will you fight? or will you perish like a dog?; ROUND III

[Carnage]

and lord, I fashion dark gods too;

It becomes clear that they may not make it out of Pangea sane. Or may not make it out at all. This doesn’t bother him – their lives are infinitesimal to him, dust in the wind.
What matters is that they stay obedient long enough to serve him.
Most of them make to the heart, in varying conditions. Only one is felled along the way, unable to fight off the dead thing that came. He brings her back, leaves her body on the shore, sends life back into her.
He turns his attention back to the ones who made it, clustered around the heart. It’s beautiful and awful, a sick and pulsating thing, life but decidedly not.

“Pangea is sick,” he says, “it cannot rise like this.”
“Inside all of you,” he continues, “are pieces of Pangea, and pieces of the Mountain.”
As if on cue, the pieces buzz within them, living and insectile. Two worlds, bound by these horses. Bound by blood.

It’s one of the strongest sacrifices there is, blood. It’s a life essence. Its own kind of magic. It doesn’t work for everything, of course, but for this place – this awful, drowned kingdom – blood will do just fine.
“Give those pieces to Pangea,” he says, “cement the bond.”
“The wounds will bleed,” he says. He considers himself kind, to warn them, “let the blood flow into the heart, too.”
As if on cue, the heart groans. A dying thing.
(But not for long.)
The buzzing continues inside them, the pieces reversing, working their way out. Homeland and mountain and blood, all together at last.

Let the sacrifice begin.

Notes:
- Volcan withdrew and will wake up wherever she last was. The player may decide if she remembers dying underwater or not. Everyone else may continue.
- The pieces of Pangea and the mountain are working their way out of your horse’s body. This can pause extreme pain, hallucinations, whatever you want it to (nothing’s required other than how it comes out and into the heart).
- As the pieces work their way out, a gaping (but nonfatal [unless you want it to be, it’s your life]) wound opens and blood comes with it as part of the ‘sacrifice’.
- If you want to, Pangea’s heart is willing to take other things during the sacrifice (eyes, hair, etc.). Again, not required, but if you want more damage, it’s an option.
- Write about the sacrifice, the pain, etc. End with your horse passing out and waking up back on the beach.
- IMPORTANT: anyone who chooses to continue on in this last round will have their character affected in a negative (but not permanent) way that will be caused by the sacrifice and will last for a TBA time period after. It’s the first part of something bigger, but I can’t be more specific. This won’t last forever, but it will happen. If you don’t want that risk, you may withdraw – either in post form or by PMing me.
- Posts are due by 11:59 PM CST on Friday, September 28th.

- Unrelated, but can I just say y’all are incredible writers!!

c a r n a g e

[sochi]

there is a swelling storm and I'm caught up in the middle of it all
and it takes control of the person that I thought I was

“We’re sick, you bastard,” she growls, loathing clear in every syllable. She finds her way to her belly and then stands, her legs weak and shaking but strong enough to hold her aloft. “Not that you care.” She’s surprised that she is surprised by his callous nature. She’s surprised that she ever expected anything different, as though the gray stallion before her would ever bother to be kind to mere mortals.

It is of the utmost foolishness to bite back at him, as useful as railing against the heavens, but she does so now, fear twisting through her at the dual beating of hearts in her chest. She is driven by that terror that has morphed into fury, her silver eyes snapping as foam begins to fleck the edges of her mouth.

“How about you sacrifice something, you coward?”

But her words, her attacks, are just gnats—they are just dust. They bounce and slide off of him, the dark magician continuing to give orders. Her body responds without prompting, the pieces of the land within her vibrating. It takes the ache of the sickness and gives it a new edge. She grits her teeth and throws her head back, fighting against the scream that works up her throat, fighting to be released into the air.

She doesn’t want to sacrifice anymore.

She doesn’t want to help him—to serve him, to be obedient to him.

