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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


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    [private]  We are the monsters
    #1
    He thinks it is the gurgling that he will remember most.

    She had not wanted to come with him. This was not at all like stealing Sickle, who had fallen so readily into the snare they set around her, Neverwhere would not be swayed with easy words and tricks. She was not a child, and yet she was, with her soul trapped into the body and brain of a six-month-old filly, and she lacked every advantage because of it. When the duplicates split apart to match his own, there were only three of them and the use of the magic darkened their skins with sweat. His mother had loathed magic. It was not a part of her the way it was him, but rather a tool she wielded crudely, clumsily.

    Four fillies tried to dash away in different directions and five wingless stallions went after them. Mouthless lunged and missed, of course, but the sun-Gold duplicate swooped in behind, snatching up the girl in its iridescent jaws, golden fangs boring into the duplicate child's neck and holding it firm as it struggled emptily.

    The flavor of blood on his tongue brought his attention away. One of them had caught Neverwhere, and Wherewolf wove through the brush to find them. Between two close-grown trees, Tailless was half stuck, its hips jammed against their trunks but its fangs were buried deep in a chocolate-brown haunch, and blood pulsed from the twin punctures beneath its lips. A dozen curses flew from the filly's lips and her eyes were glassy with rage and tears. She tried to summon more duplicates, but they never came, only shimmering half-formed and dissolving away again, and Wherewolf had smirked. What did she think to do with them, he wondered? Mouthless and Gold met them, their prey in tow. Earless came carrying, ironically, a ragged ear torn away from its victim, and Brown brings nothing, the duplicate it had been chasing dissolved when Neverwhere was caught.

    Like wolves, they circled 'round her again, and that buried memory surged forward, turning his expression black, furious. The filly spun around to try and attack Tailless, though most of it was protected by the very trees that it was caught between. He would not be able to carry her all the way to the Pampas. Not like this, fighting and biting and shouting.

    (In his mind, six versions of his mother stand around him and he writhes in pain, wing dislocated, ribs bruised, broken. She says she'll kill him.) Why hadn't she? Or maybe she did, maybe he could have been like Nash or Yanhua or Cheri. He thinks they would have forgiven a mother who might not have been the best, given the circumstances, but he isn't like any of them. He's bitter and angry and cruel, and the dappled pegasus lunged forward, burying his own fangs into the meat of his mother's neck, shaking and yanking so fiercely that, with Tailless' teeth still buried in her thigh, her fragile child's neck snapped.

    The stars winked out immediately. Her duplicates, too, leaving Earless to look both perplexed and a little saddened at the loss of its prize in the brief moment before Wherewolf let go of the magic and they, too, faded to nothing. Only he remained, sneering down at the lifeless body stretched awkwardly out before him, the air in her lungs gurgling softly as it escapes, unwilling to follow her into death.


    She is easier to carry, though not too easy because the weight is awkward as he flies, but he is too exhausted to pass the job off to a duplicate that he can't be sure will remain stable the whole trip. Not, he muses, that falling will hurt her very badly now. But just the same, the green-eyed buckskin would rather not risk losing his prize to strangers below and so he does his best to hide the limp body dangling from his teeth as he flies swift and straight back to the Pampas.

    There is surprisingly little introspection. He does not feel better for having had his revenge, he does not feel any sort of relief, but he does not feel guilty, either. His mother had deserved it, he knows, and it had been the best choice for returning with her, but he does wonder how long it will take for the resurrection to begin and hopes she will wait at least until he has brought them home.

    When the faded late-season flowers of the Brilliant Pampas finally stretch beneath him again, Wherewolf descends near its center, depositing the broken body in a careless heap, and frowns at it angrily. He has no idea what to do with the thing now that he's returned.
    Image by Stardae


    @Aela if you're bored
    #2

    Aela rarely thinks of the woman who brought her into the world. She doesn't know that she nearly killed Lilliana, that she had been the reason that her body grew weak and frail. She doesn't know that while nestled safely in her womb, she drained her mother of nutrients and sapped her of strength. She doesn't know that the labor took days, that there had been far too much blood, and if neither of them had been Immortal, then the palomino wouldn't be standing here, regarding the iridescent dappled Lord as he flies overhead with something dangling from his mouth.

    The slender mare watched as his shadow crossed over her, and tried to make out exactly what Wherewolf had brought back to the Pampas.

    When he lands, and after hearing the sound of his added weight drop lifelessly to the flowery ground, Aela approaches. Normally, she was happy to leave the pegasus alone with his spite and his resentment. It was more common for the striped Seneschal to be with Obscene but ever since he had said, 'I would have all of you.' Aela had preferred to keep her distance. It was something that she didn't understand; how was she to give everything to Obscene and yet still save something for herself?

    She scowls, both at the thought and the lifeless child lying on the ground. Aela lifts her head, as the winged horse recalls the trek that brought the dappled filly here. There had been multiples of the girl - just as there had been multiples of Wherewolf - and the battle that ensued would make anybody's head spin. Aela blinks and gives a light toss of her pale mane, shuddering away from the confusion that the Lord has brought back.

