Foxhunt Who: Azabeth Kordura, Dolain's Asher's gang, the cavalry Group 3 Where: RANDOM ENCOUNTER LAND. On the road a day north of the Brecillian Forest When: 9:45, Midday 23 Molioris Summary: Asher has tracked down the wanted murderess, Azabeth Kordura, meaning to collect on the juicy bounty on her head.... but Az isn't going down without a fight. Rating: M for violence and coarse language, and W for WALL OF TEXT.
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"HOW every hope of ours is raised in vain, How spoiled the plans we laid so fair and well, How ignorance throughout the earth doth reign, Death, who is mistress of us all, can tell. In song and dance and jest some pass their days, Some vow their talents unto gentle arts, Some hold the world in scorn and all its ways. Some hide the impulses that move their hearts. Vain thoughts and wishes, cares of every kind Greatly upon this erring earth prevail In various presence after nature’s lore; Fortune doth fashion with inconstant mind, All things are transient here below and frail. Death only standeth fast for evermore." - Lorenzo de' Medici, 1448.
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Imagine, for a moment, a long, lonesome road: red dust and scattered ill-fitting cobblestones, snaking across an emerald plain shimmering in summertime heat - the sea is little more than a distant memory on the wind, knowledge rather than sight or sound or scent, the dryness of the highway sticking to the back of your throat, clogging your eyes and nose. Now, paint in your mind to the south a vast wall of forest; the trees spring up from the ground as if a line drawn in sandy earth, and where the road veers to the west, respecting their boundary, there pools travellers like water eddying in the curve of a stream, unwilling to turn back yet reluctant to continue on. There those peoples stray, and some stay - and where they stay, they build.
Thus came to be the three-story inn surrounded by a cluster of huddled red buildings, The Chimera Among The Roses, where nothing is as it seems, and everything - within reason - is permitted.
She sat at a corner table with her cloak drawn up over her head, and shuffled her cards, endlessly and without surcease.
The noise was soothing, the quiet shff shff as the ancient gilded edges slid against one another; the motions were what soothed her more, however, the familiar patterns as she cut the deck and dealt the cards and gathered them together again, her clever fingertips automatically squaring the corners, as she had done thousands of times before. No one had yet approached her for a game, but that was quite fine by her, because she was using the time to settle her nerves and case the tavern-room of the inn. Shuffle, cut, deal, gather, shuffle. She made patterns by overlapping the golden edges, a snake, then a staircase or perhaps a flower, before erasing the design and beginning again, all the while letting her eyes take in the atmosphere, the slow shift of people coming and going, moving from the bar to the trestle-tables and back again.
There were several excellent targets at the bar, big broad-backed men who wore strength like coats, intermixed with merchants and traders and one very ostentatious Antivan elf who reeked of good leather and bad taste. Azabeth watched them for what felt like forever, waiting for the stillness that Black Matthew had taught her to overtake her, but no matter how long she shuffled and waited, the peace never came, that clarity of mind that allowed her to pick pockets and rook marks like breathing. The Antivan laughed prettily at some barmaid's jest and surrounded himself with a court of admirers, passing out drinks indiscriminately to men and women alike, and the working men huddled into their cups and prayed the Antivan would ignore them. The barmaids were tired, the proprietor distracted, and there was not so much as a speck of authority within sight; the scene was, all in all, perfection and ripe for a reaping, but no matter how many times Azabeth intended to stow her gilded cards and ghost through the crowd, she couldn't bring herself to do it.
It was rather the same feeling she'd had as a child, before a problem stallion broke loose in the stableyard, and anyone not fast enough or clever enough to reach the hayloft was trampled underfoot.
Her hands tremored at the thought, a rarity in itself, for Azabeth Kordura was famed for nothing if not her sure fingers - and from her deck fell a single card to the table, hitting corner first before settling onto its faded back, the familiar painted face of the Knight of Swords staring up at her with his too-vivid wolf's eyes and his flaming Templar blade.... but he was in reverse position.
The meaning came unbidden to the tip of her tongue: Tyranny, a troublemaker, a crafty and secretive person. Was it a warning? Azabeth was unsure, and she was ever loath to read the cards for herself, for on that path lay only madness - but the cards had an uncanny way of providing eerie, often timely insight.
