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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drnuncheon" data-source="post: 688541" data-attributes="member: 96">Harvester gives Sen-Jyu another shove, to displace the man from atop him. "My lady has asked me to heal you, Sen-Jyu. So geddoffa me! and I will..."Sen-Jyu scowls at the Harvester, then sighs as the effort for continuing to grapple with him exacerbates the gaping wound left by the sickle. "Fine. Go to her. But first," Sen-Jyu's arm relinquishes the priest, to point toward a corner of the pool. "Please, look."Harvester casts a moon-eyed glance towards the bathing beauty.Harvester sighs, "I'm looking.... I'm looking..." He rises to his feet.Ahoke glances over in the direction that Sen-Jyu points in, and then laughs. "And what is your explanation for that pile of bones, /Lady/," she says, a savage note creeping into her voice. She hefts her club, and takes a step towards the water creature.With a shriek of rage, the woman's face contorts. A dagger appears in her hand as she lashes forward at Sen-Jyu. Only the spirit-blood's quick reflexes save him from the knife.Meanwhile, furry bodies launch themselves through the air at Ahoke, their teeth slashing deep into her legs. Blood stains the stone floor of the cavern.The attack from the woman does little more than draw the hint of a smile from the lips of the spirit-blood; it's as if he had intended her to be provoked, baiting the line, as it were. His sidestep is elegant, the water almost parting to allow him passage, while Ichido-sama is drawn, a languid salute of metal and a promise of death. It is without sadness that the sword-blow is struck, and no hint of resistance is felt from the oni's neck as the blade passes cleanly from one side to the other. The body seems reluctant to acknowledge this, trembling for a moment before collapsing, the head floating momentarily as the water churns a lustrous red.Ahoke, who had been moving towards the singing water woman is so startled by her change in visage that she halts, staring. Belatedly, she tries to smash one of the rats that's biting at her, but misses, unsurprisingly.Harvester's surprise is evident as the combat breaks out anew, and his hands begin to move in intricate patterns. He speaks soft words and reaches out to slap Sen-Jyu on the back. The spirit-blood's move during his attack pull him aside at the last moment.Ahoke's surprise is short-lived, and her club wards away one of the rodents - but the other sinks teeth deep again, and blood wells to the surface of fresh wounds.The blade, after performing its duty, is returned to its home at Sen-Jyu's side; the young samurai seems reluctant to harm the cleric. Both hands, with fingers like the legs of spiders, reach forward and gnarl themselves in the robes of the Harvester, and Sen-Jyu begins to pull the other into the water. However...Harvester finds himself thrown to the ground once more as Sen-Jyu leaps upon him once more. The charmed priest's face narrows into one of focus as a hand slowly struggles free to fully clasp the Spirit-blood by the face. A final word is uttered, and golden flecks of light fly from between splayed fingers as Sen-Jyu finds the worst of his wounds closing, sealing, the flow of blood slowing...Ahoke laughs aloud as the rodent bites her leg, and brings down the club hard onto its skull, crushing it into red globby paste on the stone floor of the grotto. "Nice try, rat. Better luck in the next life." She turns her gaze to the other one, baring her teeth in a dominance display.Harvester gives a violent shove to Sen-Jyu and frees himself, and stumbles back into the shallow pool. Hands rise, whether in benediction, defense or anger, it is difficult to say.The remaining rat lunges at Ahoke, its teeth snapping on air near her shin.Sen-Jyu steps back from the Harvester, accidentally bumping into the floating newly-made corpse. He jumps at that, but doesn't remove his eyes from the Harvester. "I sincerely hope you don't have lascivious thoughts toward her -now-," he says. "That's not romantic, that's... necromantic."Ahoke, perhaps offended that the rat didn't submit to her dominance, smacks it, hard, with her club. There is the sound of splintering bone, and then a rat corpse goes flying through the air, landing in the water between Sen-Jyu and the Harvester with a splash.The woman's severed head lolls in the water, bobbing up and down. It rolls over in the current, and her eyes open, staring sightlessly past you. Her mouth forms a word - is it 'Free'? - and then, as if head and body were ice in a furnace, the woman is gone, melted into the water. The only trace of her presence that remains is the golden cuff that once adorned her ankle.Harvester watches Sen-Jyu carefully, his eyes flicking now and then towards the corpse of his beloved. Eyes fill with tears, as one by one the salty droplets fall into the pool. He kneels in the water beside the body, pulling it into his arms as he whispers, "How could you? How could you slay her so? She did nothing to you!" He glares balefully at his companions, then to her face as both body and head disappear, "No! Come back..." he breathes. "COME BACK, BELOVED!!"Sen-Jyu steps -away- from the Harvester. "Um, Ahoke, let's give him some time to, ah, mourn his one-minute stand."Ahoke wipes her club on the ground, and