Darwin made terrible time, rather than the swift agility belonging to a bestial predator of the night, he was reduced to a shambling cringing creature dragging a ridiculous suitcase around the street with him. Humiliation streaming from those simpleton fools that surround him, watching his helpless form attempting to lift his cumbersome and awkward burden and showing their bemusement towards a cat dragging a suitcase, letting a smug smile of misaligned superiority fill their faces as they gawk at him from a distance.

He shivered as the weight of the phantom laughter outweighed his own physical burdens and made him pull all the harder on his prize. The books and tomes inside held the keys to his grand victory. None but himself would know of the powerful tomes of magical knowledge hidden within the confines of the case, a set of banned books detailing the machinations and manipulations of the undead.

Not even the Demon himself could keep him from these tomes of power! Especially because he'd paid a fortune to get them in the first place and he would be damned if he let them rot or be destroyed by that fiend. Stealing them back was merely him watching out for his own investment.

Now all he needed was to drag the case back to that, things, house and weave a spell to force the orgess to divulge all her secrets. No doubt she was a ghoul, a wight or something of that nature. He'd never encountered such a power before that could compel him to obey. He would have revenge for that, but at the moment he had to secure himself before his curiosity lead to peril.

Darwin glanced at the sky and cursed, dragging this clumsy broken case about was slowing him down to an unacceptable degree. Night fall would soon be upon him, and he still had to drag this thing back to plan his assault on the other unholy abomination within the city walls. Taming one would help him destroy the other, but due to his reduce power and Pnuema, he'd have to cast from the doorstop to be effective. Assuming the strain didn't kill him first.

He thought about using another Crucible to power the spell instead, but dismissed it, by the time he found the materials for that, one or both of the demons were likely to have eaten him, though he feared the ghoul might beat the Demon to the punch.

All the more reason to get this hulk of useless leather and wood moving! Though it was still better than hauling each tome individually through the streets like a school child or a vagabond. The old paper in these tomes would be ruined if he did that and he spent far too much money to allow such venerable works to be sullied in such a cheap manner.

Though he was still sore about the ones that had been burned rather than the ones that hadn't. It would take him weeks to find new copies, or to find someone willing to sell him those copies. Robbers and thieves all of them! Unaware or unappreciative of the items the handle, like cheap peddlers of second-rate goods!

Eventually he just gave up and exerted his full power over the clattering case and effectively began kicking it down the street rather than carry it. He felt a sort of pride in knowing that, should he be bothered by any man or beast, he would have the satisfaction of being able to at least bash their heads in with a swift strike from his power. And then would likely have to claw them to death afterwards.

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Messy and clumsy, as expected of an animal, but it was his only other weapon, loath as he was to admit it. There was a kind of animal poetry to it, as he'd been forced to use them often in recent times, but he still would prefer his blade any day. If only he had hands to hold it.

He felt like mourning the loss of his thumbs, and his steel, and drink. Darwin grumbled aloud to himself again and was met by the alien noise of a guttural animal displaying a matching disposition. If he ever regain a human form, he would glad not to be walking about on his hands and knees. What was next, Eating rats and garbage like so many mongrels he'd seen before.

His gloom was over shadowed when the case struck a light pole and rebounded, spilling it's contents and painfully breaking his concentration as a tome of Whitcane's Dictations of Dangerous Items and Rituals attempted to swallow him with it's yellowed pages and ink speckled teeth.

Darwin leapt to the side and watched as the tome swallowed stone instead, rolling on it's broad sides and laying open with its spine broken on the path in a pool of brown silt. Hissing in disgust, the crude creature surveyed the damages of his own incompetence and poor aim. Books and papers like murdered cubs surrounding their mother, where scattered across the street surrounding the open case laying on its side.

Darwin scoffed at the moron who placed a streetlamp in the middle of his path, and bemoaned the arduous task of gathering up all the loose items and packing them back into the case once more. Then, as if to mock him further, a night breeze picked up and scattered the loose pages and notes, sweeping them into the night alleys to be swallowed up by the shadows whence they came from. Darwin tried to grit his teeth, but without true molars he only ended up biting himself and cutting his tongue. This became the breaking point and he began to curse the one he knew to be responsible.

"You slimy lope horned devil! I hope that when the Devil fell from Heaven he landed on You! When God meets with your miserable soul that he casts it father into the Pit of Fire farther than even Lucifer himself! May the Sword of Heaven Pierce thee Through and rend you to pieces!" He tried to scream, but was once again limited by his curse to only speak and an animal and not a foul mouthed, sinful man.

With all this yowling and screaming, it was unsurprising some unseen hand threw open a window and cried out in token despair before throwing a hard lump of a leather boot at him.

Their aim, while blinded by the dark, was peerless. And only the Devil was sad for it, but not for long.

Darwin sat there, or rather rolled about flailing, in pain as he clutched his head trying to comprehend the cruelty of nature and of Man. He had no answer and cried aloud for it. Though to any passer by, it was likely the lump that was sure to form that was cause for the screaming animal in the street at such an hour only the Lamplighter, and the ungodly would but up at.

Unfortunate that it didn't solve the noise.

Darwin scrambled to his feet, seized a stone with his terrible unseen grip of power and hurled it back towards the one who dared to strike the first blow in this battle. But the invisible archer had closed his shutters and the rock did nothing more than bounce away with a loud report across the wooden frame before falling back to earth.

It wasn't a very good night. After dragging all the books back into the case, he felt tired and hid himself within the best shelter he had, the broken case he'd been dragging around with him. There wasn't much room in there with the older tomes taking up space, but shoving some of them aside he made his bed and begrudgingly slept in it.