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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]  Starlace;
    #1

    I'm rotting inside
    My flesh turns to dust

    It waited, idle.

    A deep breath in, a shuddering breath out.

    It can taste her on the air, a familiarity despite the years – decades? – that have passed. There is no feasible way that it can forget her, forget the warmth of her skin or the scent that clutched the edges of his nostrils each morning. They spent years together, forging an empire, creating children that would be their legacy. It could never forget her, not even when Hell finally spits her back out.

    They flock to her like brainless chickens, gaping at her and grasping at what they can. She is so new to them and yet ancient, a name that has since been forgotten on their tongues. Even her son, the maggot that he is, rises from the shadows to kiss the feet of his beloved mother. From afar, it scoffs at them all. They do not know her like it does; they have not slept in her bed, pressed to her curves. They know nothing of the arrogance and ambition that circulates through her.

    But they will.

    Much like a lion stalking its prey, Infection waits. It stands at the edge of the shadows, kneading the soil with its talons until she strays near enough.

    One step, then two. It has been alive, but dormant, and so its movement is jagged, almost robotic until it abruptly stops. ”Starlace,” her name peels off its tongue just as sickeningly as when they ruled together, but there is a subtle hint of tenderness underlying the scraping of its voice. ”I knew you were unable to stay away forever,” a jackal smile stretches across its cracked lips, its green eyes glimmering mischievously in the dappled, winter sunlight. It comes to her in one piece, its body entirely whole and pristine after a recent play of death and rebirth. Its skin is not marred, it is not sloughing off or rotten.

    For Starlace’s homecoming, it returns to her entirely whole, except for the crude, decaying heart suspended in an otherwise empty chest. 



    infection

    infection by aeris | html by insane | picture c darkcloud013.deviantart.com



    @[Starlace]
    Reply
    #2

    i can feel the flames on my lips; crimson blood on my skin


    The last few days have been peaceful, and Starlace has begun to grow bored. There is almost enough fawning, but not nearly enough fighting.

    What has happened to the bloodlust of Beqanna? Where are the bold warriors, the mares and stallions who do not feel truly alive without the adrenaline of battle in their veins? Has it been bred out, she wonders? Do mares flock to the glittering stallions, the ones with pretty horns and eye-smarting colors rather than the bloody fighters?

    Weak, she scoffs internally as she walks past one such brightly colored monstrosity. Based on his reaction, perhaps the scorn is in her face even if it never leaves her mouth. The grey mare does not care.

    Her head turns at a sound to the left, and at first she thinks perhaps Stave or Lugosi has followed her. They are good dogs – perhaps a bit too independent, if they follow her unbidden – and she will not scold them overmuch.

    It is neither of them. A familiar green leer appears in the woods ahead of her, surrounded by a lean face and a jackal’s smile.

    “It’s your fault that I was dead in the first place, ” she says, her brows raised in a look so condescending it would have been laughable on any face but her own. “I’m mostly sure those twins were yours, at least.” And that she smiles, mostly at her own half-remembered antics. Her dead veins are cold, but she takes a moment to admire the way the father of many of her children looks. Looks for now, she knows, given enough time he will become as unbearable as a weeks dead corpse. Perhaps she might see how dead she really is if her unexpected reanimation shows any indication of lasting.

    “When was your last kill?” That’s always been the easiest segue.


    Starlace

    Reply
    #3

    I'm rotting inside
    My flesh turns to dust

    It regards her quietly, observantly. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has. Starlace is here, their gazes laced together. It remembers her dying, how the twins destroyed them. Her body was limp on the beach even as the scarlet-red waves lapped at her. Not much time lapsed until the flies swarmed her.

    It watched her then as memories flashed across closed eyelids. The twins thought them both dead, murdered by an obnoxious beam of light and power; but it takes more than that to kill Infection.

    A jagged grin stretches across its cracked lips as a gleam of amusement reaches the putrid green of its eyes. ”You know well those twins were ours,” it edges closer, reaching for her skin and tracing its mouth down the length of her spine, tasting her again after all these years. ”Somehow I survived but you didn’t,” its voice rasps from neglect, the words crawling like spiders from the depths of its throat, ”Survival of the fittest, I presume.” But it knows that she already has a rebuttal to protest the statement; it would be unlike her to accept any insult, no matter how heavily coated in humor it is. ”Speaking of which, our lines together still continue and still thrive,” a primal growl rises and vibrates through its hollow core as it unwillingly peels from the cold of her skin. Different, and yet the same.

