The clamor and excitement had roared across Novus with a booming voice. Everyone spoke of the bridge that erupted from the earth. Spat forth by the ash and soot that stained her hide. Effy rose with the heat of the sun, her legs were eager to carry her away from the Day Court. It was time for adventure. Aside from the strange creature in the Oasis, her life here had been relatively quiet. She yearned for the days when she had charmed the gods, and she longed for those who admired the wrath that crafted her. Those days were long gone, at least until the Gods here would love her the way that her old Gods did. The huntress carved from slate and ire moved with determination from the heart of the Day Court. The heat of the silver ribbons at her throat collided with the vulnerable flesh upon her neck as she moved. It reminded her that the sun had his wrath too. That she reflected his wrath.
That was only for Xamis. Effy had been surprised to learn that there was more than one who held the flames of the sun in their hooves. She wasn't sure how it worked, but it amazed her. She embraced the new court of the Sun wholeheartedly, despite being a thorn to those she met. Effy didn't care much for the others, but she didn't really know them. Efphion had yet to introduce herself to the new Sovereign, though she had approved of the way he'd ripped the throne from Seraphina. The sands poured out before her and heated the flesh just above her daggers. Effy wished she had the time to admire the beauty of her arid home, but she didn't. There was speak of a hunt, and discovery of a strange new world beyond this bridge. If the rumors were true, her blasphemous sister would be there. Efphion had no intention of letting Noctiilucent slip away from her fury.
Anger pushed the maiden made of ash and hate. It took almost no time to arrive at the bridge. It looked as though the earth had a long black tongue extending into an empty horizon. Efphion felt no hesitation as she began to cross the bridge. She would show Day who she was when she found her sister. Effy had no doubts that Noctiilucent would be here.
"Speech"
@Maerys
Blah, I am not great at starters. Effy has a vendetta for her sister, hence her focus here. I think Maerys is going to be an interesting character to rp with! <3 I'm excited!
YOU SYMBOLIZE THE GRITTY EDGES OF MY OUTRAGE LIKE SALT - I grind you into my wounds and you bite like salt
The tide drifts inward as a river – a curve like a sickle, cutting through stiff lines of shore, and, further inland, muddy gorge. In the deep center of the estuary, where the water is darkest, the sharp curve of a fin breaks the surface. The pale lash of a tail. Bull shark, Locust thinks (no, knows) as she watches it slice through the grey skim of waves with surgical precision. She finds the movement admirable, though she knows it is what it is meant to do; even when she swam, and she dares not swim anymore, she never had a choice but to fight the water.
Her knife hangs in the air in front of her, twirling around the curves of her invisible, telekinetic fingers absentmindedly. (She scarcely even looks at it.) Each revolution is a sharp click; a nervous twitch that she developed sometime in childhood.
It is high tide, and the rising sun is red. It hangs on the horizon, a thick glob of magma which makes the bobbing waves look like flames, rippling with distant heat. Behind her, it is still night; the world is dark blue, nearly dark enough to seem black, and the faint, hazy outlines of the stars and a disappearing sliver of moon remain visible even to the naked eye. The world is two-tone, the very contrast an act of violence – and, though she has seen many dramatic sunrises while out on the sea, where the water is sometimes so flat and calm that one can see for several miles in any direction, this one feels unnatural to her. The ocean is not itself. She has spent time in these waters, on one boat or another, but it feels unrecognizable.
She is not yet sure what that means. It is not like being on foreign shores; it is like being on something that is not a shore at all, even as she stands with her hooves just-buried in the pale lick of salt, barely out of reach of the ocean’s hungry mouth. She knows that the water will climb no higher, so she stands dangerously close to its briny tendrils, like a free man come to taunt a chained prisoner.
There are certain times when, in her line of work, Locust can almost forget the way that her stomach drops when she stands too close to the sea. This is not one of those times. The shark disappears beneath the current, and, a moment later, she thinks that she sees a splash of red drift to the surface.
