[private] could not hold me back

[Mazikeen]

A pleasant hum rumbles through Mazikeen when the scent of burning skin and feathers reaches her. Would Gale smell like that if she were to light him on fire? It is an experiment worth exploring if he ever returns from Tephra. Or her fuse grows short enough that she goes to seek him out there. She does not know of his history with the volcano, but she is imagining something similar all the same. Her slit pupils dilate with the pleasure this scent - and these thoughts - bring her but she is quick to scowl again when Nashua continues to talk. Mazikeen does not have the patience to explain that memory to him, and she wishes he could just see how it had actually played out. Gale had only shown him such a small piece - erasing the playful game that had come before and the conversation that had come afterwards. So she ignores this question so she does not have to repeat herself - she had already told him the truth once. Another snarl works its way up her throat at Nashua’s answer to her own question - her barbed dragon’s tail flicking behind her like a cat’s. “My trust in your family is wearing a little thin.” He had every reason to want to get her out of here as fast as possible, so this answer does not surprise her. “I will search this forest for her, with or without you. And if Sickle truly isn’t here I will go back and deal with that golden bird.” The dragon’s teeth curl back into a cruel smile that is filled with a growl. She’d left Aela with a promise and she intended to keep it. Mazikeen has had enough of being jerked around by this family. m a z i k e e n .

 

[Nashua]

"Good," Nashua retorts to her.

He flickers in and out of view, wondering if the distortion might mess with the dragon's vision. (As a youth, he had pitted himself against Leilan several times. He had very rarely bested his mentor but Nash had learned a few tricks.) When he comes into Mazikeen's line of sight, his glowing stripes move in tandem with his healing and he wonders if the vision she uses might be thrown off by the magic.

"We're a rather distustful lot," he continues on. He works on keeping one part of him in sight - a wing, a striped leg, the dark scowl on his blazed face - as Nashua continues trying to lure her out of Taiga. Mazikeen is intent on searching his home and the Freyr becomes determined to keep her out of it.

Nashua becomes determined to draw her dragon flame out, towards him.

"She's a shifter, isn't she?" he calls out. "Like you and Gale?" he says, not bothering to hide the contempt from his voice. "Why would we want her here?" (It isn't the complete truth. If Mazikeen's daughter had really sought their help, Nashua would have given it. If it meant one more chance to really end the Curse - or atleast deny it another path to the future - Nash would have aided in any way he could.)

While he questions Mazikeen's sanity, it's her maternal instincts that he's counting on. The Isle is a shrine to a dragon's fire, and the devastation it can cause. But he's learned that there is so only much that they can wield, before the fires within them burn out, and he hopes as steps back in the direction towards the River, that hers will run out before she can turn them back on the Taiga.

@Mazikeen

[Mazikeen]

Nashua flickers in and out of her vision and Mazikeen’s pupils dilate and contract in an effort to keep up with it. Aggravation flushes through her and whatever parts of her body were not illuminated by fire-bright markings are now burning. He is moving and she is drawn after him, a hunter after her prey. His words distract her rather than inflame her further. Was Sickle a shifter? Mazikeen has to think about it for a moment - looking back on her only interaction with Sickle with a clinical coldness. That had been the night Gale had changed her into what she is now and it makes her uncomfortable to remember the way sadness had roared through her when she had first watched as Gale killed their daughter and then rewound time so that she could do the same. But in her distress, she remembers how the filly had seemed to waver between shapes. A handful of different ones each second so that she seemed to blur as she stood there. A shifter, though not a particularly talented one yet. The dragon snarls. “Are you trying to tell me you wouldn’t want revenge for me taking Bolder?” It still makes so much sense - and she cannot comprehend not wanting retribution. She doesn’t even particularly care for Sickle and she is ready to burn this forest to the ground just for the insult of having her taken away. “That you wouldn’t keep my daughter here while I keep your son?” She’s slunk after him for a few feet, thinking of sinking her teeth into his glowing flesh, before she pauses. Realizes that she’s being drawn away from the heart of Taiga. “I am not leaving this forest, Nashua.” She repeats, his name revolting to speak and she makes no attempt of hiding that. “Not until I finish searching it.” m a z i k e e n .

 

@Nashua

[Nashua]

When he had been young, Nashua wondered what happened to the mind during a shift. He had seen his father do it a few times, and before he had learned all the darkness associated with it, Nash had been fascinated by each new shape the former Commandant took. Now, as he flickers in and out of sight, the way that Mazikeen begins to stalk towards him only confirms (in his mind) that multi-shape shifters eventually shed themselves of their humanity.

Even if he hadn't been goading her, Nashua thinks that eventually, the dragoness would have razed him to ash for simply being so defiant to her wishes.

"Oh, I want revenge." Nashua tells her with a wicked grin, fighting to heal his burnt flesh and trying to maintain staying out of her sight. He fails, and flickers into Mazikeen's vision with a shuddering grimace. "But not against you, Mazikeen." It isn't her that he blames for the loss of Bolder. (She is a shapeshifter, but she's also been twisted, he assumes.) It's partly his own fault; he should have told the boy his family history. But the rest lies firmly with the thing that possesses Gale, just one more crime committed in the long history of the Curse.

Nashua glows brighter and brighter, as he attempts to lure her away from the heart of Taiga.

He focuses on vanishing again, and there is only the sound of beating wings echoing beneath the tree canopy. "Taiga doesn't give up her secrets," snarls the invisible pegasus. He tilts one wing down, coasting towards the damp soil before using both to propel him directly up again, attempting to take their argument into the air. Attempting to move quick enough to further aggravate Mazikeen.

@Mazikeen

[Mazikeen]

Not against you earns a growl from Mazikeen, a flash of dragonfire sizzling across the needle-covered ground in front of her. Once, she would have seen red at this barest hint of a threat towards Gale - he was no one’s to tear apart but hers. Now, she wants to be seen for what she is. Not the foolish Alpha she had been but another, separate threat that Hyaline houses. “I guess I’ll have to try a little harder then, won’t I.” She spits back with another flash of flame, scorching a nearby tree. Mazikeen does not snarl back at Nashua at his taunt about Taiga's secrets as he darts into the air. She’d come here with one purpose and she’d already been sidetracked enough. Instead of feeling aggravated, there’s a strange sense of calm. Mention his losses Aela had told her, but the shapeshifter intended to do more than just that. She feels shadows curl through her, overshadowing both her fire and the golden light she’s pretending does not exist in the back of her mind. She tilts her head, smiling upwards at the canopy with a hollow, wicked grin that does not even come close to lighting up her eyes. “Will Taiga feel better about giving up this particular secret to a friendly face?” And then she changes where she stands from a dragon into a stallion with golden hair and a rich chestnut coat. The curving horns from her head are now straight and goatlike, matching the beard that grows. She remembers the blue-eyed twin of Nashua being a little taller than her so she grows as well. It may not be an exactly perfect match, but it should do the trick. “I’m afraid I’m short a chicken but I think this’ll do? You can have your brother back for a few hours while we search. Won't that be nice?” That grin remains and her gaze lowers to the shadows of Taiga, the paths she'd once walked with the same stallion she is mimicking now. Nashua could flutter around in the air all he wanted, she was going to finish looking for Sickle, and she moves to walk further into this cursed forest on her new, cloven hooves. m a z i k e e n .

 

@Nashua

[Nashua]

She growls and the pegasus flickers back into her sight, coming to land across the leaf-littered ground from Mazikeen. He strides forward and his chestnut ears pin as the Alpha breathes a burst of flame towards a proud Seqouia. These trees are his heritage and as he tries not to take her assault personally - nearly constantly reminding himself that this was another fault of the Curse. This was what it did, Nashua cautioned himself.

Losing his temper with Mazikeen wouldn't bring Bolder back.
It wouldn't help find his missing brother nor find a way to deal with his accursed one.

Nashua is prepared for more fire; that he can handle. His Magic prickles against his copper skin, working tirelessly to heal the burns that the dragoness had caused. His coat - while coming together - lacks any real protection from further heat and his pink flesh puckers where Mazikeen's fire had blazed against him. One wing is still held defensively against his barrel, attempting to shield it from further damage. (At least, long enough until he adequately fly again.)

He watches as she shifts again, and as she begins to take a deeply familiar shape, Nashua can't hide the disgust from his gaze.

She becomes chestnut, instead of a pale winter white. Her onyx points blend into the rest of her coppery hue, and even the molten eyes of Mazikeen shift into something, emerging as the ancestral Legacy blue. A shade that he had always been envious of. Forgetting his injuries, Nashua flares his wings wide and trots forward. "Take it off," he snarls at her, and loses any sense of pleasantries. "I don't know who the hell you're looking for, but if it's a stolen child, there are only two horses I know that would commit that kind of crime."

The striped stallion continues rounding the near carbon-copy of Yanhua, with his coat draining to a near impossible shade of shadow.

"Was that Gale's idea? To take Bolder? Or was that yours?"

Glancing up at the shifter, taking in the horns and the blue eyes and the flaxen mane, his pale lips curl.

"Why stop at a foal?" He continues, falling into a thunderous rage that gleams threateningly from his dark green eyes as he draws nearer. Nashua recalls his earlier conversation with Reave and all his cryptic implications beneath the high temper they both shared. Had this been it?

"Why not take a Guardian?"

