DANSE MACABRE

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Arael had not intended to hunt. She had scoffed at the throngs of people eager to prove themselves capable when she already knew her skills were whispered about. The memory of her sedating a horde of heretics with her ability always blossomed in her mind at the talk of hunts, and she would simply deny the event and tuck herself in a corner instead.

However, as the week went on, Arael found her mind drifting to the hunt. She knew her presence wouldn’t for show, but perhaps she could gleam some answers from the hungry mortals that flocked to prove themselves as the next Star. She could sit back and observe their movements without being under the watchful eyes of Caphriel. She could identify which mortals can kill without a flash of grief striking their eyes and which mortals would balk at the thought of harming another being— half-dead or alive. 

She had felt the prospect of answers slip through her hands too many times. Each culprit led her down a dead end, and she wanted something tangible to remind her she’s doing the right thing. She needed that proof that her efforts weren’t in vain— that Uriel’s killer didn’t escape that vengeance.

She slipped through the group of mortals and celestials like the movement was natural to her. The angel was born of solitude, crafted from a sole star among the millions in the galaxy, and she had felt comfort in being away from crowds. It was ironic how she bore the title of a brethren when the angel opted to her independence more than anything. Her head snapped up when she heard an unfamiliar voice addressing her before recognition filtered in through her gaze.

“The Vice of Pride.” Her response was diplomatic— a style that didn’t quite suit the angel. Head canted to the side at the demon’s words as she searched her memory for their last interaction. Her mind had blurred out mundane moments of her past—- especially when the color red clouded her vision and forced her to focus instead on that desperate attempt at regaining lost hope. 

A dry laugh slipped past her lips at the demon’s declaration. She knew enough about the demon to see her desire to interact with such creatures as the daemonium. “The corpse queen wishes to kill some corpses.” Her curiosity at the woman’s strengths were enough for her to nod before slipping her sword out of its holster. “I suppose a few more kills wouldn’t hurt.” 

The Vice of Pride, the corpse queen; they were singularly unsatisfying titles when dripped from Arael’s tongue. She is Salome, and that is title enough. Arael should say it - Salome wills her to say it - to taste the mark of the name and the ruination it surely resembles. If nothing else, it would surely sound oh-so pretty falling from such unknowing angelic lips.

Say my name, she thinks, say it and blaspheme against your once muse.

Such thoughts she does not articulate, merely bows her head in courtly acknowledgement of the greeting, matching the evident formality in her companion’s voice. There is an intensity to the gaze she casts though, one surely unsuited to casual greetings. She makes no effort to hide it. “Corpse queen has a certain ring to it.”, she offers, brows raising absently in a display of contemplation, as though trying out the title for size, “I forget, which blessed virtue do they call you? I’m afraid they all rather blend.”

A cloying smile tugs on her lips, the spear lazily rolled between her fingers. She knows, of course, that she stands before Hope, one privy to uniquely optimistic insights, but she wants to hear it said. Perhaps she might discern from the words whether Arael is still disposed to such a funny ideal. Why, Salome hopes she is. It would be a dear shame if her whimsy actions had shot angelic hope from the sky too. So she hopes indeed that the being before her has not fallen too deeply into any grief or anger --- she’d rather like to pay witness to that final descent.

Arael accepts her invitation; her grin widens, moonlight striking sharp teeth. “A few more?” Delight - far from performed - colours her voice as her eyes track the other’s sword, “I suppose you are quite the fighter - for an angel.” The words are deliberately teasing - she knows the role she is expected to play here, petulant and devilish. Irrelevant is her view that Angels are more bloody and brash than they care to admit. “Still, I’m pleased, mortal company has run rather dry.”

There exist some voices, in both this world and others, who would dare accuse the Great Betrayer of living in a perpetual state of dishonesty, ready at the drop of a hat to turn on his own. They’d be half-right. Those voices would only be amplified should they ever come to learn of a particular quirk Judas’s many lives have instilled — the notion that any party-going ensemble remains incomplete without a vial of some sort of poison tucked neatly beside a pocket seam, for emergency preparedness. Though he’s not used it even once, it’s a comfortable safeguard, but one he opted to forego on the eve of a funeral. Surely, for an evening, there would be no kings to kill or witnesses to silence.

It had been since his years walking mortal steps beside the Lamb of God that Judas had considered himself a man of faithfulness. Perhaps, though, here in the Holy Land, there did live some truth to the peoples’ faith in a Hundred-Eyed God. Surely, that God must have gazed down upon Salome that night, with a favor Judas did not understand, for had that old vial of poison happened to sit in his pocket as she tapped the tip of a sharpened claw to her glass, she’d be dead. How easy it would be, too, to taint her cup and slip by unseen — and how sweet it would be, to watch the vice of Pride undone by her own vanity’s refusal to even glance towards those who serve her. 

He checks his fantasy of Salome’s ruin aside, his lips pressed together in a cold, even line. There are no crowns in Infernum — it’s a lie they all echo, that perhaps some of them even believe. It’s a lie he wrote. But as he turns to face Salome, chest forward and throat cleared, Judas speaks as if his kingdom’s invisible crown sits blinding atop his brow for all to see. “Perhaps you’d consider a second, revised apology, for mistaking myself for a menial mourner.” How picturesque — Judas Iscariot, the self-anointed damnedest of them all, holier-than-thou. He blames Azazel’s insubordination. He blames the inconvenient timing of Salome’s pointed disrespect. He blames, naturally, all but himself. “I’ll trust you to keep your grief,” he pauses to scoff in apparent disbelief, “from manifesting in any further disrespect.” It’s only a beat of his heart before Judas stoops so low himself. “I must ask, Salome,” he begins, “why you don’t join the others in dance? Does dancing upon a man’s grave lose its appeal on a night when it’s deemed appropriate?”

After they’d both been raised from mere flesh and bone, pride came to be called the worst of all sins in the Old World. Holy Men, the inheritors of the faith they’d mortally blasphemed, waxed lyrical: haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are Sin. Those men would turn in their graves now at the joy she takes in being the titled Vice of Pride  -- not least because she could compel their ancient skeletons to do so.

It may be her title, but it is not she who is the most plumped with pride in Infernum. How can it be, when such small slights draw such rich irritation from the would-be King? How can it be, when Judas Iscariot wields so much pride that he wears it as an inordinate crown? One made of razor thorns, even if he has yet to realise it. --What else did those Holy Men used to say?

Beware, Pride goeth before a fall.

( Perhaps they were wise after all. )

And how very easy it is to cause delightful, irate reactions in him. This had required even less effort than usual - just a lazy stretch of her arm, a pointed rap on a cup. Judas is many things but he is no fool, he will know such a display is anything but accidental. The vexation in his words is unmasked. Such an effortless victory is somewhat disheartening, though the sound of his deep, deliberate ahem still brings an amused smile to wine-stained lips. My, my, it seems the self-perceived majesty of their realm awoke on the wrong side of his lonely bed. “You’d ask such formalities of your oldest companion?” is the answer to his request, accompanied by her best attempt at a wounded expression as she turns to lay light eyes upon dark. “My deepest apologies, Judas,” she utters, countenance emphasised by the thick honey of her voice, the performative earnestness in her voice surely more mocking than any open insult, “your arrival lacked it usual fanfare - I hadn’t sensed that I stood in the presence of greatness.”

three choices meme

🎉 - hang out with, party with, ghost.

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