"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 can feel the flames on my lips; crimson blood on my skin
Barely audible over the creak of frozen branches and the whisper of the wind against the frozen earth are the low notes of a breathy song. She sings it mostly to herself, to herself and to the snow that falls around her. The words themselves are indiscernible, though she laughs now and then as though they amuse her.
Or perhaps she is simply mad.
The snow has grown deeper as she journeys north, settling on her ashen hide only to melt away. A trail of blood marks her path – not her blood, not the blood of anyone, just: blood. A drop here, a splatter there, enough to taint the air around her with the coppery smell as much as the disharmonious sound of her song.
When she falls quiet it is at the top of a hill. Even the wind grows still around her, until the drip drip drip is the only sound. Then there is no sound at all, and even the echoes of her voice fade to silence as the sun reaches noon and stretches feebly toward the earth below. Too bright. Wings that had not existed snap open, curl overhead and block the weak sunlight from where it crept across her crimson shoulders and smoke-grey mane. The feathers are white as the snow, as white as the pair of curling rams horns (which become elk antlers, then markhor spirals) that rise from her brow. Scales grows across her chest and knees as she giggles to herself, then fade as swiftly as the wings and horns.
Starlace is just a small gray mare on a hill now, and the scent of blood drifts away in the wind as the soft snow begins to fall.
Stave does not come to the field often, but that is changing.
It is changing because something like ambition has set a flame in his young heart. It is changing because the world around him is shifting and he is smart enough to know that he needs to move or risk being crushed. So he breaks from Pangea—from the stony hills and the endless, ringing of its potential—and he moves to a place that reeks of commoners and feels poisoned with its static, dead sense of average.
But the necromancer still comes.
He rests in the shadows, his gangly body growing into itself as he nears his first year.
He rests and watches—nothing capturing his attention enough to push the arrogance aside in the interest of action. That is, until he sees her. She is small and grey and yet there is something underneath that digs a sharp edge into his ribs. He angles his head, depthless black eyes narrowing in thought, before he sighs and pushes away from the tree. He leaves the small, mangled bodies of animals that he had resurrected in his wake and instead walks forward by himself—his tail snapping at his hocks.
When he is close enough, he pauses, breathing in the scent of something otherworldly.
“Hello,” his voice is smooth for one so young and his smile practiced but empty, cold.
They come to him. Starlace, Starlace, Starlace, they chant, excited whispers on varied tongues. So inexplicably linked, they cannot help but know how he has yearned. For closure, for redemption, even he does not know. But now, now that she has returned, risen from the death and decay of the beach, seemingly robbed from the clutches of the afterlife … Shifting his weight, he swings his head east, pupils wide and dark. It is an alien feeling, this feeling of uncertainty, and he finds it rather displeasurable. She had been consumed by her affair with Infection - at least, that is how it had seemed to him, her favored, her prize until the spectral creature had stolen her attention and presence. The memories are sour, bitter on his tongue, and for several moments his youthful anguish overrides the hollow craving that has been a part of him for lifetimes.
He blinks, eyes shifting, focusing, and she is before him, his bloody-shouldered queen. Not a figment of his conjuring this time, she smells the same still, albeit tinged in the rotten, milky sweetness of death, but everything else is … different.
Set does not know how long he stares. Snow falls gently around them, dulling any sounds, and still he lingers in vague silence. Another blink, gold-colored eyes burning with exposure and questions, so many questions. A sudden suck of air, nostrils flaring wide then collapsing. Shifting hastily, he shakes out the dreads of his dark mane, teeth clacking in Stave’s general direction though his gaze does cease it’s quest to cling to hers.
11-06-2019, 08:36 AM (This post was last modified: 11-16-2019, 10:50 AM by Tauti.)
Tauti
Sota
Nälkä
Tähti
They come and go as they please.
Life in the Cove with Clayton, the sire, hadn’t really worked out for them. Moreso because he was still grieving the loss of Dawn’s love for him, the greying fake-yearling thinks, than because he actually meant to neglect them or anything. But the fact was that four young foals (granted, mother had the life experience of a 7-year old, but her children didn’t) were too much to keep track on for one stallion.
It’s not anybody’s fault they turned out this way, she thinks. In fact - it’s pretty obvious that they developed the way they always would have, their instincts guiding them.
The white yearling shakes the green mane out of her eyes, scans the horizon. Something had changed. Something very unnatural had happened, even though she could not exactly pinpoint what it was or why. They’d all heard the call for a loved lost one, but when the triplets had looked at one another they shook their heads - no, mother was with them, for some reason. The ebony filly had explained to them her curse of not-dying, and frankly nothing could be done about it.
But while the red-eyed white girl had come to accept that immortality was a thing in Beqanna, she didn’t quite agree with crossing into the realm of the dead like the ghost’s call had proposed, and she wasn’t surprised at all when the dead crashed through it with the ones who were on their way back.
She walks into the Field, and the rest of their little herd (consisting of three fillies and a colt, all yearlings nearing their second year by the looks of it) follows suit. It’s not because they think her the leader, but by now, where one goes, the rest follows. In fact, it’s a silent agreement that when one of them wants to approach or investigate something, they’re all-in. A simple rule they live by.
Others have gathered, as well. One male in particular stares the simple-looking grey mare down, but they all know looks can be deceiving. Another approaches from the shadows - Tauti glares at him a little, and then she simply walks up to the mare. Seeing as only the last male had spoken, she figured she might as well start. ”I’m Tauti. You don’t really belong, do you?” she asks. She doesn’t really know why she has that feeling - it might be the staring male, it might be the shadowy-one - Stave, he’d said - but whatever it is, it might even just be the mare herself.
The slow approach of twelve other hooves means the others have gathered, too. The raven-maned and likewise winged mother of the three in the middle, right behind her same-aged daughter; the black one looking intensely at the other males with silver peering eyes, the red one looking rather bored.
11-06-2019, 12:49 PM (This post was last modified: 11-06-2019, 03:13 PM by Lugosi.)
It's his time, his time to step forth from within the dark shadows of the forest and show this world what he is. He remembers the fear he instilled in the other young equines he met as a child, they hid behind their mother's, shaking. He couldn't blame them, his talons could have easily ripped out their throats, freeing them from their mortal coils. Instead he chose to hide away, to slink within the darkest parts of the forests of Beqanna. Stalking his prey. Feeding from the weak, or just those who were unfortunate enough to pass through his domain.
It was cold, then snow was a heavy blanket strewn across the landscape. The path to the field was barely visible, as the falling snow quickly covered the tracks from those who had tread the path before him. It's not long before his taloned feet carry him to the edge of the field, a haunting melody falls upon his ears. He follows, curious for sure. The melody stops, and not too long after, he sees her. Those surrounding her, two dark stallions, and a young grey, they do not matter as they seem to fade from his sight. The blood splattered queen before him. He strides forward with large strides. The snow that had collected on his cold body flew off behind him like a white glittering veil. For it did not melt upon touching his frozen hide. He did not feel it...
She does not need to speak her name for him to know who this is. His wine colored eyes grow wide. It couldn't be....she was dead. She was LONG dead. The queen his mother told him so much about, his ruthless queen grandmother. It had to be, she was so distinct, it was almost as if she had crawled forth from the depths of his mind. A cold yet smooth voice emits from his dark maw. His talons flexing in what he could only guess was excitement. The snow crunched loudly between them.
"Starlace.....? How I have longed to meet you. I am Lugosi...son of Valien. I am your kin."
He couldn't believe he was seeing her in front of him. A living and breathing entity. The others beside him come back into his view, his tunnel vision starting to break. He nods to them, his brow furrowed and his mouth tilted up into his best attempt at a sideways grin. This was the most interaction he had ever had, and normally he hated being in crowds. But this was something, a once in a life time opportunity, something magic. He could not let this slip through his claws.
Ooc: this is Abalone, but I am waiting for his name to be updated in the database as Lugosi. Permission granted by Kyra to post with his new name!
i can feel the flames on my lips; crimson blood on my skin
A single wing is back in an eye-blink, and the curled thumb at the top joint is stretching out toward the tobiano stallion. It catches him beneath the chin, turns his head this way – then that as the grey’s lips purse and her soft eyes narrow.
She nods then, clearly satisfied, and the bony thumb strokes his cheek for just a moment before it fades to red smoke.
“You were always my favorite,” she tells him, aware in death that she had not told him so often enough in life.
Then her attention shifts to the boy with hollow eyes, the one at which her Favorite gnashes his teeth. Carnage’s, she thinks, son of a dark god. His methods are crude, and the boy smells of old blood. “Did you kill them yourself?” She asks, and there is a hawklike intensity in the way her head tilts to the side, waiting for an answer regarding the origin of the toys he as left behind. She hopes it is in the affirmative.
The patter of light feet – many light feet – approach in the snow. Children, children like the dead star boy, and only one bold enough to speaks. Starlace does enjoy boldness in the young. “Says the leader of the youngest army I’ve ever seen,” she replies with a flicker of her eyes across the four faces. Yearlings in the field in the dead of winter; how else has Beqanna changed in her absence? How much will she need to correct?
The smells of rotting flesh she thinks might be Stave, at least until an eighth figure joins them. Infection. But her’s too, he claims, and Starlace’s wing-thumb returns to shift his head back and forth as well. Carnage’s too, she sees, and a brief flicker of disappointment in that odd daughter flickers across her gray face. Still, he is effusively eager to have found her, and she does enjoy praise. “Lugosi.” She repeats with a nods, and her soon-vanished wing chucks him beneath the chin like one might a beloved hound.
