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    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 sit at a banquet for traitors; any
    #1

    i’ve been both a saint & a viper

    They come for him. They will always come for him.

    In what used to be his most precious and safest place, the demons thrive. The darkness that once was his only cloak of protection they writhe, blaspheming what used to be his sanctuary with their demonic laughter and spitting. Their shadows bounce off the damp cave walls, their howls echoing through stone and stalactites in between the sound of their clicking jaws and drool, snapping their teeth just inches from his flesh, set on tearing skin from bone. Each night is a new scene but the same characters - blood-stained and half-rotten, hobbling towards him with sickly smiles and hollowed-out, eyeless sockets. They are as real to him as his own flesh and bone, yet he knows they are hidden amongst the nooks and crannies of their cave, unseen by others.

    Yet he hears them always, champing in his ear and whispering terrible, unfeasible things in his ears.

    Kill, kill, kill.
    Kill, kill, kill, like you killed us.

    It’s never ceasing and he screams out in protest, cursing them and throwing them away from his flesh with bucks and pressing his weight into them against the walls until they disappear; but they always return, and always with the same request.

    Kill, kill, kill.

    So he did.

    Black as their own shadows he had come, and with cloudiness in Balto’s gaze he tore into actual flesh and bone, severing arteries and pressing his forelegs into a shattered rib cage until organs and muscle became nothing but mush beneath his hooves. They cackled and howled with pleasure as it occurred, the walls splattered with rubies of blood and pieces of sinew as he shredded his only friend into nothingness. 

    The act had gifted Balto with immortality - the demons had told him. 

    Now you’ll live forever, now you’ll live forever.

    They whisper excitedly in his ear and it tortured him even more than anything previously - he would never die, never die.

    Never die.

    A sound - a real sound, not one in his mind - rouses the beast and silences the demons.

    The vines of his cave whisper against each other as moonlight begins to spill inward, a shape creating a massive shadow at its front.

    Kill, kill, kill.

    Eyes - glassy and blue as the moon - sharpen and fixate on the unfamiliar shape, remaining hidden beneath shadow and his own writhing demons. He dare not move forward, he dare not listen to the demons that entice him with sickly sweet ideas. “You’re not safe here,” comes the harshness of his voice that trembles with resistance, slick with warning. It’s the same words he had told Faulkor, before his eyes became blind and his mind became theirs.

    Balto



    Strangely had muse for this one.
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    #2
    The grizzly sow surveys the land with sharp dark eyes —

    Less and less, is she the mare.
    More and more, is she the bear.

    It has usurped her life. Changed it into something that climbs trees, fishes for salmon, but still hunts for mushrooms by moonlight. Even peers into the odd cavern every so often in hopes of spotting something the bear cannot even comprehend looking for - bears don’t look for stallions, not blue-eyed ones that favor vines and shadows.

    Except this bear does. Something her odd two-shape heart tells her to sniff every cave-mouth for a scent that the mare trapped somewhere in her flesh would recognize on a level so primal it scares her.

    Is it any surprise that she finds, at last, his cave from so long ago? That his smell is both old and new on the dank air that she sucks down deep into her lungs? Or that the grizzly chuffs and snorts, unafraid as she pokes her muzzle inward and inhales again, a big draught of air and scent that makes her shape waver just the slightest and her heart flutter all the faster.

    The female’s mouth is not a slim dark-tipped horse muzzle but a bear’s toothsome maw that lets slip his name in a growly whisper of disbelief, “Balto?” She ignores the warning, the dire pant of his breath and the stink of harshness and fear that rolls off him. Keeper has never been afraid of him and she won’t start now, not while in bear-guise and fearless herself.

    ooc: yay you’re back! and pfft like you weren’t going to get a keeper reply to this! haha ❤️ and it’s horribly short - I haven’t written in a couple of months.
    Reply
    #3

    i’ve been both a saint & a viper

    The darkness crawls across the mottled blue of his flesh, rippling hungrily beneath the fibers of muscle and sinew. He trembles, his jaw clenching tightly as he attempts to still himself, to still his thoughts. The demons run rampant anyway, fluttering through his mind and over his body like raven’s wings, intimate and familiar and terrifying. He cannot control them, and every hour is torture as he tries to keep some semblance of his old self, but it is barely recognizable beneath the blackness that has become his home.

    You’re not safe here, he had told the shadow, but the shadow did not listen.

    Do they ever?

    He braces himself, muscles becoming taut beneath his skin, eyes flickering back and forth towards the cave’s yawning entrance. The scent of bear - thick and musty, wild - fills his nostrils and his ears fall back into the wild tangle of his black mane, the ferocity in his eyes magnifying tenfold while becoming rimmed with white. The stallion rakes a forehoof against the smooth, familiar stone of the cave, the sound grating and rough, vibrating through the air menacingly.

    Balto?

    For a moment, the darkness in his eyes subsides and the demon’s whispers fall silent. His brow furrows, the lines of his face softening into a sort of sad expression, stretching his neck forward to huff confusedly at the toothed mouth that speaks his name. The weight of his burden temporarily lifts, for a moment being able to breathe again, his nostrils shuddering as he inhales deeply. The bear is a stranger, unfamiliar and threatening; but the voice…

    He snorts sharply, the black of his lips pursing.

