Fiery Furnace

[NekoButcher]

(Closed)

The train rolled on through the cold, clickity clack, clickity clack, clickity clack. Its sound was monotonous, dull and boring. As Pounder looked out the window onto the vast expanse of snow that lay before him, he wondered if he would go to St. Denebriel’s Cathedral again when he arrived in Knife’s Edge. He had been their one time before, two years ago, when he was feeling at his lowest. He had killed, cheerfully and without mercy, and he was wondering what he was becoming. Now he knew, he was a nomad, unwelcome ever to return to Alerar.

Pounder tried not to think too much about it as he caught one of the last trains leading for Salvar. Given the news he’d heard about the brewing Civil War, he was surprised that even this train ran. There were very few passengers even now. Pounder preferred that. If a member of the Kyorl or the Mazzra recognized him, the large feline knew that things could get ugly. There were only so many exits on a train, so many places that were soft enough to jump to from a moving train, and only so many opportunities to escape.

Thus, as the train reached a screeching halt, the former butcher’s hair stood on end and he instinctively reached for his dagger. “Shit…” he thought, biting down on his lip. “Someone’s identified me…” He looked around, there weren’t too many people nearby, and he hadn’t remembered seeing anyone leave his car. “But who…”

Pounder knew he was going to need an escape plan, he just didn’t know exactly who from. In Alerar, he had been fortunate enough to meet a maniacal dark elf who had no qualms with slaughtering her own kind. Pounder doubted that he would meet another like her on a train.

Soon, the car startled to rattle. Pounder got up, but practically fell immediately after. He grabbed onto his seat and looked out the window. There were people rattling the car. “It’s not Alerar after me…” he realized. “It’s even worse!” He had no idea why there was going to be this sudden assault on the train, but he assumed that it had something to do with the rumors of the Civil War that he had been hearing about.

Immediately, Pounder sheathed his iron dagger and then made his way out into the center of the aisle. He cleared his throat and began to speak to the other passengers, many of whom were too busy panicking to even look out the window.

“It looks like we’re under attack,” he said, in slow Tradespeak so even those less familiar with the language could understand him. “I don’t know who by, or what for, but it seems someone’s after us. I suggest running, and I suggest doing it together. If we’re not careful, then we will end up dead.”

He looked around at the people in the car. None of them looked like fighters. Pounder shook his head. What he had thought was the boon of a few people around him had suddenly transformed itself into a curse.

[Karuka]

Karuka hadn't really decided on taking the train for any particular reason. Maybe she was just tired of walking, and where ever the train was going was a good enough destination. So long as it was quiet. The little red-head had had quite her fill of adventure, and was hoping for a few months of peace and quiet, just wandering around. The gentle bumps of the train as it rolled through Salvar, its plush seats and its inexpensive but good food seemed to reassure her that it was all right, for once in her short life.

Of course, all her hopes were dashed when a group of people started shaking the train. It went back and forth, at first gently, but with growing force. This had taken her day from quite good to really bad in the space of about three seconds, and she was really tired of having to take crap from random strangers everywhere she went.

The crowd sounded hostile, although she couldn't understand some of the words they used. It just sounded like a mob, but she could hear sonorous voices directing the crowd. It sounded as though a government or religious body had a reason to try and stop the train. Permanently.

As the train rocked harder, Karuka took a good pinch each of saltpeter and brimstone, putting it into a small vial and then pouring a couple of ounces of oil into it. Tucking a quickly-made wick into the side, she corked it tightly, ready to light and throw it at a moment's notice. She knew from experience in Dheathain that this was a very deadly sort of weapon.

She barely heard Pounder's instructions over the din, but he seemed to be advocating a plan of escape. It didn't seem to be a very good plan, all the stampeding would lead to confusion and make the whole mass an easy target.

Standing up, she raised her voice.

"Everyone move to the back of the train! Able-bodied fighters to the front and back, women with small children to the middle! If you have a child, keep hold of it!"

The two different people trying to take command confused the twenty or so other people in the car, and the train's violent rattling only seemed to make everyone more frightened and unwilling to do what was necessary to save their own lives, so Karuka stormed out into the aisle.

"MOVE! NOW!"

[NekoButcher]

Pounder cringed immediately when he heard the read haired girl. “Great,” he thought sarcastically. “Someone wants to be a hero…” The older cat man had not alluded the Alerarian army just to end up protecting a group of strangers he hardly knew on a train. Still, he could tell that no one was fleeing. They were all listening to the girl over him.

The cat man scowled. He was hoping to find a way to insert himself into the middle of the pack of fleeing passengers, using the others as shield for his escape. Now, that the red haired girl had destroyed that option for him, he began to consider whether her plan could work. He looked out the windows again. There was a mess of rioters, at least three times as many as there were people on the train.

“She’s probably one of those hero types,” Pounder figured. “One of those Princess Valiants’ that think the whole world is going to bow down to them just because they’re good. Fools the lot of them. The ones that survive come around.”

Since it seemed that the there would be no option but to join the forces that were collecting to fight the mob, Pounder made his way over towards the red haired girl. He thought about saying something to her, but decided not to. It was about then that all the rocking stopped. Pounder cringed. He could sense what was about to happen next.

“Grab something,” he said. “Something big.”

For his part, Pounder lay down on the seat nearest to him and hugged it. Mere seconds after he had hugged the seat, the cat man could feel that the train beginning to tip over. Luggage began to fall, causing Pounder to hold onto his seat that much tighter. He cringed as he heard the cries of fellow passengers, realizing that meant there would be fewer fighters on his side. Despite what was left of his quickly fraying conscience, Pounder hoped that if anyone was killed, it would be the women and children who would have been useless in battle.

Given how he was placed, Pounder’s feet were now practically on the ground. The train car had tipped over so that he was now standing upright by having lain vertical earlier. He let go of the seat and looked out towards the car door in the back. People in the mob were beginning to pound on it, and it wouldn’t be long before they broke the steel door down.

“We need to escape now…” he said, repeating himself. “Any chance we had in a fight is lost.” He began to climb up on top of the seat he had clutched to, grunting slightly as he pulled himself up. “Move out through the windows up there…”

The pounding on the doors continued. As Pounder pulled himself up towards the window now located at what passed for a ceiling, he could see that the mob had managed to make the first set of dents into the car door.

[Karuka]

As the car began to tip over, Karuka's first reaction was to grab a toddler that had panicked and slipped away from its mother's grasp. She held it tightly, bracing them with her staff.

As the world righted, there was absolute chaos. The mob was still pounding at them, passengers were screaming and running around brainlessly, and chairs were starting to fall into the aisle and on top of people. It was starting to look like a hopless situation.

Not while I yet breathe.

The child's mother had been just behind her, and Karuka handed off the little screaming blonde and shoved the mother toward the back of the car. She didn't have much of a plan, but if she could get out, there probably weren't more than fifty assailants.

Granted, she'd only barely come out of a fight against thirty with some help from a very skilled friend and three bombs, and she didn't have that here. But she did have determination, courage, and something to protect. Even if it was just a two-year old whose name she didn't know.

"All right, then," she muttered, thrusting the head of her staff through a window. The glass shattered outward with a satisfactory crash, and the red-head jumped up to grab the sill as people swarmed away from the door, trying to evade capture for as long as possible.

She struggled out, ignoring the glass she brushed against - it was deflected by her vlince clothing, anyway. Two dozen or so were hanging by the door a mere stone's throw away, a licentious mob licking its chops for the sweet meat within.

