Reunion [finished]

[flippedside]

Matt pulled himself up the rope behind Willow, feeling a weary ache in his muscles. He wasn't sore, so much as tired. Healing didn't cure that--especially when he felt weak and half-starved with hunger. He was ravenous, but it felt more like a vast emptiness than hunger.

It bothered him to climb through the narrow space. Honestly, he'd never liked small spaces--open space was preferable, with anywhere he could fully stretch his wings being the best. The tunnel that dropped and angled at varying times was too narrow for him to fly, and he didn't like trusting his weight to the rope. It wasn't that he thought the rope would snap...He just didn't like the idea of not being to catch himself. So he should be honest--he didn't rely on his wings much. He hardly used them at all. Still, there was safety in knowing that he could catch himself in a three-story drop. Here, there was nothing to stop a downward fall, except some awkwardly jutting rocks. He banged his shin against one and grunted in pain and irritation.

Willow, blocking the light above him, spoke quietly.

"Works fine with me," Matt replied, weary and strained by the narrowness of the steep tunnel. "The less we say the better, in any case."

He thought about the opened tunnel below, and wondered if leaving it as it was was the best idea. Probably better to seal it off--make the tunnel actually cave in on itself, not just invent a story of it doing so. He scrambled out of the hole, deeply relieved to no longer be climbing. He was surprised to see the flat expanse of snow directly surrounding the tunnel was empty. Sharp peaks of snow and ice stood just a little way off, a few bluish caves glinting in their walls.

The sun was low in the sky, suggesting late afternoon. Already? Matt wondered. He turned back to the cave and knelt beside it.

{See if you can find where everyone else disappeared to, will you? And maybe find some food, too...There's one last thing I need to do.} His reserves were about spent. He hoped he could manage this...

In the back of his mind, something was bothering him, but he was too focused on finding the right place to burn to pay attention. At last he looked up, double-checking that no one was around. That's when it hit him--all the world was perfectly silent. He was used to being aware of others in the sense that he could hear pieces of thought and emotion. But now it was utterly silent. {Willow?} He called silently, suddenly feeling slightly unnerved. Her footprints led away in the snow. He couldn't see her.

Matt knew he was tired and at the end of his energy. He thought he had just enough left to finish this, but he was too weary to reason out where everyone had gone. Just finish this, and then worry about it.

He returned his attention to the tunnel, got to his feet and stepped back. There was a small explosion, and a cloud of snow and mist burst into the air, along with a flash of blue-white light. Matt found himself tumbling forward into the sinking pit of snow, but he didn't fall far before stopping. His mind buzzed, falling close to blackness before reality slid back. He sat back up with a groan, checking himself slightly. He was fine, but the tunnel was gone, a sunken pit of ice and snow.


OOC: I had Willow walk away, which is godmoding a bit, but I didn't think you'd mind. I can change it if it's a problem. I just figured that she'd be going to look for the others anyway, not staring at Matt staring at the snow...lol.

[Willow]

Willow hauled herself up out of the hole, grabbing fistfuls of snow to gain purchase on the ground, finally emerging rather ungracefully as she scrabbled around on her stomach, trying to get up or at least move away to make room for Matt, looking as though she was attempting to make the world’s worst snow angel as she did so.
Finally regaining her feet, she cast a brief, longing glance at her pack, more specifically her sleeping roll, wishing the night would hurry up and draw in so she could go to bed.
Turning her attention away from wistful thoughts of sleep, she nodded at Matt’s thought directed at her, only now realising that there was no one around. Were they still searching their own caves?

Silently groaning at the mere idea of having to go down another hole so soon, Willow chose to search for food before chasing after her family. God knows, they could look after themselves for a while longer without her.
Decided, she headed away from the scattered packs, dropping into her four-legged shape and trotting away once she was clear of the last cave, nosing the air briefly for signs of the rest of their search party.
Not catching anything immediately suspicious or worrying, she was soon out of sight of the caves, hidden by the banks of snow as she snuffled around for anything that smelt appetising.

After a few minutes she caught the scent of a hare, and headed off in the direction it had gone, doubting she would find anything bigger in the area. She didn’t want to get too far from the caves.
It was another quarter of an hour before she caught up to her target, but once she did, Willow made quick work of the chase and kill, though the loose top layer of snow didn’t give her as much resistance as she thought it would so she ended up rolling nose over tail rather than skidding to a somewhat dignified stop.
Shaking her head and snorting snow out of her nose, Willow went back to the hare – felled by a single bite to the back of the neck before the wolf had gone tripping past it.

Picking it up, she headed back to the caves at a brisk trot, moving faster now she wasn’t trying to follow a scent, her dark coat a smudge against the pristine landscape as she weaved between snow drifts.
Nearing the caves again, she paused, her ears raised and tilted forwards to listen for sounds of movement.
Still none.
Ears flattening a little, Willow slunk forward, her tail falling from its high, jaunty place to lie parallel to the ground as she crouched closer to the ground.
It was in this wary stance that Willow came within sight of the holes in the ground, her eyes flickering between the caves.

She lowered her catch to the ground near her pack, then turned towards the other caves, heading for the one that had Kaz and Veraz’s bags next to it.
She nosed around it, then stuck her head into the opening of the cave. The decline was a lot shallower than hers and Matt’s had been, and the two had gone down it, but whether they’d come back up Willow couldn’t tell. Her nose was still stinging from inhaling the ice crystals, and wasn’t working as well as normal.
Pulling her head free, the ruff of fur around her neck choked with white powder, Willow shifted and knelt up, looking about for any last sign of people, before crawling into the passage non-too happily. If her wayward family had just gone for a walk after all this worrying, Willow would be cracking some heads together.


[OOC: Ugh, sorry if this post got crappy, it was first day of college today and I’m shattered. I’m not used to the early start haha.]

[flippedside]

Matt looked around him. The slight dip in the land was empty, except for the glare of sun on snow. He staggered to his feet, following the tracks that Willow had made. It didn't take him long to find the discarded rabbit. Despite the emptiness of his surroundings, there was nothing immediately worrying in the area, and Matt was starved. He devoured the rabbit raw, letting his teeth shift back to fangs to make eating easier.

Still hungry, Matt decided it was time to go hunting for himself. He trudged up an embankment of snow , waiting until he was just beyond sight of the caves to shift. He shadowed and then took to the air, dropping his shadowing when he was high enough to not be spotted.

Catching a high thermal, he soared for a moment before heading north. An hour's flying took him to a herd of elk. He dropped down on one, using his knife to sever its spinal cord. The rest of the herd raced away, but Matt was pleased with his find. He devoured part of it, and then hauled the rest up to be taken back to camp.

Matt was just about to take to the air, when a strange scent caught his nose. He turned about, not able to smell much over the heavy reek of the elk's blood. He dropped the elk and moved further away. It was a dry scent, faintly sweet. Matt identified it almost immediately. Decay.

He took to the air, circling the area in search of signs of the necromancer's passing, but whatever might have been there had been trampled by the elk when they ran from his attack. Matt was slightly disturbed by the closeness of his enemy, but only slightly. He guessed that the man had used some place nearby to raise a corpse, or feed on its blood...or do some other disgusting ritual, causing the dry reek. It wasn't likely the man was still in the area. Returning to the elk, he flew it back with him to the ice caves.

Matt landed back from the caves, shadowing his landing. He rubbed ice on his arms to remove the blood stains from carrying the elk's carcass, and then shifted back. Grabbing the ankles of the elk's hind-legs, Matt dragged the beast back to the temporary camp. He'd eaten most of the belly and part of a shoulder, but there was still plenty of meat left on the elk to be shared about. At least he was no longer weak and feeling half-starved.

Cresting the rise, Matt could hear the sounds of voices, and it sounded like they were raised in argument. What now? He wondered curiously.

OOC: Short and sweet. I haven't been feeling well, so not feeling too creative.

[Willow]

“...now she’s missing!” The voice sounded quite young, and by far the more irate of the two shouting.
“How is that my fault? How is that anyone’s fault?!” The second voice was older, and had the tone of someone who’d gotten tired of being defensive.
“I’m not trying to blame you, Kaz, but what else am I supposed to think when the cave she and someone hardly any of us know is collapsed and neither of them are to be seen? I know Willow can take care of herself, but she’s hardly invincible, especially if a few tonnes of ice came down on her head!”
“I know that, Khan, but-”
“Shut up, the pair of you!” The voice that cut across the arguing two was female to their male, and though angry, had an edge of reason the others had lacked. “Standing here shouting at each other won’t help, especially as the snow’s covering up any footprints.” It was true – Willow’s prints from an hour ago were obscured beneath sixty minutes worth of light, constant snowfall. What hadn’t been buried had been destroyed by the steps of the others as they returned. Those that had finished searching their tunnels quickly had spent the time waiting for those with longer or branching tunnels scouting for herds to hunt, or any signs of something that could be linked to the sorcerer or the fire stone. Having gone in a direction almost perpendicular to Matt, they’d found nothing except a spooked herd of elk that were too fast to hunt unprepared. Returning, they’d found a collapsed tunnel entrance and no sign of the two who’d been down there.

“Now, we don’t know if they were in the cave or not, but it’s unlikely – the rope isn’t trapped, and Matt aside, Willow wouldn’t have gone down without it, not an incline that steep. She’s crazy, not stupid." There was a general shuffle and mumble of agreement to this. Willow's...unusual exploits weren't exactly secret. "So we look for them elsewhere first. Fast runners and birds, scout the area around here. The rest of you, go back down the other tunnels – they might have gone hunting or looking for us.” Veraz’s voice was calm, hardly showing the stress she felt as she shifted and took off with the other birds, the wolves and big cats adapted to snow making to scatter as those remaining human organised their second descent.

Before anyone got far, however, Matt was spotted. At this, everyone stopped and waited whilst Veraz hurried to the weredragon.
The minute she was close enough for speech, she was shifting and talking, landing in the snow up to her mid shin and ploughing towards him.
“Matt, is Willow with you? Do you know where she is?”


Willow swore as she tripped over another piece of debris, hopping on one leg and shaking her injured foot irritably. Of course, she would have gotten lost because in her hurry she’d forgotten to bring a rope, wouldn’t she? And she would have the luck of going down the most labyrinth-like warren in this desolate place.
She just really hoped there were no more terrors trapped in the frozen maze.
It turned out that many of the ice caves were linked to each other – those who had gone down the joined tunnels has travelled until they met up with other members of their party before turning back.
Willow only worked this out after seeing another cave entrance, some twenty feet straight above her. By this point, she was utterly lost. Now, she was pretty sure no one else was down here, and was worrying over where thirty odd people could disappear to in the wilderness as she sought out an exit she could access.

Sighing, the teenager looked around her beautiful, if dim, surroundings. The strongly filtered sunlight caused rainbow distortions in the ice, which were then projected, if the ice was thin enough, onto the walls and Willow’s heavy, white clothes.
It was as she was staring around, taking a break whilst the pain in her foot receded, that she noticed the low creaking, and the slight, hair thin lines in the ice that, despite their width, seemed to run deep from what she could see.

She was actually quite close to Veraz and Kaz’s entry point – theirs being the closest to Willow and Matt’s – but this proximity had affected the ice close to the now destroyed tunnel. The structure of Kaz and Veraz’s tunnel was weakening under its own weight now that something had started it.

Willow started to move at exactly the same moment that she started to worry.


[OOC: I hope you’re feeling okay now, flippedside. As for the post, not too sure where that came from, I was trying to think what an argument could be over and this popped into my head haha. Probably rubbish, I’m tired, but hopefully it’ll lead on to something better.]

[flippedside]

Matt had just started down the steep crest of ice, elk in tow, when a hawk swooped out of the air, shifting and landing before him as a human woman. The woman, Veraz, immediately demanded if he he knew where Willow had gone.

Matt sensed her underlying agitation, but could only shake his head. "She went off to search a cave for you, I think. I saw her pack lying next to a cave entrance."

"One of the caves collapsed--" Veraz started to explain, but Matt cut her off.

"No! Not that one. We were together earlier in that cave, but came out all right before it collapsed all the way." Matt didn't explain that he had caused the collapse in an effort to hide the reptilian sorcerer. Things that evil were best left deeply buried--even if they were dead. He headed down the slope.

"Her bag was on the other end of the valley..." Actually, it wasn't far from where Matt was now, since he'd followed her prints to the dead rabbit. All that was left now was a pile of bones and a bloody stain on the glittering white of the snow. "Look." Matt pointed it out to Veraz, sensed her relax.

"Silly girl, we must have missed her in the caves." Veraz's words were irritated, almost harsh, but their very coolness showed her relief at finding that Willow couldn't have been buried in the cave-in. She took to the air to tell the others, while Matt continued to drag the elk back.

A chill pricked his spine. That other sense that allowed him to catch thoughts hissed a warning: Something's wrong. He knew it without knowing how. Though the odd, half-intuition, half-thought-catching was an irritating thing to depend on--to stake your life on--Matt had learned to trust his intuition. He'd have preferred to have set facts--to always know what he was facing--but more often survival depended on that moment of half-awareness just before something went wrong.

He dropped the elk and spun around. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. Matt circled warily, crouching slightly, disliking the silence. There was nothing out here on the broad snowfields and sharp crevices of rock. Nothing but a few mysterious ice caves and...A hawk far in the sky. He watched in circle for a moment, noting that it wasn't Veraz, since she was down with the others. Matt headed back down the hill, but the uneasy sense stayed with him.

Kaz approached when Matt was nearer. "Quite the kill you got...Though it seems to be missing something." An odd expression crossed his face as he studied the gutted animal.

Matt dropped it; replied blandly, "I was hungry."

He didn't bother to try to figure out what Kaz was thinking since he suspected he already knew. Since Kaz was a shape-shifter, he was likely wondering what sort of massive beast Matt could shift into that had recently devoured half an elk.

Not caring if he was bothering his companions, Matt asked, "Is everyone out of the caves, then?"

"Everyone except Willow." Kaz frowned, and then eyed the elk again. Elk were big. That was a lot of meat to be eaten in one sitting.

Matt grimaced slightly, but felt an odd responsibility for Willow, stemming mainly from the fact that he had opened the iced over tunnel to the nightmare creature under the caves. He knew if something happened to her, he'd feel that that he was at least partially responsible. "I'll go look--"

"No," Veraz interrupted, approaching them. "We can't have you getting lost, too."

"I'm less likely to get lost--"

She shook her head firmly, and Matt glared, irritated to be told what to do. That, more than anything, decided him on searching out Willow.

"We need to organize a search group, and have the rest set up camp. We need you to look about for signs of the man you're hunting, Matt. Since you know the most about him, you'll be be able to find his tracks more easily than the rest of us."

Matt softened slightly, mollified. These people had clearly been working together for some time, and Matt expected that they knew how to search out one of their own better than he did. Well, not necessarily better, but they would be used to their own methods. And anyway, Veraz was right that he would be by far the best one to hunt out the necromancer...

The snow suddenly cracked loudly under their feet, snapping sharply. On of the ridges grew abruptly shorter, snow crashing down off of its top, some sliding into a cave entrance. The uneasy silence after the loud thumping of snow was broken by Veraz, giving short commands to her group. With one cave-in, it was possible that more would happen soon...

[Willow]

Willow’s breath sighed out slowly, carefully as she looked up at the ceiling with threatened eyes. Part of the tunnel had suddenly given way, falling a few inches before jarring to a stop. The hairline cracks she’d seen before had expanded as the weight of the ice dragged large slabs of it down. It was only the thickness and proximity of the ice that had stopped the whole thing collapsing straight away.

