dancing with myself - one-on-none || informal poll ;)

It was Lilacsun that noticed the water-darkened pebbles on the riverbank. "Was a patrol scheduled to hunt here this early?" she asked, looking to Swanfall.

The older white tom shook his head, his eyes narrowed as he checked for scent, even if he knew it would be impossible to pick up anything over the cleansing river water. "It could be a warrior with a free morning come for a swim," he proposed, "but let's treat it as if something is amiss."

Lilacsun nodded. Ivywhisker wandered further up the bank, brushing against the twigs and grass fronds as she followed the quickly drying trail of wet --well, wetter-- earth. She had a better nose than Swanfall, and StoneClanners weren't accustommed to heavy foliage, meaning...

"Gotcha." Ivywhisker spotted a tuft of ginger fur caught in a bramble ahead. She stalked up beside it, keeping a low profile now that she was atop the bank, but she hardly had to reach before her nose was filled with StoneClan's scent: bitter, like sand grit between teeth. Ivywhisker sneezed the scent from her nose before hopping down onto the pebbly shore with her Clanmates. "It's StoneClan, and it's fresh," she confirmed.

Swanfall dipped his head towards her with a smile and she felt a rush from his praise. See, I can focus, she thought, which was more than a little petty, but she deserved it. "What should we do about it?" Lilacsun asked, again turning to the patrol leader. "They wouldn't have trespassed with fewer than four cats, it's not worth the risk with a small patrol." The golden she-cat looked between them, as if counting their own number. Hemlockpaw made himself taller as his mentor's gaze passed over him, but that didn't change the fact that they only had three warriors and an apprentice.

"Chestnutdrift is holding a mock battle session in the clearing north of the Arched Ash," Swanfall replied. Perhaps there was merit to waking up early and listening to the deputy's schedule, but Ivywhisker figured knowing about things was for the older cats. "That's not too far from here. There'll be WhistleClan warriors there too, and I know they'd all much rather a real fight than a staged one. Hemlockpaw?"

The apprentice kept his eyes to the ground, as if that would keep him away from playing messenger. "Yeah, I know where it's at," he said, cutting off Swanfall's question as he got to his paws.

Lilacsun's whiskers twitched watching her apprentices' grudging acceptance of the task. "We won't fight without back up, so get back quickly before they get away, yeah?" Hemlockpaw's ears perked at the chance to be in a fight and he sped off on the trail back to camp.

"Ivywhisker?" Swanfall asked, and she blinked, feeling the two remaining warriors' attention shift to her. "Could you scout ahead? Run away if they spot you and be careful not to fall into any ambushes, but it would be helpful to know their numbers before the battle patrol arrives."

For a moment, she sat on the pebbles, stunned, until she realized what Swanfall was asking of her. Anticipation swirled up in a wave and Ivywhisker nodded before the opportunity could pass her by. Now this was real responsibility! a part of her crowed. A smaller, sour voice whispered: better not mess it up. "I can do it." 

"I know you can," her half brother assured her.

"Let StarClan gift you stealth," Lilacsun said, and the kind golden she-cat brushed her cheek against Ivywhisker's, tickling her fur. "It's likely they'll use this crossing again, so Swanfall and I will keep watch here.."

Swanfall hummed. "That's a good point, Lilacsun. We'll find a place to watch the shore. Call if you need help and we'll be right on your tail, Ivywhisker."

The three warriors got to their paws, Swanfall and Lilacsun retreating back along the trail to camp to find a thicket dense enough to conceal them as they surveyed the river bank, and Ivywhisker to the fur she'd spotted earlier. The grey she-cat's hackles rose, both from her nerves and excitement of the task, and she grounded herself by focusing on the damp earth beneath her paws.

Ivywhisker paused at the tuft of fur, drinking in a deep breath of the scent, then gliding foward in a low prowl, following the trail through the new-leaf undergrowth. Flowers and fragrant mosses, revived from the warmth, battled in her nose, but she doggedly held onto the gritty, bitter scent of StoneClan as she wound through the trees.

Careful, she reminded herself, slipping into a heightened awareness, stalking like in the games she'd played with her littermates as an apprentice. The stakes may be higher, but Ivywhisker had plenty of practice sneaking up on Mallowflash to see how far her skittish brother would jump, or snatching away precious morsels from under Wavepatch's nose, and Ivywhisker quickly found herself moving in rhythm with the forest's sounds. 

She had nearly reached the Lush Meadow's swampy edge when she heard voices. Ivywhisker froze, glad she had decided to weave through the trees, where she'd be less exposed than the trail. She didn't see a cat at first, just movement and a flash of ginger. The shape was wrong but as her eyes traced the figure across the Meadow from her vantage, Ivywhisker realized that it was a cat covered entirely with mud with only patches of their fur visible, the rest blending seamlessly with the dark, swampy earth.

If they were trying to use the mud to hide their fur or their scent, they had done a poor job of it.

Ginger. That was the color of the fur caught in the brambles back on the riverbank. Could it really only have been one cat? No, there had been too much water for that; even a cat with thick fur wouldn't have dripped that much onto the stones. Lilacsun was probably closer to the mark with four or five cats. So where are the others?

The Lush Meadow, as the name implied, was dense. At this time of year, the sedges were browned and the vines barren, but the dead foliage still shielded much of the Meadow from view. If she could get a better vantage... Ivywhisker scanned the area and found what she was looking for: a slight rise to the east, topped with a decaying log. That should be enough to get a good view of the Meadow, if the other StoneClan cats were around.

Ivywhisker picked her way around the edge of the Meadow, her paws soundlessly cushioned by the damp peat moss carpeting the ground between the trees as she stealthed up the small hill.

She didn’t want to trust him. A StoneClan cat, a trespasser on CreekClan territory! But she was curious. They must know they couldn’t hold land on the other side of the river, not for long, and especially not this close to CreekClan’s camp. While Ivywhisker waited for the patrol to catch up, she was trying to fit the pieces together, but answers slipped away like minnow between her claws.

Why was he here?

With a frustrated growl she leaned into his face. The StoneClan tom flinched away from her sudden motion, but his eye never left hers: wide, amber like flames, pleading. “Fine!” Ivywhisker finally whispered through her teeth. “I’ll let you up but you have to promise not to yell. Swear it on StarClan or else I will make this,” she flexed her paw against the side of his face, watching the slime inch up his jaw another whisker, “a whole lot worse for you.”

The dark tom blinked and wriggled, nodding the best he could, which only served to mire him deeper. So stupid, she scolded herself, even as she shifted her weight and let the tom rise on his shoulders, gasping huge breaths now that his head was free of the sucking mud. He turned sharply and Ivywhisker tensed, ready to throw him back down if he made to scream, but the tom only spat dirt to try and rid himself of the taste and, well, she couldn’t really blame him for that, having walked those pawprints more than once in her apprenticeship. “Thanks,” he finally said, softly, his voice a rasp. “I swear on all the stars above I’ll do as you say. Please don’t put me in the mud again.”

“No promises,” Ivywhisker grumbled, but she knew her threats felt thin. She could hear the terror in the StoneClan warrior’s voice; he’d do as he said unless she gave him reason to fear for his life, or his Clanmates’.

Which meant they were on a timer, since Hemlockpaw and his battle patrol would be well on their way. “Well? You can speak now, so explain yourself.”

“Horsetail. We’re looking for herbs.”

Ivywhisker narrowed her eyes. “Early in the season for stocking up.” She didn’t have to mention that the Order of Honey always had plenty of excess, available for any Clan that found themselves low on supplies, or needed herbs that didn’t readily grow in their climate.

The grey tomcat winced; they were both well aware that trespassing for herbs --on the mainland! where CreekClan was strongest-- wasn’t a trivial decision. “Our warriors are sick. We need the herbs now.”

“Go to the Order of Honey if it’s that serious.”

The grey tom huffed a breath, half of a laugh, even as he was still pinned in the mud beneath her paws. “Your leader would have known the moment we stepped foot in the Order’s camp and then we’d have CreekClan warriors flooding our territory by the next sunrise.”

