Post by cornelius on Mar 6, 2011 8:10:07 GMT -5
RL Date: 7 March 2011
===Part 1: giving new meaning to having someone dog your heels===
Cornelius leaves the villa, and once out of immediate sight of the building reaches into his satchel and pulls out a bundle of shimmering cloth. Throwing it around his shoulders, it becomes slightly harder to see him, as the shadows cast by the trees seem to warp around him. He pulls a hood over his head, made from the same material, and raises a mask to his face - not quite the dapper gentleman of a moment before, but a figure as shadowy as any assassin. Cornelius casts a wide glance around him, the mask not apparent. In fact, it is as if an onlooker were seeing an entirely different and rather boring traveler of nondescript features. None of this, however, can quite hide the subtle scent of roses left in the wake of his movement.
Mahri waits all of two seconds before launching off her seat and following the scent of roses. She tracked Cornelius though she couldn't see him unless she turned her head and didn't try hard to see him. It was just the faintest of shimmers but she knew he was there. Hell, she could smell him. The meandering route he takes through Rynvale indicates to her he is trying to shake off any tails. He just didn't reckon on a woman who made most of her living tracking others. Once at the docks, she loses him. Frowning, Mahri wanders through the merchants and sailors scowling as some new swabbie thinks her a 'working' girl and makes a grab or two. He's quickly corrected much to the amusement of his friends. Slipping through the crowd without further accostments, the lycan scans through the throng until she spots a familiar form. Smirking to herself, Mahri waits til he's aboard before paying her own fare. Then on, she'll pretty much keep to the opposite side of the ship as the dandy. Really, it's only going one place so she can't lose him.
Cornelius boards the ship at Rynvale with all the wide-eyed vacuousness of a tourist, who somehow never grew unbalanced even when the gangplank shifted with the wake of an arriving ship, causing other passengers to curse, and one lady to lose a particularly vile pink hat - broad brimmed with an abominable plethora of ribbons. Small blessings could be found everywhere, Cornelius thought to himself with a smile. Taking over occupancy of the 2nd Mate's cabin, he spends most of his time poring over an old map and some sheathes of paper. Sometimes he would come up on deck and stare out over the bowsprit - but always with his satchel to hand, its contents too precious to leave to chance or the honesty of sailors. Eventually, the landmass of Cenril comes in sight, and he smiles with relief as he prepares to disembark. No kraken this time at least.
From her vantage point, which is considerable, Mahri can watch Cornelius without, she thinks, him knowing. The way he seems to gain sea legs prodigiously fast is something she files away to examine later. She has no sympathy for the carnation of a woman sputtering and squawking about the loss of her hat. Skirting past the Captain and a few other passengers intent on consoling her Mahri rushes up the plank in time to see Cornelius disappear into a cabin. Curious. The voyage is uneventful and Mahri dozes against a pile of crates that couldn't be loaded into the hold and so had been lashed down to the deck. At least she appeared to be dozing. Once announcement of land in sight is made, the lycan rouses herself and quietly slips into the gathered disembarkers with the intent to blend. Oddly enough, it's rather easy. Keeping at least three bodies between herself and her quarry, then at least a few yards unless he donned that cloak again, the chase will resume.
Cornelius walks casually along the shore, boots crunching on the occasional shell in the sand as he seems to enjoy the sea breeze with its tantalising hint of salt and seaweed. He wends his way into the open market, bustling as always with countless people, despite the civil unrest. If anything, the desire for goods has grown, and there are always those who seek to make a few gold out of limited supply and great demand. Cornelius casually strolls into a large section selling sheets, towels, and robes of all varieties. Taking a bright blue robe, he walks into a changing room. A minute later, someone else may be seen to be leaving the area, a pilgrim perhaps, but no-one of import.