@Mazikeen

[Mazikeen]

Mazikeen moves off in another direction when Nashua trots forwards, but he sticks close now. Rounding on her with rage that only encourages her to keep this form a little longer. At his comment about how he only knows two horses who would commit the crime of stealing a child, she laughs coldly. “Yeah, sure. Us and the mercenaries in the Pampas he bargained with to steal our daughter in the first place.” There were plenty of horses in Beqanna willing to steal a child, all they needed was the right motivation. Nashua is full of questions but she barely hears the first set of them when she watches his coat drain from chestnut to a deep black. This fucking hypocrite had stood there looking like Bolder turning yellow was the worst thing in the world and now… Her nostrils flare and those blue eyes flash blood-red for a brief moment before she contains herself, distracted by the rest of the questions and how delightful it is to see him get all puffed up and angry again. Will he strike her while she wears the face of his brother? And if so, will it haunt him afterwards? She’d like to find out. “We didn’t take your stupid brother, Nashua. He was half out of his mind when we came for Bolder. If I hadn’t known the Curse was already in someone…” She trails off, her grin utterly wicked - believing even Nashua was smart enough to pick up that little jab. She moves to step away from him, the movement casual as though she really is just going for a stroll. Her gaze darts around, checking the nearby shadows for any sign of her daughter. She’s checked most of the forest by now, she knows, but there’s still some left. There’s still every chance Nashua is hiding her on purpose. “Does Bolder know you can change?” And then that dark grin on Yanhua’s features deepens as she croons out quietly. “Does Noel?” m a z i k e e n .

 

@Nashua

[Nashua]

He surges forward, arching his dark brown neck and flares open his speckled wings. "So Gale deals with Aela," Nash says, trying to round back to a point. If his sister had a similar alignment towards the brindled stallion - the one that Mazikeen seemed so intent on setting herself apart from (why else should we have come alone?) - and the striped pegasus had made his own dislike for the golden Seneschal known, did Mazikeen think he would help Aela in bating her?

What little he knows of the Curse is that he knows that it twists and bends and warps until reason is nothing.

But his own emotions are so tightly bound - and have been so wound up for weeks - that it doesn't take make for the tethers that have kept them restrained to break. He has lost a brother, a son, and another brother; there is still the North to rule and so many other factors that have granted little reprieve for the pegasus.

Nashua is tired, and as Mazikeen wears his brother's shape (something that Yan would have been appalled at), everything about him begins to unravel.

"That Curse wouldn't have fucking touched him," Nashua snaps back. (And Mazikeen can't know how close she comes to a memory, that all the anger seething from him stems from a memory of the Curse telling Nash that there would be plenty that his brother would be good at.  That at the time he had been so jealous of Yanhua to earn their father's attention, and how all these years later, he now worries for it.) She makes a joke over something that he has agonized over, something that is a very real threat to his family and their names on her tongue makes his ire rise.

His green eyes follow her every move and he shadows her, unwilling to allow her unaccompanied access to his home.

"It's none of your business," he says through a clenched jaw while the color continued to drain from his coat. Bolder hadn't known, because if he had, what purpose would it have served him? Better that he knew how to protect himself from this darkness - from this power that Mazikeen so clearly abused - than to draw his children into it. Nashua had told no one, not even the horned stallion that she currently mimicked.

@Mazikeen

[Mazikeen]

Nashua mentions his sister again but Mazikeen just shakes her head dismissively. “I think this time it was the donkey, actually. But that golden bird was almost certainly involved.” Aela had been the one to direct her here, after all. Mazikeen hadn’t exactly stuck around to figure out the specifics, she got the information she wanted and then she had come here. Yanhua’s shape pauses in thought when Nashua snaps back about the Curse. It’s enjoyable, getting under his skin like this. Almost the same feeling as a satisfactory hunt - she’s causing pain, just not physically. She tilts her horned head to the side, the beard under her chin wagging a little with the movement. “That’s true. Does Yanhua have any talents aside from chicken talking and impregnating mares?” It’s a memory from another life, the one where Gale told her of his brothers and their extensive list of children. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so surprised when she started meeting the family. If she ever had the misfortune of meeting those in Bolder’s generation, she isn’t sure she’d be able to keep up with all the names. She stares at the draining colour with predatory intent as Nashua tells her it’s none of her business who he’s told. “That’s a no.” She replies with another laugh. “Should I tell him for you? I’d tell Noel too but I don’t think she’ll believe me. Bolder will though.” She could cart Sickle back to Hyaline and introduce the cousins (unaware of how they’ve already met) and drop this little piece of information. “He’ll be so hurt.” And then in between one step and the next, Mazikeen becomes Bolder. An adult version of the boy they both knew, muscular and powerful. She doesn’t hide all of her scars this time, lets some of them stand out against the chestnut coat. A glimpse of who Bolder could become. A fighter. Those silver eyes flash as she continues on, content with the fact that Nashua is, for now, trailing her and not stopping her. She was only here for one reason but that did not mean she couldn’t enjoy herself a little while she searched, did it? m a z i k e e n .

 

@Nashua