.
It hurt, that’s for sure, especially around his elbow and the joints of his fingers, but compared to what it had been for the last twenty-four hours, it was no worse than a bee sting. Without really thinking about it, he reached up and started undoing the bandages around his fingers.
“What the f*ck are you doing?” Loona asked suddenly from the chair near the door. Stolas looked towards her voice, finding that it didn’t hurt that much to turn his head either. Loona stared at him, eyes wide, like he’d lost his mind, and Stolas took joy in the fact that those eyes looked much clearer than they had earlier.
“Oh, Loona, dear, are you feeling better?” he asked, allowing his hands to fall on his stomach. He didn’t let go of the bandage, though. Loona just gaped at him, getting to her feet and hovering her finger over the nurse-call button.
“Stop f*cking with your bandages, or I will press this,” she snapped. Stolas flinched and carefully tucked the part he’d pulled loose back into place. Once that was done, Loona’s gaze softened. “Why were you doing that?” she asked, sitting back down.
Stolas glanced at his wrapped arm.
“It doesn’t hurt that badly,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and Loona cringed.
“f*ck, dude, your shoulder is burnt to sh*t, too,” she reminded him. “Stop moving around!” Stolas murmured an apology as she stared at the IV buried in his skin. “The painkillers they’re giving you must be some powerful sh*t if you’re just casually f*cking with your burns like that.”
“Yeah, it must be,” Stolas said, furrowing his brows. His thoughts were rapidly growing clearer as the rest of the sedatives left his system. He looked around the room, registering that it was noticeably emptier than before. “Where are Blitz, Moxxie, and Mildred?”
“They’re out doing the ransom drop,” Loona said, her face growing weary. “It took them a while to figure out how to do the human disguises, since you passed out before you could tell them, but they managed. They left like an hour and a half ago to drive over to Pentagram City. They made it in time for the drop,” she reassured him, seeing his expression. “I haven’t heard back from them yet. It’s only just after midnight. They’ll probably be calling any minute now.”
Right on cue, Loona’s phone rang, and she winced from the sound. The phone screen showed a goofy image of Blitz with the name ‘Dad Guy’ overlaying it.
“There it is, they’re video calling us,” Loona said, smiling. “I bet everything went smoothly.” She stood up, moving to Stolas’s bedside as she accepted the call.
The face that materialized on the screen was not one of extreme, gushy fondness, but one of malice and sadism. Striker grinned back at them, his glowing, ringed eyes piercing through the phone, and immediately Stolas’s mind was brought back to the dream he had earlier of a man watching him from the shadows.
“Oh f*ck!” Loona spluttered, her breathing picking up. “Where’s Blitz? What did you do with him?”
“Oh, he’s fine,” Striker laughed. He stuck a wheat straw between his teeth, the image sending the memory of an older dream shuddering through Stolas. His head buzzed and his hands tingled as he clenched them into fists. Striker laughed. “Here he is!”
The cowboy turned the camera around, and the sight set tendrils of rage racing in every vein. Octavia, Blitz, Moxxie, and Millie were all tied up, bound in blessed rope, all of them unconscious with various degrees of injuries.
“Striker,” Stolas growled.
“You didn’t follow my directions, blueblood,” he said. “I told you that if I saw a single assassin, I’d kill baby bird, and what did you send? Three of ‘em! The balls on you!” Striker laughed, zooming the camera in on Octavia. “I should kill baby bird just for that, but, you know what? I am a forgiving man.” He turned the camera around, his wicked grin filling the screen. “Tell you what, blueblood,” he said. “If you give yourself up, I’ll let baby bird go. How does that sound? But if you don’t…” He dragged a finger across his throat.
Fire exploded from his feathers, startling Loona so much she dropped the phone in his lap in her rush to get away. Stomach twisting oddly, Stolas scooped the device up, snarling at the screen.
“You don’t look too good there, feathers,” Striker grinned. “No need to get so… hot headed.” He laughed as if he just made the funniest joke in the world before his voice went dead serious. “Come to the same address as the drop-off, alone. No cops and no other assassins that you might be hiding up your sleeve. Break that rule again and I won’t be so forgiving. There will be some blessed rope waiting on the ground outside the building for you to accessorize with before you come in.”
