"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
05-15-2015, 12:59 PM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2015, 01:14 PM by Cassi.)
lord, I fashion dark gods too;
Wrynn – good post, I liked that you encountered multiple monsters.
Nymeria – I’m a little unsure how you were able to dislodge a tentacle by kicking against rocks – it would wreak havoc on a horse’s delicate legs. But you took damage and that’s good! And I’m really happy you ran into one of the sea monsters bc those rock. And good lifelessness trick.
Trekk – I like you using your trait but it was futile bc I’m a sadist. I like that you used the shapeshifting aspect of Cthaat. And smart using the heat to make it ‘evaporate’.
Dominion – very unique and your writing is super pretty but I would have liked to see more of her experience in this wasteland – this was more surreal like she was still in space?
Kellyn – good using your trait. I would have liked more description on the first monsters she encountered.
Ramiel – Nice post, it had a good mix of style while being clear on the action. Creative alien trap.
Lagertha – hahaha sorry I gave you armor when you already had it, I don’t pay attention apparently. I enjoy your sarcastic style. I wasn’t clear if the lizard thing was something you made up or if it’s in the mythos, but either way, I like it acting as proxy to the heart.
Rhy – I liked her using the lightning to ‘find’ water. Yay science. I like your subtle inclusion of the gods. Not sure if the one at the end was a god or a hallucination but it was fun.
Kratos – I really liked that you roleplayed the gods as well! Some grammatical errors.
Nihlus – did a child just appear? That bit confused me. Also, how did he set himself on fire? I can’t find any record of him having that ability. Good research on your monster.
Tyrna – good research on your monster. I would like a bit more creativity; Tyrna just seemed to run away successfully.
Judgement: well turns out judging this was a stupid idea bc seriously I was super delighted to just read a ton of posts by lovely writers mentioning Lovecraftian gods because hello, that is awesome, I want to do it again. Unfortunately this quest shouldn’t go on forever so I have to eliminate: Tyrna – you posted after the 24 hour limit. For the next BQ year (1 month) Tyrna will have uncontrollable werewolf shifting. This is non-genetic and will go away after 1 month when the wormhole’s ‘effects’ have worn off. Dominion – I loved your writing but ultimately it was almost like she was still in space and didn’t really deal with this apocalyptic wasteland. For the next BQ year (1 month) Dominion will have star markings on her body (one for each family member who sacrificed themselves). You can choose to have this fade away after the allotted time, or keep it.
*******
She is alone.
She is not alone.
She exists like butterflies encased in glass do. She exists in perpetuity. She should not exist but time itself seems to no longer be.
The chewing noise, the sound of the earth being eaten alive, always comes closer but never arrives. There is some point in time when everything resets and the day begins anew, although she has long stopped keeping time in days. She does not keep time at all.
She exists.
She does not exist.
He left her and he paused things, somehow. He paused things and left her here in this strange perpetual state where she’s forgotten the sound of her own voice and cannot remember any noise but the one of radio static, of a world long meant to end.
She loves him.
She does not love him.
She waits for him like she waits to take her next breath. He is an intrinsic part of her. It’s no longer about love, if it ever was. (“We’re indefinable.”)
He is simply a part of her, some vital organ.
They come, wading out of the sea like the Great Old Ones once did (they are gone now, perhaps fallen to the langoliers, perhaps in another galaxy, but she knows they were once here and are now gone). She watches them and it’s like the final piece is in play because suddenly time starts again.
She’s forgotten what it’s like to feel time, the progression of it rather than the same stale set of hours washing over her again and again. She finds it strange and beautiful and horrifying.
The sound is suddenly so, so much closer.
All around them the earth is shaking and the world is disappearing.
The langoliers – those strange black things, indefinable shapes that somehow hurt the eye, are eating the world, swallowing it down whole. And they are advancing. After all this time, all these resets, they are advancing.
She wants to die.
She does not want to die.
She does not know who these horses are, or why they are here. She does not know why things have suddenly changed. Why time has come back to her.
(It feels heavy and palpable, time. She never knew time had a feeling. Like rocks tied around the ankles.)
“Why,” she says. It is a whisper. She hasn’t spoken since she told him she wants to see how the world ends. And part of her does, with or without him. It won’t be long now. The ground is shaking. She is shaking. In the distance it is black. There is no longer any land. Any world. Any reality.
“Why,” she says again. She looks at them. She wonders if any of them are his. She sees hints of him in their faces. His legacy continues on.
“I can’t go,” she says. Surely her feet won’t move. Surely she is glued here, pinned here – his butterfly in glass.
“I’m supposed to die here,” she says. “We were supposed to die here.”
But they did not. He left her, and time froze, reset, reset again and again and again for enough years that she’s lost so much of herself, floating here, existing and not existing, always with static in her ears.
She wants to go.
She does not want to go.
RULES:
You found Gail, yay! However, by coming here you ‘restarted’ time (Gail was sort of frozen in time after Carnage left), which means the langoliers are closer and the world is basically coming to an end. But Gail has been here in a Groundhog Day-esque perpetuity and isn’t sure she should – or can - come back.
So you’ve been quick, and you’ve fought monsters. Now you get to play politician. Tell Gail why she should come back. Tell her what Beqanna is like now (she literally ‘died’ with Carnage in 2008 our time, so it’s been awhile). Tell her why she should come back to Carnage (background: they’ve been ‘together’ since they were foals, he can’t read her mind or really use magic on her bc reasons that exist in my head, she died with another man but then he brought her back only to take her to the end of the world and leave her here) – or at the very least, why she shouldn’t stay and die here.
