they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
and told you to find peace.
"A
pleasure to meet you, Caine.” He returns her courteous tip of the head with a bow of his own, less sweeping than he’d normally make it. He suspects the effect would be lost on the cloaked and armored Fia — seldom do maidens who send messages by steel arrow and arrange rendezvous’ by moonlight appear to be much charmed by such flatteries.
Not that Caine has ever met one, before tonight.
Her hood slips back just a little, and he is pleased to spot a trace of a smile on her lips.
“Perhaps so, though, in hindsight, I don’t think they’re my boldest.” He snorts lightly at that, his muted smile stretching into a brilliant flash of teeth. "Consider me impressed, then. If more had your resolve, Fia, this world might have itself competent leaders.”
Light as Caine carries his tone, his smile does not quite reach his eyes. Though Fia’s words burn with the intensity of truth (lies are always so flat, after all; rarely believed in by their own liar) he cannot yet tell if she is foolish or fanatical — or something to be feared.
Silence stretches thin and taut between them when his question falls from his lips like omen. It had meant to be a test — those are the only questions Caine knows how to ask — but perhaps it had been too sharp when it ought to have been soft. Like honey to sweeten a bitter poison.
Exhaustion fogs his mind, dulls his tongue. The old, familiar… dread, of saying something wrong, of being wrong, tiptoes into his chest. Why now, he thinks bitterly, when it has not visited for so long? Perhaps he should —
Gaping eyes of electric blue explode into being in front of him. He blinks. Once, twice. Until —
Caine’s breath halts in this throat when he realizes it had come from her.
The nightmares she relives in her mind — he can see them. His magic gorges itself on the pain, the fear — too muddled for him to comprehend, but enough to send him jerking back as if he has been burned. He feigns a casual flap of his wings to mask the movement, but Fia has already turned away.
Saints.* Of all the times, of all the people.
The binds around Caine’s awakening magic are tattered by sleeplessness, and by Fia — she had been too close, and he’d known it. He had been arrogant to think he could’ve controlled it.
“You know, I remember Zolin.” When her voice finally breaks through the silence, low and solemn, Caine clings to it. He forces the illusion back down inside him. It begs to be freed, a screeching, clawing hawk. Not yet, Caine whispers. Not yet.
“I won’t bother to tell you the full story of how Zolin came to be ruler of Solterra – a summary is enough.” He had liked her voice when he’d first heard it. Low, rich, tapering — the Solterran accent had always been musical to Caine, in a different way than his own was. But as Fia weaves together the story of her kingdom’s bloody past, her tone rising and falling like the tides, the boy who’d once loved stories more than he’d loved anything else forgets his exhaustion and his wild, untamable magic.
He forgets, and he listens.
The tale of cruel kings and crueler fates is one Caine has heard a thousand thousand times, and will hear for a hundred thousand more. Never had he felt particularly moved — men were born to die. Empires were built to fall. Death was the only fate guaranteed to all. He had never understood why so few ever came to terms with those truths — why fight for a future destined to end before it even began?
The silver-eyed boy simply did what he was told. Never more, never less.
“I was one of his child soldiers, though I am…something of a strange case.” His ears flick forwards at her admission. The child soldiers of Solterra. Wasn’t the queen one of them? He wonders, vaguely, where she is. They say that Seraphina is dead, but Caine has seen lesser kings stroll into their throne rooms, none the worse for wear, months after his own people believed him “gone to seek peace among the Gods.”
They are harder to kill than most like to believe.
But Caine does not interrupt Fia, not once, for fear of breaking the fragile spell of her tale. It is only when she begins to tell of Viceroy, that the spell begins to shatter. Suddenly, it is no longer a tale. “He renamed us. Remade us. He took everything that we were, and he left us…left us empty.”
Suddenly, it is all very much real.
Never has Caine been given words for what Agenor had done to him. (“Ask her to tell you where her mother is,” the sorcerer hissed. The dead-eyed boy’s hand trembled. His blade shook in his grasp, slipped against her throat. The child, scarcely younger than he, whimpered.) Never had he realized… just how much Agenor had taken from him. (She lay there, dead at his feet, her neck bent at an odd angle. A broken doll, he thought, and he almost wanted to laugh, because she had been alive and now she was dead and he hadn’t done it, hadn’t even seen Agenor’s hands slip past him and snap her neck in two. “You killed her. The next time you fail me again, boy, another will die at your feet. You are not made to feel. You are not made to feel.")
Caine’s magic roars with the shock of his fury. His eyes gleam fever-bright with the overwhelming force of feeling. He does not want to feel. He does not want to hear her memories, to see her dreams — but above all, he does not want her to stop.
