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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    Anyone;
    #1
    and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
    a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
    There was smoke, dying embers, shouting, the roaring of the earth, and then silence.

    Castile knew to grab Cyprin and carry her home. Many others, like Sochi, took to the portals or fled by their own means as the volcano belched more and more magma.

    Exhausted, he slowly eases toward the cliff ledge where he sets down his youngest sister. She peers up at him curiously, but he utters not a single word before thrusting his wings and turning toward the mainland of Loess. He glides quietly down, landing gently on a raised hill just as his body shifts from dragon to horse. Lacerations slice across his side and face, dirt and blood caked on his skin. Every muscle trembles from the exertion of their war, but it has settled. Tephra burned for attacking Loess. That’s all he could have hoped for.

    But there is more war to be had.

    Another surge of adrenaline courses through his veins when Sinner and Mary seep into his thoughts, crawling through the cracks of his thoughts to reach the forefront. His lips curl distastefully, but then he lifts his head and almost seems to grin. They will bend the knee, those traitors, or lose their forest in the making. The dog will yelp and the woman will break.

    Castile doesn’t announce this, not yet. A silence blankets the recovering kingdom as the soldiers tend to their wounds – both physical and emotional – and the dragon king grants them that peace as he observes his own.

    castile
    #2
    cRess
    like a house on fire we're up in flames; i'd burn here if that's what it takes

    She’s made it abundantly clear that this is the last place she wants to be, but she can’t seem to stop healing their broken. She wanders Loess for a while after healing the golden angel-boy, too restless to find her son and curl up with him; he is under the watchful eye of his grandfather anyways, and she honestly needs some time away from the small, seemingly underdeveloped child. All of her other children had been strong at birth, and she can’t seem to figure out where his issues stem from. His father, perhaps? It had been dark that night – she had not gotten a good look at Rodrik.

    Her golden wings drag the ground as she walks; she almost wants to take to the skies, but all of her energy has fled after pouring so much of it into the boys and Ophanim. A dragon cuts across the sky above her and she watches it almost lustfully, before realizing that it is just Castile, home from the bloody burning. He disappears on the horizon and she begins heading in that direction, knowing that she’ll find him before long.

    She tucks her wings back to her sides as his horse-form comes into view, atop a small hill. She approaches him warily as he trembles from the aftershocks of the adrenalin wearing off; he is caked with blood and she can see cuts and lacerations all along him, but she doesn’t make a move to heal him. Ophanim would have died without her help, and perhaps the children, too – Castile will be fine. Let him heal naturally, slowly, and bear the scars for the rest of his life.

    Stopping in front of him, she fixes him with hard eyes. “Why do you want me here so desperately?” she asks him bluntly, tail flicking with agitation. “My son and I had just earned our freedom and you turn right around to take me back. Why?”

    @[Castile] this is crap but i wanted cress to be ~anger~

    infected.
    #3
    and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
    a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
    It was only a matter of time until she found him, confronted him. Will she be angry? The question surfaced once or twice before drifting to the bottom of his thoughts to decay and fade from memory.

    What he didn’t expect was her approach immediately following his return from the war when his muscles are screaming from the exertion. Dried blood flakes away when his head turns to look at her with narrowed eyes. Even now, his mind buzzes as it teeters between exhaustion and adrenaline. A flickering thought considers abandoning her here on the hilltop, but Cress poses a question that is far too tantalizing to go unanswered.

    Despite the grime on his face and the wounds crisscrossing his body, Castile adopts a smug, boyish grin. The answer sits on his tongue for a long moment as he carefully traces her own face up to where she has no ears, then down her neck, before meeting her eyes again. ”I wasn’t done with you,” he murmurs with a nonchalant shrug, ”and I find you intriguing.” That much is true. It’s more of her life’s experiences blended together that fascinate him and how it has constructed someone so fierce yet so uncertain of her place in this small world.

    ”It hurts my feelings how eager you seemed to run away. Here I thought we had a great conversation.” An airy chuckle slips past his lips then, accommodated by a residual exhalation of smoke that had been swirling in his lungs. ”You don’t know where you want to be,” a step closer brings him within reach as their eyes connect, ”and Loess has treated you rather kindly I would say.” The muscles of his jaw clench as a brow lifts curiously. ”Is being here, in my company, so terrible?” And it would’ve been uncomfortable to hurt her in the destruction of Tephra, no?

    castile


    @[Cress]
    #4
    cRess
    like a house on fire we're up in flames; i'd burn here if that's what it takes

    Maybe he’s right – maybe she doesn’t know where she wants to be. She was content in the Resort, until they forced her hand and made her unwelcome. Beyond that, she can’t honestly say she’s had a home in a long time. Leliana had magicked her to Tephra, the one place since the Valley she had truly felt as though she belonged, but she had barely spent a day there before being stolen away back to Loess. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to settle, to relax; he couldn’t even have given her that. He’ll have to pardon her for her anger, but sometimes she finds she can’t control the fires in her chest, even after so long.

    He is smug as he considers her, his eyes tracing her upper body from her scarred remains of ears to the dragon tattoo upon her chest and she shifts self-consciously as he speaks. He shrugs the words off as if they mean nothing, but she knows better – he has no plans on letting her leave, now or otherwise. “Conversations have little to do with it, Castle,” she says bluntly, and despite her anger she pushes down the flames that tickle her throat. “My family is more important to me than conversing with a king.”

    He steps closer – close enough to touch, but she doesn’t pull away. “Maybe I don’t,” she admits, her brown eyes never leaving his face, “but while I would love to consider you friend, it doesn’t change the fact that I was brought here as a prisoner – for your impending war. You and your allies destroyed another kingdom. Children died there, and would have died here as well if I had not been here to heal them.”

    She pauses then, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. “You are not a terrible person, Castile, but I have lived through too much war in my life already. I just want peace.”

    @[Castile] wow this is so late i'm so sorry

    infected.




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