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RE: the flowers say hello - Torstein - 08-12-2019

@Ipomoea @Raum @efphion @Senna @Bexley @Seraphina
chest: CLOSED — Thoughts — "Speech" — Bonded
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Just as quickly as the crowd dispersed, it seemed to re-converge once more... different bodies but not at all unlike a pulsing wave of insects. The scattered fruit flies and gnats - with their bony ribs and hungry eyes - picked off the fruit as soon as it fell to the dry, dusty earth while the blood upon his leg clotted and @Efphion's glare died a lonely death upon the back of his skull.

And just like that, @Ipomoea's basket was as bone dry as the very soil it rested upon.

But his words, unlike his basket, were not empty. Torstein felt the anger, the disgust that brewed upon every syllable... the titan knew of the Flower Regent, but oh, how long had it been since the rose sprouted thorns? Since when did he carry a weapon? Since when was it not just his hoof prints that commanded nature to grow, but his hatred?

You have no right.. were true words — but no one stopped him, did they? A dictator fed by the hopeless fools who licked his boots even while they were squashed beneath them. Oh @Senna, how do you not realize this? A cat cares not for the mice it kills. The merchant was met with a judgmental, hollow gaze as he briefly considered chastising Senna - Solterra has seen enough violence - but quickly silenced the want within his breast. Is that really what you wish to bring upon us? - What a damn fool.

Blood red eyes turned once more to the quicksilver and he felt his skin prickle as their gazes met. If only the giant knew @Raum's thoughts, if only if only! How he would agree, how he wished every recent day that he had been slaughtered upon that altar so long ago... his blood painting Caligo an abhorrent shade of crimson. Or maybe Raum was not entirely human and instead of red, electric blue pulsed and would spill from his veins.

Yet here I am - such an arrogant statement, filled with nothing but the sound of a man swallowed by a void. Torstein felt no pity within his heart, although the dryness of his throat was shocking. The twitch of his lip was hard to contain, but the mountain stayed silent. When will your righteousness burn you apart, Ipomoea?

What a fucking joke. Everything within the titan wants to rip the quicksilver mole to shreds - to pierce him upon the very bones of those he's slaughtered - and he struggles to quell the nauseating hatred swelling in his chest. It pulses numbly alongside the Deluminian Regent's... and briefly quiets when @Bexley Briar flits into existence, a cackling vulture resting upon her withers.

He wondered who else would show face. Would the next - because he was sure there was more - be someone else to grovel at Raum's feet? Would they appear to take his side, only to turn against him like much like Efphion (was everything right in that woman's mind?) suddenly did? Did the quicksilver really expect anyone to truly fight for him?

Tor cleared his throat... and far above, Circle circled, her shadow offering brief glimpses of relief from the unrelenting sun. 

Run, they begged of the Regent made of roses and thorns... but would he?

[ooc] This ended up being a whole lotta words for someone who ends up saying literally nothing this post... :'D /shot/ Please excuse what is (essentially) fluff! [/ooc]

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art © memuii — texture stock © ofruin-stock — coding © inkbone



RE: the flowers say hello - Ipomoea - 08-13-2019


IPOMOEA
so lay me down in golden dandelions 

The sand underhoof is shifting, making way for the spiny stems of cactus that rises out of it. They scratch and claw their way into the air, their needle-like fingers twisting around towards the murderous king. The magic bleeds out of Ipomoea as hot as the sun, feeding off of his anger in a way he did not know was possible. He can’t pull it back, can’t stopper the flow -

Nor would he want to.

Ipomoea lets the anger fester, an unspoken rage in the back of his mind. Perhaps it has been there all along, a disorganized and distant ferocity, since the day he was born here amongst the dunes of Solterra. He feels feral now as be looks into the crow’s blue eyes, and the savage inside of him is singing with the joy of being released. The points on each cactus spine sharpens, and they reach dangerously for Raum.

A single flower, orange and yellow and bright, blooms in front of them all.

He sees the others arrive, and their words spin through his mind. He doesn’t want to listen, he has eyes and ears only for Raum, but their words wriggle their way into his ears nonetheless. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t react. He only listens, and he feels his anger grow, opening a bottomless pit within him.

