( I probably should have done this before (though I think I've gone around and latched on to everyone), but I'm moving this blog over to a sideblog of the same name ( @lux-veritatis ). The hub ( @litteris ) has five other blogs I'm setting up, but I'm hoping to start working on actual writing again soon. >>

I'm also not dropping anything, so if I continue something you'd rather drop please do let me know! )

Reblog if you are 💯 multi-ship and multi-ship friendly!

Staring briefly, eyes narrow only slightly in thought as Kurtis racks his brain, trying to place where they might have run across one another. He's usually not one to forget a face, and that's a pretty unforgettable face. And yet, the other seems convinced. He also can't deny there's still that inkling that he does know this creature somehow. Something he can't quite put his finger on.

Is he going to be mad if he doesn't remember him? Should he not press the subject and hope a clue sprinkled into the conversation jogs his memory? Right now, he's just relieved that they appeared to be friendly.

And so, just a little reluctantly, Kurtis looks down toward Masterson (keeping his friend in his peripheral)— or at least a particularly dense spot that Masterson had left behind. "Well, I was." And at this, eyes are directed back up. A quirk of an eyebrow and a tilt of his head, but still no overt recognition. "Heard he tried to kill you. If this was the first time, I'd write it off as a coincidence, but you've been busy; this isn't the first time you've beat me to the punch." And does he know what they've all had in common?

"OH, THAT'S FUNNY! THE DEADPAN DELIVERY... WHO'S THE REAL CLOWN HERE, EH? YOU OR ME?" As much as it sounds like one, it is not an insult; Tricky really is that hung up on the assumption that Kurtis is merely pretending not to recognize him. Yes, the differences between this form and his regular one may be extreme, and his voice may warble, as if underwater, but who could ever forget a genius as remarkable as he?

"SO, WHAT, WERE YOU CHASING THIS GUY TOO?" He is still waiting for the facade to fall. Any second now, the younger man is going to crack a wry smile and drop the act, confirming that Hofnarr left enough of an impression on him that he still recognizes the maestro of minds, even after all this time, after all these changes. Of this, he is certain.

stray headcanon, #1

Konstantin has a discernible German accent, which he, more often than not, covered with a more nondescript American one while working. Kurtis has a distinctly American accent but frequently defaults to a more German persona when the need for anonymity arises— a fact that remained unbeknownst to either of them.

"Last thing I remember with any sort of certainty is getting stabbed," he says, tone obviously trying to keep the statement objective, although the hand (faintly shaking from pain and disuse as it is) that reaches up to touch against his chest before deciding better of it might give away some of the underlying anxiety brought on by the thought.

It's an uncomfortable affair, addressing one's mortality. And even more uncomfortable is the fact that Kurtis currently has no idea regarding the overall state of his body— apart from the fact that he's acutely aware of the stiffness in his joints. Maybe he'll have mustered the will to look down in a few more moments. Or perhaps after he sees what Hofnarr has in the way of medication.

"I think I saw something, though— some things. And then, maybe I wasn't where I thought I was." Does any of that make sense? He can only hope.

"Um..." Pausing in his rummaging, Hofnarr scratches the back of his head, as though physically attempting to dredge up the half-apology, half-explanation that he has been mentally rewriting and rehearsing for days now. There is really no elegant way of saying, 'I tracked you down as Tricky, because I couldn't resist the temptation of killing a couple more Cabal big-wigs, and found you being torn apart by demons in Hell, as one does.' He's gonna sound like a selfish idiot any which way he phrases it, and this obviously does not help calm the doctor's nerves.

On the bright side, him being an idiot led to Kurtis being spared from certain demon-induced death, so why not start there? Good news first; bad news later.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

While the steps that carry Kurtis forward may be calm and deliberate, the same can't be said of his heart, which is currently pounding out an SOS against his ribcage in the futile request that he listen and turn right back around. He's no stranger to the grisly scene and (more or less) just as acquainted with the sort of creatures (human or otherwise) that create them. And yet, after everything he's seen connected to this particular creature, it's hard to shake the image of sharing in Masterson's fate.

