[AW] an evolutionary inferior creature, governed by hormonal chaos

[Polyxena]

She watches the strange land on the horizon grow closer.  The moon is bright tonight, washing everything in a solemn silver glaze. Too bright. She feels deeply ill at ease docking this night, even though it will be well past midnight when they do. It's too bright, too exposed, but the captain can't be dissuaded and she can't bear to be alone with him longer than she must--he reeks of filth and desperation and quite frankly she doesn't like to be around dirty or desperate people. She switches her focus from the horizon to stare at the moon; straining, grasping at frayed strands of magic that were once strong and thick as steel cords, as reassuring and steadfast as a one hundred year old oak tree. Of course, nothing happens.  Darkness does not draw across the moon like an elegant black funeral curtain, and she is reminded that what is left her magic is shattered and lost. It will take sheer will and relentlessness to recover what was lost to her. But she will, make no mistake. As long as it takes her, whatever it takes.  Despite the sour turn of events in her own country (and a two month long bought of sea sickness), she remains very much herself, very much Polyxena, lady of darkness.  She is dismayed, yes, and grieving for her slaughtered sisters (even the ones that had a tendency to stab her in the back at any given opportunity), but dwelling in despair on events she cannot change is almost as pitiful as the drunken sailors on board that sing and pine for lovers long lost.  And honestly, she feels very much like throttling the men that surround her--You'd think a goddamn pirate would know more than two shanties... She's the only woman on board and apparently the only one interested in personal hygiene, but why would she expect anything else from filthy, wayward pirates? And it is such vessel that carries her to this new world--a dismal, ugly wooden thing that carries beggars, thieves, and no doubt, smuggled goods (such as Polyxena herself). They have given her a wide berth while at sea; her reputation has preceded her. But there is no reputation that precedes her now, as the ship docks into the blackmarket ports in Solterra. A unit of heavily armored soldiers instantly seize the vessel and all those on board. She hisses softly as they put shackles around her ankles, but otherwise does not resist. Has she escaped one kingdom ruled by a madman only to arrive in another? She has only her cunning and wit to help her survive here. P O L Y X E N A oh, I drain your life 'til there's nothing left but your blood shot eyes oh, I take my time 'til I show you how I feel inside

@Raum

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

They watched that ship come in, unwelcome and strange. Its presence was not welcome and at once Raum issued a unit to seize all upon the vessel.
 
It was a swift affair, each level of the boat scoured and a great many shackles bound tight. From his place upon the dock, Raum watched as each sailor stepped off the boat, their bound ankles clinking a song of injustice.
 
This night Raum is as black as night, he sinks into the shadows of the dock and his skin is as black as his mood. His eyes barely gleam, for they are as dark and endless as the space between stars.
 
These ports are closed. A captain of the Regime says, his voice a hiss. Raum says nothing but tilts his head to watch the crew of this strange boat. The crew says nothing at all, but the shuffle of feet, the rattle of chains laughing, is enough to know how unsettled they are. Yet their jaws are tight and their tongues heavy. No words slip past their lips upon questioning.
 
At the center of the line is a girl small and slim. She is made of fine shadows and glittering black sands caught beneath liquid moonlight. Her hair curls as raspberry wine pouring down her throat and hocks. Her eyes are bruised sunsets and bright violets. Every part of her reminds him of Denocte and at once he both despises and enjoys her.
 
The captain tries again to get answers, but Raum is already slipping forth from the darkness. He is liquid ink pooling across the docks and, though he looks nothing of himself, the sea of soldiers part for him. He moves to the girl, a hiss still upon her lips, and he thinks of Legion, who listens from the shadows still. Ah Raum longs to scent Denocte upon her skin, but there is nothing of the Night Court there and Raum both enjoys and despises her a little more.
 
He holds the girl within his gaze, tighter than the metal that binds her ankles. “What is your business here?” He murmurs at the girl his voice like midnight, his gaze the bright of the moon alighting her skin in silver.

