[ AW ] If I lose you, I lose myself

The Tiamat manse. It used to be a welcomed sight on the horizon. It used to be home, a place of comfort, a place of happiness. She had a room within its four walls, it belonged to her and Ahkoris, it was theirs. Or it had anyway. Now it was just hers. Now it would be a prison that was filled with the fading scent of him and all the memories they shared.

She remembered the night his memories had returned, the first time he had slept beside her in what felt like an eternity. His lazy smile in the early morning hours, when the sun just started to peak through their window and lighten the room. The simple routine they had fallen back into almost immediately. It should have been enough to made her smile. But all she felt was hollow.

The night they eloped, she had dragged him through the streets of Rionna and the forests of the redwood, her excitement infectious as they rolled in the shadows together. Not even the ominous shadow of duty swayed her. The war didn't matter that night. They had risen the next morning, rushing to formation before marching off to war. She hadn't regretted a moment of it.

Maybe it was fitting that she returned under the cover of night. The final night of their story.

Her paws were raw and her body shook with exhaustion by the time she all but fell into the hall of the manse. She had avoided the town, taking the long way around to ensure no one saw her dragging her dead husband home. Her mouth was dry, her tongue rolling dryly against his scruff. Pale forelegs were scuffed and dirty, whispering of her many falls she had endured to get here. The entirely of her was just as much a mess. Blood that belonged both to her and Ahkoris smeared a majority of normally flawless white, tendrils now matted together. What wasn't covered in blood, was covered in dirt or torn skin. How she made it home, no one, herself included, would ever know.

With the doors flung wide open, snow scattered across the floor as the winter chill raced in, filling the hall with the metallic tang of blood and death. It was enough to have a servant peeking out to see what was going on. Crystalline eyes were eerily void. "H-h-he's dead." Her voice was oddly calm despite the way she stuttered. Sybils body was stiff even as it shook, before, inevitably, her legs would give out under her. Any self control she had was long gone - her inconsolable sobs soon filled the halls, carried by the frigid air, as if death himself were reaching once again inside the house of the Tiamats, to strip them of more.

After that, she didn't remember much. Wolves came and went, medics tended to her, attempting to tell her of her injuries and the long road to recovery she faced. It all went in one ear and out the other. The only thing she insisted upon was burying Ahkoris, as soon as possible. Not that it was an unmet request, considering how quickly Nassar had been buried.

The funeral pyre burned before her, the acrid smell of burnt hair and flesh filling her nose. He was given a proper Tiamat funeral, one that honored him in death, his family traditions holding strong. Sybil remained silent, as if she had suddenly become mute. She looked at no one, refusing to see the pity and grief that lingered in everyones stares. Drowning in her own loss, she couldn't handle anything else, anything more. The world was suffocating her enough as it was, like she hadn't breathed properly in days. Maybe she hadn't. Her entire world had stopped turning, it was as if she were suspended in time, no longer moving forward and unable to go back.

When it was over, she didn't leave, she remained seated, eyes fixating on the burning embers. Tears wet her cheeks, a seemingly constant thing now, though she couldn't bring herself to stop. Everything hurt. Her body, her mind, her very soul. With her closest friend long scattered to the wind, she sat alone by the fire, by what remained on her love. Surrounded by the broken pieces of her shattered heart, she left them there, she left them with the remnants of the only man she had ever loved, knowing another would never replace him.

