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 Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 4:58 pm
"Sorry to steal your thunder Alihi," Melethia said, "But I've had my moments of great plans before."
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 4:59 pm
(Yeah I too am sorry for stealing your thunder as well, yet part of that plan was mine as well.)
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:01 pm
Ganon stretched his tail out and sat up slowly at the sound of a brand new voice. He flicked out his tongue, tasting the air, and looked over at Ayra by the door. His eye was immediately drawn to Vaherianslyeri, the little infant in her arms, and his long tail began to wag as he sat up the rest of the way and arched his back. "Oh, now she's just adorable," he chuckled, humming thoughtfully afterward and waving to her. "Morning. Come on in, there's some trouble going down, but I'll see if we can't get you a cup of tea."
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:02 pm
"No, no, it's alright! I don't mind! It's a good plan, Melethia, and I agree with it!" Alihi said, waving her hands back and forth in a "no" kind of motion. "I'm just saying that it's always good to have the specifics planned out and a back-up plan as well."
(( It's alright. xD I was just kind of surprised to see it. ))
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Overlord of Night- Shadow
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:03 pm
"Uhh. . . UARGH!" The sound of a loud "THUMP" came from the living room of the house, and anyone who looked in would see a rather disgruntled Renault laying face-down on the floor. By the Goddess, although these new robes were quite appropriate, they were far from easy to move around in. The Saint was nearing the point at which he was simply going to cut a few inches off the bottom. It wouldn't look bad; the stitching done on the cuts made by Nils' knife had been done by himself, and it was barely noticeable. One learned a lot of things over a few hundred years of life.
Picking himself up, the man dusted himself off - then froze at the sight of the woman who'd just walked in the door. ". . . Ayra. . ." he breathed quietly. This had to be nearly the WORST time for her to come back. . . After all, in the other room they were planning the best way to take down her husband. Apparently, it was off to him to head things off before she got the news thirdhand or so. "Ayra. Come here for a moment." He'd regained his composure, and beckoned to the woman to come away from where the others were. Hopefully she hadn't heard them yet. "There's something you need to know." He glanced at Ganon and gave a slight, imperceptible shake of his head. Bad idea.
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:05 pm
Looking at the mass of fighters gathering for an assault, Arashe laughed to himself, shaking his head at their little 'strategies.' Before he was noticed, he ducked off into his room, and grabbed the Ichival before returning to the common area. Lightly hopping down the stairs, Arashe looked around at the motley band of fighters, a smug look on his face.
"Oh, come now. We'll just shoot the damn bird out of the sky and be done with it."
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:07 pm
"Hey Newbie," Melethia adressed Arashe, "The Hawk King is a little hard to hit. He's fast and I mean FAST!"
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:17 pm
Oujay listened as the person that went by the name of Melethia, as the Tactician said aloud talked about a plan. Then the tactician came in and spoke too. "Hawk King?" he thought as he heard her say that to the Archer that came down the stairs. "He must be strong.".
Oujay stood there in the main room as he thought if any back-up plan was possible.
He slowly opened his mouth. "Is it possible to Lure him into something like an Ambush?" he asked aloud. He wasn't sure if that was possible but is was just an idea he thought of and sounded like it could work.
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:19 pm
Alihi nodded in agreement, letting her eyes wander for a moment.
And that's when she finally noticed Ayra.
... Oh s**t. She would have slapped her forehead rather hard at her own ignorance if her curious child wasn't clinging to her leg.
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:23 pm
There were a few words that always alerted people to things that were said- very few are actually listened to offhand, especially with multiple people talking. However, key words are usually in the following categories: things a person loves, hates, people they know, places they've seen, and words that describe immediately how they feel in the current situation. With Ayra currently scanning the area for her current lover and holding the child in her arms, her thoughts were fairly cluttered with a sense of odd confusion and surprise at not being immediately greeted. What with his eyes and ears--
The word 'Tibarn' was an immediate beacon to her attention, but 'fight' stuck out so clearly in her mind that she had turned well before then to try to hear Melethia's message. What she heard was nothing short of odd, though she couldn't quite make out what they were talking about. Some sort of preparations...? With 'fight' and 'Tibarn' in a muddled succession, however, her eyes narrowed slightly, her brows furrowing with confusion and a slight bit of frustration. She could catch nothing else- bidden by curiosity, however, she moved forward towards the other room.
