The Road to Tullybrook

Viviane had assumed that the woman hadn't recognized her. She could see it on her face, at least somewhat, that she knew what she was, but perhaps not who. It was why she was so careful to introduce herself in the majority of social situations. She was, after all, deserving of a certain degree of respect and consideration, not to mention comfort.

She was, as usual, careful with her face, keeping it neutral, presenting a distance between herself, the woman, and her travelling companions. In response to the inn keep, she simply nodded. She had walked in with them, why would they not be her... party? It only just dawned on her that she wasn't quite certain what the word meant, but it sounded right, at least.

At the mention of cultists and an airship, though, she hesitated. An image of Riven, and her sneering, flashed in Viviane's mind, if only for a moment. It must mean they were travelling west. She wondered briefly if she should send word home, as a warning. "I... see. That is quite unfortunate. However, we have been travelling for quite some time, and I have not had a proper bed since Leur. If you have room available, I would much appreciate your accommodation," she said, an air of expectation about her. It was, perhaps, clear that she was not making a request.
 
"Aye, Miss Rally, I already said ye didn'," Abryxia agreed, folding her arms and nodding - completely missing that it was a completely different accusation Rally was refuting. "An' even if ye did, we'd have yer back, aye?"

The old woman was talking and talking. Abryxia didn't pay much mind - it seemed the Good Lady was handling that, now. Ladies were, after all, much better at talking than normal folk. Probably much better at a lot of things. Like riding horses. And putting on those big poofy dresses. And singing.

Not playing the lute, though, if Abryxia could have a bit of pride on it.

"...do ye reckon ye could, then? Fix it? That is, without - y'know - doin' nothin' that'll make 'em all a spot more skittish than they already look?"

--

"Hwe."

The old woman pronounced the word with a lot more breath than it needed, and a bit of disdain aside. Still - lowering her gaze and shaking her head - she sighed, acquiescing with a quick, rustic curtsy.

"Course, Lady Allard. Got two rooms I can spare." She turned a quick, sharp eye up to meet Viviane's face. "The Baron Allard's heir. He have - a reason for sending you through? Without guards or retainers? At least. Proper ones, you know. Not to pry. Just curious, what with, you know, how things have been, and a fine lady as yourself traveling with -"

She huffed.

"Without proper swords at your side."
 
Rally Rose gave something that might have been a shrug, except it was tiny and mostly swallowed up by the hat.

"I could fix it. But then you never know what people are going to say." Once upon a time, they had thought it would be thank you - but it wasn't. It was usually something more like why didn't you do it earlier or how come you didn't fix this other thing instead or why didn't you fix everything or now look what you've done. Fixing things was never the end of a problem. It was just... the start of something. Rally Rose wasn't sure if it was something that they wanted to start.

"How do you think it got that way?" Rally Rose didn't know very much about airships, but they sort of assumed that one wasn't really supposed to fly them into buildings. They were rather curious what could have caused all of this. "Maybe we can go over there and look?"

There did seem to be an awful lot of loose rocks to turn over, and Rally Rose quite liked turning over rocks. You just never knew what would be underneath them!
 
“Seems like it would be quite the thing to fix.” Sae said, squinting up at the ship perched like a plump raptor on a branch that was never meant to hold that much weight. “Town’ll probably need to topple the thing over before it goes and does it own its own.” Sae added, with a shrug of her own. She was no expert on taking things apart safely, so there wasn’t much point thinking much about it so long as it didn’t go tumbling down onto her head.

“Mm, can’t say I know much about how an airship works, perhaps the wind went sour and they flew too low, or maybe a spark of magic was a touch too low.” Perhaps it had been sabotage or a fair bit of revenge? Thoughts she kept to herself, as it didn’t seem proper to put out such negativity.

“Don’t see anyone turning people away,” Sae said, following after Rally. Didn't seem worth trying to keep the little one from having a poke about, they had spent most of the day chasing after anything amusement that pulled their attention on the side of the road after all. Still, she best be the responsible one shouldn’t she? “We’ll want to be careful where we go stepping, we don’t want to get ourselves hurt. Certainly be hard to get all the way to Tullybrook on a sprained ankle.”
 
"A fair question. Father..."

Hated the idea. Her mother, as well. In truth, travelling alone had been her idea, and hers alone. Viviane had been rather staunch about it as well, insisting in the several days that led up to her leaving Duleis that she would be fine, that the road was as safe now as ever. She'd been taught to ride, she'd been taught to shoot a bow. Their name carried weight, she was the heir to a barony and a descendant of nobility. Nothing bad would happen, not on the Road to Tullybrook.

