"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
The black titan leans its head forward, allowing sunlight to peek out from behind its massive crown; bright, white, blinding light stretches out from beyond the giant towards the beach. The waves standing at attention begin to race to meet in the middle, encircling the gathered souls—trapping them. Spirits who have not yet made it the gathering wail angrily beyond the walls of water as they are forced to return back to the afterlife.
It lifts its obsidian sceptre, then drives the end of it down into the wet sand. The sunlight is gone again. The earth beneath their feet rumbles, splitting from the point where the sceptre pierced towards the horses; it fractures off into glowing red fissures.
A throne made of tidal waves appears behind the creature. It sits, watching without expression as the sea stretches above them to form a curved ceiling. Saltwater drips from the top of the watery dome like rain, hissing when it lands inside the fissures and steam billows up from them. The only light now comes from the red glowing up from the cracks.
And then a clawed hand appears from the fissure.
The monster pulls itself from the red ravine, its lips curling back in a snarl; it is abysmally black, just like its master. The smell of sulphur clings to its dense, furred hide. The head of a direwolf sits atop the shoulders of an impossibly muscular, human-like torso. Long, thick horns curl out of its skull. It snorts, scraping its cloven hooves across the sand as it turns toward the gathering.
More follow.
Hundreds—a thousand.
They vary in size, crawling over one another; some of them squeal when one of their brethren pries them from the walls and casts them back down.
“Fetch,” the black titan, with its many voices, commands them and the demons below answer back with snarls and howling.
They are as violent toward one another as they are in the pursuit of their targets, ripping and tearing at one another to get to the souls first. They are all captured, some with teeth—others with claws. The demons drag them back to the fissures, regardless of their struggling, and as they near, the black titan’s giant hands appear from the fissures to snatch the horses and demons.
The demons are crushed within its grip.
There is carnage strewn across the sand until the walls of water begin to collapse, washing it all away; the sea clashes against itself in the middle, sending massive waves rushing towards The Beach.
-
Write your character responding to the demons, getting captured, and the giant hands pulling them down into the fissures. Getting pulled into the fissure should be a ‘fade to black’ moment.
Post must be at least 500 words.
The last three to respond will receive a 2-space genetic trait, you may choose an existing trait from the database or create one and submit it for officer approval. Your character is dragged back down into the afterlife (if they joined as a deceased character). If alive, they wake up as if they were having a nightmare and you may decide if they keep the trait or if it gets passed down.
The trait can be passed to one of their descendants, or someone they deem worthy of it. The character who receives the trait will be cursed with Aquaphobia (Fear of Water—yes, even tiny puddles) and the contestant’s memory of their participation in the quest for exactly one post. It’s up to the player to determine if they want to keep the curse longer or make it permanent (severity of it can vary, but first post is extremely severe).
The last three to respond only need to write at least 100 words.
The cutoff time to respond is Monday, Oct 5th at 12:00 AM, Eastern.
Failure to respond will result in forfeiture of the trait.
There is a sense of eerie foreboding that fills him when the titan moves its head, and it feels like watching the shifting of mountains as black as the empty space between the stars, like watching the moon fall out of the sky, or raindrops tipping back up into steel bellied clouds. It is a perverse kind of wrongness, and it is reflected in his dark face by the tightening of his jaw and teeth that clench so hard it makes his bones ache. The leviathan leans its head forward enough to reveal the sun, and Sundered feels the slash of light fall over his burning eyes like a blade. He cannot remember the last time he saw day, refuses to think of the last time he was even allowed above to walk in a light not capable of burning him, and it is so jarringly unexpected that he staggers backwards away from it.
He hates not understanding, hates the gaps in his memory, hates not knowing why or where or for what purpose this serves. But there are scars hidden among the red brindle on his back and chest that remind him not to ask these things aloud, not to question those who sit like dark mountains on a throne of ocean swells.
It is almost a relief when the sceptre splits the ground, when the waves rise to encircle them all and he can hear the wailing of untethered souls banished back to whatever hell they came from–they could come from nowhere else, not any of these souls here with him, for what eternal paradise would allow their wards to be taken from their resting peace–because the sun is gone again too and it takes with it the memories and the meaningfulness of life he has no right to.
