"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
01-02-2021, 07:16 PM (This post was last modified: 01-03-2021, 03:41 PM by Sabra.)
It is dark. Not so unusual, here beneath the forest canopy. We are used to shadows and lurking darkness here. Still, it is not the kind of darkness that is light filtered through trees. This holds a colder grip on us, and I feel the memory of death play along my spine. It feels... familiar, in a way I do not like. Not one bit.
"Leave your toys, Calavera," I murmur to the girl at my feet. She is surrounded by the decayed carcass of what once was a fox, bones yellowed and brown where she had found them half-buried. She sulks a moment at my soft-spoken order, then rises obediently to her feet, and we go.
To the edge of the forest, where trees are thin and most days you can see to the mountain range. There is something different about the view today. The sun rose this morning, I'm almost sure of it. Now though, we stand in darkness, and hanging in the sky is the thinnest ring of white fire. My lips curve downward. "Odd..." I begin, but stop as soon as the word leaves my mouth. It is destined to be an odd day in more way than one, I think.
Muzzle lifted high, I inhale, draw in more of the scent that I had recognized. It has long been gone from these woods. Longer than I could reliably say. "Your back," I say, addressing the unseen. Calavera's head snaps to me, worry vibrant in her eyes. In the darkness, my skin crackles to life. Electric, alive. A beacon. And like the first night we met, the fragment of darkness separates itself from the mass of night, and I feel myself pouting into the black.
"What took you so long?" I ask @[Balto], huffy and petulent, like a child deprived of her favorite toy she knows she doesn't deserve. "I was sure you'd abandoned me." And that isn't a lie, though I say it like one. I look away from the solid night that is him, fussing with Calavera's mane, making it lie straight even when she whimpers at my tugging.
@[The Monsters] please meddle with Sab's Thunderbird Mimicry!
Darkness burns deep in his bones; hatred plumes from his very nostrils, fueled by rage deep within his chest.
He comes to the forest in the middle of the night, brandishing the wounds of the Alliance along his blue mottled body - he had failed (part of him knew he would, of course, just like he had failed in the caves what seems like eons ago; when the demons crawled across his flesh and he murdered them one by one, he had failed. The way he tore Faulkor into pieces: he had failed). He almost wishes he had died there in the arena, with Jamie’s sad yellow eyes looking down at him helplessly, offering him as somber tsk as he gave into the nothingness.
But nothing of the sort happened. He had been sent on his way, revived somehow and without injury that would cause death at all. Balto could hear them trapezing through the wood beside him, high off his battles and filled with fury for not spilling enough blood. They swarm him viciously, tearing at his skin with sharp teeth (but so gently, because they care about him so), reminding him of their presence and the fact that he would never die.
Never die, they whisper hauntingly in his ears, like a lover in the night.
The stallion whinnies hoarsely and loudly; they disperse into the shadows, writhing somewhere beyond the trunks of the redwoods and watching him with beady, lustful eyes. He calls for her, the Queen, with that obvious red mark that grabs at his throat like bloodied hands, branded by the faeries themselves.
“Sabra,” he chokes into the night, his voice grisly and tough. He is not himself at the moment - something lingers that is far heavier than his own demons, something that stretches and grows within him, something like hunger. He is not himself and when he is far from who he remembers to be (who is he, even?), it is her he seeks.
He does not notice the eclipse; not at first. It is hard to look to the sky when the darkness and the shadow already hug him so closely, intimately. His head is throbbing, pounding in a way that is worse than after his recent battles and there is an audible groan of pain that leaves the onyx of his lips.
Somehow, within the darkness, her eyes fall on him easily.
The stallion steps forth, though in the slight opening of trees there is no real light to reveal his presence. The darkness of his legs melt into the shadow, his face appearing more black and less mottled blue than perhaps the last time she had seen him. He hardly notices the child. Balto’s black lips ripple unpleasantly, uncertain if the tone in which she addresses him is her way of telling him that she had missed him, or if she truly thought he had failed her.
For a moment, he has nothing to say.
Then, finally, almost desperately, he speaks in a tone that is garbled and dry: “What do you wish from me, my Queen?”
Balto
@[Sabra]
a bit of recycled from the starter before <3
The murk is thick, and teeming. Not with life. I wouldn't dare call it life, not here. Not now. But there is an awareness in the dark. I glance back to the midnight figure of my champion, the vague outline where his voice had emitted. Can he feel it too? Or is this simply my own shadows, playing in the corners of my vision but not truly seen.
I think we are being watched, here on the edge of the forest. My skin crawls with the certainty of it. The scar tissue along my body illuminates the scene for half a moment, a strike of lightning that casts a ghostly pall on all our faces.
