In their own ways, each of them have assented to the voice. The boy is somewhat wary of those who accept easily, passively, but he is appreciative of the warrior mare’s snarky attitude. He, too, is one of the irreverent ones, to his mother’s lasting bewilderment. He knows that she wonders if he cares about anything – but the truth is, he cares too much. They are all strangers to him (to each other?), silent strangers, though he flashes a quick smile to the other girl who offers her name (’Weaver’) before she sidles across to the horned stallion, familiarity in her movements. Rhonen is glad to note that he is not the youngest of them, though he is certainly to be included in the handful of less-than-quite-adult participants.
They are all very still, too quiet for his taste, but before he can add anything else scathing into the silence, the lamb is back, its many eyes staring (unblinking in an uncomfortable way). The boy shifts, restless, thinking that few have ever seen him as truly as this creature. Even in his short life, Rhonen is painfully aware that few ever bother to look past the outer shell. Most will always see what they want to see. He does not look away until the lamb takes a step forward, and then another, drawing their attention to the four stones with their indecipherable markings. He doesn’t waste much time trying to read the stones – he is more worried about the lamb who has seen into his soul.
Still, the explosion when the seal (he knows it is a seal, and he tenses in the moment before the touch, instinctively knowing he’d prefer the seal closed) and the lamb collide makes him flinch, closing his eyes against shards of rock and dirt that has been displaced. When he blinks them open, the creature is gone and the gathered horses are left silently shuffling again, only the navy mare’s terse question to break the stunned quiet. The laughter is a relief for Rhonen, who hates the tense silence more than anything he can remember in his short life. He laughs in response, but it isn’t a sound with any humor in it at all. More of a choking cough, really. All of their heads turn, drawn to the light and the noise, and the rotting stallion who emerges, his name whispered on the breeze, is repulsive. Two syllables, repeated until they mean everything and nothing, and the chestnut shivers with them, though he welcomes oncoming madness with the completeness of someone who truly hates silence. Conquest. Conquest. Conquest.
But despite the relief he finds in the voice on the wind, the boy is uncomfortable with what it demands. Conquest demands that he kneel, that he submit, and he will not. Perhaps it is because in a different life, he could have been royalty. He is the grandson of a Queen, the son of a one-time prince and a one-time Queen, youngest in a long line of royalty on his mother’s side. But perhaps not, because certainly he is not the only one of royal blood in this gathering. Perhaps it is because he is simply contrary, antagonistic, and something of a brat. Stubborn, at times, for the sake of being stubborn. Still, it takes everything in him to push the thoughts of submission back, to snarl out a response. “No,” he spits the word, dark eyes flashing his fury at the thought of being a slave to one such as this.
Rhonen, despite his independent streak, knows what it is to award his loyalty. But to have it forced from him violates everything he is, everything he wants to be. The force of the yellow-eyed stallion is pressing on him, despite his defiance, demanding his submission, until a furious voice interrupts the whisper of his domination in the air, a sound from the blue woman rising into the air. Once the trance is broken, his mind belonging only to him once more, the first thing he notices is that Conquest is not alone. The creatures are like nothing he has seen in the natural world – broken, mutated, huge.
The voice that summoned them all to this place comes only then, louder than the noise the rotting, repulsive stallion makes. ‘The Seal!’ it calls, insistent, and it is then that Rhonen knows that the seal is everything. It will free Conquest to do as he pleases, or it will entrap him. And the choice falls to the motley collection of mortals that the voice has dragged into this place that is not Beqanna. Conquest can end Beqanna, and they can stop him…or they can let it happen. He stands, uncharacteristically still and silent, and watches the others scatter before him. He trembles in anticipation, half fear and half excitement. The navy mare is already in the air, clearly searching for pieces of the broken seal; very well, he thinks, she has chosen to fight back. The woman with the skin like armor is the second to break from the group, darting across the open land towards the trees, and the monstrous Conquest darts after her. He does not follow Lagertha (or the others who move after her), though a part of him wonders if they should gang up on the enemy immediately. No. Better, he thinks, to look for a piece of his own while the yellow-eyed monster is distracted. It is the seal that is important.
The boy turns away from the monsters, scanning the ground for any sign of a piece large enough to claim. Slender limbs help him nimbly over unfamiliar ground, but the sound voices ahead of him makes him lift his head. Conquest must have finished with the armored mare, or else changed course, because it and the bay-and-orange girl stand in front of Rhonen now, too far to touch but close enough to hear. And it is this conversation that decides him – it was instinct, to go after a piece, but he had not decided what to do with it. Conquest speaks, though, a fragment of words reaching deep into Rhonen’s heart: ‘You’d be willing to turn your back on all these others?’ the oily voice says and the only thing in Rhonen’s head is the smiling faces of the people who wait back in the real world. His mother, perhaps she does not understand but she has always loved him. Father, perhaps not always quite with them but he had been there when it mattered. Nairne, the kind of big sister every kid always dreamed about having. Yael, half loving grandmother and half mysterious magician-queen. And Aubri –the first face that Rhonen had ever seen and the one that meant the most to him.
