In the Dark [30th of Yulember]

As far as the eye could see was white. It was so white that it was blinding, even in the middle of the night.

Yet, near the southern shore, something was pulsing with utter darkness. Drums were heard in the dark of night, sounds alien to the surroundings, sounding with foreboding. DUM DUM DUM DUM.

it had been a long day. Hex had been tracking a bear that had wandered into her little stretch of the coast area for a few days, completely without success, but she was getting closer. The meat would fetch a good price, be useful as rations and Niamh would appreciate the pelt.

Dreams came easy as she rested her head. Dreams of wolves, dancing girls, drinking mead, drums, old friends, drums, winter skies, drums, drums??

Her eyes snapped open as she listened to the faint sound on the wind.

DUM DUM DUM

Faint, but not faint enough. Rolling over she snatched up her glaive and emerged from her pup tent. The snow was so bright it was almost causing snow blindness. Nothing else felt amiss but there was just something not right going on. She was awake now and was not going to get back to sleep. It did not matter, in a few candlemarks or less it would be Morningtide.

Breaking camp was simple enough, it actually took her longer to get into her armor then it did to strike her tent and pack her things. With everything packed up and secured on her pack, she took a last look around. She knew that within minutes that to the untrained eye it would look as if she were never there. Seemed the bear would live to see a few more days at least.

Digging in her pack she found a small container that had bear fat mixed with charcoal for under her eyes to cut the snow blindness. With her glaive slung over her shoulder, she took out a piece of jerked meat and started to chew as she made off for the main road. She had been out of touch for a few days, perhaps someone on the main road knew something.

Reaching the main road by Morningtide, she turned south.

Waking from a dreamless slumber, Niamh stirred from her nest of furs with the hairs on the back of her neck hackling. Yet it took her some little time to stir from that uneasy drowse, time for logic and patterns of thought to catch up with instinct.

The dark of night would forever carry with it the heat of menace after her kind's experience at home, no matter the chill of air or depth of snow . And so the distant thrum of that beaten tune bore with it an ominous memory that slowly built into a foreboding possibility. Her heartbeat sped, beginning a frantic patter as her Inner Spirit offered it's instincts, the urge to fight to defend her territory as a Falcon used to the hunt, and the rarer sensation of being prey, bearing with it all the urge to flight.

Many breaths were wasted, paralyzed by indecision, and Niamh's eyes traced the familiar edges of her little hovel. She had wattled the spaces between a cluster of trees in a dense little thicket. With the snow filtering through the thin, leafless branches above, the white mounded on all sides and kept the wind away. Barring one little opening she used as a makeshift hearth, and the entrance covered by a larger skin she had bartered with Hex for, it was fairly well sealed. It made a fair stop, between her various haunts, though she had been making her way slowly back towards Port Town. Even a woman who sought the safety of solitude as much as she, found loneliness a heavy burden this time of year.

It is safe here. I am safe. Nothing can harm me. No one can catch me.

It was a mantra that slowed the erratic thudding of her own heartbeat, and allowed her to listen, to place the sound of drums as from the South.

This was a safe place, if a cold one, as her fire had died out sometime the last burn. Yet as she crawled out from among her nested furs to crouch over them, she knew that assurance would not feel truly believable until she could identify the source of this change, this drumming, that invaded her peaceful quiet of the frozen Shorewich wilds.

So she thrust her feet into boots, wrapped herself in her cloak and wrapped it tight about her. Avoiding roads and human trod paths, she turned south, her unstrung bow and quiver on her back.

Her plan? To find a safe and private hollow a mile or two from the disturbance in which to change, and view the unknown from the safety of the sky.

The rabbit emerged from the hole at the root of the tree, tentatively, nose twitching. Its fur was the same colour as the snow, at least in this light, but for a brief moment it was visible against the darkness behind it, as it took small hops out of its shelter. In the gloom, it could see little beyond the white snow, the dark sky and the snow tumbling on the wind blurring the line between the two, but the nearby bushes were just visible, and grew where they had always grown. Eyes and ears straining against the biting wind, the rabbit exercised its nose once more. A faint smell, of one of those slow grazing animals perhaps? Hadn’t they all gone, which the arrival of the cold weather? And there was something else, something not quite animal.

The young rabbit hesitated. There was something else on the wind, just on the edge of hearing, a dull thrum, slower than the rabbit’s heart beat, slower and far away, but the animal wonders about it, waits to see if anything comes of it. Flickers pass, burns. The thrumming noise gets no louder, shows no sign of interrupting the rabbit’s quest for food. The rabbit was hungry. The food was just there. It could see it, almost taste it, the bush laden with low hanging berries. Several hops further and it confirmed that there’s nothing out there, nothing lurking in wait. Nothing but white snow, black sky, and the swirling flakes on the wind. And the bush, a few more hops from the tree. As many berries as it could eat, if it avoided the thorns.

Hop. Hop. Glance around. Nose twitch. Hop. Hop.

It reached the bush. One last glance around before it began to nibble at a berry. Then another. Then a quick hop to another branch.

Suddenly there was pain, a sharp searing pain around its ankle, as something under the snow snagged the rabbits left rear foot. The rabbit panics, not sure what has grabbed it, scrambling, kicking back at the snow, glimpsing something shiny, thin, biting tightly into its flesh. Then a shadow falls over the rabbit, a large white furred shape looming where moments before the rabbit could see nothing but a carpet of white. Flickers later the last thing the rabbit felt was the sharp blade slitting its throat.

* * *

Lokisk wiped the blade on the side of his leg, and hung the now dead white rabbit from his belt. He considered resetting the snare trap, but figured that, as this was not his normal stretch of the Great Frozen Beyond and he might not pass this way again for some time, it would probably be a waste. Coiling up the metal wire and peg he tucked them away into a small pouch on his belt. Looking down at the disturbed snow by his feet it was hard to determine what were bright red droplets of blood in the snow, and what were scattered berries. After a few moments reflection he picked a handful of berries from the bush for himself.

He narrowed his eyes. There is was again. He was sure he could hear something, somewhere to the southwest. Eyes scanning the horizon, squinting against the dull white expanse and the frozen winds coming in from the coast, Lokisk wondered what that noise was. The beating of drums in some winter revelry? Some sort of mechanical contraption sending vibrations through the ground? Whatever it was, there was a rhythm to it, and that probably meant there was a purpose to it.

Interesting.

Lokisk slipped a few berries into his mouth. He’d take the ‘long route’ home, the route that went entirely the opposite direction but which would allow him the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity. Pulling his cloak tightly against his body, he set off across the Great Frozen Beyond, until he was little more than a white smudge on the white landscape.


OOC: I’m guessing Lokisk will not immediately bump into Hex, as they’re approaching via different routes, but he is heading in the same direction (and, given he’s off-road, it’s likely he won’t get there until after Hex).

The distant drumming stopped as light peeked into morningtide, around the mid of the tide, as if only the gravetide allowed this kind of dedication. Yet, to those sensitive to it, the lingering darkness remained even as the sound died away. A day started, but an oppressivenss remained.

As Hex moved forward on the path to the Soutern Cliffs, a path no sane ranger would take for no food, no sustenance lay that way, it as notable she was not alone. Movement at the edge of her view, twitches, body movement.

OOC: go ahead, but stay just shored of the southern cliffs as you prepare to watch over the seas, a striking difference with the snow covered rocks you are travelling across.

Hex was moving south along a path only used with any seriousness in non winter months and it showed why. As she moved she picked meat from between her teeth with her tongue. The drumming had died down with the morning light but the wrongness had remained. As the pale light crossed the horizon Hex had worked through just why she was going south.

Her mind had played over the images of the children from the north of the isle interplayed with the carnage in Rimmerhold and the other battles back in Trothgard. She had no stake in these people and they had none in her, but at the very least she was going to warn them as to what was coming, if anything at all. The worst was not knowing what was going on so the very least she could do is go take a look.

As full light enveloped the land she stopped for a quick rest. Crouching with her glaive across her knees, her braids dragging in the snow she was still, staring south. The land reminded her a bit of home. Cold, white and rocky with squat to really live on. Hopefully something would try to come and kill her and she would not have to ration her meager supplies all the way there and back.

Movement

She cocked her head and stared that way for a few flickers.

Looing around, there was really nowhere to hide unless she went to ground. Snorting like that was the most repulsive idea ever, she stood up and looked in the direction of the movement and smiled. At least life was never boring. Cautiously, both for rock covered snow and the chance of an ambush, but with purpose, she made her way in the direction of the movement to see who other than her was stupid enough to be out here.

OOC: No reason it cannot be him. Jump in, we need to link up. If it was something else Maeve will adapt the story.

