To freedom? (Keene)

[Rina]

It had been a day, but from the way the girl looked, it could have been a decade. Dark bags laid under the girls eyes and countless scratched now patterned her gaunt frame. The girl had lost everything when the sahova evacuation had begun, discarded like so many unfinished experiments in the trash the girl had been left to die in the testing grounds while the scientists prepared to leave the island, only taking the things they considered important. Subject P-03 wasn't one of the things considered important. Spending a night in the testing grounds had been harrowing for the girl. Between the many sounds in the night and the unrelenting insects that roamed the island the girl hadn't been able to rest at all, instead she had spent the night running from hiding place to hiding place searching for safety from the wilderness. the dawn was just breaking on Sahova signifying that the girl had indeed made it through the night.

As the sun peaked out from it's hiding place beneath the ground to shed it's weak light upon the foggy landscape, it became apparent that the child had wandered far. The place she found herself in was full of thorned growth. Surrounded by the imposing spiked plants the girl marveled that she hadn't yet skewered herself in the night. not to say she had come out unscathed, her normally pale and damp skin was crisscrossed with scratches and welts some deep enough to allow ruby tears of blood to ooze out in their morbid fashion leaving her skin a milky white canvas painted with chaotic stripes of crimson. Though the girls marvel was short lived. As the light revealed the extent of her wounds it also revealed the pain that adrenaline can only hide for so long. The only thing in worse shape than the girl was her clothing, or what had been her clothing. her coat had been lost at some point in the night undoubtedly caught on some thorned branch and lost to the forest. as for her underclothes, they hung in ragged strips about her body looking more like poor bandaging than clothing.

Succumbing to her small bodies urges the girl allowed herself to slump to the ground for a moment. her head was spinning, it had been a while since she had eaten, long enough that even the stale bread she had hated eating began to sound like a delicacy. Wrapping her pale arms around herself hugging her visible ribs trying to hold in what little heat she could while she rested. As the girl rested she knew that she couldn't allow herself to sleep, she knew that that would not end well for her even if her luck had kept her alive so far, it couldn't hold out forever. slowing her breathing the child tried to push aside the pain that wracked her corpse like frame trying to reclaim control over her instincts so that she could continue her search for someplace safe.

Though as the girl fought a battle within herself the world around her never ceased moving and the forest continued to watch the morsel that had wandered into it. The sound of light rusting emanated from the underbrush not to far from the girl, perhaps the wind, perhaps footsteps, or even the tell tale sounds of some other Sahovan project gone bad. Whatever it was it was approaching the girl from an area still shaded darkly by the cover of the thorny trees of the forest.

Hearing the sounds the girl found some reserve of energy in her body, some odd reserve of adrenaline pulled out by fear and instinct. Knowing that flight was not the best option in a forest of thorns the girl raised her small fists facing the darkness. And from her small mouth the girl let out a ferocious growl, or at least an imitation of what would be one coming from a much larger animal. "Whatever you are, Stay back! I'm not afraid to fight!" these stammered words rumbled from the girl a, last ditch effort to bluff whatever it was lurking in the darkness away. The girls body shook the effort to stand alone was straining her starvation might actually kill her before anything else did if whatever lying in the shadows didn't eat her first.

[Keene Ward]

The notice of evacuation had been delivered to him the day the before, the golems the day after. Mechanical squeaks and creaks had filled the Ravine's stony halls with the sounds of the automatons' efforts as they toted off Keene's belongings out of the Testing Grounds and down along the twisting path to set them (mostly unharmed) at the docks. All but one of the golems had performed their duties flawlessly, but it was the singular malfunction that had drawn Keene into the Forest in search of the multi-wheeled construct and, more importantly, his backpack that contained the majority of his books, inks, and quills. He had set it down for a moment as he'd been checking the various array of items he had packed away on the other golems, and in the short time he'd left the bag unattended, it had been scooped up and ferried away. Had it not been for the wide tread of the golem's wheels paired with what Keene only could assume was a leaking vial of ink, he would have quickly lost it to the winding trail of the Ravine. As fortune would have it, however, there had been a clear path into the Forest, one that Keene had taken only about a chime to shield himself against the sharp, unforgiving barbs that littered what little open space their was.

The golem had managed to entwine itself in a mess of barbs by the time he had found it, reclaiming his pack and leaving the useless mess of metal and wood to whatever fate it had chosen for itself by whatever odd stroke of chance had led the thing to act in such a manner in the first place Keene had begun to head back out towards the Prairie when a voice caught his attention and held him still for a tick or two as his calm, grey-green gaze scanned the immediate area. The meaning of the words had been quite clear, though without context, they seemed relatively out of place. As far as Keene was concerned, he had little intention to approach anything outside of what was either interesting to or required of him; the threat of altercation - physical or magical - wasn't even taken into account. Instead, when his eyes finally spotted a dark head of hair between the twisting grins of the braided boughs and gnarled grip of the brambles and bushes below, Keene responded to the child's command, voice quiet and calm - a steady contrast to the words first spoken.

"Very well." From what he could tell, the child was alone. The questions of how and why there was, as far as he could see through the various underbrush and branches, a wafer of a girl in the twisted clutches of the Forest of Thorns on the final day of Sahova's impromptu and unexplained mass evacuation were brought to mind, though, Keene found little reason to pursue his curiosity if the child had no desire to deal with him. As he spoke, Keene let his djed slip from his skin, wrapping first around the thorns then the pack that he'd strapped to his back, solidifying into a thin but uniform layer of opalescent frost to protect it from the tug and bite of the forest's influences. "I'm leaving."

With that, Keene turned towards the direction he had come, small, muted flashes of dulled prismatic light shimmering in repulsion as his shielded body passed unharmed beneath the myriad blades that served to give the forest its name.

[Rina]

The child had prepared herself for any outcome that might come from facing a shape that emerges from the shadows but the last thing is for the thing that emerges from the darkness to walk away without showing any sign of emotion and simply walk away. The experiment watched the man's back recede back into the shadows. The first response that came to mind was relief, she hadn't needed to defend herself and that had solved her first quandary, but the realization that she was not out of the woods yet, both literally and figuratively dawned on her. The man certainly seemed to know what he was doing perhaps following him would lead her out, the man certainly didn't seem aggressive.

Using what adrenaline she had left the child took a stuttering step after the man, and then another. Focusing on the man the girl tunneled in on him following the sounds of leaves crunching and the occasional sight of him between tangled branches. Footstep after footstep the child pursued the man, hardly keeping pace with the longer legs and confident stride. Not that the child's pursuit was a wise one or one that lacked penalty. While the branches themselves seemed to sway out of the mans way they made no similar gesture for the girl laying pursuit clawing at her skin and hair again slowing her pursuit and adding more angry red stripes to her already patterned hide.

Tripping once while following the man The child caught herself by grabbing hold of a nearby branch. A reflex that in most cases might save you, but in this case it rewarded the girl only with a particularly long thorn embedded in her hand. The girl let out a strangled sound, part whimper of agony, part growl of irritation. Forcing her small legs to continue her trek after the mysterious mage the indomitable irritant continued her pursuit unwilling to die alone n a forest that carved her flesh so aggressively. The problem was the man was passively out distancing her, the sounds and flashes of sight between branches becoming less and less frequent the forest encroaching from all angles seemed hesitant to release the prey it had captured for itself.

Then the child saw it, a flash of hair and the sound of a swaying branch. Summoning what little energy she had left the desperate mongrel charged heedlessly into the bramble that separated the two. One foot and then the other. Arms crossed in front of her face to protect her eyes The girl recklessly gored herself upon the multitude of angry daggers that opposed her turning her body into a white canvas striped with red frayed ribbon. But one can not simply deny reality forever. The girl was starved, her recklessness had left her anemic and dehydration was working against her. and the girls vision began fading to black. NO, you can't die here, nameless and alone. you have to press on, fight. the last thing the girl saw before reality claimed her was a bloody hand. Her hand, and it was clutching something, it was a boot, a boot attached to a man who had his back turned. The girl was able to focus her mind on one thought, a concept if you will, "Grip" and that's what she did, ignorant of the fact that she was digging a thorn deeper into her hand, headless of the fact that the man could shake her off. All she did was grip, all she was was one thing, The child was a thorn, and she would stick into whatever it was she could grasp.

[Keene Ward]

It wasn't that Keene couldn't hear the child struggling to keep up with him as he took on a rather brisk pace in favor of exiting the forest with time enough to make it to the docks before the ships departed, rather his concerns were better spent on his own self-preservation. The letter he had received had been succinct, notifying him that he would be leaving the island by the evening of the ninety-first, no questions nor explanations. Though there had been no explicit consequences should he remain, Keene had lived on Sahova for long enough not to wonder what might happen, rather he knew that should he remain, it was unlikely he would see the day's end, if that. Thus, as he made his way with the subtle crunch of the forest's ineffective defenses sounding against his shielded boots, the child's efforts became little more than noise in the background.

He had carved something of a path upon his entry into the Forest, and while it was hardly conducive to movement unimpeded without a shield, there were enough broken twigs and brambles for him to follow the way he had come. From what he could tell, the docks would take only about half of the day to get to once he had left the forest. His camp back in the Ravine had been effectively abandoned, little left thanks to the golem couriers, but still he ran through a mental checklist to make sure nothing of use had been left behind. As images of his various belongings darted through his mind, Keene stumbled forward as his movement was restricted by the sudden clutching grasp of a pair of small hands about his ankle. Literally pulled from thought, Keene whipped around, his shield flickering against the scraping claw of the thorns around him as res slipped from his fingertips, blue mist drifting around him in a silent, solemn haze as his eyes flicked about the surroundings, searching for the source of his unexpected entrapment.

What he saw hardly inspired a prolonged sense of alert, though he kept the res about him should the child prove to be more than she appeared. There was little on Sahova that ever looked like what it was, and even if that was revealed, it was often only ever half of the truth if that. As the pressure around his ankle increased, Keene tried to shake the child off of him, though his motions were subdued and only enough to jar her body slightly before he set his foot down, staring at the dark, shimmering head of what he had assumed to a creature not worth his time. Whether it was worth the chimes or not, Keene had no reason to kill the girl, and it seemed her protest at their meeting had been one of false pretense.

"Let go of me." His voice did not carry with it the harshness the words implied. If anything, it was a subdued and soft as the rolling, overcast sky above him. The winds had been agitated of late, and though there was little more than a soft breeze that drifted through the boughs overhead, it was reflective enough of Keene's own impassivity. The child was impeding what should have been a swift egress, which made her an inconvenience if anything. Though there were several options to get rid of her, Keene had made the mistake of assuming a lack of importance where it had made all the difference before. While his social etiquette had only suffered on the dusty, humid brush-lands of the Sahovan wilderness, it had not completely atrophied, and he was well aware chopping off a child's hands with magical blades of ice and glass wasn't quite the first thing one might try to remove the child in question, though it was still certainly an option.

The battered state of her ragged body was not his concern, and to make his point, Keene guided a small puff of res with a slight twitch of his fingers, pressing it against her hand as it warped into a wicked edge of translucent glass, cold to the touch though not enough pressure to draw blood; a reflection of his personal sentiments towards the child herself. "Now."

[Rina]

The girl didn't want to let go. The girl knew that if she let go, she would die. That's something she couldn't do, she wasn't done yet. Pulling her scattered mind together the girl coalesced her consciousness. She had spent her entire life in the cold embrace of the nuits, and the child had survived by being useful and doing what she was told. Now she was being told to let go, an order that would in no way help her survive. "NO" it came out like a growl, the girl didn't want to die. "I won't follow an order that will result in the termination of my existence." She wanted to see the place that she remembered from her dreams, the home with the sky of many colors. "I won't die" As sh said this the girl fixed her eyes on the man looking down on her, her Eyes that were blue like the deep ocean shifted to a burning gold, fury replaced sadness and desperation. "I will do whatever it takes to make it off this island, do your worst to me wizard, cut me open, starve me, fill me with your res, I have already experienced it all. I survived as a slave to Roknus Maelstrom." Words spewed out of the girls mouth. She was mad, she was scared she was in pain, but most of all, she wanted to live. "Wizard, invest in me, and I will pay you back many times over". Clarity, what was it that nuits cared about most? Knowledge? No, it was themselves. Perhaps that would save her, convince the creature, not the man in front of her but the monster. Convince the monster that it would benefit from her assistance.

