[PRP] You will tell me what you know. (Rezo and Nightmare)

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Every step he took brought with it a chiming sound, an eerie and beautiful music to his walking. He walked very deliberately and not too quickly. Though in the bright sunlight he could feel the sun on his face and the shadows that passed before him, Rezo was still very much blind. He had gotten precise directions on how to find the ghoul of a soquili which he sought. He followed the path there now, following the feeling of worn ground beneath his hooves. As always, he was vulnerable. If he took a wrong turn he could get completely lost. He could mostly use his other senses, particularly smell, to allow him to retrace his steps in such situations, but this was not always the case.

A frown grew across his composed expression. He had had too many failures lately. He almost had lost track of how many times he had followed a lead only to have mythical magics turn out to be nothing more than superstition. What he needed was true power and magic. He knew that it existed in the world and not just in the wings of the angeni. His life was devoted to finding whatever shreds of magic he could, in hopes that it might cure his blindness some day. His blindness was his obsession and his curse. For years he had wandered, restless in pursuit of his goal.

He searched for one named "Nightmare," though he did not know whether this was the creature's true name or simply what the fearful called him. Nightmare was rumored to be a monster that embodied fire and death. Today, Rezo would see whether the rumors were to be believed.

A certain smell came to him on the wind, the scent of burning. He was close.  

[[+Katch+]]

Nightmare wandered aimlessly, with no goal in mind and only his growing depression to keep him company on his decent to madness. His flaming hooves struck the ground as if he were trying to squash something with each step, the foliage under hoof sizzling under the green fire that sprung from his very being.
After his son had left him to go on to his training to be a knight, he was left with no anchor for his sanity and so sought the dark places of the Kawani lands, believing for sure, that his actions had made him as monstrous as his appearance suggested.

He snarled at a couple of vultures perched in a dead tree. How dare they stare at him? He used to be a great warrior, he had fought in many battles, he had once been feared as the very embodiment of death by fire. Perhaps folks STILL feared him, he hadn't eaten properly since Tannin had left, it made him gaunt and short tempered. Though he had been a stallion full of honor, his heart seemed to reside in his gut nowadays, the constant drumming like a reminder to him that he had let his love down, he had left his other two children...
The fires that flickered upon his hooves grew even hotter, leaving burning leaves in his wake as he passed.

There was nothing left for him except to embrace what he really was, a failure.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

As he drew forward, the burning smell intensified. Rezo became slowly aware of other signs of strangeness. He could hear dry branches scraping together and knew to be passing by skeletal dead trees. An avian grunting came to his ears, vultures roosting. Every sign spoke of an area that should be left alone and departed from with all haste, but this was exactly where he wanted to be. He tasted ash in the air. The Nightmare couldn't be far. He made no attempt to silence his movements, keeping his steady pace punctuated by chiming.

It wasn't long until he heard someone else in the area as well. There he stopped. His cloak, billowed from walking, settled down regally upon his back. Eyes shut, he faced the source of the noise with unerring accuracy. He judged that the soquili would be within sight... if he had been able to see.

"You, Nightmare." He named the beast and had no fear, despite the stories he'd heard and the soft crackling of smolder he could hear. "I am Rezo the Red Priest, and I have come to speak with you."  

[[+Katch+]]

He stopped, eyebrows raising behind his dark mask. He had been so caught up in his own thoughts he hadn't realized that another creature had been this close, had nearly caught him off guard. He frowned and turned, his eyes glowing like green embers as they locked upon the stranger. A unicorn? How odd...What was a unicorn doing in a place like this? His eyes narrowed to green slits as the stranger called him out by his "Name"
He snorted green mist and hissed a reply, his old fear working ways coming back so easily "...And what would a priest want with ME?" He replied suspiciously, though this stranger, this Rezo character, was a unicorn, he certainly dressed oddly, his nose wrinkled. He would watch this one carefully...

Though now that he took the time to look, Rezo kept his eyes firmly shut...was he just resting them and playing tricks...or was he blind? Now there was a question. He stood solidly, taking in this odd character before him. " Especially a unicorn...if you searched for me...you should know what I am." He curled his lip. Everyone else just assumed, they always assumed...  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Rezo's lips split into a self-assured, yet subtle, smirk. He could not see the green mist but he heard enough that he could tell that the stallion was trying to intimidate him. It wasn't going to work. He didn't even fear skinwalkers, though he respected their power and the damage they could do to him. He prided his ability to read a situation from the beginning and he didn't judge this as one that would prove dangerous. This was a stallion used to frightening soquili by his looks, but how would he respond when Rezo couldn't see him or fear him?

"I do indeed know what you are." He stood perfectly still and his stance indicated confidence and authority. "And I've come here to find out how it is that you are what you are." His tail swayed behind him, somewhat thoughtfully jingling. "You are quite the oddity, you realize. As such... that makes you of great interest to me." Though he said it softly, there was still something quietly sinister about his tone when he spoke to the stranger.  

[[+Katch+]]

The unicorn was blind, it was fairly obvious that no creature around him would willingly decide to not use the gift of sight to deal with him. Which did explain why he didn't seem to be scared in the least bit. Nightmare grimaced and took a step forward, the leaves crackling and hissing under hoof.
"...How it is?" He paused for a minute and a rumbling chuckle slithered through his fangs " Oh yes...Rezo, I am different...different from any other in this land."
He of course would not mention that he had sired three children, two of which he himself had never met, but Tannin had the hooves of bone, same as he did.

He words turned into a low grumble " I have no knowledge...of what it is that I AM. So sorry to disappoint."
He flicked his tail, his armor creaking as he moved slightly so he would not burn every thing under his hooves to ash.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Though the stallion might claim to possess no knowledge, Rezo was not ready to call this expedition a waste of time just yet. Behind his perpetually shut eyelids, his perfectly functioning eyes were able to track the movement of the light emitted from the flaming hooves. Rezo, of course, did not realize that his eyes worked this way, he interpreted it as more of a spiritual sense. It enabled him to track Nightmare with his face to an accurate degree, an eerie trick for a soquili that was supposedly sightless.

"You give yourself too little credit." Rezo watched Nightmare still as a stone, besides from the movement in his head and some soft swaying in his tail. "You have lived as you are for some time now, I imagine. Perhaps you've even been like this for your entire life, assuming someone didn't curse you." His lip twitched almost imperceptibly at this, as if enjoying some personal joke. "I'm sure that you have quite a lot of insight, whether or not you like to define it as 'knowledge."  

[[+Katch+]]

Nightmare curled his lip at the unicorn " I'm not sure I am..."
He watched the unicorn suspiciously, he hadn't ever gone out of his way to play meet and greet with other species of soquili in the Kawani lands, but he had heard that unicorns were supposedly peaceful creatures often gifted with healing powers, this one seemed a little...dark.

" My entire life...From the time i was left in a hollowed out pumpkin till now. You are correct about that..." He wrinkled his nose " Cursed, likely not...I have seen cursed things...I do not look like them." He raised an eyebrow under his mask " Though maybe you do."  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Though maybe you do. One of Rezo's eyebrows quirked upwards. Was the stallion accusing him of being cursed? Subconsciously he shifted so that his deep red cloak fell more completely over the marking that was burned into the skin of his flank. Though he couldn't see it, he knew the marking was there, an upturned staring eye. It was strange that the stallion should call him cursed, when cursed is what he had often called himself during long sleepless nights decrying fate.

"Where was this pumpkin shell in which you were discovered? Here?" The longer the conversation progress, the more he lost the guise of friendliness. His questions probed sharply. If he could understand the origin of this monster, he might be able to trace back to the one that had created him. Rezo could only assume that Nightmare was the product of some deranged sorcerer's experiments. Beasts with skeletal feet did not occur naturally, after all.
 

[[+Katch+]]

He was beginning to distrust this unicorn more with each passing minute. It seemed like an innocent question, where WAS that pumpkin shell he had been left in? Easy enough. " Likely it's rotted away by now...but it certainly lies...in the haunted woods I guarded since my young days." He eyed the stallion warily from under his mask, his eyes like ghost lights within the shadows there. " What is it...that you are hoping to learn by asking?"

His voice was hollow and empty of any emotion, giving away nothing but hinting at his own displeasure at the prying this unicorn was doing.