"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
The shifting monsters in these mountains are not subject to the whim of the fae and nor are they under their protection. For all that this Plague affects them too, the benefits of a thousand endless meals will always be more alluring that altruism. The creatures mouths will open wide, so wide they might swallow an entire horse.
And they do.
A few scratches and bruises are no deterrent, and the persuaders will find themselves in endless – painless – darkness. The last glimpse of light disappears between sharp teeth, and for a long time there is nothing but the too-warm, too-damp, too-tight belly of the beast.
There is much to be said for the type of bravery it takes to confront a monster rather than to flee to safety and for the strength of character it takes to use speech when violence might be faster. However, to say such things, one must be alive, and reasoning with a ravenous monster is so rarely the path to eternal life.
@[Mary], @[Kagerus], @[Briella], @[Nocturne], @[Aegean], and @[Wonder] have been eliminated. They will find themselves waking, damp and covered in the remnants of a slain monster. Their bodies are heavy and hard, solidified by whatever arcane digestion happens within the belly of a mountain monster. Some of them will even shine, but by the time they make it back to their homeland the hardness will have sunk down to only their hooves. Turned to stone or diamond or emerald, their hooves are a reminder of how these mountains were made in the belly of a beast that even the fairies cannot control.
Only three of them remain, three young children whose boldness might simply be born from inexperience. That does not matter in this world, and the stone-eyed fairy knows it. @[Dagen], @[Brazen], and @[Eurwen] feel themselves made strong, strong enough to fight their monsters, strong enough to defeat them and to free the questers trapped within their endless bellies. Tall and brawny and no longer children, the fate of Beqanna rests with the trio.
Ahead of them the empty path to the pebbled shore stretches wide and welcoming and free of monsters. The fairy tells them what stones to find: bright ones, perfect or imperfect, little stones that call to them, five in number for each of them. They must bring the pebbles up to the peak of the mountain by any means necessary.
Rules
-Round 3 entries are to be posted in this thread no later than JANUARY 2ND at 8:00 AM CST
- No word limit
- @[Mary], @[Kagerus], @[Briella], @[Nocturne], @[Aegean], and @[Wonder] have been eliminated. They will have the 0-space aesthetic trait of “stone hooves” that may be any type of inorganic, rock-like material. The trait may fade over time or remain permanent, the choice is up to you.
- @[Dagen], @[Brazen], and @[Eurwen] have been aged to adults in peak health in order to complete the rest of the quest. The stone-eyed fairy imbued them with the ability of great warriors, allowing them to defeat the monsters.
- Your posts should start with your character on the path to the beach of the Silver Cove, the slain monster behind them. They must find 5 pebbles and describe the return trip to the top of the mountain, ending with finding the stone-eyed fairy.
- For not meeting the deadline, Kleopatra and Cosmos have both been struck with early onset arthritis, the severity of which is up to the player.
-Failing to respond on time or at all without notifying the officials will result in a permanent defect
The spotted mare stands shakily on the beach. Her hair no longer fluffy, but fluent and soft on her mostly-white body, her metallic golden mane now longer, and with a strength in her core as if she’d trained to slay this monster her whole life. Perhaps, the thought flashes through her mind quickly and quietly, she is even stronger than her Papa, right about now. But no, that can’t be right.
Thinking of her family, her shaky stance becomes more trembling, her fears allowed to enter her mind. What if she stays this way? Is she older than Oisín now or did her twin sister grow too, not knowing what happened? And Chryseis? Ears flat on her skull and into the tangled golden mane, it is only the shadows of her cousins nearby that help her realize that this is not a weird dream. This, this is fairy magic, the kind she’d always been warned about. But she has now gained a strength with which she had been able to help the others. The antlered mare that took them all with her, every little foal around gathered to her. The other foals themselves, too. That’s good, yes? Not all bad?
Slowly, she overcomes her shock. Her weirdly-overlong-legs move her towards the other two like a crippled old woman - stiff from the fight, and wobbly; the gait of a foal in an adult body. She’s quite sure they had been foals like her, too. The mare has a trait of bone, stretching over her body like armour, the stallion doesn’t look like he has anything, like Eurwen herself. She recognizes the chestnut roan colouring on them, so similar to her own if she hadn’t had this appaloosa overlay her mother had gifted her with. Roans, like her Papa and Chryseis and her Grammama and a whole lot of aunts and uncles. But to be honest, Eurwen hasn’t yet explored all of her family tree, and has not yet met Heartfire herself, so what would she know.
It’s not important. They have a task!
”Uhm, hi. I’m Eurwen. Let’s uhm, find some pebbles?” Twisting her ears in uncertainty, she looks at the two expectantly. They’ll know what to do, yes? Will they?
