starter || @thisforgottenlore for Hyde
𝑵𝒐𝒓𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈.
That was the first thought John had when he woke up to that sense of pervasive madness. For a brief moment panic rose like bile in his throat. He dreaded opening his eyes lest he find himself in some ramshackle Newcastle hotel’s room. Yet he was in his London flat’s bedroom. Nothing changed, aside from the pandemonium on the other side of the walls. He didn’t need to look outside to know what he’d see. Violence and sex in the street, perfectly normal, “upstanding citizens” acting on their basest instincts. While he was tempted to go back to bed, pretend it wasn’t happening, John knew he couldn’t. Something this big, it wasn’t something that would just blow over. So he had a fag, made some coffee, took a shower, and while he drank that coffee, he began to consider what might be behind all this.
Certainly Norfulthing wasn’t the only terror elemental to ever exist. He only had a name because Astra gave him one. John peeked out the window as he dressed, drawn by the sound of shouting like there was a riot on his very doorstep. He wasn’t off by much. Just a raucous group of men brawling as though they were opposing football hooligans on game day. There was a disturbing furiosity to those roiling bodies.
Hitting the streets, he was the stoic man in the midst of a storm. The more he walked among the chaos, the more he was reminded of Nergal’s influence. More relevantly, those brief few days those mad doctors were injecting people with his once demon laced blood. It had nothing to do with him this time. There were no sharp pains in his temple nor any desperate desire for strangers to be near him. Still -- They were all possibilities: Terror elementals, infernal influence, tainted blood. However there was no way to stop it without the key and that would come in the form of another calm in this tempest of chaos.
It didn’t take long and it appeared in the shape of a man. A lone arsehole looking in turn both amused and uninspired. This was nothing new nor unexpected for him. John could relate.
“Oi -- “ He called as he approached, tone deceptively nonchalant. He could have been asking the time or how long he’d been waiting for a cab. “Wot’s all this then?”