fault lines tremble underneath my glass house; atrox and any

[Ilka]

She remembered the day it had happened, deep in the belly of the meadow with a night sky stretched overhead and pocked with cold, silver stars. At first the stallion had been Shah, his kind face and sad, luminous eyes watching her from across the way. But as the night had unfolded, something changed. She felt it like a tremor of electricity trailing across the silk of her gleaming black skin, like butterflies burning in her stomach. Out of the corner of her eye he would change, silver to purple and then back again when her face turned to him like a flower to the sun if only to catch a glimpse. It was like the echo of a lie, an empty illusion at war with itself. She knew then, or she suspected, but it was easier to pretend like she hadn’t noticed, like she wasn’t a bug caught in a web. She shouldn’t have stayed, shouldn’t have let him touch her, but in that moment it was easier to feel relevant, to feel his mouth on her skin instead of the relentless loneliness eating pitted holes out of her chest. The regret had come later, later when the purple had stayed and his face wasn’t Shah’s and suddenly she was alone in the dark with those cold, terrible stars and the weight of her mistake.

But now, with sweat slick and gleaming in the hollows of her once delicate body, she felt only fear as it wrapped cold, skeletal fingers around the ache and tremble of her beating heart. She reached the edge of the Chamber just as the spasms of another contraction brought her to her knees in the cool dirt. The next crumpled her body. She had meant to find her mother, to find Oksana, to find some sort of comfort in this moment she was so afraid of. But maybe it was better this way, tucked away at the edge of the kingdom in a dark, private hollow as first one and then another damp body joined her in the dirt. Her sides heaved and muscles pushed to their absolute limit trembled and shook in the wake of the birth, but she lifted her face to them, eased her balance tiredly over her belly instead of stretched flat on her side in the dirt.

Her breath caught in her throat, dandelion wisps blowing in her lungs.
They were perfect.

She struggled quietly to her feet, those nearly gold eyes wide with wonder as she stretched her nose to the first, to the mulberry colt looking back at her. And then suddenly they were gone. She recoiled as though she had been struck, stumbling forward to touch her nose to a ground that was still warm where they had lain only seconds before. As the seconds gathered and collected and passed her by, the horror grew in her chest like a ravenous beast. She forgot her weariness, forgot the apprehension of being a mother, forgot the way her body ached and trembled so wrought as it was with exhaustion.

And then, as if following an impossible instinct, she turned and leapt deeper into the kingdom, her eyes flashing like spun gold set on fire.

ILKA

makai x oksana

soooo the twins are magicky and have disappeared to go hang-out with great-grandpa atrox. obviously ilka doesn't know any of this. so it's a fun treasure hunt if anyone feels like popping in.

[atrox]

a t r o x -- For the most part, Atrox had been enjoying his respite from work. He had spent several years raising Ana after Elite had left, teaching her how to hunt, how to behave [mostly], and how to enjoy the fine art of rebellion. She was a quick study and while she was…admittedly a little crude, he had come to enjoy her outbursts of energy—her blunt honesty, lack of social graces, and, if he was being wholly honest with himself, her strength. He had never seen anyone hunt large game with quite as much natural prowess. It had been fascinating to watch her come into her own. Which made their farewell a little bittersweet, although he had known it had been for the best. Perhaps one day she would find her way back to the kingdom of pine and fog, but until then, she needed to find her own path. As loyal to the Chamber as he was, the panther-stallion had no desire to force his own bloodline to live here. The Chamber did not need unwilling soldiers; she needed those willing to bleed. Still, his days had grown admittedly stagnant—the hours long, the nights cold. That is, they had, until tonight. He had been in his cat form lounging in a tree when the two had appeared out of thin air next to its trunk, a duo so eerily similar in build and so clearly newly born that he started. Sniffing, watching the two as they tangled and then untangled, he peered down, long tail swishing back and forth through the air. “Well, well,” he finally murmured in his lethargic drawl. “What do we have here?” He considered them for a moment longer, feeling the electric charge in the air, before he padded his way down the tree. They were a study of purple and mulberry and the color of the deepest part of the night sky—and they were related to him. He could feel the connection tugging him internally, the strangest of sensations. “What are you?” he mused to himself, touching his feline nose to their shoulders. What strange creation had been created now? And why did he feel like they were connected to him? panther-stallion | ex-king | forever chamber guardian

[woolf]

the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight
{drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}

 
The first thing that he feels is the cold. It is sharp, clear, brutal—and it sears the underside of his lungs as he draws his first breath. The second thing that he feels is the curdling of magic underneath his coat. It is as instinctive and natural as the first, shuddering breath; the electricity of it sparks his veins alive and he curls himself into it. He has no way of knowing that there is something darker to his magic; he has no way of knowing that what he and his sister can do is not natural. To Woolf, magic is just what he is. What they are.

