Character #1: @Bexley Bonded: N/A Magic: Periti level Light Manipulation Armor: N/A Weapons: N/A Current Health: 30 Current Attack: 30 Current Experience: 55
Character #2: @Seraphina Bonded: Ereshkigal, Demonic Vulture Magic: Periti level Greater Telekenesis Armor: Leather face and chest plates and front leg wraps, golden hood (not sure if she's wearing it right now?) Weapons: Alshamtueur, flaming sword Current Health: 17 Current Attack: 23[/font][/size] Current Experience: 61
BEXLEY BRIAR
but if i gave up on being pretty,
I wouldn’t know how to be alive
The sun splits a perfect day in half. It’s spring again. The clearness of the new sky and the warm breeze winding over the dirt are like a clean, bright candy on the tongue. Across the steppe, Bexley can see a shadow, dark and clean against the yellowish horizon: she watches and does not flinch.
Even if she were scared, and she’s not—she’s not—what is there left to lose?
Bexley’s life is practically over, and the lives of everyone she loves. What can she do about it? They are all powerless against Raum’s military regime, next to nothing in the face of his soldiers and swords. (She sees his face in her sleep and tears it apart, sets it on fire, buries it deep. But no matter what he comes back to haunt her, all quicksilver skin and cornflower eyes. Most of the time, at least; his strange magic made it all the more confusing—)
He should be dead by now. Seraphina should be queen, and she and Eik should be regent and emissary. She should… she should know where her daughter is. And she should be living in her towers like a person, not scrounging around the desert in search of somewhere to sleep, using her magic to keep herself warm while the scum of the earth sits on the Solterran throne.
All this should, and none of it feasible. It makes her sick.
The heat of the sun bakes the steppe, and in pursuit of summer, thin, lengthy cracks spread through the wine-red dirt. The web is complex and overlapping, like the veins in a pretty piece of marble. Bexley shifts her weight over her feet in a test. The ground holds, though not without a little displacement, and she lets out a slow breath of relief.
The shadow on the horizon grows larger, closer. Bexley’s nerves start to tighten against waves of adrenaline. Her heart speeds its thump in her chest. All at once she feels both very small and very large, very angry and very much in love, and the magic heat that washes over her is so potent and so gold it almost knocks her off her feet, almost, almost.
But she is not a girl anymore, and this is no time to learn weakness.
“Seraphina.”
It’s not loud enough to carry, but even using the name feels like committing a crime, burning a brand of guilt onto her tongue. Bexley’s pulse swells. (Desert laws reign supreme to her, even all the way out here.)
The sun blinks overhead through a thin lace of clouds, and Solterra’s no-longer-golden girl slashes her tail behind her like a ribbon dancer. Her blood hums with alternating hot and cold, fear and excitement; she pulls the magic that roars through her into a fist, barely contained, and waits.
Her life recently has felt like a singular command: stay. Who is she to argue with God?
Summary: Bexley laments her current position in life and thinks about how much she hates Raum, as is her daily ritual. She makes note of the weather (unseasonably warm, though cloudy) and the terrain (super dry and less stable than usual). She waits for Seraphina to show up for their stress relief/murder practice spar!
I’m so wound-bound. I’m so lost to the vanity of staying. Stay.
She hasn’t been to the Steppe since just after her battle with Raum.
Then, it was covered with those unnatural jewel-flowers, which, under the circumstances, felt more like a mockery than anything. At least they’d guised the landscape of the Steppe; she hadn’t been sure that she could have stood to be there if it had looked as it did when he struck her down. Now, it is barren, and she is not sure if it is a curse or a blessing to stand on the pocked, dry ground or to stare out at the familiar stretches of landscape. If she looks behind her, she can see the spot where he left her to bleed out, so she doesn’t look back. Instead, she stares forward, in the direction of Solterra, and she grinds her teeth. In her spar with Caine, much she’d much rather forget about it, she’d frozen up the moment she thought he’d attack her face. It is a weakness she knows that she can’t afford – she needs to get over it.
Her once-regent appears as a blur of gold on the horizon, drawing closer with each passing second. Bexley Briar is as beautiful as ever, but she is leaner than usual, more delicate. (Then again, so is Seraphina.) She is shorter than her, though not by much, but she is no soldier – that said, Seraphina still recalls what she did to Acton. She’d chosen her for her ferocity, though she had no military upbringing or experience, a near-necessity in Solterra; what she lacked in practice she could make up for in temperament, particularly with that light magic, which seemed more than strong enough to burn skin. (She is envious of those with magic that has use on its own; her telekinesis is always reliant on other objects or people to work.) Ereshkigal perches several yards away, observing, but she makes no move to breach the distance between them, which Seraphina takes as a sign that she won’t be joining in this fight. She’d left her armor and her weapons with her. Though she knows that their absence will hamstring her, they are a bit too lethal for a simple spar, and Seraphina has no desire to hurt Bexley.
(She has no desire to hurt Bexley any more than she already has. She looks at her, and she aches. She failed her country, and, with it, she failed her regent and her emissary alike. She doesn’t look as hollow as she did the last time they met, in the canyons, but still she wears the marks of Raum’s rule on her skin, in the hollows of her ribs, and it is enough to make Seraphina’s stomach turn with guilt and her skin crawl with some terrible mixture of rage and disgust. More fuel, she thinks, for the monstrous thing that is growing in her chest, that hungry, blank space that has replaced her heart.)
Bexley greets her, and she dips her head in kind, odd eyes skirting the golden girl’s frame. “Bexley.” She could say more, she thinks, but she doesn't. She doesn't know what to say; she still never knows what to say.
When she does not make the first move, Seraphina takes it as her own. She dashes, hooves kicking up dry turf, and she closes the remaining distance between them in a few smooth strides. Once she’s breached her personal space, Seraphina lunges, front legs rising just far enough from the ground to put her in a decent position to lung, her jaws snapping out towards the spot where Bexley’s cheek hits the curve of her throat. Even if her teeth meet her skin, she will not bite her hard – her teeth might sink in deep enough to draw a pinprick of blood or bruise.
@Bexley|| quick & unfortunate || "I Put The Coffin Out To Sea," Lisa Marie Basile "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
Summary: Seraphina hangs out at the Steppe and thinks about how she almost died there. She briefly thinks of her spar with Caine and the fact that she's been a little bit traumatized in battle since. Bexley shows up. Sera examines her (proudly? proudly.) and then takes a second to angst about how she's failed her people for approximately the millionth time lately. She greets her, and then she runs up to her, rears very slightly, and tries to bite at her throat.
Attack Used: 1 Attack(s) Left: 1 Block Used: 0 Block(s) Left: 1 Item(s) Used: Nope - and her armor, weapons, & Eresh are all over on the side.
Response Deadline: 8/2/19 (but feel free to take longer if you need it) Tags: @Bexley, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless
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
but if i gave up on being pretty,
I wouldn’t know how to be alive
Neither of them are… as they should be.
Bexley has not seen Seraphina since that day in the canyons long ago, and her face twists in bitter sympathy when she notices that the girl-queen is still gaunt and tired. Her ribs and hips are showing; the scar on her face shines too-bright against the rest of her. Her eyes are… cold. Bexley’s stomach turns. Now they are only caricatures of what they were, or what they could have been—bad drawings of girls who used to be lovely. (Perhaps this was a poor idea. Life is already exhausting as-is. And both of them are traumatized enough to last a lifetime: Bexley is not quite sure why there is a part of her that still begs for blood after drownig in so much of it, but it lives and craves on, and she can only imagine Seraphina feels the same.)
She is a little relieved to see that Seraphina is not wearing her armor, nor her sword. Now they are more evenly matched, or at least that’s what it feels like. When Bexley meets her mismatched eyes, it is with a faint smile and a small measure more confidence than she entered with. No distractions. No weapons. Just teeth and blood and heart-deep magic.
And for a moment, after she hears her name, there is silence.
Bexley’s heart aches. I love you, she wants to say, or I forgive you, but her mouth won’t make the right shapes. It’s been far too long since she’s said anything kind. She’s out of practice. And they've never been one for pretty words like that anyway. Bexley and her queen have always talked like this--in less than words, in nods and blinks that say okay, come on.
Seraphina starts toward her, and Bexley does not move.
She watches. She waits. The distance between them closes, and she leans back slightly, picking up her feet, but does not run. Better a barbarian than a coward. Seraphina's path is too straight for any kind of surprise; as the seconds pick up weight, the gears in Bexley's brain start to turn. It's an attempt at prophecy, a try at predicting what's about to happen. She notes the grey's hindquarters springing to lunge, winding up like so many coils—and though she does not dodge completely, she does twist away, quick and hot as a lightning bolt. Hooves scrape her legs and gnashing teeth meet the side of her neck, but the pain is a brief thing that ebbs and passes by the time Seraphina lands.
Bexley's pulse is picking up speed now. Her breath scrapes against her chest as she lopes away, rolling blood off her shoulder. But the pain feels good. It feels like living. And she hasn't liked living much, recently, but this brings back something inside of her—an animal that wants to fight and love and laugh.
She does laugh a little (a breathy, exhilarated thing) as she turns back toward Seraphina. Her eyes flash with adrenaline, and it does not take more than a moment before the distance between them is closing again under her quick strides. They are coming together at ninety degrees, perfectly perpendicular; just before impact, Bexley digs her front hooves into the ground and goes sliding, turning parallel to Seraphina before they collide. If this works like it's supposed to, Seraphina might fall completely--if not, spoiling her balance is good enough.
As soon as Bexley feels their bodies collide, she rushes to find traction in the loose dirt and take off again.
Summary: Bexley gushes over Seraphina as per usual. She doesn't move fast enough to dodge Seraphina but does twist so that the blows land on her legs and the side of her neck rather than her throat. She canters away, then turns back toward Seraphina at ninety degrees and rushes her in a bodyslam, using her front legs to swing her body weight into Seraphina's side. When she feels impact she takes off again.
I’m so wound-bound. I’m so lost to the vanity of staying. Stay.
Teeth dig into golden skin. Dark hooves hit just hard enough to bruise.
She is quick enough to dodge the brunt of her attack, and what remains is considerably weaker; of course, she barely intended to damage her anyways. After the attack connects, she dances out of her grasp, like some flickering golden flame. Sometimes Seraphina has to marvel at her, though she has no time for that now. Sometimes, she has to marvel at how close she is to god. If her own eyes are any indication, their personalities clashed terribly when they met, but Bexley looks like Solis, if Solis were carved from skin instead of rippling cascades of metal. She has his teeth and his temperament. If she were born in Solterra, rather than some other land that Seraphina only knows of from her rare anecdotes, she might have been considered blessed.
Now, looking at her, she wonders if Solterra hasn’t been more of a curse than anything to its golden girl. How many times has it tried to kill her? How much has it taken from her? Could any of it have been salvaged, if she were in some other land? (If she went to Denocte to be with her lover, like Eik, would he still be alive? Would she be dead? Would Raum have simply gone for her, instead of Isra or Acton? She doesn’t know. There’s little use in contemplating, but she doesn’t know.) Now it starves her, drains her, hangs her out to dry.
Still – when there is some distance between them, just before she runs at her, she laughs. It is not much of a laugh, more akin to a breathless exhalation, but the sound is enough to make Seraphina’s eyes widen with surprise. (She has never gotten much joy out of sparring, for a warrior-soldier-guard. It has always been a matter of necessity; if she did not want to fall in battle, she had to remain practiced and athletic. Of course, that had not actually stopped her from falling in battle.) Then, before she can move, Bexley is springing across the dry ground, quicker than she anticipated.
