[open quest] do you think god stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created?

[bolder]

Bolder is often in the shadow of the Mountain.

As a young pegasus, he is prone to testing the winds. He enjoys the adventure and the thrill of it, and when he is not a pegasus, Bolder can be (almost) anything he wishes. Sometimes he wears the shape of an auburn hawk - one of the very first shifts that his Uncle Gale taught him - and he still races the breeze just as he had once done with the brindled stallion. Since those early days, he has learned other shapes but the hawk remains one of his favorites. It's a comfortable skin to slip into, as familiar to him as Hyaline now was, and one of his most seamless changes.

Nobody seems to pay much mind to a silver-eyed raptor, and as Bolder has grown, he enjoys the animosity it brings him. (Not that he is anybody of much importance, but the striped adolescent doesn't particularly desire to encounter anyone who might remember the moon-marked son of the Northern King and all the ensuing chaos that followed when he had left the Taiga.) As he grows older, he enjoys becoming what he isn't more and more. To heed instinct is far easier than to heed emotion, and the family that Bolder has been born into is rife with it.

It had been there in Taiga, in his father's disgust and dismay for siring a shifter. In the way that there was a blackness in their line that remained unspoken (though Gale would explain it to him later and spoke of what it was: power; to be untethered and untied; to be limitless). And now it was there in Hyaline, seeping into the Pack like the fog of his birthland. There had been many changes over the last few seasons, but it had been Mazikeen that had worried Bolder. She had shifted, somehow, changed in ways that went deeper than just a different shape or skin, so the striped pegasus did his best to adapt by remaining near their borders.

But he had continued to eye the Mountain (as a wolf, as a bear, as a bird), and he hadn't forgotten the quest that he had once mentioned to his Aunt. It had been difficult, she told him, but worth it. Bolder never forgot that conversation - nor the way that Gale had shown him how much more he might become - and so when the Magic touches his mind, the Red-Tailed Hawk sharply opens his moonbeam eyes. Come, the moment calls, and the young shifter doesn't waste any time. He spreads his wings and flies, propelling himself towards the Mountain in a frantic flight, eager that his sign had finally come.

When he reaches the base of the Mountain, Bolder lands on the ground. A chill from either the bitter wind or from knowing the stories of this place ripples down his spine as he changes from bird to stallion. He lifts one front striped leg and then another, deciding to make the journey by hoof instead of wing. The muted winter sun catches on his gilded markings, and they shine as Bolder climbs and climbs and climbs. The air becomes colder, thinner and it begins burn his lungs with each inhale that he takes. But this is part of the trek. In all the stories that he had been told, there had always been warnings about the peril of the climb. He breathes, and it continues to become harder and harder. At some point, his vision grows hazy and as a cloud passes through, the winged stallion stops. His dark nostrils flare and Bolder dips his lead, telling himself he will only rest a moment.

He doesn't even close his eyes, before he notices something shift and swirl in the shadows.

It is the shape of another horse - someone else making this journey? - and the young pegasus lifts his head. It turns, following the movement until it fully materializes before him. She is a gray mare with dark eyes, and a hard smile. He is still panting when she speaks. 'Oh, child.' says the ghost, and vanishes to the other side of him. (It is only then that Bolder senses something is very wrong, that he realizes this might not be what it seems.) The chestnut stallion turns, trying to keep her in his sights, and when he spies her again directly in front of him, something within him curdles. 'You shouldn't have come,' chimes the voice, a lovely tone that sounds as if it heeds anything but a warning. The mare is still smiling.

"No," he tells herself, his earlier exertion making the word come out more forceful than he intended. Bolder takes a step forward, determined to make it through the cloud. "No, I have to." He says, though nothing is there. He has to prove himself worthy, to Mazikeen and to Gale. He has to prove to his father that he was wrong, that there was nothing to fear in the power that he had been born with. The air surrounding him laughs, cruel and cold. It follows him, taunting him the higher he goes.

'What will you prove?'
("That I am not a disappointment.")

'What will you prove?' it continues to sing over and over, bristling Bolder's anger and riling him to sharpened teeth that snarl and echo against the peaks.

Bolder gives many differents answers, though it always comes back to the same thing.

He will show his Father that he had been wrong. He will become a credit to both Mazikeen and Gale and their teachings. His youth shows over and over again, thinking it will simply put back together pieces that had been broken and shattered. He keeps talking - muttering these things like a mad man - until the mist fades. The young stallion draws back on instinct, regarding that instead of the uncertainty the Mountain might feast on. There are more shadows but they become something solid, though when Bolder joins them, his silver eyes study them all with distrust.

Except one.

The Dark God stands expectant, and Bolder lifts his head at the sight of destiny manifesting before him, ready to greet it.