His bones and flesh were all new, magic woven skin and bones solidified by a crown returned back to its rightful position - atop his heavy black head. Thirteen years a king of the Deserts he was, before his life was taken in a moment of vulnerability, a bloody meeting between estranged father and a wrathful daughter. But the Nightwalker has been reborn with a fresh body to house his old warrior-king’s soul, so that he may sit back upon his throne of sand.
And since his rebirth, his hooves have felt nothing but sand and his lungs nothing but desert dry air. It was well enough time that he visited the Meadow to gorge himself on the sweetgrass that was far too weak to even think to bloom in his kingdom of desert stone and cactus. And it is nothing but absolute coincidence that Yael summon him to a place in which dragon-wings already carried him.Yes, coincidence, perhaps.
Like a huge plunging black cloud, the draft steps from the sky into the Meadow grass, wings pleating routinely against his ribs. When he arrives, he can barely feel her magic there – it is only a faint metallic taste on his tongue and yet still he finds the boy as if a fleshly guide had led him there.
A host of field mice was making its way to the fanged and taloned boy, waiting in line single file for their turn into his jaws when they got there. Between the sacrificial mice and the palpitating heat that rose from the cream tailed, black and quivering colt - he could all but smell Yael there. Vanquish was no stranger to those who fed on flesh instead of fauna, one of his own favored sons counted amongst them. Tarnished would just as soon rip open the warm throat of a rabbit than gaze on the dry, tasteless grass more befitting to the appetite of those of his kind.
The wraith-king’s voice is warm and smooth like a heavy silk when he speaks, “what is your name, boy?” He asks, standing a few feet from the emaciated colt. Vanquish’s size by itself was enough to unsettle some, let alone the huge, scaled wings that rose from his sides– there was no need to frighten the colt. The Percheron’s nostrils flare widely, drinking in the scents on the foal’s skin, the boy had been alone for quite some time. The king is surprised it has managed to sustain itself this long, “you've been abandoned.” He says, but there is neither pity nor accusation in his voice, “do you know why?” He asks, even though there is no right or wrong answer to a question such as this. He merely asks to see how cognizant of himself that the child was, to see how aware he was of his...strange uniqueness.
.
vanquish
black king of the deserts
