Ulrik was getting a little testy. The damn dragon helped the white goat move forward. Kirchoff was still laughing at the bottom of the mountain. And, his metal umbrella only seemed to slow him down! SO, the stallion broke down the umbrella with his magic and decided just to tackle this mountain the old fashion way: brute strength. The large, hairy goat jumped up the mountain slowly, watching so many move past him that he was frustrated.

Just a race, right? He huffed and puffed his way up until there was a fork in the road, and he ran to the right hand side. The ground became a series of mirrors, which thoroughly threw off his eyes, so he decided to close them and run for it up the mountain without much thought.

Ulrik would open his eyes every so often to peek through to make sure he was going the right direction. Every now and then, he would stumble over a rock, but he figured just running for it was better than winding up confused and sick with vertigo and nausea from the mirror floor. The Engineer was using some fairly unintelligent ingenuity, but only luck would tell of this was genius or madness.


WC: 206

AITHNIEL

Aithniel was mad that Rikyn excelled. Well, that wasn't the right wording. She was glad that Rikyn raced forward, but she was mad at herself for not being able to keep up. He was a little older, and his goat body seemed to have longer legs. But, she was little. Didn't that count for anything? Apparently not so much. Maybe the sugar overdose was making her cranky, so she tried to just calm down and keep running.

She saw Rikyn up ahead go right, so she decided to follow in the hopes tha this good luck would rub off on her a little. He had to be doing something right! The white demi-god goat child scrambled up the banks until the ground beneath her turned into some sort of shiny, shimmering material. What was strange was that she could see herself reflected back at her! Weird! IN some ways the ground was like a river, but definitely more shiny.

Rikyn seemed to be getting sick, and she felt bad. Actually, she was starting to feel a little sick too, and she didn't imagine blowing everything up with fire would help. Aithniel stuck it out, dragging herself up and trying not to look down in case she did actually get sick. Wobbly hooves tentatively reached out and over the rocks as she climbed, careful not to get stuck or lost in the mirror maze.

"Talking"

As the boulders and fire seemed to dissipate the higher he climbed a huge sigh of relief sounded from his little goat frame. It was about time but what would be next for the challengers? His muscles were beginning to feel the strain but regardless he pushed forward with his mind set on winning. Knocking all those boulders out of his way at least seemed to pay off given he had passed two other contestants. Licking some more of the powdered sugar from his coat to help sustain his energy he bounded forward towards the next ring hoping to get there before the rest of them came and sabotaged the course.

Rounding a curve found him at a split in the road with the decision to choose which way he would take. Looking to the left seemed to bring more whiteness and strange colours while to the right the ground seemed to shimmer from something odd. Well he had had enough of the whiteness with all this sugar so why not take the opposite, besides shimming wasn't all that bad after all he hoped. The flashes of light to the left also helped to make his decision who knows what or who was getting fried by that crap, not him. Bouncing with excitement up the few rocks he veered to the right to take on this next part of the puzzling race. Eyes widening cautiously he takes his first steps onto the glassy surface and tries to concentrate on finding the other side. Pushing himself through the mirrored field played strange tricks on his eyes making things appear and disappear but he refused to be distracted by them.

---

summary: Ciceron goes right.


Ciceron talks
Ciceron thinks
Kiara speaks

EREBOS

It only took a few passing moments, a frenzy of sugar, a twirling delight of powder and crystals, to go horribly awry.

A blast of fire scorched and licked at his shoulder, at his skin, brutal, searing, singing through the thick pelt and fur of his goat coat, and he instantly cried out at the overwhelming pain burrowed, hollowed, carved, and fractured into his soul. What had been so innocent, what had beguiled and allured him into a frenzy of jubilation, had twisted and distorted into a nightmarish regime, and the tears stinging his eyes said nothing for the anguish languished and seething within his little frame. Protected, guided, and cherished, he’d never felt the crippling terror of this unholy inferno, this ancient, arcane abyss, where the world treated one as dirt, as nothing, for the sake of something else entirely. What made it worse, as he feebly stumbled through the haze of agony and terror, was that everything swirled by, awakened by the challenge, by the nuance, by the sentiments of glory and victory; his friends carried on, his herdmates advanced, and he was left with naught but an overwhelming misery. At first, as they swept by, he pleaded and begged in tiny bleats, and when only the drumming of hoofbeats, and tiny, pebbled stones flicked back his way, he ceased the melancholy calls and the segmented laments, blinked away his chaotic tears, and strived to overcome.

