Fable - Ask Who We Are, What We Were

[Maranae]

If you wish to join simply shoot me a PM at any point. I will post to this as much as twice a day but I will pause for people to get involved, if they desire to.

---------

The wreckage through the wilderness was no longer easy to follow. It had been a year since the tall redheaded girl had been here, being chased by the since ever present mercenaries and bounty hunters. A year since she had escaped this place in the company of a Nordenfiir that had been as much out of place as she herself had been.

The forest had healed from a raging bear, but she did not feel as though her mind had healed from a year spent running. Running from people that wanted her dead,to capture her, or to use her to their own ends.

And so she had ran away. Every encounter had gone sour, even if she had not given up on the bright future she envisioned. A world where she could play and no one would hurt her, or each other. A world where there were no questions circling in her pretty little head.

Such as what was she?

She padded through Woodlands that were eerily quiet. The wild things could sense her, after all, and did not like the flavor of her scent. Her bare feet did not feel the stab of stone or stick or thorn. The ragged clothes she wore were a bland melange of stains that made the cloth a mottled brown, so worn as to be shapeless and thin enough to barely do the job of maintaining modesty. Fiery red hair hacked off at the waist and more snarled mess than anything else shifted with her every step.

What am I? A nagging question. One asked by several people over the course of a year spent in perpetual flight.

Mara wanted to know. She could only remember a painful awakening, a time without meaning ago. When awareness became true, she was already mostly grown, and all memories prior to that had become murky,half glimpsed things that defied every effort to decipher.

A dark shape opened before her. The yawning portal of a mineshaft, only she knew it was not. She could smell the air wafting up the adit, and it carried the smell of death on it. Down that passage was the place she had been born. She believed it was so, anyway. She did not want to go down there, not at all...

...but she wanted answers. To what sgevwas, and maybe why she was hunted.

 

[Alistair Wren]

The hems of his robes soaked with dew, Alistair strode through the trees, their branches curving over and joining hands with each other, like lovers in a passionate embrace. He had his big, string bag filled with herbs, potions and necessities, it's tightly wound strap around his shoulder, but nothing else. He had been walking for days, stopping only for sleep and his usually smooth cheeks were covered in a short stubble.

Red flashed between the trees and he spun around, his attention caught by the hair of a young woman. She was immodestly dressed, covered only by dirty rags.

Heat rushed to Alistair's cheeks. Looking away, he blushed and shielded his eyes from the exposed form of the girl. She wasn't even wearing shoes, and appeared to be one with the wild, a primal, animal woman, her senses unrefined by the knowledge of the world.

Hand against his forehead, Alistair breathed in and slowly looked up. The woman was walking towards what looked like a mine shaft, although Alistair knew it was not. Rumors of depraved magic had spread throughout these parts and he had gone to investigate, knowing the rumored experiments had been conducted down a shaft that looked much like the one where the girl was headed. Lips pursed, he grabbed his robes and ran forward, racing as fast as his felt boots could carry him. His string bag bouncing up and down, he darted between trees, puffing and panting as he caught up with the girl.

He stopped a few meters away from her.

Relaxing his shoulders, he let go of his robes and let them brush the grass, his pale orange, pleated undergarment visible between the opening of his black outer robe. The sun seeped through the gaps of the trees branches, the rose gold trimmings of his robes catching its' light. Navy eyes on the girl, Alistair strode forward, his lips parting as he prepared to speak.

"Hello," was all he said.

A pause followed, filled by Alistair's stammer as he diverted his eyes from the girl's form. He fiddled with his robes and looked down, brow creased. The forest was dark, marred only by a feint trace of sunlight which peeked through the trees.

"I've been searching for this place for days," raising a hand, he scratched his head, looking at the ground as he spoke.

He looked up and stared directly into the girl's eyes, his irises as dark as a sapphire, "you know what's down there, don't you?" He asked.

Features hardening, Alistair walked forward, stopping only when he was right beside her. Her exposed body beneath the flimsy cloth made him practically quiver, sweat rising on the back of his neck. He mopped it up with his robe and exhaled, his chest deflating. The girl had almost appeared out of nowhere, like a leaf blowing through the forest on a stray breeze, but something told Alistair she knew more than what she seemed to.

 

[Maranae]

The young man was detected long before he ever got close to her, of course. Her hearing was as keen as any animal, her sense of smell as sharp as any canine. When she first heard whoever it was pelting along behind her, she had thought to run, to seek shelter. After all, many were the ones who wished to do her harm, to capture her. Or worse, though she could conceive of little that was worse than a return to captivity.

She spun away from the entrance to the Bad Place, although she knew it a poor name for what it really was, now. Faint echoing memories of the things they had done to her in the darkness still occasionally crept into her waking mind. Especially the things that came after the awakening of self.

She waited for the long minute it took for the trespasser to arrive, every muscle tensed for flight. The girl presented a conundrum; an apex predator that did not like to predate on anything. That fled when the violence became too much.

The human stopped before her. She had remained utterly motionless save for the rise and fall of her chest, jade eyes fixed on him as soon as the first hint of his shape was visible through the thinning leaves of the autumn-bound forest. She seemed to draw in on herself a little as he came to rest, head lowered ever so slightly. The gleam of ivory reflected the light of the sun, poking from under one side of her upper lip. Disconcertingly, those fangs were not always there, and seemed to change with her mood or the needs of the moment.

She stepped back a few steps, head cocked to one side as he greeted her. She seemed unaware of her state of dress, completely uncomprehending of any effect her slender, distinctly feminine shape might have on a man. Those drives were not a part of her yet. Perhaps ever, for the strange manner of her birth. She did not reply to him for a long minute.

"Why do you want to knew Bad Place?" she asked him, suddenly. Her voice held a musical quality to it in keeping with the angelic beauty hidden beneath her filth and neglect. There was hesitance in her mien, something like distrust that lacked any malice. "Mara....I, do not like this place," she said carefully. She was forced to correct her pattern of speech, which was often unthinking. The fact she could talk at all at her age was remarkable, but there were plenty of other remarkable things about her.

She seemed to recoil from his accusation, apt or not. She shrank back towards the entrance to the secret facility, and something suddenly gleamed on her hands. Claws, and those had not been there before, either. They were gone between one blink of the eye and the next. "Ma...I do," she said. Her words cringed back nearly as much as she herself did, backing away towards the darkness. "Mara does not like it here," she added, slipping into the old speech pattern again.

 

[Fauna]

There was a strangeness in the woods.

Fauna had felt it tingling at the corner of their mind, and the closer they came to the mineshaft, the stronger the feeling was. Artificial structures always felt out of place, like a lesion in otherwise healthy flesh, but once abandoned they scabbed over and healed as nature reclaimed them.

This wound had not healed. Something dark had happened here and left a cancer behind. Isolated it was perhaps no threat, but Fauna did not like the thought of it spreading.

A crow flew between the tree branches. Almost there, now. The opening of the mineshaft was visible, and two creatures stood before it. Landing on a branch some distance away, Fauna eyed them through black, beady eyes. One was clearly human. He wore the flowing robes and carried the clumsy pack of supplies they always did when coming to the wilderness. The other... well Fauna wasn't entirely sure what it was. It looked human enough but the oddness that emanated from the mineshaft seemed to follow it as well.

What were they doing here? Perhaps they would aid in understanding this place. Fauna would wait, watch, and follow.

 

[Alistair Wren]

The young woman seemed terrified.

Brow creased, Alistair held out a hand, placing one foot in front of the other as he slowly approached her. She shifted slightly and lowered her head, as though she was too afraid to move. Gripping his robes, Alistair walked forward, turning around to face her as he stood to her side.

"It's alright, I'm not going to hurt you," he cooed, looking up at her.

She was very tall, almost unnaturally so, almost as though there was a part of her that wasn't human, and the way she spoke was childlike. Did she have the mind of an adult? Or was her capacity to understand the world around her stunted in some way? Looking up at her, Alistair reached forward and lifted his hand up to her nose for her to smell it in an effort to show her that he meant no harm.

Alistair then asked if she knew what was down the hole, to which she responded, her eyes wide with fear. It was then that it dawned on him. She must have been one of the subjects that had been created there. Everything about her, her unnatural size, her childlike manner seemed to add up to that, and the way in which referred to the place. Withdrawing his hand from her nose, Alistair took a few steps back to give her some space.

"I'm investigating what happened there," he said plainly, "I want to put a stop to the experimentation on living things with magic," a nod, and he tilted his head towards the shaft in the ground.

A pause followed.

The girl repeated a name, was it hers? She then said, very hesitantly that she didn't like the place. That confirmed Alistair's suspicion.

"Is your name Mara?" He asked, his tone softening, "I'm Alistair, you can call me Al if you like," smiling, he held a hand against his heart and offered her his name.

The woman recoiled and shrank away. She seemed to not want to talk about the place or what happened there. She was clearly traumatized, dehumanized by years of horrific experimentation and torture. Brow creased, Alistair held out a hand.

"Hey, it's okay," he spoke very gently, lowering his head as he beckoned her forward, "come here, I'll cast a spell to make you feel better," he offered, waving a hand towards him. The first thing that came to mind was siphoning all the fear, stress and anxiety that she was feeling in order to make her feel more comfortable. Hand held out, Alistair gazed at her softly, his sapphire eyes catching the light of the sun.

