Silver Urn, Silver Armor

[Teron_Ashfiend]

A small urn, fraught with delicate patterns barely touched by rust, swung gently from a stout belt, connected via a pair of slender, delicate chains. The metal links tapped silently against an amalgam of chain mail and steel plates that entombed a towering figure. The figure carried a long, awkward burden over one shoulder and bore up easily beneath the awkward, dead weight.

A silent tread carried him down the stairs of another deserted farmstead whose tenants had been evicted long before he had come. The darkness swallowed him entirely save for the burning slits of narrowed, crimson eyes that beheld the world in various greys to be incinerated beneath his everlasting hate. The world forgotten for the moment, however, he crossed to the well in the center of the floor that descended just over ten feet to bone-dry depths.

As if hoisting a burlap sack, he hefted the awkward figure over the well's lip and, leaning over the side, dropped her down into the dark depths. A distinct crash told him that the prisoner had landed roughly, as anyone would from such a height. But as he peered down into the darkness to survey his captive, he considered that she would be fine.

After ensuring Ariane Emory was laying rather still at the well's bottom, he turned and strode from the basement.

[Carnath-Emory]

In the end, it had all gone so quickly. The inevitable exchange: one urn for one question answered; no, less a matter of exchange than courtesy, perhaps. The inevitable command, a bewildered retreat following it; less a matter of courtesy then, of course. And then some blistering work with blades and lunging limbs, so that they'd showered sparks with each clash of steel meeting steel, and ... how does one fight a thing which travels the night's own shadows?

Inadequately.

A blow across the skull fit to blind her. A grip to the throat fit to murder her. And these eyes, for an architect's own: a gaze which confessed very old fears, very solemn acceptance; very real apology. Just that, before the Ashfiend's own shadow swallowed her whole.


It was hours before she woke, that being the strength of Teron's disabling attack, and it was with no real sense for the passage of time at all; for anything at all, because her world was stubborn darkness, was persistently quiet. Might have feared herself lost to the Ashfiend's shadows still, except that where two senses are smothered, a third must compensate: her world's single immediate feature is the musty scent of old dirt, cold stone.

Reckon her caution by this: that the realisation comforts.

This is how time passes, time which she hasn't the means to measure at all: with such careful explorations as these. The discovery of such close confines that she can hardly stretch her limbs at all. The texture of dry earth beneath her hand, and other things as well: forgotten things, dry and fragile things, as if small creatures had fallen here themselves long ago, and fared far worse than she.

A woman could succumb to some morbidity.
A weapon intends to do no such thing at all.

Time passes, in the discovery of broad stones and the earth lodged between them, and in the examination of simpler things, as well. Things with cool edges, for the Ashfiend had not disarmed her of those. Things that growl with pain; his kick had done real damage to that shoulder, and the fall compounded it. Things that spill from her later like some very misplaced confession, for there are no ears here but hers to hear it -- but there is also the chance that this is not true at all. It is a chance that she likes very well.

"I do yet live," is how she must begin, and she does so with some small, small smile.

[Duquesne]

There is true silence in this place, as if the hoof-falls of this horse had brought the mouths of creatures to close and winds to grow still. No branch loosens its leaves and among those that have fallen, none whisper except what sound hooves make among them. And now boots from a rider who has dismounted to the creaking of saddle leather and small jingle of harnessing, sounds which seem too loud in this quiet.

It is dark here... it is cold in the hours before dawn. Cold so that breath lingers longer in the air, is pale as it emerges and slowly loses itself in the shadows behind him... because he is moving, is taking steps away from that horse who waits.

And it is silent indeed, past what sound his movement stirs. It must be, for what he must do--listen. There can be no present sound to distract, none to anchor him in this cold and dark place, miles from the light and sound of the town and its outlying homes.

Thus, in this open place where shadowed trees are sparing and grass juts, silver with frost, a gloved hand comes up and pinches the brim of a low-drawn hat and lifts it away. He breathes in carefully as he drops it onto the ground beside him and bends once-broken knees, sinking onto them with some measure of marvel for this feat at the edge of his mind. Breath comes out, white and drifting, and eyes that subtly glow with their green close as he bends his head. Closes his mind to all else that can be heard. Dims the sense of cold that his flesh feels, the scent in the air that he smells, that he tastes. It requires time to isolate these, to make them small so that they sense so very little in the end.

And what is left is this sense of sound that has become shockingly acute, that hears sound even amid this silence. This Hearing reaches at first for what it perceives, first the thrumming of his own heart and then the life which travels within the horse nearby. He isolates these and ignores them, pushes beyond the distraction they prove, slowly beyond these trees which look soon to winter, beyond grass which is made yellow by fall and pale in the night's cold.

It requires time to reach through miles, time to sort among the heaviness of some sounds, the delicacy of others. He reaches systematically, isolating one lot of land after another, listening to the broadest things, the smallest, down to the breath of a closing door, the whisper in a bird's rifled feathers. But there is a price for these sounds and the distances at which he reaches for them.

It has begun with mere tension in the spine and inside the skull, grows until it is a pressure that persists with some pain, grows even still until the pounding of his heart's blood is an agony inside his head. And thus in this cold place, sweat beads on the brow and some scarlet leaks slow from shape of each ear, from the shape of each nostril, and is a metallic flavor heavy in the mouth. By this hour, the posture has changed, has come forward in a prayer-like manner and gloved hands are in the grass, gripping it in desperate fists. Breaths come from him ragged and shallow, evident as steam.

