"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
He’s on the hunt yet again, on the lookout for another mare to add to his little herd. He’s not having luck so far, but he’s not feeling particularly urgent - he does have five mares after all - so he’s content for the moment to step back and laze about on the edge of the southern edge of the meadow. He stands with his feet in the lake, enjoying the way the cool water laps gently against his legs. It’s nice to relax. It’s been quite the year after all. Five more children (including the last season) and a battle to his name. A successful battle. He’s done quite well for himself.
As he looks out across the lake, he can’t help but wonder what his father would think if he saw him now. The last time Zayn had seen Gryffen, he’d been but a mewling child, still suckling at his mother’s teat. Now he’s a stallion grown, with nine children to carry on his line, a captaincy in the army, a useful apprentice, a few ‘friendships’ of sorts amongst his fellow Chamber members, and a successful fight in the war to his name. Would Gryffen be proud? Zayn hopes so, but there’s no way of knowing. Gryffen has been gone for so long, and no one has seen any sign of him for years.
He sighs and settles back on his hooves, still looking out across the lake. All he does know at this point, is that he’s certainly it will only get better from here on out. He’s finally on his way up in the world.
04-25-2016, 04:15 PM (This post was last modified: 04-25-2016, 04:21 PM by Tarnished.)
Are you not entertained?
Kingpin has, perhaps, suffered the most. He’s been wrapped with tentacles for weeks; always prying, always invasive, pulling off patches of his flesh; whenever the creature thinks the stallion might bleed out, it grows another tentacle to plug the hole and continues to carry its victim along nonchalantly through the tunnels its’ dug beneath Beqanna. His screams echo along the newly made caves, but no one can hear them; not a single soul comes to help him and he’s delirious with infection and fever when his captor finally decides it’s time to return to the surface. Spewing nonsense, spittle flying from his mouth, he rallies together all of his strength in a final effort to break free; he struggles, he kicks and he bites as the monster makes its’ tedious climb upwards, so it obliges him—sort of, by squeezing out what little life is left in him and letting him go. His heavy mangled corpse bangs dully against the walls, falling back down into darkness long before the creature ever reaches the light.
The surface of the lake starts to bubble; it’s small, at first, but then the bubbles grow larger and the water starts to spiral; before long, it’s like someone has pulled the stopper out of a bath. It rises out of the spiraling water before Zayn; hundreds of feet tall with thousands of tentacles protruding from its body. He is the first thing it sees and so he is the next victim. It doesn’t make him suffer the way it did Kingpin (though if it knew, it might have); nevertheless, his death is just as painful. Tentacles surround Zayn before he can flee and jerk him up from the ground; methodically, they begin ripping him apart piece by piece. His eyes are removed first and then his tongue and then it makes short work of the rest of him before casting the squishy, bloody remnants aside. It moves among the rest of them slowly, picking targets at random; a couple (a bay stallion and a buckskin mare) copulating at the edge of the great meadow catches its’ eye and it roars before furiously crushing them. The next, a dun stallion that cannot seem to move fast enough, is hoisted up by his back leg. Thousands of beady, yellow-gold eyes glare into the horse’s one eye before the monster swallows him whole.
Two gray mares are next; they had been grazing together peacefully before the pandemonium started. A tentacle equipped with a mouth full of sharp, barbed teeth shoots out and digs into the sides of the first gray mare; it eats into her, gnawing through her ribs and feasting hungrily on her innards. Blood gurgles out of her mouth while her companion, suddenly hysterical, tries to save her—she soon meets the same end.
A thick, blackish aura begins to emanate from the creature as it starts to shrink; down, down, down, its tentacles withdraw into its body as it begins taking the shape of a horse. The aura visibly spreads—seeking targets both far and wide, the disease takes whoever it wants without regard. Wracked with chills, shaking, puking, two stallions drop to their knees as he begins to approach them; one is chestnut, the other is black and mumbling odd things under his breath: “I told you so, I told you so.”
“What are your names?” Tarnished asks, smiling.
“L-Luus,” the chestnut replies.
“Cad…mus.”
Tarnished’s smile disappears; he attacks Cadmus first, forcing him to the ground and crushing his skull beneath his hooves. Luus is next. The chestnut stallion topples over easily and Tarnished, employing the method he’d seen wolves use when he’d watch them crack open ice to get something to drink, rises and falls repeated in a half-rear—crushing in Luus’s ribcage. Breathing heavy, the Percheron Hybrid lifts his head and screams at the sky: “It’s done, it’s done! I did it for you, Master. I did it for you.”
04-26-2016, 09:19 AM (This post was last modified: 04-26-2016, 09:22 AM by Cassi.)
and lord, I fashion dark gods too;
He never knows what they’ll do when he frees them.
The ones he has for a short time move on, grow moss over their scars, if they can. He becomes naught but a name, a memory, something sleeping in their subconscious. And that’s okay, for they are all just names to him, dull memories and sharp tangs of blood on the tongue.
The ones he keeps for longer, the ones he pours his craftsmanship into – they are more interesting, set alight on Beqanna (for they all flock back to the motherland, pulled like magnets). Cordis still won’t speak his name. Perse speaks little but his name.
And now, this boy.
He is absent while the corpses are piled like cordwood, bones cracked brittle and blood soaking the earth. He does not let himself be proud – they are all failures, in the end, and he has no doubt this boy will fail him too – but he does smile, a sick little grimace of his terribly sensuous mouth.
He comes, when the killing is done (not the old king, though, that coward had run, had not sacrificed himself for his kingdom, and good riddance to him as the war sputtered and fizzled out quick as it had come). He comes as a horse, his normal, terribly plain form. It is what he prefers, when all is said and done, does not need trickery and monstrosity – he is terrible enough like this.
The meadow does not welcome the god from the machine, instead seems to groan beneath him, but he moves onward, to the killing field, to the boy who stands, sides heaving. I did it for you.
Such glorious words, the climax of what he strives for – to turn their will to his, not by force, but by conviction. To let them make a choice, and have them choose him, every time.
“Tarnished,” he says. A fitting name. The boy is stained, ruined, (beautiful)
and ever so willing to please.
He surveys the waste before him, and nods, once.
“Good,” he says. He almost means it. The boy is trying, and that’s more than he can say for so many.
He is trying.
****
And somewhere, a silver mare watches. She is not present to the affair, where god meets monster over a field of ruin, but she sees it, vivid as daylight. She is unused to visions, her magic still a strange and fickle thing despite the years.
A brand on her hip burns, hot.
Seeing Him again – even in vision – is hard enough, the ache on her hip is hard enough, but worse still is the thing before Him. The one who did the killing, who offered the still-warm bodies like a prize to the dark god. Who calls him master.
The woman isn’t aware she’s shaking, and whether it’s in fear or fury, she can’t say. There is a girl, says a voice, sing-song, a girl who’s dead and not-dead.
The voice sounds like Him, but she listens. She can’t help but listen. Who would win, do you think? The girl’s like this boy – malleable, but powerful.
A laugh, from somewhere, from everywhere, and then the laugh turns to crows, a whole murder of them, blacking out the sky.
