Torn Fate

[Thanatos]

She steadied her breathing, her chest rising and falling steadily, her pupils narrowed to slits as she concerntrated her view down the length of the bolt. Small bugs chirped loudly all around her and the quiet thud through the leaves of the forest echoed around the clearing as it moved towards the lake, the silver glinting around its neck. She took one last deep breath and let it out slowly pulling the trigger as the air left her chest. The bolt flew through the trees, tearing through leaves until finally it struck.

A deafening roar filled the trees as the bolt lodged itself among the fur on the shoulder of a hunter. "Crap!,"Kaeria spoke a little too loud and the Hunters head jerked in her direction, he had spotted her. She had only a few moments to sling her crossbow into place on her back and turn to scramble away before the creature came crashing through the trees behind her, hot on her heels.

She pulled her Sai from their sheath as she ran, her feet pounding on the floor, the sai wouldn't be fantastic against hunters claws but she'd rather have those than her bare hands. Kaeria's mind flew quickly to the pain on her leg as a low branch tore across the skin but soon darted back to her head. The path ahead of her looked different, this wasn't the way she had come, she was lost...

The hunter behind her was getting closer, almost upon her. The trees around the area begun to thin out, and the ground beneath Kaeria's feet became more moist, the smell of sea water was being carried inwards from the sea.

Kaeria struggled to slow quickly, stumbling a little as she did so. The cliff edge had come into view and she had stopped only a few meters short of it falling onto her knees to stop herself from going right over. She leapt back onto her feet and spun around, her sai held high ready to face the angry hunter.

He must have seen the cliff a little before Kaeria had for he slowed down to a stop a short distance from Kaeria and bent down onto the floor. Kaeria watched him with her eyes transfixed as he groaned in pain until the fur that had once covered his body had now disappeared replaced by human skin. He stood straight and pulled a dagger from a sheath on his hip - the only thing he was wearing.

"Little girls should never play with stray dogs, they never know when the dog might bite!" The Man looked around his mid twenties, 'old enough to have sired at least two clans' Kaeria thought to herself. His hair in his human form was the exact same color as his fur, slate gray with flecks of brown all over.

Kaeria leapt at the guy before he had the chance to attack her. She brought her sai down from above and he blocked her blows with his dagger one after another. For a man with only one small dagger he fought very well. Kaeria had managed to keep the fight going her way until the hunter caught her face with a blow from his fist.

Feeling slightly dizzied she fell to the floor only to be hoisted up again by her neck. Her breath caught and she coughed struggling to gasp for air as the hunter changed back into his beast form and walked towards the cliff. "Your going to regret that arrow shot," he growled in a deep throaty voice as he held her out above the water.

Siezing her last chance Kaeria snatched at the pendant around his neck and slashed down his chest with the sai in her right hand. Kaeria heard the deafening roar of the hunter for only a few moments before she crashed into the water below her gills working to take in as much oxygen from the water as she could manage....

[Rache]

