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Zenos' beast is a slight thing.
Her clothes are tight, bordering on impractical, though surprisingly sturdy. They don't bunch or tear as he swings her arms up and around, back and forth, feeling the gentle grind of her bones in their sockets. Her arms knock against her horns, send brushes of air against her bare thighs, and the unfamiliar sensitivity of her attempts to beckon a shiver.
A bizarre little creature. So pinched and sharp she looks, with her forward-jutting horns, curving dangerously towards her face, a singular warning to all those who might venture too close. Yet the skin of her legs is tender and soft to the touch under his curious, vague exploration. The muscle there bulges as he squats and then stands, before fading into softness once more. Such strength coiled beneath round edges; such gentleness to be found in her eyes, housed above those sharpened spires.
Yes, a bizarre set of intricacies indeed.
He loosens his stance and stares down at her palms. There's a line of discoloration where the sun has darkened her fingers. Her gloves are worn at the heel of her hand, scuffed at her knuckles, warm from her skin. She's rather a warm thing, actually. Her blood pounds through her veins faster than his own, he thinks, or perhaps he is simply unused to having his attention being drawn there. Zenos smirks. Perhaps her heart is truly as spirited as her people claim.
Her fingers are dry to the touch as he presses them to her chest, to feel the depth of her pounding heart. It throws itself against its cage, fighting to retrieve its master.
Good, he thinks. Very good.
It would be poor sport if their switch was enough to tame her flesh. But rarely is his friend so disappointing, not since that fateful day in Ala Mhigo certainly.
And oh, the rush of euphoria it brings feels different under her skin. It's more potent, more certain, more real than anything he's felt since then. Such power. Even in her nerves, in her sinew, in the ripple of life through her. She bursts with it. And he bursts along with her.
Zenos creeps her fingers up, gathering the bottom of her neck in a loose hold. Her hair curls gently there, tickling and soft, though he decides against gripping it, enamoured as he is by her throat. Her fingertips are rough, rougher than the smooth edge of the dark scales that guard her jugular. And they guard her well. The pulsing of her heart is hidden. Zenos' own throat bears no scar, no mark from the welcoming slice of his own sword all those months ago, but it is more fragile than that of his beast, able to yield to cool steel so easily. If he were to press a blade to her scales, what pressure would it take for her to bleed? Would she simply ache, or would it sting?
And if not to a sword, if not to his scythe, would they splinter between his teeth?
He basks in that thought as he brushes her tongue idly over her teeth. They are sharp, sharper than he had initially thought. How often she had bared them at him in vicious contempt, and he had never noticed. He never gave much thought to her mouth. He brushed it aside as inconsequential when he learned she couldn't speak. But teeth like hers could tear flesh easily, and they were here all along behind her pinched, dark lips.
An image comes to Zenos then. Not of her throat under his teeth, but his own throat clamped between hers. She would have to get close, linger, wear him down until he is all but spent before he would bear jugular for her, relish in such a powerful foe ripping his life from him.
Another sweet ripple courses through her and Zenos momentarily allows himself to mourn his future loss of that splendid sensation.
In his pleasurable haze, her hand falls back to her side. However, distracted as he is, it catches briefly on the gleaming tip of her horn. He almost loses himself again, in the bite of pain that shoots through her, but he contains his glee in order to inspect the wound. It's a small cut, not worth his time, but the thought of her body leaving the tower in any state beyond the way it came in irks him. It wouldn't do at all for him to tip the scales in such a way. His sport—his beast—must remain pure.
But then the cut surrenders a drop of blood, and he finds himself hypnotised by it. It is small, but it glimmers starkly against her cool, blue skin.
For a moment he longs for it. Oh, how he craves it. How he has wished for her blood. How he has wished for her lying broken and tired under his heel. Beaten and torn and defeated, ruined in battle by him, her stronger foe. The only person who will ever understand her in such a way. That blood is there, calling him, demanding he taste it, that he coat his teeth with it, that he learns her distinct flavour; the flavour of her loss; the flavour of her life.
Oh, it could be his one, truest moment of bliss. More potent even than Ala Mhigo.
Her fingers twitch with his want. It is but a small journey to his mouth—
Zenos sighs out her breath, quiet and dull. No, it cannot be. Not yet. She has not yielded. She has not given him the gift of her life just yet, he has simply borrowed the shell that once housed it. When he tastes her blood it will be with his own tongue. Not the stolen one of his friend.
He is content to wait.
No sooner has Zenos turned his thoughts back to his goal does the singularly irritating spectre that haunts it burst into the room.
Fandaniel's steps are as light and as dancerly as they always are, and his stare as cold. He rattles off something Zenos does not deign to pay much attention to. The rats huddling at the edge of the kingdom bore him.
But, he supposes, he might as well ask of his friend's fate. Surely she has escaped the rabble outside by now. Though she is weakened, it would not do for her to falter, not when he has something he wishes to give her so dearly.
Zenos brings her hands up to dance the way she does, and though the gestures are slower, unfamiliar to him in their use, her muscles remember them easily.
"And the warrior?" He asks, as he curls her small mouth into a smile. "The beast?"
"Floundering, of course."
Fandaniel's dead eyes appear to sink deeper into his hateful, stolen face.
"For something as steel-hearted as you've claimed, it does seem particularly partial to–" Fandaniel pauses before continuing, perfectly placid. "Messiness."
Zenos does not allow himself to linger on the feeling of her fingers as they brush together. "Well then, we should proceed."
"Oh?" Fandaniel hums. "Are you done preening?"
Zenos pauses, and looks to the cut. Another small, scarlet bead has welled atop her fingertip, clinging to the jagged skin.
It is time to return to his hunt.