[SWP] ACT I: The Trembling of a Distant Land

[Eik]

He did not want to go toward the darkening sky. Animals-- the smarter ones-- fled from it. The sky was crowded with birds flying north, some of them streaked black with soot. Even the trees, it seemed to him, leaned away from that inky horizon, and as he walked through the plains the grasses brushing against his knees as though begging him to turn back.

But something compels him to go and see how the end of the world might be unfolding. He isn't the only one-- those before him have marked in sand and snow and grass a trail through the desert, over the mountains, across the prairie. Like a pilgrimage.

Still his heart trembles and his legs move slowly. He has passed no one walking the other way.

The southern half of the sky is covered in ash by the time Eik reaches the coast. It colors the sunrise in apocalyptic shades of hazy red and orange. It is cold, especially at the water's edge, and when the ash first begins to fall he mistakes it for snow. He closes his eyes and dips into his magic.

He is standing in a sea of emotion, its warm waves churning with fear (terror), doubt (disbelief), sorrow (misery). Some are angry, even. Some are righteous. He wants to sooth them, to strengthen them. It would be so easy, to reach out with magic and simply... reorganize the thought patterns. He could harness their fear, make an army of them.

He opens his eyes when he realizes it is ash that is falling from the sky, not snow.

***STAFF EDIT
@Eik has rolled a 1! He has been awarded +10 signos

[Anatoly]

It is not wisdom that draws Anatoly to the site of disaster, not bravery or fear or anguish. It is not the mongers hawking fish and gossip from this side of the land to the other that drew his attention. It is not the religious sort screaming for the end of the world (“Look upon Solis and despair, for he is consumed at his height! Weep upon the rising dawn that Oriens has been bested! Vespera hangs her weary head and laments the final loss of her godly kin! Caligo take us all!”) for that only makes him laugh.

No, it is the potential that pulls him here. Disaster will always draw a crowd, will always stir emotions high until the people are frothing with the desire to act. Now the religious are blaming Caligo and he turns that around and over in his head until the idea has physical weight, considering how to use it. Now they are looking for someone to blame and he considers how best to point fingers that will have all of Novus shifting.

The sea is frothing, all angry waves and scuttling crabs (cleverer creatures than the horses that mill about the beach, staring out into the sea like it will make a difference). The sky is indeed as black as all the tales tell, but they miss the sparks of lightning at the epicenter, the flashes of molten red and gold just barely visible through the smoke.

Let this disaster be whatever the portents claimed it to be. Let it be the raging of gods. Let it be the altar of sins. Let it be believed. Anatoly will stir the whispers and the crowds and wait.

***STAFF EDIT
@anatoly has rolled a 3! He has been awarded +40 signos

[Runaveig]

Umbra crawled up her neck to grasp onto the long strands of her mane, holding tight to the hair as he hung close to her ear. ”We can’t stay,” the pygmy dragon stated softly, the somber note of his voice like a whisper in her ear despite the fact that no words actually left his mouth, ”Runa, we need to go.” Yet she couldn’t. It was as though her hooves had been rooted to their spot, unable to be moved even as the earth quaked and trembled beneath her. Soft golden eyes stared out across the churning waves of the Terminus Sea with a troubled look, the pink of her lips parted. Wind tousled the hair from her face, buffeting her slim and lithe frame with considerable force as the waves raged and crashed against the shoreline. Ash, soot, and smoke began to rain down from above, and she knew that soon it would coat the very ground they walked on. Denocte was far too close to the eruption point. Runaveig didn’t know much about the earth and what made it work, but she knew what a volcano was and that it could erupt. The talk from the others nearby, the hushed whispers of curses or punishment of the gods just didn’t instill the kind of fear within her as it may have done to others “A volcano,” she murmured, knowing what it was but still so very startled by its billowing eruption, the inky black smoke swirling and cresting high into the heavens to form even a night darker than the one they were named after, “I’ve… Never seen it before, Umbra.” Had she just not been paying enough attention to notice the land formation miles off of the coastline? After her entire life spent up in the Arma Mountains, perhaps she had simply been oblivious to it all. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, and yet… The young bard couldn’t help but feel as though there was something more to this, that this was a prelude of things to come. As others tore away or lingered to watch the billowing smoke and the grains of soft ash slowly fall down like grey snowflakes, Runa and Umbra remained. That feeling would not leave her bones, and for now, all she could do was watch and wait. "Speaking."

credits

***STAFF EDIT
@Runaveig has rolled a 3! She has been awarded +40 signos

[Eulalie]

Our hearts call us by name

Eulalie had been passing through the markets—taking care of a few errands she'd been meaning to do for the week—when the shaking started. First it was merely a tremble that spread from the street up her legs, and she thought perhaps it was just a cart traveling over the cobblestone.

