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Member
One Year Ago
Scara Brae, House of Master Bigstar
“Thank you for that enlightening snippet of the Winchester Rose, Leopold,” Lady Montague raised her glass to her colleagues continued success. “I think that sentiment is one we all quite gladly support. Am I right, gentlemen?” she raised an inquisitive eyebrow in question. To augment her dominating presence she looked down her nose at the others at the table then drained the glass in one. She set the vessel onto the mahogany table before she started to put away her wool. It disappeared quickly into her flannelled satchel.
The men all nodded. They dared not contest Lady Montague’s opinion, especially in their weakened states.
“What about you, Lady Montague? How have you fared of late?” Leopold turned to a waiting tankard of honey mead which he had let breath since he had first arrived. As a consumer of fine wine and good, strong ale, it was the only way to drink it in his view.
She curled her lip as she righted herself.
“Oh, do not look so coy Lady Montague. We all have to take our turn to declare our intentions. It is, after all, part of the Van Degalion's long standing tradition.” Leopold gave her a stern glare and smacked his lips free of the foam that he had attracted after a series of thirsty glugs. The tankard clinked on the chipped worktop as he set it down again and leant forwards. He cupped the steel possessively with both of his chubby and well worked hands.
“A tradition I sometimes loathe,” she bit, and Leopold could only smile. “Very well,” she sighed. She made a ritual of preparation and poured herself another drink from a second flask. Reluctantly she settled back into the satin backed chair to recount her own business exploits.
Lady Clarissa Montague fell in love with Lord Leopold Winchester all over again at that precise moment. The stitches of the seamstress’s cold, cold heart were coming very much undone.
“My name is Lady Clarissa Montague, head of the Seamstress Guild and matriarch of the Montague Brigade. This season, we have expanded into the shattered lands of Salvar and the snow wastes of Berevar.” There was a certain element of concern, hesitation and secrecy in her words. Leopold, who was not quite drunk enough to be ignorant of her subtleties picked up on it like a hawk spotting potential prey. He watched her body language closely.
“Berevar? What the fuck is in Berevar?”
“Magnus…please…” Leopold scolded. His earlier fondness he had allowed to develop for the man died.
With a look that could poison a man’s heart, Lady Montague disarmed Magnus before she continued. “We have begun importing building materials, namely wood from the Brokenthorn and rocks from the Windlacers. It is to aid the regeneration of the country in the wake of its civil war.”
The one flaw in the ethics of the Guilds-man Circle was its desire to achieve profitability at any cost. Though the guild did not tolerate illegal activity, it did not exclude making profit from war, suffering or natural disaster.
Leopold might have come to accept this eventually over the years, but that did not mean he liked it. He certainly did not admire those who took full advantage of the Law of Gold Errantry; Scara Brae’s archaic piracy and mercantile charters.
“The Montague Brigade has doubled its turnover since my last report to four thousand or so. As you can appreciate, for net profit that is a lot of gold in our coffers.” Her ego shone through her eyes, puffed up her chest and brought her a chorus of whistles and delicate claps. Leopold, astute to her perspiration remained unmoved and silent.
“Very good…,” he said softly, his words heard clearly by no one except the rim of his tankard. He sipped at it with relish, drawing on the deep, spicy draft of the hops to damp the sweet after kick.
“Leopold you sour dog, you seem unimpressed?” Magnus, who was boisterous but calming at such good news half made to slap Leopold on the shoulder. When Leopold leant back out of the way he stopped.
“It is…not that I am unimpressed.” He looked between Magnus and Clarissa, then back into his foam. He ran a finger over it and traced a clover into the froth. He sighed and set the tankard back onto the table.
There was an awkward silence.
“Then cheer up! This deserves a celebration and one more so than usual!” there was a chorus of applause that shook the pots and pans hanging idly on the long oak rail overhead. They continued to tinkle together for a good few minutes.
Leopold started to realise something, a faint, nagging doubt that he knew something he should have realised a long time ago.
“Let us hear her declaration, first…” Leopold set his gaze on the seamstress, hoping she would realise he was not going to be fooled for long. If she was branching out into Berevar, then something was afoot.
Only the Old Gods dwelt there, and the Old Gods did not take kindly to the interferences of mortal men.
Leopold Winchester, the Raven, knew about their curses and damnations all too well.
Last edited by Leopold; 07-20-13 at 07:05 PM.
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Member
One Year Ago
Scara Brae, House of Master Bigstar
“People expect me to pledge allegiance or assert my desire to be a charitable woman.” The exchange of glances between the male members of the guild riled up Leopold something horrid. They, unlike he, would never consider their esteemed feminine colleague to be anything other than resplendent. “However, my declaration this quarter is a little…” she licked her lips, “unusual.”
