CURSED BE THE HEART WHICH QUAKES WITHIN THE BREAST
He didn’t know why he’d come. There was a burning in him, a pull - a guiding hand pushing him through the streets of Solterra.
Oh, gods.
Raum, silver and terrible, stood over a black mass of blood and shit and feathers, so mangled that Toro didn’t recognize him right away, but, gods, that he recognized Caine at all was a stake in his heart. There was a brief and shivering moment where it did not matter that Caine was a pegasus, it only mattered that he Was (Is) and that Toro knew him as Being and that was enough to be an awful, awful thing.
And then there was the bull. Toro should’ve seen him first, but he didn’t. Behind the shining king he loomed like the shadow-self, not a true shadow, no, but the inner dark, the fear, the violence, the Truth that the conscious self beat back every day in the hope of maintaining Order.
Raum spoke many words but only some of them mattered. Caine would live, but -“The punishment I have deemed for this convict is to have his wings removed!”
El Toro shivered. He thought of having his horns cut away, his legs snapped like tree branches, his eyes gouged -
”Long live Seraphina!” The great black beast rises up and the white stallion cannot think of the sound breaking wings on thousand-pound hooves makes but it feels like throwing a wind chime against a gravestone. Blood sprays the pristine marble. Hajduk growls. We could stop him, he says, but Toro shakes his head. The sight of the black bull holds his heart like an iron fist. The arching nose, the broad shoulders, the bovine horns; it all rings familiar, so familiar. It is not right.
There is strange poetry in the
The thought of it only makes his heart race faster, his veins pumping, pumping so much blood and fear beneath his pale flesh and a harsh wind whips at him so fiercely he wonders if it has come to finally bring tears, but there is a girl running and Hajduk says Look and Toro does.
Elif.
An accursed reunion if ever there was one.
She begs something of the black beast but Toro does not hear her, he only hears the words of his blood.
”Have I?” El Rey considers the scarlet blade.
But then Toro is there, charging up the red and white steps, Hajduk beside, and there must have been some war cry tearing through his lungs but he thinks, Help her and Hajduk falls back to the girl who would beg at an executioner’s feet, carrying Caine if she requires it, prepared to fight off those who would stop her.
El Rey rears back but the axe is wrestled from him with a marble horn, glinting and decorated. Toro snaps fiercely with his teeth, his hooves clattering against the platform as he positions himself between El Rey and Elif. ”Stay back, beast,” he snarls. ”She is not meant for your block.”
@Elif @Caine
"What I say,"
What I think,
What Hajduk thinks,
