"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
02-10-2020, 12:53 AM (This post was last modified: 02-10-2020, 12:54 AM by Jassal.)
They reach their obstacles – ice, fire, whatever else seems so impossible to cross for them. Had he ever known fear? If he ever were acquainted with the emotion, the memory has crumbled from him now. None of their troubles bring him any sort of surprise but so little does when he has watched civilizations rise and fall like dramatic tides.
Tentacles thick as California redwoods squirm and flick as though they pull imaginary strings to make his puppets all jump to attention. Each of their loved ones smiles and edges closer now. They just need a little push, is all. And so, the loved ones creep behind them until there is no choice but to move forward. Any attempts to fight them are met with perfect resistance, all while they smile with their eyes so full of love. Is it love for them or is it love for the hurt and betrayal they must feel? No matter, as they shove the lost travelers into their impasse.
They burn, they drown, they freeze, they are crushed, or they are devoured. It makes no difference to him. But this is all a nightmare and the tunnels will not let them perish so easily. The Deep One strums the air with a gnarled claw and they awaken in a massive chamber. Their chosen loved one is there, still smiling, but their shape is even more wrong now – limbs bend the wrong way, some heads are entirely upside down, or their spines show through the skin. He has given up trying to mimic things from their memories. He does not know the shape of love as well as fear.
“S̵o̵ ̵s̷o̶r̷r̵y̵.̶ ̵D̸i̷d̸n̴’̷t̶ ̷m̶e̴a̶n̴ ̶t̴o̶.̵ ̷S̸o̴ ̵s̸o̶r̷r̶y̴.̷ ̷D̵i̸d̷n̷’̶t̷ ̷m̶e̴a̷n̵ ̶t̸o̴,” they chant as they edge closer once more like broken records. Their teeth fall from their jaws and trickle to the ground like ugly pearls. “S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅”
They stand between the stargazers and what seems to be the way out. A pinprick of light at the end of this tunnel seems to promise salvation from whatever nightmare this is. He has made their choice clear: kill. Destroy that which they love or it will only twist and bend further. Slaughter their darlings or spend eternity watching how ugly they can become.
For the first time in centuries, his hearts all flutter and tremble with joy.
For this round, you are shoved into the obstacle you chose previously. Briefly describe dying and then murdering your loved one! Don't forget to mention how messed up they look - the grosser, the better. End your post running down the tunnel toward that pinprick of light. Reply by Sunday, February 16th at 11:59pm CST or get your defect. Good luck, uglies!
To be squeezed within a giant's fist. That is how I feel now, with the sides of me pinched between two panels of rough, damp stone. As tight as I feel from the outside, my chest feels far worse. Each breath is a hitching, desperate thing, the very air thick with the scent of my own fear. All the while, that thing waits, and watches with a distant smile and unblinking eyes.
I can see her, it, the caricature of my long dead daughter that stands so still behind me. The walls are not so narrow there. Do not crush at her from every angle. If I can edge my way back, just a few paces, I can be free and turn around. Find some other way out.
The thought no sooner occurs than the watered-down girl jerks. My stomach turns at the sudden motion, the unnatural stiffening of joint and bone. Some string had been tugged, some signal given, and I can only watch with head heldawkwardly high as the filly-monster's legs begin to twitch. Spider fast, the limp winged body surges forward to slam into my rear with surprising power. A sharp breath hisses between my teeth. The blow has shifted me some inches deeper into my crevice, tearing feathers and skin on the jagged walls. Worse, my chin hascaught, lodged on the ever lowering ceiling. I'd had to see what was behind me. Now I can't look away.
Again. The spindly creature bolts into me, smiling with angelic bliss all the while. A few more inches my body slides, grating into the too tight space, neck arching painfully back. Warm blood trickles down my jaw, the bite of stone into my chin another throbbing point. As erratic as my breathing was, now it has grown painfully thin. Wheezing, strained lungs fill with mineral scent. Blood or stone or both, I think it could be the last thing I ever smell, that choking stench.
