Thar Shaddin

If there was anything to be said for night fighting, it was that it engendered an implicit, if extremely irritating trust in the people around you. Not that one had much choice in the grand scheme of things, as above the clashing of weapons, yelling and screaming it was hard to hear who was who, let alone distinguish one shadowy form from another. Following the man, or in this case boy, in front of you and staying alert was the best of a bunch of bad options, but it was a tried and tested method. Iolan grinned in spite of himself, feeling his gums ache a little; getting impaled on a blade and then dying was a tried and tested method too. Keeping a hold of his rifle with his other hand, he let junior lead him while he glanced around, looking for another target. It was at that moment that a group of people burst out from under the wagon his targets had been hiding behind, scattering in all directions. One of them almost ran into him, and he swore under his breath, recognizing the outline.

"Dammit woman," he said, yanking her to one side, "go with Junior!"

Pushing her towards the lad, he rushed past her, holding his still hot rifle midway up the barrel and keeping a loose grip on his knife. Beyond where the damnable woman had been standing, he could see a huddle of figures on the far side of the wagon and more to the point, he could hear an impressive amount of angry screaming. One figure, taller and masculine, was screaming like a stuck pig, clawing at his face, and another, female, was screaming in hysterical rage while someone tried to pull her away. Thankfully, the scene had drawn their attention, and in the dim light Iolan fancied that he saw the outline of a rifle in the screaming man's arms, but he didn't have much time to reflect on this. If he'd been a pious man, now would have been the time for a prayer, but he wasn't, so he swore vehemently in the solace of his head and closed the gap with the nearest figure, he took a two handed grip on his rifle and spun it, driving the butt into the back of the man's head.

It was a beautiful blow, and the man crumpled like a boned fish, but Iolan couldn't think about it; it would either work or it didn't. Feeling his blood pounding in his ears, he swung the rifle one-handed to block the next strike. It was a gamble, but it worked, knocking the next man's weapon wide and leaving the man's chest exposed. Gripping the knife tightly, he lunged forwards, dropping the rifle and bowling the man over inelegantly. They landed hard, Iolan atop him, and the old mercenary brought the blade down fast, plunging it into the man's fat neck. It was messy, and he felt blood splash over his fingers, but the man was down. Iolan knew better than to think he'd get that lucky again. Rolling free, he rose in two painful steps, snatching up a fallen weapon to parry an incoming stroke. Blocking instinctively, he moved outside the blow, deflecting it inwards, across the man's chest and kneeling to drive his knife into a knee, breathing hard. The man fell and iolan spun back, smashing his elbow into the man's nose.

Staggering back as the man fell, face spurting blood, he grunted as a knife cut through the air in front of him, a line of ice across his jaw telling him that it had struck far closer than he would have liked. One of the carts was shaking, and he thought he could see people scrambling across it, looking for something. Circling with his opponent, he tried to get a look at what had happened. The screaming man was down, Pippa, for it could only be her, atop him, beating him. He moved to attack when, wonder of wonders, there was another bang of black powder, followed by the whistle of a bullet, and the man's face seemed to come apart in an instant. Sometimes the Ancestors were funny in their ways, he thought, hurrying to the wagon. Whatever the men had been doing, they were clearly hoping not to be disturbed, and Iolan caught one by the belt, pulling him down off the wagon to the dirt. There was no strategy now, just anger, and Iolan was angry. Without his friend's strength to help him, the other man lost his grip on his end of the heavy crate, which slipped from the wagon to smash on the ground.

The crate crashed to the ground splintering with ease to release the treasures it held, even as its splinters drove inwards to shred cloth and skin alike. The pointy pieces of wood tore through the runed cloth with ease, ripping it away from Deer's fetal form as it broke against his hard exterior. As the last piece of cloth fell from him the spirit within awoke, latent magic seeping out of its very being.

A man rose from the debris; with pieces of wood stuck in his white hair, a small smirk on his face and calm eyes surveying the area. His head turned as he looked upon the chaos around him, his face locked in a single smug expression.

Where am I? What is this place?

What happened to me?

The jumbled thoughts were spun around for some seconds, then quietly stowed. He had a job to do, mere confusion and displacement was not going to stop him from that. A man landed on the ground next to him, garbed in shadowy clothing and confusion lining his face. Deer reached out to him but felt no magic.

Useless

The mannequin took a quick step towards the thief and slammed his forearm into his head, the blow was sloppy and inexperienced, but the force behind it was sufficient to make him crumple. Deer bent down to the prone form -ignoring the one-legged man behind him- and there amidst the chaos of the camp, calmly and carefully stripped him of his clothing and donned it. The clothes were somewhat baggy, but they sufficed.

Unfazed by the noise around him Deer -now dressed in a black outfit- began to reach out, hoping to find someone he could converse with. His attention was drawn towards a woman and boy, focusing he could sense magic emanating from one of the duo, he just didn't know which one.

Still magic meant a mage and a mage meant a possible way to be freed, so Deer started off towards the duo. It was at this point that one of the dwarven guards saw Deer, and mistaking him for the enemy charged him. Deer had the honor of having a small, sweaty and panicked man tackle him to the ground.

The dwarf brandished a dagger and while attempting to choke Deer, made to stab him. Now Deer wasn't scared or even angry, quite the opposite actually. But the tiny man was currently keeping him from a possible contact, and he didn't fancy the odd fondling he was giving his neck. So as the dagger came down Deer's hand went up, smashing into the dwarves wrist. The witless guard dropped the dagger.

One thing that Deer had observed was that pointy objects tended to remove distractions, so as the dagger fell to the ground Deer picked it up and mimicked his dwarven teacher, driving the dagger towards the dwarves chest. The thrust was sloppy, and instead of striking the heart simply stabbed him, still the man was weakened and that was all Deer wanted. Pushing the now limp man off him Deer stood once more, and faced the duo. As he moved closer it became all too evident that the magic was coming from the woman, and not the kid beside her. So Deer sent a message to her.

You mage. Can you hear me? Where am I and what am I doing here?

Another night, another fight, Ysoria would have lain into Iolan about his manhandling of her and his assumptions. She knew better than to argue right then, especially when death was a viable possibility for one or both of them, and kept her mouth shut as she spotted Junior, grabbed him, and made for heading back towards the girl. Iolan had taken charge of the other two, and she was not about to dispute the expert on the current situation.

Once under the wagon, she pushed the kids towards the center, keeping an eye out for any more brigands taking peeks under wagons. With the noise and the confusion, her mind was cluttered with the massive amount of sensory input as well as her own running, frantic thoughts.

She did not hear the words; they were but another layer beneath the most pressing task at hand. They were nothing more but a stray and inappropriate thought to her, and one that her mind immediately sorted to the back as unimportant.

The approach of a new figure, however, was noted.

She took out her knife.

Iolan cast a single, appraising glance at the thing from the box, several pieces clicking into place in his mind, then he dismissed it from thought. It wasn't interested in him, it has removed an obstacle and it was going in the opposite direction, which was all the cue he needed. Hugging the cover of the nearest wagon, he quickly sheathed his kukri and reloaded his rifle, taking stock of the situation.

As suddenly as it has begun, the tide seemed to have turned in the defenders' favour. Crossbow bolts and the occasional shot still rang out, but the attackers were being steadily pushed back. Keeping low, Iolan half crawled over to a dark lump on the ground, preparing to take aim, when the lump stirred and groaned.

"Damn," Iolan swore, looking at the face.

It was Big Eddie, and he seemed to be losing a useful amount of blood. Placing his rifle down carefully, lock uppermost and decocked, he quickly tore open Eddie's tunic to get a look at the wound. It wasn't bad, thankfully, but it was deep. Putting pressure on it, he grabbed a clean lump of tunic to staunch the blood flow and swore again.

"Eddie's down!" He called out, "Need help here!"

The night roared with noise, bolts and bullets alike impacting on wood and metal and flesh. Perhaps if he was a man Deer would have felt some sort of distraction, some aura of chaos. But as it was he only felt what could be described as urgency, not fear but rather a need to accomplish a task.

The woman he approached has not responded to his telekinetic advances, at least not in what he would have viewed as a productive response. Usually when he attempted to talk to mages they responded with wonder, curiosity, fear even. But this was apparently an anomaly, choosing to draw a weapon. Deer stopped and reviewed the situation at hand, approaching the woman could make him seem threatening, to which the woman would most likely respond by attacking him. And while he doubted that he would take any substantial damage from such a small weapon, being at odds with the only person wielding magic in the area would not exactly make his plans easier.

So Deer opted for what he viewed as the best option that he could pursue. He dropped slowly to a sitting cross-legged position, low enough to the ground to be less of a threat, then tried to speak to the woman once more.

Mage, I require knowledge of my current positioning, I do not mean you any harm

A diplomatic enough speech, cited with his low, scratchy mental voice and hopefully enough to incite a response. While he waited a movement caught his attention, as the lad from before peeked out from behind the woman, apparently curious to what would be to him a mute visitor. Deer tried reaching out to him once more but still felt nothing, so he turned his thoughts to other matters.

Meanwhile behind Deer, Eddie's survival instincts were kicking in. His body convulsing and attempting to shift, fur growing on his skin. It was a futile effort however, only succeeding in making Eddie bleed out even faster.

A mind is a busy place.

Even at rest, Ysoria's mind was moving. Plans, memories, stray thoughts, tasks: she was a woman who was used to getting things done. Her mind was full of her own needs, wants, likes, and distastes, as was anyone's. That made intrusion into that nest of orderly chaos problematic; interference from her own mental directives put her thoughts at the front of the queue.

Everything else, especially in the middle of a battle where her own life was at potential of failure, was just background noise.

There was no way she could know he was trying to communicate with her, which might have been funny considering how hard she was focusing on him.

Focus that was shifted by Iolan's loud words.

"Hang it," she hissed.

The figure sat down, of all things. Ysoria hesitated, the knife gripped a little too hard in her hand. The figure -- complete unknown, not likely to be a friendly -- was between her and Iolan. She wasn't some great healer type, but she knew enough of field dressing to be of help. But no one helped when they were dead.

She turned back to the two young people, and started shooing them out the back. "Come on, move it!"

They'd have to lose the stranger, and any other potential attackers, and make it to Iolan's side. Hopefully before anyone died.

Panicking wasn't in Iolan's nature, years of hard drinking and harder fighting having inured him against being shaken by random problems, and he generally being of the mindset that such issues could usually be solved by the application of enough force. Still, he reflected, trying to keep pressure on Big Eddie's abdomen while the sounds of battle carried on nearby, if he had been one to panic, now would have been a decent time for it. He was certain he had some grain alcohol in his pack, but he didn't dare try to retrieve it, so pressure was the best he could do. Part of him felt that he should have been saying something to keep Eddie calm, but that would have involved rather more swearing on his part than usual, so he decided against it.

Even so, he thought that the dwarves were winning by the sounds of it. Whomever was attacking them couldn't have brought that many people unnoticed, and moving through the passes was hard work even with a small group. No, he'd taken part in his share of ambushes and it was done best when you camped out in the area to set things up. Everyone and their mothers knew where the stopping points were on this road, so the rest was just planning. It hadn't looked like Eddie was carrying anything valuable, which, he supposed, was the point, so the attackers had to have had inside information. Were they after the thing from the box? He glanced at Eddie's pale face, wondering.

The noises of the night were dimming, slowly spiralling to a halt. As the previous sounds of fierce battle were replaced with calls of retreat, the assailants apparently cutting their losses and drawing back.

Still seated on the ground Deer watched his objective study him cautiously, then retreat with the two useless like a simple fleshie, instead of the mage that his senses told him she was. Though he guessed she could not be totally blamed for her behaviour, as the other fleshies and useless were behaving similarly. Although he did not know it yet, Deer was slowly learning how to distinguish fear and excitement.

Let us take a moment to look at the world through Deer's eyes, for in his eyes everything held a specific place, grouped and neatly catalogued.
Brethren, magical creatures and his eleven magical siblings which held the topmost ranking in his eyes.
Close below were the mages, humans capable of being communicated with, useful and powerful.
Lastly the fleshies, humans that were powerful although they lacked magic, respected somewhat.
After the fleshies, other humans and animals were grouped alike, simply means to an end. Disposable and weak.

He noted that disposables could easily to fleshies, or vice versa. Like the occupants of the camp he sat in, easily one or the other. In his quiet mulling he let his objective go for now, he would find the mage when he wanted as long as she stayed near.
Now unoccupied Deer stood and glanced round the camp, eyes searching far and wide for any other items of interest. Then he saw him.

The fleshies face stood out in Deer's memory. The last face he saw before his presence was crushed, his being suppressed to almost lethal levels.

Big Eddie. The fleshie lay still on the ground, the once vibrant face paling, body shaking as it awaited death. A fleshie becoming disposable.

Deer stood and walked towards him, steps carefully measured as he approached the disposable.

The figure moved, and Ysoria felt her gut clench in indecision. She was uneasy even as she changed her mind and shooed the two kids out towards the next wagon down the line. As if, somehow, another was less dangerous than the one they currently lay under. As if some bad stroke of luck wouldn't see them killed no matter what Ysoria did.

She slid out from under the wagon, sweeping her gaze back and forth. The knots of fighting were becoming smaller; their people seemed to have the numerical advantage, though she could hear sounds of fighting beyond the poor lighting that she could not know about.

She slunk out in a low crouch, nearly crawling in an arc towards where she saw Iolan. She used dead bodies as cover where she could, knowing she probably looked like an idiot and a coward and not caring. If she stood up, she was more likely to be shot or stabbed. She couldn't afford to be noticed, not when she had exactly zero ability to protect herself.

While the path she took seemed slow, it only took her a minute or two to close in on Iolan --

but the strange figure reached him first.

Iolan glanced around at the sound of approaching footsteps, hoping that for once things were starting to look up. Yes, they seemed to be winning, but as far as surprises went, they had all been distinctly unpleasant thus far. His discovery of Eddie was simply the icing on that particular cake, and while he was reasonably confident that what he was doing wasn't going to kill the elf, he knew that he would be far more comfortable once he was able to hand him off to someone who could actually help him. Then, he thought, if he died, well, it wouldn't have been Iolan's fault and they could all move on with their lives. He fought the urge to snarl as the thing from the cart approached, its steps heavy and hollow as though unaware of itself. It looked like a man but, Iolan narrowed his eyes, something about the way it held itself said otherwise.

Briefly, he glanced at his rifle, only his eyes moving. He knew he was fast enough to get a shot off, but would it harm it or just annoy it? He still shuddered at the memory of the great Tusker in the plains, shots and arrows bouncing off it's hide as it barrelled towards them. Sometimes it paid to be quick and unscrupulous, he thought, remembering the remains of the other hunters. Shaking off the extraneous thought, he was struck by a notion so odd that he questioned whether it was his own thought at all. Why was he wondering about whether to hit it? Damned thing was just wandering around like a lost puppy waiting for instructions, so it was clearly someone else's problem. Still, he thought, perhaps he should say something.

"You!" He said, projecting every ounce of authority he held into the syllable. "Over there and hold him!"

He gestured to the man the thing had previously incapacitated, keeping one bloody hand pressed against Eddie's wound. Beyond the figure, he could see the woman approaching, now bereft of the children, and bit back the first response that came to mind. Right now he needed help more than he needed to be away from her, much as it galled him to say so.

"Well," he said, to both of them, "come on, then!"

The voice reached Deer, piercing through the silence of the night and was acknowledged, Deer cast a single long gaze at Eddie's prone body before turning towards the dwarve. He moved towards the tiny prone figure, so secluded from the events of the night and examined it.

The man in question was curled up in pain, the knives handle jutting out of his chest. The sound of ragged breathing rose from him, as his eyes fluttered far to quickly. In Deer's opinion he was not salvageable, not worth attempting to salvage anyway, but he lowered his hand to grasp the knife.

The minute his digits clasped the rough wooden handle, two men sprang towards him, shadowy clothes fluttering as they bore down on him. Deer sprang back, ripping the knife unceremoniously and unintentionally from the prone figure as he did, to throw at the first intruder even as blood leaked from the dwarf. The knives hilt hit the closer figure firmly on the head, but only seemed to anger rather than hurt him, so Deer drew back.

Moving slowly backwards he kept his eyes on the twosome, but underestimated their purpose. You see Deer has expected something thrown, like a bolt or knife, but the bandit simply rushed at him. A palm slammed into his chest and surprisingly, he fell.

The last thing Deer saw was a tag stuck to his chest with a familiar seal on its surface, before his limbs grew heavy and his sight went dark, his body landing somewhere near Ysoria.

Things happened fast.

They always happened so fast, and even though she tracked them and waited, poised to act, she somehow always was the last one; even as she watched and her mind processed what was happening as it happened, there was a strange memory playing behind it of Diata scolding her for being in the way.

And then there were the dwarves, and Iolan, and all she could think was how angry they made her, how loathesome they were, how frustrated he made her, that rotten, wooden-toothed buggering --

She pushed herself up as the body fell, somehow so wrong for a body, stepping up and over and slapping the thing (she wasn't sure what it was, but she wouldn't put it past the sneaky dwarves to do something underhanded and wrong) away from the prone figure. Suddenly brassy, she registered all the supposed friendlies as well as their downed master, and with the knife held so uselessly in hand she bared her teeth at all of them.

"Get Eddy," she snarled, "we need this one alive for questioning. Got it?" But she didn't wait, pivoting on her heel and pulling at her clothing -- it was bad that the knife was out of him, even with his shifter healing the spreading darkness pulsing from his wounds wasn't going to do him any good. "C'mon," she snapped at Iolan, like it was all his fault. She swooped down, maybe a little reckless and without a lot of logic (fighting was mostly over, but it wasn't over), and started pushing pressure into those dark puddles on his chest.

He glanced up at her in anger and disbelief as she knelt beside him, his hands tensing even further from the effort of trying to keep Eddie's innards inside. There were moments in life when a person felt that the powers in the world were on their side, but right then, as ever, Iolan was quite certain that the world was out to aggravate him. Snarling, he resisted the urge to spit his teeth at her and growled.

"What do you think I'm doing, you catty bitch?! Where are the others?"

He didn't really care, but the question would hopefully derail her line of thought and make her less of a pain to deal with. The sounds of fighting had changed now to sounds of management. People on the run trying to rally their mates or guards finishing off someone too injured to question. The thing was still down, but that was no guarantee, and Iolan once again looked longingly at his rifle. He couldn't go for it though, not while Eddie still needed help. Where the hell was...?

"Pippa?!"

He roared the name as best he could, hoping to the gods that she'd hear. Keeping the pressure on, he looked around to the other dwarves who didn't seem to have a job.

"Don't just bloody stand there! Help us!"

It’s an odd sensation, being oppressed that is. It’s even more peculiar when you are not used to feeling sensations at all, much less odd ones. For Deer the tag had come with its own battalion of sensations; a dull shock when it had touched him, one that went all the way into his incorporeal form, and something of an ever expanding ache.
He hadn’t been conscious when his body had hit the ground, the clunk of wood just barely absorbed in the soft ground. He hadn’t been aware of his assailants rushing towards his body, drawing back only when the tag was removed. He didn’t even have an inkling of what had happened to him, the time between the two conscious moments swallowed up in an instant, merging like nothing had ever happened.

So he was somewhat puzzled to find himself on the ground, lying amidst forgotten bolts and bodily fluids, his face to the never-ending void of space. Deer glanced around with the calmness that comes from absolute ignorance, his eyes looking at everything but nothing at the same time. Ysoria and Iolan were arguing about something it seemed, Iolan’s hands rather preoccupied with keeping guts where they were supposed to be and Eddie preoccupied with not dying. Then a name floated over, Pippa, it meant nothing to Deer of course, whom was still quietly wondering how he had reached his position, but it meant a lot to Pippa.

The woman amidst all her anger and fear had somehow found herself curled up under a caravan nearby, it was a miracle that she hadn’t gotten herself stabbed, shot or burnt in all the confusion of the night, but was as right as rain as she lay exhausted under the makeshift shelter. Apparently stabbing a man in the face is tiring work. Her name floated through her head, slowly waking from her exhausted slumber. She half-crawled out from under the caravan, to shout hoarsely at Iolan.

“Here! I’m over here”

Two of the dwarves went to Pippa and the children, presumably to help her out from under the wagon. Ysoria's skin crawled at the thought, upper lip curling away from her teeth. "Misbegotten mule of a man!" She snapped back at Iolan, nerves jangling. It'd been a close thing, the attack, and now it was all she could do to keep herself from looking over her shoulder every third second.

To Pippa she shouted, "get over here, now," as if by sheer force of her words alone she could force the issue.

She cut off a piece of her sleeve, the knife finally put to use, before she realized that the hole was too deep for it to be any good. Frustrated, she stood, all but useless as she backed off to give Pippa room to work when she arrived. Keyed up, angry, scared, and exhilarated all at once, she wheeled around to land a solid kick in the downed man -- only to find that the man was not quite flesh beneath her toes.

She swore, hopping back, and then bent closer. For the moment, Eddy was forgotten. "What the. . ."