Plot Thread 1.4: Blood Inheritance (THE TRUTH)

[Andy Jammer]

Andy gave a half-hearted wave goodbye as the Other made his way through the storm. After a few good minutes the storm was indeed beginning to taper off a bit.

"I think we're in a good enough position to walk now, gather your things, snuff the fire and button up."

As he stood he paused for a moment, walking to Jasmine. "I need you to look at something."

He then removed one of his gloves to show his hand, very ice cold and may be on the verge of frostbite. "Will this affect my fighting ability?"


...


The Other, who had a good pace ahead of them, when he made it to the end of the trail he was met with the sight of the town. Usually even the cold area of Ghiaccio had warm lights to signal the towns people. Now...there was none of that...there was an eerie quiet that now hung the air...

...and a strange lack of life-aura from the town.

[The Other]

The absence of any human presence in the town was puzzling to the Other indeed. Usually when he walked through a settlement this quiet they had at least been warned he was coming. Yet as the Other walked down the empty streets he saw no sign of bordered up doors or even a single curious child who dared to peak out from the window.

"Hello? Mortals?" The Other called out past the howling winds, his voice only making it as far as a half block before being muffled out by the storm. "This is even worse than before. At least there was someone to deal with back with those children." Tiring of a civil search effort The Other's normal arm mutated into a long bony limb finished with an oversized three fingered claw. It shredded the roof on a shop in a single slice, than flayed apart the front walls of two more buildings opposite it. Once the deed was done he peered into the building, curious if indeed anyone might be revealed by his more deadly actions.

[glitters]

Jasmine figured The Other didn't like her response as he turned away and afterwards left the group. She would have protested he didn't leave alone but after hearing Andy and him go at it on the subject of who could survive the cold and who could not, she resisted because by the sound of it he could look after himself.
But still. One person down wasn't a good thing. Thankfully Andy decided to pack up and leave shortly afterward.

That was when he showed her his hand. At first she didn't seem too worried but when she felt it, she sandwiched his freezing hand between hers and rubbed them over his hand gently.

"Can you move the fingers? We need to get heat to them, you can't stop moving. As long as there's heat to be had, I don't think it should hurt the ability to fight," she frowned, "assuming we're not too late to do something about this, that is."

She wanted to ask him why the bloody hell he didn't say something earlier, but he never seemed to pick up early symptoms like she did.

[Andy Jammer]

"That's why I didn't want to move out just yet," Andy confessed, which gave note that the fire probably kept his hands from being worse. "I was worried if I went back out in the storm my hands would worsen."

He flexed his fingers to prove he had some feeling in them...


...

As the Other moved through town it was then people started to walk outside, shuffling about in the storm moving from place to place. Looked normal...except still, the absolute lack of life aura hung in the area...despite these people moving...it felt like nothing was there.

[glitters]

Jasmine pulled Andy over to the side so they could have a little privacy, which then she continued to rub her hands over his hand to create warmth. Softly she mumbled an incantation, a short string of words that made their hands glow together. It was important that the heat he received wasn't too much to cause him damage, but enough to allow him full functionality of his entire hand in the case of a battle.

When she thought he was okay, she raised his hand to her lips and laid a gentle kiss on his knuckles.

"How are you feeling?" she asked as she turned her soft gaze up to him.

[Andy Jammer]

Andy smiled a bit but that smile faded fast, she knew she had meant his hand but...he was thinking of other things. He glanced over his shoulder as everyone seemed to pack up and get ready.

"Honestly no. I have...never been a leader before, I mean yeah I always guided you and I to safety and such but I never lead a larger group. I mean...I fought with Other because while what I said was true...I didn't need him taking charge."

He frowned and clarified, "I mean, where I come from I believe in people making decisions together and such...but sometimes there is always one guy who does things his way. If it was anyone else I wouldn't care twice, but this guy...he is strong I'll give him that, but things like morale...care of people...I mean the guy called us arrogant just cause we need a fire to be warm. Yeah I guess he was right about the whole thing about moving and such but...I felt like if I gave him an inch he'd walk all over us. I need to resist him a little...make sure you and Navarre, hell even Monthu, come out of this alive."

Now that he had feeling in his hands he took ahold of Jasmine's, "The Other and I may argue again in the future...he may be right and I may be right sometimes, but with people like him...there is always that chance they may backstab us. I don't think he'll do it now, there's as much at stake for him as for us, but at the end of this..."

He sighed, his general message got across, he needed to oppose Other a little just as Other needed to oppose Andy a little. Instead of explaining further he left the sentence hanging, and instead kissed her hand just as she did for his.

