[mature] one day, that bird, he spoke to me; chapter four

[a demon]

The Demonic Path
When you condemn the bird, everything falls away.

The colors run down like rain, dripping into the starry abyss far below—there is no island, there are no friends. There is only you and a creature your eyes cannot quite comprehend, so they invent something else to keep your mind intact; its scales are as black as sin, as sinister as the storm and the dragon that came before it; its eyes are glowing red, unblinking, they peer back at you from oblivion and it’s not until it smiles that you notice the big rows of bright white teeth lining its mouth.

You blink and the vision is gone, you’re back on the island—only it’s just you, just you, and your best friend, and the bird behind you. It wails, a sound that is hardly bird-like, and the two of you watch as it transforms into the most beautiful stallion you have ever lain eyes on. His hide is bright, pristine white; there is a pale golden glow around him; a halo glows above his head and his broken white wings lay useless at his sides.

Before you realize what is happening, your best friend has vanished and you have become the very thing that smiled at you from the abyss.

The stallion cowers, he begs you, but you show him no mercy.

You destroy him.

There is no turning back now.

You have no choice now, kill the angel.

• Describe watching the island ‘fall down like rain’ and floating around in outerspace.
• Create a demon, doesn’t matter what it looks like but it must have these features: Black scales, white fangs, glowing red eyes.
• Describe your character’s transformation; it can be painful or painless, doesn’t matter. Your character is immediately filled with terrible rage and bloodlust.
• Describe killing the angel, you may do this however you like. Your character may also go about slaughtering other creatures on the island. I will responding to each of you individually after this round so make it interesting, eh?
• The last two characters to respond will be eliminated, the minimum word requirement is 500.

The Angelic Way
When the golden lightning strikes, everything changes.

There is no cave, only a bright white space that stretches on endlessly; no fear, no pain, only a soothing calm that settles over your body and puts ease to your troubled mind. There is movement among the white space, though. He is quiet and deliberate, this being—bathed in a golden glow, your eyes cannot quite comprehend what he is, only that he is, and they invent something else to keep you from going mad at the sight of him and he steals a gasp from your lips when he charges straight into you—becomes you, lends you his power.

The vision is gone soon enough and you are back in the cave, but something is different. You are different.

Your friend and their horde reel back from you, they hiss and sneer; they, too, transform and become Other Beings with black scales, horns, and spikes sticking out of their spines. The lot of them circle you—their glowing red eyes narrowed, their jaws snapping and their impossibly white teeth audibly clicking together. You sense something about them, however, something strange.

They seem afraid of you.

“Destroy them, they mean to harm you,” warns a deep voice and you recognize it as the voice of the tiger. Only it comes from within.

You charge straight towards them, meaning to fight your way out of the cave.

You have no choice now, do battle with the demons.

• Describe being in the ‘whitespace’; you may describe this however you wish, you can even see trees and the like, but everything here is white.
• Create an angel, doesn’t matter what it looks like but it must have these features: Solid white, surrounded by a golden glow, golden halo above its head.
• Describe your character’s transformation, it’s supposed to be painless but I’ll give you creative freedom.
• Describe doing battle with the demons (you may kill them), stop before you reach the outside of the cave. I will be responding to each of you individually after this round, so make it interesting, eh?
• The last two characters to respond will be eliminated, minimum word requirement is 500.

[Nikoline]

Nikoline feels like she is floating.

All around her is white. She something has changed her after the gold lightening entered her body. She is numb. There is no Beqanna. There is no evil or good and all is just blissfully gone. Niko would be a liar is she said she was upset. She can not see anything bing though her dark eyes, there are no sounds except a steady fall of rain...or was it a babbling stream? She feels herself relax and breath deeply with the feeling that her lips are smiling. Perhaps she has died and this was it.

Nikoline is oddly content in this white space.

She feels like ages have passed as she seems to only exist in content...till there is a ripple. From the corn r of a shapeless eye, she can feel the tear in her purgatory. Hello. She doesn’t speak but moreso only thinks it. But not thing responds until HE is nearly upon her.

