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  • Beqanna

    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


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    CHAPTER FIVE: the darkest depth [final round]
    #5
    <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Great+Vibes" rel="stylesheet"><style type="text/css">.atrani{position: relative;z-index: 3;width: 560px;box-shadow: 0 0 8px #000;background: #1B305D;padding-bottom: 4px;border: 1px solid#000;border-radius: 120px 0px 0px 0px;}.atrpic{position: relative;z-index: 5;width: 560px;border-radius: 120px 0px 0px 0px;}.atrgrad{position: relative;z-index: 7;height: 100px;margin-top: -100px;background: rgba(27,48,93,0);
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    For years she has avoided him, avoided Zoryn, avoided <i>her.</i>
    For years she closed herself to others, encasing her brittle heart in a steel prison.

    But seeing him here - <i>seeing</i> him – overwhelms her and she cannot hide it. Atrani almost crumbles to her knees, but finds the strength to remain standing. <i>”This is what you look like,”</i> she breathes as he edges closer to her, his porcelain bones catching the moonlight. <i>”I’m sorry,”</i> her voice is hardly more than a murmur as she edges closer, her heart thrumming in her chest.

    But then there is a shriek.
    And her body is enveloped by water.

    It crashes as she plunges down into its dark depths. She had time only for one, quick breath. It doesn’t last her long as the siren yanks her farther and farther down. A meager struggle at best, her body atrophied, weakened, and bloody. Her strength is fleeting, her hope diminishing. Atrani cannot see how dark the lake is underneath – everything is dark again. The vision of father was her first – and last – time ever seeing anything. A kick here and a balk there, but that’s all she can muster with her one breath before drawing in a lungful of water. It weighs her down like bricks as the siren brings her to the bottom.

    This is the end, Atrani thinks, as her muscles quiver and twitch with a grim finality.

    But she doesn’t die, not this time.

    The water that flushes through her brings with it a surge of power, a foreign trace of magic that she has never before experienced. Even beneath the water she can hear her bones break only to rejoin again. She doesn’t know what’s happening, or even how she can recognize the change in her body. The idea of dying had been welcomed; she succumbed to the possibility of it, let her body be pulled down by the siren.

    But, now?

    Now, there is an energy flocking to her weak muscles. Her lungs expand and she breathes in a gulp of water, but this time it’s light as air. It doesn’t burn or hurt. Gills flutter and her legs are fins. She still cannot see, her eternally-black world, but her senses come alive in a way they never have. It startles her initially, and she shies to the right. It seemingly startles the siren too, however, as Atrani notices how the water buffets her in the creature’s manner of escape. Immediately, she veers to the left in pursuit, not understanding what’s happening, what she is, or how she is breathing underwater. She doesn’t ask. Not this time. And she doesn’t wait for an imaginary vision.

    Instead, she reacts on instinct.

    The movement in the water stirs her mouth to open – filled with serrated teeth – and bite down. Blood pools around her; it has an iron tang that disgusts her at first. There is a scream from the siren. Then an attempt to sing to weaken Atrani again, but its pain hinders the siren’s song.

    Silence.

    That’s how Atrani escapes.

    A traumatic bite to the siren’s leg before she swerves into another direction to follow the rippling noises at the surface. Her body is strong, much more powerful than it has ever been, but the flesh is still taut, a sense of undead as rags of skin sway with her lateral movements. If only she could see herself as this monster piercing the inky black of the lake, a torpedo of destruction in the night.

    But she isn’t used to this change - this power - and so her body revolts and uncontrollably shifts again. Where there had been tattered sandpaper skin of a shark – tinted blue after a near-death by drowning before reviving -, fins, and an immense jaw, she now has armored scales, claws, a long muzzle with teeth, and a sweeping tail to balance it all. She drifts to the surface, her nostrils opening to inhale air for the first time in what seems like an eternity.

    And she drifts, exhausted.

    But then there are nails scraping her tender underbelly. A hiss slips form her crocodilian maw as she squirms in distress, snapping through the water blindly. Fresh blood seeps from her wounds, but the siren has already sunken and succumbed to her disastrous wounds, drifting into the darkness where she had pulled Atrani only minutes prior.

    Everything is still again, even the water.

    Another breath. Another groan.

    With movements like that of a serpent, Atrani swims toward where she can hear the grass whisper and the lake lap at the edge. It calls to her much as the siren had, but there is no imagery of happiness – only an abysmal darkness.

    She stops only when she has made contact with soil, dragging herself up the bank with ragged pieces of flesh hanging down, exposing fragments of her bones.

    Another shift.

    It hurts. Everything in her body jerks and cracks until she is herself again – emaciated, ever eyeless, and weak – lying nearly dead in the grass. Even the putrid stench of decay hangs in the air, but she blames it on the blood that had been shed – both hers and the sirens.

    She had become a monster of death and of chaos, but that is what she had always been. She has only caused pain to those she surrounds, cursing them with her hovering presence. Mother died partially because of her. Father became reclusive because of her, and he lost all sense of happiness because of her.

    Atrani broke apart a family and she tore lovers apart.

    She has, and always will be, a monster – a creature that brings only pain – a curse. For a moment, when she saw her father, she had hoped everything would be fixed and that she could hope to love and find joy again, but it was stripped from her. Torn to pieces.

    With rivulets of blood trailing down her body, Atrani lies in the grass. She doesn’t realize how her skin remains a deep blue or how emaciated she is or how wounded she is. With her cheek pressed to the dirt, she lies in wait, wondering if death is looming near or if she had beaten it down in the lake’s depths.

    Either way, she refuses to move just yet, exhausted and beaten.


    </div><div class="atrquote">dove into her eyes and starved all the fears</div></div><div class="atrcredits">picture by <a href="http://www.boredpanda.com/death-like-skeleton-drawings-haenuli-shin/?utm_source=androidapp&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=androidapp">haenuli shin</a>- HTML by Call - words: ________</div></div></center>
    [Image: callwolf_zpsasro4cel.png]


    Atrani drowned in the lake, but with the lungful of water she became a Draugr which is like an animated corpse from Norse mythology and creature of darkness. Involved in this was shapeshifting (shifted into an undead shark & crocodile), additional strength, and her skin turning a "death-blue" color.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draugr
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    RE: CHAPTER FIVE: the darkest depth [final round] - by Atrani - 07-27-2017, 09:46 PM



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