He is in the process of opening his eyes—emerald green like his grandmother’s—when he feels it happen. It races through his veins, and he just closes his eyes, leans into it, rests his chin on the back of his sister. Before he knows it, they are gone and mother is no longer looming over them. The air here is thinner and although he wouldn’t have believed it possible, colder. His lungs ache from the frost with each breath.

Forcing his eyes to open, he takes in the pine trees and the needles crushed beneath their tangled bodies. He takes in the soft, curled purple of his sister by his side, the sight of her both new and yet completely familiar. And then, from nowhere, he hears the drawl of his great-grandfather. Tiny, mulberry ears perk forward and he lifts his head toward the source of the sound, his newborn mouth pulling into a thoughtful frown.

Who are they? What are they?

He’s not sure. Exhaustion drags through his veins, and he fights against the urge to curl into himself and his sister, fights against the desire to just close his eyes and rest. Instead, he pushes to his legs, balance off but his body unnaturally composed in its motions. He says nothing and blinks slowly at the cat who prowls toward them. Silently, he shifts momentarily into a replica of Atrox, tail flicking behind him, yellow eyes lazy.

This does not surprise him.

The shifting does not last long. After several breaths, he is back as a colt. His mind breathes out and he can feel it crawling around him, stretching and yawning into existence. “Woolf,” he breathes into the mind of Atrox and whoever happened to be around the group—effectively naming himself. “My name is Woolf.” Looking down to his sister, lights flash around them, white and then purple and then the crushed gold of his mother’s eyes. They dance and intertwine and then die suddenly, collapsing into themselves. “We are the anchor.” Even if he does not know yet what that means.

Woolf

[bright]

with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean
she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene

Curled as she is with only the naked ground beneath her, Bright, too, feels the cold. Sharp as it is, like teeth peeling away at the rich purple of her still-damp fur, it isn’t enough to draw her focus from the energy humming like electricity beneath her quivering skin. She doesn’t move, doesn’t open those pale violet eyes; there is too much happening inside to bother with the world waiting patiently for her on the other side of her eyelids. She breathes inwardly and it is a tremulous sound, a whisper of life that collects like a ghost around her whiskered lips. Somewhere, somewhere nearby, something calls to her like a beacon and the energy beneath her skin, that feral magic bleeding in her veins, responds so sharply that for a long moment she cannot breathe. For a moment, she doesn’t need to breathe. And in that instant she can feel herself suspended, indistinguishable from any other star hanging bright and cold in a void, black sky, and it isn’t until she can untangle her lungs from those crushing bones and take another trembling breath that she feels herself flung across the universe.

There is a pause before they do, a hesitation etched into every tiny quiver of that gem-bright purple skin, but her violet eyes fling open to swallow this new world. Her world. The first thing she notices is that it looks just as cold as it feels, a cloudless steel sky like the edge of a blade, flat and metallic. Beneath it she traces the branches, bone-bare and empty except for a large black cat staring back at her. He is the second thing she notices. The third, when her eyes drift from him unconcerned to trace the shape of her mulberry twin, is that mother isn’t here. A feeling flutters at her consciousness, one she would later come to know as surprise, but it passes almost immediately when the panther leaps from his branch to touch his nose to her skin.

She doesn’t rise at first, instead choosing to acknowledge Atrox with a flicker of electricity, like tiny luminescent worms wiggling harmlessly over the white and purple of her skin. It won’t hurt him though, the magic is too young to be cruel, and it disappears nearly as soon as it comes. Her eyes flicker to Woolf as he rises and shifts, instantly a perfect reflection of the panther standing between them. She isn’t surprised, is neither impressed nor unimpressed in the same way she would feel about him using his legs to walk. This strangeness, this feral magic shared between them, between their family, between life and death itself, was entirely expected. Their dreams had been filled with this stuff just as soon as their minds had shaped in the womb, grand adventures in a world far less tangible than this one – though the magic had been easier there, without consequence.

