"-Morathys is now mine, in chains. A willing pain toy." Aezhyrrael goads, bound in robes as black as Hraen night at the feet of his Lord. His hair was bound behind himself in a tail draped around a slender shoulder and down his long spine in groomed effort.

"If a little eager to bite. Nnhnn."

Said with the Black Rite's brands on display over chest and eye. Paint the colour of mortal blood- marked upon him by the blunt claws of his own Dulran. In all performative measure of his kin with wicked smiles and such violent displays. True enough all that he had taken down the disloyal false Divine and claimed him for himself. To kill him was a make of suffering dissatisfying to the insult given.

Said with earnest as he did not fear the Arch-Divine. He knew of what he was. That Mornkhainen himself was as Zhaine's voice unquestioning.

Seldom did Divines meet one another in the flesh. Rarer still did they make themselves known to Mornkhainen's gaze where most saw to maintaining the silence between themselves and their Arch-Divine. That they would resume their rule with his silent blessing.

The blood of Zhaine himself saw to it yet that he would be seen. That he would announce his presence with blackest pleasure when returned to Helevorn aboard a throne of spines.

It had been some mortal years since his quest had bid him to here- wherein Aezhyrrael writhed with his soulbind entwined with him in fate, Mornfeir between them guiding both their hands.

A psyseer was a dangerous thing. Amongst the eldar, impossibly unusual.

Calix was an extension of his rule bidden to him by Zhaine's will simply. When he was brought to Helevorn, dressed, painted, flayed, branded- he was no other's to question without death for it.

Aezhyrrael would see to it that he, curse of fate become beloved creature, would be loyal to no others. That the falsified Divine Morathys himself would be killed for disobeying the psyseer's ruling.

He was. Offered a generous liberty amongst Aezhyrrael's kind. Even when flogged and shredded and Aezhyrrael's claws parted his flesh. With care taken in the artistry of his scars and the mortality burning within Calix's own soul.

The leash was his own to hold.

Aezhyrrael trusted him. This he would have once laughed at himself for.

Aezhyrrael would feel him waiting behind the carved doors now as he had waited for some time. Eldar meetings no quicker to a mortal's presence even after time. The Divine Aezhyrrael was simply in no hurry.

He would feel his impatience and tolerate it as his own soul writhed and burned in Calix's presence still.

Long claws wrap around Mornfeir's hilt in obedience as he stands before Mornkhainen's shadow with a look of dark pleasure. Their conversation cursory. He had declared his own rule for him.

Aezhyrrael bares the blade whining from its sheath and presents it cleaned, slaked in old blood.

"In Mornfeir's return to Zhaine's kin, in overthrowing the false Divine, in claiming Zhaine's gifts with my blood and blade, I have fulfilled the fate given to me..."

Offered with a cursory, black hiss. And an abeyant show of fangs.

"I offer the Black Rite's loyalty in fullest pleasure again to you."

Mornkhainen’s spire overlooked the whole of their city. Framed by the mountain spines whenever Asra or one of the moons passed behind them to illuminate it. Its shadow cast ever always over Helevorn quietly. Sometimes in fury. Sometimes in affection.

Calix found the scene surreal when he’d first arrived. Terror at first, giving way to reluctant curiosity as he had made the decision to stay. To view the spines and spires of the enemy so closely had filled his ribs in blackest dread for— had it been Months? Years? The tar in his belly had since drained.

His hands a touch reddened at the knuckles these days. His back— well…

His back was no less ornamented but in flushed red, hardly gold.

Those eldar in Helevorn had stopped staring at his passing with slavering hunger and rather casual recognition. Casual for eldar, that was to say. In some twist of fate, he found them deferential at best. Cold and nervous at worst.

They’d since come to know what he was.

He ascended the Arch-Divine’s spire after having briefly left, knowing their conversation would far exceed man’s ability to simply wait.

Mornkhainen and the thought of meeting him did wrench his anxiety somewhat but it was no fear anymore. These creatures for all their night-terror were reasonable. He’d learned this quickly.

Above, Mornkhainen addressed his divine.

If a little eager to bite.

Mornkhainen’s lips quirk lightly as eyes flicker to Aezhyrrael’s mouth to eat his pleasure with blood-red eyes alone. He’d since bade them both to sit in comfort- sensing little in Aezhyrrael that raised his own spines.

He’d come only to pledge himself as was custom after some time settling affairs. He was pleased with him.

“I’m pleased the whispers carried truth on their terrified breath, lord-divine.”

Mornkhainen offers him a thin, cruel smile.

“You played the game well, Aezhyrrael,” His voice was smooth, drawn, “Patience, a sharp blade hidden beneath a deferential bow is such a classic, yet effective weapon to hold under the throat of the complacent.”

Mornkhainen extends a hand over his head as if to pet but hovering inches above.

“You’ve come to kneel. Wise.” His expression softens to neutrality for a moment.

“I appreciate your hunger for it is the engine of our people.”

A slender hand pets him from hairline to tied hair tail before he stands a breath later.

His robes, magnificent, sparkling, shudder in a display of falling stars as he shows his teeth under a managed grin that barely creased his features.

“Your commendable appetite is noted. Pledge your Kabal, your magnificent blade, pledge that exquisite ruthlessness to my designs.”

Mornkhainen’s eyes flicker briefly up and to one of the two corridors that led to his throne room. Then back to Aezhyrrael.

“Thrive under my shadow, and you will feast. Falter,” His face softens again, “and you will become the feast…”

Gentle steps pause at the threshold.

Calix offers a deferential bow and expresses wordlessly to Mornkhainen with a look toward Aezhyrrael and back to him why he was here, seeking to approach. His disciplined grace clearly marked him a child of the Imperia and yet Mornkhainen’s look- sharp and ancient- fix to his strange eyes and hair immediately.