So much so that when the hulking mass abruptly wheels around to face him, it takes a conscious act of will to resist the urge to draw his weapon. Instead, he simply stops a reasonably safe distance away. Making a point of not letting any part of him betray his very real unease at that moment. Somehow, the unexpectedly chummy greeting doesn't help, either— spy guy, that's a new one.

"Sorry, we know each other?"

Beyond the stray chunks of mangled, unidentifiable flesh, the massive force with which the man was swung has left the floor mostly clear of viscera; this, instead, was flung all over the walls and shelves, giving the impression that Masterson was disintegrated by an explosion and not a chillingly effortless thrashing by something not of this world, who is now pacing feverishly in circles on all fours, his blood-slick hands and feet slapping wetly against the concrete.

That wasn't as satisfying as it should have been. Frankly, it wasn't satisfying in the slightest (there should have been howls of agony! Tearful pleading! Writhing!), so when the sound of steady, measured footsteps reaches him, Tricky whips around, all too eager to take his frustration out on the newcomer. A friend of Masterson's, perhaps?

Wait. No. He knows this guy. He should know this guy. Narrow, angular face, brow-length locks of hair falling across his forehead...

Is that a freakin' goatee?

"SPY GUY!!" From furious to friendly in one-point-zero. If he still had lips and cheeks, the zombie might even have smiled. "WOW! SMALL WORLD!"

@soultoken, a starter

One night. The plan had been to spend one night in the small Pacific Northwest town while passing through. Instead, Kurtis is already well into his third night.

Upon his arrival, all anyone could talk about was the semi-recent rash of disappearances. A handful of people from all walks of life, different shapes and sizes, with no direct connections to each other, had all gone missing within the last couple of months. The most recent were three kids (two twin girls and their older brother, aged seven to ten), taken right out of their backyard while playing.

Not his place, maybe, but the so-called and aptly-dubbed demon hunter couldn't help but welcome himself onto the case anyway. After all, the police were so focused on finding a human perpetrator that they'd entirely written off the telltale signs of something more ambiguous at work. Such as tracks often found around crime scenes being attributed to deer. Only if one looked a little closer one might notice the creature who had left them was apparently bipedal. The same applied to the clumps of hair (not quite fur) caught in fences, which, again, was a little too long and a little too smooth to belong to most common wildlife.

Over the course of a few days, all of this had led Kurtis to one of the last places he'd go breaking into without ample reason: the bolt cutters taking a little more effort than he'd care to admit, snapping the hefty lock that held the gates to the old waterside amusement park closed. It's far enough out of town that he's not afraid of anyone hearing— not to mention it's eleven thirty-four at night, and it's been abandoned for over five years now.

Quietly and quickly sucking in air from between gritted teeth, Kurtis doesn't bother diving for the dropped phone right away, instead freezing in place, not unlike his partner in crime. With the knife still held in one hand, he resists an urge of his own— reaching for the gun holstered at his right side beneath the jacket. He'd still rather avoid an all-out firefight, even in the empty parking garage, if it can be helped.

Of course, the two inside the car aren't the only ones who pause to listen. For all of a second, their pursuer stops, too, before swinging around at a ninety-degree angle, making an abrupt sweep of the area and tossing a glance back over her shoulder. As she moves, the beam of her flashlight pours in through the Chevrolet's windows on its way past, literally and figuratively highlighting the boon of their still being hunkered down.

Unfortunately, after this, Thompson begins walking again. Only this time, with a little more haste. Focusing her efforts (and her light) along the line of vehicles in their row.

Exchanging this brief look with the other, Kurtis does grab for the cell at that, fingers groping blindly in the dark for a moment since, with the seat still pressing into his side, he's physically unable to bend in its direction. Of course, it's a small space, so he finds it soon enough, but before he hands it over, he asks, "If I give you the knife, can you finish up?" It sounded like she was familiar with the process, anyway. "One of us needs to create a distraction, and she's closer to your side than mine." Meaning it might be safer if he were the one to do it.

Merris reached into her own pocket then for the device. Upon pulling it out and turning it over, the screen automatically flashed to life. Bright. Much too bright. In a knee-jerk reaction, the brunette clumsily tried to snuff it out with her hands. In doing so, the phone haphazardly fumbled out of her hands and percussively clunked against the interior, only to come to a sudden stop on the carpeted belly of the cab.

By the sounds of it, it must have fallen somewhere under the neighbouring seat. Merris' obscured stare contained a paralyzed mix of rue and consternation as the screen dimmed and eventually turned black. Then, an uneasy silence. Thompson couldn't have possibly heard that, right?

In her shaken exhale, she resisted the urge to emit a groan of frustration with the preconceived resolve that, in her moment of hopeless clumsiness, she had just given away their position. Soon, she would expect the same song of flurried bullets entering their metal cover that might as well have been a casket for all it would do.

A moment passed, then another as the silence endured. The realization would see an easing of tightened and scared muscles prepared for the promise of an untimely death. Forcing herself to stare into what Merris expected were the eyes of her unintended associate, her shaken lips parted cautiously.

"Sorr'.. Fuck. Musta' fallen' som'ere und'yer seat..migh' be close'nough t'be grabbin' it from yer' side. Gonna' be needin' t'plan t'stract n'case she gon' 'git wise y'start messin' wit' th' engine."

The first impact in the series is so quick and unexpected that it causes the demon hunter to flinch, and by the time his body twitches, muscles engaging to get him out and around the shelving unit a mere second later, the need for any kind of urgency is promptly snuffed out, along with Masterson himself.

For a moment, he can't help but be a little relieved he's still behind cover when droplets of blood are thrown across the floor, heralding the piece of the dead man's scalp; a callous thought, most definitely. But Kurtis would be lying if he said that wasn't a risk he had already considered when deciding to wait. He'd also be a hypocrite if he claimed that the death of somebody with ties to the Cabal would keep him up at night.

After a beat spent staring at that sneak peek of the carnage to come, he steps over it and into the open. Facing the other, his gun remains holstered, against his better judgment, and at least for now.

Already at the end of his inch-long rope, Tricky seizes the tragically still-conscious Masterson by his ankles, prompting an unintelligible mumble of confusion from the man, and hoists him above his head before bringing him down against the floor in a tight, swift arc. The resulting impact is deafening, as is the second, third, fourth, each strike a slaughterhouse sneeze of red, spraying viscera across the mottled concrete with enough force that a fragment of skull, a flap of skin and blood-caked hair still attached, lands not too far from Kurtis' shoes.

"TRY TO KILL ME, WOULD YA?!" The thoroughly-pulped Masterson, predictably, does not grace him with a response, but lack of a living audience never stopped Tricky from gloating. "THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT. JERK."

" 'Preciate that," comes the raspy response, voice only slightly louder than a whisper now, despite his best effort to raise it once the other man drops out of view and thus isn't able to lean in quite as closely anymore. Kurtis isn't about to go out of his way to keep tabs on him, though, so once the doctor vanishes from sight, he merely closes his eyes, his face angling itself straight ahead again.

Now that he's cognizant, the backs of his eyelids offer flashes of disjointed and only vaguely familiar images: a bony protrusion, piercing clean through flesh, followed by blood— lots of blood, and thankfully, shock. Then, fragments. Blurry stills of various shapes, almost as if the memories were captured with a vignette. One form, towering above the others, stands out especially.

His eyes don't stay closed for long, opening into a squint for a second time. "Hofnarr? What the hell happened?"

"A bit of this and that. Let me just check if, uh..." After fumbling his glasses back on, he turns on his heel and ducks out of Kurtis' peripheral vision to rummage through a duffel bag containing various supplies and medications, most of which were acquired through less than legal means. Most of the heavy-duty painkillers he already had, because, as it turns out, sharing a single body with a much larger, actively-decomposing version of yourself leads to some pretty gnarly hangovers.

