he deer ran, faster than it had ever run before. It’s heart thrummed loudly in its chest, as if it could almost burst from the walls which held it, as powerful legs pushed further and further from the roiling magic. Where once there were endless mirrors and glass, endless quiet, now there is only the roar of change as it rips through the landscape. And before the creature can escape it, the deer is swallowed whole by the darkness.
Mephisto returns to her earthly form with a gasp, clawing at the darkness that drowned her as a sheen of sweat and the scent of fear grew across her dark pelt. Her breath is ragged as she struggles for composure, wide blue eyes turning back toward normal now as each calming breath brings her back to her sanity. The deer was close to her thoughts though, even as she shivered and felt the brush against her sides, blinked up at the sun which shone unabashedly upon her. She was alive, Mephisto reassured herself… even if the creature whose vision she’d shared was not. It was a victim of the magic, she decided, rising unsteadily to her feet and making her way toward a small stream nearby, splashing the cool water on her face and willing herself to separate her emotions from the reality of what had happened.
She couldn’t be certain of where the deer had been, but had suspicions that the land of mirrors was none other than Tempus’ island, completely foreign and ever changing. Mephisto had once been caught in the torrential magic as it shifted, a terrifying event she’d rather not repeat. Still, curiosity has her turning toward the source, and she looks back only once at her peaceful forest home before leaving Terrestella to follow her interest, seeking the deer and the strange magic which stole it away.
Where once a towering volcano stood in the sea, now there is merely a rocky protrusion. She swoops low in the sky, finding an opening and stepping into its mouth with a deep breath to steady herself once more. After all, Mephisto knew better than to trust the magic wholly. She knew this island was a tempestuous place, one which held little regard for life or curious wanderers.
Following the scent of the deer, she made her way through the cave, carefully stepping toward the light which seemed to grow closer and closer, until at last the warg find herself staring at a grand castle and village. Don’t trust it… for nothing is what it seems, she reminds herself, even as she steps onto the cobblestone streets which led to the palace.
It was strange, she decided… for this place seemed as much a real city as her own home, albeit with a strange hum of magic. Mephisto peeked inside an open shop door, finding wares along the walls, but no life to be seen. It was strange, she decided, shivering from the eeriness of the emptiness around her, even as she turns toward the sound of another approaching. Hooves on stone. The sound is umistakable, but the warg is cautious – for she cannot know if it’s another curious wanderer or some specter long lost in this ghost city.
“Hello?” Her voice is little more than a hushed whisper in the otherwise silent world, curiosity carefully banked as she waits to see the face of the approaching beast.
Asterion wanders the city in something like a trance.
He doesn’t remember how he came to be here. Had there been a bridge - had he walked on the water? If the waves had washed his feet and belly, all is dry now. He doesn’t remember the descent, the cleft in the rocks, the dim glow from a sun that could not be a sun, here below the outer world.
He’s looking for something, (or the thing within him is), but he doesn’t know what. Maybe it is only to not be alone - but in this, so far, he is unsuccessful. Here in the outer rings of the city, there is only his reflection in dark glass, in still pools of water. He doesn’t take the risk of tasting these to see if they are saltwater or rain. He doesn’t go into any of the shops, or call out into the strange daylight. Asterion only walks, winding downward and inward, the path of a gruesome shell, his dark eyes searching for movement among the flat shadows, his black-tipped ears twisting. The only voices are far away enough to be indistinct.
She is the first living thing he sees. He’d be afraid, by now, if he were in his right mind; instead he feels nothing, numb, except for that pull like the moon on the water. Nearer he comes, and nearer yet, and his eyes are narrowing, and he licks his teeth -
And then she turns, and speaks, and he recognizes her.
“Mephisto,” he says, blinking in surprise, and for now his reverie is broken. He is relieved to see a familiar face, even as new worry seizes him. There had been deaths on the island before, and this version of it feels stranger, more dangerous, than the first.
“I wouldn’t go in there,” he says darkly, slanting his gaze toward the shop. Within, he can just make out rows and rows of windchimes, of bone and clay and wood, and they make a faint music in the wind that stirs them through the open door.
through the first gate,
into our first world, shall we follow
the deception of the thrush?
he shivers as her eyes meet his, finding recognition and the peace that follows. But still, the warg cannot let down her guard. A tight smile edges on her lips as she nods to Asterion, pleased to see him but ever cautious of the magic which hummed around them. For she knew all too well that things could change in an instant. In fact, it would probably be best for her to leave the island alone entirely, but something always pulls her back. Like a compass pointing to north, she cannot turn from the mystery which seizes her curiosity, even if the warg is ever distrustful of the strange magic in Tempus’ playground.
“You don’t have to tell me twice…” She steps from the doorframe, a shiver creeping up her spine – for it was strange to see the shelves so full but the town so bare – as if some spectacular event had simply vanished all life within this place. Stepping closer to the male, she reaches out, nodding her forehead against his shoulder in a friendly sort of greeting before questions cloud her eyes once more. “Been a while…?” She quirks an eyebrow in question, but does not press him about his whereabouts. After all, there might be bad blood involved… all she knew was that he had left the throne to Marisol, an arrangement which seemed to be working for Terrestella, even if she personally missed his presence.
Together, the two fall into an easy pace, wandering the empty streets, their hooves the only sound in the strange stillness of the city. “What do you suppose happened here? It’s almost like time stopped, stealing all life away…” Just as she speaks, a rabbit rustles between a nearby bush before hopping out in front of their path. “Well… almost all life…”
The minutes stretched on as they worked their way through the labyrinth of roads, weaving toward the towering castle as if they were destined to find it. Turning toward Asterion, Mephisto opens her mouth to speak once more, but no sound escapes. Instead, her eyes go milky white, her body stiff with a shiver. And she is gone from this world, lost to the vision.
They watch, just beyond the empty houses, just behind the treeline… not one, but many. Hearts beat and breath matches, a low growl of hunger rumbling through the beast as the scent of the strangers reaches through the stillness. Blood. Hunt. Life.
Mephisto shakes away the vision, her knees wobbling as sweat again tinges her dark coat darker. Blue eyes fight through the fog to focus, scanning the treeline even as she leans heavily into Asterion, nudging him to the left as she wedges herself between the thing and her former king. “Stay sharp, Asterion… we are not alone here…” Her voice is as cautious as it is weary, as she coaxes him forward with urgency. “Let’s get to the castle… it’s not safe in this place.”
He is relieved when she listens, even as something within him wants to order her to run. To leave him, to leave the island - never mind which was more dangerous; they both had something dark at the heart of them. Later, in a moment of clarity (one of the waning ones), he will wonder if it born of the same place.
And later than that, he will realize the foolishness of not realizing before that if horses could travel between worlds, other things could too.
The chimes toll a soft farewell when Mephisto steps from the doorway. The bay curves his muzzle toward hers when she greets him with a touch, half wanting to shiver; touch is a comfort here, proof of something real, but even so he wants to warn her away.
“Too long,” he answers, glad to be brief, grateful when she doesn’t press him for more.
Together they turn their backs on the shop with its soft, strange music and begin to walk. The wind keeps them company, rustling the dead leaves that cling to the crooked trees, moaning through shutters and swinging signs above shops. Asterion almost starts when her voice breaks the silence, and his gaze follows hers to the rabbit. ”Maybe there was no other life to begin with. Maybe the magic’s only made the illusion of a city.” Lapsing into silence again, he wishes the rabbit good luck; it is hard to say which of them will have the better chance of escaping the island unscathed.
As they curve inward, tighter spirals as they reach the center of the city, weight grows on Asterion’s mind like pressure in the ocean the further a man sinks. There is a question waiting on his tongue, one something holds him back from speaking. And as he at last turns to Mephisto to ask it, it’s a chestnut stallion he pictures, with the same dark brown eyes he has.
But when he looks at Mephisto, it is clear she is in no position to attend.
Asterion stops at once, reaching toward her as though to shake her awake. He retreats again when his thoughts urge him to bite, to strike, to seize her - thoughts he can only suppress by biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. Sudden pain overrides his synapses, and the sharp taste of blood wells in his mouth; a moment later the pegasus’s eyes are darkening again, her breathing catching before returning to normal, and Asterion averts his gaze under the guise of watching for danger and swallows down his own blood.
“What did you see?” he asks, his voice just above a whisper, as she pushes her weight into his side. He wants to tell her he needs no protection, and internally reaches out to his magic, reassuring himself those still, deep waters are there and ready. “Are you all right?”
The castle, she says, and though his brow furrows he breaks into a canter, not looking behind them where the shadows are thick and shifting. The spires of the castle are bleak silhouettes a half-mile ahead, and from somewhere there is a drumming - or perhaps it is only the echoing of their hooves.
