we must always be willing to be
more savage than angels
Sereia, is your monster awakening? Languid as a great and terrible cat, armed with teeth and claws? So, too, is Vercingtorix.
So, too, does the beast within him stretch as if in preparation of exercise; an imperceptible tightening of his muscles, of his mental acuity. As they speak of tigers, there is something unspoken between them:
The hunter must always be more savage the hunted.
The hunter must possess no mercy, no hesitation. The hunter only trumps the hunted on a basis of skill. Vercingtorix does not know yet what he is hunting; but the suspicion is there, blossoming in the same slow, methodic way that flowers do.
He feels more awake, more alive, than he has any other time in Novus.
He feels younger, more vibrant, as if the world is now shaded in a thousand colours and before everything had been black, and grey, and white.
I might like to be a tiger,” Sereia confesses. Vercingtorix smiles a polite, somewhat amused smile. He is looking into her eyes, and the beauty of them is striking; there is nothing soft about her, he decides in that moment. Nothing demure, or gentle, or smoothed. Her eyes are too bright. The weight they carry too heavy, no matter how delicately it may land. He agrees however, when he says: “It would certainly make life a little simpler.”
I guess the truth is that I would banish them all, if I could. I just love some too much… Love changes things. The words sound secretive, shared in confession. He stores it away as he builds, deliberately, a collection of knowledge on her. She has not outright confessed to being a kelpie; but she holds some intimate knowledge of them.
But, Vercingtorix had learned in Inebu-Hedij he must always confirm beyond a shadow of the doubt. He had gutted a dock-boy like a fish one night, under the assumption he had been a water-horse.
That blood still stains him, he thinks, more darkly than the rest.
So Vercingtorix bides his time. He bides his time and tries not to allow her sensitive confession, the way it is shared with a certain gravity… he tries not to allow her to soften him. But before he can help himself, he confesses in the same tone: “The man I loved more than any other was killed by a water horse.”
It is true, and it is a lie.
Perhaps that is why he can say it; a half-truth. Vercingtorix closes his eyes and tries not to think of a flanked side; the mischievous flick of a leonine tail against his cheek; running, and running, and running, and eyes bright as rubies.
But they are before his favourite statue.
Vercingtorix is wondering if he has shared too much; opened too fully.
It is beautiful.
That word.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Vercingtorix doesn’t see beauty, not here, not in this. He sees duty; obligation; the weight of Atlas.
He sees: a youth gone by, in service.
He sees: immortalisation, eternity, a hero, a hero, a hero.
There is no such thing.
Vercingtorix turns to measure her with his eyes; and as she had held him delicately in her gaze, he holds her delicately now. There is a softening to his face; something almost like vulnerability.
“Because,” he says at last. “This statue bears an expression of sadness. The other one didn’t. It seemed proud.”
He pauses. It is a difficult thing to articulate.
“But,” he says. “Perhaps that is for what you said; it was wicked. Perhaps they’re both honest, in their own ways.”
He pauses for a long time, then, simply assessing her. Vercingtorix knows he has held her gaze longer than is polite; then is acceptable. But he almost wonders if she will glance away. “Honesty is… all we have.” The truth. The power in it.
The lie, gilded there.
Vercingtorix believes it.
It doesn’t mean, however, he lives by it. He knows now—in his own mind, more than any other man—that he has nothing left.
The monster in Torix does not have teeth and claws.
The monster in Torix is void as a black hole, as encompassing as an abyss. The monster in Torix is hunger without base, without substance; hunger that burns and runs and tears, fathomless as a wendigo's desire. Insatiable.
"Speech." || @
rip up their flesh and reveal them to be nothing but the dreamy, worldess haze of lavender and godhood with your virtue shredding teeth. do not weep when their wings thrash. do not be surprised when there are nothing but ghosts in their heart.
