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Post by Arual on Nov 19, 2010 16:59:52 GMT -5
Whitte placed himself on a bed, and closed his eyes, his weaponry beside the bed where he could easily take it in a seconds notice. He did not talk to Dodger that night, not sure what to say to stop the other man's idea that he was in this whole ordeal with the natives. Despite his own presence, Dodger was happy, not sick, and in a way, it was pointless to ruin the feeling......because by morning, it would be gone.
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Post by Ladd Russo of the Russo Family on Nov 20, 2010 13:54:35 GMT -5
(Longpost is long. ;D)
Devshiva awoke, never remembering going to sleep. Incredibly sloppy. He would have to keep a tighter reign on his feelings if they were going to lead to slips that endangered himself and others. That edge seemed far away in his disgust for such a mindless mistake. His neck and hand ached fitfully from the position he had been frozen in, crosslegged with his back against the unmoving vat of dye. His neck had been twisted down over his chest as he slept, his hand white against his knife. Moving to his knees and pushing up onto his feet, Devshiva stretched the stiffness from his body and began walking to keep it away.
The dawn was only a bit of steel in an iron sky, the village would sleep for a little while yet. A cool breeze ran through the eyeholes of his mask and rustled the towngrasses, still carrying a faint bite of the colder night. It would only get colder as the days lost their length. He smelled blood. With any luck the people here had found proper garb for those two. Their foreign clothes were caked with opportunities for diseases, and mosquitoes were best avoided at all. A bit of water sprinkled upon his hand, and he raised his eyes up to cloudless sky. A fat moon shone proudly, not yet set or not yet drowned by the sun's murky colors. He put his hand to the mask, fingertips sliding across a new wetness and old, soggy rust to the smooth porcelain beneath.
Devshiva removed it, and gored blood glistened in the dim light, lumpy and half-congealed. The breeze tickled again. He smelled blood. Switching the mask to his knifeless hand, he looked into the wind, where a house's door curtains were open. Unidentified emotion gathered in his chest as he went to the door. The smell became a stench. They were lined up nicely, the bodies. Three generations on one floor. A boy, his face had been hacked off, dismembered. Some of the muscle remains suggested he had been alive while it happened. A man and an old woman, similarly afflicted. Their masks were lined up neatly besides their bodies, with bloody flaps of faces placed over them.
The Lady heavy on his shoulders as he toed between them, lifting the man's face so that he could see the mask beneath it. A Worker of Seals' mask. A doctor, a child, and a respected had died here. He laughed softly, hollowly, and felt a hand on his shoulder. Lareg, for all his size, had always been able to move more quietly than he.
"What have you done, Devshivavihsved?" Lareg asked, his deep rumble filled with mirth. Of course. A large hand grasped his, jamming his fingers painfully around the handle of his knife. Of course. He even had a knife in his hand.
The sun had spilt fire across the morning air, and there was screaming. Crying and screaming, the sound of running and shouting. Na-Eri fumbled at their curtains and stood, disheveled unmasked, and blanched at their door, her face wet.
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Post by Señor Sunday Friday on Nov 20, 2010 15:35:50 GMT -5
When Dodger first awakened, he assumed he was dead, or rather he wished he was. His eyes were half-lidded and his body was to heavy and to move and instead his normally sharp hazel eyes were dull with illness and he felt like it was some sort of godsend he hadn't eaten the night before as assuredly he would have emptied his stomach if he had. Pale-faced he slowly eased to look around the room, looking towards Whitte slowly, ever so slowly, his head pounding as if the anvil under some cruel smith's hammer. "Whitte...?" he called out in a groan. It wasn't the worst he'd ever had it... he didn't even have a fever today.
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Post by Arual on Nov 27, 2010 9:52:38 GMT -5
"Yes?" It seemed more awake, alert and concerned than the half asleep dodger, but nevertheless his color had returned and he sat up in his bed. "I heard it too." he mumbled softly. The kid's hair was a mess, sheets somewhat crumpled from flying up out of bed at the sound of the screams. Why didn't he hear? Why couldnt he have sensed this as he slept? Any other time it was possible....but perhaps the sleep was so deep it was hard to hear....he hadn't really had any since a long while back.
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Post by Ladd Russo of the Russo Family on Nov 27, 2010 12:56:25 GMT -5
"You need to come," she sobbed. "Please. My babies, my babies..." She stumbled outside, expecting them to follow, and almost all of the town was out there already. It could be considered suspicious to be inside during this obvious time of crisis, if Na-Eri's words were not information enough to read.
Laughter rang across the muddy town center, cold and cruel. It was from Devshiva’s own mouth, though Lareg’s mirthful smile seemed more suited for it than Devshiva's cold grimace. His arm was being twisted from its socket, held tight against his back to keep him down and pushing his knee into the sinking muck that coated him in splatters. Lareg looked down at him like a ruler, and there was triumph there. Not so harmless after all, Lareg.
"You're sick, Devshiva," the large man told him almost comfortingly, like a purring mountain cat. "Do you need to look at the bodies longer, so that you remember? It may be your last chance."
Light, indigo eyes went to the blood-seeped blanket-wrapped lumps on the walk, past the ring of the townspeople who watched without looking, accused and weeping in silence. He could imagine how he would do it, in vivid, warm flashes of thought, but that was not the same as remembering. Devshiva was not so unsure of himself as that.
"I am not some slinking madman, to draw up blood in shadows of my memory," he snarled, face going flat. Lareg took his chin, pressing the dull side of his knife under his eye with painful force.
"What's that?" Lareg almost whispered. "I see Death in your eyes, Devshivavihsved. For crimes like this, you will not receive the honor of the Eyeless Mask. But you will still have her cut away from you. Tell me, should I push them from your sockets or hack them out in pieces?"
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Post by Señor Sunday Friday on Nov 27, 2010 13:16:09 GMT -5
"Something's..." Dodger hacked and coughed, swinging his legs from the small bed as if they were dead stumps. His eyes didn't move up to Whitte and rather he simply looked towards the door. "Something's off." he groaned, sliding to his feet and falling to a standing position. His hand touched his cheek and there was a trickle of a tear there. He hadn't really felt the emotion too strongly, but it was there and the physical effects were plain to read. "Awful..." he muttered, stumbling to the curtain hanging in the doorway. Gagging once more, he felt bile and water rise up from his stomach and spot the ground in front of him.
(At this moment I am ashamed for I have thought to myself the very words "Oh no! Don't cut out his eyes! A man must see his crime and learn from it, and he must keep his ears as well so he may hear of the horror he had created. Remove his hands so he might not commit such an act again." unfortunately... Dodger isn't that pro-dismemberment)
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Post by Arual on Nov 28, 2010 9:28:50 GMT -5
Whitte swung his legs over the bed, and onto his feet in an instant at Dodger's sudden illness and the words he said. "Blood..." and he cut himself off. He could feel the tension now himself, three bodies. They......they blamed Devshiva for it. Three bodies. "Its the family from yesterday at the inn." That's what he could surmise from the amount of blood in the air, and the loud whispers from his hearing. (he didnt want to know, but he did at the same time)
"Are you alright?"
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Post by Señor Sunday Friday on Nov 28, 2010 10:43:42 GMT -5
"The- no!" His sudden talking sending him into a fit of coughing once more and he began making his way as quickly as possible to the scene, half stumbling the entire way. "The healer! He's-" and once more he hacked and wheezed though before he could finish his sentence. He didn't even seem to pay mind to Whitte's inquisitions about him, the only thing that mattered was that the man, the answer to everything was laying in the mud, dead. They needed to find another healer... but healing magic was a rare breed if it was anything similar here to back home. The proximity to the deed closed didn't seem to much help Dodger as a sweat broke over his bloodless skin and he swayed back and forth on his feet. "There's been..." he wheezed, "Enough blood." wheeze, "Already." A country that allowed such cruelty to live was a dark thing and Dodger didn't like it.
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Post by Arual on Nov 28, 2010 11:28:58 GMT -5
There was the young boy, his father- Dodger's healer, and the grandmother. Only the mother survived it seemed. Whitte's brown eyes widened at the blood, and the sight of his fellow captive. "Dodger's right. If you all are so intent on taking Dodger and I to be judged, then why not him as well? If nothing else, to treat your prisoners more respectably than your own people is a little hypocritical. One would think for a guard yourself, you'd trust him more."
Dodger looked pretty bad, but not as much as he had the first trip on the way here. In a way, he was glad that the other wasn't as poor in health as he was in the past hours. Whitte stood beside Dodger, looking at Lareg and Devshiva. It didnt matter who or what rank the other men were, to accuse someone potentially innocent...no.....to automatically give a person such a serious punishment wasn't right at all.
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Post by Ladd Russo of the Russo Family on Nov 28, 2010 19:07:59 GMT -5
Devshiva's head craned back, trying to escape the hilt driving into the flesh of his socket under the eye, slowly pushing it out.
