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 Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 10:34 am
Character: Ravea Wyrm: Alinta Endurance Tracking
"I appreciate the fact that you people have no concern for our cities, but couldn't you be decent and help out any way?! They're just kids!"
The forests near the place you call home are prime hunting grounds. Nobles often stay in the nearby town and use the forest for sport, hunting deer, fox, wild boar, and anything that strays across their crossbow sights. While most of the rangers ignore the gathering nobles during the hunting season, one particular lord went out of his way to approach your household. It appears that his son has gone out hunting with a few friends on horseback several days past, and the three young men, along with their mounts, have yet to return from their hunt. Needless to say, the lord is a bit nervous. This is his only son after all, and he is asking nicely for you to track him down, as well as offering a reward for your efforts.
Do you hunt down the missing men and bring them back? Politely defer and allow someone else to deal with the missing idiots?
What the hell happened to those three, anyway?
Value: 10 points
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Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 12:14 pm
Dawn was still another hour or so away, and Ravea was quite grumpy as she adjusted her light pack on her back. Gods, she didn't want to be up this early and leaving Daela again, but necessity dictated it. When the guildmaster had shown up at the inn's front door the previous evening, she had known that it was going to be to ask a favor...
"You're the best that's here for the moment, Ravea, and you know it. Someone has to track them down, and you're more comfortable in the woods than any search party from outside the guild," the guildmaster said, hands held out, palms upward, in an imploring gesture. "Ravea, the lord is frantic, and he'll reward you and the guild for it. You know it. Please?"
"And if I'm not interested?" Ravea said, cradling a sleepy Daela against her chest as the infant clung to her and murmured. She had more important things to worry about than three idiot noble's sons lost in the woods. This was not her problem.
The guildmaster's face darkened. 'I can order you, then, and you can rest assured that there will be far less compensation for having completed the task. Just try, Ravea. Try."
When Alinta trotted out of the gloom behind the guildmaster, looking eager for another adventure of sorts, Ravea had caved. "Gods, this had beter be worth it," she had grumbled, much to the guildmaster's delight.
//Don't worry about Daela, Vealove. Aliscia will take good care of her. And you know what'll happen if anyone tries to get at her here.// Alinta said all too cheerily, nosing at her chosen's shoulder. The wyrm flashed her a mental image of Thayne, her adoptive father, cheerfully disemboweling some unrecognizable person who was trespassing on the inn grounds. //Daddy likes Daela. He won't let anyone near her.//
The very thought of it made Ravea chuckle aloud, and she shook her head in amusement and self-reproach for having worried so greatly. Gods, she was becoming such a worrier. But then again, that usually accompanied motherhood, didn't it?
With a lighter heart now where her daughter was concerned, Ravea switched from worried mother to serious tracker and moved out with a purpose, Alinta trotting cheerfully at her side. The woods weren't far, perhaps a mile or two on foot, and neither was even remotely bothered by the brisk, early-morning walk. Ravea felt rather invigorated by it, as it served to sharpen her senses and wake her up by the time they reached the crowd of worried people at the woods' edge.
Alinta seemed energized at well, for she executed a high-footed trot alongside her bonded, not seeming to realize that several of the gathered people took a few steps back at the sight of her. She gave the guildmaster a respectful nod and barely glanced over the other people, her bright eyes focused on the woods and the task ahead.
Ha. Cityfolk. Bet most of them haven't seen a real wyrm up close in awhile... Ravea sent toward Alinta, getting an amused snort out of the wyrm. "Here as requested, guildmaster," she said respectfully. "And ready to search."
One of the men, a well-dressed gentleman in full hunting regalia, stepped up from his place beside the guildmaster to give Ravea and Alinta a onceover. The disbelief in his gaze was anything but subtle. "They... they're going to track them? But... it's only two of them! How are they going to find him?!" The man's face darkened as he looked back at the guildmaster. "You promised me a proper search!"
"You're getting one. Alinta and Ravea are good. If anyone can find your son and his friends, they can," the guildmaster said soothingly, and Ravea had more than a faint inkling that the guildmaster and the noble had some relationship other than a business one. They knew each other, for sure, and she strongly suspected that that was how the noble-turned-ranger had gotten his position as a master anyway. Politics...
Alinta gave a snort of punctuation to that statement, and Ravea put a steadying hand on the wyrm's shoulder. The light wyrm did not like people doubting her as such, and it showed. "Where did they enter the woods? We can try to pick up their trail there."
The noble, still looking a bit peeved, gestured at the area. "Here. This is the easiest path in, and we searched along it all day yesterday. They went in three days ago and never came back out. We can't find them in there anywhere," he said, his tone a mix of aggravation and concern, as if bothered by the fact that a bonded woman-wyrm pair could find his child where search parties had failed.
//Well, the trail is probably messed up, then. Grrr...// Alinta echoed into Ravea's mind, making the therian twitch a non-smile. Alinta was right. Tracking them was no good on the initial part of the trail. "Were they mounted, and what were they hunting?" she inquired. "And were they experienced?"
"Very experienced!" the noble said, his tone one of offense. "They are mounted, yes, and hunting wild boar. They know how to track the boar. They are not stupid, and I resent you imply-"
"I'm not implying anything," Ravea cut in. "But if I know how they were moving through the forest, I know what signs to look for. Now we know, and we'll find them." She didn't even gesture to Alinta, simply moving off to follow the path into the woods, Alinta right at her heels.
