"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
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
The field had been both as interesting as he anticipated and anti-climatic. He had left with the potential of something to sink his teeth into but no clear direction—just the shadows of it. He had been glad to rid himself of the mare with clear intentions (and yet unclear to him) but had been slightly less enthused to lose the company of the bald mare so distantly related to him. There had been something about her that had promised, at the very least, interesting conversation, which was so hard to come by nowadays.
Still, he was not an overly sentimental man and he didn’t hesitate to peel off from the group, turning his heavy head toward the west where he knew that Loess lay nestled. It had been an interesting thought, this head of a kingdom for hire. He was not interested in pretending to be loyal to a specific cause, handing over his loyalty and obedience to be treated like a dog. But to be given tasks, something for him to sink his teeth into without strings attached? That was an interesting proposition indeed.
So he made his way toward the kingdom, sticking to more traditional methods of transportation if only because it felt good to stretch his muscles after so many days standing still and watching the crowds mill about him. Thankfully, the travel was swift and it didn’t take long for the field to melt away and the forest of Taiga to thin and then the invisible border of Loess to come up on the horizon.
When he was near enough, he paused, lifting a feathered hoof and then dropping it. Up above them, the mountains tower, keeping watch over the land where families and individuals alike seemed to gather and then separate in the simple patterns of life. For a moment, he considered calling for them, but that seemed too simple and too banal that he dismissed it entirely. Instead, he reached for the blood that still rolled down sticky on his shoulders and pulled light from deep within the earth—just as he had with Scorch.
This time though, the light doesn’t simply rise like a tree and then shower back on the earth.
Instead, he sent it shooting straight into the air like a comet, exploding it when it was high enough above him, sending constellations temporarily spinning out into the sky before fading slowly away.
He was curious as to how they’d react to such an obvious showboat maneuver and who would approach him, but mostly, he was curious as to how useful a magician could be to their cause.
The open sky is framed on all sides by rough limestone, and I look out at the familiar view with a faint smile. I am thinking of another spring, not the one I currently lounge in, propped up on one side by a worn smooth bit of boulder.
Those thoughts vanish in an instant, and I struggle to my feet. It is difficult to catch my balance with my eyes still smarting and the uneven surface of the hot spring, but by the time I step into the light outside my overhang I am fully recovered.
It had come from somewhere over there, I know, and I am aloft in the time it takes me to leap from the hill and into the sky. There is someone below, a maroon (maybe purple? it is hard for me to tell from this angle) stallion that I do not recognize. I come to the earth a few dozen yards away from him, gliding to a halt without haste.
"Who do I have to thank for that little light show?" I ask, my blue grey eyes flicking briefly - but intently - across the roan horse. He is visually unremarkable but for his color, and his green eyes remind me of the haworthia that are blossoming beside my spring. I meet his gaze with a friendly smile after, breathing in scents that are entirely unfamiliar but for the Field.
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
It’s not long before someone finds him—before his gaudy display of light brings someone to his side.
The smile that splits his face is distinctively wolfish, lacking in the warmth typical of the expression but somehow perfectly fitting the harder edges of his smile. “My name’s Woolf,” he offers it without care. There was power in a name, but he doesn’t mind handing that little piece of power over to her. He doesn’t mind giving her the syllables that wrap around him, that could summon him, if she so wished.
Instead he merely reaches for her own, gripping it loosely.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lepis.”
Of course, pleasure is somewhat of a foreign concept to him. He has never truly found anything pleasurable sans the joy of traveling the cosmos, the joy of taking apart a situation and studying it from all angles, learning everything there was to learn—sucking the marrow out of each moment as best he could.
Still, it’s not quite acceptable to say such things so he offers the hallow pleasantry instead, his heavy face angling away from her briefly to look at the wild land behind her, marked by a diversity unique amongst Beqanna. “So what can you tell me of Loess?” A pause. “Scorch approached me in the field and told me some of it, but I’d like to hear more from a resident.” The least he could do is at least give the bald mare some credit for prompting him to visit here. His face turns wolfish again in amusement. “Although, of course, it does appear that you are not a regular resident here, after all. Queen, is it?”
I have met a lifetime's worth of wolves in too short a time, but this is the first one that introduces himself as such. Curious, I tilt my head, unable to keep from wondering if he'd been given that name as a child or chosen the moniker for himself. Neither would surprise me, I decide, but regardless of the origin it is certainly fitting.
He calls me Lepis, and uncertainty begins to pool just behind my heart. I hadn't introduced myself, but he knows me. It is possible I have gained enough renown to be recognized by strangers (my scars are distinctive) but something about the mulberry creature's hollow eyes suggest otherwise. I take hold of the uncertainty and crush it to nothing, overwhelmed by a flood of confidence. It lasts only a heartbeat, and then I am blinking long-lashed and wary eyes the stallion who wants to know more about Loess.
There are few who know the place better than I. For a moment I am nostalgic, and then he is smiling and calling me Queen and the memories are gone as quick as they'd arrived.
