Avishraa Reloaded

Ashernath's world is numb. Forepaws brush across his muzzle, fingers hooking in past his lower row of teeth, forcing his jaws apart enough to push the glue-like resin across his tongue. He has no will to fight, even as the artificial taste seeps into his tastebuds, soaking the sense with a bland, unappetising sensation. Dimly, he's aware he's been plucked from the strand that held him attached to the mushroom's lamella.

His vision is filled with red. Objectively, the crimson on the ground only covers a small fragment of his field of vision, but it's almost all there is. The sensation of his mother's remnant of life against his psyche is almost too much to bear beneath the pain of Tanith's death.

Who is he? He knows he has a name, but it's much hollower now: Ashernatha Tenneth avi'Shiaratha tel'Tanitha Tenneth. He has only his line and his colour, and a brother who's sold his soul. He can't talk to him. Right now, he can't speak to him, not physically where his surreal gag is stealing his voice, nor mentally, where it means grappling with his emotions as well as his own. He doesn't want to hate his father. He doesn't want to hate him, but between the pain and Demarath's spike of frantic loathing, he has little choice.

He prefers the numbness.

Chandarmaneth is clipping a satchel of some sort back around her waist where it presumably belongs. The one that had spoken inspired this measure, this crude gag. Enough was enough. He could be tolerated if he spoke during slaughter, but he would not be allowed to disturb the teachings - and why risk Ashernath potentially doing the same after lucidity returned to him?

The resin peels off of Demarath's scales like a tight suit under Shahrivrath's motions. Were he less weak, perhaps he could flee, at least to grieve in peace, but he's still Davir Srian, still crippled by his gift, the venom of magic in his veins, distorting tissue.

The Hzataalar's arm slides around his shoulders as if in cameradie, only to continue the motion, cupping fingers along the underside of his neck, letting his palm travel up along it, shaping its curve in the process, until it stops against the underside of his muzzle. A grip settles around it. “Hold still.” The instruction is calmly spoken, though the dagger resting in his right forepaw - still marred with specks of blood where it hadn't been sufficiently cleaned - does not bode well. But if it's death that awaits, perhaps it's all the better.

Silence. Silence, and pain, and nothing else. ~Asherna?~ he asks, almost pitiful in tone. Has he lost his brother too? ~Asherna, please. Please say something. Anything.~

His father's gone. His mother went with him, leaving just a hollow shell behind - a scar in his psyche, an awful, persistant reminder of everything that just happened. And now his brother is silent, either unable or unwilling to talk to him, to help him or be helped through this difficult time… - how much more is he going to lose?

He's being slowly pulled loose, the resin peeling unpleasantly off of him, freeing first his shoulders, then his arms and wings, then finally his legs and tail. Shahrivrath is curling an arm around his shoulders, and for a moment Demarath thinks he's trying to comfort him. Then it's gliding along his neck, and forming a firm grip on his lower jaw. The instruction is unnerving, terrifying him - a soft whimper barely escapes him as he eyes the knife. He's going to die. The Hzataalar's going to kill him - and the most terrifying part of that is not that it will end his life, but that it will hurt Ashernath. He should be fighting back. He should be trying to escape. He should be fleeing. But instead, he's just numbly sitting there, staring blankly at the knife, too terrified to do anything but obey.

For a moment, there's nothing, just the neutral embrace of his new mentor. Then the blade sets down against scales and cuts along his collarbone, fortunately sharp edge smoothly splitting skin. It stings, but it barely demands his attention, drawing a crimson line across that copper canvas. A moment later, the blade half-clatters, half-thumps against the ground, and one of Shahrivrath's digits rises to stroke the back of a claw along it until the halfway point. Without much warning, the claw twists in the wound, burning against protesting tissue and sinking into his skin, tracing the curve of the clavicle to hook against it.

Demarath winces, hissing softly in reflex as the blade draws a thin line along the length of his collarbone. It's just a light cut, though - a painful sting, but nothing compared to what he'd already endured. Then, moments later, pain explodes from the wound, Shahrivrath's claw digging into it. He cries out, struggling in the Hzataalar's grip, limbs clawing at the ground trying, in futility, to get away. He can't help himself; it's a purely instinctual reaction of fear and pain.