Her father had countered, of course, saying he knew the world, he had seen the dangers in his own travels to the city. Her mother had said that the city would be overwhelming alone, and she refused to have her daughter be alone and unprepared.

They, of course, did not relent. Lord Allard did not want to see his daughter harmed, and Lady Allard did not want to see their name and lineage besmirched. She was meant to be travelling with at least a retainer, but the same man who taught her archery and how to ride was the man meant to accompany her, and it was in no small way his fault Viviane had such wanderlust in her, such a want for an adventure of her own.

"... sent word ahead, to Tullybrook. An annual travel, for schooling in the city. He and Mother assumed the Road to be as safe as ever, and my new travelling companions seem capable enough. Your worry is appreciated, though, miss...?"
 
"I know a - bit about 'em. Well, a bit's a bit too much," Abryxia said, rubbing at the back of her head. She moved out through the door, planting her hands on her hips, looking the tower up and down. "They'nt supposed ta be this far south, tho. Didn' even know they coul' be. See - pretty sure they don' really fly, exact, more jus' sorta glide. They gotta use tha River Tully ta lift up into the air an' go o'er the Gap."

Her face broke into a wide, silly grin.

"Reckon t'was a pirate? They said they locked tha cap'n up. Maybe he put a lil bit o' the river in a bottle and uses it ta hop from town to town, doin' all sorts of piratey things. Takin' treasure, drinkin' ale, an' - well. Droppin' on poor ol' unsuspectin' towers!"

As they approached, the full extent of the damage was apparent. It had been a clocktower, once. The tall spindle that ran up the center of such things was still visible, jutting through the boat like a spear through a whale, knocking the mast sideways to make more room for itself. The bricks around, however, had been utterly decimated, leaving large piles of rubble strewn about the mostly intact base. There might be a way into the base itself, through the cracks, but the whole situation looked mighty precarious.

--

"Mm."

The innkeep didn't seem particularly fond of the idea of prying more into the affairs of nobles than she already had. She didn't seem particularly enthused by anything, really, lower lip curled in a permanent scowl.

"Well, road isn't safe. Dark One's back. Everyone's saying it. We're getting ripples of it all even here in sleepy Clurneywooble."

She crossed her arms.

"You'll be safe here as anywhere, though, and probably safer than in the woods."

Turning, she took two keys from the rack behind her, sliding them across the counter.

"Burgess. Missus Burgess. Keep an eye on your companions, Lady Allard. Dark One's eyes can be anywhere, hear?"
 
Unfortunately, to some degree, Viviane was already aware. Riven's speech, back at the tower, had made her intimately aware of the Dark One's return, as shocking as it was. Odds were they'd been forced to move away from Clurneywooble, on account of their beliefs. At least, in her mind, they were moving further east. As much as she loved her home, she'd been told more than once by her mother that their barony is where it had ended, furthest from Tullybrook, the most remote from that seat of oppositional power.

She tucked the thought aside, taking the keys in one hand and offering a much more refined, practiced curtsey in response.

"I don't believe I will have to worry, Miss Burgess, but I appreciate your concern nonetheless. Thank you for the rooms." The Lady took her leave afterwards, stepping back towards the door, keys in hand, with the intent to retrieve her oh-so-suspicious companions.
 
Sae seemed to know a lot about airships crashed into towers, Rally Rose thought. At least, she seemed to know more than Rally Rose did, which was maybe not particularly much after all. Rally Rose peered up at the crashed airship as Sae pointed out that the townspeople would probably want to get it down.

"Oooh, do you think they will? Can we watch?" Rally was pretty sure they could get it down also, but they wanted to see how other people went about it. Also, they were not entirely sure that they were supposed to be taking down airships.

"I think we should talk to the pirate captain some time," they added after Abryxia's tale, probably for all the wrong reasons. "If they really did put the river in a bottle, I want to know why, and which river, and if it fell out again and that's why it's been raining so much, and if people are supposed to put rivers in bottles, because I have never done that but it does sound kind of interesting but I think maybe... I am not supposed to do that?" It was possible that Rally Rose sounded much less certain on this last point than people would have preferred, at least those who had known them longer than about five minutes.