Still the dimly lit ghoul is dancing behind my back. The rasp of feathers on stone, the sharp knock of her hooves. She could be a child at play if the luciferine light didn't not betray her for something far more sinister.
The clatter of broken hooves on granite echoes closer, ever closer. I can see the grinning thing barrel towards me, shining in the darkness. The strain on my neck is agony. The pressure on my ribs is unbearable. And in just a few paces, the slight figure smacks into me again.
A crack answers the echoes.
I'm drowning, falling, gasping for air I don't expect to find. My neck is throbbing fit to blind, and like a bright negative, I can hear my spine snappingall over again. See the milky figure as she drives my into the crushing space.
The sound fades into memory, but the image does not. A swallow forces down my bruised throat. "We're not finished, are we?" I ask numbly, taking in the new scene. There is freedom, tauntingly beautiful and out of reach. Stars that glitter in a pool of darkness, the sky that I can almost taste. The gatekeeper is there. Between the glimpse of sky and myself is the ravaged dream of my daughter.
On and on, the voice a many-layered thing that claws at my mind. There is no more pretending, not when the unholy thing is creeping so dreadfully nearer. Not my daughter. Not my daughter, and I don't think it ever was. A sound like pebbles scattering on ice draws my eyes, and I can see the faint gleam of white teeth at its feet. When it moves, it's with too many joints. Each leg an independent thought, scrabbling against the floor with shocking purpose. It moves again, twitchy, jerking steps that underscore how very wrong the puppet is.
The toothless jaw has stretched, grown, tongue swollen and purple and dangling. Somehow yet the voice (voices?) echo on in an evil harmony.
The wings, what had once been Miela's beautiful, shimmering wings, are shedding feathers in clots and flurries now, revealing putrifying flesh beneath. She's rotting like late season fruit. Like a body left too long in the sun, and I remember. That was exactly what I'd left her to do.
I'd fought to keep her. To have her be accepted, and resented her after for being other than what I'd hoped for. Weak, sickly, and a product of my own desecration. I'd grown to hate her, because she had come to symbolize my every failing.
The jarring monstrosity is not her, but I find pity for it all the same. I should have cared for my girl better. Should have stood by her and fought harder to heal her when the plague struck. And now I am bound to watch her doppelganger warp and degrade before my eyes all over again.
It has come closer. Close enough that the cloying sweet scent of grave dirt and death fills my muzzle. It's all I can taste and smell, her rotting meat and sunken skim-milk eyes blotting out the hopeful sky beyond.
Her features are melting like hot wax, the blood-black skull beneath emerging from her poll. Brittle hair and skin peel away from diseased flesh. One eyeball slips from its receding socket to fall with a wet "plop" on the ground. Her ratcheting legs dance through the fallen thing, smearing the vitrious fluid in a shining snail trail from her steps. The empty hole in the now unrecognizable face leers at me accusing even as the horror voice apologizes endlessly.
I've let this go on too long.
Every moment I let go by, I am no closer to freedom. And still she warps and twists, the body a cackling, rubber-boned thing that will haunt me the rest of my days. There is no other way. There wouldn't be, of course.
Skin has begun to slough off the rickety bones, the bones themselves lurching one way and the next in that same macabre dance. This is a thing undead, and yet I'm trying to kill it again. To destroy that which I've already destroyed.
Strips of pink-white tissue cling to my teeth after the first blow. A tearing bite that passes through rot-soft flesh with far too little effort. The trembling mannequin seemed not to notice.
My head is ringing with the phrase. It's a screaming litany that fills the air as I lay blow after blow on the stinking corpse. Bone and meat alike deteriorate beneath my assault, the face a mash of gore and ichor, the body breaking down before my eyes. I'm coated in the thick fluid that decay invites, hooves and teeth pasted with bits of flesh and old, dark blood. There is frantic light in my eyes by the time the corpse stops jerking.
It is some moments more before I register the lack of noise beyond my own choking breath.
