_{Some say you're trouble, boy Just because you like to destroy All the things that bring the idiots joy} Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

Pain drains; he walks without sight. Beside him the filly breathes and her dark presence floats, obedient, subservient like he wishes—he pays her no mind. He focuses on his hooves and moving them, taking one step at a time as he descends down the stifling cavern. It is better than the cold of his home, it’s true, though it reeks of the sweat and stink of hordes of others. He has grown to detest their presence deeply, a poisonous ether that feeds the root of his grotesque sapling psyche, that kindles the beastly fire in his breast. He doesn’t pant, for he won’t reveal that weakness. Instead he holds his breath, painfully, his lungs expanding in an agonizing way as he controls his breathing.

The walk is longer than he remembers, and the pain is real. She really snagged him with that horn of hers; the adrenaline in his system has vanished, for the excitement of his discover of her has ceased. He can feel the aches and pains of his body—the stress she has caused him, physically and mentally, by the purity of her idiocy. His breathing is steady, because he forces it to be so. It will take him some time to forgive her for her foolishness—he will find a way for her to repay him, and settle her debt to his nerves.

Finally, the chamber of his empire opens itself to him. There stand the walls of curious markings and suspicious scratches, framing a story he does not know, a tongue he cannot see yet; there sits the pool beneath the pale shadow of the walls, crystalline and serene, welcoming its grey-eyed prince with open arms. His eyes are locked on the waters that churn gently in the twilight; the filly prowls the basin, a nervous wolf pup, a cautiously skittering arachnid, and Reginald lets her. He does not care, for the waters of the pool invite him, and his chest does throb--his pelt is sticky with too many different kinds of blood and dirt.

The long-limbed princeling clambers into the waters, disregarding the filly’s announcements and observations as he wanders into the water. It isn’t deep; he kneels, laying his body into the tepid, pristine waters, and he rolls himself, washing the grime and the sweat from his limbs. It penetrates his shaggy fur; he feels it trickle on his skin. The cut on his chest stings at the water contacts it, but the overwhelming relief he feels as the dust particles leave his open wound are superior to his hurt. The wound is clean; it won’t infect; he breathes easier.

He feels the stickiness on his face ebb away—though there is no trace of opaque black in the crystalline water as he peers into its depths. The black blood has not washed away; it has simply ceased existence, for the pool as erased all traces of whatever putrid sickness decided to cling to Reginald. Intrigued, his grey eyes lift to the spider—to Jorogumo-- and see that she gazes at him, focused and determined, a very different creature from the erratic idiot he encountered on the surface. He lifts his brow at her; he does not return her smile. “The water’s fine,” he mutters with disinterest, climbing out of the pool—wondering what would happen if she wander into the spring. Was she not the progenitor of the rancid blood—is she not some wasted specter spoiled by the darkness of decay? Will she simply cease existence if she touches the surface?

Or…?

@[Jorogumo]
"talk talk talk"

_{Some say you're trouble, boy Just because you like to destroy All the things that bring the idiots joy} Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

“There is more to that water than it seems.”

Reginald hears her; he doesn’t understand her meaning; he ignores. He remains ignorant of the pool’s sacred properties, of its holy, ordained nature of healing. He bathes in it because it is his; his pelt was sticky and displeasing, and he sought out water to clean his hide. That was his only motivation for diving down into this embedded realm—and so, as Jorogumo creeps around the water’s edge, Reginald ignores her caution, and so the spectacle he sees next catches him off guard.

Oh, what a spectacle.

The darkness in her body is repelled by the water—but its repulsion is outstanding. It causes a scream to tear her breast; it causes her body to convulse with the rapid, aggressive healing of her ugly sores; it causes her to splinter in to sobbing, tear-soaked pieces scattered on the dark cave floor. The grey-eyed prince is mesmerized by the sight; he watches with unsavory greed as she realizes awful sorts of torture and despair, the images not quite pleasing as they are interesting. They ignite his imagination, his wonder—he marvels why he has not suffered this girls fate, though he walked the surface with his head held high and his eyes always a dare to the world. He remained himself in a world full of monsters—did that make him a monster? He bathed in a sacred pool that tears the atrocity from your limbs—did that make him a saintly, mortal creature? Or just…

…indestructable?

