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Home » Search » Roster » Whitepages » Records » FAQ » Guidebook
there's been trials and tribulations
Trial Riptide Isles 
Savera
Currently championing:

Player is absent until

#1
Night one.

Goo. Icky, goopy, messy goo sits like a shield over her withers. It adheres obstinately to her wings, sinking between her feathers, lurking among her hair. No amount of bathing or grooming will dislodge it; she has tried water and her tongue, rubbing on trees and rolling in dirt. Even Devi has not escaped unscathed; the viscous stuff has wormed its way between her talons, and the poor chick spends hour after hour trying to remove it, all to no avail. Savera and her griffin are saturated, entrapped, prisoner of the dreaded goop.

The sun has long set, and Savera has been awake since dawn. She stands on the precipice of a jagged slab of slate, cold eyes tracing the edge of the horizon, the eddies and swells that beat far below. Her coat is dark as the midnight sky, inky black with highlights of gold;
she is a morning star introduced to midnight, a picturesque statue against the quiet nice, elegant and glorious-

Savera yawns loudly, and the illusion breaks. She is still a gangly child with a downy giffin, both of whom remain thoroughly covered in goo.

The only way to save themselves? Go without sleep for three days.

It is an interesting experiment, a study in fortitude and stamina. Sleep is something the girl has always believed to be necessary, like breathing or eating, like her family, her mother. And yet, hasn't she gotten along fine without her mother, these past days? Certainly she misses the mare; Tandavi is her dam after all, the thing that gave her life. But in terms of surviving the girl has done fine. She and her sisters are wayward stars, blown through the Rift on a playful breeze. If she can live without her mother, perhaps she can live without sleep...

And if she can live without sleep, what else can she live without?

Anything's on the table.

Well, not quite.

The girl glances back, her whole body coiling and turning (the goop has rendered her neck rather stiff). There are her sisters, her two stars, the wide older Vesper and her beloved twin. Savera is willing to live with anything, except, she thinks, for them.


"Talk?"

savera & devi
we might be hollow, but we're brave
image credits


@Neaera @Vesper @Roskuld @Noëlle - and anyone else who likes!
Rift Presence
Currently championing:
#2
Two large, dark pits stare up from beneath the dark, stormy sea. Water spouts rise and fall all around this lonely, rocky precipice. The sea writhes.

And beneath the sea, submerged and unseen except for an intermittent fin-tip that breaks through the swells, is a great Pistris. An occasional, easily missed blue flash tells that it is a bull shark. Its constant stare up at the spot of white amid the dark skies tells that it is hunting.

This morsel stands so close to the edge; that powerful tail could propel the monster out of the waters…but it waits, ever the opportunistic predator, to see if this meal will simply fall into his jaws.
the Rift
what lies beneath
image


@Savera
Vesper
Currently championing:
#3

The growing green orb had been so innocent at first.  I’d been foolish to even assume such a thing in this place would be innocent. Before I could even think better of it, before I could even take a step back to turn away, all I could see was green.  But that wasn’t the worst of it.  The worst of it was the screaming.

It was immediate, as if someone was trapped in my skull and screaming at the top of their lungs to be liberated. Instinctively I flattened my ears against the sound, shaking my head as the sound reverberated in my skill.  Every now and then, I’m able to make out words inside my head.  Commands inside my skull. It takes me precious moments of anguish to finally comprehend that the words are instructions, my means to bring this torment to an end.  I stagger a few steps still unaccustomed to the volume inside my head.  I worry that my senses will be dulled to other threats, but Everly is quick to reassure me that she’ll do her best to be my ears for me...when she’s awake.  

The sleeping spells had been recurrent since we’d been here, some sort of illness or condition that she must have picked up since stepping through the portal.  Regardless of our own infirmities, I couldn’t afford just to linger.  I had the twins to consider.  I wasn’t going to leave them to themselves in a place like this.

***

The screaming hadn’t relented.  Not for one moment throughout the day. My ears stayed flattened against my head for the better part of the day, and my features must have appeared as a permanent wince.  I tried to keep my appearance neutral for Vera and Nea’s sake, but that just… wasn’t possible.  It seemed Vera found herself in her own mess - quite literally.  I had vowed to help the girl stay up for three days, but I wasn’t sure how I could help a child forgo something as important as sleep.  My first thought was to have Everly use her magic to speed time along, for all our sakes, only to find that Everly’s magic didn’t function in this place.  Not to mention my next thought was that I didn’t want to anger whatever magical beings lived here by cheating the system.  So instead, we explored.

I kept a close eye on both of the girls because it was evident that there were way too many things that went bump in the night here.  The combination of both the night and the sea would have been soothing, if not for the screams that were out for blood.  Quite literally, in this case.  My silver gaze swept the sea, oblivious to the danger lurking there, before I moved to stand alongside Vera.  

“Strange out here without the moon and the same stars, don’t you think?” I said, lamely, unable to control how loud my voice as I could hardly hear myself speak over the chants of Kill, Kill echoing in my head.

-- V E S P E R --
"In a sky full of stars, I think I see you."

image credit


@Savera

Please tag Vesper in every post.
Force and magic are permitted, but please check before inflicting serious injury.
image credit
Noëlle
Currently championing:
#4
Noëlle
When father had finally fallen asleep, the child’s mind would wander where she knew not. To the places of the shadows, where various forms gathered from her scrambling eyesight – trying to form bodies and shapes to the things she couldn’t quite grasp. She would try to make stories of them, of the eyes that peered through the veil.

More often than not, her thoughts returned to her mother. Her eyes would shift to the glass horn between her forelegs, and prompt her to rest her head against its edges. Odd, vibrant dreams would fill her head that first week in the Rift. Dreams where mother hadn’t left, where the green smoke gave her life – and her eyes enveloped her gaze with a steady, yearning stare.

Now, as the days continued to roll on – the dreams had stopped. Leaving its hollow presence unfilled, as the child stared into the shadows. Noëlle could feel it now, and all the imagination in the world did not sate the missing parts of her. Carefully, daringly, she slowly peeled herself from her father’s side that night. Bracing for the coughs from her chest, so as not to wake him.

Quiet, cloven hooves carefully embarked towards the ocean. Escaping the suffocating forests, the empty shadow and the lights. As long as father wasn’t aware of her departure, as long as she was careful – he would never know of her brazen adventures; anything, something to ignore the empty.

Before breaching past the rocky, open surfaces – she spotted the two at the edge. Noëlle pressed against the closest tree, observing their forms and the words she could catch. Her ears flickered, as the taller of the two broke the air with a rather booming voice. It was pleasant, feminine, giving the child some reassurance that they might be travelers and vagabonds like her.

Uncertain still, she carefully approached past the trees. She was careful to displace her weight evenly with each step, hoping that her presence would remain unknown for a few more minutes. And that they would remain unnoticed between the crashing waves, and the constant buzz and clicks of the forest behind her.

Stopping, several lengths behind – with her heart thumping slightly above baseline. She thought it peculiar that creatures also accompanied them. But in the neon light, in the darkness obscured by the constant pour of rain – it was hard to make out what they were.

Encouraged by the thought of finding other foals, her soft voice stretched out to greet them. “See anything inter-esting out there?”
 
--


image || coding
Rift Presence
Currently championing:
#5
More.

There are more murky outlines against the sky. One is glowing, another one is pale. The pale ones are easier to see against the storming, sunless skies. Excitement brings a mistake from the hunter—his entire, glowing blue back breaches from the water, giving away his predatory prowl from beneath the waves.

Far too many, sharp, replaceable teeth gnash together; the grinding of his massively powerful jaw is nearly audible above the waves.

Dark hungry eyes continue to stare, the Pistris’ circles growing tighter and tighter beneath the creatures on the ledge above. Blown is his stealth, so his massive fin and glowing back remain above the writhing sea—so that his predatory gaze may better see this potential meal above.

And then he leaps.

Thick tail thrashes against the waves, propelling his great jaws and clawed limbs out of the waves. Those sharp forelimbs scrabble against the rocky precipice, massive jaws open and reaching as lightning splits the air, gleaming against this mouthful of sharp teeth.

The bull Pistris is not picky; he will take whatever morsel is within closest reach of his jaws.
the Rift
what lies beneath
image
» Presence of the Rift «


Savera
Currently championing:

Player is absent until

#6

She turns her eyes back onto the horizon, searching for secrets in the shattered sky.  She looks at her sister as the older draws near, one large ear sweeping toward the starlit filly, another trained on the surging sea. The broken world is beautiful, cruel and clear, a contorted landscape that Savera does not yet know to recognize as wrong. Her face is flushed; she looks back at it, the wind pulling aggressively at the pale gold of her forelock, licking sharp lashes on her midnight cheeks. Devi, less amused, curls deeper into the space between the filly's downy wings, mewling her displeasure with this weather, the wind. Dark clouds roll and boil above, a reflection of the furious sea- but Savera is too distracted, too drawn in by the beauty, to recognize the danger that lurks below.

Vesper says something about the stars and moon, their notable absence from the sky above. The filly frowns, her crowned brow crinkling in quiet confusion. Is it odd? She believes her sister, of course, trusts Vesper implicitly, and yet she cannot find within herself the concern her sibling clearly feels. She lived so briefly with the moon. No, it is her family the little morning star misses, the absence of them she finds so strange. Her father is the moon, her mother the sun. She does not miss the sky.

She tries to tell this to Vesper, to convey the depths and extent of her emotion, but words still largely elude the child. They are ungainly things in an unused mouth, ugly and uncertain, sandpaper on her tongue. Still, she tries, voice deep with disuse. "Familiar stars," the girl hums softly, parroting with pronounced inflection, her gold nose pressing gently into Vesper's neck, running like velvet on the silver neck. She smiles her half-smile, silver eyes glittering with innocent wonder, adoration and adulation upon the auerate lips. Her sisters all the stars Savera needs - and of late her life has been a sky of stars, but they are familiar stars, at least.

She turns to Neaera- and it is not Neaera at all, but another, wingless, slight, another child cast out upon this world. Savera's ears dip and rise, uncertainty rising vice-like in her chest. She peers out, grey-gazed, through the mire and toward the interloper - is this new world populated entirely by fillies? - distracted from the fragmented world by this flickering figure, this newcomer into their night. Inter-esting, the creamy girl says, and Savera rolls the word around inside her head, tastes it on her tongue and the roof of her mouth. It is a graceless word, intriguing, metallic, a barby thing with sharp edges and a cool interior. She parrots it lovingly, "Inter-esting," a look of delight creeping into her sterling eyes. She nods agreement - Yes, inter-esting, bottle brush tail flicking with pleasure. She looks back over the precipice, ready to invite this new stranger closer, to induce her into peering alongside her and into the unknown-

-but the unknown is peering back, and Savera freezes, enchanted, her pale eyes affixed to the dark ones that glare back below. Light glitters on the surface of the water, lights that are cut by a jagged fin, a slicing arc of vicious black that threatens and looms like a shadow on the moon. The storm is growing stronger, wind hissing warnings to the errant child; lightning illuminates the great behemoth in the depths below. Foolishly, brazenly, the filly steps closer, her cloven hooves gripping the edge of the world, unafraid, unable to comprehend the danger that dances at the edge of everything here. "Inter-esting," she whispers again, softly, awe in her voice. On her back Devi hoots a shrill warning, suddenly afraid, her instincts so much better than the starlit child despite her faulty sight. Her mind barges into the little filly's, reining her back with such vehement force that the girl trips back, stumbling away from that seductive precipice.

And not, it seems, a moment too soon, for where the girl stood mere heartbeats before now leers a jaw with too many teeth, wretched and thrashing and backlit by lightning, easily large enough to swallow the tribrid girl, she and her sister and the stranger too, three girls inhaled in a mouthful by the beast. Savera gasps, a high-pitched squeal threading involuntarily from her lips. For a moment all she can see is the gaping mouth, the gnashing teeth, the blue light and the vicious eyes. Its breath is hot on her face, the spray and spittle of it like acid on her onyx hide. She scrambles against the splitting stone, useless, downy wings splaying as she attempts to regain herself, to center herself back in the real world, to escape death as it rises from the sea. But the wings are useless, and Devi's hooting has devolved to a screech, and Savera pauses in her retreat, now largely out of range of the horrible jaws but still entranced, intoxicated, too fascinated by this turn of events to abandon it entirely.

savera & devi
we might be hollow, but we're brave
image credits


@Rift Presence, @Vesper (I can't seem to tag RP :/)
Vesper
Currently championing:
#7

Everly noticed the shape emerging from the trees before I did, calling my attention to the girl as gently as she could.  I immediately searched the trees for a mother or father, and upon finding one focused my attention on the girl.  Everly, struck by another wave of dizziness, swept past the girl and landed safely on my haunches though her perch was unsteady at best.

I didn’t trust myself to speak again, wincing at the sounds of the screams reaching a fever pitch inside my skull. Instead I do my best to smile at the unicorn filly, hoping that whatever expression has made its way to my face looks welcoming and doesn’t look like a grimace.  Without checking the expanse of ocean, perhaps a foolish move, I simply shake my head no.  

No. Nothing particularly interesting. But everything here is certainly strange.

Savera seemed amused by this new word, and on any other day, such a thing would be amusing, but the screams that refused to relent ruined the entire moment.  A moment that was interrupted by a flash of teeth and flesh that nearly stops my heart in my chest.  Shadows cloud my vision as fear tears through me. The screams in my head continue their chorus of Kill, Kill.  Before I can understand what has happened, I have become the shadows in the three steps it has take to put myself between Savera and the still nameless child and the creature from the sea.  The teeth are easier to avoid in this strange new form but the screaming is impossible to ignore.

Kill it before it kills you, they scream.  And just as quickly as the shadows had come, they are gone again, my body is back to as it always has been.  So, instinctively, I try to smash at the belly, the gills, the soft undersides of the creature with my cloven hooves - blunt instruments but all that I have for the time being - unaware that the screams had all but taken over any rational decisionmaking.   “Help me! Before it strikes again!”

Maybe once it was gone, the screaming would stop.

-- V E S P E R --
"In a sky full of stars, I think I see you."

image credit


@Savera @Noelle

I'm so sorry your eyes had to see this awfulness.

Please tag Vesper in every post.
Force and magic are permitted, but please check before inflicting serious injury.
image credit
Rift Presence
Currently championing:
#8
Dark eyes grow bright with instictive hunger; an emotionless thrill of feeding flooding the bull Pistris as the dark, smaller of the prey steps closer towards the edge. Closer to his jaws as he leaps for the morsel—

But she is gone, replaced by shadows which evade his snapping, crushing jaws of too many and too terrible teeth. Forelimbs flail, clawed excuses of paws or hands striking and grasping at anything they might grab and shove towards his waiting, hungry jaws.

Instead, a low grunt—an alien noise not meant to be heard above the waves—comes from the beast. Rather than a feast, this predator has met smashing hooves and a slicing horn. Blood, as blue as the glowing skin along his dorsum, floods onto the rocky precipice. At first, it gleams brightly, but then fades into a dark black as it spills from the wounds the darker and larger mare has opened along his gills and belly.

The twisting of the beast had exposed the softness of his ventrum; and so easily the hard hooves sliced trough the skin. Innards and fluids gush forth as further grunts and groans come from the writhing shark. Teeth gnash and claws slice in its death throes.

And then it is still, dark eyes unseeing and staring at the stormy sea while its large tail hangs limply over the edge.
the Rift
what lies beneath
image


This will be the last RP post to this thread :)
» Presence of the Rift «


Cocheta
Currently championing:
#9
Cocheta had been watching the scene from afar. She was feverish, golden tears leaking down her face. She was terrified of showing herself. Her one good eye darted around madly, it was bloodshot and frenzied. She looked insane. She looked terrifying. She stood with her lower jaw hanging slightly open. No words would flow out of her maw, the Rift had seen to that.

She paced pack and forth, her slender pink legs quivering like an a starved animal in a cage, her single functioning eye was locked on to one thing.
The sweet, metallic stench hung thick in the air.

Fresh corpse.

It was a very recently dead Pistris. She had saw it die with her own eyes. She had been wandering panicked about the region. She had wandered much over a vast area, desperately seeking what lay just beyond her reach. If only they would leave. Her hot brain sung to her. Her mind was working overdrive after the loss of her voice. She was a beast built to sing and laugh and speak. She was losing it.

All she needed was one glimmering claw from a fin of the ugly, mutilated beast. Then she could move on to the second challenge to get her voice back. She needed it back. She was ready to kill for it.



ooc; I have a trial I need to complete that requires a pistris claw! I would like to have the pistris claw, one way or another. She's ready to fight for it if need be!

Any and all violence and force can be used on Cocheta, as long as it doesn't cripple or kill her!~