The mists—they writhe with the desperate anger of a wounded beast. There is no consoling such things, they must be put out of their misery.
But this beast…it has already been put out of its misery, once. In an foreign land, by holier gods.
So Reszo formed out of these sick, vengeful mists. At first, he was but a thought; a flash of glowing eyes. And then he was smoke—dark grey misted smoke that pulled in all those reaching claws and screaming mouths that infested the west’s heart. A soft pulse of gentle wind swept across his western lands, as if to dispel the angry specters and call any who were nearby towards hope.
Yet, this was the Rift. A place of feral magic and untempered dreams. Such spirits did not willingly relinquish their domain. They fought, desperately. They took on the memories of any nearby living creature: dead lovers, dead mothers, dead fathers, dead children—even the those lost, unborn souls were not safe from their vicious vengeance.
Reszo’s teeth form from the mists, the only truly solid thing about him (aside from his glowing red eyes). They snarl and snap at these angry, wayward ghosts that will not come to heel.
For a moment, it seems to work. The dark mists shrink, allowing more light to filter in from the already wan skies… The specters pull back from the god’s snapping teeth and away from the beings they had threatened to overtake in their frantic retribution. It seems that this last vestige of the wolf god’s power has brought his heart under control.
…
……
………haven’t you learned to trust nothing in the Rift?
In the brief, precious, sunlit moment of calm, the phantoms redouble their frantic fury. They triple their number, their size, their anger, and their terror. Claws, hooves, eyes, teeth; they all morph and mutate, reaching towards any broken, hurt, or crying soul that dares to venture towards this god’s battle with them.
“Obey,” was Reszo’s snarl, reverberating in the moist air’s very droplets. Though, despite the power in a god’s demand, it has limited effect on the shadowed hauntings.
Very few pause their attacks on the living souls all around. Most continued on their godless, greedy rampage.
Oh! It seems like the last vestige of Reszo the Wolf God is attempting to wrangle the Labyrinth's angry spirits! Will you watch? Will you help? Will you run away, screaming?
Hmm, I wonder what these spirits will do to any who interfere... [;
Next 'round' will be...soonish. This may become a 'rapid-fire' thread, depending on how many/how quickly responses occur! :D
The smog, those sinister shadows that crept an crawled, alive with cold burning eyes, were receding slowly and to the west of the rainforest a vast new section of continent was apparently unveiling. But it was not like the shade she remembered, withering beneath the dawn of morning light, nay, this living blackness seemed to struggle, resist, and Zahra watched with interest, wariness, from her pinnacle in the sky.
As she circled beneath the ever burdened, grey cloud, pale eyes observed the evolution of a shadowy figure still more eerie than anything, here - in the rift - that she’d been witness to; a canine, who seemed to fashion from the writhing mists themselves.
Below him, tortured souls seemed to materialise, creatures that (unbeknownst to her), had long been lost to the sands of time. The golden-bellied mare observed them with budding worry, unsure just what the strange phenomenon unfolding meant; the rift had proven time and time again, to be a dangerous place.
Soon, tangible fangs took precedence in those billowing, shadow-forged jaws, and beneath the flash of fierce crimson eyes, the otherworldly creature was a fearsome sight to behold. The god snaps and snarls commandingly, and it appears that those haunting eyes submit; slithering back, twisting and contorting at his will.
"Da! LOOK OUT!"
The darkness, wicked and writhing, had doubled in strength when it seemed they’d pulled back. Now, they flared forward, gathering towards Zahra and her Da, with spine-chilling eyes fixated upon them. Hurriedly she began to beat her wings, desperate to ward them away with the strength of the wind. "Push them away!" She cried frantically, panting in vain attempt to wield them away.
08-03-2017, 07:47 AM (This post was last modified: 08-03-2017, 08:52 PM by Tamlin.)
tamlin
Tamlin sat on his haunches in a strange maze. He knew not that this bamboo labyrinth had been part of his homeland before the fall of the gods. He had left Helovia well before it had turned up and he had missed it on his stumbling march towards the portal some moons ago. How long had he really been here? It seemed like a lifetime, and ever since he arrived in this hellish place he had had more and more trouble separating reality from hallucinations. Before he fell through the portal his ritual had only once in a while given him visions of days past, but now they turned up almost every time he “spoke to his mother”. Were any of those he had met real? Well, Nüwa must have been a dream; no real horse was as pretty as her.
Tamlin had lost track on how many lotuses he had consumed since that morning and he was completely out of it. Surrounded by the ghosts of his past he sat rocking from side to side. Not even the sight of his “friend” the blue butterfly (or rather flying flower) he called Allie managed to calm him this time. Some of the hallucinations he saw could have been the spirits of this strange land, but the black unicorn could not tell them apart. He wasn’t afraid, in fact nothing seemed to face him or even lure a reaction out of him. He had never been this stoned before. If someone were to ask him his name it was doubtful he would know it.
So he sat there, rocking, as the mists began to churn and move. As a form was created just a few lengths away from him. And as a voice boomed from the shadowy figure of eyes and teeth. The sound actually startled him and he quickly turned his head towards it - well he thought he had moved quickly, but in reality it was a very slow turn of his head. His eyes rolled in their sockets almost unable to focus, but finally the image reached into his mind.
"Whoa…" the black stallion breathed as he took in the face of this being.
He struggled to understand what was happening around him, but failed miserably. There were several versions of Mauja and Aviya closing in on him, as well as a few of his mother and sister. They all looked different, every ghost scarier than the next. There were sounds too, screams and roars, maybe? He also thought he heard words coming from above him. He couldn’t make sense of anything. The world seemed to move in slow motion at the same time as he felt like time had sped up. Still he was not afraid, only numb and confused. Come what may. he thought. I have no more fucks to give.
YOU CAN'T STRAY FROM WHAT YOU ARE
YOU'RE THE CLOSEST THING TO HELL I'VE SEEN SO FAR
Volterra is not a believer. He does not think that an afterlife exists, or that there's a heaven and a hell - he believes that death is absolute, with no way back. When somebody is gone, they're gone.
When he sees the ghost, then, he should know better. He should see straight through the macabre apparition that appears in front of him, as though crafted for him and him alone; he should know that it cannot be true, that it cannot be her, because she is nothing but dust and dreams now.
Hope, however, is a powerful thing. Even grizzled warlords like Volterra, who understand the cycle of life and death more than most, fall victim to it. As the ghost materialises in front of him, it looks so much like her that he feels his heart soar like a spirit inside his chest, rising through his neck to his throat where it catches, his eyes glowing with delight - the first time the crimson orbs have shown any emotion since their owner witnessed Isopia's death. "Kis hollo?" His voice, usually so authoritative and menacing, is soft, boyish, like the whispered prayer of a child. Deep down he knows that it's not her, but that small seed of sense is buried beneath dozens of layers of hope.
There's others; their greedy claws and teeth reach for anything around them, yet Volterra does not think the Isopia-ghost seems as violent as the others. Because it's her, he tells himself, even though he knows the truth is more likely because the spirit hasn't noticed him yet. "Kis hollo, it's me," he tells the ghost, marching towards it as it dances amongst its brethren. He can't wait to speak to her for real again, can't wait to tell her how much he's missed her, how much the children have missed her - he can't wait to touch her, to feel her spectral flesh beneath his skin once again.
That is, until he finds himself in the centre of a cloud of savagely ripping, tearing ghosts, each one filled with nothing more than malice. His Isopia-ghost turns on him too, like a shark that scents blood; he wonders if it can feel his hope dying inside him, if it can feel the collapse of his sudden burst of joy as though it's a house of cards. Is his grief delicious, he wonders? It's not her, it's just a vicious apparition designed to taunt him; he feels his rage hatching from the gaping chasm where his happiness was just moments before, and with a savage snarl he lunges towards the Isopia-ghost. How dare it take on the form of his beloved? How dare it cause him such a horrible landslide of emotions, from the delight at seeing her to the soul-crushing agony when he realised the truth?
