[M] Draconian Prophecy (Ushima/Ashen)

[Ushima]

Darkness. Again all he saw was a deep void of darkness that followed a brief burst of pain on the side of his head. Now he was laying on the ground, unconscious, bleeding on the right side of his head and a dull throbbing was coursing through his skull. Mikal might wonder what he'd done to deserve this, knocked unconscious two days in a row, if he was conscious. The idea of wearing a plate helm at all times was becoming better and better with each pulse of pain in his head. Later on, picturing himself in the bath with just a steel helm on would make him chuckle. Maybe he'd tell Gladios and he'll get a good chuckle out of it.

Waking from the dark and dull pained filled void Mikal groaned. "Did a Dire Boar hit me?" Groaning he rolled over onto his side. "Give me a bow or a spear, I'll kill the thing. We can eat for at least two weeks." He tried to move his hands to push himself up but found he was unable to move his hands from around his back. The chaffing of rope was evident against his wrists. The first instinct that went through his mind was to light his hands with fire and burn the lashings off. But that idea was thrown out when he remembered his goal. So Mikal halted his buildup of magical energy. Now that he was bound and no longer a threat, or so Clover thought, they would make some progress.

Mikal could feel that his insect friend from the other night was back, or at least a distant relative, and could feel the critter skittering across his neck. Opening his eyes he hissed at the light. Bright light wasn't what he wanted to see right away after regaining consciousness. But gritting his teeth he forced them open to look at Clover. "So I guess I won huh?" Mikal gave her a pain filled smirk. "Didn't know the prize would be getting knocked out. Might have negotiated a better prize." He made a show of testing his binds, not wanting to give the impression that he was ok with this. "Didn't happen to get breakfast in town did ya?"

[Ashen]

Clover looked over at Mikal when he spoke. He had woken up after all. She had begun worrying that the prince would never wake. Even if she didn't necessarily need him alive, she didn't want to kill him, not really. His people had slaughtered hundreds of hers, but she saw no need to kill their leader-to-be just yet. She raised an eyebrow at him. A dire boar...? She looked to his wound, which was now slightly better-looking, and it clicked. He was just making a joke. Did nothing faze this man? That was quite amusing, and absently, Clover wondered how far she would be able to test his patience.

"It was no boar, you fool," she said, waving him off. "We need not eat any of them. No one said you were granted the luxury of food, now did they?" She turned away from him to look into the sack she had brought. He was tied now; the prince served no threat. As he spoke of being knocked out, she looked back to him and shook her head. "You did not win," she told him. How would he know, anyway? Clover certainly was not about to admit defeat, not when she had clearly had that match won from the first step. "I don't know what you're talking about. You ran straight into the tree. Don't you remember?" But his wounds did not support her story. "You really ought to be more cautious before you get yourself killed."

She turned back to him, a piece of bread in her hand. She tossed it to him, landing it perfectly on his mouth. "Don't let it get to your head," she warned. "Consider that your... prize. If that's what you want to believe. Now that we are all conscious, let's head on back to... my tribe..." The hesitation in her voice gave her away before she could stop it. She looked around once, then swept the lands again with her gaze. She did not know where to go. Clover cleared her throat and motioned with her chin for Mikal to follow her. She didn't need him to know she was clueless. Had he seen her uncertainty? "It's over this way. Might be a little hard on human legs." She looked back to him again, looked right at his wound. "I... picked up some medicinal supplies. Don't get used to it. I figured that would hurt something awful. Not that I care or anything, but um." She shut herself up and went into the sack again, then looked over a soothing sort of herb. "My family is very good at making salves. I'll make one for you, but you'll owe me for it. Come, I can craft and walk at the same time."

[Ushima]

"Sure it didn't win." He caught the offering easily in his mouth and quickly ate it. "Just like I didn't run into the tree backwards." Mikal chuckled as he followed along behind her. "And don't worry about my human legs. My stamina has been tested rather well." Again another sexual joke. Mikal rather enjoyed her reactions to them. But it also helped keep his spirits up because at the end of the day he was in the hands of the enemy. Not a good situation to be in no matter who you were. To keep the stress away joking was his best defense. If he couldn't find the humor he'd know he was letting the stress of the situation get to him. The worst thing he could do now is loose hi wits. He needed to keep focused.