"I didn't want to leave you a sitting duck by handing you over to a hospital, so I did the best I could with what I had."

Helen Oyeyemi, from White is for Witching

               I’ve been more animal than human, I will admit.                                      Nothing but teeth here.                                           And yet. And yet.

The snort of laughter and subsequent rejoinder garners a small smirk from the demon hunter, although added to the steadily growing list of things that Kurtis knows better than to do is to offer any sort of laugh himself. Right now, breaths are shallow and come almost sparingly. Anything to save his chest from too much movement.

The offer from the doctor is tempting, despite his first instinct to politely decline. He doesn't know how long he's been out, but being aware of his fruit fly-esque tendency to fall unconscious thanks to extreme stress, it's likely been a while, so staying awake for a moment might be a nice change of pace for the both of them— if he can manage it. On the other hand, he can't rightly cite trust issues (as typically would be the case) since Hofnarr's had ample opportunity to finish him off if he wanted to. Still has plenty of opportunity, in fact.

"On a scale from one to ten, I'd say I'm in crying-red-face-territory." There's no point in maintaining pretenses around the other man now, right? Not when he's standing where nobody outside of the Order has ever stood. Not when Kurtis currently owes him his life.

"What've you got?"

The comment comes as such a surprise that Hofnarr, who has leaned in to listen close and spare Kurtis the pain of raising his voice, gives a snort of laughter and a single shake of his head. This freaking joker, reminding him that, oh, yeah, he does still miss Friedrich and his overenthusiastic messages, even after all this time, despite knowing full well that his friend was part of an act and not, in fact, a real person.

"You're not looking so hot there yourself, buddy." And no wonder, considering that the two of them quite literally went to hell and back, involuntarily in Kurtis' case, escaping not only the Cabal but also the slavering demons seeking to snuff out the last living remnants of the Lux Veritatis.

"How's the pain? Do you need a shot of the good stuff?"

The voice (one Kurtis feels should be familiar somehow but manages to elude him nevertheless) echos menacingly off the predominantly bare warehouse walls. So, too, do the sharp impacts of skin against skin, the unmistakable noise of blows being dealt. And, in a way, that's good— if this mystery assassin is expecting an answer, then most likely, the poor bastard at his mercy isn't dead yet. That, or he's just as unhinged as he sounds and is waiting to get something out of a corpse. Kurtis certainly doesn't hear anything coming from Masterson.

That's the thing, though, isn't it? He doesn't know the first thing about this guy— apart from the fact that he's remarkably efficient at killing, even if it is a messy performance that he leaves behind. Not that that runs counter to this efficiency; it had still taken a little longer to track him down than the experienced demon hunter cares to admit.

Hell, for all he knows, this is a demon, and he's meddling in things better left between the underworld and the Cabal.

Squashing the impulse to help a fellow man in need in a way that comes entirely too easy, Kurtis instead positions himself behind a tall, empty row of shelves near the loading bay, using the knowledge of where they are without having to set eyes on them to his advantage. The hope is that if he waits, he might catch a clue regarding what this is all about. It isn't unthinkable that the Cabal should have enemies outside of the Lux Veritatis, but if this isn't his mother's efforts (and he's confident it isn't), then he'd like to know whose efforts it is.

Chase Masterson is having a terrible day. Between his soon-to-be ex-wife phoning to call him a coward during breakfast (the divorce form has yet to be submitted; he cannot bear reading it, let alone signing it); a key investor backing out at the last minute, leaving them with a budget shortfall in the multi-million range; and relaying this information to the ornery company COO, exhaustion robs him of any and all alertness to his surroundings. He knows this road by heart, anyway, but the mangled, vacant-eyed face leering at him from the darkness beyond the street lights is definitely new.

