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 Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:53 pm
Merro fought her way through a fog of semi-consciousness, slowly becoming aware of the cold ground pressing against her entire length and an almost crushing dizziness and weariness. She drew in her breath laboriously and when an attempt to rise to a seated position only produced a weak scrabbling of her fingers against dirt, struggled to open her eyes.
Her lids lifted somewhat and she stared uncomprehendingly at the scene before her. Letalus...and an armed woman who looked strangely familiar. She couldn't place her, however.
Her eyes widened as the two closed in battle.
"Wha..."
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:01 pm
Just as Leana had jumped, grappling hook ready and in hand, she noticed that Merro was waking. It wasn't much but she had stirred.
RIGHT when I jump...just great.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 3:17 pm
Sentelle let go of her glaive just as Letalus pulled on it. His power unbalanced her and without glaive in hand she was unable to catch her balance. The sword Letalus had at the ready did more than scratch; it cut cleanly through the chain she wore and the blade bit into her side stinging as mere steel could not. Sentelle sensed that more than her flesh was at stake now. "C'vesia," she plead as her celestial aura dimmed and fadded away. She fell unconscious.
Even as her body faltered her spirit fought on, her light had not gone out, but rather had been drawn inward. Not understanding how she directed the light to combat the darkness fighting to penetrate her being.
OOC: Meri, my intention with this is to set up a way that the curse can be broken. She's not strong enough presently to overcome the blade (or perhaps merely too inexperienced), but I pictured the blade not wanting to be near her because it realizes that she has that potential. On the flip side you're more than welcome to have it crave to kill her because she is a threat.
And to state the obvious the effect that all this has on Merro is up to you. I don't know if her fighting the curse would negate the blood that it has tasted.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:08 pm
As Sentelle fell, Letalus turned in place to face her crumpled body as well as Merro and Leana. His cloak caught the spray of warm blood, but the blade had bit deep and already began to shine. He stared at the blooded sword for a moment, as if entranced. He blinked then and headed purposefully towards the fallen paladin.
If given a choice, Letalus preferred dealing quick and relatively painless deaths. Not necessarily out of guilt or conscious, but because torture was time consuming and messy. Still, previous masters had instilled within him the ability to prolong a death and now, crouched over Sentelle like a stone-faced angel of death, he was more than prepared to slowly drain every drop of life from the woman until Merro recovered.
"Girl," he said evenly to Leana, even as he pressed the cursed sword to Sentelle's upper arm. "It would be in your best interests as well as Merro's not to take her from me."
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:36 pm
The dizziness and fatigue fell away from her in an instant, just as it had when she'd dispatched the hen. The hen had been a small thing, but a paladin was a different matter. The blood drawn from Letalus' initial thrust was enough to sate the sword for now and abruptly sever the drain on Merro.
She blinked, disoriented. The blonde woman fell toward her and landed in the dirt by Merro's legs with a thud, tearing her attention back to the victor of this brief battle. Still lying on her back in semi-stunned confusion, Merro lifted her eyes to Letalus' face, wondering that she should awake to find him crossing weapons with this strange and familiar woman. Her eye traveled down and she noticed for the first time that he was holding the magical sword she'd claimed as hers.
She heard him speak as if from a distance, her mind bringing together what was before her.
There was a deep red stain spreading slowly around a slit in the woman's clothing. There was a dark spatter on Letalus' cloak where it pooled on the ground as he crouched over the still body. There was a spray of blood on the back of his hand. There was none on the sword.
She felt fine.
She watched Letalus bring the sword closer to the prone body and Merro was suddenly jolted out of her daze and into action.
"No! Letalus, don't!" she shrieked, and rolled over to her stomach and scrabbled in the dirt, tumbling over his intended victim on her hands and knees. In a moment she was on her knees before him, batting at his sword arm with her left hand and hauling at his neck in an attempt to bring herself up from hands and knees.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she babbled, convinced that Letalus thought it necessary to sever a life in order to free her temporarily from the sword's hunger.
ooc: The post ends, and Meriko indulges in a brief fantasy where Merro accidentally manages to haul Letalus' head down for a kiss.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:53 pm
The sword flew from Letalus' hand when Merro desperately batted at it. Apparently unconcerned about the blade, he untangled her arms around his neck and supported her with his arm, one hand pressed against the small of her back. The other hand reached up to tilt her chin, first to one side, then to the other as he examined her face. His face was disturbingly close to hers, eyes more intense than usual as he inspected for any visible sign of physical distress.
It would have been quite the romantic tableau if it weren't for the blood everywhere.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:56 pm
Nova's head was thrown for a loop with as many twists and turns this evening had brought. Merro fainted, presumed dead, Letalus approached Leana with a dagger at the ready, strange woman in shiny clothes steps in, went for a ride to the tops of the buildings back down again, and now the shiny woman was on the ground bleeding and Merro is awake and persisting that Letalus stop his onslaught on the woman in armor.
"Oh...my head hurts form all this *excitement*..." Nova huffed, laying her head over the edge of Leana's shoulder, scanning Merro from her position to assess her condition the best she could.
"Merro, are you ok?" Nova's pleading eyes watering a tad as she slid down Leana's arm, across the dirt, and over to one of Merro's feet, placing her paw on her boot.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 8:27 pm
When Leana had hit the ground, Letalus must have known, for she froze at his words next to Merro.
Watching the mayhem that had gone on, she was a little upset that someone they didn't know had been dragged into this and injured. Then to think that that could've been her lying in a pool of blood.
She pulled out her dagger and walked closer to them. It was clear now that this was Letalus again, for she'd caught a glimpse of him in the mayhem.
"Why'd you attack that girl?" she asked loudly. "And why did you want to attack me at first? Or would you still like to attack me?"
She'd found it odd that he'd drawn a weapon upon her, but then attacked the nearest person to him when they'd appeared. It seemed like, at first, Letalus had had some reason for attacking Leana for dislike of her or something, but then attacking someone in general had seemed his goal...at least for now she hoped...
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 9:16 pm
As the sword was removed from her side Sentelle directed the energy that had been fighting the magic of the blade to heal the wound in her side. The foreign magic no longer pulling at her life force Sentelle returned to consciousness.
Opening her eyes Sentelle noted a body arched over hers, in what she hoped was a gesture of protection, and shut them again. It would be some moments yet before she would be able to get up and hours, at least, before she would be fully recovered from this wound.
Though she detected no evil from the sword itself she did not like it, and did not plan to be anywhere near the sword in the future should Letalus wield it again.
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Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:35 am
The repeated reassurances that she was well faded off as Letalus discarded the sword and turned all his attention to a visual examination of her. She was used to being eyed up and down at dinners and balls, but that was always at a polite distance and from the back or side. It was disconcerting to be thus scrutinized from a distance of mere inches, Letalus' grey eyes close enough to count the lashes about them and his nose practically brushing hers as he tipped her head this way and that with one hand. And his other hand...Saints, this was as good - no, bad - as an embrace!
Her hands were not helping the situation, having slid down from about his shoulders to lay pressed against his chest as she knelt before him. Not an attitude recommended in milady's book of etiquette. She was put to the blush yet again that day, and shaking her chin from his grasp, ducked her head down with the thought to hide her face from that relentless stare...
...effectively tucking herself down further into the faux embrace.
Bad! From pot to fire!
The soft touch upon her foot was a heaven-send. She twisted her downward facing head to peer over her shoulder and spied the ferret Nova, and then turned the head-twist into an attempt to twist entirely out of Letalus' arms and sit down upon the ground, facing the concerned creature.