Again though, the panther draws her attention back to him and she can feel the magic pooling beneath her skin. But the only answer she has for him, so very unlike Woolf, is a question. “What aren’t we?” She says as she, too, rises from the cold ground to tilt her delicate purple face up to him with bright, bright eyes. “Maybe we’re everything.”

bright

[atrox]

a t r o x -- Magic does not phase him. He had seen enough of it in his life to know the trickery that sometimes flowed through the veins of other horses. So he does not startle when Bright’s coat shudders with electricity or when Woolf shifts into the mirror image of him or when the trio of them are surrounded by the lights that flare into the sky—illuminating the kingdom with their brightness. He just watches them with that slight frown pulling at the edges of his mouth, his face turning hard with the concentration. His heavy head angles toward the mulberry coat when his voice glosses through his mind, and then toward the filly when she seemingly floats to her feet. These were not children that he had seen before. Usually, magic like this was gained later in life—either from inheritance or from heaven’s gift. While he was no stranger to magic of this nature, he had never seen anyone born like it. Never seen it woven into the very DNA of someone in the same way that it was with these two standing before him. This was entirely new to him, and he was intrigued. “I can see that,” is all he answers finally, shifting back, his body becoming that of the battle-worn stallion. He was not particularly tall, but he was strong—his color as dark as the sky was now. “Where is your mother?” he finally asks, because he knows in some way that she was part of all of this, that they all were. He would not recognize his granddaughter when he saw her, but he would not be surprised to know that she was related to him. After years and dozens upon dozens of descendants, many were. “My name is Atrox,” he finally says, although he is not entirely sure it is necessary. panther-stallion | ex-king | forever chamber guardian

[woolf]

the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight
{drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}

 
He does not need to look toward Bright to know that she was there. He tracked her with every cell in his body, the same way he tracked all of his family. He felt his mother running through the Chamber, but he did not feel guilt for the terror in her veins—the fear that she had lost her children. He accepts it as yet another truth of the world and he did not spend much time dwelling on it. He also felt, in some distant corner of this land, his paternal grandfather in the kingdom of sandy dunes. He felt his maternal grandfather running himself ragged around the meadow, the sickness in his lungs. They were all moving beacons in his mind, and he did not struggle to feel them ebbing and flowing around him. After all, his very existence was tied into their own. He was their anchor—even if they did not know it. 

Turning back to Atrox, his forest-green eyes sharpen a little, and his lips barely curve. “I know,” he finally says, speaking aloud for the first time in his life. His voice is surprisingly deep for a colt of a few hours, the sound of it ringing and echoing in his throat. “You have been King of the,” he roots through his great-grandfather’s mind for a second before finding the word, “Chamber twice. Your heart is beating beneath us right now.” Woolf digs into the ground, feels his magic wrap around the heart once, testing the edges of it, relishing the pulse before unwrapping itself and returning to its source. “You are the panther.”

The panther. The nightwalker. The rogue. The diseased. 

They were all tied to them. He felt the strings extending from him and his sister to them, the tenuous ties that seemingly swayed in the wind. Woolf closed his eyes, and his smile was distant before he brought himself back. “Mother will be back soon,” he murmurs, not in too much of a rush to let her find them. He was not interested in being coddled like a child, and while he was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, he knew he could stave them off for a while longer. Turning toward his sister, he nosed at her neck a little, finding comfort in having her next to him, the magic between them building upon itself like a storm. Beneath their feet, small grass pushes through the pine needles and begins to flourish. He does not notice.

Woolf

[bright]

with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean
she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene

Bright feels them too, the scattered pieces of her family through so many generations, tangled like constellations across a wild sky that existed only in her heart. They flickered and they burned and they left scars on the inside of her chest, branding her as their own- and oh, she was. She felt invisible tethers binding her to each one in turn, unbreakable spider silk, and she wondered if they felt it too or if their minds were too small, too mortal, too flawed to notice something so beautiful, so important.

