"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
05-12-2015, 03:08 PM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2015, 01:11 PM by Cassi.)
lord, I fashion dark gods too;
They come. Of course they do.
First is Lagertha, his own daughter, offspring of him and the old hag reborn. Still, Grimmy knew Gail, and it feels good to have the old blood coming.
Then Myrina, a woman he does not know, but whom pledges I will, and he needs to know nothing else.
Tyrna, then, a woman too strong for her own good.
Another blood-tie, Kellyn. This one asks the name, but he does not say it. They’ll know, when he sends them, it will echo in their minds. Gail. Gail. Gail.
Then Rhy, a woman electric. He thinks of his old silver pet, and bristles. He still remembers the sting of the lightning.
Nymeria, bay and unremarkable, simply announcing her presence.
Finally a male comes, Nihilus, young and filled with rain, who comes close, too close. He pays no mind. The boy will be gone soon enough.
Another lightning creature, this one speckled. Kratos. The boy is foul-mouthed. Carnage thinks briefly of killing him. But he thinks of the things that are coming, and knows there are worse fates than death.
Then a child, Wrynn. He wonders how long she will last. He does not think it will be long. She is too soft by half.
Another man, Dominion, who acts like he has a choice. Who acts like this is an option.
Ramiel, then, a boy who placidly agrees. He’s half grown and Carnage wonders if he’ll live to grow again.
Then Trekk, the unfinished one. He obeys simply, quickly. They are all so quick. They don’t know the langoliers.
Joscelin, then, the final acolyte, bright and merry, ready to find whatever he asks.
13 of them. An unlucky number, really. He wonders if it’s an omen.
This is the beginning.
He does not dabble much in time travel. Too many variables, too many realities, and always with the promise of a paradox waiting in the wings. The art itself is an imperfect science, these wormholes.
He will get them there, the souls who have volunteered, but it is not a straight route. He cannot do as he did with Gail that day on the beach, when she asked if he was going to kill her.
You can never go home, as the saying goes.
But there are alternate routes, detours he can send them, back alleyways to the end of the world. Sure, it’s more dangerous, but it’s not his life, it’s theirs. And the ones who came to him, they are fools – so thirsty for power or adventure that they agree to what is clearly a suicide mission, a god’s ego trip.
The first place he sends them is space.
Here are the wormholes, the promises of worlds in black gaping mouths. He’s given them the basic protection, an ability to breathe, to not freeze and shatter into a thousand pieces. The ability to move.
He is not exact, even dark gods have their limits. They have to find the wormhole on their own. Space is a strange place, the rules are changed. Look for the warmth, he says in their minds, then, and hurry. I won’t hold you here long.
It is their first test.
RULES:
You are in space! Assume basic protections – you can move, you won’t freeze, etc. Traits may be used if you have them, but remember you're in space and act accordingly.
Describe how you get to the wormhole (since it’s to land, that explains the ‘warmth’. You can work together (assume low grade telepathy as well I guess), make friendly aliens appear, whatever. Be creative. The first 3 to respond get a bonus to help them in the next round.
You have 24 hours (board time) to respond. Failure to respond within the time limit will result in automatic elimination and a defect. The last 2 to respond will be eliminated.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me at acmrshll@gmail.com
05-12-2015, 03:34 PM (This post was last modified: 05-12-2015, 03:38 PM by Nihlus.
Edit Reason: typos
)
They are close, but in the next moment, they are lightyears apart. Their dark god sends them far above the vapours which Nihlus commands, far away from the powers which solidify Nihlus as... Nihlus. The feeling of being torn from himself is altogether unholy; he feels dirty, dirtier than he has felt flirting with any man or drowning any small bug with a tsunami.
But he must find her.
The stars are around him, beautiful, stunning, indescribably and dangerous; but he must not look too long. Beautiful are they, but they are cold, cold, cold. Nihlus must seek the warmth, He said so. The memory of the grey stallion in his mind urges Nihlus into action, urges his muscles into function. Space is cold, he thinks. There must be warmth somewhere. Flailing momentarily, Nihlus attempts to swim through the nothingness, through the emptiness. But he cannot. He looks to the others, confusion clouding his glowing blue eyes. He has never been to space.
Help me.
Throat clenching slightly, Nihlus closes his eyes and attempts to see through his skin. It is so cold. His bones seem to shatter in the lack of heat, but something keeps him together, keeps them all together, and he must assume that it is the dark god. Clenching his eyes now along with his throat, the bay-black son of Father Magic and Mother Spring begins feeling.
It takes time. For what could have been hours or days, he floats aimlessly, kicking hopelessly when he imagined something. In the end, when he fears that the bark on his legs will turn into ice and all will have been for naught, a warmth comes to him. His eyes are still closed - his eyelashes are frozen together, but underneath, his eyes struggle to be free, but to no avail. Hyperventilating, freezing, and struggling towards the heat which warms his hooves and then his hocks until his whole shoulders have regained feeling. And soon, his eyelashes thaw and he can see. And what he see cannot be described - it was beautiful and terrible all at once, configured of colours which he cannot find words for, made up of figures which he could not exactly describe in the heat - and cold - of the moment.
With one last tired kick, the boy arrives. He is here. But where he is, he does not know. Really, it is simply by luck that he finds himself here at all. But whether the luck is good or bad, is yet to be seen.
He doesn’t know it of course. The colt who belongs on earth doesn’t understand his new reality; he only knows that he had been compelled to it. He accepts his choice, accepts that everything is out of his control now. Or rather, so much in his control that he can’t comprehend the consequences. He opens his eyes anyway, knowing it is too late to turn back.
The stars become brighter, beacons where pinpricks had existed before. There is no wind, no warmth, no movement to be found, save for that which he creates. He moves forward across a thin strip of alienrock. It’s sleek, and if his feet could detect heat, they would find it as cold as the Tundra’s ice. He has no destination in mind (the others linger behind him with their own schemes and plans, he’s sure) but something tells him to keep moving. Whether it’s the voice that called him here in the first place, Ramiel isn’t sure. To stop is death. He feels it in his marrow, and he moves on.
As the bridge narrows, however, he grows more nervous. Both sides drop away hundreds of feet into the endless vacuum he temporarily calls home. Strange triangular creatures like manta rays float by underneath, oblivious to the strangeness of their home. One misstep would mean certain death. The black colt is nothing special; he has no gifts or traits to his name, nothing to assist him on this journey. He feels almost foolish, as if he’s signed his life away for the whim of a god. But how could he refuse? How could he ignore that voice when it moved his vertebrae one by one, when it picked his feet up across stones and logs?
He freezes when the bridge cracks under his feet. The colt had been carelessly lost in his mind (as he often was) and he hadn’t been paying attention. A glow on the other side of the pass further distracts him. It’s eerie in the stillness, that light. But he can’t focus any longer, because just as he tries, the bridge finally gives way under his weight. Instead of falling, though, it simply disintegrates. The boy scrambles for purchase on the ever-breaking rock which turns to pebbles and then to dust, finally disappearing altogether. He is helpless and in his fear, he calls out to Joscelin in his mind. Help!
One of the space-mantas seems to pick up on his call, or perhaps his fear. It glides over, cutting through the air with fins that are much sharper upon closer inspection. Ramiel pulls back instinctively, but there is something unnerving and calming in the creature’s eyes – a softness he hadn’t expected in this hard place. It lowers its wing and suddenly, the colt finds himself stabilized. He walks onto the creature’s wing and then further onto its back. It’s just as tough as the alienrock had been (maybe all things must be in space).
He tries to connect with the creature again, guiding it to the glowing light with his mind. Shockingly, it seems to understand. The manta pushes away from the downed bridge, and in two flaps of its overlarge wings, it reaches the light. Ramiel is pleasantly surprised to find it warm as well. He hops off of the space creature, sending all the gratitude and warmth he can to it with his mind. He is here, but where is here, exactly?
05-12-2015, 03:45 PM (This post was last modified: 05-12-2015, 05:55 PM by Lagertha.
Edit Reason: added alien attack to be cohesive with Rhy and Kratos. It was decided upon after I posted. They can confirm.
)
Lagertha sees Rhy come as well, and she moves to be nearer her sister (and friend, though the word has been uttered only once). The rest come, and then they are teleported somewhere and sometime. To darkness. To a void. To space (she assumes). To look for warmth. Having never been here before, she doesn’t really know what space is, only that it is cold (but not too cold), and that they can move, albeit clumsily. Jesus fucking Christ, what did she get herself in to?
The first thing Lagertha does is look around for her gold and white companion, never giving a thought that they wouldn’t work together while they could. A thick vine extends from her right foreleg and she sends it in the mare’s direction so that it may wrap around her own leg, and then Lagertha pulls them together. She can easily pull someone else in, if Rhy wished, but her first thought was that like calls to like - amazon to amazon, and lightning to lightning - and so on an impulse, she sends a thick vine towards Kratos as well, when she notices that he starts trying to get to her golden sister. The big boy might be useful. Their lightning would protect, and she could shield them… throw things, I don’t know. This would be a test of her armor’s usefulness and potential other qualities.
Too bad Myrina is nowhere to be seen. Amazons should stick together.
When the three of them are within talking distance, Lagertha asks them to see if their electricity will work in space, and if it can find anything that will be more… conductive? Is that the right word? Wouldn’t electricity be attracted to something like metal or land or something that is warm? One of them sends electricity out into the void, and the three of them look to see if it goes anywhere - if it falls over some event horizon or suddenly disappears. Her vine keeps them all together, wrapped instead around abdomens instead of legs, giving each of them a little bit of space to use if need be . Electricity dances across her skin, and occasionally hurts, but Lagertha tries to ignore it. Find warmth.
Eventually something disappears, and when they see it, Lagertha sprouts massive pods all over her body - the kind that can spit seeds out. She accelerates their growth and forces the pods to expel millions of seeds into space, propelling the three of them towards the wormhole. If the other two are able to aid her in some way, they are able to move even faster, because the constant production and expulsion is a little tiring. Rhy helps by sending electromagnetic waves out behind them improving upon Lagertha’s aim and speed.
Then something attacks them, and electricity flows through her, only slightly absorbed by her plant protection. The plants explode, heaving Lagertha forward and it's all she can do to let the vine out as long as she dares, knowing full well that her sister and (lover? comrad? fell electrician?) Kratos could hold their own. Let her find the warmth and bring them with her.
Lagertha crosses into the wormhole first, falling into somewhere unknown. In the tumbling, At some point during the fall it grows taut and snaps, leaving her alone when she lands.
Without bothering to respond, the dark god sends her on her way. With a jolt, she is pulled out of the world she’d found only five years ago and set adrift in an endless sea of stars. Oh! Swirling, dancing, ever-burning stars, the ones that watched down on her through a lifetime of hunger and loss and tragedy, a lifetime spent surviving when everyone else died, a lifetime where the only constant were those distant stars.
She was lost at sea once again, swimming through nebulae, through clouds where new stars were being born as old lives on a distant planet were dying. And then she heard his voice, speaking in her head though she could not see him. Look for the warmth and hurry. I won’t hold you here long. She hadn’t noticed the cold, enchanted by the swirl of stardust, the shimmering sea of stars. But with his words, the cold seeped into her bones. She kicked out, her legs running as though there were ground beneath them—and somehow, despite the emptiness below and above and around her, she could feel the ground she imagined, could push off it to propel herself forward.
Find the warmth.
Dom hadn’t known many games as a child. But her Ben had taught their babies how to play hot or cold. Little Ragnar, so solemn, had treated it as a puzzle to solve. But her Aya had danced her way across the meadow to the tune of her father’s voice: “Warmer! Warmer! Ooooh, colder! Yes, warmer, warmer, hot! You’re on fire, you’re burning up, YOU FOUND IT!” Remembering the way tiny hooves had danced along the ground, Dom played hot or cold with the universe.
She ran, veering into the heat, skipping past stars that were the wrong kind of hot. She made the mistake of leaping as her Aya had leapt in her memory, and drifted, flailing, as she lost touch with her imaginary ground and gravity failed her, with no planetary surface to draw her back down. But she stilled, breathed in the empty air that still somehow filled her lungs, and, closing her eyes, felt once again for the ground she could remember even though she couldn’t see it.
There.
