Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2012 23:14:40 GMT -5
Winter. Having had her first experience with true cold, A’kana did what any Islander might.. she locked herself away in the cottage and at first didn't come out. Sure, there was the possibility of retreating to warmer climates, but the only place she knew was Ale’vine—and she hadn't the control to go there. Not yet.. if ever. No, even covered in a blanket of ice and white, the Pincer Lake cottage was far more appealing than her homeland. Over the course of a few weeks, she'd played a bit of a shut in, aside from a few trips out for Girard and training to at least keep herself going. She'd invested her mind in crafting, until it nearly because all she did. Until her bobbles, armors, weapons and whatever else she'd crafted hung across the walls on hooks, dangled from the fixtures and dried near the ember-filled hearth. The cottage looked more like a crafting studio, of sorts, than lived in, truthfully. Even the bed was covered in finished armors she'd intended on selling. Where did she sleep? Or did she? It sure didn't look like it, what with the clutter from her business. She'd been building up her own clothing an armor, too, considerably so.. going so far as to enhance the lot of her reinforced armor with defense against the cold. She looked to be simply driven, reserved, focused.. but was very much a wreck beneath it all. Nobody needed to know that. Nobody did. On this particular day, with the skies gray and large flakes slowly falling, the cottage was alive with a fire. Smoke curled out of its chimney and the windows were fogged and puffing out a steam of their own, scented in clove. Within, she sat near the hearth, working a thick needle through leather. In her leathers and boots with dark hair woven back into itself, she sat quietly and focused green eyes on the task in her lap. There was nothing but quiet.. it was, in a way, consuming.
Every lesson in this life is learned in it's own time, in it's own way, and depending upon the recipient of the lesson it may have to be repeated several times over before full understanding can ever be achieved. There was one fractured and tormented soul that had now twice learned the lesson his life was meant to follow. The first, was back in the frozen kingdom in the north. Back in Alzorc. Where he had lost his child, his wife, his home, even his full control over his actions and his thoughts. The second had taken place down in the warmer lands, the kingdoms of the Svek. The players upon the fate's board had been changed--save him--but the game was ever the same. That brutal reminder that reached down into fabric of his being and drew out any of the goodness he had hoped had fostered in his time away from the north. With her other had, those wicked sisters pulled forth the darkness within him. Bringing that wicked entity beneath his flesh back into the light and eye of Sverrir. Allowing for it to rein more over the actions than the man. The result was that Fenris had closed himself off. Shutting himself away from everything but hard labor, bloodshed, and drink. His face, already hard as the stone of mountains distant, took an even harder edge. Each line and angle in his face appearing to have been worked with chisel and hammer. Those beryl eyes no longer held a hope for peace and calm. They boiled over and ran wild with hatred, with rage, with pain, swirling around like pools of liquid metal as he cast that raptorial gaze upon those around him. Dressed in clothing not suited for winter; a tan shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, deep brown trousers held up by his leather belt and tucked down into the tops of those near knee high leather boots. Upon each meaty forearm was a leather bracer with the emblem of a stag's head, upon his right pointer finger was the thick runic ring and emblem of Sverrir, his god, and around that bull neck hung a simple leather band with metal tree emblem. Even now as the wind whipped and jerked at him, as the waters lay frozen, and snow drove down to land upon his shoulders, in his shaggy hair, or upon the beard now grown upon his face, he showed not one sign of the cold effecting him. Those booted feet tread without pause over ice and through snow. Never more did he look more the northman. Never before did he look more savage and primal. There was an air around him, one that promised a painful and bloody death to any that crossed him. He was a feared man, a Named Man. His brutally violent reputation now even reaching down into the streets of this Svek ridden kingdom. He moved down a path he had taken some time back. When he had sought to find the aid of others and go hunt the jungles of the island for vengeance. That tragic day had finally thrust what little control he had back and away. Not only did he suffer through the traumatic ordeal with A'kana. But he had found out that those that had killed his clan, had not been killed completely. He had missed some and like an open wound, they festered and spread, now stronger than before. Those Primal Six of the Svek, were weak and cowardly, and full of pity and sorrow for their people. They whispered and hinted and guided through fine working of divine miracles. Those of the Alzorc Pantheon, worked in different ways. Hardship, torment, abuse. Those were the ways in which they taught. You learned to listen and respond or die. And so this Named Man had taken the repeat of his past as his lesson. He was meant for naught but bloodshed. The songs sung 'round the fire and in the tavern in Alzorc boasted of The Bloodied, of his savagery, of his ruthlessness, of his ability to deal death. They never spoke of his charity, his kindness, his care for others. It was time he cast himself back into that which he truly should have been. Closing upon the cabin door, he tilted his head to one side. He knew he had to at least say where it was he was gong, and maybe even why, but the words needed were lost in the chaos of his mind. So instead he stood there, like some fragment of mountain set into the earth before the cabin, just staring at the door.
With it being so quiet, the crunch of snow beneath one’s boots was pretty hard to miss, especially in the near-echoing location that was the frozen lake. Hardly anyone lived out this way. That was the charm of the place, at least it was initially. Now? It felt partially like a prison.. or place to which she'd been banished. She had nothing, now, but the crafting going on around her. At first, Kana figured Girard was coming to visit, to perhaps tell her more of Zyon and the eventual spring travel that would come. She'd go, if not only for an excuse to get out of the cottage and help the one friend she kept. It wasn't quite apparent if the minstrel was a friend or a toy she simply liked to bat around the sparring ring, but hey—it was good for her in some way or another. When she heard the thumps of movement just outside the door, the stitching was placed to the side arm of the chair as she stood and crossed that way. He'd likely hear the movement nearing the door, the sounds of the locks as they came apart with one chain clanking down along the surface of the door. The knob twisted and the feline’s deep green gaze slid out as the door opened partially—then froze. Pupils focused on the massive man standing there, staring back at him with a silence all her own. It'd been some time since Kana had laid eyes on the Northerner. The last time? He was walking away from her, directly after she'd been nearly gutted and left for dead. The last time… when she was left to rage and mourn and drive herself crazy with all that had been dealt them. He might have looked different, but she knew the color of his eyes better than any other hue in the known world. The first expression that touched her tanned face was hurt. It leaked out between the defenses she'd put in place, and while no one else could pull that reaction from her, he certainly could. A snap second later, she growled lowly and turned from the door. It was left halfway open through her walk towards the kitchen… a measure of distance so short, though it was enough of a walk to feel the anger bubbling up the back of her throat, tightening it enough to feel the need to swallow at it roughly. Busying herself with stacking up a few of the armored vests she'd made, Kana didn't look back directly.
Those hard and furious orbs held nobody in different light than the rest. The entire world, and those above and below, was privy to that gaze of open hostility. Those with a wealth of knowledge from books and tomes spoke of the eyes as windows to the soul. If that held true, the soul of the northman was consumed by hellfire. for looking into his gaze was akin to staring at the fires and coal burning within a smithy's forge. Past his predatory gaze, two hands worked in different fashions. One tried to still and clam his thoughts, his emotions, his wants and needs. The other worked furiously to shake them loose, to drive him to action, to force him into rage. In the end, it was not Fenris that had won the duel beneath the flesh, it was, and always had been The Bloodied. In a voice that was not his own, this one even deeper, more menacing, and with an acidic rasp to the end of those Zorcan accented words. "I will be leaving. I am going back to the north. There are scores that were left unsettled, blood debts still unpaid." To The Bloodied, all debts must be paid. No threat or act done against him was to remain without reaction. The matter in the north trumped anything that would take place below the land he called home. For it had come first, it was the gravest action done against him, it was what had driven him all these years. The slight growl from A'kana was ignored. She was prone to letting that feline shine through, so he took it as just that. The last time he had seen her, she was angry and wounded, but ambulatory and healed by her own magic or natural ability. He had meant to come back within the hour from when he parted her company, to go to the islands and hunt. Yet, those wicked sisters, all three conspired against that it seemed. For a piece of his home came forth from the darkness, showing him that his old debts were still left unpaid. Showing him that once again, The Bloodied was needed in the north. A place, that perhaps he had learned in time, he never should have left.
Peripherals at least kept their watch of the Northerner in the door. Whether he stepped in to the crafting insanity of a cottage or not, she did not look back his way. The rage in his eyes pushed her off. It made the woman who loved him fearful of him, quite honestly. Perhaps it was intended to do this just. At the same time? Her own anger and rage still lived deep in the woman’s chest. Yes, she knew how to handle it enough, at least to the extent that I’a had taught her, but that didn't mean it couldn't grip her in certain times. Times like this. Angry? Yes. Wounded? Still. But the wounds remaining, at least one of them, had come from the very Named Man in that door. When he spoke of leaving, she nearly smirked, huffing and shaking her head some. She knew nothing of wicked sisters or what had transpired over the month or more he'd been gone. Just GONE. That was obvious enough with the sudden landing of a 6” dagger in the door frame near his head. The movement was quick. VERY quick. Much more than Kana had been capable of before. There was more to her now—something far more formidable. “You are leaving.. Now.” Nails curled from her fingertips, being used to grip at the counter before her. Finally, her eyes went back his way. “You come here to tell me you are to leave.. when you haven't been here at all?” Her Common was much better, too. “You take me in to your arms, you speak of how I am in your heart—unable to escape it, DOOMED! And after all those lies you find the kindness in your chilly chest to stop in here and give me a line about leaving.?” The infuriated way to her started to show itself more, and finally her green eyes shone with it, too. “Blood debts.. fine.. I get it.. but what about me? You just drop me and consider me dead because I failed? Am I not good enough any more? Am I no longer worth anything at all…?” Finally there was a glassiness in her gaze then, and it made it necessary to flat out turn away from him. “Go. Thank you for reminding me how alone I really am, Fenris. Though really.. you could have least done me the mercy of letting me die on that beach.” The next second had her teleporting up to the next level, to the room and loft she never much used anymore.
