The Dusk Court... was not what he had expected. Well, not that he had expected much of anything, but still. Doing the rounds, seeing the faces... he supposed he expected more. More people. The Court was small, lots of flighty-folk, plenty of his own kind, and a few who had neither horn or wings. He was told about some goddess, Waspera? Sounded like a pain in the arse (heh), but well, he wasn't inclined to be sending along any prayers to her anytime soon.
What he was definitely not expecting, though, was the sheer lack of drink. There was plenty of water, for sure, even some fancy punches, but anything stronger... With his flask running low, and himself painfully sober, the marbled stallion walked through the halls of the Dusk Court citadel. It was a pretty castle, he supposed, but as far as castles went it was kind of... bland. Too much stone, not enough cloth on the walls, and why the hell weren't there torches everywhere?
Did they want assassinations? Because that's how you got assassinations. Well, that and a lot more shit, but he couldn't bother following that line of thought. He was on a mission.
Well, he had been on a mission. A fruitless one, pun not intended. No matter how low he looked, he couldn't find a way into the depths of the castle and hopefully to the cellars. Frustrated, still sober, and all too annoyed, the ragged stallion muttered curses under his breath as he walked back through the halls, retracing his steps back out. The only good thing so far about this little trek, was that Vertias had been quiet at his side. Unusual, for the sword, but he was enjoying the silence.
He wasn't paying attention, though, as he rounded a corner and felt something-or someone- solid hit him, and he jerked to a stop, a grunt escaping him as he blinked, and focused his eyes on the person that had bumped into him.
"Y'should watch where you're going." 'You could follow the same advice.'
He woke with a start to one hell of a headache, saltwater in his mouth, and a crab climbing his tail and getting waaay too familiar with his nether regio-
Yeah, no. No. Nononono. No.
Meridoc surged to his hooves with a grunt and a curse, his left hind leg kicking furiously to try and dislodge the stubborn crustacean from his tail. When that failed, he swung his head around, lifted his leg, and nearly fell down in the surf trying to tear the little shit off with his teeth. Unfortunately, it saw the danger coming and let go to fall to the ground.
Unfortunate, because then Meridoc bit down with force on his tailbone.
Lovely fucking morning.
Once he had gotten himself set to rights, he finally trudged out of the shallow surf, stinging in annoyance and genuine pain, the rugged stallion looked around, scowling. It was awfully quiet-
'About time you noticed I was missing. Having fun with the local wildlife, Meridoc?'
Yep. There it was.
"Yeah, well, I hope you're drowning in the bottom of the ocean."
'I am a sword, Meridoc, I can't drown.'
"Well, just fuckin' rust then."
It was easy enough to spot the sword; Veritas stood in the sand, pristine and perfect, and the amusement he felt rolling off of the sword as he made it rise from the sand was enough that he idly considered throwing it out in the ocean and seeing how far he could make it go-
'I wouldn't suggest that.'
He glowered at the steel, as if it had eyes to look into. Well, it did, but they were his in the reflection of the metal. "It's gettin' tempting."The blade tilted, then, a sheen flickering across it, giving Meridoc a glimpse behind him... and at the giant hellish beast galloping it's way towards him, some bastard mix of a lion, goat and snake.
'Still want to throw me into the ocean, Meridoc? I could go if you want to... handle this foe. Surely it won't be as difficult as the Lord of Crabs you just fought.'
"Shut up." What a lovely way to start the day. Meridoc wasted no time... in running like hell, taking off as fast as he could down the beach, Veritas floating effortlessly beside him. 'It's catching up, Meridoc.'"I can hear that!"'It looks quite upset, did your stench offend it?'"SHUT. UP."
