Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Andras is standing in a dangerous place.
Nothing that wants to live stands so calmly before the tip of a unicorn's horn. And nothing, monster or mortal, steps into that void (her void, her blackness, her violence), and smiles like she's more horse than beast, more tame than unicorn. And yet, here he is, her Warden with his sparks begging to burn down her forest.
Thana smiles at him and it's not a gentle look. It's another blade, another hungry row of bone begging for blood and flesh. Perhaps there should be compassion in the way she looks at him in this forest full of dead things and more bones, and drops of blood, than leaves. Perhaps there should be something that does not look so much like the way she looked at their regent once.
Perhaps there should not be so much hunger in the way her eyes trace the sparks running across his skin. But deep inside her, the thing made looks at his electric shine and says mine.
.
She steps closer. That dangerous void that he's standing in starts to shrink and wither. The darkness beyond him presses in too. It grows scales, and fur, and star-bright teeth, as it steps into the smoldering glow of the warden's rage. And when it growls, a sound more furious comet falling into the atmosphere than predator, Thana's look of hunger only deepens.
“Oh,” She says it like a sigh, like contentment, like a belly full of gore. Eligos's growl sounds like a hum now, like Andras and his electric roar is not the only thing here that knows how to silence the birds and the mice. The moon slices through the canopy. It's still feels molten to her, silver ore instead of stardust, blades instead of moon-flowers. It still feels like fire.
So many things are begging to burn tonight. So many things.
The hunger in her look does not fade. It never fades now, not with the bone forest reaching out around her like teeth biting into the flesh of the night. “Have you come looking for us?” Us. She says. Us. Like it's not a threat, like the violence behind him is a thing instead of a prediction of war, and wrath, and a million cold, sodden deaths.
Please. Eligos asks her the only way monsters ask, all demand instead of begging.
Thana doesn't answer him or look beyond Andras at her violence (tethered to her by mercy). She doesn't do anything but look at the Warden with that look upon her face and her words, her belly full of gore, dissolving into all the humming around them.
The night inhales. Around the electric hum and the hunger hum, it inhales.