He… wasn’t wrong. Pinestar wouldn’t pass up such a wonderful opportunity to take Heron’s Rest for CreekClan, as well as some of the smaller isles to the south, testing the waters. If StoneClan couldn’t muster enough resistance, he might even try to take the River’s Throat and cut StoneClan off from the Crossing altogether. Unless SkyClan intervened, StoneClan would be weakened for moons, maybe even seasons, perhaps enough that CreekClan could march on their camp--

Okay, she could see why Swallowstar would have tried trespassing and theft. Ivywhisker shifted her weight, but now that his face was free from the mud, the grey tom was making no effort to flee. “Either way, CreekClan knows now.”

“No, you know now,” the StoneClan warrior corrected, his amber eyes wide and pleading again.

StarClan, she hated that look. Ivywhisker had to turn her eyes to the dark fur of his shoulder before she could muster the will to scoff. “Why wouldn’t I tell Pinestar? StoneClan has been a thorn in our flanks for seasons.”

The tom wilted under her paws, mud slicking over the fur of his stomach. Even his tail, which he had carefully kept free of the sludge, had fallen. Ivywhisker was very glad she wasn’t looking at his face, she didn’t think she could stand to watch the embers in his eyes die. “It’s my brother that’s sick,” he said, almost conversationally with how the emotion was stripped away. “But it doesn’t matter anyways. We couldn’t find any horsetail.”

“Of course not. It only grows in the southern marshes.” She didn’t know why she said that. Her gaze snapped to his eyes, which were just as shocked.

But his hope faded just as quickly and he leaned his head back into the muck. “The southern marshes or the moon, we missed our chance.”

The StoneClan warrior’s defeat should have filled her with pride, or at least with satisfaction, but Ivywhisker couldn’t help but to feel pity. What if it had been her brothers that were sick? Swanfall? Mallowflash? As soon as she imagined Mallowflash, withered and coughing in their nest, she knew she couldn’t fault this StoneClan warrior for his actions. Ivywhisker would have raided StoneClan’s camp by herself if her brothers were sick and that was the only way to save them.

She sighed and let him up, pushing her paws off his mud-soaked chest with a wet squelch. For a pair of heartbeats, he didn’t move, his amber eyes questing up at her. “What…?”

“Two apprentices.” Ivywhisker felt the lies rush to her tongue quicker than the river after a storm. “They crossed the river on a dare. I scared the fish-brains off.” She shouldn’t be covering for him, but she wasn’t going to let a cat’s brother die because of politics. Ivywhisker stood straighter, looking over her shoulder to check if the battle patrol was near, but the southern forest was still empty.

She waited outside the dungeon, lounging on a dark and very flat stone. It was blessedly warm on both scales and skin and if Ilyz wasn't waiting, she would have thought it the perfect place for a nap. But she didn't have time for that; the others would be here well before zenith and Ilyz knew she'd be grumpy for the rest of the day if her perfect, sun-filled nap was interrupted.

So instead she propped herself up on her elbows and let the warmth pool against her stomach where skin met scale, watching the nearby ridge with unfocused eyes. It wasn't so dry here as it was in the Jasper Hills, thank the Divine, and the cool breeze brought with it a faint taste of salt. The plant life reveled in the sea's distant gift of moisture: the sedges and shrubs were a brighter green than anywhere she'd been in the last five tides, though there wasn't enough water yet to allow for many trees. Only the hardy, blackened stalks of those Nvrit called skarsflenge (coal miner's fingers, in Sökhr's native tongue) extended past a human's height, and though they grew thickly in clumps, did little to obscure the hillside.

Behind Ilyz was the dungeon's entrance: a rough hewn slab of stone --the same color and texture as the one she rested on in fact, as that had once been part of the temple's facade-- with pillars and thick, horizontal ledges framing a dark, yawning mouth of a staircase delving deep into the side of the sheer rock face. Dust and debris made drifts against the flat wall, residue of past desert storms. Ilyz hoped they wouldn't find the bottom buried in sand.

