Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » Bloodied Shards IC (CLOSED!)

Your character wakes up. Most likely in the morning, maybe at noon or later if they're like that, maybe in the evening if they work at night. Maybe even just randomly in the middle of the night to relieve themselves. Either way, when they do, they're greated with something very different than what they expected.

Near where they were sleeping stands a slightly translucent coppery-furred fox like creature wearing a long ornate robe. They aren't particularly tall, only around 165-170 cm, but their posture, robe, and seven majestic tails give them an aura of power and authority, even though it's readily apparent that they aren't actually there.

After a moment, they speak.

"Greetings, I am Magistrate Kylarion. I am not of your world, but send you a dire warning. Among your possessions, be they meager or vast, lies a clay shard edged in electrum. This shard is a piece of the Bloodied Vase, a somewhat obscure blood-magic artifact in your world's history and mythology. I warn you that someone is intending to assemble it."

"You may know some of the story, or have even learned that this otherwise inocuous piece of pottery reacts to blood to grant control over part of your world, the beasts, the winds, the earth, or some other aspect. When assembled, the Vase grants its user power greater than that of all of the shards combined, and the perception to use those abilities over the entirety of your world. Needless to say, you cannot allow this new enemy to assemble them all."

"She is a sorceress of great power, generally considered untenable to oppose. If I were to send my warriors to overcome her, she would simply slay them all with sadistic glee! This is why you and the task I am about to assign you are of capital importance. She is one of my kind, and we are, fundamentally, hunters. Some even call us cruel, taken to slowly tormenting our prey even if it poses a risk to us. This, among others, is an advantage you have over her."

"She has no knowledge of your world beyond your language, your currency, and some of your basic customs. We are taking action to ensure that she cannot use technological means to track you or learn the lay of the land. The shards, while not in use, are not easily locatable through magical means. She would require access to one of them to scry for the rest. She is alone, while you may have friends, family, colleagues, contacts, connections, masters, or servants. Most importantly, you have the other keepers of the shards. Lastly, you have the shards themselves, should you be willing to pay them the tax they demand for their power. I know that, even as she gathers them, she will not use them. I cannot tell you why this is true, but I know with great certainty that it is so."

"I can provide little other aid. I do, however, offer a reward should you hold the shards long enough to keep her from success: Some of our technology, which you will find not only indistinguishable from but superior to your world's magics, and 200kg of pure gold or equivalent in other goods. You will find a deposite of 5% of the gold, ten kilograms or approximately twenty-two pounds, in legal coinage, in the immediate area where you have been sleeping. I wish you luck. Do not let her take the shards."

And the magistrate's image winks out of existence, leaving only a strange, smooth disk on the ground where he stood.


Welcome to the game everyone! Your characters will pretty easilly figure out how to re-play the message, there's a button, so feel free to read that again as much as you need to.

Link to the OOC thread Here

A tall, graceful, white-furred vixen sat side-saddle on the parked hoverbike, alone on the hilltop. "I know, they brought ships into the system!" she exclaims into a small device, "Don't stay, you know they can't do much here, but they can mess up the 'Storm without trouble. .... Yeah, I'll be fine. You know I know what I'm doing, Ni, sshh. Okay, talk later."

Alone, huh? Well, that would be fun. She stretched, staring over the countryside, past the forest to the peak of a castle or citadel perched on the side of a mountain. There was a city or town extending below, too. First objective, get down there and find a map to buy. Possibly several. Oh! and hope someone tried to rob her so she could steal their money to afford it.

She swung her leg over the seat, and spun up her Shriker's engines, heading down the hill toward the forest below.

Some miles away from that township lies a small village. A short walk north of the village’s gates lies a lone cabin. It’s a comfortable, homey place complete with a vegetable garden and a one-beast stable. The mule normally housed there has gone on a long journey with its master, leaving Lisa and her cat completely alone to receive the news.

