02-11-2021, 12:52 PM
In this new, dark, world, Lorne finds herself at an unexpected disadvantage - she can’t see. She lacks the infrared vision boasted by so many others of her kin. There is enough dim light to get by, but the shadows are deep and dark, and whether snake or horse, she finds no relief from the way the cursed eclipse has twisted the land she thought she knew. The earth curves where she doesn’t remember a curve being, it falls away under her feet suddenly or spits out rocks and roots and twists of grass that she doesn’t recall from her daylight years. In this way, it is safer to be a snake, small and smooth and lithe, and not nearly so far to fall when the shadows play their tricks.
But, as a horse, she has better vision, and as a horse, she is a larger target, and – she hopes – less interesting to the strange creatures traveling singly through the artificial night. There’s no reason to assume that this is a correct assumption. There’s no reason to think that she is safe in either shape, but something about being smaller than makes her breath catch short in her throat, so she wears her scales and her bright, sharp, teeth, and pretends it’s the bitter venom flowing down them that makes her mouth feel so dry.
Perhaps it’s the territory. It’s arid and dusty and though the sun never shines these days, the air is warm with summer and makes her skin slick with sweat. It’s enough that she begins to reconsider her shape. A snake would easily navigate the rocky crevices that catch at her stumbling hooves, but a sound nearby changes her mind, a soft, unnatural, chittering, whispered like laughter from a hundred small mouths. At least, it seems like a hundred when she’s alone in the dark. There’s a gleam of teeth, the light dull, the teeth not. There’s a tick-tick-tick of claws on rock. The serpent hisses into the dark and hears it returned, dark, gleeful, treacherous, and she knows that her theory was wrong.
She’s no safer this way.
Why had she thought she would be? The ridiculousness of it floods her with a warm rush of shame and regret, but it’s already too late because those clicking claws are getting closer, faster. Lorne flashes her own sharp teeth in the direction of them, eyes casting wildly across a field of dark shadows that she cannot separate from the monsters themselves. A chill shudders up her spine despite the warmth of the air, but she lunges forward, lips peeled back in a rictus of fear and anger, and snaps those pointed teeth together until they find a body in all that empty space. It screeches when its black blood spills and its cries bring a thousand small bodies out of hiding until the darkness is bubbling all around her. Venom courses into the veins of the one in her teeth. She throws it aside, ready to grab another, hard hooves seeking their fleshy bodies, stomach quaking at the feel of bones breaking underneath her feet, the sick wet noise of bodies being crushed, but the dying wails only feed fury into the others. Fingers press into her flesh, sliding across her scales to test their strength, and for the space of a breath, confidence blooms in her chest, only to turn sour and panicked when those clawed digits turn against the grain and catch at the edges of her skin, piercing, curling, plucking the scales away. Lorne rears backwards with a squeal, leaving a trail of the beasts dripping away from her like oil, but enough hold tight with teeth like knives that slash her skin so easily that she almost doesn’t feel their bite, but the scent of red blood flavors the air with its bright iron smell.
She plucks a shadow from her shoulder, another from her chest, but more pile over her withers and back, her legs, and there’s a hideous cracking sound like the earth is breaking apart. The whole world trembles, rock shattering and more darkness vomiting itself up to drag her down, deep into the earth into the darkest realm. She’s growing desperate now, exhausted, weary, bloody and her knees buckle beneath the weight of the creatures. In a blink they have already pulled her to the edge of the fractured ground, her forelegs dangling in the nothingness there and she tries to throw her head back but sharp fingers hook her nostrils, pulling at her lips, her ears, her eyelids, and the pain turns the world from black to red to white. It’s no less blinding and she struggles again, weakly, moaning, but with her weight jutting over emptiness there’s nothing to do except fall when they shove her inexorably from behind, and then she is weightless, floating in unending, unchanging, darkness with only her fear and the echoes of their laughter for company and it’s impossible to know how long she’s falling because there is only darkness, but she knows the landing will come hard, splintering bone, splitting flesh.
