Even as the minutes ebb away like the blood and drink flowing tonight, Helios’ veins still sing with adrenalin, his heart still beating in time to the thud of hooves and shouts of bloodlust. The darkness in him, that aggression and rage collared by the silver around his neck, is ever insatiable even as the energy flows like the minutes from his body. He did not relax, could not relax when the bellows and cries that filled the tunnels were like the screams of war, the sound of hooves pounding the earth like a celebration of victory. The Black Sun was a creature of battle, of war, a slave of a bygone era left to find his place in this land of peace. He could not, and so he turned to places like this, an escape from the monotony of guard duty and a release for the pent up anger.
The winged woman is wild fire and lightning, gleaming like some holy warrior as she approaches. The crowds part subconsciously as though sensing a predator in their midst, flowing around her with eyes fixed on the blood-stained ring. To be that glorious, as though it were Solis himself had fashioned her from the burning depths of the sun. Ah how Helios founds himself envying her. Were it not for the collar around his neck, the cold seriousness about him as though he were an eclipse against the sun, he might have been as magnificent as she. But he was not. He was trapped within the collar encircling his throat, remaining there by his choice, to remind him that he served Solterra and its God.
Her voice cuts through the crowds as easily as her body, smooth and tempered like a sword beneath a smith’s hammer. When her face nears his neck the steed stills, his chest rising and falling the only interruption into his stillness. Very few dared get that close to him- not out of fear for what he’d do but out of fear for what his collar represented.
Winning- victory- it was nothing more than a routine to him now. He was alive because he’d never lost a fight. Not when Viceroy had trained and tortured him. Not when Zolin had sent him, and many others, out like toy soldiers into a field of battle. Not when the boy-king’s reign had fallen and a new Solterra had risen with Seraphina’s silver steel. And not when his home had fallen to the raven-king Raum and then risen with the golden-lion Orestes. No, victory had lost its sweet nectar when the need for it was beaten into him as soon as he could walk. “Thank you,” he nevertheless offers with a dip of his head.
Helios pulls his own wings in as she moves closer, a flurry of feathers and then they are gone as though he were little more than common horse, not a Pegasus gifted with flight. The ache does not stop though- he can feel the weight of them at his tired shoulders, feel the snapped feather where his opponent had grabbed one between his teeth.
He downs the drink easily, the burn not an unpleasant feeling. His gaze is stoic, if not a little bright with the grim pleasure of battle, his eyes like embers burning out. “I would guess you are fighting tonight?”
@Amaunet <3
