And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' and I saw.
The miles passed swiftly suspended thirty feet off the ground beneath the shadow of Ruth's ponderous body, but never swiftly enough as the minutes stretched into hours with only Florentine's limp form as company. Her breaths were shallow but regular, the rustling of her feathers against the Tarrasque's pebbled skin echoing like thunder over even the sounds of Ruth's footfalls.
They left the shelter of the mountains behind. The titan hesitated at the foothills, sensing Raymond's apprehension over returning to Terrastella with the pieces of their sovereign and an apocalypse engine in tow, but he spurred her on with a stern command.
However gently the titan tried to travel, nothing could be done for the constant sway and shudder of the clawed hand that held them with every step. She was meant only to destroy, had only ever been meant to destroy, and her hands lacked the delicacy afforded a surgeon. The constant abuse was enough to shake the dagger loose from its place as a pin in Florentine's makeshift tourniquet, and before the red stallion noticed the hideous gash was weeping again, slowed at least by the coagulating influence of the yarrow in her poultice. Cursing, he wound the dagger again until it would go no tighter and the oozing slowed again to a viscous upwelling from the wound.
I'm sorry, Ruth repeated, and again Raymond did not respond.
His silence was reprimand enough.
They pressed north, toward Tinea.
-
The hospital was something of which Raymond had been informed during his time in Terrastella, but he had never been himself. Were it not for his vantage point high in Ruth's protective grasp and through her own eyes, he doubted he would ever have been able to find it on his own.
The Tarrasque stalked through the swamp without regard for the destruction she left in her wake. Trees snapped like matchsticks against her powerful limbs; her clawed feet left deep furrows that filled with murky water as soon as she moved on. Her passage changed the landscape around her without trying. Raymond glanced at the flower maiden curled limply at his side and cursed her openly for her folly.
"Is this what you had in mind?"
Being unconscious, she didn't answer. The red stallion scowled.
Raymond. It was the first thing other than 'sorry' that the beast had managed to say in hours, and it came as the swamped flung wide its proverbial arms of what could only be the hospital of which Florentine had spoken. Put us down, he ordered without hesitation, blood rising in his ears again as equines scattered below like ants from the Tarrasque's frightful form. His derisive scowl vanished beneath a look of cold iron as he leapt lightly to the ground ahead of Ruth's clumsy attempt to lay the broken sovereign gently at the hospital entrance.
The jostling had dislodged part of Raymond's makeshift poultice. Florentine's hind leg, a livid purple building around the bloodied tourniquet he'd made of her chain, began oozing dark, viscous liquid once more. Her wing fell across her body like a heavy blanket.
I'm sorry, came the refrain. Raymond did not need to look her way for her to feel his withering regard.
"Your queen needs a healer!" the red stallion bellowed sharply. To Ruth, he added, Don't touch anything. You've done enough. Obediently the Tarrasque did the best she could to make herself small, lowering herself to the earth, curling her arms catlike beneath her chest, and laying her head on the ground. The repentant gesture did nothing to allay the fears of onlookers. Her teeth were as big as he was.
@Asterion @Florentine | takes place before the sovereign audition and disasters.
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
The waters recede from the Denoctian shores, revealing all wonders of the sea: glittering seashells, brighter and more vibrant than any seen before; stray crabs with intricate designs wrought upon their shells, scuttling sideways across the still-damp sands; wonderful beds of coral and seaweed, of every color known to man, shifting in the wind as they might have once shifted in the ocean current. The stray fish can be seen flopping on the land, struggling to get back to the ocean - but the ones that are left behind do not seem to be dying. In fact, they seem to take just as well to land as they do to water.
For nearly a day it’s peaceful, the newly-revealed ocean bed seeming to call out and invite the equines of the Night Court closer, to inspect the wonders it has to boast.
Until, of course, the waters come crashing back.
It happens in the blink of an eye, waves taller than the walls of the castle roaring in to reclaim the beach. It sweeps in with a fury, taking back its land with all the rage and power of a god. It falls like the crack of a whip, flooding the beach and extending its reach farther and farther up the shores, until the sands fade away and are replaced with cobblestone. The water does not stop, but surges on without mercy.
As the waves crash upon the shore, sweeping through the streets of the city, the storm clouds begin to gather. Thunder and lightning rumble in the skies, but no rain falls - not yet. Dry lightning strikes at the land, while the sea water continues to invade the capitol.
