– Calliope – Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last
*
Calliope is there, as restless as hungry lion, as the courts file into the meeting ground.
She's there to nod grimly as Florentine and Asterion walk by with hope and youth a glimmer in their eyes. There is nothing left for her to say, no warnings she has left to give. But that nod, a short and wicked dip of her horn promises that their lives will not be forfeit by trusting a god. Calliope refuses to let such a thing happen.
It would not be the first time that she's smiled at a god and promised to find an end to faith.
She's there to watch with a warning as the dragon court filters by. I know, her eyes seem to say between blinks. I know, that horn upon her head flashes in the daylight and echoes the words of her eyes. Her body is tight, coiled like a wildcat, as she watches them go by with a confidence as thick as air. They walk by as if guilt is nothing more than a fleeting dream that they perhaps once had.
That is when her rage first begins. It roars in her blood like a maelstrom, a hurricane, an abyss that even an entire world cannot fill.
When the gates close behind them all her rage begins to overflows. It trembles out into her muscles and she paces back and forth, back and forth. Her tail lashes about her legs like a whip as she paces. Had that lion still lingered in her bones she would have roared for the gods, for the way they always swallow up the believers behind stone as if they are nothing more than dust to sweep away from sight.
She can hear nothing vital on the this side of the wall. Only the soft sound of other horses at her back, other mortals left behind. Calliope isn't sure which of them are the trapped ones. Perhaps all of them are and this is nothing more than another world gods will destroy with ignorance and greed. They act as if they could hope to understand the fire and fury of a mortal, the way they rise up and up against like a sea.
And then the world trembles and the gates collapse into rubble and she knows without doubt that Asterion and Florentine are trapped.
Calliope erupts.
This is the rage that shook Velius when her sister was stolen. The rage that struck down dragons for vengeance and watched them wither and die in payment. This is the rage that electrified an entire sea and trapped an entire herd of sick monsters and left them to die.
This is the darkness of Calliope, the monster, the unicorn, the lion ,the reaper. Her bones feel alive with war, with fury, with a lightning storm that needs no thunder or bolts to consume everything in its path. Perhaps it's a blessing her magic is gone, dried to dust in this world of faceless gods. If she still had her storms and lion teeth nothing of Novus would have been left by the time this rage burns out.
She lunges towards the rubble, leaping upon the incline of it as only a unicorn might. The rocks are slick and slide under her hooves but she's headless of the recklessness of her fury. All she knows is rage and how it feels like a volcano is rising beneath her skin. She has even forgotten the names of the horses are her back, so consuming is this hate.
A war cry rents the odd stillness that follows the collapse of the gate. It rumbles through her chest like a roar. It's a gunshot in the silence, a tolling of a death-bell, the cry of a gavel as the scales of justice tip way out of line.
Calliope screams and screams and screams.
This rage of hers knows no boundaries now that it's been set loose.
NOTE: This takes place right after the gates of the meeting area crumbled and trapped the court leaders inside. Anyone is welcome and encouraged to join.
06-17-2018, 08:05 PM
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Odeen [PM] Posts: 175 — Threads: 29 Signos: 1,315
And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying,
'Come and see.' and I saw.
***
Never underestimate the capacity for someone to mean you ill, even before the gods, he had said to her when the strange visitor arrived on the wing.
When the earth shifted again and towering ancient stone became as sand before the unseen wrath of gods, sealing the way that was blocked before only by 'divine will', he realized he should have spoken more bluntly to the flower maiden.
Never trust a god, or any who claim to do their will.
Raymond had watched from a distance with something very near boredom as Calliope paced the recalcitrant gateway like a persistent hound. That was her - she let nothing go easily, surrendered to nothing quietly, and he had been content to wait patiently for the dealer to play out the hand. But the house had cheated. As dust rose like a demon's fetid breath from the collapsed, stony maw, as the lady of lions leapt and screamed at the barrier like a beast caged, he turned to stone.