The instant she could feel it under her hooves again, she was off running, chasing the elusive warmth. The stars guided her, as they always had, pointing the way—straight into a swirling vortex of darkness. “You’re on fire! YOU FOUND IT!” Benny’s voice rang through her mind, and she dove into the wormhole.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
She blinks, and the stars are alive. She gasps at space, at the beauty of the night sky writ large, all around her. She isn't afraid – why would she be? She doesn't know that she should be unable to breathe, that she should be cold, that she should shatter, that she should be unable to move. She simply knows that when she thinks of movement, it happens.
look for the warmth. She always looks for the warmth; the kindness of a gaze, the gentle heat of a heart that loves without fear. And is it not true that like attracts like? And so she closes her eyes and opens her heart, straining her senses to find warmth.
She becomes aware, then, of others around her, pinpricks of warmth against space that, she realizes quite suddenly, is actually terrifyingly cold. She exhales, watching her breath turn to sharp ice as it leaves her mouth, and feeling the surprise as air fills her lungs again although she did not inhale. It is then that she realizes what kind of place they have come to: that she is entirely out of her depth.
But it's okay, because she promised. All she has to do is look for the warmth. And hurry.
She can't sense warmth beyond the milieu of the other horses who are here with her, and much as she would like to linger and see them all succeed, she knows time is limited. She hopes they will be cared for. And so with a thought, she sends herself rocketing out past the fringes, coming to an ungraceful halt as she tries to maneuver herself using mental thrusters. No gravity, no momentum, no resistance – nothing to stop her but her.
And now, in the silence, she closes her eyes and feels again.
The warmth of the others is far away now, and all she feels is cold, cold stretching in every direction – except one. It doesn't feel like any warmth she's known, but it is warmth, and this place is like nothing she's ever known, so perhaps it fits.
Another kick, and she's wheeling toward the source of the warmth, eyes growing wide as she does so. She manages to come to an awkward stop, just in time – just shy of running right into the personal space of an impossibly vast creature.
It is a green blob, stretching out for what must be hundreds of miles. It appears to be alive, breathing, its hide a strange gelatinous goo that quivers with its breaths. The pile seems to have a top, as though the goo had been formed, or dumped out, somewhere that had gravity, and then moved here, after it had already assembled itself. The top is smooth, dome-like, and covered in pink eyes, no bigger than an average horse's hoof. There must be thousands of them, all moving independently, and Wrynn can't help but wonder how on earth this creature sees.
It's entirely clear how it eats. Facing her, so directly in her path that she'd have run into it if she hadn't managed her awkward stop, is a huge mouth. It could probably have eaten every horse that came through to this world in a single gulp and have barely even felt it. It is a mouth with rings of sharp teeth, contracting and pulsing, set within grossly red-pink flesh. As she watches, a bit of green goo drops off of the space where its lips should be, down past the crevasse of the mouth, only to be drawn back to the bottom of the body as though through a magnetic force.
It's a terrifying thing, but Wrynn can't let herself be terrified now. She's made a promise, and she does not break promises.
She backs herself up enough that she hopes the creature can see her. "Hello." her voice is bright, cheerful, friendly. "I'm Wrynn. I'm here helping a friend find someone dear to him that he's lost." she isn't lying; to her, the strange voice is a friend, Carnage is a friend, and she can only assume that if he's willing to send them this far away, he has indeed lost someone very dear.
"I'm looking for the warmest place in this whole…area." she struggles to find that last word, the right word to describe the strangeness where she has landed. "Do you know where I might find it?" She offers the creature a smile, not showing teeth, hoping that it can understand what the gesture means.
The monster says nothing for a minute, its teeth shifting like rings within rings, like some sick whirligig ride at a terrible carnival. Her smile flickers, thinking that it has not understood. But all at once, with a noise like a roar, the same green goo that coats its body comes pouring from its mouth. It is too fast for Wrynn to even think of moving out of the way, and instantly, she is covered. It burns a little, and she wonders for a moment if she's being digested. She hopes not.
Go home, little one The voice in her mind is neither male nor female. It is as though a million voices speak all at once, with one purpose. It is impossible to tell if the voice mocks her, chastises her like a mother, or is simply indifferent. "I can't," she replies, not sure whether she speaks with her mouth or with her mind. "I promised a friend."A promise is nothing it says, still affectless. "A promise is everything." she replies, not by way of argument, but with a child's quiet certainty.
