[mature] Bacchanalia [EVERY & ALL - PARTY TIME]

[Offspring]

You're looking at an absolute zero;
I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.

   He does not know why he has come, but he cannot stay away.

 It is a sickening knot, twisting and tying itself tightly within the pit of his stomach, sullen and heavy – a heaviness he cannot shake, nor can he ignore. His heart, usually a steady, thrumming rhythm, is laden with adrenaline, surging within the unexplained tightness of his chest. His blood is churning through his veins, while his mind is moving as swiftly, wondering what might await him beyond a border he had yet to cross. He had never felt drawn to it; he knew of the Queen that had once reigned over it and she had been as indifferent about him as he inevitably had become about her. She stayed where she was meant to stay, and he did the same – there was an unspoken tranquility shared between he and the northern, gold-laced kingdom – but no more.

 No more – it was shattered by the war-born beat of a different drum; by that of a wicked and senseless soul he had known from the cadence of his first sentence that he was not to be trusted. Taiga had fallen, swallowed whole by magma and by the sea, wrought by the chaos that the pale wraith seemed to pull along with him. He had no desire to be close to such havoc and disorder – he yearned for the quiet serenity of the ravenous ocean lapping hungrily at the sandy shoreline; for the rumbling volcano with its thick and heavy plumes of low-lying smoke, drifting beyond the horizon and staining it with its darkness.

  Age had begun to settle into his weary bones, and he was growing tired – tired of diplomacy, weary of political issues, and worn thin of stepping lightly over the too easily battered and bruised egos of others. His immortality had escaped him – he can feel the tendons tethering his tired bones together growing weary and worn with time, and he could see the deep lines around his otherwise dark and brooding stare within the reflection of the water as he trudged on through evenfall. He could feel his age, and with it, he can feel his temperament slipping.

 His patience has worn thin.

 The woodland is so dense, and so dark, he has hardly noticed the arrival of morning until a stray ray of sunlight gleams through to bathe the darkness of his flesh in its light. It is fleeting, and the low-lying fog of the thicket soon envelopes him, drawing him deeper into the forest and beyond the eastern border. He can sense the stench of sex, of violence and the telltale metallic blood that came with such a sordid exchange – he expected nothing less, but still, the thickness of dread within his throat cannot be ignored.

 There is a rumble of conversation, far off into the distance, and so he does follow it. Quietly, carefully, his behemoth form pushes through the dense shrubbery and past the tall, towering hickory and pine, while his weight crushes the drying leaves and pine needles beneath each deliberate step. He is wary, with a flicker of flame trailing down the length of his spine. He is all too aware of what has been promised – armistice, peace, but he is not so foolish as to believe that Gryffen is capable of either.

 Soon, his dark, crimson gaze is peering through a crowd – seeing teeth, tongue and fervent bodies writhing against one another, while the nauseating odor of copulation and carnage combine. He cannot hide his disdain; he had never cared to be on display and lacks the capability to see the allure in it. He presses past, while slick and dampened bodies brush against his own – he flinches, only slightly, to maintain his distance, drawn in deeper by a soft echo – a cry, a desperate, pleading cry that unnerves him to the very bone, and causes his tightened, terse stomach to drop.

 Tantalize, tied and bound, covered in a sheen of her own sweat and blood – trickling along the darkness of her skin, stained a sordid red, darker than the flashing ember of his burning stare.

 Rage fills the empty hearth of his chest, pooling within the tender marrow of his bones and the tension of his coiled muscles – the lick of fire across his spine erupts, emerging across the surface of his marred, dark flesh and branching out into thick, wavering flames, white hot and blistering with a crackling ferocity. Crawling down the length of his strong, heavily muscled legs, the flame clutches tightly to the dried brush beneath his weight, traveling rapidly across the leaves, the broken branches and brittle bark lining the woodland soil. Effortlessly, the inferno snakes its way through the dense copse of maple and birch as if a thick stream of kerosene had been poured recklessly in endless rivulets, before climbing the dehydrated, hibernating wood, lighting up the timberland one by one.

 ”Get away from her!” He snarls, his scarlet stare boring into that of Krone, while the emblazoning fire envelopes around Tantalize, shielding her from the rousing tension of watchful eyes, deliberately plucking at the dried vines and flora binding her. ”Tantalize, what has he done?” he breathes, his gaze roving over her trembling body, freed at last from its binding, but he does not settle, nor does he reach to her – not yet – his gaze is searching through the darkness of the woodland, seeking the heat signature of the one that had bound her, of the one who had offered her for sexual gratification, for torture, for death.

 ”GRYFFEN!” he bellows, fire streaming from his pores and gripping the fertile earth again, flooding toward the pale wraith that had spilled lie upon lie to him upon the shore of Tephra so long ago – ”Where are you going? The party is just getting started!”

OFFSPRING

another zealot with the weight of the fucking world.

@[Nayl] - dunno if you still want to jump in; I imagine this takes place after their little "run-in"
@[Gryffen] @[Tantalize] @[Krone]