On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
There was a sun that had not set. It sat in Solis’ grandeur in the midst of the sky and did not move.
And so the Disciples had come: to watch and to wait. They brought with them the only traces of night within Novus. The dark of their Midnight shadows swell within the Order’s ranks. Night has come wondering, and reaches up from the shadow of her Disciples to test the sun with the dark of her fingers. The tendrils of shadow press and push and yet the sun does not heed her touch.
(The shadows, this Midnight, is no sentient being, but the darkness to which each Disciple of the Night Order is married. To Caligo they are bound, to her magic they are vowed. So the shadow magic they give her is feminine. It makes the new recruits laugh and blush, but by their second year they no longer react but call their magic a she, in honour of Her who blesses them: their Goddess of the Night.)
It is only five of the Night Order who have come to the Island this day and they stand as sentinels in the midnight shroud of their magic. About them the sun blazes and presses his golden light down, down upon the warriors’ dark, but not even Solis’ light can banish their dark. For every arrow of light he pierces their darkness with, the Disciples swallow it down like an elixir and let black lilies of darkness bloom in its place.
Within the heart of their dark shroud only their crescent moon sigils glow. To those who look closely at the Order’s cloud of midnight they might see the outline of warriors about each triad of glowing, crescent moons. Muscled shoulders emerge where each pair of lower moons are emblazoned upon them and faces form where the apex moons are lit upon their brows. Weapons form and fade in their swallowing dark as shadows coalesce into daggers and bows with arrows, broadswords and spears and then disperse.
They are an ominous blot of ink upon the bright page of lit daylight. They stand as only five and yet their darkness gathers as if it conceils army in its depths. At the center of the men, Tenebrae stands with his skull tipped up towards the sun. His eyes glow brightly shadowing his lips that are the stark line of a dark horizon. His winter-hued body is nothing but black as he wears this darkness as a cloth, a gift from the other Disciples. “At least it will not be 100 Years of Day.” He says and it tastes of something akin to sorrow. Slowly, smoothly, as predatory as a panther, his skull turns to gaze upon his brothers that flank him. “Though I should enjoy a 100 years war.” The Disciple confesses with a smile that is wicked in its beauty. It is a grin kept only for the dark secrets of the night. His low laughter is the sating lull of sleep.
Slowly Tenebrae steps out from the shroud of their darkness. Midnight pours from his skin as he emerges into the light. Here, lit by the stark of daylight, he is as bright as the haze of a night lit by winter’s snow. Midnight reaches for him, but he steps away from her reach, further and further still. He moves toward a small doe, frozen in time, caught in an eternal run from a wolf whose statue-body is motionless, part emerged from the brush. Around the deer’s slim frame, Tenebrae moves, gazing at the terrified lines of her body, illuminating them in the stark-white glow of his eyes. What sorrow it is to be immortalized in fear, caught in eternal flight, he thinks with a warrior’s pride.
Yet he dwells no more upon the doe, for a sound stirs in the trees that the doe had been reaching for. Danger comes creeping for her – except, a sound here, where Tempus has stopped everything, can only mean one thing: a horse. Hardly a predator to her, yet the Night Order Disciple turns toward the sound. Midnight billows her shadows round him, roused like a monster, ready as a serpent coiled to strike. Tenebrae sends her darkness pressing out into the trees, it reaches, searches, gropes for whoever lurks there. Beyond the trees Tenebrae watches, his angled skull tilted. Though the truth could be that he is the most dangerous warrior here, in this moment, the warrior monk still stands quietly, alert, dangerous, ready.
“Who is there?” His low voice slips like ink into the trees. His question is a low drawl, curious and yet craving something... He trains and trains and trains and there is no part of him that is not honed and readied for battle. He would not turn from a fight now but meet it with a delighted smile upon his lips. Through the brush his white eyes gleam, they glow brighter, brighter as the sun never sways, as he drinks its light, more and more and more as he steals its light and lets Her shadows bloom in its place. They shroud him and reach hungrily out through the daylight and the too-still trees. The darkness begs to gather into a weapon, but he calms its desire, keeping it ready, ready so he might level Night at whomever steps out from their woodland cover.
Tenebrae and I welcome anyone! <3 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
09-21-2019, 09:13 AM - This post was last modified: 09-21-2019, 09:18 AM by Tenebrae
BETWEEN THE DESIRE, AND THE SPASM, BETWEEN THE POTENCY, AND THE ESSENCE
BETWEEN THE ESSENCE, AND THE DESCENT, FALLS THE SHADOW. FOR THINE IS THY KINGDOM. FOR THINE IS, LIFE IS, THINE IS THE--
Sunlight glints off the ocean with the sharpness of broken glass. There is only light, light, light, and light for days. The newfound champion walks dreamlike upon the beach, feeling the radiant heat as though it is not only touching her, but has consumed her essence. The black of her body glistens like ink; her bright chestnut is red as blood. Boudika stands with no breeze to ruffle her mane or chase away the heat; she stares toward the immobile ocean, full of light, and wonders at the magic of it.
The island is crystalline, frozen; a certain, strange beauty inhabits the stillness. But the beauty is the beauty of a good dream which, when lived, seems sharper than the edge of a blade. Enigmatically, that same dream possesses a gaudy shroud, something nongenuine, as though just beneath the surface… lurks a great and terrible truth, or horror. Perhaps it the relic everyone whispers of. Perhaps it is the end of the world. Boudika does not know but, accompanied with that uncertainty is the thought that… Time is still, and there is peace in that promise.
For once, Boudika has managed to force her mind clear of contemplations, worries, or memories. She stares blankly at the ocean without her typical obsessive sentiment. It still stirs something within her belly, a twisting and knotted thing, but the mare does not dwell on the feeling. She turns from the ocean feeling as though she is only walking forward and with only a few steps, she delves back into the heated shade of the jungle. The trees barely cast shadows, for all the radiance of the sun, and she finds her mind languidly drawn to the heat. Oresziah had never been so hot and tropic—the weather was perpetually overcast and chill.
Boudika’s body moves with pure instinct. She reaches deeper and deeper toward the core of the island… searching… Her trident gleams at her side, and somehow she is drawn toward the deepest shade, the only shade. Frozen birds observe her from where they hang on branches, eyes accusing, and she passes by the bedded body of a wildcat with a hide like polished lace agate. Boudika wonders if they are dead, or just waiting to wake up again, to reanimate—do they exist solely as objects of time?
Her knees brush flowers like labradorite, and her eyes feast greedily on the illogical nature of the island, full of fanciful beauties. Boudika has never been one to love or adorn herself with jewellery but, as a soldier, she used to watch generals parade their wives in precious stones so native to Oresziah… and this island shows the same callous face as those women wore, adorned with sharp and precious beauties. Boudika feels the prick of thorns and glances down at a knotting, tangled plant, with roses that look more like polychrome jasper, a plethora of colours that do not coincide. They are bold, and vibrant, and throbbing with their stillness. She has never seen something so beautiful, and the urge to take it overwhelms her.
Boudika lowers her teeth to one branch and rips it with sudden violence. The noise of small, crashing boughs seems as loud as a scream in the silence. Her mouth floods with small pinpricks of blood, and three of the flowers hang precariously from her jaws as she begins to walk again.
Boudika is weaving the brazen flowers in her mane when she hears his voice.
“Who is there?”
The general’s daughter turned warrior turned exile turned refugee turned dancer turned champion. Boudika, who is never caught unawares. She starts, her eyes jerking toward the voice. She does not yet see him and for a moment, brief and fierce, she is flooded with anger at the disturbance. The anger subsides and it is replaced with a sort of chaste embarrassment. He has caught me weaving flowers in my hair, something that ought to be inconsequential but instead is humiliating. Boudika lifts her head and exits the trees, finding herself in… darkness.
The shadows bloom like so many flowers. Her eyes trace them, unnatural and misplaced, until her eyes fixate on his glowing, vibrant face. There are stars in his eyes.
