I will face god and walk backward into hell; team formation

[sinew]

He is not and never shall be her god.
Her god has the tusks of a boar that sprout from his neck, and he talks in piercing whistles that hurt the ears. But he is as close to a god as any of them will ever get.
(He was Tarnished’s dark god, she remembers.)

Still, he calls to them and like the rest, she heeds it.
She comes, bristling at the summons and the way it rides her back, hurrying her towards them - towards him, towards further damnation.

What was taken from many of them, is still in her - she felt it, it comes back slower than before, but as ever, it is there; immortal. She has not told Pollock this, he might hate for it but she doesn’t care. It swims in her, dark and rich, slow in its expansion but she can feel the reclamation of bone and sinew and blood as it lengthens the life in all of it. Sinew for one moment, has thrown her head back in ecstatic elation as her immortality sparks in her, because it is but a small common magic and she did not need to beg for it back like the rest of them will have to do, unless he is savior and dark god both, able to grant them their very filthy natures again.

She makes no pledge, takes no token of his terrible grace (none was offered), and says nothing.
Her silence is enough; it says she is here, like all the rest, staunch in her stance beside Pollock and his son.

(Behind her, flanking her, are two foals that are clearly the god’s own.)
(Their faces are set in frowns; their shadows tusked and terrible - they know what it is like to be born on the new Mountain, to have their natures bled out of them the moment they walked off it and they are angry little beasts that bury their faces in Sinew’s red tail.)

ooc: Sinew is here, along with Snout & Eyetooth. <3

[Belgarath]

What the actual, ever-living fuck. One moment, he’s comfy-cozy in his ice home, reveling in the most recent torture of one unfortunate Tycho, and the next he’s unceremoniously dumped on top of a Mountain. And it’s cold. Do you know how long it’s been since Bel’s felt winter’s chill? Like forever ago, it seems. It isn’t fun, and it makes him grumpy and mad and dangerous as he stomps like a child down the Mountain, determined to figure out what happened, and who is responsible for it. He cares not for what he must do to get it back - his morality (what little the giant ever had) went out the door with the demonic ice, and he’s never once looked back.

A voice reaches his ears, calling himself a God, and Belgarath cannot help but scoff. Has he not raised demons, himself? God or not (not, he thinks, but Belgarath has always been arrogant and foolish, never believing he could be defeated), the voice offers an answer and a solution of sorts, so the dappled stallion turns and follows it. The beast is not the only one - and as he comes upon a crowd that seems to center around a rather plain looking stallion (Carnage - oh the name rouses some memories, but Bel is not of Beqanna, and he has never been involved in its politics) whose words are oily and ooze through the muck and the mire of their confusion. This one is smart, Belgarath thinks - and it’s a pity he’s never been one to pledge loyalty to any but himself.

Listening, however, can’t hurt. So Belgarath stays and watches, glowering at all from on high. A silent, menacing sort of ice statue - without the ice. And that is exactly what the problem is.

belgarath