the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
The more horses that gathered, the quicker the mood of the clearing began to shift.
At first it had been a thing of wonder, of cautious contemplation - but as the small crowd began to grow, forming a thick ring around the Relic, the tension grew, too. Soon it felt to August thick as a thunderstorm, like the moments before a brawl. The thickening air - it’s hard to think it’s anything but magic, the way it knots inside him. When the golden stallion begins to see familiar faces - Minya, Boudika, a host of others from his court - he isn’t sure whether his unease increases or only changes shape.
It’s Boudika he drifts toward, the Relic still shimmering gold at the edge of his vision, when the clearing comes alive.
Again it’s the trees, no gruesome face in a trunk this time but the roots and branches animated like a single-minded entity. Halfway to the striped mare August turns back to the center of the clearing, to watch the wood take the shape of spines, of ribs - to watch the sand coat those not-bones - to watch the leaves make themselves into scales. He is sure time is running, seconds falling away like those shed leaves, but not in a way that makes sense; one breath the clearing was quiet but for the horses, and next there is a monster. (Not a monster - a guardian. But are all of them unworthy, or only some?)
He is not the first to strike. He only watches, flinching, a little, when the not-snake turns her whirling maelstrom of eyes his way. It is seething, moving, ready, but not yet attacking - the safest path seems to wait, for now.
Until others surge forward, attacking with hooves and teeth and magic. At once it falls into a frenzy, a cacophony of sound and motion, like nothing he’s experienced since that day, that day in the mountains when he was a boy -
August shakes his head, like he could clear those thoughts as easily as sand becomes a snake. Then he searches out Boudika, and anyone nearby, as a few horses engage the great beast’s head (though he wonders - might it not just grow another?). “Let’s rush the middle,” he calls to her, though he may as well be mouthing the words for all the noise in the clearing, “while it’s distracted -”
And as if it’s that simple, he throws himself in the melee to do exactly that.
@Boudika for the mention (and anyone else is welcome to hear him/interact)
And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
—
Aster doesn’t care for the noise of it all, when she’s used to her world being so small - only her parents, her twin, and the little cheetahs that have followed them since the Opening. Now the cheetahs are hiding, too small, too secret for this (as, perhaps, their children should be too).
There are more and more horses, and the pale filly’s heart beats faster and faster within the cage of her ribs. They are waiting for something, but it seems to her that they are growing tired of it, and she stays with Leonidas in the far edges of the group, intent and watchful. Every few moments she wonders Now? but every time the answer is not yet, not yet.
Until there is a strange and terrible sound. Until the roots and branches of the trees begin to twist into marvelous shapes, things she leans forward to see, things she can only make out from between the thicket of legs and bodies crowded ahead of her. The noise is terrible, the smells of fear and saltwater and magic acrid on the air; she will always remember that smell, and traces of it will always make her think of this clearing, and the island, and the relic shining like a star.
Aster has never seen a snake. But when the leaves shed and the sand rises up to form a creature, she knows instinctively that it is dangerous - and, in its coiling, writhing, eternal twining that it only wants to protect.
Some of the horses run. Others mill about in confusion and alarm. A wave of them attacks the creature, and Aster watches with her golden eyes narrowed, her little heart beating, beating, beating.
It is chaotic enough that something small and quick might slip through, into the island the snake has made with its body, the island where the treasure lives.
She and her twin are small and quick.
Aster catches the eye of her brother and begins to circle wide around the ring of bodies, away from the snake-head with its sea-void eyes and away from the crush of horses.
The sand sounds like a wolf baying low at the moon and the sound of it makes her grit her teeth until they ache. It trembles beneath her feet as if it's begging her to move, to run, to do anything but drag her tail in long, broken lines across the surface of it. Each cleave through the sand is a warning writ in the only language that beasts and things monstrous understand.
Thana is speaking to the island in tomes of magic and violence. If you come I will kill you. The island laughs back at her, with bones of birch and scales of frond, I am already here. And everything in her-- every black, rabid magic thing-- is roaring for the challenge, for the thought that she is nothing more than another lost unicorn wandering the shores wanting and waiting.
So when the snake rises and licks at the air like a wicked thing scenting for the meal to come she steps forward. Thana rears and where all the others rush forward with words whispered between them she only screams a challenge to the beast. The sunlight, shifting once more though the blue, lances through her horn like a thousand small golden arrows dripped in ichor. Her tail whistles a shrill echo to the battle-cry when she cracks her blade through the air (like a sea-creature smacking their tail through a wave).
Thana runs to meet the beast. Her horn is pointed straight down the maw of the snake like a compass pointing to the true north. . She drags another line across the sand. Her teeth are bare in a feral smile, a sneer, a look that says better than any words, until the end of us. She lunges for the throat of the beast and whatever ocean or sand heart pushes blood through it.
Until the end.
Because this is the age of monsters and Thana is home.
The silence is deafening, one that swells and consumes with a bitter regard – it is not a soft silence like one finds at the calm shores of mid-tide, the wax and wane of the ocean as it breathes, rushes, and recedes. This is one that sparks with a tangible static – one that drives and pulls and sputters sharply into the breeze, one that threatens in its end to ring in your ears and unsettle the blood in your veins. With what coldness it can muster; it is a calm, but it is not calm, it is far from complacent. And so Erasmus, too used to such a silence, holds steady while the others rush in. It is the same silence that holds at the gate of an enemy, a pause between two armies drawn to their peaks to observe, and then – and then – it is all metal, all copper, all blood and pain and screaming madness that seeps in to a sane man's bones. Do they know?
Perhaps he is wrong. Perhaps they will climb that mound and fight amongst each other. Perhaps there is no army waiting in the dust and sand, their spears sharpened and their teeth sharper still. Perhaps he will only hear the clash of muscle and brawn as those brazen bodies clamber and break against each other like the waves on the shore – and the cherished relic will rise above them, gleaming soundly for whoever ascends. Perhaps he is the fool, sitting and waiting while these creatures move on to fight for a god's precious trinket. Who is he to deny his own ignorance? He cares nothing for Tempus. For a golden statue. For the bodies of those who encroach upon it now with the static sparking and arching in their eyes. But oh, what did he lose?
He is watching the girl with the spinning wheel of an axe when he feels something collide against him. At first his expression is harsh – his brows draw in, his scowl deepens to a dark menace that dredges the ground beneath him, shirking the small apology of a – “Erasmus?” the predatory angles of his face shift loosely, and something sly sneaks across them instead. Of course she would come. She was not here for him, she was here for the shining thing on the mound, the golden trinket. The lore. How could he blame her? So was he. What fortune was it that she, of all the creatures who surrounded the thing now, dumbfounded and anxious, found him? A gambler's luck. She was a sight for his strained eyes anyhow, and he took no modesty in drinking her in for that small moment. “Pleasure of a coincidence."
It is business that draws her attention however, to this new thing, to this glimmering thing – and her eyes swell with the writhing of silhouettes that mount the relic-crowned hill. His still swim in the green, green vision, and the way her neck curves too nicely for his peripherals to ignore. “Can you see it?” He nodded absently, raking his tongue against his teeth as he followed her gaze up, up. It shimmered from there, as if it had soaked in the sun's rays and expelled it with brilliance. “It's there. But - something isn't right, Aghavni."
He watched the way the thing shone. It glimmered. It grinned. And in the heavy silence that surrounded him all, he wondered if it may have even laughed. He recalled the tales of the gods his tribe had fettered with fearful lectures and glorious repentance. Were not the gods endlessly cruel? Were they not so conniving, so amused with mortality? Perhaps a god intended to watch its patrons beat each other in the name of possession. Perhaps a god would see who would fight, who would negotiate, who would steal. Or perhaps – oh, dreaded possibilities – perhaps it was something worse.
He thought about the meeting with the not-moonlight and the facade of death. He remembered Eshek, that lonely god, the way the forest bowed and mourned her existence, the way death kissed her heels and laughed in her light. He thought of the wind that swept a wayward map between them, between her prying eyes and aching ribs, between the reaching grasp of not-moonlight, eager to devour his shifting shadows. He remembered how something unnatural crawled – slithered – from the heart of sand. It twisted, gnarled on itself, a serpent thing lurched from nothingness hungry and desolate. “I saw something, earlier." But he is a heretic, and his words are unsure, untacked, as if each could float away on the air of disbelief. “It was like–"
Erasmus is a thing born of lore, and it did him no favors without its recognition – he is a stubborn, untrusting thing, however a product of mistrust he is alone. He is the rock swallowed by a serpent god, a stone wept from the eye of a titan. A rock fed on the black bed river that drained it dry, that cracked the lowly serpent with straining coils of gold. His titan blood rushes hot and furious in his veins, and something crawls in the pit of his stomach as the sand beneath his feet all too softly, all too faintly, moves. All things scream against him, and he has the pieces – but he lost to its song when something beneath the mound shifts. With it his blood pulses a hungry song, a depraved song, a tattoo against his ribs that weaves and waxes and binds his grain with unearthly mettle.
All the island is a moving thing, by which a whim rises that supersedes all mortal fear. That static silence has turned to sighs now, and some screams, as roots and leaves and moss and sand all whirl and knot themselves into a briny skeleton that winds its way around the relic. There are those that leave, scattering into the dark of what forestry was left. There are others that fall back with awe and a quivering contemplation, something hollow in their eyes as they watch the weaving thing rise like a snake. And there are the rest, those brave and foolish that look to the thing with a challenge, sparing only a moment's hesitation. Erasmus bears witness to all, watches the thing rise from the sand and the roots, its plated back shuddering with sea-green leaves. It bellows with its tree-knots and hissing sands, and bows back against its shadow. “–That."
