the light won't find you - Printable Version +- HELOVIA || The Way to the Sun (http://helovia.com) +-- Forum: Out of Character (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: Archives (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11) +--- Thread: the light won't find you (/showthread.php?tid=11288) |
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the light won't find you - Mauja - 12-11-2013 Steam. It's how he first saw it: vapor escaping into the cool night air, flickering, washed-out yellow when the Heart belched fire. It dissipated somewhere in the region above his head, joining the darkness and forgetting it ever were warm. Whatever lay swallowed by that dark mouth was warmer than the world out here, which was not all that surprising. The blistering heat of summer was passing, fortunately, but not only was this world cold, but a source of overwhelming warmth was nearby. The clear air above the crater was shimmering, dancing from the heat—Mauja had stood upon its rim and stared into the churning fires before. He had no reason to do so again; the flames had taken from him what they would, incinerated the black feathers which had been woven into his hairs.. incinerated his faith along with them. And when he thought about it like that, every second in Helovia had been like jaws opening wider and wider, swallowing more of him up every moment he stayed. It was the bitter poison, the danger of his thoughts chasing themselves—and himself—in circles. Nothing would be solved by giving in, but he didn't have a lot to put into the fight anymore. He'd fought just for his right to stay awake and alive, to justify his herd's existence and their rules, but no matter how much he'd pushed and pulled, he'd been losing ground all along. And so, here he stood—was he the enemy now? Deimos, Ulrik, Psyche, all those stalwart, resolute warriors, would they understand? Ulrik's heart was as cold and bronze as his metal, Deimos was adamant he didn't have one (though Mauja had never quite believed the stoic facade), and Psyche.. jackal-heart. Could they understand what he had become? Tattered, broken, but most of all.. that he had abandoned the Plague's cause? He couldn't believe it any longer. It had been a long time since he had. Wariness had kept Mauja back from the dark, steaming hole hidden in the brown grasses, but now he was moving, aglow with silver moonlight. His entire life had been like that, anyway: too afraid to make an early move, holding back until it was too late, until the moment had passed. He'd never learned how to close his eyes, and leap off the edge. But with only the cold, apathetic darkness to fill all the white-washed spaces in his soul, what did he have to lose? What did he have at all? Walking through the dying grass, to an unknown hole in the ground, felt so pathetically reckless that he wanted to fall to his knees and weep. Mauja, the Broken King. And he'd done it all by himself. The darkness he stared down into mirrored the darkness in his heart. RE: the light won't find you - Circuta - 12-12-2013
AHMEDBAKIR : VENOMXBABY : GALAXIESANDDUST : SALSOLASTOCK</style> RE: the light won't find you - Mauja - 12-12-2013 It smelled of sulfur, mixed in with that peculiar tang of minerals, becoming a strange blend of familiar things, yet so unfamiliar in itself. His eyes were half-lidded against the earth's hot exhalations, uninterested in their strange tastes, only in the depth of its darkness. The pace of the world seemed to slow, the trembling pulse echoing up his legs pausing, until eons had passed in a single moment—a single heartbeat. Time froze, even as life ran away from him, head high and panic choking back the scream in its throat. I've been here before, but here wasn't a geographical location: it was a point in life. One and a half year ago, in a time and space far, far from Helovia, he'd come face to face with a mirror, a gateway, and had, briefly, prayed for it to be his salvation, his release, his one-way ticket out of limbo and down to hell. But what it had been, had been his way back, into a life where he didn't belong anymore. And now he stood face to face with something that felt very much the same. If he stepped through, would he fall into the blessed slumber of darkness, away from his apathy and tangled thoughts? Irma, riding the night winds, cursed him quietly, and raced against time to reach him. How many times did she need to tell him that dying was not an option? Would solve no problems? That he would regret it, forever, if he did? Her wings beat fast, her heart faster, and if it would've done any good, she