[Incubus]

He sat in a clearing that had once been his many years ago, the ferns underneath his feet like curled fingers welcoming a lover’s embrace. Took a few breaths of that stagnant air, sharp with the chill of a creeping winter, and tried to come to terms with his situation like he had been trying to do lately whenever he had a minute to think. He had been captured, returned home she had said, but that wasn’t what was bothering him. No, without his mother in his life he was lost he had long determined. But it was the two who had followed him like the idiots they were that made those thin lips twist and that gut boil. The idea that he was all that they had, that there was nothing else for them to turn to made the man spit with anger and hate the two of them even more. Stupid fucking assholes getting themselves into this situation without a clue about what they were doing, following him blindly and absolutely ruining any chance of a future.

But a shift in the pressure made his eardrum twitch in sudden concavity, the points at the crown of his head moving to the source of it all as his thoughts paused. Of course. He should have known she wouldn’t leave him unsupervised.

"I assume Cue is dead." Were the first words he spoke into the air between him and this figure he was starting to recognize on footsteps alone. The lack of the bicolored male who had helped him escape the kingdom many moons ago a given when he had chosen to stay behind, when he had knowingly sacrificed himself for his brother’s sake. And look how you’ve repaid him…

"You say you're changing the forest?"

Olive eyes flickered over his shoulder to consider her, the constant defensive edge that seemed to trace the lines of his frame softened some with her company despite the accusing tone to his observations. But for the first time in a long time, the words did not come from a place of anger. In fact, he harbored next to no bad blood for this woman carrying out what he had for a long time seen as an inevitable part of his future, and actually found himself in a small, secret way admiring her for that roaring ambition that had in himself been stomped to embers over the years.

But embers still burned.

"How?" he wondered whether or not she would allow such a question, a fleeting memory of the Viscount’s punishment of Talon meaning he half expected the blows they were to come to back out in the desert. But he was just curious, that’s all.

It wasn’t that difficult, to find him, to scent him out, to practically taste the irritation that radiated from the very bottom of his being. She came to him, drawn like a moth to flame, attracted by the memories he supplied and the idle chittering of the birds that circled above them. They were hungry, she was hungry, and certainly Incubus was hungry. She fully intended to feed him, creatively, politically… if only he were a bit more receptive to it.

He would be, for his own sake.

For her pleasure.

“Dead? Maybe. Definitely? I reckon he’s dead to a few folks, metaphorically, yah know? But, iffin’ yer askin’ fer certainty than… I’m not too sure, friend.” Azuhel slipped from the shadows, all honey and southern hospitality with muzzle splitting grin and semi-curled tail.

She didn’t elaborate. If Cue was dead and rotting it wasn’t her concern. He wasn’t here, helping them succeed, so he didn’t exist.

With a tilted head she continued their conversation, casual and friendly with a roll of shoulders and flicked forward ear, “I’m changin’ the wolves, the forest in turn will follow.”

They just need a master, a competent one.

“How?” She clicked her tongue against the back of sharp teeth, thoughtful and curious…

Then, with a shake of her head and a deep rumbling sound—a chuckle, soft and off and undeniably wicked—she stepped forward. Her intention was rather clear. She pushed forward with all the confidence and practice of a would-be noble. That aura of authority she carried, like a well-worn fur, was easily conveyed in the shift of muscle beneath fur and the steady lift of her tail. So long as Incubus didn’t move she’d invade his personal space, unaware—or uncaring—of any needs he might have held to keep them separated. She’d take one breath, then another, before moving to lean against him, chest against his chest with her head resting lightly upon his left shoulder. It was his ear she wanted, and the bodily contact—

and how long has it been since she last stood like this? Since she felt powerful and eager and ready for revelation? Was it with Crow whose fur she’d felt against her own in this very manner? Was it with Jette whom she’d hugged fiercely so many moons ago?

--“How? How? How? You want to be privy to a great deal, Incubus, though I suppose you deserve to know.” Though her accent remained it was more refined, all duchess-like and high blood. “Through oppression and systematic control. Through the proper and well-maintained caste classification, separating the filth from the worthy and proper. Making them feel oh so very [i]special and justified in their perversions by telling them all they are equal but some are more equal than others. By training our children, Alteron’s children, to obey primarily and question second. It’s all been done before, yes…[/i]”

Here she paused in her whisper to listen to the rapid beat of her own heart as she spilled surface secrets that bordered treasonous airs—

“But with the wrong bloodlines in charge. The wrong ideals set forward. The weak perish due to their own sense of morality. We’re wolves, we don’t deal in morality. We deal in absolutes. In power and pain. In flesh and blood and savage cruelty. Yet, I have plans, Incubus. Plans to wrap all that up in a pretty bow of sophistication and high blooded ideals. Traditions! Rewards! False joy! Fake Security! A wolf that bows before the system is a happy wolf, isn’t it? ”

She took a shuddering breath, her gaze wild, her teeth so close to Incubus ear and oh how she wanted to bite, bite, bItE—

“Isn’t that how Rapier did it? She stood atop her empire of bones and lies and felt godlike because of it. Except she forgot to bury her sadism underneath a pile of charisma. I have that, Incubus… what do you think?”

Slowly she pulled back, head bowed in a deceptively shy manner…

“Do you think I could do it? Do you think I could be Queen?”

The way she danced around that confirmation on Cue’s well-being was enough of a confirmation, and it was enough to make his cold heart twist with something not unlike sadness despite the lies he had told himself about having come to terms with it. It was years ago, he knew what he was getting into, knew what he was doing when he-

Powerful muscles loosened where they had bunched his skin into a stressed topography as that deceptive smile made churning thoughts re-focus as just the sight of her was enough to pump a strange cocktail of hateful adrenaline and tentative admiration as a long fucked up self-preservation battled with a growing attraction that had everything to do with the ease that was how she just took whatever it was that she wanted. Now of all times was not the time to stop circling, not when the swaying cobra was beginning to close in.

But she was quick to snatch the opening for what it was, a step ahead. The golden hair down his spine lifted with every push she made against the thin skin of the bubble he had always been so careful to keep intact, and eyes wild with a madness that grew like a tumor in his head with every passing year watched that oil-slick surface bend and yield against clawed fingers as the points began to slip in. But still he let her closer as if any of this was on his own terms, let her close enough that the whip crack of a snarl that split his damaged throat at knowing her intentions was silenced with the final press her body against his. Touch starvation crept in the corners of his mind like fingers of frost despite the swirling revulsion in his gut at the physical assertion of her own dominance as her lips brushed his cheek, and surely she could feel the vibration of his every molecule as they fought together the urge his body had to press his nose right where her jaw and head met under her ear.

Had he always been so easily read?

Firebrand ear flickered once as she began to whisper her secrets into it in that changed accent of hers, the pair of them curled like parenthesis of lovers that shared shuddering breaths and quivering hearts stemming from declarations of intentions (and didn’t megalomania count as that aphrodisiac?) that pumped gasoline into engorged veins fit to burst from the pressure. All shuttered eyes and sweet nothings that began to drag the man he had once been out from the corner of his mind he had been hiding in, all as the trees above creaked and framed their meeting as if the shared space was beginning to mean anything but blades pressing into each of their necks until black ichor began to bead at the curve.

But her next words broke the illusion she had so carefully painted, and there was a sigh of disappointment that left him as he mourned it. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been expecting more. ”No.”

If all she wanted was to reach for the low hanging fruit that was queen, he would not help such endeavors. What good were royals in the end, their names hardly able to make a child whimper with fear the second they themselves faced an aging body and mind that seized with paralysis from something so trivial as an enemy’s cry. Was that what the ex-Viscount wanted? It certainly wasn’t what the once Alteronian had in mind for her, not with everything else she had worked to have at her fingertips. Chapped lips curled with a flat chuckle at those bedroom eyes that invited him to touch when she knew how he quietly missed her touch (her palm curled around his heart made her just as privy to his secrets), but he knew doing so would just mean venomous fangs striking at the back of his hand.

”I think you could be more.”

There is a careful mixture of impulsive need within her veins, something not unlike the sense of wonder one experiences when they first encounter the fresh taste of blood and the thrill of a grand hunt. It’s not an emotion that’s unknown to her, she is a beast of slaughter and machinations, but the attachment of possessive yearning is different. She’s a collector, no doubt about that, but not the sort to feel so strongly.

Yet here, pressed close to this creature she had practically dragged into the darkness of her pit, she felt a selfish pulse of compulsive undeniable need. It’s not loneliness that drives her goals, nor is it some asinine want for comradery. She has friends and they are few and far between, driven by their own self-interest or gone entirely. What she wants, what she truly desires, is something to own—

But not necessarily control.

Still, the experience is somewhat heady and for a moment, as she feels the power of his bunched muscles, she wonders if he would strike—could strike—her down. She isn’t foolish, there are limitations and dangers to her invasion of his personal space, but she would not attempt to bond with a creature entirely built on the foundations of madness. After all, she had plenty enough to spare and unlike the bulk of the dominant collective she did not wish to live her days of glory swaddled in paranoia and the wonders of betrayal.

If Incubus could not, had not, controlled himself she wouldn’t have been so close, so tentative to power.

His mind was what she wanted anyway—

“No?” She doesn’t sound slighted as she leans back, giving him the space he might have once desired, though her look of coy innocence shatters to return to idle—yet chilling—contemplation.

His next statement, however, is enough to bring crooked smile to her lips—a look a tiger striped wolfess might have called ‘handsome’ so many moons ago.

“That’s an appropriate answer,” She purrs, “More?”

Did he know of her legacy? Of the lives sacrificed and lost to her greed and desire? Of the wolves that screeched and yowled  in the hollows of her mindscape—waking or dreaming—crying their praise and their fears? It was all the same, wasn’t it? How one worshipped—

“I am never keen to sound silly, but I often fancied myself a bit of a god.” But her tone is joking, even if her gaze is somewhat glassy, filled with the twisting shadows of the fanatical. Still, her chest trembles from her chuckle and with a roll of her shoulders she’d lift a paw, if only to place it upon his own—

“What do you think? I’d prefer to be more than just some royal. I prefer to be [i]special in all the right ways, you see. Where it counts, in the history… in the legacy. I have one already, far from here, where the wolves bow down and scream their palms to the heavens. There’s fear there too, of what I’ve done…[/i]”

But she doesn’t elaborate.

“Perhaps, not of me, exactly, but what I represent.” She pauses in speech to gauge his reaction. She wondered, idly, if he thought her looney.

“I want more than this flimsy empire, I want progression, modernism, self-sustainability, and worship. My system, as infantile as it is, will gain the infamy and stability we need to present our precious front of graciousness to the world at large.”

And then… and then—

“They will come, if we build it. The world.”

And then they would crush it.

“That’s what I’d like to be. The Center. The Sovereign. The Madness. The Blood. The Dark. Our Most Gracious and Merciful Lady and Lord.”

More. Everything.

“Help me build that.”

[Incubus]

"More," he confirmed.

With her slight retreat it was like he could feel the breathing air roll in to fill the negative space, and there was a near shudder to his exhale. It had been so long since he had been touched by anyone, and this woman was barreling through his barrier to claw at the side of his face with her nails. He hummed. "I can't say I'm familiar with any 'gods', present company excluded of course." A pinch of humor made dancing emerald sparks when added to the flames that licked at his belly, something with a bit of bite to tease and court her on lips that hadn't curled in such a fashion in ages. The man rolled his shoulders and murmured, "But the idea intrigues me. Tell me more."

Despite the reflexive twitch as her hand ran over his, the touch-averse man soon enough found himself brushing over those knuckles with a tracing thumb. "Maybe one day I could see for myself, when a reminder of the power of their feared figure is due.

The thought of just being a witness to it made him both yearn and the bile swell to sear the skin of his bulging throat.

"A representation may govern over the hearts of the masses, but not their minds." He had no doubts that she knew this, but perhaps she would appreciate hearing it out loud. If she had wanted a partner who clung to and accepted her every word with dewy, bovine eyes, he was sure the woman could have found one out there in the forest where they swarmed in droves bleating her name. Sharp eyes met their match in those glimmering coyly in silver, and tongue pushed its way between his teeth and lip. He would support her and her claim to the sole throne of High Dominus of course, but he would challenge her every step of the way. Their hands would break and reform- crumble and rebuild. "Less of a god, and more of a god-king is what she needs..." A leash to be tied around their throats of course, but also a fist at the end to keep it short. "Now's the time to take her."

The man could easily see this woman conquering them all, and he wanted in.

"I'll assist." Words curled with each breath as if one could hear the grin in each one, and he pushed into her personal space (even if it made his skin prickle and roll) just like she had his. "Of course only if there's a place for me in this burning world of ours, my dear Viscount."

[Azuhel]

What was the heart separated from the mind? What was the mind separated from the heart? The concept is not beyond Azuhel, who found her home in philosophy (with that edge of wicked psychology) while Scimitar and his lot had been practicing their strategy upon false boards of wolven chess. She has a budding ideal, a grasp of civilizational creation and cultural oppression. It’s a systematic but probable process, and it’s one she intends to sweep over their people with little mercy or care of their beliefs and former would-be actions. They were worthless as individuals. They were only strong unified, pressed to march under a banner of blood. Her own.

What use would they have for their hearts and minds then, if they belonged to her in a manner unquestionable? If she became their Lady of Sacrifice and worship, they could keep their minds—and she preferred Incubus to do so—but she wanted their emotional responses to be conditioned tapered to the beat of her success until their bodies moved to the automatic tune of war-language.

Progress! Self-sufficiency! A need to join! A need to create! Let them build utopia with their sharp and willful minds and let her use their hearts as the chains to keep them at her claws.

Yes yes, she very much enjoyed the idea of that.

“There are many ways to conquer a kingdom, and more than that to destroy it. But there is only one specific way to craft an empire while remaining that strong, irrefutable center. After all, I have no desire to fall from the cliffs of betrayal like so many overzealous before me.”

She gave a snap of her teeth, a thoughtful gesture, “So allow the mind to wander, it tapers the ego and keeps the idealistic grounded, so long as all those heads are working toward the same goal.”

A pause then, but only so she can roll her shoulders back in sly shrug, “As any wolf, god, king, master of death or otherwise, must have an advisor to keep them from ruin.”

And then, it was him pushing into her space. It was his wicked grin that matched her own and the heat of his form that made her titter—and how roguish of Incubus to do so, as if she were some youthful belle to be courted by the invasive strength of his greed for power.

“There will always be a place, of course. One we will make if we must, for a King cannot rule unless he’s made…

But one must remember that the populus govern what is created.

So we will shape them until they create Kings of us.”

Slowly, almost tentatively, she’d lift her paw again, if only to press it against his jaw so that those clawed digits could trace along the underside of his eye.

“I’m afraid I’m going to consume you, King-Maker. So make sure every deed you do counts… Get them to elevate you, I have plans you see, and I’m really not all that great at handling failure.”