A shape forms and rips away the single dimension. A flawless pearly white and glowing gently in a bath of gold. HE is beautiful. Niko can feel the way her jaw falls away at the way HIS halo floats above HIS leg text head. Niko believes this is what love is...as she gazed upon HIM. I She coos gently before HE walks over and kisses her lips... Niko closes her eyes to the most perfect feeling she has ever felt...to thher feeling of warmth flooding her body. He says nothing and only kisses her deeply, hungrily, desperate.

Nikoline becomes vividly aware of her surroundings, the stench of blood and sex. She can smell their rot. Hazel eyes snap open as she stands there panting hard. Had this nightmare not ended? HE is gone but to be replaced by the others expect they ar hissing, spitting, tangled and ugly. They screech at her and threaten to claw her eyes out.

She begins to grin, possibly a little too wide.

The mare, infused, comes for them with long claws and sharp teeth. Her body shapes and forms and wields armor where had none before. The demons are not her friends and are skewed fragments of the names they use to have. Niko is merciless as she tears through the with tooth and claw. Their blood is black and thy scream and as she seperates their esophagus from their bodies. Their blood is black and thick as far...she laughs because this reality can not be true.

Niko is torn, bloodied but she survives... the painted woman must now live long enough to walk through the mouth of the cave. One hoof in front of the other is all she needs to do...

She is filled with light and covered in black blood. So much has happened and she can barely comprehend her existence. Was this real after all? Was it a dream? The cuts in her legs and the taste of blood is real in her mouth. She can feel the pain of the claws and teeth growing inward...it will all stop is only she can reach the end of the cave...

[Zosma]

The world disintegrates around her.

It drips like the blood in the forest.  It pulls away everything in her vision.  Down, down, down.  The inky sky melts into oblivion.  The world at her feet collapses.  She feels like she is floating, like she is free of all her worldly tethers.  The stars become brighter, closer, as she seems to fall up.  The weightlessness is like a rush of blood to her head.  More clear than anything has been for a while.  The vision is somehow beautiful and altogether terrifying.  

Because she sees a monster ahead of her.

It rises out of the oblivion of deep space that holds her tight like a womb.  It is everdark, moreso than the night sky around her.  Moreso than the paths her friends have seemingly taken.  It has ebony scales that glitter in the spacelight, speak of a violence she has never known (even in her worst hours.  Remember Cecilia, how I made you a woman?)  Its red eyes are like the towering beast that had chased her and the macaw through the island air.  She shivers, because these too promise death.  She wonders if she will die, now.  After all she’s been through.  Exhaustion is like lead on her floating feet, but she will not look away.  She will face it, head on.  The stark white fangs are revealed with a haunting smile and she shivers.

Here it comes.

But then –

Then she blinks and she is back in hell.  And it should be ironic that paradise has become so much less, but she has no smiles herself.  Kangaroo is there next to her with the great macaw in front of her.  The pitiful thing cries – an unholy admission – and she starts towards it.  Surely, she’s made a mistake.  The bird needs her, needs help.  And then it changes.  A pale, beautiful stallion emerges with a glowing halo and soft shine to his skin.  His once proud wings lay weak and wasted at his sides.  

She takes that step.

And then she becomes so much more.  Kangaroo is gone, her presence a cold absence at Zosma’s side.  She is glad.  Because when her bones crack and crunch (and she shifts and grows, grows) she becomes the monster.  Rage blinds her to the wasted beauty ahead of her.  She sees only an easy kill, a need to separate head from body.   So the demon does.  When her last muscle stitches into place, the wild thing roars and races to its prey.  

“Please, mercy,” he says, “I saved you.”

But she is immune, quite suddenly.

She opens her mouth wide to expose her own set of glittering teeth.  They close on the angel’s neck, ripping and tearing until the spinal cord lays thick like a rope across her tongue.  She severs it cleanly, swishing her forked tail against her haunches in pleasure at the quick POP.  Zosma leaves the once-bird with blood pooling around him in a widening circle.  It shines in the tropical sun like the blood that splashes across her lips.  She is still hungry.  She is still so very angry.

[Sloene]

When she steps towards Thomas, even before the words fully leave her mouth, the island melts away around her. Blue sky melts into green tree tops, green foliage melts into sepia trunks, sepia trunks melt into the dark ground. Her black friends melt last, dissolving into the earth as everything becomes unending dark nothingness spotted with stars. No ground under her hooves, no breeze around her body. The noises cease as well except there is....something. She shifts, uneasy, unable to put what she is seeing into words except that it’s not her best friend. Slowly as she stares at it, it resolves into a beast like shape, hulking like a bear except she can see the glint of scales, the narrowed glow of red eyes. Sloene hasn’t decided whether to scream or flee when it smiles, its mouth filled with too many sharp white teeth to count.

She blinks, wondering if this is Thomas? If Thomas is this? The island has instantly reformed around her, but the others are gone. The bird wails behind her and Thomas is standing before her, something familiar in his eyes, mouth half open to speak but the macaw wails again, screams really, and they both turn to watch it become a beautiful white stallion. She stares at him, his golden glow Jarring where it should be soothing, his halo at odds with useless, broken wings. He is beautiful and she thinks she should love him, turns to Thomas to plead for his mercy for this creature. Surely they can bring this broken angel with the sad eyes into their little family, take him home with them.

Sloene meets his eyes, and he looks desperate. She smiles at him, and then Thomas is gone.

Just gone. No warning, just vanished into thin air.

And now it is Sloene who screams, fury in every note, and she turns on the angel. It is when he appears that Thomas is gone, and so clearly it is his fault. She is no longer an equine; no longer black with silver eyes, nor her own natural grulla; she is the terrible thing from the abyss. She towers over him, digging claws on the end of her huge ursine paws into the ground and leaving terrible long furrows. Her scales creak when she stands on back legs and roars, her eyes a terrible red. The angel cowers before her, but Sloene has no mercy for him. It is because of him, because of whatever he has done, that Thomas is lost to her, and she cannot forgive him.

She had loved Thomas with all of being, and so with that destroyed she is someone else entirely.

He cowers and begs for her to wait, to listen, just wait a minute, but she is beyond reasoning. One swipe of her massive paw and he is gone, white streaked with red but lifeless, smashed up against a towering tree and still. Sloene is still angry, an avenging dark angel herself, and so she takes to the path, slaughtering any of the creatures she encounters along the way. Monster, family, innocent bird; they flee before her but she is unstoppable, wreaking destruction everywhere until it is just her and little Blue, cornered between Sloene-the-demon-bear and the waves.

”Please,” Blue says, a voice Sloene loved, and it is enough that she hesitates. Frozen in indecision, in between Sloene and Sloene the demon bear.

[Balto]

