Cardinal shadows gathered like loose honeycomb fabric around the girl's ankles. The day, soft and moribund, fell all around her; weeping lilac-milk tears into the darkness that haunted every cavern and wrinkle like the bloodhound that it was. Sabine was not afraid of the dark, but sometimes she wondered whether she ought to be. For eventide was imbued with an organic violence that both dazzled and dizzied her; elevating her senses to an existential high that chased away the sadness clinging to her bones like pine resin. It seemed to her a miracle that the sunlight's butcher did not seek to add her own scalp to its collection, but time and again it passed her by, leaving only the fleeting stain of his bloodshed doused across her marbled flesh.
Sabine moved with birdlike grace across the steppe, caught low in the throes of her malaise. She was not a girl without peace; she woke each dawn to hum the song of swallows overhead and faithfully carried the weight of the sun upon her back, but, still, there was a great sadness living in the machinery of her heart - rusting the cogs until they could dance no more. Her mother, her father; what had become of the two greatest creatures she had ever known? For does not every child see their guardians through only glass made from gold? Time had shifted into a dimension she could neither resist or understand, and into the heavy night she moved, bearing a satchel filled with a thousand different ways to say 'Papa, I miss you.'
Fight Type: Battle Prize: None save standard Experience, this is a battle for Theodosia’s promotion to Champion of Battle in Dusk Court. Contact Made: Yes.
Character #1: @Israfel Bonded: Yes, Solaris the Phoenix. Magic: Yes, Pyromancy at Vexillum tier. Armor: No. Weapons: No. Current Health: 22 Current Attack: 18 Current Experience: 28
Character #2: @Theodosia Bonded: No. Magic: Yes, Storm-calling at Discipuli tier. Armor: Yes, an iron chestplate and leg bracers. Weapons: No. Current Health: 10 Current Attack: 10 Current Experience: 12
welcome to my cage, little lover
This was not the first time that Israfel stood upon this uprooted, pockmarked earth. It was not the first time that she had engaged in battle within the vast shadows of Veneror Peak, the highest peak of Novus looming in the distance to the north, and she was confident that it would not be the last. What she did not know, however, was if she would leave here the victor or the defeated.
’I haven’t lost yet,’ she thought, picking her path upon the mottled soil and rock with great care, golden hooves guiding her route with a sturdy elegance befitting her training and station, ’But there is always a first time for everything.’
The day was long, the twilight touches of evening beginning to stain the cerulean skies as the sun sank further beyond the horizon. A cool breeze danced within the air, curling around them upon their warped, eroded battleground. Israfel shivered but did not halt, scanning the earth and her surroundings with fire in her eyes and a wild, rueful grin upon rose-kissed lips. Already the blood was thrumming in her veins, pulse pounding in preparation for a good scrap. It had been far too long. Above her, Solaris circled lazily in the air, her uncharacteristic silence proving that even the Phoenix understood what was about to happen.
They had come from Delumine proper, temporarily leaving the Dawn Court behind and their assigned task of babysitting Atreus for an impromptu test of mettle and skill. Israfel knew that she would not be disappointed in fighting Theodosia; they had far too much in common. Eventually she came to a halt, golden-marked wings reaching out wide as ivory and gilt feathers fanned wide. She faced the south, Veneror Peak at her back to the north.
The area around them told a silent testament to the previous battles and spars waged here, the holes and hoofprints leftover in the hard soil a visible scar. Trees surrounded them on all sides, leaves shifting colors to the more vibrant oranges and yellows of fall. The terrain would not be her ally, as she had learned the last time she was here. Caution was key.
Twisting her neck, Israfel faced Theodosia, vermilion eyes staring hard at her temporary opponent. This was simply a necessity. There was nothing really formal about it, other than they would take a few hits at one another and go from there. As her eyes raked over Theodosia’s pale perlino form and the bright red war paint that she wore, Israfel did what she could to pick out potential flaws to use for leverage, comparing their attributes to try and figure out what leverage would suit her best. It was almost remarkable, how very similar they were in build; nearly the same height, muscle and curves hugging the same places with strong legs and powerful shoulders. Israfel took a mental note to use caution when in close range of the soldier’s antlers, just as she was sure Theodosia was taking into consideration with her sharp, pronged horn. Any blows to the chest would be useless given the iron breastplate that the soldier was sporting. All in all, the Warden wondered if this would be like fighting herself, and hoped to use both speed and the stocky girth of her weight to her advantage. Her grin broadened and she lifted her head, sucking in a large breath of chilly, evening air.
“I’m not going to go easy on you, Theo, and I expect you to do the same.” Then, within her mind she called to the gliding Phoenix above. ’Solaris.’ At the beckon of her name, Solaris shifted her path within the air, her colors beginning to change from the placid ivory and gold to a flaring crimson as white-hot flames overtook her robust body. She twisted in the air, a burning beacon shining in the encroaching darkness, keen lavender eyes scanning the ground below and waiting for her moment to strike.
