King of the Hill

[Tribal]

The throw was off, Shahar may have been well versed in his weapon of choice but he was no expert; especially when it came to an offhand throw. The javelin, however, clipped Clive's side and cut into Valen's arm, weakening him just enough for the woman to deal a devastating blow. Wounded and with the cabin filling up fast with black smoke, Clive struggled to her feet and coughed, fanning a hand back and forth in front of her face, "animals!" She hissed and held up the key, making sure Shahar got a good look at it before she tossed it into the fireplace, looked him in the eye and then left, limping out the door to safety.

Clive would take what she could carry; tearing pelts down from the drying racks outside before the fire spread too far and loaded up the two horses with any survival gear she could find before fetching the hunting dogs. There was no telling how far she would get before her wounds or the grasslands took her life; perhaps by some miracle she would make it back to the city of stone, she had made the journey twice before after all, and nothing was impossible.

Inside the cabin the fire was now climbing the walls and thick, dangerous smoke wafted out through the door. Valen lay dead on the floor with a dagger in his heart and an iron sword across his middle. Snow was panicked by the smoke but refused to leave Shahar's side, scratching at the bolt that pinned the chain to the wall of the cabin, even as her eyes began to sting and the smoke inhalation caused her to snort and shake her head. Desperation and adrenaline seemed to drive the man's actions, and soon his persistence paid off, with the wood around the bolt finally giving way to his tools.

By the time Shahar managed to escape the cabin with whatever he chose to take, the roof was caving in and the small glass jars of snake venom lined up along the shelves were starting to shatter and explode. The fire had spread outside to the pelts, and line by line it slowly consumed all. The hunting dogs were gone, as were the horses and any sign of Clive. In their place, the lone doe stood at the edge of the woods, watching as two season’s worth of hunting and hiding went up in flames.

"I make no distinction between good and evil, but this world must have balance," a woman's voice spoke gently, a close presence even if for now she remained unseen by Shahar and unheard by Snow, "with every end, a new beginning; just as the sun sets to rise, so too will the ideas of men once again find fruition. What say you silent one," for she knew him to be a man of few words, "what end do you seek here with your actions this day?"

[Colt]

His throw was jagged, and it ended the fight––in Clive’s favor. The weapon clipped Valen, and it gave her the edge she needed to plunge the dagger into his chest.

“No!” Shahar shouted, not that it changed anything.

Clive rose and said something––animals?––before showing the captive the key to his freedom, giving him one last look in the eye, and then tossing the key into the fireplace before fleeing the cabin and the rapidly rising flames.

Shahar’s efforts redoubled; they key was lost to him now––his only hope was to separate the shackles from the wall itself. Snow braved the thickening smoke and found her way to him, frightened by the fire but refusing to leave him to his fate. He turned his knife back to the wood, and she turned her claws to aid him. Together they gouged and sliced at whatever they could, until he threw his weight back again––and felt it move. He gave it slack and tried again, bracing a foot against the wall and grabbing the chain with both hands, heaving with all of his might.

The mutilated wood gave, and the shackles were ripped from the wall.

They were both coughing now as the smoke snuck into their lungs. Shahar pulled his shirt to cover his nose and mouth, stumbling deeper into the darkening murk of the cabin.

“Valen!” he called out, although could barely manage the entire name before being set upon by a string of coughing.

Valen was where Clive had left him, and Shahar fell to his knees to see if he was still alive. He yanked out the dagger, trying to gauge the size and how deep the wound must have been. He called out again and shook the Kelvic, but there wasn’t any question; Valen was already gone.

Heat forced Shahar away, dagger still in hand as the fire crawled up the walls and across the floor, consuming the dry fiber of the hides and chasing him away from Valen’s body. His back met one of the walls that was still untouched, falling against the hunting bows and knocking them from the wall. He picked one up as it tangled his feet, aiming to free up his movement, but then they had to move now or the fire would get them, and the bow came with him as he and Snow fled the burning cabin.

The roof collapsed at their heels, as if the building itself was trying to swallow them whole.

Outside, Clive was already gone––along with the dogs, horses and as much of the bounty as she had been able to carry. Because soon enough, the fire would consume what was left, and all the grassland they had strung up to dry would be turned to ash.

Outside, a doe stood where the dogs had once been, watching the destruction of the destroyers. That doe… was it the same one as before?

With the pure air came a voice, a voice that Shahar heard inside; female, but at the same time something else, something that Snow did not hear that that had no source. Its source was intangible, but it still felt near, as if she was right next to him.

"I make no distinction between good and evil, but this world must have balance, with every end, a new beginning; just as the sun sets to rise, so too will the ideas of men once again find fruition. What say you silent one, what end do you seek here with your actions this day?"

Shahar looked around, feeling the closeness of the words but unable to find the one who spoke them. He dropped the bow and dagger to respond in Sign, gesturing to the world at large in absence of a single recipient.

Rightness, he replied. It was a somewhat specific sign; his desire for rightness was not a desire for ‘goodness’ or ‘justice,’ and was more akin and attached to his follow-up of correctness. What he had seen, he knew that it was wrong, that the Sea of Grass had a certain way of things and that Clive and her servants had made a grave incorrectness with what they had done, even if he did not know exactly why.

Something’s wrong, he said. Vague, frustration at self, elusive words. He couldn’t quite explain it, because he didn’t quite understand it himself. Wrongness, messed up. Seek… rightness-correctness. Confusion, not quite understand.

