“The forest rose like a dream
from the mind of Chaos’s lonely daughter
and the sun fell heavy and thick
to warm the blood of a world"
Lately the night in Solterra has seemed like a slumbering giant. The only sound the whispering of the salt dune and the soft hiss of the iron sand oxidizing. There has only been decay in the moonlight as the city learned to shed the chains of the last king, and the suffering of his endless hate.
But tonight, there is not a bit of slumbering in to found in the old forgotten tunnels below the city. Echos are bouncing off the limestone walls like arrows and the clay beneath her hooves is hard packed and littered with bits of paper and forgotten coins waiting to be stolen. There is an energy humming through the belly of Solterra tonight, and in turn there is a small sun roaring to life beneath Amaunet's skin.
The time to burn has come, that small humming sun whispers to her. Over and over it coos until the sound is nothing more than her own heartbeat echoing back at her. Blood races through her veins, a flood of violence crashing against the desert marrow of her heritage. With a blink, and a flare of her wings, Amaunet comes alive.
The crowd parts around her, like lambs to the nip of a hound's teeth, as she walks into the hot press of bodies. They know of course, that tonight she is not here to watch. Tonight she's coated in her warpaint that looks like blood smeared below her eyes. Tonight she looks like a wild bird-of-prey walking among the things trapped in the dirt.
Tonight she looks like she's ready to devour them all, bone by bone, organ by organ. She does not look like she's going to lose tonight; they know that look in her gaze. Hunger, of course they know the look of it, even without their chains they can still feel it eating away at their stomachs.
Maybe before there would have been a time that Solterra would have felted bloated enough to say, that is enough. But not now, not with their sea-king and his blessed lion and the dead king's statues still scattered in courtyards. Nothing will ever been enough now.
But when she steps closer to the stage, smiling as a bit of blood flares out form the flight towards her like a ray of light reaching for the petal of a flower, each of the things trapped in the dirt knows that tonight Amaunet will fill their hollow stomach a little more with violence.
Maybe tomorrow, when the sun rises, it will almost be enough.
The uproarious din of a maddened crowd assaulted Helios’ every sense. The jeers and screams, calls and shouts filling the underground tunnels with a cacophony of sound. It was a miracle no one had found it out.
Only they had- that was why Helios was there right? As a soldier he should shut this down, stop Solterrans needlessly hurting themselves and each other? But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do so the first time he’d found it. Nor the second, or the third. No, the ring of metal on metal, the thud of muscle on muscle and the hoarse growls of pain had sung to him a lullaby he could not ignore. There was comfort in the release of his pent up energy, in the familiar feeling of his body in battle. The nightmares and the pain abated those nights, as though they ran out with the blood spilt upon sandy floors. Sometimes he needed reminding that he could actually feel pain, that the rumours surrounding him (ones he’d cultivated himself) were not entirely true.
The rough-spun cloak concealing him from prying eyes dragged upon the dirty clay floor, collect dust and debris as he weaved among the crowds. These people would not recognise him- he was a soldier, a cog in the machine, but it didn’t stop him anyway. What would the King think if he saw him now, battling it out like a savage in the pits of an illicit club? What would the Triskevma think, their unofficial leader spending his nights spitting teeth and blood?
It didn’t matter, what mattered now was the stallion in front of him, teeth bared and ears back, eyes alight with bloodlust. The noise disappeared into nothing and Helios dropped his cloak to the floor, an audible flurry of feathers as his four wings rushed into being. He filled his end of the makeshift circle, the giant appendages spread wide as he rolled his muscular shoulders and prepared to meet his opponent.
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The tang of blood still tainted his nostrils, even as he cleaned the red stains from his nose and lips. The crowd were jeering the next fighters, their blood lust insatiable. Tonight had been rough, his savageness unchecked and fuelled by the images of his past, the nightmares that resurfaced each and every night. He unleashed the pent up energy that had begun to burn inside him, akin to a dark sun smouldering in the depths of his heart. No one paid him any mind, even as his wings lay open upon the dusty floor, caked in blood at the top and stained at the tips. His shoulders ached- hell his whole body ached. Helios’ opponent had given as good as he got, even if in the end it had been his body hitting the floor rather than Helios’.
