The End is Where we Begin

There were so many people in the worlds with so many useful qualities and all it took was for the King to speak a few honeyed words and those people and their qualities were his to play with. Takua had been the easiest, their goals had aligned so all Erasmus had to do was speak the truth, though he had to admit he may have embellished his enthusiasm for such a goal. He couldn't deny that the thought of taking this "too powerful to fuck with" Las Noches and swinging it down upon the head of Seireitei was an entertaining notion, if a very very silly one at this point in the game. Evelynn had been similar, once he'd struck upon her desire he had her right where he wanted her and all he had to do was say the right words and move the right way and she was locked in his grasp, the alignment of their Obsessions came after the fact. Ara Song was still a work in progress, so far she had been the most stubborn of the bunch, but he'd get through to her eventually. He could sense the cold stone exterior being chipped away, he just needed to keep chiseling. 

He had to admit Yaksha had been a bit of a failure. It should have been easy, their goals aligned just like Takua and Evelynn but Yaksha got in the way of himself and Erasmus wouldn't have a blubbering sot like that on his council. He wanted strong willed and great minded individuals, not depressed sacks of self loathing who'd sooner rant and rave about their own shortcomings than actually put themselves to use.

Which was why he was out in the desert that morning.

His ghosts had been searching the vast emptiness for any signs of usefulness and Liora had happened to stumble upon an Arrancar who could make her prey willingly walk into her final embrace. He'd watched through the little girls eyes as many Hollow and Arrancar stumbled helplessly into her and fell cold and dead out of her. It was an interesting sight and one that Erasmus wanted to get to the bottom of. Could she control other beings and make their will her own? 

"Be still my beating heart." He muttered to himself as the thought passed through his mind. A woman with such a power would be critical to his future. 

Or she could bring it all crumbling down around him.

Either way the sooner she belonged to him the better.

Armor reflected a lunar gleam as he traversed the sands; shins, forearms and feet all emanating a ghostly glow. His mane may have grayed but he was as mighty as he had ever been, age would not make him feeble and time would never corrode him, he would not allow it. 

Emerald eyes gazed upon the horizon, saw his destination clear as day upon the line that separated white sand from black night. Vibrations reported movement, but the only frequency he was listening to was hers. The subtle shift in the air as she stirred at his approach. Any distractions in his peripherals went ignored, they weren't important, not now that she was so close. It would take a considerable amount of effort to pull him away from such an interesting person.

Sun embraced skin appeared before him once he was close enough to see her with his own eyes, brown and exotic when compared to the milky whiteness of the rest of Las Noches. Seldom were there skins of any other color. Where skin wasn't visible (Which was almost nowhere) there were light fabrics, heavy leather, glinting stones and dull ink. Despite her lack of clothing, the chaos of what she did wear was enough to distract the eye from the more revealed parts of her body.

There was so much to look at that it was a good while before Erasmus noticed that her head was turned towards him, her eyes peering in his direction yet he didn't feel them upon him. Bright green scrutinized pink pearls and he had to wonder what exactly she was looking at.

"I'd call you a flower in the desert but there's so much going on there that you're more of an assorted bouquet." The King crooned, focusing his vibrations through her body. He'd examined her from the outside, it was time to dissect her from the inside. Everything seemed normal, there were slight hints of uncertainty as her respiration increased by a fraction, but otherwise she was perfectly calm. Admirable.

"Are you alright?" Was his first question, a strong calloused hand extended to help her from her knees. It was such a simple inquiry but it had so much purpose. Questions would tell him who she was, even if she didn't want him to know.

"You're not from Las Noches, I'd certainly remember you if you were. Where did you come from?"