Are you sure? She isn't even sure what it's asking – is she sure about promises? Is she sure about her friend, is she sure about her choice? Blessedly for her, she is a child, and she has the certainty that only a child can have. She is calmly, quietly sure about everything. "Yes." she answers, her voice calm and certain.
And then she feels herself moving, in a direction that she thinks means she is being sucked back toward the mouth. She struggles, but the goo is too strong. The goo begins to drip off her, being reabsorbed into the monster itself. We shall see if you are sure, it says.
And then she slides into the mouth.
There is nothing for her to do – no sting, no crush, the teeth don't cave in on her. It is not like she expected being eaten would be, it doesn't even hurt. And so, oddly, she is not afraid. She closes her eyes and moves herself forward, deeper into the mouth, thinking only, "find the warmth".
The voice-voices start to whisper, wordlessly whirring around her and she finds herself saying her words against them. "A promise is a promise, find the warmth." their buzz builds until they are screaming, yelling, a crescendo in her head –as they crescendo her words crescendo too, until her soft, quiet voice is screaming, yelling - and then, suddenly, she is embraced by cold again.
Space is dark and dotted with stars, and the creature is nowhere to be found. But in front of her, flickering and glimmering, is a shimmer in time that seems to radiate warmth. From time to time a glimmer of something seems to peek through the veil, a hint of sound.
It makes no sense, but does anything else here? Find the warmth, he said, and she's found warmth. Perhaps it is an illusion, deep within the belly of the monster. Or perhaps the monster was simply testing her faith, and she has proven it right. Or perhaps the warmth is deep within the belly of the monster. She can't be certain, but she has all the faith and quiet courage in the world.
With a thought, she moves toward it, and without hesitation, steps through.
05-12-2015, 04:25 PM (This post was last modified: 05-12-2015, 04:34 PM by Kratos.
Edit Reason: typos n shit
)
It is a strange thing to be weightless when you, in fact, are the size of several of these horses put together. But Kratos has felt worse, felt the dread of disappointment, the ache of the loss of his parents, the surging need to live up to his father’s expectations. So the triple-beat of a panicked heart does not batter wildly about in his chest for long, he knows that this god means to pit them against each other and so a calm, much like the lull before battle, settles across his thrilled nerves as he idles in the cold clutch of a galaxy his eyes were never meant to see.
Kratos is only as furious as he can be when he feels Rhy’s magnetism pulling them together, he had told her not to follow him, but had he really expected as much? She was no broodmare, no supplicating kingdom mare – he wore the scars on his chest to prove it. So he merely snarls into her head (their words eaten by the crushing silence of space), “you just can’t fucking listen can you?” But his voice lacks any real ferocity, instead his attention is quickly rapt away by the vine that curled about him, pulling he and Rhy both to the iron-grey mare he knew only by sight. The vine was strange, not made of pliable plant but armor – he could of dissolved them away with his lightning skin if he had so been inclined, but it was clear Lagertha moved for them to work together. Kratos is stubborn but he is no fool.
When Kratos sends out his tendrils of lightning, he isn’t exactly sure what he expects – but what spurted out before them was more than what he had. His lightning comes out as a spray, hundreds of little white-hot orbs that came spewing from his mouth like misted droplets. His lightning is “freaking out” in a sense, it does not specifically look for ground, but rather seeks a lower voltage spot to relieve the electromagnetic pressures which were firing off all around them – too many like charges in one place. Kratos watches as the lightning begins to shift and begin forming back together towards a spot of black that seems thicker than the others, more dense if that’s possible, “there,” he says with lips that never move.
“Push us,” he’s speaking to Rhy now, her ability to manipulate electricity in all its forms was (grudgingly) admittedly deeper than his own. He feels waves of intangible undulation forcing them towards the wormhole and as they close the gap of distance he feels teeth sinking into his flank. These teeth were blunt, too blunt to have ever been able to of cut skin – but they did, they gnashed through his flesh and sent an icy streak of pain through his hindquarters. He doesn’t look back (he’ll never know the face of his attacker and isn’t that even more terrifying?), he shifts his lightning to pulse off of his skin – whatever was touching him (Lagertha included, unfortunately) would have received a severe shock. Luckily, if Lagertha was knocked out from the impact, at least the vines bound them together so she would still be attached when they came plummeting to the earth.