”Solterra has seen enough violence.” It will see more with Raum at its helm. ”Is that really what you wish to bring upon us?” He takes a single step forward. He does not waver, does not blink. His jaw only tightens, until his teeth grind together painfully and tastes blood at the back of his throat.

His vision is still red, as red as the man with the poisoned words.

”When will your righteousness burn you apart, Ipomoea?” Oh, if only Raum knew. It was the desert burning through his veins, a stranger and a friend, his past becoming his future. Later he might look on today with worry, and wonder when this streak of violence had first taken root in his heart. But today he does not question it, and he will not withdraw from it.

"When will it become a poison? Does it already taste wrong on your tongue?"

"First you must escape alive."

"Remember why you got away."


If this was a poison, he had succumbed to it far too willingly - and perhaps that was what the silver man wanted. The anger was oddly familiar on his tongue, and there was a sweetness to it that was unexpected. Once had felt guilt, and regret, and had worried that he had not done enough.

But he had chased gods since then, had stood and fought on a bloodstained field, had learned to say that is enough. Ipomoea could not change the past - but he could shape the future. And he would no longer sit idly by while another part of the world burned.

Be brave, be brave.

He takes his eyes off of Raum for the first time, and looks to Bexley. The vulture sitting on her back smiles and laughs and spills her mocking words. There’s something like gratitude in his eyes, but it’s masked with determination, with sadness, with anger. And perhaps his self-righteousness is already burning him apart, because still he steps forward. Their words are crumbling as ash in his mind.

“And then we accept that we might die for it.”

“I will not run.” Another step forward brings him even with Efphion, and his voice is low. The cactus continues to grow, hemming Raum in, a circle of thorns rising from the Solterran sand.

He steps closer, and the cactus in his path falls away. He steps past Efphion, past Torstein into the circle his magic has made, and the cactus grows back to fill the gap. Only then does he stop, and although the shortened distance between himself and the king makes him tremble, he lifts his head high. His words are for the king, for Senna, for anyone who supports the murderer, for anyone who tells him to run. He throws their warnings to the wind, and pays now for Delumine's silence. “Nothing here belongs to you, Raum.” His name is bitter and acidic on his tongue.

“Not even your own life.”

The first eagle dives with a scream that pierces the air, wind whistling along its wings. The rest follow in a flurry of feathers and movement, each of their talons spread wide as they reach for the king, for his monster, for the red man who stands beside them. Odet flies with them, and he is the first to reach for the solterran king’s eyes, hoping to feel flesh beneath his claws.

The blade on his dagger falls away, and in its place grows a vine. And when he raises the newly formed whip and cracks it in Raum's direction thorns sprout all along its length. The coil unwinds like a snake that lunges for the king, like a boa constrictor seeking to wrap around his neck and smother the words in his throat.

Somewhere in the canyons a teryr is roaring, and its anger is Ipomoea’s anger.










@Raum @efphion @Torstein @Senna @Bexley @Seraphina

po literally surrounded by a bunch of solterrans

to clarify - po has built a circle of cactus, if you want your character inside that circle or on the outside is up to you! there’s also a convocation of eagles on the attack.

”here am I!”









RE: the flowers say hello - Senna - 08-21-2019


COME, COME, COME, COME. GIVE ME YOUR HAND.
what's done cannot be undone.
The sun slipped lethargically into its throne of high noon, and a ghost slipped silently into place besides Senna. 

The clinging static of magic sang against his skin, but for all it bothered him (how the seventh prince loved and loathed the power which would forever elude his reach), he gave no acknowledgement of the magic user’s presence.

His ember gaze remained locked on the impending crisis in front of him. Nothing would break his concentration—not even when the ghost leaned forwards, pressed against his neck, and whispered belladonna-stained words into his ear. Soft and drawling, low and sneering. “...somehow all your genius hasn’t secured you a useful title.” 

She need not show herself. That silken voice belonged to none other than Bexley Briar. Seraphina’s right hand. Acton’s widowed wife. 

A muscle twitched in Senna’s cheek, but her provocations failed to light any anger. Only a mild irritation—living coals that none except Zofia had ever doused. “I am quite content with the ones I already wield, Bexley Briar,” he sighed. Any more titles upon his head, Senna thought, and his neck would snap from the weight.

“Solterra’s lords are crowned in blood, Senna. It breaks my heart that you think your boot-licking is useful.”

He felt Nestor’s rage bear down like a battering ram against the walls of his mind. Walls he’d hastily constructed for this very purpose—the falcon’s temper was shorter than a matchstick, and he couldn’t risk her emotions muddling his own. Seneca. They will never understand. Not then, not now. He ignored her.

He’d uttered his warning to the Dawn Regent with full awareness of the sort of bitter retaliation he’d receive. By not condemning Raum in public, he’d condemned himself. He’d sat at the helm of Solterran politics far too long not to understand, with bitterness, how the masses cared so very little for affairs conducted out of the public eye.

Senna knew that for Solis’ warrior court, appearances—public challenges, public punishments, public vengeance—were all they cared for.

“Crowned in blood, as you say. Perhaps Seraphina would have reigned longer if she'd launched a blood reckoning of her own,” he replied softly, right eye flicking numbly to her when the long-absent regent flashed into wavering existence. 

Let her interpret his words as she liked. He’d never bent his head to Seraphina during her time as sovereign—Bexley knew that. At her coronation, he’d thought the young soldier turned queen unprepared to bear the weight of the crown. He’d challenged her decisions at every turn. Had she expected blind obedience, spoon-fed appreciation? She might’ve received that in any other court, but not in the kingdom of sun. Not before any of the court could forget the corruption of Zolin, the siege of the castle. The purge of the nobility. 

Nestor’s earshattering shriek rang down from the skies seconds before the vulture appeared and settled like a black blight upon Bexley’s shoulders. That is no ordinary vulture! She is a demon, summoned from the pits of hell itself, Nestor crowed, and Senna winced when her scream demolished his mental wall. Her rage flooded his thoughts in a pool of scalding water. 

“Poor dear,” the demon cooed. “Poor darling.” Where had she come from? Who had sent her? He could barely arrive at conclusions before Nestor dove like a felled star towards him, pulling herself short just before ramming into his cloaked shoulder. Her talons tore through the fabric like a knife through paper, and blood—his blood—oozed out to fill the holes. 

He couldn’t fault her. Her primal fear—and on top of that, an armor of predatory fury—radiated like a supernova from her trembling body. If she worked herself into a state, he would lose his control over her entirely. Calm down, Nestor. The vulture—demon—is not moving from her perch. Do not act rashly. He swallowed his wince when her talons dug further into his flesh. And ease up while you are at it. Guiltily, the falcon retracted her talons. 

Calming his bonded had taken him away from the spiraling situation at hand. Raum had spoken, and then the dark woman, but Senna hadn’t caught their words. Not that it mattered. One glance heavenwards, one answering tremble of the shifting sands, and his worst fears were confirmed. 

Raum had summoned his beast. A demon had flown down from the skies. His words of caution were resoundly, gleefully, rejected. 

The situation had festered like a gangrene-riddled wound left out too long in the sun.

The Dawn regent strode forward, like a knight in the tales of old. You fool! he wanted to shout, but it was too late. He had compromised his position too deeply, and the Regent’s virtuousness had become a poison masquerading as elixir. He could only watch in silence as the Regent tipped the elixir flask back and drank.

Within striking distance of the Blood King’s magicked claws, and the scarf-bound eyes of his basilisk, Ipomoea said: “Nothing here belongs to you, Raum.” 

“Not even your own life.”

And then the eagles fell. 

Before the first one could reach him, Senna’s tenuous net of restraint over Nestor tore to pieces with one shriek of her hunting cry. Lifting into the air, she barreled into the path of the first eagle and sank her talons into its chest. Ripped out its heart with her beak, and tossed it to the sand at Senna’s hooves. Blood speckled his chest, indistinguishable from the color of his pelt.

Ipomoea’s vine of thorns cracked down in Raum’s direction, meters away from where he stood. He had no doubts where the Regent was aiming. Would not wait to taste its wicked thorns for himself. 

In the space of a second, Senna’s once-reluctant mouth curled into a snarl. With one downward stroke of his wings he shot upwards into the air, striking away eagles with his hooves. One managed to sink its talons into his left wing before he shook it off, but the pain was nothing compared to the pain he'd endured at the hand of his father and brothers. Laughable to the drowning waves of torment he’d felt when he laid his eyes upon his wife’s slashed throat, and his daughter’s hair matted with her mother’s blood. 

