RP:A Meeting in the Mist

From HollowWiki

Background

This rp is part 1 of the arc: Old Haunts and New


Misty Cairn

The misty area surrounding this barrow does not cross over onto the hallowed burial ground. Grass and stones ring the crest of this tall hill, and at its apex grows a lone tree, the only living and thriving being for miles around. The bark is of a golden-brown and smells of sweet honey and morning dew. Silver tinged leaves complete the metallic glow, every one reflecting whichever streams of light they can catch. From afar the tree resembles a crystal-tipped tower, burning white in the sky. The roots dig deep. This tree cannot be uprooted; this tree is of a different mettle than all others. Tucked between the thick roots of the plant is a large cairn, which is a small tower in itself. Moss grows along the smooth surfaces of the rocks that create the structure, and beside it is a small hole, probably of a fox.


Eboric makes his way through the misty terrain, surefooted, despite the darkness. The moon's light, wan as it is, lights his way, glittering from his armor so that he seems almost to glow. He makes his way to the cairn and stops, looking down at the monument in silence.


Jolie was lost. It seemed to her she'd wandered the mists of the lower barrow-lands for days, though it was only hours spent winding paths through the mound-graves of old, where looters had long ago left their marks and only the dead now offered dim echoes of sound, or perhaps it was only a mournful wind sighing across the unhallowed ground, high above the stilly fog that confounded her. She'd come looking for somebody. She did not know who; but the call had stirred Jolie from her bed above the tavern, and drawn her out into the night as a moth is summoned by the pull of the moon, and as fruitlessly. She sat upon a flat rock, to catch her breath.


Eboric reaches out to touch the cold stone cairn, then turns away from it. His eyes, feral and quick, alight on Jolie almost at once. He does not go for his weapons, however; he recognizes the woman from their meeting in Vailkrin, after Cornelius' death. He approaches, making no attempt at stealth. Better to not sneak up on someone out in the wilderness, if no fight is sought. "Joliette Thorne," he calls out, his voice echoing eerily in the fog.


Jolie made a small squeaking sound that was immediately swallowed, her hand already upon her knife for footfalls heard, when the mists disgorged the brash call of her own name. More bravely now she took again to her feet, “Who goes there?” She stepped as a cat does into mists.


Eboric , struck by a sudden desire to reply with something frightening, to utterly panic the woman, only just refrains, choosing instead to say, "Eboric." He does not list his titles; the woman most likely knows them all by now, anyway. He walks toward her steadily, until he can both see and be seen clearly. "It is dangerous out here, late at night."


Jolie might give way to surprise now and then, but she wasn’t the type to panic. That would be clear enough in the way she stalked into sight, knife drawn, her body taut as a crossbow string. She did not relax on sight of Eboric, nor the sound of his name, but the knife was lowered, minutely, from where its was poised to be thrown. “I am dangerous, out here at night. You are dangerous. We’re all dangerous.” She smirked. “I couldn’t sleep.”


Eboric makes no move from his weapons, but at the same time, he shows little concern for the knife as he closes on the woman, so that the two can converse without raising their voices. "I can be dangerous," he allows. "But do you not live in Vailkrin, near that tavern where last we met? These lands are far from your home."


Jolie chuckled, mainly because Eboric seemed very good at stating the obvious. “I am come on a hunt, with a small company. We’re spending the night at the inn in town. But…” she glanced up the moon that was full and yellow as a beast’s eye, and glaring through the fog. “I was restless. These barrows…” she glanced down the hillocky grounds she’d crossed to this far side of the tor. “…I think they’re restless, too.”


Eboric , too, seems restless, though he does not admit it. The moon's call tugs at him, pulling at his hidden, as yet unknown nature as surely as it must pull at Jolie's. Instead of dwelling on that inexplicable feeling, he looks again at the solitary cairn. "They are. They moulder, forgotten by their kin, by their blood."


The necromancer nodded, having an inkling of how old the barrows really were, though she was quite mistaken in some case, by several millenia. "Sad. But they were warriors, they say." Jolie shivered in the damp, crossed her arms against the prickle of sepulchral fingers plucking the ends of her nerves. "I've the feeling many are still here." She shook her reverie off, then and tilted her head, eyeing Eboric. "We could use another on the hunt, if you're up for it?"


Eboric eyes the woman warily as she speaks, hand droppign to touch his seaxe, for luck. "You speak to them?" He looks around, obviously willing to accept the fact that the spirits of the dead yet linger. "What do you hunt," he asks absently, still looking for some sign of the deceased warriors' presence.


Jolie offered him the quirk of one corner of her mouth for a wry smile. “I can talk to them, if I make the proper observances.” She paused, and added, “But I am not sure I wish to, here. And on the morrow, we hunt dragons. Gold dragons.”


Eboric cuts his eyes back toward the woman, and offers a grin. "A bold target. I'll join, but I will take something of my choosing from the prey, after we have killed it. Where is the hunt to take place?"


She had little sense of direction, here. Jolie blinked, “North-west of the inn, beyond the barrows, is where we’ve heard there have been sign of the creatures. So we’ll start our tracking there, I think.” Something made her snap her gaze back down the hill. Some faint shout, the dim rattle of ancient steel, and she turned back to Eboric with a frown. “Those who are not close to the dead at heart ought not walk such a place, under this moon,” she said, almost whispering. “Perhaps you should seek the tavern, ale and a wench for better company.”


Eboric nods his head at the directions, committing them to memory. "I will be there," he says, firmly. Then he looks around, wary, but without any visible fear. "They are restless, then? I will go now, because I am not prepared, but I will return, and set things to rights." He looks out at the darkness and repeats himself, loudly. "I will return." Turning, he makes his way through the fog, heading toward that tavern, toward that wench's arms.


Jolie watched the mists swallow him whole, and sat for a while, her head still tilted slightly as though she were listening, once more feeling the tug of the call that existed in some primitive part of her mind only. After a time, she turned to the west, and the fog ate her, too.