The kabals had been restless lately. And just like sharks they circled the figurative pavement of every majour company as if in some expectation.

Calix had yet to come close to discerning exactly why their night-eyes were so fixed on the trading companies that shipped in and out of Theastone. The obvious answer would be that they were simply looking to raid as they always had.

But this prodding was intimate and precise. Lord Aurastor was convinced he was being targeted above all other directors and had called Calix months ago to ask for his undivided attention once more. So be it.

It was no different from the usual work at all, though it did see him across the better southern half of the metro of Arune. He would sit at the harbour and observe as he always had. More than half of his job was merely that. Sitting and watching. Which served him well enough, he supposed. It made the dangerous parts seem just a little more easy to justify to himself.

He reaches up to scratch at the slightly indented scars at his right jawline and notes that he needed a shave soon. Perhaps tonight.

Eyes, divided into a rare brown and blue-grey, settle with casual dictation upon the bodies at the harbour. Men worked their backs swinging cargo in and out of multi-decker ships or simply handling the equipment that did a better job. Or malfunctioned terribly.

The Draihari frequently orchestrated such mishaps. That they might scavenge the scraps in the bay when all lights were out.

The corner of the shipping container from the last incident still poked out at lowest tide- when two moons pressed it into a sigh out to sea. Away from Theastone’s breakwater.

He noticed Draihari never traveled alone. Not like the Valar he would sometimes see. Their noses up and focus fixed on whatever held enough importance to beckon their attention. Calix noted that Valar were less likely to wander for the sake of wandering. The lingering? That was for Draihari.

And they never lingered alone.

Although they hardly made themselves conspicuous. A pair would pass the docks and sometime later the same pair or another would wander near and poise in predatory observation.

It was obvious to Calix that they were as ever intrigued by what came in and out of Theastone. It was his own people’s endless business-focus and propensity not to notice the details that made his work so in-demand. Remarkable what one saw with eyes wide open. Sometimes the wrong things.

Asra passed beyond the heath in the winter cardinal minutes past but the breath of the sea kept Arune warm. Humid.

Calix lit a cigarette and took a drag as he watches the lights flicker on over the docks.

Several ships were waiting in the bay distant and if he squints he thinks he can see the light of the starwell even further beyond. It was only truly easy to see in the dead of night. Like a band of translucent silk viewed through frosted glass.

Quiet steps pass behind him and he glances over a shoulder.

Years prowling willingly under Arunean spires had familiarised the Draihari with Theastone's winding districts and expensive dockyard for a long time now. They were familiar with the companies here and trade out of the bay every evening and morrow.

Familiar with the binds of mortal clothes for such a long time now. Suits, sweaters. Dress shoes in unthinkable indulgence.

Many others chose to remain in Niskerra where might might be remarkably unchanged- the Spectra's enormous cargo ships disallowed from entering the bay to Helevorn for fear of them tearing through the landscape.

This, Aezhyrrael had heard some time ago in rumour by the docks.

It was a need for eyes in all places that some of the Kabals had come here at all. With them, the Black Rite presided over the dark innards of Theastone where fewer still saw any need to tread.

Occasionally draihari might be heard in the blackest nights fighting with upstarts and rival Kabals. Other times stalking on the other side of glass shopfronts and beneath the shadows of the skyscrapers above. Terrible, dark swathes of monstrous seduction a strange thing in an empire not meant for them.

In taking Theastone's lifeblood as their own, the Kabals were seen in suit-dressed shadows now: credit flipping, possessing the weapons of man from tongue to hands. They had learned of the trading companies and the blood deemed most valuable paved in dull metal and holographic paper. Fit to make mortal eyes so greedy if given enough. So subservient to all desires, if offered enough.

They had learned their ways in dangerous intimacy. Such a thing making an easy living in Theastone for all their kind.

Aezhyrrael, prince of the Black Rite, presided in the self-same indulgent fashion with a long suit tailored for his body pinched at the waist. Claws in the gore of his work for his Divine, he prowled. He liked to fight. Liked to contest that which he thought belonged to the Kabal and not to hyuron hands.

Now in the district of man and their precious dockyards. He waited. As he had for several nights. The same gun and the same blades company in the other seat of his car for the same night every one.

Longer than several nights. The trading companies possessed the blade that Aezhyrrael sought in their guts somewhere. Night-eyes peered from tinted windows for hours and hours as Kabalites prowled and harassed the dockyards. No way to keep draihari out truly without such excessive locks. Machinery not enough

Not greed. This was the way of things: he had grown tired of his false Divine. The Kabal's power had never been meant for him for so long.

Aezhyrrael had come to know the very name of the once who had taken his thing. Not yet where it might be awaiting his claws.

He could make guesses. He knew the names of the same ships and their liveries as they crawled in and out of the dockyard at all times, prying night-eyes familiar with hyuron schedules. Regimented creatures all. They did so like the same thing, again and again.

It made it easy to remember their containers, pulled open by claws and torn through at nights. Most rarely, men were maimed for it in peculiar accidents.

It was a lesson learned years ago that they remain together. That they would die easily for it otherwise.

In familiarity with their predictability... they were also familiar with their shadow following in the most sublime intimacy of all.

The same silhouette spent the same nights amongst the containers and sea breeze with them. Smoke and the smallest night-eye of a cigarette difficult not to notice. Impossible not to smell over that of metal and fish and clinical tech-things. The draihari were poised to watch in return, eventually.

Aezhyrrael would rarely see him distant when he left as they did. When the moons were darkest in the sky and when the dawn paled the sky both. Comments made under hissing breaths eventually of a long coat watching them from far and then vanishing.

That their admirer parted when they did was never coincidence. Never some mistake of whose shadow they saw.

-

It would be some time before they were certain of his presence; for risk of violating the wrong creature, they were well aware of consequence. Of the strength that would be required to restrain any mroth'fli- to capture, properly, the right one.

Aezhyrrael on this night lingered some distance from the docks. Some streets away first, parked in a shipping alley where he would not hear a thing for some while.

He dressed for this. A suit double breasted cut a shadow open down the center of his slender chest where a neat turtleneck concealed his body again, necklace over it. An heirloom of pretty power.

Out of sight, a pair of black slacks shaped his skinny legs tipped by heeled shoes.

Their voyeur cut down a street nearby some hours ago, watched from the narrowed gaze of a window pulled down only to a clear view of the docks beyond the street. The sea itself glimmered under duress of the ships still out to sea- under scrutiny of Theastone's lighthouses and dock-lights.

Under scrutiny of the Starwell on days that it would be seen. The Fathom below deeper still.

Their night-wolf above though. Oh, pleasure.

Aezhyrrael, in abject fascination of their visitor, played with the same cigarettes in curiosity of the man's mind.