I'm am heaving with sobs, tears running through the gore painting my face and dripping to the uncaring ground. What is left of the tormentor lies steaming beneath my hooves, only the occasional patch of pastel hair to suggest what it might once have been.
Beyond is the small, shining light. The only hope I have still fluttering in my chest at the sight. Eyes blurry with tears, I lurch forward in a faltering canter, toward salvation or damnation, I am beyond caring which. In my wake, whispered words echo from the cavern walls.
"I'm so sorry"
I wanna be Immortal, like a God in the sky
I wanna be a silk flower, like I'm never gonna die
His mother doesn’t respond to what he says, and he turns to look at her in confusion only to find that she is pressing against him.
Torryn was larger than his mother, both in height and bulk. He could have easily overpowered her, if he could get past the mental block of not wanting to bring harm to her – and if it weren’t for the fact that there was a supernatural strength to her. This was not the Briseis that he knew. His mother had a quiet strength to her, but she was no fighter. Wordlessly and despite his protests Briseis pushed him towards the falling stalactite, and when he finally set his jaw and makes to spin to fight back – hoping to at the very least catch her off guard, so that he might not have to actually hurt her – it is too late.
She pushes him up against the hard wall of a stalagmite that erupts from the ground, and with nowhere to go, he is crushed by the large, spear-like end that falls from above him. The last thing he sees is the strange, empty eyes of his mother, and that peculiar smile spun like shadows across her lips.
When he awakens he is still in the tunnel system, but it is different. Between him there is only shadows, thick and suffocating, and on the other side there is the smallest prick of light. He moves towards it, and is immediately intercepted by the grotesque figure of his mother.
“So sorry,” she says, flat and monotonous, and her teeth clatter to the ground like stones. “Didn’t mean to,” her voice sounds broken and disconnected, and her dark eyes turn to black before leaking like slime down her face. Torryn stumbles back when worms and cockroaches crawl from the hollowed sockets, his gut churning at the sickening sound of the creature’s bones cracking and breaking. More legs erupt and the body twists and contorts, until there is almost nothing equine left – just a gruesome, twisted version of an eyeless spider, and a face that maybe at one point resembled his mother.
The creature laughs, small spiders and various other insects spewing from its mouth, and with a speed he had not expected it scurries across the chamber to block his path towards the exit.
It is only by pure adrenaline that Torryn finds it in himself to fight. It is only the instinctual drive to survive that he manages to push away his fear and disgust and lunge towards this monstrosity rather than away from it. With ears flat to his skull and a snake-like movement of his head his teeth latch onto the lower part of the creature’s middle leg. He is surprised that when he pulls back, it falls apart – that the creature is just as easy to dismantle as a small spider would be.
And so he does. Limb by limb, piece by piece, he dismembers the disgusting, alien creature. He ignores the taste its flesh leaves in his mouth, how worms and spiders and cockroaches continue to fall from its sockets and jaws as it screeches. They crawl across his face and his tongue, they tangle in his black mane, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t stop until the thing is legless and useless on the chamber floor, and Torryn is soon sprinting towards what he thinks – what he hopes – is the exit.
your heart, it's like a drum the chase has just begun
Her shriek as the false-mother edges closer, using impossible strength to corner her into the flames, is ear-splittingly unnatural. A sound that grates like the tines of a fork on ceramic. But it hardly matters. She is still pushed unerringly, her claws and teeth and strength somehow as nothing against this Lirren who is not Lirren. There is no broken skin or blood, only the impossible searing of her own flesh.
Eventually sound dies from her throat as her skin turns black and crisp, a shuddering, burning breath the only thing she has strength left for. And soon, even that is too much. She ends on an almost violent, rasping gasp as fire and smoke consume her. There is no sense of loss or betrayal as thought and breath flee, only the finality of her moments. She is not hardwired as they, not bound to the sense of emotional pain one might expect. Her world has long been very black and white. One lives or dies. For a time, she had lived. But a thing greater and mightier had brought about her death.
So it is not betrayal or anger she awakens to however long later, laying in the bowels of a large chamber. It is confusion. Every moment of the hellscape had felt so very real, and she had never imagined it may not be. But she does not dwell long on those impossibilities. Not when her broken mother steps forward, distorted apology on her lips. With a hiss, Waverly scrambles to her feet, wary golden eyes fixed unerringly on the unnatural image of Lirren twisting before her.
Everything that had been wrong before now screams it’s heinousness to the world. Her teal mane twines like living snakes around a crimson neck that undulates and bulges as though it might burst at any moment. Her teeth drip to the floor like water droplets, joints twisting all the wrong directions. One hoof comes up, as though she might placate her beastly daughter with the beckoning of a leg bending backwards, as though it had snapped loose. Even her skin seems surreal, oozing from her body, a sickening crawl of leaking flesh and fur.
Everything in Waverly screams at her to kill. To eliminate the threat that stands before her. Waverly had never been one to deny her instincts, but she had only ever killed prey before. And this grossly unnatural figure is something she would never wish to consume.
The prick of light in the distance is ultimately what decides her, however. She does not trust it, but it is more than she had before.
And so, without further thought or hesitation, she launches forward, jaw snapping wide as she rips with the vigor of a predator into the false figure of her mother. Her taste is sickening and terrible, but she does not slaughter this one for the taste. No, her goal is freedom, and the unnatural thing stands in her way.
Unlike before, her teeth easily find purchase as she tears into flesh and limb until Lirren is nothing but an unnatural heap of oozing skin and bone at her feet. The ease of the kill kindles suspicion in her mind, and as she turns her gaze to the beckoning light, she wonders if this is yet another trick. Wonders if this is nothing more than the tantalizing light of an anglerfish.
So, when she proceeds, it is not with the headlong rush of a fool convinced freedom is in reach, but rather the slow, cautious steps of a predator who understands what it is to become prey.
If Thorn is to have a favorite sibling, it is Tamlin. The pair have always bounced off each other in the picturesque way close brothers do: knocking heads, rough-housing, offering eye-rolling advice but appreciating each other all the same. It’s those memories of their unbreakable bond that Thorn thinks of as he turns to stare into the quiet eyes of his brother. There is almost nothing behind Tamlin’s gaze, just as before—he wears nothing more than a kind smile, and even that stirs discomfort in Thorn’s chest.
“Do you think we can get past these vines? Maybe if we kick—” Thorn begins only to be cut off by Tamlin’s gentle nudging. He blinks confused lilac eyes back at his brother only to find an eager, loving smile. “Tamlin, what—” but again he is cut off by incessant pushing. Thorn stumbles hesitantly in the direction of the wall of foliage, but sets his hooves hard against the stone when they do not give beneath his weight. “Tamlin, stop,” he demands, not yet harsh but certainly frustrated.
The vines come alive when Tamlin finally uses brute force. Thorn turns around just enough to see that same creepy, loving smile on his face. Fear and dread slide up his throat as Tamlin’s wings whip up and over, herding Thorn’s body even further into the vines. He could fight back, of course: kick with his back legs, flare his own wings, use his impressive height; but Thorn is kind and true, even now finding it impossible to use violence on his loved ones.
Even now, as the vines writhe around his body and tighten around his throat.
Soon, Thorn is entirely engulfed. He can still breath, his mouth and nostrils free and gasping and every few seconds whimpering, “Tamlin . . .” The vines seem to laugh, then, heaving up and down in a mimicry of mirth before finding every opening in his body and digging in. A pair snakes up his nose, another into his ears, and yet another down his throat. He would die from suffocation if his brain was not ripped to shreds by vicious thorns.
—
When Thorn wakes, the gray chamber around him pulses. He blinks, blood from his recent death still decorating the white and black of his head. His head throbs with the silver shivering of his enclosure, and when he lifts himself to the ground he can barely shake the grogginess from his eyes. Thorn peers first to the left, then to the right, then slowly spins around when he hears the labored breathing of what is sure to be some terrible creature.
Fear fills Thorn’s eyes like a flood, first feral and then sorrowful when he realizes what he is staring at. This is Tamlin to him, not some strange imitation, and he truly believes this fruitless quest he has followed has turned his brother into a monster. He can barely recognize his sibling—if it was not for the red patch on his shoulder, Thorn isn’t sure he would know it is him. Those warm, welcoming brown eyes are now black; not just black, though, black and melted and dripping dark slime down his face. What was once a kind, equine face is now a horse’s head with the wide mouth of a wolf. Canines glimmer wickedly when Tamlin’s mouth flops open to pant, followed by the long, wet tongue of a dog.
“Tamlin, please,” Thorn begs, though his voice finds the supernatural strength his mother’s heart has always given him. Tears pool in his eyes and then quietly drip down as he realizes that this creature is not to be reasoned with. That this Tamlin is no longer Tamlin but Thorn’s worst fears realized.
And Thorn is disgusted with himself for ever feeling fear. Disgusted because he thinks that if he had never worried, then this monster wouldn’t be standing before him. Disgusted because his fears not only affected his reality, but his brother’s.
Teeth fall from the wolf’s mouth as Tamlin edges closer. Thorn takes a moment to really absorb what has been done to his brother. He knows he will never forgive himself if he does not experience this terrible creation of his to its full extent. The canine mouth and melted eyes are not the only frightening changes Tamlin has undergone. His wings are no longer feathered but covered in thorns and spikes. Where hooves once were there are oversized wolf paws. Tamlin’s back legs bend and twist until they are facing in the complete opposite direction. The muscles beneath his fur writhe with their transformations. The sharp edges of Tamlin’s wings stab into his skin, leaving pockmarks and exposed muscle. The flowers that littered his mane are rotted and slimy, and his once thick mane and tail is now stringy and dreadlocked. Blood drips from the wounds on his back and sides and from various pustules all over his body.
The tiniest sliver of light catches Thorn’s eye when Tamlin manages to stumble closer. A way out, the cave whispers to him. But he knows it must come with a price. It is not another magicked whisper that gives him understanding, but a vision. The image of Tamlin festering forever in these caves locks into his mind. End his suffering or watch for eternity.
“I’m so sorry,” Thorn whispers, but this time tears do not wet his cheeks. He does this out of love—out of love for his brother and hate for himself. Mama would never forgive him if he left Tamlin here to writhe and writhe until the end of time. Mama might not forgive him for this, either, but when faced with his first choice of a lesser of two evils, Thorn thinks he picks correctly.
Tamlin doesn’t put up much of a fight, as one might think he would. His deformed body makes it easy for him to be knocked over, so it only takes a buffering of Thorn’s large wings for him to stumble to his knees. From there, he kicks him in the jaw hard enough to knock him to his side. Tamlin’s sharp wings flutter defensively, but the way his body continues to change offers him little control.
“I can’t fix this,” Thorn murmurs, then lands both of his front hooves directly onto Tamlin’s skull. Memories of healing scraped knees and sudden fevers flash across his mind. “I can’t fix this,” he repeats again, then settles a distant gaze upon the pinprick of light. He breaks into a desperate gallop, barely feeling the way his strong heart wrenches from the lack of love.
The Others press in close enough that he can feel their hot angry breath stir his dark mane, but he does not see them with his face shoved between the hard ground and the still warm husk of Hippogryph. Dreamscar is keening now, a high whining noise that almost drowns out the muddled yelling of the crowd around him and his heart beats almost too fast. They will attack us. They will kill us. Beware of the Others. Beware, beware, beware, his mother's words, a rare coherence to her muttering, it was spoken over and over again in that dry, thirsty, voice, her eyes bloodshot and unfocused, her skin twitching. She had not been looking at anything as she spoke, at anyone, nothing to give a child any reference, and so he created his own from the baseless ramblings of a mare whose mind had failed her years before his birth.
