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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


    a dead and dying thing
    #1

    all things are poisons

    for there is nothing without poisonous qualities.

    So this was The Chamber, the place her mother had tried to tear Beqanna apart for. It had almost worked - almost. Iris hadn’t understood at the time why her mother had loved this land so, and part of her still didn’t. It was just a land, though it was an appealing land if nothing else from her first tour. It’s not like anyone lived here at the moment, in this land so long gone from Beqanna, so she hadn’t stopped at the border but rather moved into the forest, the mist clinging to the trees in the early morning. The land was cool and the dead were loud and vibrant here. Many of the ghosts seemed to have lived here once, having decided to stay in their next life for their love of the land. Other’s had been killed here, in senseless wars. They were trapped here, looking for resolution that would never come.

    It seems like her kind of place.

    The magic of the land that her mother spoke of is long gone. There’s no heartbeat beneath the land now, though Iris can sense a phantom of it. There’s the remnant of her mother’s burning tree, though it no longer burns. It’s just a charred thing, dying but never dead. She sees it as she comes into the center of the kingdom, the ghosts telling her their stories as she goes. Some of the stories she already knows from her mother, stories of the wars she’d created, the heart manipulation she’d gained from the kingdom and used to crush hearts beneath her will. From what the ghosts tell her, her mother was not the worst of those who ruled and called the Chamber home, and Iris finds herself grinning.

    Perhaps she’d give this a try. Maybe staying put might be fun for a while.

    it is only the dose that matters

    iris

    photo by cottonbro



    @Affirmative here's a bad starter for you
    Reply
    #2

    Burn everything you love then burn the ashes.
    In the end everything collides;
    My childhood spat back out the monster that you see.

    He rises with the Chamber.

    He wasn’t dead - not anymore. He had risen from the dead once and decided it was worth staying, even if the Chamber was no more. It was all he had ever known, and something had told him that it would one day rise again, so he had lain in wait. The years have blurred together, but something whispers in the wind and the yellow-eyed painted king is among the first to come home.

    The pine trees seem as though they’re welcoming him home as he breathes in their earthy scent, and the ancient stallion breaks into an easy lope through the trees. There is no rolling heartbeat beneath his hooves but that doesn’t bother him; he had never truly cared much for the magicks that had forced his father from their home. It had earned him a crown at a young age - one he demanded from his sire, who only wished to hand it to his half-sister. He had done nothing to deserve the crown then, but his actions later in life had much made up for it. He had taken the Chamber’s potential and molded it into what it needed to become.

    Eventually, he slows as another horse comes into view, and isn’t it ironic that the first drawn to the Chamber are Tatter and his great-granddaughter? There is something about the black mare that seems familiar to him as he approaches, but he doesn’t recognize her - it has been eons it seems since he last set eyes on Straia, and the generations between them indicate that they are not very similar in appearance.

    He can tell she is a stranger to this land by the way she glances about as if taking it all in, and an easy smile rests on his face as he stops a respectable distance away. “Have you ever seen a land so beautiful?” he asks her, yellow eyes flashing. Tatter was never a good man by any means, but his home was his pride and joy.

    He’s been floating along for so many years now - between the Afterlife and being dragged back to life - that he is ready to stay. The Chamber is his.

    Tatter.



    @ Iris I couldn't resist, family reunion
    Reply
    #3

    all things are poisons

    for there is nothing without poisonous qualities.

    Her mother had not been the type to lie in wait. She had done everything she could to see her land raised from the dead, though it had not been enough. Instead, the monsters of the world had swallowed her, taken her back into the ground. You’d think for Iris, who stood there as a child and watched it all happen, that it might be traumatic. But Straia didn’t raise children to find anything traumatic, and truthfully, Straia wasn’t the type of mother that one was meant to mourn. Don’t hear that wrong - she was a good mother, the sort that equipped her children to succeed and grow and not need their mother at all. She was highly successful at it, so much so that as Straia was swallowed by the earth her two year old child barely batted an eyelash.

    It isn’t long before another finds him, and the dead chitter in her ear about him. He’s been here in times long past it seems, and she realizes then just how many dead Beqanna truly has. There are the ghosts that speak to her, the ones unseen, but there are those that haunt the world of the living as well. They come and go as if life and death do not really matter in this place. Perhaps they do not.

