It’s early morning when the falcon arrives, alighting on a light post in the center of the courtyard. For several minutes the falcon sits and watches, observing the comings and goings of the Court.
Until she spies the Sovereign.
She puffs up her feathers, golden eyes gleaming in the early morning light. This was the person she’d been waiting for: her attention was on Seraphina alone now, her gaze zeroing in upon the silver mare.
She is larger and brighter than any common falcon; her brilliance rivals the deserts of Solterra. She flutters now from her perch to one closer to the Day Court’s Sovereign, her watchful gaze never leaving the warrior's pale blue eyes. She places herself directly in Seraphina’s path forcing her to choose: wait and listen, or move around the large avian.
After a moment of staring her down, ensuring she'll choose to stop, the falcon speaks.
Not with the voice of a falcon--but one of a God, spoken in the common tongue. And it sounds not like one voice, but several, perhaps even hundreds: young and old, a different version of the same voice for every age, speaking in unison across the yard and throughout the entirety of the Court:
“You will come.”
The parchment tied to her ankle comes undone by its own accord, invisible hands pulling its ends apart. It unfurls in mid air, hovering just before the Sovereign so that she and any others might read what is written within:
Now that I have your attention,
Your presence is required a week from today. I have cleared a section of Veneror Peak for us to meet.
Bring with you two others whom you trust. Do not think you can hide from me.
Go in peace.
There is no signature, no hint as to who wrote the letter... but something tells you this can only be the work of the deities.
Welcome to Novus’ first Summit! Your Sovereign is required to participate in this SWP. This will be a political meeting for the four Courts to come together on neutral grounds and discuss relations.
It is highly encouraged for the Sovereign to attend: be aware, Tempus will not respond kindly if Seraphina is absent. It is expected for all members of the Regime to attend the meeting (@Seraphina @Eik) however, if one of more Regime members cannot attend, it is up to @Seraphina to choose who to send to the meeting in their stead. Choose wisely!
Everyone else is allowed to post in this board and explore the area! Please be aware: the meeting area itself is currently sealed, and only the Regime and their chosen representatives will be allowed in! That being said, feel free to post threads wondering what the heck is going on! ;D
As for this thread: @Seraphina has priority in replying. After she has, any other Court members are welcome to voice their thoughts!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The meeting will start on June 1st and will last until June 14th. A new thread will be started giving more instructions for the Sovereigns at that time.
To tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk.
Please be advised, tagging the Random Event account does not guarantee a response!
half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers real gods require blood
The sun curls up in her lungs as she breathes in the scalding heat of the midday sun, dry familiarity; when the falcon lands in front of her, she can barely remember what she was doing, passing through the midst of the marketplace. Work. Something – on her way to meet someone. They would have to wait. It takes little more than a rudimentary glance at the brilliant gold of the bird’s feathers, a look into her clever eyes, to make Seraphina realize that whatever had just lighted before her was far, far more important than whatever arrangement she was meant to attend. This was not normal. This was not-
The falcon speaks.
The voice makes her think of winding branches and black water, of a great monster with sharp, sharp teeth and skin that rippled like ink; it makes her think of running, the white-hot adrenaline of terror, of empty loneliness and misplaced devotion. She skims the words of the unfurling message. Rakes her eyes along them. Skims again. A week from now? They should move quickly. Be there early. Was it him? Will it be him? She’ll find out when she gets there, she thinks, idly.
(A choir girl steps up to the altar to sing, but she doesn’t remember the sound of her own voice.)
Seraphina has never doubted the gods.