Calavera looks startled, Balto grim as ever. I smile harshly, once the electric after image fades. "You won?" I ask, so gently. How is it that my eyes refuse to adjust to the darkness? I would see his face when he explains, one way or another, his return. There is victory and there is failure, and he is very aware of this truth. So I wait, my patience brittle.
Calavera stays near my side. Clever girl. It is better to stay with the danger you know, than the one you only suspect. I toy with the idea of letting Balto take the girl. She is very nearly useless, but she has stayed longer than many of her siblings did, and she is not so impertinent as the last few. I hold the hope that she may one day be molded into something that will make up for her existence. If not... I smile into the nothing.
"We will not linger here," I state, and turn my back on him to return to the forest's depths. Even in the unnatural night, this air feels too exposed for comfort. There remains the sense of being hunted, and I chuckle at the thought. These woods are already haunted. They had better try harder than that to scare us.
Calavera is a moment behind me, scurries to catch up when she realizes I have begun to move. Her feet are not so familiar with the path, and I scoff in the back of my throat to hear her stumble on her way. Inelegant creature. I do not wait. She will find her way, or she will be easy prey for whatever loiters out there. I throb with light again, more stinging hindrance than any kind of help to the eyes.
The spear in my breast is a guidance now, clacking loudly when it swings into a tree. Rustling the dry bones of undergrowth. There is much to discuss, now that my wolf has returned to me.
He feels it - the dark is alive with shadows and monsters, which is nothing knew to the near soulless stallion that stands expressionlessly before her. The movement in the darkness is typical along the peripherie of his haunting stare. His own voices that mock and motivate him are nearly always just that - voices - but they often would take shape of shadow and demons when they decide to crawl along his spine and wrap their talons around the delicate bones against his legs. Balto, of course, does not realize that their presence his now known by others - no longer only seen by him (and perhaps Sabra) alone.
Though he is tired, battle-worn, and terribly hungry, there is comfort in seeing Sabra. She is sharp and curt in a way he is not shocked by - her electric eyes are looking past him, no doubt feeling the same eyes on them that he is aware of. Even in the dim light of the eerie ring that hangs above the forest, she is bright compared to him. She understands his burden, his darkness, his demons. She accepts it fully without question and in the midst of the chaos in his mind, she is a guiding light. She illuminates the scene around them in an instant and Balto finally allows his eyes to fall to the girl that is beside her, uncertain and searching for comfort, but not finding much in their presence.
You won?
It feels like an accusation across her lips, as if she already knew the answer. He snorts sharply, his gaze clicking back to her as his black ears fall into the equally black color of his tangled mane. He lifts his chin abruptly as the chittering of voices arises in a chorus behind him (he assumes no one can hear them as always, but perhaps the eclipse has changed that). The movement reveals the blood-red V that cups his throat harshly, their whispers dancing around his ears. All that rage and you still failed. Weakling.
“No.” His reply is curt and without emotion, but there is no mistaking the way his jaw clenches tightly and how the muscle in his cheek jumps with the tension.
Balto follows her without question, waiting for the girl to turn to follow what he believes to be her mother. It could easily be some filly that Sabra found abandoned in the forest, but the wolf does not care for the reason she is here. He only notices, he realizes, how terrible his hunger is as he falls into step strides behind him, his terribly blue eyes now nearly black with how large his pupils have become.
Swallow them whole, a voice whispers into his ears, hot and putrid. He grimaces, ears pressed firmly into his neck, remaining silent and following Sabra dutifully further into the forest.
Nothing in this world comes free. I know this lesson well, and it stares me in the face now. My languid eyes pass over him carelessly, mouth held in an unimpressed line as he admits to his failure. I should be grateful, I suppose, that he can admit his loss. How many stallions were incapable of such admission? Too many. A simple "hm" of regret is all he gets before we move on.
Walking through the tangled glen, my body is an inconsistent guide in the shadows. Like a firefly, I shine for the briefest of moments, vanish, and reappear further away. But the way is known to me, and I lead my little entourage without much worry. There is a sacred space I have carved out beneath oak and ash, where I feel that we are safer. From the world, if not ourselves.
Eyes blinded by impenetrable night, I groan and stretch beneath the cover of tree branches. A tangled, living cavern that exists even if I can't see it. In the distance, a high-pitched wail is heard. Like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a fox, if that rabbit and that fox were warped beyond all recognition. I listen to it, thoughtful, and once Balto is near enough to feel again I turn.
It feels dangerous, having him at my back. Like trusting a copperhead to be kind. Then daring and tempting it with every opportunity to be cruel. To bite. That is why I must keep him well satiated. Fed and full on other's suffering. I promised him blood once, did I not? And who am I to not keep my promises.
