"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
12-11-2020, 11:40 PM (This post was last modified: 12-31-2020, 11:36 AM by Aela.)
Carnage had come and gone.
Aela can still feel that (wonderful) tug on her mind; that command he gave to all of Pangea in the aftermath of Straia and the laughably short-rise-and-fall saga of the Chamber. It had been like static brushing against her senses and then parting through the waves of her thoughts, the Dark God himself came crashing through.
He had given the command (and some little part of Aela had bristled at that, she has never taken kindly to being told do anything) to bring a piece of Pangea to him.
She had almost done it. The golden filly had gone out with Skandar to search for something worthy. The pair of them had scoured the lands and had even ventured as far south as Loess, thinking that some kind of physical proof of Pangea's conquests might appease the Dark God. To serve as a reminder of the things that the canyon country was capable of achieving; of the havoc it could wreak to the lesser kingdoms across Beqanna. But all they found was ashes and what good is dust to a God?
(And Aela had remembered Heartfire's words: that the Seer had recommended avoiding him. His offspring were legion - and even if she was descended from the loins of that God, it would matter little to him. Her grandmother had said that Straia would have been ant to Carnage; young, ambitious, aspiring Aela would have been less than that.)
It's why she comes out here. It's why she leaves Skandar in Pangea (though his... abilities often help others come around to her way of thinking - the threat of a laser beam between the eyes does wonders). But Aela is not less than; Aela is quite capable on her own. She wants a reminder of that power and when her blue eyes land on him - a colt not much older than her, golden and winged, lanky and gangly with youth. She recalls that Heartfire's last lesson had not been about stifling ambition but rather understanding the calculations in the steps you make to get there.
The gold-striped filly decides that he makes a good first step as any. Aela comes near the buckskin pegasus and gives him a small half-sickle smile: an invitation or a warning, his choice.
12-19-2020, 05:21 PM (This post was last modified: 12-19-2020, 05:21 PM by Narcisus.)
There’s only the seasons changing and the spin of an everlasting life to meet my sunrises and bid goodbye to my sunsets. I know nothing of the threats of a God, or normal horse kind. I know nothing of my limitations: only how to break them. If asked my interests I would reply with a smile and nothing more, maybe. Depends on who asked. Who was Carnage to tell me anything I didn’t already know? Who was anyone to tell me anything? Fuck them. Fuck them all. I’d only come out to be with the others because it suited me for the time being. When the weather changed from falling leaves to winter’s first snow, I’d most likely go back to Islandres and wait out the worst of it. After I’d gotten bored with the nothing that filled my days here, in the common lands.
Still, I searched for one minor interest that never let me sleep peacefully. Somewhere out there was my mother, who had answers to questions I’d rather not seek out from anyone else. She could be the quest of my life, if I ever wanted one. Day in and day out I swung from ill-mannered, ill-tempered discussions to actual flights over the Kingdoms, wondering if a coat color similar to mine would appear out of the blue. Like a splinter wedged deep into my brain, I could not forget her. Fate had designed that I should look for her, so I did.
It’d been years now, and no word of her. She’d either died an unknown, or hidden herself away. Worse yet, she’d probably left this strange country altogether as I’d heard of other horses doing.
I blinked slowly, aware from the flick of one ear that I was being approached, so I turned to make out who it was.
“Sexy little thing, aren’t you? Love the smile, dollface.” I winked. ‘Twas the season. “Look baby; I’m in the mood so I’ll humor you, but don’t come running to me when a runt slips out between those delicious thighs.” I grunted, happy to be disturbed by long-legged goldilocks. Before she’d come along, some randoms had been into the idea and I’d been more than eager to give it a go, but I wasn’t promising commitment or any mutual reciprocation at all, really. Slut had come up to me, not the other way around. It was my policy (after the … hundredth time. Yea, hundredth) to just be upfront. Bitches loved an upfront man.
12-31-2020, 11:31 AM (This post was last modified: 12-31-2020, 11:36 AM by Aela.)
