Calix was made to endure namelessly in binds, as the car takes him far from the dockyard in ensuing silence. Not yet far from Theastone. Not out of the city at all, perceived through tinted glass that cauterised Theastone's night-lights into so very much of the same. Madness in a whorl of colour for many minutes. Perhaps an hour. Perhaps longer. Black windows cauterised the sight of particolour despair hidden away in the dark, as he would be made to contend with needles and thorns in captive abyss. None could find him behind lock or glass without blood.

Insanity in silence as Aezhyrrael paves a torturous drive to nowhere, engine almost imperceptible. Cars that ran on arcelectric were naturally elegant in their predatory quiet and the sensations- lack of them- depriving to an ill mind. Depriving to a mind fallen to insanity or panic more-so in silence and mosaics of the same streets and same corners. When he sees the same avenue upon the sign again his heart drops. Every loud, elegant sigh. Each stretch in the driver’s seat. Every glance he tried not to meet through the rear-view mirror with his own. City lights lit both their eyes for a moment shared through the mirror polish. His own silver one momentarily like a dull gemstone polished into a sphere with a moonstone flash worth it’s weight in gold. Caught just so by a light’s caress. Uncaring that he sat on the other side of a prison of black ice. The same name again upon a desaturated sign. His heart sank because this was working.

They drove for minutes or hours- in no consequence to Aezhyrrael as his mind spun in negligent obsession, eyes flickering back and forth from road to darkened mirror at his pet kept within. There are times he seeks the sensation of anticipation and moves over his seat, back arching or something more. A tease of conversation led by the removal of gloves split in design to expose tendons above and claws beneath. The same claws flexing over the wheel and looking as though prepared to tear through a fresh corpse. Brushing in deliberate stimulation when he prowled around another street corner, over the wheel with a thumb plucking patiently at the leather covering torn earlier in the night. Mind spun to lucidity as he feeds on the suffocating quiet.

Other times a skeletal hand passes over the head unit and waves featherlight in contemplation. As if. As if moments in pause preceded an orchestra of release- or some other sound than an engine, or a breath. Windows above sealed so that air itself would be forced to hiss through fans kept off. Aezhyrrael's blood ran to ice in his veins. His captive's- ohnn. He sensed him easily. Body heat like a flame behind him. It inspires his look into the window in seeking the terror behind his seat and, suffering and thoughts kept inside easily, he would allow it to fester for a while longer.

Their proximity shared in- yes, terror- but tinged now in repose. His ribs no longer caging his breath as before. A feeling he’d not ever forget, however. To be in a Draihari’s presence for such a length of time bared to him the reality that these creatures could be something other than saw blades constantly whirring. He pauses his thoughts deliberately, suspecting this feeling of compelled sympathy was also deliberate. He would. Not. He would not. This was just another elaborate cruelty adapted to his weakness. Even still. Despite his growing rebellion when he would meet those terrifying eyes through the rear-view the line of his shoulders was able to drop into a more relaxed curve.

For a while longer, the car rolls around avenues of the same names. Traffic not so much at all at this time of night. The few headlights that pass through the windshield a fickle and quick light upon Calix before the dark snuffed them simply again. Aezhyrrael thinks on his gaze of terror whenever light catches his own pale eyes and his claws rap over the steering wheel, one hand upon it while the other. Well. It searches his own clothed thigh with nails pawing at the slacks. A bare palm savouring tension when it lifts to the wheel and drops to his thigh again and then once more clasps the wheel in tremendously stressed rhythm. Tremendously slow torture.

Calix watches every time the other’s hand came to rest on his own thigh with restless fingers gnawing at his own trousers. Calix swallows. What did he have to be so anxious about? His imagination wonders at the motion so fractious. Underpinned by his own heartrate finally, finally at some rest.

Claws turned inwards after a while in suffocation shared. It tore at Aezhyrrael's own mind, also, to be deprived of such pleasures. He desires them also. The agony of another whose flesh was made to tear so immensely. Eyes roll sidelong to glance into mirrors or to admire architecture turned brutally soulless in its design where steel and glass bore fangs into stubborn Arunean stone. Such was the way of hyuron districts in these places. Was this silence pleasured enough? Calculated, thoughtful in its prolonged burn.

It was after such bondage that a sigh eventually whispers out of nostrils hardly flared for it. Aezhyrrael's head lilting as he heaves a breath into the screaming quiet and looks. The road ahead straight: a market avenue speckled in open-plan storefronts presided over by a distant industrial estate. As was the way of hyuron suburbs. He turns onto a smaller street and for the first time this night, the sound of a blinker cuts through the soundless vessel and both would be forced to hear it.

Tck-tck-tck-tck. Metronome abyssal. Tck-tck-tck.

It was then that the turn signal’s presence urged Calix's heartrate back just so. Why for? Perhaps that he realised in the seconds to follow that this was the first time he was hearing it despite how many turns they’d made over the last hour. It was intended to be conspicuous. And oh, how it was. In the white noise crucible of their shared drive it was like a dropped glass shattering upon the floor of his mind he’d just finished wiping clean of tar. Sanitising to his comfort. He tries his best not to display his rising dread.

Rhythmic madness sounds a turn left on a street filled with no other souls- as the sedan lurches to a depressed stop on a small street backed by an unusual patch of field cordoned off in the middle of the city. Probably to become housing- or business. As hyuron liked so well. The ticking pauses. The car sighs aslumber and release or the end comes as the locks to the back lift finally.

Eyes closing hard for seconds when it was just him within the car for this brief respite. Before whatever the Draihari had in mind for him. Aezhyrrael turns- the seatbelt never worn- and gets out. Firstly to the boot of the car lifted and closed again after moments, an unwelcome gasp of cold slipped within at the speed of him. He reappears at the back of the car and opens a door unceremoniously cruelly, leaning in with a terribly slender neck first in clinical- curious- observation. Admiring the sight of him bound on the seats while Aezhyrrael had been forced to drive without looking for a long enough time now. As he does open the door and lean within, he was hit by that pretty smell of smoke and some perfume slaked in blood and terror. His prey waits handsomely for him, he sees in an instant.

He sinks both feet to the floor, sore eternally as he slid his back along the seat to meet the opening door with apprehension carefully served. Not too readily. Just as much as he could manage to be unreadable. He felt observed in the worst way possible.

"I enjoy riding at night. Better when there are no vessels upon the roads- where none can see what you are doing. Wouldn't you agree, mroth'fli?" He says as he imposes close. A voice of venom just slightly clotted speaks for the first time in perhaps hours- or not. Asra did not yet show itself. The night as pitch as any.

Of course. His body jolts, a tremor chased by the shadow that climbed over him. He leans back, lip curling gently.

He leans over him for moments and releases him from his seatbelt's find: from where he could not dare to lay down or creep out of Aezhyrrael's view for all their ride. "All of these days knowing you, and now that you will help me, I do not believe I even know your name." He shrugs, simpering as he reaches his claws beneath the rope bindings. Messy, disorganised. Put together in a hurry to bind a hyuron much stronger than any eldar.

He was so sure? Calix could have laughed. Sick over it. Sick that he did find that he had the intention to ride this out if it meant he didn’t need to suffer incomprehensibly for eternity. Lord Aurastor was worthy of loyalty, yes. But his esteem was hardly worth a soulful suffering he could barely imagine. But, after tonight, could conceptualise in all unpleasant sensation. He also understood the request to grant his name. He was disappointed with himself for how he nearly gave it. A small sound catching in his throat before hands on his arms manage to distract him enough that he could be spared of his own piteous acquiescence.

As he begins to pull him across the seats in some duress, wanting him out of the car then. "Out you come. We will sit in the front together and admire Theastone from here, mm?" Aezhyrrael offers venomously.

Struggling gently, exhaustedly, he allows himself pulled, peeled from the car. The humidity of Arune’s coastline was ordinarily choking on the thickest days but tonight Calix took a deep breath in pleasure for how it wet his lungs. He swayed against the other’s hold for a moment, grimacing self consciously. He could shoulder him off, he supposed. He supposed there were a few things he could do here in this alley. Not many were too dignified and he, in some fatalistic desire, remains quite dutifully put now, offering a strange look upward.

Eyes catch like polished gems in the mirror as they pass beneath the same lights also slumbering at this time of night. Slumbering horror beneath the lamps unwilling to look down upon them. Aezhyrrael glances every time and meets the glaring moment of silverine moonstone with ecstasy his own turned inwards. Despair in excess consumed the lord and choked him like clotting blood trapped in the throat. Much longer of his misery transcendent and he might drown in him.

Eyes glancing fervently for longer. A little darker after every self-same sign passed. He noticed every time how eyes darted away whenever they met their gazes in the mirror. The gaze upon his hand as it wandered after. Dominion in the dark. The dark cannot hide those pretty eyes, mroth'fli.

There were many times he sighed again or parted his lips for a breath as if missing a cigarette long lost. Or a taste of flesh long not given to him. He knows that his little creature must have thought this. He willed him each time to the top of the stairs again with casual malignance and then pulled him away from the descent by his nape promised silence for longer. Despair gorged upon. Despair not so satiable soon as he passes the same avenue for the third time on a long, suffering spiral around Theastone. How long had it been? An hour? Longer?