She was once the great Winter Wolf. She was once the insurmountable figure that took over castles and kingdoms and patrolled battle fields to pick a good fight with any worthy opponent; she was once the soft touch of a healing kiss who picked up the fallen and mended them back to health. She was once many things that she no longer was, for she was never enough and was bound to fail the name given to her: Rannveig, the once-Queen of two courts that fell in different ways. She couldn't uphold them, couldn't support their weights on her back any longer, and so one she passed along to a girl-child who was too innocent for the cold bite of steel of a crown that sat upon her brow, and the other she only watched as it collapsed to finalize the end of an era for the winter lands of Veteris. She was left crownless, homeless, and seemingly destined to walk the earth stripped of all titles; she was not worthy of any great stories being retold, of having her name spoken aloud, of being seen as anyone but the shell of a defeated warrior.
She had lost her battle, and there was no recovering.
She carried a secret with her as she moved out past the Swamp she once traversed infrequently many many moons ago, where a Champion of Healing had sat beneath the reign of a now-fabled wolf queen. Briefly she wondered if Yana even called the lands home any longer, or if she too had bade her goodbyes and left her hoofprints as the only thing remaining of her existence with them. But the painted woman's mind was filled with other things, and it wasn't but a moment's blink with silver lashes that she instead refused to think anything more of her past. The marsh waters turned into solidified earth but the forest trees remained in place, their interspersed limbs occasionally intertwining with each other and encasing her in a space that felt safe, that indicated that, maybe, she could let everything else go too--the burden of failures, the insignificance of her minuscule achievements and how they dulled in comparison to the acknowledgment that she had let everyone down, everyone including Vespera.
Vespera... how her heart ached and cried to be pulled apart, to have the fine stitching of its fabric be cut undone; what had Vespera done? Rann had thought she alone had hurt the Dusk Court more than anyone, but in the end it was their Goddess that did the most damage. How could she have betrayed them, how could she have put her court through so much tragedy and call it a test of their will, a test of their strength when they had done nothing but prove their loyalty to her?
She stood on the edge of the singing creek, wolf coat thrown off some distance away, her body blurred out by the chilling mists in the air from both the winter season setting in and the excess water hanging around the cheery, small river. She felt anything but as she looked down into the soft curves of the pebbles and smoothed-out rocks, mind lost to the flow of the nearly-transparent liquid running through.
"there are always flowers for those who want to see them"
Fiona was no stranger to the Great Hall of Terrastella's citadel. It had hosted many gathering within its walls on the past, the most recent being the gathering of those who had been injured or left out in the cold during the floods, and the following arrival of Vespera with the gophers. Remembering the way Vespera had spoken to them, the expression she'd worn, it brought a dull throbbing to her side where she'd been injured.
But now, Fiona looked at the Great Hall and saw no remains of that terrible time. Now, the fires were roaring not to dry the soaked but the stave off the winter chill. The tables were filled with food and drinks, not for the hungry, but for enjoyment. There was another addition too; the parchment and pens, pencils, paints.
The Champion of Community settled in at a table, allowing the sound of surrounding conversation to pull her into some sort of creative trance. It was wonderful to her ears to hear the laughter and raucous voices, and the joy was contagious. Soon, Fiona was drawing a pen across the paper in front of her, smiling to herself and sipping an amber wine from a glass that had ended up in front of her at some point while she'd been distracted.
She was the wolf that prowled in snowy fields of plush white, her howls reaching across eons, her breath staining the air with a ghostly plume that lingered for centuries. She was the wolf that carried the burden of every defeat and triumph, every broken bone and mended body, the failures of a past that haunted and taunted and drowned out the soft whispers of the victories.
She was the white wolf, the winter wolf, and she was back.
The ex-Wolf Queen had returned to Novus, to Terrastella.
Her Court of Winter had fallen. It laid behind her in a heap that could not be repaired, could not be even considered anything that it once was. There had been war--how there was always war--and that time she could not stop it. That time--her second visit and what she had intended to be her final one but in a different way since she first sought out the sister continent of Novus--that time she was powerless to stop the destruction from reaching their door. Her brother, righteous and valiant in his own way as the true heir Heimsterra called for, could also do nothing but watch in horror as all he had built those past years settled into simple rubble. How easily everything had crumbled without a second's thought, as if the foundation itself had given up the fight before it ever really even began. It was a home to those who sought solace from the endless-blizzards, a refuge for any who wandered through, a birthplace for her. And then it was all gone.
