Tales of the Ice Harpy from Glacia

Karla'd had an excuse why she'd missed the wrapped present on her bed Friday night. She and Warren had been awake for almost twenty-four hours, fought in a battle, had gotten hurled into a bridge, made up, and then she'd performed at the Showcase. Karla counted herself lucky that she'd managed to make it to a bed, never mind her own, before collapsing and sleeping like the dead. She'd managed to drag herself to Dite's suite the next morning for baking and cookies and a Conversation, and had blearily just tossed the blankets over the top of the bed and called it made without paying attention to what else might be getting covered: pillows, pilfered stuffed animals, presents...

The excuse for missing it last night was a little thinner. She'd fallen asleep on top of her covers, reading a book and had been mostly asleep by the time she got cold enough to crawl under her blankets.

But the second thing she'd noticed when she'd finally woken up this afternoon--the first being the adorably fluffy baby penguin who'd managed to sneak into her room and cuddle with her--was a wrapped gift half-hidden under one of her pillows. All the possibilities she'd come up with for what it could be--a gift from her roommate before Gabs had left? A gesture from Warren? Random Fandom whimsy?--had not prepared her for the bloody horror within.

Her little penguin friend vanished out the door in a flurry of tiny, grey feathers as Karla opened her present and began screaming.

[Warnings for a hideous--but non-bloody--horse head statue in the last link]

Karla had spent most of the past day sleeping. She had vague recollections of briefly swimming to consciousness to eat or be gently bathed, but it wasn't until midafternoon on the second day after they'd left Agio behind that she truly awoke.

She had never been to glad to wake up in her room at the Hall in her life.

At the same time? She had never wanted to leave Kaeleer quite so much. Just...get away. Away from people who would try to control a witch by dosing her with safframate and forcing her to sign a marriage contract. Away from psychic witch storms and attacks on landen villages. Away from spirals and the abyss and six thousand dead in seconds...

She loved Jaenelle, she truly did, but she'd gotten a glimpse of the combined power of thirteen Black Jewels. Karla needed a little while to put that all into prospective, to slot this newfound information into how she already saw Jaenelle until she had a better handle on it.

Sadly, running wasn't an option. Neither was hiding. She still had people to face after this most stupid of plans, and even watching Jaenelle annihilate thousands of Jhinka didn't change that.

After her bath and a meal that consisted of something more solid than soup, Karla was feeling a little more herself. Helene had left her ensconced in a comfortable chair in the front room of her suite, dressed in a thick, woolly sweater, a long skirt, and wrapped in a spell-warmed blanket. Hopefully, these would not only keep her warm--even with a fire, Karla was deuced cold--but help hide just how much weight she'd lost.

Now that she was awake and up, it meant that it was time to face the music. Too bad 'music' in this case, translated out to 'a bunch of people who had every right to be very, very mad at her.'

( Somehow she felt like enforced fussing was going to be the least of her worries right now. )

[NFI, NFB, OOC is love. Last day of plot and we have completely left canonical events behind. Post master list is 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)]

"Drink," Karla said, holding out the cup to Saetan, the wound on her wrist already Healing.

Saetan didn't even look up from his packing. Yes, he intended to vanish everything, but unlike certain blonde witches, he didn't see that as a reason to not bother packing everything away neatly. "Karla, we discussed this. I'm fine."

"You're going to be skipping your nap just so you can answer questions from some female who doesn't even believe in Craft and probably thinks you're crazy," Karla grumped. "A little bit of blood will make it so you don't spend the majority of the conversation in blinding agony. Stop being so cursed stubborn and just drink this. Or I'll kick you and tell Jaenelle why."

Why did everyone always feel the need to argue with their Healer. Was it because they thought she wouldn't throttle them? Because that was most certainly not true.

"Not just the young female," Saetan reminded her. "You said I'd be able to meet more of your friends if I didn't fuss this weekend. I didn't--I left all the fussing to you." He sighed. "I'll get no peace from you until I do?" Of course, the question if he'd get peace from her afterwards was also highly in doubt. So rather than argue more, he simply floated the cup over and drank. There were only a few swallows in the glass--enough for him to feel immediately better, but not enough to cause him to fuss at how much she'd given. "There, witchling. Satisfied?"

Karla peered at him, nodding as a bit more color suffused his complexion. "Yes." She gave him a hug and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Thank you for taking care of yourself, Uncle Saetan. I'm very pleased with you. I can write Jaenelle again and tell you you probably aren't going through your second childhood again." She dodged his half-hearted swat and laughed. "I think that was the door," she said, skipping to answer the knock.

[Open for anyone who might have handwavily been invited, by either Karla or Saetan.]