The lord struggled in the sensation of it suddenly. That his heart bounded inside his own chest even still. Some make of dark pleasure wrapping around the frame of his very bones and aether and choking his sensation. The suffering of not hours ago was sublime. Now synchronicity baring fangs at one another.

A drop of the shoulders noticed above the bare chest that Aezhyrrael glances at more than several times during their journey together. Drawn first to the colour. Then to the needle-thin wound beaded in dry blood between the hair. Mroth'fli did sit like such awkward amalgamations. But was a tame wolf to concern itself with the etiquette of its master?

Claws clawing at groomed slacks as he thought about him willingly in black possession. In some act of desired release, searching for flesh that may be beneath and reluctant to tear away his linens. It did not matter to him. He sensed every flicker of the hyuron's eye upon his hand and it inspired him to clawing. Awaiting the snapping of a chord or the shattering of glass. Perhaps the burning up of a mind finally at madness' precipice. Aezhyrrael would look forward to all.

And yet it did not come. Not until arcelectric returns his nerves to life as he pulls in to the side street and brings them closer to darkness again. The rapping of the blinker screamed terribly in his mind and he resists a grin- lip curling with a head lilted in the mirror. The doom returned in whorls of dark promise awaiting the exhaustion of the prey. That he would be pulled far beyond the altar of his terror and be brought before the guillotine that Aezhyrrael held beneath his very claws. And that he would beg for its kiss.

It pleasures him when he opens the door and observes Calix sitting for him. A little more readily. Perhaps a little more eager to look into the eye of terror he had been gifted once before. Oh, but senses returned in stunning obedience. Warm flesh curls away from him in such demure repulsion and he wishes to chase it and rip it apart for its daring to move beneath his gaze.

Patience offers pleasure to the sound left from Calix's throat and Aezhyrrael, writhing then, swallows the air of fear as it no longer simply ebbed, a sharp breath of raw pleasure degenerate inhaling him again. Sharp as he was freed from the car with flesh bound to servitude of unfair ropes- those of draihari making. Bound with blood: barbed along every rung with a bite that would not so simply let go of him from throat to limb. Calix would be poised rather like meat ready for butchering. Like a slave appraised by an astute dominar for conformation- for the way sinew and tendon twists in horror beneath the larger claws.

Thoughts manifest as gripping as Aezhyrrael appraises his ropes for fascinating. Not at all killing the time he desired to shove down Calix's throat- thinking that he would speak. Speak or be punished for it. Are you afraid, wolf? But the night is so warm. Your blood so warm and full still.

“Fellner.” He offers. His eyes narrow as if his thoughts suddenly ran deeper. And they did. “Calix rae Fellner.” He shudders then, using the opportunity to straighten his posture and mask his softening terror. What could his name do, anyway?

Aezhyrrael claws at the black webbing of his mind to free the memory: to recall him into his pleasured mind. Not a difficult thing. He kept him coiled within the cage from which he had come-- large talons like stabbing ice around a warm bicep and waist, even when shouldered in thought. "Silly titles for silly mroth'fli. Calix will suffice only." He instructs, fangs baring closer. Closer. Nightmare wishing to swallow the dream it saw in its inky grasp subsumed in tar so thick that it would not resist him. That such names were shared to him would be sworn to the most intimate of his memory. He decides in a pleasure to have that name for his own. Fangs and night-eyes peering closer still until broken. About to merely shove Calix into the front seat and be away again with a claw already around his back and pinning him towards the passenger door.

“Hold.” He demands gently, something a little more raw to follow what came as a moment’s confidence when he’d offered his name. Whatever broke apart in his bloodstream demanded he piss it out, and readily. Just wonderful. Lovely. “I need to urinate.”

Ohh? Aezhyrrael's fangs clench together and basal divinity within his body craves to attack him. A moment of anticipation follows, too long for even Aezhyrrael who inhales a breath entirely discordant to any sapient sound.

He knew how it must seem. Oh, of course, gauri, you must piss. And I suppose I should just untie you and borrow you my car keys while I’m at it, he imagines wryly. But, it was earnest need. Truly. Only, how to make such a demand… “I’d prefer not to embarrass myself. Untie me.” He tries simply, gathering his courage to give the Draihari a hard look. The hardest he could possibly manage after spending the better part of the last several hours being unraveled as yards of bloody yarn from over his own spine by deft claws. The memory of it still hot in his mind while underpinned by air cool over his chest, buttons as yet still undone. “And if you deign not to, then…” He furrows his brows. He’d prefer not to have his cock handled by an eldar’s talons. Not the same ones so eager to violate him.

A melodramatic sigh heralds the shadow malforming behind Calix's head- a long eldar neck craning over him. Poised serpentine in... some exasperation. Become indulgence of what he thought intended. "Ohhhnnhnn, of course you must piss. And I suppose I should save you the trouble and cut your bonds also?" The horrible rasp emerges in demand countered-- in desires violent beyond merely the descent into insidious torture. Oh no. This was play. Malevolence at its zenith of black bile. Oblivion's offered steps suddenly tumbling so far into the darkness. It would be a long fall. A look gives form to the words demanded and Aezhyrrael bites. Fangs from shadow manifested in caustic power. And something more. Something mired in the abyssal depths of mutualism beyond the both of them. A hiss empty bathed in venom, silvered by-- not that. Madness frayed with the offered fangs of a laugh. "Nnhno no," Aezhyrrael answers with a chuckle in clarity. "I know the games of your kind, little beast. I will see to it myself that you are satisfied."

Then? Oh- His eyes turn forward and glaze over in realisation that he’d simply invited the worst configuration of this scenario. The makings of a grimace watercolour his features as he’s thence in the eldar’s grip, rope biting into his skin. This blazer was fucked. His chin dips to peer at the hand over his bloody chest. It was so terrible up close. The creature’s hand itself looked like an alien from a movie the way it pawed. Pulled him back against him. A whisper of a tormented sigh escapes him. So dark it was here, he notes that whatever design the Draihari had for him in these moments would be inescapable suddenly. When had he become so pathetic? Not one to shy from confrontation, ordinarily. Even bloody ones.

A gracile step carries him behind Calix and both arms are taken by claws looking to devour. Stealing the strength of his biceps with strain. He would not untie him, as eyes drag ferociously down his body and imagine splitting his length open from collar to boots. Ropes that would suffice in some broken darkness before the end of a struggling stranger for a snuff film. The lowest echelons of hyuron society did so partake of some likeness, did they not. Even in the inelegance of hyuron death. And why for? Aezhyrrael's claw reaches from by them both to Calix's front and he grips his chest first, molesting furred pectorals with a gliding, frozen palm. Pushing them to one another flush as he growls against the captive gauri ear forced to be privy to madness again. As host, he thinks in degenerate wonder as the claw plucks another button free from his shirt and then tugs downwards; downwards to the slacks and the fly hidden demurely against them, it would be my pleasure. Vicious pawing catches on the belt above a button and he frowns. He would. Deign. To do as asked. And assist his gauri's every need. And does not tamper with it. Pleasured in power as his claws find the fly and he parts it, imagining lips, and pushes his claws within. Torture for moments overlong where he makes to simply not catch the zipper at all but rubs it only.

His eyes roll gently- from a mind frayed at the edges by plucking claws as they undo another button of his shirt. He quickly locks his knees when he feels them weakening, feels the other’s long nails at his fly. He wonders in mounting concern if his belt was to be undone and precurse greater suffering than even this. Forced to lean against him, he felt tipsy in his discomfort. Sometimes a breath would darken his vision further at the limbs for just as second. This toying. He should have expected this. And some part of him admitted that he had- though not in detail. Why on Hera did he suddenly feel so- “Nnm.” He complains after several long moments more of Aezhyrrael’s fingers under his fly and doing nothing to free him. He swore if his body had any energy left to give, he’d be sweating again for this wretched proximity. Revolting intimacy.

Their hips meet in intimacy over-present and Aezhyrrael, blasphemy of nightmares, loosens and excitable growl from his throat. One that suffered in a sharp and short breath behind Calix. He could not deny the sublimity of such a misfortune. Pleasure found in assisting his wolf to release. Pleasure more-so in forcing him to hold himself within for just moments more. For just until he could be fit to burst in desperate horror, perhaps. "Are you desperate, gauri?" He asks like a judging serpent's breath into one ear. Refusing to step from the car at all as night-eyes gouge and seek revelry. Or shuddering pain in the toil of this forced chastity. Such reviled needs. He supposes that Stilltide had such an effect on hyuron. Or perhaps gnawing fear prolonged into a dredged-up abyss of bodily inhibition.

What to say? I’ll hold it? Yes, I need to bloody piss, you son of a beast? He was only fucking grateful that he wasn’t losing it in need to do so. Calix frowns. And really had nothing he wanted to say to him. His breath came uneven from his nose and Aezhyrrael would feel his heart flutter under his chest with the same poorly kept rhythm.

Aezhyrrael turns both of them around his car and he walks him to the separation between alley and field over which looked a little wall, separating them from the piteous last throes of nature in this city. Sufficient for the both of them. For Calix and for that which Aezhyrrael would watch all of with pleasure. He allows him to lead him in mercy and torment away from the car, which he would have gladly pissed on if pressed, he thinks. And grunts as he stiffens in place then as his zipper was finally undone.

“Before you touch that,” Calix breathes, heart racing, “Grant me your name in turn.” A weak bargain but he thinks it reasonable. Knowing with some cynicism that he asked for it in a nudge from his panic to secure any measure of control. He wasn’t thinking about work anymore. He was subsumed in the nightmare, the fear.

An arched brow raises to meet the question before any sound does. He knew what he would ask. Aezhyrrael reasoning instantly that the exchange of a name could not be so bad of a thing- not reasoned at all. He did not question him. He trusted his cloying fear. Could he admit to such a thing? "Aezhyrrael Nesairaeth." He answers, heart bounding with his own in the pleasure that relishes the words said to him. They were a release after hours of the same signs and the same whimpers. All sounds and sights that were the same to him. The name given- he grips him.

Aezhyrrael Nesairaeth. He knew Eldar names to be of consequence to themselves in a similar way to his own people though with greater… Prophecy. He only knew raeth, a common word in Druhir, to mean darkness. Blackness. And wonders at the rest of his name. “Aezhyrrael.” He repeats for the purpose of committing it to memory. In case Lord Aurastor or the department would have use for it, naturally. He could scarcely admit the morbid curiosity of how a Druhir name would fit over his tongue. Exotic. Very much so.

Appraising with curiosity for all the differences in the each of them. As far as size. The tensing brings him closer and he rolls his hips with a casual shift of heels nudging Calix behind. Darkness repressing within the dark even still. He eyes him, sidelong, devouring him from mouth to cock just inches out of his sight beneath fabric and rope. A small sound has a thumb pushing against the soft length and its heat was almost a complete discomfort. He pinches his eyes for a blink’s worth of time, suddenly leaning a little harder back against Aezhyrrael in rising discomfort, body tensing in front of him. Why are you- Don’t fucking rub it… He thinks in horror as his brows furrow.

Pale talons make care to pull him from within- noting the ease of bare flesh's retrieval, or a lack of lingerie simply- and running a thumb over the top of his fat little length as he frees it. Lip curling insatiable. As he secures it. He does not stroke him for longer than a moment. In pleasure? Oh, in so much more. In dominion over that which was not his own. Over that which could do nothing without his guidance. In dominion over the creature he held by the throat at the hill's rocky peak of insanity- and in not so much effort at all he could merely push him over the other side. He could do that for him. Perhaps not this time. Such a thing seeming so performative for moments of silence shared flush with one another beyond the saving of any soul in this city. Such a thing so vulnerable. Even as Aezhyrrael holds him so clinically towards the grasses. Though as he held himself to him still. There was some demure, intimate pleasure in such a basal moment dragging talons through the back of Aezhyrrael's mind. Fascination? Perhaps.

Mismatched eyes flicker aimlessly forward in some whisper of dissociation as he’s pulled from his trousers. “Pff-…” He breathes a sound from his clenched teeth as he regains himself. He did need to urinate. It wasn’t a lie. But how to contend with this arrangement? He suddenly debated elbowing the body behind him and tripping him to the asphalt.

"Go on." He orders then, fangs omnipresent, drawn down with pale eyes that glittered in curiosity.

Not with his cock in these claws though, he decides in some defeat. And his spine shudders gently as he allows himself this relief. Thank the emperor for not prolonging this suffering, he thinks. Public micturition was bad enough without it going on for longer than necessary. He sighs.

Aezhyrrael does not a thing at all. He holds him. But watches even still in abject fascination. For having no need of such demure vulnerability-- he watches it.

And Calix's eyes flicker sidelong to see the face so intent upon his business. His jolt breaks the stream for a second split as he tenses from eyes, fangs so near. But he’s as soon finished.

The hesitation that comes curls the draihar's lips in black, disturbed ecstasy. As the terrified body tenses against him and he meets it flush with an elegant, appraising roll of spine and hips to meet him. Something dark pleasured by the sight-- by something reminiscent of fear released in mortal recoil. He could imagine holding him by the nape with fangs embedded as he fucked him through the rest of his reluctance. Fucked him? Why for? He says not a thing even still. Does nothing. Even when his creature finishes and he continues to watch anyway with a forefinger curling just a little tighter. Imperceptible to sight. Perhaps the pleasurable weight of a dark night to a fearful captive.

He offers a murderous look of his own into the dark. “Give us a shake,” He hisses. One part defeat, one part a bristled and discomfited fury for the violation. “These are bespoke.” He gestures with the slightest flex of his hips, turning his head to offer a pointed look directly into Aezhyrrael’s eyes. “Do try to avoid bloodshed while you’re putting me away.” His voice low, huskier than he intended for it to be.

The rumble in the throat comes deep from within ribs pressed flush to Calix as he-- growls. Eyes meeting eyes particolour like Nhera's moons for the way he saw them shimmer in stress beneath his gaze. Ecstasy in helpless vulnerability between his fingers at the diminutive need for relief. Ecstasy in its helplessness between his fingers. Fat and small as it felt to a terribly appraising grip. Terribly easy to simply sever beneath his claws, he felt in the softness of the flesh. It was cute. Nnnhnn. "Ohhnn… with pleasure." He breathes, not knowing entirely what that meant, rolling his fingers over his length first to squeeze him with a look meeting eyes darker than his own. Suffocating him for moments as he decided in a mortal moment what... shaking. Was. A brow raises in some sincere wonder as he does. Squeeze him at his fat little head and offer a shake as demurely dignified as he could manage. Something deep within loin or soul wanted not to cause him total basal indignity. Only enough to bruise him. Aezhyrrael savours a glance downward to see the dripping stop and he was already making to shove him back within when Calix's voice draws his attention upwards. He smirks as he fits him away without a word. Even in the way he tugged the zipper back up together again and assures it could not catch his soft skin. Difficult to resist that which was bored into his very blood. Difficult to resist that which he was bound to do- which his body screamed at him to do. Oh... he could castrate him. Keep his flesh for himself in obsession; a claim of ownership, as he eyes him for it with such static malevolence.

He’s put away suitably dry and without much incident beyond the surrounding misfortune and finds himself ushered once again to the car. "Now that you are finished relieving yourself..." Aezhyrrael's claws linger for too long before he turns them together to the car. Towards the passenger side, with a purr rumbling deep within. The door would be opened and Calix passed within with force, made to join the toys in the front of the car. Out of reach on the floor- but dreadful in presence. A hyuron-made crate fit for keepsakes storing phials and yeshyidi within with a roll of dark duct tape neatly above.

And within, where he quickly lifted his feet in surprise for what his toe tapped while he was, quite threateningly, buckled in. Every sound was somehow heightened within here, the cage of his earlier primordial terror. He peers in silence at what he could barely make out, though at the least does see the roll of tape and yeshyidi stored somewhat neatly. Draihari need for so very little made his car devoid of all other things. Out of sight, the glovebox would be empty of anything at all. The sedan almost a ghost devoid of soul also. He sighs as the driver’s side was opened and occupied. Now this, this would be another test of his sanity but of a different make.

The seatbelt fastens him onto the seat of assured madness and Aezhyrrael allows him seconds of isolation before joining him in the driver's seat. Hands and forearms both chilled by the night with pleasant tension. Chilled in pleasure as he glances at Calix's crotch and then rakes his eyes upwards past the hair and jaw. Calix glances over to him, the pale forearms bright as bone in the dark and finds their eyes met as his own gaze tracked upward. Easier to hold this time. For all his… Anger? He could not place how he felt. Mostly exhausted.

"We know the names of one another. And now that I know you so intimately, Calix, you are mine to keep." He answers in distant thought as an Imperial pistol emerges in a hand not meant to wield it, from behind the draihar's dressed waist. Shown clinically on display as Aezhyrrael devours his gaze then.

The statement landed like a contract clause he didn’t know he’d signed. Having been holding his breath through those words, he suddenly exhales. Keeping was a loaded concept among Aezhyrrael’s kind, this he knew. And when his eyes darted to the pistol as it came into view, he as quickly inhaled in expectation it would certainly see use. It was an easy, casual threat. Admittedly one his own people wielded sometimes too casually. Only, having it turned on him now when he was defeated, injured and worse. He had barely the mental fortitude to stave off his dread when he hears the safety clicked off. The safety is thumbed off with a small click to cut through the quiet of the world. So loud in the car. Realising his gaze lingering upon it for long would betray his fear, he forces to grant Aezhyrrael his dutiful look once more.

A hand habitually strokes the wheel before night-eyes pierce the man beside him in grinning declaration. In grinning awareness of the sentencing that presents itself. Laced in pleasure by fear- by the simple whimper of the end or the claim. However it would see its bite used first. Here where light itself hardly touched the both of them; hardly touched the gun, silhouette pitch in the white hand. The silence a horrendous thing awaiting screams. There waited no relief at the end of fresh air and mortal release. Kissed again by a gaze of torment. By the gaze of a predator so intimately interested in the sinew of his very soul.

