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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


    [open quest]  violence for violence is the rule of beasts; ROUND II
    #1


    lord, I fashion dark gods too;


    One by one, they come. A boy like a storm, a sea-thing of a girl, a gold mare old enough that he would be surprised if their paths had not crossed before. The leader of a one of the lesser lands (they’re all lesser, in his eyes), a chocolate mare, his own bug-strange daughter. A golden lord, then another child of his (with a more memorable dam, and for a moment he looks at her, hungry). A mare like a sunset, and finally, a young boy with a crescent moon. He knows none of them, at least not well. It is often easier when it’s stranger doing your bidding.
    He knows the mountain fought them. Some of them wear the physical scars of it, some wear it in their eyes. He wonders if they regret it, coming to him.

    “Once, the mountain took from us,” he says, looking at him, “some of you may remember it personally, or may just know the tales. Beqanna took it upon herself to strip her own children of their magic, to collapse the beloved kingdoms, to hoard the magic back in herself.”
    He isn’t sure how many were present, or how many generations ago that event was. Time is so strange for gods. He mostly just remembers that sick feeling, his own magic there but malfunctioning, a rare, disgusting taste of helplessness.
    “And though Beqanna restored the magic, she left this mountain, this place where wishes are granted, where magic must surely run amok, well…”
    He pauses, looks at the ground between himself and those who answered his call. He presses, gently. An indent appears on the earth, deepens a few feet, wide enough for them all to stand in. The mountain shudders beneath them. Not much. Just a tremor. A sigh, almost.
    “I’ve always wondered what’s at the core of it,” he says, “I imagine it’s quite wonderful. All that magic!”
    He steps back from the edge of the hole he has started for them. He was kind, to begin it like this. But the dark god himself will dig no further – that’s what they are for.
    “You are the chosen few,” he says, “who get to find out. Dig your way to the heart of the mountain, see what kind of magic lies there. I’m sure you’ll be rewarded handsomely.”
    He can almost taste the raw magic on his tongue. It has been a while since he feasted.
    “Whatever way you can,” he finishes, “just dig, and don’t stop until I say so.”

    OOC:
    - Carnage started a hole on the top of the mountain, and wants you to keep on digging.  Describe your horse entering the hole and figuring out how to dig. You can do this however you want – use traits, use companions, eat the dirt, whatever. You can also ask Carnage for a temporary trait to assist you (transform into a badger, shovel hooves, whatever) and he’ll almost certainly grant it (just message me on Discord).
    - End with your character breaking through and falling. Into what? Well, that’s the next round. Just falling.
    - Suggested due date is noon (12 PM CST) on Saturday, November 20th. However, if the third round of the quest isn’t up yet, you’re good to reply to this one until it is – just saying the third round won’t be posted until sometime after 12 PM on Saturday. If that is confusing, please let me know on Discord. Disclaimer: I am drinking right now.
    - Feel free to message me on Discord with any questions!

    c a r n a g e

    Reply
    #2
    Her breathing is shallow and challenged; her limbs quake with small (now) tremors of exhaustion; she thinks sleep would be good, curative even. Now is not the time though —

    His presence is too commanding, and she cannot take her eyes off him.

    He looks over each one of them with a god’s disdain; perhaps sizing them up for the task at hand. Then he speaks of the Mountain, of the taking and hoarding of magic, of the land rebelling against its denizens like a hurt child. She can understand that, little more than a child herself. But he continues, and she rests the full weight of her attention on him again.

    The Dark God is dramatic in his tale; more so, in his flash of simple but strong power as he pushes a hoof into the earth. The Mountain doesn’t like it, she can feel it in the strange hush of the air and the way the earth shudders beneath her. But it reacts to the Dark God no further, gives no more push back than that first tremor and stills. She tilts her head towards the hole, considering it as a thought pops into her brain —

    Mountains and gods, can it know what is to pass, therefore it brooked no challenge with him doing this?

    His voice draws her back in, talking of wonder and magic. It might be nice to know if magic does indeed lie at the center of the earth… if the Mountain’s heart is rife with it. She doesn’t even care about the rewards for doing so, the sheer prospect of finding out is enticement enough. Maybe even a small part of her seeks to please this errant unknown half of her parentage.

    The Dark God says to dig and not stop until he says so. Her ears fall flat at his command but it is a gutless response, she knows she won’t balk or fight back. Thorax doesn’t wait to see what the others will do; she leaps into the hole and focuses on the dirt. Pawing at it only gets her so far. She realizes that will be slow going and far more taxing to paw first with one hoof than the next. It is a slight start, as she summons a surge of power and pushes out an elemental call to arms.

