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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


    [private]  I don't know what you've done to me
    #1

    When the yellow dragon had turned into a navy stallion, when she had torn his throat without incident and discovered the leeching blood of death, Mazikeen had felt a disappointment so deep it plunged her deeper into the rage that had been driving her. The trees and grasses nearby had been lit on fire as her fury poured out of her and she took to the skies, wanting something else to tear into that was not vegetation.

    Eventually, she wakes and she finds herself in a snow leopard den with the scattered remains of the mother and teenage cub around her. In that blood-soaked cave, Mazikeen finally remembers the trips across the mountains with Gale as they sought a challenge for her, remembers fighting with the armoured beast and then how she had slid into a version of herself that she has no control over. How she had focused on Gale and he had not resisted as she tore into his flesh with murderous intent.

    Though she can no longer feel sadness, the version of grief that had haunted her after Islandres descends on her again and her claws leave gouges in the stone walls as she rages with it - almost slipping back into that white-noise blindness and only just managing to cling to consciousness. If there was to be another death between them, it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

    Mazikeen may have been feeling restless but she knew she hadn’t wanted him gone. Regret is an uncomfortable feeling for her now - a shallow emotion where it had once grown deep roots. It lingers on the surface of her mind but things she might have expected once - like worry and hope - do not exist at all. She does not fret over whether Gale will return but she does wish for it. She knows she would like to see him in whatever state he chooses to appear to her. Understanding, furious, indifferent, vengeful - it won’t matter, so long as she sees him again and can press her skin into his in as close to an apology as she is capable of now.

    He must come back. If she needs to find a way to go into Death to bring him back to her, she will. It may not be exactly love in what remains of her heart but she knows what exists there only exists for him. She'd bring this world to an end to be with him and it would be an easy price to pay.

    She does not hide in the mountains to wait, going instead to the lake as dusk settles on Hyaline. She doesn’t know if this is the next day or if many have passed. There are no other signs of any carnage caused in her blind fury, just the blood soaking her skin.

    She moves into the water until it is at her shoulder, standing there without holding any of her abilities. She is just a horned mare, the fire-glow of her horns reflecting on the dark water around her as she realizes it is only the blood of the leopards soaking her - none of it is her own. The wounds she sees in her hazy flame-fury memories are gone, as well as a few of her older scars.

    Gale must’ve done that, she doesn’t know when but it had to have been him. A few of the glowing markings down her back appear, making her all the more visible in the water, as her mind instinctively reaches for sadness and finds only anger. At him for not being here right this very moment but mostly at herself, because though she does not feel true guilt (it had not been her, after all) she still knows this is her own fault.

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @Gale
    #2
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    The crystalline heart within Gale’s body had remained still for several hours. The sun is only a few hours from rising when it finally stirs. The opalescent black surface of the jewel shatters into fragments so small they fall like sand across the bloody corpse of the brindle stallion.

    From the space within rise shadows, thick and black. They shimmer through a myriad of shapes as the bodiless thing looks down at the body in front of it with a hundred different sets of eyes.

    The host is empty in this moment. No consciousness inhabits the striped body, no bit of Wolfbane and Lepis’ son remains in that empty shell. The lunged lobsters have already begun to scavenge the body, picking off the exposed flesh around the wound Mazikeen had torn in the throat.

    The Curse tries to re-enter the body, and fails. He tries again and fails. He tries until the sun begins to lighten the distant horizon, and only then accepts the inevitable.

    If the Curse were to leave the body here, it knows that Gale would eventually return to life, pulled back by the regenerative magic that exists in each cell of his body. It has never willingly relinquished a host before, and for a very long time it considers what to do next.

    Finding another host is out of the question. There are none with Gale’s abilities. But it cannot inhabit a dead body. It will just have to wait until Gale returns to life, however long that might take.

    A ribbon of shadow stretches out toward the body, and the next moment both the Curse and Gale are in Hyaline. Gale’s body lies near the entities, beside the glittering lake. In the darkness, unseen, the Curse again becomes a jewelled heart, buried within the chest of the brindle stallion.

