Private Tales A Pair of Survivors

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
She said nothing to his observations or plans. The word 'magic' meant nothing to her, for one. For another, she very much knew what was waiting for them in the Den, and all of the preparation the cannibal was planning for, all the plans he was making were worse than useless. He would see when they got there, and she very much did not want to go there herself.

If not for the single thread of hope that it offered - an answer, a way forward, a place to look - she would avoid that place at all costs. The only thing there were the memories of pain.

The Seret Mountains rose in the distance, further to the west and north. The particular arm that they were approaching was not so rugged, with thin forests partially covering the slopes of steep sided ridges. The Den was some ninety or more kilometers from Elbion, far enough to be in relatively secluded country but close enough for easy access to supplies. Some kind of magic were frowned upon by all manner of magicians and scientists, and so there was no place for this kind of work in Elbion proper.

Maranae kept up the same pace the entire time. They had left in the earliest hours of the morning on that first day, and by the time the first stars showed themselves in the sky, they had come a long way out of Elbion. The countryside ceased being so heavily populated by farms, gradually fading into copses of wild woods, the terrain gradually becoming more rugged. The winding stream they had picked up halfway through grew swifter and more straight, running through the heart of a valley. The ridges on either side grew taller as the land grew wilder, and then trail they followed devolved to little more than two very rough, faint wagon ruts.

In the morning, with ever growing trepidation clearly visible in her mannerism and her eyes, they continued. The ground became rough, the path overgrown from months of disuse. It was clear no one had come this way recently, or if they had they had taken a great deal of effort to hide their passage. Out here, there was nothing but the sound of the wilderness; birdsong and the sound of the lonely wind blowing out of the mountains.

Despite her words, they did not reach the Den that second day. Another camp made, another night spent in the wild lands.

And in the morning, with the sun still low to the horizon, they reached the place they sought.

The barely-a-road widened a bit, but did not become any less overgrown. And then suddenly they broke through the scrubby woods, the sound of the creek burbling along beside them, into what looked like nothing so much as a village.

An abandoned village. Thatched roofing showed lack of repair from the winter storms, doors swung open and shut in the wind blowing down from higher up. There were only four or five buildings here, and none of them had the look of a tavern or an inn. This was clearly not a place where outsiders were expected.

A path left the road, which more or less ended at the little township, and wandered up the side of the ridge several hundred feet before stopping at a yawning hole in the side that looked like nothing more than a mine. The path looked well worn, though it was clear it had not been used recently either.

"This is the Den," she said reluctantly as they stepped free of the woods. Her eyes were locked on the mine adit further up the ridge, unreadable expression on her face.
 
Volker actually relaxed more as they headed away from civilization. He liked to be in the woods whenever possible, and was happy to camp under the stars. He made primitive lean-tos for her and himself at their camp the first night, and slept in relative comfort. Hunting was plentiful here, be it trout from the stream or rabbits and squirrels in the woods. He picked morels as they walked, ate wild carrots and miner’s lettuce. Autumn was a good season for food if one knew where to look.

The second day Volker seemed to be preparing for something. He sharpened his knives and began using pine needles to cover their scents, rolling in boughs and rubbing fistfuls where his scent was strongest. It wasn’t foolproof, but it would disguise any casual scouting.

The abandoned village he scouted around in. It had clearly been gone for several seasons to allow the forest to begin reclaiming it. He wondered if the denizens of the Den had simply wanted people out. Either way, it was a warning. They clearly wanted to be left alone. “Is anything familiar here?” He asked her. Perhaps she had been taken from this selfsame village, a convenient capture.

His own master was a slaver. People who kidnapped children wanted children with few attachments who were caught easily. Things they didn’t have to transport far. Oor had solved that by line breeding the Volkers. Perhaps her captors had solved that by just...picking low hanging fruit.

Volker eyed the mine. One entrance in and out did not settle him at all. He snorted. “Are they awake in daylight or night? You were captive there. Tell me the rhythms you remember.”
 
She did not participate in the scouting of the little hamlet. She knew, intimately, what was here. The fact that things had fallen to disrepair simply cemented the fact that the people who had been here had gone from this place without any intention of ever coming back.