Mornkhainen eyes him with abject curiosity for just a moment- So this was the psyseer bound to the new Divine. The creature kept his gaze lowered respectfully and toward Aezhyrrael.

The Arch-divine was utterly silent, his previously languid posture straightening slightly and expression one unreadable but of intense focus.

As if in a quiet trance, he smiles and gestures for him to approach.

Calix’s own gaze briefly flashes in something akin to terror as his shoulders tense visibly; Their eyes meeting in some silent exchange in the unseen world.

His own will seems to battle with himself to obey the command. This was no simple fear.

Calix, assaulted by his scrutiny, felt his throat tighten as he does approach. His steps, no longer those of men, were silent as he came to pause some strides from Aezhyrrael’s back.

Mornkhainen breaks eye contact with the creature and looks over at Aezhyrrael, whom he beckons to stand.

“Your acquisition. This is he?”

Mornkhainen offers a humourless smile to his Divine.

“You’ve grown fond of him. I suppose his simple loyalty warms a place you thought long frozen?”

Calix swallows, eyes glazing as his attention falls to the shards of brilliant skyline through the windows behind them both. Impossibly tall. Casting blades of Asra’s light over the chamber.

“He wears our Lord’s colours quite vividly, doesn't he?” Mornkhainen asks, glancing at Calix for a moment. “Like a prized hawk hooded with borrowed light."

Calix’s jaw tightens.

Aezhyrrael, when here, was bidden to all pleasure beneath Helevorn and that which pleased Mornkhainen also. It was known by all their kin that his words were Zhaine's own.

And so when bidden to sit, he does. Dangerous, poised awareness submissive when the Arch-Divine speaks with him.

His body writhed in frozen, corded muscle for all of this time and to be awarded was. Pleasure. Satisfaction of a fate conquered.

Satisfaction his to keep by blood-right. The mention then of his seer at some point more than duty.

He had taken great care in nurturing his prize to be as one of their own people. Artistry wrenched through sinew and meat in freeing his spine of Imperial dogma. He allowed Calix to go as he liked in trust soulbound.

That all knew of him- that he wore the mark of Zhaine and was obeyed- was victory to Aezhyrrael in jealous possession.

To know all of these things and to please Mornkhainen also fed him with coy delight; the smile an ecstatic danger as the voice of Zhaine himself bids him his blessing thus.

To hear the words were a cruel and pleasurable little song that blacken Aezhyrrael's soul in blood willing as a hand raises over him and he is given the words. He would pledge all to him. Thought in eyes lidded obediently and aether curling around the hand and the robe- the night sky itself sewn into them and offering Aezhyrrael a glimpse into Zhaine's very soul.

He bows his head to him and eyes flicker into the night-sky of his robes.

The very song, obeyed in silence, sent Aezhyrrael's soul into a whorl of obedient excitement as he writhes within himself to obey the words in all ways he knew. In all ways that would keep his Arch-Divine and his God pleased with his displays- as heir to Zhaine or as simply a servant of him.

All that was intended for him, he would be pleased with.

"My very blood and soul are yours as they please your sublime intentions, my Lord..." He hisses, face tightening in assent.

Head dropping in eager submission as he feels the fangs and claws over him.

"It is my Kabal and my blade that will answer only to your song."

The nearing of aether familiar and steps behind capture Aezhyrrael instantly and he resists turning in place to meet Calix, eyes shuddering over Mornkhainen's form.

The gaze is upon Calix immediately. Aezhyrrael senses this. It stiffens his nape as he bows and, unable to disobey, remains as he senses them both beyond him.

His senses were pleased with his seer's presence as he considers the closeness of their aether a comfort in black halls- then is assaulted by barbs piercing every nerve for moments.

In the mind. It was some thing of basal fear that strains Aezhyrrael beneath his gilded robes. He would tear himself through his glory to be at the seer's side at all other times.

Heart pounding for moments as he struggles with something recoiling within his instincts; his very soul.

He stands when made to and his chin lifts as he does regard Calix in the corner of his eye.

Assuring his bind walked.

Why?

"Given to me as my own. He is loyal to me." Aezhyrrael declares it with a licked fang.
Judgment felt, but perhaps misguided. Zhaine, misguided? No no. His own immense compassion for Mornkhainen blinding. Simply beyond the knowing of a servant of him only.

As he feels Calix's strain and it bends his very own mind into something jealous and afraid.

You've grown fond of him.-

The smile is not lost. Something wrong. Something murderous.

Captive pleasure twists in instinct within a moment. Something very wrong.

What his Lord implied was... antithetical, to what had been shown to Aezhyrrael's very soul in vision and promise. He thinks. He thinks desperately.

Aezhyrrael awaits the appraisal with growing stress as his claws curl around Mornfeir's grip in, why, unsureity.

The licking of fans- the grinning, the pleasure- lost for strain. A collected poise belies the flaring nostrils and the hand clenching around his blade out of sight.

As he feels his soulbind and his intentions questioned his mind drips instantly in murderous black blood.

"My Dulran." His mind begins to pound in restrained violence and in dissonance between the Lord's words.

He glances to the flash of white hair and to Mornkhainen again with hackles colder than before. With a grimace colder than before. What his Lord seemed to ask set Aezhyrrael's very soul to ice.

"It is in Zhaine's name that we are bound to one another. Mroth'fli or no," he breathes. "As it was, after all, our Lord who chose him as mine to claim. Was it not."

He chuckle is a self-comfort as it is sardonic. Dry. Waiting for teeth.

Heretical to question their Lord's intentions for any such a fate awaiting any of them. He thinks in loyalty.

