EATING FIRE IS YOUR AMBITION; TO SWALLOW THE FLAME DOWN, TAKE IT INTO YOUR MOUTH AND SHOOT IT FORTH, A SHORT OR INCANDESCENT TONGUE, A WORD, EXPLODING FROM YOU IN GOLD AND CRIMSON, UNROLLING IN A BRILLIANT SCROLL.
Heavy, heavy
is the climb.
The air is thin and, with winter, the air is bitterly cold. But still, he
climbs,
higher and higher,
until the only trees are wind-bent conifers, and then
only rocks, only snow.
Orestes has never been so high in his life. It is the first time he has felt fear in longer than he knows, with the steep and narrow path, the gut-wrenching cliffsides. The wind, it howls, and howls, and howls, as if a wendigo baying for blood, for flesh, with no body to claim the prize. It whips his mane into a frenzy—it tangles his tail in a whirl of flying hair. Yes, and that wind: it bays and bays and bays.
There is no sun, here. The clouds are too dense at the peak and his magic is snuffed out like a flame in cupped hands. The lack of magic leaves him cold to the quick. But there is something driving him, nearly frantically, upward. His limbs tremble, his breath comes short and quick and still does not seem to reach his blood.
That something is a cat.
Ariel makes short work of the steep cliff-sides, and despite his desert-thin coat, the cold does not penetrate him as it does Orestes. The lion casts haphazard, impatient glances over his shoulder. He does not open his mouth to speak, but hardly needs to. Orestes can sense his judgement and discontent from the slight twitch of his lip.
Must I remind you, Solis is waiting?
Orestes grunts, summiting a steep, ice-slick bank. “I am well aware. Thank you, Ariel. You have told me—“
Apparently not often enough.
And there the sun lion goes; around a bend, up a steeper incline (how is there something steeper?) and bounding up a number of rocks.
Where his paws touch the ice sizzles and melts. Where there is darkness, he burns in brilliant light.
Why is it so dark? Orestes thinks, following with laboured breath. This is nothing like the desert. This is nothing like the sea. His eyes, lungs, nose, mouth—they all sting with the cold.
Ariel chimes in, Perhaps that is why we are climbing the mountain, Orestes. To pray to an angry god.
Orestes snorts, but does not take the bait. Besides, they are nearly there. The ground is beginning to even out, and a pathway cuts through the chest-deep snow. Orestes ducks his head and is pleased to discover the howling wind has abated just enough to allow him to process his thoughts. Ariel has not told him the significance of the journey, only that it is necessary; the desert had been atypically overcast with the coming of winter, and Orestes assumed it was either time to pray for rain or light.
Ariel is out of his sight now; but Orestes does not worry. Something is changing… the path is opening up, and the mountain becomes its own type of offering. He steps from the snow into a soft bed of moss, and listens as the wind seems to grow more and more distant with each passing step. Orestes takes in the scene; the carved stone figures of the gods and the way the peak of the mountain juts at the sky, as if to gut it. Ariel is across the small meadow, bowed before a stone sigil. Orestes trots toward him and places the candle at the base of the statue; with a flick of the lion’s wrist, Ariel has lit it and it burns bright beneath the statue.
How have you gone so very far from the sea? It is Orestes’s first thought, and it feels ungrateful. So he bows. His tattoos gleam cool, metallic silver beneath the clouded sky; he closes his eyes and tries to think of the prayer he ought to say.
Orestes has never prayed.
It is so obvious Ariel feels the need to address it. “Sovereign. You start by addressing your god. Like so.” Orestes cracks an eye as the sun lion lowers into a bow alongside him, head dipped into his shoulder. “Solis, I come before you as a servant…”
Orestes begins to mouth the words—
But abruptly Ariel jerks upright. Orestes follows suit, casting a glance toward the same pathway they had arrived on. All at once, everything becomes very dark; darker then even the overcast sky. Orestes’s bonded yowls, a sound loud and piercing and full of distaste. Orestes cannot stand to look at the Sun Lion: already he is glowing the ferocious, brighter-than-bright colour of a star, neither white nor yellow but pure light.
“Good afternoon, stranger—I do not mean to be rude, but you are disturbing—" Orestes begins, quietly, to the figure that casts such a long shadow. But he trails off—this reaction is atypical for Ariel, as far as he knows, and there is something deeply unsettled building within him.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
As Tenebrae climbs steam curls, languidly, from his skin. He has not slowed in his ascent. Up and up he climbed, driven onward by penance. No longer does he feel his limbs, for they are already bitten numb by the cold. They have worked through the agony of climbing, the bite of the mountain’s icy wind - that sinks deeper than Jack Frost’s grasp, than Boudika’s teeth- He exhales sharply and forces himself up higher, faster, stronger. Tenebrae has not stopped fleeing her since she leapt into the sea.
