[mature] her halo is broken, but there's fight in her eyes. || birthing & death

[Misra]

** WARNING: Graphic violence, descriptive sexual innuendo, sadism, death.

I’d go to hell and back with you, stay lost in what we found.
Worlds apart, we were the same, Until we hit the ground.

   She is tired.
 
   She is so, so tired –
 
  Fatigue has carved its way into every tender muscle, every weary bone – she is exhausted and thoroughly spent, with her spirit, her heart, and her body falling apart at the seams. She is eternally youthful, but the brightness that once lit up her dark, doe eyes had long since faded, and the glee that once graced her softened, feminine features had become melancholy - forlorn. She often forced the shadow of a smile to touch the rim of her dark lips, but it never reached her eyes – and though she yearned to feel mirth fill the deep, empty expanse of her chest, not even his kiss, nor his warmth could bring her from the depth of her own despair.
 
   She was broken – barely held together by her own frail, frayed heartstrings, though she had been shattered into many pieces. She had come to know love - true, devastatingly beautiful love, but it had been too late. She had been used, manipulated, and abused for far too many years, and she could not bring herself to feel anything but the deep, unshakable self-loathing that had become as much a part of her as the curved kudu horns settled amid her tangled tresses, or her once wildly beating heart, which thudded dully against its rigid cage.
 
   Her barrel is round – swollen with a stirring of life, growing, expanding within her. Her bristling, unkempt feathers flex along the hollow bones of her winged appendages, which lay limply across her belly, gently cradling its girth with the extension of their breadth. She can feel the familiar contractions beginning to ease up along her sides, and softly, her breath hitches within her throat – the agony is brief and fleeting, but as a trickling of fluid slides down the length of her hind-leg, she is all too aware that it is time.
 
   She had hidden away within the darkness of the dimly lit, dense foliage – Taiga still felt foreign to her, though she had wandered it from rim to rim, exploring every dark crack and crevice it had to offer – and yet, still, she wandered just beyond the border and deeper into the forest that had become her refuge. Her solace. Her only semblance of soothing comfort in the aftermath of a world turned upside-down. Though she is yearning still for the warmth and close embrace of her beloved Siberian, she felt the desperation and urgency of solitude calling to her, and so deeper into the darkness of the forest, she moves.
 
   The anguish is swift and agonizing, and soon she is shakily stumbling through the woodland, before collapsing against an old and brittle oak near the border of the Taiga. A weak cry emerges from deep within, echoing through the vast thicket as she lay prone, convulsing with each wave – each contraction bringing her unborn son closer to birth, closer to the frigid air of evenfall and to the unforgiving world he would be forced to face.
 
   He is as dark as night, cloaked in a thick, sheathing sac – she is only barely able to look upon him, with a glimmer of hope flashing in her eye, seeing the inkiness of his skin (he is so like his father – perfect, stark imagery of the one she had given her whole heart to) and the wide brightness of his curious gaze. Her strength is gone, waning with each passing moment, though she pushes past her own discomfort to tear away the fragile sac from his body – but soon, there is little else but a sharp jolt of pain and a darkness falling over her, before she is breathless and limp upon the moist and supple ground.

Misra

[Thana]

THANA.

(as black as your soul)

  Pay mine.

  Oh, how he longed for death and decay – just as she did!
  She is giddy and quaking with delight, with a delicate flame lit within the darkness that had so wholly consumed the entirety of her soul. It traverses the slender length of her body, crawling into the tender marrow of her bones, eliciting a tingling shiver across the surface of her prickling nerve endings.

  He had hungered for her, his body flush against hers while the paleness of his mouth fed ravenously on the indigo mottling of her on – tasting the enthrallment that lingered there, amidst the dried sweat that lay across the surface. But she had hungered for something more than the carnal desire that festered and tempted her – sex was sex; it would sate her but only for a moment in time – but the simple, unadulterated bloodlust that washed over her like the thickness of salty seafoam held so much more promise for pleasure.

  She had trembled in anticipation when he had urged her on, feeding into the insatiable unkindness that filled her to the brim, provoking the voracious beast that yearned to have its darker, more insidious appetite fulfilled. The sex could wait until the sickeningly sweet metallic stench of blood melded with her own perspiration; it could wait until every fiber of her being felt satisfied with the expiry of another – however temporary such satiation might be.

  She wasted no time, weaving through the thicket with deft refinement – she is slim, slender, and yet lined with heavy muscle along her haunches, where the indigo of her silhouette fades into the very same blackness of the impenetrable copse of trees. Her breath is quiet, but quick, as her agile limbs carry her through the woodland with ease – and a low, echoing cry causes her to still, to become silent – with baited breath. When it rings a second time, reverberating off the foliage overhead, she is rife with enthusiasm.

  Her dark gaze – two-toned, one a dull and dreary gray, the other as dark as the blackness surrounding her – peers into the shadows, admiring the lurking figure of another. Ivory, with vivid, gleaming eyes of crimson fire, glittering dangerously. A wry smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth, and stealthily, she weaves on until a small but densely encapsulate clearing appears, with a sweat-slickened female in a pool of her own blood, with a small bundle of blackness wrapped in a slick and unbroken sac.

  Weak, fragile - an easy target, to be certain, but she knew it would take a callous heart to cause such grievous harm to a euphoric, fatigue-ridden mother – to cause trauma to a freshly birthed, newborn draped in his own afterbirth – and with nimble movements, she rises up onto her hind legs, aiming with skillful precision for the skull of the winged female – momentarily knocking her unconscious.