But Erasmus knows there is no glory in spectating.
And where a boy should be terrified, and a mortal should be hesitant, the titan-blood in his veins screams for deliverance and penance. It pulses in his ears, thrusts its heat against the cage of his core. His eyes swell with the thing, the great snake reflected in the darkest parts of his eyes that shine and glimmer with want. Almost too routinely, his mind searches his side for a blade but there is none – but it is casual loss, and he cannot help the way he is suddenly moving. Each step is a drumbeat cleaving the sand, and his mane almost snaps in the wind like a whip when he takes to a forward charge. Its head, a swaying, toothy thing, is a shadow in his peripheral amongst the silhouettes of those who rush against it. But his mind recounts to where the relic once sat at the things base – and that mortal brain hopes a lackluster prayer that the others have distracted the thing well enough.
He is entranced with the ethereal memories of war as he flies forth against the thing, and when he draws near there is only bloodlust and hunger that moves his bones. He seeks beyond the leafy scales and the whirling sands that plate its wood-bones – he wonders if its blood tastes like the sea, always the sea. And just how many vines must be cracked to rip the relic from its ribs.
@Aghavni - i don't think erasmus will ever be mad that she runs into him.
@Erasmus chooses option 2.
09-14-2019, 08:41 AM
Played by
Kat [PM] Posts: 146 — Threads: 25 Signos: 77
More equines come for the relic. They gather, jostle, to get closer, but still nobody makes for the chalice just waiting there in the center of the clearing. So easy, and yet, isn’t that the point? It looks easy, but nothing is ever as it seems. If it was as simple as walking up to the relic and taking it, the first equine here would have done so and been gone with it.
So what, Antiope wonders, is this island waiting for?
She knows what it is. Magic. Strange, wild magic. And it will no doubt put up a fight before it allows any of them to leave with the relic in hand. This island has done nothing the easy way, has been nothing expected. Why should this hunt be any less?
So when the world begins to tremble and shift and move, when trees begin to shed their bark and bushes their leaves, the striped woman doesn’t know what to expect but she knows its not the snake that forms, otherworldly and yet entirely of this world.
Antiope looks into her eyes that are not eyes as equines all around her jump into action and, for a heart-stopping second, she aches. It’s a floodwater cry, filling her, as she swims in those swirling ocean pools.
Of a mother: who has loved, and lost and been unable to protect. She feels in her her heart and her soul, like a burning flame, like a rushing lava flow.
For a moment, Antiope does nothing.
For a moment, she considers turning away. Leaving.
But this island, this snake, is a keeper not a mother. It called them here to challenge them, to test them, and she will not be frightened away. She pulls Theofos from behind her shoulder and speaks softly the axe’s name, and as it begins to blaze she raises it to swing down upon the head of the snake. Its hide of leaves and wood, she hopes, will burn.
"Speaking."
Antiope chooses option 1, surprisingly (to me at least lol)
cause i am, i am a little wicked
hands red, hands red just like he said
Very little surprises Vendetta.
In the desert there are Teryrs, Sandwyrms and all manner of venemous creatures. She has seen boy-kings and mad kings and elks that turn the sand to a winter wasteland. It is not the things that happen to you but how you react to them, and Vendetta has always reacted in her best interest.
She wouldn’t be where she is in the hierarchy of Solterra’s underbelly otherwise.
So when the island snake rises out of the clamoring pieces of nature as it merges together before her eyes—in mere seconds—Vendetta takes her chance to observe. It is made of nothing but wood and leaves, with eyes of water and a tongue of seaweed. Alive by magic, it is some freak of nature certainly, but a danger nonetheless.
Many of the equines attack, whether the front or the middle, which will no doubt keep the beast occupied, but it is a massive creature still, twisting and twining about the relic.
Even if she sneaks around the back, Vendetta will need to be careful to stay clear of its thrashing tail. But she is not one to get her hands dirty, and if there is a way for her to get to the relic without having to attack the creature head on she would rather take that route.
Sometimes, the first to strike is not always the wisest.
So, ruby eyes sharp and keen and cloven hooves sure, Vendetta presses forward and around. Let the others attack, risk injury and perhaps even death. No, she would bide her time on the fight.
Boudika knows the way the beach will still when a predator lurks beneath the depths of the waves, as though even the living on the shore are not safe. She knows the way the seagulls flock above, waiting to scavenge the remnants of the kill, and everything becomes so, so still.