“What could possibly be so unusual as to cause Leopold to act so uncouthly?” Magnus chuckled. He continued to down his drink as his eyes, hazel in colour and glazed over rolled haphazardly with sarcasm.
“I, Lady Clarissa Montague, vow to restore the slave trade to Scara Brae.”
Beer was spat in harmonious sprays everywhere.
Present Day
Berevar, The Winchester Rose Caravan
Leopold grit his teeth as he advanced through the snow towards his would be aggressor. The memory of their last encounter drove him to a previously unrealised swiftness. Despite his girth, his weight, his luxurious lifestyle Leopold swung his blade in a left arc into her advancing rapier. The clash was drowned out by the wind and the sound of battle behind him.
“You fulfilled your promise, then?” Leopold stepped back, dropped his blade to parry her counter thrust then chipped it away with a hefty tap. His sword was much thicker and heavier than her foil and it made short work of her quick but weakened state.
“A Montague never breaks her promise,” which, as far as Leopold was concerned, was her way of saying yes.
In the swirl of snow that thickened about them, a duel of blades was less familiar to Leopold than a well-aimed shot. Despite being an honest man, with honourable intentions, he was not going to suffer an embarrassing defeat here. He drew on every old trick he knew, and every harsh lesson he had learnt in public school to boot.
Clarissa stepped into his guard and raised her blade into his midriff. Cutting his sword in on its stable grip, Leopold flicked the blade up out of harm’s way so that it cut past his ear. It sliced into the cartilage, dividing one of the man’s most prominent features in two. He stumbled back and his hand defensively lifted to feel his injury. It was, as he expected, blissfully warm in the midst of Berevar’s untenable weather.
“I warned you Leopold when you turned me down.” She waved her sword left and right, as if it were a bat preparing for a serve of cricket. Her sword arm was apparently stronger than Leopold realised. There was a power behind it that did not come from muscles or sinew or adrenaline. “I warned you I would be your ruination.”
Leopold steeled his body for another exchange.
“You dared to tarnish the reputation of the guild with slavery, Clarissa. I would never, could never love a woman who thought that was a just, righteous application of her mind.” Leopold had never doubted that it was indeed a brilliant mind. Her acumen outshone even his in mercantile matters and her speechraft was beyond legendary.
Her honeyed words had literally toppled empires.
One Year Ago
Scara Brae, House of Master Bigstar
The uproar took several minutes of Leopold flapping his arms and Magnus stamping his feet to die down. The awkward silence that followed was deafening, smothering, and corrupting. Slowly, the heavy breath in liquor filled lungs stagnated, until no one could bear to remain silent any longer.
“You would never be all-”
“I do not need permission, Magnus,” she snapped. It was then that Leopold finally saw her true form flicker through the costume of skin and bone. She was slowly becoming the Rook once again.
The Old Gods were waking.
“What you do need Clarissa is a Royal Charter. That is something Queen Valeena would never consent to, and you know that damned well.” The etiquette of the meeting was thrown well and truly down the drain by Leopold. He had observed her slow unravelling of form; he would not pretend it was not happening any longer.
“I assume that means I do not have your support?” her eyebrow, eternally a weapon in her more than capable hands rose ready to strike.
Leopold Winchester, eternally suffering husband of Ruby Winchester, had seen it all before. He coughed, cleared his throat and languishingly downed the rest of his drink. He set the tankard down onto the table forcibly, so that the sound caused everyone to flinch.
“The Guilds-man Circle condemns the mere thought,” he said sternly.
“Then I, and of course the Montague Brigade will take its business to Salvar and away from this wretched hell-hole.” She snapped as she raised, a dramatic flair lifting her to new heights of disgust in Leopold’s mind.
First she had tried to steal him away in the night with champagne and roses, a heartfelt poem and a long, agonising list of material promises.
Now, she was trying to steal the prosperity of Scara Brae.
Present Day
Berevar, The Winchester Rose Caravan
“We can remain hidden no longer, Raven.”
Leopold curled his lip.
“We made a promise, Rook.”
“The Old Gods make promises to nobody,” she screamed. The last of her plumes shook free from her tattered, half frozen flesh as she ran at him and launched into a downward, cleaving arc with her blade.
Last edited by Leopold; 07-20-13 at 10:39 PM.
