[AW] losing my religion

[Antiope]

Antiope
i am the righteous, the touched and the holy
i am the voodoo that you want to believe

She walks that long bridge to the island, dragging one point of her double-sided axe the whole way; scrape, scrape, scraping its edge along that arching, grotesque ribcage. Over gems and barnacles that stick to and protrude from its surface. The bridge shudders, and rocks, and Antiope digs her hooves in and keeps going. The open mouth of the island is a black cave, an omen, and she descends into it with only the light of her axe to guide her.

If there is a line left in the bone behind her from her burning axe, she doesn't feel sorry for it.

There is a city in the middle of the cave, and in the middle of that a castle, reaching high, high, high toward the ceiling. Antiope presses forward, looking through the door of every shop, none of which has a keeper. She imagines that whatever is inside them requires none. Nobody will be leaving with the items lining the walls and shelves. No one will be leaving.

The woman approaches the shop with the weeping walls and the sound grinds down to her bones. It plucks at her like the spines of a thorny bush. She sets her axe upon the walls until they are screaming alongside the other ones, and drinks in the sound of their anguish. The lioness in her bones lopes languidly through her, as if expecting something wonderful. As if expecting something.

She does not stop for the strange objects, not tempted by their empty promises of beauty and glory. She goes further, goes deeper. Antiope is a wraith in the island’s open belly. She is like its loose soul, wandering, searching for the place it once belonged. So she circles, and circles. And it reminds her of circles she once walked through the sand and the jungle on this same island, once, so long ago.

She circles, and circles, like a predator does its prey, until she stands at the open doors to the castle. Everything inside the castle is calling to her, begging her to come, see, discover something about yourself. Antiope sets her axe to swinging, and swinging, and swinging. Its light is a kaleidoscope display on the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It chases shadows from the corners over and over and over again before inviting them back in.

The hallways lead her like dogs hunting a fox, and she follows faithfully, unwavering. Something in her is building, like anticipation. A pressure, a waiting. Her axe is still swinging when she enters the throne room and her eyes like cut sapphires see the thing sitting there. Only it is not a who but a what, sitting there. Antiope moves closer, her weapon now motionless at her side.

Upon the throne rests a bowl made of skin (whose, she cannot possibly know), filled with what appears to be red dye. Beside it lies a paintbrush made of bone and hair.

The last time Antiope had applied her dyes had been before going to the temple which was bathed in the blood red light of a setting sun. Later, it had been bathed red by other things. Since arriving in Novus, slowly the red markings upon her body had faded. Faded to a bruising, and then to nothing at all, as she had tried to let go of the killer she had been made. Perhaps that had been her mistake.

The striped woman stares for a long time at the bowl, and the brush, and the red liquid inside. The lioness inside her waits, and waits, and waits. It is as though the entire castle, the entire city, is waiting. She can feel its anticipation bearing down upon her like a hot breath.

Perhaps she is not a fallen star at all, but a dying one, preparing to explode.

Antiope lifts the brush made of bone and hair and dips it into the dye. Applying it is like welcoming an old friend. Five dots beneath each eye, a stripe on each hoof. A sweet, sharp, metallic smell wafts up from the brush to her nose, and that is when Antiope realizes it is not dye in the bowl but blood.

"Speaking."

∞

[Vercingtorix]

what use do we have for feeble hymns of wasted faith; for sordid songs of glory?

I come back to meet the monster.

(I come back, knowing now—and all along—I will only find myself). 

The sea does not let me go easily. Minutes, hours, days pass as I battle to the surface; through frothing waves, the unseen currents that snake, turbulent, beneath. She tosses me end-over-end ceaselessly; until at last the wave broke and I find my head above the surface. I am not yet accustomed to the struggle of swimming; and it is always a struggle, I think, to rise. She does not want to let me go; and when I emerge on the edge of the beach that leads to the strange cavern, my hair hangs lank and wet in my face. Seaweed gnarls itself through the tangles in my mane and tail; a small crab falls from my shoulder and scurries away as I begin the long walk down the sand to the bone bridge. 

This journey is not one of pride, however. No; it is a thing of survival, that I dredge myself up from the bottom of the sea. I cannot say what possesses me to return to the island so soon. The scars on my throat are pink and tender; my memory of the last time I visited seems too fresh. But when I reach the bridge, I do not turn back.

I walk across alone. 

I enter the city’s gaping, cavernous maw alone. 

Around me darkness stretches like a void—and yet if I look up, the darkness spins, and the ceiling seems dotted with luminescent stars. My eyes adjust; there are scarcely stars at all, but a multitude of small dragons peering back down at me. The stars are their eyes, and I turn my face away. On the ground around me, stones are veined through by gold and mercury; and where before the city had seemed austere, now I glimpse cottages made of crystal quartz, inhabited by incomprehensible creatures. I glimpse them as one glimpses the shadows of birds; almost shapeless, too swift to see the shape that makes them.

I do not linger.

I make my way to the same castle. It appears as if I had never been here; the stained glass window Damascus had shattered has been replaced by rough quartz. I hold my breath passing through the open gate; and once I hit the darkness beyond, I smell the blood. 

The scent is faint.

I feel no fear, this time, as I press further forward. 

(Perhaps it is because the monster in me is clamoring louder than all these other beasts; then all these other fantasies). I walk through a hallway of mirrors and then beyond; a room of skinned beasts; a kitchen that smells of flesh and fat; a hall of statues; a winding staircase that I thought I was walking up and somehow I end up down, down, down and into a throne room that looks out over the city.

There is a chair. This is where I expect to find the beast.

Instead, I find a woman and a bowl of skin. She has painted herself and I smell it; the blood; her warmth.

I recognize her.

But I also recognize that I am not the same man who met her, a lifetime ago.

And I am not the same man who asked Seraphina to paint me, a lifetime ago. 

I stand dripping seawater. My lips twitch, and once, once, I may have smiled. 

And my lips are too long; and my teeth are too sharp. And when I go to speak, I do not sound like myself. 

“Do you believe there is a monster here?” 

« r » | @Antiope

[Antiope]

Antiope
i am the righteous, the touched and the holy
i am the voodoo that you want to believe

The blood does not stop her.

She paints the two bands around her left forearm, one thinner, one thicker, and beneath that a row of dots circling around. Antiope has been painted in blood more than once in her life, and she will undoubtedly be painted in it again in the future. She is immortal, after all.

Perhaps she cannot outrun the fight in her. Perhaps she cannot outrun the killer.

Antiope hears him approach before she sees him, before she smells the seawater that is leaving trails and puddles at his feet. Brine and blood, salt and metal—a perfume of death and danger. She purposefully, gently, oh so slowly, places the brush back upon the throne next to that bowl made of skin, and then she turns. Just as he speaks, she turns.

He is changed. In the way Boudika had changed, once, many moons ago. She almost envies him his sharp teeth, for with teeth such as that and the weapon Antiope wears at her side, she could have anything she wanted. She could have fought. She could have won.

Antiope could have lost herself and been okay with the way the darkness would have consumed her the way the ichor devours her eyes every time she uses magic.

If he is not the same man that the ex-sovereign met a lifetime ago than neither is she.

Something in her has broken, fractured. Parts of her are seeping out like water through cracks. Like blood through wounds. Something has emptied out inside of Antiope, something caged has been unleashed.

“Is it you, or is it I?” she says, voice low, voice drip, drip, dripping like his saltwater, as she descends the raised dais that throne is sat upon. Antiope remembers how much she had hated the way he looks like Rezar, if it weren’t for the blanket of white upon his back. If it weren’t for his horns, or his eyes just a little too blue.

Her axe is spinning, and spinning, and spinning, and her eyes are too sharp and too dark. She moves closer to him, as the blood dries upon her skin to a deep mahogany color, and then she smiles like something wild and black inside. “Two monsters meet on a throne…”

"Speaking."

∞ | @Vercingtorix

[Vercingtorix]

you're dying of thirst so we feast on each other, the seas are still a violent mother.

I am not the only one who has changed. 

Another man may mistake the difference for one of appearance. The paint she wears, freshly done, strikes me as warlike and austere. The artistry, although there, does not seem beautiful to me; but brutal. That brutality reflects in her expression; in the emptiness of her eyes where, before, I had sworn they were filled with passion. 

Perhaps I am only hoping to see a reflection of my empty self but, when I wait for her to turn, my heart thunderous in my chest… I swear I know what she is going to say, I can feel it—

Is it you, or is it I? 

Her voice belongs here, unholy and holy all at once. The voice of a goddess, of an immortal. The only thing I can smell is the blood and the warmth of her over the saltwater of me. 

A part of me wants to smile, but cannot. The gruesomeness of my own teeth horrifies me. “Both,” I answer, as she descends the dais. Her axe becomes a pinwheel; catching the dim light of the room. The last time I had been here, Damascus had broken the stained glass window that stains us in fragmented shades of violet and red and blue. 

“What comes next in that story?” I ask. But as she steps down the dais, I ascend it. I stare at the empty throne and listen for the quake of the horrific palace, for the monsters and the darkness within. 

I only hear our breathing. 

“I don’t want it,” I say. “Do you?” 

And I am staring at the polished brass surface of the throne. I am staring at my own reflection, the elegant curve of my horns, the scar over my eye, the newly minted necklace of scars at my throat. I am a different man; I know no throne would ever be enough to fill what I am. 

“Two monsters meet on a throne…” I repeat—

And then, with sudden and intense motion, I raise to slam my hooves into the center of the throne’s back. Into the middle of my eyes. Into my own reflection. The brass does not shatter, but the din resounds and resounds and resounds. 

The silence, at least, is gone. 

« r » | @Antiope

[Antiope]

Antiope
i am the righteous, the touched and the holy
i am the voodoo that you want to believe

“I don’t want it,” he says, asking if she does. Antiope looks over her shoulder toward the throne, toward his golden and midnight skin, blanketed in ash. Toward his horns which rise up, up, up to the ceiling.

He climbs the same few steps she has just descended. He climbs toward that throne that holds the bowl of blood that she wears upon her skin. He looks at himself in its polished, reflective surface. Antiope wonders what he thinks of the thing he sees.

When he repeats her words back to her, she remains silent. The striped woman only breathes with empty lungs, and listens with waiting ears, and watches with darkened eyes. He rises up and slams his hooves into the center of his reflection, into the back of the throne.

It rings, and rings, and rings. It echoes high up above them, and into every corner. She delights in the sound, like a warbeat from a different world. Like a cry, or a scream. Finally, she speaks. “I had one already. It was taken from me, by someone I trusted,” her words are flat, her voice detached.

Antiope turns. She rises up that dais again, until her face appears like a specter in the vibrating surface of the throne, just behind his. She breathes in the saltwater of him. Leans a little closer, heedless of the teeth he refuses to show. “Do you want to destroy it?” she whispers, into the dampness of his skin.

And, perhaps, in that wavering reflection of hers, there is a flickering upward curl to the corner of her lips. “I can make you stronger,” perhaps there is something in her eyes that says she is tired of not fighting. That she is tired, at least, of fighting what she is supposed to be.

"Speaking."

∞ | @Vercingtorix