As rain clouds darken across the sky, the creatures begin appearing in the capitol. Curlews and egrets, muskrats and foxes, mirestags and grass snakes. The animals who once called the Sussoro Fields their home have seemed to flee, seeking shelter from an unknown enemy within the walls of the Court. Mere hours after they appear, the gathering stormclouds unleash their fury.
Rains sweep across the whole of Terrastella for days, drenching the lands and creating rivers and ponds of standing water. Some say it’s because of Vespera’s own weeping that the rain comes, freely expressing her grief for her siblings and for the Court’s fractured relationships. Other’s curse the goddess and claim she would never care enough to cry for them - they call it a punishment, whether it come from their patron deity, Tempus himself, or simply the laws of mother nature.
Regardless of what causes it, the rain continues to fall.
Sand is reduced to mud, until the entire southwestern realm resembles the Tinea Swamp. It creates treacherous footing, for the mud is slimy and slick and apt to shift with the wind. In lower regions the waters collect, large ponds and quick-moving rivers appearing in an instant and sweeping away equine and beast alike, remodeling the landscape in the blink of an eye.
Floods and mudslides wreak havoc across the land, carrying away all in its path without mercy nor discrimination. It would be mad to venture out into the storm - and yet there are whispers of missing horses, of equines caught unaware by the storm who are assumed trapped - or dead.
And all the while, the rains continue, alternating between light drizzles and sudden storms. One day comes and goes, then a second, and a third - with no end in sight. The lands continue to flood, the mud continues to slide. And within the Sussoro Fields, craters have begun to appear, the ground giving way to sinkholes. They range in size and depth, but soil that was once solid and seemingly anchored has begun to give way - nowhere you step is safe.
The rains have come! A storm has arrived in Terrastella, covering the skies with ominous storm clouds that threaten to sweep the lands entirely off the map. The world as the Dusk Court knows it is shattered as the entire Court begins to resemble the swamp more than anything else.
Animals that fled the storm have arrived in the Court, creating a sort of wild zoo that lacks enclosures or boundaries. The creatures raid houses and stores and even burst through the doors of the castle, trembling within its walls as they hide from the storm outside. Some of the animals are friendly… but not all.
And then, there are the rumors: missing friends and family, horses that are told to have been caught up in the storm. The flash floods and mudslides are fierce… it is not unheard of for them to take the lives of the unprepared.
Will you join a search party or rescue team to seek out your friends, families, and other distressed strangers? Or are your hands already full dealing with the creatures that invade your home, who seem to fear the storm more than the equines? Or perhaps you have found yourself lost out in the elements, left to fend for yourself as the rains fall?
You have two weeks to reply to this round! You may reply as many times as you’d like, but please allow at least two posts in between any of your own! This round will close on Friday, August 3rd, at 11:59 PM EST.
To tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk.
Please be advised, tagging the Random Event account does not guarantee a response!
Something in him changed when the rains swept in – something in him stirred awake, and as the rains kept coming and the clouds kept darkening the skies blacker than any bruise, it built and built –
And then the whole world broke open, and Asterion’s magic with it.
Everything was chaos. With Florentine still in the hospital (and thank the stars that it was in the tree-tops) the Regent was in charge, but oh, there was so little to do against the wrath or sorrow of the skies. They gave shelter to what animals they could within the courtyard walls; they chased out what predators they must. They opened the doors to any citizen who could reach them, bedraggled and fearful. Cirrus, no stranger to torrential downpours at sea, rode above the clouds and dipped below to scout, reporting back to Asterion all the while. And Marisol and her Halycons were kept busier than the unit had surely been in centuries.
But the bay stallion wondered, as dark days gave way to darker nights, if any of it would be enough. If it was, as some whispered, the end of everything.
Well. If it was, if it would be the death of all of them at the whim of the gods, they would face it together.
-
He stands now on a rain-black parapet, the skies’ weeping for once quieted to a drizzle. Asterion has been made a wild thing by the last few days; his eyes are dark and hungry, holes to fall into more than anything that sees. He cannot remember the last time he was fully dry. All the starshine of his coat has been washed away and he is muted brown and black, the color of mud, the color of everything in their world.
(And yet within him, surging, hungry, seems an answer to the waves. Sometimes it seems to him he can repel water; sometimes it seems to him he can change the direction or the shape of the currents that come up, threatening to swallow them all. But he has not yet left the castle to truly see - not when it is folly, without wings, and not when there is so much to be done here.)
There is a parting in the misty rain; a slim shape with wide wings, beating hard against the wind. The bay steps back to give it room, and though he tries for a smile it is grim. “There is grain inside,” he says, “and fires in the hearths – but what news?”
