take me back to november; pangeans

[Maleficar]

{maleficar}

My corrupt nature is empty of grace.

He watches the princes approach. One is giggling and nearly prancing as they discuss what is to come while the other - Yadigar, he recognizes - seems to have divorced himself from his emotions. The blind boy turns his milk-white gaze on the witch and Maleficar offers a slight nod of his head. Virgil grins with a mouth full of sharp teeth that unnerves the Tephran but he says nothing on the matter.

He has shed his usual disguise for this occasion, revealing the runes carved and scarred into his body as well as his bright purple gaze. Wisps of white throughout his mane reveal his age along with the tired look in his eyes. It’s evident that he doesn’t care for this sort of spell, but a promise is a promise. He steps closer to the pair as he searches for the right words to say.

“It isn’t too late to change your mind, you know,” he says softly, nearly pleading. But Yadigar says nothing and his expression reveals nothing of his inner turmoil. Maleficar pauses a moment longer before he nods. Perhaps too eagerly, the younger prince skitters back and watches with wide eyes as the runes along the witch’s body begin to glow. His teeth grow sharp and black as he stretches his jaws wide. Thick ooze the color of midnight seeps from his throat and then he sinks those fangs into Yadigar’s throat, peeling the scales like paper-thin eggshells.

Virgil gasps in awe as he watches his brother’s blood come bubbling from the wound as it pours onto the ground along the Taigan border. Maleficar swallows the scales with only minor difficulty before his glowing eyes find the boys once more.

“I call upon the thundering storm, I call upon the towering trees,” he calls, lifting his chin as dark clouds begin to gather overhead. “I offer you kings' blood, that you bring a mage to his knees.”

A low rumbling comes from the ground below them as well as the storm clouds as though must consider the command. Maleficar listens carefully, nodding slightly as some unheard conversation carries on.

“The wheel of fate has been still and the doomed walk the earth.
Grant the armies passage and let the nations prove their worth.”

The storm withholds whatever rain it carries but a harsh wind kicks up, tangling Maleficar’s long mane as he looks back to the swaying Yadigar. He gathers that tar-like substance still drooling from his throat and spits it across the open wound. The Pangean heir snarls and recoils, frantically trying to bite at his own throat as the substance begins to hiss and foam.

“The pain now will spare you pain later,” he says, his broad chest heaving with each labored breath. Virgil curiously tests the Taigan border and gives a delighted croon as he crosses at long last. Yadigar turns and observes him for a moment before spreading his wings and taking flight

This is a modified version of my previous Mal post. Basically Yadigar, Virgil, and whoever else are heading for Nerine and Gar is currently feral. Maleficar has exactly zero interest in doing anything else and he's v tired now.

[asphyxea]

asphyxea

i've been around this world and now everything's a bore
i don't know that much, but i know about keeping score

Softer than her father and half-dragon siblings, Asphyxea leaves Silver Cove early to arrive in the North on time. They may travel on hoof regardless - as Virgil is as angelic as heaven's own creatures and yet unfortunately earthbound - but the Pangean princess tells herself she prefers it this way: alone.

Alone with her thoughts, her thick skin, and striking golden beauty. Yes, she murmurs in her head, alone and proud. Father had always loved her fierce, distant nature. Proud and royal and mighty. Perhaps Phyx is narcissistic, too loud in her own mind to pay attention to the perceptions of others; but if she is aware of such self-absorption, she certainly doesn't see it as a negative trait. No, Asphyxea is obsessed with her treasure hued fur and animalistic instincts in a way that can only aid her.

At least, that is the truth she sees in her reflection.

The siblings that watched their sister grow colder as she grew older may think otherwise.

Nevertheless, as solemn as she forces herself to be, Asphyxea upholds her family's ambitions and wishes. To the North or to the South, Ghaul had offered her. Though the South was tempting, the dragon-woman had always found the Northerners . . . slightly more irritating. Loud-mouthed and whiny, is what she tells herself as the scenery changes and borders pass. Hopefully, they'll be big-mouthed enough to be forced to swallow our fire. How sweet their blood will taste when their cries go from annoying to terrified.

