Private Tales When Fire Meets Shadow

[Vyx'aria]

She watched as Azrakar dropped to one knee not of his own volition....For the first time.

Vyx’aria stood exalted, towering, her shadow-wreathed form pulsing with Maelzafan’s divine touch. Her skin shimmered with runic flame, edges blurred with smoke and power. She said nothing.

Around her, priestesses screamed. Five more fell to the ground, their eyes weeping blood, their flesh burning from within as the binding consumed them.

But Vyx’aria did not flinch. She only looked at him.

His gaze met hers, not with fury, not with wrath, but sorrow. It twisted something inside her, but her face revealed nothing. Silent. Impossible to read.

And then she turned.

Each step echoed with finality as she walked away, leaving Azrakar to his new mistress.

-----------------------------​

Several Weeks Later – The Spine, Surface Camp

The wind howled through the Spine’s jagged peaks, biting cold and stinging snow sweeping across the camp’s perimeter wards. They were back where she had first met Azrakar.

Vyx’aria stood before the fire, arms folded. The divine pulse still hummed faintly beneath her skin.

Lysdania approached at a measured pace, watching her mistress with scrutiny. “The demon… was almost convincing,” the commander said at last. “A waste to lose him.”

Vyx’aria’s lips curved into a knowing grin. “Oh, Azrakar was not entirely deceitful.”

Lysdania stopped walking. “…Then why give him to Matron Elzyrra?”

Vyx’aria’s gaze flicked toward the mountains, voice cool and deliberate. “Because I expect him to break out. In fact, I’m counting on it.” She turned fully now, eyes gleaming like daggers. “If I moved against Dalrithia’s agent myself, I’d have torn the Underdark into civil war. The goddess sees everything within her realm. But now? Elzyrra owns him. So when he escapes… she will be the one who failed Maelzafan, and by extension Dalrithia. Their entire regime crumbles in one fell swoop without any mass casualty or war between houses.”

“And who do you think Maelzafan will turn to then?” she asked with a smirk. “Her favored daughter.”

Lysdania arched a brow. “Why not tell Azrakar?”

Vyx’aria scoffed. “Because his pride would never have allowed it. I tested him. I asked him to kneel to Maelzafan.” She shrugged once. “He refused.”

A long pause followed. Then Lysdania said quietly, “Perhaps… he would have done it for you.”

Vyx’aria’s jaw clenched. The flicker of heat in her eyes returned, sharp, defensive. But she said nothing.

Instead, she stepped past the fire and changed the subject. “Gather his best orcs. Position them to infiltrate Elzyrra’s sanctum and target the priestesses. The ones responsible for reinforcing the bindings. Set the orcs loose and tell them it's to retrieve their King. Stay uninvolved. Maelzafan cannot see our hand in this.”

Lysdania nodded. “…And when he’s free? Will he not come to kill you?”

Vyx’aria stopped walking. “..I'd like to see him try."

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar awoke to a darkness that tasted of iron and incense.

The sanctum was carved deep beneath Zar’Ahal, a chamber of black basalt veined with violet crystal that pulsed like a dying heart. Chains of iron wrapped his wrists, ankles, throat. Each link etched with drow runes, burning cold against his skin.

They did not merely hold him; they fed. Every heartbeat siphoned a thin thread of his infernal essence into the Matron’s waiting chalice, drop by crimson drop.

He hung suspended above a ritual circle, bare-chested, horns scraping the low ceiling when he shifted. The Matron - Elzyrra - stood below him on a dais of polished obsidian, her white hair braided with spider-silk and bone. Four Priestesses encircled the room in silent vigil, their eyes gleaming with fanatic hunger.

"You are stubborn," Elzyrra said. She lifted the chalice, swirling the stolen fire within it.

"Most creatures break within days. You have lasted weeks. Impressive… but pointless."

She stepped closer, trailing a clawed finger along one of the chains. It flared violet; pain lanced through Azrakar’s core. He did not flinch. His crimson eyes remained fixed on the far wall.

