☼ fia the crownless ☼
the truth never set me free
so I did it myself
She is amused by the bow.
After she’d lost her crown, Seraphina had expected to be done with courtly pleasantries for a time, shedding the luxury (that had never felt especially luxurious) of politics and nobility for sand and grit. It is strange, she thinks, to see the gesture on a man that she knows is a quite deadly assassin (if rumors are to be believed), but, unlike the others she has met, she finds his company pleasant.
Her comment brings a flash of an amused grin to his lips. "Consider me impressed, then. If more had your resolve, Fia, this world might have itself competent leaders.” She merely holds her smile, stifling the urge to make some sharp remark about how it would likely only breed more foolish young queens without the faintest notion of what they were entangled in. She is sure that she is already suspicious, her guise as flimsy and transparent as water; she is not particularly accustomed to lying about herself. The statement in and of itself is almost enough to make her wonder if he knows, but she reminds herself that she is positioning herself as a different kind of leader, some hooded figure of rebellion working outside of the machinations of the law. The irony of the situation is not lost on her.
She does not notice the pained reaction of her contact when she turns away. Her eyes are cast on further things, on the stretch of stars that fade off into the midnight-blue sky and the gentle, lapping rise and fall of the dunes, like strange, golden ocean waves against the darkness. She hears him move and tenses her grip around the hilt of her sword, but, when she risks a glance out of the corner of her eye, she sees nothing more than a stranger, perhaps enraptured by her tale, perhaps troubled; in the darkness of the night, he is almost entirely unreadable, save for a faint furrow in his brow.
She continues.
“I-“
It is only when she hears his voice, brimming with some emotion that she can’t quite place, that she realizes that something is wrong.
Her lips twist with concern, and she takes a step closer to him, and then another. Beneath her hood, her brow knits, struggling for some sort of comprehension that lingers just out of her grasp. “Caine.” Her voice is low, trying for soothing, as she stares at those feverish quicksilver eyes. She couldn’t say that he had seemed fine when he arrived, but this was something else entirely; this is no mere sleeplessness, no mere burning desire for knowledge. The raven looks as tense as a bow strung too tight, and she is almost hesitant to continue speaking, at risk of further agitating him. “Are you al-“
She is halfway through her sentence when the eyes appear.
She shies back on instinct, her mind grasping for Alshamtueur, and drags in a painful breath. Her magic swirls inside of her chest, a tempest ill-contained by her ribcage; her hair rises, buffeted by some invisible, absent wind, and trails after her jerking movements as though she moves through water as she backs towards her companion. Raum’s burning blue eyes send a shot of pain through the scar on her face, and Zolin’s golden stare makes her stomach twist with nausea, but it is Viceroy’s black-eyed gaze – a blackness so dark and empty that it swallowed up all the light around it, the color of his eyes when he drew upon his terrible, terrible magic – that captures her attention. For a second, she waits for the inevitable lash of pain, the sensation of her skull being ripped open, the immense, crushing weight of loss as he tears her open and hollows her out of everything that she is all over again-
But it does not hurt. Her neck does not burn.
She is no longer his.
With that revelation comes the realization that those eyes – those massive, flickering eyes – are some sort of tortured, phantomlike illusion. They are woefully unstable, likely the product of some magic user who’d yet to gain much control over his craft, and, as her momentary panic floods free of her, she realizes that Caine has breached most of the remaining distance between them. She almost snatches for her arrow, but the strain in his voice keeps her still. "Forgive me — I cannot… I cannot yet establish a proper connection without physical contact.” As difficult as it is to drag her stare from those eyes, she manages a worried glance at him, noting the uneven heave of his breaths and the way that his gaze remains stuck on those eyes, as though he wants to – has to - keep them there, and they’ll fade away if he did not. Perhaps they would; he clearly doesn’t have much control over his magic yet. His wing brushes her shoulders, settling over her like a cloak. In the past, she might have shied away from the gesture. Now…
Seraphina is rarely grateful for touch.
However, as those flickering eyes solidify, impossibly real even though they are attached to nothing at all, she is grateful for the press of his feathers against her shoulders; perhaps she even steps in a bit closer, just brushing against his shoulder, because she is so desperately seeking some anchor to reality. (It is then that she catches the faint whiff of blood, though it is not until after the illusion has faded that she realizes that it is coming from her companion, rather than some phantom-sensation that haunts her as clearly as the eyes.)
