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Home » Search » Roster » Whitepages » Records » FAQ » Guidebook
Famous Last Stand
RP Wanted The Portal 
Amarantha
Currently championing: Vjanta
#1




Hot panting breath against her heels and flanks. The sharp tear of teeth in her skin. Her own heartbeat pounding in her chest as she struggled to outrun them. Somewhere, not too far behind, the sound of hunter's horns echoing stridently through the air.

Pain lanced up Amarantha's leg as one of the hounds sank a fang into her left hind leg. A desperate, flailing, kick was followed by a sharp yelp and jaws releasing her hock. Staggering but upright, she gathered her legs under her and leapt.

The series of surprised barks, howls and yelps behind her told Amarantha that the hounds had tumbled down into to the old, dried creekbed. The thick undergrowth meant that, unless you knew it was there, you wouldn't see the steep embankments until you were right on top of it. Not that it would stop them long. Already, Amarantha could hear their claws scrabbling up the loose, crumbling bank.

She cleared the distance and landed with a stagger, her injured leg nearly giving way. Pushing on, she dodged around a tree trunk, it's rough bark scraping her hide. Plunging through the choking undergrowth, she pushed past thick the thick, thorny, scrub. Though she knew this forest inside out, Amarantha found herself starting to get disoriented. The effects of exhaustion, no doubt.

She scrambled over a tumble of fallen logs and nearly plowed into a granite boulder. Dodging around it, she nearly ran into a patch of Stingweed.

This time of year? And so far from standing water?

She barely had time to register the thought, as a steep ditch forced her to veer right. Crashing and stumbling, a massive ancient tree brought her to a bone-jarring halt. Eyes darting frantically, she saw that it was a dead end. The only way back was the way she had come.

Well. She had known she couldn't outrun them forever. But if she was going down, she was going to take as many of them down with her as she could. Amarantha turned to  face her pursuers, legs trembling with fatigue, her flanks lathered with sweat, chest heaving with deep, ragged breaths. The glowing markings that covered her skin flickered and dimmed. Horn lowered, Amarantha waited for death.

And waited. The sound of the hunt came steadily closer and then, with startling abruptness, was silenced. In the unsettling hush that followed, the only sounds were that of her pounding heart and gasping breath. No birds sang. No leaves rustled. An oppressive, unnatural silence filled the space with it's presence.

Where am I?

Nothing looked familiar, and she knew every corner of the forest. Somehow, she had stumbled into the unknown. Overwhelmed, her legs finally gave way under her. As she crashed into into the leaf litter with a loud thud, she was suddenly acutely aware that she was in an unfamiliar place, smelling of blood and sweat, and too exhausted to run. To exhausted even to heal herself.

Well, I never expected to live out this day. Let it be what it will.

With determined resignation, Amarantha raised her head to look her fate in the face.



Amarantha
You were named for the Amaranth
Whose bloom means life unending
And whose name means Love Lies Bleeding

Magic:
Healing: Ability to heal with her touch, preferably with her horn. Difficult or big jobs take exponentially more energy the more complicated they are
Offensive: Ability to twist her healing to cause harm - unknitting bones and muscles, causing infections instead of healing them, turning medicine into poison, etc.
Healing: Ability to calm and soothe with her song

Mutations
Bioluminescent blue-green markings that can flicker or change brightness depending on her mood and energy.
Eira
Currently championing: Reszo
#2
The journey south from Halyven was always long and unnecessarily precarious for the small, young dreamer, the stunted waif, whose tortured beginning had tethered her to the earth. She had slipped between those crumbled ivory pillars nearly three weeks prior and had chosen to deviate  from the most straightforward path to the Portal (as always she did now), to avoid the swamp-stalker who had pursued her already on more than two occasions; it was a formidable looking creature with savagely pointed tusks about its face, claws to rival the horns on Roscorro’s face and such speed that that Eira had begged for her life!

Thankfully, as had been explained by one older and far wiser, that stalker and its aggressive brethren belonged much further east—it was unlucky that she’d encountered it so often. Nevertheless, Eira’s confidence had been shaken and thereafter, she’d found herself only at the mercy of black ice and wither-deep snow.

Soft white breathy wreaths ascended in quick succession from her panting nostrils when at last she found herself beneath the tangles of wild vine and gnarled bough, all very prevalent around the Portal. Here I am, she told herself with a pale, satisfied smile, attempting to feed confidence through the wariness of her soul; all the while, the scrawny child-looking filly narrowing her dark eyes upon the familiar shadows which slithered and stalked through the neon lights of this, the ugly fissure between worlds.

