He breathes out, and the ash scatters further across the sky.
Realistically, he knows that these two actions are not related -- that his wild magic has always been that of the mind, that it has never shown an inkling of being able to influence the natural elements -- but he is still terrified, as he stares up at that sprawling ash cloud, that his own rotten luck and his out-of-control magic has something to do with the recent disasters.
First the fires in Denocte, and now this trembling of the earth beneath his hooves, the fleeing of the frightened crabs that veered around him as though he were simply another rock in their way, and if he were devout (or if he believed in a god at all) he might have fallen to his knees then and there to pray that they might forgive him for whatever transgression he has managed this time.
Instead, he stares up at a sky that has swallowed the stars, dread coiling in his stomach and doubt in his heart, and he questions what he has done.
have you ever burned grief but found yourself unable to brush the ashes off your skin?
The sky is burning, and she watches it run red and choked with black smoke with a dull sense of horror that is not quite understanding.
She hears Ereshkigal’s laughter in the back of her mind, halting and pitiless. The Terminus beats at the mouth of the Rapax, staining the clear blue water black and turning the meeting-place to violent chop; she stares at the writhing waves.
The volcano. She had heard rumors, in the past few weeks – but there were more immediately terrible things to worry over than a potential eruption.
(Of course. If it could go wrong, it would, wouldn’t it? Her stomach turns knots that are not exactly fear. She does not know what they are. She is petrified, yes, terrified of losing any more ground – like she is tied up in a cave while the tide rolls in. But she is not terrified in a way that is new. Terror is dull. It does not bite at her anymore; she is wound so tense that it terror is inescapable, inevitable. The knot in her stomach is not terror.)
She has seen horror. She has seen little but horror.
(If this is some divine punishment, some part of her – that part with ugly teeth, that part of her that sobs like some harbinger, that part of her that wishes, that wishes, that wishes so ardently that she had died when Raum killed her, not lived on like this, a mourning shadow, something that is no longer herself - can’t help but think that perhaps it is deserved. Logically, she knows that there is more to the world than horror. Logically, she knows that there are plenty of good people, and they do not deserve to be punished. (She is not one of them.) Logically, she knows that, if the gods are responsible, this is just more cruelty. Logically, she knows that it is never so simple, nor so easy to discern. Logically, she knows that horror is not even most of the world – but it is all she sees, and she finds it in the glass-marble eyes of the dead that haunt her no matter where she goes, in the waking realm or the dreaming, in the starving ribs of children on Solterra’s streets, in the tattered image of her own reflection. Logically, she knows that, if she wishes the world to burn, she is no better than that thing in the palace, with his silver-sleek skin (but isn’t she silver-sleek?) and his burning blue eyes. Logically, she knows that better, or the illusion of it, is all that she has left. And this is why you are better than the rest of us, or something like that, wasn’t it what Acton had said? She’d thought that he was wrong. She knew that he was wrong. But she could pretend to be. Even if she isn’t good, even if all of this horror is her fault, she can pretend to be – better. Even if she isn’t.
But it would be so much easier if it would just end.)
She cannot stay here; that much is obvious. Ereshkigal swoops forward in front of her, and she considers telling the demon to fly south, towards Terrastella and Denocte – but the smoke inhalation would likely be dangerous for her, and, much as a part of her loathes the bird, she knows that she will lose a part of her soul if she dies and their – unfortunate – bond is broken. (And she knows that, without Ereshkigal, she will be alone through the long, long days she passes in isolation under the Solterran sun, broken up by her agents or scuffles with the guards or rare conversations with travelers, who grow rarer by the day. She is no longer sure that she won’t lose her mind if she is alone; she always used to seek out isolation, as a queen, but now she craves something else. Anything else.) She turns away from the frothing sea, and, as the ashes begin to fall, runs along the Rapax, sweat heaving down her brow.
A woman stands in her path, frozen, staring up at the sky.
It occurs to Seraphina that she is beautiful. Slender and effeminate, with long, long hair – a startling contrast of cream and coffee and gold, striking even in the low light, with great horns that dangled jewels and brilliant golden eyes, especially notable and wide with panic. She wonders if she is a noblewoman, but it doesn’t matter one way or another. If she doesn’t move, she might be a dead woman, with the strangling coils of smoke moving ever-closer and the falling ashes drifting towards the ground. (She is only glad that it is winter; the ground is less likely to catch flame. The last thing that Delumine needs is another forest fire.) She curves in her path to rush up to her side.