Raymond's rage was nothing like Calliope's, which roared and blossomed like flames in a dry forest. It ran silent and deep, a dark and powerful undertow hardly stirring the waters of his expression. His rage was patient, bitter, seductive - a paean to cold butchery in a bath of hot rushing blood.
And still Calliope screamed her hatred at the gods.
He could not rush to her side now to quell her fury. He could not wait and hope that the horses behind that rubble would not dissolve into savagery at the earliest opportunity when so much of his life experience had informed him otherwise. Florentine had named Raymond her Champion, and he had promised her his best. So his best he would do.
Snarling, tail blade whip-like in agitated readiness at his back, the red stallion leapt to action, taking charge of himself and his emotions with a cold and decisive fury. He knew at a glance that a horse alone could not shift such wreckage - assuming the gods had not abused their might to guarantee it - but however sacred the conference within he would rather face an eternity in whatever hell they created for him than do nothing at all.
Rearing up, flashing his own body like a rallying banner, he bellowed to the horses gathered near the collapsed gateway: "Who will help us rescue the Sovereigns?" Obediently the tumultuous mountain air took his words and spread them far, a clarion call to unite the masses.
It was not the will of the gods that made a mortal strong.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
Jericho! WAKING UP TO ASH AND DUST, I WIPE MY BROW AND I SWEAT MY RUST
He had come for Somnus, boyish loyalty tugging him along like an overeager pup in the sovereign’s wake. Jericho had only arrived at his gates a mere week ago, but already he found himself admiring the gentle stallion who’d welcomed him like a father and offered him refuge. He kept a respectful distance, of course—he did not claim the status of those who walked alongside the king—but he trailed along behind the leaders of the court as they climbed into the mountains, occasionally falling in step with those also making the journey.
Jericho did not know why exactly they were heading east, but he would follow Somnus anywhere and did not doubt the king’s intentions. He’d been taught to obey without question, and he was a good soldier. So, though he kept his eyes alert and his ears swiveling for any danger that might present itself, the boy’s mind was at ease. He contented himself with the thrill of exploration and the thought of what might be. Unfamiliar as he was with Delumine’s customs, he could only imagine what might await in the mountains. Something big, he guessed, by the number of citizens that seemed to materialize from their surroundings as they drew closer.
And it was big. His eyes widened as they reached the summit, and he watched with wonder as the chosen few (including his king) withdrew. Perhaps it was like a Council meeting, he mused, noting the regal posture of those who stepped inside. Did Somnus share his throne, or were these rulers of other kingdoms? Taking it all in, he watched and waited with the crowd but kept mostly to himself. That is, until the walls came tumbling down.
Screams tore through the air and a dark blur broke from the masses, streaking towards the rubble. Unnerved, Jericho pranced in place, instinct to flee struggling mightily against his past three years of combat training. Drills had taught him technical skill, but they were just that: drills. A virgin soldier, he’d never seen battle or felt the blast of heat and dust in his face. Dazed, his eyes darted around the scene, trying to determine what was happening.
It was Raymond’s voice that roused him from his stupor. He heeded the cry, darting forward through the crowd to the crumbled gates, pawing at the stones and pushing away the fear that struck at his heart knowing that his king was inside.
Acton’s typically expressive face was a stony mask as he watched the regimes file into the place that had been prepared for them.
For all his joking with Bexley, something like nervousness coiled in him now, a black snake in his belly ready to bite. He fidgeted and paced and waited, his thoughts full of Bexley and Reichenbach and Seraphina. (Somnus was on that list too – bless him for having allowed their motley group sanctuary after the Raven Gates – but Acton had never actually met the Dawn King, and had little interest in or experience with people who known for their kindness and level heads.)
All the same, when the world quakes and all their muscles go instinctively taut, their eyes wild, Acton is shocked.
Surely not. Maybe once he would have appreciated the kind of mad games the gods were playing now, but after everything that had happened –
Rising in his mind then was the memory of another crumble, another apocalypse of dust and stone and noise, and a great fist closed around his heart. It had been a long time since he had felt such empathy, but he felt it now for Bexley Briar, trapped once more, and something black and angry opened up in him. When the unicorn screamed his hair rose all along his neck and back, but it was the same sound inside him, too.
