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  • 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


    [private]  even the sun was afraid of you
    #1

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    His mind has fractured and rebuilt. His very bones dissolved before being reformed. He is not the boy that he was—the proud, restless son of Atrox and Ryatah. He is not the cursed thing that ran every night and played pretend every day. He is not even sure that he is Firion anymore. So many pieces of him have been bent and reshaped. Pulled apart and stitched together again. He has been molded around this new darkness in him but he cannot find the guilt that once accompanied it. Perhaps this is peace.

    Perhaps it is merely the eye of the storm.

    Either way, he moves through Beqanna with more ease, although even in his more renewed form, he finds that he still prefers the hours of the evening than the blistering sun of the day. The shadows cling to him and he doesn’t bother to shake them off. They glide like silk over the gold of his coat and his companion, still yet unnamed, both becomes part of the shadows and detaches—curling like a cat on his spine.

    It is only when he sees those familiar markings. That shape of her horns. The harsh distinction of her coloring. It is only then that he pauses, angling his handsome head and following her with his golden gaze. Only then that he walks toward her, keeping a safe distance because even this fractured mind knows enough to give her a wide berth. “Have you died since the last time I saw you?” he asks and there is a slip of a smile against his mouth that barely lingers before it falls away. “You have a gift for it.”

    A pause and a twitch of his nose.

    “You smell of death.”

    And at this, the smile fades and thunder sounds in his head.

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried




    @Mazikeen
    Reply
    #2

    Mazikeen is not the same as she once was either, not entirely. Pieces of her remain but the rest has been extracted by a cold hand, and only shadows live where much of her self had been.

    Still, in the fading light when she glimpses his golden form she thinks she's pulled him out of her head. It had only been recently that he had surface there again, after all. Brought forth by a conversation on whether she held any grudges. Not anymore, she's sure, as she pauses to watch him approach with a hunter's intensity.

    Still, the distance Firion keeps between them pleases Mazikeen - she’d been given a glimpse, even if it was only a small one, of his powers. And if there was still a part of him (no matter how small) that considered her a threat that is enough to cause a smile. It’s a shadowy action, compared to what she had once shared in small bursts with him. Her first not-quite-friend.

    Better for them both, probably, that she does not remember how her coat had displayed his colouring mixed in with all those she cared for when she had first been killed by Gale.

    A short laugh escapes Mazikeen at his comments - even when his smile fades. Her voice could almost be a purr when she replies, if not for the venom turning the edges sharp. “You always did say the nicest things to me.”

    Mazikeen has been practicing blending her scars in with her coat, but now she lets them stand out again - blinks her red-orange eyes at Firion through a mask of scars where teeth had once gouged the skin and her heart beats inside of a chest that had been torn open so that it could be removed and devoured. Some of the old scars are gone but these ones remain, catching the light of her horns in jagged ridges.

    She doesn’t remember the pain of receiving them, having already been unconscious, but she knows they look messy and vicious. And she remembers what it had been like to claw at her eyes to remove the scar tissue so she could see, and what it had taken to regrow a heart.

    These memories do not sit well with her, even now, and Mazikeen becomes annoyed that Firion so easily dredges them up. “Twice, actually. You may miss your chance to make things even after all, the rate I’m going.” And old joke, and a cold version of amusement shines in her eyes as they remain focused on his golden face. “But the death you smell on me isn’t my own.” It isn’t a threat - merely a reference to her recent meal - but she won’t correct him if he assumes otherwise.

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @firion
    Reply
    #3

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    Firion has always associated Mazikeen with fire, with flame. If not for the obvious connection to the very element that stitches across her body, if not for her temper that raged at the barest hint of oxygen to set it aflame, then for its ravenous hunger for life. She was a wildfire that would consume everything in her path. A firestorm that would destroy any that stood in her way. It had been him, once upon a time.

    But the woman that stands before him now is ice.

    Cold and unfeeling. Unmoving.

    It chills the parts of him that remain, bring some of his old self rising to the surface beyond the thick layer of magic that has encased it. He hums in his throat, a low, thoughtful sound, and considers for a moment diving into her mind to see what has changed. It would be easy, he knows. He could split her head open like a melon and take what was there for his own, but for all of his flaws, his sense of privacy was not yet tarnished. So he remained firmly planted outside, his golden eyes contemplative as he considers her.

    “I believe it has always been the case that things between us would grow more uneven before they ever evened out,” he says, tone nearly flat. A quirk at the corner of his velvet mouth. “We have yet to be evenly matched in the times you have tried to kill me.” It goes unspoken that he is not the same jaguar boy that he was. That he had gifts he could use now. But he would not lift them against her.

