[P] it's not late, it's only dark;

[Lysander]

 
 
 

 

It is an autumn night in name only, there on the cusp of winter, and every breath of wind has teeth. 

As Lysander walks the now-familiar streets of Denocte he thinks of thunderbirds. He thinks of black gods who soften themselves with starlight on their skin, who speak softly and smile and pretend to be anything other than what they are. He hates these gods. 

Neither does he care for their people, the way they stand and shiver and wait for the next foul thing to befall them. Perhaps he should not blame them but Lysander finds he has enough blame in his mortal heart for so many - and chief among them a Ghost, a king, a madman, a murderer. 

It is not like him to keep to the city, not when the mountains beckon with laurel and pine, not when the sea winks like a siren as the moon passes from cloud to cloud. Normally when he is caught up by too-mortal a feeling (his rage and hate and helplessness) it is the wilds that soothe it, that remind him that time is nothing but a circle beaten flat and stretched long and everything that has come will come again. That he still has ichor beneath the blood in his veins and this world is nothing at all to him but the most recent name on a list of them. 

Tonight he does not want reminding. Tonight he is wild and reckless as a young Greek and he makes himself forget that he was not made a hero. He is glad Florentine is not here to see him, nor Isra - they might not care for the salt-rimed curl of his dark hair, or the shadows in the woods-green of his eyes. Flora’s dagger swings against his chest with each step, another heartbeat. 

He is not sure what he is looking for, except that his eyes pass over each stall and its merchant, each cinder-spitting bonfire. There are still stones missing from Caligo’s emblem and this Lysander does notice, and hopes they are gone as dead stars. 

The street he walks dog-legs into darkness and there he meets the minotaur. 

How could he be anything else? He is more myth than Lysander, who was a god; he is a black mountain in the darkness with gold glinting darkly from his horns. With no other option the bay stallion stops, and when he drops his head so that his arch of antlers dip it is not only a greeting they speak. 

But Lysander is not yet so foolish as to pick a fight with a stranger for nothing more than the shape of his shoulders or the glint of dark eyes. He takes a step back, cocks his head like an invitation. “My,” he says, “I bet nobody fucks with you on a night like this.”

you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

He wanders the capital, as he does so many nights (he was told it is the Thing to Do - soldiers protect, and must they not see what needs protecting?) and he thinks. There is much to think about, as much as he would deny it; the events of his flee from home play in his mind as a forever-stuck song and while he does not wish to think words about it he does think feelings about it and it hurts. It hurts so much. (Like the sun on his eyes, but worse, worse, so much worse).

But he keeps walking. (For soldiers must walk to see what needs protecting. Soldiers must protect, and so he walks, walks, walks to see if there is anything he can do that is appropriate to his job, for these are the instructions he is given, these are the words to live by, forever, forever until he is given new words, which may happen again as violently as the last time, yes, but he hopes they do not for the stagnant way of life Denocte has brought upon him is without violence and without loss. If it is not loss, it must be victory.)

He does not care for the chill on his back; it reminds him of the draft in the cellar door, always a discomfort, truly, but then he thinks that those were the moments when he cuddled back into the nursemaid’s flank and she snuffled his hair and whispered sweet things and then he does not mind the chill so much anymore. He only knew it was autumn or winter for the draft, and when he went outside for the killing, and the rest of the time the cellar was a cool refuge from the sun. Small wonder he found himself in the land of night, but this he does not think of.

El Rey would pay no mind to the antlered stranger had he not spoken. His words rung cruel and familiar and made his innards wince and burn alike. El Rey was never taught to use profanities, particularly by his nursemaid, for they were harsh, unnecessary things spat by those whom victory taunted and evaded like a trapped fly. And they were often words used against him in the ring. El Rey did not take well to such uses of language. 

Thinking these things, he turned his great black death god’s head to look at the stallion. Smaller, yes. To be trampled underfoot, if needed. That was the purpose of the black king’s distance from the ground. It only hurt him when he closed it.

”No,” he says, flatly, ”Not usually. Do you intend to?”

@Lysander

”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Lysander]

 
 
 

 

Likely it was not a wise thing, drawing the attention of that dark and bleak gaze to himself, when he is no more than a man small and slender against the black dune of the bull. But it is cold enough out to turn his breath to mist, and hot enough within that it seems to him he can feel his blood running quick as a laughing brook in his veins.

