The Broken (Closed)

[Nashira]

Winter 72, 511 AV Location: Lost in the Unforgiving Who: Eridanus and Ulric are welcome Nashira stumbled over a bed of jagged grey rock. A sheet which seemed to stretch outwards in every which direction, as far as her eye could see. In some places, it seemed a pale shade, beneath the light of Syna's sun. In others, cast in shadow, it seemed so very dark, and dismal. As uninviting as any stretch of the wilderness could possibly be. As the wind blew, the Ethaefal could just make out the sound of several small stones, dislodged from the greater expanse, tumbling across the terrain. Clicking against its brother, as though knocking at its door, and begging to be let back in. As the Ethaefal struggled to regain her footing, her arms wavered. Her bag sunk into her back, as Zulrav's breath swept her hair off her shoulders, and tossed it into her face. Forced it into her eyes, her slightly parted lips. She could feel the strands clinging to her tongue, as she wobbled another few steps forward, before finally catching herself. Silently whispering how she should be more careful so as not to further make a fool of herself. The mountain goats after all, must have been laughing. As she moved along, Nashira could feel Syna's warm rays upon her flesh. She knew it was sparkling in the goddess' glory, even as she tried to pull her hood up over her horns, to help keep herself warm, and block the wind from her long brown hair. She was sick of it being tossed about, into her face. She was sick of eating it, when she wasn't at all hungry, or in need of sustenance. She was sick of spitting it out, or tugging it delicately away, promising herself, silently, that it'd be washed as soon as she found a pool of water. Or perhaps, as soon as it rained, whichever came first. As the Ethaefal leapt across a mouth in the stone, a narrow strip that tore away into the earth, she was surprised to find that her right hand had found the hilt of Caleb's old sword. She could feel the cool metal beneath her flesh. The way the knob was situated beneath the center of her palm, her fingers draped over its side. As she landed safely on the other side of the rock, the Ethaefal took a moment to study her breathing. The way she was taking in air slowly, and letting it out somewhat quickly. The way her chest rose and fell, and her heart began to speed up, although still, it seemed slow. Confused, Nashira's brow furrowed. It was as though a part of her expected something to leap out of the split in the stone, and try to take her.

[Ulric]

Vainly, the serpent’s spine forced perilously through the azure sky, the jut of vertebrae, rough crags rising back the way he’d come. There wasn’t a fragment that stayed his doubts. The granite was hard against his back, encrusted by purple lichen. The slopes were broken, as though gouged by monstrous fingers. The cracks nearly wreathed by the pale, spiny fibers of creepers, tufts of grass swaying with the gusts. There were larger fissures, inexorably tapering as they plunged into a desultory gloom, the resonance of crashing water vaguely in his ears.

Ulric faded in whorls of gray. The japery of his kind, jarring in its feral treachery, just sloughing away. There’d always been rocks. There’d always been sky. The chaff as a final remnant, sloughing lamely. The empty ashes.

Scrape.

There it was, what he’d been waiting for. These rocks weren’t just there, they were an augury. They’d brought him here for a reason, and he was going to find out what it was. He rose, clad in his heavy layers of plate, scales, and leather, lightly clanking as he shambled nearer. The gusts swept at spiky hair, the sparse sweep of his whiskers, furling the inky fur cloak around his legs. They framed a pair of darkly smoldering eyes, glaring brutally, imperiously from a face broken by scars, the nose bent, an ear nearly ripped away. There was a shift, for he’d hefted his crossbow, an enormity of smeared timber and harsh, unyielding steel. The prods faced the peaks, not her chest.

But he glared.

Mostly at the twist of her horns, protruding from a wavy nest of hair. There was the shape of her collarbone, the swell of her hips, the long sinewy legs, but he didn’t care for them. There was woman, but there wasn’t. There was only her conceit. Freakish cunt, he decided, giving a melancholy shrug. There’d be a tale that desired sundry weaving, surely. There was always a tale. That was unlucky, for he didn’t want to hear.

“You’re grasping the wrong shaft, lass.” Ulric jerked his jaw at the handle of her sword, mostly desiring to see if he could provoke her. “If you’re even that.” The edges of his lips gave a sardonic curl, a slight twitch just under an eye, for he kept watching her with a strange hunger. “You’re not a goat, that’s plain enough. They don’t have such shapely thighs. They also don’t carry swords. That’s just me, though. There’s so many goats out there, lurking beyond those ridges. They could yet prove me wrong, couldn’t they?”

