You return too late. You return, and the world is torn to shreds. The mighty peaks guarding your valley home: in shambles, torn asunder with the force and fury of some alien, some vengeful god. The mist and silence of your second home: all ashes, shrapnel littering the ground. The wall, gone; the trees, uprooted. Where are the kings and queens of your age? Where are the people? The children? Life teemed in this place once before, beloved and shepherded by she whose own divine blood runs in your veins. Her siblings, her children, threw off every challenge before. Nothing humbles a god. But then where are they?
Gone.
As you soar beneath a blackened sky, something the heat and texture of tar boils up in your guts; you name it fear. In the hoarse, winded gasp of a beast half-grown, a beast thrown far from his roots and stretched thin by time, you roar your father's name. Again. Again. Your sister's name, Tembovu’s name, the name of every warrior you can recall - but no. No good. In your absence everything you knew has fled, or been corrupted. Only the crumbling ruins of the proudest land ever to grace this wretched earth smile back through broken teeth at your shadow. Press on; no other choice.
It's hell you’ve stumbled back upon.
Your wings, late-coming and ill-tested, flex and strain in mighty surges against the void. But there's only you, only you and cataclysm and the light of the warped moon, and each new breath sliding into you comes harder fought than the last. You will fail. You will fall. It may come before the dawn, but it will certainly come after, when sunlight burns away the gift of your brilliant flight feathers and pins you to the ground with merciless laughter. Too long aloft; too far flown. You're dipping, tilting, frowning at the roiling waters of the southern sea...
You fall.
...
You are still falling in that other place, when the other place rears up and grabs you in its teeth. Like a dark star, a drop of ink bled from the heavens, your many-pointed shape tumbles end over end in a cacophony of feathers, hooves, and horn. Then trees - trees ahead and you twist through - you twist above them. The strength necessary to right your body floods through every nerve ending, raw adrenaline. Gasping. Breathing. Every heart beat hurts now that you live in hell. What's left of you? In you? To keep you going? “Mama!” you trumpet, desperate. “Papa! Mesec! Ki’irha! Vesper! Grandmother!” With an exhausted swoop you light upon a trembling limb; it moans and cracks beneath your weight. Oh gods, where are you? Surely they would not abandon all they made. Surely - surely - “WHAT HAPPENED?” You roar it into the rift.
The rift roars back.
It’s a fury of color, a nightmare of shape. None of this ought to exist at all; your senses crawl and reel backward as if assaulted. Bright lights, watching eyes: you hate it; you hate it! Through the shuddering of your exhausted muscles, through the crushing weight of exhaustion, you glimpse this one feeling and you grasp onto it with all your might. Hate it; hate it and conquer it and do what you came to do. No time for rest; to pause now is to falter.
The branch gives up; you leap again, and the strain in your chest, your mighty shoulders, wants to kill you. Behind, that unlucky branch falls in your place. It cries out in a dry voice as it shatters. But the blood of the moon flows in your veins, silver bright. None of this is enough to break you. Lost a year and more - two years - a decade - what would it matter? If your family lives, you will find them. Their faces burn in memory, brilliant, beautiful, the only stars you need to guide your way. This place will not defy you. You are the moon's blood. You are divine.
His magic on Helovia was a passive, though prob a partial transformation here?:
[ Magic: Dark | Moonlight adds glowing silver primary feathers. ]
[ Restrictions | Only able to support flight in moonlight. ]
It lifts its head like a hound scenting the breeze, having been roused from its slumber by a scent so sweet—power. The land seems to hold its breath, to grow taut, too quiet, as you scream into its black shadows and bright eyes. Curiosity ripples through it, a hush of wind, a murder of crows (well, they resemble crows, at least) breaking out into a cacophonous chorus somewhere in the distance.
The influx of new souls has slowed, like the trickle of blood from a closing wound. It has done little to soothe its hunger, its thirst, for all four hearts gaped empty and raw, leaking magic, unraveling the edges of its own fabric.
And the land's own heathen bastard son hadn't delivered what he had promised. The great champion was truly the Deceiver.
The spell of stillness shatters; the ground quakes and deep furrows head straight for you, like a burrowing creature charging, but.. there is nothing there, only sick light and pulsing shadows, and all you feel when it arrives is a vague presence throwing itself at you, shadow tongues trying to lick through your skin and lap up that precious godsblood running trough your veins.
Magic:
Transformation: Able to grow glowing silver primary feathers.
(While this does not specify during what time of day, it's all up to you if you want it to be conscious, etc. :D)
Tension builds along your spine like hackles rising on a stray dog. Something - But Virga, you're not paying attention. The next downstroke of your wings sets off alarm bells in the back room of your mind, but alarms ring so loud everywhere else you ignore them a moment too long. Your dark eyes scan the sky, the veiled horizon, in search of what sounds like a flock of birds…
You're falling.
Somewhere, something flipped a light switch and the soft glow of your wings went out. You fall - not like a moment ago - like long months past when you first tested the moonfeathers after dawn and learned the hard way sunlight holds no reverence for she who rules the night. It's like that, only worse because this wound in the world leaks malignance out of every pore (of course your magic doesn't work here). You flap - and flap - and flap useless as a newly hatched chick, but it's instinct kicking in your brain, in your guts. Instinct screaming this should not be! Those deep black eyes of yours rolls prettily in your head, and the ground surges up, and it's going to hurt -
Flickers. Flickers of light along the edges of those useless black feathers. It's like the moon reaching out to help you, only it burns. The feathers sprout anew but faintly, diminished, and the more you beg them to be the more they feel like knives sliding up into your wings - feathers in reverse. Where the air drags at them, you want to rip them out.
With a cry, you let it go, and crash to earth.
Or whatever the ground calls itself here.
The shock of impact surges up through your limbs, into your shoulders, and it's too much even despite the brief drag created by your almost-feathers. Knees buckling, you grind your chest into the dirt, and for a moment lie there, heaving. The rift heaves back at you. It reeks of evil all the way down. You can't just lie there; the overwhelming sensation of watched, the overwhelming sensation of prey beat at your brain and with a great, awful surge you throw your aching body to its feet. And it does hurt. Malformed wings hang, aching, limp, from the shuddering muscle of your chest and shoulders. New abrasions on your chest and limbs burn in the cool, ill-colored air. And your head is a vice, pounding with exhaustion and nerves, a whirlwind of sickly color to match the forest.
The forest.
The forest.
It surges up at you. White rings shine around the edges of your eyes as your delicate face jerks up. Your ears pivot forward. All the breath catches in your chest and you can't stop staring, the fly caught in a web. You want to run. Gods, you want to run, but nothing in you responds. And the dirt heaves up and something underneath it charges you. It wants to kill you; you know this. You know this so thoroughly it trembles in the marrow of your bones, but you watch it come like a dumb fawn until it's upon you, beneath you, before you: something hungry. Something terrible.
But - then it goes.
And you're left alone, alone with your aching body and your failing magic and no moon, no moon to guide you save what echoes of her linger still within your veins. Your pretty face swings left and right as adrenaline ebbs. Move, you think, and finally your hooves move, but they must weigh 100 pounds each. Somewhere, your family must be out there, surely.... If not in the wicked trees, then somewhere else. Somewhere.... In truth, you don't know what else to do except go.
The Portal
