Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.
An unusual silence hung over the world. In many ways it was like everything was sleeping, dreaming, except-- it was terrible.
This silence lacked the restful heaviness of sleep. There was no slow, steady breathing, no rise and fall of the chest. Nothing at all to mark the passage of time except the beat of his heart in his ears. His oldest companion. But (it seemed to him) even his heartbeat was so still and quiet that he questioned if what he was hearing wasn’t just a memory. It was certainly not a dream. There was no dreaming here, just as there was no sleep. Only that terrible stillness and a feeling that grew and grew, ravenous and anxious.
And as the unnatural silence grew, and the heat of the sun wore down the firm edges of reality, all those still alive (still awake) circled round the island’s heart. They circled in a way that was by no means perfect-- some of them with an orbit so wild it was almost completely without pattern-- which was to be expected, for in nature there is no such thing as a perfect circle. But their loops and ovals and halos, their paths, for all their differences, led them to the same place.
The relic.
Overhead a dragon beats his wings like battle drums. There is an unspoken disquiet between them, man and dragon. A shared restlessness that makes Eik stamp his hooves in the glittering sand and wish he had wings to beat and a horn to carve. All he has is magic, powerful and useless as ever, and with it the silence is full of words-- thoughts-- feelings. Fear and excitement, hesitation and an eagerness that almost reminds him of lust.
Is it the relic that is thinking of blood and power and rootless magic?
Forward, the crowd moves forward, just one horse at first, as all things, but then more and more, ants swarming a fallen crumb. Eik hesitates. (I don’t want glory, or power. I just want peace) But someone bumps against him in their rush to claim the relic and before he knows it he’s rushing forward too, keeping his attention wide like a net, knowing that absolutely nothing here is as it seems, least of all that relic, lonely and wanting and laughing, he hears it now, do the rest of them hear it too?
Laughter.
When something’s let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve
Drama llama Eik is staying
STAFF EDIT***
@Eik has rolled a 3! He has been awarded +200 signos.
Time makes fools of us all
08-29-2019, 07:35 PM - This post was last modified: 09-06-2019, 01:22 PM by Random Events
She can see the way the hoof prints begin to lead a path deeper into the forest. For a moment she lingers back, wondering what she should do. Should she follow the foot prints in search of the relic, or should she stay. There is a part of the warrior that knows her duty is to protect Denocte. Part of that Duty inevitably means ensuring the safety of those that she protects. In order to do just that, she needs to fight for the relic. She needs to be the one to ensure the safety of Kibou, of all the citizens of Night Court. Not only this, but to refuse to pine after the relic, she can be seen as nothing short of a coward, unwilling to take the risk. No Champion should ever appear weak. But then there is a part of her that knows it is dangerous, that she has something more to live for now. Kibou needs his mother to teach him. He needs to know how to be a medic so that he might follow in his father’s footsteps. Katniss could not do that if she were dead. And then she realizes why warriors are not meant to have children.
But in the end, she knows that Night Court will protect her son, even if she is no longer on this earth to do so herself. If her life is taken, she cannot help but grin at the thought that she might be reunited with Metaphor again, that she might one day feel her heart whole again.
And so, the silver black mare steps into the dense forest, intent to follow the crowd and the hoof prints. She can feel the way the vines tug at her feet and she is careful not to trip. Head hangs low as the canopy threatens to pull tufts of hair from her mane. But she continues, knowing that she must press on. She must continue forward for the safety of not only herself but of Night Court. She cannot let this relic fall into wrongful hands. She needs to ensure that it is not used irresponsibly.
By the time she comes to the clearing, she can see that she is not alone. There are many gathered, many faces from her own court. Camilia, Morrighan, August, Eik, Kassandra, amongst other faces that she has not met. She can see individuals from the other courts too but she knows that they cannot have the relic. There is no one she trusts more than herself.
So when the others step towards the relic, she too steps forward. She has to fight. She has to try.
Katniss is staying.
STAFF EDIT***
@Katniss has rolled a 1! She has been awarded +1 EXP.
08-30-2019, 06:23 AM - This post was last modified: 09-06-2019, 01:23 PM by Random Events
He stands on the island, feeling the way the ground shakes with anger, the way it begins to come alive after it had seemed to stand so still for so long. He watches with curiosity as the waves threaten to crash, the trees threaten to fall. But there is something curious about how the island is coming awake. It is almost as if it is coming awake but not yet completely letting go.
