Event: Tall trees and long shadows
Location: In the forest close to Loriindton
Interacting with: Eskandr army detachment
@Tackytaff
"Predators!"The voice amplified by the gift made whatever small flock of birds had settled down in the canopy above Loriindton rise in shock, but it were also the heads of many, many people down below that were craned to find the thunderous warning's origin.
"Predators! Two miles southwest and closing!"Predators ? Otios could only wonder about the city guard. All predators dangerous to Husoi or Yasoi alike had gone regionally extinct a long time ago, at least the last time he had checked. It took his mind a serious moment to actually start theorizing about 'predators' not necessarily referring to the city's people as being prey
or that the whole thing might just be a case of a very bad choice of words. These were times of war after all and some unexperienced, young newcomer in the lookouts way above their heads might have some frail nerves because of that, causing him to classify just anything of significance that was unfamiliar and with an unclear motive as dangerous and volatile. It would be somewhat hard to blame him for not finding a more proper word in that kind of situation.
Yet as the thief was pondering about times of war and unexperienced guards some other, much more serious prospect dawned upon him. Could it indeed be that... ? That was when he started taking flight after flight of stairs in a hurry, almost bursting his way up the dense, three-dimensional network of pathways that turned Loriindton into a giant riddle until, somewhat out of breath, he finally reached the top level to try and take a look for himself.
Predators ? There were no predators if one left out the growing number of people who had already started gathering to watch the upcoming trial session. These probably hoped for it to turn into Lyen's downfall, but could hardly be the target of any warning. Closer inspection of the horizon, as far as it could be seen, revealed an error in the otherwise fairly regular pattern of early morning mist that had gathered around the massive trunks. A heat source from below that made things billow upwards ? Or was that an actual source of
smoke ?
That ignorant... Otios cut his own thoughts short for he hesitated to use that kind of derogatory word for a person he honestly respected so far.
That hardly was a day since she told me and we talked about it, was it ? It was hardly a full night and they are already almost there! He engraved a mental note into the back of his head to have a word with Lady Talit later on about fancy space magic messing around with one's perception of time or the like. What did he know -- or rather not know -- about that!
In Otios' mind, it would have sufficed to deal with the Eskandr while they had already been on the leg of their journey leading away from Loriindton again just as long as the latter would still have been the only thing in range to go for if one's food was no more. They would just have been forced to turn around he had figured. But now ? Half a day worth of time available for his plan had just disappeared! Was there still enough tolerance and wiggle room left for that to work out ?
His thoughts were now racing as he tried to weigh his new set of chances. Lyen was locked away in a cell unknown to him, so dealing with that time walker Talit has described as shady at best was the chance to get her out. But... what if he'd just find nothing ? What if that blinded woman was just too clever to have suspicious shit laying around in her small, private bit of Loriindton ? Or what if she was just flat-out more
innocent than Talit suspected ?
He could no longer afford to spend time he no longer had on pure gambles! What little was left now would have to be spent on things with more certainty to them. These primitive Eskandr would not hesitate to turn into what they had already been announced as once they couldn't fill their stomachs anymore, would they ? That would have to do! Maybe their aggressive arrival could even serve as a distraction to... break into the prison Lyen was locked away in directly and get her out ?
Otios made dealing with camouflage before his departure a very secondary priority. This was Yasoi territory and very close to a large city on top of that, so if anything was not suspicious here, then it was encountering a Yasoi even if the latter was in proximity of an army of maybe a few hundred Eskandr warriors. His whole plan, after all, was based on the assumption that without intervention, the Eskandr would go at long lengths in order to stay neutral towards his own kind, so he expected them not to bother him unless he did anything truly provocative.
The Eskand had formed a large, mobile outer ring about the more cumbersome, heavy equipment they carried around among the center of their ranks. Otios, from the careful distance he still maintained, could see what looked like some sort of portable fire probably meant for baking bread and roasting freshly hunted game or stolen cattle. Along that were a bunch of other wagons pulled along by draft horses: fresh grass and haystacks for their mounts, shields, swords and other weapons not currently in use. He didn't even want to know just how much of that had been taken away from dead Parrench people.