The soldier was distracted for a moment, his gaze snagging on a pegasus of rich brown hues. He noticed the way the crowds parted for her, like rushing water around a resolute rock, and the paint like blood across her face- the winged mare was clearly here to fight. She was not so far from him and he called to her above the caterwauls and taunts flung into the ring. “It’s an easy crowd tonight,” he growled, the words hoarse. Yet his voice betrayed him, he doubted she was here for the crowd, just as he was not. He never did this for money or infamy, or even for the taste of blood on his tongue. No he did this in the hope that a full night’s sleep might be within his grasp. That the ghosts of his childhood might be satisfied with one night of barbarity enough to relinquish their ever hungering claws.
“The forest rose like a dream
from the mind of Chaos’s lonely daughter
and the sun fell heavy and thick
to warm the blood of a world"
The drop of blood that had flown from the ring to the curl of her brow sinks into her pores like a taste of madness. Magic traces the edges of it, of the iron and rust, below her skin. It feels like a pounding hind her eyes, like she is nothing more than a bit of birch shivering when the thunder comes to roar close at her roots. When she blinks there is only an aching, bright white glare and the thudding and moaning of a fight.
It consumes her. The aching and the blinding. And she lets it, oh she lets it devour every inch of her magic and sinew. The girl beneath the madness falls to the decay with a smile.
Amaunet does not open her eyes until the thunderous roar of her heart becomes the loudest thing she can hear. And even when she looks at the colors (blood, and red, and pale skin turned pink) everything seems dim and white-washed below the echo of her heart. Her wings flare at her sides like the holy wings of a predator-god. The crowds looks at her and smile for the sight of it.
They know what is to come. They know. Bets are placed because tonight--
Tonight is the only treasure waiting to be found in the crowd.
Chaotic wrath is already alive in her blood when the stallion yells at her through the crowd. Even with the echo of her heart roaring in her ears like the sea his voice reaches her like an anchor. She turns with her wings still spread wide and holy. When she moves towards him the crowd moves around her like ripples around a stone thrown in a lake. She drains a whiskey from someone's table before she reaches him.
The smoke makes her feel reckless. Magic coats her body in golden light as it purrs and nibbles at the edges of the forms around her. A fight starts at the edge of her shadow, two stallions shoving each other like cave creatures. Amaunet does not turn to watch them, her eyes remain still and heavy on the winged stallion as she joins him. It's the look of a predator.
She offers him her nose. “For now. The night is still young.” Her laugh is smooth as the whiskey on her tongue and just as full of banked embers. Their shadows turn bruise dark when she steps closer to him. A shiver takes her own skin as she wipes away a forgotten line of blood from his neck.
“You fought well.” Her glow brightens into a dawn sun as her wings settle themselves back at her side. One of the fighting stallions bumps into her, but she does not move from the feeling of the wrath at her back. She revels in it and lets her turn her voice to wildfire and flowers that only bloom at night. “Congratulations on your win.” And when she steals two glasses of liquor from a passing participant, she offers one to him with a smile that promises every sin left to discover.
Even as the minutes ebb away like the blood and drink flowing tonight, Helios’ veins still sing with adrenalin, his heart still beating in time to the thud of hooves and shouts of bloodlust. The darkness in him, that aggression and rage collared by the silver around his neck, is ever insatiable even as the energy flows like the minutes from his body. He did not relax, could not relax when the bellows and cries that filled the tunnels were like the screams of war, the sound of hooves pounding the earth like a celebration of victory. The Black Sun was a creature of battle, of war, a slave of a bygone era left to find his place in this land of peace. He could not, and so he turned to places like this, an escape from the monotony of guard duty and a release for the pent up anger.
