+- Vivarium (https://vivariumrpg.com)
+-- Forum: Vivarium (https://vivariumrpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=3)
+--- Forum: Spirited Highlands (https://vivariumrpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=25)
+--- Thread: BWP They say, "The Holy water's watered down" (/showthread.php?tid=7943)
They say, "The Holy water's watered down" - Prudence - 6/7/2025
![[Image: Prudence2.png]](https://magatia.net/x/Prudence2.png)
She stirred-
No, it stirred: the persistent presence of something that went far deeper than her physical body. What little pain she felt was long gone, replaced with the sensation of life thrumming in spaces it no longer belonged - and yet, when her eyes opened, she was presented with a bloom of dimming light that was yet so bright that she winced away from it and pressed her muzzle (muzzle??) to the grassy turf to shield her delicate and newly wrought retinas.
The suddenness of her arrival to the world of the living lost its novelty as her senses, one by one, recalibrated for what she discovered to be an entirely new form sprawled across dusk-touched grass. Bare skin was replaced with darkly furred limbs, her uncalloused hands compact and mitt-like and lacking purposeful dexterity. Rapid-fire thoughts brought her no answers that made sense; what had happened? Why was she here? Where was here? Why was she a dog - some beast?
Had she miscalculated a spell, her tongue fumbling an incantation or misconstruing an intention? When she grasped desperately for the living core of magic she had always found nestled in her chest, she felt nothing - if it existed yet, it turned a blind eye to her plight, ambivalent to whatever suffering she would face in its absence.
No more was its warmth cradled by the curve of her ribs - it was gone.
It was an observation she made with startling finality, the thought spoken plainly and despondently, gooseflesh spanning across her skin in time with the sinking of her gut.
She dared to crack one mauve eye, though not so widely she could not ward away some of the oppressive light with her lashes. The overbright features around her began to become more focused, less overwhelming, and she risked the freedom of her other eye as she tentatively searched her surroundings for anything familiar.
If she remained within Wyrmcove, she would have expected to find a few features readily: the nearby coast and the massive ribs of Serin's final wyrm that arced far overhead, reclaimed by moss, wild vines, and dripping wisteria. What should have been the paved streets of the duchy was the whispering grass within the meadow she had been deposited in and, though a water source lapped at a yet-unseen shore, it was not her familiar ocean. There were no seabirds wheeling overhead, baying to the horizon they would forever chase.
It was too quiet here, too calm despite the undercurrent of unease that bled into every passing moment. Something was deeply wrong, she could tell, but she did not know why. Whether it was a figment of this life or the last, she could not be certain.
The Wyrmwood puffed a breath through a nose that was both hers and not, ears reversing atop her crown as she rose unsteadily onto likewise unknown paws. Their digits spread, grasping at the earth as she took halting strides to... somewhere- a different spot from her bed in the long grass. It accomplished little, providing her with no new information, but it felt useful.
A scent - yet another new feature of this new body of hers, the identification of such things - reached her and spoke of a great many others of her kind. She did not know why she thought such a thing, but she knew so certainly that she would find others of her canine form if she were to linger here.
Her eyes narrowed as she craned her head upward, brows crumpled as she scrutinized the immediate expanse of field that slowly sloped up into mountain peaks. On an instinct to gain higher ground to better surveille the world, she reluctantly began her unsteady ascent of the nearest rockwork. Her nails screeched against the wind-whipped stones as she hauled her slender form upward, determination stitched into her very being as she doggedly pressed on.
Perhaps, just maybe, she would be able to see something she recognized and she could find her way back home. This was all sure to be some sort of mistake, some fluke - she did not dabble in the arts of transformation nor teleportation. And if some of the other dogs here found her, she could ask them where in the blazes she was - if she could even speak to them in a language they could mutually understand.
She had yet to remember the knife in her back just before her consciousness had faded.
No, it stirred: the persistent presence of something that went far deeper than her physical body. What little pain she felt was long gone, replaced with the sensation of life thrumming in spaces it no longer belonged - and yet, when her eyes opened, she was presented with a bloom of dimming light that was yet so bright that she winced away from it and pressed her muzzle (muzzle??) to the grassy turf to shield her delicate and newly wrought retinas.
The suddenness of her arrival to the world of the living lost its novelty as her senses, one by one, recalibrated for what she discovered to be an entirely new form sprawled across dusk-touched grass. Bare skin was replaced with darkly furred limbs, her uncalloused hands compact and mitt-like and lacking purposeful dexterity. Rapid-fire thoughts brought her no answers that made sense; what had happened? Why was she here? Where was here? Why was she a dog - some beast?
Had she miscalculated a spell, her tongue fumbling an incantation or misconstruing an intention? When she grasped desperately for the living core of magic she had always found nestled in her chest, she felt nothing - if it existed yet, it turned a blind eye to her plight, ambivalent to whatever suffering she would face in its absence.
No more was its warmth cradled by the curve of her ribs - it was gone.
It was an observation she made with startling finality, the thought spoken plainly and despondently, gooseflesh spanning across her skin in time with the sinking of her gut.
She dared to crack one mauve eye, though not so widely she could not ward away some of the oppressive light with her lashes. The overbright features around her began to become more focused, less overwhelming, and she risked the freedom of her other eye as she tentatively searched her surroundings for anything familiar.
If she remained within Wyrmcove, she would have expected to find a few features readily: the nearby coast and the massive ribs of Serin's final wyrm that arced far overhead, reclaimed by moss, wild vines, and dripping wisteria. What should have been the paved streets of the duchy was the whispering grass within the meadow she had been deposited in and, though a water source lapped at a yet-unseen shore, it was not her familiar ocean. There were no seabirds wheeling overhead, baying to the horizon they would forever chase.
It was too quiet here, too calm despite the undercurrent of unease that bled into every passing moment. Something was deeply wrong, she could tell, but she did not know why. Whether it was a figment of this life or the last, she could not be certain.
The Wyrmwood puffed a breath through a nose that was both hers and not, ears reversing atop her crown as she rose unsteadily onto likewise unknown paws. Their digits spread, grasping at the earth as she took halting strides to... somewhere- a different spot from her bed in the long grass. It accomplished little, providing her with no new information, but it felt useful.
A scent - yet another new feature of this new body of hers, the identification of such things - reached her and spoke of a great many others of her kind. She did not know why she thought such a thing, but she knew so certainly that she would find others of her canine form if she were to linger here.
Her eyes narrowed as she craned her head upward, brows crumpled as she scrutinized the immediate expanse of field that slowly sloped up into mountain peaks. On an instinct to gain higher ground to better surveille the world, she reluctantly began her unsteady ascent of the nearest rockwork. Her nails screeched against the wind-whipped stones as she hauled her slender form upward, determination stitched into her very being as she doggedly pressed on.
Perhaps, just maybe, she would be able to see something she recognized and she could find her way back home. This was all sure to be some sort of mistake, some fluke - she did not dabble in the arts of transformation nor teleportation. And if some of the other dogs here found her, she could ask them where in the blazes she was - if she could even speak to them in a language they could mutually understand.
She had yet to remember the knife in her back just before her consciousness had faded.