    The striped Seneshchal had been about to tell him that the point of a steal was to be given something in return. Children were easy because their parents would most likely be desperate to get them back. A dead child brings them nothing, and Aela's head was already starting to ache at imagining a mother, weeping and crying and carrying on about whoever this foal was.

    But it's something about the dark markings on her back, in the shape of wings. She has seen them before, back in Taiga, back when Kota kept them close to the border of Nerine. Aela can remember taunting the winged stallion because she had been doted and beloved as a child, while his dam would barely look at him.

    How Neverwhere is young again is something she can only attribute to Magic, or the universe has a perverse sense of irony.

    "Is that... your mother?"

    They doused your soul in water,
    but the flames raged higher.
    And they called you devil's daughter,
    such a pretty liar.



    @Wherewolf
    #3
    He is agitated and unwary, and he does not notice Aela's quiet approach, does not feel her press into the wild memories running circles around themselves in the dark corridors of his mind. When she speaks, he flinches, flaring his wings and snaking his neck out into the space between them with a wolfish snap of his jaws.

    Back off.

    Even when he sees her, he doesn't. There's a red haze across his vision, there's his mother's teeth buried in his wing and a dozen blood-red Neverwheres in a dozen tumbling scarlet Taigan copses. There's a crimson filly with an iron-grip and the scent of mud and blood and sweat and the sea-bright Nerine wind howling in her ears. Wherewolf is ready to throw himself at Aela again, ready to crash into her and use his weight to bring them both down in a pile of twisted and breaking bones, but when he steps forward there's no scent of heather or pine, only the sweet-musk smell of fading flowers whispering in the air and it jars against the snarl of his memory.

    He's in the Pampas. The ferocity of his face becomes confusion and he blinks at the Seneschal dazedly before, at last, registering her words and scowling. His ears flicker then pin back and his wings rustle themselves into order again before settling restlessly on his back, the feathers trembling. The gaze that finally settles on Neverwhere's broken body is withering and unforgiving - and unapologetic.

    "Yes."

    The word is little more than a hiss. It does not matter to him how she came to be young again. Magic, irony, most likely it is both. He does not know why Neverwhere would have threatened to kill him, and then did not, but she should have done it when she had the chance. Those livid green eyes turn back to Aela full of bloody curiousity.

    "How many times do you think she can come back?"
    Image by Stardae


    @Aela
    #4

    She sidesteps Wherewolf's flaring wings easily, remembering all the times that he had sprawled them out at her. A gust of air dances through the fine silk of her mane, but Aela is more interested in what has made the Pampas Lord so agitated when he usually couldn't be bothered. The palomino moves around him, but is close enough that the whiplash of his memories sends her momentarily spinning.

    (There is a phantom pain in a wing that she has never had. There are multiple versions of the dead foal, grown and glaring. There is the brilliant sheen of a copper coat and bright fury tumbling across the Nerinian moorlands.)

    The memories are entwined so closely together that it takes Aela a moment to untangle herself from them. Her gold ears flick back into her flaxen mane, and the Seneschal stares down at the still form of Neverwhere. Her slender head lowers, watching the small foal for any signs of life. Wherewolf had punctured her with his fangs, and reminding herself to keep out of striking distance, Aela moves closer to the dappled corpse on the ground.

    Aela had always thought that immortality meant one was impervious to death. You could be injured, you could starve, you could be almost dead, but the thought that Immortal might leave their body was an intriguing one. Had Neverwhere been one? She must have been, to come back again as a child. And her speculative gaze turns back to the buckskin pegasus, wondering if he had killed her more than once.

    It's an intriguing thought: pitting Wherewolf's lack of motivation against the hatred of his mother.

    "Do you mean to kill her each time?" Aela asks, wondering if even Immortality had its limits.

    They doused your soul in water,
    but the flames raged higher.
    And they called you devil's daughter,
    such a pretty liar.



    @Wherewolf
    #5
    What does he mean to do? He has no plan, and that should not come as a surprise.

    "Yes!" he barks back at her, he'll kill the girl-that-was-his-mother as many times as he has to until she wears out her magic, or until he does. He'll find the limit of her immortality or the limit of his healing, and one of them will kill the other for the final time, centuries from now. The obsessive zeal of this plan kindles a strange light in his eyes. He has wished for death a number of times, been ready to die purely out of spite, but suddenly presented with this chance at it, he finds himself inexplicably less willing. It is only the idea of self-sacrifice he finds so unappealing, he thinks to himself, or the idea that his dying would not be a release but his mother's victory, and he looks, frowning, at the little corpse in time to catch the exact moment a single star blooms in the air above it.

    "Watch," he growls to Aela.

    Others soon follow, bathing her still form in their faint, twinkling light. Neverwhere never had a great deal of magic in her, but he does not know when she got the stars, nor when she became an Immortal, so there's no telling if she is capable of anything else. Between one blink and the next, she is whole again, as if reset.