Will it be hard enough to kill her? There's a strange moment where she seems to have an eternity to consider it. It passes in a heartbeat. Her heart isn't ready to stop yet, and the young mare writhes, shifting so suddenly it makes her bones pop as they reset and reshape themselves under her screaming skin. She might be screaming too, but it's hard to hear over the roar of blood in her ears and the way her skin feels like it's on fire. Her serpentine body swings in the air. Roots that simply broke beneath her former weight slow her fall - they also break fragile ribs, but she has a hundred ribs now. The slick, striped, snake finally hits the bottom of the fissure with a sharp breath and darts across the rocky ground, flickering tongue tasting the air for freshness, for the way out. She presses herself beneath a stone ledge and pauses, deliberating. The narrow path opens up into a cavern ahead with an underground stream draining through the heart of the Mountain on its way to join the river. The water leaves a coppery tang to the air, the scent of magic.
The edges of the cavern beyond the water are gray rather than black, illuminated ever so faintly by the pale ring of light lingering in the sky, a way out, and between her and there, a flood of black nothingness and soft chittering noises that grow excitable as the metallic scent of her blood joins the coppery magic in the air.
Lorne-the-snake takes a deep, slow breath, unblinking eyes glittering softly from beneath her ledge. There's nowhere else to go. Or, well, perhaps there is, she could turn around and try another route, but the monsters will be there, too, only without the promise of escape on the other side. And they know she's here, they can smell her, although they haven't discovered her yet; those clever little fingers would find her easily beneath the stone projection. Soon, though - soon enough she will lose her edge, so she exhales and takes another long breath - it might be the last one, after all - and races, serpentine, into the middle of them.
It catches them off guard.
For a moment.
She is not the only one to rush into a pack of them as if bluster and bravado will save her. It doesn't, usually. Not against so many. Against one, maybe two, perhaps, but not against so many. The coral snake slides between those wicked black claws and an excited roar goes up from the murmuring crowd as they crash and slash one another in an attempt to grab her. Most miss, at first, too excited to have their prey so near, but deep in the very center of them the surprise is gone and the claws and teeth begin to catch at her edges. A claw catches deep and stops her desperate escape cold, threatens to rip her in half as the victorious beast lifts her into the air, hissing and whipping and biting, and just as it holds her above its cavernous, knife-toothed mouth, she shifts, horse again, and her hooves break those teeth, break the bones and skin behind them.
Mare again, she squeals, blood streaming dark across her pale skin from myriad deep wounds, and shies away from the pulpy mess beneath her, leaping and kicking at the rest as they try to surround her again, to drag her down, again. She's weak and dizzy and she stumbles numbly towards the cavern's mouth as if escaping is still an option, but the way the darkness at the edge of her vision crackles and sparks with light, she knows she's dying. Still, her legs churn at the hard ground and she turns to bare sharp teeth at her attackers even though her venom is gone, and she falls as she does it, landing with a splash into the frigid creek behind her. The dark beasts let up a collective hiss, something that sounds disapproving, displeased, and come no closer as the water rushes over her, turning bright red. Her vision goes red, too, and then there's nothing.
How long have I been asleep?
Her muscles ache, her skin is stiff with cold. She should be dead. That claw had nearly disemboweled her and the wound was no less serious when she shifted. Hazel eyes stare into the silent, fuzzy, darkness around her, reluctant to find the answers below, but the cold no longer comforts or soothes. The icy water pricks at her skin, driving needles into her flanks and legs until the grey mare stumbles out again on her knees, finds her feet like a newborn foal, swaying, weak, unused to the weight of gravity pressing down on her knees. It's as if she can feel the earth spinning underneath her and she's always half a step behind it. Her steps are drunken, her expression wary, as she finds the crooked crack between the foothills of the Mountain and finds herself once more in the meadow. Silent, suspicious, she careens to the meadow's heart where other horses are grazing calmly, blunders in among them, and falls to the ground at the center of them.
If any of them notice the gleam of crystal streaking across her skin like old scars, they keep it to themselves. Nothing is unusual in Beqanna.
