"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
07-22-2017, 07:20 PM (This post was last modified: 07-22-2017, 07:29 PM by The Underneath.)
Zenith, you have been eliminated for posting after the deadline. You stumbled upon an unseen portal while running towards the lake and were teleported back to Beqanna. For one real life month, you will see the world around you upside-down.
Diorae, you have been eliminated. Your post was beautifully written but gas seemed repetitive. You stepped upon uneven ground and it swallowed you whole, teleporting you back to Beqanna. For one real life month, you will experience searing, blinding pain from both the gas that you inhaled and from the gas that touched your skin.
The Underneath: The Lake
The lake is ahead of you.
It is eerily quiet and still - there is not a single ripple across its sullen surface.
The air is thick, but the darkness has seemingly faded away long its edges, and a vivid glow rises from the shallow waters' edge, illuminating the water and all that surrounds it. Beneath its crystalline surface, there lay silt, clay and small, smooth stones - all dark in color, giving it a rather glassy but insidious appearance. There is a thick fog hovering over the surface, wafting outward towards the edges as if it were created by some unseen force hidden away within the center of the mist.
Softly, a gentle crooning shatters the ringing silence.
A low hum, rising into the echo of a beautiful, enchanting melody, sung from the very breast of its creator, shrouded in the dense haze. At first, it is seemingly harmless, soothing and tranquil - the first semblance of serenity within an otherwise dark and dangerous world.
But slowly, quietly, it changes - its call more insistent, with the invisible vines of its mesmerizing cadence seeping into your mind, wrapping itself around your deepest desires; your carefully guarded skeletons - unlocked with its delicate hand - a perfectly crafted key for an otherwise untouchable box of secrecy. Though the lake is hushed and still, the surface is pliable and not unlike walking across soft, sifting sand.
You cannot fight it; it is drawing you to it.
You are powerless to hide from it, to resist it.
The song is intricate, sung from the heart, and true - calling to you.
A familiar voice singing to touch your soul, to your rapidly beating heart.
As the fog is parting for you with each uneasy step over the water, who do you see?
You are in Hyaline.
The lake is shrouded in fog, and you can walk on the water. You still have dragon vision, but it is no longer pitch black.
You must go toward the voice, and when the fog parts, describe who your heart longs for - who do they see? Their mother? Father? Sibling? Lover? Child? What are they thinking? What are their emotions? Make me care.
I am aware there is a blind contestant - the siren's call can penetrate the mind, to guide your character to "envisioning" who might be before them. It's up to you to be creative with it.
The figure that they see are in full color, and exactly as they might appear in Beqanna, but they are completely still.
End the post with your character looking at their loved one - nothing more.
Jah-Lilah all but falls down the hill, still focused on making it to the lake. She stumbles at the bottom, and it is only then she pauses to look behind her. One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Three heartbeats. It seems she's lost her pursuers for now, both the real and the imagined. She shudders involuntarily, not sure which of them was worse. She glances at her torn up rear leg, her whole right hind quarter a bloody mess. She pulls her hoof up towards her stomach, then out away from her body. It hurts, but she hasn't seemed to lose any mobility. That's a relief. She snorts, looking around her. Her vision remains the same, fitting she should have this 'dragon vision' in the land of the Dragon King, Amet. She can't sense him or his once ever-present sib, Iset, anywhere. The craggy mountains surround her, ushering her forward, to the serene lake at the heart of Hyaline. She ventures forth, noting that the world around her is no longer shrouded in gloom.
Hello darkness, my old friend.
One heartbeat. She thought she'd heard something, but it's not the body-lock inducing noises she'd heard before. Was that...singing? She creeps forward, the body of water is unnerving. It's still. And not like, still and peaceful, 'I wanna sit by the water and read' still. Unnaturally still. She's never seen water like this, it's like glass, smooth, motionless. It's wrong. As she nears the edge, she can see the bed of shale and stones beneath it's surface, and it's a confusing picture to her. The thick, heavy fog that rests just above the 'water' seems to be the source of the light in the entire valley. No, upon closer inspection the light is radiating from the perimeter of the water, all around the basin. The mist was playing tricks on her eyes, only reflecting the light and making it seem it was bursting from the fog. Her vision allowed her to see unimaginable distances, but she still couldn't see though the smog.
