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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


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    you love it when I'm bringing you hell; Ryatah
    #1


    lord, I fashion dark gods too;


    The dark god hasn’t crossed into a kingdom that wasn’t borne from his magic in ages.
    They were never the same, since the valley, and even though he’s tried to recapture the feeling in other lands, everything comes up short. He knows part of the valley’s nostalgic allure was his own then-mortality – the world looks a certain way when death and obscurity sit on the horizon, and quite another way when godhood bursts inside of you like dying stars.
    Ironic, perhaps, that the very thing that made him keeps him from recapturing such a small magic.
    Pangea was different, of course, that land had been a creation, a thing fallen and risen and now fallen again. Even then, he had not spent more than a year or two there, coming by now and again to check that it was being ruled appropriately.

    The Pampas are…fine. Everything feels a bit too lush, the Edenic air of the place thick enough to choke on. He prefers rougher things, has a habit of roughening what he touches, though he leaves the place alone for now. He had not come here to redecorate the place, but rather, to welcome its leader.
    He takes his time finding her, weaves his way through the place. He cannot resist blighting one spot, carving a symbol of his in the dead grass, a small joke that may go entirely unnoticed.
    He finds her, in time, but does not yet touch her, even though the urge floods across him, a heady desire that has not waned despite the length of their acquaintance.
    “Ryatah,” he says, “it’s good to see you as a queen once more.”
    He knows, of course, that they’ve picked different titles here. But his kingdom days – those mortal, ever-long days – knew only kings and queens and little else, and old habits due hard.

    c a r n a g e



    @[Ryatah]
    #2
    Ryatah
    This is the last place she expects to see him, and so when something gray flickers in her periphery she almost does not award it a second glance. It’s the sound of his voice wrapped around her name that brings her gaze to his, to familiar wine-red eyes and a  storm-gray face. Seeing him awakens that terrible ache that lives in her chest, the one that sometimes subsides the longer he is absent but never fades entirely. But now, everything comes roaring to life all at once—the thrill and the fear, the want and desire—and though she is sure she wears every emotion plainly on her face she does nothing to temper it.

    None of it is a secret any longer; he knows her too well at this point, in ways that no one else ever could, with their own brand of intimacy that cannot be replicated.

    “Carnage,” she says as she steps towards him, haloed by an amber light and trailing stardust from her wings; ethereal by all means, save for those hauntingly near-black eyes that had a penchant for seeking out darkness . “The place isn’t quite to my taste, but, it will have to do considering it’s the only land in existence.” It is said light-heartedly, though there is an undertone of discontent that she does not voice directly to him. She knows that he does not really care, in the grand scheme of things, what happens to Beqanna. She knows if it ever crumbled entirely into dust he would build another  world from stardust if he had to, and that there is a small chance that he might save her as the world fell apart, or briefly miss her when he realizes a hundred or so years after her demise that he did not, but that ultimately she would be forgotten.

    She is maybe a little less mortal than most—an archangel that has seen death too many times, with a life decorated by magic and tragedy—but with him she is always reminded of her own evanescence, and all the ways that she is terribly finite in comparison.

    “I must admit, I’m a bit surprised to see you here,” she says by way of distraction, because he is close enough to touch her but hasn’t yet, and while normally she would have reached for him without hesitation she cannot ignore the apprehension that makes itself known even through the haze of her own desire. She searches her memory for a recent slip-up, something she might have done or said to catch his attention in a bad way, but for once she comes up empty handed.
    EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR WICKED SCHEMES



    @Carnage
    #3


    lord, I fashion dark gods too;


    He watches the display of her emotions with a level of greed he had not fully realized was inside him. There is a vein of this, in him, a gold ore of emotion that so few are able to mine. A smile snakes its way on to his lips, glad to hear her voice again after these years, and with none of the stress of an endless dark void coloring it.
    She steps closer and he can fully breath the scent of her, sweetness with a faint acridity of stardust. He still does not move closer, even though the urge is there, stronger – he savors the feel of temptation, of wanting. It’s an art he’s mastered, in these centuries, for when he can have whatever he desires, he long ago found that the desire itself is often sweeter than the having.
    “Indeed,” he says, looking again at the land, the scrap tossed to them during Beqanna’s endless shuffles (he ignores the part he played in this, sending the acolytes to chase other worlds), “this was low on the list of places I might have saved. Beqanna should have consulted me when she redecorated.”
    He’d thought, of course, of pulling Pangea back for the second time, spitting in Beqanna’s face. But such alterations would requite his constant presence, his thread of magic, and when he left – and he would, inevitably, leave – it would be retaken, would sink once more, a nasty reminder that he could not reshape the land as permanently as he would like.

    “We were due for a visit,” he says by way of explanation. Their last encounter had not entirely been his setup – he hadn’t had the pleasure of putting her in the void, after all – and he prefers to be the architect in all things, rather than forced to step into anyone else’s game.
    “Besides,” he says, voice lower, “I wanted to bring a housewarming gift.”
    He closes the space then, the last bit of space evanescing as his lips find her pale neck, the headiness of the closeness welcomed. This is not the gift, of course, but he wants her eager, breathless, wants her clouded with desire. Softly, he brings his lips to her ear, whispers to her.
    “Would you like to see?”

    c a r n a g e



    @Ryatah
    #4
    now and then there’s a light in the darkness,
    feel around until you find where your heart went --

    A part of her wishes he wasn’t so easy to be around.

    It would be easier not to miss him if she were more afraid—or if she were always afraid, if the violence was not broken up with casual conversation and grand gestures. If she was more afraid of him hurting her than she was of him leaving her, if she was more afraid of his punishment than his disappointment.

