[P] night sky with exit wounds

[Raziel]

Death twitches my ear. "Live", he says, "I am coming".

It

had been three days (seventy-two hours and 14 minutes to be exact) since The Feeling had come over him like a rash picked up in the underbellied gutter of any city south of right here. It wasn't the kind of thing you could ignore; especially for someone like Raziel, with his dry idiosyncrasies and wooden habits. 

There were too many rungs on the ladder of his stringency to miss how unorthodoxly the sand lay disturbed behind the outer stretch of Saudagar's perimeter wall. How damp his neck had felt returning from the capitol at dawn. How strangely his youngest cousin behaved when accosted under moonsoak in the long-disused gatehouse. He had been the top of his (albeit small, privileged) class at math and he knew something here was not adding up. 

It made his blood-cracks itch a little deeper, a little longer.

Gahenna knew too. It was in her milkweed-white eyes as they dart a little too furtively back and forth. Even now, as they stood in the grand courtyard of their ancestral Nazaretian estate, her hackles hitched up just that little too high to be noted as flat. Craning down to meet her gaze, Raziel frowns. What is it? She shakes her head, the 24-carat spines needling out from her collar glinting as they swing too.

And he can't, won't, let it go. Absolutely-fucking-not. If there is malfeasance under his nose he will find it. Crush it. Rip its throat out. How many times had his mother told him to see things through? No half measures. If he had the wherewithal to see the irony in such violent dedication to Balsheva's creed he might have laughed. As it was, he didn't. 

They move as one out through the high-stone gates, glancing once into the gatehouse he had sent his cousin scurrying from last night, before turning right to start tracking the boundary wall once more. There had to be a clue, some semblance of evidence that would tie their paranoia into reality. If only he could put his finger on what exactly it was that was so quietly disturbing? 

Nevertheless, he walks - Gahenna in silent tow. Blood dripping like sweat beneath the undying heat of Solis' midday sun. 

@Pilate or whoever you desire m'love.