<div class="floatleft">(http://i.imgur.com/1fyyRhf.jpg)</div><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial black;">Red-Drenched Maw of the Unbounded Monastery</span></strong></span><br/><em>Artist in Ichor and Antinomy</em><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial black;">Location:</span></strong>"Anjushri" residence, feast hall<br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial black;">Tagging:</span></strong>Elias, All<br/><br/><em>The strange little worlds we build for ourselves when we are all alone...mortals keep their palaces in their dreams, raksha in the dreams of others...but we, we few, we build them. To wander such a place...like wandering fingers over naked skin, everything exposed and examined. Does she enjoy our explorations, I wonder, or loathe their necessity?</em><br/><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial black;">Maw</span></strong>slipped into the hall, passing through the gauzy curtains that separated Azurine's feasting chambers from the dormitories. Gone was the startlingly beautiful young man with his startlingly beautiful blue-green eyes who had entered their host's amphitheatre; closer now was the shadow that preceded him, the horror half-glimpsed through flensing winds that melted away as it approached to become so breathtakingly human. All through the evening, his room had burned with terrible lights and resonant chanting; when he emerged, his form had found its halfway mark. Tonight,<strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial black;">Maw</span></strong>was a creature of deep blackish-blue, his skin somewhere between the supple denticle layer of a shark and rippling metal, his motions more of a molten flow than the gestures of a living thing. He had put aside his face: in its place was nothing but that same smooth indigo texture, bioluminescent lights seeming to rise and fall across its surface in strangely expressive patterns that illuminated his thoughts as clearly as the most aggressive body language. Completing the semi-liquid impression were the tainted moonsilver that clung to him like a sleep-tousled paramour and the three digitigrade legs ending in sucking pads rather than feet, though this might perhaps draw less attention than the fingers of his right hand, each of which tapered into a delicate nine-inch length of glittering black spine. With a casual movement, he speared a candied locust and<em>twisted</em>; even as his spine-fingers tore the treat apart, the whole hand opened like a flower and unleashed a lamprey-like mouth to devour its pieces as they fell.<br/><br/>Despite his evident inhumanity, one cannot deny that the creature is compelling; his every line seems almost divinely inspired, an alien sculpture of sublime inspiration come to life. He is what was once meant by haunting beauty: something so transcendent it sparks a kind of aesthetic ecstasy, even as the horror of it burrows deep into the subconscious, to be reborn in the pale shadows of dreams and nightmares ever after.<br/><br/>The lights where his face once lived swirled and focused towards each of those he knew, burning from a cold white to a reassuringly warm tone of poisonous orange: brave Vali, whose guardianship of her people was just as fierce as her martial artistry; heroic Sanger, as entertainingly dramatic as he was noble at heart; adept Jubal, whose resolve and ability were clear enough in that he had a place here...he wondered if Cailana or Elias would show to the gathering, although knowing the pair of them even in passing, he felt it more than possible they were here already, walking in skins other than their own. Like he had done when he first arrived; tonight it had simply felt best to shed all false masks. He took a couch across from the beautiful boy and the elemental, Essence sight passing over them as it had passed over everything, casually and without untoward curiosity. Certainly the boy was more than he seemed (too subtle a mask is its own sort of obvious) and it was not impossible that even the Court's refreshingly direct emissary was in truth some friend or foe or stranger thing, but these were not his concerns for the evening. The locust was delicious, and that held most of his attention, his arm swallowing in faint but perceptible motions. Those who looked upon him would see little of note beyond the dozens of invisible tentacles that extended from his core and suffused the entire gathering, in constant and courteous motion as they slid out of everything's way.<br/><br/><strong>"I am sure we all have our reasons for answering our host's summons, just as she had hers for issuing them. Even as mighty a grouping as this may have their accidents and bitter failures...but they tend to be of rather grander scale than a simple case of mistaken identity."</strong>His voice hums out from a hundred sonic diaphragms across his body, deep and rich and resonant. Maidens sometimes sacrificed themselves to sea monsters with voices like that...but there were few maidens in attendance, and certainly<strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial black;">Maw</span></strong>was no more terrible in his power than they in theirs.<strong>"We are none of us pigkeepers."</strong>