• 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


    [private]  what if we're all that we thought; Mazikeen
    #1
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    Dusk’s low light turns the surface of the lazy autumn river to a silver mirror. Stars wink slowly into the deep purple sky as Gale and Mazikeen soar above the river. The marking along Gale’s left feathered white wing is nearly black in the twilight, but occasional flickers of lightning that dance along his body illuminate its true bloody hue.

    His eyes are as blue and quick as the lightning, darting across the river and its wide banks, Seeing far more than is apparent to the naked eye. There is nothing amiss in the land below, but there remains in his belly a dark feeling of unease.

    Like a burrowing creature forced into the light, Gale feels off-kilter here in the world outside Hyaline. Far in the distance, beyond the high ridges of Mountain, the magic of the entities calls to him. Can Mazikeen feel it too, he wonders? Or is this some trick of his own magic, reminding him that - at least for the moment - he has none at all?

    He’s used the last of it to grow wings, though it had meant his own pain to do so. He once would have taken it from Mazikeen, but that possibility no longer occurs to him as easily as it once had. He considers it now - and knows that she will know he does - but doesn’t linger. Instead, he swoops low over the trees, absorbing the fear of the birds nesting in the trees, feeling their fear of a predator in the night seeping into him. It’s hardly enough to sustain him, but the wound along his leg from Seeing heals, and the ache in his head from sprouting the wings fades to nothing.

    Something moves below - a lone creature drinking from the River. Gale glances down at it, then at Mazikeen, his brow raised in an unspoken question.



    @Mazikeen
    Reply
    #2

    Mazikeen feels no pull back to Hyaline - she is too glad that they are outside of the mountains. Though Gale was skilled at distracting her from it in their home, her restlessness eases out here. Even if the chaos they might cause is small compared to what he had once taunted her with and what she thought about to excite him. She catches his thoughts about using her pain to give himself more power and wishes he would - they’d promised no more deaths, but he had given her immortality so death wouldn’t even be permanent (not that it had ever been for her).

    Her thoughts churn in so many directions. She wonders if they have somehow tamed each other and then before that thought can even settle in her mind her eyes catch on the west and she feels the desire to fly to Tephra right now. To go get her daughter, to do something, instead of waiting around for others to do it just to curry favour with Gale.

    The birds that Gale startles out of the trees and the ease that enters his mind distracts her from where her thoughts were drifting and brings her back into the present. Her eyes, borrowed from a wolf, spot the movement below.

    Her gaze connects with Gale just for a short moment before she descends - her restlessness not letting her hesitate any longer. She doesn’t even feel that same pleasure at him deferring to her. If she must wait to go get Sickle, she is not waiting for this. She shifts into a pale wolf when she lands downriver from the dappled grey stallion - a snarl escaping her. Much to her delight - he does not run but instead shifts as well - into a large grizzly bear that roars back a challenge.

    Even with her host of shapes that she could become, many of them bigger and stronger than this bear, Mazikeen wants the challenge. She wants this to feed her unease and Gale’s magic, wants the anger and the fear to stretch out as long as possible so it can drown out everything else, all of her confusing and frustrated thoughts. She doesn’t look for her king, holding a vision of them attacking this bear together in her mind even though she trusts his instincts. They both know what to do, how to hunt, and she launches herself at the grizzly without another thought.

    MAZIKEEN
    mazikeen


    @Gale
    Reply
    #3
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    Gale meets her gaze, and cannot fathom the thoughts that swirl behind her carnelian eyes. He knows that Mazikeen can use this bond he’s forged between them, yet the telepathic connection still goes in a single direction.

    He knows though, without words and without thoughts, with only the familiarity of the way she moves, that Mazikeen is irritated.

    At him?

    Surely not, and since she does not say anything he does not bring it up either, instead landing just behind her. The earth is hard and frozen beneath his hooves, and then his paws as he follows Mazikeen into a lupine shape.

    The fury that seeps toward him from the stallion-turned-bear brings a gleeful smile to his face, covering the uncertainty from earlier. As it seeps into his black soul, he feels the shadows grow darker, senses the endless chasm within him expanding.

    He darts in to rip at the bear’s forelegs, its underbelly, its neck. His sharp teeth shred and rend and tear until his blue eyes peer out from a crimson mask. Each bite pushes the worry farther and farther away until there is only the hunt and the kill.

    The first wall of ice slams against him without warning, clear and solid. Gale feels his skull crack, and he’s thrown back by the force of impact. It takes several dark seconds for him to recover, long enough for the bear to back up, to become a horse again and throw a second glacial sheet that he creates out of nothing.

    This is not a Power he knows, and the blue-eyed wolf shoots an inquiring gaze toward his mate. Shall they continue, he asks without words? Or should the shadows that dance and quiver below him creep up his dappled legs and snap them?


    @Mazikeen
    Reply
    #4

    Mazikeen always seems to be in a foul mood when they hunt for their own kind, though it is not the hunt itself that ever bothers her. After that first time, the rest have always occurred when she is pissed about something. This time is no different than when they went to Islandres except that she is not sulking in the trees. She is moving with Gale, the pair of them and their fury dancing around the bear and tearing pieces wherever they can and Mazikeen lets all of her troubled thoughts fade away.

    She had just been tossed aside and is preparing to launch back when she sees a wall of ice slam against Gale. Mazikeen is distracted, breathing heavily, waiting for those seconds to pass until Gale is on his feet again.

    There is nothing in her heart, distracted as she is. Whatever worry there would have been having been taken from her, and even the confusing mix of relief and satisfaction is muted as she remains plunged in bloodlust. She looks back at their prey in time to see the glacial sheet coming her way and she leaps out of the way but only fast enough to clear most of her body. It collides with her hip and sends her splashing into the nearby river.