He can feel his body being pulled and pressed and squeezed as he enters the wormhole, like being funneled through a vacuum. The warmth enfolds his frame and he comes crashing down, no doubt leaving a Percheron-sized hole wherever he landed and crushing any unfortunate soul that happened to find the same landing spot.
Perhaps it is fitting that he’s here, when indefinable love has drawn them all here in the first place. They were indefinable, were they not? At least in some ways. But no, perhaps that’s still not true. They were definable. They were destructive, they were death, they were beautiful things. Together, they were simply magnified. Maybe that’s all love is – a magnification of the self. Her parents would disagree. They believed they were a magnification of each other, each one making the other better. But in the end, isn’t that the same thing?
For a moment though, she doesn’t think of him. They are hurled away from the world they know (though part of her wonders if she left that place at the sound of his call, and not just moments ago). This place is dark and cold and alien, and instinctually the electric begins to jump from her skin though she finds that the sparks don’t obey her commands. They fly around her, up and out and completely out of control and she shuts the sparks off again as quickly as they started. She could keep warmer with the electric in her veins, certainly, but not as well as when the sparks danced on her skin.
So instead, she looks around, peering in the darkness though she’s not used to such. The shadows of the Jungle are one thing, and perhaps they have provided some practice for this moment, but in the end, they do not compare to being outside the world entirely. But still, she can see (a gift from their god), and she spots him. Kratos.
And then she sees Lagertha too. Kratos coming for her from one direction and Lagertha from another. She didn’t have that many people in this world. Not her parents, questionably her sister, and sometimes questionably her Sisters (she is a fearful thing, when you know what sings inside her veins). But these two. These two she counted on in a way she counted on no one else. A General with a mouth too big for her own good and her male counterpart with a mouth too crude for his own good. And then Rhy. The golden girl. The good girl. What a trio they made.
Lagertha must see him too, because her vines snake out to snag them both and Rhy doesn’t protest. Time is limited. Their dark god said as much. Does she believe in gods? Perhaps, after this trip, she just might. Lagertha asks them about their electric, and Rhy is shaking her head slightly, but Kratos takes the lead. And she lets him. Because perhaps it will work. The electric should be attracted to anything more conductive, but what if they are too far? They might be. The wormhole could be anywhere.
Time creeps by for a moment as they watch the lightning, erratic in it’s movement in a way that Rhy knows is not natural. Not for Kratos or her, anyway. To anyone else, this might be normal. Lightning shooting as it will. But they are skilled, precise. And this is not. There’s a moment where she thinks it won’t work, when she thinks they will have to hope to god they can feel the warmth through all this cold, walking around in the fucking dark until death greets them before the wormhole does.
But then the lightning disappears. She grins slightly, but Lagertha is already in motion, propelling seeds that drive them forward through space with more speed than their legs could carry them. The seeds rake across her skin now and again, but Rhy grits her teeth and bears it. It couldn’t be as bad at the lightning that streaked across Lagertha (Rhy too, but of course, the lightning doesn’t hurt her).
If the electric is drawn to the wormhole, perhaps she can help. Rhy lets the electric free again, though not as lightning, but as waves, which push them forward, like a bulldozer. It’s hard to keep up, but they do, all three together.
But then she hears it. She turns, the waves slowing down behind them for her to look, but it’s already on them. How strange, a sound that seemed so far away to be so close. She’s too late even to scream, it’s blunt teeth sinking into Kratos’s skin as if designed for this. They don’t look back, but she does. She sees it, a creature made of ice and gold. Does it know? Does it know her sister? If the others looked, what would they see? Maybe this is what the gods made Kora, half of some creature that already existed. It doesn’t have a horse form, but something round and hard with a multitude of legs.
She wants to electrocute it, but that’s no good here. Already Kratos has kicked it off with a burst of lightning that she hopes, didn’t hurt Lagertha and her plant armor too much. Rhy feels the pulse, but it doesn’t touch her. It feels like home, strangely. But she’s already shifting, because claws and teeth are useful anywhere. The vine between her and Lagertha lengthens, and she’s thankful to her friend for being so quick on her feet. Good to have a trained warrior around. She launches off the ground and behind the group, heading for the place where the creature has landed.