She had been left without a place to be once again. Her last few moments in Novus were spent with Vespera, the painted star-girl down on her knees as she shed a tear for all she couldn't become; cold, cold was the alter on which she begged for some sort of sign of what she was supposed to do, begged for a forgiveness she didn't deserve for letting down an entire kingdom she had tried to carry on unfit shoulders. Her crown tarnished, her name stripped of all honor, she was left with nothing and no direction to go. Though she had been chided (like a child's whims of grasping at false promises) for losing her hope in the process of the natural order of their world, the ethereal Goddess of Dusk gave her a pledge of a brighter future as she brought life to fruition below her hooves.
In the end, the woman of cream hues and spilled blues would slink back to her den in Veteris, and there would be more life brought to her in ways she couldn't imagine.
And so with the demise of the forever-winter court, she sulked back with tail tucked between legs into the territory of the Dusk Court, alone. The stone tower was as it had always been, but the path to reach it had been more treacherous than she recalled. But she had been gone so long, and oh the events she had missed out on. Her once-lover and first child both sought solace elsewhere and the others under the guidance of Glacia had either stayed with what little remained of their kingdom or also found themselves out seeking alternative options. But she, the one who put so much of herself into a place she wasn't part of, went back to where the true test first began.
Fitting for the name the land held, her star-speckled body appeared at the steps of the dusk tower under a falling sun. The sky was painted in streaks of pink and purples, loud lines of sunlight cutting through the otherwise otherworldly colors. Teal eyes that once held the life of an entire population in their depths were then just shallow pools, and they looked up, up to the window of a room that should have belonged to their current Sovereign. The one who she last saw as just a child. "I am here for the Queen," she called out with a heavy voice laden thick with her viking accent, the sound resonating emptily like a bell rung through the expanse of an endless field. Her cape hung limply over a body that seemed smaller than it ever had before.
It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you?
T
he night is almost dark and moonlit when he takes to the streets. Tonight he is as dark as the space between the stars. Each of his feathers is heavy with ink and silent with the weight of all his secrets. His heart is the only part of him that feels like air. It beats in his chest like a war-drum in a thunderstorm. The world around him moves so slowly compared to that wild bass echoing in a hall of rib bones.
Veer almost cannot bear the slowness of the world.
When he walks through the streets each soldier watches him pass. They smile and nudge their shoulders together, whispering of fights and fortunes. Each of them wonders who he will kill tonight; who will find death as the end of his hooves. Perhaps they are wondering if it's fire in his golden eyes tonight or if it's apathy. He smiles at some of them and his teeth are small white stars in the endless blackness of him.
Tonight the Black Falcon has returned to the streets and there is a war-drum beating in his heart.
And so when a solider turns towards towards a boy, as the sun sinks past the dunes and the curfew lowers upon the city like a gavel, the Falcon follows. He dissolves into the weighted darkness and it welcomes him like a old friend. In the alley shadows he stalks the lamb of a enforcer (he would know of course, he knows them and lies when he calls them friends).
The pressure of his wings at his sides is a comfort for each whispers against his ribs like knives against an altar. They crave violence as much as he. When he cuts in front of the lamb they rise at his side like sickles that once, in a legend, cleaved the moon from the sky. He smiles and his teeth are less like stars now and more like hungry stones. “You will turn away.” The Falcon does not ask, and something in his war-drum heart begs the lamb to think of becoming a lion. A sickle wing presses against the boy's side telling him to run far, run fast.
The soldier pauses, lifting his rusted blade slowly as if the blade wants to fight more than the stallion wielding it. The black Pegasus winks as he drags a black coated hoof across the dusted stone beneath them. Something in him laments when the soldier lowers his weapon and turns away, looking perhaps for citizens in a place far from the supposed fighting pits.
