the mountains became sand

R I K Y N   &   D U I R Vacillating between emptiness, sorrow, and a strange, manic giddiness, my emotions seem to be as tumultuous as the sea, churning against the shore.  Still damp from my wild swim over here, Duir angrily extracts himself from the brine, shuddering away the sea water, to be drenched furthermore in the rain.   I hadn’t bothered shaking at all; what was the point?  The thought stretches from my head into his, and the scowl cast towards me is dark, and petulant.  Tired and weary from the swim, no where near as physically fit as I am, the young buck feels the softness that had been lulled into his body by the safety of the northern mountains more acutely than I do, and its left him even more petulant than me.   For him, this is the first time he has been severed from home; the world has never been entirely new, as it is now, and has never been filled with so many unknowns.  Our daily meals are cautiously eaten, and, unlike before, I am not a tour guide, who knows where each path goes.  Here, I know nothing, and neither does he, but, unlike me, Duir has a hard time accepting it.  The danger not knowing presented was slowly driving him mad, while I…   I was going mad, from other things.   Neither of us was really sleeping anymore, for one.  The cerndyr was too frightened by the black magic coiling in the air here, while I was plagued by nightmares seemingly no sooner than I shut my eyes, if I wasn’t kept awake by worry for my young family.  Having noticed the distance growing between Glacia and I, and not sure what to do with or about it, I’ve withdrawn, as usual.  I find myself out here, brooding and alone, angry with her for daring to be so cold to me at a time when we clearly needed one another more than ever.  If for no reason but for Gwyn…   She’d been left with the others, safe enough, I’m sure.  Turning my back to where she is, as if it will make me less anxious for her and Arleigh, I instead move my eyes over the forest, looming densely ahead, and the rocky landscape of this only vaguely familiar set of isles.  Having never come when it was in Helovia, I’m not entirely sure what is the same, and what has changed, other than that I am sure these are the same stone shapes that had marked the horizon back home.  Though I hadn’t allowed myself the thought as I’d come, I was here for the sake of feeling as if I was home, but, now that I was here, ears filled with the loud roar of the whirling vortex wending through the center-most islands of this small chain, I was disenchanted.   Home is gone, I think to myself, sullenly, while Duir stares blankly out across the volatile sea. this is not destruction this is your birth —

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@Erebos

Poised like Poseidon from another time, another place, when the great valleys yawned and no one felt the tremor, when the echoing tides didn’t promise devastation, he stood on top of the waves and pondered. It was as if the Riptide had been pulled right along with them, down into the bowels of hell, into Stygian pursuits and revelations; given life and treachery like everything else in their disturbing, hollowed sphere. The vortex, the gaping, giant maw proffered other promises, and the temptation echoed through his soul, through his mind, through his broken, barely beating heart – because he could race to it, end everything now, launch straight into its devouring mouth and no one would know, no one would care, no one would be the wiser – just another infidel, another fool gone, gone, gone into the midst. It was an enticing proposition after everything, death, death, and more death, the Basin plunging into darkness without its time, without its spark, without its empire, his father forever gone from his reach (because at least he’d been stone, he’d been rubble, he’d been there, right beyond the marble of his tomb, and he could’ve rested his head against its surface and pretended every word he said was heard), and Enyo vanishing into the air. Barbaric and twisted, he stood there amidst the rolling, petulant hold, a titan, a shell, all the potential in the world and not enough willpower to do anything but splinter, fracture, and drift away on the current. He could hear Orsino spitting, hissing, along the shoreline, trying to get him to come back, to rest along the dunes and they could try to find her again, just give one more try, but the eldritch cyclone along the sea continued to ripple through his eyes. He was a storm, and another could eat him too – swallowed into his chosen gallows before the earth had one more opportunity to destroy him. He had nothing left to give.
 
So he walked and he walked, traced the shoreline with his hooves, with his daggers, with his cutlasses and knives, wondering how far he could go before everything ended and naught existed – no pain, no torment, no loss – but Orsino just kept calling and calling, an echo, a throng, and the prince gnashed his teeth together. What else was he supposed to do? What the hell did this world have to offer? Why didn’t he just stay with the rest of them, behind in Helovia, become one more soldier eaten away by Kaos’ reign? As volatile as the ocean, as pernicious as the abysmal treachery cast into their lungs, into their minds (an irreverent, immoral concoction; he breathed it in until the fumes filled his skull and he could cast the haunted memories away from the edges of his eyes), he strayed further along the embankment, wondering how long it would be until naught stopped him from racing into the currents and becoming free of the overwhelming burdens (and maybe, together again – back with the souls who’d already been snatched and taken from him).
 
His stare cut across the ruins, landing precariously on a familiar etching of brown and gold, and the warrior sighed. If he was straining under the cumbersome weight of everything, then how did Rikyn still remain, chained and locked and tethered here, unable to escape too?
 
He couldn’t leave him behind.
 
Erebos swallowed down the pungent taste of bile closing over his tongue, and moved with precision, with cutting, slashing motions (if he wasn’t lined with anguish, it was anger), unwinding and unfurling until he was several paces away from his blood brother and he didn’t know what else to do, to say. Orsino crept along his left side, and absentmindedly the boy glanced to his right, and when the empty sanction tore into him again, he whipped his head around to just stare directly at his King and wonder how they’d gotten this far. “Rikyn,” he nodded, trying to put on a smile that died before it even managed to align across his features, then had naught else to add that wouldn’t be faulty, wouldn’t be ruined, wouldn’t tear the world apart. “I-,” he started, then stopped, usually so eloquent, capable of charismatic sanctions and charming discourses, but incapable of saying anything to his best friend. “Have you figured anything out about this place?” He spoke instead, because it felt safe, instead of a barb, a dagger, straight into his heart.

Erebos

clever got me this far - - then tricky got me in

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@Rikyn

R I K Y N & D U I R I notice his approach and lift my eyes to him, but that is as far as I move, waiting for him to come over, just in case he decides to turn back and go stare broodingly into the sea on his own some more. Knowing how I deal with my problems and feelings (not at all, with distractions, or by burying them deeper and deeper inside) I won’t push others to talk to me about them. That seems to be a primarily female trait, anyway… He’ll talk, when he wants to talk, I think, though the gold-struck buck alongside me gently connects his mind to mine with worry. He bad, Duir expresses, those two words accompanied with emotional descriptions of what he means by bad, pressed all the more onto me when he watches my ears fall back. Erebos is not… I begin to retort, before gathering what the buck means. Looking at my best friend with a concerned thoughtfulness that hasn’t broached my hard expressions for anyone but Gwyn since before the mass exodus, I wonder if Duir is right, eyeing his sorrowful gait, and the seemingly subdued Orsino. Huh, I half care and half moan inwardly to myself when I see it (because it’s a problem to deal with, and I really don’t like dealing with anything), and Duir bobs his head, looking back out to the sea. "Hey," I quietly reply, meeting his gaze. It seems like he’s going to say something other than what he finally does, but so it goes, with Erebos. He never wants to talk about it, but I know what it is. I’m sorry, for you, for me, for us and them, for her… "It never stops raining," I answer, avoiding everything like he does; I give him something he probably already knows, but I don’t know what else I’ve learned, other things that I might be able to eat. The long term effects were as of yet undetermined, and several of the choices so far had left me with, well, unpleasant aftermaths of the posterior kind, if you know what I mean. "There are caves along the cliffs, in the jungle to the south of the wood we first came to. They’re dry enough. Just have to keep an ear out for cave ins, considering the nonstop fucking deluge in this hellhole. Maybe Glacia would talk to you, then, and you could tell me why she’s being so true to her namesake. Hot and cold, hot and cold…" I kick a rock out into the jungle, watching the boughs shake around its trajectory with backwards flipped ears and scowl. "Women," I mutter to myself, with a darkness that is born from more than just being in a frustrating relationship; still, I try to pick the mood up, looking back over at Erebos with an expression slightly more friendly than a scowl, "what about you? You learn anything yet?" this is not destruction this is your birth —

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They were gifted, blessed, and consecrated with the art of avoidance. They could paint oeuvres, masterpieces, on the subject of evading and escaping from merciless edges, from topics threatening to wound, to barb, to hurt, even when the other had experienced much of the same. The pair could’ve shared their melancholy, their doubts, their muddled, mottled thoughts, commiserated on the state of hellholes and the chaos crumbling, threatening, to consume them. They would’ve understood one another, living mirrored lives, father’s dying, empires disappearing, savage, nefarious acts coursing through their veins. But they didn’t – because it was easier to lie, to hide, and to conceal how many times they’d been pierced from inward swords. It was easier to beckon the truth away from their souls, to twist and turn and fall apart with no one watching, no one staring, no one believing, seeing the weaknesses clawing from within – but Erebos knew he had enough buried so much that it threatened to bubble and froth over, to split him down from seam to seam, from rubble to ruin, and there’d be nothing left of him. He was consumed and devoured and swallowed by the chaos, by the conflicts, by everything he’d left behind – even the momentary contentment, satisfaction, of destroying an enemy (but not being able to say, not being able to be proud of the colossal achievement of destroying an enemy). He was certain Rikyn could view it all too, read him like an open book, stare and stare until he saw just how much he’d coiled and curled away, stuck between destruction, mayhem, and calamity, no longer the scion, the youth emboldened with promise. There was too much damage, too many scars, too many horrors and afflictions murmuring with abhorrence and persecution, and he glanced out to the sea again and again, wondering if that would be the only way to rid himself of the pain, the melancholy, the roughened edges and the tarnished soul.
 
It never stops raining earned the slightest of smiles, the vague, small indentation of his smile, because he’d always enjoyed the rain – the very image of his mother – and then allowed it to falter when he thought of his father, caught in his last moments in the drowning deluge. As if by mere coincidence, or perhaps summoned by the sheer notion of its existence, a few droplets descended onto his coat, crossing over his skull marking (heritage and legacy; something they both comprehended well, strived to outlast shadows and demons), not noticing the miniscule sparks glowering in its wake. He responded instead, muted, tucked away, barely there, mind embossed and embedded in the sphere of soullessness dragging him down, down, down. “All this place seems to do is take.” The grin died there, ears turning in the briefest of Rikyn’s revelations, like a little scrap of information, delivered simply because they were friends and the once King could unleash his frustrations (but never the innermost sentiments; those were reserved to wither and decay for years to come) towards a boyhood companion.
 
He didn’t have any advice though. His experience with Enna’s moods and his inability to read situations didn’t bear well for counsel or guidance (and he couldn’t tell her what he’d done for her). “Did you do something again?” His brow arched, vague, presuming Rikyn had come to fault and blemish at some point, for while the beast had his virtues, he also had his flaws (usually whatever spewed from his mouth; hostile, blunt, curt). Then he glanced against the horizon, pondering if he should reveal something too, if this was an opportunity to take part, share, give in to proclamations (but not into the deepest of fathoms, where his heart lay broken and disheveled, in shards, in slivers, in fragments). “Enyo disappeared,” was all he had, and even then, his voice sounded corroded, shaken, and blistered. “I keep looking for her, but-” The emptiness, the gaping hole beside him, was enough to know he hadn’t been successful, one more pledge, one more oath, going unanswered.

Erebos

clever got me this far - - then tricky got me in

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@Rikyn