Logs:Horrid Creatures
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| RL Date: 10 August, 2015 |
| Who: Besmernyth, Qhyluth |
| Involves: Fort Weyr, High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Two inhospitable minds meet, to predictable results |
| Where: Dragon Brains |
| When: Day 28, Month 6, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
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| Besmernyth projects nothing - no searching, no worry, just silence and perhaps a cutting cold breeze - to those dragons who have stretched their minds so far in pursuit of the Fortian queen who is no more. Beyond observing the parade of consciousness, he has little interaction. He answers when he is addressed; he shoos off the more persistent sightless black birds and long, black hounds with too many teeth. He's all-but hung a sign: go away, she is not here. (To Qhyluth from Besmernyth) And then there is the water. A slow, inexorable tide that presses, stretched like some unfathomable ocean between minds. It stretches into infinity, that terrible dark water; it shudders, faint ripples upon the surface catching the red-silver light of the twin moons that hang above. Qhyluth seeks and the reach of water suffices in lieu of a proper appendage. The cool breeze, the distance, the unspoken warning; the water does not care. It will reach - and touch. (To Besmernyth from Qhyluth) The dogs are the first to lash out, paws dipped in unwelcome shuddering water, before they rage, lifting their many mouths to the heavens - to unfamiliar and jarring moons that do not match the silvery slip of their own - and howling their affront. This is not their water. This thing is an interloper. It does not belong. Besmernyth does not silence them; he simply breathes out from somewhere far, exhaling frost, with the intent to freeze it's progress. (To Qhyluth from Besmernyth) The ocean is cold; the water unpleasant. Metallic to the tongue and nose; metallic and tinged with bitter ashes. Wrong on a visceral level that defies articulation. The primordial ocean itself starts to coil around those paws, only to retreat - at least at first - with that kiss of frost. And were it Her icy presence extending itself, he would surely retreat. Instead, that freezing breath gives birth to icy crystals that spread in warped constellations on the surface of water gone suddenly still. Luminous patterns, sickly and phosphorescent in hue; nightmarish faces, twisted unspeakably. The moons narrow to bloodied crescents, half-hidden behind a veil of clouds. Twilight persists, deepens, and a light in the distance flickers on. A bell tolls, deep and ancient and brassy. Sounding. Seeking. Curious. (To Besmernyth from Qhyluth) That fractal pattern will not be taken from him; he warps and shapes it as it spreads after the first face, into something undoubtedly serene and repetitive, and at intervals it goes down, deeper, searching for the root, for something he can choke the life out of. The dogs go back - nonono - in the scent, though none dare a taste. They're not fools. He is not a fool. Beyond them, behind their whip-tails and bony hindquarters, the land is barren and silver, and even the light fights with his. Qhyluth will not be allowed closer without his blessing. The sudden resonance of the bell echoes off skeletal trees, and one single, eyeless bird takes wing over the waters to seek it. There is no bell return curiousity. Instead, there is a coughed caw as the bird banks, not curious. Bemused. What daring. (To Qhyluth from Besmernyth) Yet, for all the alterations, the patterns continue to twist and shudder in ways that are unnatural to behold. All those efforts to reshape are met with corruption, subtle and strange. The waters reach no further, shaping a shore between minds hewn of sickly gray-green foam that glitters in the conflicting light and turns to ash when touched. The bronze will find something to throttle in the meantime; abstract lobstrosities and irradiated clabrodites, carapaced and clawed and stalk-eyed, all of them. They're readily fished up from the waters, their shapes as incomprehensible as their plaintive mewl-clicking. The bell tolls again when that bird takes flight; a third time sees the moons narrow further, red more than silver and muted all the more. Cautious. Warning. For the water stretches on interminably, inhospitably; this is no place for the living. (To Besmernyth from Qhyluth) Nor is this, and that gives Besmernyth pause. He crushes the lobstrosities he can with a thought, flicking them across the water to watch the ripples, and sometimes to watch them crash through the patterned ice without regard for how it might feel. It's not his mind, after all. The island he's reached, this mind, is barren and cold, but death is not the end. The bird flies on, tireless, sightless, and his own moon grows larger in turning, full-bellied and bright, reflecting some foreign sun down on the shore and the vast swath of dead land beyond, one that hasn't seen true light in some time. It is empty. She is not here. Leave. It doesn't matter. Qhyluth doesn't seem to care. The lobstrosities are scattered across ice-rimed waters and are devoured by bigger, deeper things that elude contact. The ocean persists in its contact, distance maintained through a thick layer of foul foam that tingles with an ancient radiation. Whispered on broken voices is a single word: « She, She, She... » and it is not Eliyaveith of whom he breathes. No horrid creatures of his creation are sent scrabbling to the shore; no nightmares flung into the dead skies dominated by a single moon. But as the bird flies ever onward over the water, the ocean seethes - and a great, squamous appendage snaps up, suckers primed to capture the creature. In that motion, icy chains might be glimpsed; chains that stretch back and on - but would the bird capture a sense of a distant and icy tower? Of the one that's begun to pull those chains and bring the beast to heel? For the attempted seizure of the avian will be the last act of that seeking mind. (To Besmernyth from Qhyluth) He doesn't seek it, and glimpses of silver and ice and chains mean very little to sightless birds, though certainly it can sense something, otherwise, how would it dive directly, suicidally into the clutches of that huge, suckered appendage? Feathers fall out to the water, and Besmernyth will watch as it is taken down - as passive, indeed, as those broken sea monstrosities he's been ripping up like weeds. « She, » he echoes back. « was your first mistake. Never let them hold your heart. » And then there is a snap, the wall of ice scaling up, up, until it obscures the moonlight, obscures everything. Leave. (To Qhyluth from Besmernyth) The bird is taken and carried down, feathers set to disintegrate in the water. The words echo across the ocean and only She is returned again in triplicate on those fractured, hopeless voices. The water threatens to boil and terrible limbs churn just beneath the surface - but the chains are pulled and Qhyluth's obedience is immediate. There is only the distant sense of the woman - no, barely more than a girl - who seizes those chains; of a cold entity that the blue yet holds to his hearts with nothing less than blind zealotry. Though the waters are sucked away from the wall, another icy wall is forced into place - a second layer of protection, but for whom? (To Besmernyth from Qhyluth) |
Comments
Alida (00:55, 11 August 2015 (PDT)) said...
MAN, I *do* enjoy me some decidedly odd dragon minds! Very enjoyable, once again, getting glimpses into their bizarre and dangerous minds. :D
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