Quote:[[This thread takes place a few miles out from Alteron, I’m posting it in this board but we’re not in the territory just looking over it.]]

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The ominous rumble of her laughter was the announcement of their arrival. Here, among the outskirts of the land she ruled under false king was where she wished to conduct a meeting of minds more alike than her unwilling guest might have realized. It was upon a hill that she’d dumped his body, half-healed and ruined, while she looked over toward the rotting jungle that had held her prisoner for what seemed like many an endless moon. She was no longer prisoner of course but lawmaker, an opportunist of the highest degree, bound to the worthless patch of land by blood and prestige.

What a tiresome responsibility.

Though she hadn’t brought her charge there to return to the place of hot swamp earth and agony. No, she was still on vacation, roaming in search of her son—to praise, to touch, to realize their purpose. She would return to Alteron, but not just yet, not until her duties beyond the festering cluster of corruption was complete and she could feel accomplished when she put back on her mantle of authority.

Until then she was certain those she’d left behind could handle the delegation of powers within.

In the meantime there were lessons to teach and wolves to oppress and she’d start with the important beast she hadn’t roasted over open fires. It was because he was a piece of the beast that had stolen her respect and despite the affiliations and stench he carried he was still useful. She wouldn’t destroy something so precious—

Not yet.

She sat at his side, meat before them—still fresh from when she’d left to acquire it—stripped and ready but she didn’t touch it. It was for the weakened boy, whose mind she wished to twist until his mouth spewed words more akin to her liking. He’d learn many things on their journey together and at the end she’d test him on the ability to retain his lessons.

Whether that was with freedom or teeth would be decided by him.

“Crow.” She spoke, aware of his name and all the precious power he thought he held in a land of fanatical idiots.

“Get up.”

Quote:All this time, all these years, and this place still smelled like the bowels of some titanic cadaver bloating and bursting and breaking down. It prickled every last razor-velvet guard hair on his nape, moistened the interior of his pale mouth, as unceremoniously his wounded body was abandoned to lie prone upon the ground, his captor moving to stand dominantly over her vulnerable black foe-familiar.

(weak helpless NO this wasn't NO supposed to NO ever happen again no no NO NO NO)

He'd fought her, of course. That was all Crow knew how to do, that was all he would ever do, this glorified spiteful wreck of a creature with eyes glazed feverishly (they never left her, not for a heartbeat) with some virulent illness backed into a corner. But the blisters on his back, shiny white and wet-looking partial thickness burns, bared gruesomely for all to see until the scorched fur grew back, could barely accept a strong breeze without the wolf who wore them fighting the urge to scream or vomit or both. Maybe he'd stopped, after the first time he felt teeth in them. Maybe it had taken several times.

So now, he only crooned a growl at Azuhel instead as she moved to sit beside him. Not that a word like "only" did justice to the high, horrible, murderous sound gurgling in his throat, a threat and a promise and a full-body rage that rippled over his skin in a physical tremor. The meat she appeared to be offering him went outright ignored in this defiance's favor, pointless as it was. He had nothing else.

(take me hostage you bitch I'll take that eye I'll take your LIFE)

It was only the sound of his name in her mouth, the name Katana had given him so long ago as she pushed him protectively against her belly, that invoked any other response, his voice heavy and hoarse and savage.

"Zero." An unforgiving snap of a correction. [I]"My name is Zero." His paws moved, nails out and carving lines in the earth as he worked gingerly to drag himself into an upright position. Not for her, never for her, but because he was Crow, killer of gods, terror of the valley, angel of the one true Order --

and HE WOULD NOT FACE ANYONE, red dragon or no, flopped over like a hamstrung fawn.

Quote:“[i]Mmm…” A soft moan, melodious and smooth. It was sincere and nearly passionate, misplaced among the scene the dragon shared with angry prisoner, but it croaked past her throat none the less at the sound of his hatred, at the savage revoking of his name, at his agony hidden behind the thick veil of such negative emotion.

Exquisite.

“Zero.” She corrected nonetheless, southern accent lacking the harsh bite it normally carried when she talked among the oppressors and otherwise worthless scum who held no business discovering the depth of her true nature. However, for Crow she would reveal, she would give so much more than he had to take and in return she’d attempt to take much more than he could give. Already she’d made sure to snatch away his strength, but he was not yet dependent…

How much longer would that take, per say…?

