"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
Mazikeen’s rage is not enough to drown out the flash of hurt in her orange eyes when it uses Gale’s sweetest voice to speak to her. Nor is the rage enough to completely stop a small part of her heart from whispering quietly into her mind an answer to that threat:
I know
She hates that response, hates that even a small piece of her is weak enough that it has already accepted that outcome. The rest of her sure hasn’t.
She can feel the white-noise fury begin to seep in the corners of her mind but she fights it off for now. She does not want to get so lost in this battle that if someone were to come across them she would be incapable of warning them away. Not-Gale shifts into a blue leopard. Two of them. Confusion is chased quickly by realization as she feels the familiar sensation of her vision being altered.
Later, she’ll be angry with Gale for not using all of his tricks with her. She had not thought to demand it so that she could be better prepared for this inevitable fight. This is a more creative use of the vision magic than she expected.
She’s even a little impressed.
Given time, Mazikeen would be able to determine which leopard is which but she does not have that time. She guesses poorly and while she turns to snap her teeth at the leopard on the right, the other makes impact and she can feel teeth trying to get through the thick fur on her neck as claws grab for purchase. A frustrated snarl escapes her and she jerks her head viciously to try to knock at the leopard with her horns and get her throat free. She quickly changes again, first into a small thin snake that can slip through the leopard’s jaw before they close (if it had not been knocked away) and then as she stretches onto blue fur this slender form thickens into a boa.
Mazikeen curls herself around Gale’s throat - constricting as each coil joins the one before, blood from where the leopard’s teeth had scraped her throat smearing along her white, glowing scales. All while she’s screaming apologies in her head and repeating this isn’t him, this isn’t him and he’ll heal, he’ll heal.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Mazikeen’s flesh gives beneath its claws, but the fur of the direwolf she wears is thick protection against the Curse’s teeth at her throat. She swings her head toward him, and the hard outer edge of her near horn knocks against its head just before she shrinks beneath him.
The small shape confuses it, but before it can back away to reconsider, she’s a white snake. Her body winds around its neck like a thick white rope, and the Curse hisses a long breath out of Gale’s mouth.
It prefers its victims to cave quickly, but it’s always known that Mazikeen would not be that type. Nevertheless, her continued efforts are putting a damper on its plans, and her ability to outwit it never grows less irritating. She might even be able to outfight it were it not for the Curse’s - for Gale’s - other abilities.
The Curse is not sure it even needs oxygen, but the edge’s of Gale’s vision are growing disturbingly hazy. It still needs this host, so as delightful as it would be to let Mazikeen kill her lover, the Curse frees itself instead.
It goes larger, impossibly large for this far inland. Gale’s body is already gasping for breath, so the struggles of the whale shark his body so briefly becomes is little different. It is sure that Mazikeen will have released it rather than risk being torn apart by its expanding body, and as soon as it has shifted back to the blue and white leopard it finds her.
Once more it goes for her throat, teeth and claws flashing.
She shuts out the instinct to loosen her hold when she can hear Gale’s body start to struggle for breath, even going so far as to close her eyes so she can’t see the sheen of iridescent blue fur.
This isn’t him.
Her eyes aren’t closed for long, they flash open when she feels the neck she’s trying to squeeze the air out of begin to grow. Mazikeen is surprised by the Curse’s creativity again, quickly loosening her constricting hold and falling away from the whale shark, landing in the soft spring grass. There’s a brief moment where she forgets that this is a serious fight, a brief moment where the light of the markings on her body flickers because she’s a little impressed and she almost almost says something like this is just a wrestling match and she's going to complement the one she loves.
But she catches herself - repeating that mantra that this isn’t Gale, only this time she’s saying it not to ease any guilt about hurting him but instead to stop herself from enjoying what is sooner or later going to turn into a very dangerous fight.
It chooses the leopard again but this time, Mazikeen is a giant short-faced bear and she swings a massive limb at the leopard to try to knock it down and pin it to the ground. A few of the leopard’s claws catch on the skin of her foreleg as she does this and she roars more in anger than in pain - snapping her teeth and trying to find flesh with them. He can heal she tells herself to ease the guilt that is threatening to soften her actions. Just because she's already accepted what the outcome of this fight is going to be, doesn't mean she is going to make it easy.
There's even a part of her, the competitive side, that begins to wonder if maybe she can win this if she can avoid taking too many wounds. Maybe she can tire the Curse or Gale's body out enough. It's a dangerous, hopeful thought - but so are most of those that have crossed Mazikeen's mind lately.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Despite the massive size of its most-recent shape, the Curse knows that Mazikeen is at an advantage. She is not limited to living creatures; her abilities extend into the past, when the world was a larger place.
The Curse might have ducked beneath the paw of a grizzly or even a polar bear, but the massive paw that pins down its feline body is larger than its entire blue head and there is no ducking that.
No ducking, but it does manage to sink sharp teeth into the bear’s foreleg before Mazikeen bites back. The Curse is struggling to get away, writhing beneath the bear’s paw like a rabid thing, but it’s not quite fast enough. The bear’s teeth find the point of its shoulder, but even as it watches the flesh hang from the bear’s teeth it feels the wound close and heal.
When it manages to extract itself, and stand panting a few yards away, the Curse considers its options.
Brute force?
Hamstring and kill her slowly?
Venom?
She puts up a good fight, but the Curse does not enjoy battle the way that its host does. There are better ways to expend energy. (It also does not enjoy things that are not quickly won, and Mazikeen will not be easy to defeat despite the inevitable outcome).
“I could do this all day,” it says rather than lunge forward again. A lazy stretch, one that reveals its bloodstained but undamaged skin. Its shoulder glows brightly, the navy skin she’d torn away replaced by a self-lit cremello, and the claw marks made as it struggled free add stripes to his back and belly.
It won’t do this all day though, because there is always the possibility that someone else might come across them. The appearance of an iridescent blue whale shark - however brief - is not a typical sight in the Hyaline mountains and someone might come to investigate.
That someone will probably be an ally of its opponent, given Mazikeen’s position as Alpha. The Curse dislikes being outnumbered more than most other things, so it begins to circle her (still as a leopard).
Then it sits and stares, and she’ll feel it behind her eyes. It needs only a moment, plucking the image from her mind, and then it smiles.
The Curse appears to shift into the shape of a horse. Instead, it grows even smaller, a tree-hopper that quickly crosses the slope toward Mazikeen and shifts to a banana spider near her hind feet.
The horse is only a vision, but it runs toward her with the same intensity as the Curse would. Its eyes - one blue and one orange - are bright with rage, and though Malik’s hooves are far too small to damage the bear, it clearly intends to try.
Knowing that the brief glimpse it had gotten of the twins might not be enough to mimic the boy perfectly, the Curse acts quickly, biting with tiny and deadly fangs into whatever part of her leg it can reach.
Mazikeen spits out the flesh she tears from Gale’s shoulder, her stomach churning at the taste of it in her mouth, and she’s glad to see the wound heal so quickly (even if that does not bode well for her). The leopard frees itself and Mazikeen stands there, bleeding and fuming but not minding the short break.
She is just about to inform the Curse that she’s not surprised it could do this all day when it doesn’t seem to be trying very hard when she feels the sensation of her eyes being tampered with. Her lips are already curling into a snarl when she sees what he shifts into. It is easy to believe the vision magic is him pulling this image from her and not anything else, though she had not known Gale could change his equine appearance like this. Like she could.
The quiet “No.” that escapes her is completely involuntary, and she bites her tongue hard enough to make it bleed so she does not say his name. Her son. Their son. She’d suspected that Gale (or the Curse) would be able to take the image of the twins from her, she’s been focusing so hard on that first moment to keep all the other ones hidden, but it still surprises her. Still horrifies her that her own mind can be used against her this way.
And to see that beautiful son charging at her with nothing but rage in his eyes? It hurts somewhere deep where claws and teeth cannot reach. She feels a sting on her right hind leg but her mind is so focused on what’s in front of her she does not spare it another thought.
She knows this isn’t Malik just like she knew it wasn’t Gale but she shifts into an osprey to avoid him anyway and surges up - thinking to give herself a moment just to calm down, to get her head back into the fight.
But shifting into a smaller animal is possibly the worst choice she could have made. It would’ve been better to stand there as the bear but instead the venom of the spider bite she still doesn’t realize she’s been given floods her system all the faster. Sharp pain radiates through one of her hind legs, the same where she had felt the sting just a few seconds ago, and Mazikeen’s head begins to spin. She had never bothered to learn about insects, just as she did not care to learn about plants. When she thought of all the ways to fight, it never once occurred to her to choose something with venom. That felt like cheating.