The leviathan unleashes a thunderous roar, and throws himself towards the Isopia-ghost to try and drive it towards its wolf master.
TL;DR: A grief-stricken Vol follows around a ghost that takes the form of Isopia, then tries to push it towards Reszo when he realises it's not her.
Our exploratory voyage continually reveals exotic lands; but these new abodes we pass over aren't the beautiful, fertile realms of our slain homeland. Nar...these are tainted, wild and dangerous places -- with damp, giant cousins of familiar foliage, unsolicited screams and living, writhing shadows. Tis a world well-suited for demons and their offspring. Her panicked scream of warning sufficiently sharpens my complacent, half-awake focus; and influx of burning aggression is summoned in response. That chemical reply floods into my system, whelping from the unsullied desire to protect. Irises descend, narrowing furiously upon those airborne specters – monsters! The rind of these velvet rims are shucked to unveil buff colored teeth! Sun kissed arms banish inward, curling in front as I pull/lean backwards to slow any forward momentum with a tight, constricted grunt…
Pastel tendrils flash irritably, lashing smartly into these painted cheeks. My head thrashes side to side; teeth agape as they snap, warding off attacks. On command, these metallic plates rush from their pulsing slumber; the scales click into their assigned position...wrapping me in a protective layer of mail. As that mask of iron slides into place - the pronged tips jerk side to side, valiantly searching for purchase; efforting to shove their cool alloy into the semitransparent neck(s) of our aggressors. Armored fringes continue their job to pummel with frantic, powerful strokes. Hopefully, those bladed primaries would slice whatever phantom came into reach and/or combine efforts with Zahra to ultimately throw them aside. “Zahra!” incisors snap hoarsely, tinged with concern. The next statement/order, ‘get out of here,’ becomes trapped in the back of my throat…their sheer number wouldn't let even one of us escape.
He does not know what is going on. He is, after all, just a boy; old before his time thanks to the hard life he's had so far, but a boy nonetheless. To find himself surrounded by ghosts that take the forms of people he doesn't know...to find himself trapped amidst the screams and howls of the tormented, whilst a wolf growls in the distance....it would be enough to make any boy's sanity snap like a twig.
Mbwana begins to panic. He is in his colt form and he's a large, cumbersome thing, already showing that he's going to grow into a massive stallion; as he blunders around, one of his heavy hooves lands on Askari's tail, and the dog squeals like a stuck pig to add his voice to the din. The colt whines, his ears pinned flat to his head, flailing around in circles as he tries to avoid the ghosts that convene towards him like predators towards a carcass. He whinnies, bucks out at them and tries his best to avoid them, and in his panic he feels himself reverting to the most basic, repetitive behaviour that he always draws comfort from. He bobs his head up and down, up and down, a tic that he's powerless to control. He's normally good at controlling his illness but in times like these, times of immense stress, he can't do anything about the impulse in his veins.
The colt stands there, shuddering, in the middle of the ghosts, sweating so much that a thin sheen of white froth covers his whole tri-coloured body. His head jerks up and down like a metronome, and Askari shudders pitifully at his heels. The duo unleash loud, plaintive whines, and slam shut both of their sets of eyes so they cannot see the terror that surrounds them. "H...help," he murmurs to himself more than anybody else, because who will hear him or care?
Somehow, through the mists of his mind and the actual mist around him Tamlin took note of something. His ears twitched at the sound of an animal, not far from him, screaming out in pain - a dog maybe? He thinks of Monster, the black stallion who had trailed after Snö wherever she went and at his death had turned into a dog. Whatever happened to him? Good riddance, whatever befell him.
Tamlin raises his head and looks past his own ghosts, real and imaginative, and sees a big colt and his African wild dog companion. The fear is plainly written on this poor soul’s face and it unexpectedly tugs at Tamlin’s cracked stone heart. It seemed he still had some fucks left in him after all.
