He does not ask, really.

They are standing together, quietly. Andras has come to the Court to deliver a stack of paper: reports on the past, quiet, year, a few messy, scribbled notes about comings and goings around the city, and an envelope that he slides under the bottom sheet-- a detailed testimony from one of the guards as to Emersyn's state-- which will go unopened, he's sure, just as all the ones before them have, as well, gone unopened.

Andras looks at it for too long, possibly. He purses his lips. When his focus breaks, when he finally looks away from the table, the stack, the envelope, it is only to say: "Fight me."

He is surprised to feel desperate, surprised to find himself searching the king's face, for the glint or two of violence that he knows lives in the cheekbones, the soft brow, the bridge of the nose. He is surprised by the absolute depth of his longing, the one that waits only long enough for Ipomoea to nod before pushing him out of the room and away from the ground, lifting like his own heart lifts and laughing like it, too.

So, the battlefield.
So, the early spring ground, drier here than in Delumine but still soggy enough that it sucks at his hooves when he lands.
So, the roar in his heart, the drum of blood and magic as it races around his body, the familiar crackle of electricity when he thinks of the point of impact, the sting of broken skin, the bright white screech of his fear with a blade pointed straight at his throat. Andras trembles but it is not with that fear.

No, when he sees the king, when the keen of his magic rises to a choir in all Andras' hollow parts, he does not feel fear, or anything like it. Only joy. Only bliss. Enough to make his head spin.

"Let loose." He says to Po, more of a demand than a comfort. "It'll be fun."
The Warden squares his shoulders and grins like a dog: teeth on teeth on teeth.

I think most would disagree with your definition of fun.
Maybe so.

Andras is still grinning when he asks, "Would you?" though he knows the answer. He has wondered for almost two years how to open the tap on Po's rage. The warden watches him, sometimes, when he can be bothered to, when he is not so tired he feels like he's drowning: that same feral undercurrent that sits on the point of his shoulders and rides him day and night, the slight ache in him, magic that sings just as much as it roars. He's always wanted to see it. He is all fear and awe when it comes to the surface.

If his grin still has room to widen, it does, like it's trying to tear him open teeth-first. He would laugh if he wasn't so breathless, if Po bending his neck and hurtling his way did not make him feel something that he can never quite find anywhere else. Here is the fear, finally, come late to the war. A different fear. A reverent fear. A dizzying fear.

It is almost too much to bear, almost too good.
Andras waits in a torturous passing of seconds: one, as Po leaps into action; two, as he eats up the ground that separates them; finally three, when Andras lurches forward just as the king comes to meet him and all that crackling and magic goes dark, turning to almost holy silence.

They touch, shoulder to shoulder, only thing that makes sound for what must be miles around. Andras feels the hooves graze his shoulder then as he rises, and the teeth that close around the base of his mane--

--Andras cracks like thunder when an explosion detonates just below both his hind hooves, one after the other, catapulting Andras forward on the blast wave that follows, kicking sparks from his heels that land with them on the cold dirt before winking out of existence. Po is on his hind legs already, and Andras, through the fog of his rage and delight, knows that it will do him no favors. He would apologize, if he knew how. If he cared to.

The warden hits the ground like he imagines the king must have done, off-balance and scuffed, entire ruts left where digs his heels in to stay upright, and as he steadies himself he is cackling.