No.
It simply was not possible. The girl's heart froze in her chest as she regarded the scene before her. Regh, her brother, stood tall, proud, defiant; his fingerclaws wrapped deeply in the hair of the man he and his cronies dragged with him.
"Behold!" Regh bellowed, and she flinched at the sound. This couldn't be happening. It was an impossibility, a nightmare. "One of the blessed Daevas!"
And, unlike last time, he was correct. This was no insane witch man claiming divinity, claiming Aion's touch, this… was a Daeva. How she knew that, she wasn't certain, but she was. And that made this trouble. Made this a crime. No, a sin. A very abomination against everything that was, and was meant to be. She felt suddenly nauseous, cold, and very, very distant from the jubiliant cries of those who surrounded her. Aion turned away from her with this…
No. She had been placed here to wait. Bide her time.
"Anything to say for yourself, Daeva?" Regh challenged, stepping back from the man. Released from their grasp, if not the chains binding him, the man stood, his eyes coasting over the gathering crowd. They stuttered over the girl, paused, returned for a longer stare, before he locked eyes with Regh.
"No, Lepharist. I have no words for you." He answered evenly, calmly. "For you would hear none of mine…" His glance took in the crowd again, "Nor would they. Why waste my breath?"
The girl bit her lip until she tasted copper. Certainly they did not mean to hurt this? Well, anymore than they already had, for blood stained his face and matted his long hair. He had not gone down without a fight, and she had no idea how he'd fallen to this. His inherent divinity poured off of him, but somehow Regh had brought this down? How?
Macz raised a heavy fist and the Daeva merely studied him warily, beaten but not cowed. Macz growled, pushing his bull heavy body forward, but Regh stopped him. "No. We can't kill him, you dolt." He snapped, and that got the first hint of concern to cross the Daeva's lovely features. "It's what he wants, can't you see?"
Death would be an escape, and Regh had just denied him that. The girl sighed, it just got worse and worse. And by the darkness she sensed, this was just the beginning.
Rasmus cursed internally. Of all the piss poor luck. He would have rather been left where he was, if he understood the way this was unfolding. At least the Balaur would probably just kill him, and that he could handle. However, this was beginning to sound dire. In spite of his own predicament, his eyes kept wanting to fall on the leggy girl child making her self small and overlooked in the back. She was filthy, as most of the Lepharist villagers were. Poorly clad. Barefoot, her chipped claws digging into the dirt. He could sense her distress, flowing like a cool spring under the hot death and rage of her people.
Poor, poor little…he sighed when he finally grasped it. Aion worked in mysterious ways, and granting its favor and divinity to a child born into the Lepharists would most certainly be an exercise in that. The child who watched him out of tortured eyes was destined, if she lived through all of this, to be just as he was. A gift to her people…those people who would turn on her for it. Destroy her through their greed and envy. He tested the chains again, slowly. No, the fight with the Balaur had taken too much out of him, and the pounding afterwards had only exacerbated it. He was not fit to break these, and certainly not fit to fight an entire village of hale Lepharists. They targeted the blessed, and grew twistedly strong for it.
They wanted him alive. He frowned with the idea. Dead, he merely returned to the blessed obelisk his soul was stored in, protected by Aion and the priests of the Great Temple of Pandaemonium. It was annoying. It was inconvenient. He still felt pain in spite of his immortality, and there was always the unspoken embarassment of appearing newly reborn in the Temple, but he could tolerate that. He had before. But alive, that hinted all too much of the rumors surfacing… Lost daevas. The missing, never reappearing at their obelisks. Just…gone. A tragedy for his family, a lurking question for his friends and those he fought with. An insult to everyone else.
