Tiamat. [ Muirin ] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ofstormandsea) wrote2018-11-05 06:59 pm
ofstormandsea) wrote2018-11-05 06:59 pm
Test driving. Sorta.
How long had it been, since Halikras had betrayed his Queen and kingdom, his sovereign duty? How long had it been since he'd abandoned his friends, family, love? Since he'd left them to take the blame and punishment and torture for his actions, and none the wiser?
Long enough to see the change in power, unbeknownst to him when he finally returned.
On this morning, the murky dawn when most of their kind took to bed... all is quiet, all is calm, most of all in the great castle where the Queen makes her home.
Long enough to see the change in power, unbeknownst to him when he finally returned.
On this morning, the murky dawn when most of their kind took to bed... all is quiet, all is calm, most of all in the great castle where the Queen makes her home.
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Long enough for him to map out more of the human lands than he'd ever cared to know before, back when he had a home and a family to return to. Long enough to venture into dark and unfamiliar seas, foreign and unwelcome despite being owned by the same Goddess. They were always too cold, or the brine too strong, or the coral the wrong colors.
He hated it.
He missed his home.
It's that - and anger, and madness, and an exhaustion that sits deep in his very bones - that leads him back to this place he'd once turned his back on. He half expects to be killed on the spot, and yet when he's spotted, the guards simply use a binding spell on him and drag him deep into the bowels of the royal palace. Which is just as well - that's where he'd intended to go anyway.
He doesn't fight as they throw him upon the mother-of-pearl dias that sits before the throne. He looks up slowly, fear and rage pumping with each heartbeat. He prays his magic doesn't fail him. Finally.... - ]
no subject
She's different. She's no longer the immensely tall, imposing figure she was before, all vibrant rainbows of the anemones and zoanthid corals that covered the reef that was as integral to their kingdom as the salt water they breathed. No long curving horns, no cruelly sharp nails or cruelly sharp grin.
The Queen before Halikras stands tall, certainly, but only with status; she was no taller than she'd ever been, not since their childhood, half a head shorter than he was. She wore the finery and jewels and shells befitting the Queen, yes, but it was with certainly more grace than pompous pride. Her horns were still small, curving gently back over her pointed ears, and her colors iridescent again the rest of her darkness; less like loud corals and more like the secretly vibrant morays and octopi, clinging to the shadows.
She looks down at him with the same face she's always had, save one immediately noticeable detail; her right eye, blinded and branded. It was a stark enough difference that one could, for the moment, mistake her for someone else entirely.
Her voice carries quietly, even in the relative silence of the hall, like speaking to a child being put to bed. ]
Of course, it would be folly to think you might ever stay away for too long. Do you come to kill your Queen, lover mine?