Still high as a kite and unsteady the black unicorn rises from his haunches. Without hesitation and without thought really, Tamlin pushes through the wall of personal ghosts. He takes no heed of the scratches and bites. Can they really hurt him, for real? He is too high to notice if blood is drawn as he pushes on towards the boy and his dog. A hazy thought echoes in his mind… A young foal colt should not be alone.
Tamlin almost floated up to the colt and his dog, stance wide and head bowed over them. Something flashed in his eyes as he looked at the youngsters - a memory maybe? A promise? He had made himself a living shield, although a poor one being a rather short stallion, and he had decided to take the punches thrown towards these two. What could he do other than that? Grow the ghosts some flower out of his own blood?
Here yoy go, ghostie, have this pretty flower and be a good evil spirit now.
another mind, another soul, another body to grow old. it's not complicated.
Kisamoa (or Kaos) had told them to explore and to learn... in a battle between a Rift God and the Rift itself, what was to be done, in light of Kisamoa's words? Whose side was the right one? Wasn't Kisamoa the amalgamation of the Rift Gods? Of this wolf? And if so, wasn't attacking him just like attacking Kisamoa? And yet ... Kis said to explore and learn of the Rift, which would seem to encompass the vengeful spirits floundering about.
Although Otem places more blame on the Helovian Gods for their part in all of this and the death of her mother than she did the Riftian ones, she still had no real love in her heart for them. But Kisamoa had given her a gift - the acorns that grew in her mane - and being the selfish and manipulative creature that she was, she did not want to openly offend or plot against him.
Still, she watched as her father tried to direct one of the spirits towards the wolf god. With narrowed eyes the daughter of the Mountain and the Indomitable watched this, knowing that she could not obviously defend Reszo in any capacity.
Obvious being the keyword.
Otem conjures two earth sprites which appear and hover at either side of her. With an eye on the chaos, she throws herself into the fray. She tries to position one of her sprites near Reszo, acting as more of a distraction for the phantasmic creatures attacking him rather than offering any sort of defence. In the interest of being subtle, it is the best she can do for the God.
Then she focuses her attention loudly on Mbwana, offering her aid. Thus, should anyone recall what Otem was up to during the battle, they would remember the filly aiding the colt. "Come on! You're braver than that!" The filly calls confidently, although they are basically the same age. The ram-horned girl offers a smile as she and her remaining sprite try to bully the ghostly things away from the colt.
The fiend should’ve been used to ghosts. He spied them in his dreams as they suffocated him, gnarled hands, knotted coils clasping over his throat, calling his name into the throngs, the bewitching arts of damnation. He saw them from the corner of his eyes as he wandered, the few he couldn’t help, couldn’t save, or couldn’t protect. He witnessed them when he stared into water, his father’s eyes mirroring back as his, or his mother’s gentle grace in the bloom of a rainstorm, of a tempest, of a squall. But when the wraiths glimmered, when the phantoms shuddered, grew and thrived on his misery, on his melancholy, on his anguish, grief, and acrimony, the twisting, turning revolutions of rage, he still couldn’t bear to look away.
The fog inspired those wafting wails, those poignant images, and he stood in the silence, allured first by screams and shouts, then stilled, stranded, caught in the crossfire. Now he was ensnared by the potency, by the fervency, by the awakening stones and souls who were dead, gone, perished, smothering his soul, stifling his movement.
He could name them all – little Arwen, never able to grow past her first birthday, bloodied and stained, asking, calling, screeching to him in hideous waves: Why haven’t you done anything? She kept crying, and his heart raced, his chest throbbed, his mind scurried to conform, mouth parted on a fiendish whisper, “I tried.” It sounded so fake, so pathetic, like he’d done anything at all, and before he could whittle away at her appearance, beg a spirit for forgiveness, more struck at him, blow for blow. There was Ode, his head detached, bellowing at him All you did was run and Aithniel, all embers and flames, fire and fury, casting her proffered speech with ardent decibels and relentless umbrage Weak, you were so weak, Erebos. It was enough to make him break, to make him shatter, to make him unravel at the seams, and he could anticipate the ground rushing at him, his knees shuddering before they gave out, his breath a hostile inhale and exhale, gasping, clawing for a redemption they couldn’t give him. He’d never had time to mourn, time to plead, time to say he was sorry, he was so sorry he couldn’t do anything to liberate, deliver, or save them. It was a losing battle, one where he’d held the knife, the sword, the shield, but done naught – the cutlass clean, the heartlessness real, tangible, and unrelenting.