But, as a horse, she has better vision, and as a horse, she is a larger target, and – she hopes – less interesting to the strange creatures traveling singly through the artificial night. There’s no reason to assume that this is a correct assumption. There’s no reason to think that she is safe in either shape, but something about being smaller than makes her breath catch short in her throat, so she wears her scales and her bright, sharp, teeth, and pretends it’s the bitter venom flowing down them that makes her mouth feel so dry.
Perhaps it’s the territory. It’s arid and dusty and though the sun never shines these days, the air is warm with summer and makes her skin slick with sweat. It’s enough that she begins to reconsider her shape. A snake would easily navigate the rocky crevices that catch at her stumbling hooves, but a sound nearby changes her mind, a soft, unnatural, chittering, whispered like laughter from a hundred small mouths. At least, it seems like a hundred when she’s alone in the dark. There’s a gleam of teeth, the light dull, the teeth not. There’s a tick-tick-tick of claws on rock. The serpent hisses into the dark and hears it returned, dark, gleeful, treacherous, and she knows that her theory was wrong.
She’s no safer this way.
Why had she thought she would be? The ridiculousness of it floods her with a warm rush of shame and regret, but it’s already too late because those clicking claws are getting closer, faster. Lorne flashes her own sharp teeth in the direction of them, eyes casting wildly across a field of dark shadows that she cannot separate from the monsters themselves. A chill shudders up her spine despite the warmth of the air, but she lunges forward, lips peeled back in a rictus of fear and anger, and snaps those pointed teeth together until they find a body in all that empty space. It screeches when its black blood spills and its cries bring a thousand small bodies out of hiding until the darkness is bubbling all around her. Venom courses into the veins of the one in her teeth. She throws it aside, ready to grab another, hard hooves seeking their fleshy bodies, stomach quaking at the feel of bones breaking underneath her feet, the sick wet noise of bodies being crushed, but the dying wails only feed fury into the others. Fingers press into her flesh, sliding across her scales to test their strength, and for the space of a breath, confidence blooms in her chest, only to turn sour and panicked when those clawed digits turn against the grain and catch at the edges of her skin, piercing, curling, plucking the scales away. Lorne rears backwards with a squeal, leaving a trail of the beasts dripping away from her like oil, but enough hold tight with teeth like knives that slash her skin so easily that she almost doesn’t feel their bite, but the scent of red blood flavors the air with its bright iron smell.
She plucks a shadow from her shoulder, another from her chest, but more pile over her withers and back, her legs, and there’s a hideous cracking sound like the earth is breaking apart. The whole world trembles, rock shattering and more darkness vomiting itself up to drag her down, deep into the earth into the darkest realm. She’s growing desperate now, exhausted, weary, bloody and her knees buckle beneath the weight of the creatures. In a blink they have already pulled her to the edge of the fractured ground, her forelegs dangling in the nothingness there and she tries to throw her head back but sharp fingers hook her nostrils, pulling at her lips, her ears, her eyelids, and the pain turns the world from black to red to white. It’s no less blinding and she struggles again, weakly, moaning, but with her weight jutting over emptiness there’s nothing to do except fall when they shove her inexorably from behind, and then she is weightless, floating in unending, unchanging, darkness with only her fear and the echoes of their laughter for company and it’s impossible to know how long she’s falling because there is only darkness, but she knows the landing will come hard, splintering bone, splitting flesh.
Will it be hard enough to kill her? There's a strange moment where she seems to have an eternity to consider it. It passes in a heartbeat. Her heart isn't ready to stop yet, and the young mare writhes, shifting so suddenly it makes her bones pop as they reset and reshape themselves under her screaming skin. She might be screaming too, but it's hard to hear over the roar of blood in her ears and the way her skin feels like it's on fire. Her serpentine body swings in the air. Roots that simply broke beneath her former weight slow her fall - they also break fragile ribs, but she has a hundred ribs now. The slick, striped, snake finally hits the bottom of the fissure with a sharp breath and darts across the rocky ground, flickering tongue tasting the air for freshness, for the way out. She presses herself beneath a stone ledge and pauses, deliberating. The narrow path opens up into a cavern ahead with an underground stream draining through the heart of the Mountain on its way to join the river. The water leaves a coppery tang to the air, the scent of magic.
