When the answer came, it did so with no surprise. Her words were less than convincing and it took all she could to stop herself from simply attempting to rip her own arm off. "You are a coward." She managed softly, knowing full well that angering a demon like the Darkin was not in her best interest. But at this point, the fire that was burning her arm from the inside out forced her mind away from any and all logical thoughts. And when Aatrox's grip tightened and pulled her forward, what else could she do but follow?
When he began to talk, the Archer merely focused on the spine lined with red spikes. His words faintly reminded her that her bow had been left behind. Still, that did not bother her - anyone who attempted to pick it up would find themselves in possibly more pain than she was in. Her only regret was that she had been so careless as to allow it to fall in the first place. "You're rather learned for a beast," Ashe said dully, her voice growing ever dimmer as the pain flickered between numbing prickles and clenching fangs.
Normally, one would continue to struggle for their lives in a situation like this, and perhaps she was a coward too. Ashe had all but stopped her attempts to pry Aatrox's hand off. It hurt, too much and far more than she would have expected when the acid had first sunk into and seared her skin. She could not lose her arm, not when her archery and all she stood for was at stake. She could not leave Tryndamere to deal with Rakelstake by himself either - though he was far from incompetent, she knew he would be at a complete loss.
A small laugh escaped her, even as Aatrox set his dark eyes on her. Despite the bone-wrenching pain which caused her heart to pound ever faster and her breath to quicken, and despite the fear encapsulated in her eyes and the little bead of blood tipped on her lower lip from her teeth, Ashe looked back defiantly. Even in this moment of weakness where she knew she could not be something more, her pride was resolute. Not the pride of the Winter's Claw, or the pride of a warrior but the pride of a person who knew that Freljord would, in the end, find the right path despite her life.
So, in this moment, Ashe mustered all this pride and locked it away. All her titles were forgotten, all her duties and all this pain, shove to the back of her mind. She locked her gaze onto the Darkin, a ghost of a smile on the curve of her lips before saying, "Bite me," and with that, she spat in Aatrox's face.
Post by The Darkin Blade on Aug 21, 2013 18:21:26 GMT -5
Aatrox huffed, walking deeper into the forest. "And how am I a coward? Compared to you, I have as much bravery as Avarosa herself." He decided it was a good idea to ignore her other insult, though, and only paused when she spat in his face.
With a smooth motion, he wiped it off of his face, flicking it into the snow where it froze. "My, you're impetuous. And how'd you ever become queen?" With that, he dropped her on the snow and raised his hand, striking her on the head to shut her up. "Sleep well, your majesty."
"You may have more bravery compared to me, but you will never amount to Avarosa," she replied, her words a little stronger. Though she was uncertain as to the role she played in Aatrox's scheme, what she did know was that she would not allow this creature to freely stain her ancestor's name. "She did not find it necessary to kidnap people just to get what she wanted."
Before she could offer another response, she was flung to the ground. The snow pressed against her shoulder, the cold and ice almost seeming to sizzle against her wounds and she let out a small whimper at the sudden change in temperature. It soothed her pain, if only for a moment, before something sharp and hard connected with her head. The meaning of Aatrox's words vanished, but her relief was palpable as her consciousness slipped away.
Post by The Darkin Blade on Aug 21, 2013 18:56:47 GMT -5
Aatrox smiled as she fell unconscious, picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder, very cautious to not impale her on any spikes as he did so. She may be a bit scratched, but she would at least not be dead. His pace was increased, now, and he eventually made it to a clearing. He decided to make this into a proper 'campsite', putting Ashe against a tree so that she was sitting up.
He suddenly realized the error of his plan of opportunity. How would he blame this on the Winter's Claw? He had none of their weapons, no rope, not even a corpse he could leave laying on the ground. He thought, and decided right there what he was going to do.
First, he would have to put on his most convincing guise. Twist his voice so that those who looked upon him and didn't already know him would believe his every word. Then, he would have to convince whoever found the unconscious queen that he had fended off the Winter's Claw...yes, that would work. And he would convince them that the Queen had gone mad with fright. This might just work...but if it didn't, things may completely fall apart...
