"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
08-02-2020, 03:58 PM (This post was last modified: 08-02-2020, 08:34 PM by Cassi.)
I can't dual tag, but assume all the following posts are MATURE for (possibly graphic) descriptions of death/violence
lord, I fashion dark gods too;
There are other worlds than these.
This is something the dark god has long known, of course. Beqanna does not exist in a vacuum, there are worlds beyond it, filled with things even he cannot imagine. And these worlds, they so rarely intersect.
Except sometimes, things interfere. Sometimes, there are doors.
It happened when the gates of the afterlife were flung open, the dead invited back to their home. Not that this was such a different world, the afterlife – after all, had he himself not orchestrated part of it? – but it was different.
Had the gates to the afterlife shut, he would have never known the things beyond it. But the longer they stayed open, the more aware Carnage was of something other - a place further apart from Beqanna, but made noticeable through the afterlife, which acted as a passage, of sorts.
A gateway, if you will.
He does not know exactly what it is that’s beyond. He doesn’t know if there’s a clean passage, or if this other plane is truly accessible through the afterlife, as he thinks he might be. He has gone himself, walked amongst the dead and listened to the faint, insectile buzzing of a reality that didn’t quite fit. There is a place in the afterlife, he thinks, where the barrier between it and this other world is thin. A weak spot, one that might if the right pressure was applied.
But Carnage, of course, did not desire to apply that pressure himself. Though he fancies himself omniscient, even he does not know, exactly, what lays beyond, and he has the sense not to wade into what he cannot know.
Instead, he does what he always has – summons those who are willing (or not so willing), and asks them to go, instead.
The call goes out, broadcasting his request in their minds, all across Beqanna. There is something I would ask of you. Meet me at the beach.
The beach seems fitting. Because they will die, of course. To start this mission into the afterlife, they must die, right?
(Or maybe he just wants to kill something. Sometimes, his desires are so simple, so straightforward.)
He meets them at the beach. He is quiet as the dark waves crash. The place still smells of death, even though so few seem to die nowadays. It will always carry that scent, he thinks. He wonders if any of them have died before. None of his own deaths occurred at the beach, it had seemed too banal.
(Not that he’d intended his last death. That one had been a miscalculation.)
When enough come, he speaks.
“You’re here because I have felt the presence of…something near Beqanna. Having these afterlife gates flung open has made our world susceptible, and I think that’s becoming known. Seeing as your dear fairies haven’t done anything about it, I thought I - we - should check it out. See what things lie beyond the world of death.”
Another pause, lets them consider the information he’s given. It’s not much, of course – he is vague, partially on purpose, and partially because even he does not know exactly what they are being sent into.
“The first step is going to the afterlife. There’s a place there where I think you can get through. It’s up their beach – a mile or so. There’s a buzzing noise, when you get close. Like locusts.”
He’d hated that noise. Even faint, it had crawled over his bones, itched in the marrow. He does not tell them that. He gives their final order.
“You’ll have to die first, of course.”
Happy Carnage quest!! Some notes:
- Describe your horse hearing the summons, making their way to the beach. And then, Carnage is going to kill you (all deaths are temporary unless you want them not to be, promise). You can choose the method (throws you into the ocean, manifests a beast who kills you, good ol’ fashioned skull bash, magic poisoning, whatever, he has magic and will do most things. If in doubt, message me here or on Discord! You could also go rogue and try to off yourself before he does, but that might have repercussions. End with your horse appearing in the afterlife (a sort of grayed out, ghostly mirror of the beach they’re currently on).
- You’re aware of the others, but interaction with them is up to you.
- This isn’t an elimination quest, but you may withdraw at any time.
- No limit on entries, but one entry per player.
- This is a Carnage quest, so defects and/or emotional/physical scarring are likely to occur.
- Entries are due by 11:59 PM CST on Friday, August 7th
- Message me here or on Discord if you have any other questions!
Butterfly wings in various colours floated around her, and she giggled happily at them while laying comfortably in the flowers she'd found. Bliss filled her as a single white butterfly landed on her nose softly, and for a while she stared at it, before a strange voice began to speak in her head. A summons?
With a small flap of her dainty wings, Astra steadied herself back to her feet, and began to prance in the direction the voice had summoned her to. She'd seen glimpses of the beach from afar during her travels, and now she'd found an excuse to go closer - not that she particularly needed an excuse, but she felt it was nice to have one.