[Words: 823][GP: 16][Total GP: 16]

It had come so close now that she could smell the blood in its veins and the lingering of civilisation; the clinging scent of other Hollows and Arrancar, the vitamin D of sunlight. And when it spoke to her she came to realise it was a man, his voice a deep vibrato and far too smooth to be anything less than fully humanoid like herself, undeniably alive. His words seemed so very odd to her, speaking of things she couldn’t quite understand, like bouquets and the insistence of looking for flowers in a desert. He must have been a mortal of some kind, inexperienced and naive. There were simply no flowers in a desert such as this.

It was so odd that a mortal would stumble here uninvited. Perhaps it was his Reiatsu that had kept him out of harm’s way, unable to be felt by anyone else, a fact of which she was certain. Her Prequisa had kept her alive, and if he was dead to her he must have been more so to everyone else.

Odder still was that his main reason for approaching her was to ask her if she was alright. She was aware of him leaning down, levelling their height and reaching for her with an outstretched hand, the first action to pull and equal reaction from her in turn. If she wasn’t already so full she would have bitten it to the bone, nibbled on it until she was satisfied and then some to conserve energy for lonely nights. Instead she allowed her fingers to coil around his, touching his calloused fingers, his warm palms, seeing what her eyes could not.

How could she have ever thought this man was nothing?

Warm skin tingled across her cold finger tips, the feel of his Hierro noting that no, he wasn’t mortal. He must have been like her but somehow more, something she didn’t have the time to ponder as his voice broke through her observations, smooth and rich. Rosé eyes drew away from the dunes behind his shoulder to settle on his lips, the source of the sound that intrigued her so. And there it was once again, the mention of Las Noches, a location she’d heard of in her memory but could barely remember, a castle, perhaps. Distant and away from her scope of existence.

Likewise, he was curious that she’d never been there. Head tilted she considered his words, contemplating the birth place of her existence. “Where do Hollows come from?” She asked him in turn, unable to remember herself or the knowledge of any of them who could. It hardly mattered; she had always just assumed they had lived forever. She was much more curious as to where this walking anomaly had come from.

"What are you?” She had to ask. Curiosity towards a living being was never something she’d entertained, yet the more her fingers felt the skin of his hand and wrist the less she understood. Were all the beings in Las Noches like the man before her? “What is Las Noches?”

*****

512 words: 10 GP
Total GP: 22 GP

Like a young child reaches for it's parent the woman extended her hand to wrap cold fingers around the King's palm, their tips sliding up his wrist. There was something odd in her touch, it wasn't just a simple grip for leverage as he hoisted her to her feet, her touch had an analytic feel to it, as if she were gathering information about him through her fingerprints. At least she was looking at him now though, he could clearly see her eyes fixated somewhere upon his face. But even then when bright green explored pale pink there was no spark in those opalescent gems that could tell him that she had registered the sight that sat before her. It felt more like she were staring through him, at some far off thing in the distance. Just as he gently slipped his hand from her grip it dawned on him exactly what was going on.

She wasn't seeing through him, she wasn't seeing anything.

"You're blind."

The fact was stated so bluntly. He hadn't expected her to lack eyesight. Takua was blind, but Erasmus had never encountered nor heard of anybody but him being blind, he had always thought the Primera to be an isolated anomaly among Hollow and Arrancar, but apparently not. He had to wonder if this woman used the same method that Takua used to see the world around her or whether she had developed her own way to perceive the world by herself. 

A deep smiling warmth bloomed outwards upon the face of the King. It was such a simple innocent little question for her to ask and was akin to the questions his own daughters often asked him. It could only have been more naive if she had replaced the word "Hollow" with "babies." 

"You really know none of this?" He asked in tones of sweet soothing sympathy, genuine emotion born from the fact that this woman was stuck out here in the desert, slowly wilting away while she could be so much more if only she knew how. It was a sad thought to ponder this womans existence, how long had she been out there wandering aimlessly, clueless from rock to rock? But it couldn't have been more perfect if Erasmus had been allowed to build the situation himself from scratch. Her mind was a blank block ready to be chiseled and chipped to perfection, all he had to do was feed her what he wanted her to know and she wouldn't question a thing. He could take her back to Las Noches, make her his, make her great, make her useful! If she had the power he suspected she had then she'd be a critical addition to achieving his vision of the future.

