"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
He often wonders if Warlight had been healed. She had been so unrecognizable to him, it had taken her whispers to place her as the bright, lively, strong, bold fighter who had visited Ischia when Aquaria had been named the new Dame. Such a difference, he had not seen through it.
He hopes the healing waters of her fall have helped her.
Aquaria watches over their eggs tonight - wow, that sounds so different than what it truly was - Aodhán takes it upon him to fly to Tephra. The marble-and-golden dragon is a shape too large, he thinks, so he comes as a black-headed gull. No, a golden-headed one. He cannot truly forsake his natural coloration, or rather, it is just easier not to. Eva had always recognized him by his emerald eyes that stayed the same whichever form he wore, but Warlight would not see through him so easily. Besides, Tephra’s jungle is quite large, so he’ll need to safe the energy to fly through it for a longer while.
Following the beach towards the north, the golden-headed gull makes a sharp right when he finds the stream that will lead him to the waterfall. It’s as good a place to start as any, and the healing power may still be something she seeks out every now or then, he figures.
Even if she doesn’t, it seems like a good place to ask around for her. Surely somebody will be there?
She didn't trust her memories of that day. They were hazy and unreliable, and when she told what she could tell of it out loud, she had realized they were nearly unbelievable. But she did remember Aodhan, and she did remember what Carnage had told her needed to be done.
Months had passed, or maybe it was a year, and she had tried to put that strange chapter behind her.
Tonight she grazes within sight of the waterfall. In the open grasslands that surround Tephra's landmark, the warm light of the volcano paints her coat a brilliant copper and the pale prongs of her antlers golden. Starsonder sleeps in a nest of grasses, the fireflies floating around her in a way that makes Warlight feel almost sentimental. She was a pretty little creature, strange but pretty, but Will struggled to feel the attachment to this one that she had felt for her last three children. The girl would always be Carnage's daughter, and she wasn't sure if it was her responsibility to get over that.
But her thoughts about such things are not allowed to wander as her skin begins to tingle and her ears fall flat into the dense mat of her mane. In the darkness, her almost-black eyes lack any hint of blue, inky mirrors that search they sky as something causes her to lift her head. It's almost tangible, the threads of their magic. She feels it more than sees the shimmer of it, tastes the bite of it in the air.
It hadn't been like that before the mountain.
When she finds a sea-bird gliding above her when all the others would be roosted, she doesn't doubt her suspicion. A wiser mare would let such a magician pass, but Warlight had always been more curious than wise.
She reaches with her new sense for the gull, testing the gift the dark god had given her, pulling at the threads and seeing if there is one that will unravel.
Oh, somebody is down there after all. Someone with a very tricky kind of magic for a horse who is aloft, it seems.
One moment he's happily flying around, another he suddenly is force-shifted back to a horse.
He falls like an idiot, forlegs splayed and making weird dance-like motions, trying to mimic the motion of wings still where they absolutely can't keep him aloft. Then, panic overtakes him for a heartbeat or two and more of him tries to writhe and struggles against the reality.
It only takes about three seconds for him to crash-land in the water below. The impact takes the breath from his lungs and sprains an ankle, but thankfully the water itself is a source of healing, and the pain quickly subsides. (He doesn't dare to think about what would have happened if he had landed beside the waterfall's stream.)
Sneezing and snorting, his white head emerges from the water with the shock and confusion still on his face. While his eyes find a shape nearby, his focus is still blurry, and a frown creases into his forehead. "Hey! What'd you do that for?"
It's an idle sort of curiosity that makes her reach for the gull, testing her capabilities and her limits. She doesn't fully think through how this strange and new magic will affect the shifter, but she doesn't expect it to be so effective.
Her impulse could have proved fatal, and if the sight of a familiar stallion flailing in the air hadn't been quite so comical, she would have realized this. Maybe it's beginner's luck, but she seems to have pulled on just the right thread.
When a damp and rightfully annoyed Aodhan comes sputtering out of the water, Will's surprise doubles. She echoes his snort with one of her own, a crooked smile plays one her speckled lips, her expression dancing between amused and apologetic.