    When Gale returns to consciousness, the Curse will return as well.

    Or rather, that is what it had intended to happen.

    Instead, when the body finally regains consciousness and rises to its feet, the Curse remains, as hard and still as stone, within his chest. Gale blinks, and shakes his head, and looks out at the clear mountain lake.

    Where is he? This place looks nothing like Loess, and he steps closer to the lake to slake his sudden thirst. The face that looks back at him is not what he expects, and Gale blinks. The face remains, and he supposes that it does look like his face, if he were many years older.

    The last time he can remember looking at his reflection he’d been just on the cusp of adulthood. This is the face of a grown adult. What exactly has happened, he wonders?



    @Mazikeen
    #3

    Movement catches her attention but it’s not what she had been wishing for. There isn’t a wave as Gale approaches her in a rush, she isn’t shoved beneath the surface until she blacks out. She doesn’t feel the brush of his feathered limbs against her skin as they make up yet again for time lost. She catches the movement a short distance away, knowing instinctively that it’s him.

    And she moves without thinking, pulled forward by that gravitational pull. At first, it doesn’t bother her that he did not go to her - glowing in the dark water she was hardly invisible. She’s not thinking about that, only the relief at seeing him again. Always and forever she will not tire of the moment when his eyes focus on her.

    “You’re back.” And she doesn’t hesitate to go to him, because that habit had died out when he had pulled her apart and pieced her back together. Why should she hesitate around him ever again? He is hers and she is his. She moves through the water towards him, her horns disappearing and she aims to brush her muzzle against his cheek to greet him.

    Their telepathic bond is hazy but that’s nothing new - she’s been trying not to use it when unnecessary. Still, something feels… off and she pulls back to ask quietly. “Are you alright?” She’s thinking about how he didn’t come to her, wondering if this is punishment for killing him after she said she wouldn’t. Not out of nowhere, not without him knowing for months or years ahead of time that it would be coming.

    Now comes that hesitation, awkward and unsure and annoyed by the rush of this uncomfortable feeling she thought was in her past.


    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @Gale
    #4
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    The sound of movement in the water catches his attention, and Gale looks out toward the center of the lake. His shadow is made long by Straia’s blazing tree behind him, but it doesn’t reach the mare in the water. Her own glowing body causes it to vanish, growing smaller as she draws nearer.

    The horned mare is a stranger, but she acts as if she knows him, speaks as if he has been gone and has now returned. Her horns vanish as she reaches out to touch him, and only Gale’s eyes move in response, opening wider in surprise. He doesn’t flinch away, not even remembering those now-absent curled horns or seeing the myriad of scars that decorate her flesh.

    She’s a warrior, he thinks, like his father.

    Will Wolfbane be wondering where he is, Gale wonders? Or will Eyas have made an excuse for him, covering for him while he came...here? Wherever it is that here is? He thinks it might be Hyaline - they had a lake

    When the mare asks if he is alright, it’s almost a relief to shake his head.

    “No, I don’t think so.”

    She is still standing very close, so Gale takes a small step to the side, turning his body so he might better see the white mare. “My name is Gale,” he tells her, even though he suspects she might know this. Perhaps she might also know why he is here, so he asks.

    “I’m afraid I don’t quite know where I am. I’m supposed to be in Loess, I think, but I can’t remember leaving.” His frown is growing as he speaks, but lightens as he comes up with a possible solution: “Have I been stolen?” Perhaps she’s a magician, he thinks, and has taken his memories of the theft to keep him from running away too soon.



    @Mazikeen
    #5

    Mazikeen is frowning when Gale tells her he is not alright and her expression slips into one of pure shock when he introduces himself. She barely hears the rest of what he says through the roar in her head as she stares at him, wondering if this is some kind of joke.

    Had the Curse grown bored with her, with the version of happiness that they had found together, and was now seeking to hurt her again? After everything?