  She does not wait for her to come to – beside her, her newborn is whimpering for her, its sac broken and clinging tightly to the sharp ridges and edges of his gangly body, and Thana cannot conceal her satisfaction. ”Watch, little one – watch your mother die before you – such a weak little thing, she is,” she croons, brushing her mouth over the crest of his spine.

  All the while, her mind is willfully drawing a thick and large boulder into the air with her telekinesis – no less than five feet in diameter, hovering it over the lifeless body of the nameless nurturer, her breath shallow and nearly still. Her faint simper is soon a tooth-bearing grin as she is finally emerging from her comatose state, aching, groaning with anguish at the heaviness of her throbbing skull. She does not see the shadow of her assailant; her gaze is bleary and settled upon her trembling newborn, still slick in fluid. Feebly, she clutches onto some faint semblance of control, pulling her weak and weary body closer to him, where her lips press a single, soft kiss against the darkness of his skin.

  ”Soldat, I love you,” Misra utters affectionately, her mind lingering for a moment on Siberian – on the distant memory of her own small body in her youth nestled into his fur, of his soft kisses along her spine, of the passion shared that had conceived their beloved son – tiredly, wearily, her head is turned, suddenly all-too-aware of the dark, beady eyes peering out at her from the darkness.

  And with a bludgeoning thud and a thrill, wicked ring of laughter, the boulder collides with the fragile bone and tender brain matter of Misra’s skull, crushing her beneath its weight.

  With a wicked, sadistic smile, Thana herself is peering into the darkness, to a deeply-set and sinister pair of dark scarlet eyes, her body tingling with adrenaline as she moves closer – brushing her shoulder against his own, crooning softly to him as she had done for the now lonesome, orphaned colt lying on the dark, moist soil.

  ”I have proved my loyalty,” she murmurs against his pale skin, quivering with the rush of emotion flooding over her – glee, at the forefront. ”come, Gryffen – let us leave him. He is of no use to either of us.”

Misra is dead, murdered by Thana. Soldat is alone, freshly birthed and nearest to his mother's body.
Soldat is not actually orphaned - Siberian, his father, will collect him, either in this thread or in another.

@[Soldat] @[Siberian] @[Gryffen]

[Gryffen]

a ghost in the darkness.

Her bloodlust is delicious, a crooning tempting mistress that commanded them both. He tolerates the pain and destruction that comes with the exploration of the dark arts. Life’s greatest hidden treasure that he craves to unravel, the mystery of death. While she danced in the blood of her victims, he would examine it. Decipher it. While she laughed slitting the throats of their enemies, he would merely smile and move the pawns into position. Plot the next move. They could do beautiful things together. Beautiful destruction. Beautiful chaos. Beautiful death.

It’s so easy to slip from the common forest to the dense woods of Taiga. He knows this place, has seen it in his dreams. In visions of a hopeless future that would come for them all. The cry makes them both prowl forward, hunger in their eyes and cruelty in every coiled muscle that ripples with each step. The shadows cling to him, old friend they whisper. The ghost in the darkness. The gray mist makes his ivory frame seem almost ethereal. He could have once passed for an angel when wings had graced his backside. An angel of decay, rot, death with haunting red eyes as bright as hell itself.

Those crimson eyes meet the cold two toned of hers and her enthusiasm is infectious. He grins as he lopes after her, coming across the mare and her newborn child. Oh isn’t this a pretty picture. A low hard guffaw as he slinks against a tree, leaning on it as Thana graceful kicks the woman in the head and knocks her out cold. This was her show and he was the audience. But it’s an episode that’s familiar to him. He’s seen it before. On the cold dark beach, a newborn blind colt and his pathetic excuse for a mother. He had killed her and taken the child as his own. What harm could poor pathetically blind Brynmor do? Nothing. To this day, regardless if he accepted it or not, that stallion was still his slave.

The babe is whimpering and the delicate words of violence make him shiver with delight. He moves closer, snarling softly behind the child. ”Families will be ripped apart…” Was this not one of the promises he had made? His red eyes darken visibly as she suddenly rips a large boulder into the air, letting it hover dangerously above the feeble mare. He can feel the tension in the air, a soft ”Yes….” Hissing between teeth and tongue. As dark as blood itself, those eyes, fixed on what he knows to come.

I love you Soldat. ”I looooove you Soldattt” He mocks as he curls around Thana, his laughter ringing through the trees. ”Come child, let’s watch her die together.” He places his head beside the colt’s, red eyes looking into the warmth of the mother’s. Let this be the last thing she sees. The ghost claiming her son. There is a mad cackling and suddenly the boulder let’s loose and crushes the mare. Blood splatters and brain matter flys. He had hoped to see the moment her life had faded from her eyes, the exact moment of her death. The boulder had other plans, a far messier end.. ”That’s gotta hurt.” He gives a soft whistle and a shrug, pulling away from the boy. He was already forgotten.

There is blood and brain splattered across his face and chest, it seeps into his ivory fur. The shadows cloak him once more but he isn’t hidden from her. Flecks of gore about those deadly scarlet eyes that meet her wicked grin, the look of pleasure that etches into every curve and hollow of her face. ”You have done well bluebird.” He tastes her flesh beneath his tongue, a lingering nip placed on her neck as his muzzle slowly brushes against hers. She mentions the uselessness of the child, to leave it be. ”Ah…That’s where you’re wrong..” He chides her lightly but it is no matter. The more broken the trinket, the more desperate they become. Desperation was so easy to manipulate. However that was his game to play, not hers.

The boy won’t go far. Not now anyways. ”I’ll be back for you Soldatttttt….” Comes the chilling mocking voice from the shadowy trees surrounding the child. Then there is nothing but laughter as the two dance away from the chaos they had caused. It was only the beginning.

Gryffen