» whatever helps you cope

No. Definitely not proud of being the spark that started this wildfire. He couldn't exactly place her in the past of the Gods—perhaps she had been some minor deity in a time before the Gods ate the rest, or perhaps she had been stowed away to keep her from just that fate—but he found himself wondering if her stay in the Pinnacle had infused her with an arrogance strong enough to rival Vjanta's, or if she'd always been this way. The smile she graced him with made him want to throw up.

He found everything about her offensive. He knew he was the pot calling the kettle black, because he was an arrogant bastard too, but he didn't care. The Rift was his.

And he didn't like where she was going. He didn't care for her assessment, her thinly veiled accusations, her—not so thinly veiled accusations. Kisamoa's lips pulled back in a grotesque snarl to match her smirk.

She was ice, he was fire. Black clouds and teal lightning crackled around him.

"I was made for vengeance!" he roared at her, his pulse running hot and fast, thrumming in his skull. His claws dug deeper into the gravel, scoring the rock below, leaving black marks. He wondered if she would bleed light, if she would become radiant when her skin was peeled back: a bright, bright star, snuffed out.

For how long would her death feed the Rift?

But she stopped him dead in his tracks. "I can help you," she said, his memory full of her fake sweetness, her accusations, the sickening smirk. He really didn't like where she was going. His anger cooled into wariness, something tight and frigid forming beneath—an emotion he was not ready to name, much less feel. His black eyes narrowed. "I think you know what we have to do."

"What are you implying?" he demanded of her, but the heat was gone from his voice, replaced only with cold.

That thing forming in his gut?

Dread.

beauty in darkness
kaos in light

image