• Logout
  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    I’ll break you a hundred different ways, anyone
    #1
    I am Real Bad at playing boys but I’m trying. 

    — I'll break you a hundred different ways —

    Beqanna is sick, and he is partially to blame. 

    He would not claim credit, though. He had merely accepted an invitation to a party; he was not the one who hosted it, nor was he the guest of honor. Normally one to prefer solitude, it was out of character for him to heed the dark God’s call, but one grows restless when anchoring themselves to solitude for too long. 

    He was not disappointed. The party had lived up to all its hype. 

    The adrenaline from the kill had long wore off, but the disease lingered. It had settled into his veins, sinking like teeth into his bones until his body was pulsing with a dull ache. A dark red stain trailed from both nostrils, and upon his pale lips; he doesn’t seem to notice. He did nothing to stifle his sickening cough, nonchalantly spitting the blood that pooled within his mouth onto the ground below as he walked. His silver wings remained tucked at his side, ignoring the branch and briar that tugged at his steel-colored mane. 

    He cast a glance briefly to the sky above, noting where the sun sat amongst the clouds. Midday, perhaps. He despised being in public in the night hours, preferring to avoid the unwanted attention that his evening curse often brought. Of course, for the last several years he has avoided the mainlands all together, but the gathering in Pangea had piqued his curiosity, wondering what has become of his homeland.  He remains in the forest, for now, a slip of silver amongst the shadows, and he is almost silent, save for the sporadic coughing and rattled breathing. 

    — and I'll make you remember my face —

    Nightlock
    Reply
    #2

    violence


    She’d missed the festivities, had not returned to the land she had once (briefly) called home. It had been a strange time, a quick turn of events that she was only tangentially aware of, and then suddenly there were new lands and a new sickness.
    She didn’t flee – she’s never been a coward – had instead stayed in central parts of Beqanna, watching with her own morbid curiosity how things might unfold. She’s witnessed no deaths, yet, which frustrates her – she prefers bones as her playthings, but a fresh-dead corpse might have its own benefits. Horses know bones immediately for a puppet, it might take longer with a thing just-dead, an interesting possibility.
    She’s considered making her own corpse, but it would be messy, and a caved-in skull would ruin the illusion, she supposes. She lacks any kind of healing, any real ability to repair the things she may ruin.

    The stallion is gray, and boring, and it’s just luck (hers, not his) that she sees him as she walks. She stops, and her bone-thing – a hideous creation, a rebuilt skeleton made from bones of several creatures, pieced together – halts too, the bones rattling softly against one another. She glances at it, and its head tilts too, as if they are co-conspirators, not a woman and her odd puppet. She nods, and walks closer.
    She can smell blood, which piques her interest – perhaps he is wounded – and is disappointed when he opens his mouth and spits out the blood.
    Still, though – that could be interesting in its own right.
    “Hello,” she says, stepping closer, shadows falling across her back, disappearing into her own blackness, “are you ill?”
    She asks this as if she is sympathetic. Behind her, the bone-thing stands, impassive.

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

    Reply
    #3

    Romantica

    The blush ripples over her own silver hide, a dusted rose, seashell pink complimenting the steel of her womanly form. She picks her way carefully over a broken and scarred land, like hungry finger over braille, reading the tragedy just beneath the skin of a revolving land. Romantica was nothing more than a lost soul among the flood of countless others. Winter had left her slightly gaunt, her ribs a little more exposed beneath the stretch of her velvet skin but her eyes the brilliance of her sea glass eyes seem to float beneath the paleness of her hair.

    A man is not far off the frozen path in the forest that she currently followed. He is a deepen grey beast with wings tugged neatly against his spine. A look of wildness swells just behind the darkness of his eyes, it is feral, angry, frightening. Romy catches her breath for a moment as she hesitates with a hovering hoof. The world had felt too quiet as of late, sickness coated the air like scum of a leper's tongue. Romy is understandably cautious.

    The world had turned rotten like a bountiful harvest that had been forgotten. It turned to sickness and misfortune for the residents had squandered their given goods. What the great gods gave then they could surely take. There would be no exceptions in their dauntless trials. Souls would be weighted in a value that was unknown to the rose dappled mare but she is fairly certain hers would not amount to much.