Phyx craves war, glory, and destruction.

Because it suits her. And because she has only ever seen power - true, knee-weakening power - wielded by those soaked in their enemies' blood.

They put on a show, the magician and her brothers. Phyx watches with a coy, secretive smile and a cocked head. She is fascinated by such magic, the way it draws power from her brother's spilling blood. The sight of Yadigar bleeding out on the Taigan soil is barely disturbing to Phyx, though some hidden protective instinct forces her from the shadows she peers from to observe Gar closer.

"Yadigar . . ." she murmurs on a breath before stepping back to allow him to take flight. Now Phyx's jaw sets and her eyes go sharp. Virgil is already waltzing across the open border, so the princess launches forward to match his stride. Smoke billows out from between the woman's dragon teeth.

"Virgil!" Phyx cries triumphantly before breaking off a few feet to test her fire on a pine tree.

"Do you think we'll get to watch them burn?"

and if there's one thing i know for sure,
it'd be a long cold day in hell when i take you back

@[virgil] phyx says hi let's commit several felonies

[Brennen]

He’s tired. He cannot be magic and mortal, and he has long since slipped onto the magic side.

It’s the sort of tired where you’ve bypassed tired, actually, and you’re in some other realm of exhaustion where dreams and reality cease to be two discernable entities.

For Brennen, now, the reality is that he’s basically given himself up to the magic. He’s not aware of the outside world at all – he no longer feels the icy water against his skin or the bite of the bitter wind. He could no more defend his physical body than a fish could defend itself on land.

He is soaked, and the winter cold has turned the water to ice on his coat, in his mane and tail, layers and layers over the months he’s been motionless in the surf. As a result, there is no longer a bay stallion in the waters of Nerine but a vaguely horse-shaped ice statue, under which everyone assumes Brennen still stands. It glitters in the sunlight and gleams in the moonlight, and when the days are overcast, it is simply an eerie reminder of the precipice of uncertainty upon which they all find themselves balanced.

Can he maintain it forever? They will not know until he is challenged. It seems he is more magic than man, now, so the better question might be can he ever recover?

The voice of the witch is a whisper at first in his mind, but the insistent tug of his net at the Taiga border draws his attention and irritated, he turns his magic “eyes” towards the dissonance, feeling the intentions of the gathered Pangeans, “seeing” them simply as life signatures in varying colors and intensities. As the blood flows from the one, oozing towards the border, it freezes everywhere it touches the invisible line, frosting to a lurid pink that pools in frozen streams. But it keeps coming, and he imagines the metallic taste of it in disgust, recoiling from the oily dark blood magic that goes against all of his own principles.

The trees tower above even his magic self; their magic is not the same as is, it is turned inward with incredible peace that Brennen almost loses himself in for a moment. It’s cool and green, but even that green is incredibly warm compared to the blue and white of his own magic, flooding now into his every vein and artery as if he has never been a red-blooded creature. It’s seductive and he has to draw himself away with great effort, caressing the tall proud trees with a shiver of bottomless regret.

He is not going to save them. But their magic will preserve their essence, and some day they will grow tall here again. The fire will cleanse this forest as fire naturally does; it will bring new life here. Perhaps another magician, one whose blood runs green rather than blue, will help them along. Brennen “reaches” out for the sign of lifeforms, and if they are in danger they cannot deal with themselves, and they are willing, they are absorbed in the cool touch of the ocean and whisked away to Nerine. Those who are not in danger or unwilling to go he leaves behind, with the same idle feeling of regret he leaves to the trees.

When the evacuation is complete, Brennen simply…. lets go of Taiga. His magic recedes like the tide, and the cool net of protection gives way to the heat and fury of @[Maleficar]’s feral minions, their fire sweeping across the redwood to be dealt with by someone else.