He knows the castle is not safe. But where else have they been going, following this spiral, drawn down the current of the city like a dead leaf in a stream? Even as they run, he wants to stop, to stand and fight whatever watches them - but oh, he doesn’t want to turn his back to the castle, nor his feet from its pull.
“Did you ever see anything like this in the Riftlands?” he asks, a little breathless - the beginning of those questions that weigh on him, things only Mephisto might know. And within him, something dark and slick as an eel writhes.
through the first gate,
into our first world, shall we follow
the deception of the thrush?
he shivers from the effort of the vision, her eyes clearing and finding his – finding balance. For a moment, she cannot speak, just quake with uneasiness… and slowly she finds her footing once more. What did you see? he asks, and a chill washes over her. “I saw us… but through the eyes of something hungry. Something which waits for us, just beyond the city gates. It watches…” And though she cannot be certain what it was, Mephisto knew that they shouldn’t wait to find out. For when the magic was hungry, the only thing to satiate it was blood. And neither of them were going to bleed for Tempus today.
They race toward the castle, and in the corner of her eye, Mephisto catches a glimpse of the deer… or at least she thinks it is, but when the deer stares back at her, its face morphs into the face of a predator, one with a smiling growl and razor teeth. She blinks, and the vision is gone once more, a mere ripple in the fabric of the illusion in its place.
Did you ever see anything like this in the Riftlands? She focuses on Asterion's voice, finding it an anchor as they approach the iron gates of the castle, breaching its drawbridge without flicking a glance behind them. It wasn’t safe… she knew it wasn’t safe. But it was safer than the open, and the eyes which watched them hungrily, the voice which whispered in her mind. Blood. Hunt. Life.
“Yes.” Her whisper is almost inaudible, as she reaches to toy with a vial which bobbed against her breast with every ragged breath. Inside, a shimmer of stardust seems to swirl suspended in a silvered liquid. She’d carried the serum for what seemed like a lifetime now, from one world to the next, never knowing what power it might hold. “There was a plague which took over the Riftlands, turning friends into monsters… and no one could seem to find the source. It was a tainted strain of magic, one which we were beginning to parse from the noise… but then…”
Then, their world had been torn apart, swallowed whole by the magic.
She swallows hard, staring ahead unblinkingly as she steps into the darkened halls. Around them, the wind seemed to howl past, weaving through the rocky corridors and extinguishing the light of torches which once glittered with light. There was no other sound in this haunted place, aside from the muffled fall of their feet upon the flagstone. And as they walked, they passed wide open doors which led to rooms of riches and intrigue.
Mephisto barely flicked a glance at the room with jewels and gold from floor to ceiling, shimmering in a halo of gilded light. Still too, she walked beyond a hall of mirrors flanked by guardian suits of armor which seemed empty, but turned to watch them as they passed. Together, they weaved through a labyrinth of stone which opened into a throne room – one with a golden statue of Tempus at the helm.
She does not bow to the foreign god, nor does she shy away from it. Instead, Mephisto simply wanders toward the idol, stopping only once she reaches a shimmering pool, with crystalline water which seemed as clear as glass. Though the surface is molten silver, it does not give any reflection… and as the two stand before it, the mysterious liquid creeps along the floor toward them, as if drawn to their lifeblood. Involuntarily, Mephisto takes a step back with half a mind to turn and leave this place, even as the door swings closed behind them with a deafening roar, locking them into the room.
This time, when she shivers, he puts a comforting muzzle against her shoulder. It is easier, when she is not undefended, to beat back that awful urge to hurt; he writes it off as an effect of this place, this dark magic.
But as soon as she steadies again, he’s quick to step away.
His mouth is a grim line as she speaks, but there is something like wry humor in his voice when he says, “It is not the only hungry thing here today.” When he reaches down to touch the depths of his magic, he wonders if this is at last the day he will test its limits.
Then there is just the singing of their feet as they race into the courtyard of the castle, beneath a portcullis with iron sharp as a wolf’s jaws. Asterion doesn’t know (and doesn’t like) why he thinks of the castle like a heart, why it is so easy to envision something beating and beating at the center, something they must uncover…
It is only her yes that could draw him back.
