Out of Character:
Flames roared through the library, hungry and relentless. William watched dispassionately as they grew, eagerly searching out the hidden nooks and crannies of the ancient structure. So much lost knowledge, so many lives worth of work gone in an instant, as if they’d never existed at all. Despite his brutish, demonic appearance, William was not a stupid man. He’d spent more than his fair share of him pouring over obscure tomes and absorbing a wide array of facts from every conceivable source. Scrolls, books, etched tablets, you name it and William had spent time looking it over. He supposed that level of intimacy should have evoked a more mournful reaction from him at sight of the burning structure, but given that he’d set the fire, that was probably an unrealistic expectation.
Something grabbed his attention and wrenched it away from the hypnotic lure of the hungry flames. A keening buzz that was both high and piercing. And annoying, William thought, looking at the librarian who was sobbing in horrified loss at the Revenant’s feet.
“Why?” the man wailed, pulling at his hair with soot covered hands.
William gazed silently at the librarian, feeling the pain of the man’s loss as tangibly as the man himself. Something darker, angrier than the fires in the library burned within, a molten glare oozing out of him. He squatted down, his hand reaching out with the impossibly smooth motion of his supernaturally enhanced grace. As lost as he was in his grief, the librarian failed to react as the Revenant took hold of his jaw and by the time his mind registered what was happening and he tried to jerk back it was too late. William’s fingers held him in a burningly feverish grip that was stronger than the bite of steel cables.
“Where is he?” William’s voice grated through his lips like cracked pieces of charcoal grinding together.
The librarian visibly shrank away, as if the words had struck him like a slap and William allowed himself a brief curl of amusement. How much more would this simpering academic fear him if he weren’t in his human form, he wondered. Nothing like molten flesh and steely, razor sharp bone to loosen one’s tongue. Still, it was easier for him to get things done without drawing unwanted attention when he didn’t look like a burning, mobile corpse. Not that burning down an ancient and well respected library didn’t draw its own sort of attention.
“Please,” a soft voice from behind William surprised him. That was certainly a negative to his human form, he thought as he whirled around in a ready combat stance, the stammering librarian falling to the floor now that William wasn’t supporting him. The man instantly began to scramble away from the Revenant, flailing limbs making for awkwardly slow progress inside his loose scholar’s robes.
Not that his efforts made much of a difference. Behind the man was a wall of flames fed hot enough on the library’s shelves to burn like the inside of a kiln. Even here the heat reddened his skin and made him pour with sweat. And the only other exit lay through his captor, had allowed his power to flow out of him the instant he had been alerted to possible danger, transforming the man into a beast of flame, ash, and bone which burned nearly as hot as the wall of fire.
It had all happened so suddenly that the librarian wondered for a moment if his brain had been cooked by the fire and he was hallucinating all this while his body burned. Especially when he saw the man standing calmly on the other side of the burning Revenant. How anyone could remain calm in the face of this searing nightmare was a complete mystery to the librarian. And yet here stood a single man, an unknown stranger in plain clothing with an even plainer visage.
And he was staring down the Revenant.
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