"I could make this far worse," she continued, almost conversational.

"Layer by layer. Feed your marrow to the goddess. Your screams would make exquisite music for her altars."

Still no answer.

Elzyrra’s smile thinned. She raised the chalice to her lips, drank deeply of his fire. Her eyes rolled back in ecstasy; shadows writhed around her like eager lovers.
When she lowered the cup, her voice was thicker, drunk on stolen power.

"She sold you cheaply," she purred. "A single night of betrayal for a taste of divinity. A traitor who managed to get some favour back with another betrayal. I suppose that is our way.

"Did you truly believe she held an alliance with you? Or cared for you? Or were you simply fool enough to hope?"

For the first time in weeks, Azrakar spoke.
His voice was low, rough, cracked from disuse.

"She did what she had to."

Elzyrra laughed, sharp and delighted.

"Still defending her? Even now?" She circled him slowly, heels clicking against stone.

"You are wasted on her. I could make better use of such loyalty. Swear to me instead. Give me your fire freely, and I will spare you the slow unraveling."

Azrakar’s head tilted - just enough to meet her gaze.

"I swore to no goddess," he said quietly. "And I will never swear to you."

The Matron’s expression soured. She gestured sharply; the chains tightened, runes flaring brighter. Fresh agony tore through him, deeper this time, seeking to break what weeks of siphoning had not.

He closed his eyes.

And smiled.

For some reason, one strand of the web holding him in place had just snapped. His eyes glanced back and forth. None of the priestesses here seemed to have noticed.

 

[Vyx'aria]

Quiet shapes moved in single file, hulking forms draped in soot-dulled cloaks, footsteps carefully muted despite their considerable bulk.

At the front was Commander Gartz, a towering orc with a jagged scar across his brow and intelligent eyes that missed nothing. Unlike many of his kin, Gartz did not snort or grunt. He gave signals in swift hand gestures, each one obeyed with eerie precision. All taught to them by the Drow.

They had been given a path.

Lysdania’s intelligence had pointed them to an old merchant’s artery, long forgotten, now used only by smugglers and spies. A narrow spine-path wrapped around the undercliff and led to an old checkpoint carved into the wall of the underrealm itself.

At the checkpoint, a figure waited, a Rous, hunched and cloaked, tail twitching.

“You walk paths not made for you,” the ratling rasped, eyes narrowing.

Gartz stepped forward, expression unreadable. “Ash-tide rises on a still river.”

The Rous blinked, then broke into a sharp-toothed smile. “Lord Skavius Drytail offers you welcome, courtesy of the Exiled Queen.”

With a sweep of his paw, he pressed a rune. A stone slab groaned open, revealing a passage cloaked in fungal mist.

The orcs dispersed into the underrealm city like phantoms, spreading out across the tiers of Zar’Ahal. Cloaked in shadow, guided by tunnels and whispered paths, they moved not like raiders, but like hunters.

In the center of a moss-lit shrine, a priestess knelt in prayer, her voice a whisper of sacred chant. A blade slid through her back.

She arched once, then crumpled forward onto the obsidian floor. No sound.

Gartz stood over her, exhaling slowly. “For the king,” he murmured, and gestured.

More hand signals. The others peeled off, each targeting a priestess. No war cries. No guttural howls. Just clean, silent executions, the precise opposite of what the drow would ever expect from the surface orcs.

Within minutes, the bindings fraying beneath Azrakar’s prison began to snap. One. Then another. Then two more in succession.

In the bowels of Zar’Ahal, where Azrakar was held, the ritual chamber trembled.

Another snap.

Then…

A familiar sound echoed faintly from beyond the chamber.

“O what decadence grows in the shade of the leaking pipe! Soft as rotted silk, with notes of copper and despair! Truly, a vintage mold for the ages!”

Elzyrra’s eyes narrowed in fury. “What in the screaming hells is that?”

One of her attending priestesses faltered, the lines of her chant warbling.

Elzyrra turned on her. “Investigate. Now.”

