"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
She feels her skull splitting, flesh ripping, tearing as two thick, curved horns burst from her head. She screams. Oh how she screams. Loud enough to wake the dead. This time the pain is all too real. The air is dense, laced with despair and defeat. The ground littered with the fresh remains of the demon's other victims.
The specifics on how she got her are fuzzy in her head, but she remembered the dreams. She remembered the others as broken as she was was. The ones that condemned her to this putrid hell. The anger boils hot and thick in her blood. How fucking dare they! How fucking dare they feel the self righteousness to ship her and Jaide off to fucking hell, just to save their own ragged hides. There would be a reckoning when she escaped this prison.
The demon's lair reminded her all too much of her flight on the beach as the wolves and gods closed in. She wanted to scream, to cry. She wanted to rip the others limb from limb, and all the while the wolf in her head encouraged her. wouldn't revenge taste sososo sweet my love? He appeared to her then. The black wolf draped in the stars. Impossibly black eyes, and impossibly wide mouth, grinning at her as she paced. This was his element, that strange place between tangible and abstract that sat just on the edge of your mind. The wolf liked it here, and better yet it liked having her here to play with him.
Tyrna was a wreck. her eyes wilder than usual and her coat lackluster. Juvenile wings flutterred weakly against her sides as she tossed her too heavy horns, flicking drops of blood all over the place as the fresh growths bled into her eyes. The horns themselves were black and sinister, curling over the back of her skull between her ears. Oh wouldn't her family be proud of her now. Two steps and the wolf was flowing back into her head. He liked it there too, so much anger and hate just waiting to be pushed to the brink of self destruction. He liked watching her carry on and on and onandonandon in such pure rage and despair. He lived for it. She was just too easy.
And she was not alone.
(ooc: sorry it's meh, I obviously haven't posted in a while)
Her name echoes into the vacuum in space three times, ringing with finality long after the last horses closes their lips. She’s counted all of them, kept a running tally of their choices as they’d responded. So she knows that three is a bad number to have. She knows that the others have less (save for Tyrna who has one more than her) and that she will therefore be condemned for it. Three is not six, though she thinks, but the madness has mostly left her by now. The demon itself has mostly left her. She feels like her bones are her own again, her’s to move and control – and also to fall.
And soon, that’s exactly what she does.
She falls and falls and falls and doesn’t stop for a very long time. The falling is okay she finds - even thrilling for its novelty - but the end result will be less than pleasant. The end will be a quick and final crash and splash to an already short life. Jaide closes her eyes as she plummets. She tries to imagine all of the faces she’s known (not many, as young as she is) pressing into the darkness of her fall-tunnel. She sees her mother and father, their bright eyes like the stars as they watch their daughter’s free fall into death. She sees the Sisterhood encircling her, feels the warm strength of so many women watching out for her. Noir comes last, an exclamation point on the final sentence of her life. He’s vibrant and whole as he tracks her downward motion, so young and alive that she can almost believe he hasn’t died at all. He smiles at her and she almost laughs with the great happiness that fills her.
Jaide reaches out to press her muzzle to his when her stomach lurches. This is it, she thinks, this is my end. A sharp pain erupts behind her shoulder blades. Something seems to split her skin open, flaying her from the inside out. The falling blue girl cries out as it happens, but she notices something, too. Her descent slows with each passing moment. The force of the air flying past her tugs violently at whatever has sprouted from her back. Wings? She opens her eyes, but she cannot see the things pulling at the muscles on her back. It hurts like absolute hell, but maybe she won’t smash into the ground after all.
But the ground rises to her all too quickly.
Sand replaces the blankness of space. It stretches as far as the eye can see in all directions but one. There, waves crash against the shoreline in unrelenting fashion, pounding the sand flat where they strike. There’s something directly below her, though. Some dark and ominous caverns she’s not sure she can avoid. Jaide flaps uselessly (and shudders with the pain each time) to try and skirt the rocky rise. The momentum of her fall is too much to overcome, however, and she sees her actions will not be enough. A perfectly shaped hole just large enough to fit one horse opens in the granite caves. Her wings scrape the sides roughly as she squeezes through. Fresh blood wells up and runs down her legs, the rock cutting into them as she flails.
The ground finally comes, and to her absolute surprise, she lands as softly as a butterfly on a flower. Not my doing, she thinks, looking around at the hell-hole she’s found herself in. Something is toying with me…with us, she amends when she spots the other mare pacing in the distance. The walls are blackened by eons of smoke; she can smell traces of fires long since snuffed out in the ashen air. She sees the blood already marking the other woman like it does her; she wonders if it is the ticket into this place. “Tyrna?” She has the decency to be meek about it, knowing full well that she’d added the silver girl’s name to the demon’s tally. Jaide takes a step forward, but suddenly, she realizes that she can no longer move. Just like quickly, He takes her bones for his own again.
She must look demonic at this point. Her coat covered in dirt, her mane matted with blood, and two curving horns rising sinisterly from her crown. Feeble wings tuck and untuck uselessly against her side as she prowls around the cave.
