The Core

Hunter's Castle - The Core

The sun had just begun to peek over the ramparts of Hunter's Castle.

Though at that point at least one of the Wilde Jagd had been awake quite some time.

A figure, wrapped in a long coat stepped with a brisk sense of purpose along the stone flags of the outer walkway, her presence eliciting a nod and a greeting from the gate's sentry.

Possibly with a hint of displeasure that a hound took it upon themselves to wander around the wilds by themselves at dawn.

Whilst Hunter's Castle sat in the Core region, it was to the north, near the border; an altogether more rough and dangerous place than the shallow valleys and farmlands near the capital. The view from the gate to the north was dominated by the grey, jagged spire of Mount Koan, and beyond that stormy range lay Vinlund and the other more scattered lands of the north. It was not uncommon for bandits to stray into the pine woods of this area.

Oren, for her own part, was not in the least bit scared by that prospect.

The Hound dealt with much worse things than bandits daily, after all. If you could not stare down storm starving northlander desperate for your boots without blinking then the likelihood that you would do anything but scream and cry against a Fragment seemed very slim.

She needed the walk anyway. There was only so long you could stare at a set of notes with nothing else to draw data from.

Access to any live fragment was a practice that was either tricky to achieve or extremely dangerous to carry out, and you stood little chance of getting anything done without a fair amount of backup. Something field agents were often too occupied with other work to provide.

And those returned dead were...only a limited amount of use. She'd dissected things, looked at samples and slides, separated blood out into its individual constituent parts, preserved parts in formaldehyde. All the things you might expect.But a fragment no longer alive was missing the vital part. The one piece the Wilde Jagd were truly concerned about.

Lately she'd found herself simply doing her best to pass time as productively as possible.

You could not afford to get complacent though.

Information was rather hard to come by on the fragments. News tended to travel slowly, so, when one was discovered you had to move quickly. And by special request Oren had gained permission to come along on the next mission. As a researcher it wasn't the typical mode of working.

You were hardly talking typical subjects either.

Achieving the permission from one of the hunters had been one of the easiest parts of the venture.

Informing field hounds of their obligation to let her along was going to be the more difficult part.

She made her way inside to the main courtyard. The primary blocks of the structure sat on each side. Research, Intelligence, Training, and the Barracks. Carved somewhere into the living rock below them were the cells, where the things they had contained now sat.

Normally her place was somewhere in the research building. Today however she turned to the east and the Barracks.

In order to ruin someone's morning.

Harren "Razor" Rager
Hunter's Case -- The Core
Barracks

Awake. Not the calm, refreshing wake of a sleeper rising from a long slumber after the body recharged and brought itself to face the day on its own terms. Not the begrudging, stubborn resistance of a sleeper dragged awake when slumber beckoned for a continued embrace. Not the startled wake of a sleeper jolted forward by a sudden sound crashing through the barrier of an otherwise pleasant slumber.

No, Rager awoke into the paralyzing embrace of an absolute and ineffable fear. The wake of one broken by a nightmare such that the sleeper's eyes break, but the rest of the body remains completely still as if restrained by whatever demons the sleep imagined from the cover of night. The wake of one for whom the mouth opened only to find the voice, the ability to scream, had been stolen and held hostage by the those same demons.

This was the way Rager awoke, the man with demons plenty enough to stay with him for the remainder of his days among those on the surface of the world still turning. Eventually, the demons released their hold, the conscious mind finally firing with synapses of waking logic that broke through the hold, the paralysis, the demons, with the simple thoughts that broke through all such nightmares. Words of comfort, supposedly.

It was all just a dream.

Rager rose to the spartan accomodations of his portion of the Barracks, feet finding the floor and the boots positioned perfectly a few inches to the left within seconds. Not quite the literally definitely of sleeping with one's boots on, but close enough. The man rose and stretched, a back pain that hadn't slept with him for many years now rising with him like a faithful companion. Or a nagging wife.

Rager dressed in the darkness and relative silence of the sleeping world. There were days he would have trainees awake for more than an hour already, going through the paces. No such luck today, no Pups to train into true, proper Hounds. No, today was a day for the field. A good day to die, the old Hound thought to himself and he placed the patch down over where a right eye had once glared at the world.

Stepping out into the light of the morning, Rager cleared his throat and spit off to the side. Maybe today would be the day the nightmares finally called Rager home. Or just another story, one to twist and relive in sleeping hours. And waking ones, too.

Speaking of bad dreams. Rager heard crunching footsteps and looked down the path to see a very familiar face. Scrunching his features together with a hard swallow of the morning, he address the early-risen face of Oren.

"Think you strayed a bit far from the cave. You do know this is where the real work is?"

Vera gave the lace of her vambrace a final sharp tug, feeling the plated leather hug firm to her forearm through her long cotton sleeve before tying off a deft knot with one hand. She rolled up onto her toes to reach her satchel where it lay on the top shelf, her feet feeling similarly snug in a pair of sturdy, flexible ankle-cut boots. Her hand touched the cold metal of the door handle, and she smiled at the sting of the sun in her eyes.

Vera Tetchneri had always been a morning person. Shutting off the delicious sensory input of being alive for the sake of sleep had always felt like a pitiful waste of time. She jogged to the meeting point, making her own breeze to cool and dry her short, metal-blonde hair, which still hung slightly damp from her earlier quick douse at the water pump.

Her manner seemed more akin to heading out for a morning of leisure than the arduous work of travel and risk. It would be hard to find any trace of the sobriety that probably should have been warranted, considering the relatively high likelihood of dying on the job. But she loved the job. She lived for the field.

Which was probably why seeing a lab rat outside took her aback a bit.

Vera caught Rager's sarcastic remark, so she announced her approach by replying, in her far North accent, "Ease up. You cannot be blaming her for wanting to be where fun happens." She looked at Oren, and managed to seem to be looking down her nose a bit despite the fact that she was a solid half a foot shorter than the researcher. "Kovalenko, yes?"

She trusted an explanation was in order. She dearly hoped this wouldn't slow them down.