[mature] don’t close the coffin yet; ryatah

[atrox]

Atrox does not spend a considerable amount of time in new Beqanna.

There is simply no need for someone as ancient as him, no need for him ever since the Chamber sank into the very depths of Beqanna—taking with it his heart and purpose in life. It is a strange thing to find that the one thing that kept you tethered for so long has been severed clean. He woke on the Mountain with the rest of the miserable souls of Beqanna and, for the first time in decades, did not feel that invisible rope tying him back home. He had spent so long with his heart placed outside of himself, but now he did not have one at all. Now he was merely wandering in a strange land, strangely empty.

But Atrox is, above all, a survivor.

He adapts and he has come to adapt to this. He takes up residence in Tephra. Partially because one of his only living children with Twinge rules there and partially because it reminds him of the jungle and the ugly, scarred woman who had died by his side there. It is enough to entertain him. Enough to pass the time as he finds root in the low branches and the shadows and the many nooks of the volcano.

But he and his golden son are not the only ones of old to still curse this land, and it does not take him long to root out the scent of her. His yellow eyes grow narrowed with curiosity, with amusement, as he tracks her. As he watches from afar as she lives out her days. Always so wrapped up in the plots of others. Always so easy to fall in love with, to fall in love. He is not surprised when she comes back one day with eyes. He cannot imagine who graced them to her, but he would not be surprised to know.

Still, he keeps his distance. Content to while away his time with his own amusing company, to pass the hours with hunting and shadows and the harmless spying of others.

Until even that is not enough to kill the boredom.

So he leaps from the tree, stretching his powerful body and digging his claws into the rich soil. His tail twitches behind him, golden eyes bright with amusement as he leaps forward, hunting down the unnaturally white mare. When he finds her, he saunters forward in his feline form, angling his wide head up at her as he gives a mischievous smile. “My, my,” he clicks his tongue against the front of his teeth, dropping his haunches. “You look mighty good for being significantly older than this dirt, Ryatah.”

[Ryatah]

ryatah

hell is empty and all the devils are here

There were so few from her past in this new rendition of Beqanna, and at first, it had left her feeling hollow. She has known death, she has known immeasurable heartache, but she had never known what it meant to be a living ghost until recently. She had not needed her to eyes to know they were looking past her. She had not needed her eyes to know that all of these faces were strangers, to know that the very lands had shifted and changed. The land was broken and remade, seemingly overnight, and while it paved the way for new blood, it seemed to drain away the old. The names of old kingdoms were forgotten, and along with them the old kings and queens that had fought for them.

She lingered anyway.

Those few sparks from her past, though they came few and far between, were enough to keep her here. But they weren’t enough to keep her content. She had been so sure that if she could just break apart, if someone could just push her off the edge she balanced so precariously on, that that would be the end of it. Instead, she had emerged from the lair with dark new eyes and the mark burnt into her hip, and his smell all over her. His threat – his promise – that he held control over her sight should have been enough to subdue her, it should have kept her at least quiet. She knew firsthand the power that he wielded, and just the notion that it wasn't so long ago that she had been at his mercy, should have made her think twice about what could happen when she turns to respond to a familiar growl.

It should have, but it doesn’t.

”Atrox,” she says his name with almost a laugh carried in the syllables of it, her pale lips lifting in an amused smile when her sable eyes lock with the panther’s own. With a knowing tilt of her delicate head, and a faint lift of her brow, she chastises him lightly, teasingly, “You should know better than to comment on a woman’s age.” But the laughter that glittered in her eyes slowly faded, as a faint look of melancholy found its way into the ageless lines of her face when looking at the once-King of the Chamber. “I didn’t think you would still be here,” she says in a softened voice, almost tentative to bring up the fact that the land that had harbored his heart – and she remembers the way the ground had pulsed with its beat every time she had entered – was gone forever. She wavers for a moment, as the humid Tephran breeze lifts and tangles the lengthy locks of her mane, briefly obscuring her almost-black eyes before she shakes the strands away and says, “I’m glad you’re here, though. It’s always nice to see a familiar face.”

@[atrox]

[atrox]

There is something about these season that makes him even more reckless.

It’s something in the air—something both familiar and new to him. It makes his smile wider, that roguish angle to it spreading across his face as he studies her. He laughs, low and throaty and appreciative, of her humor. “I’ve never been one to honor rules of good conduct,” a roll of muscular shoulders in an almost shrug, an almost cavalier dismissal of what could be perceived as a correction. “I’m sure you remember.”

After all, out of anyone alive in this new world, she’d be one to remember.

The chaos. The bloodshed. The mercilessness that made him hunger for so much destruction. The raids that he led against innocent kingdoms, just because he liked the sound of their terror.

He may not dip his toes into the political climate of Beqanna nowadays—leaving it to his children to do the rabble rousing for now—but that doesn’t mean he forgets what it’s like to taste blood on your tongue.

When she eludes to the Chamber, he is surprised at the ache he feels in his gut, but if he has ever been good at anything, it’s hiding any authentic feelings he actually has. So instead he stretches and then shifts, shaking off the feline form and emerging as himself in his truest sense. His thick, tangled mane hands over both sides of an arched neck, a ragged scar racing across his chest as a reminder of his loss.

“You should know better than to comment on a lady’s lack of heart,” he grins, yellow eyes glittering with good humor as he takes a step toward her. “Is it nice to see mine, Ryatah?” he growls lightly, the edges of his teeth showing against the ink of his lips. It is easier to think on this, to focus on the cream of her skin and the delicate lines of her face then the loss of what many could have said was his actual true love.