Mahri almost loses him again! Where did he go. The scents here almost overwhelmed the man's rosy bouquet. Savory meats, unwashed bodies, sweet breads and people shouting for attention. Haggling and bartering were prevalent and the woman was accosted from many directions. Diaphanous silks were thrust in her face in every color of the rainbow and as many jewel tones. "Try this, Miss. It'll set off your eyes to perfection!" She waves away the emerald fabric. "This one, my dear, is simply divine." The scarlet is scowled at. Eventually she passes the changing room and by chance gets a whiff of the floral scent. Back tracking, Mahri scans the crowd. There. In blue.
Cornelius' penchant for rose-scented oils may still give him away, as he attended to his toilette daily within the privacy of his cabin. Still, he moves through Cenril with practiced ease, slipping around to Arril street, then using an employee's entrance to pass through the Last Note music shop into the intersection of Merchant street and Memorial Avenue. Here he moves slowly with the crowd across the intersection, just another Cenrillian wishing to avoid the attention of bandits, trudging his way home until he suddenly cuts through the park around the Wishing Well, and slips past the somewhat scorched premises of the Cenrillian Realty Headquarters.
Mahri is getting more and more curious as she follows. It's easy now that the people have thinned out. At the same time, she grows more and more cautious. The fewer people, the easier it would be to spot her.
Cornelius pauses a little before he reaches the Guard Post leading to the main entrance. Spotting a group of youths playing nearby, he approaches them, whispers a few words and hands over some gold coins. Suddenly, the street brats were off and running, laughing as they pelted the guards with whatever they could lay their hands on - horse dung and rocks being the most prevalent. Smiling to himself, Cornelius slips past in the distraction, entirely unnoticed by the Cenrillians while he keeps to the shadows of the wall.
Mahri takes advantage of the guards' distraction and yet she almost... no. There's no almost about it. She's lost her quarry for a moment. Longer than she'd like to have. Thinking quickly, she keeps walking. As casually as possible. Past the last place she'd seen Cornelius. If he had spotted her and decided to duck behind something or someone, it might be a good idea to have a plausible reason to be so close on his heels. She had one, actually.
Cornelius strolls along the bridge out of Cenril, surreptitiously letting the blue robe fall into the river below, becoming an entirely different pilgrim yet again. He is once more wearing the cloak that encourages onlookers to find something more interesting to look at than 'that boring man in his boring coat'. It's a disconcerting feeling for even those trained to follow prey who wear such garb. The winds whip across the bridge as always, causing the cloak to flutter about, possibly offering a glimpse of expensive boots and trousers, but temporarily sending the scent of roses over the water, rather than along the bridge. He turns north once he reaches the end of the bridge, taking particular care here to avoid the sight of other passersby, holing up temporarily behind a lightning struck tree, his cloak melding with its shadows and the dark scorched patches around its trunk. He removes his right glove, and stares disconcertedly at the bone ring on his right hand. He looks up and about, suddenly wary, but doesn't seem to see anything. This, if anything, makes him doubly cautious. He replaces his right glove, and removes something from his satchel before slowly making his way north. He looks to the sky, and does not like that the sun is so high, knowing that it will descend all too soon into the dangerous time of twilight, and then nightfall.
Mahri 's head snaps around. What was that? The flutter of cape, the tease of boots and trouser. She has him! But it's with caution she moves again, pausing just the other side of that tree. Cornelius' scent is stronger here and lingers. This tells the wolf he must have stopped. Canting her head and closing her eyes, she listens. For what? The slight whisper of footfall? Rustle of clothes? A breath? She may have heard all of them but the moment the suddenly mysterious and suspicious man began moving, she does too. It's a bit more tricky, hardly anyone travels this way. Each of Mahri's own footsteps are placed carefully, though without visible caution appearing natural to the occasional observer. This is a woman who just happens to be going the same direction as someone else. It happens every day. In fact, sometimes more than once a day.