"It was he I found within the Fathom's grasp and who led me to Mornfeir's claim." Aezhyrrael recalls in hissing.

Strain. Stress. As Mornkhainen himself set Aezhyrrael easily aflame in submission of him more so.

As his mind jumps and roils in discomfort and wishes to grip Calix between his talons in jealous possession.

"It is without he that more of Zhaine's blood should have joined the choirs below." He. He Hesitates to say his creature's name aloud.

It is bitten to abrupt silence as quickly as it rumbled within his chest.

"I know not His designs, my Lord- but I obey readily."

My Dulran.

Mornkhainen’s smile remains. Some make of unreadable pensiveness. He does listen. Aezhyrrael’s increasing stress palpable to both himself and Calix. Who, perhaps misguided, shifts his weight toward Aezhyrrael dutifully with a throat cleared near-silently. A way for him to say only that Aezhyrrael needn’t concern himself. That he was fine.

He hardly expected the lord of the Draihari to be entirely pleased with him.

Though Aezhyrrael’s verbalised esteem for their shared triumphs-- It drew of sigh from his nose in warmth.

Mornkhainen, quiet for some time, finally smiles a little more unsurely. His eyes narrowing from the bottom lid only.

“The ex-venatorix embraces the dark and you find… Something else. A perfect little downward spiral. Where does it lead?”

Mornkhainen’s eyes widen and his voice levels as if narrating the very spanning of stars as he peers sightlessly into the darkened eaves of the tall chamber. Impossibly dark so far above.

“Such intense orbits are often fated to end in collision. Trailing threads of soulfire… weaving so tightly.”

Mornkhainen, as he was always wont to be theatric, extended his hands in some supplication to the air above. Meditation in motion, for him.

“Destinies like yours, especially when intertwined so unusually… Often culminate in moments of profound transference.”

His claws curl into his palms.

“Where the essence of one becomes the strength of the other.”

Mornkhainen, in an instant, drops his deep meditation and lunges into a stride nearer to them both, eyes wide.

“I see pain in certainty. This mutual pull at one another’s darkness. A perilous dance toward an end. What end?” His head tilted to observe Calix with unsettling intensity.

Calix makes a sound in his throat more like air, pinching his brows as he looks away with a hand squeezing over his forehead, nails whitening underneath as he drags his fingers across his skin, smearing the red kajal slightly in some wash of pain.

“Integration?” Mornkhainen, eyes wide in some madness perhaps, continues, “A final act where the heart of the bond… finds its final repository. Not annihilation. Absorption. Consumed to fuel the future.”

His eyes flicker to Aezhyrrael and he offers a pause, unmoving. His robes settled, barely licked to movement even by his breath while Calix panted quietly now, turning his head away in some effort to blind himself to Mornkhainen’s tempestuous projections. Like waves against the weakening hull of his mind.

“Such paths require… A strong stomach, Aezhyrrael.”

Aezhyrrael's mind coils and writhes when he feels Calix near and, disdain, his Arch-Divine in front. In stress he wonders if it was wise that he came here at all and in pressure he, in some way, anticipates the very nature of what might be asked.

Was it that Mornkhainen did not trust Calix's bloodright to be amongst them? Or.

The hairs so featherlight on his limbs stand on end painfully beneath his armour and he stiffens.

No. It could be no trick by Zhaine. It was Zhaine's will that bid them to meet. Zhaine's very will that bid him out to sea so deeply and Calix who was chosen to come to his side in his journey to abyss.

The things asked of them both...

The answer given turns his stomach into some spiral of darkness as he considers what was asked in an instant. He roils inside his own head in growing, spurring horror.

All spirals downward were to the hungering void. To death. To destruction for them both or the obliteration of one and then the other. Spirals downwards walking into darkness into the very whispers from whence they had both wrenched themselves.

The stars above were invisible to Aezhyrrael who begs and bides with his own thoughts beneath the currents of strain beyond his own will to decipher. Stars across the gown glitter in mockery of what his mind was not permitted to see.

Aezhyrrael's own body cords beneath his robes into poise collected to venom.

In collision he would see many things destroyed to keep Calix. Ecstasy starved to keep him near for longer. For in breaking him into the world of his own had he become eager and degenerate for that world of his and what lay at its heart within his own bed- in his own chains.

And it was. It was an unusual fate. Wasn't it.

In contending with the words as they seared his mind, Aezhyrrael's mind is given to adoration so deep he would devour both their very souls in defiance. In possession so starved.

Claws tense and flex against his own palms in growing strain until he pierces the skin. The stride nearer one that he meets with fangs bared and the other hand extending for his seer.

One that lapses in his mind and goes merely beyond that body. He could not help himself.

Why.

It is disobedience. That he dares to step between. The growl in his throat pausing before it was born to the air.

This was his blood to spill. No other's.

Implications and fate were not lost on him and he could not help himself. Simply. That the soul and body of this very creature were to be his own in the face of any fate given to them. In the face of any of Mornkhainen's words.

Could he defy fated death? Could he defy all his people when blood so pure poured into his pounding black heart in such expectation?
All for keeping a mroth'fli lover bound to him? Against the way of all his kind?

He cannot disrupt the ritual given to him and he cannot disrupt the fate laid before them both. The pain shared as far as their souls allowed them to share it with one another.

He is forced to see himself deep within in images so vague. Given by the bending walls around Calix's mind and soul.

Aezhyrrael glances deep into his chest and to where a beating kingdom awaited him- then draws his gaze over Mornkhainen in subsumed obedience. In the tumult of minds and images that he could not see past the pounding blood in his own head. He was not gifted with Zhaine's sight.

What was spoken was.

He looks at his Lord's eyes as his own flicker in battle- strained between Mornkhainen and. Damn him. The agony in the chest of his very soulbind. Damn the visions crafted by his own mind as it sought to surely... No.