You have ALL WEEKEND to write a reply, because I won’t be on a good computer until Monday. So all posts must be in by 8:00 CST Monday (May 18th) bc I actually have to write the next part (I think there’s only 1 or 2 more parts, I don’t know, turns out I’m horrible at eliminating people) that day. The last person to reply will be automatically eliminated; additional eliminations will also occur and will be based on creativity, style, and how good your argument is.
As I mentioned in my first post, this end of the world place alludes heavily to Stephen King's novella The Langoliers. Langoliers are these amorphous black things hypothesized to be the 'timekeepers of eternity' and are described as "monsters expanding and contracting with semicircular caves as mouths and chainsaw-like teeth leaving trails of black nothingness in their wake."
If you have any questions, email me at acmrshll@gmail.com
05-15-2015, 01:47 PM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2015, 01:47 PM by Wrynn.
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Oh look, oh my star is fading
If the world was trying to end back there on the beach, it's succeeded now.
Whereas before the earth was cracking and splitting, the seas boiling and the air salted with brimstone, here it is simply falling away, a symphony of fading, of death, syncopated to the symphony of a constant mechanical grinding (the Langoliers, though she has no concept of these things).
But none of that matters when she sees the mare.
She knows instantly (gail gail gail) and in her sweetness and exuberance, she never thinks that the mare might hesitate. She bounds up to her, injuries almost forgotten in the wake of her excitement. "Gail!" she touches the woman gently with her nose. Her voice is sweet, happy. "Let's go home." It is a gentle suggestion, warm and happy and sweet like Wrynn herself.
But then Gail speaks, and the little filly frowns. It hadn't occurred to her, young and innocent as she is, that the mare wouldn't want to. She remembers things then, how some of the mares of the jungle seem to fear what happens when they leave. How some of the horses in Beqanna seem so set in their ways. It is change, she decides, fear of change. They can't all be children like her, sweet and easy and happy to float as they will, embracing the twists in the stream with a sweet smile.
She touches the mare again with her nose, gently, reassuring. "Gail." she says again, gently, without impatience. "He sent us to find you." she explains, her small voice still so gentle. She is so small still, this little bay filly with the scraped knees and the burned barrel. "Look at all of us, all of these horses, we've come through time and space because he asked us to find you."
She pauses, letting the mare take it all in. "You say you were supposed to die here – both of you. But he didn't. He's still alive. That's how he sent us." Her voice is still gentle. "If he didn't die here, are you sure you're meant to die here? What if he changed his mind?" She pauses again. "If he didn't want you to come back, why send us? Why send all of us here just to watch you die?"
It is such a wrenching picture, this quiet voice, this battered filly, so young and innocent to have made it this far. Perhaps a filly more clever would play it up, would take the knife of her sweetness and youth and twist it in, using it in an attempt to spur Gail to action. But Wrynn isn't one for leverage; her sweetness and innocence are authentic. It's simply who she is.
She touches the woman with her nose again. "Gail, you are like nothing else he knows. You're the only one he can't read like a book, can't touch and manipulate into whatever he likes." she doesn't know where she's pulling the information, but as she speaks it she knows it's true. "You're the exception to all the rules that make up his life. You're the chink in his armor. And because of that, he needs you." the words are so soft, almost a whisper.
"Where we come from, the world isn't ending. You knew it once, back before you came here. It's Beqanna, and it’s thriving. It's where he is, waiting for you." another pause. "How long has it been since you've seen a forest, Gail? How long since you tasted grass? How long since you drank from a stream?" she is watching the woman carefully, her voice still impossibly sweet, her questions honest and innocent rather than driving at a point. "You can have that too, all of it."
"I know it's scary to change. I'd be scared too, if I'd been here as long as you have." It's been impossibly long, the little girl thinks, longer than her mother's been alive. Longer than any horse in Beqanna has been alive, quite possibly – except him. Always except him. "But he sent us here to get you. He said it'd be all right for you to come back. He's the one who brought you here, so who could know the rules better?" she looks Gail in the eye now, her question an earnest one.
She is silent for a moment, considering the world as it falls apart around them. "It's kind of fascinating, isn't it." she says, almost to herself, because it is. She is not the overly curious kind of filly, but even she can see a strange poetry in the way everything falls away. "But it will be here later too, you know. It's the end of the world – it will always be there. You can always come back to it. Maybe he'll come back with you."
Her gaze drifts back to Gail, her eyes a bright green, shockingly full of life in a sea of nothingness. "But right now, I think you should try coming back with us. There's a lot of world left, and it'll be both different and the same thanks to all the years. You'll be with him again, maybe with your children again." She pauses, smiling. "And if that doesn't work, you can always come back here. The world isn't going to stop ending just because you leave."
Wrynn looks back at the rest of them, then, all the horses who have come because he called them to save her - gail gail gail. Her smile falters and when she speaks her voice is quiet. "I'm also…not sure that we can leave without you." Her gaze shifts back to Gail. "I'd rather not be stuck here, at least not yet. Maybe when I'm old and done. But I'm not old and done, and I don't think you are." She pauses. "He said you're not." She smiles. "And he certainly isn't."
"Can we try?" she notices that Gail has not moved, not so much as a muscle, not since she first came into view. And with a filly's sweet enthusiasm she moves to place herself beside Gail, so that they might step forward together. "Let's try. Just a step. To see what happens."
Exhaustion. Pain. Blood. Wet. She felt exhausted, pained, bloodied, damp. She felt everything, and thought little as she rose from the sea, from the black hole. Emotions whirled through her head without purpose. She tried to snatch them, to ground them into thoughts, but they stayed just out of reach. She cried. She walked. She saw. Gail, Gail The name appeared to her, and as the letters faded away a mare appeared. Along side Nymeria were the other followers, the other adventurers. She felt inadequate. She was inadequate. Her steps took much longer to find the beach with her wounded leg scrapping the ground and carrying little weight. Eventually she approached the mare, the prized possession.
