Waking to the Cold

[Shadar]

((Solo))

((Continued directly from profile history (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?23182).))

Shadar's outstretched hand hung, empty, in the air. Brigitte stared at it, her smile from moments ago shrinking to a blank line. A frigid gust of Salvar wind fell upon them, dithered within the cave opening they had woken from, then flew more languidly down the narrow cleft leading to the lower end of the range and the rising sun. The cold had no affect on either of them, but Shadar imagined a chill nonetheless. Did she think it was an odd gesture? Had their lives, up to this point, been so bizarre that she was bewildered by the offering of a hand as if she had never-

Oh...

Groggy from their years-long sleep and so absorbed in the astounding feeling of rebirth, he had forgotten her age. While Brigitte appeared to be a young adult, she was five years old at most, and the body she currently inhabited (naked and unbothered by the cold morning air) was no more than a few months old. Barely used. Did she have that new body smell, Shadar wondered, like an infant. Or, maybe she smelled of the crisp, clean snow that had waited patiently all that time for her to emerge, now gratefully welcoming the soles of her feet until it turned to slush. He had no idea. His sense of smell had vanished long ago as completely as his sense for temperature.

Mouth opening slowly, Brigitte tried to push a question up through her confusion. Shadar stopped her by raising his gloved hand that had initially reached for hers and flexing the fingers. She looked down at her own hands as the realization dawned. With a twitchy, inexperienced motion, she raised her right hand limply before her. A dusting of wind-borne snow lay over the pale flesh, melting to trace the lines of untrained muscles that made her strong legs seem disproportionate. Her long, delicate fingers fidgeted awake in a weak impersonation of Shadar's. Once she had control enough to make a fist, she finally straightened her wrist, marvelling at the complex fleshy contraption of a limb he had crafted for her. The wings that had once grown from her shoulders were a distant memory, one that she found herself longing for in a sudden bout of uncertainty.

Shadar stretched his hand toward her, palm out and fingers spread. He had to catch her's when her own reach went wide, and he locked their fingers firmly enough to still the shaking of her arm.

She felt relief. The arms probably wouldn't be that bad once she got used to them.

He felt surprise. Though he couldn't feel the cold that the snow-wrapped slopes implied, her touch had a comfortable warmth to it.

~ ~ ~ Two years earlier ~ ~ ~

Snow half-concealed the cave entrance, blocking most of the starlight that sought to penetrate its depths. Violent bursts of wind, breaking through the comb of the craggy mountains, hefted thin whorls of snow that caught in the narrow mouth and dropped upon the growing mound. By the end of the season, the opening would likely be sealed. Not even the stars would dare pry within, then.

Perhaps the stars, fearing that future, had launched a pre-emptive strike, because a glow from on high rapidly blossomed and breached the dark maw. The eddies of wind danced out of the way as the falling star crashed down and resolved into two bodies amid the ruins of the cave's defensive drift. The man held an orb of white light over gloves that seemed to resist the illumination. Huddled protectively over him was a woman, if she could be called as such. The wings -in place of arms- and eagle talons at her feet marked her a monster, while the exaggerated breasts seemed more a mockery of femininity than an expression of it. The edges of her mismatched form were tattered, as if she were a painting dunked into water. Indignant, the frenzied wind seemed eager to steal any pieces of her that slipped free.

“Shut up shut up shut up,” chanted the man, his eyes delirious. The light above his hand flickered fitfully.

“Yeah, shut up!” the woman shouted to the same unseen assailant. With the side of her body, she jostled the man into the cave. He stumbled forward on thin, shaky legs and stopped dead when the air shifted an inch from his face.

Fire-red eyes flashed as a humanoid jackal appeared nose to nose with him, a hideous grin splitting the snout unnaturally. “Time's a funny thing,” the jackal mused huskily, “You never have enough. Then you die!” He directed the last to the woman as he reared back. The diamond embedded in his forehead shone a light that illuminated only his own body clad in regal, hieroglyphic robes; blood red paired with the dingy purple of his furred face.

The harpy woman suddenly let out a shriek of long-bottled fury and burst toward the jackal. Smugly, the beast raised a hand as if to stop her, then jabbed one finger toward her face. “Doink!” he shouted mirthfully and pulled his finger back with one of her brilliant emerald eyes skewer on the claw. Screaming, her charge became a backward stumble as she blinked furiously, her wings coming toward her face in a futile attempt to feel for an empty socket. Quickly realizing that she still had both eyes, she hissed up from where she had just roughly seated herself on the lumpy stone floor. One of her wings shot out, wiping away the apparition and the figment of a pilfered eye.

The jackal reappeared a few paces away, baring hungry teeth in victory. “You'll come apart for real, soon,” he snarled, “Pity I can't do it myself.”

“I don't know what you are,” the man said sternly as he came to his feet at the cave mouth. In a gesture of apparent anger, he weakly punched the rock wall at his side. From the surface of his glove, steel blossomed in a slow splash of silver. It ran along the stone, brushed the ceiling and the floor, then closed the ring on the other side of the cave. Bubbling as if molten, all edges of the hoop lunged toward the center. “At first I thought you were just evil, some sort of monster.” The metal sealed behind him, forming a featureless plug against the mountains, snow, and stars. “But you're something worse. You're suffering incarnate. Even after all you've done for me -I know it was only for yourself- I can't let this happen.” He stepped forward and placed a hand on the harpy's shoulder. Golden feathers ruffled between his fingers, sending out a cloud of bright mist as they tried to come undone.

“So my workmanship is suspect,” the jackal bantered, sparing a glance for her dissipating form, “But since I made her, it's my choice whether or not to let her fade.” His voice held the promise of compromise, but all present knew it was a lie. “What's with the redecorating?”

It was the man's turn to smile smugly. “Going somewhere far away.”

“Ooookay. I don't see a handle. Looks like you got yourself stuck here, genius.”

“Away from the world. Can't have it disturbing us,” the man continued as he lifted from the ground and hovered toward the illusionary beast. “Away from you. Me and Brigitte are going somewhere deep,” he tapped his head, “In here.”

The corners of the jackal's mouth dropped. “You can't. I know every corner of your mind.”

“Really? I figure once I find a nice quiet spot, it'll be easier to lock you out than lock you in. From there, I'll heal Brigitte in a way you never could -not that you would- and I don't know how long it will take.” His teeth were bared, tasting sweet revenge.

The jackal's insidious face took on a panicked look.

“Could be a while. You. Alone.” The man turned and knelt beside the harpy. As gentle as if handling a sickly child, he wrapped an arm around her wispy shoulders and leaned back against the rough stone wall. She lay her head against his bony chest and closed her eyes. “See you on the other side, Diamond Jackal,” the man said with a limp wave.

“You can't!” Jackal finally spouted as his fury welled up. “I worked hard on you. I own you, Shadar!”

“If you don't waste away by then...”

As the illusionary light went out, Shadar closed his eyes and dove deep into his own mind. He felt Brigitte with him, weak but joyous at the sensation of Jackal becoming farther and farther away. Now, it's your choice, Shadar thought to her, What do you want to look like?

[Shadar]

Before the twin miracles of rebirth and purification, there was a storm.

All around Shadar was a sea of color, every hue imaginable and some so alien that he couldn't bring himself to focus on them. Brigitte floated beside him, as weightless as he in this mental realm. “Toenails. I want to have toenails,” she rambled as if speaking from a deep sleep.

Shadar smiled so hard that he had laughter lines. “That's a good start-”

Suddenly and violently, the colors overhead skewed to reds and purples, but not the dye-bright colors of Jackal's banner. They were the colors of blood and bruise. They were a promise. “He's coming,” Shadar warned.

“Nice toes. Not too long,” Brigitte droned on.

They were already in the deepest part of his mind, a region that whispered of mother's lullabies and once-loved toys so quietly that the memories might no longer exist. A lifetime of guilt had scoured away any hint that Shadar had, at some point, been innocent. In this barren corner, he would have to make his stand.

“Five toes... I think...”

To keep the red tempest from reaching Brigitte, Shadar drifted higher. He raised his hands and concentrated. A collage of scenes flashed around him depicting all the times he had slapped Jackal's illusion away, locked the demon inside, or prevented his body from being possessed. How many atrocities would have been committed if he hadn't succeeded? He say the potential bodies of allies and innocents, all of them broken and mutilated, mingling into the shroud. Angrily, he cast them away. This was not a story of what Jackal would do. This was about what he could do; the resilience he still held in spite of years with a self-proclaimed god in his skull.

