| A cold shrill laughter broke through the air, the sound erupted from Jack as he looked on the two projectiles flying at him. He jumped back away from the first, his strange wirey form moving like a flickering shadow, and landed in the trajectory of the second. He made on odd flicking motion with one hand toward the icy spear. The movement seemed too late, and the spear lodged its way within his right shoulder, but it stopped but an inch beneath his flesh. The moon gave away the secret behind the abrupt stop of the spike; there lined across the spikes edges were four of those dart heads lodged within the ice, the same four that Erasmus had blocked with his ice wall.
Jack, still grinning, tore the ice from him, a spray of blood following. The red liquid streamed down his black form and glistened in the pale moon light. He tossed the ice spear aside, and noticed that some of his blood had flowed down onto his hand. Bringing this hand up to his face, he licked his palm clean of the blood.
"Interesting, interesting" Jack said after licking his whole hand clean, well almost clean the blood seemed to smudge instead of disappear, " The Earth's death he says? Ragnarok, he says? And how did he hope to do that? Coming from the darkness and raping my trust with that weapon drawn? Filthy humans don't deserve my trust! I gave it to them at first, and they took and took."
Jack choked out another twisted laugh, this one not as high and shrill as the last but disquieting nonetheless. He reached his hand down into another pocket of his coat, keeping his eyes on the old man who looked ready to counter whatever Jack through next.
"Miserable, wretched beings, existing in this reality before me no more than whipped dogs!" Jack drew from his pocket three unhinged collars, "So put on your collar and shut up!"
Jack whipped the hand out again, sending the three collars spread out before him. He kept his right hand open palmed and pointed out as the collars went through the air. The middle one flew straight, aimed right for the old man's throat. But the other two flew in a strange way, they moved much quicker and were at the old man's sides in no time, but instead of zooming by, they stopped and moved a few feet out of his reach and simply hovered there. As soon as the other two were in position the third immediatly got a burst of speed and took off like a bullet for the old mans throat. The ploy ran through Jack's mind, "Go ahead and block the first, then I'll send in the second. Can you block that old man? If so I've got a third. One of em's bound to latch itself around your neck and once that happens, well then you're no more than a dog after all!" |