and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.

She has been patient.

It was not something she was good at, even as an adult. Her temper has always been prone to igniting into flames in her veins at the slightest irritation, and it had taken everything in her to not hunt down the draconic beast that she had fought on Loessian soil years ago. But oh, she remembers him. Starsin’s memory was sharp as ever, and she did not forget a single soul that had ever wronged her, or her family. She had spared him, because she had let her heart soften at the thought of Litotes and Draco.

She regretted that every single day, afraid that she had made the wrong choice. Even more afraid that she would pay for it in the form of losing Ophanim, Malone, or any of her other children.

But she had waited, painfully quiet. She knew monsters like Ghaul were not content to hole themselves away for the rest of their days. He would be back, and he would be back with vengeance and fire, and she would be ready for him.

She smelled the smoke in Loess from Sylva, but did not know that Taiga and Nerine also burned. The sky was a strange, rusted gray color, and she is reminded of when they had burned Tephra. She feels her heart – Ophanim’s heart, actually – begin to beat harder behind the rough scar on her chest, and there is a new sense of urgency to her steps when she finally returns to her original home.

Loess burns, and somewhere in the back of her mind she wonders where Lepis is – wonders if Wolfbane ever found her – or even Castile, but the moment her eyes land on the crumpled, injured form of Malone, everyone else disappears. That familiar rage begins to lick its way up her ribcage, and her beautiful face twists into a sneer when she spins to find the one she has been looking – waiting – for.

He is not hard to find, since he leaves a path of fire and destruction wherever he goes.

The smoke smothers the stars that glow across her sides, and through the haze she launches herself in the direction of Ghaul. She sees the bleeding stallion off to the side, she sees the serpent girl that stands in front of him. Her mind flips back to Tephra and she remembers the ferocity in which she had collided with the white dragon that had been attacking Ophanim, and how Casimira had exploded into fire and diamond-like dragon scales. That had been her initial plan; to explode Ghaul like she had before. She knows with enough rage (and oh, she is never really lacking in that department) she can do it. But the girl standing in front of him presents a problem; she could shatter her where she stands, but she is afraid that wasting any kind of energy would leave her with not quite enough to kill Ghaul completely.

And so she does the next best thing.

As she has done so many times before – with trees, boulders, anything close to her – she shatters him from a distance.

Slowly, piece by piece.

She dismantles his scales in large fragments, watches them burst into a series of flames, and watches as those flames feed off one another. Her eyes trace across him methodically; his neck, and his shoulders, across his back, along his flank. She shatters his armor and she lets him burn, lets him be consumed by his own fire.

She kills him, and it is not for Loess, or for Nerine, or for Taiga.

She kills him because no matter how far she has come from the bitter, angry young girl she had been, she is still Starsin, and if he wants to make her world burn, she will be certain that he burns with it.

starsin

it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )