Holy water cannot help you now
Thousand armies couldn't keep me out
some say the moon is indifferent to your suffering. some say, the moon is too reclusive, too cold, to find comfort in. perhaps, it's only between those secret hours between deep sleep and not-waking. when streets are empty. when hearts are broken. when the oceans purr a steady hum of recognition, yet still, it's the loneliness that is promised back to you with every darkly, ushering wave. with every retreating dream, that leaves you by daybreak, wondering, who are you.
the moon knows you in ways like this. touching, but not touching. feeling, but not feeling. loving, but not loving. how can you kiss the moon, when she is so buried in darkness and in stars? she comforts you with her silence. in the deep of night, her white burn, is far hotter than any sun. yet still, she lets you gaze. still, she lets your eyes wander over her with intimacy, with hunger. so that you may find peace within her cold embrace. she gives you light, where god has abandoned you. she tells you that you are made of darkness, and the stars and the oceans and the mountains and forests, too; they all whisper in helpless affirmation, she does love me - the moon.
euryale is wildfire in a tempest sea of blue. her misty ribbons hold her close, as the night draws its arms around her like a lover. when she descends the palace stairs, she burns hot, cruel. and like a wicked hurricane, so gracefully does she take the whole night with her in a wicked storm of irresistible violence. her hair flutters in the wind. her curves shimmer with heat. the stars stir with passion for the way silver comets dust her blood-red bodice and dips it in celestial ink. tonight, her blood skin looks almost silver. tonight, she is not flesh and bone, nor sin and hunger and blood-stained sheets; but smooth porcelain, iron. arrow. sword. and when she feels this way, when she feels like winter. she is almost never in the cities of delumine. she does not care to be with them, who linger behind warm homes and hold their families, close. she does not want walls, nor mortals and kings and gods to offer her false revelations. somethings are too wild to love. some lovers, too beautiful to be kept in a cage. euryale is not made for love.
"sometimes, i dream of kingdoms. but instead of brick, i would have bones. instead of walls, i would have forests. instead of a fireplace, and school and church, i would have fur and blood and sacrifice keep me warm. i would sleep beneath the stars and become their religion," she sneers into the woods. her breath, spilling as pale as her curls. into the wild darkness, she knows he is watching. somewhere in this darkness, she knows the devil is there. she turns her face towards the shadows, to where he might linger, and without smiling, "do you like adventure?" she gestures to the forests, to the purring wickedness that stirs like slim hunger between the trees. she can hear death whispering, whispering. and she wants to run, to hunt. to enter places where mortals dare not enter.
it knows her – or he knows her – it is uncertain which unravels when it beholds her, where one becomes the other and it is hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. it knows her the way oceans know the earth, or the dark knows the light, or the way planets in their centurial travel may eclipse one another with unnerving familiarity. if she were the moon – and one were scarce to doubt her gravity, pulling – he were the shadow drawn in the creeping spaces that dreams could only touch. it remembers hunger, vigor, and lust grinding the cathedral of his ribs, the base of his spine. it remembers wildness.
his silhouette nestles in the places moonlight cannot touch – though it strains, warily, filtered through shuddering leaves at the border of the path so that it draws sparks and glimmers from his gold-lined flesh. fireflies gather abreast, and it is hard to say that he is not merely a wraith in this nightfallen court; they too, learn the value of gold as they kiss the sweat from his shoulders and dance along the sharp lines that comprise him. his eyes, like two shallow moons amid a great stygian sea, are not unlike those hovering fellows when he blinks away the woods and fills them with the sight of her.
it is the whole forest that waits with him when she draws her breath to speak, trees swaying back on their roots to settle in cupid admiration. the branches reach for her, the path greets her in silvery clouds of unsettled dust. the thing that is erasmus dreams her dream, that of fog laden forests teemed with feral, sharp things that howl beneath a full moon. and when she draws her invitation to the dark, the dark smiles greedily beneath the weight of her eyes.
erasmus sweeps from the graceless paths beyond, and the moon bathes his contours in cool hues, quelling the fire in his core. he approaches from the mouth of the forest behind her, humming contentedly as he passes the tight curve of her hips, “so may it be.” like unholy prayer whispered into the dark places between them. he draws past her with a wolfish prowl and stops just before her to turn back, as if gracefully extending an arm into the dark paths that wind on, on, feasting shamelessly on her image. “shall we?”
What's a god to a non-believer
Who don't believe in anything ♤♧
07-17-2020, 07:29 AM
Played by
Callynite [PM] Posts: 75 — Threads: 22 Signos: 50
As you begin the pathway, the forest around you seems to come alive. There are birds of every size and shape flitting from branch to branch overhead, vibrant blue butterflies dancing around your hooves, rustlings in the nearby bushes. Perhaps you are familiar with the woods, and they seem peaceful to you; or perhaps every creak of the branches makes your senses jump, and every shadow dancing just out of sight has your skin crawling.
Or perhaps it feels as though the forest is watching you. Maybe the woodland animals are not the only things alive here.
Regardless, as you venture further into the forest, the festival noises are replaced entirely with the sounds of flora and fauna, and the glow of the lanterns placed along the pathway is greater than what little sunlight manages to break through the canopy. It feels intimate here, and whether you came with company or alone, you begin to feel acutely aware of how alone you are walking in the woods.
It is not long before the rustling in the leaves grows louder, and another set of footsteps begin to echo your’s. But when you turn to look, only the empty forest path greets your eyes. The trees shiver, the light in the nearest lantern begins to waver; and from the shadows, a new light begins to shine as a thousand fireflies wander down the trail.
For a moment, they seem to form the outline of another horse. But when you blink the image slips away, and the fireflies swarm together. They drift near to you, almost shyly, cautiously; the wind seems to be holding its breath, waiting, waiting. The fireflies reach out to you like an old friend, their light falling across your face. And then as one they turn, gathering once more into the likeness of a horse. And without turning, without caring for the old man’s warning, they step off the forest path and into the forest. Without the warm glow of the lanterns, they make their own light weaving between the trees, casting strange rays of light that seem to linger too long in the darkness, reaching back to you.
As if beckoning to you to follow.
To continue the quest, you must reply to this thread with your character's choice. There is no word limit, and you can be as creative with the prompt as you'd like! In this round, it seems as though a horde of fireflies are trying to show your character something...
Choices: stay on the path, or follow the fireflies
@euryale @erasmus
(I'm sorry if this is repetitive for you raeym aha)
Holy water cannot help you now
Thousand armies couldn't keep me out
a gusty breeze pushes past her soft, lilac curls. the tendrils move across her face, feathering above her brow with each arachid trace of wind-whispers. euryale knows when the forests whisper for her name. she knows these shadows, and the dark hunger of its ancient caress. when the leaves rustle, she can almost hear their ache, too. they all cry out with a fervent longing. a longing to be with her. when the moon wanes hot silver, she watches him - erasmus - manifest, at last. his image ripples in the eerie, a primordial beast of otherworldly horror. his elegance pours like darkness pours into the world, summoning the night in the wake of his nightmarish void.
"there you are," euryale throws her silky head backwards and laughs, giggling with wicked delight. her laughter is sharp, alluring laughter; like angels and harp-strings plucked from golden mouths, dripping with not of honey, but blood. she sees erasmus, then she sees the fireflies as they play. they dance with sensual magic, but their allure is lost on euryale, for she savours violence. a scowl paints her lips, tongue curled in fierce cynicism. "what the literal fuck?!" euryale's voice feels more like a drug for the tortured mind. bewitching. sharp. utterly feminine. the proverbial sword and shield is thrown aside in a clatter of steel, as disappointment sets like ice in her blood. "i wanted to face ogres, beasts, dragons and fiends, not to elope with fireflies in the woods!!" her ears fold back, she seethes, bitterly; her syllables near shrill, it's almost too serpent across her scarlet lips. nevertheless, with a delicate huff and jaded sigh, the banshee shoulders past erasmus and continues the path towards the fireflies. her hips swing against his chest, lupine tail lashing out once, as she regains composure once again. "whatever, this is fine."
when she laughs, something about its tune reminds him of searing comets and roaring seas, wherein their equal chaos breeds beauty, danger. he watches her eyes, once soft and coquettish, gleam with a violence too distant to taste – but he, it, yearns all the same. hers is a facade of heaven one can only dream of hidden, clouded facets, but never hope to feel any relief from the scathing suits of hell. it recognizes this, as it recognizes the merciless bloodlust of predators, of life, as is the natural way of worlds to consume and divide. it is admirable, the way she undresses her soul but one lacing at a time, but he does not remember how to beg.
it is when her eyes lose the guile of their once fanciful daze that he cares to look on, and thinks on the eloquence of her exclamation. to him, to it, the fireflies are no more than a recurring ghost – they line a stout semblance of another faceless fellow – but they recall him all the same, peering to him from those dimly blinking eyes beset in shade, and he thinks perhaps their glimmering line even folds into a scowl. it is brief however, as they turn to her and shift, and the firelight phantom breaks the treeline with a toss of its head. she is stirring now with much less humor than outright fury, and his brow knits when he listens.
one firefly dances about his ear teasingly, spiraling his horn before tracing its momentary glow over the sharpness of his features. in a swift movement, he belts it with his teeth. its taste impishly reminds him of the feeling of death he had rented, deep in those delumine woods, surrounded by the grey fog and the bleached moonlight, and the grullo foal who laughed into the dark. the feeling still lingers in his legs, cold pins and needles. “fiends, no. dragons, no.” it murmurs, watching the fireflies cascade into the ongoing dark beyond the treeline. “things more subtle, but they aren't worth trusted just as well.”
her frame breaks the monotony between, an image in red, bathed silver by the light of a moon that beats dapples through the trembling leaves of the canopy above. its light dances over his own features, callous, almost inherently cruel, but it cannot help but be softened by a crooked grin when she swings her hips against his chest. when the leaves hiss against her flesh as she follows the trail of beading fireflies that break from the mock-tail of the ghostly delineation, he obliges in following, despite knowing what waits. it recognizes the same hunger for adventure in her, though when he sees that the ghost is waiting for them in the woods, the taste is stale.
What's a god to a non-believer
Who don't believe in anything ♤♧
@Euryale @Official Dawn AccountEuryale and Erasmus are following the fireflies.
also sid -- don't sweat it! i love quests.
07-30-2020, 10:30 PM
Played by
Callynite [PM] Posts: 75 — Threads: 22 Signos: 50
The fireflies bob along ahead of you, leading you further and further away from the beaten trail. And as the trees close in around you, leaves whispering amongst themselves overhead, the lantern-light from the events begin to fade into the background. The shush, shush, shush of the trees start to give way to a murmur of voices, pressing in from the shadows.
The light-horse leading your way breaks into a run.
The forest explodes with color all around you, the birch trees and the maples standing proudly in their robes of red and gold, bright green moss creeping up their trunks. Below them crabapples and cranberries tempt you sweetly, while mushrooms and wildflowers grow along every collapsed trunk. It is all too tempting to pause and enjoy the scenery, or to reflect on the strange noises rustling in the fallen leaves. And all the while the mist billowing like a cloak from the light-horse's shoulders snakes in between the trees, cloaking the ground from view, rising higher, and higher, and higher; or perhaps you notice it right away, and watch it creep forward with distrust.
It curls thickly along the ground, rising up like a wave swelling to meet you. In the blink of an eye it has consumed you, swallowed you and the forest whole, obscuring even your hooves from sight. The air grows heavy beneath the weight of all that fog.
If you kept on despite the fog, you soon realize the ground under your hooves has changed, becoming more wild and unkept as you strayed unknowingly from the path. From within that fog, from all around you, just out of sight - come muffled voices.
Voices you recognize.
Perhaps they are the voices of your friends back home, or your loved ones long passed from the earth. Perhaps they belong to your brother, your sister, your father, your mother; or a childhood friend you’ve long grown apart from. Whoever they are, their voice carries an eerie tone, like an echo follows their words through the fog, calling your name softly, sweetly, longingly. Off to the side the mists begin to thicken, a spectral form standing to greet you. Ghosts you think you recognize pull themselves from the ground and converge around you, shivering, whispering.
But up ahead, you can see a section of the fog parting, a light streaming between the trees, the fireflies from before dancing wildly as if to say this way, this way, we're over here. Perhaps it reminds you of the stranger’s words from before; perhaps it is enough to give you the strength to push through the ghosts rising all around you.
Or perhaps you find yourself trapped, and begin to think to yourself - what’s the worst that can happen? These ghosts you once knew, what harm could they bring?
To continue the quest, you must reply to this thread with your character's choice. There is no word limit, and you can be as creative with the prompt as you'd like! The firefly-horse has led you to a section of mist, as if the forest seems committed to distracting them. Can either character even see the trail under their hooves still? What are the voices whispering to them? Are any of them familiar?
Choices: continue on to the light, or linger with the voices of your loved ones
Holy water cannot help you now
Thousand armies couldn't keep me out
night descends. the blackness deepens. only moonlight lives here. between the shadows. in her heart. along her rose-red curves, that drip of want and criminal lust. the blackened canopies dapple her crimson fur. whispers of moonlight wander along her aching flesh; how they trace, like lovers tracing their bodies in the pitch-perfect dark. she is dressed in silver and red. her blue ribbons flutter by her side like a translucent nightgown. luscious and fertile - elegant dregs of cerulean, whipping themselves in sleek tendrils - that bathe her in the misty likeness of artemis, atalanta, athena. o, the red princess looks like a wild dream. child-bearing hips, full and supple. leading one to wander their immaculate gaze over the iron maiden named euryale calantha.
"right, fireflies. the brochure said 'spooky adventure', damn, how i hate false advertising," she laughs at his response, although it is a bitter-sweet jaded laugh. her voice glitters like silver bells. sharp and beautiful. onward she marches, matching her steps to the rhythm of his heavy male strides. "how about you stop eating the fireflies and just lead, erasmus. can't you see i'm a damsel in distress," her sword destiny is placed back in its sheath; how tentatively it rests along her back. she does not think tonight she will taste blood. no, so she walks calmly by erasmus' side, muttering and ranting under her breath. "even baby spiders would have been more exciting. a million flying baby spiders. fireflies, pssh. what next. butterflies."
The thing that is erasmus bides, despite memory glaring like a beacon in the night: it remembers the firefly colt, the gathering of mist things that jeer and laugh in the dark, sharpening their teeth on a blood moon. It remembers death crawling like ivy up the piston-black bones of his legs, spiraling and whirling through his veins with venomous encroach. But it thinks, as a predator might, as such things that linger in the dark are not so unlike predators, that it would know better than to lure him once more into their throng of ghosts. Or perhaps they will be waiting for him, all firelight smiles and glittering mist-eyes, and the colt will chide the life out of both of them, laughing, a grating sound that slips reality.
When the gathering of fireflies breaks into a run, it is deja-vu, and Erasmus slows his course instead of following. Euryale stirs beside him, and the sound of her laughter makes his skin prickle in a way that begs – hunger, perhaps, hunger is all it knows. Hunger for starlight and soaring things that whirl in the great black unknown, hunger for her, for the air, for the moonlight which drips across her curves like melted candlewax. It does not know love or hatred or anger, though it savors the taste of each from the Erasmus-that-was's mind as fondly as any may, it is his appetite that greets it. It is his appetite that greets her, when he looks to her and remembers the curious way Erasmus's heart once caught in his throat like a wild thing when he looked to her.
Now there is hunger, or a thing that feels like hunger, something that aches for satisfaction in a world that does not know love and romance is pain.
It reaches to grate his teeth along the serrated edge of her vertebrae, teething in each hollow and teasing blood to the surface. Not enough to break the skin – but enough to threaten, to coerce her veins to sing to him, as the rocks and the rivers and the snakes once sang to it. The hunger trembles in his core like a feral thing rocked by a wave, and it rises hot in his throat. “save distress for more terrible things,” it coos, it moans, it growls, it chuckles, thunder beneath the ground. He moves past her and thinks that when his skin passes hers it alleviates the pang in his belly, or his ribs, or perhaps it is the singing of her blood after all that pleases it deeply. And when she gripes of flying spiders, he looks back to her, and a thousand ink blots sail from the nestle of his mane to her like careening spiders, or dying stars drawn to her moonlight web but vanish when they kiss her flesh.
That is when it notices the mist pouring from beyond, and the firefly-thing has disappeared beyond the trees with a buzz or a rattle, and the singing, he thinks, does not come from her blood at all but a graceless ohm peeled from the surrounding forest. It closes his eyes for a moment, drinking in the song deep, but it is a flawed hymn, one that does not pray or harmonize. It is faulted and sick, a depravity that was never available even in the worst moments of ruination. There are more between, but he knows they are not meant for him – not songs but voices, whispers, distant laughter that call to Euryale. The blackness opens ahead, moonlight shifting eerily through the fog, though spectral shapes yearn to shut it out. He looks to her again, but his face is starless as a void. It searches for the words in what mind remains of Erasmus, and gestures toward the break in the fog. “they lie to those who listen. There,” it looks to the waft of moonlight that is thinning between huddled masses of gathering mists, peering through hollows that look like eyes, “we will go that way.”
What's a god to a non-believer
Who don't believe in anything ♤♧
Once again you choose to continue on despite the forest’s tricks, be it out of caution, mistrust, or something else. The voices fade into the background behind you, dampened by the fog, and once again you are alone in the woods. For a while, it feels as though the air is thick and heavy, hard to push on through; the fog drapes you in a coat of dew, weighing you down. No matter how hard you strain, the light remains stubbornly fixed ahead of you, never closer, never further. The forest grows deathly quiet beneath all that fog.
For a while the silver light shines brightly ahead, bright enough to guide you, as the forest grows ever darker and the day ever longer. While the path you walk has been carefully groomed, the forest surrounding it grows wild: vines hang low on the branches, undergrowth presses in against the edges of the trail, grasses and flowers struggle to grow in the hard-pressed dirt. They scratch at your sides as you walk past, like fingers reaching through the fog to tug at your mane. Perhaps you still find beauty in it all, in the vibrancy of the flora as it attempts to take back this path. But perhaps there is only a whisper of suspicion in your mind, in knowing the forest does not seem willing to let this path continue-
Perhaps you don’t notice it beginning to lessen at first, the chains of mist shackling your legs loosening their grip. But slowly, slowly, the fog begins to fall away bit by bit, ribbons of white rising into the sky.
And yet, it is almost easy to miss the split in the trail. It turns sharply to the east, snaking away into the trees. Perhaps you follow it without question or doubt in your mind, without realizing the way a fallen tree seems placed perfectly just off the trail. Or perhaps you notice right away the hoofprints leading around that fallen tree, and pause long enough to see a gap in the foliage that looks suspiciously akin to another trail, however overgrown and wild it may be.
Past the fallen tree, the new trail is drenched in moonlight that caresses each leaf and petal with all the tenderness of a mother. Dust motes and specks of light dance along the overgrown trail, beckoning to you.
You turn back to the pathway you were already on, and find it drenched in darkness.
To continue the quest, you must reply to this thread with your character's choice. There is no word limit, and you can be as creative with the prompt as you'd like! The two continue on through the mist to the light shining through, only to find that it is unnaturally bright moonlight highlighting a new path veering to the side. The path they followed continues on straight ahead, but is now drenched in darkness.
Choices: take the moonlit path or the dark path
@euryale @erasmus
A note: this will be the pair’s final choice to make! Choose wisely...
Holy water cannot help you now
Thousand armies couldn't keep me out
as fate would have it, they are bound together, forever, she realizes. maybe their relationship were not as genial as husband and wife, but surely she finds in erasmus, an eternal guardian and everlasting friendship; a relationship euryale values more than even marriage.
euryale calantha is drawn to him like a flame is drawn to gasoline. each desires to ravage one another. each desires the fever dream. when erasmus runs his lips - and sharp fangs - along her spine and teases the flesh there, a wickedly soft chuckle falls from her lips. the feeling of her blood is searing hot, when erasmus runs his teeth along the row of her spine, nearly piercing flesh.
"enjoy the taste?" a playful hiss leaves her mouth. she teases him with a wild, girlish grin. she is utterly amused, further amused still, when his aether spiders come crawling all over her crimson flesh in their little shadowy armies. their little spider legs twitch erratically upon her skin; scaling her sides like whisps of smoke - before dissipating in the moonlight.
euryale slows her pace, striding beside erasmus. suddenly out of nowhere, she starts to hear voices. they weave from the forests, eerie voices of war, of wrath. she feels a malevolent presence bearing down on her. "do you hear that?" she nudges erasmus with her muzzle, begging him to stillness.
