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Stian Berland, Wyvern Rider
Stian woke up at dawn, and before donning his armour, performed a long series of stretches to warm up for the day. The exercise in the mornings and evenings also prevented his muscles from aching too badly or cramping. As fun as flying was, and he could do it for hours and hours, his muscles and joints always started complaining once he hit the ground. And he was barely twenty! So, he trained and worked on improving his agility almost religiously. He dared say he was good what with the way he could easily do handstands or splits or bridges, and moved as swiftly and sinuously as a snake in his attacks and dodges even from a crouch. He didn't neglect to practice his footwork and grip-power, because, yes, if the situation ever called for it, he was crazy enough to attempt standing on his wyvern to tangle with another flier.
After completing the thorough work-out, Stian washed up in a nearby water-full barrel, honestly almost tempted enough to take a drink from the filthy water. With what he deemed a great self-restraint, he waited until after he clothed and armoured himself properly before fetching himself a water jug and draining it like the savage he was, trails of water left running down the sides of his mouth unattended for a moment or two until he finally wiped them off with a sleeve, burping contentedly. Right, still have to eat, he scratched at his head, slightly sheepish. He was always half-expecting that a long-stretch of time where food would be unavailable was just around the corner, since he’d often had to ignore hunger in the past and was now practiced in doing so. However, the Red Branch was fairly decent as far as providing daily meals went, a fact both he and Gamleen were very well pleased with.
The thought of Gamleen sent Stian into a dash, and he rushed to grab some nondescript foul-tasty but filling ration food for himself to munch on and a bunch of dried jerky for Gam, which he stuffed into a small string-bag. Carrying those, he practically jogged to the stables, managing to eat his ration on the way, but stopped and barely prevented the rest of his foodstuff from scattering at the sight he waiting for him. Cael was feeding his wyvern with fish, Gamleen warily accepting each while staring at the male, the wyvern’s gesture conveying a warning for Cael not to attempt anything but feeding it. True, this wasn’t the first time for someone other than Stian to feed the gorgeous creature, and yet, the blonde couldn’t help but be reminded how long it had taken for Gamleen to warm up to him. Just shows I did good by him, it does! ‘Sides, he likes me way better. While his thoughts took a teeny tiny bit of a possessive, maybe, just maybe, even jealous streak, Stian approached with a perky bounce to his step, his trademark grin plastered on his face.
“Gamleen, ya cheatin’ on me, darlin’? And here I thought we had something special between us,” he drawled in a sullen whine, fluttering his eyelashes in obvious exaggeration at the wyvern, his disappointed tone belied by the mischievous sparkle in his eyes and the miniature laugh-lines on his face – though the latter were admittedly somewhat hard to see past the scars he still sported. The wyvern, on the other hand, didn’t react past a snort that somehow managed to convey its disgruntlement and a what-can-you-do-about-this-idiot sentiment.
Stian chuckled at the wyvern’s reply and approached as Gam gobbled up the last fish, waving at Cael. “Hey, man, thanks for the fish! You’re almost as good at spoiling the old man as I am,” he smirked, patted the wyvern’s neck, and nuzzled briefly up at him. Gamleen nipped at the blonde youth's ear, and Stian still couldn’t tell if the action was playful, reprimanding, or both, but either way, it did sting enough for him to ease up on the affection. Stian lifted his hands, still carrying the dried jerky bagged in his left, and said “Easy, easy. So, still wanna share this?” he drew a piece of meat from the bag and waved it in front of the wyvern.
Gamleen snapped at the piece lightning fast, chewing and swallowing it with a pleased growl. Stian proceeded to share half the dried jerky, alternating between eating a piece himself and offering one to the wyvern. After finihing, he stashed the now-empty-bag in a trouser pocket, led the wyvern outside the stable, got him ready for flying, then climbed onto the saddle easily. Stian briefly turned towards Cael again. “Oh, yeah, if anyone asks, we’ve just went for a bit of a fly. Just above our camp, so no worries, alright? If anything’s urgent, just give a whistle and even if I don’t hear you, Gamleen sure will. But if you’d rather join the fun, that’s cool too, man!” With that said, they were both off in a great whoosh of a rise, some dust flowing freely at their ascent.
@Levias
@SimpleWriter Btw, that Discord link's expired.
“Yeah, with the four of us, there’s no need to worry about certain death. Either way, if the situation seems too dangerous, we can always escape,” Ann assured Lexa and nodded approvingly at Emilia. She then waved at Tien lazily “Alright, see you at the south gate in 20 minutes.”
