[attr="class","loctitle"]AT CLIFFPERCH + ONWARDS

[attr="class","locbody"][break][break]

The smell of sulfur hangs in the air. It feels like the ash has gotten trapped in a thin layer between her skin and the mask, dragging Robin into the town square as the flames rise higher and higher around. They are tinted blue by the oil that must have started the kindling.[break][break]

She has to save Erin. If she can save no one else, she has to save Erin.[break][break]

It's already too late. She knows it. That doesn't mean that she can't try, digging through the wreckage of the tavern. Smouldering wood burns her hands. Ash fills her lungs. If she narrows her eyes, she can just see a body buried in the flames. By now, it'll be naught more than charcoal.[break][break]

She has to try. She has to-[break][break]

It's all her fault. [break][break]

ANIMA- BEHIND YOU-[break][break]

She doesn't move fast enough. She doesn't even try until she feels someone grab ahold of her, throwing her away from the pyre. Her head smashes against the ground, and she lays in a daze, her brain and Gawain screaming at her that she needs to run - run as fast as she can never come back.[break][break]

The mask of bear looms above her, face opened into a snarl. She doesn't hear what they say - the fogged breath being the only indication that words are said. Annie begs for her mercy as she scrambles to try and get away. A club slams into the back of her head, and the world goes black. [break][break]

[break][break]

It's a bright sunny day in spring. The bubbling of the creek, the smell of bluebells and lavender as the world begins to thaw from winter; she remembers making rainbows with a broken shard of glass that they liberated from the nearby camp. Sometimes, they'd try to catch frogs and fish with their bare hands, their pants rolled up to their knees and wading barefoot through the creek and meadows.[break][break]

The farmers nearby owned several cats to help with pests. The pair had given all of them names, deciding on a court-like structure for the various housecats complete with landed titles and knightly honours. Sometimes, they'd take their food scraps that they were supposed to feed to the pigs and give them to the cats instead. [break][break]

A black and white tomcat was their favourite, affectionately named His Honourable Esquire, Ser Whisker of Blackbrush, First of His Name. Kings were too stuffy, Annie complained, so they had downgraded him to the status of the earl and traded away the King position to one of Callie's favourites, a ginger tomcat with more grey than ginger. His Royal Highness, King Greypaw of Braybery Farm, Fourth of His Name.

Callie manifests her familiar, and Annie is left to adventure on her own as Calliope is adopted by the Keeper. Annie doesn't like him, and she doesn't care for lessons about history and tradition. Annie is ten years old, and ten year olds have better things to do than worry about classes. She starts to stalk the cats instead, following them from place to place. Her parents had not come home yet, and nobody would tell her where they were going for worrying that the headstrong young girl would immediately take off to try and find them. [break][break]

They'll be back before spring turns to summer, her elders tell her, showing how to use the stars to mark the seasons. When the swan flies high in the sky, your parents will come back. They wouldn't miss her birthday after all. [break][break]

Technically, she's not allowed out without adult supervision. That has never stopped her, and she's been admonished many a time for taking other children with her. Only Calliope will go with her now, all the other kids think she's a bad luck charm. The Keeper tells them that, she thinks, like he says bad things about her father.[break][break]

Talfyn Blair, the Wolf of Roses, cannot possibly be bad. He brings Annie treasures and is always so excited to see her and hear about her stories. Last time he came back, he showed her how to use a sword. When he comes back this time, he says he'll bring her a bow, and not the ones that he had tied in her hair - two white ribbons, one on the right, one on the left.[break][break]

She's not supposed to be in the farmers' barn. They don't like the clan that has stopped near them, but they tolerate them. The Keeper did something for them to placate them, something to do with a ruined harvest, but Annie knows that they look at them with some thinly veiled version of disgust. She's used to it by now, but she always wonders *why* people hate her and her people. They do not harm, and they sort out the nasty daemons that come out of the rift.[break][break]

She never asks though. When she does, they get even angrier.[break][break]

If they get angry enough that she feels scared, her father tells that she should run. And if she cannot run, then there's a knife that he gave her. The clan will protect her. Annie still needs to protect herself.[break][break]

"How much longer are those folk staying? They'll be ruining your crops next, only fixed 'em to keep y'off their backs. The brats are playing about 'ere too much too, gonna spook the cows and turn 'em sour, and then what do we do?"

