the Rift


[OPEN] Might as well do something

Weaver Posts: 149
Aurora Basin Corporal atk: 8.0 | def: 10.0 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Hybrid :: 15.1 :: 3 years HP: 61 | Buff: Novice
Raven :: Australian Raven :: Terrorize Kyra
#1

ask no questions

“Come on, little shit. Look at those feathers of yours.” she grumbles, shaking her head to try and dislodge the raven who’s grown too large for his little perch in her horns. He likes sitting here, of course, but she’s getting tired of it. He’s heavy (well, as compared to when he hatched, anyway) and barely fits now. It’s time to fly the nest. Which based on the stubborn refusal flowing through their bond, he clearly does not want to do.

She’s wandering around the Basin in the vicinity of the hot springs, though well enough away from the water Raven won’t accidentally flop into the water. She tosses her head once again, but he’s got his damn talons wrapped around her horns. “Oh come on,” she groans loudly, finally giving up for the moment. She needed him to let his guard down, to finally let go of her horns. Shouldn’t have given the bugger any warning. Should have just tossed him from her head and hoped he figured it out.

But in truth, she couldn’t actually do that. One, he could read her thoughts. Well, emotions, but they gave her away through their bond. Two, if he really couldn’t fly yet and ended up falling splat on the ground, she actually couldn’t live with herself. For all the terrible things she’s perfectly fine doing, hurting Raven is not one of them. “You gotta fly eventually bud. We can do it together, you know.”

She knows he’ll cave eventually. Raven’s love to fly, and are damn good at it too. Eventually he’s going to want to scout around for shiny things and find food on his own. But he’s stubborn, and given that she is stubborn, she can’t even blame him. “We’re going for a bath then, and it’s not my fault if you get wet.” It’s a cheap threat, but maybe it’ll work. So she makes her way to the hot springs, figuring she might as well do something if Raven was so determined to waste her day.

- weaver -

and you'll be told no lies

Image | Quote by Charles Dickens


@Rikyn

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Magic use/power playing is okay, but check before serious injury/death
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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
#2


I’d forgotten how the mountains themselves hardened one’s body.

My morning runs had been over rises and narrow paths, rather than over flat meadow, and the gentle curve of the beach. While the sand had its own way of honing sinew, it was nothing in comparison to the rapidly changing inclines, declines, paths, and bends of the Froststeppe’s routes, and my first week of training had left me more sore than I’d been in months.

Glad for the change, dwelling on the ache of muscles rather than my heart, my eternal friend and I walk towards respite, thankful, also, for this greatly missed locale; when we arrive at the springs, however, I discover that someone is already there, and pause, my head lifting, and golden eyes narrowing to eye her wings with all the suspicion of a boy born and raised in the glimmering dusk of the Plague’s existence.

Though she’s been about, glimpsed from distances, I’ve so far avoided her, as I do the others who aren’t as I’d have them be (the hornless Lady, Aisling, or the other mixed-blood beings my Uncle had allowed into the realm). Though I don’t know her, I don’t particularly care for her, finding it far more difficult to accept those who are different than I am, while in a land that had once been a sanctuary of uniformity; the presence of a horn upon her brow, however, makes her company less abhorrent, and as she comes into clear view, I decide to join her, regardless of our differences.

I must get used to it, after all. The world is not as it was, and it really gave no shits that I didn’t want it to change.

I only notice the raven as I enter the water, glancing at him curiously as I wade to my chest without a word. It’s not until I’m good and comfortable that I really look at the mare at all, from my place across the pool, my buck tentatively smelling the strange water behind me, he himself refusing to enter the water at all, the ever-green ivy growing from his antlers trailing on the broiling surface of the pool.

"Greetings," I say to her, sighing as I feel the tension in my body begin to ease away, "the passes kicking your ass too?"





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@Weaver

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Weaver Posts: 149
Aurora Basin Corporal atk: 8.0 | def: 10.0 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Hybrid :: 15.1 :: 3 years HP: 61 | Buff: Novice
Raven :: Australian Raven :: Terrorize Kyra
#3

ask no questions

Her childhood was mountains and woods, and she’d grown up training in conditions not unlike the Basin. It has been a year or more since she’d cared enough to train, and though her muscles are beginning to remember, she can’t pretend she isn’t sore. Or that the hot springs aren’t a welcome way to spend part of a day. Her home hadn’t been nearly as cold, and though the ground was often slick with rain or leaves, less so with snow and ice. She didn’t live in a world of so much permafrost as a girl.

