"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
i just killed off what was left of the optimist in me
The war is over in an instant.
Litotes screams at her but her own self-pity drowns out the words, and tears prick the corners of her eyes as the rage that previously flowed through her flows so effortlessly into him, but she can’t even begin to pretend to react as a monster of earth and stone erupts from the ground nearby, distracting the trio. By the time she glances back to Lie, trying so hard to formulate a response, but the lion-man is gone, whisked away by his... dragon-friend.
Shivering in shock, she turns back to the monster, but can’t find it within herself to shift. She deserves this, she believes, to be brought down before she even has a chance to be brought to life. It is only when Kensa, bleeding profusely and determined as she presses her muzzle to Dawn’s shoulder and bids her to flee. “I-I can’t,” she stutters, glancing to the hardy woman beside her. She won’t leave her friend to die, no matter the outcome, and she certainly deserves everything that is now coming to her. So she turns and faces the golem head on with Kensa at her side, too wound up to shift but lowering her gleaming horn so that it is level with the monster’s chest.
And then Kensa leaves, darting into a nearby pool of water and teleporting away, and Dawn’s courage fails her as the monster approaches. She takes a trembling step back as it roars, swinging an arm-like appendage at her as the world around them starts to tremble. The arm catches her across the barrel and she screams as she is sent flying, and then the world goes black.
She wakes up to the crash of the ocean, black sand cushioning her body like an unnamed lover, and she blinks open her eyes slowly, confusion filling her as she lifts her head. The Cove? How did she get home?
The new Queen tries to roll and find her legs beneath her, but the waves of pain that roll over her nearly send her into another blackout, and with a groan she spares a glance to her ruined side. Perhaps all of the ribs on that side are broken, and if the sand below her was not black, it would be stained crimson from the gaping wounds that the golem’s fist had created. Shuddering from pain, and exhaustion, she lowers her head back to the sand, waiting for whatever is to come next.
@[Caelestra]
Basically she's back from the war and is pretty badly hurt. I tagged Cael, but anyone is welcome to join in!
05-20-2019, 10:23 PM (This post was last modified: 05-20-2019, 10:49 PM by Vadar.)
Vadar
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
Sucked violently away from Tephra and spat into the Cove, Vadar looked post-apocalyptic. His silver-tinted mane and tail were clumped, brittle. The edges of his mouth were dry and his eyes dim. He rolled across the black sands and a fine mist of white dust clouded off his shoulders and back as he went.
If he could do anything besides being winded he might’ve cursed himself out loud for getting involved in the first place, but the Pangean native was reduced to blinking in a daze and catching his breath. He remembers the dragon taking something from the ground and then passing through the hole created by his own powers, can faintly recall watching a wave of Tephra’s soil rising up to give chase. Had it really been the bay stallion Aziz? Or was his mind filling in blanks from the sudden shock of an unexpected volcanic eruption?
Fuck, his head hurt.
Not far off from him, the alien sound of someone else gasping wrenches him up, laying on his side. He feels the pounding of incessant drums ricocheting through his skull and winces, blinking to look down the dark shoreline where a hazy figure lies prostrate in her own brand of agony. If she’s dying, he’d rather not stay and be witness to it.
He’d much rather go home, except has no idea where he’s at. The mainland and having to pass through Hyaline to get to Pangea were familiar to the once-vagabond, but he’d never come this way and so the iron beach is one that seems a bit otherworldly.
Shit, they could’ve been thrown into another universe entirely and right now he wouldn’t be the wiser.
“Sonofabi - here we go.” He grinds out a bit forcefully, the sharp line of his cheek straining from the effort of dragging his legs to work, urging his body to rise despite the bone-deep ache. Each step he takes in the mare’s direction is one freshly made in hell. “Hey,” He comes to loom over her, peering down through a tangle of sooty forelock. She’s ripped open like roadkill. “don’t die yet. You know where we are, hm?” Vadar questions.
One of his hooves slide forward over the smooth, ebony pebbles - the one with a pale white scar banded around the fetlock - and it goes to nudge her chin in a way that’s far from soft. She could expire later; right now he needed her awake. “Answer me.”
i just killed off what was left of the optimist in me
She is not quite ready to die. She has so much that she has left unfulfilled and so many things left that she wants to do. She wants to revive the east and bring them back into greatness – perhaps not the sanctuary here forebearers had wanted and expected, but a kingdom that could be respected and maybe even loved throughout the land. A place of peace, but with hidden steel that they would not be afraid to wield. She wants to find love; the type of true, beautiful love that leaves the tastes of roses upon her tongue and happiness at every corner.
