the Rift


[PRIVATE] pay no mind to the rebel

Rikyn the Puppeteer Posts: 549
Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT
Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie
#1
Яikyn
Winter sure was taking forever.
 
The brief period of time in which it seemed that Birdsong was coming had dwindled back into snow and grey overcast, a thought which currently holds my eyes up in the heavens, rather than in the world around me (plain, white, boring).  Maybe it was a lack of years on my behalf, but something seemed odd about the sudden stilling of life, the return of stillness.
 
Even the few birds that had come here from their warm hiding places had left again, their songs ringing in my memory like a joke, the punch line with held.
 
Maybe others wouldn’t notice such things as birds, but I did.  For some reason, I looked forward to the return of the less snow hardy species as much as I looked forward to anything, and I noticed their brief return and sudden absence quite clearly.  Such is the thought that furrows my brows as I stand in the ruddy light of the strange red forest, the place where I had felled a God alongside my brother.  Such is the seed which blooms into a dark worry, one that sets my hooves to moving, the direction of my path diverted from North – a pull to see Erebos having lured me here, where I am now, forgotten in the motion – hooves steadily taking me towards the Veins, my questions in tow.
 
It’s on this path that my right fore clinks against something solid, metallic, my eyes widening in interest as quite suddenly I’ve stopped to inspect the noises.  Metal is a part of my soul, the smell and sight reminiscent of helping father with his trinkets, of mother’s golden glimmer and my sire’s bronze details.  It makes me think of the Sentinels, of home, of security.  I like metal.  So, the metal object, like my mirror before it, draws my full attention like a moth to a flame.
 
Kicking at the snow, then the still red leaves of the past Tallsun, the dried, crumbling black brown of older seasons past, I discover a dirty black rope, the shine of bronze (the word distinctly picked from father’s repertoire of terminology by its ruddy shine, its green tarnish in the etchings along its otherwise shining, smooth face); my golden hooves dig deeper, faster, drawing up from the cold belly of the earth a collection of bones, bones that had been a leg, bones that lead into the strange vertebrate of the neck, to a head.  It’s only one leg, a shoulder, the neck and crown, some ribs and vertebrate scattered along behind, as if an after thought; the edges of the bones are frayed, as if shattered.
 
I think of the Bear, its powerful claws, icy jaws snapping like stone severed from the side of a mountain, somehow just knowing that the being at my hooves met such a fate.  This is a Riftian, too old to be one of ours, the Helovian people who felled the monster summoned though the fabric of existence by a God who proved more worthy of the land. 
 
The impulse to shudder, to pull away, is swallowed down, hard, my nose lowering to test how the rope attaches the armor to the skeletal remains.  Its just death, I tell myself.  This being is no different than I will be when my light is extinguished, and the flesh is all rotted out, besides – the smooth white of bone is all that remains, the harness of black rope strangely unblemished but for the stains of earth (surely water will take it out?) still attached to the severed shoulder of the beast.  Besides, I’ve only found the remains to have the treasure it wears, so obviously given to me by some ancient kin or another, watching from the Starpool – or so says the dreamer within me, the boy who clings to the notion of guardian spirits.
 
The black earth is a scar in the pristine snow cover of the forest floor, that same blackness coating the skull of the creature as I begin to tug at the harness, working the bronze plate free.  When the harness and armor break free, the shudder of the skeleton meeting with the ground knocks earthen debris from the features of the skull, revealing the stubby remnants of what had been a horn.  The glint of bronze there, along the base of the long dead unicorn’s horn, draws my eyes from the armor, to a pretty band of etched bronze, detailed with gold.  Stepping over to look more closely at it, the same allure that had drawn me to my mirror itches, scratches, drives me into the motions of obtaining it as my own.  There are words etched into it, runes, similar to those lining the horns of my Uncle Torleik, the same sort of markings lining the plate of bronze, now that I look from one to the other.
 
Grasping it with my teeth, my tongue pulled as far back into my mouth as I can make it, I slip the band free.  Pondering for a second now how to best move both things to the red water nearby, I drop the horn ring, slipping the tip of my blade through it gently for transport, teeth grasping the harness to trot happily towards the water.
 
[ OOC: Walking through the Blood Forest on his way to bother the Time God when oh look shiny stuff! :o  Feel free to PP him cleaning them up in the creek a bit when you come in or however you’d like to go about Z entering the scene. <3  =]

there's no place to hide down here
Image Credit

@Zandora

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Force/violence is allowed to be used on Rikyn permitted it does not permanently maim or kill him (PM me!).

Zandora Posts: 85
Outcast atk: 7.0 | def: 10 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Unicorn :: 15 HH :: 7 years HP: 60.0 | Buff: NOVICE
Evara :: Black Leopard :: None ShadowMare
#2
Zandora
I already know I'm going to hell
so at this points
it's go big or go home


She was bound to none, a free woman, an outcast. Unfortunately, the satisfaction she was hoping to gain from leaving behind her child  everything did not come. She felt freer, condoned to work under only by her own doings, but Zandora would miss it, the icy fortress that was. She wanted jobs, wanted a purpose and now all of that had been taken away from her because she had run left. Her icy heart belonged in the basin, but Zandora bid her farewells, caring no more about anything besides the black leopard that had stuck with her through it all; Evara.

The leopard was a few paces ahead of Zandora, her head low and concentrated as she lead Zandora to whatever the cat had picked up on. The animal had pristine sensory skills, far better than herself, but often times Zandora was merely lead to a dead carcass or the leopard's dinner. But this time, she believed it was something else when the metallic smell wafted into her nostrils. It spoke of broze, laced with the dying drops of frostfall, a true concoction indeed. 

Their interest piqued, the two black vixens neared the sound of popping and crackling of stone and water. Her purple eyes settled upon the black and bronze Rikyn, his lips and hooves working to clean the metal that must've caught Evara's attention. Evara rushed forward, wanting to claim the find for herself. Zandora merely glared at her, forcing the young leopard to wait by the bank as Zandora neared her old friend.  "Somehow it isn't strange to find you digging among the dead for some treasure."  She muttered with her words of entrancing smoke and honey, her eyes sweeping over the pile of snow and unveiled bones. She wondered what had happened to the creature, but then again, she didn't much care, it was dead after all. She would've stolen from it's corpse too.

"I haven't seen you, how do you fare old friend?" She asked, ears tipping forward as she let her orbs settle upon his. 


OCC: dude I totally forgot about this thread! my b i'm so sorry! @Rikyn


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[Image: 56a075b49df35]
No restrictions on things that can happen to Zandora, please tag in first posts only.

Rikyn the Puppeteer Posts: 549
Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT
Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie
#3
Яikyn
This time, I make no assumptions until she speaks, having met another with an ebony body and amethyst veils recently. A cat accompanies her this time, while she hadn’t when we’d last walked together, but she also seems happier by many leaps and bounds; for instance, she initiates conversation, rather than me having to drag it out of her. Perhaps it is the feline, who I look to now with a cursory glance, a childish interest in felines making him more than the usual blip on my radar that bond mates tend to be, a smile brightening my features as I note his greedy gaze, and how it lingers on the metal.

She’s pretty like she always is, all fine gemstones illuminated with crimson light so that she seems to be made of blood rather than violet from the right angles. Her words have an air to them that makes a cold line paralleled by fire run down the length of my body, ears raising and smile a quirky, lopsided thing, unsure what to make of being accused of grave robbing – or if she’s condoning it. A chuckle, almost nervous, sounds from my mouth.

I find no answer in her tone as to which her statement implies, nor in the touch of her gaze across my prize and my skin, or in the sweep of her feminine curves as she closes her approach some small distance away from me.

