"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
i’ve been training like a soldier; i’ve been burning through this sorrow
He does not sleep often, but he had been sleeping when his world turned upside down.
He feels the rumble first—distant, distinct, otherworldly—and perhaps it is the curse of never sleeping deep or the decades of training, but he wakes quickly. Nyktos rolls in the water, his body stretching out along the current where he had been resting, and angles his head toward the side, a series of quick clicking noises helping orient him. It has been years since he lost his sight and most days he no longer mourns it, but that doesn’t stop the gut punch in situations like this; it would be so much easier.
But he doesn’t dwell on it. He can’t.
Instead, he makes his way out, his body morphing into the sleek body of a black marlin—one of his preferred forms. The heft of it is familiar and he spears forward, focusing on what he can gather from the sounds that make their way back to him. He should check on Helice—the thought causes a twist in his belly and his chest clenches. He should try to find the Queen and ensure that she’s safe. The Prince.
But instead his body drags him forward, closer to the source of that unearthly rumbling.
He breaks the surface of the water, coming back to his more natural form, the watery scales running down his neck glistening in the weak light. It’s not the first time that he has come up for oxygen, although truthfully he can’t remember the last time he did, but this is…different. Something new.
His mouth thins as he moves forward through the waves seamlessly, coming up to land. His feet find purchase and he drags himself up, the water dripping off of him feeling like pieces of himself lost. A swallow and the churning of his thoughts dull as he picks up a familiar metallic tang in the air.
It couldn’t be.
Another step, flinging out his senses to map the area, and when it confirms where he is, his heart stops.
Pain has turned her mind to rot, an apple left in the thick summer heat. She drags her talons across the dry summer dirt and occasionally sniffs at the heavy, humid air. She’d been beautiful, once upon a time. She’d had her mother’s face and her father’s eyes. Now she’s got crooked fangs that interlock crocodilian outside her lips and scars carved through the thick scales of her cheeks. Her blood and tears ooze off her chin to hiss into the dirt. The viscous glowing mix marks her path better than her tracks ever could - not that anyone ever looks for her.
Her small ears perk and swivel forward at the sound of running water. There is a pause in her sluggish steps. A river means momentary respite for her face, but the summer won’t let her keep this relief for long. Still, a lapse in agony is a lapse all the same. Rend tilts her pale head as she weighs her options.
Her barbed tail curls serpentine, back and forth.
Finally, she trudges forward once more. She sinks her claws into the mud along the river when the ground beneath her begins to shake. It is gentle, at first. And then the earth splits itself in two. She doesn’t know this, of course, but she flaps her wings and takes to the air where she is safe from whatever is happening beneath her.
She tucks her shoulder and her path arcs away from the river that had held such promise just minutes ago. Whatever hell is breaking loose, she wants no part of it. Rend sets off for somewhere, anywhere but here. But the thunder of this calamity is on all sides and there doesn’t seem to be an inch of safety to be found.
A shaking breath escapes her chest as she dips lower to the ground. She doesn’t recognize the ruins, but she perches herself atop some crumbled fixture and tucks her wings close to her sides. Nervous electricity arcs between her scales and the thorns along her spine. Slowly, so agonizingly slow, she turns her pale face to examine her surroundings. She swallows hard and tightens her grip on the stone beneath her.
And then she spots him, an equine-shaped little patch of blue among the yellow and green of everything else. She gives a curious chuff and tilts her head.
i’ve been training like a soldier; i’ve been burning through this sorrow
His body is alert, nerves thrumming with awareness. Decades of training have prepared him for this, he knows, and while the air around the ruins has grown stagnant, the metallic tang having long since faded, that does not stop the fear that settles into his belly like a seed. (He had once hated himself for every ounce of fear he ever felt, but he has long since grown past such foolish things of youth. Fear was as much a tool as bravery and he relies on it now, letting the adrenaline sharpen the senses he still has.)
It is how he hears the strange scraping of her walk, the drag of her tail.
There is a low, fast clicking noise as he maps the area once more, angling his translucent head to the side, finding the general shape of her perched on the rock. He cannot make out the details of her, cannot see the horns that curve and the tears that run claws down her cheeks, but he knows enough that she is different from the Baltians he knows best. She is more like the enemy, he thinks, but he quickly dismisses the idea.
It was impossible.
Even here, even after the heart shook.
Impossible.
He tips an ear toward her as she murmurs and barely makes out the sound of it, his teeth clenching at the designation. In his youth, he might’ve snapped back at her. Might have said something foolish and hot-headed as a retort. But now he just bristles, holding onto the reins of his temper with the sure-footedness of a soldier who knew exactly how to keep control. He angles his masked head toward her, the water still dripping from him and splashing onto the ground, and even though he cannot see her, you would barely know it for the way that he seems perfectly attuned to where she is. “Where are we?” he asks, and if he is embarrassed to be a soldier asking such basic questions, it does not show on the stern lines of his face.
She is a crooked, feral thing whose senses were carved out of necessity rather than training or war. Her small ears are perked for sounds of movement and she’s eyeing his throat the way she often does anyone else - besides Rive, of course. Her eyes burst long ago and she can’t quite piece together that biting him would do precious little to slaughter him the way she’d like.
Still, she spreads her wings and glides closer. She’s far too big to be silent and the sound of her leather riding the air is easy to catch, as is her talons meeting the wet sand. Rend leaves about two meters between them. That’s usually as close as anything gets before she reacts in time. Even now, it isn’t fear that knots in the pit of her, per say. It is something akin to hunger, but she can’t sink her teeth into it. She just wants to pick the secrets from his bones instead of the meat. A shiver runs down her spine at the thought and her scaled lips tip upward.
A shrug rolls through her shoulders and she doesn’t realize he can’t see it.
“Somewhere new, and also old,” she supposes. Her forked tongue slips out to taste the air.
“What’re you?” she asks, tilting that horned head and sending another thick melding of acid and burnt scales into the ground. The curve of her grin widens into a full smile of crooked fangs as she awaits his answer, eagerly kneading the wet earth beneath her like a pleased feline.
i’ve been training like a soldier; i’ve been burning through this sorrow
As she glides closer, he takes a step back, centering his weight and stilling his pulse. He feels his senses sharpen as they have for so many centuries and he angles his head in her direction, a watery ear tipping toward her. That strange, throaty clicking noise sounds again and he tracks her progress until she lands close enough to engage but far enough away to keep him standing in the defense versus charging.
“This land is old,” he affirms, because he knows in his bones where they are. He knows even when dread sluices though him and his blood runs cold with memory. “Older than you could ever imagine.” It is not patronizing, although it is hard to tell with how unyielding his voice is, and he doesn’t bother to soften it further to avoid bruising her ego on the edges of it. Nyktos does not know how to be different than what he is. He doesn’t know how to be anything but this soldier standing in front of her.
But she hasn’t answered his question yet—not the real one—and so he presses on. He will have to answer to the Queen and the General when he returns and he can’t return empty-handed. Not when he had come here first instead of gathering to them and awaiting orders. (For all of his obedience, he never had wrung out that final thread of rebellion from his bones.) “I mean the land around it though,” he clarifies, trying to smooth the conversation enough to gather information. “What this land is now couched in.”
She asks him a question in return and though he is loath to give up personal details, he knows that an eye for an eye is what is just so he looks at her without seeing. “I am a solder of the Baltian kingdom.”
