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+--- Thread: Frost and Shadow [Completed] (/showthread.php?tid=7457)
RE: Frost and Shadow [Closed] - Warren Castille - 07-11-2014
Warren's mind continued to run through everything, driving it home as deeply as he could to make sure the details weren't lost to the remnants of whatever he had been drugged with.
The old man had taken him for dead and Warren wasn't sure that wasn't the truth. The geezer had pulled him to his feet, made a makeshift tent with his cloak. Warren remembered the blue fire, the memory spreading phantom warmth into his fingers and toes and lips and cheek and nose.
That's not warmth. You're going to lose them. Frost is too much.
He pushed away useless data and focused on the important parts. He didn't dare pull the lock out, not with his fingers are far gone as they were. Even through his gloves the long night had simply been too much. He thought again that he was actually dead somewhere on the mountainside, frozen to the snow and worthless.
The thought turned his focus to anger.
Geezer was holding a lock of her hair. He took it from her, and Warren regretted his decision to not tear him limb from limb.
Focus.
A camp. High in the mountains. An impassable ravine. A voidsent turning them into monsters.
He has them. He took us all. A fiend out of the hells to reshape us. To make us living weapons. The boy followed for her, he had to have, he wants nothing to do with that fiend or his ways, but he won't leave her.
Someone took them. Someone found them in the snow and took them.
You love the girl then? She's given herself over to the fiend you know... she wants to be like him.
Warren blinked against the thought. No time for it.
I told you - they're in the hells with the nastiest voidsent of all. He wants to turn them into demons, too. It's half-done now. Maybe more. He'll either kill them or they'll come back as demons.
Enough. Worthless details. Concentrate.
Prauvaulient's girl was found dead of exposure in the snow past Whitebrim. A spear was beside her, crudely fashioned but effective. Warren was carrying a similar one now, a replacement for his sword, taken from Geezer. Prauvaulient tried to murder Warren.
Too close to him. You're too close, it was an accident but you're on the same path. Geezer will be gone, too, found in the snow.
All he needed to do was get back to Whitebrim as one piece. It didn't matter what fell off of him when he got there; As long as he was breathing he could see this through. Prauvaulient was the lock on the rest of what Warren needed.
He owned many sharp, pointy keys. One of them would fit.
RE: Frost and Shadow [Closed] - Warren Castille - 07-13-2014
"You're awake, finally. I thought we were going to lose you for a while there."
Warren groaned but was surprised to find himself still alive. His hands felt like they were on fire and he couldn't feel his toes but he was alive.
"...what?" He was surprised at how rough his voice sounded. "How long was I out? Where...?"
An elezen woman turned to meet him from across the small room and ice filled Warren's veins when he realized he recognized her. The woman who had absently left the door open.
"Relax." She could see the distress on his face. "As far as anyone else is concerned, you're just another adventurer who couldn't handle the cold. It's more common than you think."
Warren frowned, unsure how to proceed. The woman didn't seem to mind.
"I did what I could for you, but healing magic isn't really my forte. You'll need to see someone more skilled than I. You're in a bad way."
Warren looked away, trying to keep his composure. If he was already known to be back, he'd lose an advantage.
"I'll be going, then. I'm not keen on sticking around." It wasn't a lie.
"That's probably for the best. You won't want to be here when the Inspector returns in five days. I don't think he'll want to see you."
Warren turned and measured her. She continued talking, shrugging.
"No business of mine what happens. I see so many adventurers come through my lands. He can't expect me to keep track of every single one." She folded a paper in her hands and crossed to the doorway, hesitating for only a moment before leaving.
"The Fury watch over you, traveler."
RE: Frost and Shadow [Closed] - Warren Castille - 07-16-2014
Warren permitted himself one of the potions he'd arranged on the desk. He'd intended on saving all of them for his guest but the nagging in his shoulder needed to be quelled, and he was worried about the greatly spiked amount of magical healing he had needed in the recent days. He wouldn't allow himself to become dependent on conjury or alchemy to cover for his mistakes.
The quarters were less humble than Warren had expected, though he wasn't sure why he thought someone as full of himself as the Illustrious Inspector Prauvaulient would cede luxury when away from his homeland. A large, expensive wooden desk. Numerous bookshelves lined with, as near as he could tell, imported historicals and rare editions. Ishgard was a popular subject and there were tens of volumes dedicated to the history and might of the Holy See.
