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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    DIG DEEP INTO YOUR DARKEST NIGHTMARES
    #1
    ALL HALLOWS EVE QUEST


    It's no secret that the Beqanna Fairies love Halloween. Something about a night of tricks and treats really gets their blood boiling.

    One fairy in particular, the Rebel Fairy, loves to be scared. She'll curl up with a good American Horror Story season and scare herself to the end of the earth. Her particular favorite is The Ring, where she'll refuse to watch the video that promises your death in seven days. Yes, at the age of 27 she is still afraid of a video.

    But what does this have to do with you?

    The Rebel Fairy has found very little to pique her horror interest these days. The stories are bland, recycled. She wants to know your nightmares. Your deepest, darkest nightmares.

    QUEST OUTLINE
    -Write a post (maximum 2,000 words, minimum 150) detailing your character's Beqanna Nightmare

    PRIZES
    -Top 3 winners will get a Halloween Surprise OR 10 points each - please specify which you'd prefer
    -All participants get 1 point
    -If you include a character in Beqanna not played by yourself in the quest, you get 1 point

    QUEST CLOSES OCTOBER 30th
    #2
    breaking waves of change
    Her eyes get heavy, the crashing sound of the waves lull her into a sense of tranquility. She allows herself to sink into her mind, her eyes now shut. Darkness washes over, the crashing waves now a hiss, and then....the sounds of the jungle.

    Her eyes open, the green of them wide. This couldn't be....the jungle...was no longer. But, here she was. She stood beneath her favorite sun bathing tree, her breath is quiet. The scenery was more vibrant than she remembered it to be, the animals seemed more fierce, the old jaguar spirits seemed to growl at her protectively. At first she is happy, she was finally back in her beloved Jungle. The shift was all a dream after all! She was not a screw up queen, she was just your run of the mill, loyal Amazon diplomat. She took in the humid air, she basked in the heat. She could smell the ferns, the sweet jungle flowers and ripe fruits. She could see the birds of paradise and monkeys swinging from vine to vine. She could feel herself beginning to walk forward, but it was as if she had no control over her body. At first this doesn't alarm her, but then she realized she was being pushed along....herded almost. Two massive jaguars, with their bloodied maws gaping and bloody tribal war paint streaked against their colorful pelts, walked along beside her as she seamlessly weaved through the lush vines and trees. Her hooves left no mark, her breath was almost in rhythm with her seemingly heavy strides. The sounds of the jungle make her heart beat harder. Ba boom. Ba boom. boom. BOOM. BOOM.

    The sound of drums began to shake the entire jungle, and soon the blood painted cats lead her body to what was the heart of the jungle. There, in two perfectly parallel lines, stood every single former queen. Every woman, covered in war paint and draped in delicate gossamer sashes. They all turned their heads in unison...their eyes filled with hatred and judgment fell upon her. Stomping their front hooves hard into the ground, the drumming sound becoming even louder.

    Naga could feel herself becoming more and more vulnerable, but yet she is drawn closer.

    They raised their voices slowly as she walked between the rows of queens, and they began to curl around behind her, forming a circle around her. A chant began. It started as a whisper, and slowly grew louder....and louder.

    unworthy..unworthy...Unworthy...UNWORTHY. UNWORTHY. UNWORTHY.

    Their faces became more menacing, they reached....barring their teeth at her. Driving her forward. She could then see faces she knew up ahead...both alive...and dead. She began to cry as the tribal beat of the drum became deafening and the chanting washed over her body and suffocated her.

    The beating drove her to her knees, she writhed on the ground, she could not breathe. She could see her friends, and all the foals that she watched over and played with. Her dear sweet foal friend, Imogin, who played many games of hide and seek with Naga, was looking to her as if she were something foul. Spitting in her face, along with her twin daughters. Her sister Nerissa turned her back on her, and her other sister ,Nelke, shifted into her sparrow form and flew far from her, leaving feathers floating down and burning Naga as they caressed her black coat. She wails, but her cries were eaten by the screams of angered queens of old and spirits of Amazon's past. These were no longer her sisters. Her heart beat harder. The fear was real now. This was to be her end. She cried, pleading with them.

    PLEASE STOP!! I AM TRYING!! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND!? I WANT WHAT'S BEST FOR THEM!!!

    She continues to scream but they do not care, nor do they continue to let their judging eyes pierce her soul.

    Rain begins to fall, though as it's cool droplets pelt her body, it gets warmer, and turns red. Her green eyes are rimmed white now, as the blood rains down on her. The lush forest begins to burn, the animals crumbling within the flames. Screams of sisters piercing her heart, screaming for them to save her. But she is still surrounded by the fearsome and proud queens of the past. They bellow into the air, their voices rising like the smoke.

