#tyriannical

         Long fingers brushed over the keyboard with something approaching reverence, delicate and careful.  Oh, es...this would be a treat to make for her.  A far more enjoyable task than she usually gave to him, certainly.  A silver tongue and impeccable self-control, polished manners and sharp wit...he detested being sent to speak with pawns like Lionheart, but he’d honed his skills of intrigue in the highest levels of Atlesian politics, and he had yet to disappoint her.

         But this...this would be another masterpiece to add to his collection.  A true challenge of his skills.  His favorite skills.

         Rapid keystrokes paused, emerald eyes narrowing a moment.  Even here, in Salem’s realm of darkness, Arthur knew his laboratory.  Knew the way the air moved, or didn’t.  Knew the way it felt, when he was left to himself and his devices.  Or his experiments, if Salem was feeling kind enough to let him have some time to conduct the larger ones.  He knew the feel of his lab, and the way it soured when he had company.

         In this case, he also knew who his company was, and he didn’t bother to consider sending him away.  Tyrian, at least, he could stand.  The others were far too pretentious, too concerned with their justifications.  Boring.

“Manners,” he sighs, continuing to work despite the appearance of company in his office. “Haven’t you heard of knocking?”

Despite the slight irritation in the doctor’s tone, Tyrian’s appearance in his office is hardly a surprise: it’s one of the warmer rooms in Her Grace’s fortress, after all. It wouldn’t be the first time that the cold-blooded one had slithered into his office looking for warmth.

But when Arthur actually glances toward his guest for a brief moment, he begins to doubt that Tyrian’s intentions are solely to warm up. The sheen of sweat visible on his skin, the lack of a shirt (more than usual), his hair unbraided and hanging loose, the debauched smile, none of that precisely points to a cold faunus.

Then the scent hits him. A strong, almost sweet smell. One that, when combined with the rest of Tyrian’s appearance, namely the sweat and the flush on his cheeks, makes his intentions very, very clear.

Still, it would be quite rude to simply assume, now wouldn’t it?

          atlas might as well have been a foreign city. the streets felt unreal to whitley as she stumbled down them, cloak she stole from an empty ( and still open ) shoppe wrapped tightly around the blood - stained dress lee wore. her aura left her with fresh scars, though worked enough to get her up and moving again. there was still a plan in place, despite the chaos unraveling around them. 

        ‘  pick up -- why aren’t you picking up ?  ‘  she huffed, once again met by continuous ringing whenever she tried contacting arthur or tyrian. she had no idea what happened to either of them, or . . . if they both finally decided whitley wasn’t worth keeping.  she glanced around at the panicked and confused citizens --- all presumably worried about what happened in mantle happening here too. 

On his way out, he found himself looking forward to more time to himself, and decided perhaps he would stop and do some quiet meditation. The smallest of self indulgent smiles crossed his features, and he ducked his head as he walked through the crowded street. As people became more few and far between, Ren gave a quick little glance over his shoulder. Paranoia still followed him everywhere, it seemed. His senses had not yet given off any sort of indication that something was wrong, but he kept an eye out nonetheless.

@tyriannical​: "does it feel liberating to finally kill?" 

“I didn’t kill ANYONE! You started all of this, manipulating me into getting Clover out of the way, just so you can stab him in the back! I wanted him out of our way so I could end YOU!” Heart strings snap, the control he had over his rage was slipping moment by moment. Blood boils, if this is how he fell, so be it. Qrow’s mind was made up, if he became unwanted by his nieces, by their friends and by Atlas for choosing this path of vengeance, then he’ll let it happen. 

     ❛     you weren’t going to leave without sayin’ goodbye, were you?     ❜     hazel was leaning in the entryway, face as stoic as ever, save for the slightest quirk of his brow directed at tyrian.   he knew the mission came before everything else -- but he’d be damned if he didn’t see tyrian off first.     ❛     you gonna fix that?     ❜

@tyriannical​   >   "how does it feel?" his voice cuts through the air like a knife, never echoing. a giggle. "knowing he's one of us now?" heels click against the pavement as he slowly, surely comes closer, eyes glowing in the low light. he reeks of death. "knowing the next time you see your little knight, one of you will have to die? failure isn't an option, i'm sure you know." he wipes a splatter of blood from his cheek. "does it hurt to know he misses you so badly that his screams fill our home nightly?"   unscripted.

they were burning through their aura at the most alarming rate. they had been for half an hour just trying to locate the source of malevolent intent. in all honesty, ren should have recognised it sooner. hadn’t they sensed tyrian before all those months ago ? back then, they’d managed to save jaune from the first hit. the next, ren had managed nothing. jaune was taken, spirited away with nothing but pyrrha’s red sash and a pool of blood to show for it. the truth to tyrian’s question was that it was bearable, but in a way that would eventually chip and carve at ren’s insanity until they were nothing but an empty shell. the very thought of jaune in enough turmoil to give. himself. up. even after the way they’d argued, and cried, and yelled at each other to never sacrifice themselves for each other was horrifying. and ren was a realist, they could have been doing all manner of experiments on him, torturing him for information. when next ren saw jaune, they didn’t even know if they’d have the means to bring him home, and that was what killed them the most.

ren felt so much in the few careful breaths they took to answer such a cruel question, most of them the apex of ren’s destructive tendencies. they felt misery to the point of drowning themselves in the ice cold atlesian waters, they felt enough malevolent fury to kill themselves so long as they could take tyrian with them to an early grave, but that was the beauty, and the curse of their semblance. where ren felt like dying, when they wished to commit so much atrocity in the name of emotions they could not handle, they still seemed calm and collected on the surface. their emotionless expression gave no rise to the way hardened magenta hue became glassy, and red. their weapons raised defensively, dragon smoke wisping from their mouth when ren finally spoke. at the bare minimum, ren knew jaune was alive. they had no reason to trust in anything tyrian had to say, but their instincts, the ones that had sensed such a malevolent and bloodthirsty force, were normally right about liars too.   ‘   ... what do you want ?   ’   ren tried to keep their tone measured, but the last words came out as a barely restrained snarl.

‘   wh ... why are you here ?   ’