“When was the last war?” She asks her assembled crowd. The Hall of the Slain does not receive them all, but the offerings have been meager of late. Surely her world has not become entirely pacified. Surely there is chaos to be roused somewhere, blood to be spilt, bones to be broken. “And when will be the next?”
Others come and Stave does little to hide his annoyance, his disappointment.
He angles his head to the first, the painted stallion with the same kind of magic flowing beneath his flesh, and studies him with as much interest as he had studied Starlace. Then, the small army of young children and his flesh crawls with the nearness of them—and, finally, the undead one. This makes his smile spread just a little, his own magic pricking beneath his skin as reaction, a need to dissect and understand.
But none of them capture his attention for long, and his black eyes are soon back on the mare.
He does not hear what she says to the others.
Has never been good at thinking outside of his own interactions.
Instead, he looks toward the creatures he had resurrected and then left to die. “In a way,” he says with a roll of thin shoulders. His teeth are impossibly white against the black of his nose and the light that flickers in his youthful eyes is nothing like it should be. “I gave life and then I took it.” A simple dance for him, a way to pull the strings of fate and play it as though they were always his to have.
When she asks her question, he brightens—that keen edge of interest showing beneath the impassive features of his face. “As soon as we want it,” his voice is rougher than his age, tinged with the shadows where he has spent his life. “As soon as Anaxarete of Pangea makes her call of what’s to come next.”
A shudder runs through him at her touch. So, he had not been wrong. Death had changed her. Not just as it changes all who pass through the veil into the afterlife, no. There was a time that she scorned those imbued with magic, though he was too young to really know why. As Beqanna had changed and evolved, he thinks she grew more accepting of it. He never would have imagined that she herself would wield it has her own. Mismatched lids shutter slowly over eyes filled with burning emotion. She turns his head from one side to the other and he hyper-focuses on the grasp at his chin. It was not hers in life but she is there in the contact. When he opens his eyes, he’s missed the nod but approval lurks in her firm gaze. The brush of her thumb draws a sharp intake of breath and he cannot help but luxuriate in her murmured words, his chest thrumming with a low growl.
Her attention shifts, as it always does, and he quells the primal urge to dispense of the distractions that gather at his mother’s feet. He meets Lugosi’s nod in stony silence, attention flickering over the odd quartet. Ana’s name on his tongue, Stave holds a momentary interest.
Starlace has come back just as she had left – suddenly, unexpectedly, and shrouded in mystery. Why now? To what end? Withdrawn from society for an indistinct amount of time, he has no answer to the question she poses them. He cannot even remember the last Beqannan war he had fought in … there had been that small, frozen wasteland incident, but the claimants and participants had refused to meet he and his delectable sidekick on the battlefield. Licking his lips, he steps in front of the others, temporarily blocking their view of her before moving to stand closer to her. The question hangs in his mind – what does she ask of him? – but it does not pass his lips, tail switching absently.
11-16-2019, 10:49 AM (This post was last modified: 11-16-2019, 10:52 AM by Sota.)
Tauti
Sota
Nälkä
Tähti
The mare - Starlace, named by one of the others - seems highly amused by the question, but doesn’t answer - she reciprocates by calling them out of place. The white and green Tauti scrutinizes her, then the others, huffs once. Leader also wasn’t the exact title she’d have picked; an ear flicks back to the raven-winged filly behind her, knowing that if anyone deserved that title, it’d be her.
It is her, the only yearling who doesn’t carry horns, who chuckles softly to pick up the conversation. ”Talk about assumptions. There is no army” She yawns. ”And the last so-called war was a fucked up, useless raid,” the raven-maned grey informs her, ”about four years ago. Beqanna had other pressing matters.” She’s more interested in the relationship this mare has to the others who have flocked to her; sure, Tauti had been the curious one, as she always was, but one had mentioned to be of her kin and the other acted like a son to a mother. She would know.
Tähti speaks no more, and Tauti doesn’t either - still waiting on an answer perhaps. The red filly looks at Stave as he seems to be the only one really talking. A bit too much for her taste - too much talking, and nothing was really getting done. ”Oh, shut up. If you want a war, go and do it already.” She shakes her head, her horns just about grown strong and sharp enough to hit him or his companions, should he act on it right away. Oh, she’s ready, she thinks.
Yet the lighter fillies flick an ear at her, and the raven-winged one slashes her tail to her hock in mild irritation. ”Patience, Sota.” the grey corrects her, rolling her eyes at the mare. Kids, right? she implies. She’d rather the girl was a bit less impulsive, or at least would learn how to wait. Like Nälkä - the only boy between them watched everything, but at least he was surprisingly calm.
Well, calculated was a better word, Tähti corrects herself.
Set