    YOU HAVE FAILED YOUR SISTERS!! YOU ARE NO QUEEN. YOUR PUNISHMENT WILL BE DEATH.

    She pleads and screams for them to please listen to her, but she still cannot move, and her voice was nothing to them. Soon she is jerked into a kneeling position, her fear has escalated to something she could not possibly describe. The drumming, screams, and chants then become even more intense as a light grey queen, more horrifyingly intimidating than all the ones in group surrounding her, parting the way for her, as she strode forward. Her dark hooves crashed into the ground, causing it to crack beneath her. Naga cannot look away from her, she is paralyzed once again.

    The jaguars are at her sides, and she carries a blade between her lips.

    The fearsome Andalusian queen is one she recognized, but for some reason did not know personally. But, there she stood, she seemed most important, her history and power in the jungle seemed stronger than most the others surrounding her. She stops before Naga, all sound ceases. The grey woman, painted in the blood of those who crossed her, those who desecrated her jungle. She speaks, her voice echoes throughout the silently burning jungle.

    NAGA. YOU HAVE FAILED YOUR SISTERS. THEY DO NOT RESPECT YOU, NOR WILL THEY EVER. YOU COULD NEVER BE AS GREAT OR AS RESPECTED AS WE. OUR LEGACY LIVES ON, THOUGH YOURS WILL NEVER BE SPOKEN OF. YOU LET YOUR SISTERS DIE IN THE WAR. YOU ARE NOT A QUEEN. YOU ARE A MURDERER. YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE SISTERHOOD AND THE AMAZON NAME. AND SO, AS PUNISHMENT FOR YOUR ATROCITIES, YOU SHALL BE SACRIFICED. YOUR BLOOD WILL SPILL AND YOU WILL NEVER BE REMEMBERED OR MOURNED. UNWORTHY!

    She takes a step to the side, as another being steps forward.....

    It's inky black, scarred body slinks forward. Maneless, slender snaking neck, and disgusting twisted smile.
    Her mother. Shadowmere.

    She had been waiting for this moment. Her horrible traitorous daughter, she ruined Shadowmere's plans of taking over the Valley...she threw greatness all away, only to make the demise of her own kingdom. Her mother's twisted smile became more elongated, her maw opened wide, sharp caiman teeth dripping with blood from a freshly killed foal. She took the blade from the grey queen, her black eyes blazing. She had waited for this moment for years....the bloodlust in her blackened heart took over all other feeling. She was no longer a horse. She was a creature of hell. Broken and twitching, her body writhing and draped in a growing shadowy mist.

    Naga began to scream, the drums began to beat once more, as the queens started their chant once more. Shadowmere, or what was Shadowmere, crept closer and closer, blackened blood pouring from her mouth, nostrils, and eyes. Suddenly, her hell sent mother sprang forward, plummeting the sharp blade through Naga's body. It's power, from years and years of rituals, pulsed within her, she felt her body beginning to burn and peel. She was literally burning from the inside out. She screamed and screamed, painful cries gurgling with blood. The pain was unreal, her green eyes burning with guilt and fear. The scene around her began spinning, all the pained and angered faces laughing and celebrating in her death.

    They danced around her, more primal than ever. Her own blood rained down from above. They sang and danced, screaming, as drums accompanied them.

    BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

    It all spun faster and faster. The pain became worse and worse, and her body diminished with every beat of the drum.

    BOOM!

    She jolted forward, a scream escaped her black lips. Her body was still frozen with fear and her heart was practically beating out of her chest. Her eyes opened wide, her gaze flickering about in panic. But...slowly she began to realize she was back on the beach....she was awake...Nerine was hugging her with it's muggy, salty embrace. Her feet were still planted firmly in the almost black sand, and the waves crashed powerfully against the cliffs....she was alive.... and that....that was all a dream......  

    It was all a nightmare...
    Naga


    OOC :
    A look into Naga's nightmares.
    As a new queen in this new Beqanna, she is feeling the weight of trying to patch up was is left of the Amazons, but no matter what she says or does, she seems to just disappoint and anger them more. Their respect for her seeming to deplete, not grow. She feels guilty about not being able to do more in the war, and she feels the loneliness of being without her friends and family. She misses the jungle, and she feels as though she has been letting down her sisters. Her real life problems have been plaguing her dreams and making them nightmares...her overactive imagination creating the most horrid scenes in her head out of her current guilt and her past memories. Of course, her awful manipulative mother is the climax of the dream, where she finally destroys Naga. Since she had been a creature of nightmares to Naga as a foal, her and Naga's creeper older  brother, Noctus, always trying to hurt her or make her do things contrary to her more loving nature. Thus why Shadowmere is the most horrifying of the dream's "characters". This is the most frequent Naga's nightmares. Each time growing more terrible than the last. A visual for all her stress, pressures, and fears of her life.

