The pitch seas between Niskerra and the world were seldom touched by eldar vessels. For fear of meeting the water or the Fathom's song, trade routes out of the black coast ran far north as vessels skulked past the Teeth to escape the creatures below the waves.

It was an escape of terrible fate as much as of sublime opportunity- a promise of power enough for those who did not fear the abyss' song.

Aezhyrrael was bound by whispers told to him to travel deep into the gloam and beyond the reach of all latent aether, eldar souls all more potent so far over the Hraen. Over the dead sea: each bristle of clawing sensation like talons tearing apart a still wind.

It was a sensation that was as ice upon the soul. Even in the black-blooded draihari who prowled beneath the sails- hissing at all shadows given form. Hissing out at the water beneath and and poised to strike at all things.

Varakhainan prowled under blackest colours. Aether pitch, barred, subsumed in the illusions of blood sorcery in hiding; in preserving their souls that they find light in the dark.

The illusion not so in barring the song away so easily. The prince's mind clawed and venom left in the raw wounds as he and all were tempted still towards the dark. To each other. To the warp from whence they came.

Sorcery all that kept them alive this far- the witch Laerthys kept alive by vigil, shimmering night streaming from the veins in horrid rivulets enwrapping steel and wood in warding runes.

All that would allow them to survive until the light. Empyrean aether theirs to claim or the Fathom first to their own blackened souls.

They could not leave.

He would not let them. Not again to black shores or below. Not in resentment of what might yet be true without seeing. Hatred positively divine in its desire to kill.

They prolonged the inevitable. Owed to them their lives by the shimmer in the dark that he chased. Or they would all be lost as blood downstream and the Imperia as it was in all gold and mortal crimson. A spectacle drawn up in blood.

They could not turn around.

Varakhainan chases her prey into the depths. Creatures of the Imperia as lanterns in blackness when near enough and guiding from the moonless dream. Following for perhaps mortal hours.

The presence of a psyseer allowed for such vessels to be prey so easily-- that it could be assured a reliable navigator would steer them far from the Fathom's spawn.

The corsairs corner them under no moon, eldar aethersense willing the hyuron crew and their lethal pet alight despite the song. A promised feast to predators- in fighting the mortal beastman for the prey.

The hyuron crew would see the draihari in terrifying mocking as a knife in the dark. No longer so hidden even while none of the moons showed themselves.

Wary of the feast that would be; or bidden away by Zhaine himself in promise of the hunt.

The knarrar cuts the sea as flesh and its first sound is an arrow of black steel as it pierces a stern lantern. Flat silence shattered by glass and the snuffing of a mortal flame. The first of perhaps all.

The rush of empyrean drawing out all to hisses in the night. Predatory. It lit their black souls to enduring pleasure.

Hooks pierce wood and rail to bind both vessels as one; as a beast impaled by a mass of black spikes and poised night-eyes. The swathe of them a vile thing as they split the night's quiet in hissing and dark tongues.

Aezhyrael pounces forwards with twin blades drawn to the strongest aether. Vile. Thrill piercing as aethersense wills him to lunging.

He, a black and vile specimen in fangs and claw. Grin wild in ecstatic song. Oh, the pleasure.

The laughing of draihari menace pierces hyuron shouting as the bravest beneath them fight and die. As arcfire shots pierce and send one of the raiders to the deck in pitch venom.

Blades of gold and shimmering red lead from blinding empyrean. That which they had come for at the front of this pack. Of silver and red and gold willing away the Fathom so near. No song or whispers heard now.

Rage incarnate. At this creature in mocking Zhaine's name.

Aezhyrrael was the first to meet him with hissing across the dead sea's silence.

The aether easily denser than the rest as it pierced Aezhyrrael with thrilled terror.

The flash of white mocks him under the moonless sky and he hisses as he rushes for him, reaching with blades. The sight enraging. A mockery. That it was true could have stopped his pulse in place.

"Ohhn-! So the whispers were true. A beast was sent to squander his gift after all. It is almost enough to make me laugh." He growls. Shouts above death. Above silence.

The blades rush at the psyseer first and cross one another as he sought to eviscerate the uniform. Such bestial mocking.

"You are blasphemous, unworthy of him, morth'fli!" He spits, teeth baring.

This was a test? A gift?

The sight of particolour hair and split eyes dredges from him all of an eternity's envy for this creature. The sight of red just mocking. Just mortal.

That they had come to take this prize.

Blinded him. The other a predator in taunting- in Divinity's skin worn over bestial anatomy. It was a perfectly heinous creation.

Blinded him. What they had come for that which he could kill. That this false visage bore his birthright?

The draihar's eyes were pinpricks into pinpricks in furious hunt. Wild at the sight of tainted blood and its irony. Its black envy. This he was aware of in mortal moments where he saw hands gesture for the mindblades' return. For a pistol at the creature's own belt.

It was profane.

"You are an insult to my very blood, sacred one."

Aezhyrrael's fists grip around his blades in some furious reflex as they poise. Striking then- in rage- in biting envy- as a blade moves to tear through the psyseer's side in serrations where he might capture him upon it or tear his flesh.

The first of those sensations Calix felt physically was the shudder of the ship under the feet of a dozen eldar.

He felt his nape bristle in failure. Terrified shame. Surely this was his doing- if he had-- Could have told the helmsman more quickly as they circled? Could have sensed the raiders sooner. Really, he should be angry with himself over that above all.

His blades, red whispersteel edges bright as ruby, were quickly stained black in moments of thought as he descended to the main deck, sending them forward with barely a gesture.

He thinks foolishly that he could stay calm, repel them one by one and undo this mistake. His attention drawn from the sea and assaulted by the black intent of their night hunters. He barely had a moment to pray it would not cost them dearly.

The first of the beasts stepped near, so much taller than he, black blades aloft. He raises his own saber to meet the ringing razor edge as no mindblade was strong enough to stop such a blow, he knew.

And could no longer keep the pale visages obscured in his mind as a look from his nightmares met him in the dark, fangs and all. Brilliant red eyes and thrashing claws. His own body moved without his conscious thought there to guide him through terror before he felt himself throw the monster's weight aside.

His blades twirl to follow his attention forward once again as he catches the look of Aezhyrrael. To Calix, none but a lordly serpent like all his kin.

Calix winces, something assaulting his mind. Had he been less disciplined, he wonders, would he have whined from the stab of pain it gave his psyche?

The voice-- It was his voice. He pants in exertion, brows furrowing as he could see that he alone was this one's target and quickly sent the mindblades forward with a breath, taking his arcpistol from his belt and lining it up perfectly between the demoniac horns-- jewelry?-- over it's brow.

He hesitates for a moment. Just long enough in his bewilderment that he was being... Addressed? He didn't understand the monster's meaning, only his intent. Not quickly enough to step away, Eldar speed beyond his comprehension, heightened as it was even so.

He gasps, moving as he thought he should as the diamond twill of his livery is scraped by delicate serrations and marred just enough to expose red beneath. Not blood. The crimson double-breast that lay underneath.

He pauses for less than a second in the moment beyond his near-laceration and could only take in the sight of an elegant hunched form. Like a man borne from some darkwurm leviathan. It struck him in horror. Its skin so pale, brilliant in the dark.

He felt lost in the cathedral again when the wargspawn had nearly torn him of his arm. The same look could be seen in the Draihari's eyes and he-- Calix' heart outpaced his breath and he sidestepped once more to face him, the pistol returning--firing this time. Aimed in hurry at the creature's waist.

"You-- You must have me mistaken." Was all he could manage in his stupification. In all his years, he'd never left one alive long enough to be spoken to-- Not in Arunaic.

There were so many bodies in view, he wasn't sure if he should blind himself to all but this one.

A shout precedes a snap as one of the officers was thrown from the quarter, a rail broken above and crashes in death against Calix, to his feet then.

Oh, no. Not Rameson. Calix stumbles away from the blades- to the deck in a bid not to lose his guts as the mindblades tail his thoughts. Just as quickly turning in place to be sent at the Draihari again, seeking to pierce whatever skin was free and with force enough to impale through.

Calix scrambles to his feet, recalling them and trying again.

There would be no reasoning- Speaking Arunaic or not. He could only guess at what the beasts were doing so far out to sea.

Collective empyrean was a blinding and repulsive radiance in absence of all else. As light flittered in panic amidst darkness, it tempts fangs towards it in awakening number. Their dance was a morbid and effortless one over wood and rail, claws able to carve through all weft between themselves and prey.

Each sought to make gluttony of their find- for having no other choice. In desire to consume and gorge on what was given before their lord was satisfied, in blades and blood drawn, as howls and vicious sea-song see them feasting.

All in some awareness of what awaited them outside of the psyseer's vision. The aether here, though incorruptible without blood, barring them from the beyond.

They- Aezhyrrael- would feel it as the burden on all minds lessened in its presence.

And for how long? Their aether was as soulfire to the Fathom. They were watched even still.

It would not be so long before, without the psyseer, they would be consumed. They knew this. Knew it and hissed at one another as the Varakhainan lurches against the lumbering hyuron beast in impatience- the two bound to one another in agony over the black.

The first to approach Calix draws fangs at him with night-eyes aglow in predatory yellow; of strongest mortal pride. Far larger than any hyuron and seen as she lungs past another with augmented claws poised to tear uniform and flesh asunder before deciding in madness that the psyseer would be next.

He, so glorious in the dark that man and mindblade glowed with a horrendous, throbbing light. Aether so dense tempting any near to madness as she reaches- and howls away.

Black blood sprays from her ribs and belly and forces her into the swathe as the deck rained black.

Aezhyrrael replaces with a serrated maw parting to claim the psyseer and his fangs show in strain when the saber stops both blades.

The ring sets him alight in rage. Alight in the moment as he was able to see and be furious in his discernment. In what taunted him so close beyond his teeth.

Hyuron strength outweighed that of all eldar- forcing Aezhyrrael away in hissing rage when he knows he could not make him fall.

Calix would hear him. The wild panting. The voice razing Arunaic as he bites at him in the dark.

The wince enticing and enraging as all things about hyuron. About mroth'fli.

Aezhyrrael addresses him in burning rage and he bares teeth at the pistol, rushing him then against the speed of any possible bullet's fire.

The blade hesitates and rakes in his hand and he feels its weight run through his fist in power. In where teeth sank into the flesh of another.

In the sight of blooming red as fangs draw open. In pleasure then instantly in fury.

It was a trick. An illusion of the hyuron mind. As crimson thrashes the creature's body the draihar turns and sees the fabric of another panel. Dignity remaining behind the strength of a saber and a psyseer's luck of foresight or preparation to defend his own life.

It was. Enraging. Both pale ears warm in fury immense. Primal.
Aezhyrrael's mouth curls in fury as his mouth slavers to kill. Blind except to the flash of white burned into his psyche against all will. A flash of dignity yet unsundered by blade or teeth for.

He had been able to prevent him.

He stares at him through the black and feels his blood boil at sensation. At eyes upon him from the abyss from whence this creature came. Eyes of all things staring as if reality itself was woven to avoid the psyseer's mind.

The. Gift's. His eyes flicker in disbelief at the marked hair.

"Such sacrilege. Such insult." He growls aloud and rushes him again in mortal moments' wasted.

His own will given pause in some vile trance at his own rage. What was this unbecoming failure?

The blades reach again for the supple, pale flesh of the hyuron's empyrean uniform. Throat and chest blazing in Imperium red as the sight tempted blood so deeply. Tempted the desire of the kill.

That he could lose himself in his rage at the insult of it. As the haze of burning white tricks him and he avoids evisceration. As if those eyes

Aezhyrrael roars in frustration at the sight. Through the shot- the ringing in his ears in fury of it.

The bullet, unfelt, lodging cleanly within a sickly white waist and dripping in shimmering black. The white in front of him so brilliant.

Such false divinity. They could not be compared.

You-- You must have me mistaken.

Aezhyrrael howls. Glittering, glimmering, whorling fury as he laughs. Sardonic in all of the venom lacing it that his very fangs could drip.

"You do not even comprehend your own gift. You do not even know what you are-- as unworthy as you are. It is such a sickening irony."

Stupefaction in ire and humour as it was. Aezhyrrael sensed it as he closes the distance between them.

His blood burns in his own veins as he poises with blades- blades envenomed with the same.

"You are a mockery of the divine blood in your veins. Squirming virmin as you are, mroth'fli. What a vile blasphemy."

He steps close before the sensation behind comes crashing from above and the psyseer is thrown sidelong- Aezhyrrael stepping forwards. The aether faltering in pleasure.

A flash of pitch black chases the dying mroth'fli as Kheraes, Dulran, leaps between them from the shattered banister. A tall creature with ashen dark skin and white hair- red eyes glowing as pin-prick pupils chase his prey.

He was a glorious creature of Zhaine meant for service to Aezhyrrael until death. That he chases the officer with a loud hiss and raises an arm to a mindblade that cuts across his arm- aimed at Aezhyrrael where it pierces his abdomen and draws a sound from his throat.

The disruption wakens him from the dream and he considers it. That they had not come here to scavenge petty things.

It was Zhaine's insult as it was his gift. This psyseer his to take. It was why they had chased this tub over the lands of the Fathom, was it not?

"You will see me last, mroth'fli!"

The howl was a warcry in black draihir as he closes distance between himself and the psyseer.

Between his teeth and the soft flesh promised.

A declaration of domination.

The blade, a smaller shirk dripping in venom, rushing towards the hyuron's chest- disrupted. Sent awry by a blade in the Dulran's own side as Aezhyrrael pins him aside in shared fury. In abyssal dignity.

It sends the tipped shirk off-course- towards Calix's clothed waist and gut. The thing a horrendous black thorn.

"This is not your sacrilege to claim, Dulran!" Aezhyrrael barks- draihir cutting the air itself between wails of unclean war.

A punishment given with a hiss- this prey not meant for a Dulran. Kheraes relating as he shoves the psyeer with a lurching claw and snarls in thrill at his master.

You do not even comprehend your own gift.

Calix understood little, but he could clearly comprehend the rage in the dark beast's eyes. It was volcanic.

He wonders, for a moment, and could only guess that the Draihari meant his gifts of foresight and manipulation. Insofar as 'gifts' were ever a concern regarding Calix, that was usually the primary subject of focus.

He, even as he regains himself from the deck, felt the presence of his assailant in two worlds. Twice the terror. In waking, the Draihar was a rabid hound of Aulferna-- No, Raeth-- and within the perspicharix, when he had moments to dive under the glass, a perfect demon. Black and reaching with a horrendous many legs and claws and-

Calix' eyes refocus with a telling shake of his head. The whorl of howling and bloodlust were a stimulus to test even the hardest of Psyarchs. It buys the Dulran the moment needed to turn his attention toward their shared prey. The flying crimson mindblades rose to their original target- one shearing Kheraes upon his arm before stopping within Aezhyrrael's flesh.

It pauses, before Calix' recall has it emerge from his side point-first in a perfect, bloody exit before it returned to join the others at Calix' side.

And they all falter when Druhir pierces the dark, Calix trying to raise his saber to stop the blade.

Mismatched intent confused him- which thread to follow? Which led to avoiding the blade?
Either way, he wasn't quick enough to meet the lightless lightning with a counter and felt the terribly familiar heat that spread with fingers aflame.

His breath hitches, but moments of exhange between the two give him precious seconds to comprehend.

He'd found himself cornered against the mainmast, a hand coming to grip a line in his efforts not to stumble while something--

Augh- A vile blade he can just barely see connected him to one Draihari. And the other-- Ah.

That was the thread that confused him. They spoke in their own vile tongue and Calix is thrown away, his mindblades clattering to the floor as his mind exhausted itself to mutiny and he clung for moments to the lines in bid to hold himself upright. A task suddenly more challenging than it had been just prior.

His eyes, feeling delayed to him, watch the Draihari for the moment they shared together and he---

He gasps as he impends his head to comprehend the wash of pain so suddenly piercing his skull, it was. Oh, so black.

He could not even blink for moments as -- What was this? Mismatched eyes flicker sidelong at blurring silhouettes with thorns emerging-- Blades.
He turns his head into his sleeve, white-knuckled grip upon the lines tangling the mast as the other hand drops the saber to the deck.

"Hhhah?" He breathes, baring his teeth. His body defies him. He couldn't numb himself nor prevent himself from sliding to his knees despite himself.

Anything to distract? It created spiderwebs his veins, red as lightning, red as agony. He knew his eyes were open but he could scarcely see a thing.

This was his death surely. Come now, come now. That's what they came for and if death would shear him from this pain in his mind he would welcome it.

Bloodshed unfolded all within mortal moments as predators shared their rage with one another in a bid to deal the killing blow to the psyseer's body.

As Aezhyrrael pursues him across the deck, Kheraes chases with a leap overhead and his cry out. The aether of this hyuron overwhelming. Terrifying.

What was different?

It didn't matter.

As he reached for the psyseer with his blade first, aiming for prey not dead- another body to join the chorus of their feast-

The shadow of his Mornecaun pushes him sidelong, the kill stolen. The black knife sent awry for where it desired not to go. His heart bounding in thrill as the mindblade cuts through his forearm and sends his blood flying, black and horrid, to the deck. To his own bare skin.

Aezhyrrael hisses into his ear and they meet one another in some elegance as Aezhyrrael feels the blade roll through his waist- shredding easily through flesh and useless organ. The wound not mortal but the blood loss heavy as it was.

The killing blow now not a harvest at all but a strike through the waist. Even still, Kheraes' dagger bites hard into the psyseer's waist in turn as he matches him.

Disobedient against his Mornecaun's command as he was taken by his own arousal to kill the little beast.

They were aflame with one another in furious sensation instantly. The hitched breath beneath them both catching their attention in dark, absolute lucidity as the knife connects.

Then as it leaves again as Kheraes twists away from Aezhyrrael's blade.

He hisses with furious fangs: large, clearly replaced into eldar steel some time ago from natural bone. Glittering and black in the dark. The sight serpentine.

"I did what was promised, Mornecaun!" He warns Aezhyrrael with his dissent; realisation. With his submission.

With a wince as Aezhyrrael claws at him and reminds him away.

Aezhyrrael could not bring himself to admit this creature's uses. Their look at one another unspoken in resentment ebbing to- hrm.

That they were doomed if they did not leave with it.

Eyes flicker in realisation as they stand over the creature falling away. So slow as mortal things were.

Bitten and weeping black, Kheraes cackles over his lord as the venom takes hold of his own aether. Thought and sensation gripped to agony in moments as potent aether allowed the venom to travel.

He rolls his neck- licking a false fang with a serpentine split in pleasure.

Pale eyes catching the white fringe and bristling. His body and armour bloody and flesh raw. Grinning down as the creature fell beneath them in pain palpable to both Draihari.

"Is it the venom that will tender the meat first? Or our care of such a paltry creature, my lord?" He cackles in draihir at Aezhyrrael's waiting shadow.

He is quiet when Aezhyrrael looks at him.

In some exhaustion; his mind and neck in agony tolerated for the arousal it granted him even still.

Aezhyrrael sets a blade between Dulran and. Their.

Prize.

As he thinks of him his brows furrow in renewed rage. Invigorated in the fate given to him. To them all. Kheraes beside him laps at blood left over his talons from his earlier slaughter. Hyuron blood so invigorating. Not so as Valari flesh and blood-- but enough to give energy to the pain pulsing through his mind.

Perhaps the blood of one chosen by Zhaine himself in such vile mockery would taste all the better.

As though sensing him. His Mornecaun peers at him and Kheraes laughs- brow pinching in pain through the sound.

"That is his test, is it not?" He hisses.

The wound Aezhyrrael had given him wept obscenely and he felt the venom whirling from it up to his very spinal cord.

"Halt!" Aezhyrrael calls, the black draihir without echo on a sea so empty. But obeyed.

The fighting and bloodshed stops in moments and surviving hyuron are pinned to where they lay-- or silenced with claws wrapping around throats and jaws to silence them to command.

With blades envenomed, there were writhing bodies yet to succumb to the relief of death if they would at all.

Draihari were not known for their sinking of vessels- and any living would hear corsairs retreating in shadowsteps over the side and into the waiting knarrar from where Varakhainan had awaited. Some of the lines cut away in the chaos but not enough to release the vessels from one another.

Aezhyrrael's swords return to his sides bloody and he bends down to grip the fallen psyseer.

Touching him, through his gauntlets, as though touching ice. It was almost agony to the senses in a moment that he feels the pulsing fire and hisses at it, clutching him ever tighter.

He holds onto him as talons feel taut to dive beneath the psyseer's own flesh.

Teeth clenching in fury. Disbelief. They had no choice and yet. He begs that they did.

Begs that this was a test to Zhaine's most worthy and that he must kill him to claim birthright and glory.

Of what? Of being pulled into the dark below. His soul woven into a creature of darkest abyss to never speak of the moons again.

As he reasons with himself, the black mist of silence overtakes both decks. The sheathing of blades preceding agonising quiet so still that he would hear the blood pulsing through his own ears and veins in primal fury dredged from the very depths of creation.

"This is our navigator, Kheraes." The words dripping in such agonising hatred, as he clenches claws tight around the uniform.

Kheraes' fangs bare. The aether between elves known to one another for so long not difficult to sense. He had been Aezhyrrael's most trusted Dulran for long enough that he was claimed by him and no others. Ownership shown only in mocking snarls.

"This?" He eyes the stunned hyuron. Eyes drifting quickly over the fallen grace of red and white in such teasing of mortal meat.

Both lords spoke again in Draihir. In no desire to be understood. To say it so was a thing of furious trickery, surely.

He stands as he clutches the fallen hyuron around the thicker throat and lifts- lifts it as far as he might before the strain of his weight was too much.

With brain gripped by agony he would maybe be harmless. As they rebuilt aboard the Varakhainan. With enough time to bind him and deprive him of all that would kill them before the Fathom could.

He snarls at his waiting retinue as many nursed wounds while others prepared to leave.

Knowing what they saw. What they knew of this. The psyseer as tainted as the dark itself that he could see in the dark so easily. To say the words to come were difficult.

"Lift him, Kheraes."

As he could not.

Kheraes does- through a song under his breath in pain as they both lift the creature with claws holding his shoulders and body. Elven strength not enough to lift him from the deck neatly but enough to take his body to the Varakhainan in one piece.

The ordeal of binding the creature impossible and not- stiff as an old corpse in agony that both draihari felt in aether and pleasured in it.

He was, wrested, dying in there grip for some time. Eyes as glass as Aezhyrrael stared into them some time ago when fitting the mask. Into a look far away from here.

Kheraes and Aezhyrrael had both been bitten by the same venom before. It not so potent on them-- enough for them to gorge on the sensation it brought. The agony that kept them wired and attentive to pain's pleasant strings.

He does not comprehend its differences in a hyuron. Feeling that the blood ran cold in a state between life and death as their burden writhed in some absence of control at all.

The torture of binding drew incomprehensible and all but absent breaths from the smaller creature. Aezhyrrael sneered at the pain rolling through his own torn muscles by the time they were done wrestling the husk into his binds.

Awake but not. Living but not.

If the bite did not run deep, this would not last for so long.

In lucidity, Calix would find his body trapped. He would regain his presence in darkness and bound by terrible black strappings around limbs and hands; bound by strain and sores and bruising from the fight to fit him into.

Night-eyes glare over him as Aezhyrrael, stripped of terrible pauldrons, nursed his own wounds beside the creature.

That fate should have them together this way. He, not concerned with the fathom, gripping himself in ire of the indignity. The falsehood of it.

The psyseer's mindblades were bound also and tied up elsewhere. Collected to where the sorcerer Laerthys could keep them bound by blood magic but not so far that they could not be thrown into the sea if they were to escape as well.

Other trinkets, known only to the draihari, were taken in a hurry if they seemed to concern the psyseer- taken below deck and hidden away.

Out of sight, if any cared to ever tell him: the bloodshed would end with his capture.

Aezhyrrael glowers over him with fangs slavering to bite through his throat while he "slept" and yet resisting. His uniform torn open by larger hands prying to see the depth of the injury.

It was some toil to them in their awareness of mortal propensity for death. How feeble and eager other races were to bleed out or succumb to the shock of such traumas.

Aezhyrrael despises that he feels the creature's still-beating heart and mind while he sits near. Far enough away that he might nurse himself as he poultices the heavy wounds. His side bruised and bloody still.

Kheraes stood with him in shared whispers as he cleans the wound with claws and cloth.

They both sneer at one another and Aezhyrrael bristles.

"When this blasphemy awakens, you will let me alone with it." He speaks, in draihir first. Fury rippling beneath the surface when he lays eyes on the sharp silhouette of white in the other's hair.

Kheraes shows his fangs in abeyance of it. Though he hated that. Wrapping Aezhyrrael's punished side with a frown.

"This is my sacrilege to bear. That this insult be delivered to me or that we die for not accepting its charge."

The thought of anger made his pulse pound in the thrilling fury of ecstatic hatred; the space behind his eyes like lightning in agonised thought. In squeezing his eyes to aching as he tensed in disgust just earlier.

Kheraes did not speak- mind numb while the venom subsumed him in flickering time. While he worked Aezhyrrael's wounds.

The Mornecaun licks his lip when he sees movement. Sneering in darkest disdain.

His eyes drop to the herbal poultice over the psyseer's puncture wound and he wishes to gouge it out and the psyseer's mind with it. Such resentment.

Serpentine arms reach as he stands. At the blindfolded head. At eyes out of sight.

Different. Chosen.

Aezhyrrael rushes past Kheraes in rage flying with claws- latching onto the wound with talons first and tearing away the herbs.

"Graceless spawn!" He hisses in Draihir first as claws dig their way deep, deep into the wound and claw.

Tearing it and wishing he would hear whispers. Hearing silence. Hearing rage pulsing through his veins white-hot as the bloody claws leave and trace the hyuron's body in a quick, deep swipe. Rage bidding that he tear out both of those split eyes and claim them for himself--

Ah.

Ohh, the black rage. Yes. He did have those eyes, didn't he. Chosen.

"Ohnnhnn." He chuckles. The sound venomous. in-prick pupils dancing over the bound flesh. How it could yet bruise. How it could yet bleed and be kept alive.

He observes in poised fury as the flesh opens over the bare skin revealing the psyseer's chest to them- panting wildly over him and gripping the bound head by the thick jaw. Tightening his claws until leather stopped them. Clutching and turning the head to be consumed by bitter cold.

"That he should offer me this creature in such absurd torment. To live. Such a sense of humour." He growls in torn Arunaic. At it.

None of the marring deep enough to kill. Enough to gouge the chosen creature of blood and energy left within.

Enough to tempt him. The scent. How he could tear his flesh and hair asunder and send them to ocean dark. It could not be him, could it. This test. The mortal discomfort of blood satisfying Aezhyrrael for moments only in tortured agony when forced to keep this mockery alive.

At some point, Kheraes had slithered away amidst madness to the main deck.

Aezhyrrael pauses over the blindfold in the dark.

His world was white, black, red. Motion in static. He could feel hands upon him and fought them- though not for long. His fingers curl in pain as he brings an arm over his chest in a wince, squirming to feel some relief.

And fights himself to stand, enough clarity present to wish not to fall to his knees again. A sharp intake of breath was his useless defiant hiss to be bound, shoulders ablaze to fight it. It hurt. His breath shallowing by the time he was released to the black decks of the knarrar.

His body pained him beyond sight, sounds blurred in his ears, his head.
He couldn't decide if his eyes were open or closed.

"Nnh--" Calix' mind was wrapped in thread of thorns to hear a familiar voice in black tongue, another wash of hot agony at his waist- a wheeze puffed past his teeth without his permission as his body bids him to roll over the injured side.

He wasn't sure, but thinks his coat was open, the chill somehow as hot as his blood. New strings of torment were pulled taut over his flesh and he groans in defeat, voice pitiful in his throat without his consent. He would have kicked himself.

Cold talons, freezing talons, take him by his jaw and he squirms to his back, red trickling easily from any cut veins and mingling with a light sheen of sweat-- his body working itself to exhaustion since the venom met his nerves.

Even so, the hold was sobering, and bids him to open his eyes and realized he could see nothing. He pants, breath hot, against Aezhyrrael's hovering palm and wonders if these frigid talons belonged to the creature from before. Was he dead already and taken by Raeth?

"Hnh-Nh-" He had the sense to try and pull his head away, his whimpers just a touch more comprehensible than pained breath. Almost words. As his psyche recovered, slow, from immaterial torture, he wanted to speak. Ask what was next or where they were. The sound of wind in sails, he surmises, sounding nothing like an Imperial frigate and so much more like a serpent seeking prey in the grass. A whisper in his ears. Not an elegant thunder as before.

"Dead...?" He mutters quietly enough that it was nigh subvocal.

He trembles, body cooling quickly as his will returned to him and he tries to fight the burning. His flesh defies him in fear.

The pleasure of the psyseer's capture, tedious and difficult, was ecstatic agony. Raw pleasure given to the draihari in how the hyuron roiled against their claws, eventually taking several to haul him over to the Varakhainan.

In strength and size, he was larger than the draihari. Not so weaker still even when dancing with the threat of an unceremonious brain death. The squirming was irresistible despite it with all eager to gorge on his aether; on the pleasure from venom gripping his mind and the pain he wept to them through aether.

It was sublime. Golden empyrean terror sensational to the dark ones' nerves.

Sublimity and fury met as one transcendent hell in Aezhyrrael's mind. He, pulling him over and trusting few of his kin to assist for long before they were sent away, hooking talons deep through the flesh to hoist him over the deck and below.

It was an agonising and slow process. One wrought with a fight as the psyseer never truly succumbed to the venom's allure.

And the reminder of it was pungent as writhing kept his attention sealed; as whimpering from a thick throat spurred his rage.

Kheraes did not obey to steal his prey from him and so left simply.

The psyseer's body is a brilliant pale gold in aethersense and violated by claws raking through him. As Aezhyrrael despised him so openly in white-hot frustration. The rolling away from gripping claws sending the Mornecaun's rage flying.

When he claws him hard, he does so with resentment so deep it could set his claws ablaze. Wishing them envenomed.

He could kill him in offense to Zhaine's very name.

Nnh--

A reminder of the sound draws out his claws in retaliation of its blasphemy. In denial this beast of fate's rape.

He could laugh at the sight. Talons as ice over a jaw like ice. The creature trying to escape him involuntarily as he grabs him. No, no you won't.

Aezhyrrael bares fangs at the sightless thing.

He shakes him when he clutches his jaw, nails digging against the leather and imagining clawing his face through. Tearing out those eyes to keep for his own victory.

Not so easy without a sabre now, was it.

"Mockery." Aezhyrrael sneers, in Arunaic warped by blackest ire.

The pain radiating under his own claws was felt in aether shared while so close and it. Oh. Set his veins positively aflame. As he draws blood from the psyseer's body- he feels relief not yet enough to satisfy. Only enough to blacken his aether in his resenting need.

He wonders how lucid the psyseer could be to his torments without simply burning up in the dark and sending them to the abyss with him.

When he lifted his hand overhead to appraise his new pet with claws, the hairs down his nape and spine set on end at the heat. The mortal warmth setting his blood to boiling with it.

He recoils with his hand and the disgust is plain.
Then close again as Aezhyrrael leans over him. Closer. As close as he might dare without tearing his throat out with teeth intact.

The Mornecaun's blackened arm leans over Calix's chest. Over scar and blood and hair- how curious. He looks at it in a moment and rubs his arm over it and the fresh claw marks. He does not allow himself to enjoy it. That they were so different.

Why this? Why this lesser beast of soil and blackness from the ashes of a world broken? Fate surely did not intend for such mimicry to exist at all.

It angered him that he did.

That he had been brought to Aezhyrrael's grasp. The choice not his own even when given the whispers of his existence. He thinks to himself. That this violation of birthright must be some test.

Gripping his neck. Holding him secure as the other hand raises to the blindfold and tears it roughly away from the eyes behind.

When they open to him, the chuckle is black ash. Eyes are locked to his, unable to move.

"Yet alive. This mockery. Look at you. " He spits in Arunaic, claws close enough to tear the pale blue eye apart.

The claw of his thumb rests at the corner of the psyseer's eye in temptation to do such a thing.

Oh, fury. He could.

He could.

"Hnnnhn..."

The claw tightens, clamping down on the flesh and piercing. scraping over the flesh of his cheekbone.

"You are a false mantle- this mark not meant for you. Is it not ironic..? His blessings wasted on a creature so powerless. So tainted as a mroth'fli is. So. Short. Lived."

How he despised Arunaic for all of its being. So tainted. Such a mockery of song as it was.

Aezhyrrael's gaze, wide and horrid, creases with a snarl. The claw tightening. He could tear out that eye and destroy it. He could. He could.

What did he see behind that eye? Sacrilege. Blood not worthy of the veins from which the body drank.

The claw around Calix's neck loosens as Aezhyrrael moves over him serpentine, using that free talon to grip his waist- over where he cut, over where Kheraes had branded him- and hooking them as he forces his back onto the table.

Aezhyrrael shoves him against it in reminder. In overwhelmed fury.

"That he would squander the gift on a beast as you! A violation. A black mark upon his very name."

Their aether together was electric to him and it darkens his brow in some need to kill.

That he must stave himself from killing him outright. Strained his soul as nothing else did. Aezhyrrael releasing his talon from the psyseer's face with a harsh swipe, the cut threatening the bone beneath his cheek as he tears the skin in furious restraint.

He growls- outraged and hissing frustration to the static air.

Calix would feel Aezhyrrael's claws carve his skin as he hesitates to break the gaze between himself and the eye of blue ice.

"You are vermin, psyseer. You will remember this well."

It was a promise wrent in despair that he could not tear his organs apart and send them to the depths and he.

Bares his teeth as if in agony as the muzzle is unclasped then from behind his head and falls away. Allowing him some freedom for speech.

"Coil your mind around my claws and stay, sacred eye. Or I will kill you for the insult of showing yourself to me." To the disdain of the Mornecaun above who stares at the offered eye with blood stringing from his claws now.

Yet alive. The voice scrapes his senses as he feels himself reawaken to some clarity. The main, present, but increasingly manageable as minutes pass.

Aezhyrrael would feel a gentle swallow under his palm as Calix squirms carefully. When his eyes are uncovered, his pupil was contracted as if in great pain- dilating in distracted curiosity as the dark became less blinding in moments. They fix to Aezhyrrael obediently and narrow as the chuckle bids him to shudder.

He allows himself just a moment to ponder how he'd arrived here. A redder part of him disappointed in the crew for their hubris. A Draihari raid somehow feels like it had been due, given a moment's reflection. He wonders if they were all dead.

His eyes widen, flickering down to look at the threatening claws. Frigid-- On fire. His breath hitches shallow, as he truly expected that he was about to lose his eye. His throat closes and he flinches--A ruby bead filling under threatening claw and something shatters nearby.

Calix let his breath return--panting quietly--and, oh, his heart betrayed him with a staccado. He'd never been on the receiving end of a Draihari's attention. Not. Directly, that is.

Somewhere, his whispersteel blades fell to the floor uselessly, nudged to action but too heavy to obey his will.

Calix nervously looks back to Aezhyrrael, feeling a touch more vulnerable than even before. And for good reason. He makes a sound of panic as Aezhyrrael moves over him and winces openly as his wound was gripped--used as leverage to lift his body weight--giving him a dizzy sensation as he contended with such unusual discomfort.

He, distracted, lapses in his mind a moment, the temperature of the room dropping.

"Nh-! Hah-" He gasps, baring his teeth finally behind any muzzle and writhing, bringing a knee up between their bodies. Energy returned to his furrowed brows as he regards Aezhyrrael with characteristic disdain.

By now, he'd long realized what the creature held in such contempt and some inkling as to why. Eldar motivation beyond him as yet, but he knew his flashes of silver were of high regard to the Draihari. Was it truly all they'd come for? It perplexed him.

The talon carves his cheek deep-- Aezhyrrael would feel a wash of force between them. A tired willing for them to part shouted in silence from a distracted mind.

"Take it, then." He spat from under the muzzle. His voice a desecrated garden, bitten by salt and pain still.

He tries to nudge him roughly away with his leg, frustration manifesting as his confidence grew that this was not simply some drawn-out death.

There was a reason he was alive still. Which meant he had some leverage. And space to make demands, if he could discern where he stood. Simple enough task if one was not afraid of a little pain.

His body bled and his back arched uncomfortably against the table. He knew he looked a mess. What indignity. Even still, he was relieved to be unmuzzled.

Coil your mind around my claws and stay, sacred eye.

He daren't damage his eye. What else was at play here?
Calix' body trembled in some shock, but he gathered what strength he had to try and stand-- and do so steadily. It was unlikely that Aezhyrrael could hold him down for long.

"I will..." He gasps, securing his mind's grip upon his power lest he exhaust himself for a time he truly needed it. "Yet it begs the question. To what end am I still alive?"

He takes a moment--distracted by the tickle of blood sheeting his cheek from the earlier as it dripped from his chin to join all the macabre artistry over his chest. He turns his head to wipe his face carefully of blood over his shoulder, umber eye watching the Draihar cautiously.

And his own blood stringing from the creature's claws. He felt himself light in the head for a moment.

"For what purpose am I here....? Relatively unmarred." He gestures vaguely to himself.

Aezhyrrael's claws recoil and then tighten at once at the sensation of the moving beneath.

That he, in his outburst, might be contested by this foul little fetish.

That he would be unable to resist ending him and splitting his innards across the deck. Allowing this sacrilege to bleed through wood and steel to the dark and be lost.

He punishes him with claws that tighten around the creature just tighter. Just almost enough to satiate his longing for blood.

He stares into the eye like ice that he would be stunned to fury turned inwards. That he would.

Obey.

That which stared back at him.

That which he threatened and restrained himself from tearing out as he convinces himself of the curse it bore-- of the abyssal, degenerate irony of it. His own talons feeling like ice the longer he closed them around the body and over the cheek and squeezes. Claws.

The aether rising, rising. Oh, in its heal- in its ire. Its terror. The sensation overwhelming the deeper the talon broke; the closer it reached towards the flickering eye.

He falters in the sight of palest ice and the claw tears through skin- curling and cutting in a motion with the smallest wince.

"Hssk-" Something shatters in the dark behind them and Aezhyrrael's eyes do flicker, his gaze breaking from the chosen eye to the cut. A lantern or tool taken as a prize hid down here amongst all other things of their quarries and Aezhyrrael, gripping ice, is forced to consider that which lay under his hand.

He felt its heart pounding and fluttering beneath his grip and hisses at him then as his grip wrenches away from his face. To his body- the wound that pinned him to this surface.

The Mornecaun considers in these moments again what he handled.

That it would do ill to kill and torture him if they did not wish to see themselves and the Varakhainan sent beneath the waves in flames colder than ice.

That he would have to maintain this beast's life for as long as they needed him over the Hraen.

That. His prince.

As though manifested in thought itself, the room falls to ice felt beneath Aezhyrrael's own scutes, eyes narrowed. That he could feel it gather beneath his very skin like freezing ice. The force between them expected.

He knew psyseers to be delicate between here and the veil- and that abyss could be brought here and let asunder across foolish creatures.

It was not ideal. Not over the Hraen. Not over where false gods and monsters starved for all their souls.

Aezhyrrael clutches him in such deepest resentment of it. Eyes flickering across blue and white.

Take it, then.

Aezhyrrael's laugh is black venom purest as he hovers over him, as he clutches him over his flesh. Devolving into a growl and a ferocious sigh.

Salt and pain chewed through by a desperately wronged maw. Aezhyrrael's muscles cording in tension so tight that it could have ached as he growls over him. Discerning. Knowing. Almost as if they were both aware of agonising mutualism. Hah.
It brings him ferocious torment that he could not. That he would not. Relenting as he warns him to stay near as he slithers off him as a serpent in defence of his belly.

Aezhyrrael hovers close as the other begins to move and he knows he could not push him back down- that hyuron were stronger as they were. No match for a draihar in close quarters without the advantage of an ambush. Or bindings.

That the psyseer was yet bound. Yet not able to travel far.

I will...

He eyes him as the flames inside him choke on themselves in trying to burn louder; blacker. The Mornecaun's lip curls in frustration of acceptance- but triumph. That the psyseer could yet be at his command even so.

Yet it begs the question.-

Aezhyrrael laughs, howling in hysterical insult. For all of a mortal moment.

"Oh...you do not even know your-" A pause.

Night-eyes flicker over him in renewed poise as he wishes immediately to rush and pin him to the wood and attack him for it. Such helpless insult to his will.

"You..." Aezhyrrael hisses in corded frustration as the other wipes away his blood. Blood that also coated itself over the draihar's own forearm and steel from where he had smeared it.

He rushes him to grab him and claws him tight as he does. Forgetting, perhaps, the fragility of hyuron flesh to steel claws. Aezhyrrael's talons enwrapping the creature and his parted uniform- seeking the flesh beneath in an elegant sweep under a hyuron coat-tail.

"Such sacrilege. Of course. You have no idea what you are. Your differences do not occur to your kind. Such animals. Unworthy. Even still." Said with such bitter loathing.

He chuckles in disbelief of his own words. Looking beyond umber with a sickly teal night-gaze to the flash of white ice marking the other's very form. What macabre, naïve unknowing.

Such clumsy self-comfort in the likes of the hyuron. The thrill of it sending Aezhyrrael's nerves aflame effortlessly as he sought to kill and punish for it.

He.

Bites his own tongue to bleeding through a snarl as he sends himself furious within heartbeats at the perfect split. A mirror of himself in such envy.

It forces him to chuckle against the psyseer's ear as he leans in subsumed in sardonic hatred. The grin in fury; sharper than draihari blades.

"For what other purpose than of a seer's use? That all of us survive the Hraen." Aezhyrrael cackles then and grips him tight. Claws gripping flesh and ribs and musculature of the waist in rakes that ceased rage for longer.

"Though oh, I will have uses for a sacred eye...- for many, many things. " He breathes then and comes close to biting through his ear with fangs in his monologue. Eyes almost rolling in restraint of mauling him.

Though he could not kill him- he would make use of flesh so flayable. Blood so red in taunting of Zhaine's idolatry.

"You are here because you are a seer. Because you are- hnnnhnn-" A sneer. "-Gifted. An enviable thing over the Hraen. As long as you do not send ice through our veins, I would make use of your sight."

The words are difficult to say and it makes him shudder in pleasure as if boiling ichor filled his throat. Eyeing that blue eye with desperate desire. And- his ire freezing indeed into something more morbid. More curious. Such weakness.

"Vermin though you are... hatred though you draw from me like a black knife. How I would flay you and use you for sails if I but could, my detestable eye... You and I both serve him."

In securing an answer, Aezhyrrael's claws turn inwards and tear at him in growing resentment of the words. Of admitting it.

The Draihar's apprehensive mocking made him narrow his look. It wasn't that the thought hadn't crossed his mind though but briefly. That the Draihari were in need of a navigator. It was rare, but not unheard of. The Imperia hoarded his kind like relics. Dangerous weapons. Not to leave their hands.

It was only that he was earnestly perplexed at how they knew his location. Was this by chance? Certainly not.

He met Aezhyrrael's look--And it was a look of fire manifest--With a determined glower of his own, wiping his face upon his shoulder as he had done.

The creature, for all its untamed malice, was only spurred to attack him again. Hands expert in bloodletting find his skin again and he winces.

Even upon his back?--The touch sending a livewire up his spine as his eyes rolled briefly, back stiffening in a shudder of excited pain. Calix felt the hair on his nape stand on end.

For it, he was having trouble focusing on the insults, caught in a grotesque embrace. The mouth near his ear horrifically intimate. His brain could grow thorns in his discomfort suddenly.

"Nnnnmmh" He flinches gently. Aezhyrrael gives him precious few moments unbarbed. Unmolested. It was becoming a strain.

In fact, the entire situation was a nightmare, he realizes. Even if he somehow made it out of this ordeal alive, the Spectra would have words for him. To make sure he was. Yet Contained. Mind unmarred and fit for service.

How to explain.

For what other purpose than of a seer's use?

Ah. He felt claws dip just into his ribs in a sickening sensation. He was... growing exhausted of the violation.

He'd ceased listening moments ago, eyes glazing in overwhelm of pain. Disrespect.

In his strain, he steps back to bump his leg against the table in some bid to be away from the raking talons with a small sound of a bitter breath. Trapped still. Still cornered. He heard words that faded to simple static as he retreated into his mind-- Body overwhelmed. The table would be iced over just behind him.

"Hands off." He hisses, eyes a touch feral. A touch mad. If his eyes saw at all, it was surely from within the unseen world, where Aezhyrrael wore the visage of a shattered moon. Black as Asur. Entropic. Calix willed the creature's heart to quicken. To burst pitch from the casting ladle of whatever black intelligence gave it form.

"I'd-- I'd sooner send us all abyssward than serve you." He trembled. Staring wide at nothing at all.

Burst, burst. Suffer, suffer.

In thrill of desperation and contempt, he chases, chases, chases into the dark. Blood tempting enough that he could not tear himself away.

Flinching.

Escape.

He saw prey in his talons and fearlessness- torturous instinct bidding him to chase the blood as it dripped.

Blood red in the depths of his own vision. Every flinch and sound dredging up hell in his body where he resisted himself; resisting.

Resisting arousal. Teeth at the psyseer's mouth pulling him close in pleasure overwhelming. Aezhyrrael's hips stiffen as he brings himself to him and slavers for him suddenly. A mortal moment or less in passion. Blinking and finding himself in the throes of shared pain become such.

Pleasure.

He does not notice the curling at his own black limbs where he imagines, for a moment, his psyseer on hooks and chains in punished obsession.

Pale draihari eyes roll so gently in ecstasy.

Aezhyrrael's mind twisting in his own grip as aether turned claws inwards on himself- on them both.

In awareness breaking away from thoughts of blood, the Mornecaun's gaze meets the pale eye. Sees it glazing over-- like glass in the dark. Trapped lightning. Sensation far away. Particolour gaze turning all to chill beyond them; felt in Aezhyrrael's scutes and bones.

Following still. Following into ice- following into where his claws recoiled and he hisses.

As he follows him up to the table and then is awake again- seeing cold, seeing darkness. Empyrean aether burned.

Hands off.

Aezhyrrael obeys in an instant as he coils around him serpentine from some distance. In seeing a dark child's eyes, his gaze refocuses on the one of sacred ice. Thrown into a haze of familiarity for long moments that quickened Aezhyrrael's heart beyond his instruction.

His pupils dilate in realisation of his kind, the silhouette of terrible light as one of his own. As the tremendous aether of a predator subsumed in the same agony; in the same enjoyment of it.

The cold eye steals his gaze in willing abeyance- admiration. He sees in the moonless dark one of his own kind fit to destroy them all.

The rush within his ribs turns his claws inwards-- towards himself in frustration aware. Overwhelming as Aezhyrrael contends with it and with the growing rush in his chest.

Wishing to tear. To grip and pull it out. Awareness and over-sensation an orgasm of violation.

The creature was within him. In all of his ddread- Aezhyrrael saw no hyuron. No mroth'fli pet. Eyes dart between limbs arrested and the eye so far away as if Zhaine himself wished to deny the satisfaction of recognition before slaughter.

He saw a draihar. A dark shade. Himself in the eye in envy and rage as a mirror.

He. His chest is heavy; sensation immense and dizzying. Clawed too deep. Too far.

"Hhsssk! Enough, darkspawn!" Aezhyrrael hisses- breaths stolen mid-way.

That he would send them to the abyss after all- hahh-

In wanting to grip him-

Aezhyrrael's teeth clench. Suddenly in clarity as nothing else as his eyes flicker between the psyseer's pale eye and Aezhyrrael's own chest in desperate glances.

His breath quickens with the pulses.

"Enough. I have seen enough." He asserts, teeth baring.

He was aware of all sensations at once and the trembling within the hyuron: the agony, pain, poise, dignity, divinity. The way it hid like within a storm of pure ice.

"You will hear my words, psyseer!" He roars then, breathless in madness and. Hm. Earnest fear.

In earnest awareness that he was consumed by madness to clawing that which was equal to him.

Aezhyrrael rolls his neck away and reaches to himself in instinct- claws clutching over his chest and tearing. He sighs hard and then laughs. Hate ebbs from himself and admiration- respect- fills the void left within.

He struggles to see the psyseer as anything aside from his own kin suddenly. Recognising him, in heightened awareness, for the power he held.

"I admire it. Your willingness to destruction- to mine. To your very own. Despite all sacrilege." Said with careful breaths and barked at the last words. Spoken quickly. In a hurry against time.

That you would kill a black lord and be unbound for it. Unpunished. All the same at the bottom of the Hraen.

His claws grip his own chest and hook against his skin as he moans at him. Recognising that he had been angry. That he hated. Oh, blissfully detested. But no- they could be, he thinks, as the same.

"I see it. That you are not so different from our ilk after all."
He laughs at his own words. Anger. Disbelief. Then curiosity replacing madness. Curiosity and respect that he would do no further harm to him-- nothing here for him otherwise. That he was fit to turn them all to ice and void.

Aezhyrrael in awareness of all senses around them steps back- in no desire to approach. In no desire to die. Wishing to reach for his own blade to cut his quickening heart from his chest. He knew in punishment of what the psyseer was doing.

He was. He was an equal amongst crew. This was the only path.

"You will serve me, untouched by my blades." Aezhyrrael relents, loudly over static ice. In desire to hunt no longer.

His pulse pounds in his own head.

"There are uses yet for your mind. Uses that do not- concern the hands and fangs of masters long away.-- That are beyond my power to contain." He manages to wheeze, the sound a strain.

Fixated on the hyuron all the while in quickening arousal.

"I cannot kill you. And so you are mine. Unsullied. This beginning with your name- if you are to serve me without brands to bear." He speaks quickly, mind unravelling strings.

The eyes he stared into were so similar to his own suddenly and, if he could but turn his attention outwards, admires it.

He was a fool for testing. For forgetting himself. Hah. As he was. This a test of Zhaine by this shadow sent to him.

When Aezhyrrael speaks, it is in truth-- that, if they survived this, his seer would not suffer under draihari talons. Not without the pleasure of it indulged by himself. Thought with a grin become a sneer in pain turning the blood in his ribcage to thorns.

"You-- will obey me. I will not touch you."

The claws retract in an instant. If he hadn't been far away he would have been surprised to not need to do more to earn his relief.

He wills the dark creature's blood to burn--burst his heart--lost in it as he was as his own body thrums with pain, fatigue, somewhere above, below, the glass of his psyche.

He barely hears the command to cease. Somewhere, all he hears is the wild hiss of a consuming snake.

You will hear my words--!

Calix, teeth bared at first, softens just so that his pupils dilate as his clarity returns to waking.

"What did you--? He breathes. The plea to speak, he thinks it was, was just enough that Aezhyrrael would find the encroaching fury's pace slowed as Calix' focus breaks.

I admire it. Your willingness to destruction-

Calix stares, uncertainty clear on his brow. His eyes flicker to the grasping talons that pry at the creature's own heart. Still wet with his blood but desperate nonetheless.

He pities the unnatural sight for just long enough that a gasp saw his intent break--he looks away but briefly. He didn't wish to kill him. For several reasons.

That he assures himself are extremely prudent given the situation. Warranted if he were not to deprive the Spectra of his body, property of the Holy Aurus.

And all that.

He takes moments to steady his breath.

That you are not so different from-

"N-.. I'm nothing like you." He barks, unaware of any reasoning the beast might have to think so. Heretical to consider beyond simple dismissal.

He pants and does consider the circumstance. Whether by his or anyone's failings, his ship and the crew were long away and perhaps dead. He was on a Draihari knarrar. He didn't wish to die and, he supposed a Draihari that spoke Arunaic and was willing to leave him intact was worth, perhaps, listening to.

The trouble, he surmised, would come after. In being of assistance to the enemies of the Imperia and what wretched plans they had that required unimpeded access to the sea.

I cannot kill you. And so you are mine. Unsullied.

He supposes. How to explain this collaboration he was about to embark upon to the Spectra? What was the opposite of providing embellishment? He'd have to do that.

You-- will obey me. I will not touch you.

Calix was somewhat satisfied with the state of affairs. This ship needed him, whole he adds to himself--hopefully he adds again. And therefore he had leverage. Leverage he'd apparently just used without realising.

Calix' gaze hangs to his right.

"First, let me free." He looks back. "Second, I have one concern. Among many, of course, but perhaps I'll save those for. Later." He lifts himself from against the table where the frost and rime had already begun to melt. His voice a touch sardonic.

"That you need me implies you're seeking to avoid the Fathom. That you wish to traverse over the deep."

He would pause in expectation, and gesture with his shoulders vaguely in case Aezhyrrael made no moves to undo his bonds.

"I should like to stress something that I suspect you wouldn't understand. Protecting your vessel will be... Difficult. In the interest of my own life, I am willing to do this, that I remain of use to you." He says with some bitter chord.

"But that the best way to protect a vessel over the trenches is to avoid the deepspawn entirely."

He gives Aezhyrrael a hard look. Waiting. If it wasn't to be apparent, he continues.

"And I am not a practised tideseer. If we are seen by something, it-- It requires much more from me to keep it at bay. Much, much more to pry it's eyes from your wretched head if I--." Fail the first task.

He sighs through his nose.

"Are we understood..?"

What did you--?

Aezhyrrael poises serpentine with a noise. Hesitating, paining, as fangs grind against themselves in discomfort.

He sees the cold pupil dilate, ice blackening just enough to tease the abyss within that he might reason with. Before they yet both burst and were sent to pitch hell together.

The Mornecaun speaks in hisses, clawing his own bare chest through. Sickly white skin gave away to shimmering black as the flesh beaded and split in instincts begging him to cut through.

To remove the psyseer from within him.

It was a terror he admires; in truth and dignified words. Reason quickening in arousal as he claws the other from the grip of cold's temptation and feels his own chest lighter for moments. Such a foul. Foul.

Aezhyrrael hisses in furious awareness of them both suddenly malformed to passionate desire.

When his gift breaks the gaze, his lips tighten in- hhnnhn- jealousy.

N-.. I'm-

Oh, his chest flutters. Fluttering as his body cooled again- as his lips curl.

Oh, but you are. So close in aether, in his throat- in the way that pale eye stared into his depths. Now having him down to his awareness again...

The chuckle from Aezhyrrael flitters darkly and as briefly as the frozen cold. Then is gone again. Satisfaction and pain.

That he thought he could be the same as the beastmen he sailed with?

It was.

Aezhyrrael's brows inch as he licks the pale tresses with his gaze first.

"Well, mroth'fli, you... are not like the others. Are you." He eyes the hair; the eye.

He only speaks to him when looking into the blue eye- when the psyseer allowed him to see it. He could not bring himself to reason otherwise.

It was easier this way. And it must be-- for they did. Need him.

The white-hot gaze falls away in consideration and Aezhyrrael allows it but chases it with gaze alone. When he leans forwards an inch, he feels the weight in his chest and snarls at him. The willingness to destruction of him from within.

It did ebb. The grip on his heart throbbing but loosening.

He does allow the air to linger for those long moments and finally smirks at the words to be let free. Aezhyrrael, in pleasure, slithering forwards with claws poised a little more strongly than before.

"Ohhnnhn… Of course. It would be my pleasure."

He manages the cackle as his claws flex and he reaches to grip the psyseer by a strap. Careful not to touch him at once but- he pauses and gorges on the sight. The closeness of it and of the ice already melting away. Aezhyrrael does eye it as his claws pluck beneath rope and leather.

He teases him. Testing, claws daring not to touch the psyseer's bloody body but. He could have fun with straps fashioned by his very own kin.

"You mroth'fli are all brimming so deeply with concerns and worries," Aezhyrrael laughs, as he unties the first straps. "A strange wonder that you have not frozen your own minds and ships to ice." Enough to free the psyseer's biceps--

Aezhyrrael leans in with a pale breath and grins, hovering serpentine where his gaze might remain on the eye. On the gift. Hnnnh. What torture. If he were to take it as his own?

He recoils outwardly in a moment's resistance and hisses at the black air still loose of watching deepthings. Still breathable save the presence they shared with one another. Some relief that they remained safe on these waters- even whilst hiding in the black and not particularly moving.

Above, the Varakhainan meandered in awaiting a course; the psyseer's coordination. It gave time to tend to those struck by blade and bullet.
Talons meticulously loosen the sharp buckle of another and the smirk purses coyly. Hesitating as something beneath the surface hesitates also and questions him then. He, stressing that it was his heart with a puff of his chest and a heavy sigh.

Of course. He allows the psyseer to continue. Suspicious and stressed in his mind and, hrm, enjoying the words told to him. It was the despair in them, was it not? In hearing what he wished to hear. Adjacently. In some tension of reluctance told to him when the creature himself did not seem so sure.

Another trial. One of many, perhaps.

He releases another strap to allow the other's forearms to stretch away from his body- the matrix of binds lessening. Clumsy in the rush to get him bound.

He does not speak to him yet.

Aezhyrrael's claws flex and dance feather-light some inches from the hyuron's skin in a desire to touch. Knowing yet. He eyes him as he seeks permission to linger near. The gaze arrogant despite the words and leaving some moments of mortal air between them both.

"You will take us to where I desire however you would see fit to do so, seer." He assures. Growling in some play now that they were on some conversational terms.

"It is not in our blood to resist the will of the Fathom. Only to follow where thralls and daemons might take us. It is death to be on these waters-- a matter of time, with none to guide. It is why my kind do not tread these forsaken waters."

Aezhyrrael's tone lilts as he tilts his head in listening, gaze never flickering from the sacred eye. He does recall the whispers with a shudder and cringes in remembrance of the sensation. Like black leeches crawling over his mind and offering the edges of some vile, black song.

And I am not a practised tideseer. If--

A pause. He curls his lip and contemplates in the dark as he assists at untying him anyway- after leaving him to wonder for moments. The hands clutching the straps stopping and allowing fingertips to dance.

The Mornecaun's grip assures that he would be able to move.

Are we understood..?

He meets the sacred eye with an uneven brow. Mortal moments overlong that might be closer to a minute give him pause in thought and contemplation of it. The anger that comes in tides not so strong as before but. Troubled.

"Ohhhn..."

Aezhyrrael's throat rumbles as he sets the straps aside on the table near and leans past in deliberate closeness, his breaths shallower than the hyuron's. The presence in front of himself warm on his bare, torn skin in all of its mortal strength.

"Another of Zhaine's challenges. I must admit to his sense of humour."

His brow hardens and he graces a horrid snear past the psyseer.

"And defer to it."

With no intention to bow after the creature, he removes his blade from its sheath: the thing horrendous up close to mortal eyes. Black steel given iridescence by venom, with serrations running in long saberfangs down the blade's edge.

It lowers in abeyance of its master and sets down between the psyseer's legs- nudging the bindings apart as he watches him through his eye. The blade long enough to make the distance between Aezhyrrael's own raised talon and the bindings still clutching onto Calix's legs.

There was. No doubt within himself, he thinks, that this seer would take them as they needed to travel. He would find ways to where Aezhyrrael desired without need of fear for the Fathom-- for if they could avoid it and slip beneath its so many rancid arms, they could rend his waiting blade from the sea wholly unnoticed.

He smirks in found confidence. The other's presence a distraction and not at once. He, with time to calm, thinking their aether the same as each other and yet mirrored. A strange thing.

"You will find no comforts here, mroth'fli. But perhaps you will find purpose amongst us not found in your silly Imperia." The offer plain as one of the final sets of binds falls loose.

"So, does this sacred eye have a name? Your kind do so enjoy to crawl around under their visages of paltry titles and words known by no other things." He asks then. Intending to know him by one name or no name.

You...are not like the others. Are you.

Calix follows the look and his brows knit together for a moment. He wasn't sure giving the Draihar the satisfaction of his assent that he was technically correct was entirely wise. It was a pointed question, in some regard.

But he recognizes the willingness to free him as one of acceptable amelioration. He turns slightly, somehow half expecting to be eviscerated anyway.

You mroth'fli are all brimming so deeply with-

The laugh brings a shudder to his spine and he does meet the look that came from the side, mithril eye in uncertain saccade over the nightmarish features Draihari all seemed to share. Gaunt, hawkish, vampiric. A facade of beauty, each and all. Aezhyrrael's fangs were of particular intrigue.

Not the pleasant kind. He grunts airily as his biceps fell free. The vile beast was taking care to respect their bargain. And he notes, obnoxiously to the letter that he not touch him at all.

The process, naturally, drags on.

Calix also notes the change in its tone. Was that playful sarcasm, or? His lip curls and he rolls his eyes as he awaits freedom, relaying his concern to his captor.

Concern that he curses himself for--for his honesty. They were surely looking for an expert tideseer. Not a Venatorix on a chance voyage as a favour. Surely?

He was growing suspicious that the other was deliberately taking his time and he-- He pauses several times in his explanation to give him such a suspicious look.

You will take us to where I desire however you would see-

Calix' expression softens. Such trust? Such... He makes a face and caught himself before his decorum bid him to thank the beast for the implicit trust. He could do them tremendous harm with such trust.

Trust was always dangerous.
He looks forward in growing impatience, though endures their closeness for sake of freedom soon achieved.

It is not in our blood to resist the will of-

Calix blinks in earnest thought.

"I see." He wonders in an instant if it was worth a run in with an unholy leviathan to see this crew destroyed. He swallows. Recognizing the risk they'd taken and yet finding the entire ordeal profane. They were truly relentless evil.

Eye forbid they all grew as courageous as this one.

Claws pause and he sighs, brows furrowing. He should not have said it. He should have feigned competance. Was his weariness the source of so many mistakes? Something about the Draihari was testing the limits of his good sense.

Another of Zhaine's challenges. I must admit to his sense of humour.

There's that name. Zhaine. Not only did it come up frequently at the Lexicanum but it was associated with all manner of black profanity. A saint, of sorts, to the Draihari. Calix wonders if Zhaine ever existed at all-- his edicts insanity to his ears.

And defer to it.

Calix had to look away with a breath. The Draihar's voice as spoken through such a nightmare set of fangs set him to shudder.

And the blade emerges, gaining his attention back as quickly.

"Ah-mh--?* He watches it swing in measured motion between his legs and, though quickly discerning that his captor simply didn't have a mind to kneel-- thought for a moment that he would have to change his name.

This manifests as a breath through a pulled lip, curled in near-imperceptible good humour for less than a moment as he grips the table behind him. As quickly, his stoic look returns.

"Hm. No matter. I will find ways to be of assistance."

He steps his boots apart. And with a grimace looks up.

"As long as you communicate our terms to your crew."

He assumed this one was their commander. He realizes he had little knowledge of their social structure. Not in detail. Poor excuse for a Venatorix.

So, does the sacred eye have a name?

Calix had to admit- The insults were a bit more tolerable. That one wasn't terrible. He manages not to smirk.

"Calix Maer--" He swallows, self aware. Perhaps the basics would suffice.

"Calix Rae Fellner." Another look of narrowed eyes as he thought about it again. "Calix." He offers, thinking such a thing harmless in this circumstance. Oh, the Spectra would flog him for this.

"I would appreciate knowing what to call you."

Calix begins fussing with his uniform and buttoning the thing back up- body sore but mending already-- with his efforts. He wonders if he'd find rest enough to avoid too much scarring.

"And dare I ask what you're out here searching for?"

Aezhyrrael, for his part, was in no hurry to free him. In no hurry to earn himself demise, quickly or otherwise. Time nothing to a draihar who did not feel the Fathom's song.

And just so. He was able to admire the other in some repressed pleasure as he frees him of thorn and buckle in tedious succession. In no hurry to look away from the silver gaze as smirks come and go.

So full of flesh and blood in comparison. There was some thrill in the largeness of his seer that he would be powerless to resist if it fought with him again. As on the deck. Unable to bite him with blades up close.

Flush with ruby life. And yet marked.

Aezhyrrael narrows his eyes as he wonders why-- talon plucking a buckle turned inside out and taking care not to fleck his steel over flesh or fabric.

It alighs all predatory desire within when the other eye moves over him. When they did talk to one another. Strange.

The aether sets his nape to bristling in play between them. Offering a look disclosing that- of course- he did not trust him. Not really. But he and his kin had no choice and it does not occur to him in some weakness that, of course, the hyuron were such deceptive and foul things.

But. He was marked.

It was a vulnerability realised as Aezhyrrael tells him why they needed him. Told with gentle snarls and resentment seeded in the truth of it. Did he desire to trust such a beast?

Not as far as he could reach and eviscerate him.

This was. Not far. So long as the mind was bound.

I see.

The claws poise in his mind as he, sneering at him, feels his innards blacken in some insecurity. Some concern. Some mutualism in the trust that Aezhyrrael confides in him.

As he straightened with the blade first, he sighs. It would commit him to torture eternal in the scholary if he were to kill him, surely.

Aezhyrrael doesn't consider the implications of his blade poised between them both.

Ah-mh--?

He does, in some aether, feel the blood rush. It pulses in the veins suddenly from not himself.

A brow raising.

He smirks- the smirk widening to a grin, becoming feral, as he catches the hand reaching for the table still damp. He saw dew seep against the gilding over it in the dark.

Hm. No matter.-

For the first time proper, he looks down between them and he laughs. Malevolence incarnate as he considers indulging the tricks all hyuron knew. Oh, no.

"Oh, mroth'fli… I suppose you expect nothing less of your Imperia, mm?"

He bounces the blade within his grip before drawing it down, down a little more.

"When you allow me to indulge a little deeper, a little darker-- I will grant you this. If you desire it so deeply. There's a good pet, now." Aezhyrrael assures with a grin as the blade lowers enough to catch the first buckle. That which he nudges apart from another and down in sparing himself the indignity of kneeling.

As long as you communicate your terms to your crew.

"There will be no claw raised to you, mroth'fli." He chides, droning. Arunaic so taxing on the breath. So rugged a language.

His muscles cord in anticipation of giving chase- imaginary- as he loosens the thick legs. Musculature enticing under the uniform. He sees it on the creature's chest. Heavy breaths and. Hrm. Hair across the pectorals.

Thick hair over his skin. How beastly.

How charming.

The Mornecaun awaits with a name and his lips curl in pleasure he does nothing to hide when the other struggles to give him one. Oh, come, mroth'fli-- your full name will suffice. None of it used.

He could simply not resist.

"Your titles are dogmatic, Calix. They are nothing to me." He says in tasting the name on his own tongue. It was sharp, for an Imperial. Exciting to say. He would not speak the rest but finds it cute.

That he tries is pleasing enough for him to give his own name.

I would appreciate knowing what to call you.

He lets the black air linger between them for overlong. Longer than any mortal might be comfortable with. His lip curls as he unfastens the lowest of the buckles. Unnecessary, that he thinks on them now. In all fuss to contain the hyuron physically for fear of his greater strength and yet-- not enough to stop his own blood from boiling over if he had allowed it to.

Pretending to look down at the buckles wrapping calf and ankle together, he watches thick fingers working his uniform together. Empyrean not so blinding but. Oh. It thrilled. The way it burns in the mind pleasing and tempting.

Hyuron uniforms were so grand, weren't they.

He smiles and flashes a look with predatory night-eyes at his pale eye again as if in remembrance.

"Aezhyrrael Nesairaeth."

Not often spoken. But he would indulge him. It brought his jealousy some pause to do so.

He straightens and sets the blade away with a pleased hiss. Humming with an exhale.

"That is not for you to know.. The warg does not ask the name of the prey, but for the scent." Aezhyrrael decides, as he steps back and admires him in the dark. Appreciating the sight of crimson and white, for once. The epaulettes.

A shrug with a shoulder sees Aezhyrrael moving serpentine over the deck and towards the steps leading them up into the dark. His aether ice as he frowns suddenly- warg.

Wargs. Beastmen.

Though he had turned from him to step away, he spins around on a heel and night-eyes stare confounded at Calix. They narrow in an instant and he growls then.

Remembering he must feed it. Give him the strength to guide them into waters colder still. Eyes flickering a little more softly from the eye to the white hair in some understanding of it.

"And what is it that you consume to stay alive?" He lilts.

I suppose you expect nothing less of your Imperia, mm?

Calix' nape bristled and he peers between them uncertaintly.

When you allow me to indulge a little deeper-

Calix made a face and leaned back, brow hard. He assures himself that having to rely on his imagination alone was proof of his commitment to the Holy Aurus. His ignorance could be his shield in this instance.

He almost doesn't realize he'd flushed. He blinks quickly.

"M-...Pet? Oh, no-- don't even start that." He growled, raising his chin.

Despite all, he had given his name and felt a touch sicker for it.

Hearing it spoken made his nerves dance unpleasantly for less than a second. He steps apart and had begun buttoning his torn uniform. It was servicable, of course. The twill layered so that much of the damage remained on the surface. The red slash on the double-breast remained, but it would have to do.

But he could only imagine what a mess he looked, likely bruised and bleeding from places even he was as yet unaware.

Aezhyrrael doesn't offer his name at first and Calix peers over his shoulder cautiously as he pinches his collar together. He could see the other looking him over as he fussed.

What was he pondering, the wretched thing?

Finally, a name, if it was truly such a thing.

Calix mouth opens to repeat it before pausing, brows pinching in earnest unsureity he'd heard him correctly.

"Aezh-- Aezhyrrael?" He swallows after, lingering in disbelief. His disgust was immediate but didn't last. In truth, it was not so horrible a name at all.

His look softens.

There was yet one binding left that Aezhyrrael left undone and Calix dares to give him a pointed look. When nothing was done about it, he puffs a strained breath and bent just enough that he was able to lift a boot to meet his hand halfway.

He held the edge of the table behind him to steady himself lest he look a complete fool as he fussles with the strap, lip curling at the inconvenience.

That is not for you to know.

He supposed that was...Fair. He lets out a rumble of disappointed irritation as Aezhyrrael glides past him with surprising silence for a beast so large. It was unnerving.

And his eyes glaze over at the fact that he didn't flinch. Please don't tell me I'm already at ease with this. Is this how heresy begins? Oh, I'm lost. He prays to not survive this changed.

He hesitates before turning to follow. He supposes he'd establish his value as quickly as possible. But does wonder how he's meant to find something he doesn't know exists.

A prudent but confounding question breaks him of his thought and he stares dumbfounded at the, frankly terrifying, gesture of night-eye embellished glowering. Prudent because, well, he should be grateful it was considered--Confounding because he'd never had to answer such a question before.

His eyes fall in consideration as he approaches nearer, indicating that he was willing to follow even still.

He even joins him on the steps, pausing just behind. Mutual assurity gave him confidence to not wither in the presence of the enemy. Heinous as they all were. Perhaps it would be a different story when surrounded by many.

"I take it you imply there's little to eat on board." A pause. "It's no matter. I can sustain myself on ambience for a time."

He leaves out how generally unpleasant it was to do so. His kind, even with psyonics, had not the mechanism to siphon aether in great quantities unless it condensed into the telluric.

"Afterwards, I... Suppose I will find creative uses of our time. I won't be of inconvenience--Ah--"

His eyes drop, realizing he had grown so used to titles that the lack of proper address is what had him pausing in his speech so frequently. Frustrating. He swallows in a twinge of nerves.

"What are you? What is your... Surely, you must have some address."

"Mornecaun!" Came a distant hissing from above deck as a face peered down into the dark. It faltered for a moment in seeing the lord's companion but sneered plaintively as Draihir discussion emerged from nearby.

"The helm wishes to know the course, dreadful prince." Came the tongue that, to Calix, sounding only like a serpent's hiss. Dreadful.

"Mornecaun?" It wasn't Aezhyrrael. "Titles are silly, was it? What does it mean?" He raises his chin expectantly toward the deck.

Aezhyrrael expects the reason and grins with teeth, the chuckle pleasure from the throat. The bristle sending his nerves alight and his pupils contract just slightly enough.

The ignorance was lost on him- sensing the rush of the blood. It was ecstatic white noise in Aezhyrrael's aether and pounding closer.

M-...Pet? Oh, no--

He eyes him wildly and laughs then as he parts from him.

That sounds not so far from courting desire, mroth'fli. Words trapped in the mind as Aezhyrrael watches him. Contemplating in thought the speed of all his kin.

To him, in offering his name, it had been hardly so long at all. His own time spent in admiring the last glances of bare skin and hair on a chest so rounded- next to his own. Hidden by cleaned arrogance all strewn apart by black blades.

The flash of red setting his pulse alight for moments in a desire to hunt.

In a desire to grip and envy that he could not- could not hold him and make him squirm and writhe like such a pet. The way fingers gripped at the breast and pulled it together so exotic to him. Is this how all hyuron dressed? Surely not.

Another pause when Aezhyrrael gives his name. In some insult, he wonders if he had been heard.

Of course, expecting it to be butchered. He saw it on his pet's face and paused lips. It was as he had come to know him and all few hyuron that had survived him to meet in his time. So arrogant in their butchery of aesthetic.

Finally, he smirks through one corner of his lip. The sheathing of his blade and a hissing exhale was entirely performative in its disappointment.

It. Was not butchered. Even with the way of nature that was the soft tongue of hyuron language.

"Impressive." He sings. That he was not disgusted to hear it from a hyuron's own maw. That he had told it to the psyseer himself. One name freely given for another. In mutualism.

Something more grips him beneath the surface at the sound of his name escaping from such a mouth. The second time he breaks his gaze- where he glances at the lips in their warmth. And is surprised.

Aezhyrrael blinks- then hisses as he turns and breaks away from the enchantment. Away from here, as he leaves Calix to the last strap. Its inconvenience an extension of pleasured will and pleasured promise.

When he does turn back it was in some renewed concern that they might well starve their new pet before getting anywhere at all with him. And it surprises him when he finds Calix so close and his presence more overwhelming than moments before. Where they were apart from one another and the aether, the air, was a little more tolerable.

He would not discourage it. The presence so near pleasurable enough for Aezhyrrael to tolerate for long.

As if betrayed by his own body, he does turn just slight enough to meet him on the steps. The creature so much littler on him on the step below. It was almost demure.

I take it-

Aezhyrrael raises a brow. The draihar unconvinced entirely when he surmises in his own mind, eyes flickering between hair and eye, that it was no such thing a seer could do. Much less one crafted with mortal flesh.

"You cannot escape from me that easily, mroth'fli. I know what you are trying to do." Aezhyrrael sneers, taking a step above him again. The stammering thoughtless to the draihar's ears- in no hurry to be
In the silence of the psyseer's frustration, he leads him upwards.

Truthfully, they did not consider the mortal condition. Nor that they would make it this far after all. Now with a psyseer pet in his hands... Aezhyrrael's brow stiffens. He grins at the squirming he thought nervous.

"If you can forgo your feeble illnesses for a while, my kin will feed you. I cannot kill you, after all."

Nor can it be risked.

"Your kind can survive for some time on meat and mountain water, can they not?" He asks then, the answer a heedless thing. He would have to. Though...

Mornecaun!

The shriek of one of this own tears him from the whorling aether as he looks up into the dark- to where one of his creatures poised. A pale face with dark blue hair poises in the dark and approaches them both closer. The conversation setting Aezhyrrael's bristles on edge.

The grey and red of Kheraes emerge from the dark near with a smirk- his Dulran better from the high of the venom. Side torn through but healing already as piercing eyes stare delectably over the captured hyuron.

The helm wishes to know-

Aezhyrrael clenches his fangs with a bite bidding the other to silencel eyes flickering then between them both and the psyseer.

Before he could speak... Oh, rage. Playful and bitter in all its ways. Even surprise as he was forced to consider that Calix indeed heard them.

Titles are silly, was it?--

Pupils dilate and nostrils flare in bitter play. Thrill yet at teeth already showing. Though blunt as they were to his own- they showed and he wished so deeply to reciprocate. In any other lover he would pin him to the mast giggling and clawing until evisceration and howling in shared challenge.

Ohhh... how he could hunt him then. His teeth bare-- but he grins. Widely and predatory at him. He does giggle then in recognition. That the sacred eye did have humour that insults him only in his desire and inability to bite in play.

"Daring pet. It is beyond the understanding of mroth'fli." He says first. In truth-- how could he tell him? Knowing not a human comparison nor how to explain the words to him in his own tongue.

He does pause in thought much faster than earlier. Initially thinking earlier just the same that it was worth no effort of his own to teach this hyuron of anything. He realises as he explains himself that perhaps he could benefit, then.

"Suppose that your kings have need of their own princes with which to trust armies, ships, worlds. I am a prince, of my kabal. Of my god."

A sneer then.

"As seer and mroth'fli, you will address me as dominar or as Aezhyrrael. Is this understood?"

Aezhyrrael allows the question to linger as he turns on a tall heel to face larboard. Across the deck and past the bow with a grimace into the dark. The moons would not be with them at all, this night.

"You will tell us where we go, seer. I sense the ley cardinals but," he pauses in jealousy and glares at him for it. Daring that he sense the aether of artefacts and blood better than they. Knowing already that he must. "Not the ley line to that which I am owed."

His subordinate near hisses in Draihir, pale teeth glistening hungrily. Unanswered but in understanding on the hyuron tongue. It seemed that all of them were. Their nature as corsairs and sea-travellers.

Aezhyrrael takes a predatory step around him with eyes narrowed outwards that any of his crew should approach. Murmuring and hissing in the dark all as over a dozen of them were audience suddenly. Pale and dark and coloured with night-eyes glowing towards the middeck. Good eyes would see them all in similar paints.

"In wretched Arunaic, your kind calls it the north, do you not? We are far, far from our home. But the sword I desire is between us and the coast-- and you will find it for me. It lays where we cannot sail in the presence of the Fathom- it matters not how far we crawl. But you. Ohnnnhnn- you can."

He presents him with a claw outreached to direct Calix towards the bow and past several of the watching eyes. Assuring in mind only that they would do nothing to him- as Aezhyrrael's dressed chin raises in confidence of the fact.

When he clenches his teeth, the growl is terse. A little playful. A little admiring. Dangerous.

The pale faces shrink under Aezhyrrael's look. Of course, they were imposing on their lord to make any demand. But the ship was ready and cuts were tended. They were eager to test out the spoils of their raid, it seemed.

Calix feels something from Aezhyrrael--He's not sure what, exactly. Something thorny, something exciteable. Aroused even. He wonders how long before he would come to find their aether comfortable in how predictable it might be.

Was it? Or was it chaotic as his own people. So many colours of the mind in the Imperia yet... Simple. Comfortable.

Shallow. Lonely.

Aezhyrrael and his... Whatever they were to him, his crew, were unreadable in the moment and it set him on edge. A tension filled with uncertainty of whether he would be attacked or killed or subject to some other heretical vision.

Daring pet. It is beyond-

Ah. Now this was predictable. Calix' eyes narrow for just a second.

"I beg you to try me." He answers level, a touch insulted for the lack of confidence in his mind. A mind, he'd love to remind, struck him into submission between them not minutes past.

To his surprise, the Draihar relents. And explains something akin to a general. A director. A duke? All seemed aptly similar. It was no task to understand.

"I see." He answers, and meant it.

-you will address me as dominar or as-

Of course. So that's where the word has come from. Dominus. Don't tell him its origin lay in Aelhir. What irony. Unnatural.

He would never call a Draihari his dominus and so he surmises he would suffer through the use of his name alone if nothing else sufficed.

"Right. You are something of... Lordship, it seems." He pauses emphatically. If they were of the same cloth after all, he surmises Aezhyrrael would outrank him. He had one leash-- that of his ...Divine, he assumed? Calix sat at the end of several such leashes.

He held considerable authority but it was difficult to imagine, to him, being responsible for the lives of your men. It was a great one.

Calix has always worked alone.

He almost asked 'And what does mornecaun mean to say in your tongue' but Aezhyrrael was away. Perhaps it would be too nuanced to be of any understanding to him after all. It could come later. He'd be sure to listen to them speak with some effort while aboard.

Heretical but-- easily justifiable given the circumstance, he believes.

He follows, stiffly at first, over the deck. His body ached. He tries not to look too closely at the monsters around, above.

And comes to stand some steps behind Aezhyrrael.

Feeling... Dutiful, blind him. It was easier to contend with his predicament if he had a task. Navigation, he supposed, would do.

Not the ley line to which-

Right, eldar used the ley cardinals. He was familiar with them. Felt eyes on his back. On his neck. He shudders, knowing their eyes were far better than his own in the blackness.

