[Crow]

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?

[Crow]

This is to establish that Crow and friends are now in Alteron. If everyone following him could post here, that'd be great. Even just a bullet point post is cool with me.

Also, bc I just thought of it, if you're not already part of this group and would like to be, mail me at Kotake and we'll talk!

[Azuhel]

She dreamed of him.

Often.

It was only natural. He was a possession, some great unyielding thing that she had twisted and battered and broken and bruised and she was greedy. She’d wanted to control him, but there had been something fascinating, exhilarating, about letting him go with her little seed of doubt and corruption festering within him. And now, now, look at him, in all his sleek glory, the reaper, the naughty coonhound, dripping with ichor and so much knowledge. He’d become wise in his absence, hadn’t he? Filled himself up with a particular set of skills that she could utilize and… and goodness, she could learn from him too.

They could share the mastery of the darkest of arts and drown in the pleasure that came with that sort of hedonism. She would consume him just as surely as he’d consume her and she felt nothing but an almost innocent and childish eagerness for that.

She wondered if this was a mistake.

Then she shoved it aside, in this there would be no mistake. She would hoard him in a manner that was different than the kindness she offered her Zasha or the brutal dominance she pressed, all flirtation and control, upon her beautiful Incubus. She would take and take and take from this one, her bird and she was sure he’d take and take and take in return.

Equal exchange, for now.

She was fine with that.

“You’re late,” She rumbled, looked to his party, to the familiar trembling Enix and the shy child (Serif).

She wouldn’t waste time here. She knew what they could do. She trusted, trusted Crow with the sort of blindness that would have killed another.

He could kill her too, she knew. Emotionally. Physically. He was a machine. Gears slick and wheels always turning.

She could kill him too, in so many of those ways but… but

They were to wound up in each other, snakes-eating-snakes, heads-devouring-heads.

“Come. All of you.”

Those he owned, those she intended to own by proxy.

Then, with a look toward Crow, one broken eye set to stare into another, with all the controlled storms of her aches and needs and potent hungers she whispered—

“Welcome home.”

[Miasma]

   Of course she followed him; where else would she go? Would she stay home, like a whimpering infant, as her parents tasted war? Maybe get to know Kaiju a little better, particularly her insides? Imagine the horror if she had stayed, and they never came back?

   Miasma knows the Red Dragon when she sees her. There is nothing spectacular to her appearance; she is, for all intents, average. Her height, colouration, patterning, all unassuming. That's probably what makes her so dangerous. There is an aura to her: power, shadows streaked from the fire that burns within her-- like the smoke that follows Crow.

   She looks for Ink, her adoptive, terrible mother, with her killing eyes and black hole heart. Crow was brought to her orbit like all else, but Azuhel... They two could occupy the same space and survive. They are here for her, aren't they?

   Azuhel is aflame, and Miasma the moth, stitched to her father's side.