Every morning, Torix wakes up feeling inside out. There is a vulnerability, he thinks, to walking through the world with his insides on the outside. A heart on his shoulder, perhaps, or kidneys on the hips. There is a feeling, when he is Novus, that his skin is transparent and everything beneath it has grown black with rot.
His mind always, always returns to his mother. If you leave, she had said, you will only be running.
The memory is hot with rage; scalding, it burns him, again and again. He wasn’t running. How could she accuse him of that? Did she not understand he was here hunting, searching? There was something in Novus that belonged to him and, try as he may to forget it—and oh, that list is long, that list full of bodies he tried to lose himself in, fights he couldn’t win, lovers he couldn’t love—it persisted, demanded.
You would have been the youngest commanding officer in the history of Oresziah. They had told him, that. They had held his promotion ranks in a bed of red silk. Take them. Their yours. Everything in his life, it seemed, had been lined up so perfectly for the occasion. The war had been won, and—well, he would travel the seas and take it to new shores.
Vercingtorix walks along the shore in pre-dawn, when the sky is a type of blue edging on indigo. It fights the first light with a speckle of stars and a bruising horizon. That, too, feels like he feels. An uphill battle. A losing climb. The sun will rise.
But not yet. The Solterran sea brings with it a cool gust of coastal wind. He might relish it, but the scent of brine and fish will forever remind him of the unpleasantries of the world he left. They remain, however, a vivid and pungent reminder of—well, of the life he is here to finish.
Vercingtorix, as he walks, picks up small stones and seashells Rather than collect them, or even cast them into the sea, he systematically crushes what he can in his telekinesis. Otherwise, he tosses it end-over-end into the ocean. His mother had worn seashells around her neck, he remembers, like a talisman. She said it would ward off evil spirits and create fertility. Torix supposes some of it might have worked, and some didn’t. He was her only son and, besides himself, she had three daughters.
Sisters. He should think of them as sisters. He doesn’t.
Everything in his household had always been a competition. Last he had heard, they had married his classmates. The sons of other esteemed generals and commanders.
But to them, he is dead, and he knows it.
Torix pauses at last. He is looking out to the sea; it is tumultuous as always. What he is looking for he doesn’t find, and so he turns away.
He is startled to see the stallion standing there, vibrant and red, like the way the bruised sun has turned the horizon to a cut throat slaughter.
“Can I invite you to a romantic walk on the beach, then?” The tone Torix utilises is deprecating; nearly an insult, but not quite. Almost a joke, but more crudely presented. He does not like being surprised.
He looks out at the water and seethes. He should be there, faraway, well beyond the warning-red horizon. He should be wearing a different skin, a different name, and meeting with his colonels and captains, preparing for the day.
But he is here, and they are slain or imprisoned. Elettra has no army any longer, and no king; it is run by slaves-become-rebels. He can’t picture it in anything but chaos, and if it is still burning, it is because of Isra.
And she will pay.
For now he is at too much a disadvantage. She is back among her adopted people, with her mate (the word makes something black and ugly twist inside him) and her children (another cut, smaller, no less deep). She has her dragon, and her magic (a witch, his soldiers had called her, and he had not corrected them - and certainly it is unnatural - perhaps she had sold her soul for such power, become unclean).
He had come to the desert country after seeing the tree with its glass-for-leaves and glass-for-bark. Solterra’s reputation is one of violence and justice bright enough to blind, and anyway, it is a long walk back to Denocte.
The unicorn stirs just as the other man discovers him. He weighs him levelly, not reacting to his tone, only running a practiced eye over the muscles and scars and the way he stands. Without question he is a warrior, but Martell can’t guess who he serves.
“Why,” he answers, over the sound of the waves, his inflection careless, almost flat. “Are you lonely?”
Vercingtorix’s lips turn into a smile that is as deprecating as his comment had been. But then something changes. Then he turns to face the red bay stranger; his smile becomes, abruptly, genuine.
Or seemingly so, at least. Irregardless, it remains as honed as a blade.
“Who isn’t lonely?” Vercingtorix answers a question, with another question.
Perhaps he would have warmed even more, if he could only begin to comprehend the shared nature of their visits to the sea. If only he knew that when the red stallion stared out across the expanse of tumultuous waves, they were painted with a woman’s wicked touch. A touch that marked them irrevocably. A touch that stole the beauty from them.
If only Vercingtorix could admit he, too, stared longingly out at the foam and froth and turmoil in hopes of seeing a glimmer of red, a dark shadow, the flash of a leonine tail.
If only he knew both their women had ruined the sea for them.
But now, Vercingtorix does not. Now, his eyes only appraise a fellow soldier with a lean musculature and stern expression of the face. He is handsome, Vercingtorix thinks, before he can curb the thought.
“Why are you here?” He delivers the question with deflated curiosity, only after deciding he doesn’t have an answer to the question himself.
His regard of the stranger does not change with either the smile or the question the other man turns on him. The general has always been a patient man, for errors came with hasty decisions, and errors for him meant lives.
There are many, he could say, who are not lonely; lovers, children, friends. He had been lonely, an ache that only dulled with her, his head in her lap, her touch rain-light on his skin, her voice the whisper of the wind, of the sea, in his ear. But Martell - Martell isn’t lonely.
“Some are only alone,” he returns, and at last he smiles.
It doesn’t vanish, though he raises a brow at the third question the man asks. He wonders, wryly, if the scarred stranger can only speak in questions - a kind of curse - or if there is some underlying reason he is being pressed for answers both real and rhetorical. If he were still himself, he might have answered curtly, and turned away. But that man is buried (waiting, not dead) and Martell does not mind the question.
“I was tired of walking,” he says, and turns his gaze away from where he’d been idly wondering at the story of each scar the other man bore, on lip and eye and chest and leg, his skin like a well-worn map. “I’m told there’s a city south of here, called Solterra - do you know how much farther?”
Vercingtorix does not add that his personal philosophy means humanity—life, love, loyalty, friendships—suffers. That always, always they try to ease the void of themselves in the presence of others, and even those united in love, or comradeship, or grand causes… even they rot when they are old, even they rot when the war is won.
Perhaps some are only alone.
But Torix believes the line is thin.
Either way, the red stallion does not ask for an elaboration on Vercingtorix’s beliefs, and he does not give it. The smile has intrigued him as much as the first reply. Not, however, so much at the second.
I was tired of walking.
It is Torix’s turn to raise a brow.
He pauses a little longer than may be polite, in answering the final question. “I’d say five, six miles south-east of here. You have to cut across a corner of the Mors, which can be tough going. Especially if you are tired of walking.” Torix’s mouth twists, a little wryly, but the smile is not cruel. “You’re new to Novus, then?”
At last, Vercingtorix begins to walk toward him. There is nothing threatening about it, merely a polite necessity of communication.
There is a moment, briefly, when he turns his back to the sea—and the wrongness of it pits his stomach, turns his knees weak. It takes every bit of resolve within him not to turn to glance over his shoulder; but he does not know what that type of gesture would suggest to this man, and so he refrains. When they are near enough for polite conversation, the gold-and-black stallion says, “I’m Vercingtorix, by the way.”
He listens carefully, ears forward, to the directions given. The name of the Mors he has heard in passing, but five miles through a desert is nothing to a soldier as weathered as he. In the background, the sea goes hush, hush, as if beckoning him to stay. Its urging makes him want to leave it more.
“Thank you. I ought to be able to manage.” His smile is a dirty-mirror reflection of the other, and doesn’t fade when he nods. “I arrived to Denocte’s harbor a fortnight ago.” The blood bay does not expand on his reply; if the stranger is the kind of man to be aware of such things, he will know that is when the Night Court’s queen returned a conquerer. Time is a limited resource, but Martell must wait with his net open, until he learns the habits of this country’s fish.
He doesn’t move to meet the stallion, but he does turn toward him, opening up his posture, cocking a hind hoof into the hot sand. He finds that the golden man is bigger than he’d thought, well-muscled, with impressive confirmation. When he gives his name, the general’s gaze flicks up to eyes that are still dark in the newborn morning. His own horn, bone-white, glows like a pearl as light creeps across the horizon. It dips as he nods. “Martell,” he answers.
It isn’t the first time he’s said the name, but it still feels wrong, even struck surely as a hammer tapping stone. His own name lies buried a hundred miles from here, with the rubble of his city and the rotting bodies of his men.
But for Martell, the war is over, and the world open, unfolding like the horizon into crimson and gold.
“Well, Vercingtorix. Are you up very early, or very late?”
Perhaps it is because the sun has begun to lighten the dark, but I at last come to note the other stallion is the color of spilled blood. Not the sort that has had time to darken, to dry—blood that is freshly spilled, still hot.
This does not change my first impression of him. If anything, it solidifies the key characteristics I have already identified: he is a soldier, but from his easy confession of his arrival, clearly not one from Novus.
“Ah.” I note, noncommittally. And then: “And why come to Novus, my friend?”
The cordial title falls too readily from my mouth. I know it, but do not mind. He is one of the first men to truly intrigue me, if only for the chord of familiarity he strikes. It is not because he, himself, is familiar; it is because the beast teeming beneath his surface is one I have known my entire life.
“I am not from here, either.” I offer the information as a boon. I don’t only ask questions: I give answers, information. Our nearness is not intimate; our nearness remains separated by a thin veil of polite interest, and the desert air that is just so slightly humid before the sun has risen fully to burn it off. The sea continues to crash in the distance, but behind his red shoulder there is nothing but sand.
“Does it matter?” I laugh. “If it does, I’m guilty of being an early riser. I always have been. That’s the way of life in a regiment, eh?”
And yours? The implied question goes unstated, but fills the air between us.
My friend, the stranger says, and the General adds him to another mental category. The kind of man who uses that word lightly, breezily, insincerely. While the General’s eyes might have narrowed, his tail lashed his hindquarters in irritation, Martell smiles.
“I was among those who returned with Queen Isra. I’m from her home country - the one she liberated.” He watches, nonchalantly, for a reaction that will tell him something - but when Vercingtorix speaks again, he accepts that he may know nothing of the returned unicorn queen, who with her dragon and daughter and terrible magic cut the throat of an empire ancient and proud. The blood bay does not ask him where he is from; if it is not Novus and it is not his own homeland, then it does not much matter.
“It can,” he answers, and does not laugh. “Certainly it makes a difference for state of mind.” His interest had been waning, despite the scars and the stature and the striking green eyes, but at the golden man’s last comment his gaze snaps back. “Indeed.” He does not add that such a habit is the reason he stands here now, with night still bluing the sky. “And are you still a military man, Vercingtorix? I’ve seen little of this land’s armies. I’ve been wondering if they rely on magic to defend them, instead.” The way he says the word, magic, is as though it is bitter, or barbs his tongue.
He had been readying to take his leave, polite yet curt - but he does not turn toward the desert.
I was among those who returned with Queen Isra. I’m from her home country—the one she liberated.
His words, delivered so carelessly, belong to a land I have no stake in. I recognize the name “Isra,” but little else; and cannot help but wonder (and not ask) what liberating entails. “I see. That sounds like quite the adventure,” I remark, with a lack of expression. There is nothing on my face but polite interest; but that does not mean I am not cataloguing the information.
He does not ask about me; and I do not offer more.
The conversation seems to be reaching its natural death until Martell’s interest returns, abruptly, at my joking mention of the regiment. And are you still a military man, Vercingtorix? I’ve seen little of this lands armies.
I am careful in my reply. I do not look directly at him; but instead regard him from the corner of my eye, glancing toward the still-dark desert behind him. “I could be nothing else.” I turn to regard him fully. “These lands are full of magic.” I might not have elaborated further, if not for the distaste that colors his tone. “My understanding is magic is very common in Novus; but what is uncommon are those who are truly gifted.”
The sea breeze is licking at my mane; it dishevels it, into my eyes. “There are those, however, in every Court that possess power beyond what is ordinary--there are some, even, who are powerful enough to be an army in and of themselves. It was not like that where I am from.”
I do not know what I am waiting to see, in his response; only that I hope he understands the undercurrent to my words. There is no way to wage war among these people without magic yourself. The actuality of it is one that disgusts me; magic has always had primordial, if not almost evil, connotations in my heart. It is no different now.
“Perhaps I will see you again, Martell. And you will be able to tell me more of the country your Queen liberated, and how.” My curiosity is polite; but I cannot help but wonder at his scarless skin, and that sudden sharpening in regards of military and magic.
It is a sharpening I recognize. It belongs to men at war. It belongs to hounds on the hunt, when they catch the scent of their prey.
“But for now, I’ll leave you to your sunrise.” I nod politely and turn from him, to continue my walk down the shoreline, remembering quite a different war.
The unicorn blows out a breath too quiet, too distant for Vercingtorix to catch. Quite the adventure - had he spoken that way to his men, once, as though war were a boy’s storybook? Martell has long since been inured to violence, to the sight of a man bleeding out at his knees, to the sucking breath of a soldier with a punctured lung, to the eyes of a stranger who knows he is dying. But though it may not give him nightmares, he is not the sort to cheapen it by calling war adventure.
He is patient, but he still feels like a cat with coiled muscles waiting for the stranger’s reply. The bay’s vision remains fixed on that dark face, and he listens to his words with the rapt attention of a scholar - or a spy.
When Vercingtorix speaks of those powerful to be an army of themselves, even his heartbeat betrays him by echoing Isra, Isra, Isra. At last Martell looks away, as though the sight of the dawn sea could soothe the burning in him instead of heighten it; he licks his lips. “Nor where I came from,” he says.
He understands the meaning. He understands, too, the way the other soldier searches him, looking for scars.
“Perhaps.” He dips his head, and his long black hair lashes his cheek as the wind picks up from the sea, blowing inland toward the desert. As the man turns, Martell calls after him, “I hope you find a partner for that romantic walk, Vercingtorix.”
As the golden stallion grows smaller down the beach, the unicorn heads inland, toward Solterra, and their prints meet once before being washed away by the surf.