She felt a sudden pang of longing for the comforting walls of Denerim, streets she knew and safehouses only she could reach. She missed Lalin with such fierceness that it startled even her, missed Valeré with such keenness that she felt like the wound of her murder might never heal - missed Black Matthew and his drawling wit, missed even, for a split second, such souls lost to her as Lelahai and Conlan and even Dolain. She knew her place among those folk, and even if she was unwelcome, fought constantly with them, made snide remarks and lashed out with all her acerbic vocabulary, they were yet more familiar than this bar at the end of her world, the Chimera Among The Roses.
Her eyes tracked back to the upside-down face of the Knight of Swords from where they had strayed to one side, and she realized all at once that the sound in the tavern had stopped.
Bootsteps, slow and purposefully heavy, and Azabeth dared to look up at their source from beneath her cloak; even the Antivan had stopped his jolly flirting with everyone around him, a sudden deadly seriousness settled over him like a mantle, watching another cloaked figure approach the fortune-teller in the corner. The cloth-shrouded shape tugged at Azabeth's memory even as her sense of danger was swiftly mounting, blue-green eyes noting with quiet panic the attentions of the broad-backed workers and one of the barmaids focused sharply upon her.
She had the wit to put a palm over the Knight of Swords before the figure approaching her pushed back the hood of his cloak, and Azabeth's unbelieving stare was met with the all-too-familiar face of a tanned and somewhat handsome elf - or at least, he would have been handsome, if not for the sly and smug expression twisting the lower half of his face.
"Hello, Azabeth," said Asher.
Azabeth exploded into movement, and the bar erupted into chaos.
Men boiled out of their seats, the entrances obstructed by broad sets of shoulders, the bar and stairs blockaded. The Antivan rose fluidly, and Az heard more than saw the a flash of steel, an attack from the side - she dove, past him, past Asher, tucked herself into a ball and jumped shoulder-first, tumbling, agile and desperate -
- the Chimera had boasted a lovely picture window with a view of the road, but no longer so, glass shattering and showering around her, cloth snagging on the shards and impeding her way as cries went up behind her as she hit the ground unsteadily and rolled to her feet -
- the cloak was a lost cause and an impediment to her escape in any case; she shimmied out of it and ran pell-mell, cards tucked safely away, red hair streaming behind her like a banner as she crossed the cobblestones of the inn-yard to make for the dust-covered highway, air shimmering in the heat. Blood thundered in her ears and her heart thudded in her throat, panic whirled across her mind and fought her for control. Panic serves no one but the enemy, the voice of Black Matthew whispered across her roiling mind, but panic was all she could grasp for long, precious seconds -
Where had they come from? Denerim, of course, snarked Lelahai from the back of Azabeth's brain, but how had they found her so far south? A bounty hunter she had expected, and all who had come across her thusfar she had outwitted; Dolain's gang should have had no clue where to find her, nevermind lay a trap for her, so far away from their home streets.
But did it really matter how they had come? She was running, but had nowhere to hide. The trees where she might have found cover enough to lose pursuit were in completely the opposite direction, and the wide open expanse of the Bannorn lay before her even if she had the will to throw herself from the road. A glance backwards over her shoulder made her heart sink; somehow, somewhere, the gang had procured a half-dozen horses, and though freeing them of the stable had given her a head-start, they were steadily gaining, pushing their mounts to a brisk clip at best.
Azabeth couldn't outrun a horse, and if Asher were behind her, then surely Dolain lay somewhere ahead, waiting in ambush. But, breathing hard, lungs and legs burning, she had a few more cards yet to play.
Pray Fate gave her the chance to play them.
Asher and his minions caught up to her before long, and with a blow to the back - a quarterstaff? A club? Some kind of stout stick, for if it had been a blade she would have been cut down - she tumbled into the dust with a yelp, half the mounts thundering past, the rest coming to a careful stop, a ring of horseflesh that might as well have been a stone wall. Az managed to come to her knees in the dust, both arms cradling her belly, halfway doubled-over and her eyes burning as much as her chest and limbs were. Asher clapped his hands from atop his palomino, a mockery of applause.
"Well done, Azabeth!" he said, smiling maliciously, entirely too assured of his own cleverness. How she yearned to take him down a peg. "Futile, of course, but you redheads are always so feisty.... so entirely predictable."
"Spare me your attempts at polish," Az spat into the dust, in between hard, ragged breaths. "I know you for the street urchin you are. Where's Dolain?"
Asher had a good pokerface, but Matt's was better - dark red crept under his tanned cheekbones, his dark eyes flashing with a dangerous temper. Good, thought Azabeth, vindictively. Get angry. The subject of Dolain appeared to be a tender thing, and one she planned to hammer on as hard as possible. "I don't know where he is, and I don't really care. This is my operation."
