"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
you can run but you can't hide breath on your skin, I've arrived
The flash of black and red warns her she is no longer alone. It’s simple enough to shrink in on herself, to assume the guise she’d borrowed from Lilliana. The memories she’d plucked from her sight. So it would come as no surprise then, that as they flash across her mind, she might choose to turn and flee.
Of course, the looming spectre of Wolfbane is also quite helpful, in it’s own way. He had found her, and ultimately that had been her goal here.
Besides, this encounter would be better served without an audience. At least for now.
So she runs. Anyone who knew Heartfire would have no memory or even inclination to believe that she might flee any scene, much less this one. And certainly it leaves no inkling that there is another woman beneath the pretty copper illusion. Unless, of course, one has mind reading. But she is nothing if not well-informed.
As she disappears deep into the meadow, a faint curl of satisfaction replaces the violent visual of Lilliana’s first encounter with Draco. She rather hoped he’d choke on it.
Where others would find her impossible to follow, somehow slipping from their sight at one point or another, Wolfbane would find her alarmingly easy to track. Were he in his right mind, Heartfire has no doubt he might have noticed how she never seemed to leave his sight. But now? She suspects that there are only a few things he would find compelling anymore.
Slowing abruptly, she turns to face him. She doesn’t reveal herself just yet, allowing him to believe, for a little while longer at least, that she is nothing more than his frightened obsession. Allowing him to firmly tie the knots of his own noose.
Always running from him, Lilliana shot away from Wolfbane and darted off into the safety of the mountain where he quickly followed. The pursuit excited him as it always did; Bane wasn’t one to avoid a challenge and his arrogant, prideful nature spurred him further and further away from Pangea, when he should’ve paused to assess why Lilliana was being allowed to leave at all. If he’d stopped for just one second to evaluate the circumstances, Bane might’ve known better, but as a creature of wants and desires he didn’t. He was lustful and blinded by the recent success of a season’s-worth of terrorizing the colonies.
Under the shadow of the mountain, he paced behind the illusioned Lilliana and wove expertly through and over the tightly clustered saplings or fallen debris. The sound of their going was rhythmic, a pleasant tempo of thundering hooves and the snorting gusts of wind they took while running. Lilli, having already shown Bane what she was capable of before this moment, surprised him often. The brawny, wingless stallion had been surprised to see her taken to the shelter of the wood, but not too surprised. He’d been forced down onto the ground out of necessity, and though he could alter his shape and certainly catch up with her in an instant, if he wished, the creature (again) defaulted to believing himself wholly capable of doing that on hoof.
He liked the idea that his chasing her the slow way would draw out her terror.
So when she burst free from the foothills of the mountain and wove her way down into the overgrown meadow, so did Bane. He whipped out from the trees, glistening gold and blue, while the recognizable mane that grew along his spine and flared out into a streaming, white tail shivered in the wind. He never broke stride - he didn’t need to. Lilliana appeared to have accepted that he wouldn’t give up the chase, and he watched the fiery mare with a smug look of delight. With his mask he appeared almost sinister, even in the dreamy haze of the meadow’s evening light.
They stopped. The sunlight gave an illusion of glowing fire over the sea of waving grass that engulfed them both. Wolfbane sunk his hips and dug his hooves into the earth, skidding to a high-stepping trot as he shook his striped, thick neck and grinned triumphantly at the appearance of his quarry waiting for him just a few meters away. Lilliana looked … thin. Beautiful, alluring, mesmerizing yes. But thin, and not as round as he’d hoped she’d be this late into the season. That alone was nearly enough to smother his pleased expression, but he blew gusts of wind out from his wide, dark nostrils and did his best to swallow back the disappointment.
There would always be next season.
“If you wanted us to be alone, you could’ve just said so darling.” The charmer smiled, slowing his pace even further until he was striding confidently through the soft meadow. “But I admit the theatrics were nice. I’ve been needing a good reason to stretch these legs.”
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Normal, wingless ◉ Mood: Amused
@[Heartfire] bad boy bad boy, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when Heartfire come for yoooou?
you can run but you can't hide breath on your skin, I've arrived
He is arrogant in his approach. She can't truly fault him, he had come by it honestly (she is not so arrogant herself as to believe it wasn't part and parcel of her and Wyrm's relationship, and by virtue, their descendants). He is certainly powerful. But he seems to have forgotten that power in and of itself is not enough. Especially if he does not use it intelligently.
