His gallant acts had long since faded.
The boy, for he was still young and vibrant and seditious enough to warrant the name, glanced towards the ichor-laden leaves and the persistent echoes of Orsino, the constant demon in his head, pondering over what to do with her now. He’d approached, he’d made random diatribes, he’d glossed her over as one more harmless, benign creature, but had yet to provoke anymore. With others, the fiend had scorched or smiled, had irked, irritated, or bestowed something, anything, other than inaction; some lectures, some harsh sentiments, some playful notions, but this girl of airy, soft tunes and delicate foibles gave him naught. She was like a phantom, a hallucination, a laced foil of grace and morality, and it made him want to tarnish it just a little, just a smidgen, so she could see the world for what it really was: wicked and cruel, demanding and vicious, plucking all the greatest thoughts from one’s head, staining and bludgeoning and ripping them to shreds. The only webs sticking to his skull, the only fibers melding and weaving their way through his cranium, were Cheshire impulses and mischievous designs, snares and traps and an unholy barrage of heartless deceptions – his own version of play.
Another’s appearance, Ode, as dark and mysterious and hellbent as all the others looming within their kingdom, only pried the impish grin into broader strokes, into zealous, fervent, handsome spheres, as if she’d been invited into their game, a little fly pulled into the spider’s parlor. His eyes were cast towards Ode’s crimson set for the slightest of moments, an extension of abhorrent humor, before casting his glowing, ebullient stare towards the white maiden, sociable, outgoing, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “I’m Belial. A pleasure, Erthë,” his voice lingered, a charming, charismatic invitation to niceties and friendly raptures, as if he were not a child of death and infidels, as if he were not a prince to a frozen world, as if he were not on a fast pace to becoming a demon himself, lying and lying and hoping his companion would do the same. Thereafter, he mused, quietly putting his lips together in a solemn line, bending in pretense and dismay, harboring grand, impish secrets behind the walls of a thousand bedlams and merciless ideas. “I’d be careful around here if I were you. Who knows what could be out there,” and he gestured, long and low with his head, towards the red underbrush, where blood and water flowed and melded, molded, together in a scene of perilous delusions.
As if on cue, Orsino, hidden in the bushes, emitted a terrifying, bird-like screech, allowing it to resonate through the valley on high-pitched decibels; sounding like danger and discordance.
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