my shadow tilts its head at me,
spirits in the dark are waiting.
Rhonan is woefully uniformed when it comes to just about everything. He’d had little parenting, after all. A father dead before he was even born and a mother that only saw Covet when she looked at her boys, and never really saw him. He’d spent his childhood wriggling out of her grasp, leaving Tytos to deal with her instead. It wasn’t his fault that Tytos always got stuck in her veins and couldn’t be clever enough to sneak away.
That thought hits him. He’d been the clever one. Uniformed, worthless Rhonan. He’d always gotten away, always been able to take care of himself. He’d been a King once, in his own world, the one he shaped with his mind. He’d had friends willing to die for him, and he’d never even tried to earn such respect from them. He’d been stronger and faster and outrun them all. He’d been just enough of something to avoid be voted to hell.
And he wonders, very briefly, what he’d be capable of if he actually tried. If he cared.
And in that brief thought he finds himself even more eager to learn, to pull whatever knowledge from Rhynn that he can. He doesn’t know what he might want to make of himself, if anything, but he wants to make himself capable of everything.
And he watches in perfect silence. First, as she creates a solid armor. He concentrates on his as well, managing to solidify his black coat more, though not entirely. But she’s on to something new, and his concentration shifts, though he is pleased to note that he doesn’t lose the half-armor even as he focuses on other things. One small step, yes.
She splits a tree in half, teleports, turns herself to shadow, to wolf. He doesn’t flinch as she comes and goes, as the wolf growls in his face. He simply watches, enjoying the show, mind whirling as he begins to understand how powerful the darkness has made him.
He is so much more than he’d ever imagined. And his grin only grows at this thought. He is good at the destroying things, and luckily for him, he’s found a home that longs for destruction.
The mice interest him the most, but he knows he won’t be able to do that one yet. She asks where he’s like to start, and though he longs to try the hardest pieces, he decides to be sensible. “The beginning.” He returns to concentrating on the armor, thinking about the horde, thinking about how armor would have saved Noah. How hard it would have needed to be, how durable. And slowly, the shadows around him solidify, into the same armor she had worn.
He grins, and then lets the shadows soften slightly, becoming far more of a second skin than armor. He’s never liked being gold and white, and so he choses to wear the shadows instead. But now, he looks simply like a black horse. Only Rhynn, and others like them, would notice that his coat is made of shadows. It is a small thing, but it is a start.
He turns his attention to the tree, pulling the darkness into the same thin tendril he’d seen Rhynn use. It snaps toward a branch, though breaks apart on the tree on the first attempt. On the second, it bounces off the branch instead, though at least it stays solid. Third time’s the charm, and the tendril rips into the tree, though it doesn’t cut through quite so cleanly.
He looks over to Rhynn, cocking his head slightly, curious. “Were you born with your trait?”
rhonan.