But then the ground splits as though the world itself is wounded, as though even something as vast as a planet cannot withstand the fury of Hell. Maybe this should surprise him, but it does not. He is numb after all, dead. He is nothing, meaningless.
The stink of sulphur hits his nose, drags broken, jagged claws down the length of his spine. He knows what will happen just a heartbeat before it does, before that clawed hand stretches up from the fractures of red in the ground so much like the fractures of red in the dark of his own skin. He knows that he is afraid, even despite the numb acceptance. He also knows, as a hundred more hands claw their way out of a burning hellscape and feral eyes find him in this burning, sulphuric night, that he has misjudged something very vital.
He is not here to hunt, to make good on a deal made too many lifetimes ago.
He is here to be hunted.
Fetch.
It is one single word, one single breath, one single blink. It is a talon buried in his chest, hot horror spilled down his throat like the iron taste of blood. He is afraid but he knows that fear will only cripple him. He does not give his attention to anyone else - not the blue mare with sad eyes, not the stallion who stinks of the ocean, not the mare who seems oddly comfortable. He doesn’t want to know them, does not want the burden of caring. That part of him had been carved out so carefully, a limb amputated as many times as it grew back. He had not held that knife, had not wanted to lose that part of humanity.
There is a brittle stillness that settles over him, an impossible tension sitting just beneath the white bone markings of his dark body. He notes the enclosed ceiling of water, the walls of water, the titan passive on its throne. He notes the chasm of red like a gash in the dark, a dozen fractures snaking outwards as if even the beach had tried to escape this arena of death. But he comes to the same conclusion, that there is nowhere to go. No purpose, besides dignity, to resist this capture. He takes one, two, three steps in the direction of the demon lord, and by the fourth step there are just as many creatures upon him with gnashing teeth and claws that tear with too much excitement.
They fight each other like demonic littermates arguing over a scrap of meat, they fight him but seem to grow bored again when he does not fight back. It is the smallest one, fast and vicious, that maims the others and sinks its teeth into his shoulder to drag him towards the chasm. Burning fury wells inside Sundered, and fire flares like a conflagration of armor over the blood spattered across his skin. He roars, no words, no more meaning than the pent up fury that ruptures from him as his chest batters the demon creature. But the creature only cackles and titters, snaps its teeth at anyone who comes too near his prize, for what true demon fears fire.
Sundered is, after all, of them.
He feels defiance flash like a bolt of lightning in his chest, and it burns away the mask of obedience he has built with such painstaking carefulness - or maybe it bleeds out through the punctures in his shoulder, a constellation of foretold doom. He is about to be foolish, halfway to forgetting himself when the demon at his shoulder is suddenly plucked up and crushed within the hand of the titan lord. There is not even enough time for shock to register, and then Sundered too is trapped within a fist and watching the ground fall away from him.
Die. He reminds himself, urges his fury to quiet. Just die. And he can feel the familiar numbness wash back through him, can feel the burning outrage gutter from his eyes. Only the too-fast drum of the heart in his chest (but how, how can he have a heartbeat without a heart, how can he have a heart if he must die inside) gives him away as the titan tightens its fist and plunges Sundered into the molten red chasm.
sundered
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time
i think i need a sunrise, i’m tired of a sunset --
Magic had not been so rampant when she had been alive.
It had existed, as it always has in Beqanna, yet in her time she recalls it as being far more sparse. Thinking back through her memories (they are murky, though, like trying to look through water in a muddied riverbed) she cannot be sure if she ever had seen it on display; certainly not how it would be now should she walk through the ancient meadow again.
All this to say, she has never seen anything quite like what is currently happening around them.
The demon-beast moves his head, sunlight erupting from behind him like a halo. She wants to go towards it, to that slice of light, that promise of life and of a place that is very much not here on this beach turned hellscape. It is there and then it is gone, winking out of existence as if it had never been, and they are again plunged into a starless dark. Even with such little light, she can still make out the movement of water, a deep blue-black as it rushes to corral them. Her eyes trace the movement upwards as it arcs overhead, bitter salt-water dripping to her face.
She almost doesn’t notice when the ground splits open beneath them.