She wants to watch her son and her daughters blossom into beautiful adults and find loves of their own, and perhaps even children of their own one day. She hadn’t even given the newborn twins a proper goodbye before she whisked herself away to Tephra. She hadn’t expected to get caught in a war. She hadn’t expected this, oozing her lifeblood slowly upon the beaches of her beautiful home for anyone to see. Her children are tucked away in the foothills and are going to stay there until she gives the word otherwise, but what if she never returns to them? Will they find her, or will she be carried out by the tide?
Hey. The word echoes in her mind and she winces against the sudden ache in her head, her body rudely informing her brain that she is losing entirely too much blood too quickly. A hard rap of his hoof against her chin brings her to open her eyes, and she fixes him with a glare against the brilliant sunlight beaming down on the both of them. He isn’t someone she knows, but perhaps he’s new to the Cove? “I’m not... dying,” she manages, voice raspy as her sides heave. If nothing else, she will refuse to die out of sheer determination. He asks where they are and her confusion deepens, but she doesn’t have the energy to question him.
“We are... in the Cove,” she tells him, the words coming slowly. Her mind seems fuzzy and she has to grasp for the words that don’t want to come. “I’m the... the Dawn. Clayton is the other.” The other what, she has no idea. The word won’t form in her mind, nor will they come to her tongue. She is fading faster than she would have thought possible, and all she knows is that she wants her Sunny to come rescue her.
Caelestra is glad when the chaos begins to come to an end, portals opening to allow all to leave the now magma-filled landscape, to leave all the chaos and commotion of the battlefield and find peace.
The female still has energy left in her, she had only managed to help one horse during the whole ordeal and was not fatigued.
Her body quickly changes into her bear form, sprinting toward the portal and then halting right before it, what if there were still horses out there that could not get out, she had no idea what kind of magic was at play here, what if some did not manage to get home.
The mare is hesitant, yet when the ground begins to rumble and the volcano groans louder the mare leaps into the portal, her body flailing in the air as the other side is revealed, Silver Cove, thank god.
The hazel bear lands hard on the dark colours of the Cove landscape, her body twisting and turning as she spins toward the ocean, her body lightly touching the edge as waves cover her large paws.
She wakes with a startle, her body forcing her to stand as she takes a look around, she was indeed finally home. The smokey smell of wood disperses from her nose, her lungs filling with the inviting salty breeze that the cove offered, her scorched paws also find comfort in the cool water for the moment, she is glad to be out of the chaos.
As Caelestra stands silently with her eyes shut she can hear talking, a familiar wobbly voice joined by a stranger. The bear pivots around and begins to walk toward the bend in the shore, she can see Dawn, and a stranger.
Instinctively, the mare begins to growl, a deep hum resonating from deep within her chest, her teeth showing as she approaches the pair.
Cael looks toward Dawn with worry, she doesn't look in good shape at all, but she would not be able to heal her while in her bear form.
"Who are you?" she questions sharply as her body begins to transform back into her equine form, her coal-black body decorated by a constellation on her side.
The mare kneels down beside Dawn, not paying much attention to the stranger, if he really was trouble, he probably would have already killed Dawn.
"I'm sorry if this hurts" she whispers as she begins to press her nose into Dawn's wounds, an aura of light appearing around the injury as it begins to close, other scars and injuries also begin to disappear from her body as it heals.
Cael then scans over the rest of her body and presses her nose against her ribcage, she had never healed broken bones before, she didn't even know how to check if they were not visible, but she could certainly try.
"That should be better" she smiles as she stands, shaking her knees to get rid of the smaller pebbles and sand that stick to her body, almost blending in with her colour.
Her attention now turns toward the stranger horse, her brow raised as she steps uncomfortably closer to him, putting distance between him and dawn.
"And what can I do for you?" she asks, this time her tone is softer, more natural.
As long as he remained peaceful she would not mind helping him, she could try and heal him if he wanted, but if he tried to harm another, she would do quite the opposite.
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
If she wasn’t dying, then he wasn’t a horse.
Still, the way she challenges death in the grasp of its hands rouses a soft, genuinely amused smile across his pale mouth. A fighter. He could respect that since he’d been there himself not too long ago. She tells him this is the Cove and he thinks, good, not too far a distance for walking, but his legs are screaming otherwise. The delirious ramblings that come after that are basically useless, so he treats them as such by turning his eye away from her and out towards the range of heavy mountains.
He hears the soft scuttle of dragging rocks, and watches a fully grown bear approach them in the distance.
This is not so good. Vadar tells himself, especially when the creature lumbers closer, teeth bared. He’s already weak enough as it is that fighting off a hungry predator wouldn’t exactly be an easy sort of thing, and he’s not exactly spreading his legs squarely and lowering his head above ‘the dawn’ to protect her.
Not really.
