GM Note: Easing back into it, yeah?
Spikes, Horns, and Stone 11
Eventually, Gwendolyn recovers herself.
Somewhat.
It takes a considerable amount of time, but one of many things a father learns with multiple children and grandchildren is how to ignore any possible pain in the knee while remaining kneeling and maintaining a hug. Once the dam finally cracked, it exploded outwards, the tears and emotions she keeps bottled up as a matter of existence flowing without pause for quite some time. The unnatural strength, forced upon her by Khaine and dark sorceries not of her mother's design, flees and leaves you holding her upright. The heaviest sobs are the first ones, though not the last, and throughout it all her breathing is choked and harsh. She is wracked by spasms too violent at first which only slowly fall back into trembles, until those too fade until she is mostly still save for her ever so slightly steadying breathing. After that comes nothing more than the peace of catharsis, a not-quite stillness as you hold her up and she attempts to gather her composure once more.
She fails, the first few times, the wellspring finding new depths again and again.
But, as befitting her character as far as you've seen it, she tries again and again until finding success.
When she finally whispers words of thanks, quietly but with a rising strength, it is
specifically in Tar-Eltharin, not Druhir. The preferred dialect of the Druchii does not possess that phrase, not in particular, not with the intent and emotion conveyed. In Tar-Eltharin, the dialect of the Asur specifically, the meaning of mere thanks extends past what the more mundane words of Reikspiel might have managed alone. There are, after all, thrice-possible meanings to almost every word you've ever learned in Eltharin, all depending on the emotions and intentions of the speaker themselves.
"I think…I think I shall retire to my room, for a time?" She mumbles into your shoulder. "I…,"
"Of course," you tell her calmly.
Gwendolyn does not move immediately, until she starts a little as she apparently comes to realize the same thing. Her little push away from you cannot hide the tear streaks down her face, the reddening of her face which is only beginning to fade. The second you cannot do anything about. The former, on the other hand, is another matter, even if it's just some gentle cleaning with your thumb and the cloth of your sleeves. She smooths her little shift down as she takes another step back, clearing her throat, and then looks back up at you with those large dark eyes.
"I apologize for my breach of decorum and-,"
"It's fine," you interrupt, putting a hand on her shoulder, giving a small nod and smile. "Truly. Get some rest. I can just ask your mother any other questions I might have for now. It's been a surprising time, I'm sure," you chuckle before finally standing with a faint pop of some of your joints.
She nods up at you, slowly, before slowly turning and beginning to walk away while holding her arms up against herself. When she reaches the doors and begins to exit through them, there is a little half-turn and pause to look back at you before she fully exits. Two of the terrors follow her, one of each of the two varieties stationed in the room. The other two just look at you. When you leave the room to head back to the torture foyer, they follow you in silence. Well, mostly silence. There is still the slightest bit of clank and click from their equipment, albeit far less than such weight of metal should have garnered if even a bit of their creation and arming wasn't elven. At this point, you've grown used to the simply superlative levels of quality that elves and dwarfs alike seem capable of putting into their work, even if there is probably always going to be a bit of a burr in your soul about it.
"You guys want anything, or," you ask the terrors as you go on your way past the wine cabinet and grab a few more bottles for yourself. "Probably not then, huh?"
As expected, they simply look at you in silence.
"Figures," you sigh before turning your focus back towards the bond. "Far as I know you don't even have mouths anymore, huh?"
It has been a fraught time elsewhere, as best as Natasha could convey to you. While you were letting a little girl fully cry for possible the first time in her life, your wife had been found by Hultressa. It took only a few seconds for Natasha to hurl a hell of a lot of apprehension and worry through the bond at you, mostly focused on you even being near Hultressa. You've long known you simply don't have the capability to perceive magic like those who are actually gifted with its touch rather than repeatedly exposed to it, but apparently in this case that sort of ignorance was somewhat of a protection. Looking at Hultressa is, as near as Natasha could convey it, something like staring into the sun if it was made out of radiating darkness.
Which is, of course, concerning, but there is little you can do about it now other than beat yourself bloody against the doors and die trying to fight your way out of the tower on your lonesome to reach your wife.
Considering you can do little more than sit and feel as Natasha reports back through sensations, images, and memories, you can't help but try to throw your brain at the scenario a few times.
You were sure you could open the doors, or at least carve through them with
Brain Wounder. The terrors are enemies you've never actually fought, but you doubt that they would be easily disposed of given the mystique surrounding them and the supposed fear afforded to Hultressa for making them. Whether or not they would try to stop you, you can't say for certain. You're probably higher up in the tower than not, which means trying to race all the way down the largest tower in the whole of the Ark, which is filled with the most elite of the elite members remaining to the Druchii society of the floating city-states. Many of whom definitely have their own retinues, and not to mention who knows how many slaves that may be compelled or otherwise indoctrinated enough to try and attack you. Then there are the traps you might well not be able to see or figure out a way past, as well as the magical ones you would have no way of knowing about until they were triggered.
Bokdrungni would help there, some, but you've rather recently – and painfully – learned that it can't defend against too many spells at once.
No.
You're confident in yourself, your abilities, but you're not suicidal.
While there were certainly circumstances in which you would throw yourself into that certain doom, none of the conditions required had come to pass.
So instead you sit on one of the slabs once more, with a few bottles of wine and silence for companions as Natasha takes on the far more dangerous task where death could come at any moment.
"Oh," you murmur to yourself as realization strikes you. "Oh I hate this."
A wry chuckle escapes you shortly before an absolute storm of almost hysterical vindication floods the bond from Natasha. There is concern, there is worry, there is paranoia, but these are all things associated with skulking through streets, dodging patrols and going past rubble, all whilst accompanied by Hultressa herself. But the vindication? Oh, that is one of the most glorious of things, so bright in its vibrance that it could have been blinding. And despite it all, you can't help but smile and laugh at it, knowing that she most definitely is having to fight to keep herself from doing the same. The ancient concern, the oldest argument, the hardest debate that never had and never would have a perfect solution. One sublimated by the power of the bond, the bond that Natasha uses to bludgeon you with her emotions like she would with a pillow, the bond that was itself the best solution you could have hoped for in a world like the one you live in.
The only difference, of course, being that the two of you
can communicate like this for good and for ill.
You knew and know the risks and dangers associated with it, but damned if you will ever think it not worth it for that.
Much to Natasha's good-natured exasperation that you cannot quite experience precisely what she has been made to in the past in these sorts of situations, of course. More importantly, on some different emotional layers of the bond, she clings to those emotions to buoy her as she travels through the streets of the Ark. Truly the greater difficulty is not with her, nor with Roland, nor with the formerly disguised Bretonnian Whitewing. Jaques, as best as Natasha can tell you, is not actually their true name. Hopefully you both live long enough for the Whitewing's leader to tell you what it actually is. But it is not the humans that are the concern, there. If it were, there would be no worry in Hultressa's capacity at hiding them. Instead, it is Oskana, massive as she is, and the last living pure pegasus on the Ark. You still aren't entirely sure how to keep them supplied and fed, not truly.
A bottle and a half of wine later, though, and there is a bloom of relief, which in turn grants you that same relief.
"Thank the Gods," you sigh as Natasha informs you of their relatively safe arrival at the ruins of the tower which is now the sole domain of Hultressa herself.
After that comes a period of lower, though not wholly removed, stress as Hultressa goes about situating them there properly. Somehow, you aren't entirely sure, she apparently manages to stave off the issue of hunger for all involved, a working of magic that while technically made largely with Ghyran nonetheless manages to make Natasha feel as if she has been lightly flecked with pitch. After that is another check-up that, again, is an uncomfortable working by your wife's standards, and then a period of warding and defense-making that Natasha can only somewhat manage to communicate to you. And that's only partially because of the difficulty in trying to tell you about things only she can perceive and fully understand, because there are definitely parts of whatever Hultressa is doing down there that your wife
doesn't understand.
Which is concerning, for the both of you, but once more you cannot help but be frustrated by the fact that you simply have nothing you can realistically do about it if you plan to escape the Ark.
"Sigmar forgive me," you pray quietly.
And then you pray to Shallya as well. You can at least know that she will. Probably.
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When Hultressa returns, it is not daubed in the blood of the slain or at least grievously wounded, but she is clearly no less fierce for it all things considered. Though it probably helps that she's actively maintaining a crackling nimbus of darkness around her which fizzles and pops ominously with electricity.
"There is indeed utility to be found in your companions," she declares in her accented Reikspiel as the doors slide shut behind her once more, accompanied by a quiet hum as the defenses reactivate once she is past them. "And," she inclines her head towards you in the shallowest of nods, "I will admit that all else besides, it is remarkable that they managed to survive long enough as they had."
"You don't have to make it sound like it's painful for you to say it," you say dryly, which just makes Hultressa snort and toss her hair as she stalks past you to take a seat on the next torture slab over while putting her sword and staff next to her.
"There is a human phrase, a quaint thing, something about…pulling teeth?" She tilts her head as she says it. "Paltry for most higher forms of torture known to the Druchii, but it suffices in this case," she sighs and rolls her head back and forth for a moment before refocusing on you. "They have been secured, for now. However, a decision must be made either now or soon on your beasts," she says seriously, leaning forward towards you. "I cannot possibly excuse the amount of raw flesh required to keep your gryphon fed. The pegasus…," she grimaces, "Would be even more difficult to supply with the required amounts of grasses than if it were a proper-," a cross look comes over her face before she rubs at her temples. "If it were 'merely' a Naggarothi Pegasus."
