A Forest! Wow... (Closed)

[Iriah Caitrak]

Consciousness slowly returned to Ira. She’d been having a dream, but she couldn’t remember what it was, images and memories of it slowly fading as she realized she was awake and no longer sleeping. Cracking her eyes open she found herself in a darkened cave with a fire before her, the flames twisting through the air giving everything around it an orange glow.

With the fatigued of sleep still on her mind, Ira tried to sit up only to have an intense pain shoot down through her ribcage. Her gasped, bit the inside of her cheeks and whimpered instead of screaming. And that was enough to bring it all back, the memories of meeting the siahd in the forest and the incidents with him and then of leaving and being nearly killed by men not on their horses but attached to their horses. But she hadn’t died, the siahd had saved her and before she’d passed out he’d…

Ira brought her hand up and ran her fingers over her lips; he’d kissed her before she’d passed out. He’d actually kissed her! The man was confounding, how could he try to kill her one-minute then save her life and kiss her the next!? There had to be something else behind it, he did not seem like the kind of person to go around doing favours for people and rescuing them from the clutches of death. But he had and though he’d pissed her off she was grateful for that. There were too many things she had to do before she died.

Foregoing sitting up because of the extreme pain, most likely a few of her ribs were cracked, Ira rolled her head towards the fire, the heat of it washing over her face, but that wasn’t what she was really looking at. Through the flames she could see the siahd sitting on the other side watching her as well. She wondered how long he’d been sitting there and how long she’d been unconscious. Unbeknownst to her, the crystal the girl’s soul had given to her before she left Fallien had already healed some of her minor wounds, stopping the blood flow and slowly healing them from the inside out. But it would take a few more nights of sleep before her ribs even began to feel better. The crystal worked slowly and only worked while she was sleeping.

“I would have thought you’d be happy to watch me die…” Ira said to him, turning away and looking up at the ceiling and the dancing light and shadow that the flames created.

She didn’t really know what to say to him.

“You know, you’ve never told me your name siahd. Unless you prefer me calling you that…”

[Valentine]

The hours where she did nothing but lay there, unconscious were very uncomfortable for Kadarus. Not a single moment passed where he did not think of the days when he was Kade Lien, the carefree, perpetually drunken samurai. His eyes, similarly tormented by those memories were unable to focus on anything except those small, exquisite lips that lay, attached to a comatose body just a few feet away from him. His counterparts still remembered what he felt like, his palm, covered with calluses still remembered the soft, smooth, darkened skin of her's. These thoughts, these emotions, his senses... everything, they would not leave him alone. Only, this time, unlike the other time, it was a pleasant feeling.

Before, it was like a migraine constantly chewing away at the back of his head. This time, it was a pleasant feeling, almost like a conscious pleasurable dream. Only his new self restricted Kadarus' body from performing a similar task as before, but already, he could feel his former self slowly sneak its way into consciousness. At the moment, he wasn't sure how he felt about that, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to turn back into Kade Lien. He enjoyed his brief renaissance with his old self and Ira's body, but going back to that would mean going back to a meaningless life. He never wanted that again.

His mind continued to think and think, before the sounds of Ira's body rustling the small pebbles on the ground floor alerting him. Instantly, he snapped back to his normal self, his new self, the form of the Valentine Bleeder. At first, it appeared as if she did not know where she was or that he was even here. Her fingers rising to her lips almost made his knees buckle as he remember what it was like to touch her body once again. He composed himself though and instead continued to look at her as if he were analyzing here, while he was indeed admiring her body, her clothing cut up at various places allowing him a perfect view of her curves.

Her voice was something that was not present in his thoughts of fantasies, yet the fact that they moved slightly on their own accord and producing sound was enough to almost drive him insane. There was something about her, something that made him want to betray Hromagh. And even the few words that she spoke were enough to distract him from thinking about his loyalties to focus on her answer.

He took a few steps forward, the light revealing his body to her in detail. Still wearing the same clothes that he was when they first met and still carrying all his weaponry, he slowly raised his head, showing her his neck and looking down on her with his yellow pupils. Kadarus had no idea how to answer her question at first. He had so many names and even now he had a lot of names.

