RP:A Meeting On The Plains

Background

This is part of the Kurgan's Run story arc.

The very pregnant Mahri tracks Jolie across the plains toward the Dark Fortress, and is joined by the vagrant Amadeo and the necromancer's necromantic 'bodyguard' Leifong.

Later, Travelling South on the Milous Plains

Jolie had actually paid for the horse she was riding; its papers would, with a bit of skilful doctoring, help to negate any untoward claims of alternative ownership for the stallion she had obtained for Colton Black. The grey mare, an elegantly put-together beast with fine paces, made good time across the grasslands as the necromancer travelled south, her eyes set on the sprawling plains.

Only when she spied a roadside trader did she ease her horse from its steady canter into a walk, and would draw alongside the man. Jolie'd packed plenty of whiskey but... "Say, do you have water?" she asked.

No," mumbled the merchant. "I've got holy relics. A few unholy relics. And sore feet."

Jolie nodded. "Uh... huh. Like what?"

The trader wandered over, almost resentfully, to show her his wares.

Mahri probably wasn't far behind Jolie and Colton Black. Not that the two shared the same last name. Yet. Or..ever. Either way, they were both fairly easy to track. The roan was heavier, his rider was bigger. The second horse was carrying a lighter load and the tracks were roughly the same age. And if that didn't help, even on a dirt road, the two left their scent on just about everything. Granted, it was mingled with horses and sweat, but it was there. And Gods she hated walking. She'd have a horse if they could stand her and she was tired of smelling like roses. Thanks to our resident dandy. She's almost to the pair when Jolie stops at the trader. Unfortunately, she also chooses that moment to stop and have a drink. Of water. Because she can't have whiskey.

Jolie had dismounted, watching Colton ride ahead; hey, it's not like he was -glued- to her, or anything... She spent a few minutes picking through shoddy wares, before she found several items of some value, and possibly of use to her task ahead.

The trader, who was marginally aware of the various uses to which his wares might be employed stared at her balefully.

"What"?" she stared right back.

"Can't make up your mind what side you're on, Miss?" The merchant smirked.

Jolie snatched a few coins from her pouch, tossing them at the man's feet. "Well, I could chew your face off...." she shrugged. "Or I could get on my horse and ride away. Decisions, decisions."

The trader swallowed, hard. "Uh. I.. that is..."

The necromancer stowed her purchases in her saddlebags - candles in black and white, vessels both sanctified and profane. It had been a lucky stop, really, having twigged her memory regarding one of the spells she'd seen in the Forsaken Book of the Dead.. while she'd had the bloody thing... which may just prove a way to complete her mission. Tightening the straps, she was halfway mounted again when she spotted a figure in the distance. Hard to miss, really. Like a dark sort of land-based dirgible... Jolie raised a hand, and waved at her sister.

Mahri started trudging along, kicking up dirt as she went and watching it settle like fine dust on her boots. It is fortunate she looked up. Seeing the wave, Mahri picked up her pace. She didn't expect Jolie to wait. Colton was little more than a smaller speck than her sister. Still, she had an idea now of where they were going. Raising her own hand to wave, Mahri considered taking her gloves off if for no other reason than to drain the sweat from them. When had it ever been so bloody hot down this way? Streaks of moisture lined her face and the wolf took a pull from the flask of water. A flask because, well, that's really all she had to carry it in.

Jolie's mouth felt a bit like the bottom of a parrot's cage. It would therefore be Mahri's flask she had her eye on when she legged the mare forward, in the opposite direction Colton had taken. She'd spare him a glance - well, his dust, anyhow, that stallion could really move - hoping the conjurer would abide by good sense and wait for her in the fortress' exterior shadows. The mare snorted, on scenting Mahri and took to a rather elegant kind of prancing, which looked very nice but was actually the height of misbehaviour; she was not appreciating the wolf-smell Jolie had masked, a little, with her vanilla concoction, raw and wind-borne from the sweating lycan ahead. "Mahri! What in blazes are you doing out here...?" The necromancer urged her mount on, the horse's lips a-foam with the effort of galloping and nervousness both. She'd halt a stone's throw away. "My horse doesn't like you."

Mahri squints up and stares at Jolie, putting flask to lips again. It's entirely possible that cool refreshing scent of water would reach both horse and rider. "Lookin' for you and no horse likes me." Holding up the container of water, she'll wait for Jolie to either force the horse closer or dismount to get it. No way in hell was she going to risk getting bitten by a horse and come closer than necessary. "Why are you going there?" She probably won't have to say where 'there' is.

Jolie ignored the question, and did not dismount - much easier to keep control of a nervous horse while on its back, where it can't run over you - but would calmly give her mare no option but to move forward. A hand gloved for riding reached for the flask. "She doesn't bite. Well. She didn't bite me." The horse snorted again, loudly, eyeballing Mahri, plumes of dust rising from nervously-shifting hooves. "You shouldn't be all the way out here, in your condition. Go back to the pub, make Steady do the chores. You look like a ... " she paused. "Quite tired."

Mahri turns her head to keep dust from her eyes and waits until the burden, slight as it is, of the flask is taken from her hand. "No. Steadman is gettin' tired of my cranky ass." Not to mention Amadeo was back there. Not a complication she wanted to even think about..if he could even be considered a complication. "And besides, you need a bloody keeper." And at least Mahri knew something of where her sibling was going. "You know. That thing idn't the least bit stable. Gives me the damned creeps." At least it did when she'd spent entirely too much time there. "Whispers things.." Trailing off, she'll reach for the return of her flask.

Jolie would only take enough to slake the dry off her tongue, and a scant mouthful for her horse. She was what she was, and all, but denying a gravid woman water in this heat... "Warm, isn't it, Mah?" Jolie cast another glance south, where she knew it was only a mile before the misshapen silhouette of the fortress would loom up out of the grasslands. She leaned down against the mare's dappled neck, to give the water back. "And I have Colton. And.. Mahri. I know what I'm doing."

Mahri screws the cap back on and drops her hand to her side before tipping her head in mild curiosity. "You know I'm just going to follow you. What do I have back in Vailkrin if you get yourself eaten by that thing again?" She made that point. To remind her sister that she didn't know everything. "I don't mind the heat, Sister. I don't mind it at all."

Jolie's lips scrunched into a sourpuss-moue, equally sour words bitten back in favour of, "It's not going to eat me, Mah." Jolie studied a passing plover, dark against the blue of the sky, her next words a a low mumble. "I'm.. going to eat -it-. " - then, louder: "Did you know... plovers don't make nests? They just lay their eggs on a flat bit of ground and hope they don't get trodden on. It's a wonder there's any left alive at all, silly things." She rolled her eyes, and legged her mare away. "Come on, then... But you're NOT going in there. You can wait outside."

Mahri mutters under her breath, "Like hell am I waiting outside." Louder she calls, "You go ahead. I'll meet you there." Even if she had to godsdamned fight her way inside. She'd gotten in before. She just had to remember. If the Fortress hadn't changed all that much it shouldn't be too hard. Following scents was her thing after all.

Leifong is here, and in fact has been for some time. Though his presence might have been easily missed by the two women. He follows in silence, moving from shadow to shadow.

Jolie couldn't know it, not in its entirety. Mahri couldn't, either, at all, but the fortress was more akin to an organic being, an insane one, which shifted and grew and ground its many-sided stone blocks into shape after shape, room after room. It'd be nothing like the place they were in, before. "You're not bloody well coming in, hear me?" And she urged the horse with no name to a flat gallop, leaving Mahri to... well. Eat her dust.

Mahri grinds her teeth..and the dust that's gotten into her mouth. Spitting something brown onto the ground, Mahri ducks her head and plods along. She'd be going in come hell or highwater. She expected the former before the latter. "Stuborn wench. Pigheaded. Prideful. G'damn woman." She'd curse her sister with each step.

Mahri is following a swiftly vanishing dust trail.

The sky is blue, an angry plover is in the grass, tweeting.

Jolie said, "Tweet."

Mahri snaps at the bird, "Shut up. You aren't fecking helping."

Amadeo slid to an abrupt and violent stop, throwing back his hands to maintain balance against the forces of inertia. He'd been running, and from the look he threw in Mahri's direction, was not surprised to find her here. Smiling toothily, he called out, "Hey!" oblivious to whatever might be going on, as per usual.

Mahri looks over her shoulder at the shout. "You're late!" she calls back and continues plodding forward. "By at least twenty minutes!" She won't wait. Either he catches up with the slow moving overheated female or not. Mahri is on a mission.

Amadeo started toward Mahri at a casual jog, picking up just enough speed so as to eventually catch up. "Expecting me then!" he called after her.

Mahri shrugs, "Like a bad penny." A flask is raised, the cap twisted off and a slug taken from the contents. Water, of course. Because it needed to be reiterated she did not have whiskey. Not like Jolie who was packing a damn brewery.

Leifong seems to materialize on the path before the two Lycans, downcast hood and black robes fluttering lightly in the wind as he waits for them to catch up. He didn't think much of either wolves, they were nothing like the white one, the mighty huntress of which he'd been acquainted recently. "You shouldn't be following the Sin-Eater here." he states quietly as Mahri reaches him on the path. "It won't end well."

Amadeo gave an irritated snort as he noted Leifong's sudden appearance. He thumped his chest and waved the monk off, "Take a hike!"

Mahri barely looks at Amadeo as she simply steps around the priest. "Yeah? Nothin' ever does." It's a matter of fact and Mahri is determined to get to the fortress. It's right freakin' there.

Amadeo 's eyes narrowed threateningly as he circumvented Leifong's position, sparing little more than a moment's appraisal of the monk. He was hot on Mahri's heels, his stride newly vitalized with a purposeful fluidity as he began to sense there was more than light spirits afoot.

Leifong allows a smirk to grace his thin, pale lips as Mahri responds, ignoring the other lycan entirely. For a moment it looks as though he might be ready to make a retort, but then he disintegrates without a further word, melting back into the shadows as quickly as he'd come.

Amadeo said to Mahri, "Oi, what's up?"

Mahri said to Amadeo, "If you insist on coming along, then stay close. We're going somewhere..interesting."

Mahri is way under-exaggerating of course.

In the distance, a black and jagged shape can be discerned, rising out of the golden grasslands, unnatural and unpromising. A flock of starlings momentarily darken the sky, the migrating birds swarming in masses overhead. It may noticed that the flock, though flying on a direct southern route, will diverge sharply in a wide arc, to avoid flying over that ominous structure..

Leifong perhaps hadn't done -all- he could to ward Mahri away, but then again, it wasn't his place to do so and the tone in her voice made it clear that no words could dissuade her. Not that he was terribly concerned about the woman, she was not his charge to protect, and perhaps the loss of her would... well. The priest pushes hypotheticals from his mind and moves quickly through the shadows, as a shadow, making his way to the fortress more quickly than the others and once more waiting for them to catch up. Yet this was all trying his patience.... maybe he should just go forward on his own.

Mahri has her eye on the prize. That damned fortress. Watching the starling's path through the sky, how they detour, she points it out to Amadeo with a nod of her head. "Not even birds'll go near it. And where Jolie is going? It's worse than the outside. It's not like a regular structure. It'll change on you so stay close to me." If, that is, Jolie had gone in before she got there with an unexpected escort. If not..she is quiet sure her sister will try to forbid her entry again.

Amadeo offered Mahri's words a distracted nod. He'd caught sight of something unusual off the beaten path and was now leaving her side to go investigate. A gnarled branch of wood, conveniently sized to serve as a bludgeon, lay wedged between two stones, and the drifter, weaponless himself, roughly dislodged its frame and slung it over his shoulder. By now, the woman of his interest had made some distance between them, and he bounded off to resume his position beside her. "Who's Jolie?" he appealed, a hint of frustration rumbling in his tone, "Who was that monk? And why'd we go anywhere near that thing?"

Mahri slants an irritated look at Amadeo. It's all she seems able to manage for him. "My sister. One of her new bodyguards and we're going near because I'll be damned," she probably would be, "if she's going anywhere in there with Colton Black and those freaky ass monks." Mahri might find Colton's penchant for remoreseless murder amusing but that didn't mean she'd trust him with her sister near that pool. "Nice club."

Amadeo mouthed a soundless 'O', though from the look on his grizzly face, he was no closer to understanding the context of this adventure. "Thanks," his tone was light-hearted, his attentions allowed to settle on Mahri as he'd initially intended, "Found it in some rocks."

Leifong remains stationed a short way up on the path, his eyes not drawn to the structure with nearly the same fervor or frequency of the others. He didn't need his eyes to feel the overwhelmingly perverse presence that the fortress produced. Once more he phases out of the shadows, and positions himself off to the side of the path, waiting for the others to approach, wondering if Mahri and Amadeo would manage to catch up with Jolie and the conjurer in time to enter that awful place as a group.

Mahri stops. To have a drink and offers the flask, now nearly empty, to Amadeo. "Water. Sorry I didn't have anything stronger." She sounded sincere there.

Amadeo graciously accepted the offered flask, holding it up level with his gaze and peering one-eyed down the mouthpiece. With a beggar's shrug, he exhausted its sparse contents and made to toss it back to Mahri, "Been dry before." He was growing weary, it showed in the ever-increasing frequency with which he shot shifty glances toward the looming citadel. "Soo..." he cooed, as easy as you please, "I'm guessing your sister's fine, would just be rude to bother her like this, eh?"

Mahri blinks and digs the heels of glove covered hands into her gritty eyes. And shakes her head. "You should be dry more often," she mutters before finally looking up again. "No. I highly doubt she's fine. We'll find out though." We? We?? Where the hell had that come from? "Or I will. You don't have to come along."

Amadeo 's lips screwed into an unimpressed smirk. He canted his head toward the fortress, gazing searchingly into its turrets and walls. He wouldn't deign to offer her disclaimer any reply. Instead, gave his makeshift club an indicative downward tug, bobbing it behind his head as he glanced back at Mahri, "You got the look of trouble, kid."

Mahri said to Amadeo, "You have no idea."