Tales of the Ice Harpy from Glacia

Karla ran out of the hole in the ground and stopped, almost dead in her tracks. "Azarath..." she breathed. And then her eyes were dragged to the scene unfolding in front of here.

Mother Night, it was a scene from out of a nightmare. Raven, on the ground, limp in a way only the unconscious could be. Or the dead. Beyond her, running towards the entrance to the tunnels, a snatch of light and dark: Rook and Dinah, trying to keep out of sight.

( And above them all, hovering like the carrion bird that was her name. Raven. )

Knowing that she was here a decade in her own future--or a future, anyway--was a little disconcerting for Karla. She wasn't sure if that unease was lessened or heightened by the fact that standing here in front of the Keep and it looked exactly the same as it did in her own time. Having Jaenelle as the Queen of Ebon Askavi didn't change the way the Keep looked, at least on the outside.

On the other hand, when she closed her eyes and opened her other senses, she could feel the dark power permeating the very stones of the foundation. She sensed Jaenelle and a vastly dark power. It dwarfed her, made her feel very small. How could the other-Raven possibly still be bothering the other-her when Jaenelle could simply bring all of this power to bear on her?

"Shall we go announce we've arrived?" she asked absently, shaking her head free of the seductive song she could almost hear, threading its way through the Darkness. Jaenelle. "Raven, you might want to keep your hood up for a bit. I doubt you're all that popular right now."

( In which there is no bad news. Really. )

[NFI, NFB, OOC is love. Preplayed with blondecanary and trigons_child, using whateverknight's preplay coder! Warning for spoilers for Queen of the Shadows. Follows this.]

[Immediately follows this.]

Karla took a few seconds to compose herself, wiping her tears away with impatient hands. "There really does need to be a bloody phone-tree for this," she muttered, indulging in a bit of pointless sarcasm to bring her emotions back under control. She slipped the rings Raven left behind onto her finger. She wasn't sure why then had remained when Raven vanished, but they had to be important, right?

Not to mention, she just felt better wearing them. They were a connection, like a promise they'd get her back.

She made a mental list of people she had to call--and then did so, speaking directly into their minds. If they had shields, she banged on them with the equivalent of telepathic fists. If they didn't, she just swanned in and began talking.

*Wake up!* she demanded. *Raven's gone, Trigon's involved, and you lucky people get to come help me get her back.* She thought for a minute and added, *Meet me in the lobby of the dorm in twenty minutes.* Raven's room was handy, but she was calling in faculty and thought it might be weird having them here. Especially considering which faculty she was calling. *Let's go, people! I wasn't kidding about Trigon, dammit!*

( Enjoy your wake-up call, darlings. )

[Preplayed with blondecanary, brat_intraining, furious_maximus, furnaceface, icecoldfrost, justwantsquiet, life_inshadow, longislandiceme, not_a_parakeet, and sith_happened. NFI and NFB as it's after radio, but OOC, as always, is welcome.]

The bright red, neon light of Fangtasia was a bizarre sight in the parking lot of the otherwise drab strip mall. At the door, as usual, was a tall, elegant vampire in black, looking bored.

( we’re off to see the wizard! or eric. one of those. )

[NFI, NFB, OOC is better than TruBlood! Pam is courtesy of trickydemigod, natch, and Eric once again comes to us courtesy of momslilassassin! Follows after here, here, and here.]

[Continued from here]

After Lucivar finished recounting the numbers arrayed against them, he pushed himself to his feet, calling in his war blade and his bladed Eyrien sticks. "I'll be outside," he growled. "Too much fear in here."

It grated against his nerves, scraped against his precarious self-control. The fact that he had wings like their attackers only made things worse--much of the landen fear in the building was directed at him.

"I've been letting a few in at a time," he continued, "opening holes in the shield to let them through. Killing ten or twenty in the face of thousands doesn't do much, but--" He shrugged. ( What else was there to do? )

[Same alphabet soup goes here. Warning for violence. Again, still mostly 'inspired by' events in Chapter 13 of Heir to the Shadows. Part two of two; for master post list, please go here.]

[Continued directly from here]

Before Mari's hand even had a chance to fall back down to her side, Karla appeared in the back door of the room. Stairs could be seen heading up behind her.

"I felt the shield go," she said, her voice hoarse and raw-sounding. "I thought--"

It took her a moment to notice the others, swaying on her feet with exhaustion as she was. Which, of course, gave them plenty of time to notice her. Bones pressed against pallid, sweat-soaked, blood-streaked skin. More blood matted her hair which stood up in little spikes where she'd absently run her hands through it, and yet still more surrounded her mouth, where dry lips had cracked and bled. The skin under her eyes was dull and tight, covered in shadows so dark they looked like bruises. She was wearing a male's shirt, haphazardly buttoned, the sleeves rolled up to show arms thin to the point of emaciation.

To anyone who had been in the other-Fandom, it was a scarily familiar sight.

She stared at her friends for a long moment, while her mind tried to process the fact that they were there, truly there. Her head tilted, as if in question and her right arm came up to point. And then, with nothing like the grace or elegance one read about in novels, her eyes rolled up and she headed for the floor. ( Drama Queen )

[NFI, NFB, I bet you know where I'm going with this...This section warning free. Text adapted from Chapt. Thirteen of Heir to the Shadows. Uhh, very loosely adapted. List of previous entries can be found here. Yeah, I got nothing more to add.]

*There.* Prince Smoke eased out of the underbrush to greet Morton as soon as he stepped out of the Coach *That is the set of huts that the Lady and the others went to.* He whined a little in his throat. *There is a a bad-meat feeling there. But it comes and goes, like scent on a changing wind.*

After hearing from Beale that Prince Smoke had accompanied Lucivar and Jaenelle to Askavi, Morton had contacted the kindred wolf as soon as he'd landed the Coach in Askavi and his attempt to contact either Lucivar or Jaenelle had been fruitless. His relief at finding out that his wayward cousin had been following Jaenelle turned to concern when Smoke told him that the three humans had gone into a village and hadn't returned. It was the same village that Lady Tara's spell had pointed to; that much was certain. But knowing where Karla was didn't explain why they were there. Or why they couldn't come out.

That concern turned to decided unease as he stepped forward to examine the cozy-looking little village, a mile or so in the distance. A landen village, he thought, since he wasn't getting a hint of any Blood psychic scents in there. Which was damned odd, considering Smoke had tracked Karla and the others to this village and was certain they hadn't left. And now that Smoke mentioned it, Morton did notice a faint hint of corruption, like something flickering out of the corner of his eye. No sooner had he noticed it, it was gone again.

"Smoke, head back to Dhemlan and alert the High Lord," Morton said, still studying the sleepy village of Agio. Had he just felt the Ebon-Gray...? No, nothing. "Tell him to contact Khary and Aaron, too, and pass on everything you just told me. I don't like whatever's down there, and Karla, Jaenelle, and Lucivar are right in the middle of it."

With a quick Rrruff! and a small lick at Morton's hand, Smoke trotted back towards the Coach and vanished onto the White Wind. Even hopping onto the Purple Dusk back to Dhemlan and then having Aaron and the others ride the Green Wind from Glacia to Askavi, they were still looking at more than a handful of hours before help would arrive.

No use waiting, then. "Let's go," he said, turning to face the others. "Let's see what kind of trouble my cousin's landed herself in now."

( From his tone, Morton was assuming it was trouble of the most dangerous kind. )

[Warnings in place for explicit violence and potentially disturbing imagery. NFI, NFB, OOC=love. Text adapted from Chapter Thirteen of Heir to the Shadows. Ish. Part one of several; the full list of previous entries can be found here.]

It was a little tense in the Hall today. Even through the dark power that saturated the very stones of the building, those sensitive to such things could feel that emotions were running very high. On top of Karla having gone missing, no one had heard from either Jaenelle, Lucivar, or Smoke, and an emissary sent from the Dark Council was scheduled to arrive the any minute now to 'look into the distressing violence Lady Angelline had shown herself capable of.'

The door to the study was locked, bolted, and Black-shielded. Even so, it radiated danger and a hot, riotous fury.

Upon arriving, the students from Fandom were led into a wide, receiving chamber. Food was set out on the sideboard--things would have to be a lot more cataclysmic that this for the servants of the Hall to forget their duties--and four males were already waiting within.

( Not everyone appeared to be delighted to see them. )

[As you can all guess, NFI, NFB, what we'd love OOC commentary. So begins the saga of posts spread across multiple entries because of stupid LJ post size limits. The second half of this carries a warning for dark themes and potential trigger issues, as Saetan again explains safframate. Continued from here. Part...oh god, I've lost track. Part a billion, okay? (I, II, III, IV, V, and VI)]