[P] bells of death shall ring .

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

He wanders outside of his element - again. Foolish, foolish boy - man - when do you stop feeling like one and become the other? There is no one to ask. A good thing, really, because all he has with him is the silent prayer that he has been forgotten. A lost memory, a shadow that disappeared when Raum did. 

He thinks it could be the truth. Maybe they have forgotten. He does not ask Juniper of it. That golden one knew him by name, certainly, but there is always hope. The what-if.

What if I can live a normal life, he asks.

What if I don’t deserve to?

There is so much rage and sorrow in the eyes of the many. 

That’s alright, was the thinking then. That’s the way of things. They hate you for doing what must be done. They hate you for killing. 

Sure, alright. 

Lately, the beast has begun wondering if it was made for more than killing. Or if it was not made for killing at all. What if it was made for poetry, for soft words, and molded into something else? Remember nursemaid. Soft, soothing words. That was what it wanted. But the fighting, the killing - it was good. It was victorious. And no-one ever said it was wrong.

El Rey has found the most violent place in Delumine. 

Perfect.

There was a roaring, behind all that silence. Beyond it. The bird song and the gentle breeze, try as they might, could not hide it. And here was nature’s executioner, swollen with spring melt, pure pressure, pure rain, pure hurricane. 

It did not frighten him. 

It felt right.

He stepped closer, carefully. It would not do to slip. Some things were only for watching. Things that felt like you were not always you. This is a lesson the beast has learned, and must learn, and learn again. A not-you is always more dangerous than a you.


@Thana | Pan-Asian Delight
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Thana]

The smell of sand has started to twist itself around the fresh smell of fern and moss. It started slowly when Eligos begged for mercy and followed her home. Like a poltergeist it follows her steps, another shadow, another trail weaving through the forest that should not be there. She's hunting it even now, following the river-bed with its halo of branches and its furious current.

But even that still pales beneath the hunger of her aching and the way it wants, and falls silent, and wants again. And it's wanting now, gnawing at the marrow of her bones and the cells of her blood. Thana can feel it spreading, like anemia, like the desert, like the trail of sulfur left in the wake of her. And it's still spreading when she comes upon him by the banks of the racing, rushing river.

She doesn't call to him, although the urge is there, to whisper at his back like a wolf begging entrance to a den of rabbits. Thana only steps closer, and closer, and closer. Eligos follows as he always does and there is that word again, please, slipping between them as easy as violence slips from their forms like breath. Thana's hungry aching is echoing the word back at him.

Today, underneath a halo of branches with sunlight dappling her form like scars, she wants to finally say yes to the monster of fury. Perhaps he knows the same thing her body does, perhaps he is tired of hunting tracks in the forest and finding only gore at the end of them.

Perhaps they have both had enough of civility. Perhaps they are too wild to stay tame, to stand by spring blooms and pretend everything in them is not wilting in the sun for such stillness. Perhaps it's why Thana lowers her horn, and why Eligos bares his teeth.

“This is not your home.” Her blood is roaring,yes, and it's the loveliest sound she's heard all day. Perhaps. Perhaps. Thana's tail blade rises at her back like a viper and even that sounds like yes when she taps it against her hipbone like a knock.

The wolf has grown weary of begging. She is aching.



"Death hath no dominion"

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

He does not hear her approach over the roaring waves, nor does he smell her on the wind. There is only the creeping feeling of dread, and her voice.

“This is not your home.”

The black beast turns. She smells of Dawn, of the forest, of the leaves and the water and the birds. Somewhere underneath he smells rot, and agony, or senses it - what is the smell of agony, he wonders, but he is more acquainted with it than he thinks in this moment - and the creeping thing at her side is that, creeping, rot, agony. Death. 

“No,” he says. “It is not.”

He wonders if she knows him.

El Rey looks to the river and speaks. ”I came to hear the water.” He looks again to her. He sees hunger; it spills from her sinews like blood or tar. Blood and tar. He does not have to ask if she would like to kill him. Sometimes he thinks he ought to die. He searches for death every time he ventures out, going somewhere he should not, where he might be known, apprehended, executed. There is a light in his life and he would never extinguish it. But he dampens her, he must, that is his way. She would be better off without him. It is his neck that should be cleaved in two, his lungs that should fill with the river water. His stare is unwavering. He says, ”You know its violence, too.”

