blake kathryn
Game of Thrones Daily
dirt enthusiast
Love Begins
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h
oozey mess
taylor price
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
wallacepolsom
hello vonnie
izzy's playlists!
Origami Around
Show & Tell
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
d e v o n
Andulka
titsay
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@feralmenagerie
Muse Masterlist:
Autumn Beoulve - werewolf - packless - #steppenwolf [ intro ] | [ story ] | [ headcanons ]
Vorace - demon - gluttony - #tarasque [ intro ] | [ story ] | [ headcanons ]
Milisbhriathrach- fae - light - #sweet [ intro ] | [ story ] | [ headcanons ]
Vaine - Mer - Exiled - #whorl [ intro ] | [ story ] | [ headcanons ]
who: open [0/4]
where: burnt pages
when: afternoon
It is open hours, technically, but one has come in for the better part of an hour, and the shop has taken on a particular hush. Callum has spent the morning copying, as he spends most mornings copying.
Today's book is one he has never seen. It exists nowhere he can put his hands on. He has been told it lives somewhere behind a locked door in the Dominion, and he has decided to see if the sight can reach through a locked door.
The shallow copper basin is set at the center of the small side table. Beside it, in the order his second mentor taught him: yarrow to the left, salt to the right, a stub of beeswax candle in front, lit. The grimoire beside the basin is a blank one, waiting. Callum’s pen is inked and he has been holding this working for the better part of an hour.
The Sight is turned - not forward, not backwards, but through. Callum is looking at a page he has never seen, in a room he has never entered, in a house he has never walked past, and he is copying what he sees onto the blank page under his hand. Character by character. He does not stop to consider what he is reading. He will read it later, when the working is closed and he is permitted to be a mind again instead of a hand.
But the cost of his magic has begun to mount the way it always mounts. Behind his eyes, a hot small pressure. At the edges of his vision, the shop has begun to soften into gray. His breath is slower than he would like; his pulse is a distant polite thing checking in from another room. Callum knows, to the minute, how long he can sustain it before the cost comes due all at once like a thunderclap. He’s ignoring all of it, insistently.
The edge of a page turns beneath his hand - not the blank one, but the reference grimoire beneath it, the one he copied himself over three winters when he could not sleep - and it catches the pad of his index finger, opens it in a single fine line.
It’s a papercut. Absurdly, catastrophically ill-timed.
A single drop of blood falls, without asking, into the basin and the working shatters immediately. "Fuck," Callum says, low and heartfelt. He drops his pen. Fine - this is fine. That is the entire hour, but it is fine.
Only then does he notice the person standing in front of him. Callum lifts his eyes. The shopkeeper’s preamble slides into place by reflex. “Can I help you find anything?”
Then, because he cannot help himself, he gestures toward the basin as though it is the result of an ill-prepared recipe rather than an hour of ruined divination. “Here. Have at it if you want. If you add a drop of your blood, it’ll show you what our futures hold.”
"I'm supposed to sell these." Autumn says, clipped.
In her messenger bag, an old leather and canvas thing that's used to carrying hunt-mark billets and excised pieces of things and people meant to show as proof of a kill, rests a leather strap binding a stack of books together, straining its seams. Autumn hoists them free and places them on the table - hardbacks, free of cover but not free of damage. They are remarkably well preserved, given their apparent age. She wouldn't know, because reading the letters still make her head hurt with their jumbled grammar and symbols that don't quite match the order she's used to.
She puts them on the counter, and then eyes the basin as he speaks, leering into it - the prospect is alluring, even if she's not altogether certain she wants to know the future, given the recent past. Autumn's thoughts drift to the athame tucked into her belt, transfixed briefly by the idea of magic in her life that isn't tied to the moon or beasts or demons, but ultimately, she shakes her head 'no'.
"Wouldn't know what to do with it-" Then, thought interrupted, she squints. "You were at that tourney." It's a tiny, honest smile that splits her grim expression - He'd lost a lot of money on that fight, among others. "You threw your match, I heard..."
