july catch-all (open + closed prompts in comments)

[grice]

Who: falco w/ friends, old and new (you)!
What: an open log with a few closed prompts here and there for the duration of july; falco will be going through some changes that have to do with this player plot! i have my plans here and here for reference! feel free to reach out on the plotting comments, liberos or owlie#3609 if you'd like to plot something specific! i can definitely do personalized tls!
When: july
Where: corners of trench!

Content Warnings: this will be updated accordingly! check out the headers for their appropriate cws! here you will find: rituals, possession, body horror, mentions of self harm, child death.

Comments

[grice]

[ falco’s breath catches so sharply he could forget to breathe underneath the layers of flesh he’s hidden in— instead he feels a choke of the fluid keeping him suspended feel tight down his throat. he can feel the drop in his chest to his gut like an anchor at sea, so fast, and frightening— had it not been for his confidence, altruism and wish, he wouldn’t be here, raising his own talons in preparation for impact, and to catch her’s in his. ]

Anna—! [ that young voice still yells his pleas to her, she had to be listening, she still had to be in there— falco flares his wings and spreads them wide in an attempt to twirl the impact into recoil when it hits like a train. his hind talons grip for her’s, entangled and at the ready to squeeze, simply squeeze and hold on as they’d soon be thrown into a dangerous spin. she still had a sword, and while falco had two sets of jaws, he doesn’t use them. he wasn’t there to use them. he wouldn’t do again what he did to luna in a desperate attempt to keep her from confetti. the best he could do is use their airborne momentum to swing his head, stroke his wings down with pounding, angles claps to keep them from crashing. if they could just get to the ground, safely—

(the sky pthumerians were not pleased with this trespassing) ]

I’m still here! You’re not alone, not everyone’s gone! I know you can hear something—!

[ her wings, could he grab one? would it be a risk to leave her talons, even if only one, bare and free to tear through his front?

his front is the least of his worries. falco takes the chance, a shot in the dark— but a chance. ]

[hauntedsavior]

[she's awkward enough with her wings that it doesn't seem like getting grabbed by one is doing much to stop her, but as she struggles against the falco's constant grip it's clear that it's doing something. it's not crashing but it wants to be free extremely badly, and its head thrashes. there's an instinct in the back of the amaranth's head and it's hard to tell whether it's based on anything necessarily, but it's the instinct to rip and tear, to cut deep and destroy whatever's inside.]

[it's not anything special, anna may realize later. it's just the normal killer instinct that every beast has. but the amaranth is very good at that; it jerks its head sideways to swipe the blade out in close quarters. the vileblood infusion is impure, it's not perfect, it may not do exactly what's intended—but all the beast needs it to do is provide a breath of freedom to struggle away. if the falco is putting up so much of a fight then either it has to die or the amaranth needs to run away and right now, the beast is still weighing its options.]

[with the swipe, it beats its other wing as powerfully as it can to try to turn this whole thing off balance and give an opening to escape. there are other pthumerians flying about, it notices passively, but it is convinced they are on its side. it, too, is a beast created by a god, both haunted and holy.]

[grice]

[ the titan is jerked back and forth but keeps his hold as if his life depended on it— it didn’t, at least he wasn’t thinking about himself right now, he was thinking about anna. where the amaranth heaves, falco throws back in turn, angling his direction a layer downwards like an aircraft would handle a stationary landing— but tossing his neck back and stroking his wings into greater curves meant more space between them. he’s made a mistake, for a thing that wields a weapon. in fear of sinking his talons into more than just plumage, the grip isn’t strong enough; it struggles to keep her still in all that wild battering.

a sky pthumerian of tentacles and too many eyes, half obscured in clouds and rain sinks its tendrils into the titan’s ribs and yanks like its plucked weeds off the ground— steaming, acidic vileblood spews as curved bones break and muscles fail to move at their hardest. it doesn’t stop him, there’s no pain on the body, but his attention does redirect if not for a moment, snapping at the tendrils with both sets of jaws to free himself, but at the expense of a better hold. anna slips from him, but he roars in his attempt to dive back for her. ]

Anna! I’m not giving up on you!

[hauntedsavior]

[the amaranth takes this chance to break free. it knows now that the other beasts of the sky are on its side and that they will help it take this thing down, and it seems to gain the confidence necessary to actually attack back in earnest now. a small way to whet its malformed whistle before preparing for the bigger prey.]

[the beast swings its blade again in another arc. it's easy to see that this fight will be over much more quickly now that the gods of the environment itself are fighting on the amaranth's side. the vileblood coating on its blade likely won't hurt as much as it normally might, but it doesn't seem to care particularly much; it still cuts. as long as its prey still has a neck, this sword still works.]