Orsino, who’d been silent, who’d been quiet for so long, suddenly carved his way through the streamlined hallucinations, the nearly-formed tears, the cavalcade of horrors and terror.
Fight.
The scion swallowed, looking up into the crowded mists where the foils of his youth had gathered, where their wispy entities preserved his guilt, his follies, his inability to do anything for anyone – valor and gallantry that had been empty, useless, and inept. Not real, the kitsune spoke again, as if it took him great effort, gravelly and hissing, and in some part, Erebos knew it was true, but in another, he knew these demons had been granting him veracity too. He’d never been enough.
He rose, not a titan, not a soldier, but just a being immersed in too many raw, iniquitous things, broken, beaten, haunted. His mind funneled down to the simple act of violence and animosity, unleashed the havoc, the upheaval, the sedition stoked between his spirit and his soul – forced the tenors of his darkness to wash over his proximity. The youth wanted them gone, wanted them banished (but knew it was impossible – they were already stuck there, waging war in his head) – tried to send their demonic entrails back to their commander, tried to make them turn and coil elsewhere, tried to make them feel the reflection of his pain and torment.
I'LL SHOW YOU HOW GOD | FALLS ASLEEP ON THE JOB Image Credits
{tries to use his mind altering magic to send the ghostly little demons away}
Even as she beat her wings, thrusting backwards and forwards with all the vigour she could assert mid air, those twisting souls - the animated shadows - slithered nearer without heed of gravity’s foul boundary. Friends she’d once known (and for a long time forgotten), emerged from the heart of that darkness with impossible precision; were they real? There was one among them, a grown mare, who seemed to beckon to the golden-bellied girl with a retiring (almost shy), smile and… she only had one wing! Pastel eyes widen in the deceptive breath of constant twilight, uncertain, but all the same drawn by that soft, mesmerising warmth of expression; fire glow too, extended down from flaming mottled locks and altogether, the unstable arachnophile could scarcely resist.
"Da…?" she whispered breathlessly, inaudible against the tempest’s hideous song.
Already her wings were slowing, compelled to preserve the oncoming vision as she wracked frantically, spellbound, through the reservoir of old, unremembered faces; others were there (crawling slowly, smoothly behind the illuminated grey), a foal with pink accents, a horned chestnut, a one winged colt… "Zero?" she murmured, both confused and startled, distressed… There was a strained pinch through pale features and Zahra’s thumping wingspan dipped so she might close the distance sooner. "Bird! Where have you, how…?" Her dear sister stepped panting between the lanky legs of her long-lost friend and a tear rolled down the gullible, forlorn watcher’s cheek.
The mare’s plush lips seemed to move; what was she trying to say? There was a calm smile rising across them, the suggestion of longing in those strange amber eyes.
There were others gathering across the misted earth beneath, fools (perhaps no more than she), who felt the temptation to throw a challenge to the rebelling spirits; but Zahra didn’t see them, she was oblivious to all but those souls. Closer and closer they licked, walked… walked? Brimming pupils pinned suddenly as clarity of the situation seemed to descend, these creatures were walking to meet her? "Not REAL," her voice cracked suddenly, angrily as the sting of betrayal penetrated the wonder. Apparitions wavered in the wind of her pumping, driving wings and she fought with reconciled energy to force those conniving shadows from her front; chest sobbed bitterly, lashes meshed as hot tears gathered amongst them. "Da, they, they're lying…!"
Green Labyrinth
he reaps in blood
