looking for heaven found the devil in me; any

[Rodrik]

They had forgotten. The stories of the old had simply become forgotten or became legends. He faded away as well, becoming part of those stories. The stories of the old world were where he fell into, just another old king that once ruled a forgotten-kingdom. A kingdom that used to be feared by many and held the highest regard for. They will not know that names that are written upon his heart, those that he has killed and died at his hands. They will not know the souls he has kept locked away, the ones that scream to be released and to find their peace. But they will know that he is the devil, bestowed into this world—a ruler of death. But he is not the monster they made him to be. He has been a father to a handful of children. He has been a deceitful lover to some, but loved another full-heartedly. He has been a son to a once queen—a mother he adored like no other. He is a legend—forever he will live. The darkness pulls and tethers him together. Piece by piece he will always be rebuilt. The earth pulls and sews at his limbs. Flesh and bone mend back together by anatomical and physiological elements at the will of death. A salve to the darkness is what he ultimately is. He is drawn to the darkness, to worship and created to corrupt. He thirsts for greed and to be someone many years ago has shaped him to be this way. And at times he tries to return to what he once was—a man who only wanted to be something. Beneath the hollowed-dark eyes remains the boy he used to be. --- The night claims him again. He finds himself as a shadow-dweller of the night, just as he had been with the weight of the crown long ago. He used to slither through the night like a snake ready to strike, a wolf ready to hunt. Tonight though, he is not the snake or the wolf, he is a wander. These trees are not the same he has grown up in, they are not the familiar pine woods that were giants reaching for the gods. These redwoods are more; they are the gods of these woods. There are secrets here, secrets that they hold. Secrets that he seeks to find, to understand why he is the way he is. A fog intertwines through the tree trunks. It smells of salt from the nearby sea. Memory masks over the smell of the salt, as familiar images intertwine into the world he sees before it. It fills with the familiar scent of the mountains he used to know, the mountains that he once called home—the Chamber. He moves at a pace that is quick, one that leads him through the familiar paths of the Chamber. The chestnut can fill his heart bursting; the adrenaline is overwhelming. He feels it underneath his hooves, the pounding under the earth is evidence he is getting closer. Thump, thump, it calls him, it beckons him to come closer. Thump, thump, thump. The beat of it pounds within his eardrums now. It’s calling him home… home to a world that is long gone but he answers it. Disillusioned by a world he once knew; a world he would give his soul to return to. He would give up everything for a chance to redeem himself. But there are no mountains, there is trees and the smell of the salt. Rodrik shakes his head, images of a world he once knew slip away. The redwoods are replaced; reality of the world finally being put back together. No longer does he hear the thumping of the heart in the earth, nor the pounding in his ears. Rodrik isn't sure what he is doing here. A world of dreams flickering in and out of his mind. Kagerus, what have you done… he wonders.

character info: here | character reference: here | image © rostyslav zagornov

[abysm]

He is feeling rebellious today, the boy from the abyss.

(What is he really, he wonders. Monster? Shadow? Or something else entirely that they dreamed up together at the moment of conception?)

Rebellious enough to leave the safe and suffocating confines of Hyaline. It is easy to leave - to steal away in the night because they think him tucked in safe and sound somewhere, most likely dreaming. Abysm is dreaming. He’s left a dream of a tired and obedient colt lying in the grass beneath the trees that block out the black of the sky above him. It is a peaceful easy dream and takes nothing at all for him to plant it in the minds of his mother and her queenly lover.

His mother might eventually untangle the simple threads of the dream he leaves her with. In fact he knows she will at some point since he inherited his trait and raw skill from her. For now he is free of everything except the confusion still surrounding his origins. He knows now that he was pulled from the abyss and put into the fetus forming in her then passed into his father’s body for Rapt - not Kagerus - to birth him. And he could forgive this since birthing any foal would mean the end of her but he is finding it hard to reconcile the fact that she left them.

Just up and left. No explanations given. Not even know as they try to move forward as mother and son. But thoughts like these leave him sullen and mean backed by a hot wellspring of anger that feeds him as much as his dreams do. Before he knows it, fog is swirling around everything including him. 

He can make out the shadowy shapes of giant trees and knows well enough to avoid them. Gods or not, he’d prefer not to tangle with a redwood in low visibility. Salt tickles his nostrils along with something else. Something that smells old and dead. It makes him want to gag but horses don’t have that reflex so he snorts a few times, forcefully expelling air to rid his nose of the reek.

Only the smell grows stronger. Strong enough to be right in front of him as is the shape of a decaying old horse. “My god!” he says, unable to stop himself from saying anything else. His eyes look the monstrous mess up and down though he is not completely disbelieving of what he sees - he’s seen worse in his dreams. Made worse in his dreams though what stands before him is nice fodder for nightmares... what would mother think of him now as he considering bad dreams over good? 

Well she’s not here to rebuke him so he simply smiles and says, “You stink.”

@[Rodrik]

[Rodrik]

There were many that were born with innocence, unknowing of the world and yet to be splattered by the world of destruction. But then there were those, few, who were not given such a gift. Some were blessed beyond measure, capable of powerful entities. Gifts that could make them cross over dimensions of time and space, while others made them live in multiple different lives. He has been them all—born of innocence, rebirthed to create chaos, and passed through time and space. The memories had been suppressed for so long—living more than one life replaced the life before. A world he had known, but his soul had intertwined with another so long ago. They had become one—a warrior and a boy who was greedy for the betterment of life so early. Together they had perfectly fit, a puzzle piece finally finishing the master piece. It was her dreams that had awaken him. Dreams that he had not dreamt in so long. When you are dead there is nothing to dream about. There is no hope for the dead, no love. There is only loss. Rodrik snaps away from his thoughts, hollowed eyes turning to face the classic champagne boy. It is the smell, faint but still fresh, that draws him to even consider the boy. There is something familiar, something that already warms up his ever cold-stone heart. Kagerus, he thinks. But he wonders why. Why did she not say? He tosses the question aside. “You are quite observant aren’t you,” he says taking a step closer to the boy. A devilish smirk crosses his face as he peers at the boy. Rodrik’s eyes carefully look over him, he feels the darkness within him. It begs to search the obvious glow of the boy’s soul—to learn, to know, to understand. He, however, keeps himself at bay from doing so. Not just yet, he tells himself. Rodrik licks his chapped lips, the faintest of salt is tasted on the tip of his lips. “Aren’t you supposed to be with your mother, boy?” Condescending words fall from his tongue, he cannot help himself. There is something familiar in the way the boy is (something he might once had been).

character info: here | character reference: here | image © rostyslav zagornov
@[abysm]

[abysm]

He is growing less innocent and less enamoured of the world. Most days his outlook is more abysmal by the moment. Perhaps because there is something of the abyss in the boy since that is where he came from. That was before his mother plucked him out of the shadow and nothingness and wrapped him in embryonic layers of newness - new flesh, new life, new everything. 

But what if a bit of that shadow and nothingness remained? The original stuff cannot be unmade or ignored. Things that come from abysses and are named after such cannot be all sunshine and daisies, can they? He doesn’t think so as he passes from grin to glower and back to grin again. However this last grin is more impish and that somehow suits the boy.

“Quite.” he counters easily. Mother said it pays to be observant and he’d been a quick study under her tutelage. Father on the other hand er... hoof, would rather he remain as sweet and oblivious as the day he was born. But Abysm knows he won’t stay that way forever. Not when the darker aspects of life and dreams call to him. Beckon even, with arms full of monsters and darkness that seem sweeter than any parent’s embrace could ever be.

HA!

