Completed [Bronze Woods] Deals with Devils.

[Medhozic]

Time Stamp: 4th Day, Winter 513AV. The winter air chilled his marble skin and went straight through his shirt like shards of Inarta glass. He ignored it though, regardless of the fact that it made it difficult to gain purchase on the rough bark of the tree. Another day, another death-trap in the Bronze Woods, searching for any prey to take down and sell off. Or better yet, he could hunt down enough rabbits to make a little cloak out of, with a bit of help from some of the tailors around the castle. Yes.. he liked the idea of that. Though first he'd have to find the rabbits, and to find the rabbits, he needed to find a suitable perch on one of the stripped-bare trees to gain enough of a vantage to shoot them down when they came into view. He couldn't stalk very well - his movements were always very stiff, and he couldn't bend his back as much as he wanted to without it being very uncomfortable. Hunching was what peasants did, and he wasn't a peasant, he was a mighty hunter Ethaefal, majestic and beautiful and deadly. The branch snapped; he cursed silently under his breath and threw the useless thing down below, although thankfully he hadn't been putting all of his weight on the flimsy little branch, or he might have fallen from his precarious hold on the low-hanging branch. It wouldn't be much of a fall - but it'd be enough to make him very annoyed. He reached out for a second branch, but that one snapped too when he gripped it and exerted a small amount of force. They were all becoming flimsy - everything was dying, in this harsh season. Reluctantly, he kneeled somewhat on the branch and drew the bow from his shoulder, drawing an arrow from his quiver and slowly notching it against the drawstring, pulling it taut and taking a look over the area. Well, it wasn't very high.. but it would do. The cold wood offered little in terms of camouflage, but other than that, it would do its job. The arrow pointed at the ground directly beneath the tree, however, as he stared at the landscape and simply willed for something to arrive. He needed something, anything.. And then, there appeared a rabbit. Snow-white and hopping slowly along the ground, snuffling at the cold earth and scratching about with its long paws. It stuck out almost as much as he probably did, but he didn't pay attention to that; just lifted the bow, tightened the drawstring a little more than necessary, and whoosh. The unharmed rabbit hopped over the arrow that stuck at an angle in the dirt and merrily jumped off, without even much of a fright to it. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later - he'd not even come close to the little rabbit, and that could have made a fine stew for later, too. "Shyke." It didn't really say much about how he felt, but it was still there. He considered getting down to fetch the arrow, but he could easily do it later, as long as he remembered where the arrow had fallen. For now, he drew another and pulled it taut, and waited again for another critter to openly display itself as quickly as the last one. And he knew already that he was in for a long day of sitting in a tree and working up a cramp like no other.

[Celina Avali]

The Bronze Woods beckoned Celina into its pulsing heart. How could she resist such a lush Garden of Eden? The deep, haunting ballad of its ancient song called out to her. As old as Adam, the forest was still steeped in plushness and opulence. With a light heart, she plunged into the over-arching vault of leaf and limb. It was not what she had expected. The exquisiteness of the dawn’s light had not yet lanced to the lush, green sward for the frost stemmed the grass. Because of this, hoods of black shadow hung in the groves. Coils of vaporous mist en-wrapped the shaggy heads of the oak trees. They writhed around them like a conjuror’s milky smoke, sensuous and illusory. Sieves of mist caressed the lichen-encrusted bark. Adding its phantasmal gas to the damp breath of the forest, it glided with deadly intent. It deadened sound, haunted glades and poured into empty spaces. A sepulchral silence overhung the hallowed ground where the trees dared not grow. Nothing stirred, nothing shone, nothing sang. A hollow echoing, like the hushed tones of a great, slabbed cathedral, entombed the wood. Celina darted between shafts of lustrous-gold light as she went, admiring the rabbit that pounced away from her. She pirouetted in the air, her wings a-whirr like little ripples of silk until they stretched out to the side; showing their deadly purpose as she swooped down at high speed. " Mine! " She hissed as the frozen grass was crushed beneath the soles of her leather boots and snatched the whale-bone white, furry creature within her grasp. Her midnight black claws curled into its chest, piercing through flesh and bone with nonchalantly. A wellspring of blood sluiced into the air; it tasted coppery in Celina's mouth but she craved the taste. The ground before her was anointed with bowels. The putrefying stench of the dead seemed to come from it. " Oh how delicious! " She cackled like a hyena, stuffing the innards of the rabbit into her mouth and using her vice-like jaws to tare the meat apart. Smearing titian-red blood over her pale lips, growling in content.

[Medhozic]

Crouching on the branch had cramped his legs, for such a long amount of time that he'd sat, waiting, for something else to emerge as the small rabbit hopped off. It had taken forever; he could not hear them, but he suspected at least a bell and some many chimes. A noise, though.. a rustling of broken tree limbs, and something.. large. He hadn't the senses to find it, but he knew that it was somewhere. Thoughts rushed through his head at once; a deer, a doe perhaps? A wolf, even, traveling so far from the inner sanctuary on a hunt similar to his own? Oh, he could make a fine wolf-pelt coat from it, if it was what he thought. He was already collecting himself, with the bow raised and poised in stance on his precarious hold, waiting for the creature to reveal itself. It was the rabbit from before, that first caught his attention. Flushed from earlier, it hadn't run in a straight line as one might expect, but a little half-circle to end up at a different point, but the same distance from the tree inside which he perched. A few moments was all it took for him to create a new idea in his mind, in order to catch the larger beast and redeem himself for his earlier blunder. It was a perfect second chance for him; catch the rabbit first with one arrow, then if the creature was carnivorous, it would attract it further into range so that he could collect something larger. Maybe more than one somethings... oh, he was ecstatic already, and he didn't even know what it was. He raised the bow and lined the shot carefully, meticulously preparing, and then... seconds before he loosed the arrow, the small rabbit was pulverized by some wild flying animal, something crossed between a hairless monkey and a bat. He wrinkled his nose in disgust by the very thought of something being in existence - horrible, nasty thing it looked like, hardly even human, probably unable to make anything more than gutteral growls. But... if he caught it, and sold it, then he could possibly find a good price. It would not come as anything significant for him, but he could at least sell it and perhaps use the money to buy some fur-lined clothes for comfort and warmth during the winter season. Perhaps even helping him with camouflage, prowling around in the guise of a dark grey wolf. His legs ached with the position, and he shifted slightly on his spot and felt the metal of his Kopis touching against his outer thigh, comforting him with its presence. It didn't take more than a second, but it still felt slow to him as he shifted on the branch and crouched with his elbow resting on one knee for stability. He lined up the shot a second time on the feasting beast and loosed it after a few seconds, and knowing that it would probably take more than one shot to get rid of the monster, he reached into his quiver and drew another, notching it carefully and lifting it up once again. Oh yes, he'd take down this creature and sell it for a hefty sum... It was a shame that the first shot careened off to the left and slammed into the dirt a few metres away from its kill. And it had wings, which meant.. he probably had another two more shots to get rid of it once and for all, before it flew up and began to pulverize him as good as that rabbit. What a day.

[Celina Avali]

A finger of supernal light poked through the misty mesh. It was followed by a whole loom of light, filtering down in seams of gold. Like the luminal glow of the gods, it chased the shadows, banished the gloom and spilled into spaces where the mist once stalked. The fluty piping of a songbird split the silence just as the forest became flooded with light. A fusillade of trilling and warbling detonated all around me as the primordial forest came alive with the troubadours of the trees. The dewy grass flickered like diamond flame as a blood-curdling screech rented the air as the wind screamed past her ear and thumped into the dirt. " An arrow?! " Her heart leaped out of her chest and her survival instincts kicked in immediately. Her claws pushed over the remaining bowels of her meal, berry-red blood smeared into the dewy grass, leaving the prints of her hands and boots. Celina bolted..Dirt kicked up in her wake. She went on all fours like a dog, running away from the ''hunter'' and off into the distance. Venturing deeper into the forest. Her wings folding neatly in between her shoulder blades. Winter arrives then. The sunless and starless sky looks down at the Zith and the forest with the humorless stare of a serial killer. Caterwauling winds scream across the land, whistling through hedgerows and the tower high trees. The claustrophobic and scavenging skies survey her with a deadly malice. Doom-laden skies, pregnant with spite, spit out ice-silver nails of rain. She cackled in cold grates once more as the straining light of autumn is a distant memory. " Winter.. Ninety-two days of dandruff falling from the sky." Pagan-black clouds blot out all hope and a terrible growling can be heard in the heavens. Gashes of halo-gold lightning wail and whine and there is an electrostatic crackling in the air. The lightning flashes brighter than the crawling cracks on stained glass. Sonic booms thunder and rumble before the last vein buzzes its last breath. It leaves a tomb-quiet silence behind it. Celina flinched, startled by the loud boom of thunder and the spark of lightning scoring the sky. Is she was safe? Celina stood up onto her two feet, wiping the sleeve of her jacket across her crimson stained lips and sauntered into the shadows of the Woods. " Who is the hunter? "

[Medhozic]

Shyke. The second arrow whizzed off after the Zith, thumping at her heels but he didn't prepare a third. It ran like an animal - on all-fours, cowering with its metaphoric tail tucked between its legs, a cowardly thing indeed. He glanced over the edge of the branch and carelessly shifted his weight, slipping down to his feet and leaving a dull ache in his knees. He wouldn't leave that thing to get away; He'd find it again, he'd kill it.. find out what it is, what it was, and he'd take it; he was sure of it. But first, he had to collect the fallen arrows and bent down to pluck the first from the ground, and then slipped it back into the quiver with a grunt from the pressure exerted on his sore joints. Victorious or not - he'd spent far too long in those trees, waiting for something to emerge, something that he could take as a reward, and though he'd been unsuccessful, he wouldn't let the thing escape next time. Even as his hand traced along the ground for signs of any tracks of the creature - of which there were many, for it hadn't even bothered to use its wings to escape above the firing range of anything deeming it worthy to be consumed - he wondered what it was. Wings, talons.. it had all been blurs and shadows. As he moved, collecting the other two slowly and hunching against the cold earth, the crackles of high above sent the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was time to leave, now. Before it began to rain, or worse. The other two arrows were hastily snatched up and held in one hand, the other pushing the spindly branches aside carelessly on his way out of the forest grounds, glancing back to the path behind on the way to make sure that he would not be followed, idly tracing his fingertips over the limbs of the bow that looped around his bicep. He would have it.. he would take it, and its life. And claim his kill.

[Radiant]

Medhozic :

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Observation	+2 XP
Hunting	+1 XP
Climbing	+1 XP
Weapon: Shortbow	+2 XP

Lores

Lore Earned

Hunting Method: Lying In Wait

Zith: A Strange Flying Humanoid With Bat Wings

Loots

Celina :

You have an intervention on your CS. Please clear it up first, PM me, then I will give you your grades.

On a further note, your signature size is too big. Maximum dimension is 600 px x 150 px, please reduce your signature's 240 px height to 150 px.

Notes :

A nice short thread, guys.

Celina, make sure to read the notes I gave here and in your CS.

My radiance is not bright enough?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, beam me a PM and we can work it out.