"Where brilliance is good and madness is better..."
Helovia Info
Helovia opened in February 2012! We are an active fantasy equine RPG
Where once the world narrowed into naught but gray dust and desolation, the gods called for life. Wielding the elements of fire and light, dark and wind, earth and water, spark and time, they have created Helovia. The realm is set within the mythical globe of Loorien, a planet rich with all variety of creatures and blessed with all manner of magic. Originally populated by nomadic, tribal characters, they've since grown into massive empires saturated with culture and history. Separated into four distinct segments of Helovia, called "The Regions," each band of horse strong enough and capable enough, took up the power and responsibility of leadership. Unicorns, old, wise and mysterious, took to the north, hidden in forests of mists and shadows and rarely making themselves known beyond their cliffs of the World's Edge. Equines, vast, organized and militaristic, split into two, one group went north to the Windtossed Foothills and the other group went south to the Dragon's Throat. Pegasus remained nomadic, making their homes in various parts of The Wilds in a migratory manner. For many generations, the land was peaceful and calm, but peace was never the way of the gods. With a clash of argument, war and bloodshed massacred Helovia, and in the aftermath, the realm was eerily quiet. Now, as newcomers sweep into this land, they are met with the lingering bitterness of the gods and the struggle to reclaim what was lost. Nothing remains safe or certain while sorcerers and soldiers alike brood and bide their time for revenge, honor and glory.
Site Wide Plots
Kaos :: The Beginning of the End ☼ - 6/2017 - Kaos placed Helovia in a time-bubble for a short period of time, but the Helovian gods are fighting back. But Kaos is powerful- far more powerful than anyone thought. This may be the beginning of the end of Helovia as we know it.
Kisamoa :: A New Kind of Kaos ☼ - 3/2017 - Kisamoa asks Helovians to help him restore the Spectral Marsh. Which side will you choose?
Invasions :: All Out War ☼ - 5/2/16 - New layout and the brand new invasion rules are up! Thank you for your patience and we look forward to getting started with this new adventure.
The Rift :: Gods Do Die ☼ - 8/2015 - Helovia Gods are saving the Rift from corrupt gods! Can Helovians band together against these foreign deities?
The Literal Ship ☼ - 2/8/15 - Oh no! You have to pair up for Valentine's day!
Sky Island :: Murder ☼ - 10/25/14 - Vesta has been found dead on the island, and the gods have called to you to solve the murder!
Sky Island :: Peace ☼ - 7/7/14 - An island has appeared in the sky! Clouds carry Helovians from the Veins to the sky.
Restoration :: We Welcome the Dawn ☼ - 9/21/13 - The sun has finally risen on this day, giving the land new light, but the Time God and the Sun God have yet to be seen.
Endless Night :: Broken Magic Plot ☼ - 8/30/13 - The earth god has returned and is walking across Helovia to heal the land. Every area can now be considered lush and prosperous, but the sun has still not risen.
☼ - 7/19/13 - The moon has risen in the sky, heralding the return of the Goddess of the moon. Lamp trees which light the paths have grown brighter, moon flowers which grow in dark places have begun to grow and prosper and the world is brighter, filled with a new hope.
Endless Night :: Dead Magic Plot ☼ - 6/22/13 - The gods of Helovia, in order to protect the world, have disappeared into the rift, leaving the world sunless, moonless and magic-less in their absence. Only the herdlands have a source of light, but lamp-trees with glowing leaves and branches sporadically line the popular roads and paths from place to place.
Doppleganger Plot ☼ - 6/20/13 - The God of Time is still struggling to close the rift though which the dopplegangers have come. He has requested that his brothers and sister assist in closing this hole, but without knowing why it opened, the task is proving difficult. Magic still remains faulty and hard to control, but the herdlands continue to be places of refuge for those who are fortunate enough to call these lands home.
ORANGEMOON cools off the lands with a a viscious force. Colder than normal, a sign of things to come during Frostfall, Helovia is bathed in a rich tropical lushness - albiet a cold one. The coastlines of the Dragon's Throat are pelted constantly by tidal waves, and the desert climate is humid but chilly. Ice begins to form early in the Aurora Basin leaving the winding trails slick and dangerous. The mists of the World's Edge coat everything in a glistening crystalline shine which encourages mould to grow everywhere. The Spectral Marsh is the only area which remains fertile, blissfully temperature and lush.
