"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
The territory is unusually quiet. Night approaches. Winter, which has stripped nearly every limb in Beqanna free of leaves, trickles through the everlasting red-gold canopy and deposits thick flakes of snow. The white tufts of frozen water dissolve over my warm skin, kept hot because I’m shambling in discomfort. Something inside my belly feels like tainted rot. It refuses to let me sleep peacefully, so I give in and walk.
Slush, slush, slush, my hoofsteps crunch, echoed by a similarly disgusting slush, slush, slush at the center of my hindgut. If I ignore the sounds altogether perhaps they might go away.
Or perhaps your baby is dead, a forbidden thought creeps around my head. Around and around … ring-a-ring o’ roses, a pocket full o’ posies.
Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.
“Those aren’t the lyrics!” I hiss at myself, the only company I’ve got in the wide, snow-laden forest. A few racking coughs follow suit, clear of blood. I must be healing, I know that somehow I’m immune, so these thoughts of dead children and silly rhymes need to go, before they take my sanity with them. A sigh of composure passes over my tongue and I think of them - the like-minded horses who called me to action in Icicle Isle - and I wonder if I can focus enough on my power to teleport me directly to one or another of them.
I picture the horned one: the great beast with a tawny coat, and then I close my eyes.
Nothing.
“Fairies above … I'll die before I figure this shit out.” I huff in a raspy curse. It leaves me with no choice but to slush along. If I’m a lucky, naughty girl someday they just might find me.
Wanna step to me better think twice, 'cause I look pretty but I ain't that nice
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
He hadn’t expected her to respond to the Fear like she had, but hadn’t it been a beautiful sight?
He had loved the way she exploded with it, fracturing and splintering outward, sending the land spinning outward with the force of her terror. It didn’t matter whether they fought back or drew blood or simply broke down when the horror hit their veins so long as he could drink in the reaction at all.
And what a reaction she had given.
He can still taste it, rolling around in his mouth, savoring the mouthfeel of her Fear.
Of course, he hadn’t wasted time in getting himself to safety when he felt the first blast coming. It was not the first time that he was grateful for his gifts of alien speed, slipping out of danger before he needed the magical defenses thrown up every which way. It was enough that he casually stirred the pot, planting the seeds of terror in her belly, watching her react, and then escaping with his hide still intact.
He wasn’t sure where he was heading next, although he knew he didn’t want to stay out in the open lands for too long. Still, he let his feet take him where they may. First, he swam his way to Nerine, then made his way through Taiga, and then finally found his way to the woods of eternal autumn.
Disease remained here, but he would take his chances.
At least for now.
When he sees her, muttering to herself, his shark eyes brighten with curiosity. She was one of the sharp-tongued ones from the meeting. He watches her intently for a moment, studying the way that she moves before he rolls his elegant shoulders and makes his way toward her, faster and more sure-footed than he had any right to do. “Do you always talk to yourself?” he wonders aloud as he gets closer, handsome face thoughtful. Casually, he plucks at the strings of Fear, wondering if she would remember, if she would respond or if she would recognize him as the source of it. “It’s an odd habit.”
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
He makes me question if I’ve got the power to summon as well as teleport, the way his cool voice haunts these barren woods when, just a second ago, he’d only been a figment in my backwards mind. The slithering coil of my gray eyes wind up and over one of my shoulders, blind to the way I’ve exchanged white skin and blue dapples for black fur and red spots because every single nerve in my tightly-packed body is honed onto him. They’re waiting it would seem. Waiting for the moment he strums the instrument of his power so that they might bend to his god-like will.
I’m a supplicant before him, clenching my throat closed in silent horror so that he can read the mixture of fear and elation in my eyes instead of hearing the tainted scream rip clear of my throat. My heart races in my chest, probably visible against the dark curve of my neck while I try to swallow it down again. I’m so terrified that I urinate on myself, feeling trapped as the warm shame trails over my bare legs before going cold again. I’ve no idea that this is only a marginal fraction of what the horned one can do.
Being so close to death again makes me feel alive, but I doubt he’d understand. I love it.
“Get the fuck away from me.” Comes out of my mouth, a sharp hiss that flows over two fangs and falls from curled, sable lips. Was I demented? Did I want him to kill me, honestly? “Or I’ll tear you apart.” I lie.
He can’t see how the fear twists inside of me. How it feels like staring into the abyss and then succumbing to it, leaping into everything and nothing all at once. You know the end will come and when it does, there’ll be a whole lot of numbness like there was in life but you can’t help yourself. The thrill of falling is a high I’ve recently discovered, thanks to him. It’s so fucked up and so wrong.
I want more.
My innards shiver and then buck, sending me crashing down for a moment while a wave of pure nausea competes for supremacy alongside his augmented fear. From the depths of my belly a hot groan expulses itself through my mouth and out into the frigid air, breaking the cold stare between us because I’ve shut my eyes against the sensation. The parasite inside is sucking away at me still, it would seem, and it doesn’t like what’s happening one bit. Soon enough it’ll know, I think, struggling to keep acidic bile down as I stare up at the mute gold stallion again. The world outside my womb is more unpleasant than death.
Wanna step to me better think twice, 'cause I look pretty but I ain't that nice
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
She soaks in the Fear quicker than almost anyone he has ever witnessed, and it makes his black eyes light up with cruel enjoyment. Her reaction is thick in the air, the way she flays herself apart to let it seep in her. He takes a step closer to her, focus sharpening on her further. He had not been expecting to do much with this one, had even considered letting the Fear slip on by, but he is curious now, and his curiosity is a dangerous thing to be the subject of. She snaps and his ears flip backward, pressing against his skull.
“Careful,” he snarls, tapping into his alien speed to press into her side, snapping at her with blunt teeth. He pulls on the strings of the Fear once more, perhaps with a little more ferocity than before. Over the years, he has learned how to master the sharp edge of it. Where had been clumsy with it as a child (never able to control it, utilizing it like a blunt weapon), he has turned it into an art now.
He knows how to drag the terror out, balancing it perfectly.
He is not subtle with it tonight though and he tips his head back to gorge himself on the horror that swims out of her in waves. His stomach growls with his hunger and he closes his eyes, humming as he begins to paint with vicious, broad strokes. Let her feel the bone-rattling terror. Let her tremble with it. Let her come completely undone. Let her discover that he has so much more to show her in this moment.
He leans down, teeth grazing up her neck, ignoring her weak threats. When she groans, his eyes open again and he stares at her with more interest. He drops the Fear coldly, eyes narrowing to study her.
“You might be the first to beg me for the Fear,” he growls low in his throat, hand hovering over the control although not picking it back up once more. “But I’d like to hear you try.”
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
Trapped in fear for too long, the mind will distract itself with just about anything in order to stop the torment. It’s confused, you see. All it can sense is the emotion, coming in great waves and then settling overhead, but there’s no pain afterwards, no bodily release … not yet. Without the expected ending our little self-important minds are stuck in that endless loop with no escape and it just tears us apart, inside out. If your brain can’t seem to latch onto that distraction (proof of something harmless, something not so fearful) then you’ll go plain crazy in the aftermath.
Bruise snaps at me and I focus, narrowing my sight right down onto the silver strands of his mane. Each separate thread springs to life when he suddenly breezes closer, illuminated by the weak filter of pale, winter light trickling through the canopy. I fear losing myself to those undulating waves of beat pewter, and find that I’m terrified by the idea of drowning in a sea of molten platinum and sterling. It doesn’t seem to matter what I focus on; the fear’s been planted like a dark, wet seed inside of me and with the horned beast’s encouragement, it’s beginning to burst up from the darkest recesses of my mentality. I wonder how many loops of his fear I can handle before I break.
