Scint River
08-30-2017, 04:46 PM
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 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.
"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
kaos in light
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
.. and kaos opened up its eyes
