+Anima

[Nohiki]

Hydrax made a sound mixed of a sigh and roar. "Up to them. As far as i want to help them, our safety is a priority. We gave them a fighting chance, but i feel too young to be a martyr." she shrugged. "And i'm beat." she said, noticing she is out of shape after the injury. "I could use a half a year vacation. Too bad my share will be gone fast. The house needs refurbishing."

[Kauria]

The crack of a pistol made Krath jump, though the white spray of water off the side of the ship meant that no one had been hit. Yet.
Hand still shaking, he barely twisted and parried against a slave with sores down her side. She hit the bars of a cage, hard, and Krath whirled again.
Across the deck, a man dropped to all fours, his fingers bunching and his nails curving into black claws. With some effort, he managed to rear up again, ready to deal a certain deathblow to the slaver sprawled nearby.
Krath ducked and spun as the world slowed, punctuated only by the slow thrum of his pulse. He pressed the trigger, and the wire whistled.
The claw struck the side of the man, an indirect hit, but he lurched sideways and struck the railing. He glared up at his attacker with fury-filled golden eyes, but Krath was lost in the coldness of concentration. The boy was beyond intimidation.
Krath planted a foot and yanked back on the wire, and the man screamed as the petals of the blade opened.
His claws retracted and his spine straightened, his aggressive crouch turning into something more frightened than feral.
It worked. Krath let the warmth of excitement and yes, pride, break through his detachedness, though the guilt came with it.
In that moment of inattention, though, the man across the deck stood, one hand on the railing, bunched his legs, and lunged against the tautness of the wire.
With a noise Krath would never forget, the weapon's head broke free.
The man crumpled not four steps later, but one could see that he had started the transformation again.
Krath was promptly sick over his side of the ship.
These slaves still had what the Ambassador's pets had lacked— a will to be free. Nothing so simple would take it from them.
Krath took a shaky breath and turned again to the battle, measuring the odds. The guard earlier had been wrong. They didn't stand a chance.
He retracted the harpoon claw and half-battled, half-slunk his way over to the hatch. Someone had already pulled it open, and he slid down, landing as quietly as possible on the planks.
There had been no cages on this level, only cannons and the officers' quarters. The scent of someone who had passed through recently still hung in the air, and Krath could detect no animal taint. A human then, and an ally. The trail slithered downstairs, into the almost-total darkness of the ship's belly.
Krath licked his lips, looked briefly back at the square of light above, and followed.

At the bottom of the stairs, he immediately stepped down into cold, ankle-deep water. Fantastic.
The smell of sickness and fetid water was almost smothering, the scent lost among the rows of empty cages.
Krath closed his eyes. They would do little good down here.
Off to the right, he sensed heat like a lantern in the darkness, followed by a whisper of a splash as the warmth shifted. "Who's there?" Krath called.
"Krath?"
It took a moment for him to place Bale's voice.
"Yes," he said, moving carefully towards Bale's warmth, his eyes open again and somewhat adjusted. "Stay where you are."
He almost tripped twice, but soon he was crouched beside the soldier. He couldn't see Bale's face, but the smell of blood hung in the air around him. "You're hurt?"
"It's not bad." He gripped Krath's shoulder and stood, slowly. "We've lost up there." It wasn't a question.
"Yeah."
He breathed. Footsteps groaned on the floor above. "Follow me. Back here." Bale pulled away, and Krath stumbled after the retreating warmth.
"There's a step here."
Suddenly, he was standing on drier wood, surrounded by the smell of rats and gunpowder. "Where are we?"
"Storage room." A light sparked twice, and then flickered into a round flame.
"Are you crazy?" Krath whispered. "They'll find us!"
"I know." Bale set the lantern on a barrel, then cracked open one of the crates and set to work reloading his pistol.
"So you plan to surrender."
"No." He cocked the gun and looked up at Krath with steely eyes. "I plan to guard the ship my King told me to protect."
Krath avoided his gaze, looking instead at the piles of thick rope, coiled like massive snakes in the shadows. "Then we die."
"You can go and curl up at their feet like a miserable rat and hope they're feeling more merciful than they look. But you will be abandoning your master's vision and you will be abandoning me."
The soldier stood slowly, turned his back to Krath, and fired a shot straight up into the thick boards of the ceiling. The sound was deafening in the small space. Shouts above. "Now they come. Decide quickly, boy."
Krath swallowed. "I will not abandon you or my kingdom."
Bale lowered his arm without looking back. "Good."
"Because I'm afraid this falls more along the lines of betrayal." The +Anima slammed the pole into the back of Bale's neck and caught him on the side of the head with the closed claw when he turned, a shout dying in his throat.
He dropped the weapon, metal clattering a moment after the thud of the guard's body. Moving quickly, he checked Bale's pulse and snatched a handful of ropes, messily knotting his hands together. He almost left his weapon, but decided that the +Anima would find one soldier, one gun. Anything more would cause suspicion. "Sorry," he whispered.
The footsteps thundered to the stairs.
Krath dove back into the darker part of the hold and wedged himself behind one of the cages, lying low enough that the rancid water lapped at his chest.
The shapes of heat burst down the stairs, one warmth-image after another. They went straight to the light, but Krath had to admit they were cautious. When no trap awaited them, the slaves talked among themselves in tones too low to hear, then emerged from the storeroom with their peculiar prize.
Krath let out a quiet sigh, lost in the tones of the ship. Bale was still alive. And so was he. He would wait and see where the animal-people would take them. All it would take was surviving until port.


