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    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


    [mature]  when it falls in place with you and i
    #1
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    “I know just the place,” he murmurs against her cheek, and in the next moment they are in Islandres, and the wintry mix that had been falling around them is replaced instead by muted sunlight that dapples her fur.

    The air is cool but not cold, and Gale shifts to become a large bird. He is still colored like himself - palest gold with a blue throat, and the same iridescent blue lines along his belly and the lower half of his neck. He glows, which is not atypical of the many parrots of the land, but the flickers of blue lighting across his feathers are certainly unusual.

    They are on the island within the island, the black sand meadow and small forest that Gale had called his home for the better part of a decade. The grass shifts color in waves that match the turquoise waves, and only a narrow line of black sand separates the lush grasses from the gentle waves. When the tide is out the beaches will be far wider, and sandbars will appear from beneath the clear water to allow someone who knows the way to cross without getting too wet.

    At the heart of the meadow a cluster of mares graze. He runs sharp teeth along her spine, recalling his promise to the white mare. Not even to hurt them. It is not so hard a promise. Before her, sex had been a tool, one use for procreation and pleasure (his own, which came in no small part from the weeping and moaning).

    There is something more now, something that sets his skin ablaze everywhere they touch, and he is glad for this moment that there is space between them.

    “Which one?” He asks, deciding that he will bring her the heart when he has had his fill of whichever mare she sends him after.


    @Mazikeen



    current appearance: glowing perlino wildcat with lightning and iridescent navy blue scarring -> glowing perlino macaw with lightning and iridescent navy blue scarring


    @Kypria
    Reply
    #2

    Mazikeen feels like she’s walking on eggshells again, her boldness from when she first greeted him this morning forgotten in her confusion over Gale’s mixed reactions to her. One moment he is not even looking at her, not acknowledging what she says, and the next he is leaning against her and purring? She keeps a feline form when they arrive at their tropical destination, shifting into a small black ocelot that blends in with the natural animals here. Right now, she doesn't care for the instinct that tells her to become a parrot like him. Small markings begin to curl down from her spine as she moves into a spot where she can better observe the mares nearby, the glowing light from her a blazing sign betraying the darkness eating away at her thoughts.

    She’s lost whatever ability she had to ask after the welfare of others, to try to see what is going through his mind or even to speak what is going through hers unprompted. So instead it festers within her until she no longer feels the same thrill to be hunting with him or to be getting this break from the harsh Hyaline winter they left behind.

    The scenery around them goes unadmired, memories of when a different Gale had invited her back to see this place in the sun go ignored. She doesn't even really feel satisfaction upon seeing the new blue markings that line his belly and neck.

    If she knew they were past whatever that had been on the mountain she would not need to think on it anymore, but it sours Mazikeen’s mood instead. So when he asks her which one, she does not take the same care or consideration she had intended. Her interest in participating had not had the effect on him she’d wanted. Even though they are here, even though he does still ask.

    It all feeds her uncertainty which no longer churns into sadness - it becomes rage. Mazikeen wants to tear something apart and she does not care who or what anymore.

    So she just picks someone with a feature she can call out. “With the wings.” She says this with a blunt surety that she no longer feels. Not because of what is about to happen, but because of her companion. Mazikeen wants to please him, wants him to find the same enjoyment in her company as she does his. And there are many signs that he does - they just are currently roadblocked by the memory of him looking and then moving away from her.

    She sits, unsure what to do next and resenting that feeling enough to be stubborn about moving. He can hunt and she can watch, that's what she had told him - wasn't it? Mazikeen does make some attempt to appear patient, despite the fact that her unrest is plainly displayed on her skin.

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @Gale
    Reply
    #3
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    It does not occur to Gale that Mazikeen is irritated that he hadn’t gutted her as foreplay, or that the source of her furious blazing is anger that he’d drawn away.

    He can tell she is angry though, can feel the warm hum of it through the magic, see the shadows it casts on the ground. There is no warmth when he runs his teeth along her spine, only the indifferent way she chooses a target.

    Something he’s done has aggravated her.
    There is a new, strange part of him that is concerned about this.

    But it is a small part, and one that is easily ignored.

    So he turns back to the trio of mares, and finds the one she’s chosen. The wings - fins? - that glitter at her sides make her stand out from her equally pale sisters, and after a moment of watching her Gale looks back at Mazikeen.

    She is still...off, so he gives an irritated squawk that turns to a low growl as he flutters to the ground and becomes a raptor once more. It is such an efficient shape for this type of hunt, and in it he can forget the unfamiliar discomfort that feelings have brought to him.