There is scrambling and a sense of panic as she skitters sideways, avoiding the jagged path as the earth cracks open, a hellish glow radiating from them. When the first creature claws its way up she finds herself backing towards the wall of water, and she finds herself wondering if it would be better to simply drown. Could she even drown? She still has not discerned if she is even actually alive. She thinks she can feel a heartbeat, sluggish and slow, and she knows that she can feel fear, because she feels it now. But her mind cannot comprehend the events that are transpiring before her, why she would be brought back to life only to be tortured back to death in such rapid succession.
It can’t be real, she decides. It isn’t real.
She looks back at the wall of water, the fiery glow of the fissures causing the sea to reflect red. Behind her, chaos has erupted as the demonic creatures have unleashed their fury on the unfortunate souls that found themselves trapped in this oceanic hell.
Tucked into the back, she avoids the initial onslaught it seems, but she wonders if this is somehow worse. She has too much time to watch them, the way they climb over and tear into themselves as well as the other souls like her. They are ravenous, but seemingly mindless—the claw and grab in such a manic way that she wonders if they have any reason in them at all, if they had ever been living things or if this is all they had ever known, the only purpose for their creation.
Doe-eyed and frozen in fear, she didn’t notice when a group of three launch their attack on her from the side. She tries to scream, but the sound seems to die in her throat, as if someone had reached out and snatched her voice out of the air. One lands on her back, claws digging into her shoulder and teeth gripping hard to her shoulder, immobilizing her. Another latches to her throat, while the third, the largest of them, grabs at her side with its enormous claws. They are all so much heavier than she is—heavier than her once-mortal body, heavier than that fragile soul of hers that had never been made of much.
The sheer brute strength of them is enough to push and drag her towards the glowing fissures, as she scrambles and tries to find purchase in the soft sand of the beach. She thinks she is screaming; she is trying to scream, though there is no one to scream for.
And then, she is pulled down, and for a fleeting moment there is relief in thinking that this is finally the end.
Lillith inhales sharply when the titan moves its head and light blasts her freshly-forming eyes. It's been so long it feels suffocating to stand in it's oppressive glare and a small part of her wishes to crawl back into that grey nothingness where she will never have to experience anything extreme ever again. It distracts her from the waves coming forward until they are already there — blocking them in where they had gathered with impermeable walls. Them. There are others who have come too, she realizes, through doors of their own. Disappointment and determination both flow within her now that she knows.
If it's between her and any of them, she will make sure it is her.
The impossibility of everything happening somehow makes it easier to swallow, like Lillith just has to play her part to get to whatever end will reach them. Not in a dream or a nightmare had she ever dreamt of something like this when the mountainous sceptre is driven down into the earth and the sunlight disappears. The momentary black is welcome in its familiarity before it becomes fractured with light seconds later.
The very earth is breaking apart in jagged, horrid red glowing scars. It's terrifying and enticing all at once, and Lillith moves to step towards it, eager to see what lies below the surface, when hands begin to appear from the red, gripping the solid surface. She doesn't understand these appendages, doesn't know the scent that is carried with them, just knows that it is danger, it is bad.
She knows that face, though. The wolf — an instinctual fear rooted so deep Lillith feels tugged backwards by generations. Dark blue eyes widen at the command from their tormentor. Fetch. For a moment, she thinks it is speaking to them, the souls, until the mass of demons and horrors howls their assent.
Oh.
There's nowhere to run so Lillith stays her ground. She refuses to believe that she had come through a door and so close to life itself just to die again. There's nothing to her beyond what is seen, no hidden defenses to guard herself from the hoard. A pack break off and move right towards her with more in her periphery. Dozens of small, cat-sized demons tumble over one another in a struggle to get there first.
She hears someone's scream and hers soon follows — a bellowing of her rage and disgust and fear. It does nothing to deter these creatures who are built for the fight. Who are all sharpness ready to tear into the soft purple flesh of Lillith's traitorous body while she struggles to fight them off. Sharp, needle-like teeth clamp down from many mouths on her legs, a few clamouring up onto her shoulders and back. She is furious — snaking her head around to try to snap at any of them she can reach and then a large, solid weight collides with her side, toppling her over. She is still yelling, the bellows mixed with harsh obscenities, when she is dragged by bloody mouths leg-first towards the glowing red fissures.
