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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


    Simple lies, strange eyes; Ajatar, Longclaw
    #1

    when the stars threw down their spears and water'd heaven with their tears:

    It looks like a monkey. If, you know, a monkey had no hair. You might be inclined to watch the eerie swiftness of it gliding quite literally through the treetops and think to yourself, “If I had to guess at what it was, I’d say a monkey.”

    But that would be to its advantage and this- this is what it wants you to believe; that you are simply observing something not quite natural in the sense of the word, but rather something easily shrugged away. “They are good at that,” Wyrm thinks, dropping noiselessly through a hundred feet or so of intertwined branches with the single, deft swing of an elongated arm. “choosing not to see what’s right in front of them.”

    Mid-swing he stops (yanks himself to a halt, really), gripping a branch with dexterous fingers so that he might hang silently from above. Drifting, pendulum-like, noise filters up from the ground below: a pair of horses, languid in their journey north. “No…” He thinks, dark nostrils flaring as he inhales, “Longclaw.”

    The creature lets go.

    An inky blob plummets heavily to the earth, but does not spatter on the ground in front of them. Drawing abruptly to a halt, ears lowered and eyes flashing, Longclaw watches the thing sink below the surface of the earth before dancing forward - he doesn’t like the sight of it, wants to feel it trampled beneath his feet before it can rise once more.

    “I like watching you in the afternoons.” Wyrm speaks suddenly from behind them. As a writhing, semi-shapeless mass he’s already begun to rise from the soil; a black, shadow-like horse without true shape or color just yet, only a voice and two curious, mismatched eyes. “The Western shore of Tephra is a good place for you to call your own, you know.”

    Settling, solidifying now that he’s completed his resurrection, Wyrm glances over the odd pair as his shape defines and bleeds from black to his signature green. “Your mother is busy. I haven’t seen her in some time.” He relays, tilting a curious eye towards the mare. Longclaw, catching the harmless glance, moves to block the girl from Wyrm’s sight. “Is that why you came? Tell me.” The shifter demands, his once monotone phrases hardening into pointed questions. It was droll, the way his son had been acting as of late.

    “Were you afraid to come alone, little Longclaw?

    did he smile his work to see? did he who made the Lamb make thee?



    @[Ajatar] I'll be switching between posting them while playing both, bear with me Smile
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    #2
    ajatar
    devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
    angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.
    Something is wrong with it.
    She smells it well before it drops down behind them - the smell of earth and dirt and musk. Animal, though not the way Ajatar and Longclaw smelled. Like something feral and unnatural, a predator amongst the prey. Oh, how her mother and grandfather would laugh to hear her think herself prey! The girl takes a few steps closer to Longclaw, increases her steady clip, all for the purpose of having someone close. Safety, though she is her own failsafe.

    And then it drops.
    She hears the sickening thud in what should be bodies collapsed and rolling and bones breaking - instead the strange thing falls like rain to the ground and just...changes. It grows, steadily and eerily, its eyes mismatched and glowing in the dark. It is different from Violence and her dead companions, or the steady trickle of fear from her grandsire or mother. No, this is some other kind of fearful beast - it is unnatural.

    She feels the tugs of her power before she can call it back.
    Fight or flight fight or flight...she supposes she is fight.

    Without meaning to it pours from her, a noxious, toxic and unseen. It's deadly that way, isn't it? You can't run from it because you can't see it, it's not until it enters the lungs and causing festering. It's not until it crawls up your legs and causes pox, it's not until they fester and burst open and pucker that you realize the smoky girl in front of you with the scales on her legs doesn't seem as affected. Yes, the pox climbs up her legs - but slower, less affected. Her scales on her legs pop off as the blisters form, but they don't look like yours. They don't look to pain her.

    "What do you want?" she growls, her tail flicking in annoyance - a strange departure from her normally unflapable demeanor. But she is cornered, or so she feels, and something - that dark, sickly rage that comes from her long line of hellacious family - rears its ugly head and narrows its eyes on you.


    (The way I've played her in the past with her pestilence is it just kinda does what the other wants to - they can step back and be out of the range, it can affect their lungs or their legs or they just see it happen on her and high-tail it before it hits them Wink )
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    #3

    LONGCLAW

    -I close my eyes, ignore the smoke-

    Longclaw hisses. The sound of his name on that disgusting tongue sends the fur along his nape to shifting - it thickens, grays out, and then pricks with distaste as his father waits for them to move. “You worthless, stinking -” He begins, feeling the surge of adrenaline fill his lungs and widen his ribs. Words won’t do, Longclaw is stopped short in his speech by the amused flicker of a smile over Wyrm’s bright green lips.

    He should kill him. Just like Wyrm had forced a childhood of bitter resentment down his throat, so Longclaw desires to rip that pointed tongue clean from its spot and shove it likewise down his own father’s gullet. “Would you like that, for us to come to blows?” He thinks, all the while the curse inside howls for release. Maim, maim, eat- It urges, Claw trembles to smother it beneath clear-thinking.

    The pain trickles through his skin; he brushes it away at first. What are mere ant bites to the sting of a familial rivalry? Wyrm himself shuffles at the beginning, eager to trample whatever irritant might be gnawing at his exposed legs. His adept son watches those same, green hooves blur into nothingness, transparency. It won’t stop the spread, though.

    “Did you know, sweet girl,” Wyrm says, turning those unsettling eyes to where Ajatar stands for an answer, “Did you know that your friend here likes to steal other horses’ powers, hmm?” He nettles, grimacing as the boils begin to fill and burst while the infection spreads above his knobbed knees. “LIAR!!” Longclaw screams out, rushing ahead though his steps are uncertain - Ajatar’s secret has spread across those blue-gilded ribs, over the proud rise of his velveteen chest.

    Wyrm is quick to meet him. In the flash of a moment the green stallion shifts and darts forward, reaching back to send a cracking blow across the snarling face of his son. It sends Claw reeling; the power behind it cannot be matched so instead the ground rises up to break his child’s fall. “I came to stop him, maybe even see the magician he’s in league with.” Wyrm wheezes, the strength of his legs buckling for a moment. “They could’ve hurt you. No telling who they already have.”

    From the side, Longclaw pulls his forelegs up. A racking cough seizes the iridescent horse; blood paints the grass in expert strokes of slick, wet crimson. Wyrm glances at the young stallion, then to the mare who seems unaffected by the sporadic illness. “Nayl and Nerine will be happy to give you safe harbor,” He hacks, taking a moment to catch his breath while his son groans incoherently, "This way.”



    @[Ajatar] This is totally her choice, no strings attached!
    [Image: sScEgld.png]
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    #4
    ajatar
    devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
    angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.
    She's aware of what she's doing - if not totally willingly, she lets it happen. Isn't that an admission of guilt? To let something happen, knowingly, and not intervene? Longclaw was her friend, after all, her only true friend and she was protecting him. Protecting them both, really. Who knows what this maniacal thing would do if Longclaw was otherwise occupied? Ajatar still - despite all she's seen and done - doesn't understand that she is as much a threat as any other.

    Still, the anger (and fear and everything else) surges through her and keeps the pox alive, keeps it growing and swirling in the air, bursting plumes of foul disease. A few more boils erupt under her snake scales and pop off, but nothing like the racking, heaving coughs of the others. She's not immune...she's inoculated. Her disease is minimal, comparatively. She shudders until the weight of it, feeling her heart rate increase, the sweat break out along her body.

    Then the other speaks, he says...he says Longclaw does...

    She falters - just enough. Just enough to keep the pox from spreading as she considers. Would he do this, really? Longclaw? He doesn't even know her power! Or did he see her scales and know there was something more? She worries over this, more so about the promise of their friendship as a lie than worry he'd actually take something from her. Would she let him?

    The indecision is plain on her face as she looks from the groaning Longclaw on the ground to the smirking horse, the original target of her disease, leading the way for her to follow him.

    Who does she trust? Does she run back to Tephra? For some reason that idea - to run - seems ludicrous to her. Why would she run? Instead she takes a step toward them both, pinning her ears flat against her head. "What do you mean he could have hurt me? What magician?" she demands. She's not going anywhere until she gets some answers.
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    #5

    when the stars threw down their spears and water'd heaven with their tears:

    Longclaw knew what special was. If not by sight, by smell alone; the boy was a third generation shifter, gifted with a curse that had been passed on throughout the years to anyone unlucky enough to want it. He could pick a special one from a crowd of useless others, Wyrm had made sure of that from the beginning. “You don’t play with lessers, you don’t befriend them.” Wyrm had pounded, over and over again until the notion had stuck. “They get you nowhere. Power, it comes to those who take it, you understand?”

    And Longclaw had taken. And taken some more.

    Where the blame lay after that encounter, in truth no one could say. Had it been Wyrm who pushed him? Or was it Longclaw’s desire to meet his father’s golden expectations that had led them here? Either way, neither speak when Ajatar cuts through the muck of this gathering in search of answers. Instead, they only glance at one another - father to son, creator to creation - and hold their tongues.

    “His name is Deimos.” Longclaw finally spits out, still prostrate on the earth. Pushed away from the source of his sickness, he can gather enough will to answer the scaled mare. His father, Wyrm, is left to stumble away in a racking fit of wet coughs.

    “This... incarnate of evil over here,” He growls, throwing a nod in the direction of his sire, who’s coughed himself into an oddity of creatures (is that a doe tail sprouting from between his hind cheeks? The flash of odd patterns over his skin is distracting enough.) “Led me to believe that taking my grandsire’s power by force would give me greatness.”

    Heaving, the red spittle of his own blood still slick over his lips and chin, Longclaw tips his head and attention to where Ajatar waits. “It cursed me. Deimos the magician -” He wheezes, “ - thought of taking me under his wing, but …” And here he pauses, both forelegs trembling violently with the effort expended to rise from his fallen position. He falters; the going is not so easy even with the distance between himself and the smokey mare. “But I was unimpressed with his methods, or his other followers.” He finishes at last, blinking softly as his vision spins. The entire underhalf of his skin has begun to fester and slough away, rolling as if alive from the constant assault of Ajatar’s power.

    Wyrm, shriveled and changed to a writhing, black snake, can do nothing but fight the power he cannot stop. Looking upon him, Longclaw feels something akin to satisfaction. “You should kill him. Kill us both, Ajatar.” He whispers, struck by the truth of it.

    Wyrm did not deserve a full life. Longclaw would never see one anyways.

    did he smile his work to see? did he who made the Lamb make thee?



    @[Ajatar]
    Reply
    #6
    ajatar
    devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
    angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.
    Deimos.

    She blinks at the name - hard. Her face is a mix of emotions - realization, hatred, fear, acceptance. How deep the worm hole into her horrific family history go? How far would she have to go back to see a decent, normal member of her family? Were they all like her mother and grandsire - fit for nothing more than a lengthy execution? She feels the tendrils of the disease she wrought fall away from her, dropping to the ground, dissipating into the dirt. She can sense it even though she can't see it, leaving the air and returning it to its disease free state. A few more of her scales have popped off and revealed a pock mark underneath, but she remains mostly unharmed in comparison.

    "Him," she breathes, her anger replaced with deflation. She's at loss of what else to say, but meets Longclaws eye as he says it - kill us both.

    Could she?

    She looks down at the sloughing, the bloodied spittle, the ravaged pox...and she knows she did it. She knows that part of her longed for the sensation as it coursed through her veins and left her in a great rush of power. Isn't that what Deimos wanted? And Harmonia always chased? Power. Pure and simple. And she had it - the ability to wield disease. Could she kill her only friend? Would she?

    "How far is Nerine? I can send for help...we might make it..." She is thinking aloud about things she doesn't know. Would anyone even help her? Could they make it before...before...
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    #7

    Corva

    In her handful of months being alive he has definitely in her opinion) wandered every inch of Hyaline. Every slice of shore, pine copse, waterfall and ledge-side has been visited by her dainty toes and dancing steps. The creatures from border to border know her, they adore her. She has practiced her craft ever since her mother taught her how and the critters small and large all around have benefitted from it. She gains power with each stroke of her foggy magic, finding her way around it slowly.

    Today is one of those days her grandfather is ‘watching’ her. Her favorite kind of day. Each time her mother departs and leaves her own father in charge Corva knows she is free for the day. The agreement between grandchild and grandsire is as follows: “No leaving Hyaline, Don’t get hurt, Be back before your mother.” Simple.

    She bid the big speckled stallion a loving goodbye, a promise to be back and then she was off into the woods where she always skittered away to. She has a plan today as she does most days – she dreams up plans while she waits for the days her mother will not hover over her. Get to the eastern border…keep following the water…

    Fuck the rules. Today she picks up where she was exploring last time. Where does the river go?

    Unceremoniously she breaks through the border, no hesitance in her prancing step. The gushing water guides her, pulls her to it and along its mossy banks. It feels odd to her now to be where she does not recognize. Some birds from home follow her for a while but then even they go back where they know they’re safe. Corva does not, she walks on along the river’s edge until she hears something surprising (to her, anyway). She can hear voices murmur from somewhere beyond the tree’s shadows, drowned by tumbling rapids. The fresh smell of water, moss and roots is spoiled by something foul that makes her pink nose curl and sneeze. “Ugh…” She shakes as if that with get rid of the smell, but of course it doesn’t. Like any good explorer she must find the source, right?

