Paradigm. [Laszlo]

[Seodai]

He was running. Running so quickly the wind bit at his face, cold and blistering in the dark of night. Seo didn’t dare look back. His legs ached, muscles burning from prolonged exertion, threatening to fail him. But he couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t. But why? Seodai couldn’t remember why he was running. He didn’t recognize the crushed pebble beneath his booted feet, or the strange, inky black waters that lapped up near him. He was on a coast somewhere, that much he was sure of, but it was not Denval. The foreboding and yet comfortingly familiar face of the cliff he had grown up with was gone, and in its place was a landscape Seodai could hardly make sense of. It was dark, that did little to help, but there seemed to be an essence of life that teemed around him – one that threatened and frightened. Even the salty flavor of the air was off, all wrong. Bitter and sick with death, instead of the refreshing breeze he held so dear. It was death. That was what chased him, nipping at his heels when he faltered. The rocks were getting bigger, more difficult to stumble across quickly. Seodai was loathe to slow his escape, but the terrain necessitated it. He had to scrabble across the boulders, slick with mossy dampness, glistening green and ugly in the moonlight. That lovely, silver light that danced in Lysander’s hair and made his pale skin seem luminescent, seem perfect. Seodai’s heart constricted. If he died, he would lose Lysander. Without ever having known the real pleasure of holding the godchild in his arms, in tasting that skin for himself. All of the fantasies that burned like fire inside of him, extinguished without hope. Spurred on, Seodai tried to run faster. His foot slipped and one palm shot out to block is fall, slashed open on the face of a sharp stone. He cursed. Now bleeding to death had to be added to his list of worries. The darkness behind him roared its approval, as if it could read his very thoughts. Seodai, who had fallen to his knees, cradled his bleeding palm and staggered to his feet again. “No,” he groaned a bit wearily. And then, with more force. “No!” He was off again, though the stones were continually looming larger and larger before him. Soon he was climbing, leaving a trail of crimson in his wake as he scrabbled up over the increasingly difficult boulders. And, as was inevitable, he reached the place where his human capacities were simply overwhelmed and there was no more escape. He’d managed to skin up arms and legs in his attempt, and something as simple as an oozing cut wasn’t so simple for the hemophiliac. It could be a death sentence. Seodai squinted his eyes closed, palms still splayed against the cruel stone as if he might be able to move it. He couldn’t bring himself to turn and face the danger he could feel hovering just behind him. The darkness that wanted to own him, to consume him. He panted, lost in the sound of his own frantic breathing, trying so very hard not to hear the scuttling of feet, of something bringing his end closer. Closer still, until the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he could swear he felt breath upon his clammy skin. The hands that turned him were not gentle, nor were they human. A clawed grip pressed uncomfortably into his skin, threatening to pierce without actually doing so. Seo struggled, clinging to the boulder as if it might somehow offer a vestige of protection. He failed utterly, and soon found himself staring into wide, purple eyes. Familiar, frightening eyes. “Veldrys?” The figure laughed and, when his head tipped back to release that horrifyingly amused sound, the boning shifted, the skin stretched and retracted. Veldrys, who had patched him up a time or two, who had the capacity to staunch the bleeding in his hands and prevent an untimely death, was gone. The face was unfamiliar, and unkind. Seodai could only watch with muted horror as a hand he hadn’t even noticed lifting was brought up between them. His blood was nearly black in the moonlight, pooling on his palm. The clawed grip holding his hand in place was relentless, and so Seodai, literally backed into a corner, could only watch in horror as that frightening head dipped. He didn’t see the tongue that darted out to taste of his blood, but he felt the rough pull of it across his torn flesh. And then he felt fire. Shooting in daring tendrils outwards, from palm to fingertip first. And then it coiled and curled upwards, so that the bend of his wrist was painful. With every frantic thud of his heart it worsened, crawling higher until his arm was aflame to the elbow. He didn’t mean to cry out, but he must have. The panicked sound that filled his ears could not have come from the laughing figure in front of him, smiling at him now with lips too red, enjoying his misery far too much. With renewed fervor Seodai attempted an escape, but again, his failure was abject and miserable. He had nowhere to run. Fingers clutched in the shaggy blonde curls he had meant to trim for some time now. Lysander sometimes touched his hair, tugging on an errant curl, brushing a lock out of his eyes. The decision to keep it long and unkempt had been an easy one – whatever earned him more of those little affections from his beloved. Now, though, it served as a tool whereby his assailant, his tormenter could curl those cruel claws against his scalp and force him back around. When those bloody lips moved closer, Seodai assumed it was to bite. He expected those frightening, elongated fangs to create his end – even as the misery in his arm reached his shoulder. Instead, they moved in for… a kiss? Seodai screamed again, flailing helplessly against a frame he felt as if he should be able to overpower. This only made it easier for a cruel tongue to push the flavor of his own tongue past his lips, drowning him in it. He clawed wildly, helplessly. And then he heard the voices. Far away, calling his name. It was his mother, his father. Uncle Theo, even his beloved goddess. All of the names and faces he had known swam into his mind, calling his name. Vanos. Syllke. Talen. Even surly Sitkanis, Marx. Cian Noc, Lucy. Lysander. ”Seo…” Seodai wanted to weep for that voice, for that face. But he couldn’t breathe. He was drowning. In blood, in a vicious kiss, in his own end. ”Seodai…” The fire was everywhere now, his body consumed with the miserable ache of it. Somehow, though, Seodai imagined he could feel Lysander’s cool fingers against his cheek. Like ice, soothing. Where his fingers touched, the pain relented. His grappling efforts to free himself gave way to a helpless clinging and the two realities somehow merged. “Seo.” The voice was far too present to ignore, and it was with a gasp that Seodai opened his eyes again. The terrible stones were gone, but in the darkness it was impossible to tell what had replaced them. Except, of course, for the figure in his arms. The laughing eyes of his beloved, the one who had captured and consumed him somehow, smiled into his own. The misery was gone. The hurt was swept away and with it those horrible eyes, those claws, those lips. Seodai sobbed in relief and reached for golden locks, drawing Lysander towards him without hesitance. In the face of death there was no longer room to second guess or to worry about consequence. He merely acted upon the desperate relief and love and desire he felt, crushing his starving human lips into the child of Leth’s, as if he could find the strength to live again only there.

