Their ship bobs and rocks upon the rolling sea. The water laps upon the dock and the wood groans with weariness borne of its journey.
 
The Ghost had slowly walked up the loading plank. Beneath, so far beneath him, the waters had chattered, fitful or keen – who could be sure truly which? For the sea saves and the sea takes away. Raum was a storm broiling out at sea, growing more monstrous; each flash of lightning was his descending blade. His storm is tallying up the lives it has taken. They follow as ghosts in the haunting silence of his destruction. Each of their lives he marks them upon himself as though his silver skin were a wall of stone. He has lost count, but still he carves them into the place where his soul once was. As if lives meant something to him.
 
Once upon a time they did.
 
Soulless, devoid, Solterra’s hateful king ascended the ramp and the boat bowed before him. It rocked as if it could barely stand the weight of him – for oh how heavy his sins are!
 
The prisoners were lined before him, each one in chains, each one dirtied and weary. But before him now is the stowaway girl. Her lilac eyes are bright and fierce, he knows upon his skin hers would be a bruise that would not quiet. It would hurt and hurt and hurt no matter the softness of such a wound.
 
Her chains clink in a song and from it a thousand enslaved voices rise. She speaks, bold and bright. How many more would raise their voice up to him? How many more would stand bold before him with tongues as brave as serpents? The poison king regards her, his silence is consuming. Yes, yes he looks through her. He does not seek to know her, not when her skin is black as pitch, when her hair is the colour of midnight flowers caught in moonlight’s gaze. To see her is to fall in love with Night and oh Raum is homesick and home-hateful.
 
Her beauty condemns her and a “No,” like a caw, like a claw suddenly striking flesh, slips past his lips.
 
And then, when he turns, when shadows rejoice and reach their clawing black hands for his silver flesh, oh then does she dare speak again.  Her idle suggestion slips like silk past her lips and it is wonder that such an idle, fragile suggestion could bid him stop. Yet Raum pauses. An ear twists to catch each word and slowly he turns from the prisoner beside her. He holds her with his gaze, tighter, heavier than the chains that bind her. That gaze is the silver of a blade, his skin, as though an ominous shadow passes, slips from brilliant silver into black.
 
There is no joy, there is no wonder, there is no amusement. Oh there is nothing in his gaze when he turns back to her, but the silver of him (what little remains) is the fetid skin atop liquid. For beneath that cap is a simmering darkness. There is a maelstrom that begins to churn and as if the sea knows the boat rocks heavily.
 
Claws scratch upon wood, great talons cleaving through planks and the boat pitches heavily as a monster lands. The king’s basilisk caw’s a roar that rises above the din of the port. Raum, below, steps once again before the strange girl. Her stomach rumbles, oh it growls, and is lost beneath the scraping and fracturing of wood above.
 
Raum’s skin is the blackest pitch, it seethes and writhes as though monsters lurk beneath his skin as the leviathan in the deep. Cries rend the air as wood above begins to turn to stone. Legion rips along the deck and more stone creeps down, down the hull of the ship. The boat begins to pitch, too heavy as its skeleton turns from wood to stone.
 
He spares the girl a moment more, as if the boat is not sinking, as if the world has another year to turn before even a second might pass. Then the Ghost King turns and makes for the dock. “Bring the girl. She desires dinner. The rest can remain.” His voice is little more than an echo, for already he is gone, already his men are following and the castle beckons. Upon the boat, the remaining men move to bring the girl too.

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@Polyxena - well, um, that was long...

 

The sea is greedy this day. Its waves hungrily pull at the boat, tipping it onto it’s side as the basilisk weighs it down, down.
 
It does not take long for the boat to sink, so eager is the sea, so keen the breakers that wash over the wood, swallowing it down in blue.
 
The cries of men are consumed by the hiss and creak of wood. Gravity pulls harder, harder and as water floods the boat, it sinks, faster, faster. Men are sucked down below the waves, the boards washed of urine as the sea claims the failing ship. The clink of chains soon falls silent and Raum wonders for how long the men can breathe until death creeps upon them, squeezing their lungs until numbness reaches their every part.
 
Yet the boat is gone and none dare regret its sinking, nor try to help when Raum is present. He feels loathing eyes upon his spine, hatred that nicks at his bones. He moves for the castle, and the only song that remains is the girl’s chains clinking and clanking.
 
 
--------------
 
She hungers, he knows. Raum leads the girl into a room, where already food waits for them. They are only small nibbles, not enough to stave the wolf of hunger that prowls through the midnight-girl’s stomach growling, rattling its teeth along her ribs.
 
Her chains clink and her turns to her, drinking in the black of her skin, the slim lines of her sides, the grooves of her ribs. The chains are great about her ankles and already rub sores into the swell of her fetlocks. The pink skin is skies of dawn blooming against the black of her midnight skin.
 
He does not offer her chains to be removed.
 
But, he murmurs, “eat.” And the food before them steams. Ah, the desert outside is gold and bare, it denizens thirst and hunger and yet, before this girl of night and mystery he lays the beginnings of a lavish feast.
 
Does he hear her stomach growl again? Maybe the lupine hunger within her yearns for the myriad breads and meats that lie out warm and fragrant. “Eat,” Raum welcomes again, as he stands to the side, his blue eyes, sharp as sparks along her skin – static dancing up her spine. “Then tell me your name and why you are here.”
 
About the slender curve of her throat, a choker of ebony lace ties snug. A pendant hangs, it glowed once, upon the ship, the moment her gaze turned soft. In silence Raum studies it, wonders what charms lie within its depths and the chains that hang in waves beside it. “My name is Raum, I am the king of Solterra.”

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@Polyxena

 

Blood is upon the air. It turns all to metal and sin. Brutality curls in the corners of this lavish room. Its presence is nails upon a blackboard, as loud as a basilisk’s screech.
 
The king does not flinch as the girl is dragged forward and her chains rattle like the bones of the dead. But his heart beats with the clatter of them.  Ah, she is proud, he sees, as she sits adorned in grace and poise. This girl is the night that knows the sun and yet still will not be tamed. Ah, he looks over her, over every inch of her skin, black as ebony and bright as a freshly laid amethyst bruise.
 
She watches him, oh how she watches him. Her eyes are the stony grey of slate, of a bland sea, only grey and full of anger. The girl’s hatred is vitriolic, it is diesel in his veins and the twist of her lips the match to set him alight. He does not blink, he does not lean forwards and yet, he dares her light that spark. He begs to burn and scream and feel. Yet he says nothing. Oh Raum is ice upon the winter wind. He is death creeping in, silent, like shadows.
 
Ah, she eats! He watches her, watches the blood trickle like wine past her lips. Still she watches him.
 
And still he watches her.
 
She is savage and the meat tears within her grasp, steam rises like a soul before a god. Had she dared eat from the offering table at a god’s altar? Raum does not smile, he does not reveal anything in the way he watches her eat. Oh, he is as quiet as a midnight moon, as devious as a crow perched upon a branch, watching with wicked eyes.
 
Her hunger is a lion, a beast that changes her into something other. The meat is gone, only pooled blood remains. Still he does not smile, still he does not gloat, except he stirs, like a leaf moved by an idle breeze. “Was it good?” He asks her and wonders what she tasted, if she tasted anything at all, when each morsel was swallowed down like a mouse before a starved snake.
 
The napkin drinks blood from her lips, stains itself snow white to crimson. The droplets are like blood within the snow, it bears her sins so very clearly.
 
Polyxena.
 
Her name hangs between them as the fragrance of the meat once had: tempting, alluring, desirable. Within Raum, something stirs, it is vicious and white hot and savage. It would make him smile, it would make his eyes glitter, were he any other man.
 
She talks of flames, of burning flesh, of a life extinguished by the roaring of a fire. Her head tilts, the sunlight pouring down to gild along her sculpted cheek, the curve of her horns. “And what is your kind?” Raum asks and wonders what sins her kind might have committed. “Did I do wrong to spare you then?” He asks soft as silk and violent as a noose about her throat. There is still space amongst the dead, Polyxena. He does not say, but wonders if she hears the deep sea calls of her shipmates from their watery graves.
 
This ship-wreck girl feels naked, exposed and yes, Raum would strip every piece of armour from her torso. He would leave not an inch of her unseen, if only to better know the threat she brings him.
 
Even a king would not be safe from the flames. And oh how his eyes flash. Oh how his turns from mercury poisonous and soft, to a blade poised at her throat. He would spill her blood and let it mingle with that upon the plate.
 
Polyxena studies Raum as he studies her. Her head tilts, the wash of her red-wine hair curling about her slender throat. Her pendant glitters and the king’s gaze turns feral. It is a savageness, there like a spark of Acton’s magic and then gone in the blink of an eye. Raum is stone, as ever, unmoved by this girl of daring night. “Mmm.” He murmurs like the singing of a blade unsheathing from its holster. “Is that a threat or a plea, Polyxena?” He asks, soft as a whisper and as loud as teeth against her neck.
 
Then he is moving toward her and she is sea-salt and starlight, midnight and the cries of sailors lost to a monster. There is the sea upon his tongue, wine in his eyes and shadows on his skin. “Now your belly is full, you had better tell me how you can be of use to me for otherwise I could just let the flames you have evaded claim you, at last.”

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@Polyxena