Orange eyes dancing, Israfel tilted her head and braced herself for whatever first attack the soldier would make. “Let’s go.”
Summary: Israfel and Theodosia have arrived at the battleground. Israfel is facing Theodosia to the south, with Veneror Peak at her back to the north. The temperature is mildy chilly given the autumn evening, and the time of day is growing evening. Israfel is waiting for Theodosia to make the first move as Solaris flies overhead.
Attack Used: 0 Attack(s) Left: 2 Block Used: 0 Block(s) Left: 1 Item(s) Used: LIST ANY ITEMS USED, IF ANY
He has missed the ocean; his first home, his first love.
Michael's father told him when he was young that their family had always been pirates, and Michael had always figured it was true. The sea frequently calls his name, the lilting siren song of the deep and the wide. His bones are pulled toward it. His heart groans for salt grass and fine sand.
So he goes to the ocean.
Michael's lopes toward the end of the world, again. Michael does not hurry, and the hush that falls over him is ghastly. In it there are ghosts with their pale hands and their white eyes -- there is the silver and the blue of a girl he once knew and the time they cried together on the beach. This was after the end. Everything was after the end.
He is hesitant to slow. To slow is to think and to think is to invite the frankly foreboding sense of bigger thing than he wants to imagine that drapes him like a wet blanket. He has had it, he thinks, since he woke up in the mountains - it is the drums of ancient magic and the quiet rumble of deep hurt and he does not know quite how to categorize.
Michael doesn't like not knowing. He doesn't want to know, doesn't want to tie himself to another world with another heart unless he can help it, but the not-knowing kills him. Why do his bones ache the way they do? Why does he feel so, very, very tired? Why is there a pit in his stomach that has never been there?
Why, when he reaches the shore, does Michael gracelessly lurch to a halt and hesitate to continue?
He gets no time to come to the answer; rather, something else comes to him. Well, someone, and she does not so much approach Michael as Michael almost trips over her when he turns to walk the shoreline.
His first thought is that she must be the sun. He squints to look at her through the thick white curtain of his mane, all bunches and mangled and wind-tossed. He cannot remember the last time he saw something so bright.
"Oh, hello." he says. "Hey, um..."
Michael pauses. He has gone so long without someone to talk to. Hundreds of years, surely.
It definitely feels like hundreds of years.
Finally, Michael tilts his head, and flashes her a smile. This is characteristic. This is normal. Finding normal again has not been easy. "Do you, um-- are you...? Hi. I'm Michael."
Night had fallen, and the skies were clear to show off a stunning display of dancing stars in the inky black heavens. A mottled shadow marred the skies, beady black eyes peering and searching the populace of Denocte for a familiar figure of pale gold cloaked in a mantle of ivories and creams.
There.
Upon finding their quarry, the winged creature circled around to land with outstretched wings, screeching out a warning before reaching out with wide talons to take roost upon Toulouse’s horn. Attached to their left leg with criss-crossing leather straps was a scroll, vague in wording but heavy with its weight. It would be delivered to none but him.
’A specter lurks within and we are wary. Your services are needed here. Bring what information you have.’
The note was not signed and the penmanship was sketchy at best, but clearly the individual responsible had faith that Toulouse would understand.
It is quiet.
There is nothing but the long autumn shadows and the sound of wind.
Michael groans to life then; a calm breath in the cooling air, then another. Once more, he has woken up somewhere he doesn't recognize. Michael doesn't feel scared. He feels... tired. Once more, Michael has woken up when he had hoped to sleep, and sleep, until every sun burns down to ash. One calm breath turns into a sigh, heavy and sharp.
It's been a while, Michael thinks. So long since Kirk and Makenna and Eleven and Inwe. So long since the heavy weight of a crown or the looming threat of actual, biblical demons. So long since the Dark. So long since he's done... literally anything. Moving feels strange. Breathing feels strange. He had hoped to retreat to some long-forgotten corner and wait out the apocalypse but, as usual he had walked too far for too long and wound up in somewhere else completely new.
He is a dampened sun, molten gold and glittering white, and when he lifts his head and lurches to his feet, the thick curtain of his mane falls over his face in every awkward direction. Probably, he can't see as well as he should; probably, Michael no longer has it in him to care. He gives an unceremonious, full-body shake, and begins to walk.
Michael is always running from things. He didn't used to be like that. He used to be so bright and so vibrant and he wants it back, wants that carefree laughter and not having to question whether or not he sees color correctly because everything is hazy and gray anymore. He decides, at this point, he's done running. While he walks, it is not the frantic pace of a hunted man, but the graceless meandering of a long and worn-down traveler. He has set up camp in too many storms. He has walked too many deer tracks to not see the patterns.