[Laszlo]

So cold…

The Suvan lapped at Laszlo's limp body with a freezing caress, the deceitfully gentle water visiting the sensation of needles on his skin. A weak whimper was his only protest as he lay there, sprawled on his back in the soft, wet sand. Every breath was arrested by his quivering jaw; his soaked body shivered madly, but he found himself otherwise unable to move. His thick waterlogged clothing weighed him down, caked with sand and plastered with waxy seaweed. Sloppy dark tendrils of his deep brown hair clung to his face in loops and curls, as his twin, crescent horns made ridged impressions in the earth beneath him.

This was his birth: terrifying, miserable, and cold.

Somewhere deep in Laszlo's mind, he knew he had somehow experienced this before. Not entirely capable of rational thought, he interpreted his memory as clairvoyance; he knew what was going to happen. A young girl would find him lying here, she'd call for her father…

That's what was supposed to happen. It had to happen, or Laszlo would die here. So the Ethaefal lied there, staring up at the somber gray sky, and waited. The sky ignored him, having an entire world to watch over. One small man was beneath its notice.

Laszlo waited, but no one came. He never heard the chirp of a small girl calling for her father, never felt the shadow of a tall figure standing over him. Alive long enough to swim to shore, Laszlo's short life would end here.

Maybe it was better that way.

Laszlo closed his eyes.

Then all at once, he stopped shivering. An unseen pressure gently encircled him, perceptibly warm through the icy thickness of his wet clothing. Arms, his dying mind realized, strong and steady, were lifting him from the beach. Was it the fisherman? Did he finally come? Did—

A kiss? What?

Glimmering amber pools fluttered open, panicked and alive. An unfamiliar face was pressed against his, offering practiced, but unwarranted lips and a desperate tongue that moved against his. Too confused to refuse it, he almost even reciprocated, finding inexplicable pleasure in the chaotic uncertainty of what was happening.

"…Mnh?!" Wet, freezing hands groped until they found shoulders, then squeezed. He pulled the stranger away from him, his searching eyes desperate for eye contact. It was a man, sure enough, which didn't help abate the feeling of alarm clutching at his heart. Laszlo thought it was Ambrose, at first, but the face wasn't quite right. He realized quickly that he didn't know this man at all. "Who… who are you? W-Why did you…?"

The air shook with a name. It was more than a voice, it was an idea that was spoken, a cascade of golden images brought to mind that could be communicated with a single sound. It was the sound of water in a brook, penetrated by shafts of light piercing through a forest canopy. Silken tendrils of refracted shadow stroked over clusters of smooth pebbles in the riverbed. It was warmth, water, motion, and glasslike beauty. The syllables of the word could not be replicated with fleshy lips, but Laszlo knew what it meant, who that named belonged to.

It was his.

"Did you hear that…?" the Ethaefal choked, his eyes darting around. The Suvan Sea before him stretched on endlessly, lying along the black sand of a Syliran beach. Behind them, thick overgrowth sprouted from the darker soils, held at bay the smoothness of the sea's summit.