Banal. Drags nothing to his satisfaction. Wherein was the pleasure? Perhaps in burning the throat and lungs with ash and black smoke. This he inhaled also in trying to comprehend- in justifying such profoundly foolish curiosity as wanting to be within the investigator's head.

His car's very innards sought to sigh wordlessly from the parted window as it breathes the tar out to sea, ash chasing it from behind the glass as a long claw flicks the cigarette with it.

The other claw fiddled with things in rising thrill after hours, nails petting over radio and fans in distraction.

All for this night, he was groomed. Hair gathered back into a decorative high tail was tucked behind him against his head rest and his sleeves were rolled to his elbows only until he would see his retinue return.

Makeup on display in pleasured loyalty to his own Kabal.

-

The same draihari prowled by the dockyard and presided as they had done; in observation of all other things this night. Tension burning through in pleasure. The dockyard as silent as it always was. Hyuron, even in strength above any eldar, avoided the sight and soundless silence of draihari.

They did nothing. Were there and away again. Near again some time later and stalking away at the sight of a ship docking. At the bristling on fangs and napes in over-excitement dredged from nothing.

This ship was not Lord Aurastor's. It was nothing to their use.

Thank Zhaine for it. That would've been frustrating.

Both disappear into darkness again as they did on all nights. The same path made for them as they skulked away in the same silence in slacks and shirts meant to betray some secret after-work pleasure by the beasts.

The same man above them hid away in the same place he always did. With the same cigarette he always breathed. Foolishly tempting thing.

A third kabalite- it would take that many simply to carry the investigator- emerges behind him in some hurry. Tall, with night-black hair bound into a high tail.

The kajal of the Black Rite perhaps her most vibrant colouring, as they meet flush to one another and her grey eyes dive into his mis-matched ones.

She growls a horrible, husky noise to warn him to silence, forbidden from speaking to him but flashing fangs.

Calix might turn to meet her in time for her held yeshyidi to plunge into his abdomen instead of the hip, liquid sedative gushing within from the barb trapped into his skin. The other hand brought up to capture his mouth with a hiss.

Such was Stilltide-- meant to paralyse a creature from gaze to legs in promise of his coming with them. In promise of his witness to their designs. It was a pleasurable, painful poison that sent the nerves all to slumber while his body was their burden to carry away.

And as his larger assassin awaited the Still-tide to carve through him, she claws at his mouth with a thick linen to catch his voice and keep him silent.

-

It takes all three draihari to carry the investigator back to the car. All three of them to fold him onto the back seat where he's made to rest rather neatly, in fact. Shirt perhaps bloody from the stabbing.

As it takes all three of them to bind him in rope first in inconvenience that he might waken and try to escape before they were done speaking. That they could not have. He would be forced to endure ropes around limbs and legs and duct tape across a pale, stubbled snout. Best keep him silent if he tries to make noise.

When the creature was secure, Aezhyrrael simply locks the rear doors to keep him within. Then peers in teasing through the rear-view mirror first in thrill, night-eyes shimmering unsettlingly pale.

Calix would note the interior cleaned of marks- perhaps aside from blood stained into the leather in places, but never mind it- and the floor and back seats of the car turned over by bondage and a discarded overcoat folded over one seat.

All light within was pitchest black. Despite, and of course because of, gauri vision so pitiful in the dark.

The sight of him drew a hiss from Aezhyrrael who turns around from the driver's seat with a nasty little grin- open admiration as he stares at him. A gaze speaking of murder.

"Nnhnnhnn!" A presiding chuckle cuts itself on the rasp of an inhale. "You deigned to come this night. As all other nights, isn't that right, my pet?"

He speaks to him in Arunaic licked by an accent of black contempt. Pleasured as he admires his torture openly- his paralysis. His slumbering ribs and the breaths pushed out of nostrils hardly flared in uselessness. It set Aezhyrrael's loins to flame in sick delight of it.

"But this is the way of all curious creatures, isn't it? They get into situations they may not expect. Or perhaps desire." He sighs then.

The split hair and split eyes fascinate him instantly- and he cannot look away from them. Admiring the colours openly in frustration. A desire to keep him. Even as he could not writhe at all. Would scarcely resist a knife through his viscera.

Oho... this he would.

Aezhyrrael turns over in his seat serpentine and slithers towards the back with a head cocked, abyssal hair falling neatly over his clothed shoulders. In one hand, a yeshyidi balances neatly between claws and the other pulls him towards the back of the car with a wild grin.

"You have been watching us intimately, gauri. I don't like when my things are watched."

It would be some strain to join him in the back with barely space between them as Aezhyrrael clambers between the seats, balancing on a leg to join him.

"Mmmhnnh..."

The empty hand of his reaches to tear the first few buttons of Calix's shirt apart from their fastenings, gesturing at him with claws and the yeshyidi then. Aezhyrrael pulls himself close enough to bite with just a bit more reaching.

"Mmh! It would be a funny thing if your Lord Aurastor knew of this. I suppose he is soundly long asleep by now. And you are not, yet."

He drags the yeshyidi uselessly, dryly over the bare chest and his gaze is caught for moments upon the fluffy pectorals and muscle. So different from themselves.

Eyeing it and then Calix in some anticipation of him knowing its purpose.

Calix stood immediately, cigarette dropped to the salt-soaked pavement as a body so much larger than his was against him and-

He winces, fight response halted so quickly by his sheared flesh blooming with fire before he tries to grapple her away. Just a second to falter, his- He halted just long enough to be reconfigured with her behind him once again, arms taken out of his peripherals.

Oh- the… This was like vertigo? What did she… Hit him with?

A second pair of hands steal what was left of his rapidly dwindling strength and he- sways against them suddenly. Fingers, curled in white-knuckle panic against black fabric, release.

He was no fool to this. He know what it was. When he strains his mind to grab, push, pull, throw and his body betrayed him- it could only be Eldar bio-engineering.

Stilltide toxin. He thinks with what sense he had left as hope very quickly finds itself chased into a dead-end. He groans against the hand over his mouth with barely the strength to contest the linen pulled through his teeth just after.

In horror, he felt the moment his knees buckled. He could feel everything yet, he notes with growing dread. Every bruise forming under their rush to secure him and every spline’s twist of rope over his body. His mind screamed to move. Tore at him to answer. Clawed at him to respond but nothing did. Disconnected.

He’d heard of Stilltide from his friends and colleagues that worked in the department. It was… Expensive to craft. Which said so much to him in moments his mind could not speed to compartmentalize just now, stuffed into the backseat of a blacked-out sedan and hearing the locks click behind his head and at his feet.

He couldn’t even groan, shift. What fresh terror dreamed up in the depths of the Dark Below gave inspiration to this black design? Emperor’s throne.

His waist was on fire and he can feel his blood having pooled against his shirt- warm. Cold, somewhat even still.

His body, a prison. A cold sweat had broken from his forehead in his panic before the heat of his muscles left him- not dead.

He realises with fear he could not express that he was breathing.

Making himself breath.

A tremulous sensation of viper’s teeth shave his nerves from spine to nape as he must—

Make himself breath.

The dark imprisoned his mind in the sensation alone. He could hear it. His own breathing. Mismatched eyes stare in a deadened horror at nothing in particular though he does note that he can still move them. When they flicker at his behest, it did little to spark any sense of hope.

What cruelty was this design, he wonders. His eyes lid slightly as a car door shuts with a hollow sound. Like a fucking seal on his fate.

Eyes quickly flicker aside to meet the look that fired at him from the front seat. Oh, horror. It had been years since he’d seen Draihari night-eyes so close and looking directly into his own. He felt his spine complain with a chill as he maintains his breath- quicker now.

Shallow and if he was not looking at the creature’s eyes with such devoted fear, he would worry that he was hyper-ventilating himself.

You deigned to come this night. As all other nights, isn't that right, my pet?

He had. And he thought he had been quite inconsistently consistent. That was the first rule of casing, after all. To not be bloody obvious about it.

Calix breathes. Where did he make his mistakes?

His eyes clearly betray his fear. The slightest way his eyes glaze as he reminds himself to flex his diaphragm. One of the last things yet under his control. Oh, indignity.

Every one of his fibers begged him in screaming agony to do something. Danger was here. His hair laying in perfect whorls over his tailoring. Eyes of terrifying ghost-flesh.

His breathing came in quick labours. Lead in his skull begged him to sleep while the rest of him could cry in the horrific torture of utter helplessness. And it was his fault, of course.

He tries to slow his breathing but each and every inhale was so throne-damned unsatisfying he could scream. Please. I want to scream.

The look in his eyes subtly begged. Glistening with the distinct shimmer of hopeless expectation as he watches the Draihari’s form emerge like a daemon from between the front seats.

He forces another breath and follows his eyes with a dread particularly devoid of any dreams. He expected only nightmare henceforth and could not even rise to meet it.

You have been watching us intimately, gauri. I don't like when my things are watched.

Calix felt sick at the way the beast stared at him. He could still hear his own heart the way it raced. It was loud in his ears.

He’s surprised when a bead of sweat tracks down his brow. Of course. He was panicking. And felt his mind begin to fray under the stress, eyes flickering down to watch as horrendous claws come to pluck at his tie and buttons.

He breathes. Aezhyrrael would feel the barely perceptible tremors of a body desperate to shiver but unable to. Tiny contractions barely allowed through by the toxin and leaving Calix’s eyes glistening in soulful frustration.

Mmh! It would be a funny thing if your Lord Aurastor knew of this. I suppose he is soundly long asleep by now. And you are not, yet.

His phone was in his coat pocket, he thinks in dismay. Lord Aurastor, for all his eccentricity, would do something. But this thought was quickly miles away, eyes fixed on what he understood to be the antidote. At least, he presumed. Why else would a creature so foul dangle it over his flesh like so?

He takes a shallow, strained breath and turns his eyes up to Aezhyrrael with contempt so dark. It strained his eyes at this angle, unable to even move his damned head.

His heart pounded hard enough that he could feel himself dizzying with the force of his traitorous bloodstream. He wanted to scream. Bite. Tear. All sensations drowning in the whirlpool of the look he offered up at Aezhyrrael.

Aezhyrrael could imagine his struggle well, out of sight. Pleasured terror as lucid as Asra's very fire roiled deep within his own mind as he awaited his retinue's return, car and alley bathed in black anticipation for it.

Always the payment of blood first. There was no kinder way to demand that a hyuron subsume in the bliss Stilltide offered than with the yeshyidi's embedding by force. Then pleasure as all was stripped away. The splitting of nerves from the spine forcing the mind to enjoy the torture of sensation raw.

Eyes glazed over in sensation of it for some time. And how did it feel? To be bound to the ties of your captor's intentions?

Bared claws drag over his wheel and tear the leather in easy divinity- imagining flesh- when the shadows come into view in the dark writhing. The investigator in their hands numbed. A pile of mroth'fli nerves perhaps already flayed.

He saw the blood on his shirt as he was passed to the back door of the car and the smell of it overwhelms the prince's senses when the body is set over his leathers. The smell of Stilltide distant. Where it wept from the wound not enough to stop it from blooming within him.

Aezhyrrael gorged on this in the terror peering back at him empty of all life otherwise. Terror below the surface a scream of the damned and yet-- serenity pulled over the skin. Horrendously beautiful design as it was.

He poises serpentine upon a throne of bliss to be bidden with such hopeless terror; the way it painted a glistening canvas of growing sweat in such emptiness. The car his very domain.

His new pet locked into blackness. Perhaps doom. From where any could possibly know of him at all.

He cackles at the sight of him and makes his threats. His observations. Blackest malevolence.

The truth was simpler. That they had seen him at times and the anxious among them relayed such thoughts to their prince- that he be a foe or ally to them. That at first he was curious, rare prey split down his phenotype and then that he was something much more frightening.

That he was then their enemy and Aezhyrrael must have him.

Dread beads to the surface of writhing nerves that are hardly perceptible at all to black claws.

It drew sounds of venomous bliss from Aezhyrrael and the claws pounce, gripping him.

"Ohhnnn… you are useless, aren't you?" He howls. The tumult within silent- for what could it do? The very strain of his terror thrumming through Aezhyrrael's aether and cauterising his veins.

He appraises him with a claw curling over chest and neck pulled open, the long talon of a thumb plucking the musculature of a thick throat before raising. Raising.

Silence punishable. He could cut him open for it.

He could eviscerate him for a plot well of his own doing. He could feed him alive to the draihari that prowled around the sedan and allow them the pleasure of dismembering him with fangs-- that he feel all bliss and be fed on Stilltide until he succumbed.

Eyes beg him, wailing at him. He sensed this. Wild in turn as he stares back and simply dares him to do anything.

The rising of his chest no better than a cadaver, in lucidity of every breath. He hears panting, the sweat, in one as good as dead already.

The tremors. They tried. How they tried to escape. Oh... mroth'fli. He would have more of this terror. He cared not for its results-- only its sensations. His fear.

When Aezhyrrael suspects his captive breathing for himself for moments overlong-- he grips his skin with claws to pause him. To suffocate him for the pleasure of it.

"Nnnhnnhnn...-- I am afraid you will not be seeing Aurastor again." Aezhyrrael speaks then, horrible noise.

