Private Tales Leave all but the memories behind

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer

Sannoru

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Vand & CO


Winter terns circled high above the sky. Their flight like a mesmerising dance against the wind, through which their black-tipped white wings like blades would cleave through. And yet, it was not cold; enough for one's breath to freeze, enough for the snow to fall in scarce volleys – paltry yet glistening, shame they will meet their doom on the mild, watery grave below.


Sh-ssssh – sh-ssssh – sh-ssssh
Only the waves reigned here. Steadily advanced against the shore, sweeping forth crustaceans and uncovering molluscs as it retreated into the sea. And it would ebb and flow, ebb and flow.
And the terns flew while the gulls lamented their hunger to the world.

HRRRRRRR
The waves splashed against the wooden boat, hastening it towards the shore until it eventually stranded against the gravel floor. It would not go further from here.
A figure of deep blue skin, a dark elf by the name Sannoru from the southern isles would stand high. Shaky and wobbly, their descent into the water sluggish. It was cold, frigid, viscid due ice, but all San wore were mere rags.
Brrrr.
Their eyes would gaze back at the land from which they came. Nevermore their home, for Sannoru of The Thousand Valleys died there twenty years ago.
They warily stared at the island from which they came before their eyes shifted to the two other elves in the boat. They were shivering as much as Sanno was, but not from the cold. Fear.
»None followed us, that is good,« Sannoru spoke tiredly before grabbing the other two by their collars and dragging them off to the shore. Neither of them could speak or scream, for their mouths sealed shut, and even if they could; all curse words would have been used up by the time they reached the sea. San's people rarely came here, mostly as skirmishers, sellsword-thaumaturges.


No wintery gown was there to kiss San's bare feet. Only mud, thick, watery, cold mud.
With the two struggling it only became harder to move further up, often forcing the exerted Sannoru to trip over the mud and trod deeper into it. »And to know you two were once revered as the wise and merciful. Pitiful.«
Eventually, San dropped the two onto the frozen floor and standing high above them; there was no feeling of regret or bad conscience. Sannoru of the Thousand Valleys would have risked their life for the two and all over whom they ruled from Sanno of today.
Times have changed indeed.
Now... They were but a means to an end.

Exhaling slowly, San sat down and took a black scroll from their back. It was battered and muddy from the falls. Before rolling it out slowly with the tips of their fingers, Sanno would steady their focus on it. San knew the maker of it. Knew what followed.
Now true sorcery began.

From both victims, blood was drawn, trailed across the ground and towards the scroll. The due tried to move off in their weakened state, but the moment Sannoru added their own blood to it: Chains erupted from the drawn blood, quickly binding the victims to the scroll by their source wound. As this spell began, it cancelled the effects of the voice seal that was put on them.
Once seated in the lotus pose, Sannoru began to channel their seven subtle body energies onto the scrolls. First, marking the start of the spell with two hand sigils, earth, blood, then with the left touching the scroll centre. Slowly characters began to form out of the blood, all while the empty space between them erupted in painterly flames.

San's breath and wounds turned to the very same flames. These flares were not benign, for each wound they inhabited, old and new, they were over time widening them and creating new ones.
San keeled over, trying to keep their energy outflow focused.
The flames would as if they had a life of their own, dart towards the bound victims and stabbed into them repeatedly.

-
After a long and excruciating while, San was left collapsed on the floor. More brown and red than blue. Hair and clothes an equal mess. Flames were faintly emerging from here and there, like vapour off fields on a warm early morning.

The scroll had disintegrated, and the pair was dead.
 
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They were parked beside the firelight, Vand and company; these shorter, dreary sunlit hours drew their day-to-day adventures to more-hurried conclusions; allowing for longer nights of reflection. Vand peered through the fire at Signe – the wisest of them; the one that knew him best.

“But you are without a Svalen,” she stated frankly; the conversation, though he could not honestly remember what it was about, somehow saw him disqualified for further participation.

No, I just haven’t found it yet,” Vand argued. He was very aware of how unsure he was of this statement.

“So you agree that it is missing,” Signe re-emphasized, coldly. The words had changed, but the implication remained the same; and it made an uncomfortable feeling crawl into Vand’s throat. “…who’s to say if it had never been there at all? Would you even know?”

Still, it felt very familiar, somehow, despite his inability to recall any of it – like he had argued it a billion times and would continue to.

“I think so, yeah. It’s what makes us Nordenfiir, isn’t it?”

Doggrave looked on dispassionately, and Sigrith turned to look to Signe, who curiously wasn’t really there anymore. The woman he was talking to was now faceless, her silhouette mysterious and obscure.

“Is it what makes me a Nordenfiir?” She was Signe again, though she did not look like it. “Or is it what made me stop being? And when?”

Vand cleared his throat awkwardly, “That’s not what I meant. It’s –”

“Do you even know what it is you mean?”

He pulled at his collar, so humiliated it was becoming difficult to breathe. “It’s a part of me – It’s important to me because it’s a part of who I am.” He almost called her “mom.”

“Which part of you?” the woman said, standing from her tree trunk.

“I don’t –“ He was physically a child again.

“Which part of you is it, Vand?” She, however, was now a bear

And her hands were around his throat. He couldn’t breathe.

“WHICH PART OF YOU IS IT?!”

Vand shot up, coughing violently, shaking him from the haze of his slumber. He clutched at his throat desperately, trying to clear the blockage, only to find it was the usual gunk of silicosis and not the mitts of an angry bear. He coughed a few more times, clearing the residual itch.

He was just asleep. It was just the night. He was half-naked in his bungalow, a young woman, no older than 18 lay beside him, her blonde hair cast over her eyes, blue and wet and visible in the dark. She blinked, watching him, but -- upon seeing him okay -- simply rolled over and returned sleep. Vand smoothed back his hair uncomfortably. For the moment, at least, he no longer felt safe enough to dream.

He grabbed his boots, fastening them on to the staccato rhythm of other miners coughing through their REM cycles, and stepped out into the night…

Doggrave was sitting at the fire, his massive form oriented to face Vand’s doorway. It took the Nordenfiir a second or two to realize that the Tusk was asleep, his breast heaving with each mammoth breath, then deflating into a soft honk tumbling down and rolling out of his trunk. Vand chuckled a bit -- that honk, their cough – the music that added a “Home” quality to what could have been a very lonely licking of waves along the ice and mud of the coast.

Where Sigrith was -- Her feet, bare, in the frigid shoreline. Vand squinted, his eyes acclimating for the dark simultaneously undermined by the brightness of the fire. He moved away from the smoldering tree limbs, his pupils not quite right enough to see the small movement that fluttered above her, landing toward her reaching arm.

Sigri- *koff, koff*!,” he attempted to call to her; his attempt to muffle his voice in a whisper pitch tickling his throat and killing the whole thing in cough.

What was she doing out there?
 
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Though not a true Nordenfiir ("Just another Nord," the bear-kin called them,) Sigrith maintained the tolerance for cold just as her Mother did. Born with ice in your veins, child, her mother had said, and the strength of your family in your heart. It was sometimes difficult to know the latter, given her own limitations compared to theirs, but the former was easy to know.

Grounding was the practice of connecting one's soul to the earth beneath them through the direct contact of hands or feet. Sigrith stood within the frigid waters barefooted, her boots resting further up the shore beyond the reach of quietly lapping waves. In this way the realm spoke to her, whispering secrets and shadows to her mind. The waters carried tales of things long past and things close by, but mostly they carried the blood of elves and the tools of a sorcerer.

A single paintbrush, stained red, drawn beneath her nostrils to pull in the scent. Three strangers.

She held the brush aloft and from the darkness of the sky a large three-eyed raven materialized. Haw. Its feathers melding with the midnight hours, drifting down to pluck the item from her fingers.

Haw. Haw.

"Sigri-" koff. koff.

Northern lights cast across the distance between them, "We have company."