And all the while, the waters continue to rise.
A tsunami has crashed upon the shores of the Night Court! For the entirety of a day the waters recede farther and farther out to sea, leaving behind a wet seabed with all the wonders of the ocean, awaiting to be explored. But the land is not to be trusted: come the next morning, the waters rush back in with a vengeance with waves taller than the castle.
The waters will flood the capitol, but within the city walls with come to be no higher than a foot in most areas; then does it finally stop, the waters ebbing at the feet of the residents, invading houses and soaking the markets. The beach is decimated, structures crushed beneath the weight of the water.
As the waves crash upon the shore, the storm clouds gather. They do not weep, but thunder and lightning crash in the skies, striking at the plains and prairies of Denocte.
Will you be caught in the fury of the tsunami? Or perhaps you’re left to encounter the winds and lightning of the incoming storm, that sparks the ground and leaves glass and smoke in its wake?
You have two weeks to reply to this thread! You may reply as many times as you’d like, but please allow at least two posts in between any of your own! This round will close on Friday, August 3rd, at 11:59 PM EST.
As rain clouds darken across the sky, the creatures begin appearing in the capitol. Curlews and egrets, muskrats and foxes, mirestags and grass snakes. The animals who once called the Sussoro Fields their home have seemed to flee, seeking shelter from an unknown enemy within the walls of the Court. Mere hours after they appear, the gathering stormclouds unleash their fury.
Rains sweep across the whole of Terrastella for days, drenching the lands and creating rivers and ponds of standing water. Some say it’s because of Vespera’s own weeping that the rain comes, freely expressing her grief for her siblings and for the Court’s fractured relationships. Other’s curse the goddess and claim she would never care enough to cry for them - they call it a punishment, whether it come from their patron deity, Tempus himself, or simply the laws of mother nature.
Regardless of what causes it, the rain continues to fall.
Sand is reduced to mud, until the entire southwestern realm resembles the Tinea Swamp. It creates treacherous footing, for the mud is slimy and slick and apt to shift with the wind. In lower regions the waters collect, large ponds and quick-moving rivers appearing in an instant and sweeping away equine and beast alike, remodeling the landscape in the blink of an eye.
Floods and mudslides wreak havoc across the land, carrying away all in its path without mercy nor discrimination. It would be mad to venture out into the storm - and yet there are whispers of missing horses, of equines caught unaware by the storm who are assumed trapped - or dead.
And all the while, the rains continue, alternating between light drizzles and sudden storms. One day comes and goes, then a second, and a third - with no end in sight. The lands continue to flood, the mud continues to slide. And within the Sussoro Fields, craters have begun to appear, the ground giving way to sinkholes. They range in size and depth, but soil that was once solid and seemingly anchored has begun to give way - nowhere you step is safe.
The rains have come! A storm has arrived in Terrastella, covering the skies with ominous storm clouds that threaten to sweep the lands entirely off the map. The world as the Dusk Court knows it is shattered as the entire Court begins to resemble the swamp more than anything else.
Animals that fled the storm have arrived in the Court, creating a sort of wild zoo that lacks enclosures or boundaries. The creatures raid houses and stores and even burst through the doors of the castle, trembling within its walls as they hide from the storm outside. Some of the animals are friendly… but not all.
And then, there are the rumors: missing friends and family, horses that are told to have been caught up in the storm. The flash floods and mudslides are fierce… it is not unheard of for them to take the lives of the unprepared.
Will you join a search party or rescue team to seek out your friends, families, and other distressed strangers? Or are your hands already full dealing with the creatures that invade your home, who seem to fear the storm more than the equines? Or perhaps you have found yourself lost out in the elements, left to fend for yourself as the rains fall?
You have two weeks to reply to this round! You may reply as many times as you’d like, but please allow at least two posts in between any of your own! This round will close on Friday, August 3rd, at 11:59 PM EST.
As autumn continues to spread across Novus, something strange begins to happen within the Solterran desert.
Snow falls.
First the land grows cool, and cooler and cooler, until the native horses find themselves shivering for the first time in their sleep. Clouds roll in, one by one, darkening the sky and blotting out the sun, so that it may provide no warmth or respite to the hot-blooded equines.
The temperatures continue to drop, and when the clouds finally decide to spill, their tears are not wet nor warm. They’re cold and white, snowflakes that flutter upon the wind and shift like the sands. First they are light and few, melting as they fall upon the ground. At first the sight may bring joy - Solterra has been hot for years, centuries even. There is rarely rain, but never snow; could this be the gods blessing them for their good behavior?
But then the snowstorm begins in earnest.
The snowflakes become bigger and faster, until a sheet of falling white is all the eye can see. The snow is thick and obscures vision, covering the ground with blanket upon blanket until it makes for difficult walking. As far as the eye can see it’s white, as the sands of the desert are replaced with the white of a winter wonderland. Left, right, forwards or backwards, it all becomes the same - dare to venture into the storm, and you may just find yourself turned around and unable to find your way back home.
What’s this? Snow in Solterra?! Thank the gods!
...Or hold your prayers, because what starts as a light and simple snowfall quickly turns into a blizzard! Perhaps some will call it a miracle, and others a natural disaster. Whatever your thoughts on the snow, there is only one thing for certain: it doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon. It snows hard and in earnest, covering the ground and limiting vision. It would be easy to get lost in such a storm.
Will you seek shelter within the buildings of the Day Court? Or have you been lost out in the snow?
You have two weeks to reply to this thread! You may reply as many times as you’d like, but please allow at least two posts in between any of your own! This round will close on Friday, August 3rd, at 11:59 PM EST.
It started as a spark catching in the underbrush, igniting a pile of dead and fallen leaves. The spark turned into flame, the flames multiplying and turning into a small wildfire.
For a few minutes it burned quietly alone, contained to the small stack of leaves from which it started.
Until another small fire appeared, similar in nature and size, not far from the first. Then another, and another - scattered throughout the Viride Forest. The wind shuddered through the trees, and the first few embers scattered. Then the wind sighed, and it blew the embers farther, and farther - igniting all the undergrowth in its wake.
The animals of the forest had hardly enough time to hide before the fire truly erupted.
Flames licked at the bark of the trees, crawling higher and higher until several were roaring and threatening to topple over. The underbrush was lost now in its fury, consumed as it was by the fire’s insatiable hunger. In the blink of an eye, the Viride Forest was burning truly and terribly. It spreads nearly as quickly as the deer can run, catching on kindling provided by the dry and scattered leaves. Leaves of orange and red and yellow continued to fall from the trees, the colors of autumn now burning brighter and more magnificently than they ever could have on their own, the flames matching their vibrant hues. But in the fire’s wake they are left brown and black, charred to ash and dust.
And the fire continues to spread.
A fire has started in the southern part of the Viride Forest! Within seemingly minutes what started as a small flame turned into several, until they grew in size and combined with one another to form a raging wildfire. It spreads by the second, giving the wildlife just enough time to flee ahead of it.
Perhaps the first sign the Delumine inhabitants will see is the animals, appearing shaken on their doorsteps in their hunt for refuge. Or perhaps it will be the smoke rising in the distant, drifting south to cloud the skies above the capitol. Maybe a few souls will witness the blaze start themselves - and rush home to bring news and seek help.
Will you attempt to put out the flames? Or will you watch from afar as the fires continue to burn?
You have two weeks to reply to this thread! You may reply as many times as you’d like, but please allow at least two posts in between any of your own! This round will close on Friday, August 3rd, at 11:59 PM EST.
Nothing is the same when Lysander returns from the mountains.
In the time since the regimes were swallowed up by the god in the summit, summer has broken; the wind has a bite to it now that there was not before, and it won’t be long before each dawn sees a cloak of frost like leftover starlight on the green grass.
It has only been a few days, he thinks (though he isn’t sure how many hours he lost track of, staggering through the forest at night, sleeping in the silver fog, being healed by the storyteller) but now he bears new scabs across his ribcage, near-twins to the knife-wound that has long since turned to a silver scar.
There is a thin misty rain falling when he reaches the capitol, and he is bemused to find himself almost grateful for the jut of dark gray walls. Around his antlers is a blue ring of forget-me-nots, a suitor’s gift, and Lysander feels almost foolish for carrying it – but if Florentine has returned (and oh, he cannot bear to think that she might still be atop that mountain) he knows he must begin to make amends for nearly dying yet again.
For once he forgets his pride and asks the first passer-by he sees where Florentine is. The swamp, comes the response, and the once-god does not linger to see the way the stranger’s expression twists and turns more mournful than the silver sky.