Cotm
Character of the Month for
June, 2017
WEAVER, Corporal of the Aurora Basin, is a relatively recent addition to Helovia and has taken it by storm. Branded with the seal of Death on her chest, intrigue and interest follow both her past and present. Though she is assuredly beautiful, her sometimes sharp personality reveals that there is more to this uni-peg hybrid than meets the eye. Proving herself able on the battlefield in the Basin’s warrior ranks, we can’t wait to see her test her mettle against the looming Kaos happenings! Congratulations!
Helovia RPG was created by Tamme and Blu and coded by Tamme also known as Schwartze. All coding, palettes and imagery are copyrighted to the website and are not for use outside of Helovia. Thank you to our ServerMaster for hosting Helovia. A special thanks goes to Neo for all of her coding help and fixing Tamme's errors, Boom, for her loyal service and creation of the Time God, and to Ali for her consistent contributions and dedication.
Red forests, they are oppressive and dark beneath the ruddy orange light of the Moon; she is stained like infection, streaked with a sickly and tepid orange diluted by the pure ivory of her flesh as she slowly traipses beneath the midnight boughs. Her eyes are dark and heavy, her cognizance slipping in the arduous splendor of the deep night and the full face of its queen, drunk on the rising aura that promised wickedness growing in its depths.
She can smell the rot of the logs as they crush with squelching ease beneath her diminutive frame, she can scent the death of the leaves as they lie broken and forgotten beneath the bodies of their fellows that trickle with autumnal music to the floor around her, and the pulse of her empty heart throbs in time with the hymnals of her thoughts and dancing blades.
It is warmer to the south, but not as beautiful or arcane as the ice realm or the mountain and its hidden haven, the thousands of caves and their millions of branches reaching into the dark hearts of the stone peaks. She could die in them, lost for years, happy as a dog with a bag of bones, gnawing away on the richness of that colorless, oblique world as if it was filled with a marrow that could sustain her – but she would die, as all living things who find themselves in dark deep and endless. What a pitiful end for such a goddess as she, how beautiful and weak; it is the story of the others, not of her, the Beloved one.
How sweet is her existence, a petulant beast that writhes across the surface of the earth and gleams as delightfully as cursed, wicked gold. How graceful is she, how magnificent! She cleaves to the shadow like the river to its bed, and she glimmers and leaps as the silvery beads that tear free of their keeper.
Rivers, the water is black as she comes upon it, glistening with starlight, and she stares with a nervous twitch of laughter rising from her mouth at how the water seems to watch her back with its thousand eyes. A crescendo of the heart song, her soul throbbing with its heavy pulse as the wicked one struggles to grasp hold of the logic that flutters and hovers like flies.
It cannot see her. It is not alive, no matter that it moves or sings in the darkness.
[ OOC: Northwestern edges of the Dark Forest. :3 ]
@[Ophelia], @[Raeden]
Ophelia had wandered without thinking, her eyes drifting off into the distance, unseeing. She followed her hooves east, to the cover of the dark trees. A large, orange moon cast eery light through the dense boughs, a crisp chill rustling the flaming leaves through the tree. Despite her carefully formed, soft, deer-like hooves, she crunched through the falling leaves, waking her from her reverie. She had fallen asleep, in a way, disappearing inside of herself as the expression on her face glazed.
Someone else was crunching too. Ophelia paused, lifting her neck as the weights fell from her eyelids, the clouds drifting from her vision. She took a deep breath, calling Tinek down with a soft whisper of her mind. The silver dragon swept beneath the tree lines carefully, talons grasping and marring the surface as he fell to her hip. He was much too large now to perch atop her head as he used to, but he peeked around her shoulder into the distance.
A figure appeared, one pale and dripping black from the right eyes just as she seemed to drip blood. Her coat was perfect, flawless, almost like her own. Except where Ophelia's hair turned to sanguine coagulation, this mare's hair remained pristine. She furrowed her brows over her face, having never seen this one before, and her mind etched out this figure to remain there forever - haunting. Memories had the ability to haunt, especially when filled with one that gave her chills along her spine with just a look.
