The tall man of cyan and stardust is free among the stars. In his dreams, he dives into nebulae and bathes in the aurora, floating and never falling as he danced within the midnight cosmos. His step is light and unhindered, his eyes bright with hope, his hair gaily decorated with shimmer and sparkle. All around him, there is nothing by sky. It is Caligo’s realm, one where he does not belong as a mere mortal, but one he cannot help but love. Gone are the shackles of humanity, gone are the doubts and fears. In their place, Azrael finds only freedom.
He tosses in sleep, eyes pinching tighter, not wanting this place to crumble from waking. As he forced the stirring world around him away, the dreamwalker is thrust deeper into the fantasy, lost to this realm and fully sinking into the illusion. There were no rules here – no courtly ideals – no expectations. He is simply alone with his stars. For some time, this continues, and he is content with it… but then, he thinks of the girl. The girl with golden hair and fear in her eyes. Elena. She had gotten under his skin, found her way into his dreams… and the shed-star was lost with what to think about it.
She walks beside him now, and he flicks a glance toward her, meeting her cerulean gaze with uncharacteristic warmth. In the dream, she is smiling – happy and free from the burdens of her own past. She is one with the night, even if it is a night she fears. For that moment, Azrael looks at this dreamscape world through her eyes, seeing the stars anew and unburdened by their secrets. And as he pulls away, she fades into the nebula once more, a fleeting whispered goodbye leaving her lips.
The shed-star wakes with peace wrapped around him like a warm blanket, blinking at what he expected to be the sun, but finding only a starfield before him. He shivers at the irony, shaking himself awake, convinced the dream kept him trapped within the dreamscape… but finds it strange that the world around him stayed the same. Could it be that this place was real, with it’s rolling fog and endless sky? If it was, he mused, then it was as close to heaven as any place he could have known. The magic was an endless sense of fascination, as his mind is enraptured by the impossibility of it all.
And in the distance, Tenebrae walks toward him. At first, Azrael cannot make out who approaches, and he squints harder at the unveiling fog, curious who disturbs the peace of the moment. It is a stranger, he assesses, though one who bears the mark of Caligo. “Brother,” he whispers, “what is this magic, which gathers the stars for endless night?” There is a reverence to his tone – for surely the creator of such a place wielded a powerful sort of gift. But, for that at least, he knew the answer. Azrael had no doubt this place was created by Caligo, keeper of the stars.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
If Tenebrae had known how Azrael dreams of Elena, he would have not been surprised. He thinks she would indeed be capable of turning a man’s dreams into ones that dwell upon her. But then, he thinks that all girls possess such magic. It is with renewed effort that he keeps himself from them - that he prays harder, longer. Tenebrae fills himself up with duty, he trains his magic and his fighting skills until sweat gleans across his skin and his lungs hurt with the effort to draw breath. It is in those moments when his mind is filled and his body too exhausted to think of anything beyond Caligo and rest. It is then when he forgets temptation, his blood is no longer a roaring sea in his ears that calls him to return to it. He fixes his gaze upon the sun and remembers what it is to hunger.
This is one of those moments: Tenebrae is running. He flies amidst the fog as though it were the clouds up in the sky. But there are no clouds there this night, they do not veil the stars and to look upon them is to see their plentiful lights. They twinkle like dust, so great are they in number.
Moonlight and starlight shine down, but none are enough to pierce the thick darkness that shrouds him. The starlight reaches close and is swallowed up by the Disciple’s ravenous magic. The shadows billow, a shadow of night surging through the trees and out towards the waterfalls.
His breath comes in blasts of smoke draconic. But the warrior is far from a dragon. His half-moon sigils glow and it is only when his lungs feel fit to burst, when every breath is a burning agony that Tenebrae slows. His shadows shrink, down, down from where they climb through trees and flare out like a rippling balloon. They grow smaller, more intimate as they form about him, fitting to his torso like armor.
A man stirs beside the place where Tenebrae stops. The monk had been stood, drinking in the the first rays of dawn light cresting above the top of the waterfall. Slowly he turns his white-bright eyes upon the man who rouses and gleams. Still the vestiges of sleep cling to the dreamer’s form in that faint glow. But his magic is not enough to paint the golden girl beside him here in this place of waking. Elena’s fae-smiles and her sun-spun skin that Tenebrae longs to taste, remain hidden and lost to sleep.
It is just as well.
Brother.
The monk does not stir but wonders what this stranger knows of brethren kin when he does not bear a sigil of brotherhood upon his torso. This man is no monk, it is obvious in his appearance and so Tenebrae says nothing but looks to their surroundings, to this strange island who shifts and changes as she pleases. “It is the island’s innate magic the remnants of the god, Tempus’, ire.” Though the island changes her face, her body with the seasons, still she keeps memories woven in to every rock and tree, flower and leaf. Only a few strides away is the clearing where Boudika stepped into the dark of his shadows with blood upon her smiling lips.
If you want me, come to the sea.
He turns from the waterfall and the pool at its foot, though a part of him thirsts and may never be sated.
“I assume that this your first time here?”
@Azrael - <3 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
04-18-2020, 06:33 AM - This post was last modified: 12-03-2020, 11:00 AM by Tenebrae
The island. Azrael does not remember coming here, but perhaps it’s just as well. As he stands in this place of shadow and stardust, he wonders what it all means. It was a world that even in his dreamscape, Azrael could not have imagined existed. And if this were a magic, it was a beautiful one that he never wanted to end. If he could, the astral creature would stay forever in the cloak of midnight and the cover of stardust. For without wings, he could never reach the stars this close – close enough to caress and dance among them. Close enough to want for more.
If the monk is brusque with him, Azrael does not notice (or simply does not let it bother him). His gaze rests on the moon-shaped mark on Tenebrae's shoulder, not fully knowing it’s meaning, but expecting it to be some allegiance to Caligo. Perhaps this is why he feels drawn toward the stranger. Perhaps this is what makes them brothers, even if the term is one usually reserved for endearment. After all, the People were cut from Caligo’s cloth, just as the Order was avowed to protect it. They were simply two sides to the same coin.
“Tempus…” of course, it was a name he’d heard before – spoken by the elders around the fire – in the same way the future had been foretold. As a child, he’d heard the tales – of the shunned sister who had birthed the night – who had given rise to the Stars themselves. “But why?” He questioned. “Why now?” For surely there was a reason for the island to rise from the sea. Surely there was a reason that it changed so, never making up its mind, conflicted and lost.
He rose, gathering his dreamcatcher staff and pacing at the edge of the water. “Would it not be all of our first time here, if in fact the magic is ever evolving? I cannot say whether I have been to this place before, or even how I got here now.” His question is an incredulous murmur, as if he forgot that the second male even stood beside him, too lost in his own thoughts at the possibility. In truth, he remembered only the festival, the quiet whispers with Elena, the thief in the night… Azrael could only assume it was the dream that took him here, to the place of his deepest desire and love. Here, without even the wind to steal away the touch of stardust, he felt most at peace.
“What was this place, before?” His curiosity is piqued now as he watches the pale stranger, wondering if he could peel away the shroud of mystery surrounding Tempus’ creation. The island had to have more secrets than it told. It had to have a reason to emerge, after being lost for so long –
And if he had to guess, the ‘why’ could have far-reaching implications for them all.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
From his shadows Tenebrae watches the taller man. He watches as the dream-catchers eyes drift away and out across the shifting secrets of the island. What mysteries does he find there? What secrets does the island yield to him - or maybe hide from them both?
The water seems to slow, as if Tempus winds down the pulse of night until it beats slowly, slowly toward an eternal night. The monk would not resist, even as a part of him worries. How will he stave off his hunger if there is no sun in the sky upon which to feast? Tenebrae, as much as he is a Stallion of the shadows, needs the rising dawn and the endless, relentless stark gleam of daylight.
The dreamcatcher rises, he paces past the Disciple and a staff fits itself into the stranger’s grip. How the island seems to watch him with great baleful eyes limned in silver. How is there innocence here when the island keeps the bones of those she swallowed deep down in the pits of her abdomen?
Yet, Tenebrae cannot deny the beauty of this strange place, where nothing is quite as it seems. The place is different, unkempt in its own strange way. Everything is not as it should be, the grasses are blue and the water green and gold. But at least it is awake, at least things here are living. When Tempus froze the island, suspended it in time, that might have been the time that Tenebrae was the most uneasy.
Time was never meant to stand so still. To be so still is to be living and yet dying, feeling every cell in your body striving on and getting nowhere. It was blistering in its monotony.
Slowly the monk moves to stand beside the dreamcatcher and watch the quiet waters at the edge of the pool lap against the shore. “Because we all reach a point where we reach our limit on what we can tolerate.” Tenebrae says and wonders where his might lie, when temptation will become to much and his limit is breached. Will he manage to change then? Or will he freefall down, down into the pit of unrighteousness?
“His children were squabbling, their courts were squabbling. He sought change.” At the cost of lives. He does not say, but the words are salt on his tongue. Distasteful.
Tenebrae smiles when he thinks of this place as always new, that he has never walked here before. “Maybe you are right.” The monk agrees, ‘Except that there are bones beneath this island. Bones of those who tried to flee and yet were swallowed up. They live on here, even when she changes her face like a dancer a different mask at a masquerade.”
In the corner of the island a memory stirs for Tenebrae and it is one of brotherhood and enlightenment. “She keeps your memories here too, even when she changes… What was she before?” He repeats the question and then turns his gaze to focus upon the dreamer, “Before she was just the sea. She did not exist before Tempus brought her into existence.”
Azrael could have asked a dozen more questions, but it would do no good. The mortals had no answers – only more questions. He knew better to question the will of the gods, and yet the stargazer has to wonder. A quiet sort of peace falls between the two men as they stand beside the reflecting water, shining as black as the darkness above it, dotted with mirrored stardust. Time and magic were a lethal combination, he supposed. And the ire of the gods was always a volatile thing too, at least in his experience. It was strange when they decided to meddle in the lives of their followers. It was a reminder, in a way, that all of them were little more than pawns in Tempus’ end game.
As Tenebrae mentions the bones beneath their feet, Azrael shudders at the thought. He glances down toward his star-glow hooves, as if he could see far beneath the ground on which he stood. “Were you there?” His voice is a quiet whisper, almost lost in the silent expanse around them, as he wonders what it must have been like to see the island rise unexpectedly from the sea. Surely it would have been an unforgettable event to behold. For his part, Azrael wasn’t sorry to have missed it.
He’d had his own taste of the cruelty of the gods, when dragonfire had destroyed the shed-star temples, forcing them to flee their mountaintop home for earthbound dwelling. Although this had been foretold by the priestesses and the cards, the timing had not been a thing which could be predicted. He hadn’t been ready… none of them had been. To see their heavens thick with smoke, to see their temples rotting as fire devoured them to the core… it was enough to steal their breath away. They had come with hope for brighter tomorrows, but also with tears and trepidation.
Although Azrael had been in the Night Court for some time now, it still didn’t feel like home. He hadn’t found his way; he hadn’t found his place. But at least he’d found the stars once more, peeking through the cloud cover to caress the night skies. Caligo’s blessing was on Denocte – he could feel her presence in every shadow, which gave him pause and peace. Though the People had dispersed to the four winds, he had stayed… he had stayed to serve Caligo and her Night.
Perhaps this is why he feels so at ease in the starfield, even knowing the island was not what it seemed. If it was an illusion, it was a good one – a believable representation of the night he so loved. “Even knowing it’s not real, it feels real.” His voice is quiet and almost revenant, as Azrael wonders if he betrayed Caligo by even thinking fondly of this place. However, once the island changed again and the stars blinked out for something else, he could not know how the new island would move his spirit. Perhaps then, his wonder is not misplaced. Perhaps he is allowed to dream.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
Tenebrae sees the way Azrael shudders, the way the mention of death brings those bones to life. He remembers how the island rose up to swallow down all those who had visited it.
Still Tenebrae can feel the way his heart beat as he fled. It has never known flight like it. Everything was strange and wrong that day. The screams of the now dead feel like only a sigh away. The dead are close, so terribly, tremblingly close.
The stranger asks is he was there and for a long moment Tenebrae is only silent. Yet within the confines of his mind the island is sinking again. It is a python swallowing itself down, down, down. “Yes,” the Disciple answers bleakly. Suddenly the waterfall has lost its beauty, the stars in the sky are no longer bright suns burning but fireflies, barely able to keep themselves alive. The air is chill with sober memories. There are horses screaming as they fall only to never rise again.
The shadows turn to ghosts, faces of those he knows are dead. They wander aimlessly, stuck in this island, this liminal space between the living and the dead.
Even knowing it’s not real, it feels real. Tenebrae turns to look at the man, the way he spoke was reverential. This island deserves no reverence, no matter its beauty. “How do you know it’s not real?” the monk returns, speaking of the island, of the ghosts. It all looks so very real indeed.
Taking a breath, Tenebrae turns from the silver, glittering waterfall, rich with fantasy. “You seem new here. Where are you from?’ Slowly he looks over the galaxy coat of the other stallion. It mirrors the stars above them, the galaxies that reach out their tendrils to one another.
