There was a sun that had not set. It sat in Solis’ grandeur in the midst of the sky and did not move.
 
And so the Disciples had come: to watch and to wait. They brought with them the only traces of night within Novus. The dark of their Midnight shadows swell within the Order’s ranks. Night has come wondering, and reaches up from the shadow of her Disciples to test the sun with the dark of her fingers. The tendrils of shadow press and push and yet the sun does not heed her touch.
 
(The shadows, this Midnight, is no sentient being, but the darkness to which each Disciple of the Night Order is married. To Caligo they are bound, to her magic they are vowed. So the shadow magic they give her is feminine. It makes the new recruits laugh and blush, but by their second year they no longer react but call their magic a she, in honour of Her who blesses them: their Goddess of the Night.)
 
It is only five of the Night Order who have come to the Island this day and they stand as sentinels in the midnight shroud of their magic. About them the sun blazes and presses his golden light down, down upon the warriors’ dark, but not even Solis’ light can banish their dark. For every arrow of light he pierces their darkness with, the Disciples swallow it down like an elixir and let black lilies of darkness bloom in its place.
 
Within the heart of their dark shroud only their crescent moon sigils glow. To those who look closely at the Order’s cloud of midnight they might see the outline of warriors about each triad of glowing, crescent moons.  Muscled shoulders emerge where each pair of lower moons are emblazoned upon them and faces form where the apex moons are lit upon their brows. Weapons form and fade in their swallowing dark as shadows coalesce into daggers and bows with arrows, broadswords and spears and then disperse.
 
They are an ominous blot of ink upon the bright page of lit daylight. They stand as only five and yet their darkness gathers as if it conceils army in its depths. At the center of the men, Tenebrae stands with his skull tipped up towards the sun. His eyes glow brightly shadowing his lips that are the stark line of a dark horizon. His winter-hued body is nothing but black as he wears this darkness as a cloth, a gift from the other Disciples. “At least it will not be 100 Years of Day.” He says and it tastes of something akin to sorrow. Slowly, smoothly, as predatory as a panther, his skull turns to gaze upon his brothers that flank him. “Though I should enjoy a 100 years war.” The Disciple confesses with a smile that is wicked in its beauty. It is a grin kept only for the dark secrets of the night. His low laughter is the sating lull of sleep.
 
Slowly Tenebrae steps out from the shroud of their darkness. Midnight pours from his skin as he emerges into the light. Here, lit by the stark of daylight, he is as bright as the haze of a night lit by winter’s snow. Midnight reaches for him, but he steps away from her reach, further and further still. He moves toward a small doe, frozen in time, caught in an eternal run from a wolf whose statue-body is motionless, part emerged from the brush. Around the deer’s slim frame, Tenebrae moves, gazing at the terrified lines of her body, illuminating them in the stark-white glow of his eyes. What sorrow it is to be immortalized in fear, caught in eternal flight, he thinks with a warrior’s pride.
 
Yet he dwells no more upon the doe, for a sound stirs in the trees that the doe had been reaching for. Danger comes creeping for her – except, a sound here, where Tempus has stopped everything, can only mean one thing: a horse. Hardly a predator to her, yet the Night Order Disciple turns toward the sound. Midnight billows her shadows round him, roused like a monster, ready as a serpent coiled to strike. Tenebrae sends her darkness pressing out into the trees, it reaches, searches, gropes for whoever lurks there. Beyond the trees Tenebrae watches, his angled skull tilted. Though the truth could be that he is the most dangerous warrior here, in this moment, the warrior monk still stands quietly, alert, dangerous, ready.
 
“Who is there?” His low voice slips like ink into the trees. His question is a low drawl, curious and yet craving something... He trains and trains and trains and there is no part of him that is not honed and readied for battle. He would not turn from a fight now but meet it with a delighted smile upon his lips.  Through the brush his white eyes gleam, they glow brighter, brighter as the sun never sways, as he drinks its light, more and more and more as he steals its light and lets Her shadows bloom in its place. They shroud him and reach hungrily out through the daylight and the too-still trees. The darkness begs to gather into a weapon, but he calms its desire, keeping it ready, ready so he might level Night at whomever steps out from their woodland cover.

