violence for violence is the rule of beasts; ROUND II

[Carnage]

and lord, I fashion dark gods too;

As he watches them go, the dark god wonders just how random the choice was, after all.
Not all of them are familiar. He recognizes his blood in many of them, but that is not uncommon. He recognizes the blood of a woman who once helped him in one of them (the girl who bent time, who had been one of the key horses in bringing Gail back, to an almost-home, her own dead kingdom).
Then.
There is a straggler. One of the last. He blunders past, barely paying the dark god any mind, when he was the one who summoned him (again).
He wonders if this is some cosmic joke. He trusts in the chaos of the universe, but his eyes narrow still, and in a petty, bitter move, he sends a shark after the ghost shifter, imagines the taste of blood in his mouth. He considers calling the whole thing off, committing himself instead to chasing down the ghost king who loved a dark god’s queen in ways neither one could articulate.
He swallows down that whim, thinks instead of his kingdom. That is the goal. There will be time to deal with Ramiel later. After he’s served a purpose.
(He’s done it once before, after all.)

Anyway --

The kingdom they find is a drowned and dreary one. It had crumbled into decay before it crumbled into the ocean, under a false king (he should not have left, he knows now, but the throne of kings was too small and boring to contain a god).
It is dark and quiet here. The fish and other deep-sea creatures that haunt these depths do not swim among Pangea’s ruins, an instinctive behavior – this is not a land meant to be occupied.
Somewhere, Pangea’s sick heart beats.
He views it through their eyes, a kaleidoscope of images, breathes in its dim and broken splendor. The land is remarkably complete, knit together in the murky depths by the cancerous magic. The trees jut out, long dead. The dirt of Pangea remains (mud now, of course), another oddity of its sick magic. It’s dark, and hard to see, but there’s a path, winding from Pangea’s shore into deeper parts of her. Into the heart.
Somewhere in the middle of Pangea, a faint green, sick light pulses. A heart, waking. Beating.
Waiting.
Follow the path, he tells them, alone, or together. Find her heart.

He doesn’t warn them about what’s in the woods, lurking on the path to Pangea’s heart – but whether it’s because he doesn’t know or because he’s cruel even when asking for help, we do not know.

NOTES:
You’re in Pangea, which exists as a mostly whole kingdom under the water. It’s dark and spooky and clearly doesn’t feel right. Describe your horse making their way to Pangea’s “heart” (a craterous pit in the middle of the kingdom, emitting a faint, sickly green light that will grow stronger the closer you get). Along the way, your horse must encounter at least two obstacles. One of these obstacles is a drowned, rotting zombie horse corpse. It can be someone your horse knows who died, someone Carnage wants to make them think died, or just a random horse. Point is, must be attacked by/defend self against a zombie horse.
The other obstacle can be another monster of your choosing, an injury, a moral crisis, whatever you want.
The closer you get to Pangea’s ‘heart,’ the sicker you feel. End the post with arriving at the heart.

You are all in this together. If you want to work together and/or acknowledge the other horses in your post, feel free. If not, no worries. Neither choice will affect standing in the quest, it’s just a fun option!
Feel free to PM me with any questions!

I’m going out of town, so you have a while. Posts are due by September 17th, 11:59 PM CST

c a r n a g e

[Maugrim]

it was a blood-soaked feast
that never ceased

As the muck settles and the under-sea life around him vaguely stirs, Maugrim begins to notice more than just pieces of shattered rock and once-put-together plates of drowned land. The depths of the ocean knows no light (he knew this wholeheartedly, once leaving the open air for months to rest at the bottom of the sea) and the soft, pulsing light in the distance reminds him that he is - though in his element - truly in a place where even he could not be fully prepared for what it is they are to face. The light reminds him of the precious emerald shell he once held in his proverbial hands, spun across eyesight with the spindles of water he expertly wields. It’s enough to draw his interest even more, peering into the darkest depths with narrowing eyes and with a single hesitant step forward as the world beneath the ocean opens up to meet him.

There are others beside him but he does not notice them, does not care. 

Follow the path.
Find her heart.

He has found hearts before; wrapped them in his grasp as he filled their lungs with salt and foam. This heart, however, will be very different - if anything, will be harder to pluck from its keeper’s chest.

Maugrim obeys. He knows nothing of Carnage besides the whispers that accompany his name, but the stallion can recognize the sheer power that emulates from this unfamiliar being (this sentient voice and the forceful throb in his shoulder where dirt and rock wedge itself into his skin and blood) and somehow fills Maugrim with a sense of urgency that normally would not care to find in him. 

The stallion finds that it is easy to move forward in the depths. It is not like how he is used to (becoming one with the ocean, invisible and weightless, moving himself as he would move the water) but rather enjoys the solidity of his form anyway and the way his hooves press into the muck, stirring up mud and sand with each careful and calculated step forward. He is physically present now, in his ocean, and does not hide beneath his liquefied state. He has met many bottom-dwellers in his explorations of the thousands of leagues beneath the sea and he is not keen on being struck by a spooked eel or finding the tentacles of a squid wrapped around his legs. There is no sound beneath the pressure of the ocean, but Maugrim believes he can hear the swaying of the dark woods’ branches even though leaves are long since gone and the current of the ocean has long since wavered. 

He keeps the sparkling darkness of his eyes trained on the ever-pulsing light, drawn to its heart-like thrum like a moth to a flame. The drowned god notices the deathly stillness that accompanies his slow-moving travel and that there seems to be no quality of life here as he trudges deeper into Pangea’s hearth. There are no fish (not even the slow-moving, electrical predators or even bacteria-like bottom feeders) and no movement, which is enough to keep Maugrim even more on edge, carefully inspecting each turn and twist of the dimly lit path with taut muscles and ears against the thickness of his algae-and-lavender neck.

It is then - when he notices that nothing is what he once thought the ocean to be - that movement stirs to life. Maugrim’s lips pull back immediately, halting his steps at the flurry of motion to his left peripheral, the sound of groaning joints and cracking bones setting his placid features to that of the offensive. With a quick turn of his head (however quick it can be with the thickness of water constantly pulling down on him), pale and dark tresses floating around his terrible head, the ocean’s master sends a thick tendril of seawater spiraling towards the unsettled mud - it easily could be a fellow companion that is attempting the same quest that has startled him, but Maugrim didn’t care if that was a possibility. 

The tendril wraps around something’s neck - he’s yet to decipher what the shape is, save for the fact that it continues to move towards him despite the invisible noose around its neck. Maugrim’s eyes narrow angrily as his lips curl, teeth grinding together as he squeezes, but it does not stop the slow-moving shadow. Quickly, the stallion realizes the reason why.

It’s already dead.

The mare (he guesses because most parts of her are no longer there) is bloated, with eyes bulging from her sockets and soft pieces of flesh dangling from open, rotting wounds. Its eyes are blank and unseeing and as it shuffles closer with half-eaten legs, he notices one eye has been plucked clean from her skull. Her mane and tail float eerily in the pale green light, waving in the water as if the wind from another life has suddenly blown through it. The flesh of her face has peeled back to reveal the ivory underneath, delicate and broken bones that somehow still manage to create the illusion of a horse despite the rotten and soft corpse it truly is. 

He is not afraid of the sight - many days has he revisited his watery graves where he keeps most of his collection, enjoying the way their bodies change once life has left their lungs. What really stuns him, however, is how familiar the mare is despite the bloat and rot that manifests nearly every inch of her. He doesn’t remember her name, of course, (he’s never one to ask) but he remembers vividly killing her. She had been green - though it is hard to tell now with the dim light and the constant glow of Pangea’s heart that illuminates her corpse. He almost admires her as she reaches towards him, the smallest hint of a smile beginning to pull at the edges of his pale mouth.