She stepped slowly, silently, blessed by the tinted metal which was fastened round her cannons, ever aware of the frosted foliage which littered the ground—somewhere, she knew, a sour-flavoured creek carved through, and Eira was certain that by now it would be ice. It was as she came upon the frozen surface that a sound touched her notice, drawing it hither, the quiet length of her unhorsed face along too. The snowman which always trailed her, a nuisance more than a companion, for it scowled awfully and hurled snowballs in miserable fashion, gathered one such missile in its sharp, stick hand, anticipating company.

The sound was not a voice, certainly, instead a thud, or thump, like weight falling hard against the ground, and Eira, with furry blue ears fixed forward, began to search carefully through the undergrowth for the source. She started slightly, surprised (though perhaps the other’s presence should have been expected), when at last her wandering eyes fell upon the coloured flank of a stranger. They were collapsed—perhaps fallen—either way, she imagined, incapable of launching an inescapable attack, and so the filly crept closer, silently, nervously.

“Hello?” she offered with the safety of distance still comfortable between them. The other’s face was lifted, and Eira made a specific effort to present herself in a way that was noticeable. “Are you hurt?” The question, though she truly was concerned, was an equal attempt to gauge the level of danger surrounding the situation. The little blue orphan was not at all a risk taker. The snowman threw his waiting snowball with force. 

image


Eira doesn't have a horn yet (ignore the picture), and she is speaking telepathically.
Rift Presence
Currently championing:
#3
The Rift is not only a place - it is a being. Dark, mysterious, and suddenly, it is all around you. You are vaguely aware of its presence, of burning eyes watching your every move. It almost feels like the same force can read your thoughts, leaving you vulnerable, out in the open. There is no hiding here. But if you peer into the shadows, try to find it, there is nothing. Only a cold, gentle breath of wind that sends chills running down your spine and eerie susurations in your ears.
“Talk.”
the Rift

| ACCEPTANCE NOTES : Amarantha |

Magic:
Offensive: With the touch of her horn, Amarantha has the ability to cause great harm - unknit bones and muscles, trigger bodily infections, and turn medicine into poison.

The Rift devours both of your healing magics.

Mutations:
Bioluminescent blue-green markings that can flicker or change brightness depending on her mood and energy.

Welcome to the Rift!
» Presence of the Rift «


Amarantha
Currently championing: Vjanta
#4





Amarantha's ears twitched as a faint noise broke the stillness. It was the crunch of hoarfrost and  leaf litter underfoot. So faint as to be barely perceptible.

Slowly someone came into view. A pale filly appeared. One of the Erienuin? Had Amarantha somehow found her way home? But no, the hope died almost as soon as it had been born. This was a stranger,  with wings and no horn.

With the sureness of a practised healer, Amarantha read the tale suffering, starvation, and hardship written in the little filly's delicate, stunted features. Clearly, this was a harsh, dangerous, place. But equally clearly this child - no, on second glance she was older than her size might indicate, a yearling maybe? - was not one of those dangers.

It was the first friendly face she had seen in a long time. Or at least, the first one that wasn't trying to kill her.  It was more than she had dared to hope for. Slowly she rose up, front legs first, and then the hind ones.

The stranger asks her if she's hurt, and Amarantha does a quick mental inventory - blood loss, pulse thready and rapid, numerous puncture wounds - painful, but not deep enough to be dangerous - bruising on her neck, chest and shoulders, luckily no broken ribs, and, of course, bone-deep weariness. Not good, but not fatal  She gingerly shifted her weight into her injured leg and winced. The tendons are swollen and painful but, luckily, not torn.

"I..." she stops, startled by her in voice after so long.

"I'll live. I'll just be limping for a few days. Maybe less, if I can heal it. I was... am... a healer." Even after everything that she's done, Amarantha still thinks of herself as a healer, first and foremost.

Throughout this conversation, Amarantha had been aware of a vague sensation of uneasiness. A directionless sense of being watched. Now, as her words died away, she felt as though her very soul were being wrenched apart. Suddenly thrashing on three legs, she looks around wildly, but see nothing.


"Is it you? Are you doing this?" she demands of the stranger. "Make it stop! Please!" she begs, as she feels all that she holds dear, all that she is, evaporate away like morning mist.

A low moan escapes her, hollow and broken. She reaches for her magic but she already knows.    "It's gone" she whispers. All her healing, her only remaining purpose in life, is gone.