But it only grew more violent, so much so that she stumbled and nearly lost her footing, as did those around her. Then the shouts started, loud exclamations rising up across the court. Eulalie's concern rose greatly as her earth brown eyes took in the sight of the dark cloud quickly spreading across the sky from the south.

Many turned toward her, for comfort? For strength? She wasn't sure, but Eulalie steeled her jaw and took charge. "Find your families, get out of the smoke and the ash," and she thought, as she said this, that it was too familiar. It was too soon for some like this to happen again.

"I have to find Somnus, and my children," she turned and pushed her way through the growing crowd of awestruck equines, with Tabbris just behind her. He was never far. She went to the only place she thought that they could be: the citadel, and as she pressed closer and closer she saw the unmistakable gold of her husband's coat.

"Somnus! Thank goodness," she called as she reached them, reaching out to press her muzzle to his. Her eyes sought out her children, finding Regis nestled securely beneath one of her husband's wings, but where was Anemone? She wasn't there. Eulalie locked eyes with her bonded, "Tabbris," but the gryphon was already spreading wide his wings and taking off into the air.

Find her, she thought, as she gently reached out to press a comforting touch to her son's forehead and pressed close against Somnus' side. What disaster had come for them all now, she wondered, as she watched the black cloud spread.

credits

@Regis @Somnus

***STAFF EDIT
@eulalie has rolled a 3! She has been awarded +40 signos

[Al'Zahra]

The Illuminated

“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”


The thought crosses her mind, as the cliffs start to tremble at low tide, that the earth has finally started to sing. Each bit of stone at her hooves is humming and chanting a song of creation. Her bones echo and ache with memories, and want, and then after she's run out of feelings...loneliness. All the gold at her sides, chiming like small bells, feels colder than the sea she's watching (and yet somehow hotter that the pillars of smoke rising like dragons).

There are horses moving along the shore finding comfort in their togetherness. There are horses on the cliffs watching the island before turning away from the smoke billowing towards them like an oil spill. Al'Zahra inhales. The sulfur, and the ash, and the char, tastes like home on her tongue. Her heart aches for the taste of it. Part of her yearns to toss herself into the smoke, to be free and as she once was, if only for a moment.

But there is still some comfort in being the last, in knowing that her bones burn for freedom. She wants to know what it feels like to be old and sway-backed. Mortality is a grand adventure and she's not ready to turn away from it.

So she dances for that island. She tastes each bit of smoke in the air and calls it, sister and sometimes brother. Until her lungs are heavy with exhaustion, and the wind is turning too quickly towards her and the smoke is coming for her not like a dragon but like a storm, she dances. She dances until her legs feel like rust underneath her and her mane is dry and wanting only some brine.

And when she turns away from the cliffs, her hooves ring like a bells peeling out not a farewell but a someday soon.

art credit

***STAFF EDIT
@'al'zhara' has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +20 signos

[Elif]

little pilgrim
the Indian's axed your scalp.

The first sign that something (something new) was wrong came with the birds.

Hundreds of them flocked to the Solterran capitol, seabirds she knew and others with plumage she’d never seen, circling and crying out with a clamor of voices. Strange, thought Elif, but everything was growing strange in this world of blood and monsters and magic.

Not until the second day did she investigate. Then there was no denying that something was coming, when the horizon to the south looked like a smudge of kohl that grew and grew, when the desert trembled beneath her feet. Then Elif took to the skies, just another set of wings amid a thousand.

South she flew, quicker than a hawk, and though there were others making the same terrible migration the girl felt only alone. The whip coiled at her side was small comfort against such a disaster, and as the cloud of ash grew and grew Elif wondered if this was another wonder of the gods, or a punishment. It was hard to think that there was anything truly natural left, not after all Novus had witnessed in the past year. The only question was whose hand was behind it.

