Sarielle fumbles for a scowl and forces it into place the way one wrestles with an ill-fitting mask. Reluctance drags her a few paces after Nathan, but nothing more. He merely struts over to the throne and hops up, albeit with a few seconds of struggle and a lot less grace than she gathers he is aiming for. Annoyance flickers in and out as he finally settles into the marble seat. He throws his legs over one arm and nestles his shoulders snugly against the crook of the other. The blade he balances on his stomach, watching it tip this way and that.

"Perhaps," he says, "as I conquer, I shall collect these lovely things. As useless as they are, I find them beautiful." Grin slanting, he peers down at her. "Do you not agree? I could fill this whole castle with them."

He plans to keep the castle? Her tongue feels as if it is rusting. "This castle belongs to the Oscensi royal line, not you."

"It looks like a broken shell to me." His eyes glint, dagger-like, cutting. "Death has claimed it, and therefore it is mine."

"What do you care, anyway?" She puts her foot down hard, fists curled as she glares up at him, feeling awfully small. She's been standing in this place at the foot of the throne since her legs were strong enough to support her, but never has looking up felt so difficult nor her chest so hollow. Her father would be at her side any other time. Her burned fingers flex, searching for him, brushing empty air, stirring in shreds of simmering fury.

"Why do any of this?" The words spit out hot and helpless, fire flailing in a pit it cannot escape, pummelled by rain. "If you care so little for me and my people, why bother us at all? Why play and torment?" And why, why am I still alive?

His head lolls to face her, fangs flashing, laughter strung in the creases of his smile. "I am cursed with a very long life, Sarielle, and I have languished for centuries starved of pleasure. I wish to have fun."

That shows in every lazy flourish of his demeanour, and yet something about the logic of it all refuses to sit right. Perhaps it's because her thoughts stick so adamantly to the memory of her father, yet logic seems to be all she can chase right now, all there is left to wall her from throwing herself at him again and letting him kill her for real this time. She draws in a shaky breath, straightens herself on shaky legs, and clings to the solace of words: the battle she was first taught to fight before a sword ever entered her hand.

"That's a lame excuse," she says.

His brow furrows, fingers stilling on the flat of her swaying blade. "Lame?"

"Yes." She lifts her chin. "You speak of all the widespread destruction you wish to cause, and yet all I've seen you do since you stole my friend's body is pace around this so-called dead castle and toy with Fiesi and I. There are thousands of people in this world. There's no reason for you to be so selective and limited. If fun is what you seek, why be so repetitive?"

He waves a dismissive hand her way. "The time so far has been nothing at all. I have an eternity left. It is only right that I savour each moment."

Smiling wryly to himself, he shifts up a little, enough that his shoulders prop against the throne's arm. His stretched legs cross over one another. A tossed hand weaves strings of flame above his head, bending around into a circlet's shape, a crown, points each lifted high and wispy at their tips. A crude, dark crown, twisted too far from Oscensi's design to hold any eerie familiarity. It's the crown formed by a boy who has only ever seen the accessory as pictures in a children's book. Still, joy oozes from his expression. His scales look like hollow cracks in his skin, bejewelled in obsidian.

"I could be king if I wanted to," he remarks, gaze clearly prodding her, testing for a reaction. It flicks upwards to snag the crown. "I think it suits me. Do you agree?"

She finds herself shaking her head numbly, the motion detached and instinctive. "I don't believe you."

A sigh puffs from his nose, and the crown vanishes in a cloud of dark smoke. "You are so determined to call me a liar."

"I think you're wasting time. If you've waited so long to be free, it makes no sense for you to squander your days here. Particularly since the other Tía could arrive at any moment and give you a real fight."

He scoffs. "As if they could--"

"I don't think you're as free as you'd like," she says, satisfaction flickering in her chest when he startles at being cut off, "not yet, and I think it limits you. Because Nathan is fighting you."

That's when, finally, she sees the dark in his eyes shift. He sits up slowly, a hostility brewing behind them. His legs swing to dangle still and stiff from the throne's seat. "The beloved Nathan you knew is gone," he hisses, leaning forward, fangs gleaming. "He was weak."

"He's strong," she counters, voice fighting not to waver. "I know him. He wouldn't give in so easily." Her fear rises aflutter in her chest, a flurry of feathers tickling every bone with a shaky chill, and so she strives to still the winds around her heart so those feathers cannot soar. Be calm, be collected. Be firm in the point you make.

With a huff, Nathan sits back, fingers tapping on the throne's arm. His smile is slight and unreal. "He is no match for me. You forget who I am."

"Then why have you grown so defensive at his mention?"

Shadows cut low over his brow. He glares, framed at the back by dirtied off-white, his form a monochrome portrait. "What gives you the right to question me or my methods?" Venom splashes his tone, riddled with disdain. He's never sounded less like the boy she knows. "I am as powerful as the fanciful living stars your kind swear by, and you dare to run your tongue?"