He has an appetite for trouble, with Isra missing, with the memory of Raum hanging over him like the crescent-blade of the moon.

But the way that heavy head swings toward him - oh, suppose this man were looking for trouble, too. Lysander does not doubt that he could find it quicker, and come out cleaner.

Still he stands, and smiles in response to that voice as flat and heavy as a millstone. “Not at all. Only a fool would do that.” He says it easily, a curl of fern blowing up against a boulder. Around them pass a group of Denoctians, whose laughter bleeds away as they skirt around the pair. The antlered stallion nods at them, but their eyes are only for the bull. Lysander watches them until they are past, away again around a corner, their laughing voices back.

And then he turns back to his companion, shrugs a shoulder whose dapples are hidden by his winter coat. He regards the wide, impressive head and considers the wide, impressive hooves. But it is the man's eyes he really searches, wondering if the stranger felt the night the same way he did - as something tense and expectant. “I was only remarking that you must feel safer than most, despite everything going on.”

you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

”Not at all. Only a fool would do that.” El Rey holds no expression of the flesh, but within he ponders the nature of such a question if it is not a proposition, particularly if it is stated in such a way. His ear swivels to follow the sound of the laughing citizens, but they are no more than that. His attention is trained on the antlered stranger. His duty is met if there is nothing wrong with the city around him, if there is no one to protect, if there is no crisis to which attention is needed. He has time for a conversation, he supposes.

But El Rey would rather put down this stallion than let him go off to heckle another citizen.

”I was only remarking that you must feel safer than most, despite everything going on.”

He had next to no experience with what one might call a “trick question.” But his past rung like a bell at these words, for the black stallion knew not if his escape was of any greater importance. No one talked about Sevettas or nobility here. Things had gone sour as a rotten lemon and it was no secret that the sovereign had been kidnapped. As a protector of the court, he was to know of such things, and to report suspicious activities. Such was his duty. His responsibility. His life.

For all of his suspicions, El Rey held no social tact whatsoever, and wouldn’t have known what to say had he thought this man truly concerning, beyond the threat he carried in his greeting. No proper greeting I have ever heard. He said, ”I do not feel any more or less safe than before. It seems the nature of my existence is to be in danger. But I have never suffered the consequences.” He paused. ”Do you feel unsafe?” Perhaps I could help, he nearly adds, but this man seems to invite violence. Rey does not yet know enough of the scents between courts to realize he is not Denoctian at all.


@Lysander 
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Lysander]

 
 
 

 

He might have pressed upon those words, his curiosity piqued, his humor black as rotten leaves - he might have asked more of this man-beast-god who has never suffered the consequences. Lysander wants to tell him that everyone does, eventually, if they let themselves live for long enough. 

But something changes in him, at that question. For the first time in their meeting Lysander grows serious, the dark curve of his mouth turning down to almost grimness. There is no laugh in his voice when he speaks again, and though there are few (so few) in this world that the once-god has learned to cherish, it is they he thinks of when he answers.

“Not personally. But there are others…” His mind turns to Flora, wounded, and Isra, lost. He thinks of all the children that weave like stray cats among the market stalls, brightening the world with their laughter. “They say that Raum is ruthless, likely mad. I doubt he’s done with Denocte.” With that one name, said like the blunt end of a blade, Lysander thinks of the scar that marks his side in silver, of the piece of knife that had nestled, once, between his ribs, beside his lung. He thinks of how dying had felt a little like floating just beneath the surface of a midnight sea, and the way the light played on the water, the way everything was silent, almost peaceful. Lysander still wonders what would have happened, if he had given in, if he had reached his hand through that strange surface - would he return to himself and his godhood and his home among the laurel and the grapevines?

He does not think so. 

If not for Florentine, Ruam would have killed him. And Lysander has never learned regret - it is not a thing for gods, at least not his kind - but when he thinks of how he had not hunted the Crows, those years ago, he thinks he might be enlightened.

you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

If only he knew enough to know what that change of tone meant, it’s all the same to him, the animal, the child, bear cub, bare club.

To worry for others—

A mad king—

It’s like a fairy tale.