There isn’t enough time to dodge her, so Seraphina braces herself instead, legs locking into position and hooves seeking some form of traction in the pocked ground. She doesn’t know exactly what she expects Bexley to do, but it is not what she does; she twists, before their bodies can connect, and slides into her parallel. The weight of her impact throws her off balance, and, for a moment, Seraphina falters, her hooves lurching as she loses her balance. Bexley dashes away, before she can concoct some way to salvage the situation and turn it to her advantage; she is left to fall.
It is her telekinesis that saves her.
It is more of a reflex than an intentional action. For a moment, she stumbles, dangerously close to tumbling over altogether. Then, abruptly, her flailing hooves catch on air as though it is something solid, leaving her hovering a few inches above the ground. She allows her magic to lift her, tossing her head and turning her multi-colored stare on Bexley. She does not attack. (Her white hair twists in her braids, practically begging to fall out and float with the rest of her. She doesn’t let it; having long hair was a recipe for trouble in a battle.) She simply observes, her posture shifting to something defensive, muscles tensed and limbs loose. Her attack had been creative, and Seraphina, with her warrior’s curiosity, wonders what else her former Regent might have up her sleeve.
This was to be a learning experience, after all.
@Bexley|| <3 || "I Put The Coffin Out To Sea," Lisa Marie Basile "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
Response Deadline: 8/12/19 (not technically a requested extension or w/e, but I know you're heading back home in a couple of days, and re-adjusting is always...rough.) Tags: @Bexley, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless
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
but if i gave up on being pretty,
I wouldn’t know how to be alive
At the moment their bodies connect, Bexley cannot tell if the thing that rushes through her is satisfaction, relief, or pure adrenaline. She has always been, for better or for worse (more often worse) a creature of the flesh. Didn’t particularly matter what brought the rush—sex or fighting or the sight of gold—it all had been bodily desires, all stemmed from that thing inside her that had never learned to control itself or be controlled. At home commoners called it the curse of her family. They said sin is inherited. They said you carry your family’s sins with you, and you multiply them. Especially they said it is the nature of your family: what’s the use in moderation when guaranteed an endless life of luxury, guaranteed a gilded existence for thousands of years? Her grandmother had lived eons. No reason to believe she wouldn’t, either.
For a long time she had felt untouchable. Now she knows better. Now she is reminded of it every time she catches sight of her reflection, a girl scarred, starved, and under slept.
But still she is that same vessel of sin, like the priests said, no more holy than she had been although much more bold, and a bolt of pleasure hits her in the brief moment that Seraphina’s skin is against hers. (Bexley has often wondered why a pretty girl like Seraphina never took a lover. She’s… difficult, but more difficult people than her had managed to scrape up partners. Acton, for one. If things had been different, Bexley thinks, maybe they could have—)
A brief whoosh is knocked from Bexley’s lungs as they peel apart, and then with a snap of her tail she is cantering off, away from Seraphina’s reach. When she does turn back, a safe distance away, she wants to laugh again: the girl-queen is floating in mid-air like a god. Her hooves hover inches above the ground, her bone-white hair tugs at its braids like an animal trying to break free. Worse than either of these, the mismatched eyes watch from high above, and they are not kind. (What did she expect?) Instead, her gaze is as cold and analytical as a scientist keeping watch on a new experiment, and for a moment Bexley is afraid of the thought that anyone could ever hide their emotions so well.
No matter how she plants her foot on Cupid’s neck, no matter how she works and begs and pleads, skills like that never come to her.
They are at a standstill. One floating, one grounded. Both bruised, neither satisfied. Silver and gold on a steppe drenched with ritual blood. Bexley pants until her breath comes back to her in full, alternately squinting and batting her lashes against the glare of sunlight streaming down; it is then that the idea comes to her, and she smiles a secret smile so quick it could be a mirage.
A faint halo of light builds around her like a crown. Magic gnashes its teeth in the pit of her chest, strong and bitter; Seraphina is almost too far to tell, especially in the glare of the daylight, but Bexley’s eyes are turning to molten gold, unnervingly dark against her bone-white face.
