His wings carry him over the land of Novus, completely unaware of the changes happening below him. Since the overthrowing of Seraphina, Saphrax has been nothing but a shadow in Day Court. He has remained hidden away and minding his own business. Raum doesn’t seem like the sort of person he would hang out with, and he certainly didn’t have the delicate curves of a woman and so, Saphrax was reluctant to flirt. The time away had been lonesome, but it would end, he was sure of it.
Perhaps that was why he had taken flight this morning. He had been cooped up and hidden for so long that he needed to get away, to get out of Solterra and see that the others were better off than he was locked away in Day Court.
The air was warmer this morning, far warmer than he remembered it being. Last he checked, it was still winter. Had he really been absent that long? He didn’t think he had, but then again, he supposed he could have lost track of time.
The sun felt hotter against his back until the sun felt like it was no longer in the sky. Had he been in flight for that long? Surely not. Eyes looked forward and towards the open ocean. He could see the way smoke rose through the sky, panning out along the horizon and hiding the sun from view.
He comes to land where a river meets the sea. He knows it’s too dangerous to fly towards the volcano upon the horizon, not that he wants to anyway. He knew the smoke and flames would only damage his perfect coat. He might have been born of fire, but he was still smart enough to know that those flames he could not control. Those flames would burn him, charring his coat and turning him blacker than coal. And so, the stallions looks to the others who have gathered in awe and wonder. Unlike some of the others, Saphrax does not realize just how ominous this volcano was…
***STAFF EDIT
@saphrax has rolled a 4! He has been awarded +80 signos
05-14-2019, 08:51 AM
Played by
Zombie [PM] Posts: 103 — Threads: 8 Signos: 325
She was locked away in the library, locked away reading of ancient rulers of Dalumine, when she felt the first of the earth shaking. Eyes looked up from the scrolls as they scanned the shelves within the library. The room was shaking, the scrolls vibrating in the pockets that they rested in. Dust was thrust into the air as small rocks and stones were pitched from their resting places. “What the fuck is this?” He thoughts are spoken aloud, but not loud enough to be hears above the violent shaking of the floors.
She leaves the comfort of the pillow upon the floor, her large draft body slowly rising to her hooves. She can hear the screams of others as they run towards the exit. She meanders that way, not at all worried about why the ground was so violently shaking this particular morning.
And as she emerges into what she expected to be sunlight, she can see that there is so much smoke and ash in the sky that there is no sun to speak of. She hears shrieks and cries, but among the cries is a voice she recognizes. Regis.
She looks to see the yearling calling out for his parents, trying his best to not seem afraid. But it does not fool Sloane. His body drips with fear. “Inside is not safe, boy. Get to higher ground. Get somewhere safe.” She only tells him once, the only time she’s really bothered to speak much to him at all. She tries to offer him some sort of encouragement, even if it sounds foreign upon her lips. It feels soft and soothing, something that is so unnatural to her.
And unlike the advice she has given Regis, she walks towards the source of the darkness, as far as she could. With the borders still closed, there is only so far she can walk, but she goes as far as she can. She is not scared, only curious. What sort of peril do the gods have in store for them now?
The wanderer wanders, in and out of courts that she doesn’t belong to. She stays clear of Denocte, hoping that no one has see the way she so happily burned down the food stores. She does not want to be noticed, to be identified as the one who ruined Denocte’s winter. And yet, there was something that drew her towards their borders but never to cross them. Something was happening, she could feel it in her bones. It did not take the ground shaking for her to know that something was happening.
She stands where the river meets the sea, her eyes looking at others gathered. One made of fire, another as pale as the sand she stood one. And yet, here she was, her face marred with mischief and a smile that she could not take away. She looks to what the others see, the volcano in the distance beginning to erupt.
She cannot say that she has ever seen something so beautiful. Never has her eyes laid upon something that could destroy so many lives. One eruption could end a civilization. It could kill dinosaurs and whole kingdoms. Such a beautiful work of nature could cause so much destruction.
There was something eerie in the way she looks towards the erupting volcano. While others looked on with fear, scared about how they would survive such a thing if it were to effect them directly, Targwyn stands there in awe of its beautiful and ability to destroy. She wants to be like this volcano - a way of destruction that everyone fears but also finds beautiful. She will be Novus’ volcano, even if this one doesn’t take away life.
***STAFF EDIT
@Targwyn has rolled a 1! She has been awarded +10 signos
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.
