"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
10-02-2020, 08:16 PM (This post was last modified: 10-02-2020, 08:16 PM by crowns.)
CrownS
He grows acclimated to his new temperature a little more every day. Crowns is still impossibly uncomfortable, but he has grown bored of laying in the den being babied by his mother. Of course, he loves the way she dotes on him and his father’s affections are certainly welcomed. It’s just that they won’t play with him for fear of handling him too roughly or letting him push himself too hard. The boy wishes that he was somewhere colder, with someone who wouldn’t coddle him.
Then he blinks and the world around him changes. The air is shockingly crisp and cold, with winds that blow harshly against his warm cheeks. Crowns gives a little squeak of surprise as he stumbles backward. Oh, but his strange friend is here.
The colt offers him a tired grin and edges closer to Eight. Did the feather bring them both here, he wonders? His skin doesn’t burn quite so hot here in the frigid shade of the Taiga forest. Maybe his dark tutor sensed his fever and drew him closer to the ice and snow. Regardless, he is thankful for the change of scenery and he doesn’t care to dwell on the how or why of it.
“Hello again!” he chirps cheerfully. “I don’t feel so good, but it’s a little better here.”
He spreads his dripping wings so they chill in the autumn wind that sweeps between the charred but towering redwoods here. Then, he draws them close and sighs in relief as they soothe the blistering heat of his skin.
Eight does not remember the day he became a magician. He does not remember the way his bones felt as though they would splinter into a thousand pieces. He does not remember how the pain crept into his lungs like it was attempting to drown him. He does not remember his lack of lucidity; how he nearly wept for his mother, though he had not seen her since birth. Perhaps it is for the best, forgetting the way his gift felt like a curse. He has yet had to feel that driving pain since the day it settled into his blood - maybe feeling it all in one is better, so that you may never have to feel again.
There are pins at the edges of his aura - a tickle that mutated towards the back of his throat, a tangible feeling in the call of his blood. It was something so unfamiliar, but he knew so well - the pull of magic. No one had dared tease the test of magic upon him (which was not quite a surprise, considering how aged he was, and how deeply settled his magic was into his veins) . Now this… this was quite interesting - why not play along?
---
There is a bite of cold on his skin, despite the smooth summer heat that he was once bathed in. It is a land he has never stepped foot in, save for destruction. It is Taiga - a reminder of the long lost Tundra - a fogged land of ice and men. And then, there is the child; his ocean washed gift. His stolen delight, snagged and secured from beneath Sabbath. Crowns comes closer, whether for warmth or to be sure that the magician is there, he does not know. But they are here - together - and not by the magician’s doing.
He reaches out, as the little thing blathers on in his typical cheery state. He feels magic in the bones of the boy (red hot with teeth and ire, a dark shape of serpent - but much more) magic, magic, magic. And the magician cannot help but laugh inwardly ; for he could have asked for nothing better than what was right now. Sabbath’s little son (his, now - his son) has magic inside him. The magician feels the heat simmering off water wings (a steam growing into the darkening night), and the boy’s skin feels hot from even a foot away. There is magic fighting inside him - and there could be no better thing.
“Crowns. You have returned to me.” Eight blows upon his skin, an icy cool haven to the blistering that boils from below. His head turns coyly sideways, eying the blue boy with interest (for oh, how interesting things have become). And then he mentions the feather.
“No, boy.” The sigh is rifted with unknown patience. “You did.” And then - a brilliant flash of an idea. “My feather gave you something incredible. Something that makes you a part of me.”
Oh for fuck’s sake. This would be an interesting ride.
The curse has begun to put down its roots within the core of him, working itself into his veins and assimilating itself into his every cell. Its effort make his skin scalding hot even here in the north where snow could be found even in the dead of summer. It deigns enough of its strength to Crowns to pluck at Eight and bring him near. The primordial serpent can taste the chaos rolling off him in waves and wonders what might become of this meeting.
Crowns nods when Eight speaks and he offers up a beaming grin. Of course, he always returns to the ones he likes - all three of them, he supposes. He shivers in the frosted breeze that the strange magician breathes over him, but it is a comfort just the same. His own magic pauses its work to observe from behind the child’s dark blue gaze for a while.
He tilts his sapphire and bay head. How did he do this? His wings flutter nervously at the idea as he mulls if over for a moment longer, until Eight declares the feather has given him some strange ability. The curse bares its teeth at the idea that its host could belong to anyone else. Again, his flesh grows uncomfortably hot and he shifts his weight at the feeling. An anger that is not his rises up to spread through his small chest.
“You really think it was me? All I can do is the teeth and scales thing, I thought,” he wonders aloud as he looks down at his small hooves. They look just the same as before, offering no clues as to what’s become of him. The air around his body ripples with the intensity of the warmth permeating from him now. The frost around him melts and recedes from where he stands.
“Sorry, it’s just hard to think with this fever, I think.” His voice is thin and tired. His gaze wanders aimlessly across Eight as the magic burrows deeper into him, devouring every weakness and imperfection it comes across now.
To call it a curse would be a horrible thing - to mock it as something dangerous and undesired. A cure is something that shackles and binds; a think you cannot shake. No, no- magic is something more. It is a gift given to only those who deserve it, a calling to something greater, a beckoning to worlds beyond. His oceanic wonder has crawled through the depths of darkness to finally gleam in the light of his magicians blood. His mother (dear, sweet, Sabbath) drank deeply, and in doing so ignited something far more than she could ever hope. They may call it a curse- but the magician deems it a calling.
You can taste the heat- a tangible thing that creates its own atmosphere between the bright blue boy and dark black man. It is suffocating, an angry hiss that bears upon your ears and presses against your skin. He reaches out, testing and tasting what your magic is saying - a curse of serpent and scales, an absolute manifestation of your bloodline far beyond you know. An ignition between Sabbath and his hot, black blood between her teeth. So he did have a play in this, it was not just a fanciful fib to give the boy a reason. Eight feels the angry taste of magic and placates it with a push of his own: The boy will not yet understand. He needs a reason. Do not destroy your host, become whole with it. He and I will do you well.
The magician steps closer, barring his own skin with flecks of frost and ice to protect him from the sun storm of skin. “You can do all things now.” He reaches out, his nose connecting with the soft spot of Crowns’ chest, pushing his own might and magic inside to stoke the fire coursing through him- let it be done quick, let it be done soon. “You will be able to be beside me and conquer anything you come across now, my son.” And for the first time, for his first child, he stands beside and uses the magic in his blood in their time of need.
The unbridled magic coils tightly around the boy’s heart when Eight runs his fingers over its infinite scales. It bristles at being examined and so it returns the favor, dipping unseen talons into the thick of him to see who or what he is. The nameless monster sees the blood and the feather - the seeds that allowed it to take root here and nurtured the crucial first moments when it began to bond with Crowns.
But then he speaks directly to it and it listens carefully. He makes promises and requests. It loosens its grip on the child’s heart, and the boy gives a sigh of relief. Crowns lifts his gaze to meet Eight’s when he explains that he can do all things. All? His brow furrows at the thought. He is too young to grasp the possibilities just yet, but he nods as he believes he understands. The child sucks in a breath when Eight’s cold nose touches to his chest.
The endless serpent swallows the magic given to it, greedy and eager for the strength. And then it completes its work - it dives deep into his bones, weaves itself to every strand of his DNA, and carves its image over his soul. Crowns cries out in pain as the heat around him erupts into blue flame now, licking at the ground and the tree limbs above them. It burns away his mortality and chews through his every flaw, licking its fingers clean.
