I'll be a stone, I'll be the hunter,
The tower that casts a shade
***
Deep in the Arma mountains, far from the beaten paths leading into and out of Denocte, the ancient peaks gave way to the vastness of the Terminus Sea, bending in supplication to its eternal dominance. Raymond stood pensively on a stony outcropping overlooking the shoreline still miles to the west. From there he could see the Praistigia Cliffs unfold like a ribbon along Terrastella's southern border, and somewhere in there shadow he knew a sea creature lay in eternal repose, its hollow breast echoing with dreams of red and black.
Life has a way of pushing you forward more quickly than you realize. Raymond rarely succumbed to the temptation to look back, to see what he sowed in the wake of his relentless reaping, but so much has happened in so little time that it was enough to unsettle even him.
Out past the range and across those tumultuous waters were things the red stallion was reluctant to leave behind, and he had left them. It was his nature to resist attachment, to enforce a solitude that he would never have chosen for himself. Ruth was reminder enough of the wisdom of such a lifestyle, but through their brief companionships he had lowered his guard to form other bonds, to become familiar with others.
And now he almost - almost - felt guilty for forsaking a title only just bestowed upon him by someone he might tentatively regard as a friend. He would not regret, for the ends justified far more radical means than he had ultimately needed to employ, but he knew Florentine well enough by now that he at least had the decency to feel a twinge of sympathy.
At the very least he had not lied to her. Terrastella was no more his home than the riftlands had been, and the flower maiden would always in his mind be the bright-eyed girl that had saved a dying kitten for naught but kindness's sake. That was of far greater importance to him than any title she bore.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
She makes the worlds sing and cry and split as her dagger sinks its way through existence. Through a rip, glowing gold and red, the girl appears. Petals are scorched, smoke clings like a dragon’s breath to her skin.
Florentine makes no face of surprise as she appears before Raymond with dark eyes savage and bleak. The air ripples like water, her hair rises with static as the window knits shut like a cosmic wound.
At her throat her dagger is warm, but she looks out from the rocky outcrop upon which they stand and regards the jagged façade of her home. She thinks of the roaring sea between them and what it would be if there was no sea at all. But she already knows, she has walked upon a seabed where the water was lost so very long ago.
Yet this is novus, where magic is forgiving and strict. It does not change upon a whim, nor scold the undeserving. It does not keep this wild girl upon her toes, it does not thrill her like the changeable Rift once did. If she itches for adventure, it shows not. If she yearns for chaos, she hides it well.
Only the wind, loud and coarse, makes any sound between them. Only the wind dares stir the hair atop her nape. The soft down of her feathers ripple – the wind makes her soft, but politics has made her sharp. Inside Florentine has become made of too many sharp, sharp points. “You are a dick.” She hisses like a viper.
There is no part of her gaze that softens for him. There is no rise of her slender ears, there is no upward curve of her lips. She had saved his cat, she had tried twice to help him find her and all he returned were harsh words and ungrateful anger. She made him one of her Champions and he repaid her with defection. His letter appears, folded with edges singed and paper burned. What worlds had she dragged it through to be here? In silence the letter falls to his feet and Florentine turns from the shadow of her cliffs upon the horizon. “Enjoy this cursed kingdom, Raymond.”
And with that she turns to leave him where he stands, his letter unfurling as it rolls its way out to sea.
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
He had not expected anyone to find him here, let alone Florentine. She appeared before him like a bolt out of the blue, the edges of her portal frayed with the intensity of her displeasure. Neither horse said anything at first; truthfully, there was nothing to be said.
Raymond had never made it a mystery that he bent no knee to the young queen. He had never tried to convince her otherwise, had never paid lip service to respecting her station. She'd given him a title he had not asked for, and as a friend he had accepted only insofar as the station did not chain him to the kingdom that more than a season of residence had not made feel like home.
She might think him a villain, but he had done only what he deemed necessary to root out the corruption festering here. He would not apologize for it, nor would he diminish his actions by attempting to defend himself.
So he said nothing, and she said nothing - until...
You are a dick.
The words cracked like a whip between them, so strange from Florentine's young mouth. The red stallion met her eye and lifted his chin as though to accept the remark that felt as though it should be all the more scathing coming from her as it did. "I am." That, too, was something he had never tried to conceal. It seemed fitting that Florentine, so pure against the inscrutable sin-eating grey of his soul, should call him on it first among those who knew him best.
She threw his letter back at him. Maybe he should have been flattered that at least she'd delivered the charred husk in person rather than by raven post, but he simply let the smoldering parchment flutter like a broken butterfly to the earth and lay there quivering in the wind, his gazed fixed and unblinking upon the Dusk Queen.
Still, he offered no defense.
Having delivered her answer, Florentine turned her back on him. Lip twitching, the red stallion swiveled his head until his vision filled with the toothy silhouettes of the Arma Mountains laid out at his back. He sighed.
@Sid please come drop the giant death cow now
Edit: Flora walks away rather than leaving through the portal
aut viam inveniam aut faciam
06-28-2018, 07:24 PM - This post was last modified: 06-29-2018, 07:14 AM by Raymond
The meeting between the Queen and her once-Champion was brief, but that was all it took. Florentine opens a window in space, and through the rift tumble years upon years of time and memories, replaying themselves in infinite ways infinity times over.
A millennium passes in the blink of an eye, the Sphinx cat swirling through time and colors like doorways. Each one changes her, warps her and twists her, spinning around dizzyingly fast so that even she might not recognize herself in a mirror. Time creeps forward, and the once-sphinx is awaken—by a slash in space, a rift beckoning her forward.
The portal glows red, flaming light spilling out and invading the Arma Mountains.
It stretches and grows, growing both in width and in height as if it is making room for something big, something monstrous. The rift in time stretches far above Raymond’s head, wind and fire alike rushing through the created space with wild abandon. The heat might singe him, should he draw too near; but it would never burn. The grass lining the mountains wilts and dries up, crackling under his feet.
The tip of a horn appears, near the top, its matching pair not far behind.
Even the thinnest point seems thicker than Raymond’s body, and thrice as long. It appears inch by inch, ever so slowly, as if it must force its way through the portal with no small effort.
Piece by piece, the monster is revealed.
Glistening teeth. A scaled nose. A knuckle longer than Raymond’s body leading to a curled claw—a single strike could knock an army of horses out of the way.
And when the beast takes its first step out of the rift, the ground seems to shake and vibrate underneath the weight.
Her eyes blink, yellow and blue looking around in curiosity at the mountain range. Her tail flicks back and forth slowly, much like a cat in contemplation. She turns, ready to walk down the mountain path—
—and sees Raymond.
The beast freezes, staring him down in interest. A bloodlust rages in her eyes, her claws opening and closing as if in preparation to snatch him from where he stood. And yet… Something held her back.
Her head leans closer and closer, tilting to the side so that she might stare him down with an icy blue gaze. She blinks one more time, so near that Raymond might hear the clinking of her scaly eyelid as it snaps shut and reopens. Her nostrils flare, the scent of him taking her back a thousand years ago to a different world, a different time, a different life.
”Raymond.” The titan will speak in his mind. Despite the dramatic changes in her outward appearance, it will be the same voice he heard from a kitten, so many years ago. It is Ruth’s voice, and the emotions that suddenly flow through their telepathic bond are uniquely her’s.
She pushes her scaled muzzle towards him, breathing puffs of warm and humid air over him. Her tail flicks in contentment, nearly razing a grove of trees that it passes overtop. ”You have not changed at all.”
After Florentine leaves, the window she has created will grow red and begin spitting out flames, growing in height and width to an impressive size. The Tarrasque will appear little by little: first a horn, then a snout, a claw, a foot, a series of spikes. Once she is fully through, the portal will shrivel back up and close behind her. She will see Raymond and draw closer, looking him over closely and smelling his face--having to bend over considerably to reach her eye to his height. Then their bond will be restored, and she will greet him like her old friend.
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And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' and I saw.
The rip in space-time did not close as it ought.
He had turned away, but a growing heat and red, red radiance drew his eye back across the plane of his shoulder. Its vorpal edges sparked and writhed like unstable serpents, spreading like poison along the seams of reality. He weighed the option of calling to Florentine - if she could even still hear him - but before he could settle on a course the tear became a towering, wicked gash threatening to rend the sky in twain. The world looking back at him through the rift was a nightmare vision of the world where Ruth had died...and something was trying to come through.
All thought of calling her back fell from his mind.
A pair of curved horns broke through, followed by an unfathomably large, brutish head. He stumbled backward; dread was an unfamiliar sensation for the red stallion, but it buffeted him in sickening waves as the air came alive with the low, thunderous rumble of the titan's breathing. The smell of dust and char and ancient leather burrowed deep into his lungs, and still the beast burst through until its scarred and scaly underside filled his vision.
One titanic, taloned foot slid through, biting into the mountainside with a force that sent tremors through the earth and splintered the stone beneath its claws. Raymond's breath came in shallow gasps and his heart fluttered like a caged bird at the incomprehensible thing materializing before him. The second leg came through, and as the tapering impossibility of its armored tail followed, the portal - ragged, frayed by the eruption of its charge - at last began to knit itself shut.
What had she done?
The titan's massive head cast a long shadow as it swept its bright, beady eyes out over the mountain range. This was the thing that had destroyed that forgotten world, and through their reckless meddling it had found its way here. Slowly Raymond backed away, limbs weak and tingling like white noise under him. If he could slip away, he could warn someone....but who? About what.
The beast's tail felled a tall pine with a careless sweep. Even the Raven Gates could not withstand a world-eater such as this.
He took a bad step. The steady thunder of the Tarrasque's guttural breathing hitched as both of them froze where they stood - hunter, hunted. It tilted its head and bent on its powerful haunches, spiked dewlap shuddering with an aggressive growl as it pinned him down with a single piercing blue eye.
Running was not an option. A single step would have been enough to catch him up, a single swing of its grasping arms would break every bone in his body. He could only stand, transfixed by a terror and awe wholly alien to his experience, as the creature lowered its head to peer at him with the same disdainful curiosity that he might turn on a particularly shiny beetle. Its fetid breath poured over him like a dense fog as it leaned close, reflecting his stricken expression in its icy eye.
One slow blink. Click.
The head turned, serrated fangs passing inches from his side, and a testing inhale dragged the air out of his ears. The next moment would be his last; he hoped Florentine would be proud of herself.
Raymond. The word split his head like a peal of thunder, more for its familiarity than its force. A female voice - clear as a bell and wild in the purest, simplest fashion. You have not changed at all.
The red stallion's jaw went slack, and in that moment his limbs nearly did fail him. The soul-piercing blue eye flashed down at him from on high again, and as the Tarrasque turned her head again he glimpsed a spark of shining gold. When at last he moved, it was with a step toward his destruction rather than away. He gaped stupidly at her, dwarfed by every inch of her.
Gingerly she reached for him with a single long-fingered hand whose might could crumble walls with a swipe. Palm open to him, she extended her wicked-taloned thumb and brushed the muscled plane of his shoulder where once her claws had failed. Raymond had to steel himself against even that lightest touch, but....
Ruth?
His mental voice was weak and reedy with disbelief, but the flood of emotions that rushed both ways across the link was as real as anything he'd ever felt.
The rolling thunder that shook the world around her throat might have been a purr.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
The letter had swept away to sea, little more than a leaf upon the breeze. She does not watch it go, she does not even spare the crimson warrior a cursory glance as she heads for the glowing cut. It hovered electric and bright, sizzling with the static of and infinity of worlds rubbing, rubbing, rubbing.
