Indus (Closed)

[Jennifer Oakley]

Indus

druids.jpg

Closed to Glass.

The trees stand tall and stately,
surveying their domain-----
The first to glimpse the sunrise;
the first to feel the rain.

The flowers add some color
to mostly brown and green.
Their fragrance bathes the air
and makes it smell pristine.

The wind sets all in motion
and makes things come alive.
It brings the rain and pollen
that lets this world survive.

The sun lends warmth and comfort
to all the things that grow.
It's perfect for their needs,
high noon or evening glow.

The earth provides nutrition
and serves the mother role-----
Even the air that's needed
comes from her heart and soul.

Leonard C. Mayer.

[Jennifer Oakley]

The primal incantation of the Dansdel’s pre-meditative song washed over Jennifer.

The dying of the dawn scattered leaves from the dense canopy of the forest down across the arid floor. At the epicentre of the wild fire song, the last yet buoyant colours of spring fell lifeless to the ground.

At the edge of the arena, a young girl stood, though her simple appearance belied an inner strength the likes of which had once killed Thayne and Fae alike. She took on an air and grace akin to perceived royalty and even more delusional notions of empowerment, stricken to upright rigidity as she was by the raucous and heavy beat of the battle chant that sang and echoed through the tall tree trunks and dancing lights of the early sunrise.

She could hear, nay, see the music as it beat loudly, brightly and with dignity. Wind, whispers, drums, all together in one concordant rhythm. In between the words wrought to life by the dancing, swaying druids, there was a voice. In that voice, there was life, and through it, the forest spoke.

“I am one with the woods,” Jennifer said her eyes opaque and possessed by the bird song that the jumping, leaping disciplines of the arena scattered to the morning skies. The syllables vibrated, the clouds parted, the sun shone.

Time turned.

The small circular arena in the heart of the forest realm of Underwood was a glistening spire to the ominous oddity called war. Though seldom seen in the bough of the trees, or heard of except in bard song, very rarely the doors of the palisades parted, and through the flower laden entrance halls walked glorious combatants. To the tune of the Indus song, the latent vigil to the death of spring, Jennifer walked. She was smarmy, prideful, and sinful and hate burned in her hollow eyes as a constant mark of loathing for the industry of man that threatened her home.

As the song died down, along with the growing anticipation of the Spartan crowd, so too did the swirl of magic in the pathfinder’s eyes. She had walked the tomb glades far to the south, and wandered the Dying Woods alone at night, but here, she felt afraid, and crossed her stave over her torso defensively as the power of the druid’s song left her suddenly. Her bones shivered, her soul shivered, the flowers in the dew laden grass shivered.

“I am the woods themselves,” she muttered.

Bereft of the channelled strength of the choral song, she did not speak with as much conviction as she had done at the zenith of the prayer. Her words, like the bark of a long dead tree felt hollow, lifeless, and brittle. She thought they could give way at a moment’s notice, to crumble into dust at the very crucial moment of their existence. The failure of falling from momentary grace would not however be new to her. To trip at the last hurdle was her eternal mistake.

Her own pride had been the death of her many times before in this very same proving ground. The death of spring had brought her back to the Dansdel, and back to the memories of that defeat.

Like all great transitions, she required preparation to temper the onslaught of the coming and hostile bounty of summer. Soon, the Wild Hunt would ravage Concordia, its triumphant horns peeling away the lethargy and new life castigated onto every branch and bough with a perilous and shearing wind of misfortune. The delicate blooms on the Dansdel’s floor would pale in comparison to the trident leafed behemoth vines and the deep ochre flowers of the Ransburg as they burst into life all across Corone’s primal heartland.

It had been nearly three years since she had first ventured here on the wish of her Elder, the Matriarch of the Guyana tribe. She had commanded her to learn the skills not of conflict, but of defence – she would have to defend the village against the coming hostilities of the civil war between the humans of the island. She could not do it with pine cones, lies and running leaps to uncertain safety.

