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Post by Keleero on Mar 30, 2014 22:34:10 GMT 1
((OOC: All people with elves approved, feel free to post here!))
IC:
Keleero gasped and opened his eyes. The dizziness had left him, but things were still wrong. This was not his bed, not his chambers, not his mountain!
Shaking, Keleero sat up and took in the cave around him. It was a fairly small space, with three exits tunneling off into the darkness. But that wasn't what caught his attention. It was the amber colored sphere embedded in the wall right before him. It was glowing, illuminating the space around him and casting shadows shaped liked elves.
What kind of trap is this? Keleero thought. Out loud he said, "H-hello?"
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Post by Badger on Mar 31, 2014 5:23:37 GMT 1
The first thing that hit her, was the cold. Badger remembered she had taken a snooze on the rocks nearby the sea -- in the light and warmth of the sun. This was different. The maiden felt disoriented, maybe it had been due to the dreams -- not the bad ones, where she'd been all alone to face her fears; no, the worst dreams were the ones when she dreamed she had her child and family was around her.
So, she felt out of the world, disoriented groggy as anything.
Then, startled, when a voice called out in the strange room. Badger's eyes shot open, but otherwise she remained still. The voice had certainly not been a troll's voice, also, not human. The fisher doubted that anyone with bad intentions stuttered or said 'hello'.
The maiden frowned, wondering if she should reply or not -- the voice by all means was not familiar to her.
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Post by Keleero on Mar 31, 2014 21:28:07 GMT 1
Keleero was sure he was hearing movement. Was it a challenger? Had he been picked for a challenge? But where was the audience? Where was his weapon? Would rock-shaping be allowed?
He did his best to push aside such thoughts. Whatever his end was to be, he'd do his best to stall it. "Please answer. I can see you moving over there. What's your name?" Always best to stick to the basics. Hopefully it'd be someone he knew well. Or maybe he shouldn't hope such things...
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Post by Panaetha on Mar 31, 2014 23:52:21 GMT 1
Panaetha leaned back in the boughs of her favorite tree, staring up at the stars. "The Great Panther's Eyes shine through the clouds," she murmured, thinking of the story she'd just told Altica. She just sent the young elf to the furs; dawn would arrive soon. "Even the Great Panther's Eyes close," she yawned, rolling onto her side. "Will I sleep up here again? I'm sure the kits will come wake me, if the daystar's setting doesn't." The youngest members of the pride enjoyed scrambling up her tree to pull her tail and tug at her dress. She always acted indignant, but didn't mind their antics...maybe even enjoyed them as much as the kits.
When she awoke, it was dark. Dark...and cold. She shivered and opened her eyes, only to see the Great Panther staring back at her. But these eyes weren't stars...they were yellow, like her own, and much, much too close. She yelped and scrabbled back, hitting the cold and wet stone walls. A strange amber sphere, much too perfectly formed to be natural, gleamed at her, and she noticed other dark shapes in the odd cave. The panther sat and stared at her, licked his face and blinked.
Panaetha looked around with bright, frightened eyes; the only exits tunneled off into darkness, and the ceiling felt ever so low. She felt dizzy and her breathing shallowed. "Where am I? Who's there? How do I get out of here?" Her voice was panicked, but she tried to stay calm; her resolve would not last long, however.
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Post by Badger on Apr 1, 2014 7:33:55 GMT 1
The voice called out again, still sounding nonthreatening. Badger shifted from her place a little, shivering in the coolness -- it felt so much colder in here than in the sun's light.
"I am called Badger." she whispered to the darkness, although her vision was beginning to adjust to the dimness. The maiden hoped her tone was soothing, because she did not want to get stabbed on the back by some scared whoever. She noticed a figure, not troll-like and not human-like, and she sighed a sigh of relief.
"I am an elf, a wolfrider from ... well, a place away from here and--"
Her voice trailed off and the sentence was cut as a third voice joined to the conversation, panicked, shallow, afraid.
Badger was at home in tight spaces, she had had a notorious habit of hiding in setts of her namesake beasts and foxes, no matter how much fleas she caught in doing that. The maiden, however, realized this was not true for everyone else.
She reached out her hand to see, if she could touch someone and to make the space clearer to herself.
~*~
OoC: Feel free to be touched by her, if you want.
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Post by Keleero on Apr 1, 2014 9:06:29 GMT 1
Wolfrider? Such a strange thing! As if those that chose to ride the giant eagels weren't odd enough. And what kind of name was Badger? Whoever the voice's owner was - it was hard to make out more than shadows in the dim light - it had to be one of the mad ones they kept below.