His scimitar sang as it slid out from its sheath, invoked for the first time in years. 

“Ipomoea!” he boomed down to them all, massive wings unfurling to block out the sun. “Will you kill him?” The point of his scimitar spun slowly in the air, like the needle of a compass teetering towards due north. Towards Raum. Towards the monster he held at bay with a sapphire scarf.

“Will you lay down your life to end his? Ensure that Raum will not survive to lash his rage upon the Solterran people?” A barking laugh dripped out from his mouth, cut short as Nestor sliced through the air and fell upon another eagle. Ripped out another heart. 

Was it right to bend over backwards and hail Raum? He knew of no fool who had.

Was it right to clamor for his head as due payment? What the reaper reaped he shall sow. But beheaded by whose hand? With whose army? Where was this Resistance he had heard so many whispers about? They blamed him for inaction, for licking the boots of the king. The Hajakha’s had no standing army. Most citizens despised them for bearing the crest of Zolin, and would never serve under their flag. 

No noble had been willing to take action, himself included, because the king’s wrath was a starved lion pacing at their gates. Waiting, waiting, for the chance to strike.

Unlike all of you—his gaze fell upon Bexley, Torstein, the Crow King, even the damned demon—I still have much to lose. A House to defend. The Hajakha’s—their taste for indulgence even when the commoners were starving gave him endless headaches. They had never treated him well. They were spoiled, needy, cynical. Impossible.

But they were Zofia’s family. His blasted, dysfunctional family. And he would not throw his life away for the greater good, whatever noble pursuit they—standing there now, believing him loyal to Raum—deemed it be. Perhaps it was due to their youth. He could remember when he had been the same. But now that he was a father, that boy who once hungered for glory, he was dead. Mixed in with the ashes of his wife. 

Leaving Sol fatherless, after his failure three years ago had cost his daughter her mother, was unthinkable.

The rulers of Solterra, save Seraphina, all shared a common attribute. They never thought. They just acted. The boar king, Maxence, had never considered the burden he would thrust upon his young regime before gallivanting straight into the claws of a Teryr. Raum had traipsed from his castle, invoked his beast, all to flex his indomitable might to a young regent handing out apples. Who couldn’t hold a blade if his life depended on it.

“If you really wanted to help us, Ipomoea, you would’ve brought an army,” Senna seethed. “And you, king,” he said, lowering himself down just a little to lay the point of his blade delicately upon Legion’s muzzle. Soft as a snake's flickering tongue. “Swallow your pride. Bring harm to the Regent, and I swear upon Solis' head I will rally the noble houses against you. We have had enough.” 

His blade sang through the air as he sliced off the wing of an attacking eagle. Blood rained down upon the sand. 

Nestor. We are leaving. If they want to bring their own ruin, let them. And with one sweep of his wings, one parting glance, Senna shot upwards into the sky, into the cooling embrace of the clouds. 

Flew like an archer’s last arrow towards the Hajakhan residence. The tides were turning. The end—of Raum’s reign, of Solterra, he didn’t know which—was coming soon, and he would be damned if he would not do all he could to ready for it. 

If such a thing can be readied for, he thought, as resignation as hard as cooling magma turned Senna’s eyes a deep, crow black.



@Ipomoea @Raum @Torstein @Efphion @Seraphina "senna" nestor
// senna has,, left the chat,,, (rip to all the npc eagles killed in this post I love nature I swear ;_; )



RE: the flowers say hello - Bexley - 08-29-2019


BEXLEY BRIAR

the heart of the king loves everything
like the hammer loves the nail;


At first she does not notice the shadow. The soft beating of wings. How the air shifts like a secret, how it comes down to kiss her hair with the lightest breath; she does not notice the shadow because the light, and what it uncovers, is a far more pressing issue.