The boy stumbles back and collapses to the ground as the fire suddenly dies out. The dirt is stained black with the inferno of his rebirth, smouldering and smoking around them both. His chest heaves for breath while his hummingbird heart flutters between his ribs. Crowns trembles in shock as he searches Eight’s face for some answer.
“I don’t understand. What.. What’s happening?” he whispers. Strange new memories play out in his mind, and he doesn’t quite understand what they all mean. The names all come to him and yet he’s certain he’s never met them before - Ghaul, Adna, and Larva. Countless others all rushing up without him beckoning them. He does not fear the strangeness of it, but he finds himself exhausted like he’s never known sleep a day in his life.
There is something salacious about new magic. It is so bright, so furious, so delectably satiating. The magician listens to the flowing magic inside the boy, reaches and understanding, and drinks it in like the breath of a dying man. He had forgotten what something so new tasted like- doe his magic is old and hardened, his veins bleeding black sludge and his heart barely beating. The magic has eaten him whole, devoured him through the course of centuries, left him rotting and malicious. But this? His Crowns? The magic courses through him, ripe and begging to be plucked like a forbidden fruit.
Eight closes his eyes, relishing in the delightful innocence of it all. He lets Crowns’ newborn magic delve inside him; see the life that he has had, taste the rotting destruction he has left in his wake, and the gentle manipulation he has dealt, the weapons he has wielded in battle, the heavy crowns that have topped his head- he will let it see it all in a whirling globe of time.
Perhaps this monstrous curse would not devour his Son whole, and maybe it would- but he would live to see it either way. Eight can feel it drinking him in, a desert flower in the wake of a rain- let it taste him and move forward with this wretched transformation. A thing that makes monsters out of men, gods out of children, magicians out of the meek.
—
It is finished- the magic has run its course, has burned everything in its wake and left the little ocean boy adrift in soot and adroit in skill. He looks to Eight, but there is only so much the magician can explain. (And oh, how badly he wished he’d had someone to explain it all). “You have been given the gift of magic. By our blood and my feather and the faeries of Beqanna- you have the gift of the gods.” He pauses, dripping a feather down for the bot to clutch onto and pull himself up. “There will be many things you do not quite understand. But I will be here, and teach you them all.”
He turns, facing his wave washed child - “Now, just think of anything you would like to do or be in the world. Tell me, and we will make it true.”
10-12-2020, 10:11 PM (This post was last modified: 10-12-2020, 10:12 PM by crowns.)
CrownS
The newborn magic chews through Eight and assimilates all his memories into the others it has collected. It puts a little shard of him up on the shelf next to the ones who came before: Maggot, Cobain, Larva, and Ghaul. The curse had been impure in their hearts but now, distilled, it flows freely through the child’s veins and leaves none of their madness in its wake. The ancient serpent makes room for the magician’s life down in the marrow of Crowns’ bones and then, finally, it rests. It has carved all their names into his heart and it is content with its work.
Slowly, bit by bit, Crowns finds the strength to keep his legs from trembling. He digests all the new memories and lifetimes as they no longer flood his throat and choke him. There is only a quiet understanding as he devours the entire history of Eight’s life as well as the others. Their choices made sense, at the time, despite whatever chaos ensued. He sees this and he accepts it as his body accepts its newfound strength.
His wide blue eyes observe Eight as he speaks, hardly blinking as he clings to every word. They don’t make sense, at first, but the viper gently feeds the words to him until he catches on.
“Anything?” he echoes, and something inside him answers, Anything.
Crowns dwells on the question a while and thinks of his father, of those frost-covored scales and how strong they are. Even his mother’s fangs can’t find a way to break through them. The boy furrows his brows and slowly, inch by awful inch, flames lick across his skin. It burns away the fine baby hair of his mane and his newborn coat to leave armored dragonscale across his body. The weight of them is heavier than what he is accustomed to.
He turns his head and observes himself now, posing this way and that to appreciate the way he glistens now. “Am I still me, though?” he asks, suddenly worried as he turns to look back at his friend.
