Tiberios
03-29-2021, 09:49 PM
The very last thing Tiberios remembered was the sensation of running down the beach. When he’d risen after death in the afterlife, the rest of what had happened was erased entirely from his mind like it’d never happened. One second he’d been alive, the next he’d been dead, and everything else began to slowly fade away after that. How or why he’d died never was spelled out for him, though he’d tried questioning other wraiths in the beginning before giving up the question entirely. What did it matter how he’d died, or why he’d passed away? He was dead and that was it.
And for a dead horse things went exactly as expected.
Pain wasn’t an issue anymore. The stretch of burnt skin scarring one side of his body didn’t irritate him like it used to when he’d been alive, which would’ve been a relief if he felt things at all. There wasn’t hunger or sadness, he just kind of went about his business being dead and kept to himself on an endless travel across the afterlife’s grayscape. Who knows how long a time passed before he started to realize something wasn’t right, but when he noticed it Tiberios began to build something like a concern inside of his otherwise blank mind.
It felt wrong. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but Tiberios was pretty certain he wasn’t supposed to be in the Afterlife anymore. Didn’t horses pass on, he wondered? Wasn’t there something else, or was this it? The concern grew and pressured, hardening itself into a detached belief that he was missing something important, something he’d forgotten about in death that clung to him in life, and it sent him back across the monochromatic fields of quiet spirit lands, back to the beginning (or end) of it all on the beach.
When at last his hooves sunk into the sand, Tiberios stopped and looked out across the dull waves and their never-ceasing motion, panting with a hot sort of excitement because he could feel the diamond in his chest fissuring as if it were about to explode. He was there, on the precipice of some great understanding he just knew it, but it evaded him and frustrated him to no end. What was he missing? What had happened here so long ago? Why was the promised peace of eternal rest avoiding him, making him suffer like this?
He remembered running down the beach, so he picked up his hooves and pushed off into a canter, following the memory, and when he did the veil split, the fabric between worlds opened just for a moment, and Tiberios found himself spat out again into a world very different from the one he left, with no sense of direction and no explanation why.
He slid his hooves (solid hooves, hooves that cut into the sand to stop him from crashing into the ocean) and flung his head (a robust, roughly-featured head with the flare of gold running rampant down his nose) in surprise. With the curling wind tangling his locs and the howling noises of the world cast in eternal darkness to spur him on, Tiberios pranced up the beach with his nostrils full of the stench of decay and there he paused, heart hammering away inside his chest.
Pain told him he was alive. The way his intestines twisted themselves into a hungry knot confirmed it; in disbelief he felt everything that he’d forgotten could exist and tried not to lose his mind during the process, feeling it fray away at the edges while he stumbled through wilted seagrasses. He was clinging to the loose threads, shying at every sound or tickling touch, trying to make sense of it all when something leapt free from the darkness and lunged at him. Tiberios turned a hairsbreadth before it was on him, watching the thing land instead on the ground with a hellish snarl and curled back where the stallion could peer down and see its form in the dinge of the red Eclipse light.
It was a wolf, black with eyes like frozen shards of ice, and its lips curled up in a wicked smile.
The diamond in Tiberios’ chest exploded, and the shards of everything he’d nearly forgotten came back to him the instant they pierced his waking thoughts.
“It was you.” Was the first thing Tiberios said, and it came out with such conviction and clarity that you would hardly believe he’d been a total mess minutes ago. He slid his forelegs apart from one another and dropped his ears, and when the wolf lunged he was ready.
Tiberios waited until the thing took its first bite, and then without warning he erupted in flames that engulfed the both of them with liquid, burning light. From a mile away it could be seen, flames of pure white that licked the black sky and spelled death with their curling tongues. Of the two creatures only one screamed in agony, and of the two creatures only one was left standing when the burst finally extinguished a moment later. Tiberios, standing in a wide pile of ash that quickly rose and made off with the wind, frowned and narrowed his eyes.
It was all too easy. Too straightforward for him to trust at face value. He might've just come back to life and that might've been a wolf, but it wasn't the same wolf from before... couldn't be. That one had been a horse at first. And this world... this wasn't Beqanna, was it? Tipping his golden nose toward the sky, Tiberios examined the eclipse in quiet contemplation and reminded himself that up until this very moment he'd just been a set of bones washed out to sea -- he'd seen it himself from the void. Now, for whatever reason, he was here and alive in the flesh.