Appeasing Conquest meant losing them. This girl’s easy acceptance put all of them one step closer to losing the ones they’d left behind. The copper-bright boy can’t swallow his snarl of fury and he launches himself at them, thinking to strike directly at the creature, and his shoulder has just grazed the hind end of the rotting, peeling stallion when he is bowled over by one of the minions. The force of impact knocks him to the ground, rolling and skidding across the dirt, and he gets the impression of huge paws, and short dense fur. For a moment he struggles to breath, to catch his wind, but as soon as his vision clears and his ears stop ringing he scrambles to his feet, locking eyes with the big cat steadily stalking his way. Or at least he thinks it’s still a feline – it’s hard to tell, with the spines protruding at weird angles and the fact that it’s got at least three too many eyes, (probably because it has two heads).
Rhonen doesn’t wait around to count the eyes – he runs, sick to his stomach at the thought of what Esileif and Conquest are doing behind him. It’s only then that he notices the stinging, burning itch in his shoulder where he brushed against Conquest. It’s bearable (barely) and so he winces but carries on, desperate to get some space between himself and the two-headed giant cat. And between himself and Conquest – if a brush can bring this result, he doesn’t want to know what might be caused by full contact. Ahead of him, the armored mare lunges at another, and his stomach twists again in disgust, but Hickory has broken away from the armored mare herself. He brushes past the bay mare, vaguely aware that her bright blood now stains his coat, red on orange, and not caring. Blood seems to be the least of their worries. And he and Hickory are like ships passing in the night, both too busy looking for a piece of the shard to care much about each other.
Conquest has not pursued Rhonen, though he approaches others. Perhaps, the young stallion thinks, he has just not gotten around to conquering the youngest adventurers yet. Or perhaps Rhonen’s suicidal lunge made it clear that he was not on the side of impending apocalyptic disaster. Whatever the reason, the boy is glad. Dodging the lumbering, gruesome minions is hard enough, and every step is agony between his bruised and battered self (the equine form wasn’t meant to roll like he had) and the increasing itchy pain in his shoulder. His nose isn’t pressed, seeking, to the ground – it’s too hard to see the minions that way – and so he almost misses the large piece of the seal. He would have missed it, except he trips over it and falls to his knees with an undignified yelp, his nose pressed against the cool surface, smooth except where it is marred by part of a symbol he still can’t fathom.
For just a moment in the pure pleasure of relief, a memory flashes behind his closed eyes. The green meadow of the Falls, grass cool and green around him, sun shining brightly overhead. Nairne is ahead of him, gold framed in black, looking back at them with a patient smile. Aubri is beside him, two spots of bright chestnut in the field, and they are tumbling after her, laughing, the waterfall a pleasant humming backdrop to their adventure. Somewhere not so far away, he knows, their parents are together, taking a break from the twins because they are safe with Nairne. It is before Rhonen realizes that they will not always be together, the five of them, before he realizes that his dreams are sometimes hard to distinguish from what really is: it is a moment that even now he isn’t sure ever happened.
And it’s not real. The memory breaks apart when he opens his eyes, blink over, and the world is still falling apart around him. And they are not 13 that stand together, but 13 who are broken. Too many pieces, Rhonen thinks, too many groups and no one will prevail. They must join together. So much is uncertain, but he knows that he does not trust the armored mare who was first to leave the group, and who drew the blood that now stains his own coat. He knows that he can’t trust Esileif, who accepted the touch of Conquest so intimately. But the navy mare and Weaver (she had acknowledged him in the beginning, offered a name before this ordeal started, she had tied herself to the sarcastic chestnut boy, however reluctantly) are standing together within his line of sight when he lifts his head, and they are calling another name, their voices carrying.
It is not a big group, but it is a start. A chance.
Yanking his shard from the dirt, the boy kicks out at a scaled thing creeping up behind him that has an unfortunate slimy sheen to it, (and the vague look of a lizard). He can feel the satisfying crunch of a blow well connected, and then he forces himself to cross the distance, to join them, to drop his piece of the seal onto the ground before them and then place a hoof on it, mimicking the blue woman, before turning his dark gaze back to the tumult behind them. "We're screwed." he says bluntly to the mares, because he can't think of a single positive thing to describe this disaster.
cliffnotes:
Rhonen starts to look for a shard, runs into Esileif and Conquest. Decides to oppose Conquest. Tries to attack Conquest but after briefly brushing up against him and getting some sort of skin illness is knocked away by a creepy big cat mutant. So then he runs the other way, witnesses Lagertha attack Hickory, bumps into Hickory, and literally trips over a piece of seal. Takes his piece of seal to join Cinzia and Weaver.
![[Image: U5duKtst_o.gif]](https://images.imgbox.com/2f/f9/U5duKtst_o.gif)
Aubri & Rhonen [twins]