"What you ask of me..." Aezhyrrael begins, careful, eyes narrowed in some turmoil.

What was asked was of one path out of any that all ended the same way. Souls rent asunder the same way no matter the end. A strained breath screaming to be released gathers in his chest and he hopes that Calix would understand.

Aezhyrrael hisses then, all sound kept within until he speaks low.

"It is bidden that I devour him or be destroyed." He says what he thinks. In cruel strain.

Perhaps many mortal cycles and months ago he would have killed him. He would have gladly pulled the blade through Calix's chest and pulled out his heart for Zhaine's triumph. For a fate given to him back then.

But it was not offered.

It sets an agony deep within his chest like no other thing as he looks on in furious contention.

"That I have brought this soul of mine here to keep. Now I must slaughter him in fate. In Zhaine's name."

Aezhyrrael speaks the words quickly as he considers the paths. As he considers what he had heard. And wonders in tremendous pain if there was another way.

"Tell me, what is the trick that bears His gifts to him? Boons for me to claim from his flesh or mockeries to burden my own soul? Speak to me true." In fury, his gaze shoots up to meet Mornkhainen's for an answer.

He could not deny his own nature. That he would do so a thousand times more for a thousand more souls. That he would torture and flay in ecstasy to Zhaine. Hyuron skin worn on sails for Zhaine.

Had he felt death and pain for slaughtering any other? No. But his soulbind...

To be bound to Calix. What oblivion. The very nature of them was their end. There could be no pleasure of eternity.

Calix looks up with a strained look when he’s grabbed. Distracted by some phantom assault, his eyes- glazed- flicker saccadic between Aezhyrrael and to Mornkhainen off his look.

Was he-? Misunderstanding something?

Mornkhainen only raises his brows.

This dark undercurrent was poisoning his blood and he turns away with a sound in his throat. He could not— He could not comprehend a mind so ancient. It was as if his very awareness was de-threaded and rewoven into a tapestry of many voices. Most not his own. He could not maintain a look of clarity upon Aezhyrrael for very long.

What you ask of me…

Mornkhainen, eyes on the Hyuron with a look haunted, turns his crimson look to Aezhyrrael suddenly. His claws raise to silence him.

“I ask nothing of you, lord-child.”

He fixes him with a fervent stare.

And collects his hands together in front of himself.

His ordinarily unchanging brow does narrow near-imperceptibly into a look that, for the Arch-divine, could be interpreted simply as emotional pain.

“His kind are destined death.” He only says.

Calix, collecting himself, felt a tremendous shame hook against the sides of his neck suddenly to hear their words. His stomach dropping as he resists drawing the corners of his mouth up in sardonic realisation. Of course this would come up between them.

He saw it even at sea. But it was so much more than that. He was… Expendable in the eyes of creatures so storied in years. What consequence could he be to the likes of Mornkhainen? Aezhyrrael?

He battles his will to be. Loyal. Polite. Deferring. And remain at his Divine’s side. To abandon him here in front of his lord under duress would be, to him, less kind than even Mornkhainen’s insinuations that he should be simply killed. Excised to unburden the Arch-divine’s newest, favourite tool.

Was that the right of it?

His head was on fire in his mind. No, perhaps his blood ran hot just now also.

Mornkhainen only raises his chin, hands barely squeezing one another gently in thought.

“I…” He began in clear uncertainty. Torn between wishing to be implacable and anchoring and possibly leading this lord to a stranger fate still.

“I cannot say what strangeness has led to this…”

Claws extend to nearly brush over Calix’s hair.

“I see only that this white fire has come to streak your hair someday.” He said quietly, gesturing toward him.

And smiles coldly. “His blood is long since dried upon you…”

Calix makes a deep sound behind them, as if ill suddenly as his mismatched eyes widen and see nothing at all. His vision darkened at the limbs for a moment as he could imagine it so clearly. Why could he see it so clearly?

He took a step away from Aezhyrrael, panting as he could scarcely retain composure while two creatures casually discussed his murder. Yet, he stays near.

“Hm.” Mornkhainen only grunts finally, having been observing him for a long, curious contemplation.

“What a brilliant fire he burns for you. I see it.” The Arch-divine’s eyes were likewise glazed as if seeing something only he could see. “The hottest fires burn their fuel the quickest.”

Calix, unable to take this for longer. This disrespect. He snaps his attention, furious, to Mornkhainen who meets his look with curiosity.

You will not.

A whisper upon the air. A bluff? A knowing?

Calix exhales, expression softening in defeat as he turns to leave without any further attention to either of them. His shoulders were drawn in a tense line as he drags his nails upon a crenelation of stone leading away from the chamber and to the corridor, finishing with a flourish in simple threat. A hand turned up in patience burned away at both ends of the wick before descending down the stairs with a hiss in his throat.

The nerves around Aezhyrrael's mind and spine twist around one another and pull in tremendous agony at the words. At the anguish shared with soulbind and Arch-Divine both.

Fury. Shared with the Arch-Divine. What was it that he bored into Calix's head exactly? What tremendous suffering does he ask of them both? Does Zhaine ask of them both?

All was nothing that he could perceive, only recoil in disbelief and furious questioning. That the two of them both are pulled through abyss and Hraen and demanded more in sacrifice. Within the very talons of divine triumph does He seek more.

Aezhyrrael does recoil in fury white-hot when silenced, abeyant to every look but. A little fiercer.

The visions are no ask. They are a premonition. A fated thing to worthy lords and Aezhyrrael did not know what happened to the lords who disobeyed. Perhaps things far worse than any death could grant him.

