~ The Underwater Orchid ~

[Lliae Llyhedras]

Timestamp; The Month of Ioannes in the Season of Summer, of Era II of the Celestine Mandate (Current Pattern) Era XI Post Fractum in the Age of the Darkening, the Mageocracy of Julos the Mad.

Lliae had spent most of the day walking in and around Acumin itself, and had been struck by several oddities. For one thing, the people were very reticent. Friendly enough in their own way, but when Lliae had enquired as to the whereabouts of Serion D’rinishad and had shown them the small scrap of paper he’d given her oh so very long ago… they shrugged and went on their way.
While it was probably honest ignorance, it just seemed so odd that the trail that had led her here would stop so cold dead so suddenly, and it baffled her how a people so blessed by Carmelya could be afraid of hooded strangers.
After awhile, she gave up on passing unnoticed while she garnered information, and just threw her hood back. This seemed to improve things to no end, as if shadowed faces were something to be feared in this city, though it confused Lliae. Half of the adventurers she’d met had hoods up.

And they were oddly… centralised. That is to say, they didn’t venture far out from the city of Acumin, while in other cities in the Empire, Lliae had noticed that people spread out quite a bit, as if the cities themselves enjoyed sprawling in the sun.
Rarely, unless they were heavily walled, did they actually have an edge to the city.
How strange. Nevertheless, Lliae sighed and thanked those people she chatted with for their time, and padded off down the streets, as if she were hoping to see some little clue that might lead her to the D’rinishads so she could say hello.
Preferring to save what gold she could, the small Telera eschewed booking in at the Inn, and instead wandered off some ways into the forests to find a good place to bed down in, though when she cleared the last few buildings and looked up at what was looming over her, she felt she understood what had the people so edgy.

Dar Havark was… well, she couldn’t use the word “Tower” when bigger and better words like “Bastion of Darkness” and “Monolithic Evil” were elbowing her in the back of the brain.
While her blood didn’t boil with outrage at the trees they were chopping down like any of her Lightborn Kin might have… trees not being a central fixture in the middle of the Bellenic Sea… she did feel a deep and abiding sadness for what these people must have suffered.
However, Lliae wasn’t the sort of person to leap on a cause and assault a Dark Tower all by herself.
But there were several interesting possibilities. After chatting some more with the occupants of the city, right into the red skies of sunset, she found out that an old employer of hers, Avanthar, owned Dar Havark. After working at his forge for some time, she didn’t doubt that he’d built such a place.

What interested her was the possibility that the D’rinishads might guest there from time to time, and if so, she could just set Valasse on watch and intercept them to ask about the role of her adopted family… the Kaldreses and the Jaded Claw… was in this region.
With a nod, she cautioned Valasse to spend the night on watch at Dar Havark, trusting in the owl’s eyes and facile mind to alert her of any people going in or out. It had been some time since she’d staked out a place, but she knew the basics would certainly apply here. Stay low, and don’t get caught.
And this was why she left Acumin for the night, to camp out under the stars, some distance away from Dar Havark and the city, though passing with ease out through that magical Treant-Wrought Shield disturbed her somewhat.

She set up camp, got her boots off and made a small fire. On it she toasted some bread and softened some cheese with the heat, and had herself a fine if simple meal, supplementing it with some dried meat and fruit, and fresh water.
After this, she unplaited her long dark hair to brush it out, gleaming with deep emerald, sapphire and amethyst colours like a raven’s wing, slick and now reaching down past her hips. She made a note to get it trimmed soon as she stared with dreamy dark eyes into the rippling coals of her campfire, and by the dying light of the flames as they dimmed into ruddy coals, she read the note again, folded and re-folded many times.
‘Jaded Claw,’ she snorted, then lay down in her bedroll, feeling the bliss of sleeping in only her underclothes and a light shirt, for Acumin didn’t seem dangerous enough at nighttime to warrant the discomfort of slumbering fully armed and armoured.

Her Sai were under the rolled cloak that served at her pillow though, because she wasn’t stupid and bad things could happen no matter where you were. But she would sense any animal that approached and she would hear with her Thëlyri-sharp ears the footsteps of all but the stealthiest of thieves, even in her sleep.
Besides, she told herself, anyone but a strong and practiced warrior was going to have a very nasty surprise waiting for him if he thought he could just manhandle someone as deceptively petite as Lliae. Had she known about the Vysstichi and their tendency to raid Acumin though, a lot of her questions would have been answered.
And she would have spent the coin on that nice, safe bed in the Inn instead of sleeping outside in the deceptively calm forest.
Instead, she drifted off into peaceful dreams, her long dark lashes closed in the manner of one who was truly asleep, her soft cheek cushioned by her hair and her small breasts rising and falling underneath her blanket.

[Desmodus]

[OOC: The first part of this post is a dream sequence, so no wuckers (or whatever it is you say down there), I'm not taking control of your PC or your animals!]


The coals of her fire had ceased to give off light, but were still warm when Lliae sensed in her sleep the approach of a familiar animal. Opening her eyes the Telera saw Valasse returning, her wings flapping noiselessly in the darkening air. Odd, why was she coming back so soon? Was something going on at Dar Havark?

The golden-feathered barn owl landed softly on a tree branch not far over Lliae's head and peered down at her with eyes that looked like faintly shiny saucers as they gathered and reflected the ambient moon- and star-light. Well, hullo, sister Valasse hooted wryly at her mistress, Fancy meeting you here.

Well, 'hullo', yourself, muttered Lliae, mimicking the owls smart-alecky tone. So what *are* you doing back so soon? Is there something going on at Dar Havark that simply could not wait, or did you just miss me?

Do-er plynn natha lor, responded Valasse; Reiyal natha v'dri'n ssin, il zhah.

Eh, what? Lliae's brow furrowed in puzzlement at the owl's unintelligible statement. That last bit made no sense. I thought I taught you not to talk with your beak full.

Valasse seemed to grow cross at this point. Naut ji bran! she screeched irritably, mal'ai dos orn guuan ilta!

Whatever are you on about, you little feathered bint? demanded Lliae, growing cross herself in her turn. This isn't at all funny, you know.

