"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
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Gale is half-asleep, lulled by the soft evening sun and the quiet but continuous clatter of Malik playing with an elk’s jaw. The boy has just finished growing a set of teeth, and the sharp pointed canines gnaw contentedly at the bone. He’s not yet gotten the last of the meat off of it, Gale’s twitching nose tells him; the last bits of a kill they’d made a week ago.
Time passes without thought here in the heart of the mountains. The body that had once been Gale and once been Cursed is something else now, still haunted by Carnage and Black Magic but with more emotions than the intangible thing had ever been capable of. He cannot feel him, but Gale wonders if perhaps some part of his host has been resurrected by some accidental magic. Something had happened, because where there had once been nothing was now a connection to the black osprey Erne.
The bird perches in a tree on the far side of the meadow, and it is he who first spots Mazikeen, and gives a silent warning to Gale. The bird’s eyes are blue instead of yellow now, but no less sharp.
“Why don’t you go find a rabbit?” He says aloud, rolling to his navy feet and stretching slowly. Malik looks up from his jawbone, his dark head tilted curiously. The young wolf pup has yet to catch a rabbit, but his parents are prone to encouraging him to do so. He’s not yet old enough to realize it’s an excuse to get rid of him, and so at Gale’s urging he leaves the bone behind as he heads deeper into the twilight meadow. Erne’s blue gaze turns to the boy.
In the meantime, Gale shakes the sleep from his skin and heads toward where he knows Mazikeen is coming from. Two years have made Hyaline familiar to him, and the trees that he sees through her eyes are not far from where the two of them had been resting.
He winds his way through the trees, and considers climbing one to wait for her. No, he decides, he’s not feeling a fight with Mazikeen tonight. He’s tired, no longer an uncommon occurrence when surrounded by such contentment. He wants something to really wake him up, to feed the writhing pit of shadows that has grown ever more still as time has marched on.
What?
He is saved having to decide by seeing Mazikeen, and he smiles at her pale shape as she emerges from the trees.
current appearance: iridescent navy blue lion with glowing cremello brindle striping, white spinal mane and tail, black glowing horns -> whatever Mazikeen is
Her restlessness comes in waves, mulled by Gale’s presence most days but fuelled by him on others. Not because she is growing tired of his presence but because she wants more for them than the near-domestic life that has stretched between them since the winter. Hyaline is quiet and peaceful as ever, but this no longer soothes Mazikeen. It bothers her, bores her even, and though she thinks of slipping out of the mountainous region to cause trouble on her own she’d prefer to have Gale with her.
So she searches for him, checking a few of the usual spots as the sun sets, and she is on the way to another when she emerges from the treeline to find him.
Her smile is instant and there is no hesitation at all now as she moves towards him. In her periphery, she registers their son, but her red-orange eyes remain fixed on Gale. She is wearing a prehistoric skin today, that of a hemicyon, hovering somewhere between a bear and a wolf, and her grin grows to watch it become mirrored in iridescent navy. “I’ll never get tired of this.” She breathes these words against his fur as she presses herself into him, reacquainting herself with the already very familiar feel of his body. ‘This’ being seeing him walk towards her with a grin and the thrill his presence inspires. How they shift to match one another. They are a set and Mazikeen may be unsure of what else she wants but she knows this is her foundation.
“It’s going to be a beautiful night.” She comments as she pulls back enough to look into his brilliant eyes and when she catches glimpses of tired thoughts she remembers what he had said once about how being with her made him weaker - that they had too much fun. So maybe there is a way to banish her restlessness and feed strength back into him all at the same time. “What do you say we make it be someone’s last?”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
When the cursed creature had promised Mazikeen that he wouldn’t take another lover, it had never been his intention to keep his word. With Power in his grasp nothing and no one are out of reach, and the chaotic nature of the beast makes novelty alluring.
Yet as Mazikeen strides toward him, he is reminded yet again why he has never been tempted.
She looks positively ferocious, and as he buries his head in her shaggy white fur in greeting he finds that she smells of the flowering trees. They’ve covered Hyaline in riotous color, and he wonders if she’s been hunting in them. A purr is his agreement, rumbling loudly before he pulls away to meet her orange eyes.
Gale nods in reply to her second assertion; the sky will be clear, with the moon thin and dark, and the snow is all but gone. A beautiful night indeed, one that stretches out with endless possibilities.
