"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 feeling of magic leaving her body felt like acid being poured on her skin, down her throat, infecting all of her organs. It was like someone physically stole pieces of her, chopping the small mare into bite sized objects that went through a shredder one by one.
It outpaced birth - but her magic cloaked that from her.
It outpaced age - but her magic kept her ageless.
Her magic was a buffer between her and the rest of the world. Where it was sharp she could soften it, where it was bright she could dim it. She'd spent her entire life in a world that didn't truly exist.
Surgery stands to her side, still a foal - but for how much longer? He is traitless, as useless as her other children, but he once served a purpose. Now? He is dead weight. Garbage. Nothing. She tries to shoo him away but the last 6 years as a perpetual child makes him helpless in this world. He just comes back, somehow smelling or feeling her presence and following her to the edges of Beqanna.
She wants to die in the sun - she can die now. She can be killed. She can be hurt and maimed and is helpless and alone.
Surgery has always been helpless, so the change isn't palpable to him. It's another day, though his mind feels clearer. It's as though a fog lifted from behind his brown eyes and the day is clear and kind.
Harmonia lays down to die.
harmonia. surgery.
when the pied piper calls, you come
BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING OF MOVING ON
He feels lost, confused. All he has ever known has been stripped away from him, his heart ripped from his chest. It all feels like a dream, but he knows that this is the new reality; this is their new Beqanna. With hesitant steps, almost worried that the ground will shift beneath his weight, Tiphon wanders. The wings – the horrid things that aren’t his own – sprout from his shoulder blades almost obnoxiously. They are reminders of this great change, of this purge. Where rivers had been are now meadows and the jagged mountain peaks have merged and shifted as though they had legs of their own.
An eerie tingle runs down the length of his spine.
This is wrong, so very wrong.
He can see the concern painted on her face, her eyes darting across the forest anxiously. The male at her side is silent, staring. Tiphon edges closer, his molten eyes embracing the sight of them. It’s obvious that their bodies have been cleansed just as his own and left to suffer. Tiphon sighs as his attempts to phase prove futile time and time again, and so he is left to walk toward her with his wings clasped to his sides. ”It affected you too,” he murmurs, his voice gravely as he watches her lie down.
09-02-2016, 03:18 PM (This post was last modified: 09-02-2016, 03:22 PM by Camrynn.)
Maybe it would be harder on her if she hadn't been born more or less normal. As it is, it's far from easy – it didn't hurt when her magic was ripped away, it didn't tear her to shreds, but learning to live without it is about the same as trying to live with an amputated limb. For so long, so many lifetimes, she's held those around her on strings, making them dance to her whims. Almost from birth she's had all the cards, and she's played them as she sees fit.
She still holds all the cards – or she will, once she's got this new system figured out. She knows enough to know that they've all been stripped of everything. But when she stands within the breath of the mountain, when she feels the magic flow back through her veins, she knows that it's not gone forever.
And so she has hope.
And in that hope, she finds her path.
She will seek. She will meet and she will talk. She will learn. And one day, she will know what it takes to get her magic back. Not because she needs it – Camrynn needs nothing, no one – but because she wants it. Because she wants everything. And always, always, she gets what she wants.
She starts her quest without direction. There's nothing to suggest what she should do, where she should go. And she's not about to break down and actually ask; that's never been her way. And so, she simply starts walking, trusting her legs to carry her wherever they will. She has to fight the urge to use magic at every turn, so much so that it becomes exhausting quickly. She would normally fly, would normally force herself into the minds of any horses she needed to in order to get the answers she wants. But now? Gone, gone – all gone.
She's so accustomed to feeling ahead with her magic that she almost misses the presence of others. Something feels familiar about the woman, as though perhaps they'd met, once. The once-magician tries to reach back into time to recall before realizing just how futile it is. Luckily, her memory wasn't lost with her magic, and she can recall a time when she went looking for magicians, for those like herself. She'd plucked them all out of time and space, never calling them to her, but learning their names, their faces. Harmonia – Harmonia had been among them, a wraith amongst the consciousness of Beqanna, a magician like herself.
Well, former magician.
Like herself.
And in that moment, she understands exactly why the other woman has crumbled. She doesn't need to be a magician, doesn't need mind reading, doesn't need anything but her own experience to inform what she's feeling.
It's hard, this world they've been dumped into. Even if Cam is feeling more optimistic than Harmonia, even if Cam is able to let go of things with slightly more ease, it's hard. And just as she's about to speak to greet the three, a fly lands on her perfect black haunches, biting down with annoying force. It's been a long time since she's had something sneak up on her and bite her. Like, a really long time.
It's all she can do not to yelp in surprise. But she flinches, hard, and twitches her skin to detach the offending insect. When that fails, she remembers her tail can help too, and flicks that across her black haunches once. The fly dies, but it leaves a small trail of blood, a tiny wound, in its wake. Camrynn tries wholeheartedly to heal it, but of course it's to no avail. She looks back to the other three, her expression flat.
