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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


    [private]  this feels too different to have the same name for it
    #1
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    The Curse must decide what to do with Mazikeen.

    She continues to wound him, her mere presence causing the Wrongness to boil up inside him, to churn his insides into something far less comfortable than the writhing shadows that they are.

    If he had a heart, he’d love her even more than Gale had, because how could he not? How could he look at such a marvelous creature and not need her, touch her and not draw her close?
    .
    But he is a creature of hate and rage and fury.
    He has no heart.

    He’d forgotten that as he held her that night, as she whispered her desires, as he satisfied them both. He had played Gale too well, and now he is sick at the mere sight of her.

    How can he excise this aching part of himself?

    Getting rid of her is the simplest option, but the question of how is a daunting one. She will not die, and he cannot let her free. He seeks out the entities, but even Straia’s burning pine is no help.

    The more times he looks into the fires of the future, the more he sees the variance. There is not a single future, but many. A thousand possibilities, a thousand ways things can change. The chaos of it pleases him, but it is not as useful as he’d first hoped.

    The entity is useful in other ways though, and Gale bites in the inside of his lip for a drop of blood to spit on the trunk. The power comes to him in a way unlike the devouring of hearts, a slow seeping crackle.

    Lightning flashes over his head and he smiles, forgetting - just for a moment - the woes that the Alpha has caused him. Gale tries to draw it closer, but it resists, fighting his grip.

    The lightning is unpredictable, never weak or strong in the same place. It slips from his grasp just when he thinks has it, and returns to tease him as he growls in frustration. It simmers just below his skin, hot and vibrant. He wants it, yet the more he tries, the more he fails.

    Does it want more blood? Gale slashes at his leg, and more blood drips onto the pine, and more lightning flashes over his head. His delight at the magic makes the magic weaker, and again he tries and fails to control the flickering light.

    ---

    Hours later, Gale stands at the base of the flaming pine, and lightning flashes across his body. The last of the navy in his skin has gone away, ripped and burnt so he might shed enough blood - feel enough pain and distress - to control the lightning. He is gold entirely now, save his bright eyes and the snowy length of his mane.

    He sends a bolt toward the tree, but it dies before it can reach it, and that amuses Gale. Has the entity protected itself, or is it simple happenstance? It doesn’t matter, but the tree is too useful to destroy on a whim, so Gale instead turns to the second entity.

    Starlace’s stony face stares back at him, and remains unchanged even as he spills blood for her as well, thinking of his theft of Sickle, of the attempt for Bolder, of the defeat of Chemdog for the border that now keeps him safe.

    Wings come first, and they are not the white feathers he’d been born with, but instead are quite like those he’d worn when he’d ripped out Wishbone’s heart. Large, leathery, and replacing his forelegs entirely, they give him instead several long golden digits with which to grip the earth. 

    The horns are next, and as Gale looks at them in the reflection of the lake, he smiles. They are white, like those he’d worn on Islandres, but these are sharper, two tined, and pointed. (They are exactly like those of his son, though he does not know. Magic is strange like that sometimes). They flicker with the same blue lightning that still dances across his skin and down the length of his wings.

    He has grown brighter as the Black magic has sunk deeper into him, a golden creature awash with light. He looks out across the lake, enjoying the sensation of these new gifts, and contemplating the hunts he might have with them.

    As it often does, such thoughts lead back to Mazikeen, and the content smile on Gale’s face soon dims. Horns, Wings, and Lightning will not solve the trouble she might cause, and he turns away from the water to look at the final entity.

    Blessings for children. What a waste. Mazikeen had wanted it for the borders, to keep them guarded, to give her more time with Gale. His not-a-heart aches again, and Gale snarls and swipes one paw at the third entity, missing entirely. He tries with the lightning, and again it does not strike.

    So he strikes the lake instead, and hopes the little kelpie had been near the surface. Then he strikes a nearby willow, and the wisteria that Ciri had asked after. They burn, bright in the dark sky, and Gale watches with blue-eyed fascination.

    But soon the flames remind him of Mazikeen, and he snarls and tears at the earth, and then at his own chest as though he might rip it away entirely. He sends the lightning into his own chest, but it only fizzles and dies, and the organs regrow and the flesh knits back the same gold as before.

    The smoke from the burning trees fills the air around him, obscuring much of the lake, and for some time he simply paces.

    Back and forth, back and forth, the quetzalcoatlus limbs and the horse hooves leaving a strange set of prints as he does. He discovers and discards ideas, makes and remakes and reneges on plans, and by the time the dawn comes he has finally - finally come to a solution.

    He will make Mazikeen like him. He will take her heart - not her physical one, he’s already had that - but rather that place that holds emotions, the place that he lacks, that makes him wince and ache and shudder in her presence. He will take that from her, and keep it for himself so that the pain will end.

    Any troubles that will come with having a heart, he will deal with when they come.




    this is an autoquest for aesthetic lightning and also Gale claiming his entity traits which he wont actually get bc he doesn't have enough spaces




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