#prophetishak

[4uts]

you can lie to yourself.

guts is seated, cross-legged, on the ground, eye closed, trying to distill his thoughts into nothing. across from him, isaac: he is sitting with one leg pulled up, resting the weight of his arms atop his knee. utterly expressionless.

he looks the way guts pictured those great, lounging cats from stories someone must have told him a long time ago, the sort that snatch people up and drag them off into dark. strong enough to overwhelm any man, as big as a wolf, with a mouth full of teeth. guts doesn't understand the man, can barely tolerate him—and the company he keeps. just beyond, down below, there is an army of demons guts would've otherwise cut down until his soul was rendered from his body like the fat from meat.

instead, he is here, humoring isaac. in the corner, a candle burns, flickering, and there are herbs burning, smoke drifting lazily into the air. if it's to cover the smell of rotting bodies, guts doesn't know why he bothers. the stench is unforgettable, and familiar. these demons are corpses as much as they were people. he opens his eye, and answers with too much heat, shows his own hand: " i'm not. " his hand itches for his sword. " i know what they are. i know what you are. " the brand on his neck tells him all that he needs to know.

so why is he here, keeping the company of a thing worse than the spawn of hell?

I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN / ACCEPTING

[dayarmor]

@prophetishak / @kmtrpg: i will not be hunted.

with a voice like gravel, rough from days of disuse: “ you're a king. you're always going to be hunted. ”

her motives for returning to styria were, she knows, entirely selfish. but years are nothing to a vampire, just time whittled away at the root, and so after a half-decade of sitting and waiting and wondering, she leaves morana asleep in her coffin and takes the several-weeks' journey to styria by horseback. she's never been... curious by nature, in the traditional sense, just tactful. lenore was curious. morana more a collector of knowledge. but this... striga told herself that going to see the place carmilla brought them together one last time would be a sort of closure.

if she just saw—then perhaps she could assuage some of the guilt she's hesitant to admit exists.

it does not. the palace swarms with night creatures and servants. isaac welcomes her into his halls with a cunning, calculating look, and makes it clear that she, alone, is at a disadvantage. the room they stand in now used to be carmilla's. isaac, clearly, has a different taste in decor. less dripping in luxury and more practical, peaceful. she admits, privately, that she likes the gem-toned, cool blues more than she ever did the wealth of red on red and red.

the forgemaster isaac speaks softly. he does not raise his voice with her. he is surprisingly patient, but justifiably holding himself like he might reach for his knife at any second. from the tall, vaunting windows behind him, striga can see out into the mountain range: their mountains, once, their whole world. she fixes her eyes on him again, frowning. “ i just wanted to see what it was like now. there were days i was convinced she made this world. do the people of styria fear you as much as they did us? ”

that's not the question she really wants to ask. she's beating around the matter for no reason beyond sparing her own feelings. it takes a while to dredge the words up. a beat. “ was it an ugly death? i felt it. it was... ”