The knife slamming into the carpentry of the doorframe had him turning his head to the still quivering length of metal. Brows lowered down to cast deep shadows over his eyes, masking them in darkness. One of those thick and perpetually bloodstained hands reached up and pulled the blade from where it stood embedded. Grabbing the flat of the blade with one hand and gripping the handle with the other. Leather like flesh creaking slightly as he adjusted his grip, the muscles beneath his shirt coiled quickly as he applied pressure. The sharp and painful CRACK [/b]of metal echoed in the silence between them. Opening his hands he let the fragments of the blade fall and clatter to the floor. The weapon broken in that icy grip as if it had been nothing more than dried kindling for a fire. Tilting his head upwards from where the blade had landed she could see his eyes fully. That shift in their depths whole and consuming. The hatred, the anger, the pain, all of it was gone. The look in his eyes was something only the dead had. When the life had gone out of them, and when they care for nothing anymore. One had to be realistic, no words could ever make right the things he'd done. The words rumbling past his lips distant, as if coming from beyond the grave. If ever she thought he had that second half, that wicked nature beneath, now she would be convinced. The figure in her doorway was not Fenris. Not in body, not in word, not in any aspect that would have been considered even human. "There are corpses that still walk. They will be thrown back to the mud. After them come those Svek in the islands." There was more that needed to be spoken. More words should have came forth. Yet, they could not. The side that wished to speak them silenced and bound beneath this ruling entity within him. This other half. This side that until now.....maybe she had not known was his true self. A'kana had not failed. she had not let anyone down. She was not at fault. One did not blame the blade that cut into one's body, for it was the hand that dealt the blow that needed to be punished. The Named Man in the doorway stood, seething with the promise of violence in her door like a storm on the horizon. One that those baring witness could see would wash out their homes and destroy their lives but could do little to stop it's ways. The words of others had fond his ears as he readied himself to head north. They spoke of A'kana in the arena and on the roads. Of how she was with company if only in short bursts. She was not alone. A low and deep growl echoed down in his thick chest as he turned from the door and stepped back to view the cottage and the frozen lake, perhaps for the last time. The Bloodied could smell it riding the frigid winds of winter, that sickly sweet smell of blood. The faint metallic odor arousing his want for vengeance. Looking down to his hands he saw that a shard of metal protruded from his palm. Bringing it up to his mouth and biting down upon it, he pulled it free and spat it upon the ground. His hand balling into a fist and forcing thick droplets to stain the white snow in crimson. His time in these southern lands had come to an end. There was nothing left but to leave them and return to the north. To rip the life from those that should have never risen again. Back to the struggle and the war he had left behind. Perhaps this time, the tales sung after would speak of his return to the mud.[/color]
It wasn't that she didn't see the change in him—but if it was fully not[/u] Fenris driving his body and thoughts, then what prompted the Northerner to stop there at all? He had to be there in some semblance, and it was to that semblance that her anger had been directed. In the same sense, Kana had been mated to all of this man, no matter the sides. She knew there was a darkness to him. She’d accepted it.. but just as any silly female might think, she believed she'd connected with him deeply enough to be loved by him. To be able to be loved back. It was her naivety. All the words left unspoken still let the blame of it all sit on her shoulders. That'd never go away. The anger in her continued to built up in that loft, hearing what little he'd said.. what little justification he gave to any of his actions.. what little feeling he had. None of the feeling, actually. When he turned to survey the cottage and lake, he'd hear her in some fashion. “The islands are mine. You stay away from Ale’vine. If I matter that little to you, then the fates for those people should matter even less.” The words did not come without action, though. No, he'd get a solid push from behind—a magical surge of strength that shoved the chilly air around them behind the Northerner—casting him out and off the porch in a way that lifted his frame in the breeze of it. Kana dropped to the door way right after, sneering with her slightly serrated teeth. She walked directly for him, calling to the earth around the pair of them to pack in hills of frigid snow and mud in an area three times as large as the sparring ring he'd build—the one not far away from where they stood just then. “You threw it all away. Threw me away..” Another shove of wind went his way, and another, the hands lofting each gust now lengthened with black claws. Tears streamed her cheeks, but that was the only betrayal to the rage in her eyes. “I LOVE YOU.. YOU FUCK.” Another gust, shoving him towards the lake. He might have grown in strength, but she'd grown equally in her control of the elements.[/color]
The gusts of wind blowing across his back only elongated those steps taken by his legs. His teeth closing together tightly as he felt himself pushed and forced further away from the cottage. Her words cut down across his flesh like sleet driven down by cruel winds. Rolling his shoulders and lowering his head as he marched away from the place that at one time would have been his home. As the walls of earth and snow rose around him, blocking his path, he turned back towards the source of it all. Magic. How he hated it. Down to the very last strand of his being he felt it was a coward's tool. Used only by those too weak and too cowardly to go and stand before their enemy. Those unwilling to get the blood upon their own hands. Those that had not the ability to drive away those that would do them harm with their own arm. Magic. It was what had brought so many bad tidings to his life. His upper lips curling in disgust and anger as he looked back upon A'kana with those dead eyes. Lifeless orbs watching as she neared him with claws exposed and the elements whipping around her under her command. Love? What a foolish concept. Twice he had thought to place faith in it. Twice he had everything ripped apart. Love did nothing to harden your resolve. It served as no brick to stay the hand of an attacker. It offered no shelter from the world or it's wicked ways. All it served to do was offer a weakness, a chink in the armor, a hole by which any could slip past and wound you. One flick of his eyes to the ring around them before falling back upon the woman. "Drop your wall spellbender." The phrase was no request, no plea, no offering to let things stop before actions too far in either direction were to be taken. It was spoken in a tone that reflected the lack of....everything in those eyes.