She took a deep breath, and set her legs firmly apart to form what she believed would pass for a ‘stance’ should she have had any prior tutelage in combat.

“I fight not for the forest, but as the forest.” She set the tip of her staff back onto the soft spring step of the grass and closed her eyes.

She had come back to the Dansdel to learn of the ways of men. Far from the hearth and the hunt of her people, she had discovered the wonders of living the likes of which her dreams could never match. Her Niereka, her spirit song had revealed a privileged time she could enjoy. She was a path finder, and now, she stepped out into the world to find her feet on that path. She was no longer afraid, no longer worried, no longer cared for what her peers would think, what the forest might say.

She took a deep breath, and revelled in the orange tinted scent of the bracken mangroves and the chestnut blossoms. The morning in the forest had risen valiantly to cast a discordant and awkward hubris over their encounter. She was lobotomised with the joy of smelling such succulent fruits, yet brought to life and tension by the encroaching potential for pain.

The cycle of life and death was the way of the woods.

Her neck clicked as she rolled her head back and forth to loosen the lethargy instilled into her muscles from the long journey south, and she unfolded the crease in her simple green dress that was parted with utility just above the knee. She was not clad in robes, nor was she hiding in partisan fashion of eccentric attire. As she stood, she was nothing to look at, a bundle of red hair, freckles and grazed knees whose face told of innocence and heart sang of lies.

She tried to look as terrifying as a pacifist in the heart of war could.

The feathers in her hair, the bones on her waist and the dangling fetish that swayed from the tip of her stave said many things, but they did not terrify. She was a druid, a pathfinder, a walker of the woods.

She was a stupid girl.

It was not her looks that would fight, but her heart, with real and metaphorical and euphoric glee.

In her clavicle the light shifted and threatened to leap out of her chest, shattering ribs, cracking spine and strength alike with reckless abandon. She whispered hoarsely to her own mind, soothing her own doubts with a soft and gentle reminded.

“We must wait for the forest to answer our prayers…”

She waited. The dew evaporated.

Time turned.

“So let the forest hear my words, and send forth a valiant guardian to test the mettle of my heart,” she let her eyes roll open naturally, and set her gaze onto the far doors which separated the circular arena of the forest fighting pit from the preparation chamber of her would be murderer.

She held no reservations, and in the echoed pit of her heart, she hoped her opponent would do the same.

[Glass]

“Your friends stopped by again,” Ardaen’s father informed her as he entered his daughter’s bedchamber, pausing for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the lightless atmosphere within. “They wanted to know when you would be feeling well enough to play.”

“And what did you tell them?” nine-year-old Ardaen Razir asked, her voice muffled by the mound of blankets piled on top of her.

“Same thing as I have over the last two weeks,” the professional acrobat answered, picking his way across the room as he spoke. “That the Rite took a heavy toll on your body, and that you will need some more time to rest and recover. In short, I lied, again.”

When he reached the bed, Ardaen’s father took a seat at its foot and rested a hand on the heap of quilts hiding his daughter. “I can’t keep lying to your friends for you. Why not try the blindfold again.”

“No,” she snapped.

“Why?” her father inquired, keeping his voice just loud enough for his daughter to hear him.

“Because it doesn’t work and because they’ll make fun of me!” Ardaen shouted, her tone making it easy for the male gymnast to feel just how much she honestly believed at least the latter part of what she said.

“Alright,” he conceded, standing. “Lunch is about ready. I assume you want to eat it in here again?”

“Yes,” the child replied quietly.

Nodding silently in response, he made his way back across the room. As his hand graced the cool metal of the door’s handle, a fit of rustling fabric swelled into being behind him.

“Pa,” Ardaen’s voice cut through the darkness with a crisp clarity.

Turning around, the young Forge’s father peered into the brightly illuminated depths of his daughter’s glowing bronze eyes. The sight made his heart ache, but he smiled nevertheless.

“Yes, Ari?” his voice wavered as he spoke.

“Can I have some cranberries today?”

His lips spread into a bright, loving smile. “Of course you can.”

~*~

Ardaen stared toward the horizon, the early morning light trickling playfully across the sky, painting the smattering of clouds in a myriad of vibrant, sunrise hues. She watched as the dawn approached its climax, quietly wondering when last she had seen the sun rise. Even through the shielding meshwork of her tin mask and the shade provided by her hood, the brilliant sunlight pained her to look at, causing a pressure to build at the base of her skull and the first signs of a headache to take root in her temples.

Sighing and closing her eyes, the mercenary known as Mask shifted some against her place of purchase, barely able to feel the arbor post against her backside through the heavy, tightly woven wool of her shirt.

Ardaen looked at home against the wooded backdrop, her ensemble’s earthen hues a natural compliment to the landscape surrounding her. Even the gauntlets she wore, whose metal was the product of industry, boasted embossed vine work across their steel surface which enabled them to match the ambiance.

Painful though it is, it is still nice to be so close to it, she remarked internally. If only I could…

Slowly, Ardaen raised her left hand to her mask, brushing the steel fingertips of her gauntlet against its white surface for an instant before lowering the arm back to her side.

Righting herself, her attention switched from the growing warmth of the sun’s rays, to the establishment looming behind her. Should be just about time, she mused, her lips drawing into a pensive and somewhat jovial smile between the tin fangs of her façade.

Her presence here in Underwood was no coincidence. She was here by the weight of the coin in her purse, and the contract which brought her such monetary gain. And on such a thought, Mask turned wholly toward her destination: the Dansdel.

~*~

The soft, rhythmic sound of thoughtfully paced strides bore into existence as the doors leading into the circular arena opened without so much as an earthy whine from the aged hinges. In only a few short steps, Ardaen Razir, known to the world as Mask, emerged from the depths of the entry passage.

She strolled across the battered and stiff foundation of the pit, halting a hair shy of thirty feet from her to-be opponent. There was an instant of utter stillness before Ardaen nodded her readiness.

She was not here to make friends, thus felt no need for formalities. No, she was here to do a job. Only question that came to mind was if this particular bout would satisfy her current employer’s needs…

Ardaen moved into a stance which, from the view of a practiced martial artist, resembled something that teetered dangerously close to a relaxed posture. Her feet rested a firm shoulder’s width apart from one another, with the right foot a couple inches ahead of its counterpart, the toe of that boot pointed toward the woman opposite of where Mask stood now. Each arm hung loosely at her side, with her left wrist resting almost mockingly on the hilt of the dagger furthest back of the two sheathed along that respective hip.

Lets see what this one has to offer. A slight smile painted its way across her lips as she both mentally and physically readied herself for the coming fight, leaving behind any misplaced reservations in that very moment.

[Jennifer Oakley]

Jennifer returned the nod with a sudden snap in her spine. Like a dancer at the height of a leap, she arced her arms back, her head craned up to the fragmented sky between the wavering branches, and her chest erupted into a violent display. The golden light faded swiftly, but not before it projected plasma, a primal sphere of energy forwards.

It thudded into the grass, singing the ends to sleep and sorrow. In the same motion, it gave the blades life, and they sprang back into existence brighter and greener than ever before.

“Say not good day to me, elf,” she said with a stoic expression as she righted herself and leant forwards onto her stave. Her breath was exasperated, but she was used to the innate conjuration and its drain on her body. The Animus was a painful experience, but an invigorating one at the same time.

The ball of light took shape.

“Bid a hope for the rise of the morrow from him.”

Horns spiralled up from what appeared to slowly becoming a head, turning in on them as they solidified. Bestial claws spread out from the dense heart of the energy, and limbs brought the creature upwards, standing as if it were doing so for the first time.

“I am Anima,” a spectral voice said, still teetering between Fae spirit and flesh.

The light bound body slowly broke apart, as if a butterfly were emerging from its incandescent cocoon. Shaggy fur appeared between the remnants of the summons, and it shook violently back and forth like a dire wolf emerging from a silver stream in the heart of the mountains, prideful and vengeful and cleansed of its kill.