Still there were no thoughts, no voices. Nymeria simply felt. The world was folding before them. Edges of the universe were slowly being eaten away, digested into nothing as if the world had never been. It felt dark and heavy. It felt like boulders were forming within her chest weighing down every bit of her. Nymeria was mesmerized by the death of life. A part of her wanted to stay, to dissolve along with it all. The plain mare stood along side Gail, not in support but in equal question of purpose.
”Beautiful.” She whispered. Her words flowing through the air, fizzling out like flames without oxygen. The ground shook. The langoliers devoured. Their shapeless forms with chainsaw teeth wreaked destruction before them. Nymeria should have been afraid. Like before she had hints of coward woven within her being, but none of that took hold.
The ground shook. She remembered. Kreios, her stallion, Beqanna, her home, they called for her like an echo from beneath the hold of the boulders. They anguished for her. It wasn’t her time. Nymeria broke eye contact with the langoliers, the destroyers, and urgency bled into her. The small filly spoke. She spoke a lot and Nymeria listened.
”Carnage.” She spoke his name, allowing it to fall to the air. ”Gail…” Her head turned and she spoke to the mare, the confidant beside her. ”You should come with me. Back to Beqanna.” She said simply. ”This is the end, you’ve seen it. You’ve seen it everyday, but don’t you want to know what happens before this? Before it all ends? To know if the world is worthy of this.” This beautiful destruction. ”We have to tell them…about this….tell them all. Only you understand it to the depth of who you are.” For it was gorgeous, and it was worth remembrance, appreciation.
The wormhole spits him out onto another beach (though whether it’s a different beach or simply the same one at a different time, he doesn’t know). The surf is violent as he struggles to shore; weighed down by all the water he has taken on seemingly everywhere. It soaks his mane into dripping dreadlocks, clogs his ears so that they swoosh until he thinks to shake. Worst of all, the salt burns his eyes and flavors his throat with its tang. It tastes like the blood that wells upon his lips after he bites them. Here, among more ruin, this realization hits too close to home. Here where time has evacuated the travelers from its highway, he doesn’t like to think of death.
He’s glad when he can feel the sand beneath his hooves once more. The sound of machinery reaches his ears then (and he can hear, now that the water’s gone. He can hear all too well). A pulsing, living clanking in the near distance that rattles his bones. It fills him, makes his blood anxious as it circles around his arteries and veins. This unholy noise, this unnatural pulse that seems to split the universe with its progression. But he sees other things too, and hope fills him at the sight of one. Gail – the black woman he’s been so desperate to find – and he wonders how she’s tolerated the sound for so long. Surely, she is made of stronger stuff to tolerate this. Surely, that is part of the reason their dark god has spent so much time and energy (or rather, sent proxies) to rescue her. Why else would he do so? Who else would he do it for?
She must be amazing.
She must be what grounds him, what keeps him from pulling the world apart at the roots. He could, too, in the blink of an eye. Gail is his constant, his anchor and beacon in the darkest of waters. She keeps him afloat (or at least clinging to the edge in desperation). Ramiel wonders what kind of love that must be. He wonders what they’ve sacrificed for each other – because isn’t that what love is all about?
Gail draws in his eyes first, her stark figure a borrowed beacon for him. His legs quickly follow, leaving imprints in sand that is more familiar than the alien terrain he has become accustomed to. The surf crashes next to him (still so violent, so unrelenting) but he becomes more and more concerned about the clanks. The yearling stops in front of her and is surprised to see just a mare. She’s just a black horse, nothing outwardly special or unique. They look similar, in fact, save for the gold strands woven into his dread-locked mane and tail. He smiles because she is plain, smiles because he has searched galaxies for this lost woman, believing her another god (adorned and marked and powerful), only to find someone like him. As if he, too, could be worthy of such devotion. As if someone would bend time and pull apart the stars to find him.
Anything is possible, he thinks.
“Gail,” he breathes her name quietly, thinking she might appreciate hushed words when she’s been so used to the hellish noise. “I’ve been everywhere trying to find you. I’ve battled monsters.” Ramiel looks back to his leg, showing her the tentacle marks that creep along it. The wounds are puckered, ugly things made worse by the burning water that had further singed them. The pain is less than it looks, though, and he looks back at her. “I’ve ridden on the backs of flying creatures, flown through a wormhole.” He had been smiling, but it quickly fades. “I’ve lost my sister along the way. I hope she’s alright, that she’s home, but I don’t know.” His gold-flecked eyes are somber thinking about what they’ve both lost. He, his sister and her, possibly much more. To him, though, it’s his greatest loss thus far. “I don’t know.”
It’s clear that she’s hesitating. He can see it in the way the sand seems to pull at her feet (like the blue sand pit had pulled at him). She becomes anchored rather than the anchor, and it makes Ramiel feel even worse for her. Gail, the woman he was meant to save, and she doesn’t even want to be. He has to convince her, to pull her from her trappings like he had been. For now, he might have to be the monster, the shell-backed behemoth that rips you from the fate you had already accepted. She won’t die here if he has anything to say about it.
“Beqanna is different – it always is. It’s always changing, an amorphous mess of shifting politics and wars. You’ve missed many wars, I think. You missed Carnage’s resurrection by one of his daughters.” He’s not sure he should delve further into the tale, but feels suddenly compelled. If she knows, if she comes back, she can stop it from happening again. “He made a sacrificial pit in the Valley. They killed non-mythicals like you and me. My parents say it was horrible.”