And the woman curled into a slow crouch, shoulders hunching low like the curve of Signe's spine, dipping and yawing into a rolling shake that ruffled the feathers of her pauldrons. They shook free, shivering fresh snow across the mud where fingers dipped into the earth and turned into blackened paws. In the darkness the woman's silhouette shifted and writhed until a pelt of coal had taken her figure and she stood as a wolf of shadow, maw turned to the air to catch the scent of the brush on the breeze.

Then she was off, stalking along the pebbled shoreline, weaving through the detritus of Haymar's Folly to follow the trail.
 
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Vandhad not seen her do that before. In the darkness, on the moon that shown across the waves, he wasn’t quite sure he had seen her do it at all. Perhaps his nightmare had only continued…

Yawn.

Even if it had -- he recognized that strange magnetic pull of adventure. He grinned, separating the addictive adrenal from the healthy trepidation any normal man who values their life experiences, then tossing that caution into the scrap for the lessers. He returned to the fire, kneeling only to grab his kit, then bounded after the wolf – sniffing at the air while his lungs were still cleared to catch her scent.

But, after every mile, he would still have to stop.

It was not that his body was unfit, no – it was the farthest thing from. It was his lungs that failed him. Despite the cold air’s easing of some of the scarred agony…at times, it felt as though he were eating it; like he was the cautionary tale of a children’s anti-smoking commercial, stopping every so often to pant and hack and spit and cough. He would use this time to gird on his gauntlets, his sword, making it look and feel as though these breaks were as much of his intention as they were his failure, his misfortune.

Vand looked to the wolf just ahead of him who had patiently stopped to grant him this gentle pantomime to preserve his dignity. “Big trouble,” he said, fastening his right gauntlet. It was almost a question, but a soft, trailing cough cancelled the upward inflection. “Little trouble?”

Grinning. “Midnight snack?”
 
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It was not in a witch to judge another - these foul creatures who sold their souls for such weird and blasphemous reasons. Sigrith wore her soul in shades of black gleaming under the moon, swaying patiently while her charge paused again on their journey. He tied his gauntlets and buckled his weapons on, but Sigi knew why he stopped.

Sigi knew why all the people of Withereach stopped. Why they spoke in stilted half sentences. Why they never managed a full night of sleep.

Haw, from further ahead. A shadow filtered, fluttered, in and out of cloudcover.

Haw, haw.

The wolf's ears flickered towards the distant sound, the slow sway of her tail giving pause. She could not grin in this form, but the expression was there, somehow, inferred through pricked ears and glinting eyes of green and violet.

What did his guesses say about her? About him? The wolf studied him in silence, gaze betraying plenty.

"That depends on what you're looking to find."

As a Nordenfiir he could certainly find any of the three, given the desire to.

Haw.

Prints pressed into frozen mud, the wolf was on the move again, a ridge of hackles faintly raising along her spine as they closed the distance on their quarry.
 
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It was always mischief with him. It would always be.

He heard these qualities in her words, and he echoed sentiment:

“The world is ours to take.” The world is our oyster. Casual. Without zeal.

It was always sounded more malevolent than it would manifest. After all, it was this mission statement that had drove a liberation, rather than a conquering.

Honor Codes were for weaker animals, the ones that crave masters and fear their natures. Eogorath provided nothing. Every piece of the world, every piece of yourself. Eogorath would make you earn it all.

Vand stepped off after her, his pace slowing as hers did. Of course, he hadn’t needed her cue –

He could smell ‘em.

There was delight in his eyes, seeing the trio of corpses – a desire for the contents of their pockets that Eretejva no longer saw them fit to carry. It did not come for a need or interest in cash, really. Perhaps treasure – but…it was rooted in curiosity. Who were these people? What did they hold valuable?

What could they tell him about the world?

Though he knew nothing of their actual culture, he recognized their type as mercenaries. He had seen more then few roving the lands as sellswords. Irvad even kept a couple of them in his employ.

Vand did not especially care for the Dark Elves.

