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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


    Rain grey towns; Santana
    #1
    Three Days out from her forest dwelling and Eyas discovers she’s about to blackout. Her eyesight is dimming and so is the sun; she won’t make it past the border edges of Hyaline before nightfall. Her determination had kept her going without sleep through the two nights prior this one and she’d snagged what little food and water she could without much rest, either. But she’s not sedentary anymore. Exhaustion coupled with heavy eyelids dragged her legs just barely inside the protected confines of Hyaline where she could seek out shelter.

    In a place she thinks is overlooked and overgrown with cluttered trees, the female pegasus tucked herself close to the ground and slept for handful of blissfully uninterrupted hours.

    Morning arrived, dewy and brisk. Eyas woke and untangled herself for a stretch, refreshed though she certainly didn’t look it. Her belly was tucked up and away into the ribs you could count by sight. Her wings were ill-kept but able to be hoisted to her sides, for once. There wasn’t much left of her tail and there hadn’t really ever been anything of a mane on her to begin with, and yet she felt… good.

    Better than good.
    She felt close to a revelation.

    Wherever he might be lingering, whatever he might be doing presently, @[Santana] would find that interrupted by a clear image of Eyas’ smirking, smudge-black lips. They’re moving, forming words without sound. Another image would follow after the first - the sight of her location as seen by herself: hooded trees and low-lying bushes. She moved a foot or two and the treeline broke apart to reveal valleys and white-capped mountain ranges.

    Come and find me.
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    #2
    Cat-slit eyes glowed, the only light to penetrate the fortress of stone and earth he has enthroned himself within. The walls, bleak granite veined with obsidian glass that shone when he flamed. Deep within the mountain heart, the serpent roused. 

    Scales hard as stone rasped against the cave floor, drawing sparks in their path. He breathed in, the temperature of the enclosed space increasing with each moment. He'd smelled something. Or heard it. Some pry on his senses had woken the beast, and he demanded to know who had dared. 

    A snarl of recollection rent the air as the image solidified in his predatory brain. Eyas. And she was near. There was a hissing, as though a hundred snakes breathed in the echoing halls of his domain, and walls shook with his sudden haste. Foolish pheasant. He had let her go, had done nothing more than taste her blood when she lay trembling in his mercy. Never again. 

    Crystal and diamond were nothing to the white scaled beast that erupted from the mountainside, his feral voice careening from the stony cliff faces. It was a scream of mindless hunger, the demanding cry of a dragon left preyless too long. She had touched his mind, placed her images within and laughed. He knew the images, and with single minded intent he followed them. 

    She was closer, much closer than she knew to the ice-jeweled serpent's lair. The wind had beaten harshly on this mountainside, had twisted all that grew here into a mockery of what might have once been. He himself was paid proof of that. The taste of her decrepit musk stained the air, drew him in. He slowed as it grew stronger, hungry but wary of what awaited him. Tricky witch was not to be trusted. Only to be devoured until nothing remained of her twisting ways except a few straggling feathers on the wind. 

    The jagged teeth that lined his maw glistened with a crocodile's smile when the edge of her appeared. He had not flown to meet her. Not when the craggy mountain provided such ample choice of passage and hiding place, even for a beast his size. His hungry grin stretched wide.

    Hello Pheasant

    @[Eyas]
    #3
    She’d watched him descend the entire way. How could she resist? Shifters have the best sight in Beqanna, a different and unique way of seeing the world. Breathtaking, being able to watch tree trunks bend and snap under your claws. To focus in on the prey and hunt with the wolves. And the difference between a predator and prey’s sight was phenomenal, literally mind-fucking blowing. Where he goes she rides with, like Eyas has ridden with so many other hosts throughout her lifetime.

    “Hello big handsome.” Her voice cracked from misuse when she gave him the proper welcoming reception. “Miss me?” She cackled. Oooh she should probably watch her mouth, considering his last parting gift was still raked across her shoulders, but Eyas feels a bit… closer to Santana than she ever has before.

    Instead of eating her immediately he pauses to mock her and she knows why. The same reasons he thinking of, even if he doesn’t say them out loud. He was a Dragon, not a dog or any regular horse. Tana respected nothing but his own abilities and here was a meal he’d graciously let go, returned to him and goading him out of hiding. He might have scaly hide and razor teeth but Eyas is just as malicious in her own special ways.

    This time, she hopes he’ll give her an iota of the respect she deserved.

    “Oh relax.” The bone-thin mare sighed, eyeing his creepy smile. She wasn’t even thick enough to be considered a whole morsel. “I’d like to speak to @[Santana], if he’s home?” The ragged little pegasus requested, searching the wide pools of his two differently-colored eyes.
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    #4
    Her voice was as brittle as the bones that displayed so beautifully clear beneath her skin. Every inch of her was fragile, breakable. Only in the glitter of her eyes was a hint of strength betrayed, and that persistent spark of arrogance spurned his predators brain in the most extraordinary way. 