”Boudika." The general’s daughter turned warrior turned exile turned refugee turned dancer turned champion. She ought to say at least one of those things. But she doesn’t. Boudika says nothing else; she simply watches him, with still eyes and bleeding lips and flowers in her hair.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
She is so easy to hear in this unnatural still of a world stopped from spinning. Nothing revolves here, all the island is as still as a painting but Tenebrae has never seen one as intricate as this. Never has he seen paint flowers that he can brush his lips over, nor a painted world he could step within.
The silence might have been oppressive, it might have made his throat ache to fill the void with noise. Yet as his laughter dies and she replaces it with her being, her plucking - no, ripping - of flowers he only marvels at the sounds that each living horse can make. Did they always make so much noise? He hears the yielding of the branch, he hears the crunch of it between her teeth.
He sees the battle of it upon her ivory lips.
The girl, the creature, that emerges from the brush is a piece of the sun. She is the wild of the sunset, brilliant in the violence of her skin’s hue. All of her gleams bright as a ruby, savage as blood. She was not content to just rip a sharp stem of a plant, but a piece of the sun right out of its too-still sky. Was she a child of Icarus? Was she the sun he was made to swallow? Tenebrae’s soul ascends in keen delight.
With all the bold pride of a Solterran she steps into the black shadow of the Night Order’s conjuring. No longer is she bright as a raging sunset, but her skin turns as deep as maroon.The white of her face is a pool of moonlight. Every balletic step she takes into the deeper dark of his shadows find her tumbling deeper into a chasm of black with only Tenebrae at its heart. Darkness picks at every sliver of light that gleams along her skin, hungry as a wolf. If this girl is a sun then oh how his magic calls to swallow everything of her being.
Boudika. Her name fills their vacuum of dark and it falls as bold and fearless from her lips as a kiss. Slowly his skull tilts as he drinks in the contrast of her. At her side a trident, that gleams in the light of his sigils and sings with a sharpness that vows to slice his shadows into two. But upon her head and along the slender curve of her throat are flowers woven as soft as a caress into the gossamer of her hair. Her skin is the bright of the sun, a crimson that stirs his magic with its sunbright daring. It is a colour that rouses his soul and lays a wicked, violent and ready smile along his lips. At his side shadows form into sword, fleeting but there, then gone and then there again… over and over that sword forms and reforms. He lifts the shadow sword to point at her as his skull tilts, playful and bold as a raven.
“Boudika,” Tenebrae murmurs her name back to her, his voice slick as ink, as deep as the darkness they stand within. “Sounds like a warrior queen’s name.” Pointedly Tenebrae’s eyes trail along the sharp tines of her trident, each one a cut upon his gaze as the blades gleam in the light of his gaze.
But for every part of her that is bright as the sun and wild as a sunset, her skin smells like the deep dark of Denocte. The tip of his blade reaches to lightly touch the dark groove where her jaw meets her throat. In tandem his muzzle reaches to smell the stars that cling to her skin. “A girl painted like the sun with the smell of night upon her body.” The monk muses lightly, his starlight eyes roaming across her face. Darkness casts the lines of her face into sharper array and he lets his gaze run along each shadowed groove - drawn to each like a magnet. “Are you a friend, or foe of Denocte?” Tenebrae asks her, a grin curling along the curve of his raven lips. He knows the smell of Denocte, he can taste the Markets upon her skin. He is disappointed for not fight. Yet...Yet he keeps the blade angled toward her throat, lets his gaze lower again to her lips, glittering with her blood like gems. He feels how the darkness shivers, how it hungers and demands for home.
@Boudika - oh, he is a lot more playful and flirty than i thought he was going to be! <3 Thank you so much for being his first thread<3 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
BETWEEN THE DESIRE, AND THE SPASM, BETWEEN THE POTENCY, AND THE ESSENCE
BETWEEN THE ESSENCE, AND THE DESCENT, FALLS THE SHADOW. FOR THINE IS THY KINGDOM. FOR THINE IS, LIFE IS, THINE IS THE--
His darkness is greedy.
