Gale
started under neon lights, then it all got dark
i only know how to go too far
He comes as a dream, having torn the beating heart from a girl who could spin sleep. The skill is a new one and the blood is still wet on his lips, and the cursed thing drifts aimlessly on the late autumn wind, falls more deeply asleep, then wakes on a snowy and moonlit precipice.
The creature does not rise in the real world, the brindle body still at rest on the dark sand of a distant cove. A sharp-eyed osprey watches over the body, black claws gripping at his perch in a lavender and orange-leaved palm.
Gale wakes only into the dream world, and when he turns to look around, finds the dreamer.
He knows those orange eyes blazing in that pale face, brilliant in the silver moonlight, bright against the winter snow. But they are different now; there is no crimson blood behind them, no manic glow. They are the eyes of the woman Gale had loved and that the Curse had broken.
They are not broken now.
Mazikeen had been a threat to him once, back when she had eyes like these.
Has she become a threat again? Or is this some trick of sleep, and she only dreams of having become whole?
He takes a step closer. A bolt of lightning flashes behind him, a manifestation of his uncertainty. His face is still, his smile cold, but those blue eyes flicker as rapidly as the lightning across his navy skin.
His white tail becomes the same scythe that had opened the neck of the copper mare, and it sways behind him as he takes a second step closer, and then a third.
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
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Mazikeen has not felt more than the barest flicker of anger since she woke up without scars next to the sea with comfort coming from an unlikely but welcome source. There’s been little enough to aggravate her since - and the only time it has risen is when she was hunting for Gale to see if he had anything to do with Ryatah’s death. Everything else has been a twisting combination of happiness and grief.
At first, this dream starts out benign - no anger in sight. There’s a pair of foals she wouldn’t recognize if she were awake, but in the dream they are beloved and familiar. They play with each other by the moonlit lake and though they are far away, in the way of dreams she can see them clearly.
Until something materializes closer and draws her attention.
There’s still a faint smile on her face when she turns her head but it falls away in an instant when recognition hits her like a tidal wave. Her dormant rage is not slow to wake, the glowing cracks wash along her body in swift movement - illuminating her in the darkness.
Gale is a frequent star in her nightmares so she does not immediately recognize that this is any different. She just knows that of course he would show up here in Hyaline on this peaceful night, while she watches over the foals. Sometimes it is the soft-spoken Gale she had first met who does the torture - where the cruelties are accompanied by a stream of cheerful chatter.
“Get the fuck out of my home.” Mazikeen snarls at him and before the final word is spoken she is shifting into a white, draft horse-sized dragon and lunging for him.
m a z i k e e n . |
@ Gale
Gale
started under neon lights, then it all got dark
i only know how to go too far
The cursed creature has never dreamt before.
Is it the lack of a soul that had prevented it until now? Or some remnant of black magic, another component of the curse that afflicts the brindle stallion?
She turns from snowy white to luminous orange, and his fourth step closer is faster than the others. The strangeness of dreaming is forgotten entirely as his world narrows to the furious Mazikeen in front of him. She roars, and this too is familiar, and is reassuring even as she attacks. They had fought before, fought so often and so violently that she’d turned his navy skin to gold then back again.
They’d been well-matched, once, before he’d forsaken her in pursuit of Power.
Will that make a difference, he wonders? Will the dream?
She shifts, and he has his own dragon’s head a heartbeat before she might have bitten him, and his open jaws rebuff hers in a clatter of too-sharp teeth. Her sharp claws rend at his sides, but in the dream his dragon’s scales are no protection and he snarls in unexpected pain.
Time passes strangely in a dream, or perhaps he is simply inexperienced with the magic of it. How long do they fight? Long enough that the snow is red and wet at their feet, long enough that his breath comes heavy and sparks glitter between his sharp teeth.
There’s no rush of Magic this time. There’s no power radiating from the furious white dragon for him to drink down, no darkness in her heart to feed him. He feels nothing from her at all, and the blows he manages to land come with only the satisfaction of a well-honed offense. There is no rush of strength and might flowing into him from the pain he causes (and feels himself from her own attacks).
