"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
07-06-2016, 08:48 PM (This post was last modified: 07-07-2016, 09:29 AM by Grumblesnakes.)
Slaybell, Helleborn, thank you so much for participating, but Grumblesnakes is sending you home after the torture is done and you're good and broken. Feel free to keep any scars you want, otherwise he'll patch you up as a courtesy for putting you through so much pain. Physically, anyhow. Mental and emotional scars, those are all yours.
Everyone else? In torturing you, Grumblesnakes has unlocked your full potential and until you're told otherwise, you now have battle magic. NOBODY GET EXCITED OKAY because this lasts only for the duration of the quest. Not even the winners get to keep it, because Grumblesnakes is kind of a bitch like that and has no problem giving you a taste of almost unlimited power and then taking it away. Anyhow. Battle magic! Here's how this shit works: you have access to basically any offensive ability you can think of. However, you can't sneak a peek at your loved ones back home, and you can't trump Grumbly's magic. So, you know, no getting yourself out of that halter or overriding its power and finding a way to attack our dear Grumblesnakes. Oh, speaking of the halter, by the way? You might notice it's making you feel...just a little bit affectionate toward your captor. Just a little bit loyal to him. Not like you'd die for him or anything crazy, but you sure wouldn't hurt him, and you'd defend him against anyone who tried.
The sneaky bastard.
It's also got you a little bit revved up to fight, and isn't that interesting? Now that you have all this power to beat the hell out of things, Grumbly's quite generously giving you a target to practice on. Welcome to the Grumbledome. It's basically a Colosseum surrounded by a magical barrier you can't break through, and complete with all kinds of crazy stuff for you to fight. Dragons, monsters, all manner of beasts both magical and otherwise, take your pick. And oh look, even some captive fairies for you to play with if you'd like. Go wild, and get to know your exciting new abilities. Everything you face has a collar or a halter on, and will not stop trying to kill you 'til it's good and dead. So. Kill some shit and don't die. Keep in mind, Grumbles is sitting back and watching the bloodshed in true emperor fashion.
You have 2 days. Well, until 10 PM CST on Friday. So like 49 hours, whatever. Ask questions, I'll answer them here. Or in cbox or PM, the usual. If you PM me, say something in cbox in case I'm lurking, so I know to check. Have fun. (:< I know I will.
Note: Right. Feel free to play fast and loose with appearance. Battle magic extends to defensive stuff, which also covers "holy shit I look like a badass." I'm just saying.
Q&A
Soooo what kind of condition should my character be in at the end of this post? If he takes damage is that going to set him up for failure next round, or...?
Oh, good question! Yeah, anyone who needs healing between this round and the next will get it. This is play time. Practice. Getting to know your fancy new ability. Grumbles will patch you up after if need be.
That final scream released for what felt like the space of an eternity. At least, Fart would remember it that way. The oxygen from his lungs absolved in that shrill cry and after he took in air via deep gasping breaths- Fart could take no more. And when it was done, as it was now and finally, he was led back to his stall. A weak and dwindling thing, looking far thinner and broken than ever. The dark corridor was quieter this time, the hushed silence from those that had previously been led back overtaking the desperate calls for release from those who still cried. It was stagnant that quiet, thick and consuming and Fart fell in line with the rest of the rest- taking on a vow of silence.
For now he had no fight in him, his body exhausted beyond measure and failing him even as he walked at Grumbles side. Grumble, he thought but this time with an air of pleasant regard. The squat man was leading him back to his room, he was tucking him in- how nice. Or, that’s how it played out in Fart’s mind, too spent to fathom the reality of the matter any longer than it had to. His legs shook, trembled, as he was led in then locked within that cell, but Fart could not be more content for it. He slept, deep and long and his mind was free from dreams- it was even free from nightmares.
When he woke, and he did wake, his eyes blurred against the dim light of the dungeon, making lines and objects fuzzy, undefined. He could feel the halter, the thick straps heavy against his limey nose but he welcomed the weight this time. It was a gift, Grumble had given it to him. He did note with his muddied brown orbs, that the darkness of the world remained and with this realization he sighed, heaving a thick cloud of green gas into the air. Gas. He wheeled away from the noxious fumes, backpedaling as quickly and as far against the walls of his cell as he could. What was that, where did it come from, who sent it?
His rump smacked against the walls with a thunk and he desperately wondered where Grumble was. Grumble was his friend after all, he could fix this. It’s then, as he presses himself against the solid surface, that he notices the wings, the clank of metal against a hard surface. This solicits a similar response, well, it would have but he seemed quite stuck now. Yes, almost glued to the stall siding and he yanked desperately forward in an attempt to break free of yet another trap. Someone was out to get him. Someone wanted him dead, and it wasn’t Grumble. At this he panicked even further, grabbing at the air around him until he was panting furiously and gagging in his fright.
What’s that? Who’s making all that noise? Some of us are trying to sleep you know? The voices came, quick and ill-paced, some overlapping others until he had no means to make sense of them. Brown eyes snapped shut, fierce enough for them to hurt but it felt better than the ache of the words in his head. He wanted it to stop, and by reflex perhaps, he shoved his wings against his ears, their sharp edges catching his cheek. Wings. That’s it, he had gone completely and utterly mad, bonkers. Fart didn’t have wings you see, never did. Yet when the roan opened his eyes once more he could see the silver glint of a sharp feather much too close to his eye.
“What’s happening?!” he cried with fervor, his words etched with fear.
That’s when the familiar sound of boots came, the steps of a man stalking down the dark path and Fart could only hope it was Grumble. “Grumble? Grumble is that you?” In response the latch clicked and the stall door opened, knocking against the wall behind it at the end of it’s swing. “Fart,” the tiny man called, drawing out the name as though he was fond of saying it. “Found my little surprises then? Oh, I myself enjoyed finding them too. You were full of little treasures I must say..” His sneaky voice drawled and then he smiled his crooked, yellowed smile. For some reason that caused a new wave of content to wash over the green stallion, for some reason that smile was kind in his eyes.
“Have you found them all then Fart?” Grumble wondered but he frowned as he realized the answers was no. “That’s okay I’ll tell you about them and then you can thank me properly,” the spite in his voice was lost on the horse’s ears and he seemed to take great pride in the telling of Fart’s new powers. “Your ancestry was useful, as you will soon enough know. Wings first of course, do you like them? Wicked sharp at the ends though, don’t be an idiot and cut yourself up like that Edward guy, you seen that movie? Eh- no, right.” The creature was so giddy now, pacing the floor in front of Fart as he ticked off the list.
“Your eyes, well blindness doesn’t profit me so you’ll find they are quite red hot, hee hee,” he giggled once more and with a snap of his fingers beams of red streamed from Fart’s eyes, blasting small holes in the adjacent wall. “And that smell my boy, couldn’t let that go to waste. Don’t worry about that poison gas though, that’s been hidden in there for some time, won’t harm you.” Course it wouldn’t, Grumble wouldn’t have much to gain on a horse that knocked itself out now would he? “Color changing grandpa, camouflage it was. Oh and the flypaper trap on your skin, thank goodness for Grandma’s. Immortality too, I’m much too pleased with my handy work to let you be killed too easily.” He stretched his arms then, lacing his crooked little fingers together and pulling them forward to crack.
pop, pop, pop
“There’s another little treat in your brain Fart, but don’t think you can use it on me,” the wretched little man began. Use it on you? Fart thought, well, why would he want to do that? Grumble was his friend, he would never hurt him. “Pathokinesis, great little doo-dad, all your enemies emotions will be at your fingertips. Well, course you don’t have any fingers, or hands for that matter.” Grumble related this knowledge with the utmost glee, hooking the lead line to Fart’s halter once more and the stallion willingly followed him back down the hall.
“Not done?” Fart asked Grumble, his hooves clacking against the surface of the floor as he was paraded down the path, even passed the chamber door. “Oh, we’re done with that part but I’ve something new, gotta see those gifts of mine in action.” His voice was nonchalant in the telling as they began through a curved arch hall and down, down, down that path they went.
When it opened it was the grandest piece of construction Fart could ever hope to see, and Grumble would later tell him ‘Coliseum’. Fart was left there in the middle of it, stone walls of seating rising up forever but the places were all empty. Save for one. A lavishly draped balcony box where Grumble sat on high, cruel eyes twinkling. The little man waved his hands, then snapped his fingers, one, two, three and Fart wasn’t alone anymore. Instead, he was surrounded. “Show me what you got,” a call and a dismissive wave and Fart gulped loudly in return.
The first animal he knew as ‘Gator’, the creatures face lined with the same thick ropes as his own, a halter- and who knows how it was kept on. The thing was massive, 15 feet of thick, green, leathery skin and a mouth with rows of sharp teeth. Fart wasn’t sure about all this, not even a little bit, but he remembered Grumble need him. He remembered he wanted to help. It was swift for a creature so near to the ground, charging Fart without a moment’s consideration and snapping wide at his legs. He only just missed it, that amputation, flirting into the sky- albeit messily. He wobbled in the air, unused to flying and lacking practice but he made it up, if only long enough to bob away from his opponent.
As soon as he touched the ground though his attacker was on him, racing in a sidewinding pattern to reach him and kicking up dust in his wake. Fart reeled, whirling about and flapping his wings in a nonsense sort of way, trying to take to the sky once again. It was too late to climb skyward though and as a result he yelled in panic, green fumes rolling from his lips and smoke-screening the gator. The beast had been inches away, snapping its mighty jaws and was dead set on horse for dinner. Now he was wobbling, as much as a short reptile can, thrashing his head about in an attempt to rid himself of the gas. Fart thought he could finally have a chance to lay the killing blow when something unexpected happened.
The gator writhed, bubbled even, and it looked like something was trying to climb out of it that was much too big. What really happened though, was the creature changed, morphed into something else and Fart raced away, giving it plenty of room to do so. He didn’t know what might be on the other end of this magic, didn’t know what to expect, so with wide eyes he watched- he waited.
Now he had something new to fight, something bigger and fiercer and this cooled his blood. It would only get worse he was sure.
In place of the gator was a great shaggy dog, it’s head wide and broad. The wolf was taller than any Fart had seen in real life and to be honest he usually only saw them as he fled their presence, arching his head over his back to make sure he put plenty of distance between them. This one had to be part bear, part bull, something that would make it amass to such a size but the mammal before him was distinctly dog. It had long, coarse grey fur and shining yellow eyes, it’s teeth were like sharp long swords and suddenly Fart knew he didn’t like swords at all. This creature charged him too, raking the loose sand with its great paws and kicking grains of earth everywhere. Fart waited entirely still this time, partially because he was frozen stiff with fear, then an idea caught him.
When the dog was close, close enough to smell its stinking skin, he lifting a wing, twirling away and crossing the sharp ends of his feathers across the brute’s snout. It wailed, arrr, arr, arrrr as dogs sometimes do in pain, and for once Fart felt proud of himself. When the growl came after and the dog lunged forward and caught Fart’s leg, he too cried into the dome, wailing his lament without cause to subdue his outburst. This made him angry though, that beast of a hound, and it returned its feverish attack on poor Fart with renewed vigor.
Fart dodged what he could, the pain in his leg taking focus from his fight and let’s be real, he wasn’t very practiced in battle to begin with. He was likely looking like a weaving, bobbing, mess but he was still standing and for that we should congratulate him. He’d forgotten he had powers there for a moment, tiring himself as he ducked and dodged. Then he remembered, or his eyes remembered for him, boring a hole through the wolf’s ear and sending the animal rolling from the pain and surprise.
In response to the wolf’s wails Fart’s skin changed, blended into his surroundings of pale, blood stained sand and looming walls of grey mortar. He used this to his advantage, zapping at his attacker with burst of red beams from his muddy brown eyes. Weave, zap, weave, until he formed a pattern and the beast struck. A great claw slashed at him as he circled once more to strike the shaggy, grey dog with his lasers, the beast caught his eye, sending him tumbling forward.
Apparently that shape had had enough though, shimmering and engorging once again. Fart struggled to stand, pain searing through his head as fresh blood made rivers down his cheek. He stumbled away as best he could, one eyed and maimed for all to see. That only made it more personal, the blinding of his eye, and though he was quite hurt he was feeling rather riled for himself. It was a strange feeling, adrenaline, new found confidence from achieving so much but in the face of his new pairing he’s not sure it was enough.
