“I request an audience with the king,” Pavetta told the guards at the door. “If he has returned from the Summit." One nodded and disappeared behind the door, elegant emerald dyed cloak swishing behind him. The other guard remained in position, silent and motionless as as a statue. Rather then engage a boring statue in dull conversation, she paced on the threshold, cloven hooves making a hollow, clipped sound on the cool marble and echoing throughout the hall.
Pavetta wished she was here for other reasons--less serious--idle chat and companionship. It would be nice to watch the dawn turn from a blushing gray to dusty rose to sherbert melon from the balcony; talking about things that did not really matter but did because they had taken the time out their day to say it to each other, and that meant something. She had not seen Somnus since the herd meeting; did not know what details had been written into his life that she had missed. He was busy leading a kingdom, a regime, and the people--speaking to gods on mountaintops.
She had climbed the peak that day herself in the hopes of finding answers but had descended with more questions, more riddles.
What went on behind that ancient door on the mountain?
There had been no meeting yet; no announcements. She had milled around aimlessly with the other lemmings on the cliffs—mindlessly and senselessly driven towards something they could not explain; though it could have very well meant their deaths. A mystery to all what may or may not have transpired. But that was neither here nor there. Pavetta paced the empty marble halls this gray dawn for a different matter; one that did not concern cryptic gods or towering peaks.
Rather, a petition of sorts.
a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse,
creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---
The gates had opened and Araxes had been off like a shot, through the towering archway and out in to the world again. Her hooves had pounded the ground as she moved through the pass, ears down, and she had come jolting up the massive mountain, staggering at the very summit and taking in deep breaths of crisp air. Here was where all the commotion had been, and now she stood before a literal wall of trees, her head leaning up and wings fanning out on either side of her head.
For once, the little Denoctian bird had no words to speak, instead blinking and silently thanking the deities. It was unlikely that Tempus had sent the bird to simply for them, oh no. This.. was something else, but she was still ever grateful. If not for the deity, it was unlikely that the gates would have opened for a while, and she felt herself relax.
Free, she was no longer trapped. Never in her life had she felt as if she were trapped and yet... there in Denocte, she had. It had been an awful feeling, something that had squirmed in her gut, had made her uneasy. Staying home was one thing, being told she had to because of fear of a dragon harming her should she leave was a different story. She had hated it.
Now, she stood, taking in breaths and relaxing herself, offering her silent thanks, and perhaps hoping to see... someone. Family, maybe, here in this magic soaked place.
A pale stallion stood in the middle of the woods. Shifted his weight, looked around, sniffed. Sniffed again, shifted his weight, looked around. A "Hmmm," pressed through his nostrils, groaned like a branch in the wind on one of these old trees. He turned around, stood still, then eased into motion, stepping over winding roots and ducking under low branches; these were ones he'd seen before (and - though he would never admit it - ones he had both tripped over and bumped his head on at least once, each). Two cattle-tails swished behind him as he walked, in a circle, purposely, his fair head in the air, sniffing for something familiar. He sighed. "Everything's familiar at this point." He didn't even bother to complete his circle, instead deviating and heading further into the trees. He didn't know it was further, rather than the direction he wanted to go in, where the trees grew sparse and finally tapered out to the plains. Toro had a nagging feeling that he wasn't supposed to be here, but he didn't know enough to know why. So he kept walking.
In front of a very large, very gnarly tree, Toro paused. He squinted up at the canopy of leaves, the ancient oak was a shelter in its own right. He wandered if any rain could reach the ground on which he stood. "You look familiar."Maybe I'm onto something. There was another old tree on the other end of the woods, wider, and older, and it was most certainly not this one. The stallion continued on in this direction, further in Dusk territory, little did he know. His ears pricked at every cracking branch and rustling leaf; it was one thing to be lost, another to be oblivious. He didn't like it here, anyway; the trees reminded him far too much of the woods his sire would wander into, the woods in which he would die. Besides that, it was dark, and the trunks congested, and the leaves were good hiding places for basically everything... There were plenty of reasons not to like the woods. It wasn't just about dad. How could it be? It'd been years. Two years, three seasons, give him a moment and he'll know the days. He stopped in front of a bush, full of autumn berries, untouched - poisonous. He moved on. His tails swished; he was beyond impatience. He was just tired, now, and it would be nice if there was someone around here that could give him directions. He was starting to get the feeling that the old tree back there was not the old tree he thought it was.
