Raya Nightroad's Story

by Cryovizard on Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:47 pm
Leading Maria through the maze of the concrete jungle took longer than Riaze expected. He hadn't quite come to terms with just how much he'd been injured and what it had taken out of him. By the time he turned out on the street at the edge of the park, it was all he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But mindful of eyes on his back, he forced his way on anyways.

Such was his exhaustion he missed the foreign scents along the way to his lair. He blazed past the signs left in the open, exhaustion far more pressing on his mind. So when an arm stuck out at neck level a bare two paces ahead, he scarcely had time to react before his throat slammed into unyielding flesh and he flipped onto his back. Groaning, he blinked stars from his vision to see grey armored boots practically standing on his face. Traveling upwards, he became of aware of white, a woman clad almost entirely in it. A katana was held in one of her hands, a long, large wrapped object strapped across her back. As he opened his mouth to curse, she drew a sleek black scarf from her face.

"R-Raya? Wha-...whe-..." Riaze spluttered out the questions before his mind suddenly cleared and he remembered why he was laying down. "What the fuck was that for?!"

She crouched down, ruffling his hair with one delicate looking hand and smiling. "For not letting Da know whether you were still alive or not, little Rai. You'd rather it be me than him, right?"

Grinding his teeth at the pet name, Riaze struggled to his feet. Glancing towards Maria, he realized what it might look like and held up a hand. He pointed between himself and his sister. "She's my sister, I'm fine, my fault."

Hoping like hell that the lycaness understood even a word of that and didn't attack Raya like she had him, Riaze felt a chill. Please don't attack my sis, cause she'll kick my ass for it after she thrashes yours.

by Tiko on Thu Jun 07, 2012 2:13 pm
As the pair had made their way through the city, it wasn't her wounds or weariness that dulled Maria's senses as they did Riaze's, it was her single minded focus on the man walking ahead of her. He perplexed her. He was like her, and yet not. He did not know her and yet he had aided her with seemingly no expectations in return. Maria was a creature of primal instincts and aggression, and such acts were beyond her scope of understanding.

The sudden rush of movement as Raya engaged Riaze was unexpected and Maria's lips curled back into the visage of a snarl that like much of her mannerisms did not belong upon the face of a human woman. Riaze's response to the physical confrontation stayed her though, there was recognition and familiarity there that swiftly eased the tension and hostility. Instead she simply paced restlessly. She did not like this place, or the city beyond and it had her riled to stand about like this. The rapid exchange of conversation further agitated her. Though familiar, the words were gone too swiftly for her to grasp their depth of meaning.

Her eyes watched the new arrival warily. “Úlfhéðinn,” she stated bluntly before turning her attentions back to Riaze. “Not Styrkligr,” she mused before cracking a wolfish grin. “Vantar.” Something about the situation had apparently amused the feral werewolf, despite her seemingly humorless demeanor.

by Cryovizard on Thu Jun 07, 2012 3:50 pm
With Riaze staring blankly at Maria, Raya's face broke into a smile. Clapping a hand on her brother's shoulder, she turned her mind to trying to answer the lycaness. The words were Norse, but badly butchered. This was going to be something of a challenge. When she spoke, her brother looked at her oddly, sighing and throwing his hands up in frustration. She knew he hated her skills with languages. "Riaze is young yet. Are you his friend?"

Riaze fumed silently. His sister shows up after all these years, decks him, and then ignores him to speak with Maria in some foreign language. He always felt as young as he truly was as far as lycans went around her. The only thing he had ever beaten her at was the martial side of the Nightroad ways. She was a better Weaver than he was, could actually hold a conversation without looking for a way out, and her knowledge made him feel like a child. With a snarl he turned away and started clearing camouflaging branches from the shack he'd been living in.

Raya noticed this with a small frown.

by Tiko on Thu Jun 07, 2012 4:06 pm
“Friend?” Maria repeated the word as if it puzzled her. “I am Úlfhéðinn, hunter of after-goer,” she replied in old Norse. “Maria.” Having spoken the name several times that evening and having heard it in her ears did little to ease the unfamiliarity of it to her. She knew it to be her name and yet it did not feel right on her tongue.

