Gold and Ice

Whether by fate or by chance, the wind shifts suddenly and it does so in your favor. The biting winds of the east give way to the warmer winds of the southwest and bring an unfamiliar scent to your nostrils. It is the unequivocal scent of a woman, yet it was not like scent of anyone you yet knew. It carried other more subtle and strange smells with it such as leather and smoke, as well as another peculiar aroma which was new to you entirely. These scents were accompanied by the much more pungent and prominent odor of a horse. Certainly there were a few others who noticed it too but you are the second to react, right after Rigga who darted off to follow the scent a second or two before it reached you. Your group instinctively mobilizes to follow her, but you quickly cut off their advance. "This hunt is mine. Settle in behind the tree line, and get word to Inslod to see to it that the rest do the same, we attack tomorrow." The words have barely left your lips before you sprint off after Rigga. In her haste she is easy enough to track, especially for you. Tracking game even across bare rock would hardly be considered a difficult task for any Ardri, much less for you. Yet, the distance between you and your mate is surprising, even with your greatly enhanced speed you aren't quite able to close the gap between the two of you yet. You wonder for a moment how much greater the distance between the two of you would be, were it not for your gifts. Far ahead you can clearly hear the frantic galloping of hooves and the snorts of a powerful steed. You hear Rigga shout ahead of you as she engages her enigmatic foe and in moments you are there at her side.

As you step into the clearing you see Rigga narrowly avoid taking an arrow to the face as she attempts to close the distance between herself and and a cloaked archer saddled on a muscular brown horse about 100 yards across from her. Your kind hadn't used bows for at least 4 generations, maybe more, as they were a sign of weakness. This only served as further proof of how far behind the rest of the world had fallen. Your people have had no need for such devices, as they put their users at an unnecessary distance from their prey. The close proximity between predator and prey is something that should be savored you think. Perhaps you can help her appreciate this truth. Rigga continues her rapid pursuit of the green cloaked archer, weaving dexterously through a vicious barrage of arrows. A well aimed arrow slices across her back as she turns her body to the side, mid-stride, in order to avoid suffering a direct hit to her torso. Rigga has already closed nearly half the gap between herself and the rider, and you are only a step or two behind her.

As you and your mate chase the fleeing rider down, you take notice of the forest floor, and a distinct lack of the natural debris that should be accumulated upon it. Normally you should be striding over a layer of dead leaves and leaping over fallen tree trunks, instead your every foot fall meets either soft grass or packed dirt, with the occasional tree root or rock here and there. It could easily have been mistaken for a giant game trail were it not for the fact that there was not a single recognizable print to be found on it, save for humans and horses. Without warning an arrow buzzes past your ear like some furious insect, drawing your attention immediately back to the task at hand. The archer looses another arrow and this time it becomes obvious, Rigga is no longer her target. You instinctively weave out of its way and inadvertently step directly into the path of an incoming arrow that she fired only a second after the previous one. The point strikes you squarely in the shoulder and bounces off harmlessly, although the impact was tangible, evidently even iron could not pierce the magic of your markings. The archers shift in focus had provided a brief window of opportunity which Rigga expertly exploited to its fullest. In a burst of staggering speed she closes the remaining fifty or so yards between herself and the rider, and throws her enemy from the horse with one hand, while drawing a knife with the other. As both Rigga and the cloaked archer fall to the ground, you see your first glimpse of the riders face. She has high cheekbones and a long lovely face. You are drawn immediately to her frost blue eyes and a dainty nose above two soft, plump lips. This lovely face becomes contorted into a look not of fear, but of unmitigated astonishment. Rigga's obsidian blade is poised to deal ****, as it is pressed against the girls throat. The Atmoran woman is now helpless, her arms pinned to her sides by Rigga's legs which are wrapped around her torso. One look into your mates eyes tells you all that you need to know, she is less than an instant away from slitting the archers throat. "Wait" You shout to her, "Don't kill her. She is our first Atmoran, and she may prove useful to us." Both your mate and her prey appear surprised to hear your suggestion for mercy, although Rigga's expression is leavened with disappointment besides. "She doesn't look very useful." Rigga replies, with a tone somewhat similar to that of a scorned child.

