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Passing Through  - 10% off Senior Citizens Day [Bexley Briar]

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Turhan
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#1

bone to rune
The horned beast found the darkest, wettest, deepest caves in search of a rare fungus form.  The storms that were passing through Terrastella were his first sign that Psilocybes might be popping up once the third humid day continued after the heavy rain.  The caves were his only bet in finding them, all of them, and using them for rituals where connecting with Vespera required a potent dose of the blue caps - enough to make him plateau on the crazy train for days and days.  Turhan was single-minded as he entered into Abigo caves without much of an exit plan, in his senility, it became more and more of a frequent thing - these rash decision makings which oft times lead to trouble for the old man.


Following his nose, he wended through the caverns in 'S' and 'O' shaped loops and always ended up in the same place several times over before making a fateful right-hand turn down a long and lonesome path which had no light source at the end of the tunnel.  Sight was no virtue for the Elder, it hadn't been for over a decade, so navigating the deep tunnel in pitch dark was no issue of his.  Bells jingled and tinkled, too soon his deep brown coat disappeared into a voidless type of black, even though there was no light at the end of this tunnel .. 


There were Blue Caps .. 


Collecting all of the Psilocybe was quick compared to the time it took to get to them.  Only then did Turhan stop to think about the tight circle his stiff, rigid body would have to make to turn back around, to remember all the stalagmites he ducked and slinked around.  Unafraid and absurdly confident about his situation not being as bad as it truly was, he began his way back.  A secret door had rotted and fallen away from its bearings - of course he side-stepped through it thinking it was the right way.  He praised Vespera out loud, chuckled warmly (the echo of it made it sound more deep and ominous than it was), and moved through the passage where warmth off the common pathway pushed through just on the other side of it.


Unexpectedly, a low vine hooked him by his horns and pulled his neck back as the mask was braided into place with his hair through the drilled holes.   "ACH!"  It was an awful noise that he made as the mask came off his face and flipped back.  Blind white eyes bulged against a dark mahogany strip of unpainted flesh.  The rest of his face was covered in paint chips and clods of bone dust that had yet to wash out completely.  The wild hair flailed as he struggled on the vine as if his mane were made of wild snakes.  The bells jingled loudly, the beads and bones rattled like snakes in the grass.  Turhan reared up but slashed down quickly at the low ceiling, wheeled out of panic, and squealed like a demon in the dimly lit thoroughfare as the secret passage held him by the horns. 

T U R H A N
skull to dust



@Bexley  I suppose the scenario is he just quite suddenly comes out of a false wall, thrashing ... shrieking ... just ugly and old.   Eventually he yells for help ..  this is why drugs are bad.









Played by Offline REDANDBLACK [PM] Posts: 302 — Threads: 37
Signos: 135
Inactive Character
#2

bex


BEXLEY BRIAR



Nothing good can come out of this, she knows, and yet she is still here: impulsive and grandiose as ever, slinking serpentine through the winding caverns of the Abigo Caves.

Light seems falsified now. What does it even look like? She can’t remember - in the oppressive darkness that surrounds her like a second skin, even the idea of sunlight is something strange and magical, strange for a Solterran. Cool mist and deep shadow envelop her, humid and stifling. Bexley knows her braids must be falling apart, but for once she cannot bring herself to care; she is far more concerned with the wet slosh of mud under her feet, the stalactites dripping icily overhead and how they send trickles down her fragile spine, the tears of frustration building in her blue eyes as she rounds the same corner for the third time, feeling her own footprints replayed against the dirt.

It is an awfully familiar feeling, the mouse of Bexley lost in the maze of Bexley. She thinks back to a year ago, the labyrinth that opened up just near here, and the hours she spent winding through it without an end in sight, and the worst part of it all is that, she knows, however she made it out, it was through no worth of her own: something had picked her up and flung her away, like trash, alive, but like trash. And she had woken up bruised and battered at the base of Veneror Peak, dizzy and black-eyed and utterly confused, and knew that her success was only a sleight hand of the gods.

And the gods are busy now. This is terrifying to think about.

The smell of wet moss fills her nostrils, and near-invisible, in the dark, Bexley’s face contorts into a expression of bitter disgust. The cold grasp of her necklace is almost choking. With a deep inhale, she steels her nerves and pushes forward, narrow shoulders scraping against the damp walls, and for a moment she almost thinks she sees a light at the end of the tunnel, a way out, an escape -

And then an ear-splitting shriek echoes from the wall on her left, and it explodes towards her in a shower of damp, rotted wood and dripping moss, and Bexley ducks away just in time to avoid the body that follows, white-eyed and horned, chips and hunks of bone and dust flying off him and into the atmosphere around them: she screams, shrill and fearful, and scrambles backward as quickly as she can, only to hit a wall within moments. Fear turns her pulse to a pulp, shreds every nerve in her body and lights it on fire. With her heart in her mouth, Bex stands wild-eyed and fearful in the corner, watching the dark figure blur and thrash and then reform, too bewildered to say anything other than, What - the hell - are you?