“What does such keeping entail.” He asks levelly, voice a low rumble as if he’d already suspected what the answer was to be. “And what form does your control over me take from now on?” He spoke a little more quietly, as if disturbing the very air in this closed space would risk talons from the dark once more. He shifts carefully, wincing as whatever little razors in the rope did their job shredding the skin over his wrists while he did. Misery. Almost white noise by this point. “I should like to know,” He fixes him with a stern look, “for whether or not I simply ask that you kill me now.”

The rumbling sets Aezhyrrael's nape standing painfully. As it did when he flirted. That which Aezhyrrael had understood as some dare to bleed him. Not so fast. The pistol eyes Calix's bound belly while Aezhyrrael's other hand adjusts its irritable possession of the wheel. Of his own fingers as claws turn inwards to dig at his palm. "Nnnh.. Your kind make such talkative, arrogant slaves, mroth'fli. I might even suspect that you would like to be free of me, if I did not know better." He accuses firstly, rapping the wheel in some impatience growing. His head lilting closer as he sought to bore into the meat of his soul's desires. Was it mroth'fli curiosity or a desire his own? The answer the same to his senses. No matter. He could guess at the torments awaiting this creature in the back of a smaller mind bent over his own terror laced black upon his bones and mind. How such broken willpower inspired such delectable fear. Aezhyrrael's brows raise in predatory intrigue whenever Calix dares to move again. Not so much a problem but a play.

Calix meant it in earnest. That he should prefer to die than suffer overlong in the care of such psychopathic intelligence. If it was to be his unavoidable fate, he would orchestrate the necessity that Aezhyrrael kill him now. The release of death was the highest of a hyuron's swearing, was it not. A howl writing loyalty into the darkness of fatalism as mortal blood choked the last of the life free. A propensity to suffer overlong in mortal life, even when not so much overlong in any afterlife, perhaps owing to the dignity of such bravery.

As stoic anguish collides with manic possession. Aezhyrrael's lip curls and he shows him with a fang flashing on display what it was he intended. A flash of fangs show tongue and violet flesh and those teeth in contrast to the car dimmed in all black and low red. Precursor to..? A laugh. A dry rasp from the throat kept just wet enough to make sound by the city's ocean air. Oh... brave mroth'fli. Night-eyes deign to narrow in pleasure. But he notes that he did not deny him. He notes this overwhelming dread as pleasure in his own loins to provide him exactly the terror he desired. The gun raising an inch when he gestures. An inch higher then. Obliteration into the ribcage if it dared to bark at him.

But the flash of teeth and a laugh- Eugh, that laugh- leaves him wondering just what the other was thinking. His anxiety ripped through his ribcage as the eye of the gun moves in the dark over his body. Licking, licking. He didn’t doubt Aezhyrrael would use it.

"Ohnnhnnn..! You would barter terms with me. An unwise thing, mroth'fli. The wolf does not question his master," he starts, then inhales a terrible hiss as he decides as quickly that he was worthy of a better answer. "But very well. If you must know." As you are a burden of His after all. What use could he have for you. Aezhyrrael grips the wheel and wrenches it suddenly as he twists dangerously in place- twisting nearer. Finger dancing over the trigger but too aware of himself to fire it. Oh, but he would grin at Calix in dire knowing for it. Closer now so that their eyes were forced upon one another level. Pale night-eyes regard the hair and split-colour eye first.

Calix grimaces, muscles trembling beneath his ribs. Little betrayals. Still not too tired to disobey now? How ironic. Aezhyrrael wrenches toward him and- curse this body- he jolts uselessly in his seat, meeting those bright eyes with his own that trembled for a half second.

"As it seems we are bound to one another in some exquisite fashion. What I seek is that which your lord-master has taken from me. Mornfeir is mine by bloodright." He explains this first, eyes narrowing that he would understand him.

What? Were they so bound? He was, literally and figuratively bound to this brewing conflict he was just previously ignorant to. This hunt for some throne-damned artefact. But to Aezhyrrael himself? Surely not… Mismatched gauri eyes speaking in turn, in exhaustion beyond exhaustion's reach. A touch exciting. A touch obsessive. A touch of fury spiralling down Aezhyrrael's spinal cord as he pauses to assure attention was given. To assure that they alone remained in this darkness shrouded by a prison self-made. That his captive assuredly coiled up in horror. He notes Azhyrrael’s pause, his intent stare. Calix swallows as his own eyes narrow in apprehensive fear. He was listening, but he awaits to hear precisely what the creature wanted from him.

"Where it concerns you, my sublime captive... you will do anything that I ask of you. You will please me and hunt for me, and when I ask it, you will find what he has done with Mornfeir. Before it is sent away to a worse cage- I will take it back." A reminder of brutality in silence when Aezhyrrael's hand drops again from the wheel at rest and flexes in fury.

Calix’s eyes flicker down to Aezhyrrael’s emphatic hand motion, terrible bones bending under terrible sinew. Terrible and elegant lethality in exquisite mechanism. Readily latched to warm flesh, Calix knows.

His mind turns inwards for a moment where he is subsumed in the shadows of the city and the night-black blood of his kin. For his feast at the end awaiting him in Theastone- his false Divine's, or his own to choke on. "Mornfeir cannot leave this shore without my guiding will." Assured quickly to the both of them as his eyes fall to the open chest and his mind chews on the pleasure of the sight. Then he snaps to him in manic attention again.

It was difficult for him to feel sympathy for the way his voice seemed to drop. This he tells himself, that it was. But even still, he did. To think these spawns of nightmare had such worries. What other small dramas took place outside and beyond his peripherals? How many thousands of ancient things still important to some still-living Eldar were traded for a number written on paper? Funny. Aezhyrrael’s sudden attention chases away the glaze in Calix’s eyes and earns a short breath of surprise as they refocus quickly.

Sensation fills the car like smog in all welcome despair, the dark mind of his falling into degenerate places before it reconciles with itself and restrains, a rumble in his throat. A black mark over the mind and fate was this unexpected fixation. "If you please me after all things...-- ohhnnhnn, if you do not..." The horrendous hiss relents, shuddering.

Calix felt his heart in his throat as his spine rattles against his ribs in a tremor to hear the hiss. Aezhyrrael’s own shuddering some clear externalisation of his inner violence and Calix could- Feel it, now. “Mmnn-…” His neck was stiff as he dared not move so soon. His body offers its own shudder as his thoughts turn dark. Darker. Death first. He fixes his eyes to Aezhyrrael’s intense gaze for long moments. He did understand what the other was asking. The make of trinket mattered not. The point was that he was asking for betrayal.

Aezhyrrael would not allow such complacent promise of nothingness violate that meant for him. Eyes flickering to the hair in clarity now. To the streaking promise. To the burden and gift come to him for a reason. It told him that Mornfeir was here. For why else would Zhaine's gift have touched Imperial flesh.

Betrayed by every wince in anticipation of more- more sensory suffering and promises of destruction met with all the sublimity of writhing prey. Troubling in the mind of one who saw predation barbing Calix's own soul. In some way.

They were bound in exquisite fate of Mornfeir's capture and then-- perhaps black and red awash together in glorious tribute. Glorious slaughter to tame the blade sworn to him by birth. The bobbing of a worried throat makes Aezhyrrael's gaze wince as he sought to drown in the pleasure of his dread. All avenues of sanity unwinding in such a small space.

To any beyond this Hraen-bound prison, this car was long deserted. Aezhyrrael is upon him like a serpent's poised stare and he reminds him of this very thing, the gun at the edge of the threshold to eradication. His mind spins in arousal of these designs. Eyes open in carnivorous desire with every hesitation of flesh and muscle. Clawing his own mind in desire to use his weapons- to pounce on him and rip through the tendons holding him together for the words he did not speak.

Intent. Humming a silent melody promising violence. Eyes glazing as they focus on brown and blue. On white. On contempt. Intent. Awaiting his answer. He would not ask it again. His pet would not deny the fate meant for them both. He thinks in clarity.

“You speak of… bindings. Of destiny.” A pause, a difficult swallow. His voice becoming little more than a rasp. “You want obedience? My help… Finding your prize? You ask for treason. Against my own.” Absolutely death first. He wouldn’t be broken further. A final, almost inaudible breath. “I cannot.”

Aezhyrrael's body recoils first in disbelief. Fury a rasping, horrendous instancy from a breath captured in the throat against his own will. His ribs inhale a sharp breath in obsession of the pause between breaths. In awaiting what would come next. Something deep within his soul curls over into itself and begins to devour. The words unacceptable. They stake him with a strange and nauseating fear wrenched from oblivion itself. The pale claw was already moving furiously as the final breath releases and a tremendous bang cuts through the last of Calix's words in an instant.

