But he still stretched his warrior strides through the forest, launched over pieces of thawing brooks and snow-laden boughs. Orsino, just as wicked, just as ridiculous, chased after him like a Stygian whirlwind, and together they were fox and demon, interchangeable and tethered. The fiend raced and the kitsune hissed, and their menacing, minatory outlook were all mercenary, behemoth strides; he laughed as sticks crackled and they made a general ruckus of the world around them. He’d never been quiet.
The pervading sense of the unknown haunted his senses though, and they slowed to a purposeful motion, more intense, more deliberate, less chaotic and menacing. His ears perked, listening for the notion of strangers, tipping his skull towards various directions, nares widening to scrape against what information the woods had to offer. And there, breathing only yards away from him, was a beast nearly camouflaged by the stark amount of white (and then darkness, as if he’d been folded from light and shadow, and Erebos liked him already, simply for the sake of his coat and its eerie representation). For several seconds, the soldier, the beast, the infidel, merely breathed, watched the plumes of his exhale puff into the air, before curling his lips into a firm, welcoming smile. Orsino did nothing of the sort, simply staring at the stranger with golden eyes and cunning, wily munitions.
He drew no closer, but remained charismatic all the same, a hint of ruffian barbarity stored in the depths of his soul and reaching along his features. The youth maneuvered his cranium downward in a show of respect, before hastening it back upwards and deliberating on what to do next. In his childhood, he would have bounded with great exultations, whistling, hooting, and hollering, but greetings now needed to come with refinement, with technique, with something more than infernal abyss. “Welcome to Helovia. I’m Erebos." He paused, tilting his head to the left in a careful perusal, a study, an examination, before proceeding again, the same smile simmering on his face. "Who are you?” The curiosity started, simmered, down the length of his voice and upon his face, but nothing more. The questions, unraveling, toiling, down into the depths of their knots and ribbons could be instigated in their own time and place – but what the stranger wanted, what he intended to do amidst these ramparts, fortifications, and spellbinding enigmas, would be what set him apart from all the other known inhabitants.
@Fynaeon