Ereshkigal laughs her disdain into Seraphina’s ear, but she doesn’t care. The world is dark. She will still, of course, stop to save her – or to urge her into saving herself. She knows what it means to freeze, and to freeze at the worst possible moment – to be paralyzed. “Move,” she says, her tone harsh with urgency. It is not cruel, but, without the luxury of time, she does not have it in her to try to soothe the startled creature’s nerves; she nudges the woman with her shoulder, hoping that the touch might spur her into movement. “We need to move further north.” The volcano is to the far south, and, if the destruction has already moved as far as the Rapax, she shudders to think of what a state Terrastella and Denocte must be in.
She thinks of Raum, in Solterra, and her stomach knots; every time that some little piece of her manages to pull itself together enough to insist, quietly, that she’s hit her lowest point, something seems to happen to drag her further and further down – spiraling hopelessly into a pit she is no longer sure that she can climb out of.
@Llewelyn || consider this a starter for you? <3 "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
***STAFF EDIT
@Seraphina has rolled a 6! She has been awarded +120 signos
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
is this a natural feeling or is it just me bleeding?
The earth trembling underfoot reminded him of the pits and how they shook in the battles from the force of magic shoved around; all that pressurized power pushed and slammed down. Lasairian remembers the vibration of it when those strong enough to cause it were settling some kind of challenge. He had been there to observe so many of those moments, because a fair share of them held Caydren front and center. When magic was the first thing he had known to love, as enthralled with it as he had grown to be, it was easy enough to make sense of the fact that he might look at his mentor a certain way. As if nothing else could shine quite as brightly. Caydren had been high up among the strongest of creatures there, in the Bheo.
There was no pretty ending to the story, just that one sided situation for Lasairian to pine over for years. Hidden away, played close to the chest, because he could never give up that truth. He teased and sassed as a defense, never showing his cards, never letting it be seen as any serious thing. That wasn't a safe thing for him to do, and so he did his best to lock that part of himself away. The temptations of it had been the very reason he had fled; the fear within it of how such a thing would end for him. Lasairian did not enjoy thinking of it, and could not allow himself to be that close to the possiblity of it. That was how and why he had landed here of all places, so very far from home, devoid of magic, and different.
However, Lasairian knew that the trembling of the earth below wasn't the same as that other feeling, and it drew his curiousity forward. Which, in turn, had him pushing himself forth and towards the sea. This was the direction it seemed to be coming from, and the darkening sky as he pressed closer to the area confirmed it. The water was a dark and churning thing, and the ash in the air was getting thicker as it drifted from the far island that Lasairian had to squint to make out at all. The vibration of the sand felt wrong under his hooves, and the march of crabs held his gaze for several uncomfortable moments. Voices from the shoreline and beyond reached his ears, but he did not try to move to any of the groups. It felt too soon for any of that. So he waited, he watched, and fretted over what it might mean.
tag — any
template by cas • equine lines by AriesRedLo • border image from hashtag-bg.com
***STAFF EDIT
@lasairian has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +20 signos
05-12-2019, 01:20 AM
Played by
Dingo [PM] Posts: 50 — Threads: 5 Signos: 330
so give me life, give me fire
cause I'm drowning in the ocean of you and I
The height of the cliffs have never gripped him with fear, not even when he traipsed along its thin ledges as he uprooted the delicate flowers which grew there. From his adolescence until now, he had never once taken a false step, but today that would change.
Below him the waves crashed relentlessly against the Praistigia Cliffs, far more violently than Atreus recalled them ever doing in the past. At first he paid it little mind, disregarding it as the changing of the season or the shift of tectonic plates far below the surface. And so he continued with little care, until the ground beneath his feet suddenly trembled with the force of a whale colliding with the rocky cliff itself. There was a loud ’crack!’ as a fissure formed, and the area the poison master had been standing gave way and crumbled into the raging sea.
His feet scrambled for purchase, his rear half slipping and nearly dragging him to an early demise. Wings splayed and beating against the buffeting winds, his hooves scrapped the rock sending smaller section careening downward, but with effort he managed to find all four of his feet back on the ground once more. Hurriedly putting a good twenty feet between himself and the ledge, Atreus heaved a breath, his heart pounding like a war drum against his chest. He had nearly died – and would have if not for his heritage.
Casting his marred gaze out across the water, the Champion’s lips pulled taut. In the distance lightning flashed against a backdrop of apocalyptic black sky, growing in size right before his very eyes. Not many things had frightened Atreus during his lifetime, but this… this was otherworldly. This was entirely out of his control and could not be stopped.