He is pleading for a moment, as if she could go back in time (haven’t they messed with time enough to allow one more change?) and fix it. Rewind so the blood pours back into the wounds, back into the veins and the hearts start up again. Change things so that Carnage becomes a hero in other ways, becomes a legend for his hidden love of Beqanna, rather than its chaos. “He helped revive the place though. He gave it life, in a way.” Ramiel is a young fool, perhaps. A dreamer in some of the things he thinks. “Maybe you can influence him – make it a better place again. I think you're the only one who can.”
She still hesitates, and the sounds grow louder and more threatening. Already, the sky is black enough to make the colt think that there is no sky, not any longer. Maybe there won't be one again. The blackness is as deep and dark as space had been. This time, though, there aren’t any friendly aliens to carry them. No wormhole has opened up for him to push Gail through. He’s been trained to them, at this point. He would follow them anywhere, but now, he is stuck. His voice rises higher in its urgency. “Carnage is all of ours, all of Beqanna’s for better or for worse. But he is yours above all.” He says, knowing little and less of their history but guessing all the same. “And you are his. His Gail. His black light at the end of the universe.”
He tries once more. This time, he touches her though. It’s a whisper against her skin (skin that has been without touch for so long, he can’t imagine it. Skin that has survived normalcy when it is likely used to wonders beyond his comprehension). His muzzle slides up to the older and taller woman and finds her neck briefly before retreating. “Don’t you miss companionship, friendship? Love, even beyond the dark one?” Ramiel looks away again. CLANK, CHOMP, WHIRR. The robotic pulse is strong, deafening. He has to shout at her now, though he hates himself for it. “Come with me Gail. This is the end for both of us if you don’t.” He points, though the sound is all around them now. Inescapable, but he thinks there might be some time left if they hurry. He hopes. ”There are other worlds beyond this end. See them once more, please. I can't bear for you to miss them. I won't leave you like you've been left before.”
You deserve universes, he thinks. Carnage has already proven it.
05-15-2015, 02:58 PM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2015, 03:00 PM by Kellyn.
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I wish I could feel it all for you, I wish I could do it all for you
She is falling, falling, the hot water closed over her head, and for a moment she wonders if she will drown anyway. Drowning will at least be more peaceful than being torn to shreds. But then she notices the water here is cool, and her head crests the water, and she takes a gasping breath, and her feet find purchase on the ground beneath. The girl stands, water dripping from her coat, and takes another shuddering breath before looking around. They’re two short again – two who did not make it through the wormhole to another place (another time?). The part of her that cares about others hopes that Carnage managed to send them home – she shivers at the thought of anyone being stuck in that last place with the monsters.
But…there. That is not one of them, that mare standing beyond the water. Not one of the seekers. Her acknowledgement is not instant, not like some of the others, but Kellyn stares at the unfamiliar woman until recognition sets in: recognition as soft at first as the flutter of butterfly wings and then a rush, like the waves that has so recently closed over her head. “Gail,” she breathes the word and then she slips from the water behind the others, watching. Wondering what is so special about this mare that the dark god is so desperate to have her back as to send them across this deadly game of worlds and times. She doesn’t seem like something so fantastic as to be so extraordinary. Even her words are confused – talking about death and her voice is not strong.
But as Brennen has told her many times, always with a quirk to his smile that isn’t quite settled, love is a fickle thing. It chooses you indiscriminately of logic and reason.
The filly has darted forward first, words spilling from her mouth in streams and rivers. Kellyn takes the opportunity to look around, because the shaking of the earth has drawn her attention and it in turn leads her to hear the chewing noise – it hurts, deep in her bones, and she knows it’s dangerous. The look reveals that the world is shrinking. Almost slow enough that one could miss it – but it blurs and darkens at the edge of the horizon, at the edge of her vision, and Kellyn knows that something is coming. They don’t have forever.
The filly talks of all the things Gail is missing – trees and grass and life. She talks about how much Carnage loves her, how she is the missing part of him. Kellyn wonders if that’s true (the world would have her believe he is Evil; and can Evil really love?) or if he has just taken a sudden fancy to wanting this woman back. He left her at the end of the world, after all, and for how long? Nymeria is different. Nymeria tries to tell her that she must come back because someone needs to tell everyone about the end of the world. That, too, she is skeptical of. How many will really believe they’ve been to the end of the world and back? Yes, it’s Beqanna, but even still there are things that must be seen to be believed. No…it will mostly be only those who have come who will believe.
The sound gets louder as Ramiel steps forward to speak, grating on her nerves. They all need a chance to speak, but she fears they won’t get it. Ramiel has quite a lot to say, and Kellyn throws him a sharp glance when he mentions Elite’s warpath in the Valley, wondering if that’s really the right track to take. Oh, yeah, by the way, your lover who left you here is even more of a psychopath than ever, and so are his kids, did you know? Was that really the way to talk someone off the brink? She can see dark shapes now out of the corner of her eyes when she isn’t quite looking, and the world continues to shrink and blur.
When they have fallen silent, the strawberry girl closes the last few steps to stand with them, to join the smaller group, her green gaze bright and curious. She makes a picture, surely – her mane and tail tangled from the wormholes and the running, blood staining her hindquarters where the ocean hadn’t quite managed to wash it away. Fresh blood trickles from where her movements have torn apart the half-formed scabs. “He left you here,” the words come slowly, because the feel of them is as always unfamiliar in her mouth. She talks rarely, having no real need to do so when she hides away in the Tundra with only her family for company. The feeling of desperation burns in her voice, urgency driving her to speak though she doesn’t want to. “You have every right to be angry, to feel abandoned, but He is not here. If you die here, if we all die here, our stories are ended. But that’s not right, is it?” Kellyn takes a step closer, a frown etched on her face. “He is a part of you. How can you end if he goes on? That is the ending you are supposed to have.”