For always there is more to report, and always it is nothing good.
ooc: oooohkay so I'm not sure how this will all work. thought I'd throw something up for any who wanted to reply but obv feel free to ignore? we can launch a rescue here if we want or...something. tagging a few from the discord chat: @Theodosia @Marisol @Virun @Fiona and everyone/anyone!
07-21-2018, 07:51 PM
Played by
bruiser [PM] Posts: 99 — Threads: 13 Signos: 1,000
The rain seems never-ending, and so does her duty.
Her wings have ached for nearly a day now, and yet she keeps powering through the storm despite soaked feathers and chilled bones, her pale eyes constantly scanning the lands beneath her and her ears eternally positioned to catch any whisper of sound. So long as the rain persists, so will she in her duty -- searching out any citizen who might need help seeking shelter from the storm, or those who might be caught unawares by the dangers such amounts of water could pose.
For a moment, she rests upon the Hospital’s vast veranda, sheltered briefly from the storm, and her mind turns towards the child she had so carefully just delivered to the healers -- trapped beneath a mudslide that had caught it unawares, the foal had been lucky to survive with bruises and a broken leg. Her own, near-albino coat was filthy with mud and streaked with rain-water, but yet -- she had no time to preen, no time for vanity.
She launches herself into the air once more, barely faltering despite the exhaustion that seeks to claim her, and sets her course for the Dusk Court and the relative safety there. Upon a parapet stands a darkened, rain-drenched figure, and it is he who she lands before with a sharp jerk of her head.
Her answering smile is just as grim as his.
“A mudslide towards the North of the Cliffs, sir. One fatality… one wounded. I flew the child to the Hospital for recovery of a broken leg. I would suspect… when the storm is over, a search should be made for any remaining family.”
Her voice hushes with the suggestion, with the sorrow of an orphan child who had witnessed their parent’s demise far too early -- and still, while the storm had eased, it had not yet abetted. The promise of grain and a warm fire was enticing, sure -- but there was still much to do, and many still unaccounted for.
The version of Marisol that lands on the parapet might really be God: rain-slick, dark-eyed, spattered with blood.
The crash of hooves against stone echoes through the rain and seconds later the Commander emerges from the mist. Her dusky skin shines with an oil-slick of water from two days’ downpour; her short-cropped hair bristles against the curve of her neck, where her head is bent to her chest; on her legs run translucent rivulets of mixed rain and blood, leftover ichor from the bodies she’s picked up in the gutters, the scurrying animals she’s accidentally crushed underfoot, the injured, drooling degenerates she’s let lean against her side on their way to the Hospital. (The macabre part of her enjoys that irony - the Hospital being uncovered just before this cataclysmic flood, like it’s been waiting all this time for enough blood to make it worth opening.)
Asterion and Theodosia are already waiting, and she catches the tail end of their conversation as she draws close, wings pressed close to her side to let silver water drip off the brackish feathers. Any other time she might’ve flinched to see the two of them together (when Asterion’s purple-washed skin and Theodosia’s violet eyes are both annoyingly well-equipped to make her pulse flare and stomach turn), but now is not the time to think of such things. Sir, Mari repeats, and the word oozes with satire; the look in her eyes is equal parts anger and amusement, and it burns against Asterion. Didn’t we just decide we weren’t old quite yet?
Marisol flashes the Regent a faint, faint smile, a jolt back to their last meeting. It drops away as quickly as it came, and then she is steel and ice again, jaw clenched, eyes flint-hard, dark lips downturned into a vague frown, and when she speaks her voice is a guttural sound, ragged and utterly exhausted. All of Terrastella is flooded, and the field is filled with sinkholes. More than a few have fallen in already. But it seems that the Court itself isn’t much safer…
She glances over the edge of the parapet and into the court, watches the cobblestone streets and heavy-windowed buildings, how they glisten with grime and still-pouring rain.
collecting pictures from the flood that wrecked our home it was a flood that wrecked this home
She remembers that coldcoldcold darkness – the space between worlds, fluid and constricting as the darkness of the womb. Hold on to me Virun, a sweet hum of a thousand voices in her ears. Hold on to me and everything will be fine, you will be fine, it will all be over soon. And then she remembers salt and cold seawater, the thick plaster of her coat against her trembling, bone-thin skin; she remembers the way that rain pooled in her mouth and nose when she tried to breathe, or scream for help, and she remembers the coldcoldcold approach of the hungry, hungry tide, the way that the salt stung her lips.
She remembers. She remembers. She remembers.
She is in the fields when she notices the silence, a quiet that is too quiet; the emptiness is vast and gaping. No birdsong. The air hums with some strange intensity, an energy that she can’t quite fathom – when she leaps into the air to return to the Court, the tense jolt of electricity that burns through her frame is enough to send her crumpling back to the ground, shuddering like a leaf. A storm is coming, Virun! A storm! The thunder rolls. Lightning crashes, but she can’t see it.
Her sightless eyes pool with rain – and drip free, like tears.
The wind howls all around her, and she can’t tell what direction she moves in, so she ceases to move at all; occasionally, there is a violent rush, like the ocean, but she’s so disoriented that she can’t determine where it’s coming from. The ground is slick and unstable, and she wishes that she could fly - in fact, she’s sure that she could, but the violent crash of rolling thunder keeps her grounded, at least until it subsides.
Time drags on. She nests into a heap of grass and muck, the vast expanse of her violet wings encircling her like a shrine. Virun. Hallowed, sacred place. Shrine. You’re like a little shrine – a place of peace. When has she ever been at peace? The world is nothing but black. Vast, formless black that stinks of mud and uprooted grass and rain. Her lungs feel constricted, and she’s nauseas and wet and her limbs feel stuck-together with mud and sweat and stillness, but she hunkers down and tries not to move at all, like a turtle. A turtle, Virun? You’d make a poor turtle. Look at you, so gangling and awkward; at least turtles are graceful in the water. But she’s never actually seen one, so she doesn’t actually know.
An innocuous slosh.
Her stomach lurches and tangles itself into knots. Fly fly fly little bird-
But it’s too late, and the water is all around her before she can move – it catches her up in its embrace and sweeps her from her makeshift roost, dragging her high high high, tumbling and stumbling and tangled around herself. Delicate limbs scrape against branch and stone, and she can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can’t breathe and it’s all so dark too dark strangling suffocating she doesn’t know where the surface is what is up what is down where to go where to go where to go-
But she spreads her wings, even as they slam into gnarled branch and sharp stone, and she kicks against the tide, because she is not ready to die yet. Her eyes, blind as they are, squeeze shut, and the roar of thunder echoes just over the water swirling past her ears; it is the dull, throbbing noise, the howling wind, that she uses to struggle her way towards the surface. For a moment, her velveteen muzzle slips above the water, and she sucks in gasping breath after gasping breath before the tide drags her down again. Celes, she begs – prays, even. Celes, please. I want to go home.
The water does not hear her prayers.
Gully washes become the latest trend as far as disasters go.
Terrastella is under seige by a Tempest that goes by no name, answers to nothing, and listens to no one.
It does not take long for someone like Vhetiveer to learn of the tragedies that surround him. As quick as it takes for word to reach his ear - it only takes half that time to make it to the main source of water - and even a fraction less to discover his first challenge. A civilian has been taken by the water - stolen away.
There is no thought process that kicks the stallion into overdrive - built for speed and as reflective as a mirror - he flashes like a copper bullet across the fields. Water jets up from both sides of him as he powers through the flooded fields. Her wings are the only thing he can see to know that his sights are right - had she been without them she may have very well been lost -- lost like him.
That cannot happen.
Not now -- not after he has seen her.
He now knows her in a way very few may know her - and he cannot let that be the first, last thing he knows of her.
"H-HOLD ON!"
The sound of his voice would startle him if he wasn't already so focused. The tin man's slippery, metal form cuts through the storm like a machete, hacking down the world beneath his feet as the storm throws whatever it can at him.
Wind makes birdnests out of his tangerine hair, lightning makes the antique patina that freckles his body glow nuclear and green just the way his eyes do. His third eye is wide open, gaping, his soul is screaming the way the wind in his ears do.
Do not fail.
Do not let her go.
"HOLD ON!" His voice rings out loud across the distance between him and the girl, like funeral bells - only this time he swears that no one will be dying.
Vhetiveer makes like a meteorite, leaps the impossible leap that could kill him if he were to hit the same sharp rocks that Virun hits, and lands in front of her. The current is strong enough to knock him over but not strong enough to keep him down. Vhetiveer swims at her and tries to knock her off the water's course but the water has its cruel way with her and takes her again. He pulls to the shoreline and intervenes again when he can, this time with teeth as he bites into her wing and throws his weight into the mare - shoving her closer to the shallows.
Vhetiveer spits out bloody feathers for the third time in his life and hates it more than he did the last time.
Perhaps her gaze never quite allows itself to trace Marisol’s features, focused instead on some miniscule point far beyond Asterion’s shoulder, but she is all business otherwise -- she dips her head to Marisol’s approach with a clipped but welcoming “Commander,” the faintest blush beneath her pale fur perhaps the only evidence of their all-too-recent encounter, and even that might be attributed to the chill of the wind-soaked air around them.
She doesn’t understand why the sound of Mari’s voice, dripping with some sort of inside meaning between herself and Asterion, makes her stomach churn and her chest catch fire with warmth -- and even so, she has no time to even consider what such a thing might mean. A distant cry catches her attention, ears perking forward --
“What was that?”
--- but there is no waiting for a reply. The cadet has already pivoted on her heel and launched herself from the parapets, a streak of pale lightning rapidly swallowed by the storm. There was no time to debate such questions, not when the floods hit so quick and deadly, and so many of their people were still unaccounted for as the storm raged on. A hard knot of fear has rested itself within her chest since the first reports of flooding had come in, with no time to consider what it might have meant, no time to hesitate or even take a moment to warm herself by the offered fire.
This is the wrath of the gods, the inevitable progression of whatever events had occurred within the Summit, and she will not allow Terrastella to suffer beneath a punishment they have not earned.
She spots the pair even as the wind tries to tear her off-course, bright copper and amethyst amongst muddy water, and there is no second-guessing. Her wings fold to her body and she allows herself to fall, to lose altitude until she splashes down into the raging waters like a stone. “We’re here,” The words are full of a confidence she doesn’t quite feel, ignorant to the jetsam that bashes into her slender legs, and she sets her shoulder against the mare’s haunches and gives a mighty push that she does her best to time with the copper male’s pulls from the other side.
The first records of our young world
were those of tears and blood
***
The shadow of storm clouds darkened the sky over the Witch Doctor's secluded, swampy hovel, drawing her eye away from the bloody remains of the raccoon she'd been examining. Thunder rumbled across the heavens, rattling her bones and her nerves into a thrum of caged excitement. With a bit more expediency in her movements, she poked again at the ruined mustelid.
It gave up few secrets, but then it was dead. Sometimes, the dead have very little to say, and that was their choice.
Then the rains arrived.
They did not pick up slowly. Rather, they arrived like a wall of water and sound sweeping across Terrastella, beating the land into submission with heavy, torrential blows. As the rain broke across her hideaway and began trickling like ant trails into the dry spaces, the spotted mare couldn't help but bark out a triumphant cackle. She hop-skipped out into the elements, sheets of water streaking the blood and red paint on her skin until red runnels ran down her neck and flanks, and howled her glee to the bruised purple sky.
The witch doctor spared not a moment's thought for the boggy water as she splashed and lurched her way out into the open, where already she saw the soft city-dwellers scurrying about beneath the heavy hand of Vespera's judgment. She wondered if Swewll had been caught out, and if his fancy books had been ruined. That shouldn't have made her as happy as it did, but she of all horses loved being proven right. Her bobbed tail smacked against her flanks like an excited metronome as she called out to the horses before her, antlered skull all the more menacing in the shadowed mire of the monsoon.
"Oho, now you see, outsiders! Now you face um Vespela wrat!" She didn't even mind that the swaggering spring in her step jarred her crippled foot with every beat. Pain seemed as nothing next to the awesome power and rage of her goddess. Shaking her bone-crowned head with a fervency that rattled the vertebrae tied into her sopping mane, she continued.
"But as de goddess punish, so she forgive! De witch doctor help all loyal to Vespela."
She knew powerful medicine, passed down since the times of Nahane and the sand girl. If they would be but pious, the witch doctor would help them. If not...
...then perish.
***
The Witch Doctor
Its last records will be those of tears and blood also
Fiona was cleaning up the kitchen when it became dark outside, the rain coming suddenly and forcefully, pounding against the roof of her small home that she had once shared with her father. She had been baking, and the maple bars were resting on the stove cooling while she busied herself scrubbing bowls and setting spoons out to dry. The lavender girl thought the rain would ebb eventually, but it proved her wrong when it continued throughout the day without letting up. It didn’t take long for the water to gather, covering sloped streets and filling depressions in the ground.
As the rains continued, so the water began to rise. The first sign of danger that Fiona saw was the animals seemingly fleeing from the swamp. She could only assume the bogs had risen considerably, drowning any dry ground there may have been. They arrived alone and some in droves. When she opened her door, perhaps driven by the smell of baked goods, many small creatures raced through the doorway and made themselves at home, shivering under furniture and in corners. A few made their way into her kitchen and began eating the food they could find. Fiona couldn’t find it in herself to shoo them away, only able to imagine the fear they felt.