He listens, rapt, and though he still watches the way ahead out of the corner of his eye he sees her dip her chin toward her chest, to touch something there. The bay has to suppress a flinch; there is something in him that is suddenly hateful, something in him that wants to recoil from the star-colored liquid that swirls in that vial.
A plague.
Friends into monsters.
Tainted magic…
But then? he wants to ask, but Asterion already knows the answer. Gabriel had told him, when he’d met his father at last. And he’d seen what had become of that world for himself - all its beautiful, terrible magic, all its rotting and becoming, its dying and being reborn.
For a time there is silence between them. They wander the hallways, and Asterion does not call his magic, not even when the armor turns to watch them, not even when they pass room after room after room that has been bewitched. Not even when they enter the throne room, and he sees the figure of Tempus.
Asterion does not approach as she does. He has had enough of the gods of Novus to last him a lifetime. Instead he only watches, tensed for action, as she approaches the idol. It’s only after a moment that he notices the gleam of the pool at its feet, and he still pays it no mind until Mephisto steps back, and the liquid flows forward.
Then the door slams shut behind them, and he startles forward, until they are standing side-by-side once more. He nickers warningly, neck arched, eyeing the room for another way out.
“Fly if you must, Mephisto,” he says, and nods toward the dais, above and beyond the pool. And then he reaches out with his magic, to see if there is anything in the strange liquid that will listen to him - oh, but he already has an idea that it won’t.
through the first gate,
into our first world, shall we follow
the deception of the thrush?
There is something in the way his words are spoken, which raises the hackles on her back. It is not like him, decidedly something… other. There is an edge to him that wasn’t there before, a darkness which was almost imperceptible. A darkness she has seen before – in another place, another lifetime. A darkness which tore her entire world asunder. Not for the first time since their meeting in this place, her touch goes to the vial at her chest, and she clings to it for a moment, fear flickering in her as she pushes it down, her eyes imperceptibly harder as she watches him and swallows down a lump in her throat.
Her magic reaches involuntarily toward him, tasting something dark before retreating, a quick flash of something blinding her as she steps away from him. For the magic shows something else staring through Asterion’s eyes, something not entirely mortal. “Asterion?” She questions even as he warns her to fly, and Mephisto knows in that moment, her trust is a fragile thing. Her heart aches for her friend, even as Tempest’s pool grows close enough to lap against her feet, pulling her toward the magic.
Mephisto is faced with an impossible choice, to trust the familiar face in front of her – the face which screams a warning, the eyes which warm with concern. Or to give into Tempus, to allow his room to swallow her whole. “I’m sorry, my friend…” Her voice is strained and quiet, as she steps away from Asterion, liquid creeping from the pool upward. It climbs her legs, dousing her in mirrored light as it pulls her under and away from this place. She squeezes her eyes closed, unable to watch the horror which washes over the stallion, unwilling to see the betrayal in his eyes as she leaves him.
And the magic draws her far from here, spitting her out on a distant shore as she gathers her wits about her, turning to look back at the island only once before she flies home to Terrestella once more, shaken to the core as she mourns Asterion and his fate.
He feels the moment when her magic reaches for him, and they both recoil. Involuntarily the stallion curls his muzzle protectively toward his chest; something in him seethes. He doesn’t realize that his teeth are bared until he, too, swallows and turns his face away.
Asterion is almost grateful when the magic of the island interrupts them. No matter what it brings, it is better than whatever is within him, this thing he can’t look at. It’s an eel in a black sea, hungry and slick and more clever than he is. Used to staying hidden.
When she says his name, he wonders if she ever said his father’s the same way. It is easy to picture them together, this graceful mare and the red man he had finally (too late, too late) met. He wonders if Mephisto, too, had found Novus too tame at first.
It seems too late to ask now.
And then it is more truly, when she say I’m sorry, and gives herself to the pool. Asterion can only watch as it gilds her in light, his heart in his throat, his breath caught between his teeth. How could she trust the gods (how could she trust him?). He almost calls after her again, a cry, another warning -
And then she is gone, and he is alone.
He cannot be angry, has no right to feel betrayed; hadn’t he told her to fly if she must, just a breath before?
And yet Asterion will not step into that pool of light. He has had enough of vanishing, enough of the gods of this world. The once-king cries out, a challenge to an empty room; he summons the depths of his own magic, that ever-roaring sea within him.
As it answers, he closes his eyes.
through the first gate,
into our first world, shall we follow
the deception of the thrush?