Speaking of, the scar that covered his left cheek itched; there would be time for contemplation later, when he'd gathered his bearings and built up the appropriate amount of rage necessary for a revenge long-overdue. For now he turned a mauled and ugly body to the north, unsure if that was the right direction he was supposed to be going in and simultaneously sure of it because where else would he go, stepped out of the ash ring and into the grass that swallowed him whole, and left the beach as he should've done over a decade ago: whole, alive, and burning brighter than ever.
And for a dead horse things went exactly as expected.
Pain wasn’t an issue anymore. The stretch of burnt skin scarring one side of his body didn’t irritate him like it used to when he’d been alive, which would’ve been a relief if he felt things at all. There wasn’t hunger or sadness, he just kind of went about his business being dead and kept to himself on an endless travel across the afterlife’s grayscape. Who knows how long a time passed before he started to realize something wasn’t right, but when he noticed it Tiberios began to build something like a concern inside of his otherwise blank mind.
It felt wrong. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but Tiberios was pretty certain he wasn’t supposed to be in the Afterlife anymore. Didn’t horses pass on, he wondered? Wasn’t there something else, or was this it? The concern grew and pressured, hardening itself into a detached belief that he was missing something important, something he’d forgotten about in death that clung to him in life, and it sent him back across the monochromatic fields of quiet spirit lands, back to the beginning (or end) of it all on the beach.
When at last his hooves sunk into the sand, Tiberios stopped and looked out across the dull waves and their never-ceasing motion, panting with a hot sort of excitement because he could feel the diamond in his chest fissuring as if it were about to explode. He was there, on the precipice of some great understanding he just knew it, but it evaded him and frustrated him to no end. What was he missing? What had happened here so long ago? Why was the promised peace of eternal rest avoiding him, making him suffer like this?
He remembered running down the beach, so he picked up his hooves and pushed off into a canter, following the memory, and when he did the veil split, the fabric between worlds opened just for a moment, and Tiberios found himself spat out again into a world very different from the one he left, with no sense of direction and no explanation why.
He slid his hooves (solid hooves, hooves that cut into the sand to stop him from crashing into the ocean) and flung his head (a robust, roughly-featured head with the flare of gold running rampant down his nose) in surprise. With the curling wind tangling his locs and the howling noises of the world cast in eternal darkness to spur him on, Tiberios pranced up the beach with his nostrils full of the stench of decay and there he paused, heart hammering away inside his chest.
Pain told him he was alive. The way his intestines twisted themselves into a hungry knot confirmed it; in disbelief he felt everything that he’d forgotten could exist and tried not to lose his mind during the process, feeling it fray away at the edges while he stumbled through wilted seagrasses. He was clinging to the loose threads, shying at every sound or tickling touch, trying to make sense of it all when something leapt free from the darkness and lunged at him. Tiberios turned a hairsbreadth before it was on him, watching the thing land instead on the ground with a hellish snarl and curled back where the stallion could peer down and see its form in the dinge of the red Eclipse light.
It was a wolf, black with eyes like frozen shards of ice, and its lips curled up in a wicked smile.
The diamond in Tiberios’ chest exploded, and the shards of everything he’d nearly forgotten came back to him the instant they pierced his waking thoughts.
“It was you.” Was the first thing Tiberios said, and it came out with such conviction and clarity that you would hardly believe he’d been a total mess minutes ago. He slid his forelegs apart from one another and dropped his ears, and when the wolf lunged he was ready.
Tiberios waited until the thing took its first bite, and then without warning he erupted in flames that engulfed the both of them with liquid, burning light. From a mile away it could be seen, flames of pure white that licked the black sky and spelled death with their curling tongues. Of the two creatures only one screamed in agony, and of the two creatures only one was left standing when the burst finally extinguished a moment later. Tiberios, standing in a wide pile of ash that quickly rose and made off with the wind, frowned and narrowed his eyes.
It was all too easy. Too straightforward for him to trust at face value. He might've just come back to life and that might've been a wolf, but it wasn't the same wolf from before... couldn't be. That one had been a horse at first. And this world... this wasn't Beqanna, was it? Tipping his golden nose toward the sky, Tiberios examined the eclipse in quiet contemplation and reminded himself that up until this very moment he'd just been a set of bones washed out to sea -- he'd seen it himself from the void. Now, for whatever reason, he was here and alive in the flesh.
Speaking of, the scar that covered his left cheek itched; there would be time for contemplation later, when he'd gathered his bearings and built up the appropriate amount of rage necessary for a revenge long-overdue. For now he turned a mauled and ugly body to the north, unsure if that was the right direction he was supposed to be going in and simultaneously sure of it because where else would he go, stepped out of the ash ring and into the grass that swallowed him whole, and left the beach as he should've done over a decade ago: whole, alive, and burning brighter than ever.