The bad things now included Kana, perhaps. And to think, at one time she was the only magic user he trusted. That feeling was gone, evidently, along with the rest of his heart. Her heart was still very much there, though, stepped on by the Northerner’s boot and crushed to leather beneath his heel. A cowards way might well have suited some magic users, but Kana had no qualms walking straight for the big man, nails and all. She’d plenty of blood on her hands. He knew that, too. Using her hands to signal in the ways they used to.. when love was not a horrible concept.. Kana went back to the basic of what he'd taught her. Her hand balled, curling its own nails into its palm, and she beat at her chest once. Hard. “I am your mate.” She glared at the term he'd put on her. Spellbender. The winds started to follow the upper line of the wall, around and around in the circle placed there. “I will drop the wall when you tell me you never loved me.” Still, she walked his way, her brows bent together.. her heart in her stomach.
The Bloodied stood there for a moment, as if frozen by the elements running wild around them. The signals she made with her hands twisting and shifting were lost to him. He only recognized them as gestures and not the threatening beginnings of a spell. There were many things that The Bloodied knew of. He knew war, strife, struggle, hatred, rage and violence. Everything else was dead to him. It served no purpose. It held no sway over what happened upon a battlefield. Care, mercy, favor, love, pain, none of it could sink past what The Bloodied had erected. His posture well beyond menacing as shoulders hunched and his fists cracked as he balled them white knuckle tight beside his waist. Tilting his head down to cast waves of darkness over his features, his voice sounding like something from beyond the grave. "Drop your wall."
“You drop yours.” And she still continued to walk at him, appearing fearless as she made her way through the horrible snow, in the boots he'd bought her. The elements did not subside, winds still twisting around the wall, starting to pick up snow to whip around with them. The whole of it pushed and pulled at their clothing, whipping her hair out behind, off to the side and eventually to lick at his chest. A’kana walked right up to him, stopping inches away if he did not pummel her off from him, and with endless green eyes stared into the void above her, the twin beryl eyes that once held so much more. She didn't add in anything more to that.. aside from rising her mouth to his. It was a soft, excruciatingly gentle thing touched across by a warm tear that had descended to the line of her lips. The kiss might well have went to the dead side of him, but it wasn't for him. It was for her. If he let her get that far.. if he did not crush her to the ground, he'd find the kiss to end slowly, with her turn slowly.. the magics falling in defeat.. to walk back towards the cottage.
Alzorc was separated from the other kingdoms by a wall of mountains so high and jagged that their tips were forever covered in snow and ice. Only in the warmest of summers would the mountains passes ever be thawed enough to risk the still dangerous travel over them. For all their danger, for all their height, for all their menace, the walls thrust up by The Bloodied made them appear as nothing more than lumps of earth. So thick and so harsh was this entity that when she touched him she could feel it. Her lips touching down on what appeared to be flesh, but felt--in all aspects--like winter set to human form. So cold and hard was he that for a moment she may have feared her lips would be frozen upon that stoic mask of a face. Her actions had not been threatening, she offered no sign of violence, so he just watched her come, touch upon him, and part. Leaving him standing in the snow watching with eyes that were not his own at the form of the woman. A flicker of something passing beneath that iron control The Bloodied had over the man. Something that had not the ability to rise to the surface. Turning towards the north, those long legs reaching out one step at a time, the Named Man moved towards what may be the last fight of his life. Stalking off to vanish in the white swirls of wind carrying snow that had begun to fall even thicker now upon the lands.
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