Getting the Gang back together I
Leafdancer looked upon the slope of the Frostfang with something akin to disbelieve. Her eyes and all other senses told her it was just a snow-covered slope of no particular significance, yet the knowledge her masters had gifted her repeated that this was the correct point to dig.
With a shrug she began calling for the
echoes of primal earth in small groups with each call, ordering them to start digging through ice and stone, for certainly a few millenia of erosion would not stop the Void from sensing its servant's position.
Indeed it was a matter of hours before the elementals had reached a natural cave system and she dismissed them. She considered going down there, but what was trapped there would be hungry, and she did not fancy the idea of trying to fight it there, under the earth and cut off from her sky. So she called out into the forest below and waited some time longer, until the first animals came, a large Shadowcat and its kittens and went into the cave before her.
Steadying herself with a deep breath before descending into the earth after them, she walked through the tunnels until she finally found the Rune-marked entrance. The magic had long since failed, but the prisoner had been starved and asleep, so it had mattered little. She send the cats ahead and waited.
For several minutes there was no sound at all, but then she hadn't expected any kind of struggle, and finally she heard a loud tearing and chewing that told her her gift was being appreciated.
As she followed the sound she saw Alaric feasting on the dead cats, all deceased without a sound or a sign of struggle and tried to judge what sanity was left in the creature before her, after all this time.
He certainly still looked as he ever had, emaciated and pale like a man that had actually spend weeks in this cave, rather than an immortal creature sleeping for millennia. His eyes were still as strange as they used to be, one small, deep-sunken into his lined face and in the that blue that was so common among the servants of Winter, but the other larger, incongruously so for his face and burning in a far brighter blue that almost seemed to have his own light.
The rest of him looked normal for the most part, his clothes long since fallen to dust save for a chainshirt and some jewelry, his every rib visible, his arms thin twigs with little muscle or meat beneath skin. The only exception to this picture of a starving mortal were his skeletal claws, even now digging flesh from the cat and pushing it into his mouth.
As he saw her, she noticed recognition in his eyes, as he interrupted his meal and stood up to greet her with a bow.
"I feel it has been too long since we met, my lady, though I'm afraid I couldn't tell how long in truth?" he finished the sentence with a questioning rise in his dry voice.
Sane then, or as close as he usually was to it. Good, that made her work here easier.
As she explained to him that over eight millennia had past, that the Builder whose apprentices had caged him here was long fallen to dust, and what else she knew of the world behind the Builder's accursed creation, they walked towards the fresh air outside and he busied himself cleaning off and changing his shape into something that could pass for a man, though the pale grey eyes would still be discomforting for most caught in their gaze.
"So is it time yet to go south, ahead of the great hosts as we did before, weeding out those among the mortals that could pose a threat?" he finally asked.
"Not yet, it is still autumn, not Winter. It is my time, but not that of our masters and each move of theirs allows another from their foes. So we will gather those who, like you or me, can work outside of the sheltering Night, to prepare the world for its coming."
"So they still live, or I guess being less than truly dead would be enough for our master's needs?"
"They live, though I'm afraid not nearly as conveniently located as you were. Amaura of the Iron Death was last perceived in Broken Heaven by our masters, but she has since then entered a portal to Nirvana and not been seen by servants of the Void. I assume that she will work there as mercenary, she has a need for money for her contraptions and workshops and a hunger for blood that is less literal and less easily quelled than yours for flesh. I will make my way there and bring her the news of the coming work.
Sorin has somehow managed to regain his place as executioner for the Elder Fey, on the edges of their world. I have no idea how he managed to hide his work for my Court, but it seems he did. This is where you will go, for many grudges stand between my Mother and the Elders, enough that they will taste our bond and hunt me down should I ever enter their realm. As long as you keep your head low and pretend to be something mortal the trickeries of the Feywild will be manageable for one of your skill.
Moros the Hunter is still in full view of our Masters, but unfortunately not in easy reach. He hunts by the borderlands of the Abyss and the plains of death, in the territory of the Lord Orcus. I do not wish to visit there and neither should you, so I hope that Sorin's abilities will be enough to simply call him to us once the rest of us is gathered again, avoiding that particular trip altogether."
With a barely perceptible smile on thin lips Alaric thought about it. Places dangerous enough to get even the likes of them killed, only to find murderers who may or may not desire to return to service of long-absent masters and then onwards to slay foes that might be dangerous enough that the Court of Winter would prefer not to fight them.
It looked like a good deal of fun and work at once lay ahead.
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Leafdancer is known from a prevous Omake.
Internet-cookies if you can guess Alaric's last name from his looks.
