holy places are dark places.
it is life and strength,
not knowledge and words,
that we get in them.
The boy is running, his sister beside him, over endless, endless black. Their feet, he and his sister’s, are staccato on this eternal glass. It gleams into infinity, it sings like metal and its song goes on strong and loud until the edges of the worlds. Leonidas wonders if his mother can hear their feet, if she can hear how they running, running, running, to find her, to stop time - to reverse time and bring back the moment she left.
The relic is there, it gleams and it blinks and it seems to beg him to collect it. The boy strives, he pushes his feet on and on and on - faster and faster but the relic gets no closer. Until it opens like a lilly and bleeds its petals upon the floor. They fall as crimson tears and carpet the ground in liquid pools of crimson.
The boy stops, his small feet skidding along the glass. He reaches for Aster, begging her to stop too. He dares not cross, but others do. The boy huddles close to his sister as figures push past them and step out boldly across the petals.
Leonidas’ eyes are wide as he watches them. Jealousy pricks at his aching heart, he doesn’t want anyone to pick that relic but he or Aster. Those bolder, braver horses step across the petal bridge and the boy blinks away his chances of finding his mother. He waits and hopes that another way might form, that this is just another of the relic’s great deceptions.
stings, still remembering wings, even as he steps out from the chaos. A moat reaches out before them – was that not how they came here? It looks as if it may be flimsy, as if it may break, but the twins are small and fast and he turns to his sister and cries, “Run!” His voice small and shrill as any terrified boy might be. Then he leads her across the terrible moat, skipping and leaping from place to place, hoping each will hold their weight.
She breaks through the glass. Broken pieces brush by her cheeks like the wings of the gilded butterflies that rip themselves from the eyes of the bear. Blood is drawn in lines across her torso, there are a dozen that drip like tears upon her face. Each one stings like a bee. The glass has cut her skin liek the teeth she saw herself possessing in the mirror. Oh she puts that vision from her mind, she dashes in in her desire to reach the children. Why are children here within this wicked island’s game?
The image of herself, of the monster, of their melded bodies making her appear so close to a kelpie. A shudder slips like ice down her spine and the girl clenches her teeth tightly shut. After the children Leto surges, she skitters and slips along the black mirror glass - so akin to the strange mirror she saw herself within.
Onward and onward she pushes, never gaining, never losing ground. The children run ahead of her, the three of them run for an eternity, until suddenly they and the bridge have ceased. The twins have stopped upon the precipice and Leto skids to a halt beside them. Her breathing is heavy and wild. She stands guard beside them, her star-light eyes set upon the blossoming relic.
OOC: Leto has chosen option 2
| "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
Ages yawn as Minya walks. So many run past her, but she does not sway from her steady pace. Her silver eyes gleam, bright as moonlight. She moves like a dancer, as if the word was not so strange around her. She moves as if every piece of this world is at peace.
Minya walks like a woman who owns the island, she walks like a girl toward her pyre with only the feral gleam of proud bravery glinting in her wide eyes. She is the slowest creature upon the bridge but she does not rush. The relic is a song in her ears and she thinks, as she moves, of all ways she could move to its song. How can she bring it to life in dance?
Eventually - it could have been a decade or maybe just the blink of an eye - but Minya reaches the crimson petal carpet. Without stopping, without slowing from her pace, she steps neatly upon the petal carpet and strides toward the relic. Ah, what it would be to have it wrapped around her throat. What delight would fill the aching of her chest.
OOC: Minya chooses option one and uses her iridescent feather to advance from the previous round.
AS HE CROSSES THE BRIDGE OF NIGHT-GLASS, THERE IS ONLY BUT THE SOUND OF CLICKING HEELS AND THE THUNDER OF HIS BEATING HEART. IT IS A COURSER, A RAVENOUS HOUND ON THE HIND OF A HARE – IT IS ELECTRIC, ADRENALINE THRUMMING HOT AND WILD AND O CONTEMPTUOUS; AND BEFORE HE KNOWS IT HIS WALK IS A RUN AND HIS FEET ARE WINGED GRACE. FOR OTHERS HAVE JOINED HIM, OTHERS WHO ARE FASTER, HUNGRIER. AND WHO HUNGRIER THAN HE? BUT THEY ARE LOST TO HIS PERIPHERALS, ENTANGLED IN THE WEBS AT THE CORNERS OF HIS EYES WHILE THEY CANNOT REST ON ANYTHING BUT THE RELIC. FOR WHAT? FOR WHAT? HIS MIND HUMS SOFT, A NEVERENDING CYNICISM THAT FIGHTS THE CAUSE OF HIS RUSH. IT IS TENDER, TOO TENDER TO HEED, THOUGH HE HAS NO ANSWER FOR THE GENTLE VOICE OF QUESTION. HE SIMPLY NEEDS IT. IS A PREDATOR'S RESOLVE NOT SO PLAIN? HE NEEDS IT, THOUGH HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS. HE DOES NOT CARE FOR NOVUS GODS OR NOVUS GOLD, NOT FOR FAME OR THE ALLURE OF FORTUNE. ALL HE KNOWS IS THAT HE HAS BEEN BROUGHT HERE TO THIS POINT, DRUMMING OVER THE BLACK WATERS THAT SHIFT LIKE BARBED BACK SHARKS BENEATH A REFLECTIVE SILK. AND HE MUST HAVE IT.
LO, HIS MIND (IS IT HIS MIND? IS IT THE ISLAND?) PRICKLES AND LAUGHS A COLD LAUGH, SOMETHING THAT ECHOES AS TINNY AND EMPTY AS THE SHALLOWNESS OF HIS EARLIER VOICE, HAVE YOU GOTTEN ANYWHERE FOR IT? INDEED, THE RELIC STANDS AT QUITE A DISTANCE – SHINING, GLEAMING A GRINNING GLEAM, A SMUG THING THAT SEEMS, EVEN AS ERASMUS APPROACHES WITH LONGING STRIDES, REMAINS JUST OUT OF REACH. IS THAT NOT HOW IT ALWAYS IS? O HOW HE ALWAYS WANTS MORE, MORE, MORE. HOW EVERYTHING SEEMS JUST BEYOND WHAT HE CAN TOUCH, WHAT HE CAN GRASP. NOTHING SATISFIES. BUT WON'T THIS? O, GODS. WON'T IT BE WORTH IT? FOR WHAT?
HE SLOWS WHEN HE ACCEPTS THAT HE IS GOING NOWHERE, THOUGH WITH A CURSORY GLANCE BACK HE SEES HOW FAR HE HAS COME FROM THE VINE-TANGLED ARCH. IT IS NEVER ENOUGH, IS IT? PANTING, GRATING MADNESS. HIS WILD EYES WRAP THE RELIC FOR A HOT, SEETHING MOMENT... AND IT SHIFTS. PAUSED TO WATCH, HE DOES NOT MIND WHEN OTHERS COME SCREECHING PAST HIM, SOME JUST AS CURIOUS, OTHERS TOO RAVENOUS TO MIND. BUT HE, HE WATCHES AS IT BLOOMS, AS IT CURTSIES AND OPENS TO REDDENED PETALS THAT PLUCK TO CASCADE ONE BY ONE. THEY LITTER THE GLASS LIKE AN EDGE, LIKE A FINISH LINE, BUT THEIR MINGLED REDS PROVE SOMETHING ELSE TO MEMORY. HE THINKS OF THE SKELETON IN THE JUNGLE AND THE RED, RED FLOWERS THAT SPRUNG FROM THE GROUND DEEP AND PUNCTUATED LIKE DROPLETS OF SANGUINE. WERE THEY A WARNING? WERE THEY A CALLING?
BUT THE RELIC STANDS. AND IT LAUGHS, LAUGHS.
A TWITCH AND HE MOVES AGAIN, AND THIS TIME THE PETALS SHIFT WITH THE BREEZE AND FLUTTER SOFTLY WHEN HOOVES PASS OVER THE LINE – BUT HE STOPS FEET BEFORE IT, AND HE RECOGNIZES THE SIGHT OF THE GIRL WITH HER SWINGING AXE FROM BEFORE. AS OTHERS CHARGE FORWARD INTO THE SPACE BETWEEN, HE THINKS OF THE WAYS IN WHICH GODS ARE MAD AND BORED THINGS WITH A TASTE FOR FRENZY, AND HE GLANCES BACK TO SEE HOW BRIGHTLY THE RELIC SHINES. HE WAITS. BUT O, HOW HORRIBLY THE GLASS BENEATH HIM FEELS LIKE THE SHIFTING GRAINS OF A TILTED HOURGLASS, AND HOW HE DREADS THE LOSS OF A THING THAT IS SO CLOSE HE COULD TOUCH IT.
And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
—
Her heart is beating fast as hummingbird wings and there is a faint coppery taste in her mouth. It is the first time Aster has experienced fear.
Her world - so peaceful, up until this point, the hush of her mother’s belly and the warm eye of the sun staring down at a silent island - is nothing but chaos. Somewhere in the corner of her vision is a bear with butterflies spreading wet wings where his eyes should go, somewhere there is a mirror version of herself and her twin, glimpsed as quickly and brokenly as though they are running through a thick black forest. And everywhere there are other horses, and all the noise that comes with them, and more and more of that tang of fear.