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" The hesitation in her voice was easy to detect. As well as the way she scanned the area and tried to figure out her position. Mikal had seen scouts unsure of their positioning in the field. Green recruits trying desperately under pressure to read maps and equipment, or fruitlessly search their minds for the techniques to use their environment to their advantage. "Do you even know which way is North?" Not only was he captured by a Lucet but on top of that they were lost. "If you want I can help point you in the right direction? Consider it me paying you back."

[Ashen]

For some reason, this man was still capable of joking, and his off-collar jokes were confusing Clover. She didn't know whether to laugh or groan, so she did a mixture of both and rolled her eyes away from him. When he asked if she knew where she was going, she brushed him off. "Of course," she muttered. "I know which way north is. What exactly do you take me for?" She turned her back to him and looked to the sky. The sun was still rising. "Sun rises in the west and sets in the east, so that way should be... Or is it the other way around?" She was mumbling to herself, not knowing if the prince could hear her or not. After a moment she paused, then took him by the arm and tugged him along. "It's this way. I don't need your help."

She was too prideful to accept help from a friend, let alone a mortal enemy. Clover was sure she'd be able to find her way home. She was part of a people that moved around a lot, so she had to have some kind of sense of direction. But after minutes of walking and nothing seeming familiar, she let out a short, aggravated sigh and released Mikal. Moments later, she took the form of a falcon, and she soared into the sky. From her new height, she looked around for landmarks, but was surprised to find not even that advantage helped. She landed on the ground on human feet. Mikal would have to be stupid to not know that they were lost, now. There was no point hiding it. Crossing her arms over her chest, Clover huffed and she turned to Mikal.

"I've never been good at this," she admitted. "My people, we never really had a home, you know? We moved around too much, since you assholes were always hunting us down. I never had anyone to go home to, either. My mum and dad were killed right after I was born, in one of those old skirmishes. The tribe raised me, sure, but I had no real parents. Everyone had someone to look after, and I was just the added weight. I was always scared that one day, they'd leave me just like my parents did, and I'd never be able to find my way back." She wasn't looking at him. Her gaze instead was off in the distance, at a figure in a wooded area. She was staring into the eyes of a doe, who remained unflinching. "It's hard, yeah? Trying to convince everyone you're not the burden you know they know you are. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? At the end of the day, you'll always still be a prince. You need only your blood to convince people of that." She finally turned to him, red eyes challenging. "Must be nice."

She dismissed her own words with another sigh. "Maybe I don't know where we are. And maybe I didn't think I would even get this far. Is that what you want to hear?" She turned away from him, concentrated on the herbs she had pulled out earlier. "Either way, sweet prince, you're still under my eye. Lost as I may be, we're lost together, and I don't intend to let you off. I don't expect you to help me, and honestly, that's fine. I'll figure things out." She looked to the skies again. "I'd cover more distance as a dragon. We're close enough to your home for that to be commonplace, a man riding his pet. I think... So long as you don't make any jokes about that." Clover glared at him. "Never mind. Perhaps we should fix that head of yours first. Here, try rubbing this. It'll soothe the pain. The next one I'm making will stop the burning from the first."

The Lucet girl looked different. She seemed to really be concentrating on her herbs now, as if to get her mind off of something else. The prince would have no idea how she felt, of course. She was seriously starting to doubt all she had done now. Kidnapping a prince, nothing with which to hold him, and traveling by knocking him unconscious in bursts? And now, she couldn't even find her way back? She really was hopeless, and for a minute she considered not bothering to return to her family at all.

[Ushima]

"Hey genius." Mikal turned around, showing his bound wrists behind his back. "Forget about that? Can't exactly reach my head." To further prove his point he made a feeble attempt at trying, making himself look absolutely ridiculous in the process. "So rubbing medicinal herbs in is a no go." Mikal moved over to a fallen log, sitting down with a sigh. "Its a good knot though, least you have that going for you." Moving his wrist he tested the know. It was tight, barely enough room allow circulation. Almost painful really. "Definitely could get work on the docks, working with fishing nets or something. They always need good knots for the hauls. If this is anything to go by you'd make some impressive coin."

Mikal looked up to the sky. "We're South of the castle." They giant mountain loomed in the distance, Mikal barely being able to make out the spires of towers. "Sun rises in the East, sets in the West. So North is that way." He gestured with his head. "Did you notice any landmarks near your settlement? Might help me out in getting us there." He really hoped she had some cause as it stands right now all Clover know is that her settlement is somewhere and has a vague direction to go in. And that direction had been wrong until he pointed out the different directions. Silent Mikal asked his ancestors for strength, he'd need it.

[Ashen]

She looked over him, at his bound wrists, and she straightened her spine. Had she really forgotten she had tied him up? She rolled her eyes, and silently she moved to him to rub the first salve into his wound. As she did, she listened to him speak about her getting a job. Coins were useless to a tribe that always migrated, always stood independently. She had no reason to dip into the fantasy he was offering her. Still, her mind wandered anyway. Clover, a working girl, working for a paycheck, working to support herself in a society that always had enough. It was an interesting thought, one that would never come to be reality.

After the first salve, she finished with the second and rubbed that in too. The burning sensation from the first, she knew, was enough to make plenty adults cry, and she'd seen it. "It'll cool down in a few minutes," she told him. While he was left to his pain, she looked to where he had pointed. "So if south is that way... And home is west, which would be this way, we just need to head out here, and we should arrive soon." She was thinking aloud, trying to mentally map her route. Landmarks... Were there any landmarks? "Birches," she replied, after giving it some thought. "There aren't many of those up here, are there? But there were birches near my home. The carpenters, or what we had as carpenters, they commented about them. There was also... blackcurrant, that's right. The kids really liked that. We were near a river, about several hundred meters from the narrowest part of it. Besides that... I don't know."

She didn't like admitting such, and that was clear. Her back was turned to him now as she tried to recall the landscape of her home. "It's west, I'm sure. I traveled east to get here. The sun was behind me." It was a victory, remembering even that bit, and a small smile played over her lips. She started walking again, heading westward. After a few paces she stopped and turned to him. "Oh, how's that head of yours? Our medicines are pretty foolproof, so long as you know how to make them right."

[Ushima]

"The medicine is fine." Mikal said as he relaxed and let it do it's work on his wound. It actually was doing a decent job on his head wound and he could feel the pain slowly starting to dull. The prince was used to higher quality healing at the castle. Mages could train in restoration arts. It took a great deal more skill to learn this feat of magic. Destruction was easy, anyone one could hurl fireballs, shoot lightning out of their fingertips or project pure energy toward targets. Repairing and mending, fusing bone back together, stitching wounds and other such manners of healing was a lot harder and takes years of study and practice. Mikal had some, enough for minor bumps and bruises. Just to keep him going through the fight. Anything more then that would send him to the healers. But he had great respect for those who chose that particular field of study. Many picked the easy route, destructive schools, but even those were difficult in of themselves. Magic always was hard to study, great mental fortitude was required. A lack of control and focus could easily tear someone apart from the inside out.

"So we have a heading, that's fantastic." Mikal could feel impatience start to prick on the edges of his psyche. Having someone who was clearly a novice at kidnapping, while entertaining to watch make mistakes, did tend to get annoying when they didn't have a plan on where to go next. Not that he was in a hurry to go anywhere just that he hated having a lack of a plan, even for his own kidnapping. "Shall we get underway now? My head is doing fine so I'll live, much to your disappointment." He winked at her cheekily, giving her a sly grin to let her know another joke was coming. "I bet they're eager to find out where you've been. They'll surely be surprised to find out you brought a boy home."

