[open] The Sweet Sting || Elio ||

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

For the first time in his life, Elio falls headfirst and willingly into the fury that longs to make him violent.

The cheery grin that had followed his empty threat turns into a vicious, wicked smile. Like the last thing a fish sees before a shark closes around its head. Blood should be there, painting his teeth red and smearing readily across his face. If he were visible, he'd look as cruel as his cursed father.

Funny, and yet not unexpected, that Elio realizes Wolfbane would be most proud of him in this moment. The chaos he now wears resembles his father's. Those ancestors of his might jeer some more, delighted that the only thing his father can teach him is a lack of control.

Celina strikes first and quickly, prehistoric teeth flashing as they find purchase right between Lio's nostrils. The invisible man whips his head back (an unfortunate movement that drives his sister's teeth deeper), taking several swift steps backward and into the trees. Elio stops - just for half of a second, but half a second is all it takes for blood to gush. It drips in what he feels like is slow motion, red droplets becoming visible once they lose the grip of his skin.

Fuck, Elio thinks, remaining invisible as he whips around the tree he had nearly backed into. Only a moment had passed, but he is not so stupid as to think a moment isn't enough to get him hurt.

While thinking a string of curse words, the pegasus gallops between tightly packed trees, leaving stray red hairs on low-hanging branches and rough bark. Leaves and twigs kick up where his hooves land and he leaves a faint trail of blood. Elio knows this can only go on for so long, and with his wings only barely growing their feathers back, his options for escape are very slim.

It was stupid of him to taunt the pair, yes, but - he doesn't regret it. He knew the moment he realized the liger was Wolfbane that their encounter would end in him getting hurt.

It was only a matter of time. Elio simply resolves to make them regret it later on.

The image of his father dead, broken, and bloodied is enough to give him strength to weather whatever the pair have in mind.

Elio should fear such violence wrapping thorned vines around his chest but -

He is almost excited.

Just a few meters ahead, the trees begin to widen, and a clearing comes into focus. Elio doubles down on his speed, dragging a bit of his energy from his waning reserves to heal the cut on his face and breaks into the sunlight. The grass here is short enough for his hoofprints to only leave minor impressions, but dirt continues to kick up until he slows his speed.

Drawing in a deep breath, Lio turns a wide circle, remaining invisible while hoping to find the faces of family.

Elio is not a skilled fighter - not yet - but the hard set of his mouth is enough to tell he will put up one hell of a fight.

@[Celina] @[Wolfbane]

[Celina]

Celina is aware of her father leaving his perch, but she is determined to bring Elio down without his assistance. Wolfbane doesn’t join the fray, and Celina is able to draw first blood. Her jaws snap shut on the tender skin of her brother’s muzzle, the teeth and pressure of her crocodilian mouth making it difficult for him to pull away. That he manages to do so is testament to his pain tolerance, though Celina does not let herself admire it. The blood that drips from the end of her mouth is crimson against her white and silver scales, and her green eyes dart hungrily along the ground to find where he’s gone. There is no beat of wings to suggest he’s taken off and…yes! There, closer to the edge of the woods. He’s simply backed up. “Coward!”She taunts her invisible sibling. “You can’t even face us. You’d rather hide behind a child’s trick!” There is the shuffle of earth and a moving body, and though Celina knows better to lunge when it might be into battering hooves, she inches closer, closer. If Dad doesn’t want her to bloody him, surely he’ll call her off, Celina thinks. That she might not heed the warning doesn’t even occur to her. She’s tasted her own blood before, and her father’s on a few occasions, but she’s never drawn another’s. There is a faint sourness to it, the kelpie in her warning her away from a near relation, but she has spent the past two-years running feral and waiting for a chance to prove herself to her father. This is it, she thinks as she hears the thud of feet moving deeper into the woods, this is her chance. Unaware if Wolfbane follows them, Celina races after her brother. She knows what to look for when an invisible horse flees from her – Elio had taught her during their countless games of tag as children. She knows him well, and keeps pace even through the tight woods. The downside to her knowledge of Elio is that he has the same advantage over her, and he veers toward fallen logs and debris to leap over in an effort to shake her off. He must remember that she does not like jumping. If she were not struggling to pace her breathing, she might have cursed him. Celina is not a pursuit predator, and is breathing hard by the time they reach the clearing. She looks to her left and right, hopeful that Wolfbane has followed them as they barreled through the thick woods, but whether she finds him or not, she calls out to her brother. He is somewhere in this flat place, she knows, she can smell him. The scent of blood has faded, and she knows he has healed himself. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…” She calls in a singsong voice. Celina runs her pink tongue along the pointed edges of her teeth, licking away the blood as she raises and lowers her wings. If he takes to the sky, she means to be ready to follow, despite her low odds in an aerial battle @[Wolfbane] @[elio] celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

[Wolfbane]

I believe I'd die if I only could

I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

Blood flies. It spurts out of Elio’s nose in a warm spray and the scent is overpowering on the wind when Bane inhales. He can pinpoint the miniscule drops raining down to splatter over the short, croppy grass and wild brush, and he grins when Celina taunts the escapee. The red stain trails down her chin and drips freely from her throat, landing and spotting her pale chest with bright dashes of color. No father should be proud in the moment, but Wolfbane certainly is. He’s more than proud: he’s pleased. Elio has met his match in them, and his daughter will become a fully-fledged predator right before his eyes.
They grow up so fast.

The hunt begins in a flash of activity, Celina darting out to race after the invisible stallion, and Wolfbane likewise launches himself into the air, sprouting a pair of dark wings that push him along quickly above the tangle of trees. He can hear them below and that draws him close enough to skim the tops of the growth with his paws, but he doesn’t relent or slow in the chase. Only Celina’s voice stops him, and he swings around mid-air to retreat back to the faint break in ground cover where he soon spots her down below.

To the common eye she looked idiotic, standing alone in a patchy area of free-growing grass. It looked as if this particular spot had been grazed down by a wandering herd, trampled into submission before they’d moved further south in preparation of an oncoming winter. Bane, knowing better than most that appearances were not always as they seemed, blinked away the sharp eyes of a predator and drew a bit of strength to change them into something a bit more useful. When his lids popped open again, he saw the world in flat washes of gray color all around, but where Elio stood in plain sight was a gleaming ball of white-hot energy.

The trick of invisibility was most advantageous in quick spurts. Had Elio known, he might’ve thrown it off altogether for the good it was doing him now.

His father plunged. “Celina! Here!” He barked, doing away with the wings entirely as the weight of his full form came crashing down through the thin branches overhead. Their spindly twigs grasped and tore his skin, but he was beyond feeling. There was only the cold necessity of the kill - the primal drive to subdue his prey as he reached out with thick, curved claws. Elio’s blindspot, any horses blindspot, was directly above them where their widespread eyes couldn’t quite see. His full intention had been to land and dig in, hold on for the ride and get a mouthful of that thick, arched neck sporting his signature striped markings.

Either way, if he missed or if he landed, Celina was there to jump in at a moment’s notice. Perhaps the threat falling from above would be enough to distract Elio from the threat already on the ground, and in that case, the senseless escape could be over long before it even began.

For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: THIS CREATURE  ◉  Mood: Dangerous

@[elio] I have 0 idea how you really want this to end, but Bane is going to try his best to make good on the promise of ripping a tongue out 

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

Celina had called Elio a coward and now, invisible and panting in front of her, it is all he can think about. Is he a coward for running from a pair sure to physically overpower him? Would Lepis be ashamed of him for being invisible? The golden man curses himself for allowing an insult from Celina, of all his family, to cut him so deeply.

No, he thinks firmly, I am not a coward.

But she is.

"Coward, Celina?" Lio chirps without becoming visible. "Cowardly like being unable to make a decision your cursed father disapproves of?" He wants to say more - more that he knows he'll regret - but the slamming body of Wolfbane cuts him off. Elio barely hears him before there are teeth in his neck and claws in his back.

The fall that follows the collision knocks the wind from Lio's chest. He gasps, mouth open, magic falling. His stormy eyes cast wildly over the pair crowding him. He can't make much sense of their bodies and their blows, and the lack of control and fear causes his breath to hitch in panic.