The once shaggy direwolf had melded into something even more sinister, something greater and more powerful and Fart gasped. “Manticore,” he choked out as his one good eye found the creature looming before him. Grumble had toyed with him before this, merely seeing what sort of mettle he was made of.
A large lion with piercing green eyes stared at him and growled, baring it’s shining canines. Where there would normally be a fuzzy tail there was a long, curved appendage, one tipped with a hooked stinger. The tail of a scorpion, dark as was the pelt of the hybrid beast, and even now poison gathered to hang precariously on its tip. Fart turned, bolting for distance between himself and the ominous cat, gathering speed before lurching into the air. He wobbled, course he did, blinded in one eye and lacking flight skills but he took to the air nonetheless. Below the lion snarled, thrashed its long crooked tail about and then it leapt upward towards the flying pony. Fart cried in surprise twisting away and narrowly missing the swipe of one large paw. It was so close he could feel the air as it passed, he could hear a whizz sound as it made contact with naught but empty space.
“You can’t avoid me for long,” a voice cooed, curled about his mind like a wisp of smoke. The roan shook his head, bidding himself to be rid of the devilish tones but no matter what he heard the cat’s thoughts anyhow. “I can try, I can very well try,” Fart returned only to solicit a snarl from the tooth-filled, jagged maw of the manticore.
Something came over him then, a want to prove himself, a need to protect Grumble though he wasn’t sure why the little man was even in danger. Something just told him that he was, something told him to act. A twist of his limey body turned him about, facing the large cat and he aimed towards the creature, flapping his sharp wings wildly. With one beady, brown eye locked he charged the animal, gaining speed even as he struggled to keep even.
He grabbed him then, by force of mind, feeling over the cat’s thoughts and coiling them together to muddle his intentions. While he did this he prepared to crash, to strike true the opponent before him and when he barreled into the manticore he clung for dear life. With his wings he flailed, the flypaper trap of his skin like a cement adhesive, where the silvery tips touched skin it split, sending the lion snarling and twisting side to side. The stinging tail above them both jabbed wildly forward, intent on penetrating a particular green pony. But before he could smash him with his sheer size, before his curved stinger could find hold in his tender flesh, Fart did what he could only try to do. He fixed that one eye in front, straight forward into the chest flesh of the beast he desperately held, With that one eye he blazed a crimson line straight through it’s heart, squealing as the hefty beast collapsed upon him...
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
The master laughs when Sleaze nods, there on his knees.
“That’s a good boy,” he says, and a brief flare of pleasure shoots through him, the feeling he had done something right.
“Now,” the master says, “let’s see what you can do.”
Sleaze’s body thrums and for a moment the purple of him glows bright, almost neon. He feels something coursing through his body, an electricity so powerful he cannot discern if it’s pain he feels, or pleasure. The glow subsides, somewhat, though he is still softly alit, a signal to all of them of his power. This power is not like the possession, which lives in his mind like a wild, raging beast – no, this magic is tamed, patient, his to wield.
With the magic comes another feeling – a growing dedication to the master.
A desire to protect.
(Not that Sleaze has ever protected anyone. Not even himself.)
The master lays a hand on him. Sleaze does not cringe away – in fact, he leans into the pressure. It’s comforting.
“Now’s your chance, Sleaze,” purrs the master, “remake yourself. And fight these demons. Some of them are even yours!”
He laughs, again, that same dark spoiled laughter, and for a moment the feeling of loyalty is gone and Sleaze feels terror, horror, fury at the master the monster, but then the hand is once more on his neck and the fury is gone.
The master brings him peace, and this is why he’ll fight.
The world around them once again changes, now a domed building. Beneath him in sand, stained rust-red in places, almost brown. The master is gone, safely out of range. Sleaze looks at him, confused, as the master brings two fingers to his lips and whistles, a high, shrieking noise.
The doors slide open.
The darkness is the corridor behind the opening doors seems alive. And perhaps it is, for the darkness leaks out like a noxious gas, coils of shadow spilling over the sand. It moves faster as more of it spills forth from the corridor, until the colosseum is awash in blackness. It thickens, then, seems to congeal on the earth.
Has the colosseum gone darker, or has he just imagined it?
Another horse appears, seemingly from nowhere. He recognizes her – the woman who had quieted him, who had listened to his wild memories spilling out. She is still in the light, and beautiful.
He may have loved her then, and he certainly loves her now, if only because she is something familiar, a touchstone in this unfamiliar battleground.
He forgets about his magic, forgets about the leaking darkness (a mistake he will come to regret). Instead he moves toward her, first at a walk and then, a run, eager - desperate - to see her, touch her, find a way away from this. Maybe there’s a life for them. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t seen her in years.
She is turning, ready to look at him, to embrace him. She calls his name: Sleaze. His heart soars.
Hope is a pathetic and determined thing.
He opens his mouth to cry her name, to weep, when he sees it: in what is left of this light, she casts two shadows.
As she is turning, the flesh begins to disappear from her as if being erased. The bones still turn though.
She is chanting his name now, a record set on repeat.
Her flesh continues to disappear until there is only a skeleton left, the remains of a girl he thinks he loved. She is still saying his name. Or, something is.
The arena goes black, a switch thrown. On instinct, calls light unto himself – it feels natural, he thinks light and then he is ensconced in it, in a brilliant wrap of light beams.
He hears a clatter, like jaws, and thinks the dark has teeth.
“Vashta Nerada,” says a voice that comes from everywhere and nowhere, “the shadows that melt the flesh.”
The master laughs. Sleaze feels a sick desire to protect him, but he doesn’t know where he is – doesn’t know where anything is, the blackness is all-consuming
(the dark has teeth)
there is only the light – his light.
“I don’t think it hurts, much,” says the master, “if you want to end it here. Or will you be a good little solider?”
Sleaze is a stupid boy, and a frightened one. But he doesn’t want to die.
(“You don’t make it out of this alive anyway.”)
“Show me.”
He can hear the clack of bones – her bones – and hear the dull, robotic repetition of his name. Sleaze. Sleaze. Sleaze.
She says it so often it no longer sounds like his name, just sounds like gibberish. Light, he thinks, let there be light.
He is his own sun, now, and he thinks of the light pouring off him in waves, the same way the shadows had first crept in. It’s slow, at first, and Sleaze thinks I’m not strong enough, even with magic I’m not strong enough, I’m weak, I’m so fucking weak.
But the light increases – almost imperceptibly, at first, then stronger.
He radiates light, beats the shadows back into the corner. He is no longer purple, he is gold, he is the sun.
There is a clutter as bones tumble to the earth. He doesn’t turn to look. He is the sun. He is the sun. Let there be light.
As the last shadow rescinds he thinks he hears a faint mewling sound, something wretched and miserable, but it’s so faint he will never know for sure if it was real or a figment of his imagination.
“Good,” says the master, who had sat untouched in the darkness, too despicable powerful for even the most wretched of shadows to touch.
“Let’s see how you do when it’s a little closer to home, shall we? This should be familiar.”
He whistles, again. The doors roll open.
He would have much preferred the darkness to what came out instead.
Pennywise walks out again, but this time he’s flesh, and tall - at least six feet, taller than Sleaze. He has to look at him, at that glistening mouth, the dead and laughing eyes.
“We must stop running into each other like this,” says Pennywise, “otherwise a fella’s gonna think he’s being stalked.”
The clown winks, and on his pallid face the gesture is somehow grotesque. You are magic, Sleaze tries to tell himself, even though the clown makes him feel small, you are the sun.
“Wouldja like a balloon Sleaze? Or Velvet? Or Cloud? That’s what you used last time, remember? You set those fucking animals on me and stole my balloons. Woulda just given em to ya if you asked! We all float here, remember?”
It waves its fistful of balloons, which bob madly at the motion. They’re hypnotizing, in a way. Swirls of color. He can’t take his eyes off of them.
The clown steps closer and he almost doesn’t notice. There’s so many colors. Had there been this many before? He can’t remember. Reds and blues and yellows and greens and colors he doesn’t know the name for, colors that don’t exist in this universe. We all float here.
The clown is closer and Sleaze can actually smell him now, a scent of clotted blood and rancid meat, and something else, too, a sewer stench.
It smiles. Its teeth bare. Grandmother, what big teeth you have! Sleaze thinks, absurdly.
(The better to eat you up with, my dear.)
It pounces.
The teeth sink into him, sink down, down, further than they had any right to go. It takes a moment before the pain hits, crashes on him in one tremendous wave, and he screams, helpless and hurt and frustrated.
The clown rips his face back and Sleaze sees a piece of gold and red hanging from its jaws – a piece of him and it makes him dizzy, makes him faint, his legs are trembling, and oh--
He catches himself, and the jerking motion startles him out of his reverie. He is magic.
So he shifts. He shifts into what once hurt the clown. A tiger, a sleek and sinuous thing, all ropy muscle, built by nature to hunt and destroy. The tiger’s form feels comfortable, feels more adapted to this battleground than Sleaze will ever be. He lets the tiger-mind take over, hones it only on the clown, and thinks go.
He thinks, more.
And they come. They are the creations of his own mind – real, and not-real – but they are here.
A wolf, a hawk, more tigers. Mimics of the fight in the toybox all those years ago.
The air is suddenly full of shrieks, feline and canine and human (or something like human). There is the sound of collision, flesh on flesh. A balloon pops.
He lunges at the clown, tears at it, comes away with only mouthful of its colorful clothing. He tries again. And again. His neck is bleeding, and soon there is more blood mixed in – that of the clown, but also of the friends he summed. The stench of it intoxicates the tiger even as it repulses Sleaze.
But, he keeps fighting.
Keeps fighting until suddenly the clown is simply gone - not slain, but gone, dissipated like mist. The animals are gone, too, and he is no longer a tiger, he is Sleaze again – not gold, not the sun. Just Sleaze.
“Not bad,” says the master, “room for improvement, of course. But not bad.”
Sleaze stands, sides heaving. Blood still runs hot down his neck. His vision has started to blur.
“One more, I think? Rule of threes, and all that.”
The master chuckles to himself.
“So what’s the biggest monster of all, Sleaze? Or should I say – who?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know.
Such a stupid boy.
The doors roll open.
Through them walks a boy, a purple so dark it looks black unless it hits the right light. A normal boy, who isn’t particularly bright.
Sometimes we look in a mirror and we barely recognize ourselves. This is not such a case.
Know thyself, after all.
It’s the same death-Sleaze, the one who walked beside him in that terrible valley that did not exist, the one who said you don’t make it out of this alive.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” says the death-Sleaze, and he says it quietly but Sleaze can hear every word. The world has taken on an awful clarity.
“You took on a classic monster. Your took on your – our – iconic monster. And of all the monsters in the world -- why am I am the worst one, Sleaze? Why do you fear me the most?”
He looks at himself. He doesn’t know.
“You should have let one of them kill you,” the death-Sleaze sighs, “killing yourself is a mortal sin, after all. Though this…I wonder?”
Its head cocks, ponderous.
“You’re already weak,” it continues, “I’m sure Pennywise’s bite was just rife with infection and lord-knows-what. So why not let me finish the job, hm?”
It regards him. He hates himself under his own gaze.
“Such a stupid boy.”
They clash.
He tears his own flesh, tastes his own blood on his tongue. They fight in teeth and hooves and colliding bodies for what seems like an eternity before Sleaze remembers his gifts, that he is powerful, this thing he incubates inside him.
He sets fire to himself, adds the stench of burning flesh to the wretched miasma in the air. His own mane catches alight as the death-Sleaze comes at him again, not caring about the pain, comes at him again and again.
He closes his eyes as the death-Sleaze’s teeth sink into his crest, and imagines a heart, beating. The death-sleaze’s heart.
(His heart.)
He imagines it stopping. Imagines hands wrapped around it, squeezing.
He feels the death-Sleaze inhale, sharp, feels the stutter.
He thinks of the heart twisting in his hands, wrung out like a washcloth.
The death-Sleaze falls, the heavy body crashing into his, and Sleaze goes down with him. There is a crack like a gunshot as his front right leg breaks. Before him is his own body, burnt and dead. Beside him kneels Sleaze, mane still burning, broken leg beneath him.
There is the distant sound of clapping as the master rises from his throne.