The strawberry girl glances at each of her companions in turn, wondering what they leave behind if they all fail. If no one convinces her that she must come with them. Will He yank them back? Can He? Or will He let them die here, with her? The end of the world. Kellyn is perhaps the only one amongst them who could escape this, but she isn’t even sure she can. This is farther than she has ever gone – and even if she could send herself back in time, she couldn’t take them with her. One maybe, or two, but she would have to choose. And still, she might fail. “I would be angry, too. But He has torn parts of the world apart to send us here, to the end of the world, to find you. Clearly you mean something to Him. Maybe this is not meant to be your end. Maybe you are meant to be at His side until this comes for real, not jumping through time and space to get here sooner. The end of the world will come in its own time – but now is not that time.” Something in her voice changes when she talks about time – a softness that is somehow yet authority. She knows time. Its ins and its outs; and this feels wrong. Suddenly though, she grins, her capricious nature unable to hide itself for long, and her voice turns cheerful. “Besides, come back with us and you can make His life a living hell for as long as it takes to feel better about Him leaving you here.”
She steps back now and throws an unreadable glance at them as she turns to the horizon, something fierce in her gaze. Kellyn wants to live, and is frustrated if she doesn’t. “We’re running out of time. You know we are. You have to make a decision. Make it the right one.” And then the little mare steps away from the group and stares at the approaching things, big and then little and then big, teeth as bad as the monsters before, mouths as big as the dark caves of the Tundra. Wanting to give them all more time, more time to convince Gail to come, she struggles with the slippery lines of time. They don’t quite follow the rules she’s familiar with, but she catches them for a few seconds at a time, jerking them to a halt, only to feel the lurch of nausea in the pit of her stomach when they slip from her grasp and resume their inorexible forward movement. It goes like this again and again, and she is dark with sweat and breathing hard, but still hoping one of them will convince Gail to come if she can give them enough time.
She thought she had nothing to lose. But she knows now – she wants to live.
This place is different from the others. Although each place is different in its own right (the gathering place, where they first get shoved through something they are not prepared for; outer space, where their legs flail and their lungs somehow continue to breathe air and everything is so terribly cold; the land of monsters, where he smelled the ocean and then there is only water and then it evaporated away into nothing), this place is eternally different.
The first thing he notices is the noise – the noise of radio static, the noise of endless chewing, the noise of the world coming to an end – and it sends shivers up his back. It’s a nails-on-chalkboard sound and his mind recoils from the awful sensation in his ears. Although he doesn’t know that the vibrations are the noises of langoliers chewing away at the corners of everything he’s known, he certainly understands it is a bad noise (it is the complete opposite of things alive; it is the dying of trees and smoking clearings and decaying bodies, not the twittering of birds and fresh springtime rains and warm nicker of a mother to her loving child).
And then he spots her. He’s used to the ripping sensation of passing through the wormhole by now and the aftereffects are muted by the chewing noise and the sight of her wide, surprised eyes and the god-forsaken look of death everywhere. But her gaze is what truly captures his attention – a gaze of surprise and doe-like shock and hesitancy that reminds him of his own heart’s startled gaze when he proposed they make a life together.
He knows why the dark god would send them after her, now.
Her, her, her.
Gail, Gail, Gail.
The others (the ones who made it through time and worlds and stars and monsters) pile out of the wormhole as well and the chestnut tobiano notices how his heart’s son made it out alive as well. Mentally relieved of caring for the boy, the winged stallion turns toward her now. She asks why and how she can’t go because they are supposed to die together and his heart aches for her. This place – the end of the world, the darkest of all darkness, the prologue and epilogue of destruction – is a place no one should want to stay and he wonders, now, just how much she trusts him to believe his word.
And then he thinks about just how much he trusts his lover to believe her word.
The first two step forward and try to encourage her to leave with them (the static noise is increasing and in the distance he spots what he thinks is a plume of dark ash – but it is really just the end of everything). Once they try – and once they succeed or fail or end up somewhere in between – he takes a careful step toward her. They are close, but not close enough that they are touching (Lord have mercy if the dark god spots him touching her and he is struck dead after all this time) and his heart is beating fast and slow at the same time.
“Gail.” He says her name like it is a delicate, expensive object (and it is). He caresses the word against his tongue, letting it dance out with all the tunes of he might say his spring goddess’ name (sweet, slow, gentle, careful). And yet he holds back just enough to give the impression that he isn’t saying her name for his own benefit, but rather for the one who had left her. “I wanted to die, once. More than once, actually.” The memories are still sharp, even though he forced the demons away a couple of years ago, and they stab at his heart and mind. “This is the end of the world, though. This is the end of everything. If you stay here, he’ll have to go on without you. You’re his heart, his soul, his body, and his spirit. If you stay here, you’ll take everything he is and wants to be and was with him.” He knows; he’s thought about it. Each loved one he has loved and lost has taken a piece out of him (Echion, even though he barely knew his mother; Pisto, with his teachings and fatherly love; Kagerou, with her second mother behaviors and how they curled close under the canopy of the Jungle and cried over broken hearts) and he knows – oh how he knows – the feeling of his heart breaking. He doesn’t want that for the dark god; he doesn’t want that for anyone.
“He sent us here because he couldn’t come himself. Something or someone wouldn’t let him. But he’s desperate enough to send a whole troop of bodies after you. And we all came willingly, because we want to help. We want to see you happy. We want to see him happy.” Happiness is a fragile, fleeting thing and when you come across it, you must grab it tight and never let go. “The world is ending, Gail, and he doesn’t want you to end with it.”
He doesn’t know what else to say, really, but he forces eye contact in the hopes that she will see everything he can’t say with words. How much he wants to see her continue to thrive. How awful this place is and how he cannot imagine how long she has been here. How broken his heart would be if she stayed. Shuffling his wings against his sides nervously, the winged stallion licks his lips slowly before saying, “Just try. And if you can’t move at all, at least you can die alone knowing that you’ve done the best you can. But don’t give up without knowing, Gail. That’s the worst possible torture.”