[Tribal]

“Shahar,” the goddess spoke, materialising before his eyes, and with long tapered fingers moved to take his right hand, the iron cuff around his wrist snapping open and fall to the ground, “hunter, and guardian of Cyphrus,” Caiyha smiled as hair a lush green fell from thin air to dress her shoulders; knowing eyes saw past the flesh to his soul, “with this mark I grant you a fluency in the language of Nura so that you might read the world around you with new a understanding.”

The man’s right arm would tingle as Caiyha bestowed her mark there, a crystal clear lake forming above the man’s wrist, with a sea of swaying grass growing up around it, the colour of which would change with the seasons, a rich gold through summer to winter and a brilliant green during the spring. Up over his forearm the twisting, knotted trunk of the Serenity Tree grew and branched out, decorated with life in the form of brightly coloured birds which ruffled their feathers and seemed to speak silently with one another, boastful tree frogs with proud, puffed out throats and slender limbs croaked, and multi-coloured snakes wound through and coiled about the deep-set roots. High in the tree’s branches a bird built her nest, where in spring she would raise chicks that would fledge before summer’s end, one of which would revisit the nest each year to raise a family of her own. In the background on the left a band of coyotes sang to the moon and to the right a pride of Night Lions sunned themselves on a hill of rocks. Taking pride of place in the tall grass was the burrow of a Spearback, a creature that would seldom reveal himself, but every now and then peek out from his den as if to offer his thanks.

“Help restore balance to this place.”

[Colt]

“Shahar.”

From the flickering shadows thrown off by the cabin, She suddenly was. It was as if the world itself took form before his eyes, for in a way, that was what was happening; the inexplicable feeling of presence that he had felt now shifted, stepping into the physical as the Divine made its momentary home in the world of the mortal.

She was all beings, and she was at the same time none of them; the goddess was made out of the very manifestations of living, of the breathing and moving pieces of the bestial tapestry that she guided and birthed.

The mortal hunter couldn’t move under the weight of her presence, or of her sheer reality; his world, his life, his home, all the creatures he had ever seen, they were standing before him, encompassed and embodied by their Divine mother.

She reached out to him, and at a single touch the shackle opened its jaws and fell to the ground.

“Hunter, and guardian of Cyphrus.” Her smile was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. “With this mark I grant you a fluency in the language of Nura so that you might read the world around you with new a understanding.”

There was a sensation in his right arm, not painful, not pleasurable, but powerful. If he had been holding the dagger, he would have dropped it again. The feeling rolled through his fingers, pooled between the bones of his wrist, rolled through the muscles of his forearm and then tapered off above the elbow, dissipating into something he didn’t quite understand.

And when he turned to look, he saw a new arm. An arm that was alive, not in the same way he was alive, but in the way the world itself was alive; beings, together, weaving amongst each other in a web of perfect peace and violence. It was the Sea of Grass itself, settled comfortably on his skin.

“Help restore balance to this place.” It didn’t feel like a command, nor quite like a request. It felt instead like an objective observation. Because yes, Shahar would help restore balance to this place. He could feel it inside, that sense of incorrectness, made real and made clear by the gift the goddess had given him; this place was woefully out of balance, and there was no question that he would indeed work to restore it. There was nothing else he could do.

Shahar turned away from Her to gaze into the trees, the grass, the dancing orange glow of the fire. His fear, his anger, all of it was less important now; there was something more pressing, something greater than himself that demanded his attention. The how and why of the imbalance was secondary; what mattered first was that something was wrong here, and that it needed to be corrected. Shahar closed his eyes, and he prayed to Caiyha.

I will make this whole again.

There was work to be done.

[Tribal]

G R A D I N G

Shahar Dawnwhisper

Experience

• Intelligence: 2
• Tracking: 2
• Negotiation: 1
• Stealth: 4
• Investigation: 4
• Weapon, Javelin: 5
• Animal Husbandry: 1
• Logic: 4
• Planning: 3
• Bodybuilding: 2
• Mathematics: 1
• Brawling: 1
• Wrestling: 2
• Cleaning: 1
• Socialisation: 2
• Organisation: 2
• Endurance: 2

Lore

• Whisper: The meaning behind the name
• Spearback: Scout's Bane
• Spearback: Hibernate during winter
• Negotiation: Trading dinner for a rumour
• Hazelweed Pavilion: Attacked by Spearback
• Spearback: Eat snakes
• Spearback: Toxic barbs
• Location: Stardown
• Tracking in snow
• Logic: Using facts over opinions
• Planning: Murder
• Weapon, Javelin: How to kill a man
• Javelin: Stabbing
• Stealth: Surprise attacks
• Cleaning: Keeping weapons clean
• Clive: The Morpher
• Valen: The Kelvic Fox
• Javelin: A left-handed throw
• Logic: Theres more than one way to undo a lock
• Valen: Dead
• Clive: Escaped
• Shahar: Marked by the goddess Caiyha

Loot

1 x Shortbow
1 x Custom Dagger with Ruby Stone set in hilt (Value: 70gm)

Penalties

● Smoke inhalation will mean that Shahar has a nasty cough for the next few days, but some tea with a bit of honey will set him right!
● The stab wound on Shahar's left shoulder he will need to seek medical attention for from The River Flower or it will become infected.

Awards

Phylonura - The first Gnosis mark of Caiyha

Notes

It has been my absolute honour to write with you and bestow the first mark of Caiyha, hopefully I did the goddess justice. I know you've waited a long time for this mark, enjoy it along with the rest of the rewards you've earned throughout this thread.