the Rift


like savage horses kept within
Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#1

i am the vanguard of your destruction
The sun burned behind a cover of stormy clouds, a corona of light blazing through the patchwork gray but failing to cast any shadows. It was a monster locked up, its fangs, the sun rays, kept behind drab bars. Sealed away. Burning in its fury in a cage.

(He saw a lion, its mane ablaze, its breath acrid smoke, steam rising from paws pressed hard to a dark rock floor—)

But as his wary eye lingered on the pre-storm sky, the air heavy with a promise of rain, he felt a twinge of disappointment. The sun was no mighty, raging lion, no celestial beast trapped far away in limbo, on some days kind, on some days a monster; the sun was the Sun, an equine god and somewhat of a prideful asshole. Reality was cruel, imagination was better, (life sucks), and he let out a quaking sigh through dark nostrils as he paced through the wind-whipped forest, Sacre close by. Why the lanky young stallion had sought him, of all the would-be warriors, out was beyond him. Did he think he had something to prove, after all? That he was not d'Artagnan? (I know that already—) Or did he relish a chance to, fairly, bash some sense into Mauja's thick head?

Or was it just an offer of distraction, made out of pity sympathy for him? Subtly, he ground his teeth together, ears flicking in the brewing storm. The wind had already driven the ocean into a frenzy, a distant, rhythmic boom as it broke time and again upon the limestone cliffs, saltwater spraying high into the air—the tall pines swayed disconcertingly overhead, but their roots went deep and they had weathered many storms.

Mauja hoped this wouldn't be the one when they broke.

With his long, pale hair in a disarray about his face, strands of it pulled out like a spiky halo, he found what he was looking for. The wavering trees thinned, gave way to a small grassy clearing; it had been grazed down to stubble, interspersed with a few rocks and roots, but it was mostly solid ground. Immortal or not, Mauja didn't fancy getting to know what it felt like to actually break your bones. Pausing there, ears flattened against the low roar of the storm, he turned to look at Sacre. The red markings on his face and flank were muted to near-gray despite the fact that it was only late afternoon, but the amassing clouds had darkened the sun even further. You picked one hell of a day to ask me for a fight.

"Violence is evil," he said over the noise of the storm, blue eyes narrowing against the press of air. "I wish I could call it simply evil, but sometimes, the evil of the world is greater than the evil of violence in and of itself, and violence then becomes a necessary evil. And until the day those who would seek to take what is not theirs, those who would seek to harm others intentionally, are gone, violence is a thing we must know. Do not enjoy it. Do not relish in hurting someone else. If you must be proud, be proud over the strength of your body and the control you exercise over yourself; do not be proud in the blood you draw from another's veins. Use what you know, do what you can do, to defend others, those who become the prey of the greater evil."

His ears were flat to his neck, hiding from the storm, and he looked ahead again, something sad in his eyes. How much to say? How much to let Sacre figure out for himself? Just because someone was under attack, it didn't meant they were wronged—much as Mauja detested acts of revenge, they happened, and sometimes, they were emotionally justified, but.. what did revenge fix, honestly? Nothing.

"The most difficult thing is to listen to your enemies, instead of judge them," he said quietly, soft muzzle brushing against the buckles of the leather bag until it fell to the short-cropped grass. A moment later, the crystal staff tumbled down beside it.

His heart trembled, as it always did, when he grasped the leather between his worn teeth and lifted it. It still weighed almost nothing, and yet it meant so much, and with a gentleness he couldn't erase from his movements he tucked it in between the roots of a sturdy pine.

In silence he retraced the few paces he'd gone, and picked up the staff. It was colder, harsher on the teeth, heavier on his jaws—impractical, as he was not back at full strength. He'd probably throw it away before the fight was over. He moved into the clearing, and turned to face Sacre.

Bracing for the storm.

[ 0/3 || 800 words || @Sacre ]
BOMBARDA MAXIMA
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Sacre Posts: 274
World's Edge Emissary atk: 5.5 | def: 8.5 | dam: 5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16hh :: 5 Years HP: 65 | Buff: NOVICE
Inari :: Red Fox :: Heal & Ríona :: Common Kitsune :: Electric imi
#2

fox boy



Sacre stood on a prelude to a battle he felt certain he would lose, but it didn’t deter him. It wasn't a spar for glory, or selfish need, nor was it an attempt to help Mauja or become the most fearsome warrior in the Worlds Edge. Sacre sought a way to protect, to have enough strength to defend those he loved and nothing more. Mauja had lived far longer than he had, seen far more than he had and, perhaps, lost more than he had. The stained boy sought the Frozen Light because he wanted to know what skills his fathers old friend had obtained over such a turbulent time. As the storm rumbled in the background and the day grew darker, Sacre listened to the lecture he was given and smiled when he finished. The persistent wind rattled his dark, tangled mane around his face and the boy struggled to see past it, but he didn’t struggle in his response.

“Have you ever enjoyed it? Drawing blood that is” Sacre asked curiously, wondering if the sudden speech on violence was to do with something that was bothering him. Didn’t Mauja, along with his father, lose the Worlds Edge? Had Mauja felt like hurting someone then? Maybe he was worried that Sacre would become like d’Artagnan and, admittedly, Sacre worried about that too. Yet, so far, he had never come across a time when he had enjoyed someone else’s pain and he had never felt the presence of madness. That wasn’t to say he had never felt the burning of anger either and many times on his journey back home he had thought about whom he should blame for everything. His father? His mother? The Rift? Everyone? He blamed himself in the end, the cowardly son who ran from conflict and couldn’t protect any of them. He had made it his life’s goal to make a world for him and Roux, to find a way to return sight to his twin, but he grew complacent in the heat of the southern Dragon land. Sacre had grown comfortable when he hadn’t solved anything, even when his own heart had skipped for a moon-faced girl; he never had the courage to tell her.

Now look where he was.

By the kindness of Mauja he had been thrown a chance at another life, another herd and Sacre was making a point of not fucking it up again. Or at least, if it did fuck up, it wasn’t because he didn’t try.

“Teach me” he requested of Mauja, as his fathers bag fell to the floor and Sacre watched him place it next to the pine before continuing “I don’t want to hurt others, I don’t wish harm on anyone, but I must know how to defend what is close to my heart. I’m sorry my reason is completely selfish for asking you to spar with me, but I feel like you would know best,” he said with great determination. He wasn’t a warrior; he didn’t want a lesson in how to win a war or want some help with a special move he had created. Sacre wanted to know how to survive and he felt like Mauja would know more about how to survive.

With that he took a breath and considered the battlefield in front of him. It was getting dark, the darker it got the more Sacre would be harder to see, but Mauja was 17.2hh of blazing snow. Would it get dark enough? Perhaps not. There was also the issue of the staff he carried—what did that do? Was he going to hit him with it? Sacre was considerably smaller than his opponent too and that, combined with experience, left him with little chance of winning. Yet, the stained son would take that small chance and offer Mauja the best he had. The point was to learn not to win.

Did he use his magic? He thought back to the old Queen's words on drawing blood and found it ironic that his own magic allowed him to make his adversary's sweat their own blood. Little did Mauja know, Sacre didn't even have to mark his opponents for their to be blood dripping down their pelts. He could rob him of his breath, leave him trembling like a newborn, but that wasn't the point of today? Was it?

”Stay” he gently told Inari, the red fox, who looked disgruntled but fell back to stand by the leather bag under the pine tree. Ríona remained by his side, her six tails flicking in the wind as she waited for her bonded to make a move—and he did. When silence settled he charged at Mauja's left side, flicking his backend towards Mauja and aiming to quickly slam a kick into his fleshy rump.



1/3 || 800 words || *note* Sacre is fighting with Riona only.

ARGH EXPELLIARMUS??? don't come near me with that freakin' staff D:
<3



There's something wretched about this
Something so precious about this

❚ Force permitted!
❚ Please tag me!
Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#3

i am the vanguard of your destruction
“Have you ever enjoyed it? Drawing blood that is.”

Lips twitched humorlessly as the wind threw his forelock about his face, white hair snapping before his eyes. And what do you say to that? When you have lived your entire life a warrior, mercenary, and witch-hunter (executioner), when you have been fueled by nothing but pure, raw hatred, when you have been at the forefront of your own crusade—

"Yes," he simply responded, the small word nearly lost to the low roar of the world, ocean and storm, the thunder of his own heartbeat. Yes, I was once something else than what I am now. If your horn was your pride, your superiority, your advantage, was not stabbing someone to death the ultimate proof of how much better you were..?

“Teach me,” the fox-boy said as Mauja tucked away that little piece of his heart, a leather satchel with a few odds and ends d'Artagnan had left him. His ears angled back as his muzzle brushed over the worn leather, heart treacherously imagining it could still catch the faint whiff of his scent (—but it was long gone). Sacre kept blurting out his reason—his justification, all wild youth and innocence, his dark locks tangling in the wind. "Perhaps," Mauja simply breathed, before his teeth latched onto the crystal length and he left all those things behind him: words, reasons, lectures, visions.

