"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 sound of the chaos, of the madness: it fills the air. The sound of war-crying screams and anguish, of the sudden ephemeral and eerie hiss of an unseen force: it begins to spread through the trees and through the waters- through the very land itself.
Pangea comes to life with each discordant note, each disharmony and maddened wail.
It’s heart pulses, once and then twice: beating beneath the sand-mixed soil and trees covered in kelp, algae, barnacles and coral. The shadows and bones of ancient leviathans still fresh across the hellscape and their corpses shudder as the rotting meat exudes a sickly odor and smell: as the bile and blood begins to pour into the ground and give rise to things such as browning spots and dying plants. Fish that has flopped are still now, and their scales fall from the flesh as the meat sours.
Pangea exhales its rotted and fetid breath, it raises an invisible hand and all the inhabitant thereof are suddenly crushed beneath its claws.
None can feel them, none know of them: but Yidhra sees them. She feels them and recognizes the shifting pressure so suddenly that her bony form takes steps back- steps away from the war-party and the God-Mage’s hunt.
Yidhra lifted her think neck and she screams: “NO, I WILL NOT DIE.” her mind races, adrenaline pulling through her every fiber of being as she rushes to the side and dives towards the edge of a strange pool of water. Oily on the surface blood mixes with the brackish fluid and as he hoof strikes the ground the water is deeper than she imagined.
Her knees sink in, but she runs: pushes through and passed it.
The ocean is cold.
Blue, and grey- green and shimmering… the water is cold.
Like a fish she plunges into it: thrusts herself beyond the waves and allows herself to shift so that the full form of her body sinks well beneath the surface in a frantic dive. Saltwater stings her eyes but, she is so used to the pain of it that she cannot care for the burning.
Her nostrils flare and water slides through her throat and into her lungs.
Heaviness and exhaustion, the fullness causing her cough to worsen and her body to wrack with pain: she bends in ways that are not natural and continues swimming beneath the sea.
Yidhra feels the parasites of her body coming to life, she feels them digging and biting the weak flesh. She recalls the first time she tried to swim: and the drowning, and she welcomes it.
There in the heart of Pangea however, she has not escaped the beats or the eyes of it: she is not unseen, and suddenly her muscles seize and tense. Inside her mind she hears the familiar voice, the purr and shake of the God-Mage himself… the harsh growling of annoyance or amusement.
“You cannot escape.” he states.
Cold fire burns her body, and she screams beneath the water as the fur becomes flesh: spattered and grey, porous and shifting. She feels her muscles growing and feels her body and bones snapping and reforming as fullness returns to her shape. Yidhra’s mane and tail are tugged and pulled, the dark colors lightening and changed as the tangles becoming coiling and writhing tentacles: and the suckers and barbs flex. She tastes and feels the water through them- feels her own form settling as she inhales a deep, last breath and begins laughing.
“I am not dying, oh no…” she purrs, the water dripping from her lips as she breathes. “Carnage… Pangea, so beautiful.”
Hours pass before she rises to the surface, before she breaks through the waves and before her form shadows the land again. Her skin shifts a strange array of colors and textures, it’s porous and grotesque mimicry of the landscape enabling her to press upon the coral and become it. She hisses and her voice echoes as she slithers and walks across the land.
She sees color is vibrancy she never know, and stops when she reaches the highest rock: her coiled tentacles grasping and feet digging in as she feels the elongated limbs near her shoulders helping to pull her up.
Yidhra’s mouth is no longer a mouth, but rather a maw: a series of fleshy tendrils where a beak sits in the mass.
“Pangea awakens,” she speaks at the top: she calls out. “It breathes as you and I, it lives again as it has- and it brings with it, a gift: one that we are responsible for.” her beak snaps and the blood drips from it, leaks down the tendrils and drops upon the land.
Her blood is blue.
“All those here know it, we feel it: we are touched by it,” she shouts. Watery and smoky her voice is deep and guttural, the barbel shaped iris narrowing as she looks around. “I am Yidhra, a creature from lands long lost to time, and I stand now in this place- gifted and given form by Pangea. Come with me, and rise: live here, and let us enjoy the fruits of what we wrought into this world. This… is my domain, after all.”
As if to exercise a point she lifts a hoof and snaps it down upon the surface of the rock. Around her there is a bubble, a heaviness that fills the air: a vulgar humidity that becomes oppressive.
Fear.
Like a tangible force, fear seeps into the air and it affects those who it encompasses.
He hadn’t needed to get close to the group to help kill the guy.
