[P] a winding weaving fate

[Jahin]

It's midday. There is a trepid breeze tugging at his flame-like hair but otherwise the vast expanse of the desert seems relatively calm, albeit warm. Too warm. Mirages dance on the horizon and heat waves shimmer like rainbows on the glittering sand. Despite the relative "normalcy" something makes Jahin feel deeply ill at ease. Nostrils flared, he searches for something that might justify the unnerving itch he feels on his spine. He sees nothing out of the ordinary. The breeze is stronger and more insistent than before and transforms into a stunning gust that nearly knocks him off his hooves. His years living in this endless abyss of sand and sun warns him not to ignore his gut feeling and so he continues cautiously but with a sense of desperate urgency. I need to find shelter.  He does not fancy being caught in a sandstorm. Jahin has seen entire dunes moved in one day. He has seen dunes rise where there was none before. He has seen all the cards of the desert at some point in his life and he is not a gambling man. Whether there may be such a storm brewing in this eery strangeness or not, he doesn't intend to stay and find out. His trot picks up into a mile eating lope. He has focused on personal training during the past weeks since returning to his people and he is suddenly immensely grateful that he didn't delay working on his physical fitness any longer. He is going to need all of his speed and stamina to outrun whatever may be pursuing him. The breeze is no longer a breeze, but wind. Savage and hungry, the invisible force ravages the land and the sand stings his eyes, his skin, and fills his lungs in the place of air. His hooves pound the earth but it is like running through honey--the sand slips and slides out from underneath him and he feels his energy reserves burning low. There is no shelter in sight. Only dust and sand rising from the earth; the desert has taken his sight. Only his internal compass guides him now. I have been gone too long, he thinks. The desert has outsmarted me. He stretches out, cloven hooves clawing, reaching, grasping--he is a red flame flickering in the vastness that is the Mors desert. Something black and boiling follows in his wake.  He doesn't see the little auburn unicorn until it is too late. He utters a half-cry of alarm and tries to stop but the sand carries him forth like a wave from the sea and he collides into her. He's not sure how but they both manage to stay on their hooves but there's no time for an apology. "We've got to go. Now."  Before he can take another step to flee the pursuing sandstorm, a creature rises from the depths (surely from hell) right before them and emits a terrible, keening screech that drowns out even the howling wind. Something in his stomach drops like a stone into water. He realizes he was wrong before; this is a card that the desert has never dealt him before--a sandwyrm.

@Thana

[Thana]

Thana
The wind should feel like a promise of horror against her skin. Each grain of sand should feel like a bullet of dust when it slams into her like a million, small needles hungry for blood. The storm, the howling wind, the way the sand sings of death and destruction should make her feel anything but free.

But it does. It does. It does.

It feels like freedom whipping against her in lashes of sand and dark promises. Each howl of wind makes her smile brighter, and brighter, until it's ivory slashing through her red lips instead of teeth. Thana feels monstrous and feral. She feels like death magic and rift magic formed into flesh. She feels more whole than she has ever felt in this world she's searching endlessly.

Her hooves carry her fearlessly through the storm. She doesn't know to be cautious of the sand, of the dunes ripping at her ankles that might swallow her whole. All she feels is freedom and wildness and she laughs when the wind rips at her smile like claws. Below the wind the groaning starts, and she can feel the sand roiling beneath her with something other than wind and storm-promise.

Thana can feel then how hungry that thing rolling in the sand is. She can feel it pulsing through the sand like a heartbeat. It's a hunger she knows for it beats and sing and rages in the hollow places in her body. She recognizes it in the way that all monsters can sense each other in the darkness. There is no need to see the teeth to know they are there waiting.

She lowers her horn and her blade whines at her back when she swings her tail round and round like a hanging rope at her back. The wind still feels like freedom cracking against her skin. Everything about her is ready and waiting, like a lion poised in the tail grass with a dry, aching tongue that needs to be cooled with death.

Just as she's ready to step closer to the pulsing coil beneath the sand something collides hard and fast with her. It doesn't feel like freedom whipping against her now but war. She screams and whips around, the running and the storm made her too feral to turn his words quickly into meaning.

At first it's only her horn between them when she spins. Then it's her teeth pulled back in a lion's snarl. Her tail arc behind her like a cobra and her blade glints in what sunlight makes it through the sand spinning furiously behind them. But her fury cools almost as soon as it started because she she cannot taste whatever it is she's hunting for on his skin. “Why?” She says the moment she can make sense of his words through the freedom wind and her own fury.

She's still looking at him, tracing the spiral of his horn with her gaze. She's wondering who has the stronger horn. But the keening rises it pitch behind her and she trembles with the excitement with war. Thana swings her horn back towards the monster in the sand. It's grotesque and it rises a flood inside her when she looks at those strange teeth hanging in the black cave of its mouth. Her own teeth flash like stone as she sneers back it at.

Monster. Her heart beats out the name.

I know you. The wind whistling through her horn sings.

Shall we see which of us is the better beast? The blade on her tail asks in sharp sighs and glints of light on the tip of it.

Thana steps closer and the wind between her teeth still tastes like freedom.




