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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


    kids sure like the devil these days [warrick/longclaw/any]
    #11
    we are crooked souls trying to stay up straight
    Warrick’s eyes flash to Longclaw - a trusted confidant and companion, despite the differences between them. The moment Harmonia’s words left her lips and the disease spirals from her daughter’s flesh, the Overseer’s ears fall back into his neck and a sharp snort of apprehension escapes him, taking a few steps back from the dying growth that trembles towards them. Pressing closer to Wound, forcing her to take a step back as well if she had not already done so. The cerulean of his gaze lingers on the dying foliage near them, before flashing upwards at Ajatar then to Harmonia. It is unlike the ability he has come grown familiar with - the one Kolera used to have as a child, and though at first he thought this could be that same power, the welts on Ajatar’s flesh prove him to be incorrect.

    He is not impressed, and if anything there is disquiet placating the strong angles of his face, a thin line forming on the cobalt of his lips. Harmonia is vague in her request, which sets the osprey-King on edge immediately. Longclaw’s reaction only furthers this caution, and though the Warrick always had a steadier hand when it came to emotions, he knew well that the bright blue stallion’s reactions were never overdramatic.

    A single ear tips towards Longclaw, surprised at his outburst but not allowing his gaze to fall from Harmonia’s for an instant. Something stirs in his gut as the tension becomes palpable, thick and swathing him in a cold sense of foreboding. He trusts Longclaw, and though he hopes that Ajatar will not call the stallion’s bluff (if it is one), he does not know the power that is truly wielded before him and he will not allow Longclaw to wither into nothingness before him just to prove a point. “Longclaw,” Warrick directs his voice towards him, noticing the wildness that courses through his friend’s body, hoping that his agreement with him will be enough to settle the blue stallion. His gaze remains ever focused on the strangers before him.

    “What is your goal here, Harmonia?” Warrick asks tersely, his muscles growing taut beneath the thick skin of his auburn coat. “So far I see no proposition; only a display of power that is unclear, which I cannot help but perceive as an idle threat.” Perhaps not so idle, as he glances down at the disease that ravages before them.
    warrick
    credit to vel of adoxography.

    @[Harmonia]
    #12
    T
    he tension that hangs in the air is so thick Wound can almost taste it. It’s bitter and slow in her mouth, tinged with tightly-coiled muscle and the thin bite of dread. With each increasing moment, the silver bay realizes the pair might not be here to be recruited or for a diplomatic visit. There’s an undercurrent of danger that flows beneath their feet, as snarling and threatening as a riptide snatching a child out to sea.

    The rigidity of the gathering is snapped by the cold scissors of surprise when a familiar blue face appears from the shadow of Tephra. Wound’s own nostrils echo Warrick’s snort; neither of them have seen Longclaw in enough time to presume him gone from the island. The blue warg’s mate had been the one to bring Wound to Tephra (to grace her with the beauty and warmth and love she now has) and the pair had become her dear friends over the first few years of her time on Tephra.

    Her daughter had played with their children.

    Concern immediately floods Wound’s coffee-brown eyes. If Longclaw has been lurking in Tephra’s shadows, why would this particular encounter draw him into the light? But he seems to know the larger of the mare’s (the one with the simple expression drawn across her face). While that fact lessens the silver bay’s worries, thick tendrils of anxiety and unease wind through her body.

    Before she can pull apart Longclaw’s true reason for being here — for still being in Tephra at all — the earth is dying around them. Wound’s brows work together as she steps back, touching her nose to Warrick’s shoulder in a movement to comfort and protect both herself and her Overseer. “What is this?” Her voice is a whisper on the breeze of their mistrust. She’s never seen a gift (or is it a curse, in Ajatar’s case?) like this before, and while it is thrilling to witness it is also terrifying.

    The entire situation makes Wound’s skin crawl. It would be much easier to turn and flee into Tephra, where the humidity will simmer on her back and drive away the tension. Yet she is braver than that; as much as she would like to leave, she will stand firm beside Warrick. She had told him she will be by his side through thick and thin and Wound is determined to hold herself to that promise.

    Longclaw’s demands for murder chill the silver bay to the bone. She moves to shift away from Warrick’s side, bringing her silvery body alongside the blue stallion. Although she doesn’t know his angles and curves as well as Femur, she knows Longclaw well enough. Wound’s nose touches his neck (it’s like pressing her fingers against a cocked pistol, at this point) but she immediately recoils at the heat of his skin. He’s burning underneath his blue, so hot and bright she wonders if he will burst into flames.

    So she takes a singular step away, worry darkening her coffee brown eyes. Wound’s gaze turns toward the pair of mares again at the sound of Warrick’s voice, hopeful they will finally give them a straight answer.
    credit to nat of adoxography.

    @[Longclaw] / @[Harmonia] / @[Warrick] / @[Kromium]
    #13
     
    There are always the weak minded, Harmonia knows this. Those who aren't willing, or ready or brave or strong, enough to do what is necessary. Ajatar's sire was not one of those men. Harmonia's sire was not one of those men.
    Warrick, it seems, is.

    Harmonia rolls her eyes. Yes, this is a powerplay. Everything with her was. She does nothing without first reaffirming her position as above, as higher. She's smarter, she's stronger, she's faster. She's everything, the untouchable creature, the devil with the black dress on. She sighs with her eye roll, her eyes leveling on Warrick as he visibly bristles at the display. She doesn't understand, she never will - she's unable to empathize. Unable to think of anyone but herself.

    "Not a threat," she says, though it is. Isn't it?
    "A proposition. A weapon. Something for you to use, to keep your kingdom safe. Is that not your ultimate goal? Do you not have wolves at your door?"
    Harmonia isn't a wolf, she's a dragon.

    Longclaw draws her attention away, her ears flattening against her head. "Silence," she commands, half a mind to throw magic at him to silence him. But then he speaks again, he goads her...oh, he knows how to hit her nerves. She smiles a slow, coy smile.

    "Ajatar? Go."

    Ajatar is frozen, her eyes wide with panic behind that impenetrable mask. She steels herself, her mind as closed as she could possibly make it. She tries to kick and scream and push her mother away, the muscles in her neck contracting with the effort. Her mothers hold is tenuous now, the first bit of serious push she's ever given the palomino matriarch. Harmonia fights with effort too, lather building up around her axillary and inguinal region.

    The disease spreads.
     
    Harmonia
    kids sure like the devil these days and i’m the devil with a black dress on


    @[Warrick] @[Longclaw]

    (I left this open ended because the disease spreads as far as you want. Ajatar will obviously fight it. Anyone is welcome to attack Harmonia during this time. I don't even care about power playing Wink )
    #14
    Of all the threats that have washed up on these sooty shores, Longclaw can’t seem to remember ever hating one so acutely. Something in the way Harmonia holds herself unnerves him, regardless of the venom she spits. It seems to him like a veneer - a soft shine of a thing meant to keep the hardy, ugly heartwood beneath hidden - and he begins to notice it because, similar to Harmonia’s, his own veneer had been in place for nearly his entire life.

    Now though, after so much time cracking, the careful facade shatters.

    Warrick’s harsh use of his name goes unheard, Wound’s gentle touch unfelt. Even Ajatar, the very reason for him being in this particular place and time, seems to fade from his view. He notices nothing but the bubbling, viscous overspill of the curse inside of him as it eats the final remnants of his humanity away and, my god it feels like a freeing thing.

    As soon as the words, Ajatar? Go leave the golden mare’s mouth, Longclaw loses himself to the raw, untapped power within and bursts entirely into flame, uncautious of those gathered near to him. Hoof to head he’s alive inside of a writhing, pale blue inferno; sightless eyes staring with unflinching gravity at the poisonous female leech and the sweat sopping her furrowed brow. There’s no hesitation or warning when he attacks; barely a minute has passed since her decree and though Ajatar’s gift is working (the flames around his ankles flutter and seem weak) he still has the ability to release the burning death.

    Heat as scorching and merciless as the surface of a sun explodes away from him and, twisting into a mad, cyclonic spiral, focuses the brunt of itself onto Harmonia. He can almost taste the sear of her living flesh on his own tongue, so delicious and hungry as he is for destruction and without much thought, Claw gives and gives some more - pouring out every ounce of wretched power inside of himself until it begins to sputter out of gas.

    By this time, Ajatar is mostly responsible for the snuffing and not his stamina, as one would expect. The blue warg only opens his mouth and coughs, smattering bright, tainted blood across his parted lips and down his chin before the flame extinguishes altogether and he collapses heavily into the sand. A gurgling sound works free from his throat, painting the soft granules that cradle his head crimson, and true to her mother’s word Ajatar has done her job thoroughly.

    Inside of his shimmering (once proud) chest, Longclaw’s heart ribbons itself to pieces, taking the spark of his shining life with it. He becomes nothing again - a corpse - half-eaten with the scaled mare’s black disease and soon food for carrion of the ocean. What has occured today is unthinkable; a misfortunate twist of fate that happened to be his undoing but Longclaw dies how he lived and for that, perhaps he deserved such a death as this.

    One stallion who gave his best to King and country, and everything else to a woman he now waited for on the other side.

    @[Warrick] @[Harmonia] He gave burning up Harmonia his best shot with everything he had
    [Image: sScEgld.png]
    #15
    there was a heaven in you
    but god there's a devil in me
    There was a part of him that still held onto the idea that there is a sliver of good in everyone - a piece of his soul that clings to the benefit of a doubt. This is the first time, however, that he is questioning that intricate part of himself; feeling the harboring of uncertainty once again firmly grip his in his throat. The stretching of the disease into the golden inland plains of his homeland causes the Overseer to bristle, helplessly taking steps back as it reaches for them. His ears become hidden beneath the thickness of his mane, the curve of his neck showing the tautness of the muscles beneath the auburn skin, and his jaw champing wildly with adrenaline as her threat becomes all the more clear.

    Do you not have wolves at your door?

    He does not hear anything beyond the thinly veiled threat that creeps towards them with uncontrollable power, deadly fingers poised to wrap around their heels. Once again wickedness has come to him, curled at his feet like a viper. He notices nothing - not Ajatar’ s attempt to restrain her mother's orders, or that Harmonia's own body stiffens with effort and exhaustion - only the disease that unfolds before him, threatening the safety of everything he had ever known and loved.

    Without a thought, the Overseer shoves Wound away from the spreading plague with the brunt of his shoulder, wings unfurling in the same movement. He does not know with what force he has ushered her away, only that he needed her gone from the area. “Go, now.” His voice is unnaturally calm and dark as he commands her, only a few swipes of his navy wings against Tephra's humid air allowing him to become airborne.

    The heat of the volcano suddenly is at his side as he hovers nearly two yards above the dead earth, his cerulean gaze leaving Harmonia’s face for the first time. It is Longclaw that radiates with such intense heat as the blue warg is overcome with familiar blue flame. The stallion has not moved to safety but Warrick has no time to consider this as a beam of fire shoots forward into the palomino mare, causing the navy stallion's eyes to close because of the heat and brightness. The smell of burning flesh immediately stings the Overseer’s nostrils, the heat itself sending him higher into the air with steady beats of his large wingspan.

    When the sound of sputtering and coughing replaces the screams of burning skin peeling away from the bone, Warrick finds the dying form of his friend. The disease riddles the organs of the blue stallion, blood pooling from his open mouth as the light in his eyes snuffs out with a single, curdling breath.

    A sound that would perhaps haunt Warrick for an eternity.

    Rage - white hot and undeniably filling each crevice of his body - becomes the only thing Warrick can see. He can do nothing but attempt to finish the job that Longclaw had started. The winged stallion has no fire, nor any ability that could match the one that spreads purposefully across Tephra’s inland plains, but it didn’t matter. Warrick sweeps himself over Harmonia, forehooves curling beneath his body to meet her ribcage with the force of flying wings and his broad chest, throwing his entire weight into her so that they both tumble to the ground behind her, where the disease is not.

    He does not know what kind of shape she is in (is she already dead?), clumsily clambering to his feet with outstretched wings. The Overseer has nothing but his own sheer will and strength - but it would have to be enough, for it is all he has. Rearing, he finds his forelegs targeting the parts of her that had been peeled away by Longclaw’s fire, not caring if the thin tissue gave way beneath his weight or if bones would easily snap with each powerful thrust. There is blood on his chest and face (pieces of skin, perhaps) but he is not sure if she will rise to meet him, so he does not stop.

    He would fight her forever until her spell no longer had a master.


