he day which Mephisto came to Novus was a day like any other. There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to suggest the disruption of a newcomer. It was just as she would like to make an entrance, unnoticed and quiet.
Far above the world, she soared like a dark cloud against the gathering night, her black wings stretched to the heavens. Mephisto was a silent of hunter, watching – always watching. Her cerulean eyes lock onto the world beneath, determining as she travels where she might settle herself. In a way, she was a nomadic sort of creature. No one could tell you where exactly she’d come from, originally… only that she’d appeared first in the Riftlands. She is a creature of contraries - born to live on the outskirts, never quite fitting into herd life, yet she sought something more than solitude tonight.
With the moon at her back, she turned toward the west, following the path of the dying sun. Circling the Dusk Court, Mephisto lands soundlessly in the brush. Her eyes are cold and blue as the winter sea as they fall on the horses that lingered in the darkness. While the day might be filled with laughter and play, those who gathered in darkness were seldom up to such jovial matters. Instead, there is a quiet sense of serenity in this place, and Mephisto appreciates the stillness. Astute and cold, she stayed far from those preparing for sleep, shielding herself in a blanket of caution and careful calculation.
Her wandering spirit carries her about the kingdom, until at long last she stops along the treeline, listening as an owl takes flight in the growing darkness, its wings beating against the indigo sky as it went to hunt a mouse. Focusing on the place where the sky met the earth, she watched as a stranger on the horizon grew closer and closer. Only once it is close enough for the scent to permeate this place does Mephisto step forward, moonlight inching across the black and blue hues of her coat. Intelligent eyes focus in for a moment, making out the stranger’s form, and beneath the autumn moon, she waits in silence to see if she would be welcomed here or sent away.
In the cool black of the night, Dusk’s Commander walks infinite circles around the walls of Terrastella. High above the ground, on the cobblestone parapets, Marisol drops her head low and watches over the sprawling fields, the far-away roiling ocean, and the sound her hooves make on the stone is as even, as regular as a heartbeat: there is something comforting about the silence that overtakes her court, about how it is perfectly still under her watchful eyes.
And yet it cannot be that way forever. Marisol has been on patrol long enough to know that there is always something happening, even when you can’t see it, especially when you can’t. Her dark ear flicks at the sound of a wingbeat. The air shifts, cool and wild, and Mari feels the slightest change of it easy as fingers on her skin. She inhales - deep, blue, black - and there, in the treeline, a silhouette shifts, twists, shudders.
Ah.
Marisol turns to the north and floats down the stairs quick and light as rushing water. Click-click-click says her hooves against the stone, and then a soft patter as the steps melt to dirt and she goes loping across the field toward the figure, spear knocking rhythmically against her flank, wings against her sides. Moonlight streams down in silver silk, brushes the dark of Mari’s skin into glittering mercury.
Evening, she calls, and slows to an amble. The moon-grey of her eyes is watchful as ever. By Her hand.
he night parted, and as shadows pulled back like curtains, they began to expose Marisol’s approaching form. While some newcomers might shy away from such a forward approach, Mephisto simply stands beneath the moonlight, waiting as the other mare grew closer, blinking to make out the details of her form. Even in the darkness, she could make out flecked underside of Marisol’s wings as they hug her body. There is something regal in the way the female walks, something that signifies confidence and strength. Surely, it would be the warriors who greeted strangers in the night. The welcome wagon was probably much more likely to work the day shift.
Once Marisol is upon her, Mephisto’s dark ears flicker toward her, listening to the greeting with a quizzical sort of stare. By her hand… that was a new one. Must be some kind of lore. Dipping her head low as a sign of respect, the Pegasus folds her wings tighter against her in a show of deference and to maintain an unthreatening posture. Well met.
There is a quiet that washes over the land, dimming the noise even around the two mares. With only their breathing against the autumn air and the quiet whisper of night creatures in the distance, there is a stillness that begs for reverence. What do you call this land?
The mare is not keen on introducing herself first, but she wants to know more about Novus, having only just arrived. She’d flown high over the desert and the sea, over the river and the festivals and night markets… but Dusk Court seemed the most like a place where Mephisto could see herself. It seemed the type of place she could establish a home and a purpose once more
He hunts in the waning light, the pain of his recent wounds still singing like a psalm. Though the pain makes him grit his teeth, he welcomes the reminder of his folly, of the way he’d let down his guard - too trusting, yet again. It is a story he’s tired of repeating.
Cirrus has left him, gone to the shore to soothe her own hurts, and Asterion searches the autumn clearings for comfrey. He will not let Dusk’s healers see his torn ear, rent by an eagle’s talons; it is not vanity that drives him to fix his own wounds, but shame.
At least he’s learned enough from his time in Dusk to find the plant, to chew the leaves to a paste and apply them to his ear. Even so he knows it’s not enough, but the night is falling swiftly, and he cannot avoid his court forever.
He is moving slowly through the thinning trees, favoring his injured leg, when he first hears the rapid beat of an approaching horse and then the sound of voices. For a moment he pauses to listen, his lips twisting, wry, at the familiar sound of Marisol’s welcome - and then mingled curiosity and concern drive him forward just as the stranger speaks again.
“This is Terrastella,” Asterion says, and separates himself from the shadows of the trees, Before all that was visible was the pale mark of his star; now, in the moonlight, the faint dusky glimmer of him is revealed, nearly as dark and slim as the two mares he stands between.
First his gaze touches Marisol, and there is something almost dark in his gaze, a slant to his brow that she surely knows him well enough to read - do you still regard Vespera so? But he says nothing of the greeting that she has been raised by, and instead only inclines his head in a nod. “Commander,” he says, and tries not to wonder if she catches sight of his tattered and still-bloody ear.
And then it is the stranger he regards, his gaze dark but not distant. Once he might never have measured her up at all, but he has learned much in Novus and in his time as king. He searches for injuries, he searches for signs of violence, and he never guesses how well the woman before him knew his father, or how she fought by his side.
At last the bay extends his nose in soft greeting. “Welcome,” he says simply. “I am Asterion, and this is Commander Marisol of the Halycon. What brings you to these lands?” Though there is no threat in the words, he is not as open as he once might have been. Of all the lessons Novus has taught him, perhaps the most painful (and so most remembered) is this: there is always, always blood on the horizon.
king of dusk.
@Mephisto @Marisol | notes: <3 these two. for timeline confusion purposes this takes place directly after Asterion's spar with Katniss and not long before the Dusk meeting (let me know if that doesn't work)
sterion parts the darkness as he approaches, his voice rich and dark like a sultry summer song. It draws her attention immediately from the winged mare, and as Asterion approaches, Mephisto finds herself automatically bending her head in a deferent greeting. Without even knowing that Asterion was the king, she sensed it. There was just something in the way the twilight kissed stallion carried himself. It was not unlike the swagger that Gabriel once had, she mused quietly… but she knows nothing of the familial relationship just as he knows nothing of her loyalty to the Winter Court. Those days were long behind her now, and she had no notion of where the red stallion had gone – likely he too had been folded into the magic of the Rift tide, lost to time.
For a moment, Mephisto watches him, nodding quietly as he explains the name of this land. Terrestella. There is a certain romantic ring to it, and her lips tremble over the sound as if to commit it to memory. I am Mephisto. Brilliant blue eyes take in the sight of Asterion and his commander, noting the flecks of stardust in his coat with mild interest. In another life, she’d known a starry stallion, though Asterion’s hue is much more refined. Still, he was a beautiful creature.
When he mentions the Halcyon her gaze shifts curiously toward Marisol. Commander of the Halcyon… it was a prestigious sort of title, she assumed for some sort of fighting force, judging by the look of the second female. His next question, she considers carefully though. What had brought her here? Truly, it was a complicated answer, for there were many things that had set her on a path toward Novus. Even now, she could not admit to why she’d picked to stop in the Dusk Court, other than the way the light had hit the land, almost inviting her in.
Suffice to say, circumstances beyond my control have brought me to this land… and I find myself without a place in the world. Perhaps that place is here?
Marisol cannot tell, anymore, whether she loves Asterion or not, whether she respects him or not, whether she supports him or not: when he parts the cool darkness like a starry curtain her heart wavers, sure, but she is not sure why, or what to call it.
Asterion, she says, and the name is hello and goodbye and are you sure? all at once. A foam-white feather skates against her ribs. And she is not quite dense enough to miss the clot of green cud pressed against the slice in Asterion’s ear, and not quite principled enough to keep her eyebrows from quirking upward a little, but she is at least loyal enough not to remark on it in a space as public as this.