That issue being the fragile hearts of men. Raum, Senna, Ipomoea. All of them frothing at the mouth, all of them arguing like children. (When Senna speaks to her, she can’t help grinning a little. Even Seraphina’s short reign was longer than Senna could ever hope to sit in power; the crown of blood did not guarantee life as much as it did influence, and Seraphina had  found plenty of that.) There is not a man on earth, Bexley thinks with disdain, that is not, at heart, a brat. She wants to laugh. She would, if the situation weren’t so dire, because the way they conduct themselves is so feeble, so utterly pathetic, that there is nothing to be done but laugh. There is no appealing to reason or quelling their tempers. No, like Adam, they succumb without thought to the idiot belief that they are God’s most precious production (if God existed at all, he would be most proud of butterflies), filled with foolish righteousness, and like Lilith Bexley sheds her subservience and goes to cavort with Satan, and she is still the most reasonable of all of them.

(Like Lilith, she leaves the gardens and comes back a demon. Like Lilith, she does not know how to look into the night. Like Lilith she would rather die of black-rot, bleeding out, a holy curse or of God’s disdain than live under the thumb of another senseless, self-obsessed gentleman whose gene pool could use a little chlorine or who could stand to suffer a stroke. Like Lilith, she is half woman, half serpent, all devil. Like Lilith she will end them all with the simple word they pretend not to understand—no.)

There is not a man on earth who is not at heart a brat, and Bexley is fucking tired of baby-sitting.

At first she does not notice the shadow, but then it comes to land on her back. She flinches—her shoulders tense. She’s heard stories of Senna’s moon-white falcon, and she cannot imagine that it would take to her any more kindly than she took to its master. But when Bexley’s eyes turn toward it, they flash with recognition. And when the realization sets in, her body unwinds, and to the bird she smiles an ugly, savage kind of smile. “Ereshkigal.”

She is not afraid, though Ereshkigal’s grin is like sharpening a knife. Though she stands far larger than any bird should; though she smells like blood. (Haven’t they all, at one point or another?) She is not afraid, even though she can feel the pinprick of claws bright against her ribs. The weight on her spine is almost a comfort. Not alone. Not alone.

Ereshkigal’s soft, dark feathers and scaly feet brush against Bexley’s skin as she shifts. A momentary pause follows, awkwardly calm. Then an incendiary scream. The sound that comes out of the bird is awful—like sword against sword, like saying hello to death—but Solterra’s golden girl does not even acknowledge it, save for a lazy flick of her ear, as if the call of Hell is something she has heard a hundred times before. (And perhaps she has; who’s to say but for Bexley and her errant heart? She has seen blackness, she has seen grief. She has seen a heartbreak so vile it sent her to her knees. Is that so different from hell?)

Her face is flat as Raum speaks. No semblance of emotions, no subtle curl of the lips. Her eyes are as cold as his—black ice on the road. An oncoming snowstorm.

(Would Acton be proud? Or would he be scared?)

(Is she turning into the thing that killed her?)

Her head tilts, slow and calm, just like Ereshkigal. Every muscle moves like syrup.

The look in her eyes is the look of something dead or starting to rot from the inside.

“Oh, don’t pretend. You have no idea what would please Acton.” When she grins, it makes her face into a mask of villainy—the bright-sharp teeth, the moving scar. Her weight shifts lazily. “You forget we were in love. You forget we have a child. Pleasing him…” Now the smile turns into a smirk, all the wryness in her tone just barely repressed. “I promise I’m the expert.”

And everything that happens next happens far too fast, but she is a magic girl now, and, even better, she wants to live, and Bexley always gets what she wants.

The basilisk comes screaming down from the sky, blinking through his blindfold and reaching toward Ereshkigal with a mouth as big as a mountain; he is so close that Bexley can read the shine of the sun on his fangs and smell the horrible death-rot on his breath, and for a moment fear strikes her like a spear, lancing into every cell and knocking the breath from her chest; but gods will die before Bexley lets a fucking chicken kill her, and before it can touch her or Ereshkigal, into the thing’s open mouth she smashes a ball of the brightest, whitest fire.

Flesh sizzles. The air fills with the sick smell of a body charred. Now the the desert is blooming with spiny fists of cacti, and Bexley is reined in by their spines, but Raum is trapped here too, and she laughs. Liquid gold pours from her eyes, her nostrils, her teeth. “Bye-bye, Senna!” she sings as he tears off into the sky, jovial as a Christmas caroler, and winking all the while.

Then she turns to Raum, and the white of her eyes turns pure, molten gold.


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