Tellignos snorts and wuffles and gives the elkish equivalent of a yawn as he lurches upright from where he'd been lying with legs tucked under him. The big elk's breath steams in the crisp air; he listens to Tassidar's request, then nods ponderously. "I suppose..."
The elk needs little encouragement to talk about himself, and launches into a litany of his own adventures in this land, which mostly seem to consist of other creatures telling him he is a very handsome elk. It's apparent to Tassidar within a few minutes of prolonged conversation that while Tellignos is an intelligent beast, he is perhaps not exactly an... intelligent... beast. Or at least not one of the deep thinkers, as far as speaking beasts go.
In particular, trying to elicit information on how Tellignos arrived 'here' is an exercise in mild frustration; Tellignos seems confused by the question, and at first replies that he has always been 'here.' Some prompting manages to coax out vague recollections Tellignos has of a different place, 'a more boring one,' that sounds like some northern country such as where elk may usually be found. Piecing it together, it seems that Tellignos might once have been an ordinary mundane elk, and wandered somehow into the First World, after which he became the aware beast that he is now.
With this chit-chatting done, Tassidar settles in to rest, since he knows that he must rest his mind for a full eight hours in order to study magic, and to be ready for whatever the day must bring. He leaves the elk with the watch, and Mav still sitting upright by the fire, motionless as a statue.
Morning comes crisp and cold, Tellignos nudging Tassidar with his antlers and the elves slowly stirring while the sky is still mostly dark. Mav seems in no great hurry to get on the road, saying they might as well wait for full light; she studies her tattered book of spells as the other three 'native' elves putter about with heating a break-fast and rubbing warmth into the limbs of their mounts. Lydd is already cooking several fat, fresh fish over the flames; if asked where she got them, she merely gestures at the stream.
When Kló is shaken awake, he simply lies in the snow for a while, quietly watching the camp slowly begin to stir. Finally, the big man fully wakes, and—after checking with the Hofnites and their allies to make sure nothing must be done beforehand—he takes nearly the full hour just watching the snow fall.
Finally, he lumbers to his feet, shaking the accumulated snow from himself as he makes his way to whatever breakfast areas have been set up, but mostly looking to connect with the group before they set out.
He gives the fish a surprised look, then shifts his gaze up to Lydd. ”How do you know they are not talking fish? Do you know it as you catch them? Maybe you could teach me this trick?”
As he eats, he finds himself with his friends once more. His mood still seems quiet, but a morose quiet as opposed to the angry quiet of the day before. ”This place plays on my moods. Last night on watch, I saw nothing, but Baletooth and I sat and listened to the saddest, loneliest music that brought to mind everything I had ever lost. Coming from somewhere out there.” He gestures vaguely off into the woods around them. ”And then it gave me the strangest dream. Of something I know I lost but never really knew.”
He takes a bite, dark eyes searching everyone else’s for their reactions.
Lydd smiles, showing white teeth with the slightest bit of a point to them. "For fish, I have a simple method," she says as she turns the bit of salmon she is roasting. "If they are dumb enough to bite bait on a hook, they are dumb enough to eat."
(Lydd's casualness in saying it makes one think that she herself might not be terribly bothered by the idea of eating a sentient fish anyway.)
"But I do make offering to the water, where I fish," she adds on, more seriously. "I leave a coin, or a feather, or the like. To thank the stream."
Rikka yawns as she sits by the fire, close enough to get some warmth, still wreathed in her fur blankets and looking reluctant to get on the road. At Klo's words, she looks over to him. "I too heard music," she says with a little frown, "but it did not affect me as it did you, I think. And I dreamt of... being somewhere high up. I think I dreamt of it back in Hofn, as well."
The blonde woman rubs at her face, and yawns again.
Lydd turns the fish again and says, "Dreams here may be true and may be false. Pay attention to them, but do not destroy yourself for what may be a fancy of the lantern."
Kló simply nods at Lydd’s answers—both humorous and serious—then, with a quick motion to get permission he stabs some fish onto his knife, nodding again in thanks before biting into the steaming river-food.
He pauses at the discussion of dreams, his face thoughtful. ”I wouldn’t know what kind of truth there was to mine. As is so often the case, time will tell, I guess.”
”Thank you for the dumb fish,” Kló grunts to Lydd as he stands, wiping his fingers on his leathers. ”I will go help Hunts-In-Shadows and Baletooth prepare for the march.”
Halla didn't sleep well. She has felt unsettled since eating the drake-heart stew last night; angrily, and unreasonably, she blames the other Hofnites' scruples for upsetting her stomach. Something is different with Maeve, as well: she is there but distant, preoccupied, unresponsive to Halla's mental questioning. It takes her twice as long to concentrate her mind as it usually does, and when she joins the others at the fire, she is sulky and irritable.
Lydd turns the fish again and says, "Dreams here may be true and may be false. Pay attention to them, but do not destroy yourself for what may be a fancy of the lantern."
"And if I dreamed of Rys?" she asks shortly, her eyes cutting toward Mav. "What would you advise me then?"
Lydd simply nods at Klo's enquiring glance regarding the fish. "There is enough for any who wish it. ...Maybe not the cat."
The golden-haired elf huntress looks up from the fish-frying at Halla's question, then shrugs. "I don't know. I don't know much of omens," she says bluntly.
Mav, however, looks up languidly from her perusal of her old book, and smiles at Halla. "Have your dreams held power before?"
Knute's sleep is troubled after seeing the rider, and he tosses and turns in his bedroll. When dawn is finally breaking, he says "No," as he opens his eyes and sits upright. The ranger looks confused for a long second, then sighs, realizing it was just a dream. How will I learn the rules of this land quickly enough to not offend the other creatures here? He shakes his head as he goes about packing up his gear.
Knute listens with interest to Klo's conversation with Lydd about fish (and happily helps himself to one of the fillets). Maybe just reducing the chance of catching a thinking creature is enough? As well as giving an offering? "Would most thinking creatures here know the language he speaks?" Knute asks, pointing to Tellignos. "Would asking a question in that language before taking a kill, or posting a sign in that language around traps save many of the thinking creatures?" Knute asks as if he's just curious, but the strain in his voice contradicts his relaxed air.
When Klo discusses hearing music in the night, Knute perks up. "There wasn't music during my watch, but I saw a rider on a pale horse, who froze the ground around him. He stopped at the edge of the trees that had nails in them, but if not for those I don't know what would have happened." The ranger points to the nails as he mentions them, and shudders at the end of his description. "I think there's much we need to learn from the elves of how to set up a camp here before we set out to find the children."
Mav, however, looks up languidly from her perusal of her old book, and smiles at Halla. "Have your dreams held power before?"
"My dreams have been strange since Jól," she answers shortly. "Whether there is any 'power' in that, I wouldn't know."
"I think there's much we need to learn from the elves of how to set up a camp here before we set out to find the children."
"Aye, why not stay here half a lifetime, like him," she jerks her chin toward Kló, "and then hope the orks have been in as little hurry to harm the children as we have been to retrieve them?" She gets to her feet before anyone can answer and moves away toward the mules, clearly agitated.
Kló looks up at mention the ice-man, his voice alarmed. "He was in camp?" He looks over at Lydd and Mav. "And these nails. is there something special about them? Should we get some?"
Tassidar awoke feeling refreshed and more confident. His mind had resolved some of the mysteries he had pondering. He had a better understanding of the planes, nature and the lands he was in. His senses were even sharper, but most importantly his magic had grown in power.
He picked up his spell book to continue on from where he had left off the night before. He decided that he was going to eat the fish. At this point he figured he had already eaten the food at the market. As he chewed he hoped it wasn't magicked like the heart soup.
"I had rather a pleasant watch before turning in. My dreams were of power and return to my homeland, but my thoughts were of the children."
Mav looks in Halla's direction with what a later age, on another world, might call a Mona Lisa smile, and a vague shrug. She lowers her head to her book.... but Lydd looks as alarmed as Klo at the mention of the icy rider, and shoots a glare at Mav that suggests it is the first she heard of it.
"He rode up to the edge of camp, and around it," Mav says indifferently. "And they are nails of cold iron. A useful thing for travelers here. I am sure we have some to spare for you. If you know of the spirits, you know that cold iron is often proof against them."
Lydd frowns a little, but reaches into her pack and pouches looking for extras, apparently.
[From the sense motive] The other three elves all look vaguely uncomfortable when Mav talks about cold iron harming spirits.
Digging in her pouch, Lydd comes up with several nails of dark, unrusted iron, which she wordlessly proffers if any want them. She moves to the trees and pries out the nails she put in last night, using her dagger to pop them loose. "The land does not take kindly if you leave them behind," she mutters. "Can we go yet, Mav?"
