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+--- Thread: Ankyra Sound [m] burn it down (/showthread.php?tid=65827)
[m] burn it down - Sobeille - April 25, 2025
she let @Lafayette and @Shadess know she intended to patrol the sound. she could not sleep. she could not think. an annoying ripple of flame speared at her sides, and her head hurt beyond measure.
her entire life had her maman as her mainstay. the tears that could not manage to break the dam hours before came streaming down her face as she stole down the cliffs and unwittingly passed the very path that claimed val’s life.
she thought that keeping busy would keep her mind off of things. instead, she was only reminded of little memories everywhere she went; if she could just turn back time or fight back the day she’d been kidnapped, maybe none of this would have happened; the pirates wouldn’t have overwhelmed her tribe and she wouldn’t have lost her maman.
a gentle wind played through her fur as she walked down the open strand. it was a quiet night; the kind so peaceful and raw in its beauty that it humbled you. she turned her face up to the empty skies, endless indigo studded with a million diamonds and pearls! abruptly she remembered that her maman would never look up with stars in her eyes again —
she choked out a rough sob just as a long-reaching wave splashed over her paws and sucked back out. the scent of the tide, of salt and moist earth permeated the early spring air.
with a chill causing her gut to sink, sobeille noticed something else unwelcome lingering in rich smells of nightfall.
no,she wiped at one eye, then the other, her mouth trailing open in a little gasp of disbelief.
RE: burn it down - Ephraim - April 26, 2025
OOC: Joining with permission!
How many times in his life had he almost come back here?
More than Ephraim could count. The phantom scent of salt found him on the wind at the most inopportune of moments throughout the years, prompting him to turn his head helplessly toward the distant sea. He knew where it was in relation to himself at all times. He was pulled toward it more often than not, tugged along as though dragged by a fisher's hook in his nose. Whenever he tried to ignore it, the pressure in the back of his skull began to mount until his paws moved as though by puppet's strings, leading him to abandon countless pursuits and build a reputation for being unreliable.
Yet no matter how many times he was pulled toward it, since that most dreadful day — and the haunting days that followed — he had not once set foot upon the sands of Ankyra Sound.
Until now.
In spite of his seven years and the aches that were settling into his joints and the bedraggled quality of his aging pelt, when his paws touched the cold, accursed sand, it was as if he was young again. As if being here was enough to push reset on his life and bring him back to what it should have been, if only for a moment. His eyelids fluttered shut, blocking out the black sea and the pristine night sky and the stars gleaming overhead. He breathed in slowly, savoring the brine on the breeze.
Catch! whispered a small voice in the corners of his mind. His eyes popped open, then blurred with a searing sorrow while his throat grew tight. Whatever had become of her? Ephraim hoped she was living a good life, wherever she was, free from the same loneliness that had stalked him all this time.
With a choked sound, he ducked his head and marched stubbornly across the shore, determined to outpace the crush of grief for a life he should have lived and a sister he should have known, brothers he should remember, a mother and father he should have made proud—
With a start, Ephraim realized he was ankle deep in the surging sea near Caiaphas' grotto, and he was not alone. Some distance from him in the shallows, but close enough for notice, stood Raleska, bathed in starlight with her eyes heavensward, glistening before she wiped at them. His breath caught and panic surged from his belly into his chest, setting fire to his lungs and throat. His heart squeezed painfully and he found he could not move. His voice lifted of its own accord, a little boy responding to that whispered memory: "catched!"
No... Something was wrong. Cinnamon fur and a chickadee's black cap — not Raleska, but someone else. Mortified, Ephraim unglued his paws from the waterlogged ground and turned to beat a hasty retreat, only to find himself spinning back in the manner of a dog torn between a bone and a toy. It was too late to hope she hadn't heard him, so all he could do was hover there sheepishly with sea water sloshing over his feet and wait to be chased from his mother's sepulcher before he could pay his respects.
It felt like some force had tethered him to this moment, bidding him to stay put.