She is native-born and native-raised, after all; they are as real to her as the sky, the trees, each grain of sand cast golden across the dunes. In all things, she sees the touch of the divine, painting everything cast out in front of her eyes like some great, celestial paintbrush. She does not need to see them in front of her when she knows that they are everywhere. In all her times of terror, – before now - the concept of some divine watching over her had been a comfort. Now, it makes her stomach twist with nausea. What have we done now? No, not we - what have I done now? It sinks in, abrupt as a bullet to the chest, that she has spurned her own god, that she is a sun queen with no sun to watch over her. Was that the last straw, the final offence of a nation bent double beneath the weight of its ancestors' sins? Was this some sort of divine reckoning? You will come. (She was trying so hard – she had tried so hard.) She doesn’t want to go – she wants to dig her heels into the sand and focus on continuing to rebuild what remains of her nation, to try and unify her people in the face of tragedy and history and a future that seems to waver like the mirages that dance in hazy reflections along each mountainous ridge of sand in the smothering midday heat. Like most things that she is slowly realizing scare her, it makes her want to run, to bolt off into the dunes like a shadow and bury herself so deep in the sands that she will never be found again. Selfish, Seraphina. Selfish. She needed to be steadfast, now of all times; she couldn’t falter. (But, then, there was never a time when she could.) She needed to be as sharp as a knife forged in her country’s steel and twice as quick – whatever awaited her at Veneror Peak, it was likely not on her side.
(Whatever. She knows – of course she knows. Tempus himself. She isn’t ready to admit that yet, though.)
She watches the bird dully, momentarily transfixed by the metallic gold of its feathers, and she is quietly aware that she stands alone in front of something divine, and she doesn’t want that anymore. Everything has a reason, Seraphina. They are always watching over us. Was there a reason for this? For any of this? (Her eyes, torn from gold, creep along a burnt, crumbling mosaic; ashes cling to the crevices between the tiles.) She can’t blame the divine for the actions of mortals, she knows, and she is tired of blaming, or perhaps being blamed, but she’s heard time and time again that the gods have a plan.
She doesn’t know, – if there is a purpose to things, she has never been very good at figuring it out – and she doubts that a bird, no matter how holy, will be able to enlighten her about the mysteries of the universe. (She is not sure if the god still possesses her, after all.) Instead, she inclines her head at the falcon, uncertain. “Is there anything I might bring you, messenger? The flight from Veneror must have been long, and the desert is not always hospitable to travelers.” She is not sure she the flight has actually bothered it, as she looks like she belongs in the desert skies more than anything she has ever seen, and she doubts that she can speak on her own, but perhaps an indication of her needs would allow her to meet them…if she is even a bird at all, not some extension of the divine creature she represents.
She glances back at the crowd that had gathered with the falcon’s arrival, her multicolored gaze eerily composed, all things considered. “It seems,” She says, simply, “that Tempus requests our presence.” Hers, at least – and Eik’s and Bexley’s, she assumes. (In any case, there are none in Solterra she would trust more than her own two hands, Avdotya’s betrayal be damned.) She gazes at a sea of familiar faces, awaiting the questions that would no doubt be in store for her.
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
05-30-2018, 06:13 PM - This post was last modified: 05-30-2018, 06:48 PM by Seraphina
Light glimmers wetly overhead, and Bex squints against it as she traverses a winding set of circular stairs, hoofsteps echoing at an ear-shattering volume against the walls of cool sandstone.
Today she is a ghost.
All gild and snow. All white-hot and white-angry. She feels her own mortality, a stone in the throat, and swallows it as best she can. The broken skylight ripped in this tower’s ceiling sheds bright-yellow light, drips it like gold everywhere, hot and deep and choking, strangling: she should be used it to by now, shouldn’t she, Solterra’s golden girl, but somehow it never gets easier (the oppressive heat, the blinding light) on days like these, when Bexley wakes up and hates herself with stunning immediacy. It is a wardrum in the deep of her skull. It is a record put on repeat.
Keep it together. Keep it together.
Today she is a ghost, and yet too solid to be real. The Day Court is drowned in sunlight, and Bexley mutters something savage under her breath as she emerged into the heat of it, head tucked to her chest and strides extended. The early morning has come and gone, and at the least, it’s given Bex time to prepared to be seen: traversing the more populated streets, she is sleek and collected, long white mane wound into loose buns, collar glinting at her throat, gaze dead but calm as she looks out over the near-crowded square. A crowd has collected, she realizes dully. But for what?
Excuse me, Bexley calls as she starts to shoulder her way through the crowd, slinking between close-pressed bodies, butting her way through pockets of people. Excuse me. Baring her teeth sort of does the trick. The scar on her face, the snarl on her lips, the title of regent stapled to her skin all manage to split the crowd around her. After a moment she’s emerged into the center of the gathering, and of course Seraphina is the attraction in the middle, as stoic and stony as ever, but something has changed, something is different.
The falcon.
Gold-eyed, wild. Bexley has just missed its godly voice, but merely looking at the thing sends her stomach plummeting to deep earth. Her pulse beats rapid-fire under her tongue. The bird stares back at her, and she knows that it knows her, that it sees deep, that it can smell her distrust, her confusion, her fear. What is this - she can't help the question as she turns to her Sovereign, suspicion rampant in that ice-blue gaze, although she already knows the answer - something dangerous, and important, and divine.
Teiran moved with fluid, feline grace through the court. She was a predator at all times, always on alert and in tune with her surroundings. The high, bright, hot sun gleamed off the shine of her coat as she walked at a clipped pace. The outskirts of the court were quiet, unusually so. No bodies hiding in the shadows of alleyways, no one hurrying along the streets as they went from one place to another. Her sage green eyes scoured every road and every corner and wondered where everyone had gone.
Something was not right here.
Something had changed.
The warrior made her way toward center court, past sandstone walls that stood empty of sound or life. She kicked up sand in the empty streets, and it was as though she was moving through a ghost town. Until, that is, she started to hear the clamor of voices. Hushed, whispered words reached through the quiet toward her, alongside higher, more anxious tones. Teiran stepped up to the crowd with sharp, cold eyes and despite her small size, a stature that forced others to move out of her way.
Like a coiled snake anyone feared to touch, they separated before her, giving her space to prowl her way through the bodies. Her gaze swept through the masses, searching for the source of excitement, of dread, of curiosity and wonder. She found it, resting on the sands before Seraphina. She looked over the hawk, bright, and huge, and with piercing golden eyes. It did not move, she had not heard it speak, but the fact that it had she could hear among the crowd.
Teiran stepped forward, unafraid, posture loose but her every muscle screamed for action. She wanted to leap, to pound her way toward her queen and to ask what is happening? Instead, the collared girl walked slowly, oh so slowly, and read the words scrawled on the inside of the scroll that floated in the air where everyone could see it. Inside, her thoughts hissed with the same words that were on everyone's tongues. Divine, gods, Tempus. She did not know how to feel about it.
"What would you have me do?" Teiran asked, finally turning her attention, her whole being, toward the silver woman standing before her. She stood stiffly, a soldier prepared to do whatever was asked of her. She would stay, if that is what her queen wanted, the same as if she would go if it were requested of her. Her job was to protect the court, how and where she did that was up to the one in charge. The only one she looked to. Sera.
like a fresh cut flower promises sure to wither up
It was not the first time Shrike had heard the voice of a god.
To be sure, this one sounded nothing like Fantome, the god of air who had so arrogantly invited her to make a deal. His voice had been little more than a man’s. There was no denying the strangeness (she would not think divinity) of this one, and like the others she made her way to the courtyard to find the source.
When a golden mare with an impressive scar shouldered her way through, Shrike moved aside without a word. She watched from across the crowd as Tieran likewise parted the crowd, and her gaze followed the mare’s movements until she reached the center.
There was the hawk, too Other to be anything but the speaker (it reminded Shrike of a riftlands-thing, a similarity that made her distrust it even more) but it was Seraphina that the medicine hat watched most closely. She had not yet come across the desert queen.