    What else could be lost?

    Was the other a crazed beast, dazed by sickness, a fever pitch of the plague? If he was, it was far to late for the smaller mare to flee safely so what other options did she has? She exhales slowly, pale eyes on the other's form, listening to the draw of his breaths, jagged or methodical. Romatica decides to push forward along the slick winter path with watching eyes and tight little steps.

    Reply
    #4

    — I'll break you a hundred different ways —

    He attracts the attention of someone, unfortunately.

    Nightlock preferred to be the seeker, and not the one who had been sought. Approaching on his own terms was how he liked it, but unfortunately this is the hand he was being dealt. It would be easy to simply fly away, but it also gave the impression of fleeing. Birds scattered when anyone got close, in fear of being hunted; the gray stallion did not have that fear.

    His wings remain listless at his sides, his almost-black eyes hardly flickering in her direction. ”No,” but there is something akin to a smile on his sanguine lips, though the action is hollow and meaningless. His breath rattles in his throat, evidence of his blatant lie, though he finally turns to capture her gaze with his own. She is unfamiliar to him, as most are, a nameless, animated corpse. From her face his gaze moves to observe her mismatched puppet of bones, and he could almost laugh at the irony. A skeleton puppet. Fucking perfect. ”Your pet is looking thin.”

    Something pale flashes in his peripheral, rosy and pink and soft. She is walking ever so cautiously, as though each step held the chance of triggering a predatory response from him. He did not like to give chase; if she chose to run, he would not follow, would not hunt her down. His eyes drag for a moment across the svelte curve of her hip, and then to her doe-like eyes that watch him and the black mare so  carefully. ”Someone is awfully brave today,” But he utters the words so quietly that they are more to himself, casting a glance to the black mare and her bone-stitched toy, and then back to the blushed mare trying to slip past.

    — and I'll make you remember my face —

    Nightlock


    @[violence] @[Romantica]
    Reply
    #5

    violence


    Not long after she appears, there’s another, blush-pink and tentative. Violence turns to look at her, a grin infecting the curve of her lip. Her skeleton-thing curves its head, too – a horse’s skull bedecked with a buck’s horns, wolf teeth replacing the blunted herbivore teeth, and for a moment both she and her pet are fixated on the other girl, the easy prey.

    But then the man speaks, so she turns her attention back to him. He’s not much to look at, though she admires the wings – she admires any kind of power she lacks. She considers trying to steal her way into his mind, to test out his flight, but possession is tiring – other living things fight back so much more than corpses do.
    “It’s hungry,” she says, and its teeth gnash, one falling from its mouth – disappointing. She takes her eyes off the stallion to reaffix it, forcing it back into a socket it doesn’t belong in. She’ll have to work on that – can’t have her creations crumbling when she looks away.
    “My name is Violence,” she says, looking first at him, then at the other stranger, who has kept her distance, “my pet doesn’t have a name.”

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

    Reply
    #6
    @[violence] is safe from the plague. For now. (rolled a 6)

    @[Romantica] is also safe from the plague, for now. (rolled a 4)
    Reply
    #7

    — I'll break you a hundred different ways —

    The newcomer is decidedly boring, not stepping closer or fleeing to incite a chase. He loses interest quickly, as he does in most things. He is not one to offer attention if it is not being earned, and since the timid little thing was hardly a threat, either, he tilts his face back towards his new, somewhat eccentric companion, and her toy made of patchwork bones. ”Perhaps you should feed it.” It is said in a way that almost implies he is amused, though the flat-black of his eyes say otherwise. He rarely craved anything in his skeletal form; but maybe her creation was different.

    ”Nightlock,” is the only response he says to her own introduction. He doesn’t recognize her name, but he finds himself wondering if she lives up to what it implies.

    He lets his gaze drift back to her pet, a small ember of curiosity incited as he admires the random array of body parts. ”Did you kill all of them or just find them.” The decline of his head gestures to the nameless puppet, not really concerned of her answer one way or the other, but mildly inquisitive of how she worked.

    — and I'll make you remember my face —

    Nightlock

    @[violence]
    Reply
    #8

    violence


    She is aptly enough named – she’s tasted blood before. Killed, too, though most often when in the bodies of her more monstrous family. Her own body was woefully lacking in weaponry, with her blunted teeth and lack of venom, it forced her to be creative. She found violence (pun intended) most often when she possessed them, managed to wrap herself in their minds, pilot their bodies into doing horrible things.
    (She’d snapped a girl’s neck, once, run her off a cliff. It had been strange, and thrilling, the taste of power on her tongue, thick as cream.)
    She looks fondly at her creation, beckons it close to her, as if it, too, felt affection.

    He gives his name, and she nods, as if it means anything. She likes the threat of it, but is sure she’ll forget it soon enough. She does enjoy his questioning about her pet – too many run from it! – so she sends it closer, its head cocked, reaching out, as if to say hello. She does not touch bone to skin, though – not yet.
    “No,” she admits, “it’s mostly scavenged.”
    Her kills while in father’s body, or Charnel’s, had been subsequently consumed, the bones cracked for marrow, no trophy left for her. Perhaps when she claims her own kill – a dirty one, one made with own weaponless body – she’ll keep it, or part of it.
    “I like that you aren’t afraid,” she is blunt, here. She’d like if he was afraid, too, of course – that could be used – but this is different. Interesting..
    “Are you from here, Nightlock? Are you used to monsters?”

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

    Reply
    #9

    — I'll break you a hundred different ways —

    He was a particularly mild creature, despite the thoughts that often crossed his mind; dark tendrils that weaved tangled webs, twisted and sadistic, though he rarely acted on such whims. Opportunity didn’t often present itself, especially when one secludes themself in the wilderness, although he didn’t pass on it whenever it did.

    He didn’t see her as an opportunity, though. He was only intrigued. Besides, she was clearly different than his usual targets. She wasn’t meek and quiet, and he preferred things that didn’t fight back, which ruled her out. Trying to overpower a girl that possessed a puppet of bones as a pet didn’t seem wise. She appealed to him in an entirely different way than what he was accustomed to, and he tilts his head downward to regard her creation as she sends it forward.

    ”Should I be afraid?” He questions her, a somewhat amused look on his sterling face, not stepping away even as a bone nearly touches his leg. ”Skeletons and bones, they’re hardly monsters.” Perhaps the pilot was the monster, he thinks, the muted darkness of his eyes still watching her. ”But yes, I was born here. Not much surprises me anymore.”

    He shifts his wings, the coolness of autumn rustling through the pale feathers, and he finally asks of her, ”What else can you control? Besides your….friend.”

    — and I'll make you remember my face —

    Nightlock
    Reply
    #10

    violence


    For all her powers, she is almost weak, compared to her parents – a magician and a monster – and this bothers her to no end. She’d begged – begged! – mother to shape her, to give her some of the more monstrous qualities possessed by her father (and later, her sisters), but Cthylla had denied her each time.
    Her sisters especially do not deserve their deliciously wicked bodies, those armored bodies and hungry mouths, Charnel and Nexu are weak, useless things.
    (Viscera is useless too, even more so – her body is plain, like Violence’s.)
    She makes monsters with what she can, collects her bones and makes her puppet, and it’s satisfying, but she knows it’s of little danger.

    “Some find the skeletons wandering untethered by meat unnerving,” she shrugs, “we’ve known some to run.”
    He asks about her, then, and she sees the glimmer of opportunity, grabs it.
    “Dead things in general,” she says, “but I find corpses messy.”
    They are amusing in short bursts, sure enough, but she does not like them as companions, the stink of rot in her nostrils. They are harder to manipulate, too, cannot be pieced together so easily, too much tearing and ripping.
    “And minds, too, though-,” she hesitates, not wanting to admit weakness, but it’s a hard truth. The necromancy had come easy to her, like breathing, but the possession was far less reliable, too easy to be overcome by a strong will.
    “Though they have to be weak, or invite me in, to be any fun.”
    She can take strong minds but only for a moment or two, and then she’s too often forced out. She hates the feeling, which is why she does not often lean on the power, unless she finds them very weak or very stupid (like her sisters, who were both – they were beautiful vessels, though).
    “What about you?” she asks, “what can you do?”

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)