EREBOS (M|M)

erebos (part one)

part one - cuppedia

The first time Noel meets Cyric Erebos, the latter man's knuckles are stained with blood.

He stands, grappling at the chest of another male, spit dark as pitch where it splatters against the forest foliage. He shudders, all but howls with a face splitting grin, dropping him to the ground at his feet. Noel can't help but cringe from beyond the tree line, can't help the sound he makes when he hears the twigs crunch, compact under the weight of a body —

Noel can't help that his body shudders too, and that, that must be when he catches the Scelerati's interest.

—

Cyric's eyes are black and unsteady as his attention shifts, a slow drag from Noel's double-knotted tennis shoes to the collar of his sweater. He's watching his pulse — can undoubtedly hear his heart thundering against his ribs like a trapped bee.

If someone asked Noel to pinpoint the sensation of fear, he'd tell them it felt like ice slipping down his back, the way someone hunches their shoulders to make them feel smaller — the way a fawn must feel in the wake of an approaching wolf.

It's the way you feel around a Scelerati.

"It's okay, babe," Cyric smirks, his teeth barely showing beneath the side of his lip, teeth too sharp for his mouth. His voice is low, reverberates like the growl of a predator — the hiss of a snake. Noel knows it's not.

It's not okay.

He messed up, strayed off course on the way home. It'll be quicker this way, he had told himself, but a small part of him screamed —

The moon will rise soon.

Noel tells himself that he should learn to trust his gut, his instinct, as they call it. Humans are the only species alive that inherently refuse to abide by their intuition. Maybe they think that they're too damned smart, and perhaps that's why —

Perhaps that's why so many of them die here on the borderlands.

Your wit will get you nowhere in Adeline, Noel's mother says, strength; it's all about survival —and no one is stronger than a Scelerati.

Noel knows strength when he sees it. He can see it in the hard angle of Cyric's jaw, illuminated by the presence of the blunt in his left hand. He can see it in his fingers, wound around the paper like a vice. It burns a strange purple, smoke rising from it like fog in the night sky.

"We're just getting rid of some energy," The Scelerati man explains, his eyebrows shifting upwards with nonchalance, snorting when his friend chuckles from the woodland floor, "friendly sport is all."

Secrevingenium root.

Something that would be poisonous to a human. They say it's a strain bred for the sole purpose of putting creatures... Specifically, the Scelerati that are located too close to the border at ease on full moons. Just for safety precautions, in case one of the humans get too close,

but Noel has heard too many times that it's just a lie to make the humans feel better, that secrevingenium root makes a Scelerati's inevitable shift less painful.

Noel blinks up at the man in front of him — the smoke drying his sinuses in a horrid sort of way. He coughs a bit over the anxiety that's curdled in his throat and shakes his head; willing away the onset of dread, the anxiety that has plagued him since he was a child and had his first panic attack.

Cyric's dark gaze slides back to his pack. He nods at them, a smirk growing — teeth showing and overtaking his once ethereal face,

"Looks like a human stumbled across us," he informs them, a low chortle accentuating his words, too quiet — too dark, "to keep us from getting bored."