But he was getting ahead of himself.

He had to buy the clay before he molded the cup.

"Hollow are born from the darkness of the human heart and the souls fear of death. They can be born from the negativity of a Shinigami, should the Shinigami in question be strong enough to house an Inner Hollow. But in my travels I've seen Hollow born from unthinkable things." He told her, memories of the birth of his daughter Xiaobei flooding his mind.

"As for me, that question has a bit of a lengthy answer, but the shortened tale is that I was like you once, an Arrancar, but then I realized what I was doing wrong and became something more. The truth is that I have no name for it, but I've often heard people call my condition Broken."

And then they got into the important question.

"Las Noches is the only bastion of civility in this world." That line had become one of his favorites since the first time it had left his mouth. Sure, it wasn't entirely true, but it sounded so good. "It's where the strongest Arrancar and Hollow go to serve the King of Las Noches and his Espada."

"But that's enough questions for now." He told her, reaching out to place a gentle touch upon her arm, the freezing ice of her skin shooting up the warmth of his arm. "You're freezing out here, you should get somewhere warm." He whirled his head around to search for some kind of shelter, perhaps even one that this woman owned, but there was nothing but rising and falling white and ever still black. He scanned the underground for dug out hovels with his vibrations, but all he could feel beneath his own feet were the slithering lizards that burrowed beneath the surface.

"Do you have anywhere to go?"

[Words: 771][GP: 15][Total GP: 31]

The hand she was so interested in mapping out curled around her own, unwavering as he drew her from her knees to stand before him. It wasn’t a threatening move; his motives were completely unclear to her, but she knew he didn’t mean to eat or rape her. On the contrary he was the most conversational man she’d ever encountered, his appearance before her almost as confusing as his lack of apparent Reiatsu signature. His voice bore a slight accent, one that she’d heard before but couldn’t trace, as if he came from a land far away.

At the mention of her blindness small, chipped nails came to trace her eyes, feeling them and wondering what it was that made it so obvious to those she encountered. “I don’t see with my eyes, no.” She agreed, clarifying his point. People with eyes suffered from short sightedness, unable to see anything unless it was in right in front of them. And what was there to see, even if she could? She could not remember what Hueco Mundo looked like, but she knew it to be nothing worth the effort.

It had never before been important to know the inner workings of the palace known as Las Noches. The far away land had nothing to do with her, sitting on a horizon that wasn’t worth the effort of the journey it would take to arrive there. Yet this man spoke as if it was of the utmost importance, as if it catered to her interests to know of such a place. She stood still under his scrutinizing gaze, opalescent irises drawn to the sound of his voice as she attempted to take in the overload of information.

Shinigami contained hollows? Were they built from the carcases of other hollows, much like her? If so the difference between them made little sense, though she knew it to be great. Even this man claimed to have been an Arrancar once upon a time, changing and morphing the line of science in every possible way. Coming from a reality of blank facts, she was undecided if the presence of such a shattering figure was in her best or worst interests. She wondered how he had come to change so drastically, why his reiatsu didn’t exist anymore. Broken? Indeed, his reiatsu was, and reiatsu didn’t lie, yet he carried good health.

Truthfully, Las Noches sounded confusing at best. The concept of a King in a land like Hueco Mundo was an odd one, the endless wastelands holding nothing to rule over. It simply wasn’t a profitable position. What was more bizarre was that indeed, there were many more like her, and that they all lived together in this palace on the horizon. But for what purpose? Humanoid hollows were the strongest of the strong, protection in numbers hardly mattered to them. If anything it seemed a waste and stretch of resources and food.

