Severed

Ryth’s ethereal form lounged against the stained glass windows. He fidgeted with the golden rings on his fingers, humming a tune that only Merrin could hear. It was an eeries melody, disjointed notes that had to have been deliberate. After all, Merrin had heard Ryth sing before–an old form of a nursery rhyme that Merrin’s mother had once sung–and knew that he was nothing but perfect with his notes.

But this tune was one he didn’t recognise. It must have been something else simply lost to time, only revived alongside Ryth himself. A time capsule never meant for anyone else’s eyes, his own personal museum.

Merrin sunk into the cushions strewn across the floor and picked up one of the broken dials. Though his hands worked to untwist the back locking mechanism, Merrin’s gaze drifted back up to Ryth.

So much about him just didn’t make sense. Despite Ryth trying to pass everything off as a result of different times, it still didn’t add up.

The golden jewellery adorning Ryth’s skin was easily worth more than the entirety of Lady Machelle’s estate, and it was clear that once upone a time there was even more. This was simply for daily wear.

His lithe frame had little muscle, and the impractical nature of his jewellery meant that he wasn’t one for manual labour, hells, even Zane was more likely to get his hands dirty than Ryth was. But Ryth knew too much about the world to be just another sheltered noble. A historian, perhaps? Like one of those academics who threw themselves into research and somehow got invited to all the galas and masquerades and theatre performances they could want. Ryth was certainly smart enough for it, but he was almost too…pretty? As though he should have been the one on stage instead of simply watching.

An entertainer who travelled Aedria and beyond, gathering tales and compiling them into his brain for when it best suited him. Ryth seemed to know enough about the Beneath that Merrin wouldn’t have been surprised if he was some sort of consigliere. He was easy enough to look at, and the melodies he sang could have lured anyone in, a siren song finished with those razor sharp fangs.

Merrin could have theorised all day and into the night about Ryth’s life, but the more important question lay somewhere between then and now.

His death.

Merrin had been around death enough that very few people on Aedria left behind such a pretty corpse. Whether it was an accident, mauled by something in the forest, burnt to nothing but dust, or even poison, it left behind something sub-human. But Ryth was seemingly unscathed. There were no wounds or bruises across his pale skin, so he hadn’t met a violent end. His health was surprisingly fine, no lingering coughs or illness bleeding into the afterlife, he was probably doing better than Merrin.

People didn’t just die, there was always a reason.

His first guess would’ve been poison, it could explain the snow-white skin, though no blood stained his lips, and no pain periodically wounded his body, so that wasn’t it. There had been many times where Ryth had eluded to his apparent lack of bones in such a way that it made Merrin question when exactly his skeleton had changed from bone to crystal. Stardust? Is that what Ryth called it?

‘Staring,’ Ryth said and turned his head to look over at where Merrin sat.

Merrin hummed in response and couldn’t bring himself to look away–the pieces just weren’t fitting together in his head.

‘I can see the thoughts spinning away in your mind, in fact, I can hear them,’ Ryth said and swung his legs down off the windowsill and crossed the room to stand over Merrin. ‘Is it that you simply forgot that I am inside your mind? Perhaps you should voice your questions out loud instead of simply theorising, we both know you aren’t any good at that.’

He ignored the passive aggressive nature of Ryth’s tone–he’d grown accustomed to it by now–and leant back into the cushions to get a better view of Ryth. He looked over the man towering over him, all long limbs and slim waist that was bordering on inhuman. Beneath the surface of pale skin was the black ink of a Vynexian, a swirling mass of the abyss compressed into stolen skin.

Nothing screamed ‘cause of death’ or even cause of injury, he was just Ryth in all his ethereal glory.

‘How did you die?’ Merrin asked, putting the dial to one side tucking his knees up to make space for Ryth as he knelt down infront of him.

Ryth nestled himself into the blankets, crossing his legs before straightening himself back up into that perfect posture of his.

‘I was beheaded,’ Ryth said plainly, tilting his head back to show off the length of his neck.

The clouded blackout ink around his neck made it hard to see any form of injury, and Merrin squinted as he leant closer. When Merrin furrowed his brows, Ryth looked back down at him.

‘It wasn’t a clean cut, a quite literal hack-job,’ Ryth explained and drummed his golden claws on his legs before sighing. ‘One of the benefits of being a Vynexia is that no one can tell. I look no different, but there is no skin to keep it together.’

He ran his tongue across his obsidian teeth before lifting his hands to his head, fingers gingerly placed at his temples. With a wet crack, Ryth twisted his neck before lifting his head up, and up, and up. From beneath his collar black strands stretched up to his neck, falling away as his head was pulled too far from his shoulders.

Dripping black ink squelched as Ryth’s breath hitched and his neck split in two.

Merrin swallowed the bile rising in his throat, and Ryth lowered his head back down until the ooze within stitched itself back together again.

‘Who?’ Merrin managed to choke out. ‘How?’

Merrin heard the words in his head despite Ryth’s lips remaining closed.

‘My mother.’ Came first, a short pause as Ryth laced his hands together. ‘An axe.’