the Rift - » every broken promise

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The light pours from a myriad of fractures, the bones of the earth themselves broken, its ribcage torn open, the beating heart beneath—a pulsing furnace of light. Each breath is a low roar, thick with spirits, smelling of heaven and hell, things best left forgotten and undiscovered. It slips through noses and mouths, heady and frightening and intoxicating. Perhaps it is the sweet lavender smell of long, peaceful rest, or the decay of something dead and old. Maybe you catch the whiff of burnt flesh and melted hair.

Their cries, their moans and wails and roars and shrill shrieks, drift up from the innards of the world.

But why do they come up into the light?

They are called. They are called by a voice, words of commands, drawn in by patterns set with spectral lights, and perhaps they are cursed. They might have unfinished business, or simply miss the comforts of light, heartbeats and daylight, or they are so far gone they are powerless to resist the misplaced command.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The young deity goes under, and his fragile hold on the situation is broken. Without his bulwark—faint it might have been, but still his stubbornness and ferocity had protected them—memory and dreams and grudges age-old crawl up.

A silver shadow bursts from one of the rents, his mane and tail long and flowing. His horn casts a dimmed blue glow, and his eyes are banded in black—and any who knew him, knew only song and kindness to spill from his mouth, but his eyes are black and lost and the voice coming from his chest is discordant. Without thought, the shadow of Silverline hurls itself at Castiella and Otem, and by extension, Volterra and Vulkan. He looks like he did in life, but a little harder to see, hazy around the edges, and a little harder to touch. A broken chant spills from his mouth, and he tries to run his horn into Castiella's neck—behind him, the shadow of the summer-child, stormy and dappled and wild, crawls out, watching his brother's back.

And elsewhere, the shadows of the lost Isilme dead pour out, their bodies nothing but particles, razor-sharp fragments, clouds of death and void. They pour from the light, awakened from their rest once again. Like a tide of destruction they rush towards the shore, and all who stand in their way will have their skin slowly ripped to shreds, each pass of the spectral horde going deeper, deeper, deeper.

Then there's poor, brave Kiada—rushing to the aid of the fallen deity, the lost shadow child, her body covered in rose-gold armor, her headdress burning black and teal, carrying her master's banner as he himself went down. She is buffeted by ghosts, some mere visions, some the half-tangible ones like Silverline, and some, rotted, fetid husks like Tae.

She makes it to the river.

She steps into the river.

The current is strong, strangely so, and the instant she touches the water, she finds them warm. Not unpleasantly so, but warm, and the crying voices grow in both strength and clarity. Whispers suddenly have words in them, and foamy, steaming tendrils latch onto her skin—they want her to rest, to lie down, to drift away with the impossible current, to close her eyes, because she's so tired, tired, tired, tired... To sleep, would be delightful. To sleep, would be right, for she is living and she has stepped in the river of the dead, and so, she is theirs to keep, keep, keep, sleep, sleep, sleep...

She sees something, then—she sees herself die.

(Sleep, sleep, sleep...)

Maybe it is a vision of her end, for maybe, the river knows the course of history. Maybe, its spring is in the future, and its end is in the past.

Regardless of the hows and whys and whats, Kiada stumbles, and plunges nose-first into the river. It shouldn't have been deep enough to swallow her, but it was, and it pulled her into the white light along with Kis.

Up in the world of the living, the earth groans and shudders, as if the weight of this sacrilege is too much to bear.

the Rift
life between worlds

image

You are allowed to make your own ghosts! You can use RIFT HAVOC or post from your own accounts, but make sure that if you use a character that once existed, it is either your own or you have permission to write them! You are also free to have your characters ESCAPE by writing a post ending with "ESCAPE: has moved back to the crest of the ridge, but is still watching". This will not disqualify you in any way, but it'll allow your characters to not be attacked.

are attacked by two specters!
EVERYONE PRESENT is attacked by ghosts, zombies, and the dead of Isilme - shades made of black dust, each particle razor sharp. Prolonged exposure to them (as they simply try to run right through you) will cut you over and over, so I recommend not standing in them.

sees a vision of herself dying, and is then dragged into a ghost-rift together with Kisamoa. How you want to play this out is up to you - lose consciousness? Float in some weird pleasant white space with Kaos? Something else entirely?

Have fun everyone! This will be wrapped up in ~5-7 days time!

Surprise took over the fiery girl. With each hoof fall in the river, warmth succumbed her legs. It was pleasant in a strange way given the circumstances. Ghosts were pouring from this strange river, aiming for their loved ones – and for what? To kill them? To reconcile? Murder seemed the most likely, and here was Kiada, the daughter of a half royal and a general, throwing her blood line away as if it was nothing for a god that killed her friends. She was a reckless girl, stubborn and headstrong. She didn’t think things through before she did them, and perhaps she never would have done this if she knew what would happen.

Before long, the warmth soothed her pains and worries, it wrapped its way around her heart and her mind until there was nothing left but the ache and pull of exhaustion. Still, the spotted girl trudged on, step after step into the warmth as ghosts reached up to pull her down. She shook her inky head, trying to loosen their grip on her. Voices once blurry pour into her white rimmed ears, so much and so fast that the girl tries to pin her ears to her skull in an attempt at drowning them out. Her lids grew heavy, dropping ever so slightly that she’s afraid that if she blinks she’ll fall asleep, and in turn drown in the ghosts and cries. But she tries to refrain, her vision begins to grow blurry as strange images flash before her sapphire gaze.

She wants to scream out at them, to use her flames among the ghosts to push them back, but her exhaustion sparks nothing but a brief flick of a flame before it’s extinguished as another ghost passes by. She suddenly sees creatures held together by nothing but bone and sinew, and she cringes and tries to look away. The image, however, remains burned into her mind as more follow, more beasts she didn’t know but looked as though they were literally the dead walking the earth – which to be fair, was correct. But it didn’t make it less horrifying.

The young harpy tries to continue, one heavy footfall after the other, until another vision takes over her sight. She feels the grip of tendrils on her back weighing her down, and suddenly the girl feels as though she can’t breathe. She tries to call out to Khairi, but nothing comes out. Her throat feels tight, swollen, choked by the scent of smoke and ash. And darkness is all she sees. The spirits still chant, and the darkness begins to clear, and suddenly she sees herself. She wants to tell herself to run, but she can’t. Instead, she watches as the very same tornados she harnesses within her soul begin to consume her, tearing slowly up her legs. She watches herself shriek in horror as the flames along her back join them, little vipers snaking across her skin until it wraps it’s flame around her neck. Tighter and tighter they go as the flames spread, engulfing the girl’s dark throat, her lips go dry as she watches, her voice gone and horror spreads. She finds herself unable to speak as her own flames consume her, swallowing her and her companion whole until they’re nothing left but charred black, bleeding bodies.

Kiada wanted to scream, but darkness engulfed her, and she stumbles forward face first into the river that has caused so much dread. The warmth engulfs her, the tendrils tear at her, and all she can see is her and her beloved bird’s remains left behind with nothing to distinguish that it’s her. But she knows because she watched. She saw herself die, take the last few choking gasps of air trying to cry out for help only to suffocate on the ash and smoke in the air, rising from her throat as it bore holes into it.

And suddenly, Kiada thought the river hadn’t been as deep as it was. Because when the girl stumbled and fell, she continued to fall, pulled by tendrils deep into a bright light that she couldn’t quite see behind her pale lids. She felt the light as she fell through, saw the reddish hue of it from behind her tired eyelids. Her nostrils flared, and suddenly, she found herself floating. Nothing touched her anymore, no tendrils pulling her this way and that – nothing except for another body that had joined her. He, too, was floating somewhat. To and fro like a game of tag. She drifted toward him and then away, only to drift back. She tried to fight against it, to propel herself closer to Kaos, but it didn’t work. Instead, she remained in the strange back and forth this place had guided her. Light surrounded her, and she could finally keep her exhausted eyes open long enough to assess the situation. And it wasn’t good.

Her pink splattered lips parted and she tried to speak, unable to formulate words at first. And so she remained in silence for a few moments while she tried to regain control over her voice. It took a small amount of time, but she was finally able to speak. “Kis?” She called to him in her cracked, exhausted voice, her eyes and ears attentive to the god that she pledged herself to in what felt like a lifetime ago. “How – How can we f-fix this?” She choked the words out, determination and terror finding their ways into the creases of her eyes and her face. No tears fell, for Kiada had none to shed. But oh, how she wanted to. She wanted to be weak, but she could never be such a thing. She was the strong one. She was the one that was always there for her family and her friends when they needed it. She was the one that was there when they died, and she would be there with Kisamoa to try and fix this mess.

She was a stupid girl. She knew that now. But she had to do something. And that something she did. She watched herself die, and wondered if she truly was dead. And if she was, at least she had done it for something good.

"Talk."

Kiada

mama, i hope you get this

know the bed is warm and our hearts are cold

know never have i been better.

image | coding

AH OKAY IM SO EXCITED if you couldnt tell by my novel... anyway, Kiada watches her flames engulf her and ultimately suffocate herself, and falls into the light with Kisamoa. She's floating but is being pushed closer and away from him by an unknown wind or something, and she tries to ask him how they can fix this.

V O L T E R R A
HE SAYS "OH BABY GIRL, DON'T GET CUT ON MY EDGES
I'M THE KING OF EVERYTHING AND MY TONGUE IS A WEAPON"

She speaks, and is it his imagination or is she speaking to him and him alone? Despite what he's said, despite his desire to keep his children safe, he finds himself entranced, a slave to her words. "Kis hollo," he says again, a murmur. She says his name back to him and it is music to his ears, as though it's the first time he's hearing it all over again - his eyes shut, blissful, and he listens. For the first time, he truly believes that it is her. Nobody else - no foul spectre, no cheap imitation - could sound so like her.

Love them. He doesn't need to ask who, what, she means. "I do," he replies, his voice so earnest that it's almost boyish. He is a boy again stood before her in all her vast wisdom - he's back in the forest, a newly-hatched dragon at his side and a raven-filly in front of him. His eyes are stinging; sand, he assumes, or a speck of dirt, although it's hard to carry on denying the fact that tears are now rolling down his face, sticking to the harsh contours until they fall to the ground. It's hard to fight the urge to move closer, to embrace her fully, to hold her and never let her go - instead he stands, making no attempt to fight the string of tears, and returns her words. "I love you - always."

It's the first time they've both said it. He never thought that it would happen like this - in the middle of a battlefield, with her dead and him grieving, with just the spectre of her fallen body to give the words to him. It is better than never getting to say it, though. At last, Volterra feels that he has some sort of closure, and the knowledge that she didn't go to her grave not knowing how much he loved her, that instead she can fall into her eternal sleep knowing that his heart died with her, and will never belong to another.

It's as though a veil closes across his face, then. Emotion is wiped from it, the tears dry upon his cheeks, and Volterra the Indomitable rises from the ashes of Volterra the Broken. He stands upon the corpse of his former self and he surveys his battlefield; he has children to protect, demons to destroy.

There's demons for sure now; spectres erupted from the earth itself, come to attack the foals that find themselves beneath Volterra's protection. Oh, no. Not a chance. Not now he's emboldened with the thought of her, not now he's wearing her memory like armour against all the blackness of this world.

She told him that he has more battles still to win - she told him to fight.

So he fights.

Pain wracks his body as he reaches for his magic as soon as he sees the ghost begin to appear; he's still for a moment, the seconds dragging by like hours, until he emerges from the husk of himself as a monstrous three-headed dog. A roar explodes from triple heads, demonic claws gripping the earth as he places his colossal, terrifying canine bulk in front of the children behind him. With thick muscles rippling beneath damp, reeking fur, three dog heads dribbling saliva and menace and four stout legs that each end in paws the size of dinnerplates, he is a beast born of nightmares. "STAY BEHIND ME," he roars to the foals, and three heads echo the words; he is a monster now, and it is a monster that is required to slay these hellish creatures.

He lunges forward, seeking to slam his bulk into the stallion's spectre (Silverline) before it can reach the foals under his protection. One of the foals is not his own, but appears to be a friend of Otem and that means she falls under his protection too - he seeks to slam his gigantic, three-headed weight into the side of the spectre, trying to knock it away from the children whilst his triple razor-fanged snouts reach for its throat. Ghosts cannot be killed, but dog-Volterra is going to do everything in his power to disprove that. He can feel slices being torn from his skin as the particles slash against him like glass, but the pain is nothing but a distraction from the raw animal instinct that has taken him over in this form.

Vadir attempts to usher Varuna closer to the other children so she may protect them all; she circles them with her great golden bulk, seeking to place her body in front of any ghosts that approach, as her scales resist the sharp edges better than soft horseflesh.

image credits

THANKS ODD I'LL JUST BE OVER HERE CRYING.

Attacks the Silverline spectre in his cerberus form to protect Castiella" and Vulkan ; tries to tackle Silverline out of the way before he can attack the children. Vadir circles them to protect them from other ghosts.

Well FUCK. Isn't this just lovely? Ghosts rise from all around, and not one, TWO of the bastards decide to attack Cas. Teal eyes almost roll with annoyance at their actions. Sparks raise over her hide as she watched the blue bitch throw eagles her way. Castiella does not hesitate to conjure up her own electrical birds. Two doves fly towards the eagle causing an explosion of light. Crackles and pops fill the air as a few stray bolts lash back at the girl's legs. The electricity roared and thundered towards her banded legs. It burned and seared the flesh on the peach pillars. Charcoal ears pinned to her masked skull. "Someone is not enjoying hell.. Oh, make that two someones. " Her maw snapped looking the ghost in his eyes. Crimson speckles flared with the unholy inferno.

Giggles escape her maw as she dares to tango with the ghost. Well fuck, her front legs were burned pretty bad. Watching the second spirit aim his horn for her neck the girl swiftly turns away. Her large left wing rises into the air, but she does not go unscathed. The horn from the specter scraps under her wing joint causing blood to drip down her pelt. " Oh you must know I love the pain! " Her wild voice snaps back. "It makes me feel ALIVE" The features on her mask skull twist into something dark, something more DEMONIC. She was a fallen angel what is to be expected? The girl loves the pain, she loves the suffering, and most of all she loves death. Then something jumped into the path of the specter. Bright teal eyes watch as the stallion fights back. She watched as Otem's FATHER fights back."Are you okay Otem?"

Gold sparks showered down her bodice with every heart beat. If mother were here, she would kill her! If Akriel were here, he would be screaming at her; then simply he would watch and enjoy the chaos.It would hurt too much to run away from these things. Her legs were scorched, and a trail of blood leaked from under her wing. It ran over the blood knight brand on her ribs covering every inch of the marking. Then there was the black oozing liquid dripping from her chest. She did have to admit it was funny to see black flowers growing on the grass the death loomed over. Milky tresses floated behind her in the soft breeze, and the fallen angel was content watching the battle from the safety of the black stallion and his dragon. "Kaos please come back... we need you.. " Her voice was like a hushed soft whisper.

"Talk"

OOC:: Snow :') you are so sweet fro protecting my crazy girl! <3
Cas fights back the electric eagle with her doves, but gets burned. She then moves away from the specters horn, but gets cut under her wing. She then stays behind Volterra.

Castiella

I'm Well acquainted with villains
that live in my HEAD

image & coding

SILVERLINE & ECHELON

They pour from the world like blood from a wound—infected and fever-hot, fever-cold, charged with magic and the confusion of death. Echelon, his eyes black and wild, hangs back, content to stand upon the Scint's shore. The winds seem to intensfiy around him, whipping his thick, tangled mane around his dappled neck. Red lightning sparks along the length of his barbed horn. Ever the watcher, he knows little but to stand still, as his brother fights. Should he be seriously threatened, the guardian in him will wake; until then, Echelon merely stands.

Silverline, on the other hand, doesn't seem to notice the beast Volterra turns into, for he runs on without a care, his discordant voice grating on the ears. His target moves, but he does not, so the curved, wicked tip of his horn slices into the flesh below her wing—she arcs away, and he, he is knocked away in the most bizarre manner. The huge hound seems to pass through him at first, slipping through the halo of light surrounding what should've been the tangible outline of his body, and for them both, the world grows kind of cold and slow. The cerberus keeps sinking through the specter, until, all of a sudden, time seems to catch up, and Silverline's body solidifies. With a suddenness bound to startle all others they blast apart, each thrown back from the other; Silverline lands halfway into the Scint, and the current picks up his prone body and drags him away, out of sight. His watching brother follows, trotting along the shore, oblivious to the proceedings around him.

THE WORLD UNRAVELS. . .

The groan turns to a sound like disaster—like trees falling, wood splitting, skin ripping. The fabric of the world splits open, its bones come apart, an age-old, timeless ceremony the Rift has performed time after time after time as it sheds its skin, and grows a new one. It is a world of constant motion, but the horizon of mortals is too brief to see the pattern of change.

It is destabilized, and it doesn't know what to do, except cauterize the wound, and cut the infection from its fevered self. The invisible border between the Rainforest Cliffs and the Scint's western ridge shakes, a black snake between the lands as the void starts to yawn wider.

