[AW] The Unconquered Maid

[Judal]

The past was a living, breathing monster, a thief in the night, bedding with the horrors that consumed the mind, the mad desires that ruined the soul, and the phantom pains that warred against the body. How long had the past clung on, long after the trials it had given him faded like dust in a fading field, life taken, and given, with the ease of an uncaring custodian? He could still remember the agony of the leather whip searing like a hot rod against his flesh, could still taste the iron in his mouth, blood pooling against his tongue when he dared not cry out. Could still feel the cold of his body, laying there in the rain drenched earth, its humid, sweltering touch seeping against his sides, a slug in his nose that threatened to suffocate him right there where he was fated to perish. That night, that moment in time when he had finally given up, finally broke down, repeated itself like a never ending mockery, a memory to last a lifetime, whispering that he had failed. It was those monsters that never went away; self-doubt, self-disgust, self-fear. To possibility that the damage that lingered just beneath the surface was to great an endeavor to take on, and the truth of the matter was that at times, he didn't even want to try.  Some may call him weak, and perhaps they were right, but the trauma of the past was a sickly wound that had been left to fester, and with the promise of treatment, there was no end in sight as to whether it would ever look anew. Perhaps that was to be his fate, to lay consumed in the memories until they were all he ever was, fixated and vengeful in the hate that ruled his very mind. How true that thought was, his expression bitter as iron cold eyes gazed out over the vistas, the mists rising like a living sea in the valleys of stone. Whenever he remembered the past, it made him sad, made his strength falter, only to bleed into a rage that festered on the ugly taint of self-hatred. He neither loved nor forgave himself, ruled by the memories, fractured as they were, of grand warriors that was meant to be his fate. An Arnor who had knelt where none had done so before. He could not bare to return to them, couldn't even if he had wanted to, and perhaps that was the most bitter thing that lived in his uncertainty. He could not remember the way. It both broke his heart and gave relief to his being to know he would never walk those fantasy halls, those places made of gilded starlight and silver glass that lived on immortal in his very being. The Arnor plains were a simple place, free of the complexities of the world beyond, remained untarnished as the memories fell away like water escaping his grasp. Judal had accepted this new reality he led, even as he attempted to give up on the past. She had pleaded him to do so, had raged and struck against him even when his mind was black with the ghouls of the past. He could not move on, could not live if he didn't let it go. And so he tried, he tried so hard, and failed every time. Incapable of looking upon her, for surely she would know, he came to these steep cliffs every time, gazing out across the realm of Night, watching as the color was leeched from this beautiful, blessedly ignorant place. Watched at the moon rose and set white fire into everything. Even the most simple of forest realm made a dream in the light of her radiance, and his darkness. It was never enough, but it was enough to soothe the most persisting of thoughts. As all Arnor did, he gravitated to the mountain holds, feeling the sharp stone beneath his hooves, the strain in his legs as he dared to climb higher, higher still, cloven hooves cutting into the rocky soil. The exersion was exhilarating, as the air thinned and his mind calmed, taken away from the sounds and scents of the masses gathered in the court of night. They were not his kin; this was not his home, and yet, there were times he wished it was, that he could be a product of this easy life they lived, with simple conflicts and harsh politics. And that was perhaps the reason why he hated them the most. "Speech."

AW thread for the lil damaged babe of the Night

[Rhoswen]

A pale wraith was she; spilling over the moonlit mountains, drinking in the frigid alpine air with lips kissed by Solis. Solis - who had given her shelter when Calligo could not. Rhoswen knew she should not have returned, again, to Denocte. It tore at her heart: this conflict, which truly was not a conflict at all. For she had always been a forest fire; her mother had seen her prophecy in the flames beneath a winter sun. There was no question to be toyed with in the cyclonic synapses of her mind - there was only truth and weakness. For it was such weakness that drew Rhos back to the land of her birth, back to the mountains. It was the gentle pitch of her mother's lullaby humming in her ears as the sunlight died a dazzling death upon the horizon, shielding her against the dark. Because a wolf could never turn it's back upon the moon; because she would always be a lover of the night even if her heart had been sold to the sun. It was impossible to fully purge herself of the blood which rang faint still in her veins, for it seemed no matter how hard she tried - the sinew and thread attaching her to Denocte refused to be severed completely.