[Eridanus]

Nothing but calmness and serene relaxation. Some people choose to fall into sleep, the dead-like condition the scholars call it which most people spend a third of their lives doing. The more practiced ones choose to go into deep meditation, a state that was not quite like sleep, yet somewhat fulfilling the purposes of sleep. No matter where one went, no matter the environment, the danger, there was always this need to replenish one's strength.

And so that was where the vantha lay, hidden by bushes in an obscure position shaded by trees in a tension-free cross-legged position, his back upright but also being supported by the base of the trunk.

There was environmental noise, and there were sounds that did not belong to the environment. The issue with deep meditation is that when combined with the antics of a light sleeper, such a shift in environmental noise would instantly put his body on alert. After all, when one got used to the general sounds of an area, any shift in it must mean a change in variables, and that change might just be some random predator looking for its next meal.

His eyes fluttered open, and he pushed a aurora-streaked lock of hair away from his eyes, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the light. When he had fallen into this measured slumber Leth had reigned, but it seemed that time passed faster than he expected. Sighing, he stood up, brushing away leaves and twigs from his tunic and robes as he did so, feeling the weight of his weapon harness and attached weapons on his back.

The upper torso of the vantha emerged from his hidden spot, and he looked around to find out what exactly woke him up. Resonance in the Unforgiving was good, somehow. In the distance he could see two figures, though with the crossbow held in the hands of one of them he doubted very much that they might be friends, especially with their body behavior.

Eridanus walked up, not bothering to hide himself but also not making an effort to announce his position. Still, he remained ready to duck and roll should the crossbow-wielding figure proved hostile. It always paid to be more on the paranoid side.

[Nashira]

"Oh?" Nashira called, her right brow rising into an arch as she glanced up from her own troubles and out towards the traveler. A dark silhouette on the horizon, more than several paces away from where she now stood, at the rock's mouth. "Is that your way of saying I should have a hand on yours?" Nashira asked, her voice betraying both the playful nature of her heart, and the colder aspects of what lay within, as she let her hand fall, dragging across the length of the sword's hilt. Down, then back up, a few times over, before it came to rest again, at the top. The widened knob. As her hand came to a rest, Nashira took several steps forward, towards the stranger. Her brow sinking back into place as she leapt from one area to the next, as her cheeks reddened at the man's words. Not that he would ever notice, given her complexion. It was one of Syna's gifts to her, a continual saving grace, which she silently thanked the goddess for as she moved towards her offender. She was not a goat, and she'd show him as much, and then some. Her teeth clenching with her rising sense of anger, Nashira forced herself to come to a halt a few steps away from Ulric. "I am no farm animal," the Ethaefal hissed, her molten amber eyes flashing dangerously. As though shards of Syna's own light were burning within them. Burning into Ulric's skin; his soul. "So you'd better take that back." Nashira paused, as her hand fell off the top of the sword's hilt. Her long, sparkling fingers winding around the black, preparing to draw the weapon should the human prove any more hostile or irritating. "Not only that, but you should be thankful you didn't stumble upon me during the night," Shira added, a sinister smile crossing her pale pink lips as she raised her left hand, and pulled her hood off her head, shaking it from one direction to the other as the fabric came away, loosening the muscles which had coiled alongside her dangerous emotions. Her hair whipped wildly about her features, as her hand trailed down her neck, past her shoulder blades and onto her back, along the length of her side. Back to where it once rested. "For then I may have been tempted to eat you, and not in the good way..." Nashira's voice trailed off for a time as she glanced furtively at the surrounding area before returning her penetrating gaze to the human. "Just as you may be tempted to try a goat... you seem keen on them. Perhaps you prefer their bodies to the pleasure a real woman could provide. Or man, for that matter." The Ethaefal's smile widened as her thumb danced up and down the hilt of her blade. "Do you hunt them because they don't judge you? The scars that mark your skin? Your torn ear, which perhaps, one of them ripped from your flesh in the throws of ecstasy?" As those final words left Nashira's lips, she took a half step back, as though inviting the man to come at her again. To strike her. Her skin sparkled as she waited. Her eyes too. She knew he'd never win, for although she didn't look it, she knew she had been around far longer than him. So distracted was she on her intent, her will to dominate the situation, that she didn't so much as notice the other one in the distance. The one who strangely enough, kept to himself.

[Ulric]

Ulric gave a shrug, the leather joints of his armor creaking, the metal plates vaguely clanking as he drew nearer. There was nothing in his face, for he was beyond such feeling. There were only the eyes, ever watchful. They didn’t care for her. They didn’t lust, nor rage. They were just there, judging.

Just about anybody could levy threats, bleakly devoid of courage, lacking any compunction. They’d only wither were just bitter ashes in the end, but that wasn’t his place to make certain.

The judging eyes, harshly unyielding, and stiffly taking in their lonely solitude among the peaks. The three of them, like ants. There was a residual concern, for he’d already spoken with the other man who’d emerged from the depths of squat, spiny gorse, colored by vaguely purple verges of heather. The knowledge of who he was, though sadly lacking in any clarity, was a poor augury.

Presently, his torpor sloughed away. His strides were long and regular, taking on a graceful fluidity even under the burden of metal. Then he barked a laugh, raspy and unkind. The locking of horns suited her. “Your japery hurls beyond the mark, just as the empty, howling murmur that augurs the cinching of night over weary eyes. Your sour cunt, the goats in their surefooted rambling, the unalterable furl of lichen over stark gray boulders, are as nothing to me, but for all that, we venture this sprawl of rocky slopes, cleave to the same, sordidly luring dangers.”

Ulric forced a grin, though beyond her. “The cause is that we’re inherently searching for a fragment of the greater, are we not? That’s hardly fair, to just vanish your reasons, but my presence, at the very least, isn’t purely incidental.” There was a turgid joy awakening in his chest, eagerly licking at the pithy meaning of his words. The jaws of the world were before him, slumped brown and gray before his gaze, and he wasn’t going to pass up this chance. The man longed to ravage, but not flesh, never flesh. That particular scarification wasn’t inherent, couldn’t compare to what he longed for. There’d ever been, in quiet moments away from the unceasing clangor of squalidity, a sullen desire in him to break with merely veracity, to expose what the gods had wrought upon a race of dreamers. That was his purpose.

Far off, he discerned the clank of chains, the rumble of cart wheels shod with iron trundling over the waste of his heart, jerked ever onward by the souls he’d ripped asunder. They knew the truth, though he’d exacted it with the cruelest of costs. The grit had slid from his eyes, and now the dreamer was awake.

Hungering.

[Eridanus]

As the vantha neared the two people he realized that he recognized one of them, namely the mountainous armor-clad brute who he saw in Alvadas in some broken down temple. Mizahar was a huge place, but by some form of weird coincidence fate had pulled these acquaintances together in a completely different place far from their first meeting place.

The flicker of recognition from the barbarian showed that he remembered Eri from before, but other than that there was no other acknowledgement, instead the man choosing to continue his speech with his metaphor-laden poetry.

The two had been trading insults, and the vantha felt quite out of place, like a third party or outside privy to a secret rendezvous that he had no right to intrude on.

"I... What are you doing here?" He asked his axe-wielding acquaintance. It was an awkward statement, a sentence brought about by the necessity to break this awkward tension in the air, a meaningless scramble of words society used to make light of situations.

It did not matter if it made him look like a fool, for he was far from caring about society's expectations.

[Nashira]

Nashira's eyes darkened. Becoming as their centers; the dark pit of her pupils, the blackened coals. She could feel her face flushing, leaning towards the heart of Syna's sun. The blinding, inner intensity which caused everything to burn and avert its gaze, less it risk doing more damage to itself. More than the temporary insanity instilled when one was forced to chase flickering colored dots across their vision. She thought about those infuriating dots, which only seemed to make everything worse. Although, the human would never know. Not given her complexion. The shades of pink, of gold and copper. The smooth texture, upon which a vat of glitter seemed to have been poured. She could sense the fire rising in her eyes. The amber rings melting. Glowing with the heat. They seemed as though they were sacred flames, surrounding the coals, forcing them to glimmer with everything else. Come to life. She was a woman on fire, and the man, seemingly lacking sense, wouldn't so much as come to know it until it was too late. The Ethaefal's thumb danced over the hilt. Hurriedly. Angrily flying from one end to the other, as her remaining fingers drummed out the tune carried by the incessant pounding of her heart. Her pupils seemed to dilate. The darkness stretching across her eyes, as they locked on Ulric's. Opening their souls to him. The flame guiding him to her, like a lighthouse which had been asked to see every ship safely into the harbor for the night. Shut up, the magic hissed. Insignificant child. Enough of your madness. Enough of your mindless ramblings, you spineless coward. Praying for your mother's hand to hold. For her skirts to bury your face inside, as you chase the world away. Forget what is. Forget what is there. The magic paused, as it took a moment to consider Ulric, and then, grew with a newfound power. A newfound intensity, at having been interrupted. Instantly, Nashira's head turned to face the newcomer. The other Ethaefal. Her hardened glare settled on his eyes. "Shut up!" Nashira hissed. "Can't you see we're busy?" There was another slight pause, as the Ethaefal allowed her gaze to linger another moment, suggesting, that for his own good, Eridanus remain silent. When she was satisfied, Nashira turned back to Ulric. Her eyes settling on his own. Her chin lowered, as the wind swept past, whipping her hair wildly around her. "You," she hissed. "Mind your bloody manners. If you have any sense." She smiled wickedly as she returned her gaze to the Vantha. "And you. Learn to speak only when spoken to, if you insist on remaining in another's company. It's only polite, especially when you are dealing with two adults. Although one of them fails to act like one. Such a shame isn't it? How no one can bother to act their bloody age anymore, or keep their darker thoughts to themselves."

[Ulric]

Ulric glared at her, the tug of his lips infused by the esoteric. He’d already grasped her spiteful stir, though vaguely, as surely as the crows flying by wisps of cloud, raving in cacophony. There was an inherent scarcity to his conjecture, a lining unvarnished by the cryptic patina of disbelief. There she stands, he grunted, and expects the peaks to tremble. The fervor in his eyes, like glowing bushels of coals, braised her over her dilated pupils, daring her to go further. The sheer draw of her was cloying. There was something about her, imperious and insistent, that he longed to master, to sunder in the crucible of his rapture.

Infernal, that’s what she was. The contagion of scantly chained menstrual fury, ever seeking to defy the invocation of masculinity. The invisible clasp, the caprice that boiled from her, just washed over him. The qualms they raised, the nearly ritual scarification of primeval fear, deluged his mind. There was a flop of lank, unholy scalps like a basket of putrefying fish, the scrape of a flock of locusts swarming over his chest, but he stood firm. He’d trembled before a goddess, yet defied the sorely desired manacles of her lustful fervor, made her run from him. There was only a jigsaw, biding for his arrival in the carrion’s veracity, the sprawl of a puffy carcass lying over baking flanges of basalt. The conflagration of her eyes, though perhaps desiring to consume, only required drenching. There’d be no more japery.

“You know, envy and spite are a grim pair. The longer they war, the less they comprehend of the why. There’s just a flaying of their sordid dreams of conquest.” Ulric’s tongue curled glibly, and he jerked splaying fingers over his short, spiky hair, casting the other man a look. The nape of her neck, he seemed to be saying, conceals the spines of a serpent.

They knew each other, yes. They were whole, though she was fractured. The iniquity of her kind manifesting in the inky pools of her eyes, pushing them away, yet trying desperately to cling. There was a glum calculus to this, resolving not in figures, but in a funnel of restive glances. The dredging of the morose, ever invoking, devilishly braiding every instinct into a plague of laceration.

“Defying you,” he growled, “Defying your dreams, and the impiety crawling between the juncture of your shapely thighs, that is our purpose. Defying the anvil, the hammer, and tongs, like a chunk of metal plunged into a sea of red ember worms, glowing with molten fury. If you’d just look, you’d find sanctity in this display of insolence, but you won’t. There’s only insipidity in the culling of your vanity, but you’d never notice, so inebriated are you in visions of grandeur.”

Ulric crept nearer, turning over his palms, as though conjuring up a magnetic tug. “Bind yourself, and regain your clarity.” Though the clasp of his jaw was firm, his voice was undulating, scudding from the depths of his chest. There was a frigidity draped like the cloak around his broad shoulders, as if he was speaking from a distant peak. “I am done with you.”

