all you have is your fire

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

It feels right to come here, specifically, to do this. To ask this.

This, after all, is where it had begun for the Ancients - not just for Danta, but for every fiery-souled individual blessed with Dygra's touch. And so he takes himself out from the Hollowed Grounds before dawn, stepping through the bonfire to The Climb, and makes his solemn way to the Obsidian Cathedral.

Danta enters at mid-morning on bare, silent feet, wearing little more than a pair of torn pants and the blood from whatever kill he'd made along the way. It still drips from bejewelled fingers, from his chin, from the tips of fair hair made crimson, smeared across his chest and flecked along the length of his tail. This blood, though, is not for Dygra. Only his own will do for that precious offering.

Opening a cut with a small blade across his chest over his heart, the Maverick pauses before the obsidian bowl, presses his hand to the scarlet line beginning to weep, and paints his name against the black gemstones. Only once that is done does he step back, sinking reverently to his knees.

"Dark lady," he purrs, resting his hands atop his thighs, letting his eyes fall shut. "I beggar a moment of your time for your humble servant. What I have to ask is no small thing, but it concerns us all. Will you hear me?"

---

Danta is using his COTY 316 PC pass for an INTIMATE, PLOT-REVEALING CONVERSATION with Dygra. (Oooh. Ahhh.)

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //

Dygra

"Always, my sweet, dark boy."

Danta's closed eyes will miss the sight of the obsidian offering bowl spilling over with blood, but he'll hear the thick, crimson splash of it as it coats the flagstones, as it seeps into the cracks in the tiles and soaks into the fabric of his pants. Dygra's voice, low and sensual as always, will feel somehow closer than it ever has done before, and her touch, when it comes, will be a physical thing against Danta's flesh.

Pale, milk white hands caress his bare shoulders, settling the blood there into new patterns that swirl and move of their own accord. Rock whispers against rock, as if something impossible is manoeuvring about the Maverick, only to settle behind the obsidian bowl. 

Waiting. Expectant. Endless.

"I know already what you ask for, ravenous little wretch," she purrs, the affection in her tone at chaotic odds with the words that lace through the air between them. "Speak it into being for us."

Table coding by Sky <3

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

Danta hears it, alright. More than that, though, he feels it, he feels her in a way that seems ancient in its own right. It has been years, but truly it has been so much longer than that, since he was last able to sit before his lady in her true splendor, to see her lips move and worship in her physical presence. Inhaling deeply of the scent of iron in the air, his mouth watering, his eyes blink open without fear or trepidation to behold the broodmother of his race.

"Yes," he agrees, voice soft but clear enough to be heard. "The void has begun to encroach upon the Hollowed Grounds - the place where many of your children gather to call home. The Inner Quarter is protected, but blood has been spilled outside its borders." His lips twitch towards a snarl, tail sweeping across the blood drenched stone behind him.

"I ask if anything can be done - anything from you, dark lady? Not roses or lilies from lesser gods, but from the pit of your fires, from your hands directly."

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //

Dygra

Before Danta, Dygra stands with her milk-pale hands grasping the edges of the obsidian bowl, brimming and spilling over with blood. She is cloaked in something heavy, something dark and rough and stone-like, and her golden hair and bloody eyes are a delicious contrast to the porcelain of her skin. Buxom and beautiful, small and yet so much larger than the world that tries to contain her, she smiles a smile full of sharp teeth towards her dark child.

"You ask it, and by asking you have already spoken it into existence," she says, her words like steel gilded in silk, the echo of something deep and old rumbling in her tone. Across the cathedral around them, things uncoil from her body to writhe and scrape along the stone. Endless tendrils of living geode, like stone-wrought tentacles glittering with ruby and diamond, with topaz and sapphire and countless other precious gems.

"You need only make it so, dark boy. Can you do that?"

---

Danta has received a quest! He must:

1. Complete a thread mining precious stones and minerals from The Climb
2. Complete a thread doing something others would describe as "out of character" for you
3. Complete a thread collecting roots from The Hanging Tree in the Feverlands
4. Complete a thread starting and winning a fight with someone/something

He will receive:

Chaos Cluster | A semi-organic amalgamation of precious stones and roots that, when planted, repel void flora and fauna.

Table coding by Sky <3

// too many war wounds and not enough wars //

She is everything that he remembers and more, the Maverick silent in her presence to bask in her every detail. Feeling the blood creep across his skin in chaotic whirls and patterns of its own volition, gods but he could sit here forever and truly feel sated, truly be whole. Dygra speaks and a smile plays across Danta's lips quite without his notice, as if she has made his quest all the easier by simply agreeing that it's possible. More than possible, that it already is so, but for a few small tasks.

"I can do that," he says, voice low and reverent. "I will return to you before the end of Longheat, if not sooner." Of that he is certain, of that he can promise freely and with an air of finality that suggests the tasks are as good as already done. "Thank you, dark lady."

And there Danta will stay, until Dygra's presence transcends the physical once more and she knits herself back among the rock and stone, until she becomes little more than a thrumming in his blood that never, ever quite leaves.

~FIN

Dantalion

// too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores //