 |
Aki glared up at her mother, Emerald eyes burning with rage as she waited for her to speak further. This hadn’t been the first time her mother had told her about plans to interrupt a peaceful pride out of boredom and it always seemed to be her job to clean the mess up. At least, she felt it was her job due to her being the only known child of the Goddess and her strong sense of justice.
“Mother?!”
Wotlich flicker her gaze down to her daughter and smirked. She had been occupying her time by cleaning her claws. It was honestly rather amusing to watch her daughter squirm, especially when she knew her daughter couldn’t do anything to stop her. However…
“Aki, darling. Why do you stress yourself out as you do? You could just let mummy take care of you and get you everything you need! Just join me.”
The fur at the back of the orange lioness’ neck stood on end, she could feel herself losing control of her primal urge to attack her mother. “…Mother.” She growled out, teeth bared.
Neltharion had been livid when 'Poaching' vanished right out from under his nose. Literally. She'd bumped up against him and just vanished. It was outrageous! She'd been his first lead on Mkodi in eons, it felt like, and he wouldn't have it. He would. Not. Have it. He'd slaughtered a leopard family he'd found to work out his anger, but still it burned painfully strong in his chest.
Of course, so freshly awakened she was hard to trace. Few pre-established hatreds lingered through purgatory, and it took some time to pinpoint her again. In the end, it wasn't even her that he sensed. It was...a mortal. A mortal where it shouldn't be. A mortal who happened to be very angry with her mother. Not quite hatred, but something acidic that he could easily warp... And a clear enough signal for him to hone in on.
He descended like a massive dark storm front onto the pair, wings flared and smoke billowing from both maw and crevices in his skin. A great section of scale along his chest cracked and fell free, sizzling into ash as it struck the ground. A new section of his molten innards hissed as it hit the cooler air and began to harden - a new patch of plating that didn't quite fit, leaving him a bit more ruined looking.
And it really didn't help the leering grin he fixed on the goddess and her...little toy. How charming. A mortal that had such distaste for her immortal mother. "Foolish whelp. You should know your place," He hissed at her, stalking closer. "Do your mother's bidding, and be glad that you have use to us."
Wotlich’s pupils constricted all of her suddenly on high alert at the coming of the massive God. Part of her feared what the coming of the God would mean for her daughter. Her only daughter. Attempting to calm her panic, she looked towards her daughter and also smirked, a glint in her eye that only Aki would pick up on. A look that told the lioness to shut up and do what was being said and get out.
Aki, however, had not noticed the look until after she was already giving the God lip.
“Know my place?! How about you God? Why are you getting involved in a conversation between a daughter and a mother?!” Looking towards her mother, Aki choked on her next words. Her mother was fearful for her. Only twice had she been that way before.
Wotlich moved towards her daughter and growled, before her daughter could dig herself a deeper grave.
“Look here, you have my blood flowing through you and I am sick of you being so insulting! Join me, or death will follow.” Wotlich unsheathed her claws, showing that she indeed meant business when she spoke and then looked towards the God. A bit of aggression held in her eyes. Had she the option she would have attacked the God then and there.
Neltharion rolled his shoulders as the pair of females squabbled. It was...amusing. The mortal's ire aimed at him was beneath his notice (though he did suck a breath, clearly savoring...something...) and rather like a little bird peeping because he'd trod too near its nest. Easily squashed if it got too loud, but for the moment simply charming.
"Your mortal concerns are hardly worth notice, little flea. You would do well to better behave your mother. At least her blood has made you worth something." His molten eyes rolled to the goddess. She didn't hate him, no, not like the daughter, but then she was immortal. She'd have a bit more sense than to challenge him. If she did, he'd have had her, and her daughter, and she'd be back to purgatory before the day was done.
"As for you, little Poaching goddess...you were terribly rude, oh so very rude to me the other day. Luckily," A glance at the still fuming daughter. "I have ways of tracking you down." He stepped closer, the ground crisping under his claws and little splatters of glowing ooze sizzling down his legs. "Useful little things, aren't they? Better than usual mortals, if only just... Your daughter has...strong emotions. A lot of fight. But she is willful." A deep, dark chuckle, and a glance that promised pain for insubordination, even against another god, against her mother. And if the daughter was a way to get to the mother, and the mother a way to Mkodi...he would have to keep a special eye on her.
Wotlich kept her cool, even when her daughter was threatened by the dark God. She hadn’t been given a choice in the matter. If she were to give up her emotions and show too much care then the God would target her poor daughter more often than not. That wouldn’t be allowed, it couldn’t be. Looking up at the God, Wotlich sneered.
“And how is it that I was rude? You were the one breathing heavily into my face without much thought on how it might smell.”
Aki shrank back, feeling almost like she should run at the nearest possibly opportunity, but how would she even escape? Emerald eyes looked towards her mother, almost cursing at her for the sudden crude remark she made. Was she trying to piss the God off? Her mother was strong, but not that strong, not really.
