"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
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
Waking painfully to the sensation of his face being set on fire, Vadar cracked open his mouth, slid a raspy, dry tongue over crusty teeth and took a deep breath. The heat which had brought him out of a delirious slumber came from directly overhead, beating down onto his oil-slick coat and baking the sand underneath him. He had no idea how he’d ended up flat in the dirt or even where he was; for days now the plague seemed to be progressing and taking his memories with it.
Starsin. He remembers the star-mare, at least. Remembers coughing up blood and being confused, and then alarmed when dry patches of his skin began to bald before peeling off in tough, leathery strips.
Swallowing grit, Vadar shifts a very heavy head. Where was he last? Shivering and aching in the woods, he thinks. It was dark often. Unbearably cold. After that? Sweating in the foothills of … the Mountain? Maybe. Things go dark there. Spotty.
Anyways, as soon as he tries to lift his neck the vagabond can physically feel the way his remaining fur is clumped from dried salt. At some point there must’ve been a fever, his brain must’ve cooked for a little while. “Guuuhhh…” Vadar moans, the blood rush prickling his numb muscles.
@[Vadar] -- also I just made up your entry into Pangea for story sake, but if you wanna play it off as something else, you can just ignore that!
no matter what they say, I am still the king
There’s something to be said when the world cracks open and bleeds a fury of disease (cracked like your skin, like your open maw, like the membranes inside your skull). What had Beqanna done to anger the gods so? What have you done to deserve this sickness settling over you, you ravaged creature? You bore your diseased body back to ground zero, back to where this whole sickened mess started. You are home now, Vadar, to die or dwindle as you please.
You may not remember, but He does. Your drunken walk through the edge of this desecrated, desolate place. You leave a trail of breadcrumbs, skin that peels like a ripe blood orange, He does not have to look far to find you. You waver, a mirage of life and death, a bramble mix of incoherent thoughts. Muttering a mixture of a pale pink mare (oh, you devil!), stirring curses at a ruinous trek on the mountain, spittle falling as you scream of the star-dogged mare. You wove like a honey-drunk bee, falling to your knees (rivulets of blood and rotted skin falling alongside you). “A welcome back, perhaps?” He finds your listless body none too far from the river – were you trying to drown your drought of sickness? Wash away that tenured reek of rot? You elicit no true words, a ruffled noise from the pit of your dying body - “Or perhaps not.” His head cocks (a shrug of indifference, so to speak), before he urges a pool of water from the earth to settle by your open mouth. A welcome home gift, to quench the death that riddles you.
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
For his entire life it seemed that Beqanna had no place, no home, carved out for Vadar. He was born a bastard son to a clown king, nothing more than a burden laid on mother Wound’s already heavy shoulders. A product of rape in captivity who was eventually brought around to Tephra and then promptly driven out.
He was without a home; he detested the very idea of it.
That was before this moment though, before the sun roasted his patchy body and before the dark silhouette of the magician (he would find out later) loomed overhead to speak cryptically. Vadar breaths in the dust stirred loose by the other horses footsteps, feeling the water bubble and pool around his mouth. He drinks it ravenously, despite it being pure mud for a moment or two. A dying beggar can’t be choosy.
“Wh …” He coughs, wheezing in pain as he shifts from his side to his belly. Now he can see the imposing stature of the other male who’d intercepted him, and because of that Vadar feels the slime on his cheek, the sand in his fur, and the pink, bare skin over his legs as a sure sign of weakness. “Where am I?” He tries again, breathing heavily.
Home is a concept - to some, it is a solid and turgid thing. Home is where they belong; where their heart settles into dusty soil, where their loyalty lies to no bounds. To others (like Him), home is nowhere. Home has been everywhere. But He never stays in one place for long (boredom is a tricky thing) - and so his home revolves around where his hooves lay - the river, the meadow, the Dale, the Valley, the Chamber (and now, and now - this desecrated land). It seems now, that this is your home too (or close to it).
Dying men cannot be beggars, no - but you are not quite dead yet (there’s a bit of life left in you to spare). Still, you are in no shape to be choosy, and so you drink while He watches. While the water may quench you, your body is still in sore shape, a mess of blood and skin, a story of what once was. (Where had you been? You cannot know - do not know, you are a haze of uncertainty and confusion).
“Pangea.” He answers your stuttered question - though He isn’t even sure if the name would mean much to you. Pangea - the start of the sickness, the reason why you are boiling blood and frothing a fever. “I am Eight.” An introduction (something he not often does). “Up.” It is a request, not a question. And while you are in little shape to do so, He will help. Tendrils of his magic reach out to your body, easing under you, boring into your skin to quell small bites of the Plague that rattles you. No, He will not ease your sickness through and through, but perhaps he will give you at least a small look at survival.
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
Yes, when all others might’ve died or wasted away by now, Vadar is managing to cling to life. He’s unaware it’s the hidden, immortal side of himself that prevents the ‘end’ from coming so soon, despite how the plague has ravaged his body. Maybe someday, decades from now, he’ll remark on how the time hasn’t changed his good looks (har-har) and think back to being this sick. If he even lives to see those days; an immortal was just as susceptible to normal death like everyone else.
The pegacorn tells Vadar this is Pangea. The wide, flat landscape belies no other life around them when the weak stallion turns to look. It’s a total waste zone, filled with sand and baked clay. Not much else. His savior barks a name - Eight - that catches Vadar’s attention again while in the same breath, his companion orders him to stand.
The red-eyed stallion would laugh if he could. Lifting his head had been hard enough, rolling off his side was next to unbearable. Standing? Forget it. He opens his mouth to protest but the sensation of Eight’s power stops him. A warmth, not hot yet comforting, eases past the raw flesh of his legs and belly, sinking into his bones and refreshing Vadar nearly instantly. What little hesitance lived inside of him was gone, afterwards. He only pulled his legs out from underneath his body and rose from the earth to comply.
He should be thanking the large horse in front of him.
Again his mouth drops open; Vadar inhales to catch his bearings and soothe the pounding in his head, a few words poised to fall off the tip of tongue when, unexpectedly, he vanishes.
Eight won’t hear what he’s gathered the courage to say, and Vadar won’t know what Eight has in mind for him because at that moment, one of them is left to stand among the sands of Pangea while the other is taken to the mountaintop.
