you say that you're still hungry then bite the plates and break your teeth
There was a specific moment when consciousness returned to him, delicate as a butterfly breaking wet-winged from its chrysalis. In that moment there were no clear thoughts; too much magic was still trickling through his cells like they were cheesecloth, and the chaos and noise was still reverberating in his skull, his teeth, setting all his bones to shivering.
But when he did feel again, when he blinked his eyes open and found himself in the late-summer sun on the coast of Denocte, the first thing he felt was disappointment - not for losing the relic, or the island, but for keeping his life.
It surprised him, that feeling and the weight of it; it was the first time he’d ever wished himself dead.
And yet he found it didn’t fade. It was joined by others - a kind of dizzy relief, an acute nausea that nearly brought him panting to his knees, a dull-toothed sense of failure that he hadn’t earned or won or been given the Relic. More and more emotions came winging down, like his body had ceased to exist as the magic relocated him and now all his thoughts were coming winging back, one by one, like butterflies descending in fucked-up magic jungle. Below them all, certain as his heartbeat (or the heartbeat of those berries as the very beginning of the dream-not-dream):
you should be dead, you should be dead. He had seen that sand-skinned snake, the monstrous creature with the bear skull, the silent screaming mouth; he had run for all of it, open-handed, greedy for miracles, and he had been found wanting.
Nobody had found August wanting before, except himself.
Now, there was no denying it, the island itself was crumbling to bits, sinking back into the waves. He watched it go with a singing ache between his ribs, grateful to be too far to do anything about it, too far to even see the figures of horses fleeing down the bridge except for the black shapes of them, small as swarming flies.
He couldn’t yet think about those other-deaths, couldn’t yet process the ragged worry gnawing at his gut for all his friends.
But he was glad the island was dying, and he was sorry to see it go, and as it passed below the hungry dark of the ocean his heart beat slowly against his ribs and every pulse felt like something stolen and unearned.
The relic is in tasting reach, and then all at once it’s not, and the only thing O feels as she comes crashing through the portal into the sand is the brief, dull pain of collision and then the anger.
Her body burns with a strange combination of disappointment and rage—how can she have been so close and then be thrown away so quickly?—but there is no time to sulk on it, because the whole island is falling apart. Like paper curls to ash. Like flower petals torn by the wind. She scrambles to her feet, and already the sand is turning black and unsteady. Trees groan and crack before they crash completely, the earth itself trembles, water is washing up far past the line in the sand that it should.
The anger in her chest starts to commingle with panic. Her head grows dizzy-light, and then without a pause for thought (what is there to think about?) she’s racing off toward the bridge faster than she’s ever run before. So fast the world is a blur and her lungs start to burn, so fast she nearly trips over the littlest ridges in the sand, but—
But she’s made it to the bridge. It twists and writhes, it nearly throws her off balance; for a moment her breath catches in her throat, her pulse spikes to new heights. She might not make it.
It is the first time she’s felt real fear in quite a long time.
The shore rises ahead of her, not so far away. It shimmers like a mirage. But it’s close, she knows it’s close, it must be close. With every leaping stride the bridge seems to shake a little more, the cracks start to spread.
It sounds like bones shattering.
She stumbles, and touches down on the other side’s shore.
holy places are dark places.
it is life and strength,
not knowledge and words,
that we get in them.
They went their different ways moving as mirrors of each other. Twins, that are more one entity than two. Feet stretch between their bodies as the children move in a mirroring arc, escaping serpent and bear and wild magic. They rush, tripping over stone and sand and scales - so many scales. Leonidas feels the pull of their distance, he feels how his body aches without hers. How long has it known the heat of his sister’s skin against his?
The gravity pulls and pulls between them. It stretches thin, thin, thinner. Then it snaps and Leonidas does not even notice (though his heart does, though his heart bleeds). The boy pushes through the dust and clouds and grasps, grasps for the relic. But it goes. It slips from his fingers and suddenly he is no longer in the core of the island when the clouds recede but at the edge where the island’s edges meet the sea.
If he thought the fight for the relic was a melee of horror, it is nothing compared to this. The island is buckling and rearing. The sea rising up to reclaim it from its edges. But at its core it sinks, great black holes forming. The boy is running fleet footed as the sky begins to shudder and the sun moves and everything begins to roar with a noise the boy cannot begin to comprehend. It is a cacophony of sound, an assault upon his ears. He turns for Aster, for she is always there and it is only then he feels the broken thread between them. It is only then he feels her absence. When all the world has begun to spin wild and free and full of motion that is when the boy stands still amidst the chaos and realises how alone he is.
His sister is gone and all the world is screaming out its agony like it is his. Horses are falling into pits. The island swallows them whole and the sea rises up to sweep them out into its deep. The boy is silent and full of wonder and horror. He is statue still, until a body crashes into his. Until he is pushed toward a gaping crack that beckons him down. The boy leaps and lands clear and screams out for his sister. He has lost her too. They had waited for their parents together upon this island. Yet now it was falling and breaking and sinking. The tide of horses push the boy toward the edge of the island, to where the bridge of obsidian writhes and thrashes in agony. He turns against the tide, enough to see how the trees fall and the sea’s jaws crash together over sand and stone.
