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Erebos had barely pressed into the sands, had barely seethed, had barely simmered, had barely smothered his rage, his abhorrence, into the doom and gloom of fallen towers and watery castles, before another traipsed nearby. He thought about ignoring the gilded child altogether, contemplated continuing on his quest for dissolution and acrimony, on twisting and turning the revolution burning in his soul – but he choked it down instead, swallowed his loathing, his soullessness, so the boy wouldn’t see (so no one could stare and wonder and understand just how far he’d truly gone). His head swiveled, tilting slightly, and Orsino grumbled at his feet, a little less savage (which irked him too, because that’s all he’d ever known the kitsune to be; it was another puzzle to solve and ponder later). He could’ve been all power, all prowess, all precision, ruin, and annihilation, another obvious force intending to pour harm and calamity into the vile reaches of their newest hellhole, but the youth before him didn’t deserve that (and no fiend had done the same to him – until the Colossus). So he funneled and festered, withered and decayed, faded from that blistering, savage indulgence until his features warped back into an easygoing smile. The warrior displayed a touch of charm and charisma, a play of too many irreverent facets, a little Cheshire around the eyes, far too impish and mischievous, deplorable in the mind and body, his spirit broken, tangled, and snapped seasons ago, and continually cut, scraped, and lacerated; the endless sojourn of travesty and disaster. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly, because he didn’t. This world had no clues except Kisamoa and his chaotic bedlam, his uproars, his sedition – and he stared off into the mystical abyss again, wondering how this palisade had come to topple, if it was just one more empire that had dug their heels in, that had fought and fought, but bled and fell apart anyway, forced into defeat because there’d been no other option.
Then his piercing stare, too much like his father’s, fell to the child again, noted familiar features but couldn’t pinpoint where he’d seen them (ghosts, mirages, wraiths, trances, the eternal nightmares?). Instead of asking, instead of pondering over the babe’s lineage or if he’d come to be haunted too (shown the light of day only to be hastened into destruction), the tiniest of smiles coiled along his mouth, a steely, tenacious edge forming in his glance. “But I intend to find out.” It was amongst a legion of promises, of declarations, of oaths and pledges he’d yet to complete, but there was nothing here to stop him. He almost dared the world to order him to cease and desist, to never wander into their desecrated depths, to never explore beyond the spires and watchtowers; his blackguard essence had ceased to care. At this notion, he arched a brow, slid mischief into their sanction, dared, and instigated, an agent provocateur, inciting rebellion in the smallest of beings. “Would you like to join me?”
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Akvo City