After all, there is always someone more powerful. Only a fool would believe themselves untouchable. And it had become abundantly clear that Wolfbane had slipped well over that line.
As he steps forward, knees lifting to demonstrate his delight, she makes no move beyond lifting her had, gaze locking on to him with an iron certainty. His tone are charming as he greets Lilliana, dropping honey-sweet of the bitter glee of the words beneath.
It's rather unfortunate it would never last. Perhaps she could act convincingly enough to fool a stranger, but she is feeling too sharply disapproving to pretend at fooling Wolfbane longer than a single sentence.
"Is that so?" she replies with a cool cordiality, chestnut features tilting slightly. After a moment, one corner of her lips lifts into the faintest of smiles. "If that's the case, consider this a summons."
06-07-2020, 04:56 PM (This post was last modified: 06-07-2020, 04:57 PM by Wolfbane.)
I believe I'd die if I only could
I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good
Doubt crept into his mind the moment Lilliana lifted her head in certain defiance. Wolfbane slammed his hooves into the ground and stopped, instantly. Dust plumed up around him like a pale, hazy veil of smoke, and his grin fell flat. Lilli - his Lilli - had tried several times already to imitate what Heartfire knew beyond a doubt. That she could stop him, in an instant. End him. Forever. But the difference between his Lilli and this Lilliana is as clear as night and day, which Wolfbane knew in one look.
“You’re supposed to be dead.” Wolfbane replied to Heartfire’s chilling statement, his own chipper attitude suddenly dissolved. He didn’t move an inch, though the sea of earthy stems and grasses around them waved and caressed their skin. Heartfire stood out as a gleaming, red-gold goddess. Perfectly imperfect to Wolfbane’s eye. He, on the other hand, nearly blended into the waving, golden tresses. If it weren’t for the dark slashes and stripes across his pelt, he’d nearly blend. Further out the sea of wheat turned into verdant green, shorter and trampled by hungry vagabonds.
Behind them, the safety and dark security of the forest lay a few dozen lengths away. Wolfbane wondered if the stories of his grandmere’s wave of destruction on Icicle isle were true; he speculated how large a hole she could blow before sacrificing the few other straggling horses out here.
Could he make that far in time?
“You’ve got my attention.” Her descendant flicked his ears back, suppressing a hard-edged grin. “What is it you want?”
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Normal, wingless ◉ Mood: Amused
you can run but you can't hide breath on your skin, I've arrived
The way he breaks so abruptly, dust billowing around him in the haste of his forced halt, tells her that some inkling of the truth had finally seeped past the brute determination of the chase. What Lilli had tried to imitate comes with such unconscious ease to the costumed woman that trying to temper it in an effort to lure him away had been a trial in itself. But she makes no more pretense at the much more coy mask of the red woman, instead allowing the illusion to fall away in his eyes.
She becomes once again the refined woman of dusky pewter and laced white, slim and hardly imposing were it not for the sharp blue of her unmistakable gaze.
“And since when have you fallen victim to rumors of supposed death?” she retorts, her voice as composed as her features. She doesn’t wait for response though, instead continuing smoothly. “I had thought better of you, but it appears I was mistaken.”
Tilting her head slightly, she eyes him quite openly. Though nothing in the language of her body would indicate it, there is a challenge in the silence that she weaponizes. A dare, as it were.
But he already knows who has the faster draw.
Of course, she has no intentions of actually harming him. Not today at least. The point of this meeting was not to engage in some pointless power struggle. It had been designed merely to demonstrate what he had clearly forgotten: that he is far more vulnerable than he has fooled himself into believing.
When he declares that she has his attention with a hard grin, she returns it with a faint tilt of her own lips. Not the softer smile she might once have favored him with, but rather the one reserved for those who had tested her and proven themselves lacking. “Good,” she replies easily, a note of finality in her tone. “I have what I want for now. But unless you wish to change that, I advise you temper yourself. Because if you do not, I can assure you of two things: one, you are very easy to locate, and two, not all of my faces are so easily discerned as Lilliana’s.”
