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+--- Thread: Silver Moraine i put millions of miles under my heels (/showthread.php?tid=31358)
i put millions of miles under my heels - Caiaphas - December 14, 2018
set after the DL-P thread!
no matter which way she went, her progress was halted by natural formations- sometimes mountains, sometimes chasms -- this time, a moraine that looked about as trustworthy as a crocodile checking in for a dentist appointment.
caiaphas inspected the flat surface of the moraine. a thin sheet of ice spread over it, but its surface was cracked with tangled fissures and splits. intermittently the ice snarled or groaned, shifting by some unseen force beneath its opaque layers. she had little choice but to devise some other path through - but for now she caught her breath on the edge of the icebank's splintered precipice, watching the snow as it felt mutely about her.
RE: i put millions of miles under my heels - Malachi - December 22, 2018
Malachi hurried from the Glacier, eager to leave the haunt behind him, and as the land broke to open ground, he found himself more able to breathe. Scattered snow obscured his eyes from visibility, but he searched downward more often than not, his attention fixed inward on the course of his paws, and on the harried thoughts which spun like the wheels of a hydroplaning car. Who was the stranger who had led him through the underground, and where had he gone? How had the tunnels even led him here?
The questions ran unanswered as he came upon the perimeter of a swath of ice and fissured stone, and he glanced upward out of habit - and his steps hitched before he fully registered why - for it was then that he saw her - a wraith against the drift of snow, like a charcoal scar in the light, and he felt his chest tighten, for even from a distance, he could imagine the severed head she had carried to their borders, and the wicked fire of her eyes.
Caiaphas.
RE: i put millions of miles under my heels - Caiaphas - December 24, 2018
O M F G!!
a shape moved among the gentle rifts of snow; caiaphas watched it for some time before it turned to face her, its pose frozen as if struck by hyperborean wind. it was then she recognized the skulker -- and her expression contorted into one of surprised, yet wrathful horror.
his form was too detailed, too sharply visible, to possibly be the cruel trick of her imagination.. and yet, for a few seconds the sylph wrestled with the likelihood he was simply a specter come to haunt her -- only his eyes were wide, same as hers.. and a feral fear sat cradled in his unmistakable gaze.
she rose, the hackles along her spine fanned out in serrated edges. her muzzle was wrinkled in a hiss of contempt as she stopped near him, measuring his form as if considering whether or not to cut him down.
RE: i put millions of miles under my heels - Malachi - December 30, 2018
:D <3 !! I have no idea how this will go, but here we go haha! <3
For a moment he thought her a spectre - hellish, and otherworldly, the figment of a fractured mind. She had to be. Those days - weeks - underground.. they had done something to him. And hadn't he seen her ghost in the shadow of the tunnels, her apparition hidden in the chasms of the earth? Surely this was the same.
Yet he couldn't convince himself. Her countenance was too long-lasting, her wicked mass, too concrete, to be anything but real - and she snakes toward him through the snow until she stands before him as real as she was on the night he first met her.
He has half a mind to run, but he is unable, and not for the reasons he once imagined. For how often has he dreamt toward this day? Toward her bloodied fall as he finally brings her to justice, finally covers the expanse of his sins, finally throws this sordid demon to rest. Every regret and every mistake is wrapped up in the sheer existence of her, and yet..
"Caiaphas." He is supposed to feel angry, to mirror the fray of her hackles with the sharp spike of his own, and he wants to - but he sees something buried in the ferocity of her stare, a hardness, that stops him, and he wills his guarded voice to touch the air. "It's been a while."
RE: i put millions of miles under my heels - Caiaphas - January 02, 2019
the siren looked pure hellion as she rounded upon malachi, and yet, his posture does not feed off of her animosity. much to caiaphas' surprise, she detects no enmity in his gaze -- only a sense of guarding.
she snorted in response to his careful words, measuring the distance between them. in that moment, everything she could observe she drank in -- the direction of the wind, how quickly she could cover ground to sink her teeth in her throat, his age, any tell-tale knot or scarring on his limb that could somehow be used against him -- every last detail she could garner, she gobbled hungrily -- and somehow, she did not spring.
advancing very carefully on spidery limbs, the siren queen set her jaw in a hardened line and delivered to him the full bite of her boring stare.
"tell me --" she started, her voice as icy as the wind that swirled between them "do you still run with the red bitch that killed my son?"
venom dripped from her words and she readied herself -- knowing if he answered 'yes', that she would deliver to tuwawi the same interminable grief the scarlet woman had bestowed upon her.
RE: i put millions of miles under my heels - Malachi - January 13, 2019
He watches her too, and feels her hellion stare pick him bone from bone, biting through fur and flesh to bear into his very skin. He has never been more aware of his weakness - how his eyes sink within the shadows of his skull, or how his ribs protrude with every breath he draws. He is tired and hungry, and at best he can run - but how far before she catches him? He holds himself steady, knowing his breaths are numbered if he dares breach the dark one's temper - and he finds himself silently pleading that somehow, some way, the One might show mercy and deliver him now.
He still prepares for her teeth to cut him - but what she delivers renders him mute. The whiteness of the world steals his mind, and he blinks, eyes wide, as every thought seems to fire at once - "she killed your - "
- this is a trick, a ploy. Hasn't Caiaphas proven herself enough? She is a servant of the deceiver, a child of darkness, borne to lie from the father of lies. He doesn't believe her, he can't. He remembers Larus -
- and he remembers Adlartok. The wounds, the blood, the hatred in Tuwawi's eyes and the vicious flash of her teeth against him, the curl of her voice as she dripped vengeance against Caiaphas, and the wolves of the sea. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: Tuwawi had sworn to exact her revenge, and she had done exactly that, and his blood runs cold as a chill whispers through his tongue.
