He woke as the cry of gulls broke for the jeering caws of chattering crows, no doubt scoffing the state of their misfortunate scavenging. A live one, they seem to chuckle amongst themselves, a sodden wet rat at that. But it is whispers that make the notion – those of speculation, heavily weighted in a hallucinogenic dream. As his eye opens to behold they are but crows and caws, albeit laughing still, but no more parroting of any intelligible conversation as the next pest. A moment longer they observed from a driftwood perch before taking flight, scattering the ground around him in sand and pearlescent black feathers. His brow furrowed, pain bubbling in his chest and threatening to rise – like a hundred hungry daggers, balled and gnarled and rolling angrily up his throat – he coughed and choked, the saltiness of seawater flooding his mouth again and stinging his tongue as he retched it from his lungs. They wheezed and sputtered, a tangle of thorns that pried and gutted him of any full breath, wrenching from their depths a seeming third of the ocean before he could draw the slightest rasping inhalation that didn't froth.
It was morning when he was spat upon Denocte's shores. He raised his head slowly, almost collapsing with the small motion itself as his muscles suddenly remembered their plight, and observed that the sun had just begun to fall from its peak – and his skin crawled with the realization. Half drowned, near starved, and sunburnt all but to a fried semblance of what he once was, he forced his body to rise. It was almost futile the first few attempts; and once, he even fell back hard against the ground and considered resting his eyes just a bit more. But he had already wasted enough time and he doubted the patience of those hungry crows would compete with the savagery of a few famished vultures, if something worse hadn't seen him before then. Shrugging against a boulder, he weakly rose to his feet and struggled another seawater breath – choking more of it from his lungs like a bitter poison.
For a brief second he thought he had caught a glimpse of the cloaked woman again, observing from afar. The sun beat down upon the sands of the beach, lit a fire to the shores that blinded him as he blinked frantically to reclaim sight. Blurs, shadows, striking lights all fell away to dreamstate, humming with the drone of the sea. A hundred blinks more and shapes took form – rocks, seaweed, caverns... and a colt that regarded him with a tense shoulder, seeming ready to bolt at any moment the man chose to so much as twitch. It remained however, still as the stone around it, frozen and wide-eyed in panic, or wonder, or perhaps some pity? Erasmus leaned back against the boulder, catching his breath and closing his eyes as they grew sore with transition. When he opened them again the colt had moved further away, unless he had mistaken his original placement, though was just as still now as he was before. Some manner of irritation slipped in between his exhaustion, his brows knitting with solemn vexation. “what." he drawled venomously between gritted teeth, poised fang, eyes narrowed as the boy trembled beneath the burden of Erasmus's cruel, firm tone. A spindle of gold cobweb slipped from the colt's satchel, a golden crow skull plopping against the sand. The youth's eyes dropped in horror to the spilled stolen goods, then snapped back to the piercing gaze that beheld him like a cobra's heady glare.
“Drop – it – now."
The satchel clicked and struck the ground with the weight of a luggage bag, clinking with the sounds of a many valuables that scorned the foul play. Pearls rolled from the gaping rawhide, a pocket watch snapped open and ticked erratically. “I-I-I thought you were... well, dead, mister.” the colt stammered, unmoving, allowing the trinkets to settle in the sand. Erasmus shrugged off the helpful boulder and tripped forward, aching muscles snatching him from another heavy fall and groaning in each sore step. In a quick whip of the breeze his twine was unraveled from the pack, the rattle of bones and claws clattering in an array of chiding pandemonium as they wove between his hairs, knotted along his neck and tangled in his tail. “Who says I'm not?" He rasped as he bore his gaze into the boy's timid eyes, his voice a shadow of the whiskey slick baritone the lull of his voice often offered, choked out by the salt-burnt grit of his throat. Satisfied by the lack of movement the fear garnered, he dropped his sights to the contents of the satchel, eyeing a slice of bread wrapped in mammoth basil. This too he snatched, a sharp look shot to the boy has he made some small but curbed cry of disapproval.
