Spotted Eagle Mountain windshear

for @Ayishik! keeping vague about extent of injuries, etc <3

the little king had not broken in his insistence on being their king, and it was engendering within shardul a deepening rage. he wished to kill the pale wolf, but reined back his lust for such. yet his efforts were more brutal, intensifiying -- he would shatter the cheery spirit at the expense of himself, even.

today's efforts had involved a deep body of water running along the side of the mountain, and shardul clenched the wolf within his jaws, dragging him from the small cavern toward the iced pools for a second time.

ty for starting! Backdated a couple weeks, I believe~

The deliberations were by now automatic. No longer did Ishi go through the process of thinking all of this through and coming to the "logical" conclusion that Shardul was testing him. Now he simply believed it like desperate follower with a cruel god, and didn't have the energy to ponder any of it. If he had, he would have landed on a wretched conclusion.

Is — is — is this because you want to be k-king of the cougars yourself? he spoke for the first time in hours as Shardul carried his useless little body in those great jaws. Ishi felt a combination of agony and numbness, but he spoke with perseverance. You can be king, Shardul, he offered, I c-can — I can be your second for a while, your advisor. I can work my way up. You can be king, Shardul!

the wolf began to stammer, to plead, his voice rising on the thin edge of hysteria -- shardul paid no attention, subjecting his prisoner to the same sort of breath deprivation he had before, using the water as his dark means. tossing the pale creature to the earth soon thereafter, the cat placed massive forepaws on either side of the would-be liege's head, lowering his broad muzzle to smile wickedly into the sodden little face.

"i am thy master. say it. thou hast no worth to me. say it," he snarled, long claws sliding from the silver fur of his paws. he would hear it -- he demanded it be so.

Oh no, no, not the ice water again. It was excruciating pain and horrific nothingness all at once, torturing him until he couldn't feel anything at all. He squealed as the water hit him, then struggled until he was out of air, and when Shardul effortlessly dragged him back to dry land he choked and panted, gazing up at him desperately, his huge golden eyes full of tears and water. Yes — y-y-y-you're my master! he finally gave up his kingship. But the smallest glimmer of hope sparked in his frozen chest. This meant, then, that Shardul would at last cease the torture and raise him to stand at his side. He'd take Ishi back to his cougar kingdom, and there the boy would stand — not as king, no, but as prince.

master. the word resounded in shardul's chest -- he purred to hear it, and stepped back from the boy again. yet cruelty quaked upon it; he lifted and bodily carried the wolf to the waters again, where the torture was elongated until the cat lazily dragged him from its grasp. "thou art nothing. say it." 


his eyes burned; he wished to hear the little king scream, to hear the terror reaching a fevered pitch within his piping tones.

The wave of realisation hit him as hard as the wave of ice water, at which he screamed. Ishi's realisation had nothing to do with kingship or cougars or ambition or anything like that — it was a survival instinct, suddenly so pure that it dominated his mind entirely. He had to do anything to make this stop. Anything. I'm nothing, he wept as he choked and struggled, and at the pain of ice and loss he went limp and was unconscious.

the ghost was all but given up upon the last echoes of the boy's scream; satisfied, shardul dragged him from the water so that he would not drown and tossed him carelessly upon the rocks. 

when some time had passed, the argent feline laved the wolf's fur roughly, choking at the taste of it, but he meant to wake his captive and question him again, for the shouted words had stroked his ego into darker malice.

Upon the iced riverside rocks the white wolfdog was thrown, and lay there unconscious like a cast-off blanket. It wasn't until he was forced to that the driftwood re-awoke, huge eyes opening to the sight of the cougar. He flinched painfully at the mere realisation that this wasn't a nightmare. Oh he wished so much that he was gone. Either of them, it didn't matter who! But they couldn't be together. He couldn't be near this cougar any longer...

"say it," shardul snarled again, clipping the air before the other's face with his eyes burning into the wolf's own. "that thou art nothing -- lower than dirt, than offal. that thou shalt be no king, especially not unto those of my kind. that thou art weak, a worm upon the underbelly of this world -- worth nothing."

if the boy did not comply, the cat would seize him up and carry him off to such tortures as he had never known, for in his heart the silver feline had tired of their black game, and now death called in sirensong from each breath the wolf drew.

Fade? :)

Nothing, nothing, nothing, he panted desperately, I'm nothing, I'm nothing. It was a chant, a cry of desperation that, in the next couple of weeks, would fade into true nothingness and become but another torturous memory in the mind of a creature that Shardul would own in its entirely.

Nothing, nothing. And as his innocence was struck from him once and for all, Ayishik Zonnetje lost who he was and became, darkly, nothing.