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
The last place had been the bang. Screaming horses and roaring monsters, cracking earth and boiling sea. But here? Here is the whimper. The world has gone mute, the color drunk from the world. In the distance the sound of static comes, humming ever closer. She knows that is the sound of something devouring the world.
The wormhole drops her into the sea. Her burned flesh throbs insistently now, pain radiating through her to the beat of Gail’s name. With each step her muscles feel as if they tear, her legs weak beneath her. But it’s not over, and she cannot give up now. It’s too much to hold her form as a lioness anymore. She lets go, bones and muscle and flesh returning to their natural horse form. She doesn’t want to meet Gail as a lioness anyway.
She breathes out a sigh, feeling more energized in her normal form without her traits draining her strength. Looking forward, she sees a mare, and knows this must be Gail. Who else would be here, at the end of the world? The current neither pushes nor pulls on Rhy’s legs. The water is still without the sun or moon in the sky. The only movement is the tremor of the earth; the constant ripples of the water. As the sound grows louder, the world shakes harder.
Everything else is still. There is no wind, no smell, no sound other than their own voices and the static. Rhy splashes forward, even the sound of the water beneath her feet muted as if far away. Why? comes the word as the distance closes between them. As the distance between them and the static closes as well. The sound gets louder and louder, an insistent alarm. They do no have much time, but Rhy stays calm. At least on the outside, though the electric inside her rages to hurry.
There’s something about this place though. It feels almost wrong to rush or scream or yell. Gail speaks in whispers. Perhaps from so many years trapped here alone. Perhaps because everything here is so deadened even screams sound like whispers.
We were supposed to die here.
Rhy stops beside the mare, turning to look out into the distance. There’s nothing to look at. No horizon that tempts the mind to imagine what lies beyond. Not even a cloud covered black sky. Only nothing. It is both magnificent and terrifying.
Why should Gail come back? She doesn’t know this mare, doesn’t know what she’s lived for other than Carnage. If there even was anything other than Carnage. If it were Rhy, would she go home to the man that left her? Or would she stay, would she let the monsters devour her? She’ll never love Kratos the way Gail loved Carnage. She’d never follow him to the end of the world, and he would never take her. But she would follow Kora to the end of the world. She would come back even after Kora left her. Hadn't they done exactly that? Not so extreme, not with their lives in the balance. But even when her family left, Rhy chose to live. She found the Jungle. She found herself. And then, one day, she found Kora too.
“It’s tempting, isn’t it?” she asks, glancing to the mare. “To stay here, to be a part of the end of the world. There’s something extraordinary about it.”
Because it is tempting and extraordinary, and she thinks it’s worth acknowledging this option. Part of her wants to know what is coming for them. The death that comes for them is an adventure. There’d be no one to sing their tales. Not in Beqanna, where they have come from. But perhaps in the next life, if there is a next life.
“But there are also so many extraordinary things about the living world. The Falls have healing waters; the Gates have a mother tree that protects them. The Chamber has seen slave pens and their own magic tree for a time. Every kingdom has changed in both big and small ways, all destroyed and rebuilt. There are whispers of magic in the air, magic that we’ve not yet seen. Whispers of new wonders of the world, because there are always new wonders in world full of magic.”
“He’ll never die. But I think you know that.” She says now, finally addressing the last thing Gail said. “At least, he will never die permanently. Gods aren’t prone to staying dead.” She doesn’t know Carnage herself, but she knows the stories of him, of Eight, of Evrae. Of all the magicians that have lived long enough to have died many times over. None of them were dead.
The static grows louder, becoming a clear sucking sound. The tremor of the earth has grown violent, rattling her to the core. She thinks they are facing the monsters. The impossible emptiness before them seems to grow closer. The electric inside her hums, perhaps enough that even Gail can hear. She’s her own alarm. “But he did come for you. In his own way, anyway. And that is something. I know no tales of magicians coming back for anyone. They come, they get bored, they move on. But not you. He’s never forgotten you.” She may have been the most ordinary mare in the world, but to him, she was special. And how often did that happen?
She sees them now, the others that came with her. They are coming from the sea as she had. Had they all landed after her, or does time no longer move in a linear fashion here? Kratos comes, a small beast in a world of monsters. Lagertha as well, a warrior who can face anything. They move as if injured, but they are alive.
If they are to die today, at least they die together.
The sound of the static is almost louder than her words now. Would their Dark God come for them, even if Gail chose to stay? Or would they face the end of the world together? She doesn’t know. This may be the last thing she ever sees, the impossible nothingness and this mare for whom they have risked their lives. “Come home Gail. Come home for you or for him, it doesn’t matter. But come home. There’s so many wonders left to see, so many stories left to tell. There will be no more wonders here.” Just death. Just the devouring of the world. That was the last wonder they had here. And she wasn’t ready for there to be just one more wonder. And now, all she could do was hope that Gail felt the same.
05-15-2015, 04:15 PM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2015, 04:21 PM by Lagertha.)
this will never end, ‘cause i want more, more, give me more
Space, stench and ash, so of course the next element of their portals must be water. There couldn’t possibly be anything leafy and green in this tour of the various dimensions of hell (or is it the never-ending purgatory?). The dark gray mare finds herself furiously trying to keep her head above water in the hot (too hot, too unnatural) depths of the sea. Eventually her hooves find a wobbly purchase on the shells at the bottom and she is able to drag her heavy body through the shallows. Lagertha might have found the effort to be a great workout if she hadn’t just escaped from acid rain, a sentient organ that births monsters, and some half-lizard, half-elephant vampire creature. Instead, the shieldmaiden is simply grateful to find herself alone on a beach where she can catch her breath and rest for a bit, and try to figure out what must come next.
