[730] The Entertainer

Fantasy. Written in a quick stint yesterday as a way to briefly escape the pressures of the latter half of my WIP. No intentions of taking this any further. Looking for any feedback that will help me gain perspective.

Honestly, I’m so far in my own head I can’t tell if the sun still shines in the outside world. Let me know where I’m at?

Critique [1545]

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The Entertainer

The shrieks and cries of the audience resounded through the hall as two tigers soared across the stage of Drakemoore keep. Greymane closed his eyes briefly and reveled in the surge of emotion. Yes. This was the moment. Like holding lightning in your hands. He stood beneath the flying beasts with his palms raised to the sky, trembling and wavering as if under great strain. He had found it was the little details that truly sold a piece.

With a deep breath, he slowed the ascent of the tigers and left them floating high in the air, miming a struggle to keep himself on the ground. Hold the pose for one, and two.

He turned his attention to the audience, scanning the faces to see wide eyes and gaped mouths. He had them. Suppressing a smile, he wore a grave face as he spoke to them.

“I offer you this one last chance to flee. For after blood is shed, I cannot guarantee your safety.” He delivered the words from deep in his chest with a commanding voice. Another piece of artistry that landed just as it needed to.

Several people stood in fear and clambered to the exit. Great lords and noble ladies reduced to terrors and desperation, crouching down and holding their arms over their heads, expecting death from above at any moment.

The remaining crowd squirmed in their seats, watching their companions flee with envious eyes while casting up a cacophony of curses and jeers.

The whole room breathed as one while the anticipation built to a fever pitch.

Greymane held off on the next queue as long as he dared, imagining himself a reluctant headsman, stretching the final moment before the swing into an eternity. When he was sure the room would pull itself apart from the pressure, he narrowed his eyes and growled out a final command. “Don’t look away.”

With that, he threw his hands downward and brought the tigers into a dive, aiming them straight at the audience. The beasts were ready for their moment and stretched into position perfectly. Razor sharp claws extended from paws the size of a man’s head. Rippling muscles cascaded up outstretched limbs. Saber like fangs protruded from snarling jaws. Eyes blazed with the fire of the hunt.

The audience shrieked in terror, falling over themselves and eachother in a scramble of pure instinct. Primal memories of ancestral fear ripped their logical minds to shreds.

With all attention elsewhere, Greymane allowed a wicked grin to cover his face as he pressed the tigers downward with more and more speed. They looked to be moving faster than the eye could see and yet their decent could be marked in lifetimes.

He waited two counts extra before releasing the bird. The tigers outstretched claws came within a few hand-widths of the crowd and Greymane felt his heart fall out of his chest.

The slender red bird split the gap perfectly and shot over the crowd like an arrow. Greymane pulled up on the tigers and sent them soaring in chase just over the heads of the audience.

The people had devolved into an amorphous undulating blob of pure emotion. Greymane drank deeply.

Now the effort began. He weaved the tigers in and out, keeping them close to their prey while ensuring they were always just out of range. He watched the bird with all his focus, looking for every variation in movement as a clue to its intention, pulling it back down when it tried to get too far away.

Hunting the bird across the sky with claws that weren’t his own, he felt the thrill of what it was to be a predator. To hold life and death in his grasp. The throats of dozens of foolish powerful men in his jaws. A peak for which there is no rival.

He lost himself in the dance. Pulling here and pushing there. Give and take, ebb and flow. The bird streaking by. The tigers swiping after it. The crowd swelling and surging in the rhythm. They all became as one unit, moving in time according to their role, casting a spell more potent than any magics of the known world.

With perfect unity achieved, there was only one thing left to do. For just as what goes up must come down, a beginning can only ever be as good as it’s ending.