Chapter Text
The wolf comes to her first.
Her blood beats with power, child of Light and Dark that she is. Starlight pulses under her skin, sings with an ancient magic of a kingdom beneath the stars. One of the first ones. Anger pours off of her in waves, seeps into the cracks in her mind, makes her easy to see into. A guilt has made home in her bones, an impatience to be found on the tip of her tongue, a wild desperation that nestles beneath her skin. Power has made itself known to her, rooted in her chest and filled her to flooding with how much more she wants. There is a vicious desire in her, seared deep within her heart, calling to the divinity she craves. An insatiable hunger. Savathûn knows it well.
"Artemis." The name of a god. The power of one, too. She thinks she understands what she wields, the weight of the name she carries.
"Savathûn." Poison on her tongue, venom between wolfish teeth.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Oh, the anger within her twists. She doesn't enjoy feeling patronized. As if she already knows all there is to know. Naive little girl.
"Where is Osiris?"
Ah. "You know the agreement, my friend."
The hatred boils in her blood. "We aren't friends. I want you to know something."
"If it's any consolation, I am rather unable to do much but listen."
The ice in her heart creeps outward, and Savathûn can feel the restraint it takes her to keep it trapped between her ribs. Arrogant child, to assume all of this is about her, that she is any more than a player in this great game. What a contradicting combination it is, the belief that she is a hero and the desire to know all. As if the latter does not kill the former.
The wolf bares her teeth. "You," she hisses, "are not going to hurt us. I don't know what you're planning and I don't care. We are going to help you, and you are going to give us back Osiris—unharmed, alive—and then you are going to leave. You've done enough to my City."
Your City. As if it were hers alone to keep, to defend, to claim. As if that's what this is really about to her. Her tunnel vision will be her downfall if her arrogance doesn't kill her first.
"And what," Savathûn tests, "makes you think I'm planning anything?"
"I am not an idiot." Ha. "I don't trust you, and I won't. Take what you came for and leave us alone. Do you understand?"
"Are you threatening me?"
"I am warning you. You know what I'm capable of."
Savathûn's tone sours. "Yes," she says dryly, "I know very well why they call you the King-Killer. I can't say I appreciate the title the way your City does."
"Then you know very well," she snaps back—oh, clever girl, "exactly what will happen if you try to betray us. If you give me a single reason to think that you won't give us back Osiris unharmed, if you put my friends in danger—" and ah, there it is, the true motivation that lives in her, "I will kill you."
So bold. So unafraid. All that she has been through and all she has done, and yet she still feels as if she is invincible. A god in and of herself. Careless wolfish child, no regard to who she bites.
Savathûn knows what has happened to those who underestimated this girl. She is powerful. But that doesn't make her wise. It doesn't make her less vulnerable to anything else. "You certainly know how to get a point across."
Artemis turns on her heel and storms back towards the chamber doors.
"Might I impart a bit of wisdom on you?"
"No."
"We are more alike than you care to admit." Savathûn calls after her anyways, and she slows to a halt at the foot of the staircase. "Pragmatic. Clever. Willing to do whatever it takes to get what we want."
Artemis stops in her tracks. She's heard those same words before, from the same mouth, even if she didn't realize it at the time. The connection clicks in her brain, and she squares her shoulders, clenches her jaw, bones grinding themselves away beneath her silk-soft frame. The ice fills her lungs, sharpens her fangs, stretches her spine. Her mind feels like a hurricane when Savathûn tests the edges of it. Caught in the eye of her own storm.
"Your power is no crown," Savathûn says with finality. "Keep treating it like one and you may find it heavier than you are willing to bear."
Artemis is silent for a long moment. Considering. Remembering. All the gods she's brought down, all the empires who thought they were eternal. All the darkness she's leapt into and survived the fall. Icarus girl, don't you know that hubris is for gods?
"I can bear anything," the wolf says quietly. Liar. "Don't make me prove it."
The sound of her cloak brushing the ground is the only noise as she leaves the room.