And then the hoof prints appear and he does not hesitate to follow. He does not know where they lead, but there is a part of him that wants to follow it, to see where it might lead them. Never does it occur to the stallion that it might be leading him towards his death. Never does he wonder if he might make it out of this alive or altogether changed. He simply follows, content to just see where it would lead him.
The underbrush is thick, the vines grasping his legs and pulling in the opposite direction. It terrifies him to think that he would never be able to outrun anything in this forest. The brush too thick, the air too stagnant. But he knows he’s not alone. To his left are others, following the same set of foot prints. But where do they lead?
His questions are answered just moments before and he looks out at the clearing. Upon a pedestal is a beautiful item, the relic, he assumes. He has no need for relics, no need for power or the chance to prove himself. But there is something that keeps him from turning around and heading straight back to Terrastella. He knows that this relic could potentially be used for greatness, but it also has the ability to be used for evil. There is a part of the tender stallion that knows he cannot allow such a relic to fall into the hands of someone evil. He knows that he must try, if anything to ensure that the relic is not used to hurt others. And so, as others charge forward, so does he.
Rhone is staying.
STAFF EDIT***
@Rhone has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +150 signos.
08-30-2019, 06:31 AM - This post was last modified: 09-06-2019, 01:23 PM by Random Events
Sloane had always been a creature who thought of only herself. She never once cared how others felt about issues, how what she might say or do may hurt them. She didn’t care if she overstepped bounds or said words that broke the soul. She was a rough sort of creature, someone that people had a hard time getting to know or befriending. Sloane was a lone wolf, always had been and always would be.
But there was something that had drawn her to the island today, once the island seemed to roar back to life. It wasn’t the thought of a grand adventure or more riches than she could ever spend in a lifetime. Knowing that the relic was out there for the taking was more than enough to get her to return to the island.
Some sought out the relic to look for power in all the wrong places. Some sought it for the protection of others. Some wanted to use it, some wanted to destroy it. Sloane had no use for power or for relics. She only had use to knowledge and secrets. That relic could be sold for a price that many might be willing to pay. She could gain so many secrets that she would be rich with knowledge. She would be able to take down the greatest of kings with slander and rumors. The thought of all that she could do was enough to get her to step forward, to try her hand at gaining that most sacred item.
She followed the mysterious hoof prints, the ones that led her through dense jungle. While she wasn’t exactly a fan of the sweltering summer heat, she knew that potentially, such a risk could pay out well for her. And as she took each step towards the relic, she could not help the way her smile pulled even further at the corner of her lips.
By the time she reached the clearing, she couldn’t help the way her eyes lit up like Christmas morning. The relic was just sitting there, unguarded. And like many others that particular day, she too wanted it. And when everywhere began to charge, so did she.
Sloane is staying.
STAFF EDIT***
@Sloane has rolled a 3! She has been awarded +200 signos.
08-30-2019, 06:38 AM - This post was last modified: 09-06-2019, 01:24 PM by Random Events
And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
—
When the world begins to tremble and shake and the waves leap high on the beaches and the tops of the trees shiver and shed their leaves, Aster goes to her brother and lays her cheek along his own.
“Leonidas,” she says, and the shape of all those syllables is still new enough to thrill her, though it feels as though she was born knowing them, was born knowing everything about her dark twin. The pale filly says nothing more, just lips at a curl near his throat that shows the barest hint of gold in the sunlight that has not shifted in days.
There are other horses along the beach beneath the staring gaze of the stone unicorn, and they are all of them strangers. But when some of them begin to walk after that shifting path of sand and hoof-steps, Aster looks at her brother with their matching golden eyes (like creatures of the islands themselves, pyrite for pupils) and follows them.
It is a difficult path through the thick and silent trees, with no birdsong to warn of their passing and no insect-buzz to hum in their ears, but she is small and quick and moves through the tangles of fern and brush with ease, a spot of snow against dark green. And when they arrive at the clearing she stands still as a ghost in the shadows of the treeline and watches in silence - first the horses around them, and then the object in the center, shining more brightly than the sun.
Noctii had been on the island for days now, though time had become indiscernible. She knew only that days had passed, or rather that any time had passed because she grew weary and had slept until she felt rested. Isra had joined her before the Island, they had raced across the bridge together. Her Empress had asked her to promise to tell Isra's children about their hunt. It was a promise that Noctii intended to keep. The island felt different now as if the atmosphere had changed. As if something big would happen on the island that stole time. The golden maiden wondered if they aged while they were here, or if their age was stuck in this stasis. She wondered if it affected all of Novus or just this place here. It was the trembling of the earth that woke her this day. This time, this sleep. The island called for her to fulfill her duties. As a former daughter of Reth, once she had a task set out for her, she was reluctant to give it up. Noctii had parted ways with Isra somewhere along the way, though she had no doubts they would catch up. Ivory and gold splashed canvas moved across the familiar sands of the beach of the island, Noctii had been too tired to continue on with Isra. It was a wonder that anyone slept at all here, with wolves eager to tear out throats.
