RP:Shards Part 1: Snow

Part of the Lies Within Us Arc

This is a Mage's Guild RP.

Summary: The war is over. The Mages Guild has returned to Xalious. Yet still, the loss of her dear friend plagues Karasu, driving her from sleep and inexplicably to the frozen Wilds of Frostmaw. A place where wanderers dwell, and things that are lost can sometimes be found.

Deeper Into The Woods

Karasu was in a world far removed from one where sleep existed. It was one of the rare nights that her partner was able to sleep, and part of her felt jealous of that fact. In the sliver of light from the window, she watches as the covers rise and fall for a long time. Her mind races as the sound of a body hitting the ground and her guildmates frantically swarming the Archmage's body replays like a broken record. When she tries to think of something else, her mind's eye shifts to the Venturilian meeting where Kasyr warns of another imminent danger far worse than Xalious. She sees the mockery that both was and was not Odhranos fall from the highest point of the tower to disappear into the abyss below, and wonders if perhaps Ernest was just cruel enough to allow his body to hit the ground. "This isn't working." She whispers to no one in particular as she gets up out of bed. After donning her armor and equipment for safety, the spellblade paces the parlor. Karasu didn't feel very much like walking around Vailkrin. "Where does she..." She stops, seeing a deep blue door beneath the winding staircase. Surely, this must have been one of the Shadow Realm portals. Opening the door revealed only a black expanse inside, as if the room ahead was nothing but shadow. The feline steps through, only to find herself met with blistering cold. "Son of--!!" She tries to turn on her heel to go back home, but is only met with icy tree bark. "One-way..." Karasu whispers in horror as she quickly tightens her fur coat around her frame. She was in Frostmaw, she knew that much; Quintessa had mentioned a project out in the Wilds before. Where in the Wilds that was would be anyone's guess. The surrounding forest is nearly pitch-black, any visibility granted by her feline eyes is robbed by the torrential snowfall. "Luz." She murmurs, withdrawing a hand from the relative warmth of her coat. Red-violet flames hover over her palm, illuminating only the area immediately around her. A set of tracks from wagon wheels is just barely still visible, and so she follows. Karasu follows... and follows... until the tracks are no longer visible. Snow and ice mat her dark curls where visible from under her coat, and the fire in her hand begins to flicker as exhaustion and cold threaten to overtake her. The only sound heard over the roaring winds of the snowstorm is her own shout of surprise as the ice beneath her feet gives way to a drop-off. The terror of falling into darkness lasts both an eternity and just a second before the spellblade lands at the base only a few yards below. The fall is not without consequence, as the contents of her satchel scatter onto the icy expanse. She swears under her breath, using one hand to illuminate the ground as she collects her things. Was it still nighttime, she wondered, or was the darkness of a snowstorm truly this bleak. As she picks up a compass, Karasu lets out a gasp as an alexandrite heart is left behind in the snow. "Oh no, no no no...!" She picks up the stone that once adorned the compass she had given to Odhranos, trying to slip it back into the divot of the compass where it belonged. "No no no no no...!" Her frustration grows as her numb fingers fail to reposition the gemstone. If Odhranos were here, he could simply bend the metal so that it fit perfectly again. But... "He's not here." She says, her hands falling into her lap in defeat. He wasn't here anymore, and she had broken something important of his and gotten herself hopelessly lost because she couldn't control her own tendency for despair. Hot tears prick at her eyes as she curses at the blizzard, curses at Odhranos for abandoning them. Tears roll down her face, becoming icy on her skin as she curses herself, and curses the injustices of the world for taking every good thing in it away.

The nights in Frostmaw are harsh, and the winds and snow all the moreso. As the whistling flurries of ice crowd in around the waylaid spellblade, it seems like there is nothing else in this world save for howling ice. Nothing except for a dim point of light. “---lloooo?” The faintest of calls whisks through the snowstorm, smothered in sheets of frigid dust. Karasu would be forgiven for thinking she had imagined it, for no sooner than the voice is heard and the dim light seen, it is gone again, buried in the blizzard. The storm crowds closer, whirling with icy rage around Karasu, sending daggers of biting cold through her furs when suddenly, the light blooms forth again. Closer this time, the voice calls out. “Hellooooo? Are ye theeeere? Hellooooo?” The soft yellow light bobs and sways like a will-o-wisp, flickering from the choking sheets of snow, but definitely getting closer, perhaps to pass Karasu about thirty feet to her left.