    A weakness, perhaps.

    The thunder continues to rumble in the back of his mind as he circles back to the thought of her dying again, multiple times, and he cannot stop the frown that overtakes his features. The way his lips pull down in the corner, brow furrowing. “Why have you made death your constant companion, Maze?” Her nickname comes before he can stop it. He takes a step forward before he can stop that too.

    “What happened?”

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried



    @Mazikeen
    Reply
    #4

    As it had with Selaphiel, hearing her nickname again feels like a blow. Her ears flatten for a moment as her eyes harden at the sound of the familiarity and the way he takes a step closer. As if they are friends, as if they had ever been friends.

    She’d wanted that once, remembers admitting she’d die to save him if the situation ever came up. Now these memories race through her mind and cause a few glowing cracks to appear down her spine as a thick sense of discomfort settles in. This disconnect from her past self, from the memories that are so vivid, is quickly becoming annoying. She wishes she could purge herself from the knowledge that she had cared for the golden stallion standing before her enough that his actions hurt her more than once.

    Mazikeen does not know if Firion means what happened to make her like that - or what happened on those two deaths. But one of those is easier to answer than the other, so in the same blunt manner she continues talking - her orange gaze never wavering from his golden face. “I hid my children from their father and he wasn’t pleased when he found out.” Red blooms across the scarred skin around her eyes and chest, indicating the method. All while her gaze remains steady on him, curious to see if it will be the indifference she expects. “And then later that same year, when he had removed everything that made me who I was - he found himself bored.” The red disappears only to spread across her belly where Gale had torn her open that time.

    That time she had felt it, felt every moment until she finally died, but she had not cared - she was lifeless before she had even died. The memory of that hollowness seeps into her now, making her uncomfortable - a frown deepens on her face as the colour fades away again until the scars are as white as the healthy skin that surrounds them.

    Something else is troubling her, hearing these stories again even though she lived them. Before Gale, Mazikeen had worn her scars with pride - they were signs of battles she had won. But now she is a tapestry of her failures, even though she had survived all these deaths, they had still happened.

    Like the flicking of a switch, Mazikeen decides she wants any epiphanies tonight so she remarks instead in a voice devoid of any of her usual fire. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen you in the dark.”

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @firion
    Reply
    #5

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    It does not elude him that she angers at his use of her nickname, and the realization is enough to make him tilt his head in curiosity—not off put by her aggression toward him, if only because it is hardly the first time that she has done so. But he cannot focus on such things for long. Instead she continues to conversation casually, as if discussing the weather, and begins to tell him the details that he had asked for.

    And no small part of him wishes that she hadn’t.

    Because the longer that she talks, the more she tells him, the more that roaring in his head begins to grow. The more the shadows begin to pull in toward him, tightening around his legs and crawling up his neck. His companion lifts off his golden back and pulls shadowy lips back from its teeth, a growl beginning to vibrate through its body. Firion’s own eyes clear and sharpen to that same acute point of his father’s, his fury blossoming in his mind like an untapped thing, a tsunami if he did not control it soon.

    “Your children’s father sounds like a piece of shit,” he grinds out, teeth clenching and a muscle in his jaw working furiously. There is a pain in his chest at the idea that she’s had children with someone else, a blind and selfish pain when considering his own children littering Beqanna, but it’s drowned out by the knowledge that she’s done so with someone who would harm her. Someone who would harm those kids.

    He sweeps his gaze from her scars to her face, studying her orange eyes as if he would find the answer there. As if he would be able to piece all of this together. “Why haven’t you torn him apart yet?” he questions, because it’s easier to ask it of her when every instinct in his head is raging at him to do something. To pluck his name and face from her memories and do it himself.

    “You’ve never shown any hesitation in enacting plenty of violence against someone who would raise a hand toward you,” he continues, as if he could forget just how she’d done so to him. When he had merely pressed close to her, when he had been near enough to touch. But this stranger brings her to death and remains standing? He can’t make sense of it. Can’t fathom the answer is that he is so much more despicable that it was preferable and he is left with only that dull roaring in his head.

    Perhaps that’s why when she throws the question back at him with the frustration and anger typical in their interactions that he relents. He doesn’t brush it off or lie. He just peels his lips back and shrugs, eyes still gleaming. “I wasn’t overly fond of what people saw when they looked on me in the dark,” his voice is roughened and dark, shadows chasing every word. Without a noise, he shifts himself. Turning back into that thing of rotted flesh and death. Blood on his mouth and skin peeling away. Eyes fogged over.

    He stands like that for a minute, skeletal head peering back at her, before he turns back into himself.

    His breathing comes faster, heart pounding his chest, and it takes everything in him to stand there. To know that he’s revealed himself in a way that he had never done intentionally.

