[private] In the morning you'll look like regret [Severe]

[Apothica]

It was still cold out. Winter should've been on her last leg, but she refused to make way for Spring just yet. Stubborn to the end, I guess.

In many ways I could relate. A few weeks ago the mountain had lit up, beckoning any horse interested (or stupid) enough to try their luck, and I ignored it. There was nothing waiting for me on the other side of a quest except disappointment and possible death. I'd done what any reasonable, sensible creature would and turned my back to the beckoning light, hoping instead for a little peace and quiet.

Though unremarkable at best, I liked my life and the simplicity it offered.

The mountain and its temptations couldn't sway me into participating, not when there was wonder in the silence of the woods or clarity in the feeling of a good, hard flight. Both were preferable to company of any kind. I could glean more knowledge from studying rare plants or following a migrating flock of birds than engaging socially.

I wanted for nothing and needed very little.

Unfortunately for me, those needs trumped my innate desire to remain reclusive forever. I was only mortal, after all. Subject to age and all its problems, a slave to maintaining some measure of physical fitness and overall health so that I could travel. I had to eat and occasionally keep up appearances if I wanted to keep living in comfort. Something Beqanna (or 'new Beqanna' as I liked to call it) was making increasingly difficult for little old me.

By late afternoon I was trekking on hoof through the Forest, foraging as I went. I knew the best spots for birch sap and avoided the darker regions of the woods, more superstitious than your average traveler might be - and for good reason. The quiet that usually calmed me felt too quiet, even for a Winter forest.

This evening, the shadows and silence felt sinister. So sinister, in fact, that I stopped pursuing a nibble and looked up to peer into the dark heart of the wood. I couldn't pinpoint why, just that there was a feeling of being watched. I waited, finally blinked, told myself I was being silly, and then resumed the forgotten nibble.

@Severe

[Severe]

S E V E R E

At first, she had found the chaos of the storms amusing. All around her she watched the world crumble to varying degrees—some only lost their homes, or became inconvenienced by the sudden down-sizing of acreage, while others lost loved ones and family—and for a girl that kept to herself and with no family to claim any closeness to, it was easy for her to think herself above being bothered by the destruction. She moved through the world as she always had, behind a veil of her own darkness, watching and learning, a predator studying its prey, though rarely did she engage.

But after some time, the newness of it all began to wear off, and she could feel the boredom sinking in. For her, boredom felt like an arrow being pulled back—all she needed now was a target. And here in the forest, it should be simple enough to find one. She does not know why they are so drawn to this place, but many of them are, as if the monsters of the night cannot touch them in the daylight.

As if they cannot just gather their own dark to hide themselves from view.

Which is what she does, the black-scaled mare cloaked in her self-made shadows so that she might melt with the real ones of the forest as she quietly maneuvers between the scattered trees. Her steps are oddly quiet, though of course not silent—but that was part of the fun. To watch them nervously glance over their shoulders for the source of that twig snapping or brush rustling, to discover that beat they hear is indeed footsteps—only to find nothing. Sometimes she could almost taste their heartbeats on her tongue, frantic and sweet, and savoring their fear was enough to satisfy her that day.

But in Beqanna you did not have to look far to find someone wicked and beautiful (though she is beautiful in an unsettling, unconventional kind of way), which made her not so different from the rest.

The thought of being indistinguishable irritated her to no end, which is why on days like today she is not searching for someone to simply toy with; she is searching for someone to kill, to flex the power that she had to set herself apart from the others.

How unfortunate, then, for the pale pink mare that unknowingly meets her gaze, her own silver eyes still shrouded behind a veil of darkness.

She recognizes that suspicion in her eyes, that look of her trying to reassure herself that no one is there, that it was simply the wind. That a shifting shadow in the corner of her eye had been a trick of the graying light, and Severe latches onto that fear before she loses it. I’m right here, she speaks clearly into her mind, a voice with no body to attach to it. Several tendrils of shadows have begun to snake across the ground and reach for the mare’s legs, and while Severe does not reveal herself just yet, she sends a large stone hurtling just past her head to make it clear to the stranger that she is not alone.

INNOCENCE DIED SCREAMING, HONEY, ASK ME, I SHOULD KNOW

@Apothica 

archdemon has like a billion traits available and i have them all listed in her profile but to make it easier, in this post she is using darkness manipulation, telepathy, and telekinesis <3