There was no hope to be found in bones or blood. There was no joy to be found in the silence that followed the cacophonous roar.
All of Novus was silent. No part of it dared stir. They each moved with trepidation, for what may come out of the silence. Was this the calm before a storm? Was some great monster rising from the darkness?
Leto steps upon the slick obsidian glass. She stands above the sea that shimmers and shines beneath the new sunlight. Proud, bold, defiant she moves across he bridge. Each fall of her feet is a clip of an echoing song. All of the bridge resounds with it. It is a song to join with the peeling of the bells hanging from her mane. It is a song enough to join the percussion of bones that beat beside her throat.
Even as water sprays up her limbs, thrown to her by tentacles that wrap about the pillars of the bridge. Around pearl bone she steps and wonders what more secrets the ocean hides. How many bones of pearls and seaweed lie deep beneath the blue, blue waves?
What threat is this new bridge to Terrastella? What horrors may come thundering across it to claim Novus for its own? They have no gods to keep them safe. Even the bones have laughed at their lone fight.
A creature breaches close, close to the bridge and a tentacle reaches across the boards toward her foot. Oh she lowers the sharp horn of her bone mask, angling it at the creature with a low hiss between her teeth. Yet she does not hurry, not even as the tentacle slowly recedes, slipping back into the water in fire and red.
Eventually she reaches the wall of ivy, thick and tall. All light is dim here, the ivy swallowing even the sunlight. Berries throb and beg her to taste them. Slowly her muzzle reaches out and oh, is that blood? Is that flesh upon its ripe stem? With a huff she steps back, back, her mouth pulling back over her teeth with a warning snarl.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
The clack and scratch of Legion’s claws are loud in the silence following the volcanic eruption. The king and his beast cut a part through the crowd weaving their way slowly, warily along the bridge.
Some gaze in awe, others in fear, of each wonder a new mile of the bridge reveals. In black glass it holds them, rising as ribs to encase each horse who dares to cross its wicked bridge.
Slowly Raum moves along the bridge, feeling the seabreeze and the scent of ivy that grows stronger with every stride. Eyes of monsters peer up through the thin, thin glass but Raum has no fear to offer them. Yet it does not stop Legion sensing their gaze, crying with a loud roar and scraping his fangs in a bite across the hardened stone. Strings of poison pool in the wake of his sharp teeth. The sea-eyes heed the monster’s threat and sink into the deep.
Raum passes marble and pearl, timeless clocks and unfurling feather-flowers. Nothing is enough to stop him, not until he steps up before the wall of ivy. The breeze wraps itself around him, the hearts beat in parody of his own. He listens to their throb and with a dutiful claw, Legion rips and tramples a sprig from the vines. Heart-berries split beneath his talon, juice oozing out like blood.
STAFF EDIT***
@Raum has rolled a 3, and has been awarded +80 signos!
Fable is the first one to spot the bridge, from the shore he's resting on, when the clouds dissipate. It stretches before him like a snake and at first he thinks to fly over it, so that it might not seem so dark and terrible with an end even his dragon eyes cannot see. But the air feels heavier than water on his wings when he stretches them up, and he's so very tired.
He fought the ash, drowned small clouds of it in the sea (though he thinks he might have swallowed more than that).Surely, he thinks, a little rest is not so much to ask for. So he only waits in a high dune, buried in the sand that has soaked up a little of the winter sun, and alerts his unicorn that the world is strange again.
But then he watches Raum and his monster start to cross the bridge and he shakes off his slumber and sand. When he dives into the sea, and finds the sea monsters there, he only smiles a tooth-filled smile, and joins them with hunger and rage in his chest. And perhaps if they think about challenging him, they remember his egg resting deep at the bottom of the sea. Even though he loves a unicorn, and a city on the hills, Fable is to his core a creature of the deep.
Isra is not there to see her dragon dive into the waves. There are still horses pouring into the bridge with wonder in their eyes. In hers there is only anger and fear, because she knows what evil is moving through the crowd.
She smiles, and like Fable, her teeth look like fangs against her dark skin. Her belly is churning with justice. All the soot clinging to her back turns to diamond dust and gold dust. Isra looks like she's coated in starlight when she steps onto that black lava bridge.
Isra starts to walk-- to war-- and her hooves sound like gavels across the stone, glass and metal. Clang, clang, clang. They ring like the fury chiming a fire in her heart. Her bow stars to shine at her shoulder and the fletching of her arrows quiver in the breeze racing queerly through the crowd on the bridge.