"Queen of Sylva," I reply. "Though I have lived in Loess since I was a child, and only recently left." To follow my husband, I do not add, because I have grown weary of mentioning him every time I say that I am queen. I am important enough to be queen on my own merit - so says that bit of pride that festers up whenever I lose control.
I rarely lose control.
"I'll have to thank Scorch," Are the polite words that follow, tone and demeanor befitting a diplomat but not quite matching the glittering hardness in my eyes. "As for what I can tell you of Loess, that depends on what you'd like to know about it. The kingdom's ranks? Or the land itself?" Or something else entirely, I suspect. Something nefarious, as they all have planned eventually.
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
“You have nothing to fear of me,” he answers her unspoken fears, quashed as they are, his scarred shoulder rolling in a casual dismal. “I am not like the wolves of your past.” He doesn’t dwell not them long, doesn’t even think anything of casually referencing a piece of her history as if he had lived there with her—as if she had already relinquished the information to him. And, of course, she could have something to fear of him, should he ever choose to be something deserving of fear.
But not now.
He has no need to be feared now.
His lips nearly purse at her next admission, thinking on the ways she has been tied to the stallion for so long but he doesn’t comment on it, letting that slide by unacknowledged. “Queen Lepis then,” his smile remains wolfish and if you didn’t know him, you may even think the quirk of lips was humor.
“I don’t have much experience within kingdoms or herds or whatever it is that the group is being called nowadays,” he admits, although there’s no real shame in the admission. “I simply want to know more about it so that I can properly weigh my options.” Casually, he dips his fingers into the inky blood that stains his mulberry shoulder, the ground beneath their feet blossoming with flowers by the prompting his magic. It grew thick and lush, crawling up his legs ever so slightly before bending away. He doesn’t look.
“I’m curious to know how I could be of use to a place such as this.”
Would he ever manage to show up on time to anything?
From afar, he can discern the bright spot of light that blooms in the sky at the borders of his home and for a moment too long, Wolfbane doubles his efforts of flight with a sick feeling in his gut. A thousand horrible possibilities rear to life but only a few come to mind first: “Lepis... Could it be Hyaline? Should I call out for Sylva?” but there’s a shocking lack of screams or terror as he approaches swiftly, so he keeps his mouth closed and rockets above the perpetually dying forest before looping down when he catches sight of his Cleric entertaining a guest.
He hopes she doesn’t mind the intrusion, and as he approaches it would seem that his cares for her opinions weren’t even a passing thought (they both know the opposite is true). The facade is partially for the strangers benefit, and partially for his own - his conscious eases into a blank state, methodically clearing as he’d practiced so many times before - a mask on the inside was just as important as one on the outside.
“Are you planning on turning Loess into a tropical paradise?” He wonders, hearing only the final sentence from Woolf’s inquires and seeing only the heavy, bent flowers he’s created from nothing at all. “We don’t have need of a groundskeeper, but I can think of more than a few horses who’d be pissed at someone like you wanting to fraternize with the likes of us.” Bane says plainly, the curves of his forehead rising in unspoken admiration. What exactly had spurred the blood-roan here he couldn’t discern, though he was surely glad for whoever or whatever might be responsible.
“Nerine has a djinn, apparently. Or at least when Wishbone ruled, there was. Hyaline a suspicious power couple. Arthas of Sylva tells me that Brennen has also acquired some power over the element of ice, so Ischia has a rather unique guardian.” The settled pegasus enumerates, folding his wings against striped ribs. “And if you stayed, we’d have … you.”
For some reason, this tickles the Pirate Lord. He stands close alongside his comrade, just inches away from the distinctive blue curve of her own right wing, and chuckles softly in a break of composure. “The allied leaders would despise us, and I personally can’t think of anything better you could do for this kingdom than stuffing a pill of their own design right back down their throats.”
More than the other residents of the two kingdoms, I take advantage of our open borders, spending far more time amid the northern hills than the red forest. My world has been less predictable of late, flickering between familiar and foreign as frequently as I move from Loess to Sylva. This plum-colored creature should be a fearful thing with the way he picks through my mind and sprouts flowers at our feet, but rather than cower away I face him squarely, my blue eyes narrowing slightly as I watch him speak.
There is no time to answer. A ripple in the air causes me to glance back and up, and soon find that the disturbance is none other than the pale-haired Wolfbane. Two wolves then, I think to myself with a soft smile, unable to miss the irony.
The striped stallion answers Woolf far better than I would have. I am often quick and short with my words, something that I find efficient but others might see as brusque. His arrival is also unexpectedly comforting, and I find that the confidence I project internally needs less force behind it as the king settles in beside me.
I look up at him with a bemused smile, entirely unaware of the fondess that emanates in the half-smile I give him before looking back at Woolf. Bane has given him much to think about, I am sure, but his arrival had been quick and without introduction.
"This is Wolfbane," I say, "King of Loess. Though perhaps you knew that as well, the way you knew me?" The smile is softer now, and the tone in my voice is gentle. I glance back at Wolfbane for a moment, meeting his olive green gaze to draw attention to the other skills this stranger has. "Bane, this is Woolf."