She does not notice his sidelong glance; her stare is trained on those eyes, her mind running circles around itself as it struggles for some reason why he has summoned them.
And then they are burning.
The fire is so real that Alshamtueur throbs at her side, begging to ignite. She ignores the call of the blade and simply watches, wide-eyed, as the illusion burns - and she is not sure if she is relieved or horrified that she feels some spark of vengeful joy at seeing them twist and writhe as they are consumed by flames. She has been struggling with her newborn freedom, stumbling and twining like a climbing vine stripped of support without all of the things she left behind on the peak, but, standing there, shadowed by the wing of someone who was practically a stranger, consumed by the heat of the fire in front of them, she feels as though some weight has been jerked off of her shoulders.
This is the first time that she has thought that her horrors might not be such a horrible thing to have – that her past might be something to wield like a knife, a spur to will her into motion.
"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 it is to your satisfaction, Fia.” His grin, illuminated by that burning red, is wolfish and haunting, as charming as it is a distant threat – though not one directed at her. She is not a trusting creature, by nature, but, somehow, in the wake of all of these flames and the painful realization – that still knots her stomach - that she cannot walk this path alone, she trusts him on instinct.
Those eyes burn away, but she is left behind with one more set; they hang in the air in front of them like a mirror. She stares into them, and she sees herself reflected back.
You are still here. You will remain.
The illusion vanishes with a heavy exhalation from her companion, and, as she turns her head to look at him, those white trails of hair falling back against her neck, she wears a rare, sincere smile – there is something in the soft curl of her lips that is warm. “It is…far more than to my satisfaction. Thank you, Caine.” It is a gesture of kindness to which she is unaccustomed, made even more powerful by the fact that it was unexpected. She lets her gaze drift back to those quicksilver eyes of his, and she wonders what she was expecting when she sought him out; similar goals, perhaps, but not empathy.
"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.” She could have argued that point, or offered some opinion of her own, but she lets it go with little more than a passive nod, noting the way his stare drifts the silver length of her; she knows that she has already been dancing a fine line, and she doesn’t want to risk entirely revealing herself by seeming too personally invested in the topic of Seraphina. He continues, a smirk curling across his dark features.
"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?” Seraphina had almost let herself forget that he is an assassin. It is with an almost bitter humor that she notes that it would have been her job to hunt him down, as a guard; as a queen, she’d enlisted the aid of some spies and assassins of her own, though she’d tried to refrain from using them, save in extreme cases. (It didn’t look especially good for her lawful and just record, but Solterra was a den of snakes, even on a good day.) She nods her acknowledgement again.
He draws his knife, but she does not flinch away; the gesture is slow and calculated, and, even if it weren’t, she doesn’t feel threatened by his presence. He raises it towards her and offers a salute, a distorted reflection of a knight vowing his honor to a queen. "From tonight onwards, I swear to wield this blade for you, dear Fia.” A hint of that smile is still flickering across her charcoal lips, but he is looking down at the blade. "That is, if you’ll have me.”
Her response comes immediately. “I’d be honored,” she says, and she means it. Her mind grasps for Alshamtueur, pulling it slowly and deliberately from its hilt with a soft screech; she suspends it in the air between them and all but mimics his gesture with the blade. “I want you to know that this arrangement is...reciprocal. So long as you are at my side, I swear by my sword – and, I assure you, she is quite a special one –“ Alshamtueur’s sizzling hum seems to increase in volume, as though she agrees. “-I will do whatever I can to protect you.”
She knows what a dangerous game she is playing, and she knows what any who aid her have to lose.
She quirks a brow at him, then, and adds, “Starting now. Come here for a moment – a bloody wound, no matter how small, is an excellent way to attract a hungry Sandwyrm when you’re traveling the Mors.” With that, she brushes past him, tossing a deliberate stare at his shoulder, and strides to the bank of the Oasis, her contemplative stare brushing across the rows of palm trees and shrubs. She wishes that she had bandages with her, but she supposes that cleaning the wound will do, for now; they have supplies in the canyon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Caine
notes | sera is #touched.
the truth never set me free
so I did it myself
She is amused by the bow.
