[AW] the flowers say hello

[Ipomoea]

IPOMOEA so lay me down in golden dandelions  It was the grass, waving at him gently in the wind from afar, that told him it was time to go. It wasn’t until he was crossing the bridge one day that it struck him, as suddenly as entering the eye of a summer storm. Perhaps it was the broken magic of the island changing him, maturing him; or perhaps it was his intuition finally kicking in. But as soon as he stepped amongst the grass of the mainland, he simply knew. He did not stop to think, nor to say his goodbyes (for he knew he would be back, and all his friends were still somewhere on the island besides). Ipomoea simply went, and he followed the wind as it led him to the north. And all along the way, at every berry plant and fruit tree he passed, Ipomoea stopped and let the magic flow from him like water. Fruit flowered and ripened in minutes, and the young appaloosa picked as much of it as he could. He braided grass into rope, and wrapped that rope around bunches of wheatgrass and rye. His back was laden with fruit and other goods by the time his hooves first touched the desert sand. And from there, it was a straight shot to the capitol, and he grew more resolute with every step. The wall loomed above him now like a desert teryr, its crest blocking the sky. The sun waited just on the other side of it, framing the Solterran city in gold and casting darkness over the desert that waited just outside of it. And yet as he stepped beneath its silhouette, as he reached out to touch the wall with his breath, he found its shadow to be neither refreshing nor peaceful. Only then does he remember how little he’s been to Solterra since his birth, how his Court has ignored their eastern neighbor for so much of his life. The thought twists like a knife through his gut, sharp and accusing. But there would be no room for guilt here, not today. Ipomoea is not here to right the past or to relieve his own worries. He turns away from the wall, and lets his offerings tumble to the ground around him, invitingly, temptingly. “It’s not enough,” he told the first man who thanked him as he handed out apples and strawberries and melons. “It’s more than we have,” the man answers in a soft voice that sounds like sand dunes shifting in the Mors. He supposed, in hindsight, that it should have been harder to enter the Day Court. But here he stood, just beyond the city walls passing out fruit to all who came near. There would be guards nearby, or spies that smiled at him and took an apple with them on their way to report to the king. Let him come, he thinks to himself as a handful of blackberries spill like water, dark against the pale desert sand. Let this end. And as he saw their ribs, and their dull coats, and their glazed over eyes, as he listened to their ragged breathing and their sand-chalked voices, Ipomoea cursed himself for not coming sooner, and vowed to return soon with more. “How are things here?” he asked the next to step forward, his voice hushed. And as he spoke he passed a small watermelon in their direction, hoping desperately that it would be enough. @open! ”here am I!”

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

Let him come Ipomoea thinks, and out of the gloom Raum steps, bright and silver. He had passed the bodies that brought such an ache to Ipomoea’s heart. He had passed them as if they were little more that fish upon a market stall – already dead, more useful in death than in life. Was this the court he had made? He looks into the eyes of his Solterrans and witnesses only the blank stare of the starving and the oppressed.
 
Sunlight dances across the exposed ribs of the people who scrabble for the fruit Ipomoea leaves them. It is not enough. It is never enough for them. “You could have come to the castle and shown your allegiance.” He says softly to a woman who feeds her son before herself. “He would not have been starving then.”
 
As he moves by, a basket is left before the boy. Within it loaves and vegetables and butters lie aplenty. But Raum is already gone, he spares not a glace back to the boy who already has the basket open and his mother who watches, her lips a line, her eyes a pool of worry. The gates of the citadel draw open and Raum steps beyond, out into the dustbowl dance of Solterra.
 
There, a man with flowers wanders, gifting out fruit. Some see him, some do not (so lost are they in their misery and hunger). Raum turns to him, he does not change, he does not care to hide his skin – skin that marks him apart. That marks him moon born and a stranger under the sun. Though he lived here once, a spy within their lands, now he sleeps here their king enthroned in all the luxury they can afford. Yet there is no part of Solterra he delights in. There is no part of this place he loves. He came to turn it into ruins and as the sunlight makes a song of their bones as it dances across their prominent skeletons, he knows this a land of little more than ghosts.
 
Already, those who are aware enough have started forming a line before the stranger as he continues gifting out fruit. Yet there were no sanctions run passed Raum to give out food here. The only provision of fruit was from the palace gates. What is more… “If you had come to me, I could have told you how things are.” Raum murmurs to the stranger. Never have they met before and yet, only a foolish king knows nothing of his enemy courts. Only a foolish king would not be able to recognize Delumine’s Regent. “What business do you have here that does not involve visiting me first, Ipomoea?”
 