How is he to survive without his twin? How is he to live when all he has ever known is gone - the land of his birth swallowed by the sea, his parents and uncle gone, his sister lost too. The boy screams and fights and pushes but feet are trampling, herds of horses stampeding and they push and carry the child onto the bridge. He gasps through his screams and through his tears. He gasps as bodies crush him, his lungs fighting, straining to keep him alive.
Obsidian crumbles beneath his feet as he runs. He reaches the edge of the island and leaps down, down onto the unwavering sand of Novus. Horses scatter in different directions at last and suddenly he can breathe, suddenly he can look back and see.. that the island is gone. The sea churns in its place with all the violence of mastication. Horses slip beneath the waves, sucked down by the sinking island. The boy sees white horses sinking, white horses swimming and all of them and none of them look like Aster. There is no island on which to wait for his parents return and his sister, who waited, curled beside him, is gone too.
The boy collapses onto the sand and watches until the sea begins to settle and all the horses are gone.
OOC: Using Leo's horseshoe in this round please :)
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
She is running amidst the sea of horses that push out out into the waiting roaring blue of the ocean. Her eyes look amidst the chaotic scene for a glimpse of gold, for August who came upon the island with her. They parted ways when they reached the idyl that the island once was.
But this place is no perfection. Like Minya it is all beautiful to the beholder, yet inside it is twisted and broken. Monstrous things had been born of this place and Minya’s soul aches with the agony of this place.
She flees now, without a glance back - she does not need to look and remember. There is no loss for her as this island goes down. Except for August… Is he safe? The Scarab staff know how to look after themselves - of course he is well but there is a creeping dread within her. It turns her limbs to lead as she runs and she finds his name upon her lips. She cries it out into the throng of names already being cried out into the air by all who flee and fear for their loved ones.
The island cracks beneath her fleeing feet. Great fissures form and horses fall into them. A mare goes down before Minya, she slips into the chasm her limbs tangling with Minya’s as she goes. The ground rises up to meet the Scarab girl with a fierce thump, the hair escapes her lungs and the falling girl grasps hold of Minya’s legs. She cries and begs to be saved as the ground bucks and shudders, desperate to swallow her down. Minya clings to her, she tries to pull and pull and pull. But the weight of gravity pulling on the girls is too much and the mare slips lower and lower dragging Minya to the edge with her.
Oh how the fire-dancer scrabbles until her forelimbs are thrashing in the air above the chasm. Another inch and they are both gone. Minya’s head shakes, tears blossoming along her lashes. The falling girl is screaming to be saved. Again and again she begs Minya but all she does is pull her saviour closer, closer to the edge and the fall that will swallow them both.
Minya scrabbles to find them purchase, anything that will stop their slipping into the void. She reaches for the girl, trying to pull her up, up, up. But they are both sweat slick and her grasp is fleeting and then lost. She tries again and the girl only slips lower. The girl begs and weeps and Minya is half-dragged over the edge by the weight of them both. She feels gravity winding its fingers about her limbs and pulling. She feels the cold caress of death up her spine, the endless nothing and horror that awaits her at the bottom of that long and terrible fall.
She shakes her head, ‘no, no, I am sorry-’ and the girl is screaming her eyes wide with knowing. Please, please she begs but Minya is close to death too and she pushes the girl free. Their limbs untangle, the weight is gone and Minya scrabbles up and over the edge as gravity’s grip loosens upon her.
Her limbs are bloodied, from where she gripped the earth, from where the girl gripped her. There is nothing but black where the girl once was, endless, endless nothing. All around her horses are dying and yet she is living. Minya scrambles to her feet, weak and wounded and broken. She runs, no, limps toward the bridge and on towards where Novus waits calm and solid, welcoming the survivors back.
She falls upon Novus’ beach and feels the sickness of guilt surge up within her. She sobs where she lies, falling apart for s a girl she could not save but rather condemned. History, they say, was doomed to repeat itself and this was not Minya’s first murder.
The children she had been guarding disappear in the chaos of fog and sand. The convulsing darkness swallows them whole and when Leto staggers out into the light it is upon the crumbling beach of the island.
Behind her the trees are felling. Collapsing down with cries and groans that fill the air. The sea hisses and laugh as it crashes upon the shore reaching for where Leto stands. Behemoths swirl within its depths and Leto’s heart is wild within her mouth.
She looks for the children, but they cannot be seen amidst the herds of horses that stampede from where the island collapses around them. They all run for the bridge and Leto runs after them. Always she keeps her eyes open for the children. Always she listens for a child’s screams and prays that they might have survived this.
| "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
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 does not miss the way the earth crumbles and falls away beneath him. Was that not the way of all things? To be vibrant and so very alive before falling away into death and nothingness…
Horses are all running around him, fleeing and pushing and shoving but Raum walks like a man already condemned. Great gashes appear in the soil, they catch horses like flies in a venus fly trap. But none form where this cursed man walks. None reach to swallow him up. The sea does not reach for him, nor the monsters within it. They all know a different death awaits him.