On she walks, for all the miles of the bridge, and golden flowers make a garden in all the places she's moved. And when the ivy rises on the horizon and she feels the stone tremble with a heartbeat, she only thinks it's an echo of her own roaring in her rib-cage.
Far ahead a creature screams.
Isra does not pause.
" Take her apart until all that's left is her red, red heart thumping against the world. "
The bridge and monster sea feels like home. The pearls and the glass feel like pieces of her dreams that somehow cut their way through her skin to freedom. Even the bloom on rust and oil on the waves do not terrify her.
Thana does not know why this place feels like home, but it does. And so she walks with wonder in her heart instead of that once infinite feeling of searching. Her eyes when she catches a glimpse of them in a bit of mirror that reflects her form do not hold in them bits of white water and deer with antlers of steel instead of a bone. Instead in her eyes there is the sea and bits of pearls shining back at her like stars.
She walks on, and on, and on. Each mile of the bridge settles a storm she did not know was brewing. Each brush of a hot breeze on her cheek feels like salvation. The roar of the sea-creatures feels like an lullaby. A smile brushes as faintly as a butterfly wing across her lips.
When she reaches that wall of ivy, and the berries beating like hearts on stems of brown bones, her smile blooms into a hawk of a look across her lips. Her horn flashes in the sun when she looks up, up, up to find an end to it that is not there. Hope blooms in her chest like a petal with metal edges.
Thana rests her cheek against a vine of ivy. It does not wither and die. Her heart stutters a beat until it's thrumming to the same pace as the berries.
Home, her heart sings to the ivy, I want to go home.
"Death hath no dominion"
@Asterion
STAFF EDIT***
@thana has rolled a 2, and has been awarded +40 signos!
Once the smoke and ash had cleared, the sun had risen over the horizon and the animals had seemed to calm, there was still curiosity and uncertainty. Many wanted to know what was happening on the southern reaches of their land that they could not see from Delumine.
Eulalie had offered to put together a group of equines to travel south. Herself and a few of their soldiers, plus any citizens brave enough to face the unknown. And, her son. Regis, strong and bright and brave, for he walked on despite his fears or reservations, was at her side their entire journey down from Delumine, through the lands of their neighbors in Terrastella, to the coast.
Her heart beat warmly and her eyes glowed with pride every time she glanced down upon him and his companion. Courage. He had spades of it, to overcome. To endure. As they took the first steps out onto the strange bridge, which shifted and changed with every mile, Eulalie took in all the details carefully.
There was no visible end to this bridge, and she had no idea how long they would follow it out to sea. But she was certain of one thing; there was otherworldly magic here. That was the only way she could imagine such a thing coming into being overnight as it had.
And when her son turned toward her with fear in his eyes she smiled and reached out to gently brush her cheek against his own. As above them Tabbris flapped his great wings upon the sea air, and before them Milo trotted along spryly, Eulalie knew one more thing. That all would be fine. She felt it, believed it. “It will hold us,” she said firmly, turning deep brown eyes upon Regis as she moved along beside him.
"speech"
@Regis <3 Also if any other Deluminians want to join feel free!
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone
Asterion had steeled himself for horror, and so when wonder came instead at first he fought the feeling.
It has been so easy to forget the way magic once made him feel - like all the stories he’d been told as a boy were true, like anything could happen, like dreams could be pulled from sleep and borne to waking hours.
Again and again, Novus has taught him otherwise. First it stripped his magic altogether, then it gave him heroes who abused their gifts. When the summons had first come from the gods, his heart had leapt, a bird with the sun on its wings - and here, too, he was proven a fool. Every miracle turned to regret, ever wish melted like ash on his tongue.
He doesn’t know why now is different. But as morning comes at last - as they all wait together like a held breath and the dawn that comes feels like the first one the world ever saw - the bay’s heart beats with something more than dread. Cirrus is with him now, perched steadfast on his withers, and those he loves surround him, and the breeze is fresh and calm.
We face this alone, Leto had said when he sought her out as she cast her bones. But Asterion does not feel alone, and there is no one else he would rather face whatever waits beyond that waiting sea than Isra, than Flora, than Fiona and Juniper and Eik and Moira and on and on and on. Maybe they will die, and die together. But oh, oh, he thinks they might yet live -
The king does not know who first realizes the island is gone. There is a whisper, a murmur, a shout through the crowd - the volcano has vanished, but there is a bridge. A bridge of gleaming, sloping, cooling lava in whorls and arches and everything strange. Not for the first time, Asterion thinks of the maze in Ravos, how wild the magic was, how strange. Then he had been weak, alone, a boy.