When she arrived though, she was suddenly overwhelmed with a bad feeling. The smell of death hung in the air and filled her pink nostrils, making her more alert. Her prancing now slowed to a cautious walk as she approached the source of the summons. The stallion that stood there was much taller than her, as many others were in these strange lands. Astra listened carefully to him as he spoke. His words confused her, she did not understand what gates he was talking about, nor did she know how one could simply just walk into the afterlife, she'd always heard that the afterlife was for the dead, so how was it possible to enter it from the living world?
She gulped in fear and felt her heart drop to her stomach as he delivered the final order. Die first? Surely he didn't expect them to follow through with such a demand, surely he had no intentions of hurting innocent beings. Her eyes welled up with tears as worry began to grow in her, and her ears dropped back as she stared up at him. What should she do? Why was she here? A million questions buzzed through her brain, and for a moment she was so full of panic that the rest of the world was a blur to her; that is, before a searing pain shot through her left wing.
Astra let out a loud cry as the pain got worse, and quickly came back to reality, only to see the stallion's teeth deep in her flesh, and blood began to soak her dark feathers. Black hooves beat against the white sand in desperation as the small mare tried to run, but it became useless as he yanked at her, she could feel her small bones being broken with the force of his bite, and she could not help but shriek in pain as he continued to twist and tug at it.
Finally, with one final hard tug, the wing came out of its socket, and she felt a horrible ripping sensation near her shoulder. Astra screamed before vomiting from the pain, bleeding as she lay on the sand now, the pain overwhelming her as she sobbed. Seeing her wing drop from his mouth sent her over the edge, and the pale pegasus could not help but to gag as the dismembered feathers fell next to her, her tears dropping rapidly on the beach that she'd come to so willingly. Her tiny voice could not muster any words before he stomped onto her frail rib cage, choking and spluttering as blood began to pour from her mouth. Bones pierced her organs and she struggled to breathe, her eyes looking out to the ocean that lay only a few feet away. Only a short while ago, she had been laying in flowers and watching soft butterflies flutter around her, and now she was at death's door. Why was this happening? Why did she have to go through this door for him? With one final stomp to her neck, everything went black.
At first it felt like sleeping, but slowly Astra opened her eyes, her head spinning momentarily before she could finally focus. It felt so gloomy here, there was barely any colour, if any. It was the same beach, but it felt so different. Astra shakily got back up to her legs, standing tall now and looking around, determined to complete the stallion's request, despite the gruesome death he had given her.
It was a voice that perked her ears, a familiar voice that brought a humored look to her face. So there were some old codgers still hanging around. There were some old names and faces that were left over from an ancient day long ago. The black mare lifted her head, perked those ears, and set those slightly sunken, blood red eyes in the direction of his voice.
The Beach, he had said. She remembered this place. She had been there before, many times, but never for her own death. Could she even die? No, probably not. Carefully, deliberately, she picks her hooves from the ground. She moves from the Meadow through the lands. Her pace is ambling and smooth, though her bones creak and crack ever so slightly. Other than that, her age was nothing more than a number.
Despite the ambling pace, the black mare still reached the Beach in decent time. There was still only one tiny little mare standing before the familiar beast she called Carnage. As she stopped before then, a wicket grin curled up the sides of her lips. “Carnage,” she said, her voice crackling slightly. “What an unpleasant surprise.”
Her ears twitched with the sounds of his voice. She almost laughed as he spouts some nonsense about Beqanna being susceptible. It’s not that she doesn’t believe that, but rather that she doubted he cared so much about that as he did about finding answers for himself. This was Carnage, after all. She doubted he did anything for anyone’s anything but himself. That was why he had summoned others before him, to do the dirty work that he didn’t want to do.
Blasphemare had traveled to many different lands and many different worlds in the time she had been gone from Beqanna, but never before had she died. This interested her. She tilted her head in a curious stare. This was one thing she had never tested and never been curious to test, though she had had theories about death and being reborn before. But what would she get out of this? Previously, quests have you gifts in Beqanna, but she needed nothing. There was no gift that could compare to the one she already had, the gift she shared with Carnage himself. Even so, she had already made up her mind. This was something she had never done before that suddenly she wanted to do.
Slowly, she steps toward the grey stallion, and carefully, she wraps herself around him. As she swings back around to his head, she lifts her lips to his ears and purrs lovingly into them, “why don’t you join us?” With a laugh, she dances away, and that’s when she felt his magic wrap around her, felt it twisting and tearing into her flesh, ripping her piece by piece from the bone until she was nothing more than a lump of flesh on the ground and a whisper in the wind.