Willow was reluctant to look away from the glinting ice above her head, but did so, staying tense as if relaxing would bring the place crashing down.
Warily, she proceeded forward, moving quickly and lightly, worried that any movement she made on the solid ice under her feet would carry to the weakening structure around and above her and be the last straw, so to speak.

Eventually, Willow spied the end of the tunnel she’d been pursuing, and saw the tell-tale lightening around the corner. An entrance – exit – at last.
But then, hidden until then by a slight rise in the tunnel, was a break in the floor. Despite the relative amount of light in the passage, the bottom of the hole was invisible in a darkness that started unusually close to the top of the gap. At a rough estimate, the whole thing was seven or eight metres wide.
Jogging to a stop, Willow eyed the gap speculatively, whilst at the same time cursing mildly. Couldn’t just one thing turn out simple for her today?
Still, the jump shouldn’t be too difficult. A good leap in her wolf shape should carry her across the distance, and if she shifted at the peak of her jump, the edge should be well within her grasp of a lengthened human body and arms.

Nodding to herself, Willow turned and paced back to the corner, then shifted, supple muscles tensing briefly under her thick coat, before launching herself forward into a powerful run, her stubby nails throwing up chips of ice, the smallest fragments following the path her paws carved in the air.
At the edge, Willow summoned what felt like all the energy in her body to her hind legs, pushing off with enough force to break the thinned brink of the chasm, heaving lungs dragging in but barely registering the faint stench of rotting that came up from the pit.

Time didn’t slow, so Willow had no time to get over her shock and react to what happened next.
Mid-jump, just as she was shifting to her human shape, two tawny blurs came level with her, then landed on her back, their combined weight utterly disrupting the jump.
Grunting with the sudden and unexpected weight, Willow snatched at the ledge futilely, even as her nails skittered across ice.
Whatever was clinging onto her back had claws, which were digging through her clothes and catching her skin.
The fall wasn’t very far; eighteen two twenty feet, but it was enough to knock the breath out of Willow despite her twisting sharply in the air so that the two things hanging onto her hit the ground first with a dull crunch that announced breaking bones.

Willow lay for a few moments, staring at but not focusing on the light from the tunnel above. When she suddenly started taking air into her lungs again, she groaned but pushed herself to roll away quickly to examine what had dragged her down here, her pupils fully dilated in order to see.
Two servals, their long legs twisted and broken, along with their backs by the angle they lay at.

Both were in the early stages of decay.

Willow froze, the image she saw not matching with what her mind said was possible.
Slowly, she stood and looked around, excessively wary as she glanced around her surroundings with her nearly hunted look in her eyes.
Almost directly in front of her were two shadows with definite shape.
Focussing on them, Willow could only just make them out.
One, a big cat – a leopard of jaguar, she guessed, though it looked oddly thin. The other shadow, a man. The details escaped her at this light level, but she could tell he was quite tall. And thin. Painfully thin. And though the darkness turned everything into some shade of grey, his hair was obviously dark.

Willow’s subconscious had already pieced it together, and waited for her to grasp it.
‘The spell caster. Down here. How did they miss this?’
While she was thinking that, she was cementing the image she could see in her mind and trying to incorporate it into her thoughts, before projecting it out as well as she knew how. Matt could catch words – Willow just hoped he could see mental pictures as well.


“Khan, Ghett, shift and start trying to move some of that snow, you four with them. That seems to be the cave closest to where it’s weak, I want to know how sound it is before sending people back down there,” Veraz finished, the last of the crowd heading to the diminished ridge, the others scattered around, either making camp a safe distance away, flying to collect the other groups, or rounding up the packs littering the ground and move them nearer to camp.

Veraz pitched in with moving the bags and setting up camp; she wouldn’t be able to put much of a dint in the snow drift the guys were trying to clear. Khan and the rest of the men whose shifted shapes were built for power, on the other hand, were making a lot of progress in their animal forms.

Everything moved, the married couple leading the search party paused before joining those setting up camp, both turning to watch the diggers for a moment. Kaz put an arm round Veraz shoulders, sensing how worried his light-boned partner was, though she didn’t show it.
“She’ll be okay. She’ll be wandering around swearing at us, most likely, when she realises we’re not down there.” He said, sounding confident. It was a very Willow-esque thing to do, anyway. Provided she was in any state to be wandering around...Kaz shook those thoughts from his head, smiling when he saw Veraz’s lips twitch.
Their break over, they put their minds to camp and tried not to think too much about their missing teenager. She couldn’t be in too much trouble, surely.

[flippedside]

Matt left the rest of the group to worry about making camp and searching out Willow. He trudged back up the slope, studying the prints his own boots had made in the snow. He could see the wolf prints that Willow's feet had made, and beyond, the crumpled snow from the fallen cave. He studied the snow for a moment, considering where best to search for the necromancer. He had been moving by air, covering considerable ground, but his last check point had been several miles from here...

His gaze roamed back to the collapsed ice peak, and an eerie chill touched the back of his neck. He had the uncomfortable sense of being watched. Matt checked the rest of the camp, but they were searching farther down, digging at the snow. He skidded down the hill and towards the mound of disturbed ice and snow. The disturbance had caused it to lose its crust, and he fell in to his waist.

The scent of rot was suddenly strong, as if something long dead and buried had recently been disturbed. The scent brought back half-dead memories of the acid-sweet burning taste of blood and black spaces lined with death and rot...Matt shuddered. He struggled to pull himself from the world of nightmares and death that still dwelt in his mind.

The sudden scream in his mind jerked him back to the ice caves. Matt covered his ears, even though Willow's thought had been soundless. {You don't have to shout,} he thought, even as what she was projecting filtered through to his conscious mind. {Oh, shit.}

Something else was whispering at the back of his mind. Dark and cold, as dead as his creations, {So nice of you to send me a gift to add to my...collection.} Matt thought that the man would have laughed, if he was capable of it.

Matt blinked, pulling himself back to reality and his current surroundings. The force of what was currently happening had jerked him out of his own memories. "Willow's this way," Matt hollered, using his own thoughts to push his words past the limits of his voice. He looked towards the others, but felt a chill, knowing they too far away to hear. No one was even looking.

The necromancer was amused. {Nice try. But shifters are too dense to speak mind-to-mind.}

{Willow can,} Matt thought flatly. She wasn't the first shifter he'd known to thought-speak, either. But did that really matter if she was about to become a half-dead beast and the others couldn't hear him?

He shifted himself, his powerful wings tearing his shirt to shreds as he jerked them open. There was no way he was going to get out of the softened snow and down to Willow in time to help her by way of his human form. Bursting upwards, he flung snow outwards, his wings hurtling more outwards by the force of their beating. He gained the air and an updraft and passed over the collapsed ice hill. There was an entrance in the ice not far away. Matt sent Willow an image of what he was doing in an effort to reassure her, adding, {You have to behead the undead beasts to kill them. Anything else they'll survive, even being crushed when you fell on them.} Matt had his own, quite effective way of killing them, but it involved shoving fire down their throats until they exploded, and Willow wouldn't be able to replicate that trick.

{Oh, this should be good,} thought the necromancer, amusement lacing his voice.

Shouting distracted him, and Matt looked to see the others, now opposite him, on the other side of the collapsed ice. Veraz was pointing, and Kaz had just looked up. Matt caught the look of first horror, then rage on his face as he realized that Matt was no shifter. Matt didn't have time to explain. He landed and ducked into the cave, moving swiftly over the slick flooring. Unintentionally, he had already let fire lace his hands, and it caused the ice to turn to water where he touched the walls.

