[PRP] Sinner's Covenant (Mephistopheles + Tempest)

[Lady_Ourania]

The cicadas were singing again, and the raw tune was in his no-longer bones, caught up in sap that worked so slowly it gave the noise time to mature and grow deafening. Consciousness as a whole was otherwise inconstant, days and nights mere flickers of occurrence in his periphery, the lives of things that visited the shade beneath his boughs imperceptible as a millipede's individual leg taps. One, two, eighty-nine. None of them mattered, but it was infuriating not to know. Six, eight, five hundred. He had no eyes to see, no mouth to shout, no challenges to hand short of the occasional creak he could wring from the wind. They might have all perished and he would have been oblivious.

It was not like being sealed away, locked forever in obscurity. In this particular version of hell, he was the seal, his own cage of torment, heartwood strong as steel and kingly branches high enough to brush the soft, cloudy underbelly of the sky. Years had passed, long enough to register even in his scattered thoughts, all of them dispersed among leaves that came and went. Autumn made him senile, and spring brought forth the slow buds of ideas. He was a prisoner in that he could not take shelter from the inevitable march of seasons, that he was subject to light and rain to maintain. As a guardian, he had required little, only the occasional drops of dew and the ambrosial shoots that sprang fresh beneath enchanted hooves. In this shape, he was vulnerable, robbed of legs and teeth and retribution. With the spirits' goodwill run dry beneath the hot sun of his supposed crimes, he was no longer treated with care, but instead left to his own severely limited devices. The sting of it was maddening, an itch he could not scratch with limbs held irretrievably upward, tied to the cascade of heat and water. He hated purely, and the passage of time stripped him of details, left him feeling only wrathful in his victimized state. He would get back at them. If vengeance was the last thought left to him, he would stretch it out; expand on it until that was the whole of his purpose. Duty was buried, remorse forced, but he would never fully succumb to his sentence if he held on to the fury.

It was during the clarity of a greener year that he had come upon a plan that would set things into motion. Focusing on the bark near his base, he caused it to grow at a delayed rate, leaving deep scores on the outermost wood. It was an arduous process, one that he suspected would be misplaced when snow filled the gaps and rotted the thought. But he kept the poisonous hopes close to him even in the dead of winter, using it to drive him until the self-inflicted scars slowly formed words. Finally, he had an incantation that stabbed into him, that made the guardian recall what it was like to possess a heartbeat. It was a spell of liberation, a seam of characters that, when read aloud, would bring him back from the edge of the inanimate.

With his part complete, he could only await a reader, a literate but foolish example of his race who would notice the outlined knowledge. Warnings had spread ever since he'd been transformed, but it was little more than a legend now. Those who were unafraid or uninformed would still venture deep inside his forest, would squint to find him amidst the normal trunks. They would speak and it would be the words he'd recited internally, endlessly, the sequence that would release him.

Soon, soon, the lesser foliage that depended on his whim for sunlight often whispered to him, heralding a potential taker. Soon.  

[Sosiqui]

Tempest padded through the forest, not on the wing this time - but he was hungry again, a Kalona's hunger rather than the simple, easily-sated hunger that came from his mother's side. The hunger he dreaded.

The winter winds made flying in search of food too treacherous to risk, and Akahi would worry, anyway. The forest was safer. He'd told her that he was going in search of some herbs...

It was harder, much harder, to catch things on foot than it was on the wing, and the forest creatures were canny and quick. Time after time the stallion's teeth closed on empty air, leaving a squirrel or small bird quite alive, and more than able to taunt him from a nearby tree.

Finally, tired and frustrated and still hungry, Tempest came to a halt next to a particularly large and twisted tree, huffing in indignation, trying to ignore the cold ball of fear that was growing in his stomach. If he couldn't catch anything, couldn't sate the hunger, he might... might attack Akahi, not meaning to... he shuddered, his tail slapping against the bark of the tree. His worst nightmare. He closed his eyes and tried to regain his equilibrium.  

[Lady_Ourania]

There. There. The heat of breath, the touch of something living and near as his scorned brethren had promised. It was difficult to focus, to pinpoint the speck of motion if he had not prepared extensively beforehand, caused his thoughts to grind down and forced recognition. The guardian could not see, not in the conventional sense, but his roots nearest to the air felt the weight of something heavier than a bird hopping for wormy meals, or a deer that had the gall to settle beneath his sunblock-branches to avoid the afternoon heat. Some trouble persisted in identifying hooves as they pressed down on his earthbound sensors, using that guideline to hypothesize species even if the practice was inadequate. To be fair, it was akin to keeping track of a single mote of dust as it tumbled through space, insignificant and among varied others that made the act barely worth the effort. But this would be, he would make it so. Too much time had been spent planning to let it all go awry now.

He built on the moment, gathering strength while the leaves he had managed to keep shivered overhead in a show of concentration without a breeze to stir them. The creature was close enough to his base to spy the words if it just turned slightly, and he had long ago devised ways of drawing attention to his freeing cause. The etched bark shook, like a winged thing rearranging its feathers to prepare for rituals among the flock. A low sound murmured from somewhere deeper in before the outside began to ooze, red lacquer pulsing to the surface and filling the characters with a viscous layer of brighter color. He bled into them, made them brim with sweet, sticky poison, glowing ever so slightly from both exterior and interior sources.

Read. Like a mantra he repeated it, knowing that his command would not be heard, but willing it regardless. Mind working furiously, he remembered walking, speaking, wanting. Read. Read. If he was delivered of his curse, those aspects would no longer need to reside exclusively in memory. Read.  

[Sosiqui]

The tree next to him shivered and creaked; Tempest nearly jumped away in fear, then stopped, calmed himself, and shook his head. I'm just jumpy because of... everything... it's only a tree. He huffed, his tail swishing with irritation. If he was this keyed up by a simple tree...

A faint flick of movement caught his eye, and he turned towards the tree, ears half-back, wary. Resin was pooling on the tree's gnarled trunk, running into lines - no, letters. Tempest closed his eyes, then opened them again: still there. He shook his head: still there.

"Strange," he murmured, dipping his head to sniff at the sap. It seemed oddly sweet, though he admitted he didn't make a habit of eating tree sap. But a word, etched in bark - why? He tilted his head at it, then slowly read the word aloud, feeling out the unfamiliar vocalizations with care. Who-  

[Lady_Ourania]

He felt his deliverance being drowned by rage as his literate chance skittered away like a mouse, frightened by the fierce determination that made up his actions. Still seething, he decided to do nothing more, merely waiting to see if his victim could be lured back by inquisitiveness, the letters standing out in scabbing wounds. Even his thoughts were mute, a series of images that floated in and out of his foremost mind: what he would do to this thing if it failed to free him. What he would do if it did...

Talking. Even the images were gone, suspended while intensity froze his perception. The first word meant nothing, an observation of some kind that had no holding on his status. But the next.

There were sounds, subtle shrieks and howls bound to nothing while the last of his leaves fell in a flurry of rustling noise, littering the ground where roots retracted, tripping anything that had dared to nestle close. The tree groaned, a long, terrifying note before it thrashed, the bark jumping like struck piano keys, sap spurting out of fresh breaks as wood was distorted. The limbs dropped next, hitting the ground in thundering cracks, the trunk beginning to shrink while the roots crawled out of the dirt and onto it, winding around in a may pole dance. Shaved off pieces of lumber balanced on the earth like curled canoes as they were made, a shape beginning to emerge from the simultaneous reduction and chiseling, as though unseen hands were working on a grotesque carving.

Disoriented, he let his head hang where it appeared, feeling the final few details as they were made, the invisible instruments that chipped out eyelids, mouth, and nostrils. He inhaled, and his chest rattled, everything feeling constricted and heavy, like the world was crushing him. A moment to cope and he opened his eyes, his vision strange after so long spent blind, neck straightening with reluctant snapping noises. His body felt different, but somehow not different enough, and apprehension bloomed in his newly made belly. Something wasn't right. This wasn't how he was supposed to feel, his feet still connected to the ground by tendrils of plant, a glance toward his legs confirming that he was not as he had been - a miniature yggdrasil pointedly staring back from a forearm. He blinked and his eyelids grated, throwing splinters into each other; and moving his head to the side made branches poke into his stiff throat.

A stunned sense of dislocation kept his fury at bay as he looked to the one who had freed him, nostrils opening with the microscopic movement of wood grain.

 

[Sosiqui]

Tempest reared as the tree cracked like thunderclaps and peeled away, as if an unseen force was rending it limb from limb - but a shape remained in the cataclysm, as if being carved or freed from the once-living wood. The stallion's first instinct was to run in fear, but that Kalona blood in him held him fast, and his eyes glowed faintly. Here was something strange, and mysterious, and dark. The hunger that gnawed coldly in his stomach quelled for a moment, bidding him remain in the face of falling leaves.

"What are you?" he said, finally, his tone more like a low growl, but his ears were up - ready at any moment to flick down and turn tail, guiding the rest of him into the skies and away, whether his curiosity would or no.  