But she had been right. Blind, he feels the mare's corpse jerk and lunges out from behind her with a yowl, beak snapping and sharp claws slashing out at whoever dared touch his Mother-Who-Was-Not-His-Mother but who had still smelled like her when he was frightened. Talons close on air, on nothing, even as the shadows are so near that he breathes them in, but when he goes to duck beneath the mare's mane again, she's gone.
How can she be gone?
There's a shove from behind and he spins, darts forward open-mouthed without stopping to look or assess the danger first, but the garbled voice is almost familiar. The False Mother's blood spills onto his tongue, thick and viscous and abnormally sweet. S̵o̵ ̵s̷o̶r̷r̵y̵.̶ ̵D̸i̷d̸n̴’̷t̶ ̷m̶e̴a̶n̴ ̶t̴o̶.̵ ̷S̸o̴ ̵s̸o̶r̷r̶y̴.̷ ̷D̵i̸d̷n̷’̶t̷ ̷m̶e̴a̷n̵ ̶t̸o̴. The point of his beak pierces well into her throat but her voice becomes no more or less strange, and when he pulls away with a jerk and a twist, pressing his forefeet into her for leverage, a large vein is left hanging in the flapping meat of her neck, dripping blood like molasses. She comes at him still, pressing him into the hatred behind him. Unseen, a hoof strikes at his haunch and he squeals. The wispy teeth of a Shadow Horse rake his side, drawing welts across his skin and staining the white of his coat with a smeared red. He twists and slashes again with bloodied talons but finds no purchase on the attacking phantoms. The litany of abuse continues, even as their blows fall against him, and he feels them as if in a dream, blunt, dulled, the memory of pain. Hippogryph, from behind, continues her garbled speech, her relentless forward march that presses him into the attackers.
The fear that overcomes him alights again when he turns to her, a caricature of what she should be. She paints the pulsing walls thick with black blood, torn entrails spilling from the cavern he tore into her abdomen, tracing gore into the soft dirt underfoot.
"Awayyy." He hisses threateningly to her as she jerks apart and forward on legs still broken from their landing. Not one should support her weight, and neither do they appear to, dangling so that their tips drag against the ground. Skin and ligament alone attach them to her, yet she lifts and throws them forward in a parody of walking. The horn of her hoof rattles noisily against stone.
The dark, broken, mare pushes against him again and again, the only thing he can touch, though every time he lets her force him back, horses that he cannot bite or claw leave bruises on his skin and trails of bright crimson bleeding down his legs. Something whispers in his mind to kill her. Kill her again? He hesitates this time in a way that he didn't before, trapped between the anger and hatred behind him and the emptiness in front of him that so looks like the mother he has already eaten once today. He whines softly to his not-dam, crooning, pleading, but to no avail, and the straw-man she has become seems to increase in strength as his own falters. Though he curls his claws into the ground underneath, he loses ground, step by grueling, inexorable, step, scratching desperate furrows into the cave floor.
The Shadows around them have grown quiet as their quarry is forced into their circle. Well in the center now, Hippogryph ends her strange, floating, puppet-walk on those shattered limbs and her broad head rises triumphantly atop that tattered neck. Her whole front end is slick with slime and blood, intestine dragging out beyond the impenetrable circle around them, stretching impossible miles through the cave tunnel. In that silent moment, Dreamscar's keening turns to a low growl, turns to a screech that echoes through the caverns, all the twists and turns that they raced earlier, and in that moment the Others fall on them both. He fights but there is nothing to grab - nothing but ghosts and shades and phantoms that turn to air in his claws, between his teeth, yet their hooves and their teeth find their mark every time, impossibly accurate. His scaled forelegs are crushed and broken, taloned claws torn away leaving bone exposed of flesh. A hoof catches his eye and the sight goes black, another cracks the tip off his beak, repeated blows crack it, break it, and blood runs freely. The vision in his other eye is red and full of stars as he tumbles to the ground and sees his dam, too, a victim of their wanton hatred. They have always hated the mare and her monster son. She had always said They would destroy them, and now she is proven right. Beneath bloody grey hooves, the dark mare becomes an oozing, pulverized mash, blood and bone and skin, yet still those dim eyes blink, still those yellow teeth grin.
He hates her.
He doesn't even feel the blow that crushes his skull and kills him.
Darkness and stars. There is nothing and then there are stars. He has never found them beautiful, rather they make him feel small and cold and terrified as the unwanted, hated colt that he once was. That he still is. Only his mother loves him, and that because he has made her. His mother-- he reaches out to her standing nearby but something strange is happening. The rush of his magic pools into her and slides away, skims off into the caves in search of something - anything- to take hold of. Danger. Fear flares in his breast and he sits up (why was he lying down?) rolls up from his side onto his belly, leaps up to his feet. He remembers now.
There is no time for confusion. Beyond her, a light shines, beckons, promises freedom, but he cannot get past her. The glimmer at the end of the tunnel calls to him, singing sweetly in his ear, and he is simultaneously drawn to it and repulsed by it, roughly denying the hope it is building inside of him. There is nothing hopeful about the chimeric creature, and he cannot believe that the budding warmth in his chest is of his own making. Eyes still foggy with the memory of death and nothingness focus on the mare that so looks like his dam.
Looked like.
The resemblance is quickly fading, corrupting, even beyond the destruction he has wrought upon her, the lines of her body becoming lazy and blurred. She remains in his way, grinning, and he lets anger sear away that synthesized hope. You'll have to kill her again. His hesitation is gone. When he shoves his own chest back into hers, the deep curve of her body crumples, folding in on itself with a crunch like rotten bone and her black bloods oozes between those yellow teeth like tar, like vomit, but there is no horror in it for him, not anymore. He rears up and grabs her head in his eagle's claws, talons digging into eyes and sinuses, shredding bone like bark until, with a wet cracking sound, her skull splits apart beneath the pressure of his hatred. He wrenches his claws away, curled deep into her bone and brain, and pulls the False Mother's head from its place with such force that he twists and falls to the muck of the ground still covered in the red and black blood of their recent deaths.
Still she mutters her empty mantra. Still those yellow teeth grin. When he climbs to his feet again, he breaks those teeth under one hind hoof, but the body of his mother remains between him and the light. He will have to tear her apart piece by piece to pass. The stallion charges the headless, gutless, hull of the mare, forcing it down against the ground. It jerks limply underneath him, but he keeps it well pinned while he reaches into the excavation of her belly, until those claws clasp around the slick heart and rip it free so that he can pick it up gingerly in his beak.
The empty Thing rises again. It will always rise again, but Dreamscar is done fighting it. With one last disgusted look at what is left of Hippogryph, he turns away, away from the False Mother, from the beckoning light. He follows the heartsick rush of his magic which has at last found something else deep at the center of the pulsing labyrinth. The mare's heart still beats dully against his tongue, a Valentine's Day gift for the Beast. Love me.
Perhaps it is the look on her face that he finds the most troubling.
His beautiful daughter.
A face just like her mother’s.
Kind.
And he wonders if the two of them might find comfort in knowing that they died together.
But her head is tilted at a funny angle. Unnatural, almost. And confusion passes across his brow, a brief distraction from the panic swelling dangerous inside him. He opens his mouth to say her name but no sound comes out.
He knows he will die. He can feel it in the marrow of his bones. Even before she collides with him, pushes him toward the edge, offers him absolutely no way out. And there are so many things that well up inside of him in that moment, as he shackles his helpless stare to his daughter’s face and wonders why. Why, after all this time, this is the end he will meet. He’d been living on borrowed time, he knows, a stolen immortality. But the thing he feels, most of all, is regret. Regret that he had not roused Plumeria, he had not kissed her head and told her where he’d gone. He had not murmured sweetly in their newest daughter’s ear. They will wonder, forever, where he’s gone and, as the days collaborate to make weeks and then months and then, ultimately years, maybe Plumeria will have to come to the conclusion that, this time, he’s really not coming back.