Post by Tekun Valos on Aug 21, 2013 19:06:42 GMT -5
Tekun knew well Ashe had a heart; she wasn’t so frozen. The warrior reflected upon it and thought quietly to himself about how he felt. There was a longing he’d never act on, politics happened. He zoned out for a moment while one of the guards interrupted. As Tryndamere bellowed he spoke and nodded, he’d gone quiet almost.
“I suppose it makes sense.” He turned his eyes to Tryndamere as he addressed him by name and then said something he at first thought was a bad joke. He stared blankly almost as if it had not registered at first. Someone had done what?
“Is this your roundabout way of saying the peace talks flopped?”
Post by The Barbarian King on Aug 22, 2013 1:17:18 GMT -5
"No, it's my way of saying that someone wants war between my clan and the Winter's Claw." The King grunted.
He pulled out another poro snack to feed to the little creature, which it devoured with glee.
"Someone had the gall to switch one of the barrels Gragas and I brought along with us for one full of blood, and a Winter's Claw head. I don't know who did this, but they're going to rue the day I find them."
Tryndamere's eyes seemed livid with anger, although he seemed to keep the pressure well contained. However, if one were to push Tryndamere's buttons long or well enough, they would find his wrath upon them like a storm of blood and steel.
Post by The Darkin Blade on Aug 26, 2013 1:07:26 GMT -5
Aatrox had made all the preparations, and was now ready to prepare the Queen for her role in his play. He grabbed a piece of snow from the ground nearby and warmed it with his grip until it had liquidated, but just barely. He then splashed it onto Ashe's face, watching parts of it crystallize on contact with the cold air.
"Hm, your majesty, are you awake yet?" He bent over her. "If you are, I'm going to need your...help with this particular act." One of his arms stretched down so his hand could grip around her cheeks, pulling her forwards a bit. "You see, I underestimated Sejuani's resilience. The blood in the barrel worked well, but not well enough. With this little ploy, your husband won't be able to help but declare war on them himself."
He chuckled. "All I need you to do is sit still. Act woozy. Don't even think about escaping. If you try...well..." He grinned and brandished his blade towards her, holding it against her throat so as to draw a single drop of blood. "I doubt your successor would be as peace-loving as you after discovering her queen was slain by the Winter's Claw."
He strode away and spun his blade a bit, the bloody core in the center glowing for a moment. He began spilling blood on the snow here and there, replicating a fight with the Winter's Claw for his plan. All the while, he kept a close eye on his prisoner, not wanting her to try and escape, even if he could catch her without much effort.
Things would be so much easier with her alive...however, not for too long. If she stayed on the playing field for too long, her supposed madness may begin to be paid attention to. Maybe a sudden outbreak of pneumonia, or a suicide driven by dementia? Whatever the case, she wasn't safe no matter how this act would play out.
Post by Tekun Valos on Aug 26, 2013 5:36:43 GMT -5
“Then we need to avoid war and we need to get to the root of the problem. Whoever did this will answer for it.” Tekun couldn’t help but find the contrast between the Poro and the Barbarian King at least a little humorous. The Immortal Soldier moved to pet the Poro. Blood though, the more he thought about it the more
“I don’t know who did this but they went through a lot of trouble to scavenge a corpse and all that. The blood was probably from the same body or bodies. Do you think it’s a group effort or the work of one very, very angry and unlucky son of a bitch?”
Post by The Barbarian King on Aug 26, 2013 8:23:36 GMT -5
By this point in the conversation, Tryndamere had completely removed the bag from the side of his hip; he had found the poro, and he would not be needing it seeing as he could feed it regularly from now on.
As their conversation reached the theories of who did it, Tryndamere's response was blunt and gruff.
"I don't know, and I won't pretend I know either. I'm in the dark as much as you are Tekun, and it's annoying to not know..."
While their conversation was taking place, the next scout had been sent to check on Queen Ashe's location. The scout was dressed in white, although it would do little to cover her presence from the honed and trained eyes and ears of her Queen. As she made her way to where the Queen was last reported to be, assuming that she would have moved away from her past position as she wandered around the forest for target practice, she found something startling: upturned snow.
There was a struggle here... She soon came to realize...
But where is the Queen?
Her eyes went wide at the thought of something happening to her, the scout's eyes wildly darting from left to right, seeing if she could see the queen. As they returned to the struggle, she could see a path leading further north. Her steps began to move in that direction, but she fell flat onto the snow-laden ground, for moments becoming invisible amidst the vast whiteness. She turned around to see what was keeping her foot locked in place, and... and...
Oh Gods.
There, lying hooked around her boot, slowly building up a layer of ice around its leathery exterior, was the ancient relic of the Freljord, of the Three Sisters.
Avarosa's bow... Ashe's bow.
Something had happened to the queen, and she needed to race back to Rakelstake to let them know, but she couldn't leave the bow here, nor could she exactly hold it in her hands...
Almost instinctively, the scout's cloak flew off of her back, wrapping fully around the ancient ice-bow. It would still freeze through the bow, but she would at the very least only have a little frostbite from holding it, and not unusable frozen-black hands.
Later...
The clack of heavy boots across wood and stone could be heard outside of Tekun's room, thudding frantically. The door was already open from when the King had walked in, allowing a scout to enter more easily.
He was panting slightly, having ran as fast as he could through the castle, trying to find the King. Tryndamere's attention was already captured by the scout's sudden appearance, as he was not quiet about it whatsoever.
"King Tryndamere! The Queen, she's gone missing sir."
Tryndamere's face went from one of surprise at his initial appearance, to one nearly foreign to the King, although he felt its weight grip around his heart: fear.
But as all fear does to the Barbarian King... it turned to anger.
Tryndamere raised himself from his seat, his steely blue eyes fixed on the scout.
"What happened?"
"We- we..."
Before the scout could respond, the King had walked to the entrance of the room, and his muscled grasp fastened around the scout's shirt, raised a good few inches off of the floor, his back loudly slamming into the wall.
Ashe felt the movement in this sea of black, the rough rocking and bumping against rocks and waves. When she was placed down, all she could feel was the gentle shimmer of an icy ocean, a world where pain was not an option but serenity and peace. Yet she knew that it was a dream void of meaning, somewhere deep down where her demons rattled their cages, a peace like this only appeared in fantasy.
With that, she was swept back into reality as the melted frost splattered harshly on her face. She squeezed her eyes shut before cracking them open - the coolness of the ice did not bother her, but the rude awakening forced a slight gasp from her mouth. She coughed as the moisture seeped into her mouth, thankful at least that her arm was once again too numb to feel the pain inflicted upon her. Her head was throbbing, most likely from Aatrox's blow but if it was between that and her shoulder, she largely preferred the minor headache.
But before Ashe could consider her whereabouts, she felt cold, rough fingers around her face and her attention was wrenched forward. Staring at the face of the Darkin who had, in essence, kidnapped her, the Archer had to exercise some restraint to stop herself from letting out another insult. What stopped her was the sight of the wicked blade, ridged with sharp spikes and when it neared her neck, Ashe all but held her breath. It seemed to pulsate with a need for blood and so it drank against the thin slice across her pale skin.
When Aatrox released her and moved away, Ashe sighed in relief. Her uninjured arm came up to wipe the frost from her face before rubbing her damp fingers against the wound on her neck tenderly. It stung but again, it was nothing. Pain was only a figment of the imagination. She decided to ignore the Darkin entirely, instead focusing on what he had said moments earlier. "Blood..." The mutter was soft, but it seemed to resound in her ears and the splashes of crimson against white was beginning to distract her. "How quaint." She glanced up, her brow furrowed.
Why would Aatrox taint the barrels? Unless his goal was to start a full scale war between her and Sejuani, which didn't surprise her at all. The tension was there and there were plenty of opportunities to place the blame. Especially when Sejuani was so hard headed. Perhaps his goal was to accuse the Winter's Claw for her disappearance? Even they were not so dense enough to try such a stunt and Aatrox was a fool to believe otherwise if that was his plan. Sejuani would never allow herself to be caught in such a cowardly act, after all.
