"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
who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?
She had not intended on staying here, yet despite everything, she found herself drawn back.
It was difficult to let go of something that felt so familiar. It was impossible to not walk the edge of the lake and seek out the similarities to Hyaline, just as it was impossible to not walk the hidden paths that wended through the steep-sided hills and not wonder if these were exactly the same paths as a hundred or so years ago. Her dreams here were strange, as if her past was doing its best to permanently seat itself at the forefront of her mind, and it appeared to be working. Each time she left, she eventually made her way back.
This had not been her chosen home, but she could not deny that it was some kind of fate that had brought her here—the first stone cast that created the unending ripple effect that continuously led her back to Carnage.
Like so many other aspects of her life, she had always known she was undeserving of the crown; a crown that came to her already bloodied even if it was not by her own hand, but she had been so foolishly naive back then that she had taken it. She did not know Carnage as well back then as she does now, but she can freely admit it would not change things—hindsight may be perfect, but her heart is viciously flawed, and she has never been one to deny its wants.
So she drifts in the Dale, letting herself be haunted by ghosts she had thought were long-gone; lets herself think of Fenrir and Alaunus, of Ashley and Charlemagne. She remembers how the kingdom had hated their false queen until they watched her bleed for them, how it had cemented the idea in her mind that she was only worth anything if she was breaking for someone else.
When twilight falls she is alone, a prisoner to her memories, but the presence of someone else slowly rouses her back to the present. She blinks away the fog from her eyes, and with a turn of her head she finds herself staring at a stranger just down the path. The smile that finds her lips is automatic, an action as involuntary as breathing or her heart beating. “Hello,” she says in the fading light, her eyes searching his face with a practiced ease, as if she might find someone familiar hidden in the shape of it.
She does not know if it is her magic—still so unfamiliar with it, mostly afraid to fully test the limits of it—or an innate sense she has honed over the years, but there is something in him that immediately strikes her. Something ancient, a fading thread of the old Beqanna that seemingly ties a select group of them together—like her and Carnage, but also Atrox, Agetta Larva, and even Ashhal all shared it. “I don’t think I know you,” she says, contemplative, seemingly oblivious to the way the statement, when spoken aloud, sounds strange when disconnected from her thoughts. “Where are you from?”
In a sense, Ryatah is fortunate for all that remains to haunt her to this day.
He’s been standing there for quite some time, just observing anything that crosses his path. Now, he grows more contemplative as the light of day fades, taking its bright blues and greens so that the setting sun can repaint the sky in rich reds, oranges, and purples. The dramatic beauty of the sunset is not lost to him, but it reminds him that he’s never taken the time to enjoy these kinds of moments before.
In fact, he’d never appreciated much of anything before and is left with black, yawning voids that have swallowed much of his past. His connections to others had been tenuous, at best, and names and faces do not come to him as easily as they do to Ryatah.
He hears her long before he sees her. She is quiet, but not enough to evade the finely tuned senses he’d developed during his time as a herd leader. The immediate tension in his muscles is an automatic response, but he makes no effort to find the approaching traveler, since he cannot detect any ill-will in the sound of her steps.
Surprise wells in his core when she finally appears further along the path he’s been standing, sentry-like, at for so long. He’s not sure why he continues to be taken aback by the looks of those that he has come across since returning. Normal seems to have been tossed to the wayside, even his own after his encounter with the sprites. But even without her otherworldly appearance, there is something different about her, something he cannot pull into tangibility.
The salutation is ordinary enough, but she elicits a dry laugh from him with her next statement.
“Well, that’s no shock to me. I’ve only met a handful of others, and there do not seem to be many, if any, that would remember me from before.”
And why would there be? He had certainly made no attempts to be noteworthy in any way. But there is no bitterness in his voice, only a vague emptiness mirroring the barren landscape of his memories.
He presses on with his introduction, still wondering why this demure mare creates such a meaningful impression on him.
“I’m Assailant and I was born here in Beqanna. You might say I’m from the Chamber, but I never felt any loyalty to it even though my herdland was part of its kingdom.”
“You seem to know the place well. Have you been here long….?”
He leaves a long pause at the end of his question, a wordless request for the name of the lovely creature before him.
who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?
She finds that she had missed this—the company of strangers. To be with someone that she did not know, and they did not know her. Being alive for so long had caused Beqanna to feel small, and sometimes she could not help but to feel that nothing in her life was a secret anymore. It did not help that her story was often written so plainly across her body—eyes torn from her face and scarred sockets sitting empty or with magicked jewels, only for her impossibly dark eyes to later reappear; a brand on her hip; a scar across her chest.
Scars and rumors told her story more than her voice ever had, and there was really no such thing as secrets in this land anymore. Not for her.
So it was a refreshing change to meet someone that did not stare at the scar on her chest and know the events that had transpired around it, and whose gaze did not linger on the brand so boldly carved into her white hip and force her to ignore the questions that echoed in their eyes. She never knew what kind of answers they were looking for when they would ask about it, anyway—there is only one who left his mark so plainly on others, but the circumstances of how she acquired hers was impossible to put into a context that anyone besides the two of them would understand.
She nods her head to his first statement, but something alights in her eyes when he mentions the Chamber, a sudden warming ache filling her chest. She did not hold a particular fondness for the kingdom itself; just one of its kings.
“I’m familiar with the Chamber,” she says with a small, nearly-hidden smile, and for a moment she is distracted by the thought of yellow eyes set against a dark face, and a sharp-edged smile that always felt like it was solely for her. “Although the Valley was my home for the longest, and then later here, in the Dale,” she continues after she refocuses her gaze onto the stallion in front of her. “My name is Ryatah. I was not born here, as you were, but I came here when I was very young and never left.” It was strange to think that it had been nearly one hundred seventy years ago when she first followed Dhumin here—doe-eyed and unsure, with not a single clue what strange future lay waiting for her in this treacherously beautiful land.
“You are staying in the Dale, then?” she asks with a curious tip of her haloed head, and then moves to continue along the path she had been following, gesturing for him to accompany her as the light further fades and night begins to fall around them.
The names were all recognizable, but nothing else. It did not help that he had spent nearly a century (give or take; it’s hard to measure time when trapped in the darkness that lies deep beneath the earth’s crust) away from Beqanna and knew so little of her persistent changes, but even in the time he had walked on the surface, it was as though he’d done so in a haze.
But he can easily see the connections Ryatah possesses and, for a moment, a flame of jealousy licks at his heart. So much time wasted, not even counting the years stolen from him. The feeling passes quickly though, for he realizes that there are likely many more years ahead in which to make up for it.
His head nods slightly as she gives a very brief introduction to her past and finds himself wondering just how long it has been since her arrival. There is a trace of something in her voice that suggests that she is older than her appearance would suggest, or perhaps it is just an air of maturity that often occurs naturally in mortals.
Whatever it is, he unhesitatingly falls in step with her as she resumes her walk, debating what his answer to her question will be. The idea of creating a permanent home is appealing, but he is not yet convinced that the Dale is where he is meant to be. While beautiful, there is a sense of something unnamed calling him elsewhere. Still, he is determined to keep his mind open to the possibilities.
“Visiting, at least for now. I know of the resurrected lands by name only, though nothing at all of Pangea, so I thought it might be a nice little adventure to take a grand tour of them all.”
“It’s strange, sometimes upsetting, to think that I’ve been alive almost as long as some of these lands and yet I know nothing of their history. And there are apparently kingdoms that came long after me and are now lost to the ether. But I suppose that’s the price to pay for choosing to live in oblivion.”
He looks to his new traveling companion, again besieged by the idea that she holds a considerable amount of knowledge of the past. Supposing that there is no harm in asking, he opts to start with the obvious, hoping for some enlightenment, even on the smallest scale.
“What do you know of the Dale’s history, if you don’t mind my asking?”
assailant
"The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth, and the death of self." -Simon Barnes
who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?
She listens as he talks, every now and then a small smile lifting at the corner of her lips, but she waits for him to finish before she says anything. “The kingdoms have changed numerous times over the years. Beqanna rarely stays the same for long, I’ve noticed.” He asks her what she knows of the Dale’s history, and she comes to a stop, turning to face him in the ever darkening twilight, looking at him thoughtfully. “It may be easier if I show you. Though you’ll have to forgive me, my magic is still new,” she says with a quiet laugh, sending up a flurry of golden stardust and strands of silver starlight. Adding in threads of shadow, she uses the light and dark to create moving silhouettes that will accompany her stories.
“The Dale—or as it was originally known, the Forbidden Dale—is one of the kingdoms that has been around since nearly the beginning. But I had lived in Beqanna for several years before I ever came here.” As she talks, the silhouettes begin to take shape; shadows that form the hills of the Dale, backlit by stardust and outlined in silver, and figures of the horses below made up the same—and above them, several stars falling from the sky.
She tells him first the story of what they called ‘The Falling Stars’, when stars fell from the sky and took the shape of rulers, some of them old and thought to be dead, and others entirely new. Each of them took control of a kingdom, and it had been Moselle who had worn the Dale’s crown. She cannot tell him how the Dale had accepted their new ruler—she had been in the Valley, where this event had brought back Carnage; the first link in a chain of events that would leave her life irrevocably changed.
The scene changes to the darkened figures of Moselle and Carnage—she gives him eyes made of wine-red stars, outlining him in silver starlight that is perhaps a little too bright, though she does refrain from painting him with galaxies—showing a fight that ends with Moselle yielding. “Carnage decided to take the Dale from Moselle, but as he was currently king in the Valley, he did not want both thrones. And so he made the Dale a subkingdom of the Valley and gave the Dale throne to me,” she says the last part with a nearly hidden smile, adding in another shadowed-shape, placing a golden halo above its head and stardust wings from its sides.
It would be easy to assume that she thought he chose her because she was stronger or better than the other Valley residents, but she knows that is not true.
He had chosen her because he knew, even then, that she would break herself and lose herself over and over if it meant keeping his attention.
She does not go into all the details of how the Dale eventually became its own kingdom again—that was a story that had become more about her and Carnage rather than the Dale.
Instead, she tells the story of the Catastrophe.
The shadowed shapes of the kingdoms, once eight of them, are demolished and reshaped into only three—Dewdrop Gates, Forbidden Waterfall, and Forsaken Chamber, with the Amazons and Tundra lost. She remembers that Depp, Larva, and Dillan had taken over the Forbidden Waterfall as a kind of council, and though she had drifted in and out, her memories of the combined neutral kingdoms is minimal.
But, as could be predicted, this did not last forever. The land eventually mended itself, and the Amazons and the Tundra rose again, shown by the reshaping of the shadows and starlight. This, as she recalls, is also when the lands all began going by their shortened names, such as the Dale, the Valley, and the Chamber.
It stayed like this for a considerable amount of time, until the Reckoning.
The stardust sweeps across the dark shapes of the lands like a gust of wind, erasing them all entirely. “The Reckoning was, possibly, one of the most widespread changes that have happened here. Everyone's powers were lost, and the lands that we have always known disappeared entirely. Every piece of history, gone, and in their place we were given the new lands: Sylva, Nerine, Taiga, Tephra, Ischia, and Carnage’s creation, Pangea, and then later Loess and Hyaline.”
Again, all of these lands had their own histories—histories that could launch a thousand of their own stories, but instead she focuses only on how they tied into the revival of the Dale, and only briefly touching on how the Brilliant Pampas, Silver Cove, Icicle Isle, and Island Resort were revived as safe havens during the plague.
“Which brings us up to the present, mostly. The past few years have been a strange series of storms and flooding, with the arrival of Baltia and Stratos, and various kingdoms disappearing. And now, with the recent upheaval, we are here,” she finishes with a vague sweeping of stardust around them, gesturing to the land that had now been muted by the darkness of nightfall around them, letting the starlight and stardust slowly dissipate.