She had made the worlds weak and the magic knew. Florentine was so close and yet so far from the rift when it began to grow. It reached for the sky and sliced low to the earth. Then it turns as crimson as Raymond’s skin and darker still. The mountains turn blood red and light pours like a fountain of blood to spill upon the earth at her feet.
Slowly the girl retreats. Her dagger is hot, hot at her breast raging against the twisting of its magic. But it is nothing compared to the winds blowing in towards Florentine and Raymond. Oh it is fierce and hot as flames. It breathes across her skin like dragon-fire and the ends of her mane glow and singe. The air is acrid and she steps back, then back again. Over and over and over her limbs work in retreat, but the scar grows and grows and grows.
It reaches the sun and blots it out, now there is nothing before Florentine but a world of crimson fire and a shadow that looms, mammoth and deadly, from within. Her limbs turn to water, her eyes as wide as the midsummer moon.
There is no world in which she has seen a creature such as the one that rips its way through her window. It is terror that has her watching it, that has her standing as still as ice, her heart a thing so fast within her chest, it feels like air. Adrenaline is electricity within her veins and all is slow, slow, slow. The world spins as slow as an eternity and the monster that looms lights the girl like torch paper.
Suddenly alive, no longer a spectator in the wicked events of this strange magic, the girl spins round to Raymond, “Run!” But the beast casts them an icy look, as blue as a frozen sea. There are no words upon her lips, no breath that can easily catch within her lungs. She might have cried, she might have screamed, not even her wings are strong enough to carry her into the skies.
Raymond, when she drinks him in in her terror and her plight, is static, his eyes pained, his body still. But then he moves and it is not to run, but to step in towards the beast. It reaches for him, a single claw the size of an army. The girl’s wings are spread and she is airborne faster than a fly. She stutters, small beside this creature – she is indeed a fly, small and insignificant, a pest to be swatted.
But that touch to Ramond’s skin is both soft and heavy. He steels himself and it gives the girl pause, it chokes the air in her lungs. “Ray,” she wheezes. “Run!”
And then the world begins to tremble with a thunderous purr.
I'll be a stone, I'll be the hunter,
The tower that casts a shade
***
In the shock of Ruth's appearance, Raymond had forgotten entirely about the unpleasant tidings that had preceded her. Like her impossible size, the mere fact of her survival through the heart of the rift stretched comprehension to and past his breaking point. He had seen her fall - delicate, naked, defenseless against the Rift's onslaught - and he had seen her enchanted collar shattered and tarnished by time on a world kept only by the dead. But the mind that touched his yet bore a spark of the old kittenish sunshine, and each great eye gleamed with the same feline intensity that he remembered.
This was Ruth - but what price had she paid to return to him? What price had he yet to pay in earning her back?
...Rey, Run! The words leak into his consciousness as though from a great distance, so insignificant beside the Tarrasque's weight in his mind. It was only a flash of wings that caught his attention as it sent an instinctive shudder of excitement buzzing through the newly-forged mental link.
The beast did not recall her savior quite so quickly as she did her sire.
Ruth extended the very taloned hand that had a moment ago brushed Raymond's shoulder with utmost care, and it did not take telepathy to figure out that she meant to swat Florentine out of the sky like the fluttering nuisance she must have seemed. It all seemed so impossibly slow - if only because the rust-colored titan was so impossibly large - and for the razor's edge of an instant the red stallion found himself at a loss. How do you plead with the apocalypse?
"Ruth!" he bellowed both inwardly and outwardly, throwing all of his hopes behind the merciful memory that had spared his own life and shoving through the link every moment he could manage. "You know her! A dying kitten, brought back from the brink by a golden girl with flowers in her hair; a proud young sphynx entangled in the same golden girl's flowing tail.
