"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
05-22-2021, 02:09 PM (This post was last modified: 05-22-2021, 03:14 PM by Gryffen.)
a ghost in the darkness.
The ghost had always done things for his own benefit and nobody else’s. Selfish red eyed thing that he was, he had simply left them when he had grown bored of ruling. Bored of the simple minds behind thick skulls that could never see the bigger picture. So he allowed them to think him missing, think themselves abandoned, think that he had vanished. He watched as some lashed out vindictively in his absence (his favorite pet, the two-toned bluebird, seemed particularly unhappy with him) and others grew bold.
The Eclipse had called to him (darkness, shadows, and monsters) but he still held back.
Not yet, not yet.
It wasn’t till the spring, when magic played through the pile of bones that lay haphazardly amongst the dark shade of a red and yellow canopy, that the empty sockets seem to blaze back with a fiery hue of red. Now. Says something in the air, a whisper that curls around the exposed bones of his ribcage, that whistles through the bleached skull and intwines around femur and vertebrae. Come back. Come. Back.
As the skeleton walks, the world seems to wither from his touch. Leaves fall from the branches, shriveled and dry by the time his hoof crunches over them. The violent reds and golden yellows of the trees suddenly alight like tinder, the colors turning to actually flames. There’s no lungs to see but the bone man still seems to inhale deeply, this chaotic magic that flows through his bones, the crimson of his eyes dancing with the flames of the blazing woods above.
There’s new magic in these lands which means new things to discover. It’s been so long since he had picked up his scalpel and peeled them apart to see how they ticked, how their magic kicked into overtime or sputtered to a halt. It’s been so long since he broke them apart just to watch them bleed.
They had been quiet for too long, had grown stale and boring. A lot of bark and no bite for those that claimed to be wicked, claimed to thrive on violence, claimed to love chaos.
Nobody loved chaos more than the red eyed ghost.
Nobody understood chaos like Gryffen.
As the flames writhe around him, flickering amongst the open spaces of bone and air, his neck arches vertebrae by vertebrae and his jaws clack together, a resounding crack amongst the smoke and flames. He was back just in time to watch the world burn.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts,
with stoutest wrists and loudest boasts,
he thrusts his fists against the posts
and still insists he sees the ghosts.
It's unfortunate that the crumble or engraved rules should be the reason to wake her but she was something bigger than the skin that enclosed. In other worlds she is a nymphette of unexplained magic. Her body melded of horse and plant, she does not have to hide or try to make the others understand. they just accept that she is what she is...nothing more. But here in the place of her birth. she is limited and contorted to be something of acceptance in the standards that are written. Outside of Beqanna, she has lived multiples lives, crossed multiple dimensions and completely shed the image of a plain little Nikoline that has nothing to offer but now that the world has shifted and the rift has opened, she dares to return.
Niko had been tending her plants, singing a small lullaby before the moon rose full and pregnant when she felt the shift in Beqanna. It was a misstep of her heartbeat, a flutter, something uncaged. Niko acknowledges it with a push of her mind and she slips behind closed eyes to view it all. Nikoline watches the laws fade and crumble, the world as they knew is askew and the time feels right to return and visit in the window of opportunity.
The softly glowing silver mare enters the rift to return. It is no longer painless to jump from life to life, world to world. Nikoline steps from a seam of light upon her wooden points in a soundless display of movement. She is perfumed by the blossoming cherry blossoms in her mane with wide, dark doe eyes attempting to see all that she could. It's not much longer before she notices the pale man standing with a hint of malice in his eye. She can feel a vibration radiating. It's seeing like that of a chained wolf, beckoning the hand closer to snap. Nikoline in the past would have feared him, ran for ehr very life, but she is metamorphized to something greater, something stronger.
The mare dares to near him, a scent heavy of masculine pheromones seeping from his pores. He not of great height but his presence commands her attention. They look odd near one another as her whimsy is not met by his scars. Despite her own unearthly and odd company, she offers conversation. "Hello." She delivers softly, nearly a whisper on the spring breeze. she smells of fresh spring rain, lavender, and cherry blossoms and the smile on her dark lips are painted with warmth as she waits for his acknowledgment.
Speech, @tagged
TABLE BY CISSY, ART BY ELDAFER
((maybe not his cup of tea, but let's see what happens?))
Oh yes, I feel it too. Feel the ache in the land as it twists uncomfortably with magic. It is an overfilled cup, improbability spilling from its edges and saturating everything it touches. Chaos. Wild Magic. Whatever you want to call it, it throbbed beneath my feet and sang in my blood. Filled my lungs like thick smoke.
Well. That last part wasn't a metaphor. A look of utter irritation creased my face, the scent of burning leaves and wood growing stronger with every passing moment. "Oh, absolutely not," I growled at no one. No one, yet, anyway. In echo of my rising temper, thunderheads piled overhead. By the time I had come upon the source of the smell, they towered heavy and bruise colored. The day had gone from pleasant to down right threatening.
Fat drops of water began to scatter on the singed canopy, a fork of lightning illuminating the scene. Two unnatural creatures, one bone, one arbor. And the storm makes three.
"The fuck are you doing to my forest," I snapped once I was sure I had been seen. This is addressed to the scalding pile of bones, the heir apparent of this flame. Vaguely, it crosses my mind that Calavera would adore it, simply for existing. All I care is that one of my Laws has been breached. The tree-thing seems to be as concerned as I, in a softer way. Too soft.
Lightning flashes and he enjoys the way the water splatters against his protruding bones, enjoys the taste of ash that dusts his cartilage. The fire starts to die beneath the storm but a few gusts of wind helps it spread a little further before it completely goes out. His skull is angled upwards as if it can see the clouds through the trees when the first mare approaches. Cherry blossoms woven in her mane with a scent that permeates his invisible nostrils. She is bold in her approach, coming near enough for him to reach out and drag the jagged edges of where his muzzle would have been along her flesh. She tastes of life just as he reeks of death. “Hmmm.” The skeleton seems to sing to itself, a reverberating noise amongst the bones as he considers Nikoline and her glowing dapples, her twisted branches and her doe eyes.
And then she comes.
She screams, she demands. The holes in his socket mold into something of jelly and flesh, no longer just glowing spheres of color as they protrude into red eyeballs the better to roll in annoyance with. “Whatever the fuck I want.” Smoke seems to fill his skull as it crawls out to her with a variety of nasty little things as his disembodied voice lingers in the air. Maggots and worms snake around his skeletal frame before burrowing into the dirt and then reaching from the ground to crawl up Sabra’s legs. As she inhales, the smoke starts to infest her lungs and he floods her mind painfully and fills it with images of Sylva when he had ruled it. Pictures of death and destruction, fornication and fear. Torture (as his sister’s flesh starts to peel away under the coaxing of one of his followers), pleasure (the bacchanalia he had once hosted beneath these dark limbs and the fire that had resulted in half the woods being burnt to cinders), and even glimpses of Taiga (flooded as unnatural wolves snapped their jaws and those unable to make it past the magicians wall drowned). There are even images of old, from a time long before she had even existed. Of the Chamber, of slave pens, of a burning magical tree in a place of Heaven. All chaos, wrecked by him.
He doesn’t care about her precious Laws.
Laws were made to be broken.
He takes the storm above them and fills the dark clouds until they are nearly full to bursting. And then, like a pin to a balloon, the storm explodes. Is it better to burn or drown? In this form he feels nothing so he doesn’t really know. But perhaps Sabra will be able to answer that particular question when the water rises and chokes down her throat. He doesn’t mean to kill her. Oh no, he’s killed before and that is just so completely dull. He would rather feed off the expressions on her face (it's been too long since he had smelled the sweat of fear), give her just a little taste of what it was like to be truly reprehensible. For he’s seen Sabra in his slumber of bone. There are pieces of her that remind him of his old Chamber self, when he had preferred to pull the strings behind the scenes instead of getting his hands dirty. However there comes a point when the puppets no longer serve their purpose and it’s best to roll up your sleeves and do the work yourself. A lesson that might be worth learning for Sylva's current leader.
He doesn’t worry for the nymph at his side, not that he would anyways even though the taste of her lingers and sweetens the air, there’s too much wild magic in the lands that even accidentally deaths would not remain permanent. It might be nice to watch her die though, to see the way her flowers wilt. He wants to see that now actually and so he touches her again, faded enamels that rake through her mane and touch the blooms and twigs with a caress of death.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts,
with stoutest wrists and loudest boasts,
he thrusts his fists against the posts
and still insists he sees the ghosts.
There is an exchange of words after an angry (too pretty to be so angry) nearly barrels into them with anger and a rush of heat. She is utterly infuriated that they are they. Nikoline does not understand what is going on as she looks from the stallion then back to the mare. Her dark eyes are moistened and wary and she begins to take a foothold back, her wooden point hovering above the soil.
She catches goe the rooted male is spittign maggots and foul breath at the pastel female. They know one another and Niko is but a stranger who happened upon them at the wrong time. Perhaps she should go, turn and leave before she became the collateral damage between two angry equines but she can not muster her body to move. She urges her body with everything she has to return to the safety of her plants but she feels locked in place.
They exchange poisoned words like knives that slash the space between them. They dance a dangerous waltz of toying sentence fragments. It is only when Gryffen reaches to stroke her petals does his caress shock her into remembering. "Gryffen...", his name is a feral grown from between her gritted teeth that startled even herself.
She remembers. God help them all, she remembers.
"Not again." And she is turning from his touch, shrinking inward and striking out with her own head. Now she regains the control over her legs and stumbles away from his reach. How could have forgotten? Of her home in Eternal, of the Deserts...of Solomon. She can feel the splinters in her heart and to see his face...not the worms and rot, but his actually existence, makes her ill and woozy. 'Don't touch me, you bastard." The mare manages between gritted teeth. She can not hold back and spits at his feet. "Harbringer," she snorts, "did you summon me here? Why can I never be rid of you?" There is blatant disgust on her voice, the other mare temporarily forgotten.
The trees go out, and that's all I came to see. The rain I call is steaming where it hits, but the tongues of flame put up little enough fight. Less than the cadaverous spector is promising to give.
My mouth curls in a cruel grin at his self-assured rebuttal. The smile falters as a strange metamorphosis takes hold of his already-eerie visage. Wet, blood-stained flesh thickens the shape of his face, and it does nothing to improve his looks. Vain thing that I am, I can't help but find fault in something that takes so much apparent joy in being disgusting.
That becomes ever more clear as the tendrils of rancid smoke leaks forth, writhing with the basest life. It reaches me, and fills me. A violation that I have the presence of mind to be furious with before it overtakes me.
The memories are violent things, abhorrent and ugly. History, I realize, of the very place I'm standing. When I first came to Sylva, many years ago, it stood half burned and empty. I had been naive then. Still looking for a greater good that I've since learned doesn't exist.
"Gryffen," I purr in tandem with the Nymph, my voice an intrigued counterpoint to her revulsion. I shake the squirming maggots from my foreleg, distasteful of their existence. Her reaction is telling. He is the one from Before, and there's no mistaking it. Harbinger? Perhaps. Of what, is less certain. I shake the last vestiges of his effects from my skin, flickers of electricity sparking along the rivulets time has carved into my flesh.
I watch her with ill-disguised amusement. More history, it seems. The rain begins to fall, hard and fast, and I spread my opaline wings to catch it. My eyes are hooded, fractionated as I pass from one old being to the other, a mocking smile on my lips as I exhale the last of his smoke. "Did no one ever tell you not to shit where you eat?" I asked with a droll rolling of my own eyes.
"No wonder you fell," I chide, approaching the gaunt thing just as the blossoming girl retreats "I encourage chaos, I really do. But talking yourself down with it, that's just... Stupid, really." The spear in my chest pulses, blood leaking from the edges of an eternally unhealed wound to spatter at my feet. The stain is temporary, washed away by water that is quickly oversaturating the soil beneath.
The mare that tastes of life remembers him. Recalls him from another world that he can no longer call to mind. She recoils from him then, as his name is spit from her mouth and purred from the other, and his disembodied laugh echos beneath the burnt canopy, loud enough to break through the thunder overhead. It feels good to be remembered.
“Harbinger….” He repeats her own words, tasting this new name with relish. Finding it quite fits, now that unlimited power flows through these bones. He’s not sure what he’s bringing with him but it’s sure to be interesting. (Temporary these endless powers, only temporary.) It’s easy to forget that it will not last forever. She accuses him of many things but the red eyes blaze at Nikoline as the skull shakes back and forth. “I did not summon you but our story has not finished yet.” Cool knowing words, all true. He knows deep in his bones that this dryad’s story somehow runs with him. It’s the how and why that haven’t been uncovered yet.
Sabra, sweet sweet hypocritical Sabra. She writhes in disgust at his intrusion into her mind as if she does not do the same with her own hypnotic powers. It never feels good does it? When the predator becomes the prey. She tries to shake off the images, tries to remain in control. None of them are in control, not anymore. She tries to mock him but only gets the fixed skeletal smile in return. Such crudeness, such a lack of imagination. Sylva was just a plot in a much larger scheme, one land of many. The whole world was ripe for the picking, was he not to “shit” or “eat” anywhere if he dominated it. She thought to small, his thoughts ran much bigger.
“Did I fall? Or did I ascend?” His jaws clatter as his skull turns at an impossible angle, his bones clacking as he comes closer. She was delusional as much as she was ignorant. Gryffen had never fallen in disgrace. Whatever disappointments that arose when he had vanished spoke more about their own weak feelings than anything to do with him. Every move he had ever made had been a choice. He had chosen to take Sylva and chose to abandon it. Sabra cared too much and that would be her downfall.
Blood runs from her chest, from the large spear that protrudes from her and he casually leans against it, just to see what would happen if it was pushed in a little further. Curious to whatever magic this was. The scientist in him had never stopped craving knowledge, craving explanations to how magic worked the way it did. He absorbs the story entwined in the shaft of wood and gives a clattering laugh of delight. How very interesting. Water starts to pool around their hooves but still he stands before Sabra, reaching to the power he had always had. “Shall I show you Sabra? Shall I show you what it is you truly desire?” He reaches his magic into the speared heart of her, the bones standing before her starting to shimmer with the image of whatever he finds as his love illusion reaches new heights and pulses with a strength its never had before.
Gryffen
@[Sabra] @[Nikoline]
(Obvi avoid or play along to his love illusion however you wish ;P)