He watched her ascend the pile of rubble as the dust still rose like mist around them, turning them all to pale ghosts. His heart leapt along with her feet until it sat in his throat, and then his attention dropped to the red stallion below. His ears, which had been flat back, swung forward again to listen. The buckskin did not know these strangers, had no idea what court they might be from, but they were right.
“And the rest of the regimes,” he added, under his breath, but Acton stepped forward and surveyed the rubble before them.
A funny thought occurred to him then: out here, in this moment, there may as well be no court divisions. Maybe it was always a lie, whispered from gods to kings.
The buckskin longed for the things he’d left behind in Denocte – powders and flints and oils, a dozen ways to make an explosion. It might have done some good, here, but wishing was a useless pastime.
He stepped up to the outermost mound of tumbled rock, next to a dark and striking fellow he half-remembered from the trip here, and began to push at the larger rocks while wielding his telekinesis like a sweep of his arm to clear the smaller rubble.
It was, perhaps, the first honest work he’d done in years.
AND IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SUFFER
WELL, THEN YOU'D BETTER RUN
QUINN - son of Entia and Naveen
And life was like a comet falling from the sky
Lurking at the precipice of the mountain, Quinn had been circling around when the ground had heaved beneath his feet. He’d watched on and heard the sound of earth striking itself as something collapsed, and he’d leapt away like he’d be stung – clearing the distance with ease but green eyes fixed on it. He’d come full circle slowly, and found himself back where he’d begun, but there were others here and now.
He hears the screaming and turns his attention, seeing the dark woman suddenly rush at the collapsed gate and watches on as she rushes into the rubble – and then there was Raymond as well, seeming to be like a summoning call to his eyes. His senses were lit on fire and Quinn too found himself rushing forward.
He only knew of Florentine hidden being the veil of the collapse – there came another with a brilliant coloured head, and then a golden man. He witnessed a little of the moving of little rocks purely with the mind, and he too tried this and found he could shift little pieces of rubble. Quinn came in as close as he dared to others and he too joined the search, hooves striking rock with sharp bells ringing from the hit, eventually dulling out as he found his way to large pieces – piece he couldn’t move all alone.
Instead, Quinn changed his course and moved to help others, steeling himself as he pushed with all the might he could summon.
He would do what he could to help and for once, Quinn didn’t utter some foolish quip.
The silence that follows the rockslide is a terrible thing.
Almost in slow motion Indra whirls, her golden eyes tracking the enormous pile of rubble as it crashes down to close off access to the meeting grounds. The air is hollow and roaring in her ears, the world around her plumed with dust. In the span of a breath her body has gone tense, expectant, disbelieving, and all around her she can read only identical expressions of horror on the faces of the watching herd.
A cold fist closes around Indra’s heart. Her pulse is a slow, dreadful drip, the lone sound she can hear against the silence. She knows very little of these courts, with their gods and their sovereigns and their regimes. She knows very few of the people trapped behind that wall of rock.
But she knows one.
Then there is a scream, raw and clear and reverberating with fury, and a black streak surges up the slope of boulders and shale. Indra recognizes the unicorn from around the Dusk Court—recognizes, too, the red stallion who issues a rallying cry in her wake.
Her body reacts before her mind catches up, her hindquarters heaving her forward alongside a handful of other strangers desperate to offer what little help they can. What use, after all, are hooves and horn against the formless fists of the gods? What use such rudimentary telekinesis, in the face of beings who could level a mountain with less than a thought?
Still, Indra shoulders her way in among the rubble, shoving slabs of rock, pulling at roots with her teeth, sweeping the loose scree aside with a mental effort of will. And slowly, so slowly, her mind circles in on what it knows to be truth.
There was a battle, long ago and yet not so long ago—and in that battle a filly died, a tiny winged thing with a mane full of purple flowers. Indra saw her, lying motionless and cold in the gore and the mud. And yet somehow that filly returned, and lived, and grew into a young mare, and became the queen of Terrastella.