The priestess scrambled from the chamber. Outside, a deep baritone howl rose in majestic crescendo.

It was unmistakable.

Orcish opera.

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar felt the last strand snap.

His eyes opened.

A flash of light bathed the chamber in vermillion for a fraction of a second. Azrakar's feet where on the ground

Snap
The whip came in the blink of an eye. His forearm met it. It wrapped around his arm and he grabbed it with the other hand.

Azrakar pulled so hard the priestess was flung from her feet.

Elzyrra had a blade in one hand. Her other started to move, fingers tracing out a component of some dark spell.

"You cannot fight your way out of this city."

"I doubt any creature could," Azrakar replied. "I will still escape."

"You won't even make it out of this room!"

"I doubt I would even manage that..." Azrakar admitted. "Except that you have been savouring my own magic for days and days."

His gaze darkened. One moment Elzyrra's veins glowed beneath her skin, the next she was burning.

Azrakar took one step and kicked the fallen priestess in the head. He was weakened, furious and beyond killing with any form of grace. He couldn't even summon his blade.

Another whip kissed his back. He picked up the prone priestess and threw her across the room at the other.

A fee seconds later and it was done. Flames still crackling behind him, Azrakar - as a drow - stepped out of the sanctum.

 

[Vyx'aria]

The sanctum stood silent in the aftermath, its guardians slain, the ritual circle cracked and scorched. And from the upper passages, the orcs moved.

Commander Gartz led them in quick retreat, their task complete. Not a word was uttered. No celebration. No chanting. Only the low, distorted hum of the orcish opera gem, still translating insect chatter into a booming baritone across the lower levels of Zar’Ahal.

The translation carried far beyond the expected radius. The opera echoed through stone and tunnel, its volume rising with every footstep as more of the city descended into panic.

Acolytes ran in circles. Priests screamed about a divine judgment. Weeping echoed down the corridors. "Maelzafan will punish us all!" rang from every sanctum and shrine. Through this chaos walked a single male drow, unnoticed. Inconsequential. No one gave a second glance.

-------​

Beneath the Spine…

The demon’s lair still glowed dimly with fading heat. Azrakar’s elite guard had gone to free him, leaving the rest without a chain of command.

And seated upon Azrakar’s throne was Vyx’aria.

She reclined with a confidence born of certainty, her silhouette cast in firelight and shadow. Her legs dangling languidly over one arm of the oversized seat, armored skirt draped like war-banner silk. She looked every bit the crowned serpent.

At her side, Lysdania remained tense, arms folded. Her voice was low.“Are you certain this is wise?”

Vyx’aria didn’t bother turning her head. “No. I’ll do it anyway.”

She smirked, then waved lazily to one of the orc warriors flanking the hall.

“Bring me wine.”

The orc scrambled off, returning moments later with a tarnished goblet. Vyx’aria downed it in a single motion and tossed the cup aside with a metallic clatter.

“Your king once said orcs made excellent lovers.” She raised an eyebrow, eyeing the orcs gathered around. “So go on, put on a show. Show me how you celebrate conquest.”

The orcs blinked at each other, unsure, until Vyx’aria snapped her fingers, commanding them like a conductor before a most absurd symphony.

“If you’re going to learn to fight like drow, you may as well learn to revel like drow.”

The drinks started pouring, and laughter echoed around her as she took another drink from a fresh cup, reclining deeper into Azrakar’s throne. Her smile was wolfish.

She was not hiding. She was waiting.

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar emerged from the lower tunnels like smoke given form.

The guards at the outer ring never saw him coming. One moment the shadows were empty; the next, they were ash drifting on a sudden hot wind.

He moved in silence, true form restrained but unmistakable: obsidian skin, sweeping horns, runes glowing low and angry beneath the surface.

Pale marks on his dark skin showed where the drow had shackled him.

He paused at the threshold of his own hall.

Vyx’aria lounged on his throne like she had been born to it: legs draped over the arm, armored skirt parted just enough to show the long line of thigh, goblet in hand, wolfish smile in place.

Orcs roared and laughed around her, already deep in their cups and given to revelry. Lysdania was once again on the verge of giving in to her curiosity.

Azrakar stepped fully into the torch light.

The hall fell quiet so fast it felt like someone had cut the sound with a blade.

Orcs froze mid-laugh, mid-punch, mid-collision, mid-drink. Goblets clattered to stone. Eyes widened.

Their king.

"Do not stop on my account," he hissed.

He knew that Vyx’aria had given his orcs the knowledge to break his chains, but this was utterly brazen. He hadn't expected this.

Azrakar walked forward slowly. Each step deliberate. He stopped at the foot of the dais, looking up at her on his throne.

"You look comfortable," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that comes before something breaks.

 

[Vyx'aria]

The throne hall remained caught in silence, a breath held by stone and soldier alike.

The orcs who had freed Azrakar fell into step behind him. Their armor was scorched, their faces grim with well-earned victory. Commander Gartz, grim-eyed and silent, emerged among them, his movements sharp, precise, the kind that came only from discipline forged in violence.

Lysdania’s breath caught when she saw him. A flicker of something hopeful sparked across her face, until she realized Gartz’s eyes barely lingered on her. A glance, no more, before they locked back ahead. Stoic. Unyielding.

Azrakar moved like judgment itself, horned and terrible, his obsidian form made more terrible by the welts and lash marks now visible in the low light. Scars still pulsed faintly, seared into flesh as if refusing to be forgotten. The brand of humiliation, of captivity and it twisted something in Vyx’aria.

She sat up, slowly, turning on his throne with theatrical laziness. Her legs draped forward, one crossing over the other in deliberate, effortless command. The armored skirt shifted higher on her thighs, glinting faintly in the firelight.

But her eyes never left him.

And as she truly saw him, what had been done to him, something in her bristled. Not with guilt. Not with fear. But with a loathing so deep she nearly choked on it. Not for him. For the chain-bearers. For what they had carved into him. For how it mattered to her.

She shoved the feeling down like a dagger in her own ribs. She wanted him angry. Anger was cleaner. Easier.

“Don’t stop on your account?” She smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes. “This-” she gestured lazily to the orcs, the goblets, the stunned silence “-is for you. To give you a grand welcome.”

Her voice was calm. Velvet-wrapped steel. No apology. No explanation. No movement from his throne.

Just the two of them, eye to eye across that impossible distance.

Her fingers flexed slightly on the armrest, but she did not rise.

Whatever wrath he would bring, she would meet it full in the face.

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

"A grand welcome..." he mused.

He mounted the steps in one fluid motion, towering over her now. The orcs shifted uneasily, he sensed the atmosphere become charged.

That defiance. He genuinely couldn't tell if he was furious or deeply impressed.

"The plan worked," he announced loudly. He wouldn't start announcing that he had failed to see the trap in front of his orcs.

Azrakar leaned down, one clawed hand bracing on the throne’s armrest, the other reaching out to tip her chin up with the barest pressure.

"You played the long game," he murmured, close enough that only she could hear. "I felt every cut. Every chain. Every drop of fire they stole."

His thumb brushed her lower lip. It started gentle, almost tender.

"And I still came back."

His eyes searched hers, crimson to crimson.

"So first of all, Vyx’aria..." His voice dropped lower, velvet over steel. "You can get out of my throne."

"And then it is time that you did the kneeling."

 

[Vyx'aria]

Vyx’aria did not recoil. If anything, she leaned ever so slightly into his touch when his fingers tipped her chin, the heat of him a familiar sensation she would never admit she missed. She had ached for it, his presence, his weight, the way the air bent around him, and she despised herself just a little for how easily that truth surfaced.

Her lips curved as he leaned closer. A slow, knowing smirk.

“Oh?” she murmured, unbothered by the fury she could feel coiled tight beneath his skin. She could taste it on him. “Now, why would I do that?”

