02-16-2020, 10:16 PM
<div id="dreamy"><style type="text/css">.dreamy_container {background: transparent; width: 500px;border: 2px solid #8B8576; color: #8B8576; font: 14px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding: 15px;text-align: justify;box-shadow: inset 2 2 2px 2px #000;}.dreamy_name {text-align: center; color: #fff; font: 26px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding-top: 10px;padding-right: 10px;}.dreamy_quote {text-align: center; font-style: italic}</style><center><div class="dreamy_container">The Others press in close enough that he can feel their hot angry breath stir his dark mane, but he does not see them with his face shoved between the hard ground and the still warm husk of Hippogryph. Dreamscar is keening now, a high whining noise that almost drowns out the muddled yelling of the crowd around him and his heart beats almost too fast. <I>They will attack us. They will kill us. Beware of the Others. Beware, beware, beware,</I> his mother's words, a rare coherence to her muttering, it was spoken over and over again in that dry, thirsty, voice, her eyes bloodshot and unfocused, her skin twitching. She had not been looking at anything as she spoke, at anyone, nothing to give a child any reference, and so he created his own from the baseless ramblings of a mare whose mind had failed her years before his birth.
But she had been right. Blind, he feels the mare's corpse jerk and lunges out from behind her with a yowl, beak snapping and sharp claws slashing out at whoever dared touch his Mother-Who-Was-Not-His-Mother but who had still smelled like her when he was frightened. Talons close on air, on nothing, even as the shadows are so near that he breathes them in, but when he goes to duck beneath the mare's mane again, she's gone.
How can she be gone?
There's a shove from behind and he spins, darts forward open-mouthed without stopping to look or assess the danger first, but the garbled voice is almost familiar. The False Mother's blood spills onto his tongue, thick and viscous and abnormally sweet. S̵o̵ ̵s̷o̶r̷r̵y̵.̶ ̵D̸i̷d̸n̴’̷t̶ ̷m̶e̴a̶n̴ ̶t̴o̶.̵ ̷S̸o̴ ̵s̸o̶r̷r̶y̴.̷ ̷D̵i̸d̷n̷’̶t̷ ̷m̶e̴a̷n̵ ̶t̸o̴. The point of his beak pierces well into her throat but her voice becomes no more or less strange, and when he pulls away with a jerk and a twist, pressing his forefeet into her for leverage, a large vein is left hanging in the flapping meat of her neck, dripping blood like molasses. She comes at him still, pressing him into the hatred behind him. Unseen, a hoof strikes at his haunch and he squeals. The wispy teeth of a Shadow Horse rake his side, drawing welts across his skin and staining the white of his coat with a smeared red. He twists and slashes again with bloodied talons but finds no purchase on the attacking phantoms. The litany of abuse continues, even as their blows fall against him, and he feels them as if in a dream, blunt, dulled, the memory of pain. Hippogryph, from behind, continues her garbled speech, her relentless forward march that presses him into the attackers.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
The fear that overcomes him alights again when he turns to her, a caricature of what she should be. She paints the pulsing walls thick with black blood, torn entrails spilling from the cavern he tore into her abdomen, tracing gore into the soft dirt underfoot.
"<I>Awayyy.</I>" He hisses threateningly to her as she jerks apart and forward on legs still broken from their landing. Not one should support her weight, and neither do they appear to, dangling so that their tips drag against the ground. Skin and ligament alone attach them to her, yet she lifts and throws them forward in a parody of walking. The horn of her hoof rattles noisily against stone.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
The dark, broken, mare pushes against him again and again, the only thing he can touch, though every time he lets her force him back, horses that he cannot bite or claw leave bruises on his skin and trails of bright crimson bleeding down his legs. Something whispers in his mind to kill her. Kill her again? He hesitates this time in a way that he didn't before, trapped between the anger and hatred behind him and the emptiness in front of him that so looks like the mother he has already eaten once today. He whines softly to his not-dam, crooning, pleading, but to no avail, and the straw-man she has become seems to increase in strength as his own falters. Though he curls his claws into the ground underneath, he loses ground, step by grueling, inexorable, step, scratching desperate furrows into the cave floor.