She didn’t notice the fox that snuck in on her heels as she turned back to her home, lingering in the shadows as it was, until she set about lighting candles with which to better see by. It wasn’t until she stepped too close that she heard the distinct chattering sound. When the girl looked down, she saw the fox, teeth bared and fur bristling. For a moment she was startled, until she noticed the smaller bodies hiding behind the much larger adult. Kits. A mother seeking shelter for her family had stumbled into Fiona’s occupied home and, among her fear of the storm, was cornered and threatened (despite the fact that Fiona had no intention of harming the small family).
She wasn’t expecting the fox to lunge for her ankles, and Fiona reared back suddenly, unsteadily. Shifting her weight to keep her balance, she felt her hip bump into something. A table, she thought. But the resulting clattering sound had her whipping her head around, and she watched helplessly as the candlestick rocked, tipped and landed on the ground. The fire caught on the rug and spread quickly, more quickly than she could have ever imagined possible. It engulfed the rug in mere seconds it seemed, cutting her off from the only door to her small cottage.
For as few moments as it took for the fire to grow, it took even less for chaos to erupt in the rest of her home. All the animals who had tried to take shelter began to scream, their alarmed, frightened calls drowning out the crackling of the flames. Fiona looked at the fire, its flickering light casting strange shadows on the walls and over the furniture and she didn’t know how to react. She had never before in her life regretted her inability to speak than in that moment, unable to call for help if anyone were even out there and able to hear her. She turned to the kitchen as the heat of the fire licked at her heels, singing the hairs in her braided tail. In her mind, all she saw was the large window over the table.
There's a lot happening here but at least she has an out if nobody rescues her?
08-03-2018, 07:13 PM
Played by
Dingo [PM] Posts: 50 — Threads: 5 Signos: 330
I've gone a million miles
With the same crooked smile
The Poison Master watched from his heightened position within the court as torrential rains pounded Terrastella, having come to retrieve a few parchments hours ago with the intention to head straight back to the hospital when the claps of thunder halted him. It had been going on for some days now, causing the swamps to rise exponentially and turning the ground to slime. Storms weren’t entirely uncommon in the wintry season, but this… this was different, he could feel, wrong in a way that he couldn’t quite explain. It ate away at him the further he looked on through the window, brows furrowed over dark eyes and mouth contorted in his thoughtfulness.
In the distance, he saw something out of place amidst the rage of the storm. For a brief moment the roan considered the possibility that he may have lingered over his potions for too long that morning, but when the blaze failed to fade from his vision after a shake of his head, Atreus realized that this was no illusion at all.
A fire burning rampant and undeterred by the heavy rainfall, whipping wild against the winds that managed to fuel it. Curious, considering the circumstances of the weather, but…-
A mere moment more ticked by before realization slapped the man with absurd, brutal strength and stole the air from his lungs. The fire wasn’t simply climbing up an old tree, but a structure that Atreus was passingly familiar with. A home.
Fiona.
Few were privileged enough to truly hold a place of concern in the black of his heart; he remembered many details of everyone he crossed paths with, but those thing were often stored away for malicious purposes and intentions. The case was entirely different when it came to the mare of pale lavender and stark alabaster that he had encountered on the day of his return, however.
With his next breath, he was moving, forgoing any hesitation as he launched himself from his position and bolted out the front doors and into the elements. Flying would do him little good here, and in perhaps the first instance in a long time, the mud and grime that splashed across and dirtied his hide was paid no mind. When he reached the blazing home, Atreus narrowed his eyes against the intensity of the fire and the heat that accompanied it. Now that he was close, it wasn’t the roar of a fire that filled his ears but the hideous, unmistakable screams of a variety of animals within the burning home. He grit his teeth.
”Fiona! He called over the cacophony of screaming and crackling, whining wood, searching for the best way to free the occupants – namely Fiona, assuming she was inside. Smoke billowed heavily from the front door, a sure sign that it had started somewhere close to it. Circling the small cottage and fighting the burning itch of his throat and the smoky sting in his eyes, Atreus found himself at the back of the home where a large window had been installed. His sides rattled as he began to cough, and closing his eyes as he sidled up against the window, he bashed the curved, protruding tip of his horn against the glass in an effort to shatter it.
@Fiona Good lord it's been too long I am so sorry x'D
And I always give you all you need
But I can see that you're dancing with the devil
![[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c175b84a-409b-40aa-8b86-49ed65b989ee/ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda550e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2MxNzViODRhLTQwOWItNDBhYS04Yjg2LTQ5ZWQ2NWI5ODllZVwvZGRnNnF1eS05ZDE1ZGFiNS0zMzljLTRiMDktOGI1Ny0yMGE5OWZkYTU1MGUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.j-t9RuUsmMyaVL-O1rvZqbyyPYdOvtjHLjvUop12efQ)
