"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
A figure emerges from the dark, eyes glinting like some predator's when they catch the moonglow. Quiet, except for the half-heard mutters that follow me everywhere. For a moment I pause, uncertain, forgetful, and then a stretched out smile pulls my mouth wide.
"You came," I chirp, in a voice more girlish than my wraith-like body would suggest. My wings, half-feathered, ragged things, hang from my shoulders in a tattered cloak. They flutter in the night breeze as I move to greet my midnight companion. "Balto." I remember. His name is slowly said, barely etched on my conscious. But he is here, as I asked. And that deserves a smile.
"Walk with me," I invite softly, running the scarred end of my nose along his jaw when he has neared. The scent of damp caves and wet earth still clings to him, odd where the wind blows cold and crisp. There's snow threatening, and my lip curls with distaste. Still. There's more important things to discuss while the moon hangs fat and yellow above us.
It's my trail of blood he's followed to find me here, the steady dripping of red that any fool could trace. He would only go by night, under cover of shadow, and so I would have him seek me out. Flickering like an equine lightning cloud, and sheltered beneath the Sylvan trees.
"Welcome to your new home, and my old one," I smirk, only to snarl a moment later.
Wore a crown and lost it just as quick.
Weak-willed bitch couldn't hold on to what was handed to her.
All twat and no brain. Didn't get you far, did it? What makes you think this time will be any different.
"Because I have him this time," I snap, tail thrashing at nothing. At everything. The shadows throb in the corners of my vision, wet and slimy where the light hits. Until I turn my head. And then they're just trees, rough barked and stoic while my heart pounds. For a moment I imagine burning every one of them to the ground, which settles me back down. I won't do it. Yet. But the idea is entertaining.
When the burning red of flames and the sweet-salty smell of smoke has long since washed from his nostrils, the dark man comes to find himself in a shroud of giant pines that stretch into an equally darkened sky. The treetops are nearly like fire themselves - alight with reds and oranges that burn so brightly against the deep brown of their thick trunks. The voices whisper, delectable and almost sweet, though they no longer echo in the dark pitch around him. No, the voices are far beneath the surface of his skin now - in his marrow, his very cells.
They are him, and he is they.
Perhaps the pearlescent woman with lightning in her veins and blood on her teeth would notice the difference between the man she had met in the forest versus the one who stands beside her in the silence of Sylva. Where he had been weak and frail, he now stands rather comfortably as his cerulean eyes glance into each corner of darkness. Once he had been afraid of what those shadows held, but no longer - for he is the shadows, no longer a tortured soul within their grip but nearly a partner in their twisted desires. He had bent to their will, unable to fight them any longer, and now lives to keep their haunting voices at bay.
Balto’s face is expressionless despite the stoic and solemn way he stands beside Sabra.
Blood stains these woods, they inform him in his mind and though he does not see them crawl across his flesh, there is a shiver that runs down his spine. Their voices are hungry and excited, drawn to the darkness and evil that lurks here - and whatever fiendish things pulsate from the winged woman beside him. The stallion snorts sharply as a single dark foreleg pulls at the damp undergrowth beneath him, watching her out of his periphery as her voice snaps at something that is not there. He champs his onyx mouth and firmly tosses his head, disliking that she is referring to him to the monsters that do not belong to him. “Is there anything for us here?” He asks her this and there is no knowing if he is referring to the both of them or the devilish voices that now reside within him.
His dark forelock settles haphazardly across the blue of his gaunt face. “Do not bring us here to die, Sabra.” His voice is calm, controlled; but it cannot be certain that it holds a threat.
I set our pace to leisurely strides as we move through the dark woods. Ice crunching under foot is the only noise for a while, brittle as old bones. Peaceful, I would call it.
There's a new edge to his face. Something I missed when we first met, or perhaps overlooked in the heat of the moment. The way the light seems to leach away from his eyes, seems to do anything but be absorbed. I smile at it, lips curved in a way that would have stopped hearts years ago. Now I smile only for him, and I think he does not care to see it.
A slow nod bows my head, my eyes half shut as I consider his question. "This will be our chapel of suffering." I declare, certainty in my mouth. "Lay blood at my alter, and you will want for nothing." My steps halt, hooves half buried in the loam as I appraise the steely horse beside me.
Then he asks if I brought him here only to die, and I can't help it. A maddened cackle flies from my lips, shattering the stillness we walked in. "And what if I have?" I shriek, pressing up to him until we are eye to eye. The shaft in my chest lays across his shoulder, and I am writhing against him. "What will you do? Will you come back to bash in my skull like an unwanted colts? Will you lay and moulder in your cave, an eternally pissed off ghost?" I ask, louder with every phrase, spittle clinging to my lips.
I fall back then, voided of my rage as quickly as it had come on. Breathing like I'd run the last mile instead of strolled it, I glare at the blue stallion, fighting for control. "I have no use for more ghosts. If that's all you are to me, then you can fuck right off back to your hidey hole. But-" I pause to lick my lips, to gather myself back into the contained package I worked so hard to keep myself in. "-If you would be my Wolf. My warrior. Then there will be blood enough for both of us. And I will give you all that you could want and more."
The offer hangs shining between us. A soft reprieve in the cold of winter's night. I've hated winter from the first day I felt it, and that feeling has not grown better with age. I will, however, tolerate a great deal more discomfort than this if it gives me what I want.
Silence engulfs them - at least, the kind of silence any sane entity would call as such. For him - the stoic knave - the silence is marred by haunting whispers, things that curl around his insides so sweetly, hushed voices of malice and destruction, begging for the one thing they always have begged him for: flesh, blood, life. Kill, they murmur to him and now that he has wholly accepted their presence, their voices are lush and gentle, despite the diabolical ideas they insist upon. They are kind to him, persuasive; loving, even. And they know that the pearlescent woman will bring them what it is they desire, giving the stallion a feeling of misplaced loyalty in Sabra. Perhaps it will soon evolve into the real thing or even something more, but for now, the blue stallion enjoys how their voices no longer scream and maim - and he is fully content on keeping them that way.
The stallion’s eyes - such a crisp blue that they nearly appear white in the dying light of the burning forest - scrapes to her, finding her voice sultry and tantalizing on the cold air as it rings out from her parched lips, himself and his demons feeding on the promises she spills with unmatched hunger, devouring her words as a starving man would shove bread down his empty throat. Utter peace finds Balto for the first time in decades, the voices and their shadows appeased by her revelations. He must make it come to fruition, he muses mildly to himself, and the voices echo in one accord, you must.
He agrees.
No smile finds his stony lips, however. Then, there seems to be an inkling of one as his mouth quirks lopsidedly as she comes close to him. For a moment her image fades - the bright pearl of her body shattering into a mousy brown, her wild eyes shifting to a calmer and deeper tone - and that image calls to Balto. Not the Balto that stands in a dark forest with ice at his hooves and darkness in his heart, but the Balto that was once alone and unaffected by shadows. This moment is but a second, flashing across his eyesight with a single blink and then is gone.
The stallion does not coil away from the intensity in her voice and the certainty that builds within it. His eyes, however, respond - they hold something deep and dark, uncannily evil and disparaging; she could kill him, absolutely, but she won’t. She had the chance back in the forest and when she failed to do so, she has now been given a man whose mercilessness knows no bounds - a creature that has risen from the ashes and is hellbent on its own survival and personal gain. Fortunately, their desires seem to align. Perhaps insanity does that on purpose.
The stake that protrudes from her gently sloping chest grates against his skin without hesitation, the splintered wood rough and unforgiving. Her voice echoes the empty Sylvan forest, rebounding off of moss-grown boulders and doubling itself over, repeating her crazed shouts in a voice that sounds not unlike the ones in his own head. He licks his lips as she steps away, her shouting now simmering to a gentle confession - an idea, of sorts, that lingers like the fog that swirls menacingly throughout Sylva.
He wonders if the trees bow to hear their plans, knowing what darkness is about to erupt within their canopies.
Blood, they remind him, grooming him and cooing sweetly. It is all he needs, now. A blood-soaked feast. Cold sinks into his skin, dripping into his marrow and nestling within the cavernous emptiness of his chest.
“I am yours to use, Sabra,” comes the dark of his raspy voice, “just as we are theirs.” They concede to their demons and will turn the quiet forest into the darkness that resides within their minds; they will not face it alone, no. Others will see their depravity and be forced to satisfy the intense cravings within them. The possibilities are endless. “By our hands, their blood will paint all of Beqanna.”
A giggle of glee bubbles from my throat, childish and exuberant. "How marvelous!" I crow, eyes alight with manic fever. "How perfectly wonderful of you, Balto. I knew I chose right, I just knew it. Together, you and I will do spectacular things." My lips pressed to his cheek briefly, a hard peck more than a kiss.
My eyes take on a brief, flinty cast as he mentions Them. I am not Theirs, not really. But I swallow the bitter feeling down, replace it with a plastic smile. "Of course," I say, wings fluttering erratic by my sides. "We cannot do it alone." I murmur, looking at but not seeing the trees around us. The Voices snicker to themselves, calling me pitiful, unreliable, a failure. I have been all these things and more, but I think. I think this time may be different.
A flurry of pastel down floats to the thick leaves at my feet while I pace, humming an off-key melody to myself as a move to and fro. Can't stop moving, can't stop. They will catch me. No. No, I will catch them first. I will catch them unawares, hunting the hunters and bleeding them dry.
Then I freeze, and turn to him. Ice blue eyes meeting across the void. "Bleed for me. I want your blood on my tongue before anyone else's. I want to know you are mine, body and soul." He is beautiful, so beautiful, standing in the dark, a shadow at my side. And I want to taste him, to know he is real. My body moves to press against his again, but softly this time. A touch that barely grazes his skin, my breath a feather's glance on his face. He is warm, so warm on my malnorurished figure, and solid as stone.
The darkness within him curls and rattles with something like pride as she howls her delight, as if the sound of her maniacal laughter soothes the brooding beast. Her pearled lips find the mottled blue of his sharp jawline with fervance and the stallion’s dark lips cannot help but ripple into a snarl, snapping dully at the air between them as she sidles away, her worn wings fluttering haphazardly at her withers.
Their voices are different - his are darkness and shadow; writhing, thoughtless things that crawl up his insides and turn everything they touch into acid and bile. Though hers remain earth-bound and attack a far different area than his own do, they both seek the same thing: destruction, whether it be with blood or with the mind.
Two parts of one whole, yin and yang of one another; the cruelty and mercilessness of darkness intertwined with the blood-red lust of madness.
He seems nearly absent beside her, but he is far from an empty shell. The beasts crawl inside him tenfold, chattering and howling and pressing against the bones of his skeleton - they have invaded each part of him, turned each part of his body into ash. There is so much going on beneath the surface of the blue stallion’s skin and perhaps it is only she that knows it.
Balto watches her pace to and fro, thoughtful and calculating and in a frenzy. His cold eyes never leave her, like a predator watching its prey from the shadows. But she is far from prey; no, she is much more to him than most anything he had ever encountered. And when that thought brushes the tendrils of his mind is when she sweeps towards him, those hellish burning eyes on his, and he finds himself standing at attention, ready for whatever is to spill off of her tongue.
Bleed for me.
His black-tipped ears flick back, but no other movement comes. You’ll never die, his darkness hauntingly coos to him, whether it be to remind him of his eternal torture (so what did it hurt?) or that nothing she could ask of him would actually kill him, it didn’t matter. The sharpness of his shadowed face breaks for the first time, a careless grin cracking on the corner of his lips.
When she presses against him - a caress, so gentle, tender (she cares for me, within this darkness) - something dark stirs in the depths of his crystal eyes, flashing menacingly. Blood, they whisper to him frantically, as if the only thing in this moment that he needed was blood to flow - not the air in his lungs or his heart pumping, only blood.
