slayer of angels

This is it, then: the summit of lunacy. 

Chaos, a glutton ill with famine, is unruly, and Asif’s mortal vessel is atrophying from the poison of a divine fury too potent, too frenzied, to be sustained by human flesh and bone. His possessor is usually a muted hum, a symphony of echoes and whispers lusting after apocalypse. But the recent disturbance of the empire’s well-balanced equilibrium has resurrected Chaos anew, and the beast now booms with wants unbridled, tethered only by the steel of Asif’s will. 

But not even Asif, well-studied in the skill of restraint, is a match for the wrath of gods, and he can feel the early bloom of madness unfurling within, muddling the landscape of reality, disarming his will. And so, like any madman, he seeks salvation—in the arms of his ruin. 

Cloaked in dark, hooded robes, he weaves through the sand-dusted streets of the outer echelons of Paol, swathing his person in shadow, slinking through alleyways with the stealth of a well-trained soldier. He finds him near Paol’s border, surrounded by admirers and acolytes on bent knee, eyes round with want for Venus, the Silver Millennium’s paramour. Not even Asif, a born-and-bred slayer of magic-keepers, can deny the bacchanalian beauty of celestials—carved from stardust, craters, and moonshine, they were exquisite, each of them, divine in their aloof beauty and holy in their majesty. And Cedric stood above them all: magnificent, magical, miraculous. 

Desperate for a salve, a sedative, something, he pushes his way through Cedric’s crowd of worshippers, bumping shoulders and snarling curses at those who stand in his way. “Ambassador,” he half-growls by way of greeting, one hand coiling like steel around the angel’s forearm, desperate for an anchor. Sweat beads at the crown of his temple, feverish, and his voice is hoarse from the strain of inner war. “May I request a private audience, Your Holy Excellency?” he drawls, and he means to sound flip, but his jest is drowned out by desperation. “Away from your zealots,” he hisses. 

☾  location & date  |  a rocky seaside, the coast of paol; late aries, 998 a.l. ☾  status  |  closed to the godkiller, @seraphimslayer.

Ah, here he is: another shaving of her sacrilegious soul, perforating and cutting down softer parts of her whole. An ingesting, devouring beast, eating frailty alive. Though Lila, poised as the gentle handmaiden, had never wandered far from her side at the Princesses’ Ball – the voracious hollowness of her eyes widened, wolfish; eyeing her prey – Asif had been a deeply absent wedge of their trinity, unholy as each they are. With whom else could she create the same bloodletting; raze the same scripture? His value is singular; without equal. Nonetheless, Persia and Jove had seen to that themselves. In the passion of their rage, Daphne found herself blinking back two monstrously evoked nightmares: Ouranos, splintering whole skies; and Neptune, rising from sea-foam to consume the wreckage, swallowing it like the ocean. 

Rapturous, ungodly creatures, with yearnings more profane even than Daphne’s own.

She descends sea-worn steps which lead to the coast, torn by silver winds and antediluvian age, the train of her dress – webbed with gold and winking in the Paol sunlight – falling upon the stone. Asif is there already, waiting for her; punctual, always punctual – as if his heart doesn’t do well to be parted from her machinations for long. The shoreline is silent with few subjects within sight. Out in the open; here, they are truly alone. Where the crashing of the waves whips up their scheming and carries it away in the wind – a momentary whisper forgotten, lost. She meets the cold of Asif’s eye and smiles wantonly. She could almost say to him: I missed you. You and your wickedness at my side. She won’t.

“I’m sure you’ve heard –” Daphne says, more into the wind than to Asif, “Of the display; the – ah, the performance of the ball.” The winning spectacle; the bestial parade. The godlessness, in all its rhapsodic godliness. “It missed you, I’m sure. Called out to you.” Entropy, without a chaos to entertain it.

She returns to his side—or he to hers, he supposes—and he’s all at once anchored and disoriented. She’s his axis, the focal point of his orbit, and he’s grounded by her, rooted to his purpose, his will, his paramour. But she’s his elixir, too, an opium to salve his worries, and he’s bewitched by her, enchanted by her spells, her lullabies, her magic. A child weaned on a poison considers harm a comfort, and a madman weaned on witchcraft considers Daphne Paol a lifeline.

Parting is such sweet sorrow, and to be disjoined from Daphne and Lila, to splinter the unholy trinity, is grueling to a psyche grown dependent on two furies, two dragon-women who have conquered the inhabitable tundra of his heart and pierced the dead soil with flags of ownership. Beasts of their nature don’t say things like “I missed you” or “I love you”—their tongues, forked and silver, weren’t bred for the plush flowerbed of sweet nothings, no. And so Daphne and Asif have, overtime, invented their own rotten dialect: wanton smiles and a press of one’s lips to the other’s knuckles instead of “I missed you”; the obedient slash of a dagger flush against a foe’s throat instead of “I am yours”; hands bloody, bloody, bloody with the soil of her will instead of “I love you.” It was written that he should be loyal to the nightmare of his choice, and here she is: radiant, wretched. 

