There exist some voices, in both this world and others, who would dare accuse the Great Betrayer of living in a perpetual state of dishonesty, ready at the drop of a hat to turn on his own. They’d be half-right. Those voices would only be amplified should they ever come to learn of a particular quirk Judas’s many lives have instilled — the notion that any party-going ensemble remains incomplete without a vial of some sort of poison tucked neatly beside a pocket seam, for emergency preparedness. Though he’s not used it even once, it’s a comfortable safeguard, but one he opted to forego on the eve of a funeral. Surely, for an evening, there would be no kings to kill or witnesses to silence.
It had been since his years walking mortal steps beside the Lamb of God that Judas had considered himself a man of faithfulness. Perhaps, though, here in the Holy Land, there did live some truth to the peoples’ faith in a Hundred-Eyed God. Surely, that God must have gazed down upon Salome that night, with a favor Judas did not understand, for had that old vial of poison happened to sit in his pocket as she tapped the tip of a sharpened claw to her glass, she’d be dead. How easy it would be, too, to taint her cup and slip by unseen — and how sweet it would be, to watch the vice of Pride undone by her own vanity’s refusal to even glance towards those who serve her.
He checks his fantasy of Salome’s ruin aside, his lips pressed together in a cold, even line. There are no crowns in Infernum — it’s a lie they all echo, that perhaps some of them even believe. It’s a lie he wrote. But as he turns to face Salome, chest forward and throat cleared, Judas speaks as if his kingdom’s invisible crown sits blinding atop his brow for all to see. “Perhaps you’d consider a second, revised apology, for mistaking myself for a menial mourner.” How picturesque — Judas Iscariot, the self-anointed damnedest of them all, holier-than-thou. He blames Azazel’s insubordination. He blames the inconvenient timing of Salome’s pointed disrespect. He blames, naturally, all but himself. “I’ll trust you to keep your grief,” he pauses to scoff in apparent disbelief, “from manifesting in any further disrespect.” It’s only a beat of his heart before Judas stoops so low himself. “I must ask, Salome,” he begins, “why you don’t join the others in dance? Does dancing upon a man’s grave lose its appeal on a night when it’s deemed appropriate?”
After they’d both been raised from mere flesh and bone, pride came to be called the worst of all sins in the Old World. Holy Men, the inheritors of the faith they’d mortally blasphemed, waxed lyrical: haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are Sin. Those men would turn in their graves now at the joy she takes in being the titled Vice of Pride -- not least because she could compel their ancient skeletons to do so.
It may be her title, but it is not she who is the most plumped with pride in Infernum. How can it be, when such small slights draw such rich irritation from the would-be King? How can it be, when Judas Iscariot wields so much pride that he wears it as an inordinate crown? One made of razor thorns, even if he has yet to realise it. --What else did those Holy Men used to say?
Beware, Pride goeth before a fall.
( Perhaps they were wise after all. )
And how very easy it is to cause delightful, irate reactions in him. This had required even less effort than usual - just a lazy stretch of her arm, a pointed rap on a cup. Judas is many things but he is no fool, he will know such a display is anything but accidental. The vexation in his words is unmasked. Such an effortless victory is somewhat disheartening, though the sound of his deep, deliberate ahem still brings an amused smile to wine-stained lips. My, my, it seems the self-perceived majesty of their realm awoke on the wrong side of his lonely bed. “You’d ask such formalities of your oldest companion?” is the answer to his request, accompanied by her best attempt at a wounded expression as she turns to lay light eyes upon dark. “My deepest apologies, Judas,” she utters, countenance emphasised by the thick honey of her voice, the performative earnestness in her voice surely more mocking than any open insult, “your arrival lacked it usual fanfare - I hadn’t sensed that I stood in the presence of greatness.”
‘I trust you’ll keep your grief from manifesting in any further disrespect’, he threatens in pretty words, as if such a thing were possible - as if any respect that lay between them had not bled-out long ago. As if Salome hasn’t spent the last centuries affording him far more respect than he deserves, the ungrateful bastard. The smile on her face is more wolfish than earnest, fighting the cold line of his lips with dark warmth even as he fires his own irreverent questions. “Quite. You and I share a love of transgressions, do we not? But if you wish to dance with me, you need only say it.” Eyelashes flutter; webbed, golden wings stretch out behind her. “And I must ask, Judas”, she counters, eyes unflinching from his face, “Whatever has you so tense? Mortal deaths and wine a-plenty, does not that bring back sweet memories of your golden days?” Truly, she is curious. Perhaps a mortal hadn’t recognised him; perhaps he’d failed to pack an adequate amount of those crosses he adorns himself with -- he really did wear his pride on his sleeve.
ellievsbear
prguitarman
gummygunk
2087
turnnoffyourmind