[Lady_Ourania]

Not who, but what. What was he but a thing removed from flesh and blood, a being composed of dark bark and uprooted hate. He opened his mouth and tasted sawdust, memories slowly filtering back in from wherever they'd flown to while he'd been trapped. "Mephistopheles." The name came out ragged, as though his vocals had lashed it on the way up. "Guardian." He amended with something like a smirk gliding over his too-stretched mouth, remembering that he had been called something very different towards the end. The grin waned when he saw the alertness in the other's eyes, prepared to bolt if he so much as sneezed out whatever was crawling through his sinuses. Scared, but with an undercurrent of something more, or else he would have already been gone.

Kalona. The wind whispered in answer through his mossy dreads, and yet something was visually amiss. He eyed the feathery wings, a strange complement to the upward curl of horns, and recognized a halfbred embarrassment when he saw one. The smell of blood spore mixed with the lazy hint of grass-eaters emanated from him, an obvious middle child of bastardized lines, belonging wholly to none. While he considered how such a crippling weakness could be used to his advantage, the demon felt something smooth and polished roll demandingly across his chest, the heat from inside it alerting him immediately of what it contained. Oh yes, he'd very nearly forgotten about that. It must have hung like a strangled body from his branches while he'd been his own prison, just as impatient as he was for this day. The potion, the one that had damned him, some Angeni's unwanted gift for his terminated valor.

"Would you wish to run, boy?" The words were coming easier, a lightly mocking edge to them as the spindly vertebrae-trees along his back raised upward with their budding shoots. It was easy enough to seize on that particular problem and see where it led him, generalizing to seek out other ill-guarded points. "I hold a bottle of granting on my breast, if you would choose send yourself speedily away. But what does a Kalona have to fear?"  

[Sosiqui]

Tempest stood very still as the thing the tree had birthed began to talk, in a voice like a tree breaking in the wind. But at the word Kalona the tip of his tail twitched, betraying him, and the spell was broken. "One does not see a... being... born from a tree every day. Running would be the wisest choice in the face of something so strange..."

It really would be the best thing to do, but now his curiosity was piqued. "You. Mephistopheles," he said, saying the unfamiliar name slowly. "The tree, the words, did I..." He left the sentence hanging, unsure of how to finish it. Cause you to come into being? Summon you?

Free you?  

[Lady_Ourania]

The silence made his craggy mouth turn down, though the demon supposed he should be relieved that he hadn't been forced to chase the other's panicked shape through the hushed woods. Had the boy planned on acting statuesque to escape his interest? He was not alert only to motion like some ancient, lumbering predator, his sight perfectly keen despite the lack of ocular evidence. But the remark on race seemed to stir something up, and he listened with grim amusement as the other spoke the obvious, just barely resisting the urge to interrupt. "Why yes, that would seem the most apparent choice." He agreed humbly, nastiness frothing for a chance to rise up. "But you have not. What would that insinuate, I wonder?"

He sighed at the next few words, the sound like a rush of whistling wind through a wooden knot while he shook his head in a grandfatherly fashion. So full of questions, but they persisted in phrasing the wrong ones. A test of intrigue was all well and fine when time was not the proctor, and he had just recently become reacquainted with it enough to know it was sternly watching their hesitation. "Yes, yes. The words were writ to be spoken, they only needed the catalyst of a voice." Mephistopheles paused, glancing down at himself once more, a sliver of his own frustration worming into his tone. "Unfortunately, not all went according to plan. We do not always receive what we are entitled to... though there are ways of increasing one's chances. Tell me, my young, instinct-confused friend, what is it that led you out here, alone and quivering, to find and free a grateful guardian?"

It was really no concern of his what a brainless little mongrel was doing out in the middle of nowhere, reading graffiti on trees aloud to the air. But knowing would make it easier to get a hoof in, to find how best this particular crumb of luck could be expanded on. He might require a servant of some kind, someone to run his errands and do work outside of his domain. This one wasn't the most promising example of Soquilidom, but he had made due with much less before. Centuries spent as a tree should have put a damper on any opportunistic impulses, but he was already thinking too fast to follow, reveling in the freedom of ideas without necessarily tossing out the poor ones just yet.  

[Sosiqui]

Guardian? "You protect this forest, then?" Tempest examined the other stallion's barklike skin, the moss and leaves that clung to his form. It might be that such a protector wouldn't like to find a hunter in his woods... and yet, there was a somehow soothing cadence to Mephistopheles' words, a sense of deep, soft, deceptive gentleness. The ancient green.

"Hunting," he said, bluntly. "If there were any squirrels impaled on your branches when you emerged, I'll gladly take them and be on my way, back to my mate. I only take the barest bit of what I need. If you are a protector, I am glad I could help you." His tail twitched again.  

[Lady_Ourania]

"I do." He glossed over the fact that he hadn't in several centuries, that he'd been far too occupied with standing straight and tall and attempting coherent thought. All that mattered was that he'd returned, and that he could feel the forest in a different way than he had, both as a protector and as an aspect. It was strangely tearing to at once be something that he'd before been separately, but the adjustment was secondary as the words poured out of him, not about to be hindered by something as absurd as an identity crisis. "That is, after all, what 'guardian' means." And surely he bore enough resemblance to his charge at this point that there was little to no doubt remaining.

The smart remark that followed didn't faze him, though he did quietly reevaluate previous assumptions, admitting that he hadn't given the whelp enough opportunity to prove himself with spunk. It was, as the boy had said, somewhat of a slap to see a creature fall from the womb of wood while bearing a baffling array of characteristics.

"A mate?" There was no mistaking the demon's disgust at the claim, his nose wrinkling so that splinters lifted near his lips. Oh yes, a mate. Was that not what had resulted in so poor a circumstance for him? Wanting blood, essence, things he was unwilling to give while he'd had them, now wishing for them and a modicum of indifference when he was but a husk of equine stature. Such grave punishment for an act so easily remedied when he'd still been of mammalian flesh. He would have split himself open then and there if it would have meant anything.

So they were quite the commodity then, these vulnerable female things with dewy eyes and no sense of when to bow out. Still, Mephistopheles zeroed in, sensing something amiss in the statement beyond his own ill sentiments, mulling until he found the blip. "And you hunt apart? That seems rather..." His teeth gave a quick grind before he continued. "Unromantic." Kalona mares were just as bloodthirsty as their counterparts, though, if this one's sweetheart was fullblooded, perhaps he was just afraid of being shown up in the sport. To distract from the obvious curiosity, his branches spread plaintively out, showing no such unlucky rodents attached. "If it is a feast you desire, there are easier ways of obtaining it. Or do you prefer the chase?"  

[Sosiqui]

"So... you don't care if I eat the denizens of your woods? That makes my job easier, I suppose, if you're not that particular flavor of guardian." Tempest shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant, still not entirely sure what to make of the bewildering creature.

He flinched a little, without meaning to, at the strange stallion's mention of romance. "My mate does not hunt. She is not Kalona; I am only half, but it is enough to make me hungry for meat and blood every so often. That is all." His tail swished behind him, betraying his uneasiness with the topic.  

[Lady_Ourania]

Care? Why would he? "Not all 'denizens' who exist in this place do so harmoniously." He remarked shortly, arching a rough brow. "There are more carnivores here than you, my red-eyed boy." If he made a mess of things and murdered for pleasure, then that would have been another case entirely. That was traipsing over clearly drawn lines, and even he wouldn't have spurned the old laws so flagrantly. Mephistopheles kept that to himself while he watched the other's body language, trying to decide if he could read accurately after so long spent without practice. The shrug was a little nervous, perhaps hiding the residual twitching his appearance had brought about. Or maybe something else, another thing entirely. Did it really matter? The wince that came afterward was plenty.

"No?" A gene-muddied stallion that craved flesh paired with something else. Most Kalona didn't associate with those considered below them, and they tended to be even less welcoming toward those that bore some traits and lacked others. The information came back to him slowly, making the tree-bearing stallion wonder if he had known it in the past or if it was arriving through some newly established portal of enlightenment. And then there was the way he seemed to resent speaking of his mate, as if her mention in this topic were beyond inappropriate. Or even unnerving. If she did not hunt, she was not useful. If she did not revel in the bloodbath, then she was prey. And what sort of prey animal willingly associated with something that could turn and sink his fangs into her at any given moment? The same sort of stupid beast that had implored him all those centuries ago, back when it had meant less than nothing to say no. Until it had suddenly meant everything.

"Half is certainly enough, isn't it?" He almost sounded sympathetic - and perhaps he was, though his expression was veiled by the long, mossy threads of his hair, too complete a blockade to tell for certain. He bowed his head in contemplation, weighing the thoughts with a deliberate sense of urgency, melding them with all he'd been privilege to. "The hunger without the mindset necessary to operate it. You should be aware that the creatures here are inordinately clever, and sometimes hard to catch. You may very well go home with that gnawing still in your belly. But then... any good mate will share her meat." Even one who did not hunt, one who meant well, who sacrificed to be with someone that went against the natural order. That was the real fear.