"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
While her mother had to go on some important errand, Mazikeen was encouraged to explore. Something seemed off about her mother that evening but the black and white filly did not say anything - just watched her head off towards Pangea. The air felt heavy for a brief moment before Mazikeen shrugged it off and shifted into a fox, retaining her white coat and black markings, and padded off into the forest.
Now, though the moon and stars shine bright overhead somewhere, the shadows are thick beneath the summer-green branches in the woods and only get darker the farther fox-Mazikeen goes. She’s abandoned the usual pathways she keeps to as a horse, following the tracks made by countless other hooves as they move through this land. Now she wants to explore all the places she can find in this smaller form, climbing up logs and crawling beneath low-hanging branches.
She’s filled with the bravado of a youngster who has not yet seen any consequences. Not any severe ones, at least. She might be tossed to the ground for a bad decision in a spar with Daye or scolded for worrying her mother after missing a meet-up time, but those have been nothing. Even when she faced off with a wolf, it had ended up being another shifter.
So as she slinks through the shadows, this young fox doesn't feel fear - only excitement about what new adventures might be found this night.
His time with Despoina had left him mostly sated, but then it left room for something else.
After he fed off her sorrow, after he used her sadness and her pain to ease the ache of hunger in his gut, it left room for something else. It gave the darkness room to spread, to creep and crawl through his veins and seep into his marrow. The darkness had no outlet. It was left to fester, to infect and grow, and now without the hunger to distract him, he found himself unable to fight it off.
His shadows have morphed themselves back into its canine form, his eyes red and glowing as he slips silently through the brush. He had been stalking her for some time now, watching the young fox traverse over logs and off well-worn trails in favor of the wilder parts of the forest. There is no fear coming from her – not even sadness, or at least not the tangible kind. He wasn’t particularly hungry, anyway. He was agitated.
The canine form had always been too feral. Something difficult for him to control, something that made his mind turn nearly entirely to shadow. And that was why he had chosen it. He could lose control, he thinks, and not have to feel guilty for it. It was not his fault; he was not himself in the canine form, and was becoming even less of himself as an equine the longer the shadows took root.
Immersed in darkness he slips closer, and once close enough he erects an aura of fear. He pushes, stretching it until it touches her, wanting to see what happens when that unexplainable feeling takes hold of her; that anxiety that clenches in your chest, that panic of being watched. Would she run, or would she turn and face the shadow that had been following her?
Movement in the dark forest nearby suggests that someone is close, though all the white fox can see is shadows. She continues for a time, but slower - checking behind herself constantly. She starts to feel a prickle of something close to anticipation in the back of her skull a few moments before a wave of something else hits her. Fear is not an emotion she consciously knows well enough to name. So when it is pushed into her, filling her body and surrounding her like she is suspended in water, she does not know what it is. She only feels the symptoms - her orange eyes widening in surprise, her small heart beating wildly, and the way her limbs lock and freeze her where she is.
When Mazikeen first turns, at first she still just sees darkness but a shape seems to be settled right at its heart - shadow turned solid. Her heart continues to race, though she tells herself she is just curious about the figure, nothing more. He is so unlike anything she has ever seen before - and then she tries to shift into whatever he is, but there is no response from her ability. She has not encountered many animals that she has not been able to shift into which makes her wonder whether this is an animal at all.
Perhaps it is something else entirely.
What she manages to shift into, instead of the shadow creature, is a wolf - something bigger, which makes her feel better. The choice between fight or flight has always resulted in one answer for her so she stands her ground, turning around to fully face the shadowy figure she has a hard time focusing on - the fur on her back rising in what she tells herself is a warning, not fear.
She shifts, and he is not surprised, because he can shift too. He knows everyone is not all that they seem, that the innocent lambs of Beqanna can morph into wolves in the blink of an eye. But here, the shadows also have teeth, and he is prepared to sink his into her.
Her new form is larger than the previous fox, but she is still young—still a child. Somewhere beneath the layers of shadow and darkness, his subconscious is screaming, clawing at the walls of his mind – anything to break through to himself.
But the feral part of him does not listen to logic and reason. He has no conscience, nothing but instinct to drive him forward. And his instinct – what even is that, now? He wants to devour, he usually wants to drain their emotions and drink them until he drowns, and yet, for some reason, all he wants to do is hurt her.
She is afraid, but not enough.
Her hackles are raised, and if it weren’t for the fear wafting off her, he would think she was doing a fine enough job of being threatening. But she is afraid. He can taste it, and where some would find fear bitter, he finds it sweet. It makes his gut tighten, and though he does not typically hunt in the usual sense, he deviates from that today.
He is silent when he lunges forward, red eyes glinting in the faint light that strains through the trees. He does not give her the option to run, nearly on top of her in a matter of seconds, and the shadows of his jaw reach for whatever they can find, intent on pulling her into a fight.
The fear she had not known well enough to name, that she had denied, pulses freely through her when he lunges for her. It is as if someone had broke open a dam and so much more than the wave that had hit her before. Not once yet in her life has she felt fear like this - but this is to be a night of many firsts. She is too surprised to even move at first. Only managing to twist so that instead of her throat, when his teeth find purchase they dig into the crest of her neck.
Maze - who prides herself in being brave - cries out as those teeth tear fur and flesh. Pain, of course, but there is surprise in her howl too. More shattering of the world her naive young mind had created - one in which she could not be harmed, where she did not cry. She feels her blood begin to pool around the puncture. Her first real injury. Part of her expected this to be like her tumble with Daye - less a fight and more of a wrestling match. She still doesn’t understand fully the danger here, still believes that with a few short moves she’ll be out of this little problem and wander free and alive back to her parents.
The only thing going on in her head is the pounding of her racing heart. The drumming beat driving everything else right out. The young wolf acts because she must, twisting away and growling as she does - bringing a large black paw up to swipe at him or maybe just push at him
It still does not occur to her to run. It should but there are no such thoughts even if any could make it over the roar of fear inside of her mind.
Snarling, she snaps her teeth at him - attacking him right back instead of leaving, but she pulls her punches and does not really try to do damage with her sharp canines. Only to warn, only to deter. Surely if she shows she is not going to make it easy, he'll back off... right?
08-24-2020, 01:50 AM (This post was last modified: 09-11-2020, 01:26 AM by Torryn.)
choke them on the ashes of the dreams they burned
He decides that he is tired of playing games.
A creature with any sense would see that this was not an even match. In the wild, most did not needlessly attack the younger, smaller ones just for the sake of bloodshed. When she swipes at him, that should have been his cue. He should have simply lit into her enough to put her in her place, but that is assuming that this shadowed creature bore any resemblance to the canine-like shape he took.
He doesn't, of course.
He is not a wolf or a dog or a fox; he is sorrow and rage and fear that has manifested itself into shadow, that for now has decided to take on the shape of something canine. His conscience is virtually nonexistent, and all he can think of when she snarls and lunges at him is how badly he wants to make her bleed.
This time, he is ruthless when he lunges for her.
His teeth find purchase on her skin, puncturing through only to pull apart savagely. He avoids her throat, though, deciding that he doesn't want to kill her. He wants her to suffer. He wants her to regret snarling and snapping at him, wants her to think twice the next time she is facing off with someone.
And all the while that he attacks his fear aura refuses to drop. He pushes it against her, lets it amplify the fear of his teeth that repeatedly sink into her.
Then, just as quickly as his attack had begun, he stops. He looks at her, holds her in the red of his gaze for a moment, lets the sight of her bloody form burn a place into his mind, and then he disappears into the night.
torryn
sorry I power played her a lot but there you go, Maze is broken now.