Still, she found his position laughable, his denial of her meat—whether it came from her or elsewhere—a fools attempt at resistance. Using her mercy could have made him stronger, healed him faster, and her demise at his teeth and claw would have been her fault at the end of the day. Wasn’t that how the youth took their victories? Standing on the tails of their betters, stealing power from the shadows of their elders? It’d been a long time since she’d rolled under the sun of paradise but the methods used to control and dominate should not have changed so drastically that the most Crow could do was sit at her side and snarl.

Granted, Azuhel had made sure that was all he could do for sometime.

“Once upon a time, as you are well aware, you lived among the wrenches of this place with the sort of arrogance children of your father are often afforded.”Azuhel opened, her husky tone smooth and factual, her accent like a lulling purr among the sterile apathetic chill of her tone, an odd mixture to be sure.

“Then they wanted you dead and your father did nothing.” Much to proud, perhaps, or too tightly wound around the finger of royal blood and order. He’d always been a man of command, giving and following order with the pride of the absolutely obedient. A perfect model among older Alteron citizens that could still remember when Rapier ruled without discrimination between who she ruined or elevated.

“They still would, maybe, if Rapier wasn’t dead at the moment.” Still… a gentle sigh then before she rolled her shoulders—

“This day is not about Alteron, however. It’s about your existence. About why you might still be alive—it’s twice now, in my presence, that you’ve alluded death. Once because you took the reins and twice because I loved your mother.”

And to kill him would have been a waste.

“Zero,” She opened again, with quirked brow and saliva slick teeth on display in a smile most perverse. The hunger that flashed in the gaze of that one functioning eye was nearly physical in the pressure of need that rolled from her. That tense body posture, the twitch of her hooked claws, the crinkle of her muzzle in mischievous sadism… She wanted to kill him. Would, certainly could in the state his body was in, if she was given the excuse to do so. She’d joyously devour him without much thought or preamble, as was her nature, and her belly rumbled despite being in the presence of the slain meat she’d brought for him.

His meat would have been so much sweeter, his pride the wine that washed it down.

“Zero, would you believe Auntie Dragon, iffin she told yah that your existence was a lie?”

Quote:One leg under him, and another, and there he went, pushed into a stance that was almost sphinx-like if not for the feral, ignoble hunch of his spine. The pain even this simple motion caused him made him want to howl like something crazed and bite into his own flesh for betraying him. Yes, it would be foolish, like refusing the meat, like clinging onto his name, as though that gave him even an iota of power here. Blind rage had always been his worst flaw; Crow was very clever but nobody would ever call him wise.

He panted, shaking as he scanned the area wildly, eyes rolling to whites. Don't speak, a stauncher wolf of Oukoku-Kai might have commanded themselves. Not to this unholy traitor to the Free People. And yet he as Azuhel talked, sans any of her usual jolliness -- should he in a twisted way feel honored that she'd display her true self to him? -- the only coherent thought whirling around in his psyche was find a key. Something to escape from this. A word, if he had no other weapon available to him. He'd never die a martyr.

So Crow -- no, Zero -- listened to that southern twang. Heard a history he had not thought back to in years recited back to him. A terrible story about a boy who'd been born into riches and forsook them for rags. Here he was, generations later, in the shadow of these choices. After wives, after children and grandchildren, after using them as weapons and shields and mirrors.

"Where are they," was what he finally said, his voice hoarse with something raw and exhausted. Needed with a sudden and startling hunger to know. "My mother. My father. How do you know them."

They watched each other now. Like a hyena would watch a newborn gnu. He settled back into silence, his pupils pinprick and twitching, the spiny mane on his nape risen straight up, the long glimmering eyeteeth exposed. He understood her desire to destroy another animal so completely, to defile and devour them, even as it terrified him, or the part of him that was always there beneath every single act of violence and cruelty, to see it turned on him now when he could not fend it away. Maybe that was as close to empathy as he'd ever get.

"I serve a higher purpose now," he hissed. "They were something to surpass. If I'd stayed, if I'd had their lives --" He cut himself off, almost choking on the words, working himself up into a froth, then maybe I'd already have cut my throat and let you chow down, that's what I would deserve, that's what they all had coming, not me, nOT ME, I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN SUPERIOR --

"I took everything I have. They love me back there, some of them. But most of them are afraid of me." A grin then, leaking drool and wrath. Feared right alongside malevolent gods and forces of nature. Was there a higher testament to his terror? "That's no lie."

Quote:[There was no immediate answer from the dragon, who allowed the silence to stretch—swollen and oppressive—after Crow had expressed his questions tinged with the madness he’d developed due to his twisted look upon reality. In that moment she saw herself, a twisted frightened visage, proud but metaphorically burned… abandoned and desperate for the power that she’d been disillusioned into believing was [i]real. Power, in itself, was not real. Strength was just an assistant, health a grand aspect of living among the monsters, but power… meaningless against the backdrop of intimidation and carefully planned schemes. Timing, senselessness… these were the aspects that had brought her her name and flung her from her family. After that, throughout her continued life, power had granted her nothing but meals in her belly and scars across her face. No, it was charismatic finesse that brought out success, chewing on the power others claimed to possess then twisting it around until you could wear the veil of authority just as proudly.

How much of that had Crow done in Oukoku-kai. How much of anything had he done that he could not in Alteron? While she thrived on the curtails of his father until she’d swept out from under him to blaze her own path of selfish control… had he done the same?

The idea of it was consuming, an overwhelming sense of pride that Dark would not have felt for the boy had he been in her place. She smiled that wicked smile, perverse and true while an unnaturally giddiness swept through her, pushing and prodding at her overall need to strike Crow down and force him to rebuild his virtues from the ground up underneath her watchful probing eye.

She’d already begun the process, hadn’t she? Yet she needed more time to break a lunatic, time she didn’t have considering there were far grander ideals yet put into motion on her full agenda of dreams to break.

She’d instead settle for what she could tear from him and replace and she had many great ideas of what she wanted to replace.

“Gone.’ She finally answered, head titled and ears set to twitch as she found an odd sense of loss within her, a sense that she was quickly able to squash as soon as it had arrived, strangling the sense of need within her and twisting it into ambition. “Dark was here for some time, he helped rebuild this place after it was ravaged, but he too left. Your mother was gone long long before that and I think she was the only one who mourned when you disappeared.”

No one else did, no one else ever would. He was as forgotten as any of them could be once they stepped past the hell that had encased them. Even now one had to wonder how Oukoku would react to Crow’s passing. Still she wouldn’t twist her stare away from him, let him know her hunger and wonder when she’d allow it to consume her. Let him realize that she too, would perhaps forget when this meeting was done—forget to show mercy, forget to call him Zero, forget…

No, Azuhel would never forget him—she hadn’t even now—and that was perhaps the issue at hand.

Though really, it was his fanatical spewing that had her most interested. He believed he served a higher purpose? That his family was something to surpass? All of this was true—so much more than fact for him, to be sure—but he was not superior. Not to her.

It was time for part one—

“Oh I’ve no doubt they love yah. Worship yah even, dependin’ on how high you are. Child, you sound so very high.” Though she laughed softly, as if she found the idea of their entire cycle of rebirth and destruction ridiculous—“But they used to love me too, before they feared me. You know, they will always be more afraid of me and you…”

And that wasn’t a lie.

“I’ve walked their sands and played their games. I’ve slept in the den of the white and toyed with the sensibilities of red. Yet, it was yellow who caused their destruction, proud and arrogant and seemingly indestructible.”

Here she sighed.

“That’s the problem with godlings, they think they can’t be killed. You see, I’ve killed a lot, I’ve brought destruction from mountain to shore and it doesn’t take much to do it again. ” She looked at him coyly, a mask to be sure, with soft shy tilt of head while her gaze burned with the absolute pleasure and excitement she felt from just recalling the deaths of dozerns—“I burned them down to ash the first time, you know? They saw my shape among the clouds and now I’m the beast they curse during prayers. I am so much more than this generations Red Dragon. I am THEE rEd draGON!”

She gave off a joyous laugh, as if they were speaking of things less chilling, less horrific and maddening. “They all screamed out when their flesh was burned, much like you, so so MUCH like you. Yet when all was said and done only a collection of them were left. There were so many bones, so much meat and smoke.”

Saliva slipped from her maw at the recollection, of the bounty she’d given them, of the gifts they didn’t take. She’d given them so much but they’d refused her.

