WHO Evie Frye & Serefin Meleski WHERE Snowglobe!Vallo at the destroyed Frye Train WHEN Jan 19th, morning WHAT Waking up in Snowglobe Vallo, no Jacob, no wine & working together. STATUS Complete! WARNINGS Violence! Lots of it. Blood magic, beheadings, Magic & Assassiny things. It's also really long
Evie hadn’t expected to wake up tilted. She hadn’t expected to be able to easily roll out of bed, cane sword in hand before her feet even touched the ground. It didn’t take a genius to know something was very, very wrong. When her eyes opened, she was crouching slightly, hand braced on the end of the metal frame of her bed.
The train itself - what she could see - was wrecked. Metal was falling down, it was tilted on its edge, and the door in front of her was shoved closed - it looked more like dusk than dawn out the window, a gloomy fog creeping in through the open cracks and broken walls.
“Jacob?” She knew instantly there was no red outside the door, and Evie moved forward and grabbed her hidden blade from the floor before risking the call out. She needed to know if Jacob was buried under some rubble. She yanked on the door, attempting to open it and finding it a tough give, but a little more muscle and it opened. “Jacob!” She activated her Eagle Vision, after nothing but creaking metal surrounding her.
The aura a few carts down wasn’t Jacob - but it was familiar, in that complicated way. Less-so these days, but it did push Evie forward, moving crates and broken chairs out of the way, she paused to take a second to strap the hidden blade on her arm under her sleep shirt. “Serefin, you had better not have drunkenly blown something up on my train.”
Serefin woke up on the floor. Not the first time, but not expected considering the last place he had put his head down was in Jacob's bed beside Jacob. The strange half-light (or was it half-dark?) filtered in, like a creeping sense of dread. That was certainly not how Serefin intended on waking up.
He peeled his body up from the hard, broken slats beneath his cheek. It was Evie's voice calling out for Jacob that spurred him into quicker action. Hand to his face, fingers strangely numb, he expected to see Jacob also on the floor, but the room—if he could even call it that anymore—was missing most of the wall. The sudden remodel looked suspiciously like giant gashes. The bed was gone, furniture splintered and crushed, and the walls suspiciously picked clean of the usual weapons stash.
Most alarmingly, there was no Jacob.
His only security was his codex that seemed to be undisturbed. He grabbed it from the table and moved. As he followed the sound of Evie's voice, Serefin climbed through the cars, which were in equal disarray. A cold knot was settling deep in his gut.
Wrenching the door open with an excessive amount of force, Serefin dropped into an impressively casual stance (or lucky catch from almost falling) blocking the entrance to the collapsed train car he had just exited. Serefin smiled at Evie, to hide the dread. "There seems to be an issue, but I would like to state for the record that I was not the cause of it. Something else dismantled your train, and somehow we survived it."
And then with a more serious expression, he felt the need to add, "Jacob's missing."
Evie ground her teeth together, moving forward carefully to avoid anything else that might fall as she weaved her way down the train cars. It was a total and utter wreck, but she saw Serefin moving towards her, his aura through the slats of wood and metal. That was comforting, at least.
So was seeing him, uninjured and with that dumb smile on his face. Her eyes closed for a brief second, even if she already knew the issue. “I know.” She could see far past the car now, and there was no sign of him or his body. No blood, either, and Evie didn’t have a single injury on herself, for such an impact.
“We somehow managed to sleep - and remain unharmed - during a complete and utter dismantling of the train?” She moved forward, just to get closer to him, for security reasons. “Something isn’t right here. Was Jacob taken? There’s no way someone could have entered the train without us knowing, let alone… did--” A wide sweep to the room finished her sentence for her.
"Your guess is as good as mine, Dame Frye. I do suppose if someone was stupid enough to take Jacob, they would be regretting their decision for the havoc he is causing them. And that is before you and I get there," Serefin said, not backing away when she moved closer. Serefin had done his fair share of hoofing it alone, and he could safely say that doing anything moderately dangerous should always have back up. Although, he was certain he was Evie's reinforcements in this situation.
He turned his attention to a broken slat in the side of the train, which was letting in more of the dense fog and hazy, not-quite-bright light. Serefin slipped over to the unfortunate new 'window' in the car, to survey the damage. He immediately drew back, because certainly he had to be still drunk to explain what he saw.
"Is there a chance, and do entertain me for a moment—" There was an unsettling sound, wood cracking against metal, as if the dismantling of the train wasn't quite done. How sound was the floor they were currently standing on? Structural integrity became a surprisingly sudden priority to Serefin. He waved Evie over to look.
"That it might not be only the train that is experiencing this? I require a second option, because as you are aware, my eye has often deceived me."
“Right,” Evie replied with frustration edging the corners of her voice. Even knowing Jacob wasn’t here, she wanted to look for him, and that itch wasn’t going away. So instead she busied herself going through a nearby broken down desk, hoping to find anything extra they could potentially use. By the end of her rifling, she pulled out a small pistol, two throwing daggers, and a set of Jacob’s least favorite brass knuckles.
She slipped them into a pocket rather than putting them on, before following Serefin over to his vantage point. “What do you mean--” She didn’t quite have enough time to finish the question as she saw what he saw.
The view from the train had previously been busy. The warehouse district of the city, lots of people, buildings, a bustle of town life with a gothic nature she’d always appreciated. That was now… rubbish. Falling apart, quiet, dim and depressing. Evie blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she sucked in and held. “Shit. Shit. How-- Why are we here and fine--” She gave Serefin a quick glance before qualifying the statement with just an edge of gallows humor. “Uninjured, I mean.”
Serefin heard Evie arm herself, knowing he should have been following suit. He thumbed absently at the pages in his codex, wondering if he remembered the order, knew what spells were left sewn into the binding. He had wasted a barrier one to prove a point to Diego last week. Hindsight was brutal.
"I still do not have answers for you. Only guesses, and terrible ones at that, but I am willing to start listing them off in lengthy, nonsensical detail," Serefin said, as Evie sputtered away from the broken slat. So he was not imagining the abysmal horror outside.
"Might I make a suggestion?" Serefin asked, in the way that he absolutely wasn't waiting for permission to speak, simply warning Evie that he was proposing a plan. "We shouldn't stay here. Whatever caused that mess—" Serefin waved absently behind him toward Jacob's room, "might come back. And I do not think that will help our chances in finding Jacob."
He tore a page from his codex, and stretched out a hand to Evie for a dagger. "Tracking spell," he explained, before adding, "does your aura magic sense anything nearby? Perhaps there are others that are fine and uninjured."
“No, we’re not staying,” Evie confirmed. “We need height, I need to see if anything is still standing tall enough so I can get a good look at everything.” She always felt better when she was standing tall at the top of a building, looking over everything around her. But after a glance out the window, Evie wasn’t so sure she was going to get what she wanted.
This was already looking dire, and Serefin holding out his ripped spell page and hand for what she assumed was one of her sharp and pointy objects so he could make himself bleed. She was hesitant, at first, brow furrowed when she knew she could at least short-distance track without Serefin needing to cut himself open.
But a quick glance and extending her vision outside of the train changed that. A red aura was in the distance, moving slowly, and Evie carefully placed the handle of the dagger she’d just pulled out of the desk into Serefin’s hand. Her voice went down to a whisper, just in case. “There’s a hatch on my end of the train, we need to get out of here quietly, what’s out there isn’t friendly.”
"I will leave all the climbing to you. I haven't quite reached that level in my training, not until I have mastered the fence," Serefin said, though he trailed off suddenly at the serious—more than usual—expression that crossed Evie's face. While Serefin had often asked Jacob what he thought of his aura, he had never truly figured out how useful it could be for something universally dangerous lurking nearby.
Serefin stilled, waiting for instruction. The weight of the dagger in his hand caused his fingers to curl around the handle, and in a mostly uncoordinated flourish, slipped the blade-end into the sleeve of his open nightshirt. Ease of access, just a twist of his arm, was better than taking up both hands to make himself bleed. Call it multitasking.
"Just the one?" Serefin asked, shoving the tracking spell page into his pocket, as he slipped past Evie toward the hatch in her room. If they were leaving now he would waste no time in figuring out logistics. Plus, he did not hold the same amount of stealth she did; Serefin would inevitably take longer to creep through the busted cars to get to said hatch.
"No chance that whatever you are seeing shares your aura sensing and knows we are already here? All this whispering will be pointless if we manage to make it outside and it already knows," Serefin said, dodging weak floorboards. He paused once to look back at Evie, "Do we have a plan if we have to engage?"
“Just the one,” she confirmed as she followed after him, and at the same time, Evie quickly and quietly started pulling her throwing daggers out of hidden places in the train. Several in the walls, under wallpaper that was falling away from the train, books that were strewn out on the floor, drawers that were overturned. At the peak, they’d had probably more than a hundred hidden around the entire train.
Evie came away with seven, and didn’t have many places to put them at the moment. She retrieved a book tote (it had been a gift from Jacob, embroidered with I like big books and I cannot lie in the corner, but dirt covered a good portion of it now) and stuffed everything but her cane sword in it as she caught up to Serefin. “It wasn’t facing us, and I have no way of knowing if it saw us until it starts heading our way. We’ll avoid it until we can’t, keep a distance and look for weaknesses before engaging.” She was very matter of fact about it, all business, until she smirked over her shoulder. “You know, once upon a time, our sight was thought to be a gift from the gods. There’s a little irony for you.”
She pulled herself up to the hatch, opened it as quietly as she could and climbed over her dresser and pulled herself up effortlessly. Once up, she leaned down and into the hole, holding out her free hand for Serefin to help him up.
For all of the effort Serefin took to be quiet, it was still surprising when Evie caught up to him with an arsenal of weapons that he had clearly missed along the way. The look he gave her said impressive, followed by amusement at the canvas bag she used to stow them. He should have offered to carry them, but there was some lesson here about keeping a blade on your person that Diego had said once. Maybe. Serefin's "blades" were always so conveniently sewn into the sleeves of his coat.
He watched her climb up and through the hatch, while saying, "You would be killed for saying such things, so you and I have more in common than you probably would like. There is a little irony for you." Serefin took her offered hand and followed her out, less gracefully, but Serefin was not an assassin.
Once outside on the roof of the train, the damage was worse than he expected. The world was worse than he expected. And the ice cold wind picked up unexpectedly, blowing their scent and probably their location right in the direction of whatever that thing was that had popped on Evie's aura sense.
"I do think now would be a good time for us to move," Serefin hissed, watching with controlled horror as the head of the monster tilted sharply to the side, its eyeless face bearing rows of sharp teeth that Serefin was disgusted to find he could see. That was too close.
Evie felt that wind, and it sent a chill up her spine even more effective than the bitter winter air. Words she wanted to shoot back at him dropped like stone instead and Evie went into a defensive stance almost immediately. Her training would always kick in, and she was not a flight part of fight-or-flight.
But they were also in their pajamas, in the middle of winter, surrounded by nothing but buildings half torn down and a dim fog all around them. No Jacob, barely weaponized and frustrated beyond belief, Evie knew it was probably a stupid idea to fight something here now, but also knew that escaping could put them in an even worse situation, not knowing anything about the beast.
She palmed a few throwing daggers, instead of grabbing his hand to run. But she did back up, to put him behind her at least partially so she could get a good look at what he was seeing.
No doubt Serefin heard her abrupt intake of breath, though she hoped the monster didn’t, but it was headed their way, and speeding up fast. Evie let a throwing dagger go with a quick flick of her wrist - it struck true, right in the side of the eyeless monster’s neck, staggering it. “I told you I’ve always purposely missed you.”
But it didn’t stop the beast for long, just a fraction of seconds, before it started forward again with a growl. Evie unsheathed her cane sword quickly, and glanced down at Serefin’s book. “What else do you have in there?”
Serefin should have been inordinately pleased with Evie taking a step in front of him for protection. But he recognized the disservice he had done to her—and Jacob, and his friends—by underplaying his abilities. However, he could still be amazed by her aggressive accuracy with a blade.
"You should hang on to your daggers, Dame Frye. We might need them for closer quarters," Serefin said, instead of answering her other question: what did he have in there? He had already twisted his arm, feeling that sharp familiar sting of blade slicing skin. The blood running down his arm was satisfyingly warm against the cold winter weather. He tore a page, which was almost immediately soaked in his blood—a spark, and then smoke, as the parchment disappeared.
The monster slowed its pace, and if something without eyes could look confused, it did. A dark ashy cloud billowed out of its mouth between the rows of jagged teeth, before white-hot embers, and then spontaneous ignition, as if a bomb had gone off internally, leaving only a charred hole in its chest.
As it dropped to the ground, a few feet from the side of the train car, the creepy fucker let out loud guttural sound. Serefin didn't speak monster, but it sounded suspiciously like help. There was an answering noise, no two. Three. Perhaps even a dozen.
"Do you think it has any friends?" Serefin asked, as their closest ‘friend’ seemed to slowly recover from the internal combustion.
“That’s not what they’re for,” She answered, giving a little wave with the dagger. She had other close range options, though her bombs were suspiciously absent, as were the rest of her throwing knives. But she had her hidden blade, and the cane sword, and had taken out far more enemies than this with lesser.
They hadn’t been quite as ugly, though.
Evie’s eyes widened with the spell, and it was difficult not to look impressed, and eventually gave a little nod of approval to Serefin. She palmed another throwing dagger as soon as she heard the noise, wincing, and looking with her eagle vision to spot. Three, that she could see, all now starting to converge but still had a ways to go. “Three friends, at least. You’d think something so ugly wouldn’t be as popular,”
Before the creepy fucker had a chance to fully stand up, Evie ran towards it and lept, landing on its shoulder and sinking her hidden blade into its collarbone. The monster staggered again, and Evie followed it up with the sharp end of her cane sword to the other side. The dual stabbing took the monster down to the ground, and brought her with it, leaving her back exposed as one of it’s friend’s made an appearance, running out of the mist.
And there she went off the side of the train before Serefin thought better of it. From his vantage point he would be no help jumping down after her, especially not after her brutal one-two with the sword cane. Was everything on Evie's person secretly a blade? Serefin made a note to ask when they weren't slowly being ambushed by something unrecognizable from Vallo or other worlds. He actually preferred corrupted Vultures who moonlighted as eldritch horrors at this point.
Serefin needed to buy them some time. Another page came free from his codex, and the instant his blood touched the worn parchment, it disintegrated between his fingertips; a barrier shot up around the train.
Muscle memory went for another, seeing Evie's exposed back and about to be ambushed by another. Serefin didn't waste time with theatrics; his bloodied fist crackled with red-white lightning, which danced across the air into the head of the second monster, flinging it back, nearly charred beyond recognition.
He was quicker now to join Evie on the ground, but before he could help with their initial attacker, he saw the others peel apart the barrier, with distressing ease. Hm. He would need to rewrite that spell later—whenever there was a later—to include all manner of beasts and not just pesky Kalyazi humans.
Back to back, Serefin sounded breathless for the little physical effort it had taken him to lob the spell. "Don't forget, I have an extra for you." He meant the dagger in his sleeve, but that could also be applied for the extra enemies. "Try beheading? Or at least we could try for the knees and force them to crawl."
“Keep it,” Evie shot back, but he had a good idea, and with considerable force and effort, brought the two blades to meet in the middle. It wasn’t exactly clean, nor all the way through, thanks to the blades being on the shorter end of things, but it did the job as the monster collapsed under her in a slump. It stopped moving, and Evie rotated with Serefin’s back, pulling the blades with her.
“That worked. Do you have a garotte spell, or maybe flying blades, by any chance?” Evie sounded hopeful, knowing that once she was seen doing one move once, it was always harder to land it again if the monster had any semblance of intelligence. But it didn’t stop her from palming the bloodied throwing dagger she’d tossed at the now-dead one, and followed it up with a speedy soar through the air and straight into the toothy mouth of the one Serefin had charred.
It roared. She thought that was a roar, anyway, was harder to tell with a blade in it’s gaping hole. It didn’t stop the monster, though, only made it more pissed off and heading in their direction. “Maybe fire with flying blades?”
Serefin had seen plenty of horrors on the battlefield and in his mind thanks to Velyos, but there was something perfectly gruesome seeing Evie behead the monster with nothing but her two short blades. The putrid smell of the monster's blood and gore was an assault to his senses, and even his courtly demeanor wrinkled his nose at it.
"I cannot say that flying blades with fire was something I foresaw needing, but if you don't mind a little assistance with yours. Your aim—" Serefin hissed, digging the dagger deeper into his forearm, causing the blood to rush faster down his wrist and into his palm. The parchment was dissolving quickly, as he reached over his shoulder to touch the tip of Evie's offered blade. "Will always be better than mine."
It ignited, blue flames licking the metal, around her hand on the hilt, but causing no pain. She was not the intended target.
His fingers now were slippery, pages sticking together, unable to pull the spell he needed, as the other monster closed in from his side. He lifted his other arm, pushing those stars he had shown Jacob into the monster's face. Specks of light burned through its eyes, its mouth, the monster howling, gurgling, as Serefin melted it's face, and subsequently its head right off its body.
That was one way to behead the thing.
His eye darted around the remaining space, still half protected with his waning barrier. "Where did the last one go?"
Evie was impressed, both with the magic now on her blades and the magic thrown at the monster in front of them. It wouldn’t have served for stealth situations, but they were far beyond that in this point in time, and she was just happy to have something a little extra to her limited blades.
But then she sighed, and gave him a look - couldn’t let his ego get too large with praise, of course - that was rather deadpan. “Did you have to melt one of my throwing daggers with it?” She didn’t mind, not really, because she had a knack at finding more, but Serefin was temporarily replacing Jacob in her normal tendency to snark.
From looking at Serefin, she did a sweep of the surrounding areas with her vision, seeing through the fog and mist, and locked on to the red form after only a moment. “There- top, end of the train. You stay here, I’ll bring it in closer.” She didn’t wait for a response before taking off running so she could get a good jump and one-handed climb. The last part in Serefin’s view was the flaming blade shooting out of her hand and towards the misty air, and Evie following it.
"I did, I like to provide a little bit of a challenge. To keep it interesting for you," Serefin quipped back, sounding far too nonchalant than their current predicament implied. But then she was saying something about going after the last one and to stay here. Serefin barely managed out, "Evie, wait—" before she was gone from view.
The mist was becoming problematic. For every step they took into the mist, the more seemed to filter in. With a small noise of resignation, Serefin managed to pull another page free—a burst of wind that pulsed away from him, Serefin acting as its center point.
He snapped his wrist, loosening the gust from his fist, which momentarily cleared the fog away. Just in time to see the headless body of the last creepy fucker come tumbling off the top of the train, nearly taking Serefin out with it. He approached, kicked at its shoulder, and pushed it over with his boot, inspecting the fatality with casual disinterest. Tipping his head up to see Evie standing at the edge of the train roof, Serefin exhaled heavily.
"I think you brought it close enough, don't you?"
“I trusted your ability to dodge,” Evie didn’t have enough height for one of her normal leaps, so she just settled with hopping off the top of the train cart and down onto the ground again, cane sword still unsheathed and held in front of her. She walked up to Serefin, unconcerned with the fact that her previously grey shirt was now splattered in blood that wasn’t hers.
It had been a while since Evie was able to do more than just regular patrol defense or fight club damage - but there was no mistaking her skills were just as sharp as they had been back home. She eyed Serefin’s bloody hand, and held out her bloodied sword as it dripped.
“Is monster blood effective? I can spare cleaning it if you can use it. There’s no more in the area, but we shouldn’t stay.” She looked off in the distance, towards where the downtown part of the city used to be. “We can make our way to the DOA offices or Morningside, see if there are any other survivors?”
The look of contempt that Serefin gave Evie's offered sword could rival, well, hers. "Even if it was useful, I would prefer not to douse myself with it. You have already done quite the thorough job," Serefin said, waving a dismissive hand to her bloodied clothes. With the same unenthusiastic gesture, he waved away the barrier. What little use it had done them in this fight.
Serefin began the perfunctory task of tying off his self-inflicted wounds, nodding to Evie's suggestion. "Survivors, involuntary fighters, accidental participants in a horror show, whatever we are. It seems abysmal for anyone to be here when you think about it." He looked off into the crumbling city skyline. Serefin did not hold much expectation for what they would find at whatever was left of the DOA offices, or Morningside.
"However, if anyone is still there, I am hoping they have something decent to drink."