EMPIRE 6!: The Lion and the Wolf

[Tychris1]

The snow was sprinkling relentlessly, a light dusting that diluted the air with bright specks to fool the eye with their reflection. Like a great massive beast lurked in the thick clouds above shaking it's shaggy mane free of it. You couldn't see clearly more than forty feet ahead of you, any further was a muddled gamble, and in the frozen treacherous lands of Tarandi such chances were often staked with your life. It was the end of a long particularly strong winter, the winds running their gleeful mischievous hands through the air, and even as they disturbed the vagrant snowflakes like so many wedding petals they raked their claws through the flesh of the Old Lion. He meandered through the snowy miasma, shaking his ever greying mane with each step not out of desire to clean but simply from the force of his staggered movement. There were worse places to die.

But not many.

The ruined hovels of tents, broken wooden homes, and scattered shattered tools of people he had never met were strewn about him. This was once a frontier village in The Breach, a proud community of hunters, trappers, and brave adventurers who held fast against wild animals and elements alike with unbreakable resolve. No-Pride-No-Death stepped on something buried beneath the snow. He paused. Brushing the snow aside even as it was sluggishly replaced revealed a small doll nearly split in twain, a crude depiction of some priestess, or important figure. It was hard to tell with his milky vision but he figured it was probably some devotional fetish or childish trinket to the Nordgen's Goddess. It was a far easier unveiling than the grislier remains scattered throughout the shambles of this isolated ruin. He picked it up in his mouth and placed it beneath the shade of a stony frost rimed pillar jutting out of the earth at a sloped angle. There he rested, with only his ruined eye affixed to the horizon, and awaited the arrival of those who would seek the head of the abomination that caused such a scene.

Wolfenfinger.

[Elemental]

After some time a dark silhouette came into view approaching the Lion. Far too small and humanoid in shape to be the monster, it was no doubt one of the hunters, a fact confirmed once they came close for details to be made out through the falling snow. He was a Viskari, clad from head to toe in frosted furs. Even his eyes were covered by a snow visor carved from antler leaving only the barest amount of green skin visible around them. If not for the elongated teeth of the sabre-tiger pelt flanking his face and the distinctively adorned stone axe he carried his identity would have been almost impossible to determine.

As he stepped into the makeshift shelter the Lion had found Mezanak started to brush off the frost clinging to his clothing, the glittering dust of ice swirling away as he did so before removing the visor from his eyes.

"You could have chosen a more convenient place to meet Dread Lion," Mezanak said, "I had to leave my horse six days south of here with a group of hunters. Trudging through the snow for six days is not made all that much easier if you can ask the snow to move out of the way."

[Tychris1]

The Old Lion snorted, a puff of mist, a welling bubble of freezing snot, and shifted beneath the steadily growing blanket of white upon his greying golden fur.

"You know the prey we hunt, Sorcerer," No-Pride-No-Death's voice was a low growl reverberating off of the wind "This is the land of our enemy. Their scent is all around us. There will be no room for your dull tooth slave. Where we go, only predators shall tread." He rolled his head, opening his milky white eye first, and gazing into the Viskari Sorcerer's intently with the other "Do you remember? The smell of the lair? Some nights, I dream, and it reeks from the back of my mind out through my nose."

[Elemental]

He returned No-Pride's milky gaze with his own red eyes as he thought about what he said, flakes of snow dancing around him as he let his mind wander back to that day.

"How could one forget? I could avert my gaze, but scent is too primal to be ignored," he said, "Every time I catch the scent of rotting meat, even the faintest whiff, I am brought back to that place. It's almost ironic that that's where we're headed, perhaps we were both driven mad by the horror, or we're both idiots."

[Tychris1]

He laughed, a bellowing powerful sound, yet cut short by the pain of such abrupt effort, and his haggard amusement melted as he spoke in his gravelly tongue "I was a Fool Cub. I'm a Fool Lion, but I was a Fool Cub too. Foolishness is necessary for the work we do. Perhaps this Old Fool will have the last laugh." He turned his hind legs so as to bring his great tail to bear and dusted clean a spot for Mezanak to sit beside him beneath the relative comfort afforded by desecrated ruins. "Come, sit, we have a far trek ahead of us still to ensure this monster is in its lair when we go for the throat... The finger?" He shrugged "The one all clad in black, Idris I think? A sentinel of ill temper, he refused my offer, and wanders around these snows right now like a lonely Lioness in heat. Truly, we're an inspiring pack, no?" He smirked his tattered mouth.

Looking up at the obscured heavens above he squinted at the sight of a dark smudge overhead amidst the neverending snow but quickly dismissed it "You speak to the ice and snow now, yes? I've heard rumors of this strange magic. Would you care to show an Old Lion a new trick?"

[Elemental]

Mezanak graciously accepted the cleared space and seated himself.

"Throat or not I suggest we just hit it until it stops moving and then hit it some more to make sure," he said with a grin, "It'll be a mess, but we don't need to worry about inspiring anyone. There are poets for that."

He chuckled as No-Pride asked for a display and he closed his eyes. Slowly the snow carpeting the ground around them and clinging to them began to shift before lazily drifting into the air. It danced around as the Viskari pulled the scarf away from his mouth as he opened his eyes which were now glowing with a soft purple light. He breathed in deep and exhaled a cloud of steam as the dancing snowflakes turned to steam before the Lion's eye. The warmth was only temporary, but for a moment the edge of the freezing Winter had been dulled.

[Tychris1]

Mystified by the strange sorcerous sublimation No-Pride-No-Death swept a single massive paw through the wafting steam. Felt the way the water clung to his fur as the hand keeping it in place grew lax, slipping past its grip, and once more into the neverending flurry of the Breach. "How odd.... So the tales are true." He cast a sly glance at the damaged toy he had retrieved from the snow earlier "If I get my wish, Sorcerer of the Silver Host, would you do me a favor, and use your mighty gift to float me down to my home? I would like to return to my Pride. Even after this death."

[Elemental]

"Your home is far away, I'm not sure I can manage it," Mezanak said, "But I can try. I know not where your Pride dwells, but I'll do everything in my power to bear you there should this hunt be your last. We all deserve to rest in the land of our birth before we depart this life for the next after all, I'm sure you'd do the same for me."