Sleaze begins to scream. He doesn’t stop.
His body is, surely. All of the broken pieces are mended. All of the flayed, accordion-strips of his skin are sewn back together with care. Even the earthquake-like tremors have stopped shaking his limbs. But he is not healed. His mind reels and whirls and cries out its pain, still. It yearns for the balm of unconsciousness, is desperate to escape the absolute certainty of its own death. Because the memories are so fresh of the water creeping above his neck, filling in the final pocket of air and his lungs in one fell swoop. Because he remembers the grey mist of mercury replacing the water in his lungs just after, how he’d come apart in the flesh as well as in the head. Because Grumbles had done all of these things to him without care or remorse. Because now, he reaches for the halter in his crooked yet firm grasp, keeping Vidar for his own despite all he’s suffered. There will be more, the unhealed-healed stallion thinks, though he doesn’t know what more entails. He only knows that it is an endless circle between them (between a predator and its prey). I should strike him dead now, before more does me in.
But the little man’s commanding grasp on his halter changes his opinion. Changes him, even, at the molecular level. At the same time that his freedom and desire to smash Grumbles into a thick pulp dissipates, something else unfurls within him like a lotus. Power floods his systems, pulsing and violent and real. He knows, instinctually, that he could rain hell fire down on the twisted man in the blink of an eye. He could make him scream like Vidar had, could pull his intestines through his mouth with the flick of his muzzle, could pin each of his crooked fingers to the starry ceiling and watch him squirm for an eternity.
He also knows that he doesn’t want to.
He doesn’t want to hurt the man who had no problem doing so when the tables were turned. Grumblesnakes seems to realize the struggle playing out and grins at the horse. In one storm-silver eye, he watches the man’s face, recognizing the glee as a warning. But still, he won’t hurt him. “Now,” Grumbles says, reaching up to smooth Vidar’s forelock with surprising gentleness. “For something entirely new!” He pulls at the halter and the stallion obliges easily, readily. He walks beside the two-legger. (I am the prey, he thinks, but the voice is growing dimmer every second within him, drowned out by the need to please and protect). The little man leads him through a doorway at the end of the torture chamber. He catches the twinkle of Ursa minor before he is ushered away. Good luck, it seems to wink at him, you’ll need it you stupid, naïve animal.
The next room is tenfold more expansive than the last. Walls of pewter stone rise high above them, encapsulating and encircling the arena of sand the pair walks onto. Staggered amongst the walls are hundreds of seats currently occupied by ghosts. There is one seat that seems fit for a king. An empty chalice fills itself before his eyes, brimming with a nameless, blood-red liquid. Grumbles catches his gaze before gesturing at the coliseum around them with a flourish. “Isn’t it something?” His captor-savior says, not actually looking for a response. His eyes shine with pride at his creation. Vidar thinks it is a justified arrogance. There is undeniable majesty to this place of stone and sand; he only wonders if his death will please Grumbles more for all its finery.
“My style is endless. Immortal, some would say, or they used to.” For the first time, the stallion can sense a hint of sadness in the man. He frowns, too, until Grumbles straightens and looks back at him. “But no matter. The place is yours, have at it!” The crooked man begins to walk away and he wants to follow him, tries to but the halter securely strapped to his face keeps him rooted to sand. Grumbles stops one time on his ascent to his chosen seat (and how the hope rises within Vidar then – he is coming back for me, he hasn’t forsaken me) long enough to call out. “Try not to bleed on the walls, eh? You wouldn’t believe the amount of power-washing someone else would have to do for me…”
The anxiety of being left behind builds within Vidar, but so too, does the feeling of power. It thrums in his veins, in his heart and limbs until even the walls around him seem to shake with it. As he watches Grumbles, even the floors begin to vibrate with the intensity of his newfound life-force. But no, it really is the floor shaking. A huge oaken door at the opposite end of the arena shudders on its hinges. Something is on the other side, something equally massive and eager to fight. The blue roan stallion turns to face it, suddenly charged with the electricity of battle. It is what he was born for, bred for. Whatever giant beast waits on the other side of the door would be his pleasure to dispatch. The rope halter rubs at his face. All for Grumbles.
Finally, the door bursts in shower of splinters. One narrowly avoids impaling the stallion as it flies by him and ricochets off the stone wall. The ground shakes as the creature takes a step, the dust concealing its form for a minute. When it clears, Vidar is too shocked to make a move at first. What he thought would be an impossibly large animal is nothing more than a woman the same size as his savior. It is only when a pair of overlarge, gossamer wings shoot out from behind her and propel her in the air that he realizes she is also a fairy. And also intent on killing him.
A strange contraption covers her face, disappearing underneath a mop of fiery red curls. He doesn’t have long to wonder at its purpose before she is flying at him too fast. Much too fast, he decides, just before she crashes in to him. In the split second before she reaches him, her fingernails more like daggers and sharpened to a point, he inundates the sand underneath of him with water. It is something he learned long ago as a boy in the jungle – the power of water, how it changes things passively over time. Time is what he doesn’t have, though, so he speeds up its effect and produces quicksand. He isn’t quite quick enough, however. As the jungle’s son sinks into the ground, pulling the rest of the grains over his body in a thick shield, the fairy manages to gouge open his face from poll to muzzle.
He cries out in pain and anger as blood fills his eyes. But once his shield is complete, he rises and walks on firmer sand once more. Through the red curtain, he sees the fairy readying herself for another attack. This time, he doesn’t wait for her to reach him. He pressurizes and heats the air around him to levels that would kill him if he weren’t magically protected in battle. The sand on his skin begins to vibrate (or, more specifically, the graphite in the sand) until, with a pop, large diamonds float all around him. He sharpens them to match the fairy’s nails as she flies at him. With a grunt of effort, he sends them arcing in the air to meet her. To pierce her. Her eyes widen as she is struck mid-air, mid-arena. She falls to the ground like a missile, her red curls the afterburn. The sand swallows her up.
From the stands, Grumbles hollers his maniacal happiness at her demise. Vidar wonders if it is from that same source of sorrow for the man. He pities him, in that moment, pities the gluttonous need for vengeance that fuels him. Vidar takes no pride in his kills, only in himself. In his need to do what it takes to survive. Grumbles asks, “why the name? There’s no Norse in you.” He pauses, takes a gulp from his chalice. “You’ll like this next bit, even so. Poetic, I’d say.”
The now broken, open doorway is quickly filled with an inky shadow that leeches onto the floor beyond. The uneven sand makes the shadow amorphous as it draws nearer, less defined and all the more threatening in its uncertainty. But he thinks he recognizes it, anyway. A slender muzzle followed by a pair of twin triangular ears poke through the doorway. The rest of the animal slinks through shortly after, all black shadow to match the ground it walks over. Its eyes are green and glowing and turn on its prey immediately.
“Fenrir!” Grumbles claps his hands together once in obvious joy before falling silent once more. A hush descends over the entire coliseum, in fact. It is nothing like the dazzling flight of the fairy or the barely contained chaos of the swirling sand. Vidar understands why. The predator does not pity the prey, he muses, The predator needs no sound to hunt by, either, to strike fear into those it would take down. He regards the massive beast of baleful eyes and snarling, shining teeth. It begins to stalk him slowly, crossing the central spot where the fairy had fallen. Vidar turns tail and retreats, biding his time and circling the far walls. He knows the beast will follow – Fenrir will follow - for more than the halter on his face. The hunt begins.
Circle. Think. Circle. Think. Circle. Think.
He repeats his mantra as the wolf trails him. If he can think, he can win. But how? The sand under his feet reminds him of the Deserts, of the people that thrive in a land with little to give. They pull strength from deep reserves and he knows he must do the same. He knows that brute strength will not fell a beast so large, so unrelenting in its quiet pursuit. He will have to be clever (though he’s rather not). Make my weakness my strength. Fenrir pants. Vidar pants; the game is growing long. Then it comes to him.
He falls in the sand.
Think, he commands himself, because it is so hard to lie down and know that he will die in a second. Think, he tells himself as Fenrir pounces, grabbing one of Vidar’s ankles in his fearsome jaws. But as his bones are crunching, they are also changing. He elongates, his body thinning and his limbs disappearing into his torso. The horse stretches and presses and grows longer until he is more anaconda than horse. He feels his lower mid-section still held firmly in the wolf’s jaws, but he uses it to his own advantage. Flexing his absurdly muscular body, he pulls himself off the ground and wraps himself around the giant wolf. He tightens his lower half around Fenrir’s jaw and his upper half around his head. He nearly tangles himself in the other’s halter. So close, he can feel the green eyes boring into him. They seem confused, almost frightened. It takes all his strength to fight against the wolf’s resistance, but Vidar almost feels sorry when he yanks the beasts face in two.
And just like the fairy, the wolf disappears into the sand once he’s dead. Vidar slides to the ground, resuming his normal form but wearing the snake’s patterning across his body. He notices a deep laceration in his left rear ankle, tests it and finds it sound but painful. He thinks he is lucky.
The lights dim and a grey smoke begins to wash across the sea of sand. The stallion flinches, remembering the mercury gas, but he finds no ill effects of breathing it in (meant for fear, he thinks, or drama. Style, as Grumbles seems fond of saying). He decides he will not be so ill-prepared for whatever lurks in the darkness this time. Using the power swelling in his breast like barely-contained lightning, Vidar grows a pair of ox horns on his head. He can feel the strange weight of them fusing with his skull. He borrows Fenrir’s fangs, too, jolts as they slice into his closed lips. Blood drips down his chin, but he feels better, anyway. It doesn’t last long.
His parents step out of the growing gloom.
They stagger towards him, slowly, their hind limbs dragging. He sees immediately that they are dead - draugar - come back to half-life to haunt him. Crito is missing half his face (though Vidar hadn’t known any of it in life). His bay roan hide is stretched taut, pieces of it gone and showing the rotting muscle underneath. Seaweed trails his feet, crowns his head; it’s as if he’s walked from the ocean’s depths to be here, to drag his son back to a shared watery grave. What is far worse is Lagertha, though. The grey mare is nearly white, unhealthy. One eye hangs loosely in its socket, bouncing with every ungainly step she takes towards him. An undead monkey clings to her spinal cord. He thinks he will be sick.
All three draugar wear halters, controlled by Grumbles just as he is. The fighter knows what it means – that it is kill or be killed. No matter that they are his parents. No matter that he’s never met Crito and now… now he has to send him to a second death. He swallows his reserves and charges the slow-creeping false parents.
The two undead horses are on him when he moves between them. In close quarters, they are quicker than they’d appeared before. When not-Crito and not-Lagertha surround him, their teeth flash and they moan. God, he can’t stand the sound. Every time he head-butts one with his ox horns (tearing away Crito’s spleen with one sweep and part of Lagertha’s tail with another) they make the most horrifying sounds. The smell nearly does him in, too, but then he thinks he’s likely not much better himself. “Ssssssooooooonnnn,” the once khaleesi begins, and he can’t take it any more. With a thunderous clap, he silences all of them, even himself. Only Grumblesnakes can comment on how the rest plays out – the coliseum is otherwise deadly silent.
It is the most difficult task he’s ever taken part in, fighting those he loves unconditionally. Crito manages to bite into his shoulder, tearing his patterned skin with ease. In retaliation (and crying, silently in his head) Vidar explodes and shoots fire through his mouth. The dead stallion goes up in flames, quickly, his rotten flesh no match for the quick sparks. When the monkey leaps on him, he grows sharp spikes along his spine. The hellish creature impales itself on one, thrashing but unable to free itself. He can feel its’ slimy fingers scrambling on his back. This time on purpose, he calls the lightning to himself. It races down and strikes him and the monkey, electrifying both to different degrees. The monkey’s charred remains slide down and disappear into the sand. He wheels to face the last, fire burning in his veins.
He can’t kill his mother. Think, he thinks, glancing at Grumbles for help. A silent plea, please don’t make me do this. But the crooked man is grinning. The grand finale. The worst blow so far. Worse than any torture he could have dreamed up in the hours after the tank and lightning and mercury. I am the prey, he remembers, finding no answers in his captor-savior’s gaze. Lagertha is on him and at first he takes it. He takes her teeth and hooves and rotting, stinking smell. But when he knows the tide is turning in her favor – unequivocally – he re-enters the playing field. Vidar pressurizes the air again, squeezes until he thinks he might pass out. The undead horse breaks apart into a hundred million pieces that descend into the sand. He has won. He has lost so much.
