...Okay, so I don't need a whole lot of coaxing to start dropping things in here. ._. Unfortunately, I don't have much that's both current, AND independent. It's the terrible vice of being an unmotivated writer. D: This is something I started in December and worked steadily on for a little while in March. I've been stuck pretty much since, which is actually pretty depressing, because I already know everything that I want to do with this. It's just a matter of making the rest of the words come out like they should.
____

“Winter’s coming early this year.”

Unearthly eyes blinked, as though taken slightly aback by the observation, as they turned to meet the sickly-looking man that said it. A soft grunt, voiced by a velvet baritone identical to the first, wafted out in reply, a bewildered stare rising to the sky.

Sullen, insipid greys loomed high above the faded green landscape, torn into from beneath by the dark, gnarled claws of wind-stripped trees. Though no dusting lay underfoot for miles, the cold still cast itself across the land in a sheet that washed away shades and vibrance until the world ostensibly ailed towards death. An overwhelming bleakness strangled the air in its tight coils, and at first it was thought to originate from the pale earth—the withering expanse around them—until it twitched and shuddered, and then dawned the realization that whence it came was far more alive than the tired land upon which it was borne.

Thin vapors trailed along in the frigid breeze, a silver sigh seen more than heard. A pale wistfulness found the ashen man’s darkly shadowed countenance, his own gaze, scarlet and emerald like that of the fellow beside him, climbing to reach the clouds overhead. A moment’s pause, a brief hesitation, grasped at the air, and dark brows furrowed, bits of lustrous silver drifting forth from behind black-clad, epaulette-adorned shoulders. “…If only they could see it now.” It was quiet, a soft murmur low enough for the air currents to swallow whole.

His companion, colored with more vim than he, nearly missed it. With the twitch of a long black ear, richly shaded eyes turned once more to regard the ghastly form, blinking at him, before sinking down to the beaten path they shared. Polished black boots bucked rhythmically before him, pushing the world back behind them each time they fell, while midnight blue pants—whose sides had been embroidered lightly in pale grey—consumed them past their ankles on the way back. Something began to stir in the fellow’s mind, and within the moment he frowned. Thickly gloved hands rose, shifting on the air as intense eyes regarded them, before they drifted towards his chest, picking lightly at draping ornaments, and then one of a handful of well glossed buttons, turning to each other shortly thereafter.

Gradually, the word ‘formal’ began to formulate in his thoughts, a daunting whisper that tugged his balance from calm assuredness to perplexed unease. “…Dainiae?” he ventured apprehensively, fussing with the faded grey of his fingers. “Where are we going?”

Within the breath, the paler dragon’s eyes twitched, his head whirling about with a start. It was as though he had been abruptly struck in the face, though the stare that met his healthier counterpart was of stunned incredulity. “Where are we going?” he echoed, tone dubious, making certain his long ears had yet to fail him. The ensuing nod tangled his brow into a tense knot, and for a moment Dainiae studied the man’s eyes, searching his worried frown, until the dark shadows beneath his own stare thickened, stiffening subtly. “You…” he began, squinting with inner strain; the thought stumbled to another line, “Should that be a ruse, it isn’t going to work in your favor.” A distinct ring of warning wove among the depths of his voice. “But if it isn’t,” he paused, searching his companion’s face again, “…then gods help you, Iaeruki.”

Troubled features twisted further, dark brows furrowing deeper. “Ruse?” the blue-clad fellow asked, bewildered. “To what purpose?”

A spark of ire flashed across Dainiae’s face, surviving only a heartbeat before swept away in the world’s cold breath. Hooking his thumbs into his belt, he hunched forward, eyeing Iaeruki severely. He seemed to be lost in debate with himself, unearthly orbs raking over porcelain features, until he looked back down at the path beneath them. “Where do you think we’re going?” he questioned, decidedly ignoring the man’s more recent concern.

“Er…” A long look around surveyed the landscape for a second time, making inward note of key details. Iaeruki’s frown remained constant. “…I cannot be entirely certain, hence why I ask, but perhaps I should have inquired as to where we are first.”

Dainiae lifted his head again, straightening his shoulders as he dragged his attention from his feet. “You really are losing it,” he couldn’t help but remark. “You roamed around here so much in your earlier years, I’d think it nigh impossible to forget Oushae, of all places.”

The midnight-clothed lad’s heart abruptly sank. Oushae? He looked around again. Whatever familiarity the land might have borne was gone, this was not the romp of his youth he remembered. It had become a stranger, its frigid bite all the colder as he felt more and more foreign. “And…” he hesitated, reeling slightly, “where we are going?”

“The barrow flat.”

“The barrows?” The word bit into Iaeruki’s lungs from beneath, squeezing the air out in a startled huff.

“Yes, and I suppose you’ll be asking why you’re wearing that, now, too,” Dainiae replied acridly, gesturing the man’s formal garb.

His counterpart inwardly flinched. “N-no…” he breathed quietly, looking down at his long shirt jacket again. He knew well enough what he was wearing; the outfit never saw the light of day for anything else. What perplexed him, however, was that as much as he may have looked, he could not find the royal family crest anywhere on it. It must have been on the back, he would later assume. “No,” he said again, a little louder, “I… I am not that… far gone.”

“Struggling a little are we?” The paler man’s stare sharpened, picking around the edges of Iaeruki’s soul. It was not unlike the hook of a raptor’s beak contemplating where it wanted to dig in to its catch. “Playing is a lot harder than it seems when you’re under pressure, isn’t it?”

Distress etched itself deep into Iaeruki’s soft features. “I fear I do not follow,” he replied, vainly shaking bits of lengthy silver from his face.

Dainiae’s harsh stare held fast, his jaw shifted, and for a moment it seemed he was gnawing pensively on unspoken words. His visage hardened, and he soon clenched his teeth, but in the same time it took him to consider the depth of a biting insult, his brow unfurrowed, his eyes softened, and he shook it away, directing his attention once more to the ground. A long silence crept over them, holding Iaeruki aloft with unease, until the thinner man’s voice sounded an age later, and his quiet “You’ll see,” proved only to string his companion higher.

The path began to retreat from the grass beneath them, and the trees diminished. The sounds of light bustling rose from the near distance, wafting towards them, a herald, but of what Iaeruki could not be certain. The last several minutes of their trek had consumed him with dread; the silence had never been quite so maddening in his memory. The low mounds of the barrows swelled from the earth ahead of them, and among those littered the forms of people. Voices became apparent, but still mostly indistinct, and then a call rang out over the flat, sounding rigidly against the wintry air.

“Highness!” it said, bearing an aged, gruff baritone. A tall form, dressed as dark as they, waved towards them as it approached, trotting lightly.

Both men stopped—Iaeruki couldn’t do so without flinching. Dainiae raised an arm, replying with an easily barked, “Ho!”

Tarnished silver flashed in the dull light, starkly contrasting the black over which it sat, and soon dull clanking, as well as perhaps a little jangling, danced around the silent smattering of dust that flittered groundward. Thin plates of pseudo-armor, distributed sparingly over a toned and broad-shouldered frame, quickly became perceptible, closely followed by the gold form of a feathered serpent wing embroidered down the front—from the left breast—with deep crimson trim, a crest, denoting association with the royal guard.

The faded sienna of short, disheveled hair soon reached clarity, closely followed by the sun-kissed complexion of strong, scruffy features. Reaching barely two paces away, the trotting came to an effortless halt, and the lads had to lift their heads in order to see the considerably taller man’s middle-aged face. A long pause crept over them, hesitation, as a notched ear cocked back, dark brows furrowed, and mismatched eyes studied each closely.

