Solis doesn’t sleep that night - he’s a god, made from the fire of the sun, molded by its flame. He does not need sleep. As the sun sinks in the sky and the moon rises, the brilliance that make up his mane and tail seem to dull, the heat pouring from his body seeming to wither to something lukewarm. His eyes dim, but never droop; and it is like so that he waits out the night.
But when the sun returns on the dawn, oh, does he shine! The fire alights anew inside of him, burning through his eyes, igniting his mane and tail so that they dance and waver like flame. And when the dawn fades into the day, his heat is nigh unbearable to stand next to.
He tosses his head, pacing throughout the Court. “I might be wrong, but it seems to be morning,” he calls out, as spry and heedless as ever. There’s a daredevil-esque air to him, a reckless thirst for adrenaline. Can they feel it, too? “It’s time to get this show on the road, people.”
It was past time for this winter to end.
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After the meeting in the Day Court, Solis is ready to gather the Court to head into the Mors to find the creatures causing this unusual winter. Are you with him, and ready to head out into the blizzard?
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f you wanna start a fight, you better throw the first punch
As the early dawn paints sunlight across Solterra, one creature is already awake, unable to sleep -- his dreams are full of fire and ruined castles, lately, a memory that sets his teeth on edge every single time it comes back to haunt him. He longs for the armor he’d abandoned in a land far away, to shield himself and hide away from what he feels is he prying eyes of every other citizen.
"Of course you’re a fucking morning person,” He grouses blearily when Solis comes through the streets, but none-the-less he joins the God, keeping pace at his right side and shaking away the remnants of what little sleep he had managed to grab. There was a hunt to begin, after all, the sort that would lead to the kind of fight he had been craving.
His first night in the Day Court had been cold and yet, uneventful. Saphrax still wasn’t so sure about the sand that was beneath the snow. It worried him about what might happen when the snow began to melt and give way to the sands below. He was sure to get sand in his eyes and that was something that could not happen. Sand in eyes and crevices was something that Saphrax hated more than anything. And yet, there wasn’t much he could do about it now.
His thoughts about sand and snow are interrupted by the eagerness and loudness of someone gallivanting through the streets. Sticking his head out of his shelter for the evening, he looks upon the strange creature and can’t help but notice that they contain some similarities. And yet…Saphrax was not as bright-eyed and busy-tailed as this fellow in the mornings.
Slowly, Saphrax steps out of his little shelter, his flames flickering in the morning breeze as he comes towards the gathering. He’s only just arrived and he’s not sure what they are going after. And yet…Saphrax won’t back down from an adventure. After all, he needs a reason to show off to the others in this Court. He has to make an impression somehow, right?
the divine beasts ' Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to span '
Veer is the darkest thing in the desert when he joins the group. He is ink and soot, darker than a moon-less night sky, darker than the shadow stretching out in the snow below him. Even his eyes seem darker, like cooper not yet molded and shined into something perfect. He is nothing more than a carrion bird circling over head, round and round and round.
He is the Black Falcon.
The night before is still carried on his skin. Streaks of ruby (like precious stone through ore) run across his neck and his hooves are dark with blood and clay that haven't yet been cleaned by the snow. He should be tried, his wings should be heavy from a night of killing and blood and revelry. Yet he only looks eager when he smiles down at the horses below (and the god) and laughs for all the bright fire of them that dances across the blackness of him.
Today he is all the glory of war, the master of blood-lust and pain. Everything about him promises the end of whatever beast they are looking for. And if there is a tingle of worry dancing in the back of his mind (not his, never his) he drowns it out with eagerness.
Worry not, Najjad. Veer says to that tickle of caution blossoming through the wildness of him. There is no beast that could catch me, let alone kill me.
I am still faster. I could catch you. Najjad whispers back and Veer can feel phantom rivers of blood running down his throat. The gryphon is feeding and Veer thinks almost longingly of a meal he never had time to eat.
But you are not here. So eat and sleep and I will return with bones for you to pick clean There is no more worry after that, only satisfaction and that ever-present want and hunger. Najjad, in true lion form, has contented himself with slumbering away his meal while others slaughter.