Aela doesn't let her days fill with nothing.
She fills her days.
The lingering existence of the Common Land dwellers was always something of a mystery to her, a perplexity that she never bothered to figure out. Why they wanted to waste their time in such a way never appealed to her. But then, the near-palomino knows that they all can't be like her.
There is ordinary and then there is Aela.
Her smile remains as the buckskin pegasus turns to look at her. A golden ear flicks towards her and then the adolescent follows with an ochre-hued gaze. Aela's pretty eyes flick up to glance at the pale streak in his forelock that looks deceivingly demure. She had given the winged colt a choice - there had been a suggestion that crescent-moon smile and he answers it with a wink. The flaxen-maned girl gives her slender head a slight toss and decides to play along. She can hardly fault him for finding her lovely (even if the rest of what he spouts is ludicrous); a horse would have to be blind to not see that Aela's shining beauty curves in a way that borders between divinity and devastation.
But he doesn't seem to understand that he is entering the orbit of a sun; that she is blazing and golden and fierce. But such is the way of pegasi, she muses. They are so often in the heavens that they must lose their reason among the clouds. She doesn't mind, though. Aela thinks the young pegasus could use a lesson on what happens to feathers when they come to close to an inferno given flesh.
Turning her attention back towards him, Aela offers him another glimpse of that coy smile. Curved with a secret and clarified with a projection of the small copse of trees that she had just been looking at, an implication that they move away from prying eyes.
image credit to footybandit
@[Narcisus] i could not stop laughing at delicious thighs
I would never understand the allure. Mares, that is. The weaker of the sexes assigned to this world and others like it. Mares simper and smile, bat their eyes and have their way with whomever or whatever will give them the attention they seek and they constantly seek it out from sources not exactly primed for giving it, and I think this one in particular might learn a hard lesson in that area. She’d picked me when the throng of other horses in the distance was ripe for better plucking. She’d picked the outlier, and that alone made her dull when otherwise she would’ve been a sparking interest for me.
Her winning trait is that she says nothing in response to my baiting.
But it unnerves me. Every horse had a thing or two to say in response whenever I opened my mouth; this palomino is the exception. Not exceptional, mind you - just a rare exception to the rule of thumb. I wonder what her damage is, with the speechless stare and the curious smile, but wonder isn’t enough. I’m not curiously willing to take her offer up. I blink, fully aware that she must’ve been the one to implant that sudden thought (picture?) of the forest into my head, and return her coy, irksome smile with a much more steadfast one of my own. It cements itself there on my dark lips, unmoving and unswayed by the persuasion of a mute whore.
“No. I think not.” My laughing response rings out where hers cannot, or doesn’t want to.
“I think right here is good enough. Don’t you?” The question was rhetorical. Underneath the twist of my black hooves there’s the sound of dirt and grass being torn, disheveled, uprooted, and then I’m facing her.
I want to touch her, and so I will. I want her to feel the way I loosen instead of tense, and I’m watching her so closely for that spark of recognition because I don’t think - I don’t know if she’ll utter a word in response. Ochre and warm, the tinder sparks of fire in my eyes expand and so does my reach from within, invisible hands that move to finger and play with the soul without consent, longing and searching to attach strings from myself to her. To feel her from the inside out, so foreign and utterly wrong. Heinous.
I’m happy to violate. I love to violate, and she (like all the others) will come to love me violating her, too. Mimic and warp and twist, this is who I am. This is what I do. Mimic and warp and twist myself into something everyone loves. The tips of my reach brush against her, testing the pliability of her strength and sheer will against my power, and I smile my bastard smile just for her. Just for the silent girl and her pretty pictures.
01-15-2021, 03:04 PM (This post was last modified: 01-15-2021, 03:06 PM by Aela.)
He's right in regards that Aela had singled him out because he was the outlier.
