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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


    slowly did not speak another word, any
    #1
    She’d slept for so long down there on the ocean floor. Mordgeld had nearly forgotten what life above the surface had been like. Instead, her life in Beqanna had become something like a far-off dream. Down there, the pressure and the cold choked everything she had been until she was one with it. The icy trench had held her down until Pangea was summoned from its sickly grave. Somewhere between the kingdom rising and the conquest to retrieve it, her body was knocked free on the silt and sand that entombed her.
     
    When she tries to draw her first breaths, she’s coughing up salt and detritus from her burning lungs. The sun shines too bright into her eyes so she must squint to see the world around her. Another cough expels a jagged shell from her throat, bringing a spattering of coagulated blood with it. There is a sneer of disgust when she sees it but she figures she should rise from her place on the wet sand. Some rebirth this is, she thinks when she staggers up.
     
    She gives a shake of her head and the colony of coral that had built their home along her spine goes shattering to the ground.
     
    The summer heat begins to chew through the bitter cold of her skin, loosening the muscles that had hibernated for decades. She doesn’t quite recall dying this time, or rather not dying, she supposes. Mordgeld can vaguely remember being fed up with what the world had become since she was a small child. Wars became over petty, simple things that stirred nothing from the pit of her heart. They were weak compared to her children. Each of hers had grown up strong and made something of themselves.
     
    She takes her first steps back on land and a barnacle is dislodged from her shoulder.
     
    But fate has chosen for her and decided that she should return now. A slow sigh, raspy still from the remnants of the saltwater in her lungs, eases from her nose. There’s some kind of parasitic fish still latched between her ribs but she figures it’ll give up before too long. It squirms a bit as it begins to suffocate and sinks its many teeth deeper into her skin. Mordgeld snorts and continues on her way. Let it have a little more of her blood.

    MordgelD
    i am the dragon breathing fire.
    beautiful man, i'm the lion.
    Reply
    #2
    Like sea serpents entwined they slither beside one another, around and free: moving as one rather than two separate entities. Hoofbeats echoing across the brined soil and sand, across and throughout the vast expanse of coral and of rock. They study barnacles and algae, the ocean life that clings so desperately to this bizarre land. Pale blues, aquamarine, browns, and sickly greens all tied and painted and the scent of rotting fish is not without, something that makes tithe recoil and choke; but Tindalos seems to care little.


    Nearly white but undertoned with a pale silvery-cream he stands with red eyes and a stocky build: compact and muscular. His ears swivel and flit, leaning forward to focus on sound after sound; but they push the wavy mane along his neck and face and he finds himself drawn to the flopping sound of the leviathans now lacking their ocean. Tithe, beside him, is more golden and pale: a spattered grey creature whose dark brown eyes look upon the bones and sharks with disgust and horror: his body physically shuddering as porous octopus’ crawl and grasp along the ground.


    Kraits are what make him press into Tindalos and he can hear his lover sighing, cooing words of consolation and comfort; but together they continue and the pair find themselves cast within the shadow of a whale’s corpse. Bloated and grotesque its bones are decorated by remora and parasite, and the blubber has long soured. Quickly they pass it, push beyond and walk until the expanse opens and Tindalos can see the dark body of a shadow made real: of a creature whose flesh is just as scarred and ruined as the land.


    Tithe whines, but, he is calmed with a nose pressed against his neck and Tindalos draws him forward towards her. Both see her in full glory, both entranced and yet… terrified in a way by the mockery of the ocean born upon her. “A Siren?” Tithe whispers, his dark eyes searching and Tindalos is the first to speak loud, bolder and with more certainty.


    “Aye, risen with the land? Welcome back to the surface.” he states it clearly, offering her a bow of his head and gesturing in such a way that Tithe, too, imitates and acts. “Seems Pangea found itself a reason to be risen again, probably the God-Mage at it again.” liberal with his words he shrugs, but, does not seem to have further commentary for now, instead it is Tithe that steps forward just an inch.


    Timid but not scared he is clear, “Pardon his lack of introduction, I am Tithe- son of Shiv and formerly born in this land. This is Tindalos, a would’ve-been-prince of the Taiga once upon a time; but it matters little there. Time has passed for that. Have you slept long? There may be much you have missed.”


    At the commentary of would’ve-been-prince he sighs, Tindalos’ gaze diverting and his ears pressing backwards. Still, he is gentle, taking the soft nose and bumping into Tithe’s neck and cheek before looking Mordgeld over and noting the patterns and multitudes of wrongs: of ocean born into her form.”Quite the gifts you have to withstand that, pressure and ocean: things more frightening and ancient than any beast or God.” its a compliment, soft and yet affirmative, not subtle in any way.