This area of the capital belongs to him and that beating thunderstorm in his belly.
The Black Falcon turns back towards the alley maze and walks on boldly through the almost moonless night. He walks without fear. His only companion is that ache in his chest that tells him that he want's something and the blood-lust running feral through him.
The four were strangely silent as they left Solterra in the night, the moon hidden in the naked sky and stardust not daring to shine in the darkness. Clouds blotted out what little stardust might have lit their way, leaving an eerie sort of blackness that fell over the land. Each walked in a single file line, not daring to speak, not daring to make a sound. Even Rufio had left his chains at home (mind you, not because Targwyn had suggested it, but because it just made sense). Thinking of the bitterly rude mare, he sniffed a bit in disdain, but pressed forward, saying nothing.
It was easy enough to find the caravan, blending seamlessly among the throng of others and going unnoticed in their presence. Without the gold which made him remarkable, Rufio was simply a dark creature in the dusk – perhaps a bit peculiar with the red of his mane and the zebra stripes along his legs, but otherwise as anonymous as they came (particularly when he kept his mouth shut). They mindlessly followed the group as they neared the borders of Denocte, and as Abel motioned them forward, the four peeled off into a small and hidden alcove in the woods.
Here, they would make their entrance to Denocte, a place which was foreign to the boy, and yet strangely comforting and different from the desert. Even if they failed, he was happy to be away from the golden sands and the blistering heat. Mountain air cleared his mind, and he breathed it deep, relishing in the peace for the briefest of moments as his heart beat so loudly in his chest, he knew the others must hear it. If there is fear and nerves within the boy though, he does his best to mask them, biting the inside of his cheek until the sanguine taste of blood meets his tongue, to keep from idly chatting or giving away their position.
They wait for the changing of the guard, and just as Abel had predicted, the shift change came with the passing of the hour. As backs were turned, the bay gave the signal. Rufio simply nodded and pressed onward – alone, as they had planned.
The path that he’d been assigned was clear to the dark prince, as he picked his way through the quiet wilds of Denocte, unnoticed and ignored. It was strange, he puzzled, that the residents weren’t on high alert. After all, if rumors were true, the king of Solterra had stolen their queen away – murdered one of their citizens. While he personally didn’t find Raum to be some sort of boogieman, he knew better than the question the pale regent with the basilisk. Only a fool would miss the hint of danger under Raum’s haughty exterior. Though he hadn’t quite come around to being a loyal subject, Rufio had a begrudging respect for the male. A respect that drove him to follow the raven, and to do the pale king’s bidding on this fateful night.
His mind reels over all that had happened, even as he finds his way to the stores. Ahead of him, they stand unguarded like a beacon in the night. Strange, he puzzled, that the Denoctians slept while their nightmares were coming to fruition. But Rufio couldn’t bother himself with such things for now. Keeping the task at mind, he fished in a well-worn bag to gather his flint. Saying a quiet prayer for his safety, the boy struck the stones, flicking glowing sparks onto the stores of dried grasses, and watching with a quiet satisfaction as the pile roared up in flames.
His was the first to burn, the glow hot and bright against the night. And as smoke begins to billow into the dark sky, Rufio makes his exit, slipping unnoticed into the shadows as he makes his way back toward the canyon, unknowing if the rest would be successful in their efforts as the fire rages on in his wake.
the huntsman drew off the wolf's skin
and went home with it
It was a black night, a perfect night; they could not have planned it any better.
Laughter still danced through his mind, the realization that they were here, and no one was any the wiser, settling in and taking hold. The adrenaline was a fierce thing, coursing through his veins and turning his heart sour; it was all he could do to remain composed, to not laugh in the faces of the very guards who had let them through the gates. They had been disguised as gypsies, it was true; but they should have known better. They were paid to know better. And he had fooled them all.