"He's right," Na-Eri said, crying pitifully at Dodger's words. "Don't do the ritual here. Please, leave. We have had enough of your presence." The townspeople murmured in agreement, casting agonized glances at their dead. Na-Eri noticed Dodger's condition then, worse than her own. "Were you injured too?" she whispered, eyes searching him. He seemed deathly ill.
Lareg removed the hilt slowly at the request of the town, and cast a cruel eye to Whitte as he began to walk. All of the Border Guards barked a laugh at those words, even Devshiva in his pain. A light shone across his eyes as he was hit near- unconscious, becoming limp at one of the women started to drag him away. She did it as if he were a rag doll, dragging him by a thick fistful of his white hair, her hand digging into his scalp mercilessly.
"How little you know of us, Drylander. These are our people, but we are not theirs. Next time, maybe you should take the desert and give yourself up to the nomads and vampires," he said in disgust. But he smiled then, tightly. "But it was Devshiva that wanted you judged. Go where you want to now; I have no problem with you."
"Keeper help us," a woman whispered.
Then they all turned and started to walk away, one keeping an eye on the town from behind.
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Post by Arual on Nov 28, 2010 22:00:58 GMT -5
Whitte's stomach was queasy at the moment he watched the eye come out, not one for such gore if he himself could help it. But he didn't let it show. Dodger was worse now, it seemed, and he couldn't do a thing for anyone. He couldn't force a better justice; not in a land not even his own, not give health to Dodger, nor cure the deaths inside that home. Lareg would not be apprehended- not now.
Could this be true justice here? Whitte was torn particularly because of the words of Lareg......and worse yet, his emotions were high- edgy, because tonight was the deadline. Could he hold himself together? "Dodger.....do you need something to calm your stomach? Are you ill?" Why shouldn't he be with the death and blood that tainted the surrounding areas before them. Whitte's ability to control himself and the majority of these reflexes were slacking, but still strongly gripping his desire to vomit from the smell of the bodies and the plucked out eye. Weakness would do no good here...not now.
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Post by Señor Sunday Friday on Nov 28, 2010 22:32:22 GMT -5
"I'll be fine... we just need to go." the watchdog of Virisea's gates shook his head as he scratched his right side over his ribcage. "They probably still want us to follow..." not that he wanted to, "And I don't want to leave him alone." he motioned towards the group as they dragged Devshiva away. He began on his way before stopping in a somewhat furious huff, "It seems to be I need a bit of help." he muttered, holding an arm up and assuming that Whitte would then position himself to aid in the whole walking and moving about thing. Funny part was that this was far from the worst case he'd had and from everyone's reactions he must have looked awful.
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Post by Ladd Russo of the Russo Family on Nov 29, 2010 20:53:06 GMT -5
Would it be weakness to wish for unconsciousness? Devshiva's eyes were closed tightly, the difference being that the lids of the right eye were closed around the stalk of the eye that hung out in front of them, held to his head by muscle and nerve. The pain was dizzying, burning deep in his head with much greater intensity than the stunning blow across his head. His limbs tingled uselessly, dragging like a ragdoll's. Vision came in shaken dual scene of blackness and scarlet, with flashes of a sickly blue sky and the swamp below streaked with white when his dragger jerked her brutally gripped handle on him. Only hate for Lareg, duty as a Border Guard (in this case they happened to overlap neatly), and dignity kept him from begging for the Lady to walk him away in her final act of possession.
The three of them, did it matter if they believed it or not? He had heard... had heard what Whitte said, what Dodger protested... It had surprised him. The life of a Border Guard was worth less than the ground they walked on; it had to be that way. Three of them, but he would not recover in time to save himself, nor could he kill them if he did; they would best him easily in this state. Lareg, gone, and Adra and Rid, either cunning in their madness or beguiled in turn.
They were outside the sight of town, Devshiva felt the shove of water against his back as he was dropped, submerged, limbs twitching uselessly.
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Post by Arual on Nov 29, 2010 20:59:39 GMT -5
"Dodger." Whitte said, attempting to pull him onto his feet if he wasnt already. "We got to help Devisha. Come on..." There was no other option in his tone, not now. "It's time to go."
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Post by Señor Sunday Friday on Nov 29, 2010 21:17:23 GMT -5
"I know..." he grumbled, a bit insulted that his companion felt the need to explain it, "So stop wasting time." he narrowed his eyes as he half stumbled as quickly as possible though it stood to reason that at this moment he likely wouldn't be the best person to be helping anyone.
(Writer's bloock.)
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