Karasu snaps out of her self-pity long enough to turn her head towards the sound. Perhaps the wind, or yes, even her imagination. "I've gone mad." She murmurs, stuffing the remaining supplies, snow and all, into her satchel. The second call is louder than the first, though, and Karasu squints. Lantern light? Surely, the feline would have smelled the acrid smoke of chimney fire if she were near enough to the city to alert a guard. "Who goes there?" Karasu asks cautiously, slowly tightening her grip on her satchel as she rises to her feet.

The yellow light dances and jigs as it moves through the snowstorm, growing in intensity and gaining definition until the yellow-stained lenses of an old storm-lantern stare back at Karasu with an ochre glare. Holding this lantern aloft is a thick leather mitten, which belongs to a great mound of furs that has trudged out of the snow. “Beggars above, what’re ye doing this far out in the Wilds? Tis lunacy t’ be out in a storm like this.” The voice is muffled through layers of fabric and deafened by the howling storm, but it is clearly the voice of an old man, creaky with age. Pulling up rime-encrusted goggles, two old bleary eyes squint out at Karasu from within the wrappings of fur and cloth. “Sven, ye’ve nary a stitch on ya! Furs, lass, furs!” As if making his point, the figure rams the storm lantern down into the snow and begins hauling a traunch of furs off his own back, which he thrusts out towards the demi-feline. “Ya need layers, c’mon, you’ll be black and blue at the edges if you stand around too long.” Now that he has been partially unburied from his swaddling carapace, the figure’s head is more visible. A liver-spotted head is bare save for the pair of ice-goggles, while in exchange, a snow-white beard that would have wizards green with envy whips around in the wind from the man’s chin. “Which way did ye come from? Are there others?”

Karasu is alarmed by the fact that she does not feel alarmed by such a strange old man in the middle of nowhere. “I could ask the same of you.” Though her expression remains indignant and wary, the involuntary sigh from the warmth of the stranger’s furs gives her gratefulness away. “It would appear I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.” She admits wearily, keeping in mind not to activate any pyromancy while she wore the furs. The spellblade looks around, the lantern he carries illuminating more than her magical fires. “Are we far from the city, sir? I’m sure I can get in contact with my comrades once there… But do you live out here?” She asks with a tilt of her head. The Grand Hunter of the Frost Wilds rarely allowed settlements out here, or so she had heard.

The biting wind doesn’t leave much room for expressiveness, but once Karasu shrugs on the furs, the old man answers her comment with a bark of laughter. “Fair point, lass.” Once he’s satisfied that Karasu isn’t about to keel over on the spot, he tugs his goggles back down and crouches to heft his lantern from the snow once again. “Ye’re a long ways out from the city, lass. Too far out to make it in this kind of a storm.” He hoists his lantern up and stares out into the storm, as it roars and rages, tossing through the beams of light so they appear to flicker and waver. “Lucky for you, there’s an old halfway-house out here, for wayward wanderers like yerself.” He lowers his lantern and peers at Karasu through ice-frosted lenses. “Said same place would happen to be my own establishment. Hence why I find meself out in this here storm. Perks o’ the job.” The old man’s cheeks crinkle with amusement as he turns about on spot. “Have ye got all yer belongings? Anything left out here will be buried under two feet o’ snow by daybreak. Ye’ll not have much luck searching then.”

As the pair make their final preparations for the halfway house, Karasu keeps one hand on the satchel, making sure to feel the gemstone to ensure it is still there. “I’m not--” A terrible reflex, Karasu starts to deny that she’s not wayward, but bites her tongue, thinking better of it. Last items are gathered, and the pair move through the blizzard towards this supposed halfway house. As they walk, the demifeline glances up at the old man periodically to gauge whether there is some sort of indication of a threat missed. She herself fits the bill perfectly for a wayward wanderer with her curls matted with ice and muddy sleet caked around her armor. “I can’t understand why someone would -want- to live all the way out here…” The complaint seems oddly familiar as when she was making deliveries to a cabin out in the Wilds as well.