It was not a question she would answer. Though impatient and brash and always ready to fight, Elif knew when action was beyond her. And here it surely was: now the smoke was growing thicker, now the ash was visible, larger than snowflakes. Now the air was too cold, now the acrid scent was overpowering the sea, now there was lightning flickering and something red and molten and awful below it -

Elif turned, tears of cold and smoke stinging at her eyes, and like all those birds before her she fled.




 
*coughs at worst post ever*

elif

***STAFF EDIT
@elif has rolled a 4! She has been awarded +80 signos

[Thana]

Thana
Thana is standing in a ring of death like a sun burning with nothing but blackness and emptiness around it. Her skin is red, red, blood-red in light filtered through the smoke. Somehow this is the first moment in which this world makes her look like she belongs. The wind is crying like a hawk through her horn. Her blade is flashing in the sunlight, like a caught star, as she flicks it back and forth, back and forth (like the metronome of a predator). Each blade of dune grass that the winter did not kill is rotting from the roots.

All the blackness, and sand, and metronome song makes her shadow seem like it stretches out further behind her the it should. It races across the ground until it peaks and dissolves into sunlight. Her shadow looks like a volcano ready, ready, ready to become a monster like the one far out to sea.

Asterion is ahead of her, with a unicorn at his side and a dragon over his head. Part of her wants to join them, to look that other unicorn in the eye and understand what it means to be a beast with a horn upon it's brow. Another part of her wants to shed her skin like a crocodile and drag the king out to sea, deep enough that the waves, bending in spires away from him, refuse to listen to a man with stars on his skin.

It would be dark there, and silent.

She's tired of closing her eyes and seeing only brightness, only blinding water that goes on, and on, and on. Thana doesn't know what it means anymore, all these wicked wants creeping along her insides like ivy until they bloom in the space behind her eyes. She's hollow and wanting . She wants to lift her head towards that volcano moaning in the distance and scream back a battle-cry that says, I understand, I understand, I'm exploding too.

But she's still looking at the king who's insides she wants to carve poetry across deep down in the black sea, where the brightness can't find either of them. She wants to kill him; she wants to drag him back from the shore to the world that's not beating eaten by smoke.

She does neither.

Thana turns away and prays to whatever monster is living in the center of the island. She begs it to take the soul she cannot bring herself to taste with all the sharp edges of herself.



"Death hath no dominion"

***STAFF EDIT
@thana has rolled a 4! She has been awarded +80 signos

[Antiope]

Antiope I can be your heavenly or I can be your hell When the ground starts to tremble beneath her hooves, like how she imagines a soul trembles just before death, Antiope thinks it is only the fury—the bloodlust—of the lioness in her bones. She thinks it is nothing; nothing but the quivering of her skin trying to hold all that is inside her, in. She pays no mind to the birds, to the creatures, for she understands but does not feel fear. She thinks let them run, let them flee, but from what they flee she doesn't consider. Antiope doesn't consider that the thing they run from is not so unlike her. But then the trembling becomes so wild, so bucking, that it cannot possibly be from within her, that her sea blue eyes lift to the skies. It it subtle first, the darkness spreading from some distant island in the ocean. But the more time that passes, the more she notices, the more she sees. The more she feels. If she stands down by the water and stares out at the island she can just see that the blackness spews from its highest peak. She can just see the stream of fire and hate falling down its sides. And then it begins to snow ash from the sky, and she knows. She understands what it is like to let something fester and boil inside you until it threatens to erupt from your skin. She knows what it is like for a world of beings to fear your presence and the anger inside you. To be looked at both with fear and awe at once. So, when Antiope looks upon that volcano in the distance she thinks that maybe she is only looking inside herself. "Speaking."

credits

***STAFF EDIT
@Antiope has rolled a 4! She has been awarded +80 signos

[Juniper]

am i still rebuilding
bone by fragile bone ?

C

olors blur and blend as she outraces even the wind. Skies turn dark, darker than the black of El Rey's skin when it was so gently pressed against her own in welcome and apology. Sensations run like lightning through her veins as she runs like a storm over the clouds.

Juniper is a force to be reckoned with.

