The Broken (Closed)

[Ulric]

Ulric’s eyes were leonine, curiously regarding her from under his short, spiky mane. That he looked was enough, for he wouldn’t shy from her scrutiny. There wasn’t anything for him to hide. There was only truth, clad by the lyrical furls of his tongue. The biting savagery of the unshorn. That was his power, and the snaking of this torturous road was his redemption. They’d come to understand him in time, this priest and his fane, for with that maul he’d scourge away the lies that chained the race of men. Their depravity would be sloughed, as well.

But for now, he’d only have to endure. There was nothing else for him. The lift of her hand, and the honey-poison, just cast a mocking grin over the scar of his lips. “That is my way,” he grunted, though his legs were already shifting, as if ensorcelled by the miasmic seduction, left partly a thrall to their hasty parting. “The crows have laid bare their augury. They won’t let you deny them, harpy.” There wouldn’t be compromise, just shreds of a darker gray. The curtain of his disregard manifesting.

Implacably, he gazed at the jumble of far-flung peaks, wreathed by the mighty towers of icy squalls. These were the jaws of the north, the cradle of his soul. Their ferocity was his temple. The bundled furs, rough slabs of steel, the sweaty musk of man in his extremity, that was their progeny. Though we bide at the gates of this discord, he rubbed at the inlayed clasp at his throat, There is only our resolve, and the sucking mud under our feet. They bury us deep, or char our bones on pyres. That is why you’ve got to be ruthless. There’s no pity for kneelers. Through the looking glass, he judged her. There wasn’t much bend, but many cracks.

They fascinated him.

Ulric felt the conjuring drag of eyes, so myriad in the fervency of their calculus that he couldn’t keep from frowning. Those hues, draped by ribbons. They urged him with a cohort’s entreaty. The empty bindings of feeble intonation, grunted the priest. That, if anything, sundered the embers of his profaning desire. There wasn’t any use to this, to breaking her soul. Though he wished it badly, that subjugated rattle from her lips, the uncurling of segmented, jointed flanges from the deceit of her visage, was but a culled pretense. This was but a disruption, the redundancy of prideful trespass. “Tell me,” he grated, “That you aren’t just debasery. That your disgust, like a blanket of coals, is capable of waning.”

Turning, he trudged for a defile, nudging away the bristles of obdurate, squatly stunted conifers. They delved away, to a valley of turned rocks. The plunge of menhirs, veiled by drapes of fog, implied the thunder of a gorge. “Eridanus,” he rasped. “There’s a question looming at the precipice of my being, the sort of discomfiture that won’t fade away before the embers of a fire. The chains are here, so near my ears. They confound my prying.” There was a jerk of his jaw, a latching of eyes. “There’ll be words between us.”

[Eridanus]

Agreeable? He was more than amenable to that idea. Something about this spiteful woman gave his gut feeling an unease, and her speech sent trickles of suspicion down his spine. He could passively feel djed in the air, but yet not see any visual expressions of it. The ethaefal glanced at the woman, tempted to direct a stream of djed in order to reveal her aura, but if she was a fellow mage she would be bound to notice. He did not quite feel like engaging in combat, not at this time of the day. Wizards were paranoid, any sudden use of magic within their radius might be seen as a provocation.

"What is this mystery then, Ulric?" He turned to the armor-clad barbarian. In his mind the woman had long been dismissed, her presence not worthy of more attention except as a constant reminder that a possible threat remained. His proximity between both people were still too far to pose any personal danger, and that relaxed him somewhat.

"Remember my curiosity back then, my thirst for knowledge continues to seek enlightenment," He addressed Ulric cryptically, referring to the conversation they shared back in Alvadas, back in the dilapidated Temple. The man had then mentioned the unpopularity of Xhyvas, and so he would not explicitly refer to the god in front of anyone else unless the axe-wielding warrior wished for it to be so.

