❛power isn't everything. it's the only thing.❜
[complete]
wattys 2018 winner ❧
Lin is a hunter, one of the magically enhanced witch slayers that roam a flooded world. Under the laws of four Kings and Greymark, who rules them all, Lin is unto...
"How many yous have you been? How many, Lined up inside, Each killing the last."
— Kate Tempest
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Lin was bleeding, too, but all Hadrian could hear was Honora. Honora, Honora, her blood calling out to him in soft whispers of warmth. He was still empty. Empty enough that the magic surging up from the sea barely recognized him, deafening him to the swarm of information that would have smothered him.
But the blood? That, he felt intimately. Constantly.
It echoed in the bruised remnants of his mind, a crushing reminder of his failure. He'd lost his mother. His king. If he weren't such a coward, so trusting that his mother wouldn't hurt him, he could have deflected her attack and whisked them both off before Lin noticed he was gone. Now? There was no plan. No mission. He'd abandoned his post at his father's castle, leaving a gap in the information Ilse was getting. All for nothing.
Without the Witchking -- without the world-shattering event she was meant to usher in -- to seek out, he didn't even need to follow Lin.
The smart move would be to embed himself in the hunters and feed Ilse information from there. The Citadel was small enough -- altruistic enough -- to not pose a problem until far later in the game.
This was not the moment for smart moves. Hadrian was out of patience. Out of time. A plan slotted itself into place in his mind. It was vicious and cruel, far more than he'd like, but it might just work. It could kill him, though. Ilse would shut it down on that alone. But it was fine. He was disposable now, as he was evidently not the new Witchking.
He gave himself a moment to wonder who might have inherited his mother's awesome power. He wasn't all too familiar with how it worked, having spent most of his life in one role or another, but he hoped it was someone good. Someone better than he would have been.
He worked his jaw, looking up. Cortez had his arms crossed over his broad chest, for once not hovering between Hadrian and Lin. His eyes burned holes at the ship's wall.
Lin's blonde hair bounced in Hadrian's periphery as she fumed and argued. The man—Razo? He felt like it was Razo—prodded her with gentle questions until she finally snapped at him with her typical fire. Her voice spiked above the purr of the engine and waves outside.
"Shut up!" Lin threw her hands up. "Just shut -- leave me alone and do what I tell you to!"
Hadrian swallowed and tried to reel his mind back as she stormed down to the hold. Her face was splattered with blood, both her own and his mother's. A line traced down her cheek where the face had been cloven and healed.
"Are you hurt?" He asked quietly.
She stopped in her tracks. Her hands were in the middle of raking her hair out of her face, the streaks of gore already drying. She shot a look at Cortez. "Go make sure Raz isn't bitching out."
