At first, there is nothing. The nothing is a grace unto him, having left the bustle of the festivities far behind – they drone and pipe upwards of jolly things, their tunes fading into their distant meadows. Here, the solemnity is left to the rustling of leaves and the howling of a misplaced gale. Erasmus finds comfort in that – as he does most things that are oft quiet and dark, dark enough to dream. But o! What folly it is, that those dreams do not take flight; they are fettered to reality, and upon each waking slight come plummeting thus. Tonight, it is hard to say whether it is a dream or a vision that calls him to a place. There are voices in the mist, and while shadows shift behind the hoary sight the subject of their nature is much for the imagination.
When he arrives to that grand, leaf-mouthed entrance unto the Viride Forest, an old man sighs.
“No one listens.” he says simply, as if to no one at all. Erasmus does not answer, thereon the point of its vague notion, and moves to the vining web of greenery towered high above. Its thicket is starless, the moon consumed by entangled boughs that shake and quiver with soundless bluster. Each leaf beneath is a crunching and a scattering that seems to all but liven the echoes that climb up the barks of the old trees. And somewhere, he hears a vagrant song as soft as whispers, and checks to be sure the jovial meadow festivals were far behind.
The mouth to the forest gapes and grins, and beyond another step, seems to close behind him. He does not think much to contemplate the livelihood of forest walls that breathe and taunt. Though he does, when he treads softly through the halls of his predecessor's memories, find a familiarity to a particular jungle strung with ruby-eyed birds and shifting black mirror waters. Somewhere within that memory burns a bright hot moon with teeth, and something tells him that these places were an untrustworthy sort, but these things do not reveal themselves to him.
Or so he thought.
He hears the shimmering thing before he sees it – it hisses through the parched leaves, shakes the smallest boughs with its hurried force as though secretary to chaos, exhausting speed for stealth. Just as he steels himself, muscles recoiled like a guarded viper, the great luminescent bulb bursts through a plating of browned leaves and pauses where it finds its audience, bobbing smoothly in suspension. It hovers for a moment, swirling like a resetting compass, and before it can be touched careens back down the path it had previously cavorted. Erasmus, or the thing that is, has not accustomed himself to the more hostile elements of the Novusian continent, and therefore loosens freely from his tight bound muscles to watch in spectral wonder.
It pauses once more a ways down the path, bobbing pleasantly to itself once more, and it speaks in a way without words that bids him down the narrow road. It is dusty and cleared, save for the occasional imprint of a tensed hoofplace that sank in softer ground. Erasmus obliges its cordial welcome into the darker depths of the Viride, none the wiser.
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
The forest unfolds about him in leagues of depth and color; possessed by its inner graces, the dark ebbs and flows with the chattering of songbirds, the buzzing of crickets, and more and more. In this pandaemoniac fervor, he tunes an ear to the quivering leaves that shuffle at his sides, toed by the path that winds on and on through the dark. The orb above, a hallowed small moon, bobs contentedly back up the trail as he follows, and there is little that crosses his mind but the oddity of the entire engagement, the presence of these things which Novus reveals to him in slow succession. It is not entirely off-putting – as a thing who has made rocks sing and sheets of ice burn, who has seen each star blotted out to darkness and has teethed their dying heat. As a thing which ran as the blood of worlds, of magic, of life, and ultimately, of death. He waits for the coming storm with reverence.
But here, in the orchestral bounds of Delumine, he wonders if the forest waits with him.
Though it cries out with the songbirds and dreams with the crickets and bellows with the pond frogs, it holds its breath as Erasmus keeps to the path, following beneath that soft lofty glow. It waits and follows curiously at his heels, leaves reaching softly for his horns, fireflies riding just above the heat of his flesh. It is tender, but he knows even a predator is tender when soft-padding the crisp leaves; he sees it at his back, the manner in which the forest prowls and smirks at this thing that does not belong. It is not tension that bids him, though it is palpable with every twitch of golden leaf and the way it catches its breath when he, daring so, pauses to look into the dark, deep wood and its paths beyond his own. For a moment it is as if even the crickets draw their strings and the birds quiet their chorus, looming in wonder that he may stray.
When it resumes its same breath, it is as though it walks with him through the dark. It has grown tired of compliance, of obedience, of each wanderer drawn steadily down its winding paths without question. It looks to Erasmus with a spectator's curio, and grins a chain of fireflies. When he gazes, they summon together a gentle communion of glittering light, their buzzing soft and distant droning, and though he stops on the trail to watch the small moon carries on. It casts a pale light on the low-hanging boughs, casts a glare over the sparking of fireflies as a few jut and stutter their flight beneath it when it passes, and on, on, on. It does not stop until it is far ahead, just almost out of sight as it rolls itself slowly beneath the shifting red-gold of an elm limb. The fireflies between them congregate and dance, and at once breathe into another life.
The line of their silhouette darker than the great forest that surrounds them, they draw together the dim glowing form of another figure, another vagrant lost on the forest path. Erasmus does not question its odd nature – the Erasmus-That-Is cannot discern what is unnatural between the strains of distant universes and the one his Erasmus-That-Was can recall. He only knows that Novus is a shifting realm of shuddering oddities itself, and tends to unravel into delightful mysteries. A more sensible creature may run back down the path of which it came, or simply watch as the thing looks to him with expectation then pivots carelessly, drawn into the shadows that crept along the path. A more reasonable fellow accustomed to the dangers of Delumine may watch it in wary, but continue on to find that pale faerie light that waits and notions: choose.
The forest, when the figure descends into its darkness, takes a momentary breath. He can feel it in the way the lanterns creek on their arbors and the way the saplings sway impatiently, the manner in which the crickets and toads chatter back to each other now, halting their previous melodies. And perhaps, it thinks, reaching deep with prying fingers into the mind that was, that Erasmus may have been cautious enough to continue on, ignoring that figure as it looks to him now and notions: choose.
The Aether stirs, humming softly to itself in wonder, and without a second question takes to the shadows that have held stead along the path. And when he follows that firefly silhouette, he knows the forest has quit holding its breath.
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.
Through the forest it races, fallen leaves and forest soil shuddering in its wake, shedding fireflies like wishes. More and more fireflies appear, and form more light-horses that crash into the darkness and send the shadows fleeing. And with them, the warnings about the forest melt away when you follow.
But soon the trees fall away, and in the midst of a clearing the light-horses slow and turn to face you. Silver grass waves at you gently in a lingering breeze, waving you closer as a whisper rises from them. Mist weaves around their stalks like slender snakes, and as the fireflies begin to disperse, the mists begin to rise and take their place. A mist-foal framed with fireflies whinnies at you.
It takes a slow step towards you, breath whuffing softly over your face. The magic holding it together trembles.
And then, mist-hooves flashing as it rears, the ghost-foal begins to dance around you. The grass whispers louder and louder, as more mist-horses rise from the earth and join the dance. They whisper to you, dozens of voices that weave and blend together. Some of them whisper your name; or perhaps they repeat phrases of meaning back to you, phrases you hold dear in your heart. Perhaps you recognize the dancing foal, and perhaps it speaks to you kindly as it invites you to play a game of chase.
Or perhaps you see something malevolent in the way all those mist-horses surround you, and in the way their voices start to sound more like a hiss than a whisper.
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 fireflies have led you to a clearing, where dozens of mist-spirits rise from the silver grass and fog. They press in around you, whispering quietly to you - what are they saying? Are they friends or foes? Are you falling under their trance, or only unsettled by the ghosts?
Choices: double back to the path, or play with the mist-spirits
That which has become Erasmus, were it to dream of things beyond the physical space he had been captured, could dream of starfire brimming the orbit of suns – flickering, sparking, if not buzzing in lines, ripples, rings. It could dream of things like golden reflections of daylight, small or not small, glittering like gems in the gaseous twirl of dancing milk-white glow. It knows nothing of fireflies or faeries, or even horses for that matter. But it learns. As if in infancy unraveling the consumption of every moment, each thing derailed by wonder and blooming epiphany. It knows nothing of his legs as they catch their gait over the swirling grasses that brush across his knees, nothing about his nose as he blinks away the orange-red-gold of fluttering leaves when they meet it. But it learns.
And when it touches the mind that once was, there are few terrible things that greet its pursuit of delicate yellow things that glow and glimmer, dancing across the line of shadows. So it follows, ginger-stepping the twigs that threaten to snap reality in half. When the thing before him bursts into a tangle of silent discourse, threading gracefully through the firelight of its autumnal backdrop, Erasmus mimics the action. He does not look back to see the faerie-light, tenderly rolling beneath the sycamore-leaves, waiting patiently for what comes next. The legs he has yet to understand barrel beneath him as if they remember the cutting wind across their fetlocks, the heat and labor drawn abreast with breathless abandon, thundering madly over ground. It does not know them but permits, for its stolen eyes remember such predatory things with gnashing fangs and sharpened claws, or the acid clouds that prowl glassine fields of granite wash, or the shadow of the moon as it carves a hole in its mother planet.
It remembers what it is to race and rally, tearing the ground underfoot so that it may never be again, that he may never be again, but unwhole and made whole by adrenaline alone. His body wakes like stirred embers in the night – and oh how it feels like a cage still, rattling and rustling and full of rage. But it drives on, on, and his eyes forget how the Erasmus-That-Was may have looked back to that wavering ball of moonlight, may have admired it for its softness and thought of all the ways in which it reminded him of desolate, silent nights in the greater fields. It forgets the timidity of a boy, the tenderness of childish memories, and all the warnings of ever tearing into deep, dark forests. It sees only the silhouette of the firefly stallion as it breaks to pieces like golden ichor, and Erasmus, the thing that is, remembers all the ways in which it is a hunter.
He snaps at a firefly as it buzzes past his face – all harsh lines, all sharpened and focused in the glow of the firelight dance – and sees that others that hit the ground as droplets sprung from them anew; he is joined by others, their semblance no more than shifting shadows and ambiguous shapes. They are whispering, howling, screaming, a torrent of spirited things that leap and bound through the mystical lure of autumn colors shifting short behind.
And before he realizes what they are, they break the towers of trees that loom between them and stand before him like temple statues, or watchful gargoyles.
But at its center, when his eyes have scraped across every mist-face and mist-hoof that stamps lightly in place, the fireflies dance in the shape of something smaller, something child-like. Erasmus-That-Is tenderly toes the psyche of What-Was, and treads memories of children, of sad things, of bruised things, of awful things. Of broken ribs and shattered teeth, those lungs and those mouths forming over and over the prayers of aching boys lost to war.
The vagaries are speaking, but It knows not what they speak of – they are voices lost to him, whispers dreamt of another dream, hymns caught on the arid breeze of a ruined wasteland. Aether crawls in his bones, in his flesh creeping, like vines and their thorns shifting warily through the dark. It remembers the words, but only faintly. Things the Erasmus-tongue always gestured but never knew the taste of. When his eyes crawl back to the child, it does not recognize the thing, but it wants to. It looks to him with expectancy, with marvel, and something else.
“Follow,” it chuckles, and takes to a winding circled leap. “Come,” it pleads.
If there had been anything left of the Erasmus-That-Was, perhaps it would have known the face of that foal, and the noise that hummed around him like a song. He might have turned and run, and run, and run, until the path unwound itself before him and that jeering moonlight bobbed happily, continuing his journey. But nothing answers from the void, from the tunneling spiral of memories that plummet when called for, and when the Aether reaches for the child it bounds away once more.
It follows, as something in it stirs again like hunger and rage.
A shiver seems to run collectively through the spirits, when they realize you are here to stay. They press in eagerly, closer and closer, until their fireflies brush their wings against your skin and mist wraps around your legs. A dozen pairs of glowing eyes stare at you solemnly. And still they whisper.
The ghost foal alone dances through them all, spinning and careening, hooves flashing brightly before disappearing into indistinct mist. Its little hooves never touch the ground, and yet the silver grass bobs and weaves beneath its steps. And the more it dances, the more the forest and the grass and the sky above seems to fade into fog.
They say on this night, the line separating the realm of the spirits and the realm of the living begins to blur. Unbidden, a phrase you don’t remember hearing repeats itself in your mind: when the spirits are allowed to walk in the land of the living for the night, so too can the living become trapped in the spirit world…
The color begins to bleed from the moon.
Little by little, the color is drained from the world surrounding you. Perhaps when you look down, you are surprised to see a once-bright coat reduced to shades of white, and grey, and black.
All around the spirits seem to be changing, solidifying: the mist pulls away from them, and moves to you instead. The edges of your hooves disappear into the mist twining around your body, as your form becomes less corporeal. And then bit by bit, you begin to fade. The voices of the spirits become louder, laughter breaking through the small clearing as one by one, they turn and disappear into the forest. ”Thank you,” they say, in voices that have turned unsettling cold, ”it has been so long since we last felt the breeze upon our skin…” Perhaps it is only now that a pit of dread settles in your belly, watching as the spirits become the living.
The dancing mist-foal, now a grulla colt, is the last to leave. He turns and smiles widely at you, sweeping into a bow. ”It’s not so bad,” he says, as if to console you - but he is already stepping away. ”They say there’s another way back, if you are true in spirit. They say the waters of the Rapax can reverse the curse.” He stops and looks at you from over one shoulder, with a look that is hard to place. Perhaps it is one of sadness, or hope - or perhaps there is only something feral gleaming in his eyes. ”But only if you make it there before you lose your body.” With a laugh, he bounds away. And the mist creeps further up your body, as if to emphasize the little time you have left. And yet you can’t help but feel there is another way, and that the little mist-foal is the key to it...
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 ghosts have tricked you. The longer you tarried with them, the more the magic was allowed to work: it gave the spirits their bodies back, while stealing your's! Slowly, you are being turned to mist, cursed to live in the spirit realm. Unless, you find a way back... As always, be creative as possible! Is the foal, in his own way, trying to help you, or show kindness? Or has your character lost all hope in them?
Choices: chase after the spirit, or race to the river
Disclaimer: there is no wrong choice here, and effects from this quest will only be as permanent as you desire! This will be your characters final choice in this thread, if you have any concerns or questions, please reach out to @sid!
It follows, it follows. It remembers and forgets hunger like the shuddering of mothwings flitting heavily over the ghost-heads; leaping between, beside, through - they are a congregation of humming resonance and mist. The thing that is Erasmus does not know ghosts, so it does not tap into the deep psyche that would have relayed like a beacon, run, run, or even have known which nature to obey in running. After all, the boy that was Erasmus did not ever actually see a ghost, unless the oracle in the deep woods had been one – and if she was, he had not known any better.
Each one falls across him as the foal leaps, and he leaps, and the foal curtsies through the mist, and Erasmus dives like a lethargic cat with a toy mouse. He is only hindered here and there, when the ghost-mares and the phantom-stallions learn his antics and also jump, cat-like, into his path. Something in them turns from playfulness to urgency, and something about the fireflies seems less insectoid than they do like true fire, embers nestled into intangible sockets.
There is an orchestral crescendo of a whirring and a crrrrrick-cricking, when the fireflies and the mist are all he can begin to see. The foal falls away from him, light-stepped into the fog that curls about as if smog laden from a dragon, and that is the only time he stopped his hunt. The woods had grown silent about him, but he had not noticed how long it had been, the fireflies exempt. Hovering just above the bobbing heads of black-leafed trees, the ten-o-clock moon ripples and laughs and laughs and laughs.
The thing that is Erasmus (and perhaps even the boy that was, when the aether felt like the sea salt burning in his eyes and his head and his lungs) knows the feeling of death. It is a numb, cold thing, not unlike when one misses a step in the cloying dark and their breath catches in their throat. Your heart starts its final cry, knowing, knowing. Your veins constrict, your muscles loosen. There is nothing glorious about it, even for those who are carried by valkyries. There is only the deep dark that swallows you whole. And what's next –
Thank you. It comes from the mist, no, his ears – he would say his head, but it knows that it can't be. It is as if someone is speaking beside him, damnably close, but he does not feel the warm breath against his lobe or the buzzing pores of another brushing past. There is only the voice, voices, a harmony upturned from hellish gullets that all in a breath sigh and moan and laugh, uttering: thank you, and more.
Death is curling at his legs like vines, up, up. It tickles at his chest with pins and needles, sours his stomach. It doesn't understand the function of bile that suddenly rises in his throat.
The foal returns to him, fleshly. Smug. The thing scours the mind of the Erasmus-That-Was, over the myriad faces of boy-warriors both dead and alive, though all are now-dead. It is a haunt. It is a jeer. Did they follow it here, from those contemptible wastes he left in ruin? Did they come with him on a droplet of blood his shoulder caught, like a hitchhiking parasite? No. It is one from the deep forest, as it pries no familiar image from the mind that-was. The foal smiles then, as if it can hear the thing in Erasmus skin think. Perhaps the child reads it in his face.
Hunger stirs again when he sees the boy's lips turn and his skin quiver.
It's not so bad, boyish arrogance leaks wildly. Erasmus cannot consider the rest of his words. The river, a curse. The feeling of death lurches at the mention of it, as if amusedly. It creeps up his ribs. The grass is drained of its green, the trees are blackened silhouettes. The thing that is Erasmus struggles to remember the vision, but he only dreams of star-clusters collapsed in their solitary armageddons. Planets burn, they implode and cease. Erasmus does not implode. When he steps forward, he doesn't feel the grasses beneath his feet or against his ankles. The hunger escapes the feeling of death – it is acid boiling at the base of his throat now, some screaming thing.
When the colt turns on his heels, laughing, the hunger is at his teeth. He cannot help his predatory instincts, where the boy that was Erasmus may have been running for the river. Maybe he would be drowning by now. But he is gone, gone. This thing is here now, wholly, feral.
When the boy intends to disappear in the black tangle of trees, Erasmus bears down on his receding form with the fury of a descending hawk.
His laughter echoes in your ears, trickling down your spine like ice water. Perhaps it is rage, or disbelief, or panic -- perhaps it is even a mixture of all three -- that has you turning and racing after him. Maybe it is only the feeling of your body becoming insubstantial, of how you’ve become more-thing-than-person that has you acting on instinct, on impulse.
Or maybe you simply saw through his words, and knew better than to trust what he had to say after his betrayal.
Through the grey-twilight forest the grulla colt races, crashing through the underbrush and leaping over fallen logs. And along you follow in pursuit, mist billowing from your shoulders like a cloak. Perhaps you notice now that while the colt is gangly and uncertain on his new legs, you seem to float over the underbrush -- no, through the underbrush, as your body phases in and out of fog. But more likely, you are only focused on catching up to the not-ghost, watching the distance between you open and close like a flower blooming.
Until, something changes -- until, bit by bit, stumble by stumble, leap by leap, you begin to draw closer. Until you blink and you are suddenly on the colt’s heels, and one final stride later, about to collide --
“Wait--!”
You fall through empty space.
The colt disappears into a cloud of mist the moment your skin touches his, and a chill spreads like ice through your veins. Perhaps your body is already beginning to feel more solid again, the feeling returning to your limbs in a rush of cold. Or maybe it takes longer, and you are left there wondering if what the spirit-boy said was true, if you are now stuck in a world not your own. It’s not so bad, he had said -- but nor do you think would it be so good, either.
But as you stand there, flowers begin to grow from the ground the colt last stood upon. Dozens of slender, silver wildflowers, grouped in the rough form of a horse and shining brightly with a light that seems to come from within their very petals.
In the distance you can hear festival music, and over a hill you can see the light of a bonfire; but something catches your eye first. A flower that is not like the others, that remains closed even while the others celebrate. You draw closer to it - what’s one last mystery to solve?
It is not until you lower your head to the bud that it begins to stir, unfurling its petals slowly and shaking the sleep from them. There is a light glowing in its center, a single, shuddering flame rising from the heart of it. And it seems to you a gift, waiting to be plucked.
@erasmus has reached the end of the quest! The spirit had been trying to trick him to buy himself more time to escape. He leads you through a wild chase through the forest, but just before reaching the end he stumbles one final, fatal time -- and you are upon him. The ending of this quest is your choice -- Erasmus could remain half-ghost for some time, or could immediately return to his body. Feel free to powerplay the spirit!
Growing where the ghost-boy last stood is a cluster of moonflowers - one of which remains closed. It unfurls as you approach, a single flame rising from its center. The color of the flower and the flame is your choice! To claim this thread as completed, you'll need one last "exit" post.
Erasmus is gliding toward the colt and it is as normal as running, breathing, flying. It is the acid rain that pours down on some unnamed planet. It is the molten river that rushes beneath the surface. It is the thing that flutters – or swims – through air that is not air at all but something else entirely. Erasmus is not Erasmus in that instant, but wholly predator, something more, something akin to a dead sun hurdling toward the earth. It rushes, it flies, this wraith smoothly sailed through monotone moonlight and bled night that gasps; the phantoms draw their breath, more flesh than mist now, and the colt shrieks –
wait!
but it does not, it does not relent, and it is not rage or sadness or panic that moves it, but something more awful, something heavier. As he bears down on that yearling thing like a hawk with spread talons or a wolf with bared fangs or a lion with claws stretched and eager for blood, blood, blood! the pulse of the predator hymn. The ghosts cry like scavengers or wail like coyotes, but Erasmus does not listen. There is only it, him, them, the dry air and the hum and the hunger, and the space between them closes like death has ever been.
But when its fangs just knit the not-flesh of the colt and his hooves bear down on the soft earth like claws trenching the ground – there is – there is – a moment of redemption, a blessing of satisfaction – hunger blooms a wet rose in his core and he ensnares –
nothing.
The mist unfurls from beneath him and fireflies leap from the corners of his mouth, the rough contours of his face, his expression that reels – and perhaps, perhaps, it is anger then. Perhaps this is what blossoms from the rot of that rose of hunger, when there is nothing beneath him but grass and moonlight and silver flowers that look to him expectantly. They bob against his breath, nodding curiously in spite of him, like floating paper lantern lilies in the shape of a fallen yearling.
Beyond them, a larger bulb traces him with a head full of light. He approaches, and it unfurls as if just for him – a fire at its core. It presents itself, waiting, timidly still, scarcely a morsel for any respecting thing to observe. But he plucks it nonetheless, and it does not die in his grasp, perhaps becoming even more brilliant before its petals draw back against itself.
In the distance, the festivities are a jovial tune that carries on into the night, and the lanterns wave to him softly from the shadows of rolling hills. Between two trees that arch as if two sleeping sentinels leaning against one another, youthful silver eyes look from the patch of flowers to the haunted gaze of Erasmus, and though the child crumples into itself with a tentativeness a mouse could aspire to, it does not run. Foolish.
Erasmus grins, hunger carving the hollow spaces between his ribs, and he moves to eclipse the emptiness waiting between them.