    She rejects this idea, unable to comprehend how she could possibly not be enough. Each breath brings her closer to the rage that got them into this mess. Her not-quite-heart is trying to break and finding that there is nothing there to fracture. Her fire aura flickers around her for a brief moment, the markings on her skin blooming to life even as she tries to steady herself. It would be so easy to tear him apart again, chum the water with iridescent pieces, but she keeps this idea in the back of her mind. Forces herself to think, to ignore the flow of thoughts from his mind - the ones that confirm that Gale thinks he is younger than he really is.

    The ones from a life before the alliance, before Islandres, before her.

    The silence stretches between them before Mazikeen finally utters a furious “No.” Lying to him would be simple, but the Curse needs to be in there somewhere. Maybe she can draw it out, maybe she can get him back.

    Mazikeen gets her answer to the question of whether she would try to kill him like a punch to the gut as she looks into blue eyes that hold no recognition. Never. She never wants to be without him, without it. It has only been a few moments and this is already too much. How can she still miss him when so many pieces of her have been scattered throughout this past year, when she was sure this feeling was beyond her?

    Some attempt is made to soften her voice when she continues, but she just turns the fire to ice instead. “You’re here, in Hyaline, of your own free will.” 

    She doesn’t know what else to say after that because she can’t, she won’t, introduce herself to him again.

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @Gale
    #6
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    Young Gale is very bad at interpreting facial expressions. It’s one of his mother’s greatest disappointments (she wants them all to be worldly diplomats), but even Gale can read the shock on the mare’s white face.

    She’d been concerned before, fitting given his answer, but something about his introduction had startled her.

    He knows, too, that she is not someone easily startled. That much seems clear, and becomes even more so when she answers him with a furious ‘No’.

    Not stolen then, so he still has two puzzles ahead of him. The first is what he’s doing here, and the second is who this mare might be.  Gale meets her gaze, finding the orange color a rather pleasing contrast to the paleness of her skin. She is searching for something in his eyes, he can tell.

    He returns the favor, and Looks for something in her eyes as well.

    Gale finds himself there, wearing the same older face that he’d seen reflected in the water, as well as progressively younger (though not quite so young as he feels). She most definitely knows him, and Gale’s breath catches at what she’s seen of him. Battle, friendship, love, death, murder.

    Gale doesn’t recognise himself in those memories any more than he recognizes Mazikeen, and the step he takes away is unconscious. He realizes the moment he does it though, feels that there is something that hovers in the air between them. This body wants to be near her, but Gale does not.

    He shivers, just as she tells him that he is here of his own accord. Can that be, he wonders? The simplest explanation for both puzzles is that time has passed. Time that he cannot remember. Time during which his future has turned out very different than he’d planned. By the time he was this old, Gale should have been living in the Pampas or Sylva, married off to a child of the former leader, and doing his part to expand the family’s empire.

    Instead, it seems he’s become a killer and a thief, and this white mare has seen it all. Had they deserved to die, he wonders? That brown stallion and the purple-haired mare? They must have; surely he can’t have grown up only to lose his own soul.

    At that thought, something within him stirs.

    Gale looks down toward his chest, where the sensation rises. It feels like there is sand falling inside him, like something is opening, like...

    “That was unpleasant.” It is the voice of the Curse, shaking Gale’s white mane out like it might clear away some of the young stallion from his own head. “I couldn’t tell he’d come back.” The crystalline shield had become a prison, blocking the awareness of passing time from the shadowy thing inside it until Gale’s worry about his soul had passed into the thing that had taken it.

    How long had he been gone?

    Long enough to worry Mazikeen. Long enough that Gale has been able to (mostly) recover from what the Curse has done to him over the years. Will it take as long to drive him out again, the Curse wonders? Or will this adolescent with fragmented memories be easier to quash than the grown man?

    He scowls at some distant point on the lake, his brow furrowed in thought. His head is beginning to pound. When he shifts, his color changes as well, from iridescent blue to shadow. He is not quite black, but rather holds the shape of a horse while the shifting shadows flow like black smoke trapped beneath glass. And then his shape is not a horse at all, but a kelpie, one that leaps into the water with a splash.