The voices, somewhat quieter when he had answered, return to full volume and continue their cacophony long enough that he fails to hear the creature’s pleasure (if you can call it that) at the consent of those assembled at its feet. Andrew shakes his head vehemently, multiple times, all in a futile effort to dispel the voices he is slowly starting to recognize. He does not understand the tones of ire and desolation, the barbed words that they hurl at him. Had he been so awful in life to deserve such haranguing?
Thankfully, he does not have to listen too long, as distraction comes in the white light that suddenly pierces his eyes. He squints in the demon's direction, just able to discern the shape of its massive crown blacked out against the single shift of light. Before his eyes can bring any detail into focus, he realizes that the thundering roar of moving water has muted the voices, along with any other sound that the reborn souls might have been hearing.
His gaze drifts down from the creature's head to see waves that loom tall and intimidating, poised to crash into the shore as they usually do. Except they don't. Instead, they move unnaturally toward the group, stretching like arms of one embracing their lover. Except this lover isn't sure he still wants or needs the other's affection anymore.
Nervousness slowly bleeds into every last piece of him, down to the thinnest strand of hairs tickling the bands of his hooves. His legs dance in place as visual testament to his discomfort, as he internally debates if any of what is to come will truly be worth whatever reward awaits. But before he can truly react, the walls of water snap together to create the dripping walls of a shared prison.
Well, there goes the opportunity to change his mind. A small part of him suspects that they would have been trapped with the demon, even if it had not encircled them with the water. Andrew looks again, just as the light vanishes once more. He watches the sceptre as it rises against the darkened sky, as it descends in slow motion, as it strikes and embeds into the sandy shore.
His apprehension only grows as quaking reverberates from where the sceptre sits, and rightfully so, as the ground begins to split and spill its eerie glow upon the wet sand. The cracks spread rapidly, bringing with them a foul odor that burns his nose as much as the accompanying oppressive heat, and a new chorus of heartrending cries assault him once more. He startles and shies as several crimson fingers draw closer, weaving themselves until their wide web surrounds him on all sides. He stares at the fissures, fully expecting them to swallow him into their glowing depths.
But what happens is actually far worse than he could imagine.
For who could imagine such ghastly creatures as those that begin to crawl from the rifts?
Water drips from the ceiling to meet the heated hell on earth, covering the ground in a perfectly nightmarish haze of steam as the monster unfolds itself before the crowd, eyes staring back hungrily at them. It leaves no doubt that it would gladly sink its whetted claws into his newly knitted flesh so that it could devour him, soul and all.
A soft, trembling moan falls from Andrew's lips, the pathetic sound of a man forced to realize that he is not what he thinks he is. In all his living years, he'd never been challenged by events even a fraction as horrifying as this, and now he sees that he truly is just a coward, almost certainly willing to show his yellowed underside if asked to. When more of the Frankenstein'd demons begin to slink their way to the surface, his knees buckle as though he might show that belly right here and now.
They are upon him before he can draw another breath, like a furious whirlwind of claws and teeth that send pain signals rocketing through him as they scrabble and slash at his body. He struggles mightily against their greedy grasping, but of course, it is to no avail. Anguished, he wonders if this is what they were brought back for. To be taunted with new forms, only to have themselves torn asunder mere minutes later for the demon king's amusement?
Oh no, there is much more in store. He starts to figure that much out as the creatures find purchase on his skin and start dragging him toward the nearest rift. A genuine scream of terror rips itself from his throat and his hooves go flying with renewed vigor, striking out with dull thuds against the iron grips of his captors. But still they press on, slowly drawing nearer to the gaping split and its red-hot depths. They teeter at the edge for a moment, just long enough for him to grow quiet and still, before they are snared by the behemoth's pitch-black fingers.
He does not scream as he is pulled in, though whether from fear paralysis or a suddenly newfound bravado, that still remains to be seen.
Everything is moving in slow motion. Undergrad finally feels the last key click into place in his mind; the blue wisps swirl rapidly in the dark sockets of his skull. He hasn't realised until now that there are screams. Screams of abuse, anger, frustration, and fear just beyond the water wall. He even recognises some, but the drowned god has sectioned them off. Undergrad stands with only a few others ( he actually looks around him now); they are small in their isolation.