Clouds drifted lazily across the sky, occasionally blotting out the stars and new moon that were scattered across the sky, stealing their light like a blind pulled across a window. It was a quiet night - as if the darkened moon had sucked all the life and energy from the land, as if the people with stars in their eyes were fueled by the stars in the sky, and couldn’t function properly in their absence.
Toulouse planned to steal something else from them before the night was over.
The light from a street lamp was tempting, the flames within its cage dancing and flickering and throwing their orange tint across the cobblestones. It reached hungrily for his flame, promising to turn him golden - but he turned away from it. it was a sharp contrast; the lamps were spaced out widely here, intermittently, so the streets were cast in shadows so deep they seemed to swallow life itself. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound, nothing even seemed to breathe. They were alone.
There were two others somewhere else in the city, he knew; two others with a mission the same as their own. But right now, they mattered little to Toulouse. It was just him, the bay-and-striped boy beside him, and the darkness than enveloped them.
He can’t help but look down a sidestreet they pass, tracing the pathway in his mind. 10 paces then take a left, take the first right you find, then look for the white house. The Scarab he knew, would be waiting for him, the way it always was: tempting, intoxicating, irresistible to lesser men. The image of a red rose comes to mind as the alley way disappears behind them. He’d told his brother to be far away tonight, but Toulouse had never been one for caution. Was he there tonight, dancing with a girl with gemstone eyes?
It didn’t matter. If his twin was in the city, it served to give him an even better alibi.
He stopped, his diamond-shod hoof clinking against stone. His eyes turning silver in the moonlight, he watched as the rest of their company disappeared. And so four become two. The wind was a whisper against his cheek as they disappeared into the dark of Denocte.
There was a smile in his eyes as he turned to Abel. "Shall we?" His voice was low, so low that his companion would have to strain to hear his words. Before them, the road had come to a dead end - they could go right or left, but not forward.
A cloud passed overhead again, and only the brightness of their eyes could be seen shining in the night.
I know the secret pathways of Denocte, Abel's voice whispered through his mind still, a reminder from the meeting in the cave. It had been only four days prior, and yet, it felt like an eternity ago. If we are swift - if we are not stupid - we should not fail.
This time, Toulouse couldn't help the smile splitting across his face.
a messenger bird, brilliant in the shades of near-black blues and varying hues of darkness, should have found it's way to the formidable King of the desert sands. if all had gone well, he would have found it ignorantly, blissfully, perched on his windowsill as it trilled out a happy tune in the rising sun's warmth. it hadn't liked the chill of the winter's night and so it flew quickly through the new day's hours to reach its destination without much fanfare. tied to its leg with a satin red ribbon was a letter and, unsurprisingly once he knew who it came from, a single red rose--freshly cut, spritzed with water to keep it alive through the night, overly saturated like newly spilt blood. it was her symbol, of course, the one whose ink was written in that parchment, and there was no doubt he would recognize it instantly; for though their interactions may have been few and far between, even she could remember the incessant draw of danger in his eyes, the intoxicating pull of the promise for thrill and even greater bounties. surely he would picture her as she was then (as she was now) with shining tri-colored eyes and a body that lured men and women alike to their death without a second's hesitation; she was the ballerina assassin, after all, and who could forget the seduction of an alluring woman that could slit your throat in a heartbeat?
so it was with a gentle kiss that she sent the bird off to find him, letter strapped tight, as the sun was beginning to set on their day. from her room in the morally-grey establishment she let nostalgia take over from better days before her last mission sent her into hiding. how much had she missed during that time? what antics could she had gotten herself into if she hadn't been betrayed? she fumed at the thought, and some deep part of her begged to find out who was responsible, to exact revenge... but buried the voice instead; it wasn't worth the effort. she had to focus on what was to come.
and so the bird chirped its song, and when he would open her delivery (gently, for it was but a sliver of paper) he would find these words written in a neat cursive sprawl:
Raum, the Red Rose is back. you can find her claiming space at the White Scarab. she knows you frequent often; she has been watching you. do make sure you take the time to say hello.
and written in smaller letters underneath, scrawled so finely they were almost illegible:
i'm tired of the weight of mortality. i want to tear it from my bones until i bleed silver and gold.
