• Logout
  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    [open]  I try to keep from going under
    #1
    Mazikeen
    One more white feather is left in Islandres. This time, Mazikeen is a little more prepared for the emotions that churn through her afterwards - but she’s as eager to avoid them as she always is. Better to think about something else. So she flies south and lands where the river meets the ocean. There’s the faintest glimmer of light on the surface of the water, a reflection of the thin halo that’s all they’ve had as a reminder of the sun.

    Although she’s not afraid of the forest anymore, Mazikeen likes the openness of this spot. The ease with which she can keep an eye on her surroundings and know if anyone - or anything - approaches.

    It feels like a good spot to practice.

    Since completing her quest, her shifting has felt different. She’d prefer to do this with a friend, but why her list of those is smaller than it had been before her quest started is one of the topics she’s pointedly avoiding.

    Anger simmers in her heart and she’s sure with the right push, even just the right thought, she could lose control - but she’s not sure she’ll remember what shapes she took when she eventually comes back to herself so that hardly seems like the best way to experiment. Even if it was the fastest and would certainly do the trick with turning off her brain for a little while.

    The water is icy cold as she stands in the shallows of the ocean near where the River empties into it. The glow from her horns and that faint reflection of the eclipse her only light as she attempts to be creative.

    Not one of her strong suits.

    It had been easy to think of things to shift into when she was fighting but now? She lets her mind wander within defined boundaries, and when she thinks of the chill of the water - long hair sprouts on her legs. Polar bear, she thinks, and some of the chill recedes. Mazikeen looks back at the land, how everything is just shades of grey, and her coat darkens to a deep grey to match.

    That is definitely new.



    open to any!
    Reply
    #2

    Chemdog’s shoulder was slashed and poisoned a few weeks prior, and is just now starting to heal. He monster’s venom finally drained completely, leaving gnarled scar tissue and rough oozing scabs. It was not pretty, but he was rather proud of living through his encounter. The memory of a shadowy girl, all sharp teeth and eerie riddle-eyes, pulling the long glass like fangs from his bloodied wounds. She kept some for a souvenir, and he scooped up the other teeth. They clank in his thick mane, braided into it like a little chime that sings when disturbed. He ran to the River after his attack and has yet to leave and find something better to do with himself.

    He moves through the darkness with a tall dark ghost at is side. It is an enormous stallion, black in life, but ghoulishly white and translucent in his afterlife form. His eyes a hollow white, his expression hardened and stoic, walking in step with Chem and picking his head up to look toward various noises along the route. He is Mohan, his grandfather. An old spirit, aggressive but only when provoked. His grandson summons him often these days. They don’t speak, but walk in silence together, the dim glow of Mohan’s form lighting a grayish radius around them. He is silver like moonlight, moving fluidly between worlds with the help of his kin.

    He’s not sure why he feels like a walk along the coast, a lonely figure moving across the edge of the sands where the River meets the sea, but he finds himself enjoying the sound of the waves and the crisp smell on the wind. The smells become mixed though, mixed with the smell of a stranger, someone close. Through the fog he can see the glow of her horns, he snorts, but isn’t heard it seems like. He walks closer to the stranger, Mohan dissipating into a soft cloud of mist before drifting away on the wind completely. Chem watches her coat change and the look on her face when it does, a chuckle booms from his chest and he breaks through the wall of thick fog. He stops just short of walking in, watching her from shore with only his toes ouching the frigid seawater. “Isn’t that interesting.” his expression is bright, even smiling, but Chem’s always got a hungry look in his eye – a primal twinge in the glassy teal of his steady gaze. He exhales, “Neat trick.” he blinks, trying to soften his predatory look; he can always feel it rising in him. Sometimes he nurtures it, sometimes he tries to keep it at bay, but its always there waiting to slither out and take over.


    CHEMDOG
    to the window, to the wall



    @[Mazikeen] ❤ hope this is cool!
    Reply
    #3
    Mazikeen
    There is a very, very brief moment where Mazikeen is embarrassed to have been caught with hairy legs and playing around with her colour - but she quickly remembers that she had wanted company when she messed around. It helps, too, that the stranger arrives with a brights smile. A quiet laugh escapes her at his comment. It was a neat trick, she agreed completely.

    “Thanks, it’s new.” She focuses on this stranger and half-intending to, half-accidentally, paints herself in black and white - matching what she can see of his colouration and pattern in the low light. Her head tilts a little to the side, a small grin tugging at one corner of her mouth, before she blinks and she’s returned to her own colouration.

    So… still black and white, just in different quantities and patterns.

    The thick fur protecting her legs from the cold water also disappears, lost with her concentration, which causes Mazikeen to lower her gaze and frown for a moment. But, she doesn’t focus on that for long - not when she has company. It’s been a while since she’s met a new face - longer still since she’s met one and wasn’t immediately attacked by one of the shadow creatures. When she looks up - she casts her orange eyes around instinctively before they settle on the stallion again - that glimmer of a smile still present. “I don’t think it's a trick that’ll exactly help me kill any monsters but I gotta admit, it’s fun.”



    @[Chemdog] absolutely!! <3
    Reply
    #4
    When her laugh bubbles from her, his muscles uncoil just a small bit. One ear previously laid flat join the other, standing upright, those bright teal eyes glinting with what small bit of light is cast. Hell crawled from below, breaking it’s cage and releasing its contents – like a toaster into the tub, the world is electrified. And dark. He watches her, twitching his ears at her voice but not looking at her face, observing her changing coat curiously. 

    He summons a pair of hounds. Lithe bodies, sharp pointed ears, gray smokey bodies and eerie translucent eyes. The glow faintly in the blackened atmosphere, silence in their movements as they circle their master and each laying to one side before dissipating into a swirl of mist. “Mine’s new too.” he brings his eyes to meet the fiery orange of hers.

    What an interesting and pleasant woman.

    His head quirks to the side, blinking slow as he watches the fur shorten at her legs. Like him, she has yet to master her new gift. He’s much familiar with the feeling. For the first week he could only summon deformed, freaky, hideous creatures that seemed to never have breathed life to begin with – only odd byproducts of wonky magic, he guessed. Finally he has it down enough to summon his grandfather, or a few random sparring companions, but he’s not yet finely tuned and overuse drains him quickly.

    Not much will, I’m afraid.” his eyes find her faint smile and the corners of his mouth pull into his own kind of smile; more smirky, but still polite. He’s cautious, but so far rather surprised he hasn’t been chased off. “I’m Chem.” he blows a warm breath through his nostrils, puffing out of his nostrils to freeze on the cold eclipsed air.


    CHEMDOG
    to the window, to the wall



    <3 @[Mazikeen]
    Reply
    #5
    Mazikeen
    If the creatures he summoned had not glowed she would have thought they were some of the shadow beasts, and she would have been both alarmed and powerfully jealous of his ability to command them. As it is, she’s not exactly sure what they are but she watches them with interest as the pair lie down before dissipating.

    A private smile appears at his comment about not much will kill the monsters - because she knew for a fact that wasn’t true. Or, maybe she was the exception - she rather liked the idea of that too. She wasn’t sure how many others had dealt with the beasts in the same way she had.

    “I’m Mazikeen.” She offers in response to his greeting, not really knowing why sometimes she offers her nicknames and other times she doesn’t. But there are other thoughts that chase that one out - like correcting his assumptions about the monsters. There’s a prideful grin when she replies, though the way she holds her horned head up a little straighter is, for the most part, just a joke. “And I’ve actually killed three of them before, it’s not that hard.” Sure, the first one had been a little small, the second one she had help, and the third one had killed her right back but these are all details that she doesn’t feel the need to share.

    “What are they?” She motions with her head to where the hounds had been a moment ago. “Some kind of companion?”



    @[Chemdog]
    Reply
    #6

    The darkness is suffocating. Every part of him yearns for it to be over and this has made him more on edge then usual. Perhaps it is how depression bubbles to the surface for him. His shoulder aches, the scar fresh, and one of the bone-hard fangs that ripped him open dangles tied in his thick mane. Some shadow mare who helped him has the other. His scar, the tooth, just a few souvenirs for his ordeals with the monsters.

    Chem.” his name hangs in the silence until she breaks it.

    He smiles, “Oh have you, now?” he doesn’t mock her with his smile, or even his tone, as he doesn’t have trouble believing it. He doesn’t bother to explain he meant that ‘not much will help one kill the monsters’. It’s been his experience that its pretty much up to you to fight the monsters after you – metaphor there? He lets her have the moment, she seems to like it, and he likes that she likes it. If he had his own spotlight, he’d gladly tip it her way.

    No.” he blinks, shaking like a dog to summon the little black iridescent snake from his thick gnarled mane. She crawls from the black nest of hair to curl around one ear and peer at the stranger, her tongue flicking. “But she is.” he takes a bored breath inward, “They’re souls haunt willingly on my command.