One small question had raised a million more, his condensed explanation coming to an end as his calloused fingers brushed across her arm, tracing her tattoos. It was a warm touch, as if he’d been far too close to the sun; he hadn’t cooled down in the freezing desert whilst talking to her. But where did she have to go, truthfully? His question gave her little pause however, because the answer had always been so simple.

“I go where I want.” She supplied, fingers continuing to trail from his arm to his shoulder, his neck, his face. She took in the shape of his nose and cheekbones, perplexed at the lack of hollow hole. She didn’t completely understand the question, but this man had pulled more words from her than she’d spoken in centuries, her voice slightly raspy from lack of use. She didn’t feel like asking, not when she still had to mull over the vast amount of information he’d just divulged.

But he was right about one thing; it was freezing cold out here, the temperature dropping well below zero. It was one of those things that just couldn’t be helped, and she’d long since realised that she couldn’t be killed by such things. But there was nowhere warm in Hueco Mundo, nowhere she’d ever seen after 800 years of searching. Wherever this man had come from, it wasn’t anywhere she’d ever been. “There’s no sun in Hueco Mundo. There’s nowhere warm here.” She explained, stating the fact as if he wasn’t already aware.

The way he’d spoken to her thus far made her wonder if they were talking about the same place. No one knew these deserts better than her. There was no sun, no shelter, and that was a fact. He may have claimed Las Noches carried what she’d never seen, but she doubted it could have a sun. Nowhere in this world could.

******
 

805 words: 16 GP
Total GP: 38 GP

So she couldn't see his smile nor the brightest green of his eyes, couldn't see the vast expanse of complete and utter nothing around her. She could definitely feel it though, she knew that there was nothing out there. Even a blind woman could see that this world wasn't a friendly place. Monsters lurked beneath the dunes, each one stronger than the one before them, everybody was always food for somebody. He began to wonder exactly how long she'd been out there. Spirits were long lived creatures, the idea of her shambling around on this plane for centuries was a cold sad thought.

When he touched her she latched on to the contact automatically, like a snake inevitably coils itself around and around your body. Fingers touched here, caressed there, gliding up and down his arm feeling fabric and hair and steel and skin. His automatic reaction was to flinch away from such sudden intimate contact, especially since her skin was so cold, but he possessed enough knowledge of the blind to understand that she was using her other sense to paint a picture of him in her mind and suddenly he became interested in what that picture would look like. Would it be accurate? Embellished? Would it fall short? Wondering how this woman's mind created her pictures was a fascinating experience. So he allowed her to feel and to touch and to slide and poke, chuckling to himself in the process. 

"Usually I have to buy dinner for a woman to touch me like this." He grinned.

Erasmus was very much aware of Rania's unimpressed presence within his mind as she silently allowed this woman to fondle him with naught but an aura of disapproval. He couldn't help but smile wider at that. He could practically see her sullen expression and dark body with arms crossed moodily.

Playfully the King reached out to gently poke the strange little blind woman square in the forehead, taking advantage of her blindness in an attempt to shift her mind from painting his portrait to listening to his words.

"There is a warm place in Hueco Mundo, believe me, I live there and it does have a sun. It's not a real sun, but it does exactly the same thing." He reached up to his own face to take her hand in his, her icy curled fingers being warmed in his own so that she could feel the warmth he spoke of. It was difficult to discern her thoughts from the way she spoke or how she moved, there were very little social clues in her conduct, but she was an Arrancar and Erasmus knew of few Arrancar who didn't prefer homely warmth to bitter lonely cold. All he had to do was offer it to her, see if she took the bait and if she did... 

"Las Noches isn't perfect, but it's infinitely better than anything else beyond it's walls, you'll be able to thrive there, you'll find a purpose. I hear the King is always willing to take in new arrivals, maybe he'll even give you a position beneath one of his Espada if you have the talent."