The unicorn continued her path toward the center of the island, the place she had been making her way to the day prior. After her previous long rest anyway. She wove the paths that were growing in familiarity with her. Noctii wondered just how long the had really been here. Soon the center of the island expanded before her. Fellow hunters filled the clearing, there were a few here that smelled like the torches of Denocte. Katniss was the only one that Noctii could see that she knew by name. At the very heart of the island sat the relic, it taunted them to make a move. She wasn't sure if anyone had made one already, but if they hadn't, she wondered who would be the first. Noctiilucent drifted like a golden ghost toward Katniss until she came to stand beside her sister of Night. "It just sits there... Waiting. Katniss, have you seen Isra?" Noctii whispers to her, she wonders if anyone will be interested enough to try and overhear her. She wonders if they will think the two of them conspiring to take off with the Relic themselves. No, there is something strange about this relic. It would not be sitting out in the open if it were so easy to claim it. "Something is not right. No relic would lie there for anyone to take. There has to be something else..." She whispered low towards Katniss this time. Noctii did not want to reveal her former days of theft and desecration of sacred temples. This felt as though it could belong to a deity, and that they were just waiting to unleash something upon the hunters. Noctii hunted only for answers, not glory, not some relic. It had no meaning to her, an atheist among the devout few.
I don't know how to pray
'Cause if I did, I'd be worthless, all I know is curses
Caine awakes upon a bed of spongy moss in the middle of a ring of faintly glowing mushrooms, shrouded by a curtain of sinewy vines. He blinks the sleep from his eyes, leans back for a life-renewing stretch, and freezes.
There is a faint tickling upon his chest, like a tiny procession of a thousand centipede legs. He looks down, warily, and yelps.
A line of fire ants marches steadfastly from the dewy detritus up his cannon bones and over the swell of his chest, in a valiant campaign to reach the other side of the blackfurred mountain.
“Saints!” Hurriedly, Caine leaps to his hooves and swabs a balled-up mass (his shadow cloak, which he’d draped sleepily over his eyes to imitate night) over the army of ants. Little red bodies careen down to the plush moss, right themselves with affront, and scurry off to continue their ambitions elsewhere.
“Nature forsake me,” Caine groans, as he checks himself over for lingering ants. He hates ants. He hates insects in general, but ants—something about a writhing mass of legs and shiny bodies and buzzing antennae, topped roundly off with a pair of fierce little pincers, is inherently menacing.
Though—dozing carelessly in the middle of a forest deep in the heart of a magic-steeped island—he decides quickly that fire ants are a more fortuitous alternative than opening his eyes to find himself half-devoured by a bat-winged not-jaguar.
When the sun froze at its apex in the churning sky three days ago, Caine had demanded that the task of investigating the island be assigned to him. “I have been there twice before already,” he’d insisted to Jem, the scarmouthed captain of the King’s spies who was anything but. After deftly spinning an excuse as to why (Raum had been spotted there, hadn’t he? He’d gone to secure his safety, like any loyalty-sworn spy worth his salt.) he’d swallowed the smoldering ball of unease lodged in his throat and made haste for the ominous emerald shores.
He hadn’t found her. Her, being Fia. Maybe she had the good sense to stay away, but a nagging feeling in his chest whispered the opposite. It wasn’t that he worried over her. It wasn't as simple, as cleanly cut, as useless worry. It was the fact that, when he’d seen her last, her jewel-bright eyes...
(had belonged to someone who cared little for her own life anymore.)
Death-touched. His eyes narrow as he recalls the encounter. The boy. The beast. A revolutionary suspended on her last two stilts of hope. (Masquerading as other things, perhaps. Revenge, fury, justice. But strip it to the bone, dig into the marrow, and it was hope. The last emotion to leave the eyes of the dying.)
Swiftly, he combs the tangles from his hair and braids it into a row curving along the length of his neck, neat as tin soldiers. Stepping carefully over the glowing mushrooms—who knows what magic they’d release crushed underhoof—he cleaves apart the draping vines and pauses mid-step when he sees it.
A trail of hoof prints.
His head tilts, lips thinning, a hair to the left. The weight of his dagger digs into his wings before he shrugs off the instinct. No one had walked past him in his sleep loud enough—purposefully enough—to leave such prominent prints. To call Caine’s sleep light is an understatement; without the sticky pull of dreams and its ominous cousin nightmare, he never sleeps deeper than a doze.