---

@Polyxena

[Polyxena]

She knows the moment he boards. The shift in the atmosphere gives his presence away. Silence settles like a gentle snow fall, gradual at first--shouts of interrogation turn to ashes in their mouths, to the decay of whispers strained against the sigh of the wind and the creak of the ship as it trembles in the black waters. And then the silence is absolute in its entirety. The silence holds the anticipation of a last sigh before the flatline, the last beat of a heart before the shadow of death ensues...  That is how still his soldiers are (made of stone, one might say), clinging to what little breath remains in their lungs, too terrified to draw another in the presence of a nameless fear. Nameless for now, anyhow. She studies their expressions carefully (she can't yet see who is approaching), gleaning all the information available from their downcast gaze, the way they attempt to stand at attention and shrink in the shadows at the same time. Faces pale, drained of color. Eyes focused on irrelevant details (a partially exposed nail in a plank, a droplet of quivering sea water), anything to distract them from drawing the attention... of whom, I wonder. She doesn't have to wonder long. He is a ghost in the night. Gray like the dawn before a dismal funeral. A sheet of storm rain in the distance. It should be soothing, she thinks. Silver is such a listless, neutral color, devoid of any emotion or feeling. It is the color of silence and somberness and solitude. But as his eyes meet hers, his silver eyes--dead eyes--are anything but soft like the rain. He seems to look through her--no, into her--and she briefly wonders if he may have the terrible gift to pry into her mind and have all of her desires and secrets laid barren and exposed before him. His dead eyes on her skin, her hair, her face...it is the unmistakable and uncomfortable sensation of nakedness... But does this silver ghost with dead eyes know what happened to Actaeon after he lay his unwelcome gaze upon the wrathful Artemis bathing naked?  "These are not necessary." She clinks the chains on her ankles together for effect. "Release me and then we may talk business in a more sophisticated manner." Her stomach growls; her skin itches. How she longs to step on the solidness of earth and to never to set hoof on this wretched boat again. "Perhaps over dinner," she suggests idly, as if she is completely at liberty to tell a king what to do.   P O L Y X E N A oh, I drain your life 'til there's nothing left but your blood shot eyes oh, I take my time 'til I show you how I feel inside

@Raum

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 


Their ship bobs and rocks upon the rolling sea. The water laps upon the dock and the wood groans with weariness borne of its journey.
 
The Ghost had slowly walked up the loading plank. Beneath, so far beneath him, the waters had chattered, fitful or keen – who could be sure truly which? For the sea saves and the sea takes away. Raum was a storm broiling out at sea, growing more monstrous; each flash of lightning was his descending blade. His storm is tallying up the lives it has taken. They follow as ghosts in the haunting silence of his destruction. Each of their lives he marks them upon himself as though his silver skin were a wall of stone. He has lost count, but still he carves them into the place where his soul once was. As if lives meant something to him.
 
Once upon a time they did.
 
Soulless, devoid, Solterra’s hateful king ascended the ramp and the boat bowed before him. It rocked as if it could barely stand the weight of him – for oh how heavy his sins are!
 
The prisoners were lined before him, each one in chains, each one dirtied and weary. But before him now is the stowaway girl. Her lilac eyes are bright and fierce, he knows upon his skin hers would be a bruise that would not quiet. It would hurt and hurt and hurt no matter the softness of such a wound.
 
Her chains clink in a song and from it a thousand enslaved voices rise. She speaks, bold and bright. How many more would raise their voice up to him? How many more would stand bold before him with tongues as brave as serpents? The poison king regards her, his silence is consuming. Yes, yes he looks through her. He does not seek to know her, not when her skin is black as pitch, when her hair is the colour of midnight flowers caught in moonlight’s gaze. To see her is to fall in love with Night and oh Raum is homesick and home-hateful.
 
Her beauty condemns her and a “No,” like a caw, like a claw suddenly striking flesh, slips past his lips.
 
And then, when he turns, when shadows rejoice and reach their clawing black hands for his silver flesh, oh then does she dare speak again.  Her idle suggestion slips like silk past her lips and it is wonder that such an idle, fragile suggestion could bid him stop. Yet Raum pauses. An ear twists to catch each word and slowly he turns from the prisoner beside her. He holds her with his gaze, tighter, heavier than the chains that bind her. That gaze is the silver of a blade, his skin, as though an ominous shadow passes, slips from brilliant silver into black.
 
There is no joy, there is no wonder, there is no amusement. Oh there is nothing in his gaze when he turns back to her, but the silver of him (what little remains) is the fetid skin atop liquid. For beneath that cap is a simmering darkness. There is a maelstrom that begins to churn and as if the sea knows the boat rocks heavily.
 
Claws scratch upon wood, great talons cleaving through planks and the boat pitches heavily as a monster lands. The king’s basilisk caw’s a roar that rises above the din of the port. Raum, below, steps once again before the strange girl. Her stomach rumbles, oh it growls, and is lost beneath the scraping and fracturing of wood above.
 
