OPEN you're depraved! // post-eruption survivor regroup

[METEOR]

METEOR

Meteor’s ears twitched as he heard Vale’s caws. His paws already walked the river’s banks to the cave system; he didn’t have the stamina to rush. Caked in dirt and blood, Meteor looked like he’d suffered the last two days in the fight pit. Fuck, he wished he’d suffered the last two days in the fight pit.

When the lava overflowed and the earthquakes began, Meteor had assigned various teams of elementals to minimize the damage to the island. Of course, Meteor the vizier had done this; Meteor’s father, Valerius was—in Meteor’s view—a narcissistic sadist who forgot one simple problem with gorging on suffering: when you allow catastrophic pain to occur, people die. So who, then, would pay the narcissist their attention tax when everyone ended up dead from Valerius’s incompetency? Meteor hated his father for that. But perhaps that was the difference between a sadistic narcissist and a sadistic psychopath.

Meteor prided himself on efficient sadism. It was Meteor who outlawed the pit fights to the death. Valerius had thought it entertaining to watch Descendants with nothing to prove slaughter each other for pointless posturing. Outsiders, of course, still needed to kill other outsiders to prove themselves as a true Descendant of the Departed… but long gone were the foolish days of bleeding out their ranks for Valerius’s inefficient sadism. Naturally, Meteor's efficiency had kept the group running despite his father's incompetency.

Therefore, when the volcano erupted, Meteor had assigned himself to keep the winds from blowing into the heartland of the forest. Knowing that Valerius’s self-assignment of arrogant stupidity would force his old man to retreat into the forest….

Efficient, then, to protect an important piece of the island’s ecosystem while killing his father.

Meteor arrived at the lip of the pool that Vale’d repurposed for boiling crabs. He blinked at the Vale weirdness, then shrugged, and sighed as he sat near—but not directly next to—Kole and Vale. He flexed his claws and shook out his paws, grimacing at the grime. He’d have to wait for the crabs to finish cooking, for the tasty treats to be pulled out before he could wash out all the blood.

“Clearly, I survived.” A lip curled for a lopsided smirk at Vale. Honestly? Meteor expected the inquisitor to fly out and never return. The fact Vale returned at all and brought much-needed food? Perhaps the shapeshifter wasn’t a complete waste of an inquisitor. 

His gaze skipped over Vale and lingered on Kole. “Good to see you survived, Kole.”

Meteor pulled off his satchel. He unfastened the hatch, then showed the lion skull within to Vale and Kole. The skull had his father’s characteristic sabertooth fangs. And, clearly, tooth and scratch marks, even the brain cavity cracked open and cleaned out… clearly, Meteor had already cannibalized his father, which was sensible given the cataclysmic disaster.

“Pharaoh Valerius is dead. I suppose my first year at leadership will be a trial by fire.” Meteor laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh.