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 Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 10:25 am
If there are more I'll update this list. =3 For now: Nisshou's Hisoka Roni's Parnasabari and Hayagriva   and 
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 10:45 am
Hisoka lay beside his "mate" watching as the colors of the sunset faded into inky darkness. His golden eyes drifted over to look at the mare. It was an agreement. A deception to keep her eyes closed really. He wanted her blind to what it was he was doing. Why? He had asked himself that question several times before. Why did he bother trying to keep her near. The answer was cold in its simplicity. Because it was "right." Because that's how things were supposed to be.
Thinking along this past made his stomach ache, his heart tighten and his eyes burn. Now was not the time to be thinking of such things. As quietly as he could he got to his feet and looked at the mare once more. Would she notice if he went missing now? She hadn't in the past so why would this night be any different.
Shrugging it off he picked up his feet and headed into the shelter of the thick trees of the forest. In the lacking light the trails blurred into shadows ahead of him and he became a ghost treading in their wake. He followed a well traveled path that he no longer needed to look at in order to see. It lead him to a two-leggers village. Just out of reach of the fires light he lowered himself to the ground and waited for his "attendants."
Moving like little shadows themselves several mice darted out of their hiding places and scurried over to the blazing fire. They no longer need coercing to do this for Hisoka they had grown used to the task and his presence. Moving with ease the little creatures came to Hisoka's side with little smoldering sticks. The took positions around the large, yet narrow, stallion and then, with surprising precision, they lit the lanterns hanging around the stallion before discarding their sticks.
In one easy motion Hisoka got to his feet before thanking his little comrades. They squeaked their replies before racing back to shelter. Without a seconds hesitation the Fox set off into the darkness once again. His lanterns waved like beacons as he moved in a cocoon of light. Easily he made his way down familiar paths waiting for one to come to his side. They always did. After all, they thought the scariest things lurked in shadows. They never thought to check the warmth of light.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 1:31 pm
Parnasabari's eyes shot open. In retrospect she wouldn't ever be able to say why exactly she had woken. It was no sound disturbing her peace and the silence. She didn't even have a sense of foreboding. She was simply awake.
Once awake she began to notice things... like that Hisoka was gone. Her eyes dilated in the darkness but she still couldn't see her mate in the shadows. Where was he? She thought of going back to sleep. It was a warm night and she knew she'd be able to drift off again easily. It was the beauty of the night that prompted her to go looking for him. Such nights were meant to be shared, after all. Maybe he was somewhere waiting for her!
She smiled to herself as she walked. In her sleepy haze her hooves seemed to lead her while her mind wandered. Where was Hisoka? She had the feeling she'd find him soon.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 1:37 pm
Hayagriva was out that night too. He liked to run at night. The stillness and the quiet made it easy to think and Haya had a lot to think about. He was the next in line to be the protector of the Padmapani herd. He still felt a warm burst of pride when he thought of it. He was part of something now. He had a family, a home, a herd. He'd already vowed to protect them and each day and night only strengthened his resolve.
Tonight he was thinking somewhat more specifically. As his hoof beats thudded against the ground he ran over the members of the herd in his mind. The herd grew larger with each season. When he was protector it would be even larger. It would make his job a lot easier to have a second in command that he could count on and trust. Who in the herd would be best for that position?
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 1:46 pm
He traversed over thin trails leading him into less cluttered areas where other soquili could easily see him and be seen, the outskirts of the forest. It was near the place where he and Bari commonly rested. It was only a few minutes away from where he had left the mare but thankfully it was out of sight.
The voices of his mind had been getting agitated by the disturbing lack of players deep in the forest for the game. It was for this reason that he had chosen to hunt elsewhere tonight. He skirted the edge of the trees moving slowly waiting for his lights to draw a poor moth in.
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Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 10:00 am
Bari continued to thread her way through the dark forest. In the darkness the rest of her senses seemed to p***k up to a greater awareness. She found it interesting the way she could hear every snap of a twig beneath her hooves. Even the soft breath of wind on her flanks seemed sharper than before. Her smell too grew to a heightened level of awareness.
But what was that she smelled?
Bari's nostrils flared wide and then narrowed shut again. Something smelled like rot and decay. She paused in her tracks, suddenly uncertain of whether she wished to continue onwards. "But what is the worst that it could be?" she chided herself. "It's probably nothing." She walked forward, though the smell grew stronger with each step.
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Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 10:45 am
Hisoka stopped moving for a moment. He could hear approaching hoof steps. He didn't need the cheers ringing in his ears to know that the night promised to be a short one. He turned his head slightly and watched as a small colt approached. An easy target if he'd ever seen one. Children were easier to deal with. He had found his moth.
He exchanged the usual dialogue with the child. Lost? Scared? Bored? The reason never really mattered. It changed from person to person, it always had. It had always been Hisoka's job to find the more strategical approach. With children that was easy and in no time the child was trailing him like a shadow.
The two moved swiftly across beaten paths as he lead the way to his 'burial ground'. When the air began to shift and feel dangerous he knew they were close. It was at that time that he was starting to smell the stench of his successful hunts. This was about to be one of his fastest nights or so he thought.
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 8:33 am
Further and further Bari walked and stronger and stronger the smell grew. It was probably a dead deer or something. Maybe even a bear. A rotting bear could make a stench like that, couldn't it? Bari sent one explanation after another through her mind but couldn't quite convince herself. The feeling of dread that grew along with the smell couldn't be contained so easily.
Why did she keep walking, then? To prove that there was nothing to fear, perhaps... or maybe it was something more like captivation.
Her hoofbeats rang loud in the uncharacteristic silence of the forest. Whatever was in the area it had stilled all of the night creatures to silence. A fly buzzed by Bari's ears but a quick shake of her head was enough to scare it off. She was growing close now, she could tell...
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 9:40 am
It did not take Hisoka long to navigate his way along the now well used paths that had been little more then rabbit trails when he had first arrived. He had only needed to stop a handful of times to sooth the child behind him. More tricks to get even the unwilling to follow him blindly. The foal could smell just as well as Hisoka and, not surprisingly, was sending panic into the child's mind. It was probably just an unfinished meal of a wolf or a bear. The crows and ravens would be working at it in the morning hours. He always told the same story. He'd gotten so good at it that his kawani was almost flawless as he said it. If the child was smarter he may have picked up on that fact and fled. Rarely were children that smart. It was a blessing from the kami for Hisoka.
Before to much time had passed Hisoka strode into a clearing with the foal flanking him. Paths shot off from this clearing in dozens of directions very much like roots of a tree. The putrid odor clung so fiercely to the air that even the ghostly white stallion had a difficult time ignoring it. Flies, never resting, buzzed in and out of a large circular pit in the center of the clearing. Hisoka led to foal around the pit a little ways watching the colt's eyes carefully, they were fixed on the gaping hole.
Good.
"Rest here." He stopped in front of the largest path, the ledge of the pit directly in front of this path was the most stable. That made it about 100 times easier to use. A slight wind picked up causing the light of his lanterns to flicker as he watched the child "sneak" closer to the pit. "You like see what down there?" He questioned creeping closer to the colt. It nodded it's head several times eyes going wide with excitement. The two crept closer, the colt in the lead, until the child was practically pinned between Hisoka and the ledge. The stallion shifted to get as close as he could before leaning down to the colt's ear. "さらば..." He murmured before nudging the colt just enough to send him plummeting into the depths of the pit.
A sharp cream rang out through the silent air followed by a dull thud and a sickening snap. Then all Hisoka could hear were sobs of pain and whimpers for help. The Fox picked his way closer to the edge, careful not to slip in himself, and shifted to shine light down into the depths of the pit.
-snipped because of a complaint-
The first time he had killed and the second and the third and even the forth had left him retching in a corner. As time passed it stopped effecting him so strongly until he no longer felt anything at all. Now he straightened and turned away from the child in the pit. All he could here were the congratulations for a job well done. All he wanted now was a bath. He sighed and looked over his shoulder at his pit. His job always left him tired for some reason.
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 9:59 am
Just when Bari thought the stench could get no worse, she saw it. In the darkness and her fatigue she almost toppled right into the pit before stopping still right at the edge. She looked down. A wave of dizziness swept through her at what she saw there but her mind was overwhelmed. She couldn't even fathom what she saw there after the first brief glimpse of it. She found it much easier to look up to the dancing lights before her. It was Hisoka! Hisoka her love, her lover. It was almost like she could forget the gaping pit full of death and horror beneath her when she saw that familiar face so close.
Much as she would have liked to keep her eyes on his face however, her eyes dipped down once more.
There was something alive down there. A foal, most likely maimed past survival was keening for help. The maggots that crawled and seethed in that hole seemed to be undiscerning about whether the flesh they chewed was dead or alive based on how they had already started swarming the colt. It was all so horrific and so surreal that Bari thought with wild desperation that she must have fallen into a bad dream. There was no way that this could be reality. There was no way that such a terrible place could really exist and that her dear Hisoka would be the one she found there.
Bari's eyes rolled back and she staggered a woozy few steps away from the edge of the pit. Was she going to faint? It seemed likely.
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 10:19 am
An emotion finally came to the Fox's face as a familiar form came into his clearing. That emotion was shock.