{Send me exactly where you are,} Matt demanded to Willow. He knew she was close, by the force of her first thought, but didn't know just where she was...Or how close she was, for that matter. Hopefully close enough to reach before the necromancer...Did whatever he intended. At least Matt knew it took the man several minutes to complete a spell. And he could hope that Willow would be left alive as bait. He grimaced. As bait to catch him.


OOC: Poor Willow got dumped in way over her head...And twice in one day! We'll see who gets to her first: Matt or Veraz and Kaz or the necro. lol.

[Willow]

Willow exhaled sharply with relief when she thought-heard Matt responding, though the words themselves were fuzzy. He sounded disgruntled, but then his far shorter response reached her, very clearly. The same two words had been running laps around the inside of her skull since she’d stood up.
She might have given him a sarcastic reply in return, had she not been concentrating on keeping her eyes on both the necromancer and the emaciated – no, decayed leopard and simultaneously drawing her swords, moving slowly so as not to provoke an attack.

Senses hyper-alert as they were, Willow could vaguely sense some sort of interaction between Matt and the necromancer via Matt’s thoughts, but as they weren’t directed at her she had no idea what was being thought.
Also caught by her heightened senses were the first movements from the servals lying at her feet.
For a single moment, Willow blanched. Knowing that two dead creatures have just dragged you into a pit was one thing, seeing them moving right in front of her despite broken backs and legs was another thing entirely.

Still, her paralysis lasted for only two nearly painful heartbeats before Matt’s pictures and words broke it, prompting her to lash out at the small felines, following his advice and taking it a step further, separating the legs from the body of the closest cat in four more quick, light strokes. They couldn’t attack her if they had no means to move by, could they?
She’d had the time to butcher the first serval before it had rose fully, the second was now moving on broken limbs out of range and circling the young human, stopping directly behind her, facing its master past the girl.

Willow didn’t turn to stay facing it, letting it move how it wanted. She knew the necromancer was the greatest threat in the room, and was loathe to turn her back on him.
Ignoring the bait to do just that which was bristling at her with what was left of its dull, once-fine fur, Willow focussed on the man across the stone room from her, eyes narrowing fractionally. She wasn’t sure whether it was the way the shadows obscured his face, but he seemed to be amused at something.

Before she could get angry enough to start planning an attack – that would probably be intercepted by his pet jaguar-leopard, she hadn’t made her mind up which yet – Matt’s voice entered her head again, instructing her.
Obeying, Willow slowly raised her eyes to the ceiling, focussing on the rough rectangle of glacial light as she expanded her other senses to keep tabs on the other occupants of the room.
Sending the image as she had done before, she then recalled the seconds before her leap; the glimmer of snow-reflected light on ice from around the corner, the hole in the ground, the moment of flying before claws had sank into her back...

A faint scuff of claw against stone was the only warning of movement behind her as Willow whirled to face the springing serval, swords lifting up reflexively, one to guard, the other to impale.
Apparently the necromancer had decided Willow had stood still long enough, and was fully compensating for the lack of action as the larger cat finally moved, bounding away from his side toward Willow’s exposed back.

Cursing, Willow swiped her left sword through the neck of the serval that was stuck like a marshmallow on the end of her right weapon, caught mid-leap in the stomach by Willow’s first strike.
Heaving the headless cat off the blade, Willow finished turning just as the leopard – she’d finally identified it – barrelled into her, knocking her to the ground.
While it was alive, it had probably been one of the larger specimens of its species, twice Willow’s weight, judging by the skeleton that was supporting the loose, dry skin and reduced muscles. Now it barely weighed half the weight again of the human it had tackled that was plunging blades up to the hilt into its chest and stomach, though it was still considerably stronger than the comparatively fragile creature trying to tear it apart.

Willow was snarling, throwing her weight from side to side, trying to shake the leopard off to give herself enough room for a decent swipe at its neck, but its grip on her shoulders didn’t slacken.
Her blades had had equal effect – the leopard didn’t even twitch.
Changing tactics suddenly, Willow bucked violently, kicking upwards with both legs, catching the cat squarely in the torso. While not very damaging, it was enough to boost the leopard’s back end into the air, and though bearing around one hundred and fifty pounds on just her shoulders hurt and emphasised every single stone that was burying into her back, having all of its weight balanced precariously on two points was enough that, with another vicious twist, the leopard fell away from her, landing unsteadily on its paws.

Not waiting around to see if it would pin her again, Willow jumped straight from her back to her feet, sheathing her swords and starting to shift...
...then reversed it as quickly as she was able, her semi-formed hand already reaching for one of the daggers at her belt.
By the time she was fully human again, she was throwing the six-inch long blade, shouting with the effort, with all the force in her lean frame straight at the necromancer’s skull, the point of the blade lined up with the exact centre of his forehead, consequences and dead leopards be damned.

[OOC: Nothing on the others this post, if I did it’d be half as long again haha.]

[flippedside]

Matt scrambled down the tunnel, keeping the image Willow had projected in his mind. A tunnel opened up to the side, and he hesitated, unsure on the direction to head. Worse, he was coming towards the split in the path from the opposite direction that Willow had taken. He took a guess and headed right, but the tunnel grew darker and several smaller legs fanned out.

Matt cursed as he realized that the place was a maze that he could well be lost in forever.

{You know, you could help,} he grumbled at the necromancer.

{I'm busy entertaining my new guest.} The man sounded annoyed, and Matt wondered what Willow had done. At least that meant that she wasn't dead yet. {What do you want?} the necromancer demanded, surprising Matt.

{Where are you?}

Matt was sent specific, clear instructions. He felt a chill, and realized that the necromancer must have set the whole thing up; must have known all along where he was. That meant he had been right earlier: Willow was bait. And if the man hadn't caught Willow, someone or something else would have been used as bait to catch him.

{My master wants you,} the necromancer whispered, and Matt fought the sudden urge to flee. He could hear the man laughing in his mind, and he clenched his jaw. He would not run. He drew his short double-swords, and headed cautiously down the tunnel, wondering what traps were set for him.

{I would hurry if I were you,} sent the necromancer, and he sent a brutal image of Willow. Matt had no idea how accurate the image was, but it chilled him all the same. He felt sick thinking that he had brought this man on the shifters. He should have never approached them in the first place.

Further thoughts were buried under the leaping body of a giant cat, its fur tawny where it wasn't rotted away. He drew up his swords automatically, though it hardly stopped the creature, whose massive fangs snapped near his face. It had surprisingly human features, though, and its pale eyes rolled wildly in its face. Matt breathed fire on it, and it squealed and fell back. He hacked off its head, one foot pinning it on its half-rotted side.

He flicked black liquid off his swords, and paused to really look at the creature. "A sphinx?" he muttered. "Are you kidding me?" Matt didn't take the time to puzzle out whether it was a real sphinx (which he'd never actually seen in real life), or merely pieces of other animals merged into one disgusting undead thing that resembled a sphinx, but instead trotted on down the tunnel, now on his guard.

{Is that the best you have?} he challenged the necromancer.

It was a stupid challenge, as he knew the man was more powerful than he was, and Matt was quite likely to find his life abruptly ended at any moment. Surprisingly, he received no answer.

Still, Matt followed the man's instructions, wondering silently if he could kill him the way he killed his pets--by beheading. He'd assumed so while he was hunting the man, but now that he was actually fighting him...

The split in the path came suddenly. Matt recognized it just before he reached it by the image Willow had given him. Before he had quite reached the edge, something leaped out of the depths of the pit and smashed into him with enough force to send him crashing to the ground. Matt blacked out from the force of the hit, his head slamming painfully against the hard ice.

He returned to consciousness almost instantly, a giant slavering mouth about to tear off his head. Only his sword, impaled through his chest, had stopped the beast enough to keep it from killing him in one move. That wasn't going to stop it for long, though.

{Like my newest pet?} asked the necromancer.

{Just love it,} Matt returned sarcastically.


OOC: Too bad necros don't die that easily. Have you ever played Guild Wars?

[Willow]

Willow sprang away just as the leopard landed where she’d been standing, preserved claws scarring the ground as it swung around to face her and leap again.
The knife had missed, of course. The necromancer could apparently move extremely fast as well as being extraordinarily strong. After that, he’d been playing Squash the Human with the Leopard. It must have looked like some sort of warped game of leapfrog as Willow stayed barely a second ahead of the cat, grimly refusing to acknowledge that it had one major advantage against her – it wouldn’t tire. She would.
The necromancer seemed content to stay where he was, watching and directing his pet.
Willow was sorely tempted to punch him in the face, if the stupid desiccated fur ball would let up for a second. And if she could move fast enough.

She’d already been feeling the first signs of tiredness when she’d fallen, and though they’d been wiped away by the initial surge of adrenaline, they were creeping back into her limbs, stronger than before.
Willow was forcing herself to keep her breath even and controlled, though her chest shook with each breath, desperate to drag more air in than steady breathing would allow.
Landing again, Willow gritted her teeth at the clench of pain that shot through the back of her leg. She couldn’t keep this up for much longer.
The decision took a split second; using her fatigue to drop swiftly to one knee and duck low took another.
As the leopard came down, Willow rolled forward sharply, feeling swiping claws rake her spine as she scraped under the airborne cat.

Stopping, she drew her swords and leant backwards, arching to stab the leopard in the back up to the hilt.
Using this purchase and ignoring the protest of her contorted muscles, she dragged the cat towards her, twisting up and around as the leopard drew level with her.
She’d planned to behead it whilst her embedded sword held the feline in place, but apparently the puppeteer was paying closer attention to his creation than Willow had thought. The trapped cat lunged and fastened near three-inch canines into her shoulder before it could lift to strike.

Her sword dropped from numb fingers as she screamed, hunching against the pain and shifting the impaled muscle, sending another wave of dizzying pain flaring through her.
Letting go of her other sword, she grabbed the back of the leopard’s neck, it’s low thrumming growl mingling with her own pained keening as she gripped dry, disgustingly loose fur in a white-knuckled grip, breathing and trying to think through the pain that threatened to knock her sick.

She had no hope of dragging it off her – the only way she would get it off her that way would be with her shoulder still clamped in its jaws.
There was a trick, though. She’d used it before in sparring with...no time to think of that now. What was the trick?
‘Mouth...teeth...canines, behind the canines...’
Groaning, Willow inched her free arm towards the leopard’s maw, ignoring the increasing volume of its incessant snarling.
Each movement seemed to pull on her injured shoulder, even though she tried to keep it still. Why did shoulders have to be so close together?

As her bloody fingers touched the dry, black gums, the muscle under her hand shifted, jaws tightening to reignite the agony that nearly rendered her senseless and drew another anguished shriek from her, somewhat muffled as she dropped her head against the big cats, the coarsened fur scratching her face going unheeded.
‘Now I know what it feels like to be eaten alive,’ Willow’s scattered thoughts realised before she could focus them.
Despite the torture, her uninjured hand had stayed where she’d moved it. Now, she slipped her fingers into the dry mouth, twisting her arm so that her fingers could get under the small teeth between the upper canines, ignoring the rasp of its tongue against her already chafed skin.
She wasn’t sure how it worked, but the jaws were suddenly coming apart under her demanding fingers, until she could fit her whole fist into the mouth.
Her shoulder came free, each puncture feeling as if flames were burning there.

Whipping her hand free, Willow shifted as she shoved forward, knocking the leopard onto its back.
Holding her useless limb up to her chest, Willow buried her own teeth into the thin throat below her, and shook, deep tears splitting skin and muscle, fifteen centimetres long, the outraged shrieks cutting off suddenly as Willow crushed the larynx.
She let go for an instant, only to grab hold again, severing untouched pieces of flesh.
It was a beheading, and about as brutal as it could get.

The cat was tearing strips out of her shoulders and chest, but Willow barely felt them, so focussed on her task that even her injured shoulder taking a direct blow only made her flinch and bite deeper.
Finally, with a sickening crunch, Willow separated the neck vertebrae and lifted the separated, mangled head before throwing it away, the gruesome bundle landing a few feet away from the necromancer.

Leaving the body to fall lifeless, Willow limped away from it, feral gaze fixed on the spell caster.
Injured and cornered, Willow let her wolf side influence her, obeying a mix of human knowledge and animal instinct.
Her bloody jaws fell open, a parody of a smile.
‘No pets left to help you now,’ She thought, not caring if he heard or not. She had little chance of winning by herself in her condition; weak from blood loss and fatigue, but she was determined that she would leave a few scars on that scrawny body before she was put out of the fight, one way or another.

[OOC: Aye, a pity. But it'd be boring if they were easy to kill, no? ;D And I've played Guild Wars, but it was extremely slow - I'd take one step, the comp would freeze for a minute, one step, freeze etc. Needless to say, my patience ran out pretty quickly XD When I played it on a friend's computer though, it was pretty good.

[flippedside]

The snarling beast jerked downwards, its movements made awkward by deadened muscles. Matt's arms were trapped by the double swords buried to the hilt in the beast's heavily furred chest. He released one weapon, feeling the hilt crush painfully against his chest, and twisted sideways, managing to get his arm in front of his face.

The sickening crunch of bone sounded loud in his ears. He couldn't even yell, the pain itself was too deafening. Blackness fuzzed the edges of his vision, but he struggled to hold onto consciousness. He thought he heard someone screaming, but everything felt unnaturally distant, the ringing in his ears drowning out all other sounds.

Matt tried to focus on fire calling, but he couldn't move his arm, let alone draw heat and energy into it. His other arm was being crushed, but somehow he managed to pull himself together enough to send heat out of his hand, onto the sword. The metal heated rapidly, and the beast screeched as its flesh was seared. It fell back, tossing Matt aside like a rag doll. Something else in Matt's body snapped and he gagged, struggling to stay conscious, dots dancing across his vision.

Physical pain didn't seem to deter the undead monsters, but fire did. Matt didn't know why, but at the moment he was very grateful. He struggled to pull in enough air to breathe, but his cracked ribs screamed in pained argument.

Ignoring the pain, he sat up carefully. The beast was jerking Matt's twin swords out of its chest and flinging them aside. It vaguely resembled a cross between a wolf and a human, though the fur was a dark mottled brown, and the body was nearly twice the size of an average human. It shrieked angrily, showing decaying fangs, black liquid dripping out of its mouth.

Matt shuddered, too repulsed to feel frightened. He pushed himself to his feet, creating a wall of fire as the thing lunged for him. Its leap threw it right through the flames, and Matt staggered aside, the beast knocking him aside and then twisting on itself, enraged by the flames licking at its coat. It ripped at itself, tearing its own decayed flesh as it tore away its flaming fur.

The initial leap had knocked Matt off balance, and he staggered backwards, half-aware of the monster as it tore at itself. He tripped and fell backwards off the edge, catching himself with heavy wing flapping. His ribs screamed in rage at the movement of his wings, but Matt ignored the pain, shadowing himself to the ice tunnel. He landed lightly, grabbing a sword, and then turned, preparing to leap on the beast.

Several things happened at once, causing Matt to pause. First was the sudden snap and crack of the ice, as it prepared to break and bury them all. Immediately after came distant shouting. A lower voice rumbled "Willow!" the sound echoing strangely down the tunnel.

{I see your "friends" have come to join you,} the necromancer said dryly.

Matt was careful not to respond so that the man wouldn't find him. Still, the appearance of Willow's friends made him nervous, rather than relieved. They hadn't been pleased to see his true form earlier, and he didn't know how much they would help in this situation. He shifted uneasily, afraid that they would get in the way rather than help.

