#int. w/luna.iskaldrik

[alrikhart]

Alrik watched as Luna wrenched her ax from the warg's dead body, there was a breadth of time between who she'd been when they first met, and the cloaked woman that she was now. The woodcutter was right, Alrik had underestimated her, but as he made a motion to wind the chain around his palm and elbow in even loops, he acknowledged the strength that he'd previously disregarded.

"Good. Sometimes that's all you'll need." Luna would need it in the days to come. Alrik finished winding the heavy chain and set it across his shoulder again as he ducked his head through the loop. "Let's head back before others are incensed by all this..." Alrik turned up his nose at the blackened, putrid-smelling snow. "blood." If it could even be called that.

There could be no doubt that the Warg was dead, it wasn't a gamble that either of the refugees were willing to take and so they delivered it to the gates of hell with a bloody strike after another, the land sick with blight was stained with a dark ichor that smelt of sulfur and resembled the thickness of blood.

The Warg howled in anguish as it bled from its open wounds and stumbled about, dizzy and sick with pain that it wanted its pound of flesh. The spikes embedded in the skull of the beast and it came to a finish with a sickening wet sound of breaking bones, the spiked weapon caught the light of the fading sun from an burst eye socket and for a moment cast a refracted light prism of red and gold.

She reached for her axe, the first blow upon the beast and it's gained another notch, another scratch for a beast defeated and had to be cleansed with fire and water. "Never underestimated someone who grew up in the woods, I fight like someone who wants to live. Blind a beast of its senses and you've dug the creature a grave." She does not ask where he learned to fight, her head is spinning with the gore they had caused and she couldn't bare to learn anything new.

[alrikhart]

Meteor hammer returned, Alrik held the chain near the ball as he turned it idly while the loose end piled beneath him, the grip still in his hand. With a turn of his wrist, the grip sent a pulse that turned the blunted orb into a spiked ball - the poison might be overkill, but the witch had no intention of dying out here in the woods or allowing Luna to succumb either.

Luna lunged and tore into the creature, something that Alrik wasn't expecting as she gouged out the wolf's eyes and tore apart its snout, he waited for a beat, watched the blood spill, and heard the beast howl through the blighted tendrils of infection. In his mind he saw a flame, the world passed it by and burned away one at a time. The turning of his hammer slowed, the cries of the wailing monster were further away now.

An opening emerged, and the spiked meteor hammed came crashing down upon the beast's skull. The warg's head was pushed immediately into the ground with a sickening crunch, the spikes protruding from one of the shredded sockets of its eyes, gray matter spewing amid the blighted tendrils. Alrik turned his wrist again and the spikes retracted before he tugged on the chain and pulled the hammer back toward him - gathering and coiling the length of it again.

"Dead is dead." Alrik said with some finality, "Where does a woodcutter learn to fight like that?" He asked, for a moment he'd have thought she was more beast than a person.

Alrik threw his hammer with great aim and it was as if a chisel and hammer was used to separate bone within the shoulder of the diseased beast, a sick snap revibrated through the air and a distressed yowl of pain indicated that their blow had done damage. Salivating with black tendrils of ichor from the Warg's mouth communicated quickly that the Darkspawn was not the type to give up when it was outmanned but with rather take whatever aimed to kill it down with him to the pits of hell.

Her hatchet is still embedded in the Warg's shoulder as it stalked without aim, made mad and dizzy by the pain and she only has one weapon left, a small knife that Alessia had gifted her and even as the Darkspawn wheezed through broken lungs, Luna surged forward and thrust her knife into the left eye of the Warg before pulling it back covered in blood and foul blight and sought to purge it into it's right eye socket.

To dull the senses meant that it would have a harder time trying to find them before death came for it and with her final blow, she severed it's nose from its snout.

[alrikhart]

With some accuracy, Luna lobbed her hatchet and landed it in the creature's shoulder, writhing blight seemed to snap in response - incensing the beast into a greater rage. It lunged, and Alrik took his opportunity as he aimed his hammer at the spot where Luna's hatchet had landed.

The chain snapped taut as it struck the hatchet's poll, the weight of the meteor hammer enough to shatter the bones of the creature's shoulder as a sickening crunch filled the air. Alrik's hammer ricocheted back and was struck by the steel bottom of Alrik's waiting boot. The soft underbelly exposed by his previous attack, the warg was struck next in the breast with accumulative force. Enough to break the bone there next.

"Careful." Alrik said as he watched the infected creature sputter and blood spill from its gums. The bones he'd broken would have punctured the wolf's lungs, possibly its heart as well. The warg was drowning now, but it was still dangerous. "Cut off a wolf's head and it can still bite."

"Kill it?" Her heart that already beat at a furious pace leapt into her throat and all she could hope was that her cat was far from where the fight took place as she couldn't bare it if the forest cat tried to intervene, protective as always over his charge. She had some skills as a butcher, having fed off what the forest offered and eating deer for protein since she was young.