If Valasse was at all chastened by her mistress' rebuke, she gave no indication of it. On the contrary, her screeches grew even louder and more indignant than before. Orn dos qey'alu' doer inbau nindol elg'caress jal'yur?! il neera naukhaless'li.

Something was clearly not right here. Lliae felt her irritation start to turn to alarm, and that alarm intensified rapidly into terror when she tried to rise -and found that she could not move at all.

At that instant, Valasse's eyes suddenly took on a frighteningly predatory aspect, as well as a malevolent red glow that could not possibly have been reflected from any ambient light; as silent as death she took to wing, and hurtled down upon her helpless mistress, with sharp talons bared. Unable to stir, Lliae could only watch in horror as her erstwhile companion swooped down upon her, and tore into her thigh with her sharp claws...

With that sudden sharp pain in her leg, Lliae screamed and jolted awake. She was in her camp, sitting up, so obviously she was really able to move; nonetheless, something was still quite wrong. The pain in her leg was real; looking at it, she saw to her dismay a nasty little shaft, no longer than the length of her hand, embedded in her right thigh. The pain was real. So, it seemed, was the owl, for it was right there, in the branch where Lliae had seen it in her dream. But it was not Valasse.

Where the elf's animal companion had golden feathers, this owl's plumage was ghastly white; although about the same length, wingspan, and frame as Valasse, this owl seemed unhealthily emaciated. Its face had a distinctly ill aspect to it, and the eyes did indeed shine with an unnatural red glow that Lliae was sure was not reflected from her now-extinct campfire. The owl blinked slowly at the Telera; she could sense its triumphant smugness in her mind.

But the Telera did not really have time to ponder this strange creature. At that moment, a masculine voice cried out something that could only be something like "Got her" from nearby, in the direction from which the little bolt in Lliae's thigh must have originated. If she looked, she would just catch a glimpse of another set of evil red eyes, and perhaps a flash of white hair, as whatever it was disappeared behind the cover of a tree perhaps twelve to fifteen meters from where the sea-elf lay.

In the few moments that remained to the beset Telera to decide what to do next, two more sensations came to her attention. One was the sound of footfalls of at least two creatures, probably humanoid, approaching her rapidly from the same direction as the creature behind the tree, though somewhat more distant. The other sensation was that the pain from the bolt in her thigh was subsiding, and giving way to a warm, numb feeling that was already beginning to spread up and down her leg...

[Lliae Llyhedras]

‘Frikken’ Aeternia!’

The howl rang through the forest as she came fully awake from the bizarre dream, wherein Valasse had been chattering to her in a strange and very disturbingly familiar language, and Lliae ripped her blankets off, gritting her teeth against the pain in her leg.
She looked down, and blinked. Was that a small bolt in her leg? It didn’t look overly large, but for that matter it wasn’t exactly small either, for even her Thëlyri eyes caught it in the moonlight as a dark, shadowy thing, with a small spot of blood welling up around the seal it formed in her flesh.
But the next thing that drew her attention was what was sitting in the branches of the tree above and in front of her, where Valasse had perched in her strange dream.
It was an owl, a Snowy at first glance and, foolishly, she reached out with her mind to see what the creature was seeing, to persuade it to look around with its sharp eyes for whoever shot her.

A second later, she was retching at the mental taste… whatever it was, it wasn’t a normal animal, and a closer examination showed feathers of bone white and a skinny body that told of an animal that was either lose to starvation, or had died of it.

Thinking fast, sure now that she was under attack for Lliae heard the beat of swift footsteps and a cry of “Aslu ilta!”, the Telera opened her water bottle, dumping the whole lot onto the banked coals of her campfire and causing a great billowing cloud of warm white steam to fill the clearing in the cool night air.
Forcing her fast-numbing leg to move, she wound her long hair up with one Sai and anchored most of it into place on the top of her head, and snatched the other two into her webbed hands.
Though it shouldn’t be possible to go into a flat-out sprint from a totally prone position, Lliae nevertheless almost managed it as she plunged into headlong flight in the opposite direction from her pursuers, with their malevolent red eyes.
After several metres though, she grit her teeth and went sideways, her weak Thëlyri eyes tightly shut in the dark of the night, trusting entirely to her ears, for her sight would only distract her and get her killed.

The numbness was spreading, and even though she was striking out directly for Acumin and the safety of the town’s protective field, she was eventually forced to stop, shaking and lathered in a cold sweat, her thin clothing clinging to her clammy skin.

Calming herself, she gripped the dart and yanked it out, gritting her teeth so she wouldn’t betray her location with a cry… there would be blood let but it was better than falling unconscious from the poison.
Besides, though her Thëlyri physiology handled most blood-borne poisons very well, she couldn’t take the chance of blacking out while her kidneys tried shut down the rest of her body to filter it from her bloodstream.
She delicately sniffed the dart, and found, underneath the coppery tones of her own blood, an odd tang that she had never encountered before even in all of her Herbalisim, which made her despair of finding a quick and specific antidote.
Not that anything in her bags could help, mind… unless she could circle around and retrieve her gear. There simply hadn’t been time for armour and her knapsack, not even her boots, and her weapons had been a priority.

She cursed under her breath and hurled the dart off into the night-time gloom as far as she could, and then, limping badly now, she set off again in the direction of Acumin, soft gasps from her parted lips marking her passing through the velvet shadows.

Whoever was coming after her was good… Lliae knew for certain that they were still on her tail, and despite her initial blinding speed she had slowed down considerably, though she hoped that her warm droplets of blood would be missed in the dark.
They were right behind her, she was sure of it. They were hunting her, the creatures with red eyes.
Were they enjoying it? Letting her get within a hope of freedom before pouncing on her? Or was she giving them a good run for their money, with her unexpected resilience to their poison and her swift little feet?
The world jigged and swirled in front of her when she opened her eyes, and she shut them again swiftly, lest she give into nausea.
But she needed to lean against a tree again, her numbed legs unable to take her any further. Had she passed through Carmelya’s Shield, all unknowing?