Had the reptile not interrupted her movements, she would have gone over immediately to find the source of the trouble. As it was, however, Vaherianslyeri had turned in her arms, leaving her unable to do anything but nod cordially to Ganon as she tried to assuage her fidgeting daughter. Ayra could hear her blond daughter give a slight protesting gurgle- a sure sign that she wasn't pleased- and supported her properly again.
She moved a free index finger up to her lips, but kept a friendly- albeit slightly impatient- smile. This scaly fellow looked to be on their side, for all it was worth, and she trusted he would understand the fickle temperaments of children. And yet still, she needed to see just what was being discussed.
Only Renault's rendezvous with the ground made Ayra turn from her movements- again- and she was tempted to leave him, even though she knew very well that she couldn't let the priest simply lie there. Bad karma was hard to shake off. Shifting her babe so that Vaher was clinging to her neck, the swordswoman held out an open hand to the bishop to aid him before realizing that he did well enough on his own.
"...Father Renault?" The way he said her name chilled her to the bone, but not nearly as much as that fear and dread that had flashed across his face. Years of fighting had ingrained in her psyche the ability to see that flash of negative feelings, to let her know when the enemy was weak- she didn't expect to find it in the eyes of a priest, let alone this one. Her eyes went from frustrated to concerned, then quickly back to a sense of urgent impatience again.
Something had happened, and everyone was keeping tight-lipped about it.
Following him only as far as he took her, she followed his glance back to Ganon before snapping back to him. Her eyebrows were furrowed by this point, her arms protectively and tightly holding her child as the leather strap of the talisman bit into her clenched palm. Already defensive and feeling the helplessness of dread threatening to overcome her, she spat her question with a bitter tinge, lest she lose herself to the crest of dread altogether.
"Tell me. Tell me straight out. What's happened, and where is Tibarn?"
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Overlord of Night- Shadow
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:32 pm
Renuault nodded to the swordmaster, his face more serious and set than usual. "I would not do you the disgrace of beating around the bush, Ayra," he told her softly. "I will tell you as shortly as I possibly can. Three weeks ago, Melethia's dark side was liberated from her body and put her into a coma. Since then, she's attacked multiple members of our group; Rei, Nils, and Abel. Each one, she has managed to corrupt somehow and turn evil. Yesterday. . ." He paused for a moment, but then continued. "Tibarn was taken. However, we do have a way to fix this; we simply need to render him unconscious while we cast the spell. Do you understand?" He wasn't entirely sure if she'd heard anything past "Tibarn was taken." It would certainly be a shock to her; it would be a shock to anyone in this case. But they couldn't afford to have her lose control. It was her husband. If anyone had the right to make a decision here, it was her.
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:55 pm
As more and more people began to make their way downstairs and into the kitchen for breakfast, Ninian continued to cook up a steady stream of toast and eggs, happy just to be useful.
Finally, taking a break, she sat down by the window in one of the chairs scattered around the kitchen table, one hand rubbing her forehead.
Her head hurt.
"Where is Tibarn?"
Ninian froze. Rising slowly, she walked back into the living room to see the woman she knew as Ayra, holding a little baby girl and talking to Renault. With a jolt, Ninian remembered that Ayra was married to Tibarn, and he was the father of their daughter, Vaherianslyeri.
Ninian didn't know Ayra very well, so she decided to let Renault handle things. She was about to return to the kitchen and sit, but changed her mind. Instead, she headed back upstairs and to her room. There, she stood at the window, fingering the four rings she now wore.
Nils. . . .
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:20 pm
Rhys got up at last, feeling not so tired. Amelia had left the room, but he hadn't felt like getting up at the time. Where DOES she find the energy...?
He stretched slowly, leaning over out of bed, donning his boots and white robes. Maybe he'd change later. Hopefully his feet wouldn't mind wearing the same socks for two days straight.
Walking upstairs into the foyer, he spotted Ayra.
Wait. Tibarn...
...Well, too late to pretend I'm sleeping downstairs now.
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:32 pm
His words at first were startling in their clarity, as if all of the other distractions in the world faded away at that one moment. Her auditory senses seemed attuned to every word, her eyes saw only his face and the movement of his lips, and nothing else seemed to matter to her. The babe in her arms could not have distracted her for all her fiercest crying and screeching to turn her ears' attention from the bishop at this point, and not even the sights of gold, riches, or the gods themselves could have turned her eyes away. And when those words fell from his lips...
Tibarn was taken.
Time seemed to stop. In that horrible moment, even the slightest movements of the priest's lips seemed to slow down until they came to a crawling stop. Suddenly, she seemed to feel a haze around her mind- a dark shroud of denial that seeped into her very psyche as it struggled in vain to try to process and grasp the full weight of the words. For a moment, she felt dizzy- but hearing the child in her arm mewl at the sway, she merely held her daughter closer to her and bit her lip sharply in a vain attempt to keep the tears from her eyes. To be 'taken' meant one of two things- either through some miracle, a cure would work. The alternative was to be forced to kill him on sight.
Absently, almost as if her mind was unconsciously protecting her child, she gave Vaherianslyeri over to Renault. Her conscious mind was not with the action, and her very body seemed numb to the movements- and yet she handed her child over regardless and felt her eyes glaze over with the memory of what she'd heard just moments earlier.
Suddenly the words that Melethia had said made perfect, horrible sense. Suddenly, those two words she had heard in a haze seemed to become perfectly sharp and clear, agonizingly echoing in her head over and over again, raising with intensity with each repeat.
Fight Tibarn.... A pair of ruby lips seemed to enunciate this in her mind, a horrible picture of formed speech that seemed to twist into a leering smile in her mind's eye. Over and over, its hidden message seemed to become more and more evident as Ayra's grief-stricken and confused mind twisted in on itself and gave rise to an even louder chorus.
We'll kill him. We'll rip out his feathers, gouge out those proud eyes and shatter his beak with axes! Watch him die, like your first lover in the flames of Barhara!
A bestial noise tore itself from her throat, like that of a mad predator that had been shot in the side- enough to cause it pain and cause a mortal wound, but not enough to kill it quickly before it went insane from the agony. Reaching her hands up to her head, it seemed almost as if she wanted to cover her ears from the truth, if her fingers had not been contorted into barely-opened fists. Opening her hands just enough so that she could feel the sting of her nails against her scalp, the pain knocked her briefly from her reverie.
She wasn't thinking clearly. Not now. Not since those words, and not since that revelation.
Moving to Melethia in time to hear the end of her address to Arashe, Ayra's face contorted into a feral snarl as her hand moved to the scabbard of her sword.
"What are you up to, murderous witch? Off to kill my husband after you've poisoned his mind?! What a lofty conquest, the head of a king! What a prize, to feel his beating heart!" Loosing her sword as she advanced, she stopped just out of reach of the other woman and felt the trickle of blood moving down the lip she had split earlier from her coping bite.
"I won't let you. You've done enough!"
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:33 pm
Ed started complaining loudly and incoherently. Everyone was awake at once now. Not only that, some of them were making breakfast, and some others were talking about tactical strategies to take down Tibarn, while she lay uselessly on the floor, trying to get another few winks of sleep.
It made Ed feel horribly stupid. She launched herself up onto her feet and huffed, grabbing at her side for her sword -- which wasn't there. She let out a great exclamation of frustration. Firstly, Ed didn't understand a thing of anything. She was just barely grasping the concept of allies being corrupted and attacking each other, and Ed did not even realize that there was a secret weapon in their possession. No, she hadn't heard about the tome.
Ed was way out of the loop.
She looked around confused at her surroundings, at Melethia and Alihi talking, at Ashnard making breakfast in the kitchen while Blossom watched, at Oujay contemplating an ambush, at some snobby noble-looking fool spouting nonsense about shooting Tibarn out to the sky, at Ninian standing around, at Renault talking to Ayra --
Aw horsefeathers, Ed thought with sudden alarm. Tib's in trouble and Ayra ain't gonna be happy.
That clinched it.
Ed fled the room, hiding herself away in the library, deciding to retake her Aegis sword later.
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