RE: burn it down - Sobeille - April 26, 2025
catched!
sobeille tore her gaze from the sky, teary expression darkening to livid displeasure. a man, on this beach?
marina and her children sprung to sobeille's mind. the pirates that raided and killed half her family. all the suffering in her life and men were the preeminent catalyst.
protect your home, urged something inside of her. she advanced, gaze hard and measuring the man who now seemed to waffle back and forth in the seawater. he was her size, roughly. older. made lean by years that whittled at his life. he wore the coastal palette of a sea-trawler, his head darkened same as hers. she sensed in him a grieving kinship but her wounded mind refused to acknowledge it -- and were it not for those eyes;
yellow eyes
so very much and so very unlike her own --
she would have torn at his throat herself.
sobeille steadied the rising urge to hurt him. she was already angry and his sheepishness infuriated her.
fight me.sobeille commanded, rising to her full height and brandishing her auburn tail. the wind stirred once more, and again that scent came to her. she intended to ignore it, because this was not how it was all supposed to happen. fighting back the urge to throw seaweed in his face, sobeille's lips curled back in a snarl.
fight me, or die.
RE: burn it down - Ephraim - April 26, 2025
The scowl leveled at Ephraim was enough to wither his soul. He had been through a lot in his life, but there was only one other time someone had looked at him with so much disgust. It had taken years for his memories of war to stitch themselves into something more truthful than the nightmare he had experienced in the moment. More than anything, that expression stood out. These eyes were the same poisonous yellow that he saw in his dreams, but any further resemblance passed beneath his notice, his memories of his long lost family mere scraps of color held close to his heart.
That a stranger would look at him that way in the place of his ancestry raised indignant bile in his gut. It mixed with some deeply rooted emotion evinced by the wind flaring around Sobeille, turning his grief and uncertainty to a hot flash of anger and something more. With two lashes of his dark tail, Ephraim rallied, lips peeling back from gums and yellowed teeth as sea water sucked wet sand past his toes. In the dark of night, Sobeille's presence made her seem larger and fiercer than any opponent he had faced.
Fight me, or die.
It was not Ephraim's lot to be a combatant. That maternal trait had skipped him entirely. Nevertheless, he stalked dangerously forward, dropping his head so his skull was level with his rolling shoulders. He thought about running. He had spent his whole life running. It was a skill all its own. But those xanthous eyes that glared at him and measured him, those kiln-lit eyes that lingered in the back of his mind, that black presence that warded others away from him, none of these would allow it this time.
When the distance between them was short enough that he could make out a gap where a tooth should have been, Ephraim slowed for but a moment. His prowling paw trailed idly over the wet sand. Without warning, it dipped down, digging into earth, and a clump of wet sand sailed toward Sobeille's face. A split second later, the coywolf rushed her with gaping jaws.
Ephraim would not die.
So he must fight.
RE: burn it down - Sobeille - April 26, 2025
sobeille expected surrender - or at the very least, confusion. men often had noble ideas of how to treat women.
instead he stalked forward, brandishing the lash of his tail twice. something identifiable flitted in his gaze as he bared yellowed teeth: not defiance, not grief -- but something sobeille knew well.
this did not earn sobeille's respect, but it earned him a small measure of grace. he would not suffer when she killed him.
as he stalked forward sobeille braced, toes digging into wet sand. she remained at the swashline with the sea to her back. again came that annoying scent; sobeille repressed with a clamp of her tail.
skulking close, he abruptly stopped. having a change of heart? sobeille's jaw lifted in triumph, a smug gleam to her yellow eyes.
she did not notice the hovering paw until it was too late. the sand flung at her hit her square in the face; it stung at her eyes and blinded her, moreover, it assailed her pride.
wh--- BITCH!sobeille howled, freezing as she heard the ominous scamper of footfalls coming close.
he was upon her before she could lower the paw wiping at her tear-streaked eye. momentarily disarmed by his tactic, teeth raked across her cheek immediately, drawing a score of scarlet blood to mingle with black fur.
KILL HIM KILL HIM KILL HIM shrieked the unbidden impulse in her sobeille was terrified to indulge. in that moment, the incubus sobeille spent her entire life disguising from her family became loosened.
here, the only witness to her brutality was him -- and sobeille had plans to address that.
her first retaliation was softened by fractured focus: she brought her paw up to punch him squarely beneath his jaws and dislodge his teeth.
her second retaliation was anything but. she drove her teeth straight for his fucking eye, so that when she plucked his skull from his spine she'd watch his brain melt right out from it.