[and that's what it is beginning to aim for. it wants something that it knows, instinctively, that creatures cannot usually live very long without. if it can cut, if it can slice through something vital, it will send everything except itself tumbling to the ground, and it can get on with its own mission. it's simply the fastest way to resolve things. it's not personal. it can't be; the amaranth is not a person.]

[grice]

[ the blade connects between the shoulder and crook of the nape, slices straight into his actual arm, and part of his side. falco’s vessel staggers in its flight to jerk its talons close to its nape, losing a notch of altitude when forced to fling his wings up. one of them, controlled by the damaged true arm, loses function. if it hadn’t been for the leathery sheet of one pthumerian’s bat-like wings yanking it upward from the rest of its socket, he’d be pummeling by now.

the titan doesn’t roar this time: it screams. it screams in a booming trill of agony, like so many metals scraping against each other until nature demanded silence. nature was above them, above the cloud and a source for strikes of lightning. something, it was hard to comprehend its descent, it was as if something from another dimension was reaching from above the storm’s gates and simply plucked what it did not like. in this sky pthumerian’s nimble claws (or hands, or wings, or suckers— each look at it was a different one), it takes a piece of the titan like it would sift through a sheet of paper and lift what was interesting enough. in the reality they’re in, it’s his lower half that’s been pulled and mangled, leaving behind a burst of steam to regenerate what was lost. a leg is completely gone while the other hangs by a thread of flesh— he can’t hold her back. no tail feathers, steering would be almost impossible. he’s lost a wing and remains a tortured prisoner to what was once a symbol of freedom.

the sky is a cage, and he is left bare for her to finish. he keeps struggling, and shrieking and clawing for a way out that was beyond his reach—

the titan’s next (and perhaps last) yell forms a coherent word, singular and wailed through its cry like a harpy’s dying song: anna! ]

[hauntedsavior]

[it reverberates, deep within.]

[the cry reaches something that should be gone. something that isn't here anymore because the beast has become the perfect machine to enact vengeance. an avatar of The Reckoning Herself. and yet, there is a voice inside of it that responds to the very last call. and perhaps, in its final moments, the beast's prey will have something to comfort it. some knowledge that whatever it has been trying to reach within this terrible raven is still there and simply victim to the whims of the gods.]

[at least, that's the story she would like others to believe.]

[es tut mir leid. ich werde dich am anderes spiegelseite sehen.]

[it isn't anna's voice, but it carries her weight. call it a conscience, if one must. call it part of her soul. it knows it will be understood despite the language it chooses (must?) send the thought in. there is no peace coming from within the beast as it raises its sword in almost a calculated move, now. it tilts its head upward to the sky pthumerian like it's an old friend, and the pthumerian tugs and pulls at its prey's body enough to give the amaranth a clear shot.]

[it swings its blade for the final time. remorseless, ruthless. the game is over, and its prey must fall.]

[grice]

[ he thought too quickly for how slow both his bodies lurched, but there had been a moment, a split moment when her sword had raised and her thoughts came through, that he stops his struggle. whatever was being pulled and dangled of him, he lets it be. he doesn’t hold the mostly intact wing and claw that he still had to defend himself. there had been a creeping acceptance of what would happen next, and it wasn’t a matter of giving up or not. he hadn’t given up on her, but he knew the end of his line when he saw it. a struggle beyond it would lead to unnecessary and greater pain for anna, he imagines. he couldn’t change anything, now. he couldn’t stop her. he tried, to the last moment that he could. he cared enough to. what was left for him to do now was handling it afterward, how he would from the point of his reincarnation going onward (if he returned from the sea, that is).

the icy splay of fear in his chest creeps everywhere. what of levi, and erwin? what of confetti? what of anna? what of sharon, and rose, what of ange, and of peter? what of paul? what if he didn’t have his chance to say good bye to anyone? he was going to be alone by the time it happened. what would happen after that? it was stifling. the tears in his eyes swell, and behind the titan’s mask it is nothing but the wetness of rain. ]

Miss Anna, [ he could only hope in his fear, and swallow, staring back at the grand raven’s vengeance as her sword swung. he wished he could’ve gotten to her, he wished he could’ve done something. for what it’s worth, he’s not angry. he didn’t have the full details, but he still understood the emotions involved: loss. hurt. betrayal. anger. revenge. he understood beyond his years. this is why he does not struggle, he does not condemn her, and instead, reaches with sympathy: ] I’m sor—

[ he does not finish when his entire connection is sliced from nape to the other side of his shoulder. the storm brews with the smell of acrid blooms. the titan’s head is thrown clean to sea, and the body plummets.

the amaranth is free to go. ]