Trylstrian's Gift.

His eyes were sealed shut, but vision had never been so clear. The fear of failure had lost its fickle head in the frustrating explosion that had enveloped the body of lovers like a rush of off-tempo waltz. Now there was only the cold, the feel of the dirty forest floor beneath his rump, the shuffling of grit underneath feet attached to crossed legs, and the burning in his fingers.
Burning was an understatement. His fingers were an inferno of swirling, twisting, disgusting black tendrils that trembled with trickster joy as they spread as wings upon digits; first five, then ten, then thirty, then a hundred. They seethed with power and the discourse of a magician and his magic, the brutally focused and angry conversation that would yield, inevitably, to the magician. He knew it. It could end no other way, reach no lesser conclusion! He was the master on this day, so resolute and full of understanding was his will.
The naked, internally burning man stretched his hands out and let the unnatural, black reach course a long distance, slithering through trees as though they were of stuff reminiscent to the air, without damage or hesitation. They did not reflect the shafts of moonlight through the trees, but he did. His pale, scarred skin still emitted an ethereal rapture that cooled any outer impression of burning. The bald head bowed before the giant lizard brain that churned inside of it, cold and unassuming and detached from itself. The body was not important at this point. Only the conversation.
That conversation was now taking form. The emulation of the master’s desire flowed through the tendrils, testing the predicted impact before coursing the magic back into the body to keep close. In his third eye, the magician saw the force of what it was he wanted. He was pleased.
The sheer force would have been enough to knock him on his back, however. The strategic disadvantage was unacceptable, but how to correct it? His massive brain worked at the possibilities. It was a blast-back effect, which meant that a forward push was necessary to counteract his weight. But could it be done without crushing his body?
In the end he compromised. Spacing the effect further from point of origin evened out the concussion, while a back-placed aegis kept him from sliding. The simulation showed success, but there was a margin of error which meant that he had to perform it to be certain.
The tendrils snaked back into his arms with a whipping, annoyed fury, as though it was robbed some fundamental right. They quarreled with one another in his flesh before reconfiguring themselves as those swirling, sharp, pointed tattoos upon his stomach, chest, arms, and back; whole again now, standing to his feet, shoulders rolling and bones crunching deep inside of him as he worked himself limber. His fingers wriggled in preparation. Then they broke.
Eight fingers crackled deafening cacophony as they curled themselves backwards into helixes. Distal phalanges pressed against middle phalanges, which caressed proximal phalanges, which broke in half and severed tendons from the metacarpals until they were pressed upon each other like lovers. The thumbs rolled into the palms, dislocating from the trapezium and united with the hamate and capitate. Those in turn pressed themselves the triquetrum, lunate, and scaphoid bone until they were vertical.
He could feel the flow in his veins, the writhing of terrible might flooding his subclavian and into the median and ulnar and dispensing into palmar digital branches; white-hot, oozing joy secreting into the flesh of his hands. It was all a matter of perspective, of course. The odds were good that the magic did not even formulate in his body. But to him, it was as close and warm as the woman he had been forced to put from his mind.
He saw the stranger come far too late. He was amassed, he was a bowstring drawn taut, he was a god and the stranger was foolish enough to tread into his midst. Small, flat teeth bared as he grinned, hands reaching back as though he was prepared to push. The stranger had been carrying a basket of tubers, but those now fell. It was not often that a peasant happened across some bald, inked, nude man with broken fingers.
He thrust his hands into the air before him, and felt the atmosphere shiver. His body strained against the magical wall that supported his weight, and his hands buckled back like the recoil of a crossbow. The only sound was a dull roar. The ground ripped asunder. A line of debris ripped itself from it, shards of rock and dirt billowing from the ground. The trajectory sheered half of a pine tree apart, whipping leaves into the direction of the blast along with the rubble.
The stranger threw himself out of the way, but was too late to prevent his leg from being torn off like the whipping of a lizard’s tail from its thorax. Blood sprayed and turned the billowing dust pink. But the magician was not done. He reached out with his hand and drew the line to curve around, falling back parallel with the original line until it stopped two feet away from his feet.
When the dust cleared, the stranger was in half. He was identifiable as human only by the three remaining limbs that extended past a smear of gore. The success was glorious. Trylstrian had found a new gift.

The Huntsman's days had been full of trouble, lately. From rumor spawned stress, and from stress spawned aggravation. Other things in his life demanded his attention as well, some of which were quite pleasant, while most others only pressed more weight upon the man's shoulders and threatened to spoil his usually good-natured mood. The feel of the forest floor beneath his feet was a welcome change to the rigors of which his life had become, and the morning air felt cool and refreshing against his face. From it, he drew a deep inward breath and forced his clear emerald eyes forward, and his mind to focus on the reason he'd come: to hunt.

That fine recurve bow was his best of friends, when it felt like it was he against the world, a predator among predators who would not dare to take his life, if he only gave them but a chance. It was here that he felt he was within his true element, and here where he excelled. Nothing eluded him in the forest, and it was a sharp snapping of twigs that drew him suddenly toward the morning sun, bow lifted, string taut. Over the moist ground he crept, feet falling gently and quietly upon the new spring foliage as though he were a ghost, untraceable while in the brush beneath the trees that loomed above him.

Those eyes squinted in the bright light of the morning, following the fresh trail of a deer until he happened across something altogether unusual. Blinking, he slowly released the tension on his bow string which he'd seemed to be effortlessly holding, and he crouched down and placed a hand against the mouth of a gaping trench that seemed to have been carved into the earth itself. Debris littered the area, and he rose to follow it, stomach slightly unsettled. What in the world could have cut such a depression into solid ground? Steps were placed carefully as though he feared that he could fall through the soil at any point, a slow pace adopted as he scanned the area.

The metallic scent of old blood quiet suddenly filled his nostrils like some unwelcome guest, and he glanced up, only to see that the leaves had a dusting of the stuff, dried, but no more than a day old. Brow creased as he stepped further toward the blood splatter, though what he saw next caused him to cry out in repulsion and stumble backward. Forgetting the marred ground behind him, he fell and grunted as his tail bone collided with the hard earth. Scarcely drawing a breath, a trembling hand reached for the bow that had fallen only inches away and scrambled to his feet, face pale. The mutilated body of something that, despite its disfigurement could not be mistaken as anything but human, lay ruined before him. A few more steps were taken backward as though he could not pull his eyes away from it, until he turned and retched into the shrubbery just next to him. IT was then that he made the decision to flee the forest entirely, lest he stay too long and fall to the same fate.

He was out of breath when he staggered into the courtyard of the Royal Palace of Nharati, clutching at his heaving chest. Wild eyes glanced around as he struggled to catch his bearings as though the man knew not where he was. He heard nothing of the alarmed stable-keeper's words that bade him to keep calm, Sam only mumbled out something incomprehensible in regard to finding the King.