Meeting at the training hall

[Coren]

Coren nodded at that, a small sliver of woods around a staduim was a poor substitute for the woods outside of avanthal, especially now that they where nearly hunted clean thanks to the fact they couldn't leave the city anymore thanks to the feral animals. “We have to work with what we have, not with what we wish we could have.” He responded to her, just watching her think on how to procceed next with the lesson, he didn't know anything about tracking and hunting yet, so he couldn't help her out with how to proceed with the lesson even if he wanted to help her out, time spent waiting was time he had wasted in his opinion. Coren looked up when sliver suddenly began to laugh and began to strip herself down, he looked in befuddlement for a few moments, wondering why the kelvic was stripping down now of all times before he got it. She was a wolverine wasn't she? She was going to go into animal form and make tracks he could then try to follow. He didn't pay attention to her tattoes and the scars running over her flesh, because frankly paying attention to those would mean paying attention to a naked woman standing before him and he rather not distract himself when he was trying to learn something usefull. He wasn't startled when the kelvic was suddenly surrounded in smog and in the blink of an eye shrunk and dessipated, revealing a small black bearlike creature he assumed was a wolverine as she had already told him . “I hope you meant chimes with that, standing out in the cold for five bells would freeze even though I have morwens blessing and a warm coat.” He said in an amused tone at sliver who was now just watching at him with unblinking brown eyes before he turned around to face away from her, keeping an eye on the shadows of the trees to get a measure of the time.

[Sliver]

The wolverine huffed at the mage, but gave a sort of nod. Bells, chimes, they were metal things that rung, what did it matter, he clearly knew what she meant. After she was satisfied that he had turned around and was facing the tree she began her journey. Her first path was deep and easy to follow, the snow was rather deep, and for an awkwardly proportioned animal like a wolverine, great sweeping marks were left in the snow since they couldn't just walk on all fours, but had to sort of ride the waves of powder like a dolphin on land. She moved quickly, the snow becoming less and less dense until she could walk on all fours again, then peered around. It wasn't a vast amount of space she had to work with, but it would just have to do.The Kelvic slowed her pace and began scouting around for an area where the snow and ice would be packed tightly enough to leave only the barest hint of a mark. She made sure to continually step on dead leaves and twigs to ensure that he could find these disturbances where his vision might lose sight of her tracks, but she didn't go out of her way to put them out in the open. He may have been green to this whole endeavor, but the wolverine would be damned if she was going to make some trail a child could follow. She double backed a few times on her tracks, which would appear as if three or four wolverines had passed over the same spot, going in several different directions, and her final resting place was under the shadowed ledge of a set of rocks, bits of icestone peeking out from the solid grey granite. She had swept away her tracks in front of the space with her tail, but it was the final measure of Coren's trial would be recognizing the pattern of her tail against the snow, a disturbance in and of itself.

[Coren]

Coren waited till both the scuffling sounds of the wolverine faded away and when he guessed around 5 chimes had passed before turning around and giving a look at what she gave him to follow. He smiled as he saw the broad path that the wolverine had made through the deep snow. Even somebody as unskilled as coren could follow that track without any problems. The easy part quickly came to an end though, when the snow became less deep it began a lot harder to find the indents in the snow, or anything else to indicate where the wolverine had wandered of to. Still with a lot effort and some trail and error he managed to follow the trail, right up until the point sliver had decided to throw him for a loop. Coren hunched down next to the mass heap of tracks that looped through each other, letting out an annoyed sigh, it was rather obvious she had passed through here at least a few times, but by morwin did she really have to make it harder on a complete novice? He sighed as he gave the tracks another look, he could either try to track every single trail going away from it but in reality that would take way to long to find his prey and would only mean his target would get away unless he was lucky and chose the right one the first time. But he despised gambling on just luck. He just began tracing the tracks, if he had listened right there had to be one that had to lay on top of the other tracks when you looked closer, the very last time she had walked through this spot had to cover up some parts of the other tracks. After some chimes of trying to figure out his direction he followed one set of tracks, unknowingly to him though, coren had taken the wrong track from the mess and was going the wrong direction.

[Sliver]

Sliver waited. She had calculated an approximate amount of time it might take for Coren to find her, or even not find her, as the case may be. As the chimes drew on the chances of the latter increased steadily. While she had hoped he would figure out the right path on his own, he was a novice after all, and it wasn't as if she had given him an easy task. She emerged slowly from her hiding space and lumbered out, listening to where he might be. Sure enough after another chime she heard his rather uncertain steps following her false trail. She gave a little bark to signal to him and Coren would see the strange furry animal jump from the woodlands. He would know at this point that he had picked the wrong path, but if one could interpret wolverine emotions she didn't seem all annoyed or disappointed, in fact she looked rather pleased that he had gotten that far and circled around a couple times before sitting down and looking up at the mage as if to ask, what next?

[Coren]

Coren let out an annoyed sigh as the faint trail he had been following suddenly made an turn back towards where he came from. Seems like he had misjudged the tracks and took the wrong one to follow, not really surprising though, this was the first time in his entire life he had attempted this task, quite obvious he would have failed at it. Coren rationalized his failure as he tracked back to the mass of tracks, he hadn't been given a time limit but sliver didn't seem like a person who could keep still for a long time so she probably would come looking for him if he took to long. Just as he had guessed, when he had been backtracking, Sliver had left her hiding place and was now barking at him as she jumped out of the woods. “Well, you certainly where the one to come out on top this time.” Coren said as he came to a halt next to her. He honestly had no idea what she was thinking, he wasn't trained to read wolverine body language and all he got from it was that seeing as she circled around a few times like an overexcited child she might be exited... though he wouldn't have a clue why. After a few moments of cluelessely trying to figure out what the hell she was thinking or trying to say he just pulled on his djed and willed his auristic vision to flare into life, focusing on the faint aura extending about half a meter from the wolverine sitting in front of him, swirling with colours his mind had never seen before and unlike the aura from objects it was in constant movement. He focused a little bit more on the aura of Sliver and to pull it more into his focus and tried to read some information out of her aura. Once more the information he saw made itself know in his mind, and once again it was scrambled beyond any recognition for the most part. All he really picked up from her aura was a sense of satisfaction, though it could just as well be exitement he wasn't completely sure. But she had calmed down considerably now, just looking up waiting for his input, so he found satisfaction to be the more logical choice. Still he had no clue why she was satisfied, was it because she faked him out with her trail or something? “So Sliver, Do you wish to continue with this? Or should we just go and get your clothes?” He just asked. “If you want to continue just stay still for a few chimes, if you wanna go and get your clothes just go and get them. I honestly can't understand a thing you are trying to convey when you are in that form.”

[Sliver]

Sliver watched in an amused fashion as the Mage tried to discern her emotions. Though she could only glimpse the faintest trace of his eye color, his head turned this way and that as he looked down at her. She didn't notice any magic he had used on her, but eventually grew bored of sitting there in front of him. She moved a bit restlessly, pawing the ground and digging through the ice and snow to find the solidly frozen ground underneath, where tough claws dug into a little. It was about that time that the Mage spoke and Sliver realized that he couldn't understand a thing that she was doing. She huffed, quite entertained by how hard he seemed to be struggling to understand her, and pawed him affectionately on the leg before lumbering off through the snow, hopping over drifts with her tail slowly wagging behind her. One step at a time, he had done something today, more tracking than the Mage had probably ever done before, and for the Wolverine, just the fact that the idea of keeping one's eyes and ears open was enough of a lesson for the day, perhaps he would take more care with these types of things in his daily life, and she could always teach him more later. Coren would easily be able to keep pace with the wolverine who rode the snow like a dolphin, disappearing for moments before rising back up over the drifts as she made her way back to where her clothes had been left. Another swirling and sparkling cloud of smoke heralded the wolverine's transformation into human form, and she stretched her arms and legs briefly before slipping back into her leathers, shivering as she did so from the cold that so eagerly bit into her skin. Deep brown eyes, the exact same ones that had looked up at him in wolverine form, assessed the mage from a higher vantage point. Sliver smirked. "I know you probably don't see it as much, but I think you did well today regardless." Just after the words left her mouth the Kelvic held her head with a hand, eyes closing in discomfort as the two quick and successive transformations his her like a sledgehammer. She would need sustenance to keep going, too bad there wasn't anything in the forest she could hunt. As if in answer a high pitched skreeeeee came to both of the companion's ears above: The tell tale call of an approaching Ice Hawk.

