[AW] ager romanus

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the 
fire in our hearts tonight

The sight of the Ager in ruins stirs something primal and visceral in her breast, something close to choking, and she can’t help but wonder what it might have looked like in its prime, when the Halcyon still operated from the island and Prudence sat in her place of honor. Around them, the jungle is hauntingly empty except for their quiet footsteps, the soft scuffle of hooves against sand, and it sets her nerves on edge enough that when Senna’s wing extends against her chest, she very nearly calls down a bolt of lightning on him out of misguided reflex.

(She manages to just barely redirect the bolt into the nearby foliage, leaving a scorch mark that she hopes Seneca’s sudden appearance will mask -- and if asked, she’ll vehemently deny she was so easily startled.)

And of course, the ghost comes armed with more riddles that make her head ache as she tries to puzzle her way through them, her pale eyes narrowing and meeting Seneca’s verdant green with a grimace. Perhaps it is for the best she had decided to pair up with Senna, she thinks -- at least he seemed to grasp what the shadow was asking of them.

Uselessness has never been a good look on her, has never sat well on a woman who needed to solve every problem that confronted her, who had always been able to fix things with brute force or common sense. Riddles required neither of these things, however -- they required logic, and an education far beyond the one she had pieced together over the years from scraps of knowledge shared with her.

They make her teeth itch, truth be told, and she finds herself wondering what might if she were to simply extend her magic and zap the ghost out of their way, if they might be able to find Prudence that way. She has a feeling, however, that Seneca would not take kindly to a sudden bolt of lightning, no matter how tempting the thought may be -- so she grits her teeth against that infernal, damning itch and watches the way Senna uses a stick to scribble down a series of symbols in a patch of undisturbed dirt nearby.

They seem to make sense to him, at least, because he poses the first question to the trio, and she watches between them as a spectator, curious to see where this line of logic might lead them, if it will lead them on the path to Prudence or if it will prove the ruin of them all.

She finds herself waiting with baited breath, eyes pivoting between a trio of ghosts and the lord of Solterra, and she wonders when she had begun to feel a quiet sort of admiration for the winged man.

credits

@Senna @redandblack this si awful im sorry