So Michael walks, without purpose.
And Michael waits.
His imaginings of this moment had been like waves, ceaseless and varied. Hope and fear and sorrow and pride, fierce joy and quiet shame - and here he stands now, with the sea at his back, the last of the summer warmth in the breeze, his people before him.
Perhaps it would have been a grander setting, to mark their return in the castle or the courtyard - banners snapping in the light wind, the morning sun pooling through the windows, the ancient throne stately in the background. But that was not the Terrastella that had stolen Asterion’s heart, nor the one that had suffered so in the events unfolding after the Summit. So he had gathered them outside the walls, where the sun shone bright on their backs and the sea glinted turquoise and the new-grown grass was still summer green.
Time had done its work of quiet restoration; there were scars still from the flooding and the mudslides, but their land was healing. It was Dusk’s people Asterion worried for now.
As always there was ill news on the wind; another shadow of Denocte, vying for the Day Court’s crown. Peace had seemed so near the past few months - the bay wonders if it would always be this way, a fleeting thing just out of reach, like a moon-trail on the water. There was never time to be weak, never time to hesitate.
With Cirrus watching solemnly from a sloping stone nearby, Asterion sweeps his gaze over those gathered. “It is good to see you all,” he begins, and pitches his voice louder, more level, to be heard above the sighing of wind and water and grass. “And good to stand here again. Thank you, Israfel and those who stayed, for keeping the court safe. There is still uncertainty in Novus - but our bond with Denocte is stronger than ever, and we will together heal what remains wounded.”
“For too long there have been empty ranks - we cannot be whole without strong and wise leadership. I am happy to announce new Champions.” He nods to where they stand. “Once she has completed her spar with Israfel, Theodosia will take up the mantle of our Champion of Battle. I’m sure most of you know her - there is nothing she has not done for Terrastella. She makes me proud to be of Dusk.” His dark-eyed gaze finds hers, and a grin finds the corner of his mouth, there and gone again. “And Euryale will be our Champion of Wisdom.” When he searches for her among those gathered, his heart feels caught like a bird; Cirrus stirs nearby, casting him a keen gaze. “I encourage you all to get to know them both in the weeks ahead.” He smiles, then, and relaxes just a little. Public announcements have never been his favorite part of kingship - though he might be pressed to find any, save for the cooks always pushing food on him.
It is his Champions he looks to now, and his Commander of the Halcyon - but the other citizens are not forgotten. When he speaks again, his voice still reaches them all. “As for what should come next…I would hear your thoughts.”
It's good to be back! @Marisol @Atreus @Israfel @Theodosia @Fiona @Euryale tagging all Champions (and our Commander)! but everybody is welcome to participate! A response is mandatory for Champions and recommended for other Dusk members. Let me know if you have any questions or comments! <3
She walked mostly in silence back to Denocte, thinking quietly about what Metaphor had said. It was so hard for her to believe that love was not a weakness. For so long she had been told that love would weaken her defences, cause her to stumble on the battlefield. She had been told that love would make her hesitate which could end in her death. And yet, here Metaphor was, telling her that love was not a weakness, that it would make her stronger. It would take more than a few words to undo the training that had been instilled in her since birth, but she was willing to try.
By the time they reached the Night Court, Katniss led Metaphor through the rather scenic route there, trying to show him much of what she called home. But soon, she led him into the courtyard of the center of court life. This was the hub for activity, but Katniss had never really been one to participate in some of the day-to-day hustle and bustle of the court or of the markets. She had always been too caught up in her duties as boarder patrol. Perhaps that would always be her nature.
As they meandered through the streets of the Night Court, Katniss led Metaphor towards a small little home, one that she claimed as her own but she was never there. “Come, follow me. I have something to show you.” She pressed her nose against his neck in a comforting, encouraging manner, before she led him into the small little cozy home. A fire flickered in the back of the small home, the smoke rolling out of a hole in the ceiling. And near the fire lay Finnick, the harpy eagle that she found herself bonded to.
Finnick, looking entirely pleased to see Katniss, straightened himself upon his perch. And as Katniss came towards him, the bird jumped onto her back and settled himself as she brought him over to Metaphor. “This is Finnick. He’s like your fox.” The eagle cocked his head ever so slightly to the side, his way of greeting the other. “Finnick, this is Metaphor. He means the world to me and I hope you two can get along.” Katniss was just starting to bond with Finnick and she was finding that the bird could be hesitant of strangers. Perhaps it was because this was new to him as well. Only time would tell.
if you wanna start a fight, you better throw the first punch
He walks through the court like a whisper of what-might-have-been, his sides slatted with a hunger that should have disappeared upon the cusp of summer -- he is a shade chained to life, his steps heavy and slow as he meanders his way along a beaten sand path. From the corner of his eye, he sees a mother pull her son away from him, and his smile is twisted and bitter -- he wants them to fear him, does he not? To be wary and to stay away from him?
