[open] not by fire, yet forged in flame;

[Judas]

for what can break the magic that the devil made?

He feels it when his slumber broke at last, feels how the burning of life flowing actively in his veins licked like fire out in fingers from his heart. The empty thud of decades, now, suddenly sounded as if it had... that 'something more' that separated the undead from the living. It had substance in the way that oobleck differed from plain water. The thud met with resistance; echoed, but less so than for so long.

The black of his body does not immediately expose this change, having dove into the ether within for so long before turning back at last and taking equally much time to wander back into the present. Time changes, fairies wreak havoc in the land of his birth - going wild like the gods and mages that had spawned since the first footfall of Banat Er Rih on Desert soil. They spin magic tight into the bodies of horsekind, make it both less and more than it's raw natured self. They weave it into the bone and sinew of those that claim Beqanna still as their home - and when at last the world seems it's quietest, the Buzzard of the Sunrise wakes again at last.

His golden eye blinks open, wide with a pupil yet spread so broad as to make the iris seem to strain to glitter out around the sides. Then, with a snap that a watcher could have sworn to hear, it is pin-tight and his first great breath gasps those mighty lungs full and his ribs strain to contain it. His first bellow is of pain and wheezes more like a bray than a neigh. His muscles scream as he does, waking to the verve of fiery life once more filling their every tributary and waking every cell. He scrabbles against worn stone, hooves lacking purchase and legs lacking the strength they would soon regain.

His foreleg is bent, forehead rested on its rounded, knobbed, self. He groans and tries once more, making it upright but still stumbling as he makes it free of the cave mouth and into the blinding, brilliant, noon sun. His copper and ivory breast stands out, catching the sun and throwing it back as the whole rest of his black figure tries to soak it up, eat it down into darkness. He looks, stares, blinks - still uncomprehending of the ages that have passed him, of the disasters that had seen fit to leave him whole despite his escape inward -- and that is when he seems to still. The same stillness he had once lain in, a seeking stillness one usually sees in prey or in the shock of witnessing some horror.

Then there is a screech - one that the whole world could hear - and Judas’s head snaps around to see the great bird stooping down at his head with open talons and a wild spark of rage in his eyes. "EIR!" He shouts, still hoarse, still more of a bray than a neigh. "I SHOULD HAVE YOUR HIDE STRIPPED BY ONE OF THE MONSTERS THAT THIS PLACE HAS WHELPED IN YOUR ABSENCE, FOOL." The shriek is no less feral, even as the great bird lands on a bough and plucks its talons across the bark enough to chip the tender body beneath free of it’s armor. "Why are you so--- how long has it been?" The expression of sudden realization, of dawning awareness, soothes some of Eir’s savagery against nature.

"Your children’s’ children’s children are gone, Judas. You have outlived your own line. " The bird trills bitterly and with no small dose of venom.

[Viszla]

Myrna suffocate the fire  i started-------------------- right when it kindles The aspen tree is content. The sun is warm, and the soil is rich, and the air is gentle. All is as it should be, and in that moment of perfection… she is shaken awake. Myrna’s dreaming mind slips into a different shape as she stirs, surprised to find it already midday. She has slept late, the mare realizes, and then an echoing sound (the thing that had awoken her, perhaps?) comes again. A broad winged raptor land on a nearby branch, and she stills. The palomino is not yet fully awake, and for a moment she holds her breath. Is it the black bird, the herald of her father’s arrival? No, she realizes, quickly blinking the sleep from her blue-grey eyes, it is some other kind, more colorful than the midnight black osprey she’d expected. It landed in the same direction those noises had come from, and then the sound of a raised voice sounds from between her and the bird. It’s coming from far too close, and as Myrna lowers her golden head she realizes she can see the dark shape of another horse down the wooded slope. She considers slipping away, but the bird will surely see her if she tries. The hook of the beak is enough for her to guess that the eyes are equally sharp. Well, if they’ll realize she’s here, she might as well do her best to make it not weird. Without knowing what she might be intruding on and who this stranger is, she decides to investigate the sound. She can’t see much of the other horse, and as she rounds a low rocky outcropping, she realizes its because he stands at the mouth of a dark cave. Her attention is drawn to the pattern on his chest. It is the same as the bird’s, she confirms, glancing again and noting the buzzard’d sharp talons, and then back at the stallion, choosing to stop a good distance away. Yet despite that obvious display of caution, there is a faint smile on her face as she meets the stallion’s golden eyes and asks: “So are you twins, or is one of you copying the other?” Having grown up mimicking the many shapes her family wore, that prospect seems most likely, but as she waits for a reply she muses that perhaps they’d gotten on the wrong side of a magician. @Judas

[Judas]

for what can break the magic that the devil made?