[Nashira]

Hungrily, the Ethaefal's hand circled the hilt. Her fingers danced over the rising and falling lines of dark wire. She felt a sense of ease whilst it brushed against her skin. A cool air, that settled into her flesh; an air that reminded her of Caleb's sea. Yet, as she continued to touch the sword, feelings long thrown into the depths rose to the surface. They bristled menacingly; reminding her of the empty void where her heart should be. The feeling of longing, of loneliness nearly brought her to her knees. She felt as though she were old, in need of a cane; a woman scorned for her man had been claimed ages beforehand by Laviku's monstrous waters. Her eyes glimmered with the tempestuous nature of it, coupled with her grief. But that single feeling, the glimmer of her humanity, was lost in the darkest circles of molten amber. Drowning; gone forever. "Fine then, walk that path if you wish it," Nashira snarled. "It matters not, for it is not the direction I shall be following, and thus, we will accomplish what we have originally set forth to do." The Ethaefal's voice crashed into the shore. Froth rose upon darkening sand, popping, exploding over and over, until the sea sucked it back in. Everything fell silent for a time, as her eyes settled upon the man. Keeping them level with him until a time he was forced to look away from her frightening gaze; or at the very least, blink. "Go then, with the man you call Eridanus. Move through the mountains like a lizard weaving through the stones." There was a pause as the woman's eyes widened, as her head fell back a tick, enough for her to be lost in the fiery intensity of Syna's light. It radiated off her skin; shooting series of blinding sparkles as she spoke, "discover the hidden mysteries of this secret you seek." Again, she paused, "the Vantha will help you, following you to the world's end. To the very brink of destruction if need be, for the sake of knowledge. For the sake of having a true adventure, before the icy queen comes to claim him." Nashira's lips curled into a cruel smile as she stepped forward once more. "Good day to you both then," she wore on, her voice icy cold. "May Syna's light guide you always, even in the darkest of times," she finished, before turning abruptly upon her heels and moving away from the men. Down over the gentle slope of the rock they stood upon. Away into the nether reaches of the unforgiving wastes they all found themselves lost within.

[Ulric]

Ulric skirted a bluish swell of briars, finding the tiny, hard, tiny, wrinkled berries unplucked by hungry beaks. They might’ve been something more, but instead they’d just shriveled in belated demise. That’s misfortune for you, he pondered, as gimlets noosed over their brittle stains. The dullness just made him sulky. The violet’s gone, and even the rag-pickers wouldn’t have you now. There’s the rub, y’see. Though feigning indifference, internally he shrieked, Does it matter? Does it  really matter? That girl, braised by curdled snobbery, had presaged this with her deficiency. There was more in her, too. That he couldn’t deny. Those antlers canting ever so sluggishly over the molten judgment of her gaze, inquiring more of him, yet delving away from in quick. Harshly steeped in insolence, he let her slip.

Eridanus, though.

Ulric reset his vision, the scar of his lips fixed by a grimace. Regarded this fleeting comrade, partly regretful that, if anything, they’d come to a junction. There’d be no fruition, only queries.

The riddles didn’t fit.

Brusquely, he shambled over a weedy knoll, the squash of unkind heels kicking up slivers of flint. Burly palms glitched, skewing the crossbow until it lazed upon the shelf of his clavicle. Dawdled irrevocably in his vacillation, promptly reverting to the lolling of a glacier. “There’s no great mystique in these peaks, y’know.” he rasped. “Skulls pile, and gleamed by braziers, we dirge their stacking. Moths eat scrolls, and leaky rafters blotch the ink. Vast cauldrons bubble and belch a dyspepsia of flaunted alchemic brewery, impotent in effrontery to djedic immortals. Wipe a scruffy lamp, maybe you find a djinn, maybe you don’t. The sanguine is but conjecture, and the chimerical limned by inscrutable milieu busked by tragedies of the commons. Already barren surfaces fried, crisping and subjugating us to troglodyte funnels of stalactite and fungi. Mixes of affinity, petulance, and whimsical daring, all trenching jumbled grooves and gullies, and delivering us to luminosity. There’s only what we’ve discarded, and what we’ve left to perk from the rubble.”

