the Rift


[OPEN] maybe danger isn't our thing

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
 
Rikyn

 
‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ he responds, morosely.  It seems like he says more and more things this way the older we get, and there is something about it that makes me want to keep snapping at him, even if it makes his heart bleed.  “Well you damn sure didn’t!” flares to mind immediately, but, truthfully, my ankle does hurt pretty bad, and some of his bites still smart a bit.  “It’s called a spar, you idiot!” is a secondary stream, physically bit back as I grasp my tongue between my teeth and glare at him, ears still tilted back into the tangled chaos of my mane.
 
What he says next takes some of the sharpness out of my glaring, eases the tension pulling taut my sweat slaked skin, because it tugs on one of the very few soft places in my heart.  I snort, finding some humor in the notion that he might have killed me, because I honestly don’t think either one of us would have let that happen (now that I’ve actually thought of the disastrous, potential outcome to what I’d considered a friendly joust).
 
"I wouldn’t have killed you, and you’d not have killed me either," I grumble with frustrated disappointment, letting some of my tumultuous emotions out in a childish roll of the eyes that I simply expect him to forgive me for.  I’ve always been a horrible shit of a person; why would that change because my balls had dropped?  "Besides, you should know better."
 
I take the time to really look into his eyes, to make sure he sees that I’m not really that mad at him.  I’m mostly frustrated because my attempts to play Knight with him had been so dramatically different than I’d hoped, and that I’d let so much distance grow between us that he had room to worry about such womanly bullshit at all.
 
"You’re my brother, no matter where Time takes us," awkwardly, I look down at my hooves, kicking absently a spare stone and watching it skitter out into the shadows bordering the room, "I couldn’t be a King without you."

Continuation of:
let's start living dangerously & ignore remorse
tear the whole world down
 @Erebos

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Erebos Posts: 474
Aurora Basin General atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.1hh :: Four HP: 75.5 | Buff: DANCE
Orsino :: Plain Kitsune :: Dark Illusions & Enyo :: Common Griffon :: Draining Clutch Heather
#2
Erebos
Erebos cherished what came his way. He’d learned from an early age to enjoy and hold precious, valuable things (like friendship, like love, like power), because he’d watched his father stare out over the horizon during every rainstorm, because he’d watched for fallen pieces of blossoms left by his sister, because he’d grasped and clenched and lost along his rubbled path. Sometimes he clasped so tightly he wondered if any of them could feel the pulse, the weight, the fear of his dominion – if he was doomed to lose everything he cared for, if none of them would ever look his way again, if he was destined to be a forgotten piece of the past. The boy fought, tore, and presided in every avenue, corner, and corridor, so they would remember what he was, what he was worth, and what he could become. There were some he would never catch, buried beneath snow, disappeared into nothingness, or daughters of illustrious deities, but he still tried. He still hoped. He still dreamed.
 
Maybe a part of him had always believed he and Rikyn would be together forever. They’d been born within the same season, took the same steps, laughed at the same jokes, lorded over the same adventures. But where Rikyn had broadened his reach, wandered out of Helovia and out into sanctions Erebos had never seen or heard of, the princeling stayed amidst snow, glaciers, and ruins, chasing whims, mercurial pursuits, and permitting hate to boil down all the ebullience he’d ever known. He built up walls, masks, namesakes, and lies, cast Cheshire grins and didn’t allow anyone to see the emptiness, menace, or malice curled and coiled behind the dastardly smiles and the charismatic laughter; slowly withering into more monster than knight. They weren’t the same beasts any longer. They’d grown, cast away their shells and vessels of silly, boyish charms and ridiculous dreams, built up tangible ambitions just slightly out of reach, and when it came time to test their mettle, their might, their swagger against one another, Erebos couldn’t do it.
 
He wondered if that made him weaker or stronger.
 
But lord, he’d lost too many now to cut away his ties with Rikyn, to bloody, to maul, to tear him apart. The lad wasn’t even ashamed of what he’d done, of barely pressing, of forgoing minatory prowess, of forgetting the sentiments, the notions, of extinguishing and obliterating his enemy – for Rikyn wasn’t. There’d been no prize at the end, no monument constructed, no name cast off a list. Yet, whatever process they’d been under, whatever practice had exhaled from the heated cavern, it hadn’t been enough for his companion.
 