She hears her name whispered fearfully from the other side of the lair. Jerking her now too heavy head, she screams in pain as the sudden movement wrenches at her horns causing a fresh wave of blood to drip into her eyes. The mare in front of her is familiar to Tyrna. The rage and hurt that she incites rips a feral snarl from the wolf-girl's throat as Tyrna lunges towards her.
Two leaps towards the frozen girl and Tyrna is transformed. A demon wolf with wings and horns, the monster that your mother warns you about. The wolf in her head is laughing, laughing, laughing. A voice too rough too loud, stopping her from seeing reason. All she sees is one of her jailers, all she smells is fear. Do it, love. Just a nibble, just a taste. Freshfreshfreshmeat just ripe for the taking. The wolf coos to her, attempting to persuade her to kill Jaide, eat her. After all he is so hungry.
Tyrna stalks slowly towards the girl. She takes note of Jaide's new trophy. A full set of wings capable of flight unlike the stubs on her own shoulders. This does little more than fuel the anger burning hotly in her chest. Tyrna snarls and snaps at Jaide's hooves never making contact just warning her that she could. Tyrna can feel the hate, and rage, and sorrow reach a critical point in her head. Tossing back her horns and raising her maw, she let's loose a howl that fills and echoes around the small room. In it she pours all of her loss and sadness, her stubbornness and anger. When she finishes she turns back to Jaide, a sick malice filling her blue eyes. "Why?" she asks in a voice that is not entirely her own. It is deep and gravelly, laced with the wolf just like the rest of her. "Why did you condemn me here?!?" The question has barely left her lips before she growls and leaps for Jaide once more.
Unable to move herself, she instead shakes all over, looking like a quaking flower in a too-strong gale. She’s not scared, even if she looks it. Even if she should be afraid, knowing that some hell awaits her, she isn’t. The blue girl has simply seen too much, has suffered in ways she couldn’t dream of, to care what happens to her anymore. She’s not even angry at the other three for condemning her. If the demon’s lair was to be their fate, why wouldn’t they pile on the votes and send her? If anything, Jaide feels worse for not being able to send herself. She’d tried – lord had she tried – but her own name wouldn’t form on her tongue. Her moniker was elusive and uncooperative when the demon had asked; he’d pulled her next choices unwitting from her thoughts and made the choice for her.
And now, she doesn’t even have the option of defending herself from one of her picks (not that she would block Tyrna’s blows if she could – she deserves them, all of them). Her silver eyes watch the poor girl mournfully as she approaches, murderous intent making the other’s eyes flinty and hard. But her pity turns to outright shock when the mare transforms into a wolf before her eyes. The werewolf leaps at her, and all Jaide can do is lean backwards against her stilled legs. She flaps her wings, too, some new instinct that rises in her brain despite the motion’s futility. The demon will not kill her, she thinks. This was his plan all along: make the losers fight to the death.
If she hadn’t been about to meet her end, the young mare might have looked for him, then. Surely he is watching their duel now, somewhere near, in one of the dark crevasses perhaps. But Tyrna (or the winged, horned, monstrous thing that used to be Tyrna) stops her attack just in front of Jaide, snapping threateningly at her heels. The Jungle girl can see the precise moment that the rage reaches a crescendo within the creature, can see when she becomes less of a meal and more of an enemy to the other. Tyrna berates her, shames her. But this yelling she can take – at least her life is not at stake anymore.
”I…I…I’m sorry,” she says haltingly, unable to push the words past the panic that had settled in her throat. If the horned mare had wished to scare her senseless, she had gotten her wish. Jaide comes back to herself slowly, still in shock at the sight of the wolfish animal before her. Blood coats both of them, but certainly covers more of Tyrna’s morphed body. She feels terrible for the girl, but if they want to get out of this, they need to work together. They need to move past this blockade if they have any chance of returning home. Her simple apology is sincere but also comes from a place of desperation. “Just look at you, you are strong.” She explains further, her reasoning not changed since she picked Tyrna from the others before. “You have the wolf in you – you could tear out His throat if you wanted.”
She whispers this last part conspiratorially, as if He was listening (he probably was). Jaide’s silver gaze darts around the cavern, taking a moment to see if he lingers nearby. When she doesn’t see him, she breathes out a heavy sigh of relief. Perhaps they can do this together, after all. But a sudden pain like a whiplash strikes the length of her body. It burns white-hot before cooling into a cold that is almost scorching, too. The blue girl cries out as the surge travels through her veins and arteries. If she hadn’t already been frozen in place, she might have fallen twitching to the stone floor in pain. When it passes, she blinks slowly, still dazed. But to her surprise, she’s able to move her legs again. Not caring whether there will be retaliation again or not, she turns to Tyrna. “We have to get out of here.” Jaide starts to move, not looking to see if the other will follow her or not.
Jaide
girl of fire and ice
ooc: so I assumed we could powerplay the demon/torture? will change if not!
