"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
Can you know fear if you've already lost everything?
Oxytocin doesn't know the meaning of the word fear anymore. His children are grown and can care for themselves; the woman he once thought he loved is dead; the kingdom he cherished has been destroyed forever. He has nothing to fear aside from death, and death is proving to be a bit difficult to come by... he has lost the healthy sense of fear that is naturally instilled in all of them, and perhaps it is time for him to get that back.
He doesn't notice at first when the mark burrows into his rump, only continues along the path set before him (bringing him, unknowingly, towards the Dark God). It isn't until air becomes hard to draw in that he realizes something is wrong, and he works his jaw as he takes in each rattling breath, wondering why he can't fill his lungs. He reaches the shore with the rest of them, and trembles as he wonders if the magician is going to let them die here, inches from freedom. He can't take in a single breath anymore, and though the discomfort shows clearly on his face, he refuses to choke in front of any of them as Carnage speaks of Pangea.
He'd rather silently pass out before that happens.
Another mark--gravel this time--burrows into his skin, and if he had air in his lungs he would have cried out in surprise as it dug into his flesh. "Go," He tells them, stepping aside to let them stumble towards the water, and Oxytocin lets go of his pride. He stumbles to the surf, splashing into the waves until the water rushes over his head and he can breathe again. The first gulp of oxygen into his lungs invigorates him, and he dives deeper into the waves, until he can no longer feel the sand beneath his hooves.
Eventually, even the light fades. Once or twice he feels a fish take a quick nip at his hocks, but for the most part his dive goes unmolested, thankfully. It just takes so long. His legs are screaming from exertion by the time his hooves bump against the underwater island. Is this it?
For the first time in ages, she almost content. For one nearly impossible moment in time, she could almost swear she had felt happiness. But good things, it seems, are not destined to last. Not for her.
Sure enough, in that almost perfect, peaceful moment, she is struck by change. Or rather, she is struck my a small object, a perfectly aimed arrow that finds its target with ease. A sharp pain slices across her hip, startling her into flight. Her blue skin quivers in the wet heat of the Tephran winter, a response not of chill, but of surprise and hurt. She stumbles a few rapid steps until the sharp ache subsides, sending a bloom of tingles along her tense flesh.
Breath escaping in rapid bursts she glances wildly around before her vibrant gaze settles upon the offending hip, eyes darkening with alarm as something awful pulses through her body. She cannot see it, does not know and cannot guess, but she can sense the terrible wrongness of it. The darkness of the power as it spreads like thick syrup through her body. Soon her agitated breathing shortens into labored gasps as an urgency begins to pluck discordantly inside her skull. Before she can even stop to consider her actions, her feet are tugging her forward, dragging her away from Tephra. Leading her far away from the safe and comfortable and into the terrifying unknown.
Never before has she been so unable to control her actions, her own desires. It’s horrifyingly surreal, a dream she cannot awaken from. Not even when she finds herself standing upon an unknown shore, staring wide-eyed at a stranger, fearsome and ruinous.
In this odd waking dream, her heart yearns for water as her lungs strain for breath, but her desire is denied. The gray stranger keeps her here, a prisoner to his whims.
You’ve all been chose, he says. A dangerous proclamation. But if he had truly chosen her, he had chosen poorly. She is little more than a frightened, silly girl who barely knows her own mind. What use could she possibly be to him?
My kingdom is there…
It becomes more clear then, her mind grasping at straws as she attempts to determine reason. She is to be little more than cannon fodder. Just another body in a wild attempt to reclaim a fallen kingdom.
There are worse fates, she supposes.
The sharp sting of gravel piercing her flesh causes her to flinch, but the pain of her breathless lungs is far worse. And then, suddenly, she is released, the call of the ocean too strong to ignore. She stumbles forward, vision spidering as her lungs scream desperately inside her chest. The water is a blessed relief, cool against her heated skin, bursting through her burning lungs like the freshest breath of cold mountain air. She should be surprised at her sudden ability to breath underwater, but she does not find herself questioning the power of the stranger. Perhaps she had not been chosen so much as made into the tool he had so desired. That would make far more sense. She is certainly no one important.
As she slices through the murky waters, her vision shifts subtly, altering to become better suited to the ocean depths. She swims and swims until intuition tells her otherwise. Until instinct tells her that she has reached a land of ghosts.
She slows then, blue skin melding perfectly with the briny waters, mottled hair floating in a cloud about her. Another lonely, ethereal phantom in this wicked sea of ghosts.
Pangea. She has never been, but she has heard. Of course she has heard.
And he’s happy. They’re happy, as much as one can be in a constant state of grayness. They have each other and forever in their sights. They have everlasting peace and blank stillness to fill with conversation and companionship and love.
But all the time, he’s searching for a way out for them.
He thinks of escape until the thoughts are painful, but the mechanics are beyond him. He prays for escape until the hope is a raw thing unspoken at the base of his tongue. He wills them back, pressing against Ea and summoning all the strength in his dead-man’s limbs and heart until he is exhausted. But of course, there is never any flesh to really press against in the first place, no tether to the physicality that they had taken for granted Before.
One day, he leaves her with a ghostly kiss and tries something new.
He goes to the place where his grandparents ushered him Back, where Erros had burned through. He goes and touches the end of this existence. He forgets, lets go, doesn’t try. And he melts back like before. Because Ea had become his anchor. He had tried so hard to bring them both back that he hadn’t realized he could come back all this time. He had tried to force a them when the answer had been him.
Ramiel turns back to the Other Side, thoughts racing on what it all means, what he will do to get her back, too, when he’s struck.
The particle of dirt lodges under his jaw and into his head. A flash of the most excruciating pain runs through him then, so much so that he staggers back in a daze. As its magic seeps into his brain, he suddenly forgets everything else. Forgets the Other Side and the woman (women) waiting for him there. Forgets his mission to bring back his wife languishing in the bleak. Forgets everything but the need for water.
So he goes to it.
At first, he simply takes deeper breathes to fill the increasing need for oxygen. But the further he goes, the less it seems to help. When it seems like he will choke on the air that has always sustained him before, he has arrived to the shoreline. And he is not alone. Other horses stand dying alongside him, waiting for a reprieve that they are denied at first. And then he sees him – Carnage. But the sickening spreading in his brain makes him forgetful of just who stands before them all, holding them back from seaborn salvation. There is no recognition in his golden eyes. He hears him speaking of a kingdom in the ocean but none of it matters. Nothing matters until he can breath again.
Ramiel doesn’t even flinch when the second particle strikes his shoulder.
Find Pangea. Find Gail, his mind may have echoed, had it been in a right state. Find Pangea, Carnage says and releases them into the shallows. Find Pangea. It becomes the only focus of his blanked brain, the only thing that matters. The charcoal stallion falls into the water and is washed over with the glorious relief of the waves. He can breath once again once the water covers his face. He dives down, fully immersed in it now, the golden streaks of his mane fanning out around his head and catching the weak light from above.
He paddles like he knows what he is doing, like his body is meant for a seafaring life. His body seems to know the destination – or rather, the particle buzzing inside his newborn brain seems to. A dark grey bullet races in the corner of his right eye. He turns and sees a triangular fin and sharp-angled body. The creature closes in on him, swimming faster than he could ever hope to. But as it draws dangerously near, Ramiel sees that it isn’t as large as it appeared before. The shark jerks suddenly and bites him on the neck, taking a chunk of flesh and leaving blood trailing in the water. He’d underestimated it. He learns his first lesson. The wound hurts but it spurs him on further and faster.
Underneath the heavy ocean that feels anything but, Ramiel finds Pangea. The alive man’s feet find purchase on the dead land.
The dark and neverending forests of Sylva had become somewhat of a home to the stallion, but it never truly satisfies what he so innately craves.
The drowned god had been born of salt and foam, so to it he returns.
It hisses and sputters at his fetlocks, almost kissing his skin with each sweep of the black ocean’s tide; crooning to its master, dark and foreboding (powerful, all encompassing) yet at the same time a willing servant to his wishes. The deep emerald and pearlescent of his painted skin twitches almost feverishly as the spray of the sea settles across his flesh, moistening the dryness of his pale lips. His tongue runs across his own mouth, tasting the salt and breathing deeply of the place he feels the most welcome.
There is a sound - barely audible over the steady rise and fall of the ocean’s rhythmic waves - but it is accompanied with pain and a solid grunt from the stallion as the force of pressure sends him to sway. He snorts sharply, regaining his balance though not attempting to peer down at what had seemingly bit into his wet skin. Maugrim cannot breathe suddenly, but it is not in a way that begins to frighten him. He knows the feeling (one that is natural to him and he knows immediately how to satiate), but finds himself unable to move into the ocean. He champs his mouth, ears flicking into his neck as he realizes that he is not truly in control, eyes rolling wildly.
