The Fiddler

[Jirai]

"I must confess that I find scarecrows, moving or no, to be utterly uninteresting." She said with a giggle, dark eyes flicking between Waldemar and Elliot. "Nor can I imagine that Elliot Brown finds them particularly interesting. Unless he plans to return to his humble roots, that is." Sometimes the slender dark elf was perfectly controlled. At other times her speech and motions were punctuated by odd pauses or awkward twitches. This had started out as the former but was rapidly devolving towards the latter as the young rogue began speaking again. As he mentioned a child. She glanced over her shoulder at her companion, a pale brow lifted at Roschen as a twist of her wrist produced a flask.

[Suede]

"I believe he has enough things bouncing around in his life like sacks of straw that scarecrows won't appeal much." There is a banal smile for the miller at his recommendations, then a flash of something across his face at the mention of Tsoss being lured off by this fiddler. His eyes drift to Jirai at the same instant she glances at him and he offers her an abashed little smile. "Boys will be boys. I told him to go menace the carnival. It's good practice."

Really it was, and how was he to know some crazy bitty flouncing about would lure him off to who knew what. Before Jirai decided to injure him as if it really were his fault he'd take the cautious root and follow after Elliot and Waldemar, uninvited or not. He wasn't particularly worried, of course not, and he didn't necessarily believe Elliot... but why not, play along, not worrying... just play along... and see what the boy might be up to if it's a lie.

His steps hastened slightly.

[breeevil]

It had already been a bad night.
So when Clayton and his horse are moving down the path to get away from whatever was making it awful.. it, of course, got worse.
Because there is Treadwell.. laying there on the ground. Bleeding.. hurt. Not far off are others.. another horse and at least two people.. he thinks. But they're of no importance to him as, without even stopped his steed from it's trot, Clayton leaps off the beast and runs to his friend.. his brother of sorts.. sliding down to his knees next to the fat.. fat man.
"Speak.." Because that would be helpful. Of course Clayton's not going to panic or anything.. but there is some concern over how he will manage to get Treadwell to the Rememdium. "Brother.. speak." Both of his hands move for the Gluttons face.. cupping his fat cheeks in his hands.

[Treadwell]

Treadwell is covered in his own blood, his sunny yellow robe and floofy white beard slathered in the stuff. His belly has seen a number of devastating cuts and slashes across, filleted open; his right hand and side of his face are swollen horribly, indicating likely damages there--possible breaking to the hand, jaw unsettling or dislocating to the face.

Thus, when Clayton goes to cup the until now unconscious fat man's face and bids him speak, Aloisius is jolted painfully back to wakefulness, giving a jaw-aching, terrified shrieeeeeek!

It takes a few moments for the old man's fuzzy, reddened vision to make out, through the glasses that have somehow remained undamaged, the man whose name he faintly, mousily whimpers, tears beginning to pour down his fat face.

"Clayton. . . ."

[breeevil]

He is strong. But he is not strong enough to take a 600lb man on his back, let alone one who is so hurt. Treadwell's cries.. and his tears.. leave Clayton with furrowed brows and a mildly unsettled stomache.
"Give no one the satisfaction of your voice or salt.. brother." One finger gently wipes away one of the tears, and his head shakes. "We'll fix you. And we will -pay them back-." A nod from Clayton as he kneels by Treadwell.. hands sliding away from the fat mans face so he can glance up and down the path again. "I have to find help or a.. a cart. I can't move you myself without hurting you worse.." Ripping open the wounds.. makign them worse.. moving bones and such.
But he can't leave.. because whoever it was might be back to keep tearing the glutton apart.
There was always whip fingers... but that would mean dragging his brother-of-sorts around in the dirt which seemed sort of.. unsanitary.
"Which way did they go?"

[Treadwell]

Treadwell has no answer for where anyone or anything is at the moment. From his perspective, none of that much matters! A sluggish, exhausted haziness creeps back over the old tub; why did Clayton have to wake him up just for him to experience anew all of this pain?

There Tready lies in the dirt, the music and bustle of the slightly distant fair lost to him at the moment, just as is any idea about going back into the forest to hunt down the likely remains of the children eaten by that other monster that wasn't him.

[Waldemar]

"Your friends have a great many opinions, Brown." Apparently the boy knew them, by name at least. Apparently they knew him, or wished to imply that they did. The miller's tone is quite sufficient to indicate his low opinion of the company the boy keeps.

"The benefit of studying history, Brown, is that it allows one to learn from the past without repeating it. Particularly the mistakes." A lesson continued, then, for all that their pace renders it more succinct than it might otherwise have been. "History is littered with accounts of those who imagined they could grasp the fire without being burned. Who fell, and kissed the first hands that caught them. You might find them informative. They're generally quite short, but really, truly true."

Onwards between the darkening trees, the distant strains of merry music growing closer - overlaid with entirely less wholesome noises. The lecture is set aside for now, the older man subsiding into a stern quiet; grumbling under his breath now and then, the fingers of his free hand restlessly twitching and curling as he walks.

[Glenn]

"Hands that caught me are a lot nicer than hers." There was a little look shot to Jirai, still begrudging her comments. Granted, it might be useful to have Jirai as a matron on some level, but she was a bit too fickle. He had plenty of somewhat fickle women in his life. He didn't need outright insane ones too. "But look," This to Waldemar, even as they'd started picking up the pace somewhat. "My mentor wants me to read more, so how about this. Darkenhold has a huge library. You send a letter to me there with these histories you want me to read. If they have them, I'll read them and then tell you exactly how you're wrong. Deal?" It was the sort of gesture he wouldn't have made a year ago. Now, though? Now he was older and more confident and that meant every single thing didn't have to be so extreme. His back wasn't always up against the wall like it used to be. He was still painfully smarmy, of course.

The music was getting louder and more vivid and he felt a tug that he hadn't before. Mainly, it gave him a headache. Either the music did or having to look at Jirai's nervous ticks without commenting. One or the other. "Shh." The loudmouth thief had suddenly decided to be stealthy. That lasted just as long as it took to reach the maw of the cave and for the youth to peek inside. He had seen his share of terrible things, both real and imagined. They had missed the previous screams. Instead there was Phlynn's chanting as the creature slowly devoured his leg to accompany the gore and the stench and the line of terrified, bespelled children.

In the face of such unspeakable horror and perhaps due to the slight ringing of the song in his ears, Elliot's ability to reason, however meager it may have been, gave way to pure, hate-filled violence. Galacia's talon was still in hand and that was what he charged forth with, wanting no less than to stab this beast a thousand times over, to bloody it and end it and scour the memory of it from this world.

Usually, though, he would have Niall beside him for such an event, Niall or Solena perhaps. Here he had a man who despised him, the most notorious murderess in his life time and a weasel-like tailor who was poison to touch. He charged forth expecting them to be right behind them, expecting that any person with a heart would be right beside him. He did not have such people. Instead he had Waldemar, Jirai, and Suede.

[Carnath-Emory]

They have him. Lured by a dancing pursuit that was nothing but a performance -

look at me, look at us, are we not wonderful?

- and trapped, as all of them have been, by hungers that are not exclusively his own. They might have drawn away by now, after all - this rider and her excellent steed. They might have led him into the forests they know so well, tangled him somehow amidst the underbrush and the sudden ravines and lost him that way, left him to his explorations and doubled back to haul that bleeding mess to the tavern's rememdium. This had begun with sudden intentions of the very best sort, but how quickly they'd fallen away when he allowed them a glimpse of what lay beneath skin and silver and scars.

Picture a Unicorn, the Governor once wrote, and even as innervated Hrimfax wheels about upon rearing hooves, her eyes are all for stretching limbs and the tumble of eldritch smoke. White-knuckled grip upon the reins, close by her shoulder, the other arm flung out for balance's sake, but when the breath comes loose and light in her lungs it's because the heart wants to laugh in sudden, wild delight, and the horse -

The Catch, straightening rampant and tall, breathes wildfire across equine nerves and even in the midst of their dancing charge he shivers, shivers as if to shake free the glossy horse-pelt that was never really his. It is a shuddering tide of skin-deep motion beneath the rider's seat; it is a swell of unnatural muscle between her clinging knees, and the breath catches like a shout in her throat, like a shout and a plea. "No," she's breathed, flattened against the horse's neck and all too aware of the oil-slick gleam of his flesh. "No!" she's begged, through the thunder of his heavy breath and the turbulence of her own hungry steel, because

Picture a Unicorn, the Governor once wrote. Considering Hrimfax, is that a stretch?

[catch]

They stood together, man and horse, in skins not of their choosing. The silver scars kept him from what he wanted, straining against flesh, silver-bronze that pulsed, and bulged, and flickered as tendrils swam. The silver lights in him bled from his eyes, tears of all-colors dripping down his cheeks, off his chin, and where he stood was a ruin of life, burning and sprouting and burning again, the plants and soil roiling like animal-things. As Hrimfax rose, Catch's arms rose, too, and he Sang to the not-stallion, Sang to Airy Ann, devoured by her own steel.

His hands, brown with blood and clotted with loam, the silver scars burning, his fingers boneless, his pads hard as stone, seek the chest of the stallion, his nostrils flare to bring in the spicy scent. To feel the bulge of flight-muscles, short, shining hairs sticking to his hands as leathery skin devours the roots.

No - No!

Catch laughs, entirely without worry, without malice. Nothing but joy.