Dawn often signified rejuvenation, symbolizing new promises that budded underneath the sun’s soft pastel rays. Some would bloom, creating flashes of vibrant colors, punctuated by the melody of laughter and peaceful sighs. These were the ones that unfurled pathways of joy, love, and contentment – an overall satisfaction with life. Others stunted and withered, never ascending to their full potential.
That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Hydra mused, the thought expanding and giving the weary traveler a headache as the sun spilled over Vitreus Lake. Her pace was restless, her stout body weaving through the final bouts of early successional trees like a snake through grass. She had been so stupid to let her guard down, even for a moment, out in those mountains. The Armas had been treacherous, though they had never presented themselves as anything different. She appreciated the honesty, and berated her lapse of judgement regarding the hospitality of its inhabitants.
Her earthen eyes roved to her right haunch, snapping her muzzle back quickly in disgust. Four bloodied slashes glared against her golden hide, each with dried rivulets that had trickled down from the initial wounds. The blood didn’t bother her. It was her carelessness that ate her alive. She wheeled around, throwing her hind legs at a decaying tree that exploded in a display of splintered wood, termites, and emotional displacement.
“Fucking cats”, she cursed, the lithe body of the feline slinking through her dusky memories, it’s mouthful of hungry ivory gleaming in the moonlight.
“At least I have a cool new scar to impress everyone in Denocte, right?”, she mumbled to herself, sneering at the thought.
Vitreus Lake soon lapped invitingly at her hooves, and she blinked as she raised her gaze up to the cloudless fall sky.
She lunged forward and threw herself into the lake, her breath hitching in its cold embrace as the alpine waters swallowed her. Her fitful eyes closed as the world fell away.
Finally, her mind was quiet.
H Y D R A *if you could only see the beast you've made of me...
The call of the gods was a powerful one. It dragged sinners from their sickbeds and had them dirtying their knees before altars.
In silence he weaves between the penitent and faithful, rubbing his shoulders against the blasphemers and non-believers. They had all gathered here, in might, in curiosity. Shadows crawl like ants along the bare stone of the high temple gates. They were closed, not open yet, it reminds him of Denocte, though there is less fire now.
With Caligo’s darkness upon his wings, the Crow weaves his way through the masses. He draws short as a flash of orange captures his gaze. Acton is a spark, a tongue of flame licking against the dark of passing bodies.
In silence Raum begins the pursuit. With electric eyes set upon volcanic skin, he hunts the Magician. It is as he watches, as he studies the way his brother moves, that he catches the glances.
There is a flash of gold, not that of the Crow King’s old lover, but a glimmer of Solterran light. The Ghost knows that colour, that fire. It is where his brother’s bright gaze is fixed.
Raum’s gaze is stone, it does not twitch or flicker at such revealing behavior. Not even at how it feels so familiar deep within him. He is not the only Crow to be ensnared by the fire of a Solterran girl (even one born under Caligo’s watchful eye).
The Ghost appears beside the Magician, eyes set upon the gold of Bexley. “Be careful brother,” he murmurs like sin in the black of a temple. “A girl like that will burn you to the ground.” A knife glints malevolent and bright between the Crows. “But I think you already knew that.”
And it is the ash of their souls that Raum can smell, acrid and strong, upon the air.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
The sun had nearly set, the sky was a deep navy. Upon the tree-shadowed horizon, there was only a thin line of gold framing the forest. Stars began to twinkle and beneath their eternal audience, Florentine gathered the Twilight party to her.
In the fading light, she is dark and richly gold. Her skin is liquid, water struck through with gold. Her wings are held to her side, though a couple of feathers fall and join the dusting of petals at her feet.
It is the chink of silver against glass that draws the attention of her brethren and she stands where all can see her, upon a small mound. Fires still breathed into the night, their smoke drifting over their gathered members.
At her side she can feel the warm glow of Cyrene and quiet calm of Asterion. Florentine does not think she could ask for a better Regime to stand beside her. Then her eyes drift to Israfel, the only appointed member of her counsel so far. With a sweep of golden feathers, Flora called Isra up to stand beside the Regime.
“We thank you for coming tonight.” The twilight girl begins lightly. “I hope you managed to make new acquantances.” Flora drinks in every face, shadows by moonlight but limned in the gold of the dying sun.
“Some of you may have been wondering when the appointments of our champions would take place, well, the answer is now.” Her smile is bright, “Terrastella had been so quiet, but our numbers are now strong, our ranks thriving, thank you. We have been through so much: standing beside Day in their civil war, standing strong against Night. But now I seek to bring us stability, to bring honour to the worthy. With that in mind, I chose tonight as the day to appoint our Champions.”
Her eyes are electric bright. They flash in the firelight and her blood thrums in her veins. “Raymond,” Her eyes befall the red warrior. “You have shown your skills upon the Steppe. Will you continue on as our Champion of Battle?” Florentine remembers hazy days in the Rift, in a rapidly changing world. She is so far from the child she had been then, but of she is pleased that he has come from there too.
“Fiona.” The quiet girl stands amidst the crowds, her notebook held close, its pencil well worn. “Will you be our Champion of Community? Remind us the communication with our brethren is not reserved for voice and words alone but action and good will?”
“Atreus.” Her gaze shifts to the Poison Master. His name inspired doubt, but his skills were formidable, “Will you accept the position of Champion of Healing?” Florentine’s dark eyes gleamed, his future would be full of shadows and light.
“Lastly, Turhan.” Florentine drinks in the wisened Ilati, “I have heard word of your counsel, that it is good. You are learned in the ways of the earth and our goddess, will you teach that to those who desire it? Will you be our Champion of Wisdom?”
From her position the gilt fae drinks in her appointed quartet. “If you wish to accept, then please step forward so we might see and congratulate you.” With an open wing, the young queen beckons her Champions forward.
@Asterion @Cyrene @Raymond @Atreus @Turhan @Fiona | Everyone is welcome. Replies from those who have been appointed is compulsory. <3
Raymond had only ventured into Tinea Swamp once before, perhaps out of some subconscious desire to disobey Florentine (or, more likely, because he was just Busy with other things), but it was an easy enough walk to manage even for a pair of wounded scrappers such as they. Where elsewhere in Novus had begun to go red and yellow with the onset of Autumn, the swamp resisted, wrapped as it was in its cocoon of dreary, humid heat. There were many things that the swamp resisted, as all swamps do.
A marsh is a magical place, the clan elder would say, primitive and insistent. It bows to no master.
Horses like them could understand a place like this. Pavetta's worthiness of such inclusion was writ within the swath of blood drying on her left side; the red stallion needed to know nothing more than what she showed on the Steppes, though he knew he would ask eventually.
The ache in his shoulder had worked its way through and around the muscle, and with time the abrasions had filled and scabbed over with a thin upwelling of blood. It was a good sort of pain, and he neither tried to conceal his limp nor complained about it. He'd had far worse, and so had his companion. The red stallion inspected a clean, babbling spring, declaring it suitable to their purpose before turning to address the striped mare directly. It was the first thing of substance he had said since leaving the battlefield, though even that seemed somehow proper.
Raymond cultivated silence as lovingly as he did stories.
"Okay, professor," he said without the slightest hint of pejorativeness, indicating the gash in her side with a flick of his muzzle, "tell me what I can do to help take care of that." Then we can talk, his tone seemed to finish for him. As far as he was concerned, however shallow her injury and however well-kept his blade, the concern for her wellbeing took precedence over any other preoccupations on his part. Even a clean cut can get infected.
