TERROR SONG.

TWINDEATHS     ;    an independent league of legends multimuse blog run by fawkes. (26, he/they). mutuals-only, crossover friendly. pst timezone. 

current featured muse is: kindred, the eternal hunters.

carrd.

               HUM TICKLED BRIGHT LIPS, catching the voice and feeling a sense of offense at the suggestion.  golden hues turned from examining the magic overtaking the world.  of the spirits pulling her further from reality ( enough to entice minor pang of concern ).  WAS she actually losing?  was rakan not going to be fast enough?  would this truly be her end?  how… anticlimactic, really.

             not that that was her greatest worry, but it sure did feel like a blow to the rebel’s pride.  that the mighty violet raven would be felled by a moment of s t u p i d i t y of all things.  of having had one flaw in her plan, that one thing unaccounted for.  ( it was always something foolish for the brave, wasn’t it? )

                         “you mistake my feelings on the current situation with the past.  i will always be willing to die for my cause… but i’d rather my death serve a purpose.  not a failure.  if i die now, the vastaya might still sing of me, but i will have not left as much as i could behind.  not like last time, where i took out something with me.”  it wouldn’t have been a g l o r i o u s demise.  crushed by the very thing she had intended to destroy all along… yet, at least she would have perished knowing that she had freed some of her people.

          this death was so senseless.  xayah couldn’t allow it; wouldn’t.

                         yet, fate wasn’t going to let her survive easily.  scowl was next to overtake her expression, and glance to the paths before her relented feathers to prickle atop her head.  the sudden lack of the beast’s presence was noted, and that only further communicated to her that time was not on her side.  though lamb certainly engraved the knowledge.

             stubborn but not foolish ( she would discard her mistake from this situation ).  if death was taking her, then there was NO running from wolf.

                        muscles tensed as she prepared to take off.  yet, inquiry dripped from her lips as attention briefly flittered to lamb.  “is this truly it, or is this just part of the game?”  was running meaningful?  could she actually get away?

          her heart felt the tremendous weight of ache suddenly.  rakan would be in torment… and she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.  “if this is my end… i know i will be caught.  so do me the favor of letting me know if the chase can be won.”

     The swirling circle of lights that marked her area of respite had dimmed slightly, though they reignited momentarily at the question. The lamb paused, considering.

      ❝ in the spirit world, a game like this is a metaphor, ❞ She says, one hand raised to tap the side of her mask in thought, ❝ ...as many of the games children play are, to some degree or another. it is also a game that all mortals are fated to lose, eventually. ❞

     Except the ones who cheat, of course, though they would not bring up that path to anyone who might think to abuse it. Instead, she flicks the arrow back into her hand, and holds it where she can see it. Then, in typical spirit form, she answers the question with another question.

     ❝ do you think you can win? ❞ She says, ❝ the chase is hard and dark and often painful. an arrow to the heart is quicker, and more absolute. ❞

     She holds up a single finger. It is not to silence her, but to request a moment to tell a story. The vastya were an honest people; they understood this part of the world in ways that many did not, but they were still as fallible as all mortals could be.

     ❝ you have heard ‘the seven deaths of sparrow.’ ❞ This references an old ionian fairy tale, wherein a songbird evades death six times by besting its shepherd in various games, from riddles to board games, ❝ it is a true story. the sparrow, of course, was cunning lhotl—lhotl of the shifting wing, lhotl the many-colored, lhotl of the swift song. singer, story-teller, titan-slayer. they, who strike stars with their arrows and sing forests into springtime. lhotl, most beloved. ❞

    The word they use, ash’tiele, does directly translate to ‘most beloved’—though it is a deeply archaic word in vastayan dialect, referring to bonded family, chosen blood, most often.

     ❝ in the story, as The People tell it, the sparrow forfeits the seventh game, despite winning, citing his old age and long, happy life as being fulfillment enough. maybe true, in a sense, but that is more fanciful than the real story. in life, lhotl had learned from an oracle that the next time, there would be no evading either the wolf or the arrow.

     they were a close friend of ours. they used to play our chosen songs at every spirit blossom festival, and they greeted us as such. when they chose, at last, to run with the wolf, i asked why they might choose to play if they knew that destiny said they must lose. they told us, ‘i have run with you six times, spirit most beloved, and i would cross this threshold with you upon my tail or not at all.’ ❞

     A beat. Lamb lowers her hand. In the distance, the howl of a wolf punctuates the silence of the ghostly forest surrounding them.

@shenseii​ said:  “did you find what you were looking for?” /kindred maybe :o 

     They stand, balanced on one cloven hoof. Lamb’s head tilts slightly to one side, a gesture of expression even underneath the red-and-white mask that hides her face from view. 

      ❝ to be looking for something ❞ Lamb muses, ❝ ...would imply a search, and a not-knowing. we rarely deal in such insubstantialities. but yes; we have met our marks this day. ❞

     Behind her, wolf chuckles, drifting in and out of the ghostly foliage like a whale might breach the surface of the water. Shen is fairly well-known to most spirits. The Eye of Twilight often was. To maintain balance between the mortal world and the spirit world meant walking the twisting and often strange paths between both. 

     Lamb hooks her bow over her back, and then places both hands together and gives him a polite bow. She has to look up to speak to him; spirit god though she may be, Lamb herself is only a little under four-feet tall. 

     They didn’t usually make house calls. It was always a unique circumstance, however, when they had chance to meet with one of those few people of the world with tangled but significant destinies. There were a few from every part of Runeterra—the movers and shakers of the mortal realm, whether or not they knew it, connected to fate by a thousand little threads that only elder spirits like the Kindred were even aware of.

     She found Rakan outside, where he’d gone once the healer had demanded that all members of the vastayan war party had to leave the building lest they risk getting in the way of her work. The whole party had only made it into town less than an hour ago, and the feeling of suspense in the air over their fallen leader was still palpable in the air. Tension, fear, worry. Vastayan emotions always had a thread of magic to them, woven together like the different notes of a piece of music.

     Stepping from the doorway to the healer’s cabin, she appeared as a young girl, no older than twelve or thirteen. Human, this time—there were a few of those in town, and given the lack of vastayan children, it was less suspicious than appearing with her horns and hooves. She wore simple robes, carrying a picnic basket looped over one arm. At her side, a white shiba-dog trotted, dark eyes focused wherever her own went. 

     ❝ mister rakan, ❞ She reached into the picnic basket, producing a sweet roll and some cheese, followed by a bottle of water, ❝ the lady healer thought you should eat something while you wait. it may be a bit of time. ❞

     The old lady had thought as much, though she hadn’t given anyone orders to make sure he did. Lamb held the food up above where her ‘dog’ was able to reach it, though he did seat himself at Rakan’s feet with his mouth open, as if expecting a portion for himself. Lamb sat, too, though she did so mostly so she could push the dog’s head down with one hand, to keep him from begging.

      ❝ we saw you all when you arrived. ❞ There had been a lot of blood, at the time. There still was, along the road. Only the people had been cleaned up. ❝ how are you feeling? ❞

if we don’t have a thread going on i’d love to clock in some new interactions w/ people, if anyone wants to hit up my meme tag. i’m basically always accepting all of these.

oh my god..... them..........  🥺

     FOOLISH.  too close, too confident.  one group of the enemy unaccounted for in the plan, enough to cause a problem.  usually SO meticulous, disappointment was all her mind flashed initially when the agony of a near-perfect strike hit.  she messed up.  how had she done so, how could she have overlooked this?  her own fault; that made it worse.  not that she desired to blame another, but it was e a s i e r to do as such.  still, where had she gone wrong, or had the enemy just calculated right?

                bitter to think that the order was just getting smarter.  that humans were.  the rebel was going to need to switch strategies.  go bolder?  bigger?  rakan would approve of that.  or should they slip silently…  could he even do that?  could she?  flashy wasn’t her style, but chaos was of f a r more fun.  or maybe that was simply how things always ended up even if she targeted a quiet takedown.  side effect of the golden one, really.  but not always.

     it was warm.  why did it always have to feel as such?  oddly almost comforting, having blood drench one in the wake of barely conscious.  her hand pressed to the wound, but with hardly enough strength to make it worth the effort.  still, it lay there, while eyes fluttered, watching vision HAZE until it was shadows and hauntings.

                    familiar.

       the eerie stillness that came.  she was still lying down, but her mind could stir.  her limbs shifted within the vacant realm, allowing her to sit up enough to gaze upon the ones greeting her ( thought greeting was far from the correct explanation ).  xayah at first felt she saw a lamb watching her, but the shifting of her vision revealed a different form.  one she knew but didn’t.

                 recollections of dreams shifted in her head, she pressed a palm to her temple, the one not covered in crimson.  dying… how fleeting of chances she had embraced.  the wolf she didn’t even need to glance to, something about him was like a friend.  it wasn’t the first visit.  it wouldn’t be the last if she had anything to say about it.

    golden depths remained to the lamb.

                “and i won’t be dead… YET.  i have too much left to do in this world.  but you’ll catch me… eventually.  everyone gets caught.”  but she would make it centuries from now.  “i hope you’re having fun.”

     The lamb is silent. They have heard this sort of talk before. After all, they have met kings on their deathbeds, held crying infants, and walked through this process with the young and the old alike. The high and the low. The kind and the cruel. Those who cried, sighed, begged, bowed, accepted, denied, and everything in-between.

     Ionians called them The Taker, though perhaps that epithet was not so accurate—after all, they didn’t take life. They only enforced the laws pre-written into the universe at its creation. Thus, defiance didn’t have much meaning. It was up to fate whether or not this encounter would end as all things did.

     Still. Talking to the dying was one of the more interesting parts of their life; and the long-lived Vastaya, so connected to their lands and their magic, always had interesting things to tell them.

     ❝ oh? ❞ She mused. Wolf continued to circle, single yellow eye emerging now-and-again in the dark spaces between the trees. There was a slightly shimmery quality to the real world now—a transparent image overlaid upon the spirit world that they stood in. ❝ the last time we met, i wondered if you would be willing to die for your work, for The People, and you seemed to think as much. was i wrong? has something changed? ❞

     The world shifts in the few moments after the lamb asks her question. Spirit world trees part, spreading out to reveal a pathway through the forest, off into the distance. No sign of other spirits yet—which made sense. They’d arrive if she died. They were probably hovering around, waiting to see what happened, though there was nothing here for them yet.

     Most noticeably, however, the shadow of the wolf seems to have vanished. Lamb nods to Xayah, taking a step back.