Fate begs for more as it whispers of the Divine plunging his blade through the pounding heart of his soulbound Dulran. His gauri. His seer who had assured both their fates.

Fate asks much of him.

-His kind are destined death.

And oh. Pale claws tremble over Mornfeir's grip in such a tormented instant. The stare forces him to be abeyant but the furious grief does not. It was in likeness that he senses some pain like his own and in demand that he asks its purpose then also.

His blood is destined to that which Aezhyrrael, he thinks in furious silence. That he was of their own kind.

In such devoted trust to Zhaine-- Calix was destined death?

Aezhyrrael fights with it. He fights also with something darker as his brows knit together in so many questions and words and sensations weeping from his aether in torture and insult.

It does not occur to him, its effect upon Calix. Effortlessly he forgets him to be a creature of man for so many moments.

In flashes of imagination not his own he can sense his own aether and desire as it breaks through Calix's body and devours him. Himself divinity. The gift of Zhaine his to take for his own in. Yes. Consumption.

He could imagine fangs as they pierce flesh and then deeper, deeper, venomous and wanting.

He could imagine himself a king over the corpse of tribute.

Was this alone to be their fate at the height of ecstasy? The thought sublime and willing in temptation. In all vivid colour and sensation as he imagines it well, the way the seer writhed beneath him as his claws tore out his very heart. Tempting.

But horrific. It was not Calix in these desires and imaginings who swore himself to Zhaine's every will unto death.

Aezhyrrael would have those clasping, slender hands answer to his mind and to his strain, his mind tight within his own skull as he inclines his head furiously.

I...

Pale eyes narrow.

As he continues, the strain represses like a black tempest. Claws over his creature. Fangs on display for the show of it as he considers sending his very own blade through Mornkhainen's ribs in betrayal of this. Conquest.

That was not such a thing at all, was it?

Their Lord desired more of him in adoration. More blood. More sacrifice. More to fulfil his place as Divine given by bloodright alone.

Calix's sounds spurn his rage. His resentment and. Fangs clench and grind. His.

The fire in his blood burns through his very veins as he stares in a fury and asks without words-- how much?
How much sacrifice did Lord Zhaine desire of him to claim that which had been his from his birth upon this wretched star?

Aezhyrrael's breath hisses inwards in unrestrained agony before instinct overtakes and a weight of aether at his side forces his attention sidelong. The silhouette of black and gold and the pale of his own flesh. Of the marks of the Black Rite over flush skin.

To look at him fills him instantly with questioning; with rage and with all the weight of the Fathom and the blade at his very waist, in contemplation roiling selfishly. Flittering.

They were at the Arch-Divine's mercy without death. Both had come to understand this in time.

To one another, both Divines.

He did not blame Calix for leaving. Fate a thing beyond him. Zhaine's will was, after all, designed for Aezhyrrael, was it not?

He cannot forget the flash of white as it turns to leave and he poises serpentine before him. Prophecies and fates a damned thing. A thing to disobey and worry about under the pall of death and consequence. Or perhaps he would kill him after all.

Aezhyrrael's teeth clench- and he hisses with eyes feral as the blade shows itself from beneath abyssal robes. It. Was furious truth to remain here.

He bares blade and fang as a thousand images cross his mind. Of himself as Divine in black, in white, and in breaths laced still in salt-water and Fathom's song demanded of him more than he had given.

Selfish creatures. Selfish designs. And yet as he speaks he feels the obstruction of his own selfish unsureity gripping him around the throat and warning him. For what pleasure was there in a soul bound to a mroth'fli? A rodent's life, was he not?

"I will subsume you in this flame long before it is burned out. When I am done with Calix, you will suffer as my plaything until I have pulled the last of the black sinew from your bones."

He snarls openly and in some raging contemplation. For it was fate, was it not. Mornkhainen the seer of such a thing. What Calix saw in vision and soul beyond him. It was not for him to see; not for him to know, perhaps.

He and Mornkhainen both were sons of Zhaine on both sides of the blade, were they not.

And yet aware of the blood in his mind and the way it writhed. Aware of his fate. This was what Zhaine desired of all his princes, was it not.

He knew of this also, didn't he. Calix, his burden and reminder of his failures- not a gift.

———

Aezhyrrael leaves him on a heel bound from the chamber as his robes fly- as his blade poises at his side furiously.

Thoughts a tumult in his mind as he chases the clawing over the stone and breaks away from the spire. Thoughts hissing down the corridor and through Helevorn's streets paved in Zhaine's pretty gilding.

It enraged him, shoulders strung up in furious attention. A night's breeze just mocking as it stroked him over sickly skin as he carves his silhouette through those who passed in fear of the blade.

He finds his spire in a whorl of black ire and Calix would hear him first as he hisses, breath sharp through the dark. Across the city and near the bay did they writhe. Did the night blacken for them both.

Aezhyrrael would find his Dulran past the first set of stairs within and be over the carved stone in moments- with him against the wall in moments.

"You..."

He growls deep within his throat and fangs part as he slams him against the wall at speed and closes them together.

The snarl is furious, enraged- in agony. His very soul burns and writhes as he pins him with the blade and narrows his eyes in.

He hisses.

"Ohhnnhnn…"

Such suffering. Overwhelming. Claws grab Calix and don't stop as he tightens his clutching and the blade in the other hand bites his chest where it holds him in place.

"You are why I am not worthy of this rule, gauri!" The growl, feral, from his throat as his mind spins at such tremendous, terrible speed of them both. "After what I have asked of you in my charge... after what I have done for Him. Hhhhskk... I am sent away, unworthy. What has been done is not enough."

He sobs without tears in a horrible, rasping bark as he shoves Calix against the wall and hisses closer, closer. Oh, he could pull both their entrails apart for his inadequacies.

