The hunger is particularly strong tonight, driving and fierce. But the hunter cannot hunt anymore, for the blue overseers have located his last 'game'. They were much more agitated than he anticipated. He must remain quiet for some time until they lose interest, or lose the trail.
 
And yet he needs, needs so very much, to vent.
 
So he goes forth first to run, dropping into a quadrupedal gait just to feel his body stretch, feel his lungs expand to bursting with the chill of the air, his muscles settling into a sleek, perfect rhythm.
 
Paws pounding against the pavement, he imagines he is free in a true forest, the towering buildings hung with vines, mushrooms sprouting at their feet as dutiful children. His breath becomes ragged after a while, but still he keeps going, forcing more and more from himself.
 
Ripping power from taut muscles, the raindrake drags himself to the crest of the tallest hill in the city, a hill that was once a real mountain. There is a pause, ever-so-brief, at the summit, to look. Then he throws himself over the other side, hurtling down and down, no longer running so much as falling on his feet, an uncontrolled but unending forward topple, like falling down a cliff at an angle. His legs feel like rubber, his body like a rolling flexing rubber band, simultaneously an old machine that's about to rattle apart, losing bolts and sparks as it careens wildly down the incline.
 
At the bottom he falls to the ground, allowing himself some surcease, gasping, panting. He has driven himself as far as he can, wrenched every bit of stored energy from his muscles. Yet still, the Beast is unsatisfied ...
 
�-
 
Acetyl glares downward, frustrated.
 
He has gagged the man, suspended him at waist-level from his limbs, just as he likes. Yet the man is refusing to acknowledge his destiny and go nicely. While this normally would not mean anything, would in fact add an interesting element of challenge, after the run the hunter is exhausted. He doesn't want to bullshit around.
 
He is especially tired of listening to appeals to mercy, to the law, to sanity, to faded hypocritical morals and national rules. If he could, Acetyl would urinate copiously upon every single member of the Vesperigoan Congress, not to mention its crazed President. Unfortunately, even heartily assuring his toy/meal of this fact fails to make an impact on the man's whimpering, cowardly attempts to "reach" and "reason with" his captor.
 
Losing all patience, Acetyl grabs the man's jaw, forces it open, and rips the tongue out, throwing it aside. Blood spurts into the air and the talking stops. Blessed silence!
 
Immediately 'Cet tapes the man's mouth shut securely so he can't just start screaming. Now there is thrashing and stifled wailing, but the tape and bindings do their job, and 'Cet is not bothered by it. He wonders idly if the man will drown before he finishes his work.
 
The big knife comes free, hissing with anticipation from its sheath-home. 'Cet wishes he didn't have to wear gloves. Just in case, though, he needs to give the blue overseers as little to work with as possible. He is particularly grateful that he doesn't shed. Being a therapsid rather than a true mammal had its benefits.
 
The man is already nude save for underwear. Now 'Cet cuts that last concession to dignity away. The man is no longer a man; he is beef at the slaughter, pinioned for easy butchering.
 
But first, Acetyl must dress the meat, and so he does � marking it as prey, apologizing to the Father of Men for the necessity, inviting his spirit-friends to feed as he does. Not all of his prey have resented their fate. For some, death was a blessed release. Those friends have stayed with him, following him, sharing in the spirit-essence of his less worthy victims. Like a shark's faithful pilot fish, the flock of ghosts whisper and laugh; Acetyl can hear them as he works with the knife, drawing the ritual sigils with great care, and their cheer brings a creepily incongruous, gentle smile to the killer's draconic muzzle.
 
First he cuts a spiral over each knee and elbow, which then trails out into wavering lines. He draws many sigils and symbols on the man's skin, drawing with the blade. Deftly, with practiced skill, he cuts just deep enough that the wounds bleed, but not so deep that they bleed so much as to obscure the symbols.
 