All he took with him to the center of their arena was pain.

(It blossomed underneath his skin like a flower, a wave of heat, something surging up from the lowest, darkest corners of his heart; a wound too deep to have healed yet.)

The empty space where so much love had been.

It didn't matter where he stood (what he did), because there was no light to blaze into his eyes (because he's not coming back). It didn't matter which way he turned, for the fickle wind threw the forelock into his eyes anyway. His jaw clenched around the staff.

At least he was not kept waiting; Sacre billowed out of the deeper darkness, muscle rippling under a fine, relatively unscarred coat. There was no light to highlight the contours of his body, and with his storm-whipped mane he seemed oddly ethereal, as if he wasn't quite of this world—

It surprised him each time, how much he just wanted to stand still and take a beating.

But what would that teach? Defeat? There was no glory in martyrdom, nothing for Sacre to learn if he didn't fight back—so he broke the ice, started to swing away to the right, but it was a little too slow, a little too late. Dark hooves collided with his retreating haunch, smacking solidly into his left thigh; and there was that brief, sweet sweet moment in between the impact of the pain, less than half a second when it simply reverberated deep into his body, pressure and—

pain. Like a fire lit beneath his skin a deep ache spread within, and—he blinked rapidly as he began to throw his head to the right, fighting down tears he had no business shedding (—but it hurt, like he was brittle, had turned to glass over the years). The storm roared around his head as he swung the length of the crystal stick towards Sacre's hocks, hoping to give the nearest one (—his right?) a good smack from behind.

Because if there was one thing Sacre had on him, it would be speed and agility, so if there was one thing he could do to bring him down a notch...

[ 1/3 || 596 words || @Sacre ]
PETRIFICUS TOTALUS this sucked lmao
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Sacre Posts: 274
World's Edge Emissary atk: 5.5 | def: 8.5 | dam: 5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16hh :: 5 Years HP: 65 | Buff: NOVICE
Inari :: Red Fox :: Heal & Ríona :: Common Kitsune :: Electric imi
#4

fox boy



Sacre wanted to ask what had changed Mauja’s opinion. Whilst the lad was very happy that a lust for blood no longer fuelled the guy, or at least it appeared that way, he also wanted to know what had sparked the alteration in his opinion. Why hadn’t it changed his fathers? What had Mauja done that d’Artagnan hadn't for their lives to go in opposite directions? Sacre felt, that if he understood that part, then he would worry less about descending into a murdering madman, something he so easily could have been—could be. Yet, the fox boy was only drawing one word answers from the former Queen, perhaps it was time for action not words, and if later he still had questions, he would ask them then. It was that or risk standing there all day, as Sacre’s endless need to ask whatever came into his head, killed the battling mood. This was his first real battle and he felt nervous, as he had charged forwards, his mind playing through the next steps.

Was this right? What if he hurt Mauja?

However, even as his hooves connected sweetly with his slow starting opponent and the impact rattled up his legs, another sharper feeling clenched in his gut. It was a jolt of pain so sudden it made him grunt as the stick of the Frozen Light stuck a cut across his hock, sending rivulets of blood oozing down towards his hoof. Sacre had always thought pain was always the same, it hurt in the moment and dulled later, he’d cut himself the odd time by accident as a foal, and that was what physical pain was in his young mind. Yet, this kind of pain was different. It wasn’t self-inflicted, it wasn’t an accident—it was on purpose and it sent panic waves through his body.

The fox boy stumbled forward, almost banging his nose on the ground whilst his thoughts ran rampant; "what do I do now?!"  

"Sacre! Sacre!" Ríona called urgently into his mind, she was bounding forwards now, electricity leaking out from her tiny body as she fired a snaking whip towards the general vicinity of Mauja, her six tails sparking around her. "Zap" she giggled to her struggling bonded. Sacre grimaced; he now had one vaguely red hock to match the rest of the red that marked his body. The fox boy often wondered if anyone would ever be able to tell if he was actually bleeding or whether it was just his fur that loved to grow in violent crimson patches.