Draihari skin cold in malevolence- eyes and face telling nothing until the two of them were silenced by the gunshot. Dreamless, black smoke and arc-fumes overwhelm from pistol to flesh with which it connected- tearing through him in an elegant line. The claw brought lower in the moment of madness. Not into the belly- lower. Black in the dark blooms upon a thigh where the bullet plunged within and then out of the back of his flesh, embedding into the seat against the frame out of sight. The sound horrendous. Aezhyrrael catches the recoil of the pistol and winces at its noise overwhelming to eldar ears. Enough to blind the senses. Sensation boiling the blood cold.

In truth, Aezhyrrael's hand was not used to the force wielded. Not use to the flash of arcelectric as it pierces mind and flesh. Muscles strain and his nerves are lit at once against the pistol's bark, his inner world flashing white-hot and then incinerating itself as quickly as the bullet through its hostage. The black night of the cabin so loud suddenly. It screamed in all sensation from nothing at all for just a moment. Aether glowing furiously. Aezhyrrael's world folds into himself under the duress of agony blooming for moments deep amidst aether; amidst turmoil, glowing disloyalty. Agony clawing out his senses and binding them to one another in overstimulation he did not anticipate. It plunged into the crevices of his mind's darkest passages and explodes into barbs. In one mortal moment all.

He awaits several seconds with a devouring look upon the face of bound Calix. A pang of something violent bites within himself as he was made to watch the wound grow and his captive remain still in binds.

Calix saw the way Aezhyrrael recoiled firstly. Had he truly not expected to be denied? Then he notes the stillness and spoke the words anyway. And it happened far too quickly for his mind to grasp. Deafening sound in so tight a space- his ears rang immediately as the brutal sensation of tearing concussion was felt. He knew it went all the way through. The alien violation punched through and out of the flesh of his thigh yet even his bones seemed to feel a sickening thump.

Had he… He really shot me? There was a split-second of disbelief in his calico eyes fixed on Aezhyrrael before the shocked numbness was chased away by the fangs of agony. It explodes within his body with white-hot burning and radiated instantly to overwhelm him to curl forward and protect, protect. His entire leg felt engulfed in flame, an involuntary choked gasp cut behind his teeth as his vision tunnels.

His arms strain behind him, trembling against the cutting design of the rope but pull, pulling in vain desire to come forward and stifle the nauseating sensation of pooling blood. It was hot. It stuck the fabric to his skin and as his breathing leaped from uneven breath to next uneven shallow breath, his horrified wonder bloomed at just how much there was suddenly.

The ringing in his ears rang, rang. His nostrils flared when his teeth snapped closed around a ragged breath of acrid ozone. Copper. His leg slumps as dead weight, so much like before. He quickly realised that any tensing would stake him with pain. Misery, this night. He pressed his face to his knee in the dark as his eyes offer an unfocused attention upon Aezhyrrael.

Silence grips the night again and the breeze itself was as though to cease between the blunted teeth of fans across the dash. Suffocation in isolation on a street that moved so very still. Stimulation to silence depraving and desperate to the senses. Betrayal expunged in gentle noise. In the depths of this Hraen-sent prison not of his choice where all of Theastone beyond became marbled in dreadful night. Ropes bite Calix back in panic as he doubles over on the seat- the belt, biting back, snaring as he curls. Then the pity of its release as Calix lowers, lowers.

Displeasure an alien demand of the torment witnessed. When was it that Aezhyrrael was dragged to the stairwell turning downwards towards pity? To sympathy, for a captive who meant to cut down fate's reaching arm? Sensation in difficult feelings unsettles him and in breaths imperceptible, suffering, he grabs his own visions by the throat of each and demands silence. Foolish indulgence in a prey-thing that he had become attached to over days, weeks. Unwise of you, prince. The gaze beneath him is slaked in suffering and he finds pleasured dissent in it, the curl of a lip downwards almost imperceptible until betrayed by the twitching of a gaunt dimple.

A breath just hardly perceptible from between Aezhyrrael's fangs. The smallest of ocean breeze in through the fans turned off allowing for air flow so bound in a car otherwise sealed. The smell of blood and electric and flesh and leather overwhelming. Dark. Their shared world black agony again. Aezhyrrael's words are seldom more than breath, panting openly into the air left. "You are bound to Zhaine, not von Aurastor. Have I made myself clear?" He asks, venomous in disquiet. Not raised to roar. The safety does not come on.

You are bound to Zhaine- The words sounded distant. Surreal. His own eyes wet with unbidden tears. His sore arms once again useless as they’d been to him all night. Nothing but betrayal. Aezhyrrael had made himself clear, yes. He would not kill him and that was very much the worst outcome. As the pain, excruciating though it was, was sent to the correct corridor of his brain, he wonders if he’d of been in this situation at all had he not taken his medication this week— No. No such thoughts. His breath hitches as he carefully, slowly, began to unfold himself.

But he couldn’t manage much. The weight of his body rested in strained agony upon his leg and the way he pressed his temple into his knee, fixing the daemonic leer of Aezhyrrael with his own awash in bitter fear. Some loathing. He was still not wholly free of the ringing in his ears as he tries firstly to answer. Nothing but a weak rasp that failed initially. He rolls his face against his knee to wipe away a tear before he tries again. His answer came as a single word, bitten-off word forced through his clenched teeth.

“Clear.” He presents, followed by a low, guttural sound of pure agony.

The aetheric madness that consumed Aezhyrrael's sanctity in instinct returns in dark pleasure. Vulnerability in the black abyss of a cage joined to him in blood now. Were light not suffocated in this small realm, both might have seen the way the seat burned red. "Good." Aezhyrrael purrs, venom swiped by fangs as he relieves the ice within both with a pleasured noise. A performance in the way he lifts the gun and thumbs the safety- the way he sets it onto his own lap. The seatbelt not fastened before pale claws return to wheel and fob and an elegant roll of the wrist sees the car rumble to life. Not changed for the bullet plunged into it- the low whirring of its beating heart welcome noise.

Good. Came the self-satisfied purr. Calix could only catch his breath in his tight throat as he feels his muscles spasm in his thigh. He watches the gun retract, the safety clicked on again. Of course. Satisfied the creature was with such compelled assurances. He passes the mutual silence simply contending with the feeling of his leg breaking apart for all the comfort he could offer himself. He imagined what he looked like beneath his clothes. Gnarly sight, surely. He paid Aezhyrrael little attention in his misery, though does hear the squeak of leather wheel-cover under a strained grip precede the… Absurdity to follow.

Claws tighten over the wheel for longer of sitting that compelled the draihar to madness in sensation and he uses a look to his dash as an excuse to roll his eyes in some strange agony omnipresent. He wills it to stop and it simply does not. What punishment reverberating through sinew buried this insanity? He did not expect an answer. What does he expect? Blood. Perhaps weeping. Perhaps for the gates of his mind to open and shatter all for his captor's pleasure. As he listens to the hyper-ventilating and the writhing of threads against barbs. Was this punishment pleasure to the ringing in Aezhyrrael's ears truly? The sensation a little more complicated than that. It turns his blood cold in the veins; at the fingertips, as dissonant sound is his answer after all. In satisfaction of punishment that thrust down its fangs over a feeling a little deeper, a little more dangerous. Ohnn… begone. He did not torment him to be captured by shadow in a mirror upon his own mind.

Eyes drawn to the white flash of Zhaine in the darkness beneath himself, his eyes flicker over him and then to his thigh and then to his face as he catches himself in the same moment. Pleased immensely when his creature sits up- satisfaction tearing through exhaustion wept into the motion by Aezhyrrael's desire. He imagines lunging upon him for his resilience and tearing the rest of the flesh from his thigh himself down to bone and blood. Black air subsumes as his eyes devour him. In utterances bound to the mind alone- he licks at the blood inside his own head. How it wept. Enough to blacken the leg where it was punctured through and the shimmer of it in the dark was precious torment.

Aezhyrrael's gaze looks forwards to the black guts of the street beyond. Performative forearms tense and claw in furious tension suddenly wrapping his very wrists to the shredded leather. Aezhyrrael's eyes relent in less than a moment of discomfort and return in wild scheming. A sharp inhale through an arched nose a premonition for torture. "I'm hungry. Are you hungry?" He hisses, the car rolling just inches as a talon dominated once more releases the handbrake.

I’m hungry… More games, this? A broken sound, almost entirely air, came out in a series of strained chokes. Calix was laughing. He groans quietly after, in pain. You have me, he wanted to say but didn’t. Why persist in this torture? The answer was self-evident. He kept the thought to himself. And with great focus and strain, unwinds himself fully from his leg. He begins to sit up with a mind dizzy. Lightheaded. Carefully, he leans back against his bound arms again and puffs a sigh loaded with the night’s efforts.

This carriage to abyss lurches with a little more care from the side of the road and vicious claws turn them down the street for minutes. Eventually the painting of lights returns overhead in offering of the sight inside the car. Snuffed out by the side windows. Without the mercy of being in central Theastone where all would see his blood behind the glass. Beyond any others to see. This time, the same signs did not cross over the vision. Lights abeyant to the presence of the only moving thing beneath this city's steel-corpse, it would be not so long before a smattering of colour gives way to one of Theastone's intersections tucked towards the suburbs. Not so far from that hellish field left to feast on not a single drop of blood.

In having so little choice to do aught else, Calix leans against the seat in silence for the drive. There are times he shuts his eyes with a long grimace as his mind retreats. He logs away each and every sound and sensation as it came with efficiency. Turn signal, benign. Scraping claws, fine. Unbidden hissing, threatening. A look shared, unreadable. Terrible, terrifying. His own breathing, pained.

Pale eyes were drawn sidelong to Calix every few mortal minutes in the peripherals of a gaze reluctant to look at him. Sounds and signals made up much of their journey to the intersection: melodic machinations clicking away beneath noises of feral dissatisfaction. Sighs and hisses. Claws calculated ordinarily etched markings into the wheel, trembling just enough to be infuriating all the way to the turn signal that heralds their descent into the parking lot. A small thing hidden by cut hedges and hyuron attempts at keeping nature entwined within the binds of their magnificent abomination. Agony within his own body keeps him alive and in torment. In some dreading uncertainty that has him, again, clawing at his thigh- flexing horrible claws in mid-air. Something dissatisfied him even as he strained and writhed through the pleasure of the pain-- it was not the pain that discomfited him.

Another turn signal and the car slows- bright lumen piercing through his eyelids, which he opens- his pupils contracting in a hurry. He had no desire in the world to indulge this. Even in practicality he could scarcely imagine eating ever again.

The cold comfort of a hyuron building awaits them behind the hedges, made up of walls fashioned in glass and wood in sick imitation of nature in a place so very devoid of it. The warmth of the black dark was betrayed by cold lights and even colder signs, digital Arunaic etched onto boards beside pictures of horror. Pictures of numbers and hyperefficiency. Aezhyrrael, forced to squint as his car crawls up to the first signs, slows to a crawl and lets his grimace known. Sincerely reprehensible. Food and drink and meat and fish and beings fashioned to the system of the trade empire. It was one such thing of so few that turned Aezhyrrael's stomach truly. Horrendous hyuron gluttony. Horrendously, they were audience to several such creatures within. Seen behind pristine glass marked as some grotesque canvas of the very creatures places like this destroyed. He had never seen one so near in all of his time in Theastone. He could never dare. Of course, who was Aezhyrrael to deny them both? A torture to himself for what he had delivered upon his unwilling bind in a fate he did not know. A claw flexes and a window rolls down as light and breeze gasps within from the driver's door. The smell of seafood and spices was overwhelming, even to Aezhyrrael. Truly reviled.

"You may have whatever you desire, my pet." He offers to him first, a breath at the end of his words hitching in suggestion of something more. It was feral curiosity, truly. The grin carved into him in knowing and biding time as he crawls into the lowest gear, head regarding Calix again. Eyes a little wider when he looks at him-- in repulsion of the lights. Blinded into a headache to see them that he could barely read the signs.

A speaker fashioned in polished wood waits between colourful planters and its static groans to life as they pause, creeping to a silent stop beside it. Sneering at his companion as the static of the speaker erupts white-hot in his ears, Aezhyrrael reaches to release the seatbelt.

"Welcome to Coralia, what can I get for you?"

Aezhyrrael winces, leaning back in his seat. "Go on. I do not know what you eat." He whispers in flirtacious- horrendous- rasp.

The voice was surreal. Not for anything it said but for what it meant. Another being outside the realm of torment. So near and far at once. They couldn’t help him. What does he say, anyway? Some morbid part of him wanted to test how far Aezhyrrael would go to maintain this. The dead part of him was too tired to try. Desperation no longer gnawing him hard enough to bid him to try. He wonders if something the Draihari did had worked on him. “I don’t even-…” Calix pinched his eyes shut and groans. The click heralds his seat-belt slid away and he wonders only what this meant. Why did it feel like a finality? Some stamp on some further agreement between them?

As lumen-fire bound his gaze away in pain, Aezhyrrael regards Calix in expectation. In sensation of their closeness to one another and in predatory fury that awakens instantly at the sound of oblivious prey. A look shared in terrible pleasure as Aezhyrrael sneers past the speaker, head turned away towards Calix that one ear might be spared the noise. Oh, he would feast on this. Eyes lid in some satisfaction at whatever the end would be in disobedience or no, wrapped to one another by growing and terrible fascination- Aezhyrrael unable to resist the pull of pleasure from such agony. Empyrean-sent creature bleeding alone in the dark. The smirk widens horribly. He knows. His was a test of finality as much as contempt, loyalty- both dredged up from the alleys of his mind in pleasure. You will eat, gauri. Thought with a heart bounding.

Nothing. I don’t eat. I won’t play. Calix peers up from under brows knitted together at him and allows beats of silence to pass.

“Hello?” Came the voice. Calix’s brows knit tighter at Aezhyrrael. More seconds pass.

Aezhyrrael's brow raises. Well, Calix?

“Is this thing working?” The voice says a little more distantly, likely asking co-workers. Calix immediately became aware of his own conditioning and gives Aezhyrrael a pained, lop-sided sneer as he leaned in exhaustion against the backrest. How long could he tolerate this for?

Both of Aezhyrrael's brows lower in sardonic attention as the static rasps; head dipping closer to his chest so that he can snarl at the speaker. Calix.

“Can you hear me? Can I take your order?”

Exasperation that feeds his waiting host who recoils serpentine against his seat, sneer become the arcelectric of a predator's full attention. Calix’s eyes close for a breath as his lips tighten. Such simple, simple, mundane torture.

“Two number fives.” He bites.

The corner of Aezhyrrael's mouth lifts into a grin that creases skin underfed in comparison. The words entirely indecipherable to him but, oh, to hear it... Static faltering.

The voice answers in a hurry. “Oh! What was that?” Hyuron frustration was precious. Aezhyrrael's mind curls at the look and his attention wraps itself around Calix, wondering, daring him to do ought else.

Calix’s head rolls back as if he were willing himself to death for seconds. And then fixes a look of murderous intent toward Aezhyrrael. His fear whipped back in favour of such a bitterness.

"Hello? Can you hear me?"

In making his point, Aezhyrrael cackles in panting silence and flicks a claw across his dash. Thunk. And what now, Calix?

"Hello?" The doors are locked.

"They cannot hear you, Calix." He whispers, the breath frozen. Calix knows that. And hears the doors lock. The sound alone causes an invisible jolt up his spine but the extending claws that come to grip him by his blazer cause the hair at his nape to raise quite visibly.

Thoughts pause as the static fills with chatter again. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

Aezhyrrael's brows raise in play and he eyes the open air sidelong. A claw extending across the handbrake and terribly merciful gap between the both of them. He grips the blazer folded over itself and tugs him closer in a look murderous in its play. Pulling him closer, closer. Close enough to tug him to the edge of his seat against his will where Aezhyrrael sneers with fangs. Words said only with those fangs- imperceptible to the speaker already a foot from the window. "You're going to have to speak up."

Aezhyrrael coils serpentine in his chair to meet him as he drags him closer, pulls him despite the pain- the spasms. It fires pulsing pain through his own nerves to pull him, eyelashes fluttering in shock for just a moment. Panic laced beneath sadistic thrill running through his veins and forcing a moment's cold sweat beneath his blazer. The discordant shrieking of the static's background noise entirely disruptive to his mind. That is what this pain was. He pulls Calix close enough to bite if either dared- that he would be heard. That he would be sat over Aezhyrrael's own lap and over his torture and over the very claws that desired to spell his eternal torment in his own blood.

Calix groans openly, leg complaining with a quick, agonised spasm as he is unable to stifle the quickly choked off sob of pain. Calix’s eyes roll, a feeling of dizzy agony just behind his ears, pounding at his skull. His eyes, somewhat glazed, flicker at Aezhyrrael as he speaks. Louder this time. He wouldn’t be repeating himself again.

“Two. Number. Fives.” His lip curls in a bitter simper to bare a blunted canine before as quickly putting it away. His voice strained, raspy. “And lace them in poison please.”

Aezhyrrael hears it then; gratification. His own ribs dropping pleasured as he relaxes. Claws clench tight at the voice that prickles all of his desires in an instant and holds him there. He meets the gaze in glimmering pleasure, night-eyes so much less useful to him when faced with the glaring Imperial night. Lumen-fire speckles his vision in some wet irritation. Narrowing playfully into the particolour gaze.

The air is suffocated from the cabin in an instant at Calix's added request. Eyes suddenly wild in some horror. Enough to give his own heart a jump as his world spins in furious shock. It chokes any sound he might have made into a furious gasp-growl entirely alien in its noise. No. He wouldn't dare. Would he? All in less than a moment his thoughts flood in betrayal and he knows in the same horror that he could do nothing in the Spectra's empire. Nothing to truly punish him in the middle of a drive-thru. Jovial unknowing welcoming them along. Clutching the blazer. He shoots a gaze spelling execution at his companion and-

”Little joke.” Calix tells him. Calix felt Aezhyrrael’s betrayal. He truly believed the joke in earnest? Emperor’s throne, Eldar society must be… Fascinating.

