"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
Although he’s met two new siblings in Taiga, he has no problem leaving the redwoods to wander elsewhere. Tiercel has been turning away from his family since the moment he saw his parents’ eyes glow with delight at his siblings’ wings and then immediately shadow at the emptiness of his shoulders. It had been difficult to leave as a child (Eyas and Gale tried to keep him involved, Lepis would swaddle him in her peace, he relied upon the safety his family provided), but when he failed Gale and thus his whole family, Tiercel had fled the nest.
Why did he go to Taiga only to turn toward Pangea days later?
The striped faces of his two younger siblings carried more weight than the children had realized. Lepis had loved him tenderly and faithfully (he wonders if she’d known that he would hide the bitterness in his heart as an adult) but Wolfbane had been an adequate father, seemingly more involved in politics than anything. Tiercel feels anger flood in his chest at the thought of his parents torturing more children, forcing them into the tight, bonding responsibilities of a royal family.
He arrives at Pangea’s border with the anger still hovering around him like a dark cloud, likely influencing anyone within talking distance.
The shadowmare doesn’t patrol the border physically, but that does not mean she allows it to remain unguarded. The breeze that twisted through the sandstone canyons whispered secrets in her ear. And today they whispered of a stranger approaching. So in little more than a wisp of shadow, she finds herself standing along her border - watching as the stranger draws to a halt.
She can feel his anger - feel it wrapping itself around him around like a stormcloud. It had been some time since she’d encountered such an empath. It was enough to pique her interest on an otherwise quiet day.
“Well, well…” she began, inclining her head towards the gold and blue stallion. There was something about him - a whisper in his blood. A whisper of her blood. This did little to minimize her interest in this stranger.
“Who are you?” she asks, her voice devoid of emotion, but still pensive. “And what brings you to our border in such a state?” she asked, unmistakably referring to the anger seeping out of him. She couldn’t help but be thankful that she had been the one to find him here. Had it been one of her little monsters discovered him in such a state it would have triggered an absolute frenzy. Had that been the case, there’d have been nothing but bleached bones along the border.
01-10-2020, 09:38 PM (This post was last modified: 01-11-2020, 12:46 AM by Niklas.)
my shadow's shedding skin ...
It is only a little at first. Bits of shadow leeching up through the soil, stinking faintly of sulfur. It seeps across the earth, weaving through broken pieces of sandstone and sparse, trodden vegetation. One thread joins another; here, another union. Drawn to the seething anger like a shark to blood in the water, the darkness gathers and pools near the navy-striped stallion. When it hits some invisible boundary, it starts to build on itself, finally spinning together to reveal the lanky demon and his faithful hellhound. Hellfire smolders in the hollow depths of molten eyes, his unmarked skin so black it swallows light.
His eyes flick to Anaxarete. He tilts his head, the barest of inclines, neck muscles taut and prominent underneath his shorn mane. The mother of aliens, many a monster has sprung from the shadow-queen’s loins. He, Niklas, is no exception and he finds in this life more so than any other that he has lived, he is inexplicably tethered to her. His tongue, just as black as the rest of him, rasps along lips cracked and bloodied by the heat of the underworld. The body she had borne him into was, admittedly, not perfectly suited for his preferred haunts, but, he makes do. A flaked bit of skin snags between his teeth. Just then, the ragged hellhound at his side lurches forward, snatching up some unfortunate bit of prey. The small life extinguished draws Niklas’ attention for a breath before the stallion's anger coaxes him back like a petulant lover.
For a few moments, the quiet feels like a heavy blanket, wrapping itself around Tiercel until he feels choked by it. He is still ruminating over the existence of his younger siblings and the empty, eerie feeling that Pangea brings makes him want to yell as loud as he can. He wants to scream loud enough that Gale might hear it from wherever he is, a burnt colt whose family’s tears couldn’t put out the fire that killed him. He’d seen those fresh faces in Taiga falling into the volcano just like Gale had, just like Tiercel has been picturing every night since the day it happened. It makes him want to scream — the pressure of the silence, his brother’s charred wings, the suspicious faces of Celina and Elio — but the feeling of a breeze whispering across his angular cheekbones pushes the desire away for another day.
The shadows are gathering close to him, swirling and dancing with surreal force. Tiercel has seen a tornado once when a terrible storm coaxed the angry clouds to touch a Loess plain. The churning storm had only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough that not even Lepis’s emotions were able to calm his terror. Less afraid now, Tiercel watches the way the shadows move as that tornado had, his clear cerulean eyes holding an expression of lingering rage and mild interest.
His gaze shifts smoothly toward the mare when she speaks, breaking through the silence that had aggravated his anger even further. Tiercel settles under the relief her voice brings — she is a welcome distraction from the bundle of heavy, bitter emotions that rest just beneath his serious blue-and-gold face. “I’m Tiercel.” Once upon a time, his mother might’ve encouraged him to say more. “And?” she might prod. “Son of Wolfbane and Lepis, prince of Loess,” he would have said, feeling the bitterness poke at his heart. He leaves his official title in his past, thankful to feel the weight of its responsibilities lift from his shoulders (though perhaps such responsibilities are never truly gone).
Though not entirely sure what he’s going to say, Tiercel opens his mouth to answer her second question when the shadows fully form into a gaunt-looking stallion and his counterpart. They look… Well, hungry is the best way he could put it. They seem ready for a hunt, practically vibrating, and Tiercel recognizes the force of his anger weaving freely between the four of them. It is more difficult to rein in this emotion, especially when he is feeling it so fully, but the gold-and-blue is able to dampen the force of his anger until it feels something more like unrest.
“I guess I’m exploring,” he says after a moment’s pause. It’s a lie; he’s done enough exploring in the past few years to last a lifetime, yet he doesn’t want to admit that he needs to be someplace away from those two young faces. “Who are you?”