Her gaze shifted to watch Riaze carefully with narrowed eyes. Did he intend them to remain here in this park?

by Cryovizard on Thu Jun 07, 2012 4:37 pm
Raya sighed, turning towards her brother and striding to him. She put a hand on his shoulder, growling when he shrugged it off. When she went to spin him around though, the lycan's body twisted with lightning speed and strong hands spun her instead. Her back hit the wall of the shack and it rattled, then Riaze's hand slammed into a half rotted board beside her head. Her cool blue eyes met his fiery red one levelly.

"What? What the hell are you doing here Raya?"

"Why do you think, you idiot? Da didn't just send me to find you for no reason. He's here. Outside the city, and if you think I'm going to let you and her sleep in this decrepit piece of shit..." Raya banged her hand on the side of the shack before shoving Riaze back. She stabbed a finger at him. "I will flash you and drag you to the camp if I have to."

Riaze had turned and stalked a few paces before the words sunk in. His shoulders slumping, he looked at Maria for a long moment, then turned back to his sister. He wouldn't meet her eyes. "Fine, but you'll be dragging me before I leave her. She can go where she likes when we're out of the city, but I'm not going to just leave her."

Looking back at Maria, Raya cleared her throat. Switching to old Norse, she wondered just how old this lycaness really was. Amanas was just shy of a thousand years old and even he didn't speak a dialect that old. "There's a camp of wolves outside the city. I'm bringing my brother, but would you like to join us?"

by Tiko on Thu Jun 07, 2012 5:06 pm
Maria's eyes shifted between Raya and Riaze in quick succession as they spoke, but the intricacies of the conversation continued to elude her. Even Raya's words spoken in a familiar dialect were blurring together and leaving Maria increasingly agitated at the situation. Movements, posture, tone of voice, it was all keenly observed but the information was too much to sort through. Her wolfish eyes caught Raya's gaze as she stared back for a moment before simply nodding at last.

Wait, what hit Quinn? The table or Riaze?

Raya suppressed an irritated bark, quietly stalking to the room from the side door. The group Riaze was hellbent on attacking had their backs to her. Good luck, that at least.

She stalked in silence, growing closer while maintaining a low profile. She might not hold her hatred of the leeches as personally as her brother did, but Maria, his dead wife, had been her friend too.

The flash failed to blind her, unlike it would Riaze. But the human, on the other hand...

Raya darted forward, before twisting the throw herself sideways at her.

Eyes watched the preceedings from with woods all around, and not all of them human. It took a lifetime of living among the clan to even pick half of them from their concealment, and Raya nodded, satisfied that their visitors were well attended. Flashing a subtle signal to one of her lupine brethren, the lycan answered, a chorus of rising voices sounding all around the van.

And damned close, too.

A few minutes passed, as the woman made her way out to the road behind the vehicle. For living in the woods, she was remarkable well dressed. White clothes were virtually unmarred by the passage through the wilds. Tugging down her scarf, she regarded the strangers. In one hand she held a scabbarded katana, and across her back was a huge, cloth wrapped sword.

Not at all what some might imagine she'd be carrying. She raised her lyrical voice, the words coming out sharply. "What business do you have, lycan-kin, in Nightroad territory?"

A raised eyebrow was all Raya answered with, glancing to either side. She nodded, minutely. On both sides, human form lycans rose into view, a mixed assembly of guns, crossbows, and melee weapons in their hands. Surprisingly, the bolts of every crossbow glittered in the dark. Silver.

"You don't rank high enough to meet him, city boy. Come quietly? We'll take the few losses if it means getting rid of a mutt like you." The female smiled, baring her own impressive fangs. Free hand rose and waggled at the lycan, Raya holding back on her talents for the moment.

The shooting hadn't started yet. The city-dog could yet escape this without getting his hide tossed back out of the forest studded with bolts.

Raya admirably threw herself sideways as the gun rose, silver pellets grazing her long leg. Pain lanced through her, but it was superceded by fury. The damned fools didn't know enough about this particular clan, otherwise they would have brought more muscle and silver melee weapons.

Already wounds began to mend as the clan opened fire, rifles and shotguns roaring as shots blasted at the van. Changed members shot off the mark, navigating the terrain as they flanked the van, their barks and howls rousing the rest of the clan to awareness.

Raya herself cursed, tossing her blades to a kinsman before veering into her wolf form. Coat as white as the clothes she wore, her's was not a typical change. Rather, a dire wolf stood in her place, not hesitating before shooting off the mark in pursuit.

Fire reared in Raya's path, eliciting a second snarl from her. She'd already dodged the second shotgun blast clean, although yet another trick of the Nightroads was revealed. A burst of frost blasted over the road, snuffing the flames as the lycaness was forced to veer out from behind the bouncing van to evade the stitching bullets of the machine pistol. Fucking city-mutts!

However, she skidded to a halt as she saw the hulking figure that stepped in the vehicles path a quarter mile down the road, in his huge arms an equally massive maul. Her sharp yip cut off her brethren's retreat, all eyes going to that lone man.

A meeting with the Alpha? Granted.

Raya watched with breath held.

Regulus Nightroad hefted his maul as the van began to shoot towards him, beginning to sling it in a loop overhead. The vehicle closed, gradually picking up speed. The clan leader smiled, glancing past the trio and their infernal machine to wink at a white wolf on the side of the road. "Choke on this, city-boys."

One hundred feet. Ninety. Seventy-five. Fifty. At that range, the Alpha let loose a air-rending roar as he hurled the maul, the oversized hammer spinning with absolute brutal force as it matched the vehicles speed on intercept. Spinning with the rotation, Regulus veered, in a blur of motion man became wolf. And a monstrous one at that.

A shaggy coat of bronze fur wreathed the beast, baleful eyes glaring at a height to stare a horse in the eye. Hidden underneath his coat was a figure of solid muscle, and indeed, the clan Alpha massed nearly four hundred pounds alone. Leaping to the side, he bared his fangs in a lupine grin.

Sembling back, Regulus's snarl remained on his face. "No, actually."

"I'm the figurehead. My family chooses the forest of trees over the jungle of stone and metal." The Alpha looked once more at the wreckage of the van, sneering. "And I think we know which of our ways works better. Now why should I even think about letting you and these two diseased hairballs walk back to your damned city?"

The clan was drawing in, wolves of all sizes and colors, men and women in wildly varying clothing and bearing a range of weapons to beggar an armory. Medieval or modern. Raya walked as a mirror to her father, still veered in the great white wolf. She wondered how witless these intruders could really be, to miss the scents of the clansmen and women's magics awakened.

As if it mattered.

Fires blazed in the eyes of the Alpha as he regarded the fancy wolf, hands at either side. Rippling through the clan was a faint unease, for they knew their leader far better than these strangers. And even Raya didn't want to be too close to her father should he unleash his own magic. Seeing his silence, she sembled herself, calling out from her end of the circle. "Sleeping with your "family"?"

A chorus of harsh chuckles from her kin, weapons raised and readied all around. Subtle hand signals flashed, the woman fielding the answers in her father's silence. Reassurances, warnings.

"Well, city boy?"

"How about a counter arrangement." Regulus stepped forward, smoke rising from underfoot. Most of the clan scattered in every direction on the sight. The air wavered about the Alpha, his rumbling voice heard in the silence. "You go back to your territory and stay in it, and we stay in ours. Or, at whatever cost, I will burn you and your cronies off the face of this earth, along with a good portion of my own territory."

Raya stared at her father, seeing no bluff in his features. The clan chief had not won his place through domination fights, through any battle of kin. He had earned his place through violence, but in defense of his family. Through victory in war.

There was no bluff here. One of the legendary spawn of Fenrir himself was answering challenge, and the woman simply prayed that the intruder blinked. For Regulus wasn't going to.

"As my kin said. Well, city-boy?"

Regulus simply stared across the space at Artemis, nodding once. He remained ready, heat distorting the air around him. For her part, Raya moved well from the strangers' path, other clansmen and women doing the same. This was a disengagement fraught with tension.

The woman kept her silence. There was nothing to say anyways.

Fenrias Hallvard emerged from a small hatch hidden amidst the brush. He checked his surroundings carefully - listening for disturbances in the foliage and sniffing the air.