Yllestad, Early Evening (Thursday, Fandom Time)
Karla hadn't expected to return to Yllestad after finding the field full of witchblood. But then the storm had blown up, and Yllestad was the only closest city where the entire army could bunk down for the night. There was no question of her people trying to set up tents tonight. The storm had beaten them here and moved northward, but they were still dealing with the gale-force winds and the odd spats of hail.They would take shelter wherever they could until the storm blew out and then settle up then. The prospect of good food and warm quarters had the army far more cheerful than one would expect, marching as they were through a literal dark and stormy night. The south gate had stood open for them, as if Yllestad had expected their return and they were only too glad to take the city up on its welcome. They entered from the south, glad to get out of the stinging wind, good-naturedly arguing which places has the most comfortable beds and most fortifying wines.
And then they stopped.
Yllestad was dead. Horribly, completely, utterly dead. The pines that dotted the avenues were warped and gray, their fallen needles in dingy gray piles against whatever wall they fetched up against. There were lumpy puddles of brown on the ground that required poking to discover were half-melted pinecones. Stone walls were pitted, like they'd been splashed with acid. Exposed wood was dry and crumbling away. Any fabric they could see looked almost burned, the metal rusted, the glass cloudy and spiderwebbed.
Then came the dead animals. They were everywhere. Cats and dogs, birds and mice, even the odd raccoon that snuck in from the forest to steal garbage. Curled up or splayed out, they were uniformly soaked in blood that had yet to dry, skin drawn away from teeth in grimaces of agony. Fur, feathers, and skin had sloughed off in wide patches, leaving wet muscle to gleam underneath. Some of the wounds appeared to be self-inflicted. Karla had to grab onto Warren's arm as they passed a dog with its muzzle still buried in its own torn abdomen.
That was the outskirts of town. In, where it was more densely populated, the scene was worse still. Karla heard multiple people turn around to be ill and couldn't blame them a bit.
The people, who, just a fortnight ago, had been hale and hearty and alive, well, now they were none of those things. Here, too, was the same tableau as seen with the animals, but so much more terrible because they were--had been--human. There were shouts from people when they saw someone they recognized. There were painful cries when confronted with features were too broken to make out.
Fuck. Someone needed to do something. Say something. Find out what happened. There was a moment when Karla looked around, searching for someone to take command, to be the voice of authority that her people needed.
Right. Her people. That voice of authority needed to be her.
"Spread out," she barked, voice brittle. "Try to find any survivors. There have to be some, somewhere." She wasn't sure who she was trying to convince more: herself or her army. "Be thorough. Don't touch anything until we can get a better idea of what happened here! Be careful! Go in groups, cover more ground!"
She pointed towards the center of town. "GO!"
Warren
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Men, women and children. Pets. Houseplants. Every single house that Warren broke into trying to find a single survivor was met with the same result.
Nothing. Just nightmare glimpses of bodies upon bodies, of children that had died in their tracks while trying to reach their mothers. Corpses in their beds, slumped on the floor with dinner half-prepared on the counter beside them, and blood.
So, so much blood.
"Nothing," he was murmuring as he exited another building, holding a small gilded birdcage with a bloody mess of yellow feathers laying dead on the bottom. "Nothing's alive here."
He pulled in a deep breath.
"Jesus, there aren't any survivors anywhere."
Raven
Raven stood in the center of the town, hand pressed over her mouth as she reached out with her empathy, desperately tried to sense some sign of life. There wasn't any to be found.
Part of her shut down. She'd seen death before. Her father had destroyed a planet in front of her, and she had used his power to twist Earth into a world of nightmares. But that had been almost cleaner in a way. This was blood and melted flesh and gore, and the smell.
She fell to her knees in the snow, closing her eyes and praying to Azar.
Karla
Elsewhere, Karla was still giving orders, forming teams of search parties, reminding them to look in root cellars, attics, in wells. If this had been some kind of attack, people might have hid, hoping to be spared.
Other groups were trying to figure out what to do with the bodies. Drag them into a pile? No one was keen on touching the dead they'd found.
Warren
Warren took a few more deep breaths to try to steady himself. After the landen attack a few weeks back, he'd hoped he wouldn't be faced with another sight like this one. No luck.
A quick look around ascertained where Karla was, and then Raven, on her knees in the snow. His first instinct was to go for Karla. He was dying for that comfort, inside.
Common sense had him heading the other way, stepping over and kneeling down before Raven.
"Is there anything left, here?" he murmured, gently. "Or were we too late?"
Raven
Raven reached out and grabbed Warren's arm, grateful for the contact with the living. She couldn't feel the dying agonies of the villagers, but the faint psychic echo was bad enough. So much pain and fear.
"There is no life in Yllestad," she said, trying to collect herself. "But perhaps some were able to flee. I will see if I can find them."
She closed her eyes again, reaching out as far as she could with her empathy, trying to find some signs of life. Faintly to the north, on the edge of her range, she could feel something -- a burst of agony and fear and a desperate need to escape. She gasped and opened her eyes, gripping Warren's arm tighter. "To the north," she said. "I think they are animals, but they are afraid and in pain."
Warren
Warren nodded a little, glancing over his shoulder toward the North gate.
"There's a road that way. There might be settlements, too. We should probably send someone in that direction to see what's going on."
He lifted a hand to rest on her shoulder, and then stood, keeping his arm where she could reach it.
"Karla? Can you come here for a moment?"
Karla
"Did you find survivors?" Karla's eyes were alight with hope as she ran over to them. "Raven, did you find something?"
Raven
Raven hated to dash those hopes, but she shook her head sadly. "No, not in the village," she said, rising to her feet. "There is something to the north, but whatever it is is suffering."
Warren
"There are roads heading that way, too," Warren noted, softly. "Whatever this is is still killing things. Do we know how close the nearest villages are, that way?"
Sorry, Karla. Today apparently wasn't going to be a good day for hope.
Karla
"Oh," she said quietly, her heart dropping into her stomach to hear her worst fears confirmed. Yllestad was gone and whatever had done this was still out there. Still killing. And she didn't have the least clue what this could possibly even be. "Uhh, there are a few villages out that way, yes," she said, trying to move beyond the horror to be useful. "Hours by foot, trekking through the mountains. I don't know--""
"My lady!" One of her remaining landen scouts hurried up to Karla, offering a quick nod at the three of them. "It looks like a decent-sized group left earlier today, by the north gate. There are old tracks, likely from a few hours before--" The scout choked, unsure how to categorize the devastation.
Raven feeling something in the north. A group of people heading north. That was good enough for Karla. She began sending out mental orders, telling half the groups still looking for bodies to rendezvous with the cleanup crews and the other half to carefully search the surrounding woods to the north. Perhaps some people had gotten away, but were now in danger? They had to know for certain.
Raven
Some time later, word arrived from one group of scouts that they'd found something to the north. For the sake of speed, Raven teleported Karla, Warren, and herself there.
The area they found themselves in was as bad as Yllestad. The trees were dead, bark sliding off and pooling around their trunks. Dead wildlife lay scattered on the bloody snow. Raven clamped her hand to her mouth, trying not to be sick. Not here, at least. Later, she was sure she was going to be.
One of the soldiers was standing over something, beckoning to Karla.
***
Karla stopped dead--who even thought of that phrase? why do people use it? why is my brain even thinking about this stuff right now? shouldn't it be working on something more important?--when she saw what the soldier was standing over. Another body, yes, but this one was wearing a jacket.
Of course he's wearing a jacket. It's winter in Glacia, bint, everyone's wearing jackets, you could freeze to death out here!
Her brain jabbered on, trying to get her to think about ANYTHING other than the horrors in front of--behind, beside, near, far, everywhere, Mother Night everywhere--her. Karla did her best to focus, kneeling down to brush the snow and mud away. Yep, as she'd thought. The jacket was one of the big, comfortable down ones that Jono's team had been outfitted with, including the patch that half of the army had stayed up late sewing onto their shoulders.
This was one of Jono's scouts.
"Warren," she said tightly. "Warren, I need you up in the air. I need you up there now and I need you to tell me what you see."
Warren
Warren drew in a slow breath, but his accompanying nod and the speed with which he turned around to grab the nearest person wearing a Jewel was anything but.
"You're with me, Bob," he said, his own words coming out terse, clipped. He didn't wait for a reply; normally the Rose-Jeweled Blood male would have piped up in an attempt to protest the nickname. Today there was no correction forthcoming, the man in question too busy staring in mute horror at the blood in the snow.
So Warren picked him up, circling Bob's chest right under his arms, and launched himself into the sky. The first thing he did was make a wide circle around the remains of Yllestad, looking for tracks or signs of life anywhere. He spotted nothing of the sort but, wait...there...was that...? Yes, there was the witchblood field that Karla had discovered two weeks before, now charred black with only a few embers still glowing. He thought about diving down to investigate further, but his arc brought him back around to the north and he saw the smoke, billowing up sick and twisted and drifting toward the mountain on the wind. From up here, it looked like it was moving lazily, barely making any ground at all.
Warren knew better.
"I can't see anybody out there yet," he said, and nodded to Bob to relay the message on a psychic thread. "But I do see a cloud of smoke, moving fast toward the mountains. Looks like the field's been burned."
Karla
Karla froze, the only movement the slow spread of horror across her features. *Say that again,* she ordered him. *Did you say the field...?*
Bob the Blood guy
*I can see it too,* Bob confirmed, frowning down at the scarred landscape below. *The field of witchblood, reduced to cinders. Snow stained red for miles. You can actually see where the wind changed as it moved through the woods, my Queen.*
Everything was dead, or dying, or about to die.
Karla
*Hell's fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness have mercy on all of us,* Karla swore. She wobbled in place at the enormity of what Hobart had done, clutching Raven to help her stay on her feet.
Raven looked at her, confusion writ on her features, and Karla shook her head. She'd explain in a few moments, but for now she needed time to try and come to grips with it herself.
*That's what we're dealing with,* she sent. *Witchblood fumes. They've gone and burned the field and created a Kaeleeran version of chemical warfare.*
Warren
Warren let a few curse words slip from his mouth that Bob decided it would be better to not pass on to Karla, and a few more that he didn't even comprehend. Bob didn't entirely understand the concept of 'chemical warfare,' either. Being from Glacia meant that he had barely understood the concept of warfare before Hobart's rise. But whatever they were looking at, it had the Consort more upset than he'd ever seen him.
"And judging by what we saw in Yllestad, there's no filtering that out. There's no surviving that," Warren hissed, and Bob did pass that on. "Darkness, there's another village in those mountains, isn't there? And has anyone heard from Jono and his team yet?"
Karla
*Just the dead scouts wearing his insignia,* she sent, swallowing hard. *Which means that he knows that something is wrong enough to send them...and that he hasn't heard back yet. One of them was Blood--* Karla only knew that by the Jewel the female had been wearing; her face had been beyond recognition. *--Which means he's been expecting that report and is probably on his way back to find out why it hasn't shown up yet.*
The scouts were north of the city. The wind was blowing northerly. That was a bad sign.
Fuck.
She was reaching for the minds of the Blood he'd taken with him before she'd even finished her conversation with Bob. *JONO!* she screeched. *WHEREVER YOU ARE, STOP!*
Armin
It was the young voice of a boy wearing the Yellow that replied, tentatively, to the call. Jonothon was standing next to Armin, not letting his concern show on his face. Not even daring to.
He'd felt that screech. It had practically rattled his teeth inside his head.
Armin was going to have to be the one to reply to it, though.
*Stop? The General-* Armin ignored the noise Jonothon made at that title, *-sent some scouts down the mountain to investigate the smoke coming from Yllestad. They stopped reporting back entirely. He has us doubling back to find them, Lady.*
Karla
*Tell Jono to call an immediate halt,* Karla snapped, rolling right over Armin. *Hobart's set witchblood ablaze and the smoke is heading right for you! Do you know what that means, boyo? I means death for anyone caught in it. Ask your Healer!*
The poor lad sounded young, almost too young to even be here, but Karla didn't have the time to take his youth into consideration.
*I said STOP!*
General Starsmore
Jono watched as Armin rocked on his heels, and then looked toward the Healer, quickly relaying a few words with her on a psychic thread.
And then Jono watched as the boy turned worried eyes back to him.
"The Lady says we need to stop. Says it's witchblood. And-"
"And we need to run, General," the Healer finished, giving Jonothon a firm look, though she seemed pale, wanting to look back toward Yllestad. "That smoke that we're seeing... It'll kill us all. Badly."
Jonothon hissed between his teeth.
"Our scouts--"
"Are likely already dead," she replied, with no small amount of regret in her words. "And we'll join them too, if that smoke catches up."
There were a few moments of silence from Jonothon's end, and then Armin sent Jonothon's reply to Karla, sounding tentative, sounding scared.
*He's got us moving back uphill, in the opposite direction from the smoke.*
Karla
*Thank the Darkness,* Karla sent, even as she began explaining just what Jono and his people were up against and what had destroyed the city. *Warren is in the air. He'll try and direct you out of there. Keep moving, stay together, and go!*
***
Momoko sat straight up and looked around a moment. She'd learned over the past few months in Glacia that when she heard this faint sound of Karla's voice and felt the small tug at the back of her head, it meant Karla was broadcasting something. And broadcasting instead of calling was Not Good.
But since she wasn't telepathic, she wasn't getting the message.
"Dinah?! Samantha?! De..." She had to swallow hard when she almost called to Denys. "I hear Karla..."
"What's going on?"
Dinah
Dinah was up and looking around too, feet stamped into her boots. "Sam?"
Samantha had finally started responding to the nickname, after the last week and a half.
The Blood female came into their tent, looking grim. "Something's wrong in the Queen's camp. She hasn't sent a direct message yet. But it's-- bad, whatever it is."
Momoko
Momoko nodded, already gathering her things. "That explains why I can hear something. Though it's more..." she waved a hand as she stuffed her bedroll into her pack. "Something. In my head. She has to be sending it directly towards us, am I right?"
The tent opening darkened and Mark's voice came through, though he didn't enter. "Ladies? Is something the matter?"
Dinah
Samantha drew back the door-hanging, and then froze, eyes distant. "Emergency. The Lady Karla is calling to say there's an emergency." She shook herself. "Message received, Lady... I don't think this can be good."
Dinah groaned, then straightened. "Everyone be ready to travel in ten minutes."
Momoko
Momoko looked over at her, fully packed. "Ten minutes? We should start out now. It's already getting dark."
What? KARLA had called for them! Look what happened before and she HADN'T called? Dinah was lucky she wasn't grabbed and being flown there right now.
Wait... "Do we know where they are camping right now?"
Dinah
"No," Dinah said dryly, pulling her pack and sleeping bag out of the tent. "So, I'm guessing there's either a follow-up message, or a messenger coming. 'Cause 'emergency' is a little vague and all."
Mark and Kirt were already hooking up the horses, and loading the last round of medical supplies in the cart. Dinah wasn't any less anxious than Momoko, but she was in her zen place. Live in the moment. Get done what's in front of you.
Zen, damnit. If she had to hammer it into her own head.
Julian
*Lady Samantha.* The voice in Samatha's head was unfamiliar. *This is Lord Hagen, Lady Karla's Master at Arms. There has been an emergency. I need you to act as liaison between myself and your group. Are you preparing to move out?*
Samantha
*Yes, Lord Hagen.* "Lord Hagen is contacting me," Samantha said aloud, as Dinah pulled the tent poles down and started rolling them with TK. "He is asking me to act as liaison, and wishes to know if we're preparing to move out."
"Tell him we should be ready within the next-- five minutes? Yeah." Ulrich had taken on the guys' tent, and Mark was putting out the last of the firepit now. "Where does he want us?"
Samantha relayed all this, and added, *Lady Momoko is very anxious to respond immediately.*
Julian
*And she should be. Yllestad has been attacked and we need you back here quickly.* The explanation he provided was quick and devoid of the worst details, but even so, it was easy to fill in some of the blanks.
'The entire town is dead' doesn't really leave much room for uncertainty.
*I'm coming for you. I can ride the Sapphire Winds to your location; it shouldn't take me much longer than a half an hour. Do you have a Coach?*
Or, rather, could they get one?
Samantha
Samantha paled for a moment, then slowly said, "There's been an attack. In Yllestad..."
Dinah felt sick, but the news made her hurry even faster, while Samantha ran down the same information Julian hadd given her, expression frozen. She knew of Yllestad, it was one of the biggest cities in northern Glacia! "He--He wants to know if we have a Coach, said he'll be here in half an hour."
Dinah paused, and looked over at Momoko. "How far away are we from that family that kidnapped Reina, right now?"
Momoko
"Too far." Momoko's eyes hardened as she listened and she dug a map back out of her pack. "We'll leave the supplies in the town we just passed. And the wagon. We can move faster that way. The horses we'll take and we can get to that innkeeper who was making people pay for access to water? Twenty minutes easy." She traced a line, showing Dinah the path. It was pretty straightforward.
"He has a Coach and he still owes us. We'll leave the horses at the orphanage in town."
Samantha
"Works for me," Dinah said.
"That bastard." Mark looked cheerful for the first time in a week. "Works for me too."
Samantha coughed, hiding a smile, and relayed to Julian: *Yes, Lord Hagen. We will have a Coach by the time you meet us here. Do we need to bring anything else?*
Julian
*No,* he said shortly. *Travel light if you can. And be ready to go by the time I arrive.*
And with that, he leapt for the closest Wind, cutting off communication between them. Now was not the time for social niceties.
As opposed to all those times he used them, obviously.
[WARNING FOR THE AFTERMATH OF TRAUMA AND VIOLENCE, INCLUDING DESCRIPTIONS OF THE DEAD. Follows this, because,yeah, let's get this party started war ended! Preplayed with the wonderful crew of folks you see here. NFI, NFB, OOC is love.]
And then they stopped.
Yllestad was dead. Horribly, completely, utterly dead. The pines that dotted the avenues were warped and gray, their fallen needles in dingy gray piles against whatever wall they fetched up against. There were lumpy puddles of brown on the ground that required poking to discover were half-melted pinecones. Stone walls were pitted, like they'd been splashed with acid. Exposed wood was dry and crumbling away. Any fabric they could see looked almost burned, the metal rusted, the glass cloudy and spiderwebbed.
Then came the dead animals. They were everywhere. Cats and dogs, birds and mice, even the odd raccoon that snuck in from the forest to steal garbage. Curled up or splayed out, they were uniformly soaked in blood that had yet to dry, skin drawn away from teeth in grimaces of agony. Fur, feathers, and skin had sloughed off in wide patches, leaving wet muscle to gleam underneath. Some of the wounds appeared to be self-inflicted. Karla had to grab onto Warren's arm as they passed a dog with its muzzle still buried in its own torn abdomen.
That was the outskirts of town. In, where it was more densely populated, the scene was worse still. Karla heard multiple people turn around to be ill and couldn't blame them a bit.
The people, who, just a fortnight ago, had been hale and hearty and alive, well, now they were none of those things. Here, too, was the same tableau as seen with the animals, but so much more terrible because they were--had been--human. There were shouts from people when they saw someone they recognized. There were painful cries when confronted with features were too broken to make out.
Fuck. Someone needed to do something. Say something. Find out what happened. There was a moment when Karla looked around, searching for someone to take command, to be the voice of authority that her people needed.
Right. Her people. That voice of authority needed to be her.
"Spread out," she barked, voice brittle. "Try to find any survivors. There have to be some, somewhere." She wasn't sure who she was trying to convince more: herself or her army. "Be thorough. Don't touch anything until we can get a better idea of what happened here! Be careful! Go in groups, cover more ground!"
She pointed towards the center of town. "GO!"
Warren
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Men, women and children. Pets. Houseplants. Every single house that Warren broke into trying to find a single survivor was met with the same result.
Nothing. Just nightmare glimpses of bodies upon bodies, of children that had died in their tracks while trying to reach their mothers. Corpses in their beds, slumped on the floor with dinner half-prepared on the counter beside them, and blood.
So, so much blood.
"Nothing," he was murmuring as he exited another building, holding a small gilded birdcage with a bloody mess of yellow feathers laying dead on the bottom. "Nothing's alive here."
He pulled in a deep breath.
"Jesus, there aren't any survivors anywhere."
Raven
Raven stood in the center of the town, hand pressed over her mouth as she reached out with her empathy, desperately tried to sense some sign of life. There wasn't any to be found.
Part of her shut down. She'd seen death before. Her father had destroyed a planet in front of her, and she had used his power to twist Earth into a world of nightmares. But that had been almost cleaner in a way. This was blood and melted flesh and gore, and the smell.
She fell to her knees in the snow, closing her eyes and praying to Azar.
Karla
Elsewhere, Karla was still giving orders, forming teams of search parties, reminding them to look in root cellars, attics, in wells. If this had been some kind of attack, people might have hid, hoping to be spared.
Other groups were trying to figure out what to do with the bodies. Drag them into a pile? No one was keen on touching the dead they'd found.
Warren
Warren took a few more deep breaths to try to steady himself. After the landen attack a few weeks back, he'd hoped he wouldn't be faced with another sight like this one. No luck.
A quick look around ascertained where Karla was, and then Raven, on her knees in the snow. His first instinct was to go for Karla. He was dying for that comfort, inside.
Common sense had him heading the other way, stepping over and kneeling down before Raven.
"Is there anything left, here?" he murmured, gently. "Or were we too late?"
Raven
Raven reached out and grabbed Warren's arm, grateful for the contact with the living. She couldn't feel the dying agonies of the villagers, but the faint psychic echo was bad enough. So much pain and fear.
"There is no life in Yllestad," she said, trying to collect herself. "But perhaps some were able to flee. I will see if I can find them."
She closed her eyes again, reaching out as far as she could with her empathy, trying to find some signs of life. Faintly to the north, on the edge of her range, she could feel something -- a burst of agony and fear and a desperate need to escape. She gasped and opened her eyes, gripping Warren's arm tighter. "To the north," she said. "I think they are animals, but they are afraid and in pain."
Warren
Warren nodded a little, glancing over his shoulder toward the North gate.
"There's a road that way. There might be settlements, too. We should probably send someone in that direction to see what's going on."
He lifted a hand to rest on her shoulder, and then stood, keeping his arm where she could reach it.
"Karla? Can you come here for a moment?"
Karla
"Did you find survivors?" Karla's eyes were alight with hope as she ran over to them. "Raven, did you find something?"
Raven
Raven hated to dash those hopes, but she shook her head sadly. "No, not in the village," she said, rising to her feet. "There is something to the north, but whatever it is is suffering."
Warren
"There are roads heading that way, too," Warren noted, softly. "Whatever this is is still killing things. Do we know how close the nearest villages are, that way?"
Sorry, Karla. Today apparently wasn't going to be a good day for hope.
Karla
"Oh," she said quietly, her heart dropping into her stomach to hear her worst fears confirmed. Yllestad was gone and whatever had done this was still out there. Still killing. And she didn't have the least clue what this could possibly even be. "Uhh, there are a few villages out that way, yes," she said, trying to move beyond the horror to be useful. "Hours by foot, trekking through the mountains. I don't know--""
"My lady!" One of her remaining landen scouts hurried up to Karla, offering a quick nod at the three of them. "It looks like a decent-sized group left earlier today, by the north gate. There are old tracks, likely from a few hours before--" The scout choked, unsure how to categorize the devastation.
Raven feeling something in the north. A group of people heading north. That was good enough for Karla. She began sending out mental orders, telling half the groups still looking for bodies to rendezvous with the cleanup crews and the other half to carefully search the surrounding woods to the north. Perhaps some people had gotten away, but were now in danger? They had to know for certain.
Raven
Some time later, word arrived from one group of scouts that they'd found something to the north. For the sake of speed, Raven teleported Karla, Warren, and herself there.
The area they found themselves in was as bad as Yllestad. The trees were dead, bark sliding off and pooling around their trunks. Dead wildlife lay scattered on the bloody snow. Raven clamped her hand to her mouth, trying not to be sick. Not here, at least. Later, she was sure she was going to be.
One of the soldiers was standing over something, beckoning to Karla.
***
Karla stopped dead--who even thought of that phrase? why do people use it? why is my brain even thinking about this stuff right now? shouldn't it be working on something more important?--when she saw what the soldier was standing over. Another body, yes, but this one was wearing a jacket.
Of course he's wearing a jacket. It's winter in Glacia, bint, everyone's wearing jackets, you could freeze to death out here!
Her brain jabbered on, trying to get her to think about ANYTHING other than the horrors in front of--behind, beside, near, far, everywhere, Mother Night everywhere--her. Karla did her best to focus, kneeling down to brush the snow and mud away. Yep, as she'd thought. The jacket was one of the big, comfortable down ones that Jono's team had been outfitted with, including the patch that half of the army had stayed up late sewing onto their shoulders.
This was one of Jono's scouts.
"Warren," she said tightly. "Warren, I need you up in the air. I need you up there now and I need you to tell me what you see."
Warren
Warren drew in a slow breath, but his accompanying nod and the speed with which he turned around to grab the nearest person wearing a Jewel was anything but.
"You're with me, Bob," he said, his own words coming out terse, clipped. He didn't wait for a reply; normally the Rose-Jeweled Blood male would have piped up in an attempt to protest the nickname. Today there was no correction forthcoming, the man in question too busy staring in mute horror at the blood in the snow.
So Warren picked him up, circling Bob's chest right under his arms, and launched himself into the sky. The first thing he did was make a wide circle around the remains of Yllestad, looking for tracks or signs of life anywhere. He spotted nothing of the sort but, wait...there...was that...? Yes, there was the witchblood field that Karla had discovered two weeks before, now charred black with only a few embers still glowing. He thought about diving down to investigate further, but his arc brought him back around to the north and he saw the smoke, billowing up sick and twisted and drifting toward the mountain on the wind. From up here, it looked like it was moving lazily, barely making any ground at all.
Warren knew better.
"I can't see anybody out there yet," he said, and nodded to Bob to relay the message on a psychic thread. "But I do see a cloud of smoke, moving fast toward the mountains. Looks like the field's been burned."
Karla
Karla froze, the only movement the slow spread of horror across her features. *Say that again,* she ordered him. *Did you say the field...?*
Bob the Blood guy
*I can see it too,* Bob confirmed, frowning down at the scarred landscape below. *The field of witchblood, reduced to cinders. Snow stained red for miles. You can actually see where the wind changed as it moved through the woods, my Queen.*
Everything was dead, or dying, or about to die.
Karla
*Hell's fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness have mercy on all of us,* Karla swore. She wobbled in place at the enormity of what Hobart had done, clutching Raven to help her stay on her feet.
Raven looked at her, confusion writ on her features, and Karla shook her head. She'd explain in a few moments, but for now she needed time to try and come to grips with it herself.
*That's what we're dealing with,* she sent. *Witchblood fumes. They've gone and burned the field and created a Kaeleeran version of chemical warfare.*
Warren
Warren let a few curse words slip from his mouth that Bob decided it would be better to not pass on to Karla, and a few more that he didn't even comprehend. Bob didn't entirely understand the concept of 'chemical warfare,' either. Being from Glacia meant that he had barely understood the concept of warfare before Hobart's rise. But whatever they were looking at, it had the Consort more upset than he'd ever seen him.
"And judging by what we saw in Yllestad, there's no filtering that out. There's no surviving that," Warren hissed, and Bob did pass that on. "Darkness, there's another village in those mountains, isn't there? And has anyone heard from Jono and his team yet?"
Karla
*Just the dead scouts wearing his insignia,* she sent, swallowing hard. *Which means that he knows that something is wrong enough to send them...and that he hasn't heard back yet. One of them was Blood--* Karla only knew that by the Jewel the female had been wearing; her face had been beyond recognition. *--Which means he's been expecting that report and is probably on his way back to find out why it hasn't shown up yet.*
The scouts were north of the city. The wind was blowing northerly. That was a bad sign.
Fuck.
She was reaching for the minds of the Blood he'd taken with him before she'd even finished her conversation with Bob. *JONO!* she screeched. *WHEREVER YOU ARE, STOP!*
Armin
It was the young voice of a boy wearing the Yellow that replied, tentatively, to the call. Jonothon was standing next to Armin, not letting his concern show on his face. Not even daring to.
He'd felt that screech. It had practically rattled his teeth inside his head.
Armin was going to have to be the one to reply to it, though.
*Stop? The General-* Armin ignored the noise Jonothon made at that title, *-sent some scouts down the mountain to investigate the smoke coming from Yllestad. They stopped reporting back entirely. He has us doubling back to find them, Lady.*
Karla
*Tell Jono to call an immediate halt,* Karla snapped, rolling right over Armin. *Hobart's set witchblood ablaze and the smoke is heading right for you! Do you know what that means, boyo? I means death for anyone caught in it. Ask your Healer!*
The poor lad sounded young, almost too young to even be here, but Karla didn't have the time to take his youth into consideration.
*I said STOP!*
General Starsmore
Jono watched as Armin rocked on his heels, and then looked toward the Healer, quickly relaying a few words with her on a psychic thread.
And then Jono watched as the boy turned worried eyes back to him.
"The Lady says we need to stop. Says it's witchblood. And-"
"And we need to run, General," the Healer finished, giving Jonothon a firm look, though she seemed pale, wanting to look back toward Yllestad. "That smoke that we're seeing... It'll kill us all. Badly."
Jonothon hissed between his teeth.
"Our scouts--"
"Are likely already dead," she replied, with no small amount of regret in her words. "And we'll join them too, if that smoke catches up."
There were a few moments of silence from Jonothon's end, and then Armin sent Jonothon's reply to Karla, sounding tentative, sounding scared.
*He's got us moving back uphill, in the opposite direction from the smoke.*
Karla
*Thank the Darkness,* Karla sent, even as she began explaining just what Jono and his people were up against and what had destroyed the city. *Warren is in the air. He'll try and direct you out of there. Keep moving, stay together, and go!*
***
Momoko sat straight up and looked around a moment. She'd learned over the past few months in Glacia that when she heard this faint sound of Karla's voice and felt the small tug at the back of her head, it meant Karla was broadcasting something. And broadcasting instead of calling was Not Good.
But since she wasn't telepathic, she wasn't getting the message.
"Dinah?! Samantha?! De..." She had to swallow hard when she almost called to Denys. "I hear Karla..."
"What's going on?"