Without a second thought, Atreus turned and ran faster than he ever had in his life, faster even than when he had fled the city that had wanted him dead, with only one thing on his mind – Fiona.
"I am the one thing in life I can control. I am inimitable, I am an original."
Regis stood frozen just outside the citadel, stiffer than the ice that coated the Rapax River. His dual-colored eyes were wider and unblinking as he looked on at the sight displayed on the horizon – smoke, or so that was what it appeared to be, billowed from somewhere far in the distance. It filtered into the sky and expanded an immeasurable length, stretching further and further and even further still like it might consume the very world itself. The yearling was petrified, and try as he might to make sense of what was happening, he just couldn’t.
Even Milo, always so steadfast and willing to stand between his bonded and danger, seemed uncertain as he stood pressed up against Regis’ foreleg. If Regis weren’t so taken by the fear that the world might be ending, he might’ve picked up on the fact that Milo was trembling even more violently than Regis himself was.
It was when the burning of tears in his eyes became prevalent that the Prince finally drew another breath, his chest heaving from lack of it. Fearful that the darkness would swoop in and take them the moment he looked away, Regis took a step backward closer to the citadel, his knees nearly buckling on occasion. “M-… Mom!” He cried out, doing his best to cling to some semblance of bravery, but it had been drained from him. “Dad!!”
Feel free to include Reggie in your replies <3 speaks like this
Whether it be a swordfight, a footrace, a bet or a simple game of Hearts, his victories far outnumber his losses. His instincts have always served him well, and for most of his life he has trained religiously to keep his mind and body as sharp as the tip of his pirate’s blade.
But there is no fighting the world itself.
The golden boy is as much a child of disaster as any Denoctian, the whole trajectory of his life shaped by war. But far more strange were the recent things to befall Novus - gods who seemingly had turned on them, or else had lost control of their creation. Sometimes, when he dreamt, it was against a backdrop of storms and the sharp cry of thunderbirds; he had been there when their queen quieted them with a story, though not close enough to hear the words. And even amid the treachery of Raum - another powerful man seemingly unappeased by death, as Zolin had been - his heart had not sunk.
Yet now there is word of apocalypse.
There had been a feeling in the air for days, a current of dark and anxious energy, an uncommon tautness to each cold winter day. August had assumed it was only a result of the heightening tensions in their court - certainly they had enough to contend with, after the attempted torching of the food stores. It was almost a relief, then, to hear that it was a volcano off-coast, billowing thick black smoke into a cloudless sky. Only when he stepped outside to see for himself did he feel the ground shift beneath him and his sureness fall away.
For a long moment he only stood, cool silver eyes reflecting the cloud of ash and terror that built and built on the horizon, and then August swore beneath his breath. With a glance back at the door of the Scarab, he joined the others streaming down to the beach, drawn inexorably by the need to see. What else was there to do? No sword, no story, could keep this beast at bay.
And still he wonders if it only the beginning.
There is a different kind of silence than the one on the beach when the sea had been drawn far from the shore. Nobody sought treasures here; they only stand alone, or in little knots of friends, and watched the dark tower on the horizon lean nearer. For once August’s heart does not leap at the sight of the waves, or the heartbreak blue of the sea; he only inhales a deep breath of salt and brine and does not move until he sees Minya, unmistakable with the vivid arch of her antlers and the gleaming black of her skin. The palomino doesn’t hesitate in going to her, or standing near enough that his shoulder presses against her own.
He can’t name the turmoil in his heart; too many feelings roiled there, like ash and debris and smoke building a crooked temple in the sky. When he speaks at last it takes effort to keep his voice casual as a summer afternoon. “Did you ever think you’d see the end of the world, Minya?”
How she’d found herself this close to the edge of this new continent, she had no idea. The woman’s mind whirled as the scent of the sea reached her. Her chest seemed to ache more then normal and an unknown fear clawed up her throat. There wasn’t just the scent of salt and brine upon the air, it tasted of ash and smoke. Cassilyn’s heart seized and began to rattle in her ribcage as pale eyes rested upon the blackened sky before her.
The lady raised her dias and gazed bravely out towards the cursed and brewing sea. She watched as the creatures of the ocean raced to higher ground, their need for survival outweighed their love for their home. She couldn’t help the tear that slid easily from her lid and glistened against her cheek. That pain in her chest seemed to deepen tenfold as the lady continued to stare out at the churning chaos.
