Onine/Interlude01
There was a certain freedom in flight, a way to escape creation, to escape the hardships in a way that only the birds could. Wings were something every soul had and all they needed was license to soar and for most, the anchors were simply too great. Some saw love as the ultimate freeing of the anchor, and the more morbid saw death as a way to cut these tethers. No matter, every man and every woman had a different goal at heart that would cast off the anchor, it was just a matter of finding it in this, this age of sorrows. As tranquil as the metaphor was, real wings worked just the same, the orichalcum lined feathers took purchase upon the night air taking Leith higher into the sky. She relished the wind through her hair in one of the few times she could truly savour it without dodging the arrows of Alphaeios' wyld hunt. Speared by an ash-shafted arrow in retreat was an end that sent familiar shivers down her spine. She shut the thought out of her mind and swooped downwards toward the darkened mass of hoop-pines that waded in a sea of night fog. Diving like a silent dart, she pulled up at the very last moment, confounding the points of the trees that reached up at her like daggers. Pulling up, she lowered herself carefully between the pines with great flaps of her magical wings, sinking out of sight into the soupy fog.
Leaves and undergrowth upturned themselves and whirled about in a maelstrom as the gusts from the wings freed them from the ground. With one last flap Leith landed neatly on the wet forest floor, the wings folded up against her back and faded from view leaving nought but a few stray feathers on the ground that gleamed in the pale moonlight. She ran her gloved hands through her hair and took a deep breath of fresh mountain air.
Leith looked down and straightened her clothing and growled with anger when she saw a familiar shape hanging from the childs' jacket. With an angered snarl she siezed the arrow and tossed it aside as if it were a loathsome serpent, ripping more of the jacket's worn fabric as she did. She had been careful - she was always careful - but inexplicably that Air aspected nutcase kept showing up snapping at her heels, and she would spend another few hours dodging and swinging at his Immaculate's lethal arrows. Leith was no fool, she knew that there would come a time when her luck and ingrained anathema powers would fail her and the Immaculate monk would strike her mark. It was only a matter of time.
But for now, the solar was safe.
She opened the small pack and took out a familiar fabric wrapped bundle. The hilt. She held it in her hand and pulled away the grey silk revealing the portion of the daiklave she had wrested from the dragonblooded. She held the massive daiklave's grip in both hands, holding it up in the moonlight, admiring its familiar shape. It was not *her* sword, but she would find the man it rightly belong to. She had to.
A flap of wings in the forest and a sudden cold stillness in the air shook her from her musing and sending her heart thumping at a breakneck speed. Even the night crickets had ceased their monotonous chirping. Leith silently and quickly concealed the hilt and drew out the battered and chipped hook-sword. It was damaged from knocking aside essence charged arrows, and the grip was still charred from her encounter with that Dynast fire aspect. The curved tip had broken off in one of the many encounters and she no longer remembered when. It was simply missing now - either way, it would still kill if she put it through someone.
Pulling the swirling night-blackened essence around her, Leith did her best to cloak her presence and pressed her back against a nearby pine her ears keening for another noise, her eyes darting across her fog shrouded surroundings. She considered taking to flight but there was a chance they would find her easily with the bright show of golden essence that accompanied it. No, if it was the Hunt, it was better that they never knew she was there. The anathema moved swiftly through the mountain forest, staying as low to the ground as she could, optimising her cover. Her heart danced with all-too familliar fear as she moved, the ambient glow of the moonlit mist swirling around her. The sound of dew dripping through the boughs was almost deafening, though not as deafening as the next noise that assaulted her ears.
Leith almost screamed as the the all-too-close sound of metal hissing across metal echoed all around her and was quickly followed by the thunderous noise of a nearby blow of steel against wood. The anathema threw herself reflexively though none-too quietly into the foliage on the ground, skidding a few meters in the leaf cover and blazing a large bare mark on the forest floor. She rolled to her feet almost instantly, crouched low, blood roaring in her ears.
