Your justice will be the same as your vengeance. If Vercingtorix were the type of man to feel contrite, he might have paused; he might have taken stock of those words, and what they meant, and changed his mind.
Instead, he hates her as she hates him: as something other, as something dark—as a monster, with magic in her veins, with a leopardess prowling beneath her flesh. A shapeshifter, amorphous, not to be trusted. A woman, with magic ebbing in her blood.
Not to be trusted.
Only contained.
Just breathe, Warset. Don’t fight your mockery of stars; let them be like a welcome home. Vercingtorix watches her through the incandescent vapour; the swirls of shapes like curses given form. Damascus spews hate; Damascus spews every condemnable thought, whispered into something other, wrapped in silk and honey.
And you will find—
“That your words don’t matter.” Vercingtorix chides. He watches her fall with the power of a young god and Damascus, with a steady pulse of his wings, banishes the lingering vapour.
“Damascus,” Vercingtorix calls—and the beast steps forward to collect Warset in his gemstone claws; he cradles her with surprising gentleness, a star in the palm of a dragon borne from Tartarus, the pit of titans and demons and darkness, of planets and black holes and sin. The pit of all things breaking, or broken.
Damascus kneels; and for the first time Vercingtorix walks up the dragon’s arm and shoulder, until he rests safely between the monstrous beast’s wings.
“To the mountains,” Vercingtorix commands. And with their new prisoner, Damascus takes to the skies.
"Speech." || @Warset
who knows what kind of havoc they might wreak?
