Outside in the Cold Distance

A princess, a killer, and the (un)quiet cottage they call home.

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Anya de la Rose
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Outside in the Cold Distance

Post by Anya de la Rose »

Caer Cors, whatever its name had once been, had benefitted from months under the care of the slayers. Every day, Anya had taken the teleportation circle to the old fort and consecrated it. When she couldn't, friends had stepped in for her. And once a week, just as faithfully, she had added on magic to fortify the structure, populate it with unseen servants, and give it just a little more of the feeling of home. For the past week, it had been home.

She'd found a new cycle that moved outside the bounds of daylight. The servants had been given their instructions. Within an hour of her arrival at the fort, she'd found a chair at the top of the tallest tower to begin scrying. This was the tower where she and Ettyn had found the old mage. Scorch marks from where she had dropped a fireball on her partner and a clawing mass of the wizard's creations were still on the floor. It had melted the stonework in places, constant reminders of what they'd discovered. But now, she could use the old mage's tower to stare out, farther into the Wilds, past the limits of where she'd traveled, and watch.

For eight hours, she focused on the Weave. Anywhere she felt movement along the Ways, she focused. Usually, it was nothing. The fae folk knew the Ways and used them to move to their portion of the Wilds. The animals here even seemed to know them. Did they know they were using magic?  Probably not. They simply knew that some trails got them to better grazing faster than others. Or that richer hunting lie on the other side of a shadow that never moved. But sometimes, she found what she was looking for. Sometimes the things moving through the planes were blighted and sick.  When she found those, she marked them. If they were close enough to the city, or to one of the routes she knew would take them there, she sent Ettyn. She couldn't leave the tower.

At first, she couldn't hold the scrying for as long as she had hoped. She would drop out, thinking of home and her friends. It would take her time to find the clear mind again that extended casting required. By the end of the week, she needed to be shaken by one of the unseen servants to break the focus. Time spent beyond that limit would mean she needed more sleep to recover, and this was an exercise in persistence, not strength.

On Monday, at 3 AM, one of the servants performed the other alarm task she'd set for them. An invisible hand shook her shoulder until she rolled over in the large bed in her cold room, and sat up. Anya pinched the bridge of her nose tightly. She'd had a headache for days with no hint of it subsiding. "I'm awake, thank you." Her voice was hoarse. She hadn't had many reasons to talk lately. She wasn't even sure if the unseen servants were actually invisible people, or the Weave itself, or just eerie manifestations of her own will. But they gave her a reason to talk.

She spent an hour fetching food from the kitchen, stretching sore muscles, and wrapping herself in layers of furs. By the end of it, she was cocooned in the same chair at the top of the tower. This time, she'd pulled it to face the window that looked out over the Lake and back towards home. She'd discovered that the way she was facing didn't matter much once she began following the threads. As she settled and closed her eyes, the small mechanical gryphon that had followed her through her morning routine took flight off the balcony to keep watch. Pluen would patrol the immediate Wilds while Anya scryed, ready to alert her to anything that crept in close while she looked far.

Again, eight hours passed. An invisible hand shook her shoulder, sending her out to the courtyard where she worked to ensure her muscles didn't atrophy in this endless cycle of sitting and sleeping.  First, half an hour with the whip, getting the balance of the three different tips and finding the range until she could reliably break a target, or snare it.  Then, depending on the day, half an hour with her tanto or her scythe. The latter was still unfamiliar, but she was finding her way with it.

Anya finished her training in time for a short meal, a short bath, and a return to bed.  The little gryphon that curled up with her was made of metal but again, it was something to talk to. She often whispered to Pluen about the animals she'd seen stumbling through the Ways, suggesting hunting expeditions or sights her small friend should go see when she ranged out tomorrow. If she'd found anything worth killing, she recited the type and the location into the gold ring stamped with a thistle that she wore.

The purple at her pulse points, at her throat and wrists especially was deepening as she went longer with poor sleep and little food. Her head was pounding again by the end of each day. But she could tell based on the frequency and the size of the things that were jumping through the planes that something was getting closer.
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

Post by Anya de la Rose »

There had been patterns, signs of something vast and threatening moving across the Wilds. The hunting was better close to the city in what should have been a lean season with the early onset of winter, as the looming threat sparked mass migrations. Great beasts that had laired only in the deepest, darkest parts of the forest appeared within sight of RhyDin, agitated and desperate, and at least one covered in bite marks.

The sky was cloudy and the moons were new, but an unearthly glow guided the growling, scrambling shapes that skittered under cover of the bramble, slipping through the planar ripples of the ways before they could be seen...

Ettyn had found a new contact, a ranger and vigilante, who'd picked up rumors from her own contacts. Farlanders reported cannibalized homesteads and villages, and a fortress of Green Knights that had been assaulted and destroyed with near military precision.

Blighted ones slipped through the Ways ahead of the growing menace, snarling Abyssal words to an unseen master as they prepared the way for him, taking twisting paths, maddening for mortals to follow, all the way to civilization...

The pace of Ettyn's hunts increased. There were always leads to follow, from Anya directly, from her own tracking, or from other sources. Tree blights cleared a forgotten, bramble-choked path to Old Temple. Someone summoned gricks from the Underdark to unearth the denizens of an overgrown graveyard, who all vanished into the Wilds. Oath-broken death knights attempted to inscribe a teleportation circle within the northern gates of the old city cemetery.

His voice whispered among his servants, the growing masses that clawed and lurched their way across the Wilds and the clever few who carried out his deeper machinations. A wight stood upon a hill, teaming with dead saplings like grasping hands bursting from the earth, and cast her pale eyes to heaven and spoke his name: "Flesherd."

The name was not known in RhyDin, but Ettyn had heard it in stories in Fort Tiamori and the Far Wilds -- a legendary court wizard, fallen from grace for dabbling in the dark arts, a necromancer whose undead legions had destroyed themselves breaking the Eastern Dominion in ages past. And the most feared of his armies was known as the Walking Tomb...

There, in the Deep Wilds, so near to the Way that would take them to the edge of civilization, the eerie light emerged once more. The path was twisted. It would take a day or more to cross the deadwood laid fittingly before this mass of undeath, and the light guided them through. Whispers emerged from the source, directions not from the master's rotting lips -- no, from his very soul, a poisonous flame that refracted light dappled from the chains that bound its confining crystals, stretched taut between six beastly zombefied ogres embedded with jagged iron, the heart of a vast and growing heard of zombies...

The infamous Soul-Guard of the Flesherd, keepers of his phylactery.

To the ceaselessly scrying eyes of Anya, the source of the threat was known at last.

The concentration of blighted and undead servants that had begun clawing their way into the Deep Wilds had hinted at where the host would emerge. Still, the shock of seeing them cross into the limits of her range nearly broke her focus. Almost as one, they came into focus. Some skipped along the Ways, others walked until they had nearly crumbled, still more stumbled through game trails to join the main body of the lich's army. And there, in the center, was the target more important than the man himself.

Anya blew out a breath between pursed lips and squeezed her already closed eyes tightly. Her next exhale was slower through her nose. She needed to focus now, five hours into her scrying and when the blood was already pounding in her ears so loudly she could barely understand the Abyssal muttering she could pick up. She heard the name being repeated, and disregarded it. It didn't matter what he was named.

Her eyes shifted to the phylactery suspended between the massive ogres. Unconsciously, the fingers of her left hand twitched twice. She couldn't cast from this far away, but it didn't stop the urge to try to burn away the threat with a gesture. Not too long there. She needed to know exactly where the slayers would be going. Another shift and she had pulled back to study the features of the Wilds. It was nothing she recognized, but that wasn't a concern. She knew others who were more familiar with the outer reaches of the region. Dragons, fae, someone would know if she could just find landmarks.

When she'd found the Way to RhyDin, determined where the herd was in relation and the rough time to travel the difference, she looked again at the heart of the matter. That was when she felt the first sharp push. Her eyebrows knit together at the shove against her focus, and her efforts redoubled. The shove came again, with the distinct sensation of a snarled warning and the feel of being seen. Anya gasped and opened her eyes. Her hands came up to press the heels into her eyes, accompanied by a low moan. Done early today, it seemed.

For a minute, she sat with her elbows on her knees, hands still pressing into her closed eyes. She didn't open them or move far, just twisted her wrist so the ring on her left hand came closer to her lips. "Come out when you can," she spoke quietly into the ring, the strain evident in her voice.

When she did venture to open her eyes, she blinked at the harsh light coming in through the windows. It had snowed for days and the sun reflected off the white outside in a way that cut through the dull, constant ache of her exhausted mind in new and sharply painful ways. She sighed again and stood. Her lower back ached from sitting still for so long. It gave a quiet, hollow pop when she stretched.

Anya turned away from the windows, still blinking. She found the stairs down to the main hall, where unseen servants had already responded to her early loss of focus by starting water boiling for tea and a bath. "Thank you," she told them. She still wasn't certain how aware they were. But they were good at their jobs. On her way to the courtyard, she picked up an apple from the kitchen. They were wrinkled things this late in the season, already half fermented in their skin and more suited to winemaking than eating. Anya just wanted the sugar. She pushed out into the open air to walk while she waited.
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

Post by Death Knell »

It didn't take long. Ettyn was tying her hair back with the planar silk she usually carried with her these days, at least since the fight with Daronova -- weapons, armor, phone, snacks, spare clothes, and other essentials all in one place.