He’s just not interested in attracting attention from some fucking animal out here by the ocean, and for the moment he’d rather not see this particular mare get dragged off and finished before her personal battle with death was over. Someone, he doesn’t remember who, had come around when he’d been on the brink and tugged him back.
The red glow of his eyes shines, flashing out like a silent threat to the teeth bared at him. He was sure he’d be forgiven if he decided to blow this animal into a mist of chunky bits, and right at the moment he can feel a weak sort of pressure beginning to build like a red-hot migraine, the shapeshifter saves her own ass and starts talking.
“Oh for the… ” He mutters, blinking away the light source to watch her change shape. He’d never seen anything like it - the action of transforming from one animal to another was pretty gross - so he winces backward a step or two and looks away as Caelestra goes to work on The Dawn. He should be getting home, now. Not standing around waiting to be questioned.
Cael interrupts those thoughts, catching Vadar’s attention and the sharp, inquisitive look that follows it. He can easily discern the soft curve of her nose looking up at her, that’s how close she is. It doesn’t bother him. He assess her for a quiet moment and then looks past her, towards the larger mare. “Are you Clayton?” The rasp of his question is meant for the healer.
i just killed off what was left of the optimist in me
The newcomer doesn’t respond to her weakly spoken words, but the woman barely notices his lack of a response, as numbed to the world as her body feels. Her mind is filled only with thoughts of her beautiful, perfect children, and the man that should’ve, could’ve, been their father. The beautiful boy grown into a heartthrob of a man that her heart refuses to let go of, though he had rejected her on this very beach, not long after the onset of the plague. Oh, how so much has changed since that fateful night. She hadn’t even caught a glimpse of him either of the times she was in Tephra recently, which should concern her – but right now, not much concerns her aside from the pain.
A sudden snarl startles the dying queen, but she hardly has the strength to open her eyes. Squinting against the light, she opens her eyes to see a bear – not something she expected at all – stalking towards them, hissing words at the stranger before shifting back to horse form. Caelestra?! she thinks, surprise coloring her gaze only for a split second as the black mare drops to Dawn’s side, pressing her nose into Dawn’s ruined ribcage.
Dawn screams then, but almost instantly the pain begins to subside. She remembers their first meeting, where the woman had admitted to wanting to use her abilities as a healer to help the Cove, and everything suddenly clicks into place as her arteries knit back together and the skin begins to heal over without a trace of a scar. The healing of her ribs comes slower, but slowly the broken bones begin to repair themselves and the injuries to her internal organs become less and less until they, too, are gone. With a shudder she manages to sit up, taking her first deep breath in what feels like an eternity.
“I owe you my life, friend,” she murmurs as she climbs shakily to her hooves – the wounds have healed but now the exhaustion sets in, and the blood coating both sides of her barrel make her a macabre sight. Caelestra steps forward to address the dark stranger and Dawn lifts her head to watch him and gauge his reaction, too tired to do much else but watch the two of them interact.
He asks if she is Clayton and she chuckles weakly, the hint of a smile playing at her lips. “No,” she rasps, giving Cael a grateful glance before looking back to the stranger. “She is Caelestra, a valuable friend, and our healer.” Her voice grows stronger as the fuzziness fades from her mind, but even still, she longs for a nice long sleep surrounded by her children. Soon enough.“And I meant to just introduce myself as Dawn. I lead the Cove with Clayton” – though if we’re honest, she’s not seen him around much since the birth of their twins – “who looks nothing like Caelestra here.”
She rolls her shoulders experimentally, but aside from residual soreness from her tangle with Kensa, everything seems to be in working order. “I don’t believe I caught your name...?”
The mare's worry subsides as Dawn seems to regain energy, looking a little better than the state she had found her in, at least not half broken.
The mare stays by Dawn's side as she stands, using her smaller body to give her some support as she wobbles around the shore "I'm glad I could help" she smiles, wondering what could have happened if she had ended up teleporting to somewhere different, away from the place she now called home.
Her attention turns back toward the stranger, his question putting a grin across her face as Dawn answers him with a chuckle.
The stranger seemed like quite an interesting individual, she has not seen him on the battlefield, but perhaps she had maybe arrived too late.
Dawn introduces Caelestra and then properly inducts her name into the conversation, stating that she lead the cove with Clayton.
Caelestra takes a moment to herself as she watches the sky, plumes of dark smoke blocking out the sun, only small arrays of sunlight penetrate the large volume of dark ink, illuminating the ground below.
She wishes she could have stopped Castile when she had made her visit, even if it meant that she would die, she wishes she could have said something to him that would have changed his mind.
But that obviously did not matter much now, she turns her attention back toward the pair of horses, waiting until the stranger answers Dawn before stepping back in.
"Is there any wounds I can heal for you?" she asks softly, standing close to Dawn as she tilts her head in question.
