Mount Everfall your skin knew battle before it knew war

The opaque looking sky overhead opened up and a soft rain begun to fall as Nero skirted around the bottom of Mount Everfall. He stayed close to the mountain but did not venture higher than ground level. It was not a fear of heights that still him but rather a fear of losing footing up treacherous path made even more so by the rain that would render rock slippery. A mountain goat bleats up ahead of him and it draws the DiSarinno’s pace to a halt, sharp eyes of imperial jade zeroing in on the pale goat as it climbs such narrow (and treacherous!) path. It the goat, built to navigate such dangerous terrain hesitates and teeters, the small pebbles beneath it’s hooves giving way as it slips and for a moment Nero stops breathing, pupils blown wide as he anticipates a free meal but fortunate for the goat it manages to regain it’s balance and hops up further and Nero lets out a low huff that ends on a rumble of discontent like brewing thunder of disappointment.

Free meal denied to him he keeps moving, eventually happening upon a cave. He peers in the yawning mouth, dank and dark, the rich smell of rainwater and earth pungent to his nostrils which flare to search beyond the heavy musk of earth, attempting to discern if there was anything dangerous of note hidden within the cave. If there was: it’s scent had long since washed away. The Macedonian heads just inside the mouth of the cave, seeking shelter from the rain which has gradually begun to quicken in pace: small raindrops replaced by fat ones that has left him throughly soaked to the bone. He gives his pelage a hearty shake and is left with a ruffled, soaked but no longer leaving quite a sopping mess.

Lavishly Nero stretches out beneath the shelter of solid rock, pelage of smoky umbra swallowed by the darkness and of the cave as he settles onto his belly in a sphinx-like position, content to wait the rains out.

Darcia realized too late that leaving the cover of the shadewood had been a mistake. The morning had started out bright upon his departure, but as time passed and the distant mountain grew ever-nearer, the sky became darker until a drizzle had suddenly set upon him. The wolf didn't turn back— it was just a little falling water— and he had come too far from his chosen domain to give up on his task now. He wanted to see more of the peak, and he was determined not to return to home being none the wiser about his present target. One could speculate that the mountain wasn't going anywhere, that he could visit it at any time, but Darcia was not a man easily deterred.

He had swam crashing waves and braved thunderous heights. A little rain wouldn't be the thing of nature to best him.

He thought this, until the rain began to fall harder; the weather petulantly soaking him as if it'd been able to read his defiant thoughts. The titan picked up his pace, closer now to the mountain than he was to home, so he chose to find shelter there until the brunt of the summerstorm passed.

He'd been born on a mountain, but even in the dreary gray he could tell that this one was not as tall or as easily traveled as his homeland had been. He spotted the mouth of a cave fairly quickly, picking up his trot into a slow gallop towards it; but he became stalled at its entrance when the scent of another already occupying the space hit him full on the nose upon arriving. He hung back in the rain, unable to see the canine inside, and unwilling to encroach without some idea of what he was walking into. Darcia boofed into the space and narrowed his gaze in an attempt to have his eyes adjust to the dark; stilling so that he might be able to tell if he was unwelcome or not.

The resonate of approaching footfalls is not entirely drowned out by the pouring rains as overhead a rumble of thunder cracks and lets out a low, trembling rumble across the sky. Nero feels it as it vibrates through the rock under foot and tufted chin rises to blink rapidly twice as lighting streaks through the sky, leaving a tangle of electricity in it’s wake that causes the damp hair at his nape to bristle as it cracks and sizzles as it breaks the sound barrier. This reaction is hardly borne of fear, though. There is something that Nero has always loved about thunderstorms. His mother claimed they are born from Zeus; the mightiest god of them all. Nero simply thinks they are lovely — thunderstorms, that is. There is something wild and feral about them that attracts him as he disregards the bit about Zeus as carefully as he dares. He may not conform to the idea of religion quite as wholly as his mother and siblings but the harbinger of the mythos believes enough to be able to tell the stories accurately and with correct emotion. He does not discount their existence despite that there is no true and tangible proof of it. He cannot touch them, see them, smell them and until that happens he is not so easily a follower of blind faith.

The Macedonian’s muscles tense as the owner of the footfalls he’s heard over the low rumble of thunder and whip-like cracks of lightening as they grow louder and closer as the paramount of the storm draws nearer comes into view at the mouth of the cave he’s temporarily claimed as shelter. The silhouette of the male that hesitates just at the mouth of the cave, whose booming boof echoes into the depths of the cave that yawn just behind Nero, is broad and tall, as if he was carved by Ares himself. It is not trepidation nor fear that causes the slight hitch in the vespertine’s throat. Nero has always been an appreciator of the unique and contrasting artwork that is the male and female body and how he finds both equally and irrevocably attractive. If men are to be carved from hardened marble and forged of steel then women are borne of sea-foam as Aphrodite herself and made unbreakable by ivory and iron.

