Her goal had once been to ascend the highest peak of the lunar mountain. First she had been promised a guided trip up one day, by an elusive stranger, who though odd, had been kind, in a way that drew you in. He had never returned, and sometimes she wondered, if that stranger had been a dream. Some feverish phantom, who had come to her once and disappeared. When she had been given Vega’s gift, she had told herself, that one day, she would venture up that peak. But time got in the way, and eventually… those peaks were no more, and neither was that version of herself.
Every day she had stayed in the lower mountains, in the night order she had looked to the Veneror peak. A concept so foreign the peak might has well have been forbidden land to her. Hardly able to ascend to the order herself, it seemed a far off dream that she might one day climb to its summit.
She had had no reason to either. For a long time all she had for gods was a string of anger, fury, at what the world had given her. The hand she had been dealt. A life full of suffering, right from the start. Of illness and turmoil and cruelty. Of gifts given and torn away. She had said her piece to Caligo once, from the quiet of her room, watching the moon out the window, from just between the red drapery. She cared not if she had been heard or not, as she poured her heart out into the night. In truth, she had had no one else to give it to. She had held such bitterness and contempt for those above, one that hadn’t healed in many years time. One that rivalled her fear of flames, and the love of her children.
But over the months, she had softened. Seen the way Caligos people had opened themselves to her. Learned of the turmoils Caligo had faced herself, chided and shamed by her siblings. Casting the world into darkness. And little by little, the plea of the night goddess resonated within her. It sparked whatever shred of devotion that had been left to fester after Elysiums betrayal.
So when she awoke on the morning before the full moon, she decided to do something foolish. She left in silence, careful not to wake Picoro, or the pups, who all slept soundly within the cramped quarters, that smelled of herbs and wildflowers. She set out alone, she knew it was a stupid endeavor, and one that might very well kill her. But she had nothing to offer Caligo except her efforts, and a sprig of rosemary. She set course for the peak before the sun had even fully crossed the horizon. Knowing how long it would take her to reach the summit statues.
She grew nervous, by the time she reached the foothills, with the sun already at its peak, casting hot rays over her back, warming the sooty markings that crossed her body. She looked at the mountains with a mix of excitement and terror. Knowing that one mistep, one trip or stumble, ones she was oft’ prone too even on solid earth, could be a death sentence. The image of her body cascading down the cliffs crossed her mind. And yet something pushed her to go on anyways. Perhaps it was that the woman was too hard headed to stop, or perhaps it was something else.
So she began her ascent. By the time she reached the height of the order her body was weary, and her breaths came ragged. And already the sun was nearly touching the horizon, and rather than slow, she pushed her legs to stride farther, ignoring the ache that crept through her. The farther she went, the thinner the air grew. She began to doubt herself, to think how foolish she truly was, to think she could make it all the way up, without succumbing to herself.
She stopped at one point, wheezing so hard her head began to spin, as her whole body trembled, and she thought to herself that she would never make it up to the peak, that she still had far too far to go. She realized then how dark it had become, how quiet the air had still, and her gaze followed the sky to the rising moon, she realized she was only a few meters down from the peak, she could see each deities statue. Three made of white marble, stark against Caligos sky. But there was one, that could only be made out in blurred edges, blending in with the sky beyond.
She heard echoes of voices past whispered in her ear. “She won't make it past three” “-won’t ever rule” “-can barely hold herself up” and anger flooded her once more, but this time at the people who had told her she was never enough. Who had one by one struck her verbal blows, when they thought she wasn’t listening. Always too cowardly to say it to her face. Too cowardly to look her in the eyes and tell her she would never be enough.
So she pushed herself forward around the winding path. Step by trembling step, as every muscle screamed at her to stop, and every breath brought her closer to unconsciousness, she kept moving. Until after what felt like hours, what may very well have been hours, she stood face to face with the Black statue. Made visible by the full moon that shone bright, and beautiful behind Caligos delicately carved face, every feature sculpted with care.
She collapsed at the statue's hooves, her legs giving out beneath her. Though her whole body shook violently, her eyes burned brighter then they had in many years, just as they had when she too had resided in that dark sky. “Caligo” she started, pulling her one sprig of rosemary out of her satchel, and placing it in front of her “Last I spoke to you, I do not know if you listened, and I don't care. I told you I would never be a pawn to the gods again, that I would not play in your games. I still will not” She wheezed for air between almost every word, but did not stop, and her voice came strong through every word nonetheless.
“I have been a pawn before, I told you of it then too. When I took Acrux’s people to lead, only for him to let it be taken by a woman with no justice. When I accepted Vega’s blessing, just before they let the sky fall on top of us, crushing any who stayed beneath it. I will not do that again. I will not let myself fall to the gods again. When I leave this earth it will be on my terms. I will see to it that it is on my terms.”
“I told myself I would not follow a god ever again, that I would not fall to their whims, or their ways. Whether that be to love them or to serve them, or to devote my life to them. I will not love you or serve you or devote my life to you. But I have watched the way the night order does so. I have seen the way the rest of the court speaks of you and your past. I have watched entertainers in the square sing and dance in your name, and make tapestries in your image. Denoctians have carved your image into walls, and onto plaques, and made you their patron. They pray to you when they are desperate, and they curse you when they have been wronged”
“But perhaps I will open my heart to you. To see your ways, perhaps I too will curse in your name when the world does me wrong inevitably once more. Perhaps I will curse in your name when I’ve brought despair with me again as I’m always seen prone to do. And perhaps I will give praise in your name when gods forbid something goes right, when Rhone tells me he’s ready, and when Galileo Kodarki decides he is worthy of happiness. When I decide I am worthy of it too”
“Make no mistake. I will not cast my life aside to be trampled on once more, but I will try to let myself love something higher once again. And at least with the night I can once again think to look to the stars for some sort of light, when the rest of the world goes dark.”
@Caligo
Whose was it? The idea to build the temple on the peak. 'To be closer to the gods', some might say. Did it not make more sense for a god to descend to a mortal?
As if punishing him for his sacrilegious thoughts the worn path crumbled beneath him. It cast the ungrateful man from its ever guiding hand.
He caught himself before the cliff took him. Should it have claimed Lovis his pulse would have returned. None that claimed his life kept it for long. Always it returned. However, to pain he was not immune and for its searing touch he was not a glutton. The rock that had bit into his skin tumbled down and out of sight. It was no more than a small shout by the time it reached an abrupt end to its fall.
Blood trailed down his foreleg; he imagined that it traced the path to the peak into his skin. For the gods mortal hands made temples. They made monuments. Mortal bodies sweat, bled, and broke themselves to gain the favor of the gods; and what a fickle due their favor was. Grimly Lovis pressed on.
Favor of the gods? A thing to scoff at. What was it truly to have a god's favor? Some would imply that Lovis was beloved by the gods. Lovis would make known that they were fools for thinking so. He was merely of use. Gods shape and twist mortal souls to their will.
Lovis had been reformed to Orien's want. A guard for the god's beloved land. Always Lovis had questioned why it was he who had been chosen, however it could be as simple as that Oriens had seen the devotion Lovis had for Delumine.
He would bleed himself dry to water her grasses. He would cast his body to the dirt to fertilize her soils. Over and over he would give whatever she asked of him. Never could she ask too much. The soul of his homeland, that was what Lovis found to be worthy of worship.
The first time that he had been pried from death had been a hard thing. His first sensation had been that of the sun caressing him. Her touch had woke him. What had followed was the stench her touch had wrought from the corpses of his friends. Those who had come to gather the bodies to deliver them to grieving families for burial called Lovis' awakening a miracle. A blessing from the gods. They had sobbed at the gift of being able to take a body still with pulse home.