    Now there is only the hunt.
    There are only four of them in the world, and as Gale races forward and peels the mare away from the herd, there are only two of them.

    He drives her across the meadow, relishing the smell of her fear and the way the blood drips from the myriad of shallow bites he’s littered across her belly and hind end. She avoids the water and Gale moves so they are headed back to the copse where he has left Mazikeen.

    Is she still sulking? The thought comes unbidden, and he roars at it. Impatient, he wields magic while distracted, and rather than snap a single bone he breaks nearly every one.

    Gale’s roar fades into the silence of an Islandres morning. The distant splashing of the other fleeing mares is gone, and the birds (whose flock memories extend back to the time of dragons) are not disturbed by the reptile’s roaring for long. Soon the chatter of them picks up again, and Gale circles the meal that lays collapsed on the ground.

    She’s quivering.
    Can Mazikeen even see it from up there in the tree?

    He releases the magic from her jaw, and with the use of it she begins to plead: ”Please don’t hurt me. Please. I don’t want to die. Don’t kill me.”

    He steps closer, and rips a piece of flesh from her shoulder. She screams, and he swallows it. He’s meant to taunt her, to taunt Mazikeen, but as he feels the meat settle into his belly he can no longer ignore his hunger.

    Gale feeds, and sometime while he does the mare dies, but he does not pause to watch the light fade from her eyes. He gorges himself instead, drinking deep of blood and power until the lightning is a constant glow along his skin.

    “Mazikeen,” he calls, his eyes glazed as he looks for her up in the trees. “Mazikeen, come down.”


    @Mazikeen



    current appearance:glowing perlino macaw with lightning and iridescent navy blue scarring -> black utahraptor
    Reply
    #4

    The pleading voice comes to Mazikeen and feeds her hunger, stirs the flames and the darkness until she is consumed by them. She digs her small claws into the branches of the tree instead of digging them into flesh and it is not nearly as satisfying. Why didn’t she just join him, or why didn’t she leave and find other prey? Why wasn’t she venting her frustration on something other than the tree? She watches Gale feast like she’ll find the answer to these unsettled feelings there but she only feels two competing hungers.

    The one in her stomach is a low thrum, grumbling softly at the sight of the blood and flesh, but she’s ignored it for longer out of stubbornness and it is only when Gale calls to her that she moves.

    Everything she’d been hoping to feel on this hunt is muted, and though some part of her acknowledges that this is her own fault - that part is so easy to avoid. The thrill of seeing his power is still there, fuelling that second hunger. She shifts, wary of being an animal he can swallow in one gulp (even though she’s no longer sure he would try), but not into a utahraptor. She becomes a black serpentine dragon of a similar size to him. Close but not matching.

    And Mazikeen draws up to his side instead of stopping further away, not fighting this instinct. It feels like her skin is on fire, an uncomfortable prickly sensation pulling at her, but she attempts to pretend it away - brushing a light greeting against his scaled and feathered skin. She feels her stomach growl as she settles and instead of immediately joining she asks in a tone meant to be light and curious “How does she taste?”

    But it sounds indifferent again. It sounds like what it had felt like after he hollowed her out, before she had been pieced back together. She scowls while looking at the body without really seeing it, annoyed with herself for forgetting how to feign emotions and a little annoyed that she cares enough about him to want to try.

    She is used to following his lead, seeing what he is comfortable with or what she should do, and she is so fucking sick of it now - but it’s also what she knows. Mazikeen does not have to be obedient any more and the fact that it is almost a comforting place to be sours her mood a little more even as she defaults to it, waiting to see if he will tell her what to do because this is all still new to her and she doesn’t trust the instincts that have set her mind on fire.

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @Gale
    Reply
    #5
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    She comes when he calls, and even though her lack of participation in the hunt baffles him, some off the irritably flared feathers in hs golden tail begin to smooth when she obeys.

    After the invitation he takes another mouthful and happily crunches the keratinous fins that had once grown from Kypria’s sides. Lost in his meal, the creature does not notice Mazikeen is not feasting beside him.

    Only her voice - casual, disinterested - clears the bloodlust away long enough for him to pay attention.

    She is not eating.
    They do not match.
    She is still not acting like herself. Like her better, Gale-manufactured self.

    All of these are causes for the low growl that rumbles from his throat, but the Curse does not have words for why this bothers him.

    He does not move from where he crouches over the horse, one clawed forepaw on her well-gnawed hindquarters. He recalls his earlier plan - fetch her the heart - and cann0t remember why he’d want to give such a valuable morsel to such a sullen and disinteresting creature.

    She is neither burning nor destroying.

    What use is she?

    He growls again, and turns to face the black dragon with a bloody face. That is all the warning she has, and then he’s launching himself toward her, biting and slashing at any part of her that he can reach.


    @Mazikeen



    current appearance:black utahraptor
    Reply
    #6

    If only he had managed to carve out this stubbornness along with the rest of her, if only it wasn’t so ingrained inside of her she would refuse to eat while her stomach complained and while she was with the only one who would understand her new taste for flesh. All because he had turned away from her and she couldn’t figure out how to ask why while her anger fumed inside her.

    He doesn’t answer this latest question either and her mood darkens further until she thinks she might never say anything again just out of spite.

    But when his growl comes, when she catches that small warning, a corner of her mouth twitches upwards. Yes, finally. Mazikeen relishes the chance to fight him, to fight anything. This time, she does not allow him to knock her over without a fight and she twists her dark, glowing body to vent her frustration on the cause of it all. She is all rage now, there is no room to be confused about why he had stopped himself from hurting her further in Hyaline only to attack her now. Mazikeen shifts, growing into a larger dragon that catches one of his hind legs in its jaws and tears a vicious chunk out of his thigh, swallowing it greedily.

    She is bleeding too, becoming a patchwork of black scales and open wounds, and for a while she does not feel the pain. She doesn’t feel anything at all except for the flickering dark fire eating her from the inside.

    Until it becomes too much to ignore, until the wrath begins to fade enough that coherent thought slips in - tells her she needs to stop this fight before she becomes just like the other mare. Or maybe she should just let him continue to slice pieces of her away until there is nothing left. See how far his desire to keep her forever really goes.

    Mazikeen’s just as frustrated with herself as he is, her not-quite-there-heart unaware of how to deal with the hurt.

    Before she can even really think about it, the fight and pain have cleared her head enough to ask the exact question that’s been gnawing at her. Why did you turn away from me back in Hyaline?!” She roars at him, emotion returning to her voice as bits of him drip down her jaws - her glowing markings are red from where blood has splattered across them. Mazikeen’s eyes are wild as she tries to pin him, tries to force him to answer her. And if he doesn’t this time, maybe she’ll bite off his head and see how long it will take him to grow one back.

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @Gale
    Reply
    #7
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    The shift to a dragon is unconscious, adapting to the fire-eyed woman he’s fighting. Flames flicker at the back of his throat and he knows he could breathe them like he does the lightning. He could tear her limb from limb and bathe in her blood. He could crush all the light out of the embers in her chest and when she dies this time it will be Real.

    When she tears off the better part of his thigh, Gale’s roar breaks the late morning chatter of the birds around them, and for some time there is only the sound of snarls and confrontation.

    Until Maze finally pins him, her claws in a delicate part of his anatomy that until a few minutes ago he’d planned on utilizing in quite a different manner. Gale becomes still but for the heave of his chest and the rapid flicker of lightning along his skin, and he meets her gaze directly when she questions him.

    ‘Why did you turn away from me?’

    When Gale exhales, the sound is a low hiss, but he is otherwise silent. He can feel the last of his wounds healing, the iridescent blue markings that only she can leave now mark his back and sides as well.

    He needs her for the chaos, for the darkness she feels in her chest and the way he channels it into himself. And he needs her for the way she arches up against him and desire makes her voice thick like smoke and the way he can feel it down to the very core of him, deeper even than the Magic and the Fury and the Greed.

    But he cannot tell her this, cannot bring himself to admit that she has become his weakness. He wont tell her that killing her always comes with the chance of it being Real death, and that the thought of being without her terrifies him.

    So instead of saying anything at all, Gale smacks her head with one taloned forefoot, and she takes his head for it.

    ---

    He’d woken on the beach a few hours before sunset. His eyes are new and tender, and he shields them for a time with a white forelock that crests like a wave along his iridescent navy neck.

    He had died, but only for a moment.

    Mazikeen had decapitated him, severed his head from his body and then...left him?

    She knew he would return, knew that he, too, had taken some of the phoenix fire. Yet she had taken no precautions to keep him from returning, had left his body intact save the missing head and perimortem injuries.

    She had killed him, he knows, but he suddenly must know if she had meant to.

    If she means to, now or in the hazy future. When he has her confirmation, he’ll kill her. Really Kill her, and douse the embers of her immortality and ensure she will never resurrect from the ashes. Quick, simple, easy.


    @Mazikeen



    current appearance:black utahraptor -> black dragon
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