The sea becomes a stranger to her. Mother turns on child. Transforms to something dark ash-blue and cold. So cold it feels like needles and her knees ache like trees being torn from the earth. From the depths of the dark, cold water, strange shapes take form. Like nothing Anandi has never seen. Like nothing she ever wants to see again.
She can make out the shape of writhing tentacles. Suckers the size of her face, hooked teeth around the edges like hungry hungry mouths. All the kelpie can do is float there and stare, green eyes made saucers of shock and awe and fear and fascination. And then the waves take her. She screams her rage into the dark water, nothing but bubbles among more bubbles, and the froth of the waves tumbles her gracelessly onto the island that is quickly disappearing.
Anandi does not know how to run away. It is not a message encoded in the twisted staircase of her DNA. But she knows how to fight, how to survive, and so step by step she fights her way across the island, over the bridge.
All the while listening to that lush, pulsing lullaby, and thinking about death.
A N A N D I "Please,” she said, “you’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like.
I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else."
bloop
STAFF EDIT***
@Anandi has rolled a 4! They have been awarded +3 exp.
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
Once, when the future seemed only to be a grey long-winded surprise(!) with a dull dark drop at the end, or maybe just a sign: game over. Before that gnarled road straightened, widened, inclined. Before the grass began to grow, dewdrop sweet and heavy, so so heavy with all the words love won’t let us say. (and the trees followed, with (of course) the sea breeze whispering in their loving arms shhhh shhhh shhhhhh)
Now, he does not even think of it. He turns and he leaves the island and he does not look back. Only forward, to the future, to his green pasture. To his small, humble, wonderful life and the woman that holds it all together.
He does not even wonder what would happen if he stayed.
E I K
STAFF EDIT***
@Eik has rolled a 2! They have been awarded +250 signos.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
The island sinks beneath him. The land falls away as he leaps from wicked sand onto slick obsidian stone. Horses scream around him, but Tenebrae is fleeing. His limbs eat up the distance of the bridge. Yet it twists and it bucks like a freshly saddled youngster and his hooves scrabble for grip.
The sound of a thousand racing hooves ricochets like laughter through the air. It clacks with a fierce beat. Oh all the world is recoiling and thrashing and the mainland seems to drift further and further out to sea.
Waves roar their hunger, they spit their saltwater greed upon those who flee. The ocean hunts like a predator, crashing down and sweeping horses away in one fell swoop. A wave crashes across the bridge, it drenches Tenebrae as he runs, yet he does not falter, but push on, harder, faster, until even his lungs begin to cry out with their strain.
There is no shadow magic that can rid him of this horror and he vows that he will not die here. His death is for Caligo alone and the stallion drives on, wild and determined. He leaps at last onto the solid turf of the mainland. Sand sprays upon the moonlight of his limbs and he does not stop until the beach is below him and the cliffs raise him up high, high above the ocean. Only then does the Disciple look back and witness the carnage of wild magic.
- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
STAFF EDIT***
@Tenebrae has rolled a 1! They have been awarded +2 exp.
She has lost the relic. It was so close and yet, she was unable to capture it. Thankfully, Erasmus has captured it and it will be taken back to Denocte. Unfortunately, Katniss does not know Erasmus well, she does not know if he will use the relic for good or for evil. It was supposed to be hers. It was supposed to be set aside and used only for good, not for the greedy nature of man. But she had failed.
That feeling of failure is rooted deep into her bones and Katniss cannot shake the feeling that she has let her court down. She has not done enough. She fears that she has displeased Isra, even know she knows that she has not.
All of these feelings are interrupted when the trees begin to crack. It captures her attention and tosses her thoughts aside. Eyes look onward as she tries to see just what was making the trees crack and bend, falling over and landing on anything that is beneath them.
There is a heavy sound of footsteps as animals begin to flee, coming towards her in a mighty stampede. As they get closer, the ground begins to shake. It is only a soft vibration at first, growing into a mighty earthquake. As soon as the animals break through the tree line, Katniss knows this is her time to leave.
Feet begin to pound the sand, pushing her forward and towards the bridge. There are others fleeing, others trying to escape the waters as they begin to swallow beaches. A rift parts the ground in front of her and as she comes towards the edge, she takes a mighty leap, throwing her body over the fissure. She lands quite ungracefully, the shaking ground making her landing anything but graceful.
And then she’s on the bridge and it too is moving. The whole island is angry and upset, the tremors are violent and the cries of the animals even louder. And as Katniss flees for her life, all she can think of now is Kibou and how she must get back to him alive.
STAFF EDIT***
@Katniss has rolled a 6! They have been awarded +600 signos.
Rhone stands on the beach, his eyes overlooking the waters as he reflects quietly on the relic hunt. The bear made of butterflies will haunt his dreams for quite some time, he is sure of it. But what he will always remember is the way he tried his best, even though it was not quite enough to secure the relic. He had done his best and that was all that mattered. And now, as he stands on the beach, the salty sea air hot in his lungs, he is content.
