The--person might be a generous word for something so skeletal in its lineaments, beneath the Hunter's garb that obscures it head to steel-shod toe--but at least it's not clattering as it approaches, being not so much an ambulatory skeleton as a higher-dimensional monster that's put a lot of his flesh elsewhere--
Anyway.
The individual that approaches the cairn comes to a dead halt on being confronted, standing motionless (no breathing, no fidgeting) for a solid three seconds before cocking its obscured head to one side with birdlike abruptness. A low wheeze, like a lungless laugh, is its first response to the question; then it shakes itself all over like a wet dog and the world around it shifts uncomfortably--or it shifts uncomfortably--and suddenly there's more than a mobile bundle of bones and rags present. There's dead flesh and organs under the cloth, a nonhuman anatomy hung on an almost-human silhouette.
(One with sight into the River and places like it might notice the slight-of-talon that's taken place: It's a rotation, not a transformation, that gives the illusion of flesh appearing suddenly on bone.)
"I am hearing," Illarion says, in his voice with echoes that don't match the place he's standing, "from the Phtumerian's anointed, there is being a thorn in their side--a woman who steals their roses and their would-be converts, to send out of the True World back to the false.
"I came wishing to meet her. I take it I am lucky at last?" He turns his head somewhat toward the other figure, still at work on a cairn, by way of indicating the work underway.
no subject
Anyway.
The individual that approaches the cairn comes to a dead halt on being confronted, standing motionless (no breathing, no fidgeting) for a solid three seconds before cocking its obscured head to one side with birdlike abruptness. A low wheeze, like a lungless laugh, is its first response to the question; then it shakes itself all over like a wet dog and the world around it shifts uncomfortably--or it shifts uncomfortably--and suddenly there's more than a mobile bundle of bones and rags present. There's dead flesh and organs under the cloth, a nonhuman anatomy hung on an almost-human silhouette.
(One with sight into the River and places like it might notice the slight-of-talon that's taken place: It's a rotation, not a transformation, that gives the illusion of flesh appearing suddenly on bone.)
"I am hearing," Illarion says, in his voice with echoes that don't match the place he's standing, "from the Phtumerian's anointed, there is being a thorn in their side--a woman who steals their roses and their would-be converts, to send out of the True World back to the false.
"I came wishing to meet her. I take it I am lucky at last?" He turns his head somewhat toward the other figure, still at work on a cairn, by way of indicating the work underway.