After she’d lost her crown, Seraphina had expected to be done with courtly pleasantries for a time, shedding the luxury (that had never felt especially luxurious) of politics and nobility for sand and grit. It is strange, she thinks, to see the gesture on a man that she knows is a quite deadly assassin (if rumors are to be believed), but, unlike the others she has met, she finds his company pleasant.
Her comment brings a flash of an amused grin to his lips. "Consider me impressed, then. If more had your resolve, Fia, this world might have itself competent leaders.” She merely holds her smile, stifling the urge to make some sharp remark about how it would likely only breed more foolish young queens without the faintest notion of what they were entangled in. She is sure that she is already suspicious, her guise as flimsy and transparent as water; she is not particularly accustomed to lying about herself. The statement in and of itself is almost enough to make her wonder if he knows, but she reminds herself that she is positioning herself as a different kind of leader, some hooded figure of rebellion working outside of the machinations of the law. The irony of the situation is not lost on her.
She does not notice the pained reaction of her contact when she turns away. Her eyes are cast on further things, on the stretch of stars that fade off into the midnight-blue sky and the gentle, lapping rise and fall of the dunes, like strange, golden ocean waves against the darkness. She hears him move and tenses her grip around the hilt of her sword, but, when she risks a glance out of the corner of her eye, she sees nothing more than a stranger, perhaps enraptured by her tale, perhaps troubled; in the darkness of the night, he is almost entirely unreadable, save for a faint furrow in his brow.
She continues.
“I-“
It is only when she hears his voice, brimming with some emotion that she can’t quite place, that she realizes that something is wrong.
Her lips twist with concern, and she takes a step closer to him, and then another. Beneath her hood, her brow knits, struggling for some sort of comprehension that lingers just out of her grasp. “Caine.” Her voice is low, trying for soothing, as she stares at those feverish quicksilver eyes. She couldn’t say that he had seemed fine when he arrived, but this was something else entirely; this is no mere sleeplessness, no mere burning desire for knowledge. The raven looks as tense as a bow strung too tight, and she is almost hesitant to continue speaking, at risk of further agitating him. “Are you al-“
She is halfway through her sentence when the eyes appear.
She shies back on instinct, her mind grasping for Alshamtueur, and drags in a painful breath. Her magic swirls inside of her chest, a tempest ill-contained by her ribcage; her hair rises, buffeted by some invisible, absent wind, and trails after her jerking movements as though she moves through water as she backs towards her companion. Raum’s burning blue eyes send a shot of pain through the scar on her face, and Zolin’s golden stare makes her stomach twist with nausea, but it is Viceroy’s black-eyed gaze – a blackness so dark and empty that it swallowed up all the light around it, the color of his eyes when he drew upon his terrible, terrible magic – that captures her attention. For a second, she waits for the inevitable lash of pain, the sensation of her skull being ripped open, the immense, crushing weight of loss as he tears her open and hollows her out of everything that she is all over again-
But it does not hurt. Her neck does not burn.
She is no longer his.
With that revelation comes the realization that those eyes – those massive, flickering eyes – are some sort of tortured, phantomlike illusion. They are woefully unstable, likely the product of some magic user who’d yet to gain much control over his craft, and, as her momentary panic floods free of her, she realizes that Caine has breached most of the remaining distance between them. She almost snatches for her arrow, but the strain in his voice keeps her still. "Forgive me — I cannot… I cannot yet establish a proper connection without physical contact.” As difficult as it is to drag her stare from those eyes, she manages a worried glance at him, noting the uneven heave of his breaths and the way that his gaze remains stuck on those eyes, as though he wants to – has to - keep them there, and they’ll fade away if he did not. Perhaps they would; he clearly doesn’t have much control over his magic yet. His wing brushes her shoulders, settling over her like a cloak. In the past, she might have shied away from the gesture. Now…
Seraphina is rarely grateful for touch.
However, as those flickering eyes solidify, impossibly real even though they are attached to nothing at all, she is grateful for the press of his feathers against her shoulders; perhaps she even steps in a bit closer, just brushing against his shoulder, because she is so desperately seeking some anchor to reality. (It is then that she catches the faint whiff of blood, though it is not until after the illusion has faded that she realizes that it is coming from her companion, rather than some phantom-sensation that haunts her as clearly as the eyes.)
