"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
so give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light 'cause oh that gave me such a fright
He doesn’t settle to work the magic directly after his conversation with Neverwhere, Leilan, and the strange little mare. As Nerine’s Champion he considers this his duty and his life not entirely his own, but there are others in his life to consider. Brennen goes home to Ischia, to his island and his lover, and no force on this world would have stopped him from doing so. But their tryst is brief, and he returns to Nerine as the sun begins to set, casting wild colors across the surface of the ocean and leaving the rocky beaches riddled with dark shadows.
The magician had not promised Neverwhere protection for all of the North, because he does try not to fall victim to the trap of arrogance too often, but he knows he can protect two places at least. Briefly he debates his location - his long-honed warrior instincts tell him to head for the high ground, to observe and protect from the cliffs, but the water calls to him, wild and wondrous magic singing in his blood. He will be more powerful for longer if he weaves his net from the sea. So he waded out into the surf, far enough that the tide receding will not leave him standing dry but not so far enough out that he will drown as the tides rush home, and he sinks down into the magic.
Even with his eyes closed, Brennen can see every detail of Nerine, and now he can see more. The magic traces bright colors around the latent magic in everything. Silvers in the cliffs and rocks, greens in the plant life; the wildlife picked out in browns and tans and creams, and the residents traced in bright copper interlaced with colors related to their own magics. The water around him is every shade of blue imaginable and though it would be unbearably cold to most mortals after some time, it envelops Brennen like a warm summer day.
There’s already a foundation of his magic laid over this kingdom; it is part of his warning net, and that magic is strong because it has been in place more than a decade. It is child’s play to expand upon it, to strengthen the commands so that it actively repels any who hold ill intentions for the land’s residents, rather than just pinging Brennen. It is only a matter of heartbeats before he is certain that none lesser than him in power would be able to breach the shield, and that any greater or equal to him in power would struggle enough to give him time to react.
With an absent swish of his now-soaked tail and a twitch of an ear, he extends the same protection over Ischia. Recently Ivar had tricked him into believing his family endangered, and now he is not willing to leave them without the utmost protection while he is away. For the time being he also reaches out to the rest of the North, extending this net of protection to them while he can hold it. If his power is tested by an opponent or by time he will not be able to maintain that, which is why he’d urged Neverwhere to bring the children here, but for now he is fresh and strong.
He knows, however, that it is not the casting of the net that will cost him, but the continued holding of it. So even as he sinks himself into his element, the salt water sending continuous surges of power through his system, he calls for them. Mostly his own offspring, his ever-curious sons and daughters many of whom are trained at his own feet; but also those of Nerine who might hear him, and understand the truth in his unspoken request. Brennen will work this magic - he will protect this land for them and perhaps all of the North, with power that should be beyond the reach of most who would harm them, but it leaves his physical body undefended, so he asks for their aid.
but I will hold, as long as you like just promise me we'll be alright
Brennen may or may not be an over-achiever. That much Leilan would understand from his words and subsequent behaviour, anyway. Not that he doesn't appreciate the man going out of his way to protect Nerine, even if his ties to the land currently are lessened to a feeling of melancholy, of ties to what once was, of people who had been. It is perhaps the same sort of pull that Leilan himself feels towards the lands here - if the North isn't his home, then what is?
His niece had tried to continue what was, he thinks, giving the crown to Neverwhere. The silver dapple mare has a similar sentiment about her as the sabino blue roan, not unlike the silver roan himself. Yet the dragon shifter, in his icy home far away from the heat of politics, has seen the coming and going of queens just about enough to realize that nothing is ever truly the same. Hestia had been feared, in a way - or her demon friend had. Scorch had been desperate to find a successor, and the wild Wishbone hadn't ruled so long after all. Breckin had been almost her opposite, and the circle raced back to Heartfire - almost equally terrifying as the black mare had been.
But had Nerine ever adapted to the changes of the world? No, not since the merge with the Brotherhood it hadn't, and even that seemed a questionable form or adaptation in retrospect. Nerine survived purely on stubbornness, but it's reputation was faltering.
This realization is something he brings with him silently, when he nears the winged bay magician in the northern waters of the lands. Silently he watches him a while, emerged in the water, and seeing that it won't last. But the bay Arabian hybrid doesn't seem to notice him or his thoughts - if he does, perhaps only on a subconscious level, or in such a way that he doesn't listen to Leilan's thoughts. Too busy perhaps with that tingling net that even Leilan feels right now, when he is so close to the source. It wouldn't surprise him to find it strewn over not only Nerine, but any of the places the magician has familial ties to.
