[Auto-Quest] the dust settles on my bones.

[City]

PART I
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The Mountain loams big over the world of Beqanna – a guardian and tormentor. Sanctuary for the devious and magic faeries that police the mean streets of BQ. They recharge here so they may do their bidding, or whoever’s bidding, all around the land. You can feel the buzz of strong magic up through the bottoms of your feet, electrifying up your legs and into your chest. Even the surrounding skirt of meadows and hills around the mountain’s vast bottom is alive with energy. It seems to be the epicenter of magic here in this realm, from what City has gathered in her long, long life. She’s come here many times. She gave birth to Padme here, her last daughter, who know has a daughter of her own.

Like a butterfly at the end of it’s short life, the hobbling old mare makes her way to a final place – a place to land for the last time; 
– a place to die.

It takes her days to get there, the journey itself almost kills her – with this arthritis, these cataracts, whatever else riddles her sickly mortal body. She’s too elderly to go on. She’s felt this before – she’s died before, under special circumstances, she’s eve hibernated. It’s likely that, collectively, she’s seen hundreds of years of Beqanna’s tumultuous evolution. She’s held on desperately to this life, claws sunk in as far as they will go and now, they give way. Her grip no longer has any strength left to go on.

So forward she goes, on rickety boney old legs that creak and rattle. Slowly she ascends up the mountainside. Tingling begins to take over her body, she doesn’t remember this from her trips before but it sort of takes the age pains away as she keeps climbing. The rock faces harbor swaths of flowered trees, bright pink and white, like clouds clinging to the gray stone mountainside.

Higher and higher…upward the clouds begin to veil the bottom of the mountain from being seen as she ascends. She begins to feel lighter, though she appears just the same – an old skeletal nag picking its way patiently to the very top. Soon would be the more treacherous part of the climb and the mare begins to stumble, even tripping and falling, smacking her nose into the moist dirt. She feels a bit dizzy and waits for that to go, standing and morphing into a pale jaguar, an easier form to move about in. She’s got easier bones to manage, but even still, she’s stiff with age.

Up and up the cat climbs, starting to breathe heavily, panting, each step like she’s dragging a boulder up with her.

The faeries granted her a quest for what she desired – immortality, but she was never able to achieve it. All through Beqanna she searched for anyone who might talk about their eternal life – the good and the bad, and everything in between. The faeries demanded she learn about it, and they promised afterward, if she were to learn, she could return to the mountain and have the ability she desired. She failed, having never been able to pin down any real substantial information from anyone. So, she’s come to die. To place where she begged for eternal life, she’s come to die.

--------- 547 Words
----- Part II to follow.
--- auto quest for PHEONIX TYPE IMMORTALITY [0 Space Trait]

[City]

PART II
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She continues to struggle, and collapses at the top. A plateau of rock and high alpine lichen holds her like a cradle. The land cracks and moans, fog swirling around the chunk of mountain; it begins to rise and break from the rocks below. Floating, suspended, debris falling away from it and hitting the earth below with loud crashes and snaps. She’s folded oddly like a dead bird and with great ceremony, takes hers her last gasping breath. All life leaves the boney mare crumpled on the wet stone rising slowly into the clouds.

She won’t let go, she won’t let go… they whisper – she can smell them. They smell of clean moisture, like clouds and fresh mountain wind, and lilacs and jasmine, honey, and their presence feels like warm milk poured over your chilly skin. She has no eyes, but she is somewhere, looking down at her dead body. A shame what it became, she laments, floating onward. She doesn’t feel any pain, or loss, but she doesn’t feel the elation she was hoping for with death either.

She is.
In between.

She sighs with no lungs, no mouth, but still she does it. Well what now then? She floats, she floats.

Lightening flashes through the cloudy fog she’s in, she can see with no eyes, and hear with no ears. The thunder cracks, loud, rattling to the bone – what bones? She laughs with no mouth. She’s feeling something now, something heavy, gravity? What gravity!? And just like that she’s slowly sucked down like a riptide, no control, no limbs to even thrash around; she’s an amoeba in a current. She’s back against the dark rock, but then floating again, looking down, going back and forth like some glitch until finally she’s watching her elderly body slowly burn from the inside out. She cannot feel it, she burns like dry paper, her edges alight with orange her body reduced to embers in minutes.

She blacks out.

City gasps as if she’s never breathed before and her lungs take in a full, life giving breath inward. The tide of oxygen feels new, her eyes open and her vision is so clear it makes her dizzy at first. She sits up, frantic, but something in her mind tells her to calm down. The rock that was once suspended, or so she dreamt? Is now firmly planted back into, onto, the mountain’s peak. The fog is cleared and she can see 360 degree vision of the world before her, all of Beqanna. She rises to her feet, her hooves feel strong, up her legs through her chest and hips – she feels….young again? She shakes, as if to see if it may go away, she looks herself over – she’s go the same body she had when she was four or five. Young, slender and fit. Where once her bones poked out she is well muscled, and where she was faded, she is vibrant again. Her grayed out coat is freshly freckled, like when she just completed her graying as a younger mare. She was fresh again.

--------- 513 Words
----- Part III to follow.
--- auto quest for PHEONIX TYPE IMMORTALITY [0 Space Trait]

[City]

PART III
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BUT FIRST, YOU MUST BURN.

It was the immortality she sought years ago, a task she thought failed but perhaps had somehow culminated into a success. She was indeed not dead, and her body youthful again – feeling six instead of I her 70s. The mare cannot help but smile even though the formation on her lips is rather foreign. Her golden yellow eyes closing dreamily, her breathes deep and hungry.

Her daughters, her grandchildren, they will celebrate this victory. City is adored by her living descendants, she’s taught them a lot, kept them all alive in trying times and kept close eyes on them in case they ever struggled too hard. She’s had a long life and it’s not over now.

She spent hours watching the world from her ethereal perch before starting her descent down the snowy slopes down into the rest of the world. Her body fluidly melts into her jaguar form, slinking over the rocks and picking her way down carefully. A snow storm rages and everything becomes white for what feels like hours, covering everything, including her, in a blanket of perfectly white snow. The wind howls, the strom completely swallowing the mountain behnd her as she travels downward to the valley below.

Where will she go next? What will she do? Find her daughters, most likely, and show them the delightful twist in events. Surely they were prepared for her to wander off and whenever return live. She was prepared for the same thing, really. But what a plot twist, eh? Perhaps its faerie sympathy, who even knows, she has no desire to ponder it.

When she finally reaches the bottom it is sunny. It is a regular autumn evening, the sun setting in a golden blaze, the weather clear and even a little warm. She takes it in with vision so clear, much clearer than it has been in a very long time. The colors are vivid and the edges of everything so sharp. It is the golden hour and only an hour or so from now it will be dark.

Tomorrow she will hunt, but for now she only wants rest. She finds the nearest large tree, clawing her way to the top with ease and finding a suitable limb to lay across while she watches the sun sink slowly behind the horizon. She drifts off as the light fades and her consciousness slips away, her mind sinking into the realm of dreams and nightmares. Time is nothing and you can really feel that in a dream…she feels it as reality falls away. She dreams of her mother and they speak, they embrace and say goodbye, again, and her eyes flicker open to see the full moon bright above.

--------- 456 Words
----- this is the end.
--- auto quest for PHEONIX TYPE IMMORTALITY [0 Space Trait]


total words: 1516



thank you and gn ♥