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Ruby Winchester, like her husband, was no stranger to the fickle world of business. Unlike her husband however she was also no stranger to death, pain and suffering. The cold prang in her chest was like an old friend standing on her porch, knocking on her door without a thought for common decency. She staggered, lips curled, red hair bobbing as she wavered on her high heeled boots.
“Good god, Ruby!” Lillith roared, striking out at her opponent before she knocked him back with a triple strike and gave herself the opportunity to run to her sister’s aid.
She embraced Ruby with a loving, gentle hug
“Oh god, Ruby, stay with me!” she whimpered, quite overcome with melodrama. She took the weight off her boots as she started to slip into the drift, until she was satisfied she was stable.
“Arden!” she screamed.
“ARDEN!”
It was often said that if you travelled far enough into the north, strange things started to happen. Whilst the caravan was not quite that far beyond the borders between Salvar and Berevar, things were strange all the same. Whereas convention suggested to Ruby Winchester that a gladius to the side should hurt, this particular gladius in this particular side just felt like an ice cube against the skin.
She looked down at the impact, where the tip of the sword had pierced her cloak and outer tunic, but become stuck on the delicate metalwork of her floral hauberk. The mithril, quite beside itself with joy for saving its mistress still sung with a chime.
“That was not very nice,” she clucked, spinning Lucrezia about to knock the hovering sword away, poised to deliver a second blow to the injured soldier. She followed it up with a thrust to the surprised man’s surprised face, and penetrated the wind pipe with a soft exhalation of air and pent up rage.
Another member of the Montague Brigade slumped into the snow.
Ruby pushed herself away from her sister, whose expression screamed surprise at how quickly her sibling had dispatched a seasoned soldier whilst being swaddled by a doting and overbearing self.
Another red headed soldier appeared through the snow veil, his long curved blade aglow with blood. The silent swordsman remained silent as he approached; knocking incoming strikes aside, oblivious to everything and everyone else except to respond to the summons of his sister. The man that was also called Mr Wilhelm carried a bow over his shoulder. He had spent all his arrows, and had left the simple leather quiver high on the eastern outcrop.
Nobody thought to ask how a half blind man aimed so true.
“You still wore that damned armour, under all of that?” Lillith said, happiness barely showing through her seething mask of anger. “Oh I could kill you myself!” she screamed, before bouncing back into the fray. Though the members of Tantalum were immortal their kin were not, and the battle was swiftly coming undone in their absence. Screams joined the whirl of the snow, the crash of thunder and the shock of the lightning in the darkened sky.
Ruby could only pat her side in thanks.
Arden approached her from behind and rested a hand on her shoulder. It was all he needed to say by means of an introduction. Two days ago, he had been tasked with infiltrating the Montague Brigade whilst they were running the streets of Knife’s Edge, trying not to look conspicuous. Leopold, aware that he was undoubtedly being followed through the glacial landscape had tasked the double agent with a simple engagement with sabotage.
“I am sorry; Mr Jackson,” he whispered “but Lady Montague will no longer need your particular talents.” His dry, sarcastic tone brought a smile to Ruby’s face. She tugged at her helmet and tossed it into the back of the wagon. It landed with a thud before it rolled down to the back of the wooden innards by merit of the pass’s rising slope.
Her red hair, striking in the darkness, unfurled. She shook it loose and then turned to her companion.
“That was very humorous Arden. We will not need your blade’s peculiar talents today, just its swing.” She wasted no time in skipping back into the melee, scream piercing the swirl of snowflakes that rolled about her. She joined her sister in a flurry of sword swings, melodic verse and witty insults. The worst came from the soul of her sword, which longed to have a body of its own to smite its mistresses’ foes.
Last edited by Leopold; 07-20-13 at 10:41 PM.
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It had been many years since the Ice Henge had received visitors.
Or at least, it had been many years since it had non-Wizard visitors. Apparently, if you wore a pointy hat, you did not count.
At dusk the night before Lady Clarissa Montague, the once godly being called Rook had stood on the outskirts of the great ice spires. She was quite beside herself. She could feel the corruption that lingered there in the wake of a mortal’s visitation. It was a fiery, passionate chorus of power that she both feared and loved.
Rook had mistaken that man’s taint for a sign from the Thayne that it was time for the Old Gods to rise.
“I have heard the Old Song,” she snarled, their blades striking once, twice, three times in a carefully choreographed exchange. Her downward arc was easily rebuffed by a slicing cross slash, and her follow up just as easily discharged by a spiralling counter blow. Her anger was getting the better of her, and Leopold watched her every movement, analysing her like a series of business transactions.
Raven was weighing her up for a quick dispatch.
“You heard nothing of the sort Rook. You heard nothing but the wind and the howls of the half-orc clans!” the wind howled, as if just to prove his point.
Leopold took the opportunity to bring his sword into Rook’s, and pushed it aside to his right. She pushed back, causing his arm to shake as it strained to prevent it from cutting into his guard and pushing over his sword arm into his shoulder. That would worry Ruby far too much. Apparently, she quite liked her husband’s body intact.
“Just because you turned your back on the Ice Henge,” she snarled her eyes aflame with jealousy, rage, love, fear. “It does not mean that we are not being called.”
Tired of the theatrics, Leopold slowly brought his left hand up towards her chest. Gritting his teeth to steel his muscles against her efforts to usurp his defences, he muttered an ancient verse of his own, bound in the same tenets as the lightning and the fire brand she had conjured. His old magic possessed a dark malefic to it, one bridling with fear, loathing and death.
“<Makassar Santorin!>” his clenched fist glowed with a vibrancy that was beyond words, like a purple sun in the abyss of the Void.
A vermillion sphere of pure shadow shot out from his fist and ploughed into Rook’s chest, striking her square dead centre between her ribs. The sound that followed would stick in Leopold’s mind for the rest of their journey.
“Grah!” she screamed, her lungs pushed to new heights of excess as the implosion crushed and scattered her bone back into her chest cavity. She rose in the air and flew in a long dive arc back into the bird shaped furrow in the snow, just ahead of the head wagon.
The snow continued to fall in her absence but somehow, it fell away from Leopold. Somebody was watching him, and Berevar dare not touched those observed by its very soul. He panted several times with feathery fingers wavering and helmeted brow sweating. The creature moved forwards slowly, trails of red and black cloth that seemed to possess a life of their own dragging in his wake as he seemingly floated footless through the drift. The curled horns and shining silver of his headdress shone in the moonlight as the clouds began to split asunder, their mistresses’ magic spent.
Looking down into the crater, his newly conjured staff steadying his tired, fatigued and corporeal form, Raven, the once servant of Draconus glared with the baleful stare of the ages at the prone body of the creature once called Rook.
“What happened to you…,” he whispered, the tendrils of his voice seeping into her mind so that she could hear him, even as she writhed in the agony of his Vorpal blast.
“I refused to lie down and take our exile lightly,” she replied, the energy in her mind still as sharp and keen as ever. Despite her mortal form’s dying throes, her spirit, her half-immortal soul refused to lie down.
Overhead, the aurora Borealis revealed themselves in all their multi coloured glory. Long stretches of vibrant jade and olive swirls danced in the sky, waves of maelstrom flame setting the heavens ablaze.Raven looked up at them through the slits in his helmet, and shook the fetishes at the tip of his staff in reverence. The Old Gods had given Rook the power of shadow, obfuscation, mystery…but they had taken it away just as readily.
The Old Gods were noticing their lost children once again.
Last edited by Leopold; 07-20-13 at 10:44 PM.
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“They have spurned you Rook. You are to be exiled even from Berevar.” The council of the Old Gods was convening in the Ice Henge far to the north, further north than even Rook or Raven had ever been without the calling of their deities to guide them to the heart land of the Wilderness.
Rook would never see the Ice Henge again.
“I only did what they asked…they want you, Raven. They want you to return to them, you took their power and fled to the warm south…”
Leopold frowned, his cynicism still intact even in his horrifying Fae form.
“I am not returning to them, nor am I going to give the staff back.” He waved the offending relic in front of her and she opened her eyes to look up into the now clear sky. Her arms were bent, her legs splayed, her bleeding, tattered chest heaving with painful, blood fuelled breaths.
“They do not want…the staff, Raven” She spat blood, which landed on her chin in a claret gobbet. There was a guttural rattle to her words, a clear sign her lungs were perforated, her vocal chords drowning, her heart failing.
“That is all I took, Rook. When the sundering divided us I took the Staff and vowed never to return to the Ice Henge. Our time is over, the Old Gods are dying, and the al-Thayne’s children are rising once more from the Vhadya and the damnation of the Second Child.” Leopold’s knowledge of Althanas history surprised him at times; he was not sure if he had listened to Ruby’s lectures or if he had simply learnt it on the principle of osmosis from being so close to the Thayne’s children themselves. It felt like an ancestral recall, a hidden library in the mind that had been born from the Ice Henge, long ago.
“You…” with her dying breath, Clarissa formed a damning truth in the cold air, “took their dignity.” With one final cough, a lung deflated and she let out a long, pained exhalation of air that fled the body with such speed it dragged a feathered soul along with it.