The island. Always, always, the island.
The iron tang of magic stinks in the forest gloom like a sword dipped to the pommel in heartsblood. He lifts his head towards the lance of filtered sunlight and swivels his ear to the foliaged beyond.
A crescendo of voices titter behind the susurrous knot of trees. His cloak unfolds behind him with a soft whoosh. Settles upon his shoulders with a shadowy sigh.
There is no harm, he ponders soberly, in following.
Her head turns as the island begins to shudder, it sends shivers to the shore and moves trees as though they are mere toys. Then, as quickly as it started, the world falls back to stillness. Avdotya’s expression twists into a look of confusion and her wild, blazing eyes lift towards the eternal sun - she wonders what it is the gods are doing. It is that curiosity that leads her to follow the hoof prints that appear inexplicably in the sand, trekking into the dense forest through root and vine.
Each step is carefully placed, though her attentiveness is not entirely needed. The path below is already worn down well enough by the hooves of those who had passed before her, all eager to reach what lay at the end of the trail.
Avdotya got there just as the first horse pushed towards the centre of the meadow; she could only briefly catch a glimpse of the relic many sought, as it was blocked by the bodies of the many that followed shortly after. Some rushed, pushing to be the first to reach the object. Others - like herself - hung back, watching quietly to see if it was death that awaited the overzealous.
Indeed, she was content to stride casually towards the relic. Surely it was more than a matter of simply taking the damned thing.
Avdotya is staying~
STAFF EDIT***
@avdotya has rolled a 2! She has been awarded +150 signos.
Three long days, and three longer nights, and Anandi did not eat for any of it. There was not even a single stupid bird left on the island, just sand and shrubs and stillness. And that damnable sun. She would be happy to never see that arrogant bastard ever again.
But there must be some meaning to all of this, some purpose to being here. There must be such a thing as fate that threw Anandi into this long suffering. There must be a reward. So she keeps going, although the sun wrings the water from her and the hunger clenches in her belly and she sees things that aren’t there (shifting sand and moving hoofprints) and feels things that are not possible (a tug, from the heart of the island to her navel, a certainty)
When she sees @Apolonia she thinks it might be a hunger-vision. She blinks and sees the rest of the horses gathered, and she tells herself that surely such a banquet must be another mechanism of her starved-mad mind. She blinks again and at the heart of the twisty-turvy oasis of flesh, she sees it. The relic. She has no idea what the relic looks like but she knows that’s it in the middle of the sandy clearing, playing the light like a harp. The animal in her grows very still and very tense. All the horses flash into focus suddenly, like a dream, and that horrible stillness, and the heat and the light and the sweat, dripping down, and the hunger tearing her apart, tearing her apart like she should be tearing something else apart... It all coalesces into a meaning, a certainty. This is where I am meant to be.
She blinks and Anouk is there, pressed to her temple, cool and certain.
“Anandi,” it says lovingly, “Anandi, get the relic. Do it for me, Anandi. Please?” And just like a knot that tightens and tightens and– suddenly– swallows itself– Just like that the hunger is gone, or at least momentarily forgotten, and Anandi scrambles forward, into the fray, because she would do almost anything for Anouk, and even more for herself.
But it’s too late for that now, isn’t it? He’s in too deep to escape the pull of the relic, he was always in too deep even when he was miles away, safe in his favorite spot at the library where the afternoon light streamed in just-so.
He was bound, they were all bound, to the magic that called. It’s why they’re all here. Even if they don’t rush forward, even if they linger in hesitation or deliberation or plain and simple caution. So he does not run. Instead he takes to the sky, because it isn’t the relic he’s after but the story.
(and if there’s something that tells him that’s not true, that’s not all you’re here for– he ignores it)
With a powerful leap and the eager flapping of his large black wings, he’s airborne, drinking in the action with wide green eyes. Whether it’s his own magic or the relic, as the wind whistles in his ears he sees each of the horses below as a different color. Together they make a quickly-crumbling mosaic, as one after another falls away and moves forward, each at his own speed.
He feels suddenly too far apart to tell the story right and he wonders– is this what the gods feel like? Is this why sometimes they walk alongside man?
Without thinking about it too much, Matero prepares to tuck his wings close to his body and dive into the crowd, into the relic. For this was a story that could not just be observed. It must be lived.
- - -
blooop. Mateo is staying
STAFF EDIT***
@mateo has rolled a 5! He has been awarded +300 signos.