A few of the vehicles were also completely enclosed so he couldn't see what was inside at all. These were those of the most interest as the others could be ruled out as viable targets at single glance.
Perhaps these fools would let him pass through their outer ring unhindered if he just had the right fake story ? Maybe he could present himself as sort of a diplomat of a very worried Loriindton or the like who had been tasked to get in touch with them so to ensure there were no hostile intentions involved. The only problem was that his skill with the southern languages was fairly neglegible.
He considered just signaling his horse to get much closer only to then make a stop dead in their tracks. Maybe those Eskandr would neither be eager to guide hundreds of men around the tiny obstacle he'd pose, nor be willing to just let him pass through their ranks by gently flowing around him, nor allow themselves to just dispose of him for that would threaten their neutrality. Maybe they'd just have to tear down the language barrier for him from their side if they could and wanted to assess his presence here ?
What a rubbish idea! That'd never work out, so why was he even considering it!
Otios dismounted quickly and gave his horse a signal to just do what horses without a rider did. Hopefully he'd be able to find it later on. He had much more urgent issues right now and that was to find a good place to hide. A trench, a patch of very tall grass, some pile of loose dirt he could dig into or...
Or no... really ? Was
that the only thing available ? A large puddle that had the stench of rotting vegetation to it! He evaluated the level of darkness it had and, very much to his disliking, found that it indeed was situated dead in the Eskand's marching route. So, albeit very grudgingly, he just allowed his almost eight feet of body in rather light clothes to sort of dive into it, laying low as much as he could as the Eskandr kept marching on and getting closer.
And then he turned into a black hole. Something that looked like an aberration, but had absolutely nothing to do with one. Light had a very electromagnetic nature, so he could influence it and just deny it to be reflected off his skin. He turned as pitch black as the swampy looking shit he had already drenched himself in, forming a merger that would hopefully be flawless enough not to be detected. This was what generations long after him would call a 'ghillie suit', just already far more advanced in a particular way while also being far behind in others.
Don't trample on me!
Don't trample on me!
Don't... Hell just chop off your fat, blistering feet with all their rotten nails and levitate over my head if you have to! Don't you idiots even believe in some kind of ship being built somewhere with the nails of the dead ? Naglfar or how do you miserable wretches call it ? Go! Feed it with all the building material you have! And don't trample on me!Otios almost tried to shield himself from the fact that the Eskandr warriors looked all the more strong and unrelenting the closer they got by internally throwing curses at them. He just needed to survive the outer ring and then hope that the carriages wouldn't change course so much until they were where he was. It almost felt like a good thing that he couldn't allow himself to raise his head too much at this point.
Heavy boots of metal, leather or even just fur sploshed through the dirt all around him, but nobody dared to step right into a pool of liquid that looked as if would burst into a cloud of flies, frogs and leeches the moment anyone disturbed its innocence. The cart and wagon drivers however felt much more comfortable in their high seats and just kept going straight. Good! Otios made a sudden roll to the side and grabbed the first thing he could find on the rugged underside of the first of them, thereby moving on silently with the army.
As he used a gentle electric arc to slowly cut his way into the wagon's inside, some residual grain already rained down upon him and Otios had to suppress sneezing. He had found the right wagon, or maybe they were all the same... he didn't care. Sabotaging just one would hopefully suffice.
The Eskandr appeared to have found a rather lazy, but no less efficient way of storing their grain and flour. Basically the hole wagon had been built not leaving much of a gap between the different wooden boards and metal parts, so there had not been that much of a need to store things in many small bags or the like he'd have had to open and mess around with one by one. Instead there was just a large heap covered thoroughly with a thick fabric so there'd be no spilling. Excellent.
Not so excellent however was the fact that the mushroom spores he now unpacked from the inside of his clothes also had only half the time to grow and ruin things by now. It had been long since he had used them the last time and in a far less serious context on top of that, so Otios felt great insecurity rising inside him whether that would actually suffice still. These mushrooms were fast, just not... insanely fast.