“Thanks for pulling her into a mental realm,” Jackal laughed, steadily approaching from the depth of the crimson and violet swirls, “I'll get to pull her apart after all!” He burst into Shadar's visible range suddenly, all flashing eyes and elongated claws.

Shadar gripped the shroud of animated memories -proof that Jackal could be resisted- and hurled it upward. The space between them instantly darkened to a grey fog as the colors retreated. Jackal's own wave of color faltered, and he slowed to a stand-still in the empty space as if caught in bog mire. Howling, he used his exaggerated claws to try to dig through, but failed to move further.

Shaking away the surprise that it had actually worked, Shadar focused on the grey space. He could see the moments flickering, all those times he had shown Jackal who the true master was, and he became an instant and devoid believer in the first rule of mental planes. Thought and matter are one. The shroud reminded him of his strength, and he in turn strengthened it with his acknowledgement. It was impenetrable so long as he did not doubt.

“Fine. I'll have your bodies in reality,” Jackal spat, “If I can't unmake her from within, I'll tear her apart from the outside... with the hands of her beloved protector.” He smiled as if the idea had just occurred to him, but bloody hell did it sound fun.

“Sure you don't need this?” Shadar asked in mock curiosity as he summoned a red, vaporous orb from one glove. It pulsed rhythmically. Ta-tum ta-tum ta-tum. “I grabbed it on the way down.”

Jackal brayed. “Is that supposed to be your heart?!”

“As far as I can guess,” Shadar shrugged, unfazed, “After everything you've changed in me; I don't eat, sleep, breath-”

Jackal intercepted, “You don't shit, sweat, fart, or ooze any of the other filth that mortals are always spilling out. You're fucking welcome!”

“I'm sure I don't have a proper heart anymore, either, but there's something there. I feel it pumping through me when her energy is near.” He resisted the urge to glance at Brigitte, lest Jackal's hungry, frenzied gaze find her as well. “Do I run off of a little will-o-the-wisp like this? It's as good a guess as any.”

Hindered by the clinging shroud, Jackal slowly pointed a single claw at Shadar's chest. “Why don't you find out? It was in a place like this that I created the bitch and improved you. Just pop yourself open and take a look. Won't hurt a bit.”

Shadar shook his head bemusedly. “Not now,” he said as his glove reabsorbed the faux heart. “Not until I've stabilized her. Then, I'll remake myself, too. I'll make that my heart. So, it counts.”

The demon scoffed as he drifted slowly back from the grey threshold. “That's the dumbest thi-”

“I believe it!” Shadar shouted with a force that stilled Jackal. “And from all the time I've worked on this plane, I know that's all I need. It's what I say it is, and I'm saying it's a key. Without it, you can't do a damn thing to my body while I'm on... sabbatical.” Wistfully, he added, “Yeah, that's a good word for it.”

Jackal still looked unimpressed. He crossed his arms and made his most patronizing face. “Fine. Go play creator if you think you can. But, keep in mind that locking me out doesn't count for anything if you can't keep her together.”

Shadar did look below him, then, where the sea of colors was still evenly balanced. Brigitte lazed about unconsciously. Her edges continued to fray slowly into shreds of mist, and the infinite sea welcomed them. She had been created from a womb such as this, and it suddenly frightened him, for this was not a womb in the mortal sense. It was equal parts destruction and creation, mingling in a way that left no seam between the two.

His smug smile fell away as he began to doubt.

[Shadar]

“Where to start,” Shadar muttered anxiously to himself as he hovered on level with Brigitte's unresponsive form.

From beyond the grey barrier, Jackal's voice struck him physically and made his nerves thrum up to high frequency. “I can think of a good spot... two spots. Two big, sexy spots!”

Shadar didn't look at the demon, but he grudgingly agreed. Every time they had encountered others -male or female, no difference- eyes magnetized to her almost comical breasts. She had always covered herself with her wings, as both clothing and concealing illusions made her frantic for some reason. Was is by design? Was Jackal so vicious as to give her a self-image complex in the midst of a war, or had he sabotaged all her social interactions just in case he couldn't reclaim her? The tactical intelligence implied by the latter theory made Shadar wonder if all of this wasn't somehow working in the demon's favor.

“Drooling?” Jackal said with a wink that Shadar heard rather than saw.

Instead of arguing or looking away, he focused, and it struck him how outrageously chaste their relationship had been. His sexual urges had disappeared along with all the other bodily functions, but what a virile man wouldn't give for all the platonic contact they had shared, and her child-like innocence making her so susceptible to-

Dammit! I'm not going to think like them. I'm not like them, and their opinion means nothing.

“Who are you kidding?!” Jackal laughed. Shadar snapped his gaze up, to which Jackal tapped his own head and said, “If you want to keep secrets, try not to think so loud next time. Anyway, like I was saying, this is VERY much about public opinion. A bloody vanity trip.”

“She was coming apart,” Shadar growled. She still was, in fact, if only in miniscule degrees. He could feel time's steady march working against him, second by irretrievable second.

Jackal shrugged in exasperation. “I'm just saying: Keep the tits. Grow yourself a libido and I'm sure you'll find a use for 'em.”

Shadar looked to Brigitte's drowsy eyes. They were glazed and distant, but he could remember vividly how the brilliant green would dull in shame. “You won't have to listen to people like him, anymore,” he promised.

A wistful, detached smile came across her face. Thank you, the fraying colors whispered.

[Shadar]

Jackal leered as Shadar went about his work with clinical professionalism, molding with precise touches and long strokes. Flesh drained away cleanly, as did the whole swath of feathers and talons that Jackal had taken such care in creating. She had been awake for that. Her screams and twitches as he plugged feathers in, one by one, had been glorious. If he had a libido, it would have been ecstasy.

The way Shadar went was quiet, sterile, and just so damn boring!

“I wish I'd left you with the ability to sweat,” Jackal called into the surgery theater. “Buckets. Blinding buckets!” Shadar's tense concentration didn't break. For what seemed a long time now, he hadn't heard anything unless he was asking the little bird-bitch something. Oh, he heard that whisper just fine.

The only aspect of the whole procedure that brought Jackal any satisfaction was that her edges were still fraying. Her bare legs and new feet with the “cute” toes were going to come apart as if nothing had been changed. Jackal hadn't said anything, yet. Let the little limp-dick pretty her up, then BAM, hit him with it. All a waste. So sad. An anticipatory chuckle slipped out, but Shadar certainly didn't hear it, or care. The ungrateful shit.

The sculptor continued monotonously with time marked only by the languid dissolution of the harpy. It gave Jackal plenty of opportunity to poke at the barrier, though he had no success there. Images jumped out every time he drew closer; allies that Shadar hadn't seen in years, but remembered with annoyingly clear nostalgia. Yari Rafanas, the deceased King of Thieves, was in many of them, making Jackal's non-existent bile rise.

Long ago, when the physical world had seemed like an adventure instead of a prison, he had been allowed to control Shadar's body while his brain was out to lunch due to a botched healing. What had he done? He had helped Shadar's allies in the Bandit Brotherhood. Shadar could have woken up in a sea of blood and betrayal. Instead, it was in a fortress that Jackal had helped Rafanas capture. Brigitte's shame was nothing compared to Jackal's when he looked back on that. He had been giddy. Giddy! Like a happy little imp serving his stick-up-his-ass master!

His anger rose, unquenchable. If Rafanas hadn't die in some noble war or whatever, Jackal would have gone hunting this instant. To heck if he blasted Shadar's brain out his ears in the process. He'd find a way to drag the husk across the ocean and hang the bandit king up in his precious Concordia. He envisioned his hands around the smug ass-hole’s neck, pumping flame from his palms into the body until it spouted from the eye sockets. Unconsciously, Jackal drifted deeper into the barrier, reaching for the flickering image of the bandit's trademark smirk. He was almost there when the face morphed into that of Robert Uccisore, and it was all Jackal could do to hold in a scream as the long-bottled memory broke from its repression.

Shadar and him; the giddy, let's-have-an-adventure him; had decided to switch roles for a Citadel fight. Jackal got to drive, Shadar got to make pithy remarks from the back of the skull. Everything that happened during that battle, as far as his memory was concerned, was blotted out by the final moment. He saw the reflection in Uccisore's shades of blood, bone, innards that were supposed to stay inside his borrowed body. Then, the pain hit him, and he felt it in a way that made the whining mortals seem disgustingly delicate. Crying because the broken limbs and internal bleeding hurt? Try being a dream demon, a creature that shouldn't have even had the opportunity to inhabit a body. Tune into every system until they're humming with more essence than they should hold. Then, for shits and giggles, turn the body inside out!

Jackal flung himself away from the barrier. The image shrank and faded, and he could see Shadar working beyond the shroud. He had his eyes and hands down between Brigitte's legs. Did he even remember what was supposed to be down there? He'd gotten so little action since Jackal started riding shotgun that he could qualify for a priesthood. The bitch would end up with a deformed, soul-sucking black hole in her crotch. Look away or you'll go blind!

But, for once in his very long existence, the insults refused to come out. Pain ghosted through nerves he didn't have. Sounds of gore (normally so sweet) assailed his ears. If he somehow managed to say anything, he didn't know what it could be other than hysterical wailing.

Frantically, he shrank away, muzzling the traumatized child that had no business being part of an immortal's psyche. Shadar and Brigitte disappeared, then the leering faces of the grey void. He tried to regain control as he drifted through the parts of Shadar's mind that had been left unattended, but it was an unstable peace. The memories that fed the barrier were stored here, somewhere, in bits and pieces that he couldn't track in his current state.

Jackal had the run of the house while Shadar was out. A haunted house; one that he had never been able to leave. Had he ever honestly tried? He did, now. While the vessel and the monster-child cast away his influence, while years worth of his own weakness encroached all around, he reached out to the world that had no place for him.

~ ~ ~

In time, three beings would emerge -reborn- from an isolated cave in the Salvar mountains. Shadar would be the second. Brigitte, the third.

[Shadar]

I am finished, Shadar droned to himself. No inflection. No relief. His self-awareness was fuzzy after so long in a clinically detached state of mind. “It's done,” he announced, speaking aloud to see if he could stir emotion back into his words.

Brigitte sent thank you in that radiant thought-speak that flowed from her. She looked every bit a woman. Her breasts were modest and pert, a feature for her to be proud of in public... assuming his gauge of social norms hadn't deviated too greatly from present culture. Her new arms were slender and immaculate. If she wanted to make them stronger, to give them character, she would have to do that on her own. He knew that all too well from his own body, thinned down to rails after so much magic-enabled lethargy.

She retained her waterfall of fiery red hair as well as her brilliant emerald eyes. (He had no intention of changing her soul, so why change the beautiful windows?) Her legs, bare of feathers and ending in feet a fraction larger than the female average, were as muscled as they had always been. In her nudity, it made her look somewhat disproportionate. He couldn't bare to weaken her, though. Of all the negative traits Jackal had attempted to inject into her mind, a sense of weakness was the one she had been invulnerable to.

Between her legs... well-

The good news: Shadar had found his emotions again.

The bad news: He was turning the color of a tomato.

The best news: It was because her delicate lady parts -even under thorough inspection- seemed to be perfectly accurate.

“What kind of man was I that that is the one memory that seems crystal clear,” he wondered aloud. Opportunities for that type of physical study had ceased many years ago, probably because Jackal didn't want to be witness to anything as mortal and mucky as sexual relations. Shadar's mind must have put that picture in the vault for later use. “The deeper internal bits probably aren't all there,” he muttered abashedly, to which Brigitte simply eyed him with happy obliviousness. “If we're going to get those right, we'd have to talk to a physician... or maybe exhume a fresh bo-”

His jaw clicked shut, and he braced himself. Jackal had been absurdly quiet so far. But, if he was going to say anything, that train of thought was tailor-made for him. Shadar craned his eyes upward, hearing nothing, until we saw with incredulous disbelief that 'nothing' was exactly what was going on up there. Jackal was gone as surely as if he had been a hallucination all these years. Even the coloration of the mental sea had returned to its balanced state, if muddied by the optics of his barrier.

“He's probably looking for the roots of the memories,” he said with cold analysis that didn't do justice to the trauma of explosive jubilation crashing against frigid and bitter suspicion. The shroud seemed to be intact. He could still remember every face and scenario that fluttered through it. But, if memories were being pulled out, would he even realize they were missing?

Urgently, he grabbed Brigitte's shoulder as if to wake her. “We're out of time,” he almost shouted, “If he actually gets to us, he'll-” He froze, but not because Jackal's plans were as obvious as they were horrible. What stilted both his mouth and his heartbeat was the first layer of Brigitte's skin, pale and new and perfect, puffing like sand under his fingers.