    She has no idea of their relationship, nor do the ghosts. Or if they do, they don’t tell her, though she’s pretty sure they would if they had such knowledge. Family ties are not something that the ghosts tend to keep up with however, and she imagines that just doesn’t seem so important from the other side. They’d rather tell the stories of their lifetimes, and those that knew this stallion before her are the most eager. They love to feel as though they are still relevant in the world, and to her, they certainly are.

    Her eyes turn to him as he slows, her amber eyes the only resemblance she has to her brown and white mother. Iris looks like her father, whom she never met, and Iris’s twin looks like her mother. ”Only in my mother’s stories,” she says in response, not quite mentioning that she isn’t sure this land would qualify as beautiful. Enthralling, maybe. Intoxicating, maybe. She’s not sure if a land can hold such sway over her, but she’s considering the possibility as she stands here, surrounded by the misty pine forests. It certainly feels like home, like she was born to be here. ”I take it you lived here once?”

    it is only the dose that matters

    iris

    photo by cottonbro


    @ Tatter
    Reply
    #4

    Burn everything you love then burn the ashes.
    In the end everything collides;
    My childhood spat back out the monster that you see.

    Tatter has no true power of his own, and yet he had fought for the Chamber with every living breath until he was struck down in war, far from his home’s soil. The Valley War had been a brutal one, and his death at the hands of the telekinetic woman hadn’t been the first that day, nor was it the last. From there, it had been years upon years in the Afterlife, conversing with few other than those of his immediate family who had come to join him. He had quite reunions with so many of them - Frostreaver, Fey, Nocturnal, Eliska, Frostweaver, and others; lovers and too many children and even a grandchild, little Strangelet.

    It is no surprise that another war had pulled him back to the world of the living; war was something as intimate to him as a lover, and he had thrown himself back into the battle’s embrace. Once the war was done, he had faded again; not dead, but not truly living anymore. Was he a ghost at that point? He supposes he could’ve been then.

    He doesn’t know the ghosts speak to her, whispering stories of his past into her ears. The Chamber he had been raised in was one in which magic was scorned by the kingdom herself. He had watched as the Chamber bucked and fought against Set’s very being after his alliance win, denying him keeping the throne any longer. The Chamber had threatened to tear the champion’s magic from his very being, willing to rip him to shreds to force him to give it up. Instead, the stallion had chosen to abdicate, and leave the throne to his children.

    The mare before him asks a question, and his yellow eyes gleam as he turns to take everything in. “I ruled it,” he responds, looking back to her, “for nearly two decades.” It’s her eyes, he decides, that seem so familiar. Amber, with an intensity that could probably bring a lesser man to his knees. “What’s your name?” he asks suddenly, not that he would recognize her simply by her name. He hardly remembers Straia and her sister Araby, let alone any of their children.

    Tatter.



    @ Iris
    Reply
    #5

    all things are poisons

    for there is nothing without poisonous qualities.

    Iris did not know the ghosts of the Afterlife. She had no access to that place, only the ability to hear the tales of the dead that did not leave. So many did not, so many clung to this world. And of course, there were those like this stallion who traversed between worlds. Death was no god in Beqanna, hardly capable of containing its own. The lines here were a blurry sort, one that was particularly blurry for a girl like Iris who lived with one foot in life and one in death. Not that she minded - quite the contrary. Iris rather liked it that way.

    Iris knows no stories of a Chamber that railed against magic. Her mother’s stories paint a different picture - one of a land with a heartbeat of its own, a tree that burned perpetually and told the future, one that gave her mother much of the power she’d inherited. Iris does not know of the Chamber Tatter had once ruled, and she cannot really imagine a land without magic. Not in this world, not in this Beqanna. Magic ran rampant and the powerless were few, a reversal of the Beqanna that once existed.

    He answers, and she wonders if he’s proud of that fact. Maybe back then ruling was something to be proud of, though in her lifetime she’s seen that leadership seems to have become something of a joke. Beqanna had so many lands, always shifting and changing, and those that called the shots shifted and changed even moreso. Though she knows her mother’s tales of ruling as well, and it was something different even then.