As he steps from the crowd, pouring like mercury, gleaming like moonlight, those stood in the line for fruit suddenly shrink away. They scatter like lice and Raum does not bother to watch them leave. Not when his gaze is upon the foreign Regent. Slowly he circles to stand before Ipomoea, holding him with eyes that drown. Breathe, Ipomoea, breathe they dare as they gaze, unrelenting and sharp as electricity set to charge the water he holds the Delumine man within. “And what right do you have to feed my people uninvited?”

---

@Ipomoea  - couldn't resist. No one sneaks in and hands out food on Raum's watch.... ;o;

[Efphion]

Efphion had watched the man enter their court. She had trailed him since the moment he stepped foot inside the city housed in Soleterra. A place she no longer visited, it had been reduced to a ghost town beneath Raum's rule. Yet, she did not hate him, not yet. Effy lived apart from her home here, she had a hunt to complete. Then she would deal with matters here. She would not fight a war that did not belong to her, she had no ties here yet. The man spilled berries upon the ground at his feet as he passed out fruit to the starving masses. Efphion had only heard of what her new King looked like, though they had never stood in the same space together. She knew what he had taken from Seraphina. 

It had been tearing across Novus like wildfire. Efphion watched as the stag stood and waited. He seemed to be waiting for something or someone. It didn't take her long to draw herself towards the man who she assumed was her King. Someone who she had never seen, but his words confirmed her suspicions. Efphion was not a scholar like Noctiilucent, but she was clever and observant. Effy drew herself to a halt somewhere on the invisible line that separated the two men. Raum, she only knew by name, spoke and demanded of the other man what he was doing feeding the Solterran people. Effy studied the pair, as though she were a fly on the wall that towered above them. The heat of the sun lingered in the metal that laced her neck.

"And alone." Effy added onto the words spoken by the Solterran king. It was her way of sharing the information she'd collected on him so far. She would not speak her name to the king unless he asked, and as for Ipomoea, who Raum seemed to know. He would get no such privilege. Efphion did not support the starvation of her new people, but she also did not feel for them the same way she would feel for her kin in Reth. With a sudden motion, she reached and struck out with her leg to knock the basket from Ipomoea's grasp.   

---

"Speech"
@Raum @Ipomoea
>__> I hope you two don't mind

I COULD BE THE STORM

that tears down everything you hold

[Torstein]

@Ipomoea @Raum @efphion — Why hello there... :eyebrows:
chest: CLOSED — Thoughts — "Speech" — Bonded
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The borders were silent - eerily so, considering how many Solterrans were left lingering at the edge of a city whose ruler left most of them to starve.

And so he drifted, almost as silent as the Court walls themselves except for the dull clink of the armor that lay upon his back, of the imposing broadseax hanging heavily at his side. Large hooves left a wake of dust in their languid path, bloodshot eyes making contact with only a select few of the other inhabitants. Safe to say that most of those starving on the borders were not likely to be supporters of a dictator. Small talk was not something Tor appreciated, either.

The titan eventually stumbled upon a small gathering that had started just outside of the walls, one ear lazily flicking up in mild curiosity. The source was not hard to find, and although it was not someone he had met face to face before... he knew who he was. @Ipomoea's reputation proceeded him, as both the Delumine Regent and an individual.

It did not shock him that the man came bearing food to Solterra's impoverished citizens. Tor did not line up, but his pace did not quicken or cease. He just continued on and forward, as he had been.. except his focus was now trained upon the growing crowd. He watched them snap up every little bit of fruit offered like hungry animals. They were not unlike a pack of starved, beaten dogs.

No surprise crossed his face as the quicksilver slid in like a phantom ghost — he just regarded Solterra's new ruler with a brief glance. And just as quickly as @Raum arrived, the crowd immediately scattered.

After a few moments it was mostly just the Deluminian Regent faced off with the Solterran sovereign, although they were a few stragglers that lingered despite the quicksilver's presence. He assumed that if they were sticking around, they must support him in some sense.. and his theory had yet to be proven wrong. 

He heard Raum's words, but they hardly registered. Instead his attention shifted to a figure who seemed to follow in the quicksilver's wake - @Efphion. Placid gaze lingered on the silver neckalces about her throat and he was almost tempted to chuckle... the irony and familiarity did not elude him. But Tor had finally made it to the trio when he heard the dark gray mare speak, all three eyes long since open and aware. And alone almost sounded mocking, as if chastising the Regent for being foolish given the circumstances.

But despite her words and Raum's, the titan himself did not speak. His pace slowed, although he carefully took note of coiled muscles and cool, obedient words. Passing in front of Efphion, her strike hit him square on his upper leg. He stopped abruptly.

Blood red eyes turned towards the offender, ears the color of frostbitten flesh tightening their always flattened grip upon his crown as he looked down at her. A thin stream of blood — mirrored by the familiar color of his own gaze — trickled down his leg. 

