Out of Sight, Out of Mind

[Zade]

{{ Closed }}

Concordia's woodland gloom blurred past as the umbral fugitive darted through the thicket. He'd lost all track of time. The first rays of dawnbreak surged over the invisible horizon, but they could not illuminate the endless acres of trees and underbrush that Zade was fleeing through - to him, it was still night, and he was still living through a nightmare. The beating of his heart and his rapid gasps for fresh air vanquished the disturbing sounds of a weald awakening to a new, shadowy day. His feet ached, his lungs burned into his chest, and his eyes grew glazier and glazier. In the darkness behind him, he heard screams and hisses, none close by, but all intent on finding him. Hunting him.

He leaned against an exceptionally thick tree for a moment, to catch his breath. The rough bark felt strangely smooth against the palm of his hand, as though a silk blanket had formed where flesh met wood. Through the chaotic strains of his dazed thoughts, it suddenly dawned on him. He reached up to his neck with his free hand and with a frenetic movement, pulled out the dart that stuck into his jugular, though he knew that it was already too late. He looked at the yellow-feathered needle between his fingers and quickly recognized it as a paralysis-inducing projectile. In a couple of minutes, all his muscles would go numb, and there would be no way to escape the dozen furious men from Underwood chasing him. Unless, of course, they did not know that they'd hit him, which was likely, considering how far they were spaced apart at the moment. He scanned around, his silvery eyes eerily lighting up in the dim shade of the trees. He had to hide. It was his only chance.

Another echo of rage resounded through the blooming environment, much closer this time. Startled, Zade turned around and sought a suitable spot to conceal himself. He cursed as his long trenchcoat, so black that it could hardly be distinguished from the surrounding darkness, got caught by a bush of thorny vines, which in turn rattled and tore with so much clamor that it made Zade wonder whether the entire forest was conspiring against him. He dropped to all fours and frantically clawed his way through the underbrush, disregarding the stings and itches that many of the plants greeted him with. When he felt he was far enough, he put his ear to the ground and lay completely still, flat on his stomach, ignoring the small box in his chest pocket that dug painfully far into his flesh. Ferns and nettles bit at every part of his body not covered by trenchcoat, piercing through the thin cloth of his white shirt and black pants without mercy. However, those same nuisances also formed a green roof over his foundered body, shielding him from the human eye.

The scoundrel remained completely silent as the poison insidiously surged through his physique, bereaving him of movement of any sort. The world around him spun in colourful circles as his mind slowly faded to the black void of unconsciousness. As long as they didn't have hounds... he'd be... safe...

[Seraphima]

Seraphima didn't remember much of her life, but she was very sure that she'd never been so lost before. All she knew was that she was on a road in the middle of the woods. There was the occasional birdsong or rustle of a rabbit, but her surroundings sounded like woods. Her feet would occasionally crunch against a leaf, and the hard-packed dirt was still softer than cobblestone, and the trees had rough bark -- typical trees. It smelled like trees and plants. She was pretty sure it would look like an average wood, too...but the blindfold she wore wasn't the reason she missed the visual beauty of the Concordian forest.

"Where are we going, Maurz?" she asked her dog for the thousandth time in the past few weeks. She didn't expect the big lab to know either, but it was so frustrating, having nowhere to go and no one to turn to, on top of being blind in a world that was very much biased to the seeing. If she got lost in this strange forest, she had no landmark she could easily find and navigate her way back from.

Actually, that was why she was traveling with no one but her dog for company right now. The chef she'd met in Scara Brae, and then again in the rain storm of a couple of days before, had seemed like he'd wanted to at least see her as far as civilization. But somehow along the way, when neither of them had been paying attention, he'd gone one way and she another, and now she didn't know where she was.

She sighed, brushing a curl out of her face. Her hair had gone from being silken in texture to almost straw-like from the stress of travel and a long illness that was slowly draining her. At the thought of the illness, Sara felt her chest constrict, but she only coughed a few times, and much lighter than the coughs that felt like they tore out chunks of her lungs each time.