“You know, you never did spend much time with me.”

He angles his handsome head, taking another step until he can nearly feel the heat of her.

“Such a terrible loss for you."

@[Ryatah]

[Ryatah]

ryatah

hell is empty and all the devils are here

He was too easy for her to get comfortable with. Perhaps someone who didn’t know him would have been tense, on guard, but Ryatah does not quiver  beneath his golden predatory gaze. She was raised beneath the cold, uncaring hands of those that ran the jungles of the Dimension long before she ever came here, and she will never understand what it is about her that seems to pique their curiosity – but it had saved her as much as it had damned her. She didn’t know anything else, other than to how to shape herself into something that might appease to them; her own version of self-preservation.

She does not flinch when he shifts into his equine form, but the smile that flits across her lips is one of appreciation. He had always been handsome –  she hadn’t forgotten, even though it had been  a hundred and something years since she last saw his face. His was one of many that had been trapped in her memories, when all she had been left with was darkness. Their faces had faded over time, until they were more like fingerprints across her mind than actual images. She couldn’t deny that she a little more than pleased at seeing him again, and it showed in the way her nearly black eyes had not yet strayed from his face. “I’ve missed seeing a lot of things over the years,” she says to him, and then concedes coyly, “and I suppose you could say your face ranks up there.” 

Her gaze lingers for just a moment on the scar across his heart, but she says nothing, and instead slowly lifts her eyes back to his vivid yellow own. When he steps closer, she can feel her pulse begin to race; that familiar feeling of apprehension and want, and almost as if on cue, her vision flickers. Just once – like a warning. A warning that she ignores, like the infinitely foolish and reckless thing that she is. Instead, she shifts closer, her skin nearly illuminated in comparison to the endless black of his. “Well, you were always so elusive.” And as for her, there was no telling where she was at any given moment. Once she became untethered from Dhumin, she had spiraled – and no matter how fast the ground rushed up at her, she never seemed to hit the bottom. Somehow, across the span of all these years, their paths had never crossed; not like this.

@[atrox]

[atrox]

Atrox has never been one to deny his more base desires.

He has never been one to pretend that they don’t exist.

He has been carnal in nature, a predator before the world was overrun by magic too complex to ever understand. He has sunk his fangs into throats more times than he can count, and he has populated the world with dozens of offspring, but that has never slaked his thirst. Even when his heart had beat for that scarred, foul-mouthed Amazon Queen, he had hungered for more. It was an unquenchable need and he has long since pretended he could ignore it.

“I am not being elusive now,” he says with that roguish smile, with his matted and tangled hair curving around a hard jawline—a face that has never truly known the touch of age. Perhaps it was what happened when the Chamber brought you back from the dead only to rip your heart from your chest. Perhaps it was what happened when your pulse beat underground and then sunk into the heart of Beqanna.

It doesn’t matter.

He is alive now, and he feels the familiar heat flare to life in him.

It has been so long since he has indulged in a comfort such as this.

Ryatah is the perfect indulgence—and she knows it. She’s always known it. There’s something beautiful in the lines of her, a body worn smooth over the years, a purity despite everything she has seen and done. It brings a growl to back of his throat as he finally closes the distance between them, taking the first touch without asking.

Sharp teeth and rough lips find the arch of her neck, breathing in the honeysuckle of her.

It takes everything in him to slow down, to savor rather than rush.

He could lie and say that he keeps control for her sake, but it is for his own pleasure more than anything. He does not often get these chances to steep in history, to teleport to the Beqanna of yesterday, and in this moment, he can close his eyes and pretend. He can pretend that he is in the Chamber and not Tephra. He can pretend the souls of his past are still alive and the game is one that he recognizes; more importantly, one that he cares about.

He nips at her neck, feeling the give of her flesh and feeling a rush of desire because of it.

“I am not gentle,” he warns as his war-scarred lips travel down her neck to her withers.

“I do not expect that matters to you much.”

@[Ryatah]

[Ryatah]

ryatah

hell is empty and all the devils are here

Everytime she thinks she is done being the way she is, something – someone – comes along to pull her back in. She cannot even pretend to be bothered by it. She has never tried to resist the temptations dangled before her, even when she should. It’s not that she can’t – she simply chooses not to. It had been so long since she was last with Skellig that his scent had long since worn away from her skin, and along with it had gone any thread of guilt she used to feel when another ignited this familiar spark inside of her.

Atrox wasn’t the first – but he may as well have been. He was someone from the past and yet he feels brand new; exhilarating and unexplored.

If anything, the way her vision continued to flicker should have been what grounded her back to earth. But it was all too easy to get lost in the gravel of his voice, and the way that he had moved closer and pressed his teeth into her skin. The involuntary sound that it elicited from the back of her throat is soft and light in comparison to the ruggedness of him, and she caresses her mouth into the muscular curve of his neck. The smoothness of her skin is pressed flush with impossible black of his, and she notices that he smells of the innermost parts of Tephra; the parts that not even she had dared to go.

She can feel herself begin to quiver in anticipation at the slow way he feels along the slope of her neck, and for a moment her eyes drift close, her breathing quickening almost imperceptibly. When his teeth land a sharp bite against her neck, it is the stinging in her hip – where the mark he had left was branded into her skin – that causes her eyes to snap open.

She is not surprised when she opens her eyes to complete darkness.

Her heartbeat accelerates dramatically, an intense wave of fear suddenly flushing her skin hot. But all she does is press more firmly into the panther-stallion, her teeth finding his own skin as she laughs breathlessly into the muscles over his shoulder. “It’s a mystery how I ever earned such a reputation.”