Bone To Pick

[Phelan Lyall]

3rd of Fall, 514

Phelan sighed happily as he woke up from his nap before letting a yawn and stretching. "It's always nice sleeping up here...probably shouldn't stay out of the city for long though." the wolf said as he rose to stand on all four paws before stretching again. Walking out from among the trees where he had been sleeping, the wolf caught the scent of a deer that had passed by earlier.

Figuring it was time for lunch before he headed back to Lhavit, the wolf put his nose to the ground and started trying to track the deer down. Unfortunately, since Phelan didn't leave Lhavit that often, his tracking and hunting skill were woefully underdeveloped and he lost the scent a few times. Focusing on tracking down his prey, Phelan quickly stopped paying attention to what was going on around him.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

That time had come around once again. He needed bodies for his malediction practice. It was exactly the same as it'd once been in Pyconia, however - nobody really 'liked' him performing such magic inside the city, or hunting down and killing animals in order to fuel it. Lhavit seemed even worse on that last part, however - using his newfound powers, gathered inside the Dawn Tower after constant studying and practice, to kill innocent little rabbits or mice or other small creatures was far worse than a simple taboo. They thought it was a betrayal of their trust, that it was above them all. He wondered if they called it evil behind whispers, although that would likely be reserved for the slaughter of those Okomo. Either way, no matter what they said about the arts, he was still going to practice them. Until he found a way to collect new creatures without the need to sneak off in the day on the pretense that he was visiting relatives in Pyconia, while he was actually going out to kill and maledict some small mammals, he'd continue to 'betray' them. Not that they ever had to actually know about it.

The sooner he found those people, and the sooner he found a new animal to kill, the better. Constant steep inclines and rocky terrain were both terrible for his joints, and his stick was worn at the butt with all the heavy pressure he had to keep using on it just to worm his way up the edges and around the corners. He'd made a few journeys into the Unforgiving before - mainly just to capture the occasional creature and use it for his own gains. All of them weren't too far from where he'd started though - and where he'd started was in Pyconia, too. He'd need to cross plenty more distance in order to escape the radar of the Shinya, and any occasional traveler that might end up jabbering a bit too much about a walking hedgehog/mouse. The last thing he wanted was for people to find out what he was doing, after all... but the second-to-last thing he wanted to happen was to get lost in the Unforgiving. It was a very real possibility. He had to keep glancing back over his shoulder to remember which direction was back to Lhavit.

The stick jammed once again into the small scatterings of rocks that littered the mountainside, but the grip was feeble and stones were pulled from the earth and left to roll down the side of the face. Cyq would have nearly gone with them, if not for a quick grab for a larger rock as he went down onto one knee and steadied himself. Nothing like this in Sahova, that's for certain. No damn mountains to climb every day.. no damn need to even travel away from the rest of the world in order to practice magic. They accept everything. I could just borrow some of the corpses that they use. Every day spent in Kalea, in Lhavit or otherwise, just made him pine even more for the world half a world away that he'd never even seen before. It was like a children's tale grown into an adults fixation. But he knew that he could make it there - he just needed to find a way. A portal, a hidden doorway, a way to build up enough money and influence to have people escort him. Just.. something.

In his desperation of the moment, he almost completely ignored a prime specimen passing by. Almost. A wolf would be perfect.. he could skin its coat and maledict that into a cloak. He could take away the claws, the leg-bones, the teeth and the jaw and the skull... all of it would find use. Perfect. The only problem was, it wasn't exactly close. He'd need to find a way to finish crossing around the upper lip of the mountain, and then carefully slide his way down to the valley below. Shyke. If he'd spent more time working on his Reimancy back at the Tower instead of fantasizing about Sahova, he'd likely be able to throw a spike of rock from back here. As it was, the wolf was far too far away for even an attempt. It'd drain him too much. Well, I've only got myself to blame. Might as well remember this when I'm back at the Tower thinking of rivers and streams and shyke.

[Phelan Lyall]

Phelan let out a whine as he lost the scent of the deer again, this time as it passed through a small stream. He didn't like swimming in his fur, it made him a lot heavier and tired him out, but he really wanted to track that deer down and get some food from it. So, after pacing for a moment on the streams edge, the wolf waded into the stream and started to swim across it, keeping his head above the water as best he could.

After a while, the wolf was able to pull himself out of the stream, immediately sitting down at the side of the river to shake the water out of his fur before stopping a moment to rest before he set off in pursuit of his prey. As he did, he stopped to look up at the mountain looming above him. "Always dangerous out here...should be careful." he said quietly before he started after the deer again.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The first thing to do would be to lower himself down the side of the mountain. It wasn't really a mountain - more of a rather steep and rocky hill - but that didn't matter to him. What mattered was traversing the damn thing and getting to the wolf before it found something better to do and disappeared. The stick was buried into a gap between two rocks just above the hedgehog, before he began to steadily lower himself one foot at a time down the side of the hill. His feet never really found a comfortable space for footing, so he just had to go with what little he could find and hope that everything would play out just fine. For the better part, it did, remarkably. His feet slipped once or twice but the spines lining his back soon jutted out and dug into the ground with enough force that he could draw to a stop before he ended up rolling right off the face of the Unforgiving. The wonders of being a hedgehog, hmm.

It took some time - at least ten chimes, but he made it to the bottom, and winding around the side was pretty simple stuff. He was, by now, just above the wolf and behind it. The stream that winded down between the hill he'd just descended and a very different one neighboring it lapped at the ground barely a few feet from the lying wolf. Huh.. is it dead already? I guess that cuts out half of my work.. although it would have been nice to at least try out some of my Reimancy on the thing. He'd spent all of this time learning, paying for lessons in how to control his Reimancy so that he could protect himself from monsters and other people, as well as kill them - and now it seemed that Caiyha was going to steal all of his fun and just kill a wolf for him. At least he got the bones of it - or so he thought. He wasn't very close - there was a bit of undergrowth growing around the edges of the stream that barely covered him from view as the wolf lifted itself and looked towards the mountains - the ones he'd been walking over barely chimes ago.

Well, looks like I'm going to be using my Reimancy after all. He'd have to wait for the wolf to come to a stop for a second time before using it.. he didn't have a good enough shot from this angle. The last thing he wanted to do, was nail a wolf straight on the backside with a huge chunk of rock. No no no.. he needed to get a good shot right on the head, if he was going to accomplish anything. With that in mind, he waited a few ticks before he slowly began stalking behind the wolf - hoping and praying that the wolf didn't manage to pick up his scent before he managed to prepare a spike of rock to throw at his head.

[Phelan Lyall]

Phelan sighed as he lost the deers scent again, then perked up as he picked up the scent again and padded after it. However, before he could follow the scent to it's final destination, the wind brought another scent to the wolf's nose. "...Clay? Wait, not just clay..." he said, stopping a moment and letting out a whine as he tried to decide whether or not to follow the deer or check out the new scent.

After a moment, the wolf decided to check out the new scent and see what it was, so the wolf turned on his heel and walked back to where the scent came from and started sniffing in the grass for the scent. After a moment, he stumbled on the source of the scent, a creature that looked like a hedgehog but didn't smell anything like one.

"Well now, what are you? Though I don't suppose you speak wolf..." he muttered, sniffing the hedgehog curiously, careful to keep his nose away from the spikes on the back of the hedgehogs back. He'd stuck his nose once when he was little and wasn't exactly eager to repeat the experience.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The branches and leaves of the small bushes rustled as he passed them, unfortunately not doing anything to aid his stealth - and didn't he know it. Unfortunately, he wasn't exactly the most slender of creatures. His hedgehog body was rather naturally rounded and stout, as it should be, and seemed to brush every single branch on the way by, no matter how he angled himself. If I keep this up, it's going to notice me. Amongst the undergrowth it was difficult to keep sight of the thing for too long, so it was more or less mere glimpses of the creature on his way by until he eventually pushed aside one branch and caught the thing staring straight at him. Immediately he regretted ever leaving Lhavit - or trying to track a wolf - or straying too close, not shaping his body to a more slender physique so that it wouldn't have brought about so much noise. There were so many things he was damn sorry he'd not done, and more things he was sorry he had..

Yet the dog did nothing. Evidently it had noticed him but it wasn't ripping into him, as he would expect. At least it kept its nose away from the very visible spines on his back - they weren't as sharp as a natural hedgehogs, but they certainly weren't blunt either. It gave him a moment to turn around and think on the situation, much as he hated turning his back on such a dangerous creature. I need to do something and fast. I need to make a spike, a spear, heck a little stone to throw at it and make sure that it won't come back. Priority was no longer in killing the thing for his experiments, but rather just killing it to stay alive. If he could find a way to do it without too much damage to the body, of course that'd be the way to go.. but otherwise, it looked like it was time to conjure up some rock spears.

He wasn't used to just concentrating for five ticks and magically creating a spear out of nothing, though. He knew that it was a slow, delicate process... something that took time. Heck, that was the reason he wanted to do it from a distance - it'd give him time, space, to think and to work. Now he was under too much pressure.. it was so difficult to reach down inside himself and find that little ball of light. Come on.. find the light.. where's the light? Come on.. shining, bright, white.. balled up deep inside.. With his back to the wolf, his breath slowed as he concentrated, slowly raising his outstretched palms in preparation. Deep inside, he could see the little ball of light that was his djed.. and he could feel the warmth and the light spreading all over his body - through his fingers and through his toes, up to his mouth and down each and every spine over his back. He concentrated even more, coaxing it in the direction he wanted it to go.. and it slowly fed itself down his arms and into his palms, pooling up until he could feel it spilling down.

Just as he imagined it in his mind, it was right before Phelan. Droplets of sparkling liquid floated in the air, slowly rising over his fingertips and floating just an inch or two above each hand. It wasn't anywhere near enough, so the hedgehog had to begin calling on more to form over his fingers, with his eyes soon 'opening' once again - there were no eyelids so they couldn't really open, he was just reconnecting his nexus to his eyes - to watch as it spread, and slowly began to form a distinctive shape. It wasn't a very long spear, barely a few inches in length.. and it was needle-thin, slowly growing as Res was added to it. It was most certainly there, though. It spread out before him, and when he turned around slowly to display it to the huge wolf, it stood between them, pointing straight at the wolf's face. "Don't worry.. shh.." If it'd not attacked him this far, he certainly didn't want it to change its mind now. "Shhh.. it'll all be over soon.."

[Phelan Lyall]

Phelan kept sniffing the hedgehog as it just sat there, before backing up a bit as it turned its back on him, expecting it to try to jab him in the nose with its pins. However, when it did nothing, the wolf stepped in closer and resumed sniffing the strange smelling animal. Or at least, he thought it was an animal until it turned around again with a spear in its hands and started talking to him.

In an instant, the kelvic shifted, a bright ball of glowing yellow light momentarily taking his place before it passed to reveal Pehlan's human form. "I'd prefer if you didn't stab me in the face. I tend to find it painful when people do that." he said, laughing slightly before cocking his head at the creature. "Sorry if I offended you by getting in your face like that, I didn't think you were intelligent until you turned around with that spear and I was curious about what you are..." he said, smiling as he gave the hedgehog another look, this time taking note of things like coloring.

"You're obviously not a regular hedgehog, your smell alone tells me that, but...I can't say I've ever seen anything like you, or are you a Kelvic too?" he asked, his tone more curious than anything else. The blacksmith hoped he wasn't offending the creature before him, but he really was curious about the hedgehog and hoped that it would give him an answer...or at least not try to kill him.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

He was glad he'd not transmuted the Res into the intended stone just yet - he still held enough control over it to draw the floating gel substance back, until it slowly wavered between his paws. Hmm. Apparently not a wolf. It took him a few seconds to respond to the wolf-person's question - he was still a little bit shocked.. and now more than a little bit curious. Evidently there was some kind of magic that this person knew, allowing them to shift between different forms. If he could learn this magic, perhaps he would be able to transform himself into a human body.. or just appear human. I could still kill him. Take his head, take his bones, maledict them and see just what I'd have at the end of it all. He could have used his Auristics but given the amount of djed he'd already used up - and the small trickle dwindling away already as he let the Res entwine between his fingertips - he'd rather not risk it.

"I understand. When I first saw you, I intended to knock you unconscious with a large rock." As he spoke, the Res slowly came together again and formed a little ball. It wasn't really very big, but.. at the right speed, it could likely do something. It wasn't a pebble, but it wasn't a boulder - at least, not to the Pycon that held it. "I'm sure I won't make the mistake of stabbing you in the face if you don't make the mistake of dismissing me as unintelligent." Despite all that had already transpired, he was trying to keep a calm and steady voice. It wasn't really working as he'd intended, but at least he wasn't stuttering like a little whelp. The wolf-person evidently meant him no harm.. and it wouldn't be that hard to recreate the spear between his paws and give it a good throw for the chest or face.

