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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


    [open]  And they lived happily ever after, The End. / Lepis /
    #11
    Wrath occupied his mind from the moment he woke. Wrath, and the scent of smoke hanging in the air. For a moment, the pale stallion lifted his head to the wind, eyes slit uncertainly, draconic sight bleaching the landscape down to its warmth and cold. Oh, and there was far more warmth than there should have been. 

    The horizon bled in shades of crimson and gold. Tongues of flame licked the sky, and Santana watched the home of his friend, of her family, burn. 

    Heavy wings flung out by his sides, as the scaled stallion threw himself at the sky. Fire burned within his own breast, the embers of anger threatening to shred the equine skin, to exchange it for other, more lethal garb. Control was a hard won thing though, and he held onto it with an iron grip while the landscape melted beneath him. 

    All was burning brightly, filling his sight with brilliant ribbons of light. Ribbons that twisted and threaded before him, weaving a pathway that drew him onward. Hot white gave way to paler warmth, figures that shifted and melded with the heat until his eyes gave up their strange effect, leaving blackened carnage and torn earth in all its miserable glory. 

    It would break Eyas heart.

    A cluster of oddities gathered in the heart of things, horses in odd shapes and sizes that gathered with palpable tensions in their lines. Oh but he could smell the smoke in his lungs, the fire in his brain. And he could see the tinder in another's throat. A roar of feral predation ripped through his maw, talons erupting from his forelegs as he fell from the sky. 

    Spiraled to the smoldering earth. 

    Fell upon the horn-faced dragon who burned the land.
    #12

    Something stirs in his chest. A dull sound echoes in his silver ears and there is no need to chase away the bleariness from his blue-eyed gaze. In all his years, in all the places he's been, Tarian still remembers an early lesson. Always be alert. Always be listening. Always be ready. A roar stirs to life all those great Guardians of the past, all the warriors of Old that blow in his blood.

    His proud head had picked up and then his hooves had carried him towards the rumble that shook Loess instead of away. Horses ran past him, taking blurred shapes that raced past him. The pegasus tucked his wings tightly against his sides and once he found a space wide enough (without rushing horses or prickly cacti), the silver stallion leaped into the air and spread his wings. He pumped them furiously, gaining altitude as quickly as he could.

    What he could see lasted only moments. The land caught flame but Tarian - who had seen battles and fights before - had never seen anything like this. How quickly the fires spread, how fast the flames climbed, and clamored over everything. For the unfortunate few below, he did what he could to find alternate paths to safety. But even that was futile because he became a gray shadow and his noble white coat became marred with soot and the stallion slowly reclaimed the color he had been born with. With each wingstroke, with each way he would turn or try to change his course, the almost-white stallion became a duller, dirty gray.

    His eyes are burning with the smoke and he knows that he can't keep this up for much longer. For as much as he wanted to help the few still behind him, the wind altered its direction and blew ash into his eyes. With each inhale, it coated his throat and threatened to turn his lungs to char. As the wildfires claimed Loess, Tarian turned his eyes to the epicenter of it all. He'd known that Lepis would be there. The Monarch who defended her own borders with such determination wouldn't be anywhere else, he thinks.

    And he's right because amidst all the horses that he can see through the haze of smoke is Lepis. She is most distinguishable with her navy stripes and cream-colored wings. He doesn't think that she would need defending but he had once belonged to an Order and there will always be the call in his veins to protect. This is not that time or that place but Tarian transplants it to Loess like it could have been.

    He catches a name when he lands on the ground, hard with his wings splaying out. The brute - the threat? - lays on the ground but he spits out a name that catches Tarian's ears. (He doesn't wonder about it long; that name is common and the gray stallion has long assumed that she would have found her golden cousin. There was never one without the other and he used to think that the pair of them would have led themselves off the edge of a map somewhere.) 

    Tarian makes no preamble to add to the conversation. He has nothing to say; this might not be his fight but there are flames dancing across a wasteland where there had been a thriving kingdom hours before. There are innocents rushing and bleeding on the dusty ground. The dappled mare isn't worth his time, he quickly decides and the other - the Dragon - makes his lip curl in open disgust. A fire-breather. 

