[open quest] round one: and with strange aeons, even death may die.

[Jassal]

Usually when the veils between the worlds is shifted, it is a gentle and beautiful thing. The world hardly stirs at the event and most continue to sleep soundly in their beds. But tonight, tonight the veil is torn down with a boom that echoes across Beqanna. The world heaves and quakes at the abrupt arrival of an Old One. If it wasn’t for the ground rumbling and the deafening roar of the heavens, he might have looked like a falling star burning angry red across the night sky. But he is not one of the heavenly bodies or anything so lovely as that. When he crash lands into the base of the mountain, it feels like the continent may break apart beneath the weight of him.

He is frantic teeth chewing into the earth and burrowing claws erecting a new nest in which to hide. The air here feels like it might set his skin on fire. Already, boils and pustules have erupted across his body. He lets out a frantic shriek as he finally slips down, down, down into the caverns he has found for himself.

After that, there is only eerie silence other than the quiet sizzle around the massive hole he has dug. Splatters of the ancient monster’s blood shimmer and glow even without the aid of the moon that hangs fat and full in the night sky. Abruptly, a fog comes creeping out of the cave mouth and it engulfs everything around it. Any careless traveler might get caught in it and find themselves unable to see more than a foot or so before them.

And that is precisely what the ravenous beast wants. He likes his playthings lost and confused in the mist, likes to watch them wander blindly to his waiting jaws. Their hearts always guide them to some sweet, agonizing end.

His hundred mouths open wide but the sound he makes is surprisingly soft as it carries across the cave walls and out into the open air. It is the sob of a child, the aching wail of a mother, and the fearful cry of a lover all at once. They echo and twist over one another, repeating ceaselessly. The call demands answer. The monster’s unblinking swarm of eyes watch the mouth of the cave for a while longer before shambling deeper into the depths as it awaits its prey.

Welcome to the anti-valentine quest. The rules are simple. Reply by 11:59pm on February 2nd central standard time and tell us how your character sees the falling "star". Have them arrive at the mouth of the caves but do not enter. There will only be one winner at the end of five rounds. All others will die, or simply awake from a horrible fever dream with a defect. You may choose whether your character lives or dies, as well as the duration of your defects. You may even make your defects permanent if you wish. Only characters who have NOT been posted in the past month (30 days) may enter. Good luck, uglies.

[jarris]

 
He had found peace at last.
But Jarris knew, perhaps better than anyone, how fickle and fragile a thing peace could be.
He knew that it existed in the space between a heartbeat, knew that it was fleeting in a way that meant it could not be trusted.

He also knew that he was a fool.
That he had always been a fool.
That his ability to love had never been enough to cancel out his inability to stay put.
Jarris had not been built to grow roots and yet…

It had been several years since he’d returned to Beqanna, reeking of someplace far away.
He had fathered a handful more children – five, exactly, each of them strange and wonderful in ways he could not have anticipated. He had never doubted his capacity to love, Jarris, but there was something in him that spurred him into near-constant motion. It had quieted significantly in the past few years and he had remained steadfast, anchored firmly to Plumeria’s side. Exactly where he’d belonged all along.

It is here, in the meadow, watching quietly as Plumeria and Dear sleep soundly, that he sees the star fall. The light arrests his attention, tugging it swiftly from his love and their daughter, and the brow darkens as a cloud of confusion passes across his face. He takes one stilted step in its direction before stopping short, casting a glance over his shoulder at the girl and her mother. He will stay. He has made the conscious decision to stay every day and he will continue to make it.

But he hears the cry and he whips his head around, the heart lurching up into the base of his throat. His breathing quickens along with his pulse because he immediately recognizes the voice. He recognizes, too, the agony in it. He should wake Plumeria, alert her, but he does not. Instead, he surges out into the night, following the sound of that voice. Each cry is a blade slipped into the valleys between his ribs and he runs as hard and as fast as he can in its direction.

And when he reaches the mouth of the cave, it does not occur to him that it might be a trap. Instead, he narrows his gaze in concentration and peers into its dark, yawning mouth. “Kennice?” he calls, the name wrapped tight in the panic that threatens to consume him. For it was her voice he’d heard crying out in the dead of night, beckoning him to the cave, his daughter. 

jarris

now I’ve been crazy, couldn’t you tell? I threw stones at the stars, but the whole sky fell

[Sabra]

I did not see the star fall. My eyes had been glazed and clouded over with the fog of absense for moons on end. My soul and body had lain in separate plains for a long time, since the violence I had begged for had drawn us apart. It had been a necessary respite, the kind of deep sleep some called eternal.