“You were my first,” he muses to himself, wondering if her dead ears would hear him. 

The watery noose he has fashioned around her neck continues to tighten, though it does nothing but peel more soft, pliable tissue and skin away from her bones. He allows her to get closer, curious and in awe of his kill that now spazzes with renewed life, wondering how it is he could kill her again if breath no longer resides in her lungs. Her jaw swings open, the muscles in her face unable to hold her mouth together as a guttural groan gurgles from her throat. As she attempts to reach for him (a foolish, sad attempt, he chides), he suddenly remembers his purpose for being here and reels backward, moving away from the threat of her shining teeth.

He tsks, his eyes widening as she lurches for him again, seemingly building up strength and speed, perhaps motivated by being in the presence of her murderer. Maugrim’s grip around her neck tightens ever more - so much so that the only thing to be seen from his watery hand on her is her spine, as the water he wields has peeled away any remaining tissue or muscle which now floats eerily around them. She reaches for him again, the spine of her neck creaking against the pressure he puts on it, though in this watery world, he cannot evade her yawning mouth as easily the second time. The reanimated corpse finds purchase on the underside of his neck, clamping down on the soft skin that he had tried to turn from her with another throw of his head away from her. 

His eyes darken and he shouts with the pain, forcing the watery noose tighter and tighter. She clamps down even harder (striving to find the jugular, searching for justice), her unhinged mouth holding him firmly. Maugrim holds her just as closely, attempting to pull away, before sending a heavy current that focuses in on her head. The force of his current nearly knocks himself to the ground, screaming as the feeling of her locked teeth rip through his skin. 

Maugrim straightens as the pressure of her mouth against his throat subsides, blood clouding the water before him. He wrinkles his nose, noticing that the heavy current he had sent did not knock her entire body to the ground - but because of his tight grip around her neck, only her head drifts slowly to the bottom.

The rest of her body stands there, quivering for a moment before he releases her from his grasp and watches it crumble before him.

Maugrim stares at the bloated form for a moment, his chest rising and falling as he catches his breath. He calls the water back to him, relinquishing his grip on it for the time being, and turns over his shoulder so that the light of Pangea’s heart reflects in his abysmal eyes. He turns from her without a thought, just as he had done when he killed her the first time and continues on his way towards the epicenter. 

As the stallion gets closer to the heart, he is all too aware of the trail of blood he leaves in his wake. It is a shining beacon to all that is around him and he wonders what else lingers in this drowned kingdom that would be attracted to the smell of fresh blood. It is this notion that quickens his pace as much as he can, willing the water to part for the thickness of his body and to make his travel a bit more streamlined, though the motion only causes more blood to fall from the open wound in his neck. It’s as if Pangea herself needed his blood - a pound of flesh - for the wound billows and blows, never clotting. He can feel himself weakening, growing tired, fading. The feeling disrupts his thoughts and his power over the ocean falters, sputtering in tiny gasps as he attempts to continue to move forward, his eyes set on the glow of the green in the center. He felt sick as if a disease has spread through him and now thrums wildly - perhaps the corpse’s bite was not as harmless as he had assumed.

Find her heart.

The command echoes clearly in the drowned god’s mind, causing his eyes to glance up once more at the ever-nearing glow. His movements are slower now as the wound begins to finally clot, but the feeling of weakness and stupor does not subside. His teeth grind as he moves ever closer, his thoughts churning idly.

Why is he doing this? Why follow the command? Why find this kingdom - why try to resurrect it? It is beautiful the way it is - drowned beneath the ocean’s fist, a solemn and dark place that perhaps only Maugrim could truly find lovely. These thoughts cause him to halt, shifting his gaze around the shadowy land around him - a kingdom made barren, a deeply sought after Atlantis.

And it could all be mine.

The last thought is met with searing pain throughout his body - the dirt and grit that had embedded itself into his marrow now resound in protest. It wracks his muscles and tissue and blood with a darkening magic that is loyal to only one - and it is not him. He groans, quaking beneath the sheer weight of it, nearly crumbling to his knees. It cows him, this dark magic, and he screams in rage. It did not matter what he wanted; it would not be his. 

Not yet.

Again his body writhes in pain, the once-dimly pulsing green center now more vivid than ever, angry and twisting with rage. This time the pain is enough to send him to his knees, throwing himself into the muck beneath him. His lips ripple with frustration and anger, finding no purpose in carrying out the mission that has been given to him now that he has seen the land stretched before him. Pangea could be so much more than what lay above the ocean, so much more than what Beqanna already has.

But the dark magic that pulses within him and the same magic that pulses through Pangea does not agree.

And for that reason alone he leaves the idea there in the muck, lifting himself from the ground to stand shakily. The pain subsides as it sees that he has shifted his allegiance once again back to Carnage’s original purpose, allowing Maugrim to come within feet of the heart without any repercussions. The stallion stares blankly at the pale green light that illuminates the terribleness of his face. He is expressionless save for the slight twitch of his pale lips and the ethereal floating of his mane and forelock from the water surrounding him.

m a u g r i m.

TL;DR - I apologize for it being a novel, I didn't mean for it to be, I swear
Maugrim fights a reanimated corpse of his first victim, using hydrokinesis to hold her in place while using a current of water to effectively decapitate her.
Maugrim then decides Pangea doesn't need to be resurrected and would rather become the King of the drowned version of it, but obviously changes his mind due to the fact that dark magic/Pangea/Carnage can be rather convincing. 
Permission to reference Dacia (Maugrim’s first victim) given by Calcifier via FB message

[Rey]

|| TRIGGER WARNING: attempted rape and self-blame ||

Rey

In a moment the dizzy spell winds down and the dark, tumultuous waters clear of silt so I can catch my bearings. I feel sore, blinking into the dingy surroundings, yet altogether complete. Alone in the bitterly cold sea other shapes begin to appear from the black depths: stragglers, the final ones to answer His call. Rooted by curiosity I turn flashing, stone-gray eyes to watch a struggle from below, bearing witness to one lone stallion grappling against a shark.

“Move or die.” I’m reminded, stirring the sleeping bed of Pangea once more as I twist up from a prone position.

Good thing that I have. His voice is there, (everywhere) again and I’m certain that it echoes past my own mind and into the others which He hints are lurking about. “There’s no sense in being alone, or feeble...” I reason, turning gently to view my ripped shoulder (beige muscle hangs ragged at the edges, bobbing along with every step up the sunken shore.) My ‘talents’ are strictly harmless and commonplace. If there are other, much stronger horses here I’d do well to find them - quickly.

But Pangea is stifling in her quiet, deadened flora slick covered in algae and rot. The only color I discern is one that comes from far away, giving false illumination to the outer edges of this place. “Don’t speak, don’t make a sound.” Becomes my mantra, while fear conjures shadows creeping in on all sides the further I pass through the hollow trunks and their exposed roots.

A figure, clearly equine, darts like a shadowy beacon of hope just ahead of me; my slender face and ears both jerk to attention. “Hello?” slips boldly out into the open, where the crushing weight of our liquid world sucks all the resonance right out of it. (Useless, useless dumb girl.) The sound refuses to travel.