After a moment Nero rises from his position, shedding of the cloak of camouflage that the abysmal darkness offers him. “Come,” Nero invites honeyed, lilting voice given volume from the depths of his chest as to be heard over the increasing tempo of the storm outside. “there is plenty of room to share.” The Macedonian can be plenty selfish and in extending invitation he cannot claim he is being purely selfless. A terse glimpse is offered to the darkened skies outside but he is not at all perturbed by it.

When lightning cut the sky overhead, Darcia was presented with the slim opportunity to see his potential cave-host. Besides appearing well-built, and a shine of stark green eyes, the two-toned gargoyle couldn't tell much else about the stranger. It took him a moment to realize that this was because the other wolf was entirely black, making it difficult to separate him from the surrounding darkness on this cool, dreary day. Darcia waited patiently, ears perked and flicking as he watched the figure rise in one fluid motion, and invite him into drier cover. Through hearing the wolf's gentle timbre, he deduced that it was a male sharing his space with the would-be king.

"Thank you," Darcia accepted graciously, readily slipping into the den with a duck of his head beneath a sheet of falling water at the cave's mouth. The wolf shook out his fur at a respectful distance, and then approached a few steps with a neutral set to his body so that he might get a better whiff of his circumstantial companion. Darcia, for all his proposed superiority, was not an uncivilized savage. The male had been kind enough to share his space without any unkind preamble, and the titan in turn was not inclined to disservice the kindness with a show of his truly pompous identity. He reclined on his lean haunches to further reiterate that he meant no harm here.

The wolf didn't seem the carry any other scent on him but his own, but the rain could have seen to that, so Darcia made no assumptions. "I am Darcia," he introduced in a low rumble after another bout of lightning strikes and crying thunder. "I appreciate thee not sending me on my way."

Words of gratitude come from the stranger at the threshold of Nero’s temporary shelter and the Macedonian accepts it with a quiet rumble of acknowledgment to replace the simple nod of his head he would have given instead. There is respectful distance between them so that Nero is not bombarded by flying droplets as the other male gives his own pelage a hearty shake — not that Nero would have noticed. His fur is damp and has begun to curl at the nape of his neck. He barely notices if not for the occasional shiver that ripples up his spine despite that the day is hot, made even more muggy by the precipitation that now clings and will no doubt linger even after the thunderstorm passes. Nero shifts then, moving closer to the mouth so he is not swallowed so thoroughly by shadows, so he might look upon his new found companion and that said companion can see him as opposed to a vague, shadowy outline of umbra upon abysmal pitchy.

The Macedonian knows, though, he is not entirely stygian with lighter highlights of smoke weaved through his pelage but even so it is likely akin to trying to see a needle in a haystack. “Nero,” The roman offers his own name as he tucks away his companions. Darcia. “I am called Nero.” Nero is but one of his many names but out of them all it is the one that stuck (plus Tiberius was taken so Torvi had to improvise a bit). “Think nothing of it.” Nero accepts the gratitude but he does not seek to collect a debt. After all, this cave is not his. Nero himself sought shelter here too …the only difference being that he happened to beat Darcia to it first. “What brings you out this way, if I may ask?” Of course, it’s not truly any of Nero’s business and the roman would hardly feel offended if Darcia chose not to disclose. Small talk had never exactly been a strong suit of his but he has the desire to keep conversation flowing and talking about the weather struck him as horribly cliché.

Nero is aware that he heads in the wrong direction of Stavanger Bay, Horizon Ridge, and Phoenix Maplewood (for Mercury's instructions were fairly concise and clear) but Mount Everfall reminds him of Mount Pompeii in exactly the way one might imagine and though Nero suspects he cannot return he aches for something familiar in these new (to him) lands.

Darcia watched closely as the wolf drifted nearer; the shadows appearing to part for him, his raven-and-smoke pelage taking on a svelte figure that the male couldn't quite keep his golden eyes from. Instinct dictated his attraction to she-wolves— he could never resist a set of slender, dancing hips— but feral preference and a singular need to procure everything of power and beauty, often translated to carnal proclivities that did not concern procreation. Watching this lean, robust specimen now stirred such emotions, and Darcia became intensely aware that he would have liked nothing more than to dominate and claim this male. The wolf who named himself as Nero.