Oh. Note the stare that remains in fury as an elegant boot presses in tension furiously corded and Aezhyrrael lets go of him. A growl in the throat. He. Aaahhnnn- -Is compelled to some sympathy of it as that. A joke. Perhaps in any other moment he might have giggled also. Eyes narrowing then. Calix holds the look with his own knowing one until he’s let go, wincing as he slid back into his bloodsoaked seat.

“Hah! Right away, sir.” The voice cheerfully asks them to pull around.

Aezhyrrael's pale face flattens to a gentle frown as he rolls the car around slowly enough to toy with his things. A bare hand reaching over to pick the glovebox open with claws. Empty, save trinkets and pocket-things from necessity amongst hyuron. An uncountable pile of notes and pocket change collected over all time amongst them. The gun swaps places from his lap to the glovebox and the safety does remain. The gaze of it peering away from Calix entirely passively this time. The same hand plucking and flexing through many numbers of notes before he simply takes a pile of them and doesn't read the numbers.

Around the path of torment to the other side to the first window where a young man stands. Furious electric. A moment in a purgatory of its own making lulls the car with the sound of swarming and mechanics within. Detested food-making noises all. Movement compels Aezhyrrael to lilt his head, the pile of money brought with his hand towards the window. "That'll be--ah," first, the pause. Blood speckled on the ghost-white arm and then the visage within. Slightly apprehensive- more so as the notes are raised. In his little uniform, the mroth'fli was. Difficult for Aezhyrrael to look at in front of such terrible light. "Sir. That'll be two-fifty." Aezhyrrael did not deign to want to speak either suddenly. Confident moments earlier with a smirk of pleasure wrought from suffering-- now made to himself. Eyes narrowed in some pain. He gestures at the money and then grimaces as he brings it into the car and rifles through it when the man hesitates with eyes fixed to something else for just a moment- as Aezhyrrael looks for what exactly two-fifty is. Two-fifty? None of these notes said such a thing. What a horrible system. A hiss escapes his throat as he rifles through his own pile of papers with some bristles stiffening along his nape.

Calix contends with his pain in silence as the scene unfolds at the window. He, leaning his head back against the leather of the headrest, panted gently with lips curling in the ghost of amusement. Not only did the Eldar not know a joke when they heard one but they couldn’t count Arunaic denominations? Solid gold, he thinks, seeing the immense collection in the glovebox. Ironic, he notes. Aezhyrrael’s people understood its value in the Hyuron world but didn’t seek to truly learn the intricacies? Funny.

Calix, leaning gently over peers at the notes gathered in long, bony fingers. Folded over in talons. He allows several painful moments to pass, eyes flickering up to meet the- oh- the terrified gaze of the boy at the window. What a sight the two of them must be, he wonders, and looks back at Aezhyrrael’s hands. “Give him the one there.” He mutters almost gently, extending his neck carefully. And peers into the inconvenienced expression of his captor. “At the end beneath your thumb. With the three on it.” With his eyes, he gestures toward the window where a trembling hand clutched a paper bag and nervous fingers suspended unsurely for the notes, clearly deliberating whether to remain put or flee. Calix clears his throat quietly and leans back against his seat once again.

Aezhyrrael's mind emptied in all of its frustration as the boy was beyond him-- for why would the notes be unacceptable. Were they not in the exacts that the hyuron liked? Was that it? Frustration, frustration- boiling into the tips of his claws as he plucks uselessly at the notes and pretends to know what he was looking for. It was perhaps only in the upper echelons of business with these beasts that the number writ on the paper mattered less. That anything at all could be pleasing to the hyuron who had earned their dominance and simply did not care for exacts if the pile of notes was large enough. The creature in the blinding window was no more than a pup. Symbols carved into the paper tell him nothing and he senses all things. Apprehension, suspension where notes are wrung of phantom blood in search of what was owed- Eyes dart to Calix with a frown as his body leans closer to the creature without his own awareness- slumped over in the seat as he bided counting scripts. A head tilt towards his passenger to catch his thoughts with hands suddenly brought still.

Beneath your thumb- "What does a three look like." Aezhyrrael growls, throaty and furious. Sincere at nothing in particular. Seeing the notes for himself for deliberating moments and even showing his hand to Calix before he can consider as he gestures in a moment. Beneath his thumb lay one coloured in script more elegant than the rest, bound in some coils at the corner of the page. The rest of the notes find their way discarded into the open glovebox in a hurry, the single one freed also- waved out of his window towards the boy.

A trembling hand reaches for it and stops mid-air at the fright. A gasp. Aezhyrrael's eyes drifting from the bag to the paling terror with a frown. He takes the weighted paper before the wincing creature could drop the thing and takes it within, protectively on his own lap. Decisively. Try poisoning that. Eyeing Calix suspiciously as he does before a hand clasps the wheel and the smugness returns. Pleasure. Some relief as he now looked onwards to another destination of terror.

A coy smirk returning sidelong and then disappearing instantly as rifling and a whimper wrench his head to the window again. Once again, and what does he want now, looking to the light. "Y-your change, sir."

Aezhyrrael's throat fills with a hiss restrained in inconvenience. Of course. Men. Thought with eyes rolling. The sedan pulls away as quietly as it had come and Aezhyrrael turns them out of the drive-thru- to the distal threshold of the parking lot. Pausing with an elegant sigh as the car settles again.

Calix looked on in some tired fascination as Aezhyrrael took his change. A success, against some odds, he thinks darkly. Humourously. The car finally lurches away and Calix wonders to what dark alley they would creep next. What fresh suffering awaited. He didn’t wish to use his imagination even if he had the energy to use it.

Was it man that bid him to turn to Calix and speak also? "First, you will tell me exactly what a number five is." He says matter-of-factly first, the hand on the steering wheel relaxing somewhat. Perhaps the growing fatigue of satisfaction at such a night. Some level of maligned comfort makes the company... pleasurable. Beyond the chains of agony joining them to one another there was something simpler to instinct. Aezhyrrael leans over his creature to steal his scent for just a moment as he jams the single note into the glove box and closes it.

His eyes follow Aezhyrrael’s motion to the glovebox while he himself remains still, leg throbbing. He thinks his entry and exit wound had finally clotted, his blood finally lukewarm against his skin. “Nothing insidious.” He offers after some thoughtful moments of silence, having waited for the other to return to his own side of the car. He stares in the dark. Some deep exhaustion settled in his bones that gave him a languor he was not fully aware of and grants a long pause between each spoken offering.

A pale Draihari eye flickers his way and he curls a long thumb around the wheel in some unsureity. Distracted by burning over flesh eye-rolling in pain. Pleasure. He feels his own skin begging for mercy and it keeps his adrenaline from quite clotting. Tongue pressing to the back of his own teeth in the abyss slightly less so. Not at all the horrendous design of his own thrill but welcome silence from hyuron ways. Inclined to trust him in word alone but he does so eye him. Eye him with the sneer held within at the statement. You would wish it to be, he thinks. Sensing it on him as he did the fatigue lacing his blood and bones. It rocked his basal instincts somewhat to play with him. Perhaps a bond in suffering shared offering him some willingness to play with his new pet. Aezhyrrael permits the silence while he drowned deep in thought himself. Thoughts of torture; of fate, when he glances at the white tresses and finds them yet begging to be stained red also.

“I trust you’ll find it palatable.” A smile coloured in the complexity of defeat, pain and wretched, wretched sympathy. “It really was a joke.” He chuckles, but it died in his neck.

The corner of Aezhyrrael's lip curls out of sight. Meditating on agony not unwelcoming after all. That's so? Aezhyrrael turns to him as the car halts in place and he frowns, wanting to devour him and tear out his teeth for such a smile. What wolfish charm. A note different from his desire to chew through his tongue and throat only some hours before. A smirk widens- wanting to possess him and punish him in deepest cruelty for such a thing. A smirk in contempt? No, no. In claws wanting to come out and punish him. "What a bold thing to say to such promised torment, gauri." What strange behaviour. Something venomous and thrilling laced it and he desired more of it so deeply to be injected into his veins by blade and teeth. The chuckle he wants to reach inside his neck for and pull out with claws. What trickery was this desire for such a possession? Craving so much more than the closeness of a captive. He struggles to ask the way home in thoughts of it pulling his mind down into oblivion himself alone.

Sensation that makes his skin crawl in fear of implication that leaves him a little choked for it. Throat tight as he awaits his answer. They were... bonded, in some sense. By word alone. Every moment of silence longer and Aezhyrrael's heart felt fit to burst in predatory rage- confusion- out of his own ribs. Sinew in all places of darkness. Torment and suffering entwined around the threads of his own body and threatening to tear him up as he contended with many things. Many words suddenly not so poetic as he struggles with what lay being the somatic and the violent. Claws still now. Hissing sworn to silence as night-eyes drift towards the veil of his window where he looked into darkness. Into streetlights ebbed to distant stars.