Raymond. "he's an outlaw loose and runnin'," came the whisper from each lip
"and he's here to do some business with the big iron on his hip."
Pavetta was reminded of her wedding day and the veil she had worn. It had been the day that changed everything. Would this too, be a day to change everything in Novus? She hadn’t wanted to make the journey up the steep slopes, would rather linger in the valley, pretending such forces in Novus didn’t exist. But when had she ever backed down from a challenge, even if gods were involved? She had only seen the destruction wrought, the chaos that bred and festered in the presence of such forces.They had brought the fall of worlds, kingdoms, of people.
And Pavetta had been raised to worship such beings.
Suddenly, she was the girl on a mountaintop once more, secluded and silent. Dressed in gauzy silk and hair plaited, head bowed, for you might be whipped if you interrupted worship. The sorceresses dripping jewels and diamonds, vain and beautiful. She remembered the offerings—not myrrh and jasmine, but young girls that never returned. Blood on the altar, wet red pearls in the shape of constellations.
Sacrifice was necessary, they said.
Pavetta climbed the last step, her breathing labored and heavy. Sweat rolled down her sides, hair plastered to her neck and forehead. She stood shakily, catching what little air there was up here, to see that already patches of snow littered the common area. Her hair was not pleated neatly, nor did she wear her fine clothing. She had left everything behind—here she was raw and barren before the gods. They did not deserve jasmine and myrrh, reverence and respect. They did not deserve sacrifices of girls with pearls in their hair.
They deserved death after life, as any mortal.
Hushed murmurs of excitement and anticipation. Pavetta felt alienated, their faith and belief made them people of action and hope. Her faithlessness did nothing in the grand scheme; it was powerless. She wandered among the gathering crowd and mist, not in a chatting mood, but neither did she desire to be alone in this place.
This place harbored nothing but ill intent.
a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse,
creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---
When the bird (some grey-black desert thing with beady mean eyes, he was no ornithologist) approached him, Acton was surprised for a small multitude of reasons, but the first was this: how the hell had it found him? He’d barely admitted to himself that he was living in Dawn, much less anyone else.
For a moment he’d just stared between the letter and the bird, and the bird stared back. “Who’s it from?” he’d asked, but the bird had only darted in, bit the thin skin on the bridge of his nose, and flown off like a bastard before he could bite back.
“Yeah, fuck you too,” he’d called after it, but by then it was just a small black blur in a big blue sky, and he dropped his gaze back to the scroll, rolled up tight as a snake in the grass.
He was irritated to find his heart tripping in his chest, pounding out an uneven drumbeat. And he was almost ashamed to find he wanted it to be from Reichenbach. That he wanted to be begged back, courted for his favor like a wronged girlfriend. Who else knew he was here, anyway?
But as soon as he touched it, as soon as it unfurled with the bleached scent of sand and sun and sandalwood, he knew it was not the Night King. His nerves were still alight as he took in the blue, slanting ink, but already there was a little hint of a grin snaking across his lips.
It was in full bloom by the time he finished.
--
Conveniently, the Dawn Court had also received a heavenly courier bird, and a delegation was headed up to the summit. It was a large enough one Acton could join in with little fanfare, trailing along behind them, trying to sort out the razor-wire tangle of his thoughts. It stood to reason that Denocte had received the same invitation, that his king would be moving even now for the same destination as him. The buckskin kept trying to force his thoughts away from Reich; he much preferred the mess of feelings surrounding Bexley. The former was a dull, dark ache, but the latter – ah. Anticipation prickled like a sharp shallow cut, just enough of a sting to make him feel alive.
Probably he ought to have been worrying or wondering about the gods, but Acton had never had a head for religion, and little interest in third-party judgment.