"She is my prey. I will do what I want with her." Rigga's blade presses against the archers neck as you try to make a case for her continued existence. You aren't sure why you want her to live other than that you want information, and that she might even join you. "She wounded you Rigga. We should at least consider sparing her." "Hah! She wounded me with a BOW!" Rigga mockingly laughs, "We should conserve our mercies for the brave and the capable. This is the price they pay for their weakness." She hisses. "There might be things we can learn from her. I'm going to ask her a question." You approach Rigga and her helpless captive carefully, and kneel down to face her. "What is your name?" You say to her. She doesn't even look in your direction now, she is actively avoiding your gaze. After a moment Rigga breaks the silence, "See! She's both ugly AND stupid. We should put her out of her misery.." "A moment Rigga, give me a moment. What is your name?" You say again, this time grabbing her cheeks and turning her face toward yours, until she is **** to look at you. "My name?" She finally answers in a low and and unassuming tone. "You are a man, no man is worthy of such an answer." She says, now looking you directly in the eyes with a blank expression. "Ugh what was that? Was that supposed to be her voice? It sounds like two rutting aurochs!" Rigga exclaims in a tone of disgust, reminding you of the language barrier between the two of them, as well as your own Allspeech Rune. "By the ancestors if I didn't have reason enough to kill her before, then I certainly do now! Anything that makes a noise like that must be at deaths door!" At this point you ignore Rigga to a degree and focus more intensely on the strange woman. "I am not worthy? Because I am a man?" You ask. "Is that not what I just said? Yes, because you are a man. If you want to know my name you should have her ask me for it." She replies, with a little more vigor than before. "Have my mate ask you? She listens to me, why shouldn't you? After all, you are at my mercy." You say. "No, I'm at her mercy. You are just an eyesore, nothing more." She responds. "Ask me whaa.." Rigga begins as you grab a handful of the woman's clothing and lift both her and Rigga up in the air simultaneously with a single hand. "Now that's what I was waiting for!" Rigga exclaims, clearly delighting in the change in your demeanor. She leaps off of the woman, and fluidly switches from being a participant to being a spectator. "At MY mercy." You say in a thunderous tone as you hold her up with no effort at all. "You were saying?"

"Put me down and I'll contemplate telling you." She bargains, beginning to grasp the situation. "You'll tell me anyway." You say, bringing her closer to your face yet still holding her a foot or so in the air. She's not quite afraid you think, but certainly nervous. The fabric of her cloak begins to pull a bit, parting enough for you to glimpse a small leather cord around her neck. "What is this?" You say, before you begin to reach for it. As soon as you look at it, her composure collapses. "Wait! Wait! Don't! I'll answer anything! Súgain! Súgain! That's my name! Don't touch that! It's fragile!" "I take it this is important?" You ask her, pulling your hand away a bit. "Nothing escapes you does it. Look, if you'll leave that alone I'll answer any question you ask me, but you should put me down first. My steed has already run off and if your 'mate' can outrun a Barcost Brown, then I have about as much chance of escaping her as a raven would have of pecking it's own eyes out by mistake." She finishes, what she says makes sense, but her relentless sarcasm is most off putting. "Rigga, grab her bow and her arrows for me would you." "Of course my mate, but tell me what is she saying?" She asks as she collects the riders scattered weapons. "She says that you are fast." You answer tersely as you put her down. "I'm not so fast as she is slow." Quips Rigga, although that assertion didn't quite ring true to you. You lower the woman to her feet and her long golden hair spills out from her cloak as she adjusts her clothing. She stands more than a head taller than Rigga, who carefully recovers the woman's white colored bow from the ground and strips the woman of her quiver. Despite being disarmed, she has all but regained her composure. "Why do I get the feeling she doesn't like me?" The woman says with a slight chuckle. "I can't exactly tell because whatever language it is she speaks, sounds too harsh to properly convey amicability, but I just have a feeling about her." You can't exactly blame Rigga for disliking her, aside from being an Atmoran the woman's less than athletic physique betrayed a life of relative ease in comparison to your own. "You did try to kill her." You answer. "I tried to kill you too, and yet here you both are, safe and sound. No harm done, right? So where are you two from anyway?" She asks. Her constant attempts to assume control over the situation were as frustrating as they were futile. "I have questions of my own. Yours will have to wait." You state plainly, yet again prompting her to deny you. "I don't think so, my hairy captor. You know my name now, so I deserve to know yours at least." She states. "Mate Rigga, this woman tells me she has a knife under her cloak. Would you please remove that for me?" You ask.