Once Karasu confirms she’s good to go, the man nods firmly, then sets off into the blizzard, lantern held forward to cut through the darkness like the prow of a ship. “Frostmaw’s always been a place for wanderers.” He comments, his breath short from the strenuous exercise of trudging through knee-deep snow. “Some lookin’ for something they’re missing, others not sure what they’re lookin’ for, some just wandering for the sake of it. Me, I found what I was lookin’ for. Out here.” He turns to look at his companion, his glassy lenses winking yellow with the lamplight. “Now I help others who are still lookin’. Speaking of-” Ahead of them, another yellow light has begun to shine through the snow-gloom. The old man’s strength seems to renew and he strides through the snow towards the light, which soon resolves itself into a door, hewn from dark Frostmawian oak, set in a wall of rime-glazed stonework, crowned by another lantern. The door is shouldered open and from within, a blast of warm air and the promise of a fire beats back the cold momentarily. “Whack the snow off yer shoes, there’s slippers and the likes on the left.” As if to demonstrate, the man’s boots are beaten solidly against the stone doorframe, spraying snow out into the night, before a pair of thick fur slippers are produced. “Close the door behind ya, we don’t want the storm following us in.”

Karasu does not need to be told twice to get away from the blasted frost. After a few good whacks of her leather boots against the stone, a cantrip is used to get the remaining chunks of ice off before being deposited aside. With some resistance from the winds and a bit of strength from her shoulder, the door is shut tight, sealing the pair in the warm hut. “Thank you for your kindness, sir.” She says as she hangs the loaned furs from a hook near the door that neighbors with more furs on hooks. The spellblade removes the holster for her sword and props it by the door in a show of good faith for her host before moving towards the fireplace. After a moment of wiping the melting frost off of her hair and face, a realization dawns on her. “I… apologize if I awoke you before as well. I lost my temper a bit, I suppose.” A profanity-laden ‘woe is me’ rant to Sven, Hind, and Lore was far more than ‘a bit’, though she hoped the statement would suffice. Her satchel is set near the fireplace, and Karasu quietly rummages through to ensure that she did, in fact, claim everything that had spilled before.

While he sheds his furs, hanging them up in slow-laden lumps, the old man breaks into laughter. “I ‘ppreciate the formality lass, but I’m no sir. Folks ‘round here call me Snow if they need to call me anything. “Old Snow”, if they’re feelin’ cheeky.” By this point, Snow has hooked the last fur up to dry and he plods over to the fire to warm his hands. Once free of the bulk of clothing, he is a somewhat diminutive man, with tough wiry limbs that look like they’ve seen nothing but years of tough labour. Snow wears a simple woolen jumper, fraying at the cuffs, with old linen trousers and scratched spectacles to match. “Beggars above, get this cold out of my bones.” He complains as he rubs his hands together. Karasu’s apology is waved away with a dismissive gesture. “Not a fear lass, I’ve heard worse in my lifetime and I’ll wager I’ll hear worse again before I’m gone. Nothing like a good cursing and blinding to heat the blood on a cold night like this.” To make his point, Snow throws his head back and curses, throwing obscenities towards the rafters as he stamps his feet and rubs his hands. “Great for tha’ body, great for tha’ soul.” He laughs brashly, then rubs his arms to get some warmth back into them as he steps away from the fire. “Now, if you’re needing anything, just let me know, There’s blankets aplenty in the chest there, an’ plenty of books on the shelf if ya feel partial. Now let me see if I have any… drat.” Snow is rooting around behind an old timber bar, behind which a thick stocky stone oven squats solidly. “I could’ve sworn I had some. hrmm… Do ya eat stew or soup, lass?” Snow’s bald head peeps over the countertop. “Something warm’ll do you a world o’ good.”

Something about an old man letting loose every profanity in a Common dictionary seems to brighten the girl’s spirits as she lets out a laugh at the display. “Aye, I suppose it does do some good. Glad to make your acquaintance, Snow. You can call me Kara. Most of my friends seem to do so anyhow.” Karasu sets out the broken compass pieces on the stone floor, and closes the bag, satisfied that she has everything else she needs. Attempting to make herself useful for the kindness she received, the demiblade rekindles the fire as she answers, “Soup, please.” Wringing her hands awkwardly once the menial task is complete, Karasu takes the pieces and takes a seat at the table, starting her attempts to repair the thing. Repair, in this case, consists of trying to push the gemstone into the rounded divot unsuccessfully since a clasp has snapped off. “What was it that you were looking for out here?”

“Ahh, Kara? Lovely name, that.” The air fills with the jingling of pots and pans as Snow fishes out the appropriate crockery to serve soup, while behind him, the oven grumbles and groans to life, soon filling the room with the warm savoury scent of a beefy soup. “What was I lookin’ for?” Snow taps a wooden spoon against his bearded chin in thought. “Y’know, I’m not really sure what I was lookin’ for. Just one day I woke up and knew that I had to go find it.” The old man laughs sharply. “Prob’ly sounds like a load of rot, but I dunno how else to put it.” He ruminates as he stirs the pot, which bubbles and broils pleasantly over the oven’s mouth. “I used to live a busy life, always to-ing and fro-ing, always somewhere to go and someone to see. Then one day, I just decided, it was time.” He casts a glance over to Karasu and shrugs. “I’d found this place when I was a young man, back then it was just a bunch of ruined stone walls, covered in snow. I didn’t think much of it then, there was too much else to do. But when I came back, all those years later, it felt like this place had been waiting for me.” Snow sighs, running his old calloused hand over the warm stonework of the oven. “There I was, old, and tired and looking for something I couldn’t even place. And there it was, snowy and silent, waiting for some old fool with a dream.” A quiet moment passes, marked only by the gentle grumble of flames and burble of soup, before Snow coughs and sets back to his work. “I fixed the place up, restored it to what it used to be and well, I’ve been here ever since. Helping people like me, who don’t know what they’re looking for.” Snow ladles generous helpings of soup into a pair of bowls and walks over to the table, setting one beside Karasu along with a spoon and a small roll of warm crusty bread. “Don’t let it go cold now.” He warns gently, sitting down across from her. “What about you? What is it you’re out here looking for?”

Karasu pauses her fidgeting with the item to listen to Snow’s tale, watching his movements and his familiarity with the place as if the stone cottage were an extension of his very being. “I don’t think it rot at all. I have heard of dwarves and gnomes in the Craughmoyle mines just walking out of the caves mid-shift, some starting over as fishermen or taking up trades that would be frowned upon in their past life.” She pauses. “I have a friend that wanted to do the same thing as well.” With a grateful bow of the head, she puts the compass to one side of the table and digs into the soup. Her stomach comes alive at the first drop of warmth, encouraging her to eat more. After a moment, she puts the spoon down and takes the roll in her hands, breaking off small pieces with her tapered nails to toss into the soup. “I am not sure what it is I was looking for either. I… just want everything back the way it was. I want my friends to live to see the next Arh’Nuk ball, and I want the friends I lost to come home. They were able to bring me home, and yet I can’t seem to be able to do anything to help them when they need it most. Even now, my friend is on the verge of life and death, but because I am not a true magic user, there is nothing I can do to help.” During her confession, she runs out of bread, but her gaze stays fixed towards the fire, and her fingers idly continue the motion of plucking grains where there are none for a moment. When she realizes this, she takes the spoon back up. “It’s a selfish thing to ask for, isn’t it? I want my friends to be saved, but I also want to be the one that saves them to satisfy my own insecurity.” She lowers her head and continues eating.

Snow spoons his soup quietly as Karasu speaks, his scratched glasses shining as they catch the flickering light from the fireplace. When she finishes speaking, he continues to eat, as the two sit in silence, united by the simple ritual of food. Once they finish, he holds a hand out for her bowl, and takes the two over to the bar once more, where the splashing of water from the washbasin breaks the silence. “Does it matter that it’s selfish?” He eventually asks, keeping his focus on washing the bowls. “Love’s selfish, simple as that. An’ that’s fine.” The solid clinking of crockery punctuates his point as he places them aside and dries off his hands. “The heart seeks what it seeks, and it couldn’t care a whit whether we understand that or even agree with it. Even if it’s the most selfish thing in tha’ world, all we can do is follow where it leads.” Snow returns to the fireplace, pulling a large armchair and a large crate so that they sit in the rosy circle of light. He seats himself, then pulls back the lid of the crate, revealing within a veritable explosion of colour. Spools of thread, of every colour under the sun, all tucked in around a thick heavy roll of fabric. The roll is hoisted out and placed on Snow’s lap, before he begins hunting around within the crate for a spool. “Now, my eyesight is going bad, so I’ll need your help with this. What colour’s this?” He holds a spool to the light, which Karasu would find is a shade of purple, quite the same as her hair.

Karasu mulls over his comments in silence as the midnight meal is cleaned up. Just a few years ago, the spellblade only knew of friendship from polite teachers and townsfolk who pitied her inability to use magic as well as her peers. She had always thought to love was to be as selfless as one could be. Now that she had more friends than she knew what to do with, the idea that love was just as equally selfish made as much sense as a dragon using mice as steeds. Karasu quietly follows Snow to the armchair and kneels beside the crate, enjoying the crackling of the fire and how it created a kaleidoscope of colors in the light of the cottage. Her fingers run over different spools that remind her of the people she wanted to save. A glimmering chartreuse, the same shade as Quintessa’s favorite eyeshadow. Black with silver flecks, like Magikrios’ fires, cerulean blue like Iintahquohae’s Cenril home, violet like the gaudy clothes Lanlan absolutely had to wear, sandalwood like the very distinct hair that only Kasyr could have, and one as golden as sand like-- “Hm, that’s a dark violet, I’d say.” Her eyes are drawn upwards by the question. “Some of these look like they have never been touched.” Karasu remarks, turning over a ruby spool in her fingers.

Snow murmurs approvingly. “Good, eye’s mustn’t be as bad as I thought.” He plucks the end of the spool free, then rolls out the thick fabric in his lap, slowly revealing a swathe of intricate embroidery. A sea of faces and places, all picked out in careful needlework, to which Snow now sets the newest thread. “Aye, most of them have been there for years. My wife had a thing for colours and fabrics. That’s her, in tha’ painting above tha’ door.” Snow gestures before realising that outside the fireplace’s little pool of light, the painting can’t even be found, nevermind looked at. “Ah, you can look in the morning, when it’s light.” He turns back to his needlework, carefully passing the steel pin through and back. “Always wandered, that woman did. I could never tie her down to one place. Not that I’d want to, wandering was her way.” The old man rambles fondly as he works away, a gentle smile creeping across his worn face. “She’d come and she’d go, but no matter what, I swore I’d always be here and sooner or later, she’d come blustering in that door like she’d never left. Like the wind, that woman was. So I said, If she's the wind, then I’d be the earth, Solid and dependable, so no matter where she lands, I’ll be there to support her.” He chuckles gently, then looks up from his embroidery. “I ‘spose I was a little selfish too, in my own way. Nothin’ wrong with that.” He squints as he smiles, tugging a thread gently, then snipping it off with his teeth. “Anyway, I’ve been nattering and kept you up long enough. The storm’ll break by morning, grab some blankets and find yerself a nest to tuck into. I’ll be working away here if you need me.” ||

In the morning, the fire has gone out and Snow isn’t to be seen in the main room of the halfway-house. Clear sunlight streams through the windows, illuminating the warm room and casting dappled light up into the rafters.

Karasu || Day breaks, and Karasu opens her eyes slowly to see the rafters of Snow’s cottage. Strange, so last night had not been a vivid dream after all. With a yawn and a stretch, the spellblade rises to her feet, carefully folding the blanket and rearranging the pillows of the couch how they were before. A minute passes as she waits for some telltale sound of Old Snow approaching, but no such sound is heard. Idly waiting to say her goodbyes, she looks around the main area of the cottage. It does look very well cared for in spite of the man’s failing vision, though Karasu does organize fallen items here and there. A reflection of light draws her attention upwards to the painting he had mentioned above the door, and time comes to a standstill as she tries to make sense of what it is she sees. There in the morning light is a delicate oil painting of one very familiar pair of Kerrigans, surrounded by smiling children of different races and ages. “O-O-Odh--” She stutters, whipping around to take in the room she should have recognized the moment she entered.

When Karasu turns around, she is met by snow. The roof has fallen through a century ago, rafters now only old withered stumps that poke and prod through the snow drifts swathing the hall. The stocky stone oven protrudes like a sleeping giant from the snow, its blocks glistening with hoarfrost, its heart as cold as ice. Everything is cold and stark in the morning light, nothing but black and white and grey as far as the eye can see. Save for one small splash of colour. A scrap of fabric, no larger than the palm of one’s hand, lies gently on the blanket of new fallen snow. A cutting of a tapestry, it’s edges frayed and loose. At the centre of this scrap, picked out in dark violet thread, a little leopard curls up in sleep, it’s spotted tail tucked almost to its nose, while around it, a halo of thread, gold as sand, wraps around it protectively, warding off the ice and cold, so the leopard may sleep safely a while longer. The scrap is warm to the touch, as if it had only just left its maker's hands, while around it, the stones of the halfway house lie in quiet, patient ruin. Snowy and silent. Waiting for some old fool with a dream.

Karasu falls to her knees, gently cupping the scrap of fabric in her hands. “Odhranos…” She asks of the tapestry softly. Beneath the tapestry is the compass she had left on the table of the man who called himself Snow, no longer broken, but with golden threads holding the magically charged gemstone securely in place. Karasu opens the delicate thing to see it no longer spinning aimlessly how it was in the Xalious Mage Tower, but pointing southwards. Karasu would never know for sure what exactly had happened that night, but she knew two things for sure: She was awake, and it was time to wake up Odhranos.