They held me down And called me a monster So I howled at the moon And showed them all now they don't dare say my name
Once in Alanaris, long before mortals sought to classify monsters, All Hallows had been known as Lunamortuus, the Night of the Dead Moon, where the dead would whisper and the Corvi would dance. But as old tales and even older Gods were forgotten and the true meaning of All Hallows was lost, it became known as the Hunter’s Moon, a time when monster hunters grew rich slaying the creatures drawn like flies toward light, to the veil that separated the two plains. Castalla had always recognised it as a dangerous time- not just for her kind who often fell prey to hunters, but for the whole of Alanaris. It was during the Dead Moon that creatures from the other side could cross into their world, that witches could summon dangerous spirits or druids channel ancient beings. But did this world, this Novus, suffer from the same threats at Harvest? Did it lay prone next to a veil that thinned at this time?
From the festivities filled the air with tantalising scents and joyful choruses, this Court at least celebrated something, though Castalla had not gotten close enough to find out. Instead she had taken a wooded path, wandering ever into shadow. She was not ready to join the revels and the crowds, the raucous and the games, not when the loss of her powers, of her longevity, still cleaved at her heart.
From somewhere in the shadows, a broken voice split the silence, a cry for help that set the Wolf on edge. Ears pricked, stock still, Castalla listened intently, her eyes narrowed. And then again, the soft plea stroked the edges of her hearing. Carefully, cautiously the rogue picked her way through the forest, weaving between the trees and bushes, an ever silent predator. The rustle of leaves and soft thud of hooves upon earth told the femme she was not alone, but the shadows disguised whoever might also be wandering the woods. Were they friend or foe? Powerless or not, Castalla was still a living weapon, a dagger honed by years of experience. Whatever threat faced the weeping voice, the Wolf would not stand idly by.
something kissed by the wild
and loved by lightning
There is a boy chasing his cheetah along the fringes of a wild wood. He laughs as the cheetah cub yips and in the deep of the wood the forest answers. Its voice is a woman’s. It wails and it sobs. The cheetah stops suddenly, its head turning toward the noise. Her eyes are bright and wary, gilded gold like a hunter’s moon. The boy stops as she does, his posture mimicking hers. Each of them paused in their run, each of them gazing, head up and alert into the misty deep of the dark wood.
The forest speaks with a woman’s cry again and the boy’s sides heave with a wary breath. This forest smells of strange things. Mysteries dance like ghouls across his tongue and the boy’s nerves tell him to run, but he his his mother’s daughter and he is deaf to such warnings. Slowly he steps toward the trees and his cub bounds to his side. It trots forward, ready and keen.
Together they slip into the shadow of the trees as the woodland begins to laugh.
The night had blurred into one long dream of fairy lights and festivities. There had been a fortune teller, Sterling knows, and at one point he had bobbed for apples, and... He can’t remember; his head is reeling from too much pumpkin wine and spiked cider. He had wanted to get away from the noise and the crowds, just for a little while, to breathe the cool night air and rest his throbbing skull—
And now he’s here, weaving through the shadowy trees, beginning to wonder if he’s strayed too far from the pleasures of the marketplace. He’s not alone, exactly, but the voices that he hears are far-off, snatched swiftly away by what’s proving to be a rather bitter wind. Somehow he’s surprised by how dark it is. It’s easy to forget, living in the city, the depth of true night.
He turns around, shivering with cold, ready to retrace his steps to the court. Only then does he feel the first true prickle of unease along his spine. He had expected to find lights at his back, but among the trees there is only blackness, dizzying with the thousand tiny movements of leaf and branch. His vision swims as he scans the forest, looking for a flicker of light, listening hard for a strain of festival music—
What he hears instead sinks freezing talons into his chest. “Help me,” the trees whisper, and Sterling flinches and staggers to a halt. His brain feels like the smashed insides of a pumpkin, and the forest is beginning to spin, and the voice, the voice...
Was it his voice? he thinks wildly. Did he call for help? He needs help, he knows it—now in this moment and always, always, with his constant irreconcilable mistakes—
He doesn’t remember calling out. He’s not sure, with his skull full of fog and lightning, but he doesn’t think that it was him.
