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  • 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


    [private]  I'll pull you from the dark; Aten
    #1
    She had not found anyone in Nerine to come to their aid and with her head hung low she made her way back through Taiga's cover. She spent her time going over all the horrible things that could have happened to Aten. She had not seen Turul again after he took flight, hopefully he had gone back to Aten and helped in any ways he could.

    The sun had set when she left Nerine and now a deep dark mingled with the salty sea fog that devoured her to her knees. As she peered to the canopy above she could see the faint twinkle of stars between the cracks the trees failed to fill, or maybe it was a gift from the forest. They were beautiful.

    Lethy's attention was pulled suddenly from the sky and her ears pulled forward attentively. She could catch hooves colliding with something. She took off careful to not trip over uprooted legs of trees and jumping over smaller, fallen trees that harbored an assortment of small animals. 

    She pulled up as she came to a very small, comfortable clearing. The wind shifted and she caught Aten's scent, though it was currently filled with aggression and failure. She crossed the clearing quickly as Aten took that aggression out on a large solid trunk. Aten she said softly but loud enough to catch his attention. She did not want to get caught between him and that tree. Aten, you're okay she breathed in relief.
    forget me not; but never remember
    Lethy

    @[Aten]
    IMG-20190524-092123-677
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    #2
    Rage... sadness... anger... hatred... more than one of these emotions were directed at the stallion who currently felt them, his sense of self-loathing and disappointment firmly rooted in his mind as he continued to go over, repeatedly, the events that had transpired within the last three suns.

    Those two... Wolfbane... Lepis... just the mere thoughts of their names were enough to make his blood boil, but it was not necessarily the two of them he was aiming his anger at. If he'd fought harder... had the resources to be able to stand up to them and keep Taiga safe from their clutches...

    But Aten had stepped down in self-interest, claiming it was because their deal to allow him residence in Taiga as it's champion so he could also watch over his friends, would be beneficial to a degree. The only one that fell short was Aten being deprived of what he'd promised a friend. He would look after the Taiga, guard it with his life...

    And he had just handed it over like a shameful foal who'd been caught trying to sneak a very tasty plant after being told by it's dam not to. Never before had Aten felt this angry at himself... what did it say of his character, to just hand down his throne? Could he really claim, truthfully sounding, that it was in the interest to stay and protect his friends? How many would actually believe that?

    Would Ruan? Would Heartfire? Would his own sire? Djinni? All the past leaders he'd known? Would they believe it? Or would they think him a coward who led by the excuse that he couldn't muster the will to fight because it was one stallion against two gifted who knew they could overpower him despite their smaller sizes?

    Aten easily outstood and outweighed both Wolfbane and Lepis; hell, it would've been comical to see them standing next to him since he was so big to begin with. But here he was, cowering  beneath them, like a wolf cub in the face of a fox.

    The golden stallion had only recently returned from Wolfbane's challenge back in Loess, having spent the last sun secluded in one of Taiga's glens, the small area surrounded by a line of trees but also making it seem more like a clearing on most of it's sides. One, the one where Aten was, had a greater number of trees, packed close together, so it looked more like a three-sided glen.

    He'd altered his time between pacing and standing still, but one thing had not changed; his current state of mind. And the longer he was trapped, the further he was falling. He didn't catch himself kick out a few times in sheer rage until, one time, he ended up kicking one of the trees near his hooves, something that briefly startled him back into the present. Seeing the small indent his hooves made, wishing it was something besides a tree trunk, he felt his negativity creeping up on him again.

    Rage... at the fact he'd had his throne taken away... he kicked the tree again, his eyes focused on the grass by his front hooves.

    Sadness... at failing to keep his promise... again.

    Anger... at having to forfeit the challenge like a crippled colt... an audible crack in the bark...

    Hatred... towards the ones that had put him in this situation... pieces of bark splintered from the tree trunk...

    This loop repeated itself a few times in Aten's mind, and with each one, his kicks only got stronger. Not even noticing the damage he was doing, the stallion snorted, threw his head, bucked, kicked again, and let out a string of curse words before, in an enraged state, let one final kick loose.

    Cursing the turn of events on his tongue, Aten's hooves met their mark on the trunk of the tree, a very audible crack echoing in the silence of the clearing. Aten's hooves came back to the ground, the stallion's chest heaving as his wide anger-filled eyes burned a hole in the grass in front of his hooves.

    A quiet voice cut through the momentary silence, and Aten's blood froze. Eyes going wider for a different reason, he turned his head, sure enough, seeing Lethia standing only a few yards away. The mare was watching him with worried eyes, speaking again, though he could not tell if her tone was a relieved one from her being gone to Nerine, or from her trying to pull him from this black state of mind.

    Aten swallowed a gulp that had been building, and turned his head to look at the trunk he'd been kicking earlier. Somewhat afraid of what he would see, the stallion slightly winced at the damage. The trunks of Taiga's trees were incredibly thick and wide across, save for some areas where the younger ones were growing. The one he'd been beating up was at least a decade or so old, so already pretty thick, but from where Aten's hooves had been striking was now a decent sized-hole that left the stallion wondering how the tree's weight was still being supported.

    Realizing how this must look, feeling ashamed, Aten sucked in a breath to calm himself down. He turned and walked toward Lethia, stopping a few feet from her in case she didn't want to be too close after seeing that display.

    "I..." Aten took a second to compose himself, "I'm happy to see you're all right. I'm... sorry you had to see that... Lethia..." the stallion resisted the urge to look back at the damage he'd done, knowing he'd just return to thinking about those two.

    "Your journey was safe... to Nerine? And back here?" he questioned, trying to hide the anger and pain in his eyes.

    @[Izora Lethia]
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