anyone;

[Malis]

"we pull apart the darkness while we can"

She knows the scent of death, the stink of decay, and when it finds her in the wind she does not turn from it. Though she is not as close as a few of the others, it is easy enough to track the scent through the brush and trees, easy to wind along the paths she has traveled a thousand times before. She moves quickly, eagerly, though her skin prickles with wonder and she can feel her heart knotting and unknotting in the pit of dark that is her chest. Too much of her family is here, Killdare and their children, and this rot reminds her of something, a memory she tries to keep pushed back and away to the darkest depths of her mind. But now, even now, with the smell so strong and stinging in the indigo of her nose, she can see a body melted with rot, can remember laying their broken and not dying, and when she blinks she is there again.

But all this is forgotten when the trees part and the Chamber opens like a mouth into a broad, flat meadow. There are several gathered already, and only one she knows, only one she trusts implicitly. She slips to his side with all the feline fluidity of a horse that does not age, of a horse who has thus far been impervious to death – though pain, pain she knows intimately. Her eyes are narrow slits when they settle on the one the rots, on the arrogant way he peers back at her king. Unlike Killdare, she is not made for such things that a ruler must oblige by. She is not patient, she is not diplomatic. It is not words she relies on, but action. She may never be the Queen this kingdom needs, but she will always be the guard dog. Even now her skin crawls with impatience as her gaze traces the tattered lip of every wound, memorizes the shapes of the dirty bones inside. Where he is undead, with rotting flesh that regenerates, she is very much alive, made wholly perfect by her own regenerating body. Where he has talons and fangs, each stained rusty with blood, she wears her weapons like a crown upon her head, a row of gleaming obsidian horns that arch from nose to forehead. They are the antithesis of one another; they are well matched.

It is only when the mare speaks that Malis realizes she too is a stranger. At first she prickles and her eyes narrow there also, wary and unappreciative until she hears what spills from those lips. Malis might’ve said more, or she might have said differently, but what the tobiano mare says suffices for the moment and so she holds onto her silence just a bit longer. Instead she touches her mouth once to Killdare’s shoulder betraying her affection for him, and then shifts away to branch out further and block more of the kingdom from the one who rots and festers. Her eyes darken and her face tightens when new breeze fills her mouth will the scent of death. It is too much and she roils like shadow, shifting to block his view with the blue of her coiled body. The tobiano asks one more question, and it is then that Malis adds her amendment, finding that she cares very little who this creature is and more for why he has come. “I don’t care who you are, I only care why you are here. You seem comfortable, but I am certain you must be new or else you would know that coming into this kingdom uninvited is enough of a reason for me to run my horns through your throat.” She pauses and her voice is oddly calm, languid even despite the way her eyes glint like emeralds in a burned earth. “How do you choose to proceed.”

MALIS

makai x oksana

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