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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2014 15:31:59 GMT -5
503! “Isengrim is the one who brought all of us together and constructed our culture. If not for him, we would still be living as solitary beasts. That is why he is our king.” Her green eyes shone with admiration.
“And I am the greatest king who ever lived,” Isengrim insisted, gnawing on a bone. He grabbed a Whole Roast Chicken and deposited it in front of Terra and himself, looking at her intently.
Her lips thinned, and she stared back as she reached for a loaf of bread.
He took a deep breath and nudged the meat closer.
Terra slowly and deliberately took a bite of bread, her eyes not leaving his. She was not backing down from this.
His fur began to bristle.
“Sire!” a male Werelupe in the circle suddenly spoke up. “Nusa and I were going to hunt down on Drackonack Ridge today. Would His Lordship be interested in joining us?” The female beside him nodded with a smile.
Isengrim grinned. “Certainly!”
Terra let out the breath she had been holding and gulped down her bite of bread. Maybe he got the hint.
“It would be an honor to have you, lord,” Nusa continued, her tail wagging. “We’ll set out after lunch—“
Suhel suddenly elbowed Isengrim’s arm. “Milord. You have administrative work that needs taking care of.”
Isengrim’s ears flattened and he let out a whine. “But—I have been invited to a hunt—“
She drew herself up and seemed to tower over him, despite being shorter than him by several centimetres. “It is your duty as king to see to these matters.”
He sighed. “You are right. I am sorry, Halon, Nusa. I will have to join you some other time.”
Terra raised an eyebrow at him and snickered. “Are you letting her order you around?”
The king’s nose wrinkled. “No! Suhel is my second, it is her job to remind me of my duties!”
His owner smiled knowingly. “Right.”
At his other side, Suhel leaned over and winked at her.
Terra had begun to worry that she would be stuck with sticky fingers for the rest of the day, but Isengrim showed her to a washroom with pools of clear water where she could clean off after meals. After that, he took her to his war room.
“Every proper king must have a war room,” he insisted as he showed her into a cavern whose walls were covered in charts. Terra recognized them as mostly maps of the entire Meridell region, plus maps of a few surrounding areas, astronomical calendars, and other assorted sundries. A ring of furs lined the perimeter of the cave, and inside was a large, flat space covered in various papers, scrolls, parchments, and bags.
“Have you ever been in a war?” Terra asked.
“Not yet,” Isengrim replied, “but kings have war rooms.” That seemed to settle the matter for him as he sat down cross-legged on a fur rug.
“This looks more like a mailroom,” Terra commented, sitting down beside him. Terra and Isengrim have the best interactions. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2014 15:34:01 GMT -5
xD I love the dynamic between these two.
Eh...I didn't end up with much. I'm gonna focus on planning for now. >>
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2014 15:43:23 GMT -5
Thanks! They are sooooo much fun to write. They're everything I hoped they would be and more. xD
I'm sorry you're having a hard time. :/ Should I give you some space to plan? I appreciate the warring!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 13:54:24 GMT -5
Anyone up for warring today? :3
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 15:01:18 GMT -5
I'm doing Camp NaNo, so I'll need this. How's 4:15 sound?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 15:03:16 GMT -5
Sounds great! How long do you want to go for? I'm up for just about anything. Looks like my schedule's going to be free for most of today.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 15:29:39 GMT -5
...Crud. I got caught up in some April Fool's silliness with a friend and forgot about this. >__> Um. How about 4:35 for 45 minutes?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 15:34:37 GMT -5
Sounds good!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 16:19:26 GMT -5
Okay, so I spent a bit more time planning than writing here. >_> So, uh, I only have 162 words here. But I'm slow, soooo. Anyway, this one's based off some recent events at my old high school. On the 25th of March, thirty-something students at Arlington High School rushed over to the infirmary, arms pressed tightly against their stomachs and skin sticky with sweat. Offering only three beds and two trash bins, the nurse could barely cope with the inundation of the sick. And so thirty-something parents rushed their children either home or (if especially anxious) to the hospital. Attendance in the following week dwindled, with upwards of five-hundred students calling in sick each day. The faculty, too, had suffered a hefty loss. How many had actually fallen ill was anyone’s guess—many had likely stayed home as a precaution.
A few dozen still came, albeit with surgical masks. Among them were Lilah Lieber and Ellie Kirschke-Rosenfeld, co-editors in chief of the school literary magazine. Ugh. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 16:24:18 GMT -5
1,218. Somehow. o-o I'm surprised, too. I think it helps that I have this part pretty well outlined. And Suhel was being hilarious. “You know, runt,” Suhel continued from in front of him. “All sorts of things lurked these tunnels before we cleared them out.”
Her ears were perked and her tail raised and wagging. Pharazon was familiar with this kind of body language from Neopet species like Lupes and Gelerts, and Petpet species like Spardels and Doglefoxes, and he was able to surmise that the Werelupe was feeling playful, yet dominant. That did not bode well for him.
“But,” she continued, “they might still lurk in dark crevices somewhere. Nasty Drackonacks that spit venom. Mutant Symols twice your size. That sort of ilk.” She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him with an impish grin. “Might drag you away while you’re sleeping.”
Pharazon whimpered. “Stop it! It’s bad enough that I’m stuck down here with the likes of you, now you want me to worry about monsters, too?”
Suhel laughed. “Of course! What fun would it be if you weren’t scared?”
“It’s not fun for me,” Pharazon grumbled.
She groaned and waited for him to catch up. “I hope you realize that you’re only being kept safe and taken care of because of the deal my lord made with your owner,” she said a little more curtly. “Be grateful that all we can do to you is mess with your mind.”
“Ugh.” Pharazon’s claws clicked against the cool stone. “But why can’t I stay with Terra?”
“His Lordship doesn’t like you,” Suhel replied frankly. “So he sees no reason to keep you in his presence. Really, I think he was being gracious when he made me look out for you instead of throwing you in our dungeons.” Her eyes glittered. “Unless you’d prefer that.”
Pharazon folded his arms and hunched his shoulders. “Hmph.” This was the most aggravating day of his life, worse than when Blynn had decided to build a castle using every book in their library. It took him a week to get them all organized again.
They reached a bridge, and Suhel ushered him forward. For someone with wings as Pharazon had, heights held no terror. No, it was the darkness that got to him most, and he tried not to look down as he was marched over the abyss. How lucky Terra was, he thought. She never seemed to be afraid of anything. She had always been his rock, his voice of calm when he spiraled into paranoia. Usually that was a good thing.
Now, though, was the time in his life when he needed her most, and she kept letting him down in that regard. She seemed to be handling this quite well, and for the first time in his life she did not offer him comfort, but advice that would never work. He couldn’t help but be a little bitter.
As they made their way across, from the darkness below echoed a creak and a rustle. Pharazon jumped, his wings throwing out a shower of sparks. “What was that?!”
Suhel folded her hands behind her back and strutted onward. “Oh, probably a Chumablah. They’re known to live in cave systems like this. Claws half a metre long, a razor-sharp beak. Always hungry.” She grinned widely, showing her own long fangs.
Pharazon felt himself growing faint, and he wrung his tail anxiously as he hurried off the bridge. “D-do they ever c-come up here?”
“Oh… sometimes.” Suhel waved him ahead, herding him into another narrow passageway.
Pharazon was glad to be away from the crevice, feeling his heart rate slow down to normal levels. He had just let go of his tail when he felt a claw poke his back.
The Draik screamed at the top of his lungs and jumped in the air, the knucklebones around his neck clattering. He flailed wildly for a moment before collapsing to the ground in a shivering lump. “D-don’t eat me!” he yelped.
From behind him, Suhel laughed, withdrawing her paw. “Aye, you’re a skittish one for sure, runt!”
Pharazon glowered at her and picked himself up, dusting off his scales. He had to be stuck with the one Werelupe who got a kick out of scaring him. Unless they were all like that, which he wouldn’t put past them. Wearily, he started moving down the tunnel again. His wings had not yet recovered from the shock and they twitched erratically, flinging out sparks of magic.
“Stop doing that,” Suhel muttered from behind him.
“What?”
“That… sparkly thing.”
“I can’t help it,” Pharazon complained. “It’s a natural reaction to stress.”
“Well, stop being stressed, then.”
Pharazon blew a small wisp of magic in aggravation. Dealing with Werelupes was like trying to nail jelly to a tree. “Fine, I’ll walk behind you if you don’t want to see it.”
“Sounds good to me.” Suhel sped up her pace, padding ahead of him. “You walk too slow for me anyway, on those runt legs of yours.”
Pharazon hung his head and allowed himself to follow the sound of her footsteps while he wallowed in self-pity. This just wasn’t fair. Terra said Hyren and Blynn would save them. Where were they? How come they had saved Terra last time, and now that he was in distress, no one was there to rescue him? Was he just not that important to them? Was he not even as important to Terra as he used to think?
And he was weak, so weak and ineffectual. If not for him, he thought, she probably would have escaped by now. Instead she was bound here to keep him safe, because he couldn’t even save himself. What use was he to her, to anyone?
With a sigh, he looked up to see why Suhel was being so quiet, and realized that the sound of her footfalls had faded and she was nowhere to be seen. Naturally, panic flooded his system. Had she really grown tired of him and abandoned him? “S-Suhel?” he croaked, dry-mouthed.
As unbearable as being around the Werelupes was, suddenly Pharazon felt like being alone was worse. “Oh no,” he muttered, fear quickening his pace.
A flash of gold on the floor ahead caught the Draik’s attention, and his terror was momentarily replaced by curiosity. It was a pendant in the form of a small gold crescent moon, fixed to a golden chain. “A Lupe Moon Charm,” he breathed. He couldn’t just leave something like this lying around to be trampled on.
As he picked it up, the charm caught the firelight oddly and flashed with a bright white light. Pharazon blinked, and then stared in surprise as he saw an image in the crescent like it was a mirror reflecting things that weren’t really there. It was a young white Lupe wearing spectacles, her white hair done up in a tidy bun. She wore robes of green and gold. And her yellow eyes were staring right at him in confusion.
“… Celice?” Pharazon asked.
Her muzzle opened to reply, but then the light shifted and the image faded, leaving a blank golden surface.
“No!” Pharazon shook the charm, angled it in the light ten different ways, even blew some of his magic on it, but nothing he did made the image return. “Celice! Come back, I need you!”
“What’s the matter, boy?” a kindly voice, rusted with age, asked from behind him. Pharazon is such a whiner.  Did you want to go again? |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 16:25:31 GMT -5
Eh, not right now. ^^; I can do some stuff this evening, though.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 16:29:07 GMT -5
All right. Ooh, yours scared me. xD That kind of thing is not fun.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 16:32:23 GMT -5
Haha, yeah. x3 The good news is that it's supposed to subside in a week or so--not a serious thing, though certainly not the best way to kick off spring.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2014 15:51:25 GMT -5
Anybody up for warring today?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2014 13:03:49 GMT -5
I can war for the next hour or so, if anyone's interested. I'll also be available again a little later today.
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