Half an hour passes. Cornelius' breathing seems shallow, but is slow and regular, perhaps too regular. Barely a sound comes from him, the occasional rustle only as the breezes jostle his clothing. Even the breathing can only be heard by Mahri's heightened senses on the few occasions where the wind has died down to nothing. Another half an hour, and there is a slight rustle of silk against fingers, a pause, and another similar rustle. A sigh may be heard over the wind, and the sound of a person lightly getting to their feet and walking north, towards the forbidding chasms and volcanic areas which form the gorge overlooking the approach to Cenril. As the trees and wildlife become sparser, so too do his movements become much slower, as he relies on the gradual shifting of his cloak to obscure him from the casual view of anyone who may have wandered further north than intended on their passage between Cenril and Kelay. It becomes hard to tell which way he is facing, as he moves in an irregular pattern along the ground, mimicking the movements, perhaps, of wild animals to further delude the casual onlooker.
Mahri has an epiphany. Cornelius expects to not be detected with that shimmery cloak. Yet his movements are meant, as far as she can detect them, to throw off anyone smart enough to track him. Which actually made this little endeavor of hers a bit more challenging and thus fun. Oddly enough, she'd begun this as a lark and somehow, as they went along, it became something a bit more than that. There was a mystery here and damned if she could ignore that. In the hour and a half that's passed, the sun has started to make its way closer to the horizon, sending shots of red and orange into the sky. Not that that will matter given where she believes Cornelius to be heading. Vailkrin was perpetual darkness.
As the sun slowly falls, Cornelius moves more directly north. In fact, he moves directly to a section of terrain where the gravel is crumbly, noisy, and not at all stealthy. At this point he ceases his efforts at stealth, knowing full well that any who have tracked him thus far would be able to see through any such double-plays. So it is that, for a good hour he tromps through gravel and cracked obsidian, his boots becoming grey with the ash mixed into the dust. He frequently pauses to look back, senses not so acute as a Lycan's but sharp enough to remain a threat of detection for unwary followers. He eventually makes it to his destination: A long chasm, caused by a recent earthquake, carefully scouted out weeks before. He knows from experience that it will take someone a couple of hours to pass around the long way. He notes the old petrified runoff of ancient magma which he marked as approximately halfway along the chasm, and pulls something out of his satchel, something which glints brightly under the failing light. As he starts to whirl it in a circular motion, its purpose becomes clear: it is a finely made grappling hook. As to its material, that is hard to tell from such a distance. From hours of previous practice, he waits until the wind dies down, and launches the grapple. It flies over the chasm to meet with something else. A clink of metal-on-metal can be heard as Cornelius' grapple lands on the metal hooks he had so carefully drilled into place on his second visit there. He had wasted two grapples and several attempts before he had been confident of a setup which would hold his weight with momentum attached.
Cornelius tugs on the grapple, to ensure it is secured, then calmly launches himself into the abyss, swinging across to slam against the chasm wall. From there can be heard a sharp, grunted "Oh dash it all, that hurt more than I had expected! Deuced rocks!" After much exertion over ten minutes, he reaches the top and pulls out a sausage, in obvious need of refreshment after his effort.
Cornelius ate a summer sausage.
Mahri figured, over the stone and gravel, she wouldn't have to be so quiet and careful. She's right and if Cornelius noticed an odd echoing of his own footsteps she can't tell. The whistle of a projectile through the air has her come to a stop. From the distance she's at and keeping to the shadows of things, it's hard to tell what it is. Closer, but too close she believes, the glint of metal is seen. Oh hell no. He wasn't. He was. And did. Cursing silently, Mahri narrowed her eyes speculatively. If she hurried..she might get to Vailkrin to see where he'd come out. And she could really hurry if she had to. The lycan paused, waited and had a good grin at the curses to follow after the rather brave swing across the chasm. Mahri had been down there, crawled through the warren of caverns and tunnels that laced the sides and had no desire to do so again. That particular adventure would be blamed on Jolie.
Cornelius sighs with relief, having gained at least half an hour. He has no illusions about the speed of what he thinks may be following him. He heads north, limping at first but soon regaining the use of his leg. He no longer bothers with stealth, trying to get to his destination as soon as he can, eventually jogging once he has recovered enough. Eventually, he makes it, and stares with discomfort at the murky gateway which will undoubtedly give him nightmares for a week once he passes through. Such, he considers, is the price of knowledge.
