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

A twinge of intuition strikes Thalia during her brisk, focused walk toward the library, causing to glance around. For a moment, she doesn't quite realize what she's looking for, but then a pair of sharp ears catches her attention, bringing her eyes to Adriannu and Liliath.

Well, Cornelius certainly wasn't apt to go anywhere right away. She may as well catch the young ones before they did.

"Liliath!" she calls as she approaches, voice stern not with frustration, but with militaristic focus, "Is it true that Lisa has been abducted?"

Liliath saw a familiar face it was Thalia! Liliath hapily smiled, but when she started talking about Lisa the smile dropped. "Yes after the goblin attack, Victi took her away from us. We are heading out of town, so that Victi can't find us and take us way to. I hope to find Jules and Alastor and Lisa ofcourse to. When I see Victi again she will regret it."

"Liliath, while I am well informed, remember that even I don't know who everyone is, or what everything is," Thalia remarks with a slight hint of exasperation in her voice. She'd managed to forget how much the girl wasn't only a handful to manage, but was so in multiple ways. Thalia internally reminded herself that Liliath had proven far more resourceful than she let on, and continued.

"I'm assuming, though that Victi is the... name or moniker, that the supposed white-furred chimera woman used. Rumour has it, though, that she might be more than that. I'm glad you confirmed that for me."

She turns her head toward Adriannu and asks, "You, cathra girl. I was told you were there too. What's your involvement in all of this? If you know anything about this whole mess, I'd be glad to hear it."

"Victi is a weird lady, we met her in the libary. I accidently told her about my shard, we ended up in a tea house and then the attack happend. Afterwards it was very chaotic and than Lisa got taken away, but Adriannu helped me a lot! I only was a bit mean to her, but I said sorry."

"Us, responsible?" Raven smirks, looking up at Urug with wide, deceptively innocent golden eyes. Poor orc.At the sound of paper being torn from its bindings, the orc cries out in horror. Raven laughs, and briefly an image of Lisa's face, a caricature of shock and fury, flashes through her mind. She blinks and shakes her head. Just like that, the image is gone.

Don't worry, we're going to find her.

She bounds ahead of the group, eager to get out of the door and out of this city, forging onward to the next one. Find Lisa, find friends. Jules mentioned another little girl...who could that be? Why does she matter?

As they walk, Raven falls back to follow Alastor's lead, him being the guy with directions and all. She trots beside Jules and asks, "This girl, she's not got a, y'know, one of these clay things, does she?" she bounces a little, jostling the cat-pack which now holds not just her shard, but also some trail food and a short length of rope.

Lisa rolls over, curling up and lying on her side in the dirt. She folds her arms over her chest, tucking her hands underneath her armpits as she shudders. It isn't cold out; the weather's actually quite comfortable. On a better day, she'd love to be able to fall asleep under the shade, almost just like this.

But this isn't a "better" day. In fact, Lisa gives herself a rough time speculating how it could possibly get worse. And as such she'd be damned if she doesn't feel chilled to the very core of her being.

As she closes her eyes, trying to will her mind into silence so she can sleep, it rebels and races with all the possibilities, fears, and regrets inspired by the past few days. It's a cacophony of survival strategies, existential crises, and lapses of "God, why couldn't I have done that differently?" Even the slightest sounds from her surroundings tend to send her jolting wholly awake, ears and eyes alert. Then she sees the only threatening presence is still the one and only Victi, she lies down and her head goes back to racing.

After this cycle repeats for fifteen or twenty minutes, she sighs and sits up, and looks for her abductor, hoping she's actually checking something, and therefore not paying enough attention to tell Lisa she shouldn't drug herself to sleep.

Victi is sitting under the tree still, staring at a glowing image full of alien-looking text which she flicks through occasionally. Perfectly legible to her, it was the most recent release of a thaumaturgic research journal concentrated on artificially induced magical behaviours, and this particular release had some very interesting studies on inducing non-native magical abilities into magical life-forms through biotechnological limb replacements. She'd been meaning to catch up.

Her eyes are focused on the image, but one ear is swivelled to be directly facing Lisa.... along with a trio of tails, sitting there fluffily. One tip is flicking periodically. She hadn't moved them since originally offering their use as pillows, mostly in hopes that Lisa would actually use them. There was nothing harmful, she just wanted her information source to be functional in a few hours, and Victi also wasn't the biggest fan of "solving" problems by self-medicating. Seriously, it pretty much never really worked, and it ticked her right off that people knew that and kept trying!

Hearing Lisa sit up more fully made the ear twitch as she braced for speaking volume after the quiet sounds of the forst. Hopefully not shouting, that would still sting a bit, but she was ready if the woman said anything.

Adriannu actually smiled slightly when Liliath said that she would make Victi pay if she saw her again. The girl showed a good spirit of spirit that that she could show a little respect for. However that smile quickly faded when she started making suggestions for what they could do in the woods. Those ideas of her's needed to be shot down, but she could at least try to be nice about it, she supposed. "We can't build a treehouse as the idea is to keep on the move so anyone hunting us down has an even harder time finding us. There may be other people who want to steal our shards after all. As for boiling the water to catch fish, we really can't do that as we would likely kill more fish then we need depending on how much water you boiled. Only take what you can use as any more then that is wasteful and disrespectful to the prey you killed. Besides constantly giving up your blood to catch fish isn't good for you. There are other ways to gather food that won't necessitate using your shard."

She did however let Liliath keep her dream of selling her shard for a castle. It was a stupid idea to her, but ultimately didn't matter in their situation so there was no need to say anything about it.

They hadn't been walking long when apparently they ran into someone the young girl knew. This could turn out to be quite the fortunate turn of events as this could relieve her of having to look after the girl any longer. As such, she watched as the two spoke to each other. Seeing the way Liliath interacted with the woman made her decide that she would indeed be in good hands in her care and decided to try slipping away silently.

Unfortunately that was when Thalia spoke to her which made her groan internally before turning her head back to look at the inquisitor. It was then that Thalia would see that even though Liliath and herself were children, they couldn't be more different. For the eyes are a window into the soul and Adriannu's revealed a great deal. They spoke of having seen far too much shit, of her predatory nature, that her innocence of childhood had died a long time ago and that she didn't trust her in the slightest.

"Liliath was there for the entire encounter and I wasn't, so you are better off talking to her about it. As for my involvement, well I don't know how Liliath was taken in by Lisa, so you will have to ask her about that as well. As for what I actually did, I protected Liliath in the goblin attack and am now turning her over to her so that ends my involvement with you two." With that, she looked forward again and started to walk away having told no lies, but keeping her secrets safe all the same.

"Oh I forgot, but treehouses are fun. We could take the fish with us to other places or maybe sell fish."

"Hey don't go!" Liliath looked upset, she liked Adriannu so she didn't want her to go away. "Thalia can help us to hide from Victi." Liliath spoke as she rushed after Adriannu "Come. Afterall you can't go cause we need make Victi pay for taking Lisa away from us." Liliath would try to grab Adriannu by her hand and walked back to Thalia. "You can help us hide right and find Lisa?"

Thalia initially says nothing in response to Adriannu's attempt at dodging the questions, but as the girl turns away, she asks the important thing once again: "What is your involvement, broken girl? I'm willing to accept that you weren't there the whole time, you didn't lie about that, but if you're one of these Shard carriers, I'd like to know the details. If just to find out if I should let my people know not to kill you if they find you doing blood magic."

Thalia had caught the hardness in the cathra's tired eyes. It was a look not too different from many Inquisition recruits. Broken, angry children looking for a cause that let them get their fury out. Driven to zealotry and focused, the church found them useful. This one, though? Too independent. Paranoid and distrusting. Just the right kind to tick Thalia off, the Inquisitor could feel it. Hopefully, though, the indirect threat would lead her to turn back around, and, if not, Liliath holding the carrot to Thalia's stick... or possibly morningstar, would do the trick.

Lisa's vision blurs in and out of focus as she squints at the back of Victi's head. Briefly, her gaze drops to where a third of the vixen's tails lay just within reach, insistent she lays her head down on them. The chimera buries the urge to roll her eyes and looks back up.

One of Victi's ears sits swiveled in her direction, obviously listening intently. To the tired, desperate individual Lisa has become, this is more of a warning to be very, very careful than it is to think twice about what she does next; she slowly reaches for her pouch and unhooks the clasp with a subtle click.

Adriannu pulled her hand away from Liliath and decided to play nice one more time. "Liliaith, it's better if we have more groups searching for Lisa as we can cover more ground in the same amount of time. Also Victi can't catch both of us at the same time if we are not together so it's safer for both of us." She explained hoping that this would get the girl to accept her departure.

As for Thalia however, well the woman's words made it abundantly clear that the time for playing nice was over. As first, she pretend to go along with her, but lowering her head and walk a few steps forward as if she had been scared into submission." Then suddenly she jumped onto the roof of a nearby building and jumped again onto the roof of a larger one. From this position, she looked down at the inquisitor and narrowed her eyes. "Why would I ever trust someone who can't be bothered to use my name even after Liliath gave it to you? Someone who despite protecting an assumed acquaintance of yours that you seem to be on friendly terms with, is so quick to imply such things merely because I dodged a few questions. It makes one believe that if I did tell you what I knew, you would rob me of my possessions and kick me back to an orphanage at best. Now while it's true that I may be 'broken," at least I know not to piss off the person who has information I want. Maybe if you had been nicer and maybe, you know, call me by my name instead of girl, I would have been open to an exchange of information. A question for a question as it were, but now there is no point in doing so as since I previously said, I have no reason to trust that you would tell me anything other than a pack of lies."

As Adriannu stops to shout down at her, Thalia casts a spell.

Initially, she'd been tempted to trap the feline child in a force-cage and just call that that. She would be furious, but that wouldn't matter. She'd changed her mind, though, the moment the girl stopped she knew the obnoxious kid was going to try and give her an earful. The Judicial Truth spell was... an interesting one. What it actually did was call the attention of an angel of law over an area. The result was an area of lie detection and argument control. Baseless accusations, name-calling, or irrelevant arguments would be responded to by a polite reminder, and lies would be called out.

The angel was not visible, it wasn't even technically there, just looking in from the celestial realm, but everyone present may have the feeling of being watched.

"I don't need you to trust me," Thalia calls to Adriannu, "Though if you're willing to trust the gods, I can assure both of our honesties. I've called the attention of an angel of law. It's the same spell used in most church-governed courts. I'm hoping you're aware of how those proceedings go, at least. Controlling both sides' tempers so that they can present useful arguments is useful, and frankly I'm hoping it will help keep me in line as much as it gets you willing to talk. If that works for you, I might even answer some of your rhetorical questions that you so kinda structured to encourage me to--"

Thalia is then cut off by a calm but authoritative psychic voice that rings in the minds of herself, Adriannu, and Liliath. "Inquisitor Thalia," it begins, "The offer of response is acceptable, but the expression of your irritation and likely intent to threaten are not. You will now wait for Huntress Adriannu to reply, and will make no further comment."

Thalia looks mildly shocked, then takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly, and replies, "I understand, radiant one. I will comply."

“A group is not just 1 person.” Liliath would listen quietly to Adriannu and Thalia “Thalia doesn’t tell lies, she is a friend of mine. And I am not friends with liars.” At some point Liliath felt watched.

Liliath was excited when she heard about the angel “Angels are cool! But all this stupid talking not. It is very simple we need Lisa back and a place to hide.”

The voice speaks again.

"Liliath, of those you call friend, not all are restrained in their deceit. Additionally, the doom which has come to stalk this world will not be thwarted by concealment, or at the very least not concealment alone. Lastly, your attempt to halt, terminate, or bypass the proceedings because they do not hold your interest is not productive. If you wish to leave the proceedings, you may do so. If you do, however, you will be prevented from engaging with them further. The freedom of choice is yours."

“Maybe, But still.” Liliath but on her lip, but stayed queit afterwards. She didn’t like the angel anymore, because she thought it didn’t gave any good advice. “But Angel how am I supposed than to make my point?” She spoke after a while of silence.

"The points you make, while of value, are not related to the discussion at hand. All discussions have their appointed time and place," comes the reply. It carries a truth, that the angel's purpose is only that of a discussion moderator and fact checker. If what is being said is not relevant to the subject it has been called to moderate, it will avoid replying. It will not reinforce truth, merely address falsehoods or inadequately supported statements of fact. It is not present to advise, but only to moderate, as per the nature of the spell which called it.

((That will be the last exchange between Liliath and the Angel until Adriannu replies, please. It's mostly there as a spell effect.))