[private] and in my dreams i've kissed your lips a thousand times // Maugrim

[Kagerus]

Kagerus

{ and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times }

He appears, lips crowned in blood and eyes reverent of my towering spires. In the depth of the forest, only slivers of moonlight pierce through the canopy of wiry branches above, slicing our figures like knives in its precision. Where its light falls, shimmering marks of the leopard appear on my skin: a tribute to my grandmother, for whom I was named... And somewhere in the woods behind me, the manifestation of these markings silently prowls. She doesn't trust him, and nor do I; but he is a tool, and I must wield him.

No one comes here, comes the sound of his voice like stones falling down a cliffside. Unless they want something. He smells like death and rotting, a coat of bile making up the first layer of his aura and only festering the deeper one dared to journey. My ears press back at the words, spoken through smiling lips, though their upturn inspires no friendliness within me. Or unless they are for me. My nostrils twitch once, upper lip threatening to curl in disgust and to show that his words have no effect on my confidence here.

But I stay the movement for now, pinning the wretched creature down beneath the weight of my practiced gaze. From there, the slip of my eyes to trace the stallion as he crawls forward with the air of one both worshipful and hungry is the only sign that I am indeed alive. No steam rises from my nostrils, no hair moves in the wind. He asks if I am a gift, raising his head to challenge the authoritative position of mine, such that it is I who must look up at him. But this is no threat to me. My eyes continue to glower into his.

Or do you want something?

"Silence your tongue, snake." The words are monotone, somewhere between a mutter and a whisper as my lips do now peel back, disgusted by the smell of him. "Listen, and you will find your questions answered."

A single heartbeat passes before my need for personal space - in light of my encounters with Vulgaris and Magnus - overwhelms my good sense, and suddenly my chin snaps to my neck and I press the stallion back with a thrust of my many-pronged swords. I don't aim to actually pierce his skin, but he'd gotten so close, eyed me so hungrily - a rage nearly inexplicable fills me, forcing my hand and clearing the space around me as efficiently as possible.

Rats.

My head rises only just from it's defensive position, leaving my glaring up at the green man from beneath the bones of my brows. The wet, muddy and leaf-strewn ground reflects an image of us now, standing like vipers, coiled and flared and ready to strike. My lips, flattened now, part again to direct my captor's attention.

"I come to reveal to you what you want. To show you what could be yours." A thread of dream burrows into the synapses of his brain, causing an image of subjects bowing at his hooves to flash just behind his eyes. "It's a gift," I mutter at last. "If you'd like to call it that."

@[Maugrim] idk what this is enjoy