The afterlife was cold and harsh, grey and...ghostly. That was no surprise to the old mare. She still stood upon the beach, thought it was different, hollow and lonely. And she was nothing but a shadow of what she once was.
“ I will love you until we run out of mornings. Then I will love you in the dark. ”
She’s been spending more and more time apart from her mother. She doesn’t like it, but she understands that Ryatah needs her space. They always return to one another eventually, and that is enough to keep the young girl content. Now, she stands beside the river with her dark ears trained forward for the sound of familiar footsteps approaching. There is, as always, a smile to her face. She is infinitely patient in her waiting. When the voice finds her, however, her smile fades into slightly parted lips as she turns this way and that. She’s not used to telepathy, you see.
But the beach sounds like a lovely place. She casts that morganite gaze behind her for a moment longer and then she moves in the direction she is summoned. The first thing she notices is the smell – sickly sweet with rot and a hint of the salty tide. Echis wrinkles her nose but she comes when she is called just the same.
She listens, tilting her head as he goes on about death and the afterlife. Father had said it wasn’t so bad, once you got used to it. Echis had studied his scars as he slept and imagined all the ways he must have gone in the past. Her glimmering gaze finds his when he says she, too, must die to reach her destination. Naturally, she takes a step back and lowers her chin as she considers the command. But if she does this favor, he might restore her mother’s eyes? She swallows the lump building in her throat with a nod of feigned confidence.
“I’ll go,” she says simply, and then she takes the first steps in the direction he’d bid them to go. She closes her eyes because she’s too afraid to see her death coming. One more step, and a flash of perfect heat finds her dark throat. It burns so deeply and then, just as quick, it feels like cold water flooding her veins – like wading in the river waters in early spring.
She opens her eyes and fat tears roll down her cheeks. A scream dies in her throat. How long had she been calling out like that? Her knees tremble horribly as she looks around at the dulled beach, at the other spirits coming to. A quivering breath leaves her despite there being no air in her lungs.
The darkness comes, as it always does.
And the shadow thing with it.
Jamie is nothing but bright yellow eyes when the call comes. A summons. He is nothing but bright yellow eyes and an ink black mouth and the fog licking greedy up his legs when the portal opens. And oh, how the shadow thing delights in the ease of it, how little it takes the wind out of him to build it. Still, the lungs rattle when he draws breath, but he does not tremble with exhaustion when he steps through it and onto the beach.
It is that rattle, so much like death already, that gives him away. The death rattle and the large, unblinking eyes when he joins then. Weightless. The sand hardly shifts beneath him when he comes to rest beside a child. But he does not look at her, looks only at the stallion who addresses them.
They will have to die. And the shadow thing wonders if he can die, if you can kill something that is not truly alive. Something that does not trust itself to be real, that does not trust the beat of its heart or the rattle of its lungs. But he nods, the shadow thing understands.
The others go before him but he feels no flicker of fear. The darkness does not fear darkness. And it is glorious when it comes. When the gray stallion turns to him finally and Jamie’s soft edges go even softer. He cranes his neck to watch as the shadows dissolve. First the legs and then the rest of him. Until all that is left are the eyes and then those are gone, too. Just that quick.
And there is one delirious moment where he belongs to the air. He is nothing. Nothing at all. Not even darkness.
But then all that shadow pulls back together on the other side. And he is whole again. He is new. But there is no rattling in his lungs, there is no pulse. It is murky here, devoid of color. Even the eyes are pale when he glances around at the others. He feels no pain and he wonders, in some abstract way, if any of them do.
He is still a shadow thing, but the fog that has curled so sweetly around him his whole life has gone. He is alone.
* don't read this if you don't like rats? idk if it's bad enough for a warning but you've got it
Beyza, fresh into adulthood and still brimming with curiosity, does not think twice about following the summons. It’s enough of a fascination that she unfurls great white wings and flies there just to get there faster than her legs could carry her (teleportation still being a trick she had yet to master). When she arrives, she does not recognize the stallion that called them but she feels his power. Older and greater than hers or even Anaxaretes. A power, she thinks, without limits.
When he explains their purpose, she is not daunted - still only curious. Beyza did not fear death. She had told others that point-blank before. It was not that she did not fear dying - she just had no respect for the whole concept of death. She had saved Caledonia from it once, before she knew the extent of her powers, and it had solidified the belief in her that she could do whatever she wanted. Not even death could stop her.
