Intrigue is a sensation created when Kagerus speaks, a thing that prickles her skin and shakes the dark corners of her mind: dreams of the other woman slowly forming in her mind, and Yidhra does not deny the appeal of her voice or the posture in how she stands with all the world-soul balanced atop the points of those dangerous antlers. She muses and mires in them, considers a time when she might’ve been the same; but it gets away from her and Yidhra speaks slowly with a dulcet purr. “Truly?” she clicks her beak as if to imitate a tongue. “Such a difference in cultures, where I once dwelled a title meant a great deal- it was something earned and forged by your owns actions. We considered them a polite way of address, much like one refers to their King or Queen by such. Primordium, Imperious, Abyssal, and Mother: names and titles I dream about, things that I hear in whispers.”
Rolling her shoulders back she draws herself up to stature, lacking menace and violence- lacking malice: instead she carries a veil of some almost-tangible dominance, some confidence in her own authority that remains even when Kagerus introduces herself- and before she can speak the Kraken’s name… Yidhra purrs and speaks up as if to ease what existing tension might be present. “I will tell you a secret: a show of trust between us. You see, no one knows where I came from- how it is I slithered my way onto Beqanna… they only know that I crawled from the depths of the ocean. Sick and thin, covered in barnacles and coral- rotted so badly from the pressure and cold that it was miracle I even breathed.” she pauses, turning slowly to her side.
She exposes the hairless and porous skin, the black and blue roan spattered with gray- colored like a rock… but most of all she exposes the scarred leg and flesh: all the bites marks and blackened scabs where a great mass of barnacles once existed: bitted and pulled off of her flesh. Yidhra also shows, in that gesture, the burned and scarified mark on her neck of a flower with a thorny stem and she continues quiet: a whisper meant only for them. “Hundreds, thousands of years ago: I lived, and I was born where wings indicated your birthright. Mine were blackened and beautiful: so lovely that I found them to be a burden… and so I tore them off. I shattered the bones and broke apart the skin until only scars remained… and I cast myself out. Or so that’s what my dreams tell me. You see, I remember that once upon a time I had a great family, powerful and strong; but they ultimately paid the price: vanished into the annals of history.”
Shrugging, she chuckles: the faint memory of Aerofire in her mind.
“I traveled so long and so often that I knew no home but many houses… and eventually I settled into the Element. For years I watched as a land soaked with power warred and fought, as chaos reigned without any order or challenge. I fought my way to gold, to a title- and then? I traveled to peaks where my will and mind were tested… and I was given a new gift: vision. I saw the end before it began, I saw the stone being remade and the blood that spilled in its name. The stone was what gave the power to the land, and in turn, I gave the lands back to the stone. Yes, I did it. I wrought cataclysm upon the Element and watched as all the world was brought beneath the sea.” she stops, looking sidelong as if considering something.
“The Stone brought order to the chaos, it brought the end of a maddened era of war and sickness: it did so by killing countless many and forcing the survivors… the strong, to go elsewhere stripped of their power and with the last words of what once fueled them. I? I for my service was banished to the depths, brought to a place where whalebones are decorated by anemone and worms, where kraken and leviathan alike swim and slumber. I spent so many years in the dark, suffering and twisted: immortal and always drowning; but it taught me a lesson. Where chaos reigns, order must be had: because in chaos, we are weak and suffering- we risk being pulled apart and killed off in paranoia and senseless violence.” why she stops, she cannot say, but, Yidhra takes a breath.
Her lungs are still waterlogged, raspy and heavy- and she looks at Kagerus with a deadpan stare: with her posture maintained and her gaze leveled on the other woman. “These are my dreams, my truths: or so I think they are… it is very hard to tell when you’ve died and been reawakened, reshaped and remade in the image of the thing you serve. I do not care for chaos, nor for strife without purpose or meaning, and I have seen the end of one world- I would hope that I do not have to see a second… even if my hand has already been played into what feels like the beginning of it. I will not treat you like a child, you deserve far more respect than that.”
In there is an absence of things to say and she listens to Kagerus’ words with a nod: though she afford the mare one thing and forms the tendrils of her mouth into lips and mock-nostrils. She imitates the face she once possessed and slowly smiles, soft and genuine: nodding before sobering and minding the ruler with her ears perked.
It is when silence falls that she does something out of the ordinary, and a sudden heaviness clouds the air: a weighted feeling of cold that sweeps across the ground and weaves around Kagerus like a serpent or perhaps, like one of the ominous tentacles she possesses. There is something subtle in it, shadows that move in the peripheral vision, the static pulse and low hum of a sound far away: the unnatural and chilling feeling of someone being watched. Fear.
She narrows her eyes, waits for Kagerus to respond, and she breathes softly then- considering the boundaries and actions she must take. “Apologies,” she says slowly- the fear fading and her demeanor shifting as she stretches and blinks. “I agree to your terms, and I have no issue with abiding them; but something to know, and I hesitate to say this publicly… you want me in power. You may not trust me or my motives, my reasons… you may not like me; but you cannot afford to let anyone else control Pangea and I already know who will if I do not. You will not agree with everything I must do, but, it will not be my choice to do anything else. We need to work together: I will not watch another world fall apart.”
The dream is whatever Kagerus makes it, and Yidhra merely exists- still and quiet.
Yidhra
@[Kagerus]