Her gift is one that gets better with time - with more practice - but keeping control over something as volatile as emotions is not an easy feat. The more defined the emotion, the sharper the memory, and the clearer it becomes: this is her voice and her weapon and Aela intends to keep them both honed to a fine point.
If she had attempted this with the older roan mare that she walked past, Aela doesn't doubt the old creature would have retreated. The young are too easy, their minds too open. Aela takes pleasure in many things but she doesn't find joy in the conquests that come easily. She had chosen this buckskin because he had been away from the other young stallions and he had chosen to remain aloof where he might have otherwise blended in the nearby band that roamed the Common Lands. That makes him worth noticing because Aela knows that those who keep themselves apart usually have a reason for it and the reason is usually worth finding out.
She had thought to tempt him with the copse of trees and once there, well, she assumed she could practice some of the darker memories she had encountered. His mind seemed strong and his arrogance seemed to lend him a confident air that she found herself wanting to break. The stallion wants nothing of it, though, and decides for them both that the wide-open Meadow should suit his needs well enough.
The pegasus unravels something - Magic, she assumes - that she has been waiting (and wanting) since she had approached him. It's like something in him loosens and Aela doesn't have time to react; it invades her. She inhales sharply - the last action that is genuine - as something intertwines and weaves and tangles within her. It doesn't happen without protest. It doesn't happen without Aela struggling against the confines of his power but she reminds herself again (her mind is still her own, she discovers, even if her body is not) of fixed things: Nerinian granite, the steady flame of Straia's once-burning tree, small pebbles that crush beneath her pale hooves.
Aela finally finds the strength to look away from those ochre-colored eyes, wondering if they might be the source behind his ability. When she lifts them - (she doesn't have the ability to change her skin so that it might become something fiery and molten) - she is the very image of temerity. It's burning (raging) beneath her skin - an electric spark waiting to ignite, daring him to touch her - and glaring brilliant blue at the pegasus.
There’s a darkness inside of me writhing, always squirming. When I was younger, I pictured it a worm: small and burrowing deep where it didn’t belong, hollowing out the insides like rotten wood. I thought I was different somehow special, but the truth was less exciting and evident the older I grew. The truth that I was fallible and yet untouchable, crafting falsehoods when all I ever wanted was the real thing. I thought what I had wanted was so clear and so precise, but the worm wriggled its way up through my stomach and into my brain, rearranged my perception of this world and those who lived in it until they became the worms themselves. Eating and dying and fucking, carving holes into the landscape of time like mindless, sightless organisms.
I didn’t want to be one of them. I refused to be like them, even if they approached me with half-smiles and promises of strange magicks.
What I wanted was exactly what I got. The sucking of air between the golden girl’s teeth; so sweet, like music to my ears. It made the smile around my mouth more genuine. I shivered gently, and probed into the places I wasn’t invited.
To her credit, the mostly-silent mare was as strong an opponent as I’d ever met. There was iron in her, forged and cast strong, and I met the resistance nearly everywhere my little invisible tendrils touched. There it was in her heart - so strong! So proud! There it was in her mind - I couldn’t breach the sheer barrier of mental doggedness she possessed. Even in her gaze; my skin felt the phantom burn, but I laughed and laughed a moment more. Stupid, silly mare.
“You’ve got spunk, haven’t you?” I snickered. “Where’s that pretty smile? Gone so soon?” I tsked sarcastically. That wouldn’t do. She’d been much more appealing with a come hither expression.
I resolved to fix her attitude. No; better yet I decide I’ll gift her. I’ll exchange a feeling, thick and sticky sweet - nearly substantial - and see how she takes to it. There are ways of conjuring bliss without touch, and though I relent the use of underhand tactics when it felt so simple just to clench the fist of my domination over her willpower, I’m more inclined now than ever to see how she takes to the drug I’m offering. It was easier when they fought less. Easier when they felt the strange fog slowly creeping through their head, bringing undesired but heavy-handed ecstasy with it. It almost seemed a bit unfair that I could make other creatures feel happy about walking into their own deaths.
