THE GHOST KING

this was for today’s @nicodiangeloappreciationweek prompt; mourning!

Little doodles during exam season

                    when I was a young girl, like you, this old world was younger, too                              we set it spinning, hand in hand, me and a young man

A part of him had hoped he was wrong. That one of his kin would emerge from behind the white dappled pines and laugh at him for being so uptight, for having fight of flight instincts to an extreme compared to the rest of them all. Oh, how he would have longed to see the golden scales and teal feathers of his twin instead of…this.

Scorpio took a step back, the thick crusted ice crunching like bone beneath his talons. His spiked lips curled, exposing an ivory fang in something akin to a sneer. Every muscle in his body was tightened into painful knots, his tail painfully stiff like it was turning to stone. He flared out his wings, the starry patterns upon the black membrane glittering in the light of the sun. It was perhaps some foolish, animal part of his brain that was trying to make himself look bigger, he reasoned.

“Are you here to kill me? To destroy us?” He seethed, taking yet another step back. No, no…he had to stop that. Show he wasn’t afraid. He was a Celestial- a great and powerful god! He would not show fear to this spawn of the new world order. The one that perhaps sought to erase them from history. 

“If you think I will let you lay a hand upon me or my kin, you are sorely mistaken.” Now he forced himself to be the aggressor. He stalked forward and began to circle the teen like a wolf ready to tear apart a fawn. 

His opponent didn’t look intimidating. He was young, and held up his hands to show he was unarmed. But that could be a farce. The children of gods surely had abilities and powers, like the Celestials would bestow upon their own followers. Sometimes blessed ones would be lucky enough to pass their earned abilities on to their own children.

And sure, the threat of being trampled by a horse, especially a flying horse, was very real, but it paled in comparison to being killed by a dragon. For one thing, this one had so many more options. Besides the poison tail, and the teeth, there was also presumably a fiery breath, if the stories about dragons were really true. Nico's heart thudded dully somewhere near his throat, begging him to turn tail and book it out of there, but the rest of him remained stock-still, a deer frozen in front of an oncoming truck.

"To kill?" Nico repeated dully. Could he actually kill a dragon? The question echoed around his mind, more a matter of curiosity than giving it any real consideration, especially because the thought that came rattling back was the faint, vaguely panicked repeating of the word 'dragon' over and over again.

No, this wasn't working. Get it together, Nico, or he was going to be killed one of three ways before he had time to take a second breath. Mentally shaking his head, he then literally shook his head, trying to get the shock to release his brain. Where were those battle field reflexes when he needed them?

"What? No, I'm not here to kill you. No." Oh great, the dragon was circling now, and this move Nico recognized too, chilled hands going slick with sweat. "It was an accident. I didn't come here on purpose."