No doubt it would not take long for exhaustion to set in if he had to peer at every face he passed with suspicion.
Wolfbane felt annoyed at this little wrench in his plans. Heartfire was back from the netherrealm, coming to haunt him and ingress on his life as she always did. From the first time they’d met in Loess, Bane knew he’d have trouble shaking her off and he’d struggled openly with the distrust that came side-by-side with the desire to have Heartfire in his future. He’d never truthfully wanted her at all; Beqanna’s horses had a way about them concerning their ancestors, throwing names around for clout, but Bane had always considered himself to be self-made. He needed nothing from his forefathers and when the seer had shown up on the doorstep of his kingdom, eyeing him in that particular way she did now, Wolfbane had wanted her dead and gone as much as he ever had.
Only, back then he’d been torn asunder from having a conscious heart. The part of himself that was better than his fathers before him (hah!) had longed for connection she could provide and, secretly, for the love he’d been looking for ever since he was a child. Heartfire was the final living thread to his own sire, and back then he would’ve been sick to hear what she was saying right now.
But he only laughs at her. She’s here to chastise him, then? Because if not, he’d already be dead.
Though, as he studies her and his bright humor dwindles, Wolfbane begins to see that she’s not incapable of killing him. He wonders what it is that keeps her from doing so, and then wonders idly what it was that he did to push her so far as to want him dead. Right now Bane can’t fathom that it’s merely a power check. He thinks it's got to do with Neverwhere, or something. “Oh, I see.” He responds casually once she’s finished. “Yes, sure, of course. Whatever you say, Heartfire.” The gilded stallion nodded his masked face, infinitely disappointed.
None of this was about anything, then. Just that she’d been keeping an eye on him. He understood now why Wyrm had done what he did, ripping his own eyes out, but the combined group of voices in his head had hammered out other, more practical ways to keep Heartfire from discerning what he was seeing. His daughter Eyas had taught him to think outside of the box long before she tried to hide herself and those secrets with her.
But Heartfire doesn’t know this. “I know my actions have been… undesirable in your eyes, but it really is so good to see you, Grandmere.” Wolfbane gave her tentative smile, and his eyes locked with hers. In his thoughts: Lilliana’s weeping sounded fresh, Neverwhere’s angry screams rang in his ears, and Lepis’ cries of mercy twisted his lips into a darker grin.
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Normal, wingless ◉ Mood: Amused
you can run but you can't hide breath on your skin, I've arrived
She isn’t fool enough to believe that, in his state of mind, her censure would hold great weight. But it is not censure she is here to deliver. Rather it’s a promise. One he seems too lost in his psychosis to have understood. Perhaps her expectations are too high, but chastisement is not the result of failure. At least, not when it concerns the blue and white mare.
“Whatever I say, hm?” she replies thoughtfully to his mocking agreement, the subtle sharpness of her features remaining unchanging despite the clear evidence he did not take her seriously. Between one breath the next, less than a blink even, chill fingers run along his spine, erasing all evidence that even a tuft of hair had only moments earlier stood proudly erect from his nape.
“How quickly can you run, Wolfbane?” she continues, her tone disarmingly friendly even as the volume drops. “Or is it you think you could have your teeth at my throat more quickly than I could rip them from your mouth?”
She gives him a moment then, to consider the consequences. To consider his response. She cannot know his thoughts, but she does rather hope he’ll use his memories. Still, she cannot help but think that both he had Wyrm may share the same fatal mistakes. After all, Wyrm too had assumed she needed his eyes to find him. But his eyes should have been the very least of his concerns (something Eyas would no doubt one day learn, but she is young yet).
“If it were only undesirable, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Which you know as well as I do, or you wouldn’t have said anything. She does smile then, briefly, but nevertheless true. “My presence here is meant as a kindness, for the kinship you are choosing to spurn. But you must know it is the only one I’ll offer. Don’t waste it.”
heartfire
Please let me know if this isn't ok! I can definitely change it
![[Image: Wolfbane2.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/601918740845559818/696502662816071770/Wolfbane2.png)
![[Image: 3bCHvj.png]](https://img.nickpic.host/3bCHvj.png)