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried



    @Mazikeen
    Reply
    #6

    A cold laugh escapes her at Firion’s first words. Like so much else, it’s not what it was - her warmth is missing - but it is still a genuine laugh. One of the few she’s had in the last few years.

    But she can’t make sense of Firion’s reaction, the way he seems angry about what was done to her as she sees something change in his gaze, the tense lines that form. What did it matter? Firion wasn’t the one who had been told by someone she loved to kill their child, refusing and refusing until finally relenting because she knew her strike would be kinder. Who woke up in a pool of her own blood, greeted by the sight of the remains of another child that had only just begun. Who had sold herself willingly to buy more time for the very same body who had then inflicted that pain on her. It wasn’t Firion standing here with the memories of all that had happened, everything that was continuing to happen, and feeling detached from them all. Rarely even able to fell the deep well of anger that should come from just one, nevermind the entire collection, and so eagerly distracted by the moments of bliss that blur them all together.

    Though at first she does not intend to answer his questions, even the hint of the suggestion that she had done nothing aggravates her further and more of her glowing markings crack down her sides. “I have.” She spits the words out, annoyed both Firion for asking these questions and herself because of the light being cast on her actions and inaction. “Many times. I even bit his head off, literally. But like you and I, death does not seem to be permanent for him.”

    She wants this conversation to be over. She doesn’t want to keep following these thoughts and seeing if they connect to the growing frustration she has felt over the (relative) peace and contentment that has settled over Hyaline recently.

    So she’s grateful when Firion accepts her change in topic. Her confused frown barely gets a chance to form before he is showing her what he means - and her eyes widen as the handsome stallion turns into something rotten.

    Had she done that to him, when she peeled apart his skin?

    It is Mazikeen’s turn to take a step forward, pausing when Firion turns back into himself. Confusion churns through her in the second that follows - she doesn’t know why she had the impulse to go towards him when he displayed that decaying version of himself. But it had been there, strong as anything. It must have been just another echo of her former self, she decides - dismissing the thought.

    Instead of the handful of insults that flash through her mind, Mazikeen asks flatly “So did you push me away because you thought that would scare me off, or because you knew it wouldn’t?”

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @firion
    Reply
    #7

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    He never could understand why their conversations always turned this way. No matter how kind it starts, how innocent, somehow they are dry kindling and every spare word is a match. They misunderstand each other. They understand too much. They poke and jab until they get a reaction. They irritate and inflame and infuriate until the most genial of conversations is nothing more than a heated argument.

    It’s enough to dig into the celestial haze Firion had been in—bringing him to the surface. Bringing all of him gasping for air, his chest nearly heaving with the sudden life that pours into his open lungs. But the relief of it does not overshadow the fury that spreads through him like wildfire. The shadows that twist and dance around him of their own accord, the thunderous boom that claps in the sky.

    “So you just give up?” he snarls, knowing his anger isn’t directed at her but punting it there anyway. “You decide to stay with him and let him continue?” He is blind with his fury and anger and a senseless need to do something and yet feeling hobbled by it. He doesn’t understand the blankness in her eyes sometimes or the feeling that something is so very wrong. What had she meant that he had removed everything that had made her her? Her words come screaming back to him until his mind spins endlessly.

    She steps toward him as he shifts and something in the widening of her eyes is like the old Mazikeen. The young girl he had driven away the first time they had met. Would things be different if he had let her stay? If he had accepted her friendship instead of doing his best to frighten her off? Guilt gnaws at him.

    “I don’t know,” he answers honestly and his guard drops just slightly, gold eyes blinking at her.

    “Would it have?” he asks, wondering if his vulnerability would be enough to bring her back.

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried



    @Mazikeen
    Reply
    #8

    Mazikeen doesn’t know whether it is the questions themselves or the fact that the answer is yes that causes the rest of her body to crack and begin to glow with her fury. It hadn’t felt like a decision, staying with Gale - or at least there had never felt like an alternative. She just… did. It made sense. Without the depth of her emotions, without that heart that truly made her who she was, she knows it isn’t love she feels for the curse but it had always seemed to be close enough that the difference did not matter. She’d been grateful to have her emotions carved from her, to be free of the strings that tied her to everyone she met and the worry that had made her nights restless. She’d come to enjoy being hurt if it came with other things.

    It had seemed like a kindness until now. Until, like with Selaphiel, she’s standing before someone she cared for and she is forced to feel the weight of the difference between before and now. Until she’s forced to think without the distractions of Hyaline.

    Had she given up? She wrestles with her thoughts, resistant to the ones that make her examine how truly awful everything has been when viewed from the outside. Mazikeen doesn’t care but she has the uncomfortable knowledge that she should and that makes it worse.