    Imogin was a foal played by Elle Belle, who lived in the Jungle for a while that Naga played with multiple times.
    The queen described in the dream, who spoke to Naga and handed the blade to Shadowmere was actually supposed to be Prague. Though I do not believe Naga ever met her, I was told she was one of the most intimidating and prominent queens of the Amazons.
    #3

    The bats have left the bell tower

    The victims have been bled


    I am running rapidly away from something.  All I know is that it is dark and up ahead is a warehouse with a illuminated door. I do not know what I am running from but I do not ask questions instead I see others doing the same...a handful of people are doing the same as I close the space between the door and me.

    I can see myself reaching and pushing through the door, snatching a glimpse behind me but there is nothing but darkness. When I look into the building, there is a single sickly yellow bulb hanging. To the right, a metal set of stairs leads up but I opt to turn into the closest open doorway on the left. I was not going to take any chances going further into the warehouse depths.

    I am running, tripping, and finally collapsing behind an overturned table. I lay there huddled and shivering when I hear others shushing each other, their voices quiet and frantic as we all struggle to remain silent in the dark. Our lives depended on it.

    But it's too late...

    An image appears in the door way, the shadow stretched long and thin.

    The first shot goes off,a flash, a pop, a thump, a moan.

    Footsteps.

    There is another and another. Bodies fall, a scream gives way to the shadows. I curl into a ball and cover my ears till I feel the tap of hot metal on my back. The figure, the man, grabs my shoulder and pulls me up and out from my secret place. I am suddenly aware of the acrid smell of blood, the splitting silence. I am wretched up on my knees, kneeling as if prayer. I feel the press of hot metal on my temple and I begin to weep. As if in slow motion, I hear the click of the trigger, the slam of a hammer. "Forgive me Father for my sins." And I am pitching forward...I think I've done it! I'm moved quickly enough!

    ...till the burn of the bullet rips through the back of my skull, just behind my ears. I am too late.

    Everything goes black.




    I wake up sweating and panting hard. My head still hurts where the bullet when through...I didn't know you could die in a dream.

    graveside




    ooc: this is a legitimate nightmare and waking up from a dream. grave's fear is more so of believing so strongly in something for it to only turn out to be a lie/untrue/not what you believed so deeply in...so betrayal in a crooked sort of way.

    If I am lucky enough to be one of the top 3, I'd like a Halloween Surprise please!
    #4
    The mare, unwillingly so, started to recall things of the Tundra as she examined Tephra's volcanic, heated terrain. The cave in the center, the wall covering most of the entrance side, leaving a small section for land-walkers. Winged inhabitants - and visitors, but that is less often seen - will often simply fly over the wall, she recalls. Brynmor, when he had wings for a short while, had done a good deal of flying over the walls.

    Now, she's called into memory itself - a full play-through with emotions. She doesn't know what's going to change, she knows she is asleep, something inside her screams to wake up, but she moves forward, closer to the cave.

    She falls into a seemingly endless pit, scratches appearing from thin air and latching onto her legs, causing her to weaken.

    She's falling faster, now, and physically limp. She's gone slack, her eyes still open - frozen by fear - as her gaze unfocuses.

    Rael reaches the bottom, and she somehow is standing perfectly upright, her head high. She screams as pain slowly creeps up her forelegs, and she tries to rip free of them by rearing, but more pain holds her upright now, midair. She looks around, and sees the pain is from the thorned vines, adorned with black roses, around her forelegs, barrel, and now slowly closing her muzzle and holding her neck hostage in an uncomfortable position.

    In reality, she's quivering, jerking - the signs of a nightmare are evident in her facial expression, as it twists and her mouth opens to give a shocking, unearthly rattling sigh of defeat.

    Back, where she's trapped, water is slowly lapping higher up her legs. The vines force her down, and she collapses, only to be jerked up into a standing position again like a puppet in a puppet show. Stone hits hard on her back, the weight and jagged edges causing almost unbearable pain.

    She doesn't expect the approval of the cave as she is paralyzed by a rock cutting through her skin and swelling her spine.

    She thinks of her brother, Real Fire. Her mother. Her father, but not so lovingly. Brynmor. Offspring. Each name - minus her father's - pierces her heart through with pain. She'd cry out if she wasn't paralyzed, breath slowly fading as she loses motion.