 


She is so easy to hear in this unnatural still of a world stopped from spinning. Nothing revolves here, all the island is as still as a painting but Tenebrae has never seen one as intricate as this. Never has he seen paint flowers that he can brush his lips over, nor a painted world he could step within. 


The silence might have been oppressive, it might have made his throat ache to fill the void with noise. Yet as his laughter dies and she replaces it with her being, her plucking - no, ripping - of flowers he only marvels at the sounds that each living horse can make. Did they always make so much noise? He hears the yielding of the branch, he hears the crunch of it between her teeth.


He sees the battle of it upon her ivory lips.


The girl, the creature, that emerges from the brush is a piece of the sun. She is the wild of the sunset, brilliant in the violence of her skin’s hue. All of her gleams bright as a ruby, savage as blood. She was not content to just rip a sharp stem of a plant, but a piece of the sun right out of its too-still sky. Was she a child of Icarus? Was she the sun he was made to swallow? Tenebrae’s soul ascends in keen delight.


With all the bold pride of a Solterran she steps into the black shadow of the Night Order’s conjuring. No longer is she bright as a raging sunset, but her skin turns as deep as maroon.The white of her face is a pool of moonlight. Every balletic step she takes into the deeper dark of his shadows find her tumbling deeper into a chasm of black with only Tenebrae at its heart. Darkness picks at every sliver of light that gleams along her skin, hungry as a wolf. If this girl is a sun then oh how his magic calls to swallow everything of her being.


Boudika. Her name fills their vacuum of dark and it falls as bold and fearless from her lips as a kiss. Slowly his skull tilts as he drinks in the contrast of her. At her side a trident, that gleams in the light of his sigils and sings with a sharpness that vows to slice his shadows into two. But upon her head and along the slender curve of her throat are flowers woven as soft as a caress into the gossamer of her hair. Her skin is the bright of the sun, a crimson that stirs his magic with its sunbright daring. It is a colour that rouses his soul and lays a wicked, violent and ready smile along his lips. At his side shadows form into sword, fleeting but there, then gone and then there again… over and over that sword forms and reforms. He lifts the shadow sword to point at her as his skull tilts, playful and bold as a raven.


“Boudika,” Tenebrae murmurs her name back to her, his voice slick as ink, as deep as the darkness they stand within. “Sounds like a warrior queen’s name.” Pointedly Tenebrae’s eyes trail along the sharp tines of her trident, each one a cut upon his gaze as the blades gleam in the light of his gaze.


But for every part of her that is bright as the sun and wild as a sunset, her skin smells like the deep dark of Denocte. The tip of his blade reaches to lightly touch the dark groove where her jaw meets her throat. In tandem his muzzle reaches to smell the stars that cling to her skin. “A girl painted like the sun with the smell of night upon her body.” The monk muses lightly, his starlight eyes roaming across her face. Darkness casts the lines of her face into sharper array and he lets his gaze run along each shadowed groove - drawn to each like a magnet. “Are you a friend, or foe of Denocte?” Tenebrae asks her, a grin curling along the curve of his raven lips. He knows the smell of Denocte, he can taste the Markets upon her skin. He is disappointed for not fight. Yet...Yet he keeps the blade angled toward her throat, lets his gaze lower again to her lips, glittering with her blood like gems. He feels how the darkness shivers, how it hungers and demands for home. 

 

His blade presses to the soft of her throat, forming and dispersing in shadows. When formed it feels the throb of her heart. It is slow and as steady as her eyes that watch him. He wonders what it would take to make her heart race, but she has already affirmed herself a warrior queen and they are not so easy to break.


All of the darkness hums with the song of her blood. It pulses and his face tips up, his eyes peeling themselves slowly from hers to watch how the shadows hum. There is a smile upon his lips as he drinks in the way they ominously fall in tune with the girl beside him. His smile is a door, locked tight against the secrets it hides, Boudika may look and look upon the up-turn of those raven wing lips. They may wonder whether that smile is dangerous or delighted - maybe even both. Most likely both.


