[Quest] seek me

[Random Events]

and I will tear you asunder

It was in the lamp-flickered darkness, the worn stone walls, the engulfing silence, the musty scent of knowledge years past. It permeated the solemn entity that stood tall against the surrounding prairie. Tonight, it seemed so much more quiet, so much more void of everything. All life had been scattered away from the walls of the imposing Court's grand keep - no birds flew through the quiet night, no bugs buzzed around the flickering lamps lining the walls, no sentient being dared whisper their presence with their footsteps.


Except one.

Buried deep within the Court, in a room that most have long since forgotten how to traverse to, he lay. Legs pressed underneath him, the Regent of Denocte slept in a deep haze, worn ragged from the nights prior. It was a restful slumber, devoid of both nightmares and typical dreams.

---

But the visions, oh the visions! How wonderful, how splendid, how vivid, how bright!

In the depths of his mind, she was there. Her skin reflected the allure of the deep night sky, her eyes a void darker than any black hole within the galaxy. Her hooves were harder than any diamond and blacker than any onyx - but did they even touch the worn stone of the grand keep? The hair that graced the strong crest of her neck - borne heavy with the weight of the world and the hatred of her siblings - wafted elegantly and weightlessly, surrounding her form like a haze. Star-like shimmers reflected across her pelt, and her manifestation was as ephemeral as it was solid.

She was glorious, beautiful, but oh so bitter. The resentment that exploded within her heart continued to radiate as an immense presence. It tightened his muscles, made him shift uncomfortably within his slumber. In his mind, she was standing over him, a vision so bright it was blinding.. her existence all-consuming.

Even in his dreams, he mirrored his physical position - prone on the floor, unable to stand with a figure so commanding bearing down over him. Her eyes felt like they were boring a hole into the depths of his soul. But the bitterness was coupled by a sweet tenderness, and as Caligo bent her head down to him, her lips touched his ear.

An explosion of pain would consume him, and he would forget how to breathe for seconds that felt like hours. It felt as if his insides were being shredded, and along with the pain came the bright flashes of his history past. It gripped him, immobilized his limbs, and spread like a wildfire rapidly inwards. The agony found its center, tightened around his heart and choked him, threatening to break the slumber..


Until she breathed.

Caligo's breath pushed away the pain and agony, and in his hazy stupor, it felt hot along the nape of his neck. "Make my name eternal like you now are," she whispered. "Make it dark like the void."

In an instant, the vision ended - her bitter presence fleeting. All she left in her wake was more questions than answers, and a sweat-soaked red and bay creature, crumpled on the floor of a quiet room.

---

@Camdis' fell asleep within the library walls of the Night Court and was visited in his dreams by what he may interpret as Caligo herself. The pain he experienced is his mortal form 'shedding,' revealing his immortality that has now frozen him at his current age. 

Camdis may interpret the dreams as a vision from the gods, but please be aware no 'confirmed' contact was made! He is free to interpret the words spoken in his dreams however he wishes, and you may choose if he is 'aware' of his immortality or not.

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Congratulations! -inkbone

[Camdis]

He had never known fear and love to commingle.

The stallion awoke, drenched in a frigid sweat, shivering to the point of convulsions upon the stone floor of the great library that he had made his second home. Pupils contracted and dilated over and over and over beneath blackened lids, the stallion's body not his own, his heart stammering out an answer to the questions that he couldn't even bring himself to ask. Twin plaits were wrapped about his neck, threatening to strangle him, their ebony lengths thick and made all the heavier by being soaked in the regent's sweat. He could taste the salty tang of it on his lips and the old bitter iron of swallowed blood. Prodding the inside of his mouth with a clumsy tongue, the stallion winced as he found that he had bit a rather impressive hole into his own cheek. 

Moments passed and Camdis still could not bring himself to open his eyes, still could not control his limbs enough to rise from his place cowering upon the floor. 

Caligo? He called out with his thoughts, too weak and terrified to use his own voice amidst the stifling silence. The bay and scarlet stag swallowed thickly, throat raw from the screams he had choked upon - but no, the dream couldn't have been real, it was only a dream. The great and terrible creature that had towered above him, with her voice of honey and doom; she had riffled through his head and thoughts and memories like so many pages of a long forgotten tome. She had displayed such fearsome power, an endless void of being so dark and so rife with bitterness and cold... That could not have been his goddess. Caligo was night incarnate, the space between heart beats, the silence that filled the conjunction between breaths; she was gentle and all encompassing, a mother and a warrior all at once. She would never have harmed one of her devout children, never have wrenched her loyal son's soul with such uncaring ease.

Would she?

Camdis gritted his teeth to bite back the pained moan building within his throat as he forced his eyes to open. Yet, he could not stifle the hiss of displeasure as the low light of lanterns bit into his silvery gaze and drove daggers into his skull. With an effort, he raised his great horned skull, lengths of onyx hair tangled and wrapped about the twin crescents of bone. Eyes narrowed against the painful glow, the regent shook his head slowly and with care, ears pinned beneath the wild and sweaty mass of mane that had threatened to strangle him mere moments before. Already, he could feel the memory of agony easing from his bones, releasing it's hold on his heart and lungs as he attempted a deeper breath. 

"It could have been She," He murmured to himself, voice hoarse and brutalized from pain and exhaustion. Eyes climbing up the shadowed walls and toward the point where ceiling faded into unlit darkness, Camdis Lohir swallowed again, finding that the physical pain that encumbered him as a result of his vision was more hesitant to leave his frame. Gaze still trained heavenward, the stallion tried to stand, yet found that he couldn't control any of his muscles beneath his shoulders. A panicked gasp worked it's way from his chest as his throat spasmed with a newly cultivated fear - It could have been She. It could have been a reckoning. It could have been She.

"Caligo!" Cried Denocte's Regent, betrayal and confusion lacing his words with a heaviness that could have dragged him to hell if he had let it. Yet, there was an undercurrent of love there, too; a river of undying, unfaltering devotion. The knowledge of such a devotion only made Camdis' terror all the more palpable, "Was it you? What did you mean? Where did you go? Caligo!"

It was not the voice of an Exile King, nor a stallion, nor a Regent that floated from onyx lips and ricocheted over dusty tomes and ancient texts, no, it was the voice of a scared boy, a lonely child who had felt too much and loved too few. Nothing made sense and Camdis worried that his grip upon reality was faint at best. Slowly, he lowered his skull back to the sweat damp floor and allowed silvery eyes to flutter closed, overcome with an exhaustion that sapped at the small strength that he had regained. As Reichenbach's second spiraled down into a dreamless slumber, the entity's words encircled his blackened heart, piercing the silence of sleep with each pulse.

Dark like the void...

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 @Random Events AAA