Lovis had taken that joy from them. Without word he had turned his back to their marveling and he had tried to deliver himself back to the eager clutches of death.
Lovis had walked into the forest with no intent of stepping back out. He had not bothered to eat. He only drank whenever the rains pooled on his cracked lips.
In the forest Lovis watched the eggs of a mother robin hatch. He watched life begin anew. In the forest Lovis watched a father robin drop wriggling insects into the mouths of fledgling. In the forest Lovis watched life and death feud over what each would take as theirs. In the forest he had wished that life would soften her bruising grip on his shoulder.
Only whenever his breath wheezed from his chest and his body grew cold did he cry. Only then did he stumble back home. In the care of his family he had died the second time. But a god's command is not to be dismissed, not even by death itself. Life clutched Lovis to her breast again. And again. And again.
Lost in remembrance Lovis reached the peak. He saw the woman but did not acknowledge her. He saw her through a veil cast by memories. For him the present had grown dim and far.
He moved quietly past her to stand before Oriens. Lovis did not bow. He did not snivel. His eyes glinted almost accusingly at the carving. Had the one who had carved the visage ever even stood before the gods that they carved?
Tired of gazing into the statue's stony eye Lovis cast his own down. He watched an ant try to get around his hoof. He heard the woman's words. First faint and then once the spell of reminiscence had passed he heard her clear. Silence existed between them for long before he spoke out loud.
"To that creature," Lovis shuffled back to allow passing of the ant, "I am a god." He looked at her, "As are you." A quiet voice in him begged for him to quit talking. Begged for him to just leave her to her worship. The words that she had spoken had not been for his ears. He was the intruder. It was he that stepped out of line.
That quiet voice of reason did not have soft hands; no, it yanked on Lovis' chains. Its quiet demeanor was shed and it roared in his ears once it realized he did not intend to heed its warnings. If the woman were to speak he wondered if he would be able to hear her still over the roaring of his inner voice.
"It would probably be a surprise to that ant to learn that it has not experienced the mercy of a god." His smile was morose, "Perhaps it will build a statue of our visage." He sighed and warily eyed the statues that stared back at him.
On Oriens he lingered. To Oriens he stepped closer to. He pressed his own face into the statue of his patron god. There was no warmth. Lovis had shrunk from a man to a distraught child, seeking comfort from a distant parent.
Hair mussed, with Oriens still holding him on his feet, Lovis looked at the woman mournfully, "May you excuse my ramblings." He hesitated, "May you excuse what I say," he ached, "Never cast aside the knowledge that you have. Never forget that the gods, those of this land and any other, they are not infallible." Sometimes they too are wrong. Sometimes they burden mortal hearts with the weight of godly desires and under that sort of pressure a mortal heart would always break.
Just like that her privacy was shattered, as another stepped onto that desolate peak, his footsteps taking with them the silence that had lingered between each wheezing breath. Who was this man to interrupt her moment, to take something she had worked so hard for, something that very well could have taken her life for a second time.
With effort she hauled herself to her feet, starkly made aware once more of how thin the air was, when her vision immediately spun, and stars appeared where they hadn’t been before, pushing themselves into constellations she hadn’t seen in over two years. Her own image splattered across them, hers and syrilths, both written in the stars like the ink that crossed the pages of dawn courts great scrolls. If only she had been born a different person, she would never have suffered the fate she did.
Her eyes were drawn first to the blood that dripped down his legs, the iron tang hitting her nose. It was the smell that had followed the fire that took her woods. The color that the skies were painted when Herstials willows hit the ground in little grey flecks, a blanket as cold as snow, and as cruel as the gods themselves. Usually she would have fussed over such a thing, reached into her satchel and set to work.
For once though she did not care. Did not care to help a creature who would cross her in such a vulnerable moment. Who would take this one thing from her. She huffed indignantly as he spoke. Not even glancing down to the ant he spoke of, instead her turquoise eyes yelling fury into the silence between his words. Broken only by her heavy breaths. She forced her legs to cooperate as she walked towards the man, as she stretch out her neck until she stood tall, as level to him as she could.