    Her type of manipulation might be pheromonal in a sense; for the three types of insects she has summoned come to her in swarms and droves. From queens to lowliest workers, they answer her and form around her. They even crawl up her legs and alight upon various perches of ear, hip, and wither. It looks as if the ants, cicada killers, and mole crickets have consumed her until there is barely an inch  of Thorax left visible.

    She talks to them as if they are but another horse standing in front of her: “I need you to dig. I’ll help, but you must do most of the work.” Of course they make no protest - they cannot go against her command, nor would they try. But all three are diggers and burrows for one reason or another. Each assumes a position in front and to either side of her, gracious enough to still allow her room to paw at the earth too.

    It is slow going for the ants, exhausting them faster than the other two insect kinds but more ants simply take their place. Perhaps after this, Beqanna will never see an ant again for she’ll have killed them all off during this one task. But ants are hardier than that, than even she gives them credit for. She cares for them on some level but there is a task at hand that is greater, that requires their sacrifice before her own.

    The ants dig on.
    She digs beside them. Her cloven hooves sometimes seem advantageous and other times, not so much. Progress is slow, but how can she truly tell when time seems suspended or slowed up here? Thorax isn’t sure if that is his doing or the Mountain’s and supposes that it makes no difference. She refocuses on the task,  ever once looking away except to behold the cicada killers.

    They are her second line of digging defense and their colors make her think of yellow jackets and hornets. But these are wasps, and the threat of their sting doesn’t scare her - they would never touch her like that, unless she told them to. But she’ll use them for her own purposes, nefarious or not, and she bids them to dig. They tunnel and burrow quicker and bigger than the ants do. Dirt begins to pile up around her as her section of the hole widens inch by precious inch.

    She begins to move dirt by the mouthful, alternating between that and pawing. The insects do most of the work for her so that she is able to stand there and supervise, and conserve her strength. It takes little to manipulate their wills to hers. Such small flickerings of insectile self that she has bent to her command, and she’ll use them up long before she uses herself up.

    Husks of wasp-corpse and ants mirror and mock the piles of dirt their brethren move. If she feels remorse at the loss of hundreds and thousands of bug lives, it is scant in comparison to the thrill of the hole widening to the size of her head. She smiles, and there is an edge to it that is knife-like and sharp. More cicada killers move in, as do the ants. The digging goes on.

    Ants dig.
    Cicada killers dig.
    Thorax digs.

    It is exhausting. Her constant manipulation of the bugs begins to take a toll on her, as much as her own digging by cloven hoof and mouth does. She tires, but refuses to give up. Is relentless. She’ll not yield until she breaks the earth’s crust. A thin trickle of blood spirals down and out of her left nostril. She ignores it, it tells only of the toll on her psyche and flesh but she’ll go on - it isn’t in her to give up.

    The mole crickets stir to action at last. Gryllotalpa brachyptera. She thinks fondly of them, murmuring their scientific name to herself. It sounds a little like magic, like an incantation and the mole crickets scuttle forward to add to the digging action. The space enlarges; can fit more than just her head on there now.

    All the insects know that she alone, out of them all, must fit through so burrow and scratch and crawl they do. Until the hole takes shape into a strange tunnel that accommodates her shoulders now if she wiggles just a little. It’s tight but promising. The trickle of blood outside her nostril widens too. No guts, no glory, she reminds herself. Maybe she’ll garner a fraction of his attention for this!

    Thorax takes pride in her bugs’ work and feels a small thrill of satisfaction in knowing that she is succeeding in this endeavor. The ants and cicada killers renew their efforts too. The mole crickets blaze on. More insects crawl out of the woodwork to assist: solitary bees and white grubs. She favors the grubs the most because they naturally attract animals that dig after them like moles, skunks, and birds.

    Thorax cannot summon or manipulate the latter, but they come drawn to the free meal she provides them as her grubs burrow deep and these animals seek them. Funny how they’ll feast too, as she feasts off the exploitation and knows that this is merely the circle of life and she has but to stand back and look on. The insects dig and die, others come to dig after them, drawn by their squirming attractiveness and she smiles.

    Her hole grows, she can inch and wiggle through it. Enough to chip at a section of hardened soil that has a peculiar flavor to it. Is this magic then? Perhaps, and she withdraws to allow one last insectile advance and then —

    Dirt crumbles, the tunnel quakes, and Thorax tumbles through a break in the hole. She’s falling and it simply feels like forever. Or dying, as twin rivers of blood carve their way down from her nostrils and blood-drops and mare tumble away, spinning like a leaf loosed from an autumn tree.

    Thorax was free-falling.

    (sorry, did you say write a novel? Lmfao)
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    #3

    i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high

    It is easy to see why they whisper of this dark god. Even without his gifts of insight, Reave would be able to see it. He has found a great deal of chaotic power in the world, but it is paltry in comparison to what stands before him now. And for a moment (just a single breath), he wonders if he has made a mistake.