For Tricky, the night has taken a most fortuitous turn. Rarely do his targets allow him to creep this close before their primal instincts sound the alarm, driving them away from him or preventing them from moving a muscle in the moment of their impending death. Masterson, it turns out, is stupid or confident or both enough to run, at which point the pseudo-demon presses the advantage and lurches forward, peeling fingers snatching the yowling man from the pavement and slipping back into the night without so much as a rustle.

In the loading bay of an abandoned warehouse, well away from any potential witnesses, Tricky finally lets go of his quarry, pinning him against the concrete floor with one hand while the other keeps him steady in a half-crouch. Masterson has screamed himself into a stupor and is likely dissociating or in a state of shock, because his face remains slack, half-lidded eyes staring into nothingness, even as the zed strikes him hard across the face.

"HEY!" Another smack. "HEY!! WAKE THE FUCK UP!!" This, too, does nothing except clue his pursuer, of whom he is currently ignorant, in on his whereabouts in the abandoned facility.

The crack about his disposition is fair, so it's met with little more than a bounce of his eyebrows and a tilt of his head, each gesture probably equally as lost to anyone but him in the darkness. It isn't the first time he's been told something similar. Although, in this case, it's all still amicable, at least so far as he's concerned. His newfound friend appears to disagree, which, all things considered, is entirely reasonable— especially given the fact that they don't know each other at all. That they can't account for the other's ethos.

Another note is added to the mental corkboard: Keep the cute quips even more to yourself for now. Kurtis could certainly try, but with it being such an instinctual coping skill by this point, he couldn't make any guarantees.

Specks of dust drift through the blue-tinted beam of the woman's LED-powered flashlight as she slowly, thoroughly, makes her way between the row of cars, eyes scanning each vehicle for a couple of seconds before moving on to the next, ears straining for any misplaced noises.

Any minute now, and she knows what she'll be hearing soon enough: police sirens. Sure, pseudo-officer "Thompson" might still have a little time before they started searching the area once they arrived, but ultimately, she'd have to make herself just as scarce as the little mice she had chased inside, facing a few too many things she couldn't answer for.

So, for now, her voice is low but echoing when she mutters, "Come out, come out, wherever you are."

It's a bad horror movie cliché that Kurtis chooses to ignore, instead addressing the brunette beside him in a likewise hushed tone. "Goin' as fast as I can. But sure, let's see that light for a second." Yes, there is that flashlight in his pocket. No, he isn't about to contort so he can reach it. And while he can technically see in the dark, that doesn't stop colors from being washed out. This is relevant when, upon removing the steering column, there are different colored bundles of wires awaiting underneath.

"'Scuse me but y'be havin' 'terr'ble di'positionin', y'know."

Merris' back and legs cramped in fierce protest in the confined space, but she wouldn't dare try to move even an inch in the face of. They had the advantage of cover, but Merris still felt like her eyes were on them. She was already too close for comfort, the way she saw it, her comfort.

Even so, Merris didn't have much choice in the matter but to hazard raising her head just enough to keep tabs, as the other brunette needed to focus solely on the Keyport. From what she could see, and it wasn't all that much, the blonde slowly and decisively scrutinized each vehicle they passed with a brief wash of light—a flashlight. (Of course, she had to have a flashlight) Merris had to remind herself that Thompson wasn't actually a police officer. But she still had the equipment. Hell of a costume. The blonde was far enough away, plenty of time to let the other do whatever he needed to do, so long as she kept to the pace and didn't decide a sudden change in trajectory.

Retreating carefully back and under the steering column Merris turned herself just enough to where she thought she was facing the other. She couldn't see his work, not really, but knew that he would only be deterred briefly (if the door begged any question about his capabilities.) That knife was sure handy. There was a momentary pause in consideration before deciding to ignore it. If there had been any inclination to use it on anything besides the console, he would have done so already. Right?

Mindful to keep her voice soft, she did her best to hide the trembling within it,

"She's still a' ways, but hurryin's not gon' hurt non' neither..lookin' in cars with'er light, real close n'th'like..How much long'er? I migh' still be able'n t'use m'phone fer' th'wires wit'out 'er noticin' ."