But she looks around and sees the rest of them, strangers to her but trapped in this moment all the same. She will remember their faces, she thinks to herself. She will seek them out. She will acknowledge the pain that they have all experienced, the way that Carnage has torn them apart for his own desires.

She will find them because she will survive this. They will all survive this.

(They have to. This can’t be for nothing.)

Sochi can feel the pieces beginning to work their way through her, traveling beneath the flesh through the branching roads of her veins. She cries against gritted teeth, knees threatening to give out beneath her.

Was it—was it making its way to her heart?

Fresh fear brands her as she feels both Pangea and the Mountain slipping through her, faster than possible, closing in on the place in her chest where the two hearts now unnaturally rest. Get it out. Get it out. Get it OUT. Instinct takes over and she tries to reach down and bite at the flesh covering her chest.

She starts to claw at the flesh, her body more flexible than usual. Her paws reach for her flesh and find purchase, the skin sloughing off easily—too easily. The pain is incredible and she howls against it, but she doesn't stop. She can’t stop. There is a dull roar in her ears, something that is only drowned out by the thumping of the hearts, the sound of them increasing in volume with each passing second.

Another howl escapes her as she desperately claws at her own chest, breaking it open.

The skin peels back, torn and tattered. Tears run down her cheeks. She wasn’t meant to die like this. She wasn’t meant to be ripping out her own heart at the bottom of the ocean on some godforsaken piece of land. She wasn’t meant to be bending to the will of some coward of a magician, sacrificing something so that he could have something. This wasn’t meant to be the end of her story. It wasn’t. It wasn’t.

She snarls as she reaches ribs, the hearts pounding, the pieces of dirt somehow wedged behind them.

She claws at the ribs and they crack, but they don’t break.

She stumbles to her feet, blood leaking out the edges of her mouth, froth gathering more in the corners of her mouth. She lurches and slams into whatever is nearby—tree, rock, anything. The water around her is syrupy and stained with blood, but she can’t think enough to process it. She just keeps slamming into whatever she can, until she feels the creaking of her ribs as they give way like ancient wood.

Finally—finally—the ribs crack, no, shatter. She gasps against the feeling of it, stumbling—crawling—back to the crater. She spits up blood but more leaks from her chest. The pieces that she had been ordered to sacrifice fall out of her, followed closely by the eerily green heart and then her own.

Sochi’s eyes go wide, a strangled noise coming out of her throat as she tilts forward and falls near Pangea's heart, bleeding out of her now empty chest, the congealed, alien blood making its way for the final gift.

Minutes pass.

Hours pass.

Days, maybe.

She doesn’t know.

All she knows is what when she wakes, she’s breathing air and not water, there is sand beneath her—

and everything has changed.

Everything.

sochi

it comes and goes in waves; it always does, it always does
we watch as our young hearts fade into the flood, into the flood

[Zain]

His focus into the deep crater is intense.  Glee can be seen reflecting from his blood red eyes as he watches the sickly pulse.  Thum, tha thum... The glow weakens as it struggles to repeat the rhythm.  He had to fix it, but how...?

A familiar voice echoes behind him.  His God appears again, surrounded by those who remain, and his attention diverts.  Instructions.  As Carnage speaks of the pieces, the sting returns to his hip.  The dark god tells them of the pieces, of Pangea, of its sickness.  Of the sacrifice needed to cleanse her of the cancer that consumes her.  He is more than willing to spill the crimson from his veins to satisfy his God. 

Along his perch aside the crater ledge, he feels the pieces fighting to be free.  They must be free, he thinks.  Pangea needed blood, his blood.  So he turns to his marked side, finding the sting from the poison barbs dulled and all that remained was ebony burns etched in his hide.  He reaches his head, mouth gapping and teeth barred.  The sharp incisors rip a chunk of meat from his side and allow the life blood to fill the water around the weakly pulsating glow. That wasn't enough though, he turns to wear the second piece had impaled him and rips open that flesh as well.  More red liquid spills into the murky waters.  He does not feel pain, but euphoria.  A wicked smile is painted across blood stained lips as his head rises high.  Blood draining from his body until his consciousness blackens...