Raum’s skin is the blackest pitch, it seethes and writhes as though monsters lurk beneath his skin as the leviathan in the deep. Cries rend the air as wood above begins to turn to stone. Legion rips along the deck and more stone creeps down, down the hull of the ship. The boat begins to pitch, too heavy as its skeleton turns from wood to stone.
 
He spares the girl a moment more, as if the boat is not sinking, as if the world has another year to turn before even a second might pass. Then the Ghost King turns and makes for the dock. “Bring the girl. She desires dinner. The rest can remain.” His voice is little more than an echo, for already he is gone, already his men are following and the castle beckons. Upon the boat, the remaining men move to bring the girl too.

---

@Polyxena - well, um, that was long...

[Polyxena]

She remembers everything in painstaking detail. Everything. Her brain is carefully compartmentalized and organized to store the photographs of her impeccable memory. The minuscule details of lesser relevance and importance do tend to fade over time but they are always stored and readily accessible should she ever wish to recall a certain face, a certain environment, a certain sentence spoken two years ago. She memorizes Raum in this way. She memorizes every detail; not matter how relevant or irrelevant it may seem at the time. She searches for a crack, anything that might tell her more than he intends to reveal, anything that might help her survive. But he has dead gray eyes and she can only assume that his heart, too, is dead. Hoping otherwise would be foolish. She has made that mistake once before and paid dearly for it; they all did. A kingdom had burned in the wake of their poor, empathetic judgement. People can only be what they are, not what you want them to be. No. He turns away from her, smoothly, his face bland and void of emotion as if she is inconsequential as a fly buzzing in his ear. He pauses, just so. Something has changed his mind. An ear tilts her way. His eyes find hers again. This time he does not look through her. This time his gaze is as relentless, as if she is being crushed between a silver vice. She finds that she cannot look away and despite the fact that she struggles to breathe beneath the weight of those dead eyes, she holds. She does not look away. She holds. She wants to look, wants to discover what lies in the depths of those eyes that no one else on board will meet. What will she see if she looks? As she holds his gaze her necklace begins to pulse with steady warmth, like an ember flickering to life in a steady breeze. The spell is broken—she is no longer a prisoner drowning in the soulless depths of his dead eyes. Instead she beholds him with renewed interest and mild surprise, as if she knows something he doesn’t.  The boat shifts and the floorboards creak and moan under the strain of something immense; she is rent entirely free form the suffocation of his unyielding gaze. Basilisk. The name of the creature comes to her immediately even though she has never seen one before. She has read about them and Erebos occasionally spoke of those he had met in the Other World. It is a regal creature and a curious mix of midnight scales and feathers the color of a blood-red dawn. The blindfold binds the creature tightly, unmercifully. She wonders if he might be a prisoner, too. A murmur of fear rises like a wave from the smugglers on board as the basilisk screeches his fury, his wrath, his pain. Her nostrils flare and wrinkle; there is the distinct, acrid stench of urine in the air. Yellow piss runs down the cracks of the floorboards beneath her cloven hooves. She glances around, frowning in distaste; but somehow finds a sliver of empathy when she sees how young the boy is and how all color is drained from the soft planes of his face. She does not blame him for losing control of his bladder in the presence of a creature from nightmares. She supposes she ought to be afraid as the wooden clad deck turns to stone and as the ship begins to creak and groan as sea water spills over the side. She ought to feel something, anything as she faces her doom, her death, as the ship gurgles and drowns beneath her hooves. She thinks of Erebos and wonders what fate he has met in the Rift. She had hoped they would meet again before her time was up.  The young man who had wet himself begins to weep uncontrollably like a child. The only thing she can really think is: how ironic. First she had been condemned to burn by wicked, weak men and now she is condemned to drown in the sea by a man with dead, dead, dead eyes. The eyes of a walking corpse. What can possibly drive a man as far gone as this? Bring the girl, she hears. Then: The rest can remain. The silver man with dead eyes and his blind-folded creature are gone. The guards in black armor escort her off the ship. Her chains chafe and bruise her ankles. She looks back as she is jostled along, searching desperately for the young man. Her daughter would be about the same age now, she thinks absentmindedly. But he is lost in the chaos of the sinking stone ship. His cries are swallowed and overwhelmed by the wails of dying, drowning men. Polyxena does not look back again. P O L Y X E N A oh, I drain your life 'til there's nothing left but your blood shot eyes oh, I take my time 'til I show you how I feel inside

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

The sea is greedy this day. Its waves hungrily pull at the boat, tipping it onto it’s side as the basilisk weighs it down, down.
 
It does not take long for the boat to sink, so eager is the sea, so keen the breakers that wash over the wood, swallowing it down in blue.
 