“A
udierunt autem umbrae.”
He no longer shivers when the shadow cloak’s familiar chill soaks into his skin, sinks into the notches of his spine. He has invoked it so many times, on so many moons, that without its coldness the desert night embraces him in a pocket of sizzling heat, sweat-sheen slicking his midnight pelt.
The limited visibility, however — that, Caine is still not used to enough. The shadows he wears drinks the light out from the dark, and when the night is dark enough, the boy sees about as well as a blind man on a good day.
He’s picked up enough tricks from his nights under the shadows to elevate his vision to that of a semi-blind man on a very good day, and Caine deems the improvement passable. He dabbles in stealth, after all, and going unseen is more useful a talent to him than seeing where his dagger should slice.
Without the cloak, the plan he is executing tonight would never have come into fruition.
- ♦︎ -
After he had sworn his blade to Fia, Caine returned from the hideout deep in the canyons of the Elatus and spent the better part of a month doing little more than observe Solterra and the suffering of her people with cold, keen eyes.
A month counting the ribs of passing children, their smiles too big for their hollow faces, when the rationing began in earnest. A month swatting away the flies descending in swarms upon the corpses of skeleton-thin newborns, wasted-away elderly, left in the dark of the alleys.
He watched and he watched, and one day, he flipped a coin.
A game he used to play back when he was a younger boy with a sharper knife, blood trailing him instead of shadows. When he could not reach a decision — to spare them, or not — he flipped a coin.
The question had now become: to save them, or not.
Heads, and he would continue as he always has. Watching and waiting and watching. For Fia to send her letters, for food to become scarcer and scarcer, for flies to feast and swarm.
Tails, and he would enter the ivory citadel and begin a game he didn't know if he could win.
The coin came up tails. The game had begun, and the clock was already ticking.
- ♦︎ -
Slipping past the line of velvet-suited guards is childsplay. The Sun Court’s limestone castle practically swims in shadow, and the irony is not lost on Caine.
He tucks himself behind a pillar in an empty corridor, and pulls out a map. An ocean of moving dots covers the worn yellow parchment when he rolls it out carefully, like ants on stale bread. (The rations have starved even ants.)
One for every citizen of Solterra, he knows; but the enchanted map is peculiar. It reveals one name at a time, and only if you know of its bearer. Caine closes his eyes and pictures the curl of an R and the silver of a ghost.
Raum. He is comforted somewhat when he sees that the dot has not moved since the last time he had checked. The blood king (a title some have bestowed on him, for the blood on his coat during his coronation and for the lives he has already reaped) is still in his study.
And from Caine’s observations of him over the past week, when the clock strikes midnight, he will retire to his chambers.
It is ten minutes to midnight. Caine wraps the shadows tighter around him, slides the rolled up map into a crevice he’d found in the pillar, and makes for the king’s chambers.
- ♞ -
“Ego liberabit vos.” The shadows slide from his skin and melt into the corners of the room, and already the heat they leave him in begins to feel unbearable.
He shoves the cloak into a satchel slung across his chest, and strides to Raum’s desk. Three minutes to midnight.
He has thought about the precise way he should startle, how much surprise he should reveal when Raum enters the room, for days and days. Imitation has always been the boy’s art, but he had never considered learning how to startle. Some would say it came naturally.
Before he can mull it over further, he grabs an official-looking scroll off the desk and stuffs it into his bag, before rifling carefully through a stack of sealed envelopes. One minute to midnight.
He stops pondering how to appear startled. He tells himself that tonight is just like all other nights. Just another nobleman’s chambers. Just another job.
The more he believes it, the more genuine he will seem when he is proven so, so wrong.
@Raum | "speaks" | notes: hope this works as a starter for them!