.

Upon awakening he is no longer underwater, no longer in Pangea and no longer standing beside the heart.  He is beached upon the shores of where he had started.  His head lifts to find others are here as well. Watching. Waiting...  

Zain

ReBeL jUsT fOr KiCkS

[Maugrim]

it was a blood-soaked feast
that never ceased

Just as he gains his breath and his strength, his dark eyes staring into the soft glow of Pangea’s heart, the voice that had called to him before now speaks again. Blood still drips freely from his shoulder, clouding the waters around him with the color of rust and creating a mixture of plasma and salt that presses in at all sides. Maugrim blinks slowly, turning his chin upwards in attempts to find the face that owns the voice, but only finds emptiness and open blackness of the ocean’s expanse that abruptly opens up above the pines, a twisted world bent upside down within the dark god’s mind.

Cement the bond.

Immediately, Maugrim braces himself as the buzzing intensifies, vibrating through his very core and resounding in his bones in a way that jars his joints and tendons. In the nearby distance there is a woman’s voice that spits languishly into the fray, but the drowned lord pays no heed to the bubbling of her accusations and threats. There is far too much to focus on than those around him, though in a single instant he would easily spill their blood with a quick rush of water beneath their feet to shove them against sharp rock and stone. He’d make them all bleed - not for Pangea, but for himself - if it meant he didn’t have to sacrifice his own blood willingly. For a moment he considers this - as if more of their blood in the water and in the dying heart would appease the god, so that his own could remain intact.

A strong and forceful wave pulsates away from the dark green and pearlescent stallion, sending deep ocean and blood in a powerful pounding towards all that are closest to him. He would open them all up, slice them against rock and coral until each drop satisfies the heart, and he would remain unscathed. He could not die, not now, when he could nearly taste the powerful magic that thrums deep in Pangea’s dead roots.

Unfortunately, he is not able to make good on his plan.

The buzzing turns into fire in his blood. Unable to focus, unable to be precise, Maugrim’s attempt at slaughtering those around them ends with the single wave sent from his being. The pieces of Pangea and Mountain rummage through his body without sentience; all it knows is to move towards the surface, ribboning his veins and arteries with their broken pieces, set on reuniting with the thing that calls it into being. Within his body, the pieces of rock and clay attempt to piece themselves together, slicing through tissue and organ like a claw through sand, becoming larger and larger inside him. He howls in pain, stumbling in blind agony and throwing himself against the corals and rock and dark tree in attempts to have all of it stop, all of it end.

The pieces of Pangea and Mountain have now become large enough to begin to break bone. No longer is it just the feeling of his insides brimming with his own blood that tortures him (coughing, choking, drowning in his own blood), but the sound of breaking ribs and sternum, of fractured hips and splintered legs. He crumples to the ground before the heart helplessly as the pieces tear away at his insides, knowing that his blood has not yet been spilt and that time will be coming - soon.

The two separate pieces finally exit him, exploding from both eye sockets with such force that he could hear the severing of his spine from his skull with the motion. There is the sound of a terrifying scream, but it is cut short by the instantaneous ceasing of his nerves ability to keep him alive. The soulless and unseeing holes spill and pour with gallons of dark red blood freely towards the heart, flowing with purpose towards its epicenter.

His heart stops beating just as Pangea’s heart truly begins to thrum.

Then, he is awake.

The drowned god feels the coolness of air against his body and the grittiness of sand beneath him. He cannot tell if his eyes are open or closed - he only sees blackness. There is the familiar, soothing feeling of water lapping against his legs as well as the shushing sound of waves frothing on a shoreline. He is back where he started, though he cannot tell if he has only truly made it to hell, like all of his victims hoped he would.

m a u g r i m.