    She doesn’t reply to Firion’s snarling questions except for that increase in her glow. She does not growl, doesn’t deflect, there are no furious words flung at him - asking him why he even cares. The inferno remains internal, filling all the empty spaces and burning her from the inside out. Her silence is enough of an answer, anyway. She can’t argue otherwise - he was right.

    Even the idea that she misses feeling something other than fire and rage is a hollow one, forgotten as soon as it enters her mind.

    The question asked when she is standing a little closer is easier to answer. She does not carry the same embarrassment that would have had her say anything other than the truth. “No. I would have stayed without hesitation.” Mazikeen knows that this should pain her, that this honesty should come with a price, but there isn’t any sadness for her to reach for anymore. It is all fire and shadows, it is just a blank look in her eyes when there should be something more there at this confession. 

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @firion
    Reply
    #9
    FIRION

    He doesn’t need to break into her mind to feel what she’s feeling. Her anger is raw and potent—so much so that he feels as though he can taste it on the tip of his tongue. It feels fuzzy, as though he has been poisoned, and there is a part of him that wonders if he has been. If she had the ability to slip a drug in his system that would let his body rot and decay as it once did in shadow. The same thing now causing that milky glow—sharpening and enhancing the handsome features that it had once destroyed.

    But he doesn’t care.

    He just focuses on the markings that crack all over her body. Feels the air practically buzz with everything she both felt and didn’t. He doesn’t miss that she doesn’t reply to him. Doesn’t further enflame the conversation that spits between them. Part of him wishes that she had. Wishes that she’d launch at him with teeth and claw. Tear into him so that he could focus on that instead. It was easier. So much easier.

    But she doesn’t. Instead, she gives him the truth and he visibly flinches from it, recoils because he hadn’t expected that answer. Never expected that anyone would possibly see past the curse that had simmered in his blood, so very different from the one that haunts her step now. The shock that widens his golden eye is chased by something else, something bitter, and he rolls his shoulders as if he could get rid of it.

    “Then perhaps I did you a favor,” he finally allows, not knowing how to untangle the feelings that her confession knots in his chest. A muscle works in his jaw and he swings his gaze up to her again, studying her with an intensity he didn’t bother to soften. “I would stay with you now,” a confession for another, as he thinks about all the times he has infuriated her and how this blind rage of hers now was the worst.

    “I would stay to find you again, Maze.”

    And, tentatively, he lets loose a single tendril of his magic to work toward her, a brush against her mind, a request to slip in and see what he might find under what has been fractured there.

    so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas
    all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)



    @Mazikeen
    Reply
    #10

    Mazikeen remembers what she had felt after she had torn him apart - that self-loathing and regret that had shredded her just as effectively as her claws and teeth had shredded his golden skin - and maybe the memory of that pain is what causes her to hesitate from doing the same now, just in case that is what brings those feelings back. Or it could be the knowledge of his powers - where was the fun if he could stitch himself back together or turn incorporeal so she would pass right through him?

    And then when he flinches away from the truth of her words, she feels satisfied. She doesn’t need her physical claws to cause him pain - she can pour out the truths of the Mazikeen he had known, let him know exactly how easy it would have been for him to have her, and she will feel nothing.

    But his words erase the delight at his shock and annoyance seeps in at that infernal nickname. Stop calling me that.” She hisses, some of her control breaking and there’s another small step forwards before she freezes again. Her fury seeping back inside of her, pulled back in by the vacuum of the empty spaces. Just like with his brother, Mazikeen can name each reaction she would have had once to Firion’s confession - like she recognizes the silhouette they’d left when they had been torn out of her. Pain, a flutter of joy she would have tried to immediately squash, fear that he actually meant it, and echoing through it all: that damn hope.

    Maze cared too much. Maze had been weak and stupid and sacrificed so much of herself. She wasn’t Maze anymore.

    When she speaks again, her voice is cold, dismissive, as though that small outburst had not happened. “Oh yes, what a favour. Because everything has turned out so fucking well.” Her scars flare red again to highlight them for a second - it’s a cheap shot and she doesn’t actually blame him but the truth doesn’t matter. It is her turn to push him away. “Staying has never been a talent of yours, Firion. Why should it be any different now?” Now that she doesn’t care, now that she does not want him to stay.

    She feels the gentle brush against her mind and her bright eyes do not stray from him for a single moment as she continues. “There’s nothing to stay for anyway. See for yourself.” Her anger recedes slightly because she wants him to find no resistance, wants him to look inside her and understand so that he will take back his confession, so he will leave.


    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @firion
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