The Scint is coming untethered, from north to south.

You'd better get out of here, but you saw what happened to Kiada when she stepped into the river.

KISAMOA

"We all have things to learn."

He was tired. The energy was sapped from his bones, stolen right from his soul—the white light both pleasant and unpleasant, willing him to close his teal-and-black eyes.

So, he did. His ever-shifting body stilled, its changes grinding to a halt. The smooth fur rippled gently in some unknown breeze, the black scales glowed with the light. He looked oddly peaceful as he floated within the light, and oddly dead, as the incessant motion of his skin and muscle and bones ceased.

Isopia's words were not absolution from his sins. They did not permit him to drift away in the currents of death, and leave the mess he had made behind, though, oh, how tempting it was. Even the monsters in his head were silent, lulled into gentle sleep by the weight of eternal rest. Kisamoa betrayed his life by heaving a deep sigh.

So how could he fix this?

Could he even?

It took him a while to become aware of the other presence, and even longer for him to bother acknowledging it. It was something that ought to be alive, but for whatever reason had pitched in here with him. Too bad for you, he thought, until her tired voice pummeled through the cottony mess of his thoughts. “Kis?” she said. Not Kaos. Not Kisamoa. Kis. Slowly, his eyes cracked open, and he looked at Kiada. So loyal, so brave, even after all he'd done to her. And now, she called him Kis, as if he didn't have the powers to destroy the world, and hadn't provied it a couple of times either.

“How – How can we f-fix this?” His body, which had elongated into something almot serpentine before it froze, suddenly moved, almost twisting itself into an agitated knot. We can't he wanted to say, but he didn't.

He needed Vjanta's control. He need Reszo's wisdom. He needed Vourib's strength. He needed Caevoc's innate defenses. He needed the love and ferocity of mortals.

He needed to be what he wasn't, and it grated on him. Frustrated, he defied whatever forces held them there with seeming ease, gliding up next to, and around, Kiada. "You are tired, little flame," he rumbled, his voice soft for once—the light muted all hard edges and echoes, and his jaws were oddly smooth and not full of mangled teeth for once. "Be strong." A cloud of teal and black—colors they had learned meant death—slipped from his slitted nostrils and down hers. For a while, it would clear her thoughts, invigorate her body.

It was all he could do, for now.

"We'll have to see what we can find," he said next, and without further ado, a clawed paw emerged from the floating fringes of his shadowy fur, and grabbed hold of her. Slowly, they began to fall deeper into the light. The whispers grew louder again. The light faded into twilight. Kisamoa's nose twitched, and he swam here, then there, obviously looking for something.

A repository. A tomb. A place where lost, dead pieces of himself had come to rest.

Guilt pricked at his mind. The longer he kept her in the light with her, the greater the risks for her.

beauty in darkness
kaos in light

image

SILVERLINE & ECHELON drift away

The rent between the Rainforest Cliffs and the Scint is still narrow enough to jump across, and is a viable means of ESCAPE. Don't worry, there'll be another way to escape, too, so you can stick around the river! :] Even if you do not manage a post before the thread eventually closes, your character will NOT be killed.

KIADA & KISAMOA might continue to make "rapid posts", depending on player availability, but these events do not affect those on the surface! They're off on their own little adventure.

We'll be giving people a chance to catch up, but are hoping to wrap it up in about 7 days time!

Lastly, if you have any RIFT GOD ITEMS that were abandoned in Helovia and wouldn't mind them coming back into play here, please PM the items and their descriptions to Kisamoa's account :D

P A T R I C K

Of course, once the chaos begins it does not stop at a simple three ghosts. Those first ones are violently angry, at least two of them are, it is true but they seem to have specific targets and this makes them a little less frightening. The ones that follow after are driven mad by the length of their time in death and are indiscriminate with their attacks. Kismoa-Kaos has disappeared and the fact is almost an after thought to the adolescent stallion watching from the back of the pack. A female, younger than Patrick but still older than the "littles" he'd been so concerned for, steps into the river and vanishes. This does catch his attention if only for a moment. Then he is back to seeking a way through the crowd, a way he can not find because everyone is scrambling about and despite his nearness to adulthood, practically every actual adult here is bigger than he is. All he can see are butts, butts and more butts. It is way, way too late now for anything he'd tought might help.

