[center]Music OOC[/center]
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[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMXLE2bhC6Y[/youtube][/center]
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The music had ended, as expected upon the entrance of conversation. Those notes he himself had struck and plucked, casting speech forth in her direction for her to catch or ignore. Music did not end with silence, then, for the quiet constantly consisted of the noises of the forest, interjected with a man’s voice. [i]A man.[/i] Was that what he was? Yes. No. He was more than that. [i]More than man. [/i]

He thought as much but his thoughts raced within his brain in instants. Even as the words dripped from his tongue he could scarcely put a name to the tongue itself. The language consisted of letters and words within sentences. It was comprehended. He understood what he was saying. Clearly, so did she. Yet, if the tongue was common, was it from the world of old, or the world of new? What was the world anyway when his own fingers had unfurled a universe from the very fabrics of a reality reshaped and remade? What was language but the web spun between lips and tongues?

This one had one, and lips, and teeth. They probably bit harder than any punch. Sharper than a snake’s tongue. [i]Tongues.[/i] There was a word that was suddenly so stuck. [i]Yes…I remember some…[/i] Yes. He had taken them from his minions, but not out of punishment. [i]I took one of their eyes to punish them, didn’t I…[/i] But he took their tongues simply to shut them up.

The stranger’s fingers might have stopped playing her instrument but her eyes never gave way. They played a different game. Those amber oculars of this giantess with arachnid elements gazed his way, and they spoke another language entirely, one of silence. [i]But as loud as a blind eye shining with malice.[/i] With madness.

So, in those moments, as if this forest was an ocean and they were just two droplets within it, both man and woman played. They scrutinized one another, sized each other up, but not yet in the sense of assessing an opponent. If one proved to be prey and the other predator? The spider might likely feed on the rat, but the Rat was Veshkei, and the Veshkei was Veron, and even a rat of his character and stature may one day become a god even if this giantess was already a goddess.

Dominance. That was laced in her gaze. Where there was no fear there were spears, with pupils penetrating through his flesh and bone as if his body was already in her web, and her appendages might just wrap around him any moment to dissect him. At least, this was her attempt, but when she would see she would meet a defense. Her eyes attacked his form, swarmed over it like curled legs, but his eye attacked right back. He was dissecting her in turn.

She was nearly twice his height, her figure heavily accented, her sex rather evident in her giant breasts. That was yet a compliment. Yet his eye did not linger on her chest. The corners of her lips turned upward, she jutted her hip, every movement purposed as if practiced and predetermined, whereas he stood still and expressionless, unperturbed. Perhaps he simply admired the abomination. 

[i]Perhaps I may yet determine her sexual orientation.[/i] In seconds or days. Her skin was pristine, perfect amid the elegance of her constricted outfit, but not waxed like a doll’s. However, even as his eye took this tall woman in, tickling his imagination of mauling her breasts, rising and falling with her breaths, and even if she might kill men for less, they were lesser men, for Veron Blacktear was no creature’s thrall.

He thought. He watched. She did too. What she saw amid horns and tail fit for a Rat-man was a muscular figure, broad shoulders, skin grey as ash or the decay of the grave, black tattoos intricate and enigmatic at the crook of his neck to the chest, and scars across his body from head to toe. Fitting for a warrior who had taken as many blows as he had given, who had broken bones and bitten flesh. Was she any different? A spider with hair as auburn as a burnt autumn.

[i]She speaks.[/i] He listens. 

She said his eye wasn’t deceiving him. Apparently it wasn’t deceiving her either. But what about the one hidden beneath? That remained to be seen. She spoke of appearance, and that much was its own deception to him, for Veron knew of form, how to shift his, much unlike his Verm kindred spirits. They were idiots. He had to admit it. He was different.

Meanwhile his arachnid companion in conversation had a tongue as melodic as her music. She called him wise, and even one eye could possess the intelligence of evolution’s peak in its black and white and silver sea. She called herself little. It was his turn to smirk. [i]Brave. Stupid.[/i] There was danger in wonder as much as there was wonder in danger. He didn’t answer her. Maybe that his own gate into the domination of conversation. Maybe it simply didn’t matter either way.
[i]
Valerna Jorgenskull.[/i] Her name sounded like a kind of hybrid between an elf and an ogre. He wouldn’t put either past her depending on her true nature. [i]Spider… Voyager…[/i] Fist to breast, evidently a military salute, or at least what he was used to whatever her true culture. 

At her offer for him to come closer, he tilted his head. She said she didn’t bite. That much was certainly a lie. One that he liked. She stepped forward, and maybe it was fated, because in that very same moment he stepped forward.

One step. Two step. [i]Three heads. Four heads.[/i] Two breasts. Two pecs. Yet her chest was clothed where his was naked. Her gait was that of a woman with wide hips whether she attempted to hide it while his was straight and basic. The closer he came, the bigger her structure, like some looming tower that walked. [i]The Mountain That Rides…[/i] Another memory, unbidden, from a long lost slumber. A minion. A red orc. [i]Am I awake? Or am I asleep?[/i] He could only wonder.

[color=8493ca]“Veron Blacktear.”[/color] That was his name. Maybe ten feet away now. Approaching half. Given her height, such distance would not matter for either. [i]I…remember…[/i] His tail curved from one side to the other. [i]Captain of the Lost Scions. Lord of the Eye, Sycreet, the Iron Pikes and the Black Sea.[/i] [color=8493ca]“King Veron Blacktear of Nesthome.”[/color] His dominant hand lifted like his tail had, touching his eyepatch with one of his long black nails, as if the fabric might remind him of his own existence. [color=8493ca]“Once upon a time, perhaps...but perhaps my past is as blind as whatever hides behind this eyepatch.”[/color] He lowered his arm to his side as he paused his walk [color=8493ca]“And who are you? The Spider Queen?"[/color] That would prove to be all too amusing if true.

@Spooder Girl