It was a strange atmosphere that greeted them at the base of Veneror Peak. Half festival, half firesquad, the crowd was a livewire jitter of nerves, all flashing eyes and shivering skin. Acton slipped through them all, warring with his wants – to look or not to look? There was not yet the scent of jasmine, of cedarsmoke, and maybe he was grateful for that.
Finding the Solterrans was not difficult. Finding Bexley among them was even easier – sharp as a sword, bright as a sun, she carried her own kind of orbit, a glittering gravity. For a moment Acton only observed her – he had never seen her around her people, and there something fascinating about it, the thoughtless dance they did.
Gods, it made him homesick. Before the black wave could take him, before he changed his mind, he stepped forward. At first he had to fake his swagger, but as soon as her blue eyes found him it became real as a bad habit.
“Hey,” he said by way of greeting, very intentionally ignoring every face but her own. She looked like some bright burnished goddess, all her hair braided and coiled up tight as a vow; it made this meeting seem more different than their others than even the memory of the note she’d written did. “Some bird gave me a letter from someone pretending to be you. I knew it was fake, ‘cause it had the word sorry in it.” His smile was a half-sickle on its way to full weapon and a thousand tiny things with sharp edges seemed to have taken up residence just beneath his too-tight skin.
It was awful. It was amazing.
“Just thought you should know there’s an imposter before you get smitten, or whatever.”
WELL I SAW A SNAKE IN AN APPLE TREE
YOU KNOW I DIDN'T TRUST A WORD THAT HE HISSED AT ME, NO
Fight Type: BATTLE Prize: n/a! just exp Contact Made: yes!
Character #1: @Bexley Bonded: n/a Magic: n/a Armor: n/a Weapons: n/a Current Health: 21 Current Attack: 19 Current Experience: 27
Character #2: @aion Bonded: n/a Magic: discipuli frostbite magic Armor: n/a Weapons: n/a Current Health: 10 Current Attack: 10 Current Experience: 16
MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON.
All this anger and nowhere to put it. For once Bexley feels all herself, and, in conjunction, utterly Machiavellian.
A day and a half walking from Solterra to Ruris, and most of it drenched in wet, stunning sunlight. On each side steps a member of the Day Court regime on their way to Veneror. The eagle’s letter remains strapped to Seraphina’s leg. Eik walks in a slow, self-conscious saunter. Hair braided, headaches blooming in her temple with obnoxious reoccurrence, Bexley follows-the-leader over plains and valleys, sloshing through creeks, their destination naught but a phantasmal monument in the fair distance, and in her heart something stubborn and wild still asks for more.
More, she realizes as it comes into view, lies in the Steppe.
Ah, all her capricious wants, served to her on a silver platter. How long has it been since she felt bone-crunch, tasted salt-iron on her tongue - since she felt really evil, really monstrous, in the manner her heritage has always asked of her?
Long enough.
Bex splits from the rest of the regime, announcing her departure in a low murmur, to find some lonely refuge in the blood-bathed stone. Refuge. A disagreeable word to describe a barbaric place, but Bexley has realized, over time, that violence is discomforting only to those who do not recognize it as intimately as she does - people who don’t see bleached skulls tattooed on the insides of their eyelids, who don’t see their own obsessions on a loop, nothing but blood and blood and replay.
Enviable.
Overhead the sky swirls with insidious dark clouds. If Bexley is Machiavellian, the scene unfolding around her would be the work of Botticelli - winds blowing and flowers crushed to the dirt and light, misty drizzle coming down onto the dry earth - but that gauze of gold-touched rain is too faint to hide the silhouette that stands across the Steppe, a chimeric amalgamation of white and shadow. Bexley draws to a stop. Interest raises her brow. Her blue gaze is fervid - it glows with intent.
For a moment, her heart ceases its bleeding, if only in preparation for the real bleeding to follow.
Fuck the world, huh? Bex drawls, something like laughter tinging her already-indelicate tone. Me too, buddy.
@aion <3
Summary: Bex (in a bad mood as per usual) wanders off from her field trip w/ the regime, sees Aion also being grumpy on the step, teases him just for the #drama