    The towering beast flares his wings at the striped pegasus doubled in the dirt, where Tarian's blue-eyed gaze flickers for only a moment, and then the sky falls down on them.

    He didn't think. What he did next, he would have done in the lifetime before or the one that might come after. In the chaos that ensued, Tarian did what the knights of old had done: he moved to defend the Queen.

    Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
    which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.

    #13
    l e p i s
    gave me the blues and then purple pink skies
    The silence that rises between them feels heavy, weighted by the manifold years since she last seen at the fanged creature in front of her. There are subtle differences between that fierce young king and this killer in his prime, and Lepis finds that the lines of maturity and age have only made him more handsome. Is that the Curse, she wonders, or the part of her heart that still remembers what it felt like to have him look at her with love in those olive-green eyes?

    It doesn’t matter.

    There is a click of hoof on stone, and the window for action grows narrower. Lepis doesn’t dare take her eyes from Wolfbane, but a gust of hot wind brings the smell of Nerine and Neverwhere, who comes to stand beside Lepis. The dun mare does not seem to acknowledge the other, but at her arrival Lepis glances over her own shoulder, toward the roaring that grows ever closer

    The window grows narrower still.

    A body appears in the sand at Neverwhere’s feet. Wolfbane’s body, but summoned and seemingly controlled by the bald-faced mare. That’s been a well-kept secret, Lepis thinks. Her sources still claim the Nerenian leader is scornful of Beqanna’s magics. But the dapple mare seems to know what she is doing, and whatever it is incenses the real Wolfbane, who pulls himself to his feet faster than she had expected. Wolfbane seems taken aback by the smoke the rises behind the two mares, or perhaps it is at the arrival of the eyeless dragon.

    The roar of fire behind her announces that the window is nearly shut.

    Everything happens so quickly.

    A pale dragon falls from the sky toward Santana, a white mare with a navy mane and too many sharp teeth barrels down a canyon toward them, the grey stallion that had stood as unobtrusively as a shadow beside her moves instead to separate her from the chaos. “Don’t kill him!” She shouts over the roar of the flames and the feathered wing in front of her. “Don’t, kill him, I have to. It’s a curse, it has to be me, it has to be me to do it.”

    She’d not wanted an audience.

    They’d have been able to do it alone, she thinks, to put down the patriarch of the family as private family matter. What she wants no longer matters, she thinks as she coughs through the acrid smoke. Her eyes sting, but the flames are still some distance away.

    “Let me…” She feints left than goes right, hoping that their recent acquaintance might not yet have Tarian realizing she is not the type to run into danger. Wolfbane is lunging for Ghaul, and Lepis’s dark hooves beat down on his left leg, unbalancing him and forcing him back down to the earth. Something slams into the side of her head. She’d forgotten to take the wings into account, having never been an outstanding warrior, and as Wolfbane falls his left wing fell with him. A little dazed, she stumbles to the side and begins to fall.



    @[party]
    n | l
    #14

    Lilliana was right, he says, and her ears flick the words away, words that die in his mouth before he can get to the part that was supposed to insult her. She can understand his confusion, he didn't know she could do this. To be fair, she didn't know, either. Not until recently when her unpracticed magic had glitched and stolen Lilli's echoes. Surprise.

    The duplicate grunts beneath her blow, and it bleeds, but it heals itself, and seeing the flesh knit together again catches the dappled mare's breath in her throat. She had almost expected it to fail, but she remembers her lesson with Lilliana.

    You better kill me this time.

    "You'll be able to now." The smoke makes her growled whisper to Lepis even rougher, "As long as this exists," She gestures at the duplicate that is climbing to its feet to stand slightly behind her, "as long as I can hold it, he can't heal himself."

    There's no time for anything further. Everybody appears on the scene at once, Ghaul, wreathed in smoke, a dragon falling from the sky, the proud grey pegasus. Hooves clatter and proclaim the arrival of another, while Wolfbane throws himself at the scaled Pangean king. Neverwhere draws back a pace, and her scarred flank presses against the duplicate - the skin of the false Bane makes her skin crawl as much as that of the cursed stallion himself.