The growl that erupted from her mouth only earned her a laugh from the Fae. "Yes, doggy, growl! Lou--" He grunted, his words cut off as the wolf shoved her head into his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. All the while, the smile remained on his face.
Even as the werewolf knocked his leg out from under him and then, sunk her teeth into his ankle. Even as pain erupted all the way up his leg, Jasper laughed. Pain was a friend for him, welcomed most forms.
Jasper didn't fight back as he was shoved into the dirt. "That's all you got?" He shouted as he lay there, waiting for what was next. Claws dug into his skin and then its teeth were dug into his flesh again. Before he could say anything further, Jasper felt his body being shook back and forth, over and over. Bones cracked, flesh gave way, and blood sprayed on the ground as well as the fur of the wolf.
Sper, if you don't fight back, she might kill you.
Good. Let her.
Jasper. Don't. I am not ready for you to leave me yet.
His mother, along with his boyfriend, were the main reasons he'd yet to off himself. He thought that having her back in his life, though, would allow her voice to leave his own mind. It hadn't. It was as if it had only grown louder.
Sper, my darling, ask her to let go. You're going to be so sick and you will die if you don't make her stop.
Jasper let out his own growl as he used his wings, batting them quickly in the wolf's face, then pulled onto his illusion magic. He gritted his teeth as he forced an image of himself across the other side of the ring. "That's not even the right one!" His illusioned self mocked the wolf. "I'm over here now!" His hope was that the wolf would let go and stalk after the other fake him. If not, Jasper would have to figure something else out.
There's a spice in the blood that drips greasy over her teeth as she uses fang and claw to open little holes all over this toy she's found. She wonders when it'll stop writhing and wriggling. When it'll stop moving so she can tear chunks free to shear and shred in her teeth.
Wings beat at her frace and she snaps at them in aggravation. Something's calling for her, but she pays little attention to it at first, getting ready to leverage the muscles in her forearms against the muscles of her jaw to yank a limb free.
The second call stops that though, successful in getting her attentions. She swings her teeth a final time, flinging the fae as she turns to another.
Her great, clawed fingers and toes dig into the sands, leaving depressions and bloody prints in a trail as she sniffs at the mirage. Her chin drips with blood and slobber in a pant as she comes near, but then she realizes his scent shrinks, this way, and turns back after a moment, lowering a wrinkled snout to the sand as she lets out a low, threatening whine - one that warns Jasper to stay down or she'll bury him.
Avery grunted as the woman crashed into her. Her legs shook as she was pushed off balance and in response, her own arms wrapped around the woman that was pressed against her. Not because she knew her, but because she didn't want to fall.
It had been years since Avery had felt the warm embrace of someone else. She'd forgotten what it was like to have another's skin pressed against hers. Her heartbeat quickened as the stranger became gentler in the hug. She swallowed through the lump in her own throat as she heard the woman cry.
This woman knew her. Or, at least, the body she was now in.
"Why are you apologizing?" Avery asked. "it's real. I'm... real."
What the fuck else was she supposed to say?
A piece of her never wants to let go - Summer is warm, and smells sweet and healthy and doesn't feel cold or clammy or reek of gangrene or dry-rot. Autumn's arms are tight around her, but not crushingly so.
She's confused - she'd wondered if this would be the case - if she would remember the years where she'd been little more than a dying bag of bones and sickly health. She'd hoped that, if that were the case, she'd be spared it - not that Autumn's culpability might be absolved, but for her own sake.
"I didn't mean to hurt you-" she stammers into an answer on accident. "Didn't want to hurt you."
Years of searching to find Aria, to find the Moon and ask it to fix what she'd broken under it's light. She takes the scent of her in, eyes screwed shut. "I'm afraid to let go." Autumn murmurs, half incredulous sob, half nervous tickle of laughter.