He had looted the contents of the pockets of the ACTUAL corpses before moving on to Sanno, laying them out beside their bodies for Sigrith’s inspection. When he got to Sanno, though, and retrieved their brushes and scrolls, it really didn’t take long to see the Dark Elf was still breathing.

Huh. This one’s alive,he offered, apparently unsure as to how he felt about it.

Gripping the elf's collar with one hand, he slapped their face with the other, probing for consciousness.
 
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The two corpses could be quickly identified as upper caste with their lavish clothes, unlike the live one who only had scantly rags on their skin.
Along with the nicer fabric, the corpses actually had usable currency on them. That is if one wanted to trade on the transitory islands to the south. The green coins went by the name mun, were marked with characters, fauna and flora, and hey were perfectly round in shape with a hole in the middle for ease of carry.


What a smack! Sannoru's eyelids trembled at the impact.
"Mhhhhh," rumbled out of their throat.
 
A snout capable of scenting out the bloodlines of an individual roved across the lifeless bodies and the contents of their pockets. The clothing meant little here to the Nordenfiir - it was far too delicate, far too light to be of any use other than a handkerchief for a bear. Such things tore like ribbons under the claws of the mighty ursine. The currency held no value here, either.

Of the few kingdoms that the Nordenfiir empire had not established open trade with, it was the Dark Elves of the southern isles that never joined the fold. King Iordahn had been patient and kind, indeed, but some empires mixed like water and oil.

They didn't.

Haw.

Haw!

Haaaaa-ooo draws life with a Godless brush?


Said brush fell from the talons of the raven, caught in the teeth of the wolf waiting below. Sigrith's maw clamped down with a growl, breaking the tool upon her fangs only to expel the shattered pieces onto the shore.

"We should burn them," a low rumbling of words from the wolf as she watched from where she stood as the third body stirred, "these soulless husks should not be left for the spirits to find."
 
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Vand inspected the mun, squinting to detect its green glint in the moonlight. They weren’t currency here, sure – but they could still be worth something. Just not what they were.

And that’s okay.

There’s a moral in there somewhere.

The raven asked its question, and his brain, as it often did, began to free associate to give it an answer.

Of forbidden texts. Of pornographic illustrations. Of dead weeds and brushfires.

It was almost as if Vand hand no idea what a riddle was at all – That they had static answers, with static wisdoms or punchlines. The crow was an instrument of divination for him; of casual therapy and thought-checking.

Peering through the hole in the currency, he observed Sigrith the wolf – her green eye set alight by the jade frame…then framed a second time by the eyehole his bone mask. She made her pitch to burn the bodies and spare the eventual agony of demonic possession. “Maybe,” he shrugged, slipping the coin into his pocket, grinning at her.

“Still, I feel it would be wrong to deprive the crustaceans of their rightful meal…”

He had found the mental imagery delightful.

Vand held in him the weirdness of a mad scientist – This odd interest in letting rogue elements loose so that he may play in the upheaval left in their passing.

What trouble could a ghost riding upon a dark elf get into, exactly? In a year, what might Vand find him doing?

He returned his attention to the still-breathing Sanno, lifting him by the collar again – “What say you, corpse? Are you kindling or lobster-food?”

It was apparent in his voice that Vand was mostly kidding. While he held no love for the sellswords, he had a certain affection for survivors.

Vand slapped the calligrapher again, this time, the claws of his gauntlets nicking the flesh.
 
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It's all over now...Is It? The brief slap before was enough to shook San from the depths of their darkness. But to awake was to accept life again, something Sannoru falsely believed they rejected, gave up on.
Did you plan this ahead? With how much you've done and all you wish for now is to be washed off into the cold sea? Passive, pathetic. This is not the person you once were. Never would you have accepted defeat when it was this easy.
Wasted efforts, to go this far, yet the same result could have been achieved by smashing your head hard enough against the prison wall.
Try again.



The skin would scrape at the collision, rosy streaks would appear upon the wither blue flesh.
This was a violent snap into reality, and with it, their eyes slowly opened, only squinting at first as they began to recall their location and the happening.
Corpses, beasts, men...

