Post by Nicola on Sept 7, 2007 0:44:30 GMT -5
(I'll add to this as Los and I add to it)
Nicola:
His eyes had been huge and glittering silver storm-clouds that fell into the depths of eternity when they’d turned on one, wide and expressive, they could have reflected shimmering sparkles of humor, or flints of icy rage, depending on his humor and mood, and they’d held all the mystery’s of the world when the lightening flashed in the depths of the eyes of the White King of Dragon Lands. His eyes had been the first thing to capture the notice of the Lirys knight, glittering at her with an expression that glowed in admiration and curiosity for the slim figure of the woman dressed in black leather and wielding a blade to best most men, Nicola’s powerful intuition staying her hand from ever challenging the man in the tradition of the Lirys, for Valar would have made a magnificent addition to her harem. She had become his.
Tongues of deep purple flame licked and scrolled over the pearled white scales crafted with delicate precision from pure, snowy white marble, flickering and gleaming like ice, crafted with meticulous attention to detail, the twin horns like shards of glass that twirled in spire’s to the arched, shadowy ceiling of the huge cavern. Alone amid the great dragon’s laying at rest did the huge, pale white statue sit in Honor Dead, a monument to the last King of the Dragon Mountains, the statue without the fine tracings of deep magic that lay like a spider’s webs over the figures of the greatest of their kind. The body of her first husband had never been found, though Nicola felt the cleaving of his soul from her own as cleanly as a tie severed in two.
She was diminutive against the huge work that had been crafted by the finest hands the land of Lycosia could offer, the purse for the massive statue afforded from her own coveted horde, so slight in stature that she could have easily been overlooked. Crafted to scale, Valar had been a magnificent 275 feet in length, the tip of the marble-statue’s tail curled around the powerful haunches that were crouched down while the long, slender, serpentine neck was arched and crested proudly up, the wings crafted of a magnificent glass that shimmered like diamonds and gleamed in gossamer beauty.
The pair of guards standing at alert attention at the tunneled entrance to Honor Dead - an honor guard and in a place held sacred to the Queen of Fire - did not look into the vast cave when she had passed by silent, but stood respectful as Nicola gazed silently up into the silver eyes that did not quite capture the shimmer she remembered in them.
”…I... miss your wisdom, Valar…”
Incredibly softly murmured, the brilliant gleam of her sea green eyes burned up at the statue that was glorious - had it not attempted the impossible in capturing the magnificence of the White King, the Mage King, the Last King - her husky voice so low it did not echo in the vast space with ceilings that arched up into shadows and the glory of the fallen bound by powerful magic’s so that there were massive shapes laying through the huge mountain cave. Pillars soared up to the ceiling hidden by shadows, dragons curled like watching gargoyles, clinging to stone columns; great slabs of stone had huge, sleeping bodies coiled on them as though they but lay for a nap in the cool, dimly lit room; great dragons were reared on powerful hindlegs with jaws gaping and wings wide-spread with muscles rippling and scales gleaming in a scattered brilliance of color so that through the room the floating balls of deep lilac flame played over the gleaming dragon’s there as if enacting a beautiful, macabre dance of life and death.
”I feel as though I’m drowning. Or being tested. Have I not endured enough? Ahhh Valar! Why..? Is this why you first made me your queen? You knew, didn’t you? You knew I would not leave them. You knew I would love these people as my own, as they love me as their own. That I would lay my life down for my duty. Gods. And still, I miss your wisdom..”
No answer was returned to her, she hadn’t expected one, and slowly the long, sooty lashes dipped down to mask the glitter of the orbs, shadows starting to pour from her pupils, the gift of the Father of All Dragons, Granturian, seen sparking in her gaze and stroke over the gleaming iris’ of her hooded eyes. A hand lift, the sleek, taunt figure of the Crimson Queen and renegade Lirys knight shifting under the black leather catsuit that hugged the svelte curves like a possessive lover as she moved. The marble did not feel quite right, it was cool and smooth under her palm when the touch stroked against one of those great scales that made up the massive chest of the image of Valar.
Her eyes slowly closed as she let her hand very slowly slide from the cold, gleaming figure – she could not bring herself to call it his ‘body’, not when she had known it warm and alive – to fall limply at her side again, the gleaming rubies in the eyes of the long, silver sword slung low on her hip shimmering like droplets of blood in the quiet of the massive room. Valar was long since dead and unlike her Heart Mate, Mythe, it was apparent that Granturian would never return him to life. For the briefest of moments, she let herself mourn the loss of the great king, and then let her mind turn to other things. The reason for her visit to Honor Dead was not to see Valar, though she would ever take time for that task.
The sleek body turned, placing her back to the statue, and when they opened, Nicola’s eyes gleamed a hot, golden color with shadows dancing over them in thin tendrils like fingers to peel back the layers of darkness before her gaze and her vision lost the dreamy haze of memory, taking on instead the sharp clarity of focus.
”Azani! Are you in here?”
Only slightly raised, her voice carried none-the-less over the rock walls and pillars, rippling through the darkness and splitting the silence like a well-cast dagger into the shadows, calling for one of the most unnatural of their kind, a creature not entirely alive.. but not entirely dead, either, and one she hoped desperately would give her the answers she sought.
Azani:
Azani missed no one, for all who left the world of their kind passed through him.
Yet the Messenger was more familiar with loss. Since returning to flesh for the first time in millenia, the spirit-wyrm had been forced to remember flesh. Flesh was beautiful, in its crude way. Flesh could enjoy the sensation of claws digging into straight stone, or of sunlight on dark scales, or the satisfaction of hunger sated. For the first time since the youth of the world, Azani had had to hunt for his bread. Azani had remembered what it was to be weary, to be blinded by a sunrise, to feel hot blood in his fangs when he brought down game.
Alive, yet not, he had felt more at home amongst the necropoli of the world. He knew these individuals well, and their faults and glories. The living were now a mystery to him, despite his own origin as flesh and bone long ago.
Many came before the Messenger for counsel. Most did not like the answers he gave them. They wanted to know what they must not know. They hoped to know the afterlife of their own departed, but there was no one whose story he was allowed to tell save one's own. They wanted to alleviate the judgments of those who had done evil, but no one could stand for you on that day when the bell tolled. Each man, woman, child, neonate, or elder faced Azani alone. The Messenger himself could not even amend judgment. His role was mechanical. Like clockwork, he executed a single function perfectly without fail. In symbols and metaphors, he showed the freshly fallen how they chose the life they created. Forging a spirit was an unending task, like channeling a river, and choice made the river bend so it was forever changed. Azani's only purpose was to bridge that spirit from body to its next life, on the same course it had already taken.
None wanted to hear that. They wanted to believe Azani could show mercy, and not mere justice. They didn't want to believe their son was doomed to torment because he chose it. They did not want their heroes tarnished; many interred in this ground were less than perfect heroes. Tradition refused to tell of their crimes and sins, or the great heroism and justice of the unnamed dead, but Azani knew. He merely forever kept silent.
The Messenger was silent. Smaller than most of the rest of the grand wyrms, he was faster and able to creep almost unseen despite his immense bulk. The first indication of his coming was the cold of the black mist that surrounded him, killing base creatures near the Messenger and leaving in his wake new life. Wherever Azani walked, the land was purged instantly, but minutes after his passing it was in fertile bloom.
The Queen was quick to come for him. Of all the souls to pass, only one was -ever- allowed to bypass the Messenger, and those had been strange times. She came for advice about the future, most likely; his Master had chosen to come in some (admittedly tiny and limited manner) in the flesh. Like Azani, he was a misfit, but better able to blend; divine will made flesh. The reasons were unimportant to the Messenger, whose sole task was to obey the geas given him long ago. Azani, knowing much of the past, was no oracle. His role was to prepare for the future, but not to realize it.
There was much that was unnatural in the Messenger's movement. He was vulpine and swift; there was something wrong with a beast so large moving so fluidly and rapidly. He spoke, and his voice was strangest of all, the deep, fair boom of his life matching not at all his symbolic countenance.
“If a man climbs a mountain,then he sleeps, should he not awaken on the same mountain?” Azani asked. He sat gingerly upon the ground; a wyrm of his size should make the stone quake, but the wyrm disturbed nothing. Only his flicking tail moved as baleful eyes stared back down on his guest.
“Great Queen of Fire, the past is my domain,” he said. “My charge is sweeping it away. The Master bids me come to this place in flesh, ready such little counsel and might as I might give, and place it in the service of his people. But the future is entirely out of the hands of the dead. I may not warn you of what is to come, and indeed I see very little of it.”
The ancient spirit stared at this figure, torn between memories and obligations, and remembered. There had been a time long, long ago when Azani was the great hero and savior. When his had been the epic struggle and victory and loss. When he mourned his own loss, when he feared for the safety of his people, when he had been the first to cast a stone in defense of right. Now, he did no such thing. His deeds had been done, forgotten, and in the end, they were his alone to carry. The reward and punishment of his own actions waited over him like a bill long-overdue, a Damoclean sword to fall when he was released from service. Knowing this, even in the impartial discharge of duty, he felt a bit of pity for the distraught woman.
“For whatever it is worth, you must know already much will hinge upon you. The temper of your steel will serve, and come what may, it will not be forgotten.”
He did realize hearing the Angel of Death casually mentioning that he -would- have to go ahead and tally up one's deeds had to be a slightly disconcerting thought, but then, shouldn't all the living already be quite aware of that?
Nicola:
It came slowly, that awareness, like a creeping specter, a mist dark as midnight and swallowing the light within it, as though it feasted on the warmth of the living, and cold with a chill that was like the bony fingers of death dancing up one’s spine, an all too familiar sensation to the Queen of Fire. It smelled rank, of decay and mortis, it felt hollow and numb, like the grave, and she needed no shadowy gifts from her God to see the ripple of death prelude the sinuous grace of the great creature that wound his silent step through the massive monuments to those who kept their lands safe, hero’s to the living, comrades to the dead. The toxic lava of her blood pulsed almost violently with passionate life to battle the coming of the Angel of Death to Dragon Lands, speeding like a drug running hot through her veins, waking a mist of deep, throbbing crimson vapor that wound like hungry, greedy serpents around her long, sculpted legs.
And many would have fled in terror of the message the great wyrm would have brought them. He was something more than the minds of the simple could grasp and oft, he spoke in riddles that would leave one more confused than before coming to see him. Few could grasp that he was more than what use he was sent for. Few could look into his eyes and see past the death and shadows there, and had the God not touched her brow with his kiss, she might not have seen, either. But what she saw, and what she spoke of, were not always one and the same.
”Azani.”
Murmured, her head gave a slight dip to the massive creature of darkness as he sat before her, gazing down with eyes accustomed to rendering judgment, stripping away the layers of one’s life and deeds like so many layers of an onion to bare their very soul, his look heavy and weighty and glittering with an unknown, arcane wisdom that came only by way of a gift from the Father God Granturian.
And no, he gave her no comfort in his words, though Nicola was not entirely sure what comfort she was looking for, instead the mind of the knight and queen in action, strategies rolling constantly in the back of her mind as the sensation of something… bad descending on the land continued to grow in her. It was nothing she could place a finger on, however, but rather a sensation, a premonition, an instinct that began when Mythe made his return to his home, returned to life by the will and hand of their god.
She took his words and let them move through her mind, like pieces of a puzzle she could not yet see clearly before her and working them steadily into place while vapors of seething crimson curled slowly around the slender legs, casting a lurid red glow over the lower limbs of the massive crystalline statue behind her, the gleaming gray eyes of the Last King of Dragon Lands watching over their exchange. There was a macabre irony in the Messenger’s words, causing her lips to twist in a wry smile utterly devoid of humor, her head turning slightly to lay her gaze on the gleaming silver scales of some ancient dragon long since gone from life laying coiled on a massive slab, his huge violet eyes watching, unseeing, the svelte figure. And had not the massive silver eyes of a God once sat upon her in judgment, Nicola might have shrank under the unwavering gaze of Azani.
”Ahh, Azani, but what if the future begins with the death of one? Or that one returning, returning from death?”
Her husky voice was low in the cavern, ensuring it would not slip past the two of them and into the ears of the pair of guards standing stiffly at attention just outside Honor Dead’s tunnel entrance, something both wide and broad enough that had the massive wyrm decided to leave the mausoleum of Dragon Lands, he could have done so without touching a single rock wall. She could have easily been speaking of herself, the Red Queen knowing death in the salvation of her people from mass extinction, but a look at the taut, lean lines of her body, sleekly curved in that leather suit, would tell the Angel of Death that Nicola did not speak of her own experience with death and time spent shackled to the side of their god, but another.
The gleaming golden orbs of the dragon queen swung back to the sitting figure and she moved then, gracefully, her hand lifting to push an unruly honey-gold lock of hair behind her earlobe and with a graceful, predatory stride, began to take up a slow pacing before him, her slender brows lowered in a frown to mark the depths of her thoughts, her stride long, yet controlled, like a creature feral caught tethered on a leash, nearly vibrating with the need to lash out in a fury at what threatened her peace of mind, her people. Low on her hip, the long, gleaming silver blade of Sha’le, the Crimson Death, flickered in the dance of the softly glowing lilac orbs battling the slowly pulsing crimson vapor and mist that wound in a sensuous, slithering trail behind the knight and queen.
”Does death then hold the key to the future, O Messenger of the Gods? Or is the future held only in death? What hand guides us all? The hand of the past, or the hand of the future? I think, Azani, they are instead interwoven, one with the other and held as tightly as lovers.”
The sleek figure finally halted her pacing to round on the sitting wyrm, her hot golden eyes glittering brilliantly up at him as the shadows rippled from the depths of her inky pupils, slithering like slender serpents over the gleaming molten gold orbs. Her features were cast in a mask that slipped into place without her realizing it, a fierce expression of single-minded determination, a savage intensity that would be lost on Azani. Realizing it was she speaking in riddles, Nic slowly closed her eyes, the long, sooty lashes laying like dark bruises against the pale ivory visage and took a slow, deep breath, soothing her raging mind with the tranquility of her surroundings. Even the surreal nature of the Angel of Death provided a measure to that calming.
Her eyes opened slowly and she gave a minute shake of her head.
”Forgive me, Azani. I have had much on my mind lately. Let me speak in simple terms and perhaps you can shed some insight for me. I do not seek answers, I know you can not give them all.”
A hand uplifted forstalled any argument from the wyrm as to her intentions and her eyes gleamed at him.
”But I would know why Granturian has returned the soul of my Promise Mate, Mytheaniel, to life. More than life, he has made him near-feral again and dangerously protective of the Thrones of Fire and Ice, a killer in much more mortal than dragon terms. The Father sent him to guard Stiria and I. I would know why. Why Mythe? Why did He change him so, make him so fierce, so.. protective of the thrones and so possessive of me? What is happening, Azani?”
Nicola:
His eyes had been huge and glittering silver storm-clouds that fell into the depths of eternity when they’d turned on one, wide and expressive, they could have reflected shimmering sparkles of humor, or flints of icy rage, depending on his humor and mood, and they’d held all the mystery’s of the world when the lightening flashed in the depths of the eyes of the White King of Dragon Lands. His eyes had been the first thing to capture the notice of the Lirys knight, glittering at her with an expression that glowed in admiration and curiosity for the slim figure of the woman dressed in black leather and wielding a blade to best most men, Nicola’s powerful intuition staying her hand from ever challenging the man in the tradition of the Lirys, for Valar would have made a magnificent addition to her harem. She had become his.
Tongues of deep purple flame licked and scrolled over the pearled white scales crafted with delicate precision from pure, snowy white marble, flickering and gleaming like ice, crafted with meticulous attention to detail, the twin horns like shards of glass that twirled in spire’s to the arched, shadowy ceiling of the huge cavern. Alone amid the great dragon’s laying at rest did the huge, pale white statue sit in Honor Dead, a monument to the last King of the Dragon Mountains, the statue without the fine tracings of deep magic that lay like a spider’s webs over the figures of the greatest of their kind. The body of her first husband had never been found, though Nicola felt the cleaving of his soul from her own as cleanly as a tie severed in two.
She was diminutive against the huge work that had been crafted by the finest hands the land of Lycosia could offer, the purse for the massive statue afforded from her own coveted horde, so slight in stature that she could have easily been overlooked. Crafted to scale, Valar had been a magnificent 275 feet in length, the tip of the marble-statue’s tail curled around the powerful haunches that were crouched down while the long, slender, serpentine neck was arched and crested proudly up, the wings crafted of a magnificent glass that shimmered like diamonds and gleamed in gossamer beauty.
The pair of guards standing at alert attention at the tunneled entrance to Honor Dead - an honor guard and in a place held sacred to the Queen of Fire - did not look into the vast cave when she had passed by silent, but stood respectful as Nicola gazed silently up into the silver eyes that did not quite capture the shimmer she remembered in them.
”…I... miss your wisdom, Valar…”
Incredibly softly murmured, the brilliant gleam of her sea green eyes burned up at the statue that was glorious - had it not attempted the impossible in capturing the magnificence of the White King, the Mage King, the Last King - her husky voice so low it did not echo in the vast space with ceilings that arched up into shadows and the glory of the fallen bound by powerful magic’s so that there were massive shapes laying through the huge mountain cave. Pillars soared up to the ceiling hidden by shadows, dragons curled like watching gargoyles, clinging to stone columns; great slabs of stone had huge, sleeping bodies coiled on them as though they but lay for a nap in the cool, dimly lit room; great dragons were reared on powerful hindlegs with jaws gaping and wings wide-spread with muscles rippling and scales gleaming in a scattered brilliance of color so that through the room the floating balls of deep lilac flame played over the gleaming dragon’s there as if enacting a beautiful, macabre dance of life and death.
”I feel as though I’m drowning. Or being tested. Have I not endured enough? Ahhh Valar! Why..? Is this why you first made me your queen? You knew, didn’t you? You knew I would not leave them. You knew I would love these people as my own, as they love me as their own. That I would lay my life down for my duty. Gods. And still, I miss your wisdom..”
No answer was returned to her, she hadn’t expected one, and slowly the long, sooty lashes dipped down to mask the glitter of the orbs, shadows starting to pour from her pupils, the gift of the Father of All Dragons, Granturian, seen sparking in her gaze and stroke over the gleaming iris’ of her hooded eyes. A hand lift, the sleek, taunt figure of the Crimson Queen and renegade Lirys knight shifting under the black leather catsuit that hugged the svelte curves like a possessive lover as she moved. The marble did not feel quite right, it was cool and smooth under her palm when the touch stroked against one of those great scales that made up the massive chest of the image of Valar.
Her eyes slowly closed as she let her hand very slowly slide from the cold, gleaming figure – she could not bring herself to call it his ‘body’, not when she had known it warm and alive – to fall limply at her side again, the gleaming rubies in the eyes of the long, silver sword slung low on her hip shimmering like droplets of blood in the quiet of the massive room. Valar was long since dead and unlike her Heart Mate, Mythe, it was apparent that Granturian would never return him to life. For the briefest of moments, she let herself mourn the loss of the great king, and then let her mind turn to other things. The reason for her visit to Honor Dead was not to see Valar, though she would ever take time for that task.
The sleek body turned, placing her back to the statue, and when they opened, Nicola’s eyes gleamed a hot, golden color with shadows dancing over them in thin tendrils like fingers to peel back the layers of darkness before her gaze and her vision lost the dreamy haze of memory, taking on instead the sharp clarity of focus.
”Azani! Are you in here?”
Only slightly raised, her voice carried none-the-less over the rock walls and pillars, rippling through the darkness and splitting the silence like a well-cast dagger into the shadows, calling for one of the most unnatural of their kind, a creature not entirely alive.. but not entirely dead, either, and one she hoped desperately would give her the answers she sought.
Azani:
Azani missed no one, for all who left the world of their kind passed through him.
Yet the Messenger was more familiar with loss. Since returning to flesh for the first time in millenia, the spirit-wyrm had been forced to remember flesh. Flesh was beautiful, in its crude way. Flesh could enjoy the sensation of claws digging into straight stone, or of sunlight on dark scales, or the satisfaction of hunger sated. For the first time since the youth of the world, Azani had had to hunt for his bread. Azani had remembered what it was to be weary, to be blinded by a sunrise, to feel hot blood in his fangs when he brought down game.
Alive, yet not, he had felt more at home amongst the necropoli of the world. He knew these individuals well, and their faults and glories. The living were now a mystery to him, despite his own origin as flesh and bone long ago.
Many came before the Messenger for counsel. Most did not like the answers he gave them. They wanted to know what they must not know. They hoped to know the afterlife of their own departed, but there was no one whose story he was allowed to tell save one's own. They wanted to alleviate the judgments of those who had done evil, but no one could stand for you on that day when the bell tolled. Each man, woman, child, neonate, or elder faced Azani alone. The Messenger himself could not even amend judgment. His role was mechanical. Like clockwork, he executed a single function perfectly without fail. In symbols and metaphors, he showed the freshly fallen how they chose the life they created. Forging a spirit was an unending task, like channeling a river, and choice made the river bend so it was forever changed. Azani's only purpose was to bridge that spirit from body to its next life, on the same course it had already taken.
None wanted to hear that. They wanted to believe Azani could show mercy, and not mere justice. They didn't want to believe their son was doomed to torment because he chose it. They did not want their heroes tarnished; many interred in this ground were less than perfect heroes. Tradition refused to tell of their crimes and sins, or the great heroism and justice of the unnamed dead, but Azani knew. He merely forever kept silent.
The Messenger was silent. Smaller than most of the rest of the grand wyrms, he was faster and able to creep almost unseen despite his immense bulk. The first indication of his coming was the cold of the black mist that surrounded him, killing base creatures near the Messenger and leaving in his wake new life. Wherever Azani walked, the land was purged instantly, but minutes after his passing it was in fertile bloom.
The Queen was quick to come for him. Of all the souls to pass, only one was -ever- allowed to bypass the Messenger, and those had been strange times. She came for advice about the future, most likely; his Master had chosen to come in some (admittedly tiny and limited manner) in the flesh. Like Azani, he was a misfit, but better able to blend; divine will made flesh. The reasons were unimportant to the Messenger, whose sole task was to obey the geas given him long ago. Azani, knowing much of the past, was no oracle. His role was to prepare for the future, but not to realize it.
There was much that was unnatural in the Messenger's movement. He was vulpine and swift; there was something wrong with a beast so large moving so fluidly and rapidly. He spoke, and his voice was strangest of all, the deep, fair boom of his life matching not at all his symbolic countenance.
“If a man climbs a mountain,then he sleeps, should he not awaken on the same mountain?” Azani asked. He sat gingerly upon the ground; a wyrm of his size should make the stone quake, but the wyrm disturbed nothing. Only his flicking tail moved as baleful eyes stared back down on his guest.
“Great Queen of Fire, the past is my domain,” he said. “My charge is sweeping it away. The Master bids me come to this place in flesh, ready such little counsel and might as I might give, and place it in the service of his people. But the future is entirely out of the hands of the dead. I may not warn you of what is to come, and indeed I see very little of it.”
The ancient spirit stared at this figure, torn between memories and obligations, and remembered. There had been a time long, long ago when Azani was the great hero and savior. When his had been the epic struggle and victory and loss. When he mourned his own loss, when he feared for the safety of his people, when he had been the first to cast a stone in defense of right. Now, he did no such thing. His deeds had been done, forgotten, and in the end, they were his alone to carry. The reward and punishment of his own actions waited over him like a bill long-overdue, a Damoclean sword to fall when he was released from service. Knowing this, even in the impartial discharge of duty, he felt a bit of pity for the distraught woman.
“For whatever it is worth, you must know already much will hinge upon you. The temper of your steel will serve, and come what may, it will not be forgotten.”
He did realize hearing the Angel of Death casually mentioning that he -would- have to go ahead and tally up one's deeds had to be a slightly disconcerting thought, but then, shouldn't all the living already be quite aware of that?
Nicola:
It came slowly, that awareness, like a creeping specter, a mist dark as midnight and swallowing the light within it, as though it feasted on the warmth of the living, and cold with a chill that was like the bony fingers of death dancing up one’s spine, an all too familiar sensation to the Queen of Fire. It smelled rank, of decay and mortis, it felt hollow and numb, like the grave, and she needed no shadowy gifts from her God to see the ripple of death prelude the sinuous grace of the great creature that wound his silent step through the massive monuments to those who kept their lands safe, hero’s to the living, comrades to the dead. The toxic lava of her blood pulsed almost violently with passionate life to battle the coming of the Angel of Death to Dragon Lands, speeding like a drug running hot through her veins, waking a mist of deep, throbbing crimson vapor that wound like hungry, greedy serpents around her long, sculpted legs.
And many would have fled in terror of the message the great wyrm would have brought them. He was something more than the minds of the simple could grasp and oft, he spoke in riddles that would leave one more confused than before coming to see him. Few could grasp that he was more than what use he was sent for. Few could look into his eyes and see past the death and shadows there, and had the God not touched her brow with his kiss, she might not have seen, either. But what she saw, and what she spoke of, were not always one and the same.
”Azani.”
