"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
let go and make believe, we’re singing in the streets
Bloody and broken, she stumbles into the Meadow.
Her blood stains her cheek from where the dragon-hound mist creature had stroked her face, though the wound has long since healed over. Her ruined ears—barely stitched together—had bled heavily all down her face and neck, and ruining her future Self had left Cress’s entire front end—her muzzle, her neck, her chest—coated in blood that is hers and is not hers all at the same time. The blood drips down her legs (the brutal murder had been only minutes ago, after all) as she half-walks, half-trips into the Meadow. The taste of blood is still heavy in her mouth and she is desperate to find a stream to rinse the taste away.
It doesn’t take her long to find running water, and she wades into it gratefully. The blood had covered up her dragon-Mark but as she goes deeper the delightfully cold water rinses away the blood, uncovering it piece by piece. Wings, a reptilian head, a bulky body, curved tail, and long, cruel talons slowly come into view, burned black into her skin. She has been branded by the dark god—they all have, if they managed to escape—and she’ll carry the mark for the rest of her life.
The blood slowly rinses away, leaving her as golden as she was before the torture. When all but her face is clean, she cautiously sinks her head beneath the water, letting the coolness wash away the fire inside of her. It’s still there—maybe she’ll feel it there forever, now—but the cold water helps to bring down the burning sensation and she doesn’t want to leave. She considers the possibility of just staying beneath the water and letting it carry her away, but she can’t possibly do that. She has to go home. She has to prove to the Valley that she’s okay and that she’ll make a great Salaam.
With a sigh she pulls herself from the stream, shaking like a dog to loosen the water clinging to her coat. As the heavy breath escapes her nostrils she notices a trail of smoke coming from seemingly within her, but she pays it no mind. It’s probably just a remnant of the fire that the dragon left in her chest. She wouldn’t be surprised.
Maybe being free just means a new way for him to torture them.
Her eyes fall on a nearby stallion—he’s familiar!—and she gasps, instinctively taking a step towards him. He’s here, but he was there, too, he was in the dungeon with her; he was one of the dark god’s captives as well. “You survived!” she exclaims, and something clicks within her body as she speaks—a tongue of flame shoots out of her mouth following the words.
“Oh my god.”
There will be time for falling apart later. All that matters now is that she was not the only one who escaped.
cress;salaam of the valley
you’re only happy when you’re making a scene
09-28-2015, 01:49 PM (This post was last modified: 10-09-2015, 01:55 PM by Ledger.)
I can see for miles, miles, miles
He needs to go home but he doesn’t. Instead he’s in the Meadow… He’s looking for his father’s corpse. Something solid to make the lines stop blurring. Something that will show him that he did indeed kill Magnus or that it had just been another trick from the Dark Torturer. Of course only one gold flecked eye remains to look, the other cruelly ripped from it’s socket and leaving only an empty hole behind. An empty black hole with three long wounds grazed from top to bottom. He was a disfigured man, mutilated for the rest of his days. His flank aches where Carnage had left his brand, still fresh and bleeding in it’s Ursa Major shape, lines connecting to large dots. A mockery the Star God had left on his flesh.
She has cleaned herself but he hasn’t though to do such a thing. He is too broken at this point, too upset to think of anything else but finding Magnus… Dead or alive. Her voice startles him and he whips around, his one good eye wide as he braces himself for new cruelty. He won’t run away, not anymore. The only good thing Carnage had done was unlocked that box he had chained so deep within him for so long. It was filled with all the injustices he had ever faced and gone through. Where he had been a whipped puppy for so long, the puppy now had teeth. Could now defend itself better than he could before. It’s a strange feeling though. As his fear flares so does something else inside of him. It rumbles and growls inside his core, something that want’s to be unleashed but doesn’t know how to break free. Not yet.
It takes him a moment to place her, to register what she said. A sharp inhale as his nostrils flare and his aching muscles slowly unwind. Before he can speak, she exhales fire and he quickly steps back with a look of surprise instead of alarm. For he remembers her. He remembers all of them. The children most of all. Instant guilt sweeps over him, an old and familiar blanket. ”You couldn’t do that before…” He states blankly, it wasn’t a question. He had heard their screams as much as they had heard his. He knows that they had all been weak. Surely if she could manipulate fire, she would have escaped much sooner. He would have remembered flames in the darkness.
His one good eye takes her in, notices her cleanliness and the soothing edges of her own brand. Ashamed, he drops his neck with his head towards the grass. ”I should have done more…” Pain in his voice, pain in his body, pain in his abused heart. He had been so wrapped up in his own suffering that he had forgotten them, had left them all behind. ”I should have saved you all.” As if there had been anything he could have done to release them from torture. But maybe if he had sacrificed himself, they could have been freed. It was what his father would have done but then again, he was nothing like Magnus. He remembers his father’s words clearly, how worthless he was. The shame burns him more than the brand on his flank does.