The Indus song still echoed in Jennifer’s ears as the sight of the faun forming before her as her valiant and triumphant guardian almost passed for titillation. Though it had been perhaps a hundred times she had witnessed her own heart leaping from her chest to echo an oath down the ages and aeons of time, to see the forest leap forth, to see the father that bore her ancestors and the exiled love of the Thayne Y’edda herself take up arms in her name, it was exasperating.

Fully formed, the faun’s legs snapped back in on themselves, taking on the structure of the goat that gave the half bestial half man Fae its namesake. With its long snout gleaming with snot, and it’s feral eyes baring down on the dagger bearing opponent, it clawed at the dirt as if it were about to charge, then rose slowly as it’s anger left it’s chest.

Jennifer felt the calm as it washed over him, and the cycle of emotion that linked them together nestled into a gentle, spring breeze of readiness. With no danger to her, he had formed as his winter self, brown and matted fur tangled with twigs and sycamore leaves, autumnal effigies and solstice totems. He wore no armour, except his anger, and carried no blade, except those claws on his hands and the heavy blunt force that he could apply with his split hooves and the buttress of his stubborn head.

“Let the seasons turn,” she said, stepping back as Anima made forwards to close the gap between nature and industry, between wood and glass.

[Glass]

Elf? Ardaen’s lips drew into a thin, pensive line which, for all of an instant, quivered with a smidgen of amusement.

Watching with a detached gleam in her glowing bronze eyes, Mask pondered over what precisely was occurring before her. She had fought only a small number of spell users before, but never had she seen something like this. When finally the light gave away to a creation both man and beast, all Ardaen could do was sigh.

Seems that I am destined to fight the countless breeds of man and beast, she mused, reflecting briefly on her last battle with the pen write and his demon counterpart as she turned her right side ever so slightly forward.

Ardaen made no move to advance on the creature (or its creator for that matter) as it began to close the gap between them. Her only action was the drawing of a dagger in her right hand, the sound made by the iron scrapping against its leather confines challenging the beast to attack.

With the exception of the faint forward slide of her right and that respective arm being poised a hand’s length in front of her, Mask’s posture changed very, very, little.

She had never once encountered something like this, and while she was able to roughly gauge its capabilities at a cursory glance of its physique, she still was unsure of what all this man-beast could do. Needless to say, despite how she looked, Ardaen considered herself well prepared.

[Jennifer Oakley]

Though not versed in war, even Jennifer could see the readiness in the opponent's eyes.

She had seen that same calm riposte of nonchalant nothingness in the braves of the Guyana, before they set off for the winter hunt before the frosts set in.

She hoped that winter would not set in here before her Animus realised what he was charging headstrong towards. The powers of men and elves and dwarves paled in comparison to the forest, but she felt the resonance of fate and the skill of aeons in the strange armour and blades of the opposition.

Anima crossed the small gap between them with thunder in his heart and fire in his soul. Little flourishes of excited swelled in Jennifer’s stomach as he grew to be content in his servitude, expressing his love of battle through the bond they shared and the memories they held together as one, singular vessel. With every heartbeat, every step, every dirt clod that bounced away from his hooves, history spoke.

The faun was used to conflict, a king amongst the Fae, a warrior amongst the sorcerers, tricksters and concubines of the woods. He held no temper greater than his own, and took no prisoner save those who would swear fealty to the trees. His nostrils flared in the final few feet, and his muscles, bridling beneath the deceptively bedraggled fur that covered his taut hide, flexed, flowed and moulder over his ethereal bones to pull his arms back as he leapt.

Birds in the canopy overhead flocked upwards into the open air, as if they could not dare watch.

Time turned.

The feral onslaught of Anima carried with it a pulse of the tangle of the infinite expanse of the woods that surrounded the Dansdel on every side. Unflinching, unending, cyclical, but calm as well. For the briefest of moments, Anima did not reflect his kingdom, but took on the grimace, the roar and the anger of the people that dwelt in it.

