[open] you be the lamb, and we'll be the slaughter

[frenzy]

so hopeless but i'm still romantic
bloodstained, i'm gonna blow a kiss
______________________
They say that a child born amidst chaos will lead a chaotic life, so what else could be expected from the fledgling dragoness who is kissed by stars?

She doesn’t remember much from the murder of her mother other than a lot of red, red, red blood, but she does remember the blind boy who turned out to be her brother. He is timid and a bit squeamish, but Frenzy adores her elder brother. As it turns out, she has another mother as well, a beautiful woman named Clarissa, and two sisters. They are all as different as the constellations in the sky, but she loves them all the same.

All but perhaps Father, who frightens her with his curling eye-horns and ruthlessness. He is a king, making her a bastard princess, but there is something deeply abnormal about him. He scowls when she is near, as if she is nothing more than the dark reminder of the woman his son had slaughtered. She tries not to let Ghaul’s blatant cruelty bother her, but she also does her best to avoid the king and his equally cruel brother.

Second-Mother’s nest is situated directly on the border of Pangea and the Cove, and it is where Frenzy rests her head each night. The decaying skull of First-Mother doesn’t even bother her anymore, hanging like a decoration over her parents’ heads while they sleep. The nest allows her easy access to both territories, and most days she finds her hooves carrying her over the kingdom her father rules.

It is a barren wasteland, dangerous but beautiful, and Frenzy stops along the edge of the slow-moving river, lowering her head to take a few sips of the water before continuing on. The echoing of hooves reaches her and she swivels her head towards the sound, water dripping from her lips as she stares down the stranger.

frenzy
i'm pretty like a car crash.

[Set]

Not one to sit idle, he had left Salomea and Dretch in the Cove; though, he very much doubts that the little scamp will stay put for long. The ink-blotted child, with her evolving self-modifications, is just as restless as he. He has not been back to Pangea for some time now. As he crosses the border between the northern inlet and the sandstone kingdom, Ana and her monster’s scents have faded, replaced by others unfamiliar to him. Change is the way of the world, kingdoms and their rulers waxing and waning. He had learned long ago, sometime after the Chamber had disappeared into the void, that effort is wasted if it is not invested in something tangible – and, preferably, under his control. Striped hooves track up underneath him in a languid walk, his head swinging low. Mismatched ears flicking back and forth, bright gaze roaming from one canyon wall to the other, senses alert.

The silence is thick, disrupted only by his dusty hoofsteps and the now and then cry of a particularly cheeky gryffen fledgling. It keeps sending him images of the most tedious persuasion. It floods the channel linking them with close-up pictures of things – nothing but brown water, sparks of sunlight caught on its surface; an old bloodstain – on a rock, on the bank opposite his path. Finally, exasperated, he releases the creature. Rather than return to where he had beckoned it from, the lion-pawed little bundle sinks its needle-claws into Set’s haunches, his just-feathered wings stretched out behind him to keep his balance as the piebald bucks and snorts, careful not to dislodge the kid.

It chirps happily and leaps down to the ground, trotting ahead of Set and disturbing the fresh trail that their line of travel had only just intersected. He pauses a moment, brushing his muzzle along a smudged track, licking away the dirt that sticks to it. Interesting. The little’s tufted tail disappears around a bit of rock, no doubt headed directly for the river, and Set jogs after him with a lopsided grin.

He ruffles the ground ahead of the prancing rogue, humps of earth slowing its beeline for the water’s edge. Another breath and then he turns to peruse the galaxy-marked mare, tracking the bits of water that drip from her chin, roving up over the wickedly pointed horn tip to meet brown eyes streaked through with warm honey. Offering her a grin and a wink in all of his casual arrogance, he snorts and a haggard, prehistoric creature rears its scaly head above the water’s surface. The little gryffen shrieks, first in fear as the yellowed teeth snaps in his direction, then in delight when it uses its scaled tail to whip water over him. Sodden, he wiggles and struts down the bank, following his new playmate. The substantial crocodilian beast slaps its tail again, sullied water again sent up and over Set and company.

@[frenzy]

[Reign]

Reign couldn’t remember what life was like before she walked across galaxies, before she learned to hide behind starlight; it was cold there, empty. The sound of the two great beasts clashing together lost in the vacuum of the void. She should be dead. She never should have witnessed it. He tore her to pieces when he remembered what he was and who he served. Reign could not reach him. Not even her Mother could reach him.

Her Mother didn’t matter to him.
Her Brother didn’t matter to him.

Reign, herself, who had been poised to be his favorite was suddenly nothing in the eyes of Tarnished.

Not once he remembered his Master and their Cause.

And then Caw came.

Caw begged for Reign’s life as Reign lay dying, pleading: “Pretty please don't let her die, don't let anymore of them die—“

Reign supposed someone, or something, was listening. They must've been. She had spent the years since then hiding behind the stars, the sole witness to a war that would never quite end. A war that waged on and on in the heavens, beyond Beqanna, past their moon and stars and understanding. They destroyed other worlds in their wake, oblivious even to the planets they annihilated all in the name of their Gods. Good and Evil. Light and Dark.

'Please let me go home, please...'

Someone, or something, was still listening.
All Reign needed to do to was ask.

—

The sky was cloudless and then it was not. Black, monstrous thunderheads swirled—roaring, crackling, until they cast a single lightning bolt and then they were gone. No harm, no foul.


Only Reign in her little, roan child’s body, regarding the world around her with a bizarre mixture of wonder and contempt. She blinked her yellow eyes as if to test them, her black, forked tongue sneaking out of her mouth to taste the air. There were no Titans here struggling to destroy one another, only water and sandstone and grass and trees.

She was almost afraid to move, half-considering the fact that she had gone mad and this was all some grand hallucination. Still, the urge to do so won out and she began inching forwards—slowly, steadily. Her legs didn’t feel like they belonged to her. Her wings were mere wisps at her side, hardly noticeable unless someone bothered to look close. She followed the river, figuring that it must support some kind of life, and didn’t stop until two figures stood in the distance.

Reign lifted her head higher, her tongue, again, slipping out between her teeth to taste the air. She didn’t quite know what to make of them, whether to approach and ask for directions or to skirt around them and find her way out of this place on her own. Regardless, she would still be doing quite a bit of traveling—she wanted her Mother, if Mother would still have her—and nothing was going to get in her way.

Snorting, the filly opted to try and go around them—hoping to give them a wide enough berth that they might not notice her. She chose to stick close to the canyon wall, only bothering to side-eye them if they moved.