"Well, I think that's just wrong," Jakheem argued. "If you got three queens and a tower, you should always discard the fifth, even if it was a lion."

"But lions beat towers."

"Which is why everyone is holding a lion. So you'll have less chances to draw the pair."

"But the draw pile has nothing to do with what the players held," Osma said, turning to face him as they walked. "The only cards out are what are in their hands. It's random."

Jakheem thought about that for a second, realizing Osma's observation was accurate. "Still," he pushed on, "how many players are dealt towers versus lions? Seems like everyone has a lion, but maybe only two towers. It's still better odds," Jakheem finished with a determined nod. 

They both knew that they could turn and ask the Copvikt to settle the argument --though Jakheem hadn't been with the group for long, it was growing increasingly eerie how deep Nvrit's memory pool ran-- but that would defeat the entire point of the conversation. There was no perfect way to play a hand of King's Set; the game took adaptation and skill along with a healthy helping of luck.

And while Jakheem suffered for the first two, it was undenable that he was lucky. 

It was genetic. His great great great grandfather had started it, catching a thirthugg at only fifteen years old and blessing all the first sons of his line to have Divine luck for twelve generations. Jakheem was the sixth of his line.

"Fine!" Osma exclaimed after a few moments of quiet contemplation. "But only because the pair is equally likely to be drawn, and if you have all three queens, the other player's trio would be the deciding factor of the match, not the pair. So in this case, towers and lions are equal, even to stones or spears."

Now that was altogether too much for Jakheem to follow, but since Osma had given in to his claims, he found himself nodding along. "See!" he agreed, even if he hadn't understood her logic in the slightest. "Keep the towers. It's good luck."

"Maybe for you, kismet," Osma snorted, using the old term for a person blessed by the Divine. 

Jakheem's legs ached. Even on level ground, he struggled to keep up with the others, but climbing the side of the ridge quickly put his relative weakness into sharp perspective. It helped a little that he always had good footing, choosing the easiest path with the least obsticles, but Osma's height and powerful stride and Nvrit's almost mechanical endurance made it impossible for him to keep pace, despite his athletisism.

He had to drop the conversation and focus on the climb. He knew they both slowed for him too, which pinched at his pride, so he pushed himself as much as he was able. The ground seemed to almost help him ascend, the boulders forming a near staircase for his legs the more tired he grew.

At least from the top he could see Ilyz, her dark skin blending with the dark stone. On first glance, it appeared as if she was in the process of being eaten by a snake, its jaws consuming the woman to her waist, but that was simply how the gorgon was. Her scales were just as dark as her skin, a dusky, shimmering black, winking with thousands of sunbeams.

Her eyes flicked up, catching them on the ridge, and Jakheem waved with a grin.

"I could have taken a nap after all," Ilyz said as the others decended from the hillside and approached her sunning stone. She was just teasing, even if the words had the sharp edges of truth buried like glass, or hidden fangs. One didn't have to know Ilyz particularly well to know her words were often this way: a bite hidden behind soft, sinuous syllables. 

She was loathe to leave the warm stone, but as the saying goes, adventure awaits not a lazy gorgon. 

Even so, she took her time as she rose, stretching her spine and unwinding her coils from the stone. Ilyz yawned, and usually she wouldn't let her jaw unhinge around other people, but her companions had already seen her grouchy in the mornings and with a patchy shed last Cycle, so she counted them as family, really. Her jaw cracked just right, making Ilyz feel like her eyeballs had been dipped in honey. Lethargically she gathered her pack, slinging it over her shoulders, and used her tail to lower her body down from the dark slab of the facade.

"Did you find the oil?" Ilyz asked Osma, and the massive woman nodded, hefting her pack.

"It was more expensive than we were hoping, but it'll be worth more than liquid gold down there." Osma nodded her chin towards the yawning hole in the side of the stone cliff, previously a crypt. Now, it was still a crypt, but it's occupants were not quite dead anymore.

Nvrit was filling two of the lanturns with some oil and handed one to Osma after it lit the wick. "I trust your endeavor was equally fruitful, Ilyz?" it asked, and she never ceased to be caught off guard at it's voice: musical and delicate, despite its monstrous appearance.

