This forum uses cookies
This forum makes use of cookies to store your login information if you are registered, and your last visit if you are not. Cookies are small text documents stored on your computer; the cookies set by this forum can only be used on this website and pose no security risk. Cookies on this forum also track the specific topics you have read and when you last read them. Please confirm whether you accept or reject these cookies being set.

A cookie will be stored in your browser regardless of choice to prevent you being asked this question again. You will be able to change your cookie settings at any time using the link in the footer.

Hello There, Guest!

| Register
Home » Search » Roster » Whitepages » Records » FAQ » Guidebook
I AM THE ORCHESTRA
Trial Rainforest Cliffs 
Cahira
Currently championing:
#1
Like the stars chase the sun
over the glowing hill,
I will conquer.
Her qualms over leaving Dallilja and Shahrokh to their own machinations, their schemes and expeditions, deepened like the burgeoning shadows left in her wake; as darkness swathed and swaddled the landscape ahead of her. There was no moon proclaiming its radiance over the earth for her to clearly see her avenue back towards the tangle of wood and brush she had so eloquently arrived in through the snarling slit in time, a laceration which bled out her; but a strange waltz of lights in the sky, muted and subdued. She had been a coward, and facing the heinous blaze of eyes gleaming like fabricated stars in the shelter of the fronds she still was.

But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow them to suffer for her mistakes. Mother would have wanted them to be together, would have wanted her to keep them safe, and if she’s truly dead, if she’s never going to come back; Cahira owes her this meager command. Beads of water from the constant deluge careen down her spine in a bitter surge which causes her to shiver and suddenly her reflections are in rapture, when she’d grieved her sorrows and longing for the Lightningborne to the capricious skies she’d expected nothing, and in truth felt very much a fool. What was the use of supplications to deities who had let her be cast from their realm, who had failed to save Dagr or Nótt? (What was the rationale in hoping they could bring the likeness of her mother to her?) Yet she had drawn the attention of Something. The warbling muddle of voices had demanded of her with the authority of a being who could grant her what she wanted and felt it had the right to compel her to do what it—they—wanted, though no names had been assumed. Doubts swam in her mind like swarms of fish, too slippery to catch, was it possible? Could she… would she… that is, would mother…

A snap of twigs beneath her hooves preceded the crackling and whooshing of what she could only assume was a animal of some kind distracted her flustered line of speculation on what mother would want and do, and she hesitated, nostrils quivering as she tensed; Dallilja? Or perhaps Sharokh? The disturbance goes on, seemingly in her direction, and she risks a faint cry, "Hello?"
The gloom ahead of her seems to soften, to brighten, and then from the trees arises the silhouette of a monstrosity Cahira has never seen before, or yet wishes to see again. From its back sprouts the source of luminescence, coils like appendages veer lazily down its sides, and she can see them well, because the flesh of the monster is translucent; and then its face is lowering towards hers; its beady eyes twinkle with a bleak kind of malice and for a moment she is staring back at it, neither moving, her blood like ice.

And then—it doesn’t roar, it would be nicer if it had—its mouth writhes into a voracious grin, showing off what seem like millions upon millions of pointed, blackened teeth.

Before she’s very aware of what she’s doing she’s whirled around to slam both her hooves into its (smug) smile, they connect with what might have been a satisfying smack if she couldn’t feel its breath at her croup and then the thing hisses, like a snake, like a dozen snakes and she’s fleeing back through the woodland with it behind her. Branches graze her withers and scrape her flank, the whites of her eyes flash and judging by the crashing at her heels it’s hunting her, the nimbus haloed about her rapier shines like a beacon and for once Cahira wishes she could rip it off and throw it into the mud. Anything—as long as she can escape—she can distract it with, breath heaves in her sides and out of her mouth and sweat mingles with the rain to drip down into stinging eyes, blurring her vision. She doesn’t cry out, not physically, she can’t, there’s not enough air, but she pleads with every fiber of her being, help me, please, help me.

She isn’t sure if she’s talking to the deities she’s familiar with or someone else, all she knows is fear.

@Kratos
Cahira

'CAUSE I'M GONNA BE FREE

AND I'M GONNA BE FINE

+
Rift Presence
Currently championing:
#2
If only—if only—that were it.

If only this mare’s one brush with the nightmare were just that: a quick scare and bolt in the darkness of the rainforest.

But the nightmare isn’t done. Sharp black teeth gingerly move in an alien jaw that doesn't quite line up correctly after her well-aimed kick. So the terror lopes through the trees, with a silent and grotesque grace.