In drunk movements, Undergrad feels the urge to run; survival is a basic function even as your mind slips (usually), but then the fissure opens with the massive sceptre as Undergrad realises how dark the world has become, and the glow is piercingly bright. The drowned deity’s world is now. Undergrad is still planted in the sand; he feels, with sudden realisation, the itch of the crushed sand against the frog of his heels, but it is soon forgotten when the glowing fissure begins to birth dark shadow creatures. For a moment, Undergrad believes they are Wendigos like him, but they're just not right. Their shapes are misaligned. Heads that do not belong to the right body. Undergrad finally regains some control of his limbs to run, but the demons are flashing past him, moving beyond the water wall to wrestle, wrangle, and drag the souls towards the fissure; their screams are undeniable.
All he can do is witness; the dark male knows he cannot do anything, and he is unable to help anyone else in this moment. The stallion can only move out of the demon's path as it snatches and tears at the unfortunate others. The blue wisps of his eyes are rolling wildly; his heart suddenly feels like a bird beating its wings inside a bone cage. Undergrad can feel the tinges of franticness spreading.
Relief bleeds into his veins as the demons begin to disappear back into the fissure, and he hasn't realised he's been holding his breath; it bursts from his burning lungs, ragged and hitching his thin chest. But- wait-, what is THAT? Impossibly black hands are dragging the demons back; the hunters are bow the hunted. The hands snatch at the cursed despite their screams, their gnashing teeth, and their flashes, dragging them back into the fissure's pulsing glow. Undergrad is moving now, unconsciously, away from the grip of the black hand.
From his periphery, he can see the horses, his unnamed companions, being taken. There is no sound as the hand moves, grips and steals away the others, their screams fading away in the wake of the hands…and Undergrad feels a sense of false relief washing over him; his legs having carried him to the corner of the water wall, he believes the darkness of his body will blend him into the dark edges perfectly…till the searching hand finds its target - Undergrad.
It’s impossibly cold; that's all he can think, not hot, not rough, like a gripping mist surrounding his antlers and jerking his head back, dragging, his spindly legs kicking as he begins to bellow, a sound that resembles the scream of an elk. Undegrad becomes erratic, and with jerking movements, he balks, desperate to escape the grip, blue wisps rolling wildly as the glow of the fissure falls over his thin and crooked body. The Wendigo screams and screams and screams as he is dragged closer, the heat of the fissure engulfing him, the icy mist, the weight of the hand snatching him away until the fissure swallows him up, the blue wisp of his eyes growing smaller, dimmer, before they wink out in the weight of his unconsciousness, gobbled up by the fissure. His mind’s eye fading into blackness.
Good, the beast says with the voice of an endless earthquake.
Maybe that singular affirmation should ignite his instincts to flee. But all Alaunus can think about is how completely thrilling it is to take a breath, to smell the salt air, to feel the breeze against his stormcloud hide and through his slate wings. To feel was quite enough to justify whatever might come next. And he has never run from an impossible challenge, despite the foolishness in staying his feet. He has stood in opposition to their dark god and come through unscathed; why not the devil himself?
There is the briefest wash of sunlight as the behemoth moves. He leans into it, letting his eyes shutter for a second longer in veneration. For just a heartbeat, it is the soft mountain meadow grass of home under his feet. There is a stabbing ache when he opens his eyes again to reality.
But he is closer to home than he had been on this side of the Afterlife. If he has been brought back to fulfill some purpose, surely he can make quick work of it and be on his way. Would they even notice? Would he even be allowed? The stallion works his jaw in thought. He didn’t care much for upholding the rules; he’d like to see them try to take him back now that he has had a taste of life again.
The creature sits back as the cracks open up beneath him. Alaunus jumps back as one splits just ahead of him, its eerie red glow replacing his beloved sunlight. The seawater, too, has formed its own blockade against the sky and around the risen souls. Drops occasionally land on his back and wings. Each drop doesn’t make him shiver, but what comes next does.
”Fetch,” It says, but he hears his mother in its voice, too. The demon’s puppets come from the fissures then, and it is hard not to feel some sort of betrayal that his own dam commands it. The logical part of his brain knows it is not her, not the sweet mare who had come to Beqanna all those years ago seeking refuge. Who built a home and a bloodline that Alaunus hopes still continues to thrive to this day. But logic flees him as the monsters keep coming in droves.
Instinct finally wakes and tells him that there will be no flight, only fight, if he wants to survive.