It was easy to mistake Iaeruki and Dainiae as the other, they were nearly identical, and when they both wore the same attire, not even the differing color schemes of their clothing made identifying them any easier. Though Dainiae had a much thinner build—one might go so far as to say emaciated—it was well hidden under the loose embrace of his suit and long-skirted shirt jacket, and he carried the same face, albeit with exhausted shadows lying perpetually beneath his eyes.

Gold flashed sharply above soft royal blue, turning steely alongside abysmal teal within the breath, and a strong hand lashed out, gripping tightly into Iaeruki’s collar, before yanking him off his feet, dragging him to face with the elder man as Dainiae instinctively shuffled back. His lip curled back on one side, his eyes narrowed, and his brows knitted together, twisting his visage into a mask of contempt as a low rasp caressed the air between them. “You really have been defying your character of late. I don’t know whether to commend you for being here, or despise you for finding the balls to show up,” he growled, baring clenched teeth.

“I hope you’re damned proud of yourself,” he added odiously, his piercing glare reaching deep through Iaeruki’s eyes, boring even into his core.

The lad in question hung limp, stupefied, terror writ boldly into his wide-eyed countenance. The taller man’s stare was humbling, perhaps even belittling; it was a look Iaeruki only ever saw of the old—the fierce, scornful glare learned through generations of experience. He never could think well under it, and when he finally found words he felt safe enough to speak, a glance over the royal guard’s shoulder snatched away their existence in the same fleeting moment they had surfaced into his consciousness.

Men and women, clothed in gold-trimmed black, shuffled by, each wearing a crest on their shoulder, the very same as worn by the officer holding Iaeruki aloft. Maintaining absolute silence, heads down, gaze not once faltering from their path, they moved in two groups, each bearing the weight of a case carved into the form of a beast in repose.

The first, lightly painted in beige and white, held a serene, lupine face to the sky. Long ears perked forward amid the likeness of the long, thick hair of a mane, and beneath its uplifted chin curled thin, feathered wings, secondary to a pair much longer and broader atop which they sat.

____

I'm entirely open to discussion on this, so any questions or comments you may have are welcome.

it's good to see that you posted in here
i thought it was a pretty good story, i'm not a writer so i have like 0 advice, but all in all i liked it a lot
i look forward to when you finish it

...Now I have to ask, even though I hate getting asked this question when I comment other people's stuff: what'd you like about it? Any part in particular?

i like how you described the characters and settings, the best way i could put would be like you were painting a picture with your words (i know it sounds cheesy XD)

Don't worry about it. XD For the most part, I write things like someone's watching them happen. I used to get comments from my teachers in creative writing and literary arts that my descriptions are vivid but I need to be careful not to overwhelm the reader. I'd like to think I've eased off a bit since then. My mum read one of my more recent things a few months ago and told me my language was much less flowery. *cackle* Perhaps I'll post that one next, even though that one's also incomplete.

This one, whenever I finish with it, is intended to be a supplemental piece to a role-play I'm writing with a friend on the forum that's linked in my profile. It's a waking nightmare that Iaeruki has; I already know how he breaks from it, and it's highly likely that while to him what happens here isn't real, he's probably seeing an instance in another layer of reality. A parallel in the multiverse, so to speak. For the sake of the integrity of plot, I'll spare the spoilers unless you so wish I disclose them, which I'm perfectly open to spilling. XD

if you feel it's necessary to give spoilers, spoil away!
cause there seems to be way more going on than what i can glean from a couple of stories

role-play?
do you make a character and write stories for them?

Well, what he's on his way to right now is a funeral service. As you can probably imagine, he has absolutely no idea what's going on. The version of himself, whose eyes he is seeing through, doesn't really realize what's going on either.