    Drawing in her scent, it remembers their evenings together. How many children did they bring into this untamed world? It remembers their empire, their surge of power over the Chamber and Tundra. Together, they were a relentless pair, and although love did not exist in its heart or in the fucks, there was still a magnetic field that hindered much stray.

    Since her demise, it has become reclusive and silent.

    ”A while,” it confesses bitterly because she knows what it yearned for – kings, queens, hands of power – but now it consumes lowly deer in the shrouded darkness. ”This world has greatly changed.” While once, it was a tertiary predator, a murderer, a fearsome creature, the allure of its abilities has stagnated with the uprising of more formidable powers. There are more unique means of killing, ones that surpass its own capabilities. Rolling its shoulders, it turns its head to look at her and to search the eyes of its only Queen. ”Why now?” The question is simple, but curious. It has been half a century, if not longer. For what purpose, it wonders does she return to Beqanna now.



    infection

    infection by aeris | html by insane | picture c darkcloud013.deviantart.com



    @[Starlace]
    Reply
    #4

    i can feel the flames on my lips; crimson blood on my skin


    Starlace lets him touch her, lets him draw a line down her back with his black lips. His humor- if that is what it is, merits a half-hearted attempt at a cow-kick before he pulls away, but she is mollified by the continued existence of her descendents. Well, she was for a moment anyway, and then recalls that the quiet of Beqanna is as much their fault as any others.  How watered down have her progeny become, that Beqanna sits so happily in a bloodless lull? She had been sure that at least some of them would be enough to make her proud. Neither of Set’s women had been strong enough, she assumes; perhaps that is why he’d had to have both of them. At least he is still alive, she muses, he can try again and prove to her that he deserves his place as her favorite.

    Or perhaps she will make another favorite.

    A while, Infection says, and Starlace decides that perhaps it will not be with him.

    “A pity,” she says to his admission that the world has greatly changed. Or perhaps a blessing, given that she has returned to it changed as well.

    Infection’s query as to the timing of her return is met with a shrug; she is no more aware than he is. One moment she had been dead – gloriously, powerfully dead – and the next she was not. The body that she wears looks like the one she’d once inhabited, but her true flesh has long ago filled the belly of scavengers and her skeleton was pounded to bone-white sand decades past. This body is something different, something better.

    “Do you live somewhere here?” Starlace asks, “Or do you just skulk in the shadows?” For all her innate awareness that this way is Hyaline and that way Tephra, the grey mare does not have a meaning for those words. Her knowledge of the world she’s returned to has come in bits and pieces. “What are these new places? What is a Loess? A Nerine?”


    Starlace



    @[Infection]
    Reply
    #5
    The half-hearted kick elicits a throaty chuckle, unfazed by whatever emotion spurred the retaliation. This was their relationship, their life they forged together. Unlike so many others, they had no true love. There was opportunity – hunger - that tethered their souls. No honeyed words or tender kisses shared during those moonlit nights. In its memory, there was at least respect, but their copulation was instinct-driven. It was a need to continue their lines and solidify their legacy. It remembers much of its life, but most of it contained her.

    It’s only right that when Starlace returns, they find one another.

    ”You’re telling me,” it hisses with a lip curled in disgust before it glances away toward the clusters around them, lost in conversation. Scavenging is only so interesting, so satisfying. It yearns for something fresher, to taste blood as it drips from its chin. It craves the invigoration of a chase and to see the fear in its victims eyes before ripping the life from their soul.

    She saw it in its prime, when it murdered kings and sat on two thrones.

    And now? Now Infection is hardly more than a shadow.
    At least, it muses, it’s alive… mostly…

    Starlace shrugged in response to its question, but Infection hardly noticed as it sank into its bloodstained memories. Her voice is what pulls its attention back, bringing its sickly green eyes to level on hers. ”I’m not a subject. I’ve had no interest since our twins pulled their stunt,” thoughtfully, its tongue rolls across the jagged edges of its teeth, ”so I’ve watched from the shadows. Watched our children and their children… Watched as everyone was stripped of their abilities then restored, then plagued with sickness and healed. You’ve missed a lot since you died.” Its voice grates against her ears, raspy from neglect while it kneads the soil with yellowed talons.

    To know more than her somehow spurs a lopsided, smug grin. ”I thought you had critical thinking skills,” the quip is icy but with a thread of ill humor, ”The faeries destroyed our homes. The Chamber is no more. Instead, these lands were found and named by the group claiming them.” Drawing in a slow, rattled breath, it considers the two lands she recalled as though they should mean more than the others. ”They are opportunities, Starlace. Every land is an opportunity.”



    @[Starlace]

    well, since photobucket removed stuff, there goes the old guy's html lmao
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