Shrike would never bow – not to a god, and not to a god’s mouthpiece – and she appreciated the silver mare’s air of cool politeness. Maybe these were a people she could understand, their walls and clothing and peculiar customs aside.
But she did not linger long before slipping away from the outskirts of the crowd and making her way westward out of the city.
It was time to investigate these gods – and there was a part of her that knew (though she dared not hope) that if a certain black unicorn was also in this strange land, nothing could keep her away from such a challenge.
His hair stands on end when the shadow of the falcon falls over him, gliding toward the court in a dead-straight line. He is too far from the capitol to have any chance to beat the bird, but he picks up his pace to a run that sends fistfuls of sand in the air with every bounding step. Nevermind the way his body aches from all the travel- there is something different about that bird. Something that makes his heart sink.
Of course, Eik arrives late to the gathering. Late and a poor sight: foaming with sweat and dirty from his travels. The mud and clay splattered across his legs and barrel have already dried under the Solterran sun to parched brown cakes. From the back of the crowd, over the pounding of his heartbeat in his ear and the rasp of his heaving breaths, he is just in time to catch the sovereign's words-
'it seems that Tempus requests our presence'
Amidst the noise of the crowd's angry, confused, emotional reaction, Eik enters a silent place within himself. He is worried. And for this world and all the ones in it he's come to care about, he is afraid... It is never a good thing when the gods choose to meddle in the affairs of mortals. His eyes seek Seraphina's, knowing she will find him in the writhing crowd, and when he has her gaze he nods before moving away from the claustrophobic mass. His questions will come later.
- - - There is no better way to know us
E I K than as two wolves, come separately to a wood
half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers real gods require blood
Bexley is the first to approach her, wild-eyed; she hears her hiss from the back of the crowd, which is quick to part for her bared-teeth snarl, split by the ghastly scar that has come to carve her pretty face in two. Seraphina has a feeling that she hasn’t realized it yet, but the scar is valuable currency in the desert kingdom – a mark of survival, worth its weight in gold in a kingdom of war and blood. “See for yourself,” She says, quietly, and offers her the note. “The falcon spoke - but the voice…it seems that the gods have finally decided to break their silence.” She could be wrong, of course – it could be no god that calls them to Veneror. However, though she has authority that deems her worthy of dictating what is or is not divine, she knows – better even than she knows herself, the winding streets of the court, the great ridges of distant dunes – that they have been summoned by a god.
She leaves Bexley to her reading, and the crowd parts to allow another, familiar figure through; she winds like a snake, her posture stiff and cool. Unlike most of the uncertain, murmuring crowd, however, her fellow soldier is immediate in her query. “Teiran…” She considers her words, for a moment. Would she rob the girl of the opportunity to meet the gods by asking her to remain? No, she thinks – it wouldn’t be something that matters to her anyways, and she needs someone so solid and stable to keep the court safe with the entire Regime gone. The other girl was both, and, further, she was, like her Regime, as close as Seraphina had to family; there was no one that she would put more faith in, at least when it came to the defense of Solterra. “I trust you to keep order and calm in our absence. The court needs someone to protect it, should something go wrong.”
She sees other faces among the crowd, some familiar and some less so; for a moment, her eyes linger on a red and white woman that she is sure that she’s never seen at all, but she is quick to slip away into the crowd. Her gaze catches Eik’s as he arrives at the back of the crowd, and she nods in turn before he can disappear into the streets. Gods willing, they’d have plenty of time to discuss in the future, perhaps somewhere less crowded – and away from prying ears. For now, they need to prepare for the long trip to Veneror – she is sure that it will be an endeavor, for she can only imagine how many will be eager for the opportunity to see the divine for themselves; it will practically be a pilgrimage, even though the circumstances, to her, seem quite grim. “I’ll begin our preparations immediately.” She addresses the crowd with little elaboration and the same quiet stoicism as usual, before turning on tail and descending back into the streets.
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