"I did not!" The woman half-shouts, her brows now furrowed with concern. "I knew she was hiding something.." Rigga says as she reaches for the girl. The fallen rider struggles for a moment, only to have the wind knocked out of her by a knee to the gut, as Rigga yanks off the cloak. Hanging at the woman's right side was a long knife in a leather sheath with brass adornments, just as you had suspected, everyone ought to carry a good knife. It would appear that even Atmorans weren't foolish enough to rely solely on ranged weapons and expendable projectiles. "Okay, alright, I guess I deserved that somehow." The woman said raising her hands in a show of surrender. "Oh, and Rigga, she says she has a second one hidden under her clothes." You add. The purpose of your game was simple and twofold. Firstly, it should weaken her resolve at least a bit by asserting your control over the situation and most importantly, you had never seen a naked Atmoran before. "You big dumb bastard!" The lady all but shouts before a swift kick to the back of her knees from Rigga drops her into a kneeling position. Piece by piece Rigga begins to tear and cut her clothes off and toss them aside into a pile, exposing the woman's silky smooth, ivory-colored skin. After the first layer of her clothing was removed, you could easily spot several of the distinctions between this woman and the average Ardri female. One stood out in particular to you, as a man. She was busty beyond compare, never before in your life had you ever seen such large tits. They could hardly be considered suitable for the rugged lifestyle of an Ardri, perhaps the only attractive trait about them to you was simply that they were exotic. Rigga stopped disrobing her when only her chest wrapping and trousers remained, "I haven't seen another knife. Perhaps she is lying? Or maybe she cannot count." She says. "Keep looking." You say, fighting the urge to smile a bit. Without hesitation Rigga slices through the woman's chest wraps, causing her ample tits to spring forth like a butterfly bursting from a cocoon. They were full and plump, like some succulent fruit, heaving with her every breath. "By the ancestors she has udders!!" Laughs Rigga, clearly as surprised by the sight as you, but less impressed and more critical. "They look heavy!" Rigga says, as she cups one breast and hefts it in her hand. The woman shudders slightly at her touch and struggles visibly to remain calm and serene. "No wonder she's so slow! I don't know how she manages to move around with these things stuck to her!" Dangling in the valley of her cleavage, is a tiny stone talisman which hangs from the leather cord you saw earlier around her neck. It is small, no more than two inches long and cylindrical in shape. A faint magic radiates from it. On the side of her ribs you notice a large scar which runs horizontally all the way from her back around the right side of her rib cage. The scar is jagged, irregular, and freshly formed. It doesn't look to be more than a month, or maybe two, old. The shape of it, as well as its placement and direction, were enough to make you entirely certain that the wound had been inflicted upon her intentionally. You decide that her earlier question is now deserving of an answer, "My name is Ogma the Wild and this is my mate, Rigga the Bloodmaned. We don't actually have a name for ourselves as a people, but we have heard that you call us the Ardri." For a moment the woman goes blank, appearing perhaps a bit disappointed.

"Of course you are, that makes total sense. You're from a mythical lost tribe and I'm Unda, primordial spirit of the sea. At this point you needn't bother lying to me, you could simply refuse to answer my question, and if you're going to lie to me at least make it believable. The Ardri, better known as the feral tribe, died off centuries ago. Some historians doubt they even existed at all. You should have just told me you were mercenaries hired to capture or kill me, that at least would have made sense." She tells you. "You've made your point alright, just stop. I'll tell you whatever you like, please just let me keep what I have on. My name is Súgain. I am, or rather was, an Atmoran Ranger. I have plenty of knowledge about Atmor, secrets that might prove valuable in other lands. I suppose you're planning on selling those secrets after you've finished with me, aren't you?" Certainly your people had been under trial in the north for a long time, but you never would have thought that they might've all but forgotten your existence altogether. Was money all that 'civilized' humanity concerned itself with? "I don't think you understand, Súgain. I'm not interested in the filthy currencies of the world you are familiar with. Your secrets are much more valuable to me, and to the world as it will be. You may yet help me free this land, help me free humanity, from itself. You can be a part of the growth and renewal of the world, you can help make it to be again what it always ought to have been, a world where mankind is utterly free and fearsome. Every city will be sundered and every chain will be broken, brick by brick and link by link, this is your calling." This was the ultimatum which each Atmoran, and each human, would soon face. Growth or Decay?

"Well, good luck to you I suppose. Just because I am marked as a traitor to the current regime and an enemy of the state doesn't mean that I will back some hopeless rebellion. There is no possibility of overthrowing the republic, and I know that now. That is precisely why I am leaving this country, or at least why I was until you thoroughly ruined that for me." She responds. At least now you can understand why she would believe you were mercenaries sent for her. "Has she said anything useful yet? I'm prepared to cut off my own ears if this continues much longer." Rigga complains, clearly growing tired of waiting. "Yes, just give her some time. If you decide to go back to camp I won't stop you, but I'm interested in hearing what she has to say." Your words of course do nothing to placate her waxing restlessness.

"Okay, so lets say that you ARE a part of the feral tribe. That might explain your odd clothes and backwards relationship, but it wouldn't explain how you learned to speak perfect Atmoran." The speech rune, a gift from a dragon, certainly one of the more far fetched events you had experienced. She already didn't believe you, what did you really stand to lose. "That would be the Allspeech Rune. It was a gift, from a dragon." Upon hearing this, the former ranger called Súgain, rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, which presses her breasts together in a most appealing manner. "Okay, I give up. I'm done asking questions that will never get serious answers. Let’s get this over with, what do you want to know?"