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H
e did not leave Vectaeryn to find himself in the middle of a war. Unfortunately, he does. 

Though in the grand scheme of things, it’s a rather advantageous situation for him, he admits. An extra body or two in a sea of bloody corpses is about as noticeable as a needle in a stack of needles; and it’s not as if he’s affected in any way by any of it. 

Caine does not have enough loyalty left in him — if he ever had any to start with — to feel anything but mild annoyance towards the Solterran plight. Mild annoyance, because if the Sun Court burned to the ground, if it was ravaged to pieces by the primitive tribe they called the Davke, it would be a nuisance to relocate to another, this time more peaceful, Court. 

From the shadows, the pale-eyed boy had watched the carnage unfold from start to end with grim detachment. Despite his occupation, he had thought the whole affair mad; a meaningless loss of life. Slaughtering each other like animals, to what avail? Revenge against a king whose corpse had rotted to dust? It had been his first time witnessing death on such a massive scale, and to say that it was more enlightening than anything he’d ever read on warfare would be a dire understatement. 

Caine rubs the sleep from his eyes as he stretches his weary limbs under the sweltering Solterran sun. It is noon, the golden desert a shimmering mirage as waves of heat shiver like rippling water from the sands. Again, he rises late. Sleep is a luxury more precious than water to him now — for the Harbinger’s nights have been spent carrying out assassination after silent assassination, the orders piling up higher than the bodies stacked like minnows at the edges of the reddened streets. 

Ironic, Caine thinks, how bloodlust begets more bloodlust. Like a cloud of black flies, descending upon the hearts of the living and leaving only bones in its wake. An eye for an eye. Ten lives for the loss of one. He wonders if his clients will ever realize the extent of their hypocrisy.

The marble fountain, one of the few left standing, is a stone’s throw away from where he stands — precisely the reason why he’d chosen the otherwise rundown, dilapidated cottage to stay in after Seraphina had set the royal library aflame. The boy still grimaces whenever he is reminded of the atrocity. The scrolls had been his only solace in this godforsaken pit of sand and smoke.

The water is blessedly cool against his parched lips as Caine lowers his onyx muzzle to the crystal-blue waters. 

“Hello?” He freezes, mid-drink. “Of all the times,” he murmurs, lamenting the loss of an afternoon spent in solitude resting upon the smooth marble. A sigh pushes past parted lips as he raises his silver eyes leisurely upwards, crystalline droplets running down the sharp angles of his face. 

“May I help you?” His sonorous voice carries easily across the shaded courtyard to reach the slender, earthen-pelted girl standing warily at its edge. A foreigner, new to the lands no doubt. He sees it in the curious tilt of her delicate head, the inquisitive glint of her odd, misty eyes. Pupil-less, he notes, with a touch of passing interest. She is of no threat to him, that much is for certain. Though, whether she will prove to be a welcome distraction remains to be seen. 

“You’ve chosen quite a time to visit. Solterra is not in a state fit to be seen, I imagine.” A hint of a smile touches upon the boy’s lips as he sweeps his sleek, raven locks back against his crown. She smells of the sea; it rolls off of her in waves, so vividly he can almost feel the salt-laced breeze skimming across his ink-black pelt. It reminds him of Vectaeryn, of the Coast, of Agenor. 

He decides, with a dark, fleeting smirk, that perhaps her company will be more intriguing than solitude after all.

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@Vanora | "speech" | notes: he's now solterra's (un)official welcoming squad ;D

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H

e studies her as she approaches warily, his pale gaze as smooth and coolly contemplative as the bubbling sapphirine waters she stares so intently into. He wonders what she wishes to see reflected upon its rippling surface. 

He also wonders, with slight amusement, what she wishes to hear when she asks him for asylum. 

“Carnage as a permanent fixture, possibly not,” Caine replies, a thin smile spreading wryly across a raven sleek jaw. “But I’ve found that Solterrans harbor a peculiar… taste for blood, so if you are looking for a place that is peaceful, you will surely not find it here.”

With a light shrug of vast obsidian wings, the boy’s shifting silver eyes drift to settle mutely upon the fountain’s sparkling marble statue, as Caine appears to consider the girl’s question for a sincere moment. 

A compelling act, entirely fabricated. The Illusionist's specialty, turning imitation into persuasion. Each gesture is as artfully spun as a spider’s gossamer web, as meticulously alluring as the flourish of a calligrapher’s pen. It is almost an obsession to him, how perfectly he can pull off each lilting smile and lyrical sigh. How convincing he can make it, until not even Caine himself knows for certain if any of it was ever genuine at the end of the night. 

It is a game to him. Everything is a game to him, because it is so much easier when there are only two ways for things to end.

“Asylum?” he begins, rolling the word languidly, gracefully, across his tongue. “Pardon me, but I think you are mistaken, miss. This city is as foreign to you as it is to me. I arrived just a week before, myself, and —” he pauses, a rueful smirk lifting a charming chuckle from his dark lips. “Perhaps we’ve both chosen the wrong time to visit.” 

Perhaps they’d all chosen the wrong time to visit. 

With the flick of a velvet ear, Caine shifts his keen gaze towards the figure who’d appeared as silently as a shadow across the courtyard. He focuses just in time to catch the stranger’s heavily accented words before they fade to echos along the wall.

"What a curious place to take - asylum, hm?"

There it is again. Asylum. Such a sobering word to be tossed around before the sun has set, Caine thinks with a snort.

He’d sensed the skeletal-masked man’s lingering presence at the edges of his mind — there is little, if anything, Caine misses — yet he hadn’t expected for him to stop, much less stay. It is odd for him, to be in the company of those who don’t have death nestled like a sleeping dragon along their slender necks. Yet rare occurences carry that much more interest, and the boy's curiosity is quickly kindled by the both of them. The living have so much more to say than the dead, after all.

“Another wanderer hoping to settle?” he muses, all traces of macabre thoughts vanishing from his eyes like fog in the wind. 

“In that case, it seems that introductions are in order — if I may, I’ll begin.” A smile as beautiful as black silk flickers fleetingly across his angular cheeks. “My name is Caine, and I welcome you both to Solterra.”

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@Vanora @Káin | "speech" | notes: pshh all y'all writing is spectacular <3