[Coren]

Coren just let out an amused chuckle as the kelvic in front of him just snorted, gave him a pat on the leg with her paw and began to treck through the heavy snow in front of him. He retreated his djed letting the world of auras fade into nothingness before walking after the wolverine that was diving and gliding its way through the thick snow. Easily keeping pace with the animal that really was not build to make its way easily through the thick snow. A smile was on his face as he was looking at the sight, it reminded him of the dolphins that he occasionally saw in the bay. Jumping out of the sea just like the wolverine was jumping out of the white snow and diving back a half a meter or so later. Coren polity turned away from the naked kelvic as she slipped back into her clothes, turning back as soon as he didn't hear the rustling of clothes anymore. “I learned something, so that means it could have gone worse.” Coren replied to Sliver. Before the signature cry of a frosthawk pierced through the air, letting coren look up to the gray sky to see where the hawk was flying. It most likely wasn't a danger for either of them, seeing as they where to large a prey for the frosthawk to be able to carry off. Still the best would be to inform the icewatch to the fact, if it would kill cattle the results could be disasterious to avanthal. “Seems like there is a frost hawk around here.” Coren stated the obvious as he was still searching the sky. “Lets go inform the icewatch or somebody of that fact before it can do damage to avanthals children or our cattle.”

[Sliver]

Sliver didn't hear the last of Coren's words, so focused was she upon the horizon. It was a light grey, blocking direct sunlight, but still light enough to be difficult to pick out a white set of wings upon the sky. All the Kelvc could think of was that small child being lifted up into the air and subsequently dropped to his death, the crack of his bones upon hard snow as he landed. Her head rotated, ears straining. She needn't have expended so much effort, however, for the two skrees each one in short succession of the other, were significantly closer than before. Something filtered into her mind that Coren said, and she smirked. "Is your memory so bad mage that you forget I am the Icewatch? Consider it reported. Besides, something tells me they won't be letting us get back to the City proper." Just as she spoke she grabbed Coren by the cloak and flung him bodily down into the snow as a bird swooped dangerous close to them, both companions able to hear the telltale clack of talons grasping air as it rose back around. Sliver's eyes darted upward and a grimace appeared on her face. "It looks like they're a pair. You ready for this, Coren?" The Kelvic got up and dashed over to more solid cover, glancing up into the skies for their attackers. A frustrated cry echoed high above them, and the beating of wings could be heard from the massive vermin, preparing for another go around.

[Coren]

“I was more thinking to report to icewatch in ge...” Coren attempted defended himself and his precious memories from Sliver's rather ill timed joke, but was cut of as suddenly sliver grabbed him and before he knew it he landed hard in the soft snow. The snow getting everywhere even through his thick robe. Before he could even ask what the hell she was doing he heard the eagle miss its swoop at him. “What in morwen's name, those aren't supposed to be that vicious.” Coren stammered out, clearly a bit shocked before regaining his composure again and clambering to his feet. His face falling once more as he heard it was a pair. Of course, where there was one flying rat the other half of the pair always was close by. “Well, whether I'm ready to do this or not, I doubt those two birds are going to care much.” Coren replied as he followed Slivers example and dashed behind a tree for some cover, keeping an eye on the sky for any of the two frost hawks. He doubtd he had any time to throw up a decent shield, and he didn't know if would do any good against their sharp and strong claw anyway. So he had to fall back on his one and only weapon, his projection. Still he didn't know how much good that would do against those two flying rats. “Sliver, do you have anything that could help against those two? Or are you just going to try and punch them?” Coren yelled in a deadpan tone as he let his djed flare once more and began to push out the astral body of his right arm. Maybe if he could grab the wing of one oft hose birds he could let it crash, maybe giving sliver enough time to beat on it or something.

[Sliver]

Sliver slowly rose, confident that the birds would not swoop from behind as she caught sight of a form flying high in the air, scouting out their potential prey. "You have been very concerned for the mages of the City. Have you not noticed the animal attacks?" Her tone was a little caustic. Regardless of the fact the wolverine was being rather hypocritical, the fact that he seemed so shocked by these events rubbed her the wrong way. All he seemed to care about was how mistreated he and other mages were when innocent people were dying, children were dying. "Also there is nothing wrong with fists." As if to illustrate this point Sliver walked out into the open, holding her arms up into the air as if asking to get grabbed by a hawk. A high pitched skree cut through the foliage like a well sharpened knife and a white blur dove at high speeds for the wolverine. Its claws reached out and latched onto her shoulders, wings beating furiously with the ungainly load. Sliver gasped in pain, but gave a chilling battle cry and sank her teeth into the birds leg, who gave an awkward cackle and let go of Sliver immediately. The wolverine, however, was not yet done with the bird, and clung with both hands onto one of its legs, teeth puncturing any flesh she could reach. So there she was hovering a few feet off the ground, the poor ice hawk trying and failing to gain altitude and shake its prey off that so desperately clung to the leg of the bird, with its partner circling the trees. It was up to Coren to make the next move.