There’s something comical about the sight, this round ball of a creature rolling away with legs flailing. But then it gets it’s footing, and she sees it’s eyes. Cold and cruel and bottomless, like it’s already dead. She rakes a clawed paw across it’s chest and black blood spurts from the wounds as it rushes her, but remembers how Kratos leaned into her claws before and she thrusts her paw out again in front of her. The creature is too slow, too clumsy, and it runs into the claws until they can sink in no further.
She pulls her paw loose, soaking in tar-like black blood, and turns to find her companions far ahead. She’s dripping with the black stuff. She doesn’t want to call it blood, because it’s cold and wretched (not warm and bright like Kratos’s blood). The vine pulls her forward again and lets the electromagnetic waves flow behind them until she’s caught up. But they are tumbling now, through the wormhole, the vine disappearing from around her waist. And she knows, somehow, that they won’t be next to her when they land. Wherever they land.
It is a strange feeling, to be pulled from the only world you’ve ever known, and he isn’t sure if he likes it or not. Time and space and energy and gravity pulls at his flesh all at once, pushing him away from places he has been and across places he has never been and through portals he will never return from. This is the first step – he might come away from this, or he might not – but the first step is something that will change his life (for better or for worse, much like a marriage vow and the commitment is much the same).
He blinks and in a flash the feeling appears and disappears, leaving behind the past effects of where he was, the aftereffects of the traveling, and the present effects of where he is. For a millisecond he struggles to breathe, caught in the sharp motion of magic traveling. The cold is what drives him away from shock (a cold that dives deep into the fibers of his bone marrow; a cold that seeps into his skin and leaks into the lines of his innards; a cold that is unrelenting and fierce and empty) and his wings begin to move feebly as his eyes open. He instantly knows where he is, however, despite being so far away from home and his heart.
Space is a place he has only ever dreamed about (a place he wondered if he would survive, a place he wondered if he could fly to, a place he wondered if he could die at) and the startling reality that he is finally here shakes his mind’s core. The stars are close – closer than they have ever been, close enough that he finds he might be able to touch them – and their brightness both burns at his eyes with a living fire and offers no freedom from the harsh cold. His feet struggle to move atop nothing, but when he pushes his wings out, he finds they are more useful than his legs.
The absence of air and wind and motion and life is another foreign thing to add to the ever-growing list. Instantly he knows that space is a place no one could ever live – it is too empty, too unforgiving, too lifeless – and survival is not meant for anyone here. But the intention of their arrival here (her, her, her – Gail, Gail, Gail) echoes in his mind with the voice of the one who has brought them here. Instinctively, he seeks out the rain child. Although the mission is to find her, when the rain boy appeared the hopeless lover knew he had to keep a careful watch on her child. And so he does. While the boy spins in a frozen state of mind (or body; maybe both), the boy’s sudden protector awkwardly works his wings to reach him.
The motion of flapping his wings like a bird flying nowhere is tiring, but he is relentless in reaching the boy. And once he has him (in a tight grasp between his chin and his deep red and white chest, holding him close lest they float away), he begins to continue the mission of searching for her (and now, this warmth as well). Her, warmth, her, warmth, her, warmth, space and stars and cold.
But a prey animal’s mind is finely attuned to seeking out the very things it needs for survival. The hopeless lover closes his eyes, tuning out the sights of others floating aimlessly in a world consisting of darkness and cold and stars, and instead focusing on the sensation of warmth. He brings the feeling to his suicidal mind (the look in his lover’s eyes as she gazes at her children, the shared body heat between the lovers under the Desert’s nighttime sky, the feeling he gets in his chest whenever he looks at the spring goddess) and translates it into the world around him, focusing all his body’s senses and emotions and connections on the simple feeling.
Warmth, warmth, warmth.
And through the energy-sapping motion of his wings carrying them through space, through the cold that seeps into his entire being until he feels he will be frozen forever, through the flashes of memories and words and emotions in his mind, he moves toward that feeling of warmth.
There is another feeling similar to the one at the beginning of his quest (a sucking feeling, a pulling of his flesh, a loud and sudden roar of time and space and sound) and when he opens his eyes he is someplace else entirely.