[Noah]

The pulse of the heart is not steady, but it is deep and powerful. Each time it pulses, Noah feels a little more ill. She drags herself to her feet, the deep water feeling heavy against her skin. She’s vaguely aware of the others around her, a loose circle of strangers around a sickly glowing heart of a dead Kingdom. Noah doesn’t bother looking at their faces, she only has eyes for the thing that draws her, attracting even as it makes her ill. Her body aches, and some deep part of her mind knows that will only get worse when they surface for air, and the water no longer supports her.

She knows nothing of Pangea’s history. Knows very little about their puppetmaster, either. She’s a little uncomfortable because of the illness – why would doing this make her sick, if it’s a good thing to do? On the flip side, Noah supposes everything worth having is worth sacrificing and working for, and maybe the sickness is the sacrifice. His voice resonates within her, and she knows she has a decision to make. Maybe she couldn’t stop it from coming back out (she can feel it moving within her), but a part of her wonders if she should flee. Should Pangea stay at the bottom of the ocean? If she ran away fast enough, would her piece of the mountain rest harmlessly somewhere else?

Would she drown, in the attempt?

Without the history that would make her wary of Pangea and Carnage, she doesn’t have much reason to resist. A vague feeling of unease is not enough. The heart groans, as if it’s dying. She doesn’t want it to die. She thinks, with a little hopeful smile, that helping raise Pangea would be kind of a better thing, a creation of sorts. Noah thinks her dad might be proud. Creation is the opposite of the thing he calls his curse, after all, and the thing she too holds though so far she’s managed to keep it a secret from him. Rhonen doesn’t need to know his little miracle shares his “curse”. The little roan mare relaxes, sighs, closes her eyes, and simply exhales and doesn’t resist, beyond a furrow of her face at the discomfort.

It wasn’t comfortable having a piece of rock shoot into her chest, and it’s not comfortable having it propel itself back out. It stings, perhaps sears, but the pain is good. A relief. These fragments didn’t belong to her, and her body didn’t really want to carry them. Maybe it’s why she didn’t feel good. It’s hot as it reaches the surface and she cries out at the very end, her eyes flying open as the piece, slick with dark blood, pops out of the last layer of skin and flesh. 

She passes out - maybe shock, maybe something unnatural like how she got here. When she recovers, she's lying in the sand on the beach where they started, the dark water lapping at her legs and tummy. Underwater she was right - without the support of the water her injuries are much more painful and she groans, blinking in the bright light as she rolls upright and looks around. If she wasn't in so much pain, she'd wonder if it was all a dream.

[Rapture]

somewhere between the sand and the stardust

For a time, there is only the hush of the deep and the pulsing, sickly glow of the heart. Her eyes glimmer unearthly green in the faint light, but they are blank. She stares unseeing into the eye of Pangea, her mind unable to come to terms with the pain of her grief. Even the throb of her injured skin cannot tear her back to the present.

There are others now, each drawn here by the same sickening tug that had brought her to this dead kingdom. She pays them no heed however, her mind too lost in denial and stilled by the shock that renders her mute and pliant. She might have stood like that forever, lost eternally to the sea, had it not been for the pain that slowly begins to build in her hip.

His voice means little to her as he speaks, the words a mumble in her skull, all too easy to ignore. Pangea is little more than a myth to her, and it’s rise and fall had never guided the path she had taken. Truth be told, none of the kingdoms had. She had never felt anything in her heart for the pieces of land so many fought and bled and died for. Not her place of birth, nor even the place she currently resides (no, it was her ache for another that had drawn her there, not any true preference for it’s humid confines).

But now, it seems, she would bleed for a land. For the first time in her life, she would give a piece of herself, giving life to death. Even if it was only a small piece kept here in it’s heart, she would belong to this land. Always.

Perhaps it was fate, or perhaps she was merely an accidental target. Whatever the case, her destiny has been sealed.

The philosophy of the thing is lost on her however. Soon, all she knows is pain. Give those pieces to Pangea, he says. And so she does. Wretchedly.

Pain is not pretty. It is not a thing to be admired or sought. It is horrid and ugly and frightening. Her once lovely face creases as the bits of rock and dirt that had burrowed beneath her skin now try to claw their way free. They are not sickened by the dying heart. Instead they are drawn to it, iron to a lodestone. But she does not fare so well.
As it turns out, she is not the soldier, but the sacrifice.

Her pain means nothing in the face of birth. It cares not whether her screams of agony are lost to the heavy waters, her tears swallowed by the briny depths. But she accepts her fate, not even attempting to resist. The pain of her body now matches that of her heart. It is qismet, if such a thing really exists.

Her blood billows into the dark blue of the water, garnet in the sallow light. But the heart is greedy, unwilling to let her sacrifice go in vain. It swallows her blood hungrily, drawing her lifesource from the sea (from her body) in greedy gulps. It isn’t until her screams have died and her eyes grow heavy, her vision dancing with black spots, that it finally seems to have clawed everything it needs from her. The flesh of her hip gapes gruesomely, tissue torn away from muscle and sinew. She doesn’t have the strength to wonder if she will ever have use of her leg again. She doesn't even have the strength to wonder if she will live.

Blessedly, as darkness begins to consume her, her pain gives way to the bliss of unconsciousness. It is the first joy she has felt since the start of this hellish journey.

-----

Time is meaningless in the the depths of such unwilling slumber. It is impossible for her to know how much time has passed when she finally awakens, blue and white frame pressing heavily against coarse grains of sand. Death lingers here, but somehow she has found life.

Somehow, she has survived.

---

Rapture

---

there is a pulse that echoes of you and I

[Rajanish]

He's an unworthy son and he's known it the whole time; but his father had chosen randomly (or so he says) and he feels that maybe he can make up for his uselessness. That's why he put so much effort in this quest, even if he can hardly forgive himself for toying with the zombie girl almost too long. The sickness of the Heart however, calls to him, like a long lost sibling, and he knows that he is able to help it. In some way.

And when all the others have arrived; Carnage gives them another task. There's been pieces of Pangea in them this whole time, and of the Mountain also. So that was what the two-timed pain of crashing dirt into their bodies had been for. See? His father, the God, knows the bigger picture.

But the translucent bay appaloosa has no time to think about it very much. The dirt needs out. And the rock too. Surely there must be a way to do that... but the magic works in itself. He can feel the pieces moving, just when his skin had closed on those places; and it wriggles it's way out. But will it be enough?

The pain is hardly bearable with the pieces coming out. He can't really think clearly, but his devoted self scratches his skin until he bleeds like the others do. He watches the reddened pieces of dirt coming out of himself and the others in sheer fascination - then he is forced unto the ground, as if hit by a large rock on his back. He's choking. Oh - dear - god, he's choking. There's been dirt in his lungs this whole time; that's the magic that had made him able to breathe underwater. Dark magic of his father's. Wonderful magic. So pure. Like how the zombie had been alive.

Oh, shit. The eye. Horses can't throw up, and he can only think of the eye in his stomach. Ready to be digested. No! Pangea needs it back. It was accidentally stolen, but if Pangea needs to be whole it needs every piece of magic it can get. Lying sideways on the ground now, he tries to claw at his belly, but the pain is swarming inside his head, there's flickers of light in his vision as he tries and fails to reach his stomach. No! It can't be his fault if this place doesn't live. An eye. An eye.

And then somewhere in the fog that is his mind, he realizes. Pangea can have his eye. Clawing at his face now, however, it seems too hard to actually do it. Oh, if someone else could do it for him instead. But everybody is wincing on the ground and bleeding like he is, and passing out, and...