Not today, boys.

With a flick of her striker, she lit the wick on her explosive. It was the only one she'd made, so it'd have to do a great amount of damage. Not that explosives were her only method of defense.

As the wick started burning, Karuka tossed her vial as hard as she could, and just before it hit the ground it exploded in the middle of the mob. She saw four hit the ground dead, and another seven too wounded to fight. A few more were slightly wounded and on fire, but not enough to incapacitate them.

Hearing the passengers flee out the back of the train, Karuka gave the mob a feral grin. They'd be on her pretty quick, but she'd make them pay.

She spotted a priest shouting directions, and grabbed one of her kunai from her belt, throwing it at him. He didn't see the thing coming until it was too late, and it hit him in the eye with a gush of blood and ichor.

The mob was rushing at her, and she held up her staff, braced for what would definitely be a fight to sing of later.

[NekoButcher]

The moment Pounder heard the explosion, he knew he wanted to stay with the red haired girl, at least until he could have gotten access to her explosives. He knew, as an older man, a test of endurance in the expanses of Salvar wouldn’t be something he could survive on his own. His knee had been injured in his battles with the Kyorl, and it would always give him pain in particularly cold weather. Already, the Salvarian winds danced in through all the holes in the car, creating a deep, uneasy chill through the place.

Pounder hated it, the sudden interconnectedness that bound him to these people he neither cared for nor expected to ever see again. He hated the irony that the one who would perhaps be the most responsible for his survival was also the least dependable, the auburn haired girl who seemed to have little regard for her own safety and far too much for being a hero. Still, Pounder made his way down from the climb he was attempting, and instead began to calculate a plan to the new reality of the situation.

“Just don’t get why she’s so caught up in not running…” Pounder thought. “Doesn’t she realize that she’s going to get in trouble if she stays around too long. There are more of them than there are of us, and explosives need to be saved.

Instead of leaping into the fray like a few more excited warriors, Pounder was glad that his weapon of choice, the crossbow, gave him a perfect opportunity to hang back. The seat provided an excellent source of cover. Bolted to what once was the floor, it provided Pounder with a buffer both from frontal attacks and ones to his most vulnerable side. “If only I could reach over,” he thought regretfully. Even so, he fancied his chances.

The occasional hitman loaded the first bolt into his crossbow as he looked out on the madness. He could tell that none of the rioters had noticed him yet, and he took advantage of that. Not that they were armed with projectile weapons anyways, but Pounder’s intuition was always to anticipate the worst. He didn’t know if any of them would have had a projectile weapon handy to throw in his direction.

“Maybe I shouldn’t shoot at all,” the experienced hitman considered. His ammunition was scarce, and he knew that the more bolts he used now, the less he could use when he was on his own and really needed them. With his face formed into a tight line of consternation, he looked out on the red haired girl and the others who had more eagerly taken to the fight. They were all fools, and Pounder felt no obligation to sustain their existence, and yet as he looked at the crowd breaking into the car, and their shock at losing one of their priests, the hitman knew that if he had an opportunity to kill an important figure, then he had to take it. “Only way to cripple them,” he decided.

Pounder waited calculatingly and the moment that he saw another man decked in ceremonial robes, he pressed the trigger. He smiled as the bolt hit right in the middle of the forehead. That was, after all, the benefit of waiting till he saw the whites in his enemy’s eyes.

[Karuka]

There hadn't just been fifty of them. There'd just been fifty of them for any given car. Up and down the train, the battle was raging, but the odds seemed hopeless. There were hordes of fanatics against a handful of confused and frightened passengers. This had never been supposed to happen. There was no reasoning behind it.

It's a random world, random things will happen.

The past few minutes had been spent in an intense fight with multiple opponents. She saw so many limbs and weapons flying around her that she forgot that most of them were the ghostly ones that had yet to happen and was just reacting to everything she could.

Her premonitions had kept her from being gutted so far, but there were too many; for every man she knocked unconscious, ten more swarmed her as other fighters fell. She almost wished that she had a better offensive weapon, but she was sure she was better off with her staff. It was weapon and shield in one.

Of course, you can only expect things to go so well when you're fighting too many people at once, and so one man managed to get behind Karuka and strike her hard on the shoulder. A powerful electric discharge ran through the red-head's body at this contact, and she fell, twitching.

She had no control over any of her muscles, and so she watched helplessly as a sword plummeted down toward her throat. There was a sudden flash and a loud, thunderous roar that split the wide rolling plains, making everyone look up. A great blue feline had appeared, spots and whorls decorating its powerful frame and primal hunger sharpening its teeth.

The first thing it did was swipe its massive paw over Karuka, battering the men away from its temporary master. Some of them hit other men with such force that neither could have possibly survived the impact. But that was just the beginning. Leaping into the horde of religious freaks, the Guardian of the Liviol Sanctum started ripping and slashing, biting and stomping, as though the people were mice for his pleasure.

Karuka took advantage of the confusion and panic inspired by the suddenness and unexpectedness of her old friend's appearance by getting her muscles back under control, standing up and punching one of the mob that was shocked into stillness by the cat's actions. He looked at her stupidly, bringing his weapon to bear, but she backhanded him with the bracelet she'd been given as a gift. One of the spikes hit him right in the eye with a sickening SPLORK!

She dimly heard yelling from the far side of the train, a couple of men urging passengers to flee west, away from the attackers. That was good, that way, the most lives could be saved. It was just her job, and the job of her fellow fighters, to give them as big a head start as they possibly could.

She looked at the carnage going on in front of her as a final, triumphant roar rumbled over the landscape and the cat shook before vanishing into the air. Almost eighty bodies littered the ground, just from the beast's rampage. The screams of the wounded and dieing sent chills down her spine, but moreso when more screams started, and people started slapping at themselves. Karuka didn't know what was happening, but she knew that the carnage was just continuing.

She was temporarily in the clear, so she knelt down, stuffing quite a bit of saltpeter and sulfur into another vial, pouring in some oil, wetting a scrap of cloth and stuffing it in with a cork. When the charge resumed, she'd be able to take out several more.

But soon it would be in her best interests to run with everyone else.

[NekoButcher]

The moment that Pounder saw the giant cat, he knew it was his time to run. As the rioters grew thicker, he had been fearing he had passed up his best opportunity for escape. Now, thanks to the magic of a very powerful girl, he felt as though his chances were considerably better. Not waiting like the other warriors that were standing by the red haired girl’s side, Pounder used the commotion being caused by the giant cat to escape.

First, he climbed up onto the seat so that he could reach up and grab the seat above. It was a bit difficult, the seat was a bit taller than him, and even for a hitman trained as well as pounder, it took a good deal of his strength to pull himself up to a point where he could reach the seat above him. He managed to do that well enough, ignoring a woman pleading that he take her baby with him. He had enough trouble holding the crossbow he needed for survival without adding someone’s kid.

“This isn’t charity…” he thought snidely. “Get red head to blow a hole somewhere else…” Once he had dug his claws into the cushion of the seat above him, he needed both of his hands just to pull himself up towards the window that was now directly above of him. It was a grunting struggle, and Pounder was grateful for the giant cat that afforded him the opportunity.

Others, more kind than Pounder, were helping up the children incapable of carrying themselves up to the top of the train, so by the time the older hitman had carried himself up through the window that had once been on the train’s side, he found there were more children there than able bodied fighters. Shaking his head, he cringed. “I pick the one damn train full of these damn do gooders…” he lamented.