When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend
I don't really remember what happened last night (was it last night) after Grumble had taken me back to my stall. I remember the utter hopelessness I had had, the way the shadows seemed to be far more welcoming. The less he could see, the less I would be tortured. I remember thinking I ought to prepare myself for the long life of torture that would be lined up for me, and then eventually some kind of gruesome death. Then I remember just not even caring. I told him I would do whatever he wanted me to do and I would, even if that means dying here for this, whatever this was.
I fall asleep, remembering the vision of my mother dying and bleeding.
Oddly enough, I wake and didn't have any nightmares. I feel okay, my body feels like it's not quite right. Like, there is something under my skin where I can't quite reach it....like an itch. I feel more invigorated and know it must be something to do with Grumble's magic. He had healed me physically many times and he hadn't ever quite broken me mentally. He was just seeing what my strength was and how long I would survive. Ha, silly Grumble. He knows we are friends.
Wait?
I shake my head. That itch distracting me from my train of thought as I turn and look at my body. I don't see anything different. A small circle in the small as I check again, just to make sure. Then I mentally shrug.
The sound of footsteps in the aisle way make me stick my head out over the top of the door. I whicker when I see the little man heading my way. He smiles, that sneaky little smile of his and when he opens the door I back away so he can come in. But he doesn't, he simply grabs my halter and starts to lead me someplace else. For a moment a heavy tide of fear washes over me and I stop, my legs locking in place and causing Grumble to turn and raise an eyebrow. I couldn't return to the torture room, I wouldn't make it out a second time. A sense of calm washes through me. Of course we weren't going there, that was the doorway to the right. Grumbles had taken me to the left.
And just like that we are walking again. My ears prick and my stride is long and energetic. I look curiously in the other stalls, seeing only those that have been broken or the ones that are still waiting. Poor souls. "Don't worry, it will be okay!" I say in my youthful ignorance. I don't see any of their reactions as Grumble is nudging me through the door and into the biggest open building I would ever see in my life.
"This is a Coliseum." Grumble explains. "I've gifted you with something, but you get to figure it all out on your own. I want to see how clever you are." I can only look at him. Clever? I would have to be clever wouldn't I? After all Grumble did pick me. A small smile curls my lips. "I will be up there watching you. Don't disappoint me." He points to the throne in the middle of the Coliseum and the last little bit of his tone is darker, but I am not sure what it means. After all....Grumble and I were friends.
Adrenaline starts to course through my veins as a loud roar echoes somewhere. I turn to look, only to see the bars on the other side of the Coliseum start to open. I turn to look back at Grumble, only to realize that I was alone. "Shit." I mutter to myself. I stretch my wings out, readying myself to take to the air. Or rather, at least try. Instead I move myself closer to the opening door. I see long, clawed fingers curling itself around a bar before drawing back in. I would fight, the hormones coursing through my blood making me ready.
I would never realize that any of this was all from the halter, from that magic binding me to him. At least, not until after this was all over.
When the bars are finally down, the creature doesn't immediately rush right out. I am still, not daring to move. I don't know how long we stand like this. It could have been seconds, or hours, perhaps minutes. Either way, any measurement of time is too long and Grumble is impatient. So a zap touches my nose and jerks me, startling me and apparently whatever creature is lurking in the dark because it roars and then comes charging out.
It charges for me on four legs, like that of a lion. All of it looks like a lion, except for the long tail that curls up over it's back with a rather vicious looking barb on the end. Something lands at my feet, one of the creature's barbs and I jump to the side. Green and yellow something seeps from the stinger and then I turn and run. I move as quickly as I can behind one of the large columns. It is easily big enough for me to hide behind and I gasp, heaving. My wings are tucked tight against my side. I don't think now would be the time to learn.
"It's only a wee manticore, boy. Go kill it!" Kill it? Was he daft? Oh but what if it manages to get out and hurt him, hurt Grumble? No, we couldn't have that. Alright, fight. Grumble said- and a sharp raking pain down my hindquarters makes me scream in pain. Blood wells from the claw marks that had broken through skin and some muscle, ripping that tissue. Oh god it hurt. I buck out almost in reflex, sending a quick kick that some how manages to hit the manticore in it's arm. It roars and starts to charge again. Oh I wish I was away from the creature, out of it's reach.
And suddenly I was. I was floating in the air, the manticore below me. My wings stretch out reflexively and I move them. Oh excellent gift Grumble. I fly, er float. Something. Anyways I am moving up and out and away from the manticore below me. I need a little time to figure this out. I need to figure out some way to dismantle his stinger (as another one flies past me.) I barely manage to dodge it this time. I swoop and soar, getting a feeling for real flying where I can actually feel the wind in my wings and the muscles working beneath my skin.
A loud roar brings me back to the battle and with a narrowing of my eyes I swoop towards it. Smaller, I need to be smaller. If only I was like the falcon, swooping down with it's deadly claws and beak. I scream, a falcon scream, and my beak...wait...my beak? My beak slams into the manticore's eye. My claws find it's face and oh boy, now it's mad.
It throws me from it, but I shift again, thinking of the small crabs and their hard shells. I land on my belly and my legs scramble to get some purchase. I see the manticore looking for me and I clack my claws in preparation. Another barb slams into me this time, ricocheting off the hardness of my shell and I can only laugh some mentally. I grow larger, using my claws to snap and click at the manticore, only growing more determined as I missed his tail each time. Blood ran down it's face from the wounds I had given it as a falcon.
This shifting was nice.
Finally I grab it's tail and squeeze the poison off, but not before the damn manticore shoots off a last barb and it sticks in one of the soft parts of my body. I return to horse form, the manticore still growling but with a thought of fire, the manticore is nothing more than a howling ball of flame. I fall to my knees, looking at the wound from the barb oozing green already. My body feels weird and .....
"Oh not yet." Grumble is there pulling the poison from my body. "More to do yeah?" The poison is gone and so is Grumbles.
But another creature crawls from the gaping hole on the other side of the Coliseum. It's a Cyclops and as we fight, I grow just as big as he was, and into him in fact, replicating him. He lands a couple blows, I land some and then he is a goner. I'm beginning to figure this out, anything I can think of happens. I do all the things and then some to the creatures that crawl from that pit. I fight cyclops, griffens, orcs, ogres, rocs. I fight them all and come out victorious every time, using every scrap of magic that I can find.
Wounds and scars dot my young body now. Some of them had been too deep and Grumble had made sure I didn't die. But I was tired and the sun was finally lower. I was exhausted actually, my body heaving as I collected what breath I could in this small break. And I wait for more to be forthcoming but there is nothing. I look to Grumble to see what was going on.
Submitting turned out to be much easier than fighting.
A strange sense of acceptance and calmness washes over her and soon she’s standing in front of the little man completely relaxed. This time her head is on his eye level because of her own free – or maybe not so free? – will. She accepts the hands that roam across her skin and Igni is even snorting contently because of the small amount of affection. And she’s eager to return it. It’s not that her parents hadn’t been affectionate towards her, but she cannot say that she’s used to the feeling. Therefor it means the world to her to be treated in such way, like she mattered and was cared for. That the feelings maybe weren’t genuine wasn’t something that she paid attention to. Instead she gladly offered herself to him, blocking all other thoughts out and plainly ignoring everything the unaffected part of her mind had to tell her. Igni simply wanted his affection.
The almost gentle treatment, especially after the torture, makes her wonder why she hadn’t submitted like this earlier. It would’ve been so much easier for her and probably less traumatising. But she doesn’t understand nor know the little man’s reasoning and she probably would never. He still hadn’t spoken a word to her, but words weren’t needed. Just like Igni doesn’t need to know that the torture had been part of the process, just as her fight against it, even though her fight had been useless.
In her relaxed state she’s totally oblivious to the world. With that also to the changes she had went through. It is only when she sighs deeply that she notices something different. The expansion of her chest – the deep breath before the sigh – had caused her sides to brush against something, something unfamiliar and smooth. Surprised Igni opens her eyes again, blinking confused, only to see the little man stepping back and smile at her. Or was it a well-disguised grin? Her gaze follows his nonetheless, hear neck bending and head tilting a bit to be able to glance towards her own back. Out of all things she had expected to see, the black batwings that now sprout from her shoulders weren’t it.
Her mind is filled with questions, such as; what happened to me? Where did those wings come from? When did this happen? Why didn’t I notice it earlier? None of those she can answer and when Igni looks towards the little man again she instantly know he wouldn’t either. Why would he? He had enjoyed seeing her in pain, he hád tortured her, but in the end he had built her to be a different creature. If she hadn’t been feeling this calm and comfortable in his presence she probably would’ve questioned him, but right now she can only accept it, just like loves makes blind.
However, this doesn’t mean that the blue roan girl is ready to brush away this sudden change. Now she knows she’s aware how different she feels. The movement of the pair of wings on her back is still a bit odd, especially the sensation when the sensitive membrane of the wings brush against something else. Next to that there’s adrenaline rushing through her body, which isn’t too unfamiliar to Igni. She already knew she was a warrior, or wanted to be one, and the little man had turned her exactly into that. But next to the adrenaline there is something else too. Her throat felt dry and the sudden thirst was hard to ignore. If felt like her throat was on fire and stomach aching for food. And then not the food that had been available in her little cage. Thick, warm liquid with a sweet smell. That was probably where the two fangs were for. Her outermost front teeth had grown – just as magical as the bat wings – and were formed with a sharp tip that could tear through flesh easily.
He leads her away and Igni follows without questioning. She goes where he brings her. Like that she ends up in the colosseum. Her gaze must have shown her confusion. The little man only chuckles darkly, patting her upper leg (that was as far as he could reach) gently. ”Good luck girl, show me what you’ve got.” Those were his first spoken words towards her, might be the last too, because he disappears before the sound had completely faded away. Once again she was alone.
Well, not really alone. She can feel his eyes following her every movement as she walks further into the colosseum, the gates closing behind her and effectively blocking her way out. Instantly she feels very small, glancing around the arena with its high walls. Her wings would’ve probably made it possible for her to just fly across it, but the little man surely would’ve thought about that too. And even more important, she didn’t gets the chance to even try it, when the gate opposite of her opens.
It is another two legged creature that walks in, but this one is taller and far more dangerous and aggressive looking than the one that had tortured her, the one that she wanted to impress. He then stops, eyeing her up and down just as she was studying him. He was tall, broad and muscular, with long white – but somewhat dirty – shoulderlenght hair and a short beard. The scar on the left side of his face travelled from above his eye, right down across it and then with a cure towards his ear. But most scary of all was the calm, confident and judgemental look in his snake like eyes. In those eyes shé was the monster and she could barely blame him for that. His armor didn’t look like it was meant to withstand a lot, instead he would probably feel comfortable and be able to move around freely. To finish it all he carried two swords on his back, one silver, one steel, it was the first one that he drew.
She should have been afraid. Both afraid because of what might happen to her, but also afraid to hurt him. She was neither. All she wanted was to please and impress the little man and the only way of doing that was by defeating her opponent. But it wasn’t all. With the changes a strange sort of bloodlust had come, yet Igni wasn’t sure that that was due to the little man or because of the change she had gone through. In the end both would go back to the torture, but the urges had their specific sources.
Without second thoughts she lunges at him, almost blindly and completely driven by her bloodlust and superior feeling. Yes, Igni liked her new powers, it completed her in ways it shouldn’t. But right now it wasn’t the time to think about that. He stood there, ready for her, much more ready for the fight than she would ever be. She’s fast, faster than she thought she would be, dashing past him instead of coming to a halt on his right side. A bit confused the blue roan turns around, looking at the human creature like she waited for him to explain things to her. Of course he didn’t. A stinging feeling on her left side has her glance to her flank, where blood flowed. Where she had miscalculated he clearly hadn’t. Annoyed she snorts, ears turning back to pin against her skull as she lunges at him again.
