Fate - First Reply Chameleon

[Kor]

Kor did not approach with Soleil. He stood behind her, with his arms crossed over his chest and Archene perched upon his shoulder, watching the predator and the prey with eyes unblinking.

What was it that that the leader of the flock sought in this encounter? What was he hoping to see? Even he wasn't certain, but the tension in the air, soaked in the fear that dripped from the elf's pleas, had him more excited than he'd been in months.

As if it was the most ordinary part of her day, Soleil removed her pendant, and began to spin in a circle, building momentum with every shimmering rotation. Then with one smooth blow, she caved in his skull. The pendant connected with the elf's scalp and overpowered the bone, leaving a bloody crater in his cranium.

Verdane's expression was unchanged. The mood was the same, the chaos outside hadn't ended. All that had changed was that this one particular elf, whom Verdane had decided was a target, was now dead.

In a way, it wasn't unlike his own hunts.

"So, he's dead. Does that make you feel something? Or was it a distraction?" Kor kept his eyes trained on her. Well, Archene's eyes, anyways. "In the time we spent, we could have killed so many more. I would have helped." There was more to Soleil than he could understand, and that infuriated him, to some degree.

Or maybe there wasn't anything to understand?

Turning to leave, he shrugs his shoulders. "You're an odd one, Verdane. Odd, but not boring."

 

[Soleil Verdane]

In the time we spent, we could have killed so many more. I would have helped.

"Some kills better than others," she replied. Here, of course, it was because the thief needed to die for her tracks to be completely covered. All blame for the death of Douglass Mueller could be foisted upon him, and he was now in no position to speak to the contrary.

What Kor said at the end though was intriguing. What he had said previously—you would kill me if it meant furthering the drums of war, and I would do the same to you—was equally so. Soleil knew instinctively that she was not like the vast majority of other people, that others like her could not be found often, even if, at the Academy, there was a greater congregation of them. Was Kor truly like her?

She turned around then, finally gazing back at Kor with that now wonderfully triumphant smile. "Desires? Not stupid. All we are."

He was turning to leave, but she continued to speak. "I want? I take. Slow, or fast; sooner, or later; doesn't matter. Morals? Laws? Dumb rules. Restrictive. Useless." She made a popping sound with her lips. "You? What you do?"

Kor

 

[Kor]

For a moment, Soleil had lost Kor's intrigue.

What she'd just said to him brought it back, leading him to stop. Archene turned around from atop his shoulder, looking back at her on his behalf as he seemed to consider her words.

Well... perhaps consider wasn't the right term. Truthfully, her sentiments echoed his own to a large degree. She was right in that desires were what comprised all beings. Certainly, it was all that Kor adhered by; he was at the Academy because he wanted to be. The moment he lost interest, the moment it no longer appealed to him, he fully intended to leave it behind.

"I do what I want, so long as it serves me well enough. I suppose we're not unlike one another in that regard."

Archene cooed, pecking at her wings as Kor disconnected from her and turned his own body around to face the girl, he'd spent his interesting day with. There was a small smile on his lips, though it looked rather foreign there. "But I do have morals, and I do obey laws. It just happens that the rules I abide by are my own, not those set by another." Reaching up, the boy gently petted the hawk on his shoulder with a pair of fingers, running the tips down it's downy neck.

"You asked me earlier why the birds obey me. I was not entirely honest with you at the time." Kor admitted. "The truth is that these birds know me. Every one of them I raised from their births. In a way, I am their father." Scratching under his companion's skin, he whispered to her, before she took flight and sent herself down the hatch and out of the attic. "I learned a long time ago how disgusting the world is. People bicker and fight, they lie and kill. They betray those they love. Far be it from me to stop them. The creatures that we share this world with though, know nothing of deceit and hatred. Birds, for example, operate on desire, on instinct and nothing else. Just as you or I."

Archene returned, holding a pouch in her beak, which she quickly dropped in Kor's palm before tucking her head under his chin. The Initiate took his time counting the glimmering coins she'd taken from a body, before pocketing them.

"If you become one of them, if you appeal to their desires and needs, they will serve you with loyalty unmatched by any other. You become the master, as I have. When I am stronger, that mastery will extend beyond the birds. Any who get in my way are suitable only as food."

Kor pauses, and chuckles a bit.

"Though I admit some are far too entertaining to hunt, and I would be lying if my time in Anir hasn't instilled in me some faint sense of... camaraderie."

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Camaraderie.

Soleil, unintentionally fitting considering whose company she was in, curiously cocked her head in an avian fashion. A lot of what Kor just said didn't make much sense to Soleil (some of it she was purely incapable of ever truly understanding). She didn't find the world disgusting at all; she saw it dispassionately for what it was, saw it as a set of circumstances to navigate through and overcome. People bickering, fighting, lying, killing, betraying. So? Unless it impeded your own interests, what was the problem?

But the point on camaraderie was the strangest of all to her. She could examine the word, look at its definition, observe it in all the objective and logical ways in which she was capable...but she just didn't understand it. She had never felt it. She knew in that detached way, from the vantage of the outsider observer, what it entailed for other people to feel camaraderie, to have friends, to love someone (and these were all things which could be leveraged and taken advantage of if she needed), but as for herself? Even the way she had viewed Charon was based solely on raw, animalistic attraction and the possibility of pleasure and satisfaction for herself.

Soleil trilled her tongue. Then, eyes shining brightly, smile unbroken, simply said, "Why?"

Kor

 

[Kor]

Kor shrugged his shoulders, his blind eyes drifting off to the side as he thought. "Is it not nature for people to prefer the presence of those similar to them?" He asked her, somewhat curious as to how she would reply. "Not that I consider many of our classmates to be like me, but in the broad scope of this place, beings like you and I are a rare breed."

It wasn't as though Kor desired to feel the camaraderie. It was something that came naturally with spending such a long amount of time with the same people. Was she, he wondered, devoid of such developments?

It would be enough to make him envy her.

"That isn't also accounting for baser feelings like attraction and physical desires, tied closely with instinct." A low sigh, and another shrug of the man's shoulders was like an admission of defeat. He could not change his baser nature, not yet anyways. "Perhaps I sought your company today because you seem so unaffected by such things. All of the other Initiates, I can place into a category. But you... You're different. You're a variable, and even after this hunt, I can't quite decide what to make of you."

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Mere preference. This cut through Soleil's inability to comprehend like a spear of sunlight through parting gray clouds. This was something that Soleil could understand, perhaps the one way she could contextualize the idea of camaraderie. She would never feel it in the way the vast majority of people did, but in this way she could at least begin to develop her own limited personal sense of the word. Kor had illuminated this for her, and she did so enjoy finally figuring something out. Immensely pleasurable, the joy of discovery, and the elevation of her blissful smile displayed this; fissures opened in her pseudo-flesh and rippled across her cheeks in delightful waves.

And here, prompted by all Kor had said, she made a pivotal decision.

"I killed Douglass Mueller," Soleil said, directly admitting to the murder of an Anirian citizen. She took the chameleon out from her pocket, holding it in one hand against her breast and petting it with her other. "Wanted chameleon. Him? Not willing to sell. Me? No chance to steal. Chance to kill though. So I killed him."

She made that popping sound with her lips again.

"I want, I take."

She jerked her head back toward the body of the elven thief.

"Blame murder on him. Chameleon mine. Much joy."

Blinking slowly, a luxurious and leisurely gesture full of calm, she came to say, "You? What think?"

Kor

 

[Kor]

Surprisingly, at least to Kor, something he'd said seemed to have made sense to Soleil. Her face lit up in recognition, the surface of her skin rippling in excitable waves as she appeared to understand.

Then, she came right out and said it

Kor raised an eyebrow as Verdane suddenly proclaimed the crime she'd committed. It wasn't exactly an earth shattering revelation; Kor had assumed Soleil had played a large part in the events that had set their hunt off from the beginning, amd it was far from the only crime they'd committed today, but the honesty was... Well, it was more than she'd usually offer him.

"I think..." Kor began, unable to see the chameleon, but feeling the presence of the small creature held against her chest. "That you live much like the beasts and birds. You thrive on instinct, on your desires. And you will do whatever it takes to get what you want."

Kor slid his eyes closed, smiling, just a bit.

"You're dangerous. Unpredictable. But also... Curious. You want to understand the things that evade you, even though you've no intent to change."

He paused, and then concluded.

"I think I admire you, Verdane."

 

[Soleil Verdane]

"You? Think like me."

She gestured to Archene, to the chameleon she held.

"Want to live like them too."

It was true that she at times envied animals their freedom, the way in which their lives were so much different than that of people. With this there was a likeness between herself and Kor. A shared admiration, even.

"Enjoy the kill too."

Soleil stepped forward, placed her free hand on his chest, and said, "Friend Kor."

She did have a preference for him, and the word "friend" was a useful shorthand.

Kor

 

[Kor]

At her touch, Kor's body stiffened. Not from nervousness or anxiety, but from the foreign nature of the act. Though he'd connected again through Archene, his own head angled down to look at where her hand rested against his chest, not the birds.

Friend Kor.

He scoffed, smirking at the funny little declaration. Friends. Kor had all the friends he needed; beasts who would do anything asked of them just to please him. He'd never asked for the companionship or respect of any of the other Initiates, and he wasn't about to ask it of Verdane.

But then, she hadn't made him ask, had she? And he'd already admitted to her that something drew him towards her.

Kor didn't say anything until Archene made a small thoughtful sound, and gently hopped from Kor's shoulder to Verdane's outstretched arm.

He blinked, brow furrowing in confusion towards his bird's sudden gesture. The Hawk had never shown any interest in anybody besides him before now. Nevertheless, her opinion of Soleil was clear, and her desicion held weight with Kor.

So he too reached forward, mimicking what Soleil had done with her hand, placing it on her chest, just beneath her neck.

"Very well, Friend Soleil."

 

[Soleil Verdane]

The Revolution did, at least, one notable thing. When the iron veil draped over the Academy of old was lifted, when the Anirian Guard's changes came into effect, the two classes of Initiates slowly came to be revealed:

Those who didn't want it, who never wanted to be there, and who hated their lot.

And those who did want it, who were pleased to be there, and who loved their lives as Initiates, soon-to-be Dreadlords.

In Kor she now had someone likeminded. A rarity she would not have expected while the iron veil was still draped over the Academy. This she found pleasing. She didn't know which of them would die first, but it didn't matter. Until then, there were hunts to be had. Until then, there were kills to be enjoyed.

As Kor and Soleil held that strange but special connection, their hands upon the chest of the other, the chameleon, much like Archene, climbed in its slow and bobbing way from the cradle of Soleil's palm up and onto Kor's wrist. Its independent eyes looked at both Kor and Soleil.

From downstairs, a large clamor could be heard, someone being slammed into a wall perhaps. Louder than the rest of it, it was enough to garner attention.

Soleil, hearing it, said with an eager smile to Kor, "Let's hunt. Let's kill."

Kor