darkhand:
The warmth of her ambition is met with Malekith’s cold gaze.
His eyes were serpentine, and seemed to match the unfeeling gaze of the mask cast over them. It was an eerie ambiguity, one that Malekith had honed into a weapon. Lies fell before this icy gaze, revealing themselves in the twitches and squirms of the unsure.
Ysbryd was shaken, as were many in the presence of the Witch King, but she wasn’t unsure. The words she spoke were done with confidence, the only tell of truth one could hope to find.
“ I see.”
Malekith could never let his guard down – He was closed off from the world in the literal sense, trapped behind iron that suffocated as much as it liberated. Yet as he began to understand the Druchii who stood before him, he felt a tension that was ever present begin to lift, one that had been with him for so long he had begun to forget it was there.
But Malekith was not the trusting sort. He would not let himself be.
“ And what is the bigger picture, Raven Witch? What is it in my future that you see that your ambition brings you to my side?
– Perhaps you see my destiny ? “ Only barely was this a question. He spoke it confidently, like it was an interrogation – but with just a hint of desperation, the smallest suggestion that he begged for her to agree.
“ My crown, my birthright.. The son of Aenarion, ruling a court of alabaster and gold, and not this one of iron ? “
☽ ♝ ☾ // –
Ysbryd contemplated his words her deep ocean blues meeting the striking greens of his glade-like hues. The corners of her ebony painted lips curled into a soft and subtle smile. Her expressions were rather demure it seemed. And had he been paying attention to her features he might have observed that she seemed to rarely if ever portray clear emotion upon her porcelain visage.
Though her disposition seemed to betray that of someone more prone to contemplative melancholy it was hard to imagine Ysbryd to portray any extreme anger, happiness or grief. Would she sneer? could she? clearly she had been anticipating his question and yet she gave way to very little.
“I imagine previously you have dealt with oracles and prophets who stated with utter certainty that events will unfold as they predict as sure as they are that day with surrender to the cold caress of night upon every setting of the sun.” She turned her attention away from Malekith and the window to silently step over to the stone table in the centre of the chamber.
She reached out to pry free a blank sheet of parchment and quill. With a deft motion she dipped the quill into a pot of ink and began to sketch out a diagram. A tree branching out.
“And how many times have these visions failed you? Though their portents are not inaccuracies they miss out the bigger picture of which I speak of. May I draw your eye here if it so pleases you my lord?” She gestured to the diagram she was drawing.
