"Were you considering leaving him before?" Shonagon asks lightly.
His reply is shaded with surprise and the delicate widening of his lilac eyes. "...But of course. I was to ride to the east on the morrow. A matter of diplomacy, to Argentia. But," And he fixes Sei in particular with his gaze, just for a moment, before pressing the water goblet towards the good doctor. "In truth I was intending to examine whether there was any substance to the rumors of Argentian aggression along the border."
Argentia being the nation which bordered Glazingstoke to the west, and in fact separated one province from the main body of the rest of the nation. Mountainous, small, landlocked, its primary trade was in mining and the production of quarry materials, jewelry, alchemical reagents, and engineering equipment - though a number of notable authors also hailed from the region. Glazingstoke, with its fertile fields and long border with the sea, its quiet bays and smooth, level roads, was Argentia's most important trade partner.
The names certainly ring at least a few bells; despite all the effort he's exerted to stay very much out of trouble until that anomaly occurred a second time or the Enterprise was able to replicate it, McCoy has still managed to pick up a few bits and pieces of the local political climate. Hearsay and rumors, for the most part, the kind of gossip that goes around the Inn when the drunks are leaning close to one another at the tables.
What he knows for sure, given his current understanding: he has a hell of a time remembering these names. "Aggression, eh. You think it might've had anything to do with that fiasco?"
There's a thank you in there somewhere, for the goblet.
"Does Argentia have any motive for an assassination attempt?" Shonagon asks, eyes wide over the top of her fan. Such a drastic move would surely be detrimental to trade, she thought. What could ever possess the neighboring country to risk destabilizing the economy? She'd believed the nations to be on good terms with each other.
"I do not wish to tire you with the intricacies of international affairs," (Shorthand for we do not yet trust each other so well) "But if I were to guess, I would wonder whether the Argentines ever covet their own port. As you know, they have none. And we are not likely to give ours up."
The last words he pronounces with firmness.
Sei's tea arrives, brought by a servant in violet livery. It's a grassy, sweet green, brewed well but just a little cold from its trip down the hall.
"A bad business," McCoy says with more than a bit of harshness. Border skirmishes are always the same, no matter where they happen. The King's lucky to be alive. "And a business I ain't interested in getting wrapped up in."
He inclines his head toward the prince. "No offense, o'course, but I'm a doctor, not a soldier." Or a damned spy.
Shonagon sips her tea and smiles, pleased by its obvious quality.
"I rather agree with Mr. McCoy," she murmurs politely. "As foreigners, it would be appallingly impolite for us to insert ourselves into your politics any further than we already have."
McCoy doesn't have to clear his throat this time. His look and his voice are clear. The memory's still fresh. "A man and a woman. The woman was a lot taller than the man. Both of them were dressed in black from head to toe, which looked pretty damn conspicuous in the daylight."
But there was something else, wasn't there? Something before that - "They came in through the...it had to have been the King's Quarters. It wasn't one of the public doors."
He leans back in his chair, chewing this over himself. "They were surprised to see us still awake. Accused us of being sent by a him to see what kind of job they were doing."
Wait, hold up.... someone is there. Someone not wearing feathers, nor carrying a spear nor staff.
A woman, short, with a hard, capable look. She has very dark skin and soft, androgynous features, and wispy black hair like a cloud of cotton fluff that catches every hint of a breeze. She is wearing black clothing cut functional and close, though the white lace trim at her throat and the elaborate assortment of heavy silver (is it silver? experienced jewelers in the party may discover it is something else.) jewelry suggests that this is no scullery maid. There she is, leaning against the pale yellow-green soapstone wall, rolling a crossbow bolt between her thumb and forefingers. A fly in the ointment.
She is looking over Hei's shoulder to see who follows. Her quiet smile suggests the ripple of a lake under moonlight. If the ripple were caused by an enormous carnivorous fish.
"Fallen one, hide or perish. In there."
Her voice is soft; a vague, hushed sound, with a pronounced accent that licks along the L's and aspirates the TH-sounds. She points the flanged head of the bolt at an almost invisible door outlined in the stone of the palace wall.
