[P] when we all fall asleep

[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.

 

The doorway yawns above him, its maw black, its wooden lips limned in moonlight. He watches as Caine gazes at the papers. Did Raum possess any more secrets than the horror already being enacted upon Solterra’s dusty streets? And even if he did, was Raum enough of a fool to leave them exposed upon the table?
 
Eventually Caine moves and Raum’s eyes (that glow like blue torches in the doorway) follow him. The Denoctian turns and he turns and then he stops. Caine’s silver eyes meet the blue of an ocean – he becomes an iceburg upon the water. Caine is fire and ice but Raum is the lethal spark of electricity and he will never fail to wield that ice and fire to his advantage.
 
No surprise glimmers in Caine’s gaze yet Raum’s sharpens like a blade in its absence. Each touch of his watching is a pinprick of electricity. Static fizzles beneath his skin, it burns like water through the electric of his nerves.
 
You are punctual… it has made it easy to track you. Though he does not smile, though he does not laugh, his eyes gleam. Bright, bright, bright, cold like a blade pressed to the throat. His gaze mocks, gently, subtly. He watches realization dawn and wash across Caine’s face. It passes in the blink of an eye and Caine stays behind Raum’s desk. He hangs like a shadow there, a reaper – oh, is he here to bring death upon the Solterran king?
 
Raum does not stir from where he stands, languid, in the doorway. He listens as Caine speaks of a plot to kill him. But Raum knows this, it is why he changes his skin like a chameleons and wanders whilst doppelgangers roam in his place. Yet this night, he is no doppelganger, he wears no skin but his own, he stands with no guards here to protect him. Oh, it is just he and Caine and who might come out of this victorious?
 
“I could not agree with your noble more.” He says at last and moves pouring like quicksilver from that gaping black maw. “Drink?” He asks softly, as if Caine’s threat of death was something unremarkable. He fills a crystal glass with whiskey and slides it across the table. It gleams darkly golden in the light, amber and rich. Never has a drop of alcohol passed Raum’s lips – Caine would know and so there is no surprise when the Villain king does not pour a second. “It is not poisoned.”
 
He does not move from the drinks cabinet, but regards Caine from where the moonlight streams in the window. Papers glow like slabs of marble and Raum muses softly, “So, Caine, are you here to kill me, or have you found enough to satisfy your curiosity?”

---

@Caine