He forces himself not to look skyward as he passes over the open fields, but he is careful not to make his path near the ivy-covered temple. It is shameful, his ugly fear, but he will examine it later – now he lopes (though each stride strains the injuries still pink with healing) for the humid mouth of Tinea.
At first he sees nothing when he enters it, each footfall soft on the damp and spongy ground. It is still gray-green here, not yet turning red with autumn, and rain-damp petals drift from his foolish crown like a blue bread-crumb trail through the swamp. Lysander pays no mind to the first lily, but by the time he sees the third he knows what they must mean. It has been some time since he was a god, but he remembers the tricks of them, the games they play and paths they lay, and he feels almost shameful (thinking back to his black words, the scrape of blood antlers on stone, the push and shatter) as he follows the trail that Vespera left her people.
How to describe his curiosity, almost wonder, when he finds the first staircase, carved from oak and disguised with leaves and twisting vines? Oh, he could linger here, and dream of naiads and all the strange creatures he had long since left behind, for this feels a nearer echo to those myths than anything he has yet seen. But as he climbs each knotted step, dark thoughts gather like shadows beneath boughs.
There are a thousand reasons the queen of Terrastella might be here, but it is the worst of them he fears. His brush with the kelpie did far more to teach him how fragile his meager life is than any blow from the Night King and his thugs.
At last a silent, solemn-faced mare directs him to the belly of a great tree, one whose width could house a ballroom. Lysander inhales a last rich-green, rain-dark breath and steps inside to warm darkness, where there is only the glint of gold in the dim like scattered straw.
The scent of blood and sharp-smelling poultices strikes him at once, so near to his own recent misadventures, and Lysander’s feet beg him to step again into the clean damp air. Oh, but his heart weighs him down, an anchor sinking for the sea-bed, and as his green eyes adjust to the semidark he bows his arch of antlers and the foolish crown of forget-me-nots drops to the whorled wooden floor beneath him.
“Florentine,” he says, and though his voice is bedrock below the silken soil it is more desperate, more fearful, than it ever was when it was he in a hospital bed.
you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night
@Florentine I am sorry for this monster, it got a little out of hand
Time slips away from him much the same way his blood does – steadily at first, then more erratically, little pieces of himself he can never put back.
When he escaped from the Eater it had been just after dusk, as the stars were just beginning to burn through the skin of the sky; after that, beneath the darkness of the trees, he only knows he walks until his lungs burn and muscles ache like dying. There is no time beneath the canopy, only darkness, only crickets and cicadas and the terrain beginning to climb up and up and turn rocky.
Fear drives him on where exhaustion would have him stop. She will not hunt him here, he thinks, not where the branches are close as secrets and the stars only a legend. Even so he keeps walking, like any wounded thing going to water.
Morning creeps up on him, damp as tears with silver fog, and the trees begin to turn to conifers, filling the world with their sharp clean scent of spruce and pine. Lysander isn’t sure where he is, only that he has never been here before, and that he is still not ready to leave the cover of the trees, not when he can still smell his own blood (and hers, bitter and darkened to black on his bright skin).
His second brush with death has altered him in a way he can’t yet untangle from the dark snarl of his thoughts. It has made him more mortal than anything yet, a hateful, fearful thing, and there is no victory for Lysander in the fact that he escaped. And oh, he is so weary – each lichen-green boulder looks a pillow, each faint breeze a whisper to sleep.
And so, at last, he gives in – for he is only flesh and blood, and losing the latter fast.
Swathed in morning mist he bends like a stag to the forest floor beneath a towering pine. The bark is rough against his back, the needles soft beneath his knees, and he cannot see the sky overhead.
Exhausted, still bleeding from tattered ribs, he lets the current of sleep carry him away.
Nighttime in Sideralis Prairie reminded the red stallion of the big sky country in which he'd spent his formative years. The sky stretched overhead, an uninterrupted and unpolluted dome of glittering splendor as its countless stars winked and glistened like a spray of crushed diamonds. He was a worldly creature, hooves planted firmly on the ground in more than just the physical sense, but such vastness awoke in him the very same awe so readily claimed by the more religious majority. Here on the prairie, Raymond remembered his smallness as readily as he remembered the path that had brought him across the leagues to this place and this moment.