So with a dark curl of his lips, he offers her his throat.
09-25-2020, 10:36 PM (This post was last modified: 09-25-2020, 10:36 PM by Sabra.)
I snicker as he snaps at the air, teeth clacking with satisfactory sharpness on the empty space. He would eat the world I think, if I asked him too. How reckless that makes me feel. How vibrantly alive.
I think that has been my missing piece, my cornerstone gone astray. Life, and living, and reasons to keep going on. If I thought about it, I could live on the edge of some convenient cliff. Fly off it and let the wind slip through my wings and break myself on whatever lay below so I could sleep with the dead until my body healed enough to wrench me back to life. Over and over again, breaking and renewing until my mind lost all sense of reason. Yes. I could do that.
Or.
I could take bites from the world. I could swallow it delicately, drowning in the blood of it just enough to keep my mind at ease. Suffocating only just as much as it takes to remind myself that I exist.
I grin haphazardly at Balto's stoic face. Oh yes, so serious, so grim and fiercesome. But I can see the turbulence behind his eyes. The bitter sweetness of not being in control. How freeing it is, to not be in control. I grant him that.
I jerk forward, a marionette with half the right number of strings. "You are too good to me," I sigh, breathy as a lovestruck two year old. A glitter of pastel swims in the corner of my vision. A witness. A portent. I sway for a moment, dizzy for lack of food, for lack of faith. Until my resolve hardens and I lurch toward my prize.
It is quickly done. So sudden I surprise myself with its having happened at all. But the evidence is between us, and undeniable. His marbled throat has been ignored, in favor of the naked chest now leaking red, red blood around the far reaching point of my javelin.
We are joined now, the blood of my curse binding us forever more. The little round soon-to-be scar I think went deep enough that he might carry it eternally. My breath is thin with the pain I've inflicted, my heart shifting uncomfortably in my breast. Fresh blood drips between the pair of us, until I reel back without warning, jerking the rod from his flesh carelessly.
"Call me Mistress." I rasp, gigging to myself as I wander deeper into the woods.
He’d bend to her will; the voices would allow it. They quiet when she ventures close, their galavanting voices hushing at her closeness, feeding off the violence that pulsates from her very being. He’s attached to her in a way he simply cannot describe; he is wholly hers and at the same time, bound to her command. Sabra’s spectacular grin is somehow beautiful and fearsome in the burning light of Sylva and for a moment the blue beast wonders how he’s come to this - but the thought only lasts a second, for he knows exactly what he had done to put these steps into motion. It should not surprise him to be beneath the will of those voices that haunt and terrorize his mind so violently, nor that he obeys such insanity without single hesitation.
Monster, they whisper, reminding him of the blood he had spilled and the bones he had spliced. A monster, comes the voices, mournful in their snickers. He is nothing but a beast, a being created for darkness. He is reminded of this as she tumbles towards him, haphazard yet it is somehow graceful on her thin, pearl legs. He had offered her his throat; that pulsing jugular that throbs heartily beneath muscle and sinew - is he surprised that she completely ignores it?
The stake dives into his chest and there is an audible groan that passes through his onyx lips. He grimaces but otherwise is unphased by the mounting pressure and pain that sears from the wound, splintered from the wood that skewers her body. Blood swims down his chest and legs as if it was its own entity; part of him believes that it is. And when she backs away from him without a thought, careless of the wound that she had inflicted upon him, another audible exhale leaves his throat. And he notices when his blood swims in rivulets down his muscular legs and pools into dark puddles at his hooves, the voices are silent. Gone, it seems; but they are merely watching, in awe of the ruby river that runs down the blue of his skin.
Tied together by the wound and somehow by the mind, the stallion’s crystal gaze clicks carefully to Sabra, her retreating form darkening as the woods seem to swallow up her figure.
Without hesitation, the beast follows her deeper into their forest.