She's not wrong. You've had the same thought yourself, more than once sitting here waiting. Tactically, in a fight, both Oskana and whatever the Pegasus has as its name are incredible force multipliers. In a situation demanding longer-term covert action and behavior, their utility becomes incredibly reduced while raising their status as disadvantages and detriments to remaining undetected. In the future, if you manage to create a situation where simply flying off the Ark is an option, their worth would be invaluable. But that, of course, simply rolls back around into how to deal with them in the interim period between now and that possible future.
"I'll go ahead and assume that putting them down is off the table," she taps at her chin, shrugging at your immediate glare. "I would not wish to do so either. Utilized the right way, they could be quite useful. But in the
meantime…?"
"You sustained them with magic, didn't you? For a while?"
Hultressa blinks at you before that faint look of horrified disgust ghosts into being before dissipating again.
"Ah, the bond. Yes," she lifts a hand and releases a little shimmering puff of Ghyran, "There are measures to utilize the weaving of the Wind of Life itself to sustain the body where food and water are without presence. It is not…comfortable," she waggles her head from side to side, "And the resulting evacuations of the body glow a luminescent – and
staining – green. But it is possible. The issue is the magical expenditure on myself," she places her hand against her chest for emphasis. "And the fact I would have to make daily travels out of the Tor of Dominance to provide it."
Before you can respond she lifts her chin towards one of your unopened wine bottles with an expectant look. Well, she does own them after all, so you toss it over without any fuss and watch as she uncorks it and begins sipping from it.
"No glass or cup? How unrefined," you raise an eyebrow, making her huff slightly.
"My only audience is a barbaric primitive, and I am planning to extricate myself from Druchii society entirely. I will maintain their standards when necessary, but no further," she says with a sniff and another toss of her hair.
"Fair enough," you grunt, and drink from your own opened bottle. "But besides that, wouldn't that make sense for you to be leaving the tower more often now that you're…'active' again?"
"On the one hand," she raises an empty hand, "That is true. It would raise less suspicion than it might have garnered otherwise previously. On the other," she raises the wine bottle, "It makes my schedule more predictable, it means I spend less time in the Tor proper, and may bring more attention to our little bastion I've made for your wife than you may like."
You suck some air through your teeth as you think, and also to restrain your immediate impulse to her words. Surely she did not mean for that to come out as threatening as it did, it is surely just a natural consequence of being a Druchii for a thousand years. Definitely.
"And the other option you would suggest?" You ask.
"A slumbering spell, enforced stasis," she says, creating another shimmering cloud of green, but this one is shot through with white and blues. "It does not kill, but it removes the requirements of drinking, eating, and otherwise, leaving them breathing and otherwise unharmed."
"And if they need to wake up quickly, say, if their holdout is attacked?" You ask immediately.
Hultressa frowns at you before she looks up and works her jaw.
"Your wife is not…wholly incapable. Perhaps I could instruct her in the proper method to awaken them properly. To do so
improperly can result in simple failure at awakening or causing health problems as portions of the body 'wake up' and others remain dormant," she pauses to drink from the wine bottle. "And, I will admit freely, that loud noises and the like will not do it either, so it is possible to have one's throat slit and never know it or be able to react to it."
That's not just theoretical knowledge.
That's practical, and experienced.
She's done exactly that before.
"We must choose one or the other, there are no other options I can think of," she shrugs, looking at you expectantly.
Choose
Moratorium 3 Hours
[] Active Animals: Have Hultressa, daily, return to the ruins she has claimed to continue ensuring that both Oskana and the pegasus remain awake and active without having to infringe on food supplies elsewhere on the Ark. This will ensure that, at a moment's notice, they could potentially be used or at the very least can help defend the holdout if it is attacked. However, it will require that Hultressa leaves the Tor daily, enforcing a bit of conformity to her daily schedule, and will drain her magic and time somewhat that could otherwise have been put to other matters.
OR
[] Comatose Creatures: In many situations, a gryphon and pegasus are incredibly useful. This is not, necessarily, one of those times. At the moment, they are in fact more of a liability than of use, but you will not see them put down simply for that and neither does Hultressa think doing so wise. Instead, she offers another way, a method of enforcing slumbering upon the two beasts and ensuring you need not worry about feeding or watering either of them for the foreseeable future. She has also promised to try and instruct Natasha in how to awaken them magically if necessary, as if done improperly there are evidently dire consequences. However, this means they will not be able to be used for anything with immediacy, and may not well be able to defend the holdout if doing so is required.
