the Rift


[PRIVATE] Darkness, Forfend!

Knox Posts: 262
Outcast atk: 4 | def: 7.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Equine :: 17hh :: 7 Years [Tallsun] HP: 67.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Jen
#1



Night falls and the hunter is waiting for it. When it is night, it becomes more difficult to see. If he can be thankful for anything, it is that actuality.

He has beckoned Manhattan and his son that he believes is his daughter to follow him, even if he cannot recognize them as being anyone he's ever known, even if he cannot recognize himself. He walks beneath waterfalls and comes out soaking wet, feeling every drop of water in his eyes like a dab of cream and a shard of ice making hot bloody streaks across his compromised vision. He is lost in the sensation of being unable to recognize feeling.

Manhattan has resigned herself to being his keeper. She was always his keeper, she always has been. She knows this now more than ever before, and with the realization that this will truly be all her life—packless, guiding the mad and aiding the mentally infirm—she finds it difficult to go on. How could she, with everything taken from her? How can she now consider that her entire future is to be the nurse for her master and the father to his son, his son whom he does not even recognize, his son whom he can barely acknowledge through the shadow of illness?

Still, she must. Perhaps Knox's body will recover someday. She has hope that the dark sleuth will not always be so covered in sickly sludge, will not always be so struggling to walk a straight line. But she does not think his mind will recover from this. She does not think he will ever come back the same.

The only consolation this illness offers is the muddling of their bond and Knox's magic. Manhattan can hardly see his thoughts through the haze but she can see well enough to know that his ancestors are silent. In fact, they have not spoken since Milo's birth.

Manhattan does not think this a coincidence.  

When the three shadows arrive, Knox is snuffling and dripping with a combination of sweat from the energy of standing upright and water from his walks through minor falls. Milo is a small sweet thing, floating in and out of intelligence as he learns the world around him. Manhattan is the only one who even remembers why they are here, the only one who might be able to salvage this gathering, this paltry presentation, for the newcomer in the herd that she had scented in the old and now broken trails she'd once walked. Whatever her name, should she come they would be there—whatever their condition, as a whole or in trembling parts as a broken machine.




Knox
ave mortuite salutat
</style>
Credit


@Imonada @Kaj @Archibald
@Random Event for GLL

Milo Posts: 60
Outcast
Stallion :: Equine :: 16.2 hh :: 2 years [Birdsong]
Jen
#2

I'm gonna carry you in
In my head, in my heart, in my soul



This one knows a few things [tricks,] knows: "Dog! Fa! Dog! Fa!"

And Dog, Maaaann, thinks this good. This one knows because Dog looks at this one for a lot [long time], Dog feels big [proud] for this one. This one knows. Father, yes Father, doesn't say anything. [I] This one doesn't know, him, that one, Father.

She is gone. This one hasn't seen her [mom] in a while. This one misses, forgets, doesn't know. There are so many things.

The bright is not here, is [gone] and this one misses it. Feels shaking [shivering, cold, lonesome, alone, abandoned, fucking freezing out here in this weather, Father,] feels big gone inside, big [hole striving to be filled with affection, black in space and a cosmic suction hoping to devour anything. Do you care about me? Any of you? But not you, Manny, maybe you, Father, Pa, Pops, Big Knox, Big man, Big looking anywhere but me. Can't you see me? I've been behind you for hours now, dad. I've been calling your name as best as I can and you haven't even turned around. And it's dark and I'm tired, and I want to go home but I can't because I don't know my way around anywhere without you and I don't know what home is. You haven't taught me.

You're my Father and you haven't taught me squat. I don't think you even know my name.] This one cries. Small, alone, presses body to Dog, cries. Knows: [so, this is what your beloved nights are like.]



background by: http://sirius-sdz.deviantart.com

Imonada Posts: 61
Hidden Account atk: 6 | def: 8.5 | dam: 3
Mare :: Pegasus :: 14.1hh :: 3 (Frostfall) HP: 58 | Buff: NOVICE
Byrneve
#3


Carefully snipped away from the mother fabric of the shadowverse, quite neatly right along the dotted line silhouetting her premortal design concept polished and compact, Imonada phases in and out of the darkness with the same reliability promised to one chasing love. Slithering and inky, a black moccasin leisurely drifting through the interlinking canals tucked away beneath the exaggerated overhang of birch, she moves with quiet patience fueled by tempered determination; liberally spiced with the essential ingredient, of course, that crow curiosity of hers that has led her astray on many a occasion. The moon is strange here as it sheds feeble lambent, its gentle face pinched and shrunken, a faded portrait hung drearily within the nightscape, still surrounded by her adoring stars. A child's unheeded, desperate calls for its parent had slipped through the light doze she was enjoying; the tone was distressed and frustrated, not hysterical, so she took her time mulling over the potential scenario as she moved to arrive at the source.