He sinks into the truth that Eir exposes, feeling the dark waters of guilt, regret, and loneliness slowly rising like a pool filling with misty rains. Little things over eons that he not only missed but lost out on-- big things that he clearly must have missed with how the world around him already seemed changed and reshaped. He is feeling very much the reality settling into his bones, a great weight becoming another part of him like how his state of being is being shaped by the new air, the magic-depleted air of this new world.

Eir looks not at all like he regrets his contribution, a creature of honesty as he normally was. He feels badly for those Judas had left behind, those Judas made him leave behind. He could appear, but in a place like that cave, he could only go so far in a straight direction. In that state of inward wandering, Eir was at the end of his leash within the immediate vicinity of the cave.

The duo do not even realize that Myrna is there until her brilliant form catches some of the light and Eir turns his eyes towards her, bobbing his head in a clear avian brand search for the flash he had seen. Judas looks up, notices, only because Eir has quieted when normally there would have been plenty more admonishing. His eyes then catch the same flash of near-white that snaps his head around as it had done for Eir when he’d stooped on his lifelong partner.

For a moment, Eir grows large - impossibly large, near to an albatross, wings poised and arched in readiness… neither beast she approached believed the innocence of appearance or the purity of outward trappings. Judas flicks his black ears into his thick mane nostrils flared as his heart races against the fear building that he’d again slept too near to some haunt of Carnage’s and he’d finally crossed that demon’s path once more after eons of keeping his distance. The relief on his face upon seeing her is blatant; he had always been of the opinion Carnage was too vain or proud to veil his image as anyone else, although he had never had proof of this belief.

He looks on her, this new mare, with relief and yet a mild bit of awkwardness - having long been in only his own and Eir’s company. She has horns like he recalled of Moriarty, only white and glowing in many rainbows of colors overlaying white. Her mane, it seems, travels the whole length of her spine with little flowers strewn through it as if she had just rolled in a spring meadow-- she speaks and his attention is captured. "So are you twins, or is one of you copying the other?" She asks, and he feels the compulsion to answer for no reason other than she was more beautiful than any creature he’d seen in so long.

"When he appeared out of me, my breast was colored as his was." It was an oversimplification, spoken in a hushed voice, eyes locked on her and unmoving - his face shorn of any emotion save surprise. Some surprise of seeing so wildly traited a creature and the rest, some from the fact he’d bother to inform a stranger of what it was that’d made them… him… no, them. He looks to Eir, realizing that the bird was not his phantom form and had invited comment. It was rare for Eir to idly travel in his solid form; he must have been so angry to have done otherwise.

"Who are you, Miss..." he begins, still sounding a bit softened by distracted surprise, but voice deep enough to sound a rumble, "I have been sleeping… for a very long time. The whole world feels different, changed..."

[Viszla]