"It won't be like the spells they used in the bad place, I promise," he said softly, "it's a nice spell," a nod and he looked at the woman in the hope that she would trust him enough.

 

[Maranae]

Instinct. It drove a great deal of how she operated in the world, and so it was that she was more animal than human. Not a surprising thing to learn, given that she was a blend of human and animal stock. What came after the initial blending only served to make the instinctual ever stronger.

Her nostrils flared as she took in his scent. Human, through and through, shot through with traces of something she was not entirely familiar with. She had encountered it before, that subtle scent of burning tin and copper. If magic had a smell - and to her, it did - then this was what it smelled of.

It took an effort of will to master the fear within her. She had no reason to fear anyone, she tried to tell herself without much conviction. She was as strong, or stronger, than most men were, and hard to kill. Being chased across half a continent with bounty hunters at every turn proved that readily enough. It was just that she did not like violence. She was not a fighter, and never would be she suspected. She just wanted to play, and the enjoy the sun and the world and the people around her.

"They are all asleep," she said suddenly, then cocked her head to one side so that dirty red hair fell over half her face. "Not asleep. Dead?" It was a concept she did not understand, death. The concept was terrifying in and of itself, echoing of something unspoken, some unplumbed depth within her. "Mara....my name is Maranae?" Another pause, and then a nod. "Yes, I am Maranae!"

She made no connection to a spell and anything he might being doing. The words meant little to her, although she acknowledged them with a timid smile, eyes bright but ware.

 

[Alistair Wren]

The woman's nostrils flared as she sniffed Alistair's hand. Holding it out, he let her smell it to confirm that he was friendly. His features shrouded by his hood, he withdrew his wrist and the woman recoiled, her entire form gripped in fear, like metal in a vice. At Alistair's mention of the place down the shaft, she told him that "they" were all asleep, whoever they were.

"Who are "they"? Are they the people from the bad place?" He asked, brow furrowed in concern.

The girl then revealed that they were dead, to which Alistair nodded, beginning to understand what she was trying to tell him. There must have been a massacre of sorts, which explained why the research facility was deserted. As she stumbled through her words, Alistair nodded, listening intently to every piece of her story. A breeze blew through the forest, sweeping up leaves and blowing back Alistair's robes, the breadth of the trees darkening, the sun shrouded by their thick branches.

When Alistair asked if her name was Mara, the girl questioned it for a moment, as though she was not sure of her name at all. She remembered and piped up, revealing that her name was Maranae.

"Maranae, it's good to meet you," Alistair nodded, his cheeks dented with dimples as he smiled.

Maranae kept her distance, still visibly terrified, so Alistair opted to siphon some of her stress and fear. Splaying a hand against the air, he coiled his fingers above her head and coughed, clearing his throat.

"This is a nice spell that will calm you down," he said assuredly, both eyebrows raised.

Hand held above Maranae's head, he penetrated the source of her distress and began to sing, "fear by which grips thee, leave this poor soul and beckon unto me, relieve her of terror and calm her," the words fell from his lips like honey, his voice calm and soothing. Tendrils of blue energy dripped from his fingers as he attempted to siphon Maranae's fear.

As he did so, he received an uncomfortable vision of multiple souls occupying the same body. Jerking back, he opened his eyes widely, astonished that he had been unable to siphon Maranae's emotions. She repelled the spell and sent it back, the blue tendrils exploding in the air between them. Mouth agape, Alistair looked around, flustered and confused as to why his spell hadn't worked.

"It didn't work!" He gasped, "Mara, are you alright?" Gripping his robes, he retained his balance and looked up at Maranae, brow creased in concern.

 

[Fauna]

The pair greeted one another in a bizarre dance of animal instinct and human sociality. The man in the robes attempted contact, the woman reacted as a wary animal. He did seem to manage to pull out whatever humanity she had, though. An exchange of names, and details about the mineshaft's history.

The feathers on Fauna's neck bristled at the mention of the place's dark past. Experiments? Living things worked upon by magic? This was not the Way. Magic flowed through the fabric of existence and the natural order was no stranger to it, but too often humans pulled at the threads and threatened to fray existence.

The woman... animal... creature? She spoke, said everyone within was dead. Good that the experiments had halted, but the scar on the land had not healed. They would need to investigate.

Pushing off of thin legs and flapping dark wings brought them closer to the pair just as a bright blue explosion went off between them. Fauna cawed noisily in surprise as they were pushed to the ground by the blast.

Standing up quickly, they shook their feathers and eyed the pair warily. How would... Maranae, was it? How would she react to a startling flash?

 

[Maranae]

Benign smile on her face fell as magic shifted and sifted through her mind and body. Oddly enough, some strange resonance existed between what was being done and what had already been done.

