Muttonhawk

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine's eyes dropped to the fire. She stole a glance at Do'Rhajul. She brought a hand up from her new cloak and wiped both of her eyes.

"Lorag...my packmate, he was a soldier under Do'Rhajul," Sabine's voice grew at least somewhat more audible. "He said that Do'Rhajul would not do the things he has done. Not normally." She looked at the fire silently. The pause lasted a few seconds. "If I took you both home, they would make you answer for everyone killed under his command. They would try him. And then sentence him to death."

Sabine stopped. She was thinking to herself but the pause let her words sink in.

"But..." Sabine hesitated. Her mouth stayed ajar for long enough to find words. "A long time ago, my sister tried to cure my lycanthropy when I was a child. She locked me in a silver cage and forced me to take medicines that did not work. She tried for a long time. Everything hurt. Everything made the beast rage and cry. And I cried. But after a long time trying, she stopped, she smuggled me away, and she let me free. Years later, I had my pack, they helped me. I did not tell them what happened. Then we passed near my old home. My sister found us. I was scared at first. But she..." Sabine blinked twice as her eyes welled up again. "She just wanted forgiveness. She thought she was doing the right thing. She stopped trying to cure me when she realised I was only getting hurt. She smuggled me away so I would not get killed. She let me free near a forest where I would not be likely to hurt anyone, and because she did not know how to hide me or take care of me."

Sabine blinked again, fresh tears joined the drying lines on her cheeks. "I had a knife at her throat. I could have killed her. I did not want to. I did not want to make more suffering." She closed her eyes for a moment.

"I forgave her in the end. My pack found out about the story. Meesei knew how to help me by having me talk with the Hist. My sister helped us in the end. She helped me recover. She is a good person. She always was. She did bad things because she thought it was right. When she realised it was not, she knew her mistake and tried to make up for it. She did it all because she loved me."

Sabine's cringed forward neck straightened. She took a deeper breath. "The lycans clans will not fall apart if Meesei dies -- they are not organised purely under her. Vile would want another lycan dead, and another, until there are none. Even the children would die. Many children have already died. Vile would not have to fulfil anything. He keeps the souls of each one killed by the gas as well. They are powerful souls." Sabine swallowed down a dry throat. "...I do not know what Rhajul lost that Vile would bring back. But I know that if Rhajul is honest about what he really wants, I can help him. I can forgive him. If he helps us, if he is still a good person, I want to give him a second chance. Even if he asks for something impossible, I could probably do it. He just has to tell me."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

A pause drew out from Sabine. For a moment, it seemed long enough that Yerig might have been getting ignored again.

The pause was not broken by words, not immediately. It was instead changed by Sabine lifting her eyes up to stare at Yerig. "What is the pact he made?" She asked.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

While Yerig might have been referring to Sabine as a 'girl' in being relatively older than her, Sabine found it only fed into her behaviour. he cloak was too large for her, she was behaving like she used to before her ritual with the Hist, and -- when she did eventually speak after finishing her mouthful -- it was with a more subdued and almost childish voice than when they first questioned her.

"I did," she said tersely.

The staff was still at her side, laying flat and half-covered by the cloak. Sabine did not take her eyes off the small fire between them.

"Your friends," Sabine mentioned before Yerig could ask another question. "Five hours. Then they awaken."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine turned her head to look at Do'Rhajul's surrender. Her eyes flicked between the weapons and his face for several lost moments. She was shivering. After a while, her eyes and mouth narrowed as if about to resume crying, but she stiffened and swallowed it back.

There was not a word from Sabine. She broke eye contact and walked away. She shuffled herself over to the enemy's camp. Without regarding Do'Rhajul or Yerig, she rifled through the team's belongings with one end of her staff until she found something. A large fur-lined cloak. All the warm clothing was packed together, but the cloak she pulled out had not been worn by any of those that tortured her. She wrapped the cloak tightly around herself with both hands and continued shuffling around. She quickly located a skin of water and some preserved meats. Her next destination was the campfire, where she sat herself down.

Sabine stared into the fire with wide eyes. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, though the cloak covered everything below her neck. One of her hands beneath the cloak fed her tiny bites of food at a time.

It wasn't until she stopped shivering that she began listening to Do'Rhajul and Yerig again.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Oh goodness. I'm going to have to take a closer look, then.

Anyway, I am about to get ready to have dinner with my family. I think I'm done for IC posts for the next few hours.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Between Sabine's defiance, the staff, and her knowledge of restoration magic, the thought of Yerig staying dead did not even cross her mind. She lowered herself to her knees by his side and placed a hand on his chest. A yellow light shone over the scorch-mark where the lightning bold spell struck. Sabine closed her eyes and mouth. Her face twitched as if dreaming. The light grew for another ten seconds, healing the immediate damage.

Sabine put a jolt through Yerig's heart. Just enough to make it beat. His entire midsection tensed and fell involuntarily. She tried again. A flash ended the yellow light. Yerig had not been dead long, which made Sabine's magic possible. She manually tensed his diaphragm to force him to inhale. Whether it would be enough to revive him or not, Sabine exhausted all she knew how to do. No more power applied to the problem would fix it.

She stood up and watched to see what would happen.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Hah! Nice. It's beginning to sound an awful lot like a tabletop RPG.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Hahahah, I've seen enough games of Diplomacy to see how that must go. Have you played the coop before? Are there points where you have to work together to progress?

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Ah, I know the one you're talking about. I heard pretty awesome things about the first Divinity: Original Sin when it came out, but it languished on my list of games I'd like to try. Those games have coop, don't they?

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Yeah, they can be fun. You probably noticed on steam that I've been playing Disciples II every now and then. That...sort of falls under the genre, but it's really more of a Heroes of Might and Magic ripoff. It's not particularly good in comparison to most strategy games (apart from the artwork) but it's a nostalgic game from my childhood that I've been playing as a wind-down game.

Why do you ask?