If you're going through hell, keep on going

Colt

It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo

"C'mon cocksuckers!"

She calls boldly into the jungle, all the edges of her curling with a raw edge of frustration too tender to ignore any longer. Quiet and determination had gotten them from one tip of the desert and back, but if this place is so infected, she doesn't see it. One cluster of spiders, in all the hours of travel?

Though she never wants to be seen as weak, perhaps least of all by him, every bit of her has stretched until there's no give left—so it tears instead. Her patience, her grace, even her voice, dry and tight with the heat cracks as she bites out once more, "show yourselves!" She listens, straining for the telltale signs of a scuttle or scurry that might be the clue that the taunt has worked and they need to skedaddle.

"Fucking Frey," she hisses as she drops back to his neck so they can pass under a sagging bough. "Isn't it lucky that we've avoided the monsters this long? Doesn't that count?" but she already knows the answer. It's a test, and there's no score to give if she never faces the sheet to jot her answers on. She'd gladly do so if the paper would show up.

She huffs into him, fraying a bit more with every cursed step.

It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo

Vesper lifts his head and whinnies, the sound sharp and echoing through the jungle like a question with no patience left for its answer. It does nothing, of course. The vines don’t stir. The leaves don’t rustle with threat. Just the buzz of insects and the low throb of heat rising from the earth, thick and humid and maddening. Her shout had teeth, and even so, the jungle does not bite back.

He tosses his head once, ears pinning in shared exasperation, before slowing beneath the sagging bough. Colt presses against his neck again, and the breath she huffs into him sends a tremor down his back—not from exhaustion, not from pain. Just...frustration.

He considers the cluster of fever-blooming plants to their right. Their petals twitch with the thrum of waiting, heavy with hallucinogenic dust. A few steps closer and it’ll rise in a glittering cloud, unseen monsters just a lungful away.

The temptation is real. Imaginary enemies are still enemies, right? If Frey wanted them to encounter something, surely that would count. Vesper’s sure Colt would put on a damn good show, blade flashing through some phantom threat while her mind lost its grip on heat and reason. He’d been dragged through worse for dumber reasons.

You know it's all just a game that I'm playin'

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

Colt

It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo

She's a puddle of contempt and fatigue upon him, as liable to slip off and allow the ground to swallow her as she is to hang on any more. The steel she normally carries, the resolve, it's been slowly cooked away by sand and sun until she's been left with nothing other than a busted give a damn. The only remaining tether to sanity and self-preservation is him. He's still here, going through it all with her, and if he can keep lifting those damn legs, then the least she can do is stay with him.

Though he's slowing, and the manner of it seems to be born of something other than his own refusal to carry on. There's a thought strumming under her, a guitar string plucked and reverberating with ideas and plans she can't hear. "What?" she asks, unable to see around his darkness to the tempting flowers, and unwilling to sit up when she knows the canopy still looms overhead with risk.

If she had a hunch, she's tell him there's absolutely no fucking way they're taking drugs in the desert like a pair of idiot teenagers.

It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo

Vesper snorts—hard—and the sound isn’t just breath but protest, sharp and indignant as gravel under a boot. Her question hangs unanswered because there’s no real answer. Just the temptation. Just the silence. Just him, trying to lure monsters out of shadows that don’t care. The fever-blooms tremble beside them, golden and sickly, twitching with all the promise of delirium. He tosses his head again like fuck it, ears flattening briefly before he makes his decision.

And then he whinnies.

It’s loud this time, a raw, grating sound that cuts through the Suvahasi’s dense canopy like a flare tossed into fog. Not a call, not a challenge—just a demand.

He doesn't stop walking, but the tension is in every part of him. Muscles coiled, hoofsteps heavy, tail flicking with agitation. Colt might not see the fever-flowers, but she’ll feel the pulse running through his neck, hear the sharp exhale, the restlessness in every stride. He wants this over. Wants something to answer. Wants just..

something.

You know it's all just a game that I'm playin'

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

On the scorching plains of Hak Etme, a mirage crab appears as an illusion—a false oasis that beckons the desperate. Its flat, expansive body is now marred by swirling tendrils of violet void energy. The creature conjures an eerie illusion of a shimmering pool bordered by spectral palm trees, luring unsuspecting prey close. As you draw near, the mirage dissipates, and the crab’s sharp mandibles snap in a silent, brutal motion. Its many eyes, plucked from forgotten creatures, glimmer with a cruel, predatory light—a grim promise of the void’s relentless hunger.

As Hak Etme has been taken over by the Family, remaining in this area will be dangerous as the flora/fauna will continue to grow increasingly hostile toward you. Remaining in this thread for a prolonged period of time will likely trigger a KQ.

---

You’ve encountered Void Infected Mirage Crab. This counts as an uncommon creature encounter for the purposes of levelling, but does not count as a Random Event for levelling or MP. There will be no further admin/re intervention. If you choose to follow this creature, you do so at your own risk, however, just having it in this thread is enough to satisfy your levelling requirements.

Colt

It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo

His answer is not clear. His own form of coiling agitation, she feels that—it's in the taut bow of his neck, the expressive exhale, the slant of ears. A flinging head, a stomping leg. He's done, it seems. Has perhaps decided to hell with it and would like her to kindly (or even unkindly) fuck off. Her lips press together, trying to squash the rising dismay. She can't blame him though. They'd been walking the line, looks like they finally tumbled over it.

Except he calls out again, his entire body shaking under her with the force of it. He's still moving, taut, but in motion all the same. There's something else, too. A new beat to his blood, a feeling that presses under her splayed hands like something ticking towards ruin. She might have been left to wonder it, or gotten lost in it herself, the poison pollen speckling the air around them both and her sideways hit about to strike, except there's a beautiful pool shimmering just over there.

Something rises in her, bright and lively. "Hey! Look!" Her fingers tap the midnight manifest, urgent, desperate. "There's a pool!" A bid to slip into it, to rest, to relieve some of this itch and drag of the desert from them. Except, the image is a bit jarring amid the jungle, the trees don't quite match, and fuck, everything is starting to feel so damn heavy and blurry.

That's not a pool, she realizes with a gasp. It's molten, a bubble of lava yawning up from the core of the earth with a decimating invitation. "No," she says harshly, the sound grating past her teeth with all the force left inside of her. "No, that's gonna burn us alive. We have to run." For the first time since this trip she drives her heel into his side, and it feels like she's stepped in liquid ink when she does it, like she might just melt into him and be consumed by him instead. "RUN!" she demands, whisper-shouting as she grabs a breath before his night chokes her.

[FIN]

It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo