RP:As Threads That Bind Us
Part of the The Most Dangerous Game Arc
The Throne of the Impossible Wyrm
(Continued from Into the Teeth)
Svilfon shakes his head to free it of the memory, even as his gaze falls upon Elanor. With her hands extended, silently asking him to grasp them. Her looks are lost on Svilfon, he cares nothing for her begging. Yet... even as he thinks this his hands are raised and placed within her own... surely, such a creature could mean him no wrong...
The tiny, child hands of Elenor are buried within Svilfon's grasp. She closes her eyes, nods once, and slips her hands free immediately afterwards with a sigh. The contact is over in a matter of seconds, and yet, when Elenor breaks away, Svilfon will have been left with a deluge of thoughts, whispers, and images. It is as if he has had a book rapidly flipped through in front of him, only to have him fully understand its content nonetheless. Understanding, it is the truest gift of the Seer.
In the time it takes Hildegarde to blink or Satoshi to swish her tails, Elenor has spoken into Svilfon's mind-
"Wizard Svilfon, I know you and the paths you've walked. I know of your wife," Ilgy's scaled face flickers past, "your book," the spellbook and the Coterie's images pass, "and your plans. Some will succeed, some will fail. I know which are most likely, just as I knew which paths were most likely to bring you here." The words are accompanied by flashing images of Emiur, one moment alive, proud, and magnificent, the next a beaten and bloody form. Alahir, hatching in a nest with his kin--a past that might have been. Alahir, hatching in the hands of the wizard. Tournament duels, ending in hatred for Hildegarde, or ending in friendship. The possibilities of the recent past, what may have and what is. Elenor has seen each one. "I am sorry. So very sorry. But I have brought you here, through pain, sorrow, misery, and heartache, because you carry a special darkness and anger in you." Jolie's face briefly fills the mind's eye, superimposed over the view of Frostmaw's garden with Satoshi's Asorial poised to impale Svilfon. The mocking sneer of Vuryal resides in a third layer beneath these two, alongside Kasyr with a crooked grin of bloodied fangs. The corpse of Leoxander lies beneath these all with the Eldermage standing over him; beside him is Svilfon's dragony wife, perched atop cottages and with a maw full of fire. "She will call on you soon to fell a God and Goddess. Answer her. Please." As the words end in an echo, Satoshi's quizzical, half-grinning face is briefly visible before it too fades away. When Elenor's hands leave Svilfon's, a stab of pain follows and the wet sensation of blood welling. On each palm glows a rune bleeding as if freshly carved there, the sigil of Fire on his left, and Wit on his right, both of them aglow from within as if smouldering embers or magma lurks just beneath Svilfon's flesh. They and the pain are sparks, to coax his emotions to rekindle, as she's placed the smallest ward upon him to fend off the wyrm's effects.
Even as the images are fading from Svilfon's mind and the twin wounds begin to throb, Elenor has turned her gaze on Hildegarde and offered her hands in the same gesture. Her smooth palms are now marred with a smear of blood each as they're extended toward the knight.
Hildegarde listened to the wyrm in silence before answering as logically as she was able: "Does it hurt her?" she nodded to Elenor, watching as Svilfon took her hands. It was all she had to ask, knowing full well that asking more or saying more would only invoke greater emotions and cause her greater pain.
As Elenor offered her hands, Whim pressed into the earth beside her to stand still alone, without her support. Her thumbs swiped gently at her palms, as she offered a smile - even though it was false, no feeling was behind it - and pressed her own hands into hers. "M'lady," she offered softly to her. Even with her emotions stolen, she was iron-willed and would cling onto her ways.
Hildegarde's question isn't answered by the wyrm, the great beast occupied with watching Elenor drift among the trio. However, an answer comes from the little girl as she turns pain-filled eyes up toward the knight. Something within those violet depths speaks of an agony that is not physical, a suffering that makes the poachers' captures seem small and pathetic by comparison. Elenor's are ancient eyes despite her tiny, youthful appearance, and made all the more heavy with seeing the weight of countless lives and their infinite possibilities every day. No soul is meant to see the paths of time like Elenor. It is a blessing and curse meant for the gods alone. But she has carried it willingly, waiting until that one shining moment she foresaw, that would set it all to right again.
And so the little Seer takes Hildegarde's hands--a flicker of a familiar smile shown for the knight's unconscious compassion. In every Possible Elenor had seen for this moment, Hildegarde had always wiped the blood from the child's hands. Always. Some things simply cannot be changed by any force.
Like Svilfon a second before, the contact between knight and seer is fleeting yet carries all the force and substance of a runaway caravan. Within Hildegarde's mind will appear a torrent of visions and thoughts, with Elenor's soft words whispering above it all:
"Cherished knight. Ardugaulirpalaxingeirtraintrurrturacvalam. The loyal. The fierce. The forgotten. You will not always be alone, for you've already chosen to let go of what holds you back." Whim swims before Hildegarde's eyes, the Emerald creation flicking between weapon forms too swiftly to follow. But even as it shifts shapes endlessly, it becomes less visible as the mind pushes it aside for other images. Calhoun, young and laughing, and Calhoun, haughty and sneering. Family disapproving of choices made, and family rejoicing at choices made. "You will not be forgotten, not if you heed her call and take up your weapon one more time. I have Seen it, I have used it to bring you here." Again Calhoun appears, this time lying broken in the snow. Like a ghost beneath his image rests the feral Silver Hildegarde had slain. Above these is the scene of Kenway's hatching. All of these have been brought into existence to bring Hildegarde to this moment, and it pains Elenor to have done it. Tears stream down her graying cheeks as the Seer unveils her work before Hildegarde, as she had with Svilfon. "I have made you suffer, and you will suffer again before this is over. I am sorry. Forgive me. And forgive him." At the words, the Wyrm's image flows into view, but hidden beneath the heavy layers of his presence is the face of Calhoun again. And beneath this still is another image, the ghostly outline of Kirien's visage, grinning one second and snarling the next. "He is not a creature of evil, he was once a kind and gentle soul unlike his Empath kin. All this darkness, misery, hatred, it has corrupted his soul to feed on only the foul fragments of life. Forgive him. And answer her call, beloved knight, to slay the impossible, my lonely god, and free him."
While this floods through Hildegarde's mind, she too will feel a stabbing pain in her hands where Elenor's had rested. Just as with the wizard, runes have been etched into the knight's palms with an ethereal blade: on the right, the symbol for Family, and on the left, the mark of Faith. Both bleed, yet the blood shimmers as if metallic, and the wound itself appears to be filled with liquid silver softly glowing. From the glow comes a comforting warmth not unlike the hug of a family member. Although with Svilfon it had been the bite of pain and spark of fire Elenor used to rekindle his emotions, for Hildegarde, it is quick pain and the quicker embrace of a loved one that she deems best for the knight.
Elenor hovers before them, suspended by the life-fueling tubes embedded in her back and forever tying her to the wyrm. As tears continue to spill down her face, Elenor reaches forward to Satoshi. Numbly the magus stares at her. The wyrm, at first having thought Elenor was just playing with their food, becomes suspicious at this point. Just shy of touching the magus, Elenor is halted as the wyrm thrusts his enormous head forward, scowling. "Why are you crying, my dear?" he demands, radiating agitation. "Why can I not taste those two anymore?"
As quick as a thought, the seer swivels to face him and place bloodied hands upon his jaws. She makes gentle shushing sounds among her words, "Do not fret, dearest. You will taste them again in but a moment. I have shielded them and given them visions of the futures they could have had. Think of how rich their anguish will be, how glorious their dismay, and how succulent their wrath when I remove the shields and you finish them? I am preparing you a feast."
At this the wyrm voices his rumbling laugh again and retreats to his coils, poised as a king awaiting the banquet. "Carry on, little Elenor, so that we made feed and achieve the impossible. Relish your brief tastes of the future you will never have, wizard and knight."
Svilfon remains motionless as the damned Elanor fills his mind with images of the winding roads which have led him to this place. With what is, and what could have been. She said she was sorry... he does not forgive her. The pain in his hands is ignored after his mind once again fills with the essence of who he is; that tumultuous blend of anger and joy which is Svilfon. She showed him Alahir... he should have been born beside his brethren, with Emiur watching him break free of his shell, to guide him in a way far better than the wizard ever could... that was taken from them all... and nothing the forsaken girl could ever say would change that fact. What was done is done. The future may be many shifting paths with what will be and what can be... but the past is forged in steel... there is no power on this world strong enough to change it. The visions of the others, his battles and plans, his wants and desires, flashing before him without mockery, but with a deeper knowledge... he understood... that does not mean he has to forgive.
He draws in a breath, feeling within himself the swelling of his magic. Oh, how it wants to break free... but not yet. He wants to avenge the fallen, to rid the world of this monstrosity once and for all. He wants to devour beneath the flames of his anger this entire den; to erase from history the stain that this Empath Wyrm made upon the world. But he waits... holding it within... he will adhere to the wishes of the girl and wait until he is asked to slay this... would-be-God. He would not risk leaving Hildegarde and Satoshi in the states they are in now. Like him, they are born of their passions... he would die before he was a catalyst to taking such things from them both.
So he waits in silence, even as he watches Elanor take Hildegarde's hands in her own, before speaking to her horrifying master. He ignores the threat and malevolent edge to the wyrm's words, letting his pale gaze remain upon the girl as she moves once more, this time stopping before Satoshi. Her hands extend like they did to the others, even as her eyes glow with the light of silent pleading, sparkling with the tears which glisten over them... a silent request to take her hands, to grasp them like the others did, to be free... to be herself... a look without malice or hatred... without threat or deceit. A contradiction to the words she spoke earlier, yet with it a depth of promised trust which echoes in silence between them.
Without mask, schemes, selfishness, or pride to interfere, Satoshi is left with primal instincts, instincts of a creature that was born to have young of her own, to care for, raise, and teach them. A creature that freely and knowingly sacrificed that internal need to be with the one she had chosen. And yet, while the sacrifice had been made, the instinct had never died. It's revealed itself over time in Satoshi as sparks of compassion or charity, when she'd helped someone for no reason but for the act, or taken in a lost soul to nurture them. Maternal instincts still live within the magus, however buried they might be beneath Asorial's malice and her own natural vanity. Thus, it is that instinct now that drives Satoshi into taking Elenor's extended hands, unable to resist the pleading face of a child in misery. She feels nothing for the little seer, yet a chord is struck nonetheless by that violet expression and reflex demands she react accordingly.
Elenor's grasp this time is not a fleeting one. She clings to Satoshi's hands with a terrible fierceness, as if she'll be ripped away any moment by unstoppable forces. Satoshi, however, can't help but try to pull away, her face twisted with pain and flickering through a series of expressions. One moment rage turns her features into the angular face of the predator, only to have fear step in and reduce her to wide-eyed vulnerability. Ecstatic delight is not far behind, nor is the narrow-eyed gaze of bloodlust. When a look of anguish crosses the magus' face, rarely seen tears prick at her eyes and her fangs are bared around a hoarsely whispered, "No!" in a voice thick with heart-ache. As each emotion from one extreme of the spectrum to the next crosses over Satoshi's face, she tries to yank herself free of Elenor. The child is unrelenting, however, and impossibly strong for her size. Satoshi has no means of escape, not until the seer is done with her.
Slowly, and not ungently, Elenor drags Satoshi closer. The magus resists, even drops upon her knees to still her momentum as she shakes her head and quietly begs, "No, no, please, no." Behind Elenor, the wyrm laughs with obvious satisfaction at seeing Frostmaw's queen reduced to helpless pleading. In little time, Elenor triumphs and Satoshi is pulled forward, her forehead pressed to the seer's as tear-stained cheeks mingle. With the contact comes a spark of light that blossoms out from the pair to shroud them in a sphere of glowing amethyst. From within, Elenor whispers frantically to the now unmoving magus.
"Child of chaos, envier of light, singer of frost, soulkin of Ashen, ghost of the North. You carry so very many names. Some of them you are not even aware of, some of them you have fashioned upon yourself, but most have been given birth by your actions--unwitting and purposeful alike. Your existence is an impossibility. You defy logic at every turn. You deny Fate's hold upon you. You pull down legends with flippant remarks. Your kingdom was built on rumors, and yet you embraced those rumors and made them real, so real that not even you are certain whether or not they are truly fact or fiction. The threads of your past, present, and future are tangled beyond comprehension when examined closely, and yet when one takes a step back to regard it all as a whole, your life is a single complex tapestry. You create without realizing, you destroy without a thought. You kill and you heal with the same hands. You laugh and growl with the same voice. You live and you die with the same soul. To one with my eyes, you are everything wrong. And that is precisely why you are capable of setting it all to rights. A child so unthinkably chaotic that you sit in perfect balance, ever on the knife's edge and oblivious to it. I need the light and the dark that holds you in that balance. I know I ask an impossible gift from you, especially after all I've done to hurt you and yours to bring you here, and I cannot promise what the results will be if you consent. I cannot foresee that no matter how hard I try, for your future is shrouded to my eyes, born always in the very instant Future becomes Present, and thus almost always elusive to those that see ahead. Creature of whim, I'm asking you to give yourself freely without knowing whether your charity will spell life or death for you. Choose."
As Elenor's words end, the barrier dims and she releases Satoshi to let the eidolon sag to the ground with a half-strangled sob. Where the magus has crumpled, she remains, staring blindly at her hands pressed flat to the floor. Azure-colored blood pools around her hands, spilling from the runes carved into the flesh. Without looking at them, Satoshi knows what each one reads: Cold on the left, and Death on the right. Elenor has bared Satoshi's soul and defined her with two simple, and yet impossibly complex, marks. The words are her.
Hildegarde inhaled sharply when the girl left her mark and addressed the great wyrm, inhaling as if she had held her breath for so long, even though in truth she hadn't. It merely felt that way. What was only a few moments felt more like an hour. But something more important had come about through that brief moment with Elenor: feelings had returned without being stolen and that gave her strength and she felt so mighty for it; she near felt unstoppable now there was a return of her feelings. She looked to her hands, spotting the runes that oozed that metallic colour and made her smile some. She didn't understand what the runes themselves meant, but she was sure it was only something positive. Unlike Svilfon, the knight was full of forgiveness (perhaps she was too forgiving at the best of times). She only wanted to save Elenor, to rescue her and return her to some kind of normal life; something better than this existence.
As Elenor moved to Satoshi and seemed to be adamant in speaking to her, revealing truths and chances to her, the Silver tensed and watched her. She resisted every urge in her body to intervene, to hold the Queen up or to protect her as her instinct and duty told her to. This was, perhaps, more important. Fingers flexed again around Whim as she watched the pair. The knight was patient.
Cold. Death. The twin words and their thousand meanings sing through Satoshi's veins like fire. They dive through heart and soul alike, seeking the core beneath it all. And it finds it, that blazing essence of the magus, shrouded by a miasma of shadows and lights; Asorial, Bozrah, Ko'tar, those the scythe has eaten, those the blade as freed, that which she has absorbed, the sins she has committed, the virtues she has upheld, all of it woven as a smothering net around Satoshi's point of existence. Even Wetutherag's stain remains. Satoshi can feel those words drawing around the miasma, gathering it into a single solid shape, yet she doesn't seem to care.
What she feels more acutely are the countless wounds and balms Elenor has inflicted on the eidolon's mind, pushing it to the brink of breaking. Elenor has shown her everything. Every possible route her past could have taken: dying in the blizzard as a child, finding a different teacher of the arcane, falling for and marrying another, a chance at motherhood, becoming a master of fire, of earth, or of wind, her siring failing, her siring breaking her, and so many more might-have-beens. Might-have-beens that led to countless different outcomes and futures for Satoshi, where she could have been a mother, or a pyromancer, or a diplomat, or even a pirate aboard Captain Trey's ship, a lycanthrope, anything. Except a cryomancer, and Kasyr's wife. It is for these two reasons that Satoshi's mind shuns the possibles of the past. Some possibles she could have enjoyed, would have embraced with all her being, but none is worth losing what she has: her Ice, her love. The past is pointless. Satoshi is in the here and now, she is the person she is now because of those two possibles. Without them, the runes scoured into her hands would not define her in the least. She is Cold. She is Death.
Fists bloody and clenched, eyes blazing, the magus rises to her feet. One arm extends out straight before her, as the other is pulled back as if Satoshi is drawing a bow. Where once the air was empty, it begins to shimmer with a cloud of diamond dust, gathered together to form a glittering, ethereal recurve bow in Satoshi's bleeding hands. As her eyes fixate on the wyrm, he seems to take notice of her once more and cocks his head--his expression curious rather than alarmed by the glowering queen. "Oh Elenor, look what you've done. She is so very angry. I can feel it from here. This will be a feast indeed," he chortles. Despite the arcane bow leveled at him, the would-be-god is unafraid. Satoshi's bow has no arrow.
"Today," Elenor says in a voice distant and echoing, "the impossible will be achieved."
The wyrm lifts his head proudly. "I will become a God. You will become my Goddess. The impossible will be achieved."
At this, Elenor's sorrowful eyes move to Svilfon, her expression apologetic yet not expecting forgiveness for her crimes. She instead nods once to him, as if to say, 'Prepare yourself'. Like Satoshi, the runes burned into the wizard's hands are seeking that raging darkness and sin within Svilfon, striving to gather it into a single mass for him to take hold of, to forge into an unbreakable, blood-thirsty arrowhead. Whether he chooses to comply or not is entirely up to Svilfon. Elenor can only pave the road, she cannot force the wizard to walk it.
Leaving the wizard to this, Elenor looks quickly to Hildegarde and offers her a small, sad smile. She knows the knight forgives her, and yet an apology is still clear in her eyes. 'Don't hesitate', her face seems to say to Hildegarde. As with the other two, the Silver's bleeding symbols are at work, and yet in a different fashion, for the twin words have split. One's--the essence of Family--search is gentle, it does not seek shadows, angry, or bloodlust, it seeks to embrace the knight's bottomless compassion, to absorb that energy to near bursting--an arrow needs the gentle guidance of its feather fletching, after all. While the other--Faith--searches outward in the form of the blood spilling from Hildegarde, the silvery liquid flowing onto Whim where it's grasped. From here the blood fills every crevice, etching, and nook upon the weapon until the entire length of emerald is coated in the metallic blood, an arrow's shaft.
"Now," Satoshi whispers, calling to them. But will she be answered? Will they each rip out a part of themselves and sacrifice it to forge an arrow for the glass bow in her hands? For without them, the bow is useless, wrought of the miasma of Satoshi's core and certainly a thing of immense power, but still useless without its other components. It is only one part of three.
Svilfon spends a moment glaring at the forsaken child. He understood now what must be done, yet... no. She wanted to destroy this ancient beast with this weapon; one forged of the darkness within. It was her call, no his own – and he found a certain joy in the irony of it: The same path walked again for the wyrm; he who was deceived by the malevolent emotions he devoured... and these same things would destroy him now. A crooked grin twists across the wizard's face, flashing the gaps in teeth, before a feral edge shifts the expression.
He understood... within himself, he can feel the effects of the runes upon his hand.s. But this young girl, so wise in the many paths which shift and change throughout the world... she didn't realize it was not necessary. The wizard holds within himself his anger and hatred, chained like a beast beside the source of his magic. But though the chains are strong, born of stubbornness and loyalty if nothing else, they are easy to unshackle now. He falls into the pits of burning anger within, drawing them to himself , solidifying them within the stagnant air of the den, forging, as Satoshi and the girl ask of him, an ebon arrowhead which burns with flickering flames. It is part of the evil that lives within the wizard, that which fuels his anger. It is the remnants of the malevolent Coltron Black, whose sins were fed to Svilfon by Joliette Thorne. It is in part the cruelty he keeps inside, unshackled to forge this weapon for the snow queen. He tears it free and forces it to do his will. It drains the wizard, it hurts; in its own way, it feels as unnatural as when the Emapthic Wyrm devoured his emotions. But there is only one person in control now, and he understands this.
He knew what they wanted.
He had given it to them.
Hildegarde spent a few moments staring at her hands as if she was bewildered, watching that silvery fluid that mixed with her blood leave her hand and coat Whim so generously. It was almost pretty to look at, almost enchanting to watch until she heard the 'now' from Satoshi. Her body moved before she had even thought or willed herself to, moving to stand behind Satoshi who was poised at the ready with her bow. She was heeding the call of her Queen, as told by Elenor; feeling so oddly out of place and yet so right in the moment, as if she were destined for this, as her hands shifted the position of Whim, as if she were ready to notch this would be arrow to that bow. "I did my duty, for Queen and region," she whispered quietly to herself, as everything seemed to catch up on her.
Her bottomless compassion oozed from her hands and onto Whim; her wounds throbbed and ached as if to tell her to stop, but she paid no heed to them. She paid heed to nothing, even as Whim whispered so darkly to her; whispered all those things that might stir her pride and her hate. And yet, here she stood, holding onto Whim as the ethereal feather began to blossom from her very hand; causing the Knight to stare at it with bewilderment and awe. It was so delicate a thing, it would be hard to convince anyone it felt as though it was tearing her hand to pieces to form it. She watched it drift to the base of Whim, attaching itself there and waiting. Waiting for the impossible to be achieved.
As Hildegarde rips a part of herself out to aid in forming the arrow, so too has Satoshi in forging the crystalline bow. The wrath of Asorial, so deeply entwined within her soul, is not easily detached after all this time. Its claw latched on and shredded as Satoshi forcibly removed it from her essence with a strength of will she didn't know she possessed. Asorial's screaming defiance echoes loudly in the eidolon's mind as it is forced out, but the sound is muffled seconds later by Ko'tar's song, as its light envelopes the raging shadows. Willingly Ko'tar gives itself up of Satoshi for this, an entity of charity through and through, and dutifully it forms itself and Asorial into the bow's shape. Flawless, glassy ice on the outside, a miasma of whirling shadows its core.
As Svilfon unshackles his hatred and sin, so too has Satoshi, in freeing Bozrah. With a malicious glee, the wraith's ragged essence springs forth--but not without a parting stab at the magus' core for the simple sake of torment. With an almost submissive compliance, the wraith's shadow is formed into the bow's string, so that when it is drawn back by Satoshi's hand, it is taut with all his ravenous, tortuous, merciless aggression. And so while Satoshi stands with the bow drawn and arrowless, the wyrm regarding her with humiliating amusement, she cannot help but feel empty. A tool, as much as the bow is. She has been pulled along on puppet strings by Elenor to this very moment.
Fingers tighten their hold upon the drawstring, so that the thin, razorsharp edge slices into Satoshi's hands and spills further blood down its chords. As the blood drips, the ghostly outline of the arrow wrought by Svilfon and Hildegarde begins to appear where it belongs, nocked in the bow. Wizard and Knight are there with Satoshi. She can feel them as keenly. She's not empty, she's not a tool, she's not a puppet. She is the twilight, to the wizard's midnight and Hildegarde's morn. Satoshi grins.
Something in the magus' expression has shifted, causing the wyrm to narrow his eyes and cock his head. "What are you doing?" Where did she get that arrow from? An arrow with a vicious black point of firelight, and silvery shaft with ethereal flight feathers. That is no natural arrow.
Shoulder muscles grow taut as Satoshi pulls the string back further, the bow protesting with a tinkling cry. Satoshi's face has abandoned its mask for an expression of fierce joy. "We're achieving the impossible." The arrow is released.
And Elenor is dragged into its path by her puppetmaster.
No look of surprise crosses Elenor's face. She had foreseen this. She had known the wyrm would try to shield himself with her body. All her plans would have been for naught, if he had kept her out of the arrow's path. The arrow would have flown straight and true to pierce the wyrm's hide, yet it would not have killed him despite the combined strengths of Hildegarde, Svilfon, and Satoshi. Now, however...now the wyrm has created his own demise by attempting to protect himself.
Putting Elenor before the arrow was precisely what the seer needed. As it plunges into her chest, punches through bones of draconite, and out through her spine with her heart pinned to the burning point, the essence of the arrow goes to work. Whim's greed, Asorial's endless appetite, the Wizard's voracious sins, all sink ravenous teeth into the seer's core. As the arrow passes through that tiny body, it rips out the prophet's gift and wraps itself in it so that, when it embeds itself with a heavy 'thunk' in the wyrm's forehead, doom is spelt. All of Svilfon's blackened rage, all of the whispering, roaring, screaming, and singing entities of Satoshi, all of Hildegarde's compassion and Whim's arrogance flood into the wyrm's body, guided and bolstered by Elenor's godly gift. Every shred of strength given by the trio and seer come together now to choke the Empath Wyrm on more emotion than he has encountered in his entire lifetime combined. What once was meant to be a feast is now his final, fatal meal.
For a single, shimmering moment, all is still and silent. Elenor with the hole through her chest hangs limp, smiling. The wyrm, mid-laugh, still sits poised as a king among his coils with the arrow buried fletching-deep in his skull.
(Continued in Silence is All You Know)