Chapter Text
Nostramo.
Night.
Elver was drunk.
Not that it being night particularly changed the atmosphere of perpetually-darkened Nostramo. The cold fluorescent lights that lit some of the more fortunate streets didn't extend to here, or most places for that matter. Just fluttering orange hues from the struggling lights and stuttering candles in the tiny, grate covered alley windows. It was, bluntly, miserable. Even if the Nostroman populace had turned to describing it almost romantically. Call it stubbornness, or delusion, or just plain stockholm syndrome.
Elver knew he wasn't much different. Steadying himself against a wall slick with runoff from drains hundreds of metres above, he rubbed his eyes. He knew he really shouldn't be doing this again. Stumbling home drunk. Too many times he'd been jumped, arrived home penniless or worse. Ah, well. He figured his instincts were still sharp enough, alcohol blunted as they were. Just one step at a time he continued, the alleys progressively darker and damper. He slipped on a slimy stone, foot landing at just the right angle to set him stumbling. Cold hands slapped against warm, wet walls as he tried to keep upright. It stank, of mould and drains and metal. Not exactly unfamiliar. The coppery edge was particularly unpleasant. And the steady dripping in the near complete darkness…
Elver stopped. His mouth went dry. He blinked. Once. Twice. Slowly withdrew his hand from the warm, slickened wall. It was too dark to make out the colour, but he didn't need to. All he needed to do was look up.
Corpses. Or what remained of them anyway. Strung out across the cobweb of wiring like obscene festival decorations, each part mutilated and skinned and drizzling droplets of dark, sticky blood onto the floor below. One landed on Elver's cheek. He couldn't bring himself to wipe it away. He just stared for what had to have been far too long, mouth drying out and throat closing up. It took a scream to bring him to his senses again. Screams weren't ever uncommon around here. But this one, Elver couldn't think of any description other than the painfully cliche blood curdling.
~~~
Everybody knew the Night Haunter. Not in person. Elver hardly thought anyone knew him as a human, partially because he doubted he in fact was a human. The myth was all that mattered. That and the remains, left out with purpose and on display. It was like a fable, told to children to keep them from joining up with gangs and criminals, made real and stalking the streets unseen. Elver knew it through rumours and second hand stories whispered through the bars he frequented. All muscle and teeth and righteous ultraviolence. He had tried not to think about it much. Thinking about it wouldn't lead to anything good. Not that he was delusional, Elver knew he broke the law just about as much as any other man, with his measly wages being poured into an increasingly desperate supply of illegal substances. He wasn't hurting anyone with it. He wasn't doing anything wrong. Dwelling on the Night Haunter as a real threat would lead to fear and paranoia at best, and his dreams of those gory accounts were more than enough without his waking brain getting caught up too. At the very least, not in public. Where his drunken thoughts wandered as he locked himself in his tiny flat at night were his own damn business.
So everybody knew the Night Haunter. Not many had seen him. Enough to hear accounts of it, sure, but most that ran into the creature ended up dead. Call him spoiled, but that was something Elver didn’t quite fancy being yet. He didn’t think himself a particularly clever man, he was hardly well educated, but he did reckon he had enough common sense to piece together a bunch of bloodied body parts and an equally gruesome sounding scream. His wonderful luck had led him to stumble right into the path of the Night Haunter. Something welled up in the back of his throat, and he didn’t quite know if it was a laugh or a cry. Fear cleared his mind and his vision enough to make out bloodied footprints in the dark. They vanished a few feet ahead, as if he had disappeared like a ghost. Or jumped up into the obscured web of unstable metal walkways, old pipes and fraying wires just above. The marks were huge, too, and Elver couldn’t help but compare them to his own now bloodied prints. The man- creature, whatever he was he was… He was big.
A curse found its way past Elver’s lips before he could catch himself. Should he run? He didn’t fancy his chances running from the Night Haunter, not with how he was stumbling just moments ago. Was it better to go back, and take a longer route, or to keep going to get home faster? The locks that kept Elver’s room secure were hardly going to be a match for the Night Haunter if he was followed, but then, why would he be? He’s clearly not the creature’s target, right? If he was, he'd be dead already. The Night Haunter could have dropped down, pinned him like he was nothing, Elver would have been entirely powerless to resist.
