Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Beyond them the darkness is immaculate, almost holy, almost grotesque. It's thicker somehow where his electric hum and her rot touch, where they both thicken the darkness and devour it. Perhaps if there wasn't this rage in her, this fury, this retribution without a head to hang, she would have stepped away into the beauty of it. But her bones feel molten, white and thick as blood, beneath the live-wire itch of her skin.
Somewhere there are still poachers on the outskirts of her forest, with their knives and their snares and their thoughts of superiority. And here is the Warden squaring his shoulders and flaring his wings like a the hilt of a blade being touched for the first time. Something in Thana answers back, to the poachers and their mortal bodies and the Warden with his wings that will not be fast enough to save him.
The forest quivers. Leave start to fall around them as the trees bow above her, their branches gone soft with terminates and rot. The ground turns to swamp that clings to their hooves and turns the air metallic with sulfur. Death knocks, in the silence, it knocks once against that immaculate, almost holy, almost grotesque, darkness.
And then it opens the door.
Thana steps closer-- closer and closer until she can feel the hum of his electric wrath that seems such a tiny thing to all the conquering rage roaring in her skin. He has never looked as mortal as he does now, flaring his wings against a creature with the soul purpose of unmaking this plane of existence. She is not smiling at him now. Her expression has darkened, broken itself down to the teeth behind her lips, the tilt of her horn arced towards him rather than away, the curl of her tail-blade rising up over her hip like a snake half awake.
“For what reason?” The expression on her face, the suggestion of desecration, does not waiver despite the softness of her voice. It's the only way she can tell him to move away, to coil his mortal wings and his mortal magic back to his side and fade into the darkness beyond him. It's all nothing more than a whisper, the hope, such a small thing compared to that please still echoing between her and Eligos.
And but for the lowering of her horn, the whisper of it in the air and the sulfur sting on her tongue, Thana does not move while she waits for permission to unmake him. At least, later, she'll be able to tell Ipomoea that she had not been the first to strike.
But she will be the last.
