The woman is silent beneath the cover of night, slipping from shadow to shadow like an ebony wraith. Rent open by the trials of time, weathered and worn and empty, the catacombs lie behind the mare, the dust only just settled.
-----
In the ever twisting loop of time, Sobec seethed. Like embers burning, biding time and awaiting life-giving oxygen, she smouldered in the darkness. The names upon her lips are written in ash, in blood, in hatred that flickers in her gut. Zachariah. Arjun. But her anger was only half directed at them, at their treachery, the remaining fury churned within her own chest, fuelled by her failure, by the lie she had been told. Forever seemed like a second, a second seemed like forever, her mind in turmoil, her eyes veiled in darkness. She felt her brethren, trapped as endlessly as she, waiting in the darkness for Solis’ light. Falling, falling, falling. Until…until at last Sobec felt like she could breathe, like the air was finally clean. The ground beneath her hooves felt solid, even if her knees quivered and her legs felt ready to give way. Dust filled the air, the whisper of a quake still thrummed in the dirt but light filtered through where the woman recalled there being none. The Catacombs had collapsed.
Then she had become aware of the others, the Arete all coming to terms with their escape, and their loss. Each day had been endless, each year torturously slow as had slowly buried them and entombed their curse. What had happened now? What had changed? Sobec had backed into the shadows then, pressed into a crevice where she would not be seen, and watched.
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Even with the curse broken time seems at odds with the obsidian woman, the nightfall coming too early, the darkness too dark. Soltera had barely changed and yet at the same time the buildings seem unfamiliar, the streets unwelcoming. Who sat upon throne now, what had the past ten years wrought upon the realm? Was there anything left of the Soltera she had known? For a moment Sobec felt scared- where would she go? But with the grim press of her lips she steeled herself- she was a survivor.
this night is irreparable. but where you are, it's still light;
Of all the courts, Elchanan should find Solterra the least attractive. It is everything he hates: a vast expanse of arid, lifeless desert, populated by a people so delusional that they dare to worship the sun.
But he has heard whispers on the wind. Gossip, passed from mouth to mouth—letters flown on the backs of birds from court to court and back again. Apparently Solterra, despite its new, foreign king, is returning to some of its old ways. Elchanan cannot claim to know everything about the situation, but what he does know has intrigued him enough to outweigh even the discomfort of a desert. What he does know is this: a spiderwebbing tunnel of catacombs that had been lost for years in a bubble of stasis has opened up again, and the warriors caught inside it are out in the world now.
Wandering. Vulnerable.
When night falls—and it is early today, just as it has come earlier and earlier since the solstice all those weeks ago—the archpriest slips out from his apartment in the Denoctian city center and takes to the skies in one easy beat of his wide, white wings. Now that fall has settled over Novus, the air high up is colder and thinner than usual; it prickles at Elchanan’s lungs as he breathes it in deep. And down below, as minute after minute passes, the landscape changes like an unrolled scroll painting. First the silver mirror of the lake’s surface fades away, then the Arma mountains rise and fall. Past that open up the forests, then the fields, long oceans of grass prickled with flowers; then finally it slopes into bone-pale dunes of sand, and he lands on a hill near the entrance of the Day Court on light, nimble feet.
Elchanan has never been here (or anywhere, really) in the daytime. He cannot know with full confidence just how strange it is to witness Solterra like this. But he knows on instinct that this is not how anyone was really meant to see this place. The dripping moon casts strange globs of lights on every surface and stretches the shadows longer than a life. He slinks through the empty streets with ease, noting the eerie feeling that follows—the odd silences, the flapping of flags in the breeze; the ringing in his ears, like the sound of a church bell.
The dark slip of a woman he sees at the end of the street.
Elchanan’s tattoo, so many rings stacked inside one another on his forehead, seems to glow. And when he calls out to her, his voice is calm and easy: "Are you lost, too?"
As though her senses were still trapped in the loop of time, Sobec felt like a newborn foal. Her balance was impeded, her legs quivering imperceptibly as she prowled the long shadows, the darkened alleyways. Casting her gaze left and right, twisting her head, her neck, her body, she scanned the streets constantly for any sign of danger. Yet she did not notice the winged stallion until mere seconds before his voice permeated the silence, as calm as stars amid their navy satin blinking down upon the world. The cold desert breeze drew his voice to her, his scent that spoke of Denocte, yet a strange Denocte.
Sobec did little to hide the suspicion in her bi-coloured gaze, her posture that of a stalking cat as she turned only partially toward the Pegasus. Her unveiled gaze swiftly roved the golden cream of his form, settling on the pale marks upon his brow, tattoos that seemed to gleam beneath the moon’s visage. He was unarmed but that did not mean he posed no threat, Sobec had met many a fellow glad in naught or silk that were as dangerous as those dressed in iron.
“No,” she replied promptly, a little quickly, her voice tinged with perhaps the smallest amount of distrust and distaste. Sobec’s gold and silve eyes still glanced around them periodically, jumping to the source of dancing shadows or a flicker of light in a window. She was not lost in the typical sense- though the buildings had changed perceptibly the street pattern was still the same as it wound its way between the walls of the Court, toward the main edifice in the centre. No, Sobec was lost in a different way altogether. She was lost in time, leaving one world behind to enter another that was just like it yet filled with different faces. Filled with the sudden need to find somewhere to stay, to hide, to collect her bearings, she considered leaving the winged man in the streets, turning her back upon him and slipping away with the shadows. Yet… his was the first face she’d seen beyond that of her captured Arete comrades. She knew no one in this strange new reality and what’s more, she knew nothing. The desert woman had always been self-reliant, alone, but it had mattered not when she had a home and a purpose, a job to pass the time. Now that was likely all gone and all she had right now was the dust from the catacombs upon her ebony hide and the pale winged stallion standing further up the street.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Her questions came in quick succession as she turned to face him completely, taking a step or two closer. Her voice was laced as much with a desert accent, the melody of a people long lost and long since forgotten, as it was with mistrust. It had occurred to her now that if this stallion was from Denocte, what would he want from Soltera in the dead of night?