The Triennial Eye had been awake this entire time but now it focused squarely on her, a gaping stare so heavy and fervent it felt suffocating. Its pupil dilated rapidly; such a stark contrast to the otherwise cool expression that had settled across his face.

Somewhere in her mind, she would hear a mocking voice trickle in at the edges of her subconscious: Oops, hissing laughter.

And then he would abruptly turn away from her, scrutiny focused elsewhere.

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art © memuii — texture stock © ofruin-stock — coding © inkbone

[Ipomoea]

IPOMOEA so lay me down in golden dandelions  It was not the stranger standing before him who answered, but a snake. The likeness was uncanny he decided, as the silver stallion wove through the crowds towards him, parting the throng like a prophet standing before a sea. Even if Ipomoea had not heard the tales of the crow-turned-king, even if he had not left his home to fight a war against the usurper, still he would have recognized him by the crowd’s reaction alone. It does not take long for the sick and the starving to scatter, some desperately taking fruit on their way and others too terrified to do anything but flee.  For a millisecond, Ipomoea is alone with a murderer.  A millisecond is all it takes for the warmth in his cherry gaze to vanish, as he looks into the eyes of a madman.  His heart stutters, grinding to a painful stop. It takes too long for it to start beating again, and in that time the silver man draws closer, and closer, like a grim reaper come to take him home. He has never drawn blood before, but today he thinks he might like to. I’ve never heard your voice before, he thinks, his eyes narrowing, his blood boiling with every word that flows like poisoned honey from the liar’s lips. He did not like it. It sounds like starvation and death to him, like a kingdom oppressed and acts of war.  Ipomoea hardly looks at the woman who comes between them, his vision tunneling in on Raum. But when she moves, when her foreleg darts out to carve a bloody line across his chest, he is quick to react. The basket of goods slips from his grasp before she can strike it down, while his telekinesis reaches instead for the wooden blade strapped to his thigh. The vines uncurl in an instant, but he does not point it at either of them, not yet. He does not need to, not when a stranger he knows only by reputation stands between him and the soldier. No longer is he alone. His heart is racing, a wild thing inside of his chest that screams for blood, for retribution, for justice. Ipomoea is surprised by how much he longs to hold a bloodied dagger, by the way it begs to feel flesh split beneath its blade. “Your people.” He spits the words from between gritted teeth, and oh how the anger rises like bile in his throat, how it wraps its cold fingers about his heart and squeezes any bit of joy and love he might have had left, wringing it out of him like a rag. “You have no right to starve these people. You have no right to call yourself their king.” He wants to keep going, even after his jaw clenches so tightly the words cannot find their way out. He could almost laugh, in a bitter, hateful way; his fury is poorly contained, coloring each word red, red, red, as he stares down the false king. The fires flash before his eyes; the ribs of starving children; the smile of a traitor; the cry of a dragon. All of the anger that has been slowly festering away inside of his heart, all of the guilt and doubts that have taken hold of his mind since the day he watched his own forests burn at the work of a god - it all roars inside of him now. There's a savage inside of him that he doesn't recognize that's clawing its way out, a monster that has been sleeping since the day he was born here in the deserts surrounding the city. “Would you like to hear a secret?” his voice has dropped to nearly a whisper, for he cannot find it within himself to shout, not while his teeth lock themselves together and wish it was skin they bit down on. “Come here, and I’ll tell you one.” The wooden tip of the dagger is growing longer, the vines that wrap around its grip sprouting thorns. Be brave, his magic whispers to him, the same way it had in the Bellum steppe, the same words it had said when Isra had aimed her bow at him besides the lake. Be brave, be brave, don’t look away, be brave, be angry. Overhead an eagle begins to circle. And he knows, as his magic raises cactus and shrub grass from the sun-baked earth, their tines pointed at Raum, that it will not be the last. @Raum @efphion @Torstein! I know there was a LOT of interest in this thread - if anyone is still looking to jump in, please feel free! let’s make a showdown c; po you idiot i told you not to come here feat. a saga of po's internal thoughts ”here am I!”

[Senna]

YOUR TEETH WILL NEVER FEEL SHARP ENOUGH
the body always holds a burning feeling

Dawn is here, Nestor crowed as she sailed through the door, urgent, but the nobleman did not look up.

He was watching the sun. Watching as the noonday rays bent through his half-lidded window in fragile slivers of amber, casting upon the carpet a scattering of golden triangles. They looked, Senna thought, just like the triangles of spun sugar placed atop the rose cakes Zofia had loved so much. 

Crown's Confectionary, branded and sealed. Delivered in a box with a white silk bow to her room every Altar Day, when the little family would be permitted (generously granted by dearest brother Zolin) to leave the castle for the sand shrine in the Mors. "Crown's — the Best Bakery in all Novus!" Zofia Dubbed. Zofia Loved.