Fortunately, Rally did not seem too inclined to do any of that at this very moment, and seemed perfectly happy to approach the tower and start turning over loose stones that had fallen off in the crash. "Ooh, look, I found a worm!"
 
“By gliding is it?” Sae looked up, offering the broken ship an approving hum, quite the marvel when it wasn’t skewered on the end of a bell tower wasn’t it? “Ah, but it being a pirate’s vessel does make for an exciting story, doesn’t it? Sae said with a sly sort of smile. It was hard to deny the whimsy that Miss Abryxia seemed to approach the world with, good for the soul to smile as grandmum was always fond of saying. Rally themselves also seemed to be poking through the tower with that exuberance for learning that the little one always seemed to hold. They’d give old auntie Carol a run for her money, and Sae though her a limitless source of knowledge when she had also been small.

“Aye, a worm is it? Any fun colors? Always heard there were worms with as many bands of colors as a sunset up around Tully way.” Sae said, stepping over to the tumble of rubble to join Rally.
 
"A wyrm?" Abryxia said with a moment of surprise - and perhaps a little trepidation. As much as the previous encounter had turned out harmless, she'd had her right fair share of wyrms to last her another month at least. And, well, something like that in a place like this, with everyone so on edge, was just a disaster waiting to happen.

Thankfully, it wasn't a wyrm, but instead a worm of the 'o' variety, squiggling about on the ground in the midst of debris and still-caking mud from the rainfall prior. The weirdling relaxed, tail flicking to and fro in excitement as she knelt down to look at the creature.

"Aye, seems Miss Sae knows right what she's talkin' about," she said cheerily. "Wonder why they're like that? Think it's somethin' in tha soil?"

This particular worm was banded in bright red stripes, looking for all its life like a well-wrapped maypole, save for a little bit of orange on its very end.

"Reckon its tryin' to escape tha sun. Not a lot o' damp ground for the poor lil' thing ta get into here, though, with tha tower's floor still intact."

--

For Viviane, she'd find her companions absent from 'directly outside', and absent from 'slightly less than directly outside' too. She would, however, hear talking from the ruins of the nearby tower - something about dirt and worms.
 
"There's lots of colors," Rally Rose concurred, with the certainty of someone who had spent probably a lot of time looking at worms. They reached out a finger towards the worm, then hesitated briefly, as if suddenly aware of the very close presence of two companions, both of whom seemed strangely interested in the worm.

"Um." It seemed to them like there was something maybe a bit odd about all of this, and perhaps they should ask... "You're not... going to be mad at me if I eat it, are you?" The hat tilted up, reddish-pink eyes looking at Sae and Abryxia rather than at the worm.

"It's just... I should probably eat something, if I'm going to take the boat down. And worms don't have any bones."
 
“Minerals in the dirt my great aunt Carol always said, supposed to scare off the birds. They have a festival every spring up around Gaptooth where all the boys and girls try to find them a worm with a spiral of green and blue, winner got themselves a whole basket of sweets.” Sae said, resting her hands on her knees as she admired the pretty worm as it squirmed and squiggled in search of dirt it couldn’t find. Rally asking if she could eat the wiggling thing did cause Sae to raise her eyebrows.

“Magic powered by worms?” The elf asked, the image in her mind of the great sorcerers of old needing to kneel down and scoop themselves up a handful of worms before a duel bringing a mirthful chuckle to her lips. Though, as far as the girl eating the worm went, it was only a worm she supposed, Sae couldn’t imagine it would taste well but great gram gram always taught her not to be picky.

“It’s fine I suppose, a bit of a shame for the pretty little thing but better it than the tower squishing half the village.” She said with a shrug of her shoulders.
 
"I don' think -" worms are a particularly good thing for eating, is what she would have said, if what she was about to say was something she'd settled on saying. But some things did eat worms, didn't they? Birds, and moles, and other worms, too. Rally wasn't any of those things - least, Abryxia didn't think they were - but they weren't normal people, and normal people were the only thing she was certain worms weren't good eating for.

"Jus' - long as yer sure o' it, Miss Rally," Abryxia continued slowly, staring down at the worm. "Wouldn' want ye to get a tummyache on tha road from gobblin' critters ye shouldn' of."
 
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"Life magic works with anything that's alive," Rally explained, wondering if they really ought to explain this. They remembered... well, no, it was too late now. "I just... I'd rather they not have skeletons." This seemed to be another one of those wrong-things, the statements that weren't exactly lies, but they left a lot out. Rally Rose felt a little guilty about it, and so added, very quietly, in a way that they hoped no one heard enough of to comment on:
"...This time."


