[P] There's a bad man in everyone

[Raymond]

Show me your fangs, show me your claws
Break all my bones, break all my laws

***

Once upon a time, Raymond had crossed great swaths of forest turned to ash by dragonsfire and passed beneath the somber and watchful gaze of the sentinels perched atop the Raven Gates. He had walked these streets when nary a soul dared darken the cobbled walkways with their shadows - nary a soul, save one. She was dark, fearful, but she refused to hide despite her terror.

And once upon a time, he had walked with her through the desolate waste beyond the gates and helped her lay those lost souls to rest, in silence as Death intends. And he had watched her take up the mantle of the tyrants who fled the judgment of the masses, and had offered what support he thought he could with the understanding that his heart and his allegiance would forever pull him elsewhere.

And then, after a whirlwind of bloodshed and revelations, they had done exactly that.

The red ranger now walked the streets toward the night court privately impressed by the changes that time (and, yes, Isra) had wrought. Every corner was alive with activity: he passed largely unnoticed, for he walked with silent purpose as though he belonged as certainly as they did and each of them was invested in their own preoccupations. The court buzzed with frenetic preparations. A festival, perhaps, loomed on the horizon.

Raymond entered the Court proper with a cool glance at the guards, meeting the delayed recognition in their eyes with a half-smile and a salutatory flick of his bladed tail. The familiar crushing itch of walls closing in around him bubbled through his skin like a swarm of biting flies. As always the moment he subjected himself to Novus' concept of civilization, he found himself reminded of all the reasons he had avoided these very things throughout his life. He craved the open skies and fresh breeze and a hundred miles of uninterrupted wilderness to run. He needed predators to outrun and enemies to bring low. Domesticity felt like poison.

But he also needed an audience with the Night Queen, to account for if not answer for his transgressions, and to secure the safety of perhaps the only thing left for him in this forsaken realm.

So here he was.

***

Raymond
Show me your darkest heart, your darkest heart
So that I may rest in peace.

@Isra | set just before the fall festival, sorry it's garbage

[Isra]

Isra and the deadly song

"I could put my teeth on your throat. I could growl. I could eat you whole."


There was a time where she would have rushed to greet Raymond the moment she heard he came to see her. It was a time when sorrow and not magic ran electric through her blood. A time when her eyes had been the eyes of a wild thing fearing the cage, or the lash, or the feel of teeth wrapped hard around her spine.

But that Isra, the one with her soft eyes and her soft heart, is buried beneath the crown of teeth she'll forever wear around her neck.

She is almost dead.

So she simply smiles when one of the guards tells her He is here.  It's a smile full of sharp edges that still ache metallic and bloody. When she pauses at the window, to see her dragon swooping low over the waves and drawing out words in the brine with the tip of his tail, the look does not soften on her face. If this a story, if any of this is a story anymore, she's already decided that she will never be the maiden again. Isra only wants to be the dragon in the mountain, the hero with his chest full of noble glory, or the shadows running fast and slick through the sunflowers. She only wants to be everything.

The hallway shines with moonstone, quartz and lapis lazuli. Each step she takes sounds like a song she sung once in a dream-- the sharp clash of stone against bone, the sigh of magic pouring out from her like blood, the whisper of wondering shadows when they found no darkness and only brightness. It reminds her of Eik.

And even that isn't enough to soften the look upon her face, because---

There he is, blood-red glory that belongs to some age long gone. She can see the way his tail rests against the floor like a waiting beast. The sight of it makes her shiver with something more dangerous than fear. Beneath her skin her magic roars, and out at sea her dragon hums, and the moon blazes white-cold in her breast. Her throat aches like she's swallowed a fiery, rusted sword. She can taste metal, even now  it's always metal and dust.

Isra steps closer and all the things alive and hot beneath her skin do not settle. They do not settle at all. “Was it worth it?” She wants to turn the walls to bone around him, like a teeth falling down over a mountain cave. When she blinks can still feel the drop, drop, drop of Acton's blood falling on her face. It all flashes electric through her blood that once sang only of sorrow and running fleet-footed through the hills.

She steps closer again and the ground beneath her hooves trembles like it's both afraid of what it might become and eager to be anything but worn gray stone. “Was leaving worth it?” She can see the darkness of his gaze when she stops, and she wonders if he can feel the fire of her breath curling hungry in the space between them. Her eyes flash like the storm sea and her dragon's humming becomes loud enough that she can hear it trickling in through the window like icy rain.

And when she lifts her head, so that he might see the ring of white curled around the delicate hollow of her throat, the stone beneath their hooves turns to rubies.

Blood-red, always blood-red.    




@Raymond