She still doesn’t know the Dark God is her sire, but if she did, she might have spit at his feet for such an absurd and dangerous mission. She would be glad such whimsy wasn’t passed on through his seed.
Gail, Gail, Gail continues to echo its siren’s call in her head, and she is about to lay down when the beach (no, the earth itself, the entirety of it) quakes and the sound of metallic crunching echoes from somewhere that must be fairly close by. Wide eyes with white rims look around and spot a mare standing alone, silently watching her progress. It must be her. It must be, who else would stand so still while the world crashes down around them; who else can effortlessly look the part of the damsel in distress? Who else would look so much like a Gail? She stands alone atop a fairly small, rocky cliff, seemingly unperturbed (neither excited to see her rescuer, nor feeling the urge to flee) by the sudden appearance of another horse. Lagertha tries to keep her eyes upon the mare as she scrambles up the beach, and then up the low-grade incline of the cliff, until she reaches the top and draws nearer to the morbid angel, the only one who could ever come close to taming their Dark God.
Old blood should call to old blood, and in a perfect world, some magical part of Lagertha would remember Gail the way that Grimmy did. Alas, Grimmy is not in her daughter the way that she was in Seera, it is only her likeness that might nudge at some memory in Gail’s mind, but not in our General’s. Instead, she must ask the question, lest it be another otherworldly trick. “Are you Gail?” she asks, her usually demanding tone slightly tempered by the desire to keep the woman here, in front of her, instead of chasing her off. The mare nods, though she is clearly confused. “Good. Then you must come with me.” This time, it is an authoritative command, the type that mothers use with children when they must make it clear that there is no other option.
It doesn’t take. Instead, the woman whispers Why? with a tremorous rasp in her voice. As if it has been a century she she last spoke. Lagertha rolls her eyes and snorts in irritation, unused to being disobeyed. “Because I was sent through two different worlds to get you, and your name has been pulsing in my brain since we began. I found monsters and bled to fetch you back. Now, come with me.” The last part is more insistent, more demanding than before. Now she is a General talking to a soldier, and she knows few who would not heed the command. Still, the woman has the gall to ask her again. Why?
She looks at Lagertha, and there is some shift in her eyes, as if she can recognize his blood that runs through her veins, as if she might be able to recognize her old hag of a dam. “Because this world is about to end, and the world that you came from kept on going. Beqanna is still there, and it has endured and changed. It’s actually a pretty nice place to live. I’m from the Jungle - this tattoo -” she indicates the vine and flower that is intertwined with a nordic pattern to create a sort of breastplate across her chest - “- is an indication of our Kingdom now. I’ve heard that wasn’t always the case. There’s a lot going on right now and you could be a part of it. You could be a Queen, Gail. He is still King.” She lies through her teeth, making him alive and part of their world again. She makes him more than their figments of imagination, more than their nightmares, and brings him back as Elite once did. It doesn’t know she’s always been his Queen, and yet never sat upon the throne. She doesn’t need to. But it might spark her fancy, to believe that she could finally be at his side forever, ensconced upon a dais as a pair.
I can't go, she says. Now, Lagertha's patience is at its end. “Stop being so weak,” she growls. "Its pathetic. You've been standing here all this fucking time, just waiting for the world to end. Who the hell does that? If you want to stare death in the face, head on out to the battlefield, or climb a live volcano, or walk on the top of the Tundra’s ice wall. This? This is cowardly. What do you intend to do? Whatever is making that goddamn sound is going to get closer and you're just going to passively let it end your life?" She pauses, disgust in her hard, dark eyes. Lagertha is almost incapable of giving up, she doesn't understand it and she does want to. Amazons don’t give up. "Why am I here, then? Why did he waste his magic and effort on someone like you?"
Good lord, if looks could kill, Lagertha would put Gail out of her misery right then and there with a pair of daggers. No second thought needed.
When the object of her derision opens her mouth again, is it Lagertha’s imagination, or has the mare's voice grown more quiet, more lost, more confused... as if the General were eating away at her resolve? I’m supposed to die here… We were suppose to die here,she whimpers, and our warrior takes a deep breath, heading back into the logical melee. "Look. Beqanna hasn't actually changed that much. These days, those that die don't often stay dead. My dam died twice and still came back through some freakish possession and managed to have me. Death means nothing. Death is not the end. This place here? This is the end, and if you stay you will never see him again. He isn't coming to join you, Gail. And the fact that I'm here is proof that he doesn't want you to die either. Besides, men are all talk anyway. Saying he wants to die with you is probably some stupid metaphor for wanting to fuck you." She adopts a sad, disappointed sort of tone. “If you really loved him, you’d come with me so you can live. If you came with me… maybe he wouldn’t be so miserable, and maybe he wouldn’t take his misery out on us.”
That’s right. Take a full-speed-ahead ride down Guilt Trip Lane.
That horrid, grating-cum-chomping noise (like nails on a chalkboard, but in some junkyard meltdown facility) sounds again, a fog horn in their ears. It's perilously close, close enough to make the hairs on her body stand on end. Close enough to make her want to resort to violence to get this damn woman moving. So Lagertha circles around and inches in front of Gail, sprouting a multitude of tiny, onyx thorn - shaped spikes from her chest. "Now we can either make this easy or hard. You can run with me away from here, or I can physically force you back. These babies are razor sharp, and while they won't do nearly enough damage to put you in danger, they will hurt like hell. Enough to make you jump back. I will do it again and again until you come with me" She stares at the mare, a solid, no-nonsense sort of look. Her jaws clench in determination. She doesn't leave anyone behind. That's not her way. "So what's it going to be, Gail? I'm not dying here with you. Not today."