If it was an emergency, Anya would have said so; but with the silk, she could be ready to hunt and slay in the space of a few minutes.

She hadn't come out empty-handed, either. A warm brownie rested in the palm of her hand, held out to Anya in offer. "Rhosyn." Assessing -- her looks over Anya were often assessing, and just as often she did not like what she found. Exhaustion. Strain. Cold. She looked a little better herself, but her usually graceful movements were stiff -- frequent hunts were taking a harsh toll on her body.

Her left hip especially seemed to be aching.

"What'd you find?"

The brownie was the first thing Anya concerned herself with. She took it and bit into it without pausing to say hello. Extended concentration made her cold, and hungry, and dizzy. Warm desserts fixed, or at least distracted, her from those things.

"A day out from the Way to RhyDin. The main herd has moved in. There's a phylactery being carried by six of them. Lichs calling in more the further they go."

The dark circles under her eyes stood out against her pale face. Her schedule hadn't allowed her to eat as much as the slayers' amped up metabolism required to maintain weight and it was starting to show. The permanent bruising on her throat and wrists had deepened a few shades, appearing more black than blue. Even with her ugly brown wool coat on over a thick sweater, she looked cold and tired. She looked like someone who had spent weeks living alone in a wild fortress.

While Anya caught Ettyn up on her discovery, Pluen touched down in the courtyard and trotted across it with a series of chirps. Anya nodded her head towards the mechanical gryphon. "I'll send her out to look tonight while I sleep. He felt me when I focused for too long, and he pushed back."

Ettyn nodded decisively. "Then we move fast. I can be ready to go out to track him in... ten minutes. Use my Sight, follow the thread from the phylactery. Think we should -- drop Phettyn on the phylactery? Anyone goes into the middle of that herd--"

Her mouth pulled to one side, and she held out her hand for Pluen to nip at.

"--not coming back out. What do you think?"

Anya shook her head at the haste and the plan. "I'm sorry, I can't. Not right now. I can't get myself out there or a simulacrum. I'm not even sure I can find you once you go." She lifted her right hand to press fingertips into the center of her forehead. "It felt like getting punched in the head."

She moved her hand down in a fist to press it just below her sterum. "I don't have anything left right now. Give me a few hours to sleep."

The admission was more painful than the hunger or exhaustion. She'd burned herself out trying to keep up the irregular hours and now that she needed to use the information she'd found it was time to wait again.

Ettyn frowned and shook her head. She reached out a hand to the side of Anya's head, and put their brows together for a moment. "Done well. Fought hard. Can't be about to cross -- not yet. Let him worry about us -- falter. We'll catch him at dawn. Sleep. I'll trance by you -- listen for any sign from our father. Mm?"

"They're not in a hurry," Anya confirmed with a nod. Her ears and cheek were icy cold and the pulse that Ettyn would be able to feel in her jaw and temple was faster than usual. "They may not have everything they want yet. They could be waiting for something."

She turned away to look at Pluen. "Go find the ones I told you about," she said to the gryphon. "Stay far." At a distance, it wouldn't be obviously mechanical and could be excused as any other resident of the Wilds fleeing before the herd.

The small gryphon chirped again and took off, headed for the border of the Wilds. Anya turned back to Ettyn when she had left. "I need a bath, warm food, tea. Then I'll sleep. Just an hour to feel a little better."

"Sleep as long as you need to," Ettyn pressed. "We fight him and his together." She drew her head back when Anya turned away, watching the brass creature take flight, and rumbled thoughtfully.

"...What do you want to eat? Can cook it or dash it. Good meal -- fill your belly for good rest, and the last of this -- together."
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

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Anya moved her arm to the side, dismissing the need.  "The servants will have made something by now. Probably some sort of stew, they're good at that. They keep my room warm, draw a bath, anything really."

She moved to lead the way back into the main hall through the kitchen. Inside, a meal appeared to be plating itself. Stew, bread, and more of those sad apples mercifully baked this time. Without being fully aware, Anya skirted the spots people should occupy if they were completing the tasks on her way to the small table tucked in a corner.  She took a seat with her back to the wall. This was where she had eaten all of her meals for the past weeks.

Ettyn followed her path, seeming to intuit the reasoning, and paused at the seat across from her. "Wh--" She frowned, uncertain what to say, perhaps; then decided, "Been thinking about you... and... doing what I can. Aught else I can do..." She considered, again. "...be near in silence... keep vigil... prepare something..." She raised a hand in offer, then lowered it.

"I just need to sleep." Anya tried to sound reassuring. "After we handle this part, I'll stay out a few more days to watch for stragglers. Who knows how far out the call went."

The food delivered itself, a setting for each of them. Again, she paused while she ate. The stew was too warm still. She compromised by tearing off chunks of bread and dipping it in the thick broth before eating it. Her enthusiasm hinted at the way her stomach gnawed at itself. Only after the first half dozen bites did she finish the answer.

"Then home. I want to go home. Is everything all right there?"

Anya picked up a spoon while she waited for Ettyn to answer. She wasn't looking at her friend anymore. Her attention was on the food that she shoveled up in heaping mouthfuls and blew on to cool enough to eat. She was hungry and she was trying to be fast about it so she could get to sleep.

As she warmed up slowly, she shed outer layers. First the brown jacket and then the sweater. She spent long hours sitting in cold rooms here. There was a hoodie on under the sweater, hood pulled through the neckline. This she unzipped some. The loose tee underneath dipped enough at her throat to show the spreading bruise and the way her collarbone stood out.

Even while she preemptively undressed for the bath that was being prepared in her room, she ate steadily. There was a good chance Ettyn was going to need to carry the rest of her own meal to Anya's room if she wanted to keep talking.

"Home, and more food -- grow your stomach back steady." Ettyn grimaced and started to chide herself: "I should have--"

She stopped herself. She had her job: keep home safe. Hunt the Near Wilds. Let nothing slip. Make sure your sequestered partner is feeding herself enough hadn't been on there.

"Home's fine. Our friends are well... our beasts... the house... Near Wilds... Whitedown... Kept an eye on everything. Kill the lich and break the herd, the stragglers..." She looked at Anya then. The bruise had not been missed.

"Any stragglers... rangers and new friends I've made, they can handle that." She ate as quickly as she could, to try to catch up. She would have to carry it with her. "Soon as we've done that -- the lich and the herd -- want you to sleep... eat... be warm under your new blankets waiting by home, and by the fire. And trust me to--" She paused. "--delegate the rest. All right?"

"All right."  She knew she looked terrible. There weren't many mirrors in the fort and those they did have weren't always polished to a usable shine, but she could feel the way the cold got to her bones faster than before. She could see the marks under her skin. It would all heal quickly, she was certain of that as well. No permanent damage was being done.

"Can I still see people? No offense to you, but I've been talking to ghosts for two weeks. They don't answer." Her eyes shifted to watch a metal brush take it upon itself to start scrubbing a metal pot in the wash basin. It proved her point.

A few more bites and she was moving again, a mug of tea in her hand.  "Come on. They're usually done with the water by now."

Ettyn grinned. "Not great talkers, no. Can see anyone. Just... no work for a while. Think your work should be taking care of yourself," and she rose to eat and follow.

Maybe she would eat again after she followed. Her left leg shuddered on the way up, and her balance was not as good. She looked, on the whole, warmer and happier than Anya, but constant hunting had made her leaner and harder, and the soreness of injuries that didn't have time to recover was adding up.

"The same for you," Anya suggested on her way up the stairs. "Let friends handle some of it. She if we can get a few days off from the itch." Which was how she thought about the growing pressure when they went too long without fulfilling their oath.

Undressing to get into the bath in her room was a series of quick motions. She didn't let the air touch her bare skin for more than the minimum time necessary. The servants had done well again. Steam rose from the tub and the water nearly overflowed when she lowered into it with a splash.  "Tell me about your new friends."
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

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"Mm. I'll take the time, too," Ettyn readily agreed. "Kill naught. Long baths and naps and enough food to fatten back up."

She sat on a stool by the edge of the tub. Only a few more bites to finish it, then she folded her arms over the edge of the tub and rested her chin there. Eyes drifted to slits. She was enjoying the steam.

Violet flush rose more easily from heat (or biting cold) since the change to their souls, because her skin was a paler gray -- ashen outright, with less sign of the underlying tan hue. And here in the Deep Wilds, the towering trees were teeming within her black gaze.

She was darker around the edges in a sense. Every shadow, such as those between her hair and her brow, was deeper; light did not quite reach her deepest scars; and every once in a while, motes of darkness could be caught drifting from her eyes when she blinked.

"Kiera. Think you met her, at the Perch. Ran into her on the trail a few times. --Think she's alone a lot, and, mm... sympathize. She has gardens in the Wilds, and a flower shop. Think you'd like both."

A beat. "Made a few more friends at the Hunters Guild, besides Esme. Few homesteaders in the Near Wilds who've brought food or drink -- the seedcakes, they were from an aarakocra family, the Kethrua clan. Lot of little ones -- they bite," she chuckled into her arms, wiggling a finger to indicate it. "Cute, though."

"I've met Kiera," Anya confirmed with a nod. She didn't appear to be washing so much as warming up in the tub. Her eyelids were already heavy with the heat that was slowly seeping to her core. Her hair was tied up and kept out of the water. One more thing that would make her cold if it got wet.