[The Other]

"Ah now that's just rude! You couldn't be bothered to at least have someone come out to welcome a visiting ruler, and now you only come out to save your own buildings from being destroyed. Perhaps you need a lesson in manners!"

The Other took a massive step and by the end he had morphed into an entirely different being. His tendrils grew and stood up with a mind of their own as his head sunk into his torso. His muscles and perfect sleek skin caved in to reveal a boil-ridden shroud of tendons and sinew. Left faceless, left headless, the perversion of his once human form was a nightmare. Of course, words could never do it justice.

Snatching a human from within one of the houses he held it in front of the dripping jaws that seemed to beg for the morsel that was mere inches away. "Any pleas for mercy?" It boomed, a voice from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Yet it just hung there. He could feel it, or rather, he could feel the lack of it. The lack of cold sweat and a racing heart. The lack of fear, not just in the man but in those around him. Whatever these mortals had been, they were no better than husks now.

"Worthless puppets." The Other threw the man with a careless disinterest back into his house and quickly returned to his reserved form. "Either the Queen of this realm is as brutal as I, or our target has already left their mark on this place. I don't know what that boy was hoping to find out here. Damn, he'd at least be able to tell me what it was I suppose to be looking for." He considered going back, but now that he thought about it there was a castle that had been mentioned. Maybe the town had simply been a distraction, or an appetizer to what lay ahead.

Very well, let's hope this castle offers something worth exhausting my time in this wasteland. He said as he continued past the husks and buildings towards his destination.

[Andy Jammer]

The Other was right on more counts than one, the people weren't people...they didn't even have eyeballs. They were just...husks...like drones just walking. They didn't yell or attack...or anything, not even when the Other grabbed one.

But after that they did all start staring at him, like an animal that was just alerted to someone's presence. In the Other's path, something moved through the storm, something not one of the strange husks that walked in the town. Something that was seemly not giving off any form of life signature, like a ghost in the wind. More glimpses of movement, whether they were aware of the Other's presence of moving past them was...unknown, there was a lot of growling in the wind though.

[The Other]

Moving with a determined fervour The Other took no notice of the sounds or motions that slipped intertwined with the continuous cacophony of the storm. The empty eyed things that watched him were paid no mind, lest a quick slap was needed to move them directly out of his way. When at last he reached the opposite edge of the city his eyes strained to see anything through the whirls of white, yet even with the creation of a few more eyes on his head and chest he failed to see a clear path to any castle.

"To what good are roads in a realm that hides them with snow? No lights, no humans to demand directions of, not even a horde of stupid minions left like bread crumbs to my destination." Forming a set of giant black wings The Other attempted to gain a higher vantage point over the city in hopes of seeing some marker of the castle's whereabouts, the muscles of his wings barely keeping up with the gale force winds that ran through Ghiaccio that day.

[Dios Sarvo]

With The Other's exodus from their travelling party, Dios' saw fit to maneuver himself ahead of the rest of his party, finding little reason to stay and wait, what with his only source of interesting in this whole matter having walked out of view. Waiting till no one else was seemingly paying attention, Dios slyly maneuvered into the flickering shadows kicked up by the firelight and surreptitiously slid into them, his figure disappearing as he jumped from shadow to shadow in an effort to keep up with his proxy.

Peeking from one of the shadows, more so in an effort to keep from the biting cold then to avoid detection, Dios bore witness to The Others quick disassembly of a few buildings, and his nightmarish twisting form as he made some effort to prove a point to the creatures that littered the once lively town. Be it The Others lack of human knowledge or simply his ego, he seemingly took little notice of the husks that populated the town, but their featureless faces somehow reminded Dios of the mannequins the they cleaned up in Roccia.

Wanting to investigate further, but also wanting to keep tabs on his proxy, Dios pulled forth a small raven-like creature from the shadow plane and sent it to keep an eye on The Other, confident that that the hulking shade would care little about the small follower, should he even spot it.

Sliding through the town upon the tumultuous groupings of shadows found within the overcast city, Dios effortlessly pulled one of the creatures into the shadows with him, examining it more closely within the comfort of the Shadow Plane, hoping that he might glean something about either the creature, or the situation from their presence.

[Monthu]

Monthu had leopard crawled backwards away from the bluff on which he had been observing, and as soon as he was certain he wouldn't be seen by anyone watching them, he stood up. Almost like a ghost appearing from the snow, he walked over to the fire around which Andy and Jasmine had gathered and sat himself down. Throwing back his hood, he placed his bow by his side, and removed his gloves. He stared into the crackling fire as he spoke.

"It's common belief that you need to cover your hands and head in the cold." He held his hands out towards the fire. "But hats, gloves and hoods trap cold in just as well as heat... You'd be better warming them without them being covered and then covering them again when you set off, trapping the heat within." He gave a small smile as he shuffled slightly, getting comfortable. His gaze tapered off towards the direction in which The Other and Dios had headed and grimaced slightly.

"The big one plans on throwing his weight around." He muttered "I could see it in the way he walked."

[glitters]

Jasmine shook her head. It was one thing to expect this kind of attitude from Andy, even if she didn't necessarily like it, but this other guy, too?

"All that matters is he hasn't done anything yet...aside from maybe throw our original fire out of the cave," Jasmine shrugged as she recalled the random event, "I'm not saying put your guard down, I'm saying you boys best be all getting along regardless of 'who started what' and keep your minds focused on what's important here."

She stopped there to give Andy a smile and caressed his cheek, throwing in quietly, "I'll heat your gloves up a little, too before we go. You'll be perfect, then."

[Monthu]

Monthu shook his head slowly.

"Believe me, I really do wish that we all get along and this goes smoothly, but it's like you said... I'm just keeping my guard up." He rubbed his hands together as he narrowed his eyes. He could faintly here the sounds of The Other's little rampage on the wind, it came back as the sound of tiny little crashes and snapping of wood. "Either way, he's venting... I just feel sorry for whoever it is." He smirked, a grim line spreading across his face as he glanced over at the pair for a brief moment, before his gaze turned back to the fire.

He hadn't caught what had been said, but their physicality and closeness struck a chord in the archer, and not for the first time in the day his thoughts slowly lumbered back to Bast. His face creased into a frown that didn't quite suit his features as he rubbed his hands together slowly. Of course it didn't take long for his thoughts to drift to the rooftop in Unda where they'd talked to one another, and the frown slowly flattened back out into a smile as he rubbed at his face, a thin layer of stubble had already started growing around his chin. Inwardly he cursed himself for not having shaved, he'd end up like the God of War at this rate.

He poked the fire with a stick and placed his gloves next to it, hoping to keep them relatively warm so that he wouldn't effectively be plunging his hands into snow when he put them back on. Standing up, he brushed his legs off and coughed awkwardly into his fist.

"I'll uh... I'll well, I'm gonna'... S-sight my bow, I'll leave you guys.... Well, I'll leave you alone..." He coughed once again, and stooped down to pick up his bow. He turned to leave and started walking away before turning and coming back, leaning down, picking up his gloves, giving the two an awkward smile, and then actually setting off."

[Kato Shin]

I closed my eyes, huddling into the heavy fur coat I'd been given.

"How much further?" I asked my unwelcome guide, invisible ahead of me - though whether that was because of the snow preventing me from seeing more than three feet in front of me, or because she really was invisible, I couldn't really say.

I disliked working with her. But I had no choice. She was the only one who could take me where my dreams told me I needed to go.

"Not long!" she called back. "Monthu should be in this mess somewhere shortly up ahead!"

Wonderful. Exactly who I wanted to see. But she seemed happy, so I played along.

"Great," I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

I could feel them, moving sluggishly through me. This was as far from any of the mana that fueled them as I was likely to get, so I was saving them for later, when I really needed them - but I concentrated on my hands and feet, channeling my ki into them, carrying the flames with it, keeping my extremities warm and unfrozen.

Being a fire mage was... difficult.... in this climate.

[Monthu]

Monthu had taken up his old position on the bluff, laid on his side, hood covering his head and lens of his monocular just poking out. The only light source, the fire, was to his back, preventing any lens flare from the device. He had it set to NV currently, and was scanning the horizon when he spotted the moving figure of Shin, and obviously not Bast. He took a sharp intake of breath, and his fingers slowly crawled to his string which was already nocked with an arrow. With the utmost care, he pulled all 30lbs of the bow limbs back, as silently as possible, any creaks were masked by the wind and he closed his weaker right eye and focused ahead and to the right of Kato. He hasn't yet recognised the boy.

'No sneaking up on us...' He thought. As he exhaled and held his breath, his monocular positioned in line with his sight as he took aim.

THWACK

The bow released all of its energy in a silent, ghostly shot that propelled the long, thin, awlpike arrow through the air, the carbon shaft flexing in flight as it shot straight and true towards its target. Given the distance, there was a split second in which Monthu observed the arrow in flight, like a soaring falcon, a small smile crept onto Jin's face at the thought of his old team.

The arrow ploughed into the snow with a heavy crump, launching white powder in every direction.