Thin feathers of her long dark hair swayed in the cool night breeze as she hung her head, bare thighs quivering, one of them ribboned with demented red patterns of blood, and concentrated on the Vis of the living thing within her chest.
Valasse… find a Druid, someone who can understand you, tell them that I’m hunted, wounded and need help, she told her owl in an unusually strong message, concentrating all of her Thought into a tight beam and planting the impression indelibly in her friend’s mind.
She could feel her, where she was coming towards the Telera from miles-distant Dar Havark, upset and confused at all of the pain and rushing, complicated thoughts she’d been getting from Lliae, but at this she wheeled off and fled in the opposite direction on silent wings.
They were right behind her.

The chill certainty rushed through her… or was that the poison?
She swayed unsteadily, slick and moist with the sweat soaking her trembling skin, knowing that she had to keep going but unable to move legs that felt as though they were wearing lead shoes.
They were right behind her!
Her racing, panted breath slowed, and then fell into a deeper, quieter rhythm.
But she couldn’t go on, and Lliae felt her muscles begin to crumple underneath her, and dumbly registered teetering slowly towards a fall, though some part of her brain tried to keep her vertical and she staggered a few small steps.
And then stood there, the glossy black eyes of her pursuer’s prey drooping, watching what came for her, frail and vulnerable as she swooned into their clutches with a soft, despairing moan.

By that time, she felt beyond shock at what she saw.

ooc: I’ve RPed Lliae as getting at least a little ways, and because of her Thëlyri capability to deal with poison, I had it as slow-acting on her, hope that’s fine by you.
And no wuckers!

[Desmodus]

As Lliae scrambled frantically to her feet, the owl-thing overhead emitted a derisive-sounding hoot, as if to mock-cheer the Telera's efforts to escape. The creature's voice was hollow and menacing, and seemed to come from afar even though it was in a branch only a few feet away. But Lliae had no time to dwell on such impressions as she sprinted headlong out of her campsite into the Dolwood. The uneven forest floor seemed to lurch towards her as she fled the onrushing footfalls, and the ancient trees swayed drunkenly around her as she struggled to retain her balance and footing.

Maybe all this was not real, either. Maybe Lliae was still dreaming, having a nightmare that she was trying to cross the deck of an impossibly large ship, staggering amongst its countless masts as it pitched and rolled its way over a storm-crumpled sea. But that did not explain the bolt in her leg. No, this was real, her life was in danger, and she would not wake up in her bed when calamity struck.

The bolt. In spite of her terror, and in spite of the danger and urgency, she made herself stop and extract the missile that still stuck in her leg, pinning her clothes uncomfortably against her flesh. The extraction was less painful than it would have been normally, as a strange numbness had suffused up and down most of Lliae's leg. In addition to the local numbness, the Telera felt a slightly different sensation suffusing through all her body, and even her brain. She found herself starting to grow sluggish and clumsy, as if she were drunk. Her experience with drugs, poisons, and herbs told her that it was unusual for the same toxin to have both effects. In an effort to figure out what she had been hit with, Lliae put the bloody bolt to her keen nose, and smelt an odd array of scents as unnatural and complex as the air in an alchemist's shop. Perhaps whoever hunted her had applied more than one type of agent to their arrowheads.

Lliae heard their voices behind her now. Her change in direction had temporarily confounded the hunters, causing them to overrun the sea-elf's trail. For a moment she could have hoped that they might stay confused long enough for her to make her way back to Acumin and its protective barrier somewhere in front of her; however, that hope was quickly dashed by the sardonic cry of that damned, ghastly owl. As distant as it sounded, Lliae knew, from her ability to feel its hateful glee in her own mind, that it must be close, and that it sensed her proximity even as she sensed its.

The faint, more humanoid voices farther behind her changed tone as they spoke in their strange dialect, though Lliae could not distinguish what they said; one voice, higher-pitched yet more powerful and commanding than the others, shouted out almost immediately in response to the strange owl's cry, and the others began once more to close distance with the struggling Telera.

It took Lliae a moment or two longer than usual for her to focus on the strange talisman in her chest, to draw upon its power, and to send her urgent message out to Valasse, several miles away near Dar Havark. By the time she started to move again, it was apparent that the elf would not make the barrier before her pursuers were upon her; wounded and drugged, perhaps even poisoned, she could not run with her wonted speed. By the time she could make out a lightening in the trees ahead that might have been the outer edge of the cleared lands around Acumin, her pursuer's speech had become intelligible, even if their language was not.

"L' il-sadei zhah dofithin ulanen Sylnannen!"* The high, commanding voice exclaimed. "Ka il ul'plyren ol, a Haya Usstan zhal yutsu maglust ulu Herozzal maristo!"+ The voice took on a harsh threatening tone, as it spoke these last words. The threat was a moot point. By the time Lliae was within a hundred paces of the forest's edge, her strength was spent. Loss of blood, exhaustion both physical and psychic, and the effects of the alien substances in her body all conspired to rob her of her strength, her ability to move or even stand. She felt, or rather didn't feel, her legs collapse beneath her as the horizon tilted insanely upwards before her, and grass and dirt rushed towards her face.

Though exhausted, disoriented, and hardly able to stir from her prone position, Lliae was still conscious and more or less in possession of her wits when her pursuers arrived. A few blades of grass crunched softly right next to the fallen sea-elf, and a moment later, a pair of booted feet came into her field of view. A lowered spearhead also appeared, and began to move towards her shoulder, only to be halted by the commanding voice Lliae had heard earlier, now unquestionably recognizable as female: "Naut xuil l' mon'tu, wael!"** The spearhead froze, then swooped up quickly out of sight; in its place, the butt of a spear, presumably the same one, appeared and jabbed quickly at Lliae's shoulder, pushing her body up onto its side so that she could look down upon her hunters and they, in their turn, could look down upon their quarry.

As she rolled weakly onto her back, Lliae saw two black-skinned figures standing over her. There could be little question in her mind as to what they were: vysstichi, a male holding the spear, and a female holding some sort of bola. While the male shifted the trained his spear-point upon the base of Lliae's throat, the female simply stood and smiled cryptically at her. Lliae saw a flurry of motion out of the corner of her eye, followed by the appearance of the ghastly owl, which perched itself upon the female's shoulder. Owl and vysstichi now gazed down upon the helpless elf with the same malign gleam in both pairs of glowing red eyes, and the emaciated bird's delight at the prospect of harm and humiliation pressed in upon her sensitive mind.

When the authoritative female spoke again, it was to Lliae, in Charismean: "Hi, there!" she said in a sardonically mock-friendly voice, "My name is Missie. What's your name?" The male with the spear chuckled at this, as did another male voice coming from somewhere outside Lliae's field of vision. However, even while the dark elves indulged in this bit of apparent mirth, Lliae heard the unmistakable mechanical rattle and creak of a crossbow being cocked.


*The vixen is fleeing towards Sylannen!
+If she reaches it, then by Haya I shall return to Herozzal alone tonight.
**Not with the point, fool

[Lliae Llyhedras]

She lay upon the ground, panting no more, though her heart was thumping treacherously fast with adrenaline and tension… Lliae herself didn’t feel fear. Her personality had been purged of it long ago, and she was pure action and reaction.
Well… she wasn’t getting much of the action bit lately, what with lying helplessly on the path.
Face turned slightly to the side, her hair shadowing her features, the small Telera almost missed what was coming up the path for her in the darkness of the night and through the veil of her hair… ebon-skinned elves, whose shape and manner were burnt into the mind of every other elf in the world.
Vysstichi!
It was, perhaps, in the best interests of Lliae’s continued good health that she was paralysed right now, for she would have almost certainly taken a hefty swing at them, blades-out.

While she didn’t loathe the Vysstichi as much as her Lightborn cousins she still detested them… she understood, for example, that there were Dark Elves out there who had good hearts and pure souls, despite their horrendous upbringing.
But all others were fair game.
And Lliae certainly wasn’t stupid enough to go around cuddling random Vysstichi on good faith. The idea that these were nicey ones who had been frightened by her and were acting in self-defence didn’t trot itself across her brain, though a few grim ideas of what might be her fate certainly did.
No… she’d been friendly enough with the D’rinishads, but that had only been because she’d not known the full extent of the horrific acts visited upon the Thëlyri in the Bellenic Sea in the Elvish wars by the Vysstichi and their Undead armies.
And she hadn’t seen any reasons as to why she shouldn’t find a certain one of them to say hello and to ask a few polite questions.

Well… she could count a few good reasons right now.

Lliae breathed out a deep sigh as she saw the spear move into the line of her vision. It seemed that they were going to execute her, perhaps with a swift stab to the throat, though surely she must have been a poor hunt for them.
And then deep bewilderment as the spear-holder was shouted at, and then reversed their weapon, using the butt to prod her over and onto her back, though she must have looked a bit of a fright, with grass stains, leaves and muddy sweat streaked up and down her body from her fall.
They were standing over her, graceful and lean, their dark faces framed with gleaming white hair and, where the moonlight caught them, showing a chiselled, angular beauty, fine and cruel.
Their eyes were vicious; malignant blood red.
In sharp contrast, Lliae’s own slanted, glistening eyes blinked, and then trained themselves onto the female who had spoken, though only very close observation would have noted their movement.

That owl was really beginning to get on her nerves, but she wasn’t surprised that something so foul accompanied such as the Vysstichi, and she felt a moment of brief relief that she’d sent Valasse arrowing through the night and into safety.
She would be well hidden from these beasts and their familiars.
At the woman… “Missie’s” question, the Telera’s fingers twitched where they’d managed to keep ahold of one of her Sai, and she entertained the thought of lying to them for just an instant, to protect her identity.
But why bother? Her name had little import in the Empire, and she very much doubted that the Vysstichi had any records of an Llyhedran born and raised in the Bellenic Sea.
And it wasn’t as if anyone would think to look her up and to demand a ransom from Pirvan or Elle… besides, she was technically their property. Expendable and easily cast aside. She wouldn’t have them jeopardise their family’s safety by consorting with the Vysstichi Elves.

‘Lliae,’ she managed to breathe softly in answer, prompted by the cocking of the crossbow.
A sudden, numbing feeling of despair gripped her, twisted at her heart, as something that had been bothering her clicked in her brain. Why had they bothered to use the butt of the spear if they were going to kill her? Why worry about harming her, especially since a shoulder wasn’t a lethal place to prod?

They weren’t going to kill her.

[Desmodus]

The female who had called herself "Missie" looked the prone elf up and down with keen red eyes. When those eyes caught the movement of Lliae's fingers as they attempted to get a good grip on her Sai, they narrowed somewhat angrily. "Plynn ilt' sarolen, nin!" she barked. "Ragarrl ilta!"[1] The owl on the female's shoulder flexed its wings and screeched irritably, as if to echo its mistress' sentiments. Lliae felt a slightly wrenching feeling as the vysstichi drove down with one booted foot upon the blade of the Sai, pinning it flat against the ground, while another foot slammed into the delicate green hand that was holding it, the toe catching her hand right in the small depression between her wristbone and the base of her thumb. This kicked the hand forcibly loose from the handle, and sent a searing pain down through Lliae's thumb and first two fingers and up one side of her forearm.

Then the spear point lifted up out of her field of vision, and an instant later, strong hands grabbed her and turned her over roughly so that she was face down in the grass. Though her thin clothes concealed little, Lliae was nonethless patted down thoroughly -perhaps more thoroughly than was necessary- by the male's roving hands, his calloused black fingers probing practically every inch of her body, some inches more than others.

"Ilt' lauske!" the female shouted, exasperation obvious in her voice, "Dos yllssigul ilta phor lu' harl, lueth dos gotfrer ilt' lauske!"[2]

"Taudl, jabbress", the male searching Lliae responded sheepishly, and the Telera felt those same fingers digging into her luxuriant hair, finding and removing the Sai that was there. When at last that awful groping was finished, the prisoner felt her hands pulled behind her back and bound tightly by some sort of rope, and her feet as well.

As she lay on the ground with her forhead against the grass of the Dolwood floor, Lliae heard the female mutter something quietly now, responded to by a harrowing cry from the owl; the Telera felt, rather than heard the owl take to wing and fly off into the forest. She could sense that the owl was off to find "others" friendly to it, and give them some sort of message, but she could not tell what.