    Her vision fades first, then her legs still, her head slack; she's trapped, left with only her slowly fading thoughts. This is the end of me.. She thinks before she's caressed by a gentle darkness and returned to a weary sleep, exhausted and too stunned to wake.
    -------------------------------
    OOC : A look into her nightmarish, deepest fear. She was reliving a twisted version of her experience during the traditional Tundra initiation, where she slowly started to die, as in her nightmare, she doesn't pass the test and is tossed out and deemed unworthy of the scar of approval.

    Word Count = 429 Words

    Halloween surprise please!
    #5

    There was a saying, where I am from, 'Don't enter The Cave of the Damned and expect to exit.' It was a warning to foals - to everyone really. But not everyone took it as a warning, or believed the warning was true. But the power of sacred places, ancient places, should never be underestimated.

    The walls are rough stone of a gray colour, though that is becoming harder to determine as I get farther into the cave. I can still hear the rumble of thunder and the violent lashing of the rain as it comes down outside. I don't know this place, but it offers shelter from the torrent.

    I don't know what this place is, I don't know who I am, I am new. My mother has left me, and I am hungry and cold - that is the extent of my knowledge. I do not even have a name. But I keep walking, an instinct has driven me from the storm into this shelter. The air here is cold and clammy. Somehow despite the fact that I am no longer within site of the entrance I can still vaguely see the walls of the cave around me - there are darker patches here and there. I slow and look more closely at one of the darker patches. It is a cracked, indistinct smear of red-brown against the gray stone. I move on. I vaguely become aware that this shelter is beginning to become warm, but I know nothing, this does not compel me to stop. I am not immediately able to name or understand the implications of the feeling that something is watching me.

    The wall markings are more frequent now, and I no longer struggle to see my way forward - the passage seems to go on forever ahead of me, straight and narrow. I look close around me, hoping to find a wider place where I may lay down to sleep, for it has become quite warm. The air around me is dank and unpleasant, there is a noticeable almost sweet smell to the air that I do not recognize. That smell, I do not like it.

    A sense of foreboding blooms inside me.  The air is too close here, and humid. There is no place for me to rest, the passage is to narrow. I manage to turn my body around, for I am small and sill very flexible. My rump and muzzle graze the sides of the grotto and I must rear up onto my feebly hind legs to maneuver properly. All the while the need to be gone is increasing. I begin to understand the malevolence of this place. My nose brushes against one of the red-brown smudges on the wall and I realize that this one is not cracked, but glistening wet. I can feel some of it on my muzzle, and as it wafts up my nose I recognize the smell; one of the few things I have encountered in my day of existence - blood.

    My ill defined sense of foreboding grows ten fold. I must not be here. I must get out. It would be better to brave the storm than be here. I try to move back the way I have come, toward the entrance which I can no longer see but I find my legs don't want to move, I am paralyzed with emotions.

    "Don't enter the Cave of the Damned and expect to leave!" A serpentine like hiss echoes through the narrow cavern. I can not tell where it a come from, but the instinct to not look behind me is strong. But I must, I must know what is keeping me here. My small heart is pounding in my chest, I can feel my joints loosen and grow weak, my body begins to shake. I have not experienced this emotion before - fear.

    I must know what is behind me which every instinct tells me not to look at. I force my small dome to turn backward and look down the  passage. I see a figure that was not there before, it is too dark and far away to determine what it is. It was not there before. I blink, hoping I am seeing things, but I find that this instant has brought the figure a little closer. Now I see it move. It takes strange exaggerated strides and undulates in a disturbing fashion toward me.

    I find myself running, cold claws of fear gripping at my stomach. I hear it behind me, closer than it was before, I can hear it's foot falls now. I can feel the vibrations as they hit the ground. I can hear harsh rasping breath close behind me. I can smell, through the congealed blood on my nose, a sickly sweet stench.

    I can see the entrance now.

    It has caught me now!

    "Don't enter the Cave of the Damned and expect to leave!" I am frozen, unable to run. The figure is before me now. It has a shape similar to my own, but larger and jet black. The texture of his coat is nothing like mine, it appears to be scaled, like a snake. Fangs protruded from either side of it's rather horse like muzzle. It's eyes are a brilliant glowing green with strange slit like pupils. It's eyes seem to move independent of each other, one eye is pointed toward the roof of the cavern, the other vaguely in my direction. A snake like tongue protrudes from it's muzzle for an instant.

    I can't feel my body now, I am to frightened to be aware of anything but the monster before me and the rate at which my small heart is trying to hammer through my chest. The sickly sweet stench fills my nostrils.