There are other changes though. Better changes. The joy of battle he experiences is not new, but the weakness he has always associated with fighting her is now gone. Nor is there magical impotence accompanying the pleasure he feels at the fight, and vulnerability does not accompany the desire that has always come of being near her. He grins, and it is hot and wild and feral, because he grows ever more sure that he could kill her.
Lightning has begun to flash more frequently now, so bright and often that it might be midday, the forked light landing always on the farthest peaks.
He circles her, back to the precipice, and asks between panting breaths: “Are you enjoying this as much as I am?”
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
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The ease with which he becomes a matching form disgusts her now but she doesn’t trade the dragon for something else, wanting the protection that these hard scales give. In this dream, their effectiveness changes with each strike - glancing blows leave cuts across her skin and hard strikes bounce off. There is no reason to it and she wishes this was one of the dreams where she would wake in the middle of a fight.
That she is even thinking about how she is dreaming should be a clue that this is different (more real) than the others she has had but she is too focused on trying to destroy him that she does not pause to think about it.
Not even when they part, her breaths coming in deep gulps and she keeps her gaze locked on him as he circles her, those bright eyes of hers not even daring to blink.
Mazikeen recoils from the question as if it were a blow itself, her features twisting into a scowl. Was she enjoying this? She did not enjoy being this close to him, did not enjoy the memories that each wound spills alongside the blood even though they are hazier in a dream than they would be in real life (and that is a small blessing). They don’t pull at her now like they did in the fight with Reave.
But she wanted to kill him and that required a certain level of closeness. At least enough to push him from this cliff and maybe that will wake her up.
So she doesn’t answer the question and tells herself she doesn’t care which conclusions he’ll draw from her silence. Or, near-silence because instead she asks a question that’s never gotten her an answer that didn’t make her skin crawl in any other dream. But she asks it every single time anyway. “Why are you here?”
m a z i k e e n . |
@ Gale
Gale
started under neon lights, then it all got dark
i only know how to go too far
She doesn’t need to speak for him to know her answer - the recoil is enough.
No, she is not enjoying this.
The navy dragon stops its circling, dark claws falling still atop the bloody snow. Only his eyes move now, meeting hers from beneath a pensive frown..
The magician had not known what he was doing when he had broken Mazikeen, but the result had been exactly what he’d wanted at the time. She had become something more entirely on her own once given her freedom, become something better than he could have crafted: full of rage and fury and a hunger to match his own.
There is still hatred now, glittering behind her orange eyes, and rage too, illuminating her skin.
But there is brightness as well. Brightness he had torn out already, because it had made her weak.
She had grown less predictable with each passing day, he recalls, and nearer his most recent death had chafed against his contentment. She’d wanted destruction, and he’d wanted her happiness.
He’d corrected that imbalance the only way he could, choosing Power over weakness, forsaking her for sorcery without limits, and locking his heart away so that next time - this time? - he could kill her without hesitation.
He’d expected to find her as he’d left her. Snarling and vicious until the bitter end, as savage and deadly as when she’d dropped him on the mountainside. He wanted to watch the red-orange fire fade from her eyes, to swallow down her strength and fury as the final garnish to his own Power and know that nothing - no one - could stand in his way.
This is not what he had expected.
“You’ve changed.” he finally says, his expression still perturbed. “I don’t like it.”
The sky is white with lightning now, a constant crackling orb around them, the sky as bright as the snow at their feet. He does not like dreaming, he decides. He cannot tell what is real.
Why are you here, she asks, and rather than add further uncertainty to this experience, he chooses honesty.
“I didn’t mean to come.” And he is no more sure of how to leave. He hasn’t tried, not yet. After he has killed her, he will. And he will kill her after he knows why she has changed, and what it will take to change her back again.
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
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A short laugh escapes her when he remarks that he does not like what she’s become and it is not the hollow, cruel sound she had made when he had remade her. There’s warmth in it, though it is not meant for him. It's just that she must be doing something right if he does not like who she is and if he is wearing that perturbed expression. “I don’t care if you like it or not.”
The lightning-filled sky would have drawn her attention any other time but she does not dare to remove her eyes from him. They narrow at his answer. He had never given that particular one before and Mazikeen frowns, unsure of where this new dream is going to head now.
This doesn’t feel like the monster her subconscious tortures her with. He seems… real. Or, as real as anything can be in a dream. Her discomfort grows, not trusting this (almost) normal conversation in the slightest.
