RP:Point Counterpoint

Part of the What You Leave Behind Arc

Summary: An anguished Krice accepts Lionel's aid in the search for Talyara. The friends set out by way of wyvern, but they'll locate something else entirely -- something they knew would return, but they'd hoped would not return so soon.

Fort Frostmaw

Krice immediately shook his head - partly because he didn't want to think that Talyara was so far out west in the danger zone of Frostmaw, and also because he had other knowledge. " If they're out west, they doubled back after I lost them. I saw them move in the opposite direction during their escape." The warrior's lips twitched into a pensive frown. He caught on to Lionel's use of past tense when describing the location of his home, but his mind was too far elsewhere to register any need to ask why. He moved toward the town, people bustling about their daily lives, seemingly oblivious to the battle that had just taken place. How blissful, to be so ignorant. The warrior shook his head and halted, turning toward Lionel. " This is too slow. I can't stroll through town while they're doing Gods know what to her." His brow twitched; his cool exterior was faltering. Talyara meant a lot to him. " It worries me that they didn't just kill her." They needed her for something.

Lionel clenched his fist. Now it was his turn to feel useless. He’d rushed out into the freezing streets with Krice, no questions asked, because it was the right thing to do -- and because he knew Krice would have done the same for him. But so far his aid had proven aimless. ‘This is too slow,’ he heard the silver-haired swordsman say. He was inclined to agree. While Lionel could have offered to tap into his supernatural agility, which would have afforded him the chance to have kept up with Krice or at the very least not fallen terribly behind, he thought up something better. “We’ll find her,” he reassured him. Talyara had been a fleeting acquaintance to the Catalian, but he had dozens of reasons to know she was a decent person with numerous ties to his own network of friends and allies. “We need to cover more ground than even -our- legs can accomplish. I know you’ve been hesitant about this in the past, Krice… I’ve seen you opt to use your own means to get where we’ve needed to get time and again. But if you can, please, join me up a little higher just this once.” He whistled. The whistle carried down the street, carried through the storefront crowd, carried around the bend and down an alley and toward the Eyrie’s tower. The blissful, ignorant townsfolk stopped and gaped when a wyvern the color of deep sapphire with wings like scarlet blushes descended from the tower in a hurry. The wind its wings drew up caused the blacksmith’s sign to rotate around its pole at least three times. Lionel wasted no time hopping up upon the forward stirrup. Two more saddles were aligned to the wyvern’s backside behind him -- more than enough room for Krice. If the enigma came up as requested, Lionel would have taken off and the two of them would commence their aerial surveillance of the direction Krice had mentioned the witch hunters scattering. If he didn’t hop on, Lionel had plans to nod grimly, take off on his own accord, and keep close to his friend.

Something in Krice's expression faltered and he looked away. 'We'll find her'. It was a promise from one friend to another, with the integrity of a warrior's word behind it. He knew they'd find Talyara; it was just the time -until- then that caused him grief. The warrior lifted an arm, wiping the bicep of his shirt across his chin to dislodge excess blood from his chin. Blood soaked the abdomen and arms of his shirt, courtesy of the swiftness with which he dispatched the majority of Talyara's kidnappers, but it was a small nuisance on a grander scale of necessities; changing could wait. The captured witch could not. It was only when Lionel whistled that Krice returned his attention to the steward, thereafter glancing upward for the winged creature that must inevitably be following. A wyvern, magnificent and powerful, soared overhead before landing nearby. Silver strands swirled against the warrior's face in the winds created by Lionel's wyvern. She (he?) was bigger than Gylworliath, space for three saddles instead of only two. The warrior glanced from the beast to its rider and grudgingly accepted the lift, hoisting himself into the rearward saddle. " Not too high," he said, his tone one of request than demand; despite his concern for Talyara's welfare, he had enough presence of mind to maintain respect for the other warrior assisting him. " My ability to detect magic has a finite range."

Across the Range...

Their journey was now a swift one. Lionel guided the wyvern to a decent but relatively unimpressive elevation before pulling the reins gently but just firmly enough to inform her that she needed to resist her natural urge to ascend as close to the heavens as she could muster. Fields of snow and ice, patched green by hardy northern vegetation, filled the warriors’ view for nearly fifteen minutes before slowly giving way to the white-capped mountains of the Xalious Range. The mountains towered over them at this height, almost as imposing as they would have been if they had been standing on the rocky ground. A great dragon soared far overhead, her bronze scales glistening as they kissed the setting sun. Lionel’s wyvern let out a submissive whine. The dragon did not deign to respond in the slightest; the comparably small creature was beneath her in every sense of the word. Irritated, the wyvern briefly attempted to carry Krice and Lionel skyward. Lionel let go of the reins with his left hand and petted her soothingly. “She’s not worth the trouble.” Reassuring words, even if his true meaning was that the dragon would have meant potentially lethal trouble for wyvern and riders alike. Trilling, the wyvern returned to her previous elevation. The snowfields of Frostmaw were still visible, not so much ending at the start of the mountains as snaking relentlessly through the pass until at last they had no recourse but to give way to southern warmth. Roughly halfway through the Range, Lionel directed their trajectory eastbound. Now they rode over lands more likely to have been quietly claimed by the whoresons who had spurred Krice’s rage. It was Lionel’s hope that, if the silver-haired swordsman had not already sensed Talyara’s magic, he was at least on the right trail now.

Krice paid no mind to other creatures of the sky. His focus was on the ground, even as Lionel's wyvern took them away from it. Keen eyes scanned the changing terrain as they passed overhead from Frostmaw's ice to Kelay's dirt and grass, scrutinizing in search of -some- sign that would tell him of the With Hunter's (and therefore, Talyara's) trajectory. When the wyvern angled upward, Krice's attention driftward in toward his immediately bubble of space, across Lionel's shoulders to the head of the wyvern beyond. He understood her eagerness, possessing his own wyvern as he did, but even her grudging agreement to leave the larger reptile alone didn't reach the warrior's core. His mind was focused elsewhere, solely dedicated to finding the idealogues who kidnapped his companion. By now, cool and warm air had dried most of the blood coating his sleeves, moisture from Frostmaw responsible for an at least partial rinse of his forearms, and it was with a pink finger that he pointed at the ground. " There," he called to his fellow warrior, squinting through thin streaks of cloud at something nestled at the edge of Kelay Way, just by the base of the Xalious Mountains. " Go lower." His request was accompanied by the slightest lean out of his saddle. If Lionel and his wyvern obliged, the warrior would wait until a few metres had been cut from their altitude before he slipped clear of the creature's back to fall the remaining metreage to the ground, landing in a firm, hard crouch that stressed the earth underfoot. Undoubtedly, a druid somewhere protested. Straightening, Krice jogged the few remaining steps and…

...dropped to a knee at the base of Xalious' Mountain range, scooping up a thick winter scarf from the shadows of a rocky cluster. He raised it, inspected the fabric, caught a whiff of the scent attached to it, and buried a moment of anxiety against it. The scarf was wide enough to hide his frown, which he managed to control before rising to scan the immediate area for other signs of Talyara's presence - however through-passing or otherwise.

,,,By Way of Kelay

The Eyrie’s borrowed wyvern had a gentler descent than her skyward eagerness might have suggested. Lionel stayed with her until she claws down on the ground. By the time he caught up to Krice, the scarf had already been fetched. Lionel didn’t need to ask whose it was. If his present companion was someone else, someone who valued brief moments to digest their sorrows, Lionel would have waited before approaching. But Krice was on the hunt, and Lionel knew the silver-haired warrior needed to embrace this breathless pace. “Halycanos can help, too,” the Catalian said. There was no need to draw the sword in which Halycanos resided; the spirit could inform his human ally of malevolent thoughts from within the scabbard. The scabbard glowed a bright, uncertain shade of red. Someone or something harbored dark thoughts not their own, but it was too distant to pinpoint, let alone examine in emotional detail. “I don’t know if it’s them, but something hostile is dwelling or moving around within… half a kilometer,” Lionel gauged. He felt like he wasn’t offering much to go on but he knew it was better than nothing. Hellfire was more akin to a vague compass of evil than a mage’s precise spell, but Halycanos’ unique ability had saved Lionel’s life on more than one occasion. With the extent of his magical assistance tapped, he started to examine the mundane. He was never the best of trackers, but he understood the common sense factors of the trade — if footprints existed, follow them. Would he find any? He crouched low and began the search.

Krice paused upon hearing Lionel's voice and turned, regarding the man with a focused but quizzical stare. Halycanos? The warrior dropped his gaze to the glowing sword sheathed at his counterpart's side. It glowed, and Krice didn't need more information than its impressive magical hue to know that it was tracking... something, in some -way-. Lionel's confirmation of this drew his attention again, which shortly shifted outward to their surroundings. Within half a kilometer. Was that radial or more direct? As the Legend of Hellfire perused the network of footprints in the ground--of which there were many; every man, his grandma, and his dog had traversed Kelay's main thoroughfare--Krice pivoted to sprint southward, a blink of movement whereby he covered several metres in less than heartbeat. In short bursts, he traveled half a kilometre into Southern Sage, stopping intermittently to scan his surroundings for any sense of not only magic, including the signature which had followed the arcanely obscured witch hunters, but other signs--footprints, discarded clothing, blood from injured hunters--that weren't normal for the woods at this time. Nothing triggered his observational sensors. After lingering for a few more seconds in the deeper shadows of knotted tree trunks, Krice proceeded back toward Lionel's last known location, approaching Kelay Way with similar haste.

Lionel had scouted Kelay Way to the best of his limited abilities. He knew Krice was the master here and he the pupil, but that wasn’t going to deter him. It was within the realm of emotional matters that Lionel could hesitate and falter; perilous missions like these rarely found him flinching. Along the way, he encountered an elderly elf -- perhaps a half-elf, he wasn’t sure -- walking a small dog while smoking a pipe. He nodded politely and the old maybe-half-elf nodded back between fits of coughing. The small dog yapped, but not at Lionel. She yapped at a nearby tree. Lionel knew it could be nothing more fanciful than a common squirrel, but he had to be thorough. He waited for the dog and her manservant to pass him by before approaching the tree, not wanting them to become casualties if the going was about to get rough. With a deep breath, Hellfire fresh-drawn, the Catalian turned a corner alongside the great towering oak, perfected his combat stance… and caught sight of a common squirrel zigzagging away into the rushes. “Literally, it was a squirrel,” Lionel snarked. He noticed Krice emerging from afar, sheathed his sword, and caught up to him. “No leads to speak of. You?” This was becoming irksome.

Krice was indifferent to the passersby; if none of them wore rich brown hair and deep emerald eyes, he wasn't interested; if none of them harboured magicks most sinister, he ignored them. Only Lionel's query and movement drew his attention. Steeling himself to maintain focus in the face of frustration, the warrior lifted his chin to regard his fellow warrior with a cool stare - though not directed at Lionel, himself; it was more the reflection of a deeper internal battle, his logical mind fighting emotion. " Nothing," he muttered in reply, the scarf clutched in his left hand and held by his thigh. The pad of his thumb moved across the fabric, as if remembering the softness of the skin around which the garment once wrapped. " You also found nothing?"

Lionel shook his head with a sigh. Nothing was the order of the day, it seemed. Then, before he could bemoan their circumstances, a massive, bipedal amphibian with putrid and slimy grey skin and a too-pale tongue and dead yellow eyes emerged from the tree line in the span of a heartbeat. Three more soon followed, their webbed and contorted feet mere meters away from the dirt road that marked Kelay Town’s perimeter. Whether they slurped their pale tongues across their faces hungrily for the old man, for his dog, for the warriors or for them all would have been difficult to ascertain if the answer mattered to Lionel in the least. “Sloads,” he said in contempt. The fell creatures that had ambushed Krice in the days before Kahran’s formal declaration of war. Hellfire hadn’t been reacting to Talyara’s captors after all. Trusting his companion implicitly to do what he thought was best, Lionel kicked magical sparks of flame upon the earth and sprinted so quickly to the right of the monsters trust it was almost as if his legs never moved at all. Krice might choose a pincer attack, rushing in on the sloads’ left, or he might prefer a direct assault, or something else entirely. Whatever he would do, the men wouldn’t need verbal communication; their joined techniques had been polished too many times in too many other battles. Hellfire pulsed a blood red out of malice toward the tainted creatures and the steel erupted into orange and blue hues. Lionel faked his first swing, goading the nearest sload into reaching out with its claws and extending its tongue in a bid to trap him and potentially paralyze him. The Catalian sidestepped that ordeal, burying his flaming blade deep into its bulbous skull.

Krice was known in Lythridel's more populated parts as a stoic warrior, a man who showed little emotion in the battlefield or elsewhere. Despite the kidnapping of his emerald-eyed companion, he was very minimally different; a fire burned in his eyes to tell of the loss he felt, but he was externally a sentinel of composure and self-discipline. Losing his cool now wouldn't help anyone. Lionel's confirmation of a failed search impacted him indeed, but in ways that were his own to feel, not for others to see. Turning his head, instinct told him to glance at the tree line - or maybe he was privy to a spike in the magic that emanated from Hellfire. Whatever the cause, his crimson stare was squarely on the face of that first sload right as it appeared. A trivial distraction for a man on a mission. With his mind focused on matters that were immediately more important to him, Krice didn't devote brainpower to any meaning ehind the arrival of these creatures--for instance, a potential fortelling of Kahran's return. Nor did he have time to dance around them. Talyara was out there somewhere, held captive by and at the whim of extremist idealogues whose passion was to punish the innocent witches of the world. He needed to get to her; - she- needed -him-.