“But that’s enough of my riddling,” Ulric scoffed. Traces of a jubilant grin flooded his visage. Brashly, he glanced over his shoulder and saw, with insensate glee, only the boulders. “Invoking the matter of transcendence relies upon understanding not only of what you can be, but of what you can’t. The departed know, if only because they’ve failed. Listen to their spirits. Listen to the crows. Listen to the flies, the beetles, and the worms.” Feverishly, he licked chapped lips, his gimlets like musket balls. Inky and ruthless, they refused to submit.  “Then you really listen, and what d’you make out? The shrillest of shrieks, and then you realize, children are dying. Think on it, until it gushes out your pores. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?” Fur-fringed pauldrons lifted in a shrug, and he blinked. Reigning over this final inquiry was a punctual migration from fussiness, defusing any circumlocution with the blasé, relying on the self-evident as a bombshell witness.

“The injustice.”

This, if anything, was the instant to part. Inquiry of hundredfold thoughts eluded them all, a rejoinder that was intangible, intrepidly nebulous in its discrepancy. Vagaries of chimera had imparted that much, at least. “Farewell, then,” he grunted, freeing a palm for the shaking. “May your enlightenment carry you down a different path. Excursions to the bowels of humanity aren’t very… pleasant.”

Swiftly, he petered from imprecation, loping over the ridges and fissures like a goat. The metal casings barely delayed his pursuit, for they’d served as sepulcher, hierophantic vestment, and trophy. The man in metal was metal.

Invariably brittle.

Ulric didn’t have very far to look, for that scurrying knit of skin and skull, with all its alien projections, lifted unmistakable from the boulders. “I’ve arrived,” he grinned wryly, as though she’d delay in audience. “If you can stand my proselytizing, then I’ll partake of your auguries. Incidentally, we can always whelp them together, and see what unfortunate progeny they’d glean,” he jeered, as if rebuking her with an intimation of carnal aggression.  

[Nashira]

A dark outline against the greying stone, shadowed by the way the sun's light fell. The way it hit the uneven edges, the rounded curves, worn away over time by tumultuous rain and stormy weather. Nashira kept on walking, approaching the strange silhouette. A hallucination, she thought, considering how rare it was to find another roaming the harsh terrain. Yet, she had no hunger, she had no thirst, no desire when the light touched her sparkling skin. So how could it be? How could her mind create a falsity? Shaking her head lightly, splaying the frayed edges of several strands across her paling lips, Nashira continued her descent through the mountains. She continued her approach towards the strange being walking this desolate place. Her molten amber eyes fixated on the dark outline, slowly growing larger. Far less blurred around the edges, as though she were trying to look directly into the sun for a time, and then finally, managed to avert her gaze from its beauty. As she continued, she came to realize that this figure was no one new, it was the man from before. Nashira's brow furrowed with her displeasure. Her eyes melted into a pool of fiery intensity. They seemed to billow tendrils of smoke as her right hand met the hilt of Caleb's old sword, and her muscles bunched. Her body hardened, tensed. She thought she had taken care of this, and to see him here, on her side of the ranges, was getting to be a problem. Swiftly she strode towards the sound of his voice, her fingers dancing angrily against the cool metal. She stopped short only when she was facing him once more, only a few strides away. Her eyes narrowed slits, stuck on his mangled form. "Didn't we discuss your traveling in the other direction?" Shira growled. "To be sure that something like this didn't occur?" There was a pause as she took a single, menacing step forward. She was in no mood to back down from this. No mood to deal with a puny human. A child in her eyes. Arrogant in that they think they knew better; that they knew all, when truly, they had so much more to learn. You have no right to your tongue. No right to speak. "You shouldn't be here," Nashira insisted, her hypnotic tongue lashing out at him, as would a whip when uncoiled. "Which leaves one to wonder, just what you are doing here. Unless... you have come to merely mock me." A very unwise decision, her mind added, as her heart hammered in her chest, and her breath caught in her throat.