(As a girl, hadn’t she swum with sharks? But that was so long ago now – god, she was getting old.)
She has encountered others on this island, while she has searched for one thing or another, but they have not lingered for long; there is a part of her that wishes that she’d brought a few members of her crew along with her, but another, more reasonable part of her knows that they lack the spine of the Sea Star. Most were relatively young and inexperienced, and, with no loyalty or obligations between them, they were apt to spook at the first sign of danger.
The island, of course, was dangerous. She was not yet sure if it was the danger of something cursed or something blessed. The natives told stories of their gods, but she was not a religious woman; blind faith was worthless, and even that which you saw with your own two eyes was often untrustworthy. She was not sure if the distinction mattered – regardless of whether it was cursed or blessed, she was neither native nor believer, and she hadn’t come here for blessings besides.
She had come here for August, or for the possibility of some kind of treasure, both of which, she supposed, she could consider blessings – but she had also come to the island because, like the song of a siren, dangerous things had always called to Locust, and she had discovered that it was always best to seek them out, rather than let them find her.
The knife turns. Clicks. She watches the water, which still does not feel to her like water should, and she wonders what she is hoping to find.
(Perhaps, somewhere in the distance, she sees something stir.)
In the shallows, a jade-eyed kelpie plays among the forest. She darts to and fro between the curtains of green, chasing after harbor seals and rockfish for no reason other than the sheer fun of it.
There was nothing like this where she was from. There was almost nothing at all but open space in every direction. It was the opposite of claustrophobia, but no less maddening for the uninitiated– and then you had the immense, bone-crunching pressure on the body and a blue so dark it almost seemed red. (or was that just the hunger coloring one’s vision? It was hard to tell, down there where Hunger was a religion.)
This was an entirely different world. One could get a true sense of their speed, when there were landmarks by which to measure distance traveled. So Anandi speeds along with powerful undulations of her long tail, front hooves tucked delicately to her chest (they were always in her way, but not as practical to remove as her mane) and among the kelp forest she learns how fast she can be, how agile. With only herself to race, she is always the winner. She laughs, so many bubbles, and fish dart away in fear at the sound. It makes her laugh even more.
It was usually easy to forget that beneath all that responsibility and maturity and hunger was just a girl. But not today. Today she is a child. Today she is–
Anandi sees the man with eyes like ice just in time to avoid colliding with him. She pulls up and rolls to the side, and though she should run run run while she has surprise on her side, she stops and turns to look at him. The child in her is gone the instant she sees the magnificent horn that spirals from his forehead (overcompensating much?) ending in a sharpened point. In the course of a split second, everything about her is different. Her face grows guarded and her lips tighten. Tension fills her body as she debates whether it is better to stand her ground or run, to charm or antagonize, seduce or repulse.
Her white forelock floats weightlessly around her like a halo. (The rest of her mane is cropped or tied particularly for this reason; she could never stand hair in her face, despite how wonderfully dramatic it could look. It was one of the few cases in which she chose practicality over vanity.) She must duck down to clear the hair from her vision, and once more their eyes lock. He looks positively villainous. She thinks she might be scared.
But she's never seen anything like him and she isn't ready to look away.
The girl stares at the menacing stranger with huge expressive eyes, ears and frond tilted back uncertainly. You wouldn’t eat me– would you? And then there is another change in her. Perhaps she is remembering that she is a princess, and she has sharp things too. She smiles, or more accurately she bares her teeth. You wouldn't dare try.
(right?)
A N A N D I Like a deep woman, the sea hid a good deal; it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. It spoke of miracles and distances; if it could court, it could also kill.
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
Sweat still gleams across her skin as she steps out from beneath the blazing candlelight of the stage. The wings are dark and cool and she drinks in that shadowy air. Behind her applause fill the room and already a stagehand is picking up the scattered flowers and jewels thrown in adoration upon the stage. “Take them to my room, as usual.” Minya says dismissively to the girl and sinks into the black.