As such, his decision was to attack directly. It was more dangerous but also quicker. Whilst Lionel tendered the death of that first Sload, Krice rushed two of its kin to the left, light of foot- and more importantly, vampiric of speed, to catch the oversized pustules unaware. Through a blur of silver and black, a curved katana cried free of its scabbard, wrenched upward through the fatty flesh and esophageal cartilage of his first victim. It's gelatinous head rolled from its shoulders to land in a twitching clump in the dirt. Krice turned in the same movement to offer similar treatment to its startled but angry counterpart, skidding beneath its lashing tongue to sever it through the salivatory glands, dismissing jaw from face. The sload reared back in a healthy cry of pain and fury, but its attacker was merciful - if only because he was in a hurry. Parallel a spray of slime and otherworldly blood, the warrior guided his curved steel through the beast's chest, under its left armpit and upward through to the other side of its neck, cleaving arm and head from body. Krice twisted as his second victim fell, pivoting with a blade-cleaning flick to face Lionel and the last standing Sload. Drawing his katana at the ready, he stood poised to assist his legendary counterpart, a fire of determination and malice burning in his focused stare.

Lionel and Krice had reduced the enemy’s number to one in a matter of seconds. The sloads were powerful beasts to be sure, but their opponents had an unmistakable advantage: they had cut through lines of sloads in battles far fiercer than this. If, instead of being sloads, the monsters before the men had been something else from their nemesis’ ranks -- revenants, or wraiths, or even orcs or goblins -- the surviving beast might have beat a quick retreat to warn others in its camp, or simply to preserve its own life. Odds would not have been good that it would have successfully escaped from two of the fastest swordsmen in the realm, but surely it would have tried. Sloads, however, possessed a different sort of intelligence. It wasn’t quite revenge that steadied their last foe’s webbed feet and sent its tongue barreling forth rapidly toward the old man and his dog, but cold-blooded instinct. Krice and Lionel were known among enemy ranks as protectors. The sload, hopping backward several meters with the intent of swallowing the small dog whole and dangling his owner threateningly, suddenly found itself in vivid pain that felt too far away to make sense of it. Its bulbous eyes examined the path ahead, and it shuddered uncontrollably when it realized that Hellfire had sliced its tongue to ribbons. It didn’t have to worry over what to do next. Lionel slashed it across its rubbery neck and burnt it alive.

Lionel approached Krice when the two had determined the sloads had not brought reinforcements. He wiped a bead of sweat from above his brow. His sword had been sheathed and the old man had bowed graciously and scooped up his dog and made a run for it babbling understandably about the return of Kahran. It was so understandable, in fact, that Lionel felt no need to verbalize it. All he could do was apologize. “I brought you here so that we could find Talyara.” He clenched his fist with anger. “I’ve failed in that endeavor, because there’s no way I can leave this place until the Resistance has been informed what happened here today. I’m sorry.”

Krice angled his katana, ready to slice through that elongated tongue in protection of the innocent old man and his canine companion. Lionel's focus was such that he rendered the remaining Sload useless and properly dead before the silver-haired man needed to, and with a final flick of katana to dismiss excess frog flesh from the blade, he tied Talyara's scarf to the hilt and then sheathed the weapon. A fleeting glance acknowledged the old man's retreat before Krice stepped up to his comrade, flames igniting across the gold of his eyes. He shook his head at the apology and extended his right hand. " Talyara is my priority. The rest of the world is yours." He would not begrudge Lythridel's hero the need to tend to the masses. Krice had been there, before, deciding for the needs of the many at the sacrifice of the few. Once Lionel pressed his palm into his own, the warrior would give it a single shake in gratitude for the assistance, in unspoken understanding between warriors, before pivoting to dash across Kelay in search of the missing witch.

Lionel felt shivers of relief rush down his spine. He knew Krice would understand, but still he worried that his friend would feel disheartened. Right now, Krice needed to feel anything but disheartened. But Lionel had underestimated the silver-haired enigma. The parting of ways seemed only to steel Krice’s resolve. Lionel returned his palm to his side, nodding solemnly. “You’ll find her.” There wasn’t a doubt in his mind of it. More than anyone Lionel knew, Krice was zealous in his pursuit of whomever made the mistake of crossing him. Krice vanished from sight in under half a minute, leaving the Catalian to take up position beside a tree and get the word out to his sister that the war had resumed.