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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 1857952" data-attributes="member: 15043">A New, Urgent Mission“Nothing?  You can do nothing?” Nayu asked in a hushed horror.  My town, my parents, and now Felonca...“It’s beyond my capabilities, Master Nayu,” Liu affirmed with a sigh.  The monk put a comforting arm around Felonca, whose eyes glowed orange as she stared into the dying campfire, soft, short coughs coming from her lungs.  Nayu’s eyes flecked downward, his vision obscured by nascent tears in his eyes.Poor Felonca... escaped hell only to die a few weeks later... poor poor...  He felt his heart ready to break, the deep, harsh pang of anger and sorrow striking deep within him.  What... what can I do?C’mon, Nayu! a small part of his brain responded, growing larger by the second as he took in her terror filled eyes.  She needs your help!  Somehow you need to help her.  Think!“We... we can’t be more than two or three days from Xianlung!”  Nayu offered quickly, desperately searching for hope.  “Would that be enough time?”  Please, please say that would be enough time!For a second the monk’s eyes frowned in thought, before suddenly growing wide in hope.“If the disease runs a normal course, she would have four, maybe five days to find her some treatment.  If Xianlung is a good-sized city...”“Its larger than Mukden,” Nayu said hopefully.  Forty thousand people maybe, a very large city.  If she cannot find healing there...Felonca then suddenly broke free of Liu’s hold, and covering her repeated coughs, she darted towards the horses.“Let’s go, Liu!  I think she has the right idea,” Nayu yelled, running towards his own mount.Felonca hunched further over, her teeth clattering together.  Down her neck, shoulders and back she could feel the rivulents of rain run, despite her now completely drenched cloak and travelling clothes.  The burning feeling in her lungs suddenly flared again, and she hunched over, coughing harshly again.The coughing fits came and went.  There were some points where she felt almost normal, save a slight tightness in her chest.  Then there were moments like these, where she would launch into a spate of deep, hard coughs that could last half an hour or more at a time.She'd had plenty of time the last few days to think over her life, only to come to the simple, unerring conclusion that she didn't want to die.  She was young for a hengeyokai, barely 25, and she'd yet to see and experience many things the world had to offer.Many times her mind had gone back to home... in her dreams she saw her father, accepting and proud of her, her mother, kind and smiling as always.  Her fellow clansmen, showering her with respect.None of which will happen if you let yourself die, Felonca! her mind snapped as her will to live fought against the disease wracking her body.  Fight it!  Work through it to find that shaman or healer!“How are you doing?” she heard Nayu’s voice say quietly, amidst the harsh rocking on her horse as it struggled through the mire that had only two days before been a packed dirt highway.“The weather spirits should be cursed,” Felonca rasped back.  The burning HURTS!  “How long to Xianlung, or have any of your requests been answered?”  “No one knows anything that can help your poison... yet,” Nayu added quickly, with a deep decisiveness.If he could, he would merely will someone to know how to fix me, Felonca’s soft thoughts managed to conquer another series of sharp coughs, though the stabbing pain caused her to want to gasp, which only made the pain worse.She felt herself sliding off of her mount, only to feel a pair of hands catch her shoulder and haul her back into place.  Weakly, she turned and saw Nayu’s eyes, red with three days of worry and lack of sleep, staring at her through the shafts of rain.“You’ll be fine, okay?” his voice carried a powerful force within it, but somewhere in its commanding depths she felt a small ripple of despair.  “You’ll be fine.  The next village will have a healer or a shaman.  Just watch!”“I...trust...you...Na...yu...” Felonca managed to rasp back.  The smile she tried to force evidently looked hideous on her already emaciated face.  “You...won’t...let...me...die,” she added.  She felt his hand clasp around hers, and suddenly and fiercely grip it.“I won’t!  I won’t!” he replied, and between the raindrops, she thought she saw a tear run down his cheek.“I...st...ill...have...two...days...” she added.  Two days to find a cure...somewhere!  Another vicious cough ripped through her system, and she found herself gagging.  In a move that had almost become instinctive over the previous three days, she turned her head to the side, and spat out a small patch of the mold that was ever growing in her body.”Apart from the weakness and coughing, you should be able to function like normal, until the last day,” she remembered Liu telling her a few days before.  ”Then, the collapse begins quickly and in earnest.  Should... should I go on?” she remembered the uncertainty in his voice as they rode through the night.”Yes,” she had responded, ”I need to know as much as I can.  I want to find a cure!”From somewhere ahead of the party, she heard the splashing and splattering of a horse attempting to move through mud, and slowly she turned her head to look towards the front.  Outlined against a featureless, gray sky was the figure of Chou, clad in his armor and calling to them.“A village!  Just ahead!” the warrior shouted, pointing eagerly over a rise.  “And they say they know a powerful shaman of the wood!” “The disease is caused by the yellow mold growing inside of your body, especially your lungs.  On the fifth day or so, the fatigue will get you first.  There will be too much mold for you body to function normally.  Within a few hours, you’ll lose consciousness... and death results not to much beyond that.”  She remembered Liu had shuddered, before he had added, “And after three days, your body will rise again as a corpse controlled by the mold... a most horrible end.”That ending can still be rewritten!“Many thanks for your kindness in telling us of this shaman, sirs,” Felonca said softly above the patter of the rain.  Below her and her comrades, four peasants tipped their broad brimmed hats, before one, a greasy looking man with short hair spoke.“It would be our pleasure, madam,” he said in a gruff voice.  “The ‘Old Man of the Woods’ can heal anything, or so they tell me.”  The man reached up under his hat and scratched his head.  “He doesn’t usually want to have anything to do with many people, though.”  “They say,” one of the other peasants whispered, leaning close to the party, “that he drinks blood, and that he’s as old as many of the great trees in these here woods.”“I don’t know about that... but I know he is quite wise, and powerful,” the greasy one cut in his friend’s descriptions.  “Though... none of us here have ever seen him.”“Wait... none of you have seen him?” Felonca heard Nayu grumble.  She could tell by the furrow in his brow that fury was building behind his otherwise calm exterior.  Fifty gold to find out they’ve never seen him?“No... Zhen has that wrong,” the younger one stole the floor back.  “I saw him... from a distance though.  At his mound.”“His what?”“His mound.  He goes to this little hill in the woods, and he, um... you know, does stuff there.  They say that’s where the sacrifices take place, and where he does his magic.  Its got skulls all along its bottom, and some kind of shrine or altar at the top!”“Ren, these people are looking for –” the greasy one interrupted, only to be cut off himself.“Where do we find this mound?  Which way?” Felonca asked, her voice even softer.  She felt the familiar tightness in her chest returning; another spate of coughing was soon to arrive.“You go north of the village, and at a great oak, you turn towards the east...”</blockquote>

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