Confrontation in B Flat || Ben & Lev
benjamin-mackenzie:
The first witch he killed had been as young as him – maybe younger. Before he learned to play the game, his rage had settled into violence. He had no use for subtlety then. The witch’s death had been tragic – or so the community had said. It had been a show of needless violence. He remembered he got a call from his mentor who took him out for celebratory dinner after it made national headlines. That had always been the world he lived in. The kind of world where power was power and anything less was a death sentence.
Of course, not all hunters thought that way. There were plenty of packs who would have seen Birchwood and fled to the hills – but not the MacKenzies. Not Ben. His mother might have told him to raze Birchwood to the ground, but Ben was not his mother. He saw value in magick, he saw danger in men. After all, if magick was so vile, he might have condemned himself – despite the Order’s claims that reflection was divine providence, not magick.
The question was not: how should I kill the man before me? It was: should I kill the man before me?
The answer wasn’t quite clear yet.
In either case, Ben studied the way the man’s shoulders moved, the way he shifted his weight. He watched him like a predator. He didn’t seem weak.
“I wasn’t,” he took a sip of his drink and wiped the foam from his mustache. “But I think then, you might be able to imagine why. I cannae help but wonder why I have nae seen more of the leaders of yer nae so wee community. You can imagine that, as the town’s professional on such matters – what being a professor of such things and all – someone might come knocking. What de y’think?”
Back to the codes. This was a little less convoluted than the musical commentary, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere with a discussion of the town’s leaders. He knew very little of the matter, other than that there was a coven and most of the residents had some sort of allegiance to the council. And if the hunter was the professional, he knew that much as well.
He needed to turn this conversation to his terms. He leaned forward in his seat, lacing his fingers together and being mindful to not let his posture slip. How hard he was working to make his movements look effortless.
“Do you know much about orcas? They have fascinating social dynamics. You have your resident whales that stick to one, albeit large, territory, and remain in strong, loyal pods. They tend to eat the local fish and are generally content and even-tempered. As much as an apex predator can be, in any case.
“But there’s another type. They’re called transient rovers. They may pass through waters shared with a resident pod, but they never truly integrate themselves. Their behavior is notably less predictable and often based in a sort of brutal opportunism. They might eat the local fish, but they’re known to take on anything weaker than them, even the other predators in the area, because they’re not looking for enough for everyone, they only care about enough for themselves.”
He sat back, as if form a clear break in the conversation. He was done stating some interesting facts about whales.
“I can’t really tell you what’s going through the mind of this community’s leadership, you’d probably get a better answer to that question from a resident.”