[Ashen]

His joke made her stop walking entirely. She paused for a few moments, then turned to him. "No," she said flatly. "Don't you... Don't you joke about that." She turned away sharply, blonde tail whipping behind her. "You're not a boy. You're the enemy. I have absolutely no intentions of getting with any boy, let alone you. After all, don't you have all your lovely princesses waiting at the castle for you? Don't you have lines and lines of people waiting to secure your hand? So what is it? Does my fire excite you? Does the forbidden fruit entice you? Or is it simply because I'm exotic, and with so much more power than any of your floozies at home?" She stopped and faced him again. "Here, why don't you make both of us happy, and cut it out. It's nothing like that, and unless you'd like to never be able to have kids, I'd recommend not making jokes about such affairs."

He'd struck a nerve. Clover was only reminded of her family now, of how they pressured her to just pick someone, and settle down. She didn't want that, not with any of her tribe's men, and that was just another way she was a disappointment. Was there any real reason bringing Mikal back to them? What would that fix in the end? She shook her head and started walking silently. She didn't want to talk to him anymore, and it would be a long and silent walk back.

The pair continued like that for a long while. The sun rose and fell, and was presently low in the late afternoon sky. They had walked for miles, and while Clover could have easily taken on a form that would make the journey quicker, she had decided against it. For one, she didn't want to talk to this man, let alone have him ride her as some beast. Secondly, she wanted to test him, see how far he could go on his own two feet. He was holding up a lot better than she had expected. Finally, Clover stopped walking, and she turned back to Mikal. "Hungry, aren't you? I am." In another moment she was a dragon. One fiery exhale provided them the fire they needed for cooking. It was a messy fire, made over grasses and twigs, one that would die out within a few hours. Human again, Clover looked through the sack she had stolen, and picked out the foods she had also brought. "I stole enough meat for one person, along with several spices and vegetables. Since you're here, and since I'm such a nice captor, I'll let you catch your own food." She walked over to him and held his hands in hers. After hesitating only a moment, she pulled a dagger from her bandeau and tore away the ropes around his wrists. She stepped away, then tossed him his sword. "You are freed and armed. Don't think this means you can do whatever you want. I'm still the authority here." She looked around. "We aren't far from home. There are the birches, you see? We should get there by noon tomorrow." It was a great guess, one she hoped was right. "But I can't expect you to make great distances on no food. So let's go. You probably don't know how to hunt the proper way, do you?"

Clover threw more twigs and sticks into the fire before motioning Mikal to follow her. They were in a plain, and a little distance away was a river. She had two daggers in her hands now. "Come on, I'd like to see what you've got. Impress me, would you?" She had little intention of letting him do all the hunting by himself. Yet, Clover wondered if she were being foolish again. Was she giving him too much freedom? How quickly would she be able to get to her family by sky if anything happened? No, she thought. If she didn't have the prince, she didn't want to get back. So she set off towards the river, expecting the prince to follow. "You're gonna let everything get away, slowpoke!"

[Ushima]

Mikal shook his head as he watched the Lucet charge into the forest, shouting back at him. Clearly it was up to him to find them a proper meal as Clover was going to scare away all of the targets. So looking around the immediate area he went to work. Quickly Mikal found a large stick, about three feet long and sturdy enough for him to work with. Drawing his sword the took a moment to enjoy the sound of the metallic ring that echoed in the clearing before starting his task. Sharpening the end of the stick wasn't too difficult thought the size of the sword made it a bit cumbersome. Three minutes was all it took though for Mikal to have a nice point on the end of his makeshift spear. Testing it with his finger he smiled at the small drop of blood the appeared. Inspecting his work Mikal knew the spear would break after a few uses but if things went his way all he'd need was one.

Sheathing his blade Mikal stalked into the woods. He kept himself low as he searched for any signs of game. Deer tracks were spotted easily enough after a few minutes of stealthing his was between the trees. There was actually a few sets of tracks leading towards the river. A plan formulated in his head as he made his way toward the water source. As he did so he could hear activity elsewhere in the forest and wondered if Clover was having any luck. Having started off yelling and rushing in didn't fill him with confidence in her abilities. But that line of thinking would be for later. Quickly Mikal picked out a tree near the waterline and climbed it swiftly, spear held in his mouth as he scaled the tree. "Bleh." Mikal spat out the taste of bark once at the top and positioned himself on a branch, sitting on his haunches. Looking down towards the ground he waited, spear aimed down. It was silent, the only sound being his breathing.

