02-08-2020, 08:16 PM
<div id="dreamy"><style type="text/css">.dreamy_container {background: transparent; width: 500px;border: 2px solid #8B8576; color: #8B8576; font: 14px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding: 15px;text-align: justify;box-shadow: inset 2 2 2px 2px #000;}.dreamy_name {text-align: center; color: #fff; font: 26px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding-top: 10px;padding-right: 10px;}.dreamy_quote {text-align: center; font-style: italic}</style><center><div class="dreamy_container"><I>The first sensation he knew was cold. It wasn’t the cold that woke him from his slumber, something else made his eyes fly open, wide and shocked, something else made him bleat and cough and choke on his first breath, but it was not the first sensation he <b>knew.</b> The headfirst tumble he took to earth, legs limp underneath him, his body crumpled and wet and thudding against the cool ground, this he didn’t notice, too new, too asleep, but the cold crept in. Tendrils of it writhed up his body, clinging to the wet of his fur. His mother did not lick him clean, though she was not far away, standing still and muttering quietly to herself. He could not understand her words.</I>
“Fol̮̩͋͋ḷ͌ow ̢̂m̺̿̃͟e̤̔,̭͗ ͍͂w͇̟̽̒e̱̱̓͑ ͔͓̔͛d̩͎̊͗o̓͟n̲̏'̯͖́͝t ͍̿h̝̎ā̮v͕̓e͎̓ ̲͊mū̘̟̅ć͖̦̎h͇̓̚͟ ̲̎t̛̘im͎̐e̳͐!̮̀”
There is a long, slow moment in which Dreamscar looks at the black mare standing over him, blinks away the flashback of his birth, the tattered memory of what came after, her attack, his surge of power, the feeling of her body as she landed atop him, curling protectively around his strange body. He knows that gentle warmth of which she is capable as he know wild, uncontrollable, <I>raving</I>, fear that she meets every day, breath quaking, reddened eyes rolling, furious, unfocused. She has always been unfocused, until she had a son. He gave her that focus. <I>He</I> did, with his magic and his strings and his control, and now, as she stands over the crumpled grey form of her taloned, beaked, son as once she stood over that wet, black, colt, he knows, and he is <I>furious.</I>
She frets as he stands, but he takes his time, feeling anger coil in his belly, burning brightly, fed by the fear that came before. She frets until he is on his feet, softly thrumming the strings that connect his mother to him, listening to them sing tight and high in his head. They are stretched so thin he can hear the tension in their whine, so taut he can feel the fragility of them. They are ready to snap, she is so far away, and yet, she is in front of him. He blinks once, almost sleepily, and a soft growl crawls from his throat so slow it is barely more than clicking. His beaked mouth cannot curl into the snarl he wishes to express so, instead, he screams.
“<I><B>NOT</B> hrrrrrr!</I>”
In the blue glow around him, the broken tunnel pulses like entrails, but such things do not bother <I>him</I>. There is never even a second that he entertains this creature as Truth, this fake Hippogryph - he will shred her, <I>eat</I> her. As the last of his outraged breath leaves his lungs, he charges and she cannot turn and run from him as fast as she did above on flat, hard ground. In the Underworld, there are twists and turns and chambers that double back. There are pits that swallow and trip. He tears at the walls – they become mere rock and soil when he looks at them directly, but his black talons leave great grooves in them just as easily as if they were the thin, pink, flesh of intestine.
"<I>Falsssss</I>"
His scream tears through the tunnels as he follows after her, fading to a hiss. He follows, with the scent of her sweat and fear hot in his nostrils. At the corners of his eyes strange figures flicker, but Dreamscar has no time for whispers and shadows around him, the False Mother consumes him. He pays no heed to the depth to which they are traveling, nor to the increasing treacherousness of the cave floor, nor even how she is ever just beyond his reach, though the streaming strands of her blacks tail occasionally flutter against the horn of his beak. One scaled foreclaw snatches the hairs away with a screech and his hind legs gather beneath him. He leaps.
The False Mother stops so hard that she is nearly sitting down, desperate to avoid the gaping black chasm that opens up in front of her.
Her son collides with her in that self-same second, talons outstretched, finding their mark, digging deep into the flesh of her back, her shoulder. The momentum throws both mother and son into the abyss which swallows them like ink. The scream that wrenches from Hippogryph's mouth as they fall, entangled, is real enough, but the mimic is silent now as his claws pull her tight against him, below him. His mother's body is heavy, so full of solid bone, bone that snaps and crunches when they land at last, her still beneath him. He falls atop her and she breaks his fall, she breaks beneath him against the rock floor and he rolls away, battered, bruised, but whole. He coughs, the False Mother groans. She rolls up onto her belly with heaving sides and legs that bend in all directions except the correct one, unable to stand. Her sides twitch and sweat, she cannot outrun him now. When he leaps, his bloodied talons find purchase immediately in her soft flesh, they curl and dig and the welling blood is almost as dark as her damp black coat, gleaming dully in the pulsing blue light.
He has never hunted prey as large as a horse before, and though he might have felt some sadness rending a horse or stag to pieces normally - for they are so large he cannot quickly darken their little lights as he would do with the rabbits and groundhogs and sleepy fawns - for this mockery of his mother, he feels only disgust. Talon and bill pluck chucks of flesh from neck and haunch and shoulder, flesh he cannot eat, that he rips messily away and, shaking his head, open-beaked, sprays against the walls tight around them. The mare does not die - <I>it does not make sense</I> - perhaps because she is not real, and he knows it; perhaps because he wills her to wakefulness as he scrapes meat from bone, as he at last rips through the soft skin of her belly. He will not have to eat for weeks, after this.
That's when he sees them.
<I>The Others.</I>
How could they have gotten here? The horses of Beqanna, those who were not him, not her, that would surely kill him if he could not control them? How could such a crowd fit in this tunnel?
The shadows ring the fallen pair, encroaching, growing denser and more threatening. Fear quells his anger with ice. He reaches out as he did before with his magic, <I>Love me,</I> but there is nothing to grip, nothing to control. Heartless. The shadows grow black and he can hear the snarling whispers of their voices.
<p style="text-align:left">"What are you?"</p></body>
<p style="text-align:center">"Stomach Eater."</p>
<p style="text-align:right">"Abomination."</I></p>
Whispered voices become screams in his ears, he sees flashes of teeth and hooves and angry eyes flickering in the darkness and in response he roars back at them, but his own anger is fading fast. He is the same frightened child he has always been, crying for his mother to save him from the Others, the monsters she sang of every night, breeding terror into her child. But she's not here, only the blank-eyed husk of the Hippogryph Who Was Not. As the darkness envelopes them, Dreamscar crouches low behind his kill until he can hide his grisly face in her mane and breathe the scent of morning glories drowned in blood.
<div class="dreamy_name">Dreamscar</div><div class="dreamy_quote">Carnage x Hippogryph</div></div></center>
“Fol̮̩͋͋ḷ͌ow ̢̂m̺̿̃͟e̤̔,̭͗ ͍͂w͇̟̽̒e̱̱̓͑ ͔͓̔͛d̩͎̊͗o̓͟n̲̏'̯͖́͝t ͍̿h̝̎ā̮v͕̓e͎̓ ̲͊mū̘̟̅ć͖̦̎h͇̓̚͟ ̲̎t̛̘im͎̐e̳͐!̮̀”
There is a long, slow moment in which Dreamscar looks at the black mare standing over him, blinks away the flashback of his birth, the tattered memory of what came after, her attack, his surge of power, the feeling of her body as she landed atop him, curling protectively around his strange body. He knows that gentle warmth of which she is capable as he know wild, uncontrollable, <I>raving</I>, fear that she meets every day, breath quaking, reddened eyes rolling, furious, unfocused. She has always been unfocused, until she had a son. He gave her that focus. <I>He</I> did, with his magic and his strings and his control, and now, as she stands over the crumpled grey form of her taloned, beaked, son as once she stood over that wet, black, colt, he knows, and he is <I>furious.</I>
She frets as he stands, but he takes his time, feeling anger coil in his belly, burning brightly, fed by the fear that came before. She frets until he is on his feet, softly thrumming the strings that connect his mother to him, listening to them sing tight and high in his head. They are stretched so thin he can hear the tension in their whine, so taut he can feel the fragility of them. They are ready to snap, she is so far away, and yet, she is in front of him. He blinks once, almost sleepily, and a soft growl crawls from his throat so slow it is barely more than clicking. His beaked mouth cannot curl into the snarl he wishes to express so, instead, he screams.
“<I><B>NOT</B> hrrrrrr!</I>”
In the blue glow around him, the broken tunnel pulses like entrails, but such things do not bother <I>him</I>. There is never even a second that he entertains this creature as Truth, this fake Hippogryph - he will shred her, <I>eat</I> her. As the last of his outraged breath leaves his lungs, he charges and she cannot turn and run from him as fast as she did above on flat, hard ground. In the Underworld, there are twists and turns and chambers that double back. There are pits that swallow and trip. He tears at the walls – they become mere rock and soil when he looks at them directly, but his black talons leave great grooves in them just as easily as if they were the thin, pink, flesh of intestine.
"<I>Falsssss</I>"
His scream tears through the tunnels as he follows after her, fading to a hiss. He follows, with the scent of her sweat and fear hot in his nostrils. At the corners of his eyes strange figures flicker, but Dreamscar has no time for whispers and shadows around him, the False Mother consumes him. He pays no heed to the depth to which they are traveling, nor to the increasing treacherousness of the cave floor, nor even how she is ever just beyond his reach, though the streaming strands of her blacks tail occasionally flutter against the horn of his beak. One scaled foreclaw snatches the hairs away with a screech and his hind legs gather beneath him. He leaps.
The False Mother stops so hard that she is nearly sitting down, desperate to avoid the gaping black chasm that opens up in front of her.
Her son collides with her in that self-same second, talons outstretched, finding their mark, digging deep into the flesh of her back, her shoulder. The momentum throws both mother and son into the abyss which swallows them like ink. The scream that wrenches from Hippogryph's mouth as they fall, entangled, is real enough, but the mimic is silent now as his claws pull her tight against him, below him. His mother's body is heavy, so full of solid bone, bone that snaps and crunches when they land at last, her still beneath him. He falls atop her and she breaks his fall, she breaks beneath him against the rock floor and he rolls away, battered, bruised, but whole. He coughs, the False Mother groans. She rolls up onto her belly with heaving sides and legs that bend in all directions except the correct one, unable to stand. Her sides twitch and sweat, she cannot outrun him now. When he leaps, his bloodied talons find purchase immediately in her soft flesh, they curl and dig and the welling blood is almost as dark as her damp black coat, gleaming dully in the pulsing blue light.
He has never hunted prey as large as a horse before, and though he might have felt some sadness rending a horse or stag to pieces normally - for they are so large he cannot quickly darken their little lights as he would do with the rabbits and groundhogs and sleepy fawns - for this mockery of his mother, he feels only disgust. Talon and bill pluck chucks of flesh from neck and haunch and shoulder, flesh he cannot eat, that he rips messily away and, shaking his head, open-beaked, sprays against the walls tight around them. The mare does not die - <I>it does not make sense</I> - perhaps because she is not real, and he knows it; perhaps because he wills her to wakefulness as he scrapes meat from bone, as he at last rips through the soft skin of her belly. He will not have to eat for weeks, after this.
That's when he sees them.
<I>The Others.</I>
How could they have gotten here? The horses of Beqanna, those who were not him, not her, that would surely kill him if he could not control them? How could such a crowd fit in this tunnel?
The shadows ring the fallen pair, encroaching, growing denser and more threatening. Fear quells his anger with ice. He reaches out as he did before with his magic, <I>Love me,</I> but there is nothing to grip, nothing to control. Heartless. The shadows grow black and he can hear the snarling whispers of their voices.
<p style="text-align:left">"What are you?"</p></body>
<p style="text-align:center">"Stomach Eater."</p>
<p style="text-align:right">"Abomination."</I></p>
Whispered voices become screams in his ears, he sees flashes of teeth and hooves and angry eyes flickering in the darkness and in response he roars back at them, but his own anger is fading fast. He is the same frightened child he has always been, crying for his mother to save him from the Others, the monsters she sang of every night, breeding terror into her child. But she's not here, only the blank-eyed husk of the Hippogryph Who Was Not. As the darkness envelopes them, Dreamscar crouches low behind his kill until he can hide his grisly face in her mane and breathe the scent of morning glories drowned in blood.
<div class="dreamy_name">Dreamscar</div><div class="dreamy_quote">Carnage x Hippogryph</div></div></center>