    The creature bend's it's overly long, serpentine like neck toward me. The closer it comes the more I try to back away, but I am unable. It's oddly independent eye balls are the most disturbing part of the whole devil. They speak of a bestial hysteria that promises to drive me past the small store of courage I have.

    It's massive skull is now level with mine. My quick, rasping breaths are the only noise - and perhaps the thundering of my heart can be heard.

    In an agonizingly slow fashion the snake like, emerald green orbs of the creature begin to align on me. First the left and then what feels like an eternity later the right rolls down from the ceiling to settle on me. For a moment it simply stares at me.

    A reptilian forked tong erupts from the creatures fanged maw and flashes toward me. I feel the touch of it on my muzzle for an instant. I feel myself falling, with no ground beneath. Feel the air rush from my lungs and the strength leave my muscles. Cold pricks cover my skin. Darkness clouds my vision and my other senses fade.

    "Don't enter the Cave of the Damned and expect to leave!"



    I feel myself snap to consciousness, I hear a scream die on my lips. I am awake. A cold drizzle is falling in the forest, and the canopy of trees above me no longer blocks out the cold drops that feel like icy bites.
    I amalive and awake! Memories come flooding back, it was just my nightmare, the time I met and was spared by Death.


    Text can be added here, it's HTML colour 000000 atm, chane that to make text visible

    The dose makes the poison




    OOC: Word count: ~1250
    Unfortunately no mention of other Beqanna characters.

    Elixir is  character I revived from my early days of RPing several years ago. She was the product of some unhappy relations and abandoned by her mother at birth. The cave of the Damned was basically like the Beach here, where horses go to die, but the God of Death judged each horse and sent them to where he felt they belonged - sometimes he got hungry and if a horse was particularly bad he would eat them alive (Then they could become a vengeful spirit which was a big Halloween themes plot we had one time. - Darn it I miss SATH)

     ANYWAYS: Basically the day she was born there was a storm and she took shelter in the cave and this is vaguely what I recall happened with a few embellishments to try and make it a bit more spooky.... Death didn't bother with her because she was too new to be judged properly... So she kind of met our version of death and lived.
    Hope you guys like it! Shy


    P.S: Halloween surprise if I happen to do well, please.
    #6

    Love is friendship set on fire ...
    Even the forest isn’t safe anymore. They have found her, they haunt her. They are everywhere and at the same time nowhere. Flashes of dark pelt are constantly to be seen out of the corner of her eyes, but when Igni skittishly snaps her head in that direction, it is gone again. Their laugher is all around her, as she nervously spins around her own center while standing in the middle of a small clearing in the forest.

    Igni had avoided staying at home in Pangea, where Gunsynd too resided. Lior’s words about his father had confused her, scared her even, although she still didn’t understand them. Her confusion had been enough to drive her away from her home. The meadow wasn’t safe either, that was where Lior resided. Only the thought of how he had lured her in, how he had hurt and betrayed her, brought the tears back to her eyes. And now they had both come to get her.

    The blue roan girl can never see them long enough to determine which of the two it is. They shared the same slick black coat, were similar in height and build and right now they even seemed to get along way too well. Even their voices and laugher sounded the same, where they used to contrast each other – even though their likeliness – very much. ”Come here~ poppet.” One of them calls out to her, although Igni cannot say who of the two is it. She’s trembling all over, hastily shaking her head, as tears threatened to spill from her eyes. ”No! Go away. L-leave me alone.” Remember all those voices of scared girls in horror movies? High pitched, trembling and begging? That’s exactly how she sounds right now, she would wet her pants if that had been possible.

    Another flash catches her attention, but what scares her more is that this time they do appear to her. Side by side, father and son, Gunsynd and Lior, both with wicked grins upon their features. ”Hello poppet.” A high pitched, but short, scream sounds when Igni staggers backwards, almost tripping over her own legs, eyes wide in fear and shock. You would think this should the part in which she says ‘parley’, but then I’ll have to disappoint you. After mumbling another soft ”No, no, stay away..”, before she turns around and dashes away from the two tall, dark figures.

    The follow her, of course they do, the heavy drum of their hooves is hard to miss. The sound is rhythmically, way too synchronously to be real, but that is what makes it even creepier. Slowly the sound changes. The rhythm and heavy sound of the drum stays, but it are no longer footsteps that cause the sound. More like the sound of a shaman performing a ritual. The sound enchants her, Igni can feel the heavy drum in every fibre of her being. Her pace slows down, but that isn’t her who is doing it. The drum has taken all her willpower.