nods, scowling at the Harvester. "I hope that this isn't going to be a big drama scene. We have children to rescue." She glances over at the pile of bones, and says, "Mmm. Sparkly stuff?" She walks over, peering down without touching.Harvester spies a golden cuff in the water, where he ankle once rested, and he fairly lunges for it, splashing Ahoke and Sen-Jyu liberally. The priest hears Sen-Jyu's words and rises, angrily speaking. "You... How dare you speak so cavalierly of a love so true...." He takes but a single step forward.Ahoke says, harshly, "Her time had come and gone /long/ ago. Surely you of all people should be able to accept that, oh priest of the god of death." She stirs some of the bones up with the tip of her great club.Harvester turns his head to look at Ahoke and snarls silently, lips pulled back to expose white teeth. "What would you know of 'drama' or 'love', savage?""Tch." Sen-Jyu raises one finger toward the Harvester. "Remember thyself, priest. Remember your purpose for being in the underbelly of this mountain. If you wish to stay and bemoan the melted one, that is your choice. That will leave two of us to rescue the children."*Where is she? What has happened to my songbird? Who has opened her cage?*Sen-Jyu asks, aloud, "... songbird?"*I know you are coming...*Sen-Jyu looks querulously at the other two, "Do you hear that voice?"Ahoke looks at the priest, the hurt evident in her brown eyes for two seconds, until she goes completely stiff. "I see what it is that you think of me now. At least I don't try to kill my companions over lust." She lifts some armor up.Harvester only turns his head to look at Sen-Jyu, slowly deflating. "I remember why i am here... Just you remember not to belittle our love..." He looks around at those words, then clasps the cuff about his own ankle, "I am claiming this as the remnant of our love... a memory..." He doesn't bother to answer Ahoke. "Yeah, I hear it, Sen-Jyu. Where's it coming from?Snorting a bit, Sen-Jyu murmurs, "Ahoke, he speaks from the song that was woven over him, not from his heart."  He listens, stepping back from the waterfall, that he might better see and hear from whence the voice or voices speak.Ahoke shakes her head, clearly disbelieving.The voice seems to come from everywhere, and nowhere. With the stone walls echoing and the roar of the waterfall, it's impossible to pinpoint."We need to keep going," says Sen-Jyu warily. "We likely don't have much time, and if those voices are correct, we're only giving them more time to prepare."Harvester sighs softly, then nods. "Our time grows short, yes.... and I have little of my Lord's glory left within me this day...."Ahoke lays a set of chain mail off to the side, and then a set of half plate beside it. "I'm all for it. Let me change armor. If a priest can lay claim to something, I suppose an ignorant savage can too." She reaches for the chain mail. "This can be made to fit me. There's more stuff over here too. Maybe it can help us." HEr words are clipped and brisk.Sen-Jyu looks at Ahoke, then back at the Harvester. "You should apologize," he says softly to the priest. "She holds you in good esteem, despite the gruff exterior she wears."Ahoke snorts, starting to peel out of her bone armor. "No, I'm glad to know how he truly feels about me. At least I won't be bound to him by any illusion of friendship."Harvester looks at the armor Ahoke has discovered, and moves nearer to look them over. He squates to examine the half-plate. A look to Sen-Jyu, "Fine. If she... and you will apologize for belittling the passions of my heart. Something I thought _she_, if no one else would appreciate."Harvester nods, with an apology to Ahoke, then begins to lift the heavy plate armor for a closer look. "Y'all mind if I take this, then?"Ahoke glares at Harvester, but doesn't apologize. She starts strapping on the chainmail. "Take whatever you want. I don't care." She pokes through the bones of Harvester's love's last victim, looking for more goodies.Moving the armor did reveal a few more things...a sack, some rope, a pair of vials, a sodden quiver and a longbow.Ahoke starts pulling things out of the bones, and lays them up on the shore, next to the others. "I dunno what this stuff is, some of it," she says.Harvester sets the armor down. "I guess I can't wear this til it's sized right, huh." He looks through the items as Ahoke tosses them onto the shore. First he starts to take the sack, then glances to Ahoke, "you mind?" he asks, while _trying_ to be nice.Ahoke shrugs, not meeting the Harvester's eyes, and moves away from the skeleton. "I'm ready to move when you two are. Maybe the vials, since you didn't take anything from the korhorrag, Sen?"Sen-Jyu steps back, watching the two, and shakes his head. He looks quite resolved to keep his mouth shut, but then words start to spill out as he paces back and forth frantically, like a cat. "Listen." His eyes dart between the two, and his voice is raised, just enough to counter the dampening of the vaulted cave and the waterfall. "If I learned anything, anything at all from my father, it was... to make your peace before you die. I, for one, don't want to see the three of us hiding these wounds. Because, unlike the physical wounds that we've all taken." he gestures toward the scabbed-over mark left by the sickle, "they can't be healed so easily. Since we're headed directly into the possibility of death, I want us all to be... friends." He sighs heavily after that, pausing in his pacing for a moment.Harvester shrugs a shoulder at Sen-Jyu, and takes the sack to look inside. "Hey. I _tried_. But she doesn't give a sh*t."Ahoke laughs, stepping away. "You're right. I don't give a sh*t. Just because we had to rescue you from becoming a skeleton in the bottom of a pool and we don't get any gratitude from it, and I don't instantly accept your half-assed apology like some dumb savage, I don't give a sh*t. Whatever. I'm ready to go when you guys are."Harvester shrugs a shoulder, "Some money... and a... copper armband." That item he extracts and carefully looks over."How can you say that? How long were we together, crossing the mountains, before this? We watched each other's backs that entire time." Sen-Jyu scowls at the both of them. "I think we all deserve more respect than we're giving one another."Harvester looks at Sen-Jyu again. "And you _heard_ me apologize to Ahoke. And you witnessed her rejection." He flicks a glance towards Ahoke. "And my love wouldn't've harmed me. I know this."Sen-Jyu nods. "I heard it, but I don't know that she did."Harvester slips the armband back into the sack and rises, "Fine. Then I'll repeat myself. Ahoke, I apologize for calling you a savage. It was an ill-considered response to your belittling of my love for _her_." He points to where the woman dissolved."And it's not true," Sen-Jyu adds thoughtfully.Harvester turns to remove his robe, and then his armor. A backwards glance to Sen-Jyu, quizzically, then he stoops to don the half-plate. A long, laborious process, when conducted alone.Sen-Jyu watches the priest. "Do you even know how to -wear- that, the Harvester?""I do," comes the reply. "It is difficult, however, to properly adjust alone. And I have not done so, in quite a long time."Sen-Jyu grins. "You might ask for some help, then?"Harvester nods once. "if you would, then?"Shaking his head, Sen-Jyu says, "I'd likely tighten something a bit too much -- cut off circulation."Harvester laughs softly. "I'll tell you if it's not right..."Ahoke nods, stiffly, though it's hard to tell if the apology has been accepted or not. "Perhaps I am," she says finally, wearily. "The spirits should know that 'civilized' society is confusing for those of us who weren't born to it." She folds her arms across her chest, watching, looking towards the path spiraling upward, resolutely."Civilization," Sen-Jyu replies to Ahoke, "isn't where you're born. It's where you choose to be, here." He points to his chest and, presumably, some organ contained therein. Maybe a lung.Harvester finally concludes the donning of his new armor and kneels, to place his old armor into his pack. He scoops up the remaining items that still lie unattended on the shore and examines them carefully, before stowing them as well. He gives particular care to the vials.Ahoke glances at Sen-Jyu. "I'm a berserker, Sen. Always on the outside of what is civilized. That's wolverine's call on my life." She shrugs, and then snaps into the air, "Oh shut /up/ you stupid lizard."Sen-Jyu shrugs, "I stand by what I have said."Harvester hefts the longbow and gives it an experimental pull.  He murmurs, "This longbow... it is quite well crafted.... and has apparently suffered no ill-effects from being submerged so long..." And a gesture, "And these potatives... they appear to be curatives, created by the same being as concocted those others we got...""Probably members of the previous crew, though how sh... er, how their flesh became stripped from their bones is... beyond me." Sen-Jyu carefully looks away from the Harvester.Ahoke hmms, glancing at the bow. "I'm not so good with a bow as I am my club or my axe... but the curing potions might be helpful. Do either of you want the bow?" Ahoke glances at the Harvester, and then Sen-Jyu, pursing her lips together in an attempt to stay silent."Hmmm." Sen-Jyu steps forward to examine the bow.Harvester rises to hand the vials to Sen-Jyu. "Take these, as we possess several already."Harvester hands Sen-Jyu the bow, as well.Sen-Jyu accepts it. "This is a finely made bow, yes it is."Harvester looks to Ahoke. "You've got some already, don'tcha?"  He holds out the sodden quiver to Sen-Jyu, too. "May as well complete the set, bub.""Yeah, I took two of them," the dwarf agrees. "I think you took the other two."Accepting the quiver as well, Sen-Jyu looks over the assortment of arrows, assuming there is any variety to them at all, and starts to tuck them into his own quiver.Ahoke sighs, looking upward at the path. "Guys... far be it from me to back away from our quest, but my legs are bleeding. Those rats might have made the wounds get feverish. Can we rest for just awhile? I'm sure that the wounds won't seem as bad, when I've slept for a few hours."Harvester shrugs, "Yeag... we're all whipped, i think. Can do a little bit o'healing, if you want...""I'm ready to g..." Sen-Jyu looks at his other companions, then ducks his head. "Camp, right."Ahoke grins at the Harvester. "I'd never turn that down... should probably save the potions for an emergency. But let's go somewhere dry. She glares at the waterfall, "I'm not going to dry out for a couple of moon cycles."</blockquote>

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