She shifted languidly on the throne and lifted one bare foot, pressing it flat against his chest. Not a shove, just enough pressure to make a point, to remind him that she was still exactly where she wanted to be. She was still who she was. The contact was deliberate, and so was the gesture. She felt the heat beneath her sole, the solid reality of him. And then she applied just enough pressure to nudge him back.

“This throne is very comfortable,” she continued lightly. “I can see why you like it so much.”

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar did not step back when her foot pressed against his chest. He let it press there to his left shoulder, his gaze never leaving hers.

She guided his chest back just a fraction. He leaned into it slightly, just enough to make her feel the unyielding solidity of him, the way his heartbeat thrummed steady and deep beneath her arch. She would feel the slight stretch in her leg, improving his view.

"Comfortable," he echoed. "I suppose it would be. Especially when you’ve already claimed it."

He lifted his left hand slowly, deliberately, wrapping it around her ankle. His thumb traced the delicate bone there, heat bleeding into her skin like a brand she could not see.

"You waited for me," he said. Not a question. A quiet statement of fact.

"You sat here, on my throne, drinking my wine, commanding my orcs… and you waited."

His eyes searched hers, crimson to crimson, the fury she expected still coiled but held in careful check. The thumb at her chin slipped down. That enormous hand pinned her slim neck against the throne. One clawed thumbed lingered at her pulse.

"I could have imagined less extreme ways to hold my attention," he growled.

"I am here," he said, voice dropping to a velvet rumble. She would feel it. Like an insistent pressure pinning her to the throne.

"Unchained. Unbroken. And yet still yours."

He waited.

The hand at her ankle tightened. He drew her foot upwards until her ankle was level with his jaw. He turned his lips in to it.

He dropped his voice to a whisper.

"You must know that betrayal would not go unanswered. And I have a mind that they will all be witness."

 

[Vyx'aria]

Vyx’aria did not flinch when his hand closed at her throat. If anything, her pulse betrayed her, quickening beneath his thumb, warm and alive, not with fear, but with something far more dangerous.

She held his gaze, unblinking.

When he said still yours, the reaction was immediate and unguarded. Surprise flickered across her face before she could bury it. She had braced for fury. For punishment. For fire and ruin and a reckoning paid in blood.

Not that.

Her mind betrayed her then, unspooling images she did not want to allow herself: the chains, the lashes, the siphoning of his power. The calculated cruelty of it. And beyond that, future torments she knew, with ruthless honesty, she would one day inflict upon him again. And again. This was who she was. What she was. And he knew that.

And still he chose her.

The breath she drew when he lifted her foot, when his jaw aligned with her ankle, and his words brushed her skin, was sharp enough to ache. Heat surged through her, fierce and undeniable, crawling up her spine and eventually settling low in her belly. For a moment, it threatened to undo her entirely.

But she did not waver. Even with his hand at her throat. Even with the hall watching. Even with the orcs frozen in reverent silence.

Slowly, deliberately, Vyx’aria lifted her chin in his grasp, forcing him to meet her eyes fully. There was no softness there, only hunger, challenge, and something raw beneath it all.

“Then say it,” she said, voice steady, carrying just enough to cut through the hall.

“Say it louder.”

Her gaze never left his, demanding. Commanding. Wanting.

“So they can all hear.”

She leaned just enough into his hold to make the intent unmistakable.

“Say that you are mine, Azrakar.”

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar’s grip on her throat tightened. It was just to remind her of the power coiled in his hand. The anger behind it. His thumb pressed against her pulse, feeling it race beneath his touch, wild and defiant and alive.

“The audacity,” he hissed. He had lived the span of many elven lives. He had never been challenged like this.

He leaned in until his lips brushed the shell of her ear, voice dropping to a low, resonant growl.

“I am yours.”

The words were quiet at first. They were intimate, meant only for her. Then he lifted his head, crimson eyes sweeping the silent, watching orcs, the frozen drow, the entire hall that had gone deathly still.

He straightened slowly, drawing her up with him. It was effortless, it was inevitable. Up until she stood before the throne.

She looked past him out to the crowd past his left shoulder. His right hand now remained against the left side of her neck. He kept his back to the crowd.