    WARRICK


    @[Harmonia] / @[wound]

    Harmonia is free to attempt to defend herself obviously Smile Let me know if I need to change anything!
    #16
    Fire.
    Harmonia smells it, tastes it on her lips, well before the pain reaches her. She is dulled in this way, with her senses so muddled by trying to control her writhing daughter. She fights her the best she's done so far, twisting away from her magic, making the disease throw itself helter-skelter around the plains before them. Plants die, the ground sputters, and fire erupts.

    At first Harmonia thinks the sensation of burning flesh, the searing on her skin, is from her daughter fighting her back. Through her magic haze she barely registers the flaming beast as his flames lick her skin. Time slows down, and suddenly he is upon her - big flames biting into her skin. She tries to throw him off but the power is nothing, it's like kicking a boulder, and she realizes she must let go.

    So she does.
    But it's too late.

    Too late for Harmonia - she lets go of Ajatar to try to fend off the fire creature but he's already maimed her. A beautiful palomino, known for her childlike beauty, is scarred from her burns deep down to the exposed muscle. Her entire right side is flesh upon flesh, mottled and blackened, so painful it's almost painless. She lets out a scream of anger, a last explosion before trying to kill him...

    ...but it's too late for Ajatar, too. She watches through zombie eyes as the flame sputters out and Longclaw - her only friend - falls to the ground in a pile of ashen corpse. "NO!" she croaks, lunging for his diseased body, dropping to the ground near him. She ignores the heat that permeates off him in waves, she ignores the smell of death, or the rotting of her own flesh as it struggles to mend. She can only sob into his deadened mane.

    And then comes the arial attack.
    Harmonia registers the hooves against her side, her burnt side, perhaps a moment too late.
    "FOOLS," she manages to croak before blinking entirely out of existence, disappearing into thin air.

    Ajatar is left alone, head buried in Longclaw's mane, sobbing.

    @wound @Warrick @Longclaw
    #17
    I
    n the moments between threats and explosions, Wound recognizes the suggestions of control. She’s never been under the powerful hand of another, not in the way Ajatar seems to be, but she’s been under the command of her own selfish desires and it nearly looks the same. Control always looks the same, no matter who is doing it or for what reason — the strain in the jaw, the flare of emotion in the paleness of the eyes, the strangled sound of breaths. Whether it is volunteered or forced, some level of energy must go into pushing a mind in a desired direction and Wound catches the loss of that energy that flares in the palomino’s eyes.

    Her mouth opens to say something (she isn’t quite sure what it would’ve been) but suddenly everything is spiraling away. Time doesn’t survive when the world spins precariously out of reach and things move too quickly for Wound to have a solid understanding. The disease boils beneath Ajatar’s feet like a living threat, unspoken words of death and destruction bubbling on a pair of invisible lips.

    “Oh, m” — The silver bay’s words are loosened from her mouth with the force of Warrick’s shove. The mare stumbles, caught off guard by the pressure and unbalanced with the deformity of her foreleg, but she isn’t right alongside Longclaw when he bursts into unhindered flame. A cry pulls from Wound’s mouth at the sensation of his fire singing her left side, leaving behind second- and third-degree burns in patchy layers across her skin. It’s not as bad as it could have been; it’s not as bad as it is for the palomino Longclaw launches himself at.

    Wound manages to scramble away despite the pain on her flesh, immediately wheeling back around to face the scene with her long silvery locks draping against her petite facial features. There are no words on her lips and only an endless stream of prayers in her mind as her stomach tightens at what is left behind in Longclaw’s fiery wake. Terror chokes her at the sight of Warrick landing passionate, countless blows upon the burnt shape of the mare. Before Wound can say anything, the palomino disappears with a loud scream.

    In her wake, there is only sobbing and the thick scent of death. “Oh, shit.” The burnt, inflamed nerves of her skin protest as Wound struggles to reach whatever is left of Longclaw’s body and the disease-wielder bent over him. She would tear the mare off her friend’s body if it weren’t for the subtlety of control she’d noticed before. Tears are rolling down Wound’s ashen face and she feels stricken and unhinged for too long. Eventually her coffee-brown gaze turns toward Warrick, though she doesn’t reach out to him. She can’t think of a single thing to say in the silence of what’s just happened, but her eyes communicate the ocean of emotions that race through her heart — confusion, grief, anxiety, shock.
    credit to nat of adoxography.

    @[Longclaw] / @[Warrick] / @[Harmonia] / i'm a poot and this is way overdue and also sucks but here *runs away*




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