Devil's Luck [Open]

[Delphi]

The road to Arcadia had been pretty bumpy so far for Delphi. She still wasn't sure if those skeleton men gave up on chasing her after the girl ditched them ten miles ago. And there was that terrible charge of Tarvos earlier...wonder what they were running from? "Or after." she mumbled to herself. Whatever it was gave the wind a powerful magical tingly feeling. Best to just keep going up the road 'till it was gone. Delphi wondered what her family was up to, as she walked down the dirt road. It had been a couple days of walking and the soles of her feet were nearly covered with blisters. The gauze she had packed was all but used up after she covered up her hands and feet. Now she really wished for a pair of those clunky brown shoes humans wore. Even as a taguel all four of her feet would still ache from the incredibly soft pads she had. Delphi decided to try and push the thoughts from her mind as she kept walking. Only problem was there was nothing to do but think! She had tried reading and walking at the same time but that was how she managed to veer off the path into a group of skeletons in the first place.

Still nothing of interest, or really anything at all in any direction that she could see in. Well, she could just barely see something black on the horizon; looked like a row of teeth. She fished around in her pack and pulled out a crumpled up map. The teeth were the mountains of Arcadia! Delphi was getting close now; another day or two and she'd be just at the base of them. If only the sun wasn't setting so quickly. The day before Delphi had managed to slip into an abandoned rabbit warren as it was turning night; no such luck tonight. I'll cross that bridge when I get there, Delphi thought to herself as she kept wal-- "Oof!!" sorry I mean tripped over on her face. "I'm getting pretty tired." she sighed as she picked herself up. The obstacle that made her trip was none other than Old Pile of Bones McGee himself. Must have been out quite a while to have rotted away like that and leave no smell. "How did I miss this?" she squatted down and took a look at the corpