"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
you have forsaken all the love you've taken sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
During the years that Beqanna was plunged into darkness, Dacian, too, had allowed himself to be swallowed in shadow.
Being allowed to walk through the gates of the afterlife had always felt like some kind of trick, and every step he took while among the living was guarded, like he expected the ground to crumble beneath him and leave him standing in the land of the dead again. The eclipse had been an unsettling thing, then, and it planted an unease in his chest that he simply could not shake.
Much as he could not shake the idea that it was partially his fault.
He was not one for brash decisions, but that is exactly what going to the mountain when Carnage called them had been. It had been stupid to think the mission was anything other than exactly what it was—a Sisyphean task, a breath of entertainment for their resident dark god, to watch all the different ways they might fail.
He did not like being the playing piece in anyone's chess game, but the idea that their excursion had played a part in unleashing the creatures that accompanied the eclipse had been enough to send him back to the darkest depths that he could find. Away from Silver Cove, and away from even Aurorae, the current object of his obsession. It was all entirely uncharacteristic of him, but he did not know what those creatures were, and should they have been some kind of hellhound meant to drag him back to the afterlife he had every intention of evading them for as long as possible.
When the sun returned it was met with caution, and it would be a long while before he dared venture into the light again.
Today is the day, he decides, though there is no special reason for it.
The shadows did not crawl the way they once had, did not tremble and breathe like they had during the endless night. They shuddered only with the old monsters that have always been there, since Beqanna has never been an especially tame or docile creature. Today when he haunts the treeline he finally breaks away from it, to find where the sunlight glitters off the surface of the river.
He looks the same as he always had—a rich, dark bay, though his eyes seem harder, the set of his jaw more tense, if either of those things were at all possible. From the top of his neck and across his back and haunches there is an armor of obsidian positioned in a barding-like fashion, creeping across his face and down the slant of his cheeks. At the back of his throat he can feel the familiar fire, can taste the lingering smoke of it; it has not been used in what feels like ages, but he tempers that inferno of longing, for now.
And, much as he would have before, he largely ignores anyone that happens to be nearby, save for a flickering glance in their direction only to indicate that he saw them.
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on
There becomes less and less to keep her in the redwoods and she finds her hunt for her half-brother keeps her further and further away from them. There had been no sign of Yan either in her travels but instead of feeling discouraged, she is optimistic. Loess is next on her list but before she heads to the canyons, she decides a bath in the River is in order. It had been many days since she had taken some time for herself and her tight aching muscles scream for relief. The last time she had been here, she had met Molech. And before that, she recalls Tunnel blocking the brunt of the current for her as they crossed it. Together.
Marks from him still linger across her buttery pelt. Once she would have minded, now she finds she does not. She hadn’t seen the forest creature since that night but she isn’t worried about that either. There had been plenty of glimpses of light within his darkness and she can feel it, that knowing. It was a matter of when, not if, that she would see him again. She slips from the muddy bank into the cool waters and simply lets the river wash away all thoughts with the residue from her traveling, closing her eyes and enjoying the feel of rejuvenation. As she opens them again, revealing iris’s of a dark tarnished gold, she catches the glance of the dark bay stallion as he briefly looks in her direction.
She ignores him at first, much as he does her. But she can’t help but glance back over at him again. It’s the strange dark armor that catches her interest first, quickly followed by the rest of him. She looks away and then looks back. Curious. And perhaps it’s less to do with the plating creeping from neck to hindquarters and more to do with that sense of brooding that radiates off him in waves. That darkness. And since the flower-kissed unicorn seems to draw in such creatures naturally, she can’t seem but be ensnared in turn.
“Flowers for your thoughts?” She finally asks him over the rushing stream. A small smile plays across her lips as she remains standing where she is, looking down through the clear running waters to the small pebbles beneath her hooves. “You seem to have much on your mind.”
They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself;
you have forsaken all the love you've taken sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
It is complicated, his need for company but at the same time his complete and utter repulsion to it.
He has never quite been able to master the balance of it—it was either all or nothing.
Either a total indifference to their presence or an obsession so intense that only someone nearly as equally toxic could withstand it. His need to keep the objects of his affection skin-close was overwhelming, and somewhere in the recesses of his mind (those dark, untouched corners that he had locked and boarded up years ago—the normal parts of him beneath the callused armor) he knew that he was asphyxiating. He had known that he was pushing Devonae away with how tightly he kept her bound while simultaneously giving her no reason to want to be there.
He knew he was turning their heaven into hell, and instead of bringing water to douse the flames he chose gasoline.
He could feel the same thing happening with Aurorae, and perhaps that is why he all but disappeared. Even though seeking her out was at the forefront of his mind he managed to quell the urge, to keep himself here in the common lands a while longer.
To let someone else test the treacherous waters that were his moods, to see if his inclination would be to set them ablaze or to walk away.
The flower-maned mare that he had glanced at earlier was still standing nearby, and though he had been off in the forest for a long time, he knew what was coming next. He felt it in the way the air grew thick with the anticipation of words still unspoken, and beneath his armor his skin bristled in preparation for the small talk he did not want to partake in.
