Ankyra Sound then, a vision came to me — when you came along

they had made it. 

the sylph had become more intense the closer they came to her old range - a rather perturbing sight, given her propensity for being profoundly ardent as is. 

she picked an old path, well known to her — yet overgrown. 

no scent of bear. no scent of settlement. whatever tendrils of hope remained in her heart that she would see her fractured family here had dissipated — for no scent at all lingered here. nothing but salt and the breeze of deep ocean and damp flowstone. moss. trees old beyond reckoning. 

her heart hammered in that tiny rib cage; a pounding far too fervent for so little an organ. as if her heart were fit to burst, to flutter into rags of grey tissue and raw pumping blood. 

she thought of all the things to grace these halls; and all the events that darkened them. 

vlad. saltwinter. 

kjalarr. gods — who had he become?

the ruin of the nereides. kevlyn. 

that red bitch that had committed him to eternal and unremitting sleep. 

she was almost to the grotto now. the tree line had broken and the grey surf pounded in her peripherals. its entry remained unchanged - a grim mouth that opened to some deep and impenetrable fortress. 

kierkegaard. her missing children. the presumed dead she kept with her always. 

so much history in this cold and haunted place — her home. 

or was it?

He was spending more time in the Sound now, for it was so close to the cliffs he called home.  The waves were closer here (though the stars were further away) -- he came by day and returned home by night.

So far he had run into nobody other than members of his own home; to catch the scent of a foreigner on the wind so close to home drew his attention and his paws.

He found her quickly and held his ground at a distance, for now merely curious as oblivious as he was to what kind of threat this witch had once posed to his family.

ooo THANKA for joining!

each step she took, her heart hammered a rhythm anew. it was too close — tantalus must have felt this way trying to sup water to his wretched mouth — and yet, she had traveled so many miles it hardly seemed real that she was here, standing before the monstrous entrance to her hallowed home. 

the entrance to her heart, even. 

her crew, if it could even be called that, was forgotten as she peered into that unfathomable black. she almost dared not enter - as if some dark order lingered beyond her sight, forbidding her from embracing the cold comforts of her old home. 

she hung the balance when a figure appeared, lean with youth but not all together a child. she measured the boy with a quick gaze; svalinn’s age, maybe. 

too old to kidnap. not that the siren queen would ever love a child again. her heart belonged only to her two (known to her) surviving children - raleska and svalinn. no other could possibly breach the thorny walls of her savage heart.. not ever again. 

her mind had been made. he could follow her — or ignore her as she had done to him. in this moment she cared only for the song deep in the grottos hearth, that rung in her ears like some siren’s perilous croon. 

in sure steps that disguised her heightened adrenaline, caiaphas reunited with the black shadows of the grotto. slipping under the smooth arch of ancient gneiss, the sylph felt as if she were a cavernous hollow, and the grotto the black liquid that filled her to the brim.

bit by bit the emptiness within her dissipated; bit by trickling bit, something in her was forged anew.

Couldn't resist. :)

The measured bite of her yellowed stare reached the youth, though he did not quake beneath it as he might have when he was younger.  He was old enough now to have learned to not care what individuals thought of him so long as he was in good standing with Drageda as a whole.

His solid stare found the wraith in turn.  The front of her face was dark, hardly deciperhable from the darkness in which she stood.  The rest of her was deadly pale.  She was like him, marked so starkly that nobody would mistake her for anyone else... but she'd also lived longer and seen more than he could imagine.  When she turned away from him, he followed only after she had disappeared into the yawning darkness, and stayed in suspense between the beckoning void and the safety of light.

He cast a glance over his shoulder and thought about calling for someone, and also thought about returning home to tell the tale of a black-masked stranger in the sound.

if he followed, the sylph acknowledged it only by the flick of a long and piped ear. she had felt his gaze long after the arms of the grotto closed in on her. 

down through the dank hollow of warped flowstone and columns of ruined stalagmites; down past corrupted boughs of slime and past the skittering shadows of nameless and orderless beasts that stirred only as caiaphas passed. 

it was near black in that indomitable void, but caiaphas’ feet found the worn surface of the path easily enough. her steps, muted by the quiet clink of tired water and the groan of stone against empty space, seemed diminutive in such a complex and massive sprawl of tunnels — as if she and tux were simply lost souls that walked the behemoth underbelly of a towering beast.

tux is a little bitch sorry

His eyes adjust to the darkness, but somehow still it gets darker.  The stone floors become wet, the walls claustrophobic, and every sound made both echoes and is swallowed by the vast caverns ahead.  His breath quickens; he can go no further.  It's time for him to head home.  Later, he might recall to @Blixen that he met someone on his scouting trip... but for now, all he can think about is being swallowed by the darkness, and he makes for a quick exit.

all good! caiaphas is a big one, kek

the boy lingered a moment, but did not follow.

caiaphas paid him little mind after that, keeping a smile all to herself as she explored the empty pathways of her hallowed home. here, the old faces of tired stone and whetted moss greeted her -- as if the spirits of old comrades come to welcome her return.

she knew not how long she spent down in that cavernous pit, exploring, foraging, fording -- yet no scent of her children or her mate persisted, and eventually the wraith returned to the surface world, her shoulders rounded with newfound ambition.

it seemed strange to visit the bowels of ankyra's hearth, and then just as soon leave -- but the sylph spared the sinking grotto no sympathy as she blazed her way out of the dark tunnels.

Though asked to remain behind while the Eyjolfur matriarch surveyed the Sound's keep, Svalinn was unable to resist the beckoning of rebellion—the beginning markers of a wolf that was growing too large to be bossed around. He was eager to check his boundaries, see how much he could get away with before reprimanding. At one time Caiaphas had been impossibly hard-pressed to leave her children alone for any amount of time, but the older they became, the more lax she seemed with lording over their every move. And without stringent direction she would find the child of her adoptive son to be far more headstrong than any of her prior charges.

He was tracking his mother now; curious to both see what she was up to on her own and what punishment (if any) would befall him for arriving before prompted. He was distracted somewhat by the ocean and its incessant swooshing songs, annoyed too, but nothing else about this place struck him as particularly fascinating. The way she spoke of this place, he thought he might feel some sort of connection to it, but this area was just as foreign as any other place, and (not for the first time) he thought about their former densite at Heron Lake.

Just as Caiaphas was exiting the dank grotto, Svalinn spotted her. He froze, realizing only in that moment that he didn't want her ire at all. He should've stayed with Raleska.

perfectly content to leave and not look back, caiaphas was surprised to see a golden flash in her vision. she hissed, recognizing the figure immediately -- and a reproachful, almost wrathful look stole over her black mask. svalinn -- indolent and uncaring of the consequences -- had followed her here.

she swept towards him in angry strides, yet the closer she came the less furious those steps became, until at last her anger had devolved into something a little softer. glancing over him -- and then over to where she had last seen tux -- caiaphas announced her disapproval with a rumbling growl. "you should be catching my teeth, child," she snarled, though much of the bite had left her: "but because of the occasion, i will spare you. what do you think? grand, no? is it everything you hoped it'd be?"

His ears folded back, and he felt himself shrink as she spotted him. How silly of him to think his gold coat might go unnoticed. Svalinn tucked his chin in a motion to steel himself against the oncoming onslaught, but he watched he watched as her puffy approach deflated slightly, and he thrummed inwardly with the satisfaction that he'd gotten his way without being physically put in the dirt.

He tossed a grateful nip towards her chin, twitching his ears as she continued. At her tone—and the embedded implication that he should respond favorably—Svalinn looked at her slyly. "Oh yes, Ma," he sniped. "It's every boy's dream." He rolled his eyes, turning his muzzle away from a future look or act he presumed might not be friendly.

"The ocean is just so... noisy," he admitted further with a rueful flap of his ears, glancing helplessly in the direction of the coast, then back at her. "But I'll get used to it, if this is going to be home now." Again, he forgot.

svalinn's sarcastic quip did not go unnoticed, though caiaphas was too busy proudly surveying their -- her -- old domain. she knew every piece of the sound, from the giant trees that slept in the ancient forest, to the black rivers that darkened the throat of the grotto.

this was -- or should be -- their home.

"you'll get used to it. and then miss it, when you are inland." she answered in her own cryptic way, already making move to leave. she had other errands more pressing than indulging in nostalgia, and svalinn like as not, was now included in the ride.

Svalinn, likely as he always would, didn't agree or disagree with the statement. He simply shouldered the new responsibility of adjusting, without thought, and he followed Caiaphas on with the dutifulness she had carefully (and painfully) instilled in him since his birth.