Mission accomplished, Jackal would have said if he were there. Shadar could hear it in his own head, in his own voice. Now, she can die pretty.

[Shadar]

“Go to hell!” Shadar bellowed to the space Jackal no longer occupied. “Go to hell, dream demon! Go to hell, laws of physics! Laws of nature!” The thought-space shimmered around him as if he had rediscovered how to sweat visible fury instead of water. He cracked his knuckles, and glowing azure veins of prevalida rose to the surface of his gloves. His face contorted into a mask part rage, part madness, all blind purpose. “This is my world. My woman,” he informed the invisible judges of fate, “My rules.”

He spread his right hand an inch over her left breast. The prevalida billowed waves of light like a smith's forge. Her flesh softened and rippled, then a dome of faintly pulsating sky-blue mist buoyed from the swell of her chest. A will-o-the-wisp just as he had suspected. It floated in her bosom, half-exposed and slowly bleeding its essence back into the womb from which it had been formed.

Without a shred of logical thought, only instinct ricocheting around his skull, Shadar pressed his left hand to his own chest. Clothing parted as if it were an eye snapping open, and from the rib-taut flesh his own vessel of red emerged. Maybe it was already molding itself to his will, but it looked identical to the heart he had imagined. At first.

Shadows darkened it as if flecks of dirt has fallen inside. They looped about; colliding, forming small spheres, then breaking apart into motes and circling anew. He could feel the forces near his left hand distorting. While Brigitte's heart, even in its dying moments, gave off a steady and rhythmic pulse of energy -energy that had sustained his existence in all their time together as quasi-immortals- his sent out a fractured and turbulent signal in spite of its obvious strength.

Brigitte had been starving.

Shadar could feel the signature as surely as if Jackal was leering from each speck. They radiated an aura that was mischievous and juvenile; the work of a child who pulled dangerous pranks and, instead of worrying for who might be hurt, revelled in the disastrous what-ifs. He didn't sweep them away or rub them out. He crushed them with his will, one at a time in rapid succession until his heart took on a second, popping tempo to its beat of life. With savage eyes, he locked onto every piece of blockage in the ethereal organ and snuffed it from existence.

Finally, its inner turmoil over, his heart returned to its instinctive beat. The cure had been found. Brigitte would be fine, the cycle of energy between their hearts restored. Her hold on existence had always been weaker than his, and her need for energy greater. He had never been bothered by the burden. However... it felt incomplete. He had revealed her heart for more than a simple comparison, though he couldn't quite remember why. Already, hers was throbbing with more enthusiasm under his palm, finally satiated.

“We're as stable as Jackal wanted us to be,” she said clearly. Shadar's gaze shot to her face. Her eyes were unclouded, her altered features softer but still holding fast to her ferocity and her hungry intellect. Shadar lowered his hands. Their hearts remained exposed. In her eyes, he had seen the whispers of his thoughts mirrored to superb clarity. They both knew how to break the demon's final restraint.

In unison, eyes locked and smiles jubilant, they each lifted their right hand and pierced the first two fingers into their own insubstantial hearts. Shadar retracted a sliver-thick razor of red. Brigitte of blue. Their hands brushed as they reached toward each other, toward the other's core, and placed their offering in the epicenter of the mist. With a mismatched slit in each, like a cat's restful eye, the wisps grew more solid; their beats strong enough to end the argument of whether they had a right to exist.

Shadar had a stray thought. He didn't voice it, but perhaps Brigitte had it, too.

With this shard, I thee...

[Shadar]

~ ~ ~ Present day ~ ~ ~

As they both looked thoughtfully at their clasped hands; her in awe of the newness, him in awe of the warmth; a serpent of glacial wind wrapped about them but could not disturb the moment. Perhaps it had been waiting with all the other gusts, all those years, to give them a “welcome and good riddance” before resuming the slow build of snow in the cave's yawning mouth. Whatever purpose the hole was destined for had surely been served. Time for Salvar's reclamation.

However, instead of circling around impatiently with its brothers, the gust dove away from them. It careened down the snow-filled cleft, wove between carved, grasping shards of rock, and vaulted over a cliff into the morning flurry. Before nightfall, the two children would approach it. The man, thinking he could still fly just as he had in years past, would step off and plummet. The woman, thinking she was equally doomed in her new form, would nonetheless cast herself after him. She would discover that the wings and talons of old were not entirely gone, but simply hidden and ready to sprout from her body like spectral, solid memories. He would be saved, if embarrassed.

The wind dove, straining toward the sun that was just breaking free of the horizon. A village appeared from the misty, rock-strewn forest below. Abandoned. Belongings laid down, undamaged; forges and hearths extinguished; clothes folded and hanging dustily, unpacked. The two, celebrating and oblivious, would attribute it to the war they had heard about long ago. An evacuation, never mind why it was necessary so high in the mountains. Gleefully, the woman would flit from house to house and assemble, just so, the first outfit of her life. The man, upon waiting two hours, would remark that he had perhaps done too good a job of creating a real woman.

As the sun's warmth melted what little of the night's frost it could, the wind cleared the last barren building of the silent hamlet and slithered among the trees until coming to a larger settlement. This one was populated, even if two or three disappearances had happened in the last month. Normal, sociable citizens leaving their homes, taking nothing, and never returning. The man and woman, awkward in spite of their culture-appropriate transformations, would travel quickly through town during the third dusk from now. They would pass right between two houses with knotty fences and lazily tended vegetable gardens.

In each home, at the moment of their passing, there would be a child drawing on faded, dry leather with dyes of crushed berries. With no coordination between the children, the pictures would be identical. A canine face, large pointed ears, menacing eyes. Fur in purple, eyes blazing red. The father of one and the mother of the other would both ask the obvious question.

“Why did you draw that?”

“I saw it in a dream,” both children would answer in their own time.

On the night of the third day of their new lives, Shadar and Brigitte would leave the town without saying a word and descend through the last few miles of the mountain range. The seer of wind, on this morning, would not. It ended, snuffed out, as if some ethereal beast had gobbled it from the air.

[Silence Sei]

Shadar, I like you, I really do, but because this thread was not 10 posts, or 10,000 words long (Also because you have a kinda-WW thread asking other people to review it anyways) I’m only going to point out a few things here and there instead of the Full-Com, Full-Rub you requested. If you have any questions, you know my AIM, and also know I’m in the chat a good portion of the time.



Story: 6. It was an interesting little adventure inside the mind of Shadar, but I would have liked to see more. From the way you interpreted it, the only things Shadar really has in his mind are Jackal, Yari, and Robert, which I find slightly disturbing. :P

Strategy: 8 A great way to continue directly from your profile, and also explain Jackal’s ‘s ‘disappearence’ (I’ll believe it when I see it, or rather don’t see it.)
Setting: 4. Unfortunately, your setting left something to be desired. All I could imagine while in Shadar’s mind was the life stream scene from FFVII, except it was just the river of colors, and otherwise completely black. Try to think of your setting like a broadway play of sorts. If the light is just centered around the characters and not the whole setting, you don’t get a feel for the environment they are living in.

Continuity: 7. This could have been higher, but I’m reading this as someone who had never read a Shadar quest before. I didn’t understand anything about Brigitte (Which considering she was made while I was gone, is true) and pretty much took a stab in the dark that Jackal created a harpy for some reason. Your mention of Salvar was a little sparse, but I never take off a whole lot for that. Just try to incorporate more background into your character next time, K bud?

Interaction: 9. Your dialogue really showcased off Brigitte’s naivity, as well as the antsy relationship between Jackal and Shadar. I would have liked to have seen Shadar reacting a little angrier about having his friends eye plucked out though, illusion or no.

Character: 8. You’re characters were believable, but sometimes they left something to be desired.

Creativity: 7. ‘Battles in the mind’ are not a new concept on Althanas, though creating a new life in ones mind certainly seems to be.

Mechanics: 5. There were a couple of errors here and there that I caught, but all in all your thread was readable on the first go.

Clarity: 4. While everything was readable the first go-round, the whole scene with the river of colors did send me for a loop for a moment, and I had to question how Brigitte and Shadar got out of the cave (It was a cave right?) so easily after creating this new life.

Wildcard: 7. I like Shadar and Jackal as characters, and I don’t for a second believe that Jackal is gone. Also, that last scene sent chills up my spine, which is always a good thing.

Total: 65/100

Shadar gets 750 exp, 50 GP and a new frie

[Silence Sei]

EXP-GP added. Hope you like your new exp bar.