[When he was released... Her brain struggles to try and understand the sequence of events, but she simply doesn't have enough information to make it sensible. Liem had been taken from Venera... How many days had it been, until the assault of Achamoth? Had he been released before the raid? She doesn't know, and it makes her fingers curl tighter around nothing, her shard was hidden beneath shirt, beneath the bindings on her breasts, she cannot reach it so easily without calling on that strange magic and she doesn't want to-
She never wanted to.
But he describes someone, then. It's just three simple adjectives: tall, dark of hair, yellow-eyed. But it's enough for her head to snap back up to attention, an instinctive sneer to cover her fear of that man warping her expression. Yellow eyes were not common, she knew of no other Kenoma with them. "M" and "J", those were demons she had known beforehand-- as had Liem. But this one-]
Yes.
[Her fingers clutch tighter, white-knuckled, in her shirt, a memory coming unbidden to the front of her mind that makes her want to vomit. His fingers in her eye socket, the sick, deep feeling of her optic nerve being pulled until it snapped. The taste of his hot blood and flesh in her mouth when she ripped out his throat. She can't throw up anything, there's nothing in her first stomach anymore, and the contents of the second won't come up even if she needs them to, but-]
That demon... He is here, in this world, too.
[But he didn't have her eye, not anymore than she had Liem's sacred text. If he'd even kept it, like some sick trophy on a shelf-]
Acting like- Like the others, like none of it matters at all--
[What had he said to her, in the roots of that tree before every instinct for self-preservation she had led her to slam her entire weight and force of fury into him before he could do the same to her?
cw: eye stuff, meat stuff
She never wanted to.
But he describes someone, then. It's just three simple adjectives: tall, dark of hair, yellow-eyed. But it's enough for her head to snap back up to attention, an instinctive sneer to cover her fear of that man warping her expression. Yellow eyes were not common, she knew of no other Kenoma with them. "M" and "J", those were demons she had known beforehand-- as had Liem. But this one-]
Yes.
[Her fingers clutch tighter, white-knuckled, in her shirt, a memory coming unbidden to the front of her mind that makes her want to vomit. His fingers in her eye socket, the sick, deep feeling of her optic nerve being pulled until it snapped. The taste of his hot blood and flesh in her mouth when she ripped out his throat. She can't throw up anything, there's nothing in her first stomach anymore, and the contents of the second won't come up even if she needs them to, but-]
That demon... He is here, in this world, too.
[But he didn't have her eye, not anymore than she had Liem's sacred text. If he'd even kept it, like some sick trophy on a shelf-]
Acting like- Like the others, like none of it matters at all--
[What had he said to her, in the roots of that tree before every instinct for self-preservation she had led her to slam her entire weight and force of fury into him before he could do the same to her?
Ah. That they should let bygones be bygones…]