Abryxia didn't seem very thrilled with the idea, but seemed like she was more worried about Rally than the worm. Rally Rose didn't quite know what to make of that. It was... a nice feeling, almost. They didn't know how to respond to that, and instead looked away a bit awkwardly, letting the hat take the place of the conversation.

The worm wriggled as they picked it up, placing it gently in the palm of their hand and closing their fingers around it. There wasn't a light so much as there was an absence of one that felt like a light, a little firefly-flash of darkness between their fingers that highlighted the bones through the rest of them for just an instant, intricate and carved, hidden away from view.

The worm didn't have any, of course. It lay still, unmoving, and Rally Rose dumped it back onto the ground without further ceremony.

"What's a tummyache?"
 
Viviane had half a mind to be offended upon exiting the tavern. The initial impression of the scene would have implied that, while she was working so diligently to secure actual beds for them to sleep on, they had decided she wasn't worth the wait and continued on, abandoning her here. As fate would have it, however, she hadn't been quite so abandoned as she had previously thought. It was true that her companions had left her, but it was only just down the road, into what was left of what was surely once a great tower.

She paused in the once-doorway. "I have secured us lodging here, for tonight. Miss Burgess was rather accommodating, all things considered," the Lady stated, taking a moment to consider the keys. It was, of course, a cover to give her a moment to try and discern exactly why the three of them were in this dilapidated tower, and maybe even why Rally Rose was playing in the dirt and asking about stomach aches.

In the end, her curiosity won out. "May I ask, what are we doing over here? The people here are likely already quite concerned about strangers, given what Miss Burgess told me. That curious pair we met on the road traveled through here, and the airskiff crash just shortly before we arrived. It troubled them enough to lock the captain of the ship away somewhere here. Tensions are likely high here, and I worry that traipsing about an old tower and playing in the dirt may only make things worse for the three of you." Of course, she would never say the next part out loud, but it was also in part to save her own reputation. She was Lady Allard! If word reached Mother that she was playing in the dirt like some common child, she would likely be recalled from the trip and schooled by a tutor in Duleis until the Barony was finally handed to her.

Needless to say, that would be unacceptable.
 
It was starting to reach the point where nothing Rally said could surprise Abryxia. Of course Rally didn't know what a tummyache was, Rally probably didn't get them at all, and probably didn't even have a tummy, and probably could fly and breathe fire and shoot tulips out of their ears when they blew their nose.

Fair enough, seeing how Rally seemed to 'eat' made tummyaches feel a lot less likely, anyway. The bard stared at the still worm for a few seconds - feeling the slightest twinge of unease at the way it just stopped - but she kept grinning and tried her best to put the worser thoughts out of her head.

"See, er - when we eat, we put stuff in our mouths instead o' pokin' it with our fingers, an' then it goes in our tummies, an' if it's bad for us it hurts." She scratched at her head. "Not much an issue fer ye, if that's how ye eat, though."

The Good Lady approached, and Abryxia stood up to attention in an instant.

"We ain't causin' trouble, m'Lady. Rally's jus' eatin' worms with their fingers, s'all."
 
“That’s…” Sae’s brow knit as she looked down at the no-longer wiggling thing. Life magic was this? Rally called it feeding too, so was it the spirit of the thing they needed to eat? There was something there that Sae felt like she needed to pick at, like having a bit of food caught in the back molars that you needed the tip of a blade to dislodge. It wasn’t the death that struck her with that, she couldn’t right well say this was any different than catching a hare could she? No it was…

Sae squatted, resting her arms on her thighs. Abryx didn’t seem to find it too strange one way or another, so was this just some aspect of the arcane she simply didn’t know? No, it wasn’t that she didn’t know it but… perhaps and old memory and a piece of food really weren’t so different when they were both caught just on the tip of your tongue. Still, the elf looked away as Viv approached, the twist of her lip turning to an easy smile.

“Aye, we were just discussing fixing up the little airship-in-the-tower problem the town seems to be having.” Sae said, standing back up. They could concern themselves with how Rally ate later — perhaps she should set out live traps for small game? “Ah, the captain’s in jail you say? Might be worth giving ‘em a talking to and see how this happened. Seems a rightly unjust to have someone in a cell if this was all caused by a bout of bad wind in the night.”
 