    "You son of a bitch!"

    Her child's voice is high-pitched and the words rip a sharp laugh from his throat. Is her death-addled memory is too sluggish to capture the irony of them? The bald-faced girl clambers to her wobbly legs, glaring first at the glowing mare who she does not take the time to recognize, then throwing her small body at Wherewolf, crashing against him in a flurry of bright teeth and swinging grey hooves. He lifts his head high, out of reach, and knocks her down with the blow of a wing.

    "Try not to be so embarrassing, hm?" he says, placing a heavy hoof at her poll to keep her prone. He deserves this. He deserves the opportunity to show her the fruit of all that bitterness and resentment and hurt that she'd planted in his chest years ago, even if Aela wonders at the change in him. His mother scowls into the dirt but lies still, not keen to die twice in one day. No doubt she is trying to plan her escape.

    "Lilliana will come for her eventually. If she makes it out of Tephra alive." How many reincarnations can they get through before then, he wonders? And what will Lilliana bargain for her friend? Something ridiculous, surely, her own life for his mother's, as if he has any interest in the red mare's death. But Aela, with all her war-mongering, might, and he looks to her again, wordlessly.

    They'd kill them both, of course. He won't let his prize go so easily.
    Image by Stardae


    @Aela
    #6

    The first star emerges, much like they do in the night sky. The Seneschal is quiet — observant as she always when fascinated — and then it's joined by others. Aela has seen similar Magic before and knows that these small pieces of the sky are simply cosmetic. They (disappointingly) do little more than shine.

    But its not the stars that hold her interest.

    Its the way that the soul re-enters the body. What had been crumpled and broken a moment before is suddenly revitalized. The dappled filly comes yelling back to life and wastes no time screaming at her winged son. Aela smirks, clearly enjoying the interaction between mother and child. Neverwhere remains on the ground, apparently not eager to rejoin the Afterlife again.

    Aela glances sideways at her half-brother, the first time impressed with his iniative. It was for twisted reasons that didn't align with the Pampas — his mother wasn't remarkably talented or beautiful — but she had been a former Nerinian queen. And as she stares dispatioinately down at the young filly, she remembers that she had been particularly beloved by Lilliana.

    Something that will find no favor with the Pampaiian Seneschal.

    A golden ear flicks towards Wherewolf before her lovely head follows. He's right in the sense that the red mare of Taiga would come looking for her companion. The two were rarely seen without the other in the North. But what he says next is a pleasant surprise, and it shows by spilling out in a bright chime of laughter. "You sent her to Tephra." Aela said, unable to hide her amusement as she looked back down to Neverwhere.

    Would Gale murder her?
    It was a wonderful thought.

    "Wolfey, you wicked, wicked thing."


    They doused your soul in water,
    but the flames raged higher.
    And they called you devil's daughter,
    such a pretty liar.



    @Wherewolf
    #7
    Flat on the ground with the weight of Wherewolf's broad hoof leaning a touch too heavily on her neck, Neverwhere is snarling and silent, staring daggers in every direction with her ice-pale eyes. The sound of Lilli's name on his lips draws her attention - and her worry. Her heart skips at the implication of his words and a scarred hind leg kicks out at the air as the glowing golden girl smiles a dragon's smile and meets her livid gaze with something wicked and cold.

    When did Tephra become unsafe for Taigans? For anyone? What had become of the little magician that lived there and protected its people?

    She struggles under his foot and Wherewolf shifts his weight so more of it presses down on the delicate bones. He can feel the way they give to him beneath the sensitive triangle of his frog and the start of a smile plucks at the edges of his dark lips. He knows by the timing that it will seem he is preening under Aela's approval but he has never needed or sought it and that has not changed. His motives - like hers - are his own.

    "It was only my intention to get her out of the forest so I could find her," he says plainly, calmly, turning his attention from the kicking foal to glowing Aela and tipping his head to one side as if considering his luck, "but Gale has impeccable timing."

    The Curse. He should be more afraid of it than he is, but caution was not something his mother had taught him beneath the magic dome of Brennan's safety net. It was not a virtue that Neverwhere had ever deeply held herself, though she had many traits that combined to look like it. More caution might have saved her from him.

    As fast as he lifts his weight away, Neverwhere is struggling to gain her feet, her freedom, but she's still only kneeling when he strikes out at her, the hollow sound of his hoof connecting with bone rapping dully, absorbed by the dense vegetation around them. Neverwhere drops like a stone with a startled exhalation, but most of the stars still flicker around her fallen form.

    "That's twice," the buckskin growls softly, "Wanna try for three times?"

    There's no time for Aela to respond (and was she really going to say no, anyway?) before the edge of his hoof finds Neverwhere's small skull and the dull cracking sound turns wet. This time, when the stars blink out, it's with a ghastly spray of blood that spatters across his chest and face.
    Image by Stardae


    @Aela I suppose we can probably leave this one here and pick up somewhere else




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