Damien stood on the edge of a mountain cliff, colorless eyes watching the white clouds above him in pondering thought. A slight wind started up, ruffling his feathers as his mom used to do when she came to visit...
But not anymore.
He fingered the long bow in his hands with calloused fingers, switching his gaze from up above to down below.
Hunting had never given him any trouble, but today...
Today, everything seemed to want to stay home and sleep...
Sighing, he sat cross-legged, the leather leggings he wore bunching at the knees. He had worn sandals today, but even that didn't really keep his feet from being cut by the rocks.
Damien notched a green-feathered arrow and aimed it up at an angle.
Since there seemed to be nothing to do up here, why not just shoot the arrow and follow it wherever it went?
That would at least give him something to do...
He gazed down the sight and aimed at a cloud he thought looked like a bird, then loosed it with a smile.
The arrow soared up, a wooden bolt of lightning, before arcing, arcing, arcing down to thud somewhere into the forest below.
The smile on Damien's face was immediately replaced by a frown.
Hunt for an arrow in the forest?
Huffing, Damien stood up with a solemn smirk and brandished his wings like two rays of light exploding from his back. He waited for a silght wind to puff up and then threw himself over the cliff.
He was falling...
Falling fast...
Damien arched his wings, catching the air like wind into sails. He soared for a short distance before catching a thermal and heading up, circling as he tried to remember in what square mile of forest his arrow had landed.
Curse it! It had been a perfectly good arrow too!
As he augmented in height and anxiety, he glanced around at the cold blue sky around him. Quite a few meters away, he could see a falcon circling as he did, but in search for a meal, not a stupid little stick of flint and feathers and...
Well...
Damien halted to a hover as his stomach growled and he moaned.
He was hungry too...
Forcing himself to push the thought of missed meals and prey away, Damien crushed his wings together and dove towards the forest near the coast.
Maybe... if he couldn't find his arrow... he could at least find some rabbits that... lived by the coast?
Damien shook his head.
Rabbits didn't live by the coast...
But fish lived in the water...
Maybe he could catch some...
So into his thoughts was he that Damien didn't pull up in time to avoid crashing into a tree branch. Yelping, he tumbled down to the forest floor as his wings cocooned him in a little safety blanket of feathers.
Crashing down. Leaves exploding up. Slight pain in the shoulders.
Damien groaned as he extracted himself from the mess of his wings and bow. His leg was bleeding where his rapier had crushed into his thigh.
Ow...
Damien cracked a kink out of his neck with a glare at the leaves under him.
Hungry, hurt, bleeding...
At least his wings were fine...
He started stalking through the black trunks that dispersed to zigzags of broken wood above, sprouting green tendrils called 'leaves'. Damien wasn't so used to the forest, but he knew one thing...
If in need of herbs slash medicine slash prey, go to the forest.
Just watch out for the Hunters.
Silently, he stopped as he heard a crack up ahead and drew another arrow from the quiver lodged betwixt his wings. He drew it, but waited for whatever was coming to come...
A small squirrel.
That was it?
Sighing inwardly, Damien sighted with a narrowed eye, blowing puffs of air up his cheek to dislodge a lock of hair covering his right eye.
When he had a good shot, he loosed.
The arrow smacked into the squirrel's head, pinning it to a tree as small bits of brain matter and gore started falling from the decimated squirrel.
Damien smiled grimly and, walking over, yanked the arrow out and picked the squirrel up by its bushy oversized tail.
Great.
Meat.
Taking some rope he had wound around his waist, he knotted up the squirrel and continued with the small prey thrown over his shoulder.
He was hungrier than just what a squirrel could supply.
Maybe he could find something at the coast.
Some washed up fish for example? Even though that was too much to hope for.
Damien paused and thought.
Would it be better to take his squirrel back up to his little cave in the mountainside and eat it and starve, or continue and find something else to eat too?
Damien's stomach growled again, and his mind was set.
Continue and find something else to eat.

[Thanatos]

Kaeria crawled out onto the beach, her throat still burning from the grip of the hunters claws. Five tears of blood ran down her neck from the small puncture wounds on her neck that the hunter had left, they stung from the salt water but Kaeria knew that they would heal faster from it.

She struggled to her feet and looked around herself. She had come quite a way down the beach from where she had begun, at least a couple of miles West of where her small boat was anchored. Her muscles throbbed and screamed at every single movement that she made, her encounter with the hunter had really tired her out.

The easiest way back to the boat was to swim back in the ocean along the coastline, she knew better than to attempt swimming that far whilst she was so tired though. There were all sorts of dangerous creatures in the ocean, said to have mutated over hundreds of years. Her grandmother had often told her horror stories of creatures with the ability to swallow her whole as a child and they had not left her as she grew.

She made her way, shakily, inland towards the forested area where she could gather together some firewood to set up camp here for the night, under the stars. She pocketed the pendant she still clutched and returned her Sai to their sheath, it was a miracle that she had managed to hold on to them and avoid the rocks below the cliff.

[Rache]

Damien crooked his legs under the branch he was sitting on, gazing out over the sparse area that spanned between the water's edge and the forest.
Chewing on a bit of mint he had found, he spat the wadded vegetation out and stretched his wings behind him, stupidly cracking his right appendage up into a branch and snapping it in two. He winced, then retracted his wings to sigh deeply.
He really didn't want to go anywhere near that murky thing called the sea, so he was just waiting to see if anything eatable would wander by so he could shoot it and add it to the squirrel hanging from the rope...
He had caught a crab and eaten it then and there to ward off the pangs of hunger, if that counted.
Yawning, he paused when he saw a figure move across the beach and out onto the small grass and sand area.
Hmm... a water dweller...
He thought back to the aerie for a moment, remembering his instructor telling him of these people

"What an odd people! The ladies head the societies, leaving the men to spawn more girl-children who inherit everything!" His instructor had shook his head and clucked his tongue like an annoying old pigeon, "Women are foolish creatures, Damien. They'll take your heart and carry it away with them... And you'll never see it again. See how our race does it? We let the men do the work, make the rules, hunt for meat. Now, compare that to the watermen! They must fight off sea monsters of the most horrendous kind just to survive!"

Damien had never taken him seriously enough to wonder more about these water-dwellers habits, but now...
He narrowed his eyes and surveyed the girl with an intent colorless eye, regarding her bedraggled clothing, the dripping hair, and, of course, the weapons she bore.
But she looked like she had been through a hurricane!
A slight smile tugging at his lips, Damien alighted and flew a bit higher, circling around the water creature.
The more he saw of her, the curiouser he became. Before he could stop himself, he swooped and plucked at her matted black hair,
"Hello!"

[Thanatos]

Kaeria swallowed the large lump in her throat and readied the last of her energy. She had seen the shadow circle overhead before she had heard the voice call out, the old tongue. She pinned her right arm to her side, the side most shadowed, and silently slipped her sai from its sheath, hoping that the creature would not see.

She took a quick glance over her back at the forested area. If she could make her way to the trees then those poisonous talons could not come down on her to tear her flesh.

She scrabbled to her feet as quickly as she could physically manage and put the last of her remaining energy into sprinting to the shelter of the nearest tree. She caught at the trunk of the tree, swinging around it and landing on the sand, craning her neck to peer through the canopy of leaves. She hoped that the creature would not land, as she had just expended the last of her energy trying to evade the thing. She silently prayed that the creature would not want to battle on the ground and simply fly on to look for other prey.

[Rache]

Hmm... the water dweller didn't seem to want to talk.
Smiling, Damien fluttered to the ground and peered into the trees and underbrush, trying to make out the female.
A lone thought wandered into his mind: Could you eat them? Were they good?
Shrugging the thought away, he crouched down and cocked his head to the side, smiling, "Come on, I won't hurt you." His voice was raspy, kind of grating like *talons* scrabbling against a rock.
Just to be safe, he held his wings out at ready, his hand on his sword's hilt.
It was a female. Females were foreign creatures. Always stringing out cliff flowers and talking about how horrible their life was, always complaining, always talking...
They could attack if they got angry, he supposed.
Last time he had gone to a village, he had overheard another air-walker talking about how a 'girl' had clawed out an eye of one of his friends.
Frankly, Damien hadn't believed it, but, again, he could never be too careful...
"Hello?"

[Avecielo]

The desert sprawled out into infinity around the two figures who stood across from each other. The one to the east, the one with the knives stored around the belt that wrapped around his chest, was the man who had previously been believed to be untouchable. They said that he would buy another blade each time he planned to murder someone. They also told how he killed every hunter who planned to collect on his hide. This one in front of him, they would wager, would be no exception.

Except there was something about the man with the west behind his back. Mayhap it had been the way the sun cast his shadow almost perfectly ahead of him. Perhaps it had been the way his flat-crowned hat painted an ominous shadow over his eyes and concealed them in total blackness. Or maybe it had been the way he stood. The silhouette leaned tall and proud, and even though the man to the west appeared to be the same height as your average human hick, there seemed to be something about the way he stood that made him a giant. Almost able to block the sun. In fact, he would set his watch and warrant on that. And for a brief moment, the man to the east won his own bet.

They stood there for at least five minutes now. They say an eternity to those who know death breathes down their neck.

See, now, the man to the west. See him well. Mayhap he looks familiar to you. Maybe thats exactly who he is. Echoes of him have been seen in different times, different realities. Notice the aura brimming around him. It warms and it burns, just like the desert sun from this beaten world. Remember the look on his face as he is about to kill. Cool, calm, collected. Its the last thing youd reckon you see. It meant you were dead.

The outlaw flinches, finally. The sweat pouring into his eyes turning out to be too much to handle. He reaches for his knives before realizing that his left hand is no longer there. It takes a second before the warm pain begins to set in. He cries as the sudden revelation begins to unfold before him. It was not how his hand was no more, blown into oblivion by the man to the west. But rather the cruel jab of desperation. Of how fast the man to the west drew his gun.

He kneels, the outlaw. Cries a pardon. But is lost in the vastness of the desert. He grabs his arm, his incomplete one. He weeps and weeps, not realizing exactly how much blood he is loosing. He looks up and theres the man to the west. The sun directly behind his head. He looks like an angel to the outlaw. An angel coming to collect his soul. Almost as quick as his hand was gone there was now a gun resting on his forehead. A big gun. A beautiful gun. An angels gun.

[Thanatos]

The air walker didn't seem much of a threat. Now that she could see him more clearly she took a moment to look more carefully at him. His black hair hung loosely around his face slightly covering some of his features. He was quite a handsome young man, only a few years older than Kaeria at most. She ventured a little away from the trees, seeing that his feet were not much different from her own, there were certainly no talons.

From his back emerged these beautiful white wings, they looked soft and sleek and Kaeria had a sudden urdge to touch them. She kept herself rooted to the spot. This Air Walker still had weapons, he could still choose to cut her open and eat her for dinner if he chose. Her eyes darted to the small furry creature at his side, that certainly wouln't sate his hunger.

He gave greeting in the old tongue, Kaeria did not know much of it but attempted a greeting anyway, her accent twisting the words making them sound more exotic.

"Hello Air One, you want what?"