It comes for her with the hands of a lost lover. It softens the red of her copper, caresses the brightness from her face, and enviously draws the sun from where it kisses her. No, the shadows seem to say. Only I can have her light. She does not flinch from it. Her head is high even though as she nears him it feels as if a great cloud passes overhead, casting them into a different realm, somehow cooler, somehow quieter. There is a privacy in the unnatural darkness; an intimacy; it is a chamber of shared secrets, and truths, and religions, and she thinks of how it reminds her too much of the way the sea caresses, caresses, caresses and then takes.
The shadows begin to form a sword and her eyes devour it as it forms, with all the reverence of a warrior preparing their battle dress. Her trident gleams defiantly—the burnished gold tries to remain the gold of fire and things of her past, but even that becomes dim and tarnished in his non-light.
Boudika has never seen anything like it, and it strikes her in a way few things in Novus have. She wants to ask: why not become the darkness if you love it so? But her lips remain fastened shut, the blood dripping now to her chin. The sword is pointing at her now and she feels the familiar weight of her trident. Boudika does not aim it, however; she knows it too well. And it remains at her side, real, much realer than the things he fabricates. Her eyes nearly goad him, nearly dare him, because do they not possess a light of life that cannot be taken, except for in death?
“It is a warrior queen’s name.” Boudika affirms. She might have told him, then, how it was the one thing her mother left her with. She may have told him it was a name that came from the sea. But she does not, as the blade touches her. She stays very still, save for the movement of her trident. It is slow, and curious, as she attempts to catch the blade between two tines and push it gently from her throat. Can it be touched? she wonders, or would it just dissolve against the metal?
His face is close to hers. He names her Denoctian.
“I am one of her Champions.” The statement is hard, and clear. Boudika does not show emotion when she says it, but she does begin to move, nearly dismissively, to trail a tight circle around him. How do his shadows not devour him? He is the pale of moonlight, with sigils of it on his flesh. The hunger of his darkness is too much like the hunger she knows of her homeland; it is too encompassing; too pure. How does it not consume him, too? She feels it like a shroud, an abrupt and dangerous shift from the bright, bright light of the sun.
“And who are you, to demand so much and give so little?” Boudika asks. He bares remnants of the same scents, but he speaks as though they are enemies. There is something of him that is other, so much so that Boudika doubts for a moment if he is Denoctian at all. But only for that: a moment, Boudika wonders if he is perhaps some servant of Caligo sent to right the wrongs of an endless sun—but to walk among gods is still a foreign concept to Boudika, and she dismisses the notion readily, easily. It is more likely he is some demon, or fever-dream conjured up by the island that seems too alive, too thoughtful, to be only an island.
There is a familiarity to him, however; one that she is well-practiced in discovering. His body is composed of the hard lines of a warrior, a fighter by trade and by purpose. His body is a utilitarian one, with no spare flesh and muscles that cut and tighten even through his shroud of shadows. His eyes burn, she notices again, and it unsettles her. But not enough for her to feel fear; Boudika does not allow it. His techniques are all of intimidation, and she wants to say:
I have seen worse.
Yes. There are things worse than darkness, or she would not be among Caligo’s Court. Her expression is hard as she comes to rest in front of him again, too close, too close. Do you know the darkness of the deep sea, Boudika nearly asks. Do you know how it will not only consume, but crush you? A darkness that you can drown in?
"Do you want to scare me?" Boudika asks at last, and her voice is a sweet and quiet whisper.
On my body, the grace of shadows 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.
BETWEEN THE DESIRE, AND THE SPASM, BETWEEN THE POTENCY, AND THE ESSENCE
BETWEEN THE ESSENCE, AND THE DESCENT, FALLS THE SHADOW. FOR THINE IS THY KINGDOM. FOR THINE IS, LIFE IS, THINE IS THE--
The darkness sings and so does her blood. This is the only kiss Boudika has ever known—the semi-firm pressure of a blade against her throat, taunting, tantalising, and forever a part of her dares, and dares, and dares press harder. There are some who would call it arrogance, or foolhardiness. There are some who might consider it apathetic. But to her, it is always more, indefinite, aloof—
The gleam of a lion’s fangs mid-yawn with all it’s killing power. An orca that breaches the surface with a spray of salt and surf. A wolf that runs, and runs, and runs, forever more honed than whetted steel.