RE: burn it down - Ephraim - April 27, 2025
Sobeille's exclamation brought the fragments of another memory to his racing mind in the single beat before his teeth met the side of her face. The very sand that granted him an advantage filled his mouth along with the taste of satisfaction and Sobeille's salt. The corners of his lips turned up as a wild impulse swelled inside him.
Prior training told him what to expect. Her teeth would fly for the side of his throat, seeking purchase on vulnerable flesh. Predicting this, Ephraim snapped his neck down to avoid it, dragging teeth through flesh and fur. A brilliant flash of white shattered his vision as Sobeille's paw connected with the underside of his jaw in an unanticipated blow, strengthened further by his own momentum.
As intended, his teeth snapped apart and he reeled away. That alone saved him from Sobeille's next attack. Her teeth dug into the flesh of his brow and cheek a mere hair's breadth from slicing into sclera. Up close, she was much smaller than he expected from the way her gaze and stance commanded the space. It would have been easy to assume she was weak. The scariest wolves he had ever known had always been the smaller ones, though, and he was already learning this of her.
Ephraim tore away with a hissed oath, Sobeille's embedded teeth cutting a red swath across his face. Blood streamed from the deep lacerations and flooded his eye, blinding it. He paced to the side, circling, blinking rapidly and seeking another opening while the tables turned against him. Still he did not run, for the scent of blood mixing with the scent of her made for a potent cocktail that hooked his nose more strongly than the promise of the sea ever had.
Sometimes we are what we are. Ephraim licked blood from his lips and readied himself for her next attack. He was no longer tempted to run from fate. He could not underestimate her again. Sobeille was the grim reaper given flesh. Eventually, every man had to embrace his death, but Ephraim did not intend to make it easy.
RE: burn it down - Sobeille - April 27, 2025
brilliant the arc of blood sprouting from her and hurled upward through an indigo sky.
his teeth scored deep through tissue, a spark of violent pain reeling through her. this was not like holding a child's head underwater, or poisoning a fish, or running among the caribou -- this was visceral.
once before, she had known such strength. the prospect she might not win filled her with frenzied fury.
she only narrowly missed an eye. a shame, considering the mark was something of an emblematic family trait - and losing them by the sea a violent ritual.
he pulled away with a hiss. sobeille did not immediately close the distance, for she was panting already from pain and effort. blood ran in rivulets down both their faces; as he paced and circled, sobeille wrestled with holding onto the last of her fleeing confidence.
no. she reminded herself killing came naturally to her. she threw a man from a cliff. she poisoned another. and once, she killed a cub when her pet hummingbird lost its luster.
besides, she had just buried her fucking maman.
as with the screaming man they chased from the tangle, any evil sobeille committed tonight could be writ away as an episode of grief, of intense visceral territoriality.
she was free.
mixing in with the crippling bouts of pain was a tremor of something inspired by ephraim's heavy cologne of testosterone and salt. its vivid urging disoriented her enough that for a moment, she stood collecting her breath.
he circled. sobeille waited for him to advance and then she charged forward in a line, her skull and neck lowered to drive right into his chest. her teeth did not sit idle; if she collided with him, she aimed to rip his front limb from shoulder junction.
one might win. or, they might both die tonight. sobeille did not care anymore.
RE: burn it down - Ephraim - April 27, 2025
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There was a lull between them, Ephraim staring down the barrel of fate, Sobeille flexing the metaphorical finger on the trigger. He had no sense of her flagging confidence; to his clear eye, she was still because she was assured of her strength. She did not need to pace to mask her weakness or how aging joints protested. His own confidence was wavering, the pain of his flayed face spreading in cobweb cracks across a veneer of adrenaline.
He took one step forward, faltering when a gust bid him sniff with interest, and then she was plowing into him with the full force of her bite sinking into the meat of his limb. A howling shriek tore from his throat as teeth laid open flesh, slicing through muscle and nerves to jam against bone. He had never felt such all-consuming agony in his life. An inferno erupted from his ravaged limb and speared through his shoulder and into his spine, staggering him, turning knees to water and vision to static. Her sawing hold on his flesh was what kept him upright. Up close, Sobeille's rising scent bloomed and for an instant, Ephraim was seized by an intense, confused longing that defied the danger he was in. Animal fear and panic came next, burning all as it coiled around his racing heart.
