Novus
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Novus closed 10/31/2022, after The Gentle Exodus

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Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 79 — Threads: 19
Signos: 440
Inactive Character
#1

BE BOLD, BE BOLD
BUT NOT TOO BOLD


Cold wind tangles in Septimus’s mane as he walks the streets of the Night Market. It’s early morning; dawn has just swept over the horizon, painting it in pale pinks and dusty oranges. It looks entirely different in the Markets during the day. When darkness falls, they feel magical, like something that exists outside of the horrible, mundane reality of mortal existence. Without the stars and the dark, however, it becomes blaringly obvious that the streets are just streets, the minstrels just minstrels, the market stalls just market stalls, and the lanterns just lanterns. He finds them impossibly dull, and he wishes that he could leave – but it’s snowed since he arrived, and he’s more than willing to lean on the hospitality of his hosts until the weather is a bit more amiable to travelling long-distance.

One of the tiny dragons that inhabit the markets flies out from an alley, gleaming like a sunset-colored jewel in the newborn light; it lands on a barrel and begins to nibble at what looks like some strange piece of red, lumpy fruit, little tail twitching back and forth eagerly as it grasps the fruit in its front paws. Septimus opens his satchel, thanking his lucky stars that this land didn’t deprive him of his telekinesis, and pulls out his notebook, a jar of ink, and a quill. He dips the tip of the quill into the jar, and, with a flourish, writes “Pygmy Dragon – Novus, Denocte” on the top of the page.

His quill dances the page as the shape of the dragon begins to take form. The little creature seems to notice that he is watching it, and it preens, insect-like wings outstretching to catch and glimmer in the early-morning light. He sketches their leaflike veins, tries to shade the wing to capture the translucency, the way that the light gleams little stars into the thin chitin. He outlines each scale, each spine – and, in the absence of color, scribbles a short paragraph of description in the far corner. Satisfied, he holds the book open as he walks, murmuring his soft thanks to the little dragon as he passes.

It flaps its wings, purrs like a kitten, and presses its nose up against his before it disappears down an alleyway. He watches it go, letting a soft laugh escape his lips.

In the absence of his magic, he has to let the ink dry on its own, so he holds the pages steady and up to the sun as he moves down the streets. They aren’t very crowded yet; he wonders if the Denoctians wore themselves out with all the drinking and revelry that seemed to have occurred the night before. (They seem like a happy people, these Night denizens.) He basks in the morning light, and the relative illusion of space, although his legs are freezing from the thick layer of snow that he’s trudging his way through; if he could fly, this wouldn’t be an issue, but the buildings are too close together to take off.

He exhales a long breath of white and leans back against one of the walls, pulling his notebook down to eye level; a few little streams of ink have smudged, but, otherwise, the drawing seems to be dry.




@Valefor || <3

"Speech!" 





@









AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONS
the two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow


please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence






Played by [PM] Posts: N/A — Threads:
Valefor
Guest
#2

there's no going back
when you cross the line
He has not slept.

It is not an entirely strange thing, this lack of sleep -- he spends many nights pacing the streets full of festivity, trying to escape the nightmares that threaten with every wave of exhaustion, the scene that replays every time he closes his eyes. 

Snow, stained crimson with a pool of blood atop Dead Horse Ridge. Winifred, sprawled like a doll across the ground, her throat a gaping hole. Desdemona, kneeling by her sister with blood splatter across her chest, frantically muttering a dark spell. Pentecoast, staring at him with an accusation in his pale eyes, his teeth still holding flesh between them.

Look what you’ve done, the wind howls at him, look at what you’ve done.

He wakes up screaming every time, his throat rasped hoarse, until he has taken to just avoiding sleep until he drops from exhaustion. He already hurts, so often -- his joints aching from the strain of supporting his body at such a young age, forced to grow at an accelerated rate in his home land, and the chill of the winter air hasn’t been helping. He feels like a puppet with broken strings, like a machine with rusted pieces -- he thinks, maybe, that he is not entirely a person, with the malevolence that rests inside his chest.

It hangs there, heavy and choking, a constant weight to remind him of what he has done, what he cannot outrun. He cannot control it, try as he might, and he lives in constant fear of the possibility that his magic might break through at any moment.

He catches sight of a familiar face, of antlers with bright jewels hanging from them, and he breathes out a sigh of relief -- Septimus is, at least, someone he recognizes, and he has not yet forgotten how the older man had reassured him at the disaster when his fears had overcome his senses. “Septimus,” He murmurs as he winds his way closer, through the market stalls, and he stops a few feet away from the man with his tail hanging low enough to sweep along the dusty path. 

“What have you got there?”

"Speaking."
credits










Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 79 — Threads: 19
Signos: 440
Inactive Character
#3

BE BOLD, BE BOLD
BUT NOT TOO BOLD



His thoughts are interrupted by the appearance of a familiar face; a slightly taller but distinctly younger boy, all red and gold, like licks of flame. He greets Septimus with a murmur, that tail of his – he can’t quite call it leonine, or draconian, and settles for just not knowing what it is – sweeping against the cobblestones. Septimus tilts his head, dark hair nearly falling in his spectacles in the process.

“Hello, Valefor,” he greets, with a practiced pleasantry. He looks tired, but Septimus is under the impression that’s normal for him – it probably still isn’t healthy, but he can’t visualize Valefor without the various hallmarks of sleeplessness (dark circles, red rims, veins that are altogether too obvious, hunched shoulders, slow strides, a subtle hint of exhaustion to his every move, hindering him like a leaden weight) haunting him like a dark and heavy shroud. There were ghosts in Valefor, he’d decided, from their few interactions, and he wouldn’t be free until they were out. Septimus wonders what happened to him to make him like - this -, but he doesn’t ask, or he doesn’t ask yet. He barely knows him; it would be in poor taste.

Instead, he follows Valefor’s stare to his sketchbook, and he flashes him a grin. “It’s one of my sketchbooks,” he replies, opening it again and offering it to Valefor with a flourish of his telekinesis. “I’m a naturalist, you see-“ He flips through pages of neat diagrams and anatomical sketches, lingering occasionally on the ones that he’s especially proud of. “-so I study the plants and animals I encounter on my travels.” He pauses on the page with the pygmy dragon he just sketched, glancing (upside-down, for he is on the wrong side of the book to actually read them) at his scribbled, haphazard notes on the subject. “The pygmy dragons in Denocte are a subspecies that I’ve never seen before. I wonder if it has something to do with the acidity of the ocean, or their habitat – I’ve never known dragons to inhabit cities before. Or maybe it’s the influence of the goddess. They say the Night deity of this land came down and made them, a few months ago; were you there for it?” He glances back and forth suspiciously, and adds, in a slightly more hushed tone. “I’m still a bit, err, unsure about the idea of physical gods appearing here, personally.” Septimus had always been a skeptic, and a new, magic-stealing realm would not take that from him; it was always best to use caution when dealing with information you weren’t sure was factual, and, in spite of his extraordinary, eldritch background, he hasn’t forgotten that.





@Valefor || <3

"Speech!" 





@









AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONS
the two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow


please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence






Played by [PM] Posts: N/A — Threads:
Valefor
Guest
#4

there's no going back
when you cross the line
He has long-since given up on the idea of sleep as something that was necessary for survival; after all, he spent so little time sleeping that it seemed as though the need was simply a cruel joke of some sort. Seeing a friendly face at least gives the appearance of lifting away some of his exhaustion, however, no matter how the boy might try to hide it -- his ears perk forward, just slightly, and the curve of his mouth traces out the hint of a smile, just enough to keep from showing the sharp teeth that his lips hide.

He peers at the sketchbook, at first politely and then with more interest, his amber gaze moving across the elegant ink swirls and lines. “This is amazing, Septimus. I didn’t know you could draw so well.” Even the antlered man’s handwriting is pretty, looping across the page in a dark scrawl, and when he gets the chance he does his best to pick out the words that he’s familiar with, although his attention is quickly caught by the man’s question.

“I was not, no,” His tail moves from side to side, a slowly serpentine in its motion as he holds it low against the ground. It is, perhaps, the key to his strange moods, when his face only ever seemed to carry that exhausted air that overshadowed everything else. He considers the ink dragon for a few long moments, considers exactly how much he can reveal without exposing his own raw nerves, and then bites down the temptation to blurt out every nightmare he’s ever had.

He’s used to it -- Septimus makes him feel strangely safe, as though the scholarly man wouldn’t judge him for his crime, as though he wouldn’t be shown a cold shoulder once he confessed, or worse, as though his crimes wouldn’t be exposed so that everyone would know them. It was better to swallow down that strange impulse, to lock the words inside his ribcage and hold them there where they couldn’t break free, couldn’t condemn him before he found the key to controlling his magic.

“I’ve never actually met a God. Not here, nor the place I was born.” Not that he can remember, that is. His wild, cursed magic was apparently supposed to be a gift from a god, from Shishira himself when he had only been a newborn child, but whether Shishira himself had actually appeared to bestow the magic; well, he certainly couldn’t remember, and the tavern owner had been strangely tight-lipped about whatever had happened. “I don’t think I’d want to, honestly. They never seem to be up to any good.”

That might be an understatement, actually.

"Speaking."
credits


@Septimus









Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 79 — Threads: 19
Signos: 440
Inactive Character
#5

BE BOLD, BE BOLD
BUT NOT TOO BOLD




Valefor seems to perk up with a bit of friendly conversation; his ears twitch forward, and his lips hint at a smile. Septimus meets it with his own, and, for a fraction of a second, considers moving his wing to rest it across the boy’s back. He’d done it to his siblings back home, when something seemed to be bothering them, and something always seemed to be bothering Valefor. It is only his basic comprehension of things like common courtesy and personal space which prevents him from following through with the impulse.

Probably for the best – it may well have ended in disaster.

Valefor seems impressed by the drawing, which does nothing to smother Septimus’s already-bright grin. “Thank you,” he says, sincerely, then tosses him an ambiguous, mischievous look, which borders on a smirk. “I’ve had plenty of time to practice.” He lets his gaze linger a moment longer than it needs to, willing to dance around the subject of his age but unwilling to admit it outright. Thousands of years of practice, at least; long enough for any compliments on his skills to feel largely undeserved, though he takes them anyways, because no polite person turns down a compliment, and he has never minded to have his ego stroked anyways.

When he asks about Novus’s gods, he is given a response almost immediately – disappointingly, Valefor was not present for the summit. However, his posture and expression both suggest that he is not done speaking, from the somewhat faraway look in his eyes to the way his tail (a leonine thing, or draconian – draconian, he decides, after a moment of allowing his stare to linger on it) twitches back and forth, which suggests to him that he is deep in contemplation. Septimus doesn’t push him. He waits, his stare almost exceedingly patient. (He is used to having all the time in the world, after all; it has not made Septimus a creature inclined towards instant gratification.)

Finally, Valefor remarks on the character of the gods – that he has never met one, here or in whatever land he was born in, and he doesn’t want to, for they never seem to be up to any good. (He supposes that he has heard of truly benevolent gods far more rarely than troubled gods, full of petty conflict and punishment and trials. Then again, he supposes that mortals would always have an easier time fathoming a god that resembles them than any truly perfect, omnipotent being.)

What Septimus wants to ask is what do you know about gods? What makes you say that? He has never seen one anywhere, so he is sure that he doesn’t know enough to have an opinion; for Valefor to know, he must know something that Septimus does not. However, he decides that line of questioning is rather tactless, and he opts for something more neutral instead. “Where were you born?” Most of the Scarab’s workers seemed to be native to Novus; Valefor, apparently, was not, and he was curious about the land he hailed from.

Perhaps he’d visited, at some point or another.





@Valefor || <3

"Speech!" 





@









AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONS
the two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow


please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence






Played by [PM] Posts: N/A — Threads:
Valefor
Guest
#6

there's no going back
when you cross the line
Perhaps if Septimus had reached out, the boy might have found some comfort in it - -how long had it been since someone had touched him in a comforting way, in the way a friend might? The last contact he’d had was when Vik had tattooed the scarab onto his chest, and that, well -- that hadn’t exactly been friendly, so to speak. The older horse had been downright hostile, truthfully, and he’s somewhat afraid to even approach him again for fear of upsetting him once more.

At least Septimus didn’t seem to mind his company, although he was never entirely sure what exactly the antlered man was thinking -- he seemed comfortable, at least, and he had asked a question, so clearly he must want the conversation to continue…. Oh. It had been that question. It was, at least, marginally better than the question about his magic, he supposed.

“...a place called Caeleste, far from here.” He answers, the tip of his tail twitching once more -- back and forth it jerks, agitated by the mere mention of his homeland, and he cannot help the way that when he says Caeleste, what he hears is Winnifred, what he hears is that he can never go back until he manages to gain control of the curse that he was given. “They had Gods, as well -- but they were aligned to the seasons, not to Time itself, and each of them had specific types of magic that they would hand out to those they deemed worthy.”

He still doesn’t understand why Shishira -- cruel Shishira, god of late winter, god of chaos -- had chosen him to bless. Why had the god picked out one newborn child to give this curse to, to forever throw his life into a spiral, to forever mean that his life would not be his own until he learned to control it?

It was, certainly, a cruel trick.

“Are you from here?”

"Speaking."
credits


@Septimus this is terrible im sorry









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