On a different day, in a different world, Indra might have walked away from this scene—might have shrugged her shoulders at the gods, and the courts, and their petty conflicts, and turned her back on all of it. It was not, after all, her sort of fight. But not today; not this world.
She would run a god through the heart, to keep Florentine from death again.
So the unicorn lowers her head, and drags the iron blade of her horn against a jagged rock, and the dark whine of its whetting rings out like a promise.
It was the first thought that raced through her mind as the ground began to quake, to groan and twist like a wounded animal. The sounds of the earth being torn apart was haunting, chilling—trees snapped in half; the deafening sound of something like the crack of lightening rending the air in two. Her king and regime was there, trapped behind those ancient doors. They all were. The lifeblood of the courts, cut off from the rest of the body that was Novus.
She had been in idle conversation to pass the time with strangers, but now she leaped away in panic as the earth began shifting and pulling beneath her, cloven hooves gliding over the earth with easy grace, adrenaline coursing through her veins, propelling her onward, towards those crumbling doors…if she could leap through, throw herself against the doors before the rubble...No, it was too late. Too late.
Others were already there; keening, wailing, screaming.
The black unicorn was at their lead, deadly and terrifying in her onslaught. The rage of her cries trembled deep in Pavetta’s bones, a cry of grief and of hatred. Raymond—the blade of his tale glinted in the light, a scythe of death sweeping behind him as he cried out for help, standing atop the rubble and wreckage, leading them in a rescue attempt. Acton—she saw him next, the flash of his bronze skin was unmistakable. He too clawed and dug at the collapsed doorway in quiet desperation, exuding a sort of calm Pavetta only wished she could pretend to feel. She wanted to drag them all away from the doors, lest they also fall prey to whatever game the gods were playing this night.
Pavetta clattered up the rubble, slipping, sliding, scraping silver skin, red pearls of blood littering the stones in her passing. She shuddered to an uneven stop at Acton’s side, breathing labored and haggard. “Acton!” Her voice was stronger than she felt. “It was a trap…it had to have been.” Saying the words out loud, to another soul, made it feel more real, less of a bad dream. And yet, how was this reality any less of a nightmare? “I have no magic…” I can’t help anyone she wanted to say. Her telepathic skills were so frustratingly weak and pathetic it made no sense to use them—she used her body physically, tearing and scraping and blooding her hooves and knees.
For the first time in Pavetta's life, she prayed, desperately, to whatever gods were present on that mountaintop holding their leaders captive.
a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse,
creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---
Shrike says little once she arrives with Raymond and Calliope back at the gathering-place. She keeps to the outskirts, near to the black unicorn, her dark eyes watchful on the regimes. The paint knows little enough of any of them; she hadn’t been much more than a ghost in Solterra since her arrival.
All she knows is that she cares for none of it – the waiting, the magic that weighs the air, settling like iron in the pit of her stomach, the finery of these frivolous, foreign horses.
But with Calliope it does not matter. Shrike could be standing at the gates to hell and she would not mind it, not with the black unicorn at her side once more.
Then comes the collapse. Then comes a scream that splits the air, a clarion call, a battle-cry she has answered before and will answer again and again and again until there is nothing left of her but dust.
She does not follow Calliope in her mad charge up the mountain; her expression of rage, of distrust, is much more an inward thing. Instead she only watches as other horses gather, as Raymond’s voice rings out, as they begin to do what little they can.
She longs for the bear that once lived in her bones – thick shoulders to push, paws to send boulders tumbling out of the way. This body seems to her such a breakable thing.
But there is little room at the fore, anyway; the entryway is not narrow enough for many more to dig. And so Shrike only paces wrathful half-circles, keeping an eye on the rocks and the trees and the sky, waiting for the next sign of more danger.
The gods never rested in their trickery, and neither must they.
Then her gaze snags on a familiar sight – another unicorn, one fashioned of iron and of blood. She is another beast escaped from the riftlands, and Shrike goes to her then, wondering at such small twists of fate.
