it is a strange thing to nourish what could kill you
in the hopes it does not kill you
in the hopes it does not kill you
A
ghavni watches the glamour roll across the girl’s skin like storm-summoned tides, breaking and foaming in a miasma of sun-bright gold and churning black. Watches as she regards the splendor of the Den with a scathing eye, equal parts entranced and repulsed. Like she knows, inexplicably, that beauty lures men to their deaths.“Thank you.” There is no mouth that moves when the girl’s voice comes. It simply drifts from her shape like one of Vikander’s protection spells, invisible save for a telltale bending of the air as it wanders past, sniffing for tells of trouble.
“You run this place?”
Aghavni’s posture, watchful and prowling, melts into a sway of practiced languor as she pushes herself off the massive gilded vase she had been leaning against – one of several scattered throughout the foyer like urns – and into the flickering light cast by the sea of enchanted candles.
She is almost a hand shorter than the glamoured girl when she steps up to her, and the realization digs into her skin like thorns. When she had been younger, she had always threatened August after every sparring match (that left more than just her skin bruised) that when she grew taller than him – a when, never an if – she’d never lose to him again.
When her prophecy had failed to come true, she’d had to settle for beating him with pure wit and a princess’ steel-tempered pride.
“Well, I certainly keep it running,” she answers with a shrug. Vaguely she thinks of the monstrous stack of paperwork piled in her father’s office at the very top of the Towers – her office, in his absence – and swallows the sigh building in her chest. When she had demanded Charon to relinquish her more authority, she had not expected it to arrive in the form of paper.
“Follow me,” she almost says, the phrase more frequently uttered than ‘hello’ – before she turns to appraise the girl with an arched brow. “It is no use to glamour yourself any further. Warlocks have spelled every inch of this establishment – your magic has already started to fade, and before we cross this hallway it will be stripped away entirely.”
She lets her gaze run down the entire length of her, purposely imposing, before it catches at the gleam of a weapon tucked neatly at her waist.
Green eyes widen the moment the throwing ax is spotted, like a maiden’s might at a bouquet of perfumed roses. Aghavni has never seen a hurlbat in the steel, not even in the Scarab’s impressive armory.
She tears her gaze away from the hurlbat before the urge to take it roots deep inside her, like an unscratchable itch.
She never takes things from first-time patrons, not until night creeps into dawn and the stragglers stumble towards the exit, wine-drunk and giddy, the promise of visiting again – soon – sealed into their blurring eyes. It is easy, then. Too easy.
But the idea of stealing a weapon from its welder feels wrong, like separating a babe from its mother. So she plays the scene through her mind, letting the devastation of the mother suffocate her, until her urge to take is snuffed out like a candle flame.
“We normally don’t allow weapons, either – but I shall make an exception for you if you promise to keep it away from the limbs of our patrons, no matter how tempting the thought might be.” With a sly smile, Aghavni twirls on her heels and heads towards the familiar din of the Floor.
“Come along. I’ll show you what we have to offer.”
@Apolonia | "speaks" | notes: ;D
