Mama said, fulfill the prophecy be something greater, go make a legacy, manifest destiny, back in the days we wanted everything, wanted everything. Mama said, burn your biographies, rewrite your history, light up your wildest dreams, museum victories, every day we wanted everything, wanted everything.
The prison is one of the coolest places Charlie had ever seen, and she wishes she could have spent all day exploring every corner of the whole place. “We’re gonna have to remember where it is, Indy,” she says as she trots along, splaying her wings out to catch her feathers on the passing breeze. She definitely wants to come back eventually, but right now they’re on a very important mission.
The third message had been more confusing, as Commander Marisol had read it out to her and her new friend Sirius. ‘One great eye…’ Charlie has spent a lot of time by the ocean and never seen any giant eyes looking out of it. Or one eye, for that matter.
The filly is picturing all kinds of huge beasts. Sea serpents, giant squids, the list of creatures with giant eyes that could look out from the sea is bigger than one would think.
Then there is that line about things that eat but don’t have a mouth. Charlie can’t think of a single animal that eats without a mouth (which unfortunately rules out sea serpents and giant squids). But the harder she thinks about it, she remembers something she heard some of the cadets talking about back at the barracks. A place that had been overgrown by plants.
And then she remembers that one time she got tricked into learning when she went wandering into Fiona’s shop by accident and Fiona decided to teach her about plants. Boring.
But plants eat, kind of. Fiona had said they make food, from the sun and water and other things like that. And if this message is talking about that place, that the cadets were talking about, it’s someplace near the end of Terrastella’s southernmost point.
Charlie has never gone that far down the coast before, but she is more than ready to go there today, as she bounds through the grass with Indy atop her head. “Do you think it’s the place, Commander Marisol? What’s it look like?” The filly glances up at the woman with bright vermillion eyes, wide with a hungry curiosity.
The young pegasus spends a lot of time at the Halcyon’s current barracks and training grounds, but she can’t imagine them having a whole island to themselves. If that’s true, it must be pretty cool, and as they follow the cliffs all the way west and down, down, down, she hopes it’s true. Past the court walls and beyond, Charlie can imagine nothing more exciting than getting to do missions like this all the time.
ll he can think, as the wind ruffles his russet feathers and glides like a spear across the dark planes of his skin, is how strange the land of Novus is, and how unfamiliar its geography is to him.
Small-wings-big-dreams-Charlie guides them south with such surety and confidence, as if each rock and blade of grass that stretches between them and their destination is familiar. A riddle that makes no sense to him reminds her of places she’s been, and he thinks perhaps that is what the mystery-writer may have intended: that a local should find this Prudence, that a Dusk Court loyalist should be the hero of this story.
Sirius, of course, is not looking to be a hero; nor is he particularly eager to don a suit of armor (it reminds him too much of the hood he once wore, the leather that once tied him down.) The excitement that rises that a wave in his belly comes from the chase, from the joy of exploration and discovery; even if there was a treasure chest full of jewels at the end of this hunt, he would have little use for it.
He lifts his head, letting the cool-wind-off-ocean-waves wash over him. It distracts him from the riddle, from the twisted words that still tie his mind in complicated and confusing knots. He can taste the salt on it, and he can’t get enough of it; there had been no ocean where he came from, not for many miles.
But here, the land only stretches so far; waves crash against the shore, a dull roaring filling his ears. As the filly bounds through the grasses, he tilts his head to listen.
“I don’t see a “great eye” here,” he says, looking around the cliffside, “unless they mean the sun? But that’s everywhere.” He gestures upwards with one wing extended.
From the moment you step onto the island, you know that you are being watched.
The Ager is still and haunted as a graveyard. Its buildings are dilapidated by decades of disuse. Overhead the sky is a stormy grey, as if Solis has chosen today to frown down upon you. Sand has risen to swallow up the doorways; knotted trees and vines carpet the walls in thick grey lattices, their leaves and vines breathing in the wind; dust and moss and dark, wet dirt carpet the paths underfoot, bearing the faintest curved suggestion of hoofprints.
Winding, winding, winding, from the beach deep into the forest.
And yet those hoofprints are the only sign of life at all. No scurrying rodents, no wing-beating birds. The air is totally thick and still. As you follow the path deeper into the woods, the sunlight seems to dim and dim until your eyes are struggling to adjust. You pass bones half-buried, dirty scrolls turned belly-side up, rosebushes rewilding the wet earth. You pass buildings crumbling to brick-red dust and beds rotting away into beds of leaves. You pass a place that was once something to be proud of and you see how it has fallen totally into ruin.
And then there comes a place you cannot pass, for Wrath blocks your way.
