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Post by Kay on Dec 30, 2016 12:26:33 GMT
There was an uncomfortable sensation lingering in the air. Kaileen knew for certain that this place was where she had once lived once. It was a long time ago, but that didn’t change the importance of this place. Everywhere she looked she could see the small markings that reminded her of home, yet the closer she got to where she had once lived the thicker the miasma that surrounded her seemed to get as if the forest itself was trying to keep her out. This was the second week in a row during which she had travelled beyond Haven and it was the second week in a row in which Kay had tried to venture into the miasma without any clear progress. Her hands trailed along the enchanted markings she had left half a century ago in an attempt to retrace her steps, but it was as if they all just ended.
Frustration had started to get the better of her. Her eyes opened as she latched on to the ten frost arrows she had enchanted earlier that day. If her hidden little magic path had been ended she would simply have to retrace her steps by other means and right now that meant bruteforcing it. She loaded one of the arrows into her bow and let it loose on a nearby tree. It hit the bark with a thud and a crackle.
This was it. Time to bruteforce this mother.
“Now or never, Kay.” The elf muttered to herself and pushed on through, never letting her eyes off the place of impact. She wasn’t going to let magic get in the way of her memories and the last resting place of where her family had once been. No, there were ways to win against these things and Kaileen was not one to quit. It had been fifty years. It was time to go back. The hunters who had come for her parents had no reason to keep her mother’s home under observation for that long before it became a waste of resources.
She nocked another arrow and set it loose in the direction of her ancestral home, once more refusing to let her attention off of it and once more pushing on through despite the overwhelming pressure that built up against her mind.
It was here. She knew it was. She just had to push through against this barrier.
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Post by Lasciel Amaranth on Dec 30, 2016 16:44:00 GMT
Lasciel had been watching this strange elf since her first attempt at forging the Warded Wood. Each Scout was given a fairly open hand in managing any breach of the wards, so long as no one made it through the wards without being walked in by a Scout. The woman seemed to be attempting to forge through on her own, and so Lasciel had waved off interventions by other Scouts in favor of watching. Lasciel was fascinated by the outside world, which was one of the reasons she had joined the Scouts. That, and she was only middling with a blade, and didn't have as much innate magic as the High Elves at the Library did. She'd grown up a Wild Elf, and so knew the Warded Wood better than the majority of Arnae Aida's citizens. Kay was almost through the first Ward, which would mean the fear ward was next. Lasciel touched the enchanted braid of vines that girded her right arm. It allowed her to ignore the wards as she moved in and out of the Kingdom. It was the physical portion of a King's writ of passage. She could let the strange elven woman proceed, and make a decision later. Or she could intercede now. Lasciel was not one of the bloodier minded Scouts, she didn't relish killing intruders. She mostly just wanted to learn. So, Kaileen would see a form melt out of the forest a few meters away, off to the right of her aiming point. Lasciel kept the hood of her cloak, and the mantle over the lower part of her face for a moment as she stepped into the open. She kept her bow in her left hand, the enchanted Wyr wood seeming to dance between glittering light and shadow, and the quiver on her back would appear to be enchanted as well. She'd step to within a few meters, then stop to speak. " You've tried these woods before, yet you return." She began, her head tilting in curiosity. " What draws you here?"
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Post by Kay on Dec 30, 2016 18:04:37 GMT
Kay kept the bow in her left hand as her right hand grabbed at the tree in which her arrow had landed. She let the frost tug at its surface as she struggled against the tidal waves urging her to turn back. She remembered what her mother had told her about illusions such as this. That in the end it was the one exposed to it that chose what they wanted to do themselves. The charm was without a doubt strong, but the particular personal quest that Kay had set herself out on was far too busy for her on a personal level. She had to push through and that was that. And then, the blonde arrived. Kay raised nocked another arrow and pointed it at the woman that approached her. Her teeth gritted, for a second she considered leaving again, but no, that was still not an option. Blue eyes scanned the blonde in distrust. Witch hunters had used seeking equipment and weapons to find and kill her mother and father. What if this woman was one of them? Someone they had left behind to see if anyone returned? Elves lived for a long time, they made the most perfect watchmen. Yet she didn’t seem to know why Kay was here. Was it a test? “If you’re one of them you’d know why I am here.” Kaileen muttered through her gritted teeth as she continued to tug the string of her bow just a little further. “Who are you? What have you done to my home?” Lasciel Amaranth
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Post by Lasciel Amaranth on Dec 30, 2016 19:27:27 GMT
Lasciel stayed silent for a moment, searching the woman's eyes. There was a bit of malice, but it seemed to be defensive. She could also see that the wards were having the normally desired effect on her, but that wouldn't do to have a conversation. Reaching back into her pouch, she pulled out a small river stone. The stone was inscribed with Elven runes, which glowed with a soft green light. She tossed the stone to the woman's feet, then sat cross legged where she stood. " Pick that up, and keep skin contact with it." She said, laying her bow across her lap, the placing her wrists on her knees, palms up. Partially a resting position, and partially to show she had no ill intent. If Kay touches the stone with skin, the wards will seem to lift away, though in reality she will simply cease to be considered a threat to the ward. It was a risk, a gamble, but Lasciel knew that other hunters would confront her if she walked the woods alone and as if the wards weren't there. After a moment, Lasciel pulled the mantle off her face and the hood away from her head. " Sit, tell me of what you speak. These woods are the home of my people. Are you from Arnae Aida as well?"
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Post by Kay on Dec 30, 2016 20:32:38 GMT
Lasciel AmaranthA few slow, deep breaths filled her lungs before Kay slowly lowered her bow and put the arrow back in her quiver. This didn’t feel right, but the woman wasn’t of any threat to her. At least not right now, and she threw some kind of rune at her feet. Kay kept her eyes on the other elf as she knelt down to pick the stone up, passing the bow to her gloved right hand to let the cold stone surface chill against her fingertips. The thick fog that surrounded her mind was swept away in an instant and she shook her head in surprised relief before her eyes set on the other elf again as the blonde elf proceeded to show her face, unravel her disguise and mask. “No.” Kay shook her head as she too took a seat and hesitantly put her bow by her side with a clang. “I have no idea what you are talking about.” “I am-...” Kay hesitated again. “I used to live in the area. A long time ago.” For the first time since their conversation started Kay would allow her eyes to wander again. With the ward gone she felt the familiarity of the area again. The smells, the feelings. The home she had lived in under was located underneath one of the greater trees was close by. Built around the roots in harmony. A symbiotic relationship between a household and nature. It was the only way her mother would have allowed Kay and her father to stay. The only way Kay and her father would have wanted it. The brown-haired elf let a few more moments pass in silence as she soaked in the memories of her childhood again. “Fifty years ago.” Kay would let the smile twitch on her lips before she forced herself to quench it. “I wanted to return home. See what it was like.”
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Post by Lasciel Amaranth on Jan 4, 2017 3:10:14 GMT
Fifty years ago. Before the sundering of the Empire, before the Elves became isolated. Before the Warded Wood came into being. This area had always been patrolled by the Scouts, but prior to the King's decision to close their borders there were no wards. Trade flowed in and out of the Kingdom through these woods, a road even crossed through once upon a time. The road had been razed by magic, reclaimed by the land, and the woods warded against any who would breach Aida. "Even for our kind, fifty years can see great change." She began, watching the other woman. "Fifty years ago, this wood was different, you wouldn't need that stone, and families lived in secluded enclaves." She spoke, she had seen many homes and villages moved to enact the decree. She had also seen homes and villages that had been sacked while trade flowed. Trade tended to bring thieves and other dour characters with it, and it was the small folk who always suffered most. "Would you recognize where your home was if you saw it?" She was curious, she hadn't thought any who had left the Kingdom would ever return, yet here was one who not only returned, but fought tooth and nail through the wards to do so. Kay
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Post by Kay on Jan 5, 2017 10:10:17 GMT
“Fifty years is also a lot of time to dwell on the past.” Kay offered in response. “I have explored these woods in my dreams for a very long time. Home is always going to be home.” “From the way the small creek carved into the mossy ground to the smells and sounds of rain as it smattered against the leaves above. The way the very roots in our home pierced the ground and lent us its protection from the elements. The carefully plotted fireplace kept alight by my mother’s magic.” The same smile as before twitched on the elf’s lips. “I remember it very well.” “And right now, after all these years, I wanted to come back and see if it was still the same place.” Eyes set on Lasciel again. “I guess it’s not. The magic wasn’t here when I fled home.” “So, if it is quite alright with you I would like to go back home.” Kay pushed herself off the ground by her knee and reached for her bow again. “Welcome to tag along, I guess.” “I suspect I don’t have much of a choice.” Lasciel Amaranth
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Post by Lasciel Amaranth on Jan 5, 2017 13:53:06 GMT
"There is always a choice, but you are welcome to keep the runestone for the time. We can visit your home, and go from there." Lasciel stood as well, holding her bow loosely in her right hand. If Kay was an archery buff, she would notice the bracer on her left hand, meaning that Lasciel was likely carrying her bow off hand as a sign of trust. Lasciel looked around the woods and smiled. "My tribe originally came from a range closer to the mountain spur to the west of the Warded Wood. At the King's order, we traveled further inland." She looked questioningly over at Kay, then shrugged. "Not everyone wanted the wards to go up, my tribe included. While I was very young at the time, I too know what it is like to lose a home..." She offered a small, reassuring smile. "...though I get the feeling mine was more amenable than yours." She offered for Kay to lead the way with a small bow and extension of her hand. "Lead the way, we can take our time getting to your home and looking it over. Eventually, we will need to go into Aida proper. There, it can be decided if you will be able to keep that stone and travel freely."
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Post by Kay on Jan 16, 2017 19:51:47 GMT
Lasciel Amaranth It was appreciated at least, but from Kay’s memory the — as of now — elves were not the biggest threat to her in this forest. There was plenty of wildlife, and while she certainly wasn’t a stranger to how to hide from them or even pacify and tame them, Kay was still somewhat unsure what to do about the fact that her home seemed to no longer be available to her as if someone had one day said “Keep the runaway away from our lands.” Regardless, Kay returned the favor and kept her bow in her off-hand as well. While there was no bracer on her hand, she still kept said hand gloved for a better grip. “I wasn’t in a tribe or anything like that.” She offered a further explanation of why reaching home was so important. “I was raised by my mother, a witch, and my father who hunted her. Once.” Kay took the lead, had them passing over mossy rocks that seemed to play in harmony with the memories that the elf had from back then. Perhaps she was a bit taller than then, but the feeling of ‘I have been here before’ still clung to those memories as it were. “My mother worked with many of the surrounding woodworkers and other laborers to aid their work in symbiosis with the nature. Curing trees, hunting animals, cutting trees and then helping with the regrowth…” There was warmth in these memories. “She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but much like anything in the world of business… The hunters didn’t care.” They passed over a rock. Before them laid a small grove that seemed rather unremarkable by many measures, except to Kay. This was the grove she had grown up in. Her smile faded, the smell of ash filled her nostrils where none was really meant to be found. For Lasciel, perhaps she would smell the morning’s dew lingering around or the smell of… Well, a forest. Kay felt much else. “They came here and they burned her.” “They flogged my father for his treachery.” “I ran away. I was young but from the day I could talk they had told me that this day would come.” They came to a stop before a grand tree and its roots, and if someone looked through the overgrowth and moss one could almost make out what had once been a door situated within said roots. At least it had been once, fifty years ago. “This was where we lived.” Kay sighed and let her anger go as the palm of her hand planted itself against the charred remains of the door. “Fifty years ago. When I ran away.”
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Post by Lasciel Amaranth on Jan 19, 2017 17:06:14 GMT
Lasciel listened and followed as Kay spoke of what happened. She had been a Scout in this area for many years now, but the forest was large, and always held more secrets than it revealed. Thus, it was no surprise when Kay led them into a grove that Lasciel hadn't been in before. It was a beautiful place, though Kay's words revealed a marred history for it. "Hunters..." Lasciel said, the venom within the word was evident. "...fifty years ago, this forest was better traveled, and less protected..." She said, though it was obvious that Kay would know both of these quite well. Still Lasciel was at a loss for what to say, even for Elves, fifty years was a long time. She was a gifted tracker, but if any spoor from the hunters remained, it would only confirm their presence here, not tell them anything about them or where they could be found. Lasciel looked upon Kay, then, as she seemed to be reliving part of her memory at the sight of her former home. She couldn't detect any subterfuge from the Elf, only sadness and similar emotions. Trusting her instincts was part of the training of a Scout, and her instincts were telling her that this Elf belonged here. "I will aid you how I can, from your story and what I see of your reaction to this place, I believe you..." She said, looking around the clearing. "You were born here, and as such should be a citizen of Aida. If you wish it, I will vouch for you to our King to be such and to be given free passage through the Warded Wood..." It all sounded a bit hollow to what Kay must have lost here, to offer her what she should already have. Once more, Lasciel came face to face with her deeply held belief that the wards should be brought down...that the woods should be protected by Scouts and Knights, but traveled again.
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Post by Kay on Jan 19, 2017 19:07:56 GMT
Lasciel Amaranth A small flicker of a smile tugged at the very corner of her lips. “That sounds great,” She smiled for a second. “Thank you.” Though the smile quickly faded when the elf turned back towards the door that her hand had been put up against. She moved it to grab a hold of the rusted handle and gave it a pull. The door didn’t open, and so she gave it a second more firmer pull. The hinges creaked and echoed into the vast greatness of the forests before the door collapsed in full onto the ground with a bang. Kay twitched, tensed up and threw a quick look around her as if to check for the witch hunters. After all these years the fear was still as real as the day she had fled. She knew that they were tracking her, she knew that they were still on the hunt. What few magical abilities that Kaileen had managed to teach herself was still a burden that needed to be absolved in the eyes of the witchers and their gods. She carried the tainted blood cursed with magick, that made her a threat that needed to be exterminated. It had certainly made her father someone who had to be made an example of. For a second she could hear both of their screams of agony, but she shut them out. History was history, it didn’t have to affect the present unless you made it. Lord Fremont had taught her that in one of his many lessons with her. It was the words that had formed their bond between another, until his death when the empire fell. She took the first step inside her old home and was met with an interior as overgrown as the outside. But remarkably enough that was the only thing that seemed to be off about it. If anything it seemed perhaps a little too overgrown. Roots covered the entire floor, most of the walls and kept the ceiling from falling in, almost as if… “Mother.” Kay smirked. “She did this.” “But why?” Kay began poking around in her old home. At least the few parts of it that she could still reach with all the overgrowth. “Not sure how common it is in this… Aida of yours, but my mother only allowed herself to read the part of her tomes that helped nature with its processes.” Kay knelt down and grabbed a hold of a leafy vine growing along the walls. “She always said, ‘Kaileen, we are born of nature, for nature. We have to be thankful for what she brings us’” “I never really understood what she meant until I was older.”
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Post by Lasciel Amaranth on Jan 26, 2017 16:57:46 GMT
KayLasciel stayed back and allowed Kay to have a private moment in what had once been her home. Her caution was mildly infectious, so Lasciel turned her eyes, ears, and nose to the trees and wind. The forest continued to sound like any other forest, the woodland animals unaffected by the warding. "Not common, but not unheard of." Lasciel responded, moving to stand near the doorway into the abode. "The Wood Elves are notorious caretakers of tame plants, and the Wild Elves, my people, hold a connection to the Wild beyond anything the Wood Elves can claim. Your mother sounds like she was a Wild Elf, a hedge witch of some kind." Lasciel seemed unsure. "There were Wild Elves that lived in this area, but they and my tribe had never interacted until after the Wards went up. I know some tribes have such Wild Witches, it travels in their blood so you likely have some ability in it as well."
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Post by Kay on Jan 27, 2017 14:29:37 GMT
Lasciel AmaranthWalking around in your childhood home some fifty years later felt unreal in a sense. Had it not been for the overgrowth, the roots that kept the walls and ceiling from falling over she might very well not even have had the chance to be here. Which was exactly the problem for Kay. There was no reason for her mother to keep it structurally sound for all these years, but here they were and the daughter couldn’t help but feel as if her mother had intended something for her with it all. Lasciel talked and Kay nodded. “I do.” She turned towards the other elf. “They didn’t teach me much, it would have made me a target along with my mother when the hunters came to burn her at the stake.” They weren’t wrong. The things that Kay had managed to learn without her mother’s supervision was mainly something that had happened in secret amongst the most trusted advisors that Lord Fremont had to offer her. She knew how to enchant arrows, she knew how to lift small things with her mind, but beyond that Kay was as untrained as it got. “What I know is what you saw when I tried to brute force that ward of yours. I can enchant items through a ritual that takes me a long time to perform.” Kay took a step deeper into her hom. “I can lift things without touching them, but I never got very far with that.” She took a step into the room that had once been her own, she started to speak, “And I-” She gasped in surprise. “Dear maker!” A startled exclamation echoed through the small home. Kay shivered and took a deep breath before she knelt down before the particular overgrowth in her room, but it wasn’t just any overgrowth. There was a corpse embedded within it. “Amber silver-weave armor,” Kay’s teeth gritted. “Silver weapons.” “It’s one of them.” She cussed under her breath. “One of the men who hunted my mother.” She lifted the man’s helmet to expose his long-since decomposed skull. The jaw fell off and she gasped once more albeit in disgust as she saw what had happened. “The roots, they’re…” In the man’s chest, in his pelvis and out in the back. This wasn’t natural, her mother had forced the roots to grow like this. “Mother…”
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Post by Lasciel Amaranth on Jan 30, 2017 18:19:17 GMT
Lasciel practically blinked into the house, she reacted to the alarm in Kay's voice. Her bow was drawn, and an arrow shimmered on the string as she cleared the first room, and stepped into the entrance of the second. When Lasciel saw what had caused the startlement, she slipped the arrow back into her quiver and knelt by the corpse. "This looks to have been done quite suddenly and violently..." She said as she looked at the wounds. The damage to the bones near the entry areas looked fairly similar to an arrow wound. "How powerful was your mother?" She wondered aloud. Then she turned and looked at the silver amber weave armor and quirked an eyebrow. "I'm not familiar with this construction, do amber and silver affect your abilities?" She asked. She knew only enough about magic to do her job, which was little enough. She hadn't heard about such, but she knew there were many different expressions of magic in the land.
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Post by Kay on Feb 13, 2017 19:38:05 GMT
“Powerful enough to be a threat.” Kay offered Lasciel. “I had never seen her go wild with her magic before, I can only assume that in the light of knowing what was going to happen to her she decided to go out with a blaze rather than a whimper.” The ranger picked up the Sword and held it in her hands weighing it up and down. “No, but superstitious fools will always throw themselves at make belief as long as it supports their cause and opinion.” Carefully discarding the silver sword in the man’s lap she eventually got up from the floor and gave the area a lookover. There was something deliberate in the way that the roots had intertwined within the man. There was something deliberate in the way that the roots had taken a hold of the house and kept it from falling apart for all these years while still remaining in obscured enough from the outside to not seem all that important and easy to miss. Kay approached another door in the opposite side of the hallway. The hinges creaked, a weird sense of familiarity fell over her. “This was my roo-” She gasped at the sight of a bare skeleton that laid before the ruins of what had once been her bed. “Is that...” She whimpered as her knees grew weak. She glanced at the scratches at the bones, the caved crack at the back of his skull before her eyes closed. She knew the risks of going back here, much less so with a stranger, but she had to know what had happened after all these years. She swallowed air trying to find the words to describe what they were seeing. “It’s my father.” She said rather abruptly. “He was once one of them, but now he’s an example of what they do to traitors.” That was how he had met her mother in the first place. “I can’t think about it right now, I need to find out what the hell is going on. Then I can mourn.” Little did Kay notice the way the arm and what remained of the hand seemed to point towards a nearby strongbox atop of a nearby wardrobe. She was too busy doing the opposite of looking at the remains of her father for that. Lasciel Amaranth
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