Then the fabricated blade is gone, its edge replaced by her ravenous smile. The stranger’s gaze is locked on hers and Boudika feels as though they dance, and dance, and dance—the shadows may well be fire that separate them, or stage-light, because this intimate lock is one she knows well. It is almost mesmerising. One of them must be the cobra and the other, a sparrow—but who is what? Which is which? Boudika does not know, even as she trails around him cat-quick and cat-slim, the darkness kissing her ankles and her vibrant copper.
“Should I not be accommodating?” she asks. “Should I hide behind shadows, as you do?”
Because he is there, like a sickle moon gleaming between clouds, swallowed in the darkness. Does he not know how bright he still is? Does he not know how much the light would love him, if he let it? He asks, and asks, and asks, but Boudika does not like games. She sees no reason to withhold her truths and she says, with bright pride, “Community.” Let him know how much she loves Denocte; how much she strives to overwatch Caligo’s shadowed community and offer them protection, advice, companionship.
He leans toward her, this man who gives so little, and his mouth is near her ear. For a moment she is shot through the strangeness of it; Boudika is nearly disarmed. The hostility is not there; instead it is replaced by a kind of homesick yearning, a strain for something she cannot comprehend. Would he like to be named, she wonders. Would he like to be known?
What do you think I am?
Boudika does not answer immediately. She sees no reason. Instead, the copper-headed mare allows their proximity to intensify. She leans forward to answer his yearning, her mouth pressed nearly to his ear. She whispers then, quietly, as their comfortable darkness demands: “Only a man.” Her first notions of someone demonic, someone godlike, have been replaced by what she sees him as. A warrior. Utilitarian. Hard. And perhaps, not so unlike herself. His smile, then, belongs to the sky—it is the luminescent sliver of the sun beneath an eclipse, beautiful, tragic, frightening.
The Champion can feel the darkness press closer and closer still; perhaps it is because she has spent so many nights wandering’s Caligo’s court alone, but it does not feel menacing. Boudika tosses her head and the flowers tumble about in her mane, but remain where they were weaved. She feels the touch, then, of his shadows to the petals of one in particular. “It is not much blood.” Is her answer, even as it drips about her lips like so much smudged paint.
Do you want to be scared? This is the question Boudika does not answer. Instead, she glances about him, at the darkness and the way it hovers. In its own way, it is beautiful, even as it is greedy. No, Boudika thinks. She does not want to be scared and she finds, the more she searches, the less capable of fear she is. What could he do to her that has not been done? There is nothing. The only thing Boudika feared was a broken heart and that had had its time and its place. “Are you Denoctian, shadow-caster, light-eater?” Boudika knows the answer already. She asks, regardless, and there is something predatory and sharp within her. She does not recognise him. “Why not let your shadow’s fall? I won’t hurt you.” And that Boudika promises, with a sly and nearly girlish smirk.
But things girlish still do not sit well on her, and as she thinks it one of the carefully chosen flowers falls from her mane.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
If the touch of his shadow sword is a kiss upon the column of her throat, then that is the only kiss he has ever bestowed upon any creature. Fitting it should be upon a girl who has never been kissed. Fitting it should be upon a girl who speaks only the language of battle and violence. Their kisses will be many, enough to make skin yield, enough to make blood run.
She smiles when his blade disintegrates. Her ravenous lips are the brightest thing in this dark of theirs - for the darkness stopped being Tenebrae’s the moment she stepped within it, as if she owns his darkness, as if the darkness was all she knew. She slinks around him, that smile never fading. Feline is this girl, a crimson slip of a cat loosed from the sun. Oh, the sun… if Boudika’s lips are wet with hunger, it is nothing compared to the slakeless desire that presses upon Tenebrae’s lips. It is good to be a monk, he thinks, for simply all his lips yearn for is the press of a sun, between his teeth and down his throat. Was this not what Caligo made him for? Tenebrae is, after all, one of her Stallions Set to Swallow the Sun.
