like fishhooks; an old kind of hunger
Violence is the only poetry Vercingtorix knows.
He watches as it is written upon the sands of the arena in arcane splatters of blood. It is the oldest language in all the worlds, no matter how civilised. It is the only thing he can trust to admire.
Violence is the only honesty Vercingtorix knows. The only truth; fundamental; primordial. The soldiers that circle one another in the pit are no different than the wolves that have encircled the deer for eons; the serpent the bird; the lion the buffalo. There are similarities, Torix thinks, to men; but the difference is these soldiers do not fight to reenact some ancient dance between predator and prey, life and death, the beginning and the end.
No.
Men do it to feel like God.
Yet, Torix scorns them; there is no nobility in fighting for a crowd, for appearances. The only fight that matters is consequential.
No one gives a shit if you’re gutted in an alley, or a competition you signed up for.
Ignoble.
Base.
He sneers, and might have left the tournament altogether, except something catches his eye.
It is not the man, at first, who for Novus standards appear quite ordinary.
It is the gravity with which he holds the dagger, beneath the surface of the crowd. First, it looks like a toy; wooden; slight. Then it transforms; it grows vines and thorns, and petals the colour of the carnage blooming flower-like below.
(He only sees because his entire life has been this
his entire life, yes,
searching for weapons, for blades, for death-makers beneath the surface of the crowd, the throng, the herd).
Torix smiles.
It is not a kind smile.
(It never is.)
He parts the crowd easily. He looks like he belongs in the arena, not the audience. He almost looks Solterran.
He is not, and this is evident in the way he smells of everything but Solterran. Brine, and sodden wood, upturned dirt, copper. His walk is not a saunter but direct, intentional.
Torix says, “Are you here to fight?” and gestures at the magic blade. He distrusts it; the petals; the thorns. It is unlike anything he has ever seen. Yet, it fascinates him. Yet, there is a part of him that wishes to touch it, to understand.
(Oh, Vercingtorix, you learned long ago you will never understand anything outside you own world.)
Below them, the men engage in a tangle of grit, rage, blood. The dance is inelegant, to him. The dance is all posture and plume; two birds of paradise with nothing save their vanity.
Torix’s disapproval is clear in his expression.
But so, too, is the way it makes his blood sing.