She hadn’t lived anywhere, recently, and treks had been by land and sky. Her muscles became used to a whole new way of living, moving, never quite ceasing. She found herself both content to call somewhere home and restless, muscles twitching for something new to do. If nothing else, she looked forward to the promised spar with the young General. It would be an ass-whopping, she knew, but that didn’t matter. It was something different, and different was needed. She could stay, and she liked the idea of staying, but her muscles have never completely agreed.

The pools are warm and refreshing and lovely here though, and she could certainly get used to them as a permanent thing in her life. Raven is careful to keep himself tucked in her horns, hating the water himself. She’s tempted to dunk him into the water and see if that’s enough to get the bird to finally fly the nest, but she can’t bring herself to be that cruel to Raven. She’d only just found him again, and she couldn’t risk losing him. It might break whatever semblance of a heart she had.

Besides, it’s probably not the time for teasing companions as another joins. He’s rather obviously on the other side of the water from him, and it’s tempting to slide closer, tease him for being so far away. But she doesn’t, some gut feeling suggesting he may not like it. Beloved’s laugh and warning about her wings (given too late, might Weaver add) flit back into her mind, so like normal in this place, she keeps the wings tucked to her side and doesn’t make a fuss. Her good behavior can’t last forever, but it can last long enough.

She laughs at his question, amused and agreeing. “I grew up in the mountains. Can’t say I’ve entirely missed how exhausting they are.” Her voice is light and easy. She doesn’t know if he thinks twice about her wings or not, but even the suspicious of it is kept from her voice. It has always been easy for Weaver to play though. Especially with handsome boys. “Weaver,” she offers, because for now, playing nice is her best path forward in this place. Besides, sometimes she is actually somewhat nice. "And this is Raven. He hates the water, and apparently hates flying." She tosses her head slightly and he squawks, clinging to her horns for balance. "I'm not going to toss you, bird," she says with a groan. Pretending like he's not entirely right to be slightly wary. He would fly one of these days.

- weaver -

and you'll be told no lies

Image | Quote by Charles Dickens


@Rikyn

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Magic use/power playing is okay, but check before serious injury/death
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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
#4


It’s almost easier to ignore her wings than I would like it be, a reminder of why it was the world was no longer perfect, and why no one seemed to care. Though I still remembered Vaelenne’s teachings, and her kind, gentle eyes, it’s grown more and more difficult to feel the conviction that I felt then, in the reaching awes of the cavern of the Starpool. It’s easier to be like the unicorns who allowed hybrids of our great lineage to exist, to be the man who sees the soul within, and not the defilement of its very existence by the form holding it.

Looking at her through the rise and swirl of the mist, I think of how she will be denied entry into any existence greater than this, for the simple truth of her birth, if what the old Priestess, and the spirits in their pool, had told me was true. I also wonder, however, what sort of cruel God would continually punish those who could change nothing of the past or their reality, being, ultimately, mortal and incapable. I wonder, too, what will become of me, thinking of another pretty girl, who is black, and white, and wears wings.

She didn’t even have a horn, like this mare.

And just what did that mean for me, now?

I look away from this inner turmoil to listen to what the stranger says, smiling faintly when she admits to the difficulty of the slopes as well. Though she could have flown, her wings seemingly whole and useful, she hadn’t, and I notice that truth almost immediately. Was she simply of the mindset that putting one hoof before the other made one strong, and deepened their endurance? Or was there, perchance, some hope that the old laws of my land ruled on, and she was afraid?

"We are Rikyn, and Duir," I remark, my buck lifting his head to nod at the mare and her Raven as I name him; a smirk tilts my lips, one which I’m sure she gets. Surely she’s heard often enough that her name is a very real job here. From the look of her, though, she doesn’t make cloth; she makes bruises. "Our companions share a distaste for at least this pool then. He is greatly skeptical when it comes to the general safety of bubbling lakes, no matter how much I’ve assured him."

My proud companion defensibly lifts his head, before moving away from the pool all together, disliking his worries being voiced aloud so openly, and without his permission; the physical distances he has begun to allow between us is a new development, the longer we've lived in the Basin, and one that I don't mind all that much. Something about the sight of the mountains rising around us makes him feel more secure, I guess, or the fact that he already knows the land as if he has always been here, having stolen the maps from my mind. He moves out towards the wood, perhaps in search of the wild elk, again.

"You are not from Helovia?" I assume, because she is from the mountains, by her own proclamation, and I don't know her at all. I might occasionally wander off for extended periods, but I'm almost sure I would remember her living here, if she had been born beneath these peaks, as I had. I certainly had forgotten none of the others I'd been raised alongside.