She was Solterran, that was clear in the wildfire in her clouded eyes. Her gaze was an oil-slicked ocean set alight. Her tongue a flickering spark of molten arsenic. Her heart an organ pumping only fire and sunlight. And yet ... ? Rhoswen sighed, her shoulders drooping as though the weight of an entire universe had chosen to rest upon shoulders so dainty it seemed they might break. Break, however, they did not. She stood tall upon an empty plateau, bearing the burden of her quiet strife, finding comfort only in the freezing air; Rhos almost broke into a sickly smile then - it was as though Calligo was trying to push her treacherous daughter from her clutches. As the thought danced like a broken record in her mind, the sound of falling scree echoed into the silence. She stiffened, her swanlike neck arching as she turned toward the footsteps thudding closer up the mountainside. Rhoswen was not frightened in the least; she knew better than anyone that Night folk were widely misjudged as dangerous creatures; people tended to be afraid of what they did not know. Yet still, if it was a stranger and not someone she had grown up with there was no doubt they would be hostile to a Solterran woman intruding upon Denocte soil. For once, Rhos just did not have the energy to argue.

@judal helloooo 

[Judal]

As much as he fell into this fixation he held upon his past, this inability to let go, there was an old ire to be found in the stallion of the old lines. An idle mind drew accursed thoughts; a working body banished all evil. These were words he had come to know in the pits, the wisdom given by the elders to had lived lives long into the twilight hours, those who had endured through the cunning of a mind that focused on one thing; survival. This life was but one of many, a trial to rise to enlightenment, so the scarred fool had said, a man respected for no other reason than his age. An accomplishment it was to live so long in the blight of a masters hand. Judal had always believed his words folly; a delusion forced upon them to keep the masses docile, to keep the chained bound to their purpose. It was by the heat of his own resentment that he had thrived in the struggle, working day in, and day out, his thoughts whirling in a chaotic collision of hatred and desire. Perhaps this though, this poison that ruined his ability to find joy in life, was the very thing the stranger had always fought to oppose. What was freedom when one could not even enjoy it? Sometimes he would scoff, his heart aching even as whispers gave cruel reality; there was no peace in the life he lived. There would be no renewal, no great cascade of water to cleanse the dirt from his wounds. They would fester, they would rot, and one day, they would kill him.  This, he could accept, or at least, acknowledge. And yet, as he gazed out over the vast lands beneath the banner of the night, Judal found a tentative contentment in the quiet, in the darkness that veiled the great steeps he wandered. These mountains had become his own in a way, distant from the halls that stood pledged to the sovereign line, yet another man to claim himself above others. There was no love to be had in this place he had come upon, these borders that had crossed his path in the wanderings since his arrival here, only that it offered a moments reprieve from the silence. And that was surely the one true fear he had, those hours when the shadows were so dark that they stretched over all things, engulfing even the moon and sun, leaving the night an absolute. Those hours when the murmurs of the herd fell silent, and the winds grew tired in their relentless sighs. Those hours when the memories began to resurface. This was why these mountains held a comfort for this damaged heart, her shrieks a constant, never ending in her battle cry. It drowned out everything else, it shielded him in her cold breath, and allowed his eyes to glimpse all that she could offer him. A beautiful place, one that was untouched by the dunes of gilded sand far to the west. A place where no familiar faces could be seen. To see with eyes unclouded gave him those comforts he dared to take in the deepest hour of the night, ones he had learned to finally accept, even in the gratitude of his only company. He wasn't alone though. The scent that painted the strangers hide was the first to signal her presence, a phantom wraith from the lowlands. Silver eyes, from contemplative to sheer ice turned, the balding mark upon his face a beam of moonlight against the bleakness of the rocks. Each strike of his hooves sounded sharp against his ears, each breath swollen, exhaling from flared nostrils, taking in the smells that came up like an offering. The temptation of this intrusion upon his solitude brought the mountain blood from his perch, corded legs straining to keep him steady, a tension in his girth, his hips, his spine. When she appeared, a pale figure upon the rise of earth and rubble, Judal paused in his steps, crown rising, tilting, so he could see her more clearly. Another breath and he was certain she was no member of this court he had befallen. "Why are you here?" he murmured, a detached tone portraying his utter disinterest in her answer. "Come to pray to your beloved Denocte." That wretched fantasy.

