Hi guys, sorry for disappearing! I'm back now. I'll have to catch up on all the latest news soon.

POST, PEOPLE!

Nygrune~

I finish the spell I've been casting on the medical tent--protection
from flame, this one--and turn to survey the battlefield. A girl runs
past me, waving a battleaxe and screaming her head off. I grab my shield
and satchel and break into an easy lope, following her at a distance.

I spot an untamed fire and pull it through the air to me, hastily shape
it and hurl it off in the direction of the enemy. I don't wait to see if
it hits. That's how you get yourself killed.

The girl has stopped running, having been surrounded. She swings her axe
twice, both hits, and takes a sword slash from behind. I watch her turn
and slay the swordman with one swipe. I stop. The swordman falls to the
ground. The girl stares, swings her axe blindly in a full circle around
her. An unlucky soldier gets it in the stomach. I tear my eyes away. 

I see Catastrophe.

He is in the air. He doesn't look interested in me. I fall on one knee and pull a seed from a pouch on my belt.

"Hey! Are you okay?" I hear. A girl, wielding twin daggers. I wave her over.

"Fine. Cover me?"

She nods and applies herself to the task. I start to draw in the dirt,
praying that memory serves. Sprinkling ingredients over the marks, I
glance up. Someone in black and red is aiming a bow at us. I open my
mouth, but it's too late. The arrow hits the girl in the shoulder. She
screams.

I have dozens of healing spells prepared.

"Get down!" I shout, grabbing her arm. She screams again. Wrong arm. But
she falls, and I cover us both with my shield, holding it with one hand
and rummaging through my satchel with the other. Aha!

I grab the spell--camouflage for five minutes--and toss it out, where it
bursts on my shield, then look over at the girl. She seems to have
passed out. That's good; what I'm about to do is going to hurt a lot. 

I roll her half over so she's on her side, leaning against my shield.
Oof, that's heavy. The arrowhead glistens bloody, having punched
straight through the poor girl's shoulder. I grit my teeth and look
through my pack again. Healing spell, that can come out... Saw blade,
here. It takes several seconds longer than I would have liked, but I cut
halfway through the arrow shaft and snap off the head, then take a deep
breath for the next part.

Rolling the girl back over, I take hold of the arrow shaft and give it a
tug. Ugh, that's too much blood for my liking. I pull some more, then a
little more, and dear Claaws, how long is this arrow? But finally it's
out, and I apply the healing spell. It's weak. The wound doesn't even
close entirely, but it stops bleeding. And she wakes up.

"Don't move. I have to bandage this." She complies. The spell on my shield fizzles out.

"No! Blast..."

"What?" She sounds worried. I shake my head.

"Nothing, it's just they can see us now." 

"Oh." Now she's puzzled. I leave her to her puzzle and dig scissors and a
bandage out of my bag. Cut the fabric, bandage the wound, the bandage
has already been soaked in herb water. Lycaella packed me everything. I
bet there's even a lunch in here.

"Done. Don't use that arm if you can avoid it, and get to the medical
tent if it starts bleeding again." I help her up. She raises a dagger at
me with her good arm. I duck sideways. She stabs past me--oh. An enemy.
I look away as they fall and she stabs again, and again. As she
searches them.

I look down instead, at my half-finished spell. It's smudged, and
there's blood on it from the girl's shoulder. I wonder what that will do
to it. Probably something bad. I scuff my boot over it, rub it away,
take a few steps to the side, and start over.

~And this is getting really long, how did I even write that much?
Anyway. Lycaella is back in New Windswood for her mom's visit. I'm
guessing it's around September 24th when this battle takes place, so
she's early, but she's also going to be scouting around. Reconnaissance,
mostly.

Lycaella~

I spot a deer trail leading of the path, and decide
to take it. I'm about a mile and a half from home, in Great Forest. I'm
scouting, but I'm also looking for interesting things to trade or make
art out of. There's not much to see in the way of enemies, and I'm using
a spell to help with the looking, so I think this forest is safe for the moment. 

I lose the trail, but keep going, and after a while I come to something that looks like... a wall of vines? This couldn't have happened on its own, but it also looks wild, overgrown, like someone made it and then forgot about it. I walk slowly along it, following the leaves and stems of wild grape, pole bean, snow pea and Virginia creeper. It continues in a rough circle, wide enough to hold my entire house and yet invisible if you didn't look closely. It's well off the path, too. Whoever made this didn't want it to be found.

Towards the end, I find a gap easily large enough to pass through, although the vine tendrils nearly obscure it. There's deer leavings here, too; they must eat the vines or something inside the ring. I step through.

Trees. Fruit trees, and nut trees, and a little hut swamped with more vines and plants, and a surprising amount of sun. And deer. I've startled them, and they stand perfectly still under the trees, and one pokes its head out from inside the hut and freezes. I slowly shrug my backpack off and fumble for my Cypher, but the deer spook and run to a spot mostly obscured by the trees near the other end of the clearing, and soon there comes the sound of their fleeing through the woods. There must be another exit there.

I pull my pack back on and wander around the hidden clearing, which I'm now certain was once occupied but is now abandoned. The fruit trees are still bearing, although the lower branches have been picked clean, and I climb the tallest one for the fun of it. I look out from the top, a bird's-eye view of the clearing and the woods beyond. I don't see the path, but I see the way I came from.

Looking down, I notice a dull shine of something on the roof of the hut. It must be heavy or wedged in to not be in a magpie's nest by now. I pull an apple from its twig and climb down.

Munching on the apple, I swing my backpack off as I walk to the hut and set it down on the ground, carefully avoiding deer droppings. It looks like I could get onto the roof pretty easily, but I don't know if it will hold me...

I circle the hut and duck inside--it's dark, of course, though a partially overgrown window lets in enough light to see the remains of furniture and essentials of living sit among dirt, plant shoots and old shed deer hair. The stone supports look sound enough, so I go back out and begin my ascent.

Rocks, plants, did that use to be a melon? Whoever lived here apparently really liked gardening. And there it is; a shine of old... something. It looks like metal, but there's no rust... Maybe an alloy, or glazed, like ceramic. Is glazed metal a thing? I don't know. The color is fairly plain, but also hard to pin down, like tree bark, or the color in between where orange sky changes to blue.

It does seem to be partially buried, with scratches around the edges, probably from the suspected magpies. Dirty, too, but that's to be expected. There's about four or five square inches exposed. I look closer. There are thinly traced, colored markings just below the surface, like drawings, or runes... I think this might be a spell. A lot of spells are physical objects, or integrated with them. It's probably best not to disturb it.

I climb down and grab my sketchbook and a pencil from my backpack, then go back and spend a while carefully copying the symbols and patterns. I brush away dirt with a fistful of grass to see better, absentmindedly noting the presence of grass in addition to food plants, and continue.

It takes a long time, long enough for a cramp to start to develop in my back and for my shadow to shift visibly. A cool, gentle breeze blows unobtrusively in, just enough to play with the loose ends of my hair. I'm nearly finished, so I look up and there's the cramp, ow, ow ow ow, okay, back to work and here, and that, yes, no, erase, there, yes, and done.

I stand up and stretch, banishing the cramp. It's really been a while, hours even. I climb back down, take one final look around, pick up a few pretty stones from what probably used to be a collection, and leave the old clearing.

I finish my scouting as quickly as I can and head home with the sinking sun throwing my shadow in front of me and my stomach grumbling for more than an apple. I shove some food in it upon reaching my house and head back out to help repair and rebuild the homes and workplaces that were hit like Laeta's before the sun sets fully. I marvel at how many people are doing the same, and how long ago the attack feels.

Later, I sit up long past nightfall paging through some of Nygrune's spellbooks, the ones he didn't take with him, trying to find the mysterious object from the clearing. It's not there, although I do find a few of the symbols. I get the feeling that the spell, whatever it is, is very obscure and complex. I fall asleep without meaning to and wake up late the next morning.

Nygrune~

I finish the spell with a splash of focused energy. The ground cracks
and moves like something under the surface waking up. The soil crumbles,
and I pull the simple, unstrung longbow out of the earth. 

"Whoa, where did that come from?" the girl asks.

"I made it. Magic. Took a lot of my ingredients..." I dig around a
little and find the set of arrows. Stringing the bow, I stand, nock one
and spin around to shoot the cause of another scream from the girl.

She's down for good this time, a hatchet stuck deep in her chest. I
fire--a kill, it was nearly point blank, and both the bow and the arrows
are enchanted--grab my shield, check her vital signs. Already gone. I
push aside the swirling rush of emotion, pull a pebble from another belt
pouch and place it on her body. A small golden flash indicates that the
spell has taken effect. No enemy will be able to touch her. Pity it
only works on the dead.

I've dropped the bow. I pick it up now, pushing the shield all the way
onto my forearm so my hand is free. I'm carrying a lot now... The bow
will be useless once I use all the arrows, though, so now I just have to
spend them. Preferably on Catastrophe. I look up, but he's gone.
Invisible, or somewhere else. 

I curse under my breath and start shooting at some of the closer
enemies. Another arrow from the enemy sniper takes out someone to my
left, and I decide that's my new target. As soon as I use these arrows,
can't let good magic go to waste...

And finally they're gone, six arrows to six enemies, all hits thanks to
the magic. I unstring the bow, drop it, putting my back to a tree and my
shield in front of me as I wind up the string and stow it away. String
is always useful.

Another arrow whistles past, another scream. And now the emotion
returns, in a flood. I let it engulf me. She was alive, she asked me a question and
now she's dead and they killed her and I killed them, they didn't even
have a weapon, death and death so close. She could've become a friend.
They both probably had friends. Blood. The blood. I was the cause of
some of that blood. I was the cause of blood and screams and death.

I lean over and vomit.

When the rush finally subsides enough to allow it, I straighten up and
resume some semblance of calm. I somehow avoided getting sick on my
shield or my bag, although there's a few spots on my boots. I rub them
off on the ground and go to inspect the person who once used a hatchet.

Bile threatens to rise again, but I force it down. I turn away without
searching the body and slowly, silently walk several yards away through
the dark forest. A distant crashing thump reminds me of the sniper. 

I can use my shield as a weapon, and close quarters will render their
bow useless. I take five to renew the spell on my goggles (night vision,
an easy spell not dissimilar to light, the most basic) and another ten
to cast stealth. Double-check that my ingredients and satchel are well
secured, and I'm off to hunt.

Top! Poke! Nudge! Goop!