His chest clenches with loneliness, a constant hollow ache that he has never understood, and it only serves to help fuel the fire banked low in his veins.
He whirls and offers the child a bared-teeth smile, stalking towards the stilt-legged thing -- the same age as his own sons, the one and only time he had laid eyes upon them, when he’d left a bag of gold for each of them at the doorstep of the orphanage they’d been brought into, a letter tucked inside as well that had explained his side of things, their heritage should they ever wish to seek it out.
“Do you believe in the bogeyman?” He mutters to the child as the mother freezes, torn between the urge to run and the instinct to defend her round-eyed offspring. The boy shakes his head, too quickly, and a harsh laugh burst from his chest.
High above flew a Swift herd – just passing through. They won’t land here, in this place of heretics, where they have never claimed a roost of their own. They will talk to no one, make no contact. Here and gone again on their migration path.
Below them shudders a girl.
Like Swifts above so below: Ianthe had never meant to land here. She was meant to be like a passing cloud, a whisper of wind, the herd above. And yet she stands in an open field of lush grass just now browning with the oncoming winter, her heart in her ears and an ache all through her.
Her right wing drapes to the ground, the bone closest to her body pushing against her skin where it’s been broken a little more than halfway down. She knows what happens to limbs healed wrong – has seen Swifts with once broken legs struggle to land and walk – but she doesn’t know how to fix it (doesn’t think she can fix it). A grounded Swift is a dead one.
And she can’t fly.
A breath that would have been a scream, if only she could muster up the energy for it, punches from her chest, and she stumbles on solid ground. The earth hasn’t been able to lay solid claim on her since she was two months old and leaping off a ledge. To now be here, knowing that she can’t reach the sky plunges a knife under her heart, driving pain through her with every beat.
It’s a wonder she hadn’t broken herself against the earth, coming in as uncontrolled as she did, with a wing only half responsive. She wonders if, had the bone broken through skin, it would have torn muscle and tendon until it ripped- until it snapped clean off- and promptly stops wondering.
The gods are cruel, but not like this: that she’s alive must mean something. What god could have been moved by pity enough to let her survive but not fly? What had the Fates weaved for her? Already she is nothing to her herd, as so many others have been nothing to her, and she doesn’t know what to do with the pressure in her chest or the unanswered questions or the wing useless at her side.
As a child, they said she wore a ballgown fashioned from an ancient sun, and when you saw her you could not deny the truth of it. It was not a colour you had ever seen before; beware the girl with the Delphic dress. The shadows lay tattered and bleached in her wake, for they could not withstand the might of a child cursed with Solis' heart. They loved and loathed her; pushing and pulling at the fissure between them until it yawned into a monochromatic void that harboured only the most bitter parts of she.
And yet -- beneath the disorientating clamour and the violet bruises left by Caligo's disappointment -- someone loved the wild sunlit soul that so many had come to hate. He did not mind the way her smile lit matches in the dark, or the burning of his fingers at the touch of her lightbulb skin. He was not afraid of the way she loved the sun, and in return for this small virginal kindness, she fell in love with him. Except it had never felt like falling; not under the gentle caress of a summer innocence that sheltered them from the voices of doubt. They had tumbled through stained glass windows, hearts beating to a handmade rhythm inaudible to all ears but their own. In that fairy-lit haze everything had made sense.
Until one day, it didn't.
Rhoswen stood in a silence that was her own, leaning listlessly into the breeze that carried with it woodsmoke and magic. Autumn in Denocte had always possessed a charm unparalleled to any rivalling kingdom; the kaleidoscopic canopies, the crackle of fires old and new, the bite of skeletal leaves underfoot - even a siren with sand in her bones could see the beauty that lived here. But her mind was not on the seasons. Instead her thoughts drifted lazily in and out of the past, reliving secret sunny moments that had unfolded upon the very ground she now stood. If she concentrated hard enough, she could feel the memories as if they had been born again: her fingers entwining between his own, the sound of his placid laughter echoing across the water.
The red woman shifted, her dark gaze rising from the reflection below up to the clear denim sky overhead. If asked whether she could turn back time, whether she could save the childhood happiness that she and Raum had created, Rhoswen knew that her answer would always, unconditionally, be no.
Rhos waited. It was only a matter of time before her ghost returned to haunt her; for that was all he was to her now: an empty husk of a boy once loved by a girl.
![[Image: sabi1.png]](https://i.ibb.co/9ssqhhD/sabi1.png)