It had not been the case for me. Not when Klaudius had savaged me and driven iron through my heart. Not now, so long after Leilan had torn the fragile skin and tissue of my throat, and spilled my lifeblood on the river's current. I had crossed over then, found my peace and reconciled the ways my life had gone so very wrong. Still, life beckoned, the threads of existence tugging persistent at my soul. I could go back, if I wanted to.

Yet it was not until the collision that the magnetic pull of life grew too strong to ignore. It was a crashing, breaking thing, an impact that tore through countless plains and smeared the very lines of reality with its passage. What had been a stretching elastic thread between my soul and corporeal form was released at last, and with a wheezing gasp they reunited. The very earth beneath me trembled, and with a moan of horror I became aware.

Cave walls. Stone above and below, the very same sort of prison I had been kept in before. Dragons, they're all alike. Keeping their prizes in cavern prisons, to be freed only when they grew tired of them. My newly animated form trembled at remembered claustrophobia. Weak-legged, I rose up in the cramped space, the action made far more difficult by the growling, heaving earth.  It was this that saved me.

With a rending scree, the tumbled stone sealing the cavern entrance fell away, sharp spears of light piercing my eyes. Moonlight, soft as it was, still seemed harsh to one who had not seen in years. The fog of rock dust faded, and my weeping eyes adjusted, the night scene revealed as my quaking limbs took their hesitant first steps toward the open air.

The earth had steadied, the rockfall the gift I'd needed to be free. No broken wing would hold me here. Not this time. A plume of rising pigment caught my eye against the horizon. Smoke or fog or heavy dust, i couldn't tell, only that it curled against the dark night sky, silvered by the blessed moon. My eyes traveled back to myself, taking stock of what was, of what had been. So long I had lain there, the wound that had allowed my soul to flow out was now long knit. New lightning would be the only reminder, a flickering fractal scar among the rest. My wings felt heavy with disuse, muscles atrophied and weak.

All of me, in fact, was thin as the breeze. I'd been starving myself before I'd met the dragon at the river, and no nourishment was given to the dead. I was a wraith of the woman I had been. Yet somehow felt more alive and at ease than I could ever remember being. It was fighting nature and my own fragility, but I had always been a stubborn one. Stubborn enough to take to the air on this strange night. Not for long, of course. It was only with the help of merciful updrafts that my wings allowed the journey to the base of the mountain, where my waking catalyst ate the earth.

It was not ash, I discovered, or steaming mists. The rising cloud that was my beacon was choking dust, coating my throat with its scratching mineral flavor as I neared, forcing me from the sky into an unpracticed landing. My heart faltered at what was revealed beneath the dustcloud. A cavern, sinking beyond sight within the volcanic soil, dark as the sky above. Every instinct screamed. I had only just escaped a cave. Had only just returned to fresh air and freedom, I could not dive inside this hungry mouth. I could not fly again so soon, but I could force my legs to walk steadily away.

One pace, two, and then I stopped in my tracks. Surely not. But there it was again. A thin, reedy sound, not unlike a crying foal. The whine of something lost and needy, it drew my eyes back to the bottomless depths with inexorable awareness. Silence, and I could almost believe that I had imagined it. That the cry was a figment of my so-frequently fractured mind. I should have known better. When the cry came again, it was unmistakable, and I knew I could not ignore it. I had ignored so much in my life. Had walked away from those that had needed me most, and it had destroyed me inside and out. This time would be different. 

[Dreamscar]

If Dreamscar were one to consider beauty, he might find the stars above Pangea beautiful, glittering brightly against the black velvet of the night sky, but he is not, and instead they make him feel cold and small and frightened like the frantic colt he once was. He is not that tiny, sick thing anymore, he has nearly reached his maturity, but there is still an oil slick of fear that shimmers green and purple and yellow over his thoughts of the world.

He has not lost his otherness. Even in a land that calls and consumes otherness, that sings sweetly to monsters and demons, he is detached, afraid, angry. There is nothing that brings him peace but the deranged touch of his dam, her red eyes wild and rolling, unfocused. Three years under his grip, he sometimes wonders what would happen if he let her go now, could she revert to that hatred that stirred her to lunge at him in the very first moments? He can barely even recall it, now, if he tries to remember, there is only a sense of blackness crashing down on him and a plaintive, childish plea for love. He'd been too young to know what he was doing, too young to know he was saving his own life. Instinct is funny like that, that drive to survive at any cost. But the cost had been small enough, the unkempt black mare had been little more the a murmuring shadow, she is still little more than that to most, but she worships him, and so he loves her, and so he controls her.

The shooting star streaks across the sky, too big, too bright, crashing near enough to Pangea that he can hear and feel it's impact, sees the burst of green light spread like sickness across the sky. Hippogryph gibbers and shies away from it, panicked, and her son flinches, too, feeling the candle-flame flicker of fear stirred into something larger, simmering in his belly. He freezes even as his breath quickens, and in that moment of hesitation he fails to rein in his mother's madness. She bolts blindly into a greasewood tree, then turns, stumbling, and flees westward.

Dreamscar feels the tug of her flight, her terror has pressed her beyond what he is used to controlling and she puts distance between them quickly. A guttural screech rips from his throat as he bounds after her, but his awkward body is not built for sprinting and cannot compete with even her perfectly average ability to run.

It feels like only seconds have passed, and already she is lost to him, but he follows a trail of scent, sour fear and the smell of the morning glory flowers she loves to eat, though they make her colicky and strange.

Stranger.

Something about the air around him shifts, a fog rising up from nothing. Hippogryph runs farther, faster, and he can no longer see her hooves in the soft earth, but he can feel her - somewhere. He trills softly into the blinding cloud and shadow, and then he curses in perfect mimicry of the crows he left still roosting back among the Pangean cliffs. From behind him, there is a cry, the young Mimic hisses and spins around, but there is nothing - only silence, pausing in the air as if startled. Scaled claws flex, their talons driving into the ground, gouging deeply into it, and Dreamscar tosses his head, black mane whipping into the windless air. His voice is a scratchy, breathy growl when the sound comes again, a wailing misery that sounds so like his mother's voice.

And yet... Using the love inducement to track is imprecise at best, but the feeling of the strings he has tied round and round and through his mother's heart is distant and stretched, a pinprick of pain and sorrow. The Mother-Voice sobs again and Dreamscar answers with a clumsy, querulous, copy of it, questioning the pulsing mist. Fear blooms in his chest, spilling out from his belly like acid and the feathering of his front legs and chest lays slick and flat. The muscles of his haunches bunch, making the skin twist and jump. He does not move towards it but seeks out what is ahead of him with magic. Tendrils creep forward, searching for a heart in darkness, in a hole. It is a trick he has done so many times, but this is not a rabbit, not a woodchuck, and his success with larger creatures is inconsistent. His pupils dilate, wide and round, suddenly pinning when he feels something, feels that lovesick pull that means he has found what he is looking for, and the grey bird-colt hardens his focus on it.

Please.

He requests it, at first, as though coaxing a rabbit from its burrow, but the ask shifts feather-soft to a demand as his patience wears thin and the terror licks at his throat.

Love me.

Dreamscar

Carnage x Hippogryph

[Torryn]

Torryn is alone, as he often is.

He does not return to Taiga as frequently as he used to, finding that the great trees there feel too close together – have they always been that way, he wonders? The forest had seemed so large when he was younger, with trees that he was sure could reach the moon, and shadows that stretched into an endless abyss. It all felt smaller now, somehow. He now knew the trees could never climb that high, and though the shadows were indeed eternal, they were not his. They were his father’s, and his siblings, and though he could enter them, he would never be apart of them.

He is in some nameless meadow when he sees the flash that streaks across the sky, and stops to stare at the remnants of light that trail after it. He follows it with his eyes to where it seems to crash into the earth, and he is so certain that he feels the ground pulse with the impact of it.

He follows it, because he has nothing better to do. He disappears into the night, guided by some nameless pull. It takes him to the mountain, he thinks, but he is not entirely sure. A thick fog had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and he cannot see the great peak that looms in the distance. He just knows that the ground had become rocky and the trees and thinned, but the mouth of the cave he finds himself standing before has him disoriented.

Staring into the yawning darkness, he hesitates. There was a tension tightening in his gut, that instinct that told him something was off and to not enter. He had never been a foolish or brash sort, and in the time that he is standing there contemplating to turn around or not, a bone-chilling cry drifts from the chambers of it. It is the kind of wail that makes his hair stand on end, the kind that makes him want to run headlong into the darkness while also disappear back the way he had come.

And for now, he does neither. He remains caught in limbo, staring unblinking into the unyielding shadows, unsure if he wants to see what might be staring back.