“Kennice,” he whispers. But the sound of it is drowned out by the roar of the river at his back.
He knows he will die. And yet, he reaches. Reaches for her, kisses her head just before he loses his footing and tumbles over the edge. He swallows one great, gasping breath before the cold of the water knocks all the air out of him. He paddles furiously for the surface, thinks that if he can reach the air there may still be some chance of survival. The river must run out somewhere, he thinks. But he knows that there is nowhere for it go but deeper into the earth.
Finally, he breaks the surface. Sucks in another sharp breath, coughs and sputters and turns just in time to see the splintered, uprooted glacier bearing down on him. He tries to duck under it, but it clips the skull and the water runs red with his blood. Still, he fights. Until it becomes clear that there is no hope left at all. Until there is not an ounce of fight left in him. The lungs scream and seize. The ribs and throat spasm. He closes his eyes tightly, thinks fiercely of Plumeria. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ he thinks it as hard as he can. As if the thought might break free of the confines of her mind and travel all those miles until it can sink its teeth into her psyche. And then he opens his mouth and he breathes in the water. It burns. How terribly it burns. The body recoils and then goes absolutely still. And, there in his head, the sweetest music. The sound of their laughter – all of them, every soul he has ever loved – and then absolutely nothing.
Until life kicks him swiftly in the chest and he wakes up sputtering, coughing, choking, lungs burning. He staggers to his feet, turns sharply in the direction of the voice. His daughter’s voice, but not. Not at all. She is coming for him, but it is not his daughter. The thing is dripping wet, the flesh coming off in great strips as if it is melting. It oozes and pulses and pools at the thing’s feet. But they’re not feet at all. The hooves have come apart, revealing the muscle and the sinew and the veins below. He stares, chest heaving as it continues chanting and continues advancing and he is too stunned to move.
The mane falls out in great clumps and, when the hair hits the floor of the chamber it dissolves into so many maggots. He feels some great defeat then, a defeat even greater than what he’d felt as they’d slipped over the edge and into the water. Everything in him burns and the muscles spasm with exhaustion.
But the thing is getting more grotesque as it advances. It flickers and pulses and the jaw comes unhinged and the lower half clatters to the chamber floor. Still, it tries to speak. An eye tumbles down the length of its melting face.
It is not his daughter, that much is clear. And yet. And yet, guilt still blossoms wild at the very center of him. Even as the thing bears down on him. It is harmless now, he thinks. It must be. Because the lower half of the jaw is gone and the hooves have dissolved, too. But there is so much suffering. And, over the thing’s head (which is quite rapidly falling apart now), he sees the light.
“You’re not my daughter,” he tells the thing, as if this might somehow absolve him of all that guilt. As if saying it out loud will fully convince the part of him that still clings to the notion that this is Kennice and not something else altogether. Not even a horse.
It has been so long since he last fought. But this thing will not put up much of a fight. He has never been a killer, Jarris, but he will do what he has to do now. It is all so improbable. Impossible, even. Because he’d resigned himself to death only moments ago and now there is hoping blooming in his chest.
It does not take much to crack the skull. A swift kick is all. But the thing keeps coming, the bone plainly visible beneath the flesh that continues to slip-slide down the face. So, he rears and he lashes out again. Punches a hole clean through the neck. Spins and kicks another hole clean through the chest. It is unclear if the things has a heart or a brain, but there is a terrible sucking noise coming from both wounds. He kicks the left knee next and the thing stumbles, sinks to the chamber floor.
“You’re not my daughter!” he yells it now. The thing stares up at him with its one remaining eye. He rears and comes down on the thing repeatedly. Until it breaks apart. Until the bones are scattered across the chamber floor. The bones, brittle, and the wet, melted flesh. And all the maggots. And the great swarm of flies that erupts from the things broken, swollen gut as he turns and runs as hard and as fast as he can toward the light.
jarris
now I’ve been crazy, couldn’t you tell? I threw stones at the stars, but the whole sky fell
