Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » The Scent of Adventure (1x1)

"The pony doesn't like to be ridden, so you're even. We're not that far off, but this terrain is very steep. It will be slow going. Realistically another half day of trudging."

It is lucky for all of them that they don't have to climb their way all the way up to the snowy peaks, because the going is noticeably hard for the hoofed creatures, and even harder as they approach their destination.

“Well, wake me when we get there, or if you get lost, or fall in a hole or something.” Skag leans back into his seat, rests his head on the roll behind him and quickly falls asleep. One thing Skag has always been good at is sleeping through anything. Even a moving pony isn't enough to prevent Skag from ignoring the world, though it is enough to flip his tiny head back and forth while he sleeps, like a rag doll.

The trip is measured in outbursts of cursing, growing ever more frequent as the path becomes less a path and more an incline utterly inhospitable to hooved creatures. Little rocks slip beneath them in noisy crowds, and the horse-creatures scrabble to find purchase.

Finally, their journey ends at a ledge. On one side, it looks out over a frightening ravine; on the other side, a cliff face reaches up toward the sky. It is bumpy and uneven, full of hand holds for climbing for any race with the capability of climbing.

This leaves Cavalia and her animal companion squarely at a loss. She flicks her tail, whisking it over Skag. "Hey. Hey. We're stuck."

Skag's teeth snap at the tail wagged in his face, apparently Kobolds have a different sleeping reaction to nose tickling than humans do. It must be a snout thing. Fortunately for the tail, Skag's teeth are useless for biting a tuft of hair, designed purely for tearing meat.

It takes another moment or two, but he does eventually wake up, under duress. He sputters and wipes his mouth as he sits upright. “Pppfff... pppfff... What are you trying to do, choke me with your tail?” Memory kicking in finally, Skag looks down at Cavalia's hooves. “What do you mean stuck? You look fine to me.” perhaps he's not fully awake yet.

Cavalia tilts her head, eyeing him with the thoughtful expression that usually precedes extreme mischief. Perhaps Skag should fear that she is going to punt him to the mountain top like a football. Instead, she simply jerks a thumb at the wall of rock in front of them, uncharacteristically silent. Yes, definitely not a good sign.

“Oh right...” Skag's ear to ear grin suggests that he was never confused or half awake, but was deliberately poking fun at Cavalia for her inability to climb. “Well, I'm not going up there alone, we Kobolds are diggers, not climbers, and I was more what you might call management anyway. Though in retrospect they might not have kicked me out if I did a little bit of digging. All for the best anyway, I much prefer human food, Kobolds do not eat well, and I'd best leave it at that lest you risk slipping in your own vomit.”

He reaches behind himself to start strapping his backpack on, and unmooring it from the pony's saddle. “I suggest you let me ride you, and I make you able to fly. That way we can both go up there in case the eagle is home, and so you can carry the eggs down, they're likely to be far too large for me to manage.”

"Don't you have..." Begins Cavalia, her narrowed eyes now falling on the bag that she often sees Skag pulling things in and out of like a clown car. But the objection dies on her lips as she realizes large or no, she doesn't entirely trust Skag to care about obtaining the merchandise quite as much as she does. She clears her throat, and revises mid-sentence. "...concerns about going flying near the nest of a giant eagle? She is definitely going to eat you if she sees you."

“I have many concerns about flying near the nest of a Giant Eagle, but it's better than walking, or Gaknulak forbid, climbing. A Giant Eagle could pluck me off that cliff face and I'd be so busy staring at the rock, I would never see it coming. At least if I'm flying around on your back, it's unlikely to come after me when it can just grab you.“ clearly martyrdom is not a trait Kobolds tend to display, and Skag has never demonstrated himself to be a particularly brave or altruistic Kobold.

He finishes messing with his backpack, and stands up on top of the saddle, he's so small that it isn't even slightly challenging for him. “Now hold still while I hop onto your back, I don't want you knocking me off before we even get started.”

Cavalia busies herself with loosely buckling a belt around her waist so that Skag will have something to hold on to while perched atop her. This only takes a few seconds, leaving her to "ready" her lance for the journey. She tries several grips, apparently uncertain what hold will be the most secure, the most practical, or perhaps heroic looking. Really, she hasn't the slightest idea how one prepares to fly, physically or emotionally? She is a four-legger, a creature of the plains and the earth. What business does she have soaring around like a pegasus? Pegasi are ridiculous horse-amalgams. Just ridiculous.

Possibly this plan is ridiculous.

But then there's a kobold trying to get onto her back and she's frozen still, staring up at the clouds overhead in silence.

She'd look too ridiculous going back on this now. She'll just have to sort out how one holds a lance while flying.

"Am I going to grow wings?..."

Skag waits only until Cavalia has all four hooves on the ground and is no longer shifting about before making the short hop from the pony to Cavalia's back. Skag is neither strong nor tough, but he is at least nimble. “How would I know what your future holds for you? Do I look like an oracle?”

Skag only gives his retort a half a moment before continuing. “My spell will not cause you to grow wings, and you should plan to use that silly lance just like you do on the ground. After a few seconds of adjustment, you should find flying to be only slightly more complicated than walking. Though I suppose you have enough trouble walking and talking already, you may just want to focus on flying and not talking. It will at least give me a few minutes of peace.”

"Careful. Wouldn't want to upset me or I might lose my concentration and drop us." With the tension of this new experience creeping up on her, she seems markedly less resilient to his constant niggling. She twists her neck to look at him, waiting for him to get situated and begin his spell.

Skag settles in promptly and begins chanting in the language of magic, less a language than a series of specific sounds accompanied by symbols and gestures to focus the magic as desired. Over almost before it began, Skag grabs onto the belt with both hands. “All done. I recommend trying to go strait up first, it's the trickiest part and always better to do with the ground still underfoot.”

Cavalia takes a long, deep breath, expanding her already stocky chest as far as it will go.

"You stay here," she breathes to the pony. He looks forlorn but not insulted to receive such an obvious instruction.

And so the two horsekin part for the moment. Cavalia rears back onto her hind legs, holding her lance with a white knuckled grip, and then kicks and pushes with hind hooves and the base of the spear at once. The tripod arrangement results in a slight spin to her take-off, whirling her gently as she drifts up into the sky. Hooves go flailing, causing the still land-bound pony to back away to avoid getting a kick in the head.

Skag holds onto the belt for dear life as she takes off unevenly. “What part of strait up did you not understand. You can fly now, you don't have to jump or push off or kick, it's not like swimming, all you have to do is think. I know that's hard for you under the best of circumstances, but since you're thinking for two now, the least you could do is try.” Skag gets excited easily sometimes, and he's surely excited in a bad way right now, but there's nothing easy about it.

Ignoring Skag's advice (as per usual), Cavalia continues to gallop precisely as if she were swimming in the air. Moreover, she is still holding her breath, perhaps under the assumption that pretending to be a balloon will somehow aid her in this endeavor. The spinny speeds up, whirling the pair for some time as she panics and thinks a little too hard about spinning. Gradually, she evens out, hovering perhaps fifty feet from the ledge that served as their launching pad, her legs almost languidly going through the motions of a gallop.

"Now where?" she asks tentatively.

Skag continues spinning long after Cavalia has stopped. “I have often been thankful that Kobolds do not have a regurgitation reflex, but right now I wonder if it wouldn't help more than hinder. You did that deliberately just to spite me didn't you?” Rhetorical apparently, Skag does not wait for a response.

“We have to find the nest. It will look just like any eagle's nest, only much much larger, possibly even as large as a small cabin. Most likely is on a ledge, but they have been known to nest in caves if they are large enough to support flight, or have a bit of a ledge to land and perch on out front.