I turn aside from the petulant aggression, my dark head jerking away at the sharp prick of his blunt teeth. This “concoction” of terror and pain he’s mixing is a potent one, for sure, needling me in one direction and then shoving me in the other, hardly giving me rest. Like being placed on the precipice of something and then being rudely yanked back. Intoxicating. Exhilarating. “I’m sure you would.” Comes the denial, and without a second to lose I snake my thin, bowed neck into a crooked angle and I strike, viperous, at his bare chest.
What have I done? I wonder in alarm, feeling the heat of our bodies and smelling the tang of my own sweet, briny sudor.
Wanna step to me better think twice, 'cause I look pretty but I ain't that nice
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
She splinters and goes in every direction, falling apart and coming together with each breath.
He wonders at the wildness of a mind that would drive someone to such lengths, taking them to the edges of sanity and back again—whimpering with need one moment and then lashing out with fury the next. Part of him wants to turn from this, recognizing something messy when he sees it, but the other part is intrigued and thus he stays, choosing to let this interaction play out how it will in the coming moments.
“Of course I would,” he answers evenly, stepping away with alien grace when she strikes and coming up on her other side in another breath. “That’s what I said I would like to hear you try.” He leans forward and presses his lips and teeth to her neck, a threat but not an aggressive one—yet. He tastes the sweat on her, the feverish mania he imagines he can feel beneath the surface, and he breathes it in deep.
Curiously, he picks up the Fear once more, weaving it around them. Let it change her perception of the world around them. Let her grow drunk on it. Let it morph what she sees until this land bleeds away to be replaced with something else entirely. He wonders if she will see him crawl out of his own skin, his body falling away to be replaced with a more monstrous design. Will she see the ground rise up to swallow them both? Will she see his spine breaking and reforming so that he is born into something new?
He doesn’t know, but his laugh comes quietly, like smoke out of his mouth.
“It doesn’t matter if you beg or not now,” he whispers into her ear, tipping his head back and drinking the moment in, thinking of how Lucrezia looked painted on the ground. “Because it is coming regardless.”
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
Underestimating the extent of things is something I’m very capable of doing. This interaction had begun like a dream when he appeared, but I’m toying with the master of nightmares - a dream gone horribly awry. What he’s managed to do (what he continues to put me through) should have broken me by now; inside my roiling belly something is certainly resisting the intrusion, perhaps already broken. The arch of my back dips and then violently bucks, I’ve not even grazed his skin but somehow he’s transitioned to my opposite side and I react like a wild animal underneath the pressure of his lips. Had no one resisted in this way before? Did no one else see the beauty in his lovely horror?
Gasping, stretching, shaking with the pressure of his gift I’m watching as our world tilts itself into darkness. From the edges of my vision I can see water, oily black and hungry, begin to flood in a trickle over the bare floor of the woods. Where it comes from is unknown, I’m only left to stare while it slips past the tree trunks and builds atop itself, rising gallon after gallon all around us, all around my legs until it touches my belly. The sensation of being drowned is very real to me, how the water rises and engulfs us both to froth and swirl up and up, over my head and into my nostrils that cannot breath it in like they had during my fateful quest.
I see the faint light of hope streaming down for one more second, and then everything is black.
A sinister laugh brushes small bubbles into my ear while I choke and gag, followed by the sound of a decree that seems incredibly vile, malicious. He’s … enjoying this too, I think. I can tell when my eyes fearfully roll to the side. Enjoying the invincibility of this moment.
But I only smile. I only smile and feel the indistinct fade of consciousness around my blurry vision, releasing the final gusts of my breath with a short, pretty laugh. I wish I could say something back to him, maybe something like It already came for me, imbecile but I’m forced to draw the trump card and teleport myself away. One second I’m his play toy and the next I’m not, simple as that. It leaves me to think he might be special, since I’m left gasping for air when I materialize dry as a bone near the foot of the great Mountain, but he’s not - not really.
Just another tease who leaves me wanting much, much more. Something about men … they always take and never give.
Wanna step to me better think twice, 'cause I look pretty but I ain't that nice