Post by The Barbarian King on Aug 30, 2013 7:58:34 GMT -5
Tryndamere was furious, perhaps even more so than when he was fighting the Void. The sleeping beast that was his Rage had been rudely woken from its slumber, and it was not happy.
He let go of his grip around the scout's collar, his back sliding down against the wall where he left a slight indent. His eyes were still on the scout, whom he was now looming over, barely restrained enough to not be punching the answers out of him.
The blow to the scout's back winded him for a few moments before he could string together a coherent sentence, but as he looked up at the Barbarian King's terrible, rage-back lit visage, he felt like a small child before an angry ursine.
"A scout came running back to Rakelstake, out of breath; her hands frostbitten from holding Queen Ashe's bow in her cloak. She reported a struggle, and a trail left in the snow. Blood was found, but whose is unknown. The trail extends north..."
All of this was too much for Tryndamere to take-in at once, as he found his fist clenching more tightly by the second, the aura of rage around him increasing in heat, like a piece of metal being heated within the burning belly of a forge.
She was taken... from right under our noses!
This is what the King was thinking at that moment, how the Avarosan tribe could not even keep their own Queen from being stolen on a whim. Tryndamere would not have it, and whoever took her would not live to see another day if he had it his way.
The terrible, wrathful eyes of the King turned towards Tekun, and but for a moment, Tekun felt like he was being stared down by an angered beast rather than a man.
Then, Tryndamere turned to walk out the door... at first. Tekun would have to follow the King then and there, because the Barbarian King was not stopping, for anything or anyone, save the Queen. Soon he was running like a madman, slamming open the doors to the great hall of Rakelstake, running to the stables.
Whoever tried to reason or stop him found themselves trampled or thrown to the side.
Tryndamere rode hard out of the stables, mounted on top of a beautiful brown horse with black legs and a wild midnight mane. The guards could see him coming, and without a second thought, they opened the gates for their King, who rode out into the snowy plane before his home, following the easily discernible tracks of snow left by the scout who brought Ashe's bow.
Tryndamere would have to thank her later.
Tryndamere kept on riding, pushing his horse as fast as it would go until they came upon the sight of the struggle. Tryndamere pulled on the reigns, inspecting the tossed snow. The scout was right, there was a struggle here. His eyes darted to the side, where he could see a new trail extending farther north from where Ashe fought.
He kicked the sides of his horse, and hooves thundered through the snow, the brown animal racing through the vast white land.
Tryndamere had no idea who or what he would be facing, nor did he care. His Queen was threatened, and right now, the only thing on his mind was her.
Post by The Darkin Blade on Aug 30, 2013 11:52:01 GMT -5
The Darkin was silent as Ashe asked her question. "Well...the Avarosa will almost certainly find someone to replace you. Sheep without a shepherd certainly go awry, and the Barbarian can certainly not lead on his own." He finished his work, stepping back to admire the splatter of blood. "So, your majesty, I can hear the rescue...team..."
He paused, his victorious smirk fading away to a look of confusion. He listened intently, trying to discern the sounds coming from the trail he'd left. After a minute, his smirk came back in full force, extending into a grin filled with his sharp teeth. "Oh. This is even better...my opus is coming for you." He paced out into the middle of the clearing. "I suppose the normal plans must be put on hold...this is something far more important." He was quite eager to see how much Tryndamere had progressed since they last had met, and whether he'd fully learned to use his rage just yet.
Ashe responded with a simple smile. Nothing genuine, nothing certain, nothing sudden. Just a curve of plain, pale lips dotted with blood. She inclined her head to the answer at first, pondering such a notion. The Avarosan looked to blood - not because blood meant you were entitled to leadership, but because blood meant they could hold onto the one thing that symbolized their tribe - quite literally. There was no point in holding onto something that could not be used, especially if such a thing was so capable of bringing together people in peace.