Whatever bond existed between them does not appear to be working at the moment, another sign that this is different than the other nightmares. In them, there had been no shortage of horrors both spoken and shown to her in his mind.
Mazikeen thinks she might be grateful for this difference, though she would not mind having any advantage she could get.
“All that bother about choosing power over me and you can’t even stop yourself from accidentally dreamwalking, huh?” She snorts, a half-hearted attempt to cover how uncomfortable she is with him being here. Though she is grateful that there's no lingering sense of hurt about that rejection. It had been one of the pieces she needed to get back to herself.
The white dragon stands there with her discomfort for another moment before deciding she shouldn't have to suffer his presence. This is her dream. Although she had not looked away from him, something in her gaze sharpens. Maybe it’s the only warning he gets. “I suppose there’s only one way to make you leave then, isn’t there?” Mazikeen surges forward, intent on grabbing him and taking them both off of the precipice if that is what it takes. In reality she did not have the power to defeat him but maybe here in a dream she could.
m a z i k e e n . |
@ Gale
Gale
started under neon lights, then it all got dark
i only know how to go too far
She doesn’t care if he likes it, she says, and Gale smiles.
At least her defiance had not changed. Though he’d commanded obedience of her for a time, the cursed creature had come to prefer her free. She’d grown ever more vicious with their time together, free of the restraints of morality, delighting him in every possible way. And he’d let himself be delighted and seduced, willfully turning his back on the power and chaos he had promised her in exchange for seclusion in Hyaline.
His taking of Tephra had forced him to that realization, had opened his eyes to how weak he had allowed himself to become. He’d grown soft - with her, with Malik, with Bolder - left himself vulnerable. Cutting her off had been the only solution he could come up with when he’d turned his back on her nearly a year ago.
He hadn’t even been able to hurt her without invoking aid. What a fool he’d been. He should have just killed her then. He knows that now. She certainly hadn’t had any qualms about dropping him down to break across the mountainside.
Despite the way her taunting echoes that of their last conversation - when she’d called him useless, a disappointment, mocking his choice not to fight her - there remains that suspicious brightness in her eyes. The fullness of her laugh. This is not the white rage Mazikeen that even a magician cannot control. This is something different in a way that is beyond the dream.
Perhaps it is better this way, he thinks. There is less of a chance for him to slip up with this unfamiliar Mazikeen, the one who meets his gaze with clear orange eyes that he’s not seen in years. He will be able to kill her, he knows, and the anticipation races through his body, manifesting in the ever more rapid flicker of lightning across his skin.
He is ready for her attack. Her claws dig into the wide expanse of his navy chest, knocking him back. He sinks his teeth into her right foreleg as he feels the back of his hips crack against the edge of the cliff. And then the pair of them are spinning toward the jagged rocks below.
The rocky crags become choppy waves as they land, the impact knocking the wind from him, and then the water becomes a field of endless snow with crisp air to inhale when the ability returns to them. Each change comes with a flash of lightning, his influence on the world her dreaming mind creates. As soon as he can turn to face her he does, whipping the blade-edged tail behind him in anticipation of her attack.
Mazikeen is not enjoying their fight, but he is.
It has been a very long time since he’s made Mazikeen do anything she didn’t want to. He’d forgotten how good it felt.
He darts forward, tail slicing toward her left side while he attempts to close his teeth around the same foreleg he'd held a moment earlier.
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
| She has changed so much and it can all be summed up in one desire - she does not want to die. She had long assumed that she would. That killing Gale would be her final act and that was fine, it would have been a worthy way to meet her end if she had succeeded in that one task.
But now Mazikeen wants to live. She no longer feels the same curiosity to see if there is a limit to how many times she can die and come back. For almost a year she’s managed to not replace the injuries that had marked her with grey scars that nearly overtook the white and black of her coat. It feels good to live, to have the pieces of her family she had not managed to shatter completely.
She wants a long life with those she loves.
And this fact changes her tactic when fighting - there is less carelessness than there has been before.
Less, not none. Because she does put herself in a position where she is tumbling off of the cliff with Gale, his teeth sunk into her foreleg as she tries to sink her claws into any part of his skin she can reach as they spin. The rocks that she expects become water, and she fears sinking for only a moment before it changes once again into a field of snow.
When Gale darts forwards, she alters her shift - becoming a wyvern instead of a dragon so that there is no foreleg there for him to grasp as it becomes part of the limbs creating a pair of great wings. The membrane of the left is sliced by the end of his knife-tail while her right wing swings in an attempt to slam into his head or neck before he can pull back from trying to bite at the foreleg that no longer exists.
Shifting the injury is painful and her teeth grit as she keeps her footing on the white snow, a snarl escaping her through them. Though threats and thoughts churn in her mind she does not speak any of them out loud. She does not tell him that though she is not enjoying this, she looks forward to the peace she likes to think she will feel once he is finally dead.
Instead of speaking, she is quick to strike in retaliation. Her jaws open as her wyvern neck moves like a viper's, trying to snag her teeth on his neck and tear into it.
m a z i k e e n . |
@ Gale
Gale
started under neon lights, then it all got dark
i only know how to go too far
He feels the leather of her wing give beneath his bladed tail and pulls back, slashing rapidly as he does lest the limb become tangled in the pierced dragon-now-wyvern’s wing. He has no time to realize that there’d been no unconscious shifting of his shape to mimic her own, because she is striking him across the face with her right wing. He feels teeth break and spits them out, knowing that by the time they fall to the snow below that they will be whole again in his jaw.
His healing now works in the dream world, it seems.
When she strikes at him like an over-sized snake, Gale ducks to the left, but her sharp teeth meet at his shoulder. The dragon scales are not enough to protection to keep him from snarling in pain at the bite, even as the wound mends itself with pale gold scales.
She is fighting differently, he realizes, in a way that mirrors the way she’d recoiled from his question of enjoyment. He could keep ripping at her, he knows, continue to score her skin with wounds that will not kill her quickly.
But why rush things?
There are other ways to make her suffer, and he is eager to exploit the ability to enjoy hurting Mazikeen again.
“I wish you hadn’t kept me from the angels so long. Killing Ryatah was better than I expected.” As he says the words, he is pleased to feel no uncomfortable twisting in his chest. Perhaps Ciri is suffering somewhere, or perhaps the agony is entirely contained within the heart he’d torn out and locked away for this very reason.
He doesn’t attack again, waiting instead to see how she reacts. How changed is she, he wonders, and what will it take to restore her to something he is certain he knows how to kill? Will she cry? Will she launch herself at him with renewed rage? He hopes the latter, and licks his bloody lips in anticipation.
Perhaps he should dream more often, especially if they all turn out this pleasant.
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
| She doesn’t enjoy the fighting, in being closer to him in any way, but Mazikeen thinks she’d prefer a clash of teeth and claws to having to hear him speak. His voice grates on her mind even before the reality of what he’s saying sinks in and she feels her stomach twist painfully. Mazikeen doesn’t want to let him see her cry but there is very little she can do to stop the tears that rise up. She had suspected but the confirmation has teeth that bite into her heeart, reminding her of the fog of sadness that had descended on Hyaline afterwards, that still clung to the mountains. She thinks of Selaphiel’s devastation and of the way she had felt Firion’s sobs reverberate through her body as she had held him.
And of course she thinks of how Ryatah had healed her twice, bringing her back from that strange death she suffered when she could not die from her wounds but could not heal them either.
She knows he is saying it to get under her skin and she hates that it works. The wyvern shape falls away and she’s a horse-sized, bristling wolf instead. The glowing markings on her skin return, burning brighter than they could in real life. They dance with a white-hot flame even paler than her fur and her eyes change to match it. It illuminates the blood on her foreleg and smeared across her coat but her attention is focused on him.
“That was a mistake.” Mazikeen is grateful her voice doesn’t shake, that it is only steel and certainty even though there are still tears. She isn’t sure the Curse is capable of regret but if he is, she wants to make this something he knows is a mistake before she finally kills him.
When she moves it is not to lunge forward like parts of her shout to do. She moves to the side, a prowling walk that, if left uninterrupted, would allow her to circle him as he had her. Mazikeen is brimming with rage and pain and wants nothing more than to tear Gale apart but she keeps a hold on her self-control a little longer, not wanting to give him anything he might actually want.
m a z i k e e n . |
@ Gale
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