[open] change what we can - warship

[Straia]

is this the end of everything?

STRAIA

or is it just a new way to bleed?

It is strangely comforting to hear herself called by that familiar old pet name. Anyone else and she would have lashed out with magic, just to remind them who they were speaking to. But Warship knew exactly who he was speaking to. He’d known her all her life, watched her grow from a tiny thing to a Queen to a conqueror. And he had followed her always and her wild, impossible, destructive schemes. She did not need to remind him who she was, or what she was capable of.

He follows not too, stepping through the fog and back into the land of the living. She grins at him, and there is something youthful beneath the years and magic that has settled upon her. She feels ancient, even if in the grand scheme of Beqanna she is not that ancient. Still, she can feel the land, it’s magic a part of her now, and in some small way it has changed her.

”Come, and I will show you the place that currently serves as home.” Before them she opens what is clearly a portal. She needs no such thing to move them, but for his benefit, she makes it visible, stepping through without concern and assuming he will follow. After all, he has no reason not to.

The portal spits them out in the middle of Pangea, near the large winding river that cuts a path through their home. The tree can be seen nearby, sitting on a small hill, easily accessed by those who need it. ”They call it Pangea. An accident of a land caused by Carnage, but it has become home nonetheless. At least for now.” She missed the Chamber, and she would see it returned at least in some sense. She did not know what the faeries would give, or what they would ask for in return, but she would pay whatever price they asked. ”There is no more magic in the lands though. All of them are largely the same, with nothing to stand for and no real purpose. I do not know what that should look like in this new Beqanna, but I do intend to change what I can.”

@[Warship]

[Warship]

when all of hell is full, the dead shall walk the earth

Beqanna giveth and Beqanna taketh away. And sometimes, she giveth back.

As he stepped through the portal Straia created, he felt something surging into his veins. It was not Straia’s magic, powerful though she may be. It was the soul of the lands, ancient and vast. Like space, it was infinite and all consuming. It poured over him, both hot and cold at the same time, reaching into the spaces between his bones and crawling beneath his skin. From the roots of the land, roots that ran to the very core of the earth, it came. It crashed into him and he was powerless to fight it, instead allowing himself to be tossed in the tide of the electrical current. Time lost all meaning to him, and eventually he stopped trying to think about it. Instead, he let himself be pulled beneath the current, and the last thing he remembered was a flash of white as the portal closed.

He awoke with a start, and he knew immediately that his body was not the one he had grown accustomed to after all those years. Something was different, though for the moment he was not terribly concerned with figuring out what. With a groan and a frown he hoisted his bulk to his feet, and once he was firmly settled on his hooves he truly opened his eyes. The world around him was different; crisper, somehow, though it lacked any sort of color. A deep breath brought with it the story of hundreds of animals who had stood in this spot before him, and their scent was more vibrant even than the new foliage surrounding him. For a moment he let himself explore those scents, enjoying the way that they poured into his nostrils, over his tongue, and flooded his brain. As he moved his tongue against the tingle of the scents, he noticed for the first time his teeth. Incredibly sharp, fully formed canine teeth. He bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood, and the intoxicating coppery taste brought with it a rush of endorphins he was completely unaccustomed to. It made him feel wild in the most literal sense, as if a feral creature was crawling at his ribcage and pushing against his heart. The feeling was so primal that it frightened him, though the building in his chest excited him. Finally, when he felt he could hold it no longer, the beast escaped, in the form of a mournful howl that echoed against the rocks and the trees before finding its way back to him and reverberating against his quivering hide.

He arrived in time to hear her description. While it was evident that she had meant for her portal to spit them out together, Beqanna had had other ideas. He comes to her side as she speaks, and he listens intently while taking in the new lands. It is not the Chamber, but he can find nothing truly objectionable about it. He viewed it as a stepping stone. ”I often wonder what Beqanna’s purpose was.” he said, and his voice had a peculiar quality to it as he moved his tongue against sharpened teeth. ”What are we, if we have nothing to stand for? What are the lands, if they have no one to stand for them?” He quieted, his new, amber colored eyes taking in Pangea. Turning back to her he grinned, before allowing a fearsome growl to rumble up from his throat. His grin changed too, and his black lips peeled back from his lethal teeth in an oddly canine manner. But it was all for show, and the growl faded into a laugh. ”It would appear that I’ll be of more help than originally thought.” He had been capable before, a force even...but now, he was fear made flesh.

Warship

TLDR; Sorry, muse explosion. Warship followed Straia through the portal, but took a wrong turn like Harry Potter with Floo Powder, finds out he's a wolf horse thing, announces his arrival by howling and growling. @[Straia]