"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
01-09-2021, 05:26 PM (This post was last modified: 01-09-2021, 05:26 PM by Desire.)
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
There had been no resistance when she had offered to take the lead of Pangea, though she can’t say she is entirely surprised. The land was quieter than it had been when she was younger; there wasn’t really anyone to contest against her. She had half-expected Beyza to step forward if no one else did, but the shockingly white mare had not. Which was good – she would rather have her as an ally than an enemy.
Having not been here for a few years, there weren’t many familiar faces. Ghaul was gone, of course. Draco seemed to be sparse, along with his irritatingly soft sister (she can’t say she minds that part so much). She thought she had seen a few that reminded her of Ghaul – draconic features and peculiar oddities – and she assumes they are his children, but she has not bothered to find out yet.
No, there is one individual in particular that she is searching for, and he is proving to be difficult to find in this darkness.
Word spread fast in Beqanna, but considering the most recent winner of the alliance called Pangea home, it had reached her especially quickly. Desire, never one to turn down an opportunity when she saw one, was keen to name him as their champion. Was it cheating to have the alliance winner as your champion? She doesn't really care.
Jamie was his name, and something about shadows.
How convenient that all of Pangea was currently one endless shadow.
With the aid of her infrared vision, she was at least able to easily track down the few residents that were here, quickly eliminating them as her target.
When she finds him he is a strange, shifting mass of blue and purple, and with a switch of her vision she is met with two glowing eyes staring back at her. “Evening,” she says, but the greeting is followed by a silvery laugh and a shake of her head. “Or at least, I think it’s evening. Who knows anymore.” Night and day bled into one another now, a dark that never changed, without even a star to break up the black of it. It was disconcerting, and while she did not know what it meant she was determined to at least have Pangea be protected. “My name is Desire.” She waits, then, to see if she was correct in assuming this was the man she was looking for.
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
He brings the darkness home to Pangea.
The darkness and all of the things that come along with it.
And he prefers the desert in the darkness. It does not feel so long ago that he, as a child, had banished himself to the darkest corners he could find. How scarcely he had emerged from them, how the sun had offended his eyes. He is a shadow thing, it is only natural that he would shy away from the light.
He brings something else along with him, too.
The promise of protection for Pangea, total immunity.
Strange to think that Pangea had been a kingdom when the fighting had started and now it is something other.
How seamlessly he bleeds into this darkness. He could make himself easier to find, certainly. He could give himself a soft glow if he wanted to but he has never been a beacon and he has never cared much for attention. He could just as easily make himself totally invisible, he thinks, but he sees no reason for this either. He does not know that he is being hunted.
When he sees her moving through the darkness it does not occur to him that she might be looking for him. Until she addresses him directly and he thinks she must have been. She greets him and then she laughs and he, uncertain of how to react, smiles that shark-tooth smile and tilts his peculiar head. It had been day on the battlefield and then, somehow, it had been something else. He thinks it must still be day beneath all of this crushing darkness.
“Desire,” he echoes in that rasping, rattling voice. “I’m Jamie. From what I understand, congratulations are in order.”
( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME
YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME )
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
She is right, and there is a small smile of self-satisfaction that grows on her face. She is always pleased when she is correct about something, no matter how small.
He is just as she had hoped— a shadow with teeth, much like she thinks this darkness that has descended upon them might be. There are things that move here that her infrared vision can't seem to find, and she won't lie that it makes her uneasy. After all, the ground here had swallowed someone whole, and now they are trapped in a never-ending eclipse; she does not trust what she does not know, and she certainly does not know any of this.
She wonders if he is familiar with the creatures that roam the dark, but she tables that topic for now.
With a shake of her head and a laugh that could have sounded humble if not for the glimmer of conceit in her eyes, she says, “No, I think you are the one deserving of congratulations. I simply accepted what no one else did.” She wonders if it was the presence of Carnage that intimidated them; wonders if they were afraid it would be their body being devoured into the earth next if they failed. It was a thought that had crossed her mind, but she thrived off the fear of it— so similar to her mother, and yet entirely different.
She would not lie, though, that she was pleased to find herself in this position.
Even more pleased to be in the company of the likes of Jamie and Beyza, and with an idea shaping of adding more.