The woman lifted her eyes to the now midnight sky and sent a silent prayer to her creators. “Keep them safe brothers, they need you,” the woman whispered as horse after horse fled the scene. From afar, they didn’t know who she was and little did she know she’d seen terror like this before. The fallen queen’s memory may be gone but her instinct had not. She remained there, a stoic figure upon the cliff as the ash landed lightly upon her skin.
Not knowing how much time had passed, the ivory damsel slowly turned, the tears in her eyes as genuine as her soul as she walked calmly away from the shoreline. “Heaven help us all….”
***STAFF EDIT
@cassilyn has rolled a 1! She has been awarded +10 signos
She stood over the gathering as it buzzed down on the beach below, her perch a rocky outcropping that kept her from all their wild speculation. Avdotya did not need to know why the skies so suddenly churned with thick black smoke- she did not need to know how the volcano came to be. She simply knew that it was there and it was menace enough shake even her own bones with a fear that no other could ever produce... for Avdotya knew the earth, she held a connection with it that melded into the very fibres of her being; they shared their strength, therefore she knew to fear it. Whatever it was that now brewed inside the unknown island’s volcano, she wished not to find out.
And so the Davke mare turned away from the crowd, beginning her journey back to Solterra where the land still remained quiet. Perhaps Raum would be lucky and Novus itself would lay waste to Night Court in his stead, without so much as lifting a hoof. If, that was, she perceived his goals correctly.
She, however - like the many that galloped past her - was not keen on finding out the immediate repercussions of an angry earth. Her lungs already burned hot from the smoke-ridden air and it would not be long before it potentially debilitated her travel to the Mors. Thus, with Feliks having appeared from seemingly no where, the pair left nothing behind them but a thin veil of dust. Solis help the fools that still lingered among the crabs and the crashing waves.
As if Denocte hasn’t suffered enough, Katniss can feel that something very ominous is happening. Novus is changing and she knows that this change is not good. The way the seaside bird come towards the mountains of Denocte in flocks and droves, the way the land shakes and rumbles, and the way the sky begins to darken. It is all a terrible sign of what is to come.
Although there is already still smoke and ashes from the burning of the food stores, there is even more smoke and ash that fills the sky. It burns her lungs and causes her to cough. She looks to the sky and she can see the way the horizon appears dark. She cannot tell the hour of day or night, the sun hidden beneath the wall of ash and fire.
She leaves the safety of her home, the same home she shared with Metaphor and Finnick. To the edge of the Terminus Sea she walks. She doesn’t have to leave Denocte to see that the island in the distance is the cause for the current unrest in Novus. She remembers looking upon the island and wondering what it might be like. But now, now she knows it is not a place that she wishes to visit.
Now Katniss can see that what she once thought was a lone mountain has begun to erupt. It is the cause for the quaking land, the angry waves crashing against her hooves as she stands just a foot into the water. She keeps vigilant watch, watching to see what might unfold next even though she knows it is nothing good. This is not something the Night Court soldier can fight against. She can only watch so she might plan a defense.
***STAFF EDIT
@Katniss has rolled a 2! She has been awarded +20 signos
He stands atop the cliffs of Terastella, a place that he finds comfort in. It is here that he knows even Asterion enjoys. However, the cliffs do not bring him pleasure today, today that bring him fear and sorrow and yet, a sense of familiarity and calm.
Rhone watches as smoke fills the air, bellowing out of the volcano as it rises towards the sky. He know what it is like to live amongst a volcano. After all, it was he who once ruled a stallion band who called a volcano their home. He was used to the way the heat felt upon his back, the way the smoke filled his lungs. And yet, even though a volcano was a reminder of greatness, he knew that this volcano was not meant to erupt in such a manner.
He looks over his shoulder and towards the Dusk Court citadel. He has not been here long, but he has grown to love and appreciate this place. He knows the others must be scared. He knows that they will look to Asterion for answers, but he also knows that Asterion will not have them.
The magic fills his body and he can sense his powers coming to life. Already he can feel the work of Brighton, the God of Earth that he worships. He can feel the way the magic courses through his veins. But even Rhone knows that he cannot calm the volcano alone. It is too far and his magic too weak.
He turns from the cliffs, then, to walk towards the other gathered Dusk Court citizens. He can do nothing to help them but be a friend, a body to talk to. There is very little any of them can do except wait and pray. Wait for the volcano to calm or destroy, pray for peace or a quick death.
***STAFF EDIT
@Rhone has rolled a 3! He has been awarded +40 signos