"Hello, Lady Viviane! Thank you for securing the lodgings." Rally Rose was not entirely sure if the lodgings were likely to be under attack, but they did suppose what with the whole pirate captain business, perhaps it was a good idea after all. They had never been particularly sure what securing a place actually meant, as it seemed to be something other people did, and largely involved armies. Not worms, often - though occasionally wyrms, they were fairly certain .

Abryxia was explaining tummyaches, which seemed like an awful lot of bother to Rally Rose, but they supposed that was what came of putting things in your mouth. It wasn't something that they wanted to experiment with, that was certain. Also, they hadn't really bothered with most of the inside parts, as they were largely irrelevant - so they weren't even sure what would happen, though it was unlikely to be good.

Sae was taking it on herself to explain the situation, at least as much as the situation could be explained. Rally looked up at the ship - very far up, it being stuck on the tower and all - then raised a hand, clenching it into a fist so that the ship shattered into seven million seven hundred seventy-seven thousand seven hundred seventy-three pieces. They'd always liked that number.

The pieces fell to the ground, and then another gesture brought them back together, built-and-made-whole. Some of the bits were missing, so Rally did the best that they could. The missing glass had been rendered into a stained-glass window, depicting a Lady on a horse, standing atop a wyrm.

Someone else could figure that out, later.

"Okay, that's done! And they said to leave the tower alone so I am not doing anything about that. Do we go meet the pirate captain, now?"
 
"Excuse me?"

It was a simple statement, but her tone carried a disbelief to it that was hard to quantify. Rally was what? And why worms? If they were hungry, they could've spoken up! Viviane was relatively certain that she could have requisitioned a fresh meal, even if it wasn't going to be to her own liking or up to her standards, but it was something she could have easily managed. There was no need to poke around ruined towers, or dig in the dirt for worms. It was unbecoming, especially after all the work she had done to defend them to the innkeep.

The Lady turned towards Sae, head tilted somewhat. The tower was not a problem they needed to consider. The ship looked stable enough to her, and they had the captain in custody. "The townsfolk seem to have that under control here. I hesitate to pry. It would be uncouth for us to impose ourselves. I believe we should rest, and then proceed on our-"

Lady Allard froze in place. She was stricken with fear, stuck to the spot, as the airship, the very one the other three had been concerned with not moments ago, was rent asunder in an instant. It was reduced to splinters mid sentence. She did not realize it was the ship making the noise of being disassembled at first, of course, instead assuming it was the tower collapsing under the weight, and she was certain it was coming down on top of their heads. Once it subsided, and once she realized nothing ill had become of her, she released a breath she did not realize she had been holding, albeit shakily.

Had Rally Rose done this? Their hand was raised aloft, clenched in a tiny fist, as if she had done it. "I- I suppose so, yes," she said, conviction lost. How could she argue? She'd never seen something like this before, only heard of it in stories. It was incredible, and terrifying, and was secretly exactly the excuse she needed to allow herself to speak to the captain herself.
 
Abryxia nodded thoughtfully.

This entire thing wasn't really their business, but wasn't part of being on an adventure sticking your nose in places it didn't belong? After all, stories that lived out in the open were terrible for telling, because everyone already knew how they went. But stories hidden under rocks and in crannies, those were the ones worth taking down.

She was about to speak - probably just to affirm that the captain would be interesting to talk to, at least - but Rally did something.

Not a little something, like eating a worm. A big something, like the fireball. They raised their hand, and all around them, something changed, twisting up the airship wedged above, tower creaking as the great burden on its back was relieved. There was a half-a-second where Abryxia stood dumfounded, unsure of how to act. A quarter-a-second where she contemplated ducking and running for the gap in the ruined wall. But what about the others? Rally could handle themselves, but the others, well, they were just as squishable as she was. So then, in that last bit of second left, she made the absurd -

And frankly unnecessary -

Decision that if anything fell, she could at least keep her companions from it. Grabbing at Sae and the Lady Allard, she shoved them aside, trying her best to cover them with her arms.

"Look out! It's all comin' down!" she shouted - but it had already come down, and it had come down in a way that was neither catastrophic nor terrible. In fact, the ship was just there. Intact. No impact, no destruction. Her cheeks dulled purplish grey, tail curling around her leg. "S'what I'd say. If t'was. Which t'isn't. Sorry fer eh, givin' ye folks a bump."
 
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