He munched the dry slice of bread in shameless peace, though it hardly hit the spot his stomach begged to fill. It didn't take long for him to recognize his small mistake – it clumped in his mouth, caught at the awful edges that raked with seasalt – and he quickly dumped the rest of the satchel, littering the ground with all manner of what he assumed were more corpse belongings – parchments, gold coins, silver lacings, rusted trinkets... and yanked from their mess a small bladder of water that he drowned down gulp for gulp. The boy stood gaping in awe and mortification, his shoulders dropped in defeat as he observed the right mess that was made of his wasted goods. Erasmus threw the empty bladder back at the kid's hooves and took a deep breath, finally clear and arguably the most relieving drag of fresh air he had ever taken. “Well you just had to, didn't you-” the boy muttered, almost weepy, gathering the useless things back into the sack and yammering what else he thought beneath his breath – nothing he dared loud enough for this heathen bred of a jackal to hear. Erasmus couldn't have cared less. As the boy gathered the bulk of his goods, sputtering and stammering over his tongue in who knows what language he blubbered, Ras dashed half the goods back to the ground to reclaim attention – and was rewarded with such, a wetted and derisive eye that went vacant in the realization that he was captive to something much more foreboding than a dead man.
“Now, tell me... where am I?"
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Dusk began to lay heavily upon the bazaar outside the gates – vast night, purpled and bruised on the western set of distant shores, the castle dimly lit in its silhouette. He marveled for some time just outside, watching the curtains flutter from the broad windows, caught in a northern wind that whipped them violently before letting them drift to the sills. Candlelight flickered within, music drifting eerily between the gales. The scatter of papers catch his ear and eye, snatching parchment as it flies past him like a hellish bat. He uncrumpled it, its corners whipping wildly in the wind before it died down. A Warning to the Court, he read – its penmanship regal, a deep and beautiful red, stained frantic and dirtied with the dust it collected as it tumbled through the markets. Skimming through, he focused on the writings while the markets bustled behind him, merchants drawing to their vendors to set up for the night. He honed in on the words, though felt lost in them for a while, his moralities finding it hard to empathize with the fear of a villain. He is after all, a cold being despite his warm ambiance, all smoke and mirrors and sharp edges beneath the wealth of glistening gold. A dragon, gluttonous and cruel, all consumed in self worth and ambition for the finest luxuries in life. Those luxuries however found themselves well in the clutch of war and infamy; and the word of villain scrawled fearfully across the paper appealed to his sense of chaos.
As his eyes rose back to the castle, the parchment crumpled once more and rolled from the grasp of his mind, tumbling back through the wilds beyond. He saw them now – posters that fluttered idly in the breeze, tacked here and there in suffered array. Curious. Drawing forward, his gold-laden hooves clicked against the rich pavement and he rose to the cobblestone pathway to the gates, held in the study of two guards. They tensed as he arrived in their audience, and he felt he could not blame their regard – he was disheveled, much more than those earthly merchants in the streets, depraved of a good meal, a good bed, and perhaps even a good mind. Despite this, he allowed an amiable grin to cross his features. King deceit, fangs tucked softly in the nestle of his lips, he quite resembled a quaint businessman in his vigor, an arms dealer immersed in the charismatic throes of devilish youth.
“State your business.” One broke the silence between them, a stern woman of stone whose lips churned sour with a skeptic glare. Perhaps his charms weren't well enough practiced for the might of shieldwomen, a young wolf who had no desire to shoulder the weight of sheepskin. “An audience with your Sovereign." "What for?" his brow twitched at the sudden engagement, but he persevered. “My services." The guard beside her grumbled what may have been a laugh, may have been a cough - "What services?" Their abrasiveness and reluctance caught him off guard, but he hardly wavered more than a few seconds of irritation. “That's to be decided with your Sovereign." "Well that's not answer a'tall now is it?" Erasmus knit his brow now, vexxed with the level of resistance he found so unlike what the colt had relayed to him. An open court, he yammered, Diverse, accepting - that is, that's what Isra wanted! He stared through the gates, watching shadows shift through the doorway. “I have..." he trailed, his mind drifting back to the posters that littered the yard. The male guard leaned forward, brow raised. “... information on Raum, the Crow." Quiet between them. And then, "Oh do you, now? I'm sure you wouldn't mind sharing that information would ye? We're awfully curious." Caught. Erasmus felt himself slip through the floor a bit, but dared not falter in his expression. It was a voice that shot from behind the gates then that met him with softer lull, a woman with fine features. "Quit bothering him and let him in, already. He's half dead, by the looks of it." The guards stopped to behold the meek thing, turned an accusatory glance to the bristling youth before them, and yielded the demand.
Erasmus followed the young girl through the gates, through the doorway of the castle, hardly hearing a word she spoke as he admired the beautiful walls, the nightly decor - the feeling of calm that overwhelmed him with welcome unspoken. All but "yeah, yeah, no, aha," that met her idly while his mind trailed elsewhere and his eyes drank in the scenery. She left him there in the breezeway and promised a more formal welcome by someone else. He dismissed her with a nod, though only vaguely caught what she said. There he waited, his eyes drifting all through the breadth of the castle room, surveying all manner of luxury he had never witnessed before. And despite its regality, all the soft sweetness of a nightly empire, something itched under his skin. Something wrong, something too good, too pure, too soft.
His skin crawled.
It was morning when he was spat upon Denocte's shores. He raised his head slowly, almost collapsing with the small motion itself as his muscles suddenly remembered their plight, and observed that the sun had just begun to fall from its peak – and his skin crawled with the realization. Half drowned, near starved, and sunburnt all but to a fried semblance of what he once was, he forced his body to rise. It was almost futile the first few attempts; and once, he even fell back hard against the ground and considered resting his eyes just a bit more. But he had already wasted enough time and he doubted the patience of those hungry crows would compete with the savagery of a few famished vultures, if something worse hadn't seen him before then. Shrugging against a boulder, he weakly rose to his feet and struggled another seawater breath – choking more of it from his lungs like a bitter poison.
For a brief second he thought he had caught a glimpse of the cloaked woman again, observing from afar. The sun beat down upon the sands of the beach, lit a fire to the shores that blinded him as he blinked frantically to reclaim sight. Blurs, shadows, striking lights all fell away to dreamstate, humming with the drone of the sea. A hundred blinks more and shapes took form – rocks, seaweed, caverns... and a colt that regarded him with a tense shoulder, seeming ready to bolt at any moment the man chose to so much as twitch. It remained however, still as the stone around it, frozen and wide-eyed in panic, or wonder, or perhaps some pity? Erasmus leaned back against the boulder, catching his breath and closing his eyes as they grew sore with transition. When he opened them again the colt had moved further away, unless he had mistaken his original placement, though was just as still now as he was before. Some manner of irritation slipped in between his exhaustion, his brows knitting with solemn vexation. “what." he drawled venomously between gritted teeth, poised fang, eyes narrowed as the boy trembled beneath the burden of Erasmus's cruel, firm tone. A spindle of gold cobweb slipped from the colt's satchel, a golden crow skull plopping against the sand. The youth's eyes dropped in horror to the spilled stolen goods, then snapped back to the piercing gaze that beheld him like a cobra's heady glare.
The satchel clicked and struck the ground with the weight of a luggage bag, clinking with the sounds of a many valuables that scorned the foul play. Pearls rolled from the gaping rawhide, a pocket watch snapped open and ticked erratically. “I-I-I thought you were... well, dead, mister.” the colt stammered, unmoving, allowing the trinkets to settle in the sand. Erasmus shrugged off the helpful boulder and tripped forward, aching muscles snatching him from another heavy fall and groaning in each sore step. In a quick whip of the breeze his twine was unraveled from the pack, the rattle of bones and claws clattering in an array of chiding pandemonium as they wove between his hairs, knotted along his neck and tangled in his tail. “Who says I'm not?" He rasped as he bore his gaze into the boy's timid eyes, his voice a shadow of the whiskey slick baritone the lull of his voice often offered, choked out by the salt-burnt grit of his throat. Satisfied by the lack of movement the fear garnered, he dropped his sights to the contents of the satchel, eyeing a slice of bread wrapped in mammoth basil. This too he snatched, a sharp look shot to the boy has he made some small but curbed cry of disapproval.
He munched the dry slice of bread in shameless peace, though it hardly hit the spot his stomach begged to fill. It didn't take long for him to recognize his small mistake – it clumped in his mouth, caught at the awful edges that raked with seasalt – and he quickly dumped the rest of the satchel, littering the ground with all manner of what he assumed were more corpse belongings – parchments, gold coins, silver lacings, rusted trinkets... and yanked from their mess a small bladder of water that he drowned down gulp for gulp. The boy stood gaping in awe and mortification, his shoulders dropped in defeat as he observed the right mess that was made of his wasted goods. Erasmus threw the empty bladder back at the kid's hooves and took a deep breath, finally clear and arguably the most relieving drag of fresh air he had ever taken. “Well you just had to, didn't you-” the boy muttered, almost weepy, gathering the useless things back into the sack and yammering what else he thought beneath his breath – nothing he dared loud enough for this heathen bred of a jackal to hear. Erasmus couldn't have cared less. As the boy gathered the bulk of his goods, sputtering and stammering over his tongue in who knows what language he blubbered, Ras dashed half the goods back to the ground to reclaim attention – and was rewarded with such, a wetted and derisive eye that went vacant in the realization that he was captive to something much more foreboding than a dead man.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dusk began to lay heavily upon the bazaar outside the gates – vast night, purpled and bruised on the western set of distant shores, the castle dimly lit in its silhouette. He marveled for some time just outside, watching the curtains flutter from the broad windows, caught in a northern wind that whipped them violently before letting them drift to the sills. Candlelight flickered within, music drifting eerily between the gales. The scatter of papers catch his ear and eye, snatching parchment as it flies past him like a hellish bat. He uncrumpled it, its corners whipping wildly in the wind before it died down. A Warning to the Court, he read – its penmanship regal, a deep and beautiful red, stained frantic and dirtied with the dust it collected as it tumbled through the markets. Skimming through, he focused on the writings while the markets bustled behind him, merchants drawing to their vendors to set up for the night. He honed in on the words, though felt lost in them for a while, his moralities finding it hard to empathize with the fear of a villain. He is after all, a cold being despite his warm ambiance, all smoke and mirrors and sharp edges beneath the wealth of glistening gold. A dragon, gluttonous and cruel, all consumed in self worth and ambition for the finest luxuries in life. Those luxuries however found themselves well in the clutch of war and infamy; and the word of villain scrawled fearfully across the paper appealed to his sense of chaos.
As his eyes rose back to the castle, the parchment crumpled once more and rolled from the grasp of his mind, tumbling back through the wilds beyond. He saw them now – posters that fluttered idly in the breeze, tacked here and there in suffered array. Curious. Drawing forward, his gold-laden hooves clicked against the rich pavement and he rose to the cobblestone pathway to the gates, held in the study of two guards. They tensed as he arrived in their audience, and he felt he could not blame their regard – he was disheveled, much more than those earthly merchants in the streets, depraved of a good meal, a good bed, and perhaps even a good mind. Despite this, he allowed an amiable grin to cross his features. King deceit, fangs tucked softly in the nestle of his lips, he quite resembled a quaint businessman in his vigor, an arms dealer immersed in the charismatic throes of devilish youth.
“State your business.” One broke the silence between them, a stern woman of stone whose lips churned sour with a skeptic glare. Perhaps his charms weren't well enough practiced for the might of shieldwomen, a young wolf who had no desire to shoulder the weight of sheepskin. “An audience with your Sovereign." "What for?" his brow twitched at the sudden engagement, but he persevered. “My services." The guard beside her grumbled what may have been a laugh, may have been a cough - "What services?" Their abrasiveness and reluctance caught him off guard, but he hardly wavered more than a few seconds of irritation. “That's to be decided with your Sovereign." "Well that's not answer a'tall now is it?" Erasmus knit his brow now, vexxed with the level of resistance he found so unlike what the colt had relayed to him. An open court, he yammered, Diverse, accepting - that is, that's what Isra wanted! He stared through the gates, watching shadows shift through the doorway. “I have..." he trailed, his mind drifting back to the posters that littered the yard. The male guard leaned forward, brow raised. “... information on Raum, the Crow." Quiet between them. And then, "Oh do you, now? I'm sure you wouldn't mind sharing that information would ye? We're awfully curious." Caught. Erasmus felt himself slip through the floor a bit, but dared not falter in his expression. It was a voice that shot from behind the gates then that met him with softer lull, a woman with fine features. "Quit bothering him and let him in, already. He's half dead, by the looks of it." The guards stopped to behold the meek thing, turned an accusatory glance to the bristling youth before them, and yielded the demand.
Erasmus followed the young girl through the gates, through the doorway of the castle, hardly hearing a word she spoke as he admired the beautiful walls, the nightly decor - the feeling of calm that overwhelmed him with welcome unspoken. All but "yeah, yeah, no, aha," that met her idly while his mind trailed elsewhere and his eyes drank in the scenery. She left him there in the breezeway and promised a more formal welcome by someone else. He dismissed her with a nod, though only vaguely caught what she said. There he waited, his eyes drifting all through the breadth of the castle room, surveying all manner of luxury he had never witnessed before. And despite its regality, all the soft sweetness of a nightly empire, something itched under his skin. Something wrong, something too good, too pure, too soft.
His skin crawled.
@Isra
(Takes place after Raum's attack on Isra, before her capture. And no, he doesn't really know anything about anyone.)