    But isn’t life made up of mistakes? He would not turn back now.

    It is not a large group that assembles. Sharp blue eyes rake over Elliana’s familiar form when she crests the mountainous path, something almost bestial in that avid glance of his. He grins at her, unable to prevent himself. It seems only natural that they would find one another yet again as they stand on the precipice of such dangerous discovery.

    With that impish grin on his mobile lips, he slips easily alongside her, eyes glittering behind the glow of his mask. “Are you lost, little bird?”

    He nearly laughs when he turns to see the familiar moon-marked face of his nephew joining them. He cannot imagine his brother would be thrilled to learn of his presence here, though Reave would certainly not be the one to tell him of it. It might have been amusing to call a familiar greeting to Bolder simply to watch the confusion light his features, but they hardly have time for that now.

    As Carnage begins on a story, Reave’s gaze jumps to him, considering his words with an almost idle demeanor. In truth, his thoughts are anything but idle. He knows the story, of course, though he imagines there are those who do not. The years have been long and memory is such a fickle thing.

    As the ground sags before them, buckling beneath a force far beyond his own, his bright eyes flick only briefly to the shifting earth. The dark god expresses his curiosity plainly, but the bone-clad stallion cannot help but wonder if there is something else behind it. A hunger more insidious than a simple desire for discovery.

    Certainly Reave’s own motives are not nearly so pure, though it is not the handsome reward being offered that inspires him. His desires cannot so easily be sated by such recompense.

    When Carnage tells them to dig, Reave hesitates for a heartbeat before stepping forward to survey the depression. His expression is curiously blank as he considers his options. Digging is not something he had anticipated doing - an endeavor for which he is uniquely unsuited - when he had embarked on this adventure.

    It is only after a few moments of quiet contemplation that Reave turns from the indentation to find Carnage. He should be afraid, given all he knows of this powerful being, yet he is not. Cautious perhaps, but foolishly unafraid. Perhaps later he will learn to regret that.

    “If I am to dig for you, maybe you would be willing to help me become… better suited to the task,” he begins, a faint grin flashing across his mouth. “My grandmother was able to destroy things with a thought, so the ability must be in my blood.” Tilting his head, Reave speaks carefully as he makes his request. “Can you grant me access to it?”

    There is silence for a long moment before the dark god simply says, “No.” Reave releases a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding as disappointment washes through him. Before he can turn away to reconsider the problem however, Carnage continues. “But since you asked so prettily I will grant you something… similar.”

    The gleam in the powerful stallion’s eye should have warned Reave it would not be a gift without strings, but Reave feels only a surge of satisfaction. He can feel the tingle of power along his skin, and when it settles, he murmurs his thanks before turning to consider the shallow depression where he must dig.

    Uncertain precisely what he has been granted, Reave focuses on an isolated stone as he reaches for the new energy bubbling inside him. With an insidiously hungry whisper, darkness erupts from him, swarming the stone and all that surrounds it with ravenous, destructive shadows. Startled, Reave swiftly pulls back, clumsily yanking the shadows back to him. They are reluctant, so eager for the feast that it requires effort on his part to rein them back in.

    When they are gone, the stone is no more, the earth surrounding it bare and pitted as though eaten away by acid. Despite his alarm when the shadows had resisted him, Reave allows a smile to grow.

    Shifting restlessly, Reave gives them freedom once more. They froth forth, those hungry shadows, consuming greedily as they surge around him. He flinches when one curls across his cannon bone, sloughing skin away until he jerks sharply on that reticent darkness. Blood seeps down his leg, followed by pain as his nerves belatedly recognize the injury. Reave ignores it, instead focusing all of his energy on controlling the riotous flow of shadow, careful to keep it from touching him again.

    His smile now a grimace, Reave feels weariness stealing over him. The effort to control something that so desperately does not wish to be controlled saps his strength far more than he would wish. Fortunately for him, their ravenous appetite swiftly draws them deeper and deeper into the earth despite the way they seethe at the small space Reave has allowed them.

    He’s not certain how long they have been burrowing into the earth, but when he feels a shifting beneath him, Reave stills. He hastily pulls the devouring darkness back, using a great deal of his waning strength to bottle them once more. Another wrenching of the ground beneath his feet sends him scrambling backwards, but it is far too late for him to save himself.

    With a groan, dirt and stone gives way, sending Reave tumbling headlong into a yawning abyss.

    reave

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    #4
    She is too young to have been there when the world caved in on itself, too young to have seen it rebuilt or the magic stripped and hidden away. She isn’t even sure she’s heard the stories of older lands, these beloved kingdoms he speaks of, and she is sure no one has ever spoken to her of a time when magic was harvested like a tithe to a thing no one knew how to believe in anymore. But Alleria doesn’t blame anyone for their silence, she is sure she would not want to speak of such a violation either - is sure because she knows what that fear is like, because hers is a gift that can be taken from her.