Tension, it started in san's heart, like invisible chains wrapping themselves tighter and tighter around em. Hardly knew who the one in front of him is, who the beast besides, and if they are the only ones here...

Sannoru bared their teeth as their gaze trembled when they fixated on Vand's own.
" Corpses do - not speak. "
San's frigid and stuff fingers would reach for Vand's hand that held them by the collar.
 
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Then I guess you’re spared,” Vand disengaged, releasing his grip on Sanno and letting them fall as far as their own composure (or lack thereof) would allow. Meanwhile, the brawler himself returned to full height, looking down at the alleged “not-corpse.”

His posture wasn’t overtly hostile, but his visage and general ambiance always seemed to offer the potential for menace.

“Alright, elf --,” he started, twisting “elf” into something more akin to “alph” as his throat spasmed under a low-grade fit of cough. “—we’d hear your story, so long as it’s interesting.
 
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To the frozen depths of the Folly, then.

The wolf stepped around the first of the bodies, seizing an ankle within her maw to heave it towards the waters. It was not the first taste of flesh on her palate, but it would be the first of elven kind. Nordens were not particularly choosey when it came to their meals - they were as most bears were want to be and where fresh meat could not be hunted, carrion and carcasses would do. There was something about the acrid taste of the arcane in the blood that made her just a little less gentle in her endeavor.

Black paws dipped into frigid waters, the beastly dire wolf had little trouble maneuvering the weight. Soon it was caught upon the currents and floating out, like a sordid piece of glacier ice.

Sigrith returned for the second body, pausing as the third came-to and spoke. She lingered only long enough to hear the exchange before gripping the remaining corpse and dragging it to its watery grave.
 
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Sannoru fell right down on their knees, sinking into the frigid mush.
»H-heh. I rrr may r-not r-look r-like it. B-rr.« their breath was cold enough to not be as visible in the air.
Sannoru gave Vand a snarky stare before his glance quickly shifted to the beast lass who was dragging the corpses away.
Sannoru feared them not. Being a fine warrior of high skill, but even now, he knew that the dark cell he rotted in for a decade or more took a hefty toll on his condition and skill.

»H-mh... No time for pleasantries rrrh. Was once t-the prrride of my town. War came. Sent to k-kill our oponent's strongest warrior, almost died, yet I returned with a peace treathy. -In short. I escaped from prr-rison just now.«
 
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Vand arched a brow at Sannoru’s “snarky stare,” unclear as to where the Dark Elf had gathered this perception of familiarity; that these feral brigands were looting only the deceased villainy and not the surviving refugee.

This misapprehension that Sannoru had been found, rescued, and was now safe.

This was simply not the case.

And so, it was a challenge. Casually, unthreatened by the pride, Vand shook his head, breaking eye contact and stepping out a few paces with his back turned to the Elf.

“No time for pleasantries?” Why, Sigrith and he had all the time in the world, even if Sannoru themselves had not. What was expected here? That the barbarian shoulder the wounded elf – this one that could not stand without assistance – across the lengthy terrain, to abide this potentially hostile stranger for a prolonged period of time? To labor with his lung issue for someone who could not be bothered to tell him a compelling story? Not a chance. It seemed his first impression was correct. The elf was, indeed, a corpse.

Still, despite Vand’s awareness that elves had quite a large life expectancy, a brain making shortcuts under his own social lenses approximated Sannoru, by height and by timbre, to be a petulant teenage boy – something that Vand, himself, could identify with up until a point.

So, maybe not Murder, but Fear could perhaps be the order of the day.

Again. Up until a point.

His expression was clearly disappointed as he reached for the hilt of his sword, pulling it from his back – the ugly shadowed blade of the Black Bastard shining like a mirror in the moonlight. However, the action and the residual posture were not aggressive – the sword being drawn was merely a contingency, should the need arise. He drifted back toward the sunken elf, glancing to Sigrith.