No. No, he can do better. Better than all of them. He can sacrifice more than any of them, because if he lives through this, then he is worthless anyway.

And so he crawls forward, following the trickle of blood and dirt that is his own. Ready to give. Give it all. Because he doesn't stop crawling at the edge; he shoves his mangled body forward until he tumbles in and gives in to the bliss of being swallowed whole.

Because there's nothing more he can give than all of himself.

And when he wakes up on the beach like the rest of them, he is devastated that he has been rejected. Useless. Defeated, he lies on the sand, bleeding, and his eyes closed, waiting for the thunderous voice that no doubt will send him back home like the worthless excuse of a horse that he is.

[Khaedrik]

Khaedrik came upon his doom, studded with horror and all the traits of that which lurks and lures children, into the shade of night.
When water-air slides down his throat like sweet wine, Khaedrik raises his head; and stares into the wet eyes of his demons, amassed and collected.

And smiling.

And speaking.

”She is sick.”

Khaedrik had arrived in this land thusly attired in the rivers of his life; for blood, and sweat, and tears all ran down the contours and angles of his face. They did not forgive, or absolve, or renew; they were useless, as he was. Khaedrik himself was a dream of an imperfect golden stallion down here, a clustering of pain, a ghost more than he was flesh and vein – but he does not know that, though he fears it to be true. This chaos of thought and madness and all lost hearts had a single chord, reverberating without end, inside; a string, plucked by Carnage’s unforgiving hand.

There is the pain; wild and relentless; stretching its claws inside him as the pieces of Pangea seeks to reunite with their maker. Her sick, dying heart calls out for him as he falls to his knees again. The stench of it came in shifting zephyrs, and he breathed the scent of death as though it was the only thing to keep him alive.

”Make the sacrifice”

He can feel it – the briery edges of something clawing its way out of his chest and he wept the burning oceans that come when an old wound is opened, and newly pierced.

The corners and corridors of this place are not friendly. Oh, he did not know, this maker of shadows, that he was dashing towards his greatest fear; we mortals rarely do know the turns our feet take. But there, with a rake’s burning smile, lay the zenith of all Khaedrik’s fears on a pillow of emerald light. Though bejewelled and edged with gleaming, ailing light, the heart continues to beat faintly. This threnody of his own demise – calling softly for the pieces of dirt embedded in his chest. And all he could do was bleed.

From the shade of his own racing heart, he peered into Pangea’s many rotting souls and dissembling halls – and found the same smiling darkness, that lurked inside his own breast. On every outstretched bough, at least one glazed eye was mounted. On every breathless silence, fey shadow was fastened, by a tether of heartbeat on dying earth.

Khaedrik clenches now; made delirious by the onslaught of pain.
”Cement the bond”

And before his unseeing eyes came shadows that danced without owners, things that moved without existing and evaporated as quickly as they came. In strange consequence they collected themselves about his feet, enshrouding the crimson-bright pool of blood there in black.

How fitting.

He feels more alive in dying than ever before. As the blood leaves his veins and returns to Pangea’s greedy maw. As pain renders his body useless – a pile of dead matter and nothing else – as the pieces hum violently against the confines of his bones and skin – threatening to tear it all apart.

He could hear it, even as his breath laboured in gasps and wheezes from his mouth, even as his heart gave its final footsteps against his breath; a lute, a note, a single thought. It echoes, and dies, and gives a silence that animal feet or mouse whispers or any forest symphony could not destroy. Then, oh, then, it returns; and blazes, for the instant of his life, the image of a sun-child inferno.

The last thing he saw was that sick drumbeat light; carmine now with the blood of his sacrifice; and then he coughed on ocean-water and saw only the murk of his mind.

Then, time.

Untold, perhaps none at all.

Counted in the scent of the sea as it strengthens.

And life.