This time she’s more aware of her new abilities. Her movements are fast, almost too fast to see with your bare eyes, making it look like she was teleporting her way around him. Every time she stopped – and thus was visible – she reached out, teeth sinking in skin and through lether, tearing flesh from his body. His sword didn’t stay still either, swaying in her direction with uttermost precision. But the more blood she tastes the less she seems to care about her own well-being. Where her opponent stays calm and collected, Igni loses herself more and more in the heath of the battle. Her strikes are strong but sloppy, leaving room for him to strike her with his silver sword.
The biting and tearing is occasionally traded for an aimed kick or a slash of her wings. That last move hadn’t been the best one though. Igni had managed to slash him with her right wing, but just as easily he had been able to cut the membrane of her wings. Never before had she felt something that hurt so, so badly. It forces her to retreat and once dashed to the other side of the arena she watches him, sides heaving. She watches him drink something (a swallow potion, it regenerates health points and mana) and instantly he looks much better. At the same time worse too, as the lines in his face show more clearly. He almost looks sickly, but that look is misleading.
Her right wing hangs limply at her side and it annoys her how little was needed to make them unusable. The pain only adds up to her heavy emotions. When she lunges herself at him again she aims for his left side and Igni doesn’t even bother to dodge his attack. The sword penetrates her chest and at the same moment she digs her fangs in his throat, tearing it away like a feline animal. She’s even growling from deep within her throat, enjoying the rich flavour on her tongue. She doesn’t step away, sucking the thick liquid out of him with his sword still stuck in her body. As long as it stays there it wouldn’t harm her too badly. Her head lowers when the two legged creature drops to the ground, hands flopping on his side lifelessly. Well, he’s not entirely lifeless yet, but soon would be. Her thirst sucks him dry, drinking every single drop of blood he has to offer her.
By the time she steps back, stomach full and thirst sated, she notices how exhausted she is. Then there is also the silver that’s stuck within her body. She had lost almost just as much blood as she had taken, blue roan coat covered in red. However, she doesn’t feel the pain, only triumph and with a hopeful glint in her eyes she glances up to where the little man is seated, hoping he would look pleased.
The heat….no….the inferno....was unbearable. Melted flesh and eyes were the lovely results of Grumbles’ second, and final test for our poor old stag. Flames roared on, Fascade’s wails now melding into the sound as the torture continued, as the flames grew hotter, and our stag could take no more, he felt something like….a truck or train hitting him, he almost was on the verge of losing consciousness when Grumbles finally hit the switch that turned off the massive kiln. Slowly, the halter began to work its magic a little, making it so Fascade regained his eyesight after his retinas being pretty much melted off. He was dizzy with pain, his cooked body raw and bloodied, hurt as he took a wobbly step forward.
”Gru….Grumbles….whe..where are you….GRUMBLES!?”
His words were frantic, as if he were looking to his captor for guidance. What? Why? Why would he feel this way….this nasty little fae practically killed him over and over again and yet he feels a kinship to him? What was this insanity!?
Though, there he stood, after all that horrid martyrdom he had put Fascade through, with a look a terrifying delectation on his face. His gravely, yet high pitched voice sounded just a tad bit comforting.
”AH...yes...it is done. Well done Fascade, I did not expect you to come out of this successful, due to your age….but you did well. Come now, let’s get you to your stall. You must be a little tired.”
His last sentence was a deliberately sarcastic understatement, but Fascade’s exhaustion was too extreme for him to be pissed off or even give him an equally sarcastic comeback. Instead, he stood at the door to the waiting to be lead back to his dark dungeon stall. His head low, sides still heaving from all his panicking and running around. All he wanted right now was home, his family, and his beloved Use...but none of those would come to him...for they were no longer there. All he had, unfortunately, was Grumbles. His pained eyes watched as the small fae bobbled to him on knobby bowed legs and reached out to snap a golden lead onto his halter. With a painful stroke to the cheek, Grumbles then gave a little tug on the gleaming lead and Fascade instinctively followed him slowly. His body ached all over, including his insides from when he was drowned. The screams that once terrified him in the torture chamber became just a muffled background noise, and he continued on toward the long corridor that lead to his stall.
The walk seemed like it took an eternity, his heart ached as he heard voices screaming out from behind the countless stall doors at him, “Please, Please someone get me out of here! Please help me!!”, all he could do was walk on. Knowing that there was nothing he could do to help them. All he knew was that they had the same fate as he did, though even now his fate was unknown. Grumbles was going to torture those poor horses like he tortured him, and they too would have Grumbles collect them when he saw they were “ready”, even though he had no idea what that meant.
Soon enough, they reached Fascade’s stall. He slowly followed the fae man in, turning around to face the door as Grumbles unsnapped the lead from the halter. Grumbles pat him once more.
”Alrighty now...I will see you tomorrow….have a good sleep, you are going to need it.”
He snickered and then disappeared.
Fascade was too tired to read into what that meant, his charred eyelids were heavy and his body hurt. Sleep was what Grumbles said he needed, and he was not going to argue with that. He wondered what tomorrow would bring. Slowly his eyes shut, and his body fell into the deep, warm, sweet smelling straw.
Sleep took over.
Morning, the sounds of another scream passing by his stall door woke him. His eyes fluttered heavily, blinking the sleep away. Yesterday was fresh in his head, and he was still a bit exhausted from it. He hoped he would not have to go through that again.
grooooowwwwllllll….guuuuurgle….
His stomach practically gnawed at his backbone he was so hungry. Instinctively he got up and stretched himself before finding that lovely sweet food he liked so much. After eating a few mouthfuls, he realized something strange….his muzzle did not pain him when he touched the coarse feed… He turned his head slowly, his long neck cranked to the side so he could see his hind end. What his eyes beheld was beyond his comprehension…
His body….it….it was fine.
He was taken aback. The hair...his skin…..it had melted clean off and was bloody and raw when he was finished with the torture...but….he was back to normal. His hair was grown back, there were no scabs….it was absolutely ludicrous. He was burned to a crisp, how the hell was this possible!? He heaved himself up off his perfectly form fitted nest of straw and gave himself a good shake. But, something felt off….his tail felt….heavy. So did his head. He was scared to look behind him….but he did anyway. His eyes widened at the sight…
da fuck?
There, where his bushy black tail used to be, was a long bluish green scared dragon tail with sharp spikes running all the way down where the tip ended in a three pronged trident, as well as two spikes on the sides of his tail just before the trident tip. He looked down, where his white stockings used to be were also strong bluish green scales, and spikes took the place of where the shaggy feathers on his fetlocks used to be. He couldn’t believe his eyes...he began to shake a little. He had no idea what was going on. But, he had to face whatever it was head on. And speaking of heads...his felt strange. His mouth felt odd and his head was heavy. He slowly stepped toward the round water trough...his eyes looking down into the dark, reflective surface. There, staring back at him was a creature he could barely recognize as himself. Though the halter remained the same and his head was still dished and bay, he was….different. Where his blaze used to be was more scales, and on the bridge of his nose, just between his nostrils were two spikes, in the likeness of a rhino’s yet not as large. Atop his head were two spiraling horns, and his cheeks were also adorned with spikes. What really spooked him was the fact that his mouth had been elongated to just about his cheek bones and inside his mouth were sharpened teeth like an alligator’s and his tongue was pronged like a snake’s.
”Grumbles you demented little freak, what the hell did you do to me?!”
He spoke to himself, more freaked out than mad. Our stag began to pace a little, his mind was blown. This was strong magic that healed him like this...there was no other way he could have come out of that completely scorched and then overnight be healed completely. He didn’t even know of a horse in Beqanna with that sort of healing power. Not to mention his new look. This was something he could never EVER understand, but he didn’t really care. He was healed, and he looked like a complete badass as well. That was all that mattered to him right now.
But as he was thinking about all of this, and taking this all in, he felt a small tickle in his throat. Naturally, he coughed a little to ease the itch, but as he did, a few large sparks clicked out from the back of his throat and out his mouth. His eyes widened…
”What the actual fuck what was that…..”
The tickle remained...he wondered what the hell that was all about...sparks? How? Why?
The tickle became stronger.
He coughed again, harder.
This time, the click was louder, sparks jet out from his mouth and with a second cough, the sparks ignited into flame, bursting forth from his maw. Dark eyes widened with fear, his voice boomed.
”WHAT THE HELL!?”
He paced frantically. FIRE? He breathed fire?! What the hell was this….This was not right...he was a plain horse, a horse with no traits whatsoever. And here he is, spewing flames from his dark mouth. No...this couldn’t be happening. He wondered if this was some messed up dream after being tortured so much the previous night. There was no other logical explanation other than that.
As he paced some more, he heard a high pitched cackle...he knew that voice anywhere. He whipped around, his new tail swung heavily and quickly around him making a deep “woosh” sound. There, atop the sweet feed bucket, sat Grumbles. He looked quite pleased, his black eyes sparkled despite the dimness of the stall.
”Hehehehe! Boy oh boy your reactions are priceless!! I see you slept well, I also see you look well. I am digging your scales...very fitting for an old warrior like yourself. Though that fire breathing needs some work. I don’t think you have noticed since you are in a small space, but you also have the ability to move at lightning speeds if need be. I would have unlocked more abilities for you, but I didn’t think an old man such as yourself could handle it.
Grumbles snickered some more, and Fascade’s sarcasm bubbled up in a snarky response.
”Oh shut up. I’m not that old!!! I made it through your hell, I think I can handle other things now....ALSO! It’s not like I have been able to do this all my life. It’s hard to teach an old nag new tricks. Let’s see you try it!”
Of course, Grumbles’ eyebrows furrowed and a sly smile spread across his lips.
”Oh yeah? How’s this?”
His mouth opened wide and he drew in a deep breath, suddenly he let out a huge ball of fire with his exhalation. Fascade was left with his now large maw wide open. Of course he would do that with ease….he was the one with magic stronger than any he ever knew of. With that, the knobby little imp hopped down from his perch and clipped the gold lead to Fascade’s halter once again and gave it a tug as the heavy bolted door opened on it’s own. He walked on slowly beside Grumbles, quietly.
”Come on now, we have work to do. You need to get that fire breathing down, as well as learning how to maneuver and use your new tail and other defensive features on your body. Welcome to the coliseum.”
With that, they came to a massive double door, which opened with a loud rumble. Fascade’s eyes grew wider…..Inside, there were creatures of all sorts. The ground was supple dark earth that felt nice and bouncy on his feet, and cold, yet it was not slippery like mud. The walls of the battle arena were not quite walls, they were a gleaming iridescent barrier of sorts, shimmering and incredibly strong. The only walls started at just about half way round the ring where stadium seating and a balcony made of beautiful and cold Bloodstone crystal. Fascade was blown away, this place was incredible. Grumbles chuckled and gave him a light tug on the halter to lead him further inside the coliseum. As they walked in, they passed by dragons, dire wolves, and many other creatures. Grumbles looked him over one more time, taking time to give him a pat on the shoulder before unclipping his golden leadrope. Fascade’s nerves started to eat away at him a bit, and began to make his body tingle strangely. He wasn’t sure if he was excited or terrified, either way, this was beginning to look a little dangerous. Some of the creatures were about ten times his size, even though he had defensive and offensive abilities and qualities, he sure as hell was still terrified. As if Grumbles could read into his thoughts and feelings, which he probably actually could, he began to snicker once again, but inside his sarcastic, piercing words, sounded like reassurance? Being strangely fond of the small tricky fae now, he really did start to feel a little better.
”Hehehe nervous eh big guy?! You will be fine. I will be watching from up there, Maybe I will give you tips…...maybe I wont. But you must learn to use your abilities and learn how to defend yourself. The road ahead will become much bumpier than this one I assure you. So, get out there and crack some skulls, Old Man!”
Old Man, there he goes again with the age jab. Though now it was becoming less annoying and more of a term of endearment. He nodded and turned to reply, but Grumbles was gone, already perched up in the quartz crystal throne, tapping his foot impatiently. Fascade knew this was no time to dottle. It was time for battle. He charged forward, his gait was an animated and lofty, rolling canter. His neck arched and his head tucked, nostrils flared with streams of smoke spiraling forth from them. He charged his way toward his first chosen target, a Satyr, he had no weapons, but he did have strong metal bracer with spikes protruding from the outside edges. He had to be wary of those things, but he figured this creature was the least difficult choice for his first opponent. He gathered himself and darted faster than he ever has moved from side to side in front of the strong Satyr. He yelled a battle cry and came forth, his movements were precise, but Fascade was quick. His eyes picked out his opponents weaker points, the legs, since those were similar to his own previous legs without the scales, his thin human-like neck, and his fragile exposed belly. Fascade felt strange, almost like he wanted to hurt this creature. Normally he would be protesting this, not wanting to hurt another living thing, but now he had a thirst to maim and kill….it was something he had never experienced before.