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
He understands the humor in Wolfbane’s joke but his face remains relatively passive, his features as neutral and difficult to read as the striped stallion’s own. “If you have no need of them...” his voice trails off and the plants shrivel by his side, curling inward into themselves, drawing their own poison in. The ground bubbles slightly as it spreads outward, the grass and foliage beneath each of them turned charred as he kills it off.
Soon, there is nothing of the lush vegetation.
Nothing of the garden that has sprouted around him.
Just the black scar where it had once been.
Again, Woolf doesn’t bother to look at it. It is petty, foolish magic and not worth much attention. Not worth anything more than the few drops of blood that he has to spill to even perform it.
“I am capable of much more than that,” he says coolly. He had been born into magic, molded from it. He was not someone who had slipped it on like a coat later in life. It was an intrinsic part of who he is, the very fabric of his being. He flares his nostrils, drinking in the air. His eyes turn white, fogged over and misted as the blood begins to flow more freely down his stained shoulder.
He pulls away the land around them, replacing it with the vision of his own design. He shows them, as long as they do not fight it, the world as it could be. He shows alien fire being lit on the borders of the kingdom, consuming everything in its path. He shows them craters opening up, drinking the blood of those nearby. He shows stats falling hard and fast, scarring the land with wherever it hit. He shows them creatures of mud and bone crawling out from the earth and forming armies. He shows them power.
The vision fades, and soon it is just the three of them standing there, the world once again mundane and quiet.
“Such magic requires sacrifice,” an obvious statement. His magic is tethered. It is anchored. “But we can find that easily enough.”
woolf
I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste
@[Lepis] @[Wolfbane]
I can edit if you don’t want them to have the vision!
Or you can just say they resisted it. He wouldn’t force it.
This is no mere manipulator, then. The power to give and rescind is above anything Wolfbane has ever come in contact with and he unthinkingly presses closer to the dew-gold mare beside him, warnings echoing in his once clear mind. Longclaw had detested the work of magicians but as a ruler, Bane can see their purpose and their meaning in this world. He could’ve seen it without the vision Woolf grants them and yet, all the same, he allows himself to be wrapped up entirely in a fantasy unlike anything he’s ever known. Their mulberry visitor is keen on destruction, when personally redemption would’ve suited Bane’s interest though he holds any further comment, letting the false time and conjured images play out for curiosity's sake.
Fire and death grate sharply against his ears, scenes of horror and utter contempt that find him neither angry nor excited. These things the mage shows them are altogether purposeful in their erratic showmanship (however Bane can sense the absurdity of each each situation like a sour twinge on his tongue) and still, when the stars rattle free from the heavens to shower them in comets of deadly light he tears olive eyes away from the Beqanna Woolf has created to peer down upon Lepis, in fear that she might not be handling this as serenely as he was attempting to.
His gaze remains there, pleased to lose itself in the depths of something real until the vision has stalled to an end.
When the newcomer finds his voice, the Pirate Lord listens but pipes up in instant refute. “Even with the greatest of sacrifices, Beqanna herself would reject such wild displays.” He surmises, in a tone neither chiding nor disappointed. Simply factual. “Taiga fell prone to destruction because a magician sought to refute the laws of nature.”
Ancient history, but one he’s not forgotten even if others have. Bane refuses to be the kind of ruler who leads his own people into nothingness; he hungers for something more permanent. Detaching himself from staring too long into Lepis’s eyes, the striped pegasus returns his focus to the self-wounded roan stallion and offers him this: private ideas of Loessian members, cloaked equally in invisibility like he himself occasionally wore, creeping into Tephra’s weakened lands to raid and maim because the volcanic Kingdom wrongly assumed neutrality would keep them safe.
If it was destruction and sacrifice Woolf sought, he was right in assuming they could find it easily enough.
|| The Pirate Lord of Loess ||
@[Lepis] @[woolf] Bane is all for the visions since meeting Heartfire
I feel the weak give of the flora at my feet and burn of the irritation as it climbs into my mouth. If he can do more than that, then he should have no trouble returning the life that he stole from the greenery at our feet. Some of the greenery might have been his own creation, but part of it was Loess and he has killed it off without thought. There's no indication of my dislike of his showmanship, and I pull it back within me before it can reach my companions, just in time for the vision to begin.
The destruction Woolf shows us echoes the death of the plants, though on a scale I have never imagined. For a moment it is tempting to imagine the red forest burning. When the vision ends my gaze meets with Wolfbane's, and the embarrassment at the thought causes me to look away.
Back at Woolf, who tells us his vision is easy enough to achieve. Easy enough with him, I do not say aloud; even with Sylva there is no chance of Loess achieving such ends without the power that the mulberry stallion wields. He'd always be the one with the most power. Unaware of what passes between the two men, I shake my head as if to clear away the flames of the vision, and then speak.
"And what would you consider equitable exchange for much more than that?" I ask. "Loess works on contracts, with fair rewards for services rendered." We've never had services available quite like these though, and I glance once more at Wolfbane (only to find that he looks away as I do this, and though it is entirely coincidental it still feels like a blow) to see what he might think.
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