The rustle of the bushes alerted him to his upcoming prey. His grip tightened on the sharpened wooden stick in his hands. A deer emerged from the brush, large antlers adorned it's head as it approached the water for a drink. Mikal watched as it moved under the tree the prince was perched in. Carefully he lined himself up. He'd only have one shot. So once he was sure he wouldn't miss Mikal leapt off the branch. Falling through the air he thrust his spear. It struck true, finding a place in the deer's back. The animal crumpled to the ground and the spear broke off near the tip. All the other animals on the riverbank bolted into the woods, probably causing any nearby animal to flee as well. He hoped he hadn't ruined Clover's chances, just a bit. Tossing the broken piece aside he hefted the deer onto his shoulders and set off back toward camp.

[Ashen]

Contrary to what Mikal thought, Clover was quite the huntress. She first lingered near the prince, wanting to observe him. Soon, however, she heard it, heard the gentle footsteps of some type of prey. After making sure Mikal was alright, she headed off in another direction, following her own lead. A few moments later she was a bird, silently beating through the air in search of her target. After just a minute, she saw it: the fluffy, dirtied pelt of a grey wolf.

Wolves, like most wild canines, were among the hardest to catch. They were too observant, too evasive, and not many knew how to catch them with ease. Clover, however, was not going to back down. She was in a tree a little distance away, back in her human form. One of her daggers was poised at eye level, and she tried to determine with how much force and at what angle would she have to throw it. The other was lodged into the bark of the tree, an extra grip as the branch was slim. She waited silently, watched the wolf. He was completely oblivious, nibbling on something on the floor. Just as Clover was about to pounce, to drive her dagger into the wolf's neck from an aerial advantage, there was a rustling by the river. She did not dare look towards it, instead deciding to take her leap now. She threw her dagger, and as she fell from the tree she drove her other downwards as well. The first landed in the beast's neck. The wolf glared at her, and tried to strike, but Clover was too fast; her second dagger pierced the animal's aorta, effectively killing it. It had been a clean kill, and she was satisfied.

She'd said a few words over the dead animal, and then turned into a lynx to drag it towards the river. She needed to investigate what had spooked her prey, and she still need to find where her companion had gone. Both her questions were answered at once when she saw Mikal and his own catch. Clover dropped the wolf and stared, offended, at the deer. It had been stabbed in the back. The thing was still alive; didn't he see that? Clover transformed back into a human, her hands on either hip, her brow furrowed. "What have you done?" she demanded. "Who taught you how to hunt like that? Put him down, put him down!"

She took the buck from him and lay him on the ground. His eyes were open, petrified, and it made Clover shiver. "I'm sorry," she was repeating. With her own bloodied dagger, she severed the deer's aorta, and waited for it to take its last labored breath before bowing her head and murmuring something in a different language. When she looked up, she looked relieved, yet still angered. "You don't strike for pain! You strike for the kill! Strike the areas that will kill, not the back! The back will only hurt them." Her hands were unconsciously rubbing over the bloodied fur of the animal. "Such a dulled spear; could you not have allowed him the swift kill of your sword? Or tell me, were you scared of getting blood all over your pretty weapon?"

She took a moment to calm down, then got up and put her dagger away. "Sorry," she muttered. "Deer are... Well..." She sighed. "Each member of my family is known for their signature form. We all have unique forms in every species, obviously, but we all have a favorite, too. My signature is a doe, for serenity, for grace... I don't... I don't kill deer." She turned away, went back to her wolf. "We will have an abundance of food. Good. We can also use the animals' pelts when we get home. Wolves usually aren't common closer to us, and especially not during the day, so this is a brilliant addition. I'm sure one of our tailors will make use of the deer, too. The sinew is good for weaponworking, the antlers for knives and other tools. I wasn't expecting you to get anything, really, so well done. Let us head back. Are you able to cook?"