The cries of men are consumed by the hiss and creak of wood. Gravity pulls harder, harder and as water floods the boat, it sinks, faster, faster. Men are sucked down below the waves, the boards washed of urine as the sea claims the failing ship. The clink of chains soon falls silent and Raum wonders for how long the men can breathe until death creeps upon them, squeezing their lungs until numbness reaches their every part.
 
Yet the boat is gone and none dare regret its sinking, nor try to help when Raum is present. He feels loathing eyes upon his spine, hatred that nicks at his bones. He moves for the castle, and the only song that remains is the girl’s chains clinking and clanking.
 
 
--------------
 
She hungers, he knows. Raum leads the girl into a room, where already food waits for them. They are only small nibbles, not enough to stave the wolf of hunger that prowls through the midnight-girl’s stomach growling, rattling its teeth along her ribs.
 
Her chains clink and her turns to her, drinking in the black of her skin, the slim lines of her sides, the grooves of her ribs. The chains are great about her ankles and already rub sores into the swell of her fetlocks. The pink skin is skies of dawn blooming against the black of her midnight skin.
 
He does not offer her chains to be removed.
 
But, he murmurs, “eat.” And the food before them steams. Ah, the desert outside is gold and bare, it denizens thirst and hunger and yet, before this girl of night and mystery he lays the beginnings of a lavish feast.
 
Does he hear her stomach growl again? Maybe the lupine hunger within her yearns for the myriad breads and meats that lie out warm and fragrant. “Eat,” Raum welcomes again, as he stands to the side, his blue eyes, sharp as sparks along her skin – static dancing up her spine. “Then tell me your name and why you are here.”
 
About the slender curve of her throat, a choker of ebony lace ties snug. A pendant hangs, it glowed once, upon the ship, the moment her gaze turned soft. In silence Raum studies it, wonders what charms lie within its depths and the chains that hang in waves beside it. “My name is Raum, I am the king of Solterra.”

---

@Polyxena

[Polyxena]

The citadel is full of light. Even though it is the darkest hours before a bloody red dawn, starlight floods through the stained glass pane windows in brilliant, gleaming rays that wash the roughly hewn sandstone floor in shades of silver and gray. He is out of place, she thinks, gazing at the red stone hewn from the desert and the cavernous space flooded with light. She can only imagine how the sun sets the citadel ablaze in the morning and midday hours. He floats through the candle-lit halls like a ghost who has haunted these corridors over a lifetime, but never graced them in the light of day. The silver man is smooth in his stride and possessing all the hubris of a fallen king of old. The snake is nowhere to be seen.   She is led into an elegant but simply furnished room. An interesting scent (but indiscernible) wafts in the air with the perfume of the luxurious candles lit on the embroidered velvet tablecloth. Her stomach cries out in anguish against her will. The ship’s supplies had run low during the three month journey. She does not remember the last time she ate. The guards deposit her at the table and then step back into the flickering shadows. Her chains remain. The skin is raw and her ankles are swollen. Somehow, the sting of imprisonment no longer registers, as if she is an old friend to such conditions. It is not the first time she has been chained—she is not so naive to think it will be the last, either. The man with dead eyes is at the opposite end of the table, watching her with something resembling vague amusement and boredom, as if she is merely his entertainment for the time being, perhaps to be disposed of when she is no longer of any amusement or interest to him. She does not take her eyes off him. He is at home here in the darkness, here amid moon and starlight and silver washed tiles, but does he cringe from the morning sun’s knowing rays? Eat. It is not a suggestion. She glances at the lavish feast laid out before her. Silver plates and crystal goblets glimmer in the gentle illumination of flickering candle-light. Her stomach clenches uncomfortably at the sight of the dish in front of her. The red meat still steams with heat and liquid fat pools on platter. There are no greens in sight—no apples, no rarity of oranges and berries… Only the wrong, wrong, wrongness of meat. And yet, the emptiness of her stomach is merciless. She meets his dead eyes and sinks her teeth into the unknown flesh. Ruby-red juice dribbles down her chin. She does not look away from the diamond-hard, unfathomable planes of his face as she eats. The taste is alien. The taste is wrong. She eats anyway. She has not watched her sisters burn, Erebos imprisoned, and sailed three thousand miles for nothing. She devours the wrongness of the meat like a wild animal until her plate is slicked clean. She drains a goblet of what she assumes is wine. Perhaps it is watered-down blood. At this point she doesn’t care to know. Only then, after her belly is gorged and bloated, does she regain some semblance of an elegant lady instead of a wild, savage creature governed by the brink of starvation and desperation. She blots her chin with a pristine ivory napkin. The napkin falls to the table, beaded with scarlet pearls of fleshy juice. Raum, King of Solterra.  “I am Polyxena,” she says, then pauses. She considers her next words carefully. It would do no good to lie, she has no doubt that he can see through such frivolities and she doesn’t consider herself a liar anyhow. “Where I am from my kind is burned alive.” Or worse. She feels strangely naked, stripped of the armor of her magic and the company of Erebos. She tilts her head, clearly curious about something. The pendant pulses warm and sure against her skin. She studies him closely for a reaction as she suggests: “Even a king would not be safe from the flames." P O L Y X E N A oh, I drain your life 'til there's nothing left but your blood shot eyes oh, I take my time 'til I show you how I feel inside