The hall remained silent. Even the crackle of torches seemed to hush.

Azrakar’s gaze returned to hers, burning, unyielding.

“And if you wish me to announce that,” he said, voice carrying clear to every corner, “if you wish them all to see exactly what that means…”

“Kneel for me here,” he said. “Right now. In front of every orc, every drow, every witness in this hall. Let them see their queen lower herself to the demon she claims.”

The hall gasped.

 

[Vyx'aria]

---​

Vyx’aria stood on a narrow outcropping high above the Spine’s jagged vales. Her silver hair was unbound, wild, caught in the same chill that prickled her skin with goosebumps. She did not retreat from it. She welcomed it. Savored it.

There was no wind like this in the Underrealm. She closed her eyes, letting the alpine air flood her lungs. The cold burned deep, a cleansing sort of pain.

It had been days since Azrakar’s return. Days of their battle in flesh and will, a contest that ended not in surrender, but in something worse, a mutual understanding.

They had their own wars to wage, their own paths to walk. And yet… the space he left burned like a phantom wound. Even while he stood right beside her.

Her crimson eyes scanned the craggy horizon. Down below, framed against the pale blue sky, two distant figures were seated along a ridgeline. One slight, white-haired, draped in the unmistakable elegance of Lysdania. The other, broad and immovable, was the orc war-captain Gartz.

From here, Vyx’aria could not hear them. But she could see Lysdania’s laugh, the tilt of her head, the easy brightness of her smile. Gartz, for all his size, sat still, as though weathering a pleasant storm.

Vyx’aria’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps it was jealousy at watching others afforded such an easy and nonchalant existence while she wore the burden of an entire people.

Then, without looking behind her, she spoke, her voice barely louder than the wind, but sharp enough to carry. “What do you suppose they’re talking about?” she asked Azrakar, “Doesn’t seem like battle strategy…”

 

[Azrakar]

"It does not."

Azrakar walked up to the edge of the ridge. He wore his humanoid form. They were preparing for war. He didn't expect there to be any spies in the mountains, but he didn't want a flaming demon visible for fifty miles.

They had gone north and brought the ice giants to heel. Next came a consolidation of orc tribes. They would fall into line or they would flee.

Then came the move east to secure the strategic portal stone. Odd things. His magic couldn't affect them. Their creation was lost to time itself.

He had a lot of territory to secure. He had never been a patient creature; it was his nature to consume. Azrakar had to avoid being too hasty after his exile. He had to measure time in years and not months.

Marching north to Molthal would be possible when he was certain the dwarves or humane could not bring down his horde from the south.

He looked down at the pair. Gartz's shoulders gave a little shudder of a laugh, breaking his stillness.

"They must go their separate ways," he said quietly, not speaking entirely of the pair below.

 

[Vyx'aria]

“Lysdania is the one who trained your orcs to navigate the Underrealm,” she said. “It was her designs that slit the priestesses’ throats before they ever saw their death coming.”

Her tone was matter-of-fact, but there was pride threaded beneath it. Not for the kills, but for the precision.

“She’s the needle, when all your other tools are maces,” Vyx’aria added, gaze still fixed on the ridgeline below. “Let her stay with your forces. I think she has grown fond of....the Surface."

At last, she turned to look at him, her silver hair catching in the wind like pale flame, her expression difficult to read.

“You and I will be parting ways,” Her lips curled into a smirk. “After all,” she said, tone turning smooth, dry, almost amused, “we've taken everything we wanted from each other, haven't we?”

 

[Azrakar]

"That is to be seen," Azrakar replied.

He wasn't certain if she was trying to draw something from him. For once he wasn't quite in the mood for escalating the back and forth between them.

Azrakar had spent far too long in his exile. She had woken him back to life.

"She is welcome here then," Azrakar said of Lysdania.

Vyx'aria was the reason he had been in the hands of the priestesses. When he had been rescued, he knew that the drow had directed the missions but he hadn't stopped to ask about the specifics.