Fading, the shape I was certain could be a savior slips away and I’m left to stumble after, increasingly frustrated by the rate at which I travel (slow, slower still.) My surroundings blur, the path once clear fading like too much ink blotted onto a page, each step more encumbered than the last, “Don’t speak, don’t make a sound …” rings in time to the erratic pulse of my heart. The beating organ is frantic, the dirt and stone in my breast sinking towards it as if to stifle the life out of me.

Audibly, the crack of weathered sticks smacking atop one another halts me dead-still.

This quest is losing its initial gleam. I’m scared, I can’t fucking breathe, and still that same clacking brings some nightmare closer to me. I see … soft skin like pale gray linen, hanging loosely over the skeletal remains of a ... horse. A crab scuttles out from one exposed nostril, skittering up to slip into an empty eye socket. No ears, no luscious mane or tail. It moves uninhibited towards me: an unholy abomination.

Arthas, long dead and decomposed, ambling ever closer on bleach-bone stilts that gather no resistance from the watery grave.

Only an imbecile would hesitate and for all my faults, I’m not one to stick around when things sour, so I turn away but he’s faster. Uselessly a scream tears free of my throat, feeling the disgusting grapple where one of his hooves reaches for my thigh and seconds later, where his teeth sink eagerly into the flesh of my hindquarters. He means to take me, (already the other sinewy leg is greedily advancing) and with clarity I realize he will rape me to inevitable death if I don’t do something

Instinctually, my wings unfurl to flap backwards. I catch the mounting corpse in between their structure, freakishly dislodging him enough for me to skirt ahead. Sensibility, direction, purpose evade me - a black that matches these cursed waters spreads over my fur - and I dive for the beach whence I came, enemy hot on my heels. (Swim, swim you useless girl.)

For a moment I’m free, open water ahead of me as a surge of hope rises like bile in my gut, and then his teeth … terrible, terrible … they clamp onto my streaming tail and yank me back.

There’s no quick death in hell for a fornicator. For Arthas, however, there’s the glinting flash of silvery skin just before a waiting shark rips into his middle, inadvertently freeing me to drift through the wake with one lifeless skull still clenched tight to my hair. Carnage or not, fate or fury, I gasp in disbelieving agony while the forgotten pain in my chest wrenches me back to the hell below earth. “Saved by fucking camouflage...” I mourn, numb. There’s no longer an awareness to my descent, just the knowledge that I’m ingressing through Pangea against whatever resolve I had in me before. I’m doubtful sex will ever be the same, surface-side up.

“That’s all you’ve amounted to,” conscious pipes up, “a thing. A speck living on a dot, living on a God’s thumb. A slut” I acknowledge, the years of my fruitless life coming to a crash around me, adding to the discomfort spreading through my organs and bone. All this time I’d avoided it, tried to call it something else and now here it was staring me back in the face. “I deserve to die.”

Apparently not yet, though.

Trailing one bodiless head behind me, I’ve carelessly traversed along His path subdued in shock, shuddering to a weak stop when the combined agony of the dirt, stone, shoulder tear, and bite refuse to be ignored. 

Pangea’s epicenter bathes me in a glorious viridian light, (contrasting my sable coat) and I fall prostrate to the sickly, glowing orb.

Wanna step to me better think twice
I might look pretty but I'm not that nice

[sochi]

there is a swelling storm and I'm caught up in the middle of it all
and it takes control of the person that I thought I was

The world is not the same down here.

She sinks and is surprised as the physics seem to shift, as she finds herself more grounded—her weight settling onto her paws, the mud squishing between her toes. It doesn’t feel right though. It doesn’t have the same connection it normally does, her body unable to connect to the Earth, the way that the dirt feels beneath her somehow alien and broken and wrong. It leaves an unsettling feeling within her, an ache she doesn’t understand, an unshakeable feeling that the rope that tethered her to reality had been deftly cut.

Such feelings are only magnified when she hears the voice echoing in her hearts, the instructions cutting through the rage and settling into her bones. Follow the path. Find her heart. The anger that had laced through her is gone now, and she is left with nothing but unsettling fear—the unknown stretching out before her. Part of her wants to disobey. Part of her wants to kick off this cancerous land and find home once more, breaching the surface of the ocean to breath in air that is natural and cold and brilliant.

Instead, she is left with a sickness branching through her veins and an order she cannot ignore.

Her feline head swings upward and then to her right, focusing on the faint, shimmering green light in the distance, the hues of it filtering through air and water alike, emitting a sickly glow. Everything in her tells her that she needs to turn away, that she needs to leave, but she can feel the sickness and she can feel the pieces of earth that have burrowed into her skin, and she knows that there will be no escaping this.

So she does the only thing that is possible, the only thing she can do: she starts.

Each step requires more effort than it should, and she is nearly winded by the simple task of finding and then following the path—unsure where the rest of the chosen victims have scattered off to. It leaves Pangea eerily silent, nothing but the faint echoes of her own footfalls keeping her company as she walks.

It is silent; at least, it is silent until it is not.

The ground beneath her begins to grumble and groan, the mud squelching. Her brow furrows and again she is struck by the desire to flee. But she was not born of cowards. She was not born to turn tail and flee and so she doesn’t. She stays and she watches. She watches as the earth cracks beneath the ocean floor and something entirely alien begins to crawl forward. It is alive, at least as much as this cancerous land was alive. Its limbs are deformed. Its body is bloated. What little mane is left is matted and sticks to its scabbed, peeling neck. It walks the line between life and death, and she should be terrified.

But she is not. Fear drips from her and is replaced by steely resolve and, perhaps worse, hunger. A hunger that takes root and blossoms into impossible hatred. Her lips draw back over her canines and she snarls, roaring as the creature begins to make its broken way forward. It is faster than she had imagined that it would be and suddenly the world, just moments before syrupy in its slowness, is racing forward.

She is rocking back and then rocketing forward, paws outstretched. She is making contact, her claws shredding through the rotted flesh like paper. The horse that is not a horse hits its knees with the impact and then crashes onto its side; she continues with the momentum, flipping and landing on her back. The fall knocks the air out her, leaving her head spinning, but she doesn’t have the luxury of recovering.

Feeling sick to her stomach, she twists, the alien mud working its way deeper into her fur, finds her footing and catapults forward again. She can feel the bones crunching as she manages to pin the horse down, its jaw working as it snaps at the air, eye rolling in its socket, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
She snarls and snaps at its throat and black sludge oozes forth, coating her lips. She gags and drops its neck—giving the monstrosity enough of an opening to snap again, this time finding purchase on her right ear as it yanks with jagged, broken teeth. She can feel the tear immediately, her own blood flowing freely down the side of her head and the anger floods her once more. She would not die like this.

She would not give the dark god that much power over her own story.

Fury blinds her, warping her heart, and she sees nothing but blood. Sochi gives into the predator that howls in her chest, and she is feverish in her attacks. Her heavy paws swipe, and her jaw opens so that she can sink into the mangled flesh, but the thing does not stop. It does not slow. That is until she has had enough. Until she sees the way that its chest cavity breaks open, rotted bones giving way beneath the pressure of her. It is remarkably hollow, black ink and moth-eaten, but she can see the sickly green glow.

The same color that paints the sky.

Without thinking, she reacts, burrowing her face into it, paws still holding the thrashing body down so that she can root through the chest. Animalistic, she tears until she reaches the source of that glow, until she can feel that mangled heart between her teeth. She doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even pause. Doesn’t think until she has torn it out and swallowed it, the congealed blood on her lips and the monster finally still.