would've howled in his mind. As it was, she was silent. And he, too, was silent, even as a stranger came to stand beside him. Normally, it would've bothered him to have someone he did not know not only "sneak" up on him, but also stand next to him. He could smell her through the sharp fumes, even feel the heat radiating off her skin though her heart was cold. She was silent, too. The entire world was silent. Mauja kept staring into the living, breathing darkness. "It is fascinating beneath the surface." He couldn't place her voice, had never met her before, but the words broke his spell. Mauja's regal head hitched up a bit higher, blue eyes finding her face as her gaze flickered down again. She was tall, but slim, and for a moment he had the overwhelming urge to give her a shove down, just to see how far she fell, but the moment passed, like every other moment had. He didn't answer. "Accompany me?" She was a creature of the night, something birthed from the loins of darkness, surely—a starless sky stretched across mortal, fragile bones, a weapon as deadly as any other rising in a backwards arc. Every element she was composed of screamed danger in his head, Darwin doing his best to assure Mauja's survival, but folly goes hand in hand with apathy. She slipped down into what proved to be not a simple dead-drop, but some path, and with bitter humor he figured this was the end, and she was the valkyrie for the pathetic failures of the world, come to claim his soul so he could taint the living world no longer. With no heart, and no mind, he began to follow. The moment his frosted hoof touched the downwards path Irma struck from the sky, a lightning flash of white, and in a moment reminiscent of his dream-fall, they descended into the darkness. In the humid blackness sight was useless. The noise of their footfalls ricocheted off the walls. Irma's talons grabbed his shoulder firmly, her head rotating, seeing dim outlines; the swaying steps of his midnight guide, the fangs of the cave itself, and together they walked into the belly of the earth.. towards a heart pulsing heat and fire. A glow like an underworld sunrise slowly spread the further they went, and Mauja's head was blessedly silent, overcome by the simple tasks of seeing, smelling, hearing. The further they went, the hotter it became, and round a bend the churning fire opened up: it slid like thick, molten blood through glass veins, a primordial heartbeat. Mauja's breath was quiet in the vast caverns, his existence nothing in the great scheme of everything, less than a breath in the book of time—everything he had ever been, done and dreamed, would be forgotten when his body collapsed and his bloodlines failed. Every black drop of bitterness would dry up. There would be no glory for the resentful and damned, and his one urge was to ram his horn through the crystal panels and drown the three of them. But as always—he didn't. RE: the light won't find you - Circuta - 12-13-2013
AHMEDBAKIR : VENOMXBABY : GALAXIESANDDUST : SALSOLASTOCK</style> RE: the light won't find you - Mauja - 12-13-2013 His first thoughts had been wrong. There was no heartbeat here, no pulse to send the thick floods coursing through their glass veins—it was but the slow, constant slide of life, and endless, sedated surge. If anything, it was fire married to glacier ice, but he had a hunch that it was much too hot to ever touch. In his budding winter coat he was beginning to sweat, the thick hairs bred for a northern climate trapping the heat and keeping it close to his frigid heart. His guide was almost forgotten, nothing but a shadow that had led him down here, something sprung of the night and now banished in the sight of the Sól's blood, until her voice breached their silence. So she was real, too, or at least as real as anything could feel when his mind was numb, and the nuances of her voice painted a feral tale. She was, his thoughts told him through the haze, not one to get on the wrong side of. In fact, getting on the wrong side of anyone was a bad idea. He knew that quite well. But not everyone had the whisper of wolves lacing their voice. Not everyone had eyes like hers. He envied her. Mauja didn't respond, though. His gaze had left the entrancing wall to study her for a moment, and in all honesty, he was not quite sure who she was talking about. An elegant woman? His mind sprung to Psyche and Ophelia, wondering if she was somehow knowing things about him, but how could she? Or was she hallucinating? Was she mad? As she advanced towards the wall Mauja surveyed the room, looking for anything that was amiss, or any