Yesterdays drumming had enthused Wigmore's senses, the like of which he hadn't felt in a long time. But that was yesterday. Where were they?

As the snow covered fields gave way to snow covered rocks Lokisk found the going a little easier, as long as he correctly judges the angles of the rocks beneath. The snow seemed less like a large blanket across the landscape as there were holes where the snow fell between the cracks, and some of the rocks even offered some shelter from the snow. Still, at a distance the landscape still looked almost uniformly white.

The drumming noise had got steadily louder for the mile or so Lokisk had trekked through the snow, but had gone quiet some time back. Still hoping to catch a glimpse of the people responsible, to get an inkling of what had occurred, Lokisk pressed on, as the sky lightened ahead, and the snowy landscape did beneath. Ahead he could make out the dip that marked where the path made it's way through the larger rocks towards the Southern Cliffs. Taking care not to snag his cloak, he picked up speed, to see of he could catch anyone as they left. As he stepped around the corner of a rock, and bounded over a smaller one, he noticed almost immediately a figure ahead of him, turned away but crouched, as if searching for something perhaps. He recognised her almost immediately, even from this angle, the terrifying woman with the long red braided hair, dressed as a warrior and wrapped in a wolf's pelt. He could not see her face clearly as she studied the rocks, but he remembered her sharpened her teeth. He didn't know what sort of creature she was. He hadn't failed to notice that they both had pale skin and, although he'd never admit it, he'd worried that she might be somehow related or otherwise connected to the foreign father he'd never so much as seen. Now he wondered whether she had anything to do with the drumming, whether there might be some war party preparing to invade Shorewich.

Lokisk couldn't see much further down the path, and wasn't sure what the woman was taking in, but as she surveyed the landscape and began to turn her head his way he panicked, having no desire for her to see him. He stepped back and crouched against a cold rock, and tried to hold his cloak still against the wind.

OOC : Just a quick post to get us together.

IC: Hex moved closer to where she saw movement. A snap of wind revealed a flash of red. Swan. Lowering her gaurd a little she stopped a few paces from where she had seen him.

"Friend Swan, it is Hex, if it is south you go let us go together. I too am curious of the driums. This path is treacherous and our skills are better together."

Lokisk stiffened a moment when he realised he had been seen. Stepping from his limited cover, hands raised to show he intended no harm, he listened to her speak. Friends Swan? Let us go together?

"Well met, Hex. Yes, I come to investigate the drums. Nothing to do with you then?" Moving slowly towards her, making sure not to startle her with any sudden moves, Lokisk realised he was treating her as he might a ferocious animal. He would not turn his back on her, but at the same time would give her a respectful distance. He tried to look beyond her, to see if there was any hint of anything that might have happened amongst the rocks beyond. "I heard them from a distance but couldn't get here before they stopped. Have you seen anything?" Lokisk continued to look around.

Standing amongst the rocks, the cloak reversed with the wool side out, clumped with snow, Lokisk looked more like a Swan than he had any other time Hex had seen him.

Eyes had felt the drumming every night since three days ago, like an undercurrent, throbbing just outside of his awareness. This close to the Southern cliffs though was the first time he had first heard them out loud, clear and without being able to deny their reality.

Moving to through the snow was difficult. Doing so without being noticed impossible. Up ahead of the road he saw two figures, tension betrayed in their frame, exchanging words he could not hear. A woman and a man. They had not yet acknowledge him but that didn't mean they weren't aware of him.

None of the participants had a clue where the wardrums had come from. They sounded ancient, rough, alien. All they knew is that their path led South.

OOC: Welcome to the thread Eyes!
Hex, Lokish: Please reassure yourself. I will only roll back for essential stuff. I will be keeping an eye and interfere when necessary. Do however tag in Niamh and perhaps send her a PM if she's okay with moving forward. Eyes is joining you as well. You may allow yourself to notice him.

Hex could see the tension in Lokisk as he talked to her. She did not truly know him and the first time she saw him she almost thought he was from beyond the wall. In the end he was just a pale man, one apparently good at hiding.

"No, they have nothing to do with me other than they broke my sleep." Hex was wary as a predator being lead into a trap. "Swan, I believe that you have little to do with the wrongness that I feel so I am also going to believe that you have nothing to do with figure coming down the path. Lets wait and see who comes this way"

With that, Hex turned to face the figure coming south along the path

Lokisk turned to face the approaching figure, having to turn his whole body in order to see beyond the confines of his hood.

