[P] See the sun set in the hand of the man

[Seraphina]

I'M READY FOR THE FIGHT & FATE

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Reports of some great, hulking, mountainous beast in the distance – visible just beyond the wide expanse of the Mors and the great, ribbon-like ridges of the Elatus – making its way towards the desert kingdom had sent the silver scurrying towards the borders.

She could not quite fathom the idea of a monster so large as the one that the guards had described, though, in the wake of recent events, Seraphina had learned not to discount anything, no matter how ridiculous it seemed in the moment. The gods walked the earth as mortals, and the landscape itself bent to their will; a lumbering mountain hardly seemed outside of the range of their capabilities, and it seemed like exactly the sort of punishment they might devise to constitute the mysterious “change” that Tempus claimed was coming for them – the land itself rising up to swallow them all whole.

But Seraphina is a creature of sand and sun, and the shifting dunes of the Mors ate travelers, unwary and experienced alike, with the comfortable regularity of a hungry predator. It crunched up corpses and left nothing to prove that the souls they belonged to had ever come wandering into its arid jowls in the first place.

When she reached the northern borders of the Elatus, whatever hulking mountain that her patrolling guards had described is gone – a trick of the light, she assumed, or perhaps she wanted to assume. (Perhaps, she thinks darkly, it was merely passing by. Circling, like a vulture.) Sweat beaded sticky trails down her sides, leaving her molten beneath the sun god’s light. She might as well have been burning.

Her eyes caught on an approaching shape, and she slowed her even pace to come to a halt a short distance away from him. Her head tilted forward and nostrils flared as she breathed in deep the scent he carried, beneath sand and sweat; she was greeted by the candle-and-perfume-honeyed scent of the Night Court and straightened. Visions of another visitor from the land of stars and smoke crept at the edge of her mind, and, before she can force them back, she was reminded again of the image of Bexley Briar caught beneath a heap of stones, all red and gold and grit. (Oh, she tried to trust Denocte, and she was not fool enough to believe that all of its inhabitants were like its former Sovereign and his Crows, but she knew of their ideals, and she knew what they were in war. With Reichenbach and his entire Regime gone, she knew not what the denizens of Night would have of their desert counterpart.) This one struck her as more capable than Acton, and more straightforward in stance – her eyes lingered on his muscular, fire-red frame, cropped mane, and scythe of a tail. If she had to guess from a rudimentary once-over, this one was more warrior than spy. “Denoctian.” Her voice is cool and crisp – though the observation invokes some indiscernible emotion in her that isn't-quite suspicion, it isn’t evident in her tone. “What brings you to Solterra?

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tags | @Raymond
notes | <3

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