Mazikeen lands roughly, becoming herself with her natural horns, all shifting falling away as she shakes her head. The wounds on her throat and foreleg are bleeding, though not enough for any real concern - not when her vision begins to blur. Accusations fly around with her spinning thoughts but all she manages to get out is an angry hiss as her orange eyes attempt to focus on her opponent.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
As a tiny insect, it wears eyes too simple to see her lips move and no ears at all to catch the quiet sound of her ‘No’. It would lament that, if it knew, but it is sure that something delightful had happened. Parents are often conveniently vulnerable to their children, and it knows that Gale would be and suspects the same is true of Mazikeen.
The Curse sinks sharp fangs into the skin of her left leg, and then does it a second time with a slightly different set of fangs, those of a rattlesnake that coils its body around the osprey’s talons to avoid falling to the earth as she takes off. When she lands as a horse, it slips away and retakes Gale’s glowing equine shape.
She looks unwell.
The Curse smiles.
“I’m going to kill you,” it repeats, and takes a step closer. How long will she remain standing, it wonders? How long until she crumples to the ground, until it can whisper into her ear as she dies all of the terrible things it will do to her lover, to her children, to every one that she loves. It takes another step.
Will Mazikeen’s blood be poisoned, The Curse wonders? Or will it simply be flavored by the venom of the spider and the snake?
There is only one way to find out, and it lunges forward in a repetition of its initial attack, leopard teeth searching for her jugular.
05-21-2021, 10:41 PM (This post was last modified: 05-21-2021, 11:24 PM by Mazikeen.)
Mazikeen’s ears twitch at the sound of the voice but they don’t stop moving, they don’t focus on the source - as though they can’t quite pin him down. He’s a blue, glowing blur in her vision nestled amongst the green haze of their surroundings. She had thought that her heart was racing before but now it is wild, and she knows it cannot keep this up, knows that something has happened (had that been a snake coiled around her talons as an osprey?). The game has shifted and she cannot claw the poison out of her own veins.
She doesn’t know how to fight like this.
She tries to shift, to grow wings again, but the ability eludes her. Mazikeen strikes out with her hooves when she thinks that he’s near, trying to remember the lessons that Gale had taught her that day long ago. On slopes not far from here.
Then she feels the sharp agony of teeth on her neck as she tries to twist away and it clears away some of the fog in her mind, but the thoughts that seep in are no relief. They are choked with fear and fury. She’s forgotten her theory that she cannot die and all she can think is how she’s not ready to fail - not this easily, not now. This can’t be how her promise to Gale breaks, can’t be how she betrays Breach’s faith in her. Those that live here are far from helpless but she can’t leave them.
Fueled by this fear of failure, the white-noise rage she had been fighting off meets no resistance now and consumes her easily. Mazikeen roars again - a primal, sputtering sound as her throat is torn into. It’s not just the chemicals in her system that blind her but this anger too, her mind empties of rational thought and turns into an inferno as her body burns with the venom in her veins. Her fire aura bursts into life around her and somewhere her rage finds enough energy for a few quick shifts - a rapid succession that matches the furious pace set by her heart.
Bear and panther and hippogriff and eagle.
It’s enough to free her and then she’s trying to tear into him while she’s wreathed in flame - she thinks she’s screaming in fury but every sense has dulled so she cannot say for sure. There’s nothing to see, nothing to hear, just the push to rend flesh from bone. The aura flickers with her shifting, each heartbeat bringing something new, something terrifying as blood pours freely from the wound on her throat and she completely loses control.
But she is burning bright in too many ways, her rage eating up every scrap of energy in a body already being attacked by poison and soon there will be nothing left. The leg that had been bitten seizes up and she half-falls but still, she tries to get to him. Still, she tries to fight.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Gale's skin burns, orange flame on blue skin, and the Curse rips its sharp-toothed grip from Mazikeen’s throat just as she shifts from hippogriff to eagle, unable to bear the pain any longer.
Recovering quickly from the short fall, the brindle leopard turns back to Mazikeen.
The whole of its underside glows a soft pale cream, and the Curse smiles with Gale’s handsome mouth. There’s an uncomfortable ache in its belly for just a moment, and then Gale’s healing rends the venom-turned-poison completely harmless. The rest of her blood drips down Gale’s golden mouth and stains his glowing neck and chest.
It licks its lips.
When it had hunted the deer and wolves of Hyaline, The Curse had most enjoyed feeling the heartbeat stop while it held down its victim’s throat.
Gale tries to yawn, but finds when he attempts to so that he has no body. Nor does he have eyes to open, so instead the brindle opens his Eyes and finds only black. He smells nothing but what most resembles the back of a dry cave he once ventured into as a mole. What is happening to him?
The sensation of not being inside but not in control of his own body is not an unfamiliar one for Gale, but it is. He begins to look for an escape, and it is with a renewed vigor that the Curse had not anticipated.
Mazikeen has been on the defensive for most of their battle, but now she attacks with a savagery it had not anticipated. She pushes him back, and by the time it takes to the air as an osprey there is significantly less navy hair on Gale’s hide.
While the Curse had focused on fighting Mazikeen, Gale has slipped nearer, Seeing his way nearer to where he belonged. But now the Curse can See him too, and chooses to share the vision on the ground below them.
Mazikeen, poisoned and bleeding out from the great rend in her throat, is engulfed in orange flame on the mountainside below. Gale screams with his own mouth, shrill and furious and terrified. The sound is brief, cut off before it can summon anyone else to witness the death of the Alpha.
Only Gale and the Curse will see this, circling overhead in the shape of an osprey and waiting for her to die as it digs through the slowly blackening edges of her visual memory to find where she had left the twins.
05-22-2021, 08:46 AM (This post was last modified: 05-22-2021, 08:51 AM by Mazikeen.)
He’s gone in a rush of feathers, the sound only just managing to register enough for her to know what’s happened. Mazikeen’s instincts try to follow, but her waning energy is not enough for flight. Her body begins to seize and the fire aura around her flickers out of existence, leaving only the burning markings taking up nearly every piece of her skin and those glowing horns. She thinks she hears Gale scream and she tries to stir to answer it, tries to rally herself to help him. Those instincts are still thinking flight when her legs give out on her. Wings of every bird and bat and creature she’s ever seen rolling out over her now-equine shoulders as she collides with the ground and stares upwards with unseeing, furious eyes.
She snaps at the nearby empty air as she writhes on the ground but there is no one left in the vicinity to fight. Where the one she had been fighting has gone she does not know. There is no space in her mind for rational thought. No room for a last-ditch effort, no ability to guard her memories or even to think about how she is not ready to die.
Instead, where her mind might have gone is displayed on her coat, her shifting still out of control but just colours now as continues to pace with her rapid heart. Iridescent blue and cream, teal, purple, both striped black and plain, white and gold, palomino and pale blue, gold and black, iridescent blue and black, pale icy blue, red roan, warm chestnut and dun with navy. Each one chased by each other in a loop, bleeding into one another.
And then this display slows as her heart begins to trip over itself. As its rapid pace ceases, unable to keep up with her fury. As her blood continues to pour from her and the two poisons in it do their work.
Until finally, when her heart gives out, the only colour on Mazikeen’s white coat is the blood from her wounds and those she inflicted on Gale, and the red marking on her nose where he had touched her outside of battle for the first time.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Carried on the soft spring breeze, the Curse circles over Mazikeen. It peers down at her with Gale’s bright eyes, but the expression in them is far colder than any that its host has ever worn.
She shifts rapidly, first her wings and then her coloring. She dons a dozen shades while she writhes, and she glows from within like a blazing sun. Mazikeen is splendid in her death throes, and the Curse admires her from afar.
Only when she is still, when the ever-slowing rise of her ribs is the only movement the Alpha makes, does it descend.
With teeth and claws, it rips her body open, and devours the best parts of her.
First the eyes, keeping its promise to take the memory of where she’d left the children. Tephra, it thinks, swallowing a glowing orange eye. And a mare the same shade of purple she’d been a moment ago.
Then the heart, torn from her bloody chest, and swallowed in a single gulp. Gale’s equine body wretches, an involuntarily reaction that disgusts the Curse. It swallows the heart anyway, and feels the changes begin.
The power sings to it, sweet and delicious. The Curse closes its eyes, savoring the sensation of the magic that flows from her heart to its own. It fills Gale until he can hold no more, and then it makes him larger so he may hold the rest of it.
Sometime before the sun sets, the Curse understands that it has gained far more than Mazikeen’s shifting. It reaches for its healing, and finds the reserves are so large they might spill over to others. It reaches for its shifting, and no shape is impossible. It attempts to See, and no eye is out of reach.
Anything it attempts, it can achieve.
The Curse begins to laugh.
When it cannot laugh anymore, when the tears of delight that run down Gale’s cheeks have dried, the new magician moves Mazikeen’s body where it might be most easily found, and disappears into the wilds.