After the geomancer left, Katrin refocused on the two other females with a winning smile. “If you’ve decided to go along, it would be best that we share our abilities with each other. Maybe even think up a way we can best work together. I’m not so sure Tien is the type to think about tactics when he can afford to just rush straight in and fight head-on. Well, as long as he distracts all the enemies, that works out well for me,” she trailed off, looked past the girls in contemplation for a moment or two, then blinked.
“Oh, sorry,” she smirked wryly at both Lexa and Emilia “I still have to think about my skills, since I’m kinda new to this whole fighting thing. No need to worry though, because we can just plan a good way out and we should be fine even if the skeletons turn out to be too much. Let’s just start with my skills, yeah? I can easily get rid of any unsuspecting skeletons and I can knock down any that get too close to me. There’s also some kind of an illusion with which I can appear like something else as long as I got its fresh blood. Sounds creepy, I know, but it’s good for scouting. How about the two of you?” Kat cocked her head minutely to the side, switching her gaze from Lexa to Emilia and back every once in a while, both to assess how each of them was feeling and as a conscious attempt to make them both feell included.
@Inkarnate@Sola
Asteria
The lake and stream did not overflow as Asteria had feared, and even Mother Rat gave her approval to the dam. “Safe journey, guys,” she said to the leaving trio, then added her own warning to Ed. “Just as Oberon said, you’d be in more danger returning by yourself than the three of them would be leaving. But if you insist,” she shrugged her shoulders, an action that seemed a bit awkward and odd on a rat.
Asteria then moved into Jason’s tunnel, and settled right next to Mother Rat. Before going to sleep however, she wanted to try something she’d been inspired to do at seeing Jason’s chant-type of magic (even if it had been a failed attempt). She was relatively safe and still had just enough energy for an experiment or two. Asteria was curious to find out how best to focus intent when working with mana, as her attempts to direct magic with pure thought, intent, and will had not yet been successful. It was true that she might have been too vague or had not done enough repetitions, but for now, she’d test something new. So, she set carefully to work, and used her right forefinger to draw a circle into the earth. Even with the dextrous skill and giving herself plenty of time to make a circle, it obviously wasn’t perfect, but maybe it didn’t need to be. Then, she drew three lines inside of the circle in what amounted to an (approximation of an) equilateral triangle. That done, she moved a pace or two away, dug out a medium-sized rock, and put the rock into the centre of the drawn triangle. Before trying anything with the rock, she decided she would write the “spell” on the ground. She switched on her mana sense, and while focusing on the rock flying exactly two feet off the ground and staying there, wrote the letters L-E-V-I-T-A-T-E around the circle so that the letters were arranged starting with L at the top of the circle, and ran clock-wise around the circle, the spacing between each letter roughly equal.
If the rock wasn’t yet levitating at this point, Asteria would put her paws down right next to the drawing, stare at the rock, and quietly mutter “Levitate, levitate, levitate,” trying out different intonations and tempos, occasionally moving her paws around the circle just as a fortune-teller might with a crystal ball, to see if any of the variations had any notable effect besides the simple one-minded focus on the rock and it levitating. All the while, she’d keep mana sense on just in case the skill gave her any pointers regarding the spell. She’d keep this up until she either succeeded or ran out of mana.
After that, Asteria dedicated the rest of her time before going to sleep to physical training exercise. For this, she simply wrapped her tail around the rock and did the weight-lifting again. After all, it was that simple exercise that had prompted the system to give Asteria a progress notification. In fact, as far as she remembered, the only other thing that gave her an obvious sign of advancing was trying to stand up on her hind legs back when. After several weight-lifting repetitions and unless she was already too tired to do so, Asteria dropped the rock, then tried the whole bipedal thing again, disregarding the fact that she could get that if she picked what to her wasn’t the most desirable evolution option. Cautiously, she pushed herself to her back two legs, leaning on her tail for support, trying not to flail too much with her front two paws that were left in the air. Perhaps she’d even notice an improvement in her ability to stand from the last time she’d tried it.
Utterly tired after all of these activities, Asteria cuddled up next to Mother Rat, curled into a ball, and did one last thing before letting herself sleep. “System, I want to review my evolution options,” she muttered. She didn’t know if she’d get to see all the info again or not, but she tried this only because she was curious if there was any more information that there had been initially. If she didn’t receive any other options or new information, she’d settle on the most boring, risk-free, but what she still considered a worthwhile option… “Alright then, grow me up to Adult Dire Rat.”
Dryad
Angela Stewart “The Witness” and Valeria Nicole Alvarez-Knight
Warning: Switching POVs
Proceed at Your Own Risk
It was a lovely spot I’d found myself as I watched a parade of power and pageantry from the middle 1870s. I guessed at the time period based on the fact one of those powerful men I saw was W.F. Havemeyer and he looked as if he were in his third term by his age. Then I heard it, a voice from the now and they were addressing me, at least I thought it was me; "Hey there, I’m new here. Name’s Valeria. How about you?"
So I focused on the now, making that dream world I’d been observing fade smoother than a Hollywood transition to the the modern day. I had been in the old world, in what I called my fallback, and coming back to reality made me foolishly gasp so the pretty coffee-with-cream woman might think I was startled, which I was. You see, when coming back to the now, I get swamped briefly by the life force of the world.
"Oh, hello, Valeria, it's my third visit but Derrick said the other two didn’t count because I didn’t talk to anyone more than 30 seconds." I just blurt out like she knows who Derrick is, and only while dwelling on how spacey I must sound do I realize I didn’t say my own name, so once more I rush headlong into making a case for the Space Ace I must seem to be.
"Sorry, my friends call me Angie, Angel, but the girls at MCDougal's call me Sista Spooky after some comic book hero girl…my real name’s Angela"
I felt my brows raise and a bemused smile form as the woman in front of me gasped, as if astonished someone had approached her at all. "Uh, sorry for startling you…?" I trailed off on a questioning note and listened to her rambling introduction. "Angie it is then," I offered a short chuckle and hoped it came across as good-natured rather than awkward or nervous. I’m usually perfectly fine chatting to strangers, but I have to admit Angela here had thrown me for a loop just a bit, scattering some random info at me like you’d see a lonely retiree do with breadcrumbs to pigeons.
"Derrick’s a friend? Does he come here too?" I asked, letting my gaze flit from male to male briefly. As soon as I did, I realized that if he were there, Angie probably wouldn’t have been standing by her lonesome. I could smack myself, the idiot that I was.
Then, eager to find out more, I couldn’t help but shoot the question I’d been itching to ever since Angela introduced herself. "Why spooky?" There it was, the chance to find out what kind of freakishness the other folk got going for them. I know I sounded overly curious, but that was the real reason I had decided to visit. I didn’t want to be by myself in the weird corner, trying to figure out if I was crazy or not and which would be worse.
"Well that’s because of my talent, I can look into the past and I help the police solve capital cases. Mostly though, I work Lost and Found, pets, jewelry, children, and people with special needs. The spooky part of my talent is when you walk down a sidewalk, you see the scenery and the now, me I see what has happened there before and it's usually the bad stuff.
Lot of murders in this city and they leave lingering traces I don’t even need to focus on. I can’t walk within 5 blocks of the Towers." I told her then realized I hadn’t told anyone but Derrick about the Towers.
Or the Burning of the Normandie where the Port Authority Passenger Ship Terminal; this city was filled with stories and for me, they were all there to Witness.
"Oh, holy fuck!" I exclaimed. There was only one thing the Towers comment could refer to. "You get to see the bombin’ live when you get too close? Fuck, girl, I only remember some from the TV and the panic back then was huge…An’ here I thought I had it rough," I whispered that last sentence to myself, now torn between relief that, Hell, yeah, this abilities shit was something others dealt with too, and guilt that I could feel anything positive-like at the messed up fuckery Angie had to be going through daily. I couldn’t even begin to imagine seeing murders every day, and what was worse, not getting to do shit about them.
"Damn…I bet you get to spend a lot of time in the past if you can’t control that BS, huh? Shit, I don’t know how you handle knowing sick murdering fucks are out there and then don’t get to catch ‘em all. Hell, I get pissed just thinking about it. Or maybe you’re like one of those noir detectives, all hardened and tough, calm and analytical but all bitter," I pondered loudly, then realized I had just spewed out whatever came to mind, and might have been rude. I can’t always tell.
But since I thought speculation like that could probably get on someone’s nerves, I apologized best as I could. "Hey, just shut me up if I get too pushy, I just never met someone like me before this, obviously, so uh, yeah, here I go rambling again." I gave Angela a chagrined grin, briefly looking away and down from her, making as if I had to put one of the short black locks of hair outta my eyes in what was pretty blatantly a nervous gesture. Man, that would be just my luck (Manners, Valeria Nicole I could hear my mother’s voice ringing in my head) alienating the first person I’d talked to here.
Strange, she focused on my nickname Sista Spooky. But then, maybe that would be normal for most people.
"It’s something I’ve had time to get used to, my first manifestation was when I was 9 years old. I put on a jacket belonging to Sally Fisher and suddenly her mom was hitting me and I was in Sally’s house.
It was the teacher that became my problem because she thought I’d cracked and so did the of administrators at the school so they called an ambulance…… sorry I was rambling about the past." I said, realizing I was about to tell this woman I’d just met my life history.