There were portraits on the wall; Excellently made and likely the works of a master. The Inspector himself. Ishgard at dawn. A knight, one who looked much like the inspector but younger.
The spear Warren retrieved from Geezer was nestled behind the door. He was seated beside it, just biding his time until the Inspector returned from his expedition. One hand absently went to the cool glass vial he had tucked away in his pocket. It was one of a handful of items there and the most valuable. It had been given to him alongside advice to be prudent.
"It will look completely natural. No one will know anything was amiss."
He considered the proposal. He knew what he intended on doing, and the potential ramifications it would bring. He was given an out, a way to get what he wanted without destroying himself.
Warren released the vial, his eyes moving to the tools he had arranged on the inspector's desk. His trip through the Gold Court had been one that would have seemed almost hopeful to someone without insight. A stop by a culinarian vendor to purchase a heavy iron cleaver. A brief moment spent before selecting a skinner's knife from a leatherworker's hut. Warren purchased a set of pliers from a Limsan armorsmith and exchanged small talk on their proper use.
The Inspector would be back soon. There would be much to discuss, none of it about proper use of any of those tools.
RE: Frost and Shadow [Closed] - Warren Castille - 07-16-2014
A butcher with a practiced hand will be able to bring the edge of a cleaver down at the weakest part of a joint. Whether it be neatly quartering a dodo or removing a lava toad's leg at the hip, the art of preparing food is equal parts knowledge, precision and execution. Unfortunately for Inspector Prauvaulient, Warren Castille never spent time in a kitchen.
Thwack.
The edge of the butcher's blade came down an ilm or two further to the right than intended. Instead of catching the elezen's hand at the thinnest part of the wrist, the metal bit down into flesh and muscle and latched into the bone.
"Clumsy. Gonna need two for this one." He wrenched the metal free as a torrent of blood spurted from the wound and held it aloft, considering.
Thwack.
**
The initial struggle took only moments. The Inspector, for all of his bandying about and self-importance, was unconditioned to carry out his own fights. He was also completely unsuspecting that he would be accosted by a dead man mere moments after returning from a successful expedition.
As soon as the door latched shut the shadows came alive. The inspector was hauled by his collar onto his wonderfully expensive desk, furnished by the Holy See of course, and he was pinned before he could do much more than stutter. There was the faint hum as the silencing wards kicked in; Prauvaulient had always felt secrets were worth keeping and spared no expense - of Ishgard's - to be certain his domain was secure. The thought didn't dawn on him on account of the first knife being driven through his left hand, sinking into the wood.
His hunter reached to his belt and removed another knife. There were words spoken but they were unheard. The inspector's screams began in earnest when his head was wrenched to the side and the second knife bit into his ear. He felt a tugging and a tearing and then everything sounded strange. Flatter. His voice cut off, the surprise of the situation overruling the pain coursing from his palm and the hole in the side of his head.
Prauvaulient's eyes fixed onto the man's hand. It was holding his ear and he fought the urge to laugh madly, completely and utterly mad at how ridiculous the scenario was. He had just returned from delivering yet another to Ryuuga's camp. He was furthering the line of Ishgard's heroes with the blood of the unworthy. Making weapons. The brief moment passed as the adrenaline spike dipped and the gravity of the situation returned with all the weight of Coerthas' snow and ice.
He looked to his attacker and saw a ghost. The fool knight who he had left to die in the snow. There was single-minded fury in his eyes and he brought his face close to the elezen's, leaning in the direction of his remaining ear and speaking, too furious was he to whisper.
"I'm going to take everything from you."
Prauvaulient opened his mouth to scream and sputtered as the potion splashed onto his face, the bottle rammed into his mouth and down his throat. He gulped desperately at the liquid, his only options compliance or drowning. For all his muster, Prauvaulient feared death.
He felt an aching itch on the side of his head as the wound closed. His ear was still gone, he could tell, and pain shot from his wrist as flesh attempted to suture itself around cold steel. He turned his face away from the highlander, letting his vision fall to one of the bookshelves on the opposite wall.
Once he was able to count the number of potions that were stored there, he was able to scream once more.