Does she pull the idea from his mind, he wonders, or has it occurred to her of its own volition? It doesn’t matter. He’s grinning, unbothered by the magic that is slipping away from him in his delight.
“Pangea?” He suggests, remembering the pretty purple Desire. Maybe not the leader, he amends; that might bring about a quicker end. Better to hunt the weaker links - children, the ungifted - and use them against their families. He’s already gotten quite a bit from Pangea - authority over them as king of the east, their magical entity - but there’s no reason that they can’t take a little more.
Mazikeen wonders if Gale knows how far she is drifting away from the self that would have stopped him from hunting those inside Hyaline. It is smart to avoid it, she doesn’t doubt - although she’s grown tired of the peace it does give them, that peace also delays the day when they may have to run.
And then she wonders if he’s catching these thoughts of hers, though it does not matter. If he does then he will know, and if he doesn’t hear them he will find out where her thoughts stray one day when she suggests a fellow shifter for their evening meal.
The neighbouring land of Pangea is what he suggests and she’s quick to agree. “Perfect.” Long gone are the days when she tries to pretend she hasn't always agreed with everything he suggests, when she tries to delay responding to make it seem like she is thinking.
The wings she sprouts are not the usual white or black, but a deep iridescent blue - her orange eyes bright with a grin when they flare at her sides. They could walk through the mountain passages, the narrow pathways are dangerous and thrilling and there would be many places they could allow themselves to get sidetracked. But Mazikeen’s restlessness shifts to impatience, an eagerness and a hunger roaring within her. It’s been a while since they harassed that mare in the field and though she does enjoy hunting animals, there’s something special about what they’re about to do. There will be time to be sidetracked after they have found Gale a source of misery and maybe a new power or two.
And Pangea is close, outside of their home, and as its king and queen it only seems right that they be able to feast there when they wish.
They are only just over the mountains when movement in the shadows below catches her attention and she sees a horse being trailed by something that is only vaguely horse-like. Armoured and vicious-looking, it is the prehensile tail tipped with something sharp that really draws Mazikeen’s interest, and she gestures to the scene with a dark paw. “Looks like we’re not the only ones hunting tonight.”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
He had Seen her dreams last night, but Gale has not yet been able to read her thoughts the way she can his own. He can tell when she’s doing it to him, but no more than that. Mazikeen sprouts a pair of iridescent blue wings to cover the distance to Pangea, and Gale admires the way that the color melds with her pale shoulders.
She moves impatiently beside him, so rather than kiss the spot where black fur meets blue feather and draw her into the shadows, he bumps his forehead against her instead, and grows wings of his own.
They are shadowy and hardly substantial, like those that had failed her over the seas of Islandres. Dragon-like in shape, they are shadowy but capable of flight, carrying him up alongside Mazikeen as they take to the darkening sky.
Far below, Malik stalks a rabbit.
Gale is looking for water in the canyons when her voice draws his attention to the hunt below them. He watches, fascinated, and when the armored monster makes its kill and begins to eat, he lands atop a bluff to watch.
“What do you think that is?” He asks. It had moved with astonishing speed and is clearly an efficient and savage killer, but it does not look particularly delicious. The horse that it has ripped open looks far better, and he is not above bullying his way into a meal.
There are advantages to being at the top of the food chain after all.
The restless lioness beside him wants a hunt though, not a meal, and he eyes the glittering hunter below with a calculating gaze. There are no eyes that he recognizes and so no Sight to take, and Gale frowns. This one might be a genuine challenge, and he meets her gaze, having felt the familiar sensation that says she’s been sharing his thoughts.
if she decides to go after the oversized scorpion he will join her, but this hunt - and this kill - are for her. The emotions from the dying creature below are swept up toward them in a wet wind from the Cove. Gale swallows them, feeling the terror and pain sliding down his throat. They rouse the shadows that have been so still, and the lightning in his eyes begins to flicker more rapidly.
He’d heard that monsters dwelt in Pangea; was this what had been meant by those tales? Are there more like this one? What sounds will it make when it dies?
His eagerness to answer these questions cause him to flex his clawed feet. This time, when he glances toward Mazikeen it is with excitement in his dark face.
Mazikeen lands beside Gale, her gaze captivated by the creature they are watching eat. The tail that dances behind it, the way a secondary mouth juts out now and then - punching easily through the ribcage and bone - it is a fascinating display.
He asks her what she thinks it is, but there is no word that comes to her that can possibly describe this creature. Well, not a name for it at least. She knows what it is to her and she tells him with a growing, wild grin. “It looks like a challenge.”