@Thana

”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“

I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Thana]

There is still that tap, tap, tap of her blade against her hip below the low thunder of Eligos. It does not stop when he turns to look at her with his dark gaze. It does not stop when she sees the tips of his horns, tainted golden as a sword she has seen before. There is still that tap, tap, tap of her blade (like a hungry thing rattling the dead trees in the forest as it passes) when she closes the distance between them. And it is still there when she says, “You came,” like it's blades swinging from her lips instead of words, “and you did not ask me.”

Thana inhales the rot of her trail and the sand of his skin. Oh, there is that thing gnawed loose from something old still prowling between the cage of her bone and flesh. It's moving inside her with an aching jaw and a hollow stomach that could devour the sun before turning on the moon. And when the tapping stops, there is only the prowling thing and her hollowed out, corkscrew horn titling towards the hollow below his eyes.

She exhales. The rot around her hooves expands-- black, molding moss and rocks worn down to dust. It runs in looping circles, like a stone tossed into a quiet lake, straight towards him.

Eligos moves closer with the decay.

Part of her wants to agree with him that she knows the violence of the river. Part of her wants to drink from his heart with the tip of her horn just to show him that next to her the river is nothing but a slow, bloated death. Part of her wants to drag him beneath the waves. And all she says, with her horn trembling out a warning like a divining rod, is--

“It is not for you.”

But there is a look in her eyes and her snarling teeth that says, the violence can be.

He only has to ask.


"Death hath no dominion"

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

He watches her come close. He watches, and he waits. He waits for her to strike for so long it seems like forever; he waits for her to tear his throat open with that iron blade of hers or for the blackness that follows her to do it, or for the rot to crawl up his legs and turn him into a wet mess of blood and bones.

None of those things happen.

”You came and you did not ask me.”

The tapping of her blade halts, and there is silence, save for the breathing; the inhale, exhale of two, no three, bodies, death-bringers, rot-bringers, meeting at the edge of violent waters. Waters that could sweep them both away in an instant, waters that could kill them both more easily than they could kill each other. He wonders what it would take to drag her with him if he slipped.

The rot runs towards him. The twirls of her horn run towards him. 

”It is not for you.”

He thinks-knows that she wants to kill him. She must know me, is his only thought, and a breath later is the question: How do I kill her first?

The river runs towards them.

(It takes the threat of death to know whether you truly want to live.)

In less than a blink or a flash or a sharp inhalation he dips, then twists, twin horns aiming for her one horn. El Rey gathers his momentum, body sliding one way and head another, all hopes screaming may the river-foam take her.

This has been his entire life; what is one more corpse to the raging waters?


@Thana || he’s attempting to hook her horn with his own and throw her into the river.
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Thana]

Ah! She had been waiting for him to ask.

All her parts, and her perhaps, whittle themselves down to one: drinking from his heart. There is an almost smile in the way she pulls back her lips, the way her teeth form themselves into aching lion's teeth, the way her eyes flash like a wolf scenting a stag. There is almost a beauty to her horror, her violence, the way she unfolds herself from the mortal champion to something as primordial as the worlds before his gods.

This time when Eligos says, please, her own answer is yes, like a hallelujah, “yes”.

They are moving by the time the stallion turns. Their movements are all grace, all fury, and between them three wolves form themselves out of the sand. The wolves lunge forward with them, baring their sharp sod teeth and growling with all the fury of dirt, stone, and leeched out water. Like one they all swing for the stallion as he swings for them.

Thana laughs to see his intent, a bellowing rage that sounds deeper than a comet caught on a sun. She waits until his horn is reaching for her own before turning her neck away. His horn only slices across her neck and Thana hardly inhales with pain (this is her calling, this violence, the tug of her skin splitting open). The blood dripping down her neck only fuels her fury.

Like gasoline to a flame Thana explodes.

The world ripples black with moss spreading across the shore and all the trees arching in halos above their heads start to drip like purified death. Eligos snarls as he feels an echo of the cut on his own neck. And with his snarl he leaps for the stallion, his sand-wolves leaping with him, their teeth all bared and begging for flesh, blood, and bone.  