The chaos that ensues makes her head swim - and she's still so afraid that she might drown here, that everything and her short little life will amount to nothing. By the time the bloodshed is over and the men are dead, Aspen has still not wrapped her mind around what is actually happening her or the fact that this might be her last day breathing.
And then she's thrown up out of the water. It bruises her thighs and back when she lands and she exclaims, short and choked, while she tries to scramble into something of a sitting position - or some way she can get away quickly.
The darkened space doesn't provide much comfort, even though the curses and shouting voices of the men are gone now. She can't see the woman who saved her, and she's not certain she wants to. The eyes just above the water makes her stomach twist and turn into fear.
"..I'm.. My name's Aspen." She says, voice shaking. "I didn't meant to... fall in your hole."
Aspen.
Az-pin.
"Aspen." She tries it. Then, a hand, to her breast; "Vaine."
What does it mean, she wonders? Is it a word or a thing. Is it something pretty or magical or is it some human word of resolution or virtue? She's never seen an Aspen, this one sitting her shivering wet or any other Aspen.
She lurches again, and briefly vanishes below the dark surface. Beneath it, she places rocks on the corpses, lest they float to the top and unnerve the poor thing further. She has decided - in the moment - to pity the human girl. She wrestles a bundle free of some crag as well, and when she resurfaces, it's closer to the ridge, to put her soggy, waterlogged pack on its edge.
"My hole? My home." She corrects gently. "Many come here to jump in," she says. They think the fall will kill them. It's more often her - an act that washes out as mercy when all's tallied.
"Are you hurt?" she asks. There'll be no helping her, if she cannot climb - vain's long, lashing tail will do no good to carry her out, not until her patron arrives
Much like her previous life -- at least, towards the end of it -- Avery was aimless. After leaving Oberyn, all she wanted was to find the Demon that had not only ended her life, but apparently brought her back. Why? She wondered, as she slowly moved through the world that she'd once known, but was now so foreign to her.
The Dominion was much like she remembered -- dark and heavy. It reminded her of the world she'd left. A world that had been much more familiar to her. She pressed her lips together into a thin line as she walked into a gallery, ignoring everything it offered with only one mission in mind: find Aria.
As she pushed open doors that led to some kind of yard area, Avery's new blonde fell into her face. She let out an annoyed groan as she pulled her hair back, silently wishing she had some for of hair tie. One hundred and thirty years ago, she'd never have allowed it to get this long. All hair did was cause her issues. It got caught in branches while running, became dirty easily, and blocked her vision. Not only that, but it was an easy way to get caught by other species that would have done her harm.
She pulled her bottom lip inward and sucked on it gently as she approached a nearby fountain, noticing a girl who was sitting on the ledge of it. Nerves burst inside her body, causing her stomach to twist. Every inch of her body tingled and she quickly paused in step. What the fuck is this?
"I'm sorry I--" Avery cut herself off has her throat swelled. Something was wrong with her body. Obviously, it wasn't hers, which was clearly posing an issue as she stood their frozen. Is this fear? No. It felt different. There was no dread in her mind, or body. There were no thoughts at all. "It's hot. I forgot-- how hot it normally is." Avery blurted out as an excuse for her odd behavior.
She recognizes the scent before she registers footfalls - something sharp and crisp and sweet and horrendously familiar. Something that had been, for years now, slowly overtaken with rot and putrescence until she had convinced herself that the stench of death was something to be coveted.
It brings a sheen over her eyes almost immediately as she all but tosses bookwork to the flagstone and starts searching.
She finds her then, staring, stammering. Autumn hasn't felt relief in long enough that she has forgotten what that sort of catharsis feels like, and so she feels sick as she stares, stumbles - runs towards her.
She crashes into the shape of her sister, wraps her arms around her as tears roll over her cheeks and she pulls her tightly - no, gently into an embrace. "I'm sorry," she repeats, over and over. "Please be real, are you real, please be real"
If she doesn't know, then Aria's is assumption is that she needs to be taught. Or to use the earlier word, trained. This delights her, and she squeezes Autumn's hand in her own as if to show just how much. "We have some time before the second half of the show."
One hand lifts and brushes some of Autumn's hair back, tucking it behind her ear, and traces a thumb along the shell of her ear as she does so. "If you don't know how to not be tense, then allow me to help you relax." Her smile becomes mischievous. Her hands move once more to her shoulders, pressing thumbs into the knots on her shoulders.
"Take a breath. Breathe me in. You are not in danger." She is. "And you will not be harmed." She will be. "I will take care of you." In many more ways than one. Her head tilts towards her, and she grazes her lips along Autumn's jawline, as she continues whispering. "What questions did you have for me about the show, sweet wolf?"
Autumn's hand is warm in Aria's, and it reminds her of other hands, just as soft and just as warm - hands that can no longer hold. In that moment, and at the beck and call of the woman's words, Autumn feels a swell of needy longing so full rise up in her chest that she fears she might burst. It's a hurtful, painful sensation, one mingling betrayal and desire in equal measures, both of a nature she doesn't really understand, because for so long it's been hard to imagine anything beyond simple survival. It's somewhat tamed by the shiver that the tender glide over her ear elicits, or the smokey, calming nature of Aria's voice that bathes her mind in an equally alien feeling of warm safety as her shoulders tense then ease at her touch.
Her eyes are closed, she notices, and she listens, and obeys, and breathes. Then she feels lips against her jaw, her chin - that snaps her out of the reverie and she pulls away - not harshly, but in surprise - and as Aria whispers, she can't help but to have her gaze fall from her dark eyes to those lips. "I..." she'd been paying attention, or trying to, but she can't even think of a a name, or a line. Couldn't even tell you the color of the hero's coat.
Eyes wide, she barely has time to scramble to her feet before Autumn is taking the upper hand. The wolf's head crashes into her nose and forehead, a gush of blood immediately spurting out of her nostrils as she feels the bones there slide in and out of place.
Fully panicked as she's pinned against a corner - her own knife pressed against her throat - she can't think of any way out of it. If she tries to wrestle it away from her, Autumn can overpower her. If she tries to kick at her legs again, it probably won't do much. Human versus wolf. In all cases, the wolf wins. A spark of an idea starts in her mind. What does she have that Autumn doesn't? Not.. much.
But, maybe. Maybe she can surprise her.
Pushing against the knife, she kisses her and tries to ignore the blossom of pain in her face from the broken nose.
The girl stares into her eyes, and Autumn stares right back - her struggles are dying - her strength bolstered by the curse running through her veins overpowering anything her opponent could really hope to muster.
She scans her, trying to figure out where to stick the knife that will take her down, but not out - it's a rare moment of giving a shit - but the hesitation is interrupted when the girl plants a kiss on her lips.
Autumn stares at her after pushing her off. "What the fu-"
Out of nowehre then, there's a lightning strike up the middle of her that knocks all semblance of wind out of her lungs.
@oftragxdy - Summer/Avery Galerie Desir - Courtyard
While the exterior grounds of the Gallery are blasted and dry, the central courtyard is well tended- kept healthy and vibrant by the many banadaged attendants that haunt the place - faceless folk under their linen cloths dressings whose softness and kind nature almost puts her on edge, given the glares she receives from their master.
Autumn has not known the sort of leisure she's found here since she was a child wreathing together flower crowns and petting frogs and stickbugs at the fringes of the world.
And now she sits on a fountain's edge, scribbling poorly-scrawled letters on a volume of paper with a sharpened nib of coal-lead. The lack of grit beneath her nails, the lack of ash and soot and road-dirt seemingly etched into her skin, the smell of soft soaps and sweet oils that stick to her, they're alien to her, and keep distracting her from her attempts to learn her letters - but these are not the only things that lead her thoughts astray
She has not seen, or heard, her sister's voice in some time - not since Aria had spirited her body away to restore it, and that has robbed her of sleep and peace, regardless of kindness or comfort - a fact written deep under her eyes and in the deep furrow of her brow.
Jack runs the stall for The Refuge overflow, getting Kochba from what they can spare to buy what they find themselves dangerously low on. It was easily decided that it needed to be someone that they could trust, and he wasn't willing to trust anyone else with it. It wasn't that others were incapable, but one bad deal could be the difference between important medical supplies and food, and someone dying because of a lack thereof.
The peppy stranger picks out a couple of bits; things found on the hunt, donations, overflow of certain perishables that even The Refuge wouldn't be able to use before they were no good anymore, then offers him a trade.
Brows furrow for just a moment, reaching out to take the seeds and inspect them, "What grows from these?" He questions, not recognising them by look alone. He wasn't a gardener; the greenhouse was much more Ophelia's realm. The honey he pulls closer to himself, willing to accept it - It would keep for a very long time, and it had its medicinal uses, which were better served than its nutritious ones.
"Not orange tress, I'll tell you that," she opens with, face brutish and grumpy but her tone just as flitting and chipper as it'd been throughout the market-day.
She next peers into his hand, gleaning the shape and the size. She fingers each of the three seeds contained therein in quick succession.
"Radish, sweetmarrow, and mousemelon. All hardy fun, delicious and yummy and good for the bones."
She eyes him eying her things, and reforms her smile. "They grow hardy, save the mousemelon - those you'll want a hotbox or greenhouse for, they don't love cold. But oh so sweet, when you pluck them from the vine. Like a watermelon and a cucumber had a bouncing baby."
Sylvia waits, counting the breaths it takes before the figure emerges. Milisbhriatrach was a pretty thing, if a bit smaller than the demon had been expecting. Sylvia knew better than to let her guard down even at the unassuming size. Fae wore illusion magic easier than humans would breath. Syliva could hear the faint buzzing that spread across the entire property, she was surrounded by the monstrous little creatures that answered to the fae and knew she was not safe despite any appearances. One had to be careful when engaging with the fairfolk, for they were never really fair. "It got your attention did it not?" Slyvia mused, refusing to let her smile slip. To Display unease was to loose the invisible war that hung in the air. "I am Sylvia. It is a pleasure to finally meet you. Do you have a preference for what I call you?" Sylvia stepped closer as she spoke, holding out her hand.
"Your name came to me as I was inquiring around for an apothecary." Sylvia gestured to the scars that took up residence on the side of her face. The skin still taut from where she had been branded. "Tricky thing Silveriron even after its gone it leaves a nasty bite." Slyvia smile turned into something wild at the memory. Sharp canines gleaming in the sickly light of day. a glimpse of a predator behind the mortal facade.
"I was told that I might be able to trade for something to ease the pain. " Sylvia had heard the other tales, not apothecary but surgeon as well. People taken apart and put back together, not always in the ways they had been expecting.
Here, in her demesne, Milisbhriathrach needed not play to the comforts of the soulbound mortals or the creatures that kept them for sport - here, among her flitting friends, she was King and Queen and any other royal word she may have wanted to mantle upon her dainty shoulders.
"Fumbletongues call me Sweet Bee or Mel or Mili."
Her wings snap into a vibrato of beats, lifting her into the air, those extra arms dangling as she cups her chin in her hand and kicks her feet up and behind her, as if she lays on some invisible downy bed. "- or Mil or M or PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE MAKE IT STOP HURTING I'LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING." The last bit is melodrama at its finest, though one might be hard pressed whether to pinpoint her tones and inflections as pain or pleasure or both in equal measure.
She laughs then, and rolls about before returning to her previous positin, this time her chin rests on the bridges of two hands - different ones from before, bridging themselves together.
"Oh, a painkiller. Icky silveriron. In your skin like stingers?" A pout. "Not to do, not to do!"
She drifts a little closer, face buzzing with sudden intrigue. "It is true I craft in my little cavern all manner of potables and unguents and salves and ointments and sweet sweet treats. All for sale, some come cheap and others come heavy and FAT with price." She's spun now, feet dangling, mimicking a big round belly.
"All worth all I ask," she assures, floating even closer to the woman with wild gestures that betray the excitement of commerce.
The "fight" with Callum had been embarrassing. And Aspen was still afraid, still had the sick feeling in her stomach. But he'd helped her try, and maybe that was enough to push through and try again. The first fight was the hardest - mentally. But if she could keep going, keep pushing then maybe she could prove that sometimes humans (and good) can win.
The girl is pushed into the ring and immediately, Aspen recognizes her. Her lips twist into a frown, but her half-transformed state can give her a bit of an advantage. Maybe she's sore. Out of sorts. She doesn't say a word, but drops down into a crouch.
They circle each other for a moment before Aspen kicks out at her knee, where the joint still looks a little funky, and uses the momentum to pin and stab at her shoulder.
The girl sinks low, and pulls out a knife. It brings Autumn's hand to her waist, where her athame is gone. Her body snaps its angles hard as she strafes opposite the other girl when she moves and her firsts raise, their feet tracing a circle in the sand. Autumn's feet fail to keep their footing solid and whether it's observation or a lucky guess, the servo-girl sees it. Autumn lifts her leg, trying to move away from the attack, but the effort fails, and she falls to her knee before her back hits the ground.
When the knife goes into her shoulder, there's more a growl than a yelp, and she makes no bones about staring directly into Aspen's eyes. She pushes up, into the knife, sucking it into her shoulder to the handguard, and uses that to headbutt her in the face before scrambling to her feet. Foolishly, she tears the knife free, letting it hang sorely at her side as she backs Aspen towards a corner - when the girl fails to keep herself out of it, Autumn lunges after tossing the blade to her other hand, pinning Aspen to the wall and puting the girl's knife to her throat.
She owes her, for the gas station. For the food. There's no surrender here now. But she's tired, running on rapidly fading adrenaline as the soreness of sling-shotting between shapes builds into every inch of her.
"Give up and I'll make it shallow." She spits it out, quiet but deathly serious. "But I'll kill you if I gotta."
@bonecarved-dreams The Slaughter Ring
Vorace watches the second round begin it's preparations down below, and picks some squirming bit of creature from a plate, snapping it's head free with teeth before sucking the meat out of the shell. And another, and another.
His table-setting is accumulating shells much like his lost gambles.
It's stress, he tells himself, that sees him emptying plates and glasses like with abandon. It might also be the absolute irritation sitting next to him.
Another cheek hits the sand, tired and half-dead, and Vorace hangs his head a moment before flinging the platter and its shells across the box and striking a slaughter ring attendant clean in the face.
Turning back to Sylvia, he smiles, peevish, at Sylvia. "CONGRATULATIONS." He says, overquick and underenthused.
Slaughter Ring Slasher: Round 2 Steppenwolf vs. Wayfarer; @morsreliqua
The thing that gets shoved back onto the sands is a a half-formed creature, mostly beast at first, but it's jerking, snarling form contorts as the borrowed rage from it's owner ebbs out after the bout with the manic fae.
It's with confusion and frustration that rational thought ebbs back in, alongside a murky understanding of what's happening here. Autumn's fur falls in wiry mats from her skin. Teeth sink into her jaws. Bones shed and snap and burn away layer after layer inside her, shrinking her down and down until, relieved of monstrous nature, she's practically panting on the sand, skin still stained with fae blood, hair near a foot longer, the story of her life these past however many years a roadmap of scars on her body as somebody throws the shreds of her pants into the ring after her as her name is called out to the uproarious spectators.
The heat of her body wafts faint steam from her shoulders as she cools into a painful fatigue from the turn back, and its almost a struggle as she pulls the breeches on, tying them with the ratty drawstring as she turns to face her opponent. There's a spark of memory - the girl that haunts the gas station - she'd seen her in the same ratty place as the Fae. Her bones pop as she takes a first, exhausted step forward.