exit

"speech"

code // art

”Lady Sybil has arrived home with Lord Ahkoris.. He's.. You must go to them, my lady,” A mousy male servant announced to her, although Xandria could sense that something was off by the way he refused to look her in the eye. Fear shook her heart and it surfaced with boiling rage in her golden gaze. “He’s what?” Her voice rumbled with an impatient growl and the servant merely shook his head. She stormed through the manse like a hurricane, paws beating against the ground like thunder. He’s what? she asked herself and the answers she came up with flayed another strip of raw flesh from her grieving heart. She made it to the entrance and saw the heap of bloodied white and fiery orange fur on the ground. It felt like the air was stolen from her lungs, spots danced in her vision as she staggered towards him. “Ahki…” one word was all she could utter, golden eyes taking in the extent of his injuries. Her paw touched his side and came away bloody. Something inside her broke, all the threads that had held her together since the death of her mother and father snapped. Xandria was unravelling. She sagged to the ground , shaking and sobbing. “Ahki.. please… Not you too,” she whimpered once more, unable to believe what she was seeing. It didn't make sense that the brother whose warmth she had felt not that long ago was dead. “I need you,” she pleaded, but of course there was no answer because the dead could not speak.

She threw back her head and howled. A chorus of grief and anguish filling her lungs and voice. It was a lonely and longing howl from a little sister that wanted her big brother to tell her that everything was going to be alright. Her throat was raw and her eyes were burning with hot tears by the time she finished. The only reason her howl stopped was because she lost her voice.

By the time everything was prepared for the funeral Xandria was barely aware of what was happening. As if in a daze she watched the events unfold like it was happening to someone else. Shock had finally set in causing Xandria to withdraw inwardly and observe in numb silence.

- fade to exit

art + code: clae

SIF ASGAUT

The anguish that filled the halls would cause the gilded woman to abruptly sit upright from where she had been prone, watching her two big babies play and banter about who knows what; she certainly had lost the plot half way into her son’s story. Her blood ran cold as she listened to a howl that drowned out everything else in the manse, knowing that voice all too well and anxiety pooled about what could have her letting out such sorrow. “You two stay here,” she commanded, seeing Haskell’s lips already twitching with a desire to argue but the boy would concede without any complaint, pressing into his sister. Without another word, she would slip out from the room, expecting Mios or Miread to be injured and her husband racing to the scene if he was here at all. Quickly, the smell of blood would take over her nose while that howl continued to strain her ears.

As soon as she entered the room where everything was coming from, her ears would instantly fall back at the sight of blood and the crumbled body of Sybil by an unmoving Ahkoris. A growl rolled up in her throat instantly assuming another wolf had done this as her mind flooded with memories of the day Nassar had died not all that long ago. Khepri had been just as mangled, the same red scene but as she moved closer and closer, reality would become more apparent. The goring of flesh would silence that rumble and any desire to ask who did it cause it was clear this was not a canine that had done this. This was prey and in a way that made it less horrible as that desire for revenge did not fuel her thoughts.

Not much touched her mind in the moment, in all honesty, too shell shocked to feel much of anything. War was over, she had thought that death wasn’t going to be in their futures for a while but everyone around her was falling down like dominos. Death happening all at once like with her birth family had been almost easier, at least the pain all hit at once instead of in waves with each passing death, rekindling that mourning that was just starting to ebb away.

Her gaze fixated on Xandria, finding some hesitation before she would sweep close to the girl’s side to drape her in as much comfort as she could with the frame of her much smaller body. It was the most she could do, rocking her a little if she allowed. To see this girl break this way, it seemed unfathomable, she had always been so stone faced or angry that tears were so abnormal to her to see on that earthen face. “You are not alone,” she whispered into Xandria’s ear as the howls faded.

—-

She would do everything she could to assist in the funeral procession, if only to ease the minds of those that lost their function in this cruel situation of loss. Her own emotions were lacking just as they were at every death, preventing any tears from surfacing but her tail betrayed her sorrow as it hung low and limp the entire time.

Once things were prepped and the funeral started, she would allow her children to finally see their cousin’s corpse, should they choose to. Haskell was by no surprise quick to attend, though staying close, nestled into her chest as he cried. The weight of death seeming to be fully understood this time by the young boy. She did what she could to comfort him and anyone else that needed her support, watching her nieces and nephew with perhaps more sorrow than for the loss of the life. Ahkoris would be at peace as the pyre took him but those left behind, those were who would suffer the most for months or years to come.