It coils around his heart with choking tendrils. These coy, strangling wisps tightened now; and pulled his head upward on an intangible string. In the universe of his gaze (an empty place, of pooled torment and nightmares still fermenting), there was only the leering face of a god, wreathed in scintillation.

Oh Lord, what have they done.

[Sinner]

The silence consumes everything around him. Sending him back into the depths of hell itself, back into the black abyss with nothing but silence. Except there is something there. The emerald pulsating light remains. The very entity that lights up the world around him, pushing the darkness away from him. As if it is the only thing that will guide him out of this darkness—his salvation, his revelation. He can feel the sickness within him, slowly taking away his newfound strength. It weakens him even more as he remains on his knees at the heart Pangea. His breathing is becoming heavier, and his heart is beginning to beat slowly and faintly. A familiar voice rustles him, awaking his restlessness once again. The dark god speaks again, and he listens. This time he does not listen like a servant does to its master, but as someone entirely different. He is an individual now, a separate entity. He is no longer the creature he once was, no longer will he accept the commands and demands of darker monsters. He will have his say now, not the decisions of gods that are fickle creatures themselves. The hound’s dark eyes open, focusing on the emerald light in front of him. He listens carefully, on his own accord this time, to the words of the dark god. These commands he does not accept. He chooses to do them instead. Pangea is sick. “I am sick too,” he insists. It cannot rise like this. “Neither can I.” Sinner feels the pieces within him, immediately vibrating together. Two worlds bound together, colliding together. The vibrating fills his core, erupting the very inside of his body. It tears at his joints and tendons. It engraves deeper into his bones, pressing them together, bending them in ways that never felt possible. He grinds his teeth against each other. This feeling is more terrifying than before. He throws his head down into the murky floor. He wants to scream. To scream out into the open. He fights it back though. It would be only showing weakness if he allows himself to be completely consumed by this sickness, to let go of his newfound strength. Give those pieces to Pangea. “Why?” Cement the bond. The wounds will bleed. Let blood flow into the heart, too. “A sacrifice.” The god wanted a sacrifice—a blood sacrifice. “No,” he musters through grinded teeth. He will not be another sacrifice to the dark gods again, he will not allow himself to be used like he has been before. He cannot be a servant again—not like this, not now. His lifts his head up from his kneeled position. The hound’s red, yellow glowing eyes look at the others around them. They are all sacrifices like him. They are so easily fooled answering the call of the dark god. Pathetic. I am pathetic. He throws his head back, attempting to pull himself to stand. I will not be a fool like them. “I WILL NOT!” Sinner screams, throwing his head back. But he is suddenly pulled back down. He falls back into his position. The heart of Pangea groans, demanding the blood sacrifice from him. It’s too late. The vibrating within his shoulder begins to turn fire. He screams again, louder this time. The pieces of Pangea and the Mountain are rummaging together, slowly working to find their way out of his body. They fuse together almost, pulsating and cutting the inside of his flesh. His whole core shakes again, the sickness overwhelming him. It works the two pieces out of his black, scarred shoulder slowly. It controls him no matter how much he tries to overcome the sickness. His strength is nothing now. His body is not even his. It is the dark god’s. It is Pangea’s. It is the blood sacrifice. If only he had known that he had accepted to be a sacrifice at the shore where he left the dark god. Things would have been different. Would they? He wonders for a second through the pain and suffering. The pieces then pierce through him, slicing open his recently sealed wound. He howls out in pain, pushing himself up into the muddy ground to brace himself. The pieces slowly begin wedge their way through his flesh. His muscles and bones groan in more pain as he feels the force of the disease within him working the pieces out of him. His tendons and joints are on the edge of breaking. Sinner screams. The sound of a bone cracks—his right shoulder. He feels the immense pain and suffering. It is unbearable at this point as his right shoulder gives out. Sinner tumbles to the murky floor on his right side helplessly. The pieces are just at the edge of tearing away from his inside, not yet has his blood sacrifice been made. Finally, the two pieces rip away from his shoulder, exploding with a rush that he could have never felt before. Not even a rush of speed he could ever reach. He screams out in the most terrifying pain he has ever felt before as the blood from his body rushes out from his open wound, sending the two pieces forward into the open heart of the drowned kingdom. His scream is silenced quickly after the pieces make it to the center of the heart. Sinner begins to feel the disease escape him too as the blood continues to flow through his shoulder and into the heart. His eyes become heavier, and his heart is beating faintly. His breathing is dull. He closes his eyes, taking in one more deep breath before raspy air is exhaled through his mouth. Sinner wheezes for air suddenly. His eyes open wide as he gasps for air. Instantly he feels his heart beat against his chest. It thumps loudly against his chest. He can feel the sand beneath his dark, large body. The shore where he had last seen the dark god. He isn’t sure how he got back here. He doesn’t know how much time has passed. All he knows something has changed. Maybe everything has.