Sochi grows dizzy as the realization sets in and she stumbles away, her stomach revolting against her but her body refusing to let her lose the evidence of her guilt. Instead, that sickly heart rests inside of her, and she swears she can feel it twitch, the sound like a clock striking its rhythm. What have I done? she thinks, knees shaking as she looks to the ground, but she knows she can’t stop. Not now.

Not with this sickness now planted in her like a seed.

Trembling, she begins to move once more—begins to find her way back to the twisted path, back to the road lit from afar with the heart that guides her like a northern star. Was it this far last time? She can’t remember. She doesn’t remember how it stretched so far—the road seemingly unending. She doesn’t remember how the mud hardened beneath her and then gave way, dropping out so that she stumbles and nearly loses her balance. She doesn’t remember any of it, but she doesn’t give up. Can’t give up.

With each step, the light on the horizon grows brighter, but so does the beat of that dead heart within her. Her stomach grows more and more uneasy as the hours pass. What first began as a twitch turns into a tick and then a thump and then a roar. Her ear spills freely, but that is not the only thing that bleeds.

She can feel it rising in and through her—this sickness that centers on the pulsing heart. Tears of blood begin to leak out the corners of her eyes. Her gums begin to split. Her nose begins to crack. She can feel her tongue swell in her mouth and she coughs, hacking, desperate for air that never seems to come.

Around it all, she begins to hear the faintest of whispers.

“Murderer.”

No. That couldn’t be true. She hadn’t killed anything. It had been dead before she arrived.

“Murderer.” again.

She shakes her head, coughing as blood speckles the Pangean soil beneath her. She was only trying to protect herself. She was only trying to survive so that she could get home.

“But what about who you killed? Didn’t they deserve to go home?”

Her stomach flips.

Had it been alive?

Had she somehow not noticed?

“She was a mother. I was a mother.”

Sochi is struck with a sudden onslaught of memories that are not her own—dreams that are not her own. A chestnut mare with her nose against her children. A mare curled into the side of a calm-eyed stallion who clearly loves her. The birth of a child. A family. They are a family. Sochi nearly screams.

“I just wanted to go home—like you. I just wanted to go home to them.”

Suddenly, Sochi’s brain is going into reverse, dragging her back to just hours before. At first, it plays out as she remembers it. She sees the ground crumble, she sees the undead monster crawl forth. She watches as she lunges, as they fight, as she finally gives into a predatorily rage and rips the thing apart.

But then—then—it all shifts.

As if a veil was lifted, she watches another version play out. One where she walks up to see a bleeding mare on the ground. One where the mare is choking on death and crawls to her, looking for mercy. One where Sochi lunges. Here, the mare screams and begs and pleads but Sochi is relentless. It is not a fight because the mare cannot fight. The only defense she has is trying to snap and bite to hold off the tigress but this only results in a bleeding ear. It is not enough and it ends with the tiger feasting on her heart.

“Murderer.”

This time, Sochi does scream and she feels the heart that is not her heart expanding in her chest, swelling until she nearly chokes on it. She hits her knees, the illness still branching through her, but keeps crawling forward. She cannot stop. She cannot give up. She gags, the cries of the very much alive mare ringing in her ears, but she doesn’t stop moving. Each step is a battle. Each inch gained is a mile.

Her throat is raw from screaming when she feels the earth give way and she tumbles into the crater.

Her body is nearly limp as she comes to rest near that beating, sickly heart.

Her chest beats with the dual hearts.

Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.

sochi

it comes and goes in waves; it always does, it always does
we watch as our young hearts fade into the flood, into the flood

[Shiya]

Shiya

Shiya peers up again, already missing land and air. It’s frightening down here where the sun no longer hits and where there are monsters she has never before seen. With her heart in her throat, she stares back down into the depths and paddles nearer until her hooves make contact with Pangea’s mud. It latches onto her, clinging to her legs desperately. Life, it almost seems to say, a sacrifice. The cancerous magic wants to drain her to give itself life, to rejuvenate its drowned hills. It climbs her legs, snake-like, until she lurches away. Her legs kick frantically to discard the stray magic before she can bring herself to stand again on the drowned kingdom. ”Don’t stand in one place too long,” she murmurs more to herself although anyone around her could overhear.

She takes a breath, then another. It’s still frightening to breathe underwater and to not feel the immense pressure of the water boring down on her shoulders.

”I can do this,” she whispers to combat the fear branching through her veins. She isn’t strong; Shiya is far from brave, and she isn’t at all a warrior. The family’s ferocity poured into Vulgaris, not her. Weak, silly Shiya. Nothing more than a parasite desperately feeding off other’s joy to fuel her own, but she fails even at that. What is such a meek, useless girl doing here – trying to complete Carnage’s whims? Stupid, stupid girl.

Speed, she muses, that must be the key here. Each time she takes pause, the muck tries to clutch her and drown her below. Desperately, Shiya tries two swim and run through Pangea but her path is frequently obstructed. At one such misfortune, when she finds herself pressed to the edge of a small cliff, Shiya turns to retreat but is met by a face that both haunts and loves her. It stares at her with a hollowed stare that chills her bones. ”No, no no… I just saw you,” but did she? Now she’s questioning her own sanity as it’s barred against what her eyes are drinking in.

”Vulgaris,” it was him – it had to be – and she searches his body and sees the scales and his fangs. And his eyes. Those vibrant green eyes – they aren’t there. Much of his skin has sloughed off, exposing porcelain bone that seems to glow in these darker depths. ”I just held you,” she nearly stutters as she inches back. He, on the other hand, edges closer, his body misshapen and awkward in his movement. ”What happened?” But she doesn’t expect him to answer. He confirms that by continuing to slink closer, his mouth opening wide with his fangs ominously protruding. Fear races through her and overshadows her clearer thinking. As he closes the distance between them, she panics.

Flight or fight.

The briefest of glances confirms that even in water, the Cliffside is too deep, and he would likely follow.

”Vulgaris, please,” she begs desperately, wanting this to be a dream, for him to be alive and not a creature of the murky ocean depths. Unfortunately, he doesn’t stop. He looms nearer, hissing as he finally lurches toward her. Shiya ducks to the left. With his momentum and anticipation of blood spill, the monster stumbles into where she had been. When his jaws clap shut – a noise she can feel through her bones – he tastes only bubbles. Angry, he twists his head aside to blindly stare at her with tassels of flesh rippling with his movement. He wants her – needs her – and even with sockets emptied by fish and crustaceans, Shiya sees the hunger and desperation.

Panic-stricken, Shiya’s body is suddenly extending out in retaliation. Her bones stretch, her skin is elastic in its expansion and extension. She isn’t sure how, or why, but she elongates herself, wrapping her own neck around his in multiple coils. Within her grasp, Vulgaris squirms and groans.

Her grip tightens.

He attempts to widen his jaw, unhinging it to desperately grab for her.

Her grip tightens again.

Every muscle contracts and ripples, almost painfully to herself. ”Stop,” another plead falling on deaf ears. This is her brother, her only love in this miserable world. She wants it to end, but still he struggles beneath her as she wraps around his cervical spine.

She has no choice. It’s him or her.

Shiya’s grip almost releases in defeat but then with one more contortion of her body, the creature’s neck snaps. There is no sinew or fat to hold it in place, and so Vulgaris’ decomposed head tumbles down to the muddy bottom. ”Goodbye, love.” Slowly, her body reverts back, but her eyes are weighed by emotion.

It makes her want to leave and to surface from this God awful mission. Peering up, she almost follows the weakness of her heart, but then his voice echoes through her. Find the heart, she is reminded. This could all be over soon. Just find it.

Craning her head, Shiya sees the faint green glow in the distance. It seems wrong to pursue it; it hasn’t escaped her notice how the ocean life avoids this plot of cancerous land. There’s a reason, she knows, but with an exhausted groan, she pushes onward. This could kill her. For a fleeting moment, she is afraid, but when she looks back over her shoulder and sees Vulgaris lying limp and shredded, a sigh of resignation passes through her. They would be together forever then. It wouldn’t be so bad, right?

If only she knew that it was just a figment, that Vulgaris is still thriving on land with a child on the way and a lover to keep his bed warm.

Shiya doesn’t realize – doesn’t feel – the branches reaching for her or the mud spiraling up her legs. She is still absently staring at Vulgaris’ corpse, imagining what was and what could have been. Their lives play in front of her eyes like a movie reel, both the highs and the lows. Heartache rips her open, exposing and weakening her. Everything is suddenly numb; she’s falling into a void where everything is black and she’s losing herself.

It’s the sound of nails, or teeth, grating against her scales that somehow extracts her from the darkness that consumed her. It tickles at first. It seems so gentle and playful, but then it’s burning and the pain heightens. When she turns her head and blinks, she sees Carnage. She believes it’s him just as she believed it was Vulgaris she just murdered. It can’t possibly be the magic that infects this sabotaged kingdom. No, it’s him, staring at her with emptiness in his eyes and heart. Fangs, much like hers, protrude from his jaws and scrape along her neck. They begin to puncture, just barely, before Shiya truly awakens and struggles to flee. The muck underfoot clutches desperately to her and tree branches, brittle as they are, attempt to pin her in place. Whimpering and afraid, Shiya jerks her head aside and tries to retaliate by biting him instead. Poison leaks from her own fangs and pours through his veins. The roughness of his coat seems all too familiar from those times they had emotionlessly fucked. This has to be him. She, the meek and silly girl, is poisoning Carnage. It empowers her and she buries her fangs deeper, dispensing more venom until she forces herself to pull away.

As the liquid death reaches the monster’s heart, he falls limp with the mud and trees following in pursuit. They release their grips on Shiya so that she may flee. With frantic strides, she tries to both swim and run away without ever looking back.

She never looks back to see that she didn’t kill Carnage. It was never him at all.
It was an illusion, yet another trick on her weak and vulnerable mind.

What lies in her wake is a rogue kelpie drifting with the current, lifeless with copious amounts of venom swelling its body.

Shiya doesn’t stop this time, pushing through the water desperately with her viridian eyes staring intensely at the looming green glow. Find its heart, she whispers. She killed Carnage, she poisoned him. The heart is therefore hers, this is all hers, this cancerous shit show lost in the tide.

Upon reaching the bosom of Pangea, Shiya descends into the crater where the heart lies, beating calmly while hers feverishly hammers in her throat and ears. She collapses at its side, panting and reflecting.

For you, I'd give my last breath

[Rajanish]

The young colt stares at the others arriving; he suddenly notices a shadow swimming over and sees that it's a shark, holding a few suspiciously dark tail hairs. There are more sharks than one, right now though. But Rajanish can't be bothered. It's not important. They're not attacking him right now.

The lost kingdom of his father is dark, eerie, and spooky. Exactly how he likes it. It's in fact, maybe not even that different from the ever-autumnous Sylva, where it is also cold and damp (though to say that Pangea is damp is perhaps the understatement of the year). There's trees, and, oh! Some green light, like the northern Aurora Borealis has been put into the forest, or maybe it's like Queen Astarael's fear aura, but then green instead of red. Pretty.

All in all, the bay appaloosa colt is not too bothered, where perhaps he should be. Instead he's eager, curious, and a little overwhelmed. This is real.

The voice of his father is steadfast in his head. He needs to go to the green light. The heart, he calls it. Raj supposes it may be sick, that that is why his great Godly father can't reach the place. Maybe they'll get to heal it. Maybe he'll be actually useful for once.

So he goes, almost with a spring in his step. He's a demigod, he tells himself - so are probably many of the others around him. He spies Zain between them, and for a moment, stops to stare. He dares not to laugh, but it is quite comical. Whatever the slightly older boy had done to displease the gods or the fairies, it had earned him pretty roses in his hair. Too bad Raj can't smell them now.

But he doesn't linger. Several before him have already gone out to do the god's bidding and he will not be the last. He cannot breathe very well in the water with his swollen nose, he cannot hear very well on his right side, and his skin tingles from the jellyfish stings, still numb, but he goes.

Each step seems harder to take, the further up the path he goes. He finds himself alone in the forest, and feels the pressure that holds him back, the sickness that Beqanna's fairies maybe, or whomever, have put upon this kingdom. But he welcomes it. He's a child of darkness, he tells himself. Surely he won't be harmed.

He's wrong, of course. When he rounds a corner, there's a dead horse moving in the water before him. He doesn't recognize her. It's a filly, younger than he, she's just a yearling he thinks, and he thinks she's harmless until she turns to look him straight in the eye.

Something's definitely wrong with her eyes.

There's the initial fear that should not be, irrational, and he weaves it away. She's just here to scare him. She's just a mental obstacle to keep him from going. It's a test. But when she comes straight towards him, he frowns. She has teeth, and looks like she wants to eat him. Now that can't be right, that's not right at all. He's the one who should be eating her - oh, but maybe that's it.

She's already dead, and he stares at the tearing skin, the muscle that's not all attached to her bones - but then he rears to keep her mouth away from him, kicking at her in the water. He almost tumbles over backwards, but at least she diverts instead of biting. But she keeps coming. He has to think of something to distract her, or to slow her down so that he can continue on his quest. She's really not all that important.

He kicks her away again, but then attacks her in return. Her flesh gives way easily - too easily - and he's surprised that he hits bone, that his hoof almost gets stuck in her mushy, rotten body. But then he remembers that she is not alive, that she has been rotting here for a long while, and it makes him wonder how she moves at all. Magic maybe? Is there something else?

He tears away more skin - she bites in return, but now that he has a hold of her bones (spine? rib?) it is quite easy to kick away more of her muscles until nothing much of it is left. She's then a moving skeleton, and he keeps on tearing off more flesh and kicking at the bones until they're no longer aligned right, until she moves only with twitches. Until she lies on the ground and he crushes a few leg bones to stop her from coming after him. He doesn't have time to deal with her.

He's not done, though. He wants to see how it works. He should have walked out by now, but instead, he circles the girl, remembering Lokii's words - careful, you may break something and then it stops working. He paws at her eyes, and one falls out, the other still stuck. She still is moving, trying to bite him. He has several bite marks on his shoulder already, but perhaps thanks to the jellyfish, he does not feel them, their poison making his skin as numb as his nose and right ear. But the eye, he decides to take as a prize. His zombie trophy. He would have gone further and find a way to open her skull, but suddenly he remembers his calling.

Find her heart.

He did not mean hers.

Move or die. Quickly, he takes the eye and runs forward in a hasty trot. He's almost forgotten, almost hadn't gone to the heart. That damned curiosity of his. Would Carnage take away the ability to breathe here if he didn't make it in time? Would he have been killed on the spot? Made into a real ghost, but like, forever? He shudders. He would not mind being a ghost - if only he could return to the mortal world as a ghost. He grins. Wouldn't that be fun.