But the beasts in repose are caskets. The man that grabbed Iae by the collar, who I introduced in my art thread as Ghydeias, is supposed to toss him back on his ass when they meet stares again (this is the point I hope to be at before I finish the picture for deviantART). Confused, and barely managing his way back to his feet, prince-laddie would stammer out his best query to what just happened, to which Dai would turn a wide-eyed, and slightly deranged look towards him, and then reply "You... killed them, Iaeruki. Both of them. In a blind fury, you tore them both apart. Why do you think the guardians were four-winged? Their faces where the only parts of them still enough intact to be remembered."

Prince-laddie reels more, because I enjoy doing these things to him (I'm a terrible person like that), and then has to carry out his part of the service for his wife and daughter as an offender. When he's done with that, and the retired monarch, his grandmother, takes over, he prompts Dainiae to explain what happened, and it's not very happy. He waits out the rest of the ritual with dread, trying to wrap his head around the idea of himself brutally slaughtering the people he held so close. He understands then why Ghydeias received him so maliciously.

Strained words are exchanged between Iaeruki and Dainiae; Dai's origin as a doppelganger is briefly touched upon, and then high ranking officers of the royal guard, commanded by Ghydeias, take Iaeruki under restraint, despite his pacifism. Dainiae imparts just a few more last words to him, many colored with stagnant bitterness, and then lets them go on their way to take prince-laddie into custody.

Said prince-laddie only chances one look over his shoulder as he's led away, but it's enough to see the shame on his grandmother's face, and that his mother isn't even looking at him. His father is nowhere to be found, presumably dead like in the reality he knows as his own. And it's about here that it breaks off, and he jerks back to immediate consciousness in the library he's been in, confused, and then devastated. The reality he knows has both of his parents dead, as well as the wife (betrothed in what would be I guess we can call the default) he buried, so a few things have been switched around for this.

On the RP note, oh god, I have TONS, and have stories for a number of them. Hardly any of them are written, though.

that sounds pretty cool, ever thought about writing a book?
and i know what you mean about having a ton of characters but not doing anything with them, i have plenty, but i can't do anything cause i have absolutely no writing skills

I have, but considering the furthest I ever got in a story was about twenty pages, I've barely entertained the thought. ._.; Probably one of the only ways I'd get anything published is through a collaborative effort with a friend, or if I stuck just to short stories. Super short stories. It's pretty sad, because I probably have enough material just with Iae's life here to fill a whole book, if not a series, though most of it sits in my head, aging, probably fading with time.

Hilariously, when I first started writing, I did a lot of independent stories, but back then my writing was complete s***. I would not be able to even look at anything I did then. All of those stories focused on other people, and had Iaeruki as a supporting character, if you could call anyone that. I write everyone like a main character almost, which is something I've always done. Almost everyone I've listed as a character (I have a document over 200 names strong; it's terrifying) has been used at least once, and chances are I'll have a record of it somewhere, likely with features described, if I don't remember them.

And now I'm going to have to see what those writing skills look like. <.< Provided you'd be comfortable with that.

speaking of having a bunch of characters, there is an old chinese novel that has upwards of four hundred characters, check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber#Characters

i would be more than willing to write it's just that i don't know where to start, any advice?

._. Holy crap.

The horrible thing is that I have the same exact problem. Getting me to start RPs is a nightmare for that precise reason. I think I can find something of help, though; one of the webcomics I read had a link to a twitter that gave little writing prompts daily. ...Or maybe I can't. f***. She doesn't keep an archive of her news posts. D: Agh. f***. But, searching the phrase "writing prompt twitter" did come up with this result that has some interesting phrases, one of which I know I've used before. <.<; I also had to laugh, because I just found one that said "I fired my guardian angel." Have a peek; there might be a couple bits in there that could be of some help.

i didn't mean to put you on the spot like that
but i really appreciate it, it helped to get me thinking about ways to start a story, but don't hold your breath it may take a little while

XD That's okay, on both accounts. You know what I could have suggested, even? The picture linked in my signature. But take your time. I take forever to get anything started or finished, so it would be silly of me to expect anything more of anyone else.