She grips the knife in her hands, laid flat against the hay in the upper loft. Through the holes in the wooden beams, she can see two of the farmhands pacing. One of them holds a stake wrapped in barbed wire, the other a pitchfork. She wills herself not to breathe, not to make a sound. If they find her-[break][break]

In her memories, they don't. She runs home barefoot. Annie does not go back to the farm because one of them nearly do, grabbing for her hair as she ducks through a hole in a fence that's too small for them to fit through. When she gets to back to camp, almost dry heaving, the first thing she's met with is Calliope's concern, who looks like she might cry.[break][break]

Annie learns to smile then, even through her own worries and she does, all to soothe her only friend's worries.[break][break]

These are not her memories.[break][break]

She is dragged kicking and screaming from the rafters, grabbed by her mane of fiery red locks as they drag her out into the sunlight. Annie struggles and she tries to do whatever she can to get them to let go, screeching and begging and crying out for anyone to come and find them. One of them grins, a twisted smile. [break][break]

"You think anyone cares brat? Be a good girl - don't struggle."[break][break]

The pitchfork does not glint in the springtime sunlight, covered in rust as it does, but her heart still beats like a hummingbird in her chest. She screams at them to stop, she didn't do anything, to let her go.[break][break]

But they do not let her go. The one without the pitchfork holds her down, roughly grabbing her face and forcing her to look up, towards the sun, towards the pitchfork. His breath smells sour against his neck, pressing against her ear as he promises what they'll do to her. Her body, or what's left of it, will feed the crows. They'll throw her bones to the pigs. Her head will remain recognisable though. It's good to give back a gift to their guests, isn't it?[break][break]

She is forced to look into the sun. But all she can see is the bright red eyes and a crooked smile staring down her, ready to spill her guts on the grass. [break][break]

[break][break]

The rope bound around her arms only allows her to fall at most five steps behind the caravan. It's been at least three or four days now, but she can barely tell. If she falls asleep, she is dragged behind the beast of burden that she's tied to. Orders are that if she comes close to dying, she has to be rescued back from the brink of death until they reach.... Somewhere.[break][break]

The clouds cover the stars in the sky. Cliffperch has burned to nothing but cinders. Erin is dead. Robin is dead. The refinery caught flame, spreading everywhere. There is no culprit to blame but Anima Blair, who decided to try and return Robin home to his family. So the warband take her with them, as what? A trophy? A prisoner? She fails to see why Brynhildr has given the order to drag her home like this, but Annie can't complain.[break][break]

She's alive. It's not much of a life, but she still breaths.[break][break]

After she walks for another 6 hours, Annie can't stand up anymore and blacks out once again. The caravan does not stop moving, and she's once again dragged through the snow as if she's already dead.[break][break]

[break][break]

The vernal equinox is celebrated by a hunting competition in a small town near a forest. Annie is fourteen, nearly fifteen in two months. She knows how to handle a bow and a gun. The prize is to be declared the Green Knight, and the Knight can declare a woman as their Queen of Love and Beauty for the dance at night.[break][break]

The Green Knights of the years are hung up in the tavern. One of those faces is her father, admittedly a lot younger and without his stubble, but he still wears his characteristic grin stood above a dead stag. There is a woman there. She does not know the woman. She has the same eyes as Annie and freckles dot her face - but the picture is out of focus and she can remember the crown of roses better than she can remember that woman's face. [break][break]

Annie wants her face on that wall too.[break][break]

There's a local boy who's been taken with her, but Annie doesn't return the sentiment. He's sweet though, and he offers to take her through the forest in order to help him claim the prize. Between the two of them, they can be the Knight and his Queen, at least according to his plan. Annie doesn't want to be the queen, she wants to be the Knight.[break][break]

The tavern is abuzz with people as they prepare to go hunting. Annie has borrowed her father's rifle, who wishes her good luck and pats her on the head.[break][break]

There is a woman who watches her. Her face is out of focus, features shifting whenever Annie tries to get a better look. All that she can see clearly is red eyes, bright like fresh blood from a wound. She hides in the shadows, cloaked in darkness and an inky black mist that follows her when she moves.[break][break]

You wish to be a knight, a heroine, somoene who the bards sing of, don't you?