@Rhoswen YO

[Reichenbach]

 —   R E I C H E N B A C H   —

"Rhoswen!"

The call came through the night like a song, low and melodic but filled with a vibrancy that sounded chaotic amidst the stars. His body slid and pulled over the mountains with something akin to ease, though the rate of his climb had his muscles straining and bulging underneath his mahogany skin. He hadn't expected Rhoswen to return to swiftly, and in fact he wouldn't have even known she was upon Denoctian soil if one of his crows hadn't whispered it so. There was no fear in his heart for her - Rhoswen was Solterran through and through, and he knew it. Calligo didn't whisper to Rhoswen as she always had to him, for while the long-legged girl was wild, she was not filled with stars and shadows but flame and heat. 

"Rhoswen!"

He called again, coins clinking wildly around his handsome head as he climbed, ebony curls flailing around his face chaotically. He paused a moment, breathing smoothly as he filled his deep chest with crisp mountain air. The sounds of Denocte swarmed around them and The Night King turned back to face his city, alive and bursting with activity now that the night had fallen. Music and laughter echoed, distant but beautiful. He grinned, dancing neatly upon his hard hooves as he made to continue - then paused, cocking his head as he listened. 

Voices.

They were near the pass. 

Reichenbach slipped from shadow to shadow like a wraith, almost invisible in the heavy dark. Rhoswen's voice he knew - could have recognised anywhere. The other... it held a cold apathy that Reichenbach couldn't help but stiffen at. Was he insulting Reich's sister? The thought set alive a fierce burning within his chest and belly, argent eyes flashing as he drew ever closer. 

"Is there anything wrong with that?"

He asked coolly, sliding in beside and slightly behind his flame-haired sister. 

---

ooc; omg protective Reich! @Judal @Rhoswen

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[Rhoswen]

The moonlight cloaked her in a dress that was almost godly, decorating her skin with a wash of Denoctian silver that was utterly unparalleled. Perhaps that was why she had returned; because the night was a different creature here. It was a living breathing entity - saturated with mystery, clandestinity and cold charm. It felt wrong that her solitude should be broken; it made her skin crawl and her lip curl, though even with the lines of her brow furrowed Rhoswen could not wipe the beauty from her face. As a youth she had often been the object of people's desires, and she had grown tired of the shallow lust climbing at the walls of her keep. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Tiresome. She did not resent the looks her parents had handed down, but sometimes it was an inconvenience, a hindrance almost. That wasn't to say she had never exploited it herself - you had to make do with the tools in your pocket, no?

At last the stranger poured into her line of sight, melding through the darkness toward the level perch upon which she stood - gazing down at him through eyes of burnished ash. Her first thought was that he might have been taller than any man, or woman, she had ever met, for despite the fortress of night he loomed high - imposing and aloof. Rhoswen did not flinch, did not falter. She ate up his gaze with her own dusky-eyed flame - granite against ivory - breathing in his scent long enough to realise they had not crossed paths before. A newcomer. She might have smiled then, lips almost parting to flash milkywhite teeth, but instead she did nothing at all. A harsh highland breeze lifted her thick auburn hair, spiralling it upward before it settled down to frame her marble-carved features once more. Rhoswen was not a girl made of softness, nor malleable design; someone had once said she was too sharp to touch, and they would not have been wrong. Each line of her body was more pointed than the next - a girl made of glowing razor blades. 

"Why are you here? Come to pray to your beloved Denocte." 

Exactly what she had been waiting for: Rhos had seen his haughty derision from the moment they'd met, it'd only been a matter of time before he bit - detached or not. Her tongue struck like a bullwhip, "I would tell you, stranger," cracking against the sky, "if the matter of my worship happened to be any business of yours." A breath, a moment, a life time.