When she catches his thoughts about this hunt being for her, when she realizes he is waiting for what she wants to do, she wishes she had been a little more thorough in her greeting. Appreciation courses through her and she shifts to bump her hip against him. But she does not let herself get more distracted than that, her gaze remaining fixed on the armoured one. It would be all too easy to let it slip through their claws, to just tangle themselves on the mountainside and find something else once they were done
And it is tempting but Mazikeen unfurls her wings instead and takes off from the bluff where they had landed. She circles around the feasting monster once before dropping. Just as she gets close to the ground, she shifts into a black utahraptor and hits the ground running. This is what she had been on their first hunt together and she has a feeling these claws might come in handy.
She’ll be thrilled if it will take more than one shape to take this creature down.
Mazikeen has not yet hunted something that does not run and again she feels a thrill, again there is a pulse of excitement through her when the horned head turns away from its meal and to the approaching intruders. The creature roars and Mazikeen roars back as she charges and the beast meets her. She leaps when she gets close enough but this is a formidable opponent, not prey, and when Mazikeen lands on the armoured back, her hip is sliced open by that prehensile tail - bathing both of them in her blood and feeding the frenzy all the more.
For the first time in a long time, she feels the white fire of her anger begin to rise up and take over her rational mind. It meets no resistance now like it has in the past and Mazikeen changes into a creature of rational thought to one blinded to everything else, even Gale.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
A challenge?
True, he thinks, and that makes it all the better for the orange-eyed creature beside him. The sensation of her hip against his is met with a smile, but there will be time for that later, when the hunt is over and there is room for other kinds of satisfaction.
When she leaps from the cliff he hands back a moment, watching the way her blue wings catch the air, the way her dark body hangs falls through the air until they do. It is a wonderful sight, made better by the vicious predator she becomes when she drops to the earth.
Gale joins her with a loud roar from his own reptilian mouth, a vocal warning to the Challenge that Mazikeen does not hunt alone.
The thing is savage, as quick and vicious as it had seemed from above. He reaches for a leg only to find the scythe-like tail, and manages to grasp it between his jaws for only a moment before it is ripped away and his mouth is filled with blood from his lips and gums.
Gale snarls and lunges for it again, this time for the base of the tail. He’ll rip it off, he thinks, and then they’ll have only the head and feet to contend with. Concentrating on their prey and unable to sense her emotions through the bond they share, Gale remains unaware of Mazikeen’s building rage.
Rational thought is slipping away from Mazikeen, along with any irrational thoughts that might appear as well. She sees Gale in her periphery, battling with the tail that had just sliced her hip, but she does not currently comprehend who he is. Competition is the word that her feral mind gives her - but for the moment they seem to be on the same side so she does not strike out at him yet. She will, once this kill occurs, She will not suffer anyone else.
But even these thoughts are not truly present - she is nothing but a blazing inferno, completely and utterly lost to the hunt and the instincts that drive her. The creature hisses as it is attacked by the pair, that thick tail whipping and wielding its dangerous blade chaotically, trying to slice at both the beast upon her back and the one trying to rip off that tail.
It is not in Mazikeen’s nature to dodge blood and so she does not think to do so now when the liquid sprays out from the wound Gale creates near the base of the creature’s spine - hitting them all. But this is not normal blood, it is concentrated acid. She cries out as it eats away at the flesh of her neck where the droplets fell and she falls away from the side of the creature. Multiple shapes roll across her skin but there is no relief, not even in the hard dragon-scales of the horse-sized black dragon she ends on.
And when the armoured creature sees the dragon, its fury doubles and a terrific roar echoes into the growing darkness. It remembers past meals taken by such creatures, remembers the hearts gone untasted.
It wrenches itself free and twists, snapping its gleaming silver teeth at Gale - not forgetting him or the danger there either. Its tail is still intact but there is pain in the movement now, the chaotic whipping now more measured and slow. Mazikeen does not even acknowledge her mate, king, competition - whoever he is to her at this moment. Her eyes are a deep blood red and fixated on the challenge as she regains her footing - her skin still smoking from where the acid fell. Through the pain, through the fire, she notices the reaction to this shape and flares out her scaled wings as a taunt, and Ripley launches at her in attack.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
There are many crescent moons reflected in the monster’s glittering sides, and the repeating image makes Gale’s head ache. He jerks away from, his mouth burning with acidic blood, and roars his fury.
