He heard it before he had seen it. The distant roar, the insurmountable growling that grew and grew, festering snarl from the ground that ripped the skies with heat – with rage, with uncontested rage. No matter the noise that rose to meet it, it engulfed all. Perhaps it was his ears that collected the drone and not the every whisking breeze that swelled with it, he wasn't certain – but they tomed like the loudest bells and the loftiest horns. Were it a reckoning? He listened to it for long, the low hum grinding to a crescendo over days of his returning, the lapse of his pilgrimage into the heart of the Solterran tyrant's den. There was much that crawled over the span of his mind like the trickle of spiders over marble; much to think, much to feel, much less to mind the volcanic pandemonium that scraped the stars with conquest. Indeed he tried his best to drown it out with those creeping thoughts, his ever shifting philosophy that groaned almost louder than anything else. But it persisted.
He felt it before he had seen it. It was but a low tremor, hardly noticeable, as he traipsed the ledges of the canyon. Here and there small quakes would tremble the most unstable of pebbles and you could here the pitter-patter of cold stones ricochet in the night. Even the teryrs were silent, locked in the shelter of their wings and their bone-laden nests, death-eyes curdled by apprehension. He did not see them but he felt them – they and the rest, the shivering that followed, the quiet that stirred between tantrums of an aching world. It was the mountains that shook then; their peaks shuddered the heavy, glimmering snows from their jagged edges. They woke. They quivered, crags shimmying with a fear so like the rest. At times he was shrugged from his sleep as the tremors grew to quakes and the quakes to a wracking, so much so that his dreams were tossed into the deep of the sea – where the current is merciless and drags to-and-fro, hurriedly tearing at you like jealous siblings.
He had seen it long before he arrived. The smoke that lay heavy on the horizon, pillars of ash and cinder rising from the ocean like draconian exhaust, some heaving beast beneath the trench that sighed and gaped wearily. How the black smog twisted and flooded all light, how pleasant, how terrifying – had he grinned? He could not recall, to look upon the scurrying dots that lay far below, the racking waves that struck the rocks and receded from volcanic thrust.
Something woke there, something awful and drenched in horror. And he grinned.
Perhaps he should have returned to Denocte first. To witness the carnage, the ash and the loss. To comfort those affected, to find a strategy to replace what was lost, to uncover who had committed the crime. He would have known the answer. Not those involved but the manner of orchestration – the nature of the flames, the contempt, the war. He would have said nothing. He would have watched the flames from the dark, his intrigue narrowly crowed from his heart like blackened smoke as he admired the way fire ate and ate without prejudice. He would have wondered if Isra would turn the flames to precious turquoise, jaded sapphire, sparkling diamonds that rained to extinguish the pernicious heat. He would have wondered if she saw the shadows leak into his eyes the way it did as he watched the fear unfold over the southern horizon from atop the peaks of the Arma Mountains, watched as the insidious possession wrapped his expression in mirth. In awe. Would she still pity him?
Perhaps if Isra favored soldiers over dreamers, the fires would never exist.
But that was then, a would-be clause that closed over his anticipations as he had watched the fires burn in the distance like beacons in the night. He had been descending the spine of the Arma Mountains, clambering into the thrush of the wooded canopies below that grew ever darker beneath the mingling smoke. Each one had turned to embers before he broke through the deep of the forestry, each one blinking to smoke that rose and caressed the dark skies above.
Now he was here. But where was here he wasn't certain. He stood on the edge, that he knew, but of what unfolded was a necessary mystery moss-soaked and molten, the ground still hot beneath his hooves. Steam rose and curled against his dark skin, brushing lightly over the burnished copper and gold like a spring of spirits hungry for mortality. He stood there for a long moment, his cynical gaze held to the peninsula that had risen in the distance, supported by this peculiar bridge. It was dark in the night, deep and wooded and full of sounds he had never heard before. Each day seemed to unfold from the next here, things of wonder and treachery and awe, like the whole of Novus had been built on the foundation of dreams and harrowing nightmares. He wondered which of them this new thing was.
Come...
The waves crash against the rocks at his side, and he looks to their jeweled crests before they foam and steam over the molten trail of sulphuric stone, hissing something unfamiliar. –ome..., another quake, but it is low and humming and too deep to shake the path he stands on. It is something ancient and cold and buried far too deep for him to truly care. Come and s–... something distant cries out, and he isn't certain if it is a bird or a man or a wolf or something more, he can't tell if it is fearful or terrifying or simply wanting. He stands still, a stone amongst stones, rocked by the breeze that sifts from behind him and desperately persuades him to move, see, come and see... This wind is strange and fleeting, brisk but not cold – it tousles his mane like a lover twirls their finger through his hair. It presses to his flesh with soft kisses, and wisps longingly beneath his chin. All forward. All moving. All toward the heart of the island. Come see...
One step, two. Erasmus's horns raise high above his silhouette, two spiraling thorns sharp against the backdrop of the skies. Wary, weary, he has traveled long and not long enough to stop there, he resolves. Every footfall is muffled against the sea-moss that coats the cooled magma, his gait collected and roving machination of concentrated caution. Something stands far before the island he can see now, though too far to make out what it is. He doesn't pause – it doesn't move, not breathe or sigh or make a sound at all. Still as stone. The closer he arrives he sees the horn first – it is striking, tall, and sharp, as though it could split the sky with its caliber. The proprietor is frozen to the spot, anchored in a wild pose that reminds him vaguely of the statues that poised high on Veneror Peak. And a piece of parchment flickered in the starlight – he reached out to stop its movement and drew closer to read. ”Time is free. Time is here. TEMPUS.” It means nothing to him, some vandalism or joke he assumed (for he knows only us in his blood, the truth, not these Novus gods) or otherwise some tourist engagement for the perks.
He looked on from the statue to the forests that towered on the island, to the volcanic mountain that cast a black shadow sprawled from its belly. Come... He stopped short of the first limb that bowed from the mouth of the woods, a bough laden in more vibrant emerald than he could remember any tree in his life. For a moment he forgets Denocte. He forgets Solterra. He forgets Raum, forgets Isra.
And as a breeze of relaxation smooths over his body, he enters.
STAFF EDIT***
@erasmus has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +100 signos.