    A bone-shaking snarl peeled through his parted lips at her cavalier words. There were still livid stripes across her withers, puckered and dark against the faded palor of her coat. And yet she dared to return. More than that. She had arrived on his doorstep and mocked him. 

    The snow-etched beast loomed over her, his shadow long and deep where it crossed her body. Thin silver ropes of saliva gleamed from his teeth in anticipation. Not that she would make anything like a satisfying meal. Not in a physical sense. No, this was no deer or boar who's only purpose was to ease the ache in his belly. This? This was personal. She had made sure if that. 

    He liked the way she eyed him. That she was so very aware of his presence. His smile stretched wide as spoke again. The dragon had no intention of relaxing. Not here, not now. Not with her. 

    He had waited for his moment. Whip-quick his body uncoiled, and threw her against the stony earth. His own body followed hers, taloned fingers driving against her wings to hold her pinned against the unyielding ground. Scant inches from her muzzle his own snout hovered, sulphurous breath lifting the dark ends of her forelock. 

    He is not

    The sound of his draconic voice was felt as much as heard, vibrated deep within the ribcage. 

    He would not speak with you even if he were

    The dagger lengths of his clashing teeth flashed with every word. 

    Beg for mercy, witch

    His breath fell hot on the exposed length of her throat. He wanted to feel the words leave her, thready and weak as they would be. The abysum of his maw came down to fit about the tender flesh that spread beneath him, the stutter of her pulse a fluttering, living thing beneath his cat-rough tongue. 

    @[Eyas]
    #5

    I've got you deep in the heart of me

    -So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me-

    Eyas felt the sting of @[Santana]’s punch as she was flying through the air. She’d been holding her breath, trying not to inhale the stench coming from between his teeth and then a faint whoosh lifted her off the ground and sent the scrawny mare flying. Out came the breath - she gasped and landed with a heavy thud, her head spinning while Santana’s claws pinned her to the spot. Et verba mea in aenea et lapidea; his voice was pure energy, rattling her bones. Her rough gold skin felt damp where his breath roasted it, the sensation of his teeth pressing into her felt so very far away. The light in her black gem eyes flared, then dimmed. Her body slumped and was still.

    [[Santana.]]

    Et nos unum sumus. And we are one.

    [[Hear me.]]

    Eyas called out for him from the inside where it felt warm and she felt so very strong all of a sudden. It was true: Santana the dragon hadn’t been a match for her from the very beginning. He was stronger and faster, wicked and not to be trusted like her (of course) but still horribly dangerous. Yet for all his claws and teeth, for all the memories he’d unwillingly or unknowingly shared with her, in the end all the scales and fire in this world wouldn’t have been enough. He’s so damn raw and wild, a strength he can wear on his sleeve and Eyas is… nothing like him.

    She’s undead. The scruffy pegasus had chosen to isolate herself because of something a magician had shown her once. But it was worth it. The months of barely tethering herself to this plane of existence, of working out methods to consume and steer another living creature’s soul without killing it or hiding it away forever had been painstaking. Santana should consider himself lucky in this moment that his possession will not technically be her first. Only her first where the soul was more than it appeared; he would be her first shifter.

    [[Feel how I move through you.]] Her conscious guides him somewhere in the dark. He’s not gone just pushed aside, sort of. Not locked away, oh god no. She’s learned the soul doesn’t cope well in a cage. His willpower and ferocity had been breathtaking, but now the enemy is something he can’t see and her presence inside of his body is so much more than it appears on the outside. It has the kind of ferocity he couldn’t have fathomed just by looking at her. He’d called her a witch. He should’ve listened to his own stinking words. Now he was stuck in a battle of her own design.

    [[You will not find this easy to navigate.]] Eyas leaves a warning to his life force. She breathes in and the smell of smoke rakes into her lungs. She breathes out and smiles a crooked, toothy grin. She feels something underneath one… claw. For him she’s made something special in anticipation of this moment: a maze. Reserata carcerem. The infamous prison without locks.

    “A dragon’s soul should be free to wander,” and so she would let his soul wander too. After all she was starting to enjoy the sensation of scales on her skin. Make no mistake he was free - free to drift the corridors of her trap or free to fight and try forcing her hand. She hadn’t even begun to move, yet. Hadn’t started thinking about how she might peel apart his dragon-self from his horse. She’d never shifted after all. It could end up being… painful. What did she care anymore?
    She was looking down at herself from above, and Eyas knew right then that she had the strength to give up everything for something she believed in.

