"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
06-01-2015, 12:17 PM (This post was last modified: 06-01-2015, 12:18 PM by Rhy.)
and when I breathed, my breath was lightning
She tears across Beqanna, riding a wave of electric through the air. As the crow flies, the distance to the Tundra is so much shorter. As electric flies, it’s even faster.
As she tumbled through the rip in the realms, she realized quite quickly she was plummeting to the beach and likely death. If not death, at least broken bones. But as quickly as she thought it, the electric formed beneath her, solidifying and flying beneath her. Really, it seemed to materialize in front of her and disappear behind her, moving her along all the while. Like an endless slide, some wild rollercoaster.
She laughs as she leaves the beach behind. The real beach, and she knows this because age no longer weights her down and all her powers are back. Plus some. She didn’t leave the realm of the death unscathed, but rather, with the ability to become the dead.
It is strange, and she shifts between ghost and living as she rides the electric to the Tundra. Vanquish had said he’d be here, alive. Though she needed to see for herself. Before she went back to the Jungle, before she found Lagertha. She needed to know he was okay.
She needed to tell him how proud Vanquish was. No is. He’s still around, just not where everyone can see him. Oh, but she can.
The electric slide beneath her leans toward the ground as she approaches the ice wall, dropping her lightly on the frozen earth in front of their entrance. She is tempted to race into the kingdom rather than wait, but she knows that she isn’t welcome here. Even to find him. Instead, lightning cracks over the sky, and she waits. Because if he’s here, if he’s okay, she knows he’ll respond long before she sees him.
06-14-2015, 06:40 PM (This post was last modified: 06-14-2015, 06:46 PM by Kratos.)
Kratos had been an ill sore of a sight across the Tundra in the days since he had been spat from the sky with flesh, temper and hide all wounded. He had been too late, but wasn’t that always the case with him? Too late to sit on a throne still warm from his father’s weight, too late to be there before his bones were burnt to ash, too late to the Tundra, just too fucking late. But he doesn’t pity himself, no, it only makes his fervor wilder, more fevered. It only drives his intensity to a figurative (or perhaps literal) boiling point. He had been idle with his gifts, slothful with his bloodline. His father would have softened it with pampered words but his mother would have called it for what it was, laziness. She would have been dismayed at the squandering of his possibility, maybe even more so than his crown mongering father.
But nonetheless, the other Brothers of the Tundra had steered clear of the volatile, lightning wielding giant lately. And for good reason, his temper was sour and he looked even worse than his mood raged, dried blood still caked on his flanks and legs, a mark of black stone glimmered from his left side like the smudge of an explosion, the skin around it was inflamed and angry - his eyes hooded and searching. He had ran the length of the Tundra to the Amazons more times than he cared to ever again waiting for her return, his throat knotted with lightning and stomach empty and groaning. He was worried.
And worrying pissed him off. So when her call finally came, he sent a lightning storm back into the sky that shuddered the Tundra’s Great Wall and left a static in the air that made his own jaw clench. His steps are heavy and deep as long legs drive him across the summer frostgrass, his nostrils scarlet and wide – he ached for her claws that he knew could sink deep and he ached to dig his own power deep into her flesh, make her feel how he had felt. The pressure of his worry, the depth of his fever for her to be beneath his shelter (like she needed it). When he finally came to her side he reached out with a mouthful of dripping lightning, teeth bared as he reached out and bit down on her chest. Without stopping he strode past her, circling around her backside and finally up around to her other shoulder, wavering at her quest-born scars, “what took you so long?” He demands, as if he wasn’t the one who had been sent back from the Other World, "what happened?"He asks before a low squeal emits past his lips as he continues to ascertain her well-being, nipping her neck, “I worried,” he says, more quietly.
She isn’t surprised the his storm of a response. He wouldn’t be pleased. First, because she had gone when he had told her to stay (ah, but she’s an Amazon, she listens to know one but herself). Second, because she had succeeded where he did not. Third, because he would be worried. The third one she hopes, but does not know. Would he really worry about her? Did he care for her that much? Or did he love her for the lightning in her veins?
For a while, she had loved the lightning, not him. She had loved the ability to touch him, but he had been something to wild for the girl her father had raised her to be. But slowly, surely, she grew to understand that she was more than that girl. Kratos helped her understand that. The quest helped her understand that. Her sister and her parents and the sound of static at the end of the world. Everything together had changed her, shaped her.
She finally understood Brunhild from all those years ago, and the words ring true now. You are amazing.
She wasn’t full of herself. But she was amazing. She was electric and claws and teeth and now death, all wrapped into one.
He comes, and in his fashion the electric drips from his mouth and his teeth go to her chest. He bites down hard, but she doesn’t notice, or simply doesn’t care, because he’s real and alive. Vanquish had been right. Which means Lagertha is all right too. He keeps stalking around her, a predator with his prey, nipping at her as if she isn’t alright. He’s the one covered in dried blood.