[Rache]

Air one? Very simple term, indeed...
Damien eyed the water dweller as she stepped away from the trees, eyes sparkling in their uncolored way, wary, cautious.
The words that the water dweller had spoken had a curious note to them, a lisp that spoke of ill-usage, not to mention her aforementioned simple choice of words...
Smiling, he rasped a hoarse cough, "What I want is food, but now it is replaced by curiosity." He leaned forwards, towards the girl, hands never leaving the hilt of his sword. His head tilting to perfect the picture of interest, he noted the small blood-wounds on her neck as he asked, "You are hurt?"
He could smell the blood, a deep copper-iron scent he knew would not emanate from the squirrel on his waist, for it was dried now.
His hand reached up and out, and he beckoned with a pointed grin, "You are hurt. Come here. I know... medicine."
True, he had some pain relievers and blood-clotters in the small pouch he hid at the bottom of his quiver, but the water dweller must first come forward...
The blood...
His stomach gave a wretched groan at the smell.

[Thanatos]

Curiosity overcame Kaeria and she stepped closer towards the air walker. If this man chose to attack her, whether she co-operated or not, she hadn't the energy to overcome him. She stepped forwards, her hair blowing across her face as the breeze from the ocean swept over the beach.

Her sai still clutched tightly in her hand, she stopped at arms length away from the air walked and tipped her head backwards to bear her neck to him. At least if he chose to kill her, it would most likely be quick.

"Hunter",she pointed at the wounds on her neck which were beginning to feel very sore and inflamed. The heat had spread from her neck and was working it ways through her body, or perhaps it was just exhaustion working its way through her.

[Rache]

Damien stepped closer cautiously, unlatching the small bag at his waist that, by itself, was no larger than a mouse's body. Inside, small packets of ground brown leaves served as simple painkillers, and other delicatelly wrapped bark and flowers for other random measures.
Pulling out a packet of painkilling powder, he hesitantly put out a hand and gently traced the wounds with the tip of his finger. Infection had began to set in, carried by air, or water, or both.
At any rate, it had to be treated.
Flicking a bit of the powder onto it, he murmured, "Stay still."
His hand itched through the small trinkets till he found what he was looking for: a nance's flower, pink and round and beautifully fresh. Popping it into his mouth, he ignored the sour taste and, chewing it up thoroughly, spat it back out as a pinkish-white mush into his hand.
He dabbed it solemnly on the wounds with gentle care, careful not to push too hard or rub the wrong direction. As he spread the poultice over the hurts, he gazed at the water-dweller's eyes with interest.
This female didn't seem all that bad.
In fact, she was cooperative, unlike some of the free-minded ones back at the village who would have been atwittering at his touch.
One reason he had started to live outside the boundaries of the village.
Drawing back his applying medical hand, he let his other linger at the throat of the water-dweller, hesitant.

[Nightia]

Nightia went cautiously up the beach. She had heard something. She pinned her wings as close to her side as they would go. Her gold eyes watched the scene. Shaking her head the silver blue hair cascaded over her wings
so that they were unseen. She kept one hand on her sword as she went up. She looked at the air dweller and wondered what it was.

[InfinityUnending]

Name: Rayvyn
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Build: Like a tank. Huge, all muscle.
Appearance: Spiked brown hair. Brown eyes. Long flowing pants and tight-ish shirt.
Weapon- Long Spear, not the throwing kind. Kinda like a glaive, except bigger and with a lot more pain.
Abilities: Doesn't feel pain and heals all but fatal wounds.
Strengths: Doesn't drink or smoke, exercises and practices with his spear every day.
Weaknesses: Fun loving, almost to a fault, quick to anger, and blunt.
Job: Mercenary

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

::Sounds of snapping twigs and crunching leaves heralded his approach. Rayvyn steps out of the forest onto the beach, and stops, checking to make sure he can still access his spear easily. He nods and continues forward, towards the small gathering on the beach. He hadn't seen anyone for a while, and he needed money. Surely one of them would need some hired muscle...::

[Nightia]

Nightia's head snapped up at the sound of breaking twigs. She looked over at the two on the beach but they were making no such sound. She looked around and finally spotted someone comming out of the forest. She was closer then two on the beach and exatly on his route. She ducked her head and hoped against hope he might go around.

[InfinityUnending]

::Sees someone in his way. Starts to walk towards her, but then notices her trying to hide. Respectfully, he avoids her and continues towards the two.::

[Nightia]

Night looked up a bit surprised. It was plainly obvious he had seen her. And even started torward her. But now seeing she was hiding was going around her. Someone who acted like that couldn't be too bad... She jumped up and followed him. "Wait!"

[InfinityUnending]

::Stops and turns around, waiting for the stranger to catch up to him.::

[Nightia]

"Hello, who are you?" Asked Night catching up.