Mav looks mildly peeved at the rushing, but closes up her book and bundles her things onto her white palfrey.
Kló accepts the nail, sliding it into his belt pouch as he stands, stretching his legs and stomping his feet to get the blood moving in his near-frozen feet.
He seems as impatient as Lydd to get going.
Lydd gives Knute a long, slightly bemused look at his enquiries regarding how to properly warn the thinking beasts. She opens her mouth to say something, seems to think better of it, and settles for a little shrug as she he hands him a bit of piping-hot fish.
"You... could do that, yes," she says slowly. "Of course, if you were to call out in any language to a deer as you stalked it... you would be taking no hunt, that day. A dumb beast would flee the sound of your voice," she says with a slight smile. "But trapping, like fishing... the thinking ones are usually wise enough not to take the bait. If you are so... worried, then traps are your safest path."
***
(Klo knows nothing of said rider.)
***
The mules, Bo and Bim, stolidly trudge along under Rikka and Halla, seemingly content with the snow as long as they are fed ample grain from their feedbags overnight. Glorn hops along with Knute on his back, though the hunter has taken uncommonly well to the giant frog's bouncing gait. Tellignos picks a stately away along with Tassidar atop him, and Klo once more contends with Hunts-in-Shadows little bursts of energy sideways to and fro across the trail. Baletooth, as the day before, rides with Rikka, not trusting the giant predator cat. The elves are on their horses...
Also as the day before, Cai sings to pass the time, though he makes less effort to transfer things to Skald and sticks to Sylvan and Elven. Klo and Tassidar are able to understand his songs-- the Sylvan ones are mostly paeans to the beauty of the First World (though one of his songs seems like something he might have heard from one of the licentious satyrs), and the Elven ones are old standards of lost love and bittersweet pleasures. Still, even for those who don't understand the words, the green-eyed elf has a pleasant voice.
Long-distance visibility today is low: the sky is a washed-out white-gray and there is no sun visible, just that same diffused light. The path, still with its intermittent markers, has led through snowy woods. The landscape is dramatic in a different way than the breathtaking vistas known to the Ulfens: winter for them is a thing of glaciers at sea, stark mountains, fjords that cut black water through white snow. The winter here seems a quieter, more intimate thing... if not sometimes claustrophobic, as it is possible to look back at the road winding through the snow-blanketed woods, and then to look at it going forward, and to realize one can tell no difference between the two, and other than Cai's solitary singing, the woods are very, very silent...
...at least, until about an hour's time of travel has elapsed. The quality of the light changes in some hard-to-express way, the wind shifts direction. Several people feel their ears pop, as if they'd reached a higher altitude.
Scants seconds later, the earth crests and bubbles beneath your feet as the surge passes through. Several people have an unpleasant fall from their startled mounts, Cai and Lydd among them. Lydd gets back to her feet with some especially foul Sylvan cursing.
Among the elves, there's some quick checking if anyone's broken a bone or wrenched an ankle, hoof, or otherwise. This seems a relatively commonplace experience to them-- they only bother to look around after checking essential health.
The world, it seems, has changed to autumn. The road now leads among trees with leaves of orange and brown; yellowed sere grasses emerge from what was a blanket of snow minutes prior and is now mere patches, and the patches themselves become an insubstantial fog, which shrouds the road in vagueness beyond a hundred feet out.
Lydd takes the weather in and grunts, hauling herself nimbly back onto her horse. Mav is more vocal-- after surveying the change, she smiles brightly at the Hofnites. "Well! That will be a bit more comfortable for all of you, won't it? Certainly Master Glorn there must like it better than leaping through that chilly snow."
(Glorn croaks.)
The fog has lingered and lingered. To judge by time as the Hofnites know it, it seems it must be nearing the mid-day daymark, or at least well into the dagmal measure ... yet the fog shows no signs of lifting. It lays along the road in thin wisps and tatters, like stray bits of goose down, and past a hundred feet it swallows the landscape up into a gentle blur.
That said, the landscape has been more full of life than during the 'winter.' Squirrels bustle and chatter from the trees, seemingly fully normal squirrels-- cheeks bulged with nuts, as if preparing for a winter rather than having just experienced one. More exotic things are seen: a trio of jackrabbits hop at a fast clip down the center of the road, grumpily yelling in Sylvan to clear the way, which Mav does without complaint despite having the larger group. A little peddler, a man no taller than a child who looks nonetheless like a cross between a treestump and a very old man, is passed-- he has a colorful dogcart filled with odds and ends, drawn by a three-foot tall snail. A troupe of flying spirits, little six-inch tall sprites, zip past at one point, tugging hair and poking at noses as they flutter on by...
Lydd calls a halt from the front of the group some time later. She squints, looking forward, and pointing: just where the fog begins to swallow up the past, you can make out the faint lines of what look like a gate, wide open, into which the road leads.
"It was not here when we came," she mutters low to Mav, who has ridden up behind her.
Mav looks annoyed. "Tash's boneyard," she says with what sounds rather like contempt. She turns her palfrey to address the group.
"It appears our road is going through a cemetery, do you have that word in your northlands? Yes? The usual rules apply. Simply be polite to whatever we encounter, and stay on the path."
Kló falls heavily from Hunts’ back just in time to warn the creature and keep his feet as the change washes through. He looks around warily, watching the new-come fall colors with a shake of his head.
”I would be comfortable in a place that didn’t change so much.” He shrugs, ”But I guess that would be like complaining that it was cold in winter.”
At the sight of the gate, Kló frowns. ”Is this a common thing? A cemetery appearing? And are cemeteries different here than in our home?”
Hunts-in-Shadows is able to crouch low due to Klo's warning, and rides out the world-shift without trouble, rewarding him with a lick of her rough tongue to his face.
Mav only chuckles at his observation. "It is so. Sometimes, when the lords and ladies are truly at war, this place changes far more rapidly. I recall one day in which we stood in a land that had been ravaged by fire, soot, and ash in the one moment-- and was a great ocean with glaciers the next-- and after that as far as one could see it was a city of steel, with everyone become like moving statues.... I believe there were forty-six changes that day."
She gives a small shrug of her graceful shoulders. "But that was during the full war, all nine at each others' throats, alliances constantly shifting. Today they only bicker. Personally, I would find the world you inhabit to be... dull."
She huffs an idle sigh at the question of the cemetery ahead, as if he had broached a subject of some depth that she found tedious. Mav rides a few steps in silence and then says:
"Most creatures in this place, the true native spirits, cannot really... die, as you may understand it. Their essence simply becomes remade into new spirits. Many of them have an accordingly cavalier attitude towards dying, regarding it with no more weight than you or I might regard trying on a new cloak. They might hold funerals out of whimsy, caught up in the drama of it, but the deceased and the mourners would tire of the game within a day.
"Were it not for visitors, the First World would need no real boneyard. But there are visitors: yourselves, for instance, and your little rat friend here, and I think also your elk... these creatures were not born here, but entered the land through gate of some sort. As I did, many years ago. We are all still mortal."
"When mortals die here, it is often difficult for their souls to leave this place and reach their proper judgment. The fey spirits themselves were not overly troubled by stray ghosts, but the goddess of death was. Some years ago she dispatched one of her servants to collect stray ghosts that were lost in the First World. This servant is called Tash, and this is his, or her, or its traveling cemetery-- the only cemetery that I know of, in the First World. I find the creature, Tash, to be extraordinarily tedious. It is a glorified clerk."
Some people might say 'child-murdering rapist' in the same tones in which Mav says 'clerk.'
She shrugs, and picks a twig from her palfrey's mane. "Nevertheless there is no point in antagonizing him. It. Whatever."
Halla falls heavily off of the mule onto the road, harder now that it is autumn than when it was blanketed with snow a moment earlier. Grumpily, she takes the time to remove Signy's furs and stow them in the saddlebags before climbing up again, inexpertly.
"When mortals die here, it is often difficult for their souls to leave this place and reach their proper judgment. The fey spirits themselves were not overly troubled by stray ghosts, but the goddess of death was. Some years ago she dispatched one of her servants to collect stray ghosts that were lost in the First World. This servant is called Tash, and this is his, or her, or its traveling cemetery-- the only cemetery that I know of, in the First World."
"We should search it," Halla says suddenly, "for the children. If their ghosts are there, we will know we have failed."
Rikka gives Halla a nod. "That's clever thinking," she says. "If we can search it?" The question is directed at Mav, who shrugs, radiating Disinterest.
"You could no doubt ask Tash," she drawls, and spurs her palfrey forward. Rikka follows thoughtfully, with Baletooth looking uneasy at the cemetery ahead and pushing his hat up at a jaunty angle as if to give himself confidence.
Closer to the cemetery it becomes apparent that the gate stones are made of man-high shards of a strange rock, like black glass. Halla has seen it before-- the small knife on one of the dead elves was made of the same substance.
The interior of the cemetery seems without perspective or clear size. It is filled with standing stones, some rough and unworked, or marked with only a few runes, as the Hofnites would be accustomed to for marking of a burial mound. Other stones are elaborately carved as statues, or engraved with many patterns. There are even houses made of stone-- or, as Tassidar would know them, mausoleums.
In between the many standing stones move pale shades-- faintly man-shaped outlines, barely distinguishable from the fog that still pools in hollows on the ground. They drift, slow and aimless, showing no interest in the small knot of living souls who travel the road.
At the apparent center of the field of the dead there is a tall wooden lectern and a near-as-tall wooden stool. A figure is crouched at the top of the stool, writing with a feather-quill on a roll of parchment that spills over the edge and piles down around the feet of the stool. The individual is about the size of an average person, and seems slender, but any other details are near impossible to tell, for a black robe drapes the slight form fully, and the presumed head is obscured by an ornate winged, golden mask.
A raven is perched on the lectern as well-- also wearing a mask, though a plainer one. On noticing the group's approach, the raven spreads its wings and lets out a harsh caw. "Master Tash," the raven croaks, "visitors!"
(The Ulfen hear the bird as speaking Skald. Tassidar hears the bird as speaking Elven.)
The masked head lifts and turns towards you. If there are eyes behind the mask's eyeholes, they cannot be seen.
"Name?" rings out a voice from behind the mask, snapping the interrogative like a challenge. The quill hovers, poised, over the roll of parchment.
Mav rides her palfrey a step or two closer, mouth opened to answer, then she pauses and looks idly back at all of you, to see if any care to answer first.
Kló general unease with this strange world is compounded as they pass into Tash’s domain, and his every uncomfortable movement proclaims it.
His mind latches onto something … anything … the strange, black rock-glass. ”Obsidian,” he mutters, to no one and everyone, ”supposedly found near mountains of fire.” He shrugs uncomfortably, ”Though with the way this place changes, I’m not sure what to make of it.”
As the group comes to a halt, he tries to press upon Hunts to stand still, watching the strange bird-writer duo with mixed fascination and suspicion. Then his gaze shifts over to Halla, giving her an encouraging look as if to say ’go ahead’.
It's clear the big man doesn't intend to speak up.
"Halla," Halla replies, "daughter of no one."
Luckily Tassidar perceived the coming ripple of change and managed to have avoided by gracefully sliding off his mount.
"A shift is about to occur. Steele yourself for it if you are able."
As Mav spoke Tassidar had the distinct feeling that he was missing something. Rather than let on, he tried to keep his face impassive as he politely nodded in acknowledgement as she spoke to them of the boneyard and its keeper as his elven eyes took in the stones that formed the gate.
Now here was something Tassidar knew about.
"Yes, Fisher, obsidian or as it is also known, volcanic glass, due to its igneous origin. Hummm, the mineraloid sample is remarkably free of impurities for the size of shard . . . Facinating."
Hearing Halla questioned and then give her true name shook Tassidar out of his geological ponderings. He spoke up politely hoping to send a subtle reminder to his companions as he gave a slight bow and responded, "In this place I am known as Tas good sir."
Hmm, maybe I'll need to get better at trap-setting while here, Knute muses to himself. He takes a cold iron nail from Lydd, placing it in his backpack.
Knute hears the warnings shouted by some of the others, but not quickly enough to slide off Glorn. He is shaken off the frog, and lands hard on his left arm. "Ouch," he mutters under his breath, along with a curse. Still cradling his arm, the ranger nods at Klo's words as the group moves forward again. "I don't mind the cold so much. Not knowing what to expect, on the other hand... That seems uncomfortable and dangerous."
Knute looks at the strange...man, inquiring of his name. He glances at Mav for guidance, but after Halla speaks up, Knute decides to hold off. If Mav dislikes him so much, perhaps it's best to see what he does with Halla's name before I give my own... Skaði, guide my path here, Knute thinks somberly.
At Halla's answer, both the masked heads, raven and Tash alike, tilt in perfect synchronization to one side, gazing down at her fixedly from the top of the lectern. Neither Tash nor the raven move for a few seconds, and then the golden-masked head turns back to the scroll. The sounds of rapid, furious skritching with the quill be can be heard.
Tassidar earns a shorter look, and a dismissive wave of one of Tash's hands (which appear to be humanoid, but wearing black gloves, so one really can't be sure, can one...)
"I am not of the fey," the creature Tash says brusquely. "I do not play games of names. If you wish to present me with a false name, it is your own affair. I don't have the time to coax people along. Surely you see my backlog?" (The gloved hand gestures in seeming exasperation at the long scroll.)
"Next! Name?"
Mav interjects, in a lazy drawl: "Oh, surely you remember me, Tash?"
The mask-wearer sniffs. "Are you visiting one of your departed kin here held, madam?"
"Hardly."
"Then prithee, madam, do not let me detain you or hinder your quick departure from my domain."
"You appeared on our path, Tash. The road passes directly through your ghost-box."
Tash pauses, the quill poised above the parchment roll. The masked face looks, it seems, in Halla's direction. "Indeed. Indeed... Next! Name?!" The golden mask turns its eyeless gaze towards Klo and Knute.
Something is being teased out of you, like a knot from carded wool. It doesn't hurt, but everything spins and twists, like when as a girl you danced with your only friend Maeve, the one nobody else could see, the one that made the other thralls laugh at you and throw rocks. You spun and spun until you fell laughing on the grass, and Maeve laughed too.... you spun until you couldn't stand up any longer...
Everything about this encounter made the hair on the back of Kló' neck stand on end. He looks between Halla, Mav, and the eery speaker, his face a mix of confusion and suspicion .
"Tell me, Master of this domain, do you know all who ... dwell here? We don't want to bother you. Just to know if a few specific people have joined you or not."
Tash heaves a put-upon sigh. "Of course I do. I process them. I record their arrival and method of death. I organize them and keep them secured until we are at capacity, at which point I escort them to my Lady's presence. I should be rather terrible at my job if I did not know who was and wasn't currently in my cemetery, shouldn't I?"
He (if it is a he) writes with his quill throughout the speech, without looking down at what he is writing-- the mask continues to face Klo.
"Names! Yours! Or, at the very least, the names of those you wish me to look up, please, or we are wasting precious seconds of your finite mortal lives, aren't we?"
Kló looks over at Knute and Halla, nodding encouragingly.
"...Ingrid. Ingrid Alfsdóttir," Halla manages. She sways a little on her feet, and her face is flushed.
Knute watches Halla and Tash as Tash responds to Halla's name, and seeing Halla acting...oddly...opts not to give his own. Again, before giving more of the children's names, the ranger waits to see how Tash responds to the Ingrid's name.
Knute clears his voice, and mentions the name of one of the children. "Tomi Eriksson?" His voice cracks a little as he remembers seeing the little one run around the village and visit his home.
Tash begins flipping through roll after roll of parchment at the offered names, muttering to himself beneath his breath. (If he breathes.)
"Hmmn... these would be recent? I'm not seeing any such names. Nor do I have recollection of them."
The mask pauses, focused in Knute's direction. "You look familiar. What is your name?"
While Knute decides whether or not to answer that-- Halla falls to the ground, her knees giving out from under her, like that one fainting goat Red Alf keeps around. There's a soft thump as she hits the packed earth.
The masked raven immediately launches itself from the lectern and flutters towards her. "Awk! That's got to come out!"
Tash unfolds from his stool and stands on the ground in a disturbingly fluid motion, interposing himself between the others and Halla with two strides. Standing, he is as tall as Klo though rail thin. He lifts a gloved hand. "I suggest you let us do our work and see to your friend's-- condition," the cool voice says from behind the mask.
Mav looks as if Tash's words alone might stir her to doing the opposite of what he says. "Well!" she says to the Hofnites, turning her restless palfrey in place. "If you have objections, I shall support you."
The raven is perched on Halla's chest, the masked head bobbing; it looks for all the world like it is trying to pull an earthworm out of the soil, except it's targeting Halla's heart, not a patch of dirt.
Kló doesn't hesitate. He steps forward aggressively, protectively, pointing at the bird on Halla's chest.
"Whatever it's doing!" he roars, "STOP!"
The wizard speaks to Klo, Rikka, Knute and Mav.
"These two are what the Arcanum label as psychopomps, spirits from beyond who guide the dead to their final judgments. I believe they are like the attendant spirits of Odyn, his winged warriors who carry the valorous dead to his mead-hall."
Tassidar's feet turn cold. His instinct to protect a friend is blunted by his failures in the orc cave and the near disaster his loyalty has caused at the faun's cart. He had fancied himself a born leader, but he had been shown how green he was.
Klo's booming voice helps steel his resolve.
"She gave you her name as you bid, she is clearly living and not in need of your services, what sort of harm has befallen her?! Please pause before there is some kind of misunderstanding."
What are you doing you stupid elfling. These things are working as agents of a god from the mortal plane. What the hell do you think you can actually do to stop it? But I have to try at least even if she still doesn't count me as a friend I still have an obligation to her.
Order: Tassidar
Rikka
Mav
Klo
Knute
Lydd
Tash
Raven
Halla
The golden mask snaps Klo's direction at his shout. "I do not take orders from mortals in my domain," Tash says coldly. In response to Tassidar's words the psychopomp says, "She may be alive, but that which dwells within her is not, and thus, it is my concern."
He lifts his other hand, which bears a long, gold-and-silver quill...
Tassidar shows his open hands and appeals to the masked being.
"Oh, I believe you misunderstand the circumstances here. My human friend is concerned. You see, this woman is a mortal vessel serving to house the spirit you are trying to collect. We are returning it to the prime plane as soon as possible. In fact we are trying to collect several mortal children and return them to their home plane before their souls become lost here. The spirit housed in that woman is vital to that cause, are you aquatinted with the Winged Spirits of Odyn? These children are Ulfen they rightfully belong to his Mead Hall if they become disassociated with their shells here. If we could please be on our way there will be many fewer souls to collect here in this realm."
When the master of this place (and his masked bird) isn’t quick enough to stand down, Kló lets a feral-sounding growl rip from deep within his throat. He roars at the name-taker, flexing and posturing like an bear whose territory is challenged. It becomes quickly apparent that the posture isn’t just an act. His face elongates, a white-furred muzzle full of teeth extending from his mouth. Claws tear themselves from his fingertips, and his muscles bulge and elongate … giving him more and more the look of a polar bear.
As the transformation completes, along with his savage bellow, he moves to stand between the masked creature and Halla.
Tash seems unmoved at Tassidar's plea. "The spirit in the woman is no soul-bearer," he says shortly.
Rikka, who isn't privy to Tassidar's knowledge about exactly what the masked figure is-- or what it might be resistant to-- falls back upon her standard seidr in battle, sending out bolts of bright light towards the masked figure. "Leave her alone, she's done nothing to you!"
Unfortunately, her missiles of light seem to have no effect on the tall masked figure.
Mav curses as she slithers off her palfrey. "Spells do not always work against him! And my magic is very nearly no good at all against his type. Still...
"Mind that damned quill of his, though!"
She gestures and chants, and a silvery cloud of mote appears around Tash's head, as it had the drake the day before. It's unclear whether or not it's effective.
Klo undergoes an animalistic transformation, roaring a challenge...!
Knute freezes as Tash says he looks familiar. I've never stumbled into his graveyard before. Why would he recognize me? Unless... Knute's eyes fly open as he realizes that Tash may have seen his father. But before he can utter anything else Tash is...accosting Halla, and Knute's questions die in his throat.
As the others in the party rush to action, Knute still seems frozen. He hesitates, then takes a step away from Tassidar, trying to spread out. Then the ranger nocks, draws, and looses two blunt arrows at the masked figure, praying to Skaði that they find their mark. And actually have an effect...
Knute fluidly snaps off two arrows to the masked figure-- one hits, but the other goes wide. The figure staggers back a step but shows no sign of pain.
Lydd growls wordlessly, grabbing her bow off her back since Mav has picked a side. She sends a single arrow at Tash-- it sticks quivering in the black robe, next to Knute's.
The strange graveskeeper swings one of his long, black-shrouded limbs at Klo, the quill gleaming in the winter's weak light. The pointed tip scores a line across one muscular, white-furred shoulder-- a thin line of blood wells in its wake.
Tash takes several long-legged, unhurried steps backwards through the snow and the gravestones... He raises his free, gloved hand in an emphatic gesture. "Spirits in my graveyard! There is a threat to your peace! Attend!"
The raven, meanwhile, keeps tugging-- and it has something in its beak-- something dim and translucent, like a shadow-- that abruptly wrenches free into-- a shape, almost like a person's, which solidifies and looks like...
"That's better," croaks the raven, and flaps away from Klo and Halla and the new, strange thing in order to land on a gravestone. "Awwk! What do you want to do with that, Master Tash?"
Any verbal answer Tash might have made is somewhat drowned out by the noise of rocks and leaves skittering across the frozen ground as if moved by a tumbling wind. The debris and detritus of the graveyard-- cracked fragments of tombstones, broken twigs, the occasional shard of bone-- swirls and forms into two whirling piles, like eddies of leaves in the fall...
Klo, the bear-man, stands stock still in the wake of Tash's strange quill, gazing blankly into space, his now-clawed hands lowering slowly to his sides.
Things spun out of control, Klo had begun the physical conflict and words would not stop it now. He didn't want this fight, but that was irrelevant. It was time to fight!
"Magic spells will have little effect on Tess! He is commanding the undead spirits of his realm to manifest as disembodied piles of rubble! Any mundane blade will just pass through them, they can hurl things about through the power of their wills. We need to stop him!"
"Tellginos! Charge Tess!"
Tassidar takes a five foot step back, draws a scroll from his belt and begins casting Summon Monster 1 to send an eagle after the raven.
The shadow resolves into a roughly humanoid shape, swallowed in a billowy cloak so the details are hard to make out. As a matter of fact, the whole figure is a little vague, the dark hair blurring into the hood of the cloak, which itself seems to melt into the patches of fog at the margins. It stumbles up against a tombstone and stares down at Halla with a woman's careworn face. "Cad atá déanta agat di?" it angrily demands.
Tellignos rumbles out bemusedly, "Who is Tess? I'll go for the fellow in the mask, I suppose...."
With numerous people in the way, the elk cannot charge, but he does lumber forward and drop his huge antlered head for a swipe at the god-servant. However, Tash dodges the sweeping horns.
Hunts-in-Shadows hisses at Klo's motionless position. "What is stolen... from you... white rider?" she snarls, and streaks forward like purple lightning to close with the masked figure. Her bite connects, though Tash does not cry out in pain at the furred jaw closing over his black-shrouded limbs.
Seeing that her spell had no effect on Tash himself, Rikka turns more of her seidr-lights on the nearest pile of whirling rubble...
Mav looks irritated with everything, controlling her upset palfrey with tight yanks of her hands on the reins. "Wonderful, shades as well. Nothing with a damned mind," she mutters. She holds on, surveying the battlefield a moment.
Klo continues to stand still, staring into the middle distance...
Throwing wary looks at the babbling spirit-thing that has been drawn from Halla's insensate body, Knute steps to be side by side with Lydd and looses two more arrows at Tash's form-- though he has the issue of a giant elk and a giant cat somewhat in the way. Still, one of his arrows strikes home! He calls out to Glorn, who has been sedately sitting back and observing everything through dispassionate yellow eyes-- the animal leaps unhurriedly forward at Knute's urgent gestures.
The giant frog sticks a disturbingly long-and-large tongue out at Tash, but the figure dodges.
Lydd sends two arrows a moment after Knute does, but with the frog in the way she does not connect. "Move, you foolish beasts," she hisses.
Tash... walks away, though multiple arrows jut from the lanky, shrouded form, and they do seem to be hindering him. As he moves away from the elk, Tellignos takes another swipe-- this one connecting with an audible sort of crunch as the elk's horns impact the black robes. Tash staggers but keeps walking-- about thirty feet further into the graveyard, where his tall figure stands and sways in place.
The whirling masses of dead leaves and rubble skitter closer over the frozen earth, adding to their mass as they go. One almost could imagine shadowy forms in the center of the bones, twigs, and rocks... and one does not need to imagine the malice, for chunks of broken gravestones and fragmented statuary are hurled forward at your otherworldly mounts. However, Hunts-in-Shadows and Tellignos both manage to dodge the cascade of debris.
Seated on a tombstone, watching, the raven answers the shade that it pulled from Halla's body...
"Tá tú marbh, cailín. Tamall maith, freisin. Anois, cén fáth nach bhfuil tú féin a iompar féin agus roghnaigh cloch chinn; beidh Tash sheolann tú ar aghaidh leis an loingsiú chugainn. Tá mé cinnte go bhfuil an cailín ina gcónaí sásta a bheith réidh agat."
Halla-- you hear these words, and you feel the ground cold and hard beneath you, sensation rushing back to your body.
40 damage to Tash
6 damage to Red Shade
5 damage to Klo
"Uimh! Saoire a n-aonar!" Halla manages shakily, getting to her feet with an effort and stepping next to the spirit-woman. "Ní bheidh tú ar leith dúinn!"