She would resort to violence, wouldn’t she? She is so like him, and she doesn’t even know it.
i'll pick up these broken pieces 'til i'm bleeding
if that'll make it right
With his next breath, the ash clears from his lungs. With his next journey through time, space, and eternity, he finds himself at the End. With the next opening of his eyes, he sees it all, and all he sees, is nothing. The radio static is both in his ears and before his eyes, like the waves of the ocean or the crackling of wildfire.
The End.
He appreciates it, for a moment. Stunning.
He thinks about staying, about replacing Carnage, about dying with Gail instead of returning her home. I can’t.
He can’t. For all of his morbidity, for all of his sinster ways, Nihlus longs for life. For Daemron, for Cerva.
The sea drips from his blackened hide; where once diamonds grew, fur has come once more, alabaster bark upon his legs. Memories of shifting into a horse do not exist to him; nothing exists to him, save Gail, save the Langoliers, save the life he must return to, with Gail. Thick, black water drops from his skin; the wind should have dried him off by now, but the wind no longer exists. Perhaps the Langoliers have taken that, too. They’re voices seem to be of it, of the wind; but the wind has never sounded so catatonic, so immobile, so constant.
She stands before him, plain, simple, the disjointed reflection of Carnage in the House of Mirrors. Nihlus wonders if perhaps there is more to her; he wonders if asking would be inappropriate in this situation, in the End.
Like Cordis, like Spyndle, like Noori, she is not mine to have but rather mine to reawaken, mine to save.
They come together slowly, and all at once, for he runs to her and she simply stands. Her words don’t reach his ears the way words reached his ears in Beqanna; her small voice is like the static, empty, full, alive, and dead. The wailing of the langoliers ring in his ears, yet instead of turning to run, he listens to her, to the way her lungs shrivel and the way her eyes taste like agony when he looks to them. As the timekeepers of eternity consume what little is left of this place, of this world, of this existence, Nihlus concentrates on her.
Nihlus glares into her, blue eyes glowing, the only patch of colour in this empty, desolate land.
”Why? Because Carnage lied. No one was supposed to die here, except everyone. Why do you think he left you here, the world on repeat, the static jumping from closer to further like a skipping record player? He lied, Gail.
"He’s kept you here for eighty four years, Gail. The little black boy you knew growing up has been fucking half of Beqanna in the white skin that only you truly know. In fact, he shed that skin for a season and turned into the stars, because maybe, just maybe, it would bring back some long forgotten memory of all the indefinable things you have done together.
“For eighty four years, Gail. He’s been thinking for all that time only of you; when seldom he did return to Beqanna, it was not to distract himself from the loneliness, but to scope out the horses who would be most able to finding you for him. Carnage can’t come here himself, Gail, but he also could never let you go. His magic was always weak here, but he’s kept you safe – stale, useless, and safe. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?
“He doesn’t fucking want you dead. If he did, why do you think he left? Why do you think you’ve been caged here for eight four years? If you leave him now, the paradoxes will be of an imaginable magnitude; if you don’t come with me, Carnage is going to end the world in Beqanna, the world where you are supposed to be, with him. If you let the world end here, the world will also end a million years ago. We do not want that.”
In Beqanna, the boy would have been out of breath. Here, it is as though he needn’t his lungs, for the langoliers have taken them, too. They have taken everything, it would seem. And the static – it only comes closer. He hopes it is enough. Oh god, it has to be enough.
Nihlus
rain manipulating, rabbit shifting son of Sinder & Noori
Ooc – sorry for the confusion about the setting himself on fire bit. I really need to be clearer about that. It’s just my interpretation of how shapeshifting works, since he can shapeshift into a rabbit. That’s all (:
05-15-2015, 04:26 PM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2015, 04:30 PM by Kratos.)
The next wormhole spits him out upon the beach of a world half-gone, half-eaten already. He sees the others here, his wild eyes frantic to lay upon Rhy and although she looks as battered as he, she breathes and so that is well enough for him. They are a battered and broken group, far from white knights more accustomed to saving ladies. But then again, was it not Carnage that sent them here? The Skeleton King? The eater of souls and breaker of spirits?
Bloody faced he steps to Gail, the object of his charge, the culmination of his journey, the reason why he bleeds before her. “Why?” She asks and he repeats it back to her, “why? Because he has risked us all for you, strangers and those that carry his own blood alike. Where I’ve been,” he motions with a swing of his heavy white head, “where we’ve all been, is unimaginable. Those of us that live through this, if..” Kratos adds emphasis to the word, for if she knew Carnage she knew full well what would become of them if they failed their dread god, “we survive this, will be forevermore changed.” He says, black lips caked and cracked with the dried blood from his nose, “as I know you are, forevermore changed.” Predator’s eyes gleam softer now, perhaps out of pity, perhaps out of sheer exhaustion. “I’ve seen what you’ve seen,” he takes a step towards her, his voice rising as the howl of the Eats of the World grew louder, closer. “And it scares me too,” he admits quietly, “come with us, come with me.” He asks, shifting his weight uneasily as the roaring of the end of the world becomes almost defeaning – they didn’t have long now and his words didn’t seem to cause much variance in her deadpan face.
“Look, I’m not good at this shit, I never have been. I’m not my father,” a titan’s sigh escapes his lips, “if he was here, he would know exactly what to say and in all likelihood you’d probably end up going home with him instead anyway.” A bit of levity breaks his lips in a laugh that somehow rises above the screams of the dying earth, “you weren’t supposed to die here. Your soul has lingered here too long for this to have meant to be your grave. Come back with us, decide if you'll stay once you see your new world, our new world. Beqanna is different and change is coming. Be a part of it, with us."