He recognised the figure. It was the crazy red bearded guy with one eye he'd seen around the island. They'd never really talked before, as neither of them were particularly chatty. Lokisk wasn't sure he'd ever seen the guy without his kilt before - clearly he wasn't completely crazy!

Did Hex know this guy? They seemed to share the same pale skin, the same red hair. Was it a coincidence?

Ooc: sorry for delay! I will be on a plane for 5 hours tomorrow, so expect a few delays then and again on Friday!

She had found a grove a respectable distance, she felt, had spent the requisite 15 burns granting her falcon spirit it's head, and then promptly launched herself into the air for a bird's eye view of the situation. Following the currents of wind and air up and up after the initial effort to launch herself, her eyes scanned the snowy landscape, traveled along the horizon and sought what traces she could find of those who had beat upon drums kind in that foreboding thrum.

Whatever else she noticed, peering distantly upon any signs with a sharp falcon's gaze that kept her far beyond the reach of any ordinary weapon, the three acquaintances converging below caught her attention. Wings spread stiffly to either side, she swirled over them once before angling back to that distant cops of hills and trees. It took her a few flickers to land, but nearly 30 burns to regain a recognizable shape and make an approach. Which she did quietly, using the geography observed from on high to do so quietly and carefully from a direction not easily linked to that of the falcon.

One could never be too careful.

Despite the chill, her travel and exertions warmed her beneath her cloak so much that she cast the hood from her head, the furred edges pooling around her shoulders as she slipped into the footprints left in Eyes wake. It amused her to do so without being noticed, as long as possible, for the compressed snow would not crunch and shift as much for those following as those breaking a path.

Yet there was only so much a woman in a dark cloak against such an icy backdrop could do if anyone actually looked. She arrived last, full of the clues her flight had offered her, short hair mussed by fingers of wind and eyes narrowed against the early morning's glare.

"Hex is ok, but who is that bastard with her?" thought Eyes.  His shoulders arms and hands tensed and then relaxed as he reached down with his hand towards the hilt of his sword.

"Just be ready" he thought.

Eyes knew from the way in which both of the bodies standing in front of him had tensed that he had been seen.  Why try and disguise his approach.

Step by never ending step he trudged on through the snow, always keeping his eye on the male one, his right hand coiled...to use if necessary.

As Eyes got to about five metres away he heard, amongst the roaring wind, an ever so light crunch of snow under foot behind him.  "Female or animal or both" he thought.

Eyes suddenly crouched to the ground and in doing so unsheathed his sword and spun round, pointing the sword directly in front of him. His right leg stretched out to the side of him, his left underneath him, his left hand a fist in case the strange man behind him had any ideas.  He was sure Hex wouldn't try anything funny.  Well at least he thought she wouldn't.

Looking up he saw her, Niamh.  "That is a dangerous game you play bird".  He liked to tease Niamh by calling her bird, as he knew it bristled with her.  She hated sexist terms like that.  Well she shouldn't sneak up on him, should she, the bloody fool.

Standing straight up, Eyes sheathed his sword and turned.  Taking two steps forward he spoke.

"Good day to you Hex, what brings you into my wilderness?"

The wind nudged her braids a little as she looked north. Hex could make out Wigmore as he pushed his way forward to her and Lokisk, who very much looked like his adopted name. Wigmore could not see, but Hex saw Niamh flittering through the snow behind him. Wigmore whirled around ready for a fight but relaxed when he too made Niamh out.

Hex heard the banter from Wigmore to Niamh but did not know what to make of it. Smiling at the thought of this being anyone's land, let alone Wigmore's made her smile.

"Wigmore, good morningtide to you. I see you know Niamh, have you met Swan? The drums take Swan and I south. I know not what they are but they heralded a wrongness upon the wind. Your blade would be welcome as would your skills Niamh"

Niamh was still catching up so Hex spoke loud enough for all to hear.

"With the four of us we should have enough skills between us all to move with some stealth to the south to find the cause of this drumming. We also will need to do a little snaring and gathering along the way as this path offers no respite."

Hex looked to each of her new companions in turn as she gathered herself to be off again.

Lokisk nodded as his name was mentioned. He was pretty sure they'd never been introduced, although he'd certainly seen Wigmore before. He was a hard man to miss. As Niamh approached behind the large man Lokisk offered her a more respectful nod, not quite a bow. He wasn't sure he'd seen her before. Was she new to the island?