===To Be Continued on the other side of the Dark Portal===
===Part 1: giving new meaning to having someone dog your heels===
Cornelius leaves the villa, and once out of immediate sight of the building reaches into his satchel and pulls out a bundle of shimmering cloth. Throwing it around his shoulders, it becomes slightly harder to see him, as the shadows cast by the trees seem to warp around him. He pulls a hood over his head, made from the same material, and raises a mask to his face - not quite the dapper gentleman of a moment before, but a figure as shadowy as any assassin. Cornelius casts a wide glance around him, the mask not apparent. In fact, it is as if an onlooker were seeing an entirely different and rather boring traveler of nondescript features. None of this, however, can quite hide the subtle scent of roses left in the wake of his movement.
Mahri waits all of two seconds before launching off her seat and following the scent of roses. She tracked Cornelius though she couldn't see him unless she turned her head and didn't try hard to see him. It was just the faintest of shimmers but she knew he was there. Hell, she could smell him. The meandering route he takes through Rynvale indicates to her he is trying to shake off any tails. He just didn't reckon on a woman who made most of her living tracking others. Once at the docks, she loses him. Frowning, Mahri wanders through the merchants and sailors scowling as some new swabbie thinks her a 'working' girl and makes a grab or two. He's quickly corrected much to the amusement of his friends. Slipping through the crowd without further accostments, the lycan scans through the throng until she spots a familiar form. Smirking to herself, Mahri waits til he's aboard before paying her own fare. Then on, she'll pretty much keep to the opposite side of the ship as the dandy. Really, it's only going one place so she can't lose him.
Cornelius boards the ship at Rynvale with all the wide-eyed vacuousness of a tourist, who somehow never grew unbalanced even when the gangplank shifted with the wake of an arriving ship, causing other passengers to curse, and one lady to lose a particularly vile pink hat - broad brimmed with an abominable plethora of ribbons. Small blessings could be found everywhere, Cornelius thought to himself with a smile. Taking over occupancy of the 2nd Mate's cabin, he spends most of his time poring over an old map and some sheathes of paper. Sometimes he would come up on deck and stare out over the bowsprit - but always with his satchel to hand, its contents too precious to leave to chance or the honesty of sailors. Eventually, the landmass of Cenril comes in sight, and he smiles with relief as he prepares to disembark. No kraken this time at least.
From her vantage point, which is considerable, Mahri can watch Cornelius without, she thinks, him knowing. The way he seems to gain sea legs prodigiously fast is something she files away to examine later. She has no sympathy for the carnation of a woman sputtering and squawking about the loss of her hat. Skirting past the Captain and a few other passengers intent on consoling her Mahri rushes up the plank in time to see Cornelius disappear into a cabin. Curious. The voyage is uneventful and Mahri dozes against a pile of crates that couldn't be loaded into the hold and so had been lashed down to the deck. At least she appeared to be dozing. Once announcement of land in sight is made, the lycan rouses herself and quietly slips into the gathered disembarkers with the intent to blend. Oddly enough, it's rather easy. Keeping at least three bodies between herself and her quarry, then at least a few yards unless he donned that cloak again, the chase will resume.
Cornelius walks casually along the shore, boots crunching on the occasional shell in the sand as he seems to enjoy the sea breeze with its tantalising hint of salt and seaweed. He wends his way into the open market, bustling as always with countless people, despite the civil unrest. If anything, the desire for goods has grown, and there are always those who seek to make a few gold out of limited supply and great demand. Cornelius casually strolls into a large section selling sheets, towels, and robes of all varieties. Taking a bright blue robe, he walks into a changing room. A minute later, someone else may be seen to be leaving the area, a pilgrim perhaps, but no-one of import.
Mahri almost loses him again! Where did he go. The scents here almost overwhelmed the man's rosy bouquet. Savory meats, unwashed bodies, sweet breads and people shouting for attention. Haggling and bartering were prevalent and the woman was accosted from many directions. Diaphanous silks were thrust in her face in every color of the rainbow and as many jewel tones. "Try this, Miss. It'll set off your eyes to perfection!" She waves away the emerald fabric. "This one, my dear, is simply divine." The scarlet is scowled at. Eventually she passes the changing room and by chance gets a whiff of the floral scent. Back tracking, Mahri scans the crowd. There. In blue.