I should have done this by myself, Matt thought, yet again.

Body aching, spots dancing in his vision, Matt lunged forward and up, thrusting his sword straight through the beast's throat. It hardly fazed the thing, which swatted Matt aside like a fly and then tore the sword out of its throat, leaving oozing black liquid and its neck flopping slightly on its head. Matt struggled to regain his balance, wings snapping the air, but his ribs caused him to black out briefly, and when he came to, he was falling into the pit in the tunnel. He made one last effort to catch himself before crashing to the ground. Dizziness and the sickening taste of bile in the back of his throat woke him.

The necromancer was staring down at him, one hand extended towards where his monster loomed on the edge of crevice.

"So we meet again," he whispered. "I should have finished you off the first time."

Matt glared, but his body didn't respond to his demand to lunge to his feet, screaming in angry protest. He'd pushed too hard, and too much was broken and shattered. He closed his eyes briefly, struggling to push down the nausea. When he opened them again, he at last noticed the wolf on his other side. He groaned to himself. Another pet?


OOC: Willow manages to keep her sense of humor even when being chomped. ;D And I think poor Matt needs help. lol.

I asked b/c I play Guild Wars all the time. It lags occasionally b/c the comp I use sucks, but not by that much! That would be really frustrating. If you ever play again, let me know. Maybe we can play together (that's the fun part of the game--playing with friends).

[Willow]

Willow’s vault from the ground at the necromancer’s throat was powerful, though not very well thought out. He dodged, and Willow struggled to land without using her injured leg, staggering as she took her weight on her single good foreleg, hopping as her back legs hit the ground and gave her the stability she needed to turn around, right into the harsh kick to her ribs that knocked her aside, rolling and yelping each time her bitten shoulder cracked against the ground.

When her momentum ran out, she wasn’t quite unconscious, but the jarring pain had fazed her, leaving her limp and dazed, confusion clouding her eyes.
She saw a dark, fluttering shape crash into the ground near her, but the image didn’t register with her entirely. Besides, she was distracted by the pressure of her weight lying on her mauled shoulder, and she was certain she’d heard her name called during the confusion of skittering across the stone ground. Trying to place the voice was taking a lot of concentration in her hazy state of mind.


Kaz took the corner at a brisk lope, red fur a shock of colour in the glistening white and frozen blue-green of the ice surrounding them.
The sound of mainly human footsteps hurrying behind him was comforting, but they weren’t the sound he was focussed on.
Kaz, when shifted, could hear a mouse squeal at one hundred and fifty feet, and right now he could hear furious, animalistic screeching that indicated a fight.
Slightly beyond that, but far fainter, barely audible, were a series of yelps that were quite familiar.

His course set, Kaz shifted so that those following him had more than a russet blur to focus on, and called out for the wolf shifter he’d heard barking in pain.
When the only reply he received where the echoes of the sound of fracturing ice, his concern turned to alarm. Willow was very good at letting herself be heard, as loud as she was when she wanted to be, and the lack of a response told Kaz she either hadn’t heard him for some reason – odd, because at that distance, she should have – or she wasn’t able to reply. Neither were good signs.

Kaz shot a glance at his wife, now running level with him. Veraz looked tense, though whether that was due to worry about Willow or about the tunnel collapsing he couldn’t tell.
Or maybe it was what they’d seen earlier. Matt. Veraz had been the first to see him when he was shifted, if that was even the right word to use. Veraz was in the habit of keeping track of everyone she thought she was responsible for, and as Matt, by default from working with Willow, fell into that category, she’d been glancing after him every few minutes.

She’d been more astonished than anything else when she realised exactly what she was seeing. By then, others of the group had also spotted Matt and started shouting as Veraz took Kaz’s shoulder and pointed.
She hadn’t seen the emotions on Kaz’s face, but she could imagine them easily. A flicker of shock in his eyes, horror probably lingering and showing on his face. Then anger. Kaz would be beyond furious at this; it was just how he was. One of his biggest faults was that he tended to judge too quickly, and it took a lot to shake him from his judgement once he’d made it. From the sound of the others, many of them agreed with Kaz.
Veraz was shocked, certainly, but she wasn’t as quick to condemn someone as her hot-tempered partner. And calmer than Willow, she felt no need to scream or run.

This serenity was invaluable in the next few minutes, as was her ability to keep her head in the middle of chaos.
She’d briefly scanned the crowd around her after Matt had disappeared below the snow, sharp eyes searching for a reaction similar to hers.
There. Taka, large doe eyes troubled but not angry.
The two looked at each other, nodded, then mobilised, Taka jogging up to Veraz as the others ran for weapons. Veraz would knock out everyone in this group before she let them turn into a lynch mob.
She grabbed Kaz by the arm as he was turning towards his pack, and the heavy fighting spear strapped securely across the top of it.

Taka was already darting around, issuing orders to wait for instruction. The warriors obeyed, fetching their weapons but then waiting, their nervous energy remaining but discipline holding them in place.
Kaz glanced questioningly at Veraz’s hand, then her face, stopping as she spoke.
“If you are fetching weapons, it better not be to hunt that man,” She said conversationally, but Kaz caught the familiar iron glint behind her eyes.

“Veraz, you saw him. We have no idea what he is, what danger he poses. For all we know, he’s the one who’s responsible for Willow going missing,” Kaz replied, tone measured but with restrained frustration roiling just under the surface. Couldn’t she see that that...creature was dangerous?
“Or he could be going to help her right now. He’s kept this hidden from us for hours; why suddenly abandon that effort now? He knew that so close to us there was a great chance we’d see him shifted or whatever he did. He still did it, so why?” Veraz’s response was sharp, quick. Kaz realised she’d already given this some thought during the shouting and rushing going on around her.
“I don’t know, but I don’t trust him, not around you, nor Willow, nor anyone. We’d all be safer if he were-”
“-Don’t even finish that. I swear Kaz, if you think of going down there with the intent to kill him with no solid proof he wants to hurt us, then I will hog tie you and leave you in the middle of camp with nothing but the wind to listen to!” Veraz shouted, her raised voice silencing everyone, Kaz included. They were certain of an audience now.

After a moment of watching her husband’s face carefully, Veraz continued in a far quieter, but no less dangerous tone. “Go and fetch your spear and my tonfa. We’ll go after him and see what reaction is necessary. If he does actually pose a threat to us, then we kill him. If he is helping us, or not trying to hurt us, we help him or leave him be. Am I understood?” Kaz paused, measuring how serious she was, then nodded. Veraz was by far the most level-headed of the two, and he trusted her.
That didn’t mean he would let her anywhere near Matt until he was certain she wasn’t in danger.

And so they found themselves turning the last corner, facing the pit and the real monster peering into it.
It turned, and its first snarl was the signal for the shifters to leap forward and attack.


Willow had given up trying to place the voice, and was focussing on a new puzzle: what had just landed next to her.
But first, her shoulder really hurt.
Groaning quietly in her throat, she managed to roll onto her belly, the relief of her shoulder no longer being pressured returning the slightest edge of lucidity to her mind.
Looking back at the shape, she recognised it. Matt. He’d seemed to flutter as he fell because he was shifted; his wings spread-eagled on the ground.
He was just starting to come round as the necromancer approached, looking down at him.
Willow tensed instinctively, but the spell caster ignored her, too focussed on the weredragon collapsed on the ground.

Willow glanced at Matt as he finally noticed her. He didn’t seem too pleased with her presence, which confused her, until she realised what she must look like, torn up and shifted as she was.
‘I really must look like crap if he thinks I’m one of the necromancer’s pets.’ Willow reflected, the ghost of her ever-present humour growing just a little stronger.
The thought however reminded her of the spell caster himself. He seemed to have forgotten about Willow entirely. Then again, which would be more interesting, a half-dead wolf or a half-dead weredragon? Willow knew which one she’d be staring at.

But the necromancer’s inattention was valuable.
Silently, Willow gathered her legs under her, breathing deeply as she turned her shadowed green eyes on her target.
Aim right for the throat or skull. Whatever her jaws closed on, she’d crush.
That goal the only thing in mind, Willow tensed then released her muscles all at once, the power propelling her into a leap right over Matt, jaws gaping, dead set on locking in the necromancer’s throat.


[OOC: I went a little bit overboard here I think...1,456 words ^^'' I think Willow’s sense of humour is outside her control; it decides when it wants to show itself haha. And poor Matt! I feel rather sorry for both our chars at the moment. They’re not having a very good day, are they?

And if I ever get Guild Wars up and running properly, I’ll tell you. It’d be fun ;D]

[flippedside]

The pain faded Matt's mind, and his whole body spasmed in response. He tried to focus his mind in order to cut out the pain, but he couldn't. He was about two seconds from a brutal end, and he couldn't do anything to stop it. Rage answered him--cold, assured, deadly--that this should be happening to him again. He had been brutalized by the necromancer in the past--he refused to allow it to happen again. It simply couldn't happen, and the anger that settled deep in his gut focused and steadied him. He set aside his pain, and rolled to his feet a moment after the wolf next to him lunged straight over him...And into the necromancer.

{Willow?} he thought in confusion.

The necromancer's attention was attracted by the blurred figure and he managed to throw an arm up, a shout coming out of his mouth as Willow's jaws clamped onto his arm. She'd only just missed his throat. Matt felt brief disappointment, but he didn't have time to focus on that. Above, Willow's friends were attacking the brown-furred monster, but mauling it did no good. It simply shook them off, and, blackened blood and dead skin flying everywhere, threw itself into the pit in response to its masters cry.

Matt dragged out a narrow dagger from his boot, and leaped onto the beast's back. He wrapped his tail around its shattered neck and attacked the remaining flesh with focused intensity.

Meantime, the others were dropping into the crevice in a sort of confused disorder. Matt was vaguely aware that Willow had somehow gotten the necromancer knocked off his feet, but only in the half-sense that he knew that neither were currently a threat to him. A shape-shifted bear came to his rescue, tearing the beast's head the rest of the way off, and Matt fell back off of the still twitching corpse. The bear spat several times, probably disgusted by the taste of undead flesh. Matt didn't blame him--the stench was awful. A foul reek of death of rot permeated every corner of the tunnel and narrow trench.

Something unseen hit him and knocked him sideways, and Matt's vision blurred, then blanked out. He came back to the awareness of shouts, but something was crushing his chest and he couldn't breathe. It took a moment before Matt realized that it was his own broken ribs that were denying him the ability to breathe.

With that realization came the shout: "Kill me and you'll all die, too!" Matt started, realizing that the necromancer was still alive, but surrounded by a group of very angry shape-shifters.

"I think he's right," Matt croaked, but no one heard him. He grumbled to himself, knowing he couldn't heal his broken ribs didn't heal instantly. With his last strength, he staggered to his feet. "Kill him and the tunnel collapses!" The words were clipped and dry from pain, but he managed at least to get his words to carry.

Too late. A massive polar bear lunged forward and swiped the necromancer sideways. The man staggered and hit the wall. He moved to fight back but, a moment later and he was buried under a wall of writhing fur. Matt knew the exact moment of the necromancer's death by the sudden rumbling in the cavern. Only Veraz, the hawk, was separate from the mauling, catching Matt's eye as she screamed a warning.

Matt caught his whole body on fire. He swayed, spots dancing in his vision, and for the briefest instant blacked out, before shooting up a firestorm above them. Rather than snow and ice, several feet of water gushed down on the company in the ice tunnel. Heavy slush and icy barely-melted water shot everyone in separate directions as Matt melted out the cracking ceiling. The sharp snap and then loud rumbling around them warned that all of the caverns were collapsing in on themselves.

Drenched, and having successfully burned off all of his clothes, Matt rode his own tidal wave into a snow bank. He dug himself backwards, somehow extracting his wings without harming them, and then collapsed in a ball with a groan. He knew, in a vague, disconnected way, that he really needed to fly away, and that he wasn't out of danger, but somehow he couldn't find the energy to move. Instead, he drifted into a healing sleep, wings curled about himself as he burned a slow puddle into the snow.


OOC: I just realized that this thread was 6 pages long. Not a super-long post because poor Matt just wasn't going to last any longer...lol.

[Willow]

Only one thought passed through Willow’s mind as her teeth closed with bone-crushing strength in the necromancer’s arm.
‘Missed.’
Her nose was practically touching the skin of his throat, but his forearm would have to do.
Snarling now that there was no need for discretion, Willow used her remaining momentum to swing the rest of her body against the necromancer’s, legs bunching up against his chest and stomach as they collided with him.
As she’d hoped, the force of the blow knocked her and Matt’s tormentor off-balance, and her weight did the rest.

The impact of the spell caster hitting the ground jarred up through Willow’s braced legs, shaking her injured shoulder. Her only response to the pain was to whine-yelp and bite down harder on the limb in her jaws. The bone, already broken, shifted at the fractured point as Willow’s teeth met through flesh and muscle.
Willow started to ease the pressure in her jaw, intending to release the mangled arm in favour for the puppeteer’s throat or skull, but a hand closed in the fur and skin around the back of her neck before she could start to open her mouth.
With a violent wrench that tore Willow’s jaws apart, nearly severing the limb still caught in them, the owner of the arm yanked Willow’s head back and lifted her clear of the ground, sitting up as he did so to accommodate the length of the writhing animal in his grasp.
Drawing her breath in rapidly through clenched teeth, Willow shifted and reached her good arm behind her head, clawing at the wrist attached to the hand holding her aloft by her neck alone.

The pressure suddenly released, only for the hand that had grabbed her to form a fist and slam into her jaw.
A sharp crunch of pain blared in her mouth along with the familiar tang of blood as her teeth were forced together, her tongue trapped between them, the pain in her mouth and throbbing through her jaw reaching her a second before she hit the ground. As unsteady as she was, the punch was enough to knock Willow over, stealing the skin from her until-then-unscathed cheekbone as it grazed rough ice and rock.
Before she could recover fully, the cruel grip on her neck had reappeared, only this time around her throat.

Lifting her with one hand seemed easy for him – her protesting snarls and strong kick slamming into his chest only made him take one step back to keep his balance, otherwise remaining unaffected.
Since the strike to his chest yielded no results, and her arm was shaking uncontrollably, close to giving way as she tried to hold herself up to avoid choking, Willow snapped her left leg out again, aiming for and catching his bloodied, broken arm.
That elicited more of a response than just a pained shout. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to release her neck as Willow had hoped.
Instead, with no set target and easily as if she weighed no more than a throwing knife, the necromancer threw the girl clean across the ice cavern before clutching his now deformed arm to his side, grimacing.

’Strong,’ Willow realised in the few seconds she had – spent twisting in the air in an attempt to take the impeding impact against her whole back rather than her neck or head – before she smashed into something that didn’t hurt as much as hitting the wall would have done, but it did little to slow her down.
Willow was aware of both herself and whatever she’d hit crashing to the ground, but almost as soon as she touched the ice and rock she was rolling uncontrollably away, her momentum dragging her violently a few yards away from a now floored Matt.
When she came to a stop, there was a near crippling pain in the back of her head where it had struck the ground, her shoulder felt like a white-hot iron had been taken to the entire limb, and her bruised throat still felt partially compressed. Her taste of blood still lingered in her mouth.

Groaning, she lifted her head from where it was resting face-down on the rough floor, struggling to focus on the noisy blur that had gathered in the direction she’d just come from, but her brain felt thick and heavy, and it slowly coaxed her head back to the ground.

