[???? Dos Bros – The BossHoss.]
AYA NAAMAH WAS THE ONE chosen to flirt with the guards at the city's gates—naturally.
Seduction was a second nature to her.
"Oh my Lord! Silly me—" They had just lighted off a crimson buggy studded in gold which a [Ghostrider] Aya once knew was—Ravenna didn't ask how—was kind enough to take them in. All the way from the dense meadows of the northern woods which the demon had carried them in, to the rising spires of Titans Landing, there had been quite the heavy flirting between herself and the man.
Ravenna, mostly through the ride tried not to look as sick as she felt.
Did the Succubus never learn?
Her disposition to men's advances had cost them a hiding spot at the Inn in Gūndlheim. Fleeing had been the only option: they were lucky to get away from the witch-hunt without pitchforks in their hearts and a burning at the stake. Now Rafel was gone, men did look more than was polite in their direction.
Both Ravenna and Aya thought nothing of it; but Eldorian men were notorious for not keeping the lewdness to their eyes, but letting it rip and rap out their mouths.
". . . so gorgeous are you, succky, if I asked nicely, would you sit on my face. I could stop right here on the road," the Ghostrider had said.
Ravenna had stuffed her ears with her fingers inside the carriage. Not another word had she wanted to hear. But not before catching Aya's cute smile at the man in front, before sizzling back; "oh, honey, trust me, you wouldn't begin to know what to do with all me. Perhaps, if I wasn't so engaged to leave the city, I'd have touched my toes and let you eat my ass. I'll totally dominate you though.
Would you have being comfortable with that?"
The Ghostrider roared with laughter. The flames of his head had turned blue, just when Ravenna blocked her ears. It was not that she didn't enjoy some raunchy dialogue every now and then, but ever since Emberfall's destruction. . .and everything; the secrets, the lies, and the shit, she had lost total interest in sex topics.
She only wanted to find Rafel now—she had come back that violent, burning night after had father was gone to find him missing from the chars.
He had saved her once. She owed him this much.
'I feel a little guilty too, since it was my father who nearly killed him,' she thought briefly.
Just five seconds ago, the [Ghostrider] demon had waved them away by the reconstructed city gates. The walls were being built again, several watch towers for defense starting to rise into the cerulean winter sky again, but if one squinted enough, the craters left by the colossal feet of the Titans during their invasion were clear. Boulders of fallen rock were pulled up on gondolas.
Ravenna had stood and stared a while. There were skeletons of the former republic; shadows of the ruined Capitol, but the Blackstone Castle distant in the headland and its billowing swart banners swallowed it all.
She remembered the General, Ian Noguri; the man had being right about a revolution coming, but it wasn't the cheery, spirit lifting jubilation he'd predicted.
"Oh my Lord! Silly me—"
Aya paid the man in coin and they stepped out on a wooden dock. Ravenna took some fine coppers and went to fetch them some woolen coats and windbreakers for the tumultuous sea winds. Aya dealt with the primage. She noticed the sleepiness of the ports, like a little ghost town in the moors.
The mists pervaded the docks, rising high so that the ships were shrouded and the morning sun barely lighting through.
As compared to Titans Landing, the ports were scanty. A [Wraith] paradise.
"Why is it so quiet? Where is everybody?" Aya asked the captain to whom she handed coin.
The man smiled, but it was dead. "Not much folk want to go a'sailing in the waters of Holocaust."
He jingled the coins and gazed meaningfully at her. She got it. These were the very same waters the Titans had risen from: the Cold Sea. "I say we won't be getting much of passengers any time soon. People fled these parts soon as they could. We sailors had to mop up so much blood and guts, it filled a full ship.
I've never seen so much flattened bodies in me life, I tell ye, ma'am. We must have forsaken God."
Ravenna joined them again with a light trunk, and they added it with their misshapen bags shut in haste from escaping Gūndlheim as the captain led them to a looming gray ship.
It was mighty in the cold waters. Some loners were already on board: a trickle capacity to what Aya supposed such a great frigate could carry. She read the ship's name in the mists: THE AURORA. As she ascended the gangplank with Ravenna, and their luggage carted by a skinny porter, she observed the few souls on the deck.
Their gazes were as curious as hers; only two kinds of people traveled in such hard times: the bounty hunters and the fleeing.
One whispered to another, "It's gonna be a cold one."
"Aye," replied his neighbor, a tall redhead.
"How long do you reckon."
"Ten days. Fourteen, if parts of the sea freezes over like it tends to in the winter months."
"At least it's not Titans Landing," said the first in a lukewarm tone.
They briefly stopped talking as Aya passed by.
Ravenna joined her at the railing, and like wights without coin for Charon in the afterlife: huddling close together, so did the couple. As the ship's crew drew up the anchors, the red haired woman among the duo said to Aya, "Where to?"
For the first time in many days since the Titans Landing, Aya Naamah didn't see the need to lie. She was on a ship—with Ravenna. No one could get them now.
She opened her mouth softly, replying, "Corynthia."