But, Ophelia lacked the necessary survival instincts. She had been lacking them since birth. Her beautiful mind had taken up these instincts to make more room for memories. You cannot give without taking away. "Who are you?" she asked conversationally. Phi did not run. She had no desire to run. She felt the chill, but the hammering in her chest did not call her to flight.
OPHELIA
Faith shattered and decays as frosted blood flows in my veins
sdrcow @ DA
Undertow has come to take me. Guided by the blazing sun. Look at everything around us. Look at everything we've done.
Please. Anyone. I don't think I can save myself. I'm drowning.
There is the crunch of dead leaves being pulverized beneath the weight of another, a sound close and watching. Swiftly, her ears pull back, her crown turns to face the assailant with molten silver writhing in the thick black ring of her stare, the pupil small and threatened in all the ways the other is invisible in its bed of black.
A sucked hiss ushers through her lips as the other speaks, gaze attuned to the darkness and finding the speaker a pale seraph in the shadowy boughs of the forest, blood staining her locks that tousle gently in the passing breeze that carries the scent of leaf bodies and the stream between them. Her nostrils draw, deeply, draconic in their slenderness, in their search for her identity, her purpose; for all the gore marking her pale bodice, there is no scent of the metallic ambrosia, not a sign that she wears the badges of war tied in her milky moon mane.
Curious, curious as the thousand eyes glinting and laughing behind her. She can hear the titter of the river and it makes her nervous as the stranger, rouses laughter supple and deranged to her lips once more to sing in time with the rise and ripple of the water, her eyes never leaving the beautiful stranger that spared her the stare of the stream.
She does not tremble, despite being startled, nor does she truly start; it is merely a twist of her hideously beautiful face, a bend of that supple and elegant neck to look upon the other woman awash in the orange light of the moon.
Who is she?
No one in this land knows what it good for them, do they?
The smile that breaks the impassive nothingness of her stare is cold and chipped from stone, snowy lashes flickering slowly over the maniacal gleam harbored in her face. "I could be a dream, sweet and fleeting," she sings, her head tilting with an exaggerated gesture to the right, almost as if her neck has been snapped there at the cheek and neck, limply hanging as the lips betray that she is not dead or broken at all, her laughter sweet and entwined with the childlike innocence of her voice, "a thought, a dancer like shores retreating."
She takes a step closer, to admire the perfection of that white pelt, the dark skin beneath. She smells like women and wilderness, like capsulated blood and a beating heart. Can she hear it, if she listens? Her ears cannot lean forward hard enough to glean if it is only the sound of her hooves that thuds so suddenly against the chiming rhythm of the starlit water behind her, trailing beacons on her ivory flesh. "Are you lonely, loveless?" she pauses as if a thought snatches her ankles fast, another inhalation deep and audible as it whistles through her nostrils suddenly, "Beloved will love you, though the water watches. It loves no one. It will not care."
Her movements were snakelike from the natural arch of her neck to the darting movement of narrowed eyes. Ophelia did not react as the serpent tilted her ears back, revealing one white eye with a severely narrowed slit to match the bed of blackness on the other side of her skull. Her lips released a hissing sound, and Ophelia holds her gaze without reaction except for the increase in the pounding of her heart.
Little did this serpent know that the blood stains on her hair were permanent. She was born and bathed in blood, from a line of warlords and battle queens. She lead mercenaries, spied for all and held loyalties to none. The beautiful appearance, so angelic, was the perfect decoy for the secrets and darkness that lay inside - just like her father. For all of the beauty, the cleanliness and the softness that exuded from her figure like the scent of a flower, she was an interesting type of poison.
At least, that is what she thought about herself. She broke everything she touched, and harmed with only a glance. No one stayed, and she never could. Ophelia was, and always would be, Forsaken.
Laughter reached her ears, and Ophelia watched as this true stranger approached. She tilted her head to the side, watching the mare approach, her ears almost quivering with alertness. She smiled a smile that Phi recognized - one that didn't move past a quirk of the lips and made the glint of eyes all the more sinister and empty. The mare spoke, reciting a poem in a sing-song voice.
