Ni'Srilan: The Desert: ANNIE, ARE YOU OK? WILL YOU TELL US THAT YOU'RE OK?; HYPATIA/any

the light that is not light is here
to flush you out with your own fear
you hide, you hide, but will be found
release your crypt without a sound

His hooves light on desert sand and the dry, tepid air releases him.

The Nightmare folds his wings at his sides, throws his head up and casts a single glance around the rolling crimson dunes that have always held a complicated position in Kurai’s reckoning. It was their Commander who kept him at bay – either because of strong mutual hatred or some latent apprehension Nachtmere held of his Firestarter son.

He is out-of-place, a misnomer among the careless reality of the Vipers. For once he is out of the seclusion of the shadows. The trees to not shelter him and he is blatantly real – gleaming scales and folded wings, forked tongue and cascades of surreal ink-black mane and a pointed, dragon tail. He finds Hypatia by the power of the Relic which repulses his Shards. “How do you fare, Naphtha?” he asks, and the pseudo-sincerity of his voice glides easily over mocking and cruel amusement (but this – this is all that shines through in his pale eyes which are unable to express even false sentiment).

“A fallen General, and now, a Commander gone down in his own haphazard flames,” Kurai remembers watching those billowing flames, which consumed more than half of his forest in a brazen attempt to destroy him that took Baraqel’s life. Funny how horses who try to kill him usually wind up dying.

It is the triumphant delight that this event brought him that is why he’s here now, why he’s temporarily abandoned the unbroken solitude of his shadowcast existence to the vast open reality of Ni Srilan.

“You are all dust, and to dust you shall return. It’s the curse of the mortal, not just for my idiot son and his friend but for all of you.”

He’s seen generations, and empires that rise and fall like the planet’s deep, steady breathing, but he’s never before found himself entangled in the events of a nation’s downfall. He knows this, but the implications of it do not reach his ancient mind which can only observe from a measured distance. Baraqel’s combustion is only a prelude, an ironic reflection of a future that the Nightmare cannot predict.

GLD. K U R A I;
THE NIGHTMARE;
SHARD-KEEPER || LIGHTNING III & AIR III || STUPEFY || NACHTMERE

YOUR SCREAM’S A WHISPER