It makes a horrible, chilling, sort of sense. Amarantha had once forsaken her calling, and now her calling had forsaken her. All that remained was darkness and death.



Amarantha
You were named for the Amaranth
Whose bloom means life unending
And whose name means Love Lies Bleeding

@Eira
Eira
Currently championing: Reszo
#5
Eira stood poised and tense as she watched across the way, ready to recoil and vanish into the queer chaos of colour and shadow, vine and wood, if even the slightest suggestion of hostility caught her notice. In the seconds which followed, however, the stranger’s large eyes, set into a quite ethereal-looking skull—far more delicate than hers—turned quietly to find Eira, guided by the sharp point of a near moon-white horn. The  lean, unusually painted body of the other followed gradually, slowly, perhaps afflicted by some hidden injury and the yearling waited motionlessly, uncertainly. It took another moment before the elegant stranger offered an answer to her question.

Downy, blue ears craned forward when at last sound broke upon those dark, mottled lips—but it ceased just as suddenly, sliced from existence before any sense had emerged. One ear retreated quickly to the rear and crooked knees trembling terribly beneath the narrowness of her shoulders, begged to follow.

“I’ll live…” a far smoother voice continued at last and it easily smothered Eira’s resounding fear, the heart, pounding between her fleshless ribs, like a heavy quilt, warm and reassuring. The yearling blinked quietly, mesmerised in a way, by the obvious disparity between them; between this otherworldly creature and every other which she’d stumbled upon in the Rift. The breath she’d been holding for most of the encounter rattled out softly through her widening nostrils, yet, no sooner had some of the tension eased from her stance, the stranger began suddenly to flinch, even thrash, and the waif stumbled three strides clear.

Questions erupted suddenly beneath a tone brighter and now demanding. Accusations Eira’s vulnerable sensitivity deemed them hastily and a sliver of her confidence was crushed; she could see nothing throughout the scene before her that could’ve provoked the unexpected, unwarranted twist of character and—

“It is the Rift!”

…Her thoughts blurted the statement suddenly, desperately, aloud, as she relived the moment of her entry in a  horrid blinding flash; she fed her own personal experience with the fog into the mind of the panicked female for clarity. The pulse within her ears exploded and her eyes clenched closed to force the startling situation from her vision. At the same moment, unnatural darkness descended upon them and whistling wind began to harry the leaves above their heads, so too the queer vegetation surrounding; beyond, ominous clouds had meshed into one bleak blanket across the heavens and the low rumble of thunder warned within its blackened midst.

Minutes bled by and though she anticipated some drastic, agonising climax, nothing further seemed to happen—the other’s hollow moan had failed long before, and Eira realised that the reverberation around her was the fury of the weather. She could not have realised that the pressure of her culminating anxiety had summoned the freak storm, the adolescent was oblivious to her own inherited power, and as the first freezing snow spilt down upon her, eyes peeled apart to locate the one who had worried it forth.

image


- Able to speak into the mind of another, using images or words.
- Able to summon thunder-snow storms (she doesn't know it yet).
Forgive my inability to avoid drama >.>
Amarantha
Currently championing: Vjanta
#6


Hollow. She was empty and hollow. Inside her, in the space where her one comfort had remained, nothing but a gnawing void. No way, any longer, to pretend that she wasn't a monster. No way to atone, to forget all those who had died because of her

As the sense of violation fades, and the invading force withdraws, panic gives way to desolation Her markings flicker, dim, and go dull in sync with her spirit.

Images flicker into her mind. Experiences not her own. From the flood of images and words, Amarantha pieces together an undertanding.  Looking up at the other girl, Amarantha can sense the honesty of her vision.

The frail blue and silver waif looks ready to bolt, her body taught as a spring. She looks ready to vanish into the snow. Silence stretches out between them as flakes of snow flurry down through the frozen air and fall thick on the forest floor. Amarantha wants to comfort her, but doesn't know what to say. In the end, she settles for the truth.

 "I was afraid," she says softly.  "I'm sorry if I scared you."

Amarantha
You were named for the Amaranth
Whose bloom means life unending
And whose name means "Love Lies Bleeding"


Sorry this post was so up in Amarantha's head. Future ones will be less internal drama, I promise!
Eira
Currently championing: Reszo
#7
“I was afraid,” the stranger revealed finally, remorse ripe through the quiet murmur of her voice. Eira was selfish, in a sense, for the weight of her own traumatic memories allowed her little room to apprehend the horrors that others too had faced; these set upon her now with all of the ferociousness of the wind that dragged at her knotted, matted mane; Kaos, the swamp, death.

