The Wolf, the Ram and the Hart: The Senior Partners
by redmoon
The Senior Partners
And so I never find my rest, chained here outside His Hall, and as the aeons drag slowly by I wonder, will he hear my case at all?
Three things to terrify nightmares. The Ram, the Wolf and between them, the Hart. Angel’s arm shivered involuntarily. He glanced sidelong at the others, unable to discern anything except that they were similarly fighting back the instinct to run. It was not a familiar feeling, nor a welcome one.
The Wolf stood before Angel. He was eight feet tall. He stood upon his slender hind legs, his muscular upper torso rising and falling gently as he breathed. His fur was patchy and irregular, grey and brown, exposing black skin in places. His feet were the paws of a wolf, he stood upon his toes as a dog might. There was little else about him that resembled the species. His shoulders were drawn back like a man, his head leaning forward on a thick muscular neck. His hands were like the hands of a sloth; hair-covered fingers with long thick recurving nails. His arms were just long enough to reach his knees.
His face was what sent chills down Angel’s spine. It was vaguely reminiscent of a wolf, but several times too large. His snout was at least twenty six inches long with a glistening black nose at the end. Double rows of serrated teeth could be seen behind his back-drawn lips. His slaver pooled at the corners of his mouth as he made a hideous smile at the vampire. His eyes were out of proportion to his head, too large and all black, like the eyes of a shark. His face was covered with roughly even fur, punctuated by spines or quills which pointed backwards up his muzzle and face and down his neck. His shoulders were thickest with the rough fur and dense spines. His breath came in hungry pants as he eyed the small creature before him.
Buffy stared at the Ram, and he stared back at her. He also stood on slender legs, each footed with a thick, massive cloven hoof. His knees were knobby and about the size of the Slayer’s head. About the thigh his wool coat started. It was dark red, like dried blood, matted and tangled. The coat ran thickly up the creature’s back and thicker on his shoulders, but it thinned out enough on his stomach for Buffy to see the muscles rippling under his leathery skin. Unlike the Wolf, the Ram hunched forward, his shoulders allowing his shorter arms to dangle. On each hand was a razor-sharpened cloven hoof, large and dexterous enough to snip off Buffy’s head.
The Ram’s head was similar to a sheep, but large and terrifying. His long muzzle foamed at the corners and Buffy could see needle-like teeth inside his panting mouth. His eyes were drawn wide, as if with rabies, the whites fractured with thick red vessels. He had a matted cap of red fur atop his head, between the two gargantuan horns that weighed him down. Each horn rivaled the size of the Ram’s head, growing forward out of his massively thick skull and curving back down and out to form a spiral with dagger-like tips pointing back and up.
Willow stood between the other two. The Hart stood before her. He was by far the tallest among them, at least nine feet tall, with an array of wickedly sharp antlers stretching up a further four feet. Willow swallowed as the towering creature stared down at her with eyes like a horse but much larger and cognizant. Like the others, he stood on relatively nimble legs, though longer than either the Wolf or the Ram. Somehow he bore the weight of his antlers better than the Ram and managed to stand fully erect, his arms at his sides, thicker and more muscular than his legs, more like the arms of a troll, each ended in a hand with long slender fingers and tipped with a claw. The Hart’s hide was thin and dark grey, patched with black skin. His neck was longer and more slender than the Wolf’s allowing him to reach his superior height. The back of it was a tangle of long black hair, reaching down his back to his flanks.
His face was nothing less than the incarnation of a nightmare. Two large flaring nostrils took the end of the horse-like face, though too wide and with a mouth that wrapped too far back. His teeth were jutting out of his jaw, not pointed but inside that powerful jaw looking strong enough to crush bone. His eyes were set into the sides of his head, though each was trained on the witch before him. From the top of his head grew the two massive stalks that were his antlers, twisting and rising in a mockery of nature’s symmetry. The antlers all unraveled to form eight long spear-like points all aiming for the ceiling. His breath hissed through his wet glistening nostrils.
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