Her pale violet eyes turn to settle on Woolf, on his small mulberry face and a pair of green eyes that felt too sharp for his newness, and she knew hers must look just the same. When he sorts through Atrox thoughts, thumbing through truths and memories like he was turning pages in a diary, she flinches. It is a strange moment, one she cannot explain, a reflex of how she should feel – sorry to see him lain bare before them. But the feeling isn’t hers, it’s like an echo of morality, and it fades as soon as it flares and there’s only a furrowing in her small brow to even note its passing.

There was nothing this family possessed that did not belong to the twins.

It isn’t until Atrox asks and Woolf answers, that Bright remembers their mother. Again her brow furrows and she feels like she should be more concerned for the mare who had given them life and would continue to do so until the twins could be weaned. But the longer she considers it the clearer it becomes that Woolf is the only one who would be able to coax such feelings from her. For Ilka, their mother, there was only the same feral but vague possessiveness she felt for all of her family.

Mine.

Woolf noses her neck and she shifts even closer, settling against him so close that their shared magic sparked and hummed and pulsed with pleasure. Her eyes flashed pale and perfect and disarmingly wide, and when she turned to hold his gaze she felt that word brand itself across her greedy heart.

Mine.

bright

[atrox]

a t r o x -- The longer that he stands here, the more he is acutely aware of the strangeness of his night. He can feel the colt moving through his memories and the mulberry boy does not bother hiding the intrusion. Atrox feels the memories flash—sees his life moving in fast forward as the boy consumes them all. For a moment, rage fill his chest, but it soon dies, and he just accepts the fact that the boy’s magic had rooted through his mind so effortlessly. Woolf seemed as incapable, as disinterested, in controlling his powers as Anastasia had been. She had killed without second thought, and Atrox had not attempted to stop her. He wasn’t about to put boundaries on the duo before him now. Instead, he just sighs, yawns. “You know, you will encounter soul who do not like that intrusion very much,” his voice is thick, and he drawls them out, enjoying the lengthening of the syllables. For a stallion who lived for the drums of war, he never seemed to be in a rush to get anywhere. “Luckily for you, I do not overly care. You will not find much of interest rattling around in my mind.” Not entirely true; he had seen a lot to interest newborn magicians, but he wasn’t about to invite them further into his memories. Stepping forward, he eyes the grass growing beneath them, the sparks between them. “Do you plan on staying here?” With war on the horizon, it would not be disadvantageous to have magicians on the Chamber’s side. Set and Ana both were powerful, having spent years mastering their powers, but they were as reliable as magicians tended to be—and they could not be relied upon to show up when they were needed. “The Chamber tends to like things like you.” He could feel her purr her consent beneath him. panther-stallion | ex-king | forever chamber guardian

[woolf]

the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight
{drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}

Mine. The word that flashes in Bright’s mind is the same one that flashes in his own, and he just looks at her, feeling his cold heart constrict around the notion: Mine. She was his in a way that she would never be anyone else’s, and the world was theirs in a way that no one would ever understand. The drawling, lazy voice of his grandfather is almost forgotten into the fuzzy haze of the world, and he ignores the way that it flits in and out of his conscious: his grandfather’s questions no more than gnats annoying the pair.

Finally, he drags his green eyes from his sister and toward the panther, exasperated, mouth frowning with more gravity than it deserved. “I will not have a home,” he decides, liking the way it sounded for now. He may someday, could see himself enjoying the power that came with titles and armies beneath your command, but he could not appreciate that right now. There was no desire for a land to claim him. “We belong to the stars,” his voice is detached, apathetic, and he almost sighs with disappointment.

“And we cannot belong to you or your kingdom. You will have to win this war on your own.”

Such matters seemed so little—seemed so so trivial. Wars being waged and fought and death rotting around the land, for what purpose? His face hardens. “Do not kill the rogue,” he orders, mind flitting toward the buckskin stallion he had yet to meet. Woolf pushes the image of Magnus into the forefront of Atrox’s memory, branding it there. “Do not kill the nightwalker,” and with that, he pushes the memory of Vanquish. Both bleed away, and he looks toward Bright before glancing back to Atrox. “Both need to live. Do you understand?”

Woolf