    @[Mordgeld]
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    #3
    She hears them when they approach but the only sign is a swivel of a single ear, mostly unconcerned with them. But then Tindalos speaks and she turns her head to watch him. In her youth, her eyes had been bright and full of wonder, eager to see what fate would bring to her doorstep next. Now they are dark and knowing, wise to the horrors and he triumphs of this world and the next. Pangea. Risen again. God-Made. None of it makes sense to her but she dismisses these things for the time being. Beqanna was always changing her face and Mordgeld found little interest in keeping up with its renovations.

    Then Tithe speaks his name, along with more lands and names she doesn’t recognize. In truth, the only thing she ever tried to keep up with were her children. When she moves her jaw to speak, some trilobite looking thing falls from her lips and she looks down at it in mild surprise. It had been there so long she had forgotten it, she supposed. But the thing lies dead in the ground between her hooves now so she returns her gaze to the pair.

    I am Mordgeld. I’ve slept since before your Taiga existed,” she explains with a shrug of her great shoulders. She doesn’t care to catch up on the history of things since then. Time marches on with or without her and she accepted that fact long ago. Her eyes watch the brief meeting of nose and neck, the tender teasing between the two and she tilts her head slightly. But then he says she has a gift and she laughs for the first time in a very long while, hard enough to expel some of the salt swishing in her lungs.

    My only gifts in this life are my children. To be undying is as much a blessing as being born, I think.

    Mordgeld resumes moving forward as she takes in the sights and sounds – rotting fish and greedy seagull cries as they soar overhead. Her gut tells her the couple will follow alongside her for a while as the lampreys had beneath the surface. She regards them with the same sort of indifference for now as they may prove to intrigue her a little later on. Speaking of, the parasite in her side finally releases and hits the ground with a wet smack of fish scales on rock. She doesn’t pause to mourn.

    Do you two have any children?” she asks over her shoulder.

    MordgelD
    i am the dragon breathing fire.
    beautiful man, i'm the lion.
    @[Tindalos - Tithe]
    Reply
    #4
    In another place, in another life- they might’ve felt the cling of brine and humid air… might’ve cared more for the smell of ocean water laden soil and the dying fish, coral, and mollusks. Yet this is not the life of now, and instead they do not seem to be affected by the way the mist rolls across the watery and murky ground or the way the salt stiffens their fur and clings to the skin well beneath.


    Neither are bothered tremendously by the sweet smell of rot or decay, and they remain absent care for the graying that spreads from coral to tubular worms and anemones: they do not even seem phased by the brutal reality of Mordgeld’s form. All the barnacles and brine-soaked skin, she is matted and salty- fragrant of sand and sea: of the rocks and morning on cliffs and coasts. Had she a crown of coral, or a weave of colored grass or kelp, they might’ve commented; but instead the immediate silence is filled with her words.


    Tindalos side eyes Tithe, thinking for a moment of how to respond. She confirms a suspicion of his about her age; but, he is only able to blink the grim red eyes and think of stories his mother told him. “Ah, when the world was younger. Ilyena told me of the Chamber, the Valley- of a Jungle. Places and lands long since gone.” he states it more to confirm for himself the thought and idea of what it had been; but Tithe does not need this and instead sighs, recalling the Chamber with memory of his time there.


    She cleans herself in a manner that seems inhuman, incapable of this reality; but it is of this reality, and still, neither flinch at the lamprey nor the blood. They seem unmoved by the burden of this woman’s newly arisen form, and more accepting: prepared perhaps to intervene is she asks. “To be undying,” Tithe begins to speak where Tindalos has fallen silent. “Is a gift, yes. And a curse I imagine… you may live on forever, endless and always there; but what of the lives around you? Unless they are like yourself, they pass eventually.” and he grows silent, mulling over the prospect: looking at Tindalos with an almost sorrowed gaze.


    Though it is not reciprocated, Tindalos notes this and presses his nose on Tithe’s head gently, brushing away the forelock and trying to ease the rampant mind. Sighing he looks to Mordgeld and shakes his head in a somber ‘no’ before speaking. “Mine are all from a world that has long fallen to the ocean’s bottom- a place destroyed by the very power that its residents were gifted with. It was unfortunate, but, they chose to go… my eldest son drowned for his God.” shrugging weakly, he thought only of his child’s face before growing quiet.


    Tithe, in his rampant mind, was at a loss as well; but he found no voice and thus Tindalos spoke again, aware of his lover’s neck curling across his shoulders. “What of yours? For someone who has slept beneath the ocean for so long: someone undying, you must be one of the earliest ancestors of the kings and nobles that populate the land?” genuine and curious, silence befalls them both: and intrigue, one that is perceivable in their posture and expression.

    @[Mordgeld]  ....why do I feel like I love her.
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