And just like that, the nightmare seems to come to an end. All around him he feels a certain sensation - a push and pull, like being stretched. It is not painful, not like the beatings he had ravished only moments before, but it is uncomfortable. He allows the feeling though and does not fight it, nor does he question the intensity of warmth that seems to radiate from his very core. After a few moments that seem like lifetimes, the stallion feels that it is quiet enough, that it is finally safe enough, to open his eyes. He knows the brilliant whiteness that greets him should blind him, but it doesn’t. If anything, it soothes him in a way - much like darkness once did when he lived in his cave, which seems like eons ago. He is surprised by the comfort the whiteness brings him, and as his brilliant eyes adjust to it, he begins to make out shapes and shades of things around him. Balto is in a forest, with a silence unlike anything he has ever witnessed - a silence that is nearly ethereal. He is standing beneath tall pines that stretch out before him to pierce the sky, pearly white and magnificent in their growth. He can only hear the sound of his pulse as his heart beats in his chest, and for the first time, he realizes the pain in his side (the cavity that once had been gaping and wide) is gone. He dare not look at himself, he dare not turn to see if he is truly healed - he feels like it might break the spell, and send him spiraling downwards back into the hell he has seemed to have escaped. The blue roan decides that he is perfectly content with standing in his forest until the end of time, never moving and never exploring, merely just existing in this peaceful world that seems to only be him. But, as his eyes rove the expanse before him, digesting the beauty of the white world he has found, a movement straight ahead causes his heart to leap in his chest, and though he assumes he will be filled with fear, the only emotion that arises is that of hope. At first the white light is wavering, as if the sun’s intense rays were beating down on the space before him. He watches as the light grows and grows, bigger and brighter, and even more white than the world that is around him. Balto has to turn his head and close his eyes, for the intensity and beauty from the light is too much for him to handle, but oh he wishes he could continue looking at it forever and ever. The light doesn’t dim, but suddenly Balto feels as if he must turn back to it, as if it is calling his name without words, without a voice. He does, and when his eyes meet the equine that now stands before him, he is left breathless. Whiter than anything around them the stallion stands regally, hints of golden rays shining from his brilliant white. A thin ring of gold is gently laced on his crown, sparkling and dazzling - he feels as if he is staring into a reflection of himself, but it is not himself. Balto finds himself on his knees, unable to stand just as he stands, feeling unworthy beneath the beautiful stare of the creature that is before him. The stallion says nothing, but Balto brings himself to all fours, only because he knew the stranger wished him to do so. For a moment they merely stare at each other and Balto wonders if he is finally dead, finally at peace, because he does not wish for anything else but this moment. It does not last, for suddenly the stallion is coming towards him, nearly floating in his gracefulness as he brings himself nearer. Balto is frozen in awe, even as the white creature speeds up, and melds into him seamlessly. Balto can feel the warmth as it floods him, permeating every vein and bone and tissue throughout his body. He does not have time to process this, for when he takes his next breath, darkness surrounds him. With a gasp, he opens his eyes. Familiar darkness wraps around him, and the sound of the beasts he had left behind growl and hiss in his ears. His blue eyes take in their shapes - no longer his friends, but demons with forked tongues and ugly black scales, hideous in every part of their being. Their jaws clack listlessly and their anger writhes within them at the sight of Balto, glowing red eyes boring into him with hunger - though something else lingers there too, now - fear? They do not surge towards him as he expects, though some seem brave enough to snap their unhinged jaws near his shoulders and haunches as they circle him like vultures, wanting to rip into his flesh but something keeping them at bay, holding them back. Destroy them, they mean to harm you. It was not a voice at all, but he knows the thought that crosses his mind is not his own. It is the tiger, the one who ripped apart his family and struck him with golden lightning, and sent him to the white place. Without hesitation, without anger and without sadness - without any emotion at all - Balto obeys, and he does not even question if he can destroy them - he just does. He can feel the light that had radiated within him in the white place join him again, vibrating and pulsing in his chest as he leaps straight towards the demon horde, a strength and resilience in his body and mind that has been absent from most of his life until this very moment. He would get out of this cave, he would destroy the evil that lurks within, he would make sure that the devilish beings would not ever crawl out of this hole ever again. They leap towards him now as he begins to move, frightened but led by their own wickedness to try and kill him. With snarls and sharpness of teeth they try to drag him back into the pit, but as each one touches him, brilliant white light zaps through them, disintegrating wherever it touches. They turn to ash and dust before his eyes when they try to touch him, as if his skin now burns like acid on their flesh, yowls of pain and roars of anger flooding his mind - but fear does not plague him; instead, his eyes are set on the exit, away from the demonic creatures that continue to claw their way to him. He follows the light of the cave mouth before him, kicking at snapping jaws with his heels and not caring when the bones of their faces fall away to nothing at his touch, melting skin and bone to leave carcasses of his once-family withering and boiling in the dampness of the dark cave. Soon he hears nothing but the sound of his hooves clicking purposefully on wet stone - a sound that reminds him of his long lost childhood and youth, that reminds him of a dark face that cared for him in another world, of a doe-eyed mare with hope and trust in her eyes - and those memories give him the momentum to keep going, as well as the warmth of the light that thrums wildly in his chest and blood. The cave mouth is becoming larger as he makes its way to the entrance. In another time and another place, he may have feared what lay on the other side of his cave’s walls, but now, he walks with confidence and bravery towards the sun. The fear is gone. -- once the king of beasts but now they feast on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.