Sarielle's tongue catches between her teeth. Her heart is a wartime drum, loud enough to resonate in her stomach, dizzy, steady.

His lips curl like her silence is victory. "You kneel before your king, do you not?"

She is fixed in stone, too focused on clinging to her calm to recall how to nod. Speckled myriads of candlelights bounce off the snow-shade walls. The light crowds her, presses in with the presence of a heavy curtain in the wind. Like a ghost's long, tattered robes.

His eyes don't have a glow; they are everything light is not, condensed in a blank slit. "Kneel."

Her inhale comes slowly, rattling along with the unsteadiness of a carriage atop a beaten path, struggling along yet persevering nonetheless. "You may be a living star if you wish," she says, "but you are in the wrong. Both Nathan and I will fight any being if we believe her villainous, no matter her power." She takes a step forward, challenge coursing through her, fiery and limitless. "If you wish to strike me down, then do so. Prove to me that Nathan is truly gone and don't hesitate."

Her spine straightens with the honed steel of a blade -- one that lacks the curve of her own sword, now laid abandoned within the throne's seat, clattering faintly as Nathan extracts himself from under it to plant his feet on the floor before him. She holds his gaze. Peace is fragile and slippery, impossibly thin wires that cage in the war raging within her. Peace doesn't exist. Her words were brave, but her body shakes, her fear plain and devoid of music. There is no gentle acceptance of death that comes. There are only rough, swampy waves, a brittle prayer echoing at the back of her mind, a throb in her wounded arm and a dragging exhaustion.

Courage is flimsy. The hope is foolish, perhaps, but she winds it over her flesh and breathes it in with desperate haste. She is not a hero laying down a sacrifice. She is a scared little girl, unarmed and waiting, thinking again and again of the monster she once trusted and now hands her life to.

She could lose herself in the madness of those black eyes, but there has to be something beneath. Please, Nathan.

"Very well," he says, his voice like dull, clanging bells. An amused snort puffs out. His hand lifts, fingers curled in, aimed for the underside of her chin. "Death welcomes you, Sarielle."

The sensation of his skin on hers is shockingly new, like nothing it should be. His fingertips are silky smooth and ice cold. A shiver wracks her jaw. Knived pain slides in and gnaws at the bone, steadily, carefully climbing the insides of her cheeks. She feels tears well in her eyes and lets them fall in silence, stare unwaveringly fixed on his face, his guarded expression, the lack of emotion in his gaze.

Perhaps her faith was naive, as it always is. Perhaps she really will die.

A shout skips through the air.

Everything jolts in its wake. Nathan's touch shifts, softens. The fiery blades embedded in her cheekbones pull back. Their pain circles her in a dark halo, somewhat blinding. She only sees his gaze jerk to the side, and the way it widens, and the glint of colour in the glassy reflection his eyes cast.

Then a cloud of fur swallows him. Hazel fur, slashed by scar-like streaks of pink. A wolf.

A startled sound builds up in Sarielle's throat yet she doesn't hear it emerge. All noise is underwater, muffled in her ears. She stumbles back. Without his touch to anchor her, she's shockingly weak, her legs folding, her head spinning. The walls blur. Steady arms clamp around her before she can fall. Instincts a wriggling mass of insect-like panic, she squirms, clawing blindly at a long, fur-lined sleeve.

"Easy," a woman's voice murmurs in her ear, low in pitch and meandering in accent, clipped at the end. Rough fingers curl into Sarielle's tunic. Warmth spikes in her pulse, and she gasps.

Her hand flies to her chest and wrestles with this new touch, nails digging into knuckles, skin and bone. "Don't," she forces out. Her breaths whistle, leaping in and out unregulated.

"I wasn't going to, pet." A faint, distant laugh tinges the words, the curve of a lackadaisical smile, and recognition finally clicks into place. Rosi. The pink Tía. Rosi and her wolf, Mira.

Help has arrived.

Relief comes in a sweet breeze that nearly steals her consciousness anyway. She digs her heels into the carpeted floor until the swaying bout subsides and she can find her tongue again. "Thank you."

"It's our pleasure. Or our duty, to be more accurate, but I'll take gratitude where it's given."

That 'our' is said with purpose. Sarielle blinks, headache pounding like a repetitive fist but vision gradually clearing, enough to make out the sight before her.