He leans closer to bid him to such venom.

Oh, but he would like this, wouldn't he... the way his pulse fires in desperation beneath him. Fear that could not hide. Aezhyrrael's eyes rolling in pleasure as his claws rest over bare skin and he taunts him openly with the antidote.

It was true enough that he would find no satisfaction in the answers he sought before the man was simply obliterated from within by his own terror. Aezhyrrael sees it in the way his gaze whimpered at him in this terror earned so easily.

The car itself was silent. In silence. A prolonged mind-game where Aezhyrrael himself seldom spoke amidst the tides of such violence. Not panicking but subsumed in the focus of prolonging this.

Fear his deepest pleasure. The hopelessness ripped from the investigator's own soul into Aezhyrrael's very being as it laced him with adrenaline, thrill, pleasure. His own loins burned in arousal at his torment.

This he could enjoy for many years longer, he thinks.

He lifts the yeshyidi with a hiss between them, a fang weeping so slowly. The liquid thick. Transparent. Like the water of some wretched savour's sanctity. He lifts it when he sees the turmoil within his captive's very soul and meets frustration with such willing desire to have him suffer.

Aezhyrrael presents his own throat first in desire unattainable as the yeshyidi comes between them both. A horrible, thorned thing in the dark hardly visible.

Lifted over the ghoulish violet tongue, it would remain for horrible, horrible mortal moments. More than just a couple.

The first single droplet comes-- devoured.

"It seems that your antidote is only a finite saviour, I am afraid." He narrates. Clinical, theatrical, with eyes lidded in some far-away orgasm of pain from witness alone. The pounding heart sensed from where he sat to him.

The antidote would do nothing for him. This he knew.

Pounding, pounding within his own head in the pleasurable heat of agony.

Aezhyrrael's bare claw drops to his captive's thick chest in fascination as he claws him down his throat. Wondering at the way his blood clots within beneath such sublime silence.

"As we have found you, now, should I waste my time in keeping you? Should this antidote be yours? Perhaps not, for all of your curiosity."

He questions himself aloud as the claws dig deeper into his fur. Deeper into skin. The bliss of the Stilltide allowing him to weep and cry and scream at all sensations within his own mind like trapped prey. Aezhyrrael understood this in all of its rancid elation.

"Are you worthy of knowing the truth of us?" Aezhyrrael wonders aloud. He sighs.

Claws gouge into the offered chest as the yeshyidi lingers. Another drop of antidote falling between claws that groaned to be within him.

"Perhaps not."

Closer and closer for all their isolation. None could see into the tinted glass that imprisoned Calix's every bit of wretched sinew to his seat.

"Perhaps you have told your Lord Aurastor many things about us. Perhaps you could be a deceiver," he hisses, nape bristling in his own excitement as he writhes closer. Unable to be away. "but perhaps you know many more things than we..."

Allowing him these long, straining movements where he was simply touched. Simply gripped bruisingly and clawed.

Many moments simply awaiting the end.

Then Aezhyrrael's brows raise. Eyes lighting up in morbid curiosity.

He peers up at him with a grin in perplexion suddenly.

"Perhaps you know of Mornfeir?"

Aezhyrrael's eyes burn furiously as he nears him and stares into his own, night-eyes flickering in temptation to devour him.

"Your answer?" He asks in knowing. Asks with a throat laced by tar and smoke in sublime knowing. Eyes met to eyes.

And would he tremble? Would his foul little body manage to shudder under the touch or pass out first? How far would he stretch the duress of such a soul bound so tight within his own bones? Oh..

He demanded this of him. An answer. Answer, mroth'fli. He demands again with a sharp breath given into horrendous rising ribs. Not bound into his chest of empty nightmare.

He saw the abyssal terror behind the eyes of his trapped thing and cackles- impossibly aroused. Heart pounding in time with his captive's in purest black euphoria.

A third droplet of antidote flicked away to elsewhere in the car with one theatrical writhing of his wrist. Such a waste.

For Calix, every pause was a chasm dredged in black pitch splitting his mind wider apart.

His vision, clear as crystal, would darken at the limbs as his breathing was willed by his consciousness.

His fear, tasting of salt and blood, was not carved with the blade of death but the weapon of his own mind’s imagination. He knew what the Draihari were capable of and needed not so much nudging from the daemon’s words to be catapulted into the abyss of suspecting his suffering was to be a slow burn on the rack of insanity.

His was now a night so cursed. Moments away had he been from avoiding this. Perhaps.

Aezhyrrael’s claws needle his throat like the fangs of a snake and-

Calix’s eyes took on a new colour of despair as those claws press his throat closed. His mind screamed immediately from the razor’s edge of consciousness. Now this-? Now this?

Not even a jolt. Not even a sound. Aezhyrrael would feel his pulse slow to almost nothing at all.

Darkening eyes watch in silent suffering as the compound beads at the blade of the yeshyidi and is consumed pointlessly.

The release of his pressing fingers would be met with only a gentle return of his pulse and several short breaths in broken staccato.

The claws at his chest elicit another barely noticeable tremor beneath his ribs. Purest terror rested in stillness beneath his skin while dismay cosmic glittered in dull shine behind his eyes.

Are you worthy of knowing the truth of us?

Calix could not listen for what he thinks could be minutes. He breathes, eyes flickering blankly ahead as he anticipates that any moment his battle for simple air, simple freedom of his own body, would give way to earnest desire for death only. When does it begin?

And when would it end once it did?

His eyes flicker at the flashes of pain over his chest. Raw. Worse for having no other protection against them. Pure rent skin.

Perhaps you know of Mornfeir?

He didn’t hear him.

Your answer?

He looks up, piteous but somewhat more alert. A weight in his throat he knew to be dread kept him pinned where else the Stilltide maybe had not reached. Calix could only meet his look.

Draihari always played with their food. He knew these questions to be worth nothing more than to be fodder laid at the head of his torture. He would see his mind rent alongside his body. Any minute now.

Another bead of sweat tracks down his temple and he battles his own urge to wipe the tickle away. Oh- Oh. Insanity incipient.

His throat wheezes with another gentle breath he wills himself to take. Aezhyrrael is fixed with his expectant gaze devoid of all hope. A tiring fear thorned his very aether. Like the fear of a creature that knew only fear. Calix could scarcely remember anything beyond the black ice of this terror.

The daemon’s face, glowing gentle in the dark, was his sole memory.

When… When does it start?

Aezhyrrael met him in the dark feral, his captive meat as clear as the night sky to him. Hair split like a comet's cold tail forcing his eyes to it. Insulting in how it demanded his abeyance.

He could tear it out, claim it for his own. As claws caressed neck and throat of a thing much warmer than he.

