Ship: The Reaper's Envy
System: Stygian Outrim
ATROCITA LOOKED OUT OVER THE BRIGHT NEBULAE AHEAD. The Orovian bridge crew took pains to walk around her with wide berth as they went about their tasks. She was glacially still, but not tensed like before. She was locked down, now. Inside her perfect stillness, she was spiralling. Facing the long viewport of the bridge, head tilted downward, eyes shut.
Venatonce strode onto the bridge, cleaning the last of the Snare Beasts' blood from his glaive before his eyes rested on Atrocita. He swallowed and hung the weapon across his back, shaking his hands out uneasily as he approached her. He came near her right side, but she wouldn't meet his gaze. After a moment, he waved his finger in a swift circle and addressed the bridge crew. "All of you, out." The Orovians paused, then acquiesced, setting navigation and communication to automated setting and quickly scurried out of the bridge. The bulkhead sealed shut, leaving the two Entrophs in silence. Venatonce took a step closer to her, slow and gentle. "My lady…?"
She said nothing. He took another step, now right beside her.
"…Atrocita..."
"We were supposed to do this together," she blurted, finally fluttering her eyes open. Her churning black and red swirls couldn't portray it, but Venatonce knew her face well — her eyes may as well have been bloodshot and sobbing.
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He swallowed and got closer. "I'm so sorry, my love. I…had my misgivings about her, but I never thought she'd turn her back on you."
"She stood beside me," she pleaded, "She understood me—believed in me!"
Venatonce gently took her by the arm, she finally turned to face him. "I cannot give an answer that will ease you," he admitted, "But I have given you all that I am…and I have never faltered. Never blinked. Never thought twice." He cradled her face in one armored hand. "…I believe in you. Nothing in the cosmos could change that." Despite herself, she smiled at him. "And I can return what she took from you." Her brow furrowed and he tilted his head confidently. "I am the God of the Hunt, Lady Atrocita," he jokingly bragged, "Set to the task, there is no quarry amongst the stars I cannot hound and harry. I could not find your brother only because I knew not how to start — but this creature?" he scoffed, looking out the viewport, "This bottom-feeder? As you say, he is a predictable mongrel. I know where lessers of my vocation such as him make port. And with his ship so freshly gone from us, I know the taste of his starship fuel, that absurd brick he flies has few of its like left in the sky." He chuckled smugly, before turning back to face her fully, and kneeled. "What more would my goddess have?"
She held silent for a moment, taking him in, thinking about what Linares said. 'Courtesy of Venatonce — thank him for the advice.' It was clearly an effort to cloud her judgment and mistrust her finest tracker…wasn't it? She weighed her response for a while, then stepped forward and stroked his cheek.
"I would have words with the cowards who took what's mine."