Though his limbs are numb, the Disciple leaps and bounds, working his way up the mountain like a lion born within its crags. He has lived within such ranges since Caligo called her Stallion’s home. He has been trained to live in such climbs and so, even if he was not chased by the hounds of penitence that snap and claw as his ankles, his breath would never thin.
The snow falls in flurries. It descends white, white upon the ground. His shadows stream behind him, sinking everything into endless black. But before him, above him, is the whitecapped peak of Veneror and he ascends to it as her snow storm kisses the heat from his wearying body.
Snowflakes settle into the whip-wounds along his spine. Oh what bliss their touch is upon such fevered skin! They turn crimson with their touch. They turn to blood-stained water, but in their melting they steal the heat from his skin. They leave icy kisses that sooth the sting as well as any balm.
Twenty, Balliol had said, with his lips drawn into a grim line. Or as many more as you think is befitting of your failure to honour your vow to Caligo. So Tenebrae ascends the mountain with not twenty open lashes parting his sinful flesh but thirty; one for every tooth Boudika pressed into his flesh. Her bite is yet another sorry wound about the young Disciple’s throat and Balliol, Abbot of Caligo’s Disciples, regarded it positively, Another fine warning, Tenebrae. We have all been tempted and paid our prices for it. Let these scars, the Abbot said, of Boudika’s bite, of the marks of Tenebrae’s self-flagellation, be a reminder to you and your brothers of why we pledge ourselves to Caligo and the punishments that come of breaking our pledge.
The darkness pressed her fingers along the broken flesh of Boudika’s bite. It trails like a lament and Tenebrae feels the song of betrayal the darkness sings into his wretched wounds. He teeth had grit together, his breath short, but he keeps his eyes upon his Master and the shadow panther that stalks behind him. To show your brothers of your repentance and that you still hold honour in your vow to Caligo, pilgrimage to Veneror and repent to Caligo before the other gods. Show them that her Disciples are still loyal to her. Uphold your vows to Her and to your brothers Tenebrae and show that you value us, our values, our goddess by returning to us within 72 hours.
And so Tenebrae steps at last from snow to moss at the open mouth of the gods’ temple upon the 36th hour of a 48 hour journey. It was not just a pilgrimage but an ordeal designed to bring him to exhaustion and beyond. Darkness seethes with his mood, it claws its way before him, billowing out into the temple. Oh how easy it would be to renounce Caligo then! How blissful to rest and never return to the Disciples, to cast aside his destiny and find whatever girl he chose and look without guilt, to love a girl other than his goddess…
But Tenebrae does not. His love of Caligo burns, deep, deep, deep. He craves her like his tongue craved water. He might dare to stop, beside the water of Oriens’ temple and drink of his font. He does. He comes to the first and lowers his lips to drink. The water is cold and holy and blissful upon his parched throat. His gashes twinge with longing and he would bathe, if he could, if there was enough water there.
He is still consumed with need, with assauging his thirst when light blooms. It grows and grows and grows and beats back his darkness. Tenebrae lifts his mouth from where it desecrates Oriens’ sanctuary and turns his gaze upon the source of Solis’ light.
There a lion stands, much like the one that stood sentinel during Solterra’s interregnum. That lion was all the Disciples spoke of in the time it took for a new king to ascend the Solterran throne. It was the return of a god, the essence of Solterra and here, here it stands within Veneror. It glows like the sun, its heat evaporating the holy water that still clings to Tenebrae’s lips.
“I have not eaten for days.” Tenebrae murmurs as he looks upon the lion and his eyes - soft as moonlight when he entered - begin to glow bright, bright, bright as he swallows down the cat’s light. Shadows bloom, they meet with the light smothering, choking, dissolving.
“I did not know such a feast awaited me here.” He breathes, his shadows undulating with his words. The Stallion Made to Swallow the Sun, steps forward and darkness curves a smile along his lips. Maybe this is close to what Boudika felt, to scent his blood his skin upon the air to want, to need, to eat, to live. Maybe they were not different at all, this monk and the kelpie-girl. But Boudika is so far from his mind - at last. This is what he was made for. How could he ever need a girl when all of him was darkness against light?
The Sovereign’s words cut through the warring air where darkness and light meet in blistering red and shattering gold. Tenebrae slowly turns his gaze from the Solterran’s lion to drink in the King himself. “Forgive me, your Majesty.” Tenebrae murmurs repentant as his skull dips, his half moon sigils blazing light.
@Orestes ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
12-18-2019, 07:06 AM - This post was last modified: 12-18-2019, 07:09 AM by Tenebrae