Cool, refreshing water swirls lazily around her legs as she slips into the pond the trio's waterfall gorges itself upon. The first one she notices is the lofty steed; his discombobulated, zombie movements and unseeing gaze betraying malady, but in this shroud of late evening he too buoys between anonymity and exposure. Uncertain as how to process it, much less address him, her gaze flicks off him as if spurned away, landing on the sleek black dog and... a foal.

Her breath catches in her throat, memories pounding at the gates, demanding retribution. She'd not seen a child since her clan had lost their crop. For a heartrending, fleeting moment Milo's face is Imanie's precious visage; small, afraid, unhappy. But she blinks, and that lost piece of her soul returns to its true place; beneath the heather, the soil, a lifetime from here, what once was a vibrant and brilliant --living-- creature now a tiny skeleton curled up tight, never to leave the dream that ferried her to the other side, her only company the other lost children and the worms that stripped their flesh for their ritual inauguration of returning to the greater cycle. Although she harbors a fervent wish --her anxiousness manifesting itself in a shift of weight from one hoof to another-- to address the young foal and the stallion's companion, who herself looked more approachable at this point than even her own master, she was bound by codified honor to acknowledge him prior to the others. Even if that acknowledgement ends up dispersing like smoke. 

She dances, fights, with her uncertainty; two actors unable to possess this stage, one threatening to steal the show from the other. A strong, clean, able voice somehow crawls its way out of the internal conflict as she hails Knox with a pastor's confidence; everwhile, watching him warily and sending errant gazes to Manhattan and Milo, concern gouging into her normally serene features for all of them. 

elizabeth: you're not telling us everything.
red: let me put your mind at ease; i'm never telling you everything.
--blacklist

force allowed
plotting prior to death/maiming please

[Image: a0jmns.png]
line art by jennyleigh

Knox Posts: 262
Outcast atk: 4 | def: 7.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Equine :: 17hh :: 7 Years [Tallsun] HP: 67.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Jen
#4



He feels a relief that is momentary but strong enough as his own cape of dark and light flickers over him. Perhaps it is a cure, he can't quite tell. But he has enough of himself left to recognize the mare when she speaks to him. Yes, she is the one he has heard of. The one who wishes to spy along his side.

Manhattan is pleased to see him stand up straighter and pull himself together. Milo is silent, drifting further away, lying down in the grass at a fair distance. He isn't aware of fear, yet, but he knows that his father scares him in some instinctive part and that is enough.

Maybe the trees will consume that child in shadow and with such an act, Knox will not be faulted for forgetting his son even exists.

"Yes, you're the one," Knox murmurs softly as he considers her. She is swathed in shadow, blessed with two wings very unlike those he has stashed in the deep woods, and she is promising. One like her would surely be good at hiding, at watching, at being discrete in general. Still, when he says it there is a glimmer of uncertainty planted. He can't have her thinking she is god's gift, that she is truly as good of a recruit as she might be.

"Give me your name," he commands the mare. Before him she is miniscule--his tone is a threat, his inflection an order. She will give him his name or she will turn and lose everything. There is an implication that with her name he will have her soul, her power. There is something gothic about the question.

There is also, too, some sort of trickery in it. But Knox betrays no emotion as he stands towering before her. He casts a long shadow in a persistent dark and snorts, inhaling black into his lungs even as it starts to crack and flake away.




Knox
ave mortuite salutat
</style>
Credit


@Imonada
@Kaj
@Archibald

So sorry for the wait! I was waiting for someone else to tag but they just told me to go ahead. Knox got cured of GLL in another thread so I'm acting as if it's fading away from his own magic that he used (which is a cure). Go ahead and post, I'm not posting Milo this round.