A dozen guards are running your way.
It looks like the guards from the north are starting to notice the commotion.
It's the very first thought through his head, and it's so strong it slows him for just a moment. Something about that smile rings alarm bells in his head.
There is no time.
He acknowledges his instincts and then promptly ignores them. The guards behind him are a certain danger. The door in front could be anything at all, including, he supposes, death. But if she's dangerous, then so is he, and if the choice is between "no" and "maybe"--
It very dark once the exterior door closes. Slowly it becomes apparent that the only light is coming from the floor itself, on which a luminescent dust heaps and scatters at random. The wash of warm air from outside disappears into the cool, dry, mushroomy depths of the passage. There is no turning back.
He doesn't move forward immediately in the darkness. For a few moments, he listens to the ongoings outside. There is an indistinguishable murmur of voices; is she explaining herself to the guards, and if so, what is she saying? It's impossible to distinguish and pointless to guess.
In the meantime, his eyes have adjusted to what limited light there is. He looks down, frowns, and then starts walking. He extends his arms until his fingers can follow the walls on either side.
He moves as briskly as he can afford in the darkness, listening for any movement in front or behind.
The stone of the hallway is unbroken on either side, but there is a faint light up ahead...
The corridor opens upon a circular cavern. The sunken floor is obscured beneath water, 4-5cm deep, out of which grow innumerable slim plants that glow in the darkness and fill the water with their blue-green radiance. It is impossible to tell whether there is a ceiling or how high it is. The plants themselves are curled stalks like fiddlehead ferns clenched shut and poke their nodding heads up out of the water, thickly clustered, the occasional tall straggler emerging here or there. It would be impossble to walk to the door on the other side of the round without crushing some of them.
From far down the hall behind Hei comes a woman's voice: "Wind or hunger..."
Water. An immediate advantage (he recalls, in passing, many a star-lit rainforest pond which quickly turned into a graveyard) It becomes even more immediate when the voice presents itself and he tenses, moves -- into the cavern, out of sight.
He wants to glance down the hallway -- but it would be pointless, that far ahead, that far into the darkness. Instead, Hei braces himself against the cavern wall and starts moving, as soundlessly as he can, along the circle perimeter.
Wind or hunger. Was she talking to him? About him? He strains to hear more over the muffled wet sounds of his movement.
As Hei's light feet brush over the plants, they maunder towards him like iron filings to a magnet, and hunch up on each other, clinging to his ankles...
They begin to grasp at him. Though each individual one is not strong - pluckable, like blades of grass - en masse they present more and more of a challenge and they begin to climb up his ankles and calves.
He tries to walk through them at first, dislodge them second, but once he feels the numbing in his toes, it becomes obvious his options are limited.
A trap. His lips press together in displeasure -- but it makes sense. He pushes back the anxious throbbing in his belly (are they paralyzing him, what happens if hey climb higher...)
Hei stops and straightens. Then, much like the plants, he begins to glow. Not for a long time -- just long enough for him to release a crackling, sizzling wave of electricity down his body and into the water.
Plant, animal, trap; he's yet to see a living thing that didn't burn.
A surly looking guard with blond hair and huge breasts that struggle beneath her armor of leather straps approaches Zell's cell. She is carrying a tray containing the following:
1 rough stoneware mug of water 1 small apple 1 stoneware bowl of salty oat gruel that has gone cold 1 hard-boiled (overcooked) egg 1 well-used, but clean, metal spoon A napkin of a linen so rough that it is more likely to scratch the shit out of your hands than wipe them.
She bends over with a grunt, sets the tray on the floor, and pushes it through a slot at the base of the barred wall.
Unwilling to season the prisoner's lunch with conversation, she turns to leave.
Cludig rouses from a cold stone corner of the cell. Her position suggests a haphazard toss in. Wide groggy eyes take in the four walls with growing horror.
"Oh crumbs," She begins to chant, "Oh crumbs,Oh crumbs,Oh crumbs,"
"How did we get here?! What happened to the Fireman?" She zeros in on the slightly familiar face of her co-prisioner as she uses her grubby hands to feel around the floor and walls. Definitely magiced, but how? and what enchantments? The magic in this place was so confusing to her. She jitters close to the blond again.
"Everything's magic'd, and they obviously mean to starve us with such horrible fare," gesturing towards the offered food with disdain. "oh except maybe this."
Picking up the gruel she sniffs it experimentally. Maybe if she added a pinch or two of spider legs...Reaching up into her rats nest of hair, she pulls out a small vial with tiny black sticks inside. Dashing the contents into the bowl seems to calm her enough to talk without her voice cracking.
"Don't say that too loud, but ya, thats what i was hinting..", shrugs Zell. "Not sure what all to do though. I figure maybe if we do something the guard has to deal with, maybe we can grab her?"
"W-what to you suggest? Uhm I've got-" Holding her improved gruel one handed, she digs around in her hair with the other, pulling out two pouches and a dead looking bug. "A gas-beetle and two pouches of..oh, hmm Sizzle-sand."
Cocking his head to the side, he asked what that would do, aside from add more protein to their questionable meal.
Welp. I'm a little lost. We have all the materials for a fire, but nothing to light, he thought to himself, before making a game of tossing the apple against the bars and catching it.
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Sei & Bones' path
His reply is shaded with surprise and the delicate widening of his lilac eyes. "...But of course. I was to ride to the east on the morrow. A matter of diplomacy, to Argentia. But," And he fixes Sei in particular with his gaze, just for a moment, before pressing the water goblet towards the good doctor. "In truth I was intending to examine whether there was any substance to the rumors of Argentian aggression along the border."
Argentia being the nation which bordered Glazingstoke to the west, and in fact separated one province from the main body of the rest of the nation. Mountainous, small, landlocked, its primary trade was in mining and the production of quarry materials, jewelry, alchemical reagents, and engineering equipment - though a number of notable authors also hailed from the region. Glazingstoke, with its fertile fields and long border with the sea, its quiet bays and smooth, level roads, was Argentia's most important trade partner.
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What he knows for sure, given his current understanding: he has a hell of a time remembering these names. "Aggression, eh. You think it might've had anything to do with that fiasco?"
There's a thank you in there somewhere, for the goblet.
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The last words he pronounces with firmness.
Sei's tea arrives, brought by a servant in violet livery. It's a grassy, sweet green, brewed well but just a little cold from its trip down the hall.
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He inclines his head toward the prince. "No offense, o'course, but I'm a doctor, not a soldier." Or a damned spy.
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"I rather agree with Mr. McCoy," she murmurs politely. "As foreigners, it would be appallingly impolite for us to insert ourselves into your politics any further than we already have."
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"We come to the matter at hand: you say that you saw the assassins. You must tell me everything, down to the last detail."
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But there was something else, wasn't there? Something before that - "They came in through the...it had to have been the King's Quarters. It wasn't one of the public doors."
He leans back in his chair, chewing this over himself. "They were surprised to see us still awake. Accused us of being sent by a him to see what kind of job they were doing."
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Hei's path
A woman, short, with a hard, capable look. She has very dark skin and soft, androgynous features, and wispy black hair like a cloud of cotton fluff that catches every hint of a breeze. She is wearing black clothing cut functional and close, though the white lace trim at her throat and the elaborate assortment of heavy silver (is it silver? experienced jewelers in the party may discover it is something else.) jewelry suggests that this is no scullery maid. There she is, leaning against the pale yellow-green soapstone wall, rolling a crossbow bolt between her thumb and forefingers. A fly in the ointment.
She is looking over Hei's shoulder to see who follows. Her quiet smile suggests the ripple of a lake under moonlight. If the ripple were caused by an enormous carnivorous fish.
"Fallen one, hide or perish. In there."
Her voice is soft; a vague, hushed sound, with a pronounced accent that licks along the L's and aspirates the TH-sounds. She points the flanged head of the bolt at an almost invisible door outlined in the stone of the palace wall.