The conversation felt awkward to Lokisk, as usually he didn't deal with groups of people, and almost certainly had not had to work within a group. He wondered if perhaps he should reverse the cloak, given that it seemed useless adopting a stealthy approach with this ragtag group. Still, as Hex spoke it became clear that she thought otherwise. As the topic turned to finding rations Lokisk stepped closer, pulling aside the cloak to indicate the rabbit he had caught earlier. "I have this for sustenance, but I fear it will not go a long way to feed the four of us." turning to the others he asked "Has anyone else got anything on them now? I worry that any time spent hunting might detract from the reason I assume we're all here..." Looking around he added "I don't think this landscape will offer us much in the way of food..."

Now that a watery sun had come out and played over the snow, glittering here and there, but mostly still the cold blue of morning, the drumming seemed a dim memory. There was something chillingly beautiful about the Frozen Beyond, especially if you couldu take the cold in stride.

The people that gathered all had their own experiences in understanding the lay of the land, none of them fools. In the distance the call of a bird. Keen ears could hear a snow rabbit escaping a bird of prey. There was more life (and death) to the snow fields than at first appeared.

OOC: very well done. Do carry on!

As Eyes spun, Niamh rolled up on her toes, arms flaring out to either side instinctively to provide balance, yet as she expected, he caught himself in plenty of time. Her eyes narrowed at his chosen moniker, but she didn't dignify it with a response.

Straightening, her ears perked up at Hex's voice, her head cocking to one side as she took in Swan from head to toe in one quick sweep, her eyes large and oddly dark with her over large pupil.

They were all on edge, a little wary, yet her senses didn't alert her to any immediate threat. Not from these three, at this time. The hairs on the back of her neck quivered, still, from the earlier, strange drumbeats that had drawn them from their respective places of loneliness.

And here they stood, discussing human niceties and sharing food, fussing together to determine the two-legged pecking order. Niamh could understand such things, even if she had grown out of practice with them. Yet she didn't want to linger overlong in the unknown, either.

"I look for the source of the Drums." She replied, shrugging, then scampering about them all to stand on the far side, shielding her eyes, ostensibly against the early morning glare against crystalline snow. "I climbed a tree, and saw little to nothing. The sound must be deeper, come from deeper."

She turned then, eyeing the others, her eye brows lifting questioningly.

"Coming?" Hardly waiting for an answer, she turned the proper direction, eyes strafing the stretch of snow as she contemplated where the places might be that would have been hidden from her previously airborne sight.

"I'll walk with you for a while my avian friend" Eyes said with an inward chuckle to Niamh.  She would have seen much more from her airborne view, it made sense to be with her for a while.

"I have no food, nor do I need any" Eyes snapped at Lokisk.  "Lets see if he likes that tone" Eyes thought inwardly.

As he followed Niamh, his lamb skin, wool lined boots warmly crunching through the snow, he whispered to her, "I will only walk a while, I have to get back to my animals."

Turning his head backwards, he walked on, watching to see whether Hex and the other were following.  His right hand was still coiled, but perhaps not as tightly as before.

Ooc: point of clarification, it is likely Niamh would be seen as unusual, but unless Eyes was experienced and knew of Kanthrop, probably unlikely he would know her to be an avian type. Tribal of origin, that should be easily picked up. But the other is a bit more obscure. Thanks!

Hex looked on as Niamh set off with Wigmore. The expression on her face was one of puzzlement between the odd interaction between the two and Wigmore's odd response to Lokisk.

Perhaps that one has his reasons to live alone. Seems his battles left him with more that just the physical scars...

Shouting ahead

"Set a good pace Niamh, I plan to stop as tradetide burns low. I suspect that we will get little sleep this night and want to rest early."

As they set off Hex held out a hand to Lokisk motioning him to hold.

"I will take you up on the offer of fresh meat as all I travel with is dried fruits and jerked meat. We can save what I have for when the fresh meat is gone and our snares are empty."

Hex produced her tin with the blacked bear fat offering it to Lokisk

"Cuts the glare. Are you from this isle?"

Taking in a cold deep breath Hex looked out over the land. Nothing near the frozen wastes of Tothgard but it felt good to be back wandering across frozen land. She wanted to push the pace till near dusk to get them as far south as they could. The moon would reflect off the snow and give the false light but she did not want to attract unwanted attention with fire in the dark of night if she could help it.

Time to push this pace along.