Crown’s Confectionary: [Out of Operation — Fall 503] The first victims of the ration had been the sweetshops.

(He'd gone to see it, once. There it had stood, at the end of an alley, at the end of a city, at the end of its Best Bakery life. Shattered glass windows. Doors kicked down to splinters. Sacks of slashed sugar bags, contents long devoured, strewn like skins beyond the entryway. Faded gold lettering on a faded old sign, crossed through with painted blood. It stated, with glee: CROWn'S CONFEctionarySSIONAL.)

Dawn. Is. Here. came Nestor's piercing cry, and finally, with startled indignity, did Senna stir. “The court," he said, slow and hissing, for rose cakes crowned in sugar triangles were being cut into thirds in his mind, "did not receive word to expect a Delumine ambassador."

Not an ambassador, the falcon clucked, unrelenting. She cared not for rose cakes and dead wives, not when Dawn was here. The regent himself.

At this, the Regent himself, Senna's head lifted. A cloud chose that moment to slip over the sun, so golden triangles and cake-loving wives chose that moment to slip over the River (Cocytus). 

"And Raum?" he asked, quiet as Lethe. Undercurrents of contempt curled and caught around the single, curt syllable. A thousand words and none it gurgled, but Nestor understood.

Out, she replied, equally curt. Equally understood. Out to meet the Dawn.

---
At first, he didn’t make his presence known. If all went well, he thought, jerking back his hood, he wouldn't need to. 

Under the blazing noonday sun, Senna was a stone splitting a frantic flood. Women and children, a symphony of ribs, pushed and parted like a stampede of spooked antelope. Deftly he twisted out of their way, unwilling to look at them yet unable to look away. He settled for piecing together the parts as he passed: the symphony of ribs, the matchstick legs, the jaundiced eyes. He waited for the feeling to come. The pity (on their behalf). The anger (on their behalf). The injustice (on their behalf). And come it did. 

Plainly put, justly observed, the people did not deserve to suffer for crimes they did not commit. 

“You have no right to starve these people. You have no right to call yourself their king.”

But the curious thing about empathy, was how easy it was to reverse. Like flipping a lightswitch. On: pity you. Off: pity me. Senna wondered, when he flicked the switch to Off: had they pitied her? (Zofia) Were they angered for her? (Zofia) Had they demanded justice for her? (Zofia) Because plainly put, justly observed, Zofia had not deserved to die for crimes she did not commit. 

All had not gone well. 

“Regent Ipomoea. King Raum.” A nod for the furious regent, a bow for the crow king. And a crooked half-smile for the reclusive warden. “Warden Torstein.” The dark woman — he did not recognize. But perhaps that was a small mercy.

Senna's heart beat like a war drum in his chest. Drum, drum, drum. The song of violence ascending. Regent of Dawn, his eyes demanded. Why have you come? The apple in his pocket whispered to him the answer. To feed them fruit and sweet sympathy?

A wave of a wand, blessed by Dawn, and out rolled a barrel of forbidden apples. Out filled the cheeks of the cherub-children, out clawed the laughter of the twice-damned. Once by Zolin. Once by Raum. Where was the wand, the apples, the cherubs and the laughter, three years ago?

When the capital burned. When the insurrection raged. When the rebels stormed the castle, slaughtering them (the hateful, hateful nobles!) like cows at a grand butchering. “You damn nobles. What have you ever done for us?” 

(The Azhade kept the black market alive; they were buyers of stolen goods, gold-provisioners for desperate fathers. The Sevetta furnished the weapons to be used in hypothetical revolution. The Ieshan eased the anxieties of disgruntled Denoctians, Terrastellans, Deluminians. "Raum will not attack. We are a civilized court." And the Hajakhas. The Scarab edged deeper into debt with each piece of gold he lent to nobles and hungry peasants. 

Nothing. They were doing nothing.)

“I advise you to calm your weapon, Regent. Solterra has seen violence enough. Is that really what you wish to bring upon us?”

One hair on Ipomoea's pretty head — that was all it would take. One hair singed by Raum's infamous wrath, and what would keep Oriens' scholar court from severing all ties with starving Solterra? Denocte, already a madhouse with the disappearance of their magic-blessed queen, raged like a tempest in the South. Terrastella, peace-loving Terrastella, twiddled its thumbs until it could bother risking its neck for a revolution.

Now Delumine came knocking, without notice, without merit, to slice one more limb off dying Neutrality. Kick one last leg out from the stilts keeping the sun court from total collapse. All under the iceblue stare of a king who despised his own empire. 

Who cared not who he brought down in his reckoning. 

“Would you like to hear a secret?” the Regent asked. Ah, little Regent. Would you like to hear mine? 

Sweet Zofia. Darling Princess. Throat slit ear to ear. Her crime was being born a Hajakha. 

And sometimes, sometimes, he wished for the world to pay.


☾

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

the heart of the king loves everything
like the hammer loves the nail;

Bexley stands among people who do not see her. None of this is new.

She watches quiet. Not from the shadows like a coward, but from deep in the crowd, invisible to the eyes all around her. It could be a calm and even a pretty day, disregarding… certain circumstances. The sun is high, light streaming down in waterfalls bright enough that Bexley’s grinning magic deflects it near-perfectly. She is nothing more than a chameleon against the dunes. Her skin blurred into grains of sand, her eyes clear as water, all her edges soft and undetectable. Better, even, than a ghost.

And of course she knows all about those.

The spell is strong in her today, made stronger still by her building rage. The only clue that she might be standing among them is the smell of rosewater and the faint whoosh of her breath.

Raum stands among them. Bexley shudders at the sight of him, not in fear but disgust—pure, acid hatred burning in her chest like bile, shaking her now-frail body as the wind does a leaf. The blue of his eyes is unconscionable. The perfect silver of his skin even worse. They are twins in alternate, mirrors and worse. Standing so close to him makes her nauseous. It makes her teeth itch. Oh, to kill him where he stands would be so sweet. To see the desert swallow him whole like the mouth of a monster, as it is within its rights to do.

(She realizes she is starting to drool while wondering what his blood might taste like. When did they all become so feral?) He is such a delicate thing, and anyway Bexley has practice with bones. It would be so easy. So, so good.

But there are too many witnesses.

Bexley is poised just behind the Dawn regent. Watching. Heart soft and stubborn in her chest, slow, silent tears tracking her cheeks. What a pretty Madonna she makes—clear and weeping gilt. Not that any of them can see it, or appreciate it. She recognizes all of faces around her, and as her eyes turn past each, her abhorrence grows. More than a few of these fuckers are Solterrans from her time, Torstein and Senna and Efphion who once pledged their gifts to Seraphina, and yet here they are, the evil rats, showing their ugly hearts as one by one they pronounce their loyalty to the bastard king. Speaking or wordless. Either way, pathetic.

Silent and unseen she picks her way around the edge of the circle. There is an empty space next to Senna of House Hajakha, snake that he is, gleaming with blood, and Bexley fills it with a careful step. Her invisible form stands centimeters from his; she can watch him closely from here, so, so closely. He has nice cheekbones. Good hair. If he weren’t such a skeevy bitch she might have even been into him.

Instead she rises up close to his ear and drawls, quiet and enticing: “Regent, King, Warden. And somehow all your genius hasn’t secured you a useful title.” Her eyes flicker to his, though he cannot know it. “Solterra’s lords are crowned in blood, Senna. It breaks my heart that you think your boot-licking is useful.”

Bexley shimmers oh-so-briefly into view beside him, close and bright and dangerous, and within the blink of an eye vanishes again.

She disregards Efphion and Torstein, circling toward Ipomoea. Her heart is beating quicker now, and something like admiration blossoms in her chest as she looks up at the Regent, warmth in her invisible eyes. She pulls close to his side. “Ipomoea—“ Her voice is little more than a murmur, audible to his freckled ears only. “Someday I would like to hear the song you write about this but first you must escape alive.”

And with that Solterra’s golden girl flickers into vision.

She wears a grin like a scythe, and her eyes burn with obscene pleasure. Every cell vibrates with adrenaline; even the bright-white strands of her hair seem to float. Gold slips like blood from her nostrils. “Good morning,” Bexley purrs, and her voice is as good as a laugh.

(Especially when she throws a wink at Raum.)

x

[Seraphina]

☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼

the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //
with only my teeth

tw for a little bit of body horror



Say there is a monster.

Say there is a very terrible, terrible monster. A monster with shiny red eyes, like little chips of stone, and big teeth with serrated edges, and claws that are so sharp and hooked that they could tear your skin to tatters, easy as you can tear paper, if you let them sink into you. Say there is a monster. Say that it lurks in the shadows in that horrible, frightening way that monsters do, and, the moment you look away from it, it lurks a little bit closer, and the room, or the woods, or the village at night – wherever you are, when you see this monster in your peripheral vision, like something sprung from a child’s storybook -, and there’s no way for you to get away from this monster, because the world is a little bit darker wherever you look, and, wherever the world is a little bit darker, the monster can get to you. Say there is a monster, and it wants to eat you. Or maybe it keeps tricking the children, and, once they step into the range of its teeth, it swallows them whole. Or maybe the monster is all ribs, and, at night, you can hear it crying, because it is hungry, and you take pity on it, and you give it a bite to eat – but it takes you instead, and you learn that it is worthless to sympathize with something that can devour you. So say, theoretically, that there is a monster. How do you deal with it? Do you chase it into the woods with torches, and hope that you can hunt it down like an animal at slaughter? Do you let it creep close and kill it like a rabid dog, with a quick sympathy, because of course it can’t help being a monster? Do you poison it, without dignity, and let it pass in its sleep? Do you challenge it outright, and risk it tearing your throat-?