She waved a hand dismissively. "Either the ritual was accurately recorded or it wasn't. We won't know until we descend." It had been her job during the night to spread a bit of magic around the area under the moonlight. If the scroll peddler in Noskuul was to be believed, the ritual should affect all undead creatures in a kilometer radius, making them glow faintly so that their group would have an easier time routing them from the crypt's halls. Ilyz had bought the scroll for only a few pennies, and though she privately doubted it would have any effect at all, it was cheap enough that it would be worth the hassle of the thirty minute moonlit incantation.

The fact that the casting was simple --with only a basic circle glyphset and no components-- weren't points in the spell's favor, though it did mean that it was nearly impossible Ilyz had erred. She'd followed the scroll to the letter. "Let's go slay some ekimmu!" Jakheem said loudly, pushing between Ilyz and Osma and sweeping his hand in front of them in a grand guesture.

"They aren't quite ekimmu," Nvrit corrected from behind, "they have more corporeal--"

"Corporeal means we can hit them with swords, right?" Jakheem interrupted. "Then that's a good thing they aren't ekimmu!" Nonwithstanding that none of them had a sword; the closest the group owned to a melee weapon was Osma's knuckledusters. Ilyz sighed and fell into step behind Osma, letting Nvrit deal with Jakheem's questions. The Copvikt had seemingly endless patience.

"Why stairs," Ilyz complained softly to Osma as they began to descend. The sunlight only accompanied them so far, but the oil lanturn in Osma's hand was plenty bright to illuminate the steps, though not as far as Ilyz would have thought; the dark stone seemed to consume the light rather than reflect it and so instead of fading gently into gloom, the lanturn's range was cut off abruptly, squared and sharp against the pitch black walls. Ilyz kept close to Osma, not only because she wanted to stay well within the range of the lanturn, but also because the staircase was rather steep and slippery on her scales and Osma's bulk was comforting in case she lost purchase. 

She left her worry at the entrance to the crypt. Sure, it crept behind like a shadow, reaching long arms downward to prickle against her spine and the back of her neck, but Ilyz kept close to Osma, her hands on the broad woman's shoulder, and tried not to let her worries bother her as her scales hissed against stone. Another dozen steps fell away. Two dozen. Fifty.

The overwhelming darkness of the stone made it easy to see the glow; it was faint, like the flickering of a single candle, but the golden light reflected from the stones like a star caught in an empty night sky. Ilyz reached over Osma's shoulder, pointing, and they slowed. Hopefully, the glow meant her ritual had worked. The group didn't say anything, wary of alerting their prey, and Ilyz trusted Nvrit to keep Jakheem in line as they continued to carefully descend.

Ilyz checked her magic. It wasn't as if it could have disappeared in the time it took them to descend into the crypt, but the reflex was instinctive, like a swordsman checking that their weapon was at their hip by brushing their hand across the hilt. Except Ilyz brushed her mind against that river of energy that swirled lazily against the back of her thoughts. She dipped a metaphorical finger in the flow, felt the tingle of magic as a shiver in her core. Her eyes, usually a warm, deep brown, briefly glowed blue until she let her grip on the magic go, satisfied the edge was sharp.

The light from Osma's lantern illuminated the archway. As the group came upon it, Osma shuttered the light with each step, keeping the arch in sight, but dimly lit, so the light wouldn't pass through the doorway. It was fortunate, now, that the dark stone ate up the light, refracting little. Osma hit the base of the stairs first, the laturn nearly fully shuttered now, so her shape was only an outline of shadow. Ilyz was fortunate she could see even that much, and knew both Osma and Jakheem were now completely blind. Only Nvrit, the copvikt engineered for the utter darkness of mineshafts, was unhindered.

Ilyz descended the last step, pulling her coils down the staircase and onto flat ground, where she could finally relax her tense muscles. She sensed more than saw Nvrit pass her, the copvikt eerily silent as it ghosted across the stone. Jakheem was less than silent; though the human gave stealth a good shot, her sensitivity to lone tones caught his footfalls in the silence. Ilyz reached out a hand and guided him down the last two steps, keeping him close to her side, ready to pull him into the crypt once Nvrit and Osma made contact with their foes.