Lisa, a young lady with an imposing height but a fragile-looking frame, paces back and forth practically digging a trench in the cabin’s dirt floor with her bare feet. "No. No no no. This is not good. This is...this is-"

A dark ball of fluff sitting on Lisa’s cluttered desk flashes a smile. "Exciting?"

If looks could kill, Raven might have died right there on that desk. "Hell, no."

"I dunno; I’m pretty excited."

"A monster is coming to kill us over a piece of clay!” Lisa spins on her heels and looms over her familiar, nearly shouting as she slams her fists on the desk. Raven cringes, not because Lisa raised her voice or sent vials of potions rolling and crashing on the floor, but because the bright yellow color of Lisa’s irises is slowly fading into crimson.

“Uh, Liz? your eyes are going.”

Lisa takes a shuddery breath and squeezes her eyes shut, willing the color back into them. An honest-to-God Chimeran panic attack is not what they need. Once she thinks her instincts have passed, she slowly opens her eyes and mouths an apology.

Raven shrugs it off, returning to the problem at hand with a slightly less flippant attitude than earlier. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly simple solution. Let’s see...destroy it, bury it, throw it down a well…”

“Don’t you know anything about magical artifacts?”

“Wait a minute, maybe it’s not actually magical. Maybe...this is a prank.” Raven’s voice dips and she looks a little too crestfallen when she admits that this scenario might actually be staged.

Then she says, “Only one way to find out.”

With that, the cat starts reaching for the item she assumes Magistrate Kylarion meant when he described the broken Bloodied Vase, a chunk of clay that might have once formed the base of some ancient pottery. They’d found it together recently on a short foraging trip. Raven thought it looked cool and Lisa wanted to clean it put it up for decoration. Not once did it cross either of their minds that it might be a tool for blood-magic, let alone part of a mythical world-controlling artifact.

Lisa snatches it away before Raven can prick her paw on the shard's jagged edge. She slowly shakes her head. “I’ll do it.”

She sets it back down on the desk next to the projector disc and generous gold deposit that neither one of them yet care about, then fetches her belt (strapped to it is a sheathed knife) from the coat rack by the door. Raven crawls to the corner and pretends to sulk.

After Drake receives the message, he dresses, packs up his things including the disc and most of the gold (he leaves a tip to last night’s whore on the bed stand, who is very much awake and just as surprised as he is.) and slips out of the inn. He leaves a small heap of gold at the front desk. The innkeeper stares slack-jawed at the glittering pile of coins as the mysterious Chimeran darts out the door without a single word.

Drake skips town without any semblance of a direction or plan. Nevermind the job he was supposed to do there; he apparently has much more than an angry client to worry about.

He finds a clearing, sits cross-legged in the dewy grass. Here, with nothing but the rustling of leaves and the chirping of early birds, he can properly process the Magistrate’s warning.

Drake thinks he knows what possession of his the kitsune meant, although he’d not once suspected it might be a literal piece of ancient mythology. He absentmindedly strokes the ochre shard tied to a braided string around his neck. So...this thing is magic. It runs on blood. Someone else wants to have along with the rest of the pieces so they can reassemble what some long-dead civilization likely destroyed for a very good reason. Neat.

Although he’s tempted to see if the blood-magic actually works, Drake has a bad feeling that its power might draw whoever wants it to his location, and he isn’t ready to deal with that. He could use some time prepare. While he mulls over some plans, the song of some pretty finch has him smiling.

Then he hears a new song. Strange; snaps his head to the left, large ears pricked to listen. The noise starts quiet and rumbly, then grows into a shrill shriek as whatever it is draws closer. The Chimera leaps to his feet, drawing his broadsword from its sheath and clutching it in his right hand. He clenches a fist with his left, burying some instincts for the sake of keeping a surprise for the person or creature that approaches him. Staring into the thick timber, he curses under his breath, realizing he might not get that time to prepare.