To her, those punishments all seem too lenient. (And she has never been a lenient judge.) No, you make a poor example of cruelty if you are kind – those who are unwilling to stoop have simply never risked anything more valuable than their own good reputation. Death, fortunately, is not a judge with a good reputation to uphold, so she cares nothing for mercy. She does not pity the damned.

No, she does not pity the damned - she gives them exactly what they deserve.

She perches, imperceptible, on the balcony of a building, hunched over the scene playing out below. Her bonded will be here soon, but not soon enough. No, no. But that is fine with Ereshkigal. The little girl is too hurt to accomplish what she wants. She cares too much for those dead bodies in the streets, the prodding ribs of children and the empty buildings. Ereshkigal does not. She is the tick of the pendulum, the end of things – she is more accustomed to the dead than the living. She is unconcerned with his dead, unconcerned with him.

Time swallows all evils. Crunches them between its toothy jaws. Spits them out as dust.

She thinks of what she has done, in the past, to people who she found guilty, and it makes her smile – a thing that rips, terrible, up the line of her jaw, extending past the edges of her beak, and revealing the sharp, shark-like ridges of her teeth in the process. (In the back of her head - she presses squirming, ghost-white maggots into their skin and watches them eat themselves out. Or maybe she stuffs a little lick of ever-bright flame down the cavity of their throat, and she watches, dazzled, as the bright light burns a black-rimmed hole in that soft, intimate place where their jawbone meets their neck. Or maybe she pushes them below the surface of a still, dark pool, she leaves them in that moment just before they drown – forever. No relief that comes with darkness, no air. Or maybe she rips out their tongue and devours it in front of their eyes, and then she takes their eyes, and they taste slimy and twitching in her throat, and-)

Ereshkigal envies her sisters. She would far rather be adjudicator than revolutionary, demon than bird – but, of course, she is still both.

This mortal realm simply requires that she play with her food.

She leaps from the balcony and spirals downward slowly – lazily – until she is just above their heads, her circling somehow more like that of a tiger than a bird in flight; perhaps it is the way that her red eyes catch in the light, or the way that the split of her beak upturns into a knowing smile. Carnivore, bone-eater, devourer of the dead – she still doesn’t like this body, but she likes what it means. Her wings outstretch, expanding to catch in the wind, and, like some dark specter, she lands on Bexley Briar’s shoulders, the hooks of her sharp, sharp claws hovering over her flesh – but never quite sinking into it. She flutters her wings, feathers ruffling, and pulls them in at her side, her every movement intentionally, excruciatingly slow. Her head tilts. There is a high, low, crackling sound – like something crunching inside of her throat – that builds up to a harsh screech, like metal meeting metal. She stares at the blood king. Her red eyes trail the length of his form, and she drags her tongue along the curve of her beak; it is wriggling and pink, like a worm. She spares a glance to his little pets, to the red man – who thinks he’s right, like most creatures that are wrong – and the grey girl, who thinks that she is far more frightening than she is.

The king, of course, is by far and large the most pitiful of the three. There is nothing in this world more pathetic than a man who thinks he’s won.

Her head tilts so far to the side that her neck looks broken. “Poor dear,” she says, her voice high and sickly-sweet, dripping condescension. “Poor darling.” It dips several octaves, to something low and nearly-sultry; and then she laughs, raucous and jarring, as if to some cosmic joke that the rest of the gathered figures are unaware of. Poor dear. Poor darling. Poor dear. Poor darling.

Poor thing.

---

@Ipomoea @Raum @Efphion @Torstein @Senna @Bexley || ah, this was a fun reply <3 sera will show up as more than a mention in the next one! ||

@

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

After him come the others but Raum does not deign to turn and watch them gather.
 
In ice that claws and water that drowns, he holds the Dawn Court Regent in a choking blue gaze. There is no part of him that warms, no matter how the sun beats down and turns all around him into dust and death. He was cold long before Solterra. His soul was dead long before anyone came to recognize it so.
 
The dark of him is a prowling beast that claws at his skin and gnaws as his bones. He is a disfigured man, this Solterran King. He wears sin like a cloak and a crown like thorns. He bleeds and there is no salvation in it. He will die, and only then may salvation return, blinking in the midday light.
 