    “My mother once ruled it as well, though not so long. Straia. Her name was Straia.” She’d left the throne to Killdare, and without her the Chamber had fallen into disrepair, though it hadn’t mattered for Beqanna itself had changed then. It had called magic back to itself, pulled it all into the mountain and wiped the slate clean. ”I’m Iris,” she offers, still imagining she’s talking to a total stranger.

    it is only the dose that matters

    iris

    photo by cottonbro


    @ Tatter
    Reply
    #6

    Burn everything you love then burn the ashes.
    In the end everything collides;
    My childhood spat back out the monster that you see.

    It wouldn’t surprise the painted stallion that strength and magicks have persisted in his line throughout the generations if he knew of them, but after his first death, Tatter had stopped paying much attention to his descendants. One isn’t supposed to have favored children, but Nocturnal had been a special one, and the most magical of all of his offspring. Frostweaver and Nocturnal were born of a second love that perhaps shouldn’t have happened, but the king had been strangely drawn to Fey after the disappearance of Reaver, and great powers had been borne from that little slave girl’s line.

    Rulers and magicians and everything in between, and he’d be more proud if he knew more of them. The fact that his bloodline still persists would be enough for him to be satisfied. In decades past, bloodlines meant more than whatever magic one might have - magic was reserved for the Valley, the Dale, the Deserts; the mythical kingdoms. The Chamber may have had a beating heart, generously donated by a king from before even Tatter’s birth, but the magic of the kingdom was different then.

    And if he’s being honest, he doesn’t even remember how long he ruled the Chamber, only that it had been a chaotic and cruel reign. Mayhaps age - and multiple deaths - has made him soft, but he can’t imagine a slave pen would be very welcome in today’s Beqanna, even today’s Chamber.

    Times have changed and magic has become widespread, and perhaps it has made them weaker as a whole.

    The girl speaks again and his ears flick forward in rapt attention, his eyes widening only slightly at the mention of her mother. “Straia,” he repeats with a low chuckle. “I never formally met her, though the war she orchestrated is what pulled me from the Afterlife in the first place.”

    The bloodline is strong, and it is no surprise to him now that she has come to the Chamber. “Well met, Iris,” he continues, his long black tail flicking over his hind legs. “I’m Tatter, and though I know I don’t look that old, you are my great-granddaughter.”

    Tatter.



    @ Iris this post took a surprising amount of research, bc as it turns out I don't remember a lot from 10+ years ago
    Reply
    #7

    iris

    The magic of Beqanna has always been this way in Iris’s lifetime. She knows of no other Beqanna besides the one she has heard in stories, though it seemed like a better version of itself then than now. But wasn’t that always the case? Didn’t everyone look back on the past and reminisce about how times were simpler? How the world was a better place? It’s like a right of growing older, that one must sit on the rocking chair in the front lawn sipping tea and speaking of the past like a long lost love. Maybe it was. Maybe as you looked back things became more favorable in hindsight. Maybe it was easier just to forget the things that hurt.

    Or maybe it was simply true. Maybe the world just progressed forward toward its own inevitable destruction, growing weaker and more pathetic by the day. Perhaps those of Iris’s generation would never hold a candle to the great rulers of the Chamber’s past. She doesn’t know, and will never truly know. She has no magic to see the past as it was. Iris’s knowledge is passed down from her mother and the ghosts around her, and those stories cannot be trusted. Not really, anyway. Everyone has a bias. Everyone has memories shaped by their own experiences.

    Iris’s brows raise just slightly as Tatter replies, and the slight change in her expression is not one of surprise but certainly interest. “I’d say you aren’t missing much by not meeting her, but…that would be a lie.” Iris was like her mother in many ways, but not in the grand ways. Iris is of the dead, she is a girl who prefers ghosts and shadows. Straia was the centerpiece. She commanded attention without trying, owned any place she stepped foot in. Iris had no desire to take after her mother in this, but she respected it nonetheless. “Well met, great-grandfather,” she says with a small grin. “You only look old enough to be my grandfather, if that makes you feel better.”




    @ Tatter  I definitely had to look up how they were related too, haha
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