The pegasus spins to face the tower of water and kicks behind him as the first closes in on him. He grunts as he makes contact, the ghost of a smile on his lips at success. But it fades almost immediately as he feels the bruising butt of the beast’s horns on his rump. Alaunus stumbles but catches himself, turning back towards the horde.
And what he sees makes him consider jumping into the walls of water to take his chances.
Because the monsters have multiplied to an absurd number. And many of them are closing in on him. He bucks and kicks, flaring his wings and making himself as unruly as possible. But it is no use. They come like a tidal wave themself, tearing feathers from his wings, making sure he can’t take to the air. One stops in front of him and he manages to bite its dark shoulder. It tastes bitter and wrong. It is not enough to make a difference, either. They rip into his shoulders, his flanks. He sees bloody bits of himself on the ground in the red glow from the ravines. He falls soon after, feeling his knees bust open on the exposed rock of the ocean bottom. They swarm then, using their claws to hook into his hide. The pain becomes constant all over as more lock into him. And then he feels himself being dragged.
The demon lords above them all on his throne of seawater. As the monsters pull him helplessly towards a ravine, leaving a trail of blood behind, Alaunus struggles once more, twisting his body this way and that trying to get free. He feels his skin tearing more, but the thought of going back to an endless black is worse than the pain. He screams in defiance, but it falls on deaf ears. The giant hand reaches through the ravine and takes him and his captors. There is a squeeze, a silent plea of desperation, and then darkness.
10-03-2026, 10:46 AM (This post was last modified: 10-03-2026, 10:49 AM by Arik.)
Image by Artistic Pineapple
His heart beats raggedly, uncertain, the drag of his breath raking his throat like claws. Ironic, considering what is to come. For a long moment, the stallion teeters weakly in his bowed stance, then - and with none of the coltish grace of a newborn but something more lurching and broken - he heaves himself again to his feet in the cold sand. His hooves, no longer numb, stab back at him and he rocks his weight from one quadrant to the next seeking peace. It comes slowly, but for a time it is the whole of his awareness, the way his body screams and alarms that something is wrong, wrong, wrong. Pink-tinged sea water trickles from his nostrils as he finally lifts his head again, blinking away the sand and the fog of death that still clung to his vision. He coughs wretchedly, explosively, his lungs aching, and there is a strange fullness in his belly that makes him kick and twitch.
Wood cracks. There's nothing under his feet but a swirl of fine bubbles. Overhead, light glimmers, dancing, it's a sight he's always thought beautiful before this. The bubbles race away from him to meet it. He gasps, air-starved.
On the grey, dead, shore, he jerks his attention again to the flat-colored sea and the demon that stands within it, swallowing all its water into black fear. Something like understanding suddenly drifts down over him, something like consciousness, settling in his pale eyes. This is impossible, but it's not the first time he's thought that. The leviathan sits down on its abyssal throne, the bleak sun cracking atop its head, blinding death-bleary eyes.
Oh.
Yes, he remembers something of this. His cracked lips quirk into a wry, grimacing, grin, his legs stagger forward as the great scepter breaks the world with such a great crack that the aftershock tosses him back to the boggy ground like a doll, like the dead thing he is. Was. His climb back to his feet is quicker this time; every muscle screaming sore but living, trembling full of adrenaline as he flings himself away from the snapping, snaking, fissures that bolt away like lightning, black as an afterimage at first, and then-- oh, livid red. The stallion clicks bloodied teeth together, eyeing the glow, then the other souls who have made their way here. He tenses, casting a glance behind him to the nearest horses and seeing only the cavernous wall that surrounds them all, reaching overhead, as wolf-headed creatures scramble and claw up from the depths, black and red and hungry. Their wet mouths are full of blood and black bile, strings of it catching the air like spiderwebs and they reek of sulfur so strong his eyes water.
Fucking rotters. He steps backwards, away from them, whale-eyed and panting, unable or unwilling to hide the fear that stumbles across his face. He barely hears the demon give it's command, only sees the dark frothing landslide of monsters that crashes over them, screaming, whining, slavering things. They fall upon the first stallion - himself already a thing of blood and bone and darkness - with talons that wrench soft flesh from its reclaimed bones. That is the last thing he bothers to see too closely, turning as if to run at the sound of a strangled scream not far behind him.
