It is a strange thing to watch a dragon and not feel a Biblical sort of fear, terror in the form of condemnation, punishment, enlightenment. He knows the tremendous beast would carry him if he were to only ask—in fact, through their Bond, he feels Damascus’ frustration he has not done so—but Vercingtorix feels a prideful twinge. To become powerless before a monster—
It isn’t like that, Damascus reminds him, for what must be the hundredth time. A Bond does not mean to Torix what it means to the monster—and even that thought, so clipped and cruel registers in Damascus’ mind, and a feeling of anger wafts through their Bond like a scent. I am not a monster.
No. He is the compilation of every broken piece of Vercingtorix’s Soul, left to manifest itself in some hellish pit. The field Vercingtorix walks through in his travels is brittle, and yellow. In Oresziah, he knows, it would be time for harvest. Vercingtorix stares out at the rolling hills and Damascus flies above; he dips and turns and, with eyes like a falcon’s, seeks out prey. Occasionally he deviates from their path and comes back with bloodied jaws; a bison or elk having fallen hapless victim to the beast’s endless appetite. Yet, the sun is beginning to set and Vercingtorix decides it is better to stop rather than continue. They find a small creek that must brach, somewhere, off the Rapax. Vercingtorix starts a small fire and settles for the evening.
The smoke sails up into the sky.
It Damascus who says through their Bond, We are not alone. But Torix cannot see beyond the ring of light and so, he only waits. Damascus is settled beside him and, as far as he can discern, he has no reason to fear whatever lurks beyond the fire's light.
'There is a hollow in her heart full of knives and full of poison. She drinks from its dark waters every morning. She prays to its dark depths every night. In this cauldron there are no moons to swallow down as they rise, no burning suns to seethe and writhe away from every morning.
There is only darkness.
There is only silence.
There is only self.
So she travels on these endless waters, wades in the pools of eternity. Time is endless, only the ticking of her heart telling her that she is still alive alongside the burning in her gut. It burns so bright, so hot, so fierce that it is cold. Arctic and bleak. Once, these barren lands were teeming with life, with flowers whose heads faced the sun of a brighter future. Ideas were borne on the backs of gulls and crows, jays and falcons, delivered to her flight every dawn, tucking them into bed with confidence in their glorious future.
Those died when she was buried beneath the cliffs, when she could not see the sky - only bare walls and prison bars left for her to see.
Dalmatia moves now away from the Terrastella of the past, away from the Terrastella of the present. It is a riotous mess of priestesses and fragmented flights, of broken kings and girls with too bright of eyes pining after something - someone - they might never have. Her gut tightens, a roiling knot, disgust at what has become of her nation, of what she let happen, as clear as the fading light on her skin.
When it is gone, she has only the light of a falling dragon up ahead, the burning of a fire, to draw her nearer and nearer. Beckoned forth by the fire, by the body that huddles and waits beside it, she does not let fear take root in her breast. There never was any room for that anyway, not when every flight is one strike away from falling.
A bird does not fear freezing to death nor falling from the skies, and so she does not fear her end wherever it should come.
The magpie woman stops just over the border between light and dark, green eyes tracing lines into the curve of dark horns, learning the crevices of gold and cream skin. When she looks upon the pair, it is a face of silence that greets them.
He feels a child’s wonder for them; and in that wonder is the mixed portions of excitement and, perhaps, a tinge of fear. They mark her as other, as something he will never be or understand.
A pegasus.
Up until a year ago, he had thought them unreal. But on Novus they are plentiful, as if not abnormal.
The second thing Torix notices is how she wears her silence like armour. He does not rush in breaking it. Vercingtorix only watches her with analytic eyes; the striking, magpie-like markings, the black and the white and the soft way the light silhouettes her in the dark.
Damascus is not so patient, however. The dragon lifts his massive head—larger than either of them, or both of them combined—and fixes her with those strange, opalescent eyes. There is a moment—transient, as if it never even occurred—when through their bond Vercingtorix can feel Damascus wondering, perhaps I should—
No.
No.
Now is not the time for your magic.
“You are welcome to join us,” Damascus says, his voice velveteen. Torix will never become accustomed to the way everything spoken from the dragon’s mouth seems nearly hypnotic; primordial, as in the ancient dance of wolves and bison, of drumbeats and hearts.
The pair stares at her as one would look at a Christmas tree - quietly, intrigued, excitement bubbling just behind. The first, the stag, is less inclined to speak, just as she is in tune with the sound of silence, letting it be her cloak, her shield. The latter, the drake, looks at her with his gemstone eyes, as precious as they are rare, and coos for her to come closer, closer still.
She should wonder if he were inviting her in to devour her whole, for Dalmatia knows she is small enough for him to gobble in a single bite.
She does not wonder this.
With a slight dip of her chin, the woman obliges the primordial beast. If anything, she feels more inclined, seeing his wings - thick, membranous, veiny and so unlike her own - reminds her of her father, of what he'd tell her of her mother (she was soft, they two, these winged things beside the fire, are not), to join them with a winged beast there. Unlike her mother, and very much like her, Damascus is dark and beautiful, his spines glinting like the darker, iridescent sides of her wings.
As a girl, perhaps she would shiver with the same amazement that the golden man sees when looking upon her (otherworldly, strange, exotic, yet so alluring, a beacon of power, of independence, of freedom), but Dalmatia is far from a child, farther still from that innocence that once graced her lithe form.
Meat has yet to return to her ribs, her hips, but she is not a walking corpse as she'd been fresh from the catacombs beside the sea.
"Of everything I knew, this has not changed," she states simply, coming to settle beside the fire, opposite the bonded pair that share a shattered soul between them. There is nothing sharp about her when she lies herself upon the ground, content, for now, to listen to the puff of a dragon's breath, to watch the flame toy with golden hair on a dark-faced man.
He is beautiful, but she knows so many beautiful things that are monsters underneath.