“You need to help us!” one of the few adults called out to Pounder before he even had time to catch his breath. The hitman looked up to see the man who was calling to him. He was a strapping young man in his twenties and carried a large broadsword on his back. If he had been more inclined to be sarcastic, the feline might have suggested that this muscular man had enough strength to spare.

Pounder scowled, but he realized that he had little choice. He moved gingerly on his knee that didn’t bend properly, just so that the expectations on his help would be limited . “Sure,” he said. “I’ll offer what I can.”

The hitman smiled as he began to help lift up people from the windows, helped all the time by the man who had called him.

“It’s good of you to help with your injury,” he said. “My name is Markham.”

Pounder just continued to smile.

[Karuka]

Karuka stood, braced for the charge, ready to light and throw her explosive at any second. Hopefully the car would be clear before the main body mowed the defenders over.

The train shook as hundreds of feet pounded down its length, and as the cars cleared ahead of her, fellow defenders retreated, some opting to run as well. They were in luck, though.

From the back, a man's voice called out to Karuka and the handful of men at her side. "We're clear! Let's start to retreat!"

The men standing with her fled, but Karuka stayed. She watched them advance, yard by yard, and when they were almost within throwing range, she lit her bomb and threw it hard before leaping down and running herself.

She felt the heat on the back of her neck before she heard the catastophic BOOM of the grenade. This was her most devastating yet, she'd packed so much explosive powder into the vial.

She was stunned as a second, larger explosion rocked the train, powerful enough to throw her down and send bodies flying. The explosions continued, eleven in all, the train's great engine going so hard that it lit the landscape near it in a violent conflagration.

The scent of burning flesh and hair was overpowering, and as Karuka picked herself up to keep running, she saw why.

A smoldering priest lay not far from her, clearly dead. On his ring finger she saw something sparkling, a ring with a large gem in the center.

It's probably significant, somehow...

If it would help her and the victims survive until they reached the next town, it was worth stealing from a dead man, and she grabbed it off his finger, slipping it onto her left middle finger as she continued to run. She didn't know how many survivors there were or how far it was until the next town, only that it would be a long, dangerous, and difficult journey, slowed by little and old legs. But she had to stick with the group as long as possible.

[NekoButcher]

After having got a few other children through the top of the train, Markham prepared to run. “We’ll start moving them down,” he said, looking at Pounder as if he needed confirmation of the plan. “You get down there, and I’ll throw some of the smaller kids to you…”

For once, Pounder was benefiting from one of the few benefits of his race that he maintained. Despite the distance to the ground, he leapt onto the cold ground and landed well, on all fours. With a bemused smile, he looked around him. The ground, was not snowed on, but it was cold and hard with winter. In a stroke of good fortune most likely caused by the girl with the giant cat, there were no rioters around. Acknowledging this bit of luck, the hitman stayed long enough to catch the first child that Markham threw down to him.

He sighed and caught more children, helped down old women and even some younger warriors who were nervous about the fall. Pounder helped them all, given the situation, though he particularly loathed helping the dark elves. Many times he considered fleeing, but each time, he decided against it, knowing that he would need to rely on people like Markham and the red head for his survival, and that if he went off abandoning the children, he would be on his own. Grudgingly, he continued, though he wished there was a way to seeing what was going on in the train.

After what seemed like far too long, Markham called down to the rest of the train. “We’re clear! Start to retreat!” The large muscular man dropped down next to Pounder and grabbed his shoulder. “Come mate,” he said. “Let’s run!”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Pounder thought to himself.

Seconds later, there was an explosion, an explosion much louder and ferocious than the first. Cries of pain echoed through the area, but it was impossible to tell if they were rioters or passengers from other cars.

The catman paid them little mind. He just watched with wide eyes as the engine, tilted on its side, careened out of control. Searching for cover, he cursed the fact the landscape was so flat that there was nothing for him to hide behind. “Even just a snowbank…” he thought as his gait turned more panicked. “Damn its Salvar… if it’s going to be this cold, some snow for cover would have been nice!”

Eventually, he had moved far enough from the train that he could catch his breath. There was nothing but a wide expense of plain between him and the train, but the distance was enough for any bits of debris. Pounder could see that there were a few that hadn’t been so lucky, the only thing that littered the ground other than the plants that died in the cold were corpses from the train.

“Shame, isn’t it?” Markham said, looking on the carnage. Pounder had to agree.

[Karuka]

The sound of a scream to Karuka's left caught her attention, and she saw a woman writing on the ground, hit by a piece of shrapnel. It was a death she was responsible for, and the only one so far that tugged at her heart.

"Please! My baby!"

As much as she wanted to keep running from the fire that was practically licking at her heels, Karuka stopped and knelt by the woman, the same woman who had lost her toddler at the beginning of all the chaos. She still held the screaming toddler, but now she held her out to Karuka.

"Please! She has an aunt in Knife's Edge by the name of Katherine Monsted. Please..."

Gathering the baby in her arms, Karuka nodded. "I'll get your child to her aunt...be at peace...be at peace."

She didn't have the time to see to the woman's wounds, or even sit with her as she died. She merely held the child and kept running.

Twenty minutes later there was no pursuit, and the running band of survivors was stumbling across the plains toward a distant clump of woods. There were all too few young and strong survivors, just herself, a man in his mid twenties named Markham, and a handful more.

Karuka's two-year-old had quieted, too little to understand what had just happened, and now she rode in a dazed silence on the red-head's back, despite the offer of the muscular Markham to carry the little one. This one, little Meg, was her charge.

"We need someone who knows the land. Hopefully there's a river somewhere near here, and a shelter where we can see who's injured and how badly. We need people who can hunt to scout for food, we have a lot of mouths to feed. We need those who can fight to be on guard, we'll need rotating shifts at night. We only have a few strong enough to fight, so we can't afford to wear them out. We also need women who can't fight to mind what children and elderly there are. Everyone looks out for everyone, that way we all stand the best chance."

Unbidden, lessons that Karuka had listened to during her childhood while the boys had been trained as warriors and defenders of her hometown came to mind and out of her lips, and all of it was met with a sort of respectful chuckle by Markham.

"You know a lot for such a harmless-looking girl, Missy Karuka. I know the land well enough, there's a river only a couple of miles north of here. We can get all set up there."

Karuka nodded, shifting Meg slightly as the toddler fell asleep. That plan seemed good to her.

[NekoButcher]

So the girl who was making things much more complicated than they needed to be was named Karuka. Pounder stood by Markham as the two do-gooders spoke to each other and cursed the way that it seemed the rest of the group looked up to them as leaders. With a face taught with displeasure, he shivered slightly, making no efforts to conceal his weaknesses now that he had found that between Karuka and Markham, they were more likely than not to be perceived as strengths.

“We should start moving now though…” he said. “It is only a matter of time before someone, anyone comes to finish up what was started. I don’t know what these people want, I’m not a particularly political person, but riots don’t just come out of nowhere. There are always more rioters, more people that are angry. Let’s not delay.”

Since they had already resolved that they would head towards the river, Pounder went along with the group. Again, he felt torn between two decisions. Going by the river would make sense, from a standpoint of getting oriented, but at the same time, they were strangers in a strange land, and it seemed that political turmoil was heating up. Pounder didn’t know if they were being assaulted because the mob was bloodthirsty, or because of their race, because they were not deeply involved with the Salvic church or even if they just happened to end up on the wrong train by chance.

Regardless, he knew that moving to a river was a bad idea. The closer they were to water, to the supposed ‘civilization’ of Salvar, the more likely they were to be detected. Perhaps people like Karuka and Markham were operating under the assumption that the rest of Salvar was bound to help them, and while they might have been right, Pounder found it highly doubtful. There was just too much uncertainty, he thought it was best they conserve whatever martial resources they had in order to fight when necessary. Perhaps once they got to Knife’s Edge, things would be different, but until then, Pounder didn’t want to be overrun by an unruly country mob.

However, he knew that most people wouldn’t listen to him. They would head to the river because Markham had suggested it. Grudgingly, he complied, but only because he had determined that the powers of the group he was traveling were enough that his chances of survival with them were better than apart. He only hoped that nothing happened at the river.

[Karuka]

It wasn't so much a river as a shallow creek that was about five yards wide. They couldn't stay long, but it would give them a chance to refresh themselves and clean wounds. Fortunately, the ones worst wounded had wounds readily washed out and stitched up, and there were a few minor burns from the explosion.

All told, out of about two hundred and fifty passengers, fewer than a hundred remained. Of those, most were women and children; when push came to shove, their husbands and sons of fighting age had chosen to protect the weaker members of their families, and had fallen doing so.

The fact that she'd helped slow down and take out the mob had spared the rest their lives, for the moment, but the victory was only bittersweet. Too many lives had been lost. It was too big a fight. Now she could just hope to get the majority of the people to the next town, and the tot that she'd left with one of the women to her aunt in Knife's Edge. It was more responsibiity than she'd ever had in her life, and she was glad that there was someone to share it with.

When everyone was taken care of and had had some water, a scout led the group to a sheltered area to spend the night, since darkness was drawing on soon and the adrenaline rush of earlier had left most of the able-bodied fighters exhausted.

The few people that had any sort of food were more than willing to share it, but it wasn't enough for everyone. Markham gathered what there was to feed the children, while Karuka asked for volunteers to go out and hunt.

When the hunters left, she and a few women started weaving branches together into mats so they could have a barricade against the wind. They wouldn't be able to make big fires, so it was looking to be a very cold night.

There are a couple of wee ones that I'm not sure will make it...and a few of the elderly.

It was going to be the hardest trip of Karuka's life, and of that, the red-head was certain.

[NekoButcher]

Pounder had stayed back instead of joining the hunt. Markham had asked him to go, but Pounder pointed to the knee which he had deliberately been limping with the entire walk to the river and said, in a cleverly manipulative way, that he would be happy to go, but only if they felt that he wouldn’t slow them down. He even offered Markham his crossbow and bolt pouch, though just in case the muscular man had accepted, Pounder had made a point to remove half of his bolts.

Markham, of course, denied. “You’re a good man for even offering,” he said. “And I couldn't take your weapon with me on the hunt and leave you defenseless, it would be almost cruel. It was thoughtless of me to even ask, you’ve been fighting with us this whole time, bum leg and all. Rest up, heal some. Talk to one of the women when they’re done with what they’re doing, and one of them will bandage it for you.”

Concealing a sinister grin, Pounder just nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re very understanding.”

Shortly after the hunting party had left, Pounder began to regret staying back. It wasn’t that his conscience was causing him pains as much as he wondered if he would be getting a proper meal. Even someone like Markham was bound to make sure he was fed before bringing the rest of the food back to camp. And for someone like Pounder who had no qualms eating raw meat when necessary, it would have been much easier for him to get his fill. When the food had been passed around to be shared the first time, the cat man hadn’t received any.

With the temperature as it was, the older catman wondered if there was any point to fishing in the river. He definitely didn’t want to fish the way that was most common for his people, by dipping into the river and clawing at what he could find, but he imagined between all the twine being thrown around, he could have rigged up something with a spare canvas to catch some fish. Once he looked into the rippling water, he abandoned that plan. He was more like to lose whatever cloth went into the fishing than he was to get any food.

Now, with no plan for food other than to hope for Markham’s munificence, Pounder made his way to Karuka, just to see if the girl had any ideas that he hadn’t thought of. Making sure to limp visibly on his long since healed knee, he approached her, waving gently as he made his way towards her. “Hello,” he offered. “My name’s Pounder, I wanted to thank you for what you did back there.” He offered a polite smile and extended his hand out towards her.

[Karuka]

Karuka had been watching the cat-man as much as she'd been watching everyone else. She'd watched even more intensely when she noticed that he was the only adult that wasn't willing to pull his weight. Even the littlest children were helping out, gathering twigs and sticks for fires or stuffing leaves into the branch mats that everyone was making.

Maybe he had hoped to curry her favor or her sympathy by coming over to introduce himself, but Karuka wasn't having any of it. She'd risked her life for him and all the others, and if he was going to be deadweight to an already weak band of refugees, he was either going to shape up or be left behind.

She took his paw firmly, shaking it in her own calloused hand. "Karuka."

She leaned down, getting closer so that she could speak quietly enough that only he could hear her. "That's not a fresh wound. It's old, and you know how to maneuver around it. I've seen men with wounds like yours, but I've never seen them so cowardly as to try and use an old wound to shirk work. If you won't hunt, help weave mats for shelter. If you won't do that, stand watch. But you will work, or you will not eat. EVERY person in this band must to his or her fair share, or everyone will suffer. I'd sooner expel someone who won't than watch the rest suffer, and you stand a better chance with the group than alone. What will it be, Pounder?"

She let go of his hand as a woman approached her with a question, and left him to think of it as she went off to keep working to set up their camp site. She needed to keep the others as warm as possible during the night, but having fires would be dangerous after sundown.

Even worse, clouds were gathering, and it smelled like snow. Things were starting to go from bad to worse, and they had at least a full day's march after what would be a long, cold night out in the open.

[NekoButcher]

Pounder’s eyes narrowed darkly as Karuka spoke to him. He was simultaneously enraged and offended, enraged at her audacity and offended with the way that she called his integrity into question. There were many things he wanted to say in reply to her, but he held himself back. She had no right to speak that way, and had they not been in a more public place, Pounder might have slapped her in the face.

As it was, he held back, but took a long look at her while he thought of what he would say one day, when he looked over her broken, bloody body. After he had calmed down just enough to say something without threatening her, Pounder turned to Karuka again. “I will keep watch,” he said. “It is one of the few things I can do effectively with my knee. If you knew old injuries like you said you did, you’d know one like this doesn’t ever go away. The pain might disappear in times of need out of necessity, but it never leaves. That’s something you might want to think about Karuka, things that never leave…”

With that, Pounder was content that he had said as much as was prudent to say. He looked around at the women and children closely, debating whether or not there were any of them that were unattached enough that he could have picked them off should he have deemed it necessary. While Pounder wasn’t a cannibal himself, he had sold enough human flesh that he hardly found the prospect of eating it in a time of necessity hardly unappealing.

Still, Pounder supposed he shouldn’t complain too much. The expectation, at its base, was relatively reasonable, though Pounder thought angrily that no one would have thought the same way if he had told a kid that the either pulled themselves up or that they didn’t get saved. But he reminded himself, the job wasn’t so bad. Given his fur, keeping watch would hardly be an issue, even if he remained outside. Also, it gave him the advantage of being able to flee if necessary. He doubted that Karuka had considered this, but after the way she had spoken to him, she was not going to get an early warning.