He and Orsino listened in silence as the bay’s disappointment ricocheted off the walls in low grumbles and dissatisfied tremors. You should know better was an echoing assault along his skull, contorting and distorting the Machiavellian schemes, pleading with him to bow his head in indignity – but he didn’t. Prince faced prince, his eyes narrowed, a concentrated refrain repeating what he’d said to Enna just seasons before. “I’m tired of seeing my friends in pain.” Orsino nearly laughed through the seditious wave, for the boy had administered throngs of agony and misery upon those he considered brethren in spars and skirmished before – and now, facing legions of hypocrisy, he’d barely swung his sword. Rikyn would always be different, just as Aithniel would always be different, just as the rest of them would be segmented and quartered off in his brain – friend, foe, ally, adversary. “I don’t know where Time will take us, but when we get there, I’d rather fight with you, side-by-side,” he remarked, curbing the discourse with a slight grin. Then, a natural confidence possessed him, seized him as the other played with stones, as days of their youth and rampages of the future flickered over him, avaricious and mercenary. “If you really want to measure my strength, watch me fight an enemy,” he paused, lowering his face so he could peer into Rikyn’s and laugh, “not a friend.”

I'LL SHOW YOU HOW GOD | FALLS ASLEEP ON THE JOB
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@Rikyn

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

Rikyn

When did I forget how to read his face?

It’s a thought that nags at me, his silence pervading the room as much as my childish crowing. I may have been running around having fun, but he was learning arts I couldn’t get a grip on, no matter who I was talking to. It’s hard pretending to be someone you’re not, and I don’t want to hide who I am from him. That he may be hiding some of himself from me…

The melancholy rings its low bell again, it resonates, darkens the feelings that are already jagged metal spirals in my belly when I think that, maybe, I’m losing him, too. The stone propelled forward by my anxious hoof skitters into the wall and spins in place.

What he says makes me look up from the ground with a renewed vigor, a dark humor that has tempered itself within me all my life, raises its ugly head to spit at his concern. My face comes alive with it, the bark of my short, sarcastic laughter humming through the drone of the fire falls.

"The world is pain," I remark, all those winding trails I’d walked alone cumulating into this statement that is more often heard from the mouths of those much older, more jaded, than I am. I’d seen enough of it to believe my words as truth; the wolf kills the deer to live, and the rest of us struggle for the power to not be the deer. He’d seen the weathered, weary denizens of the Rift himself, the tired sheep of their faulty shepherds; he knows death, death without reason but to be stronger than.

That I know does not stop me from scrambling with the rest of them. It does not halt my blade, or dampen my vigor to conquer, even if it is a simple joust between brothers, and the prize is nothing.

My own mask rises, the selfish shadow within me whispering, cradling the most fragile parts of my heart in its cold, forceful hands. He does not understand me. He never will. Even his smile does not warm the chip of ice that blooms and seizes me, though I do mimic it as best as I can, trying to grasp hold of childish daydreams of conquering a kingdoms. Side by side, he says.

"Who would our enemy be?" I almost demand, that self-same shadow driving bitter malice into my words, over the remnants of his laughter, that I regret as they sound, "our parents war is lost, their enemies dispersed. I have seen the winged ones in the mountains, and the rust on father’s guardians."

Stop it, I tell myself, you’re being an ass for no reason. He cares for you. You'll hurt him. For some reason, its harder than it seems like it is for other people to shut myself up. Like water boiling over the brim, my temper continues to hiss, even after dousing the heat. Gritting my teeth together so that my brows knit down and my cheeks flex out with tension, I try to swallow down all the resentment. I shift through the heaviness to find the real point of it all: "Is it worth fighting at all if even the winners lose?"

tear the whole world down
@Erebos

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

Erebos Posts: 474
Aurora Basin General atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.1hh :: Four HP: 75.5 | Buff: DANCE
Orsino :: Plain Kitsune :: Dark Illusions & Enyo :: Common Griffon :: Draining Clutch Heather
#4
Erebos
Erebos had always believed he and Rikyn were two sides of the same coin. No matter how many times someone flipped the metallic bits, they’d land on a smirking face, a glowering, somber son, an interchanging web of boyhood dreams and silly, jovial persistence. Either one would’ve granted a multitude of wishes, ambitions, and aspirations, and there’d be nothing to it – one day, they’d cast their spirits into regimes, into empires, into kingdoms and sovereigns, and become more than boys born from the Basin, stepping out of their parents’ shadows, invoking eldritch abominations and sacrificial arts. They would’ve allowed anyone else to become a means to an end, except one another.
 