It was not that she didn’t care—the empath she channelled did feel the strange hollowness as it consumed her coloured company, could see the dullness as the luminous bars across her unusual hide, ceased. Though her conscience deep inside ached for the other’s grim plight, whatever that was, fear cemented her broken hooves to the spot and forced a flaky wall of reservation to rise right between them.

The yearling nodded at that point, partly accepting the words offered as truth, mostly shaking the nightmarish visions from her mind.

Blue eyes, drowned in tragedy, cleared to reveal the forlorn looking stranger still standing (more or less), where she had been. The soft tendrils of hair which, before, had fallen like a sleek veil to frame her horned face now flung wildly in the wind, burdened all the while by the wetness of the thickening snow as it flurried down through gnarled, naked branches—Eira’s own hair hardly moved, glued to the thick, untidy coat lining her neck with thistles and filth.

“I have a home here,” the orphan's thoughts mentioned after a fair time spent staring, studying. “It is safe. There are others.” The face of Roscorro sprang forth into her mind and she shared it—the gentleness of the giant’s fair expression, a private moment between them when Vynter had been missing and she’d searched the waterlogged shoreline beneath his protective eye.

Eira added kindly, “I limp too.”

image


I love your girl <3
Amarantha
Currently championing: Vjanta
#8




"I have a home here," the words turn up in Amarantha's mind. “It is safe. There are others.”  The words feel like an invitation.

Images of people, and feelings of security flash through her thoughts. A safe place. People to belong to. For Amarantha, who has lived in self-imposed exile for so long, the idea is alluring  beyond words.

But would they even want you, if they knew what you are? What you've done?

The thought creeps unbidden into her mind, sending a chill down her spine. And yet what choice did she have if she wanted to live? In this strange, perilous place whatever magic she does have might fail her at any time. And she was no warrior. She had never trained to fight. So she bows her neck in gratitude to the yearling's kind offer.

 "I'm not sure how long I can stay, how long you might be willing to late me stay..." she says hesitantly,  "My past is... " she falters.  "I can promise that I offer you no malice," she finishes somewhat awkwardly, cringing at how abrupt and suspicious her words sound even to her own ears.

"I limp too,"

 "Oh, maybe I can...." Amarantha begins then stops abruptly. "maybe I can heal you," she'd been about to say, but of course she couldn't.


 "Maybe I can lean on you and you on me," she amends.

She steps towards the petite yearling carefully, moving slowly so as not to scare her. She was not quite as old as Amarantha's own sister, Nocturna, would have been, but her eyes held the suffering of one much older. For a moment, the older woman feels the urge to groom the silver not-quite-child's mane, to work out those tangles, as she used to do for her Nocturna. But she checks her presumption and drops her gaze.

 "Lead the way. I'm Amarantha, by the way. I don't think I caught your name?" she asks, as she follows her new guide into this unknown world.


Amarantha
You were named for the Amaranth
Whose bloom means life unending
And whose name means "Love Lies Bleeding"
Eira
Currently championing: Reszo
#9
The fog of wariness that had all but engulfed the frail meeting seemed to ease a little, thinning its gloomy grip just enough to allow, sensitive, brittle nerves to stop their raucous pinging. Frayed lines too softened across the shaggy yearling’s sickly frame, taking heart when the horned woman swapped her broken thoughts and hesitation for a more confident suggestion:“Maybe I can lean on you and you on me—”

A brighter smile ignited through Eira’s gaunt features. “I like that,” her thoughts returned quickly.

Crooked forelegs trembled as the other stepped nearer, this time without the burning heat of fear coursing down their length; willing her to pivot and flee into the tangles of neon undergrowth. One chipped hoof lifted, as though to welcome the other’s advancement, and quivering nostrils extended a small puff of warm breath towards the vicinity of the other’s coloured frame; a halo of white steam billowed upwards.

Amarantha, at last, introduced herself, enquiring in turn for Eira’s own identity. The orphan’s lips drew back a little, shyly, revealing a pearly, near-white grin. “I’m Eira,” she answered with rising excitement visible, feeding the words into the pretty mare’s mind. As she turned to guide Amarantha away from the Portal, the shadows and the storm, the young blue horse added, “Our home is in Halyven and there are walls and things to keep us warm.”

Keeping to the plan, the one that broke the ice, Eira’s bony frame aimed to press against her wounded friend as support. Now it was just a matter of finding the right way out…

image