"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
Without the knowledge to lead, so you just follow the sheep.
Making sure your lame swag is all polished and clean.
It is dark when he slips through the trees that outlined the chamber's borders. His wings are gone the fresh taste of mortal life runs through his veins with a renewed and relieved vigor. He had spent so much time in the minds of his demons that he he had forgotten what the taste of fresh air felt like on his throat, or how the fresh soil spread beneath his hooves. For the majority of his trip he focused on both entirely, relishing in the feeling of clean air and damp earth.
As he pressed forward, his true self lay dormant, like a monster laying in wait under a child's bed in the early morning hours. His main goal was to search for the three faces the demons had spent ample amount of time showing him, ensuring he remember, before spitting him back into the place he was born so crudely. It seemed to take hours, this little trip from the forest and he could have easily cut his time into seconds, yet he knew it was best that he remain as normal as possible... For now that is.
It is when he is a few yards from the broder that he stops and begins to wait, knowing that they would eventually come. He had no doubt they would hear of his return and that they would desire to have words with him about his disappearances and he was willing to let them say their pieces without threat of anger in response. And when they were done, saying what they felt they needed to say, he would offer them what he knew he could in exchange for his failure. Though it would be entirely up to them whether they took the peace offering for what it was or not.
His body remains still, becoming statuesque as the minutes of his unusually patient waiting turn to hours and he refuses to even make a sound save for the quiet breaths that pass through his nostrils. It was about time he made up for the demons tearing him away from their plans and now was as good of a time as any.
The oncoming change that lay so delicately on the horizon was almost palpable and with change always came unrest. It was almost necessary that one get all their ducks in a row before things potentially came to a head.
07-06-2016, 09:24 AM (This post was last modified: 07-06-2016, 09:34 AM by Killdare.)
± when you feel my heat, look into my eyes ±
Night came lately in the most definitive of ways, heavy, like a thick wool blanket. It hung with a presence so absolute that Killdare would swear he could feel it. One thing was different though that he hadn't noticed before, the crickets, they sang sweetly among the pine forest and he thinks maybe he had just never stopped to listen. He shakes his sooty head, the nonsense, it had been eerily quiet before the Kingdom meeting and now it wasn't, the Chamber had come alive. He knew she had, that she wouldn’t settle to lay dormant for too long, especially when there was so much going on.
The King settles into the sounds of the wood, weaving through the pines even in the dark, eyes bright as lamps with their fire. It was almost peaceful here, he laughed inwardly, this world did not know peace did it? They wouldn’t allow it to wash over the realm because they were too set on their paths to throw things wayward at the drop of a hat. Well fine, he would keep his lava eyes peeled then if that was how it were to go.
Very few in Beqanna could hold a stench akin to the sulfer and brimstone that called Killdare home. Very few indeed. This one was particularly strong, passed the depths of the Earth to levels far more magical and religious perhaps, hellfire. Well, that certainly wasn’t the case was it? Nothing smelled like that except, well except…. A charcoal brow rose on its blackened base and he growled if horses could do such, and then he charged. He melted, raging through the forest as flowing, molten earth. Tendrils of himself whipped around the trees, flinging against their rough bark and yanking him forward with new bursts of speed. He obliterated that path, surged forward singing everything yet burning down none of it, leaving only an ashy trail as evidence.
Killdare found him all right, bold as brass at his borders, returned to life or simply released from the shadows of it. He brakes then, until the last inch of lava has whipped into place from a low hanging branch and snaps back in place. He stops, but he doesn’t bother to cool, to become hardened rock to save the other from imminent death. Tannor could not die of this heat and that was almost a bloody shame. “Well, well, well,” he seethes snorting brimstone and ash into the air. “Your majesty, to what do I owe such an audience.” His words were bitter, biting even with his tongue as a proverbial whip against a fleshy back.
“I know many little shitasses Tannor, and I dare say you are king of them all.” Ah, that felt kind of good. With that little jab he molds two messengers, both panthers made entirely of magma, one to the North and one to the South. “Can’t enjoy a good tongue lashing all to myself can I? Offspring and Topsail will be overjoyed at your return, I must say.”
And then he too waits, glaring into Tannor and wishing he could burn holes where his eyes fall. What a rotten little devil he was.
He has emerged from the icy confines in the shadows of twilight, his marred flesh glimmering beneath the pale moonlight. His lungs painfully sting with the stickiness of humidity, but he savors it for a long moment as his behemoth mass is enveloped in the warmth of a brisk summer evening. He does not often descend from the mountain peaks, but something lures him from the depths of the shadows and into the thicket of foliage. The soil is moist and pliable beneath his weight, and the Earth blossoms once more with life.
He remains still, breathless at the sight that bubbles and simmers before him, illuminating the otherwise impenetrable darkness of the forest. It takes very little time for the mass of rippling magma to reach him, and now it stands before him, a beacon for something far larger than itself. His crimson gaze bores into it as a sheath of ice crawls along his own body, and he observes the way that it wavers and sways with each thick overlay of its own product; rebuilding itself each time that it begins to melt into the terrain below it.
The heavy scent of sulfur is enough; to see it glaringly study him is the only message he needs. Without a second glance, he breaks away from its obscenely warm (and entrancing) allure, weaving his hefty weight through the various pines that line the forest. Once exposed to the open elements of the stagnating air and open, twinkling night sky, he breaks into a weighted gallop, fiercely pushing against an unseen force as he gathers forceful speed.
At last, with heavily lungs, flaring nostrils and gleaming red eyes peering up along the familiar (albeit charred) border, he draws his pace to a quiet lope, softly loping through the terrain. The scent of sulfur begins to infiltrate the heady scent of pine and he knows that he must be close to the border's edge. He has been called here; he has been beckoned and he knows what and who awaits his presence. Crushing dried leaves and twigs beneath him, he follows the gentle glow of a distant ember. Upon rising over the crest of a gently sloping hilltop, he sees him in his magma-encrusted glory, burning with a ferocity that Offspring has never seen before.
His own flesh bristles angrily with a dense encasing of ice and his shoulders develop a thick lining of sharped icicles, extending nearly a foot beyond the surface of his skin as he descends to observe what surely must deceive his eyes - but it does not. He stands in the flesh, eyes gleaming with mischief, as silver as the salty seawater beneath a ray of moonlight and stripped of his glorious wings. He reeks of something else, but the stench from Killdare overwhelms it. Tannor. Offspring nears the bubbling magma King, standing beside him but with a decent distance. His own body fights the heat radiating from his body and replenishes the ice covering his own.
"I now see why Killdare has sent for me. Topsail as well, I presume." He does not look towards Killdare for clarification - he knows that he is accurate; it is only a matter of time until the ferocious reptile makes a frightening appearance from the shadows of night. "You've returned. The audacity. You settled into the shadows and heeded the call of your own demons," (and oh, little does he realize the truth of this statement) "without returning the calls of those who sought your alliance. What do you want now? Why have you returned?"
She had been lurking at the border when the lava-made panther found her. The wolves patrolling with her snarled and frothed, clearly uneasy in the fire cats presence. She eyed the beast with a half smirk on her pretty lips, knowing full well where it had come from. And while its presence didn’t concern her, it had certainly peaked her curiosity. Clearly something was urgent if Killdare couldn’t spare the time to come speak to her himself, instead sending his minions in his place. So with that same smirk, she transformed. Even the cats of lava had to admire the monster that rose before him.
The forest was no match for intensity. She thundered on powerful legs, letting loose a feral screech to split the still night air. The wolves howled along with her and ran at her side, their own lips peeled back to reveal yellowed teeth. She did not slow when she reached her kingdom border and neither did they; if Killdare wanted an audience, an audience she would bring. Their combined growls and snarls sent the forest into a frenzy and though her little contingent longed to give chase, they stayed true to the path. A brazen wolf snapped at her ankles and she returned it in kind, bloodlust flooding her veins as the canine blood spilled over her tongue. It would survive, probably…or not. There were more.
She should have slowed when she neared the Chamber border. Common courtesy dictated it. Common courtesy also dictated that her kingdom stay free of stinking fire beasts in the dead of night, but Killdare had shot that rule to hell and so to would she. Opening her lethal mouth she screamed again, a warning to the Chamber residents that she was amongst them. They scattered into the night and all for the better; her eyes, and possibly teeth, were meant only for one. As his sulfur stink flooded her sensitive nostrils she slowed, clawed feet digging into the soft moss. It was like flesh but without the satisfying tang of blood that followed. As the magma king came into view, so did the ice king. And another…like a ghost from her past; Tannor. Her counter part, so to speak, in the grand kingdom exchange executed by their fathers. But unlike her, he had left his kingdom. A growl tore loose from her throat to be matched by her entourage of wolves, revealing a row of lethal teeth. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, showing up here in the middle of the night.” she growled. On the ground, the wicked-sharp toe claw flexed, an action she wasn’t acutely aware of. “Your next words had damn well better be good ones, for they may well be your last.” Of course, she did not know what he harbored in his own breast. She also didn’t care. Right now she was blinded by the anger and the fading bloodlust so common to her raptor form.