    Back, she urges it. Away from the fighting and the fire where she can focus on maintaining its shape while the battle rages on. Back, to where she can study that serious, silver, stallion, and compare him to the memory of Lilli's vision. What had been his name? It was so close to Pteron that she could remember nothing else and shakes her head, frustrated.

    More trouble than a simple assassination is birthing itself here today.



    Please feel free to skip Nev going forward if you want, she plans to do exactly zero fighting if it can be avoided and is mainly focusing on preventing Bane from healing Smile
    #15
    GHAUL
    And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire
    He is the guillotine where all lives meet their equal end, kings and paupers alike. Ghaul is thrilled when Wolfbane disregards the warning Neverwhere gives and charges toward the dragon king. But another is diving face first for Ghaul and he grins with all his crooked teeth as he draws a deep breath. The northern queen was not the only one keeping secrets.

    He spreads his jaws wide and, instead of fire, a beam of perfect white light erupts from his throat. Ghaul had learned that even their scales burned like autumn leaves when faced against his rays. Well, perhaps it would be better to say Yadigar had learned this. But he doesn’t wait to see if the dragon takes a blow to the face or if he dodges. There are more pressing matters at hand.

    Lepis stumbles and there is a glimmer of mercy that finds its way to the surface of Ghaul’s mind. Their deal is not complete if she does not have her lover’s head. He flaps his wings to propel him forward and beside Lepis, tucking one wing around her and pulling her against him to keep her upright.

    You may die when our business is done and not a moment sooner,” he snarls, his teeth snapping near her face despite his protective stance. “I will pluck his wings so they do not harm you again.

    He releases her then, watching the blur of her outline against the backdrop of flames growing ever higher around them. It would be easiest to devour Wolfbane’s throat but he heeds the Loessian queen’s words despite his better judgment. Ghaul rushes forward for Wolfbane and ducks right, sinking his teeth into his brilliant white wing as he begins to thrash. Without the cursed stallion’s healing to aid him, the limb comes loose with a pop. Ghaul plants his left talon against Bane’s ribs and pushes off from him to free the wing completely. But he must live, sadly, and so the monster king breathes a plume of fire to cauterize the remaining stump.

    He tosses his head and flings the limp wing into the fires. It would have made a handsome trophy in his nest, but he has no time for souvenirs.

    Finish him!” he commands her, baring his teeth.
    #16

    I've got you deep in the heart of me

    -So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me-

    She would be be too late.

    Eyas beat her slender, dark wings against a blackening sky and tucked her forelegs closer to her belly, stretching her body as thin as it could possibly go. The pegasus mare was hellbent on a mission, aimed for Loess, flying as fast as she could manage toward the growing plumes of smoke rising from the Kingdom. High above the world, Eyas couldn’t make out the landscape until she dipped lower. Then she saw them - horses fleeing the growing wildfires, animals scurrying or flapping away from where the smoke was darkest.

    Eyas drew up and hovered expertly, letting her hind legs hang loosely beneath her while she contemplated and tapped into her magic. With her third eye open, the little witch could make out a hazy vision through the ash and fire, but it was useless. She couldn’t make out any identifying landmarks, but she could see Wolfbane and what was happening to him in the fray of utter chaos. Frustrated, Eyas snapped her magical eye shut and pumped her wings harder, rising up into the air again on a blind whim of feeling.

    A dragon’s roar cut through the crackling and rumbling, sharp as iron and hot as flame itself. The buckskin mare halted, fluttering sideways with a look of incredulous disbelief as she witnessed a creature appear out of the din and heavy smoke. His wings were massive and blotted out the sky, and when he beat them against his sides, he dragged the ash and heavy clouds of oily darkness along with them. The sky itself looking like it was rolling around his huge, mythical form, and Eyas - no longer confused about where she should be flying - straightened herself out to head directly at the colossal creature. She had left @[Santana] without a word months ago, but right now she could kiss the dragon-shifter for his help.

