[M] the blackest hole in all of space

Larkspur D'Angelo · 09-01-2011, 04:37 PM

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pray to your god, open your heart

+7

Every part of him belonged to the ancient and terrible road laid out by his forefathers. When Tak had blemished the land and took sanctuary from the sun goddess in the earth, they had followed him. They had gone mad in that pit. Many had died. Those who had survived were savage things more akin to monsters than any wolf that walked the earth. If he had known what rabies was, he might have compared it to such. There was no room for science within Larkspur—magic alone held sway, and this remarkable ideology kept him from seeing that the way the child died did not matter.

So he sat still, a gargoyle cut from obsidian and dusted with snow, with two holes of flame where his eyes should have been. The dying thing at his feet was not his daughter. It was a blight sent to prove that his mate had been wrong. Tak had come and taken the single white child from the brood, taken it and consumed it from the inside out. Had he been cruel, he would have killed it that day. Rank alone saved the babe, who had suffered silently while her mother stood by. Eris was a creature of pride. If Larkspur knew nothing else about the woman, he knew that.

Great paws did not move even as she returned. He was here to observe and direct, and to do what needed done beyond her hand, but the sin belonged to Eris alone. Larkspur had honored his gods. Larkspur had honored Eris, even as she betrayed him with another man. Yet in their relationship, she held power; her rank allowed this. To show as anything less would only lower his own standing within the pack, and while not a dominant wolf by nature, Larkspur enjoyed his place above others. He had earned it.

The fire began as they always did, a faintly glowing ember that rose with the wind and came to consume the living sickness whole. Two dark figures gleamed in that firelight. Larkspur’s pelt reflected the color readily, for it had once met it before. Deep eyes sucked in the sight, consuming the color and taking it for themselves. Pumpkin orange burned with the living, undead, uncontrollable thing that was the flame. It had sought his soul, once, an eternity ago. These flames were not large enough to bring fear into Larkspur, who was wholly frightened of fire, but he respected its power none the less.

He said nothing. Silence held his tongue still, and no thoughts of comfort came to him. She had brought this upon herself, and for him to bear the weight of her sin was laughable. Had Tak not taken enough from him yet? Had he not met the earth-god as a child and faced it, screaming, as his senses were destroyed? He spoke the language of the dead. He had been into the ini and knew what true fear was. This display of emotion from Eris was feeble. No part of the Arbiter mourned what had been claimed by Tak, what burnt in a hellish cacophony of soft, breaking branches and the stench of sickness and death.

His eyes only broke to study the pattern of the wind, the path of the stinking black smoke that contained the festering soul (if gods had souls, that was) of Tak. Their daughter had never been. He knew that, and this was why he did not mourn. It was not as if they had taken one of the other girls, or one of their true, mighty children. Salvia and Pandemic set prescience; how could a dying body without a soul usurp them?

Lowly, and with great skill, he spoke in that damned tongue that would summon the beastly night-god to take what was his. “Mi him, can de lach, mi him, min en tow. Tak!” The wind seemed to hesitate, to take a breath. Larkspur steadied himself as he felt his body respond to the sacred tongue, to bristle and stiffen as the wind turned. It rushed from behind them, tugging at his thick pelt, twisted through the smoke and the dying fire and snuffed it out. The moment passed and the wind settled, soft and constant as it always was by the shore. The Arbiter did not rise. His massive head turned towards Eris, orange eyes gleaming like the still-dying embers of the fire, and waited.

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