The dirt melts into the soldered scar (healed by fire, ironically) that races jaggedly across the thick muscle of his shoulder, seeping into the part of Maugrim that is familiar to both the dirt darkened by magic and the old wound that was opened by the same bit of earth.
And then, he remembers.
He remembers the shuddering of the earth, the groaning of the plates as they crash together and separate, rumbling hungrily beneath his hooves. He had been standing in the ocean with the water pressing against his chest (he had felt truly alive in that moment, the frigid dark waters soothing the churning rage that dwells inside him), but it was fleeting. It was a strange feeling as the water begins to sink lower, rushing out from beneath him like someone had unplugged a drain. For a moment he had merely watched curiously, his head tilted slightly in confusion as the world behind him shattered and cracked. Then, with more power than he had ever felt, the water pulled his legs from underneath him.
He had been just a boy when his newly discovered world of Pangea had crumbled into the sea - pulling him, calling to him, even before his abilities had begun to ripen. He had stood at the edge, staring into the endless black ocean with equally endless black eyes, falling into its inky embrace with a peaceful gaze despite the rocks that bruised his bones or the corals that met him beneath the waves with biting, unforgiving teeth would leave memorable scars. The weightlessness he had felt was nothing like he had ever experienced. He remembers the dark, cold womb as it had enveloped him the first time and fear had not been at the forefront of his mind. The water was where he belonged.
Another force of pressure into his shoulder brings Maugrim to the present, pressing into his skin mere centimeters from where the first incision had been made. This piece did not trigger any sort of memory or ‘duty’ in the Oceanlord’s brain, but he did not have to think about it very long before a voice from within occupies his mind.
“You’ve all been chosen,” comes the voice, “My kingdom is there - ” The voice pauses, but Maugrim already knew the ‘there’ into which it is referring. His dark eyes scan the sparkling horizon, already attempting to leave the calm shoreline to feel the surge of water pull and push against the broadness of his chest, despite his hooves being firmly planted into place by the will of another.
“Find Pangea.”
There is no hesitation as he pushes himself into the ocean, leaping into the waves without a second thought and allowing it to curl over his head with a welcoming sigh. The sea intensifies with his presence, humming with madness and life, even more so now as Maugrim uses his power to propel himself downwards into nothingness. The ocean responds to his mind, creating a current that pulls him close and allows the travel to the bottom of the sea quick and easy. He has done it before, after all.
However, the drowned god finds it interesting that there is no need for him to liquify himself to be able to breathe clearly. Even the pressure of the entire ocean does not phase him in his solid form. His lungs and throat and body are fully visible as he comes to sink his hooves into the muddy floor, the overwhelming darkness meeting him like an old friend. There is a semblance of a smile on his pale lips as he notes the creatures that surround him - some living (anglers with their wide jaws, tube worms with their swaying spines) and some long since dead (cracked bones and skulls of those who could not find their way out of Pangea). He, perhaps, would have been among the bones if the ocean had not chosen him and spit him out in the riverlands when he was just a boy.
He had been ready to sink down into the darkness when Pangea first fell and he is more than willing to do so again.
09-08-2018, 11:05 AM (This post was last modified: 09-08-2018, 11:07 AM by Pond.
Edit Reason: Posted as Pond, was meant to be posted as Volcan... my bad ^^;;
)
volcan
Burn slow, burning up the back wall Long roads, where the city meets the sky Most days, most days stay the sole same Please stay, for this fear will not die
Volcan is alone, contemplating some of her more recent encounters and the strange gaps of time and memory still lingering in her mind, when something stings her right between the shoulders. The spike of pain is enough to make her flinch and startle, literally jolting off all fours until she can look around and see what’s happened.
Except nothing has happened… until there is a strange sensation of something running through her body like the roots of a tree, something she can’t control. Something that is not quite corporeal but magical, something that moves her with its own will although she moves along with it - what was this calling? She’d been near the ocean already, but this calling brings her elsewhere, to a new place that she hasn’t visited since…. Since when?
Foggy memories fling through her mind like autumn leaves on a strong wind, there and then gone again before crunching beneath her hooves and… wasn’t there something she was supposed to be doing? What is this urge? This strange tug in her breast that pulls her further and further to the very edges of Beqanna? She finds herself gasping as if the air were made of mud, as if her throat were closed and she couldn’t even cry out for help.