A dozen guards are running your way.
It looks like the guards from the north are starting to notice the commotion.
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It's the very first thought through his head, and it's so strong it slows him for just a moment. Something about that smile rings alarm bells in his head.
There is no time.
He acknowledges his instincts and then promptly ignores them. The guards behind him are a certain danger. The door in front could be anything at all, including, he supposes, death. But if she's dangerous, then so is he, and if the choice is between "no" and "maybe"--
It's barely even a choice. He goes for the door.
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It very dark once the exterior door closes. Slowly it becomes apparent that the only light is coming from the floor itself, on which a luminescent dust heaps and scatters at random. The wash of warm air from outside disappears into the cool, dry, mushroomy depths of the passage. There is no turning back.
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In the meantime, his eyes have adjusted to what limited light there is. He looks down, frowns, and then starts walking. He extends his arms until his fingers can follow the walls on either side.
He moves as briskly as he can afford in the darkness, listening for any movement in front or behind.
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The corridor opens upon a circular cavern. The sunken floor is obscured beneath water, 4-5cm deep, out of which grow innumerable slim plants that glow in the darkness and fill the water with their blue-green radiance. It is impossible to tell whether there is a ceiling or how high it is. The plants themselves are curled stalks like fiddlehead ferns clenched shut and poke their nodding heads up out of the water, thickly clustered, the occasional tall straggler emerging here or there. It would be impossble to walk to the door on the other side of the round without crushing some of them.
From far down the hall behind Hei comes a woman's voice: "Wind or hunger..."
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He wants to glance down the hallway -- but it would be pointless, that far ahead, that far into the darkness. Instead, Hei braces himself against the cavern wall and starts moving, as soundlessly as he can, along the circle perimeter.
Wind or hunger. Was she talking to him? About him? He strains to hear more over the muffled wet sounds of his movement.
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They begin to grasp at him. Though each individual one is not strong - pluckable, like blades of grass - en masse they present more and more of a challenge and they begin to climb up his ankles and calves.
A numbing sensation overtakes Hei's toes.
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A trap. His lips press together in displeasure -- but it makes sense. He pushes back the anxious throbbing in his belly (are they paralyzing him, what happens if hey climb higher...)
Hei stops and straightens. Then, much like the plants, he begins to glow. Not for a long time -- just long enough for him to release a crackling, sizzling wave of electricity down his body and into the water.
Plant, animal, trap; he's yet to see a living thing that didn't burn.
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Zell's path
1 rough stoneware mug of water
1 small apple
1 stoneware bowl of salty oat gruel that has gone cold
1 hard-boiled (overcooked) egg
1 well-used, but clean, metal spoon
A napkin of a linen so rough that it is more likely to scratch the shit out of your hands than wipe them.
She bends over with a grunt, sets the tray on the floor, and pushes it through a slot at the base of the barred wall.
Unwilling to season the prisoner's lunch with conversation, she turns to leave.
Re: Zell's path
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Cludig rouses from a cold stone corner of the cell. Her position suggests a haphazard toss in. Wide groggy eyes take in the four walls with growing horror.
"Oh crumbs," She begins to chant, "Oh crumbs,Oh crumbs,Oh crumbs,"
Re: Zell's path
He leans in closer. "But we can probably make soooome kind of distraction with it. Maybe get a set of keys..", he whispers, shrugging.
Re: Zell's path
"Everything's magic'd, and they obviously mean to starve us with such horrible fare," gesturing towards the offered food with disdain. "oh except maybe this."
Picking up the gruel she sniffs it experimentally. Maybe if she added a pinch or two of spider legs...Reaching up into her rats nest of hair, she pulls out a small vial with tiny black sticks inside. Dashing the contents into the bowl seems to calm her enough to talk without her voice cracking.
"Maybe if we, uh, over-power a guard?"
Re: Zell's path
Re: Zell's path
Re: Zell's path
Welp. I'm a little lost. We have all the materials for a fire, but nothing to light, he thought to himself, before making a game of tossing the apple against the bars and catching it.
Re: Zell's path
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