    The more she slows down, the more her belly grows, rounder and rounder, until she reaches the point at which she cannot grow bigger. The life inside her stirs, make their presence know. They don’t ask for attention, instead demand it. It hurts, it hurts so much that Igni isn’t even aware from the pained cries that get pulled from her lips, of the tears that roll down her cheeks. However, the thing she does register is her own fear, her panicked state. Not so much because she’s fearing for her child’s life, more from the evil that seems to be linked to the child.

    A sharp pain drives her on her knees, forcing her down. Her body spazzes as bones get broken and bruised, a rib piercing her lung, and her back find itself in an unnatural position. Igni screams die down, to be replaced for shallow gasps of breath and an shocked expression upon her features. It are not contractions, the pain worse, as the life in her womb struggles to force itself out. Fear holds her in his hold as they bite themselves through flesh, piercing skin, clawing their way out of their mother, leaving her only able to cry out in fear and misery. Igni’s body moves, muscles moving on their own due to the tension, like reflections.

    As suddenly as it had come, it is over. Blood oozes from the big wound in her stomach, but the blue roan girl can no longer feel it. She’s numb, numb to the pain, numb to her own panic and fears. Her breath his shallow, body no longer hers. There is one thing Igni is aware of, the soft sounds that newborns make. Yes, newborns, twins. She had twins. Motherly instincts drive her to push the boundaries of her body even further, her head slowly lifting up from the ground, glassy eyes searching for her children.

    The sight of them is horrible. Deformed, aborted, but at the same time so perfect. These slimy, wet bundles are her children, after all. They don’t seem to need her, or not in the way a newborn normally needed its mother. Her head drops back on the ground with a thud as soon as their teeth sink into her skin, continuing what they had done on their way out, filling their stomachs as the life slowly oozed away from Igni.
    ... and fire is the burning passion within.


    OOC: I'd like the Halloween suprise too, if I happen to get in 1 - 3rd place ^^.

    Ponies included are Lior, Gunsynd and Igni's unborn twins. I will play one of the twins myself, the other is going to be played by Elle Smile
    #7
    If he thought she had not seen the guilt in his eyes when they had reunited, he was wrong.

    Foolish.
    And he is rarely ever foolish.

    She had seen it – she had felt it. They were too close – too fashioned of the same cloth – for her to have missed the crinkling forehead under her kiss.
    Her lips curl and quiver into a scowl, but she watches from behind trees and underbrush, until the thing that blossoms between them becomes unbearable. Until it hurts.

    Until her eyes become red and dry from the autumnal wind that makes them huddle together even closer, necks tangled and breath evening out into a slumberous hum.

    —bleary and heavy.

    ----

    ‘Don’t go far.’ It echos, as if in a world contained by the slimy walls of a cave.
    It is young and sing-song, and he answers, ‘I won’t. I promise.’
    It is boyish and earnest.

    She can see him, gangly and stern-eyed, contained by a million miniature galaxies, blinking over at her from across their nest made of fat pillows and woven blankets.
    Around them curve, perfectly circular, stone walls.

    Far below their tower room, pine trees grow far into the black horizon. They are like passengers in a ship lost at sea.
    A fire glows somewhere nearby, it’s light dances and it’s warmth eats away at the wind that whistles through windows carved, wide and glassless, all the way around the circumference.

    And so it is, like a chain that binds them from the inside out. ‘I promise.’
    She smiles and on her head is a crown of baby roses and newborn starlight; her indigo hair curls around her bright face and down her golden neck. He smiles back, a thick, metal loop circling his thin neck, engraved with ornate, stellar patterns. A single row of glittering links falls from it, between his bent knees, then fork off, each end fastened to a smaller ring, circling both of his front ankles.

    Her eyes become bleary and heavy.


    The world shakes her awake, and her body is not young but full and her crown sits in a pile ash at her feet – she flinches as each young star dies and each rose withers.
    He is not there. He was not there.
    She is alone, in a fractured chamber, groaning under the weight of its own fiction. ‘GIVER–” the name catches in her tightening chest as she scrambles to stand. Around the tossing tower, silvery links are strewn like constellations, broken and bent. ‘No. No,’ tears trailing down her cheeks, hot and hopeless, as she follows them like some lost astronaut. The floor gives away with a sudden, sharp jolt as limestone cracks and crumbles.

    And she falls.

    ‘NO!’


    She falls, but the pinewood below does not get the pleasure of impaling her.
    She is caught, instead, in a web of many, infinitesimal gravities. Cold and without weight, she hurtles ever towards the event horizon, through distances like galaxies and deep space. Blind and cold, past the vast, gaping mouths of worm holes; hot, as she approaches mighty suns and does not turn from them, but searches their flares for his scent. Forever.

    (She felt like it had been forever.
    But time is a queer thing here.)

    ‘Giver...?’ This is his place. With no time and no boundaries, in a kingdom of colossal emptiness; bereft of spring flowers and jeweled birds; princesses and princes; too close to the moon to be romantic. She blinks, tears slip off her face and suspend around her like many frozen raindrops.

    She can see now that it is a dead body – colourless and bleak.

    ‘Giver!’ She shutters her eyes tight, picturing, instead, their childhood games. Like reenacting Shakespeare alone in the dark, skipping through trees and listening to mother’s tales. (Princesses and princes, and monsters.)
    ‘GIVER!’ Her voice shatters the utter quiet and suddenly, her lungs deflate, trying without success to feed off the vacuum. She sucks in, but her efforts are greeted only by a sensation like a fist squeezing her body. She feels her skin grow tight to her bones, wrinkling as moisture drains from the supple curves of her hip and neck.

    She blinks, tears blur her vision. She can see the dead all around her – the moon. The stars. The skeleton drawn out in their formations. The Reaper. Hooded and holding a scythe in each bony hand. (Like no constellation he had ever pointed out to her before.) He turns to her, star-death, and so it is...
    She blinks, but her eyes are growing heavy as she hurtles ever towards a shared fate with them.


    When her eyes reopen, she is standing, knee-deep, in icy water. It’s dark, calm surface reflecting the blinks and glows of the night sky above. ‘Her?’ She protects her hurt with a veneer of careless incredulity. (He is rarely ever foolish.)
    He stands beside her, and while he wears his own supernovas, he is not wearing his chains.

    ‘You’ll like her, Alight. I promise.’
    She blinks down at her own reflection, his wavering to her right.
    ‘I’m sure.’ Spittle sprays from her mouth. ‘I’m sure she is lovely,’ ripples cascade away, almost violently, as something heavy and solid crashes into the water. She squints, dropping her head down to inspect as it bobs away like a duck n a lake.
    ‘Hmm... Skin,’ he mutters, absentmindedly. In the crooked mirror of water, she can see he is looking over his shoulder at something enticing on the beach.
    ‘Yes.’ She agrees, examining the bright white underside of her mandible. ‘What… ith her… name?’ Acid liquefies her jaw into a messy slop, her tongue (fat and pink) lolling down her thin, golden neck. She can taste sea salt, dirt, horsehair and meat. She watches her throat take to it, like fire to dry kindling, melting and bubbling; sloughing off her in steaks and strange cocktails of fat and blood. Until her tongue, too, bobs away from her, off to the dark horizon.
    Until she can see the way each vertebrae connects and moves together. Watches, as her heart and gut – liver and unused uterus – fall from between the graceless spires of her ribs. Until, ringed in the rippled stars, and the dead bodies of Once-Was-Alight, is the imitation of Pale Death.
    ‘Well. Hey,’ Giver says, slow and casual, in a tone that pleads for disengagement to be as gentle (and as quick) as possible, ‘I have to go. I’ll come see you later. I promise.’

    She turns her eyes away from the grisly sea, following his body back to the beach – glowing faintly like the moon from down here – her, pale and black-bonneted, beside him. Flowers tangle in the wild mess of her tail, and on her head is a crown of starlight and grass. 

    He brings constellations to her; points out the ram’s horns and lion’s stride. Dully, she wonders why he can glow but her skin cannot repair itself – she wonders what the woman’s name is, but when she opens the hinges of her bare-bone face to yell after them, she has no organs to make or guide the sound. She only creaks and clicks.

    She watches them until the thing that blossoms between them becomes unbearable. Until it hurts.

    Until her eyes become red and dry from the sharp, caustic rot that gurgles from within.

    —bleary and heavy, they are consumed, and she falls below the surface of that liquid cosmos surrounding her.


    ------

    Kristin's Spark is mentioned, of course. We are looking at just over 1,200 words. And I dunno if I'm eligible to enter because of the race quest? I really, REALLY hope so, but if not, I'll be damned if I'm not glad I got to write this, regardless. If I do place... eeeeehhhhh, I'm slightly nervous, but, why not a Halloween surprise. xD
    [Image: RS84HN4.png]
    Pollock x Malis
    pixel base by bronzehalo
    #8
    Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.
    ((Um. Trigger warning. Just a whole lot of trigger warning, okay? This post is pretty fucked up, so...sorry in advance.))