The claws faltered, pausing a few scant yards shy of tragedy. The grating rumble of Ruth's puzzlement rolled over in her throat like a mouthful of boulders as she drew in an experimental breath of Florentine's floral scent. Her jaws clicked shut with a sound like a tree snapping in two and tore a furrow in the earth where her tail twitched irritatedly behind her, but Raymond sensed a confused sort of restraint.
I can catch it, the Tarrasque huffed, and Raymond had no reason to doubt it.
"Flora," he called, breathless, "you have to land." That much he delivered with every bit as much steel as he had borne her in the forgotten realm, though his tone seemed to entreat rather than command. It was a voice of worry for what could happen rather than the pain of what had already come to pass. "It's Ruth."
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
The monster’s gaze turns upon the pegasus and her heart stops within her chest. To keep aloft, her wings strong, was suddenly an effort. Adrenaline peaked and then fled in the numbing, stealing wake of terror.
Florentine had seen so many beasts since she had roamed so many worlds, but here, held fast between the eyes of this great monster, she feels so dreadfully in awe.
Its great head tips, its horns seeming to scratch the clouds from the skies. It steals Florentine’s breath and her lungs spasm within her ribs.
The eyes that follow her are hungry and curious. They are as unwavering as the gaze of a cat surveying its prey. Florentine’s own gaze falls to Raymond, where he stands, staring up at the creature before him. It does not move to attack the crimson warrior – not when it’s eyes are still so fully upon the girl who flutters like a moth.
The paw comes up and Flora should have known it would. She should have seen those eyes as Raymond had, but the Dusk girl does not have the advantage of a connection with this beast. It therefore does not cross her mind that this might be the kitten, who was once so fragile and naked, that she had saved.
A cry leaves her lips and her eyes are on Raymond for a moment too long. The claws arch up to swat her from the sky. Here she is little more than a fly, a pest to this beast that make even mountains looks small. Florentine sees the arm lift like a terrible omen. It comes through the air with the force of death pushing the air before it.
Ray begs her down, her eyes incredulous and bright lower to where he stands, all tense angles and lines. “Down.” She breathes, shocked and wild and pushes herself out over the sea, aiming to be free of the reach of this beast. “Ray, it is a monster.”
Then she pushes down, sweeping in low, reaching for the crimson warrior. She is close enough to hear him say It is Ruth. and the girl stops midair, her eyes lifting to drink in the monster before her. The keen eyes that once stalked her tail from the delicate skull of Raymond’s cat.
Ruth.
Florentine is numb, oh so numb. What twisted trick of the Rift was this? Her love of ancient time and magic, turns to ash within her mouth.
And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying,
'Come and see.' and I saw.
***
Time balanced on the knife-edge of calamity. Of course the flower maiden wouldn't believe him: he wouldn't have believed himself, but for the warm familiarity of the Tarrasque's mind nestled against his. He had questioned her judgment and scorned her hospitality, however soundly he could defend his actions. But they had no time to compare evidence or check sources, for even at that moment the beast's puzzled restraint wavered before the temptation of Florentine's frantic wingbeats.
Cats are killers. They stalk, they disembowel, they hunt when they have no need of it. If the forgotten world were any indication, then the only measurable difference to speak of between cat and Tarrasque was the scale of their destruction.
Why wasn't she landing?
Instead, the golden girl fluttered out of reach, scarcely more than a moth on the wind from his helpless vantage point. Ruth's head tilted, tracking her flight with mechanical precision. Raymond could hear her incredulously shouted reply, but only just.
Florentine swooped back toward where he stood, and as she did the rolling thunder of the titan's purr fell abruptly silent. The connection at the edge of his consciousness vibrated like a taut bowstring; he felt rather than saw the dilation of her pupils, the bunching of mighty muscles beneath her iron skin. The jagged eruption of serrated teeth in her mouth were permanently fixed in a gruesome rictus that grinned with anticipation at the pegasus sweeping low into her reach. "Stay back, Flora!" he warned, but she was coming in too quickly now.