"Shit."
His voice is quiet; the realization sinks against him like a rock abandoned to gravity, and the final light in what remains of his construct of Tuwawi flickers out and is gone.
She was no better than Caiaphas.
"No." he is numb, his mouth is dry. "I don't. I haven't. Not for a very long time." And it feels like he is outside of himself, watching himself speak from another dimension - like they have both become an apparition, and soon he'll wake up and see that this isn't real at all. "I wanted to stop the war." His tongue stings with the fraying ends of years upon years of pent up frustration, and grief. "We only wanted Larus back. I never wanted this to happen."
RE: i put millions of miles under my heels - Caiaphas - January 15, 2019
caiaphas set the full bite of her cold stare on the male, noticing first and foremost the way he seemed to reel from her statement -- as if it were some accusation he had never heard before. yet, hadn't kevlyn been killed by the glacier hounds in front of their homeland -- and was malachi not one of the triumphant, crowing their after-battle victory as the ankyras trawled through their dead and hauled them home?
she did not believe him anymore than he believed her; she was convinced his surprise was somehow counterfeit.
yet, his admission's tone was stung with sincerity -- and for as much vitriol as the siren queen could muster, she could not deny malachi his rightful grief. she glanced away, sparing the glacier wolf the contempt of her cold gaze. "and i never wanted kevlyn to die." she finally answered, her tone tight and cold. "where is she now, do you know?"
RE: i put millions of miles under my heels - Malachi - February 02, 2019
So I don't want him to die, but if that would be the only idea in Caiaphas' head after Malachi's request, or the only realistic option for her character to take in light of the circumstances, let me know and we can figure out an end that would work for us both (:
Malachi couldn't read the siren's face behind the ire she projected against him. She was like ice, a dark and sullied shard, and yet, when she turned the brunt of her gaze away, he was left conflicted. Why afford him this momentary space? An ache stirred in his chest he'd never once felt toward her, familiar, and unwelcome. Caiaphas hadn't changed, he reminded himself; she still chilled with sharp vexation, and he still didn't trust her, but in her gesture and her words, he caught a glimpse of something else - someone else, and a sense of reality grounded the ragged edges of her frame. This was a mother who had watched her son die, a blackened soul encased in layers of bitterness and grief, yet a wolf, no less than he.
He, too, shied his eyes away, to offer her the same respect she strangely extended toward him.
"I don't," he admitted, with a shake of his head, "I haven't seen Tuwawi since the war. I fought, for a moment - but then I saw your faces, and I couldn't - " and his throat felt tight, for he remembered the moment he'd seen the face of the one he'd struck. Even as his teeth had locked with her flesh, he had felt no fear from her. Only resigned determination to fight for her people - yet at the first taste of blood, he had been the one afraid. Not to die, not to fall - for he knew what end awaited them all - but afraid - terrified - to bring that end upon another, and to carry the weight of their blood upon his head for the rest of his life.
Benjamin's blood was heavy enough, but now, having failed to stop Tuwawi - having failed to stop Caiaphas - he felt the weight of Kevlyn's death sink upon him, too. "I couldn't follow her. I broke allegiance before the war was even over. It's been years." And the accusation kept stirring, even as he spoke, of how many more had fallen because he had not stood against the russet queen the night she'd declared the war. How many more would he stand accountable for when his own soul rose at the end of days?
"You were my enemy, but your son was innocent, and he suffered for my mistakes," his voice was taut and shook with the gravity of the words already formed, and yet to be spoken - but it was only a matter of seconds before his request touched the air, "Where I was raised, we have a scarification ceremony, a reminder that our actions affect many others, for good or for bad. I don't wish to die - " his heart beat quick at this - for who was this siren, to honour a request like that? And who was she, to deserve a mark upon his flesh for the wrongs he'd brought against her? She was no less guilty, perhaps even more - but this had very little to do with that. Kevlyn's death was a consequence of his cowardice, and his failure to uphold the Song he'd been taught since he was a child; his failure to strive and toil for what he believed in, even at the cost of his own life. He should have been the one who had fallen that day, but he was alive, and he thought of Larus, Adlartok, and every life who had suffered on his account.
No. This was what he had to do. "Would you strike me?" And he turned his cheek toward her - the side that hadn't been marred by his father, that solemn evening they had buried what had been found of his brother - and he closed his eyes.
RE: i put millions of miles under my heels - Caiaphas - February 03, 2019
reluctantly, the sylph returned her gaze to the man - surprised once more by the ardor of his words. he seemed as embittered and conflicted as she -- and as she listened, he spoke of his time following the war that had stolen everything from her -- revealing he had turned from the red woman and the lives she had extinguished.
the grief caiaphas had been holding onto all of these years -- the hateful, bileful lesion of raw and untamed sorrow -- it seemed to crest and ebb, as if a mighty wave carried thousands of leagues and finally, at its apex, was cast against an immovable cliff and sundered.
her shoulders fell as the wrath ebbed from her, carrying with it her last vision of kevlyn. "no." she answered, turning her gaze from the proffered cheek and closed eyes of her enemy. it would not have been right -- and kevlyn, even the memory of him, would not have wished such spitefulness all these years later. "it will do nothing to bring him back."