“Who are you to assume what I do and do not forget about those who call themselves gods?” she asked, bitterness creeping over her tongue, enveloping her in its cold embrace. She lifted a crimson hoof, letting her toe fall onto the tiny bug. Hoof against stone echoing into the night from the high peak. “You think I don’t know the cruelty they cast upon those who are smaller and weaker than they? That I don’t know the extent of which we are at their mercy, and the extent to which they use it as a toy in each and every game they play?”
She didn’t know where the anger had come from, from what deep recess it had risen. Perhaps it had been left behind in the depths of Elysium, only now rising to her. Or perhaps it had fallen with the ashes in Herstial, but now it bubbled up through her throat. “You know nothing of me, not my name, not the people I’ve led and let fail. Not the places I’ve been, or the ones I’ve loved and hurt. Not the children I’ve bore. And yet you dare waltz in on my moment, and assume that I know nothing of the ones I speak to?”
She had never felt such anger broil within her. Not even when she had spoken to Caligo out her window that fateful night. When Obyana had let loose his mouth of flames it was terror and sadness that flooded her. When the woods fell it was horror, that someone could be so cruel for no reason. When Etain took her people and Cavaliers tongue, it was desolation, hopelessness, that filled Luvena’s soul. And yet the simple words of this one man, this one stranger who had done nothing but speak, had the princess, the queen, the humble medic, seeing red.
“What small man you must be” she sneered “A woman who thought herself a god doomed my kingdom years before its time, and years and years later it fell, long after her death she cursed it to a fate that never should have come to be.” Sometimes she forgot about Ma Testri, cast the image aside and blamed herself. At heart she knew it was the fault of neither, instead the fault of a king, a many time great grandfather who had not the forgiveness in his heart to save the land of willow and wildflowers.
“A god of justice and mercy let a kingdom be taken from my frail grasp by a wolf who did not count his values. A land he himself had taken ownership of. And he let it drop without question” That too, she knew was not Acrux’s doing. And still she could not see past the crimson that clouded her vision. No more did she see the blood on the strangers leg, as it blended in with the rest of the world, no more did she smell that iron tang, as the rest of the world changed to match it. A red that matched Vegas strength.
“A Goddess of war and valor saved me from a fate I was ready for. One I had taken in stride, one that was supposed to take me the day I was born, and instead was staved off by willpower for eight long hard years. I gave her my loyalty and she gave me her undying strength so that I may feel flesh between my ribs and clarity in my head, that I may not fall asleep each night wondering if I would have the strength to stand in the morning. And when she felt it appropriate she ripped it away without morning, casting me back into this shell of a body.” This was the one she could justify, could not meld to make it somehow just the fault of fate. This was the one that made her heart sing song of unforgiveness. Made her want to pull Vega from the sky and cast her forever into shadows. Made her want to beg for Caligo, or Acrux, or Heretic to take away her power and cast her aside. She wished, on that one night, that the firstborns had simply let her die. Instead of giving her a taste of another life. A fate she wouldn't wish upon anyone, no matter how much she hated them. This was the one thing, she wasn't sure she would ever forgive. Even though she though everyone deserved it, that chance for forgiveness. She could not find the strength inside of her, to muster up any sort of forgiveness for this one thing.
“We are the ants of this world and of that I am well aware. So who are you, stranger, to look at me just once and decide otherwise.” She turned back away from him, laying down once more at Caligo’s hooves, letting the smell of rosemary cut over the iron that still flooded her senses. “I know full well, to what kind of being I am giving my words to.”
IM SO SORRY IDK SHES BEING LIKE THIS
Really idk where it came from I love @Lovis, apparently lu has decided to be awful.
She was consumed by her own flames. He allowed her to come close so that he might feel her blaze. He did not try to calm what she kindled nor did he wince in the face of such a searing heat. He allowed her to ignite flames of his own. Unflinching Lovis stared into her fire.
