Welcome to Gaia! ::

She still frowned, touching his face and making tut tut sounds at him. "Il vous retenir. S'ils voient la faiblesse ils l'utilisent contre vous. S'il vous plaît, faites attention à ce que vous faites. Ils utiliseront la toxicomanie, la corruption, tout ce qu'il faut est un désir, et puis ils ont un appât."
She drew the symbol of death in the air between them, not saying whom she spoke of.

"Je m'inquiète, parce que je vois et sais ce que c'est que nous devons faire ... et je déteste ça." She was sad but knew that it was a sadness of her own making. "Je me soucie trop, mais je suis tout aussi cruel que les autres. Je viens de le cacher mieux."

Looking to his feet, thats when her brain caught up with the facts, to what was happening. And yet-
"Je vais rappeler les noms, mais même alors, je ne peux pas pleurer. Cela fait partie de ce que c'est que d'être mort."

She looked to the who else was near, and the reaper made her pause, voice familiar. Had he'd been the one who....?

Another vision cut her thoughts, this of Finn. Of before his eye had been taken. Of him and a woman intimate. She paused, her gaze cast at the one who reacted, who cursed and she sighed. It wasn't her place. Not here, not now.

"Guy- I'm scared." She looked again to his growing problem. "Israfel has been acting up. He's been- he's reacting emotionally. I don't know why but he thinks something is coming. Something terrible, worse. A name mentioned of someone killed- That furthered his reaction. Dorian-" The use of her friend's name, the dropping of carelessness for something more factual, more real.

"Something is wrong here. Something terribly wrong. Dream or game, this is not right."

Peyton would have liked to have had enough time to really comfort the young man. To tell him everything that had run through her head. Every selfish and selfless impulse that had lead to her joining Deus, but the Queen wasn't going to give them time. She managed a smile, and she squeezed his hand as she'd offered up the few words of comfort she'd been able to give, but the influence of the Queen was still there, and memories and confessions were thick in the air.

What hit the petite gryphon now wasn't so much a memory as a certain deep rooted fear. The sort that kept her up at night when her dreams were unkind. She stiffened as that familiar fear crashed into her, and her grip on Noah's hand tightened almost painfully as she looked up at him and realized how terrified she was of losing him.

Not just him.

She bit her lip, but the words forced through anyways, and she stood there with both small hands wrapped around his wrist, and her one eye wide as she rambled up at him, voice raising. "You have to be careful." It fit, but it was so random. "You just.. You have to. You have to stay safe, and you always have to come back." Her gaze flicked from his face and to one side, jumping from person to person as if trying to pick out familiar figures from the crowd, but she didn't know who all was who. Only a couple of names matched the faces of the avatars.

"You, and America, and, Otto, and Taym." she actually whined when she reached the Death hunter's name, because of all the people she truly cared about, he was the one that was in real danger. He was the one being shipped off to some far off, dangerous base, and he was the one she'd be absolutely unable to protect if anything went wrong. "If anything happened.. I need you all to be safe." Because she wasn't sure she could survive it if she lost someone else she loved.

Forgiveness? It came easy to someone who was a master at selective forgetfulness, who could push away the bad memories in favour of new editions of his story, of the people in it. Forgive and forget, it was a good life motto but not one he'd been entirely successful at. He'd never forgiven his family, never forgiven those who had treated him badly, at least not wholly.

It was far easier to forgive the circumstance, to forgive fate for sending things his way than to forgive the enemies that came after him, with words or with weapons. He could forgive life, because he only got one shot at it, only one chance to make the most of it. He had plenty of memories of patched up friendships, of apologies and make-ups, but in the end he wasn't sure if he'd ever really forgiven anyone. Instead he'd just pushed down the hurt until it coiled in the pit of his stomach, hidden and tucked away save for the sparse moments when it reared it's ugly head, when he was feeling down, in his nightmares.

If he'd forgiven them, he wouldn't have to hide them away because forgiveness wasn't about forgetting. It was knowing that it had happened, but not letting it matter.

Too many things still mattered, to him.

Yeah. He was going to get up and hit it. It didn't matter how much he was being weighed down, and how much his limbs felt too heavy to move. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't. His freedom would never be taken. Not by anyone. And he needed to show that.

Before he could show that, he glanced over to afroQueen and noticed there was another ... memory .. thing playing before her eyes. The curiosity was bubbling up, and he was tempted to ask her all the what-how-if-who questions he could possibly come up with, but the effects were fading, and he was more interested in figuring out what was happening than asking her about what was happening, exactly. He could infer it. She was ... doing some kind of summoning thing? With her whole family?

(They must have been reapers, since they all seemed to have familiars.)

She didn't get a familiar, though; she got a weapon. It was a pretty cool weapon, too. Admittedly, as much as the elders of the city he had grown up in--full of other elementals like him--had been hesitant of Reapers still to this day, Reapers didn't seem so bad now. And they had weapons, which was cool. Blightning wished he could get his own awesome weapon that he could swing around like a badass.

He looked down at his hands.

Oh, right, he had the knuckle punchers.

Oh, there was Biggie! And he had a lot of questions too. He was going quickly, but Blightning naturally thought about things rather quickly and he nodded along, listening to everything he said. "I run!" He managed, in response to the question about playing any sports. He went to display that, but found himself rather frustrated with the fact that his legs were getting harder and harder to move. No! He wouldn't let this happen! He wouldn't, he wouldn't, he wouldn't, he had to be able to move of his own facilities and of no one else's, this would not stop him.

"I've got some knuckle ... punchers ..."

He wanted to show them off, but even finishing a sentence seemed overwhelming. What was he talking about?

"Ignatius, focus!"

"I'm trying!"

"Yildirim Ignatius Svarog! You've been working on this thing for hours now. It's one question! One! You're doing everything but! Where do you go when you stare off into space? What are you doing that you can't get this done -- Yildirim are you even listening to me?!"

Ignatius squinted, for a moment, jumbling over what she said. His body was bouncing, unable to stay still as his eyes darted around seconds after he looked at her. Then, he clutched his head, and promised a, "Mom, I'm trying!"

"If you want to do well at any school, you need to pay attention, okay? Look at the paper. Concentrate on the words. Solve them."

"Mom, I can read ... this is running away from me!"

Where was he? His limbs were hard to move. Why couldn't he move? He made a distressed, almost panicked noise as he attempted to lift his leg again, glaring forward in the direction of -- it was hard to say. He couldn't see anything, couldn't focus on everything. His thoughts were running away like hummingbirds and butterflies and horseflies and fireflies and were there shapes in the clouds? He thought he saw a rabbit and his arms felt like stone, outright like stone, like a limestone maybe--those were the hard ones, right? Were those the hard ones? Or was that sandstone? Perhaps it was igneous, igneous like his name Ignatius, was that where he had gotten his name from?

His names, like the volcanoes, that was from the distant side of the fire elementals, wasn't it? He was a lightning elemental, and lightning never struck twice they said, or something like that. Did it strike twice when it was an elemental? Perhaps it would. He would need to test that theory. His legs ached. It was grey, so grey...

Again, the Queen seemed to draw something out of SCIENCE. The little Hatter watched eagerly to see what it would be this time.

Another vision of her in the swamp! But as SCIENCE recognized the origin of this memory, her face grew still.

Skarks loved to make music. If they weren't hunting, or sparring, or chatting, you could always hear a few individuals singing, or mimicking instruments, or even just tunelessly humming. It created a happy background cacophany to life in the swamp. However, while occasionally two or three Skarks would get together and sing in harmony, or send a message thundering out over the swamp to some other distant Skark family, singing together was generally discouraged by the Elders.

Canon had always wondered why, but she'd never found out until today. And today, music was the last thing on her mind.

It was a rare thing for a Skark to die of old age. Hunting, sparring, and an innate curiosity for all things dangerous usually added up to a short, if interesting life. Not so for Lavie Enrose. She was a legend in the swamps. Hunted everything, sparred with anyone worth sparring and won. It was a common saying that cats borrowed lives from Lavie. Young Skarks had listened to stories about her adventures and believed that she would live forever.

Today, the swamps had thundered with news of Lavie's passing. The Elders had gathered the families. They congregated on the spot where they sent messages, and Canon had never seen so many solemn antennae and down-turned eye stalks. But there had been an air of anticipation all the same. Canon whispered to her Mother, asking what would happen.

"We will remember Lavie Enrose, Canon. Now, hush, and listen."

So, Canon had obeyed, staring forlornly at the Elders, who seemed to be listening for a signal.

And finally the Eldest began to sing. Every young Skark perked up as they recognized the opening notes to Lavie's name. Soon, all the Elders had joined in, and then the adults, and then they motioned for the young ones to join in. It was the largest gathering of Skarks Canon had ever heard singing together, and she eagerly joined, adding her voice to the harmony.

And as she sang, she realized she could hear a rising echo of their music. Canon skipped a note when she realized it had to be the other families in the swamp. The music merged and rose until it sounded like the Swamp itself was singing farewell to Lavie Enrose.

They sang into the night, and when the song finally died away, Canon didn't feel quite so sad.

"I don't hate monsters, I am not afraid of them, my father is a monster, I'm a monster. I still don't know why we fought when we first met, but jack, I'm sorry. I'm so...." He swallowed. "sorry."

Epithet felt his ears grow hot, his eyes shocked at the words that escaped his mouth, pulling his lips tight into a downward frown. He was proud of the fact that he had some heritage there, but he did not know why he got upset with Damien when they first met. He did not know how he brought up his pack in the volley of one-ups and counters. He did not know why they ended their first interaction on bad terms. He closed his eyes, growling inward. Was it because he felt threatened by an older canine? Was it because, no matter how much he worked out, trained, practiced, fought, that a monster would naturally be better than him, physically? He blamed his social inability to effectively talk to people. That was why he kept quiet, that's why he stayed to himself. He closed his eyes, trying his best to hold back, fearing that the Queen could make him say anything else.



[[ Empress ]] [[ Empress ]] [[ High Priestess ]]

It had been just as much her fault as his father's, and for a while he blamed her equally. It was only after he started seeing his uncle regularly that he realized he and Zira were cut from the same cloth. She had needed someone else's anger, and her choice to live as some high society matron had limited her sources. He forgave her because he knew he would have done the same.

Peyton? It was fitting how all the hunters seemed to come out of the woodwork here at the big battle field of darkness. It felt better to know they were all close by. Almost safer.

Peyton's worries weren't lost on him. Not at all. He could relate as far as that worry went. But he couldn't make any promises. None of them could. Their job title held a certain danger that made such promises cruel and futile.

He gave her a wry looking expression, unable to answer her pleas.