Old friend, she says, and I’ll admit it feels good to hear someone other than Erebos call me that word. If she was chastising me, I’ll forgive her, for no reason other than that she’s deemed me worthy of such a title. I obviously demand respect, and usually am given it, but you couldn’t force anyone into actually liking you all that much, could you?

"Wandering, I suppose," I answer, because I’ve done a lot of that, "and picking fights I shouldn’t."

My smile is impish, the sort of cheeky grin that besieges a rogue who has yet to have been killed in his escapades, though he’d seen the dark tunnel of the end looming. It makes me grateful to have found the armor. Maybe it’s why I did, some guardian spirit having drawn me here to protect me from my own stupidity.

"You seem well," I remark next, looking over her with more than an ounce of lustfulness (it’s hard to control yourself when all these urges are still new, beckoning with promises sweet), the cold air marked with white plumes of breath that obscure my lecherous gaze, "what brings you south? On patrol again?"

there's no place to hide down here
Image Credit

@Zandora

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Force/violence is allowed to be used on Rikyn permitted it does not permanently maim or kill him (PM me!).

Zandora Posts: 85
Outcast atk: 7.0 | def: 10 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Unicorn :: 15 HH :: 7 years HP: 60.0 | Buff: NOVICE
Evara :: Black Leopard :: None ShadowMare
#4
Zandora
I already know I'm going to hell
so at this points
it's go big or go home


"Picking fights?" She questions, a single onyx brow rising as she lets her gaze linger across the man. She hadn't noticed his skin fill out, the young lines beginning to fade to harder, sharper lines, his growth seemed to serve the time in which Zandora had allowed to slip through her fingers. Rikyn was the first she had conversed with in the longest of ages, her life without order bringing her to countless hours of wandering, but little of doing. He also spoke of his wandering and she found it comforting that she wasn't as alone as she had originally thought in her endeavors, that someone else too wasted time within the clutches of Helovia's wood and terrain.

Returning her gaze back to his eyes(how she had forgotten that they had gotten lost in the shedding of his youthfulness) she offers a small smile, she was better but she was not good. A little cry from Evara distracts Zandora from thinking further on the subject, god bless her bonded, sometimes Zandora forgot that they shared souls and that the creature knew exactly when to reign in Zandora's thoughts before they left her control and well, the after math of that--no good.

He asks of the basin, and a clipped snort released from her lips, too much emotion already released in the single sound to hide from Rikyn. "No no, I left the basin and my-" She starts, eyes falling down as the honeyed words of the black vixen falter and stumble short. Here she was, cracking, spilling over. Evara swiftly got up from her place on the bank, green eyes seeking out her bonded, Zandora can feel the reassurance, the companion's desperate need for Zandora to just be alright.

Oh how she wasn't.

Zandora wanted to cling to the idea of Rikyn's presence and the aurora about the two equines that she did not desire to ruin with a fit of goddamn emotion. She wants to push it away as she always had, does not want to face the reflection in the mirror, that would only show her everything she had become, everything that defined her: mistakes. But she felt her hooves slip, the floor icy and frozen with nothing for her to grab, nothing to grip, her mind instead flailing hopelessly about.

"No!" The word breaks through, Evara's attempt at speaking through their bond echoing through her mind, bouncing off the frozen floors of desolation. It is then that she sees it, her body racing towards the horizon at which she could run too, her mind clutching the shoreline with ferocious need of sanity, this, this was what crazy looked like. 

Her head sagged, a sigh escaping from her lips as she finished what she had started to say. There would be no more denying, no more running away from the thing at which she created. No longer would Cortana grasp the noose at which Zandora tightened everytime she slipped underneath the warmth of the world; into the ices of insanity. Zandora would slice through the bondage, she would experience freedom, and it seemed that Zandora had finally gotten started. 

"-daughter Cortana long ago. What about you Rikyn? Surely you have not just wandered and picked fights?" She asked, a playful smirk melting onto ebonite lips as she shifted the attention away from her and back onto something lighter. Maybe freedom wasn't too far from her reach.