The questions that the man asked were utterly meaningless to her, and there was no answer she could give him. Aside from the grim reality that awaited them in the mine itself, the simple fact that she had been held underground for her entire life prior to her escape, and had not known what day or night was, let alone a concept of the passage of time, made it completely impossible to frame it in a way that Volker would understand.

That was assuming she even understood the question, and she very much did not.

"Always dark," she said. "Unless Robed One came with light." She looked up at the entrance with distressed eyes. "None here, now," she said in a low voice.

She had told him that she would take him to the Den. She did not like the thought of returning to the prison that had held her fast for her whole life, and yet she was here. It felt like led was strapped to her legs, but she made herself climb the steep path, heading towards the open adit.

They had not gone very far when they came upon the first body, although 'body' was a bit of a stretch. Out here, exposed to the elements, it had been picked clean by scavengers. It was difficult to tell how they had died...but Mara...

...she could remember.

Pounding down the path, blood soaked clothing sticking to her skin as she went. So much blood. So much blood, everywhere - in her clothing, her skin, her eyes, her hair. And still, they would not stop trying to capture her.

Fiery pain, stumbling and rolling down the rocky path. More pain, and suddenly another was atop her, trying to restrain her. Wild frantic moments, spinning through his grip, taking hold of an arm...

The bleached bones of a forearm lay a half dozen paces away, and she felt sick at the memory of it. How it felt, how it was.
 
Volker snorted at her. She seemed very limited in what she could respond with, so he looked over the buildings in more detail. Far more recent bodies; ones that had not yet gone through frost. He examined some of them, but ultimately found no more answers there than he would have from her.

He followed her up toward the open area and sniffed around the entrance. He drew his longest blade, just over eighteen inches of steel hilted in a long human femur. He looked at her, and began to slowly make his way down into the Den.

Volker moved slowly and purposefully, making sure each foot had a secure fall. He was being as quiet as he could. His eyes were swiftly useless in the black, but he relied more on his nose and ears.
 
The air within the mine was still as death itself, cold and dry. Within, there were no sounds to be heard; not even the scavengers that were ever present in the wild remained within. It was dark, cold, and unwelcoming as a place could be.

And it was just as Maranae remembered it. The haunting voices that she alone could hear, speaking over her head as if she were incapable of understanding human speech; worse, when they were talking to her it was always as though they were speaking to a simpleton incapable of understanding even the most basic of things.

This place featured prominently in her nightmares. Chief among the horrors were the Day of Rebirth, as called by the Robed Ones. But that was not the only horror of this place. How many had she killed here, in service to the Robed Ones? And after? Her bid for freedom had not been bloodless, after all. As was evidenced when the descended far enough into the old abandoned mine, which truly was what the Den had been before it was put to other uses.

The first body inside still had some mummified flesh on it, but the body itself was torn in half, dozens of bones broken to the point of being unrecognizable as being such. The clothing on it looked shredded, in places as though by claws. Another body, not much further down the way, lay with its head cocked at an odd angle.

For her part, Mara followed in silence. She could see clearly even in total darkness, and could only hope that Volker could not. What would this strange man think if he saw what was strewn about the abandoned Den. She had...she had killed them all, or so close to all as to make little difference. If they hadn't tried to stop her...

...if blinding rage hadn't consumed her, once the blood started flying. She could blame the first few on their own actions, but the rest? She had taken it into her head to hunt them down, one by one, and show them no mercy. Had they shown her any mercy? No, they had not. And neither did she.

Now, thinking of it made her sick. She did not like what she did here, and had promised herself she would not do it again. She could stop it from happening again, right? Right?

She did not know. So much she didn't know, about herself, about her parents, and about the world.

The adit continued to run upwards into the side of the ridge, unused drift levels breaking off occasionally, the ancient ties used for rails long ago preserved by the dry air. Up, several hundred yards from the portal, until they reached a level that was obviously more heavily used, or had been. A drift ran crosswise to the main haulage adit of old, and here there were many more dead, their bodies literally torn to pieces. The ghostly memory of it flickered into her memory, there and then gone.