He kept his driving desires behind an unmoved facade, his lantern eyes the only thing moving in the gloom aside from the ripple of goose-pimpled flesh beneath his rain-saturated coat of black and white fur. "I came to visit the mountain that borders the forest I intend to claim. The storm caught me before I got the chance," he easily admitted. "And what of th— yourself?" Darcia returned in a quiet sort of purr, catching himself as his tongue slipped onto the language of Old English. His eyes glittered with naked interest, and the only notion that his attention went elsewhere was the faint flickering of one ear, distracted by the noise of rainfall behind him.

Nero does not expect a response to his question, let alone one that strikes him as honest and thus when he receives one he is (pleasantly) surprised. They are …well not strangers as they know one another’s names but new acquaintances perhaps and it would have went understood if Darcia had chosen not to indulge upon his purpose. Yet, the titan does and upon it comes word of intending to lay claim to a forest that borders Mount Everfall. Could it be the very forest he has just come from? That he met the intriguing, silent and mysterious Tacita? “The forest to the north? The one they call Shadewood?” Nero inquires, unable to still his tongue or quiet his curiosity. It is a beast of nature that has plagued the DiSarinno’s for generations: that temptation to seek answers, to gleam knowledge (perhaps because he knows knowledge is power). It is a temptation that Nero is weak against. …One of them, anyway.

The question is returned to him in a quiet purr of a noise that is enticing and pleasurable to his ears. “This place reminds me of where I was born. Of course it is not the same but it offers some familiarity.” A familiarity that he knows he would not even need if he could have just done as he was expected to; but he could not. It was torture watching Manakin waste to his death but being the one to kill him when Nero had spent all of his life up to that point protecting him would be utterly unimaginable. His cowardice strikes him like a arching swing of a sword but he would rather bear the brand of coward than kinslayer.

“Also, I was tracking a mountain goat but unfortunately for me it did not fall to it’s death as I hoped it might.” He admits with a sheepish tone while a coy smile tugs the corners of his lips upwards as the vespertine speaks with a soft chuckle. It is shame for more reasons than one, Nero cannot help but think as he regards his colossal companion with coy jade gaze.

Darcia nodded succinctly to the question, serving the wolf with a nonverbal response as he tried unsuccessfully to pinpoint exactly how he felt about Nero already knowing of the hardwood forest. It was a large place, and certainly hard enough to defend on his own without his frequent trips beyond the treeline, but he now had the sneaking suspicion that the woods might be famous— a fact that would make them even harder to take without the support of others to fit in his stead. He decided within that same moment that this didn't matter. It could be just him and one other wolf, and he would still defend them and the woods will all the strength his body could muster.

His ears twitched and pressed forward atop his shadowed crown, listening intently to the man's cool timbre, letting it wash over him as he avoided thinking too deeply about his more craven wants— to hear such a voice call out in both pain and pleasure. Darcia made a low noise in his throat, an understanding hum that told without words that he related to the sentimental qualities of seeing something familiar, something nostalgic. He blinked slowly, choosing not to respond out of personal preference not to reminisce of such things himself. Running into Benedict had served him with enough memories, both fond and unpleasant, to last him for the rest of the year.

Darcia snorted lightly at Nero's last admission, and his mouth glittered with faint pearls as his fangs peeked past dark lips in a softly wry smile. The colossus slid forward suddenly, taking up the pose of the sphinx as he hunkered down to weather the storm. He began to lick the access water from his forelimbs, but glanced up towards his companion from beneath hooded lids as he finally spoke between measured grooming strokes. "One must have a lot of hope to imagine a goat losing its footing," he hum-chuckled, beginning to carelessly nibble at his paw pad that had some sort of thorn or pebble lodged in it.

"What other impossible things does thou hope for?" he mused a little playfully, cutting his eyes to find the man's expression again.

Nero has no particular attachment to the Shadewood; he has no intentions of stealing it out from underneath Darcia. In truth, the Macedonian has not given much thought to what he would do once he has visited the places Mercury spoke of; and hadn’t truly planned this trip out beyond running from the duty he was expected to carry out, to be the one to press teeth into soft flesh of Manakin’s throat and steal his brother’s life. It was only after Nero reached the Wilds had he decided to see the places Mercury had dwelled, no matter how temporary. He is the disgraced heir and seeks no desire to try to make the visage of amends by visiting his father’s previous haunts. It is only an idea that came to him all the while to hide from the guilt that he feels stirring in the darkest corners of his heart. Guilt that he could not save, guilt that he could not kill. Of his own future he affords little thought. It is not in his paws, though, he thinks. It has never been his. It was predetermined by the Fates …or so that is how the myth goes. That everything is pre-determined. His choice. Tacita. Darcia. It was easy to believe that this …all of it was meant to be.