    “Who are you?” He asks, his voice quiet and uncertain, as if his voice would awaken his seemingly sleeping demons.

    Balto



    @[keeper]
    eeeeee! i'm so glad you caught this <3
    Reply
    #4
    Keeper listens to reason and instinct, but is blind in the face of his snarled threat. Or maybe it was an assurance? She ignored it; obstinate and determined to behold the face of her friend and to almost touch him but she remembered she was in grizzly shape and he’d not know her like this. Then embarrassment hits her hard and the bear pulls back, managing to look chagrined.

    How could she have forgotten that he’d never seen this side of her? She had done so well to keep it hidden - to keep herself hidden whenever she was a bear instead of a mare. Keeper gnashed her teeth together as her fore paws kneaded the earth in a not so nice manner. Small breathy snorts and grunts push their way out of her nostrils and mouth that become a kind of song to her embarrassment.

    Until —

    He doesn’t know her but he changes, softens, subsides back into that same sad self that she had known and tried to free from other different demons at the time. She’s not certain of these new ones or how he came to be so harsh and hidden, and it makes her sad in turn too. Then again, her heart often bruised easily when it came to him and how the world kept trying to break him.

    She can tell he’s trying to figure out who she is through smell and sight. It almost makes her laugh aloud but her laughter in a bear’s mouth is harsh and unbecoming, so she smiles instead not realizing that her smile is probably not much better coming from a predator’s toothy jaws. Instantly, she brightens at his question and finally laughs, a guttural growl of a thing that shakes her great round bear-belly;

    “Why, it’s me silly - Keeper!”

    Then she recovers, sobering and almost lifts a paw to him in offering before thinking better of it. Instead, she lumbers a few paces back from the cave and wills herself into that old shape she has spent so little time in. Before she knows it, with a pop and a crunch and a small cry of pain - she’s back to being a plump but lovely little mare. “I’m more familiar this way aren’t I?” she calls out to him before walking back over so he can get a better look.

    Her dark eyes find his face for but a moment before her head drops, bashful and apologetic. “I - I wanted to show you before but I went away for a while and when I came back, you weren’t here.” Keeper doesn’t ask where he went, or further explain how she almost lost herself to the bear and it’s needs. She just inches that much closer, extending her muzzle towards him until they can almost touch… and she wants to touch him so badly!

    The mottled blue of him has never lost its allure to her; neither has his eyes and his face. She contents herself with just breathing him and tells herself that that will just have to be enough, for now.


    @[Balto] eeeeee me too! missed you! <3
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    #5

    i’ve been both a saint & a viper

    He feels them stirring as uncertainty clouds the sharp features of his worn face. They flicker like a flame in the electric blue of his eyes, burning his insides as the whispers fight to be heard. The stallion swallows hard, grimacing as his throat tightens, attempting to keep the demons from bursting forth and taking over. It’s a bear, menacing in size and girth, and he wonders briefly if it is the universe answering his prayers to send him to his grave.

    You’ll live forever. Forever.

    The blackness of the cave becomes a bit brighter with the movement of the vines from the bear’s mouth - he swallows again, unmoving as he meets it’s toothy smile. Somehow it's dark eyes are not feral and wild; they hold something soft and gentle - familiar. The grizzly says it’s name and his breath catches there in his throat for a moment, a pause in his mannerisms as if he is trying to digest her words. Keeper. 

    “Keeper.” He says her name aloud, breathlessly, as if he had been waiting for her since the moment of their last encounter.
    Perhaps he had.

    Kill.

    They ravage him then - screaming and shouting and clawing - feeling the weakness inside him and barreling through the wall he tries so hard to keep them at bay. The stallion’s neck curls and a gutteral sound leaves his ebony mouth, squeezing his eyes shut as he wills the whispers into silence. He tosses his head with the effort, swallowing their so-tempting commands. Kill. He can feel their shadows licking at his legs, howling beneath his jaw and nipping at his throat. 

    Long moments of inner silence pass and finally his eyes dare to open; when they do he is, in fact, met with the familiar face of a mousy little mare that - despite his warnings - continues to come towards him, eyes alight with happiness. His own heart leaps at the sight of her, but he remains reserved and cautious. She reaches towards him breathlessly, the dark of her muzzle stretching to meet his own. For a moment he considers this, the muscles in his neck relaxing so that he could eagerly feel the softness of her mouth against his own, inhale the scents of the outside world that she brings, and perhaps find rest.

    But they do not let him forget their presence.

    Paint the walls with her blood. 

    He winces at an unseeable pain, closing his eyes abruptly, bringing his chin to his chest with a vigorous snort. “You’re not safe here,” he repeats with an unsteady voice, eyes still tightly shut as his hooves click on the smooth stone ground, backing away from her and further into his cave. 

    They repeat their favorite word, resounding in his head. Kill. 
    His own thoughts find him momentarily, in the midst of their overwhelming voices that drip with temptation. Kill me.

    He’s met with ominous laughter.

    Balto



    @[keeper]
    ugh i love them!
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