But that contentment is only temporary. The island begins to move. The trees begin to break, falling towards the earth without any regard to what might be beneath them. It hurts his heart to see the trees that were once so mighty and tall, withering to the ground.
But he does not have a lot of time to reflect on this. Because just as soon as the trees begin to fall, the ground begins to quake and the ocean begins to rush forward. In no time, his hooves are covered with sea water and Rhone knows in his gut that the island is sinking. He wastes no further time, turning quickly and beginning to follow the others off the island and towards the mainland.
He does not stop. He does not look back. He only powers forward, even though his lungs and his legs beg for respite. He knows that if he stops now, he will die. And so, he continues forward, ignoring the way the bridge begins to move. He must get to safety. He must survive.
STAFF EDIT***
@Rhone has rolled a 1! They have been awarded +2 exp.
Sloane is not at all upset when she does not win the Relic. Sure, the knowledge that she could have gained from it was great, but she was not all about the actual fighting that had been involved. Sloane wanted no part in a physical fight, and so she had left with dignity and without looking back. Someone would inevitably win the relic and she had no intention of sticking around to see who actually had taken it.
Sloane was already on her way back to the mainland, having no other reason to be on this island anyway. But when the ground began to shake, the animals began to stampede, and the ocean began to swallow up the island whole, Sloane wasted no further time. Her lazy pace picked up incredible speed, legs propelling her towards the bridge."Fuck this place, I’m done." She would not stick around to see what would happen to the island. This place was cursed and she would much rather spend her time on her own private island in Delumine.
Feet propelled her forward, quickening their pace until her muscles began to ache and burn. Sloane did not look back until she was over the bridge and onto the mainland. Only then did she turn her head to see the island swallowed up whole by the ocean. So much for that. And with a simple huff, Sloane made her journey home without a second thought about the island.
STAFF EDIT***
@Sloane has rolled a 3! They have been awarded +300 signos.
The island is dying, she can feel it in the earth like a lion might. Fable can feel it in the tremors of the sea, the way sharks streak by him driven on not by the terror of a dragon in the sea but by fear. They can both taste in the air, the way it tastes black even when it should be colorless.
And she knows she was supposed to be home in her castle with her children waiting to be home.
She knows she shouldn't be here where the end of one world is meeting another.
But she's glad she is when the bridge starts to buck like a willow branch in a storm. She's glad she has all this wanting magic in her blood (and all this terrible rage, rage enough to kill all the gods). Fable takes to the sky with a bellow, plucking falling horses out of the sea and the air over and over again. He hardly lands to drop them on the shore before taking off after another.
And Isra is there on the end of the bridge with fury in her eyes and god-magic in her blood. She's bellowing at the bridge and fighting with it to become daisies and soft bluegrass and ivy thick enough to walk on. It's fighting hard and fast but then so is she. Surely she has more anger than the island, more motivation not to break and sink back into the sea.
The island roars like the volcano did not too long ago, and Isra roars back.
Not this time, she says with the lash of magic and the gnash of her teeth. Fable with his massive wings echoes back in the same monstrous sound, never again
“I am hungry. And I promise myself that one day I will watch them all burn.”
STAFF EDIT***
@Isra has rolled a 2! They have been awarded +250 signos.
Everything happens at once. Time had ceased to exist; but in a hairsbreadth moment, when a large striped stallion grabs the relic, the sun shudders in the sky and the world around them begins to collapse.
Boudika does not reach the relic. In her striving, her yearning, she falls short and feels the shifting sands beneath her hooves. It does not take long for her to realise the End is unavoidable, and her bargaining chip may have been her life. She does not want to think too harshly as to whether or not she had gambled too steep a price—she runs past where the relic had been, bursting through the trees and out, out, out, but everywhere she finds the island is breaking beneath her, and just beyond the reach of her long and powerful stride the sea gleams like a savour.
The waves do not crash as she had expected; instead they swell upon the beach, engorged. It is as if they are gnawing at the island and after a moment the red mare begins to realise that they are not rising, but the very earth beneath her is sinking. Great chasms of sand open up and she leaps around; in her fury and her flight she finds herself running among a small gathering of strange and magic creatures.
A wildcat with antlers and faceted black opal eyes snarls as she passes, and nearly lunges—but then a tree crashes atop it, and yowling it is left for dead. Horses, deer and gazelle, wildcats and gemstone birds—all overrun the fallen, all push out toward the sea. Boudika discovers chaos at the disintegrating bridge and, already, monsters swarm where great chunks fall off into the sea. She tests her luck, surging to the forefront of the crowd. She makes it to the bridge, barely, and finds herself lunging from rock to rock while they remain atop the water.
When she had first come to the island, she had been stranded there for days; afraid of what it would mean to leave. And now the water calls to her as if to save her—where once it had been her sole fear—and when Boudika misses her stride and tumbles into the waves.
Somehow, she is not immediately torn apart by the writhing sea-monsters. She struggles for a moment, and then instinctively begins to kick toward shore, discovering a strange fluidity and grace to her movements—her lungs fill with the water and she hears the islands heartbeat throb far, far beyond.