With that, Pounder settled into a post he had made for himself by the north end of camp, the direction that Markham and the rest had gone off hunting. He looked up at the sky once he was settled in just to get a grasp of the weather. It looked like it was starting to snow. Reflexively, the older cat man shuddered. His only solace would be that Karuka would weather it worse than he would.

[Karuka]

She could see the hatred in his eyes as he watched her, could see it seethe beneath his skin as he stalked away. He probably understood the need for the structure they were enforcing upon him, but he resented the fact that it was being enforced. He had probably taken her for the same sort of optimist as Markham, but had instead crossed a cynic.

Well that's tough potatoes. I didn't see him fighting, although Markham said he helped with evacuation. He limped too badly to keep up like he did. And then a threat for demanding he be a useful member of the group? I'd like to see him try...

The old man may have been little and quick, but Karuka was still young, spry, strong, and better equipped.

Their little clearing was almost starting to look like a hut as the mats went up against the chill wind. It would only help to keep them warm, not garuntee it, and would leave a trail if anyone tried to find them, but that, too, was tough potatoes. Karuka would just have to hope that if a scout party decided to check up on the mob, they would see the damage of the explosion and assume that all the passengers had died in the firey furnace of the burning train.

Any company worth its salt will investigate, though, and we aren't more than five miles away. Too close...but we can't keep these people moving.

Karuka had wrapped her fleece-lined oilskin cloak around an elderly couple who had agreed to look after Meg. They'd left their belongings on the train, and would have frozen otherwise. Karuka had retained her old woolen cloak. It was battered and thread-bare in places, but she was more warmly dressed overall than she had been the previous winter, and it had gotten her safely through that.

As the fires were started and hunters came in one by one, some with food, others empty-handed. All told, there were a few rabbits and a couple of ground birds. Along with some edible tubers that a few women had gathered, there would at least be a few bites of food for everyone. It was much better than nothing, and the meat was set over the fires immediately.

A couple of the boys, an eight and a nine year old came tramping back from the stream. It had been their task to gather water, but they'd left that to the girls and whittled hooks, using weeds as lines and bugs as bait, and they brought in four or five fish, welcome additions to the ration.

Karuka paced anxiously along their flimsy walls, keeping herself occupied by stuffing in more leaves. They were too close to the wreck, too close to the stream, had too few fighters and too many children, mothers, and elderly. The red-head didn't know what on that train had been so important that they'd rally a mob and kill innocent children for, but it had to have been important.

Or maybe they were trying to get a point across. From what I've heard of it, the Church of the Ethereal Sway is as intolerant of other religions as the Christians back home. The more fear they can instill, the less resistance they'll have...and surely during wartime, they want all the power they can muster.

It was sickening. It was beyond sickening, and when the red-head shivered, it wasn't just from the cold. If the Church had been trying to make a point, the all too large and weak band of travelers might be looking at attack even before the dawn.

[NekoButcher]

The snow began to fall. It started relatively light, but it was accompanied by a bitter cold. Pounder had remained at his post through it, not as much out of dedication but because he got a subtle pleasure in freezing if it meant his enemy would as well. He continued to look out over the horizon, and eventually Markham returned with the rest of the hunting party. They didn’t have much, as far as food was concerned, it was clear they came back because they were afraid of being lost in the snow.

“Keeping watch?” Markham asked as he approached Pounder.

Pounder nodded. His first intuition was to answer with a simple nicety, but he soon thought of a much better, more elaborate plan. “Yeah,” he began. “I knew someone needed to do it. They were going to send this red haired girl to do it, but I recognized her immediately and was somewhat reluctant. While we were on the train together, before any of this ever happened, she was sitting near me, and while I could be wrong, I think I heard her earlier praying to the Ethereal Sway.”

Markham’s eyes opened widely. “Even if she does hold the beliefs of the zealots, she stayed with us so far, so we shouldn’t be too quick to judge,” he offered.

“Perhaps,” Pounder replied. He had found Markham a bit hard to hear with the stormy winds, but even so, he thought he got a good enough glimpse of what he was saying.

Markham patted him on the shoulder and passed him by. Pounder decided that he would make no effort to go after their food. For the moment, he would wait to see if Markham confronted Karuka. He was almost certain that it would happen. From the way Pounder had seen Markham’s face, he knew it would be a matter of time. There was just something in the look that showed both shock and a feeling of anger at an elaborate deception that suggested, even if Markham’s nature suggested otherwise, the matter would be settled before they went to bed.

“You might as well come with,” Markham turned around to say. “You can barely hear anything with the wind and snow the way it is. If we have fire, you deserve it too…”

Before Pounder could reply, the sounds of horses moving across the ground appeared. They began to sound louder and louder, reminiscent of the railroad’s clickety clack. Pounder shuddered. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he knew that it wasn’t good.

Soon, a group of men, dressed in the warrior priest’s robes of the Church of the Ethereal Sway turned and looked at the group. “We know some of you are innocent,” he said. “But some of you are among the damned.”

Pounder gulped visibly. “How do you decide?” he asked. Secretly, he cursed his luck. He had just spread a rumor that Karuka was the most pious around.

[Karuka]

Karuka had neglected to eat, telling the woman who had tried to feed her that she'd gone longer and harder on no food. A meal would have felt good, but there were others that needed the food more than she did. Nursing mothers, for instance, needed as much food energy as possible, as did frail elders.

It wasn't even sunset when the group burst from the woods, dressed with the same markings as the priests had during the attack on the train. They started inspecting each person, one at a time, for signs of "innocence" or "heresy." One woman who knew what was happening started begging for mercy when they looked at her, but merely got beaten for her trouble. Her son, the nine-year old that had gone for fish, lashed back at the priest in charge.

He grabbed the boy and leveled a dagger at his neck.

"Unrepentant heresy such as this cannot be tolerated. You might think us cruel for killing this little boy, but we will not allow the disease of faithlessness, disrespect and unwholesomeness to continue infecting the people of this nation. Those of you that are yet innocent will be returned home. Those of you who are not will be taken, given a chance to confess and repent, and released. If you resist or are found unrepentant, this is what will happen to you."

The knife raised over the boy's throat, but before it could plunge down, an amber fist struck the priest square in the jaw, knocking him to the ground and away from the boy. Karuka, who had been standing near the temporary wall, toward the end of the line, had broken away from her captors and now stood between the priest and his target, proud and fierce as a tigress protecting her cub. Even as he stood back up, his blue and gray robes rustling softly, his face contorted in anger and lips beginning to form around damning words, she held her ground. Her left wrist turned out to give her spiked bracelet a good chance of hitting if he gave her reason to attack.

A glint on her hand caught his attention though, changing his anger into shock.

"Priestess!"

Karuka blinked. What?

The man grabbed her hand, scrutinizing the ring she'd plucked from the corpse with his intense hazel eyes. Apparently, it was a mark of rank that she'd grabbed without knowing anything about the religion.

"Priestess, why are you here among these heretics?"

Karuka had to think fast, trying to come up with words that sounded right to the ears of a cleric of a religion she knew nothing about. She supposed that innocents, heretics, and infections would just have to be enough.

With an imperious toss of her head, Karuka yanked her hand from the clergyman's grasp, glaring into his heavily jowled face. Since she had the ring, she had his attention...as well as some negative attention from the refugees she'd risked her life to save. Being forced to pose as a priestess was more than a little dangerous on two fronts, but if she was going to save these people, she'd have to accept the risks.

"I am here, Priest, because it was my task to save as many innocents from that train as possible. These people are not your concern, they are mine."

She watched a frown stiffen the priest's jowls. He didn't believe her; the half-brained plan was certain to crumble in a matter of moments.

"Why dressed as such?"

She scoffed slightly, standing up straighter. "Because if I dressed as a priestess among these, I would have no chance to help them safely home. It destroys faith in the hearts of the people to send a mob to murder them."

The priest bit his lip, and Karuka could feel her heart trembling in her chest. It was starting to look like violence would have to start. There were no open fields this time, and they'd made their own walls. Meanwhile, the priest was muttering to himself. All eyes were on him, none of his own men daring to move without his consent. If he was staring down a priestess senior enough to be sent on such a mission, they'd already done enough damage. But he still needed to decide what he believed.

"I didn't hear anything about...what parish did you say you served? What Cathedral?"

This, she knew nothing of. She didn't know where the parish boundaries were or even any cities in Salvar save one. To answer "Knife's Edge" would have meant trouble, she was sure. If only she knew an obscure one...

She set her lips and folded her arms. Since she couldn't answer, she'd either silently stubborn her way out or hope for a miracle. If that failed, the priest before her would die first.

[NekoButcher]

“She serves at the Sulgolov lake Parish,” Pounder interjected. “On the outskirts of Sulgolok, in the farmland there…” He hated to help Karuka out of trouble, but now, it seemed as though he had no choice in the matter. Even though he would have had no problem with her receiving her justice at the hands of the warrior priests, he didn’t know how, without her they could justify their own sanctity.

It was fortunate that Pounder had, in his anger against the Kyorl, had renounced all traces of an Alerarian identity. When he had looked for spiritual counseling, he had gone to Salvar, just because he never felt comfortable feeling vulnerable in the country that had killed his son. While he never considered himself a religious fanatic, he was well enough aware of the religious tenets to help fake Karuka through.

“Please,” he continued. “We mean absolutely no harm. We’re tired and cold and we haven’t eaten in a while. Give us a chance here…”

The leading warrior priest seemed somewhat disappointed with the answer, but only because it had been correct. Pounder knew the look well. He had worn it many times himself. He couldn’t help but think about how he had ended up on the wrong side of the conflict. His personal sympathies were much more like to lie with the church, at least this warrior priest, who seemed to be using the excuses of civil war and piety as a veil for his own angry desires.

Still, there would be no conflict today. The rest of the priests would not kill, with Pounder’s help, Karuka had successfully demonstrated that they were on the same side. Now, Pounder intended to press the advantage. He knew if they were truly warrior priests, even with a Civil War, they would have been honor bound to help a group of travelers under the command of a higher ranked priestess of their order.

“What kinds of transport do you have?” he asked.

“Four wagons where we hold our things,” one of the priests answered. “There are thirty of us in all here, and we can each carry at least one person on our horses with us. Fortunately for all of you, there is a little farm city, a pious city, less than half a mile from here. If you wish, we will take you all there.”

Pounder grinned. Then, before he could accept the offer, the sound of a baby pierced the air. Pounder cringed.

“Let’s see this,” the leader of the warrior priests said. He followed the sounds of the cries to a little oilskin, and picked up the baby. She was quite cute, and had Pounder been paying more attention to Karuka on the train, he would have recognized her as the baby that Karuka had promised would reach Knife’s Edge.

The blood thirsty warrior’s eyes lit up when he saw the child. Even in the rough snowy winds, Pounder could see the murderous glint that had been reignited by the find of the baby. Immediately and discreetly, he began to load his crossbow with the intention of using it the moment the warrior priest said what Pounder expected.

“This child, she carries a curse!” the priest began. He held up the baby in a way, that with the snow, it would have been difficult for anyone to see what he was talking about. “Just above her left shoulder! There is a mark of two vampire teeth! A cursed mark of birth, and people who would house her can only be our enemies! High Priestess, you have shamed me and you have shamed your faith-”

Before the priest could finish, Pounder had landed a bolt right in his eye. The shot had been a somewhat difficult one, but the experienced hitman had considered the child to be an acceptable risk. He knew that the moment the baby was brought into the picture, conflict between them was bound to be inevitable, and he’d wanted to make the first strike count. Now, with the sounds of weapons unsheathing all around him, the feline regretfully awaited the beginning of battle.

[Karuka]

Meg's screams grew louder as Pounder's bolt resulted in ichor and blood splattering over her and her little dress. Normally, Karuka would have rushed over to quiet and soothe her, but there wasn't any time. Now she only had the time to worry about the weapons leveled at her throat, and at the throats of the group she defended.

Thirty warrior-priests, and there were maybe twenty able-bodied warriors among her exhausted gaggle of survivors. True, it was better odds than five hundred against fifty, but this time there wasn't anywhere for the women, children, and elderly to run. She could see a pair of arrows glinting from hidden spots in the woods; the campers would be brightly illuminated for the archers.

Just as she thought that, arrows went whizzing by her head to land in one man's shoulder and an elderly woman's eye. Apparently, one archer was better than the other.

"Pounder!" The voice that cried out to the neko belonged to Markham. "The archers!"

As a body, the other twenty-seven warriors advanced. Karuka threw two knives before the swarm hit, one humming straight into the throat of the lead, mace-wielding bulk of muscle, the other missing entirely and hitting the distant ground with a shff.

Then the swarm hit. Karuka dodged a sword as it slashed down toward her slender neck and backhanded viciously with her left hand, letting the plynt bracelet drive its spikes deep into her attacker's throat. Markham matched swords with another of the attackers, and at the very back, one of the old men had picked up her blood-red staff and was holding off a pair of priests quite deftly.

The clamor of battle filled the clearing, and the tang of blood soon contaminated every breath drawn, breath that had seemed so sweet and clean when the snow had started falling. Screams of the injured, dying, and frightened could be heard over the metallic tattoo of metal on metal.

The Irish red-head hacked and slashed at the front of the line. She'd taken a few blows, including one from a Prevalida knife that had opened her vlince shirt and cut viciously across her back. The pain only seemed to heighten the experience of battle. Never before had her mind been so clear while blood flowed hot through her veins. She could see every blow before it was coming, move fast enough to dodge most of them and move right into the attacker so that she could bathe her mythril daggers in his blood.

THIS was war like her ancestors had experienced it, and she could see why it was glorious to wage war, see it to victory, and die in it. She'd never felt so alive, so energetic, so kinetic and powerful as this.

As her third victim fell lifeless to the ground, Karuka let out a battle-cry as she turned to the next amidst the chaos and the raging blizzard.

[NekoButcher]

The blizzard provided Pounder with everything he needed to escape the first few volleys. It took him only seconds after he’d fired his crossbow to realize that he had put himself in a vulnerable position, and had no problem with turning tail and running until he was safe towards the back of the rampaging hoard. For once, he was glad for Karuka. Because of her, it seemed that the rest of the people seemed to have no problems with throwing their bodies into the middle of a battle.

With the snow flurries, it was easy enough for Pounder to escape. He knew that he could be strategic with his choices now, and that he’d need to be. He might have been a killer, but that didn’t make him a soldier. Once in the clear, he loaded up his crossbow again and began to size up the battle.

In the blizzard, it was hard enough to see anything, and Pounder really wondered what the church’s archers could do. He had heard Markham call out to him earlier to take them down, but he had wanted to get a bit of safety first. When it was all said and done, the cat man figured he’d be able to justify his actions, whatever they were. Now, it was just a priority to survive.

Pounder’s eyes narrowed as he searched the snowy landscape in front of him. He could barely make out people, but the colors of the bloodied, tired passengers were often much darker than the light ones worn by the clerics. It gave Pounder just the edge he needed to make sure that he wasn’t drawing friendly fire.

The only problem was, the feline didn’t know if he was setting himself up to be a target from his enemies by standing so far away from the rest of his group. It would have been difficult for the church archers to really get anyone in the fray without taking on the risk of friendly fire. However, as he stood in the back, he realized he was alone. And by being alone, he was vulnerable.

An arrow careened through the sky, and it whizzed narrowly by Pounder’s ear, confirming his fear. The hitman only waited a second to fire off a bolt before ducking behind some of the firewood that had been collected earlier. From there, he figured he’d be shielded while he attacked. Another two arrows flew into the wood, both of them from different directions.

“They see me better than I see them,” Pounder thought. He fired another bolt in the general direction of one of the archers, hoping that, at the very least it would cause his foe some consternation. He began to search for some way to draw the archers out, make them do something that would cause them to reveal themselves.

Soon, he realized what he needed to do. Wait the arrows out, but keep looking forward. Eventually, if they realized they were hitting firewood, they would use flaming arrows. “If they’re religious types, they have to have holy fires or holy magics or something…” Pounder thought. He kept shooting, but this time, he targeted any member of the Ethereal Sway he could find. He knew he had to at least kill a few of them if he was going to push the archers to use their flaming arrows.

He kept his eyes trained for the first flash of flame. His eyes bore over the battle eagerly, and the moment that he saw it, he fired. Almost immediately after, there was a second flame coming from the other direction. Pounder fired again.

The hitman waited a few seconds to move from his position, but soon it was confirmed. There were no more arrows coming towards him.

[Karuka]

Various projectiles whizzed through the air from different directions. Men dropped on both sides, clerics as well as some of their makeshift defenders. Snow swirled and pelted everyone, as though to encourage the carnage happening on the dead earth by adding its own insatiable violence.

The cold against her exposed skin was all that was keeping Karuka's thoughts even relatively coherent. It was so tempting to just throw herself headfirst into battle and hack away at her enemies until they were all dead or until she was. But each breath, while making steam surround her like an irate dragon's breath, provided a bracing cold that kept her on her toes.

Arrows stopped whizzing past her as she faced off against a wiry man with a slender silvery saber in his hand. His gaze wasn't as warm as the snow that had embedded itself in the red-head's hair and on the tips of her eyelashes, and he seemed visibly repulsed at the fire that flared in her glare.

They circled each other like rival wolves battling for supremacy, one an experienced male with nothing but blind faith spurring him to sweep through the land, ravaging it for all it was worth, the other a vicious female with nothing to gain if she won this battle, but everything to lose if she lost.

Each took a couple of moments to scan the area, looking to see how their respective packs were faring. Karuka saw maybe fifteen members of the Church still fighting on the field, and there were still maybe a dozen refugees fighting. Slowly but surely, her group was coming out ahead. The cold priest knew that as surely as Karuka did, if the sour expression on his face could be translated as anything other than an acute case of indigestion. She matched it with a feral grin, crouching down with her mythril daggers gripped tightly in her hands.

Every muscle in her body was tense, ready to move as soon as he attacked. Every hair stood on end and her heart pounded in her chest. She could almost feel the ground beneath her feet goading her on, and she could smell the blood in the air, even over the snow that her boots disturbed as she moved. Despite her peaceable nature, there was a part of her that lived for moments such as this, where there were no petty arguments, just a winner and a loser. Those that lived and died. It was too deeply ingrained in her blood.

The cleric's blade glinted as he slashed at her face in a tight infinity loop, but she batted the slender sword away as though it were a mere twig. He came at her again and again, each movement precise and graceful, and each time blocked by a crude but effective knife swipe.

It only took Karuka a few seconds to tire of this game, and she rocked backward as his sword slashed in at her face before lunging forward. He had no time to get his blade back into position, and like greedy fangs, her daggers found his neck. His eyes, so frosty and grey, flared with fear for a second before going dark.

"Good luck with your afterlife," she growled, feeling a victorious flare run through her spirit. Numbers were roughly even now, and as Markham slashed into his latest foe, it broke weakly into the refugees' favor. Karuka didn't see Pounder anywhere, but that didn't matter at the moment. Ten to nine were better odds than she'd seen in a long time, but she had to solidify them, and one of the warriors was the old man using her staff. He was tiring, although he had bludgeoned a couple of clerics into unconsciousness and was working on a third.

Seeing Markham go off to the aid of the man nearest him, Karuka charged straight back into battle, moving to help out the old man. The battle wasn't over until it was over, after all...and she wanted it over in her favor.

[NekoButcher]

Pounder was pleased with the way the battle was going, or at least what he could see of it from his vantage point. The smell of spilled blood was getting stronger and stronger, and from what the catman could see, the dark clothes of his allies weren’t falling any faster than the rest. The only thing that could have made him happier was to see Karuka Tida’s head rolling towards him.

From his position, the hitman didn’t know how many kills he had, but he could tell his support had begun to turn into an advantage. When he put his hand over his eyes to look out on the battle, he could see that the priestly soldiers had been more concerned just because they didn’t know where the next bolt would be coming from.

However, Pounder was beginning to worry. He was running out of bolts, and he only had a handful left. He didn’t trust Karuka, and was worried once the fight against the religious group were over, he was going to have to fight her. If she found out that he had told Markham about her ties to the Church of the Etherial Sway, then they were bound to go to war against each other. The catman wanted to wait back and do nothing, but he realized he didn’t have that option. The longer he was to hesitate without involving himself in hand to hand combat, the more cowardly he’d look. Karuka would know he was weak in hand to hand combat, and the rest of the group would desert him.

Thus, Pounder strapped his crossbow across his back and unsheathed his dagger. It wasn’t a particularly elegant melee weapon, but it was the only one that he had. As he moved closer to the battle, he looked on the ground, trying to see if there was a short sword or rapier that would have given him better length, but finding none, he was forced to block the first offending parry with nothing more than his dagger.

It was a last minute reflex that had allowed the catman to get his weapon up in time. He hadn’t expected for the battle to be as fast pace as it was. A second swipe of a shortsword passed narrowly over his head, and the only thing that saved him was probably that in the blizzard, it was too hard to see. Taking advantage of the miss, Pounder tried to drive his dagger forward into the gut of the offender, but all he hit was a steel chest plate. The catman’s fingers began to reverberate with the impact of the blow, and he winced and darted to the side to avoid the next blow.

Now, he didn’t know what to do. He could see fresh corpses of both ally and enemy near him, so much so that he thought there couldn’t have been more than five of each side left. Pounder knew he had to continue, because now he could see, both Markham and Karuka were among the ones alive. His plan was in danger of backfiring, and backfiring badly.

The only thing he could do would try to prove his loyalty to the cause was greater than that of Karuka. She might have seen his true colors, but Pounder knew that Markham trusted them both. There was still a chance at survival, but to get it, the hitman had to do the one thing that came the most naturally to him. He was going to have to get blood on his blade.

Seconds later, he got his chance. Pounder's enemy made the fatal mistake of checking for allies, and that allowed the feline to drive his dagger right in the holy man's throat.

[Karuka]

A few minutes later it was all over. Markham's sword pierced through a chink in the last cleric's mail, and a few moments later he fell, just another corpse on the field. The sounds of battle had quieted, the clash of blades diminished to the groans of the injured and dying, the frightened whimpers of children, and the labored breaths of the wearied victors.

Now that the heat of battle was gone, the cold slashed through Karuka like a bitter blade, and each frozen breath pierced her lungs with a thousand needles. For the first time, the wound on her back started hurting, a hot, throbbing pain that sent trails of blood down her back as they froze.

She grabbed her dirty, battered old cloak from the ground and pulled it around her for a little bit of warmth as she started toward her bag.

"See which of the wounded can be saved," she directed the women, "and start loading them and the children into the wagons."

As she flipped open her bag, rummaging for her medical supplies, she saw the tip of a broadsword enter her field of vision.

"Miss Karuka," started Markham in his incredibly soft and gentle baritone, "I hate to have to ask you this, but with the ring and all...and I was told that someone heard you praying to the Ethereal Sway on the train...I just have to make sure you're not allied with them. I don't believe you are! You helped us and stood by us through all of the bloody mess that just happened...but are you a Priestess of the Ethereal Sway?"

The weary red-head looked from Markham's sword to his ruggedly handsome face and let out a weary laugh. "I grabbed the ring from a corpse that was blown my way by the train explosion. It looked like it could be useful. I don't know anything about Salvar...and I don't even know what an Ethereal Sway is. You might have noticed that I couldn't even name a place that I served. No...I just want to get as many people safely home as possible, and deliver the wee girl to her aunt in Knife's Edge."

Markham looked into her eyes for a few moments, but he saw in them a genuine honesty that had been noted by so many other people before. Making his decision, he put his sword away and started clearing out space for the wounded in the wagons.

[NekoButcher]

With the battle over, Pounder knew he had to get moving. The warriors of the Ethereal Sway hadn’t been able to stop him, either on the train or out by the water. With a slightly arrogant snort, Pounder looked at all the carcasses around him. Karuka and Markham had survived, but both of them were tough, well equipped warriors. He wasn’t. He was a simple butcher who, at times, murdered. Though the distinction may have not been readily apparent by those prone to make comparison, the similarities weren’t really there.

Pounder made no efforts to say farewells to anyone. He didn’t care whether Markham, who had always been good to him, got to say a goodbye. It was fine with the hitman if Karuka let the muscular man know the truth, just so long as he had already got on a horse and left.

With that, the hitman made full use of the blizzard. He heard Karuka and Markham talking about her relationship with the Ethereal Sway. Pounder supposed, if necessary, he could argue that he had seen the ring and that had been the source of his suspicions, but even that wouldn’t have been that easy to explain away, especially given the lie that he’d told.

“If only I’d seen the ring before…” Pounder mused. Then, he could have sliced Karuka’s throat the moment after she had reprimanded him. He doubted that even in her anger, she would have realized the full extent of his depravity. The truth was, Pounder was a genuine monster. It was a feeling that had bothered him a great deal when he had first started killing, but as time went on, he had grown more and more accustomed to it.

There was a relatively large wagon near the carnage. Pounder, caring little for the fate of the wagon after he got what he needed, cut at the yoke that tied the horses to it and climbed onto the steed he had deemed stronger. It was still going to be a blizzard, but Pounder didn’t mind. In fact, he was grateful for the weather. Fresh snow meant any other members of the Ethereal Sway that tried to track him down wouldn’t be able to. The prints of the horse would have been snowed under shortly after they were made.

“So long,” the hitman muttered. It was loud enough to be audible, but he wasn’t calling out to anyone. Instead, Pounder was mocking the dead. The innocent lambs that had been lead to the slaughter. With one last thought of Karuka, the hitman rode away, thinking only the guilty survive.

[Karuka]

Pounder's absence was noticed briefly by Markham, who had to catch one of the loose horses and tie him in place on the wagon, but other than that, everyone was too busy taking care of the wounded and getting ready to go. Karuka's wounds were sewn up as one widow tried to press on despite the fact that her husband's corpse lay mere yards away.

Of the wounded that had been thrown out of the fight, only five could be saved, and these were treated to the best of the small group's abilities before they were loaded into one of the wagons, where some women stayed to keep them as comfortable as possible. The wounded survivors of the Church were left bound in the snow. Mercy for their oppressors was in very short supply after the long and needlessly violent day.

It had been Markham's idea to let them die of exposure. Karuka had been all for giving them quick and irrevocable deaths, but so few people were going to be stopping in the woods on such a snowy evening, especially with the distance the site was from the road. They probably wouldn't be found until spring, when more people were likely to wander and explore. So they were left to die slowly.

It was getting dark by the time the caravan was ready to move, but they had to push forward, anyway. The blizzard was still raging, but there was little they could do about that. Markham knew the way to the nearest safe town, ten miles away, and that would only be a couple of hours.

Securing her oilskin around her neck and her staff on the back of her horse, she set cute little Meg on the saddle before swinging up and following behind the wagons. The weary victor was headed onward to a safe night's sleep, and then on to Knife's Edge.

She had a baby to deliver, after all.

Spoils request: the ring Karuka pulled off a priest's body. It enhances its wearer's magical ability a small amount, and is made of silver and sapphire. It is dangerous to wear in Salvar, as it identifies its wearer as a high-ranking orderly of the Church of the Ethereal Sway.

[Christoph]

I offer my apologies for the delay. I’ve included some extra gold to compensate you for the wait. For the most part, I didn’t make my judgment overly fancy, since both of you have been here a while. Anyway, now for the main event:

Continuity: 7
On the whole, the two of you did a slightly above average job of explaining where you came from and where you were going. The beginning seemed lacking a bit, but the end made up for it.

Setting: 7
Again, a pretty decent job was done. I generally aware of what the surroundings were. Both of you did well in immersing yourselves in the setting as well. It seemed real, which is good.

Pacing: 7
If I were to take the second half of the quest and score it here, I’d give it a 9. The first half, however, really seemed to drag a bit. On the whole, though, it was pretty good.


Action: 7
This was pretty good. It wasn’t great, but it was fairly realistic and entertaining.

Dialogue: 6
Unfortunately, I need to break up the trend of 7s. While the dialogue wasn’t terrible, I felt that it came up short compared to the rest of the aspects of this quest. It seemed a bit awkward at times. Granted, with Pounder as a new character and Karu still getting used to writing without her accent, the two of you are probably still adjusting.

Persona: 6
I liked both of the characters. They seemed real to me, not fake, larger-than-life, or cardboard cutout characters. That said, I was disappointed because I just didn’t get enough of them. Particularly, Pounder really seemed to fall flat at times. That’s not to say that he’s not a great character. Don’t change anything with him, because I like him already; just give me more.


Technique: 7
Back to 7s again, it seems. The writing wasn’t very fancy, but it served its purpose well enough and made the thread, particularly the second half, enjoyable to read. Don’t be afraid to spice your writing up more, though. I know that you’re both capable.

Mechanics: 8
Aside from a number of run-on sentences, particularly from Pounder, your mechanics were fine.

Clarity: 8
Clarity was good. I had a good idea of what was going on most of the time.


Wild Card: 7
I might as well round it off. It wasn’t a masterpiece by any means, but I doubt that either of you were aiming for that. It was a fun little quest, and that’s all that matters sometimes.


Total: 70!

Karuka receives 6020 EXP, 100 GP, and the ring.
NekoButcher receives 2290 EXP and 600 GP

[Karuka]

EXP/GP added! We both level up!