Cornelius' penchant for rose-scented oils may still give him away, as he attended to his toilette daily within the privacy of his cabin. Still, he moves through Cenril with practiced ease, slipping around to Arril street, then using an employee's entrance to pass through the Last Note music shop into the intersection of Merchant street and Memorial Avenue. Here he moves slowly with the crowd across the intersection, just another Cenrillian wishing to avoid the attention of bandits, trudging his way home until he suddenly cuts through the park around the Wishing Well, and slips past the somewhat scorched premises of the Cenrillian Realty Headquarters.
Mahri is getting more and more curious as she follows. It's easy now that the people have thinned out. At the same time, she grows more and more cautious. The fewer people, the easier it would be to spot her.
Cornelius pauses a little before he reaches the Guard Post leading to the main entrance. Spotting a group of youths playing nearby, he approaches them, whispers a few words and hands over some gold coins. Suddenly, the street brats were off and running, laughing as they pelted the guards with whatever they could lay their hands on - horse dung and rocks being the most prevalent. Smiling to himself, Cornelius slips past in the distraction, entirely unnoticed by the Cenrillians while he keeps to the shadows of the wall.
Mahri takes advantage of the guards' distraction and yet she almost... no. There's no almost about it. She's lost her quarry for a moment. Longer than she'd like to have. Thinking quickly, she keeps walking. As casually as possible. Past the last place she'd seen Cornelius. If he had spotted her and decided to duck behind something or someone, it might be a good idea to have a plausible reason to be so close on his heels. She had one, actually.
Cornelius strolls along the bridge out of Cenril, surreptitiously letting the blue robe fall into the river below, becoming an entirely different pilgrim yet again. He is once more wearing the cloak that encourages onlookers to find something more interesting to look at than 'that boring man in his boring coat'. It's a disconcerting feeling for even those trained to follow prey who wear such garb. The winds whip across the bridge as always, causing the cloak to flutter about, possibly offering a glimpse of expensive boots and trousers, but temporarily sending the scent of roses over the water, rather than along the bridge. He turns north once he reaches the end of the bridge, taking particular care here to avoid the sight of other passersby, holing up temporarily behind a lightning struck tree, his cloak melding with its shadows and the dark scorched patches around its trunk. He removes his right glove, and stares disconcertedly at the bone ring on his right hand. He looks up and about, suddenly wary, but doesn't seem to see anything. This, if anything, makes him doubly cautious. He replaces his right glove, and removes something from his satchel before slowly making his way north. He looks to the sky, and does not like that the sun is so high, knowing that it will descend all too soon into the dangerous time of twilight, and then nightfall.
Mahri 's head snaps around. What was that? The flutter of cape, the tease of boots and trouser. She has him! But it's with caution she moves again, pausing just the other side of that tree. Cornelius' scent is stronger here and lingers. This tells the wolf he must have stopped. Canting her head and closing her eyes, she listens. For what? The slight whisper of footfall? Rustle of clothes? A breath? She may have heard all of them but the moment the suddenly mysterious and suspicious man began moving, she does too. It's a bit more tricky, hardly anyone travels this way. Each of Mahri's own footsteps are placed carefully, though without visible caution appearing natural to the occasional observer. This is a woman who just happens to be going the same direction as someone else. It happens every day. In fact, sometimes more than once a day.