Raum comes, stepping out of the shadows. Even silver he is muted here, in a world where smoke covers the sun and swallows the light into nothing. His lunar-bright lips twist as he drinks in the sight of lightning and fire. It is like a portent. A thing of destruction and horror.
The ground rattles and cries out in rippling fear. There is nothing that is still, not when the earth herself is rising. The sea frets – or does it rage? It crashes up upon the shore. It claws against the distant cliffs that wall it. Even the sea dare not remain for what is coming.
Beside him, Legion listens with even breath. Nothing stirs him, but if he pressed an ear to the beast’s scaled chest, he might hear how his heart begins to race and run and rattle in its cage of bone.
This is a world breaking and ending. Raum stands upon the shore to welcome it. He steps down into the sea to feel its fervent heat and how it thrashes against him to be gone. The sky splits and thunder laughs.
Raum is not the most dangerous thing here. Not when nature and magic begin to awaken…
***STAFF EDIT
@Raum has rolled a 1! He has been awarded +10 signos
the air is cold, the night is long
I feel like I might fade into the dawn
Fade until I'm gone
Grey is familiar with endings. He has seen many, been a part of them, made his own. Endings of lives, of places, of times. The almost-ending that is himself and his own life. So, when the sky starts to darken on that far southern horizon with a film so dark it can only be ash and smoke and the threat of death, Grey recognizes it for what it is.
A truth, and an inescapable one at that.
His snow white eyes watch it billow and spread, and spread and spread. He doesn’t know what or where exactly it comes from, though he can imagine a few. For a moment he thinks of the boy, Mateo, who had told him if he didn’t find what he was looking for, to go to the mountain and ask the gods. Perhaps they should all go to their mountain and ask their gods to spare them from whatever it is that looms there, where the earth meets the sky.
But the unicorn has been here long enough to have heard the stories of what their god had brought upon them not so long ago, and even his heart, ice and hard as stone, seems to ache a little for what this might mean. A part of Grey—the selfish, cowardly part that fuels his guilt—considers leaving this place, and going back to the one he already knows.
Fiona is pulling a tray of muffins from her oven when the ground begins to shake. Her jars of spices, flours and other various ingredients begin to dance precariously on their shelves, and the lavender woman haphazardly sets the tray upon the stove before reaching up to hold them steady, praying that none should fall and break. After a time, it seems to lessen.
Perhaps it has stopped completely, but it is her dread rattling through her bones instead.
She rushes out of her house, throwing open the door, and enters a street filled with bodies. Only they are not going anywhere. They are standing there, staring up at the sky with looks of panic and shock and awe. Fiona feels her own panic rising up inside her, a feeling she is too familiar with, especially once she sees the heavy black cloud quickly covering the sky.
The breath in her lungs becomes short, her sides heaving in and out as her eyes widen into unbelieving pools of lilac. All she sees is the smoke pouring out of the cracks and crevices of her childhood home. She doesn’t hear the frantic shouts and alarmed whispers of the equines surrounding her, only the crackle and pop of fire engulfing everything, nipping at her heels. Threatening to engulf her, too.
She is as frozen in her own memories as all else are frozen in their apprehension, and all she can think is no, no, no. Over and over again she repeats it like a mantra. Like she is begging, pleading, all that is not to bring destruction upon them again. Fiona wants to scream, ‘please, stop! no!’, but she knows it will do nothing.
There are tears in her eyes, but she is too shocked to feel them slipping down her cheeks like prayers and fears.
***STAFF EDIT
@fiona has rolled a 5! She has been awarded +100 signos
he morning had started quite unremarkably. Mephisto was still adjusting to life in a ‘court’ – a concept far more foreign to the dark Pegasus than she cared to admit. There was a certain poetry to the routine of the day. She woke, prepared herself, and trained alongside the Halcyon. While she didn’t consider herself terribly religious, the routine had instilled in her something of a sense of responsibility and loyalty. If nothing else, the mistress was impressed with the dedication of Marisol’s soldiers, and she strove to do her best regardless of circumstance and background. Still, it did her soul well to get away from time to time, and taking to the skies, she rose toward the heavens with a sense of freedom – leaving the weight of duty behind.
As she flew beside the birds, Mephisto felt her heart grow lighter, and a rare smile began to cross her face. After all – it was in these moments alone that she felt welcome to relax, letting her eagle eyes roam curiously over Novus with a mild interest, taking note of things which looked out of place but not letting worry cloud her new-found freedom. Things were not always as they seemed though, and as she pressed northward, the skies grew darker in a way that seemed less magical and more ominous – driving her to move closer to investigate.
Closer toward the volcano, the air began to grow thick with dark ash, and she knew instinctively that things were not right. Visibility faded, and as she returned to the ground, her warg took over – taking the form of a sea lion far from the shore. Through its eyes, she can see much more clearly – she can feel the panic in the creature’s breast as it watches ash and fire spitting into the air, not fully understanding the implications of what this occurrence would bring. Helpless to release the host, she simply waits until the warg powers subside, left breathless as she ponders what came next, but knowing all the while that duty would bring her back to Terrestella once more – to share what she had seen.
And so, the dark mare flees once more, speed at her back as she rushes back to the barracks, heralding for Marisol as she went.
HERE ARE THE ROOTS IN ONE WORLD AND THE BLOSSOM IN THE OTHER
The sky is burning.
This is not the first time that Septimus has encountered a volcanic eruption. When he still had his magic, he had studied one or two up close; of course, he doesn’t have it now, and he can’t be sure that this volcanic eruption is anything similar to the ones he encountered in the past anyways. (Different lands were unusual like that. Novus seemed to have some sort of innate magic, perhaps a result of those supposed gods he keeps hearing about, but it’s nothing like his own or his family’s.) He imagines that it is probably the lack of magic that makes his stomach lurch as he steps out of the Scarab and into the streets, his gaze upturned towards the red-streaked sky. Tendrils of smoke were swallowing the horizon, creeping like vines over the tops of buildings; occasional flecks of ash and cinder, carried by the ocean winds, stumbled down into the alleyways. (He is glad that it is winter, when things are less likely to catch fire.)
Septimus is never one to miss a spectacle. He steps into the throng of bodies streaming towards the shoreline, making his way down winding streets, stumbling and crowded with panic; but the horned man is completely serene, his eyes ablaze with something implacable but undisturbed. His steps are unhindered and fluid as he draws through the draws through the crowd of Denoctians with practiced ease, the wind – a scent of smoke and salt – tangling in the dark curls of his mane.
(He slips off his glasses and places them in his bag.)
He passes faces, some familiar and some entirely unrecognizable. His green-eyed gaze catches on Minya and August, on trails of ore and blood-red stone; on the faces of the hopeless and the furious, on the shocked and the despairing. Strange. All quite strange – but, then, he supposes that this is not his land, and he is no stranger to nature’s fury, to rampant and volatile destruction. His own stare turns out to sea, towards that black mountain as it spits ash and fire and thick clouds of dark smoke that swallow up the sky, and the only thought that crosses his mind is that they should not be standing on the shoreline like this, enraged or weeping or unable to understand what is before their eyes at all. There is no stopping what has already begun – and, as the smoke rolls in, they chance illness and suffocation if they linger.
A smattering of pale ash, like sulfuric, crushing snow, begins to fall from the sky.
His gaze catches on Valefor, who might as well be made of flame himself, and he picks his way over to the boy. His eyes narrow as he steps near enough to hear his muttering, something about this eruption being his fault. Septimus brushes against his shoulder, giving him a gentle nudge. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Septimus says, his tone surprisingly gentle. “This is nature at work – it’s no fault of yours.” His eyes train themselves on the volcano again, and those dark clouds of smoke; they are already creeping close and close, and he has no intention of staying in place to suffocate himself on them, if this eruption is as bad as it seems. At least it is off-shore. “We should get out of the smoke.”
***STAFF EDIT
@Septimus has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +20 signos
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
He had been out among the forests when the land began to tremble and shake, the vast branches of the trees in the Viride swaying as the earth shook. The dunalino held his breath, standing stock-still and waiting for the trembling to subside, but it never did. Instead, it grew worse and his hooves scrambled for purchase and the animals around him came out of hiding, birds taking cover in whatever shelter they could manage to find and the animals darting this way and that, knowing deep within their bones that a threat was upon them.
Soon, the previously bright and clear skies grew dark and grey, billowing with darkness that was neither nightfall nor clouds, and the Dawn King turned and ran. He did not fly. It was far too dark for that, and instead charged his way through the encroaching darkness, grateful for the assistance of Alba’s piercing eyesight no matter the visibility.