If we don't make it alive, well it's a hell of a good day to die
It is the pulse in her veins. The mantra echoing through her ears as the thin layers of magic envelope her. Gail. One layer of protective magic. Gail. Another layer. Gail, Gail, Gail. A thousand heartbeats, a thousand layers wrapped around her like a cocoon. She feels each one as it alights against her skin, and just as soon as the last one falls into place she is gone.
Caught between a heartbeat and eternity, when she next opens her eyes she is among the stars. She gazes around at the emptiness around her and feels a sense of peace. To stay up here forever, what a dream. There is no pain, no anger, no love, just the cold and dark. And she likes it. The stars twinkling in the distance so close yet light years away, wink at her enticing her to come to them, to stay awhile. To stay forever. The siren song of the stars pulls her from where she hovers motionless, drawing a step from her reluctant hooves. She was her for a reason after all. It is as she takes that first step that she feels the pulse once more.gail.Gail.GAIL. It screams in her ears drowning out the coy promises the lights bring. She feels the layers of her protection start to flutter off as well. With each step, each beat, another layer vanishes. Each step leaves her colder. The enticing visions of running and hiding among the stars vanish before her eyes, and the hisses of anger that replace them chill her blood. Looking around she sees that she isn't floating or flying or hovering. Her hooves are planted firmly on what appears to be an asteroid. Surrounding her are small glowing balls of light, complete with gaping mouths filled with teeth and razor claws that shine like diamonds. The light creatures are angry that their illusion has failed and still eager for a meal of tasty flesh.
Pure panic laces through her blood as a shrill whinny tears it's way past her lips. She is immobilized, her fear rooting her in place as the lights draw closer. The creatures sensing her fear, her helplessness, start to do what she can only assume is a laugh. It starts as a whisper, a rustling of the glowing fur that covers their bodies, and turns into a roar. It is a wave that crashes over her and reminds her of the evil magician that had captured her father and led her on this tumultuous path to begin with. The stallion that aided in the ruin of her fragile young psyche. The bastard that hurt her family. As she stands listening to the laughter of the light creatures, feeling the layers of protective slipping from her body one by one, it comes back to her. The anger that had been her food and drink, her life source over the last two years fills her veins and comforts her like an old friend. When next the silver girl opens her eyes there is a fire burning hotly behind them. She feels back in control. With a battle cry she lunges for the nearest creature ripping it apart in her teeth and kicking out at another. They are startled by the sudden change within her and by the time they start to fight back it is too late. The first wave falls easily, but as soon as she thinks she is finished more take the place of their fallen starpoofs. They are fragile things made of hate and stardust, but the numbers are overwhelming. Though she hates to do it she attempts to run.
With a mighty push from her hind legs. She tries to leap over the starpoofs in front of her towards the empty expanse of the asteroid and finds she is sailing farther and higher than she intended. The protection of the dark god sends her falling back towards the ground so she can try again. She glances back to see the starpoofs running towards her, so she centers herself and leaps again.
She soars through the vacuum and once more lands on the rocky surface of the asteroid. She repeats her series of leaps to gain ground as well as hop from asteroid to asteroid seeking the warmth. There are spans between jumps as she soars through space where she wonders if she will ever touch the ground again, but always the magic brings her back down. The time between jumps grows longer and longer, as the layers of magic peel from her body. With each jump she is colder and suspended midair for extended periods of time. Always however she feels the beat of her name in time with her heart and the need to find the warmth. it is what keeps her pressing onward when her limbs start to ache and grow stiff and her breath clings to her cheeks like frozen dew. She has seen others pass her by and has passed some as she continues her journey towards the warmth.
She feels it immediately. Like the sun creeping behind a snowstorm, it's there. The warmth. A radiant halo sits just within her reach emanating heat. She is near giddy with excitement as she feels it start to caress her skin. With her final effort she bunches her legs beneath her and jumps towards the source of the warmth as the last layer of magic falls from her hide. The cold takes her immediately, freezing her in place as she rockets towards the wormhole and gets sucked through to the other side. She has no control of her landing, and blacks out as the lack of oxygen overwhelms her. Moments later she awakens with her name in her pulse, and regaining her feet she takes in the landscape around her.