But her thoughts were lost; broken as the snow trembled beneath her and strangely enough, Ashe was now quite aware of the wetness that soaked through her cloak and clothes. She pulled herself upright, daring not to stand yet daring to hold her head a little higher. She wondered how she looked. Not for aesthetic reasons. She wondered if she looked weak. Save for the miniscule cut against her neck, Ashe seemed unharmed. There was a bruised lump on her head, invisible, and the pain she would feel later in her arm would also not be noticeable. But her face was ghostly, almost as if she verged on the edge of a frozen fate.
Ashe turned her gaze away, towards the noise. Though the Archer may have seemed weak, down on her knees and ready to beg, her eyes remained focused and resolute. Bright blue and burning, they provided a stark contrast to her otherwise hesitant frame. "You are not the only one," she said quietly, more for herself than anything else. It must have been the scouts and once more, she found herself thanking them for not shirking their duties. It was her carelessness that got her in this situation...
"Opus?" She frowned. But the Darkin's attack had not affected her ability to piece two and two together. Her eyes widened briefly, her body twitching almost as if wanting to jolt up. Not in happiness or relief, but in surprise. In fear. Ashe had seen Tryndamere's rage first-hand and though she knew not the extent of his anger at this moment, the thundering hooves of the beast he rode seemed to be enough. She did not fear for her own safety but for his. Aatrox was... dangerous, and however powerful the King was, could he hope to match his creator?
Her good hand grasped at the tree behind her, the bark rough and irritating as she scraped at it with her nails before she managed to heft herself up. Ashe stood with her fingers gripping at the trunk like a lifeline. Her legs were stiff from the snow and lack of blood circulation and her knees were shaking. She took a deep breath, her breath chilling in the air as she remained still. Her eyes were not on the Darkin, but on the steadily approaching figure.
Post by The Barbarian King on Aug 30, 2013 15:59:51 GMT -5
He was close now. The tracks were becoming fresher, but he only rode harder.
The breath of the beast beneath Tryndamere could be seen like clouds in the air.
He was nearing her now, and whoever the unfortunate bastard who stole her was.
As the horse got closer and closer, Tryndamere could finally see the two distinctly. Ashe, laying next to a tree, and... and...
Him.
There before the Barbarian King was the damned creature that cut down his entire tribe before his eyes so long ago. It was because of him that he was the man he was today... and he hated his involvement.
If the King's enraged aura was not present before, it certainly was now, as even the horse he rode upon was now not only driven because he was commanded to; it was driven through sheer fear of whatever he was carrying on his back.
Tryndamere rose from the saddle, lifting his feet onto it, taking a crouched position.
Using the momentum of the horse, Tryndamere lept forward, unsheathing his two-handed sword and swinging towards the Darkin Blade like a hurricane of steel, the horse bolting past him.
"AATROX!"
Inevitably Aatrox would block this horizontal spinning blow, but the sheer force of the impact of Tryndamere's sword against his would surely stagger him. Tryndamere's wrath was overflowing at this point, his anger so hot that it melted the very snow around them.
Even if he made it out alive, Aatrox would go through hell and back before the King was done with him.
Post by Tekun Valos on Aug 30, 2013 17:06:32 GMT -5
It would be reckless to let Tryndamere go out on his own like this, especially if Ashe was in trouble. He moved back into room and quickly geared up and raced after him. Grasping his radio he sent out a distress call. “This is Commander Valos, any and all active Preservers be aware we have a very dire situation on our hands. I need a search party and five well trained men to rendezvous at the stables. Ashe is missing.” He wasn’t afraid to use everything at his disposal to save her.
Tryndamere had pressed his horse and the guards weren’t willing to argue about the loss of a few additional horses considering the circumstances. Tekun and five of his Preservers raced after the Barbarian King and arrived not long after Tryndamere has shouted his adversaries’ name. Aatrox. However, he was certain Ashe was further back. Tekun dismounted immediately as did his men.
“I don’t know who he is but treat him like a Void Elite. No quarter for the enemy and expect anything.” Tekun drew his bastard sword as his men drew their gun blades. So long as they saved Ashe, that was what mattered in the end.
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