OCC: o.O to this post @Rikyn


Image Credits!
[Image: 56a075b49df35]
No restrictions on things that can happen to Zandora, please tag in first posts only.

Rikyn the Puppeteer Posts: 549
Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT
Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie
#5

Rikyn


I answer her question, at first, with a smile, one that says much more than I probably will; I’ve outrun guardians, battled friends, and narrowly avoided other mishaps along the way, but I haven’t died or been seriously wounded (but for that time with Aelin, in the mountains). This adds a certain amplitude to the already present imagined immortality of being young, and I’m rather drunk on the high that being so fucking amazing gives me. Part of me, a part I mentally shove aside anytime it tries to talk sense to me, says I should enjoy it while I can, because I’ve only been lucky so far.

"I think I won most," I proudly state, because I honestly feel like I had, even if I didn’t. Training with Furen while in the Nightwalk had given me that sort of bold belief, that any fight you walked away from of your own strength was a fight won, mostly because it was how he believed, too; that he’d never tried to metaphorically or literally kick my legs out from underneath me is something I probably won’t think to be appreciative of for many more years to come. He was a good teacher, even if I failed to give him credit for it. "Tables sure kicked my ass though. Do you figure it’s cheating if it’s three on one?"

By Tables, I mean Volterra, but I’m private about my own name, and feel like it might be shitty behavior to toss around someone else’s; by three on one, I mean he and his two dragons, one of which seemed pretty young. I might bother to explain as much if she asks…

I might not. Winning most while fighting three on one makes me sound pretty bad-ass and noble.

The metal’s dirty glint is a distraction at my hooves, because I want to clean it and inspect the runes almost as much as I want to talk to Zandora. It’s a lot easier to decide when she grumpily dismisses the notion of being on a patrol, my entire attention fixing on her as she explains. When her voice breaks and she falls into what I call the endless mind well (sometimes I fall down into blackness too), I can’t help but twinge ever so slightly, mostly because the conversation seemed to be going so well before.

Mares, and their moods. Why do women enjoy weeping and shouting so much?

Still, she’d called me her friend, and like a spell, that word has invoked certain responsibilities which I sort-of-grumpily accept, listening while doing my best to put on my “and tell me how that makes you feel” face.

Her daughter, she finishes after some moment’s time, the large black cat having approached her only seconds before. A flash of envy breaks through me, one I try to put aside because damn it more lost kids. The way she says it brings up a wave of sadness in myself, having been the child left by their mother in the Basin, and I can’t help but wonder what Cortana had done that made her dam not want her.

Maybe it would help me understand why mine hadn’t really wanted me, either; I set my questions aside, not wanting to ruin the mood anymore than it already is, clinging to the words “old friend” to keep my tongue preoccupied, and the black at bay.

I hope that the flash of darkness that surely expresses itself in my expression is mistaken for sadness for her. I don’t like looking at the faults in my armor at all, and am glad when she redirects the conversation on her own.

"For the most part, yeah, actually," I laugh awkwardly, the sound brittle and fake at first, but gaining in warmth the further away from the black well I mentally walk, "but a few fights were started because I was trying to get into places without notice. I admit I’m definitely better at starting fights than hiding from them, though."

[ OOC: Table change because ITS PURDY <3 ]


’cause we need a little controversy
@Zandora

Wishlist - Plots

Force/violence is allowed to be used on Rikyn permitted it does not permanently maim or kill him (PM me!).

Zandora Posts: 85
Outcast atk: 7.0 | def: 10 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Unicorn :: 15 HH :: 7 years HP: 60.0 | Buff: NOVICE
Evara :: Black Leopard :: None ShadowMare
#6
Zandora
I already know I'm going to hell
so at this points
it's go big or go home


She is glad to see the light that his victory brought about him, she always found something beautiful in the glow that another's pleasure brought about their eyes. In her infinite reach to find that in something, she admires from a far, forever awaiting the time in which the bounds of her onyx and icy heart are unwound by the tendrils of something brighter. 

