you should know when you're conquered :: Corps Des Vers

e x r a m.

It's biting, salt in a wound & digs in the skin, watching the ones around her bleed into the sand. The bitter doesn't masquerade as morality, a caring for the ones around her but no, Exram's never been one for warriors and pikes. They're nothing but rotting meat - poison chew on their souls with the Grim's touch, bones pressing into their frail flesh. She wasn't made for this. Blood from the night before seething from her left hand in the form of maelstrom, a peacekeeper's eye on her ever since. Chipped fingernails scratching along the cut in her palm, in their eyes they see certified crazy, a breed of dangerous insanity. Pupils are dark with their thoughts, like the bags under hers the first sign of rotting. Dying. 

But that's nothing to be afraid of. Life is the real enemy in a body of worms. 

A man enters the pit, sand sinking beneath him and a lion, Reiner. She's a one-man earthquake shaking on the bleachers, not for the man below her but the man inside her, for the Art sinking in her heart, melting like table salt. There's life there, somewhere in her like a candle, and she's always left questioning which would be easier to fight: lions or herself? There's no end to the lions, only one after another and always has she had a history of killing them, like the burns on her arms were signals for them. But there's only one Exram, one Yveltide and Art and Dove and H'iver, and in each reincarnation, she's never known the correct moment when she was meant to sink. Winters and oil burns and lion attacks and street rats and life has never been an easy thing. 

Death is already here, Grim's touch on her shoulder, how long can she survive this tsunami? Earth trembles under the cells of her skin and it'd be so easy to slip into his arms. To not stand in winter alone, he bit into her neck as a man snapped a lion's neck. Why do they fight so hard, every day without a fight is silently crying in the darkness, ripping skin open to make worth out of blood destined to be spilled anyways and nearly eating her own fingers to avoid the screaming eating in her throat. Certified crazy; she'd call herself a survivor. That tick tick tick in her chest like an 808 drum, living isn't an option. It's never been.

The man is freed, dragged out of the cage with a broken arm, and fate swaps, rushing Exram to the cage's door, dragged hair first with a peacekeeper behind her. Flail in hand, blood in the other and bars guarding her from her own decision - one side life with all its struggles and beauty, and one side death, the end finally come to free her from this birdcage body. Nails like shark teeth dig into the cut of her left hand with blood under her nails. Red has always been the color of abomination; she presses her handprint into the sand beneath her. The tides of skin cells to tattoo the ground in her only way of speaking, the only way for her to sign her own tomb. 

Here lies Art - certified crazy.

She does not yell in the cage, her third hand in that sand and as long as it's there, she's alive somewhere. Death won't be here tonight, his hand extended between the bars for her. There is no intimacy for a body of blood, gnats feasting on rotting meat and blood crisping the craze of her hair together. Lifting up the flail once again, here she stands on Grim's patio, it smells like home. 

And the doors open, both sides a lion. She isn't the coronet of the sand, one lion is her entitlement, and two would be her downfall, and exiting the cage doesn't feel like a death sentence. Death and living aren't available anymore from this side of the gate, they never were from inside purgatory. She is only allowed to leave the game, the one thing bounding her to this world still. A handprint, blood print grip on a flail, the lion stalks the other. This life is a gun, and with gunpowder locked in her throat there's only enough time for one to shoot. Her burnt arms tiny to the flail, tick tick tick, tension traps in her joints with eye contact. A reptilian tail, a wound up toy of muscle and white fur, red stars.

They must be from the same pact.

Reiner lungs, the snake biting in the air as it lands afront of her; it's snarl is absent of a mouth, no snout present but only eyes. She isn't fighting a lion, the snake hissing from behind its meat shield. She's fighting sin. A morbidity pitted against another, which to kill first, the lion strikes for her legs again and Exram flips, fingers in the sand twisting to stay balanced. She is no fighter, only a survivor, only certified crazy and drowing, struggling not to look into Grim's eyes and see her own fate. Reiner bites at her as she twists again, slamming the flail over his head and into the wall. Panic like poison, straining her eyes and tiny hands to free the flail from the wall, blood rushing to the tips of her fingers.

Art, she's always been. Angel wings like secrets on her back, it's a flash of fur and stars. The flail is released with chips from the wall with a peacekeeper's scorn, air rushes to her head and she can't think, a tiger's freedom from the ground and she falls. The snake hissing, yelling screaming but Exram cannot die, and neither can Art, she swears upon her shaking fingers, the flail hitting the ground beside her and then there's burning. A combustion in her leg and screaming, straining in her neck and veins and vocal chords with a cherub's death, fangs caught in her right ankle and no. It shreds her skin, her rotting muscle and biting through bone, left hand brushing blood into her eye. It's a piercing ringing in her ears, as she cannot stand, one foot in the sand, the second ripped from her body. A snake hiss and an angel's pitch, she swings, flail slamming white fur into the wall and a snap of bone as her vision fades, the snake bites into her shin. Sugar melts in her wrists.

Darkness takes her whole.