He drew he fists in two rakes into the opponent’s presence, flying towards him without skill, but with every intent to harm. Jennifer, unused to the emotions of conflict felt sick.

[Glass]

Ardaen followed the beast as it strolled toward her, curious to see what path it would take. When it leapt, she immediately guarded herself against the ensuing onslaught, her knees bending just enough to drop her a full two inches below her approximate height of five foot four. She waited for what came next; jumping backward a scant few inches shy of being clawed by her assailant’s mid-air assault.

The dodge was narrow to say the very least, but had been performed this way for a purpose. As Mask’s feet reunited with the beaten soil of the arena, her right arm swept forward and her hand snapped outward, releasing the dagger held within it in the process. Falling just beyond the beast’s reach, her close proximity and the timing of her throw in relation to the creature’s landing created a lethal assault which in most situations would be nigh impossible to evade. The blade’s flight, short and swift as it was, packed the strength of the tempered musculature of a trained blacksmith as it sought to sheath itself between her adversary’s ribs.

Ardaen wasted no time in taking a few paces back, drawing a second dagger in the process, though this time in her left hand. Rather than leaping to the offensive, she maintained an observational air with the sole exception of the counterattack she had just performed.

She was a patient combatant, willing to dance along while capitalizing on opportunities as they came into being. For now, at least, Mask fully intended to test her opponents, desiring further knowledge of their respective capabilities before choosing a course of action that would prove to be in the end both efficient and deadly.

[Jennifer Oakley]

It sheathed itself, but was quickly unsheathed as Jennifer fell to her knees in pain, gasping with shock and the wonderment of mortality. She clutched at her side, one hand pulling up on her stave to save herself the indignity of crashing into the floor, the other proving for blood.

"No..." She whimpered through clenched teeth, a sharp grasp at life as it felt like it was ripped from her.

Anima roared, his skin sundered, his soul ruptured, his angered spurned to greater heights. With speed, like a whippet’s gallop through the undergrowth, the silent, stoic simulacrum of lethality had undercut his attack and delivered what the faun already knew to be a fatal blow. He stumbled back, his hooves scuttling back and forth and dredging through the dust and grass like a gold pander’s feeble flails for hope.

Instead of blood, however, light poured from his injury, a golden hue, and a pallid resemblance of a soul, flowing into the open air and dissipating with a radix of energy. He was fortunate, perhaps idiotic for leaping so recklessly towards his prey, but he clutched at his wound only for a second before setting his gaze, eyes aflame and horns buckling under their own curls and bellowed.

Jennifer stared at him through blurred vision, still stricken by the nausea of the feedback she had felt. She did not share his same endurance, even though their memories, thoughts and emotions, and now pain, spiralled invisibly between them through the tense and humid air of the Dansdel. She shook. She was feverish, but she felt alive through his suffering and his burdens.

She bit her lip and prayed for him to concentration, sending out thoughts of tactile and becalming cogitation.

He stepped forwards again, and delivered a keen, tempered rake with his right hand into the guard of his opponent. They together hoped to knock dagger from thumb and claw into fragile chest.

[Glass]

Ardaen responded with grace befitting her father’s training, stepping forward with her left foot and raising her corresponding arm, turning it upward in concert with her assailant’s attack. The beast’s forearm impacted with her own, halting half a foot shy of the peak of her hood. What damage that might have been done from such a meeting was nullified by the layer of steel preventing her flesh from touching the creature’s.

Mask wasted no time in advancing her right foot toward her opponent, harnessing some of the movement’s momentum to strengthen her counterattack. Her right hand snapped forward, the chain-link palm striking forcefully at the beast’s chest, exactly at the same spot where the thrown dagger had bit into.

Hand-to-hand combat was Ardaen’s specialty. She worshipped its ability to push man and beast alike to new levels of tactile thinking and physical prowess. Fighting at such a close proximity was like dancing with a complete stranger. There was excitement, mystery, and intrigue. Each dancer had to be mindful of themselves, as well as their partner. Martial combat was no different.

