Post by lloyd on Nov 11, 2014 15:58:43 GMT -5
The priestess' intent to attack the bandits surprised Bilkin. He'd been perceiving her as a gentle, compromising person. Always first to seek peace, always one for words. The fact that she was intent on the assault on the bandit outpost, something she revealed in her discussion of whether to get a cart or not, was a side of her Bilkin had not expected.
She's completely fine with subduing and perhaps killing a dozen or so men and then taking possession of their property, and not so fine with simply buying a cart and two donkeys now. Her argument makes sense, we can get a cart and maybe some burden animals from the outpost, assuming we succeed... But her ideology... Bah, I don't know religion.
He scratched behind his ear and looked towards the loft. He struggled to recall anything about the gods and their teachings. He remembered Athika being a goddess of love, but that was about it. Was there anything he learned in the academy about secret sects of existing religions...? He shook his head to clear it out. Why was he focusing on this? He was hardly a paragon of consistently moral behavior.
He felt a sort of tug in his mind again, he'd felt it earlier. A sort of filtering out of the always-present whispers, a focus on one... Or was it the drowning out of the others by one more prominent? Regardless, it kept up for a good minute longer than the first time it happened today. There was something he needed in those woods... Or was it He who needed it? His eyes darted to the table he propped his arm up against to rest his head on, and saw multiple drops of sweat soaking into the wood. When did THAT happen? He wiped his face and his hand was slick with sweat.
Why? What could I, or He, possibly need in those woods? Sylar's beard, I hope it isn't another tree...
The warriors' reasons were their own but understandable; Valraukar despised the thugs and intended to eradicate them, and Tecuani always thirsted for battle. Each would find their desire at the bandit outpost, if things went as planned. Blank, the silent, thoughtful drow would go along with whatever came along, but no doubt there was profit in it for her. Bilkin was initially against the whole endeavor, but this new whim of his invasive, likely insane master, changed his mind. He shuddered at what might happen to him if he resisted Him, especially if he was sweating uncontrollably upon even the consideration of the mystery of what He wants.
The bright side is, you're not really even a criminal anymore. You're not a joyberry, either, but you're not in a cell! Or on the block!
Joyberry..?
He took out the tattered, stained journal, looking at the nonsensical symbols and scrawling of a madman long dead. The cipher, or pattern, or code that the previous owner(s) wrote in kept changing. Any time Bilkin solved it, the next paragraph or diagram would be illegible or indecipherable, following a different set of rules. But he knew it held secrets... He noticed he was perceiving magical auras of different sorts at different times, after a major breakthrough in a picture/diagram in the journal. The same breakthrough helped him decipher a paragraph, that, after reading, made all the already decoded pages easy to read, not requiring a separate key to read each paragraph. He peeked at some markings on the others' things, and found he understood their meanings. Bilkin is able to read all writing...
All except this insane rambling, he thought. He closed the journal, the whispers being more distracting more than usual and making his work harder, and made for the loft.
She's completely fine with subduing and perhaps killing a dozen or so men and then taking possession of their property, and not so fine with simply buying a cart and two donkeys now. Her argument makes sense, we can get a cart and maybe some burden animals from the outpost, assuming we succeed... But her ideology... Bah, I don't know religion.
He scratched behind his ear and looked towards the loft. He struggled to recall anything about the gods and their teachings. He remembered Athika being a goddess of love, but that was about it. Was there anything he learned in the academy about secret sects of existing religions...? He shook his head to clear it out. Why was he focusing on this? He was hardly a paragon of consistently moral behavior.
He felt a sort of tug in his mind again, he'd felt it earlier. A sort of filtering out of the always-present whispers, a focus on one... Or was it the drowning out of the others by one more prominent? Regardless, it kept up for a good minute longer than the first time it happened today. There was something he needed in those woods... Or was it He who needed it? His eyes darted to the table he propped his arm up against to rest his head on, and saw multiple drops of sweat soaking into the wood. When did THAT happen? He wiped his face and his hand was slick with sweat.
Why? What could I, or He, possibly need in those woods? Sylar's beard, I hope it isn't another tree...
The warriors' reasons were their own but understandable; Valraukar despised the thugs and intended to eradicate them, and Tecuani always thirsted for battle. Each would find their desire at the bandit outpost, if things went as planned. Blank, the silent, thoughtful drow would go along with whatever came along, but no doubt there was profit in it for her. Bilkin was initially against the whole endeavor, but this new whim of his invasive, likely insane master, changed his mind. He shuddered at what might happen to him if he resisted Him, especially if he was sweating uncontrollably upon even the consideration of the mystery of what He wants.
The bright side is, you're not really even a criminal anymore. You're not a joyberry, either, but you're not in a cell! Or on the block!
Joyberry..?
He took out the tattered, stained journal, looking at the nonsensical symbols and scrawling of a madman long dead. The cipher, or pattern, or code that the previous owner(s) wrote in kept changing. Any time Bilkin solved it, the next paragraph or diagram would be illegible or indecipherable, following a different set of rules. But he knew it held secrets... He noticed he was perceiving magical auras of different sorts at different times, after a major breakthrough in a picture/diagram in the journal. The same breakthrough helped him decipher a paragraph, that, after reading, made all the already decoded pages easy to read, not requiring a separate key to read each paragraph. He peeked at some markings on the others' things, and found he understood their meanings. Bilkin is able to read all writing...
All except this insane rambling, he thought. He closed the journal, the whispers being more distracting more than usual and making his work harder, and made for the loft.