Seeing this as his chance, he swallowed the pain that dogged his movements and attempted to round on Mauja, albeit slower than usual. Sacre’s piercing gaze targeted a spotted shoulder, the right one and one he hoped would have teeth marks in later as he went to see if he could try sample a little of what Mauja the Frozen Light, formerly the Frostheart, tasted like. Even now, the fox boy still hesitated to even use his horn, preferring to kick and bite, rather than pierce or inflict the wrath of magic. It just didn't feel right to direct such passionate savageness towards a friend... Was he right to hold back? Or was he being naïve? He felt the storm come alive around him, whipping his unruly mane about his troubled face and setting an atmosphere that was fitting for a spar.

Only Mauja right now, he felt, could give him a hint to the answer he sought. 


2/3 || 583 words || *note* Sacre is fighting with Riona only.

DAYUM SON I need Hermiones' Time Turner so I'm never late :L
And that is the biggest load of crap I have ever written plz forgive me
<3



There's something wretched about this
Something so precious about this

❚ Force permitted!
❚ Please tag me!
Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#5

i am the vanguard of your destruction
The butt end of the long staff swung through the charged air; it whispered, softly, quietly, the first tentative hum of a battle hymn.

But his blood did not answer. There was no slow, insidious crescendo of a violent song in his veins—only silence as the crystal staff rattled against a black hock, sending a tremor down its length and into his mouth. Not even the painful wrench on his jaws, the grind of quartz against his teeth and tongue, evoked much of a response in him; it wasn't that he was numb, so much as disinterested. With a distasteful grimace he let the weapon tumble from his mouth. He didn't even bother to press his advantage as Sacre stumbled away into the storm-gray shadows ahead of him, merely rolled his tongue and poked the sharp spot in the corner of his mouth where the sensitive skin had been snagged by crystal. It sent a jolt of pain through him, a taste of blood, and he took a moment to offer the staff a sour look.

To be completely fair, Mauja wasn't used to hitting things with a staff, so it wasn't all that strange that the impact had not only dislodged the weapon from his mouth, but also hurt it.

Whatever, he thought with a grunt and a flick of his tail, trying to remember what the fuck he was doing, why he was there at all, how to care

Why was he doing this? Time and again, why did he do this?

Ghosts chased themselves across his piercing blue eyes as he glanced at the approaching kitsune, the smell of blood rank in his sensitive nose. He did this because he cared, right? Because he wanted to help Sacre? Because he wanted to make his body remember the fine, precise dance of war, to better protect his homeland should the armies come for it again?

Noble, good intentions—so why couldn't he make himself move? Why couldn't he ignite, get out of the fucking way, give it his best?

The harsh winds whipped tears into his narrowed eyes, and with a disdain whose source he could not name Mauja moved away from the bounding many-tailed fox. His left thigh protested, but the flare of pain felt muted and distant, as if it wasn't quite his; he wobbled on the first step, limped noticeably on the second, and grunted as the sparking whip licked his hide with a faint touch. A jolt went through him, ears briefly perking forward before flattening again. Ouch. He was glad he hadn't been closer to her when she struck.

He stopped moving, locked in place, left hind hoof resting on its tip to ease the muscle. "What," he began to say as Sacre turned, blood marring his hock where some sharp point on the staff must've snagged the skin, "am I doing?" Teeth grabbed the skin on his right shoulder, pinched nerves tight, and he just stood there, feeling it throbthrobthrob in time with his haunch. The pain spiked each time his heart beat.

"I'm not very good at this, am I?" he offered whimsically, a little blood-mixed saliva pooled in one corner of his mouth. And still, he was just standing there with a piece of his skin painfully stuck between Sacre's teeth, not even able to feel any ounce of pride that the black's turn had, indeed, seemed slower than previous. So his plan had worked. So what? Oh, hey, it's storming, great day to stand around getting bitten—

The worst of it?

He was letting Sacre down. He was supposed to teach him something, and if one thing was true, it was this: your enemy didn't stand around and wait for you to beat the everliving shit out of them.

There were some warnings before he moved, though; he planted his left hind hoof back in the grass, soaking up the pain, and his gaze hardened. Then, he struck, quick and controlled like a viper; he threw his head to the right, angled it down, aiming to bury the tip—and only the tip—in Sacre's exposed neck.

[ 2/3 || 689 words || @Sacre ]
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Blu the Bootyful Posts: 443
Administrator atk: 99 | def: 99 | dam: 99
Mare :: Other :: 5'7" :: 25 HP: 99999 | Buff: TWERK
Blu
#6
Time limit exceeded. Sacre defaults to Mauja. Mauja earns 0.5 VP.
 HP: 1100

Helovia Hard Mode


Forum Jump:


RPGfix Equi-venture