The prince wasn’t sure where he’d gone wrong, where they’d been so skewed and altered – perhaps when Rikyn had gone with his mother, down other lanes and paths, corridors and halls, and he’d stayed, strayed, within the icy chasms and the cavern lantern-lights, bearing witness to decaying, ruptured friends and ruthless calculations. They’d grown in separate branches, boughs reaching other eaves, roots unsettled and shifting to another patch of sun. He stared at his friend as he remarked about the world being pain (like Erebos didn’t know? Like he didn’t realize?), as he barked into the hollowed channels of the heated caves, as he finally noticed how much of Rikyn he’d truly lost. “But it doesn’t have to be,” he uttered, cool, persistent, furrowing his brows, layering all the cycles of vengeance he’d stored in his smoldering, seething lines, incapable of recognizing the truth in Rikyn’s statement. Eventually, he too would cause the realm to feel agony, misery, woes, and afflictions – because they’d dared to wound and scar what was his. The boy was too stubborn, too headstrong, too obstinate to comprehend the heavy, cumbersome oath of his brethren’s words, fighting against them even when he’d already delved too far into the assurance, even when all his moments of triumph were labeled and lacquered into conquering the immoral, the wretched, the goliaths and titans. Causing them pain was just another renewal of the cycle; sweet, vehement vengeance, toxic, vibrant indulgences – and he deigned to swallow every one.
 
The echoes were all bitter, surrounding him in a noxious fume, in a riotous act of calamity, so acrimony spit against his senses and tore along his frame, and he looked to his brother in audacity and impudence, bearing his boldness along the crackling plumes. His carefully constructed walls imploded around him, bearing a rotten, decrepit soul, eager for havoc, for requital, for revenge. “You haven’t made your own enemies?” Could Erebos’ rivals outnumber Rikyn’s? The notion was absurd, and he snorted at the assertion – the other boy had always been capable of riling and ravaging another. He was even doing it now, to him, a little cretin who fostered the composure of his father, the gallantry of his mother, on a daily basis.
 
Then, it came, like a wave of crumbling strength, disjointed and tired, fatigued and listless, languid and wasted: Is it worth fighting at all even if the winners lose? Frustration boiled in the boy’s mind, jaw dropping for a moment at the defeated layers swarming, bristling, scathing and scaling on the walls, across the molten backdrop. “Then why bother doing anything at all, Rikyn? Why don’t you just stand around and wait for the world to crumble around you?” Anger unsettled him, and he breathed, restless, agitated, irritated and exasperated by the way they’d clambered along. On a growl, on a brilliant, blistering opus (because those final words opened up a wound, opened up a layer of spite across his tongue, daring him to bleed, daring him to cry, daring him to reach across the void and shake the rancorous shell his friend resided within), he narrowed his eyes and hissed one more set of vocals. “You’re the last creature I ever thought would give up.”

I'LL SHOW YOU HOW GOD | FALLS ASLEEP ON THE JOB
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@Rikyn

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


Not that I hadn’t thought or found the time to think before, but being alone gave me lots of time to dwell, to realize. Sure, Erebos knew the world was pain. He knew that it ended in death, and that there were struggles leading up to that oblique end; he knew innocence could be lost to true wickedness, that mothers could walk away, to never return; he had learned, most importantly, that this life was filled with loss. What he didn’t know, and what I am so sure of as we lock eyes in disagreement (it doesn’t have to be, he insists, and I almost snort my derision), is how very much hurt is yet to come. Like etched ice, the images drift about in the black well, surfacing to drown another; I see them each when I call on them, when I ask to remember how pitiful the struggle of this life really is.

A slender filly half starved in the meadow, her Father God beating his light down on her body, relentless, cruel; the bodies of women, children, contorted and bloodied by the striving tangle of hoof and horn. A beautiful mare cleaving to my side for strength, her ribs and hips hard ridges against my skin, and the shuddering death of a being who thought itself immortal; father’s given magic flowing through cloth and metal, unused, unwanted, wasted. My mother’s laughter, thin, like the false warmth she’d draped the ice of her soul in.

It wasn’t all glory, ambition, and knight’s vows; even if there was an empire at the other end of this struggle for us, as we’d always wanted, there would be a cost. I wonder now, as he makes promises with his mouth that the world won’t let him keep, if more space has grown between us than I’d thought.

Perhaps I had lost my half of the ever grinning coin when I’d, at long last, seen the sorrow of the other side; perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh to him for being happy still. He hadn’t done anything but be my friend, after all… well, and give me a half assed fight in the best place for an epic one I could ever think of.

I let his belief that life can be more than an endless pit of woes trail into nothingness, not knowing what to say that doesn’t make me sound bitter, simply staring back at him with my tail sway, swishing behind me still in arcs that read more of the emotional turmoil within than my face does, for once.

His anger is fascinating as it blooms to life behind his dark eyes, the deep sapphire of his gaze hardening under the flame; it leaves me frowning and staring even after his question is left ringing in the cavern. I can’t think of a time when I’ve roused it, this dark dominion that suddenly rises up over the chivalrous friend that had stood there moments before. Of course I’ve made enemies, I want to say, everyone does. They aren’t all that important, though. The domination over or taking of their life is not a noble cause, like the salvation of our race from the cesspit of this world. Did you not hear me?