    He speaks, and she knows she should be listening more carefully, hopes that somewhere in the back of her mind she is cataloging each word to pull forward again once this feeling has passed. But she is struck by the way the mountain bends beneath him, by the sudden magnitude of who he is. Until this moment he had occupied the role of absent father in her awareness, but now she can feel the shift from father to God. From man to entity, and there is something inside her chest that fractures at the way this realization casts her in such relative insignificance. She looks at the ground between them, at the place where the earth buckled beneath the weight of someone she had never truly fathomed until now, and she is sure there would be an identical impression on the surface of her pale chest if she would only look down.

    She does not.

    Those with abilities to do so descend into the fissure to begin their work, though, like her, a few remain above with faces transformed by thought and the shadow of uncertainty they mask so reflexively. Dig, he says, and yet she knows that she is not made for such a thing. There is a girl in the hole already, and with some amount of polite revulsion Alleria watches the bugs pulled to the gravity of her until the air is filled with a sound Alleria is sure she will never unhear. A scratching, a buzzing, a chittering of odd obedience that makes her skin crawl. Even so, this gift is something convenient now and Alleria feels a pang of jealously that she is so much less suited for her fathers task.

    There is someone that goes to the Dark God before Alleria has decided what it is she wants to do, and she watches with some amount of disguised curiosity as something passes between the pair and then the bone armored chestnut is descending as well. She frowns, her mouth a hard line and her eyes a shade of borrowed steel from the edge of a blade. Seals are not meant for digging, and even if the selkie did have her aquatic form it would do no good here. But, and her mind is a thing unraveling, the silk of a web unbuilt and made once more into a solitary strand, Alleria has seen the way the ocean erodes and excavates, the hollow places beneath the waves that hide predators too strong to face. She has seen the winding smoothness of underwater mountain ranges worn away like dust beneath the strength of a thing she knows intimately well.

    Water, of course.

    There is something inside her poised to break when she finally comes to stand before this man who is both her father and no more a father than the moon is to stars that exist only in the perpetuity of distant silver flecks. She is of him, but she thinks that she is not his, not something he would claim because in all these years he hadn’t. “If you are what mom always said,” described as a God in every way but with the word itself, “then you already know that I am worth knowing, dad.” She says, claiming him in the way he had not because pride is a twin to the jealousy beneath her skin and both tangle like twin flames inside a chest not made to burn. “But I’ll prove it to you anyway.” There is no feverish desperation, no defiance in the way she lifts a face that is too pale and too delicate and too much like the angel from whence she came. There is only a shade of quiet certainty that reaches no more than skin deep, and she doesn’t care that he’ll see that too. “Make me the thing I know best, please.”

    Which is how it comes to be that she reaches the belly of the pit as a pool of cool, glittering water that is both Alleria and not Alleria. She can feel the change almost immediately, and there is a strange distancing from the pain that hides away inside her chest and makes it hard to miss that body of flesh and bone, miss the burdens that bind her to that other skin. As water she knows only the company of herself, only the grooves of the ground beneath her and the manner in which the dirt gives way when she burrows against it. It is not work, exactly, but there is something dangerous in the way it sets her mind adrift, in the way as moments pass she forgets that she is Alleria and she is here for a purpose. It would be nice to drift, to be a tide that wanders without intent, to be the waves that lap against warm, white sands. To be never alone in the way that water is always pressed against water.

    The more she tries to focus, the more pieces of her drift, but she is nothing if not stubborn, and this need to prove herself (to herself? to him?) is a fuel that leaves her smoldering. So she, a cord of water like a rope made of glass, writhes and spirals and erodes away at a mountain that does not want to share itself and yet, she thinks, aches to be breached. She had felt the way it sighed when Carnage carved it.

    There are times when water meets stone and stone snaps the fine tendrils of her patience until she finds new edges to burrow against, new seams to rend. But she is the momentum of a current now, the pull of a tide and everything is coaxing her deeper, everything dragging her down.

    But she has spent her whole life buried in the dark places beneath the surface, and she is not afraid.

    She digs and she digs, like a worm burrowing deeper until there is hardly any piece of her left. Until she is rivers and oceans and delicate streams, until she is puddles and rain and the tears that fall down her mother’s cheeks - and the pain of that makes her caustic, makes her violent in her winding and her churning until suddenly, suddenly, there is nothing beneath her but a chasm of dark and she is torn from the oblivion hivemind of water and thrown back into the cognizance of a body that nearly breaks her heart in half.

    alleria

    pull me back to shore, i'll never reach my place

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    #5
    The trickles of blood have stopped, each artery and vein sewn back together by that magic makes him ageless and untiring, and the stains left behind are hidden by the darkness of his skin. The whine in his ears subsides in Carnage's presence, and it's impossible to say if that is because of him or if it is Wherewolf's own magic healing the damage done to him by the Mountain, but he listens to the Dark God speak with his mother's scowl etched onto his lips. What Wherewolf knows of Beqanna's past is a patchwork, he might learn more by listening to those who were there, but he does not care much about what the past holds except for where it touches him directly. No matter how many of his sire's people may have struggled in the margins of Carnage's tale, he finds little interest and less sympathy. They weren't him, and so he has nothing in his heart for them.