[thorn]

The world is quiet when the star falls. Eons of suffering whisper come here, come here, come here as the competitors lift their eyes to the sky. Thorn, bleary eyed and innocent, turns his face to the stars. They twinkle spectrally, fading in and out as if they are not really there. Thorn thinks he is experiencing sleep-induced hallucinations when a bright, burning star falls from the cosmos. The winged man’s stomach turns with foreboding, but those whispered come heres sound melodic and sweet.

The violence that follows this even sits lightly on Thorn’s shoulders as he stands to follow the light. His magic instinctively turns him into his more frightening form, nothing more than a hollow skeleton with bones that glow pearly white beneath the moon. He doesn’t think much of the heaviness, of how this sense of foreboding should turn him back to his family’s nest. Wonder would snatch him up with worried hands for leaving in the middle of the night to follow something frightening, he thinks. Guilt squeezes his gentle heart, but the call of the beast is a siren’s song.

The travel from Tephra to the Mountain is a long one, so Thorn shifts his wings back to their fleshy form and takes off into the sky. The wind is cold and strange as it blows through Thorn’s empty skeleton, but he nearly likes it, how alive it makes him feel. If it weren’t for the shiver of fear traveling down his spine, he might hum to the whistling between his bones.

Thorn has a sweet face and soft eyes. His mother’s magic gave him a powerful heart, and the all-encompassing love his family has made him stronger than the average horse. So when he lands at the Mountain and peers at the holes dug so viciously into the ground, he leans into that magic, draws on it just enough to take the hesitation out of his step. Here, facing what is sure to be at least an uncomfortable unknown, Thorn knows his family is with him. They love him so deeply and that strength in his heart replays their whispered I love yous.

At the mouth of the cave Thorn stands, peering into the orange glow. It reflects like orange and purple fire in his eyes.

For a moment, Thorn feels as if he can face anything.

[Waverly]

your heart, it's like a drum
the chase has just begun

The rush and slap of the waves as they curl beneath the distant face of the moon fills the night air, easily masking any small splash or gurgle that might give away the surfacing of a watery beast. She is not entirely certain what had drawn her up, but she does not question it. She rarely questions her instincts.

Only the flat spanse of her features rise above the surface, white and gold glinting wetly beneath the faded white light of the moon. Golden not-quite-equine eyes follow the trail of a distant shooting star as it races across the midnight blanket above, remaining eerily unphased as it draws ever nearer. She follows it with her gaze as it disappears into the distance. Moments later, it’s crash resonates subtly through the land, sending ripples across the water and a curious vibration through the depths.

Were she a lesser being, she might have ignored it easily. But curiosity tugs her. And though she hesitates for several long minutes, debating the wisdom of investigating such a clearly powerful celestial object, in the end, she cannot deny her baser nature.

As she sinks back beneath the waves, only a brief stream of bubbles betraying where she’d been, she cuts easily through the water. Diving deep, her scaled body and finned limbs, perfectly designed for her environment, aid her in effortlessly crossing the distance between her most frequented hunting grounds and the distant cove in which the strange object had crashed.

When she surfaces once more, it is to find a heavy fog lying low over the eerily calm waters of the bay. In that fateful moment, she nearly turns and leaves. She might have, were it not for the faint trace of blood lingering on the air like a passing stranger’s perfume.

And so, she creeps forward, gaze warily searching the dense fog as the follows the faint siren call of life promising something intriguing at its end. Predator and prey all at once, if only she knew.

When she begins to rise from the shallows, it is not a beastly thing with a too-wide smile and sharp, crooked teeth, but a lovely woman of shimmering teal splashed with gilded white.The long strands of her mane cling damply to distinctly feminine curves, water sluicing from flawless skin as she slips gracefully to the beach with barely a splash or disturbed wave.

A pretty face to hide the monster lingering just beneath the surface.

The cave is ahead, the gentle waft of blood leading unerringly within. She approaches with caution, nostrils flaring and steps hesitant. Her delicate ears twitch uncertainly atop her head, tangling in the damp strands of her hair. She would vastly prefer to remain within easy reach of the water. It is her home and her salvation. And it is where she seeks her prey.

But the trail leads in. Peering into the dark, gaping maw of the cavern, she draws to a halt, wondering if perhaps this is not a thing worth pursuing. Until the faint, babbling wail emerges, a lure from the depths. It draws the predator forth, teeth erupting as her grin widens, breath hissing almost gleefully through jagged teeth. Anticipating the hunt to come.

Waverly