"Is where Robed Ones did things to Mara," she said. She pointedly did not look at the deceased all around - there had to be at least a dozen in easy sight - and tugged at the strangers arm. "Mara was behind iron there," she said, indicating the right path. A couple of openings into the drift indicated possible chambers. Lamps, bolted to the wall, lay lifeless and dark.
 
Volker may have had poor eyesight in the dark, but he’d been taught to compensate for it. If taught was the correct word anyway. He remembered Klaus being allowed to terrorize him in the black as a child, until Volker had learned tears and trying to see was completely useless. Hours of getting put on his back, knees sliced through, blades finding his back and shoulders until he just...didn’t fear the pain anymore.

He led the way with his nose. Old smells, musty smells. The air didn’t move well through here; a likely sign of the reason for the initial abandonment. He disturbed something with his foot and crouched, examining it. A body, dried and crumbling. He touched it carefully, running his fingers over the shattered bones and leaning down to sniff it. Long dead. But by something much more ferocious than they.

Maranae said she had escaped. Had she done this? He hoped she had left one or two alive. He felt a tug on his arm when they continued. She could clearly see. “I will need a light, or you to guide me. Show me.” He whispered to her, gently taking her hand. He could smell more bodies here. He was surprised that more detritivores hadn’t come seeking the dead. He would have been quite pleased if he’d come across this, a fresh prize and with the work of tearing them apart already done.

That meant either the stink of magic was enough to keep away rats and coyotes, or something had been preventing them from getting to the corpses. If that were so...why hadn’t they been stopped? Was the place dead? Somehow he got the feeling it wasn’t so, regardless of how many she’d killed.

He did hope she hadn’t murdered all of their leads.
 
She led the strange man down the passage, gingerly picking her way past the dead. The first opening on their right, she ignored - the chamber within was filled with logbooks, dusty tomes, and other things of paper that meant little to Mara. They had re-taught her basic language skills, but reading was not a skill set that was required for her to perform the function she had been made for, after all.

The first on the left had a back wall lined with cages, some of them rather large. All of them stood open and empty, whatever animals they had once held long since gone. Spiderwebs fluttered lazily as the pair passed them by, their creators long since left for more productive habitat.

Volker was not wrong in his assumptions about the Den. A pall, a miasma of sorcery still hung around the place, distasteful and dark. So long after the magic had been used, it was difficult to tell what flavor it had been, difficult to even guess. Having a product of that sorcery in front of you did not necessarily help to make it more easily understood, more easily deciphered.

The second door on the right led to a room with a larger, singular cage in it. It looked more like a cell than a cage, truth to tell, with impressively thick iron bars. A bed stood within, cocked at an odd angle. The door to the cell stood open, too, and an impressively dead body lay in front of it. And around it. Whatever had happened to this individual had been unbelievably violent and quick, and bits of their corpse were scattered about the rest of the room.

"Mara's cage," the girl said. There was a hint - just a hint - of the anger she must have felt on that day when she broke free. "Where they put Mara after doing bad things to her," she added, looking back at the strange human with wide eyes.
 
Volker had a hand on the wall as they went deeper. This was ridiculous. He pawed around for a body, tore up a few strips of cloth, and wrapped it around a conveniently long bone. A few sparks of flint, and he had a torch. He followed her, looking around at the piles of the dead. He eyed the logbook chamber, but ultimately followed Maranae. Volker was illiterate; to a living weapon, books had very little use. Volker was forbidden to read, and indeed many of his ilk had been forbidden the same thing with very few exceptions. Nestor and Ferenzi could read, but what use did it do him if they couldn’t use his eyes?

“Wait.” He told her, putting up a hand, and headed back toward the log book room. He opened the tomes, staring at the paper uncomprehendingly. He flipped pages, careful to linger just long enough that a normal man might be able to read them, and moved on to the next. While he was illiterate...perhaps he could convince the notoriously foul-tempered Nestor to look at his memories with him and translate. It was a long shot; he’d never tried it before.

After he’d glanced at at least the majority of the books, he followed Maranae to her cage. He eyed the bodies. “Your doing?” He asked her, without judgement. He’d done the same. Perhaps wasted a little less.

“Forget this cage. It is not who you are unless you wish it to be.” Volker told her, and moved on.
 
She hesitated anyway, looking at the empty cage. She could remember so much time spent here, but a lot more time spent in other parts of this complex. The old mine was vast, even if most of it could not be used for anything out of concern for the stability of the roof of the adits.

Slowly, she turned from this place. She had never thought to come back here again, and now that she was here, perversely it felt like coming home. She had lived here for a long time, a period of time that was formless due to the lack of any kind of cycle.

Back in the main passage, she went back to the fork, and looked down in the main haulage adit. "Below, bad things happen," she said slowly. Below was the Chamber of Birth, the place where death and resurrection occurred. Where transformation happened. Mara had not been the only one, of course, but she had been the one that the Robed Ones thought held the most promise, and so it was her that they tested to a ridiculous degree, poking and prodding with magic.
 
Volker nodded to her, and headed down. She had hesitated at the cage. He was already learning a kinship with her...Maranae had a cage where men had tortured her. Volker had been ripped from staring at his mother’s corpse into slavery. At least Maranae had freedom. She had the opportunity for a better life. He reached out and put a hand on her head awkwardly, as though reassuring a dog. “We will find your parents.” He told her, and headed down. He had to see where she had been created. Perhaps tonight in the Well they could attempt to translate some of the logbooks.

For now he had to figure out what evidence he could find just from observation. Thankfully Maranae had taken care of most of them. The scents of death were old. He nodded to her to lead the way once more into her ‘Bad Things Chamber’.
 
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The passage downwards revealed not too much that was dissimilar from the rest of the complex. The old mine workings were obvious; the walls and ceiling uneven and bearing the marks of picks clearly on the stone. The next section they came to, however, was very much different.

Either the men and women that had crewed this place had carved the next series of rooms from the native rock themselves, or else the miners had before them and then they had gone and cleaned it up. Either way, the narrow, cramped passage and rough-cut rooms in the lower section - sometimes it was difficult to remember that the mine sloped upwards and not down - were nothing on this. The walls were smoother, the floor clean of detritus aside from the stray body. There were not many dead people here, at least.

The corridor widened, looking very nearly like a normal building if one did not already know they were underground. To their right, a room opened up. It was surprisingly clean, aside from the dust of a year coating everything. It was easy to see that, when this place still operated, it was kept meticulously clean. In the middle of the room was a stone slab with channels carved into its top. The pall of old sorcery was appallingly strong here, seeped into the very stones of the place. It was difficult to make out every strain of magic that had been used here, and it could well be that so many had it would be impossible to be certain. Necromancy was certainly one flavor floating through the stagnant air, but then so were healing arts. Fire, and blood, and a number of others.

Mara stepped to the door, and stared in the room. It was the Chamber of Birth, as she had heard it called; it was where the real experiments were conducted. Mara had been born here, after a fashion, although what there had been before there had been a Maranae was anyone's guess. She certainly didn't know.

She did not like this place. There were other rooms in the complex that she did not like, but this one...this one was where the screams came from, every so often. She had seen the tangled heaps of flesh being taken from here to be disposed of, the failures.

But she had been one of the lucky ones.
 
Volker followed her quietly, and noted the changes. As it got more clean, he grew more cautious. It was likely that the residents had withdrawn deeper into the mine, cleaning the passages and rough hewn areas. It became smoother and more organized. It was cramped, and Volker moved carefully behind Maranae. The place was definitely an old mine, and he frowned and looked at the marks on the walls.

Black magic was seeped into the walls here like sootstains, and it made the hair raise on the back of Volker’s neck. He growled deeply, baring his teeth uncomfortably. “You were made here?” He asked quietly, drawing a blade. “Are there men still here?” They had come to seek these men, but he hadn’t expected such close quarters.

He carefully crept along the perimeter of the room, head low on his shoulders. The old scents here...”This place is evil,” Volker said carefully. “Where did they sleep?”
 
Volker would not be able to understand the mind of the one known as Maranae. Concepts of good and evil did not exist, nor really of the flow of time. There was there here and the now, and there was no intention attached to the actions of others; she was incapable of empathizing enough to ascribe such motives to another actor.

She could only understand herself, and that only at a primitive level. She was not an animal, in her own mind anyway, even if her creators saw her as such. She had no answer to the statement of evil, and would have had none for good or holy, either.