The Shadows around them have grown quiet as their quarry is forced into their circle. Well in the center now, Hippogryph ends her strange, floating, puppet-walk on those shattered limbs and her broad head rises triumphantly atop that tattered neck. Her whole front end is slick with slime and blood, intestine dragging out beyond the impenetrable circle around them, stretching impossible miles through the cave tunnel. In that silent moment, Dreamscar's keening turns to a low growl, turns to a screech that echoes through the caverns, all the twists and turns that they raced earlier, and in that moment the Others fall on them both. He fights but there is nothing to grab - nothing but ghosts and shades and phantoms that turn to air in his claws, between his teeth, yet <I>their</I> hooves and <I>their</I> teeth find their mark every time, impossibly accurate. His scaled forelegs are crushed and broken, taloned claws torn away leaving bone exposed of flesh. A hoof catches his eye and the sight goes black, another cracks the tip off his beak, repeated blows crack it, break it, and blood runs freely. The vision in his other eye is red and full of stars as he tumbles to the ground and sees his dam, too, a victim of their wanton hatred. They have always hated the mare and her monster son. She had always said They would destroy them, and now she is proven right. Beneath bloody grey hooves, the dark mare becomes an oozing, pulverized mash, blood and bone and skin, yet still those dim eyes blink, still those yellow teeth grin.
He <I>hates</I> her.
He doesn't even feel the blow that crushes his skull and kills him.
Darkness and stars. There is nothing and then there are stars. He has never found them beautiful, rather they make him feel small and cold and terrified as the unwanted, hated colt that he once was. That he still is. Only his mother loves him, and that because he has made her. His mother-- he reaches out to her standing nearby but something strange is happening. The rush of his magic pools into her and slides away, skims off into the caves in search of something - anything- to take hold of. <I>Danger.</I> Fear flares in his breast and he sits up (why was he lying down?) rolls up from his side onto his belly, leaps up to his feet. He remembers now.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
There is no time for confusion. Beyond her, a light shines, beckons, promises freedom, but he cannot get past her. The glimmer at the end of the tunnel calls to him, singing sweetly in his ear, and he is simultaneously drawn to it and repulsed by it, roughly denying the hope it is building inside of him. There is nothing hopeful about the chimeric creature, and he cannot believe that the budding warmth in his chest is of his own making. Eyes still foggy with the memory of death and nothingness focus on the mare that so looks like his dam.
<I>Looked</I> like.
The resemblance is quickly fading, corrupting, even beyond the destruction he has wrought upon her, the lines of her body becoming lazy and blurred. She remains in his way, grinning, and he lets anger sear away that synthesized hope. <I>You'll have to kill her again.</I> His hesitation is gone. When he shoves his own chest back into hers, the deep curve of her body crumples, folding in on itself with a crunch like rotten bone and her black bloods oozes between those yellow teeth like tar, like vomit, but there is no horror in it for him, not anymore. He rears up and grabs her head in his eagle's claws, talons digging into eyes and sinuses, shredding bone like bark until, with a wet cracking sound, her skull splits apart beneath the pressure of his hatred. He wrenches his claws away, curled deep into her bone and brain, and pulls the False Mother's head from its place with such force that he twists and falls to the muck of the ground still covered in the red and black blood of their recent deaths.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
<I>Still</I> she mutters her empty mantra. <I>Still</I> those yellow teeth grin. When he climbs to his feet again, he breaks those teeth under one hind hoof, but the body of his mother remains between him and the light. He will have to tear her apart piece by piece to pass. The stallion charges the headless, gutless, hull of the mare, forcing it down against the ground. It jerks limply underneath him, but he keeps it well pinned while he reaches into the excavation of her belly, until those claws clasp around the slick heart and rip it free so that he can pick it up gingerly in his beak.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
The empty Thing rises again. It will always rise again, but Dreamscar is done fighting it. With one last disgusted look at what is left of Hippogryph, he turns away, away from the False Mother, from the beckoning light. He follows the heartsick rush of his magic which has at last found <I>something else</I> deep at the center of the pulsing labyrinth. The mare's heart still beats dully against his tongue, a Valentine's Day gift for the Beast. <I>Love me.</I>
<div class="dreamy_name">Dreamscar</div><div class="dreamy_quote">Carnage x Hippogryph</div></div></center>
But she had been right. Blind, he feels the mare's corpse jerk and lunges out from behind her with a yowl, beak snapping and sharp claws slashing out at whoever dared touch his Mother-Who-Was-Not-His-Mother but who had still smelled like her when he was frightened. Talons close on air, on nothing, even as the shadows are so near that he breathes them in, but when he goes to duck beneath the mare's mane again, she's gone.