"I know people think I’m strange, and it's not far from the truth, I am weird. I suppose it comes with being gifted." I was going to say more, but was suddenly caught off guard by a wolf running through the alleys of a neighborhood.
I have to admit, Angie's answer only confirmed my suspicion, or should I say rambling association, that the PI fit the noir detective stereotype to a t. Though...she did tell me yet more about herself. At this point, I couldn't tell if that was just some kind of a habit of Angel's or if she felt somehow more comfortable speaking to me than she would have to someone else.
"I don't mind you sharing, it's interesting stuff, yo." I encouraged her after she apologized to me. Then she said she knew she was weird so matter-of-factly, I immediately felt a renewed wave of guilt, coming and going like a slow tide playfully crashing into my shins. I ignored the feeling though, since Angie didn't seem to mind, much. "Oh, never-mind that. You know there's that saying, what is it...It's a normal reaction to an unnatural situation? Something along those lines. If you were all chipper and excited even with all the bad crap your power gets you, that would be weird," I reassured her.
We were still standing around, chatting to each other, when Dr. Slate started the meeting. I suggested we move to sit down, and we found two seats next to each other, intent on continuing our conversation. I introduced myself when it was my turn to do so, but Angela didn't. I wasn't sure if she was still there with the rest of us. She'd gotten that far-away look again, the same kind I saw on her before I greeted her. Was she seeing a memory of something right now? Should I do anything or was just waiting fine? On an impulse (probably a stupid one, but we can't all be perfect), I touched Angela's shoulder, saying "Hello?" as I did so.
While I was fluttering in Fallback, Val touched me and was drawn in; the scene I was watching was of a Wolf chasing a cat, but the former did not seem interested in eating the cat, and was instead simply enjoying the chase.
I felt relaxed at the scene, my expression neutral right till the moment I noticed Val and became concerned.
"Val, you are touching me, and if this all is too much for you, all you need to do is remove your hand or back up if you are touching me with any other part of your body."
As soon as I touched Angela, I thought I had somehow relocated back outside, only this time without my warm jacket, wearing only the - awesome but not winter-proof - tiger-print hoodie. I had time enough only to think that the cold I was feeling probably couldn't be countered by any clothes. The next thing I saw was a wolf chasing a cat in an alleyway. I don't think the wolf was me (hadn't I mentioned? I get to wolf-out as part of my superpower). It was quite the pleasant scene, but Angela grew concerned as soon as she saw me. "Nah, it's fine, for now. But thanks for the info," I said, flattered at her concern for me. I blinked a few times as I caught the never-ending darkness, a gaping abyss of nothingness behind her, and admitted (if only to myself) that her concern might have had grounds enough. But I wasn't about to get scared of something so simple.
I wanted to reassure her again, but Angela seemed like she wanted to say something else. However, she only let out a sudden high-pitched shriek. It may have been a short one, but I was alarmed at once. I saw her eyes rolling back, her body sag, and before I consciously realized what was happening, I moved to stand behind Angela on instinct to support her body weight as she fainted. She was pale - sickly so. Equally concerning was the scene shifting. It was jagged, as if someone from the outside had suddenly teleported us to a cave, physically and mentally.
I knew that we were actually in a cave because just as we arrived, I caught Slate's statement that we were all in some kind of a mental simulation. I wasn't a fan. "Oh, fuck this effin' BS, man, you don't do goddamn' crisis-situation team-building with a bunch of strangers," I grumbled to myself. Then I hefted the still unconscious Angela over my shoulder's in a fireman's carry, and followed the potent people scent, not at all bothered by the lack of lighting. I could easily enhance my senses even as a human if I wanted, but I had to imagine being a wolf without actually shifting, so it took pretty much all my concentration - and I still wasn't able to prevent both fangs and claws from popping out, so anyone who looked close enough would see the weirdness. Changing fully into a wolf would have been simpler, but then I couldn't carry Angie.
Eventually, we made it to where most of the others were gathered in a place that had some freaky worms instead of lamps or even torches. Some of the others were panicking, some were both rude and trying to order around, and there was even a talking cat. I wondered if it was a shape-shifter like me. "Heya, Ya'll. Don't you worry 'bout no monster, I can fend it off while you figure a way out. Someone'll just have to carry and keep watch over Angie here as long as she stays unconscious," I said, slurring my words a bit through my elongated front two fangs, the woman I was referring to still out of it and lying across my shoulders.
@SimpleWriter Hey, edited the details so it should be clearer that the wyvern had been a tamed one before, and was just without an owner (what I'd originally intended either way, but hadn't conveyed properly). I hope the CS is alright now?
Garter
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