And so he stands in the silent wood, breathing hard, and listening.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
Slowly he moves through the woodland, letting the light of the moon play across his skin. The urge to swallow the light is an itch that will not abate. His skin twitches with the desire and he feels the cold of midnight pressing deep into his bones.
There is much about this woodland that paints Tenebrae as a creature of its own. Without his shadows he is the silver of a moonlit night - he is white and greys and blacks. In the distance a woman wails and the monk’s head tilts to better hear it. It drifts and echoes all around him. She speaks with a thousand voices and the Stallion does not smile, but adrenaline leaps as sparks through his veins. They propell the stallion deeper into the woodland, they make it stride as smooth as silk, as light as a lion in hunt.
It is unclear whether he stalks the ghost, or whether she stalks him. Yet deeper into the woodland the shadow Disciple roams and the more the darkness whispers for him to employ them
Darkness swallows the lake and without the fullness of the moon, it is a wonder anyone can navigate anywhere. It seems as though even the stars do not want to come out and show their light. Thankfully, Kibou has his little orb of light that trails behind him everywhere he goes so he can always see. His mother tells him it was his father’s orb, that it flickered out when he passed and flickered to life the moment Kibou took his first breath. It had been a faithful little orb, always with him and always a comfort.
Saki sits straddled over her bonded’s withers, her hands fisting what little mane the foal has. She goes with him everywhere, always touching him, always making sure he stays out of trouble…mostly.
Kibou had watched his mother head towards the forest, probably on one of her patrols. It had been rumored that he was a scared little foal, too childlike to participate in any sort of grown up fun. And yet, Kibou wanted to feel a part of the court, he wanted to pull his weight and he wanted more than anything, friends. And so, he tried to put on his brave face as he headed into the woods with everyone else. Unfortunately, they were so far ahead of him that he was left alone and afraid.
As if the sound of the wind howling around him did not make his fur stand up straight, it was the sound of hoof beats behind him and wailing that caught his attention. He paused, looking around him for the source, watching as his little orb lit the way. He saw no one. But then the wailing continued, this time crying out for help.
There was something rooted very deep in Kibou that he did not quite understand. That need to help, that drive to rescue and render aid. It was a part of his father that was implanted in his soul. "Where are you? I’ll help you!" He does not know about ghosts or spirits, about the dangers the woods might hide. All he knows is that he has this pressing urge to help the one who is asking for it.
Okay, maybe not everyone but Charlie hears enough equines talking about the spirit that lives in the trees by the lake in Denocte, while she is there trotting through the decorated streets exploring every inch of the festival. The filly, who is finally growing into her wings but seemingly less into her legs, gets ganglier and more mussy by the day, and she tosses her short black mane as the forest rises up before her like hundreds of silent guards.
Upon her withers Indy alights, flight silent and golden eyes sharp and bright. “Do you suppose what they said is true?” the Osprey asks, gazing into the darkness. It is almost impossible to see a path forward, as the crescent moon offers very little light to see by. A smirk tilts up the corner of Charlie’s lips, and her vermillion eyes shine as bright as a flame.
“There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” the young girl responds, taking her first fateful steps into the shadowed woods. The temperature is chill, and the dying brush trails along her sides like so many grasping, reaching fingers. When the first cry drifts toward her on the still air, Charlie stops.
She can’t tell where it’s coming from; it’s almost as if the voice is coming from everywhere. It’s impossible for her and her bonded to be the only ones in these woods, searching for this wandering spirit, but Charlie has never given up on anything before. And I’m not about to now, she thinks, as she presses on.
"Speaking."
Feel free to include Charlie in your posts if you'd like!
sometimes I'm terrified of my heart;
of it's constant hunger for whatever it wants.
The way it stops and starts.
Like flies drawn to the remnants of a carcass rotting in the woods, so, too, are people tall and small alike to the sound of a plea for help. Or was it the wind? Moira does not know, and worse, she does not really care.
Something her tugs her towards that voice, the soft, sing-song voice that could be the breeze or it could be a girl crying and in need. There are bandages at her side again, tucked carefully under her wing where it will be safe from others who come and talk and annoy her once more.
So the healer went, so the phoenix ensconced in ice to devour pain and confusion comes, and it is with frigid, burning eyes that she looks to the woods and to the others gathered. She sees Michael again, the back of him burnished and gold, disappearing into the copse of trees with the others who wear skins of brown and silver and dreams. So may are not of Denocte, so many stink of Dawn or Day. There is someone, somewhere, who carries the sea all the way from Terrastella here, and it burns her as the sun burns her eyes. Moira cringes from that smell, shies away internally, buries it deep, deep down where she cannot find it again.
"I'm coming with you," she echoes to him as he'd said to her just earlier that evening. Not because she must, but because she'd rather be with no one else than one of her own. Had she seen Katniss, perhaps she would go with the woman as well, or Isra, or Bexley. Anyone to keep the hollow hounds from baying in her soul.
"You're too kind, or is it curiosity?" she questions, her midnight voice of smoke and ash as soft as the wind that carried the cry. Moira Tonnerre does not know if she cares for the answer, nor why she asked, or decided to tag along, only that it is something to fill the hole, to fill the void. Even if only temporarily.
The woods, they begin to change. Subtly, slowly, that it might seem like your imagination or a trick of the sickle moon’s light. You pass a tree with a gnarled trunk that you swear you’ve passed before: twice. The shadows are not shadows but shapes, eyes, bodies, reaching, watching. Following. But when you look, nothing is there. And the calling voice beckons you further into the trees. Nothing is as it seems.
Suddenly, the air is damp and cold and filled with a silver mist. Did you happen upon it, or did it happen upon you?
The fog creeps—like living tendrils seeking out prey it wraps around every trunk, branch and quivering leaf. It sits heavily like a blanket, thick and nearly impossible to see through. Nearly smothering. Within, the distant, aching cry for help is replaced instead by the unsettling sound of moaning as though a gate has been opened between this world and that of the restless dead.
The unnatural wailing rises, so many voices longing to be heard but together they are nearly inaudible. Are they one, or are they many? You might be lost forever in the fog, with voices that nestle themselves deep inside your bones, waiting for it to fade. Perhaps the woods have tricked you, and only made you a victim too. Or, perhaps if you listen hard enough, the keening wail for help is still there, guiding you.
The further into the woods your character ventures the more the forest… is changing. But it’s hard to tell if it’s just in your character’s imagination or whether it is truly happening. Spurned on by the calls for help, your character finds themselves enveloped in an impossibly thick mist, filled with what sounds like the cries of the dead. They are deafening, nearly paralyzing. There seems to be no way forward, and no way back.
Your character has two options:
They can try to continue forward through the fog and hope to find the end of it
- Or - They can attempt to wait and see if the fog will fade and offer them reprieve
What will they choose?
Please mark your character’s choice clearly at the end of your post! A random dice roll will be done to determine which choice allows you to move forward. You have until 11:59pm EST on Sunday, October 20th to reply.
michael
'Cause I carried on like the wayward son
And now through and through I have come undone
And now I am just but the wayward man
What with my bloodshot eyes and my shaky hands
Another sad voice in the wind, in the dark. Another hour with the phoenix icy and still like a dead thing, cold wood in the fireplace, black wood that breathes only in dying embers. Another story where the crowd gathers in hushed silence at the edge of some oncoming tragedy. He wonders when Denocte will not be marked by some oncoming tragedy.
I'm coming with you. An echo. At first he thinks it is the wind again, the voice in the wood. At first it makes him jump. He turns to see Moira, carrying medical supplies. So they heard it too, the clustered few in the woods with Michael. This does not come as a comfort.
"I often ask myself that." These words too are sucked into the fog that looms, the fog that laughs. It is with a sense of finality that Michael watches it go, sinking into his bones like winter. He has a bad feeling about this.
He does not say he is going, does not have to, only turns back to meet Moira with a grim frown before he is carried into the fog by little more than the pain of not knowing.
--
A minute passes. Stones that he know give way to unfamiliar ground, unfamiliar trees.
Five minutes: He is breathing fog and gray. There are dips where he does not remember dips, knolls where there should not be knolls. He cannot hear anything but the keening of hell, or heaven, or some blank space in between. If he stops at all he stops here, the voice howling through him like a dark December wind.
He thinks, I could die here.
He thinks, I must go, or I will. Surely.
Hours? Days? The woods are an endless loop of hills and valleys, trees and fog, and Michael is Orpheus with his own heart ringing in his ears, the screaming of ghosts and the roaring of wind and his blood whistling where am I going? Where am I going? He cannot breathe through the heavy fog and he cannot tell if he is still moving or if the ground has not dropped out from beneath him. Wherever Moira is he can no longer find her, cannot turn, cannot speak, can only suck ragged, choking breaths, over and over by mechanical force.
Where am I going?
His heart is in his throat, choking him.
Where am I going?
He passes beneath the long fingers of a leafless tree, and its branches tug at his long mane. Or was that a tree at all?
Where am I going?
The ground beneath him trips, and traps, the air is heavy and damp and the trees are gone, the rocks are gone, every whff against his skin is a palm or a heart beating or a mouth full of hungry teeth, a long and desperate tongue. He is Orpheus marching out of Hades, fixed on the road ahead though he cannot see it, praying that Euridyce is somewhere in the black and the fog. Praying that Denocte, still, is somewhere in the black and the fog.
Where am I going?
He does not know. The voice in the wood is on all sides at once, bouncing off trees? Bouncing off the hollows of his body? He does not know. But he goes anyway.
Below Zero
my frost philosophy will put no curse on me
The air seemed to grow colder around the aquatic-mare of the polar caps. But it wasn't an unwelcoming cold that many others might feel in it. To the mare who preferred colder climates, she could feel herself relaxing at the dropping temperature - but she did notice the look of the trees. Did all woods look like this when you travel deeper into them? Like gnarled monster hands trying to reach to you . . . and she was pretty sure, that tree looked familiar, very familiar at that. And then she noticed the shadows, with eyes and bodies - following after her, trying to touch her - A faintly alarmed whinny left the little dual-natured equine's throat, the sound careening through the woods, carried on the dampening air as if underwater. The end of the whinny also seemed altered, drawn out and with a cree-ing sound like that of a dolphin.
Her hooves pranced a little more with pent-up energy, and she was growing more and more nervous out there - but the voice in the trees still called for help, hoping for assistance, and Bel wasn't going to let the poor female down. So she pushed onward, even if alarmed and nervous about the land. And then suddenly the air's dampness seemed to grow denser, and a silvery mist was growing up and around her ankles, surrounding her in it's cool, humid dampness. It was alarming at best, and the silver mist seemed to take on a stronger cyan hue around her as it enclosed around her glowing form.
Her tail swished through it, trying to clear the mist away, only for it to immediately slink around her again. Where had it come from? It's heavy across her, seeming to have wrapped her fully in it's silvery mist, and she can't help but hesitate within the mass. How is one suppose to travel in this? Moans seemed to come from the mist, and for a moment, her heart started to speed up, hooves prancing nervously and eyes widening in alarm. And then a wail seemed to grow into the air, so many voices climbing together, and it's hard to decide if they are many speaking as one, or one speaking of many. Bel is about to turn back when suddenly, the wail of help hits here, still there and voice drowned by all the other sounds. Bel's fear hardens, her body going strong and determined, back straight.
"I'm coming! Just keep calling, I'll follow your voice!" Bel called out, and started to head deeper into the fog, with a silent prayer to not lose her way.
Thoughts Speech
Notes: Bel chooses to keep going forward.
i feel no cold, i feel no fear inside my mind Now I'm full of energy
![[Image: 13222742_95oVYzdeR5MVhK5.png]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13222742_95oVYzdeR5MVhK5.png)
![[Image: i-jTNwWx8.png]](https://photos.smugmug.com/BelowZeroNovus/n-X9d9fZ/i-jTNwWx8/1/e09fb6c3/O/i-jTNwWx8.png)