The sacred knife whispers trepidation, hesitation, a silent warning spidering into his pointed ear. Acetyl adds shielding glyphs, drawing a great oval around the torso, a smaller one within the first, then laboriously adds many quick, sharp, jagged cuts, declaring the prey for himself and his own ghost-friends only. He intends to block other spirits from perceiving the prey, so they are unable to devour it � or tattletale about it. Not that humans listen to spirits much anymore, he's noticed. But just in case... you never know. There might be a witch-wolf or even a skinkeeper's descendent among the blue overseers. Best to take care.
 
Here Acetyl pauses to lick blood from the surface, washing his glyphs. He holds a mouthful of blood just long enough to swallow a few turquoise dragon seeds from his pocket. Exerting himself, he hatches the seeds with the blood, feeling the fog swirl and expand from his belly outward, filling his body with its cool calm grayness. His cranial vault roils, swollen with the mist of the other. It was a useful ability, that. Being able to draw the energy of the blood and use it to force the pills to dissolve and get into his bloodstream faster was invaluable at times like this. Otherwise, he didn't mind waiting for the drugs to kick in - the waiting was part of the ritual, part of the prayer - but Acetyl had no time to wait just now. The ritual was begun.
 
A leaf emerges from another pocket. Chewing, chewing, chewing, he feels vines growing around his bones. Newborn yet ancient, they sparkle with dew as the mist feeds them power. Kratom. Not an easy thing to get ahold of, but he's got a plant growing, just one special sapling. It's amazing what you can buy in Paradise City if you know where to look and who to ask. Kratom was not illegal, not yet, but Acetyl expected it to become so any day now. It was too opiate-like to remain overlooked by the fools in power for long.
 
The mist and the vines grow together, coiling into each other. No mere physical ecstacy, this is a sacred moment, a genuine rapture. The drugs open his mind, and he can hear more, now - not just his own small spirit-friends, but the deeper, hidden voices of the greater spirits, the ones known by humans as totems and gods. Some among these are the target of Acetyl's ritual efforts, and the stormdrake feels their attention slide onto him, like gravity pulling a bit stronger all around. Silently, with his knife-drawings and the blood of the prey, Acetyl praises them and asks for their help.
 
Acetyl suddenly feels a very powerful need to offer the great totems he calls upon something greater, something better.
 
He opens his eyes. Their customary molten bronze hue has already bleached away to a vaguely silvery storm-gray. The spirit of the Poppy is in him now. She is there - steadying, soothing. Inciting and intoxicating. Behind Her presence, though, he senses others, including that of the great and hungry Ghost Tree, the usual object of his sacrifices. The great tree was only a few miles outside the city, in the forest, and there he would go later on, when this victim was reduced to nothing but bones...
 
A huge, toothy grin spreads across his muzzle. The gods demand, so who is he to resist? Surrendering to the call of the dragons, hearing thunder in his heart, the raindrake drops the knife and flexes his claws. One-two-three-four-five-six they flash out, ripping into the torso.
 
This begins an ecstatic slam-dance of worship, as Acetyl throws himself around and around the hanging body, attacking it in rhythm with the pulsing beat in his heart, the profound profane drumming which reverberates in the air and the floor. Feeling his own strength, reveling in the power of the dragons and the blood, he lunges forward after his claws rip the torso open, ripping at the body with his teeth, tearing out a rib. This he holds in his jaws as he goes around the body again, now counter-clockwise, dragging his claws from the center of the torso outward, describing a five-lined three-tiered spiral.
 
The pulse of the inner-outer world-music strengthens.
 
Locked away in passion, Acetyl rips his clenched fists free of the body and tosses steaming handfuls of human entrails into the air.
 
Twisting and kicking, utterly lost in the sympathetic gnostic pulse of drugs and violence and life, the hunter surrenders. The roiling rapture runs rampant across the sympathetic back of a helpless ruiner, and he rips himself into a frenzy until the last of his energy gives out.
 
He collapses to the floor, absolutely spent.