Myrna suffocate the fire  i started-------------------- right when it kindles Myrna is accustomed to being watched, and she doesn’t shy away from the four golden eyes. Most of her attention she keeps on the larger stallion, the more physically intimidating threat. She does not miss the surprise in his expression, and her coolly interested gaze remains on his handsome face, on the naked surprise and the way he answers as if he’d been bewitched. Flattery is familiar, but the way he answers without hesitation, as if she’s drawn veracity from him by doing nothing at all does stroke her pride. She will not come nearer yet, but she does tilt her head and regard him with curious intensity. His coloring is identical to that of the buzzard, and while he is easy on the eyes, it would be easier to appreciate him without the dirt and debris. He seems dirtier than she is when she comes out from exploring a cave, she thinks, and wonders how long he might have been in there. It seems the same thing is on his mind. The voice in which he speaks is like a cave too, deep and rumbling, and he’s more polite than she’d expected and at that her smile warms another fraction more. He might be very dusty, she decides, but he doesn't seem inclined to be dangerous. Perhaps he's not the victim of a magician after all, but rather some sort of enchanted sleep. Born into this shifting arcane world, Myrna knows better than to doubt the capabilities of magic. “My name is Myrna,” she tells him, using the name given to keep her identity hidden from her father. It is the only name she has ever known, and what her sire had called her - Viszla - makes her skin crawl. She is Myrna, and has always been. The black curse that tainted her father’s blood came from the same god the stranger fears, the same monster that had killed her grandmother. Her connection to Carnage is less direct, but caution born of his black magic is what keeps her out of striking range of the seemingly harmless stranger. “This is an old world,” She agrees, settling into a more comfortable stance. “My mother said hundreds of years. I live in a place called the Gates. I hear it is like Heaven’s Gates, but those lands were swallowed long before I was born and rose again.” Myrna falls quiet, still watching his face, wondering if he will remain such an open book, and if perhaps she should excuse herself so that he can grapple with whatever existentialism comes with waking after such a long sleep. @Judas

[Judas]

for what can break the magic that the devil made?

He had always been a simple sort, inclined to hermitage anywhere he could be fairly sure that he might not run into the infamous giver of his ability and soul-fragment Eir. It makes him less causal when something as grandiose and empowered by stuff [that in his time was yet the stuff of myth most of the time] as she was. She is striking on even a bodily scale - isabella palomino if she weren’t entirely white. Her mane is beautiful, her poise unrumpled by stumbling across a stranger in the forest.

He stops, suddenly recognizing from whence he’d spilled out onto the soil again. He can feel it more readily, the dust and dirt and leaf death that was coloring him now something closer to swamp muck than black-- his belly and chest were cleaner, the places that had not been a seat for dust and grime to settle most like his truer self. "My name is Myrna." She seems interested, the way her eyes scan him in small inches and sweeps now and then, but not in a way that inclines him to rudeness or silence. "It is good to meet you, Myrna. I am Judas, usually of the Neutral Meadow but I did spend some time at the helm of Dangerous Island and Wildflower Plateau."

Of course, he naturally inclined his head, respect and politeness always the best means of remaining out in the world unmolested by troublemakers. There are few who cared to meddle with those without true power - and he was inclined to believe things like that rarely changed, if ever.

"This is an old world. My mother said hundreds of years. I live in a place called the Gates. I hear it is like Heaven’s Gates, but those lands were swallowed long before I was born and rose again." He actually perks his head at the initial belief that she was of Heaven’s Gates - looking hopeful until she confessed that the old Gates he had known was not to be the one he ventured out to find again. His ears, so newly perked, settle back again into his mane and his golden eyes drop from her beautiful self for the first time since she’d arrived. "Eir, you did not tell me that even the oldest of the kingdoms would have fallen." The great eagle shrinks, settles its feathers and looks at the stallion with a little hardness but more pity now than before. "You left for too long, nothing may be as it was any longer… Perhaps even Carnage himself was swallowed up and you can at least wander at your own leisure."

"Do not speak that name." She slice of golden stallion eyes to the bird and the birds quick posture adjustment spoke volumes enough to need no deeper explanation. Instead, he slowly turns his attention back to the mare who had found him so new from his emergence, eyes softening in steps as he was allowed to again admire her beauty. "I am sorry for my tone, it is a name that wholly incenses me. He is the reason for the ‘twins’ we would appear to be." He shook himself, then, as the dirty sensation rises again and he realized what he must look like to this shining being before him.

"I am… not familiar with this world if even the Heaven’s Gates has been erased from it. Do you know where I might wash the eons of sleep from myself?"

[Viszla]