It is the same feeling, now. It is the same creeping apprehension that lurks along her spine, that prickles her flesh with fear. She feels the adrenaline, the rapid thump, thump, thump of her heart as it begins to beat a new, ecstatic rhythm. Do they feel it? she wonders, side-eyeing the others as they gather, nervous, some whispering—and more doing, stepping forward, toward the relic that awaits like a promise and a curse. If you can only reach me, it seems to say, tauntingly. I am right here.
Boudika’s forward momentum comes to a forced, abrupt halt when the island begins to move. The stillness is suddenly betrayed; the sand shifts beneath her, beneath them, and the forest itself comes alive as though to claim the relic. Her instinct is to backtrack, to grasp more tightly upon her trident, to shift toward the most familiar face. Boudika moves towards August, to her peripheral, as gold as the relic itself.
Everything is motion. Boudika should be more surprised; she should feel the strange rush of uncertainty that comes with unexpected magic. Instead, she thinks only of course. Of course it would be something transformative; of course the strange island itself would become in order to defend the very treasure it was erected to introduce. Equines lunge toward the creature head on and Boudika cannot help but be appreciative for their sacrifice. It is August she looks toward now, falling back on years and years of training. She had never learned to fight alone. “Alright!” Boudika shouts back, above the fray. As August launches forward, so does she.
She charges, low and swift and with ears pinned sharply to her skull. The sand churns beneath her, and she hears the great heaving and cracking of the strange creature’s wooden bones. It is futile, Boudika thinks, to try and destroy a magic thing without magic. She feels bare without gold or silver or bronze; she has no copper chains or steel shackles to Bind the thing.
Only the familiar weight of her trident. At the last moment, Boudika coils her haunches to launch herself toward the island guardian’s writhing back. Her trident is raised, pointed, descending, aiming—to become a thing of reckoning, to become a harbinger with three gleaming gold points. And still her mind, through the pandemonium, the crashing, the yells—
What favour would you ask a god?
At the moment, she would very much like to ask them to let her live.
holy places are dark places.
it is life and strength,
not knowledge and words,
that we get in them.
The thumping of his heart is upon his tongue, heavy as an apple. His eyes are wide as twin moons and still they cannot drink in all that is before him.
He feels Aster’s heart too, quick as a hummingbird, at his shoulder. Their hearts are tandem. They were more than gold and flesh and time magic.
But the boy was not ready for the world to move – no matter his magic, no matter the strangeness of his blood. He and his twin were born, tangled, into a still-stuck world. One that now moves: large and slithering. Is this what existence means? Is it a cacophony of noise and a world that ruptures its sewn-still seams?
The boy trembles, little more than an autumn leaf called down to earth and rest. His cheetah is a shadow at his feet, her body melding with her twins. Leo looks to her and then to Aster and he knows her thoughts and yet he does not think to question how.
They both move, quick and nimble as chaos ensues. He is lightning between sky and earth, fast as a flash. He follows his sister whilst the serpent’s attention is upon the chaotic distraction of the other horses.
In all this chaos, who might see two small foals slip behind the beast?
OOC: Option 3 - Leo tries to run around and avoid the snake while the others distract it.
@Aster | "speaks" | notes: thank you for threading with him! Please bear with me whilst i work out how to write him and who he is!
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
So many have gathered. Minya’s eyes skip from one to the next. All seems to be silent, but for the chime of her trinkets as they sing into the air – tight with its held breath.
For that is what it is – she feels it now. This island is as tight as lungs filled with air. It is due to burst, and Minya recognises what anarchy might follow.
But not even Minya’s imagination is enough to create the serpent that looms up from the wooded floor. She watches as the forest morphs into its own beast. That totem still gleams, wicked and bright and laden with magic.
It is not worth it. It is not worth her time! Minya knows this, of course she does. But greed has made her a wicked thing. With more grace that even the flurid coiling of that feral serpent, Minya lunges for its middle. She drives her antlers down and feels her stomach roil with the thought of battle.
Yet she is a magpie girl and what enchanted gem this might be! How glorious it might look hanging from her crimson antlers.
The beast moves and Leto hears the rattle of the woodland in its scales. She sees the endless hunger in its gaze as the beast watches the advance of the others.
She spies the glow of golden children as they skirt the frenzy of the battle. They move to slip behind the serpent and Leto’s heart trembles in her chest. The monster shifts and the shed-star does not pause to think. She lunges for its head as it twists to see the glimpse of gold in the corner of its vision.
Leto calls her magic, her skin igniting as a star rips itself from the sky and aims like a divine arrow for the snake upon the ground. She does not think of the value of trinkets, but the lives of children already tangled up in the greed of men.
Too many have died at the hands of beasts lately.
-Leto chooses option one.-
| "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
![[Image: 13716916_Rc8f5hGvZkB3cYP.png]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13716916_Rc8f5hGvZkB3cYP.png)