Known for its white-gold lustre as Polevis's castle is, it has never seen such vibrancy of colour. Streaks of loud, rose-petal red fan flames around the broad-shouldered shape of Ischryi, charging alongside his huge bear Synté. The roaring bellow that fills the air could belong to either of them. The bear pounces, its claws wrapped around strings of darkness that writhe as if living, like a seething mass of ribbon-like snakes. Closer by, threads of flame scatter a pink glow as Nathan slashes open Mira's flank, kicking her back. A brown-skinned woman with dark, spiky bangs leaps into the fray in her place, tangling twin blades of emerald fire with his black staff. His lip curls back into a snarl nearly as ferocious as her green glare. There's bright purple, too: a younger man with chestnut hair pulled back into a short ponytail barges through the double doors tailing a long violet cloak, a limber feline bounding at his heels.

Red, pink, green, purple. But no blue. Sarielle files away the pocket of bitterness that crawls in at that realisation, far more overrun by breathtaking surprise. The air thickens with smoke and hot magic, sticking her tunic to her back. Sweat trickles down the back of her neck. Never has she felt more like a gnat, an insignificant insect watching stars wage war upon the night.

Rosi pats her shoulder. "Come. Let's get you someplace safe."

Nathan's staff drives a thick line over the green Tía's bicep, and she cries out, slipping, skin cracked with wavering strings of black beneath her torn netted sleeve. Ischyri yells, swinging a huge blood-coloured broadsword. It cuts into Nathan's stomach. He stumbles back with a hiss, slitted eyes darting about, the shadows bent at unnatural angles and flickering as flame at his back.

"Wait." Sarielle can barely hear herself above the chaos. Grabbing hold of Rosi's wrist, she twists it and frees herself, whirling around to face the woman. Auburn curls splay from the gaps in her furry hazel hood, poking up like she has pointed wolf ears of her own. Sarielle gathers fistfuls of her soft, thick coat and yanks. "Wait," she repeats, squaring her shoulders. "They can't kill Nathan. You can't let them."

A frown tugs at the foundations of Rosi's airy smile. "He wiped an entire town off the map, didn't he?"

"That's not him," Sarielle hisses. "That's Shaula."

A scoff. "We're well aware."

"But he's still in there. He's fighting, I know it. You have to save him."

A thud shakes the ground, and she flinches, gaze whipping to the side. Ischyri has fallen. It's difficult to tell what is blood and what is red fire, but it's clear he is badly wounded. Sneering, Nathan plants a foot on his chest, scarlet droplets sprayed over the scales on his face and black flames swamping him like a flowing robe. A skin-crawling bloodthirst darkens his eyes.

Rosi snatches up Sarielle's arm and tugs, aiming for the open doors. She stumbles. Teeth gritted, she plants her feet, resisting, clamping a fist over the tide of fear.

Rosi sighs and lets go. There's even the beginnings of anxiety twitching in her limbs. "Despite my better judgement, I did believe Noli was innocent, but I don't see him now. You've lost him. I'm sorry."

Those words feel like a hive of bees, buzzing around Sarielle's ears. She gives her head a sharp shake. "No. No, I know he's there."

"How do you know?"

Disdain tramples Rosi's voice. It only fans the heat in Sarielle's chest. She bristles, arms spreading. There's a flashing surety of faith that rises within her, greatly, hopelessly desperate but honed by hope's brightest beam. "Because if he was truly gone, then I'd be dead. He hesitated."

That sinks in. It has to, for the way Rosi's expression ripples, though the emotion within it when it settles is hard to read. Still, her chin dips in a nod. A long pink knife strings itself together in her hand. "I'll do what I can." The blade grows a curve along with her smile. "You Cormé are so bitterly brave to the very end, aren't you? Now go."

With that, she's gone, her ribbons of colour joining with the others as her blade slits through shadowy flames. Sarielle watches her, panting, stomach a mess of itching moths. She's done her part. Everything sensible screams that it is time, finally, to run.

Rosi takes a flying leap through the air and careens into Nathan, sending them both toppling to the ground and rolling behind the throne. Mira follows with a growl. Trails of blood decorate the white carpet. Standing there amidst the storm, Sarielle thinks again of it all: of glittering gold dresses and parties and bubbling drinks, of the whirlwind of a battlefield split in light and dark, of Dalton's kiss on the pirate ship, of the quiet of Nathan's cell and the soft sadness that eternally stalked him. Of Fiesi's back pressed against hers as they each admitted themselves as allies, equals, friends. Of her father's hand.

The glint of her sword's sky-blue hilt, abandoned in the throne's empty seat, catches her eye.

"This is my home," she whispers, the words riding her lips for her ears alone. Damaged and broken as it is, this is her home, and she still has plenty to lose. She will not abandon it. Not the throne, not the Tía, not Nathan.

She lets fear fall as a sheet of shattering glass around her and breaks into a sprint.

───── ⋆⋅♛⋅⋆ ─────

And thus the battle begins :D

Lowkey obsessed with the image of Nathan lounging on that throne tho. It's just kinda funny to me.

- Pup