So when the dark god says she must die, she scoffs.
That’s when she feels it - a tickle in the back of her throat. Her eyes meet that of the grey stranger that brought them here - white to dark red - and they remain locked there when she begins to choke.
A dark, oily ooze begins to seep out of her mouth, splashing onto the sand at her hooves when it falls and trickling down her neck. She attempts to use her magic to whisk away whatever is happening but every time she feels relief, it doubles and then triples in intensity. She is gagging on the black liquid as it freely flows out of her, now leaking from her eyes and nostrils too. Staining her bright white skin.
And then when she coughs - an oil-soaked rat falls out of her mouth. She tries to scream in surprise but it only causes more of them to cascade out of her mouth, landing in heaps around her hooves - squeaking and slipping in the oil that continues to pour out of her in their effort to escape.
As she watches them scurry away on the beach, leaving dark footprints in the soft sand, she can feel more bodies pulsing and scurrying up her windpipe. She calls on her magic again, this time to get her away from this beach, but it doesn’t respond anymore. When she looks back to the one who had called him here, she knows he has taken it or dampened it.
The oil continues to pour out with more gusto, blinding her and cutting off airflow into her wide, panicked nostrils as she attempts to breathe in and out. There’s nowhere for the air to go once it’s inside her anyway, there are too many small bodies trying desperately to get out. Her crystalline white blood begins to mix with the oil coating the rats as they make their escape, as they fight each other in her throat to get to the surface first - their confusion and fear at manifesting in such a strange place only matched by hers. When she falls to her knees and then her side, she feels rather than sees her body pierced with a large shard of glass - as though choking to death was taking an inconveniently long time and it needed to be hurried along.
She is mounted on this spike right through her heart like the prey of a shrike, her body supported and her head falling limp to the ground as the last of the oil and rats spill from her.
Beyza loses herself - and when she wakes the beach is duller than it was before. When she stands, she is no longer stained but she still cannot breathe. And it takes her a moment to realize why.
Then she sees Jamie, and her soul drifts to his - they aren’t so different here, in this afterlife, and she brushes a muzzle against his shoulder in greeting. Not knowing whether either of them are solid enough for this brief contact, but wanting the comfort of knowing someone else here. In death.
She herself had teetered on the brink of death, having been restored to life only by the magic and sheer will of another.
But she knew death far more intimately than that.
Death was her constant companion. She brought death with her everywhere she went - killing with her presence alone. Her very existence was enough to leech the life from others. She left destruction and decay in her wake. It was her way. Her curse. So she finds no discomfort on the sands of the beach - does not recoil from the scent of death and decay.
There are others. She keeps her distance, especially from those she knows. One she knows to be her brother. One is the white filly - grown now - who had saved her from death once. It is because she recognizes them that she gives them a wide berth. She knows what she is capable of - what lurks beneath the surface of her skin.
Perhaps it would make more sense if she knew this dark God to be her father. Perhaps then it would make sense why the combination of his blood and her mother’s had created something so lethal - a walking blight upon Beqanna.
Instead, she listens - saying nothing.
You must die first, of course. The dark God says.
Anomaly doesn’t recoil from the statement. She’s considered doing it herself, to be honest, but she’s been too selfish and lacked the bravery to this point. But now, she welcomes death. She only has the briefest of moments to wonder how it will happen, because then it is upon her.
The taste of metal is thick in her mouth.
She knows, then, how she will die.
Her protection has been stripped away. The radiation is consuming her from the inside out - ripping through flesh and bone at a pace accelerated by what she knows must be magic. Her head pounds and then feels as if it may crack open and the contents of her mind may spill out onto the dark sands of the beach. A wave of fatigue so all-consuming sends her to her knees as she fights for each and every breath. A trickle of glowing green blood spills from her nostrils onto the wet sands below. Lesions appear on the girl’s skin as her breath becomes more ragged. The pain in her head is unbearable. There is nothing now but pain.
Her green eyes roll back into her head.
It is over.
She is gone.
But her eyes flicker open again - glowing eerily in the muted, hazy colors of what she knows must be the afterlife.
i'm breathing in the chemicals.
WARNING: Anomaly is radioactive. Those that touch her may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions. Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to her blood.