He is tall, too tall, and strangely gaunt, as though he has not been fed well in weeks; under the oil-slick black of his coat you can see the light’s suggestion of protruding hips and ribs. His wings are tucked against his sides, and they glitter in the not-light. Not a speck of white is found on his skin. Scars rib his shoulders faintly. And oh, when he looks at you, your body can’t help but tremble at the too-green true-green of his eyes, electric as envy, bright as new leaves, and how their verdant shine is uninterrupted by even the suggestion of a pupil.
Like the cloudy sameness of a blind man’s gaze, or the unwavering stare of a too-powerful god.
You realize with a ghostly chill that these are the eyes that have been watching you all along. At every turn. In sleep. From the upturned graves, above the cliffs, deep in the blackness of the salty cave-prisons. Always in the corner of your gaze, always watching as you unravel each clue.
He smiles, and his teeth are far too sharp.
“Charlotte,” he says. “Sirius.” His voice is smooth and silk, cold, pleased in a way that only sounds ominous. “Both children in your own ways, though you would like to think otherwise. How little of the world you have yet seen. And how little more, if I was wrong about you...”
His eyes fall down and stare blankly into the dirt. For a moment he stands utterly still, like a corpse or a statue, unfocused, unfeeling, and then without breaking the odd stare, his lips start to move.
“You are not done.” His eyes start to shake back and forth. “How strange, too, that you have not managed to decide which one of you will take the prize. If you can get to Her. If I decide that I will speak to Her for you.” And his voice trembles, but not in fear. It vibrates with excitement, so hot it becomes manic, pushing at the corners of his teeth. The rapid movement of his eyes has started to increase both in speed and ferocity—now it is nearly impossible to tell where he is looking, or why.
Then abruptly it stops. He stills, and meets their eyes.
“You are standing on an island where live three kinds of mortals.” (You cannot help thinking that he is talking about this island.) “Messengers who are truthful, fighters who lie, and healers, who, like men, may decide for themselves whether they will use their candor. Upon your arrival to the island one of each comes to greet you.”
On either side of the man, another vision of him, identical to the first, shimmers into existence. They are all tall, and black, and still. All their green eyes stare at you with missing pupils.
“I’m Seneca,” says the first one.
“No, I’m Seneca,” says the third.
“No, I-“
“You have two questions,” the one in the middle interrupts. (You think he is the original, but it’s hard to tell; they’re all sort of bleeding into each other, mixing at the edges, moving back and forth and back again.) “Each one of us will answer, but only in ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
“Who—” cackles the third.
“Is who,” the first taunts.
On your way into the depths of the Ager, you run into a black pegasus who claims he will lead you to Prudence--if you're worthy. He poses to you a riddle to test if you deserve Her...
You may not fight, injure, or use any kind of active magic on Seneca, nor is there a way to find Prudence that does not require finding the answer to this riddle. Nothing will happen to your character if they pose the wrong question, but Seneca will disappear for a cool down period before you can come back and try again. As always, tag my OOC account (@redandblack) when you post. You may choose to use both of your questions in one post or pose one, wait for the Senecas to respond, and post again. Either way, they will respond once you have used both questions to tell you whether you are correct.
Mama said, fulfill the prophecy be something greater, go make a legacy, manifest destiny, back in the days we wanted everything, wanted everything. Mama said, burn your biographies, rewrite your history, light up your wildest dreams, museum victories, every day we wanted everything, wanted everything.
Charlie goes until she can’t go any further, where the coast of Terrastella meets the sea and the waves roar in the backdrop of the day. “I don’t think it means the sun,” the girl says, squinting up at the sky. He’s right, the sun is everywhere, and not in the ocean. She turns back to the expanse before them, vermilion eyes bright and focused.
“There!” she says, motioning toward the distant island to the south, “The cadets talk about that place.” There is surety in Charlie’s voice, even though she’s never been to the island before, or even knows if it’s actually where they need to go. The filly seems to realize something, however, and flexes her small wings at her sides. “But, how do I get there?” She glances up at Sirius, dragging one hoof through the dirt.
~~~
When Charlie’s hooves touch the ground again, she nearly bounds forward with excitement. Only Indy, carefully perched upon her poll gives her pause and leaping to explore every inch of the island. The place truly has been over run by plants, growing up the walls and carpeting the floors. The buildings look like ruins from the stories she has been told before, but they can’t possibly be that old, can they?
Her bright eyes grow wide the further in she ventures. There are prints in the sand, as if someone has been here before them—and though Charlie isn’t much for superstition, she has a strange feeling like when she goes down to the docks and knows all the old sailors are looking at her.