Would he like this?

He asks him with a wild gaze as his fingers moved in dance with one another across supple flesh. Chest to throat- he felt the hairs on his nape rise as he petted over him. Clawed him open.

Awaiting screams that he knew could never come. Not without the release of the injection offered. Upon him in intensity with it, mocking, taunting, as he watches into eyes for satisfaction. Suspecting greedily that he would simply be given such torment-- the way it wept from every fibre of his motionless flesh.

The way he felt desperation writhe coiling within perhaps both their minds.

It was erotic. Hypnotising.

The pulse lessens, lessens. His own skull no longer so wrought by the thundering of the beast's littler heart. For moments his mind bids his gaze in searching curiosity as he wonders if he had simply killed him in a dance not meant for a mortal mind.

Eyes look into a body deprived of all its presence. Only the dead gaze looking back. Begging him. Or perhaps already warped into a pretty image of abyss. Who was to say? He thought in black pleasure.

The antidote does nothing for him. Not like arousal staking him when he hearts the breaths.

Unsteady, desperate to break through his body- but not so fast.

So little in breath and yet so much given away by those handsome, trembling eyes.

It did not matter, in the end, whether the investigator listened or not. Aezhyrrael's mind whorled in the black pleasure of suffering as he sought to simply unweave him for the task of disrupting them. Of trying to prevent him a long-awaited fate. But no mroth'fli could comprehend such a thing true, could it, after all?

He would demand again. And again. His plaything until he had long used all his aether. Flaying him beneath the chains of torment until his body could simply withstand the veil for no longer.

A perfect, repugnant little tribute to Zhaine while he bided his time towards fate.

Such horrors that he could imprint into a mind so innocent were of blackest bliss to him for as long as he would have him. And effortless it would be- useless he would be to stop him.

He would see him broken in the maw of oblivion for his imposition.

Clawing him. The blood at the end of his nails enlivening to the senses and still not enough. The antidote useless upon skin with nowhere to go.

When would this end?

When he was satisfied.

Until.

Epiphany forces Aezhyrrael's hand to curl in some abeyance as he bows his head near enough to bite. Near enough to press daemoniac lips to the tape holding the investigator's secrets within.

The answer never comes. This Aezhyrrael expects. This he would not be denied from. Meeting the eyes with level madness and a bounding pulse shuddering far above his captive's own.

"With no answer..." He growls, the sound low within his throat. Poising over him with claws and the yeshyidi pointed away.
Aezhyrrael's gaze drags down the offered face in torment as his eyes hungrily chase a bead of loose sweat.

He allows him his terror for moments more and he would lean over him in orgasm deep within the mind in turn- like silk laid over his nerves and set alight in the agony he adored.

He would lift his claw to collect that bead of sweat onto a talon long enough to pierce the throat.

Where he collects it onto a pale tongue and his brows raise. Performative, raw pleasure.

He laughs. For mortal moments. A horrid and deliberate sound all of forgotten mercy.

"Nnnhhoh… that's right. You cannot talk to me at all. What use are you to me, then..."

A cackle drawn into one single, languid breath has him forcing the same nasty claws beneath the duct tape and giving it a harsh tug- ripping it from his mroth'fli's skin and flicking it onto the seat beside him. The stubble beneath catching his eye as he frees his warm mouth and he wonders in a joyous- over-possessive- instant if the tape would shred the hair with it.

Aezhyrrael hisses as he closes the distance and pins his throat with one hand, the other tugging his open shirt aside to jam the yeshyidi's needle-blade into the tissue of a breast.

It would be painful. It would be torment. It would force his suffering as the liquid was drawn into the sensitive muscle by force.

All of this to delight the prince.

But perhaps it would be some release within torment as he would be forced to speak with him soon. Perhaps.

The needle was drawn out as quickly as Aezhyrrael bent closer in admiration like a black viper awaiting an opportunity to bite simply. This, in earnest, he was. An ecstasy it was to drive all Spectra-abeyant hyuron into the high rungs of abomination by torture alone.

If he lived through this, he would surely be broken.

He would be obliterated if not. To be a dark-desiring pet for Aezhyrrael to ruin after all, with more answers than before now.

If he lived. Aezhyrrael gorged on the abyssal terror and felt his own soul pulled by it in pleasure rare by a captive mroth'fli.

Given now an antidote to reverse some of his horrendously thrilling paralysis- they might speak to one another. And Aezhyrrael would not wait for its effects to take hold before he clasps Calix around his throat again and squeezes in testing impatience. Testing breath. The fear empyrean horror- Aezhyrrael's shadow closer. Overwhelming. Claws and fangs given to Calix as he.

Pets him.

Terrible claws pluck across flesh and face as he rises to meet their eyes to one another in clarity; pleasure secondary, ebbing from the pits of his arousal. For this moment.

This close, he notices the particolour eyes in the full bloom of their despair and it twists his gut in pleasure of the sight.

"Answer. I will not ask the question again."

He decided in an instant with eyes glittering feral that he would pull all of this creature's skin apart for his strange beauty. If reprehensible; if worthy of being made into a pelt.

Calix’s sight darkened in strain to continue to perceive. His sweat collected in some mocking display as he-

Wills another breath.

Aezhyrrael’s laugh stakes him in fear so raw. He almost wished to be hurt now. Let it become predictable at long last, please. Let my mind retreat in its long awaiting to do so.

What use are you to me, then…

Calix barely hears him, his ears ringing cacophonous with blood thick and quickened with terror as he watches the fangs display themselves above.

He doesn’t even know where his hands were. Behind, under him? He retreated his psyche inward in these moments, unable to perceive the daemon for longer.

Pain blooms over his face as he’s torn from his briefly quietened mind- His eyes are alert upon Aezhyrrael once again, wet with hot tears against his will and a strangled, torn gasp ripped from gently parted lips.

All he could do was watch each movement with despairing anticipation and have his breath stolen by his tormentor.

His mind incomprehensible to himself for moments of white noise, eyes rolling back in pain as the needle-blade sheared into him easily again. The same pain as earlier but amplified by his inaction. Every muscle still on side of his mind sent its futile will toward the spot in deepest desire to make it stop.

Protect, protect, eject.

His skin barely shudders beneath the surface. A whisper of willpower easily neutered by such casually wielded darkness. By such—

By-

His eyes widen just barely as a thousand needles and razors waken deadened nerves. His next breath comes just that little bit easier, deeper. It was almost a choke for how it surprised him in its unexpected fullness.

His breast burned just that much more while his core flexed against his ability to command it so just yet.

“Hhph-…”

His body gives a useless jolt and his flesh tightens in pain obvious to even casual observation. His mismatched gaze fixes in agonized focus onto nothing in the darkness as his brain screams painfully in reconnection to his sore muscles. It was no pleasant, joyous reunion.

