Nature to look for things we can use to eat/drink
Calla's normally quick mind is as slow as her plodding footsteps. She is lucky that her pale hooded robe reflects the worst of the sun. Over time her tears dry to a salt crust around her eyes. Soon her mouth is equally dry. Somewhere her trained mind notes numbers of captors, looks for weaknesses or signs of dissent in their ranks.
But her surface mind can do nothing other than walk and endure.
Endurance:
** spoiler omitted **
Jareen watches their captors as they move, looking for the one most likely to respond well, then begins talking to him to attempt to get some water....
The column stops for a brief rest. The land is rocky with canyons leading off in a maze, though the raiders seem to know where they are heading. A few minutes later later, two elves return from behind the pack, dragging the battered form of Arakan under the arms. One of the elves seems injured, and certainly pretty hostile-looking. But he looks better than Arakan, who is covered with crusted blood - most of it seemingly his own. They dump him in the dust with the other prisoners.
The injured elf leans over the half-elf where he sprawls and hisses, "The only reason you are alive is because we get paid for each living slave we deliver, irrespective of condition. After you're delivered, all bets are off." He gives Arakan a swift kick and stalks off.
Arakan coughs, spitting up the blood that keeps finding its way into his lungs, curling fetal as he receives a kick. With a limp arm he reaches for the elf as he walks away, grasping at one of the skins of water he has at his side. In his current state, he moves too slow and catches the strap of the skin, stopping the elf in his tracks. Angering further the man that beat him and receiving a punch to the jaw for his efforts. Arakan falls back to the ground, and spits out more blood. "Looks like my blood will be the only thing that wets my throat" he derides himself for his foolishness.
Moving alongside the crumpled half-elf, Irivis hauls him to his feet and silently hands over some water. When he has drunk enough, she takes the skin back and regards him with an arctic stare.
"Just so you know, Arakan, I'm helping you stay alive so nobody can say I killed an injured man. From now on, you walk with me."
The sun continues to beat down, but she ignores it as best she can in favour of trying to overhear anything helpful from their captors about their destination.
Arakan drinks what he is allowed, giving Irivis a silent nod in thanks, but he does not look at her. He stares at the ground a heavy scowl disrupting his features. He speaks to her in a dry whisper, the water just enough to give him his voice back, "I care not one whit for your reasons. You can level all the glares you want in my direction, but I walk where I choose. If you think you need to keep an untrusting eye on me, you will have to hobble your best." At this he walks purposefully toward the front of the group of prisoners, putting on a cold blank stare, and almost successfully hiding that he holds his injuries.
His stubborness is the only thing keeping him going at this point. He's learned his lesson, and he wants it to be known that he needs neither help or charity to make it through the forced movement of the new slaves... or in his case the re-enslaved.
"I can hobble fast enough."
Irivis proves the truth of her words as she stomps to the front to join Arakan.
"This is curiosity before the sun parches any speech out of us. Getting rid of the snipers was brave, but did you always mean to run?"
It's probably the closest thing to an olive branch she's prepared to offer. Against her own better judgement, Irivis is aware of liking Arakan despite herself.
He doesn't look at her, just stares straight ahead and responds sullenly "Does it matter what my intentions were? They failed either way, and all any of us have to show for my actions is the sun over our heads and the sand in our throats." His voice cracks a little at this last, only helping to punctuate his point.
"That's all any of us have to show for any of our actions."
She says no more and passes the waterbottle again.
The slave coffle emerges from a canyon on to a ridge. To the north the ground drops away to the silty depths of the Estuary of the Forked Tongue. Closer to hand, a ruined tower, not much more than a circular shell of masonry, keeps watch. There are more raiders here and their camp, and a few more of the strange elves: pale skin and hair, almost totally wrapped wrapped in colourful silks, incongruous with the rough mercenaries. A flat area just to the north of the tower has a few items of strange apparatus, with the elves seemingly tinkering with it.
Irivis looks at the apparatus in the distance, her curiosity roused.
Taking water to her companions, Irivis uses the distraction to murmur, "Try and stay together if we can. There's something bad going on. Very bad."
In his new sullen state, Arakan almost ignores what's going on around him. He almost seems resigned to wait and see what the slavers have in store. He replies to Irivis' warnings snidely, "Something bad? You don't say? Was it the slavers that gave it away?"
"That's right. I noticed we'd been captured."
Irivis sounds quite proud of herself.
Jareen stares at the works for a moment, then simply but very quietly says "Shit. No wonder they wanted the slaves in any shape or form. That thing will kill them. Wouldn't surprise me if its powered by them too."
"I would rather die now than have my spirit consumed by such desceration. We have to find a way out" Eyeing Jareen suspiciously..."You seem to have a keen eye for such things..."
Jareen looks down his nose a gorad, "Well, I wouldn't be of any use to anyone for my strong arm, would I boy? I have knowledge of historical events that would curl your toes and send you screaming for your mummy. But in this case, my knowledge is a little more, practical."
At Jareen's words, Arakan searches his memory for any tales he has heard about unusual devices that ran off the life of slaves. Suspecting, however, that there just may be a reason closer to his own for Jareen's knowledge, the half-elf measures each of the old man's words carefully.
Gorad glares at Jareen before relenting "I too have seen fabulous things one day I may introduce you to some of them, but this gets us no where. I bow to your knowledge"
At first Calla stares unseeing at the tower, and at the elves with their strange devices. Her eyes are open but her mind is still marching through an endless desert. Better that scorching emptiness than reliving the moment when her father's body spasmed around the raider's cruel spear. Much better to let her mind wander, lost, in dunes.
Irivis words break through, a little. Very bad? How can anything get worse? she silently agrees with Arakan. Jareen and Gorad seem to know something, but puzzling it out from their conversation is too hard. Anger rises in her.
"Speak plainly or be silent! Enough riddles, what do you see?" she rasps through parched lips. Her first words since the capture.
"They're defiling. It looks as if they need living slaves for fuel."
The prisoners are herded into the tower. It is nothing much more than a shell open to the sky, with rough, slightly inward-sloping walls perhaps twenty feet high and a sandy floor. There is one way in and out: through the gap in the wall where the doorway has collapsed, which the raiders block with thorny brush once the last slave has entered. At least it is out of the sun.
percp
Irivis looks and absorbs what she can.
Irivis continues to ponder.
"Hmmmm, something to do with teleportation from what I can tell, I've seen circles like the smaller one over there before. That middle circle seems to be drawing energy off for some other reason I cannot fathom though. We need to be away from there though, this could defile a great area!"
Arakan looks to be getting irritated at the obvious statements, based off convoluted reasoning. "Right, thank you all for stating the obvious." he spits sarcastically "We are indeed in a bad situation. They are going to use us for something we don't want. It will be a great hardship on us, and could cause our death. Or I could sum it up simpler and say, we are prisoner slaves." He rolls his eyes at it all, begins to turn back away from the others, but can't help himself. "The information we need right now is a plan, nothing more. We can worry about what they plan to do with us, AFTER we are no longer under their yoke. For right here, and right now, we should be focusing on what WE plan to do with us." His eyes dart back and forth, obviously thinking "I can do this, for a start"
He conjures into existence a simple spade, made from solidifed psychic energy. It vanishes, before he summons a simple pole in the same way, which disappears, before he makes a small length of rope. "It may not be much, but I can make simple tools. Nothing too intricate. We need to figure out what we do have between us to use. We will need all of it." The talk of escape seeming to get him worked up, and his spirits lift a little.
"There's an exit, Arakan."
Irivis wanders casually over to the harsh brush barrier and tries to work out how many guards are around and if there's any patten to their movements.
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Absolutely metagamey......
Well, here we hit a conundrum. That info really isn't something that Jareen would notice In Character.... It's extraodinary luck that he has. So, if no one else notices, then he'll speak up, but if someone else notices first, well, it seems more natural that way.... :)
percp
Gorad breaks his characteristic silence with..
"We seem to have 2 groups of guards, the non elves are riding on the crodlus and the elves runners on foot. We are looking at 10 or so riders and 15 or so runners. There are 5 guards by the tower and I see 3 or 4 of the veiled people.... We have at least 30-35 people not to mention the 5 guards we will have to get past... My abilities are extremely limited if I can't find something to focus through.."
Looking at Arakan "While we are captured you are one of us, here is your chance to regain our graces... Can you make a totem similar to what I carried before?"
Arakan scoffs at Gorad's statement "What do I care of you graces? I'm one of you, yet you stand there, telling me that I should create something to allow you to be effective." Turning to the rest, and stopping at Irivis "What does it matter that there is an opening right at the front? Haven't any of you ever had to escape before? You don't just dance out the front, out-numbered by more than there were when we were first taken, and we have less to use than we did then. Escape is a secret maneuver, under the cover of darkness, through guile, trickery, and skin of your teeth planning. It doesn't happen by pushing aside the door to your cell and walking out, while laying waste to anyone standing in your way. If we could do that, we wouldn't be here in the first place." Towards the end his voice begins to rise, but he drops it as soon as he realizes he could be overheard.
Calming down, he addresses the Mul "Let's not worry about what we can do only by having access to other things we may not find. I'm asking what can we do, with nothing, everyone has a little something, that takes nothing to do."
Arakan turns back toward the wall, testing the cracks and crevices, stability, and possible handholds. "I'm not the best climber, but it's important to know what we have at our disposal." At this, he tries hauling himself up the inside of the tower. His hands, however, find no purchase, and when they do the old stone crumbles under his grip. Frustrated, he clenches his fists, turns with his arms crossed scowling at the others as he flops his back against the very wall that denies him egress.