Offspring;

[Offspring]

You're looking at an absolute zero;
I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.

  ”You know nothing of me,” he muses softly, his voice rife with amusement. ”and yet you are foolish enough to think that you do.”

  He had been scorned by love, and spurned by lust, but he had lived far longer than most – he had loved, he had lost, and the heat of his mouth had found more than a willing neck to lavish a fervent kiss upon or wither to firmly grip between his teeth. Beneath the stoicism and feigned indifference of his iron composure, there is a heart, beating low and steady – it craved and yearned for what nearly all inevitably do. He is not immune, nor is she.

  Her gaze is heavy upon the flickering flame that touches his skin, subtle and faint, crackling from the white-hot heat as it simmers across the surface of his puckered scarring. She may be thinking of another, of fire and ice mingling (he knew ice intimately; it had once had the same hold on him that the fire now had), but he cannot know what is on her mind and her blatant gawking seems to him to be something else altogether. He cannot discern the purpose of her unabashed stare, but it has lingered too long and he can hardly suppress the wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Her wit is sharp, and it lures laughter from the burning hearth of his chest as her candor becomes bitter and acrid, laced with cyanide and arsenic.

  ”I was not aware that you were her mother,” he says carefully, the glowering ember of his burning eyes boring into the gilded outline of her own, mischief meeting with resolution. ”or perhaps it is not that you are concerned at all for her well-being, or her judgment. That is an excuse.“ His breath is warm across her cheek; he does not touch – but he is close enough to her that the heat of his fire is hot across her skin, reminding him of the roiling and endless sea that lay behind her. The impish gleam does return, and with it, a low chuckle, reverberating from the tightness of his chest.

  ”Perhaps, rather, you have come for a different reason. There is more than enough of me to go around, Nayl,” and the sardonic smile has returned, tugging at the corner of his whiskered mouth, as laughter soon echoes within the thick, humid air, stirred only by the ocean breeze sweeping inland. ”alas, you are sorely mistaken. I came only to see her, and it did not have anything to do with Hyaline, or territory politics – but since you are here ..”

  The humor is gone, and the fire has returned, alight across the broad spread of his chest, thick with muscle – shifting, twisting, as his weight is moved from one set of legs to the other. He had been there since the beginning – the volcanic island was a part of him, as fervent and as hot as the fire inside of him, and though there had been a change in leadership, the underbelly of it had been unwavering. Unchanged. It had thrived, with a strong and formidable military and peacekeeping branch, while the newly developed guard is built and carved from the ground up.

  Tephra had been tumultuous, but it had been withstanding, and had the numbers to show for it.
  Nerine could not say the same.

  ”You should be made aware that an alliance has been struck between myself and Amet. Your hold is slipping, Nayl,” he muses thoughtfully, studying the hardened features of her face. ”and your empty empire is crumbling. Tephra will stand alongside Hyaline, through whatever storm. It is the least that I can offer in the wake of what has happened,” he pauses, quiet for a moment. ”and he is wise beyond his years.”

  And then, the fire is a blistering inferno, burning hotly within the intensity of his stare.

  ”Your mistrust and arrogance will be your downfall.”

OFFSPRING

another zealot with the weight of the fucking world.

@[Nayl]