He stumbles. Swallows the eye. Curses silently when lying on the ground, then sighs. Well, it would have been too good to be true to take the eye with him all the time. When he stands up, his foreleg hurts, but it's not broken, at least, he tells himself it's not broken. Maybe a hair fracture, since it still hurts. But he's used to being hurt by now, with the teeth marks still on his shoulder and spine, with the eye of the girl in his belly (hey Zain, how are you, I at a zombie eye today), and he smirks, and makes the trek to the heart. He can see it, and some of the others that are already there, and he nears them and stops at the rim of the crater.

Staring into the darkness, he wonders if it's the girls eye, the different pieces of dirt, or this place that makes him feel a little sick.

[Khaedrik]

Alive only with the ornery thickness of an ancient bitterness – woeful Pangea stretches taut before his glitter-dark eyes. The faint glimmer of something pulsing, beating (sick, sick, sick) sings out for him – but it is a symphony of terror and his shadows tug at his heels, echoing the voice that spreads through his mind like wildfire. ”Find her heart.” They feel at home down here in the murky depths of this atrocious sunken Atlantis. Khaedrik moves – and he feels sluggish and weak – as if the blood in his veins should coagulate and turn him into a beast of mud and void. The black waters soughs and sighs around him as he weaves through the forgotten path, under the ancient trees of Pangea. The isle is a nightmare, a breeding ground of terror, and the faint light that paints the path glitter-green makes his heart stutter.

The wrongness of Pangea makes him skittish, and yet Khaedrik moves with a purpose he seldom has, and the shadows seethe with excitement. He keeps them close, for company perhaps, or fear for what hides down there in the labyrinthine depths of Pangea. He pauses beneath a yew tree; it, forbidding and malevolent, as its gnarled branches stretch high to cup a moonlight that have long since abandoned this place. Only darkness reign here – and the shadows fall in intricate patterns, brushing his bright-gold coat black, black, black. Life itself seems to have slowed, for the remarkable absence of teeming noise is louder than ever.

He raises his head, and suddenly the still waters turn hard, gusting. The eerie creak of the old branches makes him nervous. A wail rises above the din. It is as if the wind is whistling through a hole in the trunk of his yew tree. But there is no wind down here – and the sound is an angry shout; surprise and betrayal. He faces the fury of the land’s own magic. Khaedrik turns his face away from the furious undercurrent that now seeks to uproot him. It is too powerful, and his breathing is shallow, and his body trembles with the urge to flight, but he will not abandon his path. The sickness buried beneath golden skin (slick with sweat and murky water) drives him on. He has faced the terrifying delirium of madness before. His feet – sprawling and digging for hold against the slippery mud trembles against the onslaught – his head pulsates with the deafening roar of the sea. His body is an osmosis of terror and sick-black water. He can taste the anger of the sea on the tip of his tongue and fear grips him with her long claws. But Khaedrik – damned double and twice over – refuses to give in to the sea and her senseless wrath.

You, Crone, cannot overcome.

He turns his head back against the storm, and his features burn with an inner fire, righteous-hot in the dark shadows of his eyes as he leans into the storm. He feels the silk bright brush of magic along his veins, along the curvature of his body. He shudders but does not shy. But the sea calms, abruptly. The land quiets herself, and his breath (hitched behind his clenched teeth) steadies once more. He has passed the test, he thinks, naively, foolishly.

He moves on – follows the path of ailing green and the heart that now beats in rhythm with his own (fever-hot and faint). He struggles now – on sick-weak limbs and with labored breath – to follow the path pregnant with stagnant pools of fungus children, draped in the robes of disease and shadow, reeking of antiquity, rot, suffocation.

He smells it before the click-clack of hooves against rock meet his ear – it reeks of ruination and decay – and the sound an orchestra of terror and sick magic. A flash of something mud-brown and shining catches his eye (pomegranate-red with fever and delusion) and he staggers on – on his retina there is a sea-nymph, mahogany and valiant with sea-foam eyes and a smile like yawning galaxies. Grieving for a dream made fleshy and tempting he stumbles to meet her it.
Oh but it is not a reverie that meets his fever-bright eyes as he trudges on through the now long-since still water resisting his advances and slapping at his legs, leaving ugly dark stains on the golden skin, but a nightmare. A beast – welded of disease and twisted magic. It might have been horse once – sinewy and proud – but these lands no longer remember its name, and it has sunk hard into the bottomless pit of the forgotten. There it has lain in wait, with knife-sharp teeth and hungry eyes, for someone, something. It is a monstrous thing – spun of mud-brown patches of decaying skin and dirt-white bone, seaweed twining its legs like rotting vines. Death oozes from it veins, stains the skin darker and its jaws part wide and a vicious gargle bubble from its parched throat (or what is left of it). Its teeth clamp together, and it hisses its displeasure.

But he has no sword, to stab at the elation of his nightmares. Tension roils beneath his skin – wasted, ready and looking for a little courage – but the monster, jaw unhinged and rake-sharp teeth showing, charges. Pale gums that end in yellowed teeth reach for his skin, ah, there is hunger in those eyes – unseeing now and dead, dead, dead - but there is no doubt he is to be devoured. He feels the sharp pain of something rake-sharp against his shoulder, before his own magic springs to life. Leave his shadows whisper. Let us take you home and Khaedrik remembers, but his will is no longer his own. Find her heart echoes the voice in his sickened mind. Instead of fleeing – he sends his shadow-wolf charging – snarling and wicked, yellow-eyed and just as much avid monster as the thing now seeking to destroy him. In the blink of an eye, the creature is engulfed in shadow and wolf-teeth and the wet noise of disintegrating flesh and brittle bone crushing is a psalm to his ears. A psalm that lulls his soul into deceitful calm. He stumbles – falls to his knees. Blood oozes from his shoulder with each drumbeat thud of his heart. His head throbs – as if some small part of his mind is trying to claw itself out of his mangled body.

Find. Her. Heart.

Bundles of nerves wrapped up in nerves, he twitches and trembles as he once more staggers to his feet – stumbling over mud and rock to follow the sick green light further down the path that leads to death or almost death, to the heart that calls his name with every sick beat. The light grows brighter and brighter still as he nears – and his mind, scattered, broken, no longer feels the pain of his shoulder. The crater is a welcome sight to Khaedrik’s fever-bright eyes and he careens down its slopes in agitated frenzy until he finally collapses at the bottom, engulfed in green light and shadow. He has found her heart.


Obstacle 1: Underwater storm
Obstacle 2: Zombie horse consumed by Khaedriks shadow-creation

[Zain]

The red-eyed beast lulls impatiently.  Waiting for the others to catch up and gather again, he entertains himself. Bloop. Bloop. Bloop. His mouth pulses open like that of a sea creature, releasing entrapped air that remained in his lungs, to float in a bubbly display to the surface.  Boredom would soon suffocate him if he hadn’t acquired this nifty underwater breathing magic.  A crafty grin spreads across his lips when others arrive.

It wouldn’t be long now.

They look about the sunken lands.  He had not been around at this time and so he only knows stories of the sunken kingdom.  His God's creation.  It was a masterpiece and he felt privileged to be able to witness it let alone go into it.  

Carnage reappears, more abirition than flesh, and instructs them to follow the path to his kingdoms heart.  Blood red eyes trail from where Carnage existed and to where he commanded.  A winding trail through a grove of hollowed trees lay just before them.  Sea life scattered about its remains, passing through but never resting.  The only bright life here was the eternal flora through his locks.  He grumbles at the thought and touches his blight to them in disgust, knowing they would come right back.

They don’t.

He is stunned at the new revelation and fails to be the first to follow the murky path.  His view turns to himself and examines the thread of dead plant life along his sienna nape. What had changed?  As his gazes passes along his body he notices the black speck at his hip has grown, formed.  A large X has taken its place and he slightly fathoms what has marked him.  Perhaps it was Pangea herself, claiming him as her own. Or, his head turns to where his God has dissipated, could Carnage have blessed him…

He would not know the answer this moment and so, with a new sense of purpose and pride, he rushes onward.  Finding the path, now beaten with hoofprints, he travels quickly through the forest and hardly notices that the trail has veered.  Now he walks alone, or so he thinks.  Within the murky grey of the waters, he feels a rush of water from above him.  He looks up without slowing.  Strange.  The current then strengthens to his left, his head turns and instinctively he stops -eyes squinting to make out anything lurking in the depths.

“Who is there?” He bellows into the waters.  It seems that the ocean has quieted and so he looks back to the trail with a snort of irritation.  He hated games.

Just as he is about to step forward, there is a deafening screech.  He winces from the pain of ringing in his ears, eyes slowly opening to find a winged bay standing in his path.  The horse is nothing he has seen before, and a part of him wished to ask it to join his crew.  The thought is fleeting as he looks harder at the mare, her fangs where highly noticeable with the flesh half rotted off her face.  A set of tattered leather wings were lifted skyward and blocking the width of his route.  She stares at him with hollowed sockets before wicked words fall from his unhinged jaw, “Seems my worthless daughter now has a flower child… How pathetic.” The banshee sneers before lunging forward, teeth slashing for his neck.  He rears, contacting his hoof with her skull before dodging to the right, “Get away from me you creepy wench.” He spins about to face her again, finding a chunk of bone shattered off her head as she too turns to face him.  What did this deadwalker know of him and his mother, he wonders.  

He runs his fore hoof through the muck below, bowing his head and arching his strong neck.  A guttural scream emits from his vocals as he charges forward,  aiming to barrel over the ghastly creature.

Die bitch

He prepares for impact but the bat-winged demon vanishes right as he leans into his shoulder with all his weight.  The momentum sends him driving through where the zombie had stood, his hunches buckle to slide him to a quick halt.  Again he swings around, but this time all he sees is the path and in the distance a brighter flicker of green light.

His teeth grit as he reexamines his surroundings, unconvinced the creature has simply vanished, but seeing nothing he steps forward and back onto his mission.  If he ever seen his mother again, he’d make a point to ask her of what he had just witnessed.

It isn’t much farther down the trail that he gets a strange sensation.  There is a tingling along his side, no a burning.  He lurches forwards, kicking his rear legs into the dense waters.  The burning continues.  In a slight panic he looks to see what is touching him, who is touching him.  There is a mass of reddish goo with long tentacles attached near his hip with the marking.  The stinging was coming from where the being was clinging to his flesh and he reaches to rip it from his hindquarters.  His ivory teeth barely touch it before the creature is flinging a barbed tentacle at his face -landing it across his right eye.  Bulking in pain, he jets backwards and into a deadened tree stump, “What the fuck is this shit?” He growls, the pain at his rear was dulling but the fresh wound along his face still burned.  


With his one good eye, he looks around him.  Stopping on a pair of fiery eyes staring back at him from the shadows.  Again he growls, ready to charge at the mysterious stranger.  He doesn’t have to, the abomination comes to him.  A blackish horse with tentacles for hair and deep red eyes, stands before him.  He is dumbfounded at the equines oddity, and again he wished to ask the being to join his crew.  He doesn’t get a chance before the mare speaks, “You’d be smart to go back to where you came from… Carnage will only destroy you.”  He then notices a faint pulse of red through a hole in the mares breast.  She flickers to transparent and where a heart should beat, only a hollow space is seen. Unsure if he is slightly sickened or semi-amused, he straightens his posture and opens his wounded eye to better see.  With another blink, she is gone.

His mind is flooded with questions.  Who were these horses? Had Carnage tortured them? Were they simply figments of his imagination?  He draws in a deep breath before again stepping forwards.  Looking to the path the glow of green is brighter than ever and he imagines he is nearly there.  They slight burning of his flesh keeps him from moving at his quickest pace, but a powered walk gets him to the edge of the crater quick enough.  He peers into the sickly abyss and listens for the heart of Pangea...

Zain

ReBeL jUsT fOr KiCkS

Zombie horse- Karaugh (his granddam)
Obstacle #2- Dynast attacking him with jellyfish powers (Was in last Carnage quest) 

Also, his flowers are dying off and are being replaced with tattoos- change in aesthetic traits okd by Cassi

[Mori]

Something wasn't right about this place. That much was clear, painfully so.

Mori felt sick.

Follow the path, alone, or together. Find the heart.

By now, she'd figured out that trying to disobey the command-giver was a bad idea. Not only had he driven pieces of earth into their flesh and possessed the power to allow them to breathe underwater, but the moment she even thought about turning back and away from the wrong-feeling place - Pangea - her lungs burned in her chest, the entry wounds made by the dirt stung furiously, and moving through the water became even harder as she became all too aware of the pressure bearing down on her. Yes, she was certain that if she defied the command-giver, she would die.

So she turned, hooves moving unbearably slowly through the water, searching for the path. She found nothing. Nearing panic, she swept her gaze over the drowned kingdom again and again, and on the fourth time she caught a barely visible trail leading to the faintest of glows. She followed it mindlessly, moving her limbs as quickly as she could through the water and the mud even as her muscles ached with fatigue. She had to find the heart as quickly as possible. Not only was this place dark, spooky, and wrong feeling, Mori did not want the command-giver to become impatient.

She almost didn't notice the rotting corpse lunging at her.

A startled shriek came out in a stream of bubbles and she lurched away from her attacker. Unused to the way all movements were slowed down underwater, Mori took longer than she should have to recover. Before she even regained her footing, the corpse struck again, this time latching onto her shoulder and giving her a very unwanted up-close look at a drowned zombie horse. It was barely more than a skeleton; the few pieces of flesh that remained were swollen and sickly-looking. Reacting instinctively, Mori lashed out with a hoof, but again the movement was slowed by the resistance of the water. While it didn't manage to hit the zombie, the motion did tear her flesh from the horse's grasp. A red cloud billowed from the wound.

Deciding that trying to fight would only get herself in a worse situation, Mori fled as best as she could. She moved agonizingly slowly, but a look behind her told her that the zombie was little better. The chase continued for a while, until she realized that it was better, and it was catching up, however slowly it might have been. She couldn't go on like this forever. So she planted her front hooves in the mud and as the corpse approached, she pushed her hind hooves out in a kick with all her might.

Evidently the attacker hadn't been fast enough this time, because Mori felt her hooves connect with something solid. As it turned out, the kick had managed to separate a leg and a handful of other bones from the main body. Years spent at the bottom of the ocean had clearly not helped preserve the integrity of the body. There was no way it would be able to catch up with her now. In fact, she didn't think it was even moving.

As the adrenaline left her bloodstream, Mori began to realize how much everything hurt. She felt sicker than ever - her flight from the zombie must have taken her closer to the heart than she had thought. She realized with a start that the path was actually not very far from her location, which was surprising considering she hadn't exactly made staying on it a priority while fleeing. Every muscle in her body ached with incredible fatigue, probably an effect of both exertion and the sickness. And the bite was still bleeding, and the salt water seeping into the wound hurt so badly.

Her vision started to blur, and Mori collapsed onto the mud, the last of her energy draining away. She just wanted to rest. She just wanted it to stop hurting. Why couldn't she do that?