    Plunging into a wall of cinders, Eyas choked a bit and pushed herself on. There was nothing to see through the black fog, only the occasional bird flying in the opposite direction, and her ears were filled with the sounds of crackling, popping and hissing. This Loess was a place of nightmares, and just when Eyas thought she might not be able to push through, the sound of scuffling and Ghaul’s cry of “Finish him!” had her landing, galloping blindly ahead.

    “Wait!” She screamed, clattering through the gorge and past Neverwhere, crouched alone far off from the rest. “Mother!” Eyas called out to her dam and skidded, stopping. Breathlessly she huffed, looking forward to see Ghaul with his teeth bared, looming over the beaten and barely-moving figure of Wolfbane.

    Her ears fell back and she turned to Lepis, at her side in an instant. “There’s another way.” The little witch tucked her wings in and looked up to her mother, both eyes sparkling like onyx gems, “I know…” words failed her, but she swallowed and tried again, “I know how we can remove the curse. It’s a chance - but I’ll leave it up to you.” Eyas blinked away the smoke and coughed, turning her head aside.

    The audience around them might think otherwise, and maybe Lepis herself thought Bane should die, but Eyas had seen her parents fighting in a vision and left the meadow to fly here just to give Lepis a choice. Gathering herself, Eyas looked down again to where Wolfbane lay in the bloody grime of his defeat and she waited for the moment of satisfaction to come. It was done, really. One way or another, Bane was subdued and the final moment of his demise was upon him; Eyas had made it in time.

    Why, she wondered to herself, did she feel so empty?

    EYAS



    This substitutes a Bane reply. You can imagine he's all "ouch, pain, noooo" while being charred and stuff.
    ► Powerplay Me : Powers (any)
    #17
    The air was chokingly hot, wavering along the lines of every solid line. Soon it would be too much for the equids who were not born to survive it, and might grow uncomfortable even for those who were. 

    More reptile than horse now, Santana had fallen quickly once the twisted creature who'd set the blaze had aimed his track of light at the descending drake. Tana had spun away far enough to avoid a face full of the hot beam, but it had struck him between shoulder and wing in a glancing slice. Just as well that he was already landing. 

    Hackles rose when the grim thing darted to Lepis' side, hissed words into her ears and spun away again to maim the weakened Wolfbane. This was Eyas family being burned. Her tormented kin, destroying each other in the furnace that was once a home to many. The pale dragon arched to the instigator, the draconic stallion who seemed able to see perfectly well despite his disfigurement. 

    One heavy clawed forleg swept out to bat at the scaly man's side, maw opened in a crocodile grin. "You've done your part, and more from the looks of things." The words rumbled out, blending with crackle of fire in their ears. "Now stand down, Beast. This is his family's business, not yours." One ear twisted backward. 

    A tone he recognized flit through the air. Eyas, he was sure, but would not take his eyes from the Burner to confirm. He hoped it was her, and that some margin of misery could be spared for this family that had experienced so much of it already.
    #18
    l e p i s
    gave me the blues and then purple pink skies
    There are stars over Loess now.

    They turn into embers when Ghaul catches her, the sense knocked out of her by Wolfbane’s wing blow return by the uncomfortable pushed abruptly back in. She coughs, chokes, struggles to catch her breath, and by the time she can see from her smoke-filled eyes, the scene in front of her is very different. Only a few seconds have passed, yet the world seems different.

    Wolfbane lays bleeding on the earth, a burn-red stump on his side rather than a white wing.

    Eyas – her Eyas? – is lunging toward them and Gale – her Gale? No an older Gale – stands in flared-wing support beside the white dragon, a living barrier between her family and the fire.

    Wolfbane is only a single stride away. She could leap, now, and finish this. A second leap will carry her into the fire, and with her the Curse.
    Two jumps, and the world will be safe.
    That is a certainty.

    What Eyas offers is a chance, and Lepis’ blue eyes meet her daughter’s black ones.

