Mature you have lived more than enough; round three | round two results inside

He makes it, just by the skin of his teeth, or rather, the Megalodon’s.

The very last to enter the cave, he hears the keen snap of the shark’s teeth as it makes another attempt to add him to the final course of its meal. He feels the piercing sensation of the sharp points as they catch the trailing ends of his fins, tearing them to thin ribbons that float and swirl prettily as he turns to stare at the cave’s entrance. A keening wail seems to shake the entire space, from the walls that surround him, down to his very bones. Oh, no, that’s just the aftermath of the shark launching itself at the cavern, still desperate to taste the prey it knows lies just beyond its reach.

As he wheels around to flee from the hungry, jagged spikes threatening to tear through the entrance, the current generated by the constant, repeated motions create a current that sweeps everyone up and buffets them along as easily as feathers caught in a breeze. He groans and bellows as he tumbles along, the coral ripping into his flesh as though the shark might have, adding more of his blood to the already darkened water that stings spitefully at his wounds with its salt. He is sure that at least one of his bones (maybe a rib?) has broken to some degree, though it is difficult to distinguish from the many other pains stabbing at his body.

But eventually, the shoving lessens and the quaking ceases, allowing him control of himself again. Either the shark has given up, or he’s been carried so far that they can no longer feel or hear its assault. Whatever the reason, though he is alone, he is grateful to have survived yet again, unlike the Baltians that suffered so greatly as they perished. He stares around at the devastation, the bits of flesh that remain of them, as a strange heartsickness for souls that he’d never even known and guilt for outliving them swells in his chest. He moans, quiet and dejected by everything that has led to this point in time.

A soft, sudden rustle turns him away from the butchery and Rajah emerges through the fluttering, glowing underwater plants that cloak the mouth of an adjoining tunnel; a spark of relief flares brightly for a moment, before a throb of condolence replaces it. He can only imagine what must plague her despite the obvious anger upon realizing she has been betrayed.

When she insists that they must return to her home, he does not protest. If the roles had been reversed, he would have wanted the exact same thing, whether it was for familial comfort or to merely deliver the news. As he falls into line behind her, the image of her wavers unnaturally and he stumbles… screams rent the air… confusion rises as he realizes his watery surroundings are gone and he has been returned to his natural form. Where…?

Before he can take in the new scene, it is gone and he is alone, the soft illumination of the ocean flora revealing the last of Rajah’s tail as it disappears into another passageway. He moves quickly to catch up to her.

The journey is difficult at first, tense with their converse, yet congruent emotions–her resentment and his regret over his survival and the Baltians’ demise. They spend a good chunk of time in silence, neither wanting to address the situation, so he studies their path rather intently. Having only spent his life on ground, the waterscape is quite fascinating with its colorful but unforgiving corals, and the small fauna that creep along the ocean floor or dart through the seemingly velvety seaweed.

But he can only look at the greenery for so long, so one day, he decides to ask about her home. The way she describes it can only be called breathtaking, with its luminescent plants and seemingly bucolic architecture contrary to its teeming with life, all sounding even grander than what currently surrounds them. He is not particularly surprised by its social structure, but he is slightly put off by its rigidity. He had avoided kingdom life in Beqanna for similar reasons, though that seems tame by comparison to what she tells.

She eventually warms, if only slightly, and he tells of his home and experiences. It is then that he realizes that she had felt familiar because she reminds him of Lucian, with the stubborn, mulishness that camouflages an ultimately kind and compassionate heart. When she tells of her interactions with her people, he sees how magnanimous she is in her gentility, just as he knows Lucian likely would have been in a similar position. He does not necessarily fall for Rajah (none could ever replace his great love), but he certainly comes to regard her as a friend by the end of their travels.

After that, time seems to pass rapidly and it is not long before they reach Baltia, and it is everything that she had described. When he meets her mother, he is initially taken aback by her appearance, which is far less horse-like than he could have even imagined. But, having heard so much of her, he is quick to hide his shock. Though she is largely stoic, he can sense the compassion and sadness when she learns of the lost souls. He is easily won over by this, but had he not been, the months he ends up spending with them surely would do so. Though the Baltians are initially wary, the transition goes smoothly, thanks to the bond forged with Rajah, and it is not long before he feels at home alongside them.

The night after the remains of Rajah’s brother are brought to the palace, he falls into a fitful slumber. Perhaps it is the trauma of the circumstances that brought him here, but something like more trouble is to come. And he’s not wrong.

The cries in his dreams come to life and startle him awake. He leaves his sleeping spot and, yet again, is met by scrambling bodies and sheer terror. Kingdom life is not something he had ever wanted, but he is surprisingly fond of it now, so a newly bred bravery spurs him to follow the Baltians to the source of the screams.