The snap of her neck sent Ophelia one step closer, a pained concern glazing her eyes, as if the mere fact that she felt something for this stranger was agony. She could not keep herself from this action, no matter how much she tried to shut herself and no matter how many left her in this world. But, the mare was okay, just... odd. Different. Perhaps dangerous. And right now? Well? Ophelia felt kinship with this creature, not because she was the same but because this creature seemed to feel.
Ophelia's eyes jerked back as she spoke words from her own heart. She nodded once, simply. "Always lonely, and always loveless," she whispered in responses, brows furrowing in curiosity. Who was this mare? She was neither dream nor dancer, but something else entirely.
She glanced at the bubbling brook to her side, seeing nothing about it other than water. What was wrong with the water? "Your name is Beloved? Or you are?" she asked quietly, not taking her eyes off of the ever-moving stream. "What is wrong with the water?"
@[Beloved]
OPHELIA
Faith shattered and decays as frosted blood flows in my veins
sdrcow @ DA
Undertow has come to take me. Guided by the blazing sun. Look at everything around us. Look at everything we've done.
Please. Anyone. I don't think I can save myself. I'm drowning.
Unlike most, the damsel does not balk or cower, she does not flee; she approaches. Delighted laughter breaks away from the ivory one as she traipses along the bank, the wind caressing her fine hair and dislodging it like flyaway tethers that carry airborne spiders to a distant destination. The giggles die away into a mutated grimace of a smile, that she is right, again, that her mad mind so quickly reads the pages of this one that flutter and lose their scent into the breeze.
She smells of trees and no one but herself, and her eyes, those perfect, bloody eyes, they are the most sorrowful rubies she has ever seen. The mad one looks into them longingly, almost as if she might feel what touches the beating heart within this porcelain casing before her, so delightfully sculpted in tones that suit the tastes of the dancer so well; she has never felt sorrow, nor has she ever felt alone.
Was she ever truly alone?
The river mockingly laughs no, and she kicks a stone into it, grinning at the plinking sound of its rippling form breaking while her eyes still watch the emotions pulsing with as much noise as the creek across the wanderer’s pretty face.
The first signs of discomfort bleed into the moment as she looks away, looks back into the white, shining eyes of the stream and the stars. That she asks is ridiculous and makes the ivory one inhale sharply, snorting a feminine little harrumph into the air as she herself now looks out into the dark branches.
Mortals are all so stupid.
"I am these things, yes," she says to the branches, as the other snowy queen speaks to the watchful water, "but the water is water." Always laughing, always mocking, never still, not even beneath the guise of glass that it adorned in the frigid months, not even when it seemed to vanish into the earth. Beneath it all it was still alive, after the rains it would again rise to dance and writhe and jest at the sensible Beloved, and there was not a damn thing different about the water over there than any water she had ever met in all her years.
It was everywhere, and it watched. Surely the stranger knew that? The curious tilt of her head arises again in time with the mental inquiry, a breathless and nearly silent chuckle rising from her pointless ruminations.
"Do not stare at it so, loveless," she whispers, having suddenly contorted her face to again watch the woman on the bank from her curious tilt and glazed expression once aimed at the tree line, "it doesn’t like it."
Ophelia heard the delighted laugh, thinking it rather beautiful. The sound was unadulterated, pure, and simply... her. She watched, a soft, sorrowful curiosity taking hold in her heart. When the white mare's strange eyes held her own gaze, she did not falter or waver, and let her own, two toned blue and red gaze reveal what secrets they could beneath the ice and snow.
She watched, gaze breaking, and hearing the soft thunk of a stone being kicked into the chattering stream, and she breathes her questions, raising a brow at the judgmental hmph. An almost-smile catches one side of her gray lips, curving it before it slides back into emotionless serenity, her typical, pale mask.