Raven watched the glowing wisps of her life force float up into the darkness, illuminated by the northern lights and glimmering with its own, immortal prominence. When it reached a hundred or so feet in the air it took on the shape of a rook, though much smaller than the grand monstrous form it had when it descended into the pass and beat its wings one last time.
Leopold dropped his helmeted gaze back into the crater, which was now be speckled with a bloodied circle at the heart, mimicking the bullet wound he had inflicted on the grand rook, and the last, damning wound on the chest of his oldest friend.
Her corporeal body was gone, but her presence remained as strong as ever and weighing on his conscious.
“We will meet again,” he mused.
He turned back to the caravan and strolled soothingly towards the head wagon. As he advanced, the cloth and other worldly figure fell away in broken shards. Each facet of his alter ego faded into nothingness as he advanced, until he arrived at the still whimpering horses just as he was moments before.
Leopold cleared his throat, patted the mare on its mane and looked at the closed curtain that separated the driving bench from the inner space of the wagon. He heard tea cups clinking.
“Is that tea bloody ready, Wilfred? I am dying of thirst out here,” he shouted.
“Coming right away sir!” a surprised voice shouted from within.
Leopold rolled his eyes, sheathed his sword and reached onto the wagon for Isabella.
“You best set out several more cups, we are expecting guests,” was his parting command as he made his way down the long line of wagons, heavy boots stomping through the snow with a sudden urgency.
Though Lady Clarissa Montague was out of the way, there was still the small matter of wielding the dignity he had stolen from the gods and using it as a potent tool against the remnants of her brigade. He put on a façade of heroism, one not broken or threatened by the cut ear or the bruised arm, and rode in not so shining armour to the rescue of his wife.
Last edited by Leopold; 07-20-13 at 10:46 PM.
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Ruby Winchester was very much enjoying herself, but for all the wrong reasons. Unlike her husband, she never had good intentions when she approached another with a sword. There was no honour to be found in the spell singer’s heart as she made for the dwindling ranks of the Montague Brigade. They were threatening her future, and there would be nothing but wrath from a woman scorned and removed from her avenue to buy shoes.
“Come on then…” she whispered, her chest heaving with strain, the bruise that was forming beneath her arm already undoing her determination and stamina.
Lillith stood to her left and Arden to her right. Her companions formed a barricade between the last wagon of the Winchester Rose Caravan and the last handful of it’s would be raiders.
“It would be wise to return to Knife’s Edge,” Arden suggested, the bloodshed already riling his senses, gnawing at his soul, churning up the dark demon within that begged him to give in to the temptation and feed on the carnal atmosphere to extend his own power, his own immortality. “It would be wise to do it now.” He glared, and the intimidating expression he pulled burnt into the retina of the Brigade.
Seeing themselves defeated, or perhaps spurned by an unseen power Ruby did not quite understand, they slowly but surely retreated. They moved in reverse, working on instinct to avoid footfalls and corpses, swords still rose against them, just in case.
They broke away quickly and darted into the shadows.
Ruby slapped Arden on the shoulder, “Go after them!”
The swordsman looked down at her, unpaved by the flare of emotion and aggression from the matriarch. He shook his head.
“Arden, if they get away she will only kills them anyway. I…” her accent slipped.
“Ruby!” the sound of Leopold’s gruff and husky voice instantly dragged her kicking and screaming back to civility. She turned on a heavy boot and sheathed her sword. The surviving members of the Winchester Rose house guard did the same, unable to do anything else but stand, quite silent, sated on fatigue and the devastation that lay around them.
Leopold kicked into a run towards his wife, pistol cocked in a defiant show of machismo.
“Oh I am so glad to see you are,” he looked nervously at the melee, “alright.” He stopped, just a few feet from her. “Are any of you hurt?” he looked between his friends and then at the glum looking guardsmen. There were a few nicks, cuts and bruises, and one or two groans, but nothing serious. The weight pressing against his heart lifted, even as his pistol dropped to his side.
Last edited by Leopold; 07-20-13 at 10:48 PM.
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“No, but you are dear,” Ruby stepped towards him, pushed the nozzle of Isabella to one side so that she could embrace him, and ran her finger gently over his red ear. He winced.
“That was nothing,” he was lying, and Ruby knew it. She patted him on the chest endearingly.
“What happened up there?” she asked, eyes glowing with a seductive narcissism that Leopold had tried to resist over the years, but had always failed miserably. Even though they both stank of sweat and blood, she was still as beautiful and warm in his arms as she was the first day they had met.