Unsurprisingly, the thing didn't even know what he was. Funny, because the hedgehog had no idea what this wolf-person was either, until he mentioned that particular name. Are you a Kelvic too. "I'm guessing that you're a Kelvic then." Were these a specific order or organization of mages using this specific magic, or was that the name of the magic itself. "What is Kelvic?" How did he learn it, who knew about it.. perhaps this person could teach him about it. He hummed through his stout muzzle as he watched the man for several long moments, broken only by the hush of air as the Res spread into a thin stream winding between his fingers and claws once again. It'd deteriorate soon enough but he couldn't help but play with it a little. It wasn't exactly a huge quantity anyway.. he was feeling a little tired from it, but he could stop soon. It felt kind-of good to continue going for now. "I am a Pycon."

[Phelan Lyall]

Phelan laughed as the hedgehog said he'd initially wanted to throw a large rock at his head, then shrugged. "Yeah, it's not the first time someone's mistaken me for a wild animal and tried to hunt me. Probably not the first time someone's mistaken you for a wild animal either, is it? But now we both know we're intelligent, so I guess it's behind us." he said, grinning slightly.

At the hedgehog's question, Phelan nodded, then shrugged slightly as it said it was a Pycon. "Can't say I've ever heard of a Pycon, but then I'm only a little over three years old, so I guess it kinda makes sense that I wouldn't necessarily have heard of a Pycon. But anwyay, if you don't mind, could you tell me more about Pycon's? I'll return the favor of course, though I'm not sure what you'd want in return." he said, laughing slightly and scratching the back off his head.

[Cyq]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

At the accusation, the hedgehogs eyes narrowed just slightly. "If they ever think such things, they don't for long." He was no wild animal.. he walked on two legs, he was made of clay.. he knew that some openly thought he and his race were little more than funky talking objects, and treated them that way.. but they wouldn't do the same to him unless they wanted a damn spear of rock shoved through their skull as well. He'd never been mistaken for a real hedgehog because.. well, as far as he knew, there weren't many actual hedgehogs in the region. On top of that, he'd spent a majority of his life so far inside a city filled with other Pycons like himself.. and heck, they knew he wasn't a real hedgehog just as much as he knew that they didn't have working wings for ears, and they weren't trees or rabbits or whatever else they took the shape of. He didn't feel comfortable telling this wolf-man any of that, however.

In fact, the less he really told the wolf-man about himself, the better. He felt reluctant to share anything about Pycons as a species or about himself as an individual.. but he needed to know something about these Kelvics, and apparently the man was having none of it.. not until they had an 'equal' share of information. Well, the hedgehog could bend the rules a little. "We are a race of people.. made of clay, roaming the world, exploring. We take whatever shape we please and were created by the god Harameus, the God of Transformation, in his image of constant shape-shifting. Delivered to this world by a false prophet. That's all." He wasn't going to say anything else.. yet. He didn't want to.. because if he knew enough about the hedgehog, who knew what he could do with that information. And pieces of information like that.. they were power.

Which was exactly why he was so intent on finding out as much about these Kelvic as possible. If he couldn't spear this man in the face, he could certainly find out enough about him to judge ways that he could be of use.. and things he could offer the man in exchange for services. He certainly had one idea about a service the wolf-man could provide, if he had the necessary skill for it. He had the body of a wolf, after all... "Tell me about the Kelvic. Is it a magic. Can you harness it to create whatever body you wish.. can you teach it to me. Tell me about yourself, too." His hands had slowly come to a stop in their waving gestures, because the Res was beginning to decay and deteriorate. There was no point in letting it go to waste.. so with what little Res had not decayed yet, he wound it together to form a slightly thinner and shorter spear than before, and transmuted the entire thing into stone. It immediately fell into his hands, and thankfully didn't break from the minor fall.. after all, it didn't look very thick or secure. Because of its size, it was now light enough to throw, whereas before he would have had to rely on the control of his Res to keep the spear afloat.

He turned, for just a moment, and moved the spear to one paw before launching it into the air, sending it into a wide arc so that it eventually stabbed into the dirt. As it did, though, the thing crumbled from the force. Little shards of rock scattered the ground loosely afterwards. "Continue."