T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
His blade presses to the soft of her throat, forming and dispersing in shadows. When formed it feels the throb of her heart. It is slow and as steady as her eyes that watch him. He wonders what it would take to make her heart race, but she has already affirmed herself a warrior queen and they are not so easy to break.
All of the darkness hums with the song of her blood. It pulses and his face tips up, his eyes peeling themselves slowly from hers to watch how the shadows hum. There is a smile upon his lips as he drinks in the way they ominously fall in tune with the girl beside him. His smile is a door, locked tight against the secrets it hides, Boudika may look and look upon the up-turn of those raven wing lips. They may wonder whether that smile is dangerous or delighted - maybe even both. Most likely both.
His head still tilts as the moon does within her sky, but his gaze tumbles like moonlight back to hers. He seizes her stare, binds it in threads over shadow and feels how the sunset glow of her burns at its edges. His darkness frays before her and on point, Boudika’s trident touches the blade Tenebrae holds. It sounds like china, it sounds like stars colliding in the deepest night. The darkness shivers at the touch and oh how boldly she challenges him. No longer does he know whether his gaze holds hers or hers holds his.
There is a moment of resistance: a moment where that ethereal note clings to existence in their ebony void. There is the press of shadow upon metal, the grate of blade upon blade and then, the shadows disperse and her trident drifts through black. Tenebrae’s eyes have left her, they now watch the arc of her trident with a feral gleam in his eye.
Tenebrae’s eyes return to the scolding heat of hers, red as lava, for the Night Order are always attracted to bright creatures such as she. Always do they yearn for the creatures of the sun that they can swallow. Always do they seek to consume the light of others. They stand close, together shrouded in darkness, together illuminated only by the gleam of his sigils and the way their light dances like beads along her trident and glittering in her eyes.
She is smoke and violence. She is a girl with an invisible crown. She is more than a Denocte Champion. She moves, pressing through his darkness as if she were swimming. The shadows swirl feline about her limbs as she weaves. He feels her every presence, his skull tilting to follow her, his eyes illuminating her way.
She observes him and he lets her. He reminds her of the Night Order as the darkness presses in, complete and hungry. Light dances down the curve of her cheek, across the slant of her nose and he steals it from her like kisses, glowing brighter as he does. “And why need I bother when you have been so accommodating, Boudika?” The monk says sly as a fox, wicked as a wolf.
“What are you Champion of, Boudika?” He asks more of her. Again her name is pressing upon his tongue. Still it marvels to test the weight of her name, its tone and how it dances within his mouth. As she studies him - his sharp angles like instruments of war, the contour of sinew sculpted by battle - so Tenebrae studies her in turn. He is idle, considering, smiling playfully. He says nothing of what he finds, not the lines of a girl at ease with a weapon in her grasp, nor the curves of a girl made for dance and flowers and sweet, soft things.
Still the shadows recall her demands, still her voice hangs almost as a phantom between them. Tenebrae reaches forward, hungry for the taste of Denocte upon her skin, especially when they are so far from home. “What do you think I am?” He asks her, his lips close to her ear, his voice thick in the close black that shrouds them.
Do you want to scare me? Slowly he draws back, his gaze search out hers. He says nothing, then, but his smile is slow, slow upon his lips. It is idle as a weapon strike, it is the smile of a man taught to swallow the sun. “I am not the one with blood upon me.” Tenebrae says by way of an answer.
Tenebrae does not think of the sea as she does - not when he is made of night sky and bone and flesh and blood. The Disciple muses with a smile, “Do you want to be scared?” He turns the question back upon her and the darkness presses against the flowers woven into her hair. It trails the edge of a teal petal.
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