The mare was Beloved and named Beloved, and that was fitting. She seemed as confidant and comfortable in her own skin, knowing of herself and her destiny. Ophelia wished she could be as sure of herself, but her world was full of tragedy, full of memory so clear that she could taste the tears she cried on the sands of the Tides. She could still feel the bite of the shades that haunted her steps as she shouldered her sister's crippled weight to this land.
She had been born into tragedy, and she knew that she would never escape.
The pale princess had not realized she had drifted off, her view stuck on the brook until Beloved's voice called her back to the present. She let out a soft "hm" before nodding, quickly averting her gaze. Ophelia did not understand why the water did not like to be looked at, but she assumed that she did not need to know either. Beloved had some idea of what it wanted, whether that was born of madness or magic, Ophelia was not sure.
"I do not know the water as you do," she replied softly, looking into the delicate mare's white and black eyes. "I hear the sound of it sliding over rocks and nothing more." No, she was not attuned to the sounds of nature. She was attuned to the feel of snow and ice, bound to the light of the sun, and understanding of sorrow.
Ophelia felt Tinek shift on her back. He prodded her mind with questions. "Why is she asking about the water?"
Phi hummed thoughtfully. "I am not sure. She is either mad, powerful or both, but her honest is refreshing."
Tinek sighed. "You will always be my odd one." The words brought a smile to Ophelia's lips, and the dragon curled up like a cat, one red eye still trained on the stranger.
"Have you seen the pool with blood stones beneath?" she asked, wondering if Beloved would have interest in such things.
@[Beloved]
OPHELIA
Faith shattered and decays as frosted blood flows in my veins
sdrcow @ DA
Undertow has come to take me. Guided by the blazing sun. Look at everything around us. Look at everything we've done.
Please. Anyone. I don't think I can save myself. I'm drowning.
Could they learn from one another, if one mind was not broken and the other unguarded by the loss and pain that the first could not feel? Beloved held nothing to her blackened heart but delights, things that she had trained herself to feel her manicured and practiced delicate emotions over, for nothing was truly wonderful and nothing was truly without beauty but the rage that bubbled over as instantly as it subsided into the maniacal confines of her corrupted skull.
The world is only as it is, distorted in its perfection, each facet true and gleaming as ink upon a white page, and she knows she is not like the others; she can hear them when she turns away, when they think the wind gilds their words in silence, but it does not touch her, it does not matter. She is only as she is, she can be no more for she is everything and she cannot be less because she is a Queen of the Universe and she traipses upon the coat tails of fate. Let their doubtful souls be damned, let their bodies be burned and maimed and ravaged in the embrace of time, for she was not like they were and she was glorious for her differences.
"The water knows you," she replies softly.
The woman, pale and dipped in crimson, she obeys the softly ushered command of the one who hears the brook ripple and dip, cry and croon, words found in their incoherent song that slip unheard through the ears of more whole creatures. The dragon moves to rest upon her spine as she turns with her soft, sorrowful smile, a mask delicate, impossible to adorn by the dark marked devil of a woman who delivers her own empty and maddened grin in return.
The next question catches the crazed one of guard, draws her brows high and eyes gleaming crazily in the red light of the ethereal heavens. A pool of blood, of life fluid turned solid? It is as enchanting in sound as the truth of that broken castle had been, the ghostly wretch that lived within and pandered his gifts through a maw cascading maggots.
A nervous titter of giggles breaks her silence, hooves shifting beneath her as her head shakes a slow no. "Is it far?"
The words 'the water knows you' that she whispered were more chilling than Ophelia had expected. She watched the ripples in morbid fascination before quickly averting her gaze, remembering the warning the Beloved had given her just moments before. The pale princess watched for but a moment before calling to her attention the blood pool.
Phi knew these forests intimately in her mind, and since they never moved and changed, she knew exactly where she was. Nothing was quite surprising when your memories were flawless. Even though the topography was remembered, she could not quite pin the emotion that was being displayed over this mare's face. Perhaps it was something between madness and glee?
Why was she shaking her head no if her expression was so excited? Ophelia furrowed her brows, tilting her elegant face in confusion. She hummed thoughtfully. "Not too far," she replied. "But not too close. Easy to make in less than a day, but longer than a quick walk," she replied, wondering if she would want to follow.