“Your Grace,” he greets her, and the way he addresses the Sea Queen sounds more like a sigh of relief than anything else—a chant of reprieve, of rejoice, to be returned to the heel of his master. What’s Hydra without Hades? Hellhounds without Lucifer? Asif Ali without Daphne Paol? “So I’ve heard,” he says, holding out his callused palm for her taking as she descends the weather-worn staircase. “Bad news travels doubly fast, it seems.” He cocks one eyebrow at her next comments, lips twisting crookedly, half-quirked. “And I missed it.” He won’t say ‘you’—but he doesn’t need to, does he?

“You survived unscathed,” he observes, trapping her chin between his thumb and forefinger to inspect the unblemished planes of her face. Her right hand in matters of virtue and vice, he’s granted privileges others are not, and the liberty of touching the Queen is one of them. The contact lasts no longer than a handful of heartbeats, and his hand falls away from her face unceremoniously. “Not a scratch,” he murmurs. “Surprising, really, considering your choice of company that evening.” His voice is thick with varying layers of worry, caution, and perhaps a very small tinge of envy. Whispers of Paol’s Queen and the Silver Millennium’s General have plagued the empire like wildfire, hot flames of gossip jumping from tongue to tongue with hushed fervor. He’s not admonishing her (he knows better—not even Asif is safe from the foul prick of Daphne’s pride)—he’s safeguarding her. He trusts none who bleed gold—Ilo least of all—and he must prioritize Daphne’s safety above her pride, even at the cost of summoning one of her storms (he’s always weathered them well, anyway).  

Black moon training grounds, hidden location LATE AFTERNOON / @seraphimslayer​

Lila circles him on the padded mat, like a lioness closing in on her prey, dagger held tightly within her palm, but it isn’t hers, and far less severe when she jabs it into Asif’s ribs. Which she has done twice now, despite his best efforts. Was he holding back, or just lacking focus? She doesn’t care either way, really; she’s winning and that’s all that matters. 

“You have another round in you, Commander?” 

She taunts him now, grin as sharp as a knife as she lunges forward, faking a step to her right to lead him astray. But she darts swiftly to the left with a hard kick to his leg, quickly sending him back down to his knees as she brings the makeshift wooden weapon up to his throat. “That’s three.”

She’s a witch, he’s sure of it. 

Only the stuff of spells could thwart his focus, leech his tolerance, and desecrate his restraint—all in one fell swoop. And yet she’s triumphed thrice—one jab for his focus, one jab for his tolerance, one jab for his restraint. Crafty little thing, she is. Wretched little thing, she is. 

The way she says “Commander” sounds rotten, dirty, but this is their language, he supposes—a brand of dialect shared exclusively between the pair of them, two feral beasts who know naught but the tongue of wolves and snakes: howls and hisses. 

DATE: Late Aries, 998 A.L. LOCATION: Paol Palace STATUS: closed for @seraphimslayer

The look of him alone reminded her of why Yuna never liked him since the beginning. Those eyes were dangerous, and not because Asif was undeniably beautiful — because they promised destruction and ruin, because she was convinced that if she ever looked in them for a moment too long, he would swallow her whole and spit out her bones.

Seeing him now, as a grown woman, reminded her of what it was like to be a child. Unashamed of her brilliance, arrogant in her claim to the throne. The years had changed her, and she was surprised to see that it had hardly changed him. He was as foreboding as he’d ever been… perhaps even more now.

She wanted to ignore him, slide past Asif without ever speaking a word — but he might have information, too. (A temporary thrill rushed through her; she had forgotten what it was like to have such a sharp sense of purpose, of a mission.)

She approached as if he had no effect on her at all. “Asif, it’s good to see you again.” A warm smile, a quick laugh. “You look exactly the same after all these years.” — Like a monster.

There was a palpable shift in energies since their last encounter. Then, she’d welcomed him to her dominion, and in doing so had maintained a coy upper hand, leashing Asif’s darker proclivities with an iron fist of faculty. Now, however, the little doe had stumbled with lean, shaky legs into the wolves’ den, and though there yet remained a certain standard to be upheld when engaging with foreign aristocracy, the tables were nevertheless turned, and Asif wore no leash today—hackles raised, teeth bared. 

“Princess,” he purred by way of greeting, locking his hands behind his back and inclining his head in a mildly deferential bow. “Welcome back, Your Grace. Paol’s missed you.” Like a gardener’s callused thumb misses the prick of a rose’s thorns. 

She’d transformed since girlhood—flourished into something regal, something powerful, and he wasn’t half so naive as his comrades to underestimate her wiles. You look exactly the same after all these years. His mouth twisted into something that was one-third smile, one-third scowl, and one-third sneer. “And you’re unrecognizable,” he mused, eyes trained on her person with unyielding scrutiny. And she was, wasn’t she? A would-be Queen of Tsuki metamorphosed into an evermore Princess of Tsuki, demure and damned. Pity. “Come,” he entreated, gesturing to the castle’s entryway with a flourish of his hand as he turned his back to her and crossed the Summer Palace’s threshold. “The guest quarters have been prepared to your liking.” And then, over his shoulder, he sneered, “I do hope you’ll leave the Summer Palace in a far more desirable state than your guests left yours. The Queen doesn’t take kindly to disorder.” 

date: late aries, 998 A.L.

location: kova, undetermined

status: closed to @seraphimslayer

Violent, sustained bursts of brilliant luster — a stream of starlight, the indiscreet sign of a celestial traveler as she slinks precariously closer towards the Kova-Tsuki border in a fit of uncontrolled temper, unrestrained violence. Can she be blamed for it? It is in her nature, above all else. To wreak havoc, to rake her teeth across planets and claim them with molten rage. Mine, mine, mine. But this is a planet already conquered, no? Does their silvered empire not reign a careful, teetering superiority over Cosmos’ beloved creation?

So, then why?

Why else than the love she bears for her savior? Selene, who had given her holy, unholy purpose. Selene, who let her bloody her palms until the madness of a millennium slowly dissipated into a mild flicker of candlelight within her chest, a quiet thrumming called upon now only when needed — no more wild as it had been, once. Selene, who had called upon her golden seraphim to pull her wretched, scorched bones from fever flame; who had given her back her brother, where their creator had split Endymion from her.

The very same beloved figure who now sought to rip him away from her, who let him believe that this inglorious, inevitable death was his duty to her. Deeply, privately — she felt anger and betrayal and vengeance rise slowly up within her, like ghosts which had secretly haunted her. Dark wraiths, heavy phantoms. Alongside adoration, she felt a tiny, superficial hatred. 

So, then why?

But she has always been disobedient, loyal to a fault. Today, she feels a loyalty to herself and to her other half. But really, was her brother not a mere extension of herself? It were almost as if Endymion were no more than a fraction of her own existence, which had been cut out of her. Almost as if they were no more separate, moving parts than they were a glorious, divine whole. If she did anything in benefit of herself, then was it also not in inherent benefit of him? But the answer is beyond her when she feels the presence of something cold and iniquitous brush against her spine, a tiny surge of instinctual terror felt in her stomach, which she ignores. 

“Unless you’d like me to separate your head from your neck, I suggest you leave me be,” and it is not a careful warning, but an unadulterated threat conjured from deep within her throat — a snarl at the rear of her tongue, unfettered by her own small fear. But was she not an arrogant god after all?

When he was a boy, and he watched stars shoot across the nighty sky with wide-eyed wonder, his mother, eyes aglow with mad magic, would tell him to wish on the twinkling bursts of starlight. But his father was quick to cure Asif of his mother’s plague of starry eyes, as he so called it, and he schooled his son well in hate and contempt, choking the stars from his eyes until all that remained was black, black nothingness. Asif learned young not to wish on shooting stars, but to chase them, for in stardust’s wake rose angels, weary from travel and ripe for the taking. 

And so, when the sky booms with a flood of light that dances from one constellation to the next, he gives chase—and what he finds is perhaps more than he’s bargained for. 

Ah, so this is her—Ysra, the Angel of Inferno. 

She’s...alight—from head to toe, dressed to the nines in wildfire and ash, eyes smoldering with ire, red tresses crackling with electric energy. She’s palpable, and he can practically feel her every nerve ending pricking his flesh, branding him. Not even he, a born-and-bred slayer of magic-keepers, can deny the bacchanalian beauty of celestials—carved from stardust, craters, and moonshine, they’re exquisite, each of them, divine in their aloof beauty and holy in their majesty. Beautiful, wretched things they are, yes—but their beauty doesn’t make them any less fit to be killed.

He’s (regrettably) well-acquainted with her icy counterpart, for the nature of Asif and Endymion’s line of work has necessitated their acquaintanceship, a pair of guardians obliged to engage with one another on their sovereigns’ behalves. But he’s never seen Ysra, not up close. Everything he knows about her has been accumulated from pieces of loose-tongued gossip and tall-tales from Chaos’s well of omnipotence, and Asif has thus far conjured up an impression of her that’s all at once feverish and frightening, alarming and exhilarating. 

Unless you’d like me to separate your head from your neck, I suggest you leave me be. His eyebrows shoot upward, pleasant surprise dancing across the shadows of his face. A beast feared and famed for bloodlust and bloodshed, Asif is unused to being challenged so brashly and with such little regard for etiquette, and so he’s nearly enthralled by Ysra’s proposition, delighted to have encountered a fine match to his own chaos. “Did you travel all the way from the stars for the sole purpose of decapitating a mortal man unknown to you?” he asks, head lolling to the side lazily, hooded eyes trained on the angel before him. “I’m flattered, really,” he drawls, flourishing one hand over his heart theatrically. “What’s wrong, angel?” His query lacks even a lick of sincerity, a truth made doubly apparent in the way his lips twist cruelly, with rotten glee. “Trouble in space-paradise?”

Camille’s routine had never been interrupted before, so she was off her game. Usually she could use her charm to steer people away from her strange antics and onto something else— her art, Paol, politics. A smile perched on her lips, a touch to the other’s wrist, and they would forget all about their suspicions. She, however, did not do that with Asif. Perhaps it was due to her fatigue from her journey through the shadows, her bones aching for the comfort of her bed. Perhaps it was because he was her guard, a man who was trained to detect lies and suspicious actions. Either way, she had forgotten her charm and allowed her true feelings to show on her face. 

She tilted her head when he questioned her story. She didn’t believe her story to be too far fetched. Her castle was lovely, all marble columns and salty air from the ocean located just outside their doors. As a child she truly did wander around her home at strange hours, searching for hidden secrets in empty rooms and company to keep her entertained during sleepless nights. Her childhood had been filled with a restlessness, a need to do more and be seen. She watched as Victor focused on his royal duties, watched as Daphne found companionship in the shadows. Perhaps, she had found a sort of companionship with the palace. It was truly the only one to know all of her secrets, after all.

Her eyes followed his movement as he lifted up her chin. Her hazel eyes met his blue eyes, and she couldn’t help but take note of his words. She could still feel the ghost of his touch as he pulled his hand away, her eyes watching him with an innocent curiosity as he spoke about his own circumstances. She felt her lips quirk up into a half smile before her arms crossed.

“A swim at this hour?” She spoke, tone slightly mocking as she copied his words. “Perhaps we both just had a restlessness in us tonight.” 

He found himself mirroring her own faint smile tenfold, and the way his lips ticked upward with sincere, innocent amusement felt—strange, almost. Asif was unused to genuine smiles, his lips well-practiced in faux grins and aloof smirks, and he was glad to be relieved of his masquerade, even if only for fleeting handful of moments. “Clever girl,” he hummed, pleasantly taken aback by her silver tongue (sharp wit was Daphne’s forte, not Camille’s, but it suited her well all the same, and Asif found himself enchanted by her small bout of cheek). “Perhaps you’ve learned some of your sister’s tricks after all,” he mused, eyes fixed on hers as he walked a small circle around her, pace slow, leisurely, hands locked behind his back. 

When Camille and Daphne were younger, Asif recalled, Camille, though clever, was always celebrated for her loveliness, and Daphne, though lovely, was always celebrated for her cleverness. But Asif had always suspected that the girls’ strongest attributes were those best-kept, not best-worn, and overtime, he’d watched Daphne bloom into a magnificent dreamscape beloved by all eyes of Paol, and, likewise, he’d watched Camille grow sharper and sharper, doe-lashed eyes full to the brim with wit beyond measure, wisdom beyond match. And perhaps that’s why he was suspicious of Camille’s nighttime ventures—because he’d spent a career watching her, seeing what others did not, knowing her for the clever girl she was, not the lovely girl Paol knew her to be. 

Even the moon, in all her dazzling brilliance, held a shadow that trailed at its feet. Every person had a darkness, even Endymion, who prided himself in being a guardian of light. In front of Asif, this darkness manifested in the earnest gravity that suddenly clouded his facial features. While his other half, Ysra, radiated with the fiery heat that licked the surface of their planet, he embodied the icy destruction that lay abandoned in Cosmos’ wake. Frigid eyes fixated upon Asif’s face, revealing nothing but suggestions of a frozen pond; glazed over depth hidden from Asif’s searching gaze.  

The wood creaked beneath Endymion’s feet as he took a step forward, approaching Asif as he did him. What little respect Endymion had for him as a supporting soldier for the Silver Millennium quickly dissolved within the engulfing flames of suspicion. As he encroached on Asif’s space, the tension between them only strengthened as the distance lessened. 

“I enjoy the view here, if you were listening before.” Their conversation remained to be thinly veiled poison, a cold stand-off between a snake and a wolf, neither one finding it necessary to resort to violence - though the thought was certainly tempting. 

When this close to Asif, Endymion temporarily ruminated over the idea of wiping the smug arrogance from his face with a plunge of his sword into soft, mortal flesh. It wasn’t out of sick sadism that it crossed his mind, but of a jaded soldier who had experienced far too much warfare in the past in an effort to keep peace. It would be an honor to rid the Silver Millennium of Asif’s malignancy - if he were to ever step out of line. 

“And you?” Endymion’s voice was clear when he responded, a careful calm in his words like a patient leopard eyeing its prey. “How is your time spent away from the beautiful Queen Daphne?” 

He was trickier to pin down than the other celestials. Those well-practiced in the art of masquerading were dually so well-practiced in the art of penetrating masques, and so Asif had never had much trouble intuiting the designs of others’ minds, dismantling charades with skillful ease. But Endymion stood apart from his fellow angels—reticent where the rest were uninhibited, restrained where the rest were indulgent, tight-lipped where the rest were loose-tongued. 

Endymion was a slab of marble chiseled in a language Asif didn’t understand, and this, above all else, irked him the most, for if you did not know thy enemy, how, possibly, could you kill him?

If you were listening before... Asif chuckled, the sound sharp with insolence. “Forgive me,” he drawled, sweeping his arm outward in a wide bow that was not quite theatrical enough to be out of line (Endymion was, after all, one of few elite angels, and his authority was not to be challenged—at least not so outwardly) but not quite apologetic enough to be sincere. He was very good at walking the line, Asif. “My attentions drift easily when not well-kept.” 

He wondered, as he watched Endymion watch him, if Selene’s guardian was quite so straight-laced as he appeared to be. Surely any creature who shared its origin with Ysra, inferno incarnate, possessed some semblance of passion, of darkness; Endymion couldn’t be all ice, all light—could he? Asif thought he might like to find out one day, and Chaos purred his agreement. 

How is your time spent away from the beautiful Queen Daphne? Unfettered (mostly) by Endymion’s attempts to poke holes at his armor of indifference, Asif answered the angel’s question without waver, lips arched and teeth bared. “The very same way it’s spent in her company: carrying out her every wish and will.” Slaying your brothers and sisters beneath your sovereign’s moon.

She can barely feel it, a numb pain in her stomach that’s doing something to her breathing, but she can barely feel it. 

Shock settles into her limbs but she clenches her teeth in the mockery of a smile as he admonishes her. “I’m fine, Ali, I’m fine. I can - “

She goes to push off him, goes to stand up, but he’s got a grip around her shoulders and she thinks he barely feels her touch. But she’s pushing so hard? All of her strength gets thrown, the pain ache in the back of her skull, but it can’t be that bad, can it?

Then he has a grip on the arrow and he pulls.

She faints. 

///

She wakes.

Wakes to white cloth walls and a white bandage on her abdomen, wakes to her own labored breathing and searing pain that sent black spots dancing across her vision. (Wakes and wishes she could go back to sleep. Wakes and wonders at herself.)

Wakes and looks for the man she tried to save.

“Asif?”

The name tumbles from her lips and she bites down, wonders if sacrifice breeds enough familiarity to call him on a first name basis, wonders why it was his name that came first to her tongue.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Mai,” he drawls, but the quip lacks some of its punch, gentled by the soft intonation of a man stricken with the weak-bellied disease of concern. 

How horridly uncharacteristic of him. 

“Miss us, did you?” he asks, eyebrows raised. 

She looks like a proper warrior: bed-ridden, yes, but eyes alight with a steely, stubborn will to survive; body taut, alert, even in its incapacitation; voice softer than usual, perhaps, but still imbued with a knight’s grit. 

She’ll lead armies one day, he’s sure of it—if she stays alive long enough to do so, that is. 

⸢ LATE ARIES — Night before the ball The Sapphire, a booth in the corner EARLY EVENING / @seraphimslayer​ ⸥

Meet me tonight. The Sapphire. Dusk. A

Upon the note’s arrival, the first thing she did was read and re-read the words at least a dozen times, ran the tips of her fingers along the slightly smudged ink, relishing the fact he’d taken the time to handwrite her something. Lila can’t recall if she’s ever seen it before, his penmanship. Stark, blocky letters, placed meticulously in the center of the page with such clear purpose, but would that stop her from imagining the hundreds of different topics Asif might want to discuss? Absolutely not. They hadn’t trained in a while, not since their last spar when she’d gotten a little too eager with her dagger and nicked the side of his neck—by accident. Or so she told him. In reality, she was just angry he’d told her to focus more. Annoyed he’d pointed out her sloppiness so callously. But such is the temper of a creature known to flourish only under positive reinforcement, especially when poured from the lips of someone she’s so desperate for approval from. 

The second thing she did was burn it, set the edges ablaze with the candle atop her dresser and left it to ash within the bin beside it. Evidence wasn’t to be left behind, no matter how minuscule or how inconspicuous; she’d been taught that much, at least. But the knowledge she truly had a thirst for was the way it felt when a blade slips between the ribs of an angel. 

When was Asif going to teach her that?

She sets out thirdly, fetching a shawl from the bench at the end of her bed and her dagger from the underbelly of her vanity drawer. It would take her twenty minutes to make it there, fifteen if she didn’t take her time, if she didn’t want to leisurely stroll so as to make him wait a good while until she dared to show up. Lila considers the thought as she breaches the cobblestone, but the eager thing growling in her chest refuses such an idea, carrying her at a brisker-than-normal pace to her destination despite the craving to demand his time and undivided attention like she knew she deserved.

The foyer of the hotel buzzes with the likes of beasts, monsters lurking in the dark, making their shady dealings in the shadows, and it furthers the racing of Lila’s heart. It sets her skin on fire, the cacophony of chaos as it welcomes her through the familiar threshold, but she could only be so lucky as to have been called here for such a meeting. 

A girl can dream. 

Unmistakable undercut spotted throughout the sea of people and the whispers they pass, she darts in and around the drinking patrons in search of her target, the savage little suitor that he was. “Commander,” she croons, slinking up behind him like a cat all too eager to find a perch within the warm afternoon sun, and oh, how Lila would love to wrap her arms around his broad shoulders, maybe purr against his chest until he finally relents and pets her just so. A hand runs along his back instead, a barely-there touch of her fingertips against the silk of his shirt as she rounds the table, taking a seat beside him rather than across. She crosses her legs, the slit of her dress exposing a little thigh which she meets with a curious smirk in his direction. “You summoned?”

The Sapphire suits her decidedly well. Like a nasty, nocturnal animal let out to play beneath the moon, nighttime kisses her sweetly, draping shadows over her shoulders like a fine fur. It’s miraculous, really, that fate dressed a beast so heinous in a face so lovely: curls of gold that bounce this way and that; baby-blue eyes, baby-pink lips; forget-me-not smiles. 

Every superficial thing about her radiates virtue, and yet she possesses not a lick of it, instead imbued with vice from head to toe. He’s seen firsthand that halo of flaxen curls wet with the golden ichor of children and wives; he’s watched, bewitched, as those baby-blue eyes, Medusa-esque in their capacity to turn men to stone, stun her victims starry-eyed and pierce them in place—a pretty distraction—as she guts her hunt bloody; he’s seen those baby-pink lips tick up, up, up as she smiles down on her unlucky prey, pressing goodbye kisses to their cheeks, leaving the faint impression of red rouge in her wake—a sigil honoring her rotten work; an ode to her mad hunger. 

And yet she’s tricked the whole of Paol into thinking that Lila Fowl is little more than a demure handmaiden—a pink-petaled rose clipped of its thorns, preening for beauty, not pricking for blood. She, like him, is a connoisseur of masquerades, a crafter of masques. Each dawn, Asif and Lila mold themselves to fit the cast of guard and handmaiden, gentleman and damsel, knight and lady; and then, at dusk’s break, they shed their snakeskins and slither about the rotten underbelly of their kingdom, kissing venom into the mouths of their prey. 

He feels her before he sees here. There’s a palpable shift in the room’s energy, a spike of impassioned furor, and Chaos, delighted by Lila’s nearness, roars to life. Like calls to like, and Lila calls to Chaos, and Asif calls to Lila, and so goes their sordid triangle. But Asif would’ve sensed her presence even without Chaos’s cue, for they’re tethered, the pair of them, joined in their unholy communion of bloodthirst. He’s known her feral, and he’s known her, occasionally, tame; and she’s known him tame, and she’s known him, occasionally, feral. They orbit each other like cat and canary, both starved, both vicious, each anchored to the other by something not tangible, something otherworldly. 

The way she says “Commander” sounds foul on her silver-scaled tongue, and he cocks an eyebrow at her greeting, equal parts amused and disgruntled by her wiles. “Fowl,” he purrs by way of greeting, hooded eyes trained on her approaching form. Her fingers graze his spine and he feels the bite of steel nip its way up his vertebrae, a hot fever stealing up the length of his torso. Her touch is something inferno-like, he’s learned, and he loathes the way his body so irreverently betrays his mind’s restraint at her bidding. You summoned? “And you came,” he answers in turn, coy, and it sounds much too much like a taunt to pass as easy conversation. Posture cool, lazy, he leans back against the booth’s cushion, stretching out one arm behind her and letting it rest there a little while, creating a curtain of privacy to stave off prying eyes and ears. “We’ve much to discuss, little lamb,” he says, using the term of endearment he knows so irks her. He only began calling her “lamb” to poke fun at how horridly wolfish she is, but once he discovered how easily the nickname vexed her, it became a permanent fixture in their conversations, a ploy used to goad her for good fun. 

This conversation won’t go over swimmingly, to be sure, but any engagement between the pair of them seldom goes over swimmingly, and Asif is well-practiced in the art of pacifying Lila’s displeasure with his edicts. “There are matters of Kovan insurgence that require immediate attention. Sunisa and I will depart for the Kovan border at dawn,” he says warily, regarding her the same way a lone villager might regard a pack of feral wolves. “You”—he leans forward, lowers his head to her eye level, and traps her chin between his thumb and forefinger—“will remain here,” he says with some finality, eyes full of stone and steel. “You’ll be of far more use at Daphne’s side than mine.”

Camille wasn’t too fond of the darkness. She grew up in the sun— the light practically coursing through her body due to the amount of time spent in its rays. She had spent years waking up when the sun does, and going to sleep as the sun set in the distance. The darkness was an unknown abyss to her. She didn’t what what, or who, lurked in the shadows as she traveled along. She didn’t have a way of protecting herself from the darkness that surrounded her, but it was a necessary risk. Her tastes had grown more advanced than just a slip of wine at one of their many cocktail parties, and this taste was only to be obtained before the sun awoke from its slumber.

She had tucked the vials away in her cloak. Her meeting with Marius had gone as well as it normally did— quick exchanges, no one paying attention to the magic dealer or the princess purchasing such illegal goods. Of course, that hadn’t been the part she worried about. She  worried about the journey back, running on back to her palace while knowing that one small move could spill her purchase all over the floor or get seen by an individual that wouldn’t hesitate to turn her in. She assumed she did a good job of going unnoticed, even though she wasn’t trained in the art of stealth, but her skill wasn’t good enough.

She froze in place when she heard the guard’s voice. Her eyes locked onto Asif’s blue ones, and she did her best to cover up the nervousness that must’ve shown in her own. She always had a list of reasons prepared for this exact moment, but of course the unwavering look of the guard made her blank out. She could feel the pulse of the vials buried in her pocket, and she just wanted to go back to her room and place the items in her secret location. Finally, after what felt like forever, one of her excuses came to mind and she spoke to the guard before her.

“I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I decided to take a walk around the castle.” She spoke softly, eyes looking down as if she were ashamed of her answer. Little did Asif know her answer wasn’t what was filling her body with guilt, but the items stored within her outfit itself. She gently looked up at him again, and her eyes looked at the small water droplets that crowned his head and the visible parts of his torso. 

“Why are you wet?”

Impossible, really, that a thing so sweet had bloomed so well in the rotten soil of Paol’s wasteland, flourishing in spite of the cancer of vanity that plagued all Paols. He wondered, sometimes, if she truly was kin to a dynasty built on bones and blood, or if, perhaps, an angel had left her on the marble steps of the Summer Palace’s entryway at dawn’s break, a seraphic babe left to be raised by Paolish wolves. A stark foil to her sister, Asif often found it difficult to accommodate the pair of Paol heiresses. Camille’s company necessitated mindfulness of his more sinister proclivities: claws retracted, teeth sheathed, tongue kind. Daphne’s company, contrarily, coaxed from him all matters of sin and vice: claws sharp, teeth bare, tongue mean. And so Asif had to practice great care when passing between one sister and the next, mindful not to be too rough with Camille, cautious not too be too soft with Daphne. 

Her attempt at lying was positively tragic, and he had to make a conscious effort to choke quiet a laugh that scratched at the back of his throat. Lacking the finesse and confidence of a practiced liar, imbued to the brim with the chaste, sweet virtue of a truth-teller, she was a miserable liar, eyes aglow with alarm and cheeks flushed with the pink glow of nervousness. Her face, a bright-colored canvas painted in alternating shades of joy and sorrow, did little to obscure her innermost thoughts, instead forfeiting telltales of secrets. She was transparent, it seemed, and Asif’s lips twitched with subdued amusement at her attempts to play coy. How the fuck did she and Daphne share like blood?

Endymion’s muscles tensed in the presence of Asif, face as guarded as he was on the battlefield. As the protector of a beloved princess, he faced every new and strange face with trepidation rather than openness. It was out of love for Selene, love for his kingdom, and love for his job that he reacted in this way. Out of everyone, Endymion figured that Asif would understand. 

The words that left Asif’s mouth sounded all too malicious in Endymion’s wary ears. Whether it was the truth or merely his biased thought process, Endymion always chose to be safe rather than sorry. 

His eyebrows furrowed at the implication that the moon Endymion resided in could ever be boring. How could he lose interest in the effervescent beauty radiating off of the stars? It was true that the Earth was beautiful, but the moon was exquisite in ways the Earth could never surpass. 

“I was on my way home when I decided to enjoy the view.” Endymion said, words curt as he stared distrustfully at the approaching figure. Hidden underneath his cape, a hand rested at his hip where his sword was tucked safely into its scabbard. It was not a motion to incite violence, but a tension that signaled readiness to fight at a moment’s notice.

“A change of scenery never hurt anybody.” But I could, he thought to himself, the threat dormant on his tongue for now.

He watched through narrowed eyes as Endymion’s hand shifted beneath his cape, at the ready to unsheathe the sword tucked away at the jut of his hip. Asif scoffed, making a conscious effort to bite his tongue (a feat not easily achieved, mind you). Swords—so...retro; so gut-wrenchingly noble. Swords were hulking, heavy things—tedious in their bulk and weight, extravagant in their excess grandiosity, always carved with something ornate, forged from something opulent, and perhaps their worst fault of all was that they were far too weighty to pierce the backs of foes (and, on occasion, friends). Asif much preferred daggers—sleek, weightless, honorless; easy to handle if your hands were kindred to bloodlust, easy to slide between the shoulder blades of friends and foes alike. Daggers were quick to unsheathe, summoned with a one-two-three flick of the wrist, and so Asif didn’t have to move his hand to the hilt of the dagger hidden up his left sleeve—didn’t have to use discrete gestures to warn Endymion that he was at the ready should the need arise. That was the privilege and pleasure of daggers: they were always at the ready, even if not evidently so, and so too was Asif. 

He was so stiff, Endymion—straight-edged and straight-spined; not at all like Ysra, who seemed infallibly aflame with fury and frenzy. Strange to think the pair of them were wrought from the same stardust. Asif was familiar with the gravity of guarding a royal jewel, certaintly, but even he, in all his solemn servitude, knew the importance of letting loose, so to speak. This one, it seemed, did not. Pity.

“On your way home,” he mused aloud, head canting to the side as he pushed off the bow of the palm tree and moved nearer to the angel, strolling at a leisurely pace. 

At the ready, even if not evidently so. 

Escaping the past was futile - the problem with running was that at some point, it caught up to you. Zoya was the first of his baggage to pile up and it seemed Asif would be the second. The first word from his pursuer’s mouth had Saturn’s knuckles going white around his glass, eyes snapping towards one-half of Paol’s welcoming committee. There was an implicit threat in his presence - death or exposure, both which Saturn feared. “Your other half is missing,” he mentioned through gritted teeth, gaze wandering towards the different exits, looking for any escape route that seemed feasible. Anxiety coursed through his veins, sloshed like oil and stunk of death - yet the god killer had made his presence known, when he could have easily offed him the second he’d entered. Curious. “Your concern about my sleep is noted,” Saturn replied as close to nonchalant as he could muster. 

The moment Asif slid the drink back, Saturn quickly drank it. To numb the nervousness bubbling in his stomach - the reaper was right, he did need it. “What brings you here?” He asked bluntly, liquor causing Saturn to be bolder. “Killing me publicly in a bar, in a foreign country - sounds like you’d need magic to cover up your tracks.” Taunting a feral wolf was dangerous, but the situation had Saturn in the upper hand. He knew the layout of the Sapphire like the back of his hand, there was enough people around to create chaos. Being in Tsuki was also a deterrent, it seemed. “And I doubt I’m your first choice for a personal visit.”

Your other half is missing. He sneered, shoulders rotating with a hungry lion’s stretch as one half of his lips ticked upward. “So eager for a ménage à trois, dove?” he asked, head lolling to the side, eyes hooded with lazy half-interest. “Shall I send for Lila? She’d be rapt to join us, I’m sure.” And he was. Lila matched him both in bloodlust and brutality, and he was certain she’d trade away all of the rings and pendants Daphne had gifted her to join Asif and Saturn’s little tryst at The Sapphire. “Be thankful you’ve my company tonight,” he purred, “and not hers.” Arm outstretched, he used the back of his knuckles to trace the sharp jut of Saturn’s cheekbone, far gentler with his hands than he was with his words. “She wouldn’t leave your face half as lovely as I will.”

Hand falling back to his side, he watched, curious, as the boy polished off two drinks in two gulps, and Asif’s lips twitched with something akin to amusement—the sincere sort, not the malicious sort. Brave little thing. His half-grin grew tenfold when Saturn next spoke, and Asif found himself equal parts in awe of and intrigued by the magic-maker’s unfailing wit in the face of death. But his amusement ended at Saturn’s ill-timed mention of magic, and the seed of paranoia pitted in his stomach bloomed into something rotten, something frenzied and vicious, unfurling in his gut with mad panic. His lips twisted into a mean scowl, and his hands curled into meaner fists. Seething, he leaned forward, sliding one arm around the back of Saturn’s chair and fashioning a cage out his arms, effectively corralling him. “You’d be wrong in thinking you’re not my first choice for a personal visit,” he said, voice vibrating with palpable wrath. “You’re at the very top of my list, pet.” He’d leave it up to Saturn’s imagination to surmise which list, exactly, he topped.

Sacrificial Scars | Sunisa & Asif

Time : 994 AL

Location : Mud and fighting and blood

Person : @seraphimslayer

Their company of twenty had charged in with horses, had decimated the village, had torn children hiding behind mothers with frozen eyes and led the parents to slaughter, had followed rumours of rebellion.

Still, the sick feeling lingered in her stomach, the ache of a broken heart still bleeding in her ribs, a pain which had dulled and spread across her body since she had first ridden out. Something within her had fractured and frozen, and her body worked on automatic as she pointed her sword at villagers with nothing and demanded glory for the heavens.

They mixture of Tsuki and Paol soliders had thought they had burnt out the resentment, the agony, the rebellion, so they relaxed a bit, gathering the horses to go back out again. Sunisa was stood in the center, discussing with Asif what to do next, when the glint of metal off the cold sun caught her eye. 

She nodded as she listened, trying to focus on what she had seen, but the realisation only clicked when the arrow was flying through the air. There had been a girl, barely ten, her father killed. She must have found his hidden bow, must have taken all of her strength to pull the string back, must have been burning to fire the arrow. 

( Sunisa sometimes wonders what it was like to burn. )

The arrow flies through the air, and time slows as she sees the trajectory, as she hears the way Asif continues speaking, as she sees the fury glinting in the child’s eyes. She’s the only one who can do anything.

So she doesn’t think as she cries out, as she reaches forward to push Asif out of the way, as she’s too late to twist her own body away, as the arrow pierces her gut. She doesn’t think.

And then she’s thinking and time is passing too quickly as a sharp pain hits her, fiercer than the ache she had before and she watches as the child’s eyes widens as they missed and she’s falling back against Asif and it -

It all hurts.

It happens slowly and all at once: the girl, the arrow, the blood. He’s usually much more watchful of his fellow knight, tethered to her by bonds forged on battlegrounds time and again. In each battle they’ve fought together, he’s always devoted at least a small portion of his attentions to her safety, always watched her from the corner of his eye, intervening when necessary and leaving her to her own devices when not. 

But Chaos is particularly ravenous today, particularly grueling in his demands, and Asif’s psyche is weary from his possessor’s coup d'état, his attentions too fixed on Chaos’s will to be spared for Sunisa’s benefit.

And perhaps that’s why he doesn’t see her: the pale-skinned girl with eyes as green as her father’s were—right up until Asif gutted him bloody, and those green eyes, so like his daughter’s, had fluttered shut with lifelessness. 

And perhaps that’s why Asif, always so observant, doesn’t notice that Sunisa looks distracted, anxious—eyes wide with worry and cheeks gaunt with alarm.

Blinded by Chaos’s bloodlust and deafened by Chaos’s commands, Asif doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late to do much about it. “Fuck,” he snarls, stumbling one, two, three paces backwards as Sunisa collides against him, his arms snaking instinctively around the taper of her waist, accommodating her slight weight without much effort. He looks to the green-eyed girl with eyes full of black, black, black wrath, and perhaps he ought to kill her where she stands, strike her down with a well-placed dagger and a flick of his wrist, but Sunisa requires his attentions now, undivided, and so he lets the girl run.