    The earth gives way beneath the god's feet and Wherewolf, who has never been very good at following directions, does not dig but watches the red-eyed magician darkly even as the others make their own progress, widening the indentation he created into a gaping maw. Some, Reave, others he doesn't know, make requests and gain devilish boons, but it is not in his own nature to ask for things any more than it is to follow directions, and so he makes a few paltry scrapes but quickly decides against working any harder than he needs. Instead, he sets to deepening the holes that others have already made. Not him, exactly, but six duplicates each full of that healing magic to heal the hooves worn to nubs and the skin torn and the muscles aching from their impossible task. The dappled Lord stands back to watch their progress, riding high on the seconds and minutes that tick by and the Mortality that creeps over him like chill fingers.

    Stone and bone and ancient magic should not bend to them so easily, yet it does and the Duplicates are swallowed by the wide rictus, winking out of existence the instant the magic that forms its bones meets the magic in that darkness. Not all yet, but several others who answered the Call have already fallen into this nameless void, but he does not hear them or see them. There is no sound of screaming, nor the sound of bodies breaking on rocks far below (and Wherewolf is intimately familiar with the sound of a body breaking on stone, though perhaps it sounds different on someone else.)

    He lingers at the edge of the precipice, surefooted and confident, even as the broken earth shudders under his feet. He is not a child of Nerine for nothing, playing mountain goat games upon the cliffs. Sheer edges hold no fear for him. The breath of that hollow vein into the Mountain's Heart feels like falling even though his hooves are still planted on the bucking ground and lures him in.

    What would happen if you jumped?

    The whisper in the back of his mind sounds like him, and perhaps it is. It would hardly be the first time it led him here, scowling at cliff-edges and so he does what he should not, that scowl melting into a smirk, and stamps a hoof against the cracked and shivering earth. The ledge he stands on crumbles beneath him and he falls, weightless, into the Nothing and the pressure of the Fairies' invisible well.
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    #6
    The crowd at the top of the mountain is large enough that it makes Tiasa uncomfortable and she keeps not-so-subtly shifting her position to stay away from them. It is difficult to divide her attention this way and maybe that’s why she’s surprised when she finds out that one of the stallions that had been here when she arrived is the one who had called them here. Her pink and turquoise eyes continue to flick over the others as she half-listens to the history lesson, thinking that if this is why they were called up here (for a lecture) it’s been a lot of stress for nothing.

    The topic shifts - thankfully - and enough of Tiasa’s curiosity is captured that she no longer considers just turning around and walking away. Or, at least, she doesn’t consider that until it becomes obvious that they’re expected to dig. A disgusted look passes across her silver face and she glances around at the strange and unique ways everyone is choosing to follow this direction.

    For a brief, wild moment Tiasa considers her ability to seduce either the one who had brought them all here or one of the others to do the work for her. But the things that such a task required (such as even a low-level enthusiasm for interactions of any kind) were not things that she had so she abandons this fantasy and with an exaggerated sigh, she enters the hole and shifts.

    It doesn’t occur to her to paw at the stones with her hooves and instead, she lowers to the ground and grows a great finned tail. It is slightly uncomfortable to wear this shape out of the water but this whole situation is uncomfortable so she barely notices.

    Using the muscles and the bulk of her tail, Tiasa does not so much as dig as she does move the stones and earth from one spot to another, pushing it out of the way.

    The entire time she’s frowning, glancing around her and not really paying attention. This is a mountain, after all, and it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll ever dig deep enough to get anywhere.

    She’s just in the middle of trying to figure out if she’s the prettiest one in this group when she falls. Her tail goes first - one swipe across the ground too many and suddenly there isn’t any more ground left. It’s almost like slipping off the edge of rocks into water except her heart lunges right up her throat because there is very clearly nothing beneath her. Tiasa’s eyes grow wide and wild and her hooves instinctively try to scramble for purchase but it’s no use - she cannot fight the gravity that has a hold of her and in another second she is twisting and tumbling downwards.
    TIASA
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    #7
    T U M U L T
    Others eventually come, none of whom he recognizes. He has kept to himself mostly since arriving here, but he is admittedly a little surprised at how many show up at the top of this strange mountain for a reason that is still unknown to them. He does not know who the man is that has called them—does not realize he is more god than man, though he cannot deny the unnamable energy that seems to emanate from him. Everyone around him listens in rapt attention to what is being said, but the more he hears, the more skeptical he becomes.