She sniffed the air delicately, razor sharp senses picking up nothing but dust and old magic. "No humans here, now. Only dust and spiders," she replied. She started deeper into the complex, the walls smoother and the floor flat and even. There were offices, furnished with desks and walls lined with books and manuscripts; a cafeteria of some sort, stoves cold and dark, food left behind rotted or congealed where it was left. And beyond that, a way, were the living quarters of those who had worked here.

All in all, there was nothing nefarious looking about any of it, other than clinical precision and fastidious cleanliness that had faded only slowly over the year. Maranae did not know what to look for, and did not know what it was Volker was seeking. If he had sought a living person in this place, he would be sorely disappointed. Operations here had ceased as soon as she escaped, and been moved somewhere.

"Here is where Robed Ones lived," she said as she came into the residential section of the Den. There were accommodations for perhaps twenty people here and not much more.
 
Volker relaxed a little. There was no one here. The men here had been dead and gone. That meant all there was to do was pour through the records. “They have not left signs of where they have moved?” He asked her, frowning. If there was no living man to interrogate this made it demonstrably more difficult. “We will have to track them. I do not know why they left records behind. If what they were doing was so important to them, they should have taken or burned them.”

Volker went into the records rooms and looked at anything that seemed important enough to warrant a look over by Nestor. The cafeteria he seemed angry at; Volker despised waste in all its forms. He hated wasted food most of all. He glared at the dirty dishes, and resisted the almost instinctive urge to scrub every inch of the place. He snorted loudly, and moved into the living quarters.

“What do you remember of your parents? Your time here? Do you remember what you wore? What you last ate before disappearing here?” Volker asked her. He was beginning to think this was a hopeless affair. There had to be a lead here somewhere. He touched noses briefly with her. “We must find something.” He said gently.
 
She blinked at the physical contact, but did not recoil. It...confused her, a little, and a touch of that confusion might have flickered across her features, but there was no alarm.

The questions were difficult. Very difficult. Mara had lain awake many nights trying to remember more than just fragments of the past. It might as well have been a past life for as clear as those fragments were. Cryptic did not even begin to describe it.

"Mara...she does not..," she began, stammering a bit. "A red cloth thing," she said, though in answer to what question was debatable. She could see it clearly, but it lacked any context. A red dress of the style a little girl might wear, but the memory was so fragmented it could have been her imagination. "Shapes...Mara can remember shapes of....of people..."

Things that came in the night, sometimes. Shapes, and kind words spoken in gentle tones, soothing words that might have meant something if she could recall what they were. The gentle touch of a hand on her head, and the fragmentary image of a room, bathed in light from tall glass windows. She tried to reach out and grab hold of these things, but they slipped through her fingers like sand.

"Mara...does not remember anything," she said, a hitch in her voice. There was loss there, but she could not tell herself why, nor could she have told him. An aching void that yearned to be filled with something that defied any explanation or description.
 
Volker squatted in front of Maranae. “It will take time for the others in my head to sift through the records that I have seen here today. My master is gifted with memory magic. You would at least be safe in Witherhold. You would have a safe bed, while I attempt to find what our next move will be. If we cannot find where they have gone perhaps we can unlock your memories or figure out where you have come from.” Volker reasoned. “My mother will ensure you come to no harm.”

He tilted his head. She was upset, and rightly so. She couldn’t remember and this expedition hadn’t turned up any significant findings. The records were all that would really point to anything. He had to hope they kept logs of who they had bought or stolen.

“It is better than sleeping in alleyways.” Volker offered her his hand.

Maranae
 
She reluctantly took his hand. She did not know about going to any place such as Witherhold, and she was fine with sleeping out of doors. She was not comfortable around people in the cities, for the ghostly fragments of memories that encounters with people stirred up. Quite aside from the trouble she always managed to get into.

And in any case, those with any kind of idea as to using magic to probe her depths were in for a rude awakening, not that she herself knew that. Magic was a mysterious thing to her, one that she did not understand fully.

The trip back out of the crypt of a mine was an uneventful as the trip into it, and a bit easier since it was all downhill. The dead were ignored, as they had been since the day of her violent escape from this prison of science and magic.