For the time being, her focus turned wholly to the creature engaging her. She had witnessed the reaction of both the beast and the woman standing far behind it when her weapon had sunk into its chest. Mask could only assume that the two shared some kind of connection. However, she was unfamiliar with most kinds of Magick outside of her own, and thus did not marry the assumption so much that it would cloud her judgment.

[Jennifer Oakley]

Jennifer saw but one thing as Ardaen’s fist rose wistfully into the illuminated tear in Alma’s form.

Stars.

They shone brightly in her vision, shattering all hope as they burnt away her determination with a second wave of pain that rose from her chest into her neck and snapped her eyes into a dull glaze. Her lips whimpered, her heart foundered, she slumped and became utterly limp. Not even the fever that had taken the last remnants of her stoic determination to rise above the harsh reality of life harmed her now; it was futile for it to try.

She whispered her Animus’ name softly, but no words passed between her lips, no air spiralled through her teeth. Only silence befell the grass at her knee, only the soft thud of her stave falling from her grasp, it’s fetishes snapping from their chord and bouncing some inches away before coming to a stop; a flurry of dried gourd beads, bracken wreaths and straw men.

Anima did not move his pained expression, which remained statuesque and silent. Slowly, but surely, the injury on his chest came undone. The light, seemingly strong enough to pierce through the perversity of his unnatural form shattered his skin and cracked, sending lines of light out over his torso and over his shoulders, to wreak havoc down his spine in a dance of gold and buttercup yellow. A scent of death ran out from his breaking body, a delicate blend of decay and almonds, laced with marigolds and amber nectar.

Only when the entirety of his matted fur was covered in fissures did the faun move, flinching and stepping back with one last defiant roar, a buck of the head and a toss of its ivy wreathed horns. The cry pierced the dull din of the crowd’s drone, and rose up through the canopy and higher still to the very crest of the skies. Birds scattered from their nests in flocks, wavering in their sorrow for the Briar King’s death, a metaphor of winter dying into spring’s caress.

Jennifer cried, finally finding the strength to speak. With an upwards whirl of light and hurricane, Alma fell apart into dust and drifted upwards into nothing to join his death scream. Silence filled the Dansdel, leaving the crowd as breathless as the pathfinder and the tension mounting into a roiling sea of uncertainty. She drove her fingertips bitterly into her upper thighs and tore her nails into the cloth to temper her anger. She felt all the screaming decadence of her own heart’s demise, every, last, second. Pain, like she had never known had been and gone; now she felt only revenge.

The ground shook.

“You have angered the forest, you wretch!” She pushed herself upright, two trickles of blood running down her thighs from beneath her leather short dress and olive green wrapping. Her finger nails clenched, she looked at the blood stains, and then at her opponent. She longed to have the strength to drive her hands around her enemy’s neck and squeeze the life out of every last bone, but she was but a vessel for the forest, and its wrath was not hers to bear…only its sadness.

Little weeds and dandelions sprouted with a rush of life from the two impressions left by Alma’s hooves, followed by marigolds and granddad’s pepper, bright white flowers and yellow blooms to mark their patron’s passing. Jennifer smiled, defeated, but relishing the last blow to come. “I am defeated, warrior, but the wrath of nature cannot be so easily ignored. Treat it with respect, and it gifts us life, treat it badly, and it can so readily take that gift away…” She glared, and then, as if she had willed it herself, up from the blooming flowers raised the pulse of the tangle.

Long lashing vines, eight in number broke through the ground. Each was made of a bright, pure length of energy, the very soul of the Concordia forest given form. They spiralled together into a tight knot as they emerged, then flayed outwards into one mass. Knowing herself to be surely dead, Jennifer folded her arms calmly over her chest, breathes sharp, eyes glazed still, and waited for the inevitably dagger to the neck, or guttural tear up through her loin. Her hair fell over her eyes as she rose, adding to the be speckled appearance, bedraggled garb and tear stains that ran down from the corners of her eyes.

She stood before nature and was awed by its wrath as the vines slammed and darted towards the creature that dared touch the Briar King.