Adrenaline is nearly all that the golden stallion has left to lean into, and his pride gets the best of him. He does a minimal amount of healing, instead channeling his emotion magic into making himself calm.

If they are to hurt him - to kill him, even - they will not have the satisfaction of his fear.

@[Celina] @[Wolfbane]

[Celina]

Elip speaks, and Celina castes about, focused more on finding him than what he is saying. What sort of fool exposes themselves by talking, the dark-haired woman thinks with a scoff.  He accuses her of being a coward, of being unable to make a decision that their father doesn’t approve of, and it startles a laugh out of her. “Why would I want to?” She asks, taunted into a reply despite herself. “He’s been right about everything else: about you and mom abandoning us, about no one being able to understand him, about -” she’s cut off by the appearance of their father breaking through the trees and launching himself top Elio. Though she cannot see where her sibling is, she doesn’t need to with the way Wolfbane clings to his neck. Elio is below that, even if her eyes tell her there is only empty air. Celina lunges at Wolfbane’s command, her jaws open impossibly wide as he lunges at Elio. When they clamp shut, she can feel that she’s gotten some bit of him between her teeth (she knows how his blood tastes now, and it is not a thing she will forget). Exactly what it is she is not certain, but she shakes her head back and forth as quickly as she can to rip it way from the rest of his body. Perhaps it is his wing or mane or even just a bit of flesh from his neck or shoulder. It doesn’t matter, so long as he bleeds. @[Wolfbane] @[elio] celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

[Wolfbane]

I believe I'd die if I only could

I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

“Oh Elio,” His father sighed, watching the boy reappear underneath him, “you had to be difficult.”

He smiled. Celina lunged and the slick tear of Elio’s flesh as it ripped away from his body sounded so pleasant in Wolfbane’s ears. He felt the tremor of his own child’s body underneath him, jerking and then going still again once his daughter moved away, and it sent anxious jitters up and down his black spine. Heightened by adrenaline, his senses were so alert and focused that the three of them could’ve been surrounded by onlookers and it wouldn’t have deterred Bane from what he was about to do.

He’d warned Elio, and now he must make good on that promise.

With a resounding snarl the shapeshifter reared his wide head back and then plunged his thick, curved foreteeth into the bone and skin of the golden-red stallion’s cheek. His lower jaw clamped shut around the sweet curve of his jaw, and with a shocking amount of pressure they clenched until a sharp snap told him he’d fractured the bone. Wolfbane shook his head then, the muscles along his neck and shoulders and back all twisting and writhing like living snakes, and blood lathered in his mouth. It streamed out from between his teeth and covered Elio’s beautiful face, leaving red stains on the golden mask so much like his own navy blue one, and he didn’t let go until the hot, viscous liquid began to pool and drip onto the ground.

With one paw pressing into Elio’s neck, and the rest of his massive weight holding down the stallion’s body, Wolfbane licked his lips and inhaled with a pleasant purr. “My goodness.” He gasped, panting, “How refreshing!”

And then without any warning, he drove his free paw under and into the tender muscle situated right above Elio’s lower lip. It parted with a wet sound, spewing more blood onto his black forearm, and Bane grasped his son’s tongue from inside his body where it lay unsuspectingly between the rows of flat-edged teeth. He yanked, and the long pink muscle came out through the hole in Elio’s jaw where Wolfbane let it hang. His father laughed.

“I won’t take the whole thing.” The monster said, as if what he’d done had been a mercy and not attempted murder. “But let’s see you tattle on us like this, hmm?”

Pleased with himself, Wolfbane sprang down lightly from the beaten and bloodied mess of a horse. Each paw step left a trail of blood in its wake. He shook out his short mane, curled his blue nose away from those foreteeth that had just recently been used to subdue his child, and sneezed mildly at Celina. “Come, my girl.” He rumbled softly, bumping his large head against her chest and sliding his body along hers, covering the pale mare in blood and their mingled scents. “We’ve got much bigger fish to catch.” The shifter flicked his tail.

They left Elio where he lay, and together the duo disappeared once more into the safety of Beqanna’s wilderness.

For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: THIS CREATURE  ◉  Mood: Dangerous

@[elio]