Only the white of her Scarab tattoo gleams as she moves through the dim, dim light. She steps into a hallway, better lit. It oozes rich reds and glittering golds, chandeliers shine lavishly overhead, expensive artwork lines the halls, but Minya knows she is the most expensive thing here.
Smoke peels from her skin, licking and crawling up the walls of the narrow hallway. This noble girl smells of fire and smoke, perfume dances and melds with the smoke upon her skin, creating a tantalizing scent across her body. Another stagehand drapes a silk cloth across her back as she slinks by and her lips tip into a sultry smile, an echo of “thank you …?” dances by as she pauses and waits for him to give his name. Oh the boy stutters and stumbles over his words, he blushes and skitters after her – for when did Minya ever look at stagehands like him?
Danny he chirps at last and swallows, his eyes wide as he trails her down the hall, hopeful, misguided. She slips into her changing room. Inside it gleams more lavish than a dragon’s cave, and she is the exquisite creature that lies atop it, guarding. Could Minya ever be anything different? With smoke still curling across her skin and flames only just turning to ghosts within her mouth and skin that gleams like steel scales, Minya could never be anything less that draconic.
Carefully she draws a brush through the silken waterfall of her pink hair, petals and diamonds fall like confetti from it as she does. The gems skitter across the table and fall to the floor – they are more than she needs, they are everything that she wants.
The boy hovers in the doorway, suddenly unsure yet unable to leave not since she paid him any attention… “Danny.” Minya hums again, her eyes finding his in the mirror, studiously avoiding her own – never would she let anyone see how she avoids herself, how she avoids that wretched darkness and hatred that blooms and rips and tears like a dragon’s claws. She holds Danny in her gossamer web, she lets her words move to him like a black widow across her shining web. “Will you fetch Aghavni down to see me?” She asks lightly. “I need her to take my gifts upstairs to my bedroom.” Danny’s dark eyes widen, forest deep. “I- I can’t… That – that’s not…” He stammers off and in the mirror Minya pauses, her gaze unwavering, she is soft, she is hard, she is a spider, a dragon. She watches, as if he is a fly freshly flown into her web. The firedancer waits for him to finish to dare to say that’s not Aghavni’s job. Yet he doesn’t, his lips shut tight and he shifts uneasily before nodding tightly and disappearing into the lavish hallway to find Aghavni. If August were here, she is sure he would not let her play such games, yet he is not and the boy is impressionable, young and pliable as putty.
Her smile is content and mocking when she returns her gaze to her dressing table. The mirror reflects her: a girl of beauty, a monster an beautiful devil… a girl with a broken heart. Only the mirror catches that glimmer of darkness in the corner of her glossy lips. It is a darkness that holds, not a dragon, but a girl full of self-loathing and guilt, a girl whose better dreams are filled with street art and the wilds of Solerra’s desert. She is better in firelight and shadows, in smoke filled air and the gasp of street crowds. There she is Minya but here they adore her like a queen, they think of her a goddess upon the stage – and so she lets them.
Yet, when Aghavni comes, for her there will be the Scarab’s fire girl, whose patrons adore her like a queen and think of as a goddess upon the stage. And, like a goddess, Minya is the only one daring enough to expect Aghavni to do such menial tasks as the Scarab’s porters.
Santiago, reads the marker, but although the Dusk King stands at the foot of the disturbed grave it is not the weathered sandstone he watches. Overhead, Cirrus wheels silently, well above any passing pegasi, keeping an aerial view on Susurro and the nearby sea. It is late afternoon, somewhere between spring and summer, and the grasses and wildflowers, sedges and shrubs, are high enough to tickle the stallion’s belly and shoulders as he begins once more to walk. They are high enough to keep secrets, too.
Asterion has not come to look for Prudence - only to keep an eye on his Court. There are too many strangers and he does not need a horse’s natural inclination for suspicion to be wary of them; he thinks it is a bad time to let unknown glory-seekers into their home, but then, it always is.
And so he watches, and his companion watches, and rather than worry the bay makes his thoughts like the waves: an endless rhythm like breathing, remote and calm but ready to shape to any change, any threat.