Beyond the dreadful and gripping talons of annihilation, he discerned a pleasant satisfaction within himself. Satisfaction at torture- at the pain wept through them both this day. How it pleased his need for it and how. He pauses the thought as it lands in his mind, exiling it to shadow. Eyes flickering from the meal burning his skinny thighs through his slacks- the smell of meat and spice- to Calix himself. Eyes are unable to help themselves as they flicker down in the darkness, incriminating, to perceive the wound. If it still bled. The thrill of torture setting him at some peace laced in exhaustion now that it had been hours. Aching. Eldar souls would only tolerate so much sensation at one time.

"Second... I do not know the way to your home. Take us there."

All expression left Calix’s features and left his face soft in bewilderment. “You mean to-…” A gentle frown. After all of this? He was to take him home? This had to be some truly calculated intelligence. Aezhyrrael trusted the efficacy of his manipulations that much? That he would take them to Calix’s condominium without threat or violence? Just like that…

Calix closed his eyes and took a long breath. Because surely there was anything he could do to use this to his advantage. Give him the wrong address? Take them to the trading company’s front door? Nothing particularly clever came to mind and he detested his eager thoughts towards memories of home. He wanted to go home. Was it this easy? He… Didn’t care right now, he decided.

“Fine.” He mutters. “Turn here.” He gestures with his chin. And would do as asked. He’d direct him.

Pleasure weeping into the cage of his mind when his captive's voice relents- and he sighs, ecstasy. Practised elegance gripping the wheel a little more excitedly with a roll of the eyes from his creature to the road ahead. He would lead them with care to anywhere asked. Through the night, beyond where even the realmsea did reach-- these southern streets of Theastone blossoming into colour and light difficult for him to perceive in streets. Claws silent for once when mired in the voice of his companion. It was all that would break the silence of racing thoughts and sudden feelings that questioned his every moment in the vessel's cage. So deeply within the violence of his own mind that his eyes glaze over in the welcome pain of the meal, unwelcome thoughts of sympathy, as he obeys the directions simply.

With surrendered clarity Calix would lead Aezhyrrael’s every turn for a time that felt far, far too long for any waking mind to tolerate. Perhaps luckily, he was too throne-damned exhausted to care. And leads them south again. In viewing distance of the sea and curated nature within Theastone to a collection of towering pearl complexes. Sanitised beauty. Around different names and different streets chasing them until coming upon a place less kind. Clinical and pearly. The sea so near in sound and scent.

The smell of sea-air and clinical otherness soon overwhelms that of dried blood; that pleasure gone for longer than minutes. Aezhyrrael parks with the satisfaction of that which he took and his claws flex over the wheel in relief when he sends the car to its slumber once more. The red dash fades and leaves them both subsumed in pitch dark and Aezhyrrael dreads the light of such a complex.

He directs him to park in— He sighs. His own designated spot, for his own car was rather a distance away. If he survives long enough, he’d have to go and collect it.

“We… Take the elevator up over there.” He gestures with his eyes and a lifted chin. There was a front door and a back. One could avoid the night shift of the front desk by taking the glass doors from the resident parking and, he supposed, he’d rather avoid having to explain to them why he was coming home covered in blood with a Draihari on his arm. That was… That would be embarrassing. Among other complications.

"Nnnhnnn… very well." The answer, absent. Eyes regard Calix but not to where he gestured. He grips the paper bag and tears a new set of holes through the top of it with claws that lift it up over the wheel beneath the glass. There he sighs a release and squirms, testing the burns against his slacks in excited ache. Aezhyrrael writhes as the key is released from the fob and sentences the sedan to its nightly death- back arching over the leather. Gaze dragged sideways by aggression that set his veins to wanting to fight.

“Are you going to untie me now or later?” He growls, rolling his head toward Aezhyrrael. “Don’t you dare tell me you’re carrying me.” He adds with nearly a whisper, as his eyes suddenly take on a visible look of conflict. Could he walk without assistance? Oh. No. He was not going to be carried. He’d walk. Absolutely he’d walk.

"Ohhoh- Untie you? There is simply no room in here to do so. Not without sweetest agony for you, my pet." He accuses, a hand waving-flexing in suspense. The smirk suggests coyly what he could not-- that Calix would be simply too heavy for him. The gaze lids and he leans away, the door pushed open and yawning with a small whine for him as he writhes out.

“Untie me.” He demands.

"You will wait." A growl.

“Untie me or you’re carrying the food.” He bares his teeth, the barest hint of play in his tone.

When Aezhyrrael answers his demand with a growl and a hiss, Calix could sense something has changed. Unable to place a mental finger upon precisely what. He settles back in the seat, eyes watching him through the blacked-out windows until the passenger door was opened. Part of him anticipated violence yet, even under the silver Lumens with several still lit windows overlooking them in witness some stories above.

Aezhyrrael turns over his shoulder and hisses in return- the breath stealing itself. It is caught. And captured just so with a knowing cackle. Bag taken from dash to roof as Aezhyrrael pinches it, tearing it again, pulling it out of the car with a rather cursory close of the door. He reappears from darkness on the other side after he wanders around the front of the parked vessel and snarls performative at the useless little bag. The passenger door speckled in blood opens a little more quietly. Passengers were no entertainment of his at all other times.

"Ohhnnhnn..! You are a ferocious little creature." Aezhyrrael grins down, setting the food on the roof before he obliges him with claws first that appraise the barbs within his sleeves and biceps tight from play. Tight from violence; violation, tests of all senses.

Calix felt confident in reading the words to be… Less threatening than was ordinary. He doesn’t quite jolt when hands reach for him this time though he does still feel the frisson at his nape.

Plucking the thorns with just enough play that he cut his own fingers doing so and gasps in pleasure at every bite of the blades. Seduced and taken by the pleasure of agony again in overstimulation. What fun.

"You think you can walk? I should love to see you writhe in the torment of trying." Gasps in pleasure as he grips the ropes in terrible strain and pulls them- rips them and Calix from the seat with a cackle stolen on a nasty frozen breath.

Aezhyrrael, in asking if he thought Calix could walk, elicited a grunt of effort from him as he stumbles out onto the pavement. The first step sent a stab of heated agony up past even his hip. Into his back. He exchanges a look with Aezhyrrael, who he notes has a particular interest in his silver eye. He parts his lips to answer what he assumed, perhaps wrongly, was an earnest question. Before he can, he’s gripped and winded against the car.

Appraisal of the thigh is given sidelong as the blood is sent in rivulets where it clotted and broke away from the thigh beneath, violence blooming. Split-colour pectorals so near to him and a handsome face threatening in its unexpected beauty. Such a prize should be all his own to keep and take from Theastone too. Thought as he stares into that moonlit eye and struggles to peer elsewhere. Aezhyrrael's eyes roll as he makes to shove him in a quick motion against himself, sending him then against his car. Against the door leading to the back seat of the abyss he was put to so long ago now.

Calix yowls for perhaps the first time in pained, defiant complaint. Draihari fangs growl over him, flush to his body heedless of pain. For moments the breathing turning to panting in frustration and thrill. To destroy him to tears again. Aezhyrrael resists.

“I don’t think, I know.” Calix answers, but his voice was husky against the door while the heel of his injured leg lifts as he eases the weight upon it. He doesn’t think there was any damage to the bone… Therefore, walking would only be a matter of willpower. That, he can manage.

"Allow me to untie you." He relents, writhing against him with hips and the long limbs prickling at the ropes. The silhouette of the bag on the roof, if Calix looked, was split and in all ways destroyed-- save where the food itself hid from cruel talons. The skeletal claws pawing as Aezhyrrael rolls his hips against him with a purr and unties him as he allows himself the freedom of air to be upon him again in insatiable proximity.

He feels Aezhyrrael’s body against his and pinches his eyes shut. His entire body, not just his leg, screamed for him to stop this jostling, pulling, pressing. Every sore muscle tensed and trembled beyond exhaustion as his shoulders finally, finally released. His wrists, cold moments ago, hot with shaving pain. He feels his hips over his and is stabbed in the gut by a stake of… some wretched feeling he was too tired to parse and catalog. He whines in agony as his body was tested for its resilience, face turning hot against the car door which felt suddenly frozen.

"Cruel binds for wolf flesh, are they not?" He gasps as another strand of rope is freed from the suit- feeling the thorns prickling his own skin as he rescues him from further torture. Unrolled and unravelled by molesting hands unafraid to violate.

“And you’re not standing so close just for leverage, are you…?” He growls low, dangerous. But airy. Under duress in his mind. When he felt the final loop fall, he brought his arms forward with a gasp while they screamed at this new configuration. Pulled back in tightest cruelty for hours as they had been.

“Nnnh…” For moments, he remained put to savour the freedom, rolling his forehead to the chilled vehicle’s surface. And carefully rested his sole back to the asphalt. “Thank you.” He breathes, and immediately regretted it. Rather than contend with that lapse, he pushes himself back, reaching for the damned bag of food. Spurred by some fury that gave strength to his mind and body, he curled his fingers white-knuckled over the torn paper and rolls it further. Over the damage Aezhyrrael inflicted upon it and leads the way to the doors. Yes, with a limp. But his fury at the absurdity of it all burned so much hotter than his leg.