He watched in a slight daze, slowly turning to face her, as Bari studied his pit. He couldn't even begin to fathom the reasons why she was there. She had been sleeping when he had departed right? She always slept at that time, so why was she here? If he had actually gone to sleep that evening he would have claimed that he was dreaming, however he knew that wasn't the case. His eyes flickered from her form down to the hole that she stared into.
There was no way to cover this one up. There was no blood to hide in the river's water and the sun's light. There was no trail to hide with bushes. There were no words for him to use to explain everything away. She had found his secret, plain and simple. She had found something that no living creature was ever meant to see. The voices shrieked in his head and he quickly silenced them. He already knew what he needed to do.
There was one rule that he had been taught to always follow and follow it he did. Do not reveal.
Hisoka fixed his "mate" with cold golden eyes as she stumbled away from his own personal secret. "Bari..." He called his voice level and distant. "What is it you see?" He was not ashamed of what he did. He wasn't. He always told himself that. It was just that he couldn't afford to be caught. Even in another land the game couldn't just end. The spirits would never forgive the players if they just stopped. He just needed to make sure that she would never tell the things she saw.
"Does it exist?" He asked beginning his slow approach around the pit to get to her.
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 1:18 pm
Maybe Nirvana would make a good second in command, Haya thought to himself as he continued on his night time run. When he first met the half-angeni stallion, Nirvana would have been the last person Haya would think an option for that sort of responsibility. Lately Nirvana seemed to have undergone a change, though. He seemed to finally have a better grip on the world and he possessed a seriousness that balanced out his previous bouts of flakiness.
The beat of Haya's hooves slowed. Haya brought himself to a walk and lifted his head high to sniff at the air. What was that smell? A stray gust of wind brought even more of it to Haya. Decay. Rot. Something had died nearby.
A certain familiarity in the smell gave Haya more pause than a strange smell ordinarily would. His mind groped for the connection and then found it. It smelled like a kalona's den. Was there a kalona this close to the herd? Haya didn't like the idea of that at all. It was his job now to see that the herd was kept safe and that included potentially sticking his nose into a nest of kalonas. Orienting himself as best as he could toward the source of the stench, Haya began to run once more.
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 1:24 pm
"D-does it exist?" Bari, who was usually so adept at filling silence with words, could barely find enough air to breathe. She couldn't say which was more horrible, the smell that coated her throat and made her want to gag, the piteous crying of the broken foal in the nightmarish pit, or look on Hisoka's face as he made his way toward her.
"H-Hisoka?" she squeaked in confusion and fear. "P-please... please..." She asked for nothing in that plea and wouldn't have known what to ask. Her mind was too full of white terror to be able to see a way out of it.
Bari began to back away from her mate without even realizing she was moving. Her steps were short and jerky. She was moving parallel to the edge of the pit instead of away from it, she realized with a lurch of her stomach. It still lay there gaping open to her left. She looked again and the dizziness struck her once more. This was all impossible. She couldn't believe what she was seeing even as it lay before her.
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 3:26 pm
It was no good. If she couldn't give him the satisfactory answer he needed he couldn't very well let her go. She would tell. Who she told it didn't really matter. All that mattered was that she would.
He sighed shaking his head slightly as he continued his approach. He almost felt bad for the girl, almost, if she had only stayed where he'd left her he wouldn't need to do this. "No good." He muttered watching her with stony eyes. It would have been much better if he could have just kept of his charade. Keep on pretending he had a normal life with normal tastes. That would have been for the best.
He eyed the distance between the mare and his pit. There was barely any room for error on her part. That would be the easiest course. It was far more difficult to drive someone insane to the point that no one would believe anything than it would be to kill them. Pushing her would be for the best, he didn't have the stomach to crush someone's throat.
"さようなら バリ..." He said softly. Then, with no real warning he picked up pace, swung wide and turned so that he could push her in from the side. It was better than trying to maneuver her from the front.
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Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 5:55 pm
Bari's mind hadn't come anywhere close to catching up with the situation but her instincts were another matter. While Bari's mind was grappling with the idea that her loved one was a horrible monster her instincts had decided to do whatever they had to to save her. A hoarse scream tore from her throat when Hisoka charged and her rigid legs kicked into movement. She sprinted away from him as fast as her hooves could carry her. Her rolling eyes caught one last glimpse of the hellish pit but then it was gone and only open forest lay stretched out before her.
She gasped ragged breaths. Was her throat closing up? She couldn't seem to get enough air. The thick smell of rotted flesh still choked her and tears of fear and revolt squeezed from the corners of her eyes.
She wanted to say something. She wanted to beg him to stop, or to convince her it wasn't real. She wanted to wake up and realize that it had all been a crazy nightmare and something to laugh about in the morning.
But she wasn't going to wake up. The truth was chasing her with nothing but coldness in the golden eyes she had grown to admire so much.
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