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.
They’re all the same bastards throwing back long drinks at the same bar. Their passion is to haunt you and keep you from moving ahead, so Vadar likes to clink glasses with them and promptly move on. Which is exactly what he should be doing here, because when Dawn rises from the brink of that deep, endless void it’s obvious to Vadar who she is.
Or really, who she was about an hour ago.
Do I lie? He contemplates in the moment between the unicorns hanging question and Caelestra’s offer to heal him. If they both knew he was the one responsible for nearly killing the Cove’s leader it would put him in a hairy situation. And he’s not exactly strong enough to escape their advances via mountain trekking. “Ahh… sure. Why not?” Vadar takes up Cael’s offer first, hiding his indecision with a well-tailored smile. It’s his old face that he puts now: the Vadar who was once meek and a bit shy. “Could be something internal or nothing at all. Better to be safe than sorry.”
He wants them to look at him and see nothing more than a pony stallion; a stout silver black, heavily feathered and just a bit odd-looking. A simple, unassuming random caught in the crossfire. Stiffly moving sideways, his eyes caught up in the wide sea channel past the bay, Vadar turns his head to address Dawn’s concerns. “I’m Vadar.” He tells them truthfully, since he’s never seen Dawn before the battle and he’s certainly never seen Caelestra in or around Pangea.
“I was nomadic traveling through Taiga when all the chaos pulled me in. Curiosity killed the kitten, etcetera.” He smirks, rugged enough that it could be plausible. The place where Cael touches tenses for a moment, and then relaxes. “Kind of worth it. Not everyday you get to see magic like that.”
When it feels as if the bear-shifter has finished, Vadar turns a curious and more inquisitive eye towards her. She’s a unique blend of peace and conflict, stamped with one constellation that reminds him of another star-girl. It’s imperative he remember her, should they ever cross paths again. “Thank you, not-Clayton.” He teases.
i just killed off what was left of the optimist in me
Her body still aches despite the healing, and the thought of all of the political visits she has to make now loom darkly in her mind, but she forces herself to focus on the conversation before her, with the mysteriously scarred stallion in front of her and Caelestra at her side. All she wants to do is sleep, and cuddle with her children, and take some time to recover from her still tingling brush with death. Her body trembles beyond her control as she stands next to the bear-healer and her eyelids are so heavy that she can feel them slipping down to cover her eyes. Giving her head a violent shake, she adjusts her position and looks out towards the sea.
The ocean has always grounded her, if nothing else.
She misses the surprise that flashes on Vadar’s face when she rises, but her mind is in a thousand different places all at once. He takes on Cael’s offer with just the hint of hesitation, but she is not surprised – magical healing is enough to make anyone hesitant, she knows. Her own mother healing her scrapes and bruises as a child had made her uneasy until she had grown used to the near constant flow of power into her; she had been a rambunctious foal, always hurting herself one way or another.
He offers his name and she looks back at him, a tired smile on her face. “It is good to meet you, Vadar,” she tells him, and she means it. She doesn’t know that it was his monster that destroyed her, and perhaps she’ll never know. All she knows is that without him stumbling across her, she would likely be a corpse upon the beach right now. “You are welcome to stay in the Cove for as long as you like.”
Vadar talks about the magicks they encountered in Tephra, and Dawn’s smile falters a bit, mind wandering to Litotes and Kensa and the dragons and the darkness and the volcano. “It was... incredible,” she agrees quietly, trying so desperately to hide the despair that rises in her lungs and threatens to choke her. There is so much to be done. Too much. She needs to take a minute to just breathe.
Caelestra nods and walks closer to Vadar, pressing her nose against his shoulder, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
The same bright aura appears as before when she was healing Dawn, shining brightly as it covers the span of the male's shoulder.
After a minute or so, the light dims down until it is gone completely, Cael opens her eyes and steps back, smiling as Vadar thanks her humorously.
The mare takes her position next to dawn as they begin to talk about the magic they witnessed on the battlefield, the rather terrifying darkness swallowing the world whole as fire engulfs the plains and dims all hope "It was terrifying, so many dying for no reason" he says quietly, she was stuck on the battlefield as soon as she had arrived, only able to save one soul from death "I had arrived a little too late, I had to leave as soon as I had arrived" once she had healed the fallen horse she had to flee through the portal, making her feel rather useless.
"Who's side were you on anyway?" she asks, her head tilted curiously, she hadn't even thought to ask, though she didn't know if she wanted the answer.
@[Dawn] @[Vadar] I typed this up quickly so I wouldn't hold up the thread, sorry it took me so long and apologies if its a bit sloppy
![[Image: YDKFjJC]](https://imgur.com/a/YDKFjJC)