Have they thrown me...? Keleero cut that thought short before it could go any further. The rock felt wrong - he couldn't be inside Steepside Mountain, no matter how deep. "Greetings to you Badger, I am-"
The third voice interrupted him. Poor thing sounded on the edge of kicking and biting her way out of the cave.
"Please speak quietly," Keleero said in the direction of the new voice. "Whoever put us here might come back without us hearing, otherwise. I'm a rockshaper, I'll find us a way out, as long as we don't run into any people with weapons." He was no warrior and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise.
He gasped as a hand brush against his arm. "Who was that?"
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Post by Panaetha on Apr 1, 2014 9:26:03 GMT 1
"P-please get me out of here," Panaetha pleaded, her voice fading. Her breathing was still shallow, and she started shaking, her tail puffed and thumping against the wall. She grabbed hold of the troublesome thing that seemed to have its own mind sometimes and stroked it. The glider leaned further into the wall, trying to feel like the cave had more space than it seemed to. As her cats' eyes adjusted, her breathing slowed a little, but she was still very uncomfortable.
The strange panther near her padded over and headbutted her shoulder with a gentle force and a purr so loud it almost echoed. Automatically, Panaetha put her arms around him and let the great cat's head rest in her lap. Though he was a strange cat, he was the closest thing to the world she knew...the world she was just taken from.
"You're...elves?" she asked, almost timidly. That was a comforting thought, at least; not humans or trolls...yet. Like Keleero, Panaetha knew her mother's mountain well enough to know that this was not it. *There is no way Qellara and the others would ever have such a small room...they would only use it for storage, and there is nothing here.*
"Where are you from? Where are we?" she asked, then had to force herself to stop asking more questions. *Just breathe...if you keep asking questions, you'll work yourself into a panic again.*
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Post by Badger on Apr 1, 2014 9:36:46 GMT 1
"It was ..." Badger began to say, then changing to sending, **It was me, I am moving a little.**
She included only those in the small room, because one of the strangers was probably right about one thing -- they did not know their captors, they did not know if there was weapons or some other threat around.
The wolfrider moved a little, now her vision fully adjusted to the darkness. Not to mention, she smelled an unfamiliar beast, and the smell made the hair at the back of her neck to stand up, lips forming to a natural snarl. Badger missed her wolf-bond, Trotter, hoping that nothing bad had happened to the wolf.
**Rockshaper?** she then questioned, sure that none of her birthtribe had been possessed with such power. **Would you really get us out?**
Badger heard the voice of the third one to be still slightly panicking.
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Post by Keleero on Apr 1, 2014 10:46:57 GMT 1
The sending confirmed that the Badger-elf was no one Keleero knew playing a prank on him. But neither did the sender feel like one of the mad ones.
~**I am Keleero,**~ he lock-sent to the two others whose voices he had heard. He could sense the panic from one of the others - a panic he didn't share but knew all too well. Even in Steepside Mountain there were those who couldn't stand the deeper chambers. ~**I'll get us out!**~
Standing up Keleero came to a heartstopping realization. There was still very little light to see by, but there were more than two shapes in front of him and at least one of them had a tail.
~**There's some sort of beast in here!**~ He backed away until his back hit a wall and instictively began to shape a way out, his hands aglow wihh magic. He tried to keep the fear out of his sending, but it was no use. ~**Does any one have any weapons?!**~
((OOC: I'm going by River Twine meta now and thus Keleero's shaping will make his hands glow, but only elves have the ability to see said glow.))
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Post by Panaetha on Apr 2, 2014 9:17:11 GMT 1
OOC: that's alright, I dig the hand glowy stuff.
~**It's not a beast,**~ Panaetha insisted in closed sending to both elves. ~**It's just a panther...please don't hurt him.**~ She wasn't sure the cat who'd nestled it's head in her lap was male...it was just a feeling. She was glad her own tail was dark, like her; she wouldn't want to be mistaken for a "beast."
