"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
and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times
As night falls, I leave Tephra emotionally winded. The colossal weight of Warrick's traumas burdens my shoulders and leaves me almost blind as I meander across the continent, forever western bound. It doesn't occur to me, in my mental darkness, that I ought to stick to the shores of Taiga. The sound of the waves is too eerie for me tonight, disrupting the intense thoughts which are processed just behind my unseeing eyes. So, without thinking, I find myself in the middle of the forgotten kingdom - closer to Sylva than I ever have been before.
Regrettable, this decision.
The full moon above casts me in shimmering leopard, the spots standing out against the barren nothingness of this land. Trees float past me, or rather I float past them, but I take no note. The emotional turmoil is building inside of me, as is an intense need to sleep. I'd traveled with Solace yesterday to the Allies summit, back to Hyaline today, to Tephra immediately after, and now as the third sleepless day begins, I fight to resist the urge.
It's not safe here. You need to make it home.
The voice sounds and I know it is right, so I soldier on. The going seems slow, sluggish, and I falter more than once. When I hear a snap not far off however, my alertness returns full force, and I turn to face the sound the comes from the west. From Sylva.
"Who goes there?"
@[Lokii] sorry this is shitty baby I'm in a rush and wanted to get something up <3
While it’s amusing to watch their frantic attempts at wrongdoing (their hyena-cackles into the shadows, the regality of their eyes, the blood-splatter across their chests) he has lived among the best of their chaotic community and their attempts at fear do not impress him. Perhaps if his pink queen (rosy in color, bitter in heart, murdering dozens in order to speak with her god-like sire) had been their ringleader, he wouldn’t linger between the autumnal forest and Taiga as he does now.
His thoughts spin with dazzling thickness like hers. The trickster had been immediately promoted to the council-position among the devils and hounds (not only a councilmember but also the ringleader of their circus when the master is away) upon his arrival to Sylva’s borders. It had proven his reputation precedes him, his name holding power among those who know of its history, and it had brought a twisted smile to his mouth.
The trickster might love chaos, but he also fucks narcissism when the opportunity presents itself.
The sweet smell of a female mingles with the bitterness of decomposition. It draws him away from his swirling thoughts, pulling his mind into the present with a slow, gentle tug. He’s never been one to turn away from that tell-tale feminine aroma and he won’t be stopping that tradition (or hobby or obsession or religion) anytime soon. The trickster waits until she is near before stepping purposefully on a stick, snapping it under his weight.
Just as he had predicted (women have such reliable, scripted minds), she stops and peers into the darkness of his shadow. His fingers (slippery and sinewy, laced with magic and entirely hypothetical) slide into the comforting crevices of her mind and he nearly laughs amid the echo of her voice. There is strength behind her womanness, one that he’s only felt a handful of times.
Yet still the shadow begins to bleed (inky darkness falling from the face of its caster to drip in rivulets along the forest floor toward her feet). There’s a sound that greets her ears with this movement and it’s a messy, suctioning one as if the shadow were trying to suck the ground into an unforeseen mouth. Just when the tendrils of darkness might kiss her hooves, it rapidly drags itself back into its original place.
He walks out of the very same shadow now, scarred and marked body moving agily (he hopes she is startled, if not confused, but none of that shows in his bruised gaze). “I do, babe.” His voice is suave and tenor, but he doesn’t censor the lust for mischief that shimmers in its depths. His eyes slide along her leopard-spotted body (a memory of a jungle-warrior walks hazily through his mind, but it vanishes before he has the chance to catch it) for a moment before they return to her face. “And what might you be doing here?”
Lokii
lover of chaos
@[Kagerus] / let me know if i need to change anything
During the time of Elite's reign of terror, I'd been but a mote of stardust: unborn, that is. But the tales of her tyranny befell my ears at a young age; her mass murderings, her racism, her spite. Kavi hated that pink woman with a ferocity I've never seen at any other time - but the fact that her war, in the Valley, had been the downfall of his mother and my grandmother left no other emotion for him to express. And indeed, I learned to hate the hateful at a young age due to these stories; if I could read minds and know that the stallion who approaches me is one of her own goddamn number all these decades later... There would be bloodshed.
He extends his powers deep into her mind, sending a shiver down her spine; she stops, he laughs, the shadows bleed. Her heart pounds to the rhythm of his magic, unknowingly seating herself directly into the palms of his tricksterish hands. A coolness washes over her - the shadows - they -
They aren't like Khaedrik's; they do not greet me with the glee of any family member. They come, suckling with a dark neediness against the leaf-strewn earth, extending from a body that my eyes cannot make out through the obscurity. Powerless in the face of his illusion, I stand in rapture as my breath fails to come, seeing not only blackness from his shadow but also from lack of oxygen.
The shadows jolt back to their master as if tugged by their leash; her lungs reinflate and she remains conscious. Across the distance, a figure emerges with the sultry finesse of any practiced evil-doer; the dark bruises of his eyes are completely unreadable.
His gaze travels my body with the same familiarity that his word choice portrays, the gestures insinuating ownership, lust. A stiff swallow helps to bring me back to my senses, and I slowly pin my ears back against my skull. Solace is waiting for me at home - she trusts me not to put myself in danger. The need to protect my family forces my hooves to subtly realign me towards the easiest exit, though my eyes never leave the stranger. His voice only sends more shiver's down my spine; what the hell does he want?
"I am traveling home," I mutter, tilting my head slightly; the sharp prongs of my antlers gleam threateningly with the movement. "Am," I emphasize, taking a step forward as if to continue - but of course, it will never be that simple. The darkness obliges our union as happily as perhaps ever it has, though in this moment the darkness is more his than mine.
(Don't be so quick to count me out... I'm always here, don't you know that? I've just been allowing you a reprieve from my presence - I got you so close to death last time, and, well, I'm not done having my fun yet. I need my prey well rested so that the chase is more enjoyable - so keep believing that I'm not watching your every step, gathering information that I can use against you when the perfect time comes. You are not your own, oh light-hearted one, but instead, you are entirely mine.)
She reacts just as he pleases (a hitch in her breathing, a disruption to the pattern of her body’s routine, a moment that leaves her on edge) and the casual smirk that rests upon his face is just a touch larger than normal. She is disgusted with the wanderings of his eyes, but he pays this fact no heed. Woman either hate him or love him and an average-size (though still growing) population of them have proven time and time again to love him.
The leopard mare aims herself in a subtle direction away from him. He cannot know where home is (perhaps with some knight waiting in their marriage bed, perhaps she does not actually have a home, perhaps sunken among forgotten ruins of a forgotten land) but he can steal her away from it. At least for a few enjoyable moments. The shadows converge again (as real to touch and see as if it were happening, but merely an illusion to her) in a dramatic display and form a dome over top of them. Whatever moonlight had been shining through the forest’s ceiling is drowned in the darkness of the shadow-dome.
“You were traveling home.” He is in this dome with her, his voice echoing off the walls of her prison, and a single light (hazy and eerie yet strangely bright among the absence of light otherwise) finds the angles of his face. “Tell me your name.” It will aid him, in his conquest to strike fear or otherwise — with the knowledge of her name he can make the monsters and creepy-crawlies and blood-lined caskets sing her sweet little tune.
If she doesn’t answer (if she presses that slender, supple body against the wall of the dome), the shadows shrink in on her, the walls slick and bitterly cold to touch. He again asks, this time with a sharper edge in his voice, “Tell me your name, babe.” Adrenaline (the lover’s high that accompanies such endeavors as this) pumps through his veins like a drug-addict’s favorite dose and he reveals in the sensation of it all.
and in my dreams, i kissed your lips a thousand times
It's his widening smirk that warns me that this night shall be long, or if not that, then tricky; as I take my next step in the vain hope of escaping, what he has planned comes to be. Above our heads, an impenetrable dome forms, trapping us in like mice in a cage. I snort softly at this offense, ears flicking around in confusion before once again falling flat to my skull. The whites of my eyes show; but then, I refocus on him, staying as far away as I can given the constricted space.
Tell me your name. A sneer slowly forms on my lips, sending their edges diving towards the earth as I regain some of my confidence. I am a Queen, a Dreamer, an Alliance champion; I have faced worse than this gothic stallion, and I have conquered more, too.
I am about to give a scathing reply, when suddenly the shadows shrink in on me. Against my skin, the wall of the dome becomes sliming and cold, sending my skittering a step away from it in surprise and agitation. With this further increment of magic comes another harsh dose of his words, to which my head snaps immediately. Again my chest swells with self-assuredness, my nutmeg eyes slimming as I again sneer towards the sandy trickster.
"I don't tell my name to those who play unfairly." I give him a pointed look before closing my eyes and gently daydreaming a simple change to our environment. When my eyes open, his shadows are suddenly white, though they are as unblinding as the darkness. I cannot do more without entering full sleep; and indeed, it is dangerous for me to retreat as such while he remains yet awake.
"So leave me alone, or I'll be forced to make this game even."
He’s learned over the years that most of Beqanna’s individuals are weak (in one way or another, though most in multiple ways). They find something that tugs on their tender, feeble heartstrings (brings tears to their saddened eyes or fills their hearts with delicious joy or puts a rose-colored filter to shield the darkness from their lives) and they hold it close. Sometimes they lash out (snarling teeth and pinned ears and wide-angry eyes) and sometimes they quiver closer to their beloved.
There are few who do not shiver beneath the weight of his tricks.
(the pink queen with her fascinated gaze, the gold-eyed warrioress with her own earth-woven tricks, the dragoness soaring through the sky, the tricky desert queen who built her own army of chaos-doers)
They are the ones he likes the best.
As his shadows fade from obsidian to ivory, he believes he will like her (this leopard-spotted mare with her nutmeg eyes and firmly set mouth). A laugh drips from his mouth (tenor and echoing in their white-splashed bubble of shadows) and it is a true one, laced with amusement and high spirits rather than sarcasm and devilish plans. She’s caught him off guard (then again, the unassuming ones always do).
The trickster cranes his neck at an angle slightly, head tipping with a curious expression like what an intrigued puppy might make (it pulls a few strands of his silver forelock across one bruised eye, sliding against the bridge of his nose and brushing into his angular cheekbone). “Unfortunately, you just turned this into a challenge, honey.” Perhaps a foolish move on her part. Or perhaps she knows exactly what she’s getting herself into. “I’m a big fan of challenges, even if I don’t win.”
As if too much pressure had been pushed atop them, the dome of shadows caves in (the hazy-colored walls dissipate like visible wayward breezes, though the upper corners of their globe wash against their shoulders with a feeling that prickles at their nerves) and one corner of his mouth is tipped in one half of a smirk. The nighttime forest whispers around them again, but if she were to try and run, she would feel as though her feet were rooted to the ground like one of the ancient trees surrounding them.
“I’ve showed you some of my tricks… Care to show me yours? I’d like to see what I’m up against.”
![[Image: kag]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/2e8039018ce4dff6112c167ec23e886a/tumblr_p72zjit7wC1s5a0qvo1_100.png)