It was relief dipped in venom. A knife in a lover’s back. Betrayal…Again…!

And it gave way to a shiver unlike any given to him before.

He could breathe again, his teeth clenching as the lines of his shoulders tense.

A dark look fixes to Aezhyrrael as his neck regains some tone beneath his fingers. A look fueled by as much pain as fear as he felt his throat squeezed again.

“Kkhh-!”

His eyes widen a little more earnestly as the whisper of a grimace began to crease his eyes at the petting. Such… mocking-! Their faces near- his own eyes wet from pain as they roll away at first. And then come to return the look shared.

A pitiful sound chokes free. The turquoise invasive, violating gemstones. Aezhyrrael would be met with a flickering look that quickly falters and must be chased to make it return.

“Ne-…” The beginning of a word, entirely breath, choked in pain. “Never-…” His voice was raw, raspy, and as he spoke it cracked with effort. “Heard-… of… it…” His eyes deliberately blink and he coughs gently under Aezhyrrael's hand. A sound mostly air through his teeth.

His shoulders and core shudder.

This was where it has started, he thinks. Now for pointless mind games. Incomprehensible cruelty. Not mercy. Always an angle.

His gaze drifts into the dark, distracted, though quickly becomes alert and fixes upon Aezhyrrael again. He manages a soft frown, pained only, twisting his features as he tries to lick his raw lips.

As horrible claws pet down him and his fluffy pectorals, cackling and mocking, he admires him. Deep within the black crevices of his mind that no other might find- he does. Hyuron desire to be so proper for the Spectra a seductive little thing. It was in some small way that the investigator cut a pretty silhouette in the dark, amongst all things not meant for them.

That was not what enticed him the most. As eyes flicker between terror and chest unmoving.

Tears captured above such a silhouette were as beautiful.

What Aezhyrrael would do to assure that his creature wept at all moments before the end. That he would be free of all tears and all blood slaked in the making of his own biology. At the end of all things. Whether at the decision of himself or Aezhyrrael.

The Stilltide does remind him of why he enjoyed such deliberate pleasure.

There could be no end, could there. Not truly. Not without a little choking. A little despair or torment beyond a breaking of the mind.

In nerves stripped, such stoic tolerance prevails past the duct tape and bindings and the very sight of it boiled Aezhyrrael's blood to freezing. Imperial dignity even when made to face his designs.

This was as he liked it.

Of course. The investigator could stand to be a little more pleasured.

Tears and the stoic grimace of a lord yet unbroken still more than pleasure enough for Aezhyrrael. Eyes were feral on him in turn, a sickly green in the night and burning in gluttony when the split-colour gaze spills over into despair.

He would assure him of his service in all of the torture he could possibly desire. As his prince and captor would decide him to suffer.

Perhaps he would assure him with words also. Now that Aezhyrrael's mind is gripped by desires more fervent.

Be it, he tells himself with restrained arousal, that he would torture his new pet again simply until the thing was sufficiently used- if he could pry the secrets from such a simple mind. One broken in pain.

An involuntary gasp as the needle-blade connects surprises Aezhyrrael to hear it, and he does look at him. Meets him in a desire to utterly devour him in sweetest violence.

Surmising to himself with the sounds and the shuddering deep within that this toy simply likes the biting of the blade. A willing pain pet, perhaps.

Perhaps simply a creature wishing and begging in his purest soul for this torment to end- as the way of things when dealing with his ilk. All play to him. All sublimity.

To see Calix's eyes thrust into terror in his dreams would be a sweet thing this night.

He disregards the bondage on purpose and the locked doors trapping Calix in a cage beyond any horizon of relief. He would be simply swallowed by the dark moons of his draihari captors in any end.

Now that the needle-blade released itself from its bite- Aezhyrrael snaps to attention, squirming thinly-veiled as his nerves bounce. As his captive's nerves awaken in turn in not so long at all.

Practised, agonising pleasure was in observing the spasms. The shuddering of muscles against flesh as his prey began to waken again.

The shuddering of the air between their bodies insatiable and prickling Aezhyrrael in agony restrained- bound- all within Calix's body for longer than he had realised. He had wished to savour it for longer.
He imagines the terror in the unfocused gaze and gorges on it as sensation returns and he demands, and bites, and bites, and envenoms him without the breath to take into his lungs free again.

Aezzhyrrael can hardly resist as his hips roll with care and he leans over him. He would hear his answer. He would hear and consume every breath of his, he thinks instantly spurred by furious possession.

It eases his own arousal for only moments as he imagines fucking that throat into breathlessness as he whimpers and chokes without the control to stop him from stealing him entirely in such ferociously pleasurable indignity.

Petting his only solace in ferocity for he wished to tear through the mortal body and subsume it with his own.

Such pleasure he had given him.

Long looks dilate the prince's eyes in some sick design of joy. Pupils instantly contract in answer of the pitiful sounds as he roils between wanting to torture him raw and wishing to restrain. For his own sake as much as for the longer hunt.

Ne-...

A brow raises and swallows the air of his agonising breath, fangs parting and a grin savouring his anguish with sublime ease. He sighs against the broken air with pleasure untouched by torture- begging for it on a cold breath.

"Never heard of it..." Aezhyrrael answers, like black silk, in deliberation. In insult chosen to manifest as such. Some excuse to punish him and break him further.

His desire to brutalise Calix near consumed him and he shows the yeshyidi to an open wound clawed across his chest. He shows it as its fang scrapes through the laceration for just a gnawing moment.

"A pity."

Aezhyrrael watches the gaze drifting, body trembling. Oh, how it trembled. How it could awake dutifully to the pain given to it- and receive it with such awe and terror. Into the pits of abyss in horror unfathomable to a hyuron mind.

He wished to feed him visions and sensations of such immense annihilation that it would split his very nerves.

And.

The lick of lips spurs him and he reaches for him, a bare claw grabbing for a muscular jaw. Pulling him against himself and staring into that agonising, sore face. Where it already burned from the tape's abuse and now from claws upon his jaw and cheeks tracing every line.

Aezhyrrael grins at him in observation exceedingly pleased.
Ohn… but he could still use him. Yes, this creature could assist him.

"And yet you are familiar with Lord Aurastor. Enough to hunt for him. Isn't this right." He breathes, a cold sigh against the other's mouth and nose where he hovered so near. Like black ice gripping Asra's light for all he asked of him. Sensing something else for a moment that makes him grip him tighter, held to look at him.

With such possessive claws.

"Nnnhnn..." Aezhyrrael hums first as he allows himself to be envenomed also. In a curious moment.