Perhaps solitude had been a contrivance of his character, imposed out of bitter pragmatism rather than desire. Perhaps the part of him that had wanted so desperately for his dal'rend's dream to flourish had not died with his followers.
Ruth's presence, a distant yet overpowering weight alongside his own, shared her own view of the starlit sky from her nest deep in the Arma Mountains. Stars were scarce where she had weathered the tortuous millennium alone on a dead world, and here - freed or at least shielded by their connection from the most destructive elements of her Tarrasque nature - even the clouded mountains provided an endless cornucopia of things upon which she could feast her eyes.
An indistinct image pressed itself through the link like a drawing pressed against frosted glass and the red stallion's eyes focused more intently on the skies above. Several minutes passed in silent regard, until he caught sight of the familiar shape in the stars. Recognition flooded back through the link with the image, and Ruth answered with a deep prrum that Raymond need not be present to feel.
He had not played such an innocent game in a very, very long time.
Content to steal this moment from the night amidst the crushing weight of more substantial concerns, Raymond stood alone and apart amidst the softly rolling hills of Sideralis Prairie, his coat painted silver with moonlight and his eyes fixed upon the stars laid out overhead with a fixation better suited to the truly faithful.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
Ciaran Zhaoiani daughter of nylah zhaoianas and willow
Not long after her foray on the boundary of the ocean, along the edge of the new world – and directed towards the north east, in a path that would lead her to Solerra – Ciaran went. Karis was not inclined to follow her into a desert but he was loathe to abandon her, and so he would tolerate the heat. She couldn’t push him out of his comfort zone forever, but she had a task at hand. She’d been given a name, a home, and a new title, one that would likely give her father a conniption if he’d heard she’d agreed with being named a warrior. While not a true fighter at heart, Ciaran was adept and she enjoyed her tracking more, and preferred being more skilled in gathering words and thoughts of others. A scout, a spy, call it what you will. She’d learned when she was young she was not strong enough to fight.
So quick and nimble she’d learned to be, like her grandsire – and she enjoyed the elevations of the worlds. She would miss her mountain home, but here she’d find and make another, even if only for this span of her lifetime.
Here, Karsi’s voice was silenced. His ability to vocalise had vanished the moment they had left Caeleste, but inside her head he was as strong as ever.
We are here, he speaks to her. Ciaran nods her head once, as the walk over the strange red lands – far from everything she’d once known and been comfortable with.
“We are,” she says. She slows, and Ciaran looked around, running an eye over him. Karsi looked mildly uncomfortable, but not as bad as she thought he would be. Still, she kept him moving until she found him shade while she stood in the sunlight, a glittering beacon against the sea of sand rising and falling like waves on the ocean – but there was a smattering of green and the oasis was ahead.
Ciaran felt a smile touch her lips.
How far she was from where she’d come – from a palace made of ice and a world in constant snow to this place, heat and sunlight – and she felt so far away from everything, even though it was all here and now.
The transition from one world to another was difficult. She’d grown during the time she’d left Caeleste, leaving behind everything and everyone she knew. Wanderlust had pierced her heart and she’d let it sink deep into her body, pulsing in every part of her – but she did not go alone. Forever at her side, lumbering and faithful, Karsi went with her. And for the time between growing and learning, Ciaran Zhaoiani looked for a short time for her family.
But found nothing – and she was alone. She felt it heavier on her mind that she’d left them all, including Mauna, he who was truly dear to her but she’d see him again one day as well. For now, the girl who had become a young woman wanted to learn more about the world that had been beyond the prison, the cage of the forest.
She was never meant to be in one place forever.
And now, this was a merely step in her journey along the pathway that lead from one world to another, realms opening alongside the next – and along the new path she’d stepped and found herself in a world she didn’t know. Nothing was the same, everything was different. A wayfarer stopped and spoke, and she gleaned a little information that she needed – and a title and a destination to go to.
The Day Court, heralded by a woman called Seraphina. The name of the land, Novus – and Solterra where she would go, after she’d walked the edge of the ocean and wondered how far across it she was.
No words were spoken between Karsi and Ciaran. The woman did stop though, and the ocean breeze coursed through her feathers and cooled her skin. She stood out here, but she was not concerned – and she wanted to know.
It had been some time since she’d been in the company of another equine.
Hopefully, she would remember her courtesies.
Ciaran Zhaoiani
bonded to karsi - daughter of nylah zhaoianas and willow
