[closed] crossing hoards

[silentsavant]

Who: Eren & Soren; Ranulf later
When: Noveuer 15th
Where: Eastern Residential District
What: Two Dragons end up wreaking havoc in the city fighting over who gets to hoard one piece of pointy metal.
Warnings: VIOLENCE and... some cannibalism now, too. Thanks, Eren.



[ Last year, Soren had not received anything through the mirrors that came from home. It never bothered him that he missed out on the excitement. Nothing he used to carry meant much to him. The tomes of magic he once fought with would be rendered inert, unable to invoke the spiritual entities that don't exist here. Any medicine or tools would be fine, but ultimately not worth bending backwards to claim when he could acquire the same here, if not better. More of the clothes he used to wear might be a refreshing surprise, but he'd need to get them fixed if he were to accommodate his new body parts, and he already had enough of those. Beyond the basics, Soren did not tend to keep anything of personal value or significance. Only once he'd started turning into a dragon did he ever feel the drive to hold onto keepsakes, the urge to defend them at all costs as though someone were threatening the concept of Ike himself.

When this year's round of item emergences crops up, Soren can't work up any eagerness at the possibility to be gifted with a surprise from home. More than that, he just hoped he didn't get stuck with someone else's junk. That just meant the hassle of finding out who it belonged to and arranging to have them come take it off his hands. This round seems different, however, and all one needs to do is notice the brassy aircrafts puttering through the air and bumbling into walls, a variety of curios secured in their clutches. Based on the frantic message sent out through the watches, the logistics of delivering this batch to their rightful owners aren't going well, either.

It doesn't have much to do with him. If someone ends up with one of his grimoires or a lost sock of his or whatever else manages to fall out of the glass, they could keep it for all he cares.

Little did he know, he's going to care quite a lot.

At the very extent of the Haven's boundaries, one of the distant shapes of these UFOs catches his eye before disappearing behind one of the taller buildings in the residential district. It's too far to discern exactly what it is, but something about it calls to him, agitates the pool of his memories to dredge up something... familiar. It couldn't have been his. It had the sharp and distinct profile of a sword; he didn't personally use any of those. As far as he understands it, most Mirrorbound are reunited with something they owned.

Then again, what did Soren really own? Almost everything he did was technically bought using company funds and distributed to appropriate fighters. The same could be said for the other mercenaries and most of their equipment. It is this thought that the dragon holds onto as he fixes his eyes on the horizon and unfolds his wings to satisfy this persistent curiosity. Was he imagining? Could it be...? His instincts start to kick in, even if he's kicking himself for likely getting worked up over nothing. Monsters are so stupid... ]

Comments

[usurpers]

[ eren’s spines had begun to erect seconds before the anger was made verbal. he could taste the ire of his own kind the same way any dragon would know the meaning of his colorful, heated display colors of warning reds and iridescent blues: it’s on. eren’s parry is urgent and almost even late by the weight of his tail— he’s not the fastest beast at all. it burns a clean crescent eaten into the loose flap of his poncho swinging sideways, one he discards the rest of cleanly, tosses the blade with it, bundled and safe from the drop it’d have to suffer.

eren doesn’t run from the incoming dragon, now, raising his taloned hands as his tail flagged marvelously to rattle a violent hiss, its own battle cry, spat between crystalline fin and bone and guarding the prize with his own frame as the wall he’d have to take down. smoke clears from his nostrils and fumes from his mouth, where sparks fly between the cracks of his fangs would spring the breath of his fire. ]

Then die trying.

[ friendship is not above the hoard. friendship is below it. anything that goes this far is no longer a friend through the eyes of instinct too embedded. friendship ended with soren. ike’s sword is his new best friend. ]

[silentsavant]

[ Right at the second he would have made contact with his living target, he shoots up and away like a bottle rocket and zips beyond reach. Eren's defenses are too tight; there isn't enough space between him, the sword he guards, and the wall to reclaim his rightful prize.