The only weapons she had her disposal was the small axe that she had grabbed when she had fled the forest and the knife that Alessia had gifted her. She reaches for both filling her hands, an expert hold as she was use to holding blades from chopping wood. The Warg exited the tree line and stepped towards them in threatening steps with a growl in it's blighted throat. Throwing the hatchet into it's infected shoulder, it yowled and began to charge at Luna.

[alrikhart]

How Luna could know that was beyond him, but he had little experience with the blight and animals that had been corrupted by it. The Skjaldwood was shrouded in mystery, so there could have been signs Luna was used to seeing that Alrik's eyes weren't accustomed to. Just the same, he had no interest in falling victim to the blight and if the sickly wolf managed to get a grip on him then Alrik was going to be at risk for contracting the very taint that had corrupted the beast. "Good. Sounds like we can kill it."

Blue eyes watched the dark of the overgrown, blighted brush. The trees were as sick as the people in the Keep behind them. The hammer turned and made circular rotations around him as he listened intently to the churning wind that was picked up by the movements of the weapon. Threads that idly whispered alongside the metal that he'd forged with his own hands. Chains drove into links of a pattern woven from the earth itself. A branch snapped and the witch's brow set, "Here it comes."

She could hear the darkspawn slither upon the dead ground, gnarled trees sick with blight reach to consume the beasts that surround the desecrated tower, dead things shouldn't be able to eat and yet the deadlands wanted nothing more then to feast on the refugees who tried to find shelter in its grasp. Luna is more aware of the creatures in the night than she had ever been, she rationalized it by the belief that when she was safe she wasn't alerted to every step beyond her cabin but the fear had woken her up, the wolf within her had opened it's eyes upon witnessing her father crumble.

Luna wanted nothing more then to have her warm hearth in her cozy cabin with the family she loved near and yet all they had was now and luckily he was a familiar face who had returned once again in a desperate hour. "I.. I know it's a wolf, only it's one that has become sick with darkness and could never be cured. It waits with baited breath to attack, it wants nothing more to devour and yet it stalks until the right time." The blight had taken the Warg for it's own, a werewolf once upon a time and never again.

[alrikhart]

Even amid the Spine, the hills were still alive. Cold, sheltered in the shadows of one another, but the old trees had roots buried in that bedrock. This was something else entirely - Alrik had seen darkspawn and heard of what could happen to a person once they contracted the blight, but seeing the land in this condition was another thing entirely. Alrik couldn't hear anything out of the usual, but Luna had grown up in the woods so as far as they were from the ironwood trees of her home, she was likely more acclimated to the woods than the boy from the Southlands.

"Of course it is." A thud followed as Alrik's meteor hammer hit the cold ice beside him, he hauled the long chain from his shoulder, over his head, and let it sit on the other shoulder as the meteor hammer lifted off the ground as he started to spin it around and around, stirring the air as he did. As far as the witch knew, the woman he was with was the same person he'd helped a few years back - which was to say she hadn't been a seasoned fighter, but a woodcutter in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Any idea what we're up against?"

She knows it is foolish to stray too far from the pack but within her is a terrible curiosity that is hard to deny, she is far from grounded in stability having just lost everything and life feels as if it is a hazy dream of disconnect. They never spoke of the blight within the cabin in the Highlands, life was safe with the press of evergreen branches on all sides. They tended to their trees and it was a generational secret as to how make the wood burn blue. In the Lostlands, only husk of trees remained sapped of all life and a hollow reminder of decay.

"I've never seen such death in land before." It has been a terrible cascade of days as that which gave her solid ground fell away in an horrific domino effect. Luna heard a snap of step on a nearby branch and she is quick to pick up those ankles. "The beast is near."

[alrikhart]

Beneath them, the ground was sick. The blight rotted and corrupted the soil after centuries of darkspawn blood had been spilled below. All across Taravell were tales of the blight, the legacy of the legion of the dead, and the griffons they had once rode on. Stories were all Alrik ever thought they were. He'd seen the green-blooded beasts known as orcs and goblins with his own eyes, but what could a darkspawn be if not some other monster variation? Real evil lived in the heart of humanity. Unkindness and cruelty are pronounced by the horror of reality.

"You shouldn't be this far from the Keep." Amid the cold wood was a long-dead cabin. Its foundation had rotted through, decayed, and dilapidated. Valr, Alrik's falcon, had alerted of someone out past the boundaries and because the witch couldn't help but look into it, he'd gone after them. The howl sent a chill up his spine, some fresh horror that even his dreams couldn't conjure. "Nothing good. We should get back." There's urgency in his voice, "Now."

Where: Nornwatch Tower, Troupe 1

A fortnight was nothing in the chasm of time, a frenzy revibrated through her bones and yet she tried to keep the monstrous creature that carried grief in its maw from turning into beast and losing control. Luna had never seen anything but the Ironwood trees, had kept mostly the company of her father and now both were out of reach. Decay is what Luna tastes in her mouth and she knows its from the land, the Earth has always been alive and speaks to those who listen.

Dead trees consume the land and a lump is present in Luna's throat, it wasn't that long ago that she was in her protected and sheltered cabin in the grove of wild and full trees. A Darkspawn lets out a howl and it's not the same as the Wolves that visit her dreams. "What was that?"