"Missie" now came up close to Lliae, resting one knee upon her back while she examined her prisoner's hands. Long fingernails scraped across the webbing between the Telera's fingers: "cressen ivress," the female vysstichi said thoughtfully, "Z'klaen tlu qu'mados darthirii"[3]

"You are lucky this darkening, Lliae," she said, switching back to common to speak to her captive; "One does not often see Thelyri in Herozzal. You will fetch a good price on the market alive and undamaged." "Solenkri'sh lueth venorsh ilta"[4] she commanded to her fellows as she rose again. Once more, Lliae was rolled onto her back with the butt of a spear, and this time the male gagged her tightly, seeming to want to put off blindfolding her, to leer gloatingly into her eyes as long as possible. Finally, with something like a sigh, he grabbed a strip of cloth in order to blindfold the elf, when an excited male voice came from behind him. "Ilt cahallin!" the voice exclaimed, "muth ilt cahallin!"[5] The male who was about to blindfold Lliae forgot about her momentarily, and turned to face the newcomer.

A third male vysstichi, one Lliae had not yet seen, had just caught up to the rest carrying something; it was her gear. While Lliae watched, the female and two of the males rummaged through it to get at her food, which they immediately began to eat greedily. The male with the crossbow, who had remained out of Lliae's field of vision almost the entire time, waited where he was for the moment; after the other three had gulped down several large mouthfuls of Lliae's food, the male who had retrieved her stuff walked over to this other to give him his share as well.

By the time they had finished helping themselves to the Telera's provisions, Lliae's keen ears detected the rapidly approaching footfalls of several large creatures, like horses, only with very different gaits. Four of these creatures soon came into view, with two vysstichi -one male, one female- each riding on one while holding the reins of another that ran along side. They were odd mounts such as the elf had never seen, nor perhaps even heard of. They were almost as large as horses, but looked more like a cross between an enormous monitor lizard and an equally enormous goat. She could feel their minds: they were nearly as intelligent as horses, but with a reptilian coldness. At least there was no malice there. They were simply brutes, albeit very strange ones. As they came, so, too, returned the owl, which perched in a tree branch some ten feet above Lliae's head and hooted exultantly.

"Missie" barked commands now to the entire party as she mounted one of the two free creatures, and two of the males, the one with the spear and the one with her gear, picked up the captive and carried her over to one of the mounts. Lliae was apparently to ride with the as-yet unfamiliar second female. The captive was tightly lashed face-down onto the broad muscular hindquarters of the beast, so that although she was not blindfolded, it would have been difficult, though perhaps not impossible, for the prisoner to hold her head up high enough to see where she was going.

The male with the crossbow finally appeared into view to mount and take the reins of the last beast. He was by far the smallest and frailest-looking dark elf of the party, but he carried himself with assurance and moved with a considerable athletic grace. The male with the spear got on the same animal behind him. The male who was still carrying the remnants of Lliae's rifled-throuh equipment got on with the other male rider.

"Missie", as the leader, was the only one of the group who got an animal to herself. She mounted, turned her monitor-goat-horse-thing about to make sure everybody was together and ready. Then she looked up at her owl nearby and called out something softly to it. With an eerie answering hoot it took to wing and flew off. Satisfied that they were finally ready, "Missie" turned her creature about and urged it forward, and the entire party, four beasts, six vysstichi, and one sea-elf captive in all, began to lope through the darkness-filled Dolwood. They moved at something of a moderate canter; instead of being bounced up and down by the gait, as she would be on horseback, Lliae found her body yawed about from side to side as the weird mounts scuttled forward on their splayed-out reptilian legs. The party, from what she could tell, was headed southwards, then rounding southeastwards around and away from Acumin.

[1] Take her weapons now! Search her!
[2] Her hair! You fondle her up and down and you forget her hair!
[3] Webbed fingers. She must be sea-elf.
[4] Blindfold and gag her.
[5] Her food! [i] found her food!

[Lliae Llyhedras]

Lliae grit her teeth quietly.

The kick to her hand had hurt, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been beaten up before… training against Master Mohammed hadn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows either, but it was how you learnt best.
And just how did you learn?
By never making the same stupid mistake again, she thought blearily, but realised at the same time that her ever getting the chance to make the mistake of sleeping outside while Vysstichi were a-prowling was very slim indeed.
Then again, she’d never been one to sugar coat things.
She blinked, surprised… though not because they were searching her. The strength of the male astonished her, genuinely gave her pause. But then again, she’d not been touched by any man, elf or no, in anything other than direct combat for a long time, and it felt… strange to have one turn her over and examine her intimately.

Oddly enough, it didn’t disturb her, though she did feel slightly disgusted with herself for not feeling disgusted.

To feel as if you were violated, you needed to have a certain regard for your own body, and over the many Eras without physical contact, she’d sort of become numb to what it was like… as if being a blushing maiden had been left far behind her with her broken heart.
It was hard to explain, even to herself.
Maybe it was the drug, giving her a sense of detachment. The roughness of the male’s firm hands as they stroked and prodded hurt the more tender patches of her fine skin a little bit, but what didn’t these days?
But his reprimand for doing something wrong wasn’t long in coming from the female.
She very nearly chuckled when she realised that he’d forgotten to search her hair, so preoccupied had he been with copping a feel of her body underneath that thin shift… as if she could have hidden anything large enough to be dangerous under a sweat and mist soaked short, sensible shift and underwear.

And then she was tied up, her hair loose now the third Sai was gone, falling in long drifts around her face and getting clots of dirt and leaf-mould tangled up in it… though that was probably a good thing.
If she looked like the Thing of the Moorland Marshes it would probably significantly lessen her chances of getting raped, seeing as most men would run screaming from a creature with a hairdo that looked like it had been thrown together by a dung beetle that had lost interest in it’s job and really let itself go.
She felt that horrible owl go, sensed it was fetching help.
In the next instant, she was gritting her teeth to stop herself from yelping as Missie grazed her damn fingernails over her sensitive webbing.
As a comparison, she would have had the same reaction if she’d decided on her breasts to scratch at… several men had gotten a clout athwart the earhole when trying to kiss her hand, mainly because to a Thëlyri putting one’s mouth on the webbing was tantamount to putting it on some of the more taboo parts of the body.

It was the shock-a-minute hour in Acumin apparently, because even Lliae couldn’t help but blink at the mention of Herozzal.
Where she was going to be sold.
Well, bugger. It just wasn’t her night at all. She wondered what sort of oddball would want to purchase something like Lliae… she felt she was too different to be considered pretty, for the tastes of the surface races, though she could have understood it if she were some milk-skinned blonde with breasts that could serve as the udders of a herd of cows.
The best you could say for Lliae was that she was well-formed, physically fit, with nice curves in the correct places and good skin… she didn’t even want to get started on her breasts. Being around humans could really give you an inferiority complex if you were bothered by that sort of thing.

‘Just “Often seeing a Thëlyri” would be pretty remarkable,’ murmured Lliae, and was rolled over onto her back and gagged, although whether to shut her oversmart mouth up or because it was ordered she couldn’t tell.

The blindfold was delayed in the course of the leering, which didn’t disturb her much. If he wanted to, he could ogle her all he wanted, though he seemed to have a penchant for staring into her eyes, though what he found in the abyssal darkness, and if it pleased him, was anyone’s guess.
And then forgotten as another male turned up with her gear, chattering excitedly in their oddly harsh language.
All interest in Lliae was abandoned in leiu of her food stores… she lay where she was on her back in frank astonishment as they devoured the remains of the cheese, the iron rations, the sweet dried fruit and the bread in short order.
Were they starving or something? She’d never seen elves make such pigs of themselves before, although Lliae availing herself to a meal when she was really hungry was a sight to see, she admitted.
And hunger was the best sauce, though she couldn’t see how they were tasting the food they were inhaling. Surely the food up here wasn’t that much of a delicacy?

Or perhaps there just wasn’t much to eat in the dark caves beneath the earth.

Such speculations, borne of an overactive mind in an unresponsive, numbed body, were soon moot… it appeared as if she was going to find out for herself, since transport arrived in the form of the massive lizard-beasts.
Hmm. Dull, bestial intelligence, comparable to that of a horse although, being reptilian, they lacked the state of barely-controlled equine insanity that Lliae invariably encountered with horses who, noble though they could be, were sometimes more trouble than they were worth.
Thank the gods she wasn’t being jounced around too badly… when she was tied over the back of one of the lizard-mounts, she’d anticipated a ride that would pound her kidneys out through her pointed ears.
Instead, it was sort of lulling, with a swaying movement that was something like riding a camel, and in the end, Lliae gave up trying to look at anything, and instead closed her eyes so they wouldn’t get grit in them, preferring to trust to her ears.

Fatalistic in certain areas, she relaxed and let the cool night air fan through her long hair, dry the sweat on her body, and… listened, as only her people knew how.

[Desmodus]

Lliae was naive if she thought being unattractive, whether temporarily or permanently, would deter sexual aggression. Much male aggression was just that, the urge to dominate a woman, to show how strong they were by devastating her body, by breaking her spirit and forcing her to recognize how she had been reduced to something worth little more than dirt. And that urge was especially strong in male vysstichi, who went through life dominated by the females of their species, whose drive towards aggression and domination were rarely granted the outlet of a woman of another species. In short, the old saw that rape was about power, not sex, was doubly true among dark elves.

No, it was not a scary hairdo with twigs and dirt in it, or small breasts that was sparing the Telera from greater damage and degredation; rather it was the vysstichi's greed, a sense of more urgently pressing matters, and most importantly the ironclad dictates of the female called "Missie", that prevented Lliae from being violated. The captive was to be brought to Herozzal, alive and unspoiled.

The vysstichi party seemed to become more focused on what they were doing as they rode through the forest on their enormous reptilian mounts. Once or twice the male who had searched Lliae earlier nudged his companion driving his mount and muttered something to him, whereupon both males leered knowingly, or perhaps more accurately thinking-they-knowingly, at the prisoner. Otherwise, the dark elves paid little attention to their hostage. The bizarre mounts moved with a quickness, quietness, and smoothness of motion that one might not have expected from their graceless-looking, almost waddling gait.

Straining her keen ears to bring in audial cues about what was going on around her did not help Lliae as much as she would have liked. Apart from the muted sounds of the party itself, there was little remarkable for her to hear. Once or twice she thought she could hear an owl hooting off in the distance. Was it Valasse? Was it "Missie's" fiend? Or perhaps just a random passing owl? She could not tell. But something in her mind did tell her that her own avian ally had reached Acumin, and was now in the process of trying to find and rouse someone there capable of communicating with her.

The vysstichi seemed to swerve aside a bit from their path to ascend a rocky outcropping. When they reached the top, the drivers bade their mounts lie down flat on the ground, where they then waited concealed among the brush and squat trees that had somehow managed to struggle their way through the stones there. Missie dismounted and gestured for the others to stay and be silent. Stepping towards the edge of the rock, she seemed to listen for something. At first, nothing came even to Lliae's ears except the typical sounds of the Dolwood at night. Then she heard it, the distant, faint, but nonetheless distinct cry of Missie's owl. The female leader nodded as if she were agreeing with the bush directly in front of her, then returned to the group.

"L' i'dol ulu l' har'ol zhah naut kyorlen, she announced. "U'hwoe orn tiu bauth ulu kyorl ka udos ph' flohlu'en. Nin udos z'klaen alu. Udos orn alu werneth ulu l' falanni, t'yin flohlu ol wun."*

The leader glared about at the others, as if daring them to so much as hesitate in executing her orders. As soon as they started to move, coaxing their mounts to rise up slowly to their feet, "Missie" mounted her beast and turned it down the south side of the outcropping. The group followed, and after perhaps a quarter of a candlemark arrived at the banks of a stream. The stream was quite shallow, no more than a foot or two deep in any place nearby, and the water was clear and sweet-smelling. Another round of coaxing was needed to get the enormous reptiles to step into the water; Lliae could sense considerable resistance in their minds. Nonetheless, step in they did at the pitiless urgings of their riders, and soon the four beasts were wading, single-file, down the stream.

After only a few minutes more, the party came to another outcropping, into which the stream simply seemed to disappeared. The beasts apparently sensed where they were going, and Lliae for the first time could feel something like excitement in the creatures; they were coming home. The entrance to the cave was well hidden to all but the keenest and well-trained of eyes. One moment the vysstichi seemed to be following the stream straight into a wall of rock, the next they were inside a cool grotto, its mouth well-camouflaged by terrain and vegetation.

The group paused here to rest again for a moment. The stream continued underground here, and so the dark elves were able to dismount, water their beasts, and fill their own water skins in the safety of the cave. It was finally, at this point, that Lliae's captors seemed finally to remember her. The female with whom she had been riding, and whom the Telera had not yet heard speak (except to give commands to her mount), approached the prisoner with a freshly-filled waterskin. Before she offered Lliae a drink or even undid her gag, however, she grinned at the sea-elf and gestured back towards the mouth of the grotto through which they had just come.

"Take a good look, sea-elf," she said, her voice syrupy and ingratiating as she swept her hand somewhat theatrically towards the darkening Dolwood landscape framed by dark rock. "That is your last view of the surface world, possibly for-ever. From here on out, your world will be one of shadows and rocks. Would you like some water, slave?" She reached out and rather roughly removed Lliae's gag. Before she really had a chance to say anything, the mouth of the waterskin was shoved into her face, and cool water was already squirting out towards her somewhat dirty face.


*The way to the cave is not watched. U'hwoe will fly about to see if we are followed. Now we must go. We will go south to the stream, then follow it in.

[Lliae Llyhedras]

Though Lliae had never actually needed to strain her hypersensitive ears for anything, she was more than aware of the uselessness of trying to get any pertinent information about where she was going, but she still bent her ears to what they were good at, because she couldn’t exactly stop.
You might as well try to turn your nose off by giving it a stern look, which only succeeded in making you cross-eyed. Gods only knew what you’d do to your eyes if you tried the same technique on your ears.
Lliae nevertheless was perfectly capable of garnering quite a bit of information about her surroundings through passive listening… certainly far more information than her weak, inferior eyes could ever hope to give her.
Of course, for it to be actually useful one needed to be listening to something interesting or even vaguely pertinent to the situation.
There were the whispers of wind through the trees, the thudding of hearts, the rush of breath in lungs and blood through veins and arteries, the creak of ligaments, the bending of wood, rustle of leaf and grass… which all came to her in her ride as she lay slumped limply over the back of the giant lizard… gecko… thing.

In short, nothing helpful at all, though the ripples and spikes of sound gave her something to concentrate on other than her future, which was racing towards her like the landscape rushed up to fondly greet a person who’d stepped off a cliff.

The one time she actually opened her glistening black eyes, she caught sight of the two males leering at her, and heaved a sigh that jolted when it was halfway out of her lungs as the reptiles started to ascend that cliff.
It was a depressingly familiar look… one that Archmystic had given her in Mystique as he was contemplating her rape… she’d escaped with her virtue intact through the simple expedient of clobbering him with a handy fryingpan, and the same one that men across the Empire had gloated down at her with.
Too many men seemed to forget that close enough for sex was plenty close enough to kill, and Lliae was one of those small, nasty women who came up with unpleasantly inventive ways of making cruel people wish that she’d never been born, and that fryingpans had never been invented.
Well, they’d already gotten past the “Now I have you My Pretty!” stage and the next bit would be the good old “I like a girl with spirit!” or possibly the tried and tested “This one’s got a lot of fire!” though Lliae appreciated that villainous men these days tended to deviate from the classics.

Probably too much to hope that they’d get close enough for her to take advantage right back at them, though.
Missie didn’t seem to be the sort of person who took insubordination and the disobedience of her orders with a shrug and a grin, though she’d probably laugh herself sick as they tried to pull the red-hot pokers out.
As they waited quietly, Lliae left her eyes open, and stared with quiet fascination at the Vysstichi around her… particularly Missie’s communication with her own owl. Though Lliae had been constantly listening to animals, communicating with animals and, in extreme circumstances, had argued existential philosophy with animals for the past decade and a bit, she’d never used anything beyond mental chatter to do so.
The echoes of the screech that reached her ears baffled Lliae… in her experience owls tended to be very silent and stealthy unless they were upset about something. Usually Valasse would rattle her beak with rage when their debates got really heated, and then she’d try to stuff a dead mouse into Lliae’s ear when she next slept as a means of revenge.

Thankfully, Valasse was putting that to full use right now. She was sitting, well hidden, and carefully doing nothing at all.
This was one of the hardest things for friends to do in a situation like this, since running (or in this case, flapping) about and making lots of noise in an attempt to attract attention of heroes was a great way to attract the attention of nasty people who just might be looking for any key eyewitnesses.
Lliae knew for a fact that her own human family thought she was just ever so slightly unhinged because of the way she frequently broke out into flaming rows with herself, and then followed it up by shameless gloating at herself because she’d won the argument.
She wondered just how long Missie had been talking to that… thing, or other Vysstichi had defiled the fauna so. The Telera was jarred out of the deep introspection as they went into that cave, and through the small streamlet, sensing keenly the unwillingness of the mounts to touch the water, and then, on the tail of that, their excitement of heading back into the throat of the earth.

And then she was addressed by the other female, who somewhat grandiosely bade Lliae to look back at the outside world, then undid the gag and gave her some water to drink… the small Telera was so busy drinking as much as she could that she nearly missed the irony of the dark elf’s words.
When she was done, Lliae rubbed the water on her face around a bit on her shoulder, wetting and wiping off the worst of the dirt there, then, unable to help herself, grinned widely.
A slave, eh? she chuckled, then wondered that if you were declared a slave twice, did it cancel out and was she therefore free in spirit if not from physical shackles?
Obediently, she blinked at the moon and starlit world, framed by the jagged darkness of the cave’s yawning maw, and sighed a little bit.
‘That’s as much my world as it is yours,’ she said wistfully, ‘though I must admit I’ll miss the stars. They’re beautiful if you float on your back in still water. It’s like a mirror for the sky.’