Despite its soundless movements and adherence to the shadows, the glow of the tendrils on its back and in its skull give away its location. Sort of. For no matter how hard you try to focus on the Walker, your eyes keep slipping away. Like trying to remember the details of the dream already forgotten…

Rest assured, the Walker does not forget.
the Rift
» Presence of the Rift «


Kratos
Currently championing:
#3

My heart's an artifice, a decoy soul
Who knew the emptiness could be so cold?
I've lost the parts of me that make me whole
I am the darkness, I'm a monster 



He comes crashing through the dense verdure like a madman on a rampage, the only giveaway to his approach the rustling of the thick growth, the massive ferns and undergrowth bowing to the side as his sleek, catty form barreled forward, the cloak that whips and whirls behind him masking his footfalls.

The scent of the reclusive creature is what sets him off. He had heard countless stories of Walkers as a child, and he remembers vividly the way his mother would warn him from ever drawing close to them, should he ever be so unfortunate to encounter one for himself. For a long time, he had suspected his mother was doing nothing more than weaving lies in a futile attempt to frighten him, or simply to entertain him all those years ago, but that had been before he and Jaeger had come face-to-face with one themselves.

Ever since his birth, the sombre Prince has been capable of taking this form, but since returning to his homeland, he’s found it to be… well, different. No longer is he the low-lying predator capable of blending in with his surroundings, nor is he able to climb high into the trees above and simply watch the world around him in silence. No; now, he retains his normal size, and the transformation from eloquent equine to lanky feline is far more painful and torturously long than he remembers it to be.

Still, perhaps this abnormal change in his magic will aid him more than it will hinder. At least one fact remained the same; claws and incisors caused far more damage than hooves and blunt teeth ever could.

Plunging from the foliage, Kratos leapt towards the Walker in its pursuit, jaws held open wide as they sought to latch deep into the luminescent tendrils that sprouted from its back while his claws attempted to bury into the Walker’s opaque skin. A weak spot, he had hoped the tendrils to be, or at the very least, a short distraction to allow the crimson-stained draft a small advantage to escape. ”Go quickly,” he wishes to tell her, but doing so would be foolish when his focus needed to be entirely upon himself and his quarry.

’Just stay away from its teeth,’ he repeats to himself like a ritualistic chant, but the voice in his head is not that of his own - it's Jaeger's. ’Just stay away from its teeth!’


"Talking talk here."


Cahira
Currently championing:
#4
Like the stars chase the sun
over the glowing hill,
I will conquer.
At what moment in time she comes to the inevitable, grisly conviction there was to be no way to retreat, to elude the ghoulish, epitome of oblivion, of rapacious greed, something so exceedingly barbaric and yet so very cunning, she is of little confidence. But enshrined afterwards inside her mind is this—whichever way she flees, for however long, it is there, whether the right or the left or in front or behind, it is playing with her, a calamitous game of cat and mouse where she is the mouse; and though horror accelerates her frantically thundering heart and whets her senses, she cannot hear where the primordial beast was. Whatever stroke of luck (or had it intended for her to know it was coming, had found the tumult of the chase, the drama exciting, rousing its hunger) had allowed her to hear its arrival had long since dimmed, several times she believes she has been freed from the creature she arrives mere feet from its forelimbs, nearly dancing into its clutches and; indeed, rather inviting her (‘come into my lair, rest,’ said the spider to the fly). Froth lathered her mouth and truly, she was exhausted, wearying and waxing like the moon before the sun, how tempting then it was to simply give in, to let it be over and done, to lay down at its feet and be devoured, perhaps this had been her destiny from the second she fled Arazar. Who was she, fleet-footed and tenacious, to avoid death? 

So it is, then, she when she veers to a standstill before the monster once more, unable to fixate on the hunter who has very nearly caught its quarry, she considers her options and finds them altogether void. How absurd a death, how humiliating, to have had mother and Azarel care and feed and clothe her in affection for so long (even if Azarel hated her on the day she spat at him in her fury, her indignation—) only to slump and bow at the grotesque face of this thing, this thing that seemed better to live in nightmares and childish imaginations than reality and verity. I’m sorry, she beseeches her mother’s memory, I’m sorry, I was never as strong as (Destry; Azarel)—and then from the capacious shrub erupts a darkness blacker than the one encompassing her, a shape so foreign and yet so achingly familiar she stands and gapes. The lethargy whirling about her deepens before spiraling away with torturous clarity. “Dezba?” She croaks with a soaring, capering hope, careless of the danger “Dezba it’s me—” and then it descends, craters into a abyss. A jaguar it may be, though it is of the wrong odor, and as enormous as she; it would stand up to her face to face on all fours, and almost as immediately as she reaches this conclusion she comprehends now is when she ought to run, concede the beasts their bloodshed and leave, nevertheless this cat has awakened in her a kind of bravery she did not feel she had, for though the rhythm of her blood hammers still she cannot see fit to yield them to the jaws of the very thing she had tried so vehemently to liberate herself from.

What a unreasonable sentiment, love was, because the cool, rational half of her head wails this jaguar was also a predator, it wasn’t Dezba, it wouldn’t withhold from consuming her because she cared whether or not it died, but she cannot; will not leave its side. Grimly, Cahira cavorts about the monster, defying, aiming (threatening) with a sweep of her rapier towards its side to pierce, to lunge it into its flesh, to rip and tear and maim. Always seeking for her hindquarters to be between it and its front, those teeth, those wretched teeth. I won’t leave you here,” she declares, so vehemently it must be truth (as if the jaguar can understand her; then she thinks, perhaps it can), and then twice, thrice. I won’t.”

@Kratos
Cahira

'CAUSE I'M GONNA BE FREE

AND I'M GONNA BE FINE

+
Rift Presence
Currently championing:
#5
A scream.

But not the scream of words. No, this was a scream that echoed throughout memories; it was one to haunt dreams and nightmares like; one to awake you in a cold and terrified sweat.

It sounded, on and on and on, as feline teeth sank into the Walker’s tender tentacles and sharp claws gouged its unprotected back. And from this terrifying, wounded cream birthed a blackness; so complete and resolute that any caught in the lightless cloud emanating from the Walker began to forget. The darkness robbed memories, ideas, thoughts, and sense of self was lost to the Walker’s shadowed scream.

Until, abruptly, it ended.

The mare’s two-toned horn plunged to the Walker’s heart. It twitched, constricted, and spewed out blood, visible through its transparent skin. A few writhing snaps of its black, sharp, gleaming teeth; a last agonal breath—and then stillness.

A rare nightmare of the ancient Rainforest was dead.
the Rift

Congratulations @Cahira and @Kratos ! You've discovered the following about the Walker:
- It has black teeth
- Its back and tendrils are vulnerable
- Its scream causes a blackness inducing magical amnesia and loss of self

Additionally, in killing the Walker, you may take one of its tentacles! If you would like this added to your character's records, please post in Account Updates!
Item - Offensive: Walker tentacle that induces magical amnesia and loss of self while wrapped around living thing.
» Presence of the Rift «


Kratos
Currently championing:
#6

My heart's an artifice, a decoy soul
Who knew the emptiness could be so cold?
I've lost the parts of me that make me whole
I am the darkness, I'm a monster 



His teeth have an immediate, deleterious effect on the Walker. Its shriek fills the ethereal darkness all around them, sonorous and surely reaching every destitute corner of the Rift and all those unfortunate enough to inhabit it. Dark ears lie flat against his head in a futile attempt to block it out, yet still the jaguar’s might is unwavering, and briefly Kratos is aware of the mare’s promise not to leave him as well as her assistance in bringing an end to the menacing creature that is the fuel of nightmares.

As the crimson-backed mare manages to run her horn through the heart of the beast and ultimate brings it to its demise, the jaguar’s coat illuminates brightly as its soul is torn away from this world. And then, something strange begins to happen. It’s impossible to see, the blackened smog that emits from the Walker and seeks to purge the memories of any close enough to be caught in it. Before Kratos can consciously release the now still Walker from his unyielding grip, the smoke wafts all around him and snakes through his nostrils and down into his throat, initiating a deep, rattling cough as it begins to take its hold. Staggering backwards, he shakes his head as though it is something he can simply shake away like a cobweb or a persistent insect, but he would not be so lucky.

Helovia, Jaeger, Persephone – even what had just happened, the memories are all unjustly robbed from him. For a moment he grows still where he stands, looking on at the mare, at his savior if one would be so bold to say it, with a fleeting look of confusion. And then, it’s as though a switch is flipped – the Estanzian Prince is gone, and only the predator is home.

The low, rumbling growl that forms deep in the back of his throat is a portent to death, the look in his eyes no longer innocent with confusion but tainted now with the desire to chase, to taste the mare’s blood on his tongue.

His lips draw back, crinkling the velveteen, whiskered skin to reveal long canine teeth, and without another moment of warning, he leaps forward with claws outstretched towards what was now his prey.


"Talking talk here."

ooc - Well this isn't going the way I had expected it to! x'D Thanks, RP!


Cahira
Currently championing:
#7
Like the stars chase the sun
over the glowing hill,
I will conquer.
The frightful, anguished blare of the creature as it was felled, the caterwaul of resentment and passion and distress, melted the desperate pound of her heart inside of her ribcage into a amalgam of dread and, yes, pity; compassion for this thing which had sought her death so willingly, so cruelly, would this have been better, would it have lived had she waited, had she restrained the urge to attack, to maim? But even as her rapier sinks into spongy flesh, even as something damp and warm; sticky crimson dapples her face with blotches, even as she cries with shock and wrenches, yanks away from the being she has now slaughtered, eyes wide and rimmed white, her labored breath takes in air laden with acrid, pitch smoke; clouds of misery and enmity which settle into her like barbs, anchors, and then she is weightless inside oblivion.

And, oh, what rapture! To consign into the heavenly tides of the river Lethe, to be swept up, caught in the tide of a sea she cannot swim, some imperceptible wash of tired affection roaring in her ears like waves careening into rock and sand, and for a moment when her weakened mind recalls Shahrokh and Dallilja and duties and family she struggles—what would Dallilja do without her? Or wretched, sweet Shahrokh, sightless; alone? What would mother think if she just, gave in—and then the moment is over and she’s drowning. The world drifts calmly away, lazily, as if it has little else to do; and if some basic, natural urge had not roused her alarm when the jaguar had snarled, had not warned her fear instinct to be vigil, something is here, she may’ve happily succumbed to the charms the Walker had wrought, faux peace. Yet even then, so muddled and feeling as though she had come to from a nice slumber, she couldn’t turn fetlocks and flee, as she very much ought have, but instead merely blinked drowsily at the jaguar, at her liberator; with bland intrigue. The monster lying slain on the ground before her seems far-flung and imaginary, a product of her overwrought mind, and with a lethargic slur she mumbles, “Dezba? Where’s mother? Where’s Aza…"

Azarel. The battle at Ashary, the King, dead. Her brother—

The last fragments of tantalizing serenity dissolve away like smoke, like the sickly smoke that had billowed from the Walker’s tormented scream, and suddenly she is startlingly awake; though wholly uncertain of her surroundings. Had she made it into Mowupia? All she knew is she had been running, running and then… and then? She recalls with vivid spasms in her chest the words she’d howled at Azarel, words intended to gouge, to crush; the way he’d crushed her. And dear Fate, how she regretted it, not her words—they’d been true, or at least, she thinks they had, could she truly hate Azarel?—she regrets the look on his face once she’d said them. But everything from then to now seems a dim blur, a dream, where was Nótt? He’d been hurt, she feels his pain, and Dagr; why was he so distant, so mute? Ambling forwards on wobbly legs, she tumbles desperately towards the only familiar thing here; so foolishly, so childishly, “Dezba? Did mother escape?” There is heartache in her where her companions should be and she chokes, stumbles through sentences, weaving poorly ornamented words, “N-Nótt and D-D-Dagr… Dezb-ba, why does… it hurt, w-where are they Dez-Dezba?

Something is wrong. Even through her fuzzy, watery gaze she knows it, all the lines and grooves on Dezba’s face are off; somehow, the fur surging backwards in voracity and greed, a violence she has never seen crinkling the jaguar’s maw before. Not at her. Never at her. And she seems so tall, something Cahira hadn’t thought since she’d been a filly, but, but this had to be Dezba, it had to be, and her lip trembles traitorously, “Dezba?

And then Dezba leapt at her.
Had it been up to her tumultuous psyche and not flesh, primal, involuntary urge to wheel with her croup facing the encroaching jaguar; she would very likely have been dead, the bare line of her jugular naked to its teeth, but her instincts once again take hold, control, domineer. Fight, every synapsis wails (and how can she, her own mother), FIGHT, and this time she doesn’t have a choice. Her hooves leave the earth and she strikes, wildly, madly, if Dezba didn’t eat her, the revulsion and horror foaming up inside her would, she’d kicked at Dezba, Dezba, mother’s soul; and she croaks with growing despair, Please—

(I love you, rests unsaid, veiled in the inflection of her voice, the frailty in her next kick, please, I’ll be better, I’ll do anything, just stop, please, stop.)

@Kratos
A/N: Huh. That happened! xD Please feel free to harm her however you would like, Dingo! She needs some pain so she can wake up from the temporary halves of her amnesia. And my apologies for being late, Harvey affected my area and I've only recently managed to write a reply to your post, may be a little rusty!


Cahira

'CAUSE I'M GONNA BE FREE

AND I'M GONNA BE FINE

+