I've come to talk with you again.
It's wrong. Everything about this place continues to be wrong, agitating, dishonest. That voice though, it IS singing. She couldn't discern any lyrics, just an enchanting little melody being murmured in the valley. Do you know this song, Jah? It's so familiar, isn't it? She finds herself inching forward, craning her neck to try to see where the voice is coming from. She steps forward, expecting to feel a cool wetness on her hoof, but is greeted instead with semi-solid ground below. The lake continues to look like water, but feels like the shore. It gives a bit, and she lowers her muzzle to touch it. No splash, no ripple, no reflection. Her ears perk and she raises her head, listening. She took another cautious step forward, reaching for the haze in front of her, but it parts light the Red Sea did for Moses. My little bohemian rhapsody cocks her head, strangely intrigued. She walks down the path towards the center of the lake.
A vision softly creeping in.
It's so familiar. Her confidence builds the further she goes from the bank, the echo of the song reverberating louder and louder in her ears. Then she sees him. He looks exactly as he did the day they met. He is tall for a unicorn, a little over sixteen hands, and well-muscled. Battle scars are peppered all over his body, but they only make him look more like the Spartan he is. His hooves were cloven, strong, sharp. He wore small tufts of fur on his fetlocks and ears. He had a beautiful dark, silky beard. His tail was that of a lion's, with the hair on the end matching his onyx mane. His eyes were the most beautiful shade of honey she had ever seen, even now. A long, spiraling horn of ivory jutted from his brow, and he held it up high, as if it weighed nothing. He was so proud standing motionless atop the water across from her, it took her breath away.
Left it's seeds while I was sleeping.
He looks exactly as he did the day they met. They had met across a lake not unlike this one, had they been in normal Beqanna. She was the vagabond wanderer she is now, only younger and with less wisdom, he the young heir to the throne of the Valley unicorns. His people were strict, straight-edge, and thought very highly of themselves. They took a warrior's pilgrimage each summer to initiate their new braves, and it was on this journey across the prairie that their paths had crossed. Their eyes had met and they had zinged. Instantly they had imprinted on one another, and promptly traveled the length of the grassland together. He came to her only in the cover of night, his tribe thought of her kind as renegades and outcasts, creatures that had turned their back on the Earth-Mother. They couldn't have been more wrong. Nonetheless, he felt he had to creep to her in absolute secrecy. Three months Jah-Lilah spent trailing their band of prospects, just so at night her and her consort could be together, and it was worth every step. At the end of his trip, on their last night together, they had done the soul tie ceremony, and he proceeded to ask her to return to his valley with him. She refused, she could never leave the Mare's Back, just as he could never leave his lowland. They had parted ways, but each month under the new moon they'd meet and rekindle their flame, for years and years. Until one time he didn't come. She sought him out, tracked him to hid Valley and to the cliffs of the peryton. She had found him, crumpled and broken at the bottom of their canyon. It crushed her. She never was the same since, my little red mare.
The vision that was planted in my brain still remains.
They had done the soul tie ceremony. They had been bound for life. But he was dead...wasn't he? She had seen him, a mess of blood and bones, yet here he was. He was not grotesque at all. He was magnificent. She struggled to catch her breath, but this time it was not due to an everlasting darkness threatening to smother her. Her heart physically ached as she willed her feet to continue towards him, all pain in her hind end forgotten instantly. Her mouth was dry, and she was light-headed. How...how could this be Jah-Lilah? This can't be life, this can't be love. Her knees feel weak as she recalled the rumors that came to her on the wind after his death. He had went mad, he had been tricked, he had been enchanted by a red magicker from the plains. He had killed himself, hurled his own body from the top of that plateau because of a wytch. Because of her, they had said in the vale. She hadn't even known they were aware of her. She loves him still, she realizes as she nears him. He continues to sing mysteriously(he never was one for singing lullabies, he always left that to her) and somehow he is relaxing her mind. Her conscious was feeling free, and all the passion she ever felt for him comes washing over her like rain.
