i’ve been both a saint & a viper
When the burning red of flames and the sweet-salty smell of smoke has long since washed from his nostrils, the dark man comes to find himself in a shroud of giant pines that stretch into an equally darkened sky. The treetops are nearly like fire themselves - alight with reds and oranges that burn so brightly against the deep brown of their thick trunks. The voices whisper, delectable and almost sweet, though they no longer echo in the dark pitch around him. No, the voices are far beneath the surface of his skin now - in his marrow, his very cells.
They are him, and he is they.
Perhaps the pearlescent woman with lightning in her veins and blood on her teeth would notice the difference between the man she had met in the forest versus the one who stands beside her in the silence of Sylva. Where he had been weak and frail, he now stands rather comfortably as his cerulean eyes glance into each corner of darkness. Once he had been afraid of what those shadows held, but no longer - for he is the shadows, no longer a tortured soul within their grip but nearly a partner in their twisted desires. He had bent to their will, unable to fight them any longer, and now lives to keep their haunting voices at bay.
Balto’s face is expressionless despite the stoic and solemn way he stands beside Sabra.
Blood stains these woods, they inform him in his mind and though he does not see them crawl across his flesh, there is a shiver that runs down his spine. Their voices are hungry and excited, drawn to the darkness and evil that lurks here - and whatever fiendish things pulsate from the winged woman beside him. The stallion snorts sharply as a single dark foreleg pulls at the damp undergrowth beneath him, watching her out of his periphery as her voice snaps at something that is not there. He champs his onyx mouth and firmly tosses his head, disliking that she is referring to him to the monsters that do not belong to him. “Is there anything for us here?” He asks her this and there is no knowing if he is referring to the both of them or the devilish voices that now reside within him.
His dark forelock settles haphazardly across the blue of his gaunt face. “Do not bring us here to die, Sabra.” His voice is calm, controlled; but it cannot be certain that it holds a threat.
Balto
@[Sabra]