The warmth of the volcano’s stone is pressed fervently against his side, the stallion’s head lifting wearily as he glances to the entrance of his cavern made of hardened lava and shining obsidian. There is silence on the summer wind that howls at the cave’s mouth and only the soft winking of stars greet him. Svedka’s eyes narrow in confusion - he is sure that something (someone?) had stirred him from his sleep. A voice, ordering him to rise. Cold dread curls into his stomach as he stretches his ivory legs beneath him to stand, the iron shackles that Kagerus had placed on his ankles weeks ago gently tinkling against his hooves. He fumbles towards the cave’s mouth, hoping that this sense of foreboding would be misplaced on wild, midnight thoughts and fears.
The wind stills against his face, the air growing cold as all around him seems to freeze into place in both sight and sound. He inhales with a quick breath, feeling the beast inside him pacing ferociously. Svedka closes his eyes tightly, tossing his head violently in hopes that the feeling would pass; but it does not, and when the stallion’s eyes open again, they are as black as onyx. The shackles fall away from a magic far more powerful than Kagerus’ own, shattering into pieces onto the warm stone floor. The change is immediate - Svedka falls away until only a cougar remains, with wild eyes and an angry snarl.
Svedka does not answer the call, but the lion does.
The mountain lion does not hesitate to make its way to whoever had been calling it; he arrives with his heavily muscled body thudding with each step his large paws press into the sand. The dark god sees easily past the lion’s skin and out of cruelty, helps Svedka regain control once again.
The palomino and white stallion staggers forward with a gasp as he shifts, his black eyes flickering to cerulean. He glances around wildly and fearfully, not understanding how he had come to be here and with so many others around him - none that he recognized. He hears the reason he is here and he nearly stumbles to the ground in defeat, a wail perfectly choked in his throat. He’s about to cry out, to leave, to do something, because he knows he is not meant to be here but is shocked into silence as others around him perish into nothingness and in ways he could not have begun to imagine.
Fear grips him tight, squeezing his throat shut, as his wide and unbelieving eyes come to rest on the grey stallion that seems to be orchestrating all of it. Their eyes lock and Svedka finds himself unable to move - to do anything - for he was next.
And then, Svedka finds perfect poeticism in the way his own lion’s claws shred him apart and how it’s warm mouth angrily severs his jugular, coughing and sputtering his own blood as he falls to the ground. The cougar does not stop there - it is angry and filled with hate for Svedka’s attempt to keep it as a captive - and it digs and claws until his insides are hollow, the beast’s howls a mournful song on the stagnant air of the beach. As death overtakes him, and thus the cougar as well, Svedka realizes he could have never imagined how empty he would feel.
The stallion stands in a world of greyscale, his eyes inexpressive as they blink wearily open. As if he was frightened to do so, Svedka takes a single shuddering breath that then exhales in a bleak grey cloud. He feels cold and immovable, glancing up and down the stretch of desolate beach with little to no reaction; as if his mind and soul were still reacting to his gruesome death and has not yet understood what has happened.
you have forsaken all the love you've taken sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
He came, though it did not feel like it was by choice.
The voice that invaded his mind was impossible to ignore even though he doesn't recognize it – he still has a fairly good idea of who it belongs to. He had been alive long enough the first time, and Carnage was perhaps the only thing that seemed to remain consistent about this place.
It's why he has half a mind to ignore it.
He is sure that whatever reason the dark god has for disrupting his thoughts, it was unlikely to be anything good. He had not been alive (again) for the plague, but maybe he would have tried harder to resist the temptation if he had been. He would have known that Carnage had played a hand in unleashing the deadly disease that overtook Beqanna; he would have had a fresh memory of the kind of destruction he created.
Maybe he would not be following the command like some mind-washed fool, and yet, here he is.
He leaves behind Aurorae against his better judgment, but it is with the internal promise to himself that he won't be gone long.
He goes to the beach, as instructed, and instantly he is assaulted by the smell of salt and decay. He is reminded of cracked ribs and crushed skulls, and when the sound of bones breaking echoes across his memory, he isn't sure if they are his own or if the sound belongs to those that he killed.
But it coils his gut into a taut spring, and when the tension reaches the hard outline of his muscles, he cannot discern if it's from a fear of losing control or a desire to.
He watches Carnage in silence as he speaks, his face made of granite. He spares a brief glance to the others that are there, but since he does not recognize any of them, he does not afford them much else.