When the man blocks their path, she stops, narrowing her gaze at him. Her head tips slightly to the side, as if regarding him. Something about him is strange, and not-right, but she can’t really put her hoof on it. It reminds her of the island, like some strange magic or something. The young pegasus can’t help but look to her companion when he begins to speak, directly, to them both. And wonder, how is it that he knows them?
He says a lot of things, and then he starts to freak out. Like he’s not quite real, or something. Like he is an illusion. Her heart starts to race, but she stands her ground and waits. She has come to far to be scared now, even as she feels Indy nestle down among the wild strands of her mane. And then, he stops.
And then he starts to speak. Her ears perk, and the filly takes a step forward. Another riddle, but at least they don’t have to try and read this one. She stares at the three Seneca’s, who are definitely some weird magic as they meld and merge and separate before her eyes, and thinks. One of them lies, one of them tells the truth, and one of them will do either, if she understands him correctly. But how do they figure out which is which?
Charlie turns away from the three pegasi and toward Sirius, her face scrunching up. The other riddles were so easy, they were just places, and she’s been all over Terrastella. It’s her home, after all. But to figure out if someone is lying to her, or telling the truth? “What do we do?”
It actually makes her think of one time she met a boy down at the docks, when she had been younger. A bigger, older boy. What a jerk he was, he thought he was so great because he was taller than her and stronger than her and worked on a ship. Yeah, right. But he had tried to convince her that the sky was not blue. And it had been sunny and clear that day, so the sky had most definitely been blue. She remembers that day because he had convinced her that everything she knew was a lie, but he had been the one lying. Everyone knows the sky is blue, you can’t lie about that.
Her eyes grow wide with a realization, “That’s it!” she says, glancing at Sirius with a beaming smile before turning back around to face the Senecas. For a moment she looks at them. She has to ask the right question, something that is true, that they can see or know is true, so that when any of them lies about it, it's easy to tell.
Charlie hopes Sirius trusts her enough to do this, and when she looks into those freaky, pupil-less eyes, she knows exactly what to ask. The girl takes in a breath, steadies herself, and then speaks, “Seneca, are your eyes green?” She doesn't look away from them, bright and vibrant as they are, as she asks.
Hope the time jump at the beginning is okay haha @Sirius @redandblack
The Senecas seem strangely calmer now. Still they look past you, not at you, but without pupils who can blame them? Their heads are high, their shoulders proud and chests still unmoved by the regular human desire to breathe.
They only stand there, and look at each other when Charlie speaks.
It’s hard to tell what sponsors the movement. Fear that the question is right, smug satisfaction that it’s wrong—their expressions are cool and only a little tremulous, the eyes unmoving brightly, the spines long and proud. Their acknowledgement of the pair is trivial at best.
he oil-slick-green-eyed stallion before them splits into two, then three - each of them black, each of them the same. Their shadowy wings whisper as they fold them, their cheekbones flash in the sunlight. Sirius’ head hurts to look at the three of them, to look into their eyes that are too-bright and laughing. So he looks beyond them, at the sky and the sea and the dilapidated buildings. But their voice whispers through his ears like silk, and although the strange man’s words are confusing, the soldier-in-training cannot help but listen.
Small-wings-big-heart Charlie is braver than he is, and far more bold. She lifts her chin, and Sirius wonders if it’s the adrenaline from her first flight that fills her so, and he hopes that enthusiasm never leaves her. She challenges the Senecas (are they all named Seneca? He thinks at least one of them must be lying, but whom?), and Sirius watches her. The smile unfolds across her face in a way that reminds him of the sun setting, and how the light spreads out across the horizon and turns everything gold.
“Seneca, are your eyes green?”
At first, the significance is lost on him.
At first, their answers do not make sense.
At first, Sirius feels like he is nothing more than a colt hooded in darkness, who can’t read, can’t fly, can’t think for himself.
Understand blooms slowly, but brightly.
”Yes,” the two say. ”No,” says the first Seneca, and it’s the frown that accompanies the lie that does him in. He smiles at Charlie, a quick, pleased thing. And then he steps forward, his wings flaring at his sides.
“Seneca,” he says, testing the name out on his tongue. But he’s looking directly at the second Seneca, the one one standing between the other two, when he raises his voice. “Are you - is He -“ he points at the middle pegasus with one dark wing, to emphasis his question “- the healer?”
He knows he won’t know whether the second or third will answer truthfully or not. But the first Seneca has already revealed himself as the liar - and it is his answer that Sirius will wait for.
![[Image: 13222742_95oVYzdeR5MVhK5.png]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13222742_95oVYzdeR5MVhK5.png)