As they stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight, Mara blinked, and tensed. She could hear them before she could see them, blinking from the gloom within. A pair of people stood not far from the adit opening, one facing the other in some conversation, and the other leaning against a tree.

"Well, good afternoon," said the one who had been taking. She was rather pretty, the scars on her face adding to rather than detracting from that assessment. She wore steel claws at her hips, sized to fit over her hands, and wore leather armor that had been died pale blue. She had long dark hair and dark eyes, and she sized the pair of trespassers up with a gleam in them.

"I see you found the mark," the other said. He was much taller than his companion, and looked as if he could bend steel between his thumb and forefingers. He bore a spear, although it was leaning against the tree alongside him. "Unfortunately, unless you intend on turning her over, we'll have to take her with us."
 
Volker tensed instantly as they came outside, letting go of Maranae’s hand and blinking to adjust in the sunlight. Two people had followed them there, but in a way he was thankful. Here was a lead. Here was what they had been looking for. The mark; that meant these two had either been affiliated with the organization or hired by them. Either way, he would get one of them to talk. He bared his teeth at them and rose up on the balls of his feet, head lowered to protect his throat.

“We will leave one alive for questioning.” Volker told Maranae softly under his breath, drawing a pair of blades. The first was the long, wicked femur blade. The other was a throwing knife. He didn’t speak with the strangers. There would be time for talking later and they were clearly intending on attacking them. He just moved.

Frighteningly fast.

Volker whipped the throwing knife toward the woman. He could outlast a spear, but a few of his ancestors had favored the claws. He knew how fast they could be, and how devastating. If she moved, she’d catch the blade in the shoulder or collarbone. If she wasn’t fast enough, in the neck.

Maranae
 
She was, indeed, fast. Faster and a touch more reckless than Volker perhaps expected; instead of dodging and catching the blade in her shoulder or her neck, she instead caught it with her left hand. The blade slid through her flesh easily enough, sending a spatter of blood back into her face, but she otherwise did not flinch as she dropped the weapon. Blood dripped heavily from the injured hand as she dropped into a ready stance, but rather than taking up the weapons at her hip, she put fists up instead. The wounded hand did not quite ball up properly, though the flow of blood slowed swiftly.

"Be easy on him, sis," the man said, spear coming round and ready. He did not advance on either of them, though.

Maranae stood where she had been, transfixed by fear. Her green eyes shifted back and forth between that and yellow, between brother and sister. Motionless, either unable to act, or simply unwilling. "Mara does nto want," she whispered softly. Not to fight. Not to kill, not again.

"I figure if I just break a few bones we can get the point across," she replied to her brother snarkily. "Come at me, little man. I think you'll find neither of us to be easy meat."

"That's right, my pale friend. Hunting some bounties is more dangerous work 'n others, and we only go after the most dangerous!" He leveled a spear at the girl, and grinned. "Why don't you-"

Mara moved. However fast Volker or the woman was, it was nothing on her; she sent dirt and debris flying as bare feet tore into the ground, away from the fighters. The brother snorted, and launched his spear with equal alacrity; Maranae made it about a score paces along before the spear caught her in the back, sending her flying forward to end transfixed on a tree with a mewl of pain. Blood immediately began to flow, pattering on the soil. Her feet did not touch the ground, and kicked awkwardly, weakly.

He turned to face Volker with a savage grin on his face. "Wasn't going to fight, but if you want it so bad, let's go."
 
Volker eyed her as she caught the knife, shredding a hand. He followed it with another, this time aiming for her ribs or stomach. A much harder blade to catch. He backed up slowly, maintaining the distance between himself and the female. He wasn’t about to let her get close without catching a few more blades.

Maranae bolted. Volker saw the spear fly past him, catch her in the spine, and pin her to the tree. He looked at her, then back to the pair. “If she is dead then our accord is broken. There is no point in fighting.” He kept up distance, moving slowly to keep them going in a circle. Circles were easier to evaluate one’s opponent. He was also headed for the spear. He tugged it free from Maranae’s body with a grunt, then sent it spinning into the trees. He wanted to keep that away from the larger man.