The voice is from inside her, but it's not hers. It's not Gawain's. [break][break]

( he is gone. she begs for him to come back. [break][break]

whatever is there laughs. )[break][break]

The boar is limp and lifeless at their feet, her bayonet having been driven into the meat below it's neck. The boy that offered to help her stands behind her, skin as white as a sheet as he trembles. A smudge of blood on his cheek is wiped away by Annie's hand, offering him a sweet little smile. [break][break]

"It's okay; sometimes, things have to die."[break][break]

Even though he can't bear to look, he still held the pike that was driven into the boar. When it came down it, he did not look away.[break][break]

In her memories, he's crowned the knight and crowns her as his queen. It's not the role that she wants and it was her who killed the boar, but he needs this more than she does, she thinks. He steals a kiss underneath the chandelier in the tavern as they dance, and she doesn't really have it in her to stop him.[break][break]

This time, however, she finds the boy in the forest where no one is around but a few other boys from the village. They have their own weapons much like Annie's and outnumber the poor boy who goes as pale as a ghost when he sees blood. They jeer and taunt. [break][break]

You want to be a heroine, don't you?[break][break]

She takes aim with her rifle. It's a simple thing that she knows how to do with practiced ease, a deep breath to steady and pull the trigger. Across the line of sight, a head bursts. She expects them to scatter the same way that ducks do when one of their number is shot. They don't.[break][break]

They know where she is and they drag her out into the clearing too. One of them has a pike, and the pike is driven through her skull pinning her to the forest floor as she's left there bleeding in what feels like the worst pain of her life. [break][break]

The boy that she tried to save lies beside her, his eyes glassed over. [break][break]

[break][break]

They reach a clearing. The moonlight reflects off the ice. She has been given a warning that if anyone sees her familiar, they will skewer it before she can even cast a spell. The bindings are then cut loose and she finally is able to stretch her arms, cracking her spine and looking up towards the War Mother atop her boar.[break][break]

One of the boar's tusks are broken, healed with brilliant ice as if it was hued from a single brilliant diamond. Brynhildr herself is not pretty - her nose is crooked as if it has never healed properly after being broken, her face covered in scars, when she smiles there are gaps in her teeth - but she commands a presence that Annie imagines that a valkyrie would.[break][break]

"You know what you're accused of?"

The burning of Cliffperch. The murder of another's witch familiar. The murder of her own blood, another keeper by the name of Erin. Working in league with the Winter's Grasp. They have seen one of the High Priest's familiars fly over the forests towards the Tower, and concluded that the cult has succeeded.[break][break]

She didn't intend for any of this, but it has been laid at her feet for her to answer. [break][break]

Annie nods. She is corrected as the blunt end of a spear smashes against her ankle, causing her to fall to the floor. [break][break]

"Yes Maalivahti."[break][break]
Brynhildr does not move from her seat atop her boar. The flail, also seemingly made from the same diamond-like ice that makes up the boar's tusk, drops down. Annie swallows - she knows what is coming next.[break][break]

"And what do you have to say, before the sight of the Spirits?"

"I did no such thing Maalivahti. A cultist deceived me. I came to claim the Tower for my people, my blood. I wanted to seek your aid, the south is plagued by a daemo-"

She has to try, even now, to save herself. But she's a made a mistake that she knows before she even finishes the sentence as the ice cracks around her feet. A spike goes straight through her right foot, slicing clean through her boot. Annie screams, but the spike keeps upright and she raises her head to avoid having the spike pierce through her lower jaw.[break][break]

"Maalivahti! I did no wrong, please! Allow me to prove myself, under the sight of the Spirits. My name is Anima Blair, my father was Talfyn Blair - I invoke combat to clear my name!"[break][break]

[break][break]

The boar rampages through the forest.[break][break]

Annie has cheated in the spirit of the tournament, but by cunning Athena's grace and good guidance, she attempts to buy a spot in her favour. This way, her hands are clean. The blood remains only on the tusks of the boar, and the berries that made it become enraged. Boars are territorial at the best of times, but now?[break][break]

Now Annie has to watch and wait. [break][break]

The boys that murdered hers are trapped in a clearing with the boar, already dripping with blood. A jagged spear juts from it's back, not long enough to stop the boar from charging right down the pole and goring the man of the other end. That's what happened to one of them, found dead by a tree with his innards out to face the midday sun. [break][break]

Another lays dead in the stream. Ravens already peck at one of the others. Annie is content to let the boar wreck a bloody path in her dream; the dream feels real, but she knows this place.[break][break]

"Do you think you've outsmarted me, wolf daughter?"[break][break]

The boar speaks. It stares down Annie with her pike in hand, tucked beneath her shoulder and cushioned against her ribs. The boy that she wanted to save speaks the same as the boar, his eyes glassy and red.[break][break]

"You want me to learn, don't you? What?"[break][break]

The boar laughs with a human voice, and the boy laughs with the chortle of a beast. "You will learn, whether we teach or you not. You are doomed to fight the Boar and it's rider tomorrow. They will kill you. Your familiar cannot help you."[break][break]

She grips on the pole. [break][break]

"You are a daemon."[break][break]

"I am your only chance of salvation. I can give you my wings to soar and touch the heavens. I can give you my fangs and teeth to rend the world. O bearer of mine, place your heart in my jaws and together we can-"

In a smooth motion, she slashes the boy's neck open. Even choking on his own blood freely pouring from the wound, the boy walks forward to take her hands in his in a grip so tight that it crushes her wrists. He leans, close enough that she can taste the blood on her tongue as he runs his tongue over her teeth.[break][break]

"Dull, useless, forgettable. Without me, you shall die. Your father will die, your mother will die, your clan will die. I have it all."[break][break]

"And what make-"[break][break]

He bites down on her tongue, ripping it from her throat. She tries to scream, but his fingers invade her mouth to hold it open.[break][break]

"Feed me, dear wolf. Give me your life. Your friends are a good start, brilliant lanterns in their own right. Feed me the world, o bearer of mine.[break][break]

*Feed me the world, and one day you may take it from me.""[break][break]

[break][break]

Crows are not a good auspice for what she is about to do.[break][break]

The morning of the duel she is treated like one of their own. People tend her wounds, give her new clothes to wear that better insulate for the harsh cold. They wish her well, as tradition demands, and they promise that if she dies here today on the frozen surface of the lake, they will scatter her to the wind. The crows will feed on her corpse, and she will rejoin the circle of life. [break][break]

Anima Blair will die an honourable death if she dies today. If she lives and proves her innocence, then she'll be set free to wind and wing. All she must do is go toe to toe with the warmother and survive with just a spear in her hand. It is something that she couldn't do at the peak of her health, never mind after being dragged through the snow and starved.[break][break]

She chooses not take any armour when they offer it her. The flail will simply crush anything that she wears, and she can only hope that she can stay faster than Brynhildr.[break][break]

Gawain - I know you can't help me. [break][break]

I cannot. But I will pray for you, and if worst comes to worst, we will run.[break][break]

[break][break]

Tacked blood streams from her left eye. Her chest heaves as she tries to stay on her feet, spear driven into the ice below her feet. Brynhildr stands across, blood on her teeth and gritted as she bangs the flail against her shield, emblazoned with a boar. Despite the fact that she wants to fall to the ground and cry, Annie has done it.[break][break]

She survived the duel.[break][break]

"Lapsi! You fight well - would that we had half as many recruits like you."[break][break]

Brynhildr is grinning as she removes her helm, spitting blood onto the snow as she steps across. Annie is too dazed to think anything about it - when Brynhildr extends a gauntlet-clad hand, Annie takes it. The pressure is nearly enough to crush her hand, but she still doesn't flinch.[break][break]

"Am I free, Maalivahti?"[break][break]

There's a laugh, sharp. Annie feels at once threatened as Brynhildr yanks her forward. "Of course, of course - bring the girl her weapons! She is one of us as soon as she swears our oath!"[break][break]

Oath? This was not part of the deal - you swore your oath when the duel started, to uphold it's principles. Anima-[break][break]

"I didn't agree-"[break][break]

The grip goes tighter. Her bow is brought to her, so close that she can almost touch it. Annie glances between the two. [break][break]

"We need more like you. You are not one of the Southern Clans anymore, are you lapsi? Your keeper told us that. He said you were possessed - this is bullshit, of course. That means however that you are free."[break][break]

"Maalivahti, I'm not sure you-"[break][break]

"Swear yourself to me. To the Einherjar. There is a name that your familiar is bound to, spit it out or be run through."[break][break]

ANIMA- ANI-[break][break]

O BEARER OF MINE, HAVE YOU DECIDED YOUR FATE?[break][break]

Wings erupt from her back and Annie soars, high enough to touch the clouds. Her bow is in her hand, and she draws the string back, a bolt of lightning forming as the string pulls back. She tries to reach out to Gawain but he remains silent. Instead, she is met with the same chattering voice from her dreams. It feels like something crawling beneath her skin, like the parasites, but there's nothing that can there.[break][break]

Once the arrow is drawn, Annie flies as fast as she can, as far as she can, til she's brought down to earth and crashes into wreckage of Cliffperch. The arrow that has pierced through her wing snaps as she hits the ground. The last thing she sees is a ship, crew unfamiliar, immediately rushing off to investigate.[break][break]

The last words that she has are an apology.[break][break]

[break][break]

OH BEARER OF MINE.....[break][break]

LET US FILL THE WORLD WITH TEETH.