"Quite well, I thank you," she managed to say to Nova in response, albeit a bit shakily. 'Twas none so bad as a full-out stammer, however, and she make a further attempt to gather up her courage and composure. Broken out of jail with the lie that she was a concubine, attacked by brigands, chased through a forest of dead bodies, and now rescued from her own sword by Letalus and come back to life in his arms! It was not just the outside of enough; it was a mile past the border.
Glancing up at Leana's sudden interrogation - and it finally registering in her mind that the girl was there - Merro hastily intervened. Letalus' answer would likely be to the point and utterly unhelpful. "Because I needed to kill something" was apt to make matters more complicated.
"No, no, it's over," she said hurriedly to Leana, and tried to explain as quickly and vaguely as possible. "My sword needs blood else it begins to feed upon me." A thought occurred to her and she added,
"In fact I need your help if I am to pass the night safely. Go and find me some animals; perhaps some hens or rabbits. Anything will do so long as it is living." Although highborn habit and the situation had Merro tossing off a veritable order without so much as an "if you please," her tone had something of pleading to it.
And she would need them soon, she decided, as she directed her gaze intently at the deep, slender cut in the fallen woman's side. Healing spells always left her drained.
Against her will, she turned her head to seek out Letalus' cold grey eyes. He had done this. He was going to kill a woman. For her. The thought chilled Merro to the marrow; it horrified her, it frightened her. Killing a brigand to defend their lives; that was one thing. Cutting down a stranger in the middle of town in cold blood...for her. She couldn't comprehend it. Merro knew that her father thought of lives in terms of monetary value, and that he would see the sacrifice of a passerby an acceptable expenditure in the process of bringing his asset of a daughter home, but somehow this was different.
She stared at him for a moment, wondering at his inscrutable mask of an expression even as they knelt by the body of his victim, not knowing that she was meeting him with a gaze probably as unreadable to him as his was to her. For the moment her heart was in her eyes, and it was top-filled with fear and confusion and a desperate wanting to understand.
Finally she tore her eyes away and looked back to the woman lying near her. Closing her lids, she began to chant softly the words of a healing spell, hoping that it would be enough to at least staunch the wound and begin knitting the torn flesh.
ooc: Konami: I left it vague about Merro succeeding in pulling away, but I wanted to go ahead and respond to everyone and set up the next motion. :3 I'm going back to work tomorrow so I won't be around to RP until the evening. Oh, and Taylor, Leana can just like...go BUY some bunnies from a tavern, probably. XD She doesn't need to go set up traps or anything. You guys, feel free to manhandle Merro inside an inn or something if it's convenient to keep the RP going.
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Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 3:11 am
As Merro began her soft chant Sentelle held up her hand and looked up at Merro, "I've had a taste of that blade, and if memory serves you'd best hold off on casting that spell." With a slight tremble her right hand held open the shorn fabric and maille to assure Merro that the matter was being seen to; the bleeding had ceased and already the flesh began to mend. "A mage's spell will not speed this along," Sentelle closed her eyes once more.
With a deep intake of breath and a sigh Sentelle relaxed visibly. A dim golden glow illuminated her soft features. "However, if you've a spell to mend cloth or chain..." a brief smile played across her face.
*insert memory of/with Merro*
OOC: A nice little flashback scene about how they first met, or perhaps an encounter at school (did Merro go to school?), maybe at a dance or dinner would be fun, but I'm afraid I don't know Merro well enough to write a flashback with the two of them.
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Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 5:16 am
Nova let loose a soft sigh of relief having heard Merro's voice. The stammer of her words was merely seen as a side effect from what she had endured. How could anyone feel at ease with a sight such as this as a wake up greeting?
Somewhat puzzled by Merro's explanation of what happened, she reassured herself that there were many things in the world that she had no knowledge of and took it to a logical thought process in her mind. "Rabbits you say, I'm good at catching them, in fact it's a specialty of mine" she chimed, puffing her chest up some, proud of her claim. "I just need to make my belly less empty..." she sulked as she patted her stomach like before when it made it's encore grumbling symphony as she spoke.
