10-22-2016, 02:19 PM
don't forget that this is a choice.
pick your poison; live with remorse.
pick your poison; live with remorse.
He had faltered, but he had not fallen. Time would go on, as it always had and as it always would - it hardly needed him to man the helm; and the volcanic ash did not need him to stir it. Though he had relinquished his own command, he had never left, nor would he. No longer did he have the mind to seek ice and snow, as bubbling brooks of corrosive lava and hot pipes of brewing steam became as much a part of him as the sleet had ever been. He would linger in the shadows, a presence to be called upon in need, a figure of solidarity. He felt secure in body and mind that land had been obtained, that those he loved and cared for had a refuge - shelter - but he could no longer call himself a King.
It had been a tiring time, even for one who held eternity within his proverbial grasp.
Alas, the silence of morning has been broken with a rippling call that echoes all too easily across the vacuous land. His breath is still warm along the gently sloping spine of his beloved, but with a simple gaze, she understands - Isle has always understood the deep, throbbing desire to serve and protect that festered within him. Without a word, he draws himself away from her, his heavy prints pounding into the moist, nutrient rich soil that sifts so easily beneath the immense weight of his body.
It does not take his glowing red eyes long to find the source, and he lowers the mass of his thick neck, slowing the breakneck pace to a mere lope - others had begun to gather as well, and gently, his whiskered lips brush the shoulder of his daughter's shoulder (Spark and Spear had been born of such unusual circumstances, yet he had grown a deep fondness that caused his heart to ache upon each of their mismatched eyes meeting with his).
He had not gone away; he never would. His heart was bound, and his body would follow.
Power was not something he had ever thirsted for, the way that some did.
Silence remains as his mind is weighed down with the careful, heady wording of the warrior that stood before him - an ally, but more than that - a friend. Magnus knew the heavy burden of the crown, having worn it himself, and with such etched experience the two had grown close in knowing the tiring road that lay ahead. It had grown too much for Offspring, with loss and remorse heavy on his aching mind, but his heart remained satisfied with the land obtained. Safety. Shelter. Refuge. He longed for the simpler things now; the rest of the world could burn to ashes for all he cared.
A looming figure approaches, his presence heavily stated but without any proper punctuation. Careful and wary, his dark eyes of fire observe his every hardened line and the joyless humor that lingers within his foreboding eyes. Trouble, his instinct presses, and he cannot deny it. Nostrils flaring with mild agitation, he withholds his sharpened tongue as he foolishly pushes closer to the mottled buckskin before him, towering over him in a pathetic attempt to intimidate. It only takes a few heavy steps of his own massive physique to align his body with Magnus', his own glowering eyes meeting with Belgarath's - with an entire hand advantage of his own.
"I, too, have answered his call, and he is far from alone," His heavy voice rises from the ashes, echoing the sentiment of the indigo female, gruff from disuse but gravelly with something looming - a threat lingering at the back of his throat. "perhaps you are lost? Blind, by chance? Only a fool would tread so carelessly into the fray without knowing what he is up against."
offspring