    Are you guys…” Her blows a sneeze from her nostrils as the putrid smell starts to choke her. She can barely keep her watering eyes open to see the sores and the stallion in a poorly state. Her magic fights whatever sickly tentacles still strangle the atmosphere, a pale mist starting rise at her feet and spreading relief as it reaches out. She says no more but steps forward to hang her nose over him. Thick fog, resembling clouds of sparkling mountain mist, pour from her nostrils and mouth to envelope him completely. It works slow, but over a few minutes the pain should numb and the wounds heal and maybe scar (she cannot control that).

    like a h e a r t b e a t drives you m a d



    sorry if it is shit
    if you need to change anything, powerplay her idc
    <3
     
    i was born sick,
    BUT I LOVE IT.   
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    #8

    LONGCLAW

    -I close my eyes, ignore the smoke-

    Longclaw faintly remembers that Ajatar had been saying something. Listening, however, had been a bit harder, considering the fact that his eyes had closed quite permanently from the excitement and left him to slump unceremoniously back to the earth. Ajatar’s gift fumbles to release him, the damage beyond mortal repair, but still his breath comes in ragged strokes. Why does he choose now to fight, of all times? It would have been a painful death - the sting of his wounds is hellish raw - still he would have welcomed this end as opposed to the one that lay in wait years from this moment.

    Whatever the reason, he blinks awake when the first tendrils of mist billow out across his face. The sensation is invigorating, like being warm and yet simultaneously chilled, and Longclaw inhales the heavy matter deeply to let it fill his innards. Exhaling leaves him feeling alive in the sense, but he’s not whole or untouched as he was when he left the safety of the arena. His stomach, where the skin had peeled from rot and dropped blackened to the earth, feels tight with the new growth of skin. It’s dark, like his points, and interrupts the glimmer over his ribs on either side of his body.

    Marked- he’s marked now. 

    Searching for answers his bright green eyes find Corva instead; he smiles gently, raises a head to right his vision, and quips, “Never thought I’d have to thank a child for keeping me alive …” before his legs work stiffly to lift him up again. Instinctually he coughs but blood doesn’t follow this time, the little healer has done her work fully. His gaze smarts, attention turning to Ajatar with a mixture of incredulous wonder and newfound respect.

    “Should we … talk?” He asks, easing forward on weak legs. It’s an empty gesture of sorts; he’s got no idea what she’d even want to talk about, even though her connection to the characters involved in Longclaw’s life seems eerily similar. Perhaps he’s just trying to be nice. A glance around the dark mare serves to inform him that Wyrm has gone - vanished as he’s so renowned for. “Not forever.” The exhausted stallion thinks, “Not forever.”

    Remembering Corva, the little spotted girl, he tilts a curious head back in her direction to finish his earlier statement: “A ‘thank you’ is in order, though. Tephra could use talent like yours - what’s your name?”



    @[Ajatar] @[corva]
    [Image: sScEgld.png]
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    #9
    ajatar
    devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
    angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.
    "Longclaw? Longclaw!" Ajatar felt the panic rising in her chest, threatening to unleash the plague from her body once more. Why wasn't he answering? Why were his lips moving wordlessly? His breathing...was is slowing down? Why wouldn't he open his eyes? She was frustrated, angry, sad, scared - it all piled up together to make her shudder and shiver as though a cold set over herself as well. She almost didn't see the girl, almost didn't hear her "uhg" from the periphery of their meeting space. She realized, perhaps a beat too late, that the girl was well within the zone of her caustic fumes and she almost turned to tell the girl to go away. Run! Anything! Get away from the noxious fumes that Ajatar produced to maim Wyrm (gone, long gone now) and instead fell everything in her immediate range. How far did the disease go?

    Why oh why couldn't she control it?

    The girl didn't seem too affected - she coughed, made a noise, and then approached the prone Longclaw with more curiosity than anything else. A mist rises off of her, fine and translucent, and Ajatar cannot help but think of the disease that rolls off her own skin. It's not visible, not like this girl, but...what is she doing? Ajatar realizes she's relatively unaffected by her disease and her mind jumps to conclusions.

    "Don't!" she cries, taking a lunge toward the girl, hoping to knock her out of the way or something. Last minute, though, the realization dawns on her. She sees the mist enter his body, his nostrils, his mouth, and soothe the angry flesh along his sides. His coughing ceases, his breathing returns to normal. She fixed him.

    She fixed him after Ajatar broke him.
    Her only friend - reduced to near death, and nothing she could do to save him. The realization hits her hard and nearly chokes her. She is no better than her mother or her grandsire. He's just as harmful and dangerous. She doesn't deserve friends.

    Should we...talk?

    "I..." she trails off, unsure what to say, panic bright in her eyes. She wants to flee, to run, so she takes another step back away from the group.
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