She was losing a second family all over again and inwardly she was crumbling no matter how much she tried not to show it on the outside as his caring face haunted her thoughts. His memory would live on.

-exit-

table by rae - manip by amphi

The servant who was making their rounds alerting the present Tiamats of Sybil and Ahkoris's arrival had hardly made it to his door when Xandria's howl rang through the Manse. Every hair along his broken spine shivered as he leapt from his bed - only to yelp, stumble, then limp in pain - and shot out the door, unable to offer a word of thanks to the boy before his disappeared down the hall as fast as his crippled body could manage.

And as he was met with what was quickly becoming a new reality, the crack that had formed from his talk with his sister quickly fractured into something far greater, far worse, far more devastating.

Xandria's pleas faded as his ears rang with a deafening white noise.

Sethos collapsed, whether from the overwhelming grief or another round of temporary paralysis, he didn't know. It didn't matter. He drug his body towards his brother - dead, dead, dead, just like your mother, just like your father, just like you - his jaws snapping at anyone who dared to come to close to him in offerings of help. He didn't need anyone or their pity. Using his forelegs, he pulled himself, inch by inch, until he was able to shove his snout into Ahkoris's fiery pelt. The acrid stench of blood consumed him, stained the golden furs of his face but again, he didn't care. The body was cold. He was gone. He could taste his blood on his tongue now as he allowed his tears to fall, silently, into his brothers fur. His only brother. The women in his family were fierce, but he had a special love for Ahkoris, if only because they were the two men left after Kohl died... and now there was only him.

Only him.

His body throbbed and pulsed with such extreme waves of emotion, he didn't know what to do. Nassar wasn't around to comfort him or provide relief with counsel. This was all too much, too soon, too close together. Sethos remained with the body until he was forced to give in, to let him go for the last time. A funeral, they said. Of course. At this point, he was completely numb - if someone asked him to recount what happened next, he would be unable to provide an answer.

...

He burned.

Just as brightly as Nassar, as any of them would once a flame was set to their bodies. He wanted to join them. Sethos stared blankly at the flames, unable to say anything to Sybil, to his sister, to anyone. What did it matter? It didn't. Nothing he could say would make any of this better. That all too familiar smell of burning flesh invaded his nostrils, triggering memories of only a short time ago, when his mother was in that pyre.

Dead, dead, dead...

He remained, until all who was left was Sybil. Blank eyes lifted, unknowing how much time had passed. He watched her, just as vacant as he was. He couldn't imagine her pain, yet also couldn't bring himself to approach her. And so he didn't, instead forcing whatever willpower he possessed to give strength to his broken body, so he could drag himself back to his bed, back to his suffering, back to his solitude where he could cry without anyone seeing, where the softest Tiamat fell apart into fragments of self-loathing, hate and anger.

...just like you.

- exit sethos -

"We are all young and naive still."

code & art by claerie

khepri tiamat.

There were no words that could describe the emptiness he was feeling, the numbness that crept into his limps and seeping into his very core. He watched the entire thing with dead eyes, disbelief only sparking every once in a while as they lay yet another Tiamat to death far too soon. The gentle cries and anguished wails fell on deaf ears as he continue to stare and stare until the fire burnt out. His kids were here, seeing this yet again in their short lives, and Sif was there too but all he could see were the edges of darkness gathering along his periphery.

Once things began to settle as much as they could, he turned his head towards Sif mechanically and let his honied gaze snag on her. What would he do if he lost her? His heart plummeted in his chest and he felt an ounce of feeling, somewhere deep inside. He didn't want to lose her, in any way, and he knew that if he kept going down the path he was walking that those worries might become reality. His head ached steadily behind his eyes as he leaned into kiss his wife on the cheek. He would then look everyone over once again, rise to his paws, and turn and take his leave back to his room so that he could rest.

exit

table by hale. image from unsplash.