Learning of the Gods and Goddesses of this new land Camillia had been thrown into, Caligo had seemed the most appealing. Her outcast nature was all too familiar to the winged mare. Her appearance and her personality had always driven others away. That was without mentioning her demented mother.
Wishing to be accepted quickly into the herd, the safest way of doing things, she opted for the position of medic. It wasn't her first choice or her second. But missing the magic of her previous world or a position to make use of her talent in poison, she had little other choice. Her next goal was to find allies in the herd. She knew how other horses would be drawn to her newness, that was at least before they experienced her abrasive nature. But a bit of her hoped this time would be different.
Wandering about her new home, Camillia admired the stronghold. She couldn't help but be curious about its past and the work that must have done to build such a fortress. It was a place of great mystery, especially to her considering she was quite lost. She had been looking for a part of the castle meant for a medic but had gotten distracted by the architecture. Really she should have waited until after she got more acquainted with the place, but she could be a creature of fancy at times. Her legs growing tired, she paused in what appeared to be a great hall and waited for someone to find her.
Character #1: @Bexley Bonded: N/A Magic: Periti level Light Manipulation Armor: N/A Weapons: N/A Current Health: 30 Current Attack: 30 Current Experience: 55
Character #2: @Seraphina Bonded: Ereshkigal, Demonic Vulture Magic: Periti level Greater Telekenesis Armor: Leather face and chest plates and front leg wraps, golden hood (not sure if she's wearing it right now?) Weapons: Alshamtueur, flaming sword Current Health: 17 Current Attack: 23[/font][/size] Current Experience: 61
BEXLEY BRIAR
but if i gave up on being pretty,
I wouldn’t know how to be alive
The sun splits a perfect day in half. It’s spring again. The clearness of the new sky and the warm breeze winding over the dirt are like a clean, bright candy on the tongue. Across the steppe, Bexley can see a shadow, dark and clean against the yellowish horizon: she watches and does not flinch.
Even if she were scared, and she’s not—she’s not—what is there left to lose?
Bexley’s life is practically over, and the lives of everyone she loves. What can she do about it? They are all powerless against Raum’s military regime, next to nothing in the face of his soldiers and swords. (She sees his face in her sleep and tears it apart, sets it on fire, buries it deep. But no matter what he comes back to haunt her, all quicksilver skin and cornflower eyes. Most of the time, at least; his strange magic made it all the more confusing—)
He should be dead by now. Seraphina should be queen, and she and Eik should be regent and emissary. She should… she should know where her daughter is. And she should be living in her towers like a person, not scrounging around the desert in search of somewhere to sleep, using her magic to keep herself warm while the scum of the earth sits on the Solterran throne.
All this should, and none of it feasible. It makes her sick.
The heat of the sun bakes the steppe, and in pursuit of summer, thin, lengthy cracks spread through the wine-red dirt. The web is complex and overlapping, like the veins in a pretty piece of marble. Bexley shifts her weight over her feet in a test. The ground holds, though not without a little displacement, and she lets out a slow breath of relief.
The shadow on the horizon grows larger, closer. Bexley’s nerves start to tighten against waves of adrenaline. Her heart speeds its thump in her chest. All at once she feels both very small and very large, very angry and very much in love, and the magic heat that washes over her is so potent and so gold it almost knocks her off her feet, almost, almost.
But she is not a girl anymore, and this is no time to learn weakness.
“Seraphina.”
It’s not loud enough to carry, but even using the name feels like committing a crime, burning a brand of guilt onto her tongue. Bexley’s pulse swells. (Desert laws reign supreme to her, even all the way out here.)
The sun blinks overhead through a thin lace of clouds, and Solterra’s no-longer-golden girl slashes her tail behind her like a ribbon dancer. Her blood hums with alternating hot and cold, fear and excitement; she pulls the magic that roars through her into a fist, barely contained, and waits.
Her life recently has felt like a singular command: stay. Who is she to argue with God?
