The strangling order of humanity was slipping, he could feel it. It was glorious! He explored the darkness before him, seeing portents, feeling possibilities swim through his fingers, tasted dark wishes that no one but he could perceive within the whispering black. It all hinted at a dark dawn he and his kind had waited on for ages. So many years! The thought came on suddenly, heated dull red and hissing with anger. But now…Carrion, the name he’d always associated with himself, slid one hand through the emptiness before him, planing through it like water and trailing luminescence behind. Could there be…? He clamped down on this new thought, this precious possibility, too precious even to think, much less speak aloud. But, still, just, it was so…delicious.
“Is there enough? Enough slack in the noose for one quick gasp?” Carrion breathed, quietly, reverently, is there? His lids slid down slowly over ember-like eyes, he reached again into the dark – and felt it, like a cool breeze to one trapped in a cave. It was there, the chance, the path to open skies and limitless possibility.
“Yes!” Carrion’s laughter started low and dark as the hole he languished in, but it built and rose, a drowning man thrashing to the surface. The laughter built and rose and burst forth into the world above as thunder from a clear night sky.