[open] don't close the coffin yet; any

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

She is but one of many opponents he has faced during his lives, but she does stick out to him. There had been a particular fire to her—a courage beneath the otherwise blandly good exterior—that had made him give her a second look. It had not hurt that she had come back as his counterweight, the light to his dark.

He had been vicious then, cutthroat and hungry, and although he is not kinder now, he does not so quickly snap to her jugular as he once might have done. Instead he yawns, settling down and feeling something like anticipation war with his innate ability to relax. For a second, he says nothing, although he does make a sudden, jerking motion of his head toward the two souls who flank him—a quick shake of his head.

He has no need of them.

At least, not yet.

“What would the fun be in that, Agetta?” he muses, his voice casual and drawling, as though they were two friends merely catching up with one another. “This Beqanna has so much new to it,” so much that is boring and dull, he thinks, despite the fantastic and dizzying array of dolor, “but there is still some things that are worth exploring, things that are worth a dead man’s time.” His tail flicks behind him.

For another moment, he rests, yellow gaze wandering to the horizon before coming back to rest on her, something deceivingly calm about the way that he assesses her, studying this new woman.

“How is our son by the way? I have not seen him in so long.”

In forever, if he was being honest—he had no interest in all of his offspring—but it seemed like as good of a conversation as any. So he smiles, a flash of white against the scarred black of his lips.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING