The Knights' Roleplay - Silverkeep Sorcery

[Deleted]

((Hope this is ok. ^^)

“There you go, follow Sir Jay,” Sarn nodded down the path where the man was mounting his pristine horse. The Feberi hadn’t been all that chuffed about Burns wandering off on his own, but neither had the Golden Knight wanted to tag along like a sidekick. The man was of a good humour and easy enough to talk to, but Feberi were proud creatures and not at all made for tagging along.

He could, however, take the quickest way down the mountain, and in his own mind, if he was first geographically speaking, then he wasn’t a tagalong. Strange turns of pseudo-logic were all that made sense to Sarn.

“See you at the bottom!” he called, and lifted his huge wings. He observed, with some displeasure, that the tips of his feathers had dragged along the mountain path and were covered in a light sheen of mud. He shook them slightly and lifted off into the air, slowly circling down to the little town.

***

“Do nothing, she says. Well I’ve already been thrown into the middle of it all and darn it all if she won’t have me do her dirty work again … nothing eh? Always leads to trouble … me and mine gotta look after myself, don’t I? Because who else’s gonna look after ol’ Renkin? … I have to let them be, the patients … put me first, that’s the trick. Take care of my own skin before I can take care of the darned skins of others, but not her skin, oh no …”

And so he continued along the path, a pack slung on his back, a little box clasped in his left hand, bent double as he struggled over the rough ground. He kept up a steady grumbling monologue as he proceeded, quietly bemoaning his lot in life, deluding himself … justifying himself. He was bent double under the weight of his pack, and so he didn’t notice when a figure dropped out of the sky in a flash of gold and feathers.

Sarn stood on the path before him, silently triumphant that he had arrived first. “Hello good sir, I believe my companions and I have some questions for you.” He waited, hoping Jay and Burns weren’t too far away, while the cold eyes of the physician stared hopelessly at the sky, wishing only for freedom.

[Rikku]

“I’m going to head back to town and see what I can learn there; there are enough of us here as it is,” Jay said, passing. Burns blinked, then grinned. It would have been stupid to think that he was the only one who found oddness in the situation: these were knights, after all, this was what they did.

Burns looked an inquiry at Sarn, who said, helpfully, “There you go, follow Sir Jay,” and then added, “See you at the bottom!” and launched into the air with a flurry of feathers. Burns blinked up at him soaring gracefully through the sky, then at Jay, already mounted and well on his way, though going slowly.

“I need,” he murmured, stretching, “to get myself some wings. Until then …” He finished, hopped from foot to foot, grinned. “Until then I have no wish to waste time falling off that wretched beast.” He started to jog after Jay, then stopped at a thought. He asked Ro, hopefully, “Take mine?” He gave a pleading little smile and put his hands together in supplication. “If you’re headed to the stables already, and all. ‘twould be curst convenient!”

And if she does not, surely Wildfire would come to no harm left on a hitching post a little while longer, Burns thought as he started to run. Unless being left in tack for an extra half-hour is dread lethal for horses, which seems less than likely.

Jay was riding slowly enough that it wouldn’t have been overly hard to catch up to him walking, but Burns liked to run; he’d done little else in the years between the fire and now. It would have been entertaining to startle the Harlequin Knight, who, in Burns’s opinion, could certainly use some startling … but there was something about not coming up to horses from behind, wasn’t there? And this a rocky path, and all. So he slowed some as he neared, and sidled carefully to the side a little just in case.

Once he’d caught up he launched cheerfully into talking, with no noticeable pause or shortness of breath. He was half-hoping that this would be disconcerting, suddenly appearing beside him like this. “A sorceress, eh?” he said conversationally. “Tricksome things, them. Should at least prove to be interesting! Must be a fairly powerful one, this one, seein’ as how everyone’s all dazed.” He paused. “I wonder if that’s what’s odd with the physician? Seems more’n likely, doesn’t it? Him being in her thrall.” He scratched the back of his head and grinned. “Might be tricksome himself. Here’s hoping Sarn doesn’t reach there too long ‘fore us, hey?”

[Strife]

Blacktail detached his gaze from the clouds as he heard the knight girl, whom Jay identified as Tamia, approach him.

"Hullo again. Hope you don't mind..." Tamia gently rested the back of her hand on his forehead. "But I know a bit of medicine. I might be able to help a little more than the last guy did."

Blacktail twitched a smidgen upon feeling the hand on his brow, but forced himself to lay back and relax. He needed to clear his mind and make space for any piece of memory that he might stumble across... especially if it would help him discover how he ended up like this.

The so-called smith of the Color Guard cleared his throat. Time for questions.

"Tamia, I'm guessing?" He paused briefly. "What do you remember about me? What was I doing when we last met?"

Blacktail kept himself relaxed, unaware of the fact that most of the other knights had already departed, spreading themselves out to investigate the issue more efficiently.

[Shadaras]

“A sorceress, eh?”

Jay resisted the urge to nudge Snowfall to a pace quick enough to lose Burns. Even so, he sped up until the thief had to move at a quick trot to keep up. The Harlequin Knight eyed the thief, who was talking easily and without pause, almost hoping that the older man would trip and fall, anything to break his cheer and poise. But alas, it was not to be. Even as Jay mentally sighed over this sad fact, he listened to Burns’s chatter. When at last the thief stopped, he said, “If the sorceress wasn’t powerful, we wouldn’t have been sent.”

Not that he was entirely sure what the purpose of the Color Guard was, other than to be an eclectic collection of quasi-knightly people. Some barely had any training, some were pulled from the ranks of other disciplines, and few had ever gone through the traditional system of squiring that most knights of the kingdom had. Jay shook his head slightly, then continued speaking. “If the physician is in thrall, then I doubt he will be much of a challenge. Assuming, of course, the sorceress can direct her power through him, which I highly doubt.” If she could, though – Jay paled slightly, and started riding faster. Having a knight of the Color Guard in the power of a sorceress would be a very bad thing indeed. The Crown had a connection to the Color Guard, and if that was ever to be used against them, the Crown, and thus the Kingdom, would be in deep trouble.

Fortunately for Jay’s worries, the golden wings of the Gold Knight shone as Sarn dove to the ground only a handful of turns ahead of where thief and knight traveled. They entered earshot just as the physician overcame his nervous fear and asked Sarn, “Questions about what, sir?” His hands trembled. “I can think of little I have knowledge of that knights as travelled as you would not.”

“Such as, perhaps, why you left our fellow back at the mines without doing much of anything for him.” Jay kept his voice light and his face friendly as he came up behind the physician. Still, the man jumped and spun to face him. “Unless you have a patient you absolutely must tend, back at the town? Even so, I cannot see why you would not have mentioned it.”

The physician managed a sickly smile. “I, ah, couldn’t...” he fumbled over his words. “I received a summons that I could not refuse.”

Jay raised his eyebrows. “Really, now.”

“Yes, sir.” The old man’s eyes darted around, looking for a means of escape. “Please, sir, may I go?”

Jay shook his head slowly. “What do you say, my friends?” he asked, looking at both Gold Knight and the thief beside him. “Shall we let him go, or are there yet questions for Dr. Goodfellow here?”

[Deleted]

This was actually quite enjoyable from Sarn’s point of view. Although he could be unfriendly and mildly intimidating, the Harlequin Knight had the ability to be very polite, but so very hostile and threatening. Sarn couldn’t help but admire the way the physician trembled before him like no one had ever trembled before Sarn. There was an odd kind of power to it that he enjoy-

“No!” he thought to himself. This was not a knightly thing to be thinking. He swore an oath for justice and he would keep it till his dying day. He tried t think of something else and settled on a slight pang that Lady Tamia had not hurried down the mountain with the two men. Lord Jay spoke again.

“What do you say, my friends? Shall we let him go, or are there yet questions for Dr. Goodfellow here?”

Somewhere during the course of his babblings, the physician had dropped something onto the forest flood. Sarn bent and picked it up, eyed it cautiously and then straightened, placing a hand on the old man’s shoulder to turn him around.

“What’s this, then?” he asked, holding up the pack accusingly.

“I ... can’t ... I ...” the man stuttered pathetically, so much so that Sarn actually took pity on him. The fellow could have a thousand reasons for fleeing Silverkeep that were innocent enough. The Feberi dropped the pack back onto the ground where it made an odd clunking sound, forcing him to raise an eyebrow quizzically.

“And what was that, good sir? And the box in your hands, too. That little blue box you’ve been trying to conceal from me since the moment I caught you. Tell us are you the doctor or the coward? ... Or something else.”

[Rikku]

Jay seemed to be trying to speed his horse up in an effort to get away without actually openly doing so, or maybe just make him have to strive to keep up. Burns couldn’t suppress a grin at that.

Then the Harlequin raised the possibility of the sorceress directing her power through the physician, which was … well, chilling. Enough so to make the grin disappear. If that sorceress had power enough to addle the wits of so many men, there could be little doubt that she had plenty to spare to throw at a few nosy Knights, and even less doubt that she’d be willing to. And most of them couldn’t deal with magic, could they? Burns couldn’t, in any case - whenever he'd had to deal with magic or magical items it had ended poorly - and did not like the idea of trying, and liked even less the idea of Sarn facing that alone.

But there were his wings flashing just ahead, and Burns was suddenly glad that Jay had sped his horse.

“Questions about what, sir?” asked the physician. He looked nervous, even scared. “I can think of little I have knowledge of that knights as travelled as you would not.”

Jay stepped forward, and Burns grimaced. Despite the fact that he'd already proved his competence and then some, Burns was still half-expecting him to blunder through interrogations the way knights in the stories always did.

He didn’t.

In fact he handled the situation as well as Burns would’ve, or maybe better – he’d never really gotten the hang of that kind of cheerful menace - and Burns’s respect for him went up several notches, to the extent that when Jay turned to them to ask their opinions Burns stayed silent a moment or two, wondering where he wanted to go with this. They could … what, use this man to find the sorceress? That would be quick and neat, though risky.

The old man had dropped something as he talked – a pack – and Sarn picked it up, asking the man, “What’s this, then?”

The man stuttered. Sarn seemed to take pity on him, dropping the pack. Which clinked. Sarn raised an eyebrow. “And what was that, good sir? And the box in your hands, too. That little blue box you’ve been trying to conceal from me since the moment I caught you. Tell us are you the doctor or the coward? ... Or something else.”

Ah. Items. Now here was where Burns could prove his use. He could pick the man’s pocket without him even giving notice to it, or rifle through that pack quick as thinking; and then plenty of time to look at whatever it was the physician was hiding, free of whatever lies he would spill about them.

Burns took a step forward, smooth and silent, while the physician – Renkins? – was still utterly focused on Sarn. He readied –

Except wait.

The items were probably magicked, or some such thing.

Never mind.

[Draco]

Dragus looks around from playing with the kids, several of them all ready loosing interest and running off. He excuses himself from the remainder and walks back over to where Blacktail and Tamia are located.

"Did I miss my chance to give the others info?"

He looks around at how most of the others were now gone.

[Shadaras]

The Golden Knight picked up the physician’s pack. Things shifted in it, resettling as the ground dropped away. Jay watched, still mounted, as Sarn spun the man and asked him about the pack. When the old man just stuttered incoherently, Jay started wondering if they were being unfair to him; his fear was perfectly natural after being beset like this. But then the pack clunked to the ground and Sarn demanded “And what was that, good sir? And the box in your hands, too. That little blue box you’ve been trying to conceal from me since the moment I caught you. Tell us are you the doctor or the coward? ... Or something else.”

Good question. Jay smiled, behind the man’s back. Beside him, he saw Burns take a step forward, and then stop. Thinking better of his thiefly ways, perhaps? Jay hoped so. If he was, that meant the thief might have some chance of reformation, unlikely as he thought it to be.

The physician shook under Sarn’s hand, and Jay could hear him trying to form words. At last, he managed a semi-coherent sentence: “I— a coward— I- I can’t—” He swallowed. “Please, will you let me continue on my way?”

Jay frowned at that. His words came more smoothly and clearly, not stuttered and full of fear. There was something different to the tone. Jay dismounted, trusting Snowfall’s training to keep her still, and moved to the side until he could see the old man’s face.

The physician wrenched away from Sarn’s hand and turned to face the Harlequin Knight as he walked. “Sir, I fear this is nothing but a misunderstanding.” Smooth syllables, coming cleanly out with the air of a courtier, not a village medicine man. “I had a summons from the castle. A mage resides there, you know, a telepath. She left me no time to explain the summons; I simply had to come as quickly as I could to yonder castle.”

“A telepath powerful enough to compel you lives here and yet we received no magical summons for our mission here?” Jay shook his head. “I’m sorry. I find that highly doubtful.”

Old hands, bony and spotted with age and odd potions, clutched at the blue box. “Can’t you see the truth when it’s right in front of you?” he hissed. Soft blue light began to shine from the box. “Or are you too blind, Sir Jacob Fletcher, to understand the truth?”

“Why do you know my name?” Jay demanded, grabbing for the physician’s shirt. “Who are you?”

Laughter and a flash of bright light and a rush of wind beat Jay’s hand to the man. Jay stumbled forward into the now-vacant space, not quite off-balance enough to fall (and too cognizant of his dignity and Burns’s likely reaction), but close. When he straightened, finger-combing pale-blond hair back into a semblance of order, he turned towards the castle. “I don’t quite know what just happened,” he said, “but I think I know where we’ll find out.” He pointed at Silverkeep itself, bright gray on dark. “Let’s go meet the Silverkeep Sorceress, shall we?”

[Deleted]

((Best I could come up with without godmoding you lot, sorry. Feel free to timeskip us.))

The flimsy Feberi was already in the air by the time the Harlequin Knight finished his u3stion, sharp eyes scanning the strangely dark grey stone of Silverkeep. No magic or magics unknown would ever best him … but the sorceress did sound … powerful … and evil, too. Perhaps it was better to stay with the others rather than speed on ahead. He tilted his wings to catch an air current and looked down. 30 or so feet below him, the Lord and the squire looked back up at him.

“I’ll stay up here and keep an eye out for anyone else,” he called, then flashed a smile and turned his attention to the task at hand. Some niggling thought made him wonder why, if she was so powerful, this sorceress woman couldn’t stay hidden. But then again, neither could Sarn, and after all, with looks like his, why would he even want to! He smiled to himself.

***

Renkin fell into a crumpled heap and shuddered violently. He felt the magical presence leave him, but the overwhelming wave of sickness remained. He groaned, twitched, rolled over and vomited. A deep female voice, that of his Mistress, huffed coldly at him.

“How pathetic. Always I am given the weakest of men to serve me. You can’t even stand to be near my power!”

The onetime physician gulped and curled up tighter next to his little pool of sick. The cold marble floor was as a warm bed compared to the Sorceress’ disdain.

“However … you have been of some use to me this day. Perhaps I shall spare you after all, you impotent old fool. Yes, today will be a good day.”

[Rikku]

The physician started acting strange – there was confidence in his voice, for starters, and the voice itself seemed different, somehow. And he knew Jay’s name, which was worrying. And he seemed to be trying fairly blatantly to lure them to the Keep, which was more worrying still. And the way he suddenly disappeared, while not exactly worrying, wasn’t exactly reassuring, either.

Renkin’s vanishment made Jay stumble, nearly fall. Burns knew - entertaining as it was to tease the Harlequin – that he shouldn’t irk him needlessly, that mocking your comrades was not a Knightly thing to do. He limited himself to a soft chuckle, but that burst into a full laugh more or less involuntarily when the first thing Jay did after he’d steadied himself was fix his hair.

… Well. It was funny.

Anyway. He should probably be paying attention.

“…but I think I know where we’ll find out,” Jay was saying, and he pointed at Silverkeep. “Let’s go meet the Silverkeep Sorceress, shall we?”

As Sarn leapt into the air, wings whipping up wind, Burns let his grin widen into something fierce and predatory. “Finally!"

Sarn called down, voice muffled by the height, “I’ll stay up here and keep an eye out for anyone else,” and Burns nodded, feeling a pang of unease. Him and Jay, alone against some powerful mage? But Sarn would send along any others of their number who passed. All the same …

“You know this is a trap, yeah?” he said, glancing at Jay. “I’d be mighty worried if you didn’t. Thought it best to check.”

[Shadaras]

((And here we go. =D))


Sarn took to the air in a rush of wings. The sound almost covered Burns’s laughter, but the sound made it through. Jay turned and looked at the thief. The look was one he tended to give particularly idiotic students, or to younger siblings. The quelling look worked equally well on both. He doubted it would be so effective against Burns; he had lived among rats, and that likely gave him a thicker skin than most. Still, Jay hoped his look had some effect on the man.

The result, it seemed, was a predatory grin that turned Jay’s look into a scowl. He stalked back to Snowfire and mounted, while Burns said “You know this is a trap, yeah? I’d be mighty worried if you didn’t. Thought it best to check.”

“If I were not aware,” Jay said, clipping his words rather more than necessary, “would I be riding there?” He started riding down the path to Silverkeep, as quickly as he thought Burns could easily keep up with. “I make traps. It’s not hard to recognize a lure.” He paused, then added, in a softer voice, “It’s harder to ignore them.”

He rode down the path as fast as he dared; he didn’t want to lose Burns, irritating as the man could be. As they approached the castle, Jay found his hand straying to the bow and quiver strapped to his saddle more and more often. The warm wood was a comfort, as he rode through stone and twisted trees. The walls of Silverkeep rose up above them as they made their way up the switchbacks leading to the castle gates. Jay was walking, now, not wanting to force Snowfall to carry him up switchbacks if she didn’t need to.

Besides, he thought, glancing up at Sarn’s golden wings high above, they didn’t have any need to hurry.

Yet.

[Deleted]

Twang

“Fiend!”

Twang … twang …

Something long, hard and made of wood tipped with a barbed metal point arched through the air and thudded comfortably into Sarn’s wing. He cringed as the barb tore flesh and feathers with every wing beat. He had to make a safe landing, but there were trees and huge chunks of masonry everywhere. Another arrow whizzed past his head, and a third scraped his leg. The archers on the walls were hardly worthy of the title.

His hand shaking slightly, Sarn reached to his shoulder and pulled an arrow from his quiver. The golden fletch tickled his cheek as he drew back the strong, sighting carefully down the shaft. He let the arrow fly and a moment later, one of the four archers on the wall toppled over. Quickly, he fitted and loosed another two arrows. One of them disabled a second archer, but Sarn didn’t have time to see the success of his third shot.

White hot pain filled his vision.

Pain. I’m seeing pain.

He looked down and saw a quivering shaft protruding from his lower chest.

Oh cra-

Blackness took him. He fell.

[Shadaras]

((Rikku-dear let me write Burns. :3 And said that this was good, so. ^_^))

Those golden wings in the sky fluttered and folded. For a moment, Jay thought the Feberi was going into a dive. Then, when Sarn didn’t pull out soon, and after his mind caught up with the perfectly rational thought of ‘Why would he be diving towards the ground that far from the castle?’, Jay cursed and watched, helpless, as the Golden Knight plummeted to the ground.

“Come on,” he growled, starting to run up the switchbacks. They were almost at the end of the seemingly endless turns; if he could just crest the rise, then he could take Snowfall and ride to Sarn and maybe get there before whoever had downed his fellow Knight did. Hopefully—

“Any particular reason for running now?” Burns’s voice, eternally cheerful, brought Jay back to earth, metaphorically. “You can’t help Sarn if they’re out to get him.”

Jay slowed down, tightened his grip on Snowfall’s reins, and tried not to think of all the things he wished to visit upon Burns. It wasn’t that someone was pointing out where his thinking was flawed; it was that Burns was pointing out said flaws. “Perhaps,” he said levelly, “if I didn’t need to watch you, I would be close enough to help him.” Probably untrue, but it felt nice to get a barb back at the thief.