Later, promise her silver eyes in the dark, we’ll talk. She blinks at him and shuffles the white-striped feathers on the back of her wing like a vow, an oath, and then tucks them back against her side.
The sound of her name, Commander Marisol, calms her down just a little. Commander - no matter how many times she hears it is never loses its gilded edge. She tilts her head and turns her gaze back to Mephisto then, watchful, warm, and nods in endorsement of her own title as much as Asterion’s. Some part of her stings at the difference between Mephisto’s greeting split between each of them, but she gnaws at her metaphorical wounds and stays silent about it.
…without a place in the world. Perhaps that place is here? Marisol’s gaze snaps sideways to Asterion instantly. She watches him for a second, too intense to be accidental, and then turns evenly back to Mephisto. There’s nothing to be said about it that would make anybody feel better: deep in her heart Mari wants to say no, is far too suspicious and black-hearted to take a stranger under her wing at a time like this. But her jaw aches and she knows that under Asterion’s rule that won’t be an option.
She pauses, and then says: Perhaps, and dips her head a little, a hesitant invitation.
Something in him stirs at her name, a wave testing the shoreline to see what has eroded. Mephisto. Though he does not react save a twist of his ears, Asterion is sure he’s heard the name before - one of the hundred Florentine has told him as he begged for stories of the Rift (always hoping and never wanting to hear more of his father). But though he reaches for recognition he finds nothing, and he is left only to nod as though it meant no more to him than a handshake from a stranger.
It is nothing to the way his own name affects him, the syllables long and taut all at once, but this time when his gaze is caught by Marisol’s it is her poetry he thinks of, the way she’d recited it in the bleak of summer between sooty bonfires, music winding in the background like the sound of their bloodstreams given voice.
Almost he smiles at the memory alone, and the quirk of her brow does make his dark mouth curve, something wry and sheepish that is quickly gone again.
When Mephisto answers him the whole of his attention shifts to her, though he flicks his tattered ear again against its constant itching. His expression is still soft as she speaks, and does not betray the way his body wants to grow taut at how general her words are. The king cannot begrudge her for not so easily spilling her truths -
but oh, she has found them at a time when it is more difficult than usual to trust.
He is not so unaware as to miss the burn of Marisol’s gaze on him, though he does not take his own from the newcomer. Neither is he so naive as he once was, to fold her into his flock without checking for the wolf beneath the wool; it is Marisol, then, who speaks first, and only then does Asterion glance her way. The look is thank you and are you sure and we will be wary, and then the king regards Mephisto again.
The wind is sighing in the pines and the frogs and crickets are singing, in joy or in lament of the end of summer he cannot guess, and Asterion notes the strength of the pegasus and the easy way she stands and her calm and level gaze. He thinks of how many they lost in the last year, and how thin their ranks are, sparse as a midwinter field.
Maybe they cannot trust her yet, but they need her.
“You’re far from the first to arrive on accident,” he says at last, and something in him has shifted with his decision; the words are more wry, and softer. “And the Dusk Court welcomes all who arrive with good intent. If you like, we can walk to the city together, and - perhaps - help inform your decision on whether to stay.”
he spy in Mephisto is astute enough to catch their hesitation, even as their lips twist into forced smiles and welcoming words are passed to her. That was fine… she preferred it actually… for caution was necessary for survival. In truth, they had nothing to fear from the warg. She had her sights set on a purpose, lost like a dandelion on the wind for far too long since being ripped from Gabriel’s court. In truth, her vagueness wasn’t something she used out of malice… How else could she explain the dark magic of the Rift, which twisted time into an illusion, sweeping them and everything they built into the vortex. It was all just too strange for those who hadn’t experienced it themselves.
She nods to the suggestion that they should walk, falling into an easy step beside them as she fishes for information which might lead to them trusting her presence a bit more. Even though Mephisto hadn’t been here long, she had seen that all of the courts seemed to be on edge (though the circumstances weren’t fully understood of yet), so she knows that the words she chooses will carry significance, and she weighs them carefully.
It has been some time since I have found myself around others… but I fought for another place once… somewhere far from here. It had been a land which knew no gods but magic, dark and feral. She’d been an outsider there too, she remembered… at least until Gabriel had given her a chance. Like Asterion, his father was giving without question. The red stallion had been an honorable creature, one Mephisto was pleased to serve. For he had always put the interest of the Court ahead of his own ambition, making him an easy leader to follow. Late at night when her thoughts got away from her, Mephisto had to wonder what had happened to Gabriel and his queen – to their winter land, swallowed whole by the shifting rifttide – and bitterness stings her tongue. She will always resent the magic for taking the soul of her home.