Lliae seemed to shake herself out of it, and looked slightly disgusted at herself. She’d never been one for sentimental poetry, but the vision of a homeland hidden beneath the jade veil of the sea, twice lost now, had been recalled to her vividly.
She sighed again, then turned her face away from the sky and rested her cheek against the cold, scaly hide of the reptile, closing her eyes again.
The idea of being a slave wasn’t too bad, though. You got regular if not the best meals, kicks and sometimes beatings for disobedience, though Lliae wasn’t fooling herself by thinking she was going to be a mere sweeper of floors.
No, she was destined to be the concubine of some rich male, or a Lord perhaps, or even a Lady if her tastes ran in that direction. And even here, Lliae had experience, because one didn’t get kidnapped into a Harem without learning a thing or two.
What a terrible fate! To be forced to wear those impractical metal bras again.

It didn’t bear thinking about. Maybe she’d get lucky and would be allowed to run around naked.

ooc: PC History Factoid; Impractical metal bras and Harems to be found in the Crossfire Part 2 thread, in Arakmat. And yes, Lliae's a persistent thinker of Black Sarcasm because of her IC experiences because of such events

[Desmodus]

Lliae's surprise at hearing U'hwoe's spooky call carrying some distance through the Dolwood demonstrated that, while she knew a good deal about the behavior of telepathic owls, she still had a lot to learn about cheesy theatrical devices. The second female vysstichi, the one with whom the Telera was riding, clearly had a better understanding of such things, judging by her little dramatic speech. This female frowned somewhat at Lliae's response, and was clearly contemplating the standard response: a sharp blow across her prisoner's all-too-pretty face accompanied by a reprimand for speaking out of turn (and it was never the captive's turn to speak, unless asked a direct question, and sometimes not even then), when the ghastly, tainted owl U'hwoe entered the grotto. It, too, had a fine sense of drama, for it turned around to face the forest framed by the cold, hard stone of the cave's mouth, and gave one more blood-curdling hoot, which echoed against the rock walls and shot out, suitably amplified, into the otherwise quiet Dolwood.

It was unclear whether it was the owl itself or the narrator who was unable to resist such a Grand Guignol gesture; nonetheless, for all its lack of clear in-character motivation, that cry was quite effective in evoking the desired effect of creating an ominous mood. In fact, it was so effective that the narrator's tone changed at this point from one of light-heartedly ironic metaliterary quips to one more portentious and earnest, and Lliae found her world once more described in a diction peppered with dark shadows, nasty, glistening pointy objects, and wickedly gleaming red eyes.

While they waited in the grotto, the vysstichi, at "Missie's" orders, took out what little remained of Lliae's provisions and offered them to the two members of their band who had not yet partaken of it. By the time they were done gorging themselves, there was only a handful or two of rations left, which the second female -who, as far as Lliae could make out with her ever-keen hearing was named "Jhuur" or something like that- carried over and held in front of the Telera. "Would you like something to eat, slave?" she said in Charismean, waving the rations just a few inches in front of Lliae's face.

"I'll give her something to eat!" chimed in a male voice, belonging, as it turned out, to the one who had searched her earlier. "I've got a whole feast for her right here!" To clarify what he meant, the male approached Lliae with a lascivious grin on his face, and began to unfasten his belt.

Apparently, this was not to Jhuur's taste, for she put Lliae's rations quickly away and stopped the male warrior in the most effective way imaginable: by firmly grasping his crotch. Zhah nindol vel'bol dos ssinssrinil ulu zirn udossta rothe ghil?" she purred in a low, all-too-sweet tone. "Dos ph' mzilst valyrin ulu dosst plyussqen . Whol nindol zhah ke reiyal natha pracenda" ."1

She lightened her grip and began to rub his groin suggestively.

"Drill ele naut gultah Jhuur natha tyav ust , Takach ? Usstan ssinssrin dosst ...' do'ra' ji mzilt ".2 She pouted, letting her voice lower even further until it was almost a moan.

The male turned his lustful gaze towards Jhuur and smiled. "Naut ulu eszak, ussta ssinjin; gaer zhah z'lonzic d' nindel whol mzil j'nesstren."3


"But I want it all to myself," the female said, still in her petulant tone; "in fact, I think I'll have it to go!" Jhuur's voice turned suddenly harsh, and her grip tightened painfully on Takach's privates, causing the smirk on his face to transform into a grimace of agony. That expression was again quickly replaced by a look of terror, as Jhuur produced a sharp knife with her free hand, gesturing with it in such a way that her meaning became clear even to the un-subtle male.

With what must have been an heroic effort, Takach pulled himself free of the female's grip and backed away quickly, stumbling and falling quite un-heroically upon his rump, provoking a nasty laugh from Jhuur, who stepped closer to the now-prone male still brandishing her knife. This was cut abruptly short by a harsh reprimand from 'Missy', who still stood close to the mouth of the cave.

"Z'lonzic!" she hissed. "Yol dos ph' dro z'lonzic whol folt wael moran, ol zhah clear draeval whol udossa ulu alu . Vedir phor!4 And with that curt command, the vysstichi raiding party stirred once more to action, some of them glaring resentfully at Takach, whom they clearly blamed for the premature end to their period of rest. Jhuur was the last to move towards her mount, for she continued to stand with her knife raised as she now fixed her glare upon the other female; she seemed to be contemplating a new target for her small blade. From behind Lliae came another crossbow-cocking, presumably from the wiry male who once again managed to be just out of Lliae's field of vision. Jhuur whirled about in response to the sound, apparently ready to send her knife hurtling towards its source, but quickly thought better of it. Fuming, she stuck her knife back in its scabbard, and huffed back to her giant reptile mount.

The huge monitors rose again to their feet, and began almost without urging from their riders to sidle down the tunnel that now opened up in the back of the grotto. The mouth of the cave receded slowly, and within a hundred paces or so had vanished from view behind the downward-sloping floor behind them. It was dark, and practically the only thing Lliae could see was the red glow of eyes, the vysstichis' the reptiles' -and the owl's. This was not just the darkness of an overcast night with a new moon, it was complete, unrelieved darkness, such as the Telera might have experienced were she to swim deep, hundreds of fathoms beneath the ocean's surface.

The creek continued down as well, trickling furtively into the depths of uncharted, twisting tunnels. Lliae soon found herself disoriented by the strange sensations -or lack thereof. For candlemarks the party continued this way, silently, for even whispered speech might echo well down the tunnels to alert possible enemies ahead. The only hint as to what was in their environment was the slurping of the dark, styg