"The hunters... do you think they'd help us? We could offer rewards if it meant not doing it ourselves."

She sipped at the tea she'd brought with her, thoughtful for a moment. "I don't think anyone owes me any favors right now. So we'll have to pay."

Ettyn lifted a hand to her braided hair to scritch soothingly. "For any guild bounties, mm. Can foot that... or tell them how they can profit off of killing these undead. Bonemeal, flameskulls, grave dust for warding salts... But ranger companies, druid circles and the like should be willing to take up the fight without coin."

She scratched her cheek. "Can ask Gwydr. Think she's riled by all this. Likely eager for it to be done, get the game back on the trails she's used to."

"You can ask Gwydr. I'm always certain I'll say the wrong thing and be lunch." She smiled at Ettyn for the first time that day. "Maybe while I sleep? Trance first, I'll show you what I saw and where Pluen is going."

The warm bath had done its job and paired with the soothing touch, her eyes were nearly shut. Her heart had slowed down to its usual sluggish rhythm. She didn't look that different anymore. The dim light in the room made it hard to see the darkness in her own eyes.

"Then when I'm awake, I can get us all there. Bring the simulacrum through the circle. And anything explosive you can find. You're right, she needs to go into the center while you handle the lich. And I... will make myself useful."

"As ever... and ever more than useful," Ettyn rumbled, great sap that she was. The smile may have helped. Seeing the bath restore her somewhat, too.

There was a floating robe and towel approaching as Anya finished her bath. She handed them over, then said, "I'll be in the bedroom -- starting the trance and," she snorted, "thinking of the right words so I'm not any kind of snack for Gwydr." There didn't seem to be any meaningful worry in her expression, only amusement at the opportunity for the joke.

Then she pushed off from where she knelt, leaving Anya alone to dry off.

Moments later, dry and redressed in nearly as many layers as she'd worn while awake, Anya joined Ettyn in the bedroom. She wasted no time climbing in under the pile of blankets and furs, trapping the warmth from the bath that still lingered in with her. She yawned wide enough that her jaw cracked. Sometimes she clinched it when she scryed, one more little ache that she ignored.

"Ready?" She didn't expect Ettyn to answer. The speed with which the elder slayer could drop into a trance was something she admired and hadn't managed to match yet, although the past two weeks of focus were getting her closer to it. She nestled down farther under the covers and closed her eyes.

First, she thought of the Way to the city she'd seen. There were several, mostly unused. This one was the clearest path and closest Waystone to the heavily wooded eastern roads in. She showed the stone as well, briefly. It was difficult to focus on something so far away without a body to latch on to. Next, she found the herd where it was making steady progress through the Wilds. It had grown since she'd first seen it. Her careful scrying skirted the edges of the mass. Not only did this show the most features of the land, but it kept her from accidentally touching upon the phylactery.

Anya broke the contact quickly after showing the herd. "I don't think he felt me that time." She didn't open her eyes. "Good luck with Gwydr." Her tone said better you than me.

Ettyn's hand found Anya's foot for a quick squeeze. "Mm. Back when you wake -- with news -- and Phettyn -- and oil," the last word spoken grimly.

A plan was taking shape.

It was not any sound, not with her lethal silence, but the rapid shift in her presence that marked her departure.
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

Post by Death Knell »

There wasn't enough time to hunt a stag. Ettyn had as little as an hour, after all, if Anya truly pushed herself.

Instead she stood by the northwestern shore of the lake, the place where they'd made an offering before, and bared her arm to the bitter cold blowing in from the north -- long enough to bleed across the rock marked with Draconic scratchings.

As cold as it was, she washed her cut with the contents of her waterskin as soon as she was done. She was sure she heard distant wingbeats already over the howling wind. Her skin prickled as it froze, and she wiped it dry as soon as it seemed as free of oozing blood as it would get.

Then she slipped an item from the purse at her belt, a bandaid from Brinna. This would help, too. She applied it over the cut while it still healed -- a strip of electric blue adhesive fabric with the words MELON MASSACRE and a dozen watermelon chunks, each with a face of shock or dismay.

Within minutes, while Ettyn huddled into her fur-lined cloak and tries to bury her sniffling violet nose in her folded arms, Gwydr arrived.

The slayer did not flinch when the wyrm arrived, talons slamming into the gravel shore, though there was an instant where she wondered whether Gwydr would make a quick meal of her if she decided to. She remained where she was, watching as the dragon slid her tongue through teeth like diamonds--

--and did not offer her any of the meal like she usually did. One pearlescent eye swiveled over to her, and she growled. Fuck. While the slayer had left no trace and spilled no drops on the way back to her spot, taste and smell were close cousins -- and it was not hard to deduce.

She did not pounce. That was a good sign. That she stretched her body to halfway encircle Ettyn, stretching her neck so that the slayer would have to put her back to the frozen lakeshore to face her, was less encouraging. "Ettyn de la Rose," she spoke through her teeth. Forked tongue lashed over them, catching flecks of black blood.

"Gwydr. Thank you for coming," Ettyn rumbled, dipping her head, hair swaying with the gesture.

Eyes like dinner plates blinked slowly. "Thank you for the offering, though it has left me wanting." Ettyn, in the dragon's estimation, was already starting this interaction in her debt by simply answering it without a proper meal provided.

The slayer frowned. "...Sorry I... hadn't time to... offer you aught more filling."

The massive head, as big as a wagon, dropped closer, then raised up taller than her -- and stilled. "This could be quickly remedied, Ettyn de la Rose."

The slayer grit her teeth and lifted her chin to stare back at Gwydr, showing her no fear. "You fill up on my meat, there'll be no time for us to stop what's coming -- what's been killing your hunts."

The lack of a meal, and the reminder of her hunger, provoked Gwydr into a long, deafening roar. The slayer stood her ground as he ears ached, and did not blink as spit flecked her face.

The slayer waited until she was done before she spoke again. "Flesherd. We know where he is -- and his herd. Soon... matter of hours... we'll fall upon him and end it."

The name had gotten the old dragon's attention. Her head slithered past Ettyn, brushing her with a few crystalline spines that would have torn her skin open had she moved any faster, and she looked to the east.

Towards the distant plains that once held the Eastern Dominion, many years ago. She knew the old necromancer, or knew of him.

"You can kill him?" A massive eye looked down at the slayer.

"We will kill him," Ettyn replied in Draconic.

For the first time in this meeting, the dragon gave one of her feral, toothy, and -- if one got over their fear enough to recognize this -- ultimately rather goofy grins. "You should have made that your offering, Ettyn de la Rose. We are on even footing now, though I recognize that you wish to ask something of me."

"Herd is vast. Can break it, but there'll be stragglers. Days at least to find them all... on foot," she explained, gesturing with one arm.

The bright bandaid was exposed. Gwydr moved her snout closer to inspect it. She was curious now. Oops. "You are a patient hunter. You are no stranger to far longer in the Wilds."

Ettyn huddled closer into her cloak, accepting the point with a nod and clarifying, "Not me who'd be out here."

Gwydr's head turned to the tower, her scaly neck sliding past Ettyn as she considered it. "She has been out here longer than what is normal for her. I thought to start watching her work more closely, if she stayed out here longer... We have yet to speak alone."

The slayer considered this very carefully. She looked at the tower, and back at Gwydr. "In RhyDin," she decided as she shifted her cloak back over the bandaid. Don't dwell on it, Gwydr. To draw her attention further from it, she said, "Know my partner's proud of our bath-house. Gardens where she grows curious things. Or else she could decide to show you, and speak on."

"I do wish to meet her properly," Gwydr conceded. She gave a rapid blink to Ettyn, who found it an inscrutable expression. "...I am... quite lonely."

Ettyn considered again, then laid her hand on the great dragon's neck. Her fingers found a scale that had slipped out of place -- she pulled it gently and scratched underneath, then let it shift back into place. "Been a while since we caught up, too."

Gwydr rumbled low and long enough to shake the ground. "I agree, Ettyn de la Rose. We shall each speak alone, Farwolaeth's slayers and I. Now tell me of this new hunting."


The slayer patted her neck and stepped back to point. "Axewoman's Crossing. Ten leagues east of the eastern Way. In half a day, Flesherd will be dead, or we will."

"I will arrive no sooner. Good hunting, Ettyn de la Rose."

The slayer braced her arm across her eyes against the wind-blown snow as the wyrm took flight.
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Anya de la Rose
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

Post by Anya de la Rose »

Axewoman's Crossing was barren on both sides -- to the west, in the Near Wilds only a few hours from RhyDin, there were more saplings than trees worth taking, though druids and others had mulched the stumps and sown seeds to speed the forest's recovery from what overzealous logging had claimed.

On the eastern end, across the way, the forest was sick. Greedy lumberjacks had crossed the Way into the Deep Wilds and taken everything they could within a day's wagon ride, stripping ten miles of forest down to mostly tree stumps and bramble -- and what remained died without falling to the forest floor or rotting away.

Blight reigned here. And what Flesherd sacrificed in discretion with the diminished cover provided by the deadwood, he gained in calling greater numbers to this lifeless place where druids, rangers, and green knights would find their power diminished.

But these were not the whole vanguard of the balance between life and death.

Zombies of many shapes and from many sources -- some fresh, some rotten to the bone, some mummified gray or peat-black -- shambled and groaned and hissed their way across the landscape, at least a thousand if not more. Flesherd's army had decided not to linger as the slayer's attention drew ever closer, and now was the time for the final push.