The edges of the cavern beyond the water are gray rather than black, illuminated ever so faintly by the pale ring of light lingering in the sky, a way out, and between her and there, a flood of black nothingness and soft chittering noises that grow excitable as the metallic scent of her blood joins the coppery magic in the air.
Lorne-the-snake takes a deep, slow breath, unblinking eyes glittering softly from beneath her ledge. There's nowhere else to go. Or, well, perhaps there is, she could turn around and try another route, but the monsters will be there, too, only without the promise of escape on the other side. And they know she's here, they can smell her, although they haven't discovered her yet; those clever little fingers would find her easily beneath the stone projection. Soon, though - soon enough she will lose her edge, so she exhales and takes another long breath - it might be the last one, after all - and races, serpentine, into the middle of them.
It catches them off guard.
For a moment.
She is not the only one to rush into a pack of them as if bluster and bravado will save her. It doesn't, usually. Not against so many. Against one, maybe two, perhaps, but not against so many. The coral snake slides between those wicked black claws and an excited roar goes up from the murmuring crowd as they crash and slash one another in an attempt to grab her. Most miss, at first, too excited to have their prey so near, but deep in the very center of them the surprise is gone and the claws and teeth begin to catch at her edges. A claw catches deep and stops her desperate escape cold, threatens to rip her in half as the victorious beast lifts her into the air, hissing and whipping and biting, and just as it holds her above its cavernous, knife-toothed mouth, she shifts, horse again, and her hooves break those teeth, break the bones and skin behind them.
Mare again, she squeals, blood streaming dark across her pale skin from myriad deep wounds, and shies away from the pulpy mess beneath her, leaping and kicking at the rest as they try to surround her again, to drag her down, again. She's weak and dizzy and she stumbles numbly towards the cavern's mouth as if escaping is still an option, but the way the darkness at the edge of her vision crackles and sparks with light, she knows she's dying. Still, her legs churn at the hard ground and she turns to bare sharp teeth at her attackers even though her venom is gone, and she falls as she does it, landing with a splash into the frigid creek behind her. The dark beasts let up a collective hiss, something that sounds disapproving, displeased, and come no closer as the water rushes over her, turning bright red. Her vision goes red, too, and then there's nothing.
How long have I been asleep?
Her muscles ache, her skin is stiff with cold. She should be dead. That claw had nearly disemboweled her and the wound was no less serious when she shifted. Hazel eyes stare into the silent, fuzzy, darkness around her, reluctant to find the answers below, but the cold no longer comforts or soothes. The icy water pricks at her skin, driving needles into her flanks and legs until the grey mare stumbles out again on her knees, finds her feet like a newborn foal, swaying, weak, unused to the weight of gravity pressing down on her knees. It's as if she can feel the earth spinning underneath her and she's always half a step behind it. Her steps are drunken, her expression wary, as she finds the crooked crack between the foothills of the Mountain and finds herself once more in the meadow. Silent, suspicious, she careens to the meadow's heart where other horses are grazing calmly, blunders in among them, and falls to the ground at the center of them.
If any of them notice the gleam of crystal streaking across her skin like old scars, they keep it to themselves. Nothing is unusual in Beqanna.
Lorne
1,755 words.
TLDR: Lorne is auto-questing for jewel-touched. She fell in an underground waterway that has passively absorbed magic on its way through the heart of the Mountain and it healed her very severe wounds by sealing them up with geode crystals.
@[The Monsters] and because it doesn't say I can't combine posts, have at her coral snake shifting again lol
TLDR: Lorne is auto-questing for jewel-touched. She fell in an underground waterway that has passively absorbed magic on its way through the heart of the Mountain and it healed her very severe wounds by sealing them up with geode crystals.
@[The Monsters] and because it doesn't say I can't combine posts, have at her coral snake shifting again lol