@turhan <3  










Played by [PM] Posts: N/A — Threads:
Turhan
Guest
#3

bone to rune
Dumpster fires rolling down the hill, towards your stalled car-on-traintracks-cannot-unlock-doors? situation, merits a different kind of scream that cannot ever compare to the the ear-shattering scream Bexley gives when she sees/encounters Turhan.  He is nothing more than The Thing in The Dark, another title for him to add to the many he already has; Boogeyman, Scalp Collector, or even Black Bear.  


No sooner after she shrieks and startles him further, a disturbed colony of bats horrifies the old man as they start pouring out of the by-way he is ensnared by.  Turhan moans in horror like a tortured old spirit while their flapping, snapping, and screaming surround him in a nightmarish flurry.   All his beads, bones, and bells, rattle, clatter, and jingle. He nervously pulls and pulls and pulls against the vine which has him by the horns while fighting off invisible monsters Meanwhile, the real culprits flutter up-and-out, far away to freedom.


When the bat-storm clears, he is much worse off than when Bexley initially encountered him.   His skin is slick with sweat, he twitters with horsey noises in all his nervousness because words won't find their way to him.  When the vine finally (finally) snaps and releases him that is when a poisoned quill shoots haphazardly across the distance between he and Bexley out of instinct.  But, because he's so nervous(and blind),  he misses her by a mile as the quill darts into soft clay several feet away from her head.


Bio-luminescence activates from all the commotion of footfall and sets the cave ablaze in moonglow revealing Bexley who looks like a cat that has noticed the dog before the dog has noticed it.  He must look beastly in the muting light, his shadow; haunch-backed, thorny, and with teeth that could tear her into two - all of it a recipe for an unexpected disaster.  The glowing cave accentuates an irrational level of height for him, his blind eyes glow preternatural and soulless deep within of the bone white skull.  A terminator of a horse if one didn't know just how old and crippled he truly was.


Turhan the Hulk.
The Annihilator.
The Devastator.


And quite unlike Turhan, Bexley is devastatingly beautiful in the forced night of the cave, she smells like a dream (like Eternity, like Vespera) but something in her voice makes Turhan think he is trapped underground with an awful dragon woman instead.  Heart be still, she speaks, and the world stops spinning on its axis.  Turhan nearly has a heart attack right there in the entrance of the secret passage way.  


What - the hell - are you? 


She sounds terrible and the masked horse staggers backwards, further into the hole in the wall.  "No eat me.  I am full of poison."  He warns.  In his old, broken mind, the golden girl's voice reminds him of an awful spidery thing he once met in his youth.  Although it is not the monster he knows, his thoughts paint pictures where his eyes cannot.  And since she can't prove anything, it is rather ridiculous how he cowers from a cute girl where so many others might not.


She asks him 'what' not 'who' and so Turhan, challenged already in most ways of the word, tells her what she demands to know.


"I am lost.  What are you?" 

T U R H A N
skull to dust



@Bexley  horse dementia.  ; /









Played by Offline REDANDBLACK [PM] Posts: 302 — Threads: 37
Signos: 135
Inactive Character
#4


b e x l e y
MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON.


The cave is its own wild animal now and Bexley’s scream is ripped out of her, dissolved into a series of harsh, strangled gasps as she backs away from the writhing black figure, tail lashing, muscles coiled, head raised and teeth bared - and when she doesn’t think it can get worse, the beating of wings sounds to her left, and a tornado of thin-winged bats goes crashing wild through the cave. Bexley’s heartbeat is so loud in her mouth now that she can’t even shriek. Her nerves go wild live-wire under her skin. Shaking and terrified, she presses further back against the wall, and then, wide-eyed, she realizes that the tunnel is alive.

A yellow-white glow spreads cancerous across the walls. It throws everything into sharp relief - her own shadow, long-legged and spidery ahead of her - the many disappearing figures of the bats as they circle, then flee - even worse, the gaunt, curved figure of the man in front of her. He is something over-aged and nearly monstrous. But somehow, despite the bones and the sharp teeth and the blind eyes, he is a man, Bexley realizes, and at least she knows how to deal with those. With a grip on that steel will, she forces her breath to steady, her pulse to slow. Wide-eyed, she watches Turhan stumble and steady, and when he speaks, something like surprise overtakes her: I am full of poison.

Bexley’s brow shoots upward. Full of poison? He can’t be serious. Can he? Is that a metaphor or a means of escape? And then, if it is, why the hell does he think she’s going to eat him? As sharp as her teeth are, as wild her heart, Bexley Briar is no murderer. At least not one of old men and innocents.

If he is not both - and there’s no way to tell if he is or isn’t, really - at least he is one.

I’m lost too, she answers finally, her low voice echoing in the chamber around them, and at long last her muscles start to unwind, the harsh, battering-ram headache under her temples finally abating as she watches him and realizes danger may not be so imminent. It may not be imminent at all. When it comes down to it, if they ever really cross that line, Bexley is stronger, and younger, and has new magic coursing through her veins like amphetamines ,and she is made of star shine, and sunlight, and she is not afraid.