Did she need a visual to complete the feeling, though? A little nightcap to take the edge off? I could manage.
The worm crawls in, the worm crawls out. My skin writhes, tingling over my muscles like thousands of tiny ant bites, and I try my best to cast illusionment but even my powers aren’t infinite. They were draining steadily, and I only had a moment or two before one or all of them broke.
02-06-2021, 01:55 PM (This post was last modified: 02-06-2021, 02:02 PM by Aela.)
This is what she had wanted.
Tangled, trapped in a web woven of Magic and ability. This was the only way she would get stronger; this would be the only way she would get better. (Aela doesn't understand mediocrity. Half-measures like strong as any would never be acceptable. The golden girl will ascend as she intends, or resign to her only other option: to remain a worm, to remain nothing.)
This internal battling (even if her physical body complies with his abilties, her spirit is twisting and turning and constantly prodding those invisible tendrils for a weakness, for a fault, for a mortal flaw) is the only way for her to become stronger. So even as she struggles, she reminds herself: this is what you wanted.
(Wrapped up in the veil of his Magic, Aela keeps twisting. She'll knot herself but she intends to trap him in the process.)
But as she turns one corner, as she tries to wrest her body back, a foreign emotion floods her. She is familiar with the after-effects of a lingering memory; Aela has used enough terrifying ones to know the fear that remains, enough memories through the eyes of Kota to leave behind gentler emotions (a kind girl, some might think, an old soul.) The palomino has used the more powerful memories to her advantage, using their influences to direct most of her interactions. This... happiness that comes streaming in feels similar. Crafted, artificial, forced.
As gifted as Aela assumes she is, this is breaching her limits. (Her body is still moving, her mind is still reeling and now something in her feigns happiness. It demands something of a girl who is never to be demanded anything.) Her slender neck rises and there is a slight lift of her refined head, as she finds something to push against. It lasts only seconds before she is swallowed again by the confines of his Magic. It feels as if he wants to enter her mind, to be welcomed into the most private part of her and that is a barrier that Aela will not tolerate.
Where's the pretty smile? he snickers and so Aela offers him a glimmer of one, appeasing the surface while bracing within.
She is avoiding his eyes (and this comes at the cost of her own power - memories transmit so much easier through sight). The striped girl is trying to focus on anything but the ochre-magnetism of his gaze that keeps asking her to look at him. She won't; she doesn't; she is -
It's a flicker of vision - a lightning strike across her sight that reminds her of the way that Heartfire has altered her vision - that she realizes he is changing. He is shifting and despite her fascination with skin-walkers, this repulses her. (If her pale lips could curl in a sneer, they would.) He is changing, trying to become something that Aela doesn't yet understand. In time, Aela might come to love another. In time, she might even understand the reason her grandmother left this world for the Beyond to search for a walking corpse.
The pegasus is a mesh of what she might come to want; of what might come pass. Probabilities that leave Aela wide enough of an opening to break free.
Her smile, finally free of his grasp, turns sharp and wicked.
Aela takes all the happiness that he had poured into her and replays her happiest memories: Nerine being blasted apart, Taiga burning, Carnage resurrecting Pangea. Over and over again, she flashes them bright and vibrant and full of joy. Full of so much happiness that perhaps he couldn't contain it all; perhaps he would feel so much, his wretched heart would burst from it all.
Parry, thrust, lean back and guard. Strike, avoid, turn on the inside heel and slash.
Some fight with actions. This mare and I fight with magic.
Every time she resists I’m left trying to close an opening. Her head lifts and I have to concentrate on making it stay put. Her mouth twists into a smile and I have to be the one to let go of an atom and cling to another. I’m hardly expending myself - she’s not worth the effort of ascending from this body - but damn is she beginning to infuriate me with her constant wriggling. And I try and try some more to keep the strings together, to puppet her just right, but she’s not one to be tied down, not this horse. She’s tangling them and I find myself unable to unravel them.
