The prince was thankful for the evening, when the darkness hid the sun, when the shadows strolled over his back, when the aurora’s glistening hues all bound together in one sweeping, seething inferno, and he could stare at the hues, pace relentlessly, and carve a name for himself in their colors.
 
He would someday. There was no question about it, no quandary, no enigma. He’d triumph, he’d conquer, he’d be better, stronger, faster, and wiser than the rest, slashing his sword across their napes, spouting truths and lies, convictions and promises, resolutions and oaths. The certainty had been molded into his brow, into his restless heart, into the gallant, intrepid knighthood gradually wearing itself into a thin line – one more step over the dashed sanction and he’d be a blackguard, proud and belligerent, seething and unattainable. But he’d be where he craved, where he twisted, where he contorted, deep in those wily calculations, in those carnivore machinations, swindling any force, any enemy, any opponent who deigned to get in his way. It’d be glorious, he told himself as Orsino and he stretched across the blank canvas, as they stole the midnight shades of the evening and wore them like a cloak, beautiful and commanding, a warrior intent on destruction.
 
Then he smiled, reaching his destination with a wild, effervescent grin, possessing the lake all to himself. The sable kitsune at his side glinted, emboldened too, audacious in the presence of everything and anything, lingering along the embankment as Erebos found a location suitable to his task. Instead of thrusting his rapier, his frame, his figure, out along the water, poised to destroy, to ruin, to ravage, he knelt down beside a few long blades of grass, curling his forelegs beneath his chest, eyeing the verdant pieces of greenery as if they had just threatened his family. “I haven’t practiced in a long time,” he murmured to the onyx fox, who merely arched a brow, because the boy had rehearsed, polished, all sorts of savage moments and motions; but he knew what he meant through their connection. The scion had neglected other forms of vehemence in his search for prowess and potential; he’d have to utilize all of them in his pursuits.
 
So the kitsune became quiet, and the youth became incensed, allowing the coiling, the curling, sensation of embers, of brimstone, of legacies scorched and emblazoned, to layer and lacquer down through his skin. They pulsed with vibrancy, with hesitancy (because he’d forgotten their power, their sensation), until he carved a bestial hold on them and felt the invocations surge at the challenge; sparking and sizzling, smoldering and seething – and when he pressed his maw on the length of grass, he watched them ignite into a conflagration. Orsino, wiser than the boy, swept a series of water droplets upon the blaze before they ate away at the ground, before they ran rampant through the Basin and caught everything on fire. Thereafter, when everything had dimmed, they glanced at one another and pieced together the same notion, motion.
 
Again.