Open Chronicles Where the Wild Things are not...

[Kara Orin]

Kara heard Vanessa, yet continued to follow the commotion. She glanced around and took in her surroundings. Mid stride, Kara touched her right shoulder. Magic activated – specially a physical strengthening spell Kara had used multiple times before. Kara’s speed picked up and increasingly so once she was back outside and running downhill.

Mara came back into Kara’s sight. Traecon gave his suggestion of what path Vanessa could take. As Kara took another bound forward, her hand swiftly reached back as if it was an exaggerated gait.

“Go!” Kara yelled, not adding any more direction.

If Vanessa could find the beaten path that Traecon mentioned, it would position the huntress to possibly intercept Mara.

Another step. Kara’s hand returned from behind her back with a dagger. Runic symbols covered the blade. Slowly, the runes began to glow.

“Brace yourself!” Kara warned as Traecon skated down the road.

With a forward lunge, Kara threw her arm forward. She pointed the dagger at Traecon. A rune circle burned itself into the air in front of Kara. The faint smell of rain grew in the air.

At the same time, a runic circle materialized in the air behind Traecon. The symbols differed.

Not event a moment passed, and then then the spell activated. Kara’s body suddenly jerked and stopped as if she struck an invisible wall. Simultaneously, that momentum Kara lost would have been transferred and potentially applied to Traecon. This force had the ability to suddenly propel his body even faster toward Mara.

Vanessa Maranae Traecon Maxwell

 

[Traecon Maxwell]

"Brace myself? For whaaaAAAAAA-"

He had yet to see the magics cast at him from behind, and found the sudden increase in speed wholly unexpected. The boost was not additive. It was a multiplicative thruster that fully launched him out of his slide, into a flopping, spinning top of a human being. A comedic yet outrageous sight, he soared above the crowd like a human boomerang, screaming his head off.

He found the rush exhilarating. But also very terrifying. He had yet to be flung at such a speed in his life. But he still caught glimpses of red hair in his blurring vision, and swiped out a silver arm, hoping to catch anything, any part. Well... barring a few of course.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

And screaming his head off all the way. One couldn't forget that.

 

[Maranae]

Thoughts were a wild cacophony in her head, irrational and threatening to drown out coherent thought entirely. Mara did not need anything to amp her fear any further, for it was that fear that might ultimately bring the Bad One out if the dark depths of her mind.

It was a thing of instinct, not of thought beyond the bare basics needed to survive. The creature was not evil, it was just...feral.

She could hear the pursuit behind her and was dismayed that they had kept up. The words spoken - yelled, really - were too far off to understand. She did not want to understand. She did not know why people chased her like this, endlessly and always.

A sudden cry, and then something had hold of the hair in her head, yanking it painfully forward. She lurched as his weight hit her head full on, falling forward even as he crashed to the ground in front of her. Her strangled squeal of pain was punctuated by her grabbing her own hair and trying to yank it free, at which point it became painfully obvious just how strong that light, willowy frame of hers really was. Strong enough to physically drag the offending pursuer along the ground, unless he let go. Behind, Kara and Vanessa rapidly approached, and she could hear them too.

 

[Traecon Maxwell]

He thought he had her, as the two crashed to the cobblestones with a thud to break bones. He had the misfortune to be tougher than that, but he maintained consciousness to see he had grasped hold of that infernal hair. A shame to see such marvel be tattered, but he supposed it was not at all that harmful. He could have grabbed at worse places. He moved to rise, an apology on his lips, before the woman somehow maintained her heading. Having had a solid grip on her locks, Traecon was pulled along for the ride.

Grabbing at his hand to pull the offending limb off, the swordman heard the metal screech as she managed to grasp her fingers around his limb, actually bending the damn metal beneath her own grip.

*THWACK!*

And through some fit of mistfortune, he was subjected to a variety of collisions as he was pulled along, desperately fighting her inhuman strength. Like being drawed by a chariot, he ground against the cobblestones, ripping his clothes to a tattering mess. He slammed against unfortunate passerbys, sending them flying like dolls. Whatever footing he tried to gain was hampered as the woman did her damndest to dislodge his hand.

"Y-y-yee go-AAAW-ds woman! Stay - "

*SMACK!*

A flopping fish slapped his face, leaving its imprint in reddened, irritated flesh and stopping his words short.

"Still! We just want to - "

*CRUNCH!*

He slammed into a fence to the woman's right, busting the wooden barrier down with his own momentum, again. He was on the dregs of his patience and consciousness now. With what remaining strength he could muster, he bellowed out in a voice so loud, it nearly gave him tinnitus.

"For the love of - HOLD STILL!"

 

[Kara Orin]

With the spell being successful, Kara took a few moments to catch her breath. She looked down the hill and watched Traecon barrel forward and latch onto Mara’s hair. Kara had still maintained a rather relaxed, neutral and almost disinterested look throughout the chase.

Yet as Mara proved her immense strength, Kara’s eyes grew sharper. The grip on her dagger tightened.

Then, Kara began to ran down the hill after Traecon and Mara.

“Grab her legs!” she yelled out to Traecon as she slowly caught up to the madness.

Maranae Traecon Maxwell

 

[Maranae]

It was terror that drove her now, pure and simple, and his words could not reach the child's mind that resided within her adult frame. Terror had a special power over her, always reminding her of the dark place she had been, for lack if a better term, born. Only haunting fragments remained of what had been before then, and the twisted gifts of her chimeric nature were poor compensation.

She began to...blur. Her outline became indistinct, the sharp lines between flesh and clothing becoming something less defined. It only last a moment, and then it was a running woman, a man heavier than she was being hauled behind her by her hair.

And then blurring. Solid. Blurring g, and this time, the shape changed. Underwent some radical shifting within, and the hair in Traecon's hand suddenly evaporated as though it had never been. Instead, shapes bolted from the place she had been, ragged clothes crumpling to the ground. Incredibly, a mountain lion, a pair of wolves, and a dog shot away in different direction to a chorus of shrieks from the crowd. The scent if spices wafted through the air, cinnamon and incongruously tin.

Must escape! The thought was four voices-that-were-not, one consciousness in four different souls. All four bolted in terror, albeit none of them seemed inclined to separate too much from the others.

 

[Shela]

She detested being ignored, but there was nothing for it now. She did not know Elbion especially well, and certainly not enough to go off on her own while in hit pursuit. She decided that she would have words with the young sorceress when all was said and done. They were gambling with people's lives, as far as she was concerned, and that rarely ended well.

Which proved true enough. She watched as the chimera shifted, cursing rather vehemently at the top of her lungs. She did not have a bow, otherwise she would have taken her chances, bystanders or no.

"We should have cut it off, as I suggested. How are we going to catch all of...all of it pieces when it is loose in a city?" Her words were hard as steel. She drew breath, and then hollared at the man who had managed to at least lay hands in the beast. "Watch it's bite! Poison, all it takes is one bite and you will die!"

 

[Kara Orin]

The image of Maranae shifting and morphing into four different animals reflected off Kara’s eyes. She stopped in place. Her nostrils flared. Her eyebrows clearly knotted as they lowered. She glared at the chimera’s forms as they ran off in different directions.

Rather than respond immediately to Vanessa’s complains, Kara flipped the flat of her dagger’s blade up. She pressed a finger upon a specific rune. Immediately after that, the same runic symbol began to magically materialize on Vanessa and Traecon. If it fully applied, it would have no effects upon both of them.

“If we split up, I can track you,” Kara told them.

Turning to Vanessa, Kara informed her, “I’ll chase the wolves. If you two stay near the others, I’ll force the Abomination to reunite.”

As Kara spoke, she barely brushed a thumb upon the dagger’s edge.

To ensure Traecon’s cooperation, Kara looked to him and said, “There will be a gold reward after it’s subjugated.”

After saying that, Kara would begin to give chase if neither Traecon or Vanessa stopped her.

 

[Traecon Maxwell]

He had... enough. Frankly he was flat-out pissed. Enough to borrow a few lessons from that ice mage about composure and keeping a level head. His grip was lost, as the woman seemingly separated into creatures, but he simply rolled into a running start, chasing after the lion without any decrease in momentum.

His body ached all over, his limbs screamed for rest, and he was inclined to simply find a bed to crash and rest on once this chase was over. But for now...

He grabbed a set of chains from a nearby stand, presumably to hold chariots and other vehicles in place. Brandishing it like a lasso, he hurled it at the lion's limbs, intent on tripping it over and subduing it for good this time. Screw being nice - that would wait until the shapeshifting woman was calmed down, and he would offer her whatever she needed to just keep her from bolting like a cornered animal. Seriously, he had chased elephants less spooked than this.

Granted that was because they were holding water, but that was a desert story for another time.

"HOLD STILL YOU FELINE!"

 

[Shela]

The creep of another person's magic. Vanessa was no stranger to the arcane arts herself, although truthfully her own abilities with it were extremely specific. If useful. For a long moment, running alongside the woman, she considered trying to dispel whatever it was...but she doubted that she had the magical ability to counter something a true magi would use.

She grunted acknowledgement of the unnamed witch's comment and kept moving. They would chase after the forms that she had already seen before, and so she went after the dog. The breed was indeterminate, a mixture of something big. The brute was far faster than she was, afoot. It was time to change that.

Fumbling with the slender blade at her hip, she drew enough that an inch of razor sharp steel was exposed, and proceeded to cut her finger. She had no formal training from any college when it came to magic, having learned what she knew from others in her profession and the odd wizard or witch here and there. It was crude, more blunt force than subtle or finesse. Bleeding from a couple of fingers, since running and trying to do this were not a pair of activities it was best advised to try at the same time, she traced and imprecise rune on her chest, over her heart. In the air before her, she did the same thing. What hung before her, moving with her, was a representation of the rune on her chest with just a few extra symbols welded to the whole. It wrenched at the eye to try and look at it directly.

A flare of fiery red light, and it was gone. Blood flaked away from her clothes, black as ashes. In fact, where the sigil had been, heat suffused her flesh, and she could feel it spread from her heart to her limbs, a surge of strength that would have made a younger, more immature woman yell. She didn't. She knew the price of this.

The burst of speed she put on was almost too much for a human mind to handle. She could run far faster, and was far stronger than she had been...but her mental abilities were unchanged, and now she was trying to dodge around things that were moving far, far quicker.

A flash of black and white fur, a tail that looked more like a flag than a tail coming into an out of sight ahead of her. Vanessa grit her teeth, and pushed harder.

 

[Maranae]

It was the nature of the beast she had become, a thing more terrifying to her than it was to the people chasing her, than those ducking out of her way. The citizens of Elbion only saw wild animals on the loose, and that was enough to give them pause, to cause a thrill of fear in them. The specter of death bolted past them, and they did not know.

But she did. Not all of it, not to understand it properly. But enough.

The distance between all of her souls was enough to cause discomfort. It was an indescribable feeling, like stretching your skin past the point of tautness. She could see through four sets of eyes and, unlike the others, had the capacity to actually process that information and use it accordingly. One wolf over there ducked under a card, then up onto a barrel before kicking off of a wall, claws like steel gouging stone before hitting the street again. Once canine companion and now little more than another of the souls ensnared in whatever it was she had become pushing through a pair of squealing humans, the sensation of hot pursuit on it. Predatory instinct honed and then dulled by captivity.

Chains. From a feline perspective, ears and eyes incredibly sharp in comparison to the canine perspective of the world, lived through their noses, she could see the silver armed one. people scattered, such as were nearby - a mountain lion had no place in a city, after all. Chains tangling legs up, and a tumbling mess of chains and cat that ended with a feline backed under a wagon with all possible exits blocked by boxes and crates.

The low growl of the feline was a warning, claws extended and silvery teeth flashing in the light, dripping with a kind of poison. The woman called Mara was terrified of it. Whatever was in her claws or her teeth, it sickened people, incapacitating them. Killing most. The only animal she had ever bitten had become a part of her after a bite, and the people had all either died or been left dreadfully ill.

In this form, it was difficult to have coherent thoughts. The primal beast seemed to control all. Instinct driven and beyond her ability to directly control. She was but a passenger, now, watching a particularly violent game play out.

 

[Traecon Maxwell]

The beast roared and raged beneath the wooden mess, claws swiping at anything and everything it could find. Traecon, grabbing a set of steel chain this time, circled the lion warily. Beasts of this predatory nature were more resilient, vicious. From his belt, he swiped a potion of vigor, an addition from an alchemist's respite a week prior. He was planning on using it for... other ventures, but he could always visit again.

The energy returned in a rush of adrenaline, a fine restoration of his overall performance. A bit of a waste, seeing as it was worth a whole bag of coin, but the coin he gained from capturing this one would be enough. Or he could set her free. He had seen glimpses of her face as he chased her before - only a child could have such innocence and terror melded into one.

Wrapping the links around his flesh-blood arm, he approached the raging creature with his other, silvery arm. He had yet to find weapons or powers that could scratch the cast, and doubted this lion, strong as its source seemed to be, could achieve the feat.

"Stand down, feline. We do not wish to hurt you any further. Force my hand at your own peril!"

He grabbed at the iron chains at the lion's paws, and yanked hard. The metal links whipped about into a coil of chains, wrapping around the lion's rear legs. But he had suffered a hit, the metal arm denting beneath a random swipe of the beast's paw. The claws did not even pierce the metal, but the black tar they left behind sizzled and smoked.

"...Poison?"

He was getting confused and terrified. What manner of creation did this woman come from?

Maranae Kara Orin Vanessa