Chapter Text
“It’s already killed four of his Grace’s prized bitches, even ate the last one right there in the pit... You should have seen it, m’Lord, just blood and guts everywhere. Took nigh on three suns to clean up the mess, and the smell…”
The mindless yammering of Sephiroth’s escort fell on relatively deaf ears, only picking at the scraps relevant to this current case of a dog gone rogue. He cared not for the horror of the aftermath, only the behaviour of the creature itself. That and the metallic echo of their heels scraping against the hard stone floor as they traversed further into the dank, situated deep underground beneath the Shinra keep. No natural light shone here, only the weak flickering of the torches lining the hallway, crudely hanging against rock slick with damp and moss, the air fragrant with rotting food and stale urine. It was enough to make any lesser man’s stomach churn.
The dungeon surely did seem like a fitting place to keep a vicious animal as opposed to the kennels. But why not simply put the beast out of its misery? Lycan were common in these lands. What was so special about this one in particular? Sephiroth had to wonder. Very little detail had been offered when the order was delivered to his chamber door, that morning, apparently urgent enough to be forced to pass up on breaking his fast in the grand hall, much to the warlock’s chagrin.
Tame it, or extract and preserve its seed. His Grace did not care which, with only one specific order;
Not to maim it.
Easier said than done when it came to unruly little puppies left to their own devices for too long.
Pain and suffering could be an excellent teacher, a fact Sephiroth knew, perhaps more than most.
Though lycan were well known for being of vicious temperament, it was unusual to hear of those in captivity lacking the discipline to heed their master’s whim. Yet if the recent grapevine spun amongst the thrum of the castle grounds were to be believed, this particular lycanthrope was the one spoken of beside roaring firesides, the nature of tales to frighten children onto a good path. An old wives' tale, the beast master had long surmised, which was difficult to believe.
And one often uttered through the ages.
“Name?” Sephiroth commanded the moment his escort - a young lad, one of Angeal’s most trusted squires - had given up his mission for inane conversation.
“Zack Fair, m’Lord. Master Hewley introduced us out in the courtyar-”
“The name of the dog.” A simple, albeit dark drone to cease the youth’s incessant blathering, halting in his tracks in that cold stone corridor and gracing the boy with an elongated jade glare from beneath the heavy shadow of the black hood he wore. A glare strong enough to send a powerful message the squire would heed with a streak of colour bleeding across the bridge of his nose and marring his otherwise boyish features a ghastly pink.
“Oh, aha! Kuraudo, I believe they’ve been calling it, m’Lord.” That name alone was certainly enough to pique the warlock’s interest. “Kuraudo Fam.. something, uh…”
“...Famelicus” Sephiroth’s soft interjection has the young squire pause for a moment, blinking up at him rather stupidly, a moment soon broken with a terse nod of Zack’s head.
Kuraudo Famelicus - The Starving. Were the stories true after all? Was this truly the ferocious beast infamous for slaughtering and devouring its masters? Why in this world would Lord Shinra bring such a creature to the keep at the risk of endangering his entire court? Perhaps the tales were as tall as they were absurd? Though it would seem the untimely death of four female lycan was a significant loss to only one set of jaws if young Zack’s words were to ring true.
The murder of their young was far more common amongst lycan packs when a new stud was introduced to establish dominance, mating rights, and bring the females back into heat. The refusal to mate and killing them instead was practically unheard of. Lycan were often treated as slaves amongst the nobility of the vampyr clans which ruled over Gaia, but as sentient and intelligent beings, these stories of one so violent towards its own kind were unsettling at best.
Perhaps it was beyond any help Sephiroth could provide.
A debate which seemed positively endless from his current vantage point, and one that would not be settled by standing there in the dark merely contemplating these supposed facts he was yet to prove. So Sephiroth chose instead not to become enamoured with the whimsy of this fantastical supposed mythical beast being held in the castle dungeons. Rather, he found it curious that the alias attributed to it was an odd mixture of both Western and Eastern tongues.
Lycan were not native to the Wutian archipelago; they were introduced as hunting hounds to Wutai’s own version of nobility only a mere decade prior, and this one was known to be much older. Was this mutt so revered to have travelled so widely?
And so feared to be sent back?
These thoughts of fancy were interrupted then with a bone-shattering shriek bellowed from one of the many cells situated far back along the long neck of the corridor. The noise was like nothing he’d ever heard before; the roar of a chimaera entwined with the battle cry of a behemoth, certainly difficult to describe, otherworldly and almost deafening that it took Sephiroth enough by surprise to have his head spin on the end of his neck in that general direction, and the squire to take at least two steps back the way they came.
A tussle could be heard instantly after, raised voices and the violent clanking and scraping of heavy metal chains, all harmonised with the bestial grunts and growls of the thing those voices were desperately attempting to contain. It would somehow appear, even from just hearing it, that Sephiroth had his work cut out for him.
“M’Lord, if I may…?”
The boy’s voice brought Sephiroth back into the corridor, slowly turning again to face the lad addressing him and watching him hitch the heavy metallic collar he had hooked on both hands up against his chest. A heavy, crude thing, sans decoration save for the runes engraved roughly on its surface, simply beaten into shape to serve a specific purpose. Lucky for young Zack that he did not hone the beast blood lest he be unable to hold it at all. Still, the warlock remained silent, mouth pressed into a thin line, waiting for the youth to continue, which eventually he did.
“... I don’t see the point in this thing.” Another lift of the collar. “You won’t be able to get close enough to even get it on.” There was genuine concern lingering in the boy’s voice, a sentiment which complemented his bright gaze illuminated by the flames of the torches nearby.
“We will have to see, then, won’t we? Come!” A terse retort, and all he offered in return for the boy's visible unease before turning on his heel, his long dark cloak splaying out to the side a single hand gripping the cloth about his chest as he walked.
Dawdling in the shadows would garner nothing.
He needed to see this dog of legend for himself.
The lycan was being kept in a cell built specifically for very important people who were unfortunate enough to find themselves on the sharpest end of Lord Shinra’s wrath. Easy enough to find even within the labyrinth of the dungeon, considering the commotion radiating out of that single space. A room within a room, so his Grace could be deemed at least charitable enough to keep their visage out of sight of the common rabble often locked up here. However, the cells seemed empty, save for the monster itself.
Fortunate, really, considering the smell as it grew more and more rancid the closer they got, so much so that Sephiroth could even notice out of the corner of his eye how young Zack was trying with everything he had not to retch. Trying being the operative word. Truth be told, Sephiroth had dealt with creatures which smelled far worse than this one.
“About time you showed your sorry carcass!” Ah, the pleasure of receiving a greeting from the keep’s very own Canis Regis, Veld, and as Sephiroth and his young squire step into the room, where war was being waged behind the bars of the cell proper, the cloaked figure would flash the older dog handler a sardonic smile from beneath the hood.
“My Lord.” Sephiroth greeted in return with a light bow to his head, as was custom here within the keep.
“I hear we’re having a little trouble with one of your new puppies, hm?” The remark was delivered as a low drawl, and the jest certainly didn’t land either, given the grimace offered in response from his grizzled colleague. But it was then that Sephiroth would turn to take witness of the ward which would soon be in his care, while only vaguely listening to what Veld had to say about their current predicament, awe-inspired.
“The sedative wore off sooner than we’d hoped. Bastard woke before we could fully secure it.”
A towering, hulking creature, this little puppy. This thing, at least twice the size of the lycan’s currently situated within the keep, was pure muscle and blood lust, wearing a pelt spun of gold. truly it was like no other lycanthrope he’d ever seen outside of the illustrations provided by the many beastology tomes he’d collected over the years. Suddenly, it was all beginning to click into place why his Grace would bring such a beast into his court to mate with his female hunters.
This creature was a pure-breed.
Rearing up, its massive head almost touching the cieling the beast screeched again, its throat bulging visibly with the strain, and struggled against the chains wrapped about its throat, front paws and torso, chains which were tethered to the rings anchored to the wall to its rear, and two men on either side in their frail attempt to pull it back and trap the beast against the wall. A deadly tug of war.
And all it took was for one of the men, a youth possibly in his late teens, young nonetheless, to glance Sephiroth’s way, just once, unintentionally, in passing.
One simple mistake.
That was all it took for him to slip, when the unadulterated fear flooded into those young, all-seeing eyes the moment his boots skittered along the rough stone floor right into the path of one enormous golden paw as it swung, monstrous claws wrapping around his entire head and the momentum of that one motion sending him careening into the wall behind.
The sound of his skull splitting open and shattering beneath that brute force akin to a watermelon dropped from a great height. A fountain of blood and brain matter exploded over the stone and the creature’s paw, a river of crimson running thick rivers down the wall to pool on the floor, legs kicking only for a second before going completely limp.
Sephiroth could witness the precise second the boy's heart froze in his chest.
Tragic and beautiful all in the same instance.
And while the room then filled with the screams and cries of onlookers calling this boy's name, lamenting on the fact that it was they who had sent this wretched man to his death, Sephiroth merely stood, stoic, marvelling at the sheer majesty of this monster he had been tasked to bring to heel.
This great big thing that killed without an iota of thought or remorse.
One could be forgiven for believing this to be anything but a common werewolf.
Wild and untamed, absolutely magnificent.
With rippling muscle, and a battle cry of its own - so piercing it reverberated beneath the stone floor and up through the feet - it swung the corpse by the length of the lad's now exposed spinal cord jutting from his obliterated throat. From one side to the next, the wolf attempts to attack its jailers with its newfound weapon, bones splintering and snapping every time it collides with the stone wall of its cell, the men still remaining inside the cell reduced to ducking and diving, terrified for their lives, if they were about to be next.
Eventually, the beast tired of its efforts, slamming the body into the floor at its feet, a spray of blood from the impact splattering the inside of this figurative pen, and now on all fours, maw opened wide, it roared again into the room at the bystanders watching it all unfold. There was nothing left of that poor boy, crushed beneath that tremendous weight, for his family to mourn.
It was time to end this.
Sephiroth stepped before the open cage door then, and as he did so, the wolf turned its hulking head to stare back, teeth barred in a vicious snarl, foaming at the mouth, the fluid coating its maw and dripping in big slimy globs to the floor. But it was the beast's eyes he was drawn to in that moment, the moment he dared to stare the very epitome of death in the face, and not for the first time.
Blue… its eyes were blue, the colour of sapphires, precious gems fractured by an iris not much dissimilar from his own, save for the secondary gash of black streaking horizontally across the centre, in the shape of a cross. And the moment those eyes - filled with so much rage, so much loathing, hunger - landed on him, the centre of that black cross in its eyes pulsed wide.
So strong was that reaction that Sephiroth could have been convinced that he’d heard, even felt the swell of adrenaline surging through the wolf’s veins right then, when the world around him suddenly fell silent beneath the long shadow of this cold-blooded killer, where nothing else existed in that place save for him and this creature setting to tear him apart.
Sephiroth was the new target of this behemoth of a beast.
And it was beautiful.
So beautiful.
‘Take him, my darling, my love. He is yours to keep, a gift for the precious one.’
Her voice again, the icy melody of her voice sending a spasmic shiver racing down the entire length of his spine. For how long had it been since he’d last heard her speak such sweet songs to him? Now was not the time to dwell on past endeavours, as quickly as that voice had shimmered in his head, Sephiroth was steeled for the next step of this exercise, a single hand already reaching inside his cloak.
If this creature was meant for him as she foretold just now, then he shall have him.
This gift for him to keep.
“Release him.” It was not a request, and Veld was soon to protest.
“Are you fucking mad?! You’ve seen what it does! It’s killed one of my men already, what do you hope to-” The cautionary glance Sephiroth offered to Veld over his shoulder then was enough for the man to think twice about denying him, those deep, wise eyes flickering between him and back to the men still trapped in the cage with the wolf. He had a decision to make, and he made it on the whim of a warlock.
“You heard him, get the fuck out of there! Now!!”
It all happened so fast, while time practically stood still all in the same instance; the men sprinting out of the cage, the sound of those thick metal chains falling to the floor the weight of them dragging them from the ring still anchored to the wall, followed by the gate of the room slamming shut as the men and young Zack made their way to safety.
And then…
He came for him.
This immense being, fur spun of gold, eyes aflame and cold as ice.
The lunge was quick, claws spread ready to gouge, maw agape, preparing to destroy this newfound threat, and the wolf - Kuraudo Famelicus, The Starving, legendary devourer of ancient masters - hurtles towards him.
Soundless.
The perfect predator.
But Sephiroth, he was quicker, for the very second that last back foot left the ground, he squeezed, hard on the small hempen bag he was currently gripping inside the cloak, causing it to burst and violently sweeping his arm from within, cloak spreading like silken black wings, spraying the powder once stored in that bag right into the creature's eyes.
There was a yelp from the beast, pained and pathetic, but his momentum from that initial leap held, forcing Sephiroth to side step his attacker, letting Kuraudo pass and collide bodily with the opposing wall. And it was there that the creature started to come undone, whimpering and crying, pawing at his eyes while he staggered and stumbled blindly about that room. The warlock would wait patiently as he watched Kuraudo begin to physically shrink, exponentially so, clumps of his fur falling to the floor each time he would crash into a wall and allow his body to slip over the stone or the gate of the cage, causing the people behind it to gasp and fall further back into the corridor.
All the warlock had to do right then was stay out of his way while the powder worked its magic.
Until eventually the wolf gave out, not that there was much wolf left to appreciate. Hands against the wall, head bowed between his arms, the blonde vomited, a putrid mess of bile, blood and bone shards slopping to the floor between and over his bare feet from his previous meal - quite possibly the female lycan he had supposedly cannibalised - before collapsing to his knees, his body now completely retracted into his human form. Only a mop of messy blonde hair being the visible part of him remaining which would allude to his previous appearance. It was almost too easy to forget that this young man, not even half the size of the creature he was, now slumped at Sephiroth’s feet, harboured such a monstrosity in his blood.
And he sits there, slumped against the wall, this… boy, whining, and coughing, both hands still feverishly wiping at both his mouth and eyes, the latter of which were still streaming from the powder thrown into them.
“The hell did you do? We were told not to maim it!” Veld was clearly displeased with Sephiroth’s methods of handling the situation, and his voice became a touch more aggravated the moment Sephiroth placed the flat of his boot to Kuraudo’s back and pushed him to lie flat to the floor, rewarded with another one of his helpless, pathetic yelps.
“Do you know how much that thing is worth? His Grace will have both our heads!”
Sephiroth doesn’t even bother to look in the dog handler's general direction, already tightening the loose straps of the boy's tattered cloth about his waist, which had clearly come loose when he’d grown into his beast form, the only thing keeping any form of physical dignity about him.
“Worth more than your life, or that of your men? Quite certain his Grace's head dog trainer can ill afford more expired kennel boys due to his own incompetence.” Delivered flatly, as though he could very well be talking about the weather while he’s tying the boy's hands behind his back using a small length of rope prepared for this very meeting.
Veld did not dignify Sephiroth’s remark with a response, nor did he expect one; that certainly wasn’t to say he couldn’t all but feel the thorns of the older man’s glare digging into the back of his head. There was no love lost on either side, and Sephiroth certainly would not be losing any sleep over it either.
Right then, he had a job to do, and he had to work swiftly before the young wolf before him began to regain control of his senses. Standing from his crouch on the floor next to the lycan, he used that same boot against the blonde’s shoulder to shove him onto his back, and he rolled heavily with yet another pained groan rumbling from deep within his throat, head rolling from one side to the next.
Kuraudo’s eyes were still streaming, clearing clean paths across his grimy face, the flesh around the lids blistered and swollen, and now beginning to turn a grim shade of purple; he needed to wash the power out of his eyes soon lest it caused permanent damage. But it was as he was unhooking the water skin from his belt that he noticed out of the corner of his eye, Veld and the others attempting to creep back into the room to gawp at the boy their monster truly was.
“Only my squire. Bring the collar,” was all he said, a single hand raised, palm facing outwards to ensure the message was loud and clear for the rest of them to remain outside the room. The last thing he needed right now was to overstimulate the creature again and bring on another onslaught before all precautions had been dealt with. Opening the skin he holds it out and simply dumped the water from standing height over the young man’s face. The pressure from this height would aid in flushing the eyes out at least, but that didn’t mean Kuraudo was in the least bit happy about it as he instantly began to writhe and cry out at the contact, causing Sephiroth to bring up his boot and press it against Kuraudo’s chest.