“No,” the word is cut off, blunt in the way it falls like a stone from his mouth. He lets it sit there on the earth between them, unmoving, and it is difficult to discern what the ‘no’ is directed at; at her mostly rhetorical question, or at him having a lot on his mind. Regardless, he has clearly decided that no is a full sentence, and for a long moment it appears as though that is all he will say. But, he angles his head toward her, the sunlight glinting off the nearly glossy black armor, fixing her with his stare. “It’s a perilous game to ask strangers for their thoughts. You’ll find there are many things you never wished to know.”
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on
It’s strange how she keeps ending up here, how she always seems to find herself in this river. For someone who had loved the humid density of darkness the jungle had provided and even found the misty redwoods of Taiga alluring, she seems to be spending a lot of time in the common lands and most of it is spent soaking in their many streams. Perhaps she had been a waterlily in a previous life, finding reminiscence among the gentle rapids and called by the lulling ways the current splashes against her figure.
Or she just knows that she’s found the most interesting creatures near the waters edge and so she keeps coming back, hoping to collect more of them.
Her smile still lingers despite the blunt “No” he gives her. She looks up from where she had been peering through the surface to glance back at him, giving a small shrug as she does. So he wasn’t the talkative type. So be it. The silence hangs heavy between them now that an invisible wall had been crossed but she doesn’t move away from the tension, instead she leans into it. She picks up a hoof with the intention of drifting a little closer but his voice cuts through the air before she can begin to move.
Slowly she lowers that leg back into the cool depths of the river as she meets his stare with her own inquisitive one. A perilous game, he says, and she smiles because those are the only games she seems to know how to play. “I’m Bardot.” She offers to him freely, tilting her finely dished head and watching the way sunlight reflects across the rippling surface of the river from both her horn and his lustrous suit of armor. “Now we are no longer strangers. And the offer still stands.” It’s not entirely true since he is still a dark mystery to her but at least she is not to him and somewhere in her head that seems to make logical sense.
They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself;
you have forsaken all the love you've taken sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
He is familiar with the type of girl he is certain she fancies herself to be. The kind attracted to the darkness; the opposite of a moth to a flame, pulling away from the light and drawn instead to all things cold and empty.
She was the kind of girl he would have liked to break, once, but the game had lost its appeal in this new lifetime. Aurorae was not a plaything; not the way others have been. She was too equally matched, too cunning to fall for anything he might try to use against her. It could be said that perhaps she sated his desire for anyone else, and maybe that is why he can look at this golden girl with flowers woven in her hair and not be tempted to make her unravel.
“Bardot,” he repeats her name, acknowledging that he heard, though his tone is disinterested and his gaze still elsewhere. He has never been good at conversation or small talk, and he can feel his skin starting to crawl beneath his armor, his muscles twitching. Unbidden, his mind travels back to how he used to be, to the unleashed beast that he was before he had died. He was not the cruelest that Beqanna had ever seen, not by a longshot. Yet, though earth did not shudder at the sight of him, he had made sure that a select few learned what it meant to tremble beneath him. He is far from being free of sin; he knew the taste of it, knew what it meant steal innocence, or to watch the blood drain from a cracked skull.
He wondered, as his irritation tried to find the oxygen needed to ignite, when he had become so content to smolder rather than actually burn.
Finally, he turns his shadowed eyes back to hers, a sharp smile cutting his mouth as he says simply, “The answer is still no.” He turns to face her now, fully, before taking a handful of purposeful strides towards her. The impossible dark brown of his eyes, further deepened by the black-stone armor settled across his face, make no effort to hide the way he scans her face, as though looking for something—perhaps appreciating the simple beauty of a woman standing before him, or perhaps searching for a crack to slip through. “You’re alone,” he observes, and says nothing else.
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on
She does not understand that invisible pull to dark things, that insatiable need to prove to herself that despite all those cold shadows in the darkest of hearts lay a kernel of hope (of light) in each troubling soul she finds. It made it ok to care for them, she reasons, if she could find something redeeming in each of them. A wiser person would inform her of childhood trauma, the mark her parents had made on her. Daddy issues for lack of a better term. She is deaf and blind to this psychological logic and so she simply passes over the thoughts of how not normal this, ignoring every red flag and every warning sign because she thinks she can handle anything anyone could ever throw at her.
If she is always willing, nothing can ever be taken from her.
His smile is sharp and far from warm when he turns her down again and she merely shrugs again. In her golden eyes, he is a moody sort of man. A different kind of “dark” then what she had experienced in the likes of Tunnel with his unspoken promises to break her or the deceptive handsome smile of Molech. If anything Dacian would eventually remind her of the broody brother she had yet to meet amongst his court of flowers, whose words could fall just as sharply as the armored stallion’s smile.
She had expected his "no" to be a clear dismissal so she is unable to hide the surprise in her eyes when he strides towards her, looking up at him when he comes to stand directly before her. Water sloshes around her belly, splashes against her shoulders, but she stays where she is. She wonders what he is looking for, when he scans her face. She is searching too and bites her lower lip, unsure of what exactly she has found.
It is not fear that slides down her spine when he asks if she is alone although there is a thrill of trepidation to be asked such a question. She glances to her left and then her right before looking back up at him, a whisper of a smile still lingering on her lips despite the sharpness that now narrows her gaze as she meets that unreadable gaze. “So it would seem.”
They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself;
![[Image: BQjeje-Bardot2.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/T37nJTF6/BQjeje-Bardot2.png)