Welcome to the Gallows

"So you're still alive."

Her voice seemed to echo in the large chamber, climbing high and descending back to them. He finally turned, and those golden eyes stared at her coldly.

Iris felt grubby and small before him in her worn gray tunic and pathetic human form. She tilted her chin up against the feeling, as if she were the one looking down on him.

It took him a while to respond, he seemed to be consuming the sight of her. Iris imagined he must be relishing the position she was in now, crouched on the dirty floor like a creature trapped and tamed.

"You seem disappointed," he said.

Iris smiled, and it was a cruel little smile that tilted her lips - one he'd never seen before, one she hadn't known how to make when they'd met last. "Do I?" she said. "Well, the thought of you being gone from this world is one of the few things that has ever helped me sleep at night. It's more than a shame to find out you're still breathing."

His face remained flat and still. She couldn't read a single thing on that stranger's face. It both angered her and made her glad. It was a strange sort of relief that rushed her, one that both stung and soothed.

"You can try to kill me again, if you wish," he said. He let his eyes move down to the cuffs that dug ruthlessly into the skin of her upper arms, ringed by ruined flesh that remained red and angry and flushed with pain at every pass of wind.

His eyes locked there without another word, in a manner that seemed to say 'though I doubt that you'll succeed'.

Iris stopped herself from pushing forward, she held herself back from leaping to her feet and using the last of her remaining Sol to bring him to his knees.