But there is no way he will give in. His raging vitriol, his visceral need for this one memento that outshines the quality of the rest of his cobbled and pitiful collection, commands that he will die or kill fighting to protect this extension of Ike so rare, so impossible to find on the four corners of Geardagas.

The airborne demihuman cartwheels through the air and explodes in a heavenly, shimmering burst of light that expands tremendously in size and shifts in form. Gone is the small boy, replaced by the towering reptilian beast that had always been lurking somewhere in his veins.

His shape is twisted by his senseless wrath, offering a more monstrous, less noble profile, like he'd be more inclined to buckle down on all fours and growl than stand upright and speak. Spines that hadn't been present before stand at aggression along his vertebrae in turn, and his gnarly jaw unhinges to release another more volatile stream of raw energy at the untransformed dragon below in a sweeping motion that sears into the brick of the building behind him as well. Freshly created rubble smokes and crumbles to the streets below in an avalanche of masonry and glass where the wyvern stands or once stood, and the neighborhood has already come alive with shrieks to run and calls for help and the cry 'dragon!' on repeat. But the dragon doesn't halt his attack at just his breath; he lunges to crush or pin his opponent to the spot while Eren is still smaller and weaker than him, ready to tear his throat out, claw at his belly, rip him in half, anything to destroy the aggravating obstacle that threatens what is dear to him! ]

[usurpers]

[ he barely misses his step, the breath catches the middle of his tail and fries the scales to an ugly crisp that would fall out with the melt of flesh beneath it eventually. eren cries out then, viciously enraged and pained all at once. he can’t escape the dragon now far larger than him, and immediately he yanks out his own will to change and rip and c̵̡̫͍͆̚ö̸̝̝͇́̕͝ǹ̴̘̺͓̐̚s̴̞̼͙͑͑͑u̴͇̠̪̿͆͆m̸͔̻͍͒́͘e̵̡̝̿̚͝the beast upon him. the burning, the searing, it seized his body from top to bottom, and with his transformation came a shift never quite as clean as the rest.

his human frame, quite literally, lacerates, puffs and bursts with crimson ooze and flesh useless to him. if soren wanted to tear at him now, he’d be helping— as the husk and chips of flesh rotting into a burn are thrown off, what explodes beneath it was the newborn frame of the reptile growing, growing to rival soren’s size into a messy, oozing extension of his ire: a fully scaled wyvern, of precious gem horns and the face of a nightmarish devil.

his tail whips from beneath and totals the base of an intact building that had just been evacuated by the screams from outside. they continue until they’re distant siren wails (dragons! guards! help, the dragons!), until the neighborhood gathers and shrinks to a distance that would be safe, and to eren— they’ve been insignificant white noise since the moment he was attacked. the prickling tail shreds to the opposite side and like an offensive porcupine, whips the needled, erected arrowhead tip over the other dragon’s back.

he launches his first assault with his sapphire talons, without clemency or filter— he digs and drags them in the direction of the other’s side, belly, desperate to see red somewhere between the powerful plates of obsidian scales, kicks with his hind and tears his elongated, serpentine neck back into a sideways S only to spring at soren’s face with a disjointed, heated maw of exposed bone. ]

[silentsavant]

[ Soren sees red, craves more red, cleaves himself more red for the transgression done unto him by Eren and his greed. This bloodshed combined with the trauma of the potential for an unbearable loss erodes at his sanity. He can think of nothing else but destroying the dragon that poses a threat to his treasure. A feral, perverse satisfaction hatches from peeling away at skin and body tissue, even if it only makes his opponent stronger, larger, tougher to pierce.

No matter how sharp or pointy his tail or his claws, they bounce off Soren's armored scales harmlessly as a fly hitting a window, or rakes dragged across stone. But as those sapphire daggers begin to encroach his sides, they find weaker integument just beneath his forearms that breaks for him. Eren strikes and clamps his jaw shut with his own, causing Soren to shake his head back and forth in desperate resistance beneath its force, his chest and throat rumbling with a muffled, angered shriek. He does not like having his main source of attack power disabled! His hands fly to Eren's longer neck and clamp down to pry him off with a feat of his prodigious strength, digging his clawed feet into his body for good measure. ]

[usurpers]

[ these wounds, when not upon his own glowing armor that keeps his hide as clean as steel, crystal, and all things impenetrable— there’s always a spot. for dragons, there always is, and both are maddened enough to find them in each other in a snap. did eren care anymore—?

no.

you pest, comes the thought squeezing past the massive barricades of animalistic cognition that thinks nothing but outrage and gluttony in more than one facet. eren’s neck whips backwards like a spring, callous to open his molten maw to be able to cleanly. it’s because he doesn’t want to let go, much less simply harm the dragon, who is not only successfully tearing into the soft flags of membrane that gave his wings size and shape, but sinking his claws into flesh that felt like cutting into fruit the closer it was to the patch of orange surrounding and arming his nape with a bright, bright target.

eren screams a sound so horrible the neighborhood would remember it as an omen, an eerie howl that only those touched by death would have the excruciatingly bad luck to hear. it breaks what little glass was still intact, it made debris shudder. the wyvern did not just want to attack him, and had lost the one fine hair that held his consciousness to an anchor. he’s free. he swallows what he was able to rake with his teeth, debris or scale, it didn’t matter. he swallows and strikes in the same place his talons had found earlier, the arm, there, right beneath it, twists his sawing teeth into the curve like thousands of daggers wanting to churn his opponent’s gut in before—

squeezing. crushing. pulling. swallowing. he repeats until the dragon’s armor gives, until he finds the spot the same way soren has found his. he’s beyond being the victor in this fight and forgets, for some seconds, what it was that he was fighting for.

the hunger tramples upon all other aspects of his motives. he feels free when he does it. he feels right when he does it. even when he’s being battered just the same, eren is indeed, trying to eat soren alive. ]

[silentsavant]

[ Eren's previous jaw-cinching strike had been much closer to his weak spot than where he plunges his terrible teeth now, but the scales aren't as thick-plated near his arm socket and steadily break way like shellfish for the oozing, bleeding, chewy softness he sought after, much meatier, more to sink and tear into. Sharp and burning pain rips into him all at once and builds until he, too, ruptures the tense and screaming air with his maddened anguish like a bolt of aural lightning rising toward the heavens.

Ettard. A sword Ike preferred to wield. A poignant symbol of his best friend forced apart from him. It flows back into his swirling current of vision. He can't lose focus on what he's fighting for. Eren's distracted, and he's no longer.

Without a second thought, Soren lets the other dragon's molten jaws, tongue and voracious throat ravage his armpit while he dashes the poncho-swaddled sword closer with his powerful tail's long reach, seizes it by the handle, and bashes it into the back of his aggressor's neck with no finesse while flailing to break away from the harrowing torment of his ribs simultaneously seared and feasted upon with everything he has. ]

cw: fellas is it cannibalism if

[usurpers]

[ eren digs in like being just offered a banquette, the entirety of his snout pressing into flesh and blood until it bubbled at his nostrils when he exhaled and charred to a taste of burning. he sinks and swallows far more than biting and snapping away. hotness slipped between his teeth and gums, down his throat and he just fucking wanted more of it, more of the pieces gone and piling in his belly, stringing at tendons or nerves or muscle or whatever it was he was wolfing at this time. the scales attached were a sickening delight that rasped across his tongue when he’d finally pop them off to expose the juice beneath, and the way he pried it all open just a little bit more with his talons hooking at the kissing edges to snatch and devour because he was hungry he was so hungry he was hunfreegry—

a sharp jolt connects to his nape and splits the outer layer open like paper. eren’s too buried into the underside of soren’s wing to be able to retreat with efficiency, but he does try, with a jerk that seems immediately disoriented and with a reverberating shriek that vibrates between the other dragon’s ribs as if he was already at a depth he never should’ve reached. ]

sometimes a bro just wants to eat another bro out

[silentsavant]

[ Eren's shriek rattles around in Soren's skull and down his spine, enough to reach the boy whose sense and reason had been shut down. It doesn't bring Soren's right mind back. It only sends chills through his whole being, all at the same time a meaty chunk of him is ripped out by the parting of the wyvern's jaws from his torso. The dragon's roaring screams edge in with his opponent's as he continues to beat his wings, having lifted them from the ground. Eren's vitality is swiftly toppling. It emboldens the beast within Soren. No one can wrest what matters most to him, not even the superiority of his own kind.

And as long as his heart beats still, the beast decides, he will pose a threat to this. Now that the fight has escalated to this point, he can't find it in himself to cease when his very blood itches for more violence, more chaos...

...!

It's as if he's being called back from within himself, dragged up from the dangerous psychological ledge he is falling down. His bestial rage wavers momentarily, like a river's violent current slowing into a side channel. Who is it...

With a kick and a shake, Eren falls a short distance to the rooftops below. That flicker of momentary clarity diverts back into his rush for bloodshed. It all unfolds so quickly. Soren doesn't stop. Forgetting everyone else — their wailing, the guards assembling, that people dwell beneath these tiles and chimneys — he unleashes another radiant blast upon his enemy that transforms the dazed monster into a giant meteor hurling for the buildings. It erupts into blue flames that swell into an orange-red inferno when they fuse with the blaze that Eren had already begun. Soren pounces upon his kill like a four-legged raptor, hooks his teeth into his weakness, gnaws, snaps, and...

... it's as though there are invisible reins urging him back. Like something — someone — is trying to knock his sense back into him. Someone who cares desperately for him, and if they could, they would hold his ringing head in their hands and look him square in the eyes and remind him that, more than anything, he doesn't want to be like this.

Eren's pulse, made absurdly delicate in his jaws. He could crush him. Extinguish him and his endless greed upon the pyre of someone else's sacrifices. Now the screams of the neighborhood finally filter into his awareness. The smoke fills his nostrils, the heat blisters his raw and open chest further. When he takes his mouth off of Eren's neck, he suddenly, stupidly realizes that this is Eren, and in one more move, he will die.

Perhaps more importantly, he remembers dimly that he is Soren. And Soren is in danger. Not from the other dragon, not anymore, but from his foolish insistence to slay someone in broad daylight in the midst of a city, someone he'd found pockets of connection and solace with, over... what? Ike? A symbol of Ike? No. It was a sword. Objectively speaking, it is just a sword, and nothing about it can give him what he truly wants.

He clutches it within his trembling grasp. Part of the dragon won't let go of the worth he's uncontrollably invested in it. Ranulf. He can feel Ranulf, stronger than Cu. Where is he? What's happening? He finds himself swimming in a half-conscious emotional vortex.

Voices of the city guards throng them, their commands scarcely audible beyond the roar of fire and crumble of infrastructure. Perhaps it is Eren's saving grace that Soren's tremendous form mantles above him, for a crashing wave of water magic slams over them and the burning house, dousing most of the flames in a vast hiss. Soren takes the brunt of that.

"We've got to contain them!"
"How?"
"I've never dealt with a full-sized DRAGON before, much less two!"
"Water! Let's use more—"
"Wait! What if we kill them? They may be dragons, but they're still..."
"But the neighborhood is ON FIRE!"

They bicker amongst themselves like this. ]

[usurpers]

[ even in the jaws of death, there would be one thing eren would not do until he fell unconscious, and that was to submit. his weakness was being torn apart like a hot knife to butter, further in and the groove of his spine would expose, just a touch deeper, a snap of teeth, and the blood of his jugular would spill like a crimson cascade. he was dangerously aware of all of that, and even then his self preservation is at an all time zero. not because it was instinct— this was a choice. he snaps and cries out in his half daze as his scales rippled and burned from the heat of their fire and the seering heat of ozone that would scald the human lung from inside out with just a breath. he rattled and shrieked, he threw his talons sideways and searched for meat to pry into, and even as a near suicidal last resort: he jostled his neck, he thrashed and sliced his wounds open, manically, unnatural— nightmarishly. he makes himself bleed out if it meant he’d be free of the cage clamping onto his neck. he’d sever his own limbs, he’d break his own bones, he’d pry out an eye. this wasn’t something draconic that ressurges from the surface of an insatiable hunger that went quiet just as soren’s blind rage had: this was eren, and eren was this way far before he grew horns, tail and claws: an inhuman nightmare.

so much flesh simply hangs in places it shouldn’t as he falls free, as the blood builds into his mouth, bubbles from his nostrils, all a mix of soren’s taste and the overwhelming hit of his own. as water fell upon them, the stray sprays left from the full force soren caught falls onto parts of eren, some here and some there— it burns and sizzles his scales just as water does to fire, but he’s too injured— morbidly injured, to react to them.

he keeps moving where he can, keeps kicking and prying with the wilting strength of consciousness dipping closer and closer into a fade. he needs help, immediately, but from his jaws clatter and sputter the whispers of a dragon hallucinating: keep, moving, forward, ]

cat coming through

[ranyaulf]

( it's not like ranulf couldn't feel through his bond that something was horribly wrong. it was that it was the most wrong that he's ever felt in his life which drew him out--- the pulses of heat that made his fur stand up on end. of course, the closer he got to the sight and scent of blood and fire and something else that brought him even more worry. he ran even faster knowing that what probably awaited him was... not good. definitely not good. and for who? well, for anyone and everyone. no doubt that his worst fears may be realized, especially when he gets close enough.

he pushes past the guards that try to keep him back, ears swiveling toward the danger. the sight of two dragons, bloodied; it's the obviously familiar one and his condition that knocks the wind out from him. dread billows up and replaces it, deep within his chest, and his eyes widen as far as they can go. he cannot believe what he's seeing.

maybe... just maybe. he can't just stand here and let it continue, but putting himself close could be worse. the last thing he needs is to be killed by two rampaging dragons. heart racing, he's halfway between trying to breathe again and trying to figure out the best action.

magic. obviously. he could boost the volume of his voice. that will have to do. for now. )

Soren! Stop! Stop, stop, stop!

[silentsavant]

[ A precarious balance between two irresistible urges hangs: dominate or submit; keep fighting or back down; let the discord of their making sweep him back up into its addicting savagery or curtail and reassert control of his mind, his actions, the situation. His vision pulses red.

Eren's potent, metallic-tasting and invigoratingly familiar essence saturates Soren's senses as it drips from his jaws, spins his brain into an even dizzier design with these competing desires.

What does he want to be freed from more? Sanity? Or insanity? Does he crave order? Or more chaos?

Then Ranulf calls his name, and he is lifted from the mad swirling chasm. He perks up his head to find him. Hearing his Bonded is like the clear chime of a bell that distills the battle-laden air.

There is something disturbing about this dragon with Goldoa's regal ancestry. In this moment, he doesn't resemble the late king's silhouette in his transformed state, nor does he look like Kurthnaga ever had. He cuts a figure much more like snarling Rajaion did, the mount of Daein's last tyrant drugged into unruly obedience. It's the way the full moons can twist him, too, but that celestial phase won't be for another two weeks.

He never wanted to lose his own head. He doesn't want Eren to die here for such a stupid reason, not when his overwhelming instincts are really stripped away. He has to come back. He can't let himself get caught in the undertow of this senseless violence any longer, hates to be wedged in this vice. Desperately, and with a sudden surge of fright that comes with the rising self-awareness upon seeing Ranulf and coming to terms with the wake of his devastation, he clambers for his sense back, and that is how he strives to break free.

This might sound... well, a little silly. But if you're ever in a situation where you're afraid of losing yourself? Concentrate on what you look like now. What you look like back home.

The vast and fearsome form of the dragon glows in soft, shimmery light and shrivels back into the long-haired boy more recognizable as Soren. He stumbles onto both hands with a muted cry, and still clutching the handle of the sword, hunkers over the broad blade with trembling limbs and the protectiveness of a wounded mother guarding her cubs until the end. Thick blots of blood fall from his mangled ribcage to kiss the metal. The guards are far more willing to edge even closer now that at least one of the dragons has reduced himself to a more fragile-looking human form - much easier to apprehend, but even now they remain cautious, weapons drawn if they have them. Soren focuses his hazy sight upon Ranulf: disoriented, desperate, apologetic, but mostly drained; his hair in tangles and his mouth painted in Eren's vital fluid. He crouches lower when he sees enemies surround him, determined even now that his rationality filters in not to let them or the other dragon take what's his.

He knows it's senseless. Stupid to fight for. He cannot help himself. ]

He... Help...

[usurpers]

[ he can’t . . . see anymore, despite the narrow crack open his eyelids withstand, though beneath it was an unfixed gaze void and emptying. the wyvern’s eyes then roll into whiteness, along with its massive and dying husk melting— literally melting into an ugly pile of flesh and blood, of pieces of meat that burn away into a disgusting smell in the atmosphere the steam rose to. eren too, was beginning to lose the shape of his dragon form as it slipped off the human base underneath the buttered layers. there’s still parts of his dragon body left in the form of chunks, of bones breaking without the network of tissue to keep it all firmly in place.

he never liked the water. he hated the sensation of drowning. he hardly knew what was happening other than feeling some sort of welcoming cold and too much frothing in and around his throat. everything moved . . . so slowly. it burned to breathe the last few he could afford once the blood spewed backwards with each raggedy inhale, pooling at the side of one of his lungs. he couldn’t move anymore— he couldn’t swim out of the sea they’ve created. he couldn’t push his head above. the sea . . .

how ironic that he’d die choking of his own fluids (or so he thinks). his bond is somewhere, searching, worrying . . . maybe he should just stay quiet, but a part of him does reach out before, even mentally, a waving blackout pins him under his own tortuous weight. like the tide—

maybe he deserved worse than this; maybe he didn’t want death, but he didn’t want mercy either. with the last bit of strength from his human body, eren wheezes with fragility, with the taint in his heart that had yet to be filtered and cleansed from him person, now stained with his blood, his blood that chimed and screamed for freedom for those that swallow them, give them strength, if not for a second more—

coward, he manages to say in a spit at the subdued soren’s feet, of which were probably stepping into the growing, murky puddle of the wyvern’s demise and remains. what and who was that for? perhaps they’d never know. he doesn’t move after that, and if one were to look too fast they’d say he wasn’t breathing.

but he was. just a little bit, and hanging onto the single thread of life he had rather than letting go. ]

[ranyaulf]

( the guards move as ranulf push them aside, his tail wildly lashing out as he speeds past. it's two of them. both broken, battered, by each other. whoever started it... it doesn't matter. he doesn't even think about it, hands instinctually raising as he focuses his energies out and forward. though he's quick to move to soren's side, it's not like all of his thoughts are on his bonded. no, he thinks about eren as well. if he were a more vengeful, angry, and overall bitter laguz, he might leave the boy to suffer even longer. he may not want mercy but it's not up to him to accept or reject it right now. there's no honor in denying succor, remembering his first time attempting to heal a minor wound.

cool, not cold. to numb the aches and pains as best as he can. he's not a student of that respective school of spells, but to be so idiotic to not learn any is practically impossible. not for someone who's used to wars, to fighting, to drawing blood with fang and claw. )

Stop talking. ( directed at eren, just like the energy he's willing to expend for him. it's brief, maybe just enough to keep him from succumbing to a complete and unending unconsciousness. a temporary solution while he's busy prioritizing soren, immediately pressing his hands onto those grievous wounds and gritting his teeth. he can take those ones away, or at least keep them from getting worse. there has to be a medic of some kind willing to approach as well. these thoughts fly through his head, as his eyes fall onto the sword...

he understands. more than anything. maybe even more than a dragon wanting to defend the most precious treasure in its hoard. it's why... he's still angry, but it's a different kind.

pulling his headband off, ranulf immediately uses it to wipe soren's face, to clean off the blood. )

It's okay. Help is here.

( for both of them. )