Nary a few meters away illuminated in a shaft of brilliant moonlight was a curved daiklave imbedded in a tree. The shadow of the still swinging tassle drew black lines in the mist and danced across the ground. The golden blade gleamed in the moonlight. Upon the woven grip sat a little bird - a parrot-hawk perhaps, with feathers of a steely blue and a long flowing pair of peacock-like tail feathers. It watched her silently.
Leith stared into the bird's eyes as if entranced then without warning the small bird took to flight flapping quickly off through the trees, startling her with its sudden movement. The noise of its wings slowly faded. She stared into the misty darkness after it, then turned her gaze on the blade. Whoever had 'placed' it there had done so with enough force to ram the sword so that nearly a foot of blade jutted out of the back of the tree. It was a brilliant familiar daiklave, with a thin orichalcum blade, embossed and ornately paterned in the shapes of birds and long cobalt blue tassle. The hilt was patterned with golden feathers and the empty hearthstone socket seemed to wink at her in the moonlight. She stepped gingerly up to it and gripped the uncomfortably warm hilt in both hands, pulling it free from the pine's trunk with a ringing scrape. The unattuned weight of the blade caused it to drop loudly to the ground throwing up more leaves and twigs as the anathema applied insufficient strength to lift it properly. She cursed and lifted again, hefting the heavy blade onto her shoulder.
This was a *bad* time to try and attune the weapon, she didnt know what was out there, or who. It wasn't the Wyld Hunt she guessed, they would have been swifter to send a javelin at her rather than an orichalcum blade. That thought didn't put her any more at ease, as it opened up a lot more unknowns than she would have liked.
- - -
The clearing had an ancient energy to it, a place that had remained sacred and untouched for untold aeons. Even nature had not seen fit to cover over it, and the trees remained as tall sentinals at its borders not seeking to propagate and spread across the sacred ground. It was an unreal place, each blade of grass an exact length and density almost as if it were a carpet of life. In the summer, poppies would grow and cover the green bed in a spray of bright crimson. That night even the fog had only barely caressed it, a luminous sheen that swam at the ankles, licking at bared skin.
Leith shivered, not ultimately from the biting cold. She had spent nearly an hour she reckoned by the passing of the moon running almost aimlessly in the woods, chasing and being chased by phantasms, shadows and strange noises. She was tired, dragging an unattuned daiklave around even with her physical fitness was tiring. The ordeal had pulled her inexorably toward the clearing which she now edged toward. In the tree above, the blue spirit bird watched unseen. With a barely audible flutter of wings, it soared over the solar and across the clearing and into the shadows in the very center of the clearing.
She followed almost unthinking after it dragging the daiklave behind her, its blade gouging a deep dark trench in the grass. She realised her folly when the shadows began to take form, a form that outstretched its arm for the bird to land. The cloaked form seemed to coalesce out of every shadow, black motes rippling across the ground and through the air like liquid smoke. The figure turned, still only half-existant, the outstretched arm still bearing the bird.
The small bird then dematerialized in a gust of blue air and the dark figure slowly lowered his arm.
Her heart leaping up into her throat, Leith hefted the daiklave before her in two hands, her muscles keening from the effort. Of nearly a hundred questions of varying tact and intelligence, her dumbfounded mind seemed to lock on the most obvious and childishly blunt. "Who are you?" She almost kicked herself.
"I am he who would reshape creation, an instrument of the descending circle." The shadowy man's voice was deep and resonant, though not loud - he didn't need to be. His voice seemed to conquor her. His words reminded her of how she acted around the dragonblooded and she didn't like being put in that position.
"That's cute." she retorted lowering the daiklave only slightly. "What are you doing here?"
"I have come seeking a covenant." The man replied.
"That's what this nightmarish chase was for? A deal? You're insane." Leith said bitterly, raising her voice as anger started to rise in her.
"You are a very difficult woman to track down, and of course I needed to meet you with some distance between us and the Wyld Hunt after all."
"You have my attention." She replied no more at ease. "Now what do you want?"
"I think you know." The man replied matter-of-factly. Leith narrowed her eyes at him not understanding immediately what he meant. What did she have that he could want? A breeze began to brush against the grass and stir the ankle-deep fog about in swirling painted paterns.
"What do you mean, what could I-" Leith swiftly raised the daiklave and aimed it's razor tip at the man's throat. "Never! I wont give it to you!" He was one of them, one of the legions of thieves that coveted the sword.
"Calm yourself..." He said, the golden blade mere inches from him not phasing him the slightest bit.
With sudden inhuman speed Leith darted forward stabbing at the shadowy figure, banking heavily on surprise to offset the clumsiness of the heavy blade. The man was quick too, he stepped back and to the side, trailing black fabric in his wake.
Recovering she swung again, the daiklave singing as it cut low through the air sending plumes of fog into chaos around them. The shadow responded, his hand and arm snapping out of the inky cloak and deflecting the blow with a large and slightly curved medicine man's rainstick. The seeds in the hollowed out section rattling like snaketails in the quiet night air as Orichalcum and Ironwood met.
He held the rainstick in the middle, balancing it almost as if a very sturdy shortbow in font of him. Leith stabbed again with the daiklave and with a mere twist of the wrist the heavy blade was knocked downward into gravity's sway with one end, the other hitting her hard on the side of the chin with its characteristic snake-rattle. Leith nearly dropped to her knees as the daiklave fell, she only barely managed to maintain her grip on it when the point dug into the soft ground.
Stepping on the daiklave now firmly imbedded in the ground he leapt over her, becoming a dark swirling mass as he somersalted over her, the cloak rippling as it followed. He landed behind her, his back to hers and spun to the left cracking her against the shoulder and then spun to the right smashing the rainstick against the side of her knee. The blows rang out for what felt like miles as Leith stumbled away from the man trying to get distance between them
The young solar twisted around and stepped back more, dragging the sword with her. Shaking her head to clear the small black spots that danced in the corners of her eyes she cursed not taking the risk of attuning the weapon. It was far too heavy and her opponant was fast with his strange weapon. She pressed both feet hard against the ground anchoring herself. She held the golden blade behind her poised in the apex of a great backswing, she would have to gamble an all-or-nothing strike to finish her opponent off.
She lunged at him, swinging the seemingly leaden daiklave in a wide arc aimed to slice him in two, but when the blade touched his cloaked form the sudden solid mass of quickly shearing flesh was absent. The blade sailed through him trailing inky-red particles pulling the cloak with it by vacuum alone. The sudden and unexpected yield coupled with the weight of the golden sword pulled Leith forward with the power of inertia and she sailed through the swirling shadow of the man as easily as the daiklave had. Her arms strained and the grip slipped easily from her fingers, flinging the daiklave spiraling to the ground with a heavy ring of impacting metal.
She too was looking to a fall onto the grass, but an iron hand snapped out and gripped a flailing right arm. The man locked it behind her back while the other took the left and hugged it against her upper torso with the first two fingers and thumb while the last two fingers pressed hard against a nerve on her neck locking the solar in a paralyzing embrace. The cloak danced around them then fell to the ground. The mysterious man held Leith there as the disturbed mist slowly flowed back in around their ankles. "I didn't want for violence, I came here to talk, there is much that we have to gain from mutual cooperation if only you will listen! Your soul is always so quick to anger." He hissed quietly.
"Who...are...you?" She wimpered between gasps.
He leaned his head in close and spoke softly in her ear, every word was like the tolling of a great mournful bell. "You know me. You know me, Zanaida."
"Y...you..." She whispered as the sudden terrible realisation dawned upon her, plunging her heart into her stomach. Painful and frightening half-memories rose in her mind too quick to see or recognise, but she knew, she knew who HE was. "I wont let you... have his sword...EVER!"
"But I don't want it, I realise now that it is not my power to wield, nor to restore. Only the Dynasty has the power and the will for such a world-changing undertaking."
"What are you saying?" Leith sobbed trying to will her paralyzed body to move.
"Give the Hilt to the Tepets." He replied simply. The suggestion stabbed into her heart like an affront to everything she was at her core. Give the dragonbloods the blessed sword? The idea smacked of insanity, an insanity that was all too close to her, gripping her in a forceful embrace.
"What?!" She rasped, "No! Never!"
"Yes. You will," The man smiled unseen. "Because I know where the Falcon rests..."