When he mentions dying, that is the first time emotion flashed across his face. Anger flickers like a flame, hot as it brightens the dark of his eyes and his ears flatten to his skull. He was here, alive because the afterlife had been opened. He wasn't interested in returning to it, not yet.
It turns out he has little say in the matter.
The fire starts in his veins, raging like a river as it courses the entire length of him. It snakes around his bones like a rope, burning the muscle and rising to smolder just beneath his skin. There, the fire settles, slowing its pace just enough to let the stallion register that he is burning alive from the inside out. His flesh begins to bubble and peel, sloughing off in places to the sands below, and the hellish screams that rip from his throat ignite just like the fire that consumes him.
He burns and burns until there is nothing left but ash and bones, a ribcage and a skull and tendrils of smoke reaching up to a gray sky.
And then he is there, in the afterlife, again.
And he is again left with a hollow rage, with an anger that cannot find the heartbeat that it needs to fuel it. Everything here is a muted version of what it should be, and he wonders if the thought of Aurorae will be enough to inspire him to get back out.
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
There are times he thinks life is impossibly dull. And then there are times where he regrets ever having that thought. Times like now, when, in an instant, he knows his life is about to get even more impossibly fucked up than it already is.
The summons is less like a request and much more like sharp fingers digging mercilessly inside his head, insisting he obey. Naturally, his first instinct is to tell whoever the hell it is, in no uncertain terms, that they could fuck right off. But the way his brain seems to squeeze into mush at the mere thought tells him even more clearly that ‘No’ would not be an acceptable answer.
So, grudgingly, he turns to the beach.
When you’re as old as dirt, like he is, it would be nearly impossible not to know who is currently pulling the strings. He’d always avoided him like a damned plague (for many reasons, though some he was much less willing to admit than others), so he has no fucking clue why the hell he’d want him here out of all the thousands of other poor bastards he could’ve picked.
No doubt he’s about to find out though.
When he does find out however, he really, really wishes he hadn’t. But if the scowl doesn’t give that away, the “Fuck you” he tosses out certainly would. Not that he was especially worried about dying (not after dying a hundred times in a hundred different ways), but he’s been around long enough to know there are a whole hell of a lot of things worse than death.
Although, given the reactions of some of these other idiots unlucky enough to have found themselves on this beach with him, not everyone seems to realize that. Dumbasses.
As Carnage’s chilly gaze turns to him, Ashhal’s jaw tightens, a faint tick pulsing as he glares back. He’d laugh at the absurdity of this whole scenario if he weren’t also perfectly aware Carnage is likely one of the few creatures who could kill him and ensure he stays dead.
It’d almost be a relief, except that this death only meant being used like a fucking pawn. He’d never claimed to be the brightest bulb in the bunch, but he’s not so dumb that he hadn’t realized why Carnage wanted them. In a former life, he’d been a general (and not an entirely shitty one). He knows this strategy. They’re the sacrificial troops.
He would have chosen that moment to spit another choice insult had he not (with disgustingly suspicious precision) been walloped in the teeth with what felt like a massive boulder. Instead, only a grunt of pain and a spray of blood is expelled as the nerves of his face spark with hellfire.
But it doesn’t stop there (of course it doesn’t fucking stop there). Though in reality it’s probably no more than a few a moments, the way his body seems to pull apart - skin from flesh and flesh from bone - feels like an eternity. Until even his very atoms are violently separated, leaving nothing of the irritable winged stallion on the beach, save a bright red spray of blood.
---
As he materializes on the still and foggy gray beach of the afterlife, he explodes into violent cursing, shaking himself free of the lingering taste of death. As though that would also shake free the memory of such excruciating pain.
Goddamned fucking cocksucker must have fucking read his thoughts (probably not, but it makes him feel better to think so).
It’s sorely tempting to leave this beach. To accept this death and say fuck him and everyone else. But some bullshit part of him (the same part that knew absolutely nothing good could come from having the doors to the afterlife flung open like they had been) wondered if somehow, by following this wretched plan, he could close them again. Not that he really gave a shit about anything or anyone that might be affected by it.
Except that he did. Just a little bit (or more than a little, but there’s no way he’s going there). And isn’t that the stupidest, most idiotic thing he’d ever done? Well, not quite as stupid as this. But, as it turns out, he is going to let himself be a fuckwitted pawn. If for no other reason than to spit in the eye of the asshole who sent him here for everyone still alive that (he pretends) he doesn’t care about.
jamie