To look at him brought him agony. To have been made to possess him an affront to the makeup of his very existence. To betray his own birthright. Ohhnnn...

"And you."

He stares into Calix with the mind of a hundred blades as he overwhelms their shadows to one another. Furious. Agony. His heart pained him like nothing else he knew and the suffering was transcendent.

Could he kill him? As he brings Mornfeir against his chest he imagines doing it. He imagines allowing it to bite upwards and pull out his throat with its terrible barbs.

The thorns around his throat snare him tighter and he. Could kill him. Oh, he shoud. He allows the blade to slide up further in despair.

"To who I am bound." Oh, how he resents to say it. How he begs in voice alone that dripped in such terribly thick oil of fury.

His eyes flutter in tremendous, horrible pain given and shared; not earned.

"Your loyalty alone does not suffice for his blessing, my obedient, faithful, trusting... Dulran." He spits the very words from his tongue as though poisoning him to restrain them.

Mornkhainen remains expectantly motionless when Mornfeir is brandished between them though his eyes glitter in recognition of it.

His eyes devour its length in open admiration for long mortal breaths before he smiles at Aezhyrrael wordlessly.

I know him… Mornfeir mutters without sound. I did not think to meet his flesh even in dreams. A pause. He will not perish so easily. Shall we?

Mornkhainen’s eyes take on a knowing simper. Could he… Hear it?

———

Calix had paused beyond the threshold for half of a step. Should he have left? He would not ordinarily leave his Divine’s heel but such loathing was not ordinary.

His guilt for his disloyalty was diluted simply with tremendous insult. Thoughts and visions of his own demise. Faced with the horrid reverie of his own chest torn apart and a pale chin drenched in blood hovering inches from his lips, he could not stomach to be near. Not now.

Unsure of the conversation’s effect upon his lord Divine saw him continue upon his way. The Black Rite’s spire beckoning him with the threat of nowhere else to linger. Should he go there and simply resign himself to awaiting his slaughter?

The bitter comfort of the ordinary- his ordinary these days- might settle his nerves. Nerves raw and burned.

His skin felt arcelectric. He shoulders one of their kabalites out of his way when he crosses the threshold. Easily making the creature stumble with a hiss as deferring as it was surprised.

By the time he’d ascended a flight of steps, he felt the familiar sting of his Lordship’s presence below.

Inevitable that he should catch him and easily. He pauses with a frown and knows he would not be fast enough to prevent what came.

You…

And yet- He hisses when Aezhyrrael meets him and he’s sent to the wall. His body seizes and, as the blade was brought between them, all anger left his brow and gave way to disbelieving fear.

“You would take yet more from me?” He barks when the blow didn’t come straight away, voice breaking just barely from not having spoken hardly at all for hours.

It’s this one… Mornfeir’s whisper licks Aezhyrrael’s heart.

Has he finally done enough? Shall we drink him?

Calix’s eyes search his in frenetic betrayal. When would it come? His eyes welled, flesh over his cheekbone twitching near imperceptible as he willed himself not to show such weakness.

Even still, his hands only claw the stone behind him.

I am sent away, unworthy.

His eyes narrow, enough to nudge a tear free and makes a sound behind his teeth. And this was meant to move him? Was he to feel sympathy?

“You should… Have done it then.” He breathes, anxiety welling in his chest and sending his lungs to panic.

“You have cursed me to the humiliation of…” Calix swallowed, throat briefly tightening to show each and every tendon in stark relief.

“Of falling for you- only to-“ His eyes lower. It’s clear in his grim look that he was unwilling to say more.

This pain was hard to conceive. His mind battled his ability to remain upright as vision darkened every time Mornfeir brushed his skin.

He never asked to be kept like a nightblind pet. To be paraded around like a rare acquisition. Why did he, coward, not simply dive into the sea to be consumed by it instead of bend so willingly to— To an enemy of the Imperia?

And you.

Calix’s chin drops in a defeated motion for a second.

To who I am bound.

He bares his teeth. Submission and disgust both as he turns his head away. He does hear so much upon the lord’s voice. It… It erupted a pain in his throat unlike any he’s felt in his life.

Your loyalty alone does not suffice for his blessing, my obedient, faithful, trusting... Dulran.

Aezhyrrael would feel a tremor in Calix’s body.

“My loyalty?” He mutters. “You resent this bond? The one you forged? The one… You deepened?”

He turns his head an inch toward him again and continued, voice tight with strain.

“You speak of my trust as though it be a disease you’ve caught.”

His anger whorled behind his eyes, bidding him to finally fix his Divine with a look defeated. Enraged. Drowned. Eyelashes catching the light for the tears he’d let free when his face was safely away.

“I followed you. Abandoned my past. If I am the blight upon your soul then-,” His shoulders tighten, “Purge me. And let your hand not tremble as you do so.”

He felt his heart pound behind his ears, body tremoring against the stone.

The tempest chases Calix as a dark swathe and it captures him above, fangs blind to the fear. Fangs furiously close to tearing him for the measure of shame given to his own blood. That his own bind--

Makes him hesitate. His blood roils and twists in his mind in such tremendous pain. Could he do it?

You would take yet more from me?

The eyes are wild on him and glazed in unfocus when Mornfeir itself whispers to him. Out of mind.

His very breath trembles as the blade nudges nearer, nearer to a throat that winces like prey beneath it.

Aezhyrrael continues. The welling of the eyes are not lost on him and he.

Speaks in deliberation. The pain bore into him insatiably and he wanted to end it. Kill it. Free him of this eruption tearing his own soul asunder before his head was removed from his shoulders at all.

He looks at him hard.

He should have done it. In snarling, bites his own tongue with fangs to bleeding in such corded fury.

It was self-made. Self-admitted. Selfish.