That must be exhausting.
He diverges from his trip back home, choosing to approach the magician in his element. Saltwater waves crash on his knees, the newly-made tattoos almost absorbing the water (they don't, the droplets stick to his skin, but it practically looks that way). He stops short of touching the elder male in front of him, studying his unseeing eyes and wrinkled features. "Brennen." he calls softly. Not much but the fact that it is his name. "You know they'll just wait for you to tire." It's no use exerting yourself before an inevitable fight, he's trying to say. The bay would know better than that. Should know better, at least. It's not like the stoic magician to be this emotionally involved. Unless... "Who else is being threatened?"
In other words - where do you need met to go?
nothing burns like the cold
Leilan
@[Brennen] *shrugs*
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
so give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light 'cause oh that gave me such a fright
He is aware of the approach, but as the person is very familiar to him, he does not move right away. Leilan’s movement causes the water to ripple and eddy, and the small waves lap against Brennen’s skin like kisses. Magic in the water – the only thing currently allowed to kiss him other than his boy at home. That’s…distracting, at the moment; with so much of his mind devoted to the magic, when Nihlus flits across the remainder, it’s all of Brennen’s attention. He smiles, something in the expression that’s mischievous, not an expression usually found on the magician’s face.
It takes Leilan speaking his name to draw him away from thoughts of trysting with his mate. An ear twitch first, quick and impossibly irritated, but he drags himself away from memories and daydreams and focuses the small portion of his mind not occupied with magic on the dragon. Slowly, he drags his eyes open; they are still gold, but even when he has focused on Leilan it’s clear he’s not really seeing the ‘real’ world; there are wild storms in his eyes instead. “They’ll be waiting a long time.” he murmurs, not arrogant but simply the truth as he knows it, because he is a magician whose element is the uncontainable ocean, and the power he can draw from this body of water is nigh bottomless.
Who else is being threatened? This is a less straight forward question, and he can feel the draw of the magic as strong as the tide and the laughing blue eyes of his lover on top of that, and he has to force his eyes to stay open and his voice is far away. “The children are threatened,” he intones, with a deep frown. Nerine’s children. The North’s children. Wolfbane’s children. Brennen’s children. Brennen has always had an emotional blindspot for children, and this is no different.
but I will hold, as long as you like just promise me we'll be alright
He had volunteered to go to the Isle to learn. Nash, who had dreamed of open skies and endless horizons, finds himself grounded to furthest point north that Beqanna has to offer. There is an vast expanse of the sea at the frigid edge of the Isle, past the burning blue lake that never freezes.
Nash has seen the sky bloom. He has seen the lights that make the stars jealous (how could they not be when they dance like that?). It’s at that barren, jagged edge of the formerly frozen island that the young stallion can most often be found. His brown wings partially flared, his green eyes bright with dreaming and daring - Nashua is the epitome of an adolescent pegasus. Ready to test the skies.
The teenager turns away from the far-reaching vista and takes to the bright blue above him, heading towards the southern end of the Isle. He intends to find Leilan. Perhaps for another mock. Perhaps Alcinder will indulge him in a narrative of the south, Loess. He finds no sign of the draconic stallion (or anybody else) when he lands - though this island isn’t teeming with life, it is rarely ever empty. Pulling his dark wings tightly against himself, the cool wind ruffles his feathers. His pink nostrils flare and the scent of the bachelor band is faint on the gust that goes by.
Turning his head towards the left, the evergreen of Taiga catches his attention first. Nash lets his gaze linger there before it drifts further north, to Nerine. Another breeze passes him by with the absence of any of his companions and then -
He feels it. A sense? An inkling? A pull? (He is a descendant of the last Tundra King. Perhaps it’s in the blood.)
It feels like when wanderlust lights his veins. It drives him to start walking, trotting, cantering until Nashua flares his growing wings and takes to the sky for a second time that day. The afternoon winds work in his favor and the journey is a few short hours. When he lands - splashing into the chill waves - that feeling grows wild and unpredictable, like the ocean around him.
There are two silhouettes in the twilight.
"Brennen,” says the voice of his Freyr. ”They will just wait for you tire.”
Who? He wonders. "Who else is being threatened?”
The children, the Magician states. Nashua stops (though they would have heard him coming as he splashed through the waves). The adolescent looks first to the bay roan and then the other pegasus, seeing the flash of gales and storms in the amber of his eyes despite the dim light. "I can’t offer much,” Nash says hoarsely, tired from his flight and uncertain of what exactly they were speaking of. His mother had told him and Yanhua once that Taiga had gifted them with protection, should they ever need it. Maybe, he could use that gift to help someone else. "I can heal, if it comes to that.”