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@Weaver

Weaver Posts: 149
Aurora Basin Corporal atk: 8.0 | def: 10.0 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Hybrid :: 15.1 :: 3 years HP: 61 | Buff: Novice
Raven :: Australian Raven :: Terrorize Kyra
#5

ask no questions

She does not worry about the afterlife, about entry into some place held for unicorns alone or any such bullshit. The afterlife is not like that. Not in her experience. She has seen the ferryman, has watched him shuttle all manner of creatures across the river. All they care for is gold, a thing she has never had in death. A thing she does not yet need. A coin, a necklace, anything worth a pretty penny would do for fare. On the other side, she has seen the shuttled into line, has seen them all wait for their judgment. Past that, she cannot glimpse, but the appendages on their head or back or between their legs never mattered. Death took all without prejudice.

She wonders who started such a silly prejudice so long ago. Perhaps simply because their God had no wings. Sparky boy had a single, lightning-bolt horn and nothing more. At least, that’s what it looks like. But there are wings hidden there, not that she knows this. Though she wishes she did, wishes she could point out the hypocrisy of that prejudice. To serve a God that has the very thing you despise. If anything, she is more, better, closer to the Gods than anyone with just a single horn. Not that she thinks that way. She has one God, in the end, for he is the only one that matters.

One day, they would meet her God, and one day, they would understand.

For now, she can only show them she is worth trusting. That wings on her back do not make her less, but more. They are an advantage to be leveraged, nothing more. Afraid is the wrong word. She is not afraid to fly. But she is, on some level, respectful. They do not fly here, and so she does not fly here. When she can, when she’s out on her own in Helovia, she takes to the sky instantly. But not here. She will respect their customs, earn her place regardless of the wings on her back. Besides, if she is to be warrior, she better be able to run some damn slopes.

Raven caws when Rikyn mentions distake for bubbling water. He’s a smart little bugger, somewhat capable of understand speech, though Weaver’s pretty sure he’s still too young for that. Original Raven could actually utter a few words, but New Raven is a baby yet. She’s pretty sure he gets most of the gist from their bond, and just wants to make it perfectly clear he agrees. “Raven has nothing against rain, but would agree that water should not bubble or be quite so hot.” Raven peeks his head out a little farther, looking at Duir curiously, and Weaver wonders if he’s considering trying to join the Cerndyr on the safety of the bank. But soon Duir is gone, and Raven shrinks back into his makeshift nest, not yet comfortable being too far from his bonded.

“No. I grew up in a herd known as the Chamber, bordered by mountains and filled largely with pine forests. Warmer than here, though otherwise not terribly different. But I traveled for a year or so before settling here, so I have been a little bit of everywhere I suppose.” She does not tell him that the horns were a gift from a magician on her travels, that the wings were a gift from her Mother long ago. That once, she was born a simple equine with nothing. No magic, no wings, no horns, no companion. The world has given her much, and what it did not give, she earned.   "Are you from here?"

- weaver -

and you'll be told no lies

Image | Quote by Charles Dickens



@Rikyn

Please tag in all posts
Magic use/power playing is okay, but check before serious injury/death
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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
#6


It’s amazing how differently each of my meetings with new people go; sometimes, they are pleasant enough, like this one, and others, we leave the conversation fit to exchange blows. Not really sure what alters the dynamic from each meeting to the next, I can’t say I’ve ever even really thought about it until this very moment, either, at least not to the degree I do now. Settling into the warm water, at last feeling comfortable enough around the hybrid to allow myself that ease, I wonder if, perhaps, the difference between those I do not clash with, and those that I do, is a matter of how I approach the conversation.

If she notices that I might be a bit distant, I don’t care, returning to the present when the hybrid starts talking again. Maybe I unconsciously had treated some of the others I’d come across poorly, unlike I had this woman, being too tired from my new routine, and too distracted by the moral inquiries of my seasons passed, to care much for being barbed, defensive, or unnecessarily unkind.

I simply was, and, if I can be perfectly honest, I’m a pretty awesome dude when I’m not going out of my way to step on other people’s feelings.

"It’s an okay place," I tell her, because, well, it is, "prone to danger and disaster, as any other, but the closeness of the Gods is comforting, even if they sometimes are not."

My other Gods, the First Gods, were intangible. They existed in a realm beyond this one, in such a way that they could never be seen by a mortal eye, or truly known or comprehended by a mortal mind. While that degree of power had seemed pretty awesome to me when I’d lived among those who worshiped it, it was difficult to maintain loyalty to a largely inactive, invisible nothingness when the Spark could quite visibly illuminate all the sky with his might.

Besides, the Time God also didn’t punish me for being with what girls I wanted. That had to count for something, right?

"I was born in those caves over there," I say, gesturing towards mother’s old cavern, which I have avoided since returning, for those on the opposite side of the vale, "I left, once, but there isn’t much out there for me, I don’t suppose, as I’ve made it back here after all."





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@Weaver

Weaver Posts: 149
Aurora Basin Corporal atk: 8.0 | def: 10.0 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Hybrid :: 15.1 :: 3 years HP: 61 | Buff: Novice
Raven :: Australian Raven :: Terrorize Kyra
#7

ask no questions

Her meetings with new people vary as well. She’s been on her best behavior lately though, being a newbie to this place still. And lately, her conversations have gone somewhat well. Kind of like this. Awkward, tentative, like she’s placing one foot in front of the other and trying not to step on a bomb. Though she’s good at masking that with her outward demeanor, which doesn’t seem to care. She’s got a boots-on-desk, hands-behind-head, cigarette-dangling-from the-corner-of-her-mouth kind of attitude. Like “hey, I see you,” in something that is neither a good or bad way; neither over eager or entirely uncaring.

She only slipped with Erebos, and that had been on straight black ice. She’d meant nothing bad by her comment in the patrol, but he’d bristled and stiffened at her comment all the same. Sometimes she just can’t see it coming, can’t wrap her brain around it in the way someone else might. It was not a bad thing in her head to be tricky and conniving, to pretend to be something you were not to the sake of teaching.

Instead of being turned on by their General though, they’d been attacked by a bear. She definitely should have saw that one coming. But she’d been too damn busy trying to figure out what button she’d pushed to pay attention to the bear. Fail. Definitely a fail.

She’d like to think she’s a pretty awesome girl too, when she wasn’t purposefully ignoring the fact that others have feelings. Or just straight not having a clue what those feelings might be.

“We had faeries instead of Gods. They were wicked things,” she says with a laugh, thinking of how she’d left the place. Flipped upside down and wiped clean. Though the residents there deserved it. But Weaver wasn’t sticking around for that nonsense. And so she’d left, off to find a life somewhere else. This one, so far, wasn’t terrible.

“I’ve seen the Time God, obviously, and the Earth. I assume there are others?” Hopefully he doesn’t mind answering questions, but in truth, she knows woefully little of Helovia. She’d appreciate some knowledge. Knowledge is a useful thing, after all. She may enjoy fighting, but she’s not stupid, and she knows the value of learning everything she can.

And these Gods were real enough. Not the one that mattered, in the end. She knows Death well, knows that only his presence matters when your life runs out. But these Gods mattered now, because they controlled her life and her future. The history of the Basin mattered now, because she wanted to call it home. Death was her past, present, and future, but she knew what she needed to know of him.

“What is it about the Basin that brought you back?” It’s really grown on her, don’t get her wrong. She finds she’s coming to love the place. But her old home, which she had loved as well, didn’t hold her. What holds him? “When I came here, Beloved warned me against flying…I’m not going to lie, that still makes me wonder what I don’t know about this place. If it’s somewhere I should stop caring for before I waste my time.” Before I break my heart, she thinks, because she wants to care about something as her mother had cared about the Chamber. But she can’t let her guard down so easily.  

- weaver -

and you'll be told no lies

Image | Quote by Charles Dickens


@Rikyn

Please tag in all posts
Magic use/power playing is okay, but check before serious injury/death
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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
#8


"Faeries?" I ask, thinking, instantaneously, of the singing orbs that had given me Duir. I’m not sure what they were, or what faeries are, but if I had to guess, to create some image for a being who could see mental images as if displayed on the air itself, they would be those lights, dancing, entwined with one another in perfect bliss. They hadn’t been wicked, at least so long as no one tried to touch them, and had seemed, other than their shrill shrieks of displeasure at the curious colt who’d prodded at them, capricious, and wildly free. I don’t tell the strange mare of this treasured memory, however, not knowing her well enough to deem her worthy of more than my name. "There are similar here, I suppose, though I would not call them wicked. Just wild."

Like wolves, or bears, bound to the law of the ever turning world, the primal rules writ in the very core of being alive, there were those in Loorien who had conquered themselves, and those who were, simply, what they were born as. What made us different, Weaver and I, was to think, to eye one another’s bodies through the steam, I a man, and she a woman, and not find ourselves enfolded in passion, for the sake of sex alone. We see one another, and I see something I will not touch, for the thoughts which dance around her portrait, and she sees something she might (or so I arrogantly tell myself) but for the truth that I am but a stranger in a familiar haunt.

