[P] o sinnerman;

[Raum]

 
You smell awful, and you don’t look much better.
 
Through the red, red dust clinging to his silver lips, Raum’s smile is as sharp as a bloody knife. The smile is gone in the blink of an eye, little more than a glint of steel beneath the sun.
 
The Crow’s gaze is the tide washing in from the sea, sweeping from Calligo’s altar back to Denocte’s Magician. Here, Raum can not only feel the touch of Acton’s sparking gaze, but see the scrutinizing trail it makes across his silver skin. He does not ask what his brother Crow sees there, he does not care.
 
Where Raum’s gaze is the deep and restless sea, Acton is the immovable rock within its depths. “No.” The Ghost agrees, studying the brazen orange of Acton’s skin – there was never any hiding this flamboyant magician. He was unstable fire; the spark that would set a forest blazing and they would be lucky to ever put it out. “No,” Raum repeats, “You would be chained up in the desert awaiting your fate as fodder for the desert scavengers.”
 
With every word he had poured silver-slick toward Acton. Where Acton lures with his bright, bright colour, so Raum slips into darkness, unseen, unheard. He is impassive silver, a mirage upon the eyes. The Ghost’s murders are silent, swift affairs. But Acton… he impresses and confounds with every life he takes. The Magician leaves his every witness to even question whether a murder had ever taken place. Surely it was not intentional? Just a terrible, unfortunate accident… Are the whispers Raum would hear spectators wonder.
 
“Then again,” The silver Crow murmurs as he reaches Acton, his voice lowering to a whisper that holds itself in the small space between them. “You are the only one with enough balls to murder in front of an audience and play it off as unfortunate magic...” Raum pauses, thoughtful, considering, his lips curling into a smile as sharp as the knife it had once been. Blood dust falls like a cloud from his silver-scythe lips, “Do you think you could fool Maxence with your murderous magic?” His smile is the dagger he misses from about his throat. It is a promise of danger, but only that. The quicksilver assassin is, for now, just a shadow of what he should be. The Ghost is gelded with the loss of his scarf and his knife.
 
“I trust you are keeping my effects safe?” Those blue eyes glitter, the sparking of the sun upon the crest of a tsunami. He would trust only the Magician to safely magic away his most prized possessions.
 
Raum’s gaze turns impassive as his fellow Crow speaks of sackcloth and ashes, of girls weeping in the streets with the loss of Denocte’s Ghost. “I am sure you mistake tears of sadness with tears of joy. At least with my loss there are now fewer dead bodies to litter the cobbled streets.” The assassin’s smile and as hard as granite as he murmurs gently, “Maybe you should console them more, Reich cannot comfort them all.”
 
As hot and red as the desert he left, Raum finally steps away from his Crow brother. His thoughts return to Solterra, “Maxence has recently tried to steal a youth from the Dawn Court. It seems he seeks no alliances beyond Rannveig in Dusk…” He pours like liquid towards the edge of the cliff, each step as silent as a ghost – the moon frames him so. His eyes drift north, north towards the desert, north towards that too hot sun and its viperous brood of serpents with their weapons of teeth and poison.


@Acton it has been an age. i am so sorry my lovely <3 <3