Imonada Posts: 61
Hidden Account atk: 6 | def: 8.5 | dam: 3
Mare :: Pegasus :: 14.1hh :: 3 (Frostfall) HP: 58 | Buff: NOVICE
Byrneve
#5


Everything sort of just... fades away when Knox turns upon her. Almost immediately, Imonada is entranced, even as one last worried look is shot to Milo before the stallion commandeers her attention as easily and quickly as a spider ensnaring prey. "Uh." She is momentarily stunned, thoughts scattered, only to slowly compile them back together with one objective; to soothe the command in his tone. Name? What the hell was her name again? "Imonada," she hears herself say distantly, obediently and without fuss, her voice like chiming sleigh-bells, loud and crystal-clear. The pond, chilly against the almost suffocating warmth of the summer atmosphere, laps gently at her breast where a thick pelt of richly glossy feathers swell slightly in an attempt to trap heat; under the stars, the mirror surface twinkles and shivers around her sleek form as clouds of mosquitoes and gnats dance along upon the surface in a wash of pale moonlight. A lone owl screams up in a nearby tree, but she barely hears it, caught and feeling uncomfortably exposed in his obvious scrutiny of her. 

She felt frozen to the spot, tethered by the power of his stare, challenged to stay but terrified of the consequence should she flee. Guilt floods her, weighing her down, at such a consideration; she was in his employ, he her superior. Even if she was intimidated, she felt the need to show him the respect he was due. "Imonada, sir," she corrects firmly, dipping her chin and arching her smooth neck down neatly for a miniature bow, the tips of her wavy mane joining the strands of her tail in the dark glassy water to splay out like inky tentacles. 

She takes this time to begin slipping out of the water as snake-like as she was weaving through the natural canals that cut ways to each body of water around the Falls, climbing to the dry surface he and his companion inhabited, now that his child was laid to rest elsewhere, but she dare not approach him too closely, keeping a good few meters between them. Despite being soaked, quietly dripping onto the bed of verdant grass beneath her with rivulets streaming down the curves of her muscles, she stands with alert regard. 

Imaginative and prone to daydreaming, she could easily --at least sometime in the future-- avidly following this stallion, the way his strong timbre took her in deft hand, risking life and limb to please him with what skills she could offer. She could be his weapon. This was where she belonged, her true calling, a servant of another more powerful will exploiting her, giving her worth through ministration, application, and guidance.  

Shit.


Portrait template base by Wild-Hearts

*I am so sorry FAMGIRLING OVER @Knox so I had to reply, but definitely would love to see @Kaj and @Archibald if they can <3
elizabeth: you're not telling us everything.
red: let me put your mind at ease; i'm never telling you everything.
--blacklist

force allowed
plotting prior to death/maiming please

[Image: a0jmns.png]
line art by jennyleigh

Archibald the Dauntless Posts: 386
Absent Abyss atk: 6.0 | def: 9.5 | dam: 8
Stallion :: Equine :: 18.3 hh :: 10 years HP: 80 | Buff: SHIELD
Loretta :: Alaskan Malamute :: Time Slip Time
#6

His patrols are constant, and he moves through this forest like a shadow. He knows every path, every curve, every tree and every waterfall. Even before this land, he knew it well. He remembered grassy knolls and hardened mountains. He remembered the wars he fought to seize this land, to protect it, to call it his. Archibald was epitomized by the Hidden Falls now, as its Czar. This herdland and all of its history ran thick in his veins just as his own blood did, the memories etched onto the tablet of his heart. With bleeding for this land, breathing for it, came the responsibility he held over those that found shelter within his borders. His duties were never done.

Stepping toward the confrontational brother of his, Archibald merely spoke his name. "Knox." Archibald's voice was deep, cold, authoritative. The tone of it held no room for questioning, and there was a simple statement for the younger man to calm down, back down, and handle those under his hoof more curtly. Golden eyes moved to the tiny pegasus mare and he nodded his head toward her, towering above both black figures and the colt in this small clearing. Loretta stood at his side, chest puffed and head held high. Her tail curled over her back, plumed fur nearly sparkling white in the darkness. Amber eyes rested on her sister a moment before turning to the small pegasus.

She looks weak. She noted to Archibald.

Kri was small, too.

Not like her. I think one of her wings are useless.

Archibald searched over the black pegasus, though his companions vision was much better in the darkness. "Imonada, welcome. I am Archibald the Dauntless, Czar of these lands."


ARCHIBALD the DAUNTLESS
The world is a scary place
Now that you've woken up the demon in me

Image Credits


Through the ages of time
I've been known for my hate,
but I'm a dealer of simple choices;
for me it's never too late.


please tag me


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