He is none of those things any longer. It feels easy as anything to step out onto the bridge.
Almost he is surprised it is firm beneath his feet. But oh, no fairy tale is complete without its path, and he follows the strange creation, not pausing long enough to study each fearful mystery. On and on he walks, until the cry of the sea-birds falls behind him (the only gull now is Cirrus, silent and wary on his back), surrounded by horses all doing the same. He wonders if he should warn them back - but the king is ready (perhaps too prepared) to call his magic to him, to use the sea as a barrier to keep the horses safe (as if safety is anything he can expect).
The ending grows stranger yet. Then fearsome things surface briefly from the water, monsters he cannot name, and his magic curls tighter around his heart, a fist about to strike. The air grows thick, but the endless blue has not changed since just after dawn; if time lives here it has changed its rules. Still Asterion walks, and does not tremble. Still he follows the narrow path, and almost smiles at each golden flower that whispers of Isra’s passing by.
At last there is the end. But the bay does not approach that strange wall, though he does not warn others away from it. The only flicker of fear he feels is watching them all touch it - Leto, and Thana, and Florentine too.
Instead he waits, and thinks how much better it feels to be ready to fight and die rather than do nothing and live.
everything you are
is everything i need
you're everything to me
He had come to her, when her heart had been shivering and her legs aching and her eyes shining with years. He had found her, again. Fiona had taken shelter beneath his wing and taken comfort in the warmth of his skin pressed against hers. And he had stayed with her, by her side, her rock and her refuge.
Only when the sky had cleared had Fiona braved the outside again. But beneath a blue sky and a gentle morning, she felt braver. And with Atreus at her side, she felt stronger. Together, they gathered among the crowd bustling about the shoreline where the bridge stretched out into the sea. It seemed like everyone was talking at once, voicing their concerns, their thoughts and their theories.
Fiona pressed closer to Atreus. She had her own uncertainties still, watching as group after group of equines moved out onto the bridge and eventually disappeared out of her view. Would they come back? If she went, would she find them, eventually?
Much of her wished to remain here, in the place she knows well, surrounded by the equines she knows. But then she thought about the citizens of Dusk Court, who looked to her to keep their best interests in mind. She thought of the equines who she knows, who needed her. And she felt like she had to go.
Fiona steeled herself with a breath, and looking to Atreus with bright lavender eyes thought, stay with me, before taking that first step onto the bridge.
Samaira had finished her duties at the hospital, and couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. Everyone was talking about the bridge, how it had just seemed to appear out of nowhere with the clearing of the storm and the smoke in the sky. More than one patient had come in talking about it, and herself and the other medics had wanted to know more. But there was so little information. Those who had gone to the end and come back said there was nothing there.
Samaira wanted to see so for herself. Thus, after she had completed with her drop in patient that day, she took to the skies with Alaunus at her side. Equine and bonded floated on the sea-winds out to the ocean, far above the mystical bridge below. From here, even she could not see the end of it.
”Do you suppose it’s safe?” Alaunus said, glancing at Samaira as they flew. “Some mentioned monsters in the sea, but none returned injured from the bridge that I know of,” the pegasus said. Were the beasts hunting them, waiting for someone to fall to the ocean? But none had, nobody had reported any such thing. But, she supposed, if someone had gone alone and not returned… Samaira shook the thought away with a flap of her wings. Unless someone was indeed reported missing, there was nothing to be worried about.
“Everything will be alright, Alaunus. Aren’t you supposed to be the one that’s always reassuring me?” She was jesting with the young heron, but did understand his concerns even as she tried to alleviate them. “Tell you what, as we fly, we will keep an eye on those below,” she said, and the bird nodded his agreement, feeling better. ”I’m sure we can’t be the first to fly out, but perhaps we will discover something different.”
“If we do, we will report it, but I’m not sure what we’ll find. Everyone says there is nothing there, where it stops.”
They flew on, riding the breezes as they continued to follow bridge for miles and miles. She thought, after awhile, that they would need to land on it just to rest. But then the clouds grew thicker and it became harder to see. “Alaunus, slow up, I can’t tell where we are goi-- woah, woah!” when suddenly out of the clouds arose a huge wall of ivy. Samaira extended her wings backward, catching the air in them in a desperate attempt to slow her foreward motion, kicking her legs to squander her momentum.