But it's Thana's tail blade that is the quickest, swinging forward even as she turns her neck. It swings toward the curl of his throat because he begged for his blood to be drunk. Thana will not deny him.

She will unmake him.


"Death hath no dominion"

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

He knows this game, yes, but seldom does it have so many players.

There are wolves now, and then, and before and after and all at the same time that El Rey attempts to execute his stupid little plan. Stupid, in hindsight, in now-sight, knowing that she has summoned teeth out of dirt and now there are more knives at his throat than he can count. This was a bad idea, he thinks, and he could’ve guessed it before, oh, why hadn’t he? She tensed her form like lioness made from all-consuming blackness and not blood. She laughs and his horn cuts across her neck but it is far from the killing blow. 

First, blade.
Second, one two three four wolf or wolf-things.

The blade strikes against the side of his neck as he tries to duck out of its path, or rather, save himself from certain death. The wolves and Eligos come for him and there is little he can do, now their teeth snag on his flesh and tear it away; who could see the blood against his darkness if it had been anything but fresh crimson? He thinks she will kill him, knows it, but he was born for fighting and this is what he will-

His hoof slips against the bank. It falls away. It falls away and he wonders if it will take the wolves with it, if all the mud that falls into the river will stay lupine and tear him apart before the rocks have their share. It is not his to decide, no, if Eligos comes with them all, but he hopes that they all go down if he must. The mud splits away with the sand and cracks like eggshell with the black rot that runs towards them all. 

El Rey has no magic to save him. All he thinks is, Let me live, and this is his answer:

His flank slams hard into a stone. His hooves scrabble along the rocks, his hips burn like hellfire - are the wolves here too? Is the black beast? Is the red one? Funny, to think of anything but himself as a black beast. 

The river grabs hold of him, at least for now, its waters pink and tainted.


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

[Thana]

The hum in her skin is singing, home, home, home. This nothing like the aimless rage of the poacher hunt, or the wishing to unmake the desert king, this is not the fury as the forest dies around her and the court looks on at their strange, strange warrior. This is home, this song of tooth, horn and claw. The burning of magic, and wrath, and war, explodes through her skin.

Inside she is exploding but outside the world is unmaking itself, dissolving to eons of decay. It is imploding, folding up itself and the skin of this black stallion. It is all begging entrance to his bones, his form, his foolish violence that sought to drown her. Thana is still laughing as she drives him into the river by way of horn, blade, Eligos, and his sand wolves.

And like a black bull he goes.

Each of the sand wolves follow him, their forms floating away with the current. Eligos pulls back with his golden, bloody smile of jagged teeth. Together they watch the bull float down the river like a corpse caught in the rose-stained current. She can hardly feel the sting of her wounds, or the hot touch of blood running down her neck. All she can feel is the omnipresent hunger, the song in her skin still singing home, home, home.

Thana steps closer to the current, close enough that the water lashes against her hooves and algae clings to her violently. And in that current she wonders how quickly she might follow him downstream, how quickly she might finish what the stones have started. How quickly she might render him nothing more than a bit of bone at the bottom of the sea.

But there are a million more days spreading out before her. And the hunt, the anticipation, lures her back into the forest. Be it in a day, a month, a year, an eon-- Thana will find the black bull again.

Later. Thana and Eligos say. Later.


"Death hath no dominion"

@El Rey

[El Rey]

LIVE, he says, I AM COMING.

The wolves melt away, but not before their fangs sink into his flesh. Eligos pulls away, but El Rey hardly notices, the sting of so many punctures and bruising ribs singing in his nerves. Thana does not come with him; this much he sees. Oh, how he would have liked to kill her. Oh, how he would have liked her to die as he might now. 

But oh, he is not strong enough. 
They watch him rush away in reverse, blood in the water, more and more with each stone-sword cutting into his flanks, his neck bleeding so, his hips, his face. I still have my horns,, he thinks-hopes-prays. 

A rock collides with his skull and - 

He awakens on the shore. 

Bloodlust would be gone from the air, had he not carried it with him, had it not grown as the river carried him.

I will come for you, Thana.

He hadn’t wanted to hurt anybody, but now - 


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