⛧ The Call — Fantasy Roleplay ⛧ discussion
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ | 👁 | ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ | 👁 | ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Weapons class was Amelie’s least favorite of the day. Sometimes she wished she could be Called and get it over with just so that she didn’t have to sit there while Ms. Prince droned on and on about creativity and having fun. Weapons class wasn’t supposed to be fun, it was supposed to prepare her for her eventual fight against a Sidhe. She should be learning how to construct the most effective weapons with whatever she could find in the thick forests of the Sidhe’s lands. What did Ms. Prince even know anyway? She didn’t seem like she could kill anything, much less a Sidhe. This was a waste of her time.
As she opened her mouth to tell Ms. Prince just that, the scenery around her shifted. It didn’t fade like the shifting of scenes, like she thought it would when she imagined her Call. It was more like blinking and finding herself somewhere completely different, with only the absence of classroom chatter to immediately alert her to the strangeness of her new surroundings. Her desk and chair vanished beneath her, causing her to drop to the ground with a dull thud. Quickly scrambling to her feet, Amelie looked around her, taking in the faerie lands. It wasn’t at all what she had anticipated. The sky was a milky yellow, as if the sky itself was acid. There was a thickness to the air, giving the illusion of standing deep within a fog on a clear, cloudless day. Dual suns shined down on her, one blindingly bright and high in the sky, the other a dull red on the horizon. There were no trees or structures of any kind to shade her from the sun’s rays. The ground around her was dry and cracked, a dusty copper swirling up around her, slicing her exposed cheeks in the howling winds. Her hat flew off of her head, tumbling away into the distance before she could even think to grab it. It was difficult to even see her hat as the wind carried it farther and farther away from her, bits of dust cutting into her eyes faster than she could blink it away.
Where were the lush forests with leaves that cut like blades? Where was the lake of deep, red water? Where were the fortresses, jagged stone structures housing the Sidhe? None of her teachers had ever described this dry void of a wasteland. Was she even in the same place? Amelie was going to be so mad if she was sent somewhere entirely different from everyone else. She better still have her chance to fight the Sidhe. Despite being thrown off by the unexpected environment, Amelie was still more excited than scared, adrenaline overpowering the fear. It was her turn, her time to prove her worth. She couldn’t say that she expected her Call to happen so soon, but that would be no problem. Both of her parents survived their Call with ease, so Amelie knew that she wouldn’t have too much difficulty with her own. They were now experts on the Sidhe, passing along their knowledge and experience to Amelie. Or, at least, her mom did. She didn’t have much from her dad, but still, he was more than capable, and so strong, and an excellent leader. All traits that he had passed down to her.
The Sidhe would never be able to find her out in the wasteland. It was so windy and bright that visibility was near zero. All she had to do was plop down where she was and just hang out for the next twenty-four hours. But that was too easy. Amelie had bigger dreams. The Call was her way to prove herself, to show once and for all that she was worthy of being her father’s daughter, worthy of acknowledgement. All of her plans had revolved around assumptions about being in a forest, but she could work around this small hiccup. If she picked a direction and walked in it, surely she would make it to something more than empty nothingness at some point.
No matter where she ended up, all Amelie knew was that she needed to get a move on and go somewhere. Blood dripped down her cheek from a particularly nasty slice of dust and she wiped it away with the back of her hand absentmindedly, not caring if her blood fed the thirsty ground beneath her feet or was swept away into the wind. She wetted her already cracking lips with her tongue as she squinted into the horizon, turning in a slow circle. Nothing but more dust in all directions. It seemed that it truly didn’t matter which direction she picked, so towards the setting red sun was as good as anything.
if anyone says anything about the template lines im going to lose it you don't know what i went through to reach this point and i just dont care anymore. it works on firefox. maybe try a better browser. im ripping out my hair and screaming
Mod
░▒▓█ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀʟʟ ᴏꜰ ᴀᴍᴇʟɪᴇ █▓▒░
The scent of fresh meat wafted through the air like a pie on a windowsill. It rushed through the air and over the Sidhe, causing a sigh to escape their lips that almost sounded human. The air through the fortress froze, every creature feeling the joy of the coming chase. While they waited a few seconds, no one moved for there could be no distractions that could stop them from acquiring their meal. They hadn't had a toy to play with in so long, for the humans were getting clever. Whenever they caught one, it was too late to play with them, so instead they were forced to doll out quick kills. But not this one. The faeries were antsy and tired of playing games. Whatever unlucky soul got called would face the wrath of the Sidhe, with no chases or hiding or lurking.
Chaos broke when the horn was sounded. Whoops and screeches filled the desolate place, sounds that scarily resembled joy. Contorted Fae carried other Sidhe on their backs, crying out from the harsh thrashes of the whips on their hides. The Sidhe carries spears and bared their teeth, setting out for their revenge as they did every time. Filthy hoo-mans they hissed at the thought of the beasts who trapped them here, who made them like this. The clashing of weapons and clopping of the mutated fae-horse's hooves on the ground carried out the eerie and damning cry of the horn. Sometimes they were silent and careful, keeping their prey on their toes, but no. Not this time. They wanted to feel the fear, taste it, watch the human realize they were dead already and still try and run away.
A wave of frustration rumbled through the mob at the realization that they could not clearly see the human. She wasn't right by the cliff or hiding out in the jungle- she must be somewhere further out. This would make the chase more difficult, and waste precious time to play. A soft whine grew in volume, like a chorus of toddlers dropping their cookies. Why could things never go right? But a Sidhe at the front pounded his spear on the ground. Then another joined. And another. The whining stopped and they rowdy group of merry murderers took of.
It was time to hunt.
Mod
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ | 👁 | ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ | 👁 | ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━An hour must have passed before Amelie spotted an object on the horizon. By that point her lips were dry and cracked, and all visible skin was striped with lesions from the dust still whipping around her in a thick haze. Her feet blistered and ached, and her throat screamed for even the smallest drop of water, but still she walked on. The red sun was hovering right at the edge of the horizon, silhouetting the object that Amelie was shambling towards. At first she had thought it was a Sidhe, squinting at it through eyelashes crusted with sand, but the longer she looked, the more she thought it was too still to be a living creature. A big part of Amelie was relieved that this wasn’t how her encounter with the Sidhe began. The last hour had stripped away much of her confidence, allowing the fear she should have felt immediately creep in. No part of her goal had changed, but now she felt that she would need some time to come up with a proper plan, and she desperately needed something to use as a weapon.
Close enough now to see the object without it being fully obscured by the wind, Amelie could tell that it was a tree. Skeleton-bare and reaching towards the white sun like a claw of death. The ends of the branches were filed down to a point, as if life itself was a weapon in this cursed place. For all Amelie knew, it was. Everything she had seen so far had been desperately trying to snuff out her life, and she hadn’t really seen anything. Just the sky and the ground, dual forces of wind and sun fighting for dominance with Amelie trapped in the middle. Maybe the tree would offer some comfort, at the very least a reprieve from the onslaught of the elements. Amelie quickened her pace at the thought. Rest sounded as good as gold after the hour she had just experienced.
The tree was bleached white and the bark had been stripped away from a lifetime in the harsh conditions of the wastelands. Amelie hesitantly put a palm against the trunk, almost scared that it would try to bite her or start oozing acid. The tree did nothing, acting more like a regular tree than anything more sinister like the rest of the landscape. Not one to waste any time, Amelie found the spot with the most cover and slid down to sit at the base of the tree, closing her eyes and letting out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. The tree was her lifeline, her savior, the only thing keeping her in one piece. It was her beacon of hope when all had started to feel lost. Just in the few moments she had been sitting hidden from the sun’s assault, Amelie could feel her confidence skyrocketing to new heights.
From the way her teachers talked about the Call, it wasn’t often that people survived past the first hour or two, especially a second year. Not only was Amelie still alive, but she hadn’t seen or heard anything from the Sidhe. This would be laughably easy if they couldn’t find her without her making a single effort to hide. Not that Amelie had any plans to cower under the protection of her tree for the next 23 hours. No, she had aspirations, and now they were starting to feel more possible. The branches of the tree had looked jagged and pointy from a distance, but up close, Amelie could see that the wind had eroded them into razor-sharp points. Ideas raced through Amelie’s mind. A pit full of branches could take out a couple of Sidhe, but how would she dig a hole or obscure it from view? The smallest branches would make excellent arrows, but Amelie didn’t have access to a bow nor the means to construct one. The best plan of action would be to snap off one or two moderately sized branches to use as spears. She could hold one and tie the other to her back with the jacket she had tied around her waist.
But all of that could wait a few more minutes. The Sidhe were nowhere to be seen, and Amelie needed the break. Her feet were throbbing and she wanted to scrape some of the dirt from under her nails. A few minutes to sit and rest and recover, then Amelie would become a lethal weapon.
Mod
Without the thrill of the Call, the air was dismal and bleak, even for a place such as Faerieland. Every time another child escaped their bony clutches, more shrieks and wails filled the air, but no longer. It was not a game but a race. A race against time and death and each other, everything wanting to wrap their hands around a warm body. The smaller Sidhe that seemed to be children were all but foaming on the mouth on the backs of the older Fae, eagerly awaiting the sight of a human to capture.
The younger Sidhe had no memory of the old world, the gray of the land all they would ever know. Perhaps they would even enjoy it, find love and light in the place, but no. Just as they were trained to hate Farieland, they were trained to hunt humans, if not hate them, and when you’re so good at hunting something, would you ever stop? And in any case, the Calls were at the very least a source of entertainment. The only source of fun they had to our knowledge was the Call, but it is very possible that we have everything wrong. That they read and write and play and speak, for all we know of them is what we have seen. Maybe they just enjoy the killing and that's that.
If the Sidhe could read- and again, they very well might; no one has ever bothered to find out-, they’d quite like The Most Dangerous Game, a short story by Richard Connell. It tells the story of a hunter named Rainsford who gets stranded on an island and is taken in by the aristocrat who lives there. He is a fellow renowned hunter named Zaroff. Eventually, we learn the ‘most dangerous game’ is a play on words, the game of Zaroff hunting other people, as well as humans being ‘game’ as animals you hunt are often called game.Yes Zaroff hunts Rainsford, but in shocking twist, Rainsford escapes and kills Zaroff in his own home, the ending implying that he would take over the role of the dead man. I do wonder though, which one Sidhe would identify more with. Zaroff, the bloodthirsty killer who gets beaten at his own game. Or Rainsford, the proud hunter forced to kill out of circumstance, and ultimately having his worldview shaken. Who lays down in the corpses bed and sleeps soundly there for every night after.
Instead of the previous anger that rustled through the fae, an aura of intrigue and excitement bounced around. You wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at them, for they were all too gangly and gruesome to make out coherent human facial expressions. They were so bony and thin that if you could reach out, their bones could break with a flick of the wrist, so terribly malnourished that your stomach would growl at mere sight.Their limbs and hair strands looked like sticks, their eyes black and skin mangled. Their teeth, on the other hand…it was scarily human. It’s such a small thing, human teeth, but it looked downright haunting on these creatures. Why not fangs or chipped blocks, or something to erase that small trace of humanity? Now, Sidhe were most likely not recently descended from humans, or vice versa. But the smoothness and whiteness of their teeth is jarring, even for just a moment.
Sidhe were trampled and snapped, left behind in the dust cloud of a ravenous swarm that was too into the game to care about the bodies of their own left behind. The bodies twitched for a moment, then shuddered, then they died. It was very human, their way of dying. No screams, no dissolving, only a sharp breath, and then silence. The rest of the Sidhe carried on, as if nothing had happened, desperately chasing the scent and faint pants of the human, miles away. MIles away, but so sickeningly close. So close.
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