He darted to the side, gathering his tail to swing it’s spiked end to the side, driving it hard into the Satyr’s stomach, It wailed and it’s brows furrowed. A deep booming voice sounded from the creature. It stumbled back, clutching it’s now bleeding puncture wounds, but it did not want to give in yet, he noticed now the glowing collar around it’s neck making a strong ringing sound...was it forcing the creature to fight to the death? He wondered if his own would do that if he decided to stop, but he did not want to find out now, this thing wanted blood. It rushed forward, it’s arm tucked in toward his chest, it’s muscles in it’s bicep was large and veiny. Fascade went to dart away, but the Satyr was too quick. It rammed it’s arm with the sharp spiked golden bracer hard into his neck. Fascade squealed in pain, while the bracer was still in his neck, he tried to cow kick to the side, using his own leg spikes to hook into the creature’s delicate suspensory ligament. It worked, and he managed to hook into it’s leg and drag it forward, causing the creature to come crashing to the damp earth. Fascade took no time to stand and think, his first and only instinct was to rear up and drive his front hooves down into it’s skull. Crushing it like the shell of a walnut. It lay lifeless at his feet, he then heard a clapping from the balcony. Grumbles applauded him with a pleased look on his face, but soon he settled and waved Fascade on to face something even larger and more difficult.
He turned, and was taken aback when he was literally face to face with the head of a huge lion...but this was no ordinary massive lion. His back feet were goat’s legs and instead of a lion’s tail, he had a long, broad headed green viper for a tail...and beside his massive lion head, protruded two more heads, a greenish blue scaled dragon with a long neck and smoke coiling from it’s nostrils, and a goat head. It stood about four feet taller than Fascade, and was much broader in shape as well. A Chimera….
”Oh shit..”
This one was going to be much more difficult than the Satyr.
Fascade took a deep breath as the Chimera challenged him, it’s three heads tossing as if it were saying “come on, come get me, I dare you”. His hypothetical brow furrowed, his eyes blazed, a challenge he was most definitely going to dare to take up. His old soul finally burned and felt purpose. He had not felt like this in a long time, a very long time. His crooked smile was devious, cocky old bastard was feeling his oats now. He stood his ground, puffing out his strong bay chest and drawing in another deep breath allowing the sparks in this throat to ignite. With a bellow, his breath exploded forth, flames blasted from his elongated mouth, making his shining sharp teeth gleam red from the glow of the flames. His tail lashed back and forth as he took a few stomping steps forward showing his newfound fearlessness. As old as he is, and with all the hell that damned imp Grumbles put him through, he was not going to step down. This was the change he yearned for. This was his time to make something of himself before his days on earth were done. The Chimera stepped back, seemingly taking a second to rethink challenging Fascade. He snorted, and squealed a challenge, smoke pluming from his nostrils and he did a faux charge in the Chimera’s direction. In the balcony, Grumbles watched with eagerness as his fledgling warrior charged fearlessly in the face of danger. Despite being small and old enough to be crushed by the beast, he did not care. He wanted to show he was no old nag with no purpose.
The Chimera kept backing as Fascade showed his dominance, but playtime was over….the creature retaliated, the dragon head letting a low rumble come up from his scaled throat. Fascade knew he was getting ready to spit fire at him as well, and he gathered himself up to dodge the flames. As the dragon head spewed it’s fire, Fascade moved quicker than lightning, his hind end was seared by the flames and he let out a squeal of pain, and the large lion paw swiped out at him as he wizzed by, gauging three long wounds into his flanks. He tried to ignore the pain and dart behind the creature to attack from behind, but, he was caught off guard. Forgetting all about the viper tail. It caught him round the throat just as fast as he came behind the creature and it coiled round his neck tight, squeezing him as it hissed in his ear. He couldn’t let it bite him….for it’s bite was filled with deadly venom. He squealed and lashed out with his scaley front legs as it tried to strike at his face, but his flailing did no good. It almost landed a bite, but his scaled blaze acted like armor and the snake’s fangs could not penetrate them. Too close a call. TOO CLOSE. He was not ready to die yet, but he started to feel a ping of fear in his heart, afraid he would not be able to break from the snake’s coiled grip. His eyes once again rimmed with white and he strained to look at Grumbles, of whom was tapping his pointy booted foot and shaking his head. He knew Grumbles wanted him to think, to think with a clear head under pressure.
Then it occurred to him, swing his tail again. So he wound up and swung his long spiked tail hard, ramming it’s spikes into the eye of the unsuspecting goat head. It bleated sharply, its cry piercing his eardrums, the snake lessened its’ hold as it was distracted by the goat head’s pain. Fascade knew this was his time to make a move. He used his speed and strength to pull back, skittering to the right away from the three headed beast, taking the snake with him. He pulled with such force that the snake was torn from the Chimera’s body. Where it’s base was began to shoot out blood in a steading pulsing stream. The three remaining heads screamed, and while they were distracted once more by the pain, he took a few steps back and then charged forward with as much force as he could muster, his head arched, aiming his horned face toward it’s soft sensitive flesh just behind the elbow. He shoved his head hard into the creature’s flesh, his wide smile with teeth exposed was too creepy. The Chimera wailed once again, and as Fascade nudged once more, as if he were stabbing someone in the side and twisting the knife, the creature’s wails became unbearably. He them tossed his head upward hard, tearing the soft skin with him. The creature bled even more, it’s tail base still bleeding. It became slowed, woozy even from the loss of blood, The main lion head roard and tried to take a bat at him with it’s sharp claws, but it’s slowed movements were no match for Fascade’s speed. He began to laugh hard at the suffering creature that still wanted to kill him despite being half dead.
”HA! That’s right you big beasty….you are no match for me. I can outrun you, hell, you have three heads and yet I am still clever than you. You still want to kill me after all I have done to you? I’d like to see you try!! I AM NOT READY TO DIE YET AND IF I WAS IT WOULDN’T BE BY YOUR HAND!!”
With that he stepped backward again, the creature still trying to make passes at him with razor-like claws, and he let out that loud ear shattering Arabian stallion squeal and charged forward again, this time head on, aiming straight for the creature’s chest. As his lightning fast charge commenced, the creature was too dizzy to bat him out of the way. He dipped his head low just as he reached the lion head’s chin and then shot his head upward with all the force he could possibly manage. His spiraling sharp horns pierced up through the creature’s chest and right up into it’s heart. It screamed, and then began to gurgle. It’s head’s swaying back and forth as blood began to trickle and sputter from their lips. Fascade ripped his horns out from the beast’s chest and with one final bellow from it’s heads, it collapsed onto the blood stained earth. Fascade’s adrenaline was pumping, his entire body was shaking, his sides heaving. With flared nostrils he screamed into the air for all the other creatures in the arena to hear.
”YOU SEE THAT?! YOU WANT THAT!!! WHO IS NEXT! I WILL DESTROY YOU!!!”
His high pitched battle queal made his dark lips quiver, the viper still draped around his neck like an olympic gold medal and the blood still trickled down his neck from the puncture wounds the Satyr’s bracer caused. But, he was too filled with adrenaline to even notice the pain. He wanted more, more blood, more challengers. For some reason, he felt he needed to impress Grumbles now, even though just the day before he wanted to kill the torturous bastard. But, how could he want to harm him now after he gave him such wonderful gifts and a new will to live. Though at the moment he couldn’t think into it now, for his urge to battle and use his dandy new abilities and qualities was stronger than any other feeling he had. He struck his hooves outward in challenge to anyone else in the arena.
He was not tired yet, and he sure as hell was just getting started.
”BRING IT”
Standing tall and proud, ready for the next challenger, Fascade was becoming a beast himself…..and good ol’ Grumbles was rubbing his hands together in delight at how much his new favorite old man was developing into a battle fiend. But what he had up his sleeve next was a complete mystery….
What was next for our old stag...and would he be able to handle what was to come…
He is seething within, though nothing but his eyes show the intense abhorrence simmering beneath the surface of his otherwise too-still behemoth form. His flesh still bristles from the various sharpened cuts carved into his tissue, though there is nothing but the tingling of nerve endings remaining. His heart still beats heavily, but it is slower, more methodical - it felt as if it still held the heavy burden of ice penetrating its every fiber. His mind flinches inwardly with the occasional reminder of what had just lingered in the astuteness of his mind, the darkened images of blood, decay and rot, and he fades in and out for a long moment while he attempts to pull back at the reality of what still lies before him.
He feels uprooted; uncertain. Had he imagined it all? Had none of it truly happened? Here he stands, with a sheen of sweat covering the length of his body, with nothing but distant, unfounded memories to spur his anxious mind. There was nothing to suggest anything had been more than a dream (aside from his menacing smile and gleeful chuckle) - or rather, a nightmare. His eyelids close as an icy hand is placed at the based of his neck, sweeping away damp tendrils of hair away from the skin there. The man strokes him soothingly, but it does nothing but agitate his very core.
”It is time to see your true potential, Offspring. You are stubborn, but so am I. Let us see what you are built of.”
With that, he grasps his harness with unusual force, drawing him away from his solidified, unwilling imprisonment. He does not fight it (he is not sure that he could, even if he attempted to), and soon he is led through a darkened hallway with the stagnating stench of something he cannot decipher. The loud clipping of his hooves against the cobblestone is muffled by the muck of something that lay strewn across the floor, but it is too dark to see and so he can only imagine the horror that lay beneath him. Perhaps the entrails of another – friend or foe? He knew naught, but he knew that in spite of the dread festering within the pit of his belly, he was going to soon find out.
At last, a blinding light is cast upon him and his very retinas burn beneath their assault – he is disoriented; he cannot see and yet he follows blindly. Trustingly. Something soothes him and dulls the ache that will one day envelope him in his entirety, but in this moment, he is suddenly at ease with an unsteady calm that he has only ever recalled feeling when the warm cloak of darkness descended upon him each and every time he neared – and taunted – death. His mind trails away from the impending death that he is certain must be inevitable, lingering on old, forgotten memories of devastating loneliness and woe. He had suffered at the hands of time, he had tried desperately to end it on more than one occasion, and now – now as death stared at him, eye to eye, he felt eager for even a stolen moment with his beloved family.
The uneasy calm melds in with this aching longing and soon it seemingly melts away. His crimson eyes adjust at last to the obscenely bright lighting, though still, he squints from behind thick lashes to see the bloodied Colosseum that lay before him. His heart pounds slowly into a rhythm fueled by the adrenaline that floods once more through his previously frigid, frozen veins. From with the core of his spine, something springs and crawls out from the matted, beaded surface, rapidly developing and growing into a pair of massive, iridescent wings, which swell with abundant plumage and spread to three times the length of his body on each side. He cannot be stunned; he merely admires their power and length before his gaze returns to that of his admirer, who smiles cheekily.
”A pleasant start! Let's see what a little stress can draw out of you. Protect me, my protege.” He cackles with jubilant delight as he gives a playful pat to his broad cheek and disappears to the left. A long, lingering stillness draws out the uncomfortable creaking and rattling of something off in the distance. Though the cobblestone cage before him is well-lit, the light from above is blinding and he can see nothing of what surrounds it. He cannot see if there are any spectators, any friend or foe – he cannot even seen Grumblesnakes, though something that tingles within his senses tells him that he is lurking within the shadows.
Abruptly, a hefty, shackled wall cast of iron drops from behind him; a wary eye is cast behind him to look but he knows it is ill-deserving of his intention. He cannot escape, even if he attempted to, and something urges him not to even attempt it. Rather, he emerges hesitantly from the broad aisle, emerging into the lustrous light. His wings glimmer gently beneath the artificial light, shining deep shades of amethyst, jade and turquoise within a murky black. He listens, jaw shifting beneath the control of the halter – but the waiting has come to a screeching halt.
