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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


    [open]  hangman hooded, softly swinging
    #1

    hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

    It wasn’t unlike Ryatah to be gone—to wander—but he could not help but feel as though something was wrong. It started as an ache in his bones. A biting anxiety that gnawed at him. It left him irritable and angry and he hunted frequently. Until his belly was full and the slaughter was no longer done to sate him. Until he was streaked with blood and the spirits behind him looked on with confusion but did not dare voice their disapproval, did not even dare so much as look disappointed in the panther once-King.

    The creatures of Hyaline began to give him a wide berth as his fury and fear grew.

    And when he went looking for her outside the lakeside kingdom, it did not help when he could find nothing. It did not help that he was left as clueless as before. It was only when his magician son had finally sought him out that he felt even a ray of hope. When Firion came to him, searching for his mother, and Atrox told him that he had not seen her for days. Firion had merely closed his eyes and cast his magic outward—hunting for some sign of her, letting the shadows slip from tree to tree to find that particular thumbprint of her. What he found struck him cold, the blood draining from his face, mouth going slack.

    That was when Atrox felt his blood freeze over.

    Firion didn’t say a word. Simply teleported the two of them to the river where she lay. Her body beat and bruised and broken, her chest cracked open.

    Firion was silent.

    Atrox was not.

    A roar broke out of him as he rushed forward, falling down to her side, tears on his cheeks. He could not catch his breath. Could not find the words except the ragged sound of sobs that sawed through him. He touched her cold coat and searched for a pulse he knew could never be there. Covered himself in the dried blood and mud of the riverbank until he felt Firion’s nose on his shoulder.

    “No,” Atrox finally managed, voice hoarse from screaming. “She’s not dead,” he swore, barely able to manage the words. “She’s not,” he said, not sure if it was a lie or some truth he had to cling to.

    But his son didn’t correct him or argue.

    He just touched him again and Atrox sagged as Firion’s magic wrapped golden threads around the fallen angel. He didn’t move as Firion glanced at him once more before disappearing back to Hyaline with Ryatah’s body. He didn’t move as the sun set and the moon rose.

    He just lay kneeling in the mud, face streaked with dirt and tears and blood.

    Empty of anything but pain.

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

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    #2

    all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was

    When Nashua had healed her, he hadn’t cleaned her of the dried blood that still covers her dark feathers, still stains the dark fur around the new ravaged scar where the Curse had placed his heart inside of her. Right next to the one where he had opened her up and tasted her stars. No wonder Mazikeen hadn’t recognized her, had looked at her as she had when she had been covered in blood and stinking of death and anger. When she had taken off from Hyaline, torn by the interaction that had happened there, she still did not return home. She would not have Leokadia see her like this, could not stand to see any concern in the other mare’s eyes.

    And there was still the dark magic crackling in her chest, that heart in the eye of her stormy rage, that she needed to deal with. Mazikeen could not remove it. Could anyone? Somewhere beneath her, shadows move with the weight of grief in the direction from which she had came. She is oblivious to what the Curse has done now, to the lives that had been destroyed and lost in the wake of its chaotic destruction. Instead, for once, she is thinking of other things. She is grasping to that sliver of hope like a buoy, her head barely bobbing over the surface of the anger that threatens to drown her.

    If she can put this magic back in him, maybe it will be enough to weaken him. Maybe it will be enough to destroy him or at least buy them all time to figure out how.

    On dark outstretched wings, she lands by the river. Her crimson stars glow eerily in the moonlight, illuminating her many scars and the dried flakes of blood that cling to her coat. She makes to wade into the shallows and then halts, suddenly aware that the coppery tang in the air is from something fresher than her own spilt ichor. Her nostrils wrinkle as she takes a step and that’s when she sees him, that unmoving form in the mud. Smelling of blood and dirt. And there is another scent here, several days old and faint but lingering just enough that the silver strands of her eyes cover her pupils in the sudden spin of her anger and a snarl curls at the corner of her dark mouth.

    Gale had been here. Of that she was certain.

    “Hey.” She warily approaches the dark stallion kneeling in the mud. Not recognizing him for who he was. Why would she, when her father had always been just a name with no face attached to it. “Have you been hurt?” She asks him, unable to see his features from where she stood behind him. She takes a step towards him, cautious, in case this was just another trap the Curse had planted for her.

    -- Ciri

    Image by Phil Botha


    @atrox
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    #3

    hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

    Hours pass and he doesn’t move—isn’t certain that he will ever move again. Ever move from this place where she had taken her last breath. Said her last words. Felt that last wicked beat of her heart. And he hadn’t been there—he hadn’t been there. She had died and she had died alone and every ugly thought that he has ever had himself boils to the surface. Threatens to pull him under and drown him with it.

    He doesn’t even hear her when she first approaches.

    Doesn’t react at all until she asks the second question.

    It is unfair that rage rises to the surface. Unfair that he can only turn into anger because everything else was too unfathomable. How could he break down in front of a stranger? How could he show her everything that is breaking apart in him? The constellations being swallowed whole by his grief.

    “Go. Away.” he croaks and he does his best to rein in the fury that he would unleash on her. How much he wants to slaughter anything near him for the hope of some relief. She would forgive him, he knows. Ryatah had seen the worst parts of him and not turned away, but he doesn’t want to stain her memory with his unending rage. He doesn’t want to do anything but sit here in the mud and hold onto the last pieces of her, as painful as they are, as hard as it is to imagine a world where she is not there waiting for him.

    He swallows and finally looks up, each movement a Herculean effort. He doesn’t recognize her and doesn’t see any of himself in her—has never been able to pick out which of the children are his or the children of his and so on and so forth. It never mattered. “You don’t want to be here,” he manages, his face wiping clean of the grief and going frighteningly neutral, a mask that is nearly a comfort to bear.

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

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