He ignores her speech, for he does not know it; he lets her cry, because he knows there is no stopping it. Both of these things annoy him. “Don’t make this a habit,” he mutters, a whisper that bounces off the walls, lost in the cacophony of her fierce oaths. He shakes the water from his fur; his scratch is still open, but the sting is mostly gone. He can move—he has breathed—he feels rejuvenated. He sucks in the air insatiably, expanding his lungs with the luxurious gasses, even as words fall from the filly’s lips that he can understand. For the first time in my entire life I am completely lost, and most of all… I’m broken…

“You were lost before the darkness came,” he says wearily, idly gazing at the scratches of the walls, intrigued by them once more ever unable to read the mysteries of their narrations. “That’s why the darkness took you so easily...” He speaks quietly, musingly; the words from his tongue fall like the snow that drifts unseen above them. His ears cock backward; he snaps his head around, and sees her retreating. Something rears within him; he’s not done with her presence yet.

“Stop,” he says, neutral and powerful, expecting. He turns his body; he stands erect in front of the pool, his granite eyes boring into her, impassive, piercing, grey. “Come here,” he says, quieter, taking a step back, indicating her presence before him. “Kneel,” he breathes, and waits for the spider queen to respond to his commands. She is broken, yes? Reginald has decided, then, to build her back again. By his terms.

@[Jorogumo]
"talk talk talk"

_{Some say you're trouble, boy Just because you like to destroy All the things that bring the idiots joy} Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

“No” she says.

Again.

Reginald stays standing.

Again.

She speaks, and a question enters his mind, interrupting her words, festering and fluttering, an annoyed dayfly buzzing in his skull. Is she worth it? She’s not scrawny; she’s not a moron; she has a bloodlust he admires. She’s young—but that’s something she can’t help. What she can help is her arrogance—her presumption—her stubborn nature. For all her talk of brokenness, she does not seem to be as broken as she professed. For all her talk of abandonment, she does not seem to crave acceptance. Reginald feels once again the irritation with her sex; if they are not scrawny, they whine—if they are not idiotic, they act like they are. Reginald cannot fathom the female; what is their purpose? What is the need that they assuage? Why are they worth it?

“Get an empire then tell me to kneel.”

“See,” he whispers, and the tone is an amused one—for his amusement is his mockery, “you've got it backwards; that’s not how it works, Jo-ro-gu-mo.” He says her name slowly and awkwardly, for it is awkward; he makes it into a snide remark, because that is what she is. “An empire is full of those who kneel. You are either mine, or you’re not. You can’t decide later if I’m good enough to be your king—because I’ll have decided to kill you and all who tell me ‘no’. Deny me if you want—I don’t like stupid. You’re not stupid, Joro.” He breathes these words, this honesty he speaks to her. He gazes at her intently, looking into her tenacious eyes, his own iris contracted in the twilight of the cave, a serpent’s stare. “Why do you insist on acting stupid?”

He laughs—inspiration hits him. “Now I understand why your mother left you,” comes the teasing hiss, scornful of her deepest hurts, for she has given him her weaknesses. “You said you were abandoned? No. You were discarded, for your mother must’ve run out of patience with your stupid act. Or maybe you ran off blindly into the darkness, like you always do? My patience is wearing thin, Joro.” His eyes widen; he snarls; the amusement is gone. This game grows boring, and a deal must be struck. “Will you run from me this time?” Challenging, demanding, curious and inquiring. Grey speech. “Or will you let me make you a Queen? Because you can be, if you stop running.” Fangs are bared; if there were venom in his veins, he would spit it. “You can kneel.”

He suddenly eases, and he is a colt, relaxed and even-tempered, gazing at her with childish disinterest. “Or I can crush you later,” he shrugs, his tail curling idly behind him. It really is as simple as that. No girl will rule him—no female will refuse him. He has not met one yet who poses any sort of challenge to his mind, his body. They will either bow, or break, and he didn’t care which it was. It was really her choice.


@[Jorogumo]
"talk talk talk"