    He knew little of magic—real magic, and not just the lesser things that make up his wings and let him conjure small storms—and the unknown made him uneasy, but he also harbors a stubborn streak that will not allow him to leave. Besides, all this talk of magic and the mountain had, at the very least, stoked his curiosity. This land, the longer he stayed, continued to unearth more mysteries than he could comprehend, and this seemed as good a chance as any to witness the revealing of one firsthand.

    He did not understand why they were digging, but he was interested enough to at least try.

    Some of them go to the gray stallion, asking for assistance, while others use the gifts they already possess. He eyes those that asked the man for help a little suspiciously, since truly this entire ordeal seemed off, and he wasn’t about to sign himself away on an irreversible deal. Instead he moves over to the other side of a hole another had started, and steadily he begins to paw at the earth. Dirt and stone shift and move beneath the force of his hoof, and he alternates between one front leg and then the other, but it does not take long for him to realize this is clearly a Sisyphean task. His shoulders ache and each hoof is now worn into a strange shape, and the idea that they could dig to the bottom of anything seemed ludicrous.

    He stops, looking up at the man that watches them through a tangle of forelock that clings to his sweat-soaked face.

    He had watched him make that indent in the earth with a mere press of his hoof.
    He could have likely completed this task without any of them, without any effort at all, and so what was the point in having them all here toiling away, other than he simply liked to watch others do his bidding?

    His eyes lift to the skies above, and he sets his jaw in determination.

    The clouds darken and churn, matching the stormy expression that brews on his face. Even though he has by no means mastered this particular skill, he was not going to manually dig another inch without having tried. And so he summons a storm,  knowing full well that once it starts it will take on a life of its own and be out of his hands, but he shapes the beginning of it in such a way that he hopes it will spin itself into a tornado. It might not make landfall in the exact hole he had been working on, but at this point it could take them all out and he can’t really say he would care.

    Of course, as he had worried, it does not go as he had planned.

    A thunderstorm does indeed begin to form, but no tornado springs from the base of it. The thunder rumbles, rolling across the sky like a boulder. He watches with intense focus, willing for the storm to craft itself into what he needs, and he is so fixed on the sky that he does not notice as the others begin to plummet through the bottom of the holes as they reach them. Lightning begins to flash, followed by another clap of thunder after a brief pause. He notices though how that stretch of time between lightning and thunder starts to shorten, decreasing until his skin prickles in apprehension, at the realization of what he has just done.

    The next lightning strike is different from the rest, nearly apocalyptic in nature as it careens from the sky and straight to the earth below, narrowly missing the storm-cloud stallion that stood there foolishly watching. Instead it buries itself into the hole he still stands perilously close to, burrowing through the bottom of the earth, and when all the dirt around the edge collapses and caves into its center it sucks him down with it.

    It happens so fast he does not have a chance to scream, and he realizes then why none of the rest had screamed either.
    CAN YOU TELL ME, WILL I BREAK OR WILL I BEND?
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    #8
    -

    (She had thought herself indestructible.
    But there’s blood sliding hot-slick down the back of her throat.
    Even now, even in this rarified air.
    Perhaps this was her first mistake,
    thinking nothing could touch her so long as she was made of gold.)

    She goes on swallowing great gasps of air, watching.
    There is nothing familiar in any of them, those who have come just as she has come.
    She can see nothing that binds them.
    Nothing that brands them as the chosen few.

    (But she must consider the possibility that there is nothing exceptional about any of them.
    Perhaps they are merely the only souls in Beqanna foolish enough to heed the call.
    She among them, stupid in her blind willingness to bend to the will of others.)

    Still, the blood drips from her nose. 
    Down into her belly, down onto the Mountain.
    But no craggy rocks spring to life now.
    Nothing bites at her ankles, nothing pulls.

    She is sick with all the air, head swimming, when the God finally speaks.
    (Certainly their paths have crossed before.
    But there are so many things that she does not remember.
    Memories disassembled and spirited away by death and then life and then death.)

    And she must have been dead when it happened.
    When the Mountain took so much from Beqanna.
    Dead or disinterested, wayward and lost to things that mattered.
    (She had never called any place home, as far as she can remember.
    Maybe she would have delighted in the ruin of their beloved lands.
    She had been a cruel thing once, Bible.
    But the cruelty has left her now, leaving her only slightly off-balance. Weird.)

    But the dark god seems to have taken these things personally.
    Why else would he have called them here?
    Why else would he want them to try to excavate whatever is at the Mountain’s center?

    There is an odd thrumming in her ears as she continues to struggle to catch her breath.
    (Not so indestructible now, are you?)
    She swallows her blood until her belly is full of it, until it stops altogether.