Now was really, really not the time to be thinking like that. With a grimace, Elver continued through the alley. A narrow step of metal stairs clung to the wall just ahead. If he headed up there, found his way across some of the lower rooftops and through gutted floors, he might just avoid any trouble in the cramped, claustrophobic alleyways. He'd have a better view of his surroundings, too. Yeah, he thought, that makes sense. As he began making his way up multiple sets of near rotting staircases, he mused that he made quite the good survivalist. Then the final step gave a shrill groan under his weight and Elver immediately regretted the decision. Frozen, he waited and listened. Nothing. As slowly as he could force himself, he removed his foot, glaring at the metal with all his will so that it might shut up as it creaked. Then he looked up. The stairs had led up to a particularly low rooftop, only several low floors high, and the surrounding buildings seemed to lean in overhead, obscuring the smog that replaced the sky. Across in the opposing corner sat something of a small shack. Not that any of that registered in Elver’s mind. As soon as he raised his head to look around, his eyes had locked onto one thing and one thing only.
Night Haunter.
He stood there, pale light illuminating pale skin, the sobbing woman he had in his hand only serving to emphasise his sheer size. The woman was saying something, through blubbering tears and snot. Pleading. The monster watched her, studying her face. His expression, nonexistent. Just as she managed to string a few coherent words together- something about survival and a lack of ill intentions and never doing anything again- he tore her in two.
Elver had never seen anything quite like it. One second she was one, the next, two. An elegant arc of crimson exploded between the two halves as they separated, followed by the heavy, wet slapping of organs against concrete as they poured from her open torso. No effort was put into the action, no sign of exertion on the monster's face. Her spine swung freely from the upper half of her limp, ragdoll body. Elver had never seen someone’s spine like that. He’d never seen anything like this before. His head spun. After a long moment, the monster dropped the two halves of what had been a person, and they landed like meat, just pure meat, lying in a pool of blood and bile and other bodily fluids.
Had Elver been any other man, he might have fainted. At the very least vomited at the sight. A brave man might have run. Elver was none of them men, and he stood there, trembling, staring.
It was, in some horrifying way, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The way the blood sparkled as it spurted from the wound. The subtle, extra pop as the spine came free. The show of sheer, inhuman, effortless strength. It was dizzying. A rush like no drug Elver had ever taken. And there stood the man, the fable that he had heard about for months, the only creature capable of such a feat. The Night Haunter turned to look at his voyeuristic audience of one. Near paralysed by sudden fear, Elver looked back, caught the man’s gaze and immediately fell to one knee. It hurt. A lot. He didn’t care, because the giant of a man was walking towards him, and he couldn’t bring himself to even speak. A single, huge hand grabbed him by the shirt collar, lifted Elver from the ground until he was almost at eye level with him.
“You’re beautiful.”
The words came out before he could stop himself, and Elver immediately braced to join the woman in two halves. It never came. He stared at the Night Haunter’s face. Somehow, he seemed to have actually caught the man off guard. Genuinely. A small, panicked laugh of disbelief left Elver’s lips.
“You’re about to kill me and all I can say is you’re beautiful,” he said, mostly to himself. The monster’s hand tightened on his collar, the brief moment of confusion fading already. “What does that say about me?” Elver asked nobody in particular.
The Night Haunter’s grip didn’t loosen, but his gaze changed. Curiosity lingered behind his inky black eyes as he looked Elver up and down.
“You’re afraid.”
Elver couldn’t help the small whimper that came. The monster’s voice was feather soft and quiet, painfully gentle. He wasn’t sure what he’d imagined, but it wasn’t something so elegantly well spoken. He found himself wishing it had been anything else, any other voice, anything less captivating.
“But not like the others…” The Night Haunter continued, pulling Elver’s helpless body closer. Too close. He was a hair away from pressing against the creature’s sculpted, scarred torso. Elver was certain the creature could feel his pounding heartbeat, the blood rushing through his veins, his breath shaking with each exhale. “No, nothing like them.”
Another long, pained whine came from Elver’s throat. No, nothing like them, he agreed internally. Nobody else would react like this. Nobody else could be this stupid and fucked up.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Was that really the most Elver could say? It sounded even more pathetic than he felt, coming out as a trembling squeak. He would have blushed from embarrassment, hadn’t all the blood thoroughly drained from his already pale face. What could be one chance to say something and escape the situation alive, and that was what he managed. Elver honestly didn’t feel he deserved to live after that.
The Night Haunter pulled him closer. He was physically against him now, and Elver was doing his absolute best to ignore it. A long moment paused as the monster decided Elver’s fate.
And a grin spread across its dazzling face.
“No.”