Turning to the other, the man who’d gleaned hastily blurted truth, he inclined his chin warmly. “We’ve our reasons for being here, treading these bleak spines in search of purpose. This assembly wasn’t incidental, if you’ve any belief in prophecy. The crows whisper. There is a fragment that I must find, lost for so many years. That is my purpose. That we dare, that is what makes us more."

[Eridanus]

The woman jabbered sharply at the ethaefal, and he smirked in response, the light in his eyes dancing infuriatingly as he silently provoked the woman to back up her attempt to intimidate. The way her fingers played on her hilt, perhaps expressing a hidden desire to stop dancing with words and start dancing with steel, was not lost on him, which made him in turn quite aware of the weight of his own two blades strapped to his back. There was no need to display any hostility yet, for she was too far away in proximity for her blade to threaten him.

All in due time.

The two of them exchanged yet more barbs, draped in metaphorical finery and figurative ornaments, but no matter how much one spoke in circles that point of it was clear in their tone. Their body language, the way they angled their profiles as their bodies subconsciously shifted to reflect their true emotions.

She thought him a child!

That was only natural, for his mortal seeming was that of a youngster on the cusp of adulthood. His true nature was not betrayed by his youthful unlined face and the energetically rebellious attitude that his very posture displayed. Completely normal if he were in his previous life, but completely paradoxical to the truth hidden in his soul. It was an advantage that he could work in his way anyway, for boasting with words was a poor way to progress unhindered. One only needed action to get things done.

Ulric greeted him warmly, and spoke of an object of which he was seeking.

Coincidence!

Not only in their meeting, but also of his own reasons to be out here. Quite a few days before he had just been at an archaeological digsite protecting the magecrafter Albert from several yukmen that appeared to disturb their search for pre-valterrian artifacts. Yet, this man stood alone in the wilderness, also searching for his own fabled treasure.

He did not believe in coincidence of course, for everything in this world was estimatedly deterministic by Tanroa's calculations; one only needed to know the correct dependent variables to predict a generally accurate outcome. If he had known about Xhyvas he would have quite agreed with the dead god's view on probabilities of the future.

"And I was seeking my own too. Tell me Ulric, how does the idea of letting this mad woman to her own devices sound? And perhaps we can help each other to get our respective businesses done in this god-forsaken place as quickly as possible and seek to set our legs next to a warm hearth-fire soon."

[Nashira]

Nashira's eyes narrowed to a point; exposing only the churned embers arisen from the ashes of her eyes. The things her pupils hid in their darkest recesses. The embers seemed to crackle, releasing sparkling fireflies that soon sizzled into a thin trickle of smoke; easily carried away by the whistling winds, which rose into a deafening roar as they swept through the splits in the stone; producing claps so akin to thunder, that the Ethaefal was certain the ground beneath her feet was beginning to crumble. The wind whipped the folds of her dress wildly about her ankles. She could feel the smooth curves of the material circling her skin; buffeting her repeatedly. It tickled a bit, as it crawled up the length of the sparkling skin it had exposed. The roses flushing as everything got more and more carried away. "What a coincidence," Nashira began, her voice carrying out across the currents. "For I have finished with you as well," she added, as her eyes swept over Ulric, taking in every pitiful inch of him as well. The scars, the torn pieces of flesh. The lines that had been etched into his skin over time. He seemed a worn away tree, with a trunk to fat, yet too feeble, despite it, to support himself. He seemed proud though, enough so to hold his branches high. Enough to send them circling around that which hung near; and yet, it was as though he knew the end was in sight. For the ax loomed so dangerously close to his head. The metal wedge flashing in the sunlight. Sparkling like the Ethaefal's skin. Vile creature. "You are not worth my time," Nashira added, her voice laced so heavily with her hypnotic djed, that the words seemed to slither out of her lips, cascading down the sides of the gently sloped pink curves. Gliding as gracefully, and as smoothly, as a snake. "So why don't the two of you go," she went on. "I will head in that direction," she said, as she raised her hand to gesture towards the north, before sweeping it around, "and you may head in any one of those. Thus, if we all have any sense, then, perhaps, our paths will not be crossing again. At least, not any time soon." There was a slight pause. "Now doesn't that sound agreeable?" Nashira asked, as her eyelids pushed back, towards the edges of her eyes. The single pair of eyes that never stopped glowing; flashing dangerously.