There's a creature in his mind, a thing of starlight and darkness and never-ending hunger, a piece of the far-flung sky. It smells of alcohol and tastes like fire. There is someone injured on the ground, and he, he is between them, small and colt-legged, masking his fear with childish defiance. What have we ever done to you? But the celestial cannot be moved, it is not a empathic thing, and there is Kostas, charging between them all, and then there is Kostas, nearly consumed, half dead and gasping. Arik snarls suddenly, remembering, awake, and dodges that first claw that swings at him to charge the three that are swallowing the gold-spotted mare, spilling bright blood across her coat and the colorless ground as they drag her down. He storms them, unthinking. He has already died once by water, will it be so awful to die by claw and flame instead? His teeth close across the brimfire arm of one of her captors, his stony hooves battering against the creature's bare abdomen. It cannot be a mortal thing, yet it breaks and tears and bleeds like one, and might fall to pieces beneath his attack if it were the only one, but it is not.
He knew. He knew it was foolish, he knew it was impossible. He did it anyway. Arik has always been hopeful.
Stupid.
The beast's awful yowling brings a thousand more upon the pair of them. Probably not really a thousand. Probably that's an exaggeration, but it feels like thousands when their claws and their teeth and their acid saliva tears and scours his hide to ribbons and pulls him down with the rest.
10-03-2026, 10:55 AM (This post was last modified: 10-03-2026, 10:56 AM by anaemone.)
anaemone
How completely useless the eyes, for when the light comes they do not even think to close. And so she is blinded, momentarily. (Not that the eyes had been particularly useful before, blurry and drifting).
It might have struck fear in her to watch the thing sit, to raise its mighty sceptre, to split the earth. She feels only the rumbling, which arrests her feeble heart. She hears only the snarling, which stops her breath. The body thinks to retreat, to scramble backwards from whatever danger she cannot see. And so she does. Without thought for the other bodies, she flings herself backward.
And she begins to bleed, then. The skin tearing with the desperation of her fleeing. And she thinks, ah, yes, there it is. She thinks, that is the one thing this body is good for. Bleeding.
When she feels she is free of the tangle of bodies, she turns to run. She drags in a sharp, wet breath and runs. Heart pounding, blood thumping through her ears, she runs. Blindly, panic-stricken, bleeding. And for a moment, she feels she might escape whatever it is that pursues. She might have some chance on these awkward, coltish limbs. They might carry her someplace far from here.
But she crumples, suddenly and inexplicably, all of the air knocked out of her. Her head rings, throbs, and she realizes that she has collided with something. And when she lifts her head, the world comes swimming back into focus. A wall of water, impenetrable. Chest heaving, she does not attempt to rise. Knees bleeding, she understands that there is no use in fighting.
Behind her, screaming, snapping jaws, and they are coming for her next, she knows without even having to look. And she doesn’t look, Anaemone, and perhaps she convinces herself that she doesn’t care for what comes. The body will be ravaged, as it always has. It will bleed, as it always has. Bones will bow, snap, and the pain will be no different than it has always been.
In those moments, while she waits for them to come, she convinces herself that she is not afraid. She is merely a wounded animal that knows the fate of wounded animals. That fate comes snarling, snapping, foaming at the mouth, rabid. It could be peaceful, she thinks, the daughter of a hellhound. It could be like going to sleep.
At the last moment, she turns her head, a reflex as the first of the creatures leaps. And she whimpers and she is afraid. There is no peace here amongst this ruin, the bloodstained sand, the horrified screams. The skin splits so readily, eager to spill its blood, and finally she screams, too. Screams until a creature sinks its mighty teeth into her throat and all sound stops.
She does not resist, Anaemone, though this does not soften the creatures to her. Still, they bite. Still they shake their mighty, ugly heads. And still she bleeds. She can see clearly now, the blood she leaves in her wake, though the rest of her has gone numb. This is how it feels to die, she remembers, this quiet surrender. She had never been a fighter, couldn’t afford to be, when she had bled for so much less. Again, she is just this body. Limp, useless, bleeding. And, in the last moments before she is dragged down, down, down, back to the darkness she had been summoned from, her fear makes room for a sliver of annoyance. Annoyance that she had been brought back only to be made to bleed again. That she had been brought back only to die again.
It will be over soon, she knows. Or hopes. She will close those useless eyes and sleep.
