She sells seashells by the sea shore // Laura pony

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

For all of his temper and rage, Atrox had always been a surprisingly mild-mannered warmonger. It wasn’t that he was actually mealy-mouthed or afraid to speak his mind, but rather that he took great pleasure in the extent and strength of his own self-control. He did not often indulge his first reaction and rather was content to watch at the short fuse of others—at the way they jumped the gun, finger on the trigger.

He snorts lightly, at which the souls behind him stop their forward motion, and just angles his wide-jawed face at the girl, a brow raising at the temper. “I wasn’t threatening you,” he says mildly, his voice slipping into his characteristic drawl, each syllable pronounced and dripping with a lazy and nearly apathetic amusement. “I would rather enjoy watching you try to stop them. They are rather stubborn things.”

As she bares her teeth, his smile widens, the teeth only shifting into his panther form, long and only slightly yellowed, the edges pressing against the thick velvet of his lips. “I would also love to see you make me go,” he casts a glance toward the water that rises up around her. “Or make me bathe, as it were.”

Amused, curious about what gifts might lie beneath the otherwise unassuming face of a pretty girl, he flicks his gaze back up to study her, lips pressing together again. It was strange, this new world, where so many harnessed magic that was unthinkable back in the early days of his youth. Back then, a pair of wings practically made you a god and not it made you as ineffectual as a robin fluttering around a nest.

How strange indeed that the most innocent of women bathing may control the rivers that wash them.

“My name is Atrox,” he finally offers, sniffing and rolling a shoulder.

As if the undead did not rest at his sides and as if she had not just threatened to drown him.

Death threats did not exactly shake the confidence of one who had been dead so many times before.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING