thinking about…
when calligos first meets incendia, he’s initially bored by her frigid, cold exterior. dull, flavourless, without meaning, how would you ever succeed as a rogue trader without passion for anything outside of a temple? the emperor, of course, is the authority of their warrants, but to honour him would be to flex that power everywhere, with the fervour to burn down whole worlds, isn’t it?
but then he starts noticing how she gets so twitchy about aspyce. how it seems to rattle her, and actually get a bit of heat going on her! yes, that’s it, that’s what you should be channeling! that anger, that hatred, you should use that as fuel, and display that! not hide it under some obviously false, icy exterior! he gets this obsessive urge to want to watch her meltdown, have a crash out that levels buildings with melts charges. he wants to reach out and prod, and hurt, and torment her until that shrill, avian voice cracks under her rage.
he sends her a brilliant restored rifle one day, said to have been wielded by aspyce herself, lost until now, adorned with her predecessors personal coat of arms, not just the family coat of arms. and he waits, and waits, and waits.
it was real, and could be seen as a sign of diplomacy, by an idiot.
and eventually, after he has grown bored with the idea of tormenting her when it seems she won’t do anything in retaliation, when he has written her off as another rogue trader who will easily crumble, he doesn’t remember the rifle until a brutally painful bullet slams into his shoulder on one of her planets that he decided to raid, the distinct bloom of a shattered shoulder covering all the nerves there, and he wrenches around, power ace crackling, teeth bared like an animal.
that bitch is standing there, the same rifle not even in her own hands, but a subordinates, some crude little commoner. she has that same frosted expression he remembers hating before, but when she executes the commoner beside her like one does to a disobedient hound, he can see her hand is absolutely shaking with rage, at the sight of him.
that animalistic expression on his face gets undercut with pure joy at the sight of her barely concealed anger. calligos takes a step forward, and then another, indulging in the way her nervous tic seems to get worse as he draws closer, as if she is about two seconds away from absolutely exploding, giving him the nuclear meltdown he has so craved from her.
oh, aren’t you fun? you might even get onto the level of him one day, growing from some cub to a brilliant beast, one he aches to hang above his fireplace.
he can’t wait to see it.
