Template:Featured Articles/5-2015

Moment of Awesome - Marie-Ange Colbert: Battling the guardian spirits of the City of London, Tarot stretches her powers to the limit - and beyond. Marie-Ange looked up to see Death, his skeletal arm holding the puppet by where his throat should have been, where Punch's wooden head met sewn on robes. The puppet struggled, cloth thrashing around as though kicked by invisible legs, and he was thrown away, crashing into several of the deacons. The sheer strength was exhilarating, in a way. The animated skeleton shoved one of the deacons off Marie-Ange's prone body without any effort, and it flew back several meters. The other fled, running pell-mell through the crowd until it could no longer be seen. There was almost no pain, except in a dull throbbing that felt both very acute and yet separated from her by the abyss. Marie-Ange moved with Death, reaching behind her to finally draw the long slender scythe, its handle thick and solid in her hands. Hands that had no nerves, or even muscle or flesh, and yet she could feel the wood as though she were grasping it herself. It took two impossibly long strides to reach the high seat where the Lord - the figurehead of this twisted play - sat, and he cowered, begging silently. Soundless pleas for his life, for forgiveness. That he was very sorry and that he'd gone too far, and it was futile because Marie-Ange couldn't read lips. She bent slightly and reached for the man's shoulder, bending him backwards over the arm of his seat, and raised the scythe. Death cut with a single stroke, slicing through the Lord's throat, and he passed silently, unable to speak even in death. Around him, the seat and dais and theater cart disappeared, and the crowd thinned by over half. And then further thinned as the now freed spectators fled in confusion. The Lord of Misrule's body fell to the ground with a thump as the bony arm that had held it up also faded. The thump was followed by a long groan as Marie-Ange painfully got to her feet, stumbling several times before she was entirely upright. The street was nearly empty now, only a few people milling around looking lost, all of whom seemed more interested in figuring out where they were, or making frantic phone calls than in the young woman collecting a discarded jacket and broken cell phone and several cards from the ground and limping away with the remains of the crowd.