And then something quite unexpected happened, or not - considering the land upon which they stood. Reichenbach's hooves clanged out loudly, his familiar scenting filling her nares as he shouldered past the horned man to his right and stood close enough that her shoulder comfortably touched his. "Is there anything wrong with that?" His response clearly aimed at the other man's disdainful query. A wave of deja vu gushed over the red girl's head, her ears lacing backward as she was transported back a year - or two - or three. This exact situation was the summary of Rhoswen's entire upbringing; just her luck that she should be born into the most protective brotherhood Denocte had perhaps ever seen. With a flick of her tail, Rhos sent a knowing glance toward Reich, her eyes softening a fraction before they were turned once more toward the unknown stallion. 

"My turn. Who even are you?" Amusement hummed at the back of her throat, impossible to read mind, as she knew she might've been eliciting a response similar to her own. Fuck it, they were here now, why not play along?

@judal @reichenbach <3333  

[Judal]

She was of fire, of the life blood that filled the air and earth beneath his feet; the heat that rolled across his back like the brush of silk, smothering and tempting in its addiction. What would befall the serf who wandered into the desert, his back bare of the necessities to live, so enraptured by the beauty of crystal silver, shimmering in the distance, a mirage to play upon the eye. The absolute power that came with the rising sun, full and bright, casting out evil and shadow, the darkness that was set the villain in their fine retelling. It was almost a fevered mockery to his thoughts, the way in which the wind tousled her mane, the fine flaming locks a spider of fracturing light, curving over the slope of her sinuous throat, rolling as the cindered clouds of the rising sun. It was all so romantic. His expression, dull in its apathy, the cold, polished steel of his eyes watching, always watching, catching and devouring the fainted of twitches across his hide, even while amidst the tresses black and silver, his mind scoffed at the superficial guise they all held. The eyes that looked as if they stood above him, righteous in her scrutiny of him, as he was in her. They would speak of impressions in those first moments of encounters, the vital piece that would define the picture painted in one's mind, a snap shot of what beauty or beast stood before them. It was difficult to amend foul wrongs, more so when one made no efforts to do so. In short, he resented her already, the damaged part of his memories leaping forward, twisting her beautiful picture into all the other maids that had hung off the arms of their jeering lords. Polished little birds who thought the world owed them a favor. His crown, tilted from where he had set his eye upon her shifted than, rising, the Obsidian spire of his horn a space in their meeting that devoured the silver light, leaving nothing to refract upon the disk of his face. Attentive to the wild games the peaks would play upon the naive, the stone underfoot long conquered by water and air, Judal cleared the distance, his nimble legs claiming the slope between them until at last, he stood on level ground. The zealot gales were in turmoil, thrust into open sky here, where the two halves of the mountain made it whole, buffering against the shorn length of his mane, pulling the long threads bound against the arch of his shoulder. "I could care less of which grand entity you whisper your deepest desires to when you lay your head down to sleep. Though, I must applaud you. You're are the first to not swoon your amorous devotion to revered voices." His tongue charred with the barbs he returned in favor, the fire in his chest suddenly flaring in typical Arnorian fashion, amused by her ire that seemed to live on the edges of her body. Taunt, held in perpetual tension as if she were prepared to forever defend her case. And yet, before their game could continue, the shadows came to life, and the king of the dark appeared, away from his carnival of lights and fine wines. It was that very festival that Judal had made for the pass to escape, the silence of deserted pines a comfort, the cold and open views of the highlands more so. A spy who listened and jumped forth. It seemed their fair king was a shadow-walker. The slighter stallion passed, his body awrithe with gilded gold, spun like fine threads so fair, they seemed more apart of him than a mere vanity. They sang with his steps, the gypsy king, gone where the wind may take him. To her side, defending the 'interloper.' Interesting. Wrong? There was plenty wrong here, his slips finally splitting away from the flat affect he had kept like a solemn mantra, a coiling bark of a laugh. "To which do you refer? Her presence here on these mountains? Or her sealed lip at her religious choices? Neither truly. Though I remember something in the laws stated to me in my visit to the city that strangers were to be escorted, and not left to wander freely in the great kingdom of the Night Court." Unless she is a painted spy returned from her long voyage. The fire woman didn't not taste like part of this land... or why the king held so close to her, coming to her aid without true reason. Familiar with these hills, confident in her place and stance. A woman who had seemed as large as her vitality for but a moment until the male had come to lean over her like a devout protector of the fair maid. She suddenly didn't seem that impressive. At least she had the spine to speak for herself. Judals' mithril gaze turned to her, a shine there in his expression, fading as it was, the amusement whisked away as he fought off what almost felt like disappointment. "What a dull question," his eyes slid away from her, taking in the lights just barely visible from their rise, the fairytale walls of the night realm come to life with the freedom from the occupation of the sun. "Names tell you so little about another. Its like... telling the blind the color of the sky. They call me Judal. And just who are you?" throwing the words back at her, finding that he really didn't care to know the answer. She had told him already who she was, just as he was in this moment. The jolt of fire quenched, like an ember left to the cold, open sky. "Speech."

@Rhoswen @Reichenbach

[Reichenbach]

 —   R E I C H E N B A C H   —

He could sense the disapproval pouring off of his sister, she'd always hated her brothers over-protectiveness - always. She'd snarled at them more than a few times when they'd been younger, snapped that she was plenty capable of looking after herself (and truth be told, she was smarter than Reichenbach), but her elder brothers had rarely listened. For Reichenbach, the family that had adopted him was more precious than the last drop of water in a barren land - and Rhoswen was the only one left to protect. So he took her knowing glance with a slick, swift grin, half-apologetic, half "what did you expect". His lips itched to curl back at the harsh laugh that escaped from Judal's throat, at the cool irreverence with which he intoned their laws.

Truth be told, Reichenbach was not well-trained in the art of ruling or politics, and as such his Kingdom was as he was: wild, a little bit chaotic... but jovial and relaxed. Crime had a very fluid nature in Denocte - which was perhaps why the King of Thieves had been promoted in the first place, and why Reichenbach was being schooled in his own laws. 

"She's no stranger. She was born in these lands. She's my sister." 

His words did not roll so fluidly off of his tongue as Judal's, there was no cool, vast intellect hidden beneath his musical voice. Because he'd been about to tell a lie: she was born with shadows in her blood and Calligo's stars in her eyes, just as I. That was not the truth. Rhoswen had been born with the shadows burned from her veins by Solis, perhaps as a cruel dig at his tempestuous sister, stealing one of her own, making her ache for sunlight. 

Judal.

Reichenbach watched the two of them, argent eyes burning with starfire, shadows clinging to his skin as his temper grumbled. Let him talk - Reich wanted to find out more about this Judal, and if he opened his mouth now he might not have the right thing to say. 

---

ooc; fff rank post, sorry for the wait! @Judal @Rhoswen

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[Rhoswen]

Rhoswen burns quietly, subtly, as this horned man stranger drills words into the night; words of animosity and ire perforating the cool clinking air. To the redhead, he is infinitesimal - an atom, small and paltry. So she pays him no heed, and does not bite when he growls; a rarity for she, a wolf, no longer a child of constellations but instead of the indigo emerald aurora dancing upon a southern night sky. For once she is arctic, a geyser simmering, and ruthlessly she smiles - "Well then, refrain from asking questions if you do not care for the answers. It's rather simple - not unlike yourself, I'm sure."

Rhoswen catches her brother's grin, his teeth a white torch against the dark, and an inaudible sigh descends from her lips. True, mind, what had she expected? One of his beloved Crows must have seen or heard or smelled her intrusion regardless of the festivities below, and when was the last time Reich had forsaken her company? The Kings words of her affirmation brought Rhoswen's waning attention back to the current event, her ashen eyes tunnelling under the skin of the stranger as he deemed her query to be dull. What a piece of work. I'm sure they call you other things too. Her resentment toward him only grew; blooming and swelling - burning away her cool indifference so that her volcanic fire could spread once more. "Did I ask for your name, fool? I asked who you were, perhaps instead I should have asked just who do you think you are?" 

Long sanguine curls bounce as the girl lifts her head irritably, "I think we both know you, again, hold no interest in my answer. Why should I waste my breath? In any case, with some luck I won't have the misfortune of bumping into you again." Rhoswen seared and blistered, anger twisting her ribs so that they convulsed and broke beneath the weight of her indignation. She had come here to find some semblance of peace - this Judal had ruined any chance of that. Perhaps she was being a little abrasive, but as long as the heavy burden of stress bore down upon her shoulders, patience would be in short supply. 


@judal @reichenbach sorry it took sooooo long and also /grumpy/ rhos