It was certainly less terrifying then admitting that he is the captain of his own fate, that he controls it and that his choices are many and each bears different fruit: some sweet and others rotten. Nero watches as his companion slides forward in a motion that almost seems too elegant for the broad titan. It causes a shiver to sliver down the umbra Macedonian’s spine as he imagined how the titan’s muscles might have moved with that simple, seamless action and if he moves as elegantly whilst in the intimate throes of passions. “The heavy rains made the rocky path it climbed slippery. It lost it’s footing for a few seconds but regained it’s balance. Not impossible,” He murmurs with amused cheek, though of course, he is goat-less and thus Nero understands how it would seem a foolish thing to hope for: a clumsy mountain goat. “Fortuna was watching over it.” For it was either divine intervention or …dumb luck.

“Oh a many great and terrible things,” He lightly jests with a low purl, reclining back upon his haunches. His ears flutter back to rest at half mast atop his skull. “I would not mind touching the sun.” He murmurs aloud with a soft, amused quirk of his lips. Nero has has heard (and told) the story of Icarus numerous times to know exactly what desiring the beautiful sun god wrought and yet it was an impossible fancy he could offer.

Not impossible; Fortuna was watching of it. Darcia was amused by the correction, and the improbability of having run into a wolf of religion, or at the very least of some sort of faith. Such wolves fascinated him. They often had much to say, much for him to think about, even if he didn't necessarily care for such sentiments himself. "Aye, not impossible then," he hummed, ears flicking. "Unlikely, I think would be a better term." And as their conversation turned to other "unlikely" things, he found that the dreams this man carried with him were far beyond Darcia's imaginative capabilities. He felt as if he could listen to Nero all day, eager to weigh what impossible ideas would fall from his lean jaw next.

The goliath lifted his head and swiped his tongue across his teeth. This was a portion of the conversation he wanted to pay whole attention to, so he stopped in his grooming for the moment to respond. "Thou art a more complex wolf than I, Nero." He breathed through his nose to clear his father's way of speaking from his mind again, before adding: "I cannot fathom how you create such wild dreams."

“Unlikely,” Nero mused in quiet, coy agreement, a small hum of amusement drawing in the back of his throat, tail giving a single, soft wag against the earthen stone he reclines back upon. “I like unlikely much better than impossible.” if he was being honest, that was. Impossible was too limiting, he felt. A word designed by more superior beings to keep those with potential from reaching their full potential even if they are inferior: by birth, by circumstance. There is a twitch of Nero’s lips and a small duck of his head, humbled as he takes Darcia’s words of complexity in correlation to him to be a compliment. It hadn’t sounded as an insult might, at least, but in truth it was up to Nero in how he interpreted it. He chose compliment — perhaps because he was quite desperate, vainly so even!, to hear one fall from the titan’s lips.

“Perhaps because it is easy for me to get lost in them,” and even if Nero had not always known it he’d sought to lose himself in the mythos he’d come to learn to weave as expertly as his mother before him. Expectation was a heavy thing and being the chosen had been easy at first. It had made him feel singled out, special, the superior of his litter even as his siblings fell beneath his shadow because Nero is a vain and narcissistic creature at his (very) worst and until the heavy burden began to press against his shoulders as the sky presses against those of Atlas for the rest of eternity did it open Nero’s eyes. Keeping Manakin safe, re-telling the myths in poetic verses that make his telling different from Gaia’s own it kept him from being crushed for the longest time even though.

“It is dangerous to love the sun, I’ve heard. Icarus loved Apollo so much he fashioned wings so that he might finally touch his lover as he runs across the sky; but it is not for mortal to touch and when he got too close it melted his wings and he plummeted to the sea where drowned.” There are no heroes with happy endings — only tragedies. Icarus, Perseus, Hercules, Achilles and Patroclus. The Macedonian let out a small, terse sound of amusement. “What about you Darcia?” Nero seeks to make an inquiry of his own, now. “Have you never desired anything unlikely?” He does not use the word impossible, true to his (rather stubborn) nature.

Darcia wasn't the kind of wolf to trade insults— he simply didn't have a deep enough interest in those he didn't care for to offer them a verbal opinion on their inadequacies— but he was inclined to serve compliments where they were due. And to him, Nero's depth and conversation were certainly deserved of his  appreciation. He made a low noise of contentment as his company relayed to him that his imagination was a way in which for him to become lost; not something that the warwolf had any experience in, but it was a quality he could admire in another. Besides, if every wolf were like himself, the world would likely turn to a dull and violent place. For where were any of the practical and the grounded without the dreamers and fanatics beside them.

