Acton His anger was a living thing, closing in around him like the canyon walls. The news of Maxence’s death had come not long after his last meeting with Raum, and all the want for war that had been building, building, building in him had nowhere to go. And so he radiated it, heat rolling off of him in the midmorning desert, the path he walked still cool in the shadows. By all rights he should have been happy. Acton doesn’t know why it’s not satisfaction licking through his blood, quickening his steps – but then, it’s not like him to parse apart his feelings. That was more for Raum. The buckskin only felt and acted and paid whatever the consequences demanded. His course through the canyon was quicker than the last time he was here; his gaze glanced over familiar rock formations, burnished orange as his skin, the shadows stark and coal-black. Meet me, said the message that the Ghost had sent, and Acton had told no one where he was going. It doesn’t yet occur to him that that may have been a mistake. The cave mouth is a deeper black than the shadowed rock around it. Acton paused a moment before entering, ears pricked with listening, his gaze half-wary and half-mad. There was no one; not a sound but his own breathing, too quiet to echo in the narrow walls. He slipped into the darkness to wait for the sound of hooves. @Raum @ |
Private - the patron saint of liars and fakes;
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Nimble, slow and balletic, Raum makes his was toward the canyon floor. His shadow is black water pouring down the cliff-face before him. His eyes fix upon the craggy mouth of the cave. Acton had long slipped from sight, swallowed by the gaping black maw. Raum is ink through the canyon, passing through shadow with a homeliness no true Soleterran should possess. Should Acton listen closely, he may hear the whispering of the canyon, betraying the approach of his sibling Crow. It takes only a moment, as he too sinks into the black of the cave’s yawning lips, to see the orange of Acton’s skin. Even here upon the canyon floor, beneath the mile-high wall, light still managed to reach the two sly Crows. “You got my message then.” Raum begins, softly. His eyes flit over the walls and into the deepest recesses of this cave: to be overheard would be disastrous. “I presume you have heard about the new appointment? I plan to stay a little longer, see what moves Seraphina begins to make.” His eyes drift to the mouth of the cave and the Solterran rock that burns a riled red. “What will come of the tensions between Solterra and Denocte, I do not know.” @Acton @ ![[Image: x341oLX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/x341oLX.png) You're one microscopic cog
in his catastrophic plan  BEXLEY BRIAR
The winter comes as nothing but quiet.
In Solterra, still the sun burns, the ground is dry, heat waves ripple over the silvering sand. In the recesses of the desert traipses the shadow of a golden girl, aimless in step, exhausted and irritable, so angry that the desert around her seems to heat a few degrees.
And Bexley, enamored with her own grief, does nothing to remedy it.
Skin luminous in the watery sunlight, she descends the slopes with exaggerated strides. The ground sloughs off abruptly. Then she is standing at the edge of the canyon, hair wild and white around her shoulders, peering down over the edge, and just there, in the corner of her vision, a speck near-invisible against the yellow of the desert - Acton, snaking his way into the darkness. Bexley’s lip curls flat against her teeth. Silly fucking flute-player, she mumbles under her breath, almost grinning, and in one silent movement is bounding down the slope with hummingbird fleetness.
Her heartbeat pulses in her ears. What is he doing here? Stinking up her canyon with jasmine and smoke? Leaving a stream of gauzy blackness in what should be the untouchable gold of Solterra - anger blooms within her veins, irresistible, enchanting. Adrenaline drives her. Buzzing, trembling, overwhelmed with excitement, she presses herself against the shadowy side of the canyon and follows, silent, wraithlike, in Acton’s footsteps.
She stops. Does not breathe. Does not even blink. There are two of them. There’s - Raum, and Acton. Holy Solis. Utterly and completely frozen in place, her mind recalls what the court has been so concerned about, the snake of Solterra, the warnings she’s been given, the hushed conversations; her chest seizes, her breath quiets, and, entranced, her blue eyes widen until they are moons in the darkness.
Bexley wonders at the shape of them, backlit - the lines and flowering curves - and, stunned out of her wits, thinks for a moment about beauty, and danger, and their correlation. And then about how she herself exemplifies that connection.
With a quiet inhale, she presses herself closer to the cold hook of the canyon wall, farther into the darkness, and listens.