Myrna suffocate the fire  i started-------------------- right when it kindles Myrna’s careful observance of the stranger has left no doubt that he continues to appraise her. For a moment she considers letting the lightning and the shadows free, just to see what he’d make of them. Maybe she could shift into another shape entirely, like she’d changed from the quivering aspen she’d been before his arrival had shaken her awake. And it had been his arrival, she realizes.  He’d emerged from the cave behind him in a way that had shaken the soil itself. He must truly have been down there for ages, Myrna realizes. The Neutral Meadow? She supposes the meadow is neutral, and in a time when the world had been split into Heaven and Evil, being clear about the rules of such a place in the name probably helped avoid a good deal of conflict. “The Meadow is still here,” she says with a faint smile, thinking that she might accompany him a little farther, just to satisfy her curiosity, to hear what else might have changed. Two of the lands he speaks of are unfamiliar - Wildflower Plateau, Dangerous Island - and she thinks of those in the world before it had ended. Hyaline, the mountainous kingdoms she’d grown up in, and Tephra where Malik had lived. Islandres, and Ischia, and the red hills of Loess that the Watcher had told her of. The palomino mare glances up at the bird at the mention of Carnage, then once again back to the golden-eyed stallion. The reminder of evils in the world comes as no surprise. Not anymore. Mynra’s smile had faded at the mention of the dark god, but her expression remains soft. “He remains,” she replies, knowing he is less omnipresent than he has been in earlier times, and knowing it is better to not risk it by saying that aloud. But she does attempt to offer another smile, as though to brush past a minor concern. “The river that runs through those hills is shallow and warm this time of year,” she offers, pointing her pale nose toward the distant rolling knolls through which the River runs.

@Judas

[Judas]

for what can break the magic that the devil made?

"The Meadow is still here," the mare interjects with a soft smile, and the delight in his face - of finding solid ground in his apparently vast time-slip, is not hidden even a bit. That had been as good as his longest standing home and it felt suddenly less like he had walked out into an alien planet to know that there might yet be pieces that he could recognize. His eyes spark with a bit more life, as if he were waking up more and more as he steadied himself in the present. He looks on her, then, in a more steady and meaningful way.

She is beautiful, but also frightening in a way that originated with his own early life. Magic had always been wild in his day, unpredictable and a lot of the times nasty. Beauty did not guarantee safety, or kindness, but as she does not attack him or do unnatural things to harm or bewitch him, he rather hates that Eir brings up the old demon of Beqanna. He snaps at his soul-fragment and friend, Eir looking a bit abashed when the mare’s eyes turn to him and he is found out - just the same as Judas is found out. "He remains."

The words stab him in the gut, the flinch not unlike a pinch-tight girth being yanked up too snugly. He kicks a hindleg at his belly, ears out to the sides in clear discomfort… and yet somehow it too felt right and home to have that monster always at the edges of his awareness. He does not take peace in it, as he had with the Meadow, but he does indeed feel more on-the-earth. "The river that runs through those hills is shallow and warm this time of year."

The appreciation, and a bit of embarrassment, dawns on his face at the directions, "I very much appreciate the directions, as well as the up-to-dates. I almost thought that I were not even awake when we first saw you. There was nothing… like you, when I last took a turn about the place." He starts in the direction her nose had pointed, not sure if she would accompany him for the river’s rinsing refreshment - but not opposed to speaking to someone that had so much to tell him of the most recent histories.

[Viszla]

Myrna suffocate the fire  i started-------------------- right when it kindles She has lived in peace for the past five years, and while she supposes that the dusty black (maybe bay? she can’t be sure beneath the dirt) stallion might be dangerous, its not as though she is defenseless if he suddenly turns monstrous. Her transition from an aspen is not a feat she’ll be repeating soon, but there is enough buzzing magic left in her veins for a little bit of shifting. He seems as uninterested in continuing the discussion of bad magics, and she is grateful to move past it, offering him an understanding nod. “I will show you a place.” The palomino confirms, offering a faint smile as she moves closer and acknowledges his appreciation. Not too close, for these are the common lands, and for all her abilities she is still cautious first and foremost. Friendly, but from a distance. As he speaks, Myrna finds her pace with one ear flicked toward him. She blinks in surprise, and looks toward him again. “Like me?” She asks, brows rising in disbelief even as she continues in the direction of the Meadow. “Your idea of a dream will change quite a bit, if you think me remarkable.” She tests her magic, and decides that she has enough remaining to rid herself of anything not mundanely equine when they reach the water. Her glowing horns, the flowers, and the long mane, she thinks. Myrna wants to know what she might have looked like, at the dawn of time. Or whenever it was that Judas had come from. “There are four main lands,” she continues, because that seems important, “I suppose they’d be the kingdoms, but they mostly keep to themselves.” There’d been diplomacy once, she knows. But there had also been war, and Myrna knows which she prefers by far. @Judas