if you wanna start a fight, you better throw the first punch
He walks through the court like a whisper of what-might-have-been, his sides slatted with a hunger that should have disappeared upon the cusp of summer -- he is a shade chained to life, his steps heavy and slow as he meanders his way along a beaten sand path. From the corner of his eye, he sees a mother pull her son away from him, and his smile is twisted and bitter -- he wants them to fear him, does he not? To be wary and to stay away from him?
His chest clenches with loneliness, a constant hollow ache that he has never understood, and it only serves to help fuel the fire banked low in his veins.
He whirls and offers the child a bared-teeth smile, stalking towards the stilt-legged thing -- the same age as his own sons, the one and only time he had laid eyes upon them, when he’d left a bag of gold for each of them at the doorstep of the orphanage they’d been brought into, a letter tucked inside as well that had explained his side of things, their heritage should they ever wish to seek it out.
“Do you believe in the bogeyman?” He mutters to the child as the mother freezes, torn between the urge to run and the instinct to defend her round-eyed offspring. The boy shakes his head, too quickly, and a harsh laugh burst from his chest.
BLESSED BY A BITCH FROM A BASTARD SEED pleasure to meet you, but better to bleed
Teiran moves through the streets of her court like a snake, slipping between shadows and across the mouths of alleyways. Her sage eyes flicker back and forth, keeping an eye out for trouble. Much of the court avoids her, whether out of pity or fear she does not know and does not care. Her only job is to keep them safe, not to befriend them. Even if it were, the best thing she could do for them as a friend was to keep them safe, so she was still better off as she was now.
It was a quiet day, for the most part. The streets were not busy but she still passed several citizens around each bend and down each road, and as she turned another corner she stopped, sage green eyes fixated on the scene in front of her. She saw everything like a bad slow motion film, the mother pull her child away from the approaching form of Mathias. She thinks he might continue on but no, he wheels around and stares down the boy with the smile of a beast, paralyzing him with fear.
That is when she moves, crossing the street in a few hard strides, her hooves beating down the sand beneath them. “Mathias,” her voice is not quite as flat as it usually is, edged with something sharper, and she stomps her leg down between them before shouldering her way in. Already the mother is backing away, giving her more space to move further in front of Mathias, blocking his way. “Go,” she tells the woman behind her, not taking her eyes off the man of black and white. Teiran can hear them turn and disappear.
if you wanna start a fight, you better throw the first punch
There is an itch beneath his skin that he can’t seem to scratch, a desire for the sort of violence he used to seek out and incite, an ache to feel alive once more. He’s so goddamned tired of being tired, of feeling like a dead man walking, of minding his manners under the watchful eye of the collared soldier, and when he bares his teeth at the child it’s in a manic grin.
How old would his sons be, now? How much did they hate their father, for letting them remain orphans, for never coming forward and claiming them, for their only memories of him to be a note and a bagful of coins? He certainly couldn’t blame them for hating him, or even for forgetting him -- and perhaps that was best, that they might just simply forget that he existed, or some other soul might have taken pity on them and taken them in.
Everything he touched had always turned to ashes. He doubted his children would have been any different.
His wild-eyed gaze shifts to the soldier when her words crack through the air, and he turns that manic grin towards her -- a snake coiled in the grass, ready to strike, every line in his body full of tension that just begged to snap. “Fuck off,” He snarls in response, and the mother takes her chance to sweep her child away while he’s distracted -- on his blind side, so that he doesn’t notice they’re leaving until they’re gone, and isn’t that the story of his life right there?
He’s never known anyone to stay once they realize who he really is.
BLESSED BY A BITCH FROM A BASTARD SEED pleasure to meet you, but better to bleed
Mathias turns toward her and Teiran does not flinch or back away, not from the manic smile on his face or the wild look in his eye. She can see the tension in his body, filling every inch of him, making his muscles taught and prepared. Her sage green eyes take it all in with so much as a glance. It is her job to read a situation, and to do it as quickly as possible. Take too long, make a mistake, and something can go incredibly wrong in a matter of seconds.
His words bite out at her and she stands as statue still as ever, wearing soldier readiness on her shoulders. The man’s words don’t offend, don’t affect her, and her gaze is like brandished cold steel—like the collar around her neck. Then, she takes one step forward, one step closer, placing herself in his space. She knows what he needs.
What she doesn’t know is if he will do it even if she says he can.