Abyssal whispers emanating from tendrils of sickly green light exhorted the walking plague on towards the Way, and RhyDin beyond. To conquer such a city was laughable -- but to retreat from the deadly chaos with fresh fodder, far more than he'd started with, was within closer reach.

At the center of the army, the source of the sporadic light and whispers, were six hulking ogres, the most ancient of his turned ones, their bodies protected with magic and reinforced with jagged, bloodstained steel protruding from their flesh. Heavy chains stretched between them, with a crackling crystal in the center of the well-protected web.

Ettyn's knowledge of the Wilds combined with Pluen's clear directions had given Anya everything she needed to move the pieces into place.  She'd dropped Ettyn on the outskirts of the herd alone, then brought herself and the simulacrum to a spot between the shuffling masses and the Way to RhyDin. Details of the approaching host weren't easily visible from this distance, but they could be heard and smelled. Her left hand opened and closed slowly, then her right. She switched back and forth, staving off the biting cold that was already creeping into the fingertips.

The simulacrum of Ettyn stood silently next to her. Anya didn't talk to her. It felt odd to carry on a conversation, given the plan, which was implied in the bandoliers of flammable oil strapped to her. And besides, it would have been as one-sided as most she'd had recently. Her dark grey eyes remained fixed on the subtle signs of motion towards them, squinting out from the warmth of her hood against wind that found no resistance in this devastated stretch of land.

When half an hour had passed, she closed her eyes. Her brow wrinkled while she focused and listened. Slowly, she found the herd, she tracked it to the center, and she turned away when she found one of those massive ogres. She wasn't enthusiastic about another of those head spinning pushes Flesherd was capable of when he found her looking. Instead, she watched the sad, ravaged corpse that walked alongside the phylactery's front guard.  There was a type of discipline in the horde if you watched long enough to see it, and she had. She knew this one wouldn't separate by much.

Still, she waited hands turned so her right faced the simulacrum and her left faced the herd, fingers wiggling periodically.
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

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One mile away, along the outer edge of the blighted wood, Ettyn had found her quarry. She'd crept slowly across the landscape frozen in its moment of death, carefully avoiding patches of ice and brittle branches with every step, while eyes that reflected the aura of magic in the air continued to follow the unseen thread between the phylactery and the lich.

Flesherd was not remarkable to behold, not physically, not on his own and when he did not expect to be seen. Flesh and bone withered and bowed by long centuries were clad in ceremonial armor, a molded breastplate with a gilded pteruges which had long since merged with his undead body. He gripped a staff of three femurs bound together with split tongues, crowned with rattling jawbones full of gold teeth. He hissed Abyssal words into the air as he swiveled his shriveled head around, missing the slayer lying in wait as he kept pace with his army.

She bent her legs slowly, brought her arms into just the right position, waited for him to pass in front of her... and leapt at him. With a mournful wail Dawn's Strife appeared in her hands, and the moment she heaved the weapon across his chest with a burst of radiant light, the phylactery flashed. Green flame flickered between the crystal's honor guard towards Ettyn, and one mile away, it seared into her chest at the same moment her second blow was falling. It was nearly a perfect match but for the radiance -- the divine element too far removed from Flesherd's ability to touch without withering, and the necrotic shadows his soul inflicted instead had no effect on her own Shadowbound being.

But each blow that fell upon him fell upon her, too, and by the time the first furious burst of blows was done -- including one that nearly clove his skull in two -- he was rattling with laughter, even as he fell into his staff and clutched it to remain upright.

And she was screaming through the pain, black blood oozing from broad wounds across her chest, her stomach, and the side of her head, though her armor had never been pierced.

Only the chimeric draught already pumping through her body kept her from falling on the spot.
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

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The flash of green light from the phylactery was bright enough that Anya nearly lost concentration when it flared up. She hissed through her teeth to hold on a moment longer and make sure. When she knew it wasn't a fluke, she opened her eyes and dropped the spell. In the next instant two gates opened. One in front of the simulacrum and one over the phylactery. "Go," she issues the command to the manufactured slayer standing next to her, and watched until she disappeared through the gate.

Those two ends snapped shut so she could move. There was less fanfare when she only had herself to manage. A few jogging steps into the nearest shadow that she could use to carry her nearly to the herd. Then the same pattern again and in two jumps she was standing directly in front of the vanguard.

There was a BOOM when the simulacrum struck the phylactery with all of her might, smashing through it with a hammer, and three bursts of fire, fwoosh, as she smashed jars of oil into the ogres. Heedless of the mass now tearing into her, she shattered the fourth vial with even greater force at her own feet -- igniting everything she carried in a massive firestorm.