Adriannu's projector flickers for a moment without turning off, and a second message plays.

"You are of particular note to us, have learned to use and prepare for the use of your shard long before we became aware of this. Because of your experience, we would like to ensure that your resourcefulness does not go to waste. What follows is information about the hostile individual seeking the shards...."

((This information is unknown to the other players at this time. Trust me, ignorance may be bliss. ))

Perfect!

Victi spots who she assumes to be a lone brigand or thief as she hurtles through the forest on her faithful high-tech mount. She veers toward him, rushing at Drake with the full intent of turning him to lootable splatter on the Shriker's forward shields if she can. She suspects whoever this is will move aside, but that's all part of her game. Sometimes you just have to open by terrifying the crap out of them.

The most alien vehicle Drake has ever seen hurtles into the clearing, its rider veering straight at him.

With a startled cry, he dives out of the way, hitting the ground with a painful thud.

With no time to think about how he nearly fell on his own sword, the chimera flips over and lurches to his feet. He response is almost automatic, blurted without any thought: "What the HELL is wrong with you?" He snarls, mentally daring his attacker to try that again.

Let it straffe him? No, not worth it.

Victi backflips off the shriker, landing before quipping, "Hi, I'm raising money to hunt down evil aritfacts. Mind if I take all of yours? Oh, and do you have a map? I could steal one of those, too. No idea where I'm going."

The shriker brings itself to a stop and turns around as she performs her dramatic dismount.

Drake had his suspicions since he heard the Shriker barreling through the woods, and the vixen’s snide introduction confirms all of them.

It’s her.

The sorceress.

He meets her gaze, looks down, then slowly follows her body’s contours up until he again look her in the eyes. Not only is he sizing her up for a fight, but the man is also admiring her lean figure.

She’s pretty, but Drake thinks he understands why the Magistrate sounded so afraid of her. There’s something about the way Victi carries herself. The way she speaks. Her eyes...she’s dangerous and definitely wants him to know it.

Refusing to let her under his skin, Drake completely changes his demeanor by offering a pleasant smile. He tells himself that he’s not in that much danger, at least not yet. She doesn’t seem to know he has a bit of what she’s looking for, despite the fact that the shard is dangling in plain view around his throat.

Fighting the urge to tuck the makeshift charm behind his collar, he lets out a small chuckle. “No map, but I’ll trade you all the money I’ve got for that nice mount there.” He jerks his head toward the Shriker, mostly joking.

"HA! Not a chance!" she replies, emphasizing the word with a dash forward, seeming to skate over the ground.

Once she's close enough, one of her long, well-toned legs lashes out in a chest-height kick, the foot carrying a kinetic blast. A simple spell by her standards, it's essentially a suspended shockwave, ready to leap forth on contact and send a target flying.

The kick connects below the collar-bone and Drake does go flying. Although surprised by the force of the blast, he rights himself in the air and lands on his feet before stumbling and falling to his knees. His sword clatters some feet away in the tall grass. That's fine. He suspects he'll be better off resorting to other tricks than scrambling to grab it, anyways. The vixen's pretty fast.

He rises, stumbling a little. The chimera tucks one arm behind his back while the other goes from laying over his bruised chest to curling its fingers around the shard as if to make it's still there.

His lips curl. "You know, someone like you can get money in so many easier ways." And he lets the comment hang there for her to interpret however she wants. In his mind, she'll either charge him again or snap another clever retort. Actually, she strikes him as the type to do both. He braces himself, preparing for anything.

She catches the scent of someone else, and something else, still clinging to him... which leads her to interpret it in the way he probably expects.

"What, giving hope to people who can't actually find someone who wants them?" she snarks back, giving him a look that clearly states that she's referring to him. She lets it stew for half a second before stomping and unleashing a blast of force upward from the ground under his feet, hoping to bounce him in the air. If he goes up, she'll jump, pivot, and have one of her tails whip another kinetic bolt at him.