"There are," I nod, when she asks after the Divines, my beard dipping into the warm water, drops dripping slowly from its curls, "the Goddess of the Moon rules the World’s Edge, and the Sun God keeps the Dragon’s Throat hot as the fire of its namesake. There is also Kaos, now, I guess."

I frown, again feeling the dark worry that something horrible is coming soon rise to mind, and wondering if I’m at all prepared; if any of us are.

"He’s not a God of mine, though," I smile, coming up out of the dark chasm of doubt that yawns all too readily for me these days, finding some part of my old self while wallowing in warm waters, "I’ve killed three parts of him once, and I’d do it again."

I remember Ming Yue, flesh and bone, weak and near death from the curse which consumed the lands beyond, from which the Rift people and realms had been plucked from damnation. Though I cared for my friend, the doubt as to whether or not it had been worth it all often crept in, as of late, no matter my proud words.

People were going to die, again, as if they hadn’t the first time. Part of me wants to be mad at the Gods, for allowing all this to happen, but another part, the more rational pieces of myself, knows that being pissed won’t change anything. We’re going to need them more than ever, now, even if they’re pretty well why we’re going to have to face Kaos in the first place.

"Not sure, really. Erebos asked me too, I guess, and I can’t really think of anywhere else I’d like to be. I guess it could just be because was born here," I answer, rising from my thoughts as she moves the conversation onward. As if that simple fact makes some place your home; it doesn’t, but, for the most part, it still holds true for me, even if home is a lot different than it used to be. Chuckling, a dark light flashing in the depths of my eyes, I wonder if I should answer her next row of inquiries with the truth, because, well, everyone else seems to be dead or gone. Who gives a shit who I tell now, so long as they don’t tell Erebos? "Do you really want to know the truth? The General will be awful pissed at me if you leave, especially because he probably won’t believe why you’ll be doing it."

Though I’ve been pretty morose as of late, I can’t help but admit that the herd life is definitely helping; I hadn’t run into very many people to play the “I know something you don’t know” game with, out there in the wilderness.

"If I do tell you…" I elaborate, lowering my voice even more, "you have to promise to never tell him. It would hurt him too badly, you see. And then, of course, I’d have to hurt you."

Let the wicked smile that plays across my lips tell her of the truth of that promise.





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@Weaver

Wishlist - Plots

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

Weaver Posts: 149
Aurora Basin Corporal atk: 8.0 | def: 10.0 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Hybrid :: 15.1 :: 3 years HP: 61 | Buff: Novice
Raven :: Australian Raven :: Terrorize Kyra
#9

ask no questions

“I’m not sure they were very traditional faeries. More like your Gods in that they were horse-like sized and shaped, they just kept that wild, tricksy personality.” Literally destroyed everything they created and flipped it on it’s head and make the population start over again. Yea, she’d call them wicked, but let Rikyn think what he wanted on the matter. She didn’t care, really. About what he thought in regards to her version of faeries versus his, but also, she didn’t care about what happened to her home. Perhaps she should. But it had never been hers, really. It had been her mother’s, a shadow she did not want to live under.

In truth, she did not want to live under anyone’s shadow. She was her own mare. One who maybe saw a handsome boy in front of her, but he seemed too boring to be her type. Nice enough and all, but she liked the reckless and the playful and so far, he seemed like none of these things to her. Maybe it was the wrong context for such things, but she didn’t think there was ever a wrong context. This, of course, was the point of it all, that they could think and the wild things could not. But her faeries thought. Made up rules and then made them real. So she left. Because coupling wild and thinking together into one being is a terrible thing.

She’s not so far from those things, but she’s just far enough.

He answers her question, naming two other gods for the other two herds. Which all makes sense, she supposes. Who ruled though? Who controlled the actions of the Gods? It seemed they have four separate entities controlling them here, and she couldn’t help but wonder how that worked. Being controlled by siblings, and even though they were Gods, they were still siblings. And she didn’t know any siblings that didn’t bicker from time to time. It sounded like a terrible idea and quite a lot of fun, all at once.

And then he’s talking about Kaos, and she pricks her ears to listen. “He mentioned something about that. Coming back from the dead or whatever. What happened?” He may be kind of boring, but he’s the wealth of information. Information Weaver doesn’t have. And she may be a fighter, but she’s not stupid. Knowledge is just as powerful as magic or a good strong kick to the face. She wants to understand the past of the place where she hopes to help shape the future.

She, of all people, knows that being born someone doesn’t necessarily make it the place for you to live. But it’s still home. The Chamber, in its way, will always be home for her. It’s where she started. It’s the place that shaped her into a pretty little monster. It’s home. Home in a different way from the Basin, but still home. But the Chamber is gone, so even if she’d wanted to stay, she didn’t have that option.  