    She lets all of her frustration fuel her anger as she quickly stands, but this time she does not lose control. This time fire erupts around her - a thin line but it burns bright. She shifts into a large phoenix - one of her legs hanging limply beneath her as she rises up out of the way of the next ice sheet pushed her way. Mazikeen moves so that the horse is between her and Gale.

    The fire of her feathers do not harm her but she feels like she is burning anyway and she welcomes the pain in her hip as it further helps to drown out her troubled thoughts. The wide, fear-and-angry eyes of this stranger connect with hers and that is when she replies to Gale in a cool voice, wanting to be heard by both. “Snap his legs.” She wasn’t done with this bear-stallion, not yet. “I want him alive when we start to feast on him.”

    MAZIKEEN
    mazikeen


    @Gale
    Reply
    #5
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    She answers him for the bear to hear, her words loud in the winter air. Gale grins, exhaling a floating cloud of mist as the shadows around the other shifter’s legs wind up and become grasping black tentacles. They reach for particular bones, using his Vision and familiarity with Wishbone’s magic to find the long and short pasterns of the prey’s front legs and crush them to dust.

    The grey stallion stumbles forward, catching himself for just a moment and splitting the night air with a piercing scream.

    Gale rips the end of it from his throat with a beak that cauterizes, having shifted to a phoenix the moment that Mazikeen had. The terror and fear that seeps out of the stallion returns to him in the way the blood of his neck clots and the skin of his neck draws closed over muscle and tendon that mend just enough to slow his inevitable death.

    And then realizes what he’s doing, what he’d made far too much of a habit of doing lately, and rips away the layers of magic that kept the stallion’s body together. Gale snarls, and when he leaps forward it is not as something with a shape.

    He’s a mass of shadows and teeth and claws, biting and tearing and ripping and shredding at an impossible speed. Only when the horse has been rent down to nothing but bits of flesh and bone along the river’s edge does the mass of darkness slow. The movements grow more natural, and the darkness becomes a single shape, one that matches Mazikeen.

    “Couldn’t help it” says the casual shrug of his dark shoulders as he strides closer. Mazikeen had already been furious - about what he’s still not sure - and he’s wondering if she’ll turn phoenix again to better express the flame of her rage.



    @Mazikeen
    Reply
    #6

    Each snap of bone sings through Mazikeen’s body and the scream that Gale tears from him intoxicates her. She moves forward to join, and can almost taste his blood on her tongue when Gale changes. He snarls, becoming nothing but shadow, and she watches in both admiration and irritation as he completely obliterates their prey. She lands, shifting into the familiar shape of a lioness. The rear leg that had been caught by the wall rests uselessly while she watches - whatever colour her pelt is disappears beneath the network of fire-bright markings that crackle along her skin.

    Her eyes slide from the remains of the meal she had been looking forward to and back to Gale as he approaches, his casual shrug grating on her already frayed patience.

    She catches him wondering about her rage and a cold laugh escapes her. Still this bond between them was going one way. The markings on her skin do not fade but the fire in her eyes is cold as she moves to meet him, dragging her teeth lightly against his skin as soon as she is able to reach it. Each step is agony on her leg and her vision becomes spotty but it is a welcome distraction from her thoughts. “That’s twice you’ve left me unsatisfied tonight.” It is not true, at least not about the first time, but the truth matters so little. Mazikeen is tired of the truth, tired of the way confessions and honesty make her so aware of everything she lacks.

    It does not matter to her which she gets - his rage, his lust, a combination of the two. She just wants something to shift this ice to fire, wants to forget everything just for a few moments. No Sickle, no sons of angels, no silhouettes of emotions long since torn out of her, no future children - all of it needs to fade away. She presses closer and her voice is a rough purr in his ear “Is that all you’ve got?”

    MAZIKEEN
    mazikeen


    @Gale
    Reply
    #7
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    Her cold laugh doesn’t slow Gale’s steps toward her, and the teeth that she runs along his navy skin are far warmer than her eyes. Need rises in him as he presses against her, smearing blood and shadows against the white-and-fire lioness. His laughter is a low growl against her neck, disbelieving and soft with the pleasure of feeling Mazikeen against him.

    The magic that has swelled into his veins during the hunt and death of the bear-shifter begins to drain away.

    With such an abundance, it takes some time for him to notice. When she purrs a question that sends a shiver of desire down the length of his spine though, he feels magic leave with it.

    Why does he let her make him vulnerable?
    Why has he been healing his victims?

    (He’s thinking even as he kisses his way across her back)

    He’s becoming weaker, even as his knowledge of power grows. It’s been happening since he’d ripped her open, since he took the good from her and twisted her heart into something black as his own.

    Gale had made her into a weapon, intending to loose her on the world and watch the destruction. Instead he keeps her in Hyaline, content to be weak so long as she remains near.

    His mind continues to spin as he fits his body against her, because no amount of worry can outweigh how marevelous she feels, or how the world falls away as he loses himself in the fire of her flesh.

    She is making him weak.
    He cannot be weak.

    He feels the last of the magic drain away, but not until they are both sated and lying on the blood-soaked riverbank does he begin a plan to do something about it. The reluctance to harm her has grown stronger with time. Perhaps that is the key. He needs to hurt her. Hurt her in ways that she does not enjoy, he thinks as he mends the scratches along her near shoulder.

    Her suffering is as potent to his magic as her satisfaction is. He need only rid himself of this reluctance to hurt her, and surely then he will be unstoppable.



    @Mazikeen
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)