• A small glimmer of the eye, the kind of sheen steel gives off in the moonlight, gleamed across velvet irises. Crowned with thick brows, furrowed in hidden frustration wrinkled his skin in disdain. Wind blew softly through the now empty streets with scraps of paper scurrying hurriedly across cold pavement; strands of dark hair traced about his face with this sighing breeze breathing into the night. His nostrils flared from the coming winds, tensing his jaw tightly in impractical impatience, a vice that never lost hold. He felt a smirk playing about his thin lips though the thought of doing so vexed him. He stared unblinkingly through his clouding breath, coal irises burning with a type of anger about to be unsheathed and undrawn, a sword whose edge begged for blood.
    Snow began to wisp by stinging at his face. Jagged rooftops layered upon one another into the vast dark horizon, glooming giants of spires and rigid clawing fingers reaching desperately to the sky in hopes to see the light of day. His black eyes scanned across the cityscape with an armored hand clinging tightly to one of these pointing shards. Small lamp lights dotted the walks and people rushed furiously across the pebbled streets fearing the demon would soon be upon them.
    Again, those coal irises looked down. He relaxed his tensed jaw easing the straining pain from his contorted face. He gazed slowly back up to the storming sky, black clouds surrounding the city grasping it in its deathly hands.
    He straightened himself out and dropped a foot out in front of him, releasing his hold upon the broken spire. His cape whipped violently around him as he fell, his arms outstretched with cladded hands, hair twisting about his face, about closed eyes. He skidded a hand across a shingled roof, ran down the sides of the wall and thrust himself into the open air.
    Silence.
    The cape stretched out elegantly in a perfect v, hovering over his body in fear of touching him, ripples smoothing out as the calm ocean, smooth velvet outlining his body as the man made this daring leap. The tatters, too, felt the need to stray from his booted feet, each hem, a stray strand of black thread, all feared the small touch as the whole sea of gleaming midnight fluttered effortlessly in the beautiful leap.
    He threw his arms out beside him as if making a dive into the ocean; head tilted back ever so slightly, black hair hesitantly floating by his calm face. His armored hands freed themselves of balling fists, fingers gracefully tracing at the air while it passed invisible by his dead hands. Each ruffle of clothing, the contour of his body in the arch of the leap as the air ceased to pass by his face and fill his lungs, each motion a synchronized rhythm of a well oiled machine, turning cogs and churning cylinders all worked in unison to make the beast breathe. Everything….
    Flawless.
    Time stopped for that moment. He held his poise in this second, awaiting the rushing winds to fill his ears and his cape to writhe in agony as it would ripple twist and turn upon itself towards the plummet of the earth.
    The descent had begun.