Instead, he’d accelerated his disease, the one he already carried. In doing so, perhaps, maybe, his father’s design had been made easier. He had always known he wouldhave to work for it, but now, he feels accomplishment. Finally worth something; father might be proud, or, maybe not, maybe just his mother. Still, he’s slowly working towards the goal - raise Pangea, make it healthy, make it permanent.
But another seeks to claim it, and when she calls out and says she is gifted, he just grins up at her. ”We’re all gifted and shaped by our god and his land, but the land belongs to my father, and not to you.” He is decidedly healthy-looking, contrary to when he had approached Rhonen the day before. Healed, instead of made sick by Pangea - probably a thank-you from Carnage or just a side-effect from healing the land; his blood is in it, after all.
”But I guess we could claim it in His name.” He’s not overzealous or anything, he knows that to Carnage they’re worth less than their own shit is to them. Or, maybe just about that level. He grins at the tentacly woman. ”Aren’t you lookin’ good,” he assesses, tail swishing and ears turning around to catch sounds, wondering it there’s anybody else willing to call this place home.
It is the source of magic, after all.
No cost too great. No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry out suffering.
The deed was done. He had observed from the perimeter of the mass. Watching with entertainment the spectacle that took place before his very eyes. The pain, the sorrow, the carnage. He reveled in every moment to a point of ecstasy. And when his moment came, he dug his fingers deep within the chestnut stallion and stole what little health he could find. Death comes to one as renewal finds another. Bits and pieces of his tattered body repair in that very moment.
Days passed after the green plume dissipated into the atmosphere. He hadn't thought much of it until a vision comes to him in his restless dreams. A sickness was spreading throughout their world and for his service he is immune to its effects.
When he awakes he finds the world around him in changed but very much the same. The wasteland, still barren of all flora, is a permanent piece on the map once again. Other sanctuaries have evolved, by the will of the faerie, to save their followers from the plague that has been released. He chuckles quietly, but his musings are interrupted by a demanding tone.
He snorts in irritation at the sound of a voice that is not his God. Who dare come to the risen land of hell and command them? Another voice enters his ears and it forces him from his still position. Raj has answered the call and it is only curiosity that brings him to find a tentacle covered mare before them.
Zain listens to Raj's opinion in the matter of claims and he nods to his transparent friend before commenting, "What right do you have in making such a claim to this land as being your domain? Did you rise her from the ocean depths? Did you spill your blood for her? Have you been gifted by the Dark God himself for your servitude?" He stands tall, awaiting her answers and withholding his judgement. He has done all of the things he has presented and would not consider anyone who has done less...
Zain
ReBeL jUsT fOr KiCkS
@[Yidhra] Just some drama for you
*Be Warned*
Possesses health transference
and may steal your health.
They are what they are, writhing shadows born upon Pangea in form of serpents whose scales glisten and shimmer: whose bodies entwine and fangs drip with venom. They are bloodied and dangerous, creatures that like a festering wound, poison the world around them- and she cannot help but chuckle at the irony of it: smile and mind the way they appear with hoods spread and tongue flickering in the air.
She has dealt with serpents before.
To Rajanish she looks, his footsteps had given him away: and she minds the sway and posture, the way he carries himself. Earth and dark the color is something akin to the soil and stone, and she notes the condition of her form with particular interest. Grinning and maddened she can see reflection of chaos in him, and it provokes no sensation other than austere fixation. Her ears bend and Yidhra tilts her head suddenly, drawing herself up and standing at full height, those eerie teal eyes flecked with orange and the barbell shapes irises expand as she focuses on him.
Though she does not immediately respond, she considers each word: each accented lilt and purr: the slurring of consonance and all the depth of the voice itself. She does hide her shape, nor the mutable form of it: the change that has rippled so strongly it alters muscle and bone.
From her shoulders the paddle-tipped appendages stretch and reach up- the porous and fleshy skin tangled together as she presses them against her cheek and cranes her head: faking a cooing noise that whistles through the beak and mass of tentacles on her maw. “So sweet of you, pet.” she purrs, intentionally slurring the ‘s’ sounds and hissing them akin the serpent. Yet there is no disguising what she does next, and suddenly the maw splays the tentacles and exposes the blackened beak. Razor-sharp and dagger-like it chatters and clacks together in a snapping sound that mocks laughter and smiles, so exuberant in fact, that for a moment she ignored the trickling blue blood dripping along the barbed tendrils.
“To compliment after speaking so openly of business and purpose.” harsh and ancient her smoky voice is deep and laced with malice, honeyed; but in a way that sours in the end of it. Had she the ability to sneer, she might have, and instead she does something to convey that… the beak clashing and snapping: her tongue inside of it layered with abrasive radula that is exposed until the grows quiet.