Burns didn’t reply until they reached the end of the switchbacks and the beginning of the relatively level stretch leading to Silverkeep itself. Then he said, “I’m not slowing you down.”

“But if you weren’t here, then I could’ve ridden more quickly overall.”

“On that thing?”

“Snowfall’s not a thing. She’s a horse.”

“Same idea.”

Jay sighed and stopped talking. Aside from the conversation now being nonsensical, he was losing the argument. That shouldn’t be happening. Especially not to Burns. As they continued, mostly in blessed silence (because Jay had succeeded in ignoring Burns into silence earlier), Jay determinedly avoided the little voice in his head saying that he was being far more concerned about his status relative to a thieving squire than he reasonably should be.

Said state of mild irritation, broken by bouts of deeper irritation from Burns deciding once more to try and talk to Jay, lasted until they reached the gates of Silverkeep.

Seeing Silverkeep from a distance was one thing. Seeing the walls in front of your face, nearing, Jay guessed, a hundred feet tall and probably at least five feet thick, was quite another. The ready availability of stone and metal in the area meant that Silverkeep was a true fortress, one of the few castles designed for siege. It just meant Jay hoped never to need to be nearby when the gates were closed and locked shut.

Aside from the large gate designed for armies (currently closed), there was a smaller portcullis with a guardpost next to it marked by an arrow slot. Jay proceeded directly to the guardpost and, without needing much more evidence of who he was than the King’s Crest, was allowed in through the tunnel. Burns followed close behind, though Jay noted he was very carefully staying a few feet from Snowfall.

On the other side of the tunnel, Silverkeep looked like any other keep: a castle with support structures built all around it. In this case, the ‘all around’ included buildings carved into the rock of the mountains. Jay scowled. Perfect fortresses. Perfect way to get secret passages everywhere. Perfect place to hide. Behind him, Jay heard the portcullises of the passage grate closed. And now they were shut in. Jay sighed in disgust and started towards the castle proper. This was going to be a horror. He just hoped that they’d be able to find someone with an idea of where to start looking for Sarn, the sorceress, or both.

[Strife]

Blacktail hadn't moved much from his spot since the other knights left. He contentedly remained in place while Tamia fixed up a medicinal cure for him. Interestingly enough, his headache had been fading over the past half an hour or so, and the pains were nearly gone. Despite this, he still had difficulty standing up, as his head was not the only body part that succumbed to the massive weight of the rocks in the cavern.

Amidst the steady recovery of his senses, Blacktail noticed a small patch of water in the distance, and was instantly reminded of the ocean he saw before his bout of amnesia. His mind then shifted to the stone buildings hovering at the edge of his memory bank. Ocean. Building. Was the building next to the ocean? What did it have to do with him ending up in the middle of a collapsed mine with oversized peasant's clothing?

As he attempted to piece together these memories, he observed a villager walk over to the small pool of water with a wooden bucket, which was filled to the brim with water she had used to wash clothing. She promptly spilled the contents of the bucket into the pool.

Oddly enough, something about the bucket water splashing into the pool made Blacktail's mind stir. Like a key, the vision unlocked a piece of his memory that made everything fall into place.

The stone building was Silverkeep. He had escaped through an underground passage that led him to one of the mines outside town. But why was it so easy for him to escape? And what did they want with an old knight of the Color Guard anyway?

Then it dawned on him. The water... He was bait.

"Oh no..." said Blacktail, his voice visibly shaken. "No! It's a trap!"

Without hesitation, the Indigo Knight forced himself off the ground and darted towards the entrance to the mines. No more than five strides were taken before he stumbled and fell to the ground, clenching his teeth from the pain in his joints. No more than a second passed, and he forced himself back up out of sheer adrenaline.

He had to find a way back to Silverkeep to warn his brothers in arms, and the fastest way on foot was through the mines.

[Draco]

Dragus turns his head to look at Tamia.

"I don't think it's a good idea to let him run off like that."

And with that he goes after Blacktail.

"Wait! It's not safe, the mine collapsed last time you were in it, remember! Not to mention you're hurt."

He watches as Blacktail falls down, then forces himself back up.

"What kind of trap is going on? We can help."