--Of falling for you- only to-

Aezhyrrael blinks hard and wails in agony as he pins him again, shaking him in reminder.

"Enough! You have said enough!" He roars at him first. The black blood pounding behind his eyes and heart wills his gaze. A little blurrier for it.

This he had been blind to.

He was blind to the suffering of his other. His mirror. That which he saw so deeply subsumed in his fate. And why could he not bring the blade nearer? Why did it fear Calix's own flesh in death?

The blade feared nothing, foolish beast.

His gaze softens and he curses his own soul too late that, in agony- suffering in such tormented layers- he had given all suffering to Calix. It was not his seer who was fated to come with him.

The tears draw up such welling pain in his heart that it sets the claws at Calix's waist gripping and trembling in rage. In...

It was beyond his knowing to anticipate. Beyond his understanding to have been pulled away from all known. Aezhyrrael considers the wanton destruction of ship and crew in his mad chase after a god's omnipresent approval.

His focus turns inwards in betrayal. That which he demanded and did not return. That which he felt in aether and the winding crevices of Calix's mind in such suffering.

Even while Aezhyrrael speaks. He wonders if he believes his own words.

To question such a bond encourages such despairing insanity that Aezhyrrael gasps aloud for it in contending with this sensation.

The bond he stole. The one he believed in to the last and killed all to have him for his own. Now a burden to them both. Was this a trick of Zhaine?

Zhaine. Zhaine. Aezhyrrael squirms and throws his head as he holds him unsteadily as he begs to bid the name away. Furious.
The despair mirrored makes him yelp.

"Silence, gauri!" He howls.

I followed you.

He snarls, teeth bared.

Abandoned my past.

He shifts over him serpentine in guilt tremendous. In realisation of the very thing.

In perfect mirror of his soul.

Zhaine's fate banging against the doors to his mind and pounding over the tears the saw. The light catches them with such pitiful starlight and Aezhyrrael, for the first time-

He swallows.

Had he ever felt such abyssal torture? His mind pounding as his very soul screams out inside his ribs and the tremoring makes him lunge- presenting Mornfeir in a rush of agony.

It was effortless to let the first of a tear free from his eyes in feral shame.

Betrayal was not in the blood of his kind.

Betrayal. Disloyalty. All things of him.

It was not in his design to deceive. The suffering tremendous for it- and strange.

To be guided to Zhaine's designs was a thing of predation and pleasure. Blessings given at the heights of ecstasy.

Was this ecstasy?

It was despair. Black, burning despair.

Aezhyrrael, guided by seductive whispers, brings the blade to Calix's belly and lets it rest there. He would see it drench itself in his blood and lungs if he must and pierce his very heart with it. He would. He would.

His hand tightens around the grip and he snarls. Tremoring imperceptibly.

For a long time.

Perhaps minutes. Perhaps less.

After what we have been through...

He lunges forward then, bringing them flush to one another in force.

The blade pulled back at the last and through his own gut as Mornfeir buries itself into his own pale flesh- and Aezhyrrael gasps as he feels his own blood pool at the wound. The frozen steel within.

The pain of it is. Clarity. Transcendent awakening behind his eyes. And yet he did not know how to express a single word to him for it.

His body shudders forwards against Calix as he brings them both flush to the wall and he lets himself release a long breath as he swallows the blade against his skinny gut. Punishing himself deeper and allowing the blood to spill down about them both.

To whom I am bound. After what Calix has been through. After what they have been through.

This bond a blight upon his soul. One he would not readily relieve for the pleasures of the dead. He decides with a sigh.

Calix sees the lord swallow.

In the moments betwixt, he steels himself to death.

“You’re not even going to let me believe you love me before you do it?”

He bit, eyes cooling of the fire that had kindled the night his back had been flayed.

Even still, he flinched with narrowed eyes, glass shattering somewhere nearby as the blade stops again at his belly.

His breath, caught in his throat, chokes again.

“Stop it…” He whispers, almost accusatory, particolour gaze meeting him with clear resentment.

His heart dropped in his chest to hear himself speak. The death in his tone. His eyes darkening as he looks away again. A final welling of tears makes his lip curl before they were blinked way.

Pinned still but long contending with the claws against his skin.

Too many minutes passed. That's too many.

Calix’s expression softened to inattention as his mind hardened out of the necessity to contend with this betrayal. It was this difficult? This deliberation? This willingness to indulge his continued suffering?

When Aezhyrrael moves, Calix does not. Eyes still fixed to the dark somewhere beyond.

Was— Was he dead? Spine cut through? Plain confusion bade Calix to glance at him so near. Upon him. A hand rose to his belly between them as his breath hitches.

Blood. Not his own. His eyes lose their glitter as easily as before.

About you again?

“You hold a blade to my pulse. Torment me for minutes that feel like hours and…” Calix shoulders himself free, “You wish me to applaud you for this martyrdom?”

He steps back, finding his way in the dark with a hand reaching behind him upon the wall.

“It is like you. Bleed then.”

He turns his look to the pairs of eyes just below. Of course.

“Theatrics. You do this to yourselves for fun. Is it meant to mean aught to me?” He can’t quite look at his lordship. “He’ll heal it in a day.”

Calix spat, turning in place and continuing up the stairs.

You're not even-

Aezhyrrael's heart swells in agony at it. He remembers all as Calix did. The shattering glass bringing the blade closer in a wince.

He remembers. He remembers on before.

How. He does not know how. To tell him such a thing before he kills him.

Stop it...

The resentment was agony and he pities him. He feels his own soul burn to ash in anguish at the agony tremendous of all things- of Calix. Calix made him feel this.

"I-..." He breathes and cannot do it. Only able to seal the words within his mind. Ohhh, Divine. So cruel, so raw.