For just a moment, Maranae was aware of the souls within her in stark contrast to normal. Feline and canine entwined around a core that was distinctly human. A child, bound in silvery chains of sorcery, traceries of arcane web tangled. Perhaps Alistair could see it, perhaps not. In the end it did not matter; whatever had been done to make her what she was clashed with the his magic.

The burst of blue light caught her unawares. The girl jumped several feet into the air and then vanished into the maw of the adit. Only briefly though.

After a moment, she crept into the light of the entrance, and looked upon the boy standing above, the one who had used magic. Head low, teeth gleamed like bright steel, but they were certainly not bared.

"What..." she began, but did not find she had the vocabulary to continue. "Blue light was...was magic?" And having been made aware of the one, she could suddenly detect the other, another nearby. Even with her keen senses she could not pick it out.

 

[Alistair Wren]

As Maranae jumped backwards, Alistair threw out a hand, worried that he had scared her. Brow creased, he breathed in and took a few steps forward, his hand held towards her. She retreated into the shadow of the mine shaft, only to emerge after a few minutes. He could not quite put his finger on what had gone wrong with his spell, but he was beginning to suspect it had something to do with the alchemic modifications the girl had undergone when she had been in the facility.

"I'm sorry!" Alistair called out, "I didn't mean to scare you," he shook his head, his voice soft and comforting.

A hand held out, Alistair invited Maranae out from the shadow of the mine shaft, "hey, come here, it's alright," he cooed.

Slowly, Maranae emerged. She asked a forward question, as though she did not know how to properly communicate what she was trying to ask. After a while, she gathered the words to ask if the blue light Alistair had cast was magic, to which Alistair nodded, his cheeks dented with dimples as he smiled.

"Yes, that was magic, I was trying to siphon your negative emotions, but it didn't work!" He shrugged, then raised a hand to scratch his head, still puzzled as to why his spell had failed.

A pause followed, and Alistair lowered his hand, then cupped his chin in thought. An eyebrow raised, he looked up to face Maranae and tapped his chin, "Mara, when you were in the bad place, did they do anything to you that made you immune to certain types of magic?" He asked, then withdrew his hand and thought to himself, "no, I don't suppose you would know that, hmm," he muttered.

 

[Fauna]

Mercifully, the girl-creature did not attack, retreating instead to the maw of the cavern. The young man did not seem harmed by the explosion either.

He had a calming presence. His words and mannerisms were soft and non threatening (when he wasn’t causing explosions). His concern for Maranae’s well-being was commendable. Fauna had encountered but a fraction of the humanoid populations, but compassion was not something they held in abundance.

His question stood out. Had the girl been altered? It made sense. There were animal auras around her but they felt subdued... warped. Whatever had birthed her was unnatural.

|She has been... tampered with.|

The voice projected into Alistair’s mind. He would hear it in whichever voice his inner thoughts manifested, but the words would be heard. The crow skipped closer to him across the leaf-litter, one dark eye on him, the other fixed on Maranae.

The voice was broadcast again, this time to both of them.

|Maranae. Explain what you are|

There was no menace in the thoughts. Fauna simply did not understand her. They did not like not understanding.

 

[Maranae]

She cocked her head to one side, unable to understand the question he posed. Her vocabulary was significantly stunted from the average human being of her apparent age, but was quite normal for someone of her age in actuality. "What does....immune mean?" She cocked her head to the other side. "Only bad things happened here. They hurt me here!"

They. The operators of this place. They had never left it, unfortunately for them, and the traumas she had endured her had been neatly tied up and sealed away in a part of her mind where they would not bother her. The only reason she even came back here was for answers, but she didn't even know all the questions she sought answer for.

She wanted to know who she was. And many other, less tangible things.

She suddenly became alert. It was very visible; had she a tail it would have stiffened, had she hackles the would have been raised. As it was, she went very still, and then carefully looked around her surroundings. Something had spoken, and it had done so in an odd manner. She heard the words, but she had not heard them. Not exactly.

The question posed was one she did not know the answer to. It was another of those things she hoped to learn here, where she had been...born.

"I am...a monster," she whispered softly.

 

[Fauna]

Fauna considered her words, turned them over in a slow, old mind. A monster. It was not as helpful a description as they had hoped for. The girl was alert, but she hadn’t seemed to recognizant that it was the bird that had spoken to her. A common problem, Fauna had found. With the prospect of immediate danger largely eliminated, perhaps it was safe to try a more obvious approach.

The sound of rushing wind and water swelled for moment, and where the crow had been a lynx now stood. Its fur was dappled with gentle spots, and long tufts of fur adorned the tips of its ears. It padded silently towards Mara on large paws. It stepped over the threshold of the cave. The ground felt wrong, sullied. The lynx sat and turned yellow eyes back to the pair. |I should like to come with you. To destroy this place.|