Unflinching until she killed the ant. His jaw clenched. His lips thinned in displeasure.The fire he had welcomed her sparking grew. A wildfire raged within him. Her fire and his. Each threatened to consume the other.
She was a hungry woman bitter for having merely tasted life. He was a man bitter for having been forced to gorge himself upon it. "Perhaps the gift was taken because you were not ready for what it gave," he threw his words like daggers. "You are but a child," His voice was stern. No vestige of sympathy was to be found in its hardness."This is naught but a tantrum."
"Do you think yourself to be the only one that has suffered at the meddling of a god?" Words spoken with grim deliberation. He stood where she had left him.
"Perhaps you place too much blame on the gods that you have known." He studied her face with unforgiving contempt, "You may be your own hindrance." How many of the woman's demons could be summoned by the uttering of her own name?
She did not turn back to face him, unflinching at his words. Something in her that had been unlit for years, had flickered to life, and in this moment it refused to dim itself again. She refused to look back at those `All knowing` green eyes, furious at the knowledge they thought themselves to hold.
“Of course I don't” she sneered, her lip curling, though she would not give him the pleasure of turning so he could see it. “Those same gods let the sky fall on all their people, dooming them just as equally, they tore life away from the grasp of both my enemies and my friends” she spat out the words like bile. Nearly wincing as they spilled from her mouth.
Every word that he spoke stung. Not because they were cruel, but because they were true, and she had known it for a long time. But it was a truth she refused to acknowledge. “It seems the gods have cursed you to be as insufferable as they” Her voice was as cold as the air around them, louder than she had ever let it rise in conversation before. For once she let it carry about the wind, and night air. For once she didn’t wait until he wanted to listen. She was a gentle woman, but this night every angle of her was sharp with fury. She bit her tongue so hard to keep from speaking again that she tasted blood.
She stood up again, stumbling as she did, catching herself against the statue. Every muscle in her body screamed with exhaustion, and every breath came mangled, but she would not stay here a moment longer. Pushing herself up from her slump she took a step back, dipping her head to the statue. She spoke again, her voice softer, but still laced with anger that she could not mask under a saccharine tongue. “I will look to them, lest the sky fall” she murmured
Huffing with the effort she dragged herself back to the path, ignoring any of the man's words that might follow her down. More than once she caught herself on a mountain wall, leaving so heavily she thought the rocks might slice into her skin. It was daylight again by the time she made it back to the foothills, erupting into coughing fits every few moments, so hard they made her head spin.
She wished she’d brought Picoro, Yara, Mithra. Wished she’d never gone at all. She had hoped she’d find peace in those words, take comfort under Caligo’s moonlight. The soft darkness in which she blanketed the world. Instead she came away feeling miserable inside and out as she had the day she realized she’d lost her eternal life.
Twice now in the summer she’d tried to go from point A to point B without rest, and twice it had been a decision. She could have stopped where she was, but all she wanted was to collapse in her quarters. Perhaps if she was lucky, she would never rise again. So she dragged her feet onwards, until she sulked through the court under a now setting sun. Ignoring the strange looks and murmurs she got, both from those who knew her and mere strangers.
“Luvena!” Picoro was the first to greet her with a worried exclamation. The canines were soon to follow, bounding up with wagging tails and lolling tongues. “You were gone for so long without a word -” The sloth stopped his condescending spiel, eyes mellowing from protective anger to deep concern as she leaned against the door, eyes glazed. “Are you alright?”
She ignored all of them. How foolish she’d been, to think she could climb mountains. To think she could find something on their peaks. She didn't bother pulling any herbs from her stores. She walked past all of them collapsing into her bed of moss, turning her head away from them, tucking it into her side. The girls, wary of their mothers mood sulked off to another corner, while Picoro tucked himself quietly into her side, readying himself for a night that would surely be filled with fire and ashes.