The call dropped, drowning them in silence.
Stolas immediately swung his legs over the side of the bed, not even realizing that the action barely hurt. Loona objected loudly as he ripped the IV from his arm and the sensors from his chest, filling the room with the loud sound of flatlining. Steps thundered down the hall, but Stolas locked the door with a wave of his hand and got to his feet. After being in bed for so long, he felt wobbly, but he was able to stay upright just fine.
In that brief moment, it hit him just how strange that was. Less than forty-eight hours ago, he had been in a starlight explosion, and he was already up and walking around with minimal pain. That was genuinely impossible. Starlight burns, even the shallowest of them, were deadly, practically poisonous to bare skin, and he had the worst ones Hell had ever seen – He shouldn’t have even survived long enough to make it to the hospital.
How did he survive?
Stolas pushed the thought out of his mind, ignoring the continued twisting in his gut. He'd figure it out later. Right now, he had places to be. He was a man on a mission, a man ready for action…
He was a man in need of pants.
“Stolas, stop–” Loona begged, trying to get between him at the cabinet with spare clothes. Stolas merely reached around her, grabbing a pair of hospital pants and a johnny and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m going, and nothing you say can stop me,” he said, pulling his pants on over his extensively bandaged thigh. He put the johnny on backwards so that it opened in the front like a weird jacket and got to his feet, satisfied.
Stolas’s magic was still weak, but it had rebuilt some while he was sleeping, so he was able to rip a portal into existence with minimum effort. He turned to the hellhound.
“I’m going to go get them,” he said, his voice stronger than he felt. “If we don’t return within the hour, call the Goetia family and give them the address.”
“Stolas, this is a f*cking terrible idea–” She moved towards him, but suddenly halted, looking queasy and unsteady. Stolas grabbed her shoulders and helped her sit back in her chair.
“My dear, you are still unwell, you need to rest,” he said.
“The pot is calling the kettle black,” Loona bit out.
“More like green.” Stolas squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “I’ll be back.” He promised. Without another word, he stepped through the portal.
As it closed with a whoosh, he heard Loona shout, “You’re a f*cking idiot. You and Blitz deserve each other!” and although she probably meant it as an insult, his heart warmed all the same.
The street was completely empty. The decrepit building loomed in front of him, dark and bare with the exception of a soft white glow in the doorway. Stolas approached it, seeing the promised bundle of rope in a neat pile on top of the fallen door, and his skin prickled.
He paused. He looked around, confirming that there was no one in sight. What’s to stop him from just walking in without it–
“Don’t even think about coming in without those ropes,” Stolas flinched as Striker’s voice spilled out of the room in front of him, echoing in the emptiness. “Tie your wrists up or baby bird gets it.”
Stolas’s jaw tensed and he slowly bent down, scooping up the rope.
“And don’t even try tying it loosely, birdy.” Striker’s voice reverberated through the room. “I can see you. I know enough about yours and that imp’s freaky sex life to know that you can do knots that you can easily pull apart if you wanted to. Don’t try to pull one over on me. Tie your wrists up tightly.”
Slowly, he wrapped the rope around his wrists, hissing as it tightened around the bandaged burns on his left. The heavenly energy seeped into his skin, making the muscles beneath itch terribly. The little magic he had reaccumulated depleted immediately, leaving him tremulous and dizzy in its absence. Striker’s ugly chuckle filled the air.
“Good work, feathers,” he said. “Come on in.”
Stolas had only taken five steps into the building, taking note of the giant refrigerator that had apparently crashed through the ceiling at some point when more blessed ropes lassoed around his torso. His burns screamed from the pressure as he went down, and suddenly the shadow of Striker loomed over him, those awful eyes staring at him gleefully. The cowboy reached down and pressed a cloth over Stolas’s beak and an odd sweetness filled his senses. His vision darkened around the edges, the blackness closing inward until those ringed eyes were all he could see. Striker chuckled darkly.
“G’night, birdy.”
Stolas dreamt of starlight. Bright, glittering starlight. It was everywhere, all around him, and it engulfed him completely, yet it did not consume him. It was intricately woven into him, rushing along with the blood in his veins, nestled between each and every cell. He was not afraid, for he was not lost to the starlight.
He was the starlight.