This is ridiculous... why aren't we all running? Why are those foals still right in the middle of it all? Why hasn't any of the adults done more than just plant themselves in front of the kids and deflect blows? There are times to circle up and times when that ain't gonna do a damn bit of good. Doesn't anyone here have anything even approaching survival instinct? Gah! Heck with this place and heck with them, all of them Najya's kids or no, I am getting the fuck out.

With a snort of frustration, he looks back to the colt he'd addressed earlier and finds that the other unicorn doesn't appear to have moved at all. Frowning slightly Pat raises his voice.

""Hey, kid? You ok?""

He gives another nod back towards the mad scramble ahead of them.

""Never mind that. Run, now!""

This appears to be all the help he is interested in giving anyone at this point because he takes his own advice without further pause or consideration. Patrick is no race horse but his strides are long and his legs are strong. He runs flat out until he is forced to slow by a need to climb. When he reaches the top of the ridge he turns to glance back.

All I can think of through my entire run is that it is really, really lucky Kolr isn't here. I don't know how I could have protected her or gotten her out alive. Her presence and her presence alone would have stopped me from running though. Possibly a fatal mistake. I hope this doesn't turn out as badly for everyone else as I fear it might, I truly do but there is no help I can give that would actually be helpful. This is apparently what it feels like to stand by and watch an ending that shouldn't be happening and know that you can not stop it, can do nothing to dull the blade. I am quickly finding that I hate this feeling.

His pause to observe is only seconds long but by the time he turns back to pick his way onward the ground all around the river and even the ridge it self is shaking. He flails about in a futile attempt to keep his balance. The shaking takes him to his knees and he goes the rest of the way to the ground on his own likely figuring the landing will be softer if he does it himself. He stays there until a break in the shaking is long enough to let him scramble up and dart forward a few more strides. When the tremors become too violent again he goes to ground. In this manner, he might eventually reach a stable patch of ground before it all gives way beneath him.

will you help me

find myself?

image || coding

OOC: He ran up the ridge, mistakenly paused to look behind him, got shaken off his feet but is still struggling onward. So, ESCAPE, maybe... I think?

What kind of girl would blindly trust a god that could kill her without any remorse? What kind of girl would willingly – and quite possibly – give up her life to help Kaos fix this mess? It was simple, really, she was the kind of girl that was learning that sometimes she needed to get her hooves dirty when it came to try and rebuild. She wanted to believe that she did her stupid things for the better good – that perhaps when she was down in the light past the ghosts and sorrow of the river, that it was changing how the world shifted and groaned as it pulsed. But she didn’t know if it changed anything. She couldn’t see the world above anymore. Instead, it was simply her and Kaos and oh, what a story it would be to tell one day if she ever lived through it.

And so she watched the body of Kisamoa begin to stop shifting and changing, relaxing from underneath her heavy tired lids. She watched him float before she asked her question, as if the god himself had died. Her heart began to pound and she uttered the question out to him, hoping for some sort of response. She was far too exhausted to say his full name, to call him Kaos – even if that’s what he was, named for the events and destruction he caused – she could only shorten it in the hope of no repercussions. Still, she stared blankly at his serpent-like form, wishing for some sort of movement.

Luckily, the little harpy’s lids twitched open wider, fighting against the exhaustion that seemed demanding her to give in. He moved closer to her, seeming to glide easily against the invisible force that pushed the girl to and fro. “You are tired, little flame.” His voice was oddly gentle, and it reminded her of being back home in Dorobo, before the dark thoughts completely took over her mind, of her brother speaking to her to calm her worries. Her heart yearned for the golden colt, but dwelling on Kianzo did nothing good when she was among the dead. She lifted her head slightly to look at him, seeing his face become smooth and normal, she almost wanted to reach up and touch him, to see what horrors he had done and how they shone across his skin. But she didn’t, instead, the girl watched as he told her to be strong, nodding ever so slightly to Kisamoa while black and teal seeped from his nostrils.

Her ears flicked back at first, imagining that this was the end, that her sacrifice might be how the world above would be fixed and set right, and she quietly made a note to herself to tell her family that despite no outward show of affection, that she loved the strange mismatched family they had, and that she wouldn’t have traded it for the world. But suddenly, as the smoke filled her nostrils and entered her lungs, her final thoughts of her family cleared, her eyes were no longer wrinkled with exhaustion and tiredness, and she felt as though she could move her tired body once again without the stinging pain of pushing it too far. “We’ll have to see what we can find.” He said to her, and she nodded again to him, still unable to say much.

Then, a clawed paw reached for her from his fur and grabbed ahold of her. And she realized, then, that to fear this would be pointless. He could have killed her before, but he chose not to. Instead, she accepted it with a willingness to help, to change things, to show him that she wanted to help him in any way possible. And she allowed the paw to grab her and pull her down with Kisamoa until the light faded and the warmth was gone – and the screams, oh the screams, returned at first as whispers but began to grow. She came with him while he searched, her bright sapphire gaze gleaming in the dark as she tried to find what he sought – even though the girl didn’t know what it was he looked for. So she spoke up. “Is there something specific we’re looking for?” She asked him quietly, but far less tired than she had been. The stinging burning feeling of her throat from watching her death beginning to fade.

Regardless if he answered, she continued to look for anything to capture the eye. There were a few slightly shiny things in the dark that she couldn’t quite figure out what they were, but she knew they were bones of some sort. Hardly useful to what she was sure Kisamoa was trying to do. So she simply continued to look. “Bones, glowing bits, monsters, boxes?” She mused quietly to herself, unsure what kind of things he was specifically looking for as she glanced around the twilight area, finding a tooth or a bone here or there, but figuring they were probably nothing interesting. He seemed to be looking for something big, so she tried to look for something a bit more substantial.

"Talk."

Kiada

mama, i hope you get this

know the bed is warm and our hearts are cold

know never have i been better.

image | coding

She's basically paling around with Kisamoa, finding a few teeth and a bone here and there, but deciding they aren't important and instead tries to find something much larger!

He was a thinly veiled mess—in his black chest his stitched-together heart beat with a fervor and a furious panic, each beat counting down the time to disaster, but the problem was that he didn't know how long they had left.

He had seen it coming, from the first moment the river strained against his wards: the Scint would overflow. It was what the land had warned him of, and what he had waved off. It'll be fine, he'd thought, he'd told the Rift and its many, many eyes. I know what I'm doing. I have to try.

Partially out of vengeance: look at what your foolish, emotional request led to. He would both try fix it, and show them that it was pointless. What had happened, had happened, and they'd better just deal with it and look where it had brought him—the doorstep of death, where lost things came to rest, forgotten. Even down there, he felt the fabric of the world coming apart.

It was too dangerous. Too much power. An infected limb in need of being severed.

The Scint, his precious river—

Focus. But why? For those above? For Kiada, being so loyal, so stupid, so brave? Did he care? He'd wrestled with it ever since he'd told Zèklè he would try. He kept telling himself it was to buy their loyalty, and to show them the past was best left as it was, but there was that something niggling in a desolate corner of his mind.. something he wanted to smother in fury and hate. Look at what you made me do!

But hatred wasn't all good and well if he'd get destroyed with a magical river in a strange fold of the dimension. He had to get out of there first, and then, he could give them a piece of his mind.

(Guilt again. Kiada.)

"Things of the dead gods," he replied, his voice still uncharacteristically smooth, his many teeth needle-like and sharp. His eyes narrowed against the surroundings. "There's, uh..." He frowned, as if it hurt to think about. "There were weapons made from their bones, armor made from their hides... Not all of it was brought through the Portal, and that which remained in Helovia..." Familiar anger stirred in his gut, even in that serene place where all bitterness and strife ought to be washed from the body.

But Kisamoa was not there to die, so he fought against it. "This," he said as he sunk even deeper, "is a doorstep to death. Lost things sometimes end up here." He had let go of her at some point, for she seemed capable of navigating the strange forces suspending them, but he surprised himself by keeping an eye on her anyway.

"And I can feel something of them here..."

beauty in darkness
kaos in light

image

The calm dissipated as quickly as it’d come; her assuaging, soothing refrains were no match for the tidal wave of phantoms and wraiths circling over the water’s edge. The embankments were silhouetted by wraith attacks and haunted hallelujahs, and she must’ve fallen silent in those infernal, infinite moments, another witness to the cataclysm. Her eyes caught the bits of dust that eventually clamored together in a discordant requiem; each one lining a sketch, an outline, and then a figure who’d been grand, who’d been powerful, who’d been potent, left behind for a world no longer their own. The Songbird would’ve yearned for the chance to mourn them again, for her gaze to settle upon the lightning warrior Ampere, the mountain sage Isopia, or the many others she didn’t know (but should’ve, perhaps – she half-expected legions of strangers to make up an army of the dead). There was no time, however, because they weren’t at peace, because repose was barely ever found in these shadows, in these decadent halls with unending rooms – sanctuary was a sacrifice they’d made the moment they launched themselves into the portal. So instead, she closed her eyes, breathed one more intertwining hum (a precious, light, dulcet glimmer of things that used to be, the assuaging glimpse of better days), parted her jaws, and sang treachery, defiance, and rebellion.

The femme barely heeded the ripple of movement and motions of the ghosts close to her; she was an emboldened crescendo, a beam of torrents and fire, eclipsing the darkening void with the shudder, the burst of flames. The embers were summoned time and time again as she paused to echo over the bewitching symphony, a calm, slow march towards the river (because what else was she to do, what could any of them do against this ridiculous onslaught, peril after peril, fight after fight?). As she and Imogen maneuvered, two serene bodies of light, of flame, of power and ruin, the blaze sought out the figures meaning to condemn them. She refused to bend, to break, to flicker apart simply because this world demanded it (she hadn’t before; why start now?) – a persevering jewel in the eye of the storm. They rummaged and simmered past, smoldering sirens calling for a ceasefire, for the condemnation to sear, for the perished to follow the way they’d came, back into the dust, into the earth. When they reached the edge, a means to escape, the mender’s voice altered back to silken sonnets and brandished hymns, invoking the rest to follow suit. She’d put them all back together again – they need only ask.

{Lena uses her song magic to summon flames, hoping to aim them at the ghosts surrounding Imogen and herself. Afterward, they ESCAPE via the river’s edge, and wait there, offering to aid/help anyone who needs it. And if someone does need healing, just tag me and I can do it quickly! ;D}

Lena
where there is love, there is life.

image by safetylast @ flickr.com

He let her go, his hold no longer tying her beside him. And for a moment there she floated, aimlessly, her legs barely twitching against the absence of tension if she were to try and move. Yet she waited, listening with interest while he continued to search for just what kind of things he was looking for. When he finally spoke up, speaking of the dead gods, her inky head tilted slightly in his direction. Which dead gods? She wanted to ask him, if he meant the ones from the Rift from before her birth, or the Helovian gods that had died during their passage to the Rift. But when he elaborated on his idea, speaking of weapons and armor, her mind grew distant as she finally understood.

“I’ve seen one before.” She muttered, half to herself and half to Kaos. Though she hadn’t seen it here in this strange afterlife, she had seen one item before – she grew up with it sitting inside the cave of her home in the Edge. It was her father’s. A large skull of a crocodile that sat watchful and rather menacing, armor of some sort perhaps. Her gaze sought out Kisamoa briefly before she added onto her thought. “I wasn’t alive when it happened, but my father had a crocodile skull back in Helovia that looked like armor of some sort.” She mentioned. “I’ll see what I can find.” She tacked on at the end as he continued to explain what this place was. She nodded solemnly, but said nothing. She understood – she had stepped willingly into the river of the dead to help this God find what he sought. In her haste she hadn’t realized what the consequences might have been, but now she did.

She had to help him, and fast, or she might not make it out.

So she propelled her legs to move, pushing her forward as her head tilted down, sapphire eyes searching for the weapons and armor of the Rift Gods, ones she figured might look a lot like the skull her father had. At least, she hoped they did. How different could they really be? Granted, she had no firsthand experience. She had heard stories but hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, and that made things positively difficult. Her brows furrowed and her eyes narrowed slightly against the twilight darkness as she continued to search, floating here and there and coming up with nothing.

That was, until she spotted a small gleaming item nearby. Her inky legs picked up momentum, propelling her to the location of the item shining back at her. Ears strained forward and eyes tried to see through the faded light. It looked like armor, but of what kind she couldn’t tell. What she could tell, however, was that it looked important. She moved further down, reaching with her mouth to bite onto the armor. Her pink lips molded around the item as she lifted it, looking over to where Kisamoa was searching. “Mmmh!” She hummed to him to catch his attention, carrying the armor in her mouth as her legs moved toward her original location, by his side. When she stopped, she pushed her legs out forward to catch the armor in case it decided to float away before looking back at Kisamoa with a proud look on her face. “Something like this?” And she grinned.

"Talk."

Kiada

mama, i hope you get this

know the bed is warm and our hearts are cold

know never have i been better.

image | coding

<333

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10