“I remember you,” she murmurs, between the ringing of horn against stone. And she smiles, then, though it is a grim thing – for she knows that no gods, no kings, could ever hope to control what has been freed from that sick, twisted world.
Shrike has faith, but it is only ever in unicorns.
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
Calliope for the first time truly laments the loss of her lion skin and predator teeth. She misses the body that might climb up the rubble and break into the meeting area by way of tooth and claw. That body would have lunged for freedom, for justice and it would have tested how much a god might bleed if they stood before her as flesh and bone instead of specters and rumors.
Her horn might still test that fact after this day. Nothing is exempt from justice, nothing free from the tip of her horn when she's set her passion towards a purpose.
Now, with the horses gathering beneath her to clear the rubble with magic and might, Calliope feels her heart turn to fire and lightning. It feels like a weapon of war, this heart of hers. Each beat is a battle-cry, each trip of blood through her veins a cry for freedom.
How raw her throat feels! And yet the gods who summoned the courts do not come, do not respond to that fury on her lips that promises to bleed their religions dry until only dust and free-will is left in the wreckage.
“There is no freedom in this.” Calliope cries a clarion call and her words ring out over suffering and another shriek of a unicorn's horn on rock. Unicorns have always known better than most the price immortals must pay when hubris reigns over mercy.
“There is no justice in trickery, magic or whatever god-power rules this summit.” Her horn plucks loose a smaller rock at the top of the pile and it bounces down the collapse. The echo sounds like a gunshot in the silence of their shock. It goes on and on through the strange newly ancient trees until once more she can only hear the huff of exhausted horses working together to free all the regimes.
Here, now Calliope has but one enemy and they should tremble as she does for she feels as mad with righteous rage as she did in the Riftland and Ravos. Her darkness has been set loose for freedom, for vengeance, for mortals who have been ignored for centuries only to be trapped like a foxes before the hounds.
“Even gods must be held accountable for their sins by the many that have been slighted.” She thinks back to Eik, to his story, his suffering. She remembers Iago of Ravos and the way a god of wind wanted to blood-let him for choosing freedom over religion. Like Asterion she remembers all the fires that raged and destroyed because gods could not to bothered to stop the consequences of their powers.
Mortals have always been many and gods have ever been so very few.
Finally she descends, leaning her shoulder against a larger rock and pushing hard enough that it feels as if her shoulder might shatter against the force of that effort.
Calliope feels as is she might be more hydra than unicorn. She promises to rise up again and again (with more force and hate than the last time) until the god's cease giving a hundred sufferings for each miracle.
And still she pushes until her hooves make small canyons in the dirt, driven deep by her unstoppable determination and rage.
And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' and I saw.
It did not surprise the red stallion that so many would rise to their summons in aid of the sovereigns. Love of god might wax and wane with the soul's need of it, for love of the unseen is hard to touch and even harder to keep, but love of a leader is tangible and fierce when loyalty is earned.
Raymond had not waited to see who would answer the call, and no sooner had he loosed his rallying cry than he had set to with a will against the cave-in, making little headway but trying all the same. It meant nothing to inspire the people if one could not offer the same dedication in turn.
Calliope preached a creed he knew well from Velius, where shoulder to shoulder they had stood tall against gods far more tangible than the gods of Novus and fought them off in the name of personal freedom. Raymond knew the worldview well, could recite it with her in his own words even as he spoke. He saw Pavetta struggling against the collapse, slinking almost catlike to her side around the debris.
"Neither do I," he replied, overhearing her despair as he drew near. His voice cut through the air as decisively as his blade on a battlefield and there was something proud in the admission. Magic was simply a tool, a number to balance an equation - and there were far too many ways to tip a scale to fret over the lack of one solitary component. "But that doesn't make us helpless."
The red stallion set to with a will alongside the rose-tipped unicorn, and the combined straining of their bodies shifted much more than each could have done alone. Perhaps it would mean nothing against the collapse in the grand scheme of things, but in Raymond's eye it was enough to try, to speak truth to power and walk forward when it says to stop, to dig deep when it says to rest. Only then could one be truly alive.
