RP:Eboric Meets an Empath
Part of the Links to the Past Arc
Kirien sits, swinging his legs, atop the old gate. Judging by the amount of snow built up around him dusting his shoulders like a white shawl, the vampire's been here a while, hardly moving, hardly taking his eye off the sky above. It is not difficult to guess what he might be watching; for the sky is awash with the fading blue-green flickers of a northern aurora, the watercolour mix of early morning blue and dusky pink beginning to brighten and smother the nightly light show with oncoming dawn. After a short time, Kirien falls back to lean in the freshly-fallen snow, the air mostly clear around him - only a few tiny flakes drift hither and thither on the breeze, being the last remnants of the snowfall the night before. Kirien finds one sticking to his nose and scrunches his face up a bit against the sudden, cold wetness, lying there a moment before sitting up, falling into a crouch, and leaning out over the very edge of the gate at an unnaturally awkward angle. How he doesn't simply topple off is a wonder - and what exactly he was watching is questionable, because the empath was entirely blind to the colourful sights above. That is not outwardly obvious, though. Once more, he seems to be watching something, though this time it's a large snow hare bounding across the empty field before the gate in search of food.
Eboric waits, throwing axe poised, behind a tree further back east. The hare draws ever closer to him, but so still is he that it does not notice. It finds some frigid shoots of some sort of foliage, and stops to graze, nibbling cautiously at the greenery. Deftly, the barbarian behind the tree tosses the axe, the weapon whirling end over end to strike the hare in the side of the head, spraying the white snow with a red mist. Eboric follows after his axe, skinning knife already in hand as he kneels next to the carcass. He begins to gut and flay it, laying strips of bloody meat onto the snow.
Kirien 's head tilts, and his blind gaze flicks very briefly in the direction of the sparse tree line to his right. Mostly, he observes the hare move tentatively across the field to eat and remains entirely silent and still himself, an overhead watcher of nature's workings as the axe flies. The hunt is short and there is not even a final squeak from the hare, white snow misted with red around it that fills the air with the tantalising taste of fresh blood. Inhaling a long breath, the empath allows it to fill his lungs with the tang of blood and winter then lets it out slow, and leans further forward. He falls, an intermittent shadow, from the top of the gate to hit the ground beneath it and slip off to one side, trickles of snow continuing to drift down from above the gate's arch. It might seem as if a particularly unstable lump of snow fell from there, because Kirien is nowhere to be seen until he's close by Eboric and meandering up from behind - he claps his hands together, once, the sound somehow muffled, "Skilful display."
Eboric whirls, his knife held before him in bloody hands, his lips and chin equally gory from the few tidbits that he had eated, still warm, from the hare. Nostrils flare, and the werebear lets out a snort of displeasure. "What do you want," he asks, irritated. It seems that he does not like having people sneak up on him, strangely enough, and he seems likewise mad that he allowed it to happen.
Kirien is tactful, occasionally, but it appears he wanted to irritate Eboric and purposely sneaked up on him. It's highly likely he recalls the werebear's feel from previous escapades in stalking and "keeping an eye on" for the old wolf pack. The grin already tugging at the corners of his mouth likely gives away some hint of the empath's amusement as he lifts his jaw in the face of that knife, quite comfortable despite the brandished, bloody weapon, and motions with a boot to the hare, "Allo there. Polite, aren't you? I wanted a snack es all," is his casual answer, which is swiftly followed up by Kirien hopping a step closer to one of the little strips of meat laid out in the snow.
Eboric reacts immediately, animal instinct kicking in before human thought can intervene - although it's unlikely that this man's human thought would have him react otherwise. He sidesteps, putting himself between Kirien and the meat, while he slams forward with his left hand (the one without the knife) in an attempt to strike the smaller man in the chest with enough force to knock him back and, perhaps, discourage him from further attempts. "My rabbit," he says, curtly. "Go find your own."
Kirien snaps an arm up in a moment of similar instinctive behaviour to curl his fingers round Eboric's outstretched wrist, or at least round part of it. The hold is not at all threatening - it simply, by virtue of his vampiric strength, halts his stumbling backwards while at the same time likely aggravates the man more, though the force behind Eboric's shove has the smaller man skidding in place on the snow. "Rude," Kirien shoots back with the hint of a huff, pulling away after a second so as to spin and meander a short distance away, toward the trees where the other had been hiding previously. Eboric might notice that one of the meat strips is wiggling, however, a tiny mouse wrought in what looks to be amethyst having sneaked its way under it at some point with every intention to run the little morsel over to Kirien.
Eboric turns back to his kill as Kirien moves back, and is in the process of laying the last strip onto the snow when he notices one begin to move. He snatches it up - along with a healthy handful of the snow beneath, locating the culprit almost at once. When squeezing it into jelly with his hand fails to work, and he realizes that it is no ordinary mouse, he closes his fist around it, leaving the head sticking out of the bottom. Knuckles white with the pressure, he moves over to an icy rock, half hidden by snow, and brings his fist down once, twice, three times in an attempt to smash the abomination into powder.
Kirien cannot quite help the amused snort that escapes him as he watches, through his warped sense of perception, the werebear pluck up his unfortunate creation and slam it repeatedly into a rock. The tiny creature gives a squeak that sounds like ice crystals cracking or diamonds scraping against each other before being silenced, and crushed, and it shatters against the stone rather more violently than it perhaps should. Kirien once more wanders over and invades Eboric's personal space, his attentions focused on the glimmering amethyst dust now decorating the rock and some of the barbarian's hand. "You're very strange," he says to the man with a pointed sort of look and a deft wiggle of chilly fingertips - the dust rises, and the remaining shards pull themselves free, and all of it coalesces once more into the gemstone mouse, now riddled with cracks and broken edges. Kirien squints at it. "Very strong, too, messing up my jewels like this."
Eboric watches as the shards pull themselves from his skin, leaving little trickles of blood along the cold-numbed flesh in their wake. He turns to look at Kirien again, putting two and two together at last, realizing that Kirien had sent the little creature. "I'm strange? You are the one using tricks to make rocks try to steal my meal." He gives Kirien a hard look, and adds, "Which you will not have." He moves back to his kill, and begins rolling up the thin strips of meat, packing the little bundles into the hare's skin, adding plenty of snow to freeze and preserve the raw meat. "You must not spend much time out here," he says, as he works.
Kirien , dissatisfied with his amethyst, it seems, tosses the gem unceremoniously into the air while muttering something about lacking quality and blindly watches it crumble away once more, a cloud of shimmering dust whisked away by the northern wind. With that sudden, violent burst of frigid air comes a deep and lonesome moan from the nearby gate, the wind whistling through its arch and broken doors provoking such a sound. "You scream a lot at this time of year," he says to the gate as though speaking to ancient architecture is completely normal, before turning to stare curiously at Eboric. "I don't see how that es strange at all." Lean shoulders roll in an insouciant shrug, the empath's eye still on the gate as he follows after Eboric, apparently having decided to observe his task of wrapping and packing meat bundles. The remark earns the werebear another curious look, and a flick of an ear. "Whyever would you think that? I'm out here a lot."
Eboric turns to look at the gate, a faraway look coming into his eyes as he stares, seeing the gate as it was when it was first built, before the giants shattered it into the ruin it is now, before the field of death. He shakes his head abruptly, as if trying to clear the strange memories from it. He looks back to Kirien, irritation plain on his face as he tries to remember what the other was talking about. Finally, he finds it, and says, "You say that, yet you do not know the laws of nature? Unless you are an utter fool, I cannot see how you could spend time in the wild and not learn that."
Kirien narrows his eyes on Eboric, as if trying he's spotted something and is trying to see it a little more clearly. He finds nothing but a sensation which is quickly drowned in the man's irritation again, and that irritation prompts the empath into rocking back on his heels some in the snow, hands stuffed in the depths of his coat pockets. A cold huff of breath leaves him as a faint mist. "You're a type who sees rules as being written in stone, I see. If they were like that, I would feel them. All I have are guidelines. I know what I know et whether it is the same as your laws or not is unclear to me. Besides." Casting a glance down at the hare, he lifts a brow then grins broadly enough to confirm his vampiric heritage. "I hunt far larger game anyway. Or ghosts. This here es a snack."
Eboric keeps those foreign memories buried as far under the surface as he can manage. "There are some rules that are written in stone, in a manner of speaking. When a kill is made, the killer gets the meal. If he chooses to leave some behind," and here the big man gestures to the offal and bones left in the slushy, red snow. "Then others may come and eat. But if the others try to take before the hunter has finished, then that other might be the next course. You can see that by watching any animals, be they wolves, bears, mountain lions..."
Kirien does not pry, for once, into the man's intriguing thoughts and emotions, and is mostly distracted by the current topic anyway. Taking another light step forward, he falls into a crouch near the hare's corpse and leans over just slightly, a breath inhaled that brings with it the scent of blood once again. His pupil maybe blows a little wider, but he quickly lifts his gaze to peer at Eboric. "True. These are things I know. I've seen animals share their kill sometimes, though - I think people do this most often, et you're a person. Still, I feel like somethin' bigger than this now, so you can keep it." Rocking back again, Kirien rises only to spin away and raise a hand to shield his eye from the now-rising sun; an unconscious move, or perhaps just an excuse to pose as he squints out across the snowfields. The sun does little to hinder his sight, after all. "Maybe a mammoth."
Eboric shrugs, picking up one of the larger legbones and cracking it with his teeth, gnawing at the now-chilled marrow. At Kirien's words, he snorts loudly. "A mammoth? That would be an utter waste. You cannot eat an entire mammoth; it takes a tribe of giants to do that in one sitting, and you sure as hell aren't big enough to carry the meat home with you. You would be better off eating a wolf. They might not taste as good, but at least you would be able to eat or save most of it." He gives Kirien a critical look, and says, "Although, a wolf might well be able to kill you. A mammoth could, as well."
Kirien continues to squint at the horizon, staring into the sun as dawn's pale light begins to creep across the snow and set it aglow with golden glints of reflective ice. He is quiet for a long couple of seconds, seemingly fixated on something, and his silence allows Eboric to make his remarks and get none in return - abruptly, the empath who'd clearly been listening spins about and cries, "Assumptions!" with as much indignance as he can muster. Admittedly, it's not that much, because Kirien is quite used to these sorts of comments. "Rather foolish assumptions, at that. If anything I'd go for a young mammoth, et give whatever I don't need to that lot in town." He jerks his head back in the direction of Frostmaw's city. "Lots of exiles needin' food et all too. Mostly I just want the blood. For obvious reasons." There's another flash of fangs in a grin before he scrunches his nose up a little. "I don't eat wolves. At all."
Eboric shrugs his shoulders. "A carcass without the blood is like a soup without the broth. Makes you bloodsuckers poor hunting companions, and even worse providers. It so damn cold up here that a man must need take as much as he can from each kill." He getures at the hare, saying, "The rabbit's blood is too weak to be worth anything, but a stronger beast's blood can be frozen, and mixed with oats in the morning. That's what we used to do when -" He cuts off, frowning, remembering a time when he led his people through the frozen wastes, keeping them alive; a time that never happened.
Kirien 's ears wiggle, the empath's expression contemplative. "I tend to leave them alive. My meals, that is. Generally works out better that way, I've found - less waste, less bodies to lure in idiot hunters, et I can go back for a second taste if I really feel like it. Right?" Shrugging his shoulders, he paces forward again and opens his mouth to speak once more, before abruptly stopping just after Eboric stops in the middle of a sentence. "...When what." Of course he was going to ask. Kirien's curiosity knows no bounds, and topics like this are the kind he pays the most attention to. "Blood and oats, though. Never actually tried that," he says slowly, as an after-thought.
Eboric narrows his eyes. "Leaving them drained of blood might well kill them, up here. The blood keeps us warm, keeps us alive. Last time I lost a goodly amount of blood, I could hardly move. Nearly fell asleep." He ignores Kirien's question, choosing instead to speak on the other's afterthought. "It's pretty awful, but it gets your strength up for a long march."
Kirien gives a particularly pronounced swish of his tail, perhaps in a show of mild irritation, and falls into a crouch; if only briefly so as to snatch up one of the hare's bones and experiment it. "Never said I took a lot of blood from any one thing. I ain't stupid," he says, the harsh crack of bone sounding thereafter. The marrow within is prodded at in what could be curiosity, though with the vampire's relatively neutral expression, it's hard to tell, "I generally know how much I can drink before it gets dangerous. It's marginally less difficult up here though, oui." Pausing there, he comes to note that his question has been utterly ignored and casts Eboric a sidelong glance. "You have...something, in here." His free hand raises to motion to his own forehead, the perceptive empath frowning some, "That feels like it shouldn't be here. Why."
Eboric instinctively touches the black bracers that enclose his wrists, running a finger along the inlaid gold patterns without quite realizing that he is doing so. "I do not know what you are talking about," he says, anger prickling in his voice. "There is nothing there but me." It is a lie, of course, but one that Eboric is willing even himself to believe, and it is all the more convincing for that fact.
Kirien appears entirely unconvinced, and undeterred by the growing ire in those words. In fact, he seems more amused than anything else. "Hee. Your anger es like this teeny little flicker," he laughs round the leg bone he's chewing on. "I forgot how much stronger his is to everyone else's-- even calmed down." Shaking off whatever thought is lingering there in his mind, Kirien peers sightlessly down at Eboric, staring as though he -can- see and what he sees is off somehow, then quirks a brow. "Well, if it es just you, monsieur, I should let you know - one of your pieces does not fit right."
Eboric's anger grows, flaring up with every word Kirien speaks. The big man rises from his crouch, hands balling into fists as he advances a step toward Kirien. "What the hell are you talking about," he growls. It sounds quite in earnest, as if the werebear truly doesn't know. "If you are mocking me, little man, I will pull your guts from your belly and choke you with them."
Kirien , perhaps foolishly, does not move. Waves of anger flow across his psyche but the sensation is nothing he can't handle, able to brush aside the relatively familiar emotion without too much effort, and meet Eboric's hardened gaze with a merely curious one. "I'm just telling you what I feel there, because it's odd et I've never sensed something like that before," he says idly and with another shrug. The faintest of grins curves his lips then as he laughs, "If I was mocking you, you'd know it."
Eboric keeps his fists clenched, but does not advance any further just yet. "What do you mean, 'sense?'" He asks, still angry, but somewhat curious as well.
Kirien twitches an ear, looks mildly thoughtful for a moment, then reaches to tap the side of his head again. "Sense. Tu know? Mostly, we have five - taste, touch, sight, smell et hearing. I just happen to have a few extra...or maybe the blindness evens it out. Who knows." Lowering his hand a bit, he motions towards Eboric and ends up pointing straight at the man's forehead instead, gaze now a mite more calculating. "Empathy. Earthsight. I can see things you can hide from others et I can also feel your emotions, and the little things...off about them. Like whatever it is you have wrong there."
Eboric releases one fist to tug on his beard, thoughtfully. "Then can you see-" He cuts off again, as a voice, somewhat different than his own, cuts over the top of the sentence in his mind, saying quite firmly, 'Enough.' Just that single word, but the shock of it is sufficient to close the barbarian's mouth with an audible click of his teeth, his hand reflexively clenching again, tugging quite painfully on his beard hairs. "More trickery," he says, absently.
Kirien is a perceptive thing, and quite aware of the world around him and of the secrets it hides, despite his outward appearance of a naive fool sometimes. "Can I see what--" He flinches, then, and cuts himself off as well, almost as if he too heard that voice though he makes no mention of it at all. By this point, however, the empath is definitely scrutinising Eboric more closely. "Trickery?" This remark prompts a rather affronted sort of expression before he simply reaches out and attempts to grab at the barbarian's arm - only a moment's contact would be required for Kirien to send a memory of his own flooding to the forefront of Eboric's mind, a blaze of sound and emotion and odd, monochromatic earthsight blinking into view for a half second; ocean waves would be heard, the hiss of water over sand; it's clear there's a beach of some kind; and the emotion in the air is somehow contented, utterly at peace. "'Trickey' my fine ass, Eboric." He speaks the man's name without thinking, having heard it from Angelo once before - catching himself, he ends up squinting at the werebear again, trying to judge his expression.
Eboric reels backward at the touch, jerking out of Kirien's grasp like a man retreating from a skunk's upraised tail. The vampire's use of his name goes unnoticed; Eboric knows himself to be a man of great reputation, and is usually only surprised when someone -doesn't- know his name. "What the hell do you think you're doing," he demands, the anger back in full force, now that the strange scene is gone. "Do not think to lull me with your spells; I can kill you as easily as swatting a fly, and I will if you try that again."
Kirien wiggles his fingers a bit and withdraws in the same moment that Eboric jerks back, now peering down at his hand in some bemusement. "...I hope you didn't see too much of that. Could've gotten...awkward," he says, then emits a snort and buries his face in his hands for a couple of seconds, laughing to himself. "Ahah-- look, it's not a spell, what I just did. Tu could even use a magic detector and you'd pick up nothing. Empathy es a completely different type of skill." Shaking his head, he drops his hands away and lifts his gaze back to Eboric's own. "Kill me? Apologies, but I've promised my End to someone else. Anyway, I assure you none of this es trickery. Don't listen to strange voices." There's a knowing look, there. "Chances are, they're hiding something - or hiding themselves. Cowardice, maybe."
Eboric bristles, speaking before he has time to really process the words. "Not cowardice!" He frowns, then continues in a more normal voice. "Strange voices? Like your own, perhaps? I am no fool, to blindly follow the words of some scavenger chance met in the woods. I am strong, too strong to fall for lies about problems that cannot be seen."
Kirien says with a degree of nonchalance, "So you'd rather listen to voices of the incorporeal than to one who exists?" Eboric earns himself a slightly hardened look as he speaks. "I'm amazed the ghosts haven't carted you off yet. Tu know them, oui? The phantoms that wander, out here..." He sniffs, inhaling chilled air. "They'll freeze your lungs, remove your eyes, turn you into one of them-- et, regular weapons don't do much against ghosts. Still!" Spinning about, the empath hops across the snow a few paces, tracing out the beginnings of a circle of footprints. "I don't think what's in your head es one of them, at least. You'd probably be dead if it was," he states, in far too cheery a tone.
Eboric speaks again, but the words once more do not seem to be his own. "That is only done to those that are unworthy, those that are not scions of the tribe. That is done by the souls of the treacherous elves, doomed to harm and betray in death, even as they did in life." And then, as if those other words had not been spoken at all, Eboric says, "It would take more than some specter to kill me." He is proud, boastful, and he thumps a fist against his chest as if to demonstrate his point.
Kirien 's head cants to one side. He watches, briefly, in silence, then asks simply, "So, who are tu? Not-Eboric, that is." He keeps all his focus on the barbarian, gaze stormy as the man's emotions are scrutinised and observed in curiosity, watching for reaction. "Because right now I can assume you are a coward, hiding away within some large man. If tu were anything other than a coward, you might have proven that to me by now." That said, the empath shrugs in the face of Eboric's brazen confidence. "I wonder. A tip, for you, should you ever run into them - they despise fire. Obviously."
Eboric's hands spring up even as he leaps forward, unwittingly, as something within him attempts to wrap those large, calloused hands around Kirien's throat, to squeeze the life from him, almost as though the force that drives the barbarian does not recognize the fact that Kirien is a vampire, and thus without a need for air. If that physical connection is made, the empath might even see the gaunt face of a strong-boned man, eyes full of hate matched in color by blue lines tattooed into the flesh in feral patterns. This time, the true Eboric does not bounce back as quickly, and so Kirien is stuck with this other being for the moment.
Kirien , again, does not flinch or move, and simply holds his ground. This lack of evasion results in thick fingers curling round his neck, though the action provokes nothing more than a curious huff of air, somewhat strained, from the vampire. He lifts his arms to pat Eboric's hands lightly. "'Allo," he murmurs, but the word's barely there, "I'd honestly prefer a less violent meeting but, well..." Trailing off, as speaking is pretty much useless in his current situation, Kirien lifts a boot slowly to bring it back down against the snow with a dull thud, a vicious gust of wind accompanying the action to provoke the gate into giving another of those drawn-out lonely groans. The ground trembles underfoot; first lightly, then with more force, until it seems as if the very mountain is being ripped up from the rest of the world. On Kirien's lips crawls a single sibilant word that crackles with raw energy and sparks, golden, before Eboric's eyes. Another moan from the gate, and Kirien manages a wheezy laugh. "Let go."
Eboric does indeed let go, but it is due less to Kirien's display than to Eboric's own. He again steps back from the vampire, his mouth opening to emit a sort of half-human roar, as fur begins to sprout from his skin. Hands that are widening, expanding in to paws tear at his armor as he stumbles away, leaving a trail of ruined metal in his wake as the man, now more closely resembling a bear, staggers toward the trees. With an effort, he manages to pull his costly hauberk over his enormous head, the rings entangling themselves on his paw as he lumbers on all fours into the forest, disappearing from sight. The rabbit skin, with its neat little rolls of frozen meat, is left behind.