    Did he?

    EYAS

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    #6
    It was like floating inside himself. 

    A sudden separation of body and soul, flayed one from the other with the sharpest of knives. He had been set loose inside himself, still contained but not connected. The great beast that had fought so long for control raged at the realization that it had been torn from him so quickly, by the very one who'd enabled him to take it. 

    A voice echoed around him. Her voice. The scrawny witch who'd snared him here. She was whispering, always whispering, and the sound filled the spaces he was trying to occupy. Incorporeal teeth snapped at the intangible sound, as the world that had been so far away resolved once more. 

    Only it wasn't the world he'd been expecting. It was not the tumbled stone and scrubby plants of the mountain he saw. The new landscape was an alien thing. Walls, flat and grey soared above him, away from him in every direction. He had never seen walls so flat and smooth. Yet he could not touch them. There was no body to touch with, no claw to scratch, no tail to lash. He was a soul alone, drifting through this endless puzzle while she sifted through all that he was. 

    Up or down, forward or backward, it was all the same. No matter which way the dragon-spirit prowler, there was no rhyme or reason to the layout of the walls. Still he could feel her, the press of another soul in an already crowded body. His body. Not hers, not anybody else's. His. The snarling beast raged at the imprisonment, for that was what it was. No better than the soul-bonds Santana had placed on him, all the more frustrating for their elaborate nature. 

    On the edges of his perception, the beast felt her move. Felt the lungs that had been his take a heady breath and the eyes that blinked in wonder of dragon sight. It was all of it taken unwillingly from him, these sensations that grazed the furthest reaches of his conscious. A savage desecration of free will. 

    And something else, that twinged and twisted at the bottom of his mind. Insistent, curling feeling that would not go away. It tugged at the nothingness of him, a thread of a lead that seemed as likely to snap as it was to pull him along. Glowering at the impossible walls, claws leaving no marks where they passed, he stepped steadily along, following the pull that was at the least, not her. It faded and strengthened in turns as he moved. Each identical corridor that passed was another disappointment, the trap a cleverly thought out one. 

    How much time passed? It was impossible to say. There was no true light, no passing of the sun and moon. What seemed like days of wandering could have been mere seconds in the mind. Every so often, the rumbling beast would swipe at a wall, testing for weakness he was growing desperate to find. His bodiless paws were rebuffed without contact. The impotence served only to stoke the anger he felt growing hot. 

    Miles of labyrinth passed beneath him, so it felt, the walls never changing in their structure. The tugging of one soul to another had grown quietly more insistent. Without thinking why, his pace increased, featureless corridors falling away until at last, something changed. A pulsing, beating warmth that seemed to emanate from one small stretch of the ground. It brightened as he drew near. Nearly on to of it he paused, watching a shadow move with deliberate slowness beneath the flat surface he stood on. 

    Like a whale beneath the ice, the shadow slid. It was mesmerizing and haunting, the hook of connection keeping the dragon securely in place. The lazy motion held his attention fully, and it was with a jolt he lurched when the shadow suddenly shifted direction. Fast as lightning, it slammed upward, the force of it echoing through the dragon's life force. He snarled in surprise, more than ready to battle whatever came his way. 

    The shape waited a moment, and then repeated the upward surge, the violent blow making the air sing with energy. Hair-thin marks began to spiderweb through the glowing surface. A wicked grin ribboned through him. 

    When the shadow began its frantic surge again, the thunderous beast rose as high as the damned prison would allow, and crashed down once more with every ounce of power he could muster. The brilliant fractures spread beneath him like too-thin ice. 

    Once more, once more, the shadow and the beast dove in tandem. The plain between them splintered with an all mighty smash that sent ripples of hot white light spinning in every direction, pulses of energy that could not be ignored. It was dragon-magic. The kind of power that was born in flame and fire, tempered with iron and stone. It was what he had used to incarcerate his other self when the chance had risen. 

    When the surge of power ebbed, beast and shadow looked upon each other. It was a kind of novelty, to see each other bound in their true forms. Dragon and horse, each separate, each feeling the pull to be joined once more. Santana looked upon the gleam of dragon-soul, the piece of him that had never quite fit. It was no larger than his horse self now, no more intimidating. The energy of it was erratic and unfocused, no matter how powerful. 

    What the dragon saw was quite the opposite. 

    Santana was a smaller flame besides his inferno. Close, and compact, a concentrated force driven to such nimble form by a lifetime of battling for control. They had so long been like two magnets held together with like poles facing, every moment a fight to snap apart. In a sense, they had gotten their wishes answered, only to find the results an imbalance that currently threatened to end them both. 

    "This would not have happened if you hadn't locked me away." The pale stallion admonished. The dragon grinned.

    It might have. I did no more than return your gift of years. That the witch was there to take advantage was... unfortunate. 

    The smiling beast took pleasure in the irritation Santana displayed. Still, there was a fact that neither of them was in a position to dispute currently. 

    "Be that as it may." The blue-white light of Santana drummed a steady beat. "We will both of us be finished if she has her way. This body was crowded enough with just you and I. I'm afraid that means..." He paused, loathing the words he must say. "We have to work together on this." 

    The dragon's humor turned dark at the words, though he knew it was the truth. He had wandered enough to know there was no weakness he could exploit. 

    What do you suggest?

    Santana looked long and hard at the walls that surrounded them. He could not touch them, could not pass through them. 

    "It's like this everywhere?"


    Yes

    "Wretched girl." 

    Eat her

    "Tempting as that sounds, we have to take our body back first." 

    Santana moved along one wall, came back the other way. An idea dawned slowly on him. 

    "Can she hear us?"

    Perhaps. She whispered when she worked her spell, dropped me here. I could hear her then.

    Tana nodded, hopeful. 

    "I want to try something." He began, looking upward. "You are strong. I am steady. I think together we might be able to make life very uncomfortable for her." He approached the dragon soul, felt his own spirit fizz as they grew close. The power of the dragon was immeasurable. The kind of force that had always frightened him. Now, it had to work with his own tenacity to save them both. 

    They touched, and sparks flew. A high pitched keening filled the space as the two souls merged, louder and louder with every passing moment. It was the kind of noise that split ear drums, that shattered glass. Louder still until it clawed at the very fiber of their beings. Powerful. Unending. And hopefully painful enough that it might expell the witch.

    @[Eyas]
    #7

    I've got you deep in the heart of me

    -So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me-

    She takes her precious seconds to breath through his nose and see through his eyes, but afterwards Eyas didn’t waste any time getting down to business - and the business at hand was science. It was one thing to practice the dark skill of possession alone and undisturbed in the woods, another thing entirely to do it in practice. Possessing @[Santana] might’ve looked like suicide, but it served a purpose in the long run. If she wants a fighting chance at possessing her dad Wolfbane, then Eyas had better be sure she could do it in the first place.

    Now that she’s “done it”, she needs other questions answered.

    How long would it last? Eyas turned to walk away from her dead corpse and stumbled roughly like a newborn, accidentally managing to slam into nearly anything and everything she could while she teetered. The original plan had been to trap Santana by surprise then run away in his body. Eyas hoped to get as far as possible from her corporeal weakness before trying to return ‘home’ to it, but she realized that doing so now was gonna be a lot harder than she anticipated.

    Fuck, She thought to herself alone, aware that every second she wasted trying to re-learn walking was a second Santana was gaining on her and the eventual release from his maze. And now he was growing softer, quieter. Somehow he seemed to be going deeper into himself and farther away from her reach, though not entirely away from her control.

    Scrap the walking then, move on to something else. Fuck, how long has it been? Eyas could sense her panic rising and the surge of her power ebbing as a result. The confidence that had gotten her this far was wearing off. She switched gears and flared her new, beastly wings irritably. Then she paused. She flicked her wings again… and it struck her. She might not be accustomed to walking on a dragon’s legs, but she sure as hell could fly with any set of wings you gave her.

    A growl ripped through her clenched teeth and Eyas sunk low to the earth, digging her claws into the soil with a mighty tear before she launched up into the air. Her ascent took out surrounding trees too weak to withstand the span of her wings and for a moment she soared, then sank; one gusty beat of Santana’s leathery wings was slower than her own so she crashed down again and stumbled, wrecking havoc where she went, trying to leap up again into the air.

    All the while Santana was finding himself. By the time she’d gotten any measure of distance away from her lifeless body, Eyas could sense his connection in every pore. United, the dual spirits were far too much for her to handle anymore. The second their magic flared into a resounding pitch Eyas’s maze shattered apart into metaphysical dust. She was being forced out, just like she’d forced herself in.

    Hardly a mile away, the familiar tone of her screams echoed through the forest. She woke up gasping, shaking uncontrollably and nearly convulsing as the flesh that had been dead and begun to rot suddenly felt the rush of blood and life once more. It was agony. Pure, unfiltered hell that she fought against only because it wasn’t her time to die. Not yet. Somehow she wept and staggered upright, ignoring the searing pain of numb limbs and the ache of her soul in favor of mindless escape. Unthinkingly, she created a waving vision of pure black and sent it crashing toward Santana, and in the wake of it Eyas fled Hyaline screaming until her voice went hollow and quiet.

    EYAS

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