    Lepis had taught their children to trust in sure things. It was their father who’d encouraged them to strive for the impossible, who’d taught them to hope.

    [Do it] She says without words to Eyas, her voice too hoarse from coughing to make a sound. [Do it now]

    It seems Wolfbane had taught Lepis to hope as well.



    @[idk everybody]
    n | l
    #19

    The smoke in the air makes it hard to see (and even harder to breathe) but the silver stallion retains enough control that sets this expression into stone. A strong set of angles and planes that turns Tarian's face into marble, like some classical sculpture that the ancient Greeks or Romans might have praised. When he moves in defense of Lepis, it seems as if the whole world implodes in on them.

    There is too much to take account of. His mind had honed in on Lepis and Tarian had acted like the weapon he had been named for - a Shield. She had moved to the left before pivoting to the right and when the bulk of the silver pegasus weight banked to follow her sudden movement, the Fire-Breather descended wrapping a scaled wing around her. He hadn't been quick enough to lean in with his own support but the stallion snarls in response at the Scaled One's closeness, descending from a deep and inherent trust of dragons that has been bred into him.

    It lends color to his filthy face and where Tarian hadn't been fast enough to act, he is quick enough to make a sound. Deep and guttural, a growl escapes his dark labrums. The flames build higher all around them - the makings of a pyre - taking on the orange-red hues of autumn and dying days in an eerie glow. There is shouting; 'Finish him!' 'Wait!' screams another as she and another pegasus come soaring in. Another dragon rumbles. The dappled mare retains her distance, in the haze, somewhere.

    And then the body of a dying stallion lays on the ground, blood painting him red rather than gold.

    Straining to listen for more, he doesn't hear what he should have. Tarian doesn't hear the pale mare with the dark mane until she (and her many teeth) are there. With so many among them now, with the smoke wafting and rising like turrets all around, they disappear behind a thick wall of it.

    Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
    which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.



    ooc: last post from Tarian Big Grin kahzie, let me know if i need to change anything <3
    #20

    elio

    some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
    and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

    To say that Elio remembers his father fondly would not exactly be a lie.

    There are tiny, minuscule glimpses into his childhood just rose-colored enough for him to feel a clenching in his chest when the time comes for him to die. A mourning, perhaps. Elio mourns the father Wolfbane once was and the father he never had--the father he never will have and the father his own experiences want HIM to become.

    But there is terrible anger. Anger like the depths of an ocean, perpetual and so, so cold. He feels justified and certain, convinced he can tread water in a winter sea as long as the tide is not strong enough to pull him out--but he miscalculates the moon. Her silver palm scoops him and plops him down in the middle of open water, surrounded by lapping waves and indiscernible darkness.

    The anger, slick as water and just as wet, overwhelms him--as it always has.

    There is carnage everywhere, and Elio cannot confidently say that he understands what is happening. It has been a quiet, lonesome few months for him, but a certain tugging in his chest pulled him all the way back to the hot winds of Loess. Perhaps a dip in a hot spring or glimpse of a colorful cactus is what called him and he never could have imagined what he wings into.

    It's the flash of red and gold and navy between plumes of smoke that draws his attention. He swings his wings upward, backlegs pedaling as they fly forward. Elio's heart races with the realization.

    Was this all Wolfbane's doing?

    Before he can fully think, Lio is tucking his wings to his side and diving toward the earth, just barely making out glimpses of his mother and his siblings. His landing is far enough outside the skirmish for him to be away from the carnage, but not so far that he doesn't choke on the surrounding smoke. Water pools in his eyes as he desperately scans through the twisting gray and black, every hesitant step feeling futile.

    When he finds them, circled around his dying father, Elio's lips fall into a hard line. He doesn't say a word, coughing on smoke and the split in his mind. Unsure if his family will notice him, Lio takes a step back, feeling all the anger and sorrow he forced himself to control at a young age welling as tears in his eyes.

    This is it.

    The end.

    Why does it have to hurt so?




    elio just popping in. he's not really doing anything other than crying lmao
    [Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]




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