“Hrmm,” Vand reflected – or, at least, pretended to. Meat it is, then.”
 
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Sannoru would slowly stand up, their body growing only more steady. Yet their posture was slouched. »Disssssapointed over my briefing I see,« they spoke opening their palm...it as flat enough for the job. Tracing a character over it and focusing their subtle energy onto it, the character on their left palm soon erupted into a subtle flame which was more of a sightly apparition that produced heat than scorching flames.

»And? W-who arre you and ww-what is recent n-n-n-news here. I am out of-the loop.«
 
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The adolescent produced a fire spell. Regardless of Sannoru’s intention or application, it was as an unfortunate, unnecessary, aggressive action akin to pulling a gun-shaped cigarette lighter during a bank robbery. Especially after that annoying, Slytherin drawing out of that “Ssssssssssss.”

Shifting the hilt of the Black Bastard to his right hand, Vand closed the distance between the two bipeds with a single step and went to abruptly backhand Sannoru and knock the rest of the elf’s question from their mouth; the claws facing the opposing direction, they would likely be spared their edge.

The child had forgot their place. Vand, for now, was only providing proper paternal guidance.

If Vand hit, considering their size discrepancy and the Nordenfiir's strength, it would likely be quite destabilizing.

"This is your last chance, whelp," Vand stated flatly. "You don't get to know who we are until we know who you are.

He narrowed his eyes in scrutiny, giving the outlander one final, generous opportunity to get a grip on their current predicament.

"Try not to make yourself into a corpse, yeah?"

Maybe Sanno could use the floor to discuss that prison sentence they've mentioned twice in, like, ten minutes?
 
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Sannoru had believed that all now went into some common loop of nonsense. Empty words exchanged until they would leave him be and San could finally content to clearing his mind.
But it was apparent that this would not be it as his words were cut short by hostility.
How easy it would be have it all end here. A good crack to the skull could do good.

Live you worthless wretch.
The dark elf staggered back from the sudden swat. San would stare intensly after they regained composure.

»The name's-s San; S-sanno Of The Valley of the Sweet Peas. -If that even-even means anything to you,« San shivered, his teeth gritting in an intense grin while his pupils sported a striking green lucidum against the moonlight.
 
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The wolf watched and waited. Ever the patient predator, she strode silently away from the lines left along the shore, remnants of two nameless, soulless bodies given to the Folly to join the other bones laying within its bosom. Her paws tracked a circuitous route around the pair, eyes of purple and green shifting over the shivering form of the elf.

She licked her jowls, tasting blood and nursing a desire for fresh flesh.

Sanno of the Valley of the Sweet Peas.

This meant nothing to them. An older and worldly witch may have recognized the name, or perhaps a noble of the Frozen Halls that had played party to diplomacy between the two nations. Not to half-fiir and a Norden who'd spent his life in a cave, inhaling the soot of his labor to spend his nights unable to sleep because he could hardly stand to breathe.

This all mattered very little.

Sigrith drew in a rattling, snarling breath and expelled her thoughts on the man, "You are quite far from home, Sanno of the Valley of the Sweet Peas. There's no Sweet Peas here..."
 
"What the fuck is a 'sweet pea?'," Vand echoed Sigrith's sentiments. It, indeed, meant nothing.

Vand disengaged again, re-affixing his sword to his back in an unconscious form of negative reinforcement. Sanno was doing the right thing to ensure his survival.

As Sanno proceeded to elaborate (presumably), the barbarian kicked up a few loose branches, and then some more into a general pile. One might get the impression he was going to start a fire.

Vand hacked and spat on the ground.
 
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Sannoru's gaze would wander over the she-beast. "A place wherrre I was m-merely spawned is no h-home of mine."
The elf stood upright now, their gleaming gaze shifting between the beast and man.

"A hidd-dden valley d-deep within the... Island. Each acre of-land covered in in sweet peas. Larrrge blossoms, yellow, wwhite, pink and purr-rple. The sweet scent; ineffable.
- Chessstnuts line the valley edges b before the beech f-forests start."
 
