i'm not the devil, but i won't be your hero. || jah-lilah

[Offspring]

You're looking at an absolute zero;
I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.

   It was humid.

   When was it ever not?

   There was a stagnant thickness to the air that had been, at one time, stifling to him, but he had grown accustomed to it and instead, he felt enveloped by it. Embraced by it. Thus, the volcanic island had become his own. He had once thought it impossible to feel that he belonged anywhere else but the frigid tundra from whence he came prior to the rumbling, reformation of the Reckoning, but time had inevitably proven him wrong, and the tendrils of swaying vegetation caressing the length of his heavy, muscular legs and the growing plume of smoke rising up from the crest of the volcano itself were soothing to his wild but weary soul.

   He could not stay still for long.

   He had spent much of the day on the western border, his gaze settled somewhere out onto the voracious, angrily churning sea - it is not often so untamed, but there is a cloaking of darkness in the distant sky along the fading horizon. A tempest is coming, brought forth by the wayward wind, caressing the length of his body and entangling itself within the matted tresses that lay haphazardly across the thickness of his neck. He had watched it move closer, mile by mile, its shadow descending upon the island and with it, a thin veil of warm rain.

   It is trickling across the surface of his skin, tempering the vivid flame of his exoskeleton that danced across his dark, but heavily scarred flesh. He is unmoved - the rumbling of the storm reverberates through his chest, stirring a faint, but fleeting smile to tug at the corner of his mouth. It reminded him of the cruel and unforgiving snowstorms he had endured while in the land of ice, and the frigidity of its harsh gale - but the monsoon is soothing, in a way - a cloaking of warmth, blending with a soft but subtle gust. He does not prefer one over the other.

   It is simply another experience amid a thousand others.

   When he does finally pry himself away from the shoreline, he is plunging himself deeper into the volcanic isle, moving seamlessly toward a steaming hot spring that lay near the base of the rumbling volcano, beneath a sparse copse of foliage. It is quiet, but not eerily so. Overhead, a collection of fowl glide toward the sea, their crooning voices breaking through the silence, while his dark gaze catches a glimmer of gleaming fire amid the golden grain.

   The shadow of a smile has returned, pulling at his mouth as he moves closer, observing the feather entangled with her wild and unkempt tresses. She is undoubtedly wild and beautiful, but not unfamiliar to him - she had sought out Tangerine on the day of her birth, and though he had kept at bay, he had seen enough to know that she had come with no ill intention in mind.

   Alas, now, she is alone, as is he.

   ”You must be Jah-Lilah,” he murmurs, his voice a rumbling baritone while his gaze searches her own. ”I am Offspring - I am the Overseer of Tephra,” no longer a King - it had never felt the same, not after the Reckoning - not after hundreds of years of history had been stolen away. ”you are a friend of Tangerine, then? Not much gets past me.” He muses, a low chuckle emerging, and then, ”Welcome.”

OFFSPRING

another zealot with the weight of the fucking world.