Dinah
Dinah was up and looking around too, feet stamped into her boots. "Sam?"
Samantha had finally started responding to the nickname, after the last week and a half.
The Blood female came into their tent, looking grim. "Something's wrong in the Queen's camp. She hasn't sent a direct message yet. But it's-- bad, whatever it is."
Momoko
Momoko nodded, already gathering her things. "That explains why I can hear something. Though it's more..." she waved a hand as she stuffed her bedroll into her pack. "Something. In my head. She has to be sending it directly towards us, am I right?"
The tent opening darkened and Mark's voice came through, though he didn't enter. "Ladies? Is something the matter?"
Dinah
Samantha drew back the door-hanging, and then froze, eyes distant. "Emergency. The Lady Karla is calling to say there's an emergency." She shook herself. "Message received, Lady... I don't think this can be good."
Dinah groaned, then straightened. "Everyone be ready to travel in ten minutes."
Momoko
Momoko looked over at her, fully packed. "Ten minutes? We should start out now. It's already getting dark."
What? KARLA had called for them! Look what happened before and she HADN'T called? Dinah was lucky she wasn't grabbed and being flown there right now.
Wait... "Do we know where they are camping right now?"
Dinah
"No," Dinah said dryly, pulling her pack and sleeping bag out of the tent. "So, I'm guessing there's either a follow-up message, or a messenger coming. 'Cause 'emergency' is a little vague and all."
Mark and Kirt were already hooking up the horses, and loading the last round of medical supplies in the cart. Dinah wasn't any less anxious than Momoko, but she was in her zen place. Live in the moment. Get done what's in front of you.
Zen, damnit. If she had to hammer it into her own head.
Julian
*Lady Samantha.* The voice in Samatha's head was unfamiliar. *This is Lord Hagen, Lady Karla's Master at Arms. There has been an emergency. I need you to act as liaison between myself and your group. Are you preparing to move out?*
Samantha
*Yes, Lord Hagen.* "Lord Hagen is contacting me," Samantha said aloud, as Dinah pulled the tent poles down and started rolling them with TK. "He is asking me to act as liaison, and wishes to know if we're preparing to move out."
"Tell him we should be ready within the next-- five minutes? Yeah." Ulrich had taken on the guys' tent, and Mark was putting out the last of the firepit now. "Where does he want us?"
Samantha relayed all this, and added, *Lady Momoko is very anxious to respond immediately.*
Julian
*And she should be. Yllestad has been attacked and we need you back here quickly.* The explanation he provided was quick and devoid of the worst details, but even so, it was easy to fill in some of the blanks.
'The entire town is dead' doesn't really leave much room for uncertainty.
*I'm coming for you. I can ride the Sapphire Winds to your location; it shouldn't take me much longer than a half an hour. Do you have a Coach?*
Or, rather, could they get one?
Samantha
Samantha paled for a moment, then slowly said, "There's been an attack. In Yllestad..."
Dinah felt sick, but the news made her hurry even faster, while Samantha ran down the same information Julian hadd given her, expression frozen. She knew of Yllestad, it was one of the biggest cities in northern Glacia! "He--He wants to know if we have a Coach, said he'll be here in half an hour."
Dinah paused, and looked over at Momoko. "How far away are we from that family that kidnapped Reina, right now?"
Momoko
"Too far." Momoko's eyes hardened as she listened and she dug a map back out of her pack. "We'll leave the supplies in the town we just passed. And the wagon. We can move faster that way. The horses we'll take and we can get to that innkeeper who was making people pay for access to water? Twenty minutes easy." She traced a line, showing Dinah the path. It was pretty straightforward.
"He has a Coach and he still owes us. We'll leave the horses at the orphanage in town."
Samantha
"Works for me," Dinah said.
"That bastard." Mark looked cheerful for the first time in a week. "Works for me too."
Samantha coughed, hiding a smile, and relayed to Julian: *Yes, Lord Hagen. We will have a Coach by the time you meet us here. Do we need to bring anything else?*
Julian
*No,* he said shortly. *Travel light if you can. And be ready to go by the time I arrive.*
And with that, he leapt for the closest Wind, cutting off communication between them. Now was not the time for social niceties.
As opposed to all those times he used them, obviously.
[WARNING FOR THE AFTERMATH OF TRAUMA AND VIOLENCE, INCLUDING DESCRIPTIONS OF THE DEAD. Follows this, because,yeah, let's get this party started war ended! Preplayed with the wonderful crew of folks you see here. NFI, NFB, OOC is love.]