He'd have to get going anyway. That oblivious army around him could make for a rest and access their food supplies with him now effectively trapped inside them anytime soon, so he opened his jar and started pouring things over the pile of flour he had uncovered. Yet, just as he was ready to dive his arms into it in order to mix the two components, he heard a a voice coming from behind him.
"Stop what you're doing!"
It was an elderly and rather female sounding tone, but completely up to the level of commanding the words it carried called for. Otios twisted on the spot, fully expecting some Eskandr he had not seen and a large spark shot forward from the tip of his hand as an involuntary, yet much more powerful extension of the stimulus his nervous system had just been given.
The bright flash just vanished in front of the other person leaving behind nothing but a vibrant, still very spark-like looking, incomprehensibly dark something that now just floated in the tight space between the two Yasoi for a brief moment until it had slowly drifted out of the wagon as the latter moved on. Given the height of the vehicle, the phenomenon was well above the heads of the soldiers marching outside, and over all their urge to make progress in difficult terrain there was no indication of anybody truly noticing it in the air.
"I have been aware of you and your plan, I just had not precise enough of an insight yet to know where and when exactly things would happen, otherwise I'd have tried to stop you sooner. You will not sacrifice Loriindton for your machinations!" the time walker continued no less sternly, obviously blinded yet still staring at Otios. The latter found himself rather frozen at this point, taking moments to even just start speaking as he realized whom he was dealing with.
"Sacrifice Loriindton ? What tells you that ?""You think those Eskandr will just knock at the door and ask for food ?"
"Hell no! I think they'll be horribly unprepared for a raid they had neither planned for nor been given a buy-in from their king.""Eskandr ? Unprepared ? Lightning fast, highly flexible strikes are the very definition of Eskand military doctrine so far in this war, didn't you learn that from your Parrench husoi friends ?"
"Husoi friends ? What husoi friends!" Otios exclaimed a bit more loudly, borderlining on what he deemed still save so nobody outside could hear it.
"I don't have any husoi friends! I am just picking the lesser of two evils!"The time walker arched an eyebrow and tilted her head slightly. "Huh ? Are you ? Weren't you still a young child the last time the Parrench unleashed their egostic horrors upon our kind ? How can you even dare to speak of lesser evils!"
"Look at the present and not the future for once, old woman!" he now almost hissed.
"The Eskandr are doing at least as bad as the Parrench ever did, and there is no stable peace to be expected from them! You think they'll stop feeding off this part of the world once they're done with the Parrench ? No, they'll just be a replacement for their cruelties. A replacement we are far less familiar with than the Parrench!"It was now the time walker's turn to raise her voice more loudly. He raised her gnarled walking cane and prodded his chest with it. "Why do you even care! You really think you're more clever than our elders, our leaders, those with way more experience in political affairs ? You didn't even live long among us for such a long time, but along those Parrench! You even traveled to Relouse to join their war effort, didn't you ?"
Just... how does she know ? The timer walker evolved into a more and more scary mystery for Otios by the second for some serious insight she was capable of revealing would have been an understatement.
"Lady Talit is one of the leaders, isn't she ? Isn't she even considered the most powerful of all or the like ? Then you might want to know it was her who convinced me to join all of this!"The time walker's face almost seemed to turn into stone for a brief moment. "Oh..." was all she said, now frowning. "That bothersome person... She's sorta lost, just like you are right now. I repeat myself one final time: Stop what you're doing! And then just leave and let others handle this!"
How did this old, crooked woman even dare! Otios' fist just launched forward and aimed right for her face, but the cart rumbled over a pothole that very moment and he missed, momentarily losing balance and ending with his head banging against the wall. The sheer size and the presence of so much heavy stuff inside made nobody notice the ruckus from outside.
"You can't escape your fate this way!" She pointed her gnarled walking cane towards him more permanently now, denying him a second frontal approach in the very confined space they were in. "I can leave the way I have come and you might still leave the way you have come. You trying to fight me out of this will get you nowhere however. I am an old woman in no position to stop you physically while you could hit me with your gift or just your limbs any time, but what would the Eskandr say once they take their breakfast and discover my dead or unconscious body in here ?"
Otios' thoughts raced, going through the hypothetical situation, and the conclusion was that he just could not allow for that to happen. The whole plan was also based around the idea of it looking like sort of an accidental contamination and that would go out the window with any Yasoi seen inside once these doors opened. The whole story he hoped for -- the Eskandr attacking the Yasoi and not the latter going against them in the first place -- would be lost. Would the rest of the Yasoi nation outside of Loriindton even be willing to follow once learning who had been attacking whom first ? Leaving evidence behind for the Eskandr to discover and find their own, special solution for it was far too unpredictable.
"My very presence here, no matter what you do with it, makes your plan impossible. And... do you really want to end like your lightning bolt ?" she continued as she grew increasingly impatient about his thinking pause.
Otios was very much on the verge of giving in and accepting this whole affair as a failure he could still get out of pretty much unscathed. He could not proceed with her in here, but he could also not proceed with just even trying to dispose of her either.
"Okay..." he started somewhat hesitantly.
"I give in. I've not yet really started mixing spores and flour, I can still remove them just by carefully extracing that small spot I've opened over there." and he pointed to his 'workplace' not even really knowing if she had some way of noticing that gesture.
The time walker smiled as she gave a gentle nod towards him. Was that her way of feeling triumphant ?
He marched over and kneeled, digging his arms into the large heap so to gratuitously move away the clearly discoloured patch. Yet then he suddenly just cranked both of his limbs upwards, effectively shoveling as much of the flour as he could into the air over his head before moving his fingers close to one of the steel reinforcements running along the wagon's walls. That had just been one open threat too much coming from her!
"What does your lousy fortune telling say about sparks flying in a cloud of combustible dust ?" he taunted her.
"This is a confined space, just like a windmill! You think you can work your magic fast enough to escape this kind of explosion or prevent me from igniting it ? The Eskandr will never find us since both of us will be scattered around the forest in tiny, bloody bits! Their food however will be gone and who knows how many of their proud warriors will be injured by the debris! I know how much pain and desperation can aggravate those berserkers when they feel like its coming from a cowardice assault! I was at Relouse, not you! Leave, or you might not even have the chance for helping Loriindton against the Eskand for you'd just be dead already!"The time walker grimaced, then disappeared into seeming nothingness just the same way Lady Talit had. The moment that happened Otios thought he'd hear a few more words: "You will regret what you've done, one way or the other."
Slightly shaking, Otios now touched the metal to actually gently discharge any static charges that might have been waiting to strike. He'd have to clean up this mess, make it look like nothing happened, and then mix gently and properly. It was only during this cleanup operation that he was actually forced to inspect all parts of the wagon more thoroughly, thereby discovering some other items he had not really paid attention to previously. They had some fungus around here, too, and he had a suspicion what these might be good for. A tiny piece of them in his mouth and the increased heartbeat, sweating and slight euphory he felt soon after swallowing gave confirmation.
These elite warriors wanted some reckless, careless, highly aggressive frenzy ? They could have it! That would rule out a diplomatic solution all the more. Soon there were two fungi in the flour, one of them ready and another who'd hopefully act as sort of a backup plan once grown.
Otios left the wagon the same way he got in, putting the piece of floor he had cut out back into place so nobody would see any hole. Another burst of curses later and the rearguard had passed by him without noticing him laying flat on the dark, soft ground. Only once back on his horse, the Yasoi actually noticed the ugly looking, blood-sucking attachments to his legs that hid their activity with natural painkillers and anticoagulants.
These would fall off at some point, but would the time walker let go of him ? It was not the possibility of her spreading the word about his doings here that worried him. Who'd be going to listen when the Eskandr were already tearing the place down. And who'd give her any credibility given the fact she had not used her advanced knowledge to issue a general warning beforehand in the first place ?
No... it was that mysterious phenomenon she had caused. He didn't want to end up displaced in time.
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