Ryatah
me: yeah this post will be way shorter if I have her 'show' him like the smoke scene in Pocahontas
also me: writes 800+ words of utter nonsense anyway
Perhaps never a truer word has been spoken when she reflects on Beqanna’s ever-changing nature. Though he recalls very few details, he does remember the Disruption created by the arrival of a trio of mares in the peak years of his herd life. Having had nothing to do with the resistance though, he cannot remember the outcome, but it must not have been overly dramatic—certainly it did not affect his life very much.
He nods slightly when she offers to share the past as she remembers it, eager to fill the gaps of his own knowledge. Accustomed as he is becoming to the new manifestations of magic that he keeps encountering, the sudden eruption of stardust manages to dazzle him and, utterly transfixed, he watches the shapes transform into clearer images.
The Falling Stars are wholly unknown to him. They must have descended during one of his several absences from Beqanna. He cannot help but linger at the image of Carnage that she creates. His ignorance does not extend far enough to include his grey cousin in its shadowy grasp, but as they’d never met in the past, it is intriguing to see her representation of him.
At first, he does not register the meaning of her words as the newest addition takes shape, but his eyes shift from the star-lined shadow to Ryatah herself. Then it clicks into place as he looks at her for a long moment. He chuckles softly.
“Well, I couldn’t have gotten any luckier than asking you for the Dale’s history, could I?”
It is not a question that requires an answer, so he offers a smile to share with her and returns his attention to the canvas she’s created.
A twinge of discomfort fires through every nerve in his body as she resumes her story with the Catastrophe. Like everything else, he is minimally aware of the event as a whole, but this memory unsettles him because it is the last thing he remembers before Beqanna decided to bury him alive.
He had just returned from yet another ‘sabbatical’ when the kingdoms coalesced into just three. This time, he failed to find Demise again and so he decided to venture to the Forsaken Chamber. He still wasn’t sold on life under a king or queen’s rule, but he was curious to see what the fuss was all about, since he wasn’t particularly interested in gathering a new herd without Demise at his side.
He still does not know what happened that day. He just remembers days that turned into years, then decades of dark and damp. So, it is fascinating to see the changes wrought in his forced absence. For some reason, he is pleased to see that his assumption that the kingdoms were restored was correct, though it leaves him even more unsure of revisiting the Chamber.
Others might wonder what it must have been like for the longtime residents to see everything they know taken from them, but he feels as though he can understand part of what they went through. It was jarring enough to return to an unfamiliar land only to discover that it is the one that you left, but to witness its complete restructuring? He cannot quite understand that, despite the remodeling that occurred after he’d returned from the sprites’ quest. That was a return of old lands and, even though he did not know much of them, they still provided some sense of familiarity.
His skin crawls at the idea of becoming plague-ridden and he finds himself losing the desire to wander off to Pangea, even though it seems apparent that the plague no longer exists. Still, he does not rule it out entirely despite his misgivings.
The remainder of her story seems a bit blurry, whether that is because the most recent times have been largely uneventful in comparison, or because his attention has begun to wane. He briefly admires the dramatic gesture of conclusion that the sweeping stardust provides, then his eyes glaze slightly as he loses himself in thought.
So many pieces, small and large, of the puzzle that is Beqanna. He knows that he has missed so much of it, yet her presentation has made him realize that he never fully understood just how much had transpired in his absence. It is a lot to process, but certainly no more than he has already been working on. He pulls himself back to the present and refocuses his attention on the ghost-white mare.
“Thank you, Ryatah. That was incredible, and it seems to me that your magic works just fine.” At the last few words, his eyes glimmer with both silent laughter and genuine reassurance.
“It makes sense now.. you have a presence about you that is almost inexplicable, but now I see that it is because you have been alive for quite some time now.”
Though he does not say it, it is comforting to speak with someone that does not wonder, that knows almost exactly what it was like during his heyday. He is not quite so adept at painting pictures, physically or verbally.
But he can pull them from his own memories, and he does so now, imagining the landscape of the Dale as it is in the daylight. Already beautiful, it is more so now that he has learned so much of its history and so it is even more tempting than it was before tonight.
He knows that there is still something that he must deal with before he decides where to rest his head, but he looks to Ryatah inquiringly.
“Will the Dale become your home once more?”
assailant
"The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth, and the death of self." -Simon Barnes