[Ulric]

Ulric regarded her, horridly gratified by the twitch of her lips, a vague tensing of her fleshy nape. They shrieked not of disquiet pervading his presence, but scantly veiled irritation. “Well, I didn’t feel like it,” he denuded his incisors, jostling the rhetorical inquiry. “Thing is, I decided I prefer horny over scholarly,” he teased, before that flaring of insinuation deluged his head.

No right, no right.

The scuffing lasted only an instant, right heel skidding back, swiftly joined by its partner. Then he regained his bearing, frowning. Tricks, he snarled inwardly. This had occurred before with her. Taking two strides nearer, he fixed his grin on the hostility of her visage, letting it wobble over the rest of her. The swell of her chest, her hips, lowering to ankles. The tarsals jut that was nearly as alluring as than having a rodent dangling from your uvula. That’s right, he smirked, Think of me as you might, only realize I’m thinking of you as a morsel. There wasn’t much behind it, merely a reflexive ploy he’d fused to infuriate her kind.

Now that, that was droll.

Ulric liked aggravating when he’d the opportunity, but he didn’t snigger at her accusing rejoinder. That wouldn’t’ve been of any practicality, especially when he’d fixed the provisions to his liking. Exulting kernels formed in a fledgling design, bumping against qualms. Shelled chitin gave a resistance, but he pushed at its misgivings. Petals of wild joy stirred, for he’d decided to join her pilgrimage. But only before the dusk. Embers shared weren’t conducive to his purpose, anyway. Until then, any affronts he’d blankly disregard, any hazards he’d scoff over before melting with jeers.

Or maybe he’d just jeer. This was all on the fly.

“Don’t be so sour,” Ulric bickered, feigning distaste. “Don’t, little bird, or your face’ll stick. That what you want, huh? The look of a curd, freshly pickled by trolls and grumkins?”

Hazily, the pewter knolls undulated, combed by his gimlets. Their ridges plaited in purples, umbers, and dusky pinks, like a quilt of ferns mottled by blight. That’s fine, he grunted, surveying the gnarled irregularity of a dwarf juniper, its patchy needles. The setting didn’t matter.

“Maybe I’m looking for a bit of ridiculing,” Ulric gave a shrug, subtly forming an obscene gesture. “That’s what I do, like you traipsing over this jumble of ridges, brooding and bitching at me for being here, as if your shykes plop out like nuggets of gold. Think your arse is that precious? Think you won’t perish, go back to the mud like the rest of us?” Harshly, he snorted. “That’s fine, bask in your delusion, but you can’t make me leave. There’ll be no shaking, so unless you’d like to risk compelling me again, and having a different sort of shaft jutting from betwixt your tits, maybe you’d be so kind in divulging your name?”

Firmly, the crossbow hitched. 

Ulric graced her with a crooked leer, quite cognizant that he’d behaved crazily, opaquely, rudely, insalubriously, but hardly caring. “I’m Ulric.” 

[Nashira]