“But you,” she fixes her gaze onto his, finding the glow of his eyes in the dark, her own nearly lost in the purple-black galaxy of her face and the night around them. “You fought your way from the bottom and came out on top.” The admiration in her voice is evident, and not entirely fabricated. If anything, she envies him. Fighting was not her forte— evasion was a better skill of hers.
“You should be proud,” she finishes, her stare pointed but her voice velvet-soft against the shadow that stretches between them, fading into the shadows of him.
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
He knows very little about the things that had taken place when he’d been away at the Plains. He does not know that Pangea had been torn apart and then rebuilt. He does not know about the woman who had been tasked with leading it or how the earth had swallowed her whole when it had deemed her unworthy. He had heard news that Desire had taken the helm but nothing about how she had arrived there. So he does not know what she means when she says she had simply done what no one else did.
But he smiles that shark-tooth smile all the same. Things are changing, he can feel it.
The darkness swims around them, pulsing with life. He can feel the shadow things calling to him, beckoning for him to follow him into the depths. He struggles to keep his attention focused on Desire, congratulating him. And he makes no effort to shirk her congratulations, he does not think himself unworthy of them.
No, the heart swells with pride. He is not humble, Jamie, not in the same way he used to be. He tilts his peculiar head and studies her through the dark. Does she know, truly, how far he had to climb? From the crippled child he’d been to the creature that stands before her now. How steep the climb had been. How spectacularly meteoric his rise. But he will not gloat.
He drags in a rattling breath and nods. “I am proud,” he rasps, fog gathering around his legs. “My life has been strange and dreadful,” he tells her without any trace of self-consciousness. It is the most natural thing in the world for him to admit this. “It seems only right that there should be nothing outside of my reach now.”
He’d earned it, he thinks, even before he’d ever set foot on a battlefield. But he does not elaborate. He has said enough already.
( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME
YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME )
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
He is so at home in the dark, in a way that she has seen few be. She is not afraid of it, not exactly, but she is cautious. She does not trust it; does not trust all that she cannot see. The monsters—she does not know what else to call them—did not seem to be something that fell within the infrared range. They were impossible to detect, and she was beginning to suspect that their own traits were useless against them.
She wonders, though, if that is the case for him.
Wonders if perhaps his shadows at least stood a chance against the magic hidden within this dark.
The fog curls around his legs, clearly drawn there, and she feels a flicker of admiration that borders on envy. She did not mind the gifts she had been born with; it seemed for a woman named Desire to be able to manifest as someone else's. But there was a part of her that would always long for something more, that would want what she could not have.
And if she could not get it for herself, she would simply have to do her best to lure others with such gifts to stay in Pangea.
“Dreadful?” She echoes his statement with a tilt of her head, giving him the option to expand on it, although she doesn’t directly ask. She was curious about what would constitute as ‘dreadful’, but had enough awareness that perhaps this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have with a stranger.
But mostly, it was because it wasn’t the conversation she wanted to have.
“I was looking for you for a reason,” she continues, her black eyes fixed on the glowing embers of his. “Pangea is without a champion, and I was hoping you would be interested in filling that position.” She pauses for a moment but does not let the question hang for long. “I grew up in Pangea, but I’ve been gone for some time. I know that you’ve been here for a while, though, and I would feel much better with someone that both knows the land and is a proven fighter in the champion position.”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
“I was born weak,” he tells her and he can feel the memory as it ripples through him. The magic is not always pleasant, he has found, sometimes it makes him ache. Sometimes he feels things he has no interest in feeling, like the way the muscles had quivered with exhaustion in his youth. How pathetic he had been then. And the breath still rattles, this much is true, he still wheezes and the voice still curls up out of his throat like fog. (He could fix this so easily now, heal himself with little more than a thought, but he keeps this affliction to remind himself where he came from, what he has overcome.)
“Although, looking back on it now, weak feels like an understatement.”
He had been nothing. Insignificant. So pitiful that he had confined himself to the shadows because he could not bear the sun.
A disgrace.
And now? Now she has come to ask him to Pangea’s champion. Now she approaches him because he is a proven fighter, because he has done his home proud.