And alone. The first of them has come. She seeps out from amidst the crowd like poison from a gaping wound. She watches with leonine eyes and her words further end what he already has. She is not invited, he has not asked her to speak. Yet Raum does not chasten her, he does not lay punishment, like whip-cords, on the black of her skin, nor tie her tongue with wicked reprimands. Raum merely does not blink nor stir his concrete gaze from the Delumine man.
 
Yet this girl reaches with a foot, entitlement flashing like the sun along her gleaming limb that reaches to strike the basket from Ipomoea’s grasp. But oh the delumine boy is faster and at once Torstein is there. The meeting of hoof and flesh is a dull thud and all Raum thinks is how he knows it is not hoof and flesh and bone. He knows the cry of bone beneath hoof, high and achingly loud. Though the errant strike was mild, Raum knows there is nothing to break here, for Solterra is already glass shards swept in to the curbs of their barren streets.
 
When was the last time that Raum stood with Torstein? It was in a moment such as this, when, clinging to the edges of Veneror with religion in his blood, he had been just a Denocte crow with a soul of ink-black feathers and eyes honed for spying upon Solterra. Oh Torstein, did you ever think that this scarred Crow would stand a king before you now? Raum thinks it would have helped so many, for Torstein to kill him that moment when suspicion first gleamed, clotting dark, within the Warden’s blood red gaze.
 
And maybe Efphion’s presence is a valued thing, for as she strikes, childishly, foolishly at the Regent’s basket, he throws  it down. Fruits scatter into the dust. They roll until they are dirtied, until their soft flesh is bruised and spoiled.
 
Welcome to Solterra.
 
Only then does Raum blink and move – a millimeter in respect for a flower boy who grows a weapon. But, oh, it is wood and vines and not metal nor spikes. It does not sing a siren song like all blade should but hums like wind through hollowed wood. That wood-blade grows and grows and points its sharpened tip at Raum’s chest. His gaze bathes it in water, sinking it until he wonders if it will rot and turn soft. Better a weapon rust than rot away.
 
Your people.
 
Ipomoea spits the words into the dust at the king’s feet. Raum thinks it is a fitting place – for was that not where they all lay? There, beneath his feet, downtrodden, with their lungs full of dust and their knees bloody with kneeling? Raum hoped so.
 
You have no right
 
You have no right!
 
His accusations roll in like a storm to birth his ire upon Raum’s conscience. Yet Raum is no boy to be cowed. He is a Crow with wings made for storms and death. The water of Ipomoea’s discontent drips away from his wings and tumbles like tears to the earth. “Yet here I am.” Raum says, without delight, without the sated joy of a power hungry man. He speaks as it the words mean nothing and they fall like silk caught in the wind and frayed upon brush and bracken. He speaks as if he is numb – numb with cold, with drowning, with electricity. He is a man scarred by Solterra’s sun, scarred by the sun’s love, the sun’s hate. Upon his lips – the only thing that still means anything to him, is a litany, a name: Rhoswen.
 
Ghosts surround him with their haunted black eyes – he sees them each way he turns. He hears their howling and oh, still he feels nothing, and everything, and nothing at all.
 
Would you like to hear a secret? The Regent is bright and fierce and wicked in his fury. Ire is thorns upon Raum’s flesh, yet still the king does not wince for the speaking of such words.
 
Come here. Ipomoea coaxes, like a god of mockery and punishment. But Raum no longer kneels to any god. Ah to step forwards is to step into any trap the Regent might lay. To remain is to be seen a coward before the Solterran people. No wonder Delumine’s Regent stands with righteous fire scolding through his blood.
 
He might have spoken then but more come. They seep in like ants to a meal. First Senna. He speaks with a forked tongue and everything is as rich as amber whiskey. He drips blood and sunfire where he stands and Raum lets his words hang, he gives him and his words the weight of a moment and then:
 
“When will your righteousness burn you apart, Ipomoea?” Raum asks softly. “When will it become a poison? Does it already taste wrong upon your tongue? Will you truly be satisfied if I died upon that blade of yours? Is this-“ And he points to the Regent’s sword, his words, his ire, his very presence within Solterra, “- the voice of your guilt?  Will Delumine, who has sat and done nothing for Novus rejoice that at last they have done something of value beyond their incessant naval gazing?”
 
 
And now Raum looks away from Ipomoea for Bexley appears like the sun’s gilded lover. He meets the girl’s gaze in time to see her wink with mockery, mockery. Only Acton’s lover would be so bold. Only now can Raum see there would never have been a girl so right for the Magician. Though it would not have swayed the Ghost from his course. She made his brother weak (like the sun is fated to turn all Crows into Icarus).  Raum would have killed them both. He still could but, not yet, not yet, his own grief groans.
 