The air begins to thin as she takes broken step after broken step towards the still glassy surface of the lake. The suppressing darkness begins to fade, her vision clearing as she closes the distance between herself and what she hopes are healing waters. It’s the best she’s been able to see the entire time she’s been in this strange alternate reality. The lake is glowing, wispy ethereal vapor grazing it’s surface and rising towards the sky. The mist is filled with light, keeping the darkness at bay. Ciri halts right before her front hooves touch the edge of the water, her silvery eyes narrowing as she examines this possible new treachery.
The water is too still, not a single ripple breaks it’s surface. She can make out inky silt between dark smooth stones as she stares past her reflection into the water’s depths. Refocusing on her mirror self, seeing the criss cross patterns of talons along her face, the deeper wounds across her chest and along her shoulders. There is a long pause as she stares down at this wreckage of a mare, lost in thought. It takes her a moment to register that once again the silence has been broken. Once again, she is no longer alone.
It starts as a faint humming, a mere whisper. Her ears swivel forward as she strains to see past the fog. Nothing. The humming is now rising into a soft beautiful voice. A gentle soothing lullaby that reaches across the lake to her and dances around soft curved ears invitingly. She can feel herself relaxing involuntarily, her tired muscles threatening to throw her headfirst in the lake as her mind thickens with the song. It is so beautiful, calling her to come forward. Find me it seems to say, unspoken words weaving between the graceful sound as it grows louder.
Slowly she raises her left front leg, hesitating for a moment as it hovers over the still water and then gently comes down to break it’s surface. But it doesn’t break. Instead her hoof lightly comes down with a soft chink as it meets a solid surface. A pause, the spell broken by this incredible moment when this world once again defies nature itself. The voice that beckons her forward seems to become excited, intensifying, and the spell locks back in on her. Her body seems almost weightless, the pain merely a nagging thought in the back of her mind. Her head is filled with the music and nothing else.
The other hoof tenderly touches the surface and once again it does not give way. She does this twice more until she is standing on it’s top. It feels like the soft sand of the beach and yet she can still see straight through it, the water as smooth as the rocks below. It doesn’t make sense but nothing in this place makes sense. The song is becoming more agitated but it’s a beautiful agony, filled with grand highs and tumultuous lows. She doesn’t understand the words, a foreign language to her ears and yet at the same time she feels like she understands everything. Now her steps are not so hesitant, ambling forward into the light. She pushes past the curling fog, letting it embrace her until her body can no longer be seen by anyone who may be observing from the hills behind.
The fog is thick at her sides but thins towards it’s center. The voice grows louder and louder as she surges forward, searching for it’s owner. The words wrap it’s way around her heart, infiltrate it and take root. There are tears stinging the corner of her eyes and she can’t fully grasp why. A soft gasp escapes her lips, filled with a sudden longing but for what?
Before her is a small shape starting to form from the mist. Closer she comes, the shape of a foal it seems. A few more steps and she can see a dark smokey coat not unlike her own but free of the marks that now adorn hers. Another step, silvery eyes that swirl and roll break through the thinning clouds and she halts. Frozen, unable to process what she is seeing before her. The air thins of it’s own accord, the figure becoming quite clear. The filly is still, only a few months old, but it’s mouth is open as the song continues. It’s swirling gaze focused on her’s. It holds Ciri in place. This can’t be…. But it is. It’s her. Ciri as the child she had once been.
A vague memory breaks through the thick storm that has taken over her mind. She remembers a white mare that lovingly nuzzles her and graces her with a name. She remembers a place called the Dale with beautiful woods and meadows that she use to explore. She remembers kind faces, horses that cared about her. But the memory that most impresses upon her and forces itself forward, is before birth. The place before she was made into this form and thrusted into the world she had called home. Ciri had always been one of time and space. For awhile the silver of her eyes had swirled and contained a heaviness not seen in one so young. While her body had been full of youth, her eyes told stories far beyond years she should even be able to recall. An old soul comes another faint voice that recedes back into the song.