No mortal could dare keep up on land, no winged thing would dare move into her path. Like a freight train she barrels through the sky: a natural disaster, a falling star. Ash blocks out her sunlight, but she knows what it is to fly in the dark. There are no trees here that once kissed her cheeks in the night, only the falling embers of an unhappy world and the gods unsettled. For a moment, the ethereal woman wonders what they have done so wrong to displease Vespera, to earn her disfavor. But then there is a streaking of brown below, the surging of the man she met who laughed with his heart instead of his head.

He is on the ground and in the water and a roaring behind her and electricity in the air warns Juniper that there is magic brewing in the clouds. They would take her to ground if they could, but she is quicker than the wrath of a King.

Diving down, faster than a falling star, almost to the point where she should (she would) burn up and break if the ground opened its arms wide enough, Juniper aims for the shoreline where a silver man walks and a brown man draws in his magic and a unicorn froths at the lips to take on the world.

Their anger, their unease, it breeds dissent and concern in the gathering crowds. The whole of Novus comes to watch their undoing.

Time slows as she descends, body plummets faster and faster and she is in free-fall. She is weightless. Then, at the last minute, wings arch out casting a shadow over the king and the queen and the tyrant until she lands with enough force in the riotous waters for them to rebel. They rise up, they soak the world with her welcoming.

And from the waters she rises.

Spring green eyes, new green eyes, flicker over them as she goes right to Asterion and rises her wings over them. The water does not touch his back from above and slowly her right wing beats carefully. The winds push back the spray of the sea, push back the intruding water that creeps closer. Oh, Juniper is not a fighter, she was bred a lover, but she would fight for the man of starlight and smiles. "Direct me," she whispers against his cheek with steel in her voice and fire in her eyes.

@Asterion @Isra @Raum | "speaks" | notes: crash landing is becoming our forte 8)

rallidae | art

***STAFF EDIT
@Juniper has rolled a 2! She has been awarded +20 signos

[Moira]

 

 

   Moira Tonnerre
 

 

   i will burn and burn and burn again, and you will come home safely
 

 

 

   Stay," the tiger pleads.

Claws gently press into Moira's hip, pull her close as Neerja nips her side enough that it burns. Golden eyes turn toward golden eyes, their hearts break in that moment when they've only been reunited for such a short time. "You know I cannot," Moira almost sobs. Lips press against striped brow, but there are no tears.

"I'll come with you-"

"No!" the Pegasus snaps, eyes demanding her release. They soften as Neerja recoils, a hiss upon her lips, a snarl upon her face. "It's too dangerous for you, I will not lose you my dear heart. I cannot lose you."

"Be safe, my strange cub," the tiger consents at last, brushing her wet nose along the phoenix' angled cheeks until the tigress kisses the phoenix' own nose. Sandpaper tongue meets velveteen skin and at last they break apart as though their world has already broken.

Then, with the shattering of the skies and the fury of the fire, the Pegasus turns to devour the land as ash consumes the skies.

Already her people are crying. Already the animals flee.

Around her, the world vibrates with tension when it should hold its breath. She does not bother to stop and listen as she plunges forth after the many who went before her. Isra has gone, Moira knows, to the shores with that inspiring and terrifying magic coursing through her veins.

But oh, her heart is elsewhere - with her tiger and on the shoreline with him. The ocean that Asterion loves so much rises in anger at last, meeting world-weary eyes that break over the hill like the sun, like a beacon, like a flame of flesh and bone racing against time. It is there, in the waves, she finds him sheltered by a snow white girl, a dust white dove, a petite thing that is too close. Her mind screams, she wants to snarl and rage forward. Every ounce of her begs to lunge into those waters and spread her wings over the starlit king, but she is not here to feed the world more blood that cannot be spared.

So golden eyes of rage, golden eyes of sorrow, turn from the king for a heartbeat to find her Queen, her sister-kin, and to find Eik among the gathered. Plunging through the crowds, Moira brushes along Florentine and offers her a kiss, then she is beside Eik on the edge of the water that is so cold it could (it should) steal her breath away. She looks to him and to the crumbling ocean and mourns what will become of them.

From her lips comes a broken, lilting melody: "I am glad to see you, Eik," and she smiles that phoenix-bright smile that could pull the sun from the skies if she tried. Through everything, she has found her friend again and will stand by her people - these people - come what may.

---

@Eik @Florentine | "moira" "neerja" | notes: hi let me cry because neerja breaks me trololo

 

***STAFF EDIT
@Moira has rolled a 6! She has been awarded +120 signos