“Don’t think you can use me. She isn’t around the often, or ever really.” Gritting her teeth, she almost regretted what she said as soon as she spoke, but it was out now. Best to own it. “She hardly even cares, unless she wants something.”
The lion god sucked a rattling breath that stoked the blaze at his core, a rough, rasping his of laughter sliding through barely parted jaws at her insults. "You were the one who felt the need to lean so close, Poacher. You must be weaker than I thought, if it's the stink of lions' blood that sent you reeling. Your domain is death and blood and waste, and you complain of sour smells?" The grin dropped off his face, his eyes suddenly bulging and rolling, a mad animal, a beast. "Pathetic little wretch! Mkodi gave you your domain, and you revile even those base parts of it?!" He snarled viciously, claws raking through the air, skittering to the side just moments from slapping her across the face.
He flexed his paw, sheathing the hooked blades and forcing the mad, manic look that had twisted him so sharply back into the lurking corners of his mind. "Awake so shortly, perhaps you are still...weak." His voice was smother, more controlled now. There was a dark note to the emotions rolling off her now. And the daughter's words, meant to defend herself and her blood...how terribly, awfully charming.
"Of course she cares. More than she should at that. But we are GODS. Your kind are innumerable, and expendable, and have one use and then only sometimes." He looked between them, all but huffing at how easy this would be. "And if she truly did not care, then you would stink all the more, and be that much easier to find, my dear little fool. You think that proclaiming her disdain, her disinterest will make the god of Hate believe it? I know exactly how well she treasures you, little useless whelp." That toothy sneer again, wide blazing eyes rolling back to the goddess. "As much as she might deny it as well. Your hearts are both naked before me."
Aki moved quickly away from the crazed God as he attacked her mother with words. Ripping apart her very domain and personality. How dare he do such a thing, even though her mother was a b***h, she did her job well. Even if it wasn’t completely right by her standards, Aki knew the importance of her mother’s domain. If only she had power…
Wotlich’s eyes shimmered with anger, but she drew a deep breath and looked towards her daughter for patience. As her eyes locked with her daughters she did indeed gain patience. However, she couldn’t allow the God to damn her very existence and abilities!
Moving closer, Wotlich snarled, brows furrowed and tail whipping dangerously about her. “What is hate without love? Hmm…?” Pushing herself up onto hind legs again, Wotlich stared directly into the fiery beasts eyes. “What is but a bit of disgust when made into a goal?” Inching closer, Wotlich licked her nose to moisten it.
“All must be given boundaries, least we take too much and make barren the lands. What fun is there in that? No toys to be played with, no things to ruin. All… dust.” Smiling now, Wotlich gazed upon the God for a few moments.
“What say you to that, Oh great God of Hate?”
What was hate without love? He nearly laughed! "Without love, hate is a pure thing - a sharp claw to cut down all those unworthy. Love makes all things weak. Mortals, gods...especially gods." His words were bile, acid, accusing both Wotlich and any other god he could concieve of. "I, at least, was made perfect. Without love." That of course was untrue. At the birth of his life, at the birth of the world, Hate had not been so fully his own domain. Once upon an age long past he had loved very dearly. He had loved their creator, Mkodi, and all her creations. Until THEY came.
They, the dirty, crawling, blind and deaf little flickers of space and time that she had called mortals, and then begged all of her immortal children to love above even herself. He had tried, oh how hard he had tried. Using his domain to take in and guard all the fury of the world, to keep the mortal realms pure and peaceful.
Of course, it hadn't worked. The pathetic crawling things he'd been told to love so well turned from their mother, HIS mother, and began to hate more and more. He could not take it all in, but yet he had, sucking their vile thougths and emotions down like milk from a great teat of the earth.
It had shattered his mind and warped his soul, and left him a dark, mad thing that could neither love or unlove his creator, for making him into what he was.
He snarled, wings flaring and teeth snapping to clench the goddess' neck if she did not move quickly enough. "I am perfect!!" He roared, the drips of molten slag streaming int oa gout that splattered and ran down his front hideously, burning away his own flesh and fur even as it cooled into new armor of a sorts. "And a world without these pathetic wastes is exactly what I want. A final, flawed, runt given birth only to drag down those born first and better. The mortals will bend before the gods again in fear, not love, or vanish like your lovely dust!" And then? And then he would be the only thing that remained. Without mortals nothing could live, not even gods, for their beliefs and feelings and actions gave the gods life. But he, he was HATE. He would thrive on the fury of the gods themselves until at last he was the only thing to walk Mkodi's last, most perfect creation - a vast, empty world all his own, to wait upon until the great goddess herself returned for him.
"My hatred IS my goal - barrenness and dust is how it should be." His eyes glittered as he leered at the goddess. "You would do well to fall in line and remember your place ABOVE these puffs of dirt and sand you seem so keen to protect.
|
 |
Reply