Aster knows nothing of death (and what should the child of an immortal god know?). She knows nothing of magic except that it is power. The filly knows nothing at all except that there is something at the end of all this, something as molten-gold as her own eyes, something she needs as much as she needs her brother’s heart, but can’t say why.
So she runs, down and down a black and gleaming path, too dark for her shadow to follow. She stays close to her brother and wonders about the way her muscles burn with strain and her heart beats like a mallet of bone against a deerskin drum. Do not burst, she thinks wildly, and it does not. (Maybe that is what she’ll remember, at the end of this: how the whole world was mad and her body sang a thousand warnings and she did not die.)
Leonidas slides to a stop. Instinctively Aster follows suit, wild-eyed, pressing her shoulder roughly into his ribs. She doesn’t look at him; her eyes are hungry, devouring the relic and the scarlet petals that fall from its rim. She’s never seen colors so vivid they hurt. She wonders if the whole world is like this.
The scrambling of hooves against glass that yearns to shadow; the yawning maw of a bear; the sound of the wind dusting across flower petals so, so lightly. Yes. His laughter must be the infectious, riotous noise of pandemonium, of souls striving at their fullest toward an unreachable end.
It is the asking in the feverish pounding of her heart:
Is this not the most alive you have ever been?
Boudika runs forever. From her peripherals she sees the shifting reflection of her copper-and-ebony body. She sees the disembodied way her legs and head appear to float above the black of her barrel, her chest, her haunches. She is running into infinity, and beyond. She is running, and running, and running, and what she hears is the striving of her heart, her ravenous yearning, what favour would you ask a god until at last the relic is there, bright and like the sun. Time for her seems still, stiller even then when the sun had held disobediently in the sky and the world froze. Boudika watches the relic as though through some great and terrible tunnel, as though running headlong toward oblivion, and she watches it until at last nothing blooms into something, a something as red as blood, and she watches transfixed as the first petal falls—
Boudika is there. She is standing in front of the relic, or nearly so. A line of flower petals that surround the relic and they lay there, brighter and more rich than arterial blood. To Boudika, they nearly pulse, as though each petal is its own small heart, beating, beating, as her own heart beats. She watches them for a moment, transfixed—and she does not know whether to press forward, or to watch.
In her peripherals, again, she sees she is not alone. Of course Boudika would not be the only equine to make it through the fray and choose to run across the endless plain of black glass. There is something writhing in her stomach and she wonders briefly, terribly, if this is what it would feel like to shed her skin and become something else.
She does not step forward. Not yet.
"Speaking."
Boudika chooses option two if this isn't too late... it's 12:34 o:
The island is writhing beneath their hooves like a wild and feral thing, like it’s trying to shake them off. The sand roils like a wave, peaks flashing in the sunlight as it races towards them. Bits of gold and leaves hang, suspended, in the air; as if all they have to do is reach out and pluck them from their suspension.
Perhaps one of those fighting for the Relic pauses to do precisely that; perhaps they stop and admire how something so calm, so tranquil, can rest in the midst of all this turmoil. Perhaps it is the last thing that horse does.
Path One
For the rest of them, there is no time to stop or daydream, for those blood-red petals are twisting themselves into something new. When the first horse touches them, sweat-slick skin on silk-soft petals, they come crashing down. For a moment all they see is red, like a river of blood is washing over them. And then it clears, and those few who braved it are gone. Only one if them is spared.
And in the background that bear us roaring - or is it the horses, who seem more bear than equine now that they’ve looked into the eyes of their reflections? One by one they go through that almost-mirror, and behind them it shatters. Each bit of glass thens into a butterfly with flame-tongued wings as they fall. They fly away quickly as the roars fade, away from the island, away from the mother and her Relic.
Both paths were a trick - and those who fell for them will blink once as the world begins to change. And when they open their eyes they are back in Novus, scattered like a handful of dust on the wind.
Path Two
Broken magic is all that remains between those who waited and the Relic. Magic and the sand, that has risen up again like a snake rearing back her head to strike. Just behind her the Relic sits, bright and unprotected in the clearing.
The island shudders, and trees all around them begin to collapse. The sand bucks again, one last attempt to toss them back into the sea. The ground leaps so violently that a great rift opens up, then another, and another - bottomless pits that sand pours like water into. Overhead it’s as if the sky is falling, bits of cloud and smoke and strange blue gemstones descending upon them all. The bridge connecting the island to Novus is breaking up, large black stones sloughing off like scales into the waiting ocean.
The sand-snake shudders, and turns to face her remaining contenders.
It is time.
Your character has a choice.
This is the fourth and final round for the relic hunt. The paths leading to the relic were a trap; only those who waited have remained. The relic is there, so close yet so far, with only its mother-snake left to defend it. The island is beginning to fall away piece by piece, and they are running out of time. Now that magic is failing, the snake cannot possibly stop them all - but is it too late?
There is only one choice this round: try to grab the relic. At the end of the deadline, each character will have a dice rolled for a number between 1-100; the character who rolls the highest number WINS!
If your character has an unused mollusk shell, golden leaf, horseshoe, or iridescent feather from a previous round, this is your last chance to use it to proceed. This is the last round, and the dice will decide who gets the relic. For those who do not use their special items in this round, there will be no more chances to - however, you will have a chance to redeem your item for one last prize in the closing replies (details to come!)
Each reply to this thread gives you +1 post in an SWP.
The deadline for this round is October 14th.
To tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk.
Please be advised, tagging the Random Event account does not guarantee a response!
10-06-2019, 09:57 PM - This post was last modified: 10-06-2019, 10:04 PM by Random Events
FOR TOO LONG THE AIR STINGS WITH STATIC – IT PULSES, IT GROANS, ELECTRIFIED WITH MENACE AND A LOOMING COLLECTION OF BAITED BREATHS; HIS OWN SLIPS QUIETLY, A SILENT GRIEVING PANT THAT RUSHES HOT BETWEEN CURVED FANGS AND CURLS AT THE CORNERS OF HIS LIPS. AN ACHE STIRS AS HE WATCHES OTHERS EDGE THE RED PETALS, AND HIS WONDER PRICKLES AWFULLY ALONG THE EDGES OF HIS SKIN THAT BEGS ACTION, ONWARD! AND HE WAITS. A WAIT FULL OF DREAD AND PINING MISERY, AN ETERNITY OF REGRET THAT BARRELS INTO A FLUSH OF FEW MINUTES – AND ALL THE JAGGED EDGES OF THE MIRROR BELOW SEEM TO SIFT AND PRESS HOT BENEATH HIS FEET. ONWARD, IT CROWS. HIS REFLECTION IS DISTANT AND DARK BETWEEN THE BODIES THAT RUSH ON. ONWARD. TO HIM IT LOOKS TOO PAINFULLY MORTAL, TOO AWFULLY RETICENT, AND THE CRUEL MECHANISM OF HIS HEART POUNDS AND POUNDS SO WILDLY IN HIS VEINS THAT HE WONDERS FOR A MOMENT IF IT IS HIS REFLECTION AT ALL. ONWARD. HE PONDERS THE WAY THE GODS FAVOR THEIR DEVOUT, THEIR UNWAVERING SUSTENANCE GATHERED IN BLINDED FAITH. THE WILLING, THE BRAVE. THEY CHARGE ON, DESPERATE AND RAVENOUS. ARE THEY NOT THE CARICATURE OF GRATING ADULATION, THE RESTLESS WANT AND SALIVATING MADNESS THAT KINGS AND GODS BOTH CRAVE? AND HERE HE STANDS, HIS SKIN FEELING TOO TIGHT, TOO HOT, WHILE HIS BLOOD USHERS WAIT, WAIT.
HE MAKES JUST ONE STEP FORWARD BEFORE THE VEIL EXPLODES IN A FLURRY.
A CRESCENDO OF RED, RED, AND THE FIRST SHADOW THAT PASSES THROUGH THE EYE OF A GOD COLLAPSES INTO THE RIVER OF OPIUM RED AND SCATHING BLACKNESS – THE OTHERS VANISH INTO THE CLASH OF MIRROR SHARDS AND BUTTERFLY WINGS. ERASMUS RECOILS, ALL SEETHING SHADOW AND BARED FANGS, RUGGED OUTLINE RECEDED FROM THE VIPEROUS UPHEAVAL OF SAND AND CONIFEROUS GREEN. IT IS TWISTING, GNARLED EARTH THAT RISES FROM ITS OWN ASHES – A SPIRAL IN A CLOUD OF FLAMETONGUE INSECTS, SHARDS OF SHIFTING GLASS THAT GLEAM LIKE PYTHON COILS. CELESTIAL WRATH UNDONE. AND OH, WHAT TERRIBLE FINALITY FINDS THEM; ALL IS CHANGEABLE AND WAVERING, EARTH, SEA AND SKY, AND BETWEEN ALL HE IS A TRACE OF FIRE IN THE GLEAM OF A DEAD SUN. THE GREAT SERPENT LEANS BACK, AND HE HAS ONLY A SECOND TO MUSE THE WAY THE ISLAND'S MAGIC HAD REACHED ITS JAWS FOR HIS NECK. WHEN THE SKY IS A CASCADE OF AZURES AND GREYS AND SMOKE AND TOPAZ, AND THE GROUND BENEATH HIM BEGINS TO OPEN LIKE A HUNDRED HUNGRY MOUTHS, HE REMEMBERS WHAT IT IS TO RUN FURIOUS AND YEARNING ACROSS THE DESOLATE STRETCH OF A BATTLE FIELD. ONWARD. THE RELIC STANDS WAITING BEFORE A CRUMBLING LAND BRIDGE, AND THAT IS ALL HE CARES FOR.