Fia's voice, when it ebbs, takes a part of him with it. She turns to him, chest heaving, and Caine thinks he sees the echo of flames along her spine. In the darkness of her hood. The effort of holding back his illusion has cost him, badly. The pain in his skull has returned for a reckoning, and with a clenched jaw does he mourn the searing kiss of his dagger on his flesh.
He is glad that the waning moon is weak and thin. He is glad for the darkness, so she cannot see.
He cannot keep himself contained for much longer.
“I will not stand idly by and allow him to destroy us. I have bowed to a tyrannical madman before – I will never do it again.”
She pulls her hood down, the final note to a crashing crescendo. He had not expected for her to remove it, and surprise shines clear as day in his glassy gaze. For a moment, all Caine sees is the white of her starlight hair and the fire of her jewel-bright eyes. Beautiful, he marvels. Never in all his years has he encountered eyes like hers.
Then, he sees it. The knitted flesh. The missing fur. The golden scar that runs jagged down one side of her face, like a knife through a paint-thick canvas. He marvels at her scar's strange beauty, and finally, he thinks he understands.
What has he done to you? he had wondered.
"I —" Never in all his years has Caine been at a loss for words. Saints. It's better for me to show you. His magic screams for release. He lets out a shuddering breath when he finally lets it.
Electric blue eyes — Raum’s eyes — blink into existence in front of them. There is no time for shock before it is followed by a wicked golden pair — Zolin’s. And finally, eyes of the purest black, shiny as beetles, gape open. Unblinking. Viceroy’s.
The eyes hover like an unholy trinity in front of them. Three huge, monstrous pairs, more alive than they’d ever been in life. They are abominable, beautiful, haunting. Mocking. But they wobble, flickering in and out of existence like some demented summoning, until Caine steps so close to Fia he is just shy of touching her.
"Forgive me — I cannot… I cannot yet establish a proper connection without physical contact,” he manages to say between breaths, his gaze never straying from his creations.
Slowly, Caine extends a midnight wing over Fia's shoulders like a cloak. It is the least invasive touch he can manage, without losing sight of the eyes. The moment his feathers brush against her silver pelt, the effect is immediate — they solidify until they are no more illusion than the sand at their feet.
He glances over to make sure she is watching.
Then, with a tilt of his head, Caine sets them all on fire.
The eyes catch like kindling, because this is his illusion, and no rules bind the Illusionist save for the limits of his imagination. Tonight, Caine’s creativity is at its peak. He watches in grim satisfaction when identical looks of terror flicker in each burning pair.
He enchants the flames to be as hot as real fire; so hot, beads of sweat begin to trickle down his raven-black pelt. The hollows of his face deepen, and his skin radiates heat like a furnace. But the three pairs of eyes burn on and on, grotesque in their destruction. He licks the sand from his cracked lips before speaking.
"I draw my illusions from dreams. Your dreams. And though I can manipulate them to some degree, the core of it, the substance of it, I drew from you. I hope,” Caine’s grin, in the light of the flames, is ravishing. "It is to your satisfaction, Fia.”
Black smoke billows from the now-fully melted, charred orbs. When the smoke clears, however, one final pair remains. Hers.
He maintains the illusion for a few more moments, and exhales when he finally lets it fade into the backdrop of night.
"I never had any intentions of bowing to Raum. Mad kings cannot rule for long. Seraphina was a good and fair queen — her death is a shame for all of Solterra.” His gaze lingers on Fia, on the white of her hair, the silver of her fur. The Silver Queen. That is what they'd called Seraphina. He cannot shake the feeling that he has seen Fia before, somewhere, but he does not dwell on it long. Whether Fia is her true identity or not matters little.
"It has also been a long time since I have had a proper target. I suppose, after tracking me so well, you know of my occupation?” He turns his smirk onto her, and his eyes gleam with dark amusement.
Deliberately slowly (so he does not invoke an arrow to the skull), Caine draws out his silver dagger from the folds of his wings. He raises it towards her, blade down, in salute.
"From tonight onwards, I swear to wield this blade for you, dear Fia.” He looks thoughtfully at the metal, at one inscription in particular. The emblem of House Selwyn. "That is, if you’ll have me.”
@Seraphina | "speaks" | notes: caine is all over the place and feeling all of the things
*Unlike other Taeryns, Caine has never invoked the names of the gilded gods. Instead, he’d gleaned the term of Saints — men more holy than their gods — from the pages of an ancient tome when he’d been little more than a child. A slight he utters when he’s feeling particularly spiteful.
*Unlike other Taeryns, Caine has never invoked the names of the gilded gods. Instead, he’d gleaned the term of Saints — men more holy than their gods — from the pages of an ancient tome when he’d been little more than a child. A slight he utters when he’s feeling particularly spiteful.