Alaunus deftly dove upward at her exclamation, avoiding the wall and circling back around in alarm. ”Are you alright?”, he asked, blue eyes looking over Samaira as she came to a stop just before the ivy. “Yes, I’m alright,” she backed up a short distance and looked up, left, right, down, “it seems to go on forever in all directions. I would travel up but I don’t think I could see well enough through the clouds to be comfortable. Probably best we don’t, but,” Samaira paused, glancing at her bonded, “What do you suppose the purpose of it is?”
The heron looked from Samaira to the wall and back. ”To keep us out? Or… to keep something else in?”
"Speaking."
Feel free to include Samaira if you are up in the air!
STAFF EDIT***
@Samaira has rolled a 4, and has been awarded +100 signos!
As she watches the eruption from the shores of Denocte, she cannot help but watch quietly as the others around her run in fear. She does not fear what the earth has been doing, but she is curious as to why. Living in the Rift had taught her that so many things could happen without any explanation at all, that things could change without any sort of warning. Katniss did not fear the change, she only wished to understand it.
So when the ash began to settle and the rain began to wash away the soot, her eyes looked out to where the volcano had once been. To her surprise, there was nothing there. There was no island, no volcano, not even a speck of land on the horizon. She should be in awe, but instead she waits. Something will happen, as it has always done in the past.
And soon, there is a bridge that appears, made apparently of lava. But it is a strange bridge, one that is not created by the natural flow of the lava. There are walls that formed, separating the bridge from the sea. It has her curious, and so she steps forward in the hopes to discover more. Finnick screeches from upon her back, his warnings going unnoticed. He can sense that something is not right. And even though she too can feel this, she is unafraid.
As she travels the bridge, mile after mile, she cannot help but look at the oddities that the bridge holds. The feathers that bloom as a flower, the monsters that await just to her right. They are all strange and yet thrilling, and they all push her forward for some sort of promise for something more.
But when she reaches the end, she is shocked to discover that it leads to nowhere. There is only a wall of ivy there that stretches too high for her to contemplate length. It looks strange and she wonders if it is supernaturally made. Finnick wants her to turn around and flee, but she stays steadfast. She stands there studying the ivy, wondering just how such a thing had been created.
STAFF EDIT***
@Katniss has rolled a 5, and has been awarded +140 signos!
After the ash and dust has settled, Rhone moves on with his life as if nothing had happened. He continues to try and rebuild Terastella, to make it into something great again. He is distracted with his task, not even noting that something had changed in the wake of the volcano. He doesn’t notice that a bridge has appeared out of nowhere and the island has seemingly disappeared.
It isn’t until he hears the whispers of the bridge that he decided to go explore it himself. Rhone has never been considered a fearless fellow or one who does things without thinking. But there is something eerie about this bridge that has formed. His gut tells him not to go, that there is something harmful there. It tells him that he should let his elders do the exploring and he should stay behind where it is safe.
And yet, there is the scholar part of him that simple needs to know what this bridge is and what it leads to. And so, he leaves the safety of Terastella and heads towards the bridge.
By the time he arrives, he is not the only one where. Several have walked on ahead of him while several soar over him. Eyes watch their figures disappear into the distance before he slowly steps onto the bridge and begins his journey. He starts with a deep breath, the air thick. It makes his lungs feel as though the air around him is not the air he should be breathing.
As he walks, he can hear the shrieks of others ahead of him and instinct drives him forward. Even though he is no longer a king, he cannot help that feeling that he must protect those that have gone before him. It is such a fatherly sort of emotion, something that he probably should have had when his own children were young. And yet, now was not the time to reflect on his past.
By the time he reaches the shrieks, he has come face to face with a wall of ivy. He stops amongst the gathered crowd, his eyes looking up and around him. What is this? Who has created such a thing in the middle of nowhere? He cannot be sure who has created such a thing, but he does know it’s from a magic that far surpasses his own.
STAFF EDIT***
@Rhone has rolled a 3, and has been awarded +80 signos!
![[Image: x341oLX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/x341oLX.png)
![[Image: 13481303_KpOIcOG7drxHK9U.png?1556314753]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13481303_KpOIcOG7drxHK9U.png?1556314753)