“He looks to be about my age, m’Lord.” Zack uttered, his voice wistful and awestruck, as he dared to enter that room with the collar in tow, stepping behind his current master to give the blonde a very wide berth. Declining to answer Sephiroth rehooked the waterskin and crouched again, grasping the werewolf by the shoulders and unceremoniously sitting him up against the wall, listening to him moan and whine as he did so, his head lolling forward over his chest. He wanted to touch him as little as possible at this point, not for the fact that the creature was still drenched in blood and his own vomit, but for the powder remnants still on his hands.
“What did you do to make it stop…?”
“Wolfsbane,” Sephiroth answered simply, taking the time then to retrieve the collar from the young squire and securing it about Kuraudo’s neck, forcing that blonde head to roll back against his shoulders. Luckily, this much smaller form was now in far too much pain to truly fight back beyond the weak grimace tugging at the corners of his mouth and the pained whine to complement his expression. Still, due to the metal of that collar, he would be kicking and screaming soon enough, all a part of the grand plan to bring this creature to heel.
“Not enough to be lethal, just enough to interrupt the transformation-”
Sephiroth takes the opportunity then, while the creature, now turned man, was somewhat subdued, to peer at the injury upon his face. Leaning in a little closer does he grasp the blond with a single hand beneath the chin, using the thumb from that same hand hand to pull down the left lower eyelid and the thumb from the other to lift the upper, much to Kuraudo’s chagrin as he inhales a sharp hiss through clenched teeth, An action which then displayed the remaining presence of elongated canines nestled in his mouth.
So fascinating, this boy. Fascinating indeed, like nothing he’d ever seen before.
“-and it hurts like hellfire. Now that the eyes are flushed, it should take only a few hours for the swelling to subside. A Lycan’s healing process is exponentially faster than you or I.” An explanation, more so for Veld’s benefit, when his Grace would come asking his inevitable questions about his supposed prized pup. One could not work beneath the Shinra banner and not have their backs covered, an unwritten law amongst the populace of the keep.
“My patience runs out even faster,” came the coarse, breathy response from the blonde then, his head now lolled back against the heavy frame of his collar already beginning to singe the flesh beneath, if only to look at him through the cracks of his horribly swollen eyelids. Upon observation in this first glimpse into the blighted eyes of the man behind the beast, it would seem that this Kuraudo Famelicus was not a stranger to pain.
“Keep pushing, and you’ll see.” The scornful grin pulling at the corners of his mouth, revealing once again those gleaming, elongated teeth, certainly complemented the sentiment. Enough to essentially stun the people in that room into a thick, uncomfortable disquiet. And the sound of this man’s voice was, of course, enough to have Sephiroth do a double take, blinking owlishly in his general direction as he gently releases the grip about the blonde’s face, letting his hands dangle between his own knees.
'My my, it speaks!'
Though he chose to study those eyes a little longer, the cross slash of that ever so strange pupil he could still spy pulsating sporadically within that deep azure ocean between half-closed lids. That pulsation was a sign that the collar’s engraved enchantments, constructed of pure silver, not only made it purposely heavy and cumbersome to wear but also corrosive to lycan flesh, were working.
“Perhaps we should gag it, m’Lord?” A rather surprisingly agitated request from the youth still stood not two steps behind him. A request in which the warlock responds with the simple lift of his hand in his way of denying the boy his wish. Sephiroth wasn’t finished with this little conversation, and was certainly not in the habit of biting at infantile quips, and yet he decided to honour the wolf man with a response, if only to gauge his reaction, and to hear that lovely voice once more. And he does so cooly, his voice little more than a low thrum against the cotton-thick atmosphere of the cell.
“Look closer, you may find yourself in a position where your threats are meaningless, Kuraudo.”
The grin on that spiteful, puffy face remained until that name was spoken, when the smile died and morphed instead into a vicious, glossy snarl, thick slimy bubbles of saliva growing out of the small gaps in his teeth with every heavy breath. Kuraudo leans forward then, an attempt to intimidate no doubt, closing that already precarious distance between him and his new handler, their noses almost touching, golden tresses at the front of his head tickling at Sephiroth’s brow. But Sephiroth refused to bite, not even a flinch as he merely watches, and waits, breathing deeply the foul stench of rotting meat and old congealed blood on the creature's breath.
He’d smelled worse things in all his years, but that didn’t make this instance any more pleasurable to bear.
Yet from this vantage point, he was able to truly see the damage being wrought by that silver collar along Kuraudo’s clavicle, already weeping and sore as the metal slowly ate away at the flesh. Habitually, he reaches for his belt again beneath the cloak, for the ointment used to shield the skin from these types of lesions, and still allow the metal to continue its work, if only to save himself the arduous job of treating the wound later.
But then Kuraudo delivered his response, eyes forced wider against the swelling and his tongue, sharp and savage against its cage of an impossibly clenched jaw.
“Why don’t you choke on my fat knot, lich fucker.”
Sephiroth’s hand stilled against the pouch. Jade eyes slowly, carefully shifting to connect with the other’s. Moments trudged by beneath the weight of the warlock's glare into that blighted wild gaze, followed by the subtle turn of his head when the wolf gave him what could only be an amused nasal huff, given the faint upward lilt at a single corner of his foul lips.
He rose to his feet then, briskly with a soft sigh, the ointment at his belt all but forgotten before turning to his squire and giving his next order.
“His nose works well enough. Gag him.”
His arrival for breakfast in the great hall had been late this morning, all things considered. Pickings had been somewhat slim, leaving Sephiroth mildly disappointed that his tardiness had cost him the luxury of the many sweet breads the chefs often offered.
Even so, thoughts of the wolfman and his parting comment were never far from his mind. Difficult to fathom how a sentient being, lyacnthrope or no, could conjure such audacity. Or have such knowledge of the arcane.