    Maybe if bloodshed did not mix so nicely with stardust, maybe if he did not save her repeatedly from the dark in more ways than one, she would be able to see him as the unforgiving god that everyone else saw, and not a corrupted savior.

    She concedes to the idea, instead, that this is all part of some grandiose scheme. That she is a pawn in this game that he has crafted; a game that she would gladly and carelessly lose over and over just to be a piece in it.

    “I don’t think I had ever even been here before,” she muses, still playing along with the idea that he had come here for small-talk, still ignoring the way her heart thrums faster behind the scar on her chest the longer he stands there, and how that thread of darkness that had followed her home from the void clamors against its cage in response to him being so close. The words are casual but her thoughts are frenetic, flicking through every possible reason he could have come here, racing through all the reasons she wants him to come here.

    It doesn’t matter, of course, because the moment he fills the space between them and his lips find her neck, everything else is forgotten.

    Involuntarily she draws a sharp breath, an electric shiver racing down her spine at his touch and she wonders if this is why he drags out the time between their meetings; because he knows the longer he makes her wait the faster she will unravel. Without hesitation she reaches for him, seeking out the familiar slope of his shoulder with her lips and pressing herself closer. It could be a trap, she knows, and the thought tries to crowd her mind—he says he has brought her something, and she had learned a long time ago that even his gifts came at a price. “Yes,” she finds herself whispering anyway, breathless, still not pulling away from him, still leaving a trail of stardust against his skin as if he won’t just wipe himself clean of her the moment he leaves, as if she could ever mark him the way that he marks her. “Show me.”

    -- r y a t a h



    @Carnage
    #5


    lord, I fashion dark gods too;


    He learned the art of brutalization far before he learned anything else. Those other lessons came later, the gradual realization of the sweetness in delaying gratification, in making them bow of their own free will rather than breaking their knees to see them there. He still finds entertainment in the latter, of course, but it’s often an easy entertainment, almost cheap. It certainly has its time and place, but it is not today. Today is about a more refined game, a game they’ve played for ages now, one with odd rules and blurred lines and only occasional bloodshed.
    (The image of her, dead on the mountain, immune to his magic, flashes briefly across his thoughts before he puts it away. Gail is not here, and besides, he learned a lesson from that, and he has not killed her since.)

    He lets her touch him, lets their bodies meet, the warm thrum of blood pounding in his ears. Desire swells within him, and for just a moment he is lost in her, his latest game forgotten. He holds on to that feeling for just a moment, a wafer melting on the tongue, and then he pulls away, recenters himself.
    He brings forth the gift, his own private joke – a statue crafted in his image, an idol, a throwaway piece of magic. He has not forgotten his own time spent imprisoned in a similar enough statue, the maddening press of the stone, a fleeting defeat that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things – he’s here, they aren’t – but one that niggles at him, nonetheless.
    “I can’t rule beside you,” he says, voice low, “but I thought you might benefit from my company, on occasion.”
    The statue is largely useless, of course – he’s linked enough to her that it may follow, though perhaps not terribly far. He isn’t sure, he hasn’t tested this particular gimmick much. He doesn’t tell her of its small tricks, not yet – has not decided if he even will, or if he will let her be surprised.

    c a r n a g e



    @Ryatah sorry to take a hundred years to reply (:
    #6
    now and then there’s a light in the darkness,
    feel around until you find where your heart went --


    It is a sick kind of comfort that she finds in him, but it is somehow reassuring to know that even when the world tilts on its axis, they somehow remain the same.

    Beqanna is flooded and changed in ways that she silently worries it will not recover from, and yet here they stand in the middle of the last remaining kingdom, consumed by their own game, and suddenly all she thinks and hears and sees is him.

    She is never more selfish than when she is alongside him, when she is certain that no matter how feared and adored he is by the general population, no one could possibly imagine how she feels about him. When there is nothing to separate them but skin and her senses fail her and she thinks that this will be the time that she will do whatever it is he asks of her—this time she will not say no, this time she will not falter, this time she will give him no reason to punish her or to think that she is weak. This time she will do anything to ensure that she is still the girl he crafts illusions of lost valleys for and presses stars into her skin, that he pulls from the afterlife and drags from an unimaginable darkness.

    And there is a part of her that thinks—knows—that all those grand gestures have been meticulous plans to lure her into loyalty, but even knowing this, she craves his attention all the same.

    When he pulls away she has to resist the urge to follow, and instead she forces herself to look at what he has brought her this time.

    The statue is clearly him, and while there is a flicker of uncertainty as she finds herself wondering what kind of test this is, there is also a trace of amusement as she steps closer to better appraise it. “Am I supposed to pray to it like the devout follower that I am and you’ll appear to answer my prayers?” she asks with a coy smile in his direction as she reaches to touch her nose to the smooth stone of the statue, and she is surprised by the jealousy that sparks behind her ribs at the thought of anyone else coming here to observe it. She is not typically one prone to envy or possessiveness—it would be an especially exhausting and futile waste of energy considering the very nature of those she has chosen to love, but also terribly hypocritical of her even by her standards since she is loyal in every way except with her body—but the void had left her changed in more ways than one, and the thread of darkness had a way of uprooting emotions she usually kept buried.

    “It’s lovely,” she says more seriously once the strange wave of unfamiliar emotions had passed. “I don’t think it will compare to the real thing, but thank you.”

    -- ryatah



    @Carnage

    its okay i took 75 years (:




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