Half an hour passes. Cornelius' breathing seems shallow, but is slow and regular, perhaps too regular. Barely a sound comes from him, the occasional rustle only as the breezes jostle his clothing. Even the breathing can only be heard by Mahri's heightened senses on the few occasions where the wind has died down to nothing. Another half an hour, and there is a slight rustle of silk against fingers, a pause, and another similar rustle. A sigh may be heard over the wind, and the sound of a person lightly getting to their feet and walking north, towards the forbidding chasms and volcanic areas which form the gorge overlooking the approach to Cenril. As the trees and wildlife become sparser, so too do his movements become much slower, as he relies on the gradual shifting of his cloak to obscure him from the casual view of anyone who may have wandered further north than intended on their passage between Cenril and Kelay. It becomes hard to tell which way he is facing, as he moves in an irregular pattern along the ground, mimicking the movements, perhaps, of wild animals to further delude the casual onlooker.
Mahri has an epiphany. Cornelius expects to not be detected with that shimmery cloak. Yet his movements are meant, as far as she can detect them, to throw off anyone smart enough to track him. Which actually made this little endeavor of hers a bit more challenging and thus fun. Oddly enough, she'd begun this as a lark and somehow, as they went along, it became something a bit more than that. There was a mystery here and damned if she could ignore that. In the hour and a half that's passed, the sun has started to make its way closer to the horizon, sending shots of red and orange into the sky. Not that that will matter given where she believes Cornelius to be heading. Vailkrin was perpetual darkness.
As the sun slowly falls, Cornelius moves more directly north. In fact, he moves directly to a section of terrain where the gravel is crumbly, noisy, and not at all stealthy. At this point he ceases his efforts at stealth, knowing full well that any who have tracked him thus far would be able to see through any such double-plays. So it is that, for a good hour he tromps through gravel and cracked obsidian, his boots becoming grey with the ash mixed into the dust. He frequently pauses to look back, senses not so acute as a Lycan's but sharp enough to remain a threat of detection for unwary followers. He eventually makes it to his destination: A long chasm, caused by a recent earthquake, carefully scouted out weeks before. He knows from experience that it will take someone a couple of hours to pass around the long way. He notes the old petrified runoff of ancient magma which he marked as approximately halfway along the chasm, and pulls something out of his satchel, something which glints brightly under the failing light. As he starts to whirl it in a circular motion, its purpose becomes clear: it is a finely made grappling hook. As to its material, that is hard to tell from such a distance. From hours of previous practice, he waits until the wind dies down, and launches the grapple. It flies over the chasm to meet with something else. A clink of metal-on-metal can be heard as Cornelius' grapple lands on the metal hooks he had so carefully drilled into place on his second visit there. He had wasted two grapples and several attempts before he had been confident of a setup which would hold his weight with momentum attached.
Cornelius tugs on the grapple, to ensure it is secured, then calmly launches himself into the abyss, swinging across to slam against the chasm wall. From there can be heard a sharp, grunted "Oh dash it all, that hurt more than I had expected! Deuced rocks!" After much exertion over ten minutes, he reaches the top and pulls out a sausage, in obvious need of refreshment after his effort.
Cornelius ate a summer sausage.
Mahri figured, over the stone and gravel, she wouldn't have to be so quiet and careful. She's right and if Cornelius noticed an odd echoing of his own footsteps she can't tell. The whistle of a projectile through the air has her come to a stop. From the distance she's at and keeping to the shadows of things, it's hard to tell what it is. Closer, but too close she believes, the glint of metal is seen. Oh hell no. He wasn't. He was. And did. Cursing silently, Mahri narrowed her eyes speculatively. If she hurried..she might get to Vailkrin to see where he'd come out. And she could really hurry if she had to. The lycan paused, waited and had a good grin at the curses to follow after the rather brave swing across the chasm. Mahri had been down there, crawled through the warren of caverns and tunnels that laced the sides and had no desire to do so again. That particular adventure would be blamed on Jolie.
Cornelius sighs with relief, having gained at least half an hour. He has no illusions about the speed of what he thinks may be following him. He heads north, limping at first but soon regaining the use of his leg. He no longer bothers with stealth, trying to get to his destination as soon as he can, eventually jogging once he has recovered enough. Eventually, he makes it, and stares with discomfort at the murky gateway which will undoubtedly give him nightmares for a week once he passes through. Such, he considers, is the price of knowledge.
===To Be Continued on the other side of the Dark Portal===