"You can call me whatever you like, My name was forgotten long ago." A ragged cough fought out of the girls chest. "My only concern is survival." Looking at the monster who's ankle she gripped the girl had to laugh. She was just the same, a tool created by monsters to be used by monsters. She wasn't human, the clarity came from freedom, the child had only been on her own for a day, and yet she had managed to destroy herself. She couldn't exist on her own, she needed to wielded to survive. With the clarity came reality, the girl believed she had the answer.

To prove her point the tool finally relaxed her grip on the ankle with her left hand gripped the shard of ice the man had threatened her with, the ice did just what she expected, it cut her. Holding her bloody hand out to the monster, the tool showed her conviction. "this can belong to you, will you waste it?"

The tool glared at the monster eyes swirling with emotion and color. Her gambit had been made the rest was left to the monster.

[Keene Ward]

The very first word in reply was more of a guttural, animalistic baring of teeth, one that Keene stared down at impassively. Animals were of little use to anyone in so wounded and pathetic a state, but the child quickly added to her snarl with words that, despite her appearance, carried with them enough mind to give Keene pause. What she said was coherent, certainly, though it lacked logic as far as Keene was concerned. His command had been one for her perseverance not her condemnation, though he supposed in her own way, she had stalled his hand long enough that there was little need for him to forcefully remove hers. The conviction in the child's words were what drew his interest initially, though there was a flicker of light in his eyes as he watched the girl's shift, though whether it could truly be classified as surprise was debatable. It was possible the child was a morpher, though the shift had been quick and fluid, something that suggested that the thing clutching his ankle was either very skilled or possessed a natural ability to shift the colors of her eyes. Both seemed unlikely, but either presented an case worth the few chimes he'd already spent on it.

He listened with tacit austerity, his face giving way no indication that what she said had any effect on him. In truth, it did not have much, though the mention of Roknus Maelstrom had a ring of familiarity to it that he couldn't quite place. Her odd fetish with the idea of his desire to cause her harm was not entirely unwarranted, though the more she spoke the less Keene found her to be a threat. There were few things on Sahova with strength enough to grovel at the feet of others, and Keene found the entire display distasteful. As she presented her bargain, Keene's lips titled downwards into a slight frown, though his eyes remained a neutral grey-green, matching the child's own shifting colors with his impartial gaze. As she loosened her grip, Keene took a step back, freeing himself from the child's clutches as she made a paradoxical display of the convictions she had just so recently spouted. The res he had kept around him seeped back into his body, the shard of ice falling to the ground beside the dark haired child who's fierce gaze fell upon a soul who's empathy had long since been blinded by the twisted path its body had been thrust upon.

"I cannot waste something that bears no use." His words were detached, but the very fact he remained in his place spoke to his interests, even if they were somewhat faded from when the child had first begun to speak. "You claim survival but wound yourself without thought." His head tilted only slightly, eyes as still as the cloudy skies above them. "If you wish to live, live. Otherwise, die and be done with it, Girl With No Name." There was no harshness, no cruelty, nor any emotion benign or malignant in the soft, even tone of his quiet voice. As far as he was concerned, the child's eyes were the most interesting thing about her, and even that intrigue had buckled under the oppressive weight of the girl's irrational paradox of word and action. He did not have use nor desire for a slave or assistant; he had had enough trouble with Wilhelmina, and that child had already been dead. The thought of having to care for another living being was more than enough to stamp out any other considerations of what the girl might be useful for.

Having decided he had spent - or perhaps the better word was "wasted" - enough time on the child, Keene let out a slow, steady breath, his djed sloughing off of his body in an iridescent cloud, drifting through the thorns and brambles as it gathered the information he willed it to understand. After half a chime of silence, the shield solidified around the girl, the mists encrusting her in a shell of frosty protection from the forest's influences. While the shield was enough to protect her form the tears and scrapes before her, it also served to keep what thorns had already embedded themselves with her fast within her skin. It was, perhaps, not the most efficient form of protection, but it was functional enough. He had repaid her for satiating the slight warmth of curiosity that had played at the back of his mind, and the new found knowledge that there were those who's eyes shifted with the rise and fall of, what Keene assumed to be, their emotions. Though the shimmering nature of her hair had been noted, Keene had not stopped to consider that it was all that out of the way of the ordinary.

Once the shield emitted a soft flash to declare it was functioning properly, Keene turned and started back on the path towards the Forest's edge. If the child followed, it would be by her own choice and not his command. He was no leader; he was as much a weapon as she a tool, and neither a weapon could wield a tool or the other.

[Rina]

Irritation caused her eyebrow to twitch, the Nuits were easier to understand that the figure she was dealing with. As the man began to leave the tool began to feel the familiar sensation of having magic cast upon her. The sensation was quite unpleasant as the bubble coalesced around her the girl felt all the thorns in her body press harder into her flesh, as if the man wanted to add insult to injury and show how little he actually cared for the lives of others. The pain did serve it's usefulness though. It drove away what tiredness that the girl felt, like spurs do a horse.

Moving forward the girl followed, determined to force the man to do... what? What did the girl want exactly. She wanted to live, but what more was there? would she follow the morose figure beyond the island? perhaps she was the crazy one, but then who knew in a place like Sahova. Step after stuttering step the child pursued, like a dog disowned but too stupid to realize it was unwanted. Following after the man the girl noticed that the thorns of the forest no longer snagged her even though the thorns already in her never relented in paining her. The situation was certainly an odd one, The girl had never met someone that had no motives or plans for her, even less one who refused free materials. The girl didn't like it, she wanted to be needed, needed to be used. It was part of her identity, and even if it made her loath herself she couldn't accept rejection any more than she could accept her death. Another thing was that bothered the girl was the statement the man made. "I cannot waste something that bears no use." those words had hurt more than the thorns or the knife. The girl had uses, she could do things, she just didn't know how to prove them. Everything that had happened thus far had been counter productive for her.

So the girl silenced any words she wanted to say, she would passively follow, but follow she would. To the ends of the world if necessary, and she would prove her usefulness. The man had challenged her and the girl had accepted the challenge. Finding her way home had taken a back seat to her new desire, for the first time the girl was making her own decisions. Her first decision was to prove the man wrong. It wasn't much in the direction of improving herself, but it was a start. "I'm not useless" these words fell out her mouth, without force, and with little conviction. The words were said more to herself than the man. As if a mantra of self preservation. The girl found solidarity in those words and forced her foot to take the next step.

[Keene Ward]

The child fell into step behind him, a display of some sort of common sense and preservation of self. Any creature who had not yet consigned itself to the inevitable end of the journey of all living things would have behaved in much the same manner, though perhaps without the occasional mutter of internal contemplation that escaped in soft, bitter whispers. Still, for the most part, Keene only noticed her presence in the occasional snapping of a twig or rustle of wood as they passed through the forest with no more words exchanged. He had no more to say to her that he had not already said, and though it wasn't as if he couldn't say any more, there was no reason to do so. As the chimes stretched towards a bell, they came to the Forest's end. Once he had left the twisted mess of wood and bramble, Keene paused, waiting for the child to pass him so that he could remove the shield with a subtle tap of his fingers against the uppermost layer of the shield's frosty weave, shattering the barrier and releasing the girl from the influence of his magic. Most of the djed was unusable, simply drifting away on the subtle breeze that moved to gather it up and carry it away. What little Keene could reconstitute was drawn back into him as he started out across the Prairie's grassy plains.

Though the light of the sun was obscured by the ever present cloud cover, the heat of the day had set in, and with the pack that clung to his back keeping the warmth of the day close and humidity closer, it wasn't long before his clothes were damp from the basic effort of placing one foot in front of the other. There was still a large distance to cover, but with the Forest out of the way, the only things left to worry about were the various dangers of the experiments that had been loosed during the evacuation and the potential of having the ships leave him behind. Thus, he moved at a brisk pace, time of the essence, as it was something he supposed was better to have in surplus than to cut it thin.

The grasses hissed against his boots, the sound of two travelers drawing the attention of creatures big and small, though none approached for a time, held at bay by the light and the familiar manner in which Keene carried himself, the child close behind and extension of himself, and therefor equally as worthy of wariness. When the first did approach, Keene did not break his stride. He had fought, over and over, so many times that the shift of djed to res had come naturally to him. As a trio of monkey-like creatures with spindly, claw-like fingers broke the unspoken truce, letting loose wild howls as the ran forward. With a slow wave of his hand, res shot forward from his lips, curling into a wide arc before it was transmuted into a sharp blade of ice, half slamming, half slashing through the creatures, killing them upon impact as the remaining res slipped back into his body as he stepped over the twitching body of his unworthy quarry. The display held the others at bay, their eyes unseen but felt by both man and child, as they continued.

As the distance between them and the rise of the citadel's hold grew smaller and smaller, the pair came across a dismembered corpse. Thin, haggard dog-like creatures rending flesh from bone, turning to stare as Keene paused, eyes appraising the situation. The creatures had odd, twisted protrusions of bone on either side of them, similar in effect to a knight with javelin in hand upon an emaciated steed. Beyond that, there was little else about the dogs that was of particular interest, though as the hounds gazed back at him, there was an intelligence beneath the hooded lids that stayed his hand. Instead, he took a step forward, eliciting a growl from the nearest of the canines. With a slow, steady movement of his hand, Keene let his res drift forward, clearly visible to both parties. The hackles of the hounds raised, familiar, it seemed, with the magic Keene had under his employ. Rather than using it to dispatch the pack, Keene flexed his fingers, the mist shifting into short, inch long blades of stone that buried themselves in the grasses between them.

"Leave." The beasts growled, but after a chime, those closest to the pair turned and skulked off, the rest soon following, leaving the half eaten body of a man behind them. In the gnawed grip of the man's hand was the strap of a bag, the actual bag itself thrown a short distance, the contents of bread and berries half littering the ground around and within it. Giving the scene only a passing glance, Keene continued on, his focus directed towards the path the hounds had taken, his mind mulling over whether it had been wise to the let the seemingly sentient hounds free rather than eliminating a potential future danger. There was still a ways for them to go, and he could feel the soft chill of his magic gently weighing at the tips of his fingers. The less he needed to fight, he concluded, the better.

[Rina]

As time passed with the day the pair marched silently from the forest. Pain subsided to numbness and emotion faded away. The Girl followed, nothing particularly mattered to her beyond her next step. Her wounds were already scabbing into ugly lines and puckers. As the pair made their way across the barren plains they came across some pack of odd disfigured creatures. As the creatures ran towards the pair in an attempt to harry the two travelers the man effortlessly ended their existence as easily as one would wave a bug out of the air. The child wordlessly watched to creatures fall, She wanted power like that. Power to kill anything that would try to harm her. Someday, She too would have power like that. But there was time for that later, now her energy needed to stay devoted to survival. Following along the girl lost track of time, the journey felt like an eternity, and yet it seemed that no time was passing at all as the sun hung lazily in the sky uncaring as to if it singed those in it's light.

Again the pair came across more creatures. This time the man assailed them with stone instead of ice. the creatures apparently cowed by the threat left slowly but left all the same. Coming up to and past the corpse the child noticed a small leater satchel that had likely once been the man's Some of the contents had spilled out of it, a small array of berries and a loaf of bread. The girl snagged the satchel and tore into the loaf of bread zealously, the bread was tough and stale, but it was still food, and that was something the girl needed. Quickening her pace the girl again fell into pace behind the man still crunching on her new provisions her feet moving with a somewhat renewed vigor.