RP:Pack Some Iron

Part of the The White Hunt Arc

Krice chances upon Josleen in Frostmaw as she's transporting medicine in glass bottles, and gauze from the clinic to the fort. She jumps at a shadow and sends her box tumbling, some of the vials breaking. Krice helps her gather the supplies and Josleen recognizes him as Leone's friend. How convenient! Josleen is looking for Leone to tell her what she and Ansel experienced in the western wilds. She tells Krice so that he may be better equipped when he joins Leone in a mission out west.

Frozen Road

Josleen shivers despite the layers of clothing she wears: a plum coat that looks swollen thanks to a thick sweater on a cardigan on a dress on a slip on stockings, on stockings again, in sensible boots with wool lining. And still she shivers, despite the gloves and hat and not one, but two scarves. Fort-bound, she combines proper roads and desire paths into a route that only those intimately familiar with the city could design. From a box tucked beneath her arm, small glass bottles with droppers clink against one another, despite the padding of gauze trying to prevent them from doing so. She sniffs an oncoming cold. Lots of sick children in the clinic today, tiny adorable disease vectors that they are. As she comes out of an alleyway, a shadow from a passing wagon splashes on a wall and she sees the shadow out of her periphery, but not the wagon, and she jumps high like a frightened cat, choking on a throaty yelp. The box crashes onto the floor and the half the bottles tumble out onto the pavement and shatter. Their essential oils pierce the air with a cocktail of pungent smells, most pleasant, some nauseating, all a little too much.

Krice was wearing only two layers of clothing; his usual black button-down and trousers, concealed beneath thin robes. Pressing those robes to his torso was a leather strap, which secured his katanas in a crisscross position against his back. Walking through Frostmaw's more civilized parts ensured that he didn't need to wield the weapons. A cacophony of wood and glass on stone and snow drew the man's attention back to the east. He had been walking toward town from the west, and turned to find Josleen in a bit of a tizzy over something he'd missed. Shadows didn't typically startle the warrior, though he had yet to venture out into the baddest of the badlands, unlike Josleen. " Y'alright?" Asked the silver-haired swordsman as he neared, already crouching to retrieve an intact glass of rose-scented liquid that had rolled a few feet away from its vessel. Stepping forward, he reached out to return the vial to its rightful owner.

Josleen clutches a hand to her chest and catches her breath. She smiles sheepishly in response to Krice, only glancing at him without really looking. It’s too embarrassing. “Yes, thank you. Just a bit jumpy. One of those weeks.” She kneels to collect her things as Krice does, and only now does she look up. He looks vaguely familiar. Where had she seen him before? “Hi...do I know you?” She shakes a finger from her forehead to his as if it will help her remember. “During the last war, over a year ago... I think we met at the market?” She opens a thick piece of gauze in her hand and collects the larger pieces of broken glass into the gauze.

Krice accepted Josleen's initial answer without any fanfare and dropped to a crouch, lowering the yet-to-be-claimed intact vial into the presumably righted box. He leaned over to retrieve others while the woman cleaned away unsalvageable broken bottles. At her query, the warrior looked up, aligning his gilded gaze with hers. His left eye narrowed subtly in portrayal of consideration before he said, " We've met once before," though he did not elaborate on where. Whether or not he remembered that much detail about an encounter with this woman remained to be seen. " Frostmaw's a little on edge, these days. I don't blame you for being unsettled."

Josleen nods at Krice’s observation. “Yes, it is… but… Oh!” She jumps back to the previous conversation and says, “Oh and in Gualon! Yes. Yesyesyes, I remember now. We once met up on the road with Leone on our way to Gualon. Say, are you still friends with Leone? I have been trying to get in touch with her, but I think she’s at the Royal Academy or just... ” She shakes her head and shrugs helplessly, grimacing like a clueless puppy. “I don’t know her that well. But I have to tell her something. It’s urgent. Do you know where I can find her?”

Krice seemed ready to settle into conversation regarding Frostmaw and its inhabitants in recent days, even if a short-lived one, but Josleen's sudden remembrance of her last encounter with him jolted the warrior out of that lull and into a mode of piqued interest. He nodded his agreement to the accuracy of her memory, and then allowed the conversation to turn to the High Priestess. Indeed he was still friends with Leone. " If it's about what's going on in the west, she knows already. We're venturing out there in the next few days to investigate."

Josleen looks relieved and nods. Her knees grow cold in the snow and she stands. Once Krice stands, she whispers so as to not alarm any eavesdroppers. “It is. I and Ansel — he’s another healer at the clinic — were attacked out there recently. The cemetery and village were always haunted, but not like this. It’s… demonic. I think. Just evil. And played with memories in our minds. For example, one appeared to me as my sister and another appeared to Ansel as his son. I believe they wanted to lure us towards them. Their attacks physically hurt.” She fingers a cut, recently sewed, on her coat. “One wielded a machete. If you’re going out there, then you may want to know that there are tunnels beneath the village. We managed to escape through them. Some of the houses have trap doors in the cellars. In the olden days, people used them to travel underground during blizzards. The furthest east we reached by tunnel was the ruins south of the Royal Academy.”

Krice stood once he was finished collecting unbroken bottles and placing them carefully into the righted box, which he brought with him as he reached his full height. Looking down at Josleen, he was attentive to her every word, and seemed mildly disturbed by her revelations about her adventure to the west. Machete-wielding demons, huh? Coolly, without accusation or judgment, he asked, " Why'd you go all the way out there?"

Josleen takes the box from Krice and smiles her appreciation at his help. “We were looking for arctic poppy. We don’t have enough pain killers in the clinic for wartime. I needed ingredients to brew laudanum.” She rubs a hand anxiously over her collarbone, a long time tic of hers. “I was hoping not to go out that far. But well, you know the rest now. Do take care, will you? It’s… just remember, if you see someone you love appear, it’s a lie.” She sits the box on her hip like a mother would a child. “Will you relay the message to Leone? I am available if she wants to ask me questions. I either at the fort, at the clinic, or in the tavern playing for drunks.” She grins sardonically at that, recalling with a mix of fondness and disgust the lot the frequents her performances. Worst fans ever.

Krice relinquished the box to Josleen and listened to her reply. News of the clinic being short of painkillers ahead of a war was further troubling, and something else that he would relay to the relative persons. Lowering his hands to his sides, the man adopted a casual stance and furrowed his brow in contemplation. " Yeah, I'll let her know," he answered, gaze briefly distracted by the movement of her hand along her clavicle. Diverting his focus northward, he seemed ready to conclude the conversation before an afterthought pushed its way to the front of his mind. Looking back at Josleen, the crimson-eyed man asked, " You mentioned escaping through tunnels beneath the ruins... Were the demons--or, uh ghosts, whatever--were they able to follow you at all?"

Josleen nods quickly, eyes widening as she recalls that terror. “Oh yes, they followed us from the graveyard to the village. I don’t doubt they would have followed us all the way to Frostmaw if we hadn’t lost them.” Pure speculation to be taken with a grain of salt. “We found a cellar with iron doors. I was taught at a young age that iron is a natural barrier to most ghosts, but not all types of demons. I suppose we got lucky in that sense. Then we found the trap door in the cellar floor and lost them. They didn’t seem to realize we went into the tunnels.” She looks towards the fort then smiles conclusively, they way people do when they want to excuse themselves but are too polite to say it outright. “Best of luck. Take something with iron if you can.”

Krice nodded his acceptance of Josleen's reply, and then dipped his head lower into a bob of farewell. In his eyes lay contemplation over the details of her story, undoubtedly considered or dismissed as things to take into account for his own adventures westward in the coming days. " Take it easy," he said to the healer, stepping eastward as she presumably moved to the north.