“Leave?” she says with a laugh, a playful glint to her amber eyes. “Do you think me so chicken as to leave over a story?” True or not, she’s hardly about to run. Her father infected entire forests and let them rot and die, killing everything that depended on the flora for life. Her mother stopped the heart of an innocent girl just to start a bloody war with no end. Weaver faced the four horsemen of the apocolypse, and quite literally fought until her last breath. No, Weaver doesn’t run from much.

“I won’t tell him. I already offend him enough, as it is.” Which is entirely true. She’d pretty sure all of her just offends him. And she could literally gesture to her whole self for that statement. “Though I wouldn’t assume so quickly you can hurt me.” She can’t help herself. He probably can, but she still can’t help herself.

- weaver -

and you'll be told no lies

Image | Quote by Charles Dickens


@Rikyn

Please tag in all posts
Magic use/power playing is okay, but check before serious injury/death
Image by AmoretteRose

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
#10


"Sounds fucked," I smirk in reply to her description of the Fae Gods. Our Gods maybe weren’t much better, but they certainly didn’t do things just for the sake of doing them; there was always a great purpose to the tasks that they took on, each deed pondered and plotted. The reason was rarely to trick, or divert, though the Moon Goddess had certainly proven she was not adverse to rather malevolent means to get her points across.

In fact, only the Gods which she inquires after next seem to be truly like those which she recalls from her home. From what Ming Yue had told me of her life within the Rift, the Gods of her native realm were selfish, and did whatever they pleased, often at the cost of those they ruled over. What happened, she asks me, as if anyone can easily and quickly answer that question with anything more helpful than: I don’t know, a fucking lot.

"Condensed version, because otherwise we’ll be here ‘til night falls and our skin falls off, yeah?" I answer, in good humor, "there is a place somewhere called the Rift, and that is where Kaos is from. Our Gods found the Rift in magical disarray, pretty well ruined by the horrible management – Kaos, and the Divine things he was. Either the Gods here really liked the real estate or felt sorry for the Rift natives – maybe both – but they pulled four lands and the people who’d been in them over, and dropped them flat in the midst of Helovia."

I’d been there, when the Blood Forest had simply… appeared around me, sort of seeming to be born from a fleeting, blink of an eye’s time of bright, simple white, which spanned all about. Ming Yue – beautiful, princess Ming Yue – had come through a portal, which is likely where the whole land had come from. I’m not sure. I don’t have super-speed God vision, and I definitely don’t know how the weave of reality really works. I just live here, man.

"It’s weird, being there when something like that happens. It’s not everyday a whole land suddenly pushes the others aside, and appears around you from nothing," I laugh, the mirth in my voice quickly quieted by the recollection of the rest of the story, and its bloody ends, "they didn’t think the Gods of the Rift would make it through, too, but they did. Helovia stood together and killed them when the retaliated, of course, but…apparently Rift Gods are a lot harder to kill than we’d bargained for."

Figuring she’ll ask if she wants to know more, I ease into the water, deciding I’ll stay a little while longer before I get out, and sun dry on the steamy banks. When the conversation turns to the past, and the somewhat active present, I look at her with a dark smirk.

"It’s not just a story," I tell her, because it’s not, my eyes glimmering with dark humor, "and believe me, I’m good at hurting people."

"Most everyone is dead or gone now, but there are those who still remember, and a few who still believe in the old laws," I continue, deciding that the matter is well enough settled – I’ll talk, she won’t tell Erebos, and everything is peachy, "but the artifacts and bones are there still, for those who know what they are looking at. To the north of the vale, there is a deep, dark cave with several whole wings in it. Full sets, carefully removed, and others seemingly torn away with great force, left to be covered with dust. Who left them there, do you wonder? What sort of man?"

I like story telling. In another life, maybe I could have been a boring fellow who stood next to a campfire and enthralled children with his words, but I’d been born far more interesting than that. It’s why I had so many tales, after all.

"The sort of man who studiously looks them over, to understand how best to cure those afflicted with such appendages, that’s who. I’m sure you’ve heard of realms which are ruled by one species, and which violently eradicates those who are not as they would have them be. Those who lived in such places came to live here," I elaborate, "they created a vast divide between themselves and the rest of the realm for their choices. The tent, there, was enchanted for silence so that they could plot the demise of the rulers who did not wear the crowns that made them worthy. The Sentinels were made in the form of unicorns, to crush those who were not beneath their plated hooves. But what is more notable than the old way of life here, that time's creations, or the loathing and terror that it inspired in the realms about them?"