Ciri was only three now but time plays tricks when one ages. The chord between herself and that memory of infinite space and time had been lost. And yet now, as she stares at the singing foal, she remembers. The palpations of her heart seem to increase, her heart frantic in her chest. She had been wandering in darkness for so long that she had forgotten who she was and where she had come from. The spell grasps her heart, squeezes her lost longing free from it’s veins. Hot tears escape from her, unable to stop looking at what she use to be. What she had forgotten.
How long has she been lying here, crumpled at the water’s edge bleeding? It seems like an eternity. Her atrophied muscles quiver from the exertion and her lungs boil with a heated pain. She doesn’t want to move; for a moment, she wonders if she even can.
The sound of her leg dragging across the grass reassures her that she isn’t paralyzed, that she still has fight left in her, but how much? Her meager strength is diminishing, but she musters her courage and resilience to stand. It isn’t a pretty sight, but what would she know? She has never seen beauty or ugly – only darkness. At first, Atrani stumbles. Her body almost collapses again, but like a newborn fawn, she spreads her legs for an exaggerated base of support.
And she whimpers for the first time ever.
She refused to show weakness when mother died, when she turned against father and his lover, when father bid her farewell. Almost like she was practiced, Atrani was able to mask everything behind an empty expression, never letting others know how her heart shattered.
But now, she weakens. The stinging of her wounds is a new thing entirely. She has experienced emotional pain, but physical? No, father would never have allowed it. Never.
The corded muscles in her jaw clench before she sucks in a sharp breath. Prepared to escape the water’s edge, Atrani takes pause as a song drifts into her ears. Such a serene melody it is; it stops her and makes moving away an impossible thought. Tilting her head, she listens for the source, drawn by an unfamiliar hymn. She almost asks who is there, but her lips are pursed shut as though entranced by the music. It croons for her to follow as its tendrils seep deep into the crevices of her mind. Having been turned away from the lake, she now faces it. That’s where it’s coming from. Water was there, she knows. Only moments prior did she crawl from its shallows, and yet she hears not even a ripple.
What world is this? What cruel joke is this?
There is no resisting the melody as it enraptures her entire being. It caresses her like a mother, or even a sweet lover. Atrani cannot help but to follow, never realizing that she is walking across the pond. How would she know? She cannot see where her feet fall; she can only feel how the grass that tickled her heels now recedes. It’s replaced by the cling of fog as it wraps around her body and legs, but she hardly takes notice as the hymns continue without pause. As she inches closer, the melody strengthens and it echoes through her. Every other thought is gone; there is only this honeyed song.
But with the song, there is an image. It’s far away at first, a blob that she doesn’t quite understand. What is imagery? Darkness, a heavy blackness, is all she has ever known, and yet her mind is concocting colors for the first time ever.
Closer still she walks and it’s as though the image is approaching her, too. It didn’t notice her at first. Its back faced Atrani, but then a raspy breath escaped her lungs and the figure turned its head. A side glance finds her before it pivots entirely to see her.
”This can’t be real,” she whispers as she never stops walking, ”because I cannot see. I’ve never been able to see.” The muscles in her eye sockets twitch hopefully, and she imagines what it would be like to blink, but to no avail. Perhaps a wiser horse would have turned away, startled by the strangeness of it all, but Atrani’s curiosity overwhelms her just as much as the melody in her head. The distance between her and the figure almost seems to close. She can hear her heart pounding in her ears and rising in her throat.
There are bony protrusions, stained alabaster from the sun. They run along his body in a grotesque way, and yet she finds its oddly beautiful. He is emaciated underneath that, the edges of his face pulled sharply. His legs are adorned with a beautiful twilight, the stars sparkling as they would in the night sky. Confused, Atrani stares in utter silence, wondering who this is that the world decided to create in front of her.
But then the realness consumes her.
When she breathes, she can smell him.
The only one she has ever truly cared about.
The one that she chased away.
The one that she has undoubtedly missed and craved.