RE: Frost and Shadow [Closed] - Warren Castille - 07-17-2014
"Do you know what this is, Inspector?" Warren tumbled the vial in his bloodstained hands, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. What was left of the Inspector groaned, remaining limbs writhing slowly. The highlander sighed, knowing the elezen's mental limits were nearing capacity.
He stood and paced the room. They had only been together for a few short minutes - half a bell at the most - and they had been uninterrupted for the duration. Warren didn't have a plan if he was discovered and he realized he was covered in blood. None of that seemed to reach the front of his mind.
"I took them to him! I found them wandering blindly! Near frozen! He could reshape them, reforge them!"
The Inspector had explained as quickly as he could and sputtering how he and his team had followed the reports of adventurers passing through. The blue haired girl not dressed for snow. The miqo'te male who chased her. He explained how he found them huddled near one another, her completely nude and him curled and shivering, muttering to himself.
"They will be remade into something glorious!"
Prauvaulient rambled about the camp. A different camp every time, so as to not be tracked. Even he didn't know where it was, he only knew where to drop the bodies. He explained that his son had gone, willingly, and had become something more than even Ishgard's best dragoons could amount to.
"They won't be the same. Not now. Far too long. He will have broken them."
He explained how his son hadn't even let him know he had survived. He was beyond caring. His family was his spear. His love was combat. The humanity had been carved out of him and replaced with unfeeling cruelty, a lust for carnage. He tried to explain with no small reverence that whoever had gone to that camp would never return down the mountain.
"This is Rhalgr's Bile. It has killed kings. One drop, anywhere on your body, and you will die. It will look completely natural. Your heart will stop, and no one will know why. You will simply...die."
Warren studied the vial, the contents eerily similar to a vial of a man's blood. He looked at what remained of the Inspector's face and put on a mask of sympathy. The elezen's remaining eye was looking in Warren's direction. The highlander grinned. He had the mental capacity to understand him still. That was good.
"I think we've seen enough of each other, Inspector. Should I repay your honesty? Give you a peaceful death after all I've put you through? There's not much more I can do, huh?" Warren's tone dropped, guilt creeping in. Before him the inspector's useless mouth strained, groaning something low and mournful.
"You can't save them."
A moment of defiance, from when the Inspector still thought he might survive the day. Warren's expression soured and he leaned in, speaking quietly over the Ishgardian's sobs.
"I would, Inspector. But this kills kings. Are you a king, Inspector? Are you worth more than the contents of this vial? Than a drop of it?" He surveyed the shattered body of the elezen and shook his head. "Not even when you were whole."
The low sob rose to a high moan as Warren picked the spear from the corner. He turned and gave the inspector one last look.
"If I can't find them, Inspector, I will find your son."
There was a gurgled cry, cut off as the spearhead bit through into the desk.
RE: Frost and Shadow [Closed] - Warren Castille - 07-18-2014
Warren hurled the empty across the room at the fireplace. He'd already knocked the candles out and the small explosion of glass shards satisfied a visceral part of him. He staggered across to his - their - stash of bottles and took an armful, returning to the front door and bracing his back against it before sliding down the length of it, crumpling to the floor. He pulled off a cap and drank heavily, just as he had the others.
"Suh... 'sposed 'ta bring you home." He emphasized the last word, indicating as if he had taken him somewhere else. " 'sposed to be here. Suhpose t' be here..." He cut off the emotions with a flash of anger, emptying the bottle.
"S' my faul'. I'm th' reason yer' not home anymore. I sen' you t' that place, an' it's my faul' yer not comin' home." His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, the beast speaking through his own tongue. "S' my faul' yer' probly dead up there. I killed you."
The words reached his ears as a foreign entity and he broke down, the bottle bouncing off of the floor forgotten as he drew himself into a sobbing ball on the ground. "Killed you fer a girl who didn' even look at my 'nymore. Killed you by not bein' able to take a gods-damned hint." He spit bile at the words, his face contorting into an angry snarl. "Killed you by bein' weak."
It was a flash in the pan, his words lashes against his own back. He retreated back into grief, wiping his eyes as they leaked and scooping up the remaining bottles and managing to get himself on unstable legs to his seat at the table. He didn't notice the bits of broken glass sticking to his feet, or the red trail he was leaving.