    Dig.
    Dig and don’t stop until I say so.

    She is nothing extraordinary, Bible.
    She cannot call upon the insects to do her bidding.
    She cannot grow herself a tail to use instead.
    And she cannot ask for help.
    (It is not pride that stops her but rather something else.
    Something darker.)

    She watches only briefly while the others set to work.
    Watches while a few of the others ask their God for help.
    (Does she think it a weakness?
    Perhaps.)

    Once she has caught her breath, she descends into the hole.
    Slipping down the slope into the crater.
    She goes because she has not been given a choice.
    The dark god had asked them to fight their way up the mountain and she had.
    Now the dark god has told them to dig and she will.

    Even though the vision is still soft at the edges.
    She will dig until it kills her if she has to.
    (She has died far worse deaths than this.)

    She digs the only way she knows how.
    With her own feet.
    With her nose.
    She lies down and uses her shoulder, kicking off the side of the crater to push dirt out of the way.
    She labors just as the rest of them labor, her sides heaving with the effort.
    She labors until stars erupt in front of her eyes and she thinks she might faint.

    She digs and she digs and does not stop because this is what she was told to do.
    And perhaps there is some advantage to being made of gold.
    Because the dirt and the rocks do not mar her flesh.
    She is impenetrable.
    (Though fatigue does set in.
    Though she does struggle to catch her breath again.)

    But she digs on.
    Using her hooves and her head and her shoulders.
    Even if she looks foolish.
    They are each so singularly focused on the task at hand that it doesn’t matter.

    There is a faint quake that shudders up her limbs as she nudges her nose through the dirt.
    But she does not pause to consider what it might be.
    The Mountain had been displeased by their journeys, she knows.
    Perhaps it is also displeased that they are carving holes in it, too.

    (But it is not that at all.
    The quake is the earth falling away beneath them.
    All that separates them from the center of the Mountain is a thin layer of dirt.
    And they dig on. Dig on, dig on, dig on, until.)

    Until the ground disappears from beneath them.
    And she tumbles, tumbles, tumbles through the darkness.
    She opens her mouth to cry out in surprise.
    But her vision goes black and, as she plummets, she goes limp.

    ever since i heard the howlin' wind
    i didn't need to go where a bible went
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    #9


    Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.


    Her restlessness on this mountain was an animal; a beast that tore through every chain she tried to ensnare it with, only for her nervousness to burst forth and break through regardless. She comes to stand with sharp movements and strained grace. Her impatience was mailable, and thinning; like a lake that had not completely frozen over, and she was desperately trying to balance herself over the icy surface. What brought her here? Why was she one of the ones called?

    The wind rushes in and the humid curls of her hair move with it. And when she tosses her head, like wolf just waking up, sharp needles of feeling make her quiver as the knots pull and snag.

    She tells herself that's why she's trembling like a leaf-- the pain and nothing else.

    Are you lost little bird?

    It is his voice that snaps her out of whatever hunger had settled in her stomach and was slowing encasing her golden, shadowed skin. Reave. If he’s fire, and flint, and things-to-quick-burn, she’s the smoke and shadows rising up in them. She’s the jasmine, and cedar, and petals curling up into prophecy and magic. She’s everything that has ever begged and grew for the sole purpose of smoldering, and smoking, and drifting back into the night in motes of ash. “Not at all,” she tells him. If she notices the way her own voice trembles or her heart stutters, it doesn’t show. Even when her heart is leaping into her throat like it can’t bear to be trapped within her ribs any longer she is swallowing it back down, like she doesn’t know what it’s like to be any less fierce than a she-wolf fighting for the right to live.

    This is when she turns to see the face of the moon-marked soul-walker and she—she just....breathes.

    The air taste like stardust, ash and salt.

    “Oh.” The word comes out like a sigh, both heavy and confused and dark enough to drown out every star in the sky.

    She turns blue eyes away and to the one who called them as he begins to speak. It takes her a moment to figure out what is it that makes her shiver while she watches him. Her heart trembles like a caught butterfly, frantic and tender winged. Each of her bones feels full of snow and winter, instead of blood, runs through her veins. There is a storm inside her. She doesn’t know the story he speaks of, but she can see flashes of it, here on the soil. There is the roar of ages in her ears, the steady thrum of tired blood. There could have been horror here, profane as any rabid and desperate meeting of monsters. It is then she thinks, she has never paused as often as she should to wonder at the secrets of the earth.

    All that magic.

    She feels her mother’s heart shaking, wherever she may be.

    Maybe if her head was clearer, maybe if there were not two boys here that—, maybe if she were not so knew, she would have backed out there and then. Though somehow, she does not think he would allow that even if she had thought of it.