Aezhyrrael circles him and he understood, intuitively, that he was herding him. He decided to simply obey. He understood the assignment and paced then to the hideous forecastle.

He thinks it would be simple for a moment. He'd reach out with his mind and simply direct them in whatever general direction Aezhyrrael desired but then-- He realizes in silence what he asked.

"A s- A sword." He blinks in thought.

And turns toward him.

"You're looking for a blade..." He spoke slowly, as if clarity met him halfway to each word. "And you don't know where... it is?"

His eyes dance in rising panic. Oh, dear.

"North of... Our location, the coast, the--?" He shook his head. He would be killed, wouldn't he. How is he to find an eyecursed blade in the middle of the sea?

"You're going to have to give me much more than that, Aezhyrrael, if I'm to be at your service."

Aezhyrrael's nearness felt like a threat. Calix glowers back, uncertain, but determined to be angry.

He relents some moments later.

"I could. If I knew aught about you. If we shared blood. If we were--"

He couldn't finish the thought without his neck burning.

"As it stands, I--" His eyes fall delicately away and his voice distanced from his anger. In disbelief, he felt compelled to look to the northeast. Contemplative, he sighs deeply, suddenly far away.

Whether by Aezhyrrael's generously projected aether or chance he did. Feel. Something.

Ancient. Terrifyingly so. Calix felt overwhelming sadness in contemplation of it. Dust or the black of the sea. So much blood.

His eyes were glassy in his silence.

There was something. But he had not the knowledge nor the years to understand it. "Is this what you seek?" He whispers without thinking at all, eyes on the black horizon still.

I beg you to try me.

Ohh…

Aezhyrrael's eyes sharpen and contract in a moment's pleasure of the threat. In challenge from a brave little mroth'fli.

In one coloured just alike them such that, with some turns of the moons and a bloody fresh mark to claim him as one of the Hunt, none would have been able to tell him apart from his kin. Aezhyrrael, unable to claw and possess, not able to perceive man's blood roiling within.

It pleasured him to offer the attention; the answer, for which Calix bit at him. Boldness an insult at once as an excitement. It sends bristles of pleasure over his nape to hear it. Egging him on with eyes that dared him to speak up. Speak again.

Of deeper and deeper desire to...touch. That he could not infuriating in the adoration of it. That his blood would boil alive in his veins at the very threat of it.

Claws flex at his own sides instead in colourful imagination of it that he, for moments, has no control over at all. And he enjoys it.

It pleased him in his soul's depths to be privy and claimant to such a power.

These thoughts racing all in a moment's passing for the crew-- for Calix.

It pleases him to be understood then. He, of course, never intending to elaborate. Not without punishment.

Right.--

"If that be the closest thing in Arunaic." Aezhyrrael nibbles in turn. This he did understand; comprehended over time in studying the damned language, somewhat. Arunaic with all of its strange nuances. With its ruination. An inelegant and incomplete language forced to be told to them that they could deal with creatures like his kind.

He smirks at him openly in seeing him struggle with the thought as he takes a step away and then several more in contemplation. The steps longer, taller than Calix's own. Set with the clicking of a draihari blacksteel heel setting him some inches higher than he might otherwise be.

He enjoyed him from here, able to leer over his sacred aether as a dark shadow. Something deep within aching and curious. Something gripping him in its desire to be reckless with his own blood and essence.

Night-eyes narrow as he turns away, directing collective attention out to larboard: to where even the draihari seldom saw anything and certainly not beneath waters churned to ink. Aezhyrrael stares into the distance for the briefest moment where he. Feels sore. Tired..?

Where looking out to the black stole him of his energy and his limbs were heavy in an instant. So much that it quickens his pulse in its fatigue forced upon him.

A trick of the Fathom? But he had heard no whispers.

Aezhyrrael breaks away from it and blinks as he regards his smaller companion with his earnest desires. Thinking it such a simple thing: that the seer would sense the weapon to what they called the north-west and they would find the thing buried amidst silt and old stone. Admist where, he expects, no other beast lay save the blade itself.

It was the seers who had sensitivity to such things at such immense depths, he thinks. And who could resist the call of the Elder Fathom's spawn that they could make claim over such artefacts. Over perhaps other treasures long left over the side.

If there was time for that. Draihari known for greed but not at expense of the soul. Not in waters they did not belong.

A s--

Aezhyrrael's smirk curls in front of the pale eye. Not in surprise, but in some questioning immediate. Feral despite it. In likeness- he thinks that this is what you are here for, my seer.

Moments in the reality of hesitation make the draihar squirm just enough to recall him as hyuron blood. In reminder, he snarls- before his aether is just unable to tell the difference again. Unable to see him apart from them all. Now that he had become so curious.

Now that his soul peered willingly in at something else.

"It would be madness to cross over the Hraen again without a seer. We will all meet oblivion for it." He informs first with a hiss. Avoiding that he did not know-- thinking that he did. Of course he did. At this he narrows his eyes knowingly, claws flexible and unable to rip.

In gathering storm, all around peered in as a shadow gathering near. In absence of the abyss, there are whispers in sensation and aether. In collective fascination of the seer's own power.

They did trust him. As their master did.

You're going to have to give me more than that--

"I cannot give you that which has been lost for thousands of years!" He growls, teeth baring in full. In clarity met as a mutual burning flame-- not in anger. In flaming, charred passion of his venture.

And oh, how he had looked. How he had lost and fought to get close. That prowling these waters would be the death of them all if they did not find it. He thinks in such immense attention as he stares at his lantern brightest over these seas. Over white hair touched by a dead breeze.

He wishes to swallow him with his shadow as he steps to him and peers at him. Down, down towards white and blue.

To be so near suddenly let Aezhyrrael's soul alight and he cannot resist the pull of it- spirit and body stolen by a gaze into the abyss.

I could. If I knew aught about you.

Words echoing.

If we shared blood.

Distant.

If we were--

The words and thoughts distant as his heartrate quickens, quickens, pounds-- slowing again like the torture before. Without the pain of boiling blood or freezing walls.

The pitch blackness gazes back in the mind and he lifts his claws within his own body and holds them.

Holds them up, curls them, avoids in some awareness in front of himself. While the gaze is shared so far away. The draihar's breath pausing as he throbs in his own mind with the intensity of a far, far horizon. Of blood over-pouring from forest black to frosty sea.

Of overcoming, overbearing sadness and rage.
It was familiarity in an instant and he has the awareness to follow the gaze. Turning his head towards. The ley cardinal of autumn. The lord's eyes still for moments and then blinking away cold air.

From where they did not come.

To.

He was panting. He feels it in his own chest as his mind, violated, sought to lunge at Calix and gouge him through.

He resists and hisses at the throbbing eternity in his mind-- several draihar stepping closer and away from the dark in offerings of concern. Of help. Did the Fathom take the seer?

Aezhyrrael's eyes dilate and then contract as he wakens again. His gaze following in the waking world towards where the seer looked and in some disbelief of it.

He hears the whisper and gasps over it as he imagines pale shores somewhere distant beyond the horizon. The Starwell's light not even visible from here.

"The blade is not here?" Aezhyrrael roars then, teeth bearing in horror. It- he looks towards the ley cardinal as Calix did and his body stiffens.

That it had been claimed by another. No-

Is this what you seek?

Hardly discernible.

No no.

"Haul! Towards autumn where Mornfeir awaits." Draihir hisses into the dark and sets in motion over a dozen boots over wood and steel.

He had not seen it in the black. Only discerned the aether in distant sensations and in Calix's glance towards the ley cardinal of autumn. Towards where Valurn lay far from here.

It would be too far to survive without food. Enough for the draihari without water and some but-- his eyes refocused meet Calix's body and he cannot resist him.

And surely they would pause before then. That it could be in the seas near Valurn and not so close to the Valari kingdoms at all.

But... Aezhyrrael would go to all lengths to have it.
As he steps close. And stares between hurrying bodies towards the north-east.

"You will stop this torment, seer..." This betrayal. And yet it did not feel like that. Not such a thing at all. It felt like a. Connection. T something. In disbelief, perhaps Mornfeir called out to the Mornecaun alone.

Aezhyrrael growls over burning likeness with Calix like so many thorns into the brain and mind. The intensity nearly breaks him-- into gripping the psyseer's body. Almost. He bares his teeth instead. In pain of the spirit or in agony of the soul.

Something dark made him. Unable to see any other thing.

As the draihar's pale teeth clench around nothing and he hovers his claws behind him. In full cairty again but oh, oh, the pain. So demure from such a deeply other world. Such terrific sadness.

He almost cannot stop the claws quick enough as they uncurl and lunge at Calix's arms- wanting to trap him back within lucidity.

He does-- grab him. Arms corded to hold him but not to rake him with talons. Tight enough to keep him from movement for moments.

Disobedience to their bargain in a moment of terribly mortal weakness. And yet he wished to remain like this in pleasure as he did not seek or feel the Elder Fathom. He paints in clarity, then gasps as he tries to laugh through the ache in his soul.

"Ohhnnahah...such brutal, unchained agony. I see the fields of Niskerra black in blood under the first moons. So many dead." He moans, the sound rasping.

"Of course...what you feel is that which I seek."

Aezhyrrael does touch, gripping him with claws in a moment wherein his mind simply cannot resist the sublimity of dark nature, standing in dutiful watch over the seer's body with nerves aflame in blood and thrill and terror of memories he had never seen.

Calix flinches out of his deep trance at the call to action just overhead. And doesn't understand a word of it. Only morn.

They seem to exchange glances moments later.

You will stop this torment, seer...

Calix' eyes narrow in earnest disquiet. The lord's tone was unreadable to him. He wasn't sure what he meant.

"Torment? I--" His brows furrow. "I cannot explain what I don't understand. This... blade you seek? Though I know not its form there is--something you want. The perspicharix lay bare in this place of any object of your will or des--"

Calix clears his throat suddenly, adjusting his shoulders. His brows knit into a gentle, slightest of frowns. Your desire, however...

Did Aezhyrrael wish to destroy him now? His expression softens into one of uneasy ambiguity as he looks up at him with his eyes, blind him before he turns his head up toward him so near. He'd sooner break his neck doing so.

He most certainly doesn't know what it is he senses. It was unlike the emotions or intent of any of his own people. There was a blade. There was Aezhyrrael. And then there was himself.

Perhaps this intent was in desperation. That he saw Calix as his singular key to uncovering what he was swiftly discerning was of great, great importance to him.

Was it also curiosity that led him to... wish to assist? A question better buried. The Spectra would know the answer to that and he would be paying in blood. This sounded like an artefact of great value. A weapon, no less?

He was doing the very letter of the opposite of his duty.

Blind me.

Claws came to grip his arms and he, mistrusting, tenses extremely but doesn't fight the hold. Not at first.

He continues to stare out to sea.

Aezhyrrael's words haunt their way into his brain. The very recounting akin to his own mind's imagination.

How was this real?

What you feel is--

Calix' lips part and the hair on his nape stood on end as he stifles a shudder at the moan still echoing in his head.

Why was his breath quickening. Aezhyrrael's panting just behind burned in his pulse as his world closed around him. His eyes on the sea but his very awareness circling within them

"Hnmhph--" Calix puffs suddenly, unable to tolerate it for longer as he shudders openly and steps forward- tearing himself free to come grip the rail.

Asra was just now blinking awake- the light barely veiling the sea in blue. Ghostly pale. S... Stunning.

The sea was not this colour in Visia.

He swallows hard in his throat and regrets stepping away. And straightens his back to peer over his shoulder.

"I'll keep you safe." His eyes flicker back to the sea in uncertainty.