How can she be gone?
There's a shove from behind and he spins, darts forward open-mouthed without stopping to look or assess the danger first, but the garbled voice is almost familiar. The False Mother's blood spills onto his tongue, thick and viscous and abnormally sweet. S̵o̵ ̵s̷o̶r̷r̵y̵.̶ ̵D̸i̷d̸n̴’̷t̶ ̷m̶e̴a̶n̴ ̶t̴o̶.̵ ̷S̸o̴ ̵s̸o̶r̷r̶y̴.̷ ̷D̵i̸d̷n̷’̶t̷ ̷m̶e̴a̷n̵ ̶t̸o̴. The point of his beak pierces well into her throat but her voice becomes no more or less strange, and when he pulls away with a jerk and a twist, pressing his forefeet into her for leverage, a large vein is left hanging in the flapping meat of her neck, dripping blood like molasses. She comes at him still, pressing him into the hatred behind him. Unseen, a hoof strikes at his haunch and he squeals. The wispy teeth of a Shadow Horse rake his side, drawing welts across his skin and staining the white of his coat with a smeared red. He twists and slashes again with bloodied talons but finds no purchase on the attacking phantoms. The litany of abuse continues, even as their blows fall against him, and he feels them as if in a dream, blunt, dulled, the memory of pain. Hippogryph, from behind, continues her garbled speech, her relentless forward march that presses him into the attackers.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
The fear that overcomes him alights again when he turns to her, a caricature of what she should be. She paints the pulsing walls thick with black blood, torn entrails spilling from the cavern he tore into her abdomen, tracing gore into the soft dirt underfoot.
"<I>Awayyy.</I>" He hisses threateningly to her as she jerks apart and forward on legs still broken from their landing. Not one should support her weight, and neither do they appear to, dangling so that their tips drag against the ground. Skin and ligament alone attach them to her, yet she lifts and throws them forward in a parody of walking. The horn of her hoof rattles noisily against stone.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
The dark, broken, mare pushes against him again and again, the only thing he can touch, though every time he lets her force him back, horses that he cannot bite or claw leave bruises on his skin and trails of bright crimson bleeding down his legs. Something whispers in his mind to kill her. Kill her again? He hesitates this time in a way that he didn't before, trapped between the anger and hatred behind him and the emptiness in front of him that so looks like the mother he has already eaten once today. He whines softly to his not-dam, crooning, pleading, but to no avail, and the straw-man she has become seems to increase in strength as his own falters. Though he curls his claws into the ground underneath, he loses ground, step by grueling, inexorable, step, scratching desperate furrows into the cave floor.
The Shadows around them have grown quiet as their quarry is forced into their circle. Well in the center now, Hippogryph ends her strange, floating, puppet-walk on those shattered limbs and her broad head rises triumphantly atop that tattered neck. Her whole front end is slick with slime and blood, intestine dragging out beyond the impenetrable circle around them, stretching impossible miles through the cave tunnel. In that silent moment, Dreamscar's keening turns to a low growl, turns to a screech that echoes through the caverns, all the twists and turns that they raced earlier, and in that moment the Others fall on them both. He fights but there is nothing to grab - nothing but ghosts and shades and phantoms that turn to air in his claws, between his teeth, yet <I>their</I> hooves and <I>their</I> teeth find their mark every time, impossibly accurate. His scaled forelegs are crushed and broken, taloned claws torn away leaving bone exposed of flesh. A hoof catches his eye and the sight goes black, another cracks the tip off his beak, repeated blows crack it, break it, and blood runs freely. The vision in his other eye is red and full of stars as he tumbles to the ground and sees his dam, too, a victim of their wanton hatred. They have always hated the mare and her monster son. She had always said They would destroy them, and now she is proven right. Beneath bloody grey hooves, the dark mare becomes an oozing, pulverized mash, blood and bone and skin, yet still those dim eyes blink, still those yellow teeth grin.
He <I>hates</I> her.
He doesn't even feel the blow that crushes his skull and kills him.
Darkness and stars. There is nothing and then there are stars. He has never found them beautiful, rather they make him feel small and cold and terrified as the unwanted, hated colt that he once was. That he still is. Only his mother loves him, and that because he has made her. His mother-- he reaches out to her standing nearby but something strange is happening. The rush of his magic pools into her and slides away, skims off into the caves in search of something - anything- to take hold of. <I>Danger.</I> Fear flares in his breast and he sits up (why was he lying down?) rolls up from his side onto his belly, leaps up to his feet. He remembers now.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
There is no time for confusion. Beyond her, a light shines, beckons, promises freedom, but he cannot get past her. The glimmer at the end of the tunnel calls to him, singing sweetly in his ear, and he is simultaneously drawn to it and repulsed by it, roughly denying the hope it is building inside of him. There is nothing hopeful about the chimeric creature, and he cannot believe that the budding warmth in his chest is of his own making. Eyes still foggy with the memory of death and nothingness focus on the mare that so looks like his dam.
<I>Looked</I> like.
The resemblance is quickly fading, corrupting, even beyond the destruction he has wrought upon her, the lines of her body becoming lazy and blurred. She remains in his way, grinning, and he lets anger sear away that synthesized hope. <I>You'll have to kill her again.</I> His hesitation is gone. When he shoves his own chest back into hers, the deep curve of her body crumples, folding in on itself with a crunch like rotten bone and her black bloods oozes between those yellow teeth like tar, like vomit, but there is no horror in it for him, not anymore. He rears up and grabs her head in his eagle's claws, talons digging into eyes and sinuses, shredding bone like bark until, with a wet cracking sound, her skull splits apart beneath the pressure of his hatred. He wrenches his claws away, curled deep into her bone and brain, and pulls the False Mother's head from its place with such force that he twists and falls to the muck of the ground still covered in the red and black blood of their recent deaths.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
<I>Still</I> she mutters her empty mantra. <I>Still</I> those yellow teeth grin. When he climbs to his feet again, he breaks those teeth under one hind hoof, but the body of his mother remains between him and the light. He will have to tear her apart piece by piece to pass. The stallion charges the headless, gutless, hull of the mare, forcing it down against the ground. It jerks limply underneath him, but he keeps it well pinned while he reaches into the excavation of her belly, until those claws clasp around the slick heart and rip it free so that he can pick it up gingerly in his beak.
S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̡̅ S̸̞̈ö̷͍́ ̷͍͒s̴͖͝o̴̮̎r̶͓͂r̶̟̽ỳ̸̯.̵̅
The empty Thing rises again. It will always rise again, but Dreamscar is done fighting it. With one last disgusted look at what is left of Hippogryph, he turns away, away from the False Mother, from the beckoning light. He follows the heartsick rush of his magic which has at last found <I>something else</I> deep at the center of the pulsing labyrinth. The mare's heart still beats dully against his tongue, a Valentine's Day gift for the Beast. <I>Love me.</I>
<div class="dreamy_name">Dreamscar</div><div class="dreamy_quote">Carnage x Hippogryph</div></div></center>