Her entire body rattles with fear, with heartbreak, with regret, and some joy. This world is playing a joke on her, or concocting wild dreams, but she doesn’t want to wake up from this. To see him for the first time ever pulls at her heart. The only thing she has known is what the bony ridges have felt like against the velvet of her muzzle when she once sidled up next to him and breathed him in. They were rough, but now she can actually see how the bones rip through his skin and cover him like armor, and how his body is eerily thin like her own, and how stunningly grotesque he actually is.
In front of him – in front of this wild dream – she weakens again, whimpering into the darkness as she drunkenly takes in everything about him. A frown creases her lips and though she almost drops her head, she refuses to look away in fear of never seeing him again.
”Daddy,” she heartbreakingly croons, wanting only to wrap herself in him once more.
dove into her eyes and starved all the fears
picture by haenuli shin- HTML by Call - words: ________
The sun crashed down to the ground, the moon rose up into the sky bright red, the dead climbed up from their graves and fell to their knees saying "Come one, come all, come see and believe."
Tendrils of fog reach out from the center of that still lake, shadowy fingers that seem to reach for him with deceptive gentleness. He can see through that water as easily as he can see through air, the pebbled lake bed sharp to his unnatural sight. A light, eerie and without apparent source, illuminates the calm water, highlighting the softly rolling mist.
His breath sounds loud and harsh in his ears, his small body trembling with fatigue and pain. He knows he should not be still, should not remain, but he cannot seem to tear his gaze from the surface of that lake.
Then the melody starts, a soft, gentle crooning that drifts through the air like the insidious, creeping fog. Ether starts violently at the abrupt sound, abused flesh and quivering muscles drawing tight at the unexpectedly haunting music. But he is powerless to resist its reaching grasp.
At first it is just a lovely tune, sounds that pluck at already overwrought nerve endings. But then the melody sinks deep within him, a gentle probe that sends soft, almost imperceptible fingers into his consciousness, into his very heart and soul. Almost without thought, his body relaxes, the tug of those delicate, insistent tethers drawing him forward. The shadow he clutches so close dissapates, falling away into nothingness. He stumbles, torn, aching flesh weak but still obedient, following the lullaby as though he were little more than a marionette
The mist parts before him, the glass surface of the lake waiting, inviting. A shuddering breath, a too easy step, and he is upon the water. His hooves do not sink under the still surface as they should. Instead the shimmering liquid cushions his step, springy and resilient beneath his hesitant gait. But that anomaly is soon forgotten, pushed to the recesses of his memory by persistent, tugging fingers. The song is different now, more insistent, somehow familiar. He is powerless to resist its draw.
As the mist parts before him, illuminating a figure just there, at the center of the lake, his vision sharpens, focuses. He is lost then, brought so easily to that still, silent figure by unseen hands. At first he does not recognize it, this equine of the lake. It could be one of a hundred horses with youthful features and an adolescent, growing body. But with the rising intensity of the song, understanding comes.
He cannot help but stare, a deep longing burgeoning in his breast with each passing moment. He knows now that this is not someone he is familiar with, not sibling or mother or father. No, this is someone for whom he longs, for whom he wishes with all his youthful heart. A friend.
Every steady, thrumming beat of his heart deepens the ache, reminding him of everything he has been missing in his lonely solitude. A confidant and a helpmate, a companion. He can almost see what could have been. What might still be. Can almost taste the happiness, the satisfaction. The completion of his thus far quiet, lonely life with shadow as his only friend.
As he stares at that face, both so familiar and utterly foreign, he knows that he will find it, will recognize it. Should this ugly otherworld ever deign to spit him back out [to return him to the world of light and living] he would find this horse. He would find this horse because it is the only thing he has ever truly wanted. The only thing he has ever truly needed.
How it had taken this, a mysterious, mist-filled lake in the depths of a terrifying, monster filled otherworld, for him to recognize the truth, he cannot begin to say. But with that terrible, saddening truth staring him in the eye, he finally understands. He finally knows what his life has been lacking, what his lonely heart has been telling him all this time.
Now the eerie stillness of this place seems to have lost its threatening edge. At the top of the rise Crevan rests, head bobbing softly above the earth where it’s drooped with every labored breath he takes. It’s still dark (this place would never see the sun) and it still feels as if all the air around him has been sucked clean, creating a useless void to house beings that should never roam the real Beqanna. But the purpose of it all eludes him; what was the sense in his being here, aside from defeating impossible foes?
With a rasping sigh he starts again, winding up as a battered machine would. Slowly, his neck pulls a leaden skull up to view the lake properly. It’s depthless expanse seems to dwarf him, turning him into another shadowy silhouette like the other creatures here. He’s not fearsome though - anything but, just a tattered yearling who feels every step he takes towards the surface of the lake with the jarring pain of a thousand hot knives. His youthful muscles, still developing and once fleshy, protest the action with screaming cramps, knotting into hard strings beneath his flayed, washed-out pelt.
To anyone but himself he would seem finished.
Crevan, however, has the heart of a wolf to match the body of one. He’s come so far - so goddamn far and he’ll be damned if he turns back now. His eyes smart, trembling legs stopping him square at the lip of the sloping shore, and bold, hot tears stream silently over the arc of his proud cheeks. “Why?” He asks aloud, the quavering words echoing over the glassy surface of the water. “What do you want from me?!” He demands once more, louder as youthful anguish washes over him.
His silence afterwards yields nothing. Frustrated, he lifts a foot with the intention of traveling along the shoreline, but as soon as he does a noise stops him. The epicenter of the lake has loosed a note - one so pure and unaltered that it not only stops him, it turns him back to the water and steals his bitterness away. The note pours itself out and fills his heart, near brimming, with desire. Crevan feels as if he’s vibrating with the resonance of the sound.
There’s no rhythm to it, but all the same it reminds him of another song; sweet and low like the croon of his kind. Haunting. “Don’t be afraid…” the tune begins and aloud, Crevan hums along, totally unaware that at this moment he’s begun to walk across the surface of the lake. “When the night woolvesss cryyy…” He sings, each hoofstep sinking into the glass surface and holding shape after he moves, smoothing out as the darkness follows behind while a fog envelopes him from ahead.
By the time the crescendo of music has reached its apex Crevan has been totally enveloped by the mist. His sight, much like his thoughts, does not extend beyond the barrier of suspended water molecules yet it can discern the faint makings of something just out of his reach. He feels, in his most primal of thoughts, that it could be another trap and, hardly struggling, tries to stop the advancement of his journey but the song is relentless and now, his desire for an ending is simply too great to ignore.
The final words of the nameless tune slip past his teeth, each foot coming to rest parallel with the other as the boy peers achingly into the dark mass of unnatural mist.
“Dad?” He thinks, the word thrusting through his heart like a sharpened blade.
The pegasus only stares blankly back at him. Like this, the two face each other for wordless moments. Perhaps it was his father - this apparition waiting quietly for interaction. Crevan wouldn’t have known if was truly him either way, he’d seen his sire only once and that memory was supplied by his mother. But it is him, Crevan is sure of it - his heart simply knows without really knowing. Why else would he feel this way, so tongue-tied and useless, when before he’d been nothing but action and fire? Because - well - because Crevan simply can’t believe it.
“This is where you’ve been, the whole time?” The muted gold wonders soundlessly, finding it impossible that any other explanation would suffice. His father must’ve been trapped here, that would be the only logical reason he’d abandoned them! It hurts, (god how it hurts) to think of it even now, but it was true. Canaan had left them - his mother, his twin, and himself - without so much as a goodbye. Where had he been, all those times Crevan had needed a man’s advice? What had he been doing on those lonely nights his mother spent howling her loss to the moon? When Corvus had tested his wings against the wind and looked to Circy for direction, finding none, why hadn’t he come then?
Because … because … because none of them mattered to him.
They never had.
Angry, unbidden tears slip hotly from the corners of his eyes, a choking gag restricting his airway as he struggles to maintain himself. He wouldn’t allow Canaan his tears, not after never being there to wipe them clear in previous times. Instead, he blinks them furiously away and gathers himself as proudly as he can manage for a stallion in his state, tattered and tired as he is, and waits with piercing eyes for the motionless being to say something worth meaning.
Then our skin gets thicker, living out in the snow