The winged woman is wild fire and lightning, gleaming like some holy warrior as she approaches. The crowds part subconsciously as though sensing a predator in their midst, flowing around her with eyes fixed on the blood-stained ring. To be that glorious, as though it were Solis himself had fashioned her from the burning depths of the sun. Ah how Helios founds himself envying her. Were it not for the collar around his neck, the cold seriousness about him as though he were an eclipse against the sun, he might have been as magnificent as she. But he was not. He was trapped within the collar encircling his throat, remaining there by his choice, to remind him that he served Solterra and its God.
Her voice cuts through the crowds as easily as her body, smooth and tempered like a sword beneath a smith’s hammer. When her face nears his neck the steed stills, his chest rising and falling the only interruption into his stillness. Very few dared get that close to him- not out of fear for what he’d do but out of fear for what his collar represented.
Winning- victory- it was nothing more than a routine to him now. He was alive because he’d never lost a fight. Not when Viceroy had trained and tortured him. Not when Zolin had sent him, and many others, out like toy soldiers into a field of battle. Not when the boy-king’s reign had fallen and a new Solterra had risen with Seraphina’s silver steel. And not when his home had fallen to the raven-king Raum and then risen with the golden-lion Orestes. No, victory had lost its sweet nectar when the need for it was beaten into him as soon as he could walk. “Thank you,” he nevertheless offers with a dip of his head.
Helios pulls his own wings in as she moves closer, a flurry of feathers and then they are gone as though he were little more than common horse, not a Pegasus gifted with flight. The ache does not stop though- he can feel the weight of them at his tired shoulders, feel the snapped feather where his opponent had grabbed one between his teeth.
He downs the drink easily, the burn not an unpleasant feeling. His gaze is stoic, if not a little bright with the grim pleasure of battle, his eyes like embers burning out. “I would guess you are fighting tonight?”
Chaos reigns around them even as their lungs flutter like leaves instead of storms in their chests. Two new fighters claim the ring and bellow insults and challenges to each other. The words settle in the crease between her wings like song-kisses instead of words forged down into blunt and useless weapons. A boy taunts the crowd with wine (one she knows is laced) and another carries a betting-book between fools.
Everything, every bit of chaos, leeks into her like oil and begs her to become something monstrous and symbiotic.
And yet, she only smiles at him with her glow brightening like the dawn and swallows down her drink. It burns at her throat, and warms her belly, and still her magic and her hunger beg with the chaos for more, more, more. The song of it shakes the chambers of her heart like bells of war. She eases closer to him, her wings curling above them to shroud of the rest of the chaos from this too quiet place between them.
When he tucks his own wings away she pities him for the new plainness of his form, the way his violence and beauty seems more a blood-less sword than a victory. There is a memory that itches at her of another girl with a collar, one left bloody and beaten at her doorstep. Her father had told her the tale with a promise that nothing but gold, wealth and blood would ever touch the delicate curl of her neck.
Amaunet steps closer and in the secret quiet beneath her wings she reaches her smoky lips towards that collar around his neck. And she wonders if this is the secret to the wrath of broken, tamed things. What would it take to rattle loose his wings until he blacks out the sun, moon and every constellation in the sky?
“I always fight later in the night.” She smiles, teeth and gold dusted lips. Her voice is nothing more than a whisper, a shadow of the star-bright chaos stumbling into madness around them. She wonders if he can hear it all, or if he only can hear the thud, thud, thud of flesh meeting bone beyond their veil. She wonders even as she tucks her lips to his cheek and tells herself that later she'll shake loose all the bits of him held together with steel and iron.
They are made for burning the world, not for burning out.
The whisper of her wings seems more promise than silence when she tucks them back to her sides. Bit by bit the world unfolds itself into their space. “I always wait until the crowd begs for more like a single ravenous snake before I step into the ring.” There is more promise in her gaze as she presses their shoulders together and purrs.
“Will you stay?” And it's not a question. Not really.
Helios has often wondered what it was like to be so alive- to burn as bright as Soltera’s sun with flames licking at your heart. He felt it sometimes- when the wind was beneath his wings, the sun upon his back and the ground far, far below. A different kind of alive filled his veins in war, the kind where he felt like he might explode with power at any moment- alert and dangerous and ready to spill blood. He wondered what it was, however, to feel alive in a place like this; to bathe in the victory of beating another opponent into the ground to the cheers and calls of a hungry crowd. Here, Helios only felt calculated, cold, little more than a fighting machine. Such control kept him alive, that the russet man was aware of, but sometimes he envied that raw fury and fire that he saw dancing in the winged woman’s eyes.
The crowd seems to deem and quieten in comparison to the glowing woman as her wings ensconce them slightly in privacy from the crowd. Helios can feel the warmth of her skin as she closes the gap, taste Soltera’s sand in her scent upon his tongue. The lick of flames in her eyes makes the controlled stallion glad he’d only had one drink as he feels her chaos crawl down his throat rush through his veins. He does not move as she reaches out to the silver collar at his throat and the russet man wonders what she is thinking as her lips near its cold surface. Did she see him as most others did- the symbol of Soltera’s oppressed past? Or a truth the citizens did not want to admit? Did she see him as beneath her, little more than a servant despite his freedom now? But all thoughts are chased from his mind as her breath dusts his skin and whispered words barely permeate his audits. “Why?” He asks a little lamely, the question falling unbidden before he can think of anything better to say.
The more he beheld the striped woman the more he felt intoxicated by the chaos in her eyes, or perhaps it was the adrenalin still barrelling through his veins. As her lips brush against his cheek the soldier cannot help but wonder what he was getting himself in for. Perhaps a second drink might be a good idea, if only to chase the embarrassing awkwardness from his person. Her wings unfold them from their little corner and the yowls of the crowd break through Helios’ focus but he does not miss the words she speaks. A shiver crawls up his spine as, for but a moment, he feels that secret, cold thrill he always got before a battle. He swallows thickly and dips his head in affirmation. “I will,” he confirms, attempting to regain his stoicism.
For her there has always been a certain thrill in turning a stone to dust, or water to wine. Perhaps it's in the way the hardest and the plainest things beg to be recreated. Or maybe it's the thrill in reading the whisper their bodies, their coldness, do not how to give voice and life too.
Or maybe it's the only holy inclination in her form, the urge to recreate and worship the reborn.
She laughs when he answers as a stone might. A single word heavy as a stone dropping from a table. And she wonders what it would take for him to shatter like glass or ferment and flavor like wine. Would it take a war, a cut, or a caress? Maybe it would take all three, at once (and she smiles deep in her monstrous heart at the thought). She leans against him, like a weight at the corner of a crooked table, and tests the hardness of this stone she's claimed for the night.
Each feather of her wing rustles between them, a hundred flight touches and kisses, as she gives him more and more of her weight. “Are you asking why I fight later in the night or why I want you to stay?” Her smile is full of bright teeth that shine like stars in a lantern hanging nearby. They wait there, as she watches him, like each bone is waiting for the whisper of a wish from him. And she could grant them all, even the one he's too war-hard to think of asking.
A scream echoes around them from the cage. In her chest both her heart and her magic leap like lions at a hare, hanging onto the furious and broken sound like a blood-trail. Golden glow settles across her cheeks like a blush and makes her look almost-holy, almost-soft, almost-other. “Or would you like me to guess what question it is you don't know how to form into words to give to me?” The look in her eyes, the midnight desert tone of her voice, it all promises that in the end, after the blood and the liquor, he will beg her to take more than questions from him.
Perhaps he'll beg her to take that noose of metal from his neck. He could learn to love the fire, she thinks, like a free-thing instead of a duty-chained-thing.