Someone had been sitting on his throne.

"What is your next move?" he asked. "You can make weapons that will bring their magic to the surface now."

 

[Vyx'aria]

Vyx’aria’s lips curved when he didn’t take the bait. She absolutely was attempting to draw something out of him. From the very first moment they met, she took great pleasure in antagonizing him.

She considered his question, gaze drifting back toward the mountains. “I return to Zar’Ahal,” she said at last. “I stake my claim. And I will demand Dalrithia’s head for what she’s done.”

Then, after a moment, her eyes lowered, not in doubt, but reflection.

“I never imagined I would go back for the crown after it was taken from me,” she admitted, voice softer, stripped of ceremony. “But I’ve seen what remains of my people. What they’ve been reduced to.”

Her jaw set. Resolve hardened in its place.“That compels me more than pure ambition ever did.”

She glanced at him then, head tilting slightly.

“It’s a curious thing, demon,” Vyx’aria said. “To be driven by cause instead of an insatiable hunger for destruction.”

 

[Azrakar]

There was just a little acknowledgement of her smile on his face. They had plenty left to offer one another, and to take from one another. He thought not just of their sweat slick skin pressed together, but all the ways they challenged each other. They were not done.

Azrakar considered the way the mood changed. He was not a builder. He was a forest fire that swept the past away. In his wake, a new order would naturally rise.

"You never explained exactly what happened," Azrakar said. He thought back to her lies when he had met her on the surface. They had seen through one another.

"Would you tell me?" he asked. He found that he was confused by his own motivations. He wanted to understand what drove her.

 

[Vyx'aria]

Vyx’aria did not answer at once. After a pause, she spoke.

“I gave you as a prize to Maelzafan.”

She said it without ceremony. Without apology.

“You were held in Dalrithia’s regent’s keeping,” she continued. “By arranging your escape while you were still bound to her authority, I ensured her fall from grace. Her council fractured. The regent was disgraced. And the path was cleared for me to make my claim and be back in favor.”

Then, quieter. “I used you,” Vyx’aria said. “Because you would never have consented to such a ploy. But I was always going to get you out.”

She did not look at him when she said it. She did not justify it further.

Something else had been pressing at her. It irritated her precisely because it had no strategic value nor did it have a role in the selfish games played by demons and queens.

She turned her head away from him.

“You kissed me,” she said flatly. “Why?”

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar listened to her explanation. It offered a little insight into the history of her decisions. She was right. He could tell himself that he might have considered the plan, but he knew the truth.

He wanted to know more of her history with Dalrithia, but her question put that thought to one side.

I do not release you from me.

His own words returned to him, along with the feelings that had surged through him in that moment. He was made to consume, but he had felt genuine affection as he spoke those words.

"Because I wanted to. But you ask more of me than that," Azrakar replied.

"You have challenged me as no one has before," he said. "My desire for you makes me burn stronger."

"Would you rather I had not? When you look back at it now?"

 

[Vyx'aria]

He had answered her plainly, and that honesty struck deeper than any provocation.

She could not so easily forget the way he had looked at her in those moments of passion. Not like prey. Not like conquest. Like something chosen. The way his touch had lingered with intent rather than appetite. The words they had spoken and how they were measured, deliberate, unguarded.

It enraged her. It was like a wound that refused to close. But Vyx’aria was usually in the habit of carving out anything that irked her.

At last, she turned to him at his question.

"Would you rather I had not? When you look back at it now?"

“I kissed you back,” Vyx’aria said flatly, the response shutting down that line of thought entirely.

She stepped closer then, close enough that the space between them vanished. Her crimson gaze lifted to meet his, unflinching. They had danced around the topic long enough, and Vyx’aria lost patience with it.

“Understand this,” she continued. “My path is one of conquest. Of ruin and rebirth. Of dragging an entire people out of rot and into dominion.” Her voice did not rise. “I destroy. I rebuild. I lead. I am not a little damsel looking for someone to cling to and comfort me.”

She studied him with the same cold appraisal she would give a battlefield.