A bark of sharp laughter escaped her, her lips curled back in a rictus grin, shoulders trembling under tension. "You couldn't plot your way out of a wet paper bag, Asher. I'll ask again. Where's that snake, Dolain? I know he's here somewhere." She made as if to attempt to rise, but the motion was cut short, her legs not responding to her wishes. "He wouldn't miss this for the world."
The flush of anger on Asher's face darkened, and he bared his teeth like a dog snarling at a wild animal. That's right, she taunted silently, grinning with her own brand of desperate malice. Just because the hound flushes the fox doesn't make him any less of a mutt. "He's no longer a part of my gang, so he'll have to miss it when I personally throw you before the Arlessa bound in a sack. Federico," Asher's gaze cut sideways to the Antivan on a barrel-chested roan, as the knowledge coursed over Azabeth like a bucket of cold water, "be sure she's still recognizable when you're done with her. The bounty's worth triple if we bring her in alive."
The gang had mutinied. The possibility had never been on Azabeth's mind, but it opened up boundless opportunities, angles of attack and retreat. Dolain had been the heart of his gang for as long as anyone could remember, and though she hated the man with the fiery passion of a thousand intensely burning suns, even Az could (grudgingly) admit that he was a decent planner, charismatic to a certain point, and calm whilst under fire. Asher, his second, was none of these things - and while Dolain would have had insurance lying up the road in case the slippery Kordura escaped the first attempt at capture, Asher was arrogant enough to put all his eggs in one basket, committing all his assets to the first assault.
The Antivan, Federico, slid gracefully from the saddle to the road, two of Dolain's gang following the movements. Azabeth knew in one perfect crystalline moment what she had to do; the thugs approached her one to each side, bootsteps heavy, movements clunky where the Antivan was as sinuously graceful as smoke on a breeze, pacing around to her exposed back. Azabeth huddled, bent double, a scarlet veil of hair for her face and her hands hidden at opposing hips -
"Seems your luck's run out, Kordura," smiled Asher, and he made a throat-cut gesture across his own neck.
Sometimes, the spectre of Black Matthew said from the back of Azabeth's mind, his dark eyes hollow and haunted over a mug of cider left to go cold, you do what you must in order to survive.
Az was not a killer, not by nature or even by training. She had killed, yes, but even that had been in defense of her life and more accident than intent. Now, she made the choice, because in Asher's face she saw two options: live on her knees, or die standing.
The fox had nowhere left to run, and now Asher would see how ferociously such a beast could fight when cornered.
The minions moved to grasp her by the arms or shoulders, but Az was not so easily caught, twisting out of range of one and coming up double-daggers at the other - one backhanded blade landed in his gut, the other spearing under his chin and sinking into his throat, a flood of scalding-hot blood boiling over her hand, and while a part of her recoiled in nauseous horror, that was not the part that currently had control. When her hands ripped the daggers from the man's flesh, acting as if on their own whim and not at all at her command, she felt the spatter of scarlet against her face, freckling her cheeks, staining her clothes. When she turned on the balls of her feet to lash out at the other man from Asher's gang, he was already backing out of the reach of the fox's claws, the Antivan drawing steel and circling, slowly, ever so slowly.
Asher's man tumbled to the road gurgling and dying, red blood seeping into red dust, one arm twitching and the other scrabbling desperately at his gouting throat. No one moved; Azabeth wanted to vomit, the blood on her skin making her flesh crawl, the death of a man weighing like stone on her already pockmarked conscience, but she did not, could not afford it.
"I make my own luck," she hissed out between her teeth, snarling at Asher's blanched countenance as she lunged at his horse. One last throw of the ivory dice of fortune....
.... and with her heart in her throat, Azabeth Kordura was praying that she didn't turn up snake-eyes.
[ JOIN BATTLE ]
[ OKAY SO YEAH I had entirely too much time to work on this starter and it shows. Try not to be slain by the wall of text.
BATTLE STATISTICS: 2x named enemies, yellow rank - Asher (on horseback), Federico (on the ground) 3x unnamed minions, Denerim Gang Members (1 on the ground, 2 on horseback) 3x loose NPC horses
Az is smack in the center of this, attacking Asher, who will shortly stop gawking and try to cut her down. FEEL FREE TO TAKE LIBERTIES AND GENERALLY BE AWESOME with these enemies, as this is meant to be a rescue, not a protracted boss fight. Asher should be allowed to escape unless otherwise decreed by Mouse, but you can kill and then teabag poor, unlucky Federico if you so desire. <3