In the center of the mass, Anya found the phylactery, the ogres, and the chains that bound them all scattered. The rumble of remaining vials popping could still be felt in the ground. Anya wondered briefly if she was too far away for this to work. Her concerns were dismissed when she felt the heat in her fingertips. Even with the first of the zombies breaking into a run directly at her, she sighed qith relief, reveling in the heat. Her left hand lifted and and swept through the air.

The first fireball crashed down on the zombies running towards her. Those behind didn't stop before slamming into the burning corpses before them. The best part of undead flesh was that it burned.

Two more flaming spheres separated out from the burning center of the mass. One fell towards the back. The last just behind the first. The individual elements of the horde didn't seem capable of changing their trajectory once it was set. One after another, they bumped into eachother and caught.

Anya lifted her hand again, and slowly lowered it to cover her mouth. Her eyes were bright and wide over her fingers. This had been terribly, wonderfully efficient.

She didn't allow herself to linger long on the victory. The danger to the Wilds was only beginning as the burning force spread rapidly. She closed her eyes again, then quietly, tentatively began to hum. There were better ways to do this. She didn't know them yet.

The winter sky darkened over the invading army, leaving a clearing centered in the zombies. At the perimeters, it rained.
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

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Ettyn could hear the lightning crack of the enchanted crystal shattering, and the little booms of her double's alchemical flasks igniting the heart of the Walking Tomb. The louder explosions that followed, as Anya decimated the herd more efficiently than a company of paladins, she barely noticed as her world tunnel-visioned to the lich before her.

Or maybe she was blacking out from blood loss.

The fight with Flesherd hung in the balance after the initial moment of shock from the ambush -- the lich from the near-deadly flurry of blows, and Ettyn from receiving most of it in kind. It was now a matter of who recovered enough to act first, between two fighters standing on the edge.

It looked like it would be the lich, laughing as he was through his wounds at how the slayer had received his nasty surprise. But the breaking of the enchanted housing of his soul, that had made his retaliation possible, proved devastating.

His withered jaw wrenched open with shock, anguish, and fury; and in that fraction of a second, Ettyn grit her teeth over her next scream of anguish and lunged again.

The first blow clove him nearly in half with a burst of light from her wailing blade. She twisted and wrenched it twice, heaving his hissing, withering body up onto her, but she did not stop to think whether these were his death throes.

She leaned her bloody face back and drove it into his skull, and it cracked into dust.

The green comet that was his returning soul turned to black mist before it could reach him, and split into two parts. One streamed into Ettyn as she fell to her knees, the wailing longsword balanced across her lap; the other raced through the thousand little wisps emanating from the dying herd to Anya.

The storm broke over the burning deadwood, at last reduced to fertile ash and mud by the fire and rain. Clouds of smoke and steam rolled across the landscape.

Ettyn could not bring herself to say or do anything. She shivered her way through the shock of pain and the cold rain that followed, her bleeding barely slowed by the black mist.
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Anya de la Rose
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Re: Outside in the Cold Distance

Post by Anya de la Rose »

Anya's eyes didn't open until she was sure the storm had saturated the ground and extinguished the dangerous creeping edges of the burning army. Although she could feel Ettyn's location, she was too tired to make it there quickly. She opted to walk.

Coming upon Ettyn kneeling in the frozen mud made her curse under her breath. She could see that the slayer was breathing and awake, and that she was bleeding badly. She approached as quickly as she could. "Ettyn? How bad is it?"

She picked her way around the remains of the lich and his army as best she could, studying her friend.

Ettyn's head turned at the sound of Anya's voice, but she didn't say anything. She looked pale, and her lips were gray and trembling. Her head wound, a deep gash along her temple that would likely scar, was the only one visible; on her chest, across her belly and right side, on her left shoulder and forearm, black blood seeped through her armor without showing any sign of the protective layers tearing.

She knew that Anya had the ability to get them out, wherever they were. She reached a shaky hand out towards her.

"Okay. Hold on. This is going to feel worse before it gets better. I can't fix this." Anya reached out to take hold of Ettyn's outstretched hand and gently pull. There was a rough shift through the shadow realm before they were at the top of the mage tower, in the center of the teleportation circle.

Anya stepped away, traced a rune in the dust with a fingertip, and tapped the lines. They dropped again into the kitchen of their home. She lingered there, just for a moment, hesitating before pulling on Ettyn's arm again. "I need you to get up. We're going through one more. I'm sorry."

Ettyn grimaced through the pain, but enough pulling had her getting to her feet. She muttered in Welsh, something that sounded like an apology, and followed where led, eyes ticking but not lingering for the sound of their pets noisily greeting them.

One more portal opened in the corner of the room. Anya was pulling her phone from the pocket where she'd stashed it as she dragged Ettyn along. She'd sent a text to the best healer they knew before they made it through the gate to Whitedown.
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