“Clarissa…” he whispered.
Ruby’s charm faded. She flicked his ear.
“That bitch!” she exclaimed, causing Lillith and Arden to stare at one another and roll their eyes. Realising they were going to be quite a while, they turned to comfort their companions and wrap cuts and bruises in whatever bandages they could salvage from the garb of the fallen.
“Ruby…do not bother with the melodrama, she has gone.”
“To hell, I hope?” she pushed away from him, wiping her bloodied finger on the hem of her lapel. The steel buckles of her guard outfit clinked as she undid the clasp of her cloak and dropped it to the ground. Her red, resplendent attire and mithril shone in the dark, oblivious snowy landscape. “Just wait until I get my hands on her scrawny little neck…” Leopold could not quite be sure, but it suddenly got a lot warmer in the pass.
“I am just as surprised and angered she dared show herself, but she has, and that means our worst fears have been realised.” Leopold’s expression was utterly cold and emotionless, which Ruby took as a lecture in itself. “Her promise to ruin the Winchester Rose Trading Company was as sincere as her desire to bring slavery back to the island.”
“Over. My. Dead. Body,” the Spellsinger seethed.
“We can deal with her when we return to Knife’s Edge,” he moved around her, resting his hand gently on her left shoulder as he passed. “For now…” he leant to whisper into her ear, his hot breath tickling down her now exposed neck. “We have to make sure our friends are okay and press on…” he moved forwards, his girth dragging great ploughs of boots through the reddened snow.
In the north, strange things happened. This far north, even things as strange as Ruby Winchester making a U-turn happened.
"Yes...you are right, I am sorry...," she said over her shoulder. She joined him by his side and tucked her arm into his. Though this was not quite a stroll through Regent Park, it was as close to a home comfort as she could get to keep her anger contained in her kindling chest.
“Come on everyone, bring our dead into the last wagon and smother theirs in the under hangs of the pass – we move out in an hour!”
"If I ever see her myself..." she whispered back into his good ear. He smiled.
"Yes my dear, you will show her how true women in Scara Brae behave, no doubt."
The group of tired souls at the rear of the wagon began to battle the sapping cold of Berevar's wilderness as the heavens glowed overhead. They still had four leagues or so to go before they brought their cargo, still intact, to its final destination. Bandits, in Berevar, were the least of their worries.
Last edited by Leopold; 07-20-13 at 10:49 PM.
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Present Day
Berevar, The Ahyark Pass
“I can see why you chose her over me…” Clarissa whispered, fearful her words would be elevated to new heights by the wind. She looked down once more at the caravan, from a higher position at the exit of the pass. Behind her, the wild tundra of Berevar’s northern steppes welcomed her. Dead ahead the last light of day faded behind the Ahyark Mountains and moving shadows descended over Salvar.
“That does not,” she smiled, the moonlight catching her moist lip, “mean I will go any easier on you…” her cloak fluttered in the savage wind as it lapped the crest of the pass. The gale then faded into the rocky tunnels that gave shelter to weary travellers who needed to rest before the last leg of their adventure.
The Ice Henge awaited the caravan to the north.
So did the orcs...
The Aurochs...
The Wispmothers...
“Neither will Berevar,” she chuckled, citing her smashed ribs to agonise over her movements.
The pains in her chest lingered, which for her, was troublesome. The vials on her bandoleer had smashed when Leopold’s providence had struck her, and as she had risen, she had whispered the rite of incantation that unleashed their magic. The blood of her previous victims had seeped into her chest wound and started to weave her body anew. Misdirection had seen to the rest of her miraculous ascension.
Though she had died and ascended in spirit form, she had seeded a strange phenomenon on the cliffs. The Old Gods and their servants were more wraith than mortal. Though Leopold had turned his back on everlasting life, Clarissa had spent too many years in search of a new way to live until the rise of her Lord to be so easily undone.
Even though Xem’Zund and Denebriel’s children had devastated much of the surface world, and subsequently been defeated, their powers, their disciples still found sanctuary in the wilds.
Drawing her cloak tight around her exposes but unfeeling form, Rook looked back down the pass one last time before she turned away proper. Her feet left footprints in the soft snow for only a few seconds, before the heavy blizzard swept them away.
They would meet again, the Rook and the Raven.
A woman always kept to her promises.
A man always suffered for them.
Last edited by Mordelain; 07-21-13 at 01:04 PM.
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Present Day
Berevar, The Dunbar Tundra
It did not take the remaining guard and the troupe long to stow away the bodies of the Brigade into the drift, and pile their own dead into the rear of the final wagon of the caravan. It had taken them less time to drink their tea, provided by a somewhat on edge Wilfred, and less still than that to consume a hefty amount of Ruby’s specially baked scones. They were cinnamon, with raisins, and smothered in what was known in Scara Brae as ‘Lard Jam’. Somehow, cake seemed to make all their self-doubts disappear, and the tea, as it was renowned for, calmed nerves and sated welling waves of grief for the deceased.
There would be plenty of time for that later, when they could warm their toes by roaring fires and relive their grand adventure into the tundra together.
Ruby and Leopold and their ever present manservant rode ahead in the lead wagon in relative silence. In the rear, the guards sat in silent vigil over their fallen comrades. The central column was tended only by bedraggled looking mares and a solitary, cloaked and hunched driver at the head of each wagon. Arden and Lillith rode together in the second to last, discussing matters of the heart and the I Ching – their spirit warder lexicon.
The caravan snaked over the Dunbar in the same peaceful status quo for some three leagues before Ruby Winchester finally spoke. Riding in between her beleaguered manservant and her still grumbling husband, she was quite warm, quite hungry, and quite seething. Every bump in the road made her flinch, and each flinch made her angrier and angrier.
She wanted an explanation. She wanted it now.
“Leopold…”
Wilfred sighed. He knew what was coming just from her tone. He pulled out a tobacco pouch and tended to make a cigarette, despite his thick gloves and the cumbersome fur lined cloak they had all donned for the exposes journey in the open. There was an all too familiar tension in the air that declared her need to be satisfied as it ran up your spine with an electrifying urgency and anxiety.
“Yes my dear?” he replied wistfully, hands firmly on the reins and eyes firmly on the white wash of nothingness that lay ahead. He was driving the caravan north on blind instinct and wild abandon. The Ice Henge called to him, and with it, he somehow kept them on the right path.
“What did she say to you?” it was the sort of question that was loaded, but also one that no matter the answer, it would fire off the round. Leopold was already in a losing battle.
“Nothing but barbed words and threats, the same ones she made at the Van Degalion not a month ago.”
“You are lying,” she whispered. She looked at his good remaining ear, his size imposing against her slender frame. The caravan hit another rock beneath the snow, spoiling her emotive plea.
“I am not lying, Ruby. She was there to take the caravan guard as slaves. She is a slaver; after all, it is what she does.”
“It is a little convenient that of all the people in the whole world, the one slaver to attack the one caravan in Berevar this month is Lady Clarissa ‘I’ll have your husband ‘ague.”
Leopold smirked, “I suppose you think that is funny?” she nodded, poked him in the ribs, and looked ahead.
“The Montague Brigade is always in this area. We saw them in Knife’s Edge, and we just assumed they were trailing us.”
“So why did not you put a stop to it there and then?” she lifted her eyebrow inquisitively, testing every patient bone in Leopold’s body.
“Because if we had been wrong, my dear, we would have been thrown out of the Guilds-man circle and left out in the cold with all the other overly taxed merchants scrabbling in the squalor of Scara Brae.” His matter-of-factly reply put his own teeth on edge. He was playing a dangerous game and when his opponent was Ruby, it was doubly so.
“I think it is horribly uncouth to play with the lives of your employees in such a wreck less manner. Myself, Ruby and Arden have nothing to fear out here, except perhaps ruining a good pair of boots,” she wiggled her toes on the wood, clip clopping a melody to drive her point home, “but you, they, Wilfred…you are not so fortunate.”
“No need to worry about me my Lady,” he popped the dog end into his wrinkled lips and took a flintlock lighter to it. There was a puff of smoke, a longing in Leopold’s heart for a cigar and a wisp of green tinted exhalation from the butler’s lungs before Ruby sighed.
“They are paid to put their lives at risk for the good of the company Ruby. If there was no danger involved, they would not get so much gold for sitting on their behinds all this way.”
“That makes it okay, does it?” she dropped her jaw aghast at her husband’s attitude.
“It is the way of the world.” He snapped.
“It is not the way of our world!”
Last edited by Mordelain; 07-21-13 at 01:08 PM.
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“You put your own life on the line to defend it here today Ruby. That merit, that action, makes it yours.” He cracked the reins with an authoritarian flick of his thick wrists. Wilfred rose, bowed, and disappeared into the back of the wagon. He had heard quite enough to know that he would not get to enjoy his smoke if he stayed up front.
“Now look what you have done…” she whimpered, sliding away from her husband into the butler’s warm spot.