    Pain became so much more when the dark god wrapped himself around Quark, dampening her body’s hard-won ability to heal itself. He was a connoisseur of torment, and he wasted no time on niceties. Not after she taunted him so, grim satisfaction on her face as she delivered her last little blow: “She didn’t come back for you.” She watched the words sink in, watched the idle uncaring expression warp to something twisted and malevolent. He stalked toward her, crimson eyes glittering with malice as he stepped closer. Darkness closed around her and agony engulfed her.

    By the time she came back to herself, her throat was raw from screaming. It felt like only moments, like hours, like years, an infinity looped in on itself until every second was an eon and geological eras were condensed into the span of heartbeats. Her body was spent, utterly exhausted, numb from an eternity of excruciating pain, and she slumped against the wall of...a cave? A cave, cold and damp and echoing, vast and empty like her world before the dark god dragged her to hell. Oh, but the cold was welcome against her skin, skin she’d thought had been flayed away, but he must have let it regrow. She couldn’t do it herself, not when he held her powers in check, but he seemed to get a sick little thrill from forcing her body to renew itself so he could continue his torment. She drew in a slow, shaky breath as she rested her face against the cool rock, and couldn’t even find the energy to look up when she heard the
    clip clop, clip clop of approaching hooves.

    After all, who else could it be?

    She had just enough of herself left that she could feel it as he reached into her mind and rifled around, but there was nothing to find there. No trace of anyone she might have loved because she’d cut them all away. The cold, methodical invasion continued, a dirty, clammy caress to parts of her no one was meant to touch. Fingers invading, probing inside her chest, slicking along the surface of her heart and slipping inside to explore. Hands clutching her soul and holding it down, spreading it open and baring it to the dark that thrust its way in to seek out any trace, anything rooted too deep to be sliced free. She could almost feel his rush of satisfaction as he left traces of his essence inside her and withdrew.

    And then lips touched her neck, velvet soft and desperately familiar. Oh, her body remembered, even if her mind could not. She sighed, tilting her head to give her lover better access, moaning as teeth scraped along sensitive skin. Shuddering as hair prickled along the back of her neck and down her spine, a tingle of
    something not quite right. But a familiar body pressed against hers, and the musky, earthy scent of her lady wrapped itself around her and consumed her. Fire burned in her belly, spreading through her veins, ravenous after so long apart (why had they ever been apart?) and she opened her eyes to meet her lover’s golden gaze. But the eyes looking back at her were dark crimson and full of hate, and a sick, strange light that turned the fire in her blood to ice in an instant. The face was familiar, rich brown sliced through with a scythe-shaped scar about one eye, tarnished silver forelock trailing down to frame features she would know in any lifetime even if the name was gone, even if the memories were erased. But the eyes weren’t those of an almost-forgotten love.

    She tried to fight his touch, but he held her frozen by the ice in her veins as he tainted everything she’d ever held sacred. He wore that perfect face and violated what was left of her love as he violated her body. She couldn’t even scream, couldn’t even buck and kick and skewer him with spikes as she’d done once before, to a sick old man who’d stolen her innocence. She could only twist in on herself and cut away the last of her memories, destroying the pain and the horror and the sick feeling twisting her insides the same way she’d severed ties to those she’d loved. By the time he finished, she was nothing but an empty shell, vacant mismatched eyes staring off into the distance.  The dark god’s laughter echoed in her head as the world shook and quaked and began to devour itself.


    Pyre woke with a gasp, his traitorous body shaking and lathered in sweat. He shuddered violently, his body wrestling with its own inability to vomit even as all trace of the dream vanished, leaving nothing but nausea and a desperate need for a swim. He wanted to wash himself, to bathe in the swift current even if it felt like he’d never be clean again. Just a nightmare, he told himself as he clambered to his feet, shaking himself to try to get rid of the lingering remnants of already-forgotten horror. With a snort, he set out to find a river and wash away the sweat and the scent and the sick feeling in his gut, and the restless need to shift, to change his body to suit who he was instead of this garishly-painted female form he was stuck in. It had never felt more uncomfortable, for some reason...

    ((I would prefer points rather than a Halloween Surprise, since Q’s already pretty drowning in shinies and could use like eighty-five points yet before she has all her mojo back. The dark god referenced was (probably obviously) Carnage, and all of this is basically flashback nightmares to her torture from juuuuust before the Reckoning. Q woke afterward with no memory of who she was, and named herself Pyre. And also woke male because her body didn’t want to be female after what Carnage did to her, so. Thus the name/pronoun discrepancy.))
    I am the fire.
    #9
    WINNERS:

    1st- Quark - you asked for points so 10 points (already been awarded)
    2nd- Alight - Fire wings, genetic
    3rd- Naga - You didn't specify, points or a prize

    Everyone's points have been updated to reflect their contribution. Congrats!




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