Veer refocuses on the group then as he circles them and thinks that perhaps each beat of his mighty wings makes them all look to be standing still like rabbits in the snow (waiting for the falcons and eagles to spot them). Even the god seems almost less god-like when there is miles more of snow for every inch that his heat melts.
Word of it traveled like a wind across the Mors, hot and swift and whispering low. Solis is here and he seeks the bravest for a hunt, a hunt to save the Court.
Elif, whose ears were always to the wind, listened to the talk with an interest so sharp it felt almost like nerves. She spent the night eager, pacing her empty parents’ home, a feeling like heat lightning flickering under her skin. Like Solis, she did not sleep - and as the dawn crested the dunes of the Mors, a sliver of red thin as a cut, she lit incense for the god at the small altar in her hall.
Still, it was difficult to believe it was true - that their god was among them, that he desired their help - and when his voice rang out, insistent as the sun and the heat, she stepped out into the streets to meet him, feeling like she was in a dream.
But she knows it is real as soon as she sees him. Looking on Solis is like looking on the sun; his divinity is undeniable (in her eyes, at least), despite how mortal his features seem, the arrogant twist of his mouth. She can spare barely a glance for the others around him (strangers, all of them - which means they are likely newcomers to the Court), so drawn is she by Solis’s fire and shine.
Don’t stare, she chastises herself, and at last drags her gaze away, though she still trembles as before a race.
Then a shadow falls over her. It is only there for a moment but in that breath it is as though all of Solis’s bright heat has bled away; Elif turns her head up and up, her wings flexing at her sides, and what she sees is almost enough to make her forget the god and the hunt and the snow.
A pegasus, huge and dark and looming like a condor, like a vulture.
“Who is that,” she says, half to herself, and her voice feels tight, her heartbeat shivering like a bird’s.
If she were not before the whole of Solterra, if she were not before the eyes of her god, she would go and see for herself. Perhaps the man is only black in silhouette. Likely he is not the beast she seeks.
But oh, her green eyes linger on his lazy circles, tracing each with the intensity of a hunting hawk, instead of on the god that burns before her.
“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”
11-02-2018, 12:18 PM
Played by
RB [PM] Posts: 89 — Threads: 13 Signos: 185
Even with Solis standing in front of her, Apolonia is not sure she believes in God.
It just doesn’t make sense. Well, alright - not everything has to make sense. But wouldn’t it be nice if it did?
In the wet sand O stands and twirls her hurlbat like a plaything at her side, where it makes a sound of slicing through the air. It could almost skim the hair right off her neck if she weren’t so careful to keep it whirling just an inch away, almost stirring the dark, loose mane that lays flat against her shoulder. She watches Solis glimmer in the sun, and thinks absently that it doesn’t make any sense at all, that a god could be so beautiful and yet so useless.
She does not think of her mother - of the magic that shimmers over her skin like starshine, or the immense heat that wafts from her in the darkness. She does not think of charm, false or real. Nor does she think of her father and the way he pulls new worlds from thin air. She thinks only of herself, and the loud bragging of her heart, and the hurlbat spinning through the air near her ribs: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, turning atmosphere into ribbons.
As the crowd around Solis thickens, Apolonia finally moves forward. She ducks her head close to her chest and weaves through the dunes like a snake, like a wild thing, and at her feet glimmer things, sometimes, holes in the ground, sprouting jungle plants, cow skulls, but only infinitesimally, here and gone in the same second like a mirage: almost she seems a hologram herself, sparkling in the sunlight where gold meets soot.
She glances up at the sky, where that strange bird circles, with a flat mismatched gaze.
That third eye burns a circle in the middle of her forehead.
11-03-2018, 12:18 PM - This post was last modified: 11-03-2018, 12:18 PM by Apolonia
AS A GIRL, I WAITED PATIENTLY TO CATCH FIRE as if it were something worth wanting
She rises with the sun.
They know where she is going, and they paint her for it. She is not so uncomfortable with the ritual as she was months before, when the sovereigns gathered at Tempus’s behest; when they paint long blades of gleaming gold beneath the curves of her eyes and draw an ornate, spiraling sun on her forehead, she allows it without hesitation. Her hair had been pinned up in tight rosettes to reveal the entirety of her face, normally obscured by wisps of white hair. It feels right to wear it to a battle, in a way that it felt wrong to wear it to what was meant to be a simple gathering – in the past, her tribe-leader ancestors and most ancient sovereigns, prior to the rise of the nobility as she had come to know it, had painted their skin to invoke the sun god and his blessings before a fight. It only seemed right that she wore it now, even if she had no need to invoke the god.
He is as beautiful and golden as she remembers him, and how he burns - even in the frigid cold of this accursed winter, she can see the heat radiating off him in waves. He is something radiant and divine and strangely childlike in his wildness and arrogance, but she is no longer so apprehensive of his presence. Her eyes run haphazardly across the gathered equines, and she makes note of them each in turn; the black and white patchwork stallion she knows, and the little firebird. She does not recognize the dark stallion who circles above them, save for, perhaps, in passing; he is a member of the nobility, is he not? The bay Teke, is, too, familiar, though none of them are terribly so…but then her gaze stumbles upon the final member of the gathered party. Bexley’s girl, and Acton’s – of course she would be trouble. Apolonia is clever and capable far beyond her callow years, but she is still a child, and the silver, while loathe to keep her from the battle, makes a mental note to keep an eye on her. The last thing that these sands need, she thinks, is more young blood spilled out across them.
She throws a glance at each of them, dipping her head in acknowledgement, and, smooth and fearless as desert wind, moves to keep pace with the sun god – she stands close enough to feel her skin prickle with heat, but she does not move away. (Better to burn than to freeze over; she does not like this cold.) “Solis.” The god’s name is fire on her tongue. “Do we know what we are up against? How we might defeat it?” Brusque as ever, even in the face of divinity – but she tires of being the frightened girl in the face of something so vast and so bright that her mind can barely grapple with the concept of it, tires of being the girl reduced to tears of white rage and raw-throat screaming to a heaven that will never bend to her will. Besides. Besides, now they stand in the face of something like a war, and that is the only thing that she knows like the beating of her own heart; battle is worn into her skin like the rings on a tree, and she has the scars to prove for it. Perhaps she will die today, after all that she has seen, and the surge of adrenaline is something like a quiet exhilaration, because this is something far simpler than politics or matters of gods and mortals. This is the dance to a melody that she has not heard in many years, and, though she has never garnered any pleasure from bloodshed, she, like a knife forged for the slaughter, finds some strange satisfaction in adhering to her purpose.
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
11-09-2018, 10:26 AM - This post was last modified: 11-09-2018, 10:50 AM by Seraphina
BLESSED BY A BITCH FROM A BASTARD SEED pleasure to meet you, prepare to bleed
Word of the hunt spread quickly through the desert, like wildfire through a dry forest. Word of Solis’ appearance in Solterra spread even more quickly, if that were possible, and Teiran knew of both well before the morning despite the fact that she had not been present at the initial gathering. There was too much to do for her to be standing around waiting for some divine intervention, and yet that is exactly what came. No doubt the citizens of the Day Court would do whatever their god told them to do if it meant the end of this infernal weather. Teiran, even, felt a dull skip of anticipation in her stomach as she walked through the streets. Her eyes were sharp and cold like the edge of a knife when they found him, settling on the inexhaustible golden shine of his skin, brilliant even in the early morning. Ah, there was no mistaking Solis.
The warrior approached with stiff, mechanical steps, as though the chill had settled in her bones. She walked with a robot’s gait, which is nothing more than what she was. Her gaze snapped around the crowd, taking in faces in the matter of moments. Of them all she was not familiar, though there were still a few. Seraphina, of course, her queen, there as always with her smoke silver skin and their matching war collars. Another, smaller, but if Teiran’s eyes knew the softening touch of affection they might have done just so at the sight of Bexley’s daughter. Youth, somehow, always managed to crawl up inside the cracks of her and settle in without meaning to. Her eyes wandered on without lingering for too long, but the feeling did, aching, just out of reach.
When she spied Mathias there, still managing to be alive which she could probably give him some credit for, she couldn’t help but notice the proximity to him and Solis and she wondered if he’d taken to the god. Very few, she imagined, have taken to Solis well or quickly. Then she remembered how she practically dragged him out of the snow filled desert, lost as he was and practically asking for death and she decided that him going on this hunt was a very bad idea. If there was anyone here so far who needed to be watched it would be him. Solis help them.