The bellow of a utahraptor becomes draconic as Mazikeen shifts, and Gale transitions without even realizing it happens. Not until he tastes the fire at the back of his throat that isn’t boiling blood, but rather the flaming breath of a dragon. His bright scales are mostly bright daisy-heart yellow, the petal white feathers of his wings a perfect contrast to Mazikeen’s obsidian scales.
Mazikeen flares her deep blue wings to taunt the creature, and Gale takes to the sky, soaring over Ripley just to dive back down, his clawed feet extended and the fire lurking behind bared teeth. It lunges at Mazikeen and Gale alters his path, and focuses not on the dizzyingly armored monster but instead the idea of crushing it, having experienced how claws slipped off it before.
Something happens.
He isn’t entirely sure what it is. The monster was there beneath him, lunging toward the black dragon, and then somehow the ground grew larger and he landed faster than he could account for, and with a pounding migraine. He forces his eyes open, ignoring Mazikeen and focusing instead on finding the thing they’d been hunting.
There is a sharp pain in his left foot, and he looks down to find a knife-like tail blade embedded in his reptilian toe. It is a very small knife, befitting the very small monster that is half crushed beneath his left foot, its snapping head(s) trapped between the pointed claws.
No longer an animal of comparable size to the horse it had just hunted down, the monster is now no larger than a housecat. It’s still dangerous, and he can feel where it bleeds acid through the bottom of his feet. Gale snarls in pain and clenches his feet, casting out with Wishbone’s magic for whatever the thing has that are like bones, and uses it to hold it still.
He steps away only when he is sure that he knows its not-bones well enough to toss it away if it attacked. The magic had felt like eons and had taken no small amount of Power, but has taken only the blink of an eye.
.
How long he can hold the little monster he is not sure, but at least now he is free to focus on Mazikeen. This isn’t an unfamiliar interaction for the pair of them, meeting eyes over a dead meal, or one so incapacitated it might as well be. This is when she turns her attention to him instead, to punish him for taking her kill by pinning him to the ground with her body weight, and he manages to earn her mercy.
Yet as his blue eyes meet hers there is something in them that is not familiar. It’s something that been missing for some time, since before the Curse that inhabits Gale had begun to the feel the alterations to its own soul.
It is anger, so hot it blazes white in her orange eyes.
He becomes very still, very quickly. The only movement is the night wind, cold and dusty as it whips through the wasteland, riffling through his feathers.
He thinks perhaps even the monster has grown still, but perhaps it is just that his world has narrowed to Mazikeen alone. They ache in his head causes dark ribbons to flicker at the edges of his vision, writhing like the shadows within him. The same shadows that pulse with Power at the intensity of the emotion she's feeling, and that move behind his wary blue eyes as he waits to see what is coming next.
Frustration blooms in her already seething mind when the fight she was ready for does not come. The creature lunging for her shrinks as it does, until it is pinned beneath a yellow claw, stabbing at the offending dragon. All Mazikeen can do is watch for a moment, startled almost to the point of waking from the waking nightmare she is caught within. But it does not take long for conscious thoughts to slip away again - her tail switching irritably behind her tugs at her wounds, the pain causing the fire to swallow her completely once again.
She does not notice how the now-small beast tries to scamper away in its own rage once it is free but is caught and held still.
Her eyes are locked on the gaze of the other dragon. She doesn’t see that it is Gale - she simply sees the only living thing in this area that can satisfy the hunger inside of her for both flesh and a fight. But still no true thoughts work their way through the inferno, no decisions. Mazikeen simply stares at the dragon she cannot find the name for at this moment before she lunges. For her right now, he is not the one she has fallen in love with twice over. This is not a body she knows intimately, that she has carved from blue to cremello and back again with touch and talon and tooth.
The bright yellow and white of his shape are unfamiliar to her. So he may as well be a stranger. There is no recognition in her face, she's blinked forgotten entirely both herself and him. He is still hers right now but not in the way she is so fond of whispering to him in the darkness as they stake their claims on each other.
There is only the anger, fuelled by each movement of her neck as her skin stretches the acid burn.
No roar escapes her, not even a snarl - she is silent. This is not the impassioned fire that fuelled her when he killed her the first time, that made her fight right until the poison had consumed her. This white-noise rage burns cold, the now blood-red of her eyes unfocused even as she pins him to the ground to take the first bite. The red of what she takes from him cascades down her body past the actual drips, her scales now matching the blood until she is all one colour.