The forest was mythical, magic beings lived there. It wasn't just the fantastic that took the legendary rainforest in the common mans gossip, but horrifying creatures of incredible might. The things of nightmares, the objects and ideas of one's fascination, and the answer to one's questions. These were the things the largest rainforest on the planet were deemed with. The depths had not been completely penetrated, and while many claimed to have journeyed there and returned with their own tales, many cast doubt on the stories they brought back. The depth of the forest held secrets, society was sure of it, and true or false, the experiences many claimed to have there fell on unbelieving ears.

The reality of things would be something harder to believe than the stories told about it. The Vynym, a sentient evolution of plant based life forms, had called a section deep in the forest their home for a very long time. The outside world, that lying beyond the treeline, could be equally as fascinating for them as well, and while they were certainly odd little creatures compared to the many other things the world had to offer, there was, in fact, nothing magical about them. In fact, magic was not something they were even terribly familiar with. Sure some had seen it, and stories were told of the bareland's magic in a likewise manner to which those from the 'barelands', or those outside of the forest, would tell of the forest itself.

Vee was only one of the Vynym living in a village set intentionally on the banks of a large lake. They walked away from the village, at this point a considerable distance from their home. The forest bottom had no obvious path to it, tree limbs had given up and dropped to the ground, entire trees had been defeated by their own neighbors, and bushes and underbrush grew amongst the wooden graveyards as well. Despite the difficult terrain, Vee traversed the area with great ease. They vaulted, hopped, and even stepped around, over, and through many things like they hadn't been an obstacle to begin with.

Vee's slight smile showed their pleased mood. Exploring was enjoyable, and as young as Vee was, it felt like a playful thing even. Despite this youth, however, they were quite intelligent, as most of their kind were. They held a level of maturity which was average for any 136 year old Vynym, something more blended for another race of quicker growth.

So when they landed on bare ground after heaving themselves over a long collapsed tree trunk, it gave them pause. Staring between the last two trees in front of them was a discovery. Vee walked slowly between them into a large clearing, and as they looked around, their eyes widened. Their jaw dropped, revealing an open toothless mouth in their expression of fascination.

Stone pillars stood in a large circle around a strange looking altar. The pillars looked as though they once had connections, stone slabs which were mounted at the top and passed from the top of one to the other. Everything looked like it had been there for years, eons even. The stones were cracked, run down, and most of the stone slabs had fallen and broken, or broken then fallen, leaving them in defeated piles or crashlanded positions near the weathered stone pillars. The alter was just as worn, and had a strange shape, offering an almost spigot off the side for what Vee assumed would have to have been used for pouring water.

Standing there taking the scene in for a moment, Vee felt a sudden chill. It wasn't from the rain, nor was it cold, in fact it was quite warm this day. The entire scene was....creepy, and while there wasn't an outright fear in Vee, the apprehension of the strange discovery kept them stationary several moments. Finally, the small translucent wings beneath the small flowering pods attached to Vee's body began fluttering in curiosity. Two on their chest buzzed suddenly, and the vae within lifted themselves airborn, turning to look at the scene as well. They were very good replica's of Vee, with the exception of keeping the small white and yellow flowers attached to their backs.

Vee stood and without a motion to their vae, each took off into the air in separate directions. They held themselves high in the air to avoid any dangers they might find, and otherwise flew above the discovered ruins, giving Vee an aerial view of the area below through their eyes. Vee took a tentative step forward, then another. By the third step, two more vae buzzed to life and ascended out of their pods on Vee's lower back. One flew next to Vee's face, and floated along as they walked forward, the other turned backwards and sat on Vee's right shoulder, holding a deeply green leaflike appendage most would recognize as hair for balance while keeping an eye on something that may try taking Vee by surprise.

Vee walked slowly up to the ruins, tensely and with a now serious face.

Drake blinks. Then he cracks another roguish smile and laughs. “Hah! That’s actually-” He sees her raise her foot, and on a hunch, he shuts his trap and ducks low, dashing to the side, the kinetic blast bouncing him farther than he'd like to go, but not so much up in the air. He digs his feet into the ground at the end of his leap to stop another fall. His eyes narrow as he focuses, honing in on a short-term attack plan. She likes those invisible blasts of force. Now it’s time to see how she uses them when she defends herself, or will she have a different trick up her sleeve?

He lunges forward. If he gets close to Victi, he feigns the act of drawing a blade from under his coat with his left hand, then swings his right fist in a sharp hook.

Standing before that piece of clay, Lisa unsheathes her blade and brings it to the palm of her hand. She takes a deep breath. Hands shaking, She draws the blade across her palm. Her breath escapes in a quick, pained hiss through gritted teeth. As the sting dulls into a low, incessant throb, she holds her bleeding hand out over the base and lets drops of blood splatter on its smooth, hungry surface.

And she feels it. The connection. The string of magic tied to the item wrapping around her fingers, slipping into the cut and coursing through her veins. A shuddering gasp escapes her lips and her eyes go wide. From her corner, Raven sits up and stares, worried.

Lisa is a magic creature, but she’s never messed with arcane forces that come from anywhere aside from within. Her shapeshifting powers are, and have always been, a part of her. To her, they’re natural. They’re good. This, on the other hand, feels like an invasion, a violation of her privacy, somehow. She hates it.

She cries out and backs away, tripping over their empty fireplace and hitting the ground. She’d hoped getting the hell away from that thing would break the connection, but it’s still there at the tips of her fingers. She doesn’t move until finally, finally, the last vestiges of external magic fade away.

Raven creeps to her side, “So…?”

“We have to get rid of it.”

“What?”

“Like you said, smash it. Bury it six feet under. I don’t care. I’m not dying to hold onto that piece of rubble.”

“But then you said-”

“Forget that; we’ll try destroying it first.” Lisa stands, leaning against the wall for support. Clutching her bleeding hand, she stumbles toward the shelves resting above and to the left of the desk. Bandages first, actually. But Raven, hearing the fear in the girl’s voice, dashes outside to look for a good, hefty rock.

Victi rolls to her left, making it so that, were he actually drawing a blade, she would pass under it before it got out of the sheath, putting her to his right as she stands, and probably making the punch awkward.

"Oh, a feint! I like the boldness!" she says, her body facing him side on. She takes a moment to stretch slightly, showing off her figure from profile in an attempt to distract his eyes while she sweeps at his legs with her tails.

On the top of a hill that overlooks the sea lived a woman. She lived in an abandoned lighthouse with a home attached to it. The sea was beautiful and sparkled. The view was the best around. She stayed up there alone. No one even dared to be near her. She was looked at as a monster by most towns due to her appearance. As for those who got to see her angry, they would fear for their lives and run away.

She was unsure how to feel about that but as time went on she accepted the fact that she would be hated for her appearance being too demonic. She brushed off the looks of disgust and the whispers she could hear every time she went out. She would smile kindly as if everything was alright.

One morning she had awoken from her bed to a message. After just watching what she could only describe as a hallucination, she picked up the disc and placed it on her shelf. "Another strange thing to come into my possession." She sighs and looks at herself in the mirror. Her horns and fangs were out. Her wings were hidden. She smiles. "I always did like a challenge, right? This alien creature wants something of mine? I find so many things around here that... well I dont even know where to begin to look." She skims the room and shrugs. "Something passed down huh? It couldnt be..." she placed a hand over her clavicle where a black gem resides attached to a silver chain. She undid the chain and held the gem up to the light. She snickers. "Well I'll be... sneaky indeed." She clasped in on her neck once more.

Shortly after she got dressed and was going to head to town when she paused and stared out into the open water. It was so peaceful as the wind blew her blonde hair off to the side. The sun was rising over the water and the warmth spread a smile across her face. Her green eyes shined like emeralds as she took in the view. She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the sea. She closed her eyes and felt at peace.

(Hope you guys like snarky ten year olds. )

Adriannu was fast asleep in the cave she called home when a bit of light disturbed her slumber. Instinctively she reacted by snatching the daggers under her pillow and exploding from her makeshift bed, ready to defend herself. However the child quickly realized that there was no threat and instead she was looking at something quite curious. In the middle of the cave was a slightly translucent humanoid shaped copper fox with seven tails and dressed in an ornate robe. While this fox was not very tall, they were still significantly taller than the child's roughly 134 cm.

Lowering her blade a bit, Adriannu started to listen to the fox's words which readily revealed themselves to be of ill news. Apparently her family heirloom was just one piece of what was once a vase that possessed truly incredible power, though this didn't really surprise her. After all, she had already been using the power of her shard for two years now and by its very nature of being a shard meant that it had to have once been a part of something. Now knowing this, it also didn't surprise her that someone was trying to collect all of these shards because of course someone would. Greed and power constantly dictated the behavior of others as she had seen plenty of times herself.

Now what did both surprise and leave her thoroughly unimpressed was what came next; the information about this enemy, why they couldn't stop her and why they thought that she could. They couldn't handle this threat that was of their own kind and expected her, a child to be able to handle this sorceress? Truly adults were utterly useless.

Next she was given some information about this enemy that was of some use, but what was said after that left her even more unimpressed. No, Adriannu was just as alone as this new foe without even the slightest person she could call upon for help. That included these other keepers of the shards as they were probably just as likely to try stealing her shard as this enemy. Probably try to justify it too by saying that she was "just" a kid and thus didn't need it. It wouldn't be the first time that someone tried using that justification to steal from her. The fox then followed up by saying that this sorceress wouldn't use the shard even as she gathered them for some reason, but actually refused to tell her said reason. This only helped to further strengthen her mantra of adults being useless.

After this he explained that he could offer little other aid which hardly surprised, but did mention that they had a reward should she manage to hold onto her shard. Yet further revelation of this reward merely caused her to facepalm. If there technology was so great, wouldn't it be smarter to give it to her now so she stood a better chance?! Also screw their gold, what did they expect her to be able to do with it? Kids like her don't have gold coins and so naturally trying to spend any would attract unwanted and likely dangerous attention. Looking longingly at her daggers, she wished that they could have just given her an excellent pair of properly fitted daggers instead of the gold. While these weren't bad, the hilts were a bit too big for her, meant for the hands of an adult, not those of a child.

It was here that she expected the message to finish, but instead the fox flickered before continuing on. Apparently he was aware of her experience with her shard and wanted to ensure that her resourcefulness didn't go to waste. This promptly made her wonder that if they had customized this message for her, why the heck had they left in the part about friends and family? They also should have known would would have been more useful to her then gold! Yet Adriannu didn't focus for long on her ire and instead grimly listened to the information she was being provided.

At the end of the long information dump she was given, the girl had a very deep frown on her face. She...didn't like this, didn't like it one bit. This Victi sounded like someone she didn't want to tangle with, not at all, but ultimately it didn't matter, not really. There was no way she was going to give up her precious family keepsake without a fight after all. It was all she had left to remember her parents by and she'd sooner die than give it up.

For now though, this gold needed to be buried for safekeeping until she figured out a decent way to spend it. At least the disc was small enough to be hidden easily. Heading to the cave mouth and looking at the sky, she'd estimate that it was an hour before sunrise. Best to quickly get to it then as it was in her best interest to finish the job before daybreak. Most of the people around here weren't Cathera and thus they didn't have night vision so naturally it would be advantageous to get safely buried under the cover of darkness.

Elsewhere in the solar system....

The magistrate paced the bridge of his ship, drawing nervous glances from the crew. A frustrated wizard who could also have you arrested for any reason was never a good thing to have around.