And always, there is this thought... this nagging and unwanted doubt--what if he does not hear her. What if he cannot. What if...

The mare's ears turn forward, her brown eyes on the bent shape of her rider as he makes some grievous sound, some pained cry becoming some fighting growl. Fighting to continue, fighting to retain his focus. Fighting, because he had watched Ariane Carnath-Emory stolen into shadows by the Ashfiend and this is all that he has. The only capacity he has at all to help her.

[Carnath-Emory]

"He has sunk me into a well, and that is all I know for certain."

This is how it always begins, for it is not the first that she's spoken these words; nor will it be the last. She has made a mantra of these details, an incessant monologue of her voice throughout all the hours of her confinement.

"My hope is that he keeps me near Myrkentown still. If not there, it must surely be Foggy Bottom or even so far as Heath, and I think... I think that even you might not hear me there.

"I will not waste myself on that fear.

"He's done me no harm, save what was required to fetch me here. This shoulder will slow me a while, just as his svoloch' kick intended it to; the fall has left it useless, a knee not much better. My skull is done with its bleeding, there is only an ache -- "

Such an acute sense, which reaches across the many miles which separate voice from ears. Such a mind which drives it, which refines its focus, and which may have heard the chuckling sound which edged those words then. Might surely have recognised the wry amusement which coloured their sound.

"Ah, mne vzdrochennyi, mne zalupat'; what care have I for these things? These walls, they are not so high; I am sunk twelve feet into the earth, not twelve hundreds, and my hurts are not so much, are so very small. There are worse fates. There are places --

"But do you know, when I woke it was in coldness and quiet, and I could see nothing at all, there was a moment that I thought -- ah, we have no gods, no worlds after this one, yes? So that I woke in this quiet dark, and I thought that I was dead."

Some necessary pause, here: an unfortunate one, in the wake of such quiet morbidity. But there is a scarf which must be unwound from about a scalp that had insisted to bleed and bleed, and a broad wound to be gingerly tested. Her fingertips find damp, stiff hair, and skin still moist; find no free flow of blood at all, and there's wordless relief in that discovery.

"Hah. So I do not fear this, mn? Knowing that there is worse, knowing that this is so very small a hurt; I remember that you -- I do not forget the sight of it --

"I do not fear this. If it was murder he meant, he'd have had it by now. Arak's Ruin, he names that sword, and it was not its edge he wielded against me. He has left me living, he has left me armed, and soon we shall see if knives and gauntlets can scale me this wall. I think that his demand was a falsehood, and for your ears alone, and do you know -- Ah. I told the Governor this once, that he did not know how I may be compelled, and just this night that Teron Ashfiend, he stood there and he turned such a gaze on you.

"He knew.

"But I must be quiet for a time here, you must forgive me that, for I think he has no malice for me, but I do not intend to rot here awaiting his presence. He does not mean harm, but I think he is prone to distraction, and I will not die down here because he has forgotten to feed me, mn? Ah. I hope that you hear these things, I hope that you hear me, that you are not left to wonder -- I know that -- I know you wi --

"Oh, he --

"He comes."


And there is a second voice to join the first, then; there are such things as a voice like sepulchres and a fist that trembles walls.

[Duquesne]

One sound after another and none with the tones of her voice, nor the quiet of her whispers which he has come to learn... nothing of the familiarity of her here.

And the pain deepens. There must be caution for this, as it could worsen into unconsciousness... and then it does.

He judges time by the length of shadows, remembers that when last he looked through eyes that vaguely see, there was some light coming from the horizon, that things had grown blue with the promise of it. The dark was abating then, and now? there is some measured warmth tugging at the edge of his awareness, alongside some terrible cold.

His body feels weighty, though there is so little sense of feeling invested in it from the brain. He knows he lies on the ground, knows he fought this collapse to the very edge of it and then could hold it at bay no longer. But what is strange is this, that he had some dream without images and voice alone. Her voice. And that unconsciousness did not effect his hearing, that it did not retract it but it was kept out-cast on the sounds of Myrken despite his inability to consciously keep it thus. It maintained its own force... somehow.

And so his eyes have come open with this realization, and the realization of pale light, and the realization of her voice. It takes moments for his mind to accept, but in a sudden uncanny boost he drags in a shuddering breath and knows he had heard her in the dark.

He has sunk me into a well, and that is all I know for certain...

Even as he is slow about this struggle of rising, cautious with a weary body, there is some instinct guiding thought, pushing him through the pattern of sound that he had perceived. So that now, even as he comes to hands and knees, he is aware of path he must ride. The instinct places sounds with monuments, offers him some guidance into a direction he has ridden sparsely in the past.

A hand closes about something and enough sense returns to eyes that he sees it is his hat, which he clutches as he carefully begins to stand. Staggers in the beginning, this one. It takes three attempts before he is on his feet. But then his hands are for saddle-leather and a rousing horse, the hat somehow placed on his head though he cannot remember doing so. There is blood on his gloves, the taste of it in his mouth. Between the weak pulling required to mount and the feel of the saddle under him, there is little awareness, half of a remembrance of the fact. He leans in the saddle, leans dangerously forward and yet the lurch of the mare's new steps waken him again.

He understands where to go, where in terms of what sounds are generated by what things, what places. It is a strange kind of map that he reads and only half understands it. His hands tighten on rein and saddle, boot-heels sink their spurs into horse flesh--all he can consider is speed.