[P] this black terror and turmoil

[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.

 

She walks toward his monster and oh how Legion bristles. Lower and lower his head drifts for even blindfolded, he knows what fallen gods sound like. Around him is still ash, still the stone of a thousand animals he has turned to stonedust. His belly is full of bones that taste of nothing but stone and earth.
 
His stomach is the ocean that turns stone smooth as pebbles. She touches his wing, as soft as satin, yet the basilisk reacts as if worlds were colliding. Raum wonders of the sound of grinding stone, of earth crumpling into earth and ripples of energy running out, out, out in a great tsunami of death.
 
Legions maw is parted, his beak gleams black as the places of Eshek the light cannot touch. He is the black to her light and oh how his nape twists. The monster coils like a serpent and strikes, the point of his beak, sharp as a scythe, reaching out to cut the soft of her muzzle.
 
Oh it is only dark behind the monster’s blindfold, yet already he wonders if he might see the glow of Eshek’s blood runing white, or if pestilence will spill from her open veins and infect like a plague of locusts, spilling out in their multitudes and scattering to hide. His master believes it might be all three and still Raum does not tremble.
 
She talks of eating, of filling her stomach full of basilisk bones and venom. Raum does not blink, not even when he sees her swallowing his monster. No basilisk would ever be enough, within Eshek is a universe that starves for all eternity.
 
Solterra’s king, mortal, fragile, fallible before this girl of gods and monsters, settles back. A hind leg rests and he watches her as if she were a just another peddler amidst a sea of them: nondescript, plain, unremarkable… Yet he knows her, she knows her yawn would swallow him whole, already he hears the cracking of Legion’s bones, already he knows how his beast’s heart is racing. Ah, Legion can feel the creep of death breathing fetid and keen upon his scaled flesh. Yet Legion is no rabbit to tremble before the lights of Eshek’s eyes. He is no beast to lie down like a lamb and spill his blood upon her altar. Legion screams at Eshek, he splits the night and though he screams at the goddess, Raum knows the fury is for him…
 
He would indeed feed his monster to this god-girl if she might be of better service to him.
 
“Do you think you could eat him before he turns you to stone?” The silver king asks, soft as moonlight, dangerous as darkness. His eyes are trailing this girl, marking every dip and press of her flesh, where it stretches to cover her godhood, making her mortal. But oh mortality stretches, oh it is thin, thin skin pulled too tight over bony divinity.
 
“You would make a beautiful statue.” And it might be a joke, were his lips not the lines of daggers, if they did not have a Ghosts’s blood haunting their black, black grimace.
 
Slowly he steps toward her, with eyes full of pestilence and light. There is no part of his gaze that is not filled with her. “And if you managed to eat him before he turns your insides into rock, what then might you think to devour. This land is full only of little things – what are ants to a creature that preys upon dragons?”
 
And oh Raum is close, close feeling her teeth, blunt as bones, upon his skin. Here her light is heat, scolding, burning, consuming his skin, his soul. Is she worth the ash he would become?

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@Eshek, ah that was fun to write <3