@Raum @acton YESSSS
There is a wild keenness to Acton’s features. They are sharp, like knives and gleam like razor edges. There is nothing safe about this buckskin Crow, nothing that could ever fully put Raum at ease. Indeed, they were brothers, they would fight and kill and die together. Yet they would forever chafe as much as they bonded with smiles and love. Attack. Strike now. The words slithered their way all around their small cave. It spoke in corners with a voice so similar and yet so different to Acton’s. Over and over the cave murmured his words, and together the Crows listened. “Reichenbach will not be pleased if we strike without his knowledge. Shall we bring him into it, or keep this strictly Crow business?” His skull tilts, his electric blue eyes sparking, even in the darkness of this cave. Acton, this boy of sly smiles and secret gestures, suddenly falls still. Listen. And Raum does. Both their breaths fall quiet, even as their hearts begin to race, to spike to thunder like a thousand feet. A third heart beats, in the shadows, in the hidden crevices of the cave’s mouth. But she is quiet, even in her shock, and Raum knows nothing of her presence. His gaze falls back from the mouth of the cave, searching out Acton’s grin in the black. Only the Magician would still smile when their guards were up. “What did you hear brother?” Raum murmurs, a voice as soft as a whisper that not even the cave can truly echo it. Thoughts of Torstein appearing from the shadowed recesses of the temple have Raum’s stomach twisting with dread. He had been lucky then, but surely the Warden was only buying his time? In silence he turns, if only to ease his own mind, and walks toward the mouth of the cave. Were there listeners within the canyon? Only the Ghost was quiet enough to find out. @ You're one microscopic cog
in his catastrophic plan BEXLEY BRIAR
In the corner of her eye, a shimmering, moony scotoma appears. Bex blinks hard against the onslaught of horror, of shock, of unexpected fear that courses through her blood and renders her completely inert - trying to clear her vision, her fuzzy, lacking brain - yet still that crescent slice of blackness, of pure static, follows the track of her eyes. She is unarmed. Underprepared. Only the sickening brag of her heart in her chest remains a weapon to be harnessed, and now she is going blind, going dumb, how much worse can this get?
Acton turns. She catches the razor-sharp edge of his cheekbone, sanguine in the filtered light, and fights the urge to heave. How utterly disappointing - not just obnoxious, but a terrorist. Strike first. Strike now. A bomb threat in cleaner words. Bexley’s brain moves from her head to the sky outside, floats in the clouds now, looking down at Solterra, at the rebuilt Day Court glistening with gold, at its poor citizens, so dense, so unaware, just as she was moments ago, and it makes her utterly sick. Nauseated, she sways slightly on her feet. Listen. She freezes. Listen - listen to the movement of that body, curves and gold, still trying in futile resistance to keep itself alive, still backed up into the darkness. Listen to the movement of the wind against her skin, in and out of her lungs. Listen to the stupid loyalty of a girl to her country. So loud and so stupid, so woefully admirable. Stubborn as ever, bitch. She hears Maxence’s voice in her head, then Seraphina, and the harmonizing duo is so loud between her ears that she almost misses the quiet step of Raum shifting, coming toward her, so unaware and yet so relentless. The world slows, and stills. She watches Raum move forward, standing utterly still, dust and light catching on the dark swash of her eyelashes. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. They are mere feet apart now, electric. And the distance is closing. And closing again. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to run. And even if there was, Bexley is no Crow coward. Dead-eyed, diligent, she steps forward into the light, so close that she and Raum could almost crash into each other. In Solis’ light she is a lit bonfire, aureate flame in the hard sun; a raging, insatiable heat seeps from each pore, from the sea-glass of her eyes as she meets his gaze, raises her chin, blackening in the sun, defiant as ever. Fuck you, chickadee. She bares her teeth at him in a hard snarl, meets Acton’s gaze over the rise of his head, and, trembling with anger that shakes each curl on her head, spits savagely onto the ground at their feet. Solis will eat your bones. Let them fucking touch her. The gods watch, and they watch carefully. @Raum @acton
Raum stalks toward the light. He is quicksilver pouring through the shadows of the cave. He was raised in darkness and it is here, in the depths of the cave that the Crow is most at ease. The curious chink of loose stones continue to draw him out toward the scathing heat of the Terrastellan sun. Blue eyes flash, for once as hot as flame, and fix upon the growing maw of the cave’s mouth. Scolding sun reaches for him as hot as liquid gold. He is barely there before Bexley so suddenly appears. She steps into the red-yellow light pouring down between the canyon walls. Raum barely avoids her as he leans back. Silver ears fall to his skull, his eyes flashing electric blue. Those eyes promise to burn her, to scold her, to set her every nerve ablaze. Yet whilst is eyes spark, his body turns statue still. His heart thunders, fury roars like a lion within him, but it is nothing compared the fear that surges over him like a tsunami. Oh, he had never felt fear like this, he always kept the emotion at bay, yet now, now with Rhoswen, with their child… Fear surges unchecked. His lips peel back, reason barely slipping into the corners of him. It smothers the fear slowly, slowly until it loosens his stiff limbs. Then it has him scrambling with a snarl like a dog. Serpentine, his neck snakes forward at her curse, teeth snapping at her throat. The girl’s words are lost beneath Acton’s laugh and Raum’s fury. They all join to send more rocks tumbling, this time at the back of the cave. His teeth snap again towards her throat – oh for his knives! But Acton is there, a flash of orange – a tiger slinking out from the shadows. He is wicked fast, a blade catches the light, singing with a song Raum knows so well. His blade sings as it slashes across Bexley’s face at Acton’s command. It is a song of skin and blood and savagery. The Ghost is not sure what it is, whether he shouts, whether he makes any noise at all, or whether it was merely Acton’s laugh and the violent chime of his blade, but the cave begins to cry in outrage. Rocks creak, the whole roof above them rumbles. He looks up, away from blood upon gold, up, up to the roof that branches cracks as easily as melting ice. Then they begin to fall. Dust and stone collapse into the cave. The canyon’s roar is so loud is deafens the quicksilver Crow. “Acton!” He cries and shoves past Bexley, scrambling for the closing mouth of the cave. @ You're one microscopic cog
in his catastrophic plan BEXLEY BRIAR
Their physical forms are puny to the all-seeing eyes of the universe, and yet, the three of them compressed into such a small space makes the world seem utterly tiny around them, as if they are giants, now, stretched to gargantuan proportion by the fire of their feelings. Their physical forms are puny, but desire is vast - vast, absolute and utterly specific - and suddenly Bexley is overwhelmed by it. Overwhelmed by the desire to fight back. The desire to feel bone and blood. The desire to leave this cave, this earth, her body, even, if just to gain a little outside perspective. She buzzes with it, the desire. It almost tears her apart at the joints. The air smells of dust and of iron, of the stale sunlight that touches her skin in white lace. And the jackals will eat you. Bexley’s heart hammers in her chest, hammers-hammers-hammers, beating against bone and muscle with unbelievable, irrefutable force. She feels blood in her ears, her skull, behind her eyes. Violently beautiful, violent as a whole, she meets Acton’s black eyes and begins to speak, but pauses at the sight of a wet glint of metal flashing through the air near her head. You fucker, Bex exclaims out loud in blunt surprise, and then it is not the sight of the knife that shocks her, but the pain that blazes across her face as it slashes down point-to-cheek. There is a moment of stunning silence. Then the sting flares up in her face with full force, and a snarl, rather than a scream, escapes her mouth without her consent, guttural and obscene. Blood pours from her cheek to settle in the curve of those yellow lips, coats the left side of her face in hot crimson, wet and dark. The cut goes fiery, then numb. Her whole body throbs, pulses, with pain and anger, so deep and insistent that it is hard to feel or think or understand anything else but the way she has just been casually and utterly ruined. Above the noise in her head, something else thumps. A pebble hits the ground at her feet. Then comes Raum’s voice, crying Acton’s name, and the concrete pressure of his shoulder hitting hers as he rushes toward the entrance of the cave. Unsteadied, dizzy, Bexley sways dramatically in place. Dust rains from the ceiling; the sunlight fades away; rocks smash to rubble as they hit the floor of the cave, but Bexley barely hears it, sees it, barely even feels it. She is only dimly aware of the Denoctians fleeing - cowards they fucking are. Her vision starts to dim at the edges. Scraping strength from the farthest corners of her body, Bex crawls toward the edge of the cave, presses her body to the cold sandstone, rocks her head against her chest and listens to the demolition around her, a world falling apart piece by piece. @Raum @acton
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