“Your tears have dried,” he murmurs like an accusation, like sympathy, like he does not care at all. “Acton would be pleased you do not cling to him.” And something feral prowls within his blue, blue gaze. It laughs like thunder and rattles their past like the cave they once brought down, together.
 
Do you still hurt, Bexley Briar?
 
And with no smile in his eyes, nor upon his lips, the king returns his gaze to Ipomoea and ignores the demon that lands with beak and claw and feather upon the girl’s gilded back. He does not flinch as a cry splits the air, as stone dust rises and statues groan for the coming of a second creature. Legion comes with great wings flared. His beak parts and a cry claws its way through the crowd, it scratches, creaking, screeching down the buildings that echo his call. Poison strings, slick and silver, between his parted fangs and his skull shakes to violently loose the azure scarf about his eyes. Yet nothing works that knot loose and the beast settles, his skull tilted avian and unearthly as it listens, listens listens. His muzzle lifts as he towers above his familiar, he reaches toward Bexley Briar and his beak parts, a hiss rips from his throat at the bird stood upon the girl’s spine. For only a monster could recognize a demon.

---

@Ipomoea @Torstein @Efphion @Senna @Bexley @Seraphina

[Efphion]

Before her daggers find their target, the man made of mountains steps in front of her. Her slate blades carve a small path into his flesh instead of the basket. Effy turns her glare upon him, she can feel her fury building. She is unafraid of his size, nor the gruesome maw that appears to be carved from his chest up to his nape. No, she has seen far worse. She has seen the gods when they fall and become corrupt, and what terrible monsters they were. Nor did she flinch at the unsettling interest his red eye held for her. She could feel the unrest in her soul as it peered like the horrible lurking gods, the monsters they became. She had only known fear back then, now her wrath made her former gods tremble. Effy was nobody here, and she wasn't stupid enough to think that. But her fury sometimes felt like it could create whole universes with how explosive it was. Her anger had yet to turn white-hot, for now, she only simmered. The stranger who was handing out fruit, his basket had spilled upon the ground before them all. It seemed almost as though the spilled fruit was to predict the events of today. There would be more spilled than just fruit. The hungry snatched what they could as the stranger cried out about the injustices Raum had thrust upon Solterra. Efphion could hardly believe he could care about them, he wasn't one of them. But she felt little connection to this court, aside from the worship of Solis, and he only replaced Xamis.

Effy did not speak, no she was still simmering until her rage reached a boil. A brown winged beast made their appearance and spoke of peace. He spoke as though this were a diplomatic event, and that it could be salvaged. She did not get her chance to speak before Bexley replied to him. Her honeyed words were enough to make her gag, and her rage bristle in response. Efphion did not forget the blasphemous way she had denounced Solis, but continued to thrive in his court. The very place he created, and she would not have flourished here without him. But her words resonate with her, the woman who is made to spill blood.  "@Senna you are a fool if you believe no more blood will spill upon the ground today. The only questions are now how much and whose blood." Efphion spoke responded to him, though she hated the taste of acid that came in offering Bexley her support. She had heard his name fall from her lips, as she had the massive beast who had intercepted her dagger. Then upon Bexley's shoulders, a strange bird attaches itself to her withers. It emits a terrible shriek and speaks to Raum. It turns its head in a terrible manner, and Effy can feel her rage building. But this time it is because she must make a decision that is likely to change her standing in the court. The question she begins to ask herself is whether her help is better suited to help Ipomoea, or Raum. An outsider who had slowly begun to bring this court to ruin. To help Bexley, a woman who she still believed was a traitor. No better than her sister.

But still, Raum has only succeeded in dethroning a woman she did not respect. Effy had shed no loyalty to this king, for the throne of Solterra felt hollow. It felt empty, despite the body that sat upon it. Bexley next speaks to Ipomoea, she tells him that she looks forward to the song he will write in the future. He must escape alive. Efphion can feel her rage reach its peak, and she has made her decision. The Soleterrans accepted her, though they did not fear her the way that her kin feared her. Raum had no such say. He did not welcome her in from the heat as Eik had done. Even Seraphina, for all her faults, did not cast her away. Efphion decided she would help him escape. Her frenzied gaze fell upon the man from the place known as Delumine. "Run. Run until your lungs burn and ache, and remember why you got away."Efphion then turned to face Raum, she positioned herself so that she was between Ipomoea and Raum. No, the outsider king would have to fight her, and her rage was reaching its peak. It was about to burn like the sun.

---

"Speech"
@Raum @Ipomoea @Torstein @Seraphina @Bexley
<3 sorry for the wait

I COULD BE THE STORM

that tears down everything you hold