In a berserk, screaming frenzy, Ephraim thrashed his head, craning this way and that to angle frantic jaws for the side of Sobeille's blood-soaked neck. If he could just get a hold there, he would be able to wrench her teeth from him and pull her around, fit her between his arms—no, he would be able to spill her essence onto the night blackened sand, preserving his own life—he could pin her to the ground and make her beg for mercy—no, she would beg for him—
Panic and possession clashed nauseatingly in Ephraim, consuming him and blunting his bite. He was overwhelmed by the two urges: the desperate need to kill her and save himself, and the desperate need to have her and damn himself. Ephraim stalled, unable to think and blind to how his exposed throat pulsed rapidly against the side of her head.
RE: burn it down - Sobeille - April 28, 2025
screaming was all she heard as she dove for leg; her face streaked in blood and tears alike.
maman, she choked into sandstone fur; ephraim’s teeth scraping through her fur, slicing, sluicing, carving as little rivers of blood ran freely from every new scar. even then she could not be called from the violent episode of grief that overcame her.
maman, sobbed the girl who had been left behind. suddenly the thrashing of the man beneath her teeth seemed a million miles away. she was on a beach laughing as her maman frolicked and threw kelp; she was hunting seal alongside her. she was listening to bedtime stories and laughing at val’s antics. she was being fed some hideous tonic of slug bile after falling sick from the grotto witch’s curse.
would she ever know such a powerful love again?
the scream in her ear tore her from her sorrowed trance. the pain, the suffering, none of it mattered. her heaving sides. her fur thick with blood. the agony in her exposed and dripping face —
the muscles that moments before seemed to relax did the opposite. HER MAMAN WAS DEAD AND NOTHING MATTERED ANYMORE
she released his leg, the taste of blood thick in her mouth. but she did not plan to let him go, not truly.
against the pain threatening to unravel her, sobeille pushed at him with terrific force. it took the last of her energy, and now she was fueled by a blind rage.
if that push yielded the slightest opening, her teeth would drive straight for the lifeblood pulsing beneath his throat.
five centimeters. that’s all it took to undo anyone.
RE: burn it down - Ephraim - May 04, 2025
Five seconds was all it took.
One. The fog in Ephraim's head thickened. The muscles in his jaw momentarily clenched, then released. His biological imperative urged him to relinquish his hold on Sobeille and made him forget that maintaining it was a matter of life or death. The chemical flood in his brain convinced him that there were more important matters.
Two. The sharp remembrance of pain as Sobeille's teeth came free from his leg. Blood poured freely from the deep wound, red rivulets crisscrossing through fur to mix with saltwater and sand below. Ephraim hissed low in his throat and leaned his weight the other way, favoring the injured limb, which hung at an odd cant.
Three. The impressive shape of Sobeille's back as she coiled and sprang, and the feel of her colliding with his chest, this time to bludgeon the same injured side. Ephraim lost his tenuous footing and staggered backward with an agonized yelp, leaving an opening into which her scarred muzzle disappeared.
Four. The deadly pinch of teeth at his throat, and then the world crashing to a halt. Ephraim's breath hitched with a shocked gasp. Every muscle in his body seized with the urge to run, but there was no getting out of this. One move and his life would spill to the ground between her paws.
Five. Everything went slack: his ears drooped downward, his tail shot up between his legs, his hindquarters bowed of their own accord. Ephraim's eyes were wide and rimmed in fearful white as they slid away from Sobeille. His shoulders were the only thing that remained tense, aching from the strain of being held at knifepoint. Ephraim exhaled with a small, shuddering, submissive whine.
Five seconds. The next would decide his fate.