But the creatures yelp and she looks. Looks to see the hand, reaching, pulling. Squeezing. And all she feels is dread as it closes over her, the creatures dragging, and she, too, is pulled down. Down, down, down. Bleeding, screaming without sound, paralyzed by fear or resignation or some deeper, darker thing.
And she does close those useless eyes and everything does go black, but she does not sleep.
10-03-2026, 01:03 PM (This post was last modified: 10-03-2026, 01:20 PM by Killdare.
Edit Reason: i forgot a ' by the opening Good - please do not come for me
)
you break me down and build me up, believer
'Good.’
That singular word reverberated in his ears, and his defiant ‘I will’ missed meeting the pace of the echo that carried forward from the massive titan before them. Even the earth beneath him answers more fiercely than he was prepared to receive, splitting with a violence that jars through bone and sinew. Makes his hooves quake below him, and when his insolent green gaze narrows on the creature, the Sun berates him with unkindness—blazing from the sky in white-hot light until he can do nothing but shy away with a turn of his heavy head.
With one sure blow, that great sceptre meets the sand below with an unrelenting connection. Killdare tries to align his glimpse on the danger, and as pitiful luck would have him it is snatched away. The sun is swallowed once more behind the mass of great shadow, and pitch. Yet the cause of light is merely exchanged from one unfavorable hand to another, great fissures of red crack in gleaming rivulets beneath him and his eyes drop to trace the scars left behind.
What an ironic view he’s made to perceive, emitting light with glowing doom, sizzling where water lingers to be made anew as steam. Once such a gift made its home within him. Droplets of ocean-water cascade from above, sending his steady stare to the sky, watching as the titan took his place on a throne made of sea, and Killdare was rife with indignation.
As if the goliath dared him to believe that he too had once sat so empowered.
How far he had fallen, how further still he must plummet.
It’s not long before his awareness is met with correction, a great black hand emerging from the sulfurous depths until claws become form. Form becomes fur, reeking of a hellish bouquet that remained rank and fetid to endure, even its body was impossible to accept. At the crown of this man-shaped disruption sat a head surely meant for a wolf, great horns protruding from its skull in curled perversions and Killdare backstepped as he soaked it all in.
Another emerges, pulling itself up, up, up from the gleam of a crimson tear.
Several split the scene with their encumbrance, hundreds crawling over one another, a thousand spill over, squealing with urgency and beastly rampage. There are not enough steps to take to make clearance between himself and the rush of abomination.
’Fetch.’
Finality coats the word, confidence held in the many voices that speak it into recognition, reaching his onyx ears like a gunshot to signal chase.
Killdare balks, fettering his feet to pull away, ivory teeth snapping toward the horde that shows ill signs of receding. They find air more oft than not, his quick succession of tooth meeting smoke, meeting tooth, does nothing to dissuade the beastlings. He must retreat, turning away with a mighty swing of his back legs, kicking out at the encroaching mob with the only power he still claims possession of. If he fights, he fights as flesh and bone.
His legs trample what tumbles beneath him, these creatures of heat and violence giving way to tangles of fur that fly in matted clumps as they skirmish amongst themselves to meet him, turning on one another as much as they war to confront his flesh. The air is befouled with the scent of blood, and he can taste the metallic fuel along his tongue—he doesn’t know if it’s his anymore.
Flesh is a fool's armor, submitting to claws that curve, and teeth meant for destruction. Weapons unfamiliar with the cozy chewing of grass, and the savory taste of leaves that come with warm spring. For every crumb of cracked earth he gains between them, for every crush of bone beneath his weight, squelching mulch of fleece below his hooves or concussion that rang true, there’s another beat of misery to meet him, clinging to the sinew of his penny-colored bay, and relishing in the nightmare of his footfalls failing beneath him.
If he had been a king once, the evidence now holds no bearing, not now as his blood pays the toll, and his flesh splits anew. Rivulets of such slaughter spring to crimson life against a backdrop of earthen mortality, signing the waiver to his demise. Fresh markers of an ante that continues to climb, and climb, and climb. And yet…
All he can manage is to fall, down, and down, and down. Struggling against the swarm becomes a futile war, and further still he has to fail; snatched away from the throng in a single calloused fist.
The hand pulls him into the fissure, and there’s nothing left but black.
