Force-claiming is allowed here once a week per character, as is blocking force-claims by the Peak/Lagoon (as a whole) once a week. Rollover is on Sundays.
take what you can. [block] Posted on April 27, 2020 at 09:51:38 AM by Rade
to live and burn is
the most exquisite form of self destruction
Rade's brief visit to the Lagoon had left him much to consider.
His thoughts and emotions in a helpless tangle, the golden roan drifted away from the too-familiar territory, a heat burning deep within his belly. It had been too simple to return to the islands, to slip back into the skin he'd worn so comfortably in his youth - to be free from the shackles that had held him for too long. The Lagoon was his home and his reason for existence, the life that Rade had chosen. But time had not been kind to the empire he'd once helped to build - calamity and ruin had claimed the Lagoon, leaving it a shadow of its former self. And now he knew the name of the one responsible.
Cullen. His son.
A terrible cry escaped the palomino stallion - a sound that was a strange hybrid of anger and agony. His son, the murderer. Rade was no stranger to death, but the only one he could claim had been unintentional - and remained his greatest regret to this day. And as ruthless as some might have claimed the stallion to be in his term as the Lagoon's Boss, killing his enemies was a line that he had never crossed. Violence was reserved for when other options had been exhausted - and never escalated beyond the level of force that was absolutely necessary.
And he had never fought another's battles for them. Cullen, the great Boss - just a pawn in some herd stallion's game. Rade picked up his pace, crashing through a thicket in which he'd once sheltered with his brother Conquistador, laughing with the young stallion as they'd plucked burrs from one another's coats. There was no such warmth in his expression now - though his eyes blazed with a fierce intensity, they were as hard and implacable as the amber whose color they matched. And the burrs that attached themselves to him now went unheeded, as did the raking fingers of branches that opened shallow scratches on his dusted coat.
He ran as if the truth was something that could be escaped, sucking frigid air into burning lungs with each stride that he took.
Only when Rade reached the flat expanse of the Common did his strides slow, and then abruptly stop as another memory surfaced. Skylar. She had met him at his worst in this place... and somehow still found compassion in her heart for the volatile, violent creature that he'd been. Had she, too, been claimed by this war in which his fool of a son had no business fighting? The thought sent a chill rippling through the stallion's roan coat, and set his eyes to desperately searching - as if he could will the mare into being, hale and whole, before him. Instead he bore witness to the dun stallion's aggression, and the anger that his fears had dimmed erupted in another screaming cry - this one all fury.
The mare looked nothing like the Vulcan he'd once considered family, but it didn't matter. Couldn't matter, because the stallion's answer to emotions that he was unable to cope with had always been confrontation. Rade closed the distance between him and the pair in a handful of strides, aiming to thrust his slender figure between them. Of course, in these close quarters it could mean a collision - and in that case, he would seek the connection of his chest with the dun's shoulder to shove him away from the red woman. Meanwhile, Rade's teeth snapped shut on the air once, twice, three times - each warning bite intended to be closer to the other stallion's face without actually landing on flesh.
No white-cloaked knight was Rade, though his actions at the moment may have indicated otherwise. He had been the aggressor in such situations before, though only in his youngest and most callow years. In Rade's opinion, only the inept and the insecure wielded strength as their first weapon - especially when it came to influencing another's will. Physical blows might silence dissent, but they did nothing to erase it. And those rulers who sought to keep their crown on fear alone inevitably failed.
In any case, the golden stallion ceased his hostilities there, though the wiry muscles beneath his coat remained tense - prepared for any potential retaliation the Fjord might offer. The stranger would not find him an unwilling - or easy - foe, as the scars that peppered his coat could attest. So if this strong stallion was looking to show off his skills in bullying and belligerence - well, Rade was more than ready to turn to teach him a thing or two.