The magic's grip tightened again, sensing that she was drifting from her mission. Still she kept her eyes closed and remained motionless. The magic exerted more force. She couldn't breathe - was this what drowning felt like?

Finally, as the magic squeezed to a near-lethal level, the urge to keep going and survive overwhelmed the desire for rest. Mori attempted to stand up, dizzy from blood loss, and failed. The magic loosened and she tried again.

This time she managed to get to her feet. Step by agonizing step, she continued onward even as the sickness worsened. She took to counting her steps in an attempt to make the journey feel shorter. Ten more strides. I only have ten more to go. Nine more now. Reach that goal and she would start over.

At last, the glow from the heart was strong enough that everything in Mori's field of vision was tinted green. She stood on the edge of a crater - the heart - and tried not to fall as the sickness crept further into her body.

[Ramiel]

this is the man pulling on his iron chains

At the edge of the dead land, it is not so terribly dark.

While it is semi-dark here, where the land drops off abruptly into the ocean he’s just inexplicably motored through, the brittle light up above strokes down into the water like old hands.  It is a comfort, this last bastion of normalcy for a creature made for open-sky prairies and decidedly not any place underwater.   But it is a comfort that – like most things in life (and death) – cannot last.

He sinks into this new reality.  Sinks, because there is a hole in his head where Carnage shot him with rotten Pangean soil. Sinks, because the sickness is spreading from that point outward, leeching memories and pulling faces from a brain that had once thought itself wholly protected.  Sinks, because that same brain is being refilled with the dark god’s commands, weighed down, down, down by desires that would otherwise never have been his own.

After all, they’ve had exactly one similar desire, he and the dark god, but nothing like this.

Find Pangea.  Check.  The command comes again.  Follow the path.  Find her heart.  And oh, how ironic it might have been before!  Because he had found her heart in the end, his black light at the end of the universe.  He hadn’t been able to bring her home, but it had been so much better than that, meant so much more than that.  It had cost him his life but it was absolutely worth it.  Gail did the impossible, not for Carnage, but for him.
 
Ramiel doesn’t remember any of that now, standing in the sunken kingdom, he himself sinking further into the mud.  He only knows what he is supposed to do, only realizes that he should move before he becomes a relic mummified in the tarry muck for some other poor bastard to dig up later on.  So he moves deeper into the gloom.  The ground sucks at his feet as he looks for the path, making it hard to move anywhere at any rate of speed faster than a slow walk.  No matter, he doesn’t know what he’s looking for.  He’d much rather find the right path in this unsettling place than waste time on the wrong one.  

His metallic gaze levels on a suspicious spot of darkness just beyond.  The salt-soaked, dead trees bend around the spot like they are leaning away, like they want nothing to do with it.  Perhaps they stand in warning to those who would travel beyond their funeral pose.  As he nears it, the stormcloud grey stallion sees the faintest green glow emitting from its depths.  The path to her heart.  Uneasiness worms its way into his guts.  But alongside that uneasiness is a hard certainty – this is it.  So he goes forward because the god commands him to.  And who is he to decline the demands of a deity, especially one who he believes brought him back from the dead?

He owes Him everything.

The abyss swallows him, or seems to, as he gropes his way through underwater Hell.  All the while, his head begins to pound with a worsening headache.  Ramiel had attributed it to the pressure at first (he is sure Carnage is trying his best to keep them comfortable in such impossible conditions, but perhaps his magic is being stretched thin between them all).  It starts low and radiates towards his forehead, ending in a sharp CLANK of pain against his skull.  He swears he can hear it, the pain, almost like a sound he heard once long ago.
 
(Langoliers crunching through time, breaking, tearing, twisting…)  

He shakes his head and through the water it is like in slow motion.  It isn’t enough force to shake the memory to the surface of his brain.  It leaks out instead, trails in the dark water alongside blood from his shark-bitten neck.  

The radioactive green light grows stronger.  It illuminates strange movement as he begins to skirt around a bleached tree.  Something rises, spawned from the deepest recesses of this forgotten and forbidden land.  Its shape is vaguely equine, but even from a distance Ramiel can tell something has gone horribly wrong in the execution.  Skin is sloughing off in large chunks from its bloated, water-logged body.  It isn’t alive, clearly, but it is standing in the middle of the path he needs to traverse.  He walks towards the once-horse with as much confidence as one can when you’re a land-based creature under millions of gallons of saltwater, intending to get by with as little hassle as possible.  It charges.

He doesn’t remember the woman who had helped him escape the Afterlife before.  He doesn’t recognize that it is his grandmother Adolpha who wants to kill him now, her one green eye crazed and spinning and echoing the same color as the Heart’s light (the other eye missing in action entirely).  Her once proud wings are now severed at the joint and dragging in muck, the tendons ripped into ribbons and barely attaching them to her body.  She bears down on his slow crawl forward and rises up onto her hindlegs, muscles popping and separating with the effort.  Adolpha kicks out with her forelegs on the descent and even as he’s shying away, he feels her rotted hooves crumbling against his left shoulder.  It hurts, but not any more than the bite that follows along his topline.  Ramiel bucks against the contact.  The water slows his counterattack but he manages to dislodge her; he feels her teeth fall out like raindrops onto his back.  

He can’t hope to outrun her.  With an instinct that surpasses all: his memories spilling out of him, the orders of their dark god, the ceaseless throbbing inside his head, he becomes a ghost.  He slips into death easily and wastes no time.  While the nameless dead woman searches for him with animalistic hunger, Ramiel picks up a piece of petrified wood with his mind.  The end is sharp enough to get the job done.  It stabs through one side of her head (grey matter oozes like a cloud in the water), comes out the other side, and travels down to pierce her front legs together in a sick sort of hobble.  Even brainless and tied, the pitiful creature still tries to shuffle her back legs to get to him.  He comes back to full solidity and leaves her behind.  There is no remorse in his golden gaze when he goes.

CLANK.  His headache worsens to the point of nausea.  It nearly doubles him over, blinds him in the haze that has nothing to do with the sunken kingdom he travels.  All the while, the light grows fiercer in the distance.  Follow the path.  How much longer?  Find her heart.  What about his own?  What if it isn’t strong enough to make it?  What if his head bursts into a million pieces before he has the chance to complete it?  

CLANK.  Who am I?  “Who am I?”  He says out loud, the words garbled in the seawater.  He thinks he’s gone mad, or maybe he has always been?  Who’s to say?  Ramiel stumbles in a deep patch of mud, falls hard to his knees.  He thinks about staying there forever.  CLANK.  He forgets how to get up, how to move.  CLANK.  Bright green light that reminds him of the foothills in the morning light – CLANK.  Where is home?  Where is he from?  CLANK.  The fleeting feeling of red love bursts in his chest, of a promise of eternity made somewhere far from here.  Another promise, this one black and deep, like a still river.  Pinpoints of light pricking the backs of his eyelids, each one someone he cares about, each one someone who cares about him.  CLANK.  All gone.  All gone.  All gone.  Who am I?

Time passes as it is wont to (minutes, hours, days), and he pulls himself up.

The clanging headache is still there, but he feels lighter, somehow (purging memories will do that).  He has never felt worse in other respects.  The slimy sickness in his stomach still threatens to spill forth.  This place is decidedly not right.  His knees are bruised from his fall, but he manages to find the crater that shelters the heart.  Ramiel slides down the walls of the pit and into the hallowed space.  The alien light washes over him and results in a paradox of emotions, contentment and unease both in equal amounts.    

Ramiel