After eating his fill of the meagre scraps he had been able to scrape together, it was time to head up to his chambers; the alchemy tower situated in the western wing of the Shinra keep. The old oaken door squealed closed as he entered, reminding him that he should probably task his page boy to request oil for the hinges the next time he sees him.
But the creaky door wasn’t the only sound he could hear as he entered the room; the loud clattering of metal on metal, the thud of something heavy hitting the floor, and the agonised screeching of something feral reverberated from overhead, from within the lone cell situated deep in the laboratory. It would seem Kuraudo had been delivered without much issue, and given the pained cries and the sounds of him flailing in his cell, the collar was working as intended.
Good.
Sometimes lessons were learned the hard way.
Sephiroth had requested that Kuraudo’s binds be removed upon arrival, at least to make this next stage at least a touch more… tolerable for want of a better word, but the lycan could hang on a little longer. Right then, some much-needed decompression from his rather exciting morning was in order.
A deep nasal sigh while he removed his robe, hanging it on the tall wooden coat tree next to the door and a habitual adjustment of the black, ruffled shirt he wore beneath, and a sweep of his arm beneath long silver hair over his shoulder. The gloves next, while wandering further into the living quarters of his chamber and placing them upon the writing desk situated beneath an open stained window, followed by a customary rinse of his hands in the fresh bowl of water found on its stand. A soft smile found its way to his mouth when he noticed the newly cut lemon slices dancing on the water's surface, just how he liked it. It would appear his page had seen good on his duties that day to not only air out the place, supply the fresh linens and towels - one of which he had found next to the water bowl to dry his hands - but also carpet the floor with a healthy littering of fresh straw.
Denzel was such a good boy.
Strong-willed and talented, yet most of all respectful.
How fortunate he was to have him in his service.
Another anguished cry from the cell upstairs, just as Sephiroth parked himself on the chair before his table, relishing in the way the wood creaked around him, before grasping his dragon horn pipe from its holder on the windowsill and a pouch of his favourite tobacco from the little chest next to it, flicking the lid open and closed with a single hand.
While stuffing the pipe with the dried herb, he would lift both legs, crossing them over the corner of his desk before summoning a small, flickering blue flame to the tip of his free index finger, pressing down into the pipe's bowl to light it and having a tentative pull of his lips, watching the embers begin to ignite and glow. There was something so fundamentally relaxing about the ritual of wrapping the edges of his lips around the flute of his pipe, and puffing the stress away, watching the bright smoke waft through his nostrils after each little inhale and furl towards the window.
Yes, Kuraudo could endure a little longer, allowing the warlock to listen to his pleas for release like the ballad performed by the finest orchestra. Today would be a day the wolf will not soon forget; the day he was finally brought to heel. A soft nasal chuckle left him when that very thought ghosted through his mind, another mark Veld would no doubt scratch against his name.
Another pull on the pipe, another distressed yowl and a clash of metal against stone. The melody of the beast’s screams was beginning to edge on his nerves after only a few moments, enough for him to decide then that lamenting on the morning had long lost its lustre. He takes one last puff of the pipe before placing it back on its holder to allow the embers to die and cool before rising from his chair.
A brisk trot up the spiral staircase situated in the centre of the living quarters into the laboratory, those cries, the crashes and thumps which followed grew louder the closer he drew, but first a detour to the larder next to the corridor which led to the cell, to pluck an appropriately aged pheasant from its hook, feathers and all. The werewolf would no doubt devour them all if he were to live up to his namesake, truly, no matter his form.
And down the corridor, where the smell gradually worsened, the usual aromatic scents of fresh herbs, grasses and oils were obliterated by the foul, heavy stink reminiscent of a backstreet mortuary. When was the last time this creature even had a bucket of water thrown on him?
Before approaching the cell, where this writhing, wailing thing was now being kept, Sephiroth hung the bird on a hook sunk into the opposing wall. It would not do to show the mutt a reward before it had the chance to earn it. The collar to replace the silver one was already resting on a nearby end table at the cage door's edge.
Turning then to gaze in on his newest ward, Sephiroth felt the slits of each iris widen at the sight before him.
The lycanthrope of legend, devourer of ancient masters, Kuraudo Famelicus, The Starving, was huddled in a far corner of the room, brow resting on his knees, both hands balled into fists in a frail attempt to literally push the collar up over his head in sporadic upward thrusts of both arms against the rim locked in by the creature’s jawline. And he was crying, sobbing even, hysterically. The hay mattress he’d had put in here specifically for the lycan had been thrown to the other side of the room and torn to shreds in this latest frenzie.
Had there ever been a sweeter sight in all his life, to have witnessed the carnage created by this monstrous beast, and see it now reduced to a fit of tears?
Sephiroth didn’t think so. But he waited only a moment, just to see if the wolf would even notice him there. To think he smelled the lich on him back in the dungeon, surprising was it to think he couldn’t smell him now. But he didn’t linger unspeaking for long, eventually making himself known with a low and husky:
“It’s good to see you, Kuraudo.”
The blonde's head shot up from his knees with a startled gasp at the sound of Sephiroth’s voice, those cross-slashed ocean eyes wide, terrified and oh, so penetrating to the senses. The moment didn’t last, however, when the lycan’s eyes narrowed, brow furrowing before he lunged from the floor and raced to the cage door, causing Sephiroth to take a single step back as Kuraudo slammed his entire body into it, shaking it at the hinges, hard enough to disturb age-old dust trapped in the stone walls surrounding them.
“You!” the creature hissed through the bars, grasping at them until his knuckles turned white with one hand, while straining to reach for his new keeper with the other, his fingers curled into a claw, shaking with the strain.
“I’ll tear out your heart and show it to you for putting this thing on me! See if I don’t!”
The sound of his voice- crazed and furious - would awaken a pleasant flutter in the warlock’s belly, a sensation that had him subtly lift his chin and exhale a long, drawn-out sigh through his nose. What was so alluring about this animal caged in his laboratory? The path to finding out was certainly going to be exciting, of that much Sephiroth was certain.
He declines to truly react to the wolf’s threat instantly, still casually standing on the other side of that cage, arms folded across his broad chest. He would instead take the opportunity to examine his newest house guest. There was more blood than he recalled back in the dungeon, smeared across his face, clean fresh paths cleared by his tears, drizzled over the entirety of the silver collar and all but pouring down his bare shoulders onto his chest. The sight was enough to give the warlock pause for thought, a light purse of his lips, that perhaps the dog handlers had beaten him before bringing him here, a request he certainly had not made.
But then he saw the marks, on the chest, the shoulders, at the base of his jaw and cheeks, coupled with the black stains beneath the nails of that reaching hand. Kuraudo was a creature driven mostly by instinct, and instinct had dictated that clawing at his own skin until it bled was the best way to literally and figuratively dig his way out of the collar. It was then that he noticed the cloth he’d once worn about his midriff to conceal his modesty (if the devourer of vampyr was ever truly modest) was now twisted into a long rope and tucked haphazardly into the silver cuff, the ends hanging about his shoulders. The rest of him, completely bare, unabashed.
Sephiroth raised his eyebrows at this, impressed that the lycan had the mental fortitude to attempt to create a barrier between his skin and the silver destroying it.
“Hm, tempting,” came Sephiroth’s eventual tepid response. “But it stands to reason that you are at a terrible disadvantage.” A response which seemed to have the wolfman’s hand draw back to cling to the cage, his face twisting into a foul grimace, teeth barred, a vicious growl gurgling in his throat before his maw drops open and that same otherworldly roar he’d heard back beneath the keep erupts from the bowels of the blond’s chest. To think something so small could create such a noise.
The force of that roar was enough to blow Sephiroth's hair from his shoulders, and it took almost everything he had not to wince at the foul stench of his breath permeating his nose. So gutwrenching was that smell, that he could almost taste it on his tongue.
A change of diet was in order.
Kuraudo’s frustrated screech ended abruptly, with a wince, and a pained groan as those hands once vying for Sephiroth’s beating heart flew back to the collar about his throat as he staggered back, away from the gate.
“I can make it stop-” the warlock started, watching and beginning to pace a little outside that cage, if only to keep his superior vantage point as the blonde fell back to his knees. Gasping between the sobs Kuraudo the returned to his fruitless endeavour of trying to wrench the thing right off his head with the flat of each forearm, both of which were also being slowly burned by the metal.
“-if you so wish it, Kuraudo.”
“Stop calling me that! That’s not my name!” a despairing, anguished cry, his voice beginning to crack midflow, sounded up from there on the floor, his face, bloody and still a little pink and swollen from the wolfsbane powder, distorted in unadulterated misery. Sephiroth did not ask for him to elaborate; now did not seem like the right time for idle conversation. Not that the now unnamed lycanthrope would give him a chance to respond anyway.
“Why would you do this?! It burns!! I’m on fire! It burns me!”
He stands then, stumbling on shaken legs, pushing the collar up as far as it would go, and attempted to run backwards as if the motion would have him magically slip out of this torturous tunnel. When his back collided heavily with the wall, he collapsed in a pitiful heap on the floor, eliciting another rage-fuelled screech.
“TAKE IT OFF!”
“I can replace it with one that’s more comfortable.”
“TAKE IT OFF!”
“But I need something from you first.”
“TAKE IT OFF! I CAN’T STAND IT! TAKE IT OFF!”
“Ask nicely.”
“TAKE IT OFF!!”
“I said… ask… nicely.”
“PLEASE! PLEASE TAKE IT OFF! IT’S BURNING ME ALIVE! PLEASE!”
And there it was, that very first step into submission. He did not request the plea be repeated despite the carnal gratification Sephiroth garnered from it, instead simply gazing down at this wretched, crippled thing writhing on the floor of his cell. The silver collar had served its purpose.
“Good boy,” came the deliverance of the werewolf’s first reward; the second, Sephiroth would collect from that end table at his side. Thick leather lined with sheep's skin, though with a band of silver surrounding the very centre of the thing to prevent any foolish lycanthropes from attempting to remove it and served to harbour the same engraved enchantments as the original to suppress the beast blood.
Sephiroth declines to offer any warnings to the man when he opens the cage door, taking that one fateful step beyond the threshold and locking them both inside, a single confident stride as though he wasn’t walking right into a literal wolf's den. And the lycan neither lashed out nor flinched the moment Sephiroth took a knee before him, easing the boy into a sitting position, laying his back against that one elevated thigh, from the floor with a single strong hand.
“It burns… please… make it stop,” the blonde whimpered then, still pawing at the collar around his throat, albeit weakly.
“Hush now, it will be over soon.” And with that soothing response, allowing the other man to lean into this strange embrace, the warlock reaches around him, unclasping the silver collar and slipping it from around his neck, pulling thin strings of melted flesh with it, making the lycan arch his back and grimace as he did so, before setting it on the floor beside them.
The collar had worked more effectively than Sephiroth had truly meant it to; aside from the self-inflicted wounds of an animal desperate to be free, the silver had all but destroyed the skin around the blonde wolf’s throat. Raw and bleeding, like chopped meat. An arduous task to aid in the healing of a severe burn like this one, but good to know that a pure-bred lycanthrope's aversion to silver was far more severe than that of a mere mongrel turned by a bite.
Something he could add to the tomes of old.
He would heal in time with minimal scarring, of that he was confident, but the second collar was closed over that wound before the beast blood could manifest, locked in place by the latch at the back. The younger man offered a soft whimper in response to the contact, but little else, all his energy seemingly spent now that the burning sensation of the metal had been removed.
And they sit there for a while, on the cold, hard floor of that cell, the lycan panting softly in his arms, not alleviated from the pain entirely but free from the intolerable burn of the silver. He looked so at peace right then, in contrast to the creature he witnessed murdering a young boy back in the dungeon, or the man spitting his hatred from between the heavy steel bars of this very cell only moments ago.
‘Take him, my darling, my love. He is yours to keep, a gift for the precious one.’
A gift, she’d said.
Just for him.
To keep.
The memory of that voice, oh, so bittersweet, reminiscent of the very first time she had graced him with her presence. But she had granted him a kindness this day, delivering to him this entity spun of gold and brute force. Tracing a finger gently along the lycan’s hairline, Sephiroth relished in the heat of that contact, watching intently the golden locks of hair - as wild as the man himself - displace and tickle across the back of his hand, before smoothing his palm lower to cup this creature’s cheek.
A marvel was this thing in his arms, how he could retain prominent aspects of his inner beast despite the enchantments working to cull them; the ability to call to his own kind, the elongated canines, but this new thing, another curio to add to the rest; where the ghosting of his touch would reveal the tiniest plumes of golden fur to blossom in a wave through the skin in its wake and vanish almost instantly. As though Sephiroth’s touch would break the magics of his enchantments just for that one moment.
Fascinating.
Full of surprises.
This creature, he was everything the warlock perceived to be beautiful.
He shifts a little lower, finger tips dragging across the leather of the new collar and over the silver band, until he reaches his clavicle. Still marred with old blood and the deep cuts in his desperation to rid himself of the silver, those tiny hairs began to plume once more along the path created by the pad of Sephiroth’s finger drawing little patterns on his skin. A little more brazen as his touch trailed lower still, the flat of his palm gliding over the centre of the wolfman’s chest, pausing only briefly to feel the rapid beating of his heart, the rise and fall of his body with every breath, deep and exhausted.
‘I wonder how many have gotten close enough to play with you like this?’ Came that corruptive thought just now, savouring this moment, in the warmth of this body lying here at his mercy, allowing this strange, spontaneous intimacy.
‘I hope I’m the first.’
His hand slips over the plane of the blondes pectoral then, jade eyes still following that trail of gold which followed and vanished thereon after, finger tips absently grazing over a hard pert nipple, and he was gifted a reaction; the arch of the creature’s back, a sharp hissed inhale followed closely by a low amourous groan from deep in the cavern of the lycan’s throat.
Oh, so he liked that.
A momentary pause, if only to cast that moment to memory, that familiar flutter in the pit of his stomach becoming a little warmer, a little more violent, until he’s curling his body over that smaller, naked, and exquisite man still lying across his thigh. So lost in the mere sight of him, drowning in his heat, savouring those soft, kittenish sighs he emitted when that palm ghosted lower again, over the battle-sculpted terrain of his abdomen, feeling the muscle ripple beneath the light pressure. And Sephiroth shifts closer still, unable to resist, drunk on the heat of this moment and ghosting his mouth against the shell of the blonde’s ear.
“You're beautiful -” a hot, impassioned whisper, spoken before his mind had truly registered the words fall out of his mouth.
“- I wish I knew your name.”
And the blond turned his head then, towards his new keeper, breaths heavy and mouth parted only slightly, their lips brushing softly as he moved, eyes misty and tired with the expenditure of all that vicious anger he exuded not so long ago. The putrid scent of the beast's breath seemed hardly noticeable beneath the immense weight of this one intense moment.
“Cloud…” Was all he whispered back.
The opportunity to sink any deeper into this strange instance, there was a distinct sound echoing into the cell from the laboratory proper, of glass breaking. A sound loud enough to have Sephiroth suddenly come crashing back into reality with a start, head jerking upward in the general direction of that noise.
There was someone else in here with them.
Denzel would still be in his lessons at this time, and he knew better than to come up to the lab alone.
So whatever was here, it was someone, or something else.
It took a second or perhaps two to realise that he was panting, softly at least, in rhythm with the fierce hammering of his heart against the walls of his chest. The icy chill of that room began to bleed through his clothes, touching him uncomfortably on the skin, and a glance down at the creature - Cloud - to discover that he was no longer conscious. Just as well, the wounds he’d sustained today were significant. Rest was certainly needed to aid in the healing process before the warlock would be able to administer the necessary ointments.
A part of him hopes the lycan wouldn’t remember the intense moment they’d shared just now—only a part.
An arm was tucked beneath the blonde’s legs, the other beneath his shoulders, before he was hoisted from the cold floor and carried over to that now dilapidated mattress on the far side of the room. Not ideal, but certainly better than direct contact with the stone. Though not a second after he’d settled Cloud down on the bed, he heard another object from nearby fall and smash on the floor. This time, it was an irritated glare Sephiroth threw in that general direction.
Whatever was in here was destroying his laboratory.
Briskly does he adjust himself, standing upright, tugging at the open lapels of his shirt before making his way back out of the gate, of course, ensuring to close and lock it behind him, all of this before turning to walk back out into the lab -
- until a telltale spark made itself known in the near distance; a small floating glowing orb hovering in the entryway began to hurtle towards him as soon as Sephiroth laid eyes on it, bouncing from wall to wall with sharp static fizzes with every tenacious collision, then whizzing about the warlock's head before so very casually floating into the cage through the bars like a dandelion seed on a breeze.