The darkness adorns Boudika, it cloaks her in midnight and toys with the small light that glitters in her gaze. Her eyes reach his as her words sift through the darkness and into his ears. Everything between them smells of Night - it is the smoke of bonfires, the jasmine of wild flowers and the frankincense of incense burning like divine prayer.
Ah, his mind fills with gods. Of a goddess who is more darkness than he. A goddess who is the only girl he knows anything about. So different she is to Boudika, who stands as comfortable as Caligo within his darkness, yet this girl is brilliant like a spark, ready to to set the world ablaze. Tenebrae’s smile turns dark and keen, answering that wicked smile upon her lips - sharper than a knife. It is fuel to the delight coursing through his veins. He wants to see her in the light, he wants to see how she burns - is she brighter than the sun? Is he destined to chase her too? To swallow every lick of firelight and sunlight that dares to breathe upon her skin. And yet… and yet he just wants to behold the bright of her and see if it is beautiful, like the sun. For how wondrous is the sun and how sweet it is between his lips, upon his tongue. He dares to wonder if Boudika might taste like sunlight too. Just for a moment.
The darkness recedes, it falls back as light floods in bright and brilliant. It chases shadows from where they touch him and her. It chases the dark secrets that lurk in the scant space between them.”I do not hide behind shadows.” Tenebrae says, his lips no longer smiling. The darkness clings to him, as it always does, as it has since the moment Caligo pressed her darkness into him, into every inch and make him hunger for light. The darkness curls across his flesh like smoke, it presses upon him as if to sink beneath his skin and join the abyss of darkness within. “I am the shadows.” He says with no ounce of pride. It is simple fact. The shadows have become an extension of him. They breathe like the air in his lungs, they rise like his temper and fall with his sorrow.
But he stands, as exposed beneath the light as his magic will ever allow. He drinks in Boudika, a fire girl, lit beneath the sun. She is not fire he realises suddenly, but gleaming, liquid metal, bright from a furnace. “Community,” He breathes, still studying her, with his white eyes glowing bright. “Is that not a waste of a warrior queen?” Tenebrae jests, and yet he does not. He knows the importance of community. He is made to serve, to serve until death, laying his life out before and for Denocte and its goddess. Such service begins with the rest of the Night Order. They are nothing if not bound to serve each other as a sacred community.
Then her lips are at his ear, her breath touching where her lips do not: across the shell, across the angle of his jaw. Only a man those words breathe across his skin hot and dangerous. A shiver rocks down his spine. He is made for war and death and yet this girl breaks him down until he is no longer a Disciple of the Night Order, a Stallion made to Swallow the Sun. She names him just a man and men want.
Darkly he laughs, that sound like smoke. His head shakes, as if to rid himself of her revelation, as if to rid himself of dangerous things. Tenebrae looks back to her, to her crimson lips. Not much blood she had said. And she is right, for he imagines her dressed in more, glittering like a dew drenched rose upon the battlefield.
Are you Denoctian, shadow-caster, light-eater? Boudika asks him with her smile like silk and lips like knives. “I am.” he confesses at last, though he need not. Already her gaze is full of knowing, already they are just mice within each other’s game. They grin at each other like cats, languid and playful, predatory and beautiful - in the way all hunters are. “My name is Tenebrae. I am a Disciple of the Night Order, sworn to protect Caligo and, in turn, all of Denocte.”
He speaks with leonine pride and assurance, the darkness swelling like a mane about his throat. It reaches tendril fingers for her, brushing against the flower petals that curl into the groove of her neck.
Her smile turns sly and a petal falls like innocence. “You won’t hurt me,” Tenebrae agrees, confident, though a part of him already feels broken, changed. He turns from her, the darkness gathering about him, He does not turn back because he knows that tonight he will not dream of swords and suns but girls and how Boudika is quite the most dangerous creature he has ever met.
@Boudika - <3 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
10-16-2019, 05:00 PM - This post was last modified: 12-18-2019, 06:43 PM by Tenebrae
