He threw himself down on the bed, and it was not long until he was in a similar foetal position. Still, his shoes were on and he lay there for some time before he growled and licked them violently off. With his supernatural strength in assistance they flew across the room and smashed into the cabinet, making a loud raucous that would have sent guards running - had he not ordered them to stay that night, no matter what.
Naturally, he had never once been planning to tell her. Instead he had hoped that those feelings that had blossoming, and which he had only fully admitted to himself around three months prior, would die away, like his love for all mortality had once before. After coming here, and then suffering the loss of his pegasus Venesse fifty years , anger had struck. He lost his position in the army, learnt he had been betrayed and his flying beauty killed by the same side. Various attempts at relationships, reasoning methods, therapy sessions, but nothing had worked. All the years of anger for being tortured by his own divine father had flooded back and he had reverted to that base, natural way of thinking about mortals.
As his tools.
But it could only last for so long. First he had met an elf named Raevin who and made him see value in treating those he employed at least well - a pact of loyalty being the integral part. Second he had then met a kenku, whose mind he had invaded originally in order to control her, but who had now slowly begun to remember what being generous and benevolent was like.
What it once was like. It had not changed that he still craved power more than anything, and that his obsession with her and made him take various large steps so that she would never be able to leave him. Nor ever.
Grabbing a pillow he shoved it where it was most comfortable for his head. He then shrugged off his jacket, pausing to feel the weight of his dagger at his side, before he huffed and took that off also.
Sable had been unusually willing to assist. When they had got back to the Hollow - because, they all had to admit it, a secret underground world was the safest place right now and he couldn't exactly just let Sable and Blaze go - Sable had quietly asked to speak with him. It had taken only a few seconds for her to admit trying to seek a way to destroy him in the bedroom, when she had found the slavery papers.
But then she had offered something else. Something that nobody could have even suggested, as she overwhelmingly leaked empathy and pity over anything else.
“I don't need to be pitied,†he had spat.
“No, but you do need to know what it is like,†Sable answered back. “I may have come here, Sir Elssmith as another frightened girl but I have made myself learned and smart since coming here.â€
“And how the fuck does that help my issue that she will not speak to me?†He growled. “No thanks in part to you,†and he shoved a finger in her face.
Sable ignored it gracefully. “It does not. However, I can at least give you something she clearly will not. It's the same room, right? I do not need to look like her but …â€
And he had stared like she was mad.
“It's about respect,†Sable had explained. “You do not respect her as you should. You have been through hell, clearly, the last three weeks - but remember that she went through hell too. That you made her endure.â€
“I stopped as soon as I had any inkling of what she meant to me,†he had hissed.
“Which is good, but you still stole her life. Like you've stolen mine,†she shrugged, confidently. “Now, Sir Elssmith, shall we?â€
And he had lain with her. He had treated he would a whore, spent a few gentle hours simply treating her well, stopping when she wanted, making love, but full of consent. No ropes, chains and certainly no cane that had been his icon. He had just opened himself to the idea that it could be, trusted himself to not harm this woman.
Simple, basic sex was all it had been.
Like a whore, he had used Sable, after the invitation had been from her. And it had been strange - but something he needed.
Slowly he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Tightening his jaw he focused himself, throwing his awareness away from the world - away from Stare, away from his repeated attempts to mentally connect to Ventrua, away from the rock on which he lived. Away from it he pulled, letting out a breath as it felt his presence left his body and suddenly he was floating upwards.
Towards the ceiling - but that quickly melted away. And then he was reaching out, extending through time and space as his mental capacity, which was gaining traits akin to a god now, expanded in the freedom of bodilessness. Nay, he could not be omnipotent anymore - that was still beyond him - but at least he could feel and be aware of many more things. He cycled through what was a familiar path now and came to a small, awkward world which was taken up by half a continent and the other half ocean. A second flying landmass also hovered some distance above the seas, but it was still far smaller than the first. Vitruvion gazed at this world, his home world, for one long moment, letting out a sigh of loss, before he turned to the sky.
There he was … or should he say ‘it’. Ansaldo, the being beyond the stars, a selfish god in a lonely world. All snow-white haired in this, the non-physical plane, with startling blue eyes and a defined jaw that was so similar to Vitruvion's aside from the fact it supported a short, styled beard.
Currently he seemed to be watching a war, that likely he had begun. And as was familiar these past few months, he did not notice Vitruvion.
Which was good. Stare was useful for many things, and this was one of them. Making him powerful enough to be able to come back here, undetected. For a while he loitered at the edge of Ansaldo's planet, hovering and knowing that now he could never be the disgusting, murderer of a god that Ansaldo could be. That building his kingdom of the Hollow on the model of Ansaldo's world had all been a great mistake. Force your people to become your subjects, that was how it worked of course.
Vitruvion squared his shoulders before focusing on the being before him, and then rushed the mind. Quite easily, like other times, he slipped past Ansaldo's defences and made his way into the memories. From there he paused, looking around the halls before choosing an avenue.
Today he would continue with learning about the more intricate matters of molecular biology.
He settled and began to look at the strands of what Ansaldo called 'life strings’ but what Vitruvion had decided to name 'helixi exemplum vitae’ or the 'helixes that copy life’. He huffed and tried to rid himself of all the mortal world's worries by improving his ken.
And tomorrow ... Tomorrow he would stay quietly in the same room as her, not moving even when she begged. Because he couldn't let her out of his sight now, not when all hope had been lost with Ventrua.
He couldn't lose the one being that mattered more to him than his own happiness.