But that bravery is tested mightily when he realizes that the creatures that had dragged him into this entire mess are back, filling the halls with their murderous rage. He freezes almost immediately as they begin to slice and tear into those he has come to know, but he has no additional time to consider his next move as a familiar voice pierces the cacophony.

He pushes his way through the crowd and is there as quickly as he can be, but not soon enough. As they come into view, Andrew is horrified to see the mare’s head being dashed so violently against the sharp coral by the treacherous blue stallion. He calls out, agony vibrating every fiber of his being, as he seems to move in slow motion toward them. He cannot reach them before Rajah goes silent and still, eyes blinded to him as he falls to his knees at her side. He takes a moment to touch his nose to her bloodied cheek before looking up at Nereus with heated fury. But the stallion can only smirk before he is immobilized and the dark demon frees itself from his body.

Of course.

Andrew closes his eyes, any fear he might have had replaced with seething anger as the fiend taunts him. He recoils with disgust as the shadowy hand touches his skin.

But then, his stomach drops as the world falls away. His eyes snap open and he realizes he is no longer submersed in the ocean, but is rapidly plummeting toward dry land. He knows how he should react, but his body has grown accustomed to underwater life, so it fails him at first. However, his survival instinct kicks in and he realizes that there are four legs flailing wildly in vain attempts to stop his descent. Awareness spreads along his body, just as quickly as Rajah’s blood had pooled at his feet, and his wings unfurl just in time.

He does not recognize the physical heat as he climbs back into the clouds, believing it to be the madness of his acrimony as he continues to think of his companion, but then the shouts of ‘DRAGON’ reach his ears. He wheels in the air, a natural movement, to see the onyx beast there, spewing deadly fire from its rancid mouth. This time, he experiences only mild dread at the sight of yet another nightmare unraveling itself before him; perhaps he is just accustomed to it now, or perhaps it is the ire that continues swirling within him.

Next thing he knows, a new voice is chiding him for remaining still and he snarls uncharacteristically as the sunrise-winged stallion launches forward into the battle. His mind whirls with possibilities and something he can’t name swells his chest beyond anything he’s ever known. He moves slowly at first, then ever faster as the resistance seems to disappear, cleaving a clear path through the air as he chases after the stallion.

As easily as it supports his wings and propels him forward, the wind carries away every last trace of cowardice that was left in him.

Andrew

The cave shudders around him, bodies sucked away in currents not unlike the way leaves tumble and twist in the wind. He knows he should be horrified by the violence, sickened by the gore of bodies rent open and smeared gelatinous against the ragged rocks, but all he can think of for a long, distended moment is that the reverberations sound like thunder. Summer, storms, hair curled with rain, a smile he is beginning to forget, and thunder. He blinks, stunned by the shard of the memory wedged suddenly into the soft of his chest, by the pain of it as the moment passes and the memory disintegrates.

He blinks again.
Again.

It takes too many heartbeats, maybe all the ones he has left, to realize that the screaming has stopped, the booms have quieted, and the shark has disappeared to find easier prey. Sundered’s burning red eyes fall on Rajah, and for a moment he wonders if she will be incapacitated by the brutality of what just happened. He would not hold it against her–there is so much blood in the water that he can taste it now, so many pieces of flesh that unfurl like pink seaweed and float between them. Even he feels nauseated by it. But Rajah must be made of stronger stone than him, because she wastes no time on sorrow or doubt, does not linger to say goodbye to what is already gone.

“Nereus is a snake.” It is all he offers as he falls in beside her, and it doesn’t escape his notice that he and Rajah are so similar. Maybe this is what makes it easy to stay with her, to fall into a story that isn’t his, into a world that only minutes ago he had dismissed as a dream. They are both carved from something cold and hard, both shaped around the burden of duty–and perhaps even more strangely, they are both the same in skin, too. Both swathed in red and dark, both stained by the black of their souls and the blood they’ve seen spilled. He wonders, but he does not ask. It is something he does not want to know.

The tunnels are unlike anything he’s ever seen, and what should be heart racingly unsettling is made beautiful by the age carved into the walls and the glow of plankton. There is still blood in the water, but it is fainter now, faint enough to pretend, if he doesn’t open his mouth to let it touch his tongue, that it is just shadow cast by the mystery of this vast underworld. He thinks–

The water is gone, Rajah is gone. It is just him and a mist so deep it blots out all else, and screaming, screaming.

He thrashes hard and suddenly he is back in the tunnels with Rajah turning her head to frown at him. He searches her face, her eyes, the curve of her lips, but there is nothing there to indicate she saw any of what he did. So he says nothing, just clenches his jaw and shakes his head at her. “It’s nothing.” And she must agree because without a word she turns her attention back to the tunnels etched in glowing plankton.

The screaming, the screaming.
It doesn’t happen again, and Sundered is all too glad to let it fade from his memory. Their travel together through the tunnels is uneventful, and the troubles they have are making sure they’re on the correct path to the kingdom of the Sea Witch. It is boring in a way that leaves an ache of longing in Sundered’s chest, a sense of almost-peace that he is so painfully willing to settle into as time races forward and leaves his past too far back for him to hold onto. He begins to forget why, but he knows that there is something about this, or maybe everything, that should be impossible. But Rajah is good company. She is quiet and clever, sharper than the edges of the coral they swim through. She makes him forget that something that is so important, a thing he had thought to be imprinted to his heart. A smile, a laugh, kind eyes, none of it Rajah. But by the time the tunnels open into a vast cavern, it has changed. Erosion in reverse, something kindred in the way Rajah’s clever eyes spark with fire when she catches him watching.

He is unafraid when he meets the Sea Witch, because though she is vast and imposing, she offers him the same acceptance that her daughter had. Again there is that sense of kindred, of sameness, of something that feels like the itch of belonging, but he is too time-swept to recognize the danger of it. And when the guards bring in the head of Rajah’s brother, he feels their pain, their fury, the jaggedness of their loss because he is of them, and he aches with them. After that, he and Rajah had found themselves together more, not intimate, but needing the reassurance of such sameness, of the way it felt to exist with someone who understood the brokenness of your spirit but did not try to fix it. Of being enough in whatever form that came as.

But they weren’t together when Nereus came.
They weren’t together when Rajah needed him most.

He wakes to the sound of violence and screaming–and he wonders why, why, why is there always screaming, all the time screaming–and it is reflex to launch himself from the pale luminous blue of the small side tunnel he must’ve fallen asleep in. It is disorienting with the haze of sleep filming his eyes and slowing his mind, to understand the battle he swims out into. For a moment–and it is too long, too much to take for himself when his people are dying–he is struck by the eerie beauty of the kingdom sprawled before him. It is a hub, a heart at the center of a maze of tunnels that lead off in every direction, some paths and some dead ends like the one he had been asleep in. There are underwater cliffs and intricate coral structures, and all of it glows in soft blues and silvers from the plankton that clings to the walls.

The only thing that feels out of place are the clouds of red, red, so much red that spills and swirls. It’s blood, he remembers, and it jolts him out of whatever stupor he had been dropped into. “Rajah! His voice is a boom, and he takes off through the water with his powerful tail moving behind him. “Damnit, Rajah. Answer me.” And she does, and she doesn’t, and he wishes she hadn’t because the sound of her pain filled screams are a knife buried in his chest and dragging back, back along the seam of his gut.

He is too late when he finds them. Too late to help her, but not too late for her burning, aching eyes to settle on his face as the light faded from them forever. The quiet is worse, somehow. It is worse and it consumes him, blinds him to the creatures he should have already recognized. Half wolf, half merefolk. Half wolf. It is important, it means something, it is a string plucked, discordant, ignored. “NEREUS.” He roars with fury and hatred, with all the anger pent up inside him from every life he has ever lived. But when he tries to throw himself forward at the blue stallion, everything stops.

Time.
Stands.
Still.

He watches the entity step out of Nereus’ body and his eyes burn with hellfire, with pain so vast he knows it will unmake him. There is a hand on his cheek, a warning, and he plummets. “It is.” He agrees as he falls away.

He falls forever, falls until his eyes open to brilliant light and his wings snap open. Falls until the shattered pieces of him come back together enough for him to realize that his world with Rajah, with their people, is gone. There is a chasm that opens up inside of him, a weight in his chest that threatens to drag him back down again until he falls far enough to find those glowing blue tunnels. He is so tired, so weary, and it feels like the weight of what he carries inside himself is enough to see him drown.

Fire sears the air beside him, and there is something familiar in the burn of it. It is enough, for the time being, to breathe a bit of the fire back into his soul. His wings fully unfurl, and they are dark and leathery as they beat the air on either side of him. They feel.. familiar. But that feeling comes with frustration, with the sense that there is something he’s forgetting, details mixing together. There is a roar, and he is transported back to the moment he woke in the water. To a shark, to bloodshed, to a man and a woman. He does not like the parallels here, does not want to face another beast. But he realizes, as the pegasi dive from the clouds in battle formation, launching attacks and counterattacks, that it is not the beast he fears. It is the men who even now yell and call to one another, to him, and demand help.

He knows what they do not, he has seen this story already. A beast, a kingdom, utter devastation. There is a sense of ominous doom that unfurls in his chest, a nauseating dread that this is just a mirror, a twin. But even he is swept away in the hand of time, moved onward to a point where all that matters is the battle and the dragon and the call to arms. Sundered roars and it is not unlike the sound of the dragon, so filled with fury and ache and righteous outrage. And there is fire in the sky, on his skin, engulfing all the air around him as he pulls in his wings and drops like a living, burning comet towards the shadow of the behemoth dragon just below.

sundered

i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time