Crow
October 04, 2017, 02:31:28 AM
He looked upon the sagging green overgrowth high above his head. Scented the humid air, relishing as though in nostalgia the way the breath made his lungs feel filthy on the way out, the thin steam it left behind. With it came the distinct and ammoniacal reek of wolf piss where in another universe they might otherwise have had gates. Imagine the signs they'd hang, like kitschy welcome-home mats from hell: fuck off, trespassers. dragons live here. if you check in, you can never check back out.
Unless you were Crow, of course. Maybe he was more oil than beast after all, for how he slides beneath the very worst of all the karma he deserves so badly.
Like dying in the isle of glass, said the wounds, treated but raw, dashed upon his body like strikes from a barbed bullwhip, an angry red, a mosaic of split-open meat. Like being left for the hungry fire. You remember what it was like to be tasted by flame, don't you? Oh, he'd never forget. Nor had he ever crawled from that fire with all parts of him uneaten. Maybe he'd died a long time ago, and this was just the dream sputtered out by the failing neurons as the blinked out like stars and brought everything that once had been Crow down with them. But here he stood, and here he walked, a feral stray on the weathered steps of
(whatever the hell made you)
old Alteron, the kingdom that devoured itself and lived on forever. There was poetry in that, really. He still donned the name of a dead man, and it had taken him some time after the fire to figure out... what to do next. He was pretty sure he knew now.
Behind him and beside him lurked more wolves, dark shapes in the shade of the canopy. They were his, and he was theirs, because sometimes mad dogs had dogs of their own, because they liked to run in packs, and when he'd moved as though to break it, they'd followed him here, loyal beasts, vicious beasts, maybe just frightened beasts in the end.
"Alteron," mused Crow, his voice (it always sounded vaguely aristocratic, or tried to anyway, like a wolf, pun unintended, in a shitty see-through sheepskin) more aloof than usual, more tired, though he tried to mask even this minor weakness, as though he wasn't riddled with healing wounds. Details, details. "Pretty, isn't it?" In its own... special way.
Even as a small, stupid boy, he'd thought as much. That remained unchanged. What, then, had not?
What had his Red Dragon done here in all the years he'd spent in the holy valley?
Unless you were Crow, of course. Maybe he was more oil than beast after all, for how he slides beneath the very worst of all the karma he deserves so badly.
Like dying in the isle of glass, said the wounds, treated but raw, dashed upon his body like strikes from a barbed bullwhip, an angry red, a mosaic of split-open meat. Like being left for the hungry fire. You remember what it was like to be tasted by flame, don't you? Oh, he'd never forget. Nor had he ever crawled from that fire with all parts of him uneaten. Maybe he'd died a long time ago, and this was just the dream sputtered out by the failing neurons as the blinked out like stars and brought everything that once had been Crow down with them. But here he stood, and here he walked, a feral stray on the weathered steps of
(whatever the hell made you)
old Alteron, the kingdom that devoured itself and lived on forever. There was poetry in that, really. He still donned the name of a dead man, and it had taken him some time after the fire to figure out... what to do next. He was pretty sure he knew now.
Behind him and beside him lurked more wolves, dark shapes in the shade of the canopy. They were his, and he was theirs, because sometimes mad dogs had dogs of their own, because they liked to run in packs, and when he'd moved as though to break it, they'd followed him here, loyal beasts, vicious beasts, maybe just frightened beasts in the end.
"Alteron," mused Crow, his voice (it always sounded vaguely aristocratic, or tried to anyway, like a wolf, pun unintended, in a shitty see-through sheepskin) more aloof than usual, more tired, though he tried to mask even this minor weakness, as though he wasn't riddled with healing wounds. Details, details. "Pretty, isn't it?" In its own... special way.
Even as a small, stupid boy, he'd thought as much. That remained unchanged. What, then, had not?
What had his Red Dragon done here in all the years he'd spent in the holy valley?