"You are absolutely certain we cannot simply evaporate her for violating the accords?" he asks sharply, snapping out the question for, as far as the crew was concerned, the millionth time that day.

"No, sir, we do not know her agenda. There are at least a dozen reasons she could be doing this which would be valid under the Pre-Mature Contact Laws," replies his lawer, a five-tailed red furred vixen with a hint of exhasperation in her voice.

"And you are just as certain that our.... communications are also not in violation of the accords?" he asks, also for the nth time that day.

"We are alerting specific individuals to a direct threat to them coming from hyper-planar civilization. We are, by that action, in fact attempting to uphold the accords," she answers with a thin sharp smile. Would he ever stop fretting over this?

"And we can do nothing more? No weapons? warding charms? Armour? Heroes always recieve mythological relics from on high, and that freak is nearly unstoppable without starship support!" he shouts, energy crackling along his tails.

The lawer flinches, and most of the crew are nearly hidden. She's a skilled counter-mage for a lawer, but the magistrate was also a genuine wizard, an Academy-trained mage! If he got truly angry.... She sighed, partly in annoyance, partly in relief that she hadn't been disintegrated yet, "You yourself told me that they needed to take advantage of her hubris and sadism. We can't give them more equipment for the same reason we can't just send a covert operations unit down to handle her! Look at the display! She's used nothing more dangerous than a kinetic blast against that one, and as far as she knows he's just a brigand to rob quickly, not her actual foe! She can't help herself but to draw out fights and banter when she feel like she can do so! If we'd sent a dozen Shades down after her, she would probably be chewing on their rations while sitting on their piled up corpses by now, but he can likely keep her from even getting serious for minutes! He may be able to escape if she gets bored! There's a 65% chance of it, even!"

The magistrate simply growls and resumes pacing...

Unless it's particularly exciting, like the thrill of a hunt or the joy of trolling random passers-by, Raven's not really the best at keeping her focus.

In minutes, she forgets why she went outside and starts wandering. Like most cats, she has a respectable-sized territory outside of the comfortable little cabin she calls her den. For a while she wanders her familiar game-trails under a good, familiar canopy, lost in thought. What good is a magic-thing from here going to do an alien? What kind of power did Lisa feel? Why did it scare her?

Should I be scared? Nah...

Everything's fine. Do your job and keep Liz from having a mental breakdown. Us two can solve our fox problem if we keep our heads on our shoulders. She pauses and chirps the cat's equivalent to a chuckle, thinking about how their supposed enemy might make that threat literal. The cat picks up her pace to an easy trot as she tries to picture the sorceress. She imagines the bipedal fox-with-too-many-tails part just fine; the magistrate did explain that she was of his kind.

The rest is left totally up to her imagination. Maybe the fox is on fire. Maybe she wears flamboyant silvery robes or sports a long grey beard becoming of a being well-versed in the arcane arts. The latter is unlikely if she's really a she, but the image inspires more laughter. The cat felt a little confused before, but now that she's alone with her thoughts, the situation has taken on a more amusing light, if only for a moment.

You have to remember she's a predator. She's the cat and you guys are mice. It's a slightly sobering thought. Just slightly. At least it's enough to chase the cat out of her own head and realize she's made a terrible mistake.

Wait.

Where am I?

The sun's not yet risen, but for her amber feline eyes, that isn't a problem. They flash silver in the dim light as she stops and frantically looks around. Then she laughs a sporadic, slightly nervous laugh when she realizes she'd manage to wander outside of her normal range into a very unfamiliar part of the forest.

Technically, she's not lost. Raven half turns to follow her own scent trail back toward the cabin; it's safer there and the chances of Lisa chewing her out when she gets back are growing by the second.

But this is a new place, and a little bit of exploring always does her some good. With a little snicker, she turns her tail toward the path home and scampers off into this unexplored- at least for her -section of wilderness.