She does not notice his sidelong glance; her stare is trained on those eyes, her mind running circles around itself as it struggles for some reason why he has summoned them.
And then they are burning.
The fire is so real that Alshamtueur throbs at her side, begging to ignite. She ignores the call of the blade and simply watches, wide-eyed, as the illusion burns - and she is not sure if she is relieved or horrified that she feels some spark of vengeful joy at seeing them twist and writhe as they are consumed by flames. She has been struggling with her newborn freedom, stumbling and twining like a climbing vine stripped of support without all of the things she left behind on the peak, but, standing there, shadowed by the wing of someone who was practically a stranger, consumed by the heat of the fire in front of them, she feels as though some weight has been jerked off of her shoulders.
This is the first time that she has thought that her horrors might not be such a horrible thing to have – that her past might be something to wield like a knife, a spur to will her into motion.
"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 it is to your satisfaction, Fia.” His grin, illuminated by that burning red, is wolfish and haunting, as charming as it is a distant threat – though not one directed at her. She is not a trusting creature, by nature, but, somehow, in the wake of all of these flames and the painful realization – that still knots her stomach - that she cannot walk this path alone, she trusts him on instinct.
Those eyes burn away, but she is left behind with one more set; they hang in the air in front of them like a mirror. She stares into them, and she sees herself reflected back.
You are still here. You will remain.
The illusion vanishes with a heavy exhalation from her companion, and, as she turns her head to look at him, those white trails of hair falling back against her neck, she wears a rare, sincere smile – there is something in the soft curl of her lips that is warm. “It is…far more than to my satisfaction. Thank you, Caine.” It is a gesture of kindness to which she is unaccustomed, made even more powerful by the fact that it was unexpected. She lets her gaze drift back to those quicksilver eyes of his, and she wonders what she was expecting when she sought him out; similar goals, perhaps, but not empathy.
"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.” She could have argued that point, or offered some opinion of her own, but she lets it go with little more than a passive nod, noting the way his stare drifts the silver length of her; she knows that she has already been dancing a fine line, and she doesn’t want to risk entirely revealing herself by seeming too personally invested in the topic of Seraphina. He continues, a smirk curling across his dark features.
"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?” Seraphina had almost let herself forget that he is an assassin. It is with an almost bitter humor that she notes that it would have been her job to hunt him down, as a guard; as a queen, she’d enlisted the aid of some spies and assassins of her own, though she’d tried to refrain from using them, save in extreme cases. (It didn’t look especially good for her lawful and just record, but Solterra was a den of snakes, even on a good day.) She nods her acknowledgement again.
He draws his knife, but she does not flinch away; the gesture is slow and calculated, and, even if it weren’t, she doesn’t feel threatened by his presence. He raises it towards her and offers a salute, a distorted reflection of a knight vowing his honor to a queen. "From tonight onwards, I swear to wield this blade for you, dear Fia.” A hint of that smile is still flickering across her charcoal lips, but he is looking down at the blade. "That is, if you’ll have me.”
Her response comes immediately. “I’d be honored,” she says, and she means it. Her mind grasps for Alshamtueur, pulling it slowly and deliberately from its hilt with a soft screech; she suspends it in the air between them and all but mimics his gesture with the blade. “I want you to know that this arrangement is...reciprocal. So long as you are at my side, I swear by my sword – and, I assure you, she is quite a special one –“ Alshamtueur’s sizzling hum seems to increase in volume, as though she agrees. “-I will do whatever I can to protect you.”
She knows what a dangerous game she is playing, and she knows what any who aid her have to lose.
She quirks a brow at him, then, and adds, “Starting now. Come here for a moment – a bloody wound, no matter how small, is an excellent way to attract a hungry Sandwyrm when you’re traveling the Mors.” With that, she brushes past him, tossing a deliberate stare at his shoulder, and strides to the bank of the Oasis, her contemplative stare brushing across the rows of palm trees and shrubs. She wishes that she had bandages with her, but she supposes that cleaning the wound will do, for now; they have supplies in the canyon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Caine
notes | sera is #touched.
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