    His first victim is a bluegill, then a bass, and then he loses track, lost in the bloodlust. He kills but does not consume, leaving the waters behind him red with blood as he lashes out. The ache in his head does not subside, but he does feel somewhat better.

    Turning to Mazikeen in the murky depths, his blue eyes fix on hers.

    He does not want to kill her, and that more than anything is proof he has changed. Had it been the magic, he wonders? Have there been other alterations he is not aware of? He begins to frown again, but he is tired of thinking.

    The aquatic slaughter had stopped it for a while, but now it is time to try something else. Sex is usually the next attempt, but as he moves nearer, he finds he has no desire for that either. Not in this moment, anyway, regardless of the way his body responds as he drifts across her back. Later.

    “I need to sleep,” he says against her ear. “I’ll have to kill Gale in the morning, and I am tired.” She’d wanted to save Gale once, but he doesn’t think of that as he says it. He thinks instead of the glittering monster, which feels like mere moments ago, and of the strength it had taken to crystallize himself twice.

    He yawns.



    @Mazikeen
    #7

    Gale says nothing but Mazikeen can feel the familiar touch of her sight being accessed. She does not try to fight it - letting him see what they’ve been to each other would be easier than trying to explain it. Her gaze remains fixed and unblinking on him as she waits for a reaction - and when it is to stagger back a step, a hiss escapes her as her lips curl back in annoyance.

    She is again considering chumming the lake with him, seeing if she can find where the Curse is hidden and draw it out, when he glances down at his chest and she falls still once again - waiting.

    It is only when her worry leaves her that she accepts she had felt it at all.

    Her agreement that it was unpleasant comes out in a small huff of air, her fury cooling as she once more hears the voice she’s come to prefer. The Curse is back in control. It had not been quite fear that had coursed through her at the idea of losing him, she was far too practical for that now and would have tried everything she could think of to fix things, but she had not enjoyed those uncertain moments.

    His gaze turns from her and she doesn’t interrupt his thoughts, remaining where she had been with her tail floating gently around her in the current. She waits as he becomes a thing crafted from shadows (instantly feeling a thrill at the sight) and then a shadow-forged kelpie that disappears below the surface with a splash.

    Mazikeen becomes a kelpie as well, following him into the lake but does not join. Her own bloodlust had been quenched earlier and there is an enjoyment to be felt observing him. This wild, fierce, dangerous creature that she loves. She watches as he tears apart fish and creatures of the lake as she had torn apart the snow leopards - not eating, just shredding - and once again she feels the sense that they are matched. That it was the Curse, not Gale, who had drawn her in and who she actually understood.

    Blood swirls in the water around her but her red-orange gaze remains fixed on him - anticipation curling in her stomach when he drifts towards her, thinking she’s about to feel herself torn apart in one of two ways. Maybe even both.

    When he coasts across her back (sending a shiver through her) only to say close to her ear that he needs sleep, it is an effort to clamp down on the flush of disappointment that rises up. Assumed rejection had consumed her once, turned her into a spiteful wounded creature that had literally bitten off his head, and she had no desire to repeat those events. It didn’t have to mean anything at all that he wasn’t pressing into her the same way he had in the cave after that first death. He was still close, he was still here, and after his absence this was enough.

    Mazikeen reaches out to brush her muzzle against his shadowy skin as she asks “Is there a way we can be rid of him permanently? So he can’t come back?” She isn’t sure how it works, this possession - but she doesn’t care about saving the original Gale anymore. And if there is a way to remove him as a threat, to allow the Curse to have this body as its own, she will gladly do what she can to help.

    Her touch lingers against him before drifting upwards towards the surface with a flick of her white and black tail. They could sleep underwater but if strength is needed to battle with his troublesome host then shedding his shifting might be required to save energy.

    Mazikeen doesn’t ask if he wants her with him - if he wants her to leave him alone he can say so. She is not tired but she will take all the opportunities she can to curl around him again, to let the rise and fall of his breath lull her into the only peace she cares for anymore.

    m a z i k e e n .
     


    @Gale




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