With a loud clamor, an iron gate similar to the one that lay behind him (but six times its size) now shifts before him, slowly rising along an endless stone wall before shuddering to a shrieking stop. Within lie only the promise of dangerous shadows, and cautiously, he begins to pace, to the left, to the right – all the while, his fierce gaze staring blankly ahead, awaiting movement. Thump. Thump. The ground quakes beneath its behemoth force, rattling the chains hung all around and echoing off of the expanded chamber. He stills, wary of making any sudden movement, when it emerges from its cloak of darkness. Its own eyes begin to blink and squint painfully at the light above (two – four – six pairs of eyes?), though it soon shakes itself of its dizzying reverie and a grumbling snarls from each of its three heads.
Canine in composition, it is menacing, many times his own size and soon, the drooling, heaving Cerberus is raising its hackles upon the very sight of him. He draws his wings close, and he shifts his heavy weight from one leg to another – before beginning a hefty, reverberating gallop across the east side of the amphitheater. He expands to each side, letting the updraft of his pace carry him, before leaping into the air, and with a massive swing of his wings, he is airborne. He is liberated, no longer bound by the laws of gravity as he raises higher, and higher – halted only by a glimmering wall above. A force field. He eyes with a stewing disdain before turning his attention to the snarling, jaw-snapping creature below. He soars loosely around the perimeter, heart thumping against his rib cage, and at last his eyes settle upon Grumblesnakes.
Wordlessly, he pushes two words into his mind, like a seed to be sowed. Kill it.
Offspring circles still, uneasy to his very bones – he begins to search, he begins to urgently hunt for something, for anything he can find – when suddenly a massive paw stretches up and skims the air below him, reminding him of how close death looms below him. He bristles now as his vision begins to shift and change, and suddenly, it is not blinding light that he sees, but a profound darkness with only the outline of a figure cast in various shades of pink, red, yellow and orange. He can see the very essence of the Cerberus; he can see its inner-makings. Its pounding heart – a single, massive organ centrally located within his chest. An urge rises within him, to reach into the depths of its living, breath, snarling body and rip out its pulsating, bleeding heart, and it is an urge he cannot quench. He begins to circle again, with his massive wings carrying him as he mocks the beast.
It rises up, claws and teeth alike striking out at his flesh, though he is suddenly covered in a mass of malleable, glimmering armor – it reflects the very light from above, momentarily distracting the drooling mutt as he beats his monumental wings towards it, remaining stagnant in the air as his mind begins to hone in on the broad chest of the three-headed monster. He focuses not on its shining, blood-encrusted teeth, nor does he focus on the way it slowly approaches. He maintains his distance – wings carrying him back with each bulking step the Cerberus takes – as his vision sets it on the pounding target that lay deep within. He hones in with a focus that is all-encompassing. His body trembles and his flesh breaks out once more in a beaded sweat, and his head begins to ache in a way he had never experienced in any of his years of living, but he presses on. Pulling, pulling, pulling -!
At last, with a viscous spray of blood that pours from the center of its mass, the great canine splits into two, the bones of its very rib cage torn apart into two separate pieces. With a droning shriek and bound of aching, anguished whimpers, the massive three-headed carnivore slumps into its own muck and settles in a puddle of torn tissue, shattered bones and blood. He himself is cloaked in a cascade of red, but he heaves, panting, his wings damp and spent as he finally drops down to the cobblestone floor below. His vision slowly begins to restore, and before him is a mass of carnage. Within, its thundering heart beats ever so slowly, exposed to the elements but eased into death by shock, but the same two words rattle in his mind. Kill it.
With the weakened prowess of his own mind, he moves naught, but draws out a shattered splinter of its own rib cage, manipulating it and plummeting it into the very center of its heart. Soon, the beast grows still – it breathes no more, and its heart ceases to beat again. It is done. It is finished.
It is dead.
With a heaving breath, he gazes around, stunned by his own power, startled by his own simmering blood-lust. Had it always lain dormant within him, aching to be set free? He stares at the bloodshed before him, trembling, if only slightly, as the heavy scent of copper and metal finally penetrates his own senses. It fills him to the brim with something he cannot describe. Fear no longer lingers within his beaten, downtrodden soul. He peers up fiercely into the light above, knowing that he is being watched – that there are a particular set of eyes on him that watch his every move. He does not loathe it, nor is he wary over the new calm that settles within his bones. His tongue is tainted with the taste of fleshy tissue that had washed over his whiskered lips, and he now knows a hunger that now begins to loom within the shadows of his heart.
Alas, the reverie of victory is short-lived - the bones of his newfound wings break and shatter, and with a sharp cry, they cease to exist. The diamond-plated armor that one lay across his scarred, charcoal-painted body retracts, folding into itself and vanishing from sight. He can no longer alter his vision, and the urge to split and manipulate bones washes away like a dense tide of salty seawater. The blood melts away as well, and soon there is nothing but his darkened pelt and raw, pink scars. Still, he can sense the blood. He can smell it. It is a part of him.
And Grumblesnakes knows.
"You have shown yourself to be quite the warrior, Offspring." He muses as he glides with ease to his side, icy, gangling fingers once more stroking the skin of his neck. His eyes, glittering with mischief, meet his. "Such a theatrical performance. Vim, vigor and - dare I say a spot of desire? Violence, even? Some of the most calculated fighters crave it, Offspring. It is nothing to be ashamed of."
Then why do I feel so burdened? He wonders to himself, casting his dark red eyes away.
The man merely chuckles, all too aware of his innermost thoughts. He can hear each and every one.
She would’ve turned away from him if she remembered how, but her wasted body only lay there, her spirit wholly crushed.“No,” she whispered back instead, her voice ragged from so much silence, “Malis is gone.”
--
But the pressure of him doesn’t fade from her head. He remains, not unlike a headache, carving out a space for himself beside her thoughts, a space where there should be none. She thinks she can feel him settle there, he might even be smiling at her in that strange way he does. But he digs in deep like a parasite, burying something else, something ruinous, a seed of darkness in the deepest part of her consciousness, of magic that isn’t hers but loves her anyway. She knows this, she can feel it, but the numbness of solitude, of being trapped in a stone tomb with only her demons to keep her company leaves her feeling as though she is observing this through someone else’s thoughts. She is detached, and this is easier; she is detached, because she cannot live with the truths she has been carved from.
Malis. His voice sounds again, and he is crooning, he is pleased.
She is wary. “Malis.” He says once more, and this time his voice is in her ears, not her head, and she has only a second to brace herself before the stone slab over her body is pulled back to let in the light. The light. She drowns in it, gasping and writhing and burning in its bright. It feels wretched where it touches the blue, where it warms her skin and finds the dark that pools in the bottoms of those aching emerald eyes. A hand reaches in to stroke her shoulder and at first she leans away, burying her face in the familiarity of the cold stone slab she had been pinned against for so long in the dark. But the hand is gentle against her skin, his flesh cool to the touch and that is also familiar, so she softens a little for her captor. “Malis,” he says one last time, his hand moving to take the halter between his fingers and pull her up out of the tomb, “come with me now.”
She rises without question, finding her balance on legs that should be as weak as willow branches, but something makes her strong. It is his magic, she realizes with the furrowing of her dark brow, the magic he had buried in her head. She was nothing without him. The thought doesn’t feel like hers, but it fills her head like an echo until it is all she knows, until she is not only obedient and complacent at his side, but willing too. He saved her, pulled her from the dark loneliness she deserved, to give her another chance. He is good, he is kind, and this is the only life she could have had anyway.
He leads her down another hallway with his hand against her neck and she follows quietly at his side, calm until the hallway opened up into a vast coliseum, until the battlefield to-be reached out to call to its precious blue mare. She felt its presence in her belly like a heat, a hunger, a darkness she resented for the way she craved it. It was a darkness she had known intimately, a darkness she had conquered, a darkness that would never let her go. There must have been a part of her that had not died in the stone tomb though, a piece of the blue mare that still held on to who she was before, because when the darkness reached to take her she balked. “I can’t.” She starts, she tries, wanting to turn away. But Grumblesnakes merely releases his hold of the halter and turns to go, knowing inately what will come next. She knows, and it ruins her. She can feel them thrashing and shifting somewhere beneath her feet, great colossus beasts of magic waiting impatiently to be unmade.
She moves stiff legged into the center of the arena, silent as she absorbs the scene around her. The coliseum is immense. There is a ring of tall stone bleachers around the entire perimeter, but she notes that Grumblesnakes is the only one in them. Where she stands at the center is all dirt and clay, smooth, bare of any root or rock. It seems large enough to fit an entire kingdom inside and she wonders why anyone would need this much room. Her banded eyes lift to the sky to find that this stone structure is without a ceiling, but birds and clouds seem to follow a curve overhead that makes her suspect the existence of a barrier. There is a sound to her left and she turns quickly to watch the spot in the wall where stone grids against stone to open like a gaping mouth of black.
From within that mouth came a slender bay mare with a halter identical to her own, a familiar bay mare, and Malis felt her heart seize in her chest. This girl was Malis, but she was the Malis from before. The girl who grew up in the jungle with her family, who raced beneath the canopy of green with wild cats; this girl was unbroken, unruined. Malis felt a roar of agony tear through her chest, rending flesh from bone until she didn’t even know what held her together. The bay girl was wild, defiant, and her green eyes flashed like buried gems as she raced forward to come face to face with her bitter blue future. “I hate you.” She cried, and with none of the venom that would come from the years to follow. “Look what you’ve let us become, look what you did to us. It’s no wonder father left you, how could he stay.” The accusation feels like steel buried in her bones, like tattered flesh that tore and bled. The darkness swelled in her, a bitterness that this girl, this Malis from the past can even still exist and be so whole when all she felt now was years of coming undone. With her eyes burning bright she tries to pull away from the bay girl, to leave, but something turns her flesh to stone and she finds she can go nowhere. “Please.” She says once, the word a ragged prayer on deaf ears, but she knows what is to come even as the girl rears back to strike.
You should kill her malis. His voice comes in her head, and even though she had known it would she feels cold inside. “I can’t.” She tries. But she feels something come unhinged inside her, his nimble fingers hovering impatiently in her thoughts. You must.
Time slows, winding around her like a lazy river, and a single second stretches into a million as the bay girl rears up and flashes the white of her underbelly. Before Malis has a chance to react though, a hoof strikes the bone of her cheek and it shatters. For a moment she is blinded by pain, furious at the illogical strength of the brown girl who had returned to her yelling, hurling insult and accusations that hurt as much as any stone. “God, you’re such a coward. Even this life is too good for you, death is too good for you.” There is an echo trapped inside the blue mare, an echo of soft and kind, an echo of sanity. But it is lost in an instant when she rallies and thrusts herself forward, burying the full length of each horn in the soft squish of the bay girls fleshy chest. “YOU ARE NOTHING.” She screams, and the echo dies inside her. Malis withdraws, freeing her horns with a wet sound, and when the body of her childhood hits the ground it bursts into black shadow and is gone. This was never meant to be a great battle, this foe not selected for the prowess of power. This was meant to undo, to sever the blue mare entirely from who she had managed to become.
And so she is undone.
Her sides still heave, more with fury than exertion, when his voices comes one last time. My malis.
And she is.
The ground rumbles at the opposite end of the coliseum and Malis twists to face it. For a second there is nothing but sand and dirt, nothing but empty stone seating. Still, her skin prickles suspiciously as the rumbling increased and it feels like it might vibrate loose the marrow from her bones. She is wary when she slinks forward, wary but unafraid until the stone stadium explodes in shower of dust and rock sediment. From the yawning darkness hurtles an enormous colossus, a dragon, though she does not realize this until the dust settles. He is entirely black, smooth as the obsidian of her horns, but for the faint glimmering outline of each scale. Along his spine are a row of jagged, uneven spikes and they meet a crown of them against the top of his heavy skull. His wings are so ragged from years of battle that she doubts he can still fly well, but in a coliseum this size it won’t matter at all. He staggers forward and his tail whips around so that she can see that it also has a row of smaller spikes, much more like thorns, and a heavy cluster of bone and spurs like a club at the tip. The beast throws back his head and roars, smoke and orange heat fluttering from the plates shifting at his throat.