The light wyrm waited until the forest had swallowed them into its depths before she spoke. "That was rather rude. Are you cranky again?" she inquired in her usual rasping tone, nuzzling at Ravea's hair. "Should I have brought sweets to bribe you?"
Ravea gave an eyeroll in response as Alinta stopped shoving at her dark hair and commenced to sniffing at the air. The scents of the search party overrode those of the three missing young men and their mounts, and Ravea could sense her wyrm's mounting frustration. She, on the other hand, was looking for something more obvious, and she found it about half an hour in, just as dawn was starting to break.
"Boar sign," she said quietly, pointing to where a tusk had scraped up against a tree. "It's days old. They must have seen it." Experienced hunter knew to look for signs like these. They would have begun to track now, and Ravea moved a few feet off the trail, pushing aside the bushes to reveal three sets of old hoofprints in the mud. She smirked. "Got 'em."
Alinta peered over her shoulder as they commenced to following the tracks, Ravea occasionally losing sight of them in beds of leaves, rocky terrain, and the rare creek. The therian thought it curious that there were no other signs of boar. She saw no footprints or tusk marks, but that was of less importance now that they had the hunters' trail. After an hour of following the hoofprints willy-nilly over what seemed to be an interminably large area of the forest, the hoofprints abruptly vanished at the edge of a stream. When Ravea shifted to half-form and flew to the other side of the stream, she found no more prints, which put her every instinct on edge. "Check that bank. Hundred yards, both ways," she told Alinta, and the wyrm complied, checking the one side of the stream as Ravea checked the other.
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Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 12:17 pm
Their search yielded nothing, and Ravea began to get frustrated. The stream was wide and very shallow, rather slow-moving and only about knee-deepThere was no way they drowned, but any hoofprints in the stream bed were long-gone. Where the hell had the 'boys' disappeared to? Three nearly-grown young nobles and three hunting horses did not just disappear into thin air.
A sudden whistling call from Alinta, very far down the other bank, answered her question. She spread her wings and launched into the air, gliding downstream until she reached her wyrm companion, who was standing over three all-too-familiar sets of footprints. "They were trying to throw us off," Alinta said, her eyes flashing with glee at having sniffed out their trick. "Why else would they go into the stream like that?"
Ravea frowned. It didn't add up. She knelt beside the footprints, trying to puzzle it out. "They left the trail at boarsign. They go through leaf beds, over rock, and through creeks following this boa- they weren't following it!" she said, her mind switching tracks as she began to understand. "They tried to get their trail lost through those rocks and creek beds. There was no boar sign."
Her wyrm cocked her head to one side. "Why? Why come out hunting and then try to lose anybody who comes looking for you when you get lost?" Her tone was one of complete bemusement. Hunting for sport was confusing to her, but getting purposely lost while hunting for sport? Idiocy, really.
Having a fairly good inkling of what the young men were up to, Ravea trotted off after the hoofprints with renewed vigor. It was still very early morning, and it looked like this could possibly be over with before noon. Perhaps she might get some time with Daela today after all.
//They're moving in a straight line, now...// Alinta commented, her mental tone one of confusion. //What're they after? It's not the boar!//
Ravea's suspicions were brought true as the forest began to thin, and they emerged from the trees to find themselves right back where they started, at the same hunting town--really, it was a bit closer to a small city-- where most of the nobles stayed whilst they made sport of killing hapless beasts. However, they were on the opposite side of the town, on the very outskirts, and Ravea was surprised to find that the hoofprints led up to the back of one of the inns. It was a run-down inn too, one that most people of high birth would avoid like the plague.
While Alinta's mental tone hinted at her utter bemusement, Ravea felt a vindictive bit of glee as she peeked into the stables. Three horses were stabled there, along with three sets of rather expensive-looking tack draped over the nearby saddle racks. She grinned wickedly, shifting back to human form. "Do you know where we're at, Alinta?" she asked as she headed toward the inn's back door.
The light wyrm, having to wait outside as her bonded entered, looked puzzled. //Nooooeeeyessss?// she queried to Ravea as the therian made her way inside the inn. Alinta 'listened' in on her bonded's mind as the therian had a rather heated discussion with the innkeeper and headed upstairs, feeling Ravea's gleeful anticipation as she stalked toward one of the rooms, hand extended to open the door. //Isn't this the inn where-//
Alinta cringed as screeches of surprise, fury, and complete humiliation echoed from inside the inn. She listened to the screeches continue as Ravea reappeared outside the inn, looking quite smug. //Vealove?//
The therian smirked. "Yes, Alinta. This is the local brothel. Anything else?" she asked, one eyebrow quirked.
Glancing up at the inn and then down at her bonded, Alinta shook her golden head. //You woke them up too, didn't you? You're evil!// she said as she trotted after Ravea, the two headed back through the streets and toward the search party on the far, far side of town. There was a new spring in Ravea's step, and Alinta found it mildly disturbing, as well as quite entertaining. Ravea looked almost like she was skipping. //When do you think they were going to come back?//
Ravea shrugged. "Probably today. Say they'd been lost and that they just found their way back." She grinned, not feeling sorry for the young idiots in the least. "Think we can make late breakfast back home?"
Alinta shook her head again. //With the way the guildmaster is going to fuss... maybe lunch.//THE END
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:00 am
The Grade
Creativity: 6/6
Syntax: 2/2
Style: 2/2
Overall: 10/10
Points: 10 pts
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