He maintains his gaze before it rolls for just a moment towards his own gripping fingers and he grins as he immerses in the gathering pain and the way that such precious nerves recoiled and squirmed beneath him- yeshyidi plucking easy, superficial wounds across his chest.

"You were sent here by von Aurastor. And so you must know these lands and his wretched little company. Isn't that true."

Aezhyrrael monologues in basal Arunaic as he turns his head within his own wrenching hand. Cruel in its grip. Claws curling into the old scars and the stubble- that he pets in blood-motivated fascination.

"And if you have not heard its name spoken, you know well what your master does and what he steals. We both know that Mornfeir must be somewhere within his domain yet. Hnnnhnn..- perhaps you would be my key to such a thing." Said in cruel contemplation. Said with a desire to bite through his throat shown with licking fangs.

His breathes heaved as though he also regained his breath.

Need he explain more?

Of course not. Aezhyrrael coils over him and admires the binds and his captured gaze in open predation.

A torturous long sigh and moment in darkness absolute is when Aezhyrrael gorges on his growing pain. Growing aches and growing terror.

Calix might observe his open feasting on such intense fear as he grips him in place and, oh, the agony is transcendent in its delight. Reunion of brand to iron a deepest pleasure. Felt strongly as his own limbs turn to ice touching him. Felt in the agony wept from Calix's sweat and aether and how he writhed.

Fear builds in eye-rolling arousal and Aezhyrrael cackles. Cackles, laughs in horrid, rasping ecstasy gorged on in overstimulated thrill. The way of his kin.

The way of him in orgasm. Words simply a breath at the tip of his pale tongue. An ever-given promise of eternal darkness to him and the cruellest, most sublime torture otherwise. Ecstasy to say them.

"I think you are trapped here, in this car, my sorry gauri, between these fangs. And you will make chase to find what I am after. And if you disobey..."

He prods him with the antidote, yeshyidi sinking into a claw-brand on Calix's chest. A reminder as the cool venom prickles over fresh blood and coloured bruising.

A pity, he hears in miserable clarity as his freshly awakened nerves scream at the razor plucking at his wound.

He’s able to grimace gently by now and almost wished he could not. For surely his emoting was just a new colour of play to satisfy the mocking creature.

When he wets his lips carefully, with effort, even that was punished. He grunts when talons close around his jaw. His body jolts and mismatched eyes fix to the Draihari’s terrible own.

He could feel his breath hitch as it was bid to catch in his surprise for a moment. His body, awakening yet, trembled gently. His limbs, still dead, but oh- soon the needles, he suspected.

And yet you are familiar with Lord Aurastor. Enough to hunt for him.

Calix’s eyes flicker away for seconds in thought before returning in panic. Each breath, spark of tightened grip, word, seemed to bring a gentle flinch to the detective’s eyes.

“Nmm-…” His brows drop in some defeat before the near look.

The hair on his nape lifted visibly for all his thoughts and dread now racing. No fool, he understood the forming demand that began to shape in the creature’s mind.

This conversation was far from over, he suspects.

And follows Aezhyrrael’s gaze, unable to find any relief as his body began to regain itself. His mind overwhelmed suddenly with the flooding of information from his abused muscles. All they’d endured when disconnected from his brain came flooding in as if through a burst dam. The bruising, the stress. Like having a novel injected by instantaneous force, all words comprehended with claws upon the mind at once.

It gave his gaze a distance ill-timed. Neck wrenched by demanding claws as he complains with a grunt, body tensing in the seat.

And if you have not heard its name spoken, you know well what your-

Calix understood. What he didn’t understand yet was the word choice.
Perhaps you could be my key? Not needing to expend so many thoughts to simply breathe, he’s able to consider in greater nuance that his tormentor was insinuating moments far further in time than simply within this car.
Either prolonged interrogation or suggesting espionage on his behalf. Or both.

The Draihari’s sigh caused him to shudder. His own consideration and silence must have been a mistake as he observes a rising of something in his captor’s aether. His very touch felt arcelectric and Calix’s terrified flush only deepened. His limbs erupted into needles under and around him just then.

His mind unravels with a rolling of his eyes and a whimper of lost hope as his body lifts from the seat. A gentle seizing takes him as his nerves connect with incomprehensible number to his limbs, hands, fingers. Yet another betrayal his body inflicted upon his psyche and for what. It had abandoned him so readily over so little just earlier.

Despair wets his eyes as the ringing in his ears began to dissipate and gave way to the horrendous sound of a cackle made of nightmare and dark things. Of course. His suffering was a constant pleasure to this daemon from Niskerra.

He gasps, body settling in defeat with scarcely a lick of relief. And offers up a self-conscious, exhausted look at Aezhyrrael. He could see pleasure writ plain upon his terribly elegant face.

I think you are trapped here, in this car-

Of course he was. His face drops slightly.

And you will make chase to find what I am after-

Calix’s genuine surprise, laced with apprehension, washed over his face. This surely implied…? He was suggesting something entirely other from simple torture. He truly did mean for him to… Cooperate, in a sense. Could it be so simple?

His expression tightens, chest tensing in earnest the first time since the toxin gripped him to death’s stillness. His eyes peel over the deep wound over his breast- blood pooling tiredly as his breath caught tight in his throat. When the pain lifts, his breath raced to catch up in silent panting.

“You-…” Calix had to concentrate upon his words. He felt his throat obey more readily but his fear… That defied him yet still. He battled it to speak. “You seek a… A specific artefact?”

It seemed obvious, perhaps. And he also suspected punishment for asking.

“How do you know,” His voice came in a strained rumble as if awaking from death, “…That his Lordship- Has it?” He pants. “Do you at all?”

Aezhyrrael revelled in the agony of skin parting under duress not its own, soul fed in playful highs by the blood pooling in anguish. Under the shuddering bound beneath the creature's flesh, hidden within a body that simply did not mind its treatment.

Something simmering darker beneath still, beneath blood and blade like an empyrean tide. Beneath the terror subsuming his captive's glistening sun within. Beneath his eyes, as they watered for him. Wept, he could do.

Pleasure when his pets cried. Wolf become gauri backed into the corners of abyss- then become meat in dark silence.

For trapped in such song he had no need of crying out as his blood would be made to run. Not coldly, yet.

Aezhyrrael's grip tightened under flesh returning to life as it writhed for him. It shuddered beneath claws poised in pleasure that wanted to lunge through him and tear him apart. Not so yet.

Those claws fed on Calix's mind dripping from beneath draihari talons in the tangled, thick oil of horror; Aezhyrrael a venomous fanged tail after him. Spiralling down into depths with him as they were coiled against one another.