Veraz looked across from where Willow had landed to the throng of vicious shifters surrounding the necromancer with the swift, sharp motion of a bird of prey from her perch on an outcrop of ice mid way up the wall just as the polar bear – Khan, she realised – swiped at the cornered man.
Swearing, she dove just as the tunnel started groaning. In mid-dive she met Matt’s eyes for a second, before turning her attention back to Kaz and shrieking a piercing call to get his attention as she pulled up and skimmed the ground.
Her mate was already spinning around, looking up at the ceiling then for her as she neared, shifting and landing a scarce step away from him, a distance he quickly closed as he pulled her against him, one hand protecting her head as he glared at the ceiling stubbornly as if that alone would hold it up. Veraz too glanced up, mind whirring frantically as she tried to think of a way to forestall the fall of ice and snow.

Both their gazes, along with those of everyone else in the room, were drawn immediately to the surge of flames that formed a vibrant veil across the ceiling.
Quickly catching on to what would happen when a small avalanche met fire, many people backed up against the walls to give them support and got ready to hold their breath – the deluge could last for quite a few seconds, depending on the amount of melted water heading towards them.

Willow, disturbed from her semi-awareness, narrowed her eyes against the flare of bright light and heat, irritated for an instant before growing uneasy. Willow still had some common sense left despite her addled mind. There was about to be a waterfall. She couldn’t breathe underwater. Lying face-down, her face would almost certainly be submerged. You could drown in a few inches of water. She needed to get up. Now.
Growling painfully, she forced herself to her knees, then to her feet, standing in a slightly lopsided position. Her body was crying at her to lie down again – relaxing hurt, but using her muscles hurt more. Gritting her teeth against the temptation, she drew in a collective breath with all the other shifters as the first of the downpour hit their heads.

There was more water than anticipated; the surprised shifters found themselves separated from the ground and each other by the surrounding water and carried along, rushing out through breaks in the ice, shoving them carelessly out into the blinding sun.
By the time they’d got their bearings, there were muddled shifters all around, standing and shivering violently in sodden clothes that suddenly provided no warmth at all, despite the many layers.
Willow was decidedly worse off where warmth was concerned; the dead leopard had done a decent job of shredding the clothes and skin of her shoulders and chest while it was being beheaded, and the blood loss wasn’t helping matters. Now that she wasn’t moving constantly to stay alive, her lips were rapidly turning blue-ish purple, her face stark white.
From her place on the ground, huddled against a curiously warm snowdrift that turned out to be Khan in his shifted form, Willow gave a small mumble of protest at the cold, her wounds, and the cold, but made no move to get up. Tiredness had finally killed her muscles, leaving her as limp as a ragdoll.

Her half-closed eyes dimly registered people moving around her, then warm, steady arms picking her up. Her shoulder was jostled slightly, and she barked a sharp note of pain, before twisting to take the pressure off her injury and falling slack again.
Voices to match the people waved over her, only the odd few sentences making sense. Something about concussion that sounded like a question. And Matt – finding him? She wasn’t sure.
A voice, closer than the others, the sound carrying through their chest and against Willow’s arm, threatened lightly, “You’d better keep shivering, you crazy girl, otherwise I’m throwing you in the nearest river,”
Willow frowned. Why did Kaz have to be so mean?
She mumbled something incoherent at him, felt him laugh.
“That’s it. You keep complaining so I know you’re still alive.”
“Nn,”
Kaz’s voice grew quieter, his face pointing away from her to address someone else. Willow let him, her mind wandering dully, drifting between dream-like semi -consciousness and blank unknowing.

[OOC: another long one - I dunno what's got me writing so much lately hahaha. I decided to leave it there because a) it was really getting too long, and b) Willow was either unconscious, monosyllable, or using baby-talk if she stayed conscious. Not the most interesting of speech patterns If I surpassed the PG-13 limit, tell me and I'll edit.]

[flippedside]

OOC: No problem on the blood/gore. I didn't think it was too bad.


Matt found that an uncomfortably bright light was shining in his eyes...And he hurt, all over. He growled, and threw an arm over his face. The movement jarred his body against icy snow, causing him to gasp in pain. The gasp tore more pain from his broken ribs and he shuddered.

Someone was saying something while shining a light in his face. Only half-conscious, his mind caught on the cold ground and the blinding light, twisting his current pain with old memories of endless pain, and he jerked upright, his arm knocking a blazing torch aside. Someone shouted as he caught the fire in his own hand, holding it ready to throw.

He caught the surprised look on the face of the shape-shifter who had found him, followed by a shout as the man staggered back. Memory crashed back into Matt's mind.

"Oh. Oops," he mumbled. He attempted to stand and pull himself out of the slushy snow that surrounded him, but before he could get his body to move the way he wanted it to, a large form hurled itself into his back, knocking him flat. The crushing pain to his ribs and chest dropped him back into darkness again.

The next time Matt came to, he was pleased to find that he no longer hurt. His body moved when he asked it to, which was also a welcome change. Well, almost moved as he asked it to, since is arms were bound behind his back. As he moved about, he realized that he was well-tied with rope. Matt snorted. As if that could hinder a fire caller.

He was pleasantly surprised to discover that a blanket had been thrown over him. He sat up, carefully folding his wings tightly against his back, where they would be safe for the time being. The tent was dark, but the light from a fire outside was enough to enable Matt to see clearly. He shook his head. If the shape-shifters intended to keep him bound up, they had badly misjudged him. Still, he had a major problem on his hands.

These were only a few, and it wasn't likely that anyone would believe their story of a were-dragon, but could he take that chance? He was less worried about the shape-shifters, than that word might reach his true enemies in the north. Matt clenched his jaw. Healed and whole again, he could attack the camp...Might even be able to raze it. Still, he didn't usually kill for no reason. He could go back to the deep south and live amongst the Rhyallians. It wouldn't take much to change his appearance and blend in. No Rhyallian would guess who--or what--he was. They all denied the existence of any unlike themselves.

But could he keep hiding from...Him? Matt shuddered involuntarily and then burned the ropes off of his hands as he continued to think. He needed clothes, but his stash wasn't too far from here. Should have clothes and some weapons there...His thoughts were interrupted by the crunch of snow and the sound of voices outside.

"No, I haven't heard anything from him. I think he's still out."

"I don't know if binding him up like a prisoner is a good idea--" Matt recognized the woman's voice as belonging to Veraz.

"You saw how he attacked Ghett! I don't trust him. Better to keep him bound up for now. After he's awake we'll see what he has to say for himself." The last sentence was said in a low growl that had to belong to Kaz.

Matt frowned, then stood lightly. Better to get this over with now. Besides, he didn't want to try to fly away and instead find himself shot through with arrows. He ripped the blanket in half, using his sharp, talon-like nails to tear through the heavy wool, and tied it swiftly about his waist. There was was no point in shifting back to his "human" form. Everyone here had already seen him as he was, and he could move better--and fly--in this form.

Kaz was just saying something to Matt's guard, when the tent flap was flung back.

"Talking about me?" Matt asked lightly, a taunting grin on his face that didn't reach the hard blue of his eyes. All three of the shifters fell back in surprise to see him standing easily, free, unhurt, and unbound.

Matt's eyes quickly scanned the camp, noting that tents had been set up, and that most of the shifters were asleep. Only a few faces around the main fire were turned towards his. Those that were awake, were already drawing weapons, though.

"I told you it was a bad idea," Veraz muttered, while Kaz stepped grimly forward, hand on a long sword.

"Burned through the ropes, did you? Should've guessed you'd do that."

"Right." Matt agreed calmly, gauging the wind and cold air. He opened his wings slightly, ready to launch skyward. "Should've guessed you'd try something like that, too." Matt snorted in disgust, opening his wings in a massive down sweep. The wind they generated knocked his captors back slightly. Matt bunched ready for the leap, when a shout interrupted him.