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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carnifex" data-source="post: 1210920" data-attributes="member: 227">The fire crackled merrily in the darkness, illuminating the faces of the band clustered around it. They'd made a fair distance during the rest of the day and now were camped in the wilderness of the mountains, in a sheltered spot by a brook that meandered down a steep, wooded valley. Wolf doled out some soup from a pot over the fire. "It's been an interesting day. Burl," Wolf said through chewing on mouthfuls of the chunky soup, "did you understand what that fire snake thing was talking about?"All Burl could do was recount what the serpent had said and ask, “Can any of you shed any ideas on this. The only suggestion I have is to call it forth again and ask it what it meant. By the way,” Burl reached over to his pouch bringing out the wand, handing it to Mel, “Here is your wand back. Thank you. I don’t want to know what would have happened to us if the Fire Serpent hadn’t been there to help us.” So here was another mystery surrounding Burl, and once again, he didn't seem to know what it was all about. Wyshira pondered the words of the Fire Snake, as Burl had described them. "Your 'blood lineage'..... Burl, Ak'mun'tep mentioned your 'bloodkin' to me also, but I knew that he meant something more than just family." Wyshira looked at Kale. Did he know something about any of this? What did the term 'bloodkin' really mean? "Wait. Ebri, that talking skull-thing you have - Would it be able to tell us what the Fire Snake was talking about?" Wyshira had seen the mimir only that one time back at the bookseller's shop in Tarravus. It seemed to 'know' things, and gave useful advice. She hadn't quite believed Ebri's claim that it was a recording device for her travelogue, and now that she was thinking about it, she was quite anxious to see it again. Of course," Ebri said, reaching into her pack. By now, the question of suspicion of her fellow travellers was fairly moot, seeing as how they were had a reasonable chance not to survive this encounter. "We may as well take the opportunity to learn something; learning is never wasted."She handed the silver skull over with a smile. Wyshira accepted the mimir with more than a little apprehension, now that she saw it again. It felt cold and lifeless in her hands, which seemed strange to the priestess since she remembered quite cleary from before that it possessed a lively personality. For just a moment, she suspected that Ebri had handed over an odd-shaped lump of metal by mistake. Then she saw the hollowed out eye sockets and the grinning silver mouth. No, indeed it is the mimir. "I'd like some information on the term 'bloodkin', if you please," Wyshira wasn't exactly sure how to address the thing. She held it out in front of her at arm's length and waited for it to do something."Bloodkin? It sounds to me like someone in your family was associated with the Flame Guild or something," Melisande said, declining to take the rod back with a wave of her hand. "The mimir did say something about this being the sort of artifact the Flame Guild would very much covet. But if you summoned the Serpent once today, you won't get it to come back until the same time tomorr-- "Oh, my! Did you have trouble in the caverns?" In her self-absorption since the appearance of Klavius, Mel had seen but not registered her friends' ragged post-battle state. Of course Klavius had mentioned a ghast and his entourage but-- She felt Pierre give her a mental elbow, as if he noticed before she did (which he had, in fact). But no sooner had she received her explanation (and the assurance that everyone was in one piece) than she slipped back into her silent pondering...."What you are and who you are, can often be two different things." This went over and around in Mel's mind as she sat cross-legged by the fire that night. She had been unusually quiet all day, seeming sullen perhaps to some but in fact preoccupied. Who and what may often be different things, but should they be? Wouldn't you be more at peace if they were the same, if the striving of one's nature pulled in the same direction as one's personal inclinations? She'd felt it before, the rage against evil. In the Manipulation Lab that day in a snit she had upset a whole workbench of organ-beakers and rushed out, never to return; in the kobolds' cavern when their vile shaman had loosed the fire-serpent on her and her new friends; against the scorpion-assassins and the adorers of Gilamesh. It was not, she felt, only the physical reaction of an aasimar's endocrine system to the stimulus of devilry. Her heart and mind as well as her body had acted together to revile what was wrong. What she was and who she was were not two different things. It almost seemed that with these words Klavius had been testing her--giving her a ready excuse to back out of what her heart had then been deciding. But she would not be so easily dissuaded. Every particle of her, material and immaterial, agreed on this one thing. Any other ambitions she had entertained (including becoming Lady Ecurius, sorceress-scholar-adventuress-matron) evaporated like the unsubstantial clouds they were in the flame of this new purpose. To combat evil in the name of Naskha, blue god of sorcery! This voyage was an adventure no longer--it was a quest! * * *Pierre did not like this turn of things one bit. If he could have rolled his bulbous eyes he might have--all four of them. Is there a god of toads one prays to save bipeds from their folly? Things were bad enough. He had been learning to enjoy cities, with their multitude of grubs and roaches, and the dirty protectiveness that resembled mud in myriad ways. More noisy, but otherwise comfortable. Out here in the wild She let him roam when they rested but he found only the slim, rangy bugs of the wild, unfattened by metropolitan luxury. He didn't like the wandering around and he certainly didn't like the fighting. (There had been intriguing smells coming from that cavern, but Pierre's dull mind had absorbed enough of the following conversation to understand that some sort of blade-filled unpleasantness had taken place down there, so he regretted little. But if that creature that held them prisoner had been a little smaller... It looked very fat and juicy... Not worth the trouble, though, he gathered from Her attitude towards it.) Now She was on some strange train of thought Pierre could not follow if he wanted to, but the upshot he felt clearly enough in his batracian guts: She was on the warpath. Against what, or why, was not clear. (Pierre might understand some fisticuffs with another toad for a mate, but that did not seem to be the issue here.) He could only lope around the campsite hoping for fallen moths and hoping yet more fervently that this would pass, as many things did She got into Her head. But then She looked up, her eyes feverish, and he knew She was going to do something. He stopped to stare in fear. * * *"Sebastion," Mel said, suddenly emerging from her uncharacteristic silence. "Will you teach me how to use a sword?" * * *"What you are and who you are, can often be two different things." For something that sounded as though it were supposed to be cryptic, that seemed pretty obvious to Sebastion. Who you were was up to you, but what you were was the sum of everyone else's opinion. You could call yourself Sebastion as much as you liked, but if everyone in the town decided you were 'Seb', then 'Seb' you'd be. Despite the slight worry that the Emmissary's comments aroused, Sebastion was more glad to have seen Melisande get out safely after his disastrous attempt at deception than anything. On the back of that, he kept his mouth shut and merely tended to the horses as they travelled. When the evening came, and he found himself cleaning his weapons absently, staring at the pistols with an intent gaze, wondering just what it was about them that caught his attention. They weren't magical, but they seemed it; they weren't arcane, but he nonetheless understood not a whit about how they did what they did. "Sebastion," Mel said, suddenly emerging from her uncharacteristic silence. "Will you teach me how to use a sword?" For a moment, as he came out of his contemplations, he wondered if it might have been the punchline to a joke, or the finish of a conversation that lent her words a different meaning, but the expression on her face told him it wasn't. "A sword? Can you... I mean... don't you take oaths or something? I'm not saying I won't, I will, but... Can you?" Of every possible response she might have anticipated from Sebastion, this was not one. Mel was silent a moment as she tried to figure out what he was talking about. "Can you?" What was that supposed to mean? "Oaths?" Sure, she'd pledged allegiance to Carthagia every single day of her childhood, hand over heart, and said all the prayers to Toran by rote, and there wasn't one oath out of those she hadn't broken. Not that oaths weren't a bad idea... In fact, that was something to think on--she might have to make up her own for the future... one she did not intend to break, no matter what. She stood up and brushed the dust off her dress to buy time. Whichever way she looked at it, the question didn't make sense. Did he mean was she allowed to use a sword, by virtue of being a sorceress, or being blue, or being a Manipulator--or being a woman? Did he mean she seemed too weak and chicken-brained not to cut herself? She wasn't sure she wanted to know. She opted for a vague answer. "Of course I can. I have hands, don't I? Could anyone lend me one just to practice with?" She intended to get started right away. The sooner the better. The next time she came down this ravine maybe she'd righteously hack off a few evil eyestalks. Or maybe not the next time--even a blade-master like Wolf seemed leery of the Beholder--but someday. Naskha willing. Beaming with satisfaction, she moved to a safe distance from the others and beckoned with hardly suppressed excitement to Sebastion to pass her a blade. Sebastion turned to comment, to say something about hands, but held himself in check. How was I supposed to know? he asked himself, thinking back to the old tales he'd heard of wicked wizards as a boy, and how they couldn't wear armour because it interfered with their magic. Why shouldn't swords be any different? You don't see many wizards walking round hacking away with a blade... except for those Knights, of... is that why she's doing this? Rising slowly from where he sat, he packed away the remaining pieces of his cleaning kit carefully before standing to walk over to where she waited leaving his swords on the floor. "Alright, I'm sorry I took an interest... here, we'll start with feet. Put your feet about shoulder width apart, like this, and take a half step straight back with... are you right or left handed?" he began. Burl sat close to the fire listening to the banter between Mel and Sebastian over her learning to use a sword. “Well, Sebastian doesn’t ever have to worry about me wanting to learn that disgusting trade, does he Spike” When Melisande jumped up demanding that she be given a sword, Burl’s hand started to move to a three foot stick lying near the fire. But, as a couple of squeals came from Spike, Burl’s hand stopped. “Yes, quite right Spike. She’d probably have used it on me.” Burl content to watch how this played out leaned back, his hand resting on Spike’s head rather than the stick."Right. Will someone please give me a sword!" Melisande had a sense of the fragility of the moment: Sebastion had agreed to help her, and seemed sincere in spite of his surprise; but the first trip in momentum could easily shatter his patience. She was going to be good and not argue (even though she didn't see what smiting had to do with foot placement), but she was not going to do this empty-handed like a child play-acting. "Probably better to start with a sword that only has one blade," she said, pointing at the weaponry he'd left by the fire and thinking this sounded extremely reasonable. Sebastion smiled gently, remembering his first adventure with a blade - thankfully wooden. His father had begun to teach him in just this fashion, and he had thought he knew it all. Late in the afternoon, as his father shoed horses at the front of the stable, he snuck into the loft with the broken handle off one of the old hayforks, and began to merrily swing the thing to and fro... It was surprising how easy it was to suddenly loose the flight of the end, and he had curled up into his own little private ball of hurt and pain for several minutes before his father had coming looking for him. He'd said nothing, merely given that look, and Sebastion took the lessons a lot more seriously after that. "I... I don't know much about magic, right, but I'm guessing you don't start off learning it by throwing lightning about on the first day? You start off with exercises to build certain skills, then put them together, right? Well this is the same. I can only teach you the way I learnt, which is the way my father taught me, and it worked for us? You see, everything you do, striking, blocking or parrying, the power for it comes from the big muscles in the back of the legs. So it stands to reason that, if you want to be able to do it properly, you have to have your feet planted solidly, and in the right place." Adopting the position once more, arms hanging loosely by his side, he gestured for her to copy, hoping she wasn't about to make a scene with the others watching on. He's making fun of me. I'm sure of it. He'll let me stand here like this for a while until those "big muscles" in the backs of my legs start giving in and by that time everyone in the camp will be laughing their heads off. Still Melisande squared her shoulders and did as Sebastion said, but not without a hole-drilling gaze right at him. No, come to think of it, that's something Kale would do. This is Sebastion. He'll have me sweating through serious, traditional swordsmen's exercises and the first time I fall on my backside he'll call me chicken-brained and feed me to a Beholder. For some reason this thought amused her. Her dagger-shooting regard softened at the edges as she repressed the urge to laugh. Better buckle down. This is going to require even more courage, patience and humility than I thought--just to learn how to use the sword! As a matter of fact, she liked the sound of that thought even as she formed it. Courage, patience and humility! Not half bad. Better jot those down for my oath. And you're not exactly swimming in any of those either, Pierre, so keep the snide remarks to yourself. * * *Meanwhile, in response to Wyshira's request, the mimir rattled out more of the recordings it held... A strong male voice. "Though I curse the bloodkin with every breath my body takes, and my rage against him and his brethren carries me on over this desolate wasteland; though my sould and will are consumed by this, my only purpose left, to hunt down and kill the vile man; yet still I have seen something I feel I cannot let pass, and since I have this... mimir as it calls itself, I shall use it. I could swear I saw, this last night as I stumbled across barren lands, dark shapes walking the hills, men of shadows that were not men at all, that stalked the land. I saw them move with purpose and with strength, a strength I cannot hope to have as I wearily walk this land, and a purpose too. I could sense that. These forms of shadow had a purpose." "What worried me was that their purpose took them in the same direction I was going. The direction of Garkulzak, the City of Red Stone." "When I looked again, they were gone, though I swear I did see them. And then I remembered the old tales Kamizak used to tell me. He used to say that the Men of Shadow never really died out. They just hid away in the shadows themselves."* * *The same voice again, weary and of ragged breath. "I am dead, then. Puncture wounds to my lungs and arm, blood loss will kill me soon, but I slew the bloodkin for what he did. The man fell to a well-placed arrow, but how could I hope to kill a bloodkin in Garkulzak, the City of the Dragon? The very bastion of the power of that monster Tasslik who calls himself the Son of Gilamesh, who rules through his bloodkin. But that was never my intention, to survive, not at all. Just to kill Samuel, traitor of the Huronese settlement of Gar Gadrak whose treachery caused such loss of life. He is dead now, and I will be dead soon, and this strange skull will be in the hands of the Gilame<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />es." "And I can find peace with Urazel in death now." * * *A deep male human voice. "It seems that there is some sort of communication being passed back and forth between the noble called Ecurius Tarravus and someone in Zhatan. What's interesting is that this is going on covertly. I will notify the Bloodkin as soon as possible." * * *With that, it fell silent again.Burl listened carefully to what the mimir had to say about bloodkin and what he heard didn’t make him too happy. It seemed that the one referred to as bloodkin was hunted. Also, the reference to Tarravus meant that possibly they were now working for the bloodkin’s enemy. If indeed he was a bloodkin or just related to one, then there might be a problem brewing. As if we didn’t already have enough problems. </blockquote>

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