Raum walks toward Novus, away from the island, away from this chaotic death. Novus beckons him as all-knowing things do. She waits with her pristine beach and does not aid him nor slow him as he walks toward Solterra. Novus merely watches the final walk of a man toward his death.
Penultimate post...
STAFF EDIT***
@Raum has rolled a 4! They have been awarded +3 exp.
I fear no evil, the shadow is mine and so is the valley
The relic had not been hers for the taking, but Vendetta does not wear disappointment upon her face when the island somehow deposits her out onto the bridge when one moment she had been standing there, facing down all the challenges it had put against her. She turns her sharp, ruby eyes back for one moment to consider it, the island, whose mysteries were still a mystery to many, before heading back to Novus.
But when she reaches the beaches of Denocte, the piers, the docks, the world begins to tremble. Above, in the sky, the sun begins to tick its way across the sky once more, no longer prisoner to some strange magic. And the island, even from here, she can see its descent into madness.
Equines are racing across the bridge which is buckling and bucking in the water and more than one are lost to the sea and beasts that had been lurking beneath. She wonders how many more will be lost to the island as it collapses upon itself. She wonders who has the relic, now, for surely someone must. That is the only explanation she can think of.
Vendetta does not race, does not run, does not fear. The promises of the relic surely would have been nice but the unicorn already has greatness and power, and a business to return to. Curling, crimson horns glinting in the light, the Mistress turns her back upon the island for the second time and final time.
It will be gone before she reaches Solterra, but she will have moved on long before then.
There was a part of him who thought, even as the island began to buckle and fill with water, of the beauty of the flowers.
It was the magic he knew, pervading his mind and overwhelming his senses like a drug. For a moment he doesn’t see the way the world around him seems to be fracturing, the way the color is being drained out like watercolor. All he sees is the flower, with its long, black petals and the starburst of vibrant blue at its center. Five slender filaments wave gently in the breeze, as if reaching out for him.
Ipomoea leans in closer, and his heart is beating in time with the island now, a wild thing inside of his chest that runs and runs and runs like a rabbit from a wolf. It’s yelling at him, his blood is screaming at him, and he know it’s time to go. But still, but still he takes just a little more time to admire the island in all its fierce beauty.
When the waves finally reach him it feels like ice water around his hooves, and at last he stirs.
Against his better judgement, despite the part of him that is begging him to flee, he lunges forward and wraps his teeth around the stalk of the flower. With a deft twist of his head he pulls the plant out by its roots, shaking the sand and soil loose.
And only then does he turn and head for the bridge, that twists like a snake above the ocean. As chunks of it fall out from beneath him he races the wind itself, faster and faster until at last he reaches the other end. And there he collapses in the sand, and when he lifts his head over his shoulder he watches as the world itself begins to sink.
I ONCE MET A BROKEN SUNSET
ridiculously beautiful and alone
Before the island collapses, Aion is ready to run.
Every part of it makes his skin crawl, from its too-white beaches to its too-dark forest. Once he might have marveled at the magic that creates bobbing lights at night and shadows that take the shape of animals during the day.
But not now. Now he only sees something that he does not understand, something that he cannot trust. “Maret!” His tone is harsher than he means it to be, but she comes to him at once, with her wide eyes and gangly legs. “It’s time to go, little one.”
It’s early still, but Aion has no interest in waiting to see what the island has planned. He nuzzles his daughter until she stands close beside him, wrapping one golden wing around her small frame. And then they begin to run, and even though he knows she’s tired he encourages her to go faster, faster, faster.
And while they cross the twisted bridge, while he guides her around the pieces that slough off like scales and leave potholes behind, he begins to tell her a story. Of a time when the sun came down to earth, just to see what it was like, and left sunflowers behind when it left.
She wants to ask why - or pretend she doesn’t hear him, or linger behind looking at the seashells, or beg to stay for just one more minute - but something in her father’s tone has her turning and running to his side instead. It sounds something like fear, running like ice through her veins when she fell into the Rapax, and she knows not to argue with it.
Maret has never seen her father afraid before, and she knows that it must be something bad to make him call to her like that.
So she presses herself into his side, and her magic is a broken thing that makes the water in the air crack like a thousand fragile crystals. She watches the world through the gold of his wings, everything yellow and bright and beautiful, and even though she doesn’t understand why they’re running, she does it anyway.
But she can’t resist looking back over her shoulder at the island when they begin to cross the bridge. And Maret doesn’t see anything terrible or broken or dangerous, she doesn’t see the way the trees are crashing down and the waves are drowning them all.
She sees only magic in the way the light turns everything gold and sharp, beauty in the way the sand seems to float in slow motion through the air.
![[Image: x341oLX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/x341oLX.png)