The glider fingered the talon-whip coiled at her hip. She wasn't sure yet if she trusted these two yet with her weapon...after all, one of them could be their captor, just putting on an act. A talon-whip would not help much, anyway...if the one called Keleero had magic that could shape rock, that would be much faster than chipping away at it. And she certainly wouldn't let the panther come to any harm. *Why do I feel so strongly about this cat?* she wondered. *It's been a long time since I bonded with one, but I don't remember it being this...quick.*
~**Please,**~ she sent again, trying to keep the fear in her mental voice low, ~**just let me out of here...I need the stars and the sky around me. I won't let this panther harm you, and if anything else tries, I am a healer...**~
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Post by Keleero on Apr 2, 2014 12:34:46 GMT 1
~**A panther?**~ Keleero lock-sent, utterly confused. There had been an image, a sense of the word's meaning, but as Keleero had no true concept of what animals looked like - other than the great eagels and the occassional fur pelt - he got no clear picture of what the panther was. He let his companions know this in a wordless lock-sending.
The rock wall behind Keleero had begun to partly melt away. A cool breeze could be felt from it, stirring the cave's stale air. Light began to seep in. It wasn't a large tunnel, just wide enough to let an elf Keleero's size crawl out, but it was a way out.
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Post by Badger on Apr 3, 2014 19:41:22 GMT 1
Badger grimaced a little, as the word panther was unfamiliar to her. It seemed like the male in the room was just as clueless, so Badger relaxed a little, seeing that she did not mind closed spaces. The rock-shaper had finished the tunnel, and the wolfrider sighed as the breeze of fresh air came in with the small amount of light.
The fisher remembered that the other female had sounded the most panicked, so she made way for the other maiden. It would not be fair to rush out before one so afraid of closed spaces.
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Post by Silverthorn on Apr 4, 2014 15:52:28 GMT 1
In the sudden darkness, Silverthorn scrambled to his feet, the tip of his spear scraping noisily against the constraining rock.
He'd been dozing - the catnap of a hunter on the go, No-Tail curled around him. Wolf and elf were warm together against the cool of early morning. But now he was standing on cold stone, squinting into a faintly lit dark. Behind him, No-Tail scrabbled on the hard ground and his hackles rose. His growl echoed in the cave. The wolfrider chief's pulse hammered in his ears. He had not been sleeping deeply enough to be taken unaware, he knew that. No hunter ever did, since the humans had arrived. Somehow the hollow of the fallen tree was replaced by stone and his companions were gone. A dream? No, too cold to be a dream.
There was a glow ahead of him, though he could not make its source. Not a fire, at least, he was sure of that. Movement, too, flickering shadows. He shook his head, and gave a small gasp as his eyes took in the shapes of those shadows. Elves! Those were elves standing before him, and he knew at once that they were not of his tribe.
He hefted his spear on sharp instinct, the silver of its point gleaming in the faint light. "Who are you? What is this?!"
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Post by Keleero on Apr 4, 2014 18:04:04 GMT 1
Keleero started as the glow of the amber sphere in the rock before him began to pulse. He yelped as what looked to be an elf - well as much as an elf as his two other companions looked - and a wolf appeared right in front of the sphere, mere steps from him.
Had he been a Glider born before Elyro's reign his first instinct would have been to fly away. Instead he kept in place and refused to blink, but lowered his chin in a gesture of submission and respect.
"I am Keleero, he spoke softly, trembling. "Did you bring us here?" Behind them the sphere's pulsing light had died back down to a steady glow.
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Post by Panaetha on Apr 6, 2014 1:38:08 GMT 1
The wall behind Keleero melted away and Panaetha stared at it, hungry to get out. The amber sphere pulsed, distracting her, and another wolf-elf joined them. *This one seems much more aggressive,* she thought, feeling even more backed into a corner as he moved into a defensive stance and demanded to know what happened.
"Let me out!" she exclaimed, unable to resist any longer. She dashed behind Keleero and glided through the opening. The panther stayed behind; his tail puffed, ears back, growling softly in response to the newcomer's wolf. He slowly backed towards the exit, unwilling to turn away from the wolf.
Panaetha emerged from the cave into more darkness, but it was just the darkness of night and the shade of the trees. The moon shone through tall branches, still green despite the snow on the ground. She floated in the air and turned; she'd come out of a sort of cave, and behind them was only a mountain, so tall she couldn't see the peak through the clouds.
**Tailtwitch! Altica!** she sent openly, as far as she could. **Softpaw? Clawmark?** She twisted in the air, hoping to see anyone from the pride come running, listened for any sends...nothing. *Are we on the other side of Mother's mountain?* She sent towards the mountain, **Qellara? Eldris?** Nothing. She flew into the boughs of the nearest tree and curled up in the branches. Where on Abode was she?
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