“I ruined their paradise and twisted up their ideals. They screamed and fled among their dead without so much as a snapping jaw. I’d become their heaven, they’d live in my hell…”

And yet…

“Alas, good ol’ Enix took them away and I couldn’t find them again until Tibet. I hadn’t known you’d all come back to the same damn spot, and look at it! That territory looks all the better for it, the earth loves blood, my precious Zero, and I’m sure you and your pack had fed it plenty. Even from my hill it looked vibrant so I wanted to give you something, the gift of my glorious fire again.”

It hadn’t gone the same way she’d wanted though, they’d put it out eventually, before it had managed to steal life.

“I stopped when I saw you, that’s why we’re talkin’, you know. I hadn’t expected you to be there, and so brave too! So very brave.” swept away in meaningless ideals, brave for no one but his ego. An ego that meant nothing to the dragon who held him captive.

“You are not the only Oukoku wolf I’ve seen in so many moons, just one of the few I haven’t killed yet. Tell me, I once saw a pretty pretty fellow out here. He was looking for someone, his… daughter? He told me he was a higher being, a god, a red god to be exact.”

Here she paused again, if only so that she could whisper in a tone more soothing than sadistic, a gentle lullaby meant to infect Crow’s dreams with visions of twisted agony and delirious horror.

“I sent him off to this land I knew about, just a small patch of maggots and earth and while he searched and cried I brought him my gift to assist—”

A soft breath, a bit of panting as her heart pounded against her chest and clawed digits clutched at the earth—

“He burned so well, Zero. He burned like all gods do before my gift and I watched the hope die in his eyes while his fur and flesh curled up and peeled from his body. I thought he could handle my gift, but all he did was whine and scream, like so many others before him. But you, Zero—”

Crow, precious Crow.

“Crow. I have many gifts, one of which you survived. So, it is time to teach you many more…”

Slowly, if Crow hadn’t jerked away she’d reveal her tongue to swiftly draw across his cheek, to caress his scars and imperfections as she cooed obsessively about his greatness.

“You will take them back to the Valley, you will protect my other Gift, and hopefully you will not die during our lessons.”

Perfect baby boy.

Quote:He'd always known the beginnings of her control, had always felt its taste on the tip of his pale tongue, but in the end had proven too wild, too impulsive to use it masterfully, like a firekeeper who burned himself for all he did to others. And despite his untouchable lawlessness, he'd still always been under the paw of someone else in the end, hadn't he? Dancing to their songs, pulling at their leashes, a parasite and an attack dog who bungled murders and took the failures out on helpless bystanders.

Child, she'd called him. Crow was no child, not even close. And yet that was not what Azuhel meant, was it? Child with more resemblance to her than even her biological ones, child who was another version of herself. You can't change the devilish into the devout. Not even if you give him a name like seour and convince him that someday he'll be one of the gods he watches vanish into the outside world or pushes screaming from her perch and into the awaiting mouths of righteous, raging zealots.

The burns on his back hurt ferociously. But perhaps Azuhel had saved him, though not in the way Oukoku-Kai understood saving, from himself and what he thought he wanted. Shown him the way out of the light rather than in. Light was so deceptive, like a flame to a moth, like the lure of an anglerfish.

Crow listened to her with an uncharacteristic silence. Felt the animal fear in his gut strangely enough start to ebb. Seraph, he realized, with neither surprise nor sympathy, before casting the name out of his selfish thoughts entirely. Was that why the cordial, brilliant, mortal former Chinensis had never returned? Azuhel was working herself into a gleeful fever pitch. She had not killed him yet -- did monsters know their own hatchlings? Did she know that were their positions reversed, he would be tearing into her belly right now? Why was she telling him all of this?

"So you're the dragon," said Crow at last, and unbelievably, he actually grinned, mirthless humor dripping from the cracks between his teeth. He did not mock her, the joke was not at her expense, made as much in admiration as in derision. "I thought you'd be bigger."

He licked his flinty muzzle in memory. "The priests came for me once," he told her, smiling tightly, dangerously. "They thought you had possessed me. They let you out through my eye." Which he winked at her, lid sliding over blank white wet orb.

"I skinned their leader for it and threw him into the tar. I knew he was wrong. That you were a story, or just another wolf who could be killed. But I've been holding my own private executions for years. We're... not... so... different."

He laughed, a high cold sound the direct opposite to Azuhel's low husky pitch, but there was a note of furious despondency in it, not a pathetic whiny mewl but a hoarse precursor to an avian shriek, and he seemed not to notice when she caressed his wounds.

"Show me your gifts," was his acquiescence and his challenge, "Red Dragon."