"The man who did not lift a hoof to halt the collection of several of those wings is entombed with honor some short distance from here," I smirk, meeting her ember-like eyes with hard, metallic ones, that have a bit too dark of a glimmer in their depths, "praised by the very beings he likely despised. I wonder often what he thought of it all, in his last years. The forward progression of time, and how it devoured even their powerful dream… or if he thought of it's passing as a loss at all."






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@Weaver

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Weaver Posts: 149
Aurora Basin Corporal atk: 8.0 | def: 10.0 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Hybrid :: 15.1 :: 3 years HP: 61 | Buff: Novice
Raven :: Australian Raven :: Terrorize Kyra
#11

ask no questions

They had their reasons. Something about greed and curbing magic and whatever. But did they really need to destroy all their homes entirely? No, definitely not. They didn’t need to make the residents start from square one. They could have just taken the forever burning tree and the magical pools and the heart beneath the dirt. They could have taken the magical things and left the residents their own lands, the places they loved. So yea, it was pretty fucked. One of the many reasons she left, but she would have left anyway, regardless. Having found this place, she doesn’t regret the decision.

She doesn’t cut in with clever (or really, snide) remarks. Doesn’t gasp or make faces or flatten her ears as he tells her of the crap that went down in this place. Instead, she actually just listens, gathering the information he offers. There’s something vaguely familiar about the story he gives her, because in a strange way it doesn’t feel so different from her own home. Not that hers was a total mess, but it had been a mess. Ruled by faeries that gave too much magic to it’s residents and let them run around flinging lightning bolts until one day deciding it was all too much.

But you can’t take it back, not really. The residents just pretended to learn their lesson, pretending like that wouldn’t go straight back to abusing their powers the second they got them back. Don’t get her wrong, magic is cool. Watching her mother conjure armies of ravens, real and elemental alike, was a beautiful thing. Watching her mother give Weaver the pair of raven wings that still sit on her back with the flick of a tail was pretty damn fun. But Weaver didn’t care so much about magic. It, like everything else, was a mean to an end. It was a means to power, to being respected, but only if she learned to use it well.

Maybe she should be appalled or horrified by what he tells her. Maybe she should just run for the hills before someone takes her wings. But the story is just that, a story. It’s knowledge she needs, yes, but it doesn’t scare her. Little does, after all. They could tear off her wings and she’d just jump off a cliff and come back with her wings. Again and again and again. She’s the blight they would never be able to get rid of, not that they seemed to be trying anymore.

“I don’t think it’s uncommon to glorify our demons, to hide their secrets in a mask of honor. Like covering a shit field in a bed of roses and hoping, one day, the shit will just turn into fertilizer for rose bushes.” There are worse things to do. Her lands had always been divided by good, evil and neutral. Make believe factions that only sort of fit. How do you really define those things, after all? But they had tried, collecting with those that were the most likeminded.   “So what changed? Because the dirt on that tomb seems pretty fresh to me.”

- weaver -

and you'll be told no lies

Image | Quote by Charles Dickens


@Rikyn

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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
#12


I watch her through the steam, deciding, now, that it is time to get out. What had ached, no longer does, but I can feel my skin starting to sponge up the moisture. At least, I think, rising from the water, the droplets falling from my belly onto the earth below, it is warm. Give it a couple months, and I won’t think about going into that water unless I’m so sore I’m liable to die. The chill that sweeps in with Orangemoon’s arrival is unrivaled anywhere else in Helovia, to such a degree that the always warm basin at the hind of the land is hardly a tempting way to stave off the cold.

Soon, we’ll simply stand alongside it, basking in radiant heat, dreaming of these days when the Sun is high, and the air is hot enough to almost immediately begin to strip away the moisture from your skin.

As I rise and think of the fleeting summer (how each had seemed shorter as it moved onward, the more I saw come and go, this year being by far the most noticeable of all), Weaver of the Chamber is speaking. Turning an ear to catch her words, I meander towards my belongings, carefully arranged along the shore, my muscular flanks turned in her direction. Looking at her when she finishes talking, I dwell on her words while I stare.

"Nothing changed," I reply, at last, "the world remained as it was, and they gave way to its lack of concern for their desire to change it, one by one, like bricks from a wall, tumbling down a precipice or carried away, until he was the only one of them left."

Deimos had not really been to blame; he had remained faithful, and true. What other choice did he have, but to accept that the world was not what he wanted it to be? I faced the same predicament, sharing a bath with a feathered mare, forced to express kindness, because, if I did not, every moment became a battle, which lead to another. They fueled their assaults with the words honor, and justice - I called their drive narrow-mindedness and a blatant disrespect to the Old Ways. In ways, they were just as cold and ruthless as my parents had been, when they'd first arrived, full of vigor and violence, striking down the hornless where they could. After time, though, those struggles tempered them, so that, instead, they had partially shut their doors, allowing only unicorns in...