Up ahead, she thought she heard something rustle, bigger than a rabbit. Maybe a badger or a skunk, she wasn't sure, but Maurz didn't bark, so it was probably around a bend in the road or something. But he did bark when heavy footfalls pounded on the road, and bristled as three men stopped in front of Sara.

"Pardon us, miss," started a melodic, but cold tenor voice. "There is a fugitive from the law believed to be fleeing by means of this road. Did you notice anyone passing you by, particularly at a run or a jog?"

Sara shook her head slightly, tilting her head up toward the man's voice. "I haven't heard anyone before the three of you, not since yesterday, and nobody was running."

The man that had spoken, obviously the one in charge, bit back a curse. "He must have left the road between the last time we saw him and here." He turned abruptly to one of his companions. "You go back and get a search party with hounds. Hurry! Soren and I will be searching on our own. Miss, keep walking this road, and we'll send along an escort to take you back to town."

"I...thank you," said Sara as the scuff of hard leather boots on hard-packed, muddy dirt signaled the abrupt departure of the three law enforcers. Sighing, she continued prodding her way down the road, letting Maurz keep her on a straight path.

After a few minutes, the dog tugged gently on his lead, sniffing at the ground and nudging his mistress as though to guide her off the road and through the brush.

At first Sara dissented. If she stayed on the road, eventually someone would find them and take them back to town, and a town was much safer for a sick blind woman than an untamed forest. But the dog was SO insistent, much more so than normal, and after a few minutes, Sara gave in, slowly prodding through the thick brush that tugged mercilessly at her long dress.

When Maurz found the man, he nudged him with his muzzle and started licking his face, while Sara's gentle fingers checked to see that his pulse was still steady. It was, just a little slow, and so she did the only thing she could do. Grabbing her water skin, Sara put it to his lips, coaxing a little bit of water into the thin mouth supported by a strong, unshaven jaw.

[Zade]

Strength slowly seeped back into his languid body, and with it came the abrasion of the dozen bristling plants he'd crushed beneath his weight in his hurry to hide. But the sting of the vexing thorns felt far away. Although his eyelids were still paralyzed, rendering him temporarily blind, all manner of colourful ribbons and formless shapes danced in what should have been the blackness of his shut-off sight. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the leftovers of his most basic ratiocination told him that the dart must have contained a hallucinogen along with paralysis poison. The thought seemed strangely distant, however, and completely faded away when the scoundrel was suddenly overcome by an extravagant revelation about shoewear and blueberry pie.

Wonderful surges of inspiration poured through him, until he was unpleasantly surprised by something wet nudging against every part of his face that wasn't inch-deep in crushed foliage, shortly followed by a soft and moist stroking over his bare cheekbone. A part of him wished that his olfactory sensors hadn't entirely recovered yet, because the smell accompanying the clammy contact wasn't all that gratifying. The other part wondered wildly whether the blueberries could best be prepared before or after the cake was finished. Nonsense and a primal urge not to be discovered fought for supremacy in the twisted paths of his conscience.

As he was rolled onto his back by an unknown force, his instincts proved victorious and the scoundrel prepared to jump up and resume his escape from Underwood's direct vicinity, perhaps even from Corone itself. However, his body refused to obey - from his flighty black hair to his toes, no muscle would heed the spurring on of his mind. He felt his mouth being opened, but still could not open his eyes. A cold liquid was poured onto his tongue, but he could not taste what it was. Without the support of voluntary swallowing, the fluid partly found its way past its intended destination, straight into his already thin air supply.

I'm drowning! I'm choking! he panicked. He wanted to kick around, to stand up, to cough it out, but couldn't; the only result of his frantic actions was a wild spasm that ran through his arms, making the unfortunate limbs rustle through the surrounding nettles. It seemed to take ages for the torturous feeling to subside, but when it did, a hand was still keeping hold of his jaw, informing him that his frenetic jerks of random muscle movement hadn't taken up more than a few seconds. He was relieved that some of his force was returning to his face - at least the lower regions. He tried to move his tongue - and succeeded. Knowing that he was not alone, but likely not in enemy hands either, he fought back the delirious spirals that disturbed his thinking, and tried to form words with his semi-functional mouth.

"Whewmai? Oovter?" Gibberish. Furious and helpless, he concentrated harder, and when he spoke again, he intently moved every part of his jaw that he could - the result wasn't perfect, but at least it was somewhat understandable. "Whew am ai? Hoo iz terr?" He wanted to sigh at his near-drooling pronunciation, longed to throw curses at himself for being darted in the first place, but thought better of it, not knowing in what kind of company he might be residing right now.

"Where am I? Who's there?" How can it be this bleeding difficult to ask those bloody questions? Rotten paralysis. What if those chaps from Underwood find me, brassed off because I stole their lil' chest?... I'll be done for. Move, damn you, move!

...

Hey! Blueberries!

[Seraphima]

The sound of the man's arms spasming in the brush was enough to make Sara drop her water skin. She hadn't expected him to revive so suddenly. His first words sounded disoriented, animalistic sounds, and she dropped her waterskin, picking it up quickly and corking it before too much of the liquid could spill out. The second time he spoke, though blurred, it was distinctly words instead of semi-conscious moaning. Sara would think he'd been drunk, if not that she couldn't smell the alcohol on him, meaning something may have happened to him.

"Oh..." she stammered. "No, no...just...just stay still. It's okay...I'm Sara, and my dog is Maurz. He's the one that found you. Oh...umm...oh gosh....are...are you hurt at all?" She tried to remember what the old man had asked her when he found her. "Can...can you move your legs? If...if you're hurt, I don't think you're bleeding, because I can't smell the blood..."

What if he's really hurt? I don't know how much longer he has if he's hurt, and it could be an hour or more before someone comes to help. What do I do until then? The last man I found unconscious by the side of the road recovered right after some water. This one's sluggish. It's got to be bad. Umm...oh gosh...I have to...have to...keep him conscious!

"All right, umm...listen, help's coming from a town nearby, okay? But you have to stay awake for me. Umm...umm...let's see. How many fingers am I holding up?"

Holding up a soft, slender hand, she held up four fingers. She always got the answer wrong when the question was asked of her...but she was blind, after all.

"I'm going to stay with you until help comes, all right? You sound like you've had a bad accident, and I don't want to leave you alone."

Sorry it's short, I didn't know what to do. >_<

[Zade]

Pas de problème :)
Elation whirled through Zade's mind as he finally regained complete control over his head, though the remainder of his body was still set in stasis. When his eyelids finally opened, everything was a blur of strange colours, none of which the scoundrel would have thought to see so abundantly in the middle of a forest, dancing wildly in front of his eyes. He grunted as he looked from left to right, testing the muscles in his neck. The paralysis proved to wear off quite quickly; the hunters from Underwood must have thought that they'd be able to catch him swiftly after the drug took effect. That also meant that they were probably still searching for him, more frustrated than ever. A shiver of anxiety slithered through his mind as memories of the chase and what had transpired before, in Underwood, flooded back into him.

He directed his attention back to the woman that had been so kind to hasten his awakening with a few drops of water, ignoring her plea to stay still and her semi-medic questions under the guise of being disoriented - he knew full well what had happened to him, though he appreciated the irony of her asking whether a paralyzed man could move his legs. He started to assess the sudden change of events. On one hand, this unforeseen rescue gave him time to overview his situation, devise new escape plans and the like. On the turnside, this poor woman was about to become another unconsidered mesh in the web of theft and intrigue Zade operated in; yet another link in the chain that could spell doom for him, were he not careful with what information he gave her. Sudden paranoia flared up in the back of his mind. For all he knew, she might be working for the ones that had hunted him before. He looked at her again, resting his slate eyes on the blindfold hiding her features, and had to admit that her being part of a searching party seemed highly unlikely. But in this line of work, one could never be too cautious.

And what was that about a dog? the scoundrel wondered as he tried to lift his head, not completely succeeding but angling his neck far enough to discern the trusty canine by Sara's side. Maurz eyed him alertly, trained to protect his blind mistress from danger. Well, I guess that explains the awful smell, he mentally scoffed. He disliked dogs. Moreover, if the woman's familiar had been able to track him from the main path to this patch of ferns, trained hounds from Underwood would definitely be able to do the same. He felt like a marked man, and with time running short and being yet incapable of any movement save for twisting his neck around, he didn't exactly feel like conversation. But then again, he didn't have much of a choice.

Although his eyes were slow to accomodate to the shadow of the surrounding trees, he had no trouble discerning the four, meager fingers that the blindfolded woman held up. They were not really facing him, but apparently she knew in which general direction to point, through her other senses. "Four fingers, puppet," he commented blankly, his roguish nature shining through in the slum-accent that he could not repress. He decided that, as long as he was immobile, he'd do well to gain the woman's trust. Perhaps she had already encountered the men that had hunted him before sunrise - or perhaps she knew other things about the region. Her appearance was outlandish enough to warrant a story or two, even though her hair appeared rather sickly, as though she'd been walking in the cold with a bad case of flu. Let's not expect any strong visuals, though... he chuckled at his own bad joke. However, his smile quickly faded when she resumed speaking.

Help's coming? More like a bloody executioner...

"Thanks, hun," he replied with the most charming voice he could muster, and suddenly very grateful that the paralysis of his mouth had worn off. "That's right sweet of ya." His mind raced through his options frenetically, annoyingly hampered by the final thumps of hallucinogen in the back of his skull. He had to find out how much time he had left, and he had to find a way to get out of here. "I dunno exactly what happened. I remember walking through here, and, and..." he searched for words during a period of planned hesitation. "And bloody bugger, my body feels like it's been trampled by a mule. No wait, a damn horde of them. And check my neck - it's like a bleeding queen bee stuck her backside all the way through my throat..." He turned his head to the side so that Sara could put her fingers on the deep but narrow puncture wound near his jugular, unmistakably the work of a trained hunter. "Am I wounded there? Can you see... excuse me!... feel it? Cause if there's blood, I'm afraid I might not be here to chitty-chat with you all that long, luv." Of course, there would not be blood - another piece of evidence that he'd been attacked, though he did not voice that opinion aloud, afraid that she would see through it.

It was of vital importance that she, as an ignorant bystander, thought that he was the victim here. She had to, or his chances of getting away would become very slim.

[Seraphima]

Sara had been blind for as long as she could remember, and in her time had come across so many people that wanted to take advantage of her blindness that she'd learned to recognize some of the signs. This man was doing two things that set off alarm bells in her head.

First, he was talking fast. People always thought that if they spoke too fast, she wouldn't be able to understand them properly. It was an attempt to talk circles around her and fluster her, and although her hand moved to his neck to check for damage, his rapid speech actually had the effect of calming her and making her pay closer attention.

The second sign that he was trying to bluff her was the tone of his voice. The disorientation had worn off too quickly, and likely due to some drug. The second was that the timbre of fear in his voice wasn't right. A man in fear of his life had a sincere voice that reverberated through is body and echoed of joys he wasn't ready to relinquish and regrets for things he wished he could amend. She hadn't heard too many people in fear of their lives -- but she had heard people in fear of getting caught, and that was exactly the timbre of this man's voice.

Her cold fingers gently probed his warm neck, searching for the malady he was complaining of. She found it readily enough, a hot, hard bump on the prickly, unshaven skin. There was no blood, although it was obvious that he'd been attacked. This was the one they were looking for, and whatever it was, he was guilty.

"No blood," she reassured him. "Just a bump."

She stood up, probing a little distance from the man's side for a place to sit. When he realized what she was doing, Maurz got up and led her to a mossy log only a couple of feet from Zade's side. It smelled of musky old wood, with the strong, crisp scent of living plants overpowering the decay beneath, and the soft moss provided Sara a more comfortable cushion than the nettles upon which Zade reclined.

"I don't know anything to do to help you. All I can do is stay here and make sure you're all right, or go and find the help that should be coming and bring them here to you."