character info: here | character reference: here

[Rey]

Rey

I could feel the skin of my heart bend beneath the weight of foreign rock and dirt; it beat but when it did, I could only feel those two little bumps pushing back. What use was closing my eyes against the jade glow, even though I did? My body seemed to thrum in time to it, part myself and part Pangea. I wondered many things, only silent and studious, feeling my dark mane brush sweetly over unseen cheeks while the sound of anger and fresh agony began to pipe up on all sides. And my heart continued to

beat. And beat. And beat.

The drowned place was sick, or so He said. I could understand that. I considered myself pretty sick too. Some of the horses beside me had enough courage to defy, and I couldn’t seem to unfold the legs beneath my slender, still belly. A question came to mind: who was really supporting who, when the notion of us giving more flesh and blood arose. As of that moment, I could only say that I still choked down water because somehow, she’d been keeping me from expiring. But I suppose some need more than others, and that’s what love, the meaning of life, and sacrifice are all about, correct?

That God seemed to think so.

“Auh!-“ I managed to gasp suddenly, the heart groaning, my spine locking and jerking me into a tight, tense coil. I couldn’t control how my jaw popped up, or the way it clacked my teeth together sharply and wrenched my eyelids open terribly wide. I could only tell you that I felt a pain unknown, and in that instant, my life shuddered to a standstill.

Only for a moment could I remember regaining some measure of control, and my gaze was the only free thing to move so it landed on a smoky black mare and noticed with alarming clarity how shockingly blue her lovely facial marking was.

Then the real torture came.

“Why have I lost myself?” I thought, as my bent forelegs were flung apart by an invisible hand. The simultaneous feeling of being inside yourself and yet, outside of yourself was never clearer before then, as I convulsed and the objects began to reverse. “Wha-“ My thoughts had gone, right before I’d felt the roots of my wings snap free from their moorings inside my muscle. Just roots, being pulled loose from the earth of my flesh by still another invisible fist. The stone and silt inched outward, and the tendrils of my natural-born traits went happily with them.

”DEAR GOOOOOOOD!!” I know I screamed, rocking as if struck with a seizure. What had once been a second of time was now eternity and every new second of that fresh hell was spent in excruciating awareness. They dragged by, not unlike the rock and dirt that bored itself free, or my clear wings which suddenly pulled away from my skin trailing stretched knots and strings of my shoulder tissue.

Two perfectly round baubles exploded then from my chest, spraying cloudish, rose-colored blood in their wake and I was choked into silence, achingly numb in the glow. I was nothing, anymore. Not alive, not dead. Just nothing that saw Pangea’s gleam swallow at first some smallish beads, and then a pair of wings feather by feather, before it consumed all consciousness within its brilliant, beaming light.

.
.
.


I awoke as nothing. Laid flat inside of a body that felt nothing and saw calm, dark waves lapse over a black shore. Nothing was real, and it was all I had ever been.

Wanna step to me better think twice
I might look pretty but I'm not that nice