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The prince had intended to lose him through brambles and thorns, where thistles grated against skin, flesh, and sinew, because so few wanted to endure the sensation of pain, wanted to stumble blindly into something they knew could hurt them. Where the youth persisted, he presumed Thranduil wouldn’t – Erebos had grown beneath shadows and melee, rarely avoiding the inevitable reach of agony and misery, melancholy and derision, for he dared to scale great heights, for he instigated, challenged the ways of the earth, and expected the realms to balk, to shy, to load their munitions and fire back (when he succeeded, it was with a grin and a black eye, and many more scars to come). He only knew so many things about the Laurelin, but his estimations of him weren’t too high; the beast seemed to understand the nuances of nations, the slender schemes, the intrepid dance of mortals and their harsh, unrelenting perseverance, but the prince had never seen the once-king shackle and tether himself to a battle he may not win. Perhaps he was mistaken, and the gilded asp had stumbled, fallen, and twisted himself through fury and onslaughts to stand where he was now, stronger, mightier, than before, had risen from the ashes, from the embers, from the coals and stoked the fires of mayhem. But the youth had no forethought of finding out.
Instead, he was eerily disappointed when the cretin continued following him amidst the piles of spikes and barns, coiling bits of laughter into the grain of frosted meadows and unsaid oaths. He hid a grimace tucked between his teeth and lips, didn’t allow the vivid frown to sketch itself along his features, or the avid frustration building along his bones, his blood, his soul, at the loss of opportunities and the increasing chance he’d never find the immoral creature who’d dared to damage a beloved friend. Even the coaxing elements of Thranduil’s words managed to touch a nerve; he assumed it was mostly lies, fabrications, pretenses built up from methods and gambles concocted from Machiavellian, deviant designs he’d learned ages before, tried on everyone, laughed when they fell into his traps. But a tiny part of Erebos wished it were true, that he’d seen some devil ripple from the Heart Caves, run and rampage away, that he could give a face, a name, a set of characteristics to an anonymous monster, and the soldier would be able to fulfill his convictions. It was likely all another game – some vague fortune meant to rattle him (and the youth often managed to seek something just about every day: whether it was power, glory, malice, bloodshed, amusement – they often combined into a strong, steady yearning for the world to maneuver under his command), and he wasn’t interested in playing it. But he kept walking, ignoring the pricks settled along his hide, turning his skull back to stare at the golden, to deliver his message with the same menacing, feral grin, devilry confined to his eyes. “I doubt it.”
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[O] make them think they ever stood a chance