Ruth, don't -
The titan batted his command aside as easily as she would have the one who commanded it. The maiden paused, fixed in mid-air by the ancient monstrosity's oh-so-familiar eyes, and the taut bowstring snapped at last.
A single clawed hand swung toward the young mare, more eager and playful than bloodthirsty, but even a curious shark can kill. Raymond watched helplessly as the creature he twice thought was dead swatted its own savior out of the sky like a stray bit of parchment.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls
It was fate that wound about them tightly now. It was fate that would down the girl like a bird struck from the sky.
The winds played their part well. They blew too hard and drove too fast and all Florentine could hear was the erratic beat of her racing heart and the roar of a restless wind.
All her eyes could see was the monster standing atop the cliff face. Raymond stood between it and the sea. There was scant space there, between the monster and Florentine’s friend. The sea rose up to beckon the warrior in, it spat at the monster looming above it and carried the fearsome shadow across its restless surface.
For all her calls, Raymond did not move. Oh what good it would have done to be able to listen and hear. But this is no forgiving situation, Fate laughs in the wind and winds itself tighter about its golden girl. Florentine walks a tightrope between fate and chance, on a whim she succumbs to both. But here, oh here, she is victim only to one.
In she swoops to save a friend, frustration in her lungs and fear in her veins.
-----
Florentine has fallen like this before.
How many times had she thrown herself from a mountain top and scuffed her feet as she plummeted from a cliff’s highest crest? How many times had she fallen with laughter ringing in her ears and the flash of feathers fluttering in the wind? Too many, in answer.
But none were like this, for:
None began with an impact enough to blow the breath from her lungs.
None had her falling with blood in her throat or a terrible pain in her side.
None had her falling and wondering if death had caught up with her at last.
Over and over she tumbles until the ground is up and the sky is down, until both meet with a scrambling blur that becomes nothing but a swirl of stars and sky and sea and stone. Her wings shed their feathers in disarray, the wind swooping in to catch beneath them, but Florentine is falling fast. She is a falling comet; in light and gold she descends from the sky as though it were not a tarrsque that plucked her from the air, but the stars themselves.
Florentine lands with no grace. Her body meets an earth she never knew could be so hard and shattering. Blood, too coppery, too hot, spills from her nose and her lips. Oh it reminds her of what it is to die: What a pleasure it had once been to feel the haze of eternal sleep seep across her body and to give in to its calm embrace…
But this was not a day for death and Florentine was not ready to be caught in its eternal web. Upon the ground she thrashes - just to be able to stand, even with a crumpled wing... Blood pools fast and hot and wet within her throat. A cough has it painting the rocks beside her lips.
Ah her limbs are strong, but her wing is a disjointed, twisted thing that hangs so oddly at her side. She feels no pain for it now; not when all her body is a cacophony of pain. It is loud, disjointed and Flora would cry out, if she could, if only she could. She does not, and she stops thrashing as her wing hangs limply at her side, unmoved by all her frantic fears.
It is a blessing she is too dazed, too shocked, to see how close she has landed to the monster her rift window summoned. Florentine is but a small piece parchment, fluttering uselessly upon the bloodied ground and she has no thought for the monster that plucked her from the sky. What was left to fear when you were already broken? When you had already died once and now it came back to claim you again, in blood and broken bones.
Blood is an angry froth upon her lips and it gargles in her throat as she struggles to breathe. Darkness bleeds in her vision – ah, this is the truest touch of night. It creeps in upon her and she knows its welcome well. Florentine knows the tiredness that weighs her limbs down. She knows what it was to die with blood upon her tongue and her body broken. But her heart, her body, is stronger now and does not wish to die, not here, not now, but unconsciousness is sweet and so very insistent.
Heavy are the eyelids that dim her gaze and close over amethyst at last. It may be silent the moment the girl falls still and quiet, but she does not know.