This new world hurt so much to be born in to but this is almost interesting, yes, the mad king, the soldier, a fateful meeting in the night. His eyes are black as a night so polluted with light it looks starless. Covered in lies. He wouldn’t know what they were, no, he can’t even see them. 

”The soldiers of Denocte are here to protect you and your fellow citizens.” For a moment he is gone, gaze boring a hole in this antlered man but so very somewhere else, thousand-yard-stare, gone, gone gone.

Knights and glory.

Reality.

”Do you know more about the mad king?”


@Lysander
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Lysander]

 
 
 

 

Hearing those words from a man so large and dark and obviously capable of carrying them out ought to have been comforting.

It is not.

Lysander has met the gaze of a hundred heroes, a thousand madmen, a host of disciples drunk on wine and blood. If he had not, this stranger’s would have chilled him. Instead he only wonders what it is the black bull is seeing, with his eyes so far away, down and down an empty well without so much as an echo of noise.

An itch crawls over his shoulder, and he twitches his skin though there is no fly. Maybe some part of him knows this night is far from over, knows that around another corner, down another alley, he will meet a god he hasn’t seen for worlds, a god for whom madness is a blinding light.

But the antlered stallion has never been prescient in any body, in any life. He is turning his head away, jaw angled back toward the bonfires and the noise of the crowds, when his companion speaks. The smile that crawls up his dark lips then mirrors the shape of the scar along his side.

“I do.” Now his gaze is sharp again, but though he once more faces the soldier (the minotaur) it is not the stranger all that dark violence is aimed for. Lysander remembers a midnight forest of black spruce, the starlight buzz of wine in his veins, a silent fall of snow. “He almost killed me. I was ambushed, four on one - odds you could take,” he says, and his teeth glint in a grin, “but not so much myself. A piece of his dagger was lodged between my ribs.” Almost without thought, he bends to touch his lips to another knife, the one that hangs even now around his neck, the one that saved his life.

Lysander is grateful for it, and moreso for its owner - but he hopes it is still willing to drink blood. All the other Crows have flown (or died), save for the last. This time he will not wait for someone else to clear the dark.

It is how he knows he can no longer claim to be anything but a man.

you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

Curiosity drips from him like sap from a wounded tree. His ears do not twitch, his gaze does not falter from his vacancy. It oozes black as him and remains invisible, but one might see some gloss in the light. He is listening. 

He almost killed me. 

His eyes slither over to watch Lysander reach nose to dagger, and he wonders briefly if things have gone that way again. Naively he had thought he would not have to kill - but there is no violence in the braids of night-bronze muscle before him. Perhaps gore will not paint the road. Perhaps it will. Something simmers beneath the flesh of this man, something else, something worth seeing. But he can’t quite tell what it is. 

”Do you seek him, then, knowing that he may destroy you?” Fair odds or not.


@Lysander
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Lysander]

 
 
 

 


Knowing that he may destroy you.

Lysander smiles at that, a little fish-hook tug of a grin like a pike might give on the line. He remembers that almost-ending, and the memory of floating in a summer sea with sunlight in splinters through the surface. Maybe, when life was so full of worlds so close that shadows from one sometimes fell across another, death was only another kind of homecoming.

“I do,” he says at last, and his glinting green gaze meets the beetle-black of the soldier’s, and then looks away again. “But I doubt I will be the first to reach him with such intent.” There is almost a sigh in the words.

“I am sure you will hear of it, whatever happens.” And then with a brief nod, little more than a dip of antlers, he steps around the black behemoth and on down the moonlit road.

you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night

@El Rey shittiest closer everrrr

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

”I do. But I doubt I will be the first to reach him with such intent. I am sure you will hear of it, whatever happens.”

And with that, he disappears into the shadow beyond the blackness. 

El Rey merely follows him with his eyes as he passes, statue-like in the dark. He wonders at this answer, these heavy words, these promises. Do, will, sure. Definite words, far-seeing words, promise-words. He thinks it must be special to have that kind of dedication to a thing, and not simply for the doing of it; the power it carries in the heart, the power to do something of one’s own volition, the promise to do that thing and to command the air with its certainty. It is something El Rey has never had. He thinks he might like to, some day. 

In silence, he lumbers toward the black tomorrow.


”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,