The Hzataalar holding him in that unusual embrace hisses sharply, grip on Demarath's jaw briefly morphing to something near-punishing. It's breathtaking, the strength in those fingers - something he could only dream of.

But the claw isn't doing any more damage, at least not beyond the inevitable slight tearing and crushing that comes from Demarath's own struggles. The Hzataalar holds himself admirably still despite his victim writhing in his grasp, brief though the interlude might be. Then those teal eyes close and he rests the side of his muzzle against Demarath's outstretched neck.

A series of sounds begins to spill from the Hzataalar, half like a shapeless soothe, half like an absent-minded chant, syllables barely defined and arbitrarily chosen, simply carrying a very specific fragment of his concentration. For a long moment, nothing seems to happen - then an abrupt sensation like a thin, swift serpent leaping from beside that digit into the depths of Demarath's body drives a chill up the young Srian's spine, the sensation wiggling past his collar bone only to twist up to curve along his neck in an unwelcome ring. It's over in a second, painless but for the incision and buried claw, accompanied by another hiss from his captor, punctuation of some invisible exertion, but the new sense of light pressure against the inside of his skin between scales and muscle is almost unbearably foreign.

The tightening pressure on his lower jaw serves as a firm reminder of his position. After a moment of instinctively trying to wrench his jaw from that grip (if the pain that attempt caused hadn't stopped him, he probably would have only succeeded in dislocating his jaw), his struggles die down. He utters a whimper that soon morphs into a soft but high-pitched whine. Then something slips into him from that wound, curling around his neck just below his skin, painless but bringing with it a terrifyingly familiar sensation. It's just like the trap in Udunshraa. For a brief moment, fear floods through him as he anticipates the awful chill and the coils wrapping around him, preparing to squeeze the life out of him…

But it doesn't come. Seconds pass, and nothing more happens. It's just sitting there, right under his skin, taunting him with its presence. A forepaw lifts off the ground to scratch idly at his neck, as if hoping that might disperse the unnerving sensation. For an instant, it does, but then it wriggles slightly under the pressure, as if it were a live creature seeking a more comfortable position. This spurs a bout of panicked clawing at his neck, trying to claw it out. He regrets this a moment later, as the creature embedded in his neck tightens, choking him.

The desperate struggles continue for a moment longer, but quickly die down as his muscles are starved for oxygen. Once he's no longer frantically trying to claw it out, it relaxes, giving him space to breathe again. A few seconds of coughing, sputtering, and gasping for breath later, he turns his tearful eyes to Shahrivrath. “What did you do?”

He's a copper bundle on the ground, no longer held by Shahrivrath's embrace, no longer having anything grafted into him. He could pick up the blade, he could plunge it into those labyrinthine scales - it's just sitting there, framed by dust, glinting to equal part as its dulled by the ochre, powdery earth - but something about that seems suddenly terrifying, as if the desperate motions cast against the serpent around his throat implied worse should he turn against its master.

The notion that it's somehow under the Hzataalar's control is born of hope, perversely. How awful might his fate be if the creature under his skin had no master? If it could constrict at will and whim? A codex, a set of rules, was the least hope demanded of it.

Blood drips from copper scales and the light, burning pain of the wounds his own struggles have brought him begins to creep into existence against his perception. The skin is broken in several places, but not nearly deep enough to reach the parasite, just a pointless aggravation of his senses bordering pure self-harm.

“Anchored you,” his captor responds, minimalistically at first, regarding the Davir Srian's weakened state with a resentful scepticism that's only reluctant to fade. “You're not going anywhere without my permission.”

Demarath 's eyes widen in fear. 'Anchored'? More like 'trapped' - in more ways than one. If there had ever been any chance of disobeying the Hzataalar before, it's gone now, not when his new master could strangle him with little more than a thought. 'Absolute, unflinching obedience.' The meaning of that phrase couldn't be more apparent now. This was a measure by which he could be controlled.

On the bright side, at least his master seems reasonable - at least by Hzataalaran standards. As long as he does what he's told, it won't crush his throat, right? And he'd even said he wouldn't make him do anything terrible to the people he cared about, so there was that. And it's only temporary! That… - that's good, right? Presumably once his obedience is no longer required, he'll be free, right?