shadow he hadn't noticed—listened for a third breath, a third heartbeat. Nothing. He frowned, slightly, and turned back to watch her. She seemed just as taken with the molten display as he, but she was so much more alive. She found words were he had none, prompting him yet again to speak, a question he could not ignore. It needed an answer, needed his rusty voice to slip into the world and light the dark spaces of their silence. But of whom was she talking? Me, you idiot. Oh. Her mind was a nest of amusement, his one of confusion; had anyone ever spoken in such a way of his owl before? Had anyone commented on her, noticed her, aside from Tinek? One day, she'd just shown up with him, a scraggly, gray, ugly little bundle of feathers, and then she'd come to be such a part of him..that no one truly noticed? She was, in her own cool-hearted way, pleased with the stranger's flattery, but was not one to show it; she didn't stretch her wings or preen her feathers. She simply sat there, and stared, nearly unblinking, as Mauja honed his gaze in on the shadowy mare again. "Irma," he finally said, voice a little rough around the edges but level, breaching the distance and the near-silence. The wall seemed to sing to him, humming softly as the layers of crystal shifted and ground with the faint fluctuations of the heat. Many things sang, if only you listened. "Her name is Irma." Quietly he cleared his throat, and faced down the heat. His fur was thicker than hers, but still he stepped forward, to stand beside to her—perhaps closer than he needed to, but his systems weren't running as they should—and feel the intimate kiss of the Heart again his sensitive face. RE: the light won't find you - Circuta - 12-13-2013
AHMEDBAKIR : VENOMXBABY : GALAXIESANDDUST : SALSOLASTOCK</style> RE: the light won't find you - Mauja - 12-13-2013 Ice and night, marble and onyx—sapphire and amethyst, but beneath the superficial layers of appearance their experiences aligned in strange ways. Frigid of heart, and no strangers to the bite of fire. Mauja had been burned, too, scorched by countless dragons and somehow stitched up again every time. But the scars on his mind remained. Fire had been the sole reason Torasin lay dead now. Mauja knew what it was like to burn, to burn all over, flame seated in every portion of his flesh, skin drying and peeling back like burning parchment, how the hot air had rubbed his throat raw when he screamed—none of it had been real, but his mind remembered. His mind knew, his memories far too intimate with such a dangerous beast. He could relate to the dim fantasy of burning within the lava blood. He hated it, loathed the pain and the agony and the weak trembling of his knees. Fire flicked the switches in his brain and bam, Torasin was dead. If only his damned dragon hadn't loved him so much. The heat trapped behind glassy panels leaked out through the seams, stretched out its hungry talons towards their mortal shells. Mauja's blood was running hotter than it had in a long time, sweat dampening his coat to an unattractive blend of gray and yellow, bathed orange by the lava's fiery glow. It reflected in his eyes, bit his retinas and turned his blue gaze almost colorless, pale irises large around contracted pupils. The stranger by his side looked upon Irma. The purple of her gaze, and of her horn, was painted red in their faux-light, the blue leeched away as all other blue was. Stoic, Irma returned her gaze, level and heavy where Mauja was dreamy and fleeting. If he was snow, she was the glacier ice, immovable and stone-cold. "Mmh," he hummed in mindless agreement, mind struggling through years to recall where the name had come from. A slight frown creased his damp forehead, 'brows drawing together over distant eyes. He was the only one knowing the whole truth, that it was but a shorthand for Irmiut, a name he had probably never uttered—some just didn't fit with what they had been born with, but truly, who had named the owl? Was it him? Or was it herself? She was unhelpful in this, silent, mysterious, smug in her own way. Admitting defeat he let the subject drop, and memories returned to where they belonged, on the shelves at the back of his mind. "Circuta." Mauja's eyes remained upon the wall. Time seemed to have slowed, or at least lost its meaning. Everything he did, every thought and reaction, was somehow delayed with a second or two as his mind struggled. Blinking slowly at the fiery wall he rolled the syllables around in his head and mouth. It was not a word he knew, nor did it sound like she'd said something in a different language—a name, then? It was what his logic told him, anyway, and after a moment's quiet Mauja inclined his large head, mane stirring against his neck. White veiled his view of the world for a moment. "Mauja." Washed-out blue slid up towards her face again. It was dark, like the sky somewhere above their heads, but fire painted white lines yellow. He hadn't really noticed it before, had barely looked at her with something more than a fool's lack of interest. It was likely that if he hadn't followed her down, or turned back before they came here, he wouldn't even have recalled their meeting in an hour or two. As it was, she was starting to leave some kind of impact on him, to tease something back to life with her wild voice. "What is this place?" he asked of her, gentle of voice, and his mind drifted across the cavern and its pulsing wall. Somehow, he expected her to know—to explain this wondrous mystery to a poor mortal fool. If she'd come out then and there and said she was the Moon's little sister, he wouldn't have doubted her. RE: the light won't find you - Circuta - 12-18-2013
RE: the light won't find you - Mauja - 12-21-2013 "A fitting name." His quiet breath rose towards the ceiling, steam gently rising from his night-wet coat; his blue eyes tracked the small movements of hers. Maybe it was. Soft, like the snow—and for being a creature of the cold and dark, he was surprisingly soft. Slowly he let his eyes drift from her and back onto the wall, awe lighting the depths of his gaze. Circuta danced one step away. He saw it from the corner of his eye, wondering if it was because of the heat—or because he had come too close? He was tempted to follow her, to slide a little closer, just to see if it'd be like poles repelling one another, or if she'd allow it. He paused on the brink of the movement, though, leaning forward but stalling at her smile, and at her voice. "It is a pleasure to meet you both." Strange, to hear such simple courtesy from the maw of a jaguar, a predator. She seemed too wild for such mundane politeness, even if it seemed oddly honest when coupled with the smile. Mauja's ears tilted forward, something sharpening in his gentle eyes. He found his voice amidst the heat and wonders, a rumble, a vibration through his bones. More awake, more alive. "The pleasure is mine." But such things were fleeting, brief. Niceties seldom held enough interesting truth, was not nothing but a political game—maybe it was honest enough to say he was glad to have met the strange night-mare, but small talk held nothing but protective lies for him. He'd gain nothing by traveling down that path, least of all when there were other things to consider, and to learn about. Perhaps the most marvelous thing of all, was that Circuta actually had the answer. The still-sane part of Mauja's mind had expected an I don't know, the only sensible answer in this land of myth and dream. But the soft voice slipping into the heated vastness was not one of apology, but of explanation, and Mauja found himself taking that forgotten step forward, drawn in by the enchanting magic of her voice—and words. She spoke of things he knew nothing about, had never heard of or even contemplated. Ancients? Powerful old beings that were not Helovia's four canon gods? A Sanctuary? Had they died down here, then? Turned to dust by the slow turning of time, as whatever besieged them had not relented—or maybe trapped them within their castle? The mystery had him by throat and hand, dragging and leading him along its fanciful, twisting ways. His heart was pounding. "I have never heard of Ancients before," he murmured, dancing slightly on the spot to survey the vast, fire-bathed cavern. Irma was an immovable, unhelpful rock upon his shoulder. If she knew anything of this, she did not share it, but the lack of smugness made him think she truly didn't know. "I wonder who they were.. and what happened to them, in this place." The very walls seemed to echo with their contained mysteries, thrumming and singing now that his curiosity had been awakened. In places they darkened to tunnels, paths leading away from the throbbing heart-blood and its golden sheen. He spun once, before frowning into the distance. Curiosity killed the cat, and if Circuta was honest enough, she, too, was curious. To the point of daring to get her nose bitten? "Come on," he breathed, feeling more alive than he had in a long time. "Let's go see what we can find?" And he moved lightly on the spot, waiting for her body to slide into action, confirmation that she wanted to come along on his adventure—that she wanted to wander into the dark with him. |