Of the many words Ilyz could think of to describe the Sök'n city of Noskuul, boring was not one one of them. The tiered streets bustled. The crowds were primarily human (or at least humanoid), though slender ifrit were not uncommon, rising head and shoulders above the other pedestrians and other peoples spotted the streets, conspicuous in their uniqueness.

From her perch, leaning on the railing of an overhang on one of the higher tiers of the cliffside city, the streets below crawled with motion, like swarms of insects; an amber-hued cloud fogged the distance, blurring the streets and obscuring the ground entirely. She didn't envy the unfortunate citizens that lived at the base of the city, cloaked in a miasma of thick dust.

For the first time since they'd arrived at Noskuul, Ilyz felt at ease. She'd been trodden on at least six times on the climb up the cliffside and only now could she completely pull her coils away from the busy streets, wrapping comfortably around a pair of support columns on the balcony as she leaned her arms against the railing. Other people (mostly tourists, mostly human) approached to appreciate the vantage beside her and to those she gave a few tidbits of Noskuul's historical importance.

"Can you believe this is only the third tallest city in Sökhr?" she mused to one, a slim human man with impressively large eyes. He gripped the railing so tightly his knuckles went white with the effort. To his credit, he managed to gather the willpower to look down before he stepped away on shaky legs.

"You'd think a cliffside city like this would be rich in ore, or coal, or stone, but Noskuul's greatest exports are dyes and silk," Ilyz said to a trio of young women, all of which who had skin nearly as dark as her own.

"Of course," one of the girls replied. "Noskuul sits on the only cinnibar mine on the continent."

Ilyz was surprised the girl knew that detail, as cinnibar hadn't been used as a dye for over a century now. But by then, the city had already drawn the attention of textile buisnesses everywhere and the Sök'n realized that, in order to compete with neighboring countries that had richer ore deposits, they should instead leave what little metal they had to oxidize into valuable dyes. The decision, harshly critisized as foolish at its conception, was the sole reason Noskuul became the heart of the region's trade.

Instead of recounting all that, which, from the girl's insightful and almost dismissive response, Ilyz guessed she already knew, Ilyz instead turned and gave a small smile. "Indeed. And now you and I can enjoy the finest ochre for pennies to the yard."

"Is Ilyz okay?"

Osma glanced over her shoulder. The gorgon had three young women beside her on the outlook, but Ilyz looked calm enough: she was lounging and gesturing grandly over the cliffside, probably waxing poetic about the city's history. "She doesn't like crowds," Osma replied to Jakheem, turning back to idle around the shop.

She carded her hand through the barrel of polearms, the wood shafts clattering against each other. Osma picked one, ran her fingers up the wood, flicking the steel glaive head against her fingernail as she shoved it aside. "Shouldn't we like, help?" Jakheem tried to whisper in her ear, but the even the tall human wasn't big enough to reach and so he merely hung onto her shoulder with both hands, as if trying to bring her down.

A chuff deep in Osma's chest never quite made an audible sound, remaining as a rumble across her shoulders as she easily shrugged Jakheem off. "No."

"But my luck--"

"Nvrit doesn't need luck. But if you think it'll help, Kismet, why don't you go stand behind it," Osma grumbled. She wished she could stomp a hoof, but as it was, her bare heel only crunched the dust on the shop's floor. She shook her head as Jakheem left her side, moving deeper into the store towards where Nvrit haggled for supplies. "Like a calf too afraid to step out of his mother's shadow," she said under her breath.

Osma put the glaive back in the barrel and exited the shop, pausing at the entrance as the river of pedestrians was impenetrable as a wall. The narrow cliffside street practically enforced one-way traffic. Eventually, though, Osma found a gap and pushed herself into it--fortunately for her, once she was in the crowd, people quickly flowed aside to give her space like a boulder tossed into a creek. She was able to cross to Ilyz's balcony with ease.