Desreal: people are stupid; ERA

Kurai is surrounded by a perpetual storm. Even when the sky is pale-white and still, above, the air is tremulous with the power of his nightmarish Lightning. Stupify is not an ability that functions only at will; it is almost always present about him in some way, in the form of frenetic and random flashes that spark off of him especially now that his entire body is a hardwired channel of conductive metallic menace.

He watches her for a moment, bemused, and his ruminations are obscured in the foggy austerity of those white eyes. She doesn’t think like a child. He’s surprised and pleased at this. All he can remember is Baraqel, blood-traitor that he is. Absently, he shakes his head; he’d keep her here if he could, not because he thinks she can be of use now but because he doesn’t want her under the influence of those established idiots for any period of time. The Wolves especially – it’s unfortunate that she’s found herself there, especially now that Alshain is displaced among them. It was much easier to keep track of the Falcon when he led an army and couldn’t do anything without someone taking word of it to Desreal for Kurai to hear about.

Her wit does not bother him; he inclines his head to her with a wry look. “Well, most mares my age have been dead for around four thousand years. Necrophilia is hardly better.”

On the topic of Kurai being selective about who he sleeps with, he does not sleep with dead things.

“Don’t worry about him,” Kurai says quickly, latching his pointed dragon-tail against his haunches. “With the Wolves, you are at least part of an established society – useless as it may be, hardly less so than Solira – which means that even if Alshain does somehow discover who you are, he will not be able to do anything about it. If you stayed here, then you would inevitably be found out by Saphira in a matter of days.” Kurai disliked the both of them alone, and together they are worse.

“Tell me, have you seen your brother in Andarin?” Kurai says “your brother” and not “my son” very deliberately; he will not own up to the pathetic truant, glorified only for the power that Kurai gave him and respected only by random, pyromaniacal chance.