[P] of circles and fangs and hate;

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 


The flowers hang limply, choked against his leg. Their leaves are wilted and jagged, not even they can survive the touch of his mercurial skin.
 
He ignores the brush of their stems, touches that whisper, touches that tickle. He does not spare the flowers any thought, not when his teeth, sharp and white, feel the resistance of chocolate skin. But unlike chocolate (that melts with the warmth of her body) Isra’s skin presses, holds tight and does not yield beneath the press of sharp, sharp fangs.
 
Her skin is a testament to everything this girl is. She is soft silk, warm and subtly resilient. But Raum is made to break flesh, he is born to spill blood. His grasp at the queen’s throat is a warning, but Isra is a witch. He tastes the magic upon her skin, an elixir and a poison here to cast him straight to hell.
 
The scales beneath their feet, slippery like sheet ice, ripple as if monsters of the deep shift below. Then it shudders shifts and changes at the command of Isra’s night magic. Flowers grow where once only glass shone. These bouquets are nothing like the flowers of the meadow, nothing like those that sway in a breeze…
 
The flowers the unicorn conjures are as twisted as the horn atop her crown. They laugh like harpies at the sky and splinter all they touch. They rise like weeds, growing with magic as water and imagination as their sun. They reach for the pitch black sky and do not stop. There is no green, upon their metallic torsos. They click and clack together as metal petals clash with metal petals. The leaves of this steel meadow are as intricate, as spiked, as the wilted ones that still hang at his leg. But the flowers the Crow wears are soft and limp and there is nothing so gentle about the horrific flowers Isra makes.
 
Each flower is silver and copper with rust but slowly they begin to glow red, red, red. It is not a red naturally found. It is the red of Raum’s cut limbs… Leaves slice into the silver of his skin, they shred the real flowers to ribbons, leaving them to sway in the breeze: a rhythm of death.
 
Raum’s blood spills hot and bright. He turns Isra’s meadow into a sea of poppies; his blood, her magic joining in macabre art. The skin of his limbs shifts and turns, until armadillo hide layers protectively over the cuts of his legs. Each bite of the flowers is less now. But still the meadow glitters like rubies.
 
A harpy call resounds in a chorus as metal ivy creaks and groans and claws its way up derelict walls. Each leaf is a weapon that winks at the monster below, the monster at whom metal leaves still bite.
 
Ah the cut of each flower is electricity, white hot. Raum’s nerves awaken in sparks and riots. He blinks, with golden eyes, leonine and bright. Clever, brave Isra has made him savage, so much more than he has ever been. His breath is a shudder in his lungs, his heart thunder in his chest.
 
That heart of his beats with black feathers and red with blood. As it beats harder, faster, the blood drips quicker too. The monster’s jaws close tighter about her throat, aiming to choke, waiting for the first drop of her blood to trickle along the groove of her throat. He does not relinquish her, not even when her flowers reach for his stomach. They are an impasse, a tangle of teeth and metal. Raum waits, patiently, an angel at a tomb, for her blood to join his.
 
So he bites, harder, harder, harder. He tastes all that she is, all that she was and all that she can be. In every taste he finds her wanting, in every taste she satisfies him. As the blades reach the armadillo skin that covers his stomach, he feels its press, but there is no cut, not now he wears armour like a soldier at battle.
 
But, slowly,  the Crow releases his queen at last, though his lips do not pull from her skin. The Ghost keeps her close, his breath still hot upon the curve of her throat. “If you have breath enough to speak, then yes, by all means tell them.” His threat is spoken like a lover. It is made of soft caresses, a thing born of passion and desire. But romance does not know Raum. He was not made for it and never will be so.
 
His teeth return to her throat and this time there is no hesitance, there is no holding back. Raum lunges, leonine maw parted to draw life from her lungs, at last.

---

@Isra