His challenge does something to Malis, triggers something buried so deep inside that she hadn’t felt it until now. It was magic, and it throbbed and writhed and ached to be used. It was instinctual when she released it, reflexive when it mingled with the dark to take her, to bend and stretch her bones until she was just as he, a dragon, a mirror in emerald green. She roared her reply, throwing a far sleeker head than his back so that when the flame and smoke erupted from her chest it hit the sky barrier and was forced back down. If the black beast was surprised at the horse turned dragon, he hid it well. Instead they each took to prowling with an almost feline fluidity, pacing their respective sides of the coliseum while they picked out weaknesses. Where he was built like a hammer, hard and heavy, she was built like a sword. She is lean and fluid, and instead of spikes along her spine she has plates that shift, plates with edges like razors and they lift and flex as she stalks forward. Her chest is armored, as are her legs up to her elbows, and the scales gleam with reinforced gold. The dragon-beasts turn and leap together in the same moment, and Malis uses her smaller size to duck beneath him, opening her wings to pivot her body quickly so that she can tackle him before his lumbering body has a chance to prepare itself. She hits him hard and it feels so much like wrestling a mountain, but the seething fury in her veins burns and burns until all she can think about is the desire for the wet warm of his blood seeping through her teeth in his neck. She roars again and he responds, and they writhe together and grapple, tearing holes in the scales like they are little more than tissue paper squares. She bleeds, and so does he, but she can heal quickly where he cannot. Malis thrusts off the ground and wraps her reptilian body around him, using her weight to throw him off balance, to pull him back off his feet. It works, but she isn’t ready for the knot of bone and spike at the end of his tail when he flings it around and buries it in the bones of her ribcage. She screams and she is enraged, more furious than she is hurt because even now the skin starts to heal around the embedded spikes. Her thick, knife-sharp claws bury themselves in the rigid flesh beneath his scales and he throws back his head to bellow his fury. But she is ready for the instant he does, and she lunges forward to close her teeth around the unprotected underside of his throat. With fire leaking molten from her mouth, she closes her jaw and shakes her head, rewarded almost instantly with the hot iron of his blood against her tongue. His bellow ends in a wet mangled groan, and only when he grows limp beneath her and they topple sideways does she release her hold and unfurl those sleek wings to coast out of the way.
She lands quietly and turns to watch with impassive eyes the moment his body hits the dirt and shatters into a thousand pieces of shadow and dust. There is still blood in her mouth when yet another door opens in the stone of the coliseum and she turns like a cat, both bored by and curious of the prey that slips through. But whatever she had been expecting, it was not this and the emerald dragon roars her anguish. The figure at her feet is a heavily feathered bay stallion who smells of soot and ash and home. She roars again and the sound is deafening. In an instant she is wholly at war with herself. The echo of the Malis from before, the Malis who had found love and a family, she knows what it means to have this stallion here in the coliseum and the pain she feels is wholly unbearable. She fights and she rages and digs for the surface, but she is trapped. It is the darkness that fills the green dragon, the magic, the halter that consumes her. But she cannot help but feel curious at why he could be so important, so she stretches that refined head down to nose at the beast, intrigued until magma leaps from his skin and swallows every curve of her beautiful reptilian face. Furious and feverish with a lust for blood she could barely hold back, she opened her wings and flicked them hard to create a gust of wind that forced him head over heels across the coliseum floor. She should have just killed him outright, but something still held her back. When he rose again he should have had broken bones, but he moved with as much impossible grace as she did. Snarling she stalked towards him, and he met her with a dragon made of molten magma. She couldn’t harm it, it wasn’t solid, so she volleyed chunks of broken stones at him with her thick green tail. Again he was knocked aside, and again he rose without issue.
The magic inside of her flared hot like a brand, fueled by the fury and darkness she kept trapped inside. She closes the distance between them in an instant, pinning him with a foot even as he rained magma down on her. It burned away the scales where it landed, burned holes through those beautiful wings, but she had always loved this kind of pain, and she would heal. She roars at him again, her face inches from his, and still she cannot take his life. But a voice appears in her thoughts, Grumbles voice, and the blue bitch is blessedly silent. Kill him Malis, he’ll never love you like this. He will just want to change you. Do you want to be changed? The darkness in her is pure fury, pure resistance, and finally, finally, the emerald dragon reaches down and with teeth like knives, plucks the chamber kings head from his shoulders. But the moment those impassive eyes swallow the scene of the decapitated stallion, something inside her breaks. She forgets how to be cold, numb, forgets the blood lust that burns like a fever in her veins. There is light in the dark again, pure and wild and hotter than the sun, and she burns inside, burns until the dragon screams and becomes horse again. Until the horse screams, until her voice is gone and those green eyes are as hollow and empty as stone.
For one, nearly eternal moment, he feels as though he might break. As though his entire being might fracture into too many pieces to ever successfully rebuild. But then those cracks fuse abruptly back together, a surge of power infusing his mind and body, his very soul, bringing with it a storm of hellish fire. It subsides just as quickly as it had come however, collapsing in upon itself until it is only a quiet simmer in his veins.
For several seconds, he simply lays there, a crumpled heap slumped before the ghastly little creature that had done all this to him. But he is not allowed to remain for long. He is urged to his feet by the little man, his expression almost kind now as he strokes his nose with deceptive gentleness. As Shan stares at him with a blank gaze, he feels decidedly… odd. He does not hate nor fear his captor as he should. In fact, he cannot even find it within himself to wish him harm.
A frown tugs at his lips, though his scrambled, abused brain cannot quite grasp the thought that is trying to form inside his mind. He feels almost… protective towards this man. But no, that’s not right. Is it? It feels right. It feels… wrong? No, not wrong. Not wrong.
He shakes his head, trying to clear the ache that plagues him, trying to clear the torment that had broken it.
It doesn’t work, but still he tries. Whatever else he may be, he is true and steadfast. Even he wake of such torment, he cannot shake the need to stand strong against all threat.
To stand against what threatens Grumblesnakes.
Before the realization can sink in, he is being led away, down a long corridor to a set of heavy double doors. They open at their approach, leading into a vast expanse with a sandy floor. Rounded walls stretch out beside him, curving into the distance to form a large, intimidating coliseum. Inside the massive space is a number of odd creatures - frightening creatures. All seem vicious, rabid almost, though they appear to be magically restrained by halters or collars much like his. Were his mind not fogged with torture and false emotion, he might have noted the peculiarity of that.
As it is, he only knows one thing. He must fight.
Whatever state his mind is in, his body seems to know just what to do. The first creature is loosed against him, a hairy beast, all nail and tooth, snarling viciously as it lunges towards him. Acting on nearly pure instinct, Shannisoran shifts backwards, weight transferring to his haunches as one single thought crosses his mind: defend.
For a moment, he hesitates in surprise as a thick armor erupts from his skin, covering him from head to tail in a sturdy, protective surface. This hesitation, however, gives the slavering beast all the time it needs to leap upon him, extended claws and yellowing teeth sinking into the leathery scales of his hide. Shan grunts as he is shoved backwards. He uses the propulsion to dig his feet into the sandy surface beneath him, giving him the leverage he needs to launch forward into a might buck, head lowering as he does his best to dislodge the beast digging painfully into his armored skin.
After a long (rather embarrassing) moment of fruitlessly trying to dislodge the thing, it finally occurs to him that he might be able to do other things, aside from covering himself in a protective surface. And so he thinks spikes. With only the thought, several spikes erupt from his shoulder, effectively impaling the wolf-like creature. It releases him suddenly, giving a piteous yowl as he shakes it loose, retracting the bony skewers so that it falls to the ground as a pool of its own blood begins to spread around it.
He is given no time to ponder his first kill though, as another creature has already been set loose upon him. This one is a screaming half woman, half bird that takes to the sky, deadly looking talons outstretched. As she dives for him, Shan bursts into a gallop, driving full tilt for the opposite end of the arena. His armor melts back into his skin, so as to give him more freedom to run. He soon finds however, that that had been a mistake.
The harpy is much faster than he had anticipated, especially for such an ungainly looking creature. He flinches reflexively as a sharp screech sounds behind him, just before needle-like talons dig into his exposed flesh, ripping through flesh as easily as paper. Dropping his head, Shan digs his feet into the soft floor of the coliseum, sliding to an abrupt halt. The harpy, unprepared for the sudden stop, tumbles over his head with an indignant shriek.
With a viciousness he had not before realized he possesses, Shan leaps forward, claws reminiscent of the harpy’s replacing his hooves as fangs replace his blunt horse’s teeth. Pinning his ears, he charges to meet the beastly woman’s attack as she recovers and turns to him once more. As he does so, his scarred skin ripples, shifting into a molten silvery metal that flows with his movements but resists the penetration of claw or tooth. Only the recent cuts on his withers resist the transformation, causing a thin stream of blood to trickle across his slick skin.
The resulting scuffle is both terrible and fearsome, the clash of bodies and the slashing of fang and nail filling the air with awful screeching sounds and the wet squelch of rending flesh. In the end, the harpy lays dead at his feet, barely recognizable in her torn state. Blood drips from Shan’s mouth and feet, a testament to his own beastly behavior.
For a moment, the now silver stallion can only stare at the massacre in stunned silence. He is a warrior, certainly, but never have his actions been so… animalistic.
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) he is not given time to dwell upon this fact as his next opponent is loosed against him. This time it is a group of smaller, cackling creatures. Tiny hobgoblins that stare at him with intelligent black eyes and yellow, toothy grins. These little monsters are much more clever in their attack, making a concerted group effort, forcing him to fight on multiple fronts.
In the end however, they are no match for whatever hellish magic he has been infused with. Still, they had concentrated their efforts upon his already wounded back, resulting in a significantly larger and more painful wound. Even so, it is not enough, and soon they all too lay dead at his feet, having refused the give up their attack until all are dead to a man.
And Shan – he is tiring, growing weary from the constant attack upon him, wondering if this nightmare will ever end.
As metal stallion glances around, he looks up to find Grumblesnakes watching, an expression of intense concentration upon his features as he appears to consider the happenings in the arena. Unfortunately he seems in no mood to give a reprieve.
Suddenly a massive roar shakes the coliseum, causing Shan wheel around, ears flattening against his skull as that odd determination – that need to protect – fills him. There, broad wings flapping to keep its massive body aloft, is a dragon. A thing of monstrous size and appearance, with thick, glittering scales, a mouth full of teeth, and malevolent green eyes.
Without further warning, the huge beast opens its jaws and releases a bright stream of scorching flame. Shan’s metal body heats rapidly as he scrambles away, trying to escape that fire. With desperation, his skin ripples as scales reminiscent of the dragon’s replace molten metal, though the damage has already been done. He can feel the burns searing much of his body.
Gritting his teeth against the pain (it is nothing compared to his most recent torment), he eyes the creature warily from a safe distance, wondering how in the hell he is supposed to match a thing so monstrous. He is given no further time to consider this quandary however, as the dragon is tucking its wings and diving towards him, jaws agape as though it intends to eat him in one gulp.
Bursting forward, Shan uses the magic unashamedly to boost his speed, bolting past the much larger beast in a frantic attempt to escape. The next several minutes follow much the same pattern, the dragon chasing with fire or tooth and Shan fleeing as he tries in vain to formulate a plan of attack.
His mind, however, is terribly, horribly blank, any sort of plan eluding him in that moment. And so, when the dragon turns to attack once more, Shan does the only thing he can think of. The only thing his fevered brain can come up with: he barrels straight for him. As he runs, he thickens the scales covering his body, hoping they would protect from flame. The dragon snaps for him, and as he does, Shan leaps. He can feel the jaws close around him, feel the sharp sting of teeth biting into flesh and bone. And, in a desperation fueled last-ditch effort, he forces spike-like quills to burst from his skin. He releases them as the dragon snaps him up, shooting those reinforced pinions into the beast’s skull.
A sudden roar deafens him as the huge monster begins thrashing, sending Shan flying through the air. He does not have the presence of mind to attempt anything to cushion his fall, so he lands hard against the far wall before sliding into a crumpled heap upon the ground. The dragon is thrashing wildly, howling in agony as it dies. Slowly (so slowly) its movements begin to slow, its roars quieting until finally it lay still.
Shannisoran continues to lay where he had landed, breathing shallowly, each inhale sharp and painful. His body aches, torn and broken from his fall. Even if he wanted to rise, he is not entirely certain he could. He is quite sure that, in addition to several ribs, at least one of his legs is broken.
It seems though, that Grumblesnakes is finally satisfied, for no more creatures rise to confront him.