[Carnath-Emory]

It had never been easy between them. Noble Hrimfax, jewel of House Sleipner, entrusted like a parting gift to a reluctant recipient; of course it hadn't been easy. If there'd been some common thread between them besides a quiet yearning for the General's return, if the one weren't bound in inherited love and the other by breathless fear; even their flaws ran in different directions. She'd had to grow into him, this horse far too large for her, and she did it incautiously, hardly about to fear some bruising falls - and even then, he was seldom her mount of choice. Not even when she wielded him like a weapon against insurgent Janeiro, not even when a change of government had freed him from Meetinghouse stables and made Darkenhold his lasting home. His was an arrogance to rival even her not inconsiderable own, a capacity for violence over which she fretted except that sometimes it was laughter and sometimes it was delight - and when they first rode like they have today, all headlong breakneck speed and leaping those few obstacles they couldn't just crash right through, it could be something other than angry resentment, something more like -

"No," she's gritted near his flickering, heedless ear, "zapret'ty, dolboy'eb; izmudohat' -" A steady grate of sound, pleading and threatening by turn, even as she half-stood in the stirrups and struggled to manage it against the horse's mounting excitement. Like the steel in her veins he is all thoughtless distraction, each restless shift of the heavy body threatening to dislodge what clings to reins and saddle and sometimes hair. Like that silver body rushing hungry within her own, he challenges her ability to restrain, and "No," she breathes, and surely there's no hearing it now, "we do not, we do not do this - "

Catch Sings, and it hits them like a sandblast.

It is a shout through the heart of their world, abrading the senses and thrusting steel and stallion far out of her control. Its answer is the slow creak of stretching joints, the rustle of bristling steel; its rival is a woman's stunned cry, exultant and shocked and very nearly breathless. In the evening's light, dark Hrimfax gleams blackly iridescent, an oil-slick of interlocking scales and articulated tail, for ordinarily he is a horse-shaped thing because he is wanted to be -

But what he never was is a horse.

Catch's hands, boneless and burning, touch to the smooth chest of a thing which is still growing, and in this moment he exists in the shadow of a coiling neck, a maw become aquiline and glittering. Bunched shoulder-muscles are only slowly beginning to flex and she must seem smaller in their midst, for all that the armour has cloaked her in a tumble of bristling steel; she might seem insignificant and at threat if not for the laughter which is bright, bright even within the steel which is her helm. For this is Hrimfax made manifest, and

they never do this, they never ever do this

as he draws to his full height, as the leathery wings stretch slowly from his sides, it is with a roar of basso sound. A roar like a challenge, that resonates through bones and nerves, that churns earth and blisters air.

[catch]

"You are beautiful!"

He finds the human-words, torn from his mind and his throat, as hot air sears his lips, steals his breath away with more than heat. His eyes squint against the power of the bellow, tears and tendrils ripped away in greasy strands about his face. His hard hands burn with the furnace that beats under them, the great belly of the beast, a silver Wonder taken from him, far above. His words are for her, and him, all but lost in the roil and howl of his roar.

The Fiddler is far behind, the Glutton a smear on the ground. It was them, now, just them, and Catch drags his hands from the beast, crouching blindly against the ground, holding great handfuls of it in his excitement, in his pleasure. He Calls back, the commanding peel of Bells, a great, silver sound that should not come from a throat of flesh.

He cannot stop his laughter, even as the dragon-beast makes his blood boil, silver blisters bubbling his skin, bursting in a wet slap of freed tendrils and rippling muscle.

[Jirai]

With the sound of the fiddle ringing in ears, Cat could do nothing but dance. While the fiddle played, even the terror eased (though the urchin never lost hold of that tiny knife) Feet capered along behind the player, entirely a part of that group of children being led to their doom. Until, that is, there are hands shoving, tossing the delicate child out of line, inspiring an angry shout. Cat hit the hard ground, the impact knocking some sense back into that ragged blonde head, though moving away was still impossible.

Legs drew up, feet still itching to draw nearer, the urchin rolled into a crouch as blue eyes watched the strange Phlynn push to the front. This time, Cat was too terrified even to scream. The child kept inching forward, amidst the blood and gory remnants of those who had gone first, a death grip on that tiny knife.

And that was when Elliot Brown charged in.

[Jirai]

There was a long look for Suede, eyes narrowed. That could wait, however. The former councilor moved to follow Elliot and Waldemar while Jirai, irritated now, took a swig from her flask. There had better be something to stab at the end of this, she thought, even if it was only Elliot Brown or perhaps even Roschen himself.

She has no interest in the discussion between Waldemar and the young thief and their words are simply ignored. The music was not, though, irritating as the tune was. The other sounds were more familiar than the music and as the small group drew nearer the dark elf giggled quietly, took a step to the side and vanished from view.

Elliot charged into the cave with Waldemar, Jirai, and Suede at his back. What did he expect?

[Dulcie]

The massive creature made a sickly satisfying sound as it swallowed the girl that had been half dangling from her mouth. The sounds of the child's screams only seeming to draw the beast onward, her mouth mashing and chewing, the blood spurting and splattering against the cave walls.

A child then came lunging through the crowd and the mass would quiver with delight. The eager ones were always so much more delicious, practically leaping into her belly whole. She opened that massive maw widely, eagerly clamping down on Phylnn's offered limbs. Flesh rendered from bone as the blood hit the tip of her tongue.

Almost immediately the creature began to gag. The blood was rotten, bad, not like the sweet, delicious life force of a young child. The gelatinous rolls of darkness began to roll and the beast began to vomit, blood and bone chips sprayed towards those that had come to rescue the children, expelling what was left of Phlynn from her mouth.

The strange child's sacrifice had surprised her, and for a moment the music stopped.