(OOC:1048 words. I'm sorry, everybody!)

[Awesomoman]

"I once had a problem like that, had to keep spending money to keep the house going," Falco said as he sat back in his chair. "So i got rid of the house and the problem has been solved ever since." he leaned back and set his gun and bow to the side.

[Midnightmoon]

"ooh." Tateen whined, but didn't push the matter anymore. Besides, they were so far gone that she could hardly see the other boat anymore. Instead she backtracked and climbed back up into the birds nest.

[Nohiki]

They landed back home in a two days time, delivered the goods and cashed a few pouches of gold. Whatever was left after putting aside something for next time they split evenly. Hydrax then went straight to sleep.

[Kauria]

{OOC: Don't mind me.}

The boat came to a jarring stop, the hull scraping the dock as it came too close. Krath rolled over, murmured something about how the captain should be used to the ship's size by now, and almost went back to sleep. And then, of course, he suddenly remembered where he was. He sat bolt upright and pressed himself far back into the cage, holding his breath and hoping no one had noticed him. Above, footsteps sounded on the boards as everyone hurried to finish what they were doing. Krath allowed himself a small sigh of relief.
+Anima came through the hold once or twice to retrieve supplies, but they seemed so eager to get off the slavers' ship that none of them paid much attention to their surroundings.
When things had quieted, Krath slipped up the stairs. There were no windows on this level, either. He placed his hand on the wooden wall and edged his way up to the next floor, where slivers of morning light lay in shafts across the cannons and hammocks. He heard voices, and managed to duck behind a table just as two +Anima — were all of them so young? — turned the corner.
"No, I've never been here before," one of them was saying. "But from what I've heard, even if Tyay and Astar won't take us, these guys will. Right now, that's what matters. . . " Their conversation trailed off as they walked away.
Krath darted to the nearest cannon, and peered through the port. This side of the ship faced away from the dock. Good. There might just barely be enough room for him to slip out through it. The water was surprisingly close.
He ducked his head, pushed the cannon what little distance its lashings would let him, then twisted his way through the opening. Close or no, he hit the cold water with a painful slap, and memories of drowning rushed in to crowd his mind. But there was no tumbling current or floating debris or driving rain. The water that flooded his lungs was imagined. It took a moment, but he collected himself enough to swim around the ship's looming bulk. There, Krath caught his first glimpse of the people of Assat.

Hands helped him out of the water, and all around were the scents of a large town, only something was different. Not one of the eager people on the dock smelled human.
Stunned into silence, Krath accepted the towel he was offered.
"Hey there." A man crouched in front of him. His ears were pointed, and brown fur encroached on the edges of his smiling face. "You all right?"
Krath nodded and licked his lips nervously.
The man sniffed the air. "Some sort of reptile, right?"
Krath froze. Was it that easy to tell? " . . .Yes. Snake," he replied, picking his way cautiously over the consonants. No use in hiding it.
"You don't speak very much. Got a name?"
Off to the side, he recognized the slave with half-healed sores. She had a large bruise on her head, and Krath shrank further into the ring of people who surrounded him. "Kr . . . Kalai. Just Kalai." As if telling them only his last name would do anything.
"Well, hey, Kalai, and welcome to the family. You're safe here."
No, I'm not.
"No one's gonna make you do anything or go anywhere again, okay?" The man straightened and brushed off his tunic. "If you go with the others, we can get things straightened out as soon as possible and find you a place to stay."
What choice did he have? Krath nodded numbly and joined the freed slaves, all but hiding his face in the towel.
Nearby, some of the +Anima escorted the captured soldiers into an empty building.
"We're still not sure what to do with them," said a young woman with flat scales on her forehead and Anima marks on her cheeks, not bothering to look at Krath. "It could be dangerous to let them go, seeing as we're so close to the border. But they don't deserve to die or to be kept here until they do." She shrugged her orange shoulders and gave a sideways smile before rejoining the others.
Krath stayed a moment longer, watching the familiar faces, glad for each that had survived. One of them looked up, and the force of recognition in his eyes almost sent Krath stumbling backwards. It was Bale. The soldier was pulled through the doorway before either of them could react.
Krath went back to the +Anima, relieved.


That night, however, he left them. It was a hot night, filled with the sounds of crickets, and his footsteps between the sleeping bodies went unnoticed. He made it to the path, found the stars the sailors had shown him, and sprinted off silently through the forest.

[saphira]

name:senora
animal:snow tiger
can fully morph into one
picture:http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs29/i/2008/053/8/e/White_Tiger_in_the_Snow_by_fennecx.jpg
looks: platinum blonde hair streaked with black. very tall girl and moves with catlike reflexes.
gender: female

[Nohiki]

OOC:
a) To create thread with it
b) Necro bump xD

[saphira]

what?

[Nohiki]

a)
Anima has it's specific create board here:
dragon-essence.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=create

b)
but it's pretty much dead thread. Noone played here in months