"A poor return for your favor," she jokes, stepping forward to meet him in the pool. She is not the same mare he found half-alive at the mountain's roots - there is a brisk energy in her step and a lively spark in her quick eyes.
"Stay where you are, and you won't feel your bruises by the time you get out." Her legs dip into the cooling water, and although her bones no longer ache from the dark god's curse, she still enjoys the comforting touch. "In the meantime, you can tell me what brought you to the mainland, cloaked in magic at an hour that all decent folk sleep."
10-07-2020, 10:44 AM (This post was last modified: 10-07-2020, 10:44 AM by Aodhan.)
Aodhán
The bay and white mare on the shore seems surprised, snorting just as he does (but he does it to clear his nostrils from water). Ears threaten to flatten into his tangled and damp mane, but honestly Aodhán doesn't hold much of a grudge at her, seeing as that there's no immediate damage. She tells him to stay but, so he does, flicking his mane back on his crest with a shake or two of his head. "Indeed," he snorts dryly, squinting his eyes at the mare. "How'd you get rid of the Plague, Warlight?" he asks - forgetting about her own question (perhaps deeming it less important) in the whole.
10-14-2020, 07:19 PM (This post was last modified: 10-14-2020, 07:20 PM by Warlight.)
Warlight
Luckily, the fall seems to have done no lasting harm, and although he peers at her, she thinks she sees recognition there.
But her banter is unheard or unheeded, and he responds with a question of his own. "It wasn't exactly the plague," she responds, his use of her name confirming that he has put two-and-two together, recognizing her as the barely-alive creature he had found at the base of the mountain.
"It was a sort of payment, I guess." She has to make an effort not to glance back to Starsonder with this addition - the child was the other part of her payment. But she knows the girl sleeps soundly, and her attention never visibly leaves her companion. Warlight lets her dark eyes take in his true form, the form that he possessed without any magical alterations, and she rolls her shoulders as she takes a step deeper into the water. "The mountain often takes just as much as it gives," she muses, "or so it would seem."
Call him scarred, from these events: from the Plague in the midst of which he was born to the quest he undertook so early in life, to being among the first to drink the Cure. Call him scarred from fighting Noah, a disease manipulator - and it’s probably true. Aodhán had remained the happy go lucky guy he had been before, but he hides his fear of most disease spectacularly - in fact it is only Plague-like symptoms like Warlight’s that he was so careful with.
It’s what she says though, that makes him frown. ”Payment? To the fairies?” Doubt crosses his face, thinking that yes, there were tests, it was common knowledge - but payment? Nevertheless he cannot deny that she was sickened when she walked down that Mountain and got something else in return - or he wouldn’t have been forced to transform. He shakes his head once, not thinking that it’s a great idea at all that the fairies now give out diseases that so look like that terrible one from before. ”And you got... that.” He waves his head towards the empty sky that he’d fallen out of. ”Whatcha gonna do with it?”
Ah. He caught the flaw in her story - the glaring plot-hole that gave her away every time. Fairies give tests, yes, but they don't strike in vengeance, or so the lore went. Although her mother's face told another story, Aodhan wasn't wrong this time.
"The fairies aren't the only power on the mountain."
She was tired of saying his name, Carnage. She was tired of his story overshadowing hers. Would this man have an opinion on striking a bargain with such an entity? Certainly. But she hopes he will not share it. Raul had already made his dissatisfaction clear, and that was the only reason she is passing the midnight hours with her current companion.
But Aodhan asks his next question, and it seemed she had escaped another discussion about The Dark God. Although just as she feels relief, she remembers that she will be having just such a conversation with Starsonder soon, and there would be no escaping that one. The girl was already asking about her lineage. But for now, the filly sleeps, and Aodhan is the one asking the questions.
"Don't sound so unsure. It's already paying off in spades." Her response is light, as a smile curls the edge of her lip. But she still is getting the feeling this isn't exactly where he was planning to spend his night, and she circles back to her first question. The Tephran wasn't that easy to shake.
"But you never told me what had brought you to the mainland, Aodhan. If you want to keep secrets, you should go for a bat or a moth for your next night flight"
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