is it better to out-monster the monster
or to be quietly devoured?
or to be quietly devoured?
H
is night-black hooves drag long and low on the face of the cracked earth. If the sand were softer, like it was in summer, it would have sapped and sapped at his energy until he could tread not a step further. But the earth carries his weight, and he walks on.
Caine's weary wings hover inches from the ground, his distaste for dirt the only thing keeping the massive things suspended. He has never hated them more.
His bones ache. A shake of the head, less fluid, less graceful than he'd normally do it, tries and fails at shaking the exhaustion from his hunched shoulders. A cicada chirps its mating song into the fathomless night, and vaguely Caine wonders if it is even the right season for cicadas to sing.
The thought does not linger. A far more pressing matter tugs at him, and he sighs. Water. How he longs for it, preferably before his mouth turns right to sand.
But there is no water. He is in the middle of the Eleutheria.
I had thought myself beyond such amateur mistakes.
Solterra is another day's trek away, at best. Caine is too tired to fly, too restless to rest. A conundrum. Lifting his eyes to the velvet-black sky, Caine exhales clouds of curling breath before a glimmer on the horizon catches the shards of his eagle-sharp gaze.
What is that?
A pool of tears, he thinks at first, with a wry smile. Once, long ago, he had believed in such things. But the boy has seen too much sorrow to believe in fairytales any longer. "If there really was such a thing," he remarks, "the world would have flooded twice over by now."
The closer he approaches, the stranger the pool appears. It glows with its own light and looks at once like gathered moonbeams, like liquid mercury. Like impossibility. Caine smells the hand of divinity long before he reaches its glimmering, glass-smooth surface.
His hooves halt just shy of the water's depths. Hasn't he had enough of wild magic, of wilder gods?
Anger, and something worse, sparks in eyes of palest silver.
His journey to Vectaeryn had been made in vain. Agenor had disappeared, his entire mansion a hulking, abandoned shadow on the shores of the Smoking Coast. No one had given him a straight answer when he'd asked where the sorcerer had gone, and he hadn't dared probe deeper for fear of drawing the wrong sort of attention.
The Prince was gone too, well and truly. Caine mourned his loss like he mourned most things — with a shrug and a darkening smile. (Perhaps one day he will learn how to mourn properly.)
And so he returns in no better shape, with no better answers. Agenor's magic still seeps in his blood, clings to his very being, like skin.
I have played my hand, and I have failed. Caine curses, once, before stepping ankle-deep into the pool of light.
Thirst, a silent monster, beckons him closer to the water's surface. He hesitates for only a moment. Then, he lowers his head and drinks.
@Random Events | "speaks" | notes: tl;dr, Caine comes across the pool on his journey back from Vectaeryn. He went in search of answers and a way to break his curse, and returns emptyhanded. Thought to explain his absence this way!
***STAFF EDIT
@caine has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +50 signos point for interacting with the pool.