At length her sage green eyes ventured over to Solis, who had, evidently, almost less to say than herself. No rousing speech to get everyone in the mood for murder? No, she supposed not. Solterrans did after all have a reputation to uphold. Only Seraphina spoke, and Teiran thought that if any could question him it would be her. It wasn’t a terrible question, though the rose hued woman had only considered putting a dagger through its neck. Or their necks. Really, was this going to be a one on one situation or was one side going to be horribly outnumbered? Not that Teiran was concerned. What reason did she have to be? She’d been forged in fire for a fight, like the blades and spears they would wield into this hunt.
Perhaps it is foolish of them to venture out, a stranger with no knowledge of war or of weapons, but Basil has heard of the god who walks among them now. They have many questions, each of them burning with the fury of daybreak, and if they must endure the frigid blizzards outside the insulating walls of the city to ask them, that is fine. They know a little, snatches of self-defense taught when they were not yet called to court and their playmate was not dragged into the Coliseum, that should help keep them safe. It must be enough; there was no other option.
So Basil wraps themself in a dusky wool shawl — it stinks of cedar and dust — and converges with the sun in the central square of the Day Court. Solis is there, the sun rising from the ashes of yesterday, and Basil is sorely disappointed in their tardiness. There will be no time now to ask the questions that rage inside of them. The sun brings warmth and truth to the world when all light goes out— how can Solis bed down amongst mortals with no explanation for his callous disregard for the hurt suffered under the Old Regime? The Courts were molded around the deities; how could the gods bear to see their equine supplicants desecrate their own culture?
They remain quiet and subdued despite their inquisitive nature, sheltered by the gathering of horses around them— but they are noticeably closer to Seraphina, if only because the Sovereign is someone they recognize. Of the others, they are scarcely more than faces seen in passing— wraiths Basileios saw little and less of when they were naught but the second son of an unremarkable Azhade.
And yet.. Their strange, star-like eyes gaze upon Solis and feel only a curious disconnect betwixt the awe of their peers and the smoldering disbelief that Solis could so willfully ignore the cruelties of the past Regime. Soon, they will ask their questions, and they will scribe a hundred thousand copies so that the answers will not be forgotten.
11-10-2018, 01:42 AM
Played by
Muirgen [PM] Posts: 114 — Threads: 16 Signos: 0
I FEEL THE HEAT BUT I WON’T BURN / I'LL USE THE LIGHT FOR MY RETURN
He finds the sun quickly, gold on white like a winter celebration; things were always funny that way. Already many had gathered - more than last time, and the ones here today were not necessarily those that had showed yesterday - and there was only the faintest twinge in his stomach at the sight of wings and a crowd. El Toro surveys them, some familiar - for better or worse. There is the mouthy black and white stallion, why did he show up?, Toro wonders, but quickly his lip curls at the sight of some flame-winged monstrosity, his brilliance failing next to the god but nonetheless igniting something of hatred and envy in Toro. He is the snow. Here are two suns. He sees the girl, the little sooty hawk-beast he’d met the day prior. A filly spins a bladed thing; the stallion thinks oh no, and he will lay his life down for her no matter how many blades she spins. She is too young. There is Seraphina, painted in gold and blackened steel. A curly-eared brown mare, and a little reddish stranger. A shadow passes overhead, too large for a hunting bird. Toro looks up. His stomach twists. Too large for a hunting bird. The white stallion floats on a raft made of horns and broken wings; he has an intense desire to stab anything possessing either. Including himself.
He hangs onto the last day’s excitement like the stitches that should’ve held his wounds together, but did not, and so, it was imaginary. El Toro presses into the crowd with horns made of ivory and something desperate and sacred. Seraphina has spoken. He smells of warming spices and a warm place to sleep, and he looks only Solis in the eyes.
![[Image: apolonia_by_erasvita_dcmlqry_by_beccazw-dcnhnsj.png]](https://orig00.deviantart.net/4a1e/f/2018/265/e/7/apolonia_by_erasvita_dcmlqry_by_beccazw-dcnhnsj.png)