"But as you said; you go where you want, so it's up to you. I can take you back with me, if you like?" Allowing her hand to slip from the warm embrace of his fingers Erasmus watched her reaction to the sudden drop carefully. It'd be an accurate measure of just what she wanted. He could practically feel the world around him quivering in fear at the notion of him transporting her. Nature didn't like it when Erasmus broke all of it's laws just to get from point A to B, but it also knew that there was nothing it could do to stop Obsession.

"I just need your name first, can't introduce you to the locals without it."

[Words: 647][GP: 12][Total GP: 43]

It was all so very interesting to her.

His hierro was strong yet his skin softer than most, the threads of his clothing durable but comfortable. His hair was soft and obviously more looked after than her own; he lived a comfortable, luxurious life. His voice distracted her from her search; her fingers slowly dropped away, content with their findings. He was so unlike any creature she’d ever met, robust and so far off her spectrum she wondered what he tasted like.

“You can buy hollows there?” She paused, rolling such a concept around the cogs of her mind. Using a currency in Hueco Mundo didn’t seem very probable, even more so that hollows were for sale. Were resources and food so thin?

Something poked her in the head and she blinked, the spot tingling where he’d touched her. It was an odd gesture and she touched the spot gently, unsure if he’d done something to her. But it didn’t seem to be the case as he took her hand in his once more, words filling in the details she could never have guessed at.

There was a sun in Hueco Mundo.

For a woman who had no clue about truth and lies it never occurred to her not to believe him. Her eyes drew away from his lips to look blindly across the planes, as if the feeling of UV rays would reach out to her. She had wandered these lands for so many centuries, but never had she come across such a vast place. He had her curiosity and her interest and he knew it, his very existence proof that odder things could exist and be found.

“And what is your purpose?” She asked, the beginnings of a far away sand storm tickling the backs of her knees through the chiffon. From the way he spoke it was almost as if they shared a common goal, striving for one thing that contained all of their interests. Could such a goal exist, when survival was all most hollows ever wanted?

It wasn’t a hard decision by any means. She wanted to go. Even the novelty of resting in sunlight without wandering Shinigami around was worth the journey, to see if his facts were as he spoke them. It would either be a danger zone or a small paradise, yet if this man was close she couldn’t see the locals being of much trouble. It was hard to fight against what you couldn’t understand.

“I don’t have a name.” Nor had she known any hollow that did. A name was something to set you apart from the rest, a noise in which you could recognise somebody trying to get your attention. Mortals even had several, a nonsensical habit she’d never come to understand. Did these ‘locals’ of Las Noches also have names? “Do you?” She had to wonder what kind of name a hollow would have. Would they be named with human names? Several? She had nothing to lose by going with him to see for herself. Nothing except her mundane sense of living.

******

514 words: 10 GP
Total GP: 48 GP

I'll be damned if that isn't the most adorably sinister thing I've ever heard come out of a grown woman's mouth.

The concept of buying Hollow was silly, of course. Las Noches had no currency and very few people had what other people wanted that wasn't power and the only way to get that was to rip it from the cold dead hands of your superiors, not trade it for a piece of living spiritual meat. All the same though, not even the King could know about every little thing that happened in his castle. He had his vibrations that could carry movement and sound to him wherever he may be, his ghosts that could provide sight, but despite all of this there were, inevitably, blind spots. Perhaps one of those black patches on the tapestry held the image of an idiotic Arrancar trying to peddle Hollow in cages to passers by. 

"No, not that kind of dinner." He chuckled warmly. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if there's some idiot out there trying to trade Hollow, not sure what they'd trade them for though. There's nothing but sand and rock out here."

Pearls turned away from him when he told her about the sun of Las Noches. Of course, she stared in the opposite direction to where the castle actually was, but he could tell that she was thinking of what it would be like to feel the sun in this dry stinging cold. Even blind eyes couldn't hide such longing. It was just too easy. She lapped up everything he said like a man dying of thirst guzzles water. She was by far the most simple asset he'd obtained to date.

"My purpose is to make the Hollow race strong." To build a future that Xiaobei can be happy with. "To make sure that we no longer stagnate as we have in the past." To give the only child I have left something to be proud of. "To lead the Hollow race to a future they deserve, a future at the top of the food chain." To destroy those who would take it away from her.

And to do that...

"To do that I need to help people like you find their way." The breeze that warned them of the coming storm lifted his hair in the direction of Las Noches, urging him to go back before he was caught in the middle of it. It wasn't dangerous, of course, but it would be one hell of a trial getting the sand from his clothes and out of his hair. Sand storms weren't common to Hueco Mundo and only ever occurred when an overzealous Hollow decided to use an ability that it couldn't yet control, the result was a rush of power that kicked up so much force that a huge cloud of sand and debris raged across the wastes. Sometimes it lasted no longer than a few seconds, other times it could go on for days and days depending on the strength of the Hollow. By the feel of it, this was a big one. He'd have to wrap things up quickly.

But this poor soul didn't have a name and for the second time since meeting her his heart cried out for her as memories of his own awakening drifted through his mind. 

"I didn't have a name either when I first woke as an Arrancar." He told her, staring off in the direction the wind was coming from. He could already see the head of the storm crested over the largest most distant dune. "But then somebody came along and changed my life by giving me one. Erasmus, she called me." 

This woman was a complete culture overload. Her features were definitely European, maybe Italian or Spanish or of some similar descent. With all of the jewelry encrusting her face she may even have been Indian if not for her vague accent. But the translucent fabrics spoke to him of the Arabian territories of old and here there a bit of leather or buckle that reminded him of his home country. Her skin had darkened from exposure to the sun, no doubt she took frequent trips to the human world for that, but it only added to the patchwork ensemble. 

In his books Erasmus had read about a particular type of magic, more of a spiritual belief called La Mesa Blanca, one that borrowed and originated from many many different cultures. It had been a boring read, to be sure, but for some reason this woman had brought it back from his forgotten memories and into the forefront of his mind. It's literal meaning was nothing to write home about, but it was the complete miss-match of cultures that made it seem so appropriate.

"Mesablanca." He spoke the word allowed and watched her for a reaction. "How does that sound for a name?"

[Words: 817][GP: 16][Total GP: 59]

An exact fit, she thought. Perhaps, when there were people to consider him beloved. But now there was nobody, only ghosts and the voices in his head. Not even his own subjects loved him, to them he was just another monarch, they couldn't understand what he was trying to do for them. The name Erasmus couldn't have fitted him any worse.

It had been bugging him since he'd first engaged her in conversation and until now he could ignore it thanks to his vibrations allowing him to read her from the inside out. Based on the tiniest of movements in her body he could discern with some semblance of accuracy what it was she was feeling and, to an extent, thinking. But for people other than him her lack of physical emotion would be a barrier that many would find difficult to overcome. Arrancar were an emotional lot, they had to be to make up for the hearts that they didn't have and anything without such emotion was strange to them. If she didn't learn how to express herself clearly then she'd face alienation in her new environment and it just wouldn't do for such an important piece of the puzzle to be rejected by the pieces it was supposed to fit in with.

When he gave her a name he could tell that it was to her liking, that faint shuddering of contentedness was invisible to anybody but him. But the eyes that she presented to him were bland, lifeless, there was nothing there. Not even in her body, in her lips, she didn't look like she was happy with it. 

"We may need to work on your self-expression." He reached out his hands to cup her cheeks and gently touched the corners of her mouth with his thumbs. Normally he'd have just shown her, but with her being blind any kind of physically representation would be lost on her so he'd have to go with a more direct method. He didn't think she'd mind though, she seemed like the touchy-feely type.

"When you're happy or if you like something your mouth should do this." He pushed the corners of her mouth up, curling her lip into a smile that was funnier than it was endearing. "When you're unhappy, or if you don't like something, you do this." He pulled her cheeks down in the opposite direction, bringing her mouth down into a frown that was also comical. He felt silly, teaching a grown woman how to smile and how to frown, he'd never met such a blank canvas of a person before and it suddenly began to dawn on him; getting her under his thumb would be easy, trying to keep her there and teach her everything she needed to know, that would be the hard part. 

"Now then." He took his hands away from her, shaking his wrist to expel the cold of her skin from his fingers. "Las Noches is an incredible distance from here, it's no wonder you've never seen it. But I can get us there in a few seconds. You might feel a bit sick, but it's better than walking." 

The roar of the world drowned out the sound of the raging storm that whirled in the distance, growing ever closer. Erasmus willed reality to stretch, pulling himself and Mesablanca along with it until it tore open like ripped fabric and swallowed them, imploding into that space in an effort to repair the damage as they vanished into it. This was not a garganta, Erasmus had cast aside that primitive technique along with his mask and Hollow hole. Now all he had to do was force the world to open up before him, a short window from here to there. A window that mother nature preferred to keep shut.

The storm passed over their footprints.

When the world had returned to it's regular elasticity the sand beneath their feet had grown warm and the winds were kept at bay by the high walls that they were surrounded by. The dome of Las Noches flew over their heads, the mystical blue sky and the rolling clouds giving the surrounding area an elegant brightness usually found only in the human world. Nobody knew exactly how the dome could do what it did, perhaps some ancient King had found a way to harness the most pleasant summer day of earth and infuse it unto the stone that created the dome. Whatever had done it Erasmus was grateful, for the warmth of the bright orange orb above his head was a welcome feeling compared to the chill of the wasteland.

"Mesablanca," The King placed a gentle hand on her shoulder to let her know that he was still with her. "This is Las Noches. I told you it was real." 

[Words: 803][GP: 16][Total GP: 75]

"A good smile on a pretty face can be more useful than all of the power in the world when used right, but more commonly they're used to let people know whether you're enjoying yourself or if you're pleased with something. Smiles and frowns can change a persons opinion of you, help them understand what you're trying to say. A frown can be sympathetic or it can strike fear into a mans heart, they're very useful things so you'll want to master them quickly." Was what he'd told her. She'd have to learn more than just smiling and frowning if she was to survive in social situations, but she'd have plenty of time to learn in Las Noches. No doubt the woman was feeling mentally bloated after everything he'd just thrown at her, so her expression lessons could wait if she wanted them to, at least now she had more skill with it than a newborn baby.

"Anything's possible if you want it bad enough. Give it some time and you'll have free reign to explore." He told her, smiling as she gave him a conscious and crooked frown, she was already getting the hang of it. Taking his hand from her shoulder he slid it down to her forearm and gave her a gentle tug to let her know that he wanted her to follow before relinquishing contact altogether. He began making tracks towards a large tower that rose high above all other buildings within the dome, the Kings chambers.

"For now I think you should just stay close to me, we don't want you getting lost or worse. Our next order of business is to find you a place to stay, in a castle roamed by monsters it's dangerous to sleep outdoors. You can stay in my quarters until we find you a place of your own." What would people think of him, seeing the King take random human and Arrancar women into his quarters on a regular basis? He audibly chuckled at the thought of beast born of sin slandering him for sin. 

He rambled to fill the air as he pushed open a pair of doors three times his own size as if they were made of feathers, leading her through the many halls of the tower until they were in his private chambers. He told her about the Espada and their functions and the fraccion that served beneath them, told them that the King governed the Espada as the highest point of power, informed her of how huge Las Noches really was and then when they reached the generic wooden door to his own room.

"You'll be staying here. You're welcome to do whatever you like while you're here, all I ask is that you do your best to not damage the armchair in the corner of the room, it's my favorite."

"You're gonna have so much fun here, I can just tell."

[Words: 488][GP: 9][Total GP: 84]