Tip the Scales (Balian)

[Marion Kay]

1 Spring 513 AV
18 and a half Bells

If there was one thing Marion knew for sure, it was that she hated Syliras. She hated the biting cold Winter had brought, trapping her in the city for an entire season. She hated the static, immutable stone walls that had confined her for too long. She hated how everything sat still and yet somehow kept her off her balance. She was used to change, it was true. Change was good, she had always been told. But not this change, for it was the kind of change that came without change, the transition from something ever-changing to something stuck, still and sedentary.

Most of all, she hated the knights clunking about in their dull metal suits and infuriating uniformity. It was utterly ridiculous. She had heard Syliras called both the City of Peace and the City of Order during her stay, but it may as well have been the City of Tedium for all she knew. They sure enjoyed their lines and lists and damnable districts. And everything stood too still. It drove Marion mad.

But it was the principle of the place that drove her madder still -- that perverted sense of structure, that obsession with order. She could feel the constant, dark pressure of it, but there had been nothing she could do but wait, pacing her cage like an ensnared beast.

She had spent an entire season trapped in stone walls, longing to escape, filled with a desperate want to do something more than wait. But no caravans dared depart during the coldest days of the year and the knights ran a tight ship. There was no escape, physical or mental, unless she wanted to die or be taken into the custody of the knights, both of which seemed equivalent fates in her mind.

So it was with a childlike giddiness that Marion had packed up her meager belongings and set forth this morning in the company of twenty-some travelers and mercenaries. Nothing could have spoiled the relief she felt at watching the city slowly shrink on the horizon.

Except, perhaps, the Outpost.

It was seventeen bells when some young but ugly mercenary had pointed out the high walls through the trees, and eighteen bells when Marion had seen them for herself, clear across fields of crops. Apparently, the head of the caravan had decided to make a detour to fish around for some supplied he'd forgotten to bring. Instead of taking a left onto the road towards Zeltiva bells ago, they'd simply kept heading south. Marion hadn't even noticed, assuming the road that they'd turned onto to lead them towards the Mithryn Outpost was the Kabrin she'd heard so much about.

Many of the other travelers had apparently already noticed the change in plans, and even those who hadn't didn't seem too troubled by it. Some of them, after a day of travel, also realized there were certain supplies they would need more of. Others simply relished the thought of spending one more night in a proper bed. Marion, to her credit, managed to hold in the chagrin that had welled within her at the familiar sight of stone and glint of guard armor.

Now, thirty chimes later, the sun was beginning its slow descent and she had not yet been able to bring herself to enter the outpost gates. Instead she wandered the outdoors and cursed the flat fields that offered her little shelter from those glaring walls. How long would this "detour" set back her travel? It had taken them the entire day to get here. The road they'd passed bells ago must've been the actual road to Zeltiva, so it would take them half a day to get back there, without delays. So she'd lost two days? Of course, the only reason time was an issue was because she wanted to get away from this tainted place as soon as possible.

Marion pressed her hands to her face in frustration and breathed out sharply. But when she looked back up, glaring once more at the lofty walls, the irritation she felt was overshadowed by a new and deceptively powerful feeling: pity. From where she stood, she could see fieldworkers returning to the safety of their homes behind the wall, and it occurred to her that these people lived their whole lives without knowing what actual living was. Marion, of course, knew that their compulsion towards order was abominable and unnatural, but these people had no idea. They built their walls to keep monsters out, but they had no idea that the true monsters could simply walk through the gate.

They were ants, toiling their lives away under the watchful eyes of Order, and why? To what end? They were clueless, forced into limitation by the Powers That Be. And they call that 'freedom', Marion thought cynically.

She paused and, after a brief moment of denial, came to a realization.

You can help these people. And she slowly began to shake her head in rejection, but her conscience had other thoughts. You know the truth, that which they deny themselves. Ssena has given you the gift of truth, now you can give these people the gift of freedom. Show them what it really means to live.

Yes, the knights will be fine with you terrorizing their sheep-people if you tell them it was 'for freedom'.

Come now, it's not like you haven't --

The internal back-and-forth was interrupted by a sudden explosion of movement across her field of vision. A deer darted out of the crops nearby, hooves skidding to a halt against the pathway in front of Marion as the creature caught sight of her. It stood there for a moment, shocked into stillness. The two locked eyes for a long moment. There was no time to contemplate the beauty of the animal, with its lithely powerful form and flaring nostrils, but she could smell the fear -- a more primal, earthy scent than what she'd come to expect -- in its breath. The Alvad was no hunter, but if she were, she might have been able to lunge forward and snap its neck. Easy kill.

The deer, perhaps sensing this notion, was spurred to action once more. It whirled in place frantically, as if it were lost, before dashing away in opposite direction from whence it had come, leaving Marion's thoughts scattered in its wake.

[Balian Martell]

Your Words I My Words I My Thoughts

Sweat rolled down Balians brow as he slowly stalked his target, bow at the ready. He had been tracking his prey for the better part of the day, using the skills that his father had taught him. Truth be told he was frustrated. He had missed several signs of the deer as stalked the fields and the groves that made up the agricultural fields of the outpost. A more competent hunter would have noticed the signs immediately and would have had his target in no time but Balian’s skills were only in their infancy. He still had much to learn. It was luck then that he actually managed to track the deer down.

He started the day by the apple groves east of the outpost, as they were the closest to the Bronze Wood. He figured that any deer that wandered into the fields would first have to go through orchards. His instinct was correct, however his lack of experience caused him to miss the tell-tale signs of a small herd of deer moving through; the varying heights of the grass indicating grazing, some flattened patches of ground where some of the deer had lain, even missing the excrement that otherwise would have told him immediately. Indeed, it wasn’t until late morning, after bells of hiking through the outskirts of the bronze wood and the orchard that he literally stepped on his first clue.

Instinctively Balian began scraping the bottom of his shoe on an exposed root of a nearby tree. It took him a total of two ticks before he realized what it was that he had stepped on, but once he did he scanned the ground around him for more signs. Deer eat grass, moss and low lying leaves, look for broken branches, clumps of grass that are shorter than others, maybe look for tracks? He was skeptical of the last though. He did not have nearly enough experience to pick out any tracks left, nor did he know what they might look like. Never the less, he scanned the ground. For the most part the clumps of grass that grew between the trees were more or less even, at least to his untrained eye. It was the first of spring, so the branches of the orchard were bare, still holding to their winter hibernation, but none seemed to have been broken. He spent several more chimes surveying the area, but to no avail.

He was about to give up when he spotted another clue on the ground. Darker than the ground around it, this small pile of excrement lay near the edge of the trees, where the border of the Orchards and the fields of wheat met. They might have gone into the fields, he thought to himself. Indeed, the lack of any other evidence of the deer’s presence suggested just that. Balian scanned the border, trying to see if he could spot where they entered the fields. He thought he saw a thin trail, a few bent stalks of wheat the suggested something might have passed through. Not knowing what else to do, he followed.

His hunch wasn’t entirely correct. The deer did enter into the fields, but not in that exact spot. It was several bells without further sign of them forced Balian to back track the the original spot. Several chimes later, he found the spot where they most likely entered, as the stalks of wheat were more prominently bent and there were more gaps between them. The deer already have several bells lead over him, however he did have until Syna set over the horizon to find them, and this was infinitely better than the chores his father would have him run for the order. He wasn’t a squire yet, however the son of a knight was already involved in the order in ways that a normal person his age were not. He let out a sigh, chasing those thoughts from his head. He had to focus on the hunt if he were to be successful.

The majority of the afternoon was tracking his prey through the fields. A more experienced hunter would have found his targets within a bell or two, however Balians skills were not yet up to par. He was ready many times to give up his chase, yet he would always find some clue or sign of his quarry that spurred him forward. As it were, it wasn’t until Syna’s last lights were touching the land that he finally found them.

It was a small herd, 3 in total. And they all seemed to be young, if he were to judge by their size, perhaps a year or 2 in age? They were foraging in a clearing within the wheat, while Balian hid just behind the wall of stalks. With his prey in sight, he readied his bow, drawing an arrow from the quiver at his side. Slowly, dilibertatly, he drew the arrow back, preparing to strike at his target; the leftmost deer, grazing facing away from Balian. He had difficulty seeing them though the wheat, and he didn’t want to miss his shot, not after an entire day of tracking, so, in an effort to get a better line of sight he moved forward. That proved to be his mistake. As he moved closer, attempting to be as silent possible by moving crouched, he stepped on a twig. The sound was deafening. The deer al instantly looked up and at his direction, and within ticks all leaped away towards safety, as if sensing his deadly presence. “PETCH!” He yelled out in frustration. He let the arrow fly loose from the bow, hoping against hope that he might still hit his target, but by then the deer had already sprang into action. In an act of desperation from seeing his hard fought prize escape, he gave chase.

With feet pounding at the ground underneath him, arms swinging to give him momentum, Balian ran after the deer. He was doomed to fail ever before he started, he would never be able to catch the deer at full sprint, no matter how fast he ran, and soon enough the deer was out of sight. He still ran after it, his endurance already running out and his legs burning from the sudden explosion of energy, until he ran clear of the fields and what appeared to be the main road to the outpost. No sign of the deer. He decided that it was time to call it quits. It would be dark soon and he would have to go home, and he doubted he had the energy to go after it again, not after trying to run down a deer.

Bow in hand he doubled over, hands on his knees as he panted, attempting to recover some of his breath, sweat dripping from his forehead. After a tick or two he stood back up and prepared to return home, and that when he saw a woman standing a few feet of him. She looked at him with surprise, and he could hardly blame her, he had just ran out onto the road at full sprint.

“Ahh…” He started, trying to be as casual as he could. “Um. Hi!”

[Marion Kay]

She watched the deer retreat, hopping into the foliage and vanishing as quick as it came. Marion still half-expected the stones of its path to turn to diamond or the grass it had brushed turn pink, but nothing quite so exciting happened and for the thousandth time she found herself reminded that she was a long way from Alvadas.

But even if the creature's hooves didn't conjure freshwater springs where they struck, the purity of the encounter, unfettered by illusions, was still enchanting. It was beautiful in its simplicity. A burst of activity made the following silence more profound. Almost sacred.

And of course, like most beautiful things, it was doomed to be broken.

Heavy footsteps, too clumsy to be anything but human, grew louder and culminated in the explosive entrance of a fellow from the same direction the deer had been. He was a hunter, or at least fancied himself to be one, judging by the bow he gripped and the odor of sweat and earth that clung to his skin, and she had no doubt that he was the source of the deer's panic.

Luckily enough for the deer, the trail was gone. It had slipped soundly away, high grass and crops sliding neatly into place as if nothing had disturbed them. And Marion, seeing that the man was physically drained and otherwise too preoccupied to have noticed her presence, wondered whether it would be worth following the creature's example.

But the moment to do so passed when the fellow straightened -- and when his gaze met hers she realized he was really more boy than man. The way he tried to pull himself together at the sudden realization that he was not alone was almost endearing. Almost.

She quirked an eyebrow at his awkward greeting and bit back the venomous intent she felt on the back of her tongue. He'd interrupted a rare peaceful moment, but she couldn't afford drawing ire from the locals, not when she was so close to escaping the knights' disturbingly wide sphere of influence.

Idle chatter was an annoyance, and she gestured to his bow instead of returning the greeting. "I'm no hunter," she confessed, a wry grin lingering at the corners of her lips, "but I imagine you're supposed to shoot them, not chase them."She found herself all too amusing for her own good.

Marion crossed her arms, glancing at the reddening sky, then to those sickening walls. Whether she liked it or not, she needed to get back to the outpost and find a place to sleep. Then she could be on her way. Soon. Tomorrow. She gave a tired sigh, nodding in the direction of the outpost and taking a couple steps along the path. "I assume we're going to the same place?"

[Balian Martell]

Balian

Skills:

• Tracking: 1
• Hunting: 1
• Stealth: 1
• Observation: 1
• Running: 1
• endurence: 1

Lores:

• The untrained eye see’s little; need to know what to look for

Marion Kay

If you come back let me know so I can give you your grades.

Notes :

[center]If you've got concerns, just shoot me a pm.