Slowly, he spoke. This time though, there was a noticeable change in his voice, one that he could not control. It was no softer, no longer bearing the vicious or emotionless tone it had before.

"Kade - "

He began slowly, wondering whether that was truly his name now. No, it wasn't.

" - Arus."

[Iriah Caitrak]

“Kadarus…”

She mulled the word over in her mind, the name he answered to. It suited him somehow and she wondered if there was any kind of meaning behind it but wasn’t about to ask him. All of the names in her tribe meant something but she didn’t know if the other civilizations of Althanas did the same thing.

Shifting her position on the unforgiving ground beneath her, Ira sucked in a breath, clenched her jaw and closed her eyes as the quick jolt of pain overcame her again. Damn it, she’d forgotten about that for a second but the pain was a quick reminder that she probably shouldn’t move for a while. Heck, with broken ribs she didn’t know how long she’d have to lay here. That was going to put a dampener on her plans.

“I was hoping to get to the town of Underwood located somewhere in Concordia, though it looks like I’m stuck for a little while. I don’t really know my way around and I was just hoping of wandering through and enjoying the scenery before getting there, there aren’t any forests in Fallien…”

Turning her head to the side, she watched him from the other side of the leaping flames. She was in a little bit of a predicament now and didn’t expect him to help her at all. He’d most likely leave soon now that she was awake, which was fine with her, she had enough water and food in her rucksack to last her a few days of recovery and she’d traveled under worse conditions by herself before. Of course, she hadn’t exactly made it to her destination before but that was neither here nor there and was a completely different situation.

Still, she needed to get to Underwood and recover so she could cleanse the area. There were Fallen there, not just the few she’d released when she’d quickly taken Kadarus and herself in Purgatory, there were more, how many she didn’t know and she wasn’t even sure they were Fallen, they could still be lost souls. All she knew was that there were souls wandering around that town and it was best cleanse it now and be done with it then having to come back when it was a bigger problem.

[Valentine]

Words and speech... these things were not sounds that he heard regularly for such a long time. His transformation via Hromagh had changed him to the point where he could accurately say that this was the closest thing he had to a communication for a long time. It could also be argued that it was the longest time that his katana had remained sheathed in the presence of someone else. Still, Kadarus was as confused as ever. The fact that she spoke to him only sought to distort his brain even more, feeding him information that he understood, yet could not be translated effectively so that he could reciprocate.

The fire warmed him, yet the one thing that truly made him feel was the presence of this girl. His milky white skin, illuminated by the light generated by the fire only grew paler and paler as he decided to break his statuesque form for the first time in the last few hours. The Emissary advanced until his feet were about two feet away from her lying frame. Her mouth had stopped moving and Kadarus had only picked up the gist of it. She was headed to Underwood, the Peaceful Promenade.

Thoughts instantly flooded into his mind, thoughts of the last time he had ventured into that area. All a blur. Nothing except emotions. Happiness, excitement, euphoria, surprise, sadness, heartbreak, redemption... All these newfound feelings swarming through his body. For a minute, he stood there, stationary once more. Then slowly, when the flurry of emotions finished, his head slowly turned downwards, his eyes now sharply focused on the girl that lay at his feet.

"Ira."

His voice was hoarse and the name seemed to have been forced out from within his stomach and out his mouth.

"Ira."

He said her name again.

"Sorry."

This time, it was louder and more pronounced, though still devoid of any emotion.

"I will serve my redemption. I will take you to Underwood."

[Iriah Caitrak]

“Ahh, what…huh?”

Ira blinked up at Kadarus from her prone position on the hard ground. Her hearing must be shot; either that or she was dreaming, or hallucinating or crazy. Yep, crazy sounded good because there was no way that Kadarus had just offered to take her to Underwood to ‘serve as his redemption’, that was just ridiculous. This guy was ridiculous! First he tries to kill her, then he goes all weird and crazy and mumbling incoherent crap about…she didn’t know what, then he saves her life and now he’s being nice to her and bringing her to Underwood.

Yep, she was definitely hallucinating.

“Did you just say you’d take me to Underwood?”

“Yes.”

