Whatever those aureate eyes had expected, they stutter upon the seething dark of the Kingbreaker’s shadowy edges in the gloom he lingers in. It’s with a noble sort of polite silence that the boy tips his head to him, and the Kingbreaker waits- one heartbeat, two- before taking a single step into the sun-gilt shafts of misty light and mirroring the gesture; then lower, because his neck is powerful, and as he stretches toward the earth he knows the muscle is standing out on it, and as he rises, his great shadow cuts through the light, more, more, until his solid silhouette has swallowed all but a fiery halo, and all the while his eyes watch the tawny glimmers in the stare of his companion, watching them circle like little golden fish, flashing as they flicker over him.

“A dear friend, I suppose.” His voice is a little small, a little coarse, and sweet as scuffed knees and dirty palms trying to surreptitiously rub themselves clean on pressed pant legs. The smile he puts on is a grimace of lips too soft for it tugging unhappily away from bright teeth. The Kingbreaker returns it with none of the hesitation of muscle; a far more natural shift of flesh over bone, though it’s equally joyless on his cold metal face. “I've come to see if the Lagoon is still taking on fresh meat,” the ashen boy in his shadow continues, his tone growing stronger with the bloody words he chews. The Kingbreaker cannot help but wonder if he can taste the iron in them, or if he’s simply spitting up the violence other mouths have said in his ear, taking strength in the nonchalance given to him by lack of understanding.

The steel beast rolls the rusty iron rod of his companion’s words in his own mouth, metal flaking off and blackening his tongue in turn, such that when he replies, it’s in a voice stripped of living flesh or beating passions, and all that remains is a vast and hollow and echoing space, barren and cold.

“And you, my darling, wish to be the meat in their grinder?” Pulped red, fresh sweet strawberry crushed between gnashing teeth ground down by long, tireless use. “I am sure they would shiver to have you, and tire of you quickly, once they’d cracked your bones and licked out your marrow and left you empty and hungry, as they are.” He tilts his great head, neither judgmental nor pitying, simply a tarnished, dark mirror in an empty room, waiting. “And you would be home, then, with your own kind. Is that what you seek?”