But the "good" ones could not accept such things, even after the beatings had ceased, and all that differed, truly, between their herds was that some allowed all, and ours allowed but one. As a child, I had quickly learned that with the name Aurora Basin came a certain stigma, a sharpness of their gazes and a condemnation of one's being given immediately, before they had ever learned anything more about me. It was as it was.

No roses grew from that field.

Only people like me.




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Weaver Posts: 149
Aurora Basin Corporal atk: 8.0 | def: 10.0 | dam: 3.0
Mare :: Hybrid :: 15.1 :: 3 years HP: 61 | Buff: Novice
Raven :: Australian Raven :: Terrorize Kyra
#13

ask no questions

She would sit here until she was wrinkled, shriveled like a prune until there’s was just a tiny black and white Weaver left floating around on the surface. She’d come back, after all, so killing herself by staying in the hot springs too long really wasn’t the worst way to go. But Rikyn gets out, and she watches him for a moment, in no particular rush even if he is right in moving. Maybe she’d just end up cooking herself from the inside out before she turned into a Weaver-colored rune. Only one way to find out, but perhaps, she shouldn’t stay too long.

But it’s hard to leave. The Tallsun air is warm at least, making getting out of the hot springs still somewhat pleasant. There’s part of her that imagines she might be fool enough to slip into the hot springs during Frostfall, but then she really would just stay in there till she died because hell, winter was going to be a bitch. Best not to think about that now though, when the days are still beautiful albeit hot as balls when she leaves the north.  

He takes his time answering. She gets out the pool as he wanders toward his things. She has no possessions other than the chain around her horns and Raven, neither of which required removing and putting back on. Raven removed himself whenever he felt like it, and put himself back on when he grew tired of flying.

His answer makes sense. It’s a struggle you can’t really win. Did they want to lose recruits simply because they bore wings on their back? The reasons to hate or fear her had nothing to do with the feathers that grew from her shoulders. There were too many unseen things to care much about what lay on the outside so much. Or perhaps they just assumed that all wings acted like her, were made of fire and brimstone and the inability to care who got hurt in their wake. But she’s seen Beloved in action, and somehow she can’t believe that she’s the only one like her.

“It was a pleasure, Rikyn,” she says, letting their train of conversation die there. The next question on her lips is to ask him how he felt about her, but she had her suspicions. Perhaps it was better if she didn’t know for sure, didn’t find yet more reason to prove them all wrong. Prove that she was worth far more than meets the eye. She already fights that fight on the battlefield, she did not need that fight in her daily life. Besides, it is clear enough that he’s moving on for the evening as well. “Until next time,” she gives him a nod, and then heads off, away from the hot springs and the unasked questions. She’d save them for a rainy day.

- weaver -

and you'll be told no lies

Image | Quote by Charles Dickens


@Rikyn Thanks for teaching her things! We can end it here and she'll be happy to bug him again later ;)

Please tag in all posts
Magic use/power playing is okay, but check before serious injury/death
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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
#14


I watch her as she comes out of the water, comparing every inch to the other women who have danced before my eager eyes. Look, but don’t touch, was what Furen had said of the winged mares in the Nightwalk; fix or kill, my mother had commanded. What did I think, though, running my eyes across her flanks, down the smooth, velvet soft insides of her legs, wet and glistening…?

“It was a pleasure, Rikyn,” she says, pulling my attention up from my armor, which I’d been gazing at between stolen glances are her feminine assets, having determined that the temptation to touch was perhaps more difficult to avoid than Furen had led on. While I’d had older male role models, it had only been the red coated boy, a mere year older than me (and having had, perhaps, that many women in his life), who had been open about the heat of lust in any way with me. Even then, it had been coyly mentioned, as if someone might overhear, and chide us for discussing such things.

Only Mordecai had ever been so open, I think to myself, the sensation of her teeth crudely nipping against sensitive regions rising to mind, her rough voice dictating the Dothraki word for parts I rarely defined in common.

A pleasure indeed, I almost remark, looking over at the painted mare with a simple, sidelong smirk instead, water dripping down my body to the earth below.

"What, they don’t know about sharing in the Chamber? You know - I give you a stick, you give a rock, I give you a based on real life story, you give me at least a children’s tale," I chuckle with a raised brow, and sigh, feigning to look at my plate with disappointed acceptance, "guess that’s what next time is for. Better be a good one, making me wait like this."




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@Weaver

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