Autumn spits blood from her mouth onto the sand, turning, more fully to face Aspen. The mostly naked, disheveled remnants of the turn cut a strange silhouette as she crosses the ring. The girl's heart's pounding, she reeks of fear. Autumn almost feels guilty as she comes wordlessly to a stop a few paces from Aspen.
@oftragxdy - Nolan Slaughter Ring
"I've had a run of uh, how do they say it, shit luck, you see."
He opens his coat, jaw clenched, irritated, the stink of this dead thing he shares a space with odiferous in the extreme as he cards through bonded bills representing his sizeable stores of kochba. "I don't mind losing money, as evidenced by poor wagers - I do however mind losing in the ideological sense."
He forks a finger over at the standings, where Aria's little cretin has moved forward.
His tongue clicks, and two exhausted attendants step forward behind him, dropping the heavy steamer full of coins and opening it. "That," he says, smiling, "and more-" he says, sliding two bonds towards him.
"If that awful thing," he points to Autumn's name, "has trouble walking out of that arena."
Vorace steals a peek at the image of just who it is the dog is paired with, then squints before a repulsed look climbs over his features. Wayfarer. Oh dear. That fight had been painful to watch. "Eesh, mon dieu."
He slides a third bill over, and with another glance at Ratliff's picture, slides a fourth after a moment's consideration. "I'm sure you understand. Slip the bumpkin a silver knife or something, I don't care."
"Oh, DOGGY!!" Jasper shouted with excitement as he watched the woman turn into what he knew she was -- a werewolf. His laugh is high pitch and manic as he stares at the beast of fur in front of him. "Good, good doggy. So good." Jasper crooned as he closes the distance between the two.
There's no fear in the Fae's eyes as he reached out and grasped some of the fur, gently yanking at it to ensure it was real. Yes. It was. Good. Good, good, good. His own claws are no where in sight -- the illusion having been dropped the moment he became distracted by the wolf in front of him.
"Now be an even gooder doggy and show me those teeth! Growl, doggy!" Jasper moved his fingers to the werewolf's jaw, pushing her lips up so that he could see the sharp teeth that it hid. "Now... you can scratch me but don't bite me, okay? I don't want to be one of you. Disgusting."
Then, he jumped back, a smile still on his face. "Show me what you got, doggy!"
The dancing, flitting thing squawks at her like a bird, and she pads in an arc around it, closing the distance. Her snout wrinkles at his laughter, high and whining in her ears. Paws fall gainst the sand, long-fingered and claw-tipped as she searches for an angle that will serve to open him up. Aria's voice rattles in her change addled mind.
Kill him.
The hunger is already thrumming in her chest and throat. He smells not only of blood and meat and fucking bone, but of the spice of magic. It's an esoteric gaminess that renders her maw slobbering as her teeth peak from behind snarling lips as the wiry fur of her nape fans. Notably, she doesn't smell fear - that pants-pissing, shameful stink that so often accompanies prey - this earns him a mote of reluctant respect.
Respect that fades when he snatches at her fur. Autumn bucks like a horse, pulling away and growling again, her jaw clapping as it chops at the offending hand. Then he goes at her again. pulling at her lips as he lands hands on her snout. She growls before swinging her head like a weighted hammer into his ribs before dipping it to pull his leg out from under him with a snap of her jaw aimed directly for his ankle.
Blood floods her mouth and she pulls him a yard or so before her paws bat him heavy along the dirt before raking along his back. Her teeth sink into his shoulder at the back, then too, shaking and ragging him with her jaws, desperate to kill the manic whine of his voice.
"You think I want to be here?" She asked, in desperation. It was too long winded for her to tell the both of them exactly what had happened to her that brought here there, in the ring, with them. "You're hurting our brother for me?" Tears sting her eyes as she stared up at her eldest sister. How did that make sense? Vaine knew how much Greyson meant to Saylor. She'd given her story upon story about their little brother, over the years, while visting her in her cage.
