Boundless Limits {B.Durran}

20

Tierney slowly opens and closes her mouth, the bird standing on the pommel spike mimics the motion, its beak clicks with the movement. The rider tilts her head, watching the figure follow it, chirping and flapping its wings when she rights her head again.

The bird in front of her is so... real. Tierney reaches out a hand to touch the black mass, her hand making contact with it, she's not sure what she's expecting but the soft touch of feathers catches her off guard.

The ghost of a bird shouldn't feel this real, this shouldn't be correct. She killed the bird with her own hands, Daithi watching her, she remembers the blood sticking to her dagger, and the way the hawk struggled in her grasp.

"Ethereal summoner," Tierney starts, watching the bird tilt its head as if it can hear her too. "You said that, what is it?"

Anam's wingbeats are slow, and steady, keeping the pair in the air, their pace slow as they glide just below cloud cover. "It's the name of your signet," Anam replies, steadily, "From my understanding, you have abilities similar to a necromancer." 

"No one can resurrect the dead," Tierney says aloud as if speaking the words instead of thinking it would make it true. It would make the bird before her disappear as if it never existed before. As if she didn't force it to take shape when it should have stayed dead.

Tierney's cold-ridden fingers twitch in her lap, beginning a steady tapping motion on her thigh as she thinks about it. No one can resurrect the dead, it's a well-known fact. Tairn's last rider, Naolin, died trying to bring back Violet's brother, Brennan. It's not possible.

'Well it shouldn't be possible,' she thinks, but it seems like she's fucked that up seeing as there's, at least, a physical replica of something she has killed in front of her. "I'm fucked. Carr's going to snap my neck."

"He can fucking try," Anam snarls, the low growl rumbling in the dragon's chest startles the bird but it doesn't make any motion to move when seeing Tierney is calm. No— when feeling Tierney's calm.

Gods, this is distracting. The bird seems to be pushing and radiating something she can only describe as emotion, shoving it toward her in an attempt to understand it. The bird is pushing its concern, it's confusion toward Tierney while taking in the steady calm and panic Tierney's experiencing, feeding off of it, trying to understand it.

Tierney can feel the flow, as if another pathway in her grounding space opened, leading directly to the bird in front of her, allowing it to access information she's feeling, she's thinking and in turn, sending its emotion toward her. It doesn't help that Tierney can feel a path of energy from her toward the bird, it's taking Anam's power coiling inside Tierney and using it to keep its physical form.

It's disorientating keeping track of everything. From Anam's power to differentiating what Tierney feels from what the bird and her dragon feel. She can feel a headache coming along. 

"Little one, from what I understand your signet is similar to 'necromancy' but not exactly alike," Anam tells her, forcing Tierney to focus on another thing. "I cannot say I know exactly what they are."

Tierney groans, rubbing her face with her gloved hands, tracing over her goggles and over her hair before letting them rest again in her lap. "Do you know enough to tell me whether we have to escape impending death tonight or if I can sleep instead of flying to the barrens?"

Anam chuffs as if her rider's words are mildly amusing. "They won't kill you, I can promise that," Anam tells her and Tierney loses some tension in her shoulders. "From a rough understanding, they can form the physical bodies of those they have killed. But cannot summon those from the same species."