This is going to be a long journey…Leopold thought with a disgruntled voice. He pulled out a cigar when the horses steadied their pace and started to clip it. He would suffer gladly to be with Ruby Winchester, but he was not going to do it without a little pleasure. She could protest about his habits all she liked, he was done with caring for the time being.
“I just feel like I am still not clued up on what makes you tick…why we are here is just a small part of that.”
Leopold put the stub of his cigar into his mouth and relished the taste of the leaf as he chewed on it in contemplation. There were, as the man knew too well, so many ways to continue this conversation that could have catastrophic results for either of them. He steeled his gaze to the north, where their true destination awaited them. With a long sigh that came only after several arduous minutes of trundling silence, he resigned himself to telling her the truth.
He did not want to be in the doghouse again. Not after their jaunt to the theatre had seen him sleeping in his study for a fortnight. His back was still out of joint.
“She knew we would be here…or at least, that I would.”
Ruby’s eyes sparkled. It was the sort of sparkle a woman got when she realised she was winning. It was a fire you never forgot to fear.
“I knew it,” she whispered, her lip curling and teeth gritting at the same time.
“Not for the reasons you are thinking. It is a little more,” he rolled his eyes, and went about patting his many pockets in search of his lighter, “complicated.”
“Oh, it always is,” she snapped back. With the same, caring love as she had hate, she produced a match from the tinder box at her feet; which was for emergencies and replacing torches in the underground tunnels. He leant over with a nod of thanks. The long trail of smoke rose up from the wagon, signalling to Wilfred that if he was not already drunk and gambling with Arden, that it was safe to return.
Leopold took a deep drag, and leant back onto the bench.
“We were lovers, Clarissa and I. This was over a thousand years ago mind.” Leopold did not think there was any reason to prolong the inevitable. He did not look for Ruby’s reaction, because he felt the heat dig into his earhole long before it came. She was glaring at him.
“What?” It was all she could say, all her quavering lip could muster.
Leopold took another drag before removing the cigar and peppering the snow with the first ring of ash. He let the wagon pick up pace so that the inevitable exchange was not carried by the wind down the long trail of wagons as they advanced over the vast, frozen, maze like tundra. The Old Ones would be watching them as soon as they crossed the aurora flats and ventured into the True Wilderness, where only Wizards and madmen trod.
“Long ago, Clarissa and I were known by different names. Names so old they have been forgotten, lives so long ago they may as well have been those of other men.” There was a certain weight of history in Leopold’s revelation that pressed down on Ruby’s shoulders. She crossed her right leg over her left, adjusting her fur cloak so that it covered the midriff and leant sideways into the nook of the wagon’s canopy alcove.
“I am…listening. Incredulously, but listening all the same.” A strand of her red hair protruded from beneath the hood of her cloak, and a feather, pressed on by the heavy wool protruded erect as well. Leopold turned and smiled at the irony. Those feathers were very much the beginning and end of his tale.
“We are, or rather, we were Old Ones. They are the lost and forgotten deities of Salvar. Unlike the Thayne, they come and go with the ebb and flow of belief from a civilisation steeped in ancestry. Only the orcs really worship us now, though that will change with the Church of the Sway demolished.” There was a distinct lack of excitement at the prospect in Leopold’s voice. He very much hoped to have remained forgotten forever.
Somehow, Ruby was not surprised by this. She had memorised the history of the Salvar states on her previous jaunt to the country. There, she had met the strange men named, amongst other more unrepeatable things, Inkfinger. Her contempt for the man was matched by his desire to free Salvar from the oppression of the former Church of the Sway. Whilst there, she had heard of the Old Gods, powers buried in the frozen heart of Berevar. If they were buried, she thought, why is one sat opposite me?
“When the Thayne came we were called upon to serve them in their petty war. Unable to resist, I sided with Draconus. I became the being known as the Raven, the watcher of the dead, tasked with guiding the spirits of the world to the afterlife.” He returned the cigar to his lips and gripped the reins tightly; so tight the skin on his knuckles turned ghostly pale. Whilst he drew on the leaf he composed his thoughts, putting fact into place so that his story was as comprehensive as he knew Ruby was expecting it to be. He would not get a chance to repeat the scene this time.
“What about Clarissa, did she side with you?” though the question was a little inevitable, Leopold gruffly cleared his throat, slid the cigar to the corner of his mouth and continued.
“No, Clarissa sided with Hromagh. She was the effigy of shadows, of spying, of remaining unseen. They call her the Rook; she is, in essence, the female counterpart in the Old God pantheon to my Raven.”
Last edited by Mordelain; 07-21-13 at 01:10 PM.
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