All he received for his efforts was a cruel, anarchic swell of frustration and anger. The once limber youth, when not mauled and maligned by burns, breathed slowly, resiliently, and struggled to put the horrific throbs behind him, locked away in some sector of his mind he didn’t need at the moment. His emotions tumbled in wild, ferocious splendor – fear and hindering became wrath, and it exploded from him in unsettling waves, for each step he made, dragging his battered frame up the mountainside, a fierce, pervading essence toiled and plunged from him (and he remembered the cool, indifferent features of his father as he massacred wolves; embraced the shallow, bitter entrails, bit back a chilling reverie). Like a sickening, unwinding, uncontrolled barbarity, he felt pieces of him erupt and funnel towards the other participants, dark, unholy, singeing and scarring, contorting and unraveling, motioning back the stitches of repose and ensuring sedition. He didn’t know what it was, and didn’t bother to mull over the vicious connections streaming, pulsing through his sudden, heartless void, only following the steps of his companions, turning right, plunging his way through the subterfuge.

[Erebos, burned, frustrated and in pain, unknowingly unleashes his dark magic (which follows along the lines of being able to manipulate another’s dark magic). He chooses right.]

The two majestic creatures rolled on through the abyss, onward towards glory or some aspect of its glittering decibels and mischievous gems, when the nymph, once visualizing a sugared world, felt the aspects of its surface teetering, blurring, cloudy and murky pendulums, as if she were scrambling amongst labyrinths and warrens. She slowed, adrift, shook her head repeatedly against this sudden, strange onslaught, and discovered the ground coming to meet her – bashing against the powdered veneer of the mountain with her determined, stalwart features. Somewhere, she heard Imogen pleading, crying, or chirping, and she was very tired, her legs trembling with the exerted effort of rising again. In the back of her mind, the little vixen pulsed and pierced, screeching Are you okay? and Sing! Sing!, but her skull whirled and some sharpened rock had pierced her goat brow, a trickle of crimson flowed down, dripping along her maw, and the sylph nearly spun hellbounds again for the effort of moving forward. The rest of her brethren carried on, lumbered or passed beside her, and for a few moments, so lost, so perplexed, so exhausted and worn, she merely watched them slip away.

Imogen, for all of her efforts, hissed and attempted to rein in her sparked temper (because she knew her beloved had been assaulted; even if she too had done so in the sake of games and competition), but it did little good. Her maw and tails were an unwinding frenzy of fire, furious she hadn’t prevented this instance, maddened because she hadn’t done enough, and riled because no matter what she did, Lena kept saying It’s okay and I’m fine through their shared void, even though she was the exact opposite and continued to sacrifice every waking moment to witness her friends chase after their dreams. The only other thing the maiden did, with her winsome graces and soft, illustrious heart, was hum a little tune under her breath to assuage Imogen’s fears.

They lumbered on, slowly, listlessly, languidly, for some parts and portions, despite a hope squandered and fleeting, still emboldened her resolute shield: she wanted to witness what was at the end of this turtle’s great expanse, she wanted to wander through the peaks and valleys, and she wanted to see her comrades succeed, even at the cost of her own fortune. Eventually, somehow, her stride managed to strike back into a regular nuance, and even with her head still punctured and bleeding, she twisted their forms to the left, down towards the peculiar array of rainbow hues and dyed merriment.


[Lena, exhausted from Oxy’s anemia assault, falls and hits her brow on a sharpened rock. Imogen, furious, still continues to unleash her fire. Lena sings for a few moments, regaining former mobility after 30 seconds and soothing her rattled companion. They choose left.]