If she tests me, I might unravel myself.
But we're so damned alike, so bull-headed it almost makes me laugh to feel the control slipping, slipping, falling out of the invisible grasp. I’m spread thin and she knows it. The bonds between us (weren’t they beautiful? Didn’t I show her kindness in a world so dark and dreary?) snap of their own accord, powerless against the distraction of her own subtle, magical influence. An influence that builds like floodwaters breaching the shoreline, spilling out of her thoughts and into my mind until my pupils shrink and my head is shaking, trembling, locked and quivering as if it might explode.
There inside of me is a new world blooming.
Her world, I see. Destruction wrought by chaos, fire licking its way across the forest with hungry tongues of yellow-ochre light. An entity I have never seen before but somehow familiarly striking - risen above the peons and the land like a dark god, calling forth inconceivable power to shape the territory to its will. All these things and more, hammering themselves into my mind but we’re so damned alike, the two of us. So damned wrong. So I’m surprised when reality pierces the false images, when my mouth pops open and a strangled laugh works its way up and out into the quiet between us. These things that make her happy… well they bring delight to me as well. The sheer force of her feelings behind the pictures is enough to keep me steadfast, though I long to disappear into them forever. My legs are fighting the urge to run, run into their wicked embrace and find the happiness she’s found for herself. They are terribly, awfully, wonderfully beautiful. I could cry, I think.
But that’s not what I want. I want her to least expect it when it comes: when I choose to strike.
I want her to think she’s got me, that my head’s drooping from exhaustion and my wings are spreading open from their own weight, not by my design. Again and again, the delightful horror flashes through my mind, a loop that I think I can turn into a loophole. If I wait for the cycle to start again, let her play those pretty pictures in my head once or twice more then they’ll lose a bit of their luster, perhaps. They are, after all, only pictures of what once was or what might’ve been - flat, false things conjured by her and she is just a mare. A silly little mare. A silly mare who makes me feel like I have never felt before.
The dark god raises his incomprehensible eyes and I know what comes next. I lunge.
She can’t trap my physical form. She can’t, can she? She can’t stop the way my wings flare or how I push off, head low and tucked to my chest like a battering ram. She’s only shown me what I’ve dreamed to see and though I should be thankful, I want her to know that I will never be cowed by improbable fantasies. I will root myself in the present even if her images play across my vision. I will make my own way, hers be damned. I am not like the others, nor will I ever be.
02-18-2021, 10:42 PM (This post was last modified: 02-18-2021, 10:43 PM by Aela.)
Aela doesn't give up what she has easily.
So while he fights back with powerful magic to restrain her, to try and push her into some mindset, Aela pushes back. She pushes back with that wildfire tug of her smoldering smile, with the brilliant blue blaze of her firestorm eyes, with the memories that she tries to rail against him with (each one an attempt to beat down his psyche). He could command her where to walk, he could attempt to try and force himself into one place or another but he wouldn't do it without Aela trying to thwart his every attempt. She had been a headstrong girl and grown into an even wilder woman.
Trying to take control of Aela would be like attempting to control a hurricane.
She blows North and South, hot and cold, through all the corners of her soul while she tries to push Narcisus out. She tries and tries until he-
He laughs? Aela stills and regards him cautiously (when she can regain enough control of her herself) from beneath her dark lashes. He laughs, strangled (and Gods, she relishes the way it struggles). Her sides have darkened and her slender neck has started to stain with sweat. She has not exhausted her powers yet but the pegasus has tested her more than anyone else ever has. Aela had wanted to find a worthy opponent today and the buckskin has proven to be at least that. The striped palomino had challenged him and the ochre-eyed creature had risen to it.
But now, now what was she to do?
Her blue eyes continue to watch him wearily. Just because a snake in the grass stops moving doesn't mean it wasn't able to strike. She is waiting for it; his rebuttal, his venom, the vitriol that he would spit back at her.