His brain crows in disgust. He is no milksop clinging to the mother’s flank that needs to hide his face in the stringy folds of her tail. One, he did not think Kagerus would tolerate such antics from a son of hers. Two, a child of the abyss never hides - he is the thing that others hide from. 

“Hardly. Even if I was, she’s too busy ruling her kingdom and loving in her lover to pay much attention to me.” there is a sour bite to his words. A hardness if time that means he found the question offensive despite the evident condescension. This putrid elder might be off-putting but Abysm simply curls his upper lip up in a mix of a sneer and a smile. 

“She has little to no time for me so I’m left to my own devices.” There is a glitter in his eyes that bespeaks to the hardness forming like a lump in his little soul. He could conjure up a quick daydream of the painted mare that is his mother to show the hideous (but oh so beautiful!) stallion.

@[Rodrik] sorry this took so long and isn’t much but I left it open for Rodrik if he’d like to see or experience a dream from Abysm? Maybe something that would clue Rodrik in to the fact that Ab is Kag’s son?

[Rodrik]

There is something to be admired in the young boy’s eagerness to be independent and stand apart so early on. Determination to be someone—to be remembered for—was something the red devil had wanted from the very first time he understood the world. He had wanted it all from the very beginning. And there had been no stopping him. Rodrik had made every step and every choice in the right direction. He planned accordingly as he waited and watched the world for the right opportunity. He rose up from the ashes and brought a kingdom back to life. He killed when it was needed, and sometimes for his own vendetta. Yet, he has always been the one to destroy what he has built. Even the own king to ruin the empire he has built. The years have held him together though. Turmoil twists and turns into his everlasting body, letting him thrive in a never ending abyss of darkness. Rodrik cares little for the world around him now. There is nothing that appeals to him as it once did—as the things the young boy might find excitement in now. Rodrik would beg the boy for a piece of his mind. He even considers stealing the boy’s soul to feel the innocence of a child again. To know nothing, but to know it all was appealing. Rodrik was desperate enough to do something drastic—even to his own flesh and blood. “Tsk, tsk,” he says with a smirk as it matches the younger boy’s own, “Your mother wouldn’t be so happy hearing her little prince spill such words.” Perhaps there is more than meets the eye to this young boy than he had thought. Their worlds aligned in similarity—their beginning of life almost the same. It draws him in—the kinship. A son he should have had. Truthfully, he did have a son (but does an omen from hell even come close to such? No, it doesn’t really). Rodrik tilts his head thoughtful at the boy. His smirk has never faded from his purely white boned smile. “And what sort of devices are you left to doing, hmm?” he asks with curious glimmer in his hollowed, nutmeg eyes.

character info: here | character reference: here | image © rostyslav zagornov
@[abysm] I like that idea of him going into a dream. Rodrik actually really enjoyed going into the one with Kagerus.

[abysm]

Abysm’s wants were highly simplistic:

Love, for starters. The kind that wasn’t the endless devotion and pride of his father. He wanted the kind where someone served him their heart on a platter of delicate curving ribs and soft skin. The kind of love they talk about that you only get once in a a lifetime, be it a mother’s or a lover’s.

And he wanted her to notice him. Not in the pitying way that a mother must love the thing she helped create. Only not fully because first it came from a place it shouldn’t have and secondly, because she no longer loved the other half that helped him create him. He did not want her pathetic attempts at making up for lost time that she’d been the one to throw away for the sake of power, love, and better babies. 

Secretly he wanted her to fear him. Whether for a minute or a long lasting moment. He wanted her to feel small and insignificant; to pale at the sight of him. Enough so that he gained her respect on a much more equal level than the shambling pathetic thing she offered him thinking it was a benevolent gift.

All that appeals to him currently in this world is making his mother bow to him in concession that she ought to have been there, tried harder and loved him harder. Oh and the girls... sweet, perfumed with warm summer grass and wild aching need, and eyes dark and flirting. 

Plus his dreams - the fact that he can go inside them at any given moment and change their outcome, for good or bad. Such power should not have been left carelessly to a child but it has been and so far even the dream-world has been moderately safe.

“HA!” he cries aloud almost doubling over at the scornful laughter that comes up from deep in his belly. “I’m a pauper in her eyes. Not one of the golden children that came from her beloved ‘s slick well-used thighs that she adores so much.” He spits his distaste until the spittle is thick on his lips and the gate has reached the brim of his heart and spills over into his twisted guts.

The rawboned smirk and curious glimmer in the deadman’s eyes is met with a glitter in his own eyes and a smirk on his own mouth. “Things like this...” and as he trails off, the fabric of the world is ripped asunder as he plunges them fast and hard into a dream that has yet to determine who it belongs to but is certainly not one of Abysm’s original making. 

It will be now, he decides as he wrests control of it from the unknown dreamer and looks pointedly at the stallion - “Tell me what to make them dream.” because he cannot just hand over the strings of his power to him but he can manipulate from his words alone and wreak havoc that way, on Rodrik’s behalf.

@[Rodrik] ugh sorry this took forever! let me know if you need anything changed but basically Rodrik can tell Abysm how he wants the dream to go and Bys will make it happen. <3

[Rodrik]

He had everything he had wanted in the end. Even without knowing what he truly had wanted, it had come into his life. But there had to be sacrifice. He had to hold onto the things he wanted, and needed most, with a fight. The crown and the power that came with it had been something he wanted as a boy, but it did not stir him like it did before. He had wanted others to condemn themselves to him, to snatch their souls and lock them away. But it did nothing for him now—the darkness had been his undoing from the very beginning he had accepted it. And then he had wanted justice—justice for all those that had wronged him, turned against him with a blind eye and ever thought of crossing him. Blood had been the price of that, and so did it forever haunting his dreams and thoughts. But it was all for his family and his love, Brunhild. Every demon that came to tear him apart was fought down, every enemy he made was slayed. He found vengeance where it was needed, and he would do it all over again for them. He can feel his own failure when looking at the overo colt. The way he proclaims his love for his own mother remained him of Straia. The red devil had dismissed her, raised her without the love she had needed. Ultimately, he had abandoned her, forgotten her. She had been part of his undoing, the final piece of losing the crown of the evil kingdom. He can only feel heart break for the way the cold feels towards his mother, and part of him wishes to reconcile that piece. To mend what little he. If only it was possible. Maybe it was. The glimmer in the boy’s eyes and the smirk on his young face draw Rodrik in. He can feel the world around him, the familiar twisting of realms and spheres. The sentiment of knowing instantly that anything was possible. Anything in the dream world was. He watches with wide eyes—the thought hitting him hard. Kagerus, what have you done? It had been obvious from the start, but now he was certain. This boy was his own family (but a forgotten child shared by a love that did not exist anymore). Abysm was his own daughter, Straia, in another body of flesh and bone. Rodrik doesn’t need to think what to make the other dreamer dream. In the world of dreams it never came true—it was only a dream. Right? He doesn’t know the limits or the rules. What are the possibilities? It was something he could only try. With the risk of knowing what he is about to do he says it anyway: “Make them watch the person they love die, or have them hurt the person they love most.” But he must add something else, “Perhaps their mother.” He watches to see what the boy says and reacts to his suggestion. “Maybe your own mother? You don’t love her do you?” He pushes forward more. “You probably would let her die even if you had the chance to stop it.” He could not have stopped his own mother’s death all those years ago. While Hakeem had not been the killer directly, he had been the reason why she had fallen into depression. He had been the reason why his little sister had died and created the sadness that eventually killed Kagerou. It had been Hakeem, and he made sure that he had paid the price by killing him for it. Rodrik cannot help but wonder if this boy would do the same for his own mother he supposedly didn’t like so much. “What will it be,” he pushes again.

character info: here | character reference: here | image © rostyslav zagornov
@[abysm]