• Logout
  • 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


    our hearts know deeper seasons than our memories; ALL
    #11
    V u l g a r i S
    He watches when Adria approaches, sage green eyes observing silently as she interrupts as he had only moments before. How funny, he thinks, that each of the girls’ parents had come to protect them. Perhaps neither of them were ready for any sort of leadership just yet then. The corners of his lips turn downward in a slight frown, but he doesn’t voice these thoughts for the time being. There is still much to unfold and he remains a patient listener while they take their turns unleashing anger. At her proposition of a duel, he can only shrug his broad gray shoulders. Whether or not the girls would fight was entirely up to them. He could never force his brood to violence.

    Vulgaris turns and watches his daughter speak again, her chin held high and her shoulders back to make herself heard. He’s pleased at how she holds herself and the way her words do not tremble despite her nerves. When Larke mentions Eva, he turns to her and tilts his head curiously. His child had done her best to usher in peace and civility and the nereids had spit in her face for it. But he holds back his anger and lets her finish by saying she desires no bloodshed and he had expected as much of his chosen heir. She had always preferred words over any other option given to her.

    It softens his heart and he begins to think that she may be happiest learning directly under him, back at home, then. He turns to mention this to Maleficar when a familiar face comes out of hiding to stomp his feet and shout. Vulgaris feels his right brow arch, the corners of his mouth curling into a grin while he lectures the king.

    You think I forget dying, Jakub? I burned in those fires and I rose from the dead for Leliana and for Tephra. You think you know the stories better than I, and for that you are a fool,” he says with his head held high. This was not the place or the time to explain the friendship he maintained with Wolfbane, he knows, and so he saves it all for now. “Stop puffing your chest and go home before you embarrass yourself further, boy. Maybe next time you’ll think with your head instead of your loins when you invite yourself to the adult table.

    He turns then, dismissive of anything else Jakub has to say as he watches the blue and white kelpie rise from the waves to join them. But Ivar mostly observes and offers only a simple question to Jakub. Vulgaris assumes he has little interest in the goings on and so he turns his attention to Eva as she begins her own lecture. She apologizes but he offers only a snort at the words. They mean so little to him now. But he listens to the rest of what she says, watches her soft heart force itself rigid to speak up and be heard just as Larke had. They would have made a wonderful duo, he thinks with some disappointment.

    He has no biting words for Eva as she finishes, but his expression has calmed to a more neutral tone. Aquaria speaks again and he wonders why she bothers. But perhaps that was why the group had begun to nominate Eva to rule instead of her? Vulgaris sighs and turns to his child once more.

    You did your best to find peace among their people, Larke. You should always hope for the best, as you did here, but it is important to also prepare for the worst,” he says as he gently bumps her cheek with his nose in reassurance. “I don’t want your heart to break any further, so find your brother and come home to the gardens. Meraki and Sabbath will be glad to have you back.

    He waits patiently as Maleficar finally moves from his position, the silent sentinel he has always preferred to be, and stands closer to the heart of the crowd now. Vulgaris had told him before leaving their home that a final offer may sound better coming from a more neutral party, were things to go sour.

    “I am Maleficar, guardian of Tephra and the western region. Larke will return home to us to learn how to lead. Eva will rule in her place as herd leader, as I assume that is what you all would prefer,” he says in his ever-gentle voice. His dark red eyes examine them all for a moment as he considers if he should mention the shifting balance of the kingdoms, but perhaps it will not come to darken their door. Perhaps only a simple offering and warning, then. “A storm is brewing in the east and to the south. If you find yourselves in trouble, the jungle will shelter those who seek it.”

    The witch has peered into the veil, but he makes no mention of what he has seen. He only turns and begins the journey back home while Vulgaris waits patiently for his children to join him. Once Chronos reveals himself from the foliage, he escorts them back to the mainland without another word. They had Loess and Pangea to face, now.
    In this shook-up, twisted world, I'm gradually growing transparent and vanishing
    Don’t look for me; don't look at me
    Reply
    #12

    out in the deep, I've seen something real
    the mouth of the void that the waves conceal

     Ischia is a strange place, a bizarre land where scattered islands and shallows provided warmth and food… gave unto life the pleasures of paradise and never allowed them the unkindness of the very hells lingering at the edge of their primitive and miniscule world. Still, they had needed only travel beyond the shallows to see the beginnings of it… to see the dark water and sand that sloped into perilous black. The lightless reaches were shadowed by shark and beasts unknown, by whales and leviathans beyond comprehension: grasping tentacles and beaks that preyed upon all manner of life. Otherworldly geometry built the corals and caves, and volcanic waters rippled near the vents… boiled even.

    This is where the sound first came, where the call of voices bled into the sea and carried out into the aphotic depths and beyond. And this? This was the problem, for sound carries further and faster beneath the waves and it rings louder than it existed on land, and within the graveyard of bones… a kraken had begun to stir.

    A singular barbell shaped iris flattened into a line as her eyes opened, and shortly thereafter the legs rose and tentacle slithered out as the pressurized depths bore upon her with little issue or hinderance. Yidhra, ancient and callous, moved through the vast emptiness of the depths: walked between whalebones and shark’s teeth, slithered across carcasses of rotting fish and porpoise. Corals and worms all shriveled as she moved through them and with a torrent of air jettisoned through her chitinous beak she laughed and chittered the razorsharp parts.

    From the blackest portion of the ocean she moved, graceful and bizarre, and her lungs heaved with water as she broke the surface and found herself dragged upon the shore. Black in color with patterns of white and gray varnished upon her… the porous and hairless skin glistened and dripped with water. A mass of writhing, countless tentacles lingered along her neck and another pair stretched from her shoulders… barbs and suckers visible beneath them. It was no surprise her tail was such as well, a mass of writhing and grasping appendages; but more worrying for some was that while portions looked akin to a horse…

    Yidhra was most certainly not.

    The Kraken’s face ended in tentacles as well, a mass which waves and bent and exposed the massive, sharp black beak that snapped and chattered as she drifted across the sands and through the land: as she peered with barbell irises at the gathered forms of others and languished in the chaos of the scene ahead.

    She had not heard the speeches prior, not recognized any faces more than two, but when she carries herself upward there is a sudden pulse in the air that carries with it a bizarre sound: laughter or something akin to clicking.

    “Pretty faces all gathered and in-place.”  she cooed, purred even, and her voice echoed in an impossible way as the accent that colored her words was well ancient and old.  “Such a thing to disturb an old slumbering beast.”

    She made no attempts to obfuscate the muscles that rippled beneath the skin, nor the rounded belly she carried with her: playful eyes made at Ivar when she passed but no more else. She lingered though, watching and listening- curious. 

    Yidhra
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)