“You should really see me in a crown.” she chuckles, darkly. “I look even better.”
Yet he not the the only one, there are after all… two serpents.
Earthy and rotten, blackened and mouldy she can smell the detritus and rancor- the dried blood and all the bile that clings to the oily fur and skin. Flesh clings to bone and Yidhra notes the thinness and slender shape: the ribs jaunting out and stretched beneath the skin, and for a moment she recalls her own matted hair and pressure-ridden body; but it affects her little.
Instead she mind the close of distance with a slow stare, her head tilting and noting the monolithic stones and plateau around them: the water that runs and all the shrill wind that screams through the expanse of Pangea. What provocation, however, comes next is sudden and Yidhra darkens: laughs, and clashes the beak as water-logged laughter fills the air.
It has only been a day or so, maybe less; but she still smells the soured corpses of whales and fish: the barnacles and mollusks all rotting and fetish on tree and rock. Pulled from the ocean, she smiles at whalebone and puddles topped by a sheen of blood and humours, and this is way Zain… does not scare her, because deep down she recalls the black and quiet: the pressure and claws of beasts so alien that all the world has forgotten them. This is something she considers when she answers, when she finally speaks in her awful voice.
“Because I have the strength and to challenge for it- to be challenged for it, and the wit enough to know how to make it so the entire East does not come crashing down on this place at the slightest hint of dissatisfaction.” she is simple, to the point and clear. “It is not a matter of what pathetic favor you’ve earned from before: what tasks you’ve done in the past; but rather it is the nature of the very force you recognize as a dark God. Strength and now, the present.” poignant and calm, she lifts the same appendages on her shoulders, draws them up and slides one along the edge of her beak.
Austere and severe she glances at both Rajanish and Zain. “Because I have the assured knowledge on how to make sure what purpose I serve comes to fruition: you?” she points first to Rajanish. “I invite you to challenge this.” and then she gestures to Zain with her tendril. “You as well, I’ve heard the plain have been distinctly absent blood for some time. My maker,” she pauses to study them, the Kraken’s gaze heavier and rapt upon them. “Would likely have quite a bit of fun watching: and seeing the end result.”
It lacks subtlety, and Yidhra does not disguise the malevolence nor try to sweeten it into anything more than what it is.
She has a certain... style. Not class, if anyone wanted to call it that. She has a beak through which she is hard to understand, tentacles that he honestly would want to rip off her body (only one, only one) to see how the horse-hide and hair attach to the more slimy skin, to open one up to see what's inside; boneless muscle, how does it work?
He doesn't say much, though. She says she'd look better in a crown, and he tilts his head. He has not thirst for crowns. That was, to begin with, his whole problem with her appearance. "To have need of a crown in the face of a god," he tssks, shaking his head. "You're just fine as you are, as you have been created. Should he have wanted to crown you he would have done so."
Fortunately for her, he is not interested in such a mundane thing, as long as he is left alone. "Not here to challenge you. That's his department," he nods to the draft-like horse. "As long as you don't interrupt my studies, I could care less." And his pretty little prize in the pocket (hidden cave, really); the girl with light and fire, who's fire is now broken. She might be useful. She's sick now, of course, simply from being here or because of his own little trick. He wonders about the baby who will come this spring, one that he's sired by her mother just to see if he could, honestly - one that he will surely take away once born, and put in that cave as well, see how the sickness spreads from one to another, then back again, see if this Plague can kill a horse.
Why would he care about anyone being in name, the ruler of this place, when he only listens to Carnage?
No cost too great. No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry out suffering.
@[Yidhra] Raj says 'have it, just don't cross me' haha
To rule these lands is not something he seeks. If his God wished for him to rule His dark kingdom, than Carnage himself would have placed the crown upon his head. And he is quick to make this point known, "I will only serve Carnage and those the Dark God has chosen to reign in His kingdom... Prove yourself and if the Gods place the crown atop your skull, then and only then, will I consider you worthy enough to lead the darkest of the living."
There is no debate, no wiggle room in his mind of who he would accept as ruler here. In his eyes he would only worship one God and only follow the direction of who his God should choose for them. With this, he turns to begin his wanderings again. Always seeking followers or victims that find themselves near Pangea borders.
Zain
ReBeL jUsT fOr KiCkS
@[Yidhra] @[Rajanish] Sry this is short and crap but I can't write with childrens movies blaring in the background. BUT I wanted to get something up that maybe ends this thread and timelines it moving towards your Carnage thread
*Be Warned*
Possesses health transference
and may steal your health.
Zain