[[SORRY ITS SHORT D: ]]
@[Beloved]
OPHELIA
Faith shattered and decays as frosted blood flows in my veins
sdrcow @ DA
Undertow has come to take me. Guided by the blazing sun. Look at everything around us. Look at everything we've done.
Please. Anyone. I don't think I can save myself. I'm drowning.
She giggles at the flustered motions of the woman, her eyes wanting to watch the watching water but severing away from it in memory of the quiet warning given to her by a mad woman. The water can’t do anything on its own, not without aid; wind, snow melt, a gentle shove and the cool breeze stealing warmth, but alone it is without purpose but to follow its course. Even Beloved knows this, all while she argues the validity of such logic, all while she confuses the movement with a sentient thing, the blinking lights with eyes that see her soul and know she is empty.
Is Loveless empty too? She likely was, if she claimed such names with such ease.
But without a friend or without a soul, the pretty woman knows the topography of the realm with the studious and complete answer she supplies, the demoness curling her tongue over the smooth whiteness of her teeth in hungry wonder.
She had a soul, surely.
Not too far, not too near, a perfect paradox to drunken the contorted synapses of the water whisperer, her ivory mouth parting in sweet surrender to the blissful notion of this pool of blood, gleaming stones of heart’s wine. It would take her night away, to walk to behold it, let slip by the brilliant light that spills like bloody orange marmalade around them and through the stark black leaves above, the ghosts that rustle and weave along the root ridden floor, but it was a night worthy of such a death alongside a sorrowful angel.
It would end in prizes, in glorious gifts that gleam and entrance, that bend reality even further from the warped mirror from which it was already viewed, it would die in still water crimson and graceful as the endless arc of time.
"The old forest hides the pool, it lurks within?" she asks, silvery eye wobbling incandescent in the sepia light, hooves anxiously pacing further from the water and towards the shadowed line of trees that invites her into their pitch depths, dying leaves clinging stubbornly to their branches and rattling in the low wind, "you will show us?"
The water continues to stir even after the normal movement should have faded. There is no wind, though the air has grown thicker, heavier. A fog had crept in unnoticed, trailing in wisps like serpents over the moist ground. The trees, they seemed to lean into one another, crowding the mares which were present.
A splash begs for attention to return to the pool. There, in the blood-colored waters, a fish had flopped out onto shore. Its gills flared as its body twisted back and forth, desperate for breath which air alone could not provide. Its scales gleamed eerily in the dark light of the forest, though its eyes, dead eyes, held no light. Should you push it in, it would only jump out again.
Another fish appeared opposite the shore of the other. Then another, and another, and another, until the soil around the pool was lined with frantic, dying fish. Only then, when a ring of decay wreathed the pool, did the figure begin to materialize. The water parted around the body of the pegasus which stepped out of its depths. The crimson fluid retained its hue even above the red stones, appearing more like blood, now that you thought about it. Its flesh was pale and bloated. Its eyes were sunken and sickly, and just wrong.
Its head turned, fish eyes seeing past both mares and into the gathering mist. Its mouth opened, only for another fish to wriggle out and slop onto the floor with a resounding squelch of crushed organs and shattered bones. A passing swell of fog covered the phantom, and then it was gone, and so were all the fish.
At least, until they all fell from the sky. Their corpses, for they had long since suffocated, splashed back into the pool where they bobbed and floated, running into one another and pushing against the side of the pond. Turn away though, and the water would be just as it was. The fog receded just as unnoticeable as it had come. Even the air seemed to have thinned.
Ophelia had no doubt that she had a soul. She was not empty, as often as she felt it sometimes. What was inside was not pure, however, but gray. For as kind as she was, the mare was not moral, but a balance of light and dark in a curious display. She held no qualms regarding spying and delivering messages, no issues with starting wars. At one point she had left, fearing that the actions of the Grey had damaged her heart, but she realized that she was already damaged. The death of her mother froze her to the core, but the tragedy only revealed more truth.
Loveless, indeed, but not without soul. Ophelia was unsure what love even was. Even what she felt for Tinek was not all consuming and powerful as a flame. The closest she felt to anyone was to Ktulu, and she was far away in a herd she had betrayed.
The strange Beloved asked if Ophelia would show her the pool, and the bloody one nodded, offering a tragic smile. "Of course," she replied softly. Without much else to say, she easily slid into her memories, following them and recognizing the slightest deviation of branches and angle of trees. Together they walked deeper into the forest, away from the chattering brook and where the forest grows the most dense. The night wore on with little protest from creatures great or small since the orangemoon chill guaranteed their silence.
Beloved followed in her sing-song way, hooves dancing, never seeming to make the same rhythm. She was chaos, and Ophelia was drawn to her in a way she did not understand. None of her words, whispers or songs irritated the Forsaken, but she walked in silence, Tinek taking off from her back to run along the tree branches overhead. Hours past, and they arrived at the pool.
The waters were beneath a tree, the bottom blood red with stones. Ophelia had drank from these waters before and had even played with the stones, and she stopped on the Edge. She knew she did not have to say anything. Beloved would recognize the waters easily from description.
What happened next, however, was completely unexpected. A fog rolled on, the ground moist beneath her hooves, and she furrowed her brows. The white mists obscured her vision, and though she was unafraid, the sudden change in weather was curious and unsettling. She stood firm, not out of bravery but out of lack of instincts.
A fish, keen on death, flopped onto the ground from the pool. She had never seen fish in there before... Ophelia was not one to keep the fish from committed his or her act of choice, but when the entire pond seemed to get the same idea, all flopping out, she furrowed her brows. Why would they all want to die?
The trees seemed to bow inward, suffocating, and Tinek returned to her back, looking at the pond with jaws open, frost and static frothing from his teeth and causing her hair to rise of its own accord. Only when the entire pool was rimmed with a churning sea of gasping silver did the crescendo of this strange night occur. The waters parted, and from the depths came forth a bloated, decaying body, so like the one of her mother except this one was a pegasus. Water rolled from her tightened skin like blood, and the shriveled, cataract eyes looked into the beyond.
Ophelia watched, wondering why. The pegasus opened her mouth, and only a fish fell out with the sound of crushing bones, much like the sounds they made when Tinek ate them... She disappeared into the fog, fish falling form the sky like heavy, dead rain, and Tinek tried to grab at them. They bobbed in the pool, dead and decaying, and Ophelia tried to unravel the metaphor.
The fog rolled away, leaving them in deafening silence, and the pool returned to it's normal state. Suddenly, she did not believe Beloved was as crazy as she sounded. The water was alive...
OPHELIA
Faith shattered and decays as frosted blood flows in my veins
sdrcow @ DA
@[Beloved]
Undertow has come to take me. Guided by the blazing sun. Look at everything around us. Look at everything we've done.
Please. Anyone. I don't think I can save myself. I'm drowning.
As if the new pool remembers that Loveless had wounded its soul further back, the end of their venture to the blood stones leaves them standing amidst thick fog, thick and cold and which leaves the ivory damsel with the sensation of being watched more permeating than the twinkling eyes of the water had ever managed.
Her babbling stops instantaneously, her flesh prickling tight as if to keep the bitter air from reaching inside of her and further corrupting the soul within; a tinkling sound near the waters draws her eyes to the splendorous sight, a basin of blood, ethereal in the red light of the moon and the drifting dance of the cruel fog. Beloved is taken, her eyes wide and starlit, a low, adoring row of giggles sweeping out towards the rippling surface of the water, breaking away the mist in its passing as her nose settles earthward and she nearly hovers to the bank.
A fish rests lifeless on the earthy shores of the red pool, silver and perfect, newly risen from the water in its wetness that flashes like diamonds on its scaled body. She does push it in, hoping to watch it float, to watch it linger dead as death among the blood stones.
But it returns to her.
A cry of outrage makes it from her lips before dozens of fish vault from their home, startling the little mare and pulling her back on low tucked haunches with mouth agape and bichromatic eyes wild. Gleeful laughter finds her once the surprise settles and she can focus on their bending, dying bodies, as she lifts her eyes to find the center of the bloody water broiling and seemingly alive.
With a moan of ecstasy, she watches the rise of the corpse from the water, how the light is orange and burgundy in the moonlight, refracting from the water, from the fishes that fretfully die on the grass. Its eyes, they are hauntingly beautiful, she will see them for nights to come as they turn to look at she and the Loveless one who stands silent as death behind her, silent where Beloved is entirely gasps and awes and laughter at the spectacle her Gods have delivered her this night.
She steps forward to meet the corpse as it ushers from the water, she longs to touch it, but the mists beat her in their embrace and she is left with only the stench of decay and the befuddling sensation of nearly touching another, muzzle pale and hovering merely centimeters from the bloated and ruined flesh of the living dead.
It was gone. Gone!
"Noooo!" she groans, she pants, an unicorn’s version of a crawl buckling her limbs and sending her splashing into the shallows of the red pool, the water covering her pale flesh and tinting her pink, for even the fish were vanished into nothingness!
As suddenly as they disappeared, they returned, like rain, like glorious, heavenly rain, but the body was not among them to her dismay as she turns her wide and hopeful eyes upward, as she searches the deluge of dead fish for her prized lover in the night. But it is gone, gone even as they smack into her in gore inducing splatters, as they erupt against the earth and shatter the smooth surface of the pool, cascading droplets over the small porcelain one who kneels in the water.
Her cries of anguish at the loss of the things fades only momentarily, the rain of flesh ceasing slowly and pulling her eyes finally to the Loveless, questioning and full of wonder.
When she looks back at her hooves, the fish are gone again. The sound of their splashing remains in her mind, taunting, mocking, a song she will sing to the Moon for many nights, because it was beautiful, it was perfect, and it burns within her that it is gone.
A roar of sorrow breaks her stillness, ripples the water so near her pink lips, and as quickly as the sound erupts it is stifled as she plunges her face into the depths of the water, muffled cries breaking from the water as she dives in and out and bounces through the shallows searching for the dead things that had just been so plentiful.
She finds none.
"Where?!" she cries to the night, before she splashes back into the water, "wheeeeere!" Howls the mad one, a tantrum ensuing in the water for many a moment until she is left panting and hopeless, cold and miserable.
Icy, hate filled eyes turn to the pale one with the red tinged mane.
"Did you see what you did?" she hisses, her voice suddenly rising into a crescendo, "bring them back!"
Ophelia was lost in thought, the sounds of Beloved's moans and cries a distance howl on the wind. What could this mean? Why a corpse from the water? Why the dead fish? Her crimson and blue gaze locked onto the waters of the pool, lost in the blood-red gems below. An intense frown twisted her features as she tried to understand. This was shown to them for a reason, perhaps as foreshadowing for a future event. Was someone to die near the ocean, drown in the sea? The wings had eliminated her mother's death from her mind, but the thought of future tragedy filled her with dread.
Was her mother only the first of many?
Finally, Beloved's voice called her back to reality, and Ophelia was taken aback by the violent and cruel accusations and demands. If either of them was to blame the other for this encounter, Ophelia could blame her! She was the one who had been harping about the water speaking, being alive and not enjoying being watched. Why then would this mare she had met only once demand that she bring these visions back?
Rarely did the pale princess rise to challenge, but this time, she did. Ophelia took a step forward, seeming to grow in size as she lifted her pale neck on strong, slender shoulders. The Forsaken returned the hate in Beloved's eyes for bitter cold in her own, expression darkening. "I have many powers in this world," she said, her beautiful, chime-like voice a stark contrast to the chill in her tone. "But summoning the dead is not one of them. I did not call that here, and I cannot bring it back."
Tinek swept down from the trees, having seen everything as well, and landed on her back, responding to the tension in Ophelia's body language to come to her defense. "I have to unravel this mystery, Beloved," she said firmly. She had only one place that she knew she could go to learn the truth, and that was at the shrines of the God of the Spark and the God of the Sun. "If someone is to die, they need to be warned."
OPHELIA
Faith shattered and decays as frosted blood flows in my veins
sdrcow @ DA
Undertow has come to take me. Guided by the blazing sun. Look at everything around us. Look at everything we've done.
Please. Anyone. I don't think I can save myself. I'm drowning.
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