mercy. we have forgotten the name
*
They are fire and ice, fury and a freeze. They are two different types of war. One is a blaze with glory that burns like wildfire until the monsters are gone and phoenixes are left to rise and resurrect from the ashes of the new world. The other is a war made of small wins, plotted in the shadows and survival is oft dug out from the shifting sands.
But war is war and differences matter little where there is blood to be paid and justice to be dealt.
“I knew a desert once in another world, another place where lands shifted like dreams and were as dangerous as nightmares. I hunted in that desert, tracking until my lungs craved clear mountain air and my lips thought they would never taste the cool sting of water again.” There is no magic in Calliope's story, only the gunshot rasp of her voice and the way her eyes spark with seeds of lightning fury. “The winds were endless, violent breezes that moved the dunes around like there were nothing more than piles of dust.” Sand is sand it forgives neither impatience or inaction.
It is a fragile thing, to hunt in the desert and while this place is different Calliope imagines sand is sand and monsters are monsters (and she has known both well).
The desert at her back is calling her, a world of dust and tracks already swallowed up by the dunes. But there are monsters out there, beasts that tracked her shadows and she's hungry for the fight. She needs a battle to let a little of this rage out so she doesn't explode. There are other things too she wants to discover in the desert for there's a touch of bear-skin on the breeze that sends her heart thrumming with recklessness.
“Then a sandstorm came and all the trails were buried by the desert as if the monster had never been.” Calliope's smile turns bitter for it's not often that the unicorn can admit to failing in her purpose. The desert is hard for hunting, as unrelenting as she and perhaps that is why she loves the blazing sun and sands so much. But she still loves her thunder prairies more, her seas that spark and glow when the lightning lands.
With one last look at the broken fountain, the charred tapestries and the way the streets could be slumbering in the sunlight Calliope pulls away. There's an invitation in her gaze, a bond when she dips her horn to tap, tap, tap a farewell against the ground. “Do not wait too long to hunt your justice, trails are harder to follow when they are dead.” It's the last understanding that Calliope offers the queen before she gallops through the broken streets, a streak of black weapon stark against the red stone.
In the desert the sand monsters might slumber away the heat of the day, unaware that Calliope is coming for them. A unicorn never forgets and she made them a promise when she ran across the sands for the capitol.
And Calliope always keeps her promises.
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