Saylor's body betrays her -- the brief strength from adrenaline leaving her veins as she's shoved to the side. She grunted as she dropped immediately, her limbs tingling as she collapsed onto the dark sand.
"Look at your Queen, citizens of the Forgotten!" A voice over the loudspeaker sounded out. "Does she appear strong to you? Powerful, even? She can't even keep herself on her own two feet, let alone summon water like her brother!" Laughter echoed throughout the room, clouding Saylor's senses. "You know what I think?" The voice asked the crowd. "I think that whomever manipulates the ocean is not even her. Has anyone actually seen her use her magic? Hm? What about that Siren voice of hers? Who's witnessed it?" Louder, confused voices circulate outside of the ring. "She's asking for Peace because she knows her Kingdom would be destroyed if anyone challenged her!"
It was ridiculous. All of it. Her people knew of her power and what she was capable of. They knew that she, along with their Army, was one of the most strong and capable within Calamity. But what mattered to Saylor was not the rumors that were now being bounced around, from mouth to ear, it was her siblings.
"Vaine--!" A choked sob escaped her lips as her eyes found the glaive, which was back at Greyson's neck. No, no, no, no. She couldn't watch this. She couldn't have her eldest sister and youngest brother fighting like this. She reached out her arm and then pressed it onto the sand, fingers digging into it as she tried to drag herself across the ring, back towards them.
Her body was so numb that she couldn't even feel the wound on her palm as she crawled. "Greyson, don't kill her." Saylor pleaded. "Vaine don't kill him."
@wxldxheart
Greyson had too much going through his mind in that moment—a relative storm of emotions that could easily spell his end. He needed to quiet the roaring ocean of his thoughts. Questions would come later.
For now, he had one task.
Battle.
As the blade of his glaive came down towards his neck, Greyson moved in one fluid motion, like the roll of the tide. He shifted his torso so that the weapon speared into the sand and not his throat, at the same time he brought his injured leg round in a sweeping kick to knock Vaine off her shaky legs.
Continuing in his flow of momentum, the Prince rolled to his feet, ignoring the pain shooting through his leg, the blood rushing. His hand reached out towards the shaft of his weapon, and with a twitch of his fingers the hilt broke into two, shattering like ice.
The weapons of his people were crafted for their use, hilts of frozen water, blades made of salt-iron and steel, each one manipulatable by the wielder however they needed.
When the glaive shattered, Greyson commanded the water form as he caught it, once again armed. He held the blade to Vaine's throat, tip pressed deep to draw blood. "Yield!" The Prince demanded. He would not ask twice—in that moment he could not be a brother, a prince, he was a soldier, the Commander of the Forgotten. Under these eyes he could not hesitate.
@feralmenagerie
Even with Saylor flung away, her sister's words echo in her mind, clattering against the jeering taunts of the announcer's voice, picking and slice at the armor that has built up up the dynasty now headed by Saylor and defended by Greyson.
The dominos fall fast - there are shouts, and cheers, and boos. Saylor pleads. Greyson lets loose a roar like that of the very ocean itself. There is a spray of ocean water as her eyes fall to Saylor's fallen shape, and her grip on Greyson's weapon fails and his leg kicks her own from the floor.
She falls onto her back, and all the air in her chest is blown out, and she is drowning out here in the open air. By the time she catches breath into foreign lungs, a blade's edge has sunken itself between the scales on her neck, blue-black blood threading in the spaces between the shimmering, demon-touched scutes that armor her mongrel, abominable form.
Her eyes lower to the blade, first, and then back up to Greyson.
There is no victory here, for her, and the realization sets her jaw tight. "I cannot yield."
She swallows, thickly, eyes flitting from his face to the blade and back again. "So be about it then, little brother." Another unnerved gulp sounds, a fear-stricken tear falling uneven from her eye. "I am only one of the pawns being pushed about the field."
Her hand snaps to the haft of his weapon, but she makes no attempt to deflect, her frown a resigned, weak smile. "Do it, protect your Queen."
@oftragxdy @wxldxheart