Slowly she moves forward. And then—
A ball of blue fire tears from her chest and goes hurtling towards Seraphina. Beautiful and terrible, like a flower opening at ten times the normal speed: it’s almost reminiscent of the hole in Torstein’s chest, only Bexley’s closes instantly. The ball crackles and spits and sheds sparks as it smashes through the air like a comet. In reality it’s no hotter than a good bath, a shell of warmth turned blue for theatrics, but there’s no way to tell until it hits, and it seems set on a track to splash against Seraphina’s hindquarter.
Summary: Bexley bangs into Seraphina and then scoots away. They both hold their ground for a second and Bexley muses about her past just because. Then she gathers strength/energy from the sunlight overhead and uses it to power her magic, making a fireball that she throws at Seraphina's hindquarter (the one closest). The fire is warm enough to be startling but won't cause any lasting burns.
I’m so wound-bound. I’m so lost to the vanity of staying. Stay.
Fighting doesn’t feel like it used to.
She supposes that the difference lies in that she is afraid of death. Before her fight with Raum, she wasn’t. Death’s grim specter hung over her head more times than she could count, during the war and occasionally even afterwards, but, in the past, when it had come, it was closer to a relief than anything. As a girl, she hadn’t wanted to live, or, at least, she hadn’t cared if she died – she is no longer sure that there is much distinction. She can remember fragments of what it felt like to fall during the war, the tip of one weapon or another sunk into the fragile recesses of her chest. She remembers, yes, what it felt like to die on a battlefield. She was a girl. Her body was crushed so easily beneath the weight of stampeding hooves, crumpled like a sheet of paper. She remembers those odd moments between life and death. Blackness would lick at the edges of her vision like a hungry animal. She would feel her blood crusting on her limbs, mingled with clumpy stamps of mud. Flies would buzz between her ears. At one point, during one almost-death or another, she thought that a vulture came to gnaw at her tattered flesh, even though she wasn’t dead yet. (It was ironic, if she considered Ereshkigal.) She shook it off with what little force remained in her small body, because she did not care if she died, but she did not want to be eaten alive.
When she was almost-dead as a girl, it felt like the way that things should be. That was the fate she was raised for; she never considered that things could be otherwise. Fighting was a mechanical necessity. She didn’t care to be mowed down. When she was struck, the closest thing she showed to a flinch was the instinctual twitch of flesh, a bodily impulse that not even she could control.
When Raum struck her down, it did not feel right.
It did not feel like the way her story was supposed to end. (Then again, her story has not felt right since she survived the war, or the burning of the city, or the teryr.) It was desperate. It was lonely. She twitched against the dark, and she did not want to die. She wanted something else, and all of her wants have been leaking out of her (like blood, or tears) since.
Maybe she winces, now.
If she’d had time to observe it and think about it, really think about it, Seraphina would have been fascinated (and impressed) by Bexley’s show of magic. She does not, however, have time to do either of those things.
She does not have time to dodge the ball of howling blue flame, though she does make an attempt to step out of its path. Her thoughts are torn somewhere between an instinctual panic that she has not been able to stamp out since the last time she was here and the fact that she knows - knows - that Bexley wouldn’t hurt her, not seriously. In the moment that she moves, her hooves (still suspended in midair) quick as bird’s wings across the dry soil, it doesn’t matter that she knows. It doesn’t matter that she’s been in plenty of fights before, it doesn’t matter that she’s had plenty of burns before, it doesn’t matter that a burn across the hindquarters wouldn’t kill her – all she can think about is dying, alone and inconsequential. Oh, she was all too consequential politically; her death toppled a kingdom. (Raum had never ruined them, but she had, the moment she fell.) Her lack of consequence was a personal thing, a void scarcely-missed.
The flame hits her, just barely. Wisps of it catch in her hair. It feels like warm bathwater.
She is already moving. She twists, the movement sharp enough to kick up a spray of dirt with force alone, though her hooves are still not on the ground, and she turns towards Bexley, never losing momentum. It registers somewhere in the distance between them that the flame was barely a flame at all, and the hit was barely a hit. Her thoughts are running in slow-motion. It’s not a welcome reprieve from the way that they have been overwhelming her recently; it’s almost worse.