"We did not make the correct sacrifices," I murmur, bell-like in the empty space. "Next time, we will prepare more carefully." There. The weight of failure, removed from his shoulders. They told me it would be this way. That I couldn't expect things to go as I wished if blood were not spilled on the earth. Nothing comes free. All must pay a price. I have paid mine time and again, now it's their turn.
Soft as fairy down, I make my way to press my hollow cheek to Balto's, cool skin colder when touching his. "Tell me-" I say, words fed directly to his ear. "If you did not bring home victory, what do you offer me instead? Knowledge, perhaps?" Had the Beast been watching closely enough? He had met an array of strangers, foes and competitors. Surely, in all the time he'd tarried in the battlegrounds, something useful must have come of it.
Following Sabra proves easy, but he cannot help but notice that the near-blinding pain in his head only intensifies with each pulse of her light, her figure staggered as the illumination plays tricks on his eyes, making time appear to move slower.
The sounds in the forest are much more alive with the coming of the eclipse and its endless night. It does not occur to him yet that others can actually hear the movements of the creatures within the shadows and when a cry echoes through the forest, there is a soft recognition in his nearly-black face as Sabra turns her head towards it, as well as the filly. The sound is dismissed, however, whether it is real or induced by the demons of his (or her) mind.
He had put his failure in the Alliance solely on himself, let it fester in his chest as rage and it now blooms in the darkness that crawls across him, the hunger that ravages him. At Sabra’s comment, however, he becomes thoughtful. It seems promising and he finds his mouth watering at the mention of sacrifices and the idea of more. Something in him balks at the idea, finding it grotesque that it would please him in such a vile way. But something else, something darker and stronger, presses into the idea without a thought.
Balto’s crystalline eyes click to the girl at Sabra’s side, hungry and nearly black.
The intense stare is broken when Sabra’s mouth finds his cheek, drawing him from the girl and bringing his attention to her lovely opaline face. The scent of her is illuminating - rich and intoxicating, far more so than the young child he had been eyeing. The stallion swallows hard the incessant hunger, trying to focus on anything but the temptation to slice their skin to drink straight from their veins.
“Jamie, the victor.” comes Balto’s breathless reply, his voice tight; rigid as his body as Sabra keeps close to him. He pauses, remembering the brief time after their battle they spent in the forest, before returning to Sylva and its Queen. “He wields the power of a magician now, in Pangea.” Her touch makes his skin tremble, but his voice remains unwavering. “And a woman,” he says, suddenly thoughtful, “from Tephra. A fair opponent, but useless - just as any of her offspring will be.”
His gaze flickers down to the child, appearing emotionless but inwardly fighting the urge to lunge at her to tear at her throat. The thought makes his stomach churn for a moment, but then it is replaced by such a blind hunger that he does not find himself repulsed by the idea of the action. Hesitantly, as if unsure, his weight shifts towards her - still close to Sabra where their embrace does not break.
In these woods, I feel no fear. Which is foolish, of course. The trees creak and murmur, their usual sounds that harmonize so nicely with the insect-like Voices that whisper and scream between them. Whisper and scream, whisper and scream, no one speaks in a normal tone, do they? Either you're skulking in the shadows, or you're letting the world know it wasn't enough to save you.
Calavera lingers by my side, hesitant and ethereal where the dark eyes of my champion track her. I do not move to shield her, but nor do I shift and allow him access. Not yet, not yet. The daughter of a ghost, and she is a wispy thing. But not meant for Balto's teeth. Not yet.
What I have said draws his attention, and the rage that forever simmers beneath his skin dulls a moment, placated by my apparent forgiveness. I touch his skin, soft as a lover, and nod against the hollow of his throat. Yes, we will do better next time.
He describes in the vaguest of terms his interactions, and my mouth tightens. I do not care about the mare. She is another loser, and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. A new magician, though, born of victory. A sigh flutters through me. Would that it had been my Balto who had emerged the winner. I could scream with disappointment, but that will get us nowhere. I content myself with a steady grinding of my forefeet into the loam. Unseen, but near enough to know they are watching, the Voices chitter with shrilly laughter. Mocking the failure they could have prevented.
"We will simply have to work harder," I comment, mostly to myself. Sweat and tears would get us so far, and blood... I think that just might carry us the rest of the way. Speaking of which... I feel him, his muscles hard and tense beneath my touch, stretching, stretching away from me. Reaching.
My lips were soft on his neck. My teeth are not. The base of his throat is velvet, and I seek to sink my dull bite into it, snarling as vicious as any lurking monster. "She is not yours," I declare sharply, half rearing. Calavera, with more sense than I typically credited her for, darts away and off into the pitch of the woods.