“For you to become more to me than a tool I use at my leisure,” she said, “you would need to topple kingdoms. You would need a name that makes the world recoil when it’s spoken. You would need your own throne beyond the mountain.”

A pause.

“Perhaps then,” Vyx’aria allowed, “I would consider letting you court me.”

A smirk curved her mouth as she placed her hand against his chest, feeling the steady, powerful thrum beneath her palm.

“There is comfort to lingering where everyone often gravitates. On their knees,” her grin grew wider. “Beneath me.”

Her eyes locked with his, sharp and daring.

“To stand beside me,” she finished, “is an entirely different ordeal.”

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar felt her hand on his chest, the steady press of her palm against the thrum of his heart. It was a beat that had quickened for her alone, long before she named it. He did not pull away. He let her feel it, let her see the way his runes flickered faintly in response to her touch, as though even his fire recognized her claim.

"Bold," he declared, "That you tell me how I must prove myself to stop being beneath you."

Azrakar grinned.

"I would have it no other way.

He lifted his own hand, covering hers on his chest. Flat hand over hers hers in a grip that was firm but not possessive.

A slow, dangerous smile curved his lips.

"I am no tool, Vyx’aria. I am the flame that chooses its inferno. You are no damsel. I have knelt for you. Begged for you."

He leaned in closer, breath brushing her lips.

"But if you want me to stand beside you," he murmured, "then I shall prove it."

He released her hand.

"You clearly have matters to deal with. Those that exiled me are long gone. Their death was the power to seal me away. So I gather tribes, deal with the frost giants. Then it is north."

 

[Vyx'aria]

Vyx’aria could see the flare in his runes, that familiar pulse that betrayed him before words ever left him. She wouldn’t admit the little jolt it sent through her each time she witnessed it, one which had nothing to do with conquest.

She did not pull away as his hand rested above hers, her calloused hand small and almost delicate under his. Crimson eyes met crimson as he leaned in, that familiar brush of breath sending heat charging through her.

He reclaimed his agency and still embraced her challenges, all without rolling over. It was exactly what made him irresistible. When he released her hand, the same one came up to rest against the side of his jaw, a thumb brushing lightly over his lip as he often did to her. She resisted the urge to close the distance.

“Perhaps the next time you kneel for me will be to ask me to be yours,” she said with a grin. “You’ve certainly made your position clear.”

Vyx’aria knew she would surrender to his heat if she lingered any longer. She drew back from him and turned away. She called out to Azrakar behind her without looking back. “Learn how to dance,” she said simply.

With each measured stride, her spine straightened, her shoulders squared, and the gravity of her presence settled back into place. By the time she reached the caverns to return to Zar’Ahal, she walked as she always had: like the world would move aside or be broken by her.

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar remained still long after the silver of her hair had vanished down the mountain pass. The phantom heat of her thumb still lingered on his lower lip, a stark, singular point of warmth against the biting alpine chill.

Ask me to be yours.

A low, tectonic rumble of a laugh started in his chest. It wasn't mocking; it was the sound of a predator recognizing a trap and walking into it willingly.

"To be mine," he whispered to the empty air, his voice regaining that terrifying, multi-tonal resonance that made the stones beneath his boots vibrate.

His crimson gaze fixed on the northern horizon where the sky met the jagged teeth of the world. He was not certain if the 'dance' she spoke of was literally one of ballrooms and music or of blood and timing - the lethal grace she carried that he lacked.

He looked down at the ridgeline where Gartz and Lysdania sat.

"Gartz!" he roared, the sound echoing off the peaks like a thunderclap.

As the orc captain scrambled to his feet, Azrakar’s humanoid mask didn't slip, but his aura expanded. It was dark, suffocating, and hungry.

"We march," Azrakar commanded as Gartz reached the ridge. "I want out forces arrayed at the foot of the spine. The eastern road to the Ixchel stone."

He touched his lip where she had, his runes pulsing a slow, deliberate scarlet. She had gone to reclaim a throne; he was going to build one.