A QUEST OF DEATH : Dawning Darkness

02 | The Snake(edited)

"Are you gonna come out anytime soon? Your hissing is getting annoying."

The air shifted before the reply came—heat draining from the corridor in a slow, unnatural sweep. A faint chill threaded through the space, wrapping around Auden's spine like cold breath. Even the shadows seemed to tighten, as if bracing for something that didn't belong to the mortal world.

"I'm not hiding, Auden. Just wanted to see if you would call out to me," a silvery, high voice whispered—right against his ear.

Auden had asked him once if that was intentional. If he enjoyed announcing his presence by sucking the energy out of everything around him. If it was some instinctive attempt at frightening prey. Gagagore, of course, denied it. But Auden knew better. The snake always lied.

"Sometimes you're too grumpy to even notice I'm here," the snake murmured, voice laced with mock offense. "Even though you know I'm always around."

He was already halfway there, shifting from his barely kept human form to his true serpentine figure, most of his human skin melted into sleek black scales that shimmered with hints of blue and green in the candlelight. Of course. Late-night hunger always made him restless.

"Even when I'm grumpy," Auden muttered, "you still come out."

The snake's grin widened unnaturally. "Of course I do. But it's more fun when you're in a good mood. I prefer the sweetness of your happy thoughts over the sharp tang of your gloomy ones."

"And what made you think that I'm in a good mood?" The young Heir quired craining his neck around so that he was inches away from snake scaly face.

Gagagore tsked. "I saw you with... Sea a while back." His fingers brushed lightly over the faint purple mark blooming on the young Heir's neck. "I'm just here to see my favourite human. Tell me... aren't you happy to see me?"

A heavy sigh viewed out of the young Heir. It had been a hard question to answer. Or rather, there had been no definitive answer as their relationship was quite complicated.

This presence-this obsession-was becoming untamable.

The snake spirit he had summoned, sold his soul to in exchange of inner peace, was something he couldn't quite comprehend the way he did with alchemy.

He wondered if it had been any good to strike a deal with him, but as desperate as Auden was it had never really occurred to him that there would be consequences.

Of course Gagagore was powerful. He was dark. He was enticing, but in a dangerous way. Even when he had shifted into a full human form, it was evident how otherworldly and dangerous he was. He doubted it was the snake's aura, the way he held himself that made it clear that he was a predator.

A predator hungry for prey.

His mesmerising eyes, one with emerald, a black slit going right through the middle, the other usually covered in a metal eye patch that Auden knew it was only the fleshy socket of what used to be there was trained on him. Now slipped out of his human disguise his fangs were peaking.

He knew the snake could open his mouth wide to swallow him whole if he needed. And that long forked tongue that had a likeness to slip out on its own will could do wonders in different terms.

Auden wondered what it was in him that made him trust this creature. Surely not that slick, knowing smile. It was too dangerous, too magnetic. Yet desperation had stripped him of caution years ago.