In the Temple of Hodr
In which Krieger leads Bianca and Hrafnkel to seek the blessing of the blind god of night and winter for their journey.
(Krieger granted me kind permission to post this AWESEOME scene from his quest. Thanks, Kri!)
The feast was eventful and enjoyable. A Kite with a broken arm nurses his wounded pride while Bianca struts around puffed up on her victory. Hraf and Kri walk the city in quiet showing the wee little peacock the largest settlement in all of Kitezh, one that at first doesn't seem that big until one begins walking. It's been awhile now and frankly, it seems much, much, much larger. The slums are horrible, showing abject poverty of wood and stone hovels, muddy streets and poorly fashioned clothes. There is no indoor plumbing and so the gutters flow in places with open piles of sewage and an overall sense of ICK prevails. At least, it should. But the people don't seem to notice. They shovel fresh dirt into the gutters as though it were normal, smiles and jests on their lips. Lean-to's with curtains for doors show glimpses of mothers chasing children about in giggling fits and families enjoying meals to the sounds of tales of valor or truest love. The abject poor of Kitezh seem oddly happier than a great many of the wealthy in Amber. Kri, who has been mostly leading the way, simply continues to smile proudly. Stench and barely there homes don't put a dent in his pride... "The temple is up here." he says with a nod further on, he did after all promise to take them to see one of the shrines.
Hrafnkel had laughed at the match, but out of sympathy for the man with the broken arm, and likely in no small part due to Bianca's glowering blues, had even not held him to the bet he'd placed beforehand. Now, walking along, as with Krieger, he seems somewhat un-phased by the conditions they move through. Though, it does win less endeared looks from him than his earlier travels when they'd first arrived. He swaggers lightly beside Bianca, his arm more inclined to slip about her, as they walk than chastely perching for her arm as he might in Amber City.
As the trio walks towards the shrine, Bianca attempts yet again to pronounce, "May I have red sauce on the brisket" and "Can you point me to the smithy?" in Kitezh. 'More mead here' and 'your hedgehog peed in my rucksack' she has memorized and pronounces with startling accuracy - the latter - of course being a cruel joke.
Hrafnkel coaches Bianca with encouraging tips. "That's good, but...round the lips more... like this; uuuu, not uuuu." he assists in demonstration at the alien eccentricities in the Kitezh vowel sounds. He pauses, to add, "Which temple?" to Krieger.
Krieger points as they round the corner, and there, in the 'middle' of the city, or at least the middle of the ickier section of town, stands a wall of stone with a door set in its center, charred to deepest black the door looks a bit ominous. "Hod." he says with a smile.
Bianca annunciates, "Hedgehuuugue" She is ill content with the result, "Thank the stars I can always hit someone if we don't understand each other and come across seeming polite for it!"
Hrafnkel tries to keep his chuckling to a minimum, nodding. "It's...close. It's not the syntax that gets you, but the enunciation," he murmurs to Bianca. Then his head cocks at the large doors, not seeming daunted, but rather decidedly curious.
Bianca falls silent, flexing her lip into flutes and then slimming them out of existence. Sure, she's practicing Kitezh vowels, but should that fail and she descends the mountain with fingers missing if she keeps up on her 'uuuu's she's guaranteed a 'living'!
Krieger walks over to the door and pauses, taking a deep breath. The thing about Hod is that he's a misunderstood god. It's well known he will someday slay Baldur, as his twin it seems almost right that he do so, but Hod isn't a bad god. Just... disliked by most. However, the Northerners have always been different, older, more reverent and less willing to let the old ways die. "It is a room with no windows and no cracks. No light may enter and the god may place anything inside the darkness that he wishes, to test you." he turns to stare at the pair with him. "Some have entered and never left, never to be found again. Some leave with gold in their pockets, others swords of ice in their bellies." he shrugs, "The point is that you enter and remain there until it is time to exit." the stone wall is in fact an entire building, small but well made. "Hod is the god of winter and darkness, the blind brother of Baldur the Shining One. I thought it best to seek his blessing for our trip."
Hrafnkel's brows drift aloft in the wake of Krieger's exposition, a hand lifting to rub scratchily in his beard, lips pursing. He glances to Bianca. "Right. Well, why not wait out here for us and read, love..." he suggests in crisply formed Thari. "Sure this won't be long."
A wanton glare of azure eyes brimming with sterling incandescence is shot at Bianca's betrothed as crisply she informs Hrafnkel in almost fluid Kitezh, "Your hedgehog peed in my rucksack!" Her phrase is impassioned and Hod only knows what it means! Flinging the doors open (if she must) in a feat of strength apt at cowing lesser men she enters the temple without hesitation.
...and walks into another door. Bonk. Krieger did mention no light was allowed inside, right? He sighs and follows behind the small woman, closing the first door behind them before opening the second. "It is a temple." he says firmly, "Not a bar." which is to say misbehave in here and she won't have to wait for Hod to spank her. Kri is a very devout man. As he closes the second door behind them, trusting Hraf to come through properly, the darkness it total. More than that, it seem to have a life all its own. It's heavy, weighted on the skin. Sounds here either echo or are lacking entirely, sense of space it lost completely seeming both larger than the castle and smaller then a coffin all at once. It is /not/ an easy place to stand, no matter how brave or stalwart. All living things have an innate fear of the dark, and for good reason, usually it is mastered as one grows, but here in this place, such control is stripped away, years falling like chafe until a child remains locked in a room all alone. Kite gods are not kind.
Hrafnkel accept the charge that Bianca blithely levels evenly, with a glance to Krieger. Then the thunk and he winces. He says something to Krieger, in an obscure Kitezh dialect, ruefully, before they are admitted, and then, too, follows, sealing the doors after him. Inside he is a careful scraping of feet, feeling his way along in the blackness.
Krieger is muttering softly in the tone that only prayers are spoken in. Hraf feels his way forward but finds nothing to touch. His fingers reach out and do not brush over Bianca or Krieger... though the room was not that large to begin with. A wind (wind?) cuts through the darkness like a knife, passing through clothing as though it weren't there and driving a chill deep to the spine of all those inside. The wind makes no noise but the cold is undeniable. None can hear the breath of any other near them; feel their touch beneath their hands.
All are alone. In the black. The cold. Stripped of defenses, weaponless against what lays before them. It is hard to feel so naked and still be clothed.
Hrafnkel's useless eyes rake the blackness fruitlessly. He makes his way deeper, feet skimming the earth to feel his way along. His ears peel, to pry the slightest grain shift of sand from the air. He even sniffs, silently, at the soft breeze. He doesn't speak, but makes his way in the direction that the prayers come from, supposing both to be there. Hands feel before him.
Unseen by others and likely thoroughly unnecessary, Bianca nonetheless covers her eyes with the tips of her hands; indenting the eyeballs as though to render them more keen once her hands drift apart. When this tactic fails she sniffs the air intuitively and then sits. Tiny and a stranger in this land she is aware of all the myriad ways she does not belong. "Hello, Hod." She does not speak those words, but merely breathes them - syllables mussed as they manifest from deep within the willowy pillar of her throat.
Hraf's wandering takes him over something hard and slick, familiar but not, as if the feel of it beneath his boots plays upon old memories. Then comes a sound every Kite knows well and fears. creak. crack. CRACKSNAKLE... Ice. And Hraf's weight is making it pop. One can almost see the lightning bolts appear from beneath his feet. The imagination is powerful, dangerously so. Bianca sits on stone, something hard and cold beneath her rump; her whispered greeting is stolen by the press of fingers to her lips, even before she can finish the name of the god. Something speaks the guttural Kite tongue in her ear, but it's old. So old the words themselves seem to suck the life from where the breath that carries them caress her cheek. Skin shrivels and wrinkles up instantly, Bianca can feel the fatigue of age upon her bones as time passes as it shouldn't. Where the fingers pressed, and now have vanished like a puff of wind, now gums recede and she can feel the teeth loose in her mouth. Breathing is hard and her hands, oh how they shake, the joint aching unbearably in the cold. Arthritis as twisted them beyond the ability to work small tools. And where Krieger prays he feels the darkness seep into him, then the soft feathery touch of something upon his arm. Another. Another. Snow. It falls thick and slow, and for a moment the giant smile fondly. He loves snow. But then comes the wind, the snow hits him in the face like a hammer's blow, the flakes cutting at his skin with the cold only winter can bring. It knocks the large man from his feet and drives the warmth from his body. Hraf, balanced precariously upon ice he knows cannot hold him if he moves. Bianca's youth and beauty sucked away in a moment's breath leaving her feeble and frail. Kri, battered by the very cold of his most cherished homeland. And still. None can find another. Alone.
Hrafnkel is busy with the things he doesn't do; turning back to the doors to throw them open, striking a flame, drawing a weapon. With his senses, he is stripped also of all the immediately occurring solutions to the problem. Trusting fate, is not a natural thing for the man, and his ears and nose and hands and feet search their way through the unseen expanse. Feeling more like the offering than the offerer, he seeks deeper after Hod. Then the brittle crack and the other tiny ones that hiss out along the ice. Or supposed ice. Reason might say there's no ice here, but cognition, in absence of sight, defers to the sharp crackling sound underfoot. Felinely he tries to shift, without jarring the surface, beyond the shearing. There is, predictably, cussing, as well.
"Thank you," Bianca manages that simple phrasing of gratitude in Kitezh, spoken into the darkness with a diligence betraying ample hours spent in preparation for the journey - not this - journey. She shakes - cold, old, blind and aching all over, "I only hope," Her ragged words are barely audible, "I will live long enough to one day get...this far..." Her own birch-boned arms seek wantonly to embrace and cradle her withered torso, yet by the sheer power of resolve (and being no stranger to convent ritual) Bianca's hands unfurl in open-palmed wracked offering to the darkness. One should never come asking without giving...Right?
The smallest shift sends louder CRACKS from beneath Hraf's foot, this one deep enough he can actually /feel/ the ice shift slightly beneath his boot. Ice. It's a great fear of the Kite's, you cannot come back from that, and should you fall beneath the surface you will never feel the warmth of sunlight on your skin again. It's a terror built into the blood of them all. Hraf discovers why when the ice gives way beneath his feet, twisting awkwardly so that there is no graceful or balanced way to fall. Chunks fly, a large one ringing off of the man's temple hard enough to make him see stars. Any gasp of pain only sends what feels like gallons of water pouring down his throat, so cold they steal what breath he had away, ripping any sense of warmth from him with claws of ice and sorrow. Weapons, furs, cloth and leathers, they drag him down faster than any anchor could, and what was merely dark before is now freezing beyond words, wet, cloying at the lungs, and somehow /darker/ still. This is death.
The voice that once whispered across Bianca's skin chuckles again, this time not old it is young, as though the life Bianca lost has found a new home. It whispers again at her, this time with an oddly girlish giggle, words she has no hope of understanding. There is a pause, a wait, then another try. This time the Kitezh is newer, but still hard to follow. "... think ... make ... long ... now?" the words are impossible for to totally parse, especially now that she's deaf in one ear and losing hearing in the other. The teeth fall from the gums, rolling across her tongue and she can feel hair sliding away down her face as it falls out in clumps. Again the voice speaks, Thari this time, so heavily accented it is almost impossible to understand. Almost. <> the giggle returns. <> the last is a spiteful womanly hiss before the silence settles in once more.
Kri curls upon the bed of snow as the wind howls down upon him, battering his body with pounds of snow, driving the heat from his form. He rolls over onto his knees, leaning heavily into the snow as his teeth chatter and he feels the pain of the cold starts to vanish. This he knows is a bad sign... but it only makes him grin. Death. As if such a thing held a fear for a Kite. He uses the words of an ancient tongue, "The Skein of my life was woven long ago Lord Hod, if I should die here I will merely toast you in Valhalla." He takes a breath, his lungs fill with snow and winter air, and he expels it all in a great booming laugh as his fingers turn black and wither, his nose and lips crack and bleed, his eyelids frost over, freezing shut...
Hod, apparently, is not without a sense of humor. Hraf, who has never once felt the bite of cold or the constricting grasp of chill, is now threatened nonetheless by ice and the murky freezing beneath. Needless to say, he somewhat lacks either Krieger's or Bianca's aplomb. On the contrary, his only willing offering to Hod is a fight; not his life. He dives, claws at the fragmenting edges, kicks, heaves, cusses, spits, clings, splashes, flails, snarls, pulls... even as he's dragged further from the surface, holding the seal on his lungs so long as he might, thrashing his limbs uselessly, even as the sensation of them passes from his awareness.
"What use has a god for teeth?" Bianca's words are pragmatic, even as she spits out her own from the rotting ache of withered gums, "For skin?" Oh but she shakes fervent as an autumn's leaf, "For youth?" Folding onto her knees, the tiny woman's hands crisscross pliant within her fur-lined lap, "Tell me why you would have these things from me?" Impassioned - yes - yet more so her quaking alto rings curious.
The womanly laughter rings again, <> the laughter picks up anew after the question is stated and then it fades as if it's owner were walking away, leaving the ancient, pained, desiccated Bianca behind. There is a reason man fears the dark, and it is not because he knows what is there, it is because you can never know what /all/ it holds, and often it's not what you were told. Her heart stammers in her chest, it's feeble beats falling apart one at a time. A bone in her hip snaps for no reason other than Bia's weight rests upon it. She falls to the side as the sudden lack of support and her arm snaps when it strikes the cold stones. Broken bones slice like knives through paper thing muscle tissue, she can feel the one in her arm oh so slowly press against the skin before breaking through. The blood is warm, thick, and the smell of it fills her nose. The only sense she has left to cling to. Buh-dump. Buh-dump. This is death. Alone in the dark, body wracked by age, pain from everything, from nothing, weakness sapping her beauty, her skill, even her mind. Her mind, as she can no longer remember her own name. Or... that man. There was a man yes? Buh-dump. She loved him, oh so very, very much... didn't she? Buh-dump. Yes. He was handsome. B-buh-dump. When did he disappear? She cannot remember. Why can she not remember? If only she could she knows this wouldn't be the end. Buh-... ...Her heart stops cold in her chest, mid beat, done. This is death.
Hraf's lungs fill with water as his limbs flail, his valiant struggle seen by none, his life lost in a dark room in the middle of some shanty down in land he called home. Before he could marry. Before he could crest a mountain. Before he could father wee Hraflings to run about causing all manner of trouble. He has died. Cold. Alone. Buried where none can find him. Again the voice whispers across Hraf's ears as they pop and water floods them, bringing cold to the one place one would imagine cold would never go. This is death.
Kri's lids freeze shut and his laughter dies on his lips. His tongue cracks and bleeds in his mouth as his lips split like stones struck with a hammer. Blood slips from his nose, and a piece of his ear falls away, breaking off like ice flaking free in a wind. This is death. Cold. Alone. Laughing in the face of a god and his might, mocking the winters that he so loved growing up. All his strength, his size, his skill, for naught before a simple wind, snow, and ice. This is how the mighty Warhound perishes, shattered by the cold to be forgotten, or worse, remembered for never having fallen in battle. This is death.
One thing that can be said for Hrafnkel; he is a poor looser. He gives up his last breath in bubbles that should be words, spitefully spitting out the syllables of a curse that he may have waited too long to begin, but he tries to form as his unseeing eyes coagulate in the cold waters.
"I did not name you" Is the dying Bianca's defense. A hair's breadth above a whisper her defiance churns to a tour de force shout ripped from a worn and ragged throat - athletic legs rendered useless by brittle bone and viscous currents of blood that threaten to saturate her lungs. Oh how she screams, "FUCK you!" It is just as well the churning ache of her crippled scream was NOT in Kitezh. His name doesn't matter. Neither does his youth. Hrafnkel is foremost in her thoughts: He is in the caress of fur against her cheek - the feel of it so kindred to his whiskers. He is in the blood she tastes in her mouth as she sobs half-laughing in a feat of hysterics that dare suggests she somehow fathoms the humor in this... oh ..."....Ravenscaul"
Air. It's a beautiful thing and something none of them thought to feel again. And... light? Oh blessed gods the light!! It burns the eyes painfully like stabbing pokers to the brain, needles of pain. Hraf's lungs vomit up water with bits of ice in it as hands pound upon his sodden chest with heavy rhythmic blows, forcing the water out. Before he can curl up around the pain the same strong hands grip his wrists and yank them over his head forcing his lungs to expand and suck in air. It's not dignified and it hurts in ways one cannot imagine, but at the same time a single breath has never felt to perfect. When his eyes clear enough to see through the blinding stabbing light he'll discover things have changed. He is now on the muddy earth outside of the small building and a man in a robe of purest black leans over him a worried expression on his face. The man is maimed, his eyes burned out with pokers, the lidless holes in his head staring down at Hraf grotesquely. "Breath." the man commands in an authoritative tone.
Pain. It hurts so bad but it's light and it's warm and it's... Bi is carried in gentle arms made of steel until she is set down most tenderly upon a soft bed of straw. She trembles as hands smooth her head gently while still other hands grip her arm and wrench the bone back into place with a wet crunching sound. A lesser woman would pass out from the pain. The setting of the hip hurts worse. Forced to lay still by a trio of black robed men, Bianca's eyes clear of the darkness but remain impossible to focus. She can only see shapes and movements, blurred images beyond recognition. Cataracts still coat her eyes, her ears barely pick up the words "Be calm." repeated over and over in a tender tone. It's a tone she can understand even if by chance she cannot understand the words. The voice is soothing, though not familiar. But nothing is familiar, for her mind remains lost in the fog of age so deep it could not be recovered if she tried.
Kri is carried out last by more men then he could hope to count. Warm water is poured over him, freeing up the blood that had frozen over his wounds and closed them, sending bits of ice sliding in crimson streams down his face. He coughs and shudders as bucket after bucket is used to thaw the giant out, ice and bits of skin flake away, blood flows from him in rivers, joined by bits of flesh in sickening chunky manner. A strong deep voice demands of him, "Be strong!" in a challenging tone that makes the giant cut off the moan of pain about to pass through ruined lips. They pry his eyes open and douse him with more water until he can see the light, a blur through the torrent of pain. He tries to speak but cannot.
Of them all, only Hraf manages to be even remotely mobile in the end. Bi's body, ravaged by age greater than any of them thought possible cannot move, and Kri is melting bits of himself away with every bucket of water, drawing breath is nearly beyond him... But Hraf can see. Perhaps not help, but /see/ what is happening. A dozen men or more in black robes clean and care for the lot of you, wandering around in practiced motions made all the more miraculous by the fact that none of them possess a single eye. All have been burned out.
Hrafnkel does breath. He sputters, and spews up the lake that had briefly called his chest its home. And probably part of the feast, earlier. It may be fortunate Bianca cannot see. He manages to nod, and then realizing it's a non verbal gesture, tries to say, 'Thank you'. He fails, of course, the resulting croak only provoking more painful coughing. But he does, nod, again, to the man, audibly breathing...in... out... a bit deeper and steadier each time. Not saying much, but slowly he does. He tries finally, when released, to swab his face with his sodden sleeve. Then he tries, not so much to rise, but to get onto knees and elbows, determined to drag through the mud for Krieger and Bianca.
/Calm/ ~ has it not inevitably been Bianca's default state of consciousness? Consciousness perhaps, but slicing through the veil she reveals herself to be in turmoil. Blood. The tiny half-blind woman coughs up a gob of mucous gelatin harked from deep within her throat. "....Ravenscaul"
Bi is old to Hraf's eyes. No. Not old. Old is gray hair and a limp. She's ancient. In the way that makes a woman a witch or a fount of wisdom in Kitezh. Liver spots and bruises mark whatever wrinkled skin isn't covered in blood. Bones of her arm are set, the wound wrapped, but not perfectly. Her hair is more gone then not, wispy white clumps jutting from her skull at odd angles. White milky eyes stare at nothing and gums flap around a mouth devoid of teeth. A miniature skeleton with gnarled hands with skin stretched over it, too thin in some places, to baggy in others. Krieger looks if at all possible even worse. He has lost four fingers so far, the majority of his nose, both his ears; one of his eyes appears to be a total loss, and his lips are split from his mouth to the gaping hole of a nose, or down to his chin, as if someone cut them into ribbons with a knife. Bits of him seem to fall off like dead skin, only they take chunks of muscle with them, and he bleeds from /everywhere/ as the monks, for that is what they are, continue to douse him with water. The shakes from the freezing water he was in make Hraf's crawl a marathon, but not an impossible one. No hand helps him crawl, but they do help him breath, help him strip out of the wet freezing clothes. High above the light that was so bright is a sliver of a moon and a sky filled with stars. They were only in there for minutes but not it is nearly dawn, the darkest part of the night. The monks, whose robes he can now see carry the mark of Hod continue to work over his two friends while one reaches out to grip Hraf's face by the beard and force it to look at his eyeless face. "Listen!" the man hisses. "Listen and do not forget! What you have seen is for you and you alone. Do not share the god's gift with any other lest you fear his wrath!" oh yeah, this was a 'gift'. "The Warhound, once he is recovered, can explain to you what I cannot. Know only this, Hod is pleased and so he rewards you more than usually does. So few laugh, curse, or fight in the face of Hod the Black." the priest smiles with a certain amount of pride, "Your bride to be is worthy in His eyes. The dawn approaches and so we must go. But remember what I have said." the man releases Hraf's face. "Tell no one! His wrath is far greater than his rewards..." his hands cover Hraf's eyes as he whispers a prayer, and when Hraf opens them again the monks have vanished, leaving only the three 'gifted' people behind.
Hrafnkel swishes and flops clumsily in the mud like a newborn calf, eyes blinking numbly for an instant, when the hand is taken away. The mud slicks his hair and paints his beard to his cheek. Perhaps normally he could process the strangeness of the priests, but not this soon after dying. But, steadily he recovers enough of his senses to begin clawing for his two companions, again.
And thus dawn... dawns. The night that was pitch black turns to vibrant hues of crimson, gold, and violet, the sky weeping shades any rainbow would turn pure green with envy to see. Clouds burn and the light crawls across the street as if uncovered slowly by a mother removing the blanket from the slumbering eyes of her child. Kri cries in pain the likes of which he's never felt, silently weeping from the single tear duct that works as his arms finally thaw enough so start sliding down to his sides to hang. Blood continues to pour from his wounds and he rolls his eyes in his head, nearly mad with the agony of it all. Hraf, first one out is the first touched by the crawling light. The warmth of the sun's rays upon his skin is ... magical. No sex has ever felt this good. No happiness has brought warmth like this to the soul. No proud moment makes the spirit inside soar as that single touch of light. For where the sun's rays land, the cold numbness vanishes, taking with it the pain, and even yes, the water that clung to his skin. The light continues to crawl up Hraf's naked body (the monks did their job well), and where it goes feeling and heat return to it, revitalizing muscle and soothing aching bones. As it passes his face Hraf can feel it finish with him and move on. He is left dry, warm, and apparently naked, in the middle of the street.
Bianca enjoys the touch of the sun next, the light graces her fingers and the joints instantly shrink, straighten. Her skin flushes with life as liver spots and bruises fade, aches and pains she should never have felt vanish with a kiss of unbelievable joy. Indescribable warm flows through her, pure undiluted life as golden tresses sprout in a tingle from her head and fall about her shoulders, his eyes see, her ears hear, her hip and arm injuries washes away without mark or pain. In the end she is whole, alive, young, vibrant again. And then the light hits Krieger, and here it... pauses. The sun itself stops, if only for a moment before continuing. His skin seals shut, washing away blood and ice, his ear grows back, his nose, his eyes, his lips close as they should and new fingers sprout where the old ones were lost. The sunlight crawls, creeps, over the trio until it has cleansed them all of the Black's touch, and the instant it is clear it races on down the street as if all that was holding it back was them. Kri turns to face the other two, wonder written in every line of his face. They have been touched by a god.
Hrafnkel despite being naked, save for the mud he's covered in, crawls for the pair, swaying with his ragged chasing after errant breath. Bianca is reached for first, to gather her up, against him, and then a hand reaches for Krieger's shoulder. "It's... done. I'm here, Love." He looks to Krieger. "I hate ice."
Though she does not dishonor the gods with foreign prayers, Bianca forces her graceless wrecked limbs into a poise of somber quietude. Sparse shedding lashes clamp shut over the cataracts of her eyes. Toothless she gums her lower lip - a gesture rendered sultry once-upon a time. Then the light comes..her hay bale yellow hair cant back with a scream that never leaves parched lissome lips lolls rag-doll between freshly fleshed shoulder blades. "We will not speak of this. We will not speak of this ever again." She knows they're there and embraces Hrafnkel mechanically, her other hand extended to Krieger.
Krieger throws a hand up, a look of vehemence shot Hraf's way. When he speaks he does so in a whisper of pure reverence and awe. "We... He touched us." he says softly, simply. "I must... I need air. I must think." he looks around and swallows something audibly, his ice blue eyes brimming with tears. "Do not speak of this, not even with each other. It was not meant to be shared, or he would have shared it." He struggles to his feet, not from physical weakness so much as emotional stunning. "I... I have... to..." he doesn't even finish the sentence though his fingers brush Bi's own as if he wished to take her hand. He doesn't. The giant Kite is struck dumb by what has occurred and he stumbles off down the street alone, his stumble picking up speed until soon he is running, his legs carrying him away at a truly prodigious speed. So shaken is he that Hraf will look to the side and find the impossible. Krieger has left his great axe behind, the crimson glass lays in the mud forgotten before the import of the night's events.
(Krieger granted me kind permission to post this AWESEOME scene from his quest. Thanks, Kri!)
The feast was eventful and enjoyable. A Kite with a broken arm nurses his wounded pride while Bianca struts around puffed up on her victory. Hraf and Kri walk the city in quiet showing the wee little peacock the largest settlement in all of Kitezh, one that at first doesn't seem that big until one begins walking. It's been awhile now and frankly, it seems much, much, much larger. The slums are horrible, showing abject poverty of wood and stone hovels, muddy streets and poorly fashioned clothes. There is no indoor plumbing and so the gutters flow in places with open piles of sewage and an overall sense of ICK prevails. At least, it should. But the people don't seem to notice. They shovel fresh dirt into the gutters as though it were normal, smiles and jests on their lips. Lean-to's with curtains for doors show glimpses of mothers chasing children about in giggling fits and families enjoying meals to the sounds of tales of valor or truest love. The abject poor of Kitezh seem oddly happier than a great many of the wealthy in Amber. Kri, who has been mostly leading the way, simply continues to smile proudly. Stench and barely there homes don't put a dent in his pride... "The temple is up here." he says with a nod further on, he did after all promise to take them to see one of the shrines.
Hrafnkel had laughed at the match, but out of sympathy for the man with the broken arm, and likely in no small part due to Bianca's glowering blues, had even not held him to the bet he'd placed beforehand. Now, walking along, as with Krieger, he seems somewhat un-phased by the conditions they move through. Though, it does win less endeared looks from him than his earlier travels when they'd first arrived. He swaggers lightly beside Bianca, his arm more inclined to slip about her, as they walk than chastely perching for her arm as he might in Amber City.
As the trio walks towards the shrine, Bianca attempts yet again to pronounce, "May I have red sauce on the brisket" and "Can you point me to the smithy?" in Kitezh. 'More mead here' and 'your hedgehog peed in my rucksack' she has memorized and pronounces with startling accuracy - the latter - of course being a cruel joke.
Hrafnkel coaches Bianca with encouraging tips. "That's good, but...round the lips more... like this; uuuu, not uuuu." he assists in demonstration at the alien eccentricities in the Kitezh vowel sounds. He pauses, to add, "Which temple?" to Krieger.
Krieger points as they round the corner, and there, in the 'middle' of the city, or at least the middle of the ickier section of town, stands a wall of stone with a door set in its center, charred to deepest black the door looks a bit ominous. "Hod." he says with a smile.
Bianca annunciates, "Hedgehuuugue" She is ill content with the result, "Thank the stars I can always hit someone if we don't understand each other and come across seeming polite for it!"
Hrafnkel tries to keep his chuckling to a minimum, nodding. "It's...close. It's not the syntax that gets you, but the enunciation," he murmurs to Bianca. Then his head cocks at the large doors, not seeming daunted, but rather decidedly curious.
Bianca falls silent, flexing her lip into flutes and then slimming them out of existence. Sure, she's practicing Kitezh vowels, but should that fail and she descends the mountain with fingers missing if she keeps up on her 'uuuu's she's guaranteed a 'living'!
Krieger walks over to the door and pauses, taking a deep breath. The thing about Hod is that he's a misunderstood god. It's well known he will someday slay Baldur, as his twin it seems almost right that he do so, but Hod isn't a bad god. Just... disliked by most. However, the Northerners have always been different, older, more reverent and less willing to let the old ways die. "It is a room with no windows and no cracks. No light may enter and the god may place anything inside the darkness that he wishes, to test you." he turns to stare at the pair with him. "Some have entered and never left, never to be found again. Some leave with gold in their pockets, others swords of ice in their bellies." he shrugs, "The point is that you enter and remain there until it is time to exit." the stone wall is in fact an entire building, small but well made. "Hod is the god of winter and darkness, the blind brother of Baldur the Shining One. I thought it best to seek his blessing for our trip."
Hrafnkel's brows drift aloft in the wake of Krieger's exposition, a hand lifting to rub scratchily in his beard, lips pursing. He glances to Bianca. "Right. Well, why not wait out here for us and read, love..." he suggests in crisply formed Thari. "Sure this won't be long."
A wanton glare of azure eyes brimming with sterling incandescence is shot at Bianca's betrothed as crisply she informs Hrafnkel in almost fluid Kitezh, "Your hedgehog peed in my rucksack!" Her phrase is impassioned and Hod only knows what it means! Flinging the doors open (if she must) in a feat of strength apt at cowing lesser men she enters the temple without hesitation.
...and walks into another door. Bonk. Krieger did mention no light was allowed inside, right? He sighs and follows behind the small woman, closing the first door behind them before opening the second. "It is a temple." he says firmly, "Not a bar." which is to say misbehave in here and she won't have to wait for Hod to spank her. Kri is a very devout man. As he closes the second door behind them, trusting Hraf to come through properly, the darkness it total. More than that, it seem to have a life all its own. It's heavy, weighted on the skin. Sounds here either echo or are lacking entirely, sense of space it lost completely seeming both larger than the castle and smaller then a coffin all at once. It is /not/ an easy place to stand, no matter how brave or stalwart. All living things have an innate fear of the dark, and for good reason, usually it is mastered as one grows, but here in this place, such control is stripped away, years falling like chafe until a child remains locked in a room all alone. Kite gods are not kind.
Hrafnkel accept the charge that Bianca blithely levels evenly, with a glance to Krieger. Then the thunk and he winces. He says something to Krieger, in an obscure Kitezh dialect, ruefully, before they are admitted, and then, too, follows, sealing the doors after him. Inside he is a careful scraping of feet, feeling his way along in the blackness.
Krieger is muttering softly in the tone that only prayers are spoken in. Hraf feels his way forward but finds nothing to touch. His fingers reach out and do not brush over Bianca or Krieger... though the room was not that large to begin with. A wind (wind?) cuts through the darkness like a knife, passing through clothing as though it weren't there and driving a chill deep to the spine of all those inside. The wind makes no noise but the cold is undeniable. None can hear the breath of any other near them; feel their touch beneath their hands.
All are alone. In the black. The cold. Stripped of defenses, weaponless against what lays before them. It is hard to feel so naked and still be clothed.
Hrafnkel's useless eyes rake the blackness fruitlessly. He makes his way deeper, feet skimming the earth to feel his way along. His ears peel, to pry the slightest grain shift of sand from the air. He even sniffs, silently, at the soft breeze. He doesn't speak, but makes his way in the direction that the prayers come from, supposing both to be there. Hands feel before him.
Unseen by others and likely thoroughly unnecessary, Bianca nonetheless covers her eyes with the tips of her hands; indenting the eyeballs as though to render them more keen once her hands drift apart. When this tactic fails she sniffs the air intuitively and then sits. Tiny and a stranger in this land she is aware of all the myriad ways she does not belong. "Hello, Hod." She does not speak those words, but merely breathes them - syllables mussed as they manifest from deep within the willowy pillar of her throat.
Hraf's wandering takes him over something hard and slick, familiar but not, as if the feel of it beneath his boots plays upon old memories. Then comes a sound every Kite knows well and fears. creak. crack. CRACKSNAKLE... Ice. And Hraf's weight is making it pop. One can almost see the lightning bolts appear from beneath his feet. The imagination is powerful, dangerously so. Bianca sits on stone, something hard and cold beneath her rump; her whispered greeting is stolen by the press of fingers to her lips, even before she can finish the name of the god. Something speaks the guttural Kite tongue in her ear, but it's old. So old the words themselves seem to suck the life from where the breath that carries them caress her cheek. Skin shrivels and wrinkles up instantly, Bianca can feel the fatigue of age upon her bones as time passes as it shouldn't. Where the fingers pressed, and now have vanished like a puff of wind, now gums recede and she can feel the teeth loose in her mouth. Breathing is hard and her hands, oh how they shake, the joint aching unbearably in the cold. Arthritis as twisted them beyond the ability to work small tools. And where Krieger prays he feels the darkness seep into him, then the soft feathery touch of something upon his arm. Another. Another. Snow. It falls thick and slow, and for a moment the giant smile fondly. He loves snow. But then comes the wind, the snow hits him in the face like a hammer's blow, the flakes cutting at his skin with the cold only winter can bring. It knocks the large man from his feet and drives the warmth from his body. Hraf, balanced precariously upon ice he knows cannot hold him if he moves. Bianca's youth and beauty sucked away in a moment's breath leaving her feeble and frail. Kri, battered by the very cold of his most cherished homeland. And still. None can find another. Alone.
Hrafnkel is busy with the things he doesn't do; turning back to the doors to throw them open, striking a flame, drawing a weapon. With his senses, he is stripped also of all the immediately occurring solutions to the problem. Trusting fate, is not a natural thing for the man, and his ears and nose and hands and feet search their way through the unseen expanse. Feeling more like the offering than the offerer, he seeks deeper after Hod. Then the brittle crack and the other tiny ones that hiss out along the ice. Or supposed ice. Reason might say there's no ice here, but cognition, in absence of sight, defers to the sharp crackling sound underfoot. Felinely he tries to shift, without jarring the surface, beyond the shearing. There is, predictably, cussing, as well.
"Thank you," Bianca manages that simple phrasing of gratitude in Kitezh, spoken into the darkness with a diligence betraying ample hours spent in preparation for the journey - not this - journey. She shakes - cold, old, blind and aching all over, "I only hope," Her ragged words are barely audible, "I will live long enough to one day get...this far..." Her own birch-boned arms seek wantonly to embrace and cradle her withered torso, yet by the sheer power of resolve (and being no stranger to convent ritual) Bianca's hands unfurl in open-palmed wracked offering to the darkness. One should never come asking without giving...Right?
The smallest shift sends louder CRACKS from beneath Hraf's foot, this one deep enough he can actually /feel/ the ice shift slightly beneath his boot. Ice. It's a great fear of the Kite's, you cannot come back from that, and should you fall beneath the surface you will never feel the warmth of sunlight on your skin again. It's a terror built into the blood of them all. Hraf discovers why when the ice gives way beneath his feet, twisting awkwardly so that there is no graceful or balanced way to fall. Chunks fly, a large one ringing off of the man's temple hard enough to make him see stars. Any gasp of pain only sends what feels like gallons of water pouring down his throat, so cold they steal what breath he had away, ripping any sense of warmth from him with claws of ice and sorrow. Weapons, furs, cloth and leathers, they drag him down faster than any anchor could, and what was merely dark before is now freezing beyond words, wet, cloying at the lungs, and somehow /darker/ still. This is death.
The voice that once whispered across Bianca's skin chuckles again, this time not old it is young, as though the life Bianca lost has found a new home. It whispers again at her, this time with an oddly girlish giggle, words she has no hope of understanding. There is a pause, a wait, then another try. This time the Kitezh is newer, but still hard to follow. "... think ... make ... long ... now?" the words are impossible for to totally parse, especially now that she's deaf in one ear and losing hearing in the other. The teeth fall from the gums, rolling across her tongue and she can feel hair sliding away down her face as it falls out in clumps. Again the voice speaks, Thari this time, so heavily accented it is almost impossible to understand. Almost. <> the giggle returns. <> the last is a spiteful womanly hiss before the silence settles in once more.
Kri curls upon the bed of snow as the wind howls down upon him, battering his body with pounds of snow, driving the heat from his form. He rolls over onto his knees, leaning heavily into the snow as his teeth chatter and he feels the pain of the cold starts to vanish. This he knows is a bad sign... but it only makes him grin. Death. As if such a thing held a fear for a Kite. He uses the words of an ancient tongue, "The Skein of my life was woven long ago Lord Hod, if I should die here I will merely toast you in Valhalla." He takes a breath, his lungs fill with snow and winter air, and he expels it all in a great booming laugh as his fingers turn black and wither, his nose and lips crack and bleed, his eyelids frost over, freezing shut...
Hod, apparently, is not without a sense of humor. Hraf, who has never once felt the bite of cold or the constricting grasp of chill, is now threatened nonetheless by ice and the murky freezing beneath. Needless to say, he somewhat lacks either Krieger's or Bianca's aplomb. On the contrary, his only willing offering to Hod is a fight; not his life. He dives, claws at the fragmenting edges, kicks, heaves, cusses, spits, clings, splashes, flails, snarls, pulls... even as he's dragged further from the surface, holding the seal on his lungs so long as he might, thrashing his limbs uselessly, even as the sensation of them passes from his awareness.
"What use has a god for teeth?" Bianca's words are pragmatic, even as she spits out her own from the rotting ache of withered gums, "For skin?" Oh but she shakes fervent as an autumn's leaf, "For youth?" Folding onto her knees, the tiny woman's hands crisscross pliant within her fur-lined lap, "Tell me why you would have these things from me?" Impassioned - yes - yet more so her quaking alto rings curious.
The womanly laughter rings again, <> the laughter picks up anew after the question is stated and then it fades as if it's owner were walking away, leaving the ancient, pained, desiccated Bianca behind. There is a reason man fears the dark, and it is not because he knows what is there, it is because you can never know what /all/ it holds, and often it's not what you were told. Her heart stammers in her chest, it's feeble beats falling apart one at a time. A bone in her hip snaps for no reason other than Bia's weight rests upon it. She falls to the side as the sudden lack of support and her arm snaps when it strikes the cold stones. Broken bones slice like knives through paper thing muscle tissue, she can feel the one in her arm oh so slowly press against the skin before breaking through. The blood is warm, thick, and the smell of it fills her nose. The only sense she has left to cling to. Buh-dump. Buh-dump. This is death. Alone in the dark, body wracked by age, pain from everything, from nothing, weakness sapping her beauty, her skill, even her mind. Her mind, as she can no longer remember her own name. Or... that man. There was a man yes? Buh-dump. She loved him, oh so very, very much... didn't she? Buh-dump. Yes. He was handsome. B-buh-dump. When did he disappear? She cannot remember. Why can she not remember? If only she could she knows this wouldn't be the end. Buh-... ...Her heart stops cold in her chest, mid beat, done. This is death.
Hraf's lungs fill with water as his limbs flail, his valiant struggle seen by none, his life lost in a dark room in the middle of some shanty down in land he called home. Before he could marry. Before he could crest a mountain. Before he could father wee Hraflings to run about causing all manner of trouble. He has died. Cold. Alone. Buried where none can find him. Again the voice whispers across Hraf's ears as they pop and water floods them, bringing cold to the one place one would imagine cold would never go. This is death.
Kri's lids freeze shut and his laughter dies on his lips. His tongue cracks and bleeds in his mouth as his lips split like stones struck with a hammer. Blood slips from his nose, and a piece of his ear falls away, breaking off like ice flaking free in a wind. This is death. Cold. Alone. Laughing in the face of a god and his might, mocking the winters that he so loved growing up. All his strength, his size, his skill, for naught before a simple wind, snow, and ice. This is how the mighty Warhound perishes, shattered by the cold to be forgotten, or worse, remembered for never having fallen in battle. This is death.
One thing that can be said for Hrafnkel; he is a poor looser. He gives up his last breath in bubbles that should be words, spitefully spitting out the syllables of a curse that he may have waited too long to begin, but he tries to form as his unseeing eyes coagulate in the cold waters.
"I did not name you" Is the dying Bianca's defense. A hair's breadth above a whisper her defiance churns to a tour de force shout ripped from a worn and ragged throat - athletic legs rendered useless by brittle bone and viscous currents of blood that threaten to saturate her lungs. Oh how she screams, "FUCK you!" It is just as well the churning ache of her crippled scream was NOT in Kitezh. His name doesn't matter. Neither does his youth. Hrafnkel is foremost in her thoughts: He is in the caress of fur against her cheek - the feel of it so kindred to his whiskers. He is in the blood she tastes in her mouth as she sobs half-laughing in a feat of hysterics that dare suggests she somehow fathoms the humor in this... oh ..."....Ravenscaul"
Air. It's a beautiful thing and something none of them thought to feel again. And... light? Oh blessed gods the light!! It burns the eyes painfully like stabbing pokers to the brain, needles of pain. Hraf's lungs vomit up water with bits of ice in it as hands pound upon his sodden chest with heavy rhythmic blows, forcing the water out. Before he can curl up around the pain the same strong hands grip his wrists and yank them over his head forcing his lungs to expand and suck in air. It's not dignified and it hurts in ways one cannot imagine, but at the same time a single breath has never felt to perfect. When his eyes clear enough to see through the blinding stabbing light he'll discover things have changed. He is now on the muddy earth outside of the small building and a man in a robe of purest black leans over him a worried expression on his face. The man is maimed, his eyes burned out with pokers, the lidless holes in his head staring down at Hraf grotesquely. "Breath." the man commands in an authoritative tone.
Pain. It hurts so bad but it's light and it's warm and it's... Bi is carried in gentle arms made of steel until she is set down most tenderly upon a soft bed of straw. She trembles as hands smooth her head gently while still other hands grip her arm and wrench the bone back into place with a wet crunching sound. A lesser woman would pass out from the pain. The setting of the hip hurts worse. Forced to lay still by a trio of black robed men, Bianca's eyes clear of the darkness but remain impossible to focus. She can only see shapes and movements, blurred images beyond recognition. Cataracts still coat her eyes, her ears barely pick up the words "Be calm." repeated over and over in a tender tone. It's a tone she can understand even if by chance she cannot understand the words. The voice is soothing, though not familiar. But nothing is familiar, for her mind remains lost in the fog of age so deep it could not be recovered if she tried.
Kri is carried out last by more men then he could hope to count. Warm water is poured over him, freeing up the blood that had frozen over his wounds and closed them, sending bits of ice sliding in crimson streams down his face. He coughs and shudders as bucket after bucket is used to thaw the giant out, ice and bits of skin flake away, blood flows from him in rivers, joined by bits of flesh in sickening chunky manner. A strong deep voice demands of him, "Be strong!" in a challenging tone that makes the giant cut off the moan of pain about to pass through ruined lips. They pry his eyes open and douse him with more water until he can see the light, a blur through the torrent of pain. He tries to speak but cannot.
Of them all, only Hraf manages to be even remotely mobile in the end. Bi's body, ravaged by age greater than any of them thought possible cannot move, and Kri is melting bits of himself away with every bucket of water, drawing breath is nearly beyond him... But Hraf can see. Perhaps not help, but /see/ what is happening. A dozen men or more in black robes clean and care for the lot of you, wandering around in practiced motions made all the more miraculous by the fact that none of them possess a single eye. All have been burned out.
Hrafnkel does breath. He sputters, and spews up the lake that had briefly called his chest its home. And probably part of the feast, earlier. It may be fortunate Bianca cannot see. He manages to nod, and then realizing it's a non verbal gesture, tries to say, 'Thank you'. He fails, of course, the resulting croak only provoking more painful coughing. But he does, nod, again, to the man, audibly breathing...in... out... a bit deeper and steadier each time. Not saying much, but slowly he does. He tries finally, when released, to swab his face with his sodden sleeve. Then he tries, not so much to rise, but to get onto knees and elbows, determined to drag through the mud for Krieger and Bianca.
/Calm/ ~ has it not inevitably been Bianca's default state of consciousness? Consciousness perhaps, but slicing through the veil she reveals herself to be in turmoil. Blood. The tiny half-blind woman coughs up a gob of mucous gelatin harked from deep within her throat. "....Ravenscaul"
Bi is old to Hraf's eyes. No. Not old. Old is gray hair and a limp. She's ancient. In the way that makes a woman a witch or a fount of wisdom in Kitezh. Liver spots and bruises mark whatever wrinkled skin isn't covered in blood. Bones of her arm are set, the wound wrapped, but not perfectly. Her hair is more gone then not, wispy white clumps jutting from her skull at odd angles. White milky eyes stare at nothing and gums flap around a mouth devoid of teeth. A miniature skeleton with gnarled hands with skin stretched over it, too thin in some places, to baggy in others. Krieger looks if at all possible even worse. He has lost four fingers so far, the majority of his nose, both his ears; one of his eyes appears to be a total loss, and his lips are split from his mouth to the gaping hole of a nose, or down to his chin, as if someone cut them into ribbons with a knife. Bits of him seem to fall off like dead skin, only they take chunks of muscle with them, and he bleeds from /everywhere/ as the monks, for that is what they are, continue to douse him with water. The shakes from the freezing water he was in make Hraf's crawl a marathon, but not an impossible one. No hand helps him crawl, but they do help him breath, help him strip out of the wet freezing clothes. High above the light that was so bright is a sliver of a moon and a sky filled with stars. They were only in there for minutes but not it is nearly dawn, the darkest part of the night. The monks, whose robes he can now see carry the mark of Hod continue to work over his two friends while one reaches out to grip Hraf's face by the beard and force it to look at his eyeless face. "Listen!" the man hisses. "Listen and do not forget! What you have seen is for you and you alone. Do not share the god's gift with any other lest you fear his wrath!" oh yeah, this was a 'gift'. "The Warhound, once he is recovered, can explain to you what I cannot. Know only this, Hod is pleased and so he rewards you more than usually does. So few laugh, curse, or fight in the face of Hod the Black." the priest smiles with a certain amount of pride, "Your bride to be is worthy in His eyes. The dawn approaches and so we must go. But remember what I have said." the man releases Hraf's face. "Tell no one! His wrath is far greater than his rewards..." his hands cover Hraf's eyes as he whispers a prayer, and when Hraf opens them again the monks have vanished, leaving only the three 'gifted' people behind.
Hrafnkel swishes and flops clumsily in the mud like a newborn calf, eyes blinking numbly for an instant, when the hand is taken away. The mud slicks his hair and paints his beard to his cheek. Perhaps normally he could process the strangeness of the priests, but not this soon after dying. But, steadily he recovers enough of his senses to begin clawing for his two companions, again.
And thus dawn... dawns. The night that was pitch black turns to vibrant hues of crimson, gold, and violet, the sky weeping shades any rainbow would turn pure green with envy to see. Clouds burn and the light crawls across the street as if uncovered slowly by a mother removing the blanket from the slumbering eyes of her child. Kri cries in pain the likes of which he's never felt, silently weeping from the single tear duct that works as his arms finally thaw enough so start sliding down to his sides to hang. Blood continues to pour from his wounds and he rolls his eyes in his head, nearly mad with the agony of it all. Hraf, first one out is the first touched by the crawling light. The warmth of the sun's rays upon his skin is ... magical. No sex has ever felt this good. No happiness has brought warmth like this to the soul. No proud moment makes the spirit inside soar as that single touch of light. For where the sun's rays land, the cold numbness vanishes, taking with it the pain, and even yes, the water that clung to his skin. The light continues to crawl up Hraf's naked body (the monks did their job well), and where it goes feeling and heat return to it, revitalizing muscle and soothing aching bones. As it passes his face Hraf can feel it finish with him and move on. He is left dry, warm, and apparently naked, in the middle of the street.
Bianca enjoys the touch of the sun next, the light graces her fingers and the joints instantly shrink, straighten. Her skin flushes with life as liver spots and bruises fade, aches and pains she should never have felt vanish with a kiss of unbelievable joy. Indescribable warm flows through her, pure undiluted life as golden tresses sprout in a tingle from her head and fall about her shoulders, his eyes see, her ears hear, her hip and arm injuries washes away without mark or pain. In the end she is whole, alive, young, vibrant again. And then the light hits Krieger, and here it... pauses. The sun itself stops, if only for a moment before continuing. His skin seals shut, washing away blood and ice, his ear grows back, his nose, his eyes, his lips close as they should and new fingers sprout where the old ones were lost. The sunlight crawls, creeps, over the trio until it has cleansed them all of the Black's touch, and the instant it is clear it races on down the street as if all that was holding it back was them. Kri turns to face the other two, wonder written in every line of his face. They have been touched by a god.
Hrafnkel despite being naked, save for the mud he's covered in, crawls for the pair, swaying with his ragged chasing after errant breath. Bianca is reached for first, to gather her up, against him, and then a hand reaches for Krieger's shoulder. "It's... done. I'm here, Love." He looks to Krieger. "I hate ice."
Though she does not dishonor the gods with foreign prayers, Bianca forces her graceless wrecked limbs into a poise of somber quietude. Sparse shedding lashes clamp shut over the cataracts of her eyes. Toothless she gums her lower lip - a gesture rendered sultry once-upon a time. Then the light comes..her hay bale yellow hair cant back with a scream that never leaves parched lissome lips lolls rag-doll between freshly fleshed shoulder blades. "We will not speak of this. We will not speak of this ever again." She knows they're there and embraces Hrafnkel mechanically, her other hand extended to Krieger.
Krieger throws a hand up, a look of vehemence shot Hraf's way. When he speaks he does so in a whisper of pure reverence and awe. "We... He touched us." he says softly, simply. "I must... I need air. I must think." he looks around and swallows something audibly, his ice blue eyes brimming with tears. "Do not speak of this, not even with each other. It was not meant to be shared, or he would have shared it." He struggles to his feet, not from physical weakness so much as emotional stunning. "I... I have... to..." he doesn't even finish the sentence though his fingers brush Bi's own as if he wished to take her hand. He doesn't. The giant Kite is struck dumb by what has occurred and he stumbles off down the street alone, his stumble picking up speed until soon he is running, his legs carrying him away at a truly prodigious speed. So shaken is he that Hraf will look to the side and find the impossible. Krieger has left his great axe behind, the crimson glass lays in the mud forgotten before the import of the night's events.