Hyuron panic so much more lucid than that of his own kin was sublime in its torment. The body spasms beneath and intrigue becomes wild desire instantly as Aezhyrrael's eyes are drawn down Calix's body in obscenely murderous delight. That which drifted over his bare chest torn into by a tempting little hole left behind by the needling yeshyidi.

It was the tease of eyes leaving his own that Aezhyrrael would chase him with a simper, neck craning to follow where Calix's gaze writhed away.

In part play and in part furious scheming.

He comprehends him in the gush of sudden violence somewhere within that overwhelms them both. That the Draihar's mind hooks upon like a thrown blade and bites into the flesh of the torment with a hiss of pleasure.

All nerves made lucid at once were over-sensation to the eldar's mind and his own shoulders twinge beneath his suit in ecstasy shared as he was forced for such peculiar half-moments to share in it: his own heart pounded within his caging ribs and he felt nerves erupt into flame at the edges of his own limbs darkened. But shared in sensation even still.

Such forms a dance of serpentine revelry as Aezhyrrael grips him and rends him closer.

He would have him understand his demands. In ardour, that he would not kill him. Punish him perhaps. Find ways to make his mind and soul curl in defeat at the steps of descent but never quite down them.

Sensation burned in his veins for over-long at what Aezhyrrael thought to be a rather simple demand as he grips him and is met with a languishing grunt.

"Oho..." Aezhyrrael inhales between fangs, the grin emerging again in all of its heinous design as Calix's body forfeits its secrets to him; writhing, disconnected, arcelectric. The wailing of so many many nerves pleasure obsession.

The gaze bound to him is weary. Not dying but tired. Terrified beyond terror into darkness. It tore the sensation between them both to basal darkness as Aezhyrrael hisses in empty silence. Ecstasy.

Shared sensation so very somatic. Such somatic madness. It was as no pleasure from any one other thing. What was this mastery over that which satiated his every need to such easy contentment?

Aezhyrrael's body loses him in a shudder of sensation and his hand wraps around Calix's neck firmly.

It trembles in pleasure puppeteering him through the lucid moments that he spoke with him still. And he had long decided that this wolf-beast would be made to follow him into all madness as he would command it to- if it could not be such a willing thing even then.

He possessed him as his hips roll in pleasure over him closer, eyelids fluttering to hear the words.

Simple torture expunged from the last breaths of one given up.

Or one gripping to the last rungs of sanity before he would be simply slipped over the other edge of the cliff of it. He would explain all to him in no hesitation but.

He shudders and pupils contract, suddenly aware of himself.

"Mornfeir. It is my bloodright. If I am to be Cadre-Divine..." Aezhyrrael answers in sharpened contemplation. With all the patience of a blade swung through mid-air at prey.

How do you know, he hears and a brow tightens.

His head tilts at such a question. Yet he suspects without suspecting- in blind trust- that the investigator was sincere. And so he would also be.

The claw had dropped from throat to chest at some point and Aezhyrrael smears his drying claws predatory across the groomed mat of fur coated on pectorals softer than his own. Larger. Warmer. Petting and also stimulating his very mind and all of the hairs that rose on his nape in newfound pleasure.

He grins at him in bitter malevolence after little thought.

"I sensed its taking from across the sea. It cannot rest in the Hraen any longer. I hear it cry out to me beyond where I can go- and I must take it for myself. I must ascend and I must hurry against your kind's greed to do so." He answers in earnest, wildly.

Then points a long claw at the eye coloured in ice.

"And you." He hisses then, the expulsion of sound vile. Dripping contempt. "You bear His gifts, sacred eye."

And so you are bound to me again.

Loathe as he was to admit this.

Such urgency was, he supposed, why his eyes transfixed to the features had done nothing to gorge upon them yet. This must have simply been some sick design by Zhaine or test of his readiness to take the Black Rite as his own.

Hyuron greed far more dangerous than Zhaine's gifts or punishments.

Eyes lid and he senses that it would be not so long before the rest of Calix's sensations would return.

He might feel the repressive shadow recede suddenly as Aezhyrrael retreats into bloodwoven shadow, pulling himself with some elegance into the front of the car. Back into the driver's seat where he parts his legs over his own seat with eyes piercing into the rear-view.

The doors do not unlock. His retinue lad long parted.

All was planned that Calix's fate would be inescapable for these moments now. As a wrist turns out of sight and the sedan's LEDs flicker to life in colours of soft red made to be a comfort to Draihari night-eyes.

"Come."

Aezhyrrael would not hear his answer. The car rumbles to life and Calix, bound to the middle seat, would be forced in audience to watch a terrible hand lower to the stick and nudge his horrendous prison into drive.

He would not offer him the mercy of any light as the car prowls forwards from the alley's shadow.

Calix, for his growing confidence that he had some use to this creature beyond being simply meat, allowed his mind to turn the information over. Printing press of words behind his eyes finally picking up production once again.

Mornfeir, he hears again. If this beast was to be Divine of his kabal? It was an artefact for certain, or Lord Aurastor would have hardly a mind for it. And it did corroborate the kabal’s obsession with his operations as of late.

I sensed its taking from across the sea.

Calix may have been more bewildered at the magic of such a thing if he knew less of the Eldar. As it was, such a thing did seem within their capacity. Unnatural knowing as they had that made battling them in the streets a nightmare awake.

Even still, it’s a thought occupying less space in his mind than the one that was fixed upon the hand petting his chest. He has long since run out of the energy to fight it, body aching worse than the worst nights he’s had out late at night.

His body, mostly his own again, tenses gently where he lay. Not yet bold enough to lift himself while talons sat over his skin, his eyes flicker up then down. Then up at the claw pointed at his left eye. It did earn a flinch.

And you.

The voice elicited an open shudder from Calix who was struggling to decide whether to fix his gaze to the accusatory claw or the Draihari’s mouth.

Sacred eye?

He’s left in wonder as Aezhyrrael’s overwhelming presence recedes suddenly. He’d spent so long under such weight that to be rid of it left his core empty. Somehow.

In the depths of his personal abyss, the eldar had been there to torment him in the dark inches away through every miserable moment. He has to spin his psyche around through forgotten trails to recall himself before this moment. Before he knew what it was to have nary a single spark of hope in his bones.

There it was. The… hope, he’ll call it. He was still capable of it, he believes, feeling the car come to life under his skin. Dead and alive again.

With a long, long moment of hesitation, he flexes a bound arm and feels repulsed satisfaction that it listened to him. The sickest feeling colours any relief he may have felt as he nudges himself partially upright with a groan.

He bends a knee and he thinks he manages to also look pathetic as he squirms into the sorest attempt of a sit he’s ever made in his life, leaning a shoulder to the backrest.

And would focus on settling his heart for the next few minutes.