Perhaps this is why she had wandered alone for far too long, afraid in a way, to care too much. There is no sign of this hesitation in Mephisto though. She is not a creature to show weakness or vulnerability. Still, it is difficult not to find a bond in shared purpose. Here, she would find that once more.
Her indigo eyes roam over this land, taking in the sight of the court’s temple, bringing to mind the most innocent of questions (though she knows nothing about the proverbial ‘bag of worms’ she opens with the words). Is this temple for your gods? I am curious to hear of the creatures who built such a place.
It is easy for Marisol to forget that there is anything else but Terrastella, and Novus, and livelihoods stretched thing by the tensions of the solar courts. She has never known anything different. From childhood the world has looked exactly like this - marked and sequestered on maps, rough around the edges, and utterly familiar - she is more realism than imagination, and it is near-impossible to think of what Mephisto could be hiding under those vague answers.
She doesn’t trust it. She wouldn’t trust any stranger at a time like this, when there is a new rift in the world every time she turns her gaze sideways. But they are a land of healers and Asterion is no typical king, and she knows what she said at the meeting is true, that they are won’t for any bodies they can find now, on the brink of war.
(Mephisto doesn’t have to know that.)
It is with gritty acquiescence that Marisol turns toward the Citadel, familiar as a constellation against the black of the sky, and falls into step on the outer edges of the trio. Summer keeps the breeze hot and heavy, and the way it digs its fingers into Mari’s cropped mane is less a comfort than it is a reminder to be wary, even uncomfortable. She tucks her wings self-consciously against the slat of her ribs and watches the way their strides mark the soft earth, making dark half-moons in a line of three against the bent grass.
God, the Commander corrects in an absent response to Mephisto’s question, the word so familiar she does not even think about muttering it. Vespera. Praise be. And she is careful to keep her gaze away from Asterion’s, remembering with a sick kind of wonder the day She had descended and the awful things she had wrought; she knows that faith is unpopular now, but it is ingrained in her as deeply as the need to fight with a spear.
It is not just wariness that has Asterion wondering about all the truths that lie silent in between Mephisto’s vague words.
He has ever been a listener of stories, hungry for tales from a hundred worlds over. Even now, knowing how few of them ended happily (how few even began that way) the king still wants to know. And not even for his own satisfaction - how many, now, have come from the riftlands, or from Ravos as he did? More and more.
(Sometimes he wonders if a tear in the world might rise here, not to give but to take. That he might wake someday to find Marisol gone, or Moira, or any of the dozens of others he has come to consider home. But at the root of those midnight fears is this - would he go, too, if he had a choice?)
The silence is not uncomfortable for Asterion as they walk, near as dark as their shadows as the evening settles to night around them. He knows the song of the crickets and cicadas, the sound of the wind in the trees at their back; he has memorized the path the moon takes as it climbs above the citadel.
But the temple is not something he often pays attention to.
The king’s mouth draws a taut line when Mephisto asks of it, not a frown but nothing else, either. It twitches higher when Marisol answers, and he has no compunctions about keeping his gaze from her; his dark eyes find her and he wonders again what she makes of Vespera's coldness, or if she still reads poetry in what small quiet moments she can snatch from her duties.
“Vespera,” he repeats, and the name feels like a chip of ore in his mouth, heavy and metallic. “Is the patron goddess of our court. She is…complicated, as are many feelings about her right now. As for who built it, I wish I could tell you - the history of Novus is a long one, and proud, and likely more bloody than we might ever know. There are many books on it, in our city and in the Dawn capitol, if you are interested in knowing more.”
He has not stopped walking as he spoke; now, as they pass the temple, he gaze lingers on the lamps whose light flickers between wide columns. He can see no living shadows within; he wonders how many still say their prayers, or give their offerings. He wonders if Vespera is watching them - judging them - still, or if she is once more stone, closed up in her mountain.
Asterion hopes it is the latter.
But now they are nearly across the whispering fields, and the city rises before them, stone streets and archways hung with flowers and flags. It smells like summer, which is to say sea-salt and lavender, and all things green and blooming. It smells like home.
“Have you lived in a city before, Mephisto?” he asks her - but the bay is already guessing the answer.
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