She has never seen such terrifying sights as dragons and tentacled leviathans; there are long-necked, long-teethed sea-serpents and a plethora of strange, prehistoric beasts. Boudika is surprised to see them tear at one another, as if the islands beating heart has begun to drive them mad—she does not linger, and instead she embraces her newfound nature and pushes toward the shore. She can taste the blood in the sea and she wonders, if perhaps, everything is dying. But that cannot be, because
the sea is singing, singing, singing,
and it is a song of life, and death, and—
she cannot explain it.
Boudika stumbles to shore and her legs do not want to belong to the land. The air enters her lungs and it tastes foul. She stumbles, and seashells break underfoot, with saltwater streaming from her flanks and hair. There is something amiss; yet everything is sharper, everything is brighter, and it feels for the first time in a long time as if perhaps, perhaps, she did not need a favour from a god. Something surges within her as wild as the collapse she has left behind; something surges within her that reminds her of the wildcat as it ran, and she shakes the water from her head like a dog. Then, Boudika screams.
It is a keening, piercing call—and it does not belong to an equine but instead, to the sea, to a water horse.
She keens, and keens, and keens, and somewhere her heart aches for an answer. She thinks of writhing water monsters and wonders if Amoraq made it out alive. She wonders what favour she would have asked a god and decides, strangely, that this is it. Her teeth taste like copper, and her keening cry reaches a crescendo, heightening, heightening, until she lets it break off as if waiting for an answer—
Boudika feels the tension, she thinks there is an answer, there is an answer, waiting to draw breath, but the silence stretches out and out and out, and all she hears is the sea against her heels going
I THINK YOU WILL CATCH YOURSELF ON FIRE BEFORE YOU REALISE THAT EVEN YOU CANNOT CONQUER THE SUN. REBELLION LOOKS WELL ON YOU; LIKE A RED COAT OR THE GILT GOLD BURNISH OF YOUTH.
He had come to watch the End of Something.
Orestes does not know what the End entailes.
How could he? So entrapped in Solterra, in the desert, and even somewhere beyond in the sea—
He had had no time for island ventures.
How was he to know what this Something was?
Now, standing on the beach there were many things he does not know, watching the collapse, watching the finality of magic that has decayed. The game is up!
Orestes’s eyes follow the distant shadows of birds as they abandon the dense, dark canopy—but many of them appear to turn to glitter or sand at the height of their escape, just as their wingbeats become confident and assured in their survival. There is something crudely wild about it; something that looks like a god’s laughter would, if gods laughed in some distant kingdom and that laughter had a shape.
Oh, and weren’t they laughing?
Weren’t they laughing?
He turns away before he can ever know that there is a red mare running, running, running.
He turns away before he can ever know the End—
He turns away before she swims ashore,
dripping wet,
singing to the sea.
After all, somewhere far from this twisted magic there is an End to a story he was once a part of, but no longer knows to read. And for him, his heart is calm and swelled with sentiments for a city beneath a burning sun that needs him to save it. If he had waited—what if he had waited—
Orestes does not know.
He does not even think to ask what if, and as he turns from the beach and the pandemonium, he begins to hum some mild tune from a life he is forgetting. All the while the sea shudders against the shore and the island sinks and the strange creatures dissolve to sand and brine. He hums as a chestnut mare breaches the waves with a mouth full of shark’s teeth and keens out a sharp and poignant song somewhere he cannot see, because he is already past the beach, he is already returning to the desert—
But that is when he pauses. It is when he hears a song he once knew but cannot remember the words to. It is when he hears a sound so poignant, so aching, that he feels as if perhaps he had known the answer to it, once. He feels a chill go through his body despite the sun overhead. The sea is out of sight, but this does not keep him from glancing over his shoulder toward the direction of the magic island and the shore. There is so much dying magic in the air he feels, for a moment, as if he too is dying again—his jaw slackens and a desperate part of his heart wants to keen back, but he breathes in
and
and
and
the only sound that escapes him is a sigh.
Orestes turns away. It is all he can do.
He walks back to Solterra and that cry
echos
echos
echos
inside him.
Pimrsi @ deviant art.com
STAFF EDIT***
@orestes has rolled a 1! They have been awarded +2 exp.
Mateo thought it would end like this. All horrible and corrosive, all terror and monsters and sinking sinking. A slow violent sinking. He isn’t happy about it, but there is something satisfying about being right– not that he would ever gloat about a thing like this, not out loud.
The island is sinking back into the strange depths it came from, the relic has been claimed, and there is nothing left here for the pegasus. Nothing but a story that makes his heart too sad to weave into song. It is too easy to turn away from it, to turn North where home from here is just an emerald green speck.
As he flies his large black wings beat in tune to the wailing of the drowning island. The sound is violet-grey and clammy-fisted. He cannot wait to be back to his simple, carefree life, away from this terrible, wild unknown. Back to his god and his songs and his books, and all the other people and things which never hurt anyone, or at least never wanted to.
STAFF EDIT***
@Mateo has rolled a 4! They have been awarded +3 exp.