She is not afraid.

At least that’s what she tells herself, trying to stifle the electric fire in her stomach. And confused, I guess. Do you live here? The low timbre of her voice is tremulous, but the shaking is so faint it might just be imagined, especially by the brain of someone as addled as Turhan. For that Bexley is thankful.


@turhan <3
rallidae










Played by [PM] Posts: N/A — Threads:
Turhan
Guest
#5

bone to rune

I am lost.


In an instant, all that was not well with Turhan seemed to fix itself.  He lowered his hackles, settled the frantic beating of his heart, and his mind slowed itself down long enough to reason with the ancient beast that shared a skull with it. Turhan steadied himself on four long legs, his mask slipped completely free of the holds when he thought about how it had gotten stuck in the first place only to reverse it.  With a heavy sigh of relief, the shaman emerged from the wall space and onto the path where he turned to face the source of conversation.  


"Do not be lost.  Lost no good."  Well, obviously.


"I show you the way.  You follow Turhan."  The elder was feeling generous after having stolen one of her screams.  It was one of the loudest he had ever received before, and for that, he'd never forget this girl.  "I come for medicine."  He mentioned then, the glowing cave made the scars on his body and face seem far more fresh than they actually were.  Calliope's handy work on his neck wasn't anything new to him, he had been met with resistance his entire life but hers had been the most forceful since ..


He forgets.


She smells like sunshine, like sand, like sage and smoke from the city of Solis.  Jaxis had almost the same brine to her when he encountered her in Tinea, and so he says without thinking, "child of Solis?"   Perhaps not the best thing he can say never knowing how painfully arrogant the God was, even to some of his own children.  He had brushed the Shaman off like sand on skin and moved on.  The Elder could not dedicate any energy into all that had happened, that would happen, but he did find himself wondering where or where Vespera had gone and why she had yet to return to the Ilati.


Turhan knew that the majority of his encounters made the recipient quite uncomfortable around him - he chose not to get any closer to the young girl.  Here, in the gloomy light, he was just a horse with horns on his head, big hair full of things, and an old warrior's body that had lost all of its vibrance and youth in sixteen years of the longest, hardest life one could know.  He did not seem traumatized by Bexley anymore and even let his tail sway thoughtfully for a moment before he looked back (carefully) over his shoulder).  


"I return you home.  Safe.  I go with you, yes?"  Because he could never travel it alone in his condition, and because he had met enough of Solis' children to know he liked them far better than any other strangers he had met.  "Solis eh .. Solis return home too?"  He wondered then, stopping a few feet from the entry point where he once was trapped. 

T U R H A N
skull to dust



@Bexley  Sorry for all the delays.  I've kept this golden beauty trapped in a cave far too long!  I kind of made this one more fluid to the time lines here.  Feel free to add or subtract to the events which has happened during their cave encounter.









Played by Offline REDANDBLACK [PM] Posts: 302 — Threads: 37
Signos: 135
Inactive Character
#6


b e x l e y
MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON.


You follow Turhan.

Bexley has to physically choke back her incredulity. She feels it like she’d feel the threat of crying, in the back of her throat - rough and saline and overwhelming. It pricks at her nerves like a razorblade pricks the end of a finger. And even as she watches him unravel, lose his rabid behavior bit by slightest bit so that he returns to an almost-lucid state, she does not relax. She can’t.

It would be stupid, and Bexley has been fighting all her life not to act stupid.

He’s come for medicine, he says, and as suspicious as she is of his intention, she’s not doctor or healer enough to prove him wrong. Her gaze catches as easily on the bioluminescent walls as anyone else’s would, but who knows if it’s medicine or poison - who knows if it could kill her even from here, leaching into her skin like a snake leaches venom? (Her lungs tighten then, but it could just be panic.) She squares her shoulders and for a moment thinks about slinking away, but Turhan is (knowingly or not) blocking the easiest path out, and for all her stubbornness Bex thinks she might have to work her way out with strategy instead of her hard head for once.

It’s been a minute since that’s happened, hm? But the Regent is as lost in these caves as anyone possibly could be, and she can’t afford to lose any more advantages. One wrong turn, one slip of the step, one misplaced stride and Solterra’s golden girl will be nothing but bleached bones and festering skin turned to wet green grunge in the darkness of this subterranean hell-complex.

The thought sets her heart sputtering like an oxygen-starved candle.

Yes, she answers finally. Child of Solis. You can take me there -? Surprise colors her voice bright-yellow in the dimness of the cave. Perhaps she’s misjudged him. If he really can find his way from this dungeon all the way to Solterra - where she can’t be sure he’s ever even visited - then he’s smarter and bolder even than she, and she knows her life hangs in his hands as loosely as the feathers fluttering from his dreads. Bexley inhales forcefully.

Then she follows.


@turhan <3
rallidae










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