A question is asked of her, purples zoning back to the molten golds of Rikyn's windows. Her hippie mind closes off, she could find a better time for admiration of the colors and glows that emotions gave off for later. Now, it was about socializing, about caring for something else besides inanimate objects or vibes, this was about the living, not the silence in which she found so much security. 

"No-no I do not think that is fair at all. Must've been quite the fickle you got yourself in." She says, voice like the air, warm in it's caress and soft across the skin. She does not question, does not inquire more about Rikyn and his battles, if he wanted to tell he would.

Skin black like the obsidian rock, soft like the cotton's bloom, hair lavender like the drug, but eyes--eyes empty like the mourning hearts and as vigilant as the spider in it's web. Little surpassed her eyes and to see the ebonite man chip ever so slightly, it was just as much of as a surprise to her as she figured it was for him. Riykn was always the perfect concoction of when to ask and when to keep silent and for a woman like Zandora in which strived in the night and the noiselessness of it--he was wonderful. So she did not pick, did not ask, saving the man from her ever knowing what a chink in his armor might look like. She knew all too well the hatred off being so exposed, so raw, so vulnerable even in the slightest.

If love was about vulnerabilities, she now understood why she had so rarely loved. 

"Sneaking in does you no good Rikyn, there are better ways to getting what you want."  She smirks, a little playfulness lightening up the darkness that swirled within her hollows. She for sure had her own ways of getting what she wanted.

"You haven't leagued up with another herd have you?" She asked then, suddenly curious about what Rikyn has been up to all this time.

OCC: mixed between if this is a good or shitty post


Image Credits!
[Image: 56a075b49df35]
No restrictions on things that can happen to Zandora, please tag in first posts only.

Rikyn the Puppeteer Posts: 549
Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT
Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie
#7

Rikyn

She doesn’t ask me about my battles, which I will admit I am slightly off put by – mostly because I like the opportunity to brag. She doesn’t answer my question, either, which means maybe she isn’t listening. It makes me look at her a little harder, wondering if maybe the sadness, that had made her quiet and droll on our patrol all those months ago, had just been hiding behind her smile. I know it’s hard to think about what is happening in front of you when your head is busy drudging through a mire.

She should block off the inlets. I’ve been filling mine with the bones of relationships lost to the flow of time. I’ve mortared them tight with every ounce of anger I’ve ever felt. Sure, sometimes they explode, but I can usually ward off their waves for a while with my poorly contrived emotional dams.

Those conquests fade into the wind, the words replaced instead with more braggart’s remarks; the sort of attitude that had led to my fights in the first place, if angst and my terrifically large ego didn’t catch the blame first. Her smirk is a welcome sight, and I return it, though her words make the smile become genuine, humor igniting in my eyes.

"But the other ways are much less fun," I remark, naïve laughter at the danger of the game I play warmly filling the air.

The inquiry which comes next makes me snort, which might be taken as rude; the truth is, I’d rather not live anywhere that someone bosses me around. I’d like to be the boss, but without the responsibility of, you know, being the boss. Unfortunately, those things don’t really seem to go together unless you decide to live alone, in the wilderness.

"No," is my answer, as if the sarcastic blast of air hadn’t already said as much, "the only place that ever felt like it could be home was the Basin, anyway. And it’s… different now, not as it was when I was young."

Filled with pegasus and hybrids and equines, oh my. I had a hard enough time dealing with the situation for the brief while that I had, and I had disliked the soldier’s agenda as much as I had the droll life of a generic herd loiterer, as well. It had led to where I was now, I guess looking for somewhere that wasn’t real, at least until I could find a way to make it.

"I guess I’ve been trying to make my own, instead," I smile, hoping to keep the conversation from digressing into darkness (and an inevitable end more swiftly than is necessary), "a home, that is."

’cause we need a little controversy
@Zandora

Wishlist - Plots

Force/violence is allowed to be used on Rikyn permitted it does not permanently maim or kill him (PM me!).


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