“And you were born of these flowers, like some sort of wight...,” Vand said without looking to Sanno. He was crouching by his pile of wood.

Vand’s cadence was that of a statement, but its ironic character suggested it was, in all actuality, a question. The Valley of Sweetpeas required further clarification as to its nature – how Sanno’s beginnings lead to his present.

Breaking twigs from the branches, Vand would build a small house of kindling. Upon that, a small house of their sticks of origin.
 
Sanno was about to ask about the wights, with mouth slightly agape came the realization they'd rather not suffer a concussion.
"N-no. Born wherever our m-mothers chose. Be it house or grain feild."

Sannoru sported a slightly defeated expression.
"No more as you have villages, w-we do too. Ourrrrs was from 4 - unified clans and t-the many no-clans. From which I-I came too; remenants of the d-destroyed c clans in the mmmmany long wars prior. I know no ancestor or r bear a name."

His gaze went sour as his brows furrowed. Perhaps nostalgia swept over san, along with a bitter aftertaste of how life was then.
"L-like many others of us clanless, we w-were 'nothing'."
 
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From a small pouch hanging from his hip, Vand produced lighterknot, staging it beneath the smallest wooden teepee. He looked it over, ensuring its adequate placement for proper ignition, all the while listening to Sanno speak their piece.

Vand identified – perhaps even EMPATHIZED – with the declaration of being nothing, and he muttered in confirmation to this understanding, “Us rootless bastards of the earth.”

Vand gestured Sanno over, before returning to his full height and orbiting away from the Dark Elf as if allowing the refugee a moment of privacy to start their fire, to warm up, to collect themself. He would stand on the other side of the fire from the assassin -- back turned, arms crossed.

They would not start the fire for Sanno – it was its own test of sorts. Eogorath rewarded only those who needed no reward. Survival was its own gift.

Happy Birthday.
 
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Sigrith did not need to watch Vand to know what he was doing. There was an intrinsic knowledge of his actions and movements, learned from childhood. How to build a fire, how to hold a sword, how to find the weak spot in armor ... in a defensive stance, how to slay your enemy, how to survive the more unforgiving of lands. Fire ... the wolf watched the elf closely ... they did not need fire. Not really.

No Nordenfiir needed the flame to stay warm or see their way or cook their food. Fire was a luxury, needless for but the novelty of it, but still just as soothing to sit by. As pleasing to the eye.

She elected to remain silent on the subject of being nothing. Opinions upon her kind, the Nords, the unblessed and shamed by Eogorath, were mixed. Her mother had been mercifully welcoming of her, as had her sisters, but she knew there were others who spat upon her existence. A shadow of their greatness, rejected by their God, the stain of dirt from their heritage of what they once were. What they began as.

Just a Nord. Just a human.

"Flowers come here to die," replied the wolf, "withered, frozen husks of their former beauty, it does not matter what they were before."
 
Sannoru at first reluctantly approached the wooden stack. His eyes glanced from the she-wolf to the man. He crouched nearby, holding out his palm again.
»We were t-taken under clan Raikara whom already resided i-in the valley.«
Sannoru then looked at the other hand. It was red...blood red.

Who's blood was this...

Sannoru licked their finger and began to erase the blood off it in another rune.
»Were t-they diplomats? They aa a sought out t other clans t t to make p p eace with them. I asss-s-sume it's eassy to find allies u under mutual threat.«
San eventually placed some tinder on their hand. Inhaling sharply he focused momentarily, the tinder ignited and the elf winced. Fire is fire regardless of origin.
Sannoru placed the tinder under the wood where after a rough start it quickly began to spread.
»How-w else to celebrate a a new village. Us clanless, Raikara banished to th the sidelines. We wwatched from the sideelines aa as t the strongest cclans met aand settled t their differancess. Except a friend of f mine, Chiro son of the rraik kara patriarch preffered t to join us instead... Us kids and h him were unlikely friends. «

»It w was not ap prechiated a among others.«