@Azrael - <3 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
04-26-2020, 09:24 AM - This post was last modified: 12-03-2020, 11:01 AM by Tenebrae
When he asks if Tenebrae had been there, when the island burned, he knows the answer before the warrior speaks. The horror is written in his eyes, blankly staring ahead, pushing down the emotion even as his quiet Yes. confirms. Though Azrael cannot see the memories which flood over his companion, the dreamwalker can sense the swift pang of sorrow, he can taste the sourness which the moment leaves. Just as quickly as he had asked, Azrael wishes to take it away now, grateful for the subject change as Tenebrae’s question offers them a respite from the memories of death.
“The stars are wrong,” he answers easily, “They are beautiful, but merely an illusion. See here?” he pointed at a particularly bright star, shining blue and luminous in the night sky, “This star is made to look like Alcyone of the Pleiades constellation, but her other sisters are missing…” And he could name a dozen more examples, even as he flicks a glance to Tenebrae, wondering if he too could read the stars. As for the rest of the island, Azrael could not say. The dead would be real, he presumed – or perhaps they were merely trapped in this place, lost to the outside world and presumed to be gone forever. Magic was a fickle beast which Azrael did not trust – it could be wielded for good, but too often, he had seen it used for darker whims.
“I am new,” Azrael answers to the second question, “but not far removed from Denocte. My people are the shed-stars, and we came from a place you know as the Arma Mountains, though somewhere far beyond your tallest peaks. We came in a caravan, following the wisdom of the star-speakers, driven to Caligo’s land when our own was destroyed by dragon fire.” It was an oversimplified explanation of the travesty which befell his people. How could he explain the acrid scent of fire against flesh, the cries of the non-believers as they begged Caligo for mercy.
“The People walk among Denocte now, scattered to the four winds. Some are called merchants, others magicians, and some have abandoned Caligo all together.” Splintered, their group would lose its identity within a generation or two, but at least with Azrael’s conviction, his own brood would know their legacy as Caligo’s people, torn from her own cloak of night sky, and brought to this world to walk among others.
He looked Tenebrae over, vision resting once more at the subtle glow of his sickle moons. “You are also touched by Caligo,” he gestures to the mark, “What is this sigil?”
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
It makes sense that the man who bears the stars upon his skin would know when they looked strange up in the sky.
As a worshipper of Night, Tenebrae might have felt some shame in not knowing the map of stars across the midnight sky. But it is not the stars he concerns himself with when he looks up, up. It is the deep dark between each sparkling star.
It is that darkness that breathes and groans and falls endlessly into nothingness that draws the Stallion in. Yet now, guided by Azrael, the monk looks not into darkness but light. He tracks the patterns of fake stars and sees how the island unveils her illusion. She unravels before him, the threads of untruth unspooling before him and Azrael is charming as his knowing fingers tug, tug at the threads.
Together their eyes falls from the night skies, just as Azrael’s ancestors once had. Tenebrae smiles. It made sense that the man who knows the stars and bears them upon his skin, was, indeed one once. Does his blood still burn with starfire? Is his soul made of stardust?
Slowly he breathes. Slowly his lungs ache with the weight of all those dead. But the conversation moves on and oh, what a respite it is. His shadows draw in, a cloak about his muscular shoulders. The island sighs with the monk, her illusion dashed, yet she keeps it up, like a mask that hides her terrible truths.
“I know the shed-stars.” Tenebrae muses softy. “It is no wonder you know how the stars lie here. Does your blood ever feel restless with its distance from the sky?”
The stars laugh as the monk watches them. They swirl as if the world is tilting, and maybe it was. For Tenebrae so much was changing, so much was unsettled. “Many are moving away from Caligo and the other gods,” The monk notes, with only a twinge of sadness. Guilt twinges in his gut for the resignation in his voice. Should he not be fighting harder? Should he not be preaching in the streets? Hypocrite. The word lances in his veins. How could he preach of Caligo when all his mind is filled questions and desires he should not have.
Tenebrae smiles as the man’s gaze turns to his sigil. There is nothing gentle in that smile. It is full of twisting shadows, sharp as an obsidian blade. “I am a Disciple of the Night Order. The half moons are the mark of the Order. It is what identifies us as monks, dedicated to the service of Caligo and Denocte.” Slowly Tenebrae trails off.
He illuminates Azrael in moonlight white as his gaze lifts. “Do you still believe in the gods, Azrael?’