Summary: Bexley laments her current position in life and thinks about how much she hates Raum, as is her daily ritual. She makes note of the weather (unseasonably warm, though cloudy) and the terrain (super dry and less stable than usual). She waits for Seraphina to show up for their stress relief/murder practice spar!
Other than the island (which she doesn’t count, as it still feels like nothing so much as a collective fever-dream the whole of Novus shares) Elif has never seen anything so green.
From above, below the clouds but above the trees, the fields unroll like an emerald map, a stream like a blue thread winding through. But from the ground - oh! It is a wealth of color, almost too much to look at, a candy so sweet it hurts. Giant swallowtails drift past, more graceful on the breeze than she could ever hope to be, and she follows them as long as she can, rapt and wondrous at the bright yellow, the heartbreak blue, the black lines barring each. She has never seen a butterfly before.
Elif wants to linger, wants to roll in the long and waving grass and then graze until her slat-ribs are sleek and round and her hunger is a bad memory. If only, she thinks, all the people of Solterra could come here -
but that is why she came. There were rumors of an object, something powerful, something that would lend strength to the finder. And Elif needs strength. Her appeal to Raum had done nothing - she has failed to find others to form a resistance - and no one, she has decided, was coming to save them.
So she will try whatever she must. Even rumors in strange lands.
The thought sobers her, turning her attention from the beauty and richness of Terrastella. Now she scans the field as a hawk might, looking for a prey she doesn’t know - but the group of horses at the bottom of a gentle slope seems a good start.
Tucking her wings along her sides, shaking her narrow head like ridding herself of nerves is as easy as dissuading flies, she steps toward them.
Roleplayer:@Rae Name: @Eik Gender:Stud Muffin Age: 11 Court: Day, but he's an outcast
Other Information
Link to the required Amare Creek "Fade to Black" thread:here How many total threads have they interacted in?12345
What is the current IC season? Spring
Are you using any items? Isra: Twin Item, Healthy Pregnancy, Choose gender (female), Guaranteed Pregnancy(but I don't think we need it) Eik: Choose gender (female)
If the parents are of separate Courts, what parent will the foal live with? @Isra in Denocte If the conception is successful, do you have an RPer for the foal(s)? YES @Rae @Nestle Is there anything else you'd like us to know? BABIESSSSSS
There is a gentle whistle of hot, desert wind that twists and curls through Elatus Canyon - not so strong that the dust becomes unsettled in its place on the ground, but just enough to tousle the knotted hair of rotting bodies that lay slouched over sandstone. Avdotya pauses at each one, noting the similarities they all shared. Malnourished, sick, weak. She knows whose hand their deaths came from, she knows that Raum - the man she agreed to serve - is no better a king than the pompous boy who lay with his throat slit at her feet years ago. She knows he needs to die, for her own sake and the Davke’s. A crow’s promise never held much value to a snake, after all.
Eventually the bodies begin to blend in, just another piece to the canyon like the rock and sand. Feliks still pauses briefly at each one, sniffing them carefully for reasons only a dog would understand. Avdotya ignores him, if only to spare herself the irritation each time he realizes how far he has fallen behind and gallops over with excessive enthusiasm.
At least until the borzoi reaches the next carcass. His reaction is different; he breathes in, then turns sharply to look at Avdotya with an expression she knew to be grave. Bad, he says through their connection. Her eyes narrow. The markings are familiar, she recognizes those spiraling horns and that fiery orange mane. Sister. Feliks’ voice murmurs in her mind, quieter than when he last spoke. It does not take long to confirm that it is Makeda when she reaches the girl’s side, ribby and devoid of the spice it once harboured. She stares wordlessly for a moment, unsure of what emotion it was that she felt brewing in her chest; it is white hot, unlike any other Avdotya has felt. Though the sisters were never as close as other siblings may be, they were still family. Makeda was the last true familial connection she had in this life... and now she is gone.
The viper’s ears flatten against her neck.
And she remembers - she remembers that a snake’s promise would never hold value to a crow, either.
