leaves all sinking, fever dreaming; ANY

[magnus]

magnus

howling ghosts, they reappear
in mountains that are stacked with fear

All he can feel is the steady rhythm of his breathing, the sound of his scarred heart pounding against his ribcage. He doesn’t move when she does, his gold-flecked eyes ablaze with hope and a feverish need to see home again, despite the pain that it would bring to the surface—the blood welling to a fresh wound.

She presses her lips to his jaw, and a shiver races up his spine, the skin flinching against the contact.

The rest of the world disappears, melting away, and he exhales—

Letting it fall away without a fight.

***

When he opens his eyes again, they are no longer near the river, but neither are they at the jungle. He turns his heavy-jawed head toward her, but the motion is slow, as if performed underwater. He can feel the otherworldly fog curl around him, grounding him, and he wonders at the magic that does this.

It is nothing he has ever experienced before.

Perhaps, nothing he will ever experience again.

His breath catches in his throat, sitting unused like stones in his chest, and so he just nods at her words, the explanation drifting away like smoke—as quickly as it arrived. Then, again, the hope catches fire in the back of his mind, and the leaden motions dissolve as he reaches out to grasp control. Strength floods him as he grabs onto the dream, white-knuckled and powerful as he feels it move beneath his command.

He inhales the fog and the magic before leaning back, letting the currents carry him away.

***

The Abyss fades.

It is quick. One second. Two seconds. He closes his eyes to the grey and opens it to the jungle.

He trembles with the sight of it, tears stinging his eyes as he realizes that he is no longer the hardened stallion but instead a knobby-kneed colt. He glances up at the watery light that filters through the canopy, the cries of the birds echoing, and he breathes in deep, his lungs rejoicing at the humid air—the richness of the vegetation exploding around him. When he tips his head back down, she is there—

Plain and scarred and strong.

Twinge.

Mother.

He races forward, his heart exploding at the sight of her, but the second that their bodies collide, she explodes in a torrent of water, and it washes over him—the flood that claimed her life carrying him away.

When the water finally subsides, he is coughing, sputtering, and he recognizes that his body has aged. He is no longer a colt, although he does not carry the age that he does now. Instead, he is just reaching adulthood, the beginning of maturity reaching his form, his hide carrying the beginning of his scars.

He is also no longer in the jungle.

Instead, the watery light is bright and the vegetation is calmer. The vivid green is peaceful, the vines and the trees replaced with rolling hills and summery breeze. The Gates. He swings his head around and the noise he makes is strangled when he sees her rising over the hill, beautiful and serene and surrounded by all of their children. He rocks back and pushes forward, his stride eating up the distance between them.

“Joelle!” her name comes out hoarse, the wind picking up the name and ripping it from his throat.

But no matter how quickly he runs, she never gets closer.

So he runs faster, muscles screaming beneath the exertion.

But she still remains rooted on the horizon.

“Joelle!” he cries again, but it’s too late—

Because darkness is rising up the horizon and overtaking her, overtaking his children.

He cries her name, racing against a landscape that would never let him win, but the darkness consumes them, blood seeping out from the bottom of where it crashes around his family, and he hits his knees.

The howl that comes from him is animal and feral in its pain.

The dream shifts again around him, but he doesn’t notice.  

He doesn’t notice anything.

Anything.

but you're a king and I'm a lionheart

um, hi. this is why magnus cannot have nice things. :|