Once she is close enough to feel the heat that is still radiating off of Bexley’s skin, Seraphina lunges. She doesn’t try to bite, though. She doesn’t even try to kick.
Instead, her teeth go right for her blonde, blonde hair, and maybe, if they manage to grasp a chunk of it, they grant it a tug that isn’t sharp enough to rip any of it out – it might pull her head to the side a bit.
(In the right light, the gesture could almost be playful.)
@Bexley|| <3 || "I Put The Coffin Out To Sea," Lisa Marie Basile "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
Summary:
wow folks since I just realized I forgot to add the summary for the last post, here it is :
- Sera manages to get a snap in. She takes Bexley's hit to the side, but she doesn't end up falling over herself (though she nearly does) because her magic kicks in and saves her. She is now hovering. And curious about what Bexley will do going forward.
aaaaand for this post :
- Sera monologues again about the Raum battle. She manages to move a bit, but she takes Bexley's fireball to the withers; predictably, it doesn't hurt her, though. She then turns and dashes up to her, lunges, and tries to pull her hair, which is going to be a running gag with her and spars now, I guess.
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
but if i gave up on being pretty,
I wouldn’t know how to be alive
Using her magic makes Bexley feel more powerful than anything else. As a child she had been barren—surrounded by people stronger than her, older than her, more blessed than her. It stung. A golden child who couldn’t spin real gold was useless as the rest of the plebeians. For all her parent’s doting affection, she could never quite escape the nagging thought that she would never be what they wanted her to be; everyone around her had been born special, and she had spent years of her life scrambling to catch up. Only after her arrival in Novus had she gotten a taste of what the rest of them had been entrusted with as children. But the thing—when it did finally come—hadn’t come without its own cost. (Her mouth tastes awfully bitter when she thinks about that day on the mountain, how the god who blessed her had taken it away without a blink, without a modicum of effort. That was the only time the gift had made her feel powerless rather than powerful. Like mortality—you’re only reminded of your weakness when it’s coming for your throat.)
Which is what Seraphina seems to be doing right now.
Dirt ruptures like a wave from underneath the girl-queen’s feet, though they still haven’t quite touched the ground. And then the wave is moving toward her, faster and faster, and the space between them is closing: too smoothly, like Seraphina is a doll, or a joke, or a dream. It’s the way her legs don’t churn and her feet don’t hit the ground, the way she moves without actually moving. It’s unnerving. Bexley’s heartbeat spikes; electricity threads into her chest; stricken with nerves, stumbling for grace, she pitches backwards with so many quick steps, and though it’s not at all impressive, it does pull her away from Seraphina’s grasp. By the time those teeth snap closed, the only thing they’re able to seize are the very last, finest strands of Bexley’s hair, which she disconnects from her neck with a sharp tug of her head and no more than the littlest pinpricks of pain.
Her body is cold and sore now that the adrenaline is wearing off, and her steps are awkwardly stiff as she pulls away. Whoosh—a residually painful exhale is forced from her lungs in one fell push, and then she can breathe again. The strain of lacking oxygen falls away. It’s like being reborn. Her pulse finally slows and her stride relaxes as she lopes toward the edge of the steppe. The air is bright-warm against her nostrils and lips. And oh, it feels good to be exhausted: it makes her think she might sleep well tonight, for the first time in eons. Pleasure rushes through her. Or perhaps it’s simple satisfaction. Neither are particularly recognizable to her anymore.
She cuts to a stop. They’re yards apart now, not particularly far from each other, but the adrenaline and the blood have both stopped flowing, and Bexley is no longer on alert. Seraphina must know it’s over. Now they are just women again—friends, maybe, and ready to return to peace. Overhead the sun still shines its perfect white, and Solterra’s golden girl briefly closes her eyes and lets the rays sink into her skin like so many kisses.