"I have yet to see any horse unaffected." She answers, although the question hadn't been asked to her. "Tiphon." she greets with her velvet voice. He still looks similar enough that she knows him, although they'd only met once, ages ago, before the world had taken its most recent strange turn. She looks similar too – same deep black, same lovely mane and tail. She's still beautiful, but now she is unadorned. She looks to Harmonia, and the look is not without pity.
"It's affected all of us." there is a tightness to her voice, a warmth and sadness. But when she speaks next, her tones are hushed, matter-of-fact. "And we have no way to know what's coming next."
She was unaware of what had happened. But as she felt it drain out of her body, she was aware that this was never going to be the same again. The land that she had loved had betrayed her, and her abilities—which she had been born with—were now gone as the dust, carried away by the wind. A war that she had had no part of—or any member of her family… And she was paying for it. Epithet was not going to lie, she hated it. She walked through the forest, looking at all the dazed inhabitants around her. At the edges of the land, there was a thick, penetrating fog. She wondered what would become of them now that they all appeared… Normal. She had always wondered what it would have been like to be mortal. Flitting above them all, she had always associated herself with one of the angels. Partly above them, partly afraid to commit to being like them. But now as she was forced to tread through the mud, walking past them in the uncertainty of her own life, she found out one very important thing— She hated it. But she continued on, smelling the blood of ones like her—as God intended with her over-sized nostrils, and came to the place where there was a gathering of ones who seemed almost, otherworldly… ones who were like her…. Or at least they had used to be. “Does anyone know what the hell is going on?”
The others come in their slow, unsettling way - each a different shade of broken or mismatched. They cloak themselves with hope, fear, anything to replace the void that magic left. Magic is so encompassing, so catch-all, so overwhelming that it can be a life line. Say what you'd like, the void left is deep and scathing, and Harmonia feels it in every bone in her body.
Initially ,she felt it was only her. A punishment for her hubris. Her shortcomings are many and close in time and space - hubris, though, is her worst. She hides behind an infantile mask of stupidity and with her petite frame she can pull it off. Obviously something so small and weak and helpless is stupid. Obviously. But her mind is sharp, and as she sees the others come calling she feels the emotion that will replace her loss.
Anger.
Rage.
Hatred.
She sits up - it's slow and ugly compared to her fluid magical movements prior to this event. She stands, her eyes narrowed, her stance broad, her nostrils flared. "How dare they?" She posits. Revenge is really, honestly, all she knows.
"How dare she!" she continues. Someone did this. Something did this. She'll zero in, she'll find them, and she'll hurt them.
Magic or not, Harmonia intends to burn it all to the ground.
harmonia. surgery.
when the pied piper calls, you come
BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING OF MOVING ON
Tiphon shudders when he looks up to see a sky still trying to settle. All that they have ever known has flipped and crumbled leaving them to raise themselves from the ashes. Each of them squirms uncomfortably beneath the world’s oppressive hand as it pins them and drains them of all magic. Every bit of his soul is purged, the magic wringed out like a soaked towel. His lip twitches as he adjusts unhappily to this sense of powerlessness. There is nothing he can do now and he struggles with that small fact as it echoes loud in his head. Everything that he was means nothing now. All the strength he had has been flushed from his bones and so now he finds himself weaker than a newborn.
A flame crackles in his eyes, but it dissipates when he blinks. Although angry he suppresses it as best he can and tries to fathom why this all happened and why they are forced to suffer. They, these beings of magic, are being tormented by being so incapable but this is a means to humble them, to remind them of how easily their lives can be changed.
”Camrynn,” somehow the name returns to him when he hears her liquid voice purr his name. It has been years (decades?) since their brief meeting and yet there is no mistaking her obsidian coat and silky way of speaking. Slowly, Tiphon inclines his head to look at her then to Epithet (though he knows not her name). A deep breath is sighed as they confirm how deeply this purge went, ridding all magicians of their known prowess. ”Don’t try pissing her off more,” he chides Harmonia as his tail sweeps across his hocks, ”she’s obviously quite testy as is.” He glances up again as though expecting lightning to shatter the sky and punish them all.
Nothing happens and so he looks again at the women and shifts his weight. ”The mountain,” he indicates with a tilt of his head, ”still has magic. There must be a way to get it back.” He doesn’t know how, but he wants to. He remembers the invigoration at having his full strength return when he stepped across the border toward the jagged peak. ”Unfortunately, patience is a hard thing to come by when you’ve gotten used to having everything at your whim.” Tiphon didn’t have that luxury. He isn’t a magician and so hasn’t experienced what they have, but he still hungrily craves for what little power he had back.