I love you.

He is well aware of the torture and forgets himself. Again. Selfish.

Motioning then to deal the kill- and he cannot. Hesitation a betrayal. Minutes in which he thought on them both. On begging himself to end his suffering- both their suffering. Selfish beast.

Agony folds over him in waves as he feels his very soul pulled apart for it.

Oh, fool. The way of eldar not the way of man. What about your gauri?

What about the suffering calling to you from within the chest of your other?

Would the blade satiate Zhaine? Would it be enough to tell him his denial of him? As Calix speaks and he hisses then. The words break him apart to hear them at all of his own mercy. Mercy not given.

Aezhyrrael growls at him in open horror at the pain and the cold.

He has. Made him suffer. Darker than anything.

And it is like him that he be a selfish and horrendous creature to one of such warmth. Of such suffering.

The words pound in Aezhyrrael's mind as he follows him in elegance, the blade sent across the room and from his belly with a stroke of black blood. The pain in his own chest higher- dissatisfying. Tremendous suffering in clarity of regret.

It makes him sing from within his chest as he claws himself after him- as he chases him up the stairs and to the next floor where he brings Calix within and claws him close.

It was. In theatrics. That he pants openly and allows his heart to sing tears free as he grips him like naught else. In displeasure and pain.

Aezhyrrael demands his silence with a bark.

"You will listen! And then you shall leave." He hisses then. And pauses as he pins him again and fights the strength met to him.

"In hesitation should I be punished in suffering. For minutes have I drawn out your mind to strings. And it is the loyalty of your tremendous kind to suffering until suffering's horizon. And it is in years I have watched over you with such a love. And understood not your kind. I reason now that you have suffered beyond mere pleasure."

Love? What love was given over years of trial? Of flaying?

Why did you say nothing?

He tremors over him as the voice rasps lower then.

"That these bones have torn you from your homeland and dragged you deeper into abyss. I have given to you nothing back but suffering you were not meant to behold. That was not your burden to bear." Words given in rasping desperation as he looks at eyes that do not conceive of him. As he measures them.

As he grips him and wrests him with any struggle in desperate. Desperate. Agony.

"I have offered no measure of the love I feel torn asunder from my very soul. Perhaps you are the gift and I the burden, my love. Perhaps it is not Zhaine's will I should have questioned."
Said quickly. Then silence. In hoping the pain would stop. That something would give.

Aezhyrrael curses himself in hissing as he grips him by his jaw and stares into eyes long dead. In the shattering of a world spoiled of him. After all that his mirror was made to go through.

After all that Aezhyrrael had tormented him to.

"The loyalty of the hound begs forgiveness each time to his dominar. The loyalty of the hound does not forgive the tormenter as he laughs over him in meditation. In hesitation."

Why did he hesitate. Why did he.

Why did he consider loyalty in question.

Why was Calix meant to meet him this way.

"And in obedience to my Divine..."

He gasps- the pain blinding.

"I have loved you. And I have branded you in this love and I have betrayed your heart in black torment. As I think on you in all the pride and grace befitting of your kind. And-hhnn- I have spoken nothing to it. I have betrayed everything to it."

It crushes him to say the very words.

Oh, but he does not hesitate in words given too late, the stupid fool. Tears too late to one already beyond the veil. The jaw clasped and held in all struggle as he brings his cheek against Calix by force and sighs.

Without hesitation then, love given too late. And too late to pry himself away in regrets that tore through his soul. Oh, the suffering. On them both. On Calix more. The ghost of him remaining there.

"In hesitation, I have killed you. I feel you willing me away as I chase and crawl through the veil to a soul increasingly distant. Is that not right." For it was Aezhyrrael who had bidden him to this piteous death. Aezhyrrael who had given him no home to return to.

The agony of Calix. Did he deserve to speak the name?

Calix hisses when Aezhyrrael is upon him again. He squirms, a grunt of effort preceding his surrender as he stood still. Should Aezhyrrael round him or look to his face, he would turn it away with detached stillness.

His eyes flicker gently at the stone, open windows and aught else. But slowly. Was he listening?

Hardly at all. His vision dark at the limbs, hearing muffled by blood and a feeling of death pervasive.

When his jaw is taken by claws, his lips tighten and he finally tears his head away, bringing an elbow up between them and swiping the long arm away from him.

If he was to be sent away, he supposes he should obey.

May he be mercifully struck to death finally on his way.

He remains for a moment rooted in place as he frowns near-imperceptibly at the floor. Aezhyrrael was still speaking. Still speaking.

He could’t dredge out a laugh.

It had always been on the Eldar’s time. He had all of it. Time to speak as he liked. Time to consider him if he liked.

Feelings reserved yet in his body nudged what remained into surprise that his knees didn’t simply give as he descended the spire again.

All stood from his way as he walked.

Slowed at the threshold of the arches that opened to the city. And hesitated, stopped.

His eyes first flicker to the other spires. Skyline of daggers. It hurt his heart in lacerating agony that this was home. The Imperia would no longer be able to welcome him. The Holy Spectra would see him experience suffering for his betrayal-

That-

That is what it was.

He was being punished for what he’d done. The Eye had seen him, surely, and deemed him wayward. In Its mercy many ropes were thrown and he cast them all away for…

For…

He deserved all of this. His flayed back a testament to his infidelity.

Calix’s shoulders drop an inch as he, finally, turns around and simply returns inside. Where else, after all?

None had spoken yet. All night-eyes stare in uncertainty while none dared move their tongue in fear of a Psyarch with no heart. Nervous, stilted legs part again for him as he pauses at the stairs and sits.

And carefully sets his head into his hands where he would remain for some hours in silence.

Not one would ever hear him speak again.