RE: [m] burn it down - Sobeille - May 07, 2025
this was it. the roaring in her ears became cacophonous. two seconds from now his blood would spread out in a malevolent red pool. it would be over. though no amount of spilled blood could be put back into mireille’s lifeless veins, maybe it could drown her grief and hide it for a while.
the reverberation of a shudder jolted sobeille from reverie. he’d fought well. her blood coursed as freely as his.
lightheadedness came down as a wave upon her.
i will never know such profound love again, repeated a child’s mournful voice within. sobeille tensed, teeth hovering over the bounding pulse in ephraim’s throat.
no. she would never again see mireille’s beaming face, nor know her love.
but she could make her own.
with a gasp sobeille released the fighter tensed beneath her jaws. she stepped back, gaze hard but not without approval. he had earned a small measure of respect in the sapphiqian: he had fought brutally — without honor, which she liked — and outsmarted her twice.
get up.sobeille growled, feeling a wave of warm liquid slosh down her throat. her blood matted her face and slicked down her limb, coagulating in uneven clumps along her pelt.
i’ave decided you be worthy.
would chani be horrified if she came upon this scene? was a runner a better competitor than a fighter? sobeille flicked her tail and turned towards the grotto, small droplets of red left like gruesome petals upon the strand.
i will make my own.
RE: [m] burn it down - Ephraim - June 17, 2025
Feel free to control Ephraim in whatever manner you like now to wrap this, I'm so sorry for holding this up for millenia. <3 Lmk if you want anything changed!
Six. She let him go.
Ephraim blinked, bewildered. His pulse still rushed in his throat with the expectation that his next breath would be the last he ever took. The adrenaline of the fight and facing death's wicked scythe dulled the throbbing pain of his mangled shoulder, which otherwise would have borne him to the ground. Sobeille turned with a flick of her tail and a proclamation. The scent she spread in so doing chased lingering doubts from his mind.
He was worthy. Ephraim was worthy. Wasn't that all he had ever wanted, to be more than just Caiaphas' disappointment? More than Drageda's discarded leftovers, more than a rogue wolf making his way through his pathetic life by stealing and running? It stroked his ego for a relative stranger to acknowledge him. In spite of holding his damaged limb aloft, the way he followed her could only be called a proud strut.
It was not a loving affair. Both wolves were wounded and, more than that, they were adversaries. There was a begrudging respect between them, and for that, Ephraim did his best to be a giving partner, but in the end he took the prize that was granted him with a typical man's elegance, or lack thereof. When he was sated, he parted from Sobeille and staggered as his adrenaline drained away and the pain and blood loss hit him.
Feeling woozy, Ephraim let his hindquarters drop to the ground and gave his head a slow shake.
RE: [m] burn it down - Sobeille - June 19, 2025
in that hour, ephraim would be the first and only.
his worthiness. sobeille considered the whole of him. the handsome sheen of blood on his shoulder; his cleverness; the manner he’d fought. they shared a kinship of savagery; the blood coursing her veins fed ephraim's heart, too.
in this hour, his redemption. all of the past was a running river that lead to its eventual conclusion here in the grotto. his past had to happen exactly as it did, for him to stand here in this moment.
his salvation. what weight did the past carry with it, if the outcome was always this? he moved sobeille with his savagery, and in turn moved within her. a rising sensation of claustrophobia took sobeille his weight pressed upon her; his grip alien and alarming. enraged by this invasion of self, something ugly sparked to life in sobeille. as the seconds passed, that terrifying feeling of losing control refused to abate.
his end.
the grotto seemed to come to life around them. flickering blue light playfully bounced along his pained face, illuminating the edge of his spine and jut of his shoulders. she saw him differently under the dancing light: the face slender and bearing resemblance to val's.
gathering the flimsy remains of her own energy, sobeille advanced. with little warning, she seized the back of his neck and wedged her teeth into his spine.
a calm invaded the ambusher as she held ephraim's flogging body between her teeth and shook,
and shook,
and shook until his flesh sheared beneath her teeth and his limbs gradually stilled, never to run again. until the feeling of being violated passed, until the anger ebbed away to pure and simple exhaustion.
spent entire, sobeille glanced at ephraim's blood. the warmth of it pooled at her feet, a sinister gleam of blue running its length as it coursed down in black rivulets towards the small moon-pool in the grotto's center.
for a time she watched reunion of blood and sea, mesmerized by the glimmering blue that flared each time a forbiddingly red droplet hit the moonpool's surface. sobeille used the very last of her reserves to drag his body to the pool and dump it; unaware that now she joined mother and son, first in birth, and now in death.
his legacy.
she who had always been alone now carried ephraim within her.