violence
The land itself is in unrest – she heard the proclaimation, but did not go to him as he so demanded. She is not here out of any real loyalty; she is here because she is the kind of girl who thrives in wastelands, whose lungs are coasted in dust. The kind who didn’t kneel on the mountain, who didn’t beg.
She is unrepentant, unrelenting.
And she is still so wretchedly powerless. There is only her horn, slick and sharp, and though she has made good use of it – she pierced a man’s flesh with it, her first kill in her own skin, and god, it had felt good - she’d break the horn in a second to have her bones back.
She watches the stranger, expecting him to go to the summons, expecting him to be some parasitic wanderer who fancied the weight of a crown on his head. But he does not go that way, instead comes to her, and she straightens a little. He is odd, cloven-hooved and curl-horned, and she regards him with curiosity.
There is no greeting from him, merely a statement: You look like you may be missing something that was once yours.
God, was she.
“Yes,” she says, “I lost things, as most of us did. Though you seem to have recovered quite swimmingly.”
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
