Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
There was little to do in his white square cubicle of anti-magic save wait to die, and he sighed as time passed. The more the better. For his plan to work, Forest had to be out of sight, which Rodney was banking on as his best option. They didn't have time to hang around and watch a chained dog, and Forest was one of the leading generals of the vampire mage alliance, so he wouldn't sit here behind a desk. How long to give himself before he assumed Forest gone would be the variable that decided his fate.
No one came to see him even after dark, and Forest had promised fair trial and execution, which meant that they were waiting to deal with him until the morrow. There was likely too much to take care of in the pits to prioritize his death, but nighttime was best for his escape anyway. Being the period of strength for his kind meant little compared to the knowledge that Forest didn't sleep here. This was not his area, and he had likely been called in to deal with the issues at hand as one of the foremost Alliance generals.
And he would be gone now.
Rodney pushed his senses and honed his hearing, but he could make out little past the hallway door with the anti-magic shackles. They suppressed magic out, but not in, which would be their failing here. A small window into the hallway was the only indication of his short period without a patrol walking by. They'd decreased in frequency with the fall of the sun, and the last had passed not a few minutes ago. It was now or never, and Rodney focused on the feel of Forest as he'd encountered him, the minimal touch as he led him shackled enough to mirror his magic, and his appearance not at all one hard to replicate.
Rodney's hair was already long so it was easy to shift to brown, slipping his emerald eyes to blue no harder. A few inches of height, some muscle bulk, larger hands and neck, and a squarer jaw and more pronounced nose was all it took to slip into his body. That and of course clipping his fangs down to normal human incisors. Unbuttoning half his shirt with his teeth wasn't that great a taste nor was using his fang to tear rips in various spots. The final touch on his charade had him hesitating with a sigh of preparation. It did little to prepare him as he smashed the side of his head into his manacles, breaking his noseand getting a good slice out of his face. Blood ran a thick stream onto the tale that dripped a trail of dots as he slumped to the side and waited.
The door opened a few minutes later, and Rodney jerked up, his eyes lazing about as an acolyte tried to figure out what had happened before approaching. This one wasn't all too stupid, but Rodney had planned for him to have basic caution. With a groan, Rodney looked beyond the man before yanking on his manacles and startling the boy of no more than twenty or so. The odd mixing of dark hair and eyes with lighter skin meant he was neither a Copse nor a Cascade, both of which might see through his ruse.
Lucky for him.
"You have to find Echo Silver," Rodney said, dropping his face on the table. "I came here to speak to him, but he'd already broken his thumbs to slip the shackles. Took my clothes and my face. We have to find him before he hurts anyone."
