Night has fallen, consuming. The dark is a warm blanket to the pair. Knox follows the curves of the veins' welcoming stonework, ascending to the place where the shrine of the Goddess of the Moon stands. The neglect that hangs across the memorial for his deity stings; the hunter stamps a hoof with errant dissatisfaction, shocking himself with the sound of its echo on the stone.

Manhattan hangs back in a sulk, her nose raised in the air and her mouth hanging open as she takes in the scents. Blood, Knox, she warns him with a hiss in his mind. And blood of the innocents.

But Knox cannot bring himself to care. He has at last returned to the center of his night mistress' power. It is she who gave him the power he has over others, now, and the power he has over himself.

She didn't give you me, his jealous companion thinks with a snarl. And it is true, that Manhattan is his greatest, closest friend he has ever had. She is his everything, the reminder that he is no island.

Still, her disdain for his Goddess will always be a point of tension between them. Knox lashes his tail at his back and towards his companion, beckoning her with a hum. But she stays where she is, at the foot of the incline towards the shrine, facing away from its holy moonlight. Let Knox end this ridiculous fast of his on his own, if he even will.

Knox's ancestor's all have something different to say about the fact that they are here, at the shrine of a god. It is Janos who is the most enraged--vengeance courses through the mind of the colt, fighting with Knox. But he, too, is a dissenter Knox will not tolerate. In a moment, Knox shifts. It is better to not stay revealed for too long, anyhow. His Goddess, if she has watching, has seen now who he is. If he cloaks himself or disguises his being in the body of an ancestor, it is only a display of the power she has given him: a sign of thankfulness.

Janos' gray dappled body resists every inch of this place. He paces, using what little control he has to shudder and shift where he stands, a coward and a heretic in the blue eyes of the hunter, the same blue eyes that he had inherited from Janos in some distant way. They were alike, in many ways. After all, Janos had been Roanne, once in a long distance of time before the old ones had curse him. Perhaps there had still been traces of that dappled pony in the Sentinel's sin and seed, still a persistent, vengeful energy of one who had barely been allowed to live.

Listen to this devotion, Janos, Knox whispered into his ancestor's mind, soothing the jittery body of the young ancestor. See her beauty, even if only in my words.

Fool. You fool. Gods are killers, power is corruption. The ancients destroy, they take what they want and leave nothing but blood!

Knox doesn't dignify Janos' blasphemy with a response. Instead, draped in the clothes of his ancestor, he raises his face to the sky and closes his eyes, letting moonlight fill his being.

"My Goddess, dark lady of the moon, I have returned at last to live once more beneath your watchful gaze."

Manhattan lashes her tail, Janos balks, and the empty sky remains as it is: just that, an unblemished, swallowing darkness. No, the hunter realizes with a sigh, Knox has not convinced them in the slightest.

—
[[Tagged: @[Enna], any else who wish to join. Knox is currently in the form of Janos, more information can be found about him on Knox's profile. This is open to anyone--please let me know if I have permissions to use Knox & Manhattan magics if you join. Though it is unlikely they will use them, I like to have my bases covered. :)]]

Time passes. It is slow and thoughtless, each moment the ticking of a clock unseen: the clock of the hunter's patience and hunger, the clock of his dying faith. When the Goddess of the Moon does not appear at first, he is simply surprised. But the night wears on and the moon slides every so slowly lower. Janos dissents and Manhattan, bitter and hurt, gloats. The Goddess of the Moon has not deigned to visit even one of her most loyal worshippers, and in that, has proven how tenuous his grip on faith is after all.

Knox is selfish. Despite the powerful way he walks and the magics he is blessed with, despite his age and travels now, he maintains some aspect of the child. And perhaps it is being in the form of young Janos, whose bitterness towards the gods is an unintended influence, but he finds his patience for his lady moon to be stunted.

The graying tail that Janos sports lashes in impatience. In the hunter's mind, the vengeful whispers I was right. But the Hunter dislikes, too, being wrong. He matches Janos' pacing with his own, bringing a ferocity to his step as it carries him in front of, around, and eventually, away from the shrine. How many times has he knelt there and accepted a curse? Has he not been blinded, maddened, and lost at this Goddess' whim?

And now, she cannot even show him her face.

When another appears his temper is short and his belief laid low. He regards her with a familiar apathy, one he sported for so long as a child, and stares her down with the piercing blue of a long dead one's eyes. She is, perhaps, beautiful, but the hunter has very little understanding of the concept. Beautiful to him is the inner kindness of Aylin, now lost to his selfishness.

The antlered mare's mythos is intriguing, if not altogether false. But there is an urgency with which she seems to believe in this lie, in this reptilian provider, that he cannot shake. He knows the Gods in Helovia are real because he has seen them. He has spoken with them, stood before their shrines and carried out quests for them. He has felt the effects of their magics and known they are true.

But what of this dragon? Could such a creature exist at the same time as his mistress? And what of this moment now, where his kindness is gone and his lover a distant memory? How is this proof that there has ever been a Goddess at all?

He cannot, in confidence, tell her she is wrong. He breaks gaze with her, turning away from her fine features instead. "Perhaps so," he says with a frown. He beckons Manhattan once more: it is only now, feeling that she has won, that she concedes.

There is a sort of anger burning in his chest, one borne of hurt and abandonment, from the fact that his Goddess has left him, but still he feels the old obligation of teaching this mare something. He was young, once, and he has grown up in this land long enough to know that without any knowledge, you will quickly find yourself suffering at the hoof of another.

He has, before, been the one causing such pain. Now, as he struggles with a rage in his heart, he tries to be someone else. For Aylin, his companion reminds--as if he does not already know.

"I only know that here, the Gods are four: each for an element of their own," he begins, unable to wipe the unfitting scowl off of Janos' features. "The Earth, the Sun, the Spark, and the Moon."

The night overhead is a mocking threat. Beneath its dim light, the hunter shifts and feels his magic stir. The uncertainty he feels becomes consuming. "At least, that's how it used to be."


—
[[Tagged: @[Enna]]]