"I'll meet you all at that Inn over there later this night" she stated, pointing her paw in the general direction of the one they passed coming into town. "Oh, and be careful of the pawn shops' customers, they seem to have sticky fingers." How she knew this information was most likely a mystery to the group, but what she spoke was indeed fact.
What she was unaware of was that the Inn she pointed out was indeed the one that Tomlin was sitting within.
OOC: Woo! I hope you guys don't mind that story setup. If so, I can alter it :3 <3
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Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:43 am
Propriety with women was never something Letalus was good at. Most of the "gentler" sex was terrified of him. He was reasonably attractive from a distant, but his cold manner and flat gaze made ladies put as much distance between them and him as possible. So it was that Merro's nervousness bewildered him and her wide-eyed, vulnerable stare discomfited him greatly.
Not that he showed it, of course.
Again letting Merro do the burdensome task of speaking, he stood and began to gather up the gold he'd earned playing. The only surprise he registered regarding a talking ferret was to pause and blink before continuing his actions. Seemingly unconcerned and guilt-free about Sentelle, he offered no excuse. In his mind, the woman had been prepared for battle, throwing herself in the fray as she did. As Letalus picked up his lute, he absently wondered why the fallen woman seemed familiar.
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Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 1:24 pm
Leana thought for a moment about Merro's suggestion. Being somewhat of an animal person, she didn't really feel comfortable about going out and finding animals for her for...feeding her sword, as horrid as that sounded. She decided on the hens, since people ate them normally.
After listening to Nova speak, Leana nodded. "I'll be about getting you some animals too...as odd as it sounds I won't question it. So we'll meet back here at that tavern then?"
But then she realized she'd never shown Merro the pawn shop.
"Oh, er, did you want me to show you to the pawn shop first and then leave to get the animals? Otherwise you may take a while finding it."
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Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 8:45 pm
ooc: I'm going to respond to Sentelle last, as if Nova and Leana had spoken to Merro before the paladin awoke. That seems most natural, and it'll allow them a chance to react to Sentelle if they want before leaving the scene to hunt up some stew meat. ^^ And Jen, I figured Sentelle's bloodline and calling entitled her to the "Lady".
Nova's offer of a rabbit or two received a nod and a ghost of a smile, and to the ferret's side note about hunger Merro suggested,
"You catch the rabbits and I'll dispatch them, and then perhaps we can all partake of them together."
"I thank you both," she then said to Leana and Nova. "And yes, that tavern will suit. Would not the pawn shops would be closed, however? It's full dark now, and besides which we should get this woman inside quickly." Perhaps Letalus' lute playing had gained them enough coin for a room or two in the inn. A more questionable topic was whether or not Letalus would let her sleep in the bed or truss her like a turkey and toss her in the stable for punishment.
Merro began chanting, but abruptly left off weaving her healing spell as the body before her suddenly revived and spoke. Although surprised to hear that her spell would have been ineffective - the sword had seemed to act like a normal sword as far as the actual act of wounding and killing went - she noted that the wound was indeed closing with unnatural speed without any assistance of hers. Merro turned momentary confusion to a decision that the woman must be a mage of sorts herself as a faint nimbus suffused her face.
At the woman's next words, a memory came unbidden of a ball at Lord Dunthorpe's, of a sad rip in her ballgown thanks to a clumsy dancing partner and hiding her state in a curtained alcove, of a strange woman offering a pin and some conversation which Merro had at first rather ungraciously rebuffed. But the blonde had been gently persistent, and what was more, she had been interesting, chatting intelligently of magic and religion and politics as if they were two gentlemen sitting over brandy. Merro had been drawn despite herself. And while making certain of the pin before they ventured back out, the blonde lady had smiled and sighed with mock yearning.
"If only there was a spell to mend cloth."
"Lady ZhaDurn!" Merro gasped, suddenly remembering who this person was, and horrified all anew.
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