Cylus 2th, 719
Her thoughts returned to her with the sound of humming. It wasn’t a comforting sound. It was a simple tune but she couldn’t place the melody, and as it echoed around her skull it resounded with an eerie kind of echo which spoke of stories she’d forgotten. It was a harrowing sensation, one that made her feel hollow and hungry while also being fearful to welcome the song.
Her body jolted and her eyes flew open, her thoughts trying to reorganize themselves and bring a certain degree of understanding to her confusion. She only become more confused as her gaze flew around the area she found herself in. It was quiet and for the most part it was dark. A simple room of dark oak walls with no windows and seemingly no doors. There was now obvious source of light and yet there was still that same dingy glow as though the dying embers of a flame were being shown through stained glass.
She once again shivered, not from the chill though she would admit to it being cold, but from her own nerves which banged against one another and cried out in dismay. What was going on? Her thoughts demanded like she would have an answer. The involuntary shivers only seemed to get worse as her eyes flitted around the room which seemingly lacked escape in any form. It felt claustrophobic and her phantom wings aches with a desire for freedom.
It took her a long moment to figure out the source of the humming but her blood froze when her eyes landed on his form. The familiar figure seemed a bit darker now. Not in coloration, but it seemed to twist in ways she found uncomfortable. Dill, the man had called himself when the pair had first met, though she knew not much of him he had seemed to know much of her. Or perhaps he didn’t. It wasn’t like he’d addressed her by the proper name, but really, what even was her name. She couldn’t much remember herself so she just watched through slitted eyes as she tried to mask the fear which twisted around her soul like venomous eels.
Dill was the one who was humming, the melody seeming all the more terrifying and haunting as she cast her eyes over him. As mentioned before, his colors hadn’t changed. Long spun hair like gold and glittering white feathers like snow. But gold wasn’t a good thing. Gold was the color of greed, the color that men and women killed each other over when they couldn’t buy food to feed their children. It was the color that painted battlefields right alongside crimson, and looking too closely at his hair she could have sworn she saw the faintest dingy coloring of blood alongside and mixed in with the spun gold.
White wasn’t a good color either. At least not for her. Nothing stained white was ever good in her life. She enjoyed the cold but the frigid and icy winds of winter which brought snow and buried all sources of food weren’t kind. Neither were glaring sun beams that ripped at her flesh or the brilliant strike of lightning that could split even the ancient oak in half for the slightest transgression. The half-breed’s own colors were stained black and blue like rich deep soil which brought new life and the mood stained sky which bled navy and silver. She was a different creature and he was the haunting one.
As if that wasn’t obvious though.
His teeth were too sharp from the moment they met, like the teeth of a predatory beast with little regard for its prey. His nails were sharpened to needle like points which could easily carve her open like a sick dog if he so chose. He wasn’t good. He was more like a ghost or possibility a wraith. The kind of wraith that haunted dreams and chucked weaponry at people who trespassed in their territory. She didn’t like that.
“Looks like you couldn’t leave, huh?” The man finally commented after he stopped humming and allowed a long stretch of silence to follow. That silence wasn’t nerve wracking though. Compared to the humming it was a beautiful harmony of sweet relief. Compared to his voice it was a symphony of angels. Dill’s voice scratched against the inside of her skull like he was digging his nails inside of her head. It creaked and groaned with distasteful hatred and dismissive superiority. She always hated that kind of tone. It reminded her so much of the Avriel and she ever so hated them! They reminded her of everything wrong with her blood, reminded her of everything wrong with mortal people. Bird were such terrible creatures sometimes. Prideful and vain even when they didn’t deserve to be.
Dill strode closer towards her and the half-breed bared her own teeth. They were dull, no where near the fangs that Dill bore back at her. They weren’t meant for the same purpose, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight him tooth and claw if he approached too much. Well, tooth anyways. It was in this moment that she finally realized that claw wasn’t an option. Her hands were bound in chains, tightly placed behind her back and entirely inaccessible to the best of her efforts.
The half-breed tried to growl in warning, something as deep and throaty and terrifying as Dill’s voice was, but it just sounded like a kit trying to hiss while its mother was away. Dill made a mocking expression as he approached even closer, seeming none too phased by the rather pathetic display.
“Aww, such a poor creature. Why try to escape though? You know, you can always just stay here,” Dill placed a single clawed finger underneath her chin, allowing the point of his nail to rest a little ways from her throat. It was an uncomfortable kind of pressure on top of being terrifying, knowing that if he so desired with just a little more pressure he could split her throat open and spill her blood all across the darkened oak. No one would even be able to tell. In the darkness her blood would look not different to the floor. The only way to know would be the scent, and the scent of blood was something that already hung heavy in this air.
She couldn’t find the strength to respond, couldn’t come up with anything to say back. Not trusting her voice, she stayed in silence, letting her resolve speak for itself.
Dill frowned deeply, his displeasure evident on his face. He pulled his nail away, grazing the bottom of her chin as he went and quickly twisting his hand so that her jaw was gripped in his palm. She could feel the cool press of his nails against her skin, more of them pressing against her than she was comfortable with. He leaned forward, eyes gazing into hers. They were deep pools of nothingness. There was no empathy but there was no malice either, just nothing, as though when he was created someone forgot to fill him with normal emotions. That was how it felt anyway. She couldn’t tell what his eye color was. It wasn’t the kind of thing one could easily put into words, it was nothing and everything all at once, something that should be intrinsic to existence and yet never have existed at all.
Once again she shivered. Dills frown turned into a smile. He leaned a little closer. “Come now, my lady. My majesty. Great one, beautiful one, I’m not going to injure you. So just give up. Stay,” he said. He pulled backwards a little bit even as a sign of faith. It didn’t do much to ease the beating of her heart frantically against her ribcage. She hated that voice. She couldn't say why exactly. There was, however, something it it that made her entire body freeze up and caused sickness to swirl in the pit of her being while those dagger like nails pressed into the delicate flesh of her jaw and her cheek
She tried to twist away from his grip. Dill’s frown once again returned. “You… refuse?” He asked in a voice that sounded utterly baffled. As if he didn’t know what he’d done! Her entire body quivered as she tried to escape not only his grip but the chains which bound her wrists. Those dagger nails dug into the flesh of her face, ripping at it viciously as though it was an attempt to leave a scar. To mark her perhaps, like some kind of deranged wild beast.
“Well, that’s a shame,” he said as he leaned forward once more. He was so close she could smell the scent of decay on him. He was the one who smelled like blood and death and graveyard soil, but being close to him it was so much more. It was the scent of flesh left to rot out in the open sun, the scent of misery as it clings to a battlefield once all the fighting is done, the scent that a room starts to carry when it’s helped enough people out of the world. She tried not to breathe in through her nose, but the scent was all consuming and with him so close… she thought she just might pass out.
“You belong here, don’t you know? And you’ve already proven that you can’t leave. You know what that means, right? You’re stuck here, for good! No way out, good bye,” the man snarled at her as he took a couple steps back, straightening up and making himself once more take on the disposition of a gracious prince. A smile fell onto his features, but it was distant and hollow. “I’ll come back once more after you’re ready to talk. Give you a little while to think things through, understand your position and come to terms with it,” he sounded almost too excited as he spoke, almost like all of this was little more than a game to him that he was secretly excited to watch continue.
He left through a wall she hadn’t realized was actually a door. A shuddery breath following his grand exist. Tugging on her wrists she was really trapped, couldn’t lead. Feeling hopeless, she allowed herself the chance to finally cry.
