►Info

xxxxxxxxxxxxName: Mercury Occupation: Commander Build: Leviathan Mute

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► Memories

Mercury doesn’t remember much of her past. She has the vaguest memories of laughing in the snow with someone, ice skidding between her claws as she pursued a Snowfall elk through the woods, soaring a mating dance through the freezing winds- visions of color that were beautiful and wild and flickering and liable to slip away from her at any moment.

But mostly she remembers the blood. The blood and the bodies and the endless slaughter. The lack of nerves as she marched into battle after battle, the eggshells salvaged from her crushed nest on a chain around her neck and the never-ending rage in her hollowed chest under it. The horror of war barely making a dent in her as she fought enemy after enemy blindly, living and breathing the need for revenge.

She remembers the horror that finally hit her when she’d been captured- dragged into the prison cell by four dragons and a guardian, fighting her captors until her chains were bloody; because she had scented her- scented her mate, somewhere down the endless rows of prisoners, imprisoned but alive.

And she remembers the cold- the blistering, freezing, unrelenting cold that they’d been met with as they escaped, the enemy hot on their tails. She remembers the frost of the air digging underneath her scales and the icy wind buffeting them all away from each other, crying out as the hail and arrows sent them crash-landing into snowbanks down below.

Mercury remembers screaming out into the unforgiving air for her mate as they were separated again, the blizzard throwing them in different directions in a foreign land, screaming until her voice gave out and her throat dripped blood, and trying to scream even then too.

She never got a reply.

Marlun had found her then- days later, emaciated and bleeding from wounds that should have killed her, ice creeping up her feet, wandering the snows aimlessly, putting one shaking foot in front of the other and pushing herself forward until she was no longer living and not quite dead, too tied to her quest for the mortal world to let her go.

Mercury had been too exhausted to resist when he’d taken her to the Clan, patching her shredded wings back up and cleaning the cuts on her body. Her strength had returned eventually, but she could no longer remember what her mate had looked like to look for her. The chains on her wrists could only be broken by the centaurs that created them, but there was no point traveling all that way to remove something she barely noticed. Her will to live had returned eventually, but she’d been an invisible murderous footsoldier for too long to form the connection with her Clan like she longed to.

Her throat healed eventually. But she no longer spoke.

What was there to say anyway?

She lived now, in her own way, in a nest that was just a little bit further from everyone else. Suspended in grief for mostly-forgotten days and the crushing certainty that she once had loved and been loved. Still desperately searching when she could spare the time, reaching for a ghost with all the soul still left in her.

Bonebreaker comes to her once. “You’re strong,” She tells Mercury gruffly. “Stronger than anyone here, I would say- surviving fifteen years of battle against the Frostsinger’s armies is no mean feat. But what I don’t understand is why you cower behind Marlun now, when your clan needs you-”

Mercury shoots to her feet. I will not ever pick up a weapon against a dragon again, she signs furiously, her chains whipping around her and clanging together terribly, making everyone startle away. I am never going to fight again.

She storms out of the room, leaving everyone stunned. But it’s the one thing she will never budge on- because her clearest memory of all is the ice-bright eyes of her lover widening in horror and fear when she’d seen the blood on Mercury’s claws.

Marlun looks at her with pity most days, telling Mercury to move on even while knowing that the Clan would not exist if they all weren’t incapable of letting go. She gives him a smile in return each time, helps him arrange a Clan outing or a Hunt in gratitude; but will slip away when night falls, to fly back to the place where he’d found her and search and search and search for the mate she lost once and refuses to lose twice.

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Lore by Brandysilverfire

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► Visions