    The others go to work and Elliana stands there and feels a rush of heat at how foolish she may look. What is she capable of? She has no brawn, no powers to control the way the earth moves, cannot transform herself into anything useful to burrow her way through the dirt and soil. She thinks of her mother, and when she had been little ‘Ask for what you want, but do so politely.’ She had teased the daughter who had begged for an apple. “Can you show me where to go, please?” She asks, and images appear before her, of quakes, and faults and plates that have shifted. She hits in just the right spot and the earth gives way, only slightly but enough to fuel her confidence.

    She continues the pattern, asking and receiving (Elliana is reminded of Denocte’s mountains and maybe this is enough comfort to keep her pushing forward.) Dirt piles onto her coat, covering the long, white foreleg that reaches forwards, hitting, and thrashing against the tunnel she has created. Mud streaks her cheeks. And she feels dirty, and savage, and anything but pretty. But there is another thought that raises, as she pushes through the soil. Elliana does not think she wants to be pretty. Tame things are pretty and she feels so very, very far from tamed in this moment.

    Inside her chest her heart trembles like a caught hawk, almost like a warning before she rams her shoulder forward and finds the give is far too easy. And Elliana pirouettes like a reluctant dancer into the darkness.

    « r »
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    #10

    Bolder is still young, and so, perhaps it is with some naivete that he watches the Dark God (or perhaps it comes from the curiosity of never seeing a God before). Perhaps he should hood his eyes, mask them somehow so that the madness in them doesn't flee so fast. Perhaps Bolder should do something other than stare so openly at a deity (and some part of him knows he shouldn't; Bolder had heard strange stories surrounding the Dark God), and yet, his attention fastens on Carnage.

    He looks at the gray stallion, only glancing away when the sacred stone beneath his hooves shudders.

    It yawns, and Bolder finds himself on the edge of a precipice. He had made this journey because he heard the Call. It had grazed against his sentience, reaching him on the edges of his own wild Magic where the young shapeshifter sometimes lost himself. (How long had been a hawk? When had he changed the swift wings of a bird for the quiet stealth of a fox? What had he been in between, and what would he come to be next?) It had felt like the moment that he had been yearning for (another sign of his foolish, exuberant youth) and the striped adolescent had climbed the Mountain, past-ready for a Cause and not quite old enough for the patience to wait longer for another.

    What Carnage asks of them - this group gathered on the peak of the Mountain - feels strange. It makes him feel like a boy again, the boy he had been in Taiga. His silver eyes keep staring down at the crack that has formed, and remembers the rift that came when he left it. His father had wanted him to be one thing - a lie - and Bolder had wished to be another. He wanted to be himself, to not feel shame for each time his hide changed color or the longing he felt when some new creature crossed his path, the wanting to know their kind of existence. Those first shifts in Hyaline had been filled with uncertainty and hesitation (because in those early days, Bolder had still been living with the thought that his sire might not forgive him, coming to understand that the path he was taking forward would not allow him to turn around). But one season went and another came, and the more that Bolder learned him from his Aunt and Uncle, the more Bolder came to understand it would have always played out that way.

    One way or another, Bolder would have changed too many times (and in too many ways), and even if Gale and Mazikeen had left him instead of claiming him for the Pack, he would have eventually found a trail that took him out of Taiga and he would have never looked back. The winged horse peered down into the beginnings of a crater, listening to a God describe a bounty that he can hardly fathom ('All that Magic!' Carnage exclaims, and it fuels something in Bolder, a hunger left behind by his own Magican Uncle, an appetite he hasn't been able to fill despite whatever shape he hunts as).

    Dig, the Dark God commands and Bolder becomes what Carnage needs. He lunges into his gift and begins to dig, trading his forelegs for something with powerful front claws. He becomes smaller, fiercer, and becomes hellbound trying to move the hard dirt, packed down by decades (centuries?) of travelers seeking what they were digging for now.  (Bolder does not take the time to consider the right or wrong of this situation; he is here now and that is all that matters to him.) The copper badger works relentlessly, clawing and scratching his way down towards what he thinks must be the epicenter of their world.

    In his haste, the others had fallen away. And it is only when the dirt shifts in his crater that badger-Bolder remembers they had existed at all. He stops, looking up towards where the sunlight and Carnage wait, wondering what became of them. It all seems eerily quiet and still, and yet there had been no command to stop so the badger trades his shape for something smaller, something with a more cylindrical shape; something that can no longer see but where the now-Mole goes, it doesn't matter.

    There is nothing but blackness.

    There had been only a thin layer of sediment between the boy and the void.

    Bolder falls into it, and falls back into the shape that he had born with; a chestnut horse with wings that now flare open and flutter wildly in the darkness, an attempt to catch himself against the swallowing descent.

    [Image: 37477440_mkk7ul7XODhpdJ7.png]
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