Riven Wight

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

The corner of Drust’s mouth and nose rose in a quiet growl, his neck twitching. “We didn’t know what to expect, boy.” He glared at Ghent.
“Dust.” Elayra turned to face him, her expression fierce as she silently begged him to hang in there for just a short while more. “Save it for training tonight.”
His gaze locked with hers for a tense moment. He snorted, then crossed his arms tightly, his muscles bulging with the effort where the fabric pulled tighter against his arms.
When Ghent teased about a curse, Elayra snarled and took a step away, her eyes flicking between Ghent and the phone. She heard Drust shuffle a step forward behind her with a snarl of his own.
Noticing the poorly suppressed enjoyment on Ghent’s face, her chin lowered and she glared at him in warning. “Curses are nothing to joke about,” she hissed through her teeth.
“Don’t worry, Princess.”
“Do not call me that!” she interrupted venomously.
“I’m not turning you away. I’ll figure this out. Always do.”
“Cocky child, aren’t you?” Drust growled.
Elayra inhaled at the all too familiar menacing tone in his voice, and spun around, her displeasure with Ghent placed on the back burner.
“Far too long ago,” she muttered to Ghent’s question, slowly raising a hand beside her, trying to usher him a bit further back and stand squarely between him and Drust.
A war raged in the White Knight’s eyes between the Curse and the soul it infested. The dark lines at their edges pulsated and wormed outward, the black-webbed-red threatening to consume his pupils for the third time that day.
“C’mon, Drust,” she began, her voice somewhere between demanding and soothing. “Hang in there. We need him to want to come with us, remember? How about we get out of here, find something to eat, and—”
Her words cut off as the Curse won.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
“Ghent, run!” Elayra hissed as, in a fluid motion, both she and Drust drew their weapons. The clang of metal on metal filled the room before Elayra’s voice finished reaching Ghent, her body bending back to avoid Drust’s longer blade in its close proximity. The strength of the blow radiated down her arm, but she only tightened her grip.

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Elayra frowned in annoyance at Ghent’s affinity for returning their answers as questions. “Is that not what I just said?” Her foot tapped lightly against the bottom box of her makeshift seat.
She shook her head slightly at his second question, recognizing the validity of the inquiry. “Hatter Madrail isn’t royalty. He was the White Queen's right-hand man.”
“Though the White Queen trusted him enough to name him her successor should he survive the Heart family.” Drust added, his gaze shifting around the room once more in an ever-vigilant watch for any creeping dangers.
“Not that that matters with the Red Queen,” Elayra stated the title mockingly, “on the throne.”
When Ghent guessed that Elayra was of royal blood, her jaw clenched, and her back stiffened. The only answer she had time to offer was a nod as stiff as the rest of her posture before an unfamiliar musical number blared through the room.
At first, one may have thought Elayra had fallen from her box-seat, but she landed nimbly on her feet, her weapons drawn, and Drust readily pulling out his katana.
The two watched Ghent as he pulled a rectangular device from a pocket, its front lighting up as the boy looked at it. Elayra cocked her head and lowered her sword and dagger, while Drust’s intense gaze settled slightly.
They remained quiet as Ghent had ordered while he spoke on the phone, another voice emanating from it in a jumbled murmur.
Elayra’s brows rose slightly when he called something “darling,” then her face fell as she saw his sense of determination waver into confliction. Wondering what held such power over him, she watched him remove the contraption from his ear.
“Your…” Elayra shared a quick glance with Drust. Neither had considered that he may have found a family in this world. “You’ve found someone to call family here.”
She looked to the phone when he held it out. She sheathed her weapons, then reached out to take it, Drust watching from where he stood as he returned his own weapon to its sheath with a practiced motion.
“A communication device.” She flipped it over in her hand, but it remained dormant. “Much like our mirrors, I assume. In the rare event you can find one intact, anyway,” she added as she returned the phone.
Incapable of answering Ghent’s last question, Elayra looked to Drust.
He sighed, and his head twitched. “The portals are controlled by a mix of the magic in both Wonderland and the worlds they lead to, as well as a power all their own. When the Curse hit, lashing out at our world’s magic, the portals in and to Wonderland grew unstable. They all closed to conserve their power as well as prevent the Curse from spreading to other worlds. Wonderland and Earth have one of the strongest connections, so it was only a matter of time until the magical pathways between our worlds opened again. But it will remain so only for a few short days. It’s in our best interest to leave before tomorrow night, to be safe. Sooner, if possible.
“Whether or not you’d be capable of returning, I can’t say for certain. There is a chance they will all reopen once the Curse has worked its way out of Wonderland’s magic reserves, but it’s far from a guarantee.”
“In short,” Elayra began, a bitter edge in her voice at the prospect of that answer turning Ghent away, “maybe, maybe not. But you have until tomorrow to prepare.”

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Oh. My. GOSH. ROFL!! Photoshop that expression onto Richard Simmons, and then you have a TRUE nightmare, there. xD

No worries! Glad you're good with it!

*High-fives for getting to the next page.*

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

“No one has magic,” Drust answered Ghent’s first question with an impatient sigh. “It’s something you seek. Either you find it, or you don’t. It can be a finicky thing, but there are some with the capability of breaking past its barriers and accessing it to its fullest extent.”
Elayra mimicked Ghent’s smirk when he shook her hand. “I can ask nicer, if you’d rather,” she offered flippantly, a mild, almost playful threat in her voice.
She turned from him and went to a stray box. She scooted it over, stacked another on top of it, tested her weight on it, then sat. She leaned against the metal bars of the shelving behind her as Ghent asked about their relation to him.
“Uncle Drust,” Elayra repeated slowly toward the ceiling, trying out the title. “You make one interesting uncle.”
Drust glared at her, his neck twitching.
“I mean that as a compliment.” Elayra returned his stare.
He snorted, then looked to Ghent. “I am far from being your uncle, boy. Merely Drust will suffice.”
“Drust’s one of the best White Knights from Heart Castle,” Elayra explained, her expression growing solemn. “My guardian and trainer. And yours now as well, it would seem. As for you and me, we lived in the castle. Our… our parents were good friends, and thus so were we.”

Melodramatic Deities and an Ageless Taste for Pizza

Medusa! Yessss.

Melodramatic Deities and an Ageless Taste for Pizza

In the time between her question and his answer, Anora noticed how drained Pahn looked, now slouched, seemingly emotionless, in his seat. She looked at him, concerned, wondering if he had overdone himself between the battle and cleaning up. Perhaps he was not as powerful or had more limitations than she had first thought.
At first, Anora was slightly taken aback when Pahn agreed about the stupidity. Though she had thought so herself, she had not actually expected him to say so aloud. Then she realized what he meant.
“Oh,” she said simply, unsure whether to take that as a positive or negative statement. Regardless, it was far from a satisfactory answer. She opened her mouth to reiterate her question, but it shut when he spoke again.
She blinked at him. “Many places? How many vine-rooms with coffins are there?” She shook her head, dismissing her own questions. “Never mind. That’s not what I asked. My question was, did it come from you?” She enunciated each word of the inquiry, unsure if his last statement meant he had no direct part in it, or was toying with her. At this point, she suspected it could have been either.
“I swear,” she glared at him through narrowed eyes, pointing a firm finger at him, “if you’re messing with me…” She let the empty threat trail off, unsure what she would do. The most she could do was walk away from him, but that was the last thing she had planned. She had at last found the part of the world she had felt was missing her entire life; she would be a complete idiot to leave it and the adventures she was sure it had in store for her behind.
From her vantage point facing the door, her attention snapped to the entrance at the sound of the bell. She watched five people approach the counter as one party to be seated. They looked as normal as the next guy, but the sense of paranoia that had haunted Anora since that morning flared up.
She shook her head, trying to push it aside, then went to look back to Pahn. Instead, she found herself watching the group get seated individually, spread throughout the dining area. Though she could not quite say why—perhaps the day’s events had her more on edge than she thought, or she had seen one too many spy movies—their actions unsettled her.
“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” she suggested slowly, forcing herself to look from the people with their strange request. “Somewhere less populated.” She could not help but steal another suspicious glance around at the strangers as she absently fidgeted with a cloth napkin from the table that someone had fancily folded in a way she was sure she could never refold.

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Oh, also, yay for page two!

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Is it bad that I'd totally visit this version of Wonderland? (... Is it just me, or is that face freaky?)

Oh, thanks! No, I didn't draw it. Been feeling too lazy for that lately. xD

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Elayra watched Ghent warily, unsure how he would react. On the bright side, he had not already just walked out the door, but his moments of seemingly stunned silence were not exactly reassuring.
When he finally spoke, readying to give their story in a nutshell, she crossed her arms loosely.
Drust turned slowly to face them, his expression impassive, and black-streaked crimson gaze settling on Ghent.
Elayra glared at being referred to as ‘Blondie.’
“Sorceress, technically,” she responded once he finished his version of a recap, annoyance in her voice at the nickname, “and I guess we’re a bit of both, but neither of those. But yeah, you've pretty much got it.”
At his question, Elayra regarded him for a short moment, debating on how much more it would be wise to tell him tonight. She had little experience with interacting with others not effected by the Curse, and the last thing she wanted to add to the worry list was dealing with Ghent if they said too much or, even, too little.
“You said it yourself:” she uncrossed her arms, one hand again resting lightly on the hilt of her sword, “we need your help. The Curse essentially barred everyone—well,” she scowled, “most everyone—from using magic. Drust,” she nodded to her guardian, “spent years trying to research it. The two of us can cast minor spells every now and again, but that won’t do us any good against someone like the Red Sorceress. In theory," she rolled her eyes at the word she so detested, "the Curse won’t even recognize you now, so you’d have that access.”
“Your father and his kind are powerful sorcerers in their own right,” Drust added. “Which is an ability passed from one generation to the next.”
“So, what do you say? Feel like being a hero?” She offered him a hand to shake in acceptance, trying to keep her doubts about him from her expression with minimal success.

The Collector (2) [Closed]

Woot, woot!