25th of Saun 720, mid-morning
The suns shone in the sky, oppressing Woe with their intense light. The mutation from his Empathy spark shunned their brightness, and so he'd taken for the past few seasons to sheltering indoors during daylight hours. And most often slept during the day, although occasionally he had to switch it up for Guild business and other matters. Nevertheless, the fact that Toutouye was slowing down so purposefully for his sake was obvious, as Woe and Breen plodded along behind the boy, through the forests between Etzos and Ne'haer.
It'd been some time since he'd washed up on the shores of the nearby river. He remembered the ambush well, and how he'd been thoroughly beaten by a band of ruffians, left to die only to be saved by Toutouye's mercy. He still had a lingering fondness and had missed the boy in their long absence from each other. The boy had a terrible fear of civilization. Even cabins held some fear for him, and he stayed well away from manmade structures that weren't his own lean-tos.
Toutouye stopped some distance from just such a few structures now. Ahead, were the burned-out husks of several houses. Woe frowned, thinking that he'd been here before. It was a village, and there were other structures besides the cottages and dilapidated houses. In the midst of the fog, Woe could perceive the movement of creatures. Toutouye doubled back, hiding behind Woe and Breen. Woe held out an arm to shield the boy but didn't himself feel afraid of whatever lay beyond the fog.
It felt... familiar, no, nearer to kinship with those creatures. Then he realized, they were spiders. Spiders, some of which were the size of cats.
Toutouye could be felt to shiver behind Woe, but he paid the boy no mind. He wanted to see what his kin was doing in the ruins left in the wake of Morandi's fall. Because now he remembered; It was Erastus' family's lands, the place where he'd picked up a treasure or two that Erastus told him about...
He walked up into the mist, leaving Toutouye behind him. Woe turned around, to face Breen, "I'm not going far. Make sure you watch over the boy and that he doesn't run afoul of any arachnids."
So saying, he turned to face the scene again, and strode forward, armed with little more than a poorly constructed plant-fiber rope that he could use as a whip. It had been knotted at the end of the rope, for some added impact.
His kinship with the arachnids, by dint of his Lethroda mark, would ensure he wouldn't run afoul of the creatures, but one could never be sure when entering their territory. As he passed by the many dilapidated huts and houses of the ruined township, he came to find some signs, pointing toward a mine, some such or another. Then, unbidden, Erastus' whispers came to him. He'd been reduced since reappearing as a ghost some time back. Woe suspected it was because Emma had fed upon him, more than once. He wouldn't have put it past his ghostly paramour/enemy/sometimes friend. Erastus whispered, his words coming in waves, "Mines... Sintra's pact, Stone Horse..." An odd assortment of phrases, to be sure. But intriguing enough was the final one.
So Woe followed the path, heading for the Mines of the broken-down town that had once belonged to House Morandi. The spiders merely skittered about, while some others looked on. He felt their many eyes upon him, as the darkness of the mine's entrance showed itself to him.
The strange thing about this mine, it didn’t at any point dip in elevation. Then again, Woe didn’t know if that was entirely strange, having not visited many mines. He did notice holes in the ground every so often, which he stepped around, keeping abreast of their location through his Omnivision. His hand gripped the fibrous whip-like contraption that Toutouye had crafted for him. It was a poor excuse for a weapon, but he could probably fight off anything that might dwell in these mines still.
As he went, he kept abreast of the vague impressions of the tangle of nearby creatures. They all were fairly simplistic, much like spiders and insects, and small creatures. Nothing on the level of complexity of humans yet. So he kept searching, with the dual sparks of Empathy and Attunement, maintaining his awareness of the general area around him.
Eventually, he came to the end of the corridor, which branched off into a forking path. One to the left, and one to the right. Woe searched with his arcane sight each of these paths but came with little distinction between the two. He supposed he could always backtrack, supposing the mines didn’t collapse on him. At any rate, he marched onwards, to the left, as was his usual preference. Thus traveling deeper into darkness, lit only by the occasional growth of lichen.
As he went down the corridor, he thought he sensed a tangle that was quite unlike the others he’d been feeling within the mine. This most certainly was not an insect or arachnid tangle. But something more akin to a dog, or perhaps something on that level of intelligence. He kept along, focusing on that one tangle, and excluding all others.
As he walked through the darkness, his omnivision returned with feelings of entering a wide-open chamber. He could feel the tangle of whatever it had been, close by. Was it a person? It could’ve been, now that he sensed its complexity almost matched that of a human. The creature was uncertain, it seemed almost anxious. Woe was enthralled by the quality of its tangle, the closer he got to it. He almost didn't notice that he'd stopped moving, and yet the tangle was getting clearer and closer. He wasn't prepared when the tangle flared with a twinge of anxiety and anger, and he heard the horse's hooves against the ground almost too late.
Woe leaped to the side, dodging its charge narrowly. The Destiar wheeled about, kicking its hooves as it reared up in the spacious chambers of the mine. Woe held his hands out, to show that he wasn't armed. Slowly, he let down the fiber whip, which might have done something to spook it. Again, Erastus' voice emerged from the beneath, "This is it, the test." Woe furrowed his brow, and sent back his thought, although he wasn't sure Erastus would hear him, [color]"What test? What are you babbling about, old man?"[/color]
No answer came forward, but the Horse's tangle was still in flux, between angst and anger. Woe held his hands out as he rose from the fiber whip that he'd left on the ground.
Woe didn't know much about Destiars, but he could sense its aspects and general characteristics through Omnivision, even as he monitored it tangle. He acquired its frequency at that moment and attuned to it actively. As he held his hands out, the Destiar approached him, snuffling its nostrils. Woe whispered little nothings, letting the etheric honey drape over the creature's tangle. As he did so, he drew from the tangle of the spiders all around. He grasped the fibers that made him an ally to those creatures and sought to form a sort of nexus between himself and the spiders and the Destiar. He didn't bother trammeling his own tangle from the feeling of comradery that he was trying to impart to the Destiar. As he gathered those threads from the surrounding arachnids, he placed the lattice of emotional nexus around the Destiar's tangle, not quite activating the spell, but waiting and carefully moving to the side of the animal. It huffed at him but didn't wheel. That was his chance, and he took it.
Like a spidery net of webbing, he drew the Nexus around the Destiar, wrapping its anger in a confluence of comradery toward him. He drew more and more of the spiders' threads, and reinforced them around the Destiar, burying its anger and anxiety. Finally, he knotted the anger it felt, deep within its tangle. Not to be severed until it served his purposes. Then the beast was his!
He gingerly took it by the neck and began petting the animal. It had a shroud over its eyes, and indeed its entire body that he hadn't perceived through his Omnivision. Interesting.
The shroud did not consume him but seemed to accept the touch of his hand, as he gently led the horse down to the maw of the cave, from whence they'd come. There, they found Breen and Toutouye. Woe stopped using his omnivision, and looked at his prize. The Destiar had a coat of dapple gray, with brilliant white hair on its tail and mane. Toutouye, for his part, looked quite spooked by what he saw. Yet Woe nodded to him and tried to reassure him through Empathy, knotting the boy's sense of anxiety.
And so, Woe claimed the horse as his own. He found in the nearby settlement, some riding tack that he could use with the horse. He had no idea if he was using it properly, but the Destiar, while it took the saddle, didn't like the bridle nor the reins, and refused to allow Woe to put them on. Woe, reluctantly acquiesced with its wishes and resolved to continue controlling the beast with a mix of Empathy and just common-sense treatment of an animal.
Then, with Toutouye leading the way, he trotted on the road to Etzos.