"Death hath no dominion"

@Jahin

[Jahin]

Why? He is bewildered. He has realized from the her delicate cloven hoof prints (which quickly fade into nothingness) that she had not been fleeing the storm but walking into it. Jahin has seen his fair share of wandering souls in the desert hopelessly lost to madness and dehydration caused by the endless desert and unmerciful Solterra sun but this is different. She is perfectly lucid—her gaze his bright and clear and mesmerizing. Jahin is completely unnerved. She stares blatantly, almost rudely, her bladed tail swishing back and forth almost in an amused manner like a lioness contemplating if she is hungry or not. Strangest of all, there is no trace of fear in the young unicorn. “Suit yourself,” he says hastily with a shrug, figuring if she wanted to die in a sandstorm, who was he to deny her last wish? His departure is quickly cut off by the creature, of course. They are trapped in the path of the sandstorm. The black cloud at their backs boils and rolls and is ushered on by the hurricane force winds. The terrible keening noise from the wyrm makes him cringe in agony and he is sure his ears must bleeding—the sound is worse that the howling inferno screeching and clawing at his skin. Sand peppers his eyes and he can’t see again. There is no where to go…he knows they must fight the creature. Fight for their lives. Little Red may not value her own life, but Jahin sure as shit did. The creature strikes. He is blinded from the sand and doesn’t see it coming. He is thrown from his hooves and lands on his side, sliding to an abrupt stop. He can’t breathe—his lungs heave and gasp for whatever air may remain in the sand-infested sky. He manages to claw a ragged breath in but is forced to release it with a gasp—he can’t draw a full breath--there is searing pain along his side…ribs, he thinks idly. He staggers to his feet with a grunt, air whistling in his chest, but finding he can draw more breath than before. He doesn’t see Little Red anymore. The wyrm has pursued him again and possesses a speed that is almost unnatural for a thing with no legs. It is drawn by the few scarlet pearls of blood mingling with the sweat beaded on his brow. He dances out of reach, every step sending fire lacing through his lungs, but he manages to evade the next attack. He doesn’t have any hope of defeating the creature…but Little Red…he recalls the swishing cat tail with a glittering blade... He catches a brief glance of her red skin, a burning flame in the rapidly consuming darkness. She is nearby. Is she waiting for the creature to strike him again? Is she planning to let the wyrm take him while she makes her getaway? He wouldn't blame her; after all, he had every intention of leaving her to be devoured by the storm. He knows she won’t hear him over the roar of the storm and the keening wail of the wyrm. Her purple eyes are like glowing jewels—he meets her gaze briefly in a moment of calm and places his life in the hands of a stranger. He braces himself and resists the urge to close his eyes. The creature rears back like a cobra preparing to strike. He waits…waits…waits…his heart pounds and much needed adrenaline rockets through his veins—his pain is masked, it is a dim memory, as vague as a fading dream upon awakening.

[Thana]

Thana
Each kneeing cry rattles through the chasm of her body and dances off her bones like song. The death magic in her rises to meet it, rot to violence, hunger to instinct. She doesn't know why she wants to drink of this monster, why she wants to devour each shred of magic that makes it so grotesque. But she does, oh she does. She wants to gut it and carve warnings into his scale with teeth and horn.

It strikes and she's bracing and ready. Her horn is lowered and the wind is still crying a war-trumpet through the hard hollows of it. Thana is almost eager watching that gaping jaw start to lower, but it passes right by her and hits the stallion who collided with her.

She's furious.

Her own sharp trill challenges its keening cry, a trumpet of fury that came from another unicorn. It feels like a lion of war-song living in her lungs, it burns and burns even as she screams it out. Even as she screams she watches him dance out of the way. Unicorns, She thinks, because she's not really one is she? Thana knows she is nothing more than a beast with death in her bones and a horn upon her brow. There is no innocence in her, not really, how can there be?

This war is what she's made for, to kill monsters and devour their horror. To drain magic from bodies like a leech draining blood. There is magic in her genetics that made monsters worse than this: bears with stone eyes, beasts that devoured memories like air, pillars of amber in which monsters waited with wide eyes.

What is a sand-beast to her, but dead?

So she watches it prepare to strike. She watches the way the stallion's gaze looks at her and pleads, save me. Everything slows down as if the death magic in her blood is slowing her own heart. Beat by beat she watches him and she watches the beast, and she is waiting. She's coiled like a snake too, and she's just as hungry as one.

It lunges, wide-jawed and furious. Thana lunges to meet it. She's smiling beneath its shadow, a fierce-white smile full of hate and need. It arcs above her, aiming for the stallion standing like a stone waiting for death. She had hoped it would choose the easier kill, she's not disappointed. Laughter boils like hot water at the back of her teeth. Everything in her is still screaming, freedom, freedom, freedom.

Thana runs at the belly of the beast with her horn and her tail raised. The sharp tips of each glint in the sunlight and the sand like small stars. Sand is still blowing against her like small needles and her vision is blurry with it. Each blink only makes it hurt more but even the pain still makes her think of freedom.

She remembers then that she's angry (she's forgotten why). Thana leaps as high as she can with sand at her hooves instead of hard dirt. When she feels her horn and her tail sink into the skin of the monster she almost sighs in relief, like all the hot fire of her has finally found something to cool it.

Even the blood that splatters on her face tastes sweet when she licks it from her lips. Thana lunges to the left and circles back. Hopefully the stallion decided to do more than wait like a stone for saving. As she draws closer she lowers her horn again, wondering how deep it might be able to sink.

The beast still has more to give and she wants it. She wants everything.




"Death hath no dominion"

@Jahin