Her legs fail her and she falls to her knees, coughing and gasping. There are others around her suffering the same affliction and even if she could ask them what is happening, logic tells her that they would not be able to answer either. The strange burning and tingling sensation between her shoulders tells her they are all enduring exactly the same fate as herself. She gasps feebly, tries to stand, fails, and tries again. Fails.
Why is this happening again? she asks herself, retreating to her memories - memories of being trapped in a void, memories of being incapable of asking for help, incapable of returning to her family, incapable of breaking free from the jealous magic that had kept her trapped for so many years. Why can’t I just be free?
As if in answer to her mental questions, there is another sudden pain - this time it is a little more severe. It needles its way right down the line of her spine, right beside the original puncture of softer earth. This feels more like an implant than a needle’s sting and she gasps sharply as the small bit of stone embeds itself into her skin. Something between the two punctures feels strange, like a thread that sews them together with her own body as the cloth. She would cry out if she could but she also knows that she is made of stronger stuff than that. She clenches her jaw, frowns her eyes shut, and endures.
The pain is somewhat minimal, although entirely tangible; what’s strongest is the pull that tempts her toward the water. When she finds the will to open her eyes again, she sees Carnage as well as the others that have been brought with her - the ones she’d wanted to speak to before but couldn’t. A frown furrows her brow, but she listens. She does not know Carnage by name or face but she knows an authority figure when she sees one.
His instructions are strange to her, although the word “Pangea” stirs up some recognition in her vague memories. Still coughing, she takes his word as gospel and bolts for the waves as soon as she is allowed.
Once she has made it past the continental shelf and is allowed to dive further, finally breathing regularly (if a bit rapidly) again, she heaves a large sigh. No bubbles trace her descent. She wonders if this is a dream, like the ones she was fed by Camrynn when she’d been stolen, but then something scaly brushes against her side. Volcan turns her head and is startled to see some massive beast following her movements. Its neck is long, at least three times the length of her body, and its fins cause a massive disruption in the water so that she has to fight to keep swimming downard.
It only seems curious about her, bumping her haunch or shoulder occasionally but subsequently disrupting her progress. Its eyes are small but they stare at her readily as if waiting for the first sign of weakness they can find. Volcan never shows one - she has fought long and hard enough to give in to something she can finally touch (or at least control). Eventually, her annoyance gets the better of her and she lifts her head against the currents battling around her, focuses her attention, and turns the beast away with her telekinesis. Let that be that, she scoffs to herself, not bothering to look over her shoulder and instead continuing her journey downard with the others.
Finally, in the murky and abyssmal light of the ocean, something looms into sight. Could that be the kingdom the summoning-stallion had spoken of? The land that he’d lost and apparently needed them to…. Recover? Repair? Resurrect? She can still feel the twinging pain between her shoulders, as if the pieces beneath her skin were pulling her toward it and she acquiesces.
When she lands upon it the ground almost feels solid, like the earth in the Meadow or even the sandstone in Nerine. There is something strange about it, as if being underwater has made it somewhat soggy and yet there is still life within it. Volcan tilts her head and inspects it, but finds that her telekinesis does not work upon it. What is this place? she wonders as she glances around at the others who have made it this far. None of them seem to have the answer either.
For now, she waits. He’d said there would be further instructions, after all.
It is the quiet of the night, during the hour of the wolf, where the diseased remnant finds him.
The hour of the wolf is when he hunts, stretching far and across the lands of Beqanna. Hungry! It calls within him. The beast that has never settled, the one that calls him to sow and reap the lands with chaos and destruction.
He moves swiftly against the land. Dark paws finding impacting precisely onto the dirt floor beneath him. The scent is thick in the air, something meaty and fresh. It moves quickly making the game all the more exciting.
Hungry, hungry, hungry.
It calls, it encourages, it demands.
The hound answers the call. Searching wildly with red-yellow glowing eyes across the wide opened land of frosted grass blades. He inhales the deep scent of the wintery crisp night. Moving forward, twisting and turning here and there. It follows without question, the call of the hunger, the call of the darkness.
But then there is something else.
Something that forms lost memories.
He stops in his pathway, quickly turning here and there within the heart of the meadow. The hunger is forgotten, distracted by the smell of something so far, but so familiar. Black body of thick fur twists and turns, glancing here and there. The smell increasingly becoming more and more closer.
It hits him then, piercing him in right shoulder where the scar of a claw had formed. It is shoulder where Carnage had marked him. The wound had healed then, but it pierces open, the diseased remnant pushes in to his shoulder, eating away his skin and muscle.
The hound screams out in agony, falling to the ground. He twists and turns, the parasite making its way into him. It spreads through him—quickly taking over every neuron within him.
Fight it. The hungry demands. Fight it, fight fight! It begs, it cries out to him.
He can feel the hungry within him scream out. He screams out in agony as well. The hound chokes. There is no air within his lungs. He hyperventilates, choking on the very last bits of air it feels like. He chokes again, louder. He coughs uncontrollable now.
The battle between the hunger and the cancer. But the cancerous parasite is strong. The hunger is no match for the cancer that is within him.
He coughs again, but there is air. It is so small, but it is enough to breath. Slowing.
It pulls him. Move! He moves forward.
That way, it demands. He follows the path towards the water.
The hound knows this path. He knows where he is going—he is going home. Where hell had created and fathomed him into this world. Where he had come as an omen, a warning to the red devil father of his.
“Master,” he coos when meeting the dark god at the shores of Pangea. He falls to his knees and is kept silent, without question or doubt. The hound is not surprised to be called into the service of the dark god again. He will serve again—no matter the price.
He bites his lips when the second piece is pierced into his shoulder, accepting the task readily from the dark god.
“Go then,” his master says.
He bows and then moves from his kneeled position. The black hound dives into the water, swimming into the depths. Find Pangea, the voice demands.
The light slowly fades from the top of the water. He swims further into the depths of it. He finds it easy to breath. There is nothing within him that worries that he will drown and die. It is only the task at hand that consumes his thoughts.
One stroke. Two stroke. Three stroke.
It repeats. The endless cycle of swimming. It feels like he is swimming forever, into the black abyss of the night.
Eventually, his black paw touches the edges of the land. He breaks from the ocean, and stands on the edges of the shore.
It doesn’t pierce her quickly or painlessly. It eats away at her scales and burrows into her flesh, burning, ripping. Shiya’s head whips to the side and she nips at her own flesh, groaning uncomfortably as she tries to first extract and dissolve the pain, but it sinks deeper. The remnant – whatever it may be – claws into her muscle, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s in her blood, in her organs, in her breath.
There is no saving herself as the pain blossoms and spreads throughout her entire core. Her body writhes to life as the pain intensifies. Seconds melt into minutes, but it feels like an eternity until everything settles. The pounding of her heart quiets. She blinks. Nothing around her changed – the meadow is quiet with so many others mindlessly grazing. Vulgaris isn’t at her side – she feels empty and cold – but her loneliness is calmed by a voice that draws her from the tree line. Curious, she follows even as the air she breathes turns to razors. Oxygen stabs into her throat and burns her lungs; it elicits fear, but she doesn’t stop herself from the magnetic pull.
Somehow, his voice is familiar. Was he one of her many desperate attempts to find a lover that actually cared about her? Obviously, it had been a failure, but another defected child had been borne of the encounter.
But that is a figment of the past now.
All that matters is what he says now with a voice that echoes throughout her entire being, trembling ever fiber of her body.
There’s another stabbing pain that burns its way into her flesh. She turns to address it, but her mind is so clouded by his directions that it almost seems to numb the pain. Pangea, she notes, and she tries to take a breath but it reminded of the painful stabbing when she tries. Pain. There is pain everywhere – inside and out – but if he is the one to create it, then surely he can remove it. Find Pangea. It seems almost simple enough to swim down and unmask his hidden realm from the abyss. With a curt nod, Shiya turns and slips easily enough into the surf.
Drawing in her first breath is frightening. Drowning is going to overcome her and leave her corpse floating on the waves. Shutting her slit eyes, she dilates her nostrils, but she finds it easier and less painful than on Beqanna’s land. Curious, she descends. The salt water slips past her sleek scales.
There’s a shark that hurtles by. Reeling back, her hooves awkwardly scrambling, she prepares for an attack, but it pursues a large tuna nearby. Threateningly, she bares her elongates fangs before descending further into the depths.
It’s colder here, darker.
When she peers up, she notices how the sunlight begins to fade and the crystalline blue dips toward a midnight. It’s here, she muses, and she paddles desperately. There’s a large presence looming closer, and when she fixes her eyes on a piece of outspoken land – it doesn’t match its surroundings, like a desert planted in a jungle of seaweed – she realizes what it is.
This is Pangea, this is the land of death.
She found it, discarded, in the sea.