Nashira scowled as her fingertips drummed against the metal rather hurriedly, thumping out a tune for her heart to play by, "if you knew anything human, you'd know that a series of lies spill from your mouth. That you're but a fool sputtering old wife's tails, which have fallen on deaf ears." The Ethaefal took another step closer, tightening the space between each of their chests, heaving with their displeasure, distaste for once another, and general frustrations. "My face shall never be marred by such obscurities, or pitifully twisted forms." The woman paused, "even in death, a body can be beautiful. Even when caked in mud, and buried beneath the soil we so often tread upon, even when floating at the bottom of the ocean, for fish to nibble on. A body can be beautiful. But the soul; that which lies within and lives on after this form has broken down, that is the most alluring of all. They're breathtaking. The part of us the gods wish to pull into their realm, to either keep us in their midst, or spit us back out, returning us to this vicious cycle of sorts." There was a pause, "so no, we may not be all that very different in that sense." The Ethaefal's eyes glided over Ulric as she practically held her breath. His words were harsh, cold, yet beautifully strung together nonetheless. And yet, they were insulting too. Biting. Caustic. The woman felt as though they were eating her alive. "Nashira," she growled, as her fingers twirled around the hilt, and her remaining hand soon followed suit. Within a heartbeat, she ripped the sword from its sheath. "But that's enough. You need say no more. You've gone to far, and now it is time to lose your tongue," she hissed as she stepped forward, bringing her weapon down to her side as she did so, with the foot left behind, she pivoted, swinging the leg around. As she moved, the sword did too, following the momentum cast by her lower half, she swung the weapon around. Upwards, towards Ulric's middle. The tip level with his chin. You shall be silenced, Nashira's mind hissed.

[Ulric]

Ulric lifted his chin in the stiff breeze, glibly surveying the jerk of Nashira’s knotted tresses. This girl’s crazy, he reflected, haranguing her with proximity. Thinks she’s the diviner, and nobody’ll squabble to the contrary if she just tramps through these knolls like a goat.

It seemed a waste.

In all sagacity, he relished her madness. It was if she’d fire in her veins, fermented under jade-tinged horns. If she was this puffed-up, he’d deflate her with the horrid crunch of twisting a snail under your heel. If she desired to bandy meaning with him, he’d bust her porcelain.

“You’d be beautiful enough,” he crinkled an impudent grin, “If you’d abstain from rambling about mud, souls, and twaddle, and maybe let slip a few garments.” Deliberately, he tilted his crossbow. Disgorged the quarrel from its groove and lodged its prongs over a boulder. “All of them, precisely.”

Clearly, she’d other notions. None of them involving a quick fumble over gravel and lichens, which’d subsequently consign them to plucking burrs from leather and hair for days. That palm near the blade, though. The design had come to her that she’d thrash him, but he’d other plans. This was lunacy for her, but then again, she was a lunatic. Ulric was enough of a prick that he’d indulge, at least in keeping her from any harm while he fragmented her faculties. If she didn’t insist on prancing over a cliff, he’d make her perjure everything. 

Nashira. That was a pretty name.

Ulric fixed a smirk on the swell of her clavicle, looming with a further twitch of fingers. They hitched up the sword’s hilt, but he’d already seen that coming. “Don’t get so agitated,” he snorted, but she did. The harpy. Flat steel scuffed from buckskin casing, Nashira spitting about losing tongues. Ulric was already reaching, transfixing her with a jeering look. Deftly, his left palm cinched over the thongs of his shield, the right tugging up the haft of his bearded axe. Nashira’s sword skewed for his chin, but he twisted on a heel as his shield interposed, lazily brushing off the point’s intrusion with all the regard he’d afford a gnat. That left him gyrating, reversing his grip on the axe so he grasped it just under the head. Ulric finished his spin by clubbing its heavy shaft at her ankles, meaning to deposit her on her shapely backside.

This fluidity required but a tick, cut off with a choppy kick at her knee. Then he stilled, lifting the shield before him so only his gorget and jaw grinner over its metal rim. The grip on his axe slid back to its typical groove. “Nashira, your clothes are still on,” he chided.

“Give us a kiss that isn’t quite as steely, why don’t you?” The grin stayed, and wouldn't stray until she finally gave in.