Sephiroth says nothing, just watching beneath a hooded brow as that dazzling orb of light ghosted over Cloud, who now lay sleeping on the bed he’d destroyed earlier, and the thing was painfully slow about it.
“Oh ho ho! Looks like heads are going to rooooooll!” came the impossibly high-pitched sing-song voice of the fizzy orb as it danced back through the cage bars.
“Reno…” It was not a greeting, the mild annoyance in Sephiroth’s tone betraying him.
“The one and only!” the orb sang before it flashed, its light blinding and exploding into the hallway, only to die out almost instantly and the Fae himself appeared before him in full form, all crimson hair, glittery wings and pure spite, complimented by that sardonic grin pulling at his mouth, regratably noticable at eye level. Of all the people housed within the Shinra keep, this one was possibly one of the last Sephiroth wished to deal with.
Nothing good ever accompanied a visit from the Fae.
Reno’s only saving grace being his sense of style, not that dissimilar to the warlock himself.
“How many times do you need to be told?” Sephiroth asked, his tone only a touch vexed as he folded his arms across his chest. “The keyhole is not an appropriate entrance to my chambers.”
The Fae laughs, that hearty guffaw which went through him the same as metal cutlery scraped against a ceramic plate. It took a little more effort than he liked not to wince at the noise, watching as the redhead would make himself a little too comfortable, folding up those insectile wings along the length of his back and leaning against the wall of the hallway, both arms thrown behind his head.
“But if I’d have knocked, would you have answered?” a question posed with a seemingly knowing arch of a crimson brow. He already knew the answer, nor did Sephiroth truly feel like giving him one; instead, he chose to merely stare back, his jaw locked.
Another chuckle from the redhead then, “Heh, didn’t think so. His Grace demands your presence. Immediately.”
But that statement was enough to knock the warlock just a little off kilter, just a little; cool deadpan expression unchanging save for the subtle rise of his eyebrows. It was his Grace who had commissioned him for this task alone, there was nothing else which needed to be discussed, least of all in person. Sephiroth had been called in front of Lord Shinra before, but never had he been addressed by him more than once in a single day, by courier or otherwise. It was most unusual, and most certainly was not a good thing considering who was standing before him now delivering this message and the way he’d taken to examining Cloud before revealing himself.
“As you can see, I am currently in the middle of the last thing his Grace asked me to do…” Sephiroth states flatly, sweeping a single hand to his side to present the wolf sleeping in the cell, to which Reno pushed himself away from the wall, holding both hands up somewhat defensively, though still wearing that irritating grin on his mouth.
“Hey, don’t shank the messenger. I’m just passing it along.”
This conversation was becoming very tedious very fast, and Sephiroth’s quickly depleting patience was displayed with yet another sigh and a cock of his hips before asking the inevitable question.
“My presence regarding…?” Did he even want to know? Truth be told, he had an inkling already, and he was more than certain that Veld had something to do with it, and Reno was a little too quick in delivering the answer he already knew.
“How, clearly, you don’t know how to take care of someone else's toys,” Reno retorts, taking a single long stride towards the cage door to bend over dramatically and gaze in at Cloud through the bars, those glittery wings springing upwards to waft against the very tip of Sephiroth’s nose. An irritation which elicits a soft, albeit agitated, nasal huff as he pushes those infernal dusty wings out of his face with a forceful forward shove of a single hand. Oh, how he despised dealing with this damned fairy.
“Made quite a mess of it, huh?” And yet another snarky quip, as he straightened his back, hands on his hips and offered the warlock one of his sultry side glances. The kind one would find great pleasure using as a mop in the filthiest room they could possibly imagine.
“I would watch your tone if I were you, imp.” Words spoken with a sharper tongue than he’d originally intended, so much so that Sephiroth would slowly close his eyes, groaning internally as he braced for the consequences of his retort.
“Aha! Since when has the great Sephiroth resorted to insults?! Though I'll have to teach you some less boring ones for next time.” The last part of that statement was delivered behind the back of Reno’s hand and complimented by a wink, as though sharing some level of confidential information only Sephiroth was privy to. However, he would not honour the fae with a response save for a weary narrowing of the eyes.
“I have to say, though, it's unbecoming of a man of your… stature.” Reno had gotten uncomfortably close, feigning interest in Sephiroth’s right shoulder, making a show of picking a blond hair found ingrained within the fabric of his shirt and flicking it away, then patting his arm as a good friend would. If Reno had any talents about him at all as a member of the Fae, then being irrationally irritating was certainly one of them. And Reno seemed unfazed by it all. Expecting it, even. His shoulders shrugged up with his beaming grin.
"Well, the message was delivered. Heed it, or don't. I think I'm going to have my fun watching what happens next, regardless. See you at court!"
His light filled the hall again and forced Sephiroth's eyes to squint against it. As quick as he'd come, the Fae was gone in a streak of lightning, the faint shrill of his laughter fading down the end of the corridor and through the lab, pulling a good portion of it with him, papers and bottles, tinctures and ingredients he’d yet to use spilling to the floor. Yet another mess he could really have done without having to deal with.
But all of that would have to wait for now; if his Grace demanded an audience, one would be a fool to deny him.
One last glance into the cage, gaze ghosting over the lycan, naked and helpless upon that dilapidated mattress, the intensity of that moment he’d stolen from the blond before he was so rudely interrupted still burned into the forefront of his mind.
Duty be damned.
With a sigh, Sephiroth yanked the bird he’d procured earlier from the hook beside the door and tossed it through the bars, watching as the carcass skidded across the stone floor before taking his leave to prepare for the inevitable dressing down he was about to receive.
Not the first, and he doubted very much that it would be last.