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posted on the 27th of December
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Adrenalin had masked it.
The mark branded into his skin was supposed to mean something, but Rabastan, if he cared to analyze his approach to carrying out the tasks assigned to him (usually, he did not) would find that the only difference between dispensing violence from behind a mask and dispensing violence from within a ring, with nothing but a fist between him and the other person, was that the latter left him with appetites food could not fill. There was little visceral pleasure to be taken from righteous kills, which, perhaps, was why he'd torn the mask worn by the faithful from his face and let it fall, already forgotten, to the floor as he sunk his knee into the Mudblood's throat. Enjoying the death-rattle, however, had been impossible, for the man's gasping death was interrupted by the crashing arrival of a hitwizard, and as Rabastan, hissing out his frustration from between gritted teeth, broke the neck of the man beneath him with one sudden sideward jerk of his knee, everything went to fuck.
Pride, ego, vanity, or perhaps all three had driven him to exposing his face to the dead man; that the hitwizard had also seen him meant the body-count needed to grow. The fight was little more than a violent scuffle with a sparsity of spells before the man's wand was stolen from his sweaty grasp, but such was Rabastan's favorite, and as he dealt the fatal blow to the other's fragile windpipe, he failed to notice that the result of the hitwizard's final spell was the ripping of his own flesh.
The hitwizard died, and Rabastan had risen to his feet, shoulders jerking up and down as he panted through his open mouth. Still, he did not feel it -- no, could not feel it, because adrenalin was thundering through him, and it masked the sensation of torn skin and muscle with that rush Rabastan associated with winning a bare-knuckle brawl.
For a good twenty minutes, adrenalin masked it. It allowed Rabastan to retrieve his mask, send up the curse that would flare into the night-sky as the Dark Mark, and leave the scene of the murders. Disapparition had been easy enough -- but then, as Rabastan sparked into existence in the hallway of the city townhouse, the heat of a battle won was replaced by the heat of blood, and he suddenly found himself staggering for support as his hands came to touch the gaping mess that was his abdomen.
A sound -- an unintelligible curse, perhaps, or a snarling groan of pain -- escaped him as the curve of his shoulder slammed into the wall behind him as balance and strength drained away from him. Supported thus, panting through gritted teeth as he pressed himself against the surface behind him, he moved his hands a tiny degree so that he could give the band of metal around his finger a twist -- then snapped his hands back to their original position with a sharp inhalation of breath as the ring burned white-hot.
Now to fucking wait.
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