He listened raptly to Nero's next tale, even daring to pull himself forward on his belly, chipping at the space between them with casual subtlety. Another bolt of lightning punctuated the end of Icarus; a wolf (or entity of some sort) whose obsessive love had been a part of his eventual demise. He could not help but correlate the myth to the potential he saw here; a modicum of potential fate that had drawn them both here, and could lead to poor Nero's destruction at the hand of a wild and sun-hot heat of possessiveness that radiated through Darcia's core.

He didn't believe in many things, though had come to understand of himself that his wants were dangerous, and his appetites weren't easily sated. He would consume and consume like a supermassive black hole, and he had conflicting thoughts on whether or not he wanted to claim Nero in such a deep dark pit of own his intense love.

Darcia's ears twitched as the question was predictably turned on him, and the two-toned monolith smiled wryly. "Besides now, you mean?" he rumbled with coy obscurity. "I suppose I have desired many things in my life, though none that I can define as entirely unlikely... I fear I am not a dreamer as thee, young Nero."

Always the question remained, the question Nero had no answer to: whose love in Icarus’ tale had been the mortal boy’s undoing? Had it been Icarus’ love for Apollo or was it the sun god’s love for Icarus? Whose fault had it been, truly? It is easy to say that Apollo had been Icarus undoing because he was immortal but Apollo had grieved intensely. It could be claimed that Icarus had been Apollo’s undoing for the sun god had forgotten that he would burn Icarus, that the boy could not handle him in all of his godly glory. Perhaps, Nero thinks, the blame is equally shared for their mistakes. For forgetting the nature of gods and men. It is easy for him to play arbitrator because he was not involved. He is merely meant to carry it upon his tongue and to the ears of those that would listen.

Besides now? This catches Nero’s attention and umbra ears cup forth atop his skull as with piqued interest but he tempers his question and bites lightly upon his tongue offering the titan a nod (though he is unsure if the action is caught by the other forgetting that they still linger in the darkening mouth of the cave) to keep the question from spilling forth as Darcia answers his initial inquiry. “That is not a bad thing,” Nero speaks in regards to Darcia admitting that he is not a dreamer. Dreamers tended to need grounded companions to tether them to the earth lest they get caught up in these dreams and are left to waste away as they forget that they are more than dreams. Nero contemplates if his type of dreaming is simply vanity or if he is a dreamer of the day: those that are dangerous because they would act upon it and make it possible.

He supposes that time will be more forthcoming with that answer.

“And what is it that you desire now?” The question feels dangerous as it passed from betwixt his lips but he is undeniably bewitched and intrigued; thus he feels compelled to unravel the mystery before him in a different way then he hopes to unravel Tacita’s presented mystery.

Darcia seemed to consider Nero's question for a long moment, meeting the yearling's royal-jade gaze with a level and unreadable expression as he mulled over a multitude of possible answers. It had indeed been a dangerous query, one meant to beckon the beast and unveil his desires. The wolf was not inclined to ignore such blatant calling, and when he first obliged to the request, it was with the slow, physical motion of an imperially balletic rise. Darcia stood now, tall and magnetic as a heat seemed to rise from him in the cool confines of their weathered shelter. Lightning punctuated his stance, and when another snarl of thunder had passed, the two-toned king answered him with a few steps forward.

"Now?" he pressed in a low voice, taking another step. "My desires are countless." Another two steps, and he had come close enough to rustle the hairs of Nero's nape with several deep inhales. "And they all currently revolve around you." His teeth spread to nip gently at the long, dark furs of his cheek, testing the waters to see what contact he was allowed and to see how the male responded to his advance.

Nero watches Darcia as the titan makes his approach, eyelids lowering as he gives the larger male a hooded look, ears cupping forth atop his skull as he speaks, answering the Macedonian’s bold inquiry. Countless desires, he speaks, and he is so near! Nero’s body does not tense though as he might have if the approach was unwelcome — for Darcia’s approach was welcomed by Nero. The titan’s next words spark a breathless anticipation within Nero’s throat, accompanied by the rustle of the fur at his nape that Darcia’s breath stirs. The nip of Darcia’s teeth at the fur of his cheek causes Nero’s eyes to close and a low rumble of pleasure to work it’s way up the strong column of the DiSarinno’s throat. “Then see desires fulfilled,” Nero purls in invitation to the titan offering himself as a he imagines Icarus offered himself to Apollo, or Patroclus to Achilles. For Darcia would not be the only to see the smoldering burn of desires fulfilled; Nero is not selfless, after all.