The small flicker of anger with him roars to a real flame as we continue, my thoughts stalled to watch the toppling of his carefully constructed, shining armor to the cavern floor. Hah! mocks the child within me, now we are on even ground!; I simply listen, drinking in Erebos, the no holds barred version. I hear him, as he is, without his princely training, his concern for feelings, for politics, cast to the depths; he calls me a coward, a stone, a creature.

I forgive him, almost immediately. I’ve thought worse of myself on better days than this, and he has a point; the boy who grew a Prince of the auroras and Time’s Weaving certainly doesn’t give up.

"It would crumble around me, in about a year or two, if history serves as a guide to the future," a cold smile covers the hostility that still holds taut each muscle along my body. I remark with my commonplace arrogance, cold calculation flavoring my words now, "I want real enemies, Erebos, not dominion over idiots I already know we’re both superior to." I find I don’t know how to verbalize what’s next. I frown, looking down at my hooves for a brief second, hoping he’ll give me time to get it together before I look back up at him. "I haven’t gave up anything. I just… I don’t want to fail, either. It costs too much."

It could cost me you, I want to say, but don’t; it could steal away the dream that keeps me going each day, despite the ache that only seems to build in my heart: to be Kings, together.

And I wouldn’t ever forgive myself.

"We need a better plan, is all," I grumpily snort, stamping one hoof down onto the stone, "one where the winners keep winning, and I can’t think of one."

tear the whole world down
@Erebos

Wishlist - Plots

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

Erebos Posts: 474
Aurora Basin General atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.1hh :: Four HP: 75.5 | Buff: DANCE
Orsino :: Plain Kitsune :: Dark Illusions & Enyo :: Common Griffon :: Draining Clutch Heather
#6
Erebos
Erebos had always been the calm, rational, composed one. When Aithniel scorched and scorned, he’d bowed his head and waited for her tempest to settle. When Rikyn bounded into more and more hostility, yelling and snarling, the scion listened, then uttered a regal response. Now, though, the contempt was eager, intense, biting, snatching, grating on his senses, infuriated with how his friend had simply squandered opportunities, lost endless causes. He missed Orsino’s triumph and rumble of absolute glee as the politeness faded away to nothing and he was left as the angry, writhing, contorted and distorted prince, son of the Reaper, moved to incredible feats of fury and ferocity. He wanted to breathe fire in Rikyn’s face, he wanted to maneuver mountains and scale walls, pick apart dungeons, thrust his sword into another’s chest, just so he could see that things were possible, probable, if they tried. Why was it so difficult to understand? What did Rikyn ever intend to do with himself? Waste away? Wander around? Wait for lightning to strike him down? As he listened, as his ears flicked and stole every word pouring from his mouth, the beast inside the boy rattled, menacing and meticulous, irritated and exasperated by the excuses and their meaningless tactics. His voice came out infernal, disappointed, dismayed, rancorous, floored and disgruntled by the means of Rikyn’s proclamations – not enough to persuade him into the other’s mindset. “So you’d rather do nothing.”
 
His eyes bore into the bay’s, cold, hardened blue narrowed, piercing, lacerating, forgoing their gentle, jubilant ease for a direct source of audacity and vexed complexities. “Do you know how many times I’ve failed?” The query was unleashed on a growl, and he could recall all the hours, all the instances, all the moments where he’d tripped and stumbled, fumbled and fell, lost in a fight, in a brawl, in a search for a companion. A hiss followed, like it could’ve been from his demonic fox, instead of the boy who’d grown beneath sunshine and ice, mountains and peaks. “You have no idea. Not a clue.” His face drifted closer and closer, until he was nose to nose with his childhood friend, nothing more than a sinuous, unwinding thread of rage and discontent, pervading the caves with his ire and disarray; there was the infidel resting inside him, brewing and boiling, foaming and fuming, tracing over the stupidity of the world and how Rikyn had managed to bow to its temptations. “And still, I forged on, because I wanted to become something stronger, something better.”
 
Perhaps the coin had truly flipped on either of them – showing stubbornness behind blue or gold frames. They were still the same in some aspects, and so altered in other notions.
 
He didn’t care about being superior to the weakened ones of the world. He didn’t want to hear about how everything would eventually fall apart anyway. He didn’t want to stop believing in determination, perseverance, endurance, and fortitude. He’d been born from it, and he’d likely die from it. “You’re going to falter in life, it’s a given. There will always be someone more powerful. Its what you do about it that matters.” Then his voice finally quieted, less on a growl, on a snarl, dulled into a low whisper, as if the fiend from within had grown tired from the disenchantment spiraling around him, with the other youth who was smug, who was arrogant, who thought himself worthier when he hadn’t done a thing to earn the recognition. “So if you don’t want to work for it, then why bother. No one is going to hand anything to you.”

I'LL SHOW YOU HOW GOD | FALLS ASLEEP ON THE JOB
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@Rikyn


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