She gets the confirmation she needs from the boy-man (oof, he sounds unhappy), Dagen. Five pebbles, yes. The beach is littered with those, she see when she walks over to it - shiny, coloured ones, less shiny and duller ones, but all of them similarly smooth and most of them similar in size, too. Battered by the waves and the salt, they’ve come to rest here. But most of all - most of all these pebbles are one hundred percent plague-free.
The golden-maned filly (in the body of a mare) doesn’t know much of the plague. She only came to see a fairy! Now, she has survived a monster attack, and it depends on the remaining trio to help the fairies. She simply can’t give up now, even if she is quite uncertain how to move her legs without hitting any of the rocks around her. Or how to walk steadily, at all. Dutifully, she collects her selection of rocks. A green, oval one, shiny on the inside but with a scratched outside that makes it harder to see through. A white and still a bit pointy one, shaped like a salt crystal broken off the nearby coast and accidentally having landed here with the smooth ones (perhaps it is, but Eurwen is too busy searching the right stones that she doesn’t stop to think about it too much). The smoothest, gleaming black pebble she can find, obsidian, completely round. A bright blue one, slightly flattened and oval, but not so scratched as the green one from earlier. A piece of rose quartz last, rounded at the corners, but not entirely smooth yet. Five very different pieces of rock and stone. Satisfied, she looks to find the red roan twins, to see how they are doing.
It is too much to carry them all in her mouth, the spotted filly contemplates. Just about three would have been easy, but five… she might swallow them. Mesmerizing, the spotted mare looks around. Monster skin and blood, water (not helping), weeds (possibly useful), is that it? No - there is also one bone-armoured mare. ”Maybe you can carry them!” Enthusiastic like only foals can be, because in spirit she is so very much the same as before (nightmares of monsters will only come later), the reddish-spotted girl walks towards her cousin to inspect her armour. ”I mean, if you walk really, really carefully.” she adds in her most serious, but still childish, voice.
But fifteen pebbles is a lot to carry for one, Eurwen thinks to herself. What if they fell? Or swallowed one? Her obsidian pebble is very, very round. It could easily be lost. And it would possibly be very uncomfortable for Brazen. Frowning, she looks from her gathered pebbles to the other, now collected stones, and starts to pace while thinking it through more thoroughly (a habit she did not know she would develop).
Her hoof scrapes through the muddy ground, a bit away from the beach. Mud. Mud! Beaming, she looks to the others. ”Mud!” she says, then rolls around in it to show them what she means. The wet stuff is sticky, and perhaps stinky (dead seaweed does that to coastal mud), but it’s the sticky part she got it for. ”We can stick them to ourselves!” she tells them. Already, some grass, roots and branches have accumulated in her muddy fur, and she presents it to them with a sheepish grin.
Dagen doesn’t seem to like her new image much, which she can understand of course, and she shuffles a hoof. But he proposes a better idea, based off of hers, and her meek smile returns. Nooks in Brazen’s armour. ”I can, uhm, carry a few in my mouth maybe, but not all of them I think. Or if they fall I can pick them up.” she says apologetically. But if Brazen can carry a few more with her armour, or if Dagen can help stick two or three pebbles unto Eurwen’s own spine, then that’d work just as well, she thinks.
And so, their ideas combined, after a while of applying mud, and more mud, and then the pebbles, they start to move. Dagen up front with five pebbles of his own, Brazen carrying most of them, and Eurwen trailing behind, hoping none will fall off her roan cousin’s back, making sure that if any fall off, she will catch them. Or rather, collect them.
Some do fall - and on the mountainous road it is indeed a challenge to find them again. Steep roads, and rocky ones. Sometimes she has to run back to catch a pebble, but be it luck or just her anxiety tilting her vision to an adrenaline-enhanced level of alertness, she manages. They all manage; in the end, the three young souls in large bodies, find their way back to the mountain without the scare that they had had on the way to the beach. Following the water until the Hyaline-Pangea border, the golden-haired girl wonders to herself if it is easier because it is the way back, or because they are adults now. Would everything be easier when she grew up? Less big and scary? She hopes so, but then, she also doesn’t really want to be grown up yet. What would Mama think?
Slow but persistent, they follow the way back to the Mountain. Brazen has gotten more graceful during the trip, she thinks, and perhaps in her hurriedness, the spotted mare hasn’t noticed her own movements had become more comfortable as well. Stinky, she and Brazen finally stand on the mountain, and Eurwen quickly searches the pebbles out of the bone-bearing mare’s armour - presenting all pebbles in small piles to present to the fae.
Let’s just hope that it helped!
lies the seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose
cold in the violence after the war hope is a fire to keep us warm
She has never thought to question the magic of these lands, and so that she stands here fully grown seems almost natural in it’s abnormality. Somehow she had gained the heft and strength she needed to slay the beasts that had come for them, and in this moment, she can only be grateful. Still, her bright blue eyes troubled and shrouded, she surveys the carnage they had left in their wake, the beasts she and Dagen and one other had helped to slay. To save their more pacifist comrades.
But there is no time to dwell on what had been. Their path lay forward, one task left that they still must complete. She turns to Dagen, now grown as she had grown, but still so completely Dagen. He is stunning in his mottled red and patches of white, even flecked with gore as he is.
Brazen though? She is so very different.
It had take her by surprise at first, the sudden spurt of growth. There had been agony as bone had split and ruptured her skin, forming hard plates over the softness of her flesh. Growing and fusing until a nearly unrecognizeable woman had been left in her place, fighting the beasts alongside her brother. And now she stands here, a red and white and wholly feminine version of their father, her features shrouded by bone, the heavy weight settled protectively along her spine and ribs and shoulders.
Dagen had always tried to protect her, but now she had become the one made to shield.
She steps forward, wincing slightly as her skin pulls, dried blood cracking to allow fresh trickles to escape from where bone now ruptured from her flesh. This is how Dad must feel all the time, she thinks. And if he could bear it, so could she. Pressing close to Dagen, she inhales deeply, eyes closing briefly as she steels herself to complete their mission. They are so close. She couldn’t fail now.
Her expression is more somber when she opens her eyes again, her gaze falling to the girl (woman?) who had helped them defeat the monsters. She is speaking hesitantly, and Brazen offers her a faint, almost absent smile. She only a nods when Eurwen suggests they find their pebbles, tilting her head to peer at the stony beach. After a moment, she realizes she hadn’t introduced herself. “I’m Brazen,” she finally offers, a touch too late perhaps. But better late than never.
With a frown, she starts forward, doing her best to ignore the way her skin pulls almost sharply with each step. Doing her best to ignore the heavy, unfamiliar weight of the armor sprouting from her flesh. She keeps her expression still, trying to hide her discomfort from her brother. She could do this, she thinks. Daddy does it every day.
Only her eyes, so vibrantly expressive, give her away. But she tries not to look at Dagen (to avoid showing him how much it hurts), instead focusing on the task at hand.
Taking a deep breath, she steadies herself. Pebbles. She needs pebbles.
Peering at beach, she moves slowly, a frown unconsciously tugging at her lips as she considers the smooth stones scattered endlessly along the shoreline. She only stops when she finds one that catches her attention, smooth and glossy and impossibly black. Picking it up in her teeth, she raises her head, glancing around as she tries to decide what she might do with it. She can see the others, collecting their stones, wholly focused on their hunt. After a moment, she walks back towards them, places it carefully on a piece of driftwood. The first of five.
She continues then, seeking her stones, stopping only when one catches her eye. She carefully places each in a row on the driftwood, until five little pebbles sit innocuously on the weathered bark. Five little stones that could save the world.
It’s odd, she thinks, that these small, inconsequential things might mean so much. That they could save her home. Something so common and insignificant, a thing she might have barely given a thought to on any other day, is perhaps the most important thing in all of Beqanna right now. Just like three children, young and powerless, had slain beasts and saved so many lives.
It seems one doesn’t need to be large or majestic or powerful to be important. It’s humbling to realize, even for one as young and naive as she.
She blinks, straightening abruptly when she realizes her brother and Eurwen are beside her now, debating how best to carry the stones back to the mountain. She snorts, brow furrowing as she cranes her neck to peer at her armor. It is plated along her shoulders, the bones of her ribs protruding through skin, arching into the line of bones that march along her spine. Plenty of cracks and crevices where one might neatly tuck a pebble.
‘Mud!’ Her spotted companion exclaims, eyes bright as she expounds on her newest idea, hooves digging into the soft, wet substance as she speaks. Brazen steps forward, dropping her head towards the goo. Her nose wrinkles as the scent of brackish water and decay reaches her nostrils, causing her to jerk her head up.
“Mud?” she questions uncertainly, distaste evident in the single word. She peers around - thinking there must be another way to accomplish their task - when Eurwen drops to the ground and proceeds to roll rather vigorously in the sticky, smelly substance. Snorting, Brazen steps backwards, head coming up as she eyes the spotted (now mud-caked) filly warily.
After a moment, her frown deepens before she sighs. She’s sorely tempted to simply try carrying them in her mouth, but she’s not entirely certain she could make it without swallowing them. After a moment, she looks quizzically at Dagen. He seems about as thrilled with the mud as she. But when he suggests a slightly more logical way of utilizing the mud, it’s clear the sticky goop (as, er, fragrant as it is) is their best option.
After only a moment’s hesitation, she sighs again before stepping forward to help with their efforts.
Soon they have pebbles cemented in place along the hollows of their backs, along with what would fit tucked between the bones of her spine, held in place with glops of mud. Not particularly beautiful, but it would do she supposes. “Alright, let’s go,” she says, determination replacing her uncertainty as she turns her gaze to the mountains. To the direction from which they’d come.
Their journey back to the Mountain is slower than their journey to Silver Cove had been. She walks carefully, taking her time and learning the best ways to move without jostling her armor too much. The mud dries as they walk, making it that much more precarious. And as they begin their ascent along the steep path leading to the Mountain, the dried mud begins to crack.
Soon she collects more pebbles along her spine, placed in the crevices of her armor when the muddy holsters on Eurwen and Dagen begin to give way. Eurwen hunts them down relentlessly when they tumble from their perches, tucking them carefully into her spine for safekeeping. She has finally perfected her movements though, her steps as graceful and smooth as she can make them. To avoid losing any one of those precious little pebbles.
Only when the trail finally flattens and broadens, releasing them onto the mountaintop, does she breathe a sigh of relief. Drawing to a halt, she lifts her gaze, hope and relief and an incredible sense of accomplishment warring for supremacy inside her.
They had made it. They had succeeded. And maybe, just maybe, they had helped save Beqanna.
Brazen
Eurwen and Dagen powerplayed with permission from Toli and Vanilla
those bright crooked stars, man they're howlin’ out thought you read them all right, had them all figured out
He hadn't questioned it when suddenly he was larger and stronger, built and toned and deadly. He'd been a little busy.
They were walking away now, successful and covered in gore as they left the others to crawl out of the ripped-open bodies of the beasts that had eaten them. His anxiety was hidden beneath an impenetrable mask he'd likely learned from his mother, the spy. All of his secrets were hidden, his face unreadable.
Beneath his skin, his heart hammered a thundering beat. He thought he'd felt naked when his wings had vanished, but that was nothing compared to this; suddenly large and full grown and specific parts completely visible to all, just hanging out there on full display for any wandering eye to see.
He just killed something. He should probably be more concerned with that. Or even that his sister was now covered in bone like their father.
There was one other that had survived the attack, and she walked up to them then with introductions. "I'm Dagen," he replied without inflection, falling quiet for Brazen to introduce herself. "Five pebbles," he added, explaining in short what they had been instructed to fetch and return to the mountain.
He walked further with them to their destination, an ocean of dark rocks littering the ground at their feet until the land met the sea. They'd found them and their next issue was to find a way to transport them. The stranger spoke again and his dark blue-black eyes flicked over to her, then to Brazen as he eyed her new armor speculatively. Carry them? In her bone plates?
Then she threw out another idea: they could paint mud on each other and stick the pebbles to it like glue.
"I'm not sure that would hold them for the long trip. We should combine that with another idea. We draw mud along our spines and find flat-bottomed ones to settle there, held in place better with the thick soil." Ugh, gross. He would absolutely be bathing after this. Soaking, even.
"And maybe we can embed them into some nooks in your armor, Brazen, with mud for you too to hold them."
They were in agreement and began their task. Brazen had already hunted hers down as they spoke, so they muddied her little nooks up and placed them inside. Mud was applied to each of them, and pebbles too. The five, flat-bottomed ones he’d picked were settled along his spine with their help, chosen with less specified care as the girls had chosen theirs. As was typical for girls, they seemed to gravitate to shinier ones, pretty ones, and as a guy, he simply didn’t care so long as it was functional and served its intended purpose.
When everyone was set to go, he checked them all over, then nodded shortly.
He led them carefully back towards the mountain, traveling once again in tension-filled silence. Each path ahead was scouted vigilantly with his eyes before he took the women on them. This was where his attention to detail was as specific as the girls’ had been when choosing their pebbles. He was glad they’d made it this far, sparing a brief thought for those other participants that they’d spilled from the bellies of the beasts.
As they reached their destination, Eurwen helped pluck them off his back and each of their pebbles was brushed free of debris before placed in careful piles for presentation. “Thank you,” he murmured to her, his voice older and deeper than he was accustomed to.
He lined up beside the girls, standing behind the pile of varied stones that had been his find. A couple were rounded and taller than the others, another flat like a skipping stone. The other two were sharp and jutted. All of them were of varying shades of charcoal and obsidian and grey, and their only shared likeness was the flat side that had served as their balance along his spine.
With a last glance at his twin sister, ensuring she was alright after this long journey, he faced the fairy with stony eyes and waited to see if they’d helped the world begin to overcome this widespread sickness.
learned every constellation, just to find where you're at