    Tell me more about killing those monsters, Mazikeen – I would love to hear about such exciting, dangerous endeavors.” he smirks, mocking her just a little, but the want to hear her stories was in fact genuine.


    CHEMDOG
    to the window, to the wall




    so since the darkness has f'd off i was figuring we could wrap this sucker up in a few posts
    AND if its okay...i would love Chem to lightly stalk her? like, secretly follow her home lol
    ...and then arrive at her home and be like, "oh hi. just passing thru" XD

    @[Mazikeen] Heart
    Reply
    #7
    Mazikeen
    Mazikeen watches with amusement as a snake emerges from the Chem’s mane - she hadn’t been expecting that at all. The creatures, however, he says are souls that haunt on his command which is just as interesting as the snake. She finds herself wondering what her soul would look like, if it’d be an equine or another shape, but he moves the topic back to her exploits with monsters and she rolls her eyes at the smirk there. Mazikeen has nothing to prove to him, though she knows she'll answer anyway.

    She’s becoming more uncomfortable about the icy water so Mazikeen shifts into something that suits the story she’s about to tell and grants her thick fur. She becomes a large polar bear, white except for inky black paws and the black and red marking on her face. She moves to the shore, neither coming closer to Chem or moving farther away - maintaining the distance between them with cool indifference even though his mocking tone had needled her. As she moves, she replies with fire in her voice “I tore the first to shreds on a tropical island.” And she imagines that the shape she is wearing assists with the imagery of that. “The second…” Her memories of the fight with Wishbone were hazy because of the rage she had slipped into, though she remembers coming back into herself and finding little left of the monster that had tormented them both. “The same, but in the forest.” She says, flexing her massive paws a little as she sits down on her haunches.

    She’s not interested in sharing the details of these fights with this near-stranger because they offer up too much of her heart with them. No one else knows the full truth. The twisting ache that comes with thinking of Islandres and its Chief, the embarrassing truth that she could lose herself so readily to anger as she had done in the Forest. And - for the third - the fact that she was pretty sure she had died as a result and she could still feel the claws that had torn open her side and exposed her insides, feel the snap of her leg bone when she tried to step towards Selaphiel and make sure he was safe.

    Her orange eyes blaze in the face of the polar bear shape as she finishes her vague but pointed tale. “And the third I had nothing but my hooves to pound it into the ground, back to where it belonged.”



    @[Chemdog]

    sure we can wrap it up soon and that's fine if he wants to stop by Hyaline for a visit!
    Reply
    #8

    The roll of her eyes makes his ears flip forward, jarring the little snake, and she slithers back into his thick mane (pissed). So, she’s quite observant, he ponders, and feels a little scolded after she’s rolled her eyes in acknowledgement. The feeling passes quickly. When she shifts into a bear, white, black paws and markings across her face, his grin widens, almost looking mad. She’s full of fun tricks, isn’t she? He flicks his nose curiously at her as she starts to prowl out of the waters and toward the edge. His teal eyes stay with her, and he listens carefully.

    Her eyes blaze wildly, and he’s hooked like a salmon, keeping his eyes and ears on the bear as she moves. Her last story sounds a lot like his experience, the memory makes his shoulder ache and the slash scar pulse under the scab. “Impressive.” he means it, but still its hard to not sound facetious when you’re a sarcastic asshole by nature. “I only fought the one – not nearly as riveting, and I didn’t get away as clean.” The memories of it flash through him and his skin beads sweat under his mane, his skin always feels freezing and his body feverish when he remembers. After fighting the one, he ran from the rest; a very fuck this attitude. He leaves that out – in the face a warrior bear woman (he doesn’t even know she’s queen of hyaline), it seems unwise to point out you’re kind of a little bitch comparatively. And with his ego? Please. He tucks that away.

    Screams, breaking branches, growling, cracking and clicking. The apocalypse happens around them, the darkness still stifling. It feels like it may never be over. Does this sort of world not bother her, he wonders? She does seem quite at home, while his skin crawls. He can almost hear his grandfather cringing, watching closely, disappointed. Chemdog doesn’t like this kind of world, he can survive it, he can fight, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t love it, he loves other things. But this woman, she seems unperturbed, almost fueled.


    CHEMDOG
    to the window, to the wall


    @[Mazikeen] this ones kind of weird? im not sure lol forgive me
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)