She blinked at him again, just ‘yes’, one conclusive word and that was it, yes! Him and what freaking army! Her ribs were broken, it’s not like she could just stand up and walk hand-in-hand with him skipping all the way there! Was he crazy!

“Unless you haven’t noticed, but I think my ribs are broken so I’m not moving anytime soon, as nice as the offer was I just do—“

Whatever she was going to say next was cut off when Kadarus just knelt down next to her and scooped her up into his arms.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! That really hurt!”

She thumped her hand against his chest, meeting a solid wall of muscle, how lovely. He didn’t say anything to her, he just carefully reached back down and grabbed her rucksack then stepped on the fire to extinguish it and the next thing she knew was they were walking—well he was walking she was being carried—through the forest towards Underwood. He didn’t say anything the whole way and she didn’t prompt him too. And though the ground was uneven and the terrain was rough, hell it was a forest, the ride was comfortable and he barely jostled her.

She didn’t like being carried though, it made her feel weak and helpless and at the same time he made her feel a little protected, however the fact that he’d tried to kill her when they’d first met made her wonder about how safe she was with him. Though he seemed unable to hurt her with his vast arsenal, he may just as well be able to drop her down a cliff and watch her hit the bottom. Ira hoped there weren’t any cliffs in Concordia.

It didn’t take them long to get to Underwood, a half an hour maybe more and Ira was a bit miffed at how close she’d been to the place before she’d been attacked, though she really couldn’t say for certain how far away the cave Kadarus had taken her to had been from the town itself. Either way, she must have been relatively close before those horsemen creatures had attacked her, and for no good reason too.

Underwood was a beautiful town that nestled in nicely with the forest surrounding it, even if it did use the very trees as its revenue and way to stay alive. All the houses were made of wood that blended in nicely with the forest backdrop and people were milling about their business like they did on any day. A group of children even ran in front of her and Kadarus, only pausing briefly to look at the two of them before continuing on. At first she’d been worried that he might attack them, after all he didn’t seem to discriminate against anyone, he just killed because he thought people were ‘unworthy’ of living.

He didn’t hurt anyone though; he just continued to carry her to the Inn, surprise of surprises.

He stopped at the counter, “Will you be needing a room?” The young woman said. She was pretty, with long curly brown hair that she tried to pull back away from her face in vain and a simple blue dress, but she didn’t stand out much.

“Umm, yes please.” Ira said when Kadarus didn’t make any move to comment.

“Are you injured?” The lady asked her.

Ira looked down at herself, yes she was being carried, yes she was covered in mud and yes her clothes had dried blood on them as well she still had wounds on her arms and the deep one in her shoulder.

“Ahhh, yeah, kind of had a little mishap out in the woods, I’ll need a few days of recovery.”

The woman smiled at her, “I’ll have fresh water and some bandages brought to the room for you to clean up with then, you’re in number 6.”

Ira smiled and gently took the key from her and without another word Kadarus carried her up the stairs, she opened the door and he went into her room then placed her in a sitting position against the headboard and turned to leave.

“You’re leaving?”

He stopped but he didn’t turn back to her, he just nodded his head.
She didn’t know what to say to him, thanks for not being able to kill me and then just saving my life and taking me here for no good reason? Yeah, that sounded great.

“Umm…next time we run into each other, try not to kill me at first sight will ya?”

She didn’t know what his response to that was, he lingered for a few seconds more but then just headed out of the room and out of her life. She wasn’t sad to see him go and she didn’t wish him back anytime soon, in fact she hoped it would be a long time coming before she ever ran into that man again. Or if she was lucky, maybe never.

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door and a woman came in carrying a washbasin with warm water and some bandages for her. Ira smiled and thanked her and proceeded to very carefully clean off the blood and mud, wondering just how bad she really was and how long it was going to take for her to get better.

[Letho]

General notes – I want to say that this was a good quest, but it lacked several components that would make it a great one. Generally you two tell the story nicely, it’s easy to follow but the pace that was set for this quest was rather... uncommon. I’ll comment more on it in the Rising Action. But without further ado, let's judge this thing.


INTRODUCTION – 7

This was generally well done, but it was nothing exceptional. Ira was strolling through the forest, though why was she there and where she was going was something I found out in post #23. I don’t know did you do this intentionally, Ira, but as it is, it gives me a feeling that you only added it afterwards just to come up with some kind of a reason for being there. Valentine was a bit clearer on giving his reasons, but it still sounded a bit too cliché that he accidentally ran into Ira in a forest as vast as Concordia. Your characters were well portrayed in those first posts though, giving the reader enough information to work with without going through your profiles just to find out what were your characters all about and I see this as a very good thing. I as a judge read your profiles before reading the quest, but other people sometimes won’t do that. In short: Clarify your reasons in initial posts or give some kind of insinuation on the reasons if you want to keep them mysterious.

SETTING – 6

A forest can sometimes be an ungrateful setting. You two described it fairly well in your initial posts and I got a good picture on where you were and what was going on, but there was little interaction with the surroundings. Kadarus chopped down a few trees, Ira sat on one of them in her first/second post, a token R&R cave later on... The interaction wasn’t bad, but there were some mistakes. For example, for a branch to snap so loudly it would usurp the birds in the trees, the branch has to be really thick and not something that would be stepped on and broken. Also, getting ambushed in the middle of the forest with no natural light but the quarter moon hidden by the tree crowns should’ve impeded Ira’s fighting prowess since I’m fairly certain she doesn’t have any supernatural senses other then her ability to sense souls. You can call me nitpicky, but it’s the details that separate the good from the great. So try to input more of the environment in your posts and your character’s actions, and keep an eye out for details.

STRATEGY – 6

Taking Kadarus into Purgatory was an excellent way to offset any advantage he might have over Ira, but other then that the traces of any real strategy remained scarce. I found it rather uncanny that Kade was allowed to launch a barrage of attacks on Ira without her even making a reaction to them. I don’t know did you two arranged it to be so, but it still was rather strange to see Kade pull out a knife, show it to Ira and take a shot at her chest without her even making a step back or reaching for a weapon. The fight with the centaurs is another story. Ira knew she was outmatched and yet she still chose to face them in a clearing where they have a clear advantage over her, being able to surround her and move around freely. You’re in a forest, there are trees, shrubs, foliage, bogs, rocks, logs, vines, a whole assortment of stuff that you could use to your advantage. And if you do stay in the clearing, having a weapon with a longer reach would certainly be better then having two weapons with shorter reach. Plan your battles, regardless of the knowledge that the story would make you lose it in the end, try to think of the best way to use the skills you have and turn them into advantage over your opponent.

WRITING STYLE – 7

Both of you are good storytellers and good writers and I generally had no trouble reading through your posts. There were a couple of times that I had to reread the sentence to realize what was going on, but such instances were rare and generally I enjoyed reading your work. Your descriptions are generally vivid and easily imagined and neither of you suffer from either overwriting yourself or being too brief. But despite this balance there are a couple of details that jump out here and there.

Ira, on a lot of occasions you are trying to say too much in one sentence. This consequently makes you use a lot of commas, creating run-on sentences that are hard to follow and break the flow of your writing. For example: “Then it all began to melt away, the blue sky began grey and the forest around her, though in the Physical World beautiful and alive, was nothing more than leafless trees with, gnarled hands reaching out for any scrap of flesh or clothing and gaping holes that looked like tormented facing screaming back at her in an never ending cycle of misery waiting for the simple relief of rotting away.”

This could’ve easily been: “Then it all began to melt away. The blue sky began to grey and the forest around her, though beautiful and alive in the Physical World, was nothing more then leafless trees. Gnarled hands reached out for any scrap of flesh or clothing and gaping holes looked like tormented faces screaming back at her in a never ending cycle of misery, waiting for the simple relief of rotting away.”

Personally, I think that last part after a comma is a bit too much description because the image is more then clear already. So don’t be afraid of shortening your sentences. Other then that, my biggest problem was the one sentence paragraphs. While I have nothing against them and I use them myself, they are perfect for describing a moment that is a peak of some thought, amplifying its importance. But if used too often, it loses the power to get the message across. You have a couple of typos here and there, mistake its and it’s here and there, but it’s not something that happens too often.

Valentine, though you have a run-on sentence or two as well, it’s not as severe as with Ira. You do, however, have a tendency to miss a word in your sentence from time to time. This is something that could easily be remedied with proofreading. For example: “Kadarus watched its trajectory, it was aimed perfectly at her belly button was supposed to be and there was no way that she would dodge it.” This was probably supposed to be: “Kadarus watched its trajectory, it was aimed perfectly at where her belly button was supposed to be and there was no way that she would dodge it.”

Other then that and, as in Ira’s case, the occasional typos that happen once per post on average, there is nothing that really worth of mentioning.

RISING ACTION – 5

This is something I had trouble scoring. On one hand, the thread started off with a bang, a conflict between the two that really revealed a lot of their characters. The only problem was that the conflict was so emotional and significant, that it made the rest of the thread rather bland, making it go slope downwards slowly. The battle with the centaurs was a nice try to fix that, but I felt like the battle was there because you needed something that would elevate the tension in the thread. So while there was enough of action, it didn’t actually rise gradually until the climax, but rather just exploded, wound down, exploded again, then wound down some more. Also, I got a feeling that Kade’s story about Ira being “the one” or whatever was something you two put in there because you wanted to add some depth to the entire encounter. It’s not a bad thing, but I found no trace of this in Kade’s history, so I got a feeling that it was just something you thought up to create some unnatural connection between your characters. Anyways, try to create more of a build up to the scenes that are the important for the story.

DIALOGUE – 7

This was generally well done. Though at times your dialogue seemed forced – like in the cave where Ira, out of nowhere, mentioned she was going to Underwood – it mostly stayed true to your characters and seemed natural. I especially liked Ira’s conversation with the girl in the beginning. I think that through that dialogue you introduced your character better then any description could. I found Kadarus a bit too chatty at times, given the fact that he’s the silent murderer type, but it didn’t deviate from his character too much so I didn’t dock points for it.

CLIMAX – 7

Well, first we have to see what the climax really was. I think there were two points in the thread that were like mini-climaxes, the first being Kadarus breaking down in the Purgatory, the second being the fight with his old self as he observed Ira getting her ass kicked by the centaurs. And while the first one was rather confusing and a bit implausible to me, the second one seemed to fit the story a lot better. Despite the perversion of the scene where Kade ravages Ira’s lifeless body, I think that was the peak of the thread, where Kade succumbed to his old self and then snapped back from it as much as he could. Unfortunately, as good as the climax really was, it held little meaning to Ira. While Kade is breaking down, writhing on the ground naked (the nakedness felt a bit redundant though), Ira was merely there to facilitate his breakdown. That’s why this is a 7, and not higher.

CHARACTER – 8

Now this is the thing I had most trouble scoring, more trouble then the Rising Action. On first sight, both characters seemed to stay true to themselves, Kade being a ruthless killer and Ira being the independent self-sufficient woman, and your writing reflects that nicely. And I could even understand the whole conflict with himself that consequently leads to him rescuing Ira from certain death. But in between all of that there are details that stand out. In the battle with Ira, Kade goes from being a boogieman to a wimp in like one post. He takes three strikes with his katana and falls down and then, out of nowhere, because of some prophecy, he strips himself naked and kisses her feet. And then, snap, back from the Purgatory and to his old prick self. Ira, on the other hand, contemplates on whether to kill him or leave him in Purgatory, and between the two she chooses to comfort the man that just tried to kill her. Then later on, even though she knows he – a man that obviously doesn’t like her a whole lot – is following her, she doesn’t confront him. I just found these fluctuations a bit strange and unexplained, but despite them, I think this was the best part of the thread.

CONCLUSION – 7

Not rushed, but nothing exceptional either. It would’ve looked better if you wrapped it up with a post each instead Ira posting one longass post, but generally it tied up loose ends and didn’t end with a sex scene that Colin tends to have at least one per thread. It missed a bit of panache that would subtly explain what this encounter meant to them, especially Ira, but it’s not necessary.

WILD CARD – 7

I’m in a happy place right now. This was an interesting read and Germany won today, so I gave out a 7.


TOTAL – 67

Congratulations.


Ira Shinkara receives 700 EXP and 100 GP
Valentine receives 1400 EXP (due to level difference) and 100 GP

[Thoracis]

Rewards Added!