That magic must go somewhere, it cannot simply cease to exist, so it flows with a rush of power back into the shields still in place around Icicle Isle, Nerine, and the Pampas. Ripples flow from the Brennen-statue out into the water, and the ground trembles for some area around his feet. Fleetingly, he reaches for @[Neverwhere]’s mind, and from her gaining the knowledge to connect as well to @[Leilan]. There are no words – magic does not speak, after all, and the words Brennen has always been so adept at are frozen inside his physical body. But magic has eyes, and images, and feelings; he shows them Taiga, Maleficar, the young creatures rushing towards Nerine, the fire that comes from them and spreads to the ancient redwoods. He leaves them with a sense of urgency, his deep sorrow at the fate of the forest, his fury at the attack of the witch.

A part of him that knows that there is an existence outside of the magic hopes they can make sense of the images from the perspective of magic and the overwhelming feelings of a magician who has lost all ability to filter his feelings through society’s social graces.

He regrets giving up Taiga, but strategically he knew it must be done.

The dragon-children with @[yadigar] burn their way across Taiga towards Nerine, but the backwash of magic brings them up short. Their fire doesn’t touch the cool green meadow on the hill underneath the crisp white of the frost and snow; it wouldn’t harm the water or the cliffs anyway, but he doesn’t allow even the smallest of stray scorch marks. The physical barrier holds for now; they cannot enter with the magics that have been worked so far on their behalf.

Maleficar will need a much bigger sacrifice.

Or other magicians who can face off against the bay warrior without his limitations; magicians willing to shed their physical limitations as he has and meet him magic-for-magic.

The magician sends another tremor along his connection to Neverwhere and Leilan – a harsh note of warning, a heartbeat of uncertainty. The slightest caress of affection.

In this fashion he could hold forever against the fire, against the dragon-children who need to be reined in before they burn down the world. He is tempted to swat them from the sky; he has seen nothing in his life from the dragonborn except mindless destruction stemmed from unbearable arrogance and lack of self-control.

But he can’t hold forever against other magicians, so if they dragonborn have brought friends, Brennen will eventually fall. This is not the danger he was recruited to stand against, but he will stand for as long as he can.

(ooc: since brennen isn't really "here", I'm cross-posting this in several relevant places).

[Shahrizai]

So many times they had been forced to flee their homes. So many times they have had to seek somewhere new, somewhere safe they could settle their roots. He is tired of it. He would not stand for this yet another time. So, instead of ushering his family from the woods as fire begins to spread, he takes action.

With the help of his eldest son, he gathers the shadows that flourish so abundantly in their forest him. He gathers and builds, condensing and collecting until a force of solid darkness expands and grows. For once he could use this unasked for ability of his. For once the thing he had long believed a curse would be their savior.

With two of them, the work is easier. And soon, a wall stands, barricading the quiet safety of their woods against the fire and hatred of the outside world.

In the end, he is exhausted, but when a pair of yellow eyes glow at him through the darkness, a smile creases his lips. With his family surrounding him, they would never be alone. And they would most certainly never be defenseless.

-----

Ether watches as the wall grows, wishing he could help. But long ago his shadows had morphed as they clung, turning him into the creature of darkness he now is, but leaving him without the ability to craft as he once had. As he steps easily through the forest from shadow to shadow, an idea occurs though.

He had quickly gathered his family to bring them to the safety behind his father and brother’s barricade, but perhaps there is more he could do. More they could do.

And so, from the shadows he moves to the smokey and smoldering forest, where fire has begun to grow recklessly. Where the Pangean beasts set light to the ancient pines of the Taiga. From there, he reaches into the shadows of the deepest, most feral part of the ocean. A thought is all it takes to open the void. To allows the icy, briny waters of the ocean depths to crash through. Fire sizzles and dies beneath the rapid onslaught, and should anyone still lighting fire to the wood fail to move quickly enough, they too would find themselves caught in the torrent.

A few seconds is all it takes to extinguish flame, and then he moves on. Anywhere fire begins to rise, Ether follows, bringing the ocean with him.



TL;DR - Shah and @[Illum] have built a shadow barrier around part of Taiga to protect it and the residents that remain. Ether is putting out fires using a portal to the ocean. I don't plan on replying with these guys again, so from here on you can assume Ether is effectively acting as a giant, boring wet blanket