The dark wings drop to the ground. His head lowers and Aela lifts her elegant head. The memories that she keeps reciting to him like a prayer start to slow (because even Aela has her limitations). They start to dim and the golden girl doesn't expend so much of her energy on replaying them. Maybe he understands. Maybe he sees the message beneath the memories and maybe he understands the greatness behind them. These were moments of power: of raw Magic and that is where Aela's true curiosity lies. It wasn't so much of her way as it was wanting to know how their kind attained such abilities.
Carnage - the dark God - was whispered to be mortal once. How had he attained his godhead? Straia had been a Queen from another time and yet she had been resurrected as something more (she had been swallowed but Aela attributes that to her quarrel with Pangea's creator). These were all questions still dancing in Aela's young mind, a bright interest that kept the young mare testing the boundaries of her Magic and the powers of others.
What happened when they existed at the fringes of it? Was there an existence, some ascension to be found at the edges of their abilities? If there were powers found at the Mountain, what happened if someone attempted to crumble the peak?
Perhaps there was nothing. Perhaps there was only exhaustion. But Aela was determined to try and find out.
Her improbable fantasies have a price. The pegasus, no longer dull, flares his wide wings and comes to life. He barrels towards her and the only thing that the young mare can do is tuck her head down in an attempt to protect herself. She is quick but perhaps not swift enough to escape his direct attack. Aela is seething when she glares at him and speaks when she finally finds a moment. "Do that again and I will strip those wings off your sorry hide," she threatens.
The last thing I’d expected was this happening to me, which is what everyone says I’m sure. No one travels to the common lands thinking they’ll start a fight in public, but somehow here I am - here we are, me and the most annoying bitch I’ve ever met in my life (which was saying a lot), playing mind games with each other. If it wasn’t obvious to the others that we were disagreeing before, now the rest are starting to catch on. I mean, I’d charged at a little wisp of a thing in broad daylight; not a very subtle or charming thing for a young stallion to do. They were bound to catch on at some point, or get caught in the crossfire.
That was the way it went, the few times I pushed myself past my limits. Things got out of control. I’d let the golden girl have her fun, but I resigned not to let her have the comfort of watching me crack, so I chose physical violence instead. She might have a weird brain between her ears, but if it was one thing I definitely had on the weaker sex, it was usually weight class-related.
“There she is!” I taunted her roughly, savoring the piercing sound of her voice as she threatened me. As I passed by, I sank into the earth and dipped one wing toward the ground, skidding to try and turn back for a good look at her. I wanted to see that fire, that spark she thought was so punitive and glorious in her gaze. “Didn’t like that much, did we darling?” I growled through a smile.
The leathery gold of my hide sang as I cracked my black tail across it, and I sneered; she could try and come over here, try to take the wings off my back. She could damn well try. For a moment my wings flared again, spreading out like a cape at my sides, and I dipped back to pick up my forehooves in case she felt like being stupid and actaully going through with it. Not here, I told myself reasonably, thinking of why I shouldn’t just charge her again and be done with it. The stinging interest of a few nearby horses was too risky to be calculated. One might get ideas and try to break us up.
As badly as I wanted to prove the palomino twit wrong, I’d rather be able to take my time about it, kill her the right way you know. Slowly.
Which meant the party was over. I pushed off and let my wings do the work after that, dragging me up with gusty flaps. The wind whipped at my hair as I drew back, ascending and keeping her in my line of sight best I could manage, and that instant I remembered we’d never gotten the chance to trade names. A shame, I thought. Only because it’d be easier to find her later, and I was definitely going to find her later. We had unfinished business now, her and I, and if the dame thought I was letting her off easy or running from the fight then good. She was as stupid as she looked.
I had her in my thoughts, now. I knew the smell of her insolence and would remember the way she walked, along with the few words she had said. Never thought I’d be the one here, fighting a mare in public, and I never thought I’d need a Shit List either but hey… the world works in mysterious ways.
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