He smiles his shark-tooth smile and turns those freakish yellow eyes into the darkness. His darkness. It curls around him like a shroud. How giddy it makes him, the terrible things that stir in the shadows. Would she ask him to take up post as champion if she knew that he was one of them? Would she want him to fight on behalf of Pangea if she knew that they were one and the same?
He draws in a long, wheezing breath, contemplating the shadows a moment before he finally drags his focus back to her face. Such a lovely creature, he thinks. They’re all so lovely. He has seen her family, the fine glass of them. Such breakable things in such a dangerous world.
“I will continue to fight for Pangea,” he says, though he hadn’t really been fighting for Pangea through the Alliance. It had been a personal venture, but his victory had benefited his home regardless.
“What will you do with it?” he asks after a beat. “All of the terrible power that calls Pangea home.”
( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME
YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME )
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
She can’t say that she relates, but she nods her head as if she understands. She has never been weak, but she has never exactly been strong, either. When she was younger she had learned that she would never be able to physically force anyone to bend to her will—she had to learn how to persuade their minds. Most of them were easy. She was pretty, with that galaxy-color spilled across her brilliant white, and those unreadable black eyes that somehow managed to spark with life and an unnamable kind of energy. She knew how to fake interest, how to pull things from them without them even realizing.
And if they didn't find her pretty enough all on her own there were her illusions, the ability to turn herself into something they did want to please. It was perhaps her favorite trick, to be able to look like anything they wanted, and so far, it always worked.
So it was enough for her, usually, to just simply be pretty, until she found herself face to face with someone that could do something she could not—fight.
Thankfully, he accepts her offer, and while the smile on her lips is a small one, it is also pleased. “I’m glad you agree. I’ve never claimed to be much of a fighter, so it would be a shame for harm to come to Pangea due to my own short-comings.” She did not want to admit that she hated that; hated that she relied on others to help her keep her position, hated that if everyone turned on her she would be entirely helpless. She hoped, though, that as long as she at least had Beyza, and even Jamie, even remotely on her side—or at least, on Pangea’s side—that it would discourage anyone from coming for them.
“I don’t have a concrete plan,” she answers him honestly. “I think, for now, I just want to strengthen what we have. I like the idea of having a variety of talents., but I think it’s best to build on that slowly.” She pauses thoughtfully, pressing her lips together, before saying, “But if you ever come across anyone with a useful ability to add to our arsenal, convince them to come.”
Here, she tilts her shapely head, the smallest of smiles, almost demure, curling at the edge of her lips. “What is your talent, Jamie?”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
The story he’d heard had been one of his mother picking Pangea out of the ashes of its own ruin. The shadow magician, mother of aliens, Anaxarete saving Pangea from its untimely demise. Anaxarete, who had seemed to favor the white magician over her own children, taught the white magician how to wield her power. And then it had been the white magician who had taught Jamie what to do with his own terrible power because Jamie had never learned how to trust his mother, Anaxarete, convinced as he had been in his youth that his mother had crafted him from something horrible. Convinced that she had built him to be a monster.
(He knows now that it is not such a bad thing to be a monster. The monsters are his family. Those dark things that move in the shadows. The things that had sunk their vicious teeth into his bones and torn him apart. The things that had welcomed him home.)
He does not think his mother would have let any harm come to the land she dug out of its own filth but he feels no impulse to tell Desire this. At least not specifically. “There are many dark forces that call Pangea home,” he murmurs, though he’s certain she knows this already, “I do not think they would let Pangea fall.” Beyza had shown him the witch that had tried to burn it and how the earth had retaliated.
She has no plan. He shifts his weight. His breath rattles.
He flashes that same shark-tooth smile and tilts his peculiar, featureless head.
“What do you consider a useful ability, Desire? You and I might have very different ideas on the subject.”
What is his talent? Well, that’s simple, isn’t it? He turns his focus from her then, briefly. Glances over his shoulder and pulls from his shoulder half a dozen shadow creatures. But they do not look like him. They are canines, baring their razor sharp teeth, their ink black mouths, their freakish yellow eyes. Absolutely silent as they slink through the darkness toward them. They are not the things that sprung forth with the eclipse, these creatures belong to him alone. He studies them a long moment, such an adoring expression on his face before he blinks and they drop dead where they stand and he returns his focus to her.
“Death.”
( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME
YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME )
jamie