[Nashira]

A loud crack rang through the air; cascading down the length of rock to lower regions. Her sword shook with the sudden impact, jostling her hand. The hilt tickled her skin, but not softly. Not in a pleasant manner. It hurt to hold on. Hurt to have to retract her weapon. To draw away from what she wanted to be hers. Growling at her inability to fight in comparison to this wild man, the Ethaefal took a small step back. Suggesting a slight retreat until she could think of a better way to get at him. But she didn't get far. A sharp stabbing pain shot through her right foot, before another trickled through her knee. With furrowed brow, and molten amber eyes, she toppled, just as her opponent had intended. Her fingers unfurled the rest of the way, releasing Caleb's old sword. It fell silently, before clattering on the ground, several inches from where she softly landed on her behind. Scowling as her hands slid against rough stone, gathering grit, Nashira looked up into Ulric's eyes. Her own on fire. The magic behind them seething. "So they are," Nashira growled, as her fingers scrunched. Her nails grinding against the stone, gathering the remnants of their cool nature. They were betraying her. Leaving her on her own, to fend against such a vile creature. For she could garner nothing. She couldn't use it to help her settle into a comfortable simmer. "Is that going to be a problem?" she asked, as her hand slid against the stone. Inching closer and closer to her fallen sword, only to come to the realization that her fingertips could scarcely brush the hilt. It too had abandoned her, just as Caleb had, for it remained just out of her reach. "For before, you seemed disinterested in the shape of a woman who has horns sprouting from behind a thick mane of hair. Disinterested in the fallen, who bears sparkling skin. Whose eyes, should they become true weapons, could turn you into a pool of sickly moisture, rippling with a thick layer of grime." There was a slight pause as the Ethaefal's tongue slipped past her lips. As it ran over the crackled pink, before receding. "You're not interested in what an Ethaefal has to offer. Not interested in their forms. Not interested in their bodies. As alluring as they be to the naked eye. At least, to most people." For a long time, Nashira fell silent. Simply allowing her eyes to bore through Ulric's flesh. Descend into the depths of his unruly skull. "So, are you to bear your arms once more, and fight for whatever convoluted thing your mind desires, or are you going to be on your way?" the Ethaefal inquired. "Because we all have things to do."

[Ulric]

Ulric knelt with a creak of metal joints. The shield’s rim crunched against gravel, as if mooring him to the ridge. This was his way of displaying that he didn’t want to fight. Even then, it broke the codex reigning  over him. Brawling like this invariably resulted in killing, contrary to the small kindness he’d just displayed. This is, his meddling.

Immolated by that molten indignation, his lips twisted in a scowl. Taming her was trickier than he’d figured. There was steel in her, dry as bone, for why else did the cogs grind and squeak over gears, the lever sticks when he pushed, yet not when he yanked? This was all very frustrating.

Finally, he offered a cheeky grin. “I lied.” Fixed his gaze on her face instead of trying to shame her, shedding the assumed traces of barbarity that’d wormed into his conniving. “Those harsh words, in the receiving, only goaded nastier rejoinders. They are barbs only. Their impetuosity, yet unkind design I’d have thought familiar to every woman. That is the way of things, the powers that fringe our being. Even prideful, stiff-necked hetmans find themselves irrevokably the playthings of their wives. There’s but artifice, cunning, and tenacity. These intonations subjugate. There’s great power in jargon.” Firmly, he jerked his chin at her fallen sword. Filled ruthless zeal with a fraction of his kinder self, rummaging for a return. “That’s why we joust, y’see. The imaginary shackles, the bindings that might exist between us, yet don’t. The more you impose your will, the more I impose mine. That only leaves us bumping heads.”

Ulric scraped over flinty gravel, crowding Nashira. “In this we’re similar, but as you rightly say, we don’t fit the puzzle. I’ve not go your crumple of horns, I hardly know what you are, but I came here to find something. I don’t know what.” His gimlets slitted, skin crinkling. “I found you, though. I’ll see where this goes.”

Even swelled by patience, he couldn’t keep irritation from grating over his final inquiry. Thing is, you keep talking of doing, and being places, but what’ve you go to do? There’s only knolls, canyons, and quiet out here, and the crows’ll pick your bones presently. That you’ve a task, now that’s what I’d expect from a functionary of some kind of cult. There isn’t one, though,” he accused. “There’s just you, striving to reach a higher plateau where you’d only get mired, so you might look down on the rest of us, and grin.”