His head still tilts as the moon does within her sky, but his gaze tumbles like moonlight back to hers. He seizes her stare, binds it in threads over shadow and feels how the sunset glow of her burns at its edges. His darkness frays before her and on point, Boudika’s trident touches the blade Tenebrae holds. It sounds like china, it sounds like stars colliding in the deepest night. The darkness shivers at the touch and oh how boldly she challenges him. No longer does he know whether his gaze holds hers or hers holds his.


There is a moment of resistance: a moment where that ethereal note clings to existence in their ebony void. There is the press of shadow upon metal, the grate of blade upon blade and then, the shadows disperse and her trident drifts through black. Tenebrae’s eyes have left her, they now watch the arc of her trident with a feral gleam in his eye.


Tenebrae’s eyes return to the scolding heat of hers, red as lava, for the Night Order are always attracted to bright creatures such as she. Always do they yearn for the creatures of the sun that they can swallow. Always do they seek to consume the light of others. They stand close, together shrouded in darkness, together illuminated only by the gleam of his sigils and the way their light dances like beads along her trident and glittering in her eyes.


She is smoke and violence. She is a girl with an invisible crown. She is more than a Denocte Champion. She moves, pressing through his darkness as if she were swimming. The shadows swirl feline about her limbs as she weaves. He feels her every presence, his skull tilting to follow her, his eyes illuminating her way.


She observes him and he lets her. He reminds her of the Night Order as the darkness presses in, complete and hungry. Light dances down the curve of her cheek, across the slant of her nose and he steals it from her like kisses, glowing brighter as he does. “And why need I bother when you have been so accommodating, Boudika?” The monk says sly as a fox, wicked as a wolf. 


“What are you Champion of, Boudika?” He asks more of her. Again her name is pressing upon his tongue. Still it marvels to test the weight of her name, its tone and how it dances within his mouth. As she studies him - his sharp angles like instruments of war, the contour of sinew sculpted by battle - so Tenebrae studies her in turn. He is idle, considering, smiling playfully. He says nothing of what he finds, not the lines of a girl at ease with a weapon in her grasp, nor the curves of a girl made for dance and flowers and sweet, soft things.


Still the shadows recall her demands, still her voice hangs almost as a phantom between them. Tenebrae reaches forward, hungry for the taste of Denocte upon her skin, especially when they are so far from home. “What do you think I am?” He asks her, his lips close to her ear, his voice thick in the close black that shrouds them.


Do you want to scare me? Slowly he draws back, his gaze search out hers. He says nothing, then, but his smile is slow, slow upon his lips. It is idle as a weapon strike, it is the smile of a man taught to swallow the sun. “I am not the one with blood upon me.” Tenebrae says by way of an answer. 


Tenebrae does not think of the sea as she does - not when he is made of night sky and bone and flesh and blood. The Disciple muses with a smile, “Do you want to be scared?” He turns the question back upon her and the darkness presses against the flowers woven into her hair. It trails the edge of a teal petal.

 

If the touch of his shadow sword is a kiss upon the column of her throat, then that is the only kiss he has ever bestowed upon any creature. Fitting it should be upon a girl who has never been kissed. Fitting it should be upon a girl who speaks only the language of battle and violence. Their kisses will be many, enough to make skin yield, enough to make blood run.


She smiles when his blade disintegrates. Her ravenous lips are the brightest thing in this dark of theirs - for the darkness stopped being Tenebrae’s the moment she stepped within it, as if she owns his darkness, as if the darkness was all she knew. She slinks around him, that smile never fading. Feline is this girl, a crimson slip of a cat loosed from the sun. Oh, the sun… if Boudika’s lips are wet with hunger, it is nothing compared to the slakeless desire that presses upon Tenebrae’s lips. It is good to be a monk, he thinks, for simply all his lips yearn for is the press of a sun, between his teeth and down his throat. Was this not what Caligo made him for? Tenebrae is, after all, one of her Stallions Set to Swallow the Sun.