He sat heavily, taking his head in his hands and then removing the top on another bottle. "S'not fair, you know. Leavin' me to drink all'a this. Even if I knew I'd be drinkin' it all anyway. You can' hol' your liquor, not like ol' Warren can." He snickered to himself, teasing his absent friend. "I'd en' up carryin' you to yer bed. Ace can hol' more booze than you can." Warren laughed, sniffling and taking another long swig. "S'alright. I'll get ridda these bottles. You woulda-" A hitch, followed by a whisper. "Woulda wanted it this way." The laughter had drained out of him now. He looked towards the empty chair opposite his and felt something inside of him strain, then burst.
Warren collapsed his face into the crook of his arm, nodding and sobbing. "Alright. I'll leave one. Jus' one. For when you get back." He slid one of the remaining bottles across the table, directly in front of the empty chair.
The highlander drew his hands over his head and quietly sobbed himself to sleep.
RE: Frost and Shadow [Closed] - Warren Castille - 07-19-2014
You gave yourself a night. You're fine. Pick up the pieces, now.
Sunlight poured through the windows of the Duskbreak as Warren cracked his neck and groaned, rolling his shoulders. There were more comfortable places to sleep just down the stairs but he never would have allowed himself to rest. Parts of the previous night came back to him as the fog rolled itself away.
More glass. You never cleaned up the first bits.
He went about the task of cleaning. The bits of bottle and glass from the smashed map were simple enough to rectify and the highlander moved on to wiping down surfaces and setting things right. He made a mental note to refill the drink selection next time he was able.
You two prided yourselves on keeping the place looking like it was tended by a woman. You're going to have to work twice as hard to keep that appearance up now.
Ace was returned, though now the ancient puppy sat facing Warren's bed. He was the paladin's responsibility now, and the poor thing looked ready to bust his seams if mishandled. Warren wouldn't let anything happen to him.
Should think about opening her up sometime. There's no use for it as a stronghold anymore. No one's going to need it for shelter. Maybe it'd do some good.
The blue lock went away with the letter in the secured chest at his desk. He briefly considered the fireplace since it wasn't his by right but it seemed unkind to dispose of it in that way.
You can do this.
Warren made sure the bottle was still in front of the chair before leaving.
RE: Frost and Shadow [Closed] - Warren Castille - 07-23-2014
Warren sat on the stone bench in the center of the Goblet, one fist pressed into the palm of his other hand and his chin resting upon them both. His eyes flitted left and right, back and forth and up and down. He wasn't watching the stones, or the waterfall or the birds or sky; Warren's entire attention was directed into the noises he heard.
The linkpearls had been easy enough to acquire. In a world as tumultuous as Eorzea there was always a need for communication, but more importantly there was a need for security. A linkpearl is traditionally free to communicate two ways but there is a market for those that may only transmit and never receive. Warren had procured a number of these pearls and linked them to a single receptive one; The result was a network of ears he had placed only inside of his own home. The Duskbreak was fashioned once as a safehold and Warren thought he would have need to know what went on there. He had only ever removed the master link once, and that was when he couldn't bring himself to hear the words uttered from the rooms.
The last thing he expected to hear was the door open. Not forced, but unlocked. Footsteps, soft but clear. The sound of a bottle being dragged off of a tabletop. Someone had come home.
***
In Closing - Warren Castille - 07-23-2014
I think some thanks are in order.
First to everyone who stuck around in the thread. I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started it, but I certainly did NOT expect to be received as well as I was!
Second, a huge thanks to everyone who ended up helping to rally Warren during the past month. This was originally designed as an aside to the roleplay, something going on in the meanwhile but you guys refused to let it exist on its own. For everyone who let themselves get tangled up in what I was doing, thank you. Warren needed the back-up and none of you let him down.
Finally, thanks to the other side of the story. I was waiting to show this part at the end because I didn't want to spoil it, but hey, we're done now so it's time to pull back the curtain!
This wasn't just a sidestory. The whole time I'd been writing, someone else was too. While this thread catalogs the month Warren went through, he wasn't alone on this journey.
Give it a read if you can. I think it helps complete the story. Well, as much as living, breathing RP can be completed. This chapter's done but I somehow think the book's going to be much longer.
Thanks guys!