465 Gaze

Suka placed her hands against the side of her head-- "wat?" 

The Yuan-Ti's eyes narrowed, "The progeny of the Queen of Stone? ...I see."

Malik walked towards Tycon, back straight... his head and elongated neck swaying rhythmically to the sides. Did he not know how to walk? He looked ridiculous. 

"Ivory Prince, it's a pleasure to make your--"

"We're done here," Tycon grabbed the robed girl by the wrist and began to walk away. 

"We're wha? Huh? WahhHH??" Suka let out a high-pitched squeal, but obediently allowed herself to be dragged along. 

« System, cut the connection. »

Both Ananta's and Malik's avatars abruptly blinked out of existence. 

⟬ Connection terminated. ⟭ 

"Suka," Tycon turned, placing his hands on the girl's shoulders. 

Gazing into her red eyes, the young lady immediately closed them... pouting her small lips and trembling lightly. 

She was passably attractive-- not that Tycon saw the hatchling in a romantic light. With his relationship with Ananta, he could treat her as his own younger sibling... if she rid herself of her attitude problem. And took a bath. 

"...What are you doing?"

"I-DON'T-KNOW-IT-SEEMED-APPROPRIATE!!" She snapped. 

Tycon chose to ignore it, changing the topic to the matter on-hand, "Do you have access to your sister's Shadow Realm?"

The messy-haired girl couldn't decide where to look, glancing at her surroundings, down at Tycon's chest, down at the floor-- "I... what? You're..."

"The Shadow Realm, young lady."

"I... I... I, yes? Yes? I do? I do. Of course, I do."

A blast of hot air assaulted Tycon's senses as his surroundings changed instantaneously. 

Where before, he and Suka stood in a dim cavern upon green-tinted Dwarven stonework... they now stood upon a cobblestone road amongst human-designed buildings in a walled town.

And the town was burning. 

Billowing smoke clouded the air, glowing a low orange from the fires in the streets adjacent. It reeked of charred and burnt human flesh. Screams of the slaughter resounded just beyond and elsewhere. 

Sensing movement, Tycon turned... Less than twenty yalms away, a Snake Cultist wearing naught but warpaint chased down a fleeing human villager. Their hapless victim was mercilessly cut down with a hand scythe, their life reaped-- almost poetically. 

Suka crossed her arms... "This is the world the Reality Marble has formed... it looks like it's during a snake cult attack on a human village-- probably that mushroom-brain Malik's idea."

"I can see that..." Tycon was about to reach for his weapon... when he realized it was no longer on his waist. His spatial ring was gone, as well. He wore only a simple tunic and trousers. 

He would have liked at least that much. 

"Your *humans* should be here somewhere," Suka shrugged, still refusing to meet his gaze. "That is... if they're not already dead."

Tycon looked over the horizon... there were guard towers along the town's walled fortifications. Those would be useful for locating his companions. 

However, before he would go on his way... he would see if he could trick his young companion into providing assistance. She seemed to have no love for that Malik fellow... and she also seemed to have forgotten that he and she were technically enemies. 

"Suka? Do you have power over this place?"

The snake girl hesitated, staring at the dead human, blood pooling around the corpse. The cultist continued to scream his brainwashed dogma, hacking noisily at the still twitching body-- unaware or uncaring that he was being observed. 

"Excuse me, young man," Tycon raised his voice. "We are *trying* to have a conversation."

The cultist abruptly twisted his blood-stained body, meeting Tycon's eyes with a furious glare, "wHhOo in the SEVEN HELLS aRe--?!"

⟬ ⌈Vexing Gaze⌋ conditions met. Activate? Y/N? ⟭

« Activate. Swiftly and without mercy. »

Immediately, the Unranked human dropped to the road, convulsing and choking... blood flowing from his mouth and nostrils. 

⟬ Death to the enemies of Invictus. ⟭

"The... the gaze... of the Ivory Prince..." Suka whispered in a hoarse voice. 

"Now, where were we? Suka?" Observing the young lady, Tycon sensed that the young woman's heart rate had rapidly increased. Was she afraid of blood?

"Oh! Y-yeah. Of course I do-- have power, I mean..." She shook her head-- then nodded. "My sister gave me some limited control... but..."

She trailed off.

Tycon pursed his lips, "Show me." 

"You can't laugh."

"...Very well."

"It's embarrassing."

"...That's unlikely," Tycon assured her. "Please, go ahead."

Manipulating the Laws of even a mortal-created world was difficult. Any modicum of power the young Shadow Snake could display would be impressive. 

"Well... you promised you wouldn't laugh..." Suka pouted.

Tycon had promised no such thing. 

The young lady gulped, "Here goes..."

...

Suka grimaced, concentrating her magic and raising her arms towards the orange sky... She only really had one ability in her sister's Reality Marble... and the Ivory Prince had personally requested to see it. 

Was he really the Ivory Prince? He said he was... and that was reason enough. And then Ananta said it, too... He had to be. There was only one Ivory Prince among their kind. 

She wanted to tell Izzy all about him... about how chiseled his jawline was, how green and smooth and soft his hair was, how hard his... muscles were, how she could just get lost in his eyes...

And how... very... very pushy and rude he was.

That was nothing like in the stories! 

A couple of epochs [1]ago, Suka had seen Sol Invictus... she'd watched them fight in the Ezyrian arenas. 

The male in front of her had... the same build? It was definitely possible that this person was the Ivory Prince... 

The Tycon in the pit was a flashy, arrogant exhibitionist. This one... was different. But then again, it made sense that the Ivory Prince's in-the-pit persona was different from the one he used in his personal life. 

Suka was torn. Was she excited to meet the man she always wanted to meet? Or was she disappointed that he wasn't as perfect as she thought he'd be?

She had no idea why her heart pounded so hard when he said her name. 

Was she in love? With a man she'd never even met?

[1] Epoch: In this world, an epoch is 13 years. The terminology is common throughout the Realm, except in the Holy Country, which uses 10 year decades, instead.