Blackwater Islands bruise

ingram.

these few days past she had evaded his presence as never before. yet her keeper seldom left her mind. the unnamed god had sent a dream. a dream of destruction, a dream of hopelessness. a dream of marriage.

she sought him, pulsing and thrumming with the ache of this knowledge. @Ingram. grim. her grim.

hers, until the unnamed god bade her promise him to another.

the keeper is found as he patrols the beach; finding comfort in the spray of salty brine and roiling of the waves. the sand swallows the sound her footfalls would have otherwise made, but ingram senses her presence as one senses the approach of another even when their back is turned. he peers over his shoulder, giving a soft wag of his tail at her approach.

trikova, he greets in the quiet of it just being the two of them; pleased as always to see her and grateful that her period of evading him — strange and worrisome to the keeper as it was — was over. is everything alright? asks ingram.

no, abrupt, sharp like the crack of a whip. the prophet shook her head and released a long, tired breath. yes. the unnamed god has sent me a... task for you.

she reached for him with uncharacteristic reserve, her touches downy-light and almost mournful. do you trust me, my keeper? would you follow me into death if our god demanded it? intimate as the words were, her voice fell laden with weariness. the listener did not wish to ask this of him.

there was a distinct juxtaposition between her initial response and the secondary, more controlled to ingram, response. ok, ingram replies simply; unsure why whatever task the unnamed god has given her to give to him has brought about such a change in her. he does not like it. she asks him questions; things that the keeper has thought that he has already answered: noting that she calls him by his title.

confusion paints his features; but his answer is unwavering. i do trust you, hardly anyone else, for that matter. i would follow you anywhere. for ingram, it had less to do with the unnamed god and more with trikova herself.

i would follow you anywhere.

it was the wrong answer. as if in a dream, nothing was out of place; all was as it should be, yet a sense of wrongness pervaded the very air between them. as if in a dream, the prophet could only follow the path before her, against every instinct which urged her to turn away. there had never been any choice in the matter.

good, the prophet nodded, a well of cold black water seeping over her bones. the unnamed god's demands are clear. you must be married, and through this union the druids will be strengthened. your bride has not yet been chosen, but it is my wish that you have a voice in the decision.

then, softer, not as the prophet this time but as his trikova; this need not change the life we have envisioned for ourselves, grim.

a sweet lie.

to be married; a thrum of his heart.

a hopeful squeeze of his lungs, expelling his breath.

and then the ruination: that his bride was not chosen. that it did not have to change them. immediately, the keeper rejects it. if his marriage is not to her than he does not want it.

he knows this stalwartly. with all of his being.

no. the keeper says; sharper than he has ever spoken ( to her ). wanlida and the voices of the past commanders screaming in his head. i only wish to wed you. you or no other. in his mind: there was no way he would compromise because there was no compromise. this was not how he'd imagined the depth of his feelings for her might be spilt but this was how it happened: in defiance.

she closed her eyes even before ingram's sharp rejection cut the air between them, sensing his tension. he would not wed.

not unless his bride was the prophet herself.

to hear his desire stated so plainly struck lightning in her veins. she turned away. the dreampath beckoned.

you do not know what you ask for, ingram, the prophet heard herself speak, but could not feel the movement of her lips. you do not know what i am. not truly.

she turns away from him, but ingram is not cowed; far from deterred. even as she speaks of what she truly is: that he does not know. it does not matter, he thinks with a fierceness that burns into the very marrow of his bones. he loves her; regardless. this confession — even if just to himself — brings both a soft bubble of surprise that is quickly quelled by the fact that it was no actual surprise at all. he has known; for a long time.

it doesn't matter. tell me, if you think it will make a difference. or don't, because it will not lessen how i feel about you. he is confident, because what could be worse than fragheda? what could be worse than matricide? he is no innocent lamb. he has slaughtered without flinching —

and he would not be moved from him declaration.

he would wed her, or none at all.

when you look on me, you see a young woman. you see dark fur and mismatched eyes. this is the vessel i occupy, yes, but i existed long before my birth. long before the birth of my mother, or her mother before her,

the listener turned to face him, eyes of night and day ablaze.

once i was a creature of the void. a prince of the great beyond, where no mortal has ever tread. a god in my own right. or so i thought.

that night when she had thrown herself into the sea, she had learned the truth of it. yet the prophet had refused to speak of it, refused to think of it even in the most private of her thoughts. she had cast it from her mind, that endless sorrow of loss at a magnitude she could no longer truly grasp. to speak of it now tore a hole in the fabric of her.

there were many of us, but one by one the princes of the void traded power for mortality. i do not know why.

that decision was my own, once, though i do not remember it. i cast myself down for reasons i do not yet understand. in many ways, mortality has changed my nature. but the creature i was still resides within the flesh, the prophet's voice tightened with displeasure as she continued. i exist with one paw in each realm, forever caught between. a union between myself and a mortal soul cannot exist. to wed me, you must become...

the unknowable; the untouchable.

as i am. it is a great price to pay.

ingram is quiet as she speaks; the words flowing from her, spinning a familiar — though different tale. it reminds him of himself ...though the commanders were not percieved as 'gods'; though it makes him wonder was the difference was. they were revered. leaders. of a constant ouroboros of rebirth.

i tread a similiar path, ingram admits. my ...soul is that of the commanders of the past. i hear them frequently, though the most frequent and loudest is called wanlida. it was what he had 'kept' from her for a while ( though he wouldn't go so far as to call it a secret per se ). but i will do it. to wed you. i will do whatever it takes. because the thought of wedding anyone else was ( unfairly ) repulsive; and his devotion to her was so resolute.

another piece fell into place, another shadowy corner set ablaze; deeper understanding began to dawn upon the prophet as she heard ingram's words. the bones, the spirits... it all made sense.

she would not lose him to marriage, then, but to madness. the same madness which had created her.

you do not know what you ask for, the listener echoed her own words from moments before. to lure such an entity...

they were drawn to imbalance, spawning from great festering wounds of suffering and of indulgence. the listener herself had been drawn to the darkness in ursus, the great and terrible shadows cast by their dreadwitch and his murderous lover. yet that was not the source of her hesitation. such scenarios were easily found, or created, within this disjointed world.

there will be much death. first to strike the imbalance which lures my kind, to tear the very fabric of our reality and allow the screams of the spirits to draw a creature of the void. it will devour you. it will take everything you are, everything you have, and forge it anew in red and black. the bloodlust will rule you for a time, as it ruled me. you will not be yourself. then there will be more death.

he would not truly be himself ever again. the listener thought of cerulean, of the woman's hunched form as she wept over her sister at the height of viridian's illness. though her eyes were ever dry, the depth of her own grief could only be compared to cerulean's wracking sobs.

and when you wake from the haze of violence, you will feel as if you walk in a dream. you look around and see all is as it should be, yet it feels unreal. it feels wrong. this is not your world, this is not your life, this is not you. but there is no escape, except in true dreams when the otherworld beckons. little else will please you.

this would be your life, all of your lives from now until the end of time. you are certain this is what you want?

he would never be mortal again. the listener did not know if he would hold the same appeal without that spark. but if this was the unnamed god's will — and how could it be anything else? — then she would pay the price. ingram's own price to pay was far greater.

ingram draws in a breath, considering all the ramifications; weighing the options. the whispers of the commanders thrum in his head like a seperate heartbeat. would they make room or would this entity consume them? would they merge together into one being? he does not know but he knows that he wishes to be with her and no one else.

he would do whatever it took to be with her; unable to fathom a life where she was with another. where he was with anyone but her.

his mind is made. i will do whatever i have to do to be with you. ingram tells her; a solemn vow.

so he chose his fate. perhaps it was always meant to be this way. the spirits had gathered with their violent whispers and claws, shrieking their approval in soft breathy voices. perhaps... to be keeper was to give yourself to the madness.

bile burned at the juncture of throat and mouth, threatening to churn itself up and out as she spoke. tell me of wanlida, she murmured numbly, beginning her assessment without fanfare. theirs would not be a union of love, of celebration.

theirs would be a union seething in aether and old, wild magicks; theirs would be a union of destruction.

and their god had led them here.

tell me of wanlida —

wanlida, ingram begins, letting the title of roll off of his tongue. bringer of death. determined and brutal. aggressive, assertive and hostile. wanlida is him and he is them; though he remains ignorant of the fact that the entity — the soul — he feels is that of his grandmother. this entity is competitive and jealous and unforgiving.[/q]

though he is not sure what telling her of wanlida might accomplish: he considers that perhaps it would be easier to find one of her princes that mimic the strongest traits of the loudest commander in his head.

bringer of death. was there ever so fitting a soul for this purpose?

then you will survive. it is only strength of soul which will preserve those parts of you. but make no mistake, ingram; wanlida will forever be tied to this entity. this power. this... curse.

it will become part of you. or you will become part of it.

would that she knew which fate she had met so long ago.

come. we will begin with eldritch berries. we will walk the otherworld together, and you will learn to embrace the madness that is the curse of all seers. this will be the first step.

the dreampath beckoned, and in spite of the wrongness, in spite of every instinct which urged her to turn away...

she followed.

i'll create a new thread for us <33