the name of 'freedom' was chanted across the cause
*
Calliope is relentless in her journey to the newly formed summit. The storm cloud of dust at her back is without end, it rises and falls like ash to cling to all the sweat and froth on her skin. She's no stranger to long journeys, to roadways and deserts that have no break in sight. This path seems like no more than a blink of an eye to her.
Once she had spent seasons watching the trees die and oceans turn to hard, sand. Once the world around her had forgotten who she was. Once, not so long ago, she had traveled through the tangles of time and space to find all the worlds where her sister might still live.
Novus is an easy world to travel. Here there are no beasts to hide in the shadows she casts as the sun starts to hang low in the sky. Calliope has no deaths to deliver on her pathways here, no victims that require the brutal sort of salvation only she can provide.
Only the soft echo of Raymond's hooves as he gains on her slows her footsteps at all. He is more suited to lazy perusal of the dangers ahead of them. His might lies in cleverness and wit. Hers in passion and recklessness.
He is the only council she might listen to and so she relents from her wild hunting gallop to a steady canter.
Calliope gathers herself as she crosses into the summit, chin tucked to her chest and her horn pointed ahead at whatever challenges a god might have left for mortals to face. The magic is thick here. It's strange to feel it again. It was easy to forget such wild things as god-magic where there are courts, walls and laws. Novus does not seem a place for this-- this oil thick air and pillars of trees that act like sentinels to some awful secret.
Where others might pray, bow their heads in reverence at such power over the very earth, Calliope is instantly distrustful.
Gods have raised mazes before her. They were mazes full of horror, designed not to test but to devour those foolish enough to hope for blessings. She has seen them torment those who thought them holy and stitch their lips shut with fire and malice.
Distrust is not a strong enough word to convey all that Calliope feels in her bones as she beholds yet another creation of gods.
With all the sweat and dust on her she smells as wild as any magic of the long dead Riftlands.
That silver of her gaze is an inferno of emotion as she taps her horn against a single tree sentinel, testing it for any trickery that might lay Floretine and Asterion low. She turns towards Raymond, too tense to smile at the sight of him ready to follow all her blazing, reckless passion.
“I am reminded of Ravos.” Calliope doesn't smile, there is no fondness for a place full of demon gods that wanted only to hoard their might for petty things. She doesn't even miss being queen of all the heretics of wild magic that knew no gods in their bones.
Raymond surely knows it is no good thing that this wall of trees reminds her so strongly of another world devoured by itself like an ouroboros.
@Raymond @Random Events
