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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    we are crooked souls trying to stand up straight; any
    #1
    there was a heaven in you
    but god, there’s a devil in me
    The fog has lifted.

    A once-king, hardened by life and the perils of gods and men, emerges from the shroud of disease and rot. The moon is red as if signifying the end, cascading him in the deep rust of what feels like a final era.

    But it was not the end - no, he could feel it now - for a pulsation now thrums differently within him than it did before. The disease had riddled him weak and withering, along with all of Beqanna herself, but the familiar steady beat of his heart now shifts - renewed, awakened, strengthened by...something. It was not the end as he had once thought; he had prepared to die, but his body healed inwardly and outwardly, and the hand of death passed over him. It wasn’t his time.

    Time.

    Time leaves the cobalt of his muzzle and the rims of his eyelids peppered with gray; it leaves a slowness in his step that is careful and cautious where there used to be spontaneity. He is different yet the same as he returns to the volcano that he would always call home, his wife by his side. The sickness is gone, and so he returns.

    They arrive quietly, just as morning cups the midnight sky with warm, orange fingers. Starlight still flickers gently, slowly tucking themselves away as dawn rides on the sweltering, salty wind. With a kiss to her bronzed cheek and then another (more tender, more private, against the pearl white of the delicate curve of her throat), the stallion makes his way through his familiar homeland, searching for the one he knew would still remain. A pillar and stronghold, Warrick knew it would not be long before Magnus came upon him.

    Dawn finally breaks as the night peels away, the golden sunlight appearing brighter than Warrick remembers. In the distance, the cry of gulls echo, while the smell of ash and salt and smoke permeate the air. The heaviness in the Tephran wind is enough to soothe the gentle ache in his bones, humid and moist against the soreness he feels in his joints from traveling. The great navy wings at his sides rustle softly as he so habitually attempts to smooth them, the darkness of his heavy forelock sweeping across his cerulean gaze that, despite the age that he wears so well, remain bright and almost youthful.

    The rising sun brings a new hope that the stallion can feel spreading in warm, golden tendrils across his back.  

    WARRICK
    #2
    I rise from my scars. nothing hurts me now.

    Once, she had been beckoned to Tephra—hastily called to a place where the King lay wracked with fever and disease, suffering from the heavy hand of fate and the sacrifice she had made. She had been a different woman then, quiet and determined and shy. Always the calm river next to her sister’s raging ocean, the deep and undisturbed waters despite whatever turmoil raged within her breast.

    She had made herself sick with her effort to heal Warrick.

    It had been the catalyst to her own trauma, to the moment by the river.

    But she does not feel such things now. She does not feel the fatigue any longer. It is such a distant thing that she can barely recognize it; she cannot even fathom the meaning of the word. She does not feel the sorrow or the fear or the confusion she felt when rising by the waters to the world come undone. She does not feel the worry over her own inadequacies as she pitted her healing against Carnage’s magic.

    She feels little of anything, although there are constellations beginning to burn within her. Heavens that come undone—crooking a finger at her and drawing her forth down the path that unwinds slowly.

    Perhaps this is just another step.

    She walks toward him, her steps direct, her eyes burning golden—pupiless and ethereal where once there had been but hazel. When she is near, her wings rest crimson along her back, lovely face impassive. “It has been some time, Warrick.” Even this is different, her lovely voice the same and yet somehow an echo of itself, resounding in her throat on different vibrations. “I am glad to know you survived.”

    She is, she thinks, although it is a more disconnected gladness than she might once have felt. There is no connection, nothing that makes her feel personally involved in the moment.

    Still, she regards him kindly, if not distantly.

    For a second, she angles her head toward the center of Tephra.

    “Magnus is further inland, if you’d like for me to fetch him. I believe he is with his newest child.” There is a twinge at that, a ripple of emotion at the thought of Chronos and Larke, but it is flooded by the magic that runs through her veins and before she can even contemplate it, the power swallows it whole.



    @[Warrick]
    #3
    there was a heaven in you
    but god, there’s a devil in me
    With the rising of the sun came an all too familiar face. Deep ocean colored eyes turn to her - Leliana - but, with a small squint, he quickly notes that it is not Leliana.

    Not exactly, anyway.

    The quiet healer he remembers is before him, but is not the same type of quiet. Stoic almost, and still - like there was something grumbling beneath the surface, too powerful and too precious to waste on many words. There had been some kind of shift in her being and it radiates before him tenfold. She appears different too - glowing, nearly. Her eyes draw him in and his gaze locks there unwaveringly with a gentle snort.

    “Leliana.”

    He says her name soft and evenly on the dawn’s air, his tone of voice one of solidarity brimming with a blossoming curiosity. He is no stranger to magic, despite his lack of it. His wings shuffle, the lingering scent of Hyaline’s wistera on their feathers. “You are not the same,” he comments mildly as his gaze then shifts to the distant volcano. Good. “No one should stay as they once were.”

    Warrick allows a comfortable silence to grow between them, a small smirk twitching onto the mottled cobalt and gray of his mouth. Welcoming new life despite the plague warms his heart, as his own children were the light of his life. Warrick’s mind flickers to them - of Marble and Sibyl, of wayward Warden, and his family in Hyaline. His smiles settles into a thin line at the thought of his ivory-faced son, but he is quickly pulled from his reverie as another thought comes into his mind.

    “We’ve survived.” A pause, with the slight tilt of his chin upward while a single navy-tipped ear trains in Leliana’s direction. “What shall we do with that gift?”

    WARRICK


    @[leliana]
    svedka - balto - warden - molech - sunlight
    olena - skandar - starlight - burdock - bluebell - ciroc - maylene
    #4
    I rise from my scars. nothing hurts me now.

    Warrick is—has always been—a calming force. There is something about him that reminds of her of Magnus in that paternal presence but where Magnus burned with indignation, taking up the fury of her cause like dry kindling, Warrick has a gravity to him. It is a calming presence and the burning star in her chest softens, if even slightly. The glow of her golden eyes still burn, but the light is slightly dimmer, the look more thoughtful as she considers him, as she focuses on the feel of the wind on her back.

    It is the first time someone has asked her that question. The first time someone engaged her in a true conversation about her newfound gifts—who sought to understand her. Others have been reverent, or fearful, or even glad to pick up the sword by her side. But he does nothing—at least not at first. Instead he talks to her like she is still Leliana. Like she is still the calm healer who walked these lands as a child.

    It is enough to quiet her.

    She presses her lips together and angles her head toward the border, to where Loess sits in the back. She can practically feel it vibrating in her—the fires banking against her chest—but she is able to keep it calm in his presence. “I was held captive during the plague in Loess,” she says, her voice even and without emotion—as if describing the weather. “Alongside other healers.” She swallows, thinking about her time in those caves; those times where she raised her daughters in the darkness, ignoring the fear within her.

    “I have given them an ultimatum: they can release everyone they still hold captive and try to reverse their wrongs, or…” her voice breaks off as a frown runs like a shadow across her features. “Or war.”

    It feels odd on her tongue, her peacemakers mouth still learning the heaviness of the syllables.

    But it still settles across her shoulders and she straightens, bringing her gaze back for his reaction.



    @[Warrick]
    #5
    there was a heaven in you
    but god, there’s a devil in me
    He’s still staring out into the distance - where the shadowy line of the horizon wavers and crinkles with the far-away ocean’s waves dance - but he can still feel the abounding presence that is Leliana at his side. Even though she remains still beside him, there is a force that demands his attention; a force that naturally commands the air around them, nearly vibrating between the two. The peppered cobalt of his lips twitch idly, shifting his weight and flicking the dark tendrils of his tail against his ankles.

    A captive?

    The one ear trained on Leliana now falls into the heaviness of his mane, accompanied by the other. His brow furrows unhappily, a sharp snort leaving him in distaste. Loess had always been a neutral land (of course, back when he was King), though he is not surprised that the characters that lived in the hilly kingdom would stoop so low as to keep healers against their will for their own benefit. The anger on his face is clear - sharp and brooding, rippling through the planes of his worn face and settling into the tightness of his shoulders.

    “Or war.”

    Warrick’s demeanor does not change - he does not balk at the idea, nor does he attempt to change her mind. Neither does he take up arms and become elated at the thought of battle.

    Unwavering, never-changing, is Warrick.

    “I pray Loess does not choose unwisely.” His gaze shifts now - clear, crystal blue meeting the brazen, mesmerizing gold of her irises. It would be unwise, to challenge her. Once feeble and gentle, now stands strength and magic - a queen. “I fear, however, that it will be inevitable.” Warrick holds her gaze for a moment more - peering somewhat studiously as if trying to discover what fueled the molten glow in her eyes - then peels away to look out over Tephra once more. “I’ve come to help, Leliana, in whatever way that is needed so that Beqanna can be at peace once again.”

    He glances towards her with a slight raise of his brows. “Whatever it takes.”

    WARRICK


    @[leliana]




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