Nashua is still untested. A youth who has yet to prove his mettle (his frame still lean with youth) but he’s willing to try. He’ll stay, his green eyes say as looks back to @[Leilan]. If he is needed somewhere else, if there something @[Brennen] needs them to do, he’s (earnestly) willing to try.
The magician’s eyes are distant and more golden, swirling, and otherworldly than he’s ever seen on the man. For having had to live without parents, Brennen came remarkably close to one, though it has been long since then when Leilan went his own way. Still, to see him like this is almost unsettling - a magician giving up on worldly things like food, drink and rest, to pour everything into magic, where he can hardly be reached.
But he can be reached, thankfully - in such a way even that Brennen’s dry comment sparks a smile on the roan’s dark face. ”I suppose so.” he acknowledges, but it’s the thought of the children being threatened that sits unwell with him, that rouses a feeling of helplessness and raw, foreboding anger at the same time. ”Then they’ll be sorry. You are not alone.” A promise of sorts - one magician, even a magician, might not be enough, but he will have the help of any who think similarly, and if one magician and one ice dragon is not enough, then so be it.
When Nashua catches up to them, he smiles at the young male, though it is rather grimly. ”We’ll make sure you’re ready, then.” he reaches out to the striped boy to tug on his mane, playfulness never fully forgotten when he’s around the young colts he’d taken home - taken in, or just taken, in some cases; but only with the intent of making them better capable of dealing with the world. Alcinder too - to just sit around in Loess where his mother ruled and his father was absent at that time, had not seemed preferable. Sachin was of his blood, he’d realized later on, and had preferred the Isle over any other place.
But he knows now about Wherewolf’s father, and about Nashua and Yanhua’s father - as they’re one and the same. It’s true that Nerine is at risk, perhaps, and this protective magic may last long - but forever is too long a time, and in the meantime, he’ll make sure those children are going to grow up strong and independent of their sire. ”All of you,” he decides when he looks to Nashua.
All of the children - all of his siblings.
nothing burns like the cold
Leilan
@[Brennen]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
The sea makes her queasy. There was a time when it had been easy to ignore that she was surrounded by it, when ekking out her bare survival on the Isle was the only thing that mattered and the icy sea water could be forgotten, but she has grown, and she has left the Isle, and her life no longer hangs on a tattered string tied hastily to a frost-covered stallion. Beryl wonders what she might have done if the black dragon had come and she could not leap through her shadows to warn the mainland, to attack or escape. If she had had to brave the grey water of the northern channel, she thinks she might have walked straight into the flames instead.
But it hadn't come to that.
Her shadows converge on the gravel beach, twisting and writhing like smoky snakes knotted together like a hydra, and when they have fled back to their rocky crevices and back into the wet, dark, sea, Beryl is sitting quite and tense, her round ears laid back and her tail whipping side-to-side, agitated. Neverwhere may not have intended for the girl to come here, but she could no longer stand Lilliana's sad eyes and the gratitude in her voice. There had been accusation in the Khaleesi's frown that pierced through to the place where all her guilt had burrowed but nothing cut her heart as deeply as the bereft mother's kindness.
She had barely paused to say goodbye when Neverhwhere said Brennen needed help, the palomino had touched her nose to the red mare's poll and disappeared.
Now, she wears her lion skin because it makes her feel more brave - although the lion loves the water no better than she does as a horse - and watches the trio of stallions in the chest high surf with a flat expression. The bay pegasus is unassuming and the young chestnut glitters brightly, but it is the roan who demands her attention.
Leilan.
Brown eyes follow him as he moves, but she does not call out. He will see her - she is convinced he sees everything. Instead, as she watches, she feels the way the darkness moves in the sea, unmoved by the waves and currents, lurking deep below the sparkling surface. There is a touch of panic in that feeling, her heart races and skips and her lungs fill with the memory of seawater. She thought her mother had come to take her somewhere safe, but she had been dying. Beryl knows it now, it was those shadows that plucked her from their depths and dropped her on her father's doorstep.
It was Leilan that had been her somewhere safe. She should not have left for so long, so she watches, and she waits, and, when he finally looks her way, she gives him a snarling grin full of shining sharp teeth.
| 
![[Image: jCdBK6.png]](https://img.nickpic.host/jCdBK6.png)