So, she provokes him instead.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” and if there is any inflection to her voice other than the grit of sand and the drone of something inhuman, there is no indication of it in her eyes or in her body. She stands toe to toe with him and wears no apprehension despite their size difference, and she tests him, teeters on the edge of his patience. Her only question now is will he take the bait?
"Speaking."
@Mathias I'm not saying she's definitely trying to get him to lash out at her intentionally but she is
03-01-2019, 04:26 PM
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bruiser [PM] Posts: 49 — Threads: 7 Signos: 0
if you wanna start a fight, you better throw the first punch
There is a madness in his blood that only boils hotter when he sees how still she stands, how calmly she steps closer and holds his attention, and when he bares his teeth it is an absolute threat. There will be no de-escalation, no banking of the fire in his veins -- he longs for bloodshed, for the sharp, stinging pain of battle that will make him feel alive where he has only felt numb for so long.
He can see the bridge before him, and he can smell the smoke in the air -- he barks out a sharp laugh at her question even as he pours the napalm and throws the match. His teke reaches out like a heavy-handed fist and grips the silver collar around her throat, yanking with all the force the feeble mental grip can handle even as he steps forward and shoves his shoulder into hers with the intention of exploiting the size difference between them.
“I’m a god-killer,” He spits back at her, thinking of his mother’s divine reincarnation and how her throat had tasted on his tongue, and above him, the vulture cackles in glee. “Who are you, little girl?”
BLESSED BY A BITCH FROM A BASTARD SEED pleasure to meet you, but better to bleed
“Who are you, little girl?” And there are flashes in her mind, faded, torn. A girl, left out on the streets. A girl, picked up by a man (or was it a monster?) and taken into the desert. A girl, tormented, tortured, trained. Who are you, who are you? and something inside her says nothing and something else says a machine made for war. She reaches for that little girl, crying, and wants to say… What does she want to say? But the girl is too far out of reach, too buried in the shadows. There is too much space, too much time, between there and now. The girl slips away.
Teiran looks up at Mathias and the cold steel glint in her eyes does not change. Not until his hand is there, slipped between her skin and that silver collar on her throat. Everything flees, and something wild and feral fills her instead. She could kill him, and there is no fear in her. There is no turmoil. There is nothing. The soldier, quick as a striking serpent, hooks one of her legs around his own front two, and at the same moment she moves to sweep his hooves out from under him she too, shoves all of her weight into his shoulder.
She doesn’t wait to hear if his body hits the ground, doesn’t wait before her tele is reaching, grasping a knife. It draws up in the air before her and she doesn’t even know where it comes from, doesn’t hear the offended shout of the passerby she had stolen from. She could kill him, and the dagger is raised, raised, poised to bite any flesh, to take any blood, that it can. The animal thing inside her screams, begging, salivating. She is a machine made for war. A hissing sound escapes her lips. She could kill him.
She doesn’t.
Her eyes close for only a second, the emptiness being covered by the dark rose of her lids, and she sees the girl again; thin, frail, broken. Teiran meets her fading, hollow sage eyes, and when hers open again there is no beast clawing through them, thirsting for blood. She looks at Mathias, and feels her white-knuckled grip on the knife, and there is a crack in her veneer. It spiderwebs outward, delicate and gossamer, catching the light. “Do not touch my collar.”
She turns to where the bystander is, the one she had taken the knife from, as he looks on in terrified silence. One, two, three flips through the air and he is clutching the weapon and disappearing. As though any of the citizens of this court needed more reasons to avoid her, but she doesn’t care as she turns back to the black and white man. “Next time you want a fight, we can take it outside the court. Do not, however, make the same mistake again.” What she doesn’t say is that next time, she isn’t sure if she can stop herself from taking his life.
if you wanna start a fight, you better throw the first punch
There is nothing except the beat of his heart in his ears like a war drum, and it calls to the rage that has always filled his veins -- his teeth are bared in a snarl as their bodies meet, reaching and trying to tear at any flesh he can grasp between them. When he hits the sand, it’s with a heavy thump that only reinforces his wild anger, and he stares up at her with his own eyes burning.
When she steals the knife, he bares his throat in a dare -- do it, do it, do it the blood in his veins sing, and he wonders if she will truly do it -- he has seen her in action before, knows that she is a soldier without mercy, and there is an emptiness in her eyes that calls to his own voided soul. He almost wishes that she would, that she could end this existence where he walks on the edge of a knife in his own mind, where his body is the only thing left of a young bastard prince who had once hoped for a better life than this.
When she returns the knife, something inside of him cracks further, a crystal shattered against unyielding rocks.
He doesn’t hear the rest of her words, not through the rush of blood and rage, and he leaps to his feet with far more agility than a man his age should possess. It only takes one stride to reach her as he spits out “coward,” between clenched teeth -- he never asked for her pity, for her mercy, and it lodges beneath his skin like a burr.
His hooves strike out as he leans his weight on his hind legs, aiming for any part of her that he can reach -- he wants a fight now, here in this courtyard, before it feels like his skin might split apart beneath the vulture’s cold gaze.
BLESSED BY A BITCH FROM A BASTARD SEED pleasure to meet you, but better to bleed
"I am not a coward for refusing to kill you," Teiran says. There is no cowardice in fighting back against the unhinged thing in her that fears the memory of pain associated with that shining metal at her throat. And to kill a fellow citizens of Solterra, for no reason other than he made a stupid, foolish mistake for not knowing better?
Teiran might not have a lot of things, but she does have some sense of honor. No matter how small.
When Mathias rises up on his back legs Teiran shifts her body to put her should in the path of his hooves. She braces her legs, throws her head away from his flailing punches. His hooves bite into her flesh, into the meat of her shoulder, and the soldier tightens her jaw and holds her ground. If it is not bleeding it will surely bruise.
Still, she doesn't strike back. This is not a fair fight. He is angry, and reckless, and his wildness gives her focus and clear mind the upper hand. She could hurt him in so many ways. He calls her a coward yet he is the one begging to walk out on life. Teiran could say it, could make a weapon of her knife-sharp words.
She could fight him.
She doesn't, because it doesn't feel right.
"Why are you so angry." It is, perhaps, the only consistent thing she can associate with Mathias, through every interaction she's had with him or he's had with someone else. Even in the seemingly pleasant ones, there has always been an undercurrent of something bitter and black. It seems that today, whatever it is, has finally worked its way completely to the surface.
if you wanna start a fight, you better throw the first punch
He doesn’t want her pity nor her mercy.
It burns black in his chest like a fire he has left unchecked, and he chokes on the bile that rises in his throat, on the way the scent of copper rises in the desert heat, on the way she still doesn’t give him what he needs to make the voices screaming in his head silent. He strikes out and she takes the wounds he offers, and it only stirs his fury all the greater -- he thinks of Jetsam, how the stallion had fought back until he hadn’t, until his lover had given up on him as well.
He thinks of Elysium, who had held him down and forced him to accept her affection, who had beaten sense into him time and time again, who had promised him she wouldn’t leave him again and then had vanished when he’d mentioned the vulture that followed him.
There has only ever been one truth in his life, and it has been that everybody leaves in the end.
Eventually, Teiran will too, and the thought makes him want to howl with bitter rage, because he also knows that he will be the reason she leaves.
“I am a monster,” he snarls out with the certainty of one who has been told that until they have broken beneath the weight of that word, monster, the bastard prince, the harbinger of a war he had been born into, the ruination of his queenly mother’s holy campaign, and when he lifts his head to stare at her, there is a voided soul within his eye.
BLESSED BY A BITCH FROM A BASTARD SEED pleasure to meet you, but better to bleed
He grinds his jaw against some thought or emotion that Teiran isn't privy to, cannot know. She thinks that he is like a damn that is too full, has too much pressure at its back. Cracking, wearing down, waiting to explode open. She wonders how muddied the waters held at bay inside him are, how black with dirt and debris.
Then Mathias speaks and Teiran gets a glimpse of those churning waves. 'I am a monster,' he says on a growl, but in Teiran's ears it sounds like a cry. Like a shout, a scream, desperate, ringing toward the sky. It sounds like an accusation, like the crack of a gavel passing judgement, like the silent, poignant pointing of a finger. It sounds like familiarity.
"Do you think I am a monster?" Teiran asks him with glittering sage eyes, straightening her neck and looking at the man before her. "I've been called a monster, but it doesn't make me one." She has been called more than a monster over the years. She's heard them whisper when she walks by them on the street. Not all bad things, but much of it. Some have pity, some have fear, disgust, guilt.
Despite all his anger, all his boiling hate (at himself? At her, the world?), Teiran looks at him and sees a desert full of half-starved children (love, food, hope, starved of it all) with blank eyes and silver collars. She sees a young filly with green eyes and trembling legs, wandering the streets alone. She sees it all, in flashes, too distant for her to grasp. "Because I know what it's like to be abandoned."