The darkness adorns Boudika, it cloaks her in midnight and toys with the small light that glitters in her gaze. Her eyes reach his as her words sift through the darkness and into his ears. Everything between them smells of Night - it is the smoke of bonfires, the jasmine of wild flowers and the frankincense of incense burning like divine prayer.


Ah, his mind fills with gods. Of a goddess who is more darkness than he. A goddess who is the only girl he knows anything about. So different she is to Boudika, who stands as comfortable as Caligo within his darkness, yet this girl is brilliant like a spark, ready to to set the world ablaze. Tenebrae’s smile turns dark and keen, answering that wicked smile upon her lips - sharper than a knife. It is fuel to the delight coursing through his veins. He wants to see her in the light, he wants to see how she burns - is she brighter than the sun? Is he destined to chase her too? To swallow every lick of firelight and sunlight that dares to breathe upon her skin. And yet… and yet he just wants to behold the bright of her and see if it is beautiful, like the sun. For how wondrous is the sun and how sweet it is between his lips, upon his tongue. He dares to wonder if Boudika might taste like sunlight too. Just for a moment.


The darkness recedes, it falls back as light floods in bright and brilliant. It chases shadows from where they touch him and her. It chases the dark secrets that lurk in the scant space between them.”I do not hide behind shadows.” Tenebrae says, his lips no longer smiling. The darkness clings to him, as it always does, as it has since the moment Caligo pressed her darkness into him, into every inch and make him hunger for light. The darkness curls across his flesh like smoke, it presses upon him as if to sink beneath his skin and join the abyss of darkness within. “I am the shadows.” He says with no ounce of pride. It is simple fact. The shadows have become an extension of him. They breathe like the air in his lungs, they rise like his temper and fall with his sorrow.


But he stands, as exposed beneath the light as his magic will ever allow. He drinks in Boudika, a fire girl, lit beneath the sun. She is not fire he realises suddenly, but gleaming, liquid metal, bright from a furnace. “Community,” He breathes, still studying her, with his white eyes glowing bright. “Is that not a waste of a warrior queen?” Tenebrae jests, and yet he does not. He knows the importance of community. He is made to serve, to serve until death, laying his life out before and for Denocte and its goddess. Such service begins with the rest of the Night Order. They are nothing if not bound to serve each other as a sacred community. 


Then her lips are at his ear, her breath touching where her lips do not: across the shell, across the angle of his jaw. Only a man those words breathe across his skin hot and dangerous. A shiver rocks down his spine. He is made for war and death and yet this girl breaks him down until he is no longer a Disciple of the Night Order, a Stallion made to Swallow the Sun. She names him just a man and men want.


Darkly he laughs, that sound like smoke. His head shakes, as if to rid himself of her revelation, as if to rid himself of dangerous things. Tenebrae looks back to her, to her crimson lips. Not much blood she had said. And she is right, for he imagines her dressed in more, glittering like a dew drenched rose upon the battlefield. 


Are you Denoctian, shadow-caster, light-eater? Boudika asks him with her smile like silk and lips like knives. “I am.” he confesses at last, though he need not. Already her gaze is full of knowing, already they are just mice within each other’s game. They grin at each other like cats, languid and playful, predatory and beautiful - in the way all hunters are. “My name is Tenebrae. I am a Disciple of the Night Order, sworn to protect Caligo and, in turn, all of Denocte.”
He speaks with leonine pride and assurance, the darkness swelling like a mane about his throat. It reaches tendril fingers for her, brushing against the flower petals that curl into the groove of her neck.


Her smile turns sly and a petal falls like innocence. “You won’t hurt me,” Tenebrae agrees, confident, though a part of him already feels broken, changed. He turns from her, the darkness gathering about him, He does not turn back because he knows that tonight he will not dream of swords and suns but girls and how Boudika is quite the most dangerous creature he has ever met.