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Miniature heathens tethered together in a mass of impending stories, little, lithe heralds courted their namesakes to brows and bands of future endeavors, tied and taut, dusting off wooden swords, rusted sabers, embellished carvings for fortunes’ favors. They erupted and proclaimed, played and contorted, and the tiny Neptune with his eyes fixated on pernicious prowess and his mind riveted to reverential anarchy, could only see the emboldened segments of potential and disaster. She snorted, she rose, she caved into his provocation, and the devil’s hands whittled away down his spine, elongated the silly, foolish tempest brewing and swirling amidst his childish mind: of knights, of relics, of stone soldiers collapsing fortress walls (and maybe they could tear this one down too, rock by rock, pebble by pebble, to show what their world would look like when it was conquered). A stage, a portrayal, a performance of years in the making, when their bodies conformed to age and sagacity, when gangly limbs hardened into furnished, undulating muscle, when prestige and supremacy wasn’t just a dream, an ambition, but a fire burning and churning in their veins, real, corporeal, tangible. She was a series of gilded flames, rubies, gems, garnets clasped in stone, and were he not participating in the orchestrated movements, in the motions meant to swindle and deceive her, he would have laughed again, gleamed and preened in the midst of his satanic smoke. Instead, he swayed and maneuvered, attempted the primordial dance of his ancestors, twisted, turned, yielded to lanky conjectures and light, clumsy airs upon the ground. So he was surprised, shocked, when a bounty of pain erupted over his left shoulder, a battering ram keened and honed from her rapier bridging and flying in a beguiling assault: one moment he’d been an effortless blackguard storming the castle, next, a silly fledgling knocked to the ground, legs flailing, body smarting. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, and one bewildered snort echoed from his nares.
Then came the anger. Too immersed in bloodlines, in hierarchies of competence, capacity, and capabilities, sundered and destroyed, distraught and torn. Raw, unconcealed, unrestrained: a solo eruption, a virile explosion, vicious and ardent, because he was ashamed to be kneeling upon the cold, hardened floor, shaken and stirred from the regalia of warriors and shown to not be as mighty, not be as strong, embittered and vexed at himself, at her, at the ways the world composed his defeat. Instead of admitting his frustration or the conquering of his dispute (so easily, so effortlessly), a wrath, a commotion, burned amidst his mind. Wasn’t he stronger than that? Was he so weak, frail, fragile, pathetic? Where was his strength, his cunning, his potency, when a girl of locks and curls could beat him? Where was his might? His dominion? His potential? The ferocity swelled and burned in his chest, a bright, brilliant spark of titanic irritation, crisscrossing in the warrens and labyrinths of Erebos’ youthful mind, poignant, sparking, kindling something buried, brooding, stewing in his veins, a torch, an inferno, a blaze beating a savage, wild crescendo. He rose swiftly, jaw clenched, and lunged, springing across the short expanse, reaching, reaching, reaching for the filly, for Asch, for the queen who dared to triumph over the villain. And when he extended, drove forward, became pariah all over again, the tiniest, most miniscule flame flared from his touch, from his caress, from the feral antiquities and the crimson fervency he shared with his ancestors: ablaze, evoked, ignited.
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