cold nips at her cheeks, though she doesn't feel its sting any longer. on insisting, with a starstruck murmur, that the fire within her is growing stronger, she'd received a pair of rolling blue eyes and a jacket thrown at her head. i'll be back, she promised as she tucked her arms into worn leather and downy hydreigon feathers.

her nails bite into the meat of her palm. half-moon indentations rend her flesh; not enough to draw blood. how much of me will you take? she thinks quietly as she steps cautiously and grievously around ruin. 

the stalactite glows a faint blue, cradled like a babe in her arms. as she nears, the scent of brine thickens. it stings her nose and when she opens her mouth, it lay thickly on the back of her tongue. 

she joins the shadow of a man by the waterside. 

"i can feel it." she flicks her gaze, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "must you be here for this to work?"

declan walsh

☉

"does my presence offend you so?"[break][break]

freya's stalactite bleeds blue light. like blood wisping in cold waters, the primal energy seems to hang in the air. [break][break]

"i own your dripstone's counterpart." [break][break]

from beneath his umbral cloak, he pulls a young stalagmite. it too, wafts a primal blue.[break][break]

upon the reveal of the blue orb's progenitors, the kyogre stirs. waters slosh cold against the cave floor. an abysmal grumble quakes outward from the leviathan's innards.[break][break]

"we hold a direct line to the primal kyogre and its power." the rocket boss says. "you remember what Elisabeth Fiorelli did to MATIAS SILPH and groudon. we can do the same to kyogre if we so desired."

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar[break]
[attr="class","pokesprite pokemon darkrai"]

"i'd be curious to see the universe that it does not," she says dryly. time spent as a wanderer in her own body and never had she glimpsed through borrowed eyes any love for a man like him. 

she'd opened the door, but her lips still thin at the succinct reminder that they are bound. that he has bound her. water slithers over rock, spiderwebbing towards their feet. white turns to grey, hissing when the swill catches in new and ancient pockmarks.

"we can," she says, "but we won't, will we?" the prophecy, scribbled senselessly for years, and then weeks after recounting it in her journals, does not proclaim the world will be sundered by the sea. 

"you're as much a prisoner to the prophecy as you are indebted to it." there had been some at the table who questioned her capabilities, and perhaps the state of her mental wellbeing after despairing fate had been the only saving grace for the rocket boss' life. 

"does it bother you?" she asks as the waters gurgle in holy chorus, harbinger of a single, inconsequential god, "that there are spiders pulling all of the strings?"

phantasmal and many-eyed. 

declan walsh

☉

"if there are spiders, they too are on the web." the boss says. "they are fallible. susceptible. even a master weaver can skip a thread."[break][break]

the sea god stirs once more. a dark, low grumble becomes a bellow when the whale opens its mouth. briefly, one may be able to see the primal light of its ancient organs glowing from inside.[break][break]

"even so, does it frustrate you?" this close, freya would be able to see the dark tendrils of walsh's powers lapping at the base of his stone. "that fate seems to be on my side?"

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar[break]
[attr="class","pokesprite pokemon darkrai"]