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

Blood is upon the air. It turns all to metal and sin. Brutality curls in the corners of this lavish room. Its presence is nails upon a blackboard, as loud as a basilisk’s screech.
 
The king does not flinch as the girl is dragged forward and her chains rattle like the bones of the dead. But his heart beats with the clatter of them.  Ah, she is proud, he sees, as she sits adorned in grace and poise. This girl is the night that knows the sun and yet still will not be tamed. Ah, he looks over her, over every inch of her skin, black as ebony and bright as a freshly laid amethyst bruise.
 
She watches him, oh how she watches him. Her eyes are the stony grey of slate, of a bland sea, only grey and full of anger. The girl’s hatred is vitriolic, it is diesel in his veins and the twist of her lips the match to set him alight. He does not blink, he does not lean forwards and yet, he dares her light that spark. He begs to burn and scream and feel. Yet he says nothing. Oh Raum is ice upon the winter wind. He is death creeping in, silent, like shadows.
 
Ah, she eats! He watches her, watches the blood trickle like wine past her lips. Still she watches him.
 
And still he watches her.
 
She is savage and the meat tears within her grasp, steam rises like a soul before a god. Had she dared eat from the offering table at a god’s altar? Raum does not smile, he does not reveal anything in the way he watches her eat. Oh, he is as quiet as a midnight moon, as devious as a crow perched upon a branch, watching with wicked eyes.
 
Her hunger is a lion, a beast that changes her into something other. The meat is gone, only pooled blood remains. Still he does not smile, still he does not gloat, except he stirs, like a leaf moved by an idle breeze. “Was it good?” He asks her and wonders what she tasted, if she tasted anything at all, when each morsel was swallowed down like a mouse before a starved snake.
 
The napkin drinks blood from her lips, stains itself snow white to crimson. The droplets are like blood within the snow, it bears her sins so very clearly.
 
Polyxena.
 
Her name hangs between them as the fragrance of the meat once had: tempting, alluring, desirable. Within Raum, something stirs, it is vicious and white hot and savage. It would make him smile, it would make his eyes glitter, were he any other man.
 
She talks of flames, of burning flesh, of a life extinguished by the roaring of a fire. Her head tilts, the sunlight pouring down to gild along her sculpted cheek, the curve of her horns. “And what is your kind?” Raum asks and wonders what sins her kind might have committed. “Did I do wrong to spare you then?” He asks soft as silk and violent as a noose about her throat. There is still space amongst the dead, Polyxena. He does not say, but wonders if she hears the deep sea calls of her shipmates from their watery graves.
 
This ship-wreck girl feels naked, exposed and yes, Raum would strip every piece of armour from her torso. He would leave not an inch of her unseen, if only to better know the threat she brings him.
 
Even a king would not be safe from the flames. And oh how his eyes flash. Oh how his turns from mercury poisonous and soft, to a blade poised at her throat. He would spill her blood and let it mingle with that upon the plate.
 
Polyxena studies Raum as he studies her. Her head tilts, the wash of her red-wine hair curling about her slender throat. Her pendant glitters and the king’s gaze turns feral. It is a savageness, there like a spark of Acton’s magic and then gone in the blink of an eye. Raum is stone, as ever, unmoved by this girl of daring night. “Mmm.” He murmurs like the singing of a blade unsheathing from its holster. “Is that a threat or a plea, Polyxena?” He asks, soft as a whisper and as loud as teeth against her neck.
 
Then he is moving toward her and she is sea-salt and starlight, midnight and the cries of sailors lost to a monster. There is the sea upon his tongue, wine in his eyes and shadows on his skin. “Now your belly is full, you had better tell me how you can be of use to me for otherwise I could just let the flames you have evaded claim you, at last.”

---

@Polyxena