@Azrael - <3 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
05-13-2020, 04:39 PM - This post was last modified: 12-03-2020, 11:02 AM by Tenebrae
The two are not so different, Azrael thinks, as they stare upon the dark expanse of magic masquerading as sky. There is an easy quiet to their reflection, and though he knows the island holds dark secrets, he continues to be at peace among the false stars and their brightness. With a sigh, he shakes away the slight edging of unease, heeding caution at Tenebrae’s suggestion to the darker side of Tempus’ ire. What other purpose this place of shifting scenery might hold was yet to be discovered, he decided, resigning himself to letting curiosity about the island rest, and focusing this inquisitive nature on his companion instead.
“Yes.” he answers simply, when asked about the stars he so loved. “Denocte is not as our home once was, so close to the heavens and to Caligo herself. I feel her presence waning now, perhaps drowned out by the conflict with the sun. There are nights I long to touch the stars once more – nights I stay awake to the sounds of screaming in the darkness. Such a thing can never truly leave you, though the memories dull with time.” It was a shame, truly, the way the end had come to the People. Some days, he craved the community he’d lost, but Azrael did what he could to move forward and adapt.
“I find the mountains a suitable home – they are quieter than the Court. I must admit, I fear I am not cut out for court life in a traditional sense.” Would the monk understand? Azrael couldn’t be certain that his sigil-marked friend was an outsider too, but he wouldn’t doubt that one so devoutly following Caligo would find the entertainers of the Night Court a bit raucous for his taste.
While Azrael knew no monks in this life, he had deep respect for the priestesses who read the stars. It is not so different, he supposed, to have an order as vassals to their goddess. Curious to know more, he pressed the stallion. “It is good, that there are those who still serve the gods. How could I not – for the People are said to have descended from Caligo herself. I cannot abandon the one who reigns over the night… and I presume those who have feel simply spurned because they did not heed her warnings. The signs were there, but not all were receptive to hear.”
“I saw her once.” he offers thoughtfully. “She came to me in a dream – it was an amazing thing to be in her presence, if only for a moment.”
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
I feel her presence waning now, perhaps drowned out by the conflict with the sun.
Tenebrae’s muzzle presses in toward his chest. His ears fall into the tangle of his hair. They lay there, black as hornets. Their stinger is the sharp line his lips form as displeasure oozes from his soul to gather as poison along the cut of his maw.
Tenebrae’s eyes tip up, his chin jutting up toward the sky. His shadows claw up, up to the illusion of stars above. Always Solis’ sun was too bold, always it ate at Caligo’s darkness. The monk knows the anguish of the man, his pain at the stars that slip through his fingers like water. They are loosened by Caligo’s waning magic - or so Azrael claimed.
His gaze tumbles down from the sky until it finds rest within the stranger’s. “Her presence never wanes.” The monk breathes emphatically. The stars begin to tremble with their illusion, as if Night descends in her true form, darkness piercing this fake sky like swords into an enemy’s armour. “We allow ourselves to grow numb, distracted with other things. We do not listen to her.”
Tenebrae’s magic flares. His darkness billows as wings about his shoulders. They dissipate only to gather again, this time as a swarm of bees. “This magic is hers. If she was waning I could not conjure as I do.”
Beneath the island’s illusion they cannot see out. Novus hides behind her veil and so, when Azrael speaks of the mountains, it is only Tenebrae’s mind that pictures them. The star-man’s words are an antidote to the poison across the Disciple’s lips. A smile forms supple as ink. Tenebrae was not made for Court life either, yet he found himself there, on occasion. Most recently vowing himself to the Denoctean Queen. “The mountains are more peaceful. When you are next there you should visit the Night Order. Our Abbey is there. You would be welcome. None of the monks take pleasure in Court society either.”
The monk does not think on why that final sentence felt so much like a lie upon his tongue. Though it will haunt his prayers. It will play upon his tongue as he confesses his misdeeds before Caligo this night.
“I am glad you got to see her.” Tenebrae says quietly. “She is always there, for those who listen to her and welcome her.”
He sighs and the shadows blow as smoke from his nostrils. “You are blessed to have seen her. Come and join us, tell my brothers and I about it one day.” A shoulder rolls, “I should leave. Until we meet again though?” The Disciple asks, and slowly turns, letting his shadows collect the man’s answer. The illusion of stars watch him go, blinking.
~aaaand fin <3 Thank you my lovely. I really enjoyed that :)