What took you so long? he asks, but it’s a demand and she doesn’t answer right away. He’s still prowling, going to nip at her neck again. She flickers and disappears for a moment, coming back but in a form that isn’t corporeal now. “Stop it,” she says, spinning to face him again. “Just stop. For one minute.”
She turns corporeal again and presses herself against him. She tucks in beneath his neck, too short to wrap herself around him. There’s no electric, no claws, just them. Because it has never once been just them. And she’d like to know how it feels, because hours ago she wasn’t sure she’d ever have the opportunity. For all she knew, Carnage had left Lagertha and Kratos to die at the end of the world, inside the mouths of langoliers.
She pulls away and faces him after a moment, after he’s asked what happened and finally admitted that he was worried too. She closes her eyes for a moment, both content to be back in the world of the living and not quite ready to think about the realm of the dead.
But then, after a moment, she speaks. “We came back with Gail. But Beqanna wouldn’t let her though. The beach sort of, broke away. Took us to another realm. To the beach. Where all Beqanna’s dead are. Our traits didn’t work, and we were dying there.” She pauses. There’s so much to say, and yet only a few things that matter. “I found my parents. I haven’t seen them since I was a filly. I don’t think Kora knows. And your Dad found me. He’s the one who got me back here.” And then she falls silent, waiting. Wondering how he’ll take all that.
Kratos had never been deaf to the stories of what “love” had done to his family, to Queen Quark’s, to Yael’s. The crimes committed by his father’s wandering heart and the punishments paid by those left in its wake still echoed through to today. His brothers and sisters left without the profound and eager guidance of their prominent parents, Lyric and Vanquish both long dead now. In the end they were both prey to the same beasts of neglect and promises left forever broken.
As a child the titan was quick to flame at the idea of love, how paltry the notion was in comparison to the guarantee of power that his parents shared together. Lyric was brash and a revered warrior by anyone’s measure, his father a shifting compromise of feral power and a gallant heart. They could have built a house of profound influence and even though his father’s love for the spotted mare was unquestionable, still he strayed. Lyric had been forgiving of Tarnished, his brother born of Queen Nocturnal, political reasons he had reasoned to her and she believed and she forgave. But still again he strayed, this time to the golden queen that had loved him for years. Love is what built him but it is also what tore his parent’s promised dynasty down. He could have been the heir to half of Beqanna, if his father hadn't trounced the god's favor for the flimsy reward of love sought and conquered.
But love, or something akin to it, is what soothed the storm in his tongue as she wrapped herself against his shoulder. A calmness settled the cacophony of lightning that clamored in his belly and swept warmth through his blood. A hundred unutterable words threaten to spill from his lips as he drapes his neck across her honeyed body but only a single sigh of warm breath slips across her skin. He lets the silence swagger in the air as he moves his black muzzle across her flesh, absorbing the moment of softness so rarely felt.
When she finally continues, a mixture of flooding pride and great sickness smote his heart at the story of her triumph and his father’s connection. “Your triumph swells my blood with pride,” he says, “even though your total disregard for my wishes boils it too,” he adds, bumping her nose with his own. "My father?" A subtle tremor of a frown twists his lips, “did he speak of me?” He asks, black ears flicking uneasily atop his heavy white head, “was my mother there?”
For a moment, she understands what her parents have felt for so many years. Whatever love exists between Kratos and herself is different from the kind of love her parents share. Theirs is pure and beautiful and endless. Even in death, they stay together as they had in life, two parts of one whole. Kratos and Rhy are each very much their own whole. They are more like a sunrise and a sunset. They exist together and in opposition of one another. They are made better by the presence of the other. Together, they are more powerful. Together, they push the other to be better than ever dreamed of when they go their separate ways.
But in that moment, with his neck draped over her, his nose brushing against her flesh, she knows what her parents must feel like. Even if only briefly.
He doesn’t speak until she does, breaking the moment. But they are not known for quiet, peaceful moments. They are both fire and brimstone, in the end. She laughs as he replies. “If you wanted a mare that listened to the wishes of a man, you shouldn’t have picked an Amazonian.” She grins at him as a prick of lightning tickles his side. Nothing painful, just making a point. For them, it was just like the bump on her nose.
He switches gears to his father, and his mother. Her smiles changes a bit, less playful, but still genuine. “He did, actually.” Kratos was the only reason Vanquish saved Rhy, after all. The titan had no vested interest in her other than via his son. “He said I should push you to be better. To be a King, in fact. Because as we all know, behind every great is a better woman.” She laughs, playful again, before sobering. “I didn’t see your mother, though that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. We can go, if you want. I can take you there.” Because of course, Rhy isn’t entirely alive anymore.