He returned to the heart of the Court in time to hear Regis’ shout, and Somnus felt his blood run cold. “Regis!” He called out, tasting ash on his tongue as the darkness wrapped around the world like a veil, ever so slowly blotting out the sun. He passed a number of familiar faces as he hurried towards the young Prince, slowing considerably as he came to stand directly in front of the boy. Reaching out, he pressed his muzzle to his son’s thin neck, checking him for any form of injury but finding none save the palpable scent of terror.
”I have you, it’s alright.” Yet Somnus’ heart continued to race, even as he turned and shifted closer to the yearling, letting his son’s smaller size press comfortingly against his barrel and lifting a wing to wrap it atop him, to both shield him and keep him close.
What was this? The King’s verdant eyes scanned the horizon, feeling the trembling deep within his bones. It originated to the south and curiosity and the desire to know urged him to go and explore, to discover what was causing this, to find its origins… But his loyalty to his family and his Court won out, knowing that right now, he was better suited to tend to the ones closest to him than satisfy his own burning curiosity.
Turning his head the others of Delumine, it was easy to see their mixed reactions. Some were confused, others were terrified. Some huddled close to their families and others scrambled this way and that, torn on what they should do. Where was Eulalie and Anemone? Where was Ulric?
’I’ll fly on to scout!’ Alba’s mental call sounded in the back of his head and Somnus’ gaze frantically tore towards his bonded, spotting the barn owl already ascending into the inky black skies. ’Keep them safe!’
”Be careful!” He called back to her, before lowering his head to nicker softly to his fretting son.
this ain’t god’s fault, brother
i’m afraid this one’s mine
Lieve’tel wanted to explore Denocte, and Vikander had no hope of telling her ‘no’. After all, it wasn’t like a child her age could be cooped up within his rooms for too long and not feel that youthful itch to go and explore. So, he willingly put his work aside for the first time in years and took his daughter out of the Scarab and into the streets of the Night Court, moving like a hunched, grumpy shadow following his eager, wide-eyed daughter through the lantern-lit streets.
Every time someone would get too close, Vikander would snarl his teeth and snap at them, ears pinned, the icy-blue of his eyes narrowly hidden beneath a curtain of curly black hair. He did not let Lieve leave his eyesight for even a moment, remaining right at his daughter’s petite side every step of the way. They wove through the streets of the marketplace, stopping every now and then when something fancy caught his daughter’s eye - and goodness, did they stop a lot, but Vik was wrapped helplessly around Lieve’s little hoof so he truly didn’t mind - and generally enjoyed one another’s company.
With every question that his daughter asked, Vikander would ponder before giving an answer to the best of his knowledge. A group of street performers sang and danced on the side of the street and they stopped, enjoying the show despite the fact that the warlock felt too many eyes on him. It had been far too long since he had felt such peace, such heartwarming, soul-singing joy, that he honestly wasn’t too surprised when it all came crashing down.
That was life. It built you up only to watch you fall.
It began with a rumble to the ground beneath their very hooves, a shake that did not absolve after a few lingering seconds. It grew, and the people of the marketplace began to look around in fear, some scattering, the throng of entertainers and singers parting ways. Vikander’s eyes were only upon his daughter, his small, precious daughter, and he huddled close to her as the earth vibrated beneath them and darkness filled the sky. A few trinkets and trade goods toppled from a nearby vendor stall, clattering to the ground with a shatter. Someone tripped and fell, landing hard upon their knees. A few of the lanterns hanging overhead swayed until they fell to the ground, rolling to a stop a few feet away.
“Stay close,” he whispered to his daughter, peering around through narrowed eyes, scenting sulphur and ash on the breeze. From the south towards the ocean, a great billowing cloud began to ascend into the heavens, raining ash and debris down upon them. An eruption? Had there always been a volcano to the south?
Where others displayed fear or confusion, Vikander only felt the deep, dangerous desire to keep his daughter safe. Whatever was happening around them paled in comparison to the burning drive to protect Lieve’tel from harm, and what a twist he had become; the awkward, reclusive shadow of the Scarab turning into a stalwart spectre as hell, quite literally, rained down upon their heads.
“Back to the Scarab, Lieve. We shouldn’t be breathing this in.” He wouldn’t risk it. Smoke and ash inhalation was dangerous, and so soon after Lieve’s resurrection he did not want to know the effects it could have upon a recently revived soul and body. Perhaps later he would study that, but it would not be done upon the only light he had left in this life.
![[Image: x341oLX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/x341oLX.png)