Murmured, her head gave a slight dip to the massive creature of darkness as he sat before her, gazing down with eyes accustomed to rendering judgment, stripping away the layers of one’s life and deeds like so many layers of an onion to bare their very soul, his look heavy and weighty and glittering with an unknown, arcane wisdom that came only by way of a gift from the Father God Granturian.
And no, he gave her no comfort in his words, though Nicola was not entirely sure what comfort she was looking for, instead the mind of the knight and queen in action, strategies rolling constantly in the back of her mind as the sensation of something… bad descending on the land continued to grow in her. It was nothing she could place a finger on, however, but rather a sensation, a premonition, an instinct that began when Mythe made his return to his home, returned to life by the will and hand of their god.
She took his words and let them move through her mind, like pieces of a puzzle she could not yet see clearly before her and working them steadily into place while vapors of seething crimson curled slowly around the slender legs, casting a lurid red glow over the lower limbs of the massive crystalline statue behind her, the gleaming gray eyes of the Last King of Dragon Lands watching over their exchange. There was a macabre irony in the Messenger’s words, causing her lips to twist in a wry smile utterly devoid of humor, her head turning slightly to lay her gaze on the gleaming silver scales of some ancient dragon long since gone from life laying coiled on a massive slab, his huge violet eyes watching, unseeing, the svelte figure. And had not the massive silver eyes of a God once sat upon her in judgment, Nicola might have shrank under the unwavering gaze of Azani.
”Ahh, Azani, but what if the future begins with the death of one? Or that one returning, returning from death?”
Her husky voice was low in the cavern, ensuring it would not slip past the two of them and into the ears of the pair of guards standing stiffly at attention just outside Honor Dead’s tunnel entrance, something both wide and broad enough that had the massive wyrm decided to leave the mausoleum of Dragon Lands, he could have done so without touching a single rock wall. She could have easily been speaking of herself, the Red Queen knowing death in the salvation of her people from mass extinction, but a look at the taut, lean lines of her body, sleekly curved in that leather suit, would tell the Angel of Death that Nicola did not speak of her own experience with death and time spent shackled to the side of their god, but another.
The gleaming golden orbs of the dragon queen swung back to the sitting figure and she moved then, gracefully, her hand lifting to push an unruly honey-gold lock of hair behind her earlobe and with a graceful, predatory stride, began to take up a slow pacing before him, her slender brows lowered in a frown to mark the depths of her thoughts, her stride long, yet controlled, like a creature feral caught tethered on a leash, nearly vibrating with the need to lash out in a fury at what threatened her peace of mind, her people. Low on her hip, the long, gleaming silver blade of Sha’le, the Crimson Death, flickered in the dance of the softly glowing lilac orbs battling the slowly pulsing crimson vapor and mist that wound in a sensuous, slithering trail behind the knight and queen.
”Does death then hold the key to the future, O Messenger of the Gods? Or is the future held only in death? What hand guides us all? The hand of the past, or the hand of the future? I think, Azani, they are instead interwoven, one with the other and held as tightly as lovers.”
The sleek figure finally halted her pacing to round on the sitting wyrm, her hot golden eyes glittering brilliantly up at him as the shadows rippled from the depths of her inky pupils, slithering like slender serpents over the gleaming molten gold orbs. Her features were cast in a mask that slipped into place without her realizing it, a fierce expression of single-minded determination, a savage intensity that would be lost on Azani. Realizing it was she speaking in riddles, Nic slowly closed her eyes, the long, sooty lashes laying like dark bruises against the pale ivory visage and took a slow, deep breath, soothing her raging mind with the tranquility of her surroundings. Even the surreal nature of the Angel of Death provided a measure to that calming.
Her eyes opened slowly and she gave a minute shake of her head.
”Forgive me, Azani. I have had much on my mind lately. Let me speak in simple terms and perhaps you can shed some insight for me. I do not seek answers, I know you can not give them all.”
A hand uplifted forstalled any argument from the wyrm as to her intentions and her eyes gleamed at him.
”But I would know why Granturian has returned the soul of my Promise Mate, Mytheaniel, to life. More than life, he has made him near-feral again and dangerously protective of the Thrones of Fire and Ice, a killer in much more mortal than dragon terms. The Father sent him to guard Stiria and I. I would know why. Why Mythe? Why did He change him so, make him so fierce, so.. protective of the thrones and so possessive of me? What is happening, Azani?”