Eventually she cracks one bright-blue eye open and smiles at Seraphina, sated, at least for the moment.
Summary: Bexley backs away as she sees Seraphina coming and ducks her head enough that she only loses a couple strands of hair. She takes a moment to trot away/cool off and then stops, pleasantly tired and ready for them both to go their separate ways.
I’m so wound-bound. I’m so lost to the vanity of staying. Stay.
Seraphina is quick, but Bexley is quicker. She dances out of the way of her teeth before they can clamp down on her mane, and Seraphina is too preoccupied to notice the way that her steps are too clumsy to be much of a dance, or the way that her expression has twisted. She comes away with a few strands of pale mane caught in her teeth, and she expects to be disappointed with herself, but she isn’t.
Instead, she isn’t sure what she feels. When she doesn’t catch her, she doesn’t move, her hooves dug into the dry, malleable soil; she lets Bexley put some distance between them and makes no effort to give chase. Her expression is an inquiry, her two-tone stare a question - is it over?
When she exhales, long and loud enough for Seraphina to hear it even though she’s some distance away, she lets herself relax. The tension melts off her limbs like snow off the side of a mountain at the end of winter, slow and lax, and she straightens, kicking a crust of dirt off her half-buried hooves. At the edge of the field, Ereshkigal is shifting, kneading her talons in Seraphina’s scarf in an obvious gesture of anticipation. A moment later, her voice comes. “Are you done yet?”
(Seraphina has discovered that the vulture is even more single-minded than her; she thinks that it is probably because Ereshkigal enjoys her job. Seraphina acts out of necessity, and Ereshkigal acts out of a certain sophisticated bloodlust. She would never compare it to a primal urge, but it is primal in that it is what she is crafted for – she is judge, jury, and executioner by nature. It will always be her impulse to hunt and to punish.)
Seraphina doesn’t reply to the vulture, but she does pick her way over towards her abandoned armor and weaponry, dragging her tongue along the ridges of her teeth almost grimly. Once she returns to Solterra, the world will be burning again, and she’ll be on fire with it. Once she returns to Solterra, the sun will be scalding instead of pleasant, and she won’t have friends, she’ll have allies, because it is easier to swallow losing a friend than an ally.
Once she returns to Solterra, if she finds herself in combat, it won’t be to relieve stress. She looks at her reflection in Alshamtueur’s gleaming silver hilt, and then she throws a glance over her shoulder, towards Bexley. It is another inquiry.
Bexley flashes her one of those bright, bright smiles – practically brilliant things, better still for being genuine. She always understands why people seem to adore her so easily when she sees her smile like that.
Seraphina, in turn, gives her one of those smiles that isn’t quite a smile, but is more of the foggy impression of one; generally speaking, it’s the closest thing that Seraphina has to offer, and she hopes that it’s enough. She hopes she knows that she cares, even if she’s terrible at putting words to it, or showing it on her face, and she hopes that she knows that she is glad that she’s here, by her side. (She’s glad that she’s been at her side through all of this – the good moments and the horrible ones alike.) She’s never had many friends, and she’s never quite been sure if she can call her Regent one, but looking at her now, sweaty and suspended in sunshine-
She’s grateful to have found a friend in her.
@Bexley|| quiiiiick little closer ft. the power of friendship || "I Put The Coffin Out To Sea," Lisa Marie Basile "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
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
Due to Bexley being deactivated, the fight is forfeited and Seraphina wins.
This thread will be locked and moved to the IC Thread Archives forum shortly.
All damage taken in the thread is still applicable and cannot be retconned.
Both character's EXP has been updated to reflect below changes; no need to post in the Experience Updates thread!
SERAPHINA
- Participate in a Battle or Challenge: +1 EXP
- Win a Battle: +1 additional EXP
-- Total: +2 EXP to Seraphina
BEXLEY
- Forfeits do not allow you to gain EXP for participating in a Battle.
-- Total: 0 EXP to Bexley
12-02-2019, 04:04 PM - This post was last modified: 08-23-2020, 01:30 AM by inkbone