Maranae
 
"Doubt like hell that will kill that creature," the man said. He snapped a finger, and the weapon that Volker had so casually tossed aside, thinking to keep it from him, appeared in his hand. The stink of magic made itself known, but rather than leveling the weapon, he simply grounded the butt of it, ignoring the slick of blood on it.

Maranae hit the ground as soon as the spearhead was free of the tree, sliding off the shaft and leaving a slick of blood in her wake. The spear had missed her spine, narrowly, and with the spear no longer lodged in her flesh, blood poured from the wound. She almost immediately curled into a ball, moaning low in her throat as her lifeblood spilled onto the slope.

"An accord?" The woman was shaking her other hand; she had batted the blade down, dancing sideways to avoid the new trajectory with pitiful ease. The gouge across the back of her hand was already healing of its own accord, severed tendons writing under her skin. She winced fairly hard, as though it pained her a great deal. Both were exceptional fighters, quite clearly capable of some magical talent as well. "And what might that be, sweetie? As I recall, you attacked us."
 
Well. So there were magic weapons on all sides, then. Volker snorted as his blade was batted away. He could find it later. He watched the back of her hand heal. Now that was interesting information. If they got close enough she was probably fast enough to make him regret it. Volker would have to hit her hard and put her down just as hard. He bared his teeth. “You meant to attack us. I merely made the first move.” He waited, quietly, for her to draw closer. Long blade, long reach.

He sized her up. Brachial or femoral artery was his best bet. Something that would help her bleed out in seconds. Either that, or get his teeth around her throat or eyes. He waited, tense, ready to dodge and strike at her the minute she came near.

“Leave.” He said coldly.

Maranae
 
There was pain. Maranae knew it would come because it always came when someone hurt her bad enough. The spear itself had hurt, but not as badly as one might expect. Being transfixed, off her feet, had been a nauseating experience for all the time it had taken Volker to remove her from that tree.

But now, lying on the ground, she dug her claws into the palms of her hands until the blood welled up around them. The pain would build, build with incredible alacrity and to an intensity that could not be described; no human would have been able to handle it for more than a few minutes and yet...

"I meant to bring back that bounty on her head, you I have no quarrel with," the man said to Volker. The woman made a noise in her throat, spit off to one side. "Speak for yourself, brother; the bastard cut me and I mean to get my pound of flesh from him."

Mara chose that moment to shriek in pain, a low moan rising to a cry, to a piercing shriek that climbed in decibels as the flesh and bone of her body hastened its healing, writhing and knotting itself and turning a gaping hole into a small one, then a cut, then nothing but smooth skin. Blood burst through her veins as the healing factor brought that back to; the girl had uncurled and lay face down on the gravely soil, fingers digging into rocky dirt as she cried out in inhuman pain.

The two bounty hunters looked from the chimera to Volker, inscrutable expressions on their faces.
 
Volker took advantage of the scream to drop his femur blade and whip a pair of knives at the bounty hunters. The moment they left his fingers he seized the blade again and moved counter to the woman, keeping their distance. He was thankful for his training; sudden noises didn’t startle him anymore.

He snapped at them, teeth bared. “You will find me harder to kill than you think.” Volker growled at the woman. Was Maranae healing? Alive still? He didn’t dare take his eyes off of them to check. He could hear her groaning and moving. That shouldn’t be possible. She had taken a spear to the middle of the back.

Volker didn’t bother himself with it. He would be able to ask her about it in Witherhold.

Maranae
 
The woman took one of the knives in the shoulder and evaded the other one, with a twisted grin on her face. "Likewise, my friend, likewise." She pulled the blade out and threw it aside as though it were little more than an inconvenience, blood running from the wound in her flesh. It was already healing even as she moved forward, careless of the knives in the man's hands. She lashed out with precise strikes, fists only, moving as swift as a striking viper.

The piercing shriek had cut off abruptly, and Maranae lie quiet on the ground. She was very clearly not dead, though; her chest rose and fall with rapid regularity. It was hard to tell how badly she was hurt, though because of all the blood. It did not seem to be bleeding anymore, though.

The spearman theatrically spun his weapon, and joined the fray, a quick series of thrusts that were designed mainly to make the knife wielding villain back off from his mark. All they needed to do was grab the girl and be off; they had no beef with Volker, however he might think things would play out.
 
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