HE CRASHES HEADLONG INTO A THUNDEROUS GAIT – A FANTASTICAL SPRINT THAT LAUNCHES FROM COILED HAUNCHES SPRUNG; HIS PHYSIQUE IS RIPPLING GUILE, RUGGED GRACE TRACKED BENEATH THE LOOMING JOWLS OF A PYTHONIAN TITAN. ERASMUS DOES NOT STOP TO THINK OF THE OTHERS, OR THE FATE THAT WAITS FOR HIM WHERE THAT JEWELED PIECE SITS SPARKLING AND SLICK. HE DOES NOT THINK OF THE MOTHER SNAKE WHO SEES HIM AND THE OTHERS AND FLOODS HER MOUTH WITH SEA VENOM, REARING BACK TO STRIKE AND SWALLOW THEM ALL INTO A REALM OF BRINE AND BROKEN MAGIC. THERE IS ONLY ERASMUS AND THE RELIC HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND. THERE IS ONLY ICARUS AND THE GRATING GOLD HUNGER FOR THE SUN.
I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream // I know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam // And I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem // But if I know you, I know what you'll do // You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream
It's been made clear that the trick to getting the relic is not through logic, but only luck. As the petals come crashing down and turn into a blood red river, it's luck that is on Lucinda's side. For a moment, red is all she sees and she wonders if she's passed out, or if this had all been a dream.
She blinks a few times and finally the red disappears. Many that had surrounded her along the path towards the relic had also disappeared. The once large group of strangers is now down to a handful and the woman hopes that this is the end. When she set foot on this path in the first place, she hadn't been intending to be stuck within this rabbit hole of illusions. Normally she's extremely patient, but her patience is beginning to wear thin.
From the sand erupts another snake which guards the relic. All around them the island is collapsing and cracking. It reminds her of the eruption that caused the island to come into being in the first place, only they are now in the thick of it. Were they doomed to fall? Perhaps the relic itself is an illusion.
But Lucinda does not quit; she's too good for that. Her determination makes her go into a gallop towards the relic with her staff held out in front of her. She feels as if she is going back into battle and perhaps that is exactly what she is about to do. This entire ordeal has been unpredictable, so there is no telling what the snake will do to them. Behind the creature shines the relic, mocking the hunters once again. It seems much closer, but yet so far. At this point, she had to win for her own sanity.
And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
—
Everything is fa l l i n g
a
p
a
r
t.
It is a blessing that Aster knows nothing of the way the world is supposed to work, that she was born beneath a sun hung in the sky as still as though stuck on the end of a pin. If she had any idea of normal, that horses did not cut time with silver knives and vanish, that snakes should not shake themselves out of sand and bears should not wear butterflies for eyes, she might go mad.
Around them the island is sloughing itself like a snake sheds its scales. Black pits open up (where do they go? To the water, or below that?) and the sky is filled with a terrible roaring as bits of blue burst open like overripe fruit. It is too much to focus on, and so the filly of bone-white and gold ignores it (except when she must keep to her feet, when the ground lurches beneath her like the back of a whale) and focuses only on the snake, and her brother, and
the relic.
It shines like the sun, like dying leaves flaring gold, like nothing she’s ever imagined. It shines like the light of other worlds when the seams between them were pricked open by her mother’s dagger. Even when she blinks it is golden-red through her eyelids, and it pulls and pulls her, and oh! How Aster wants it.
But there is the snake. And there is her twin.
She wonders if the beast and its teeth of sand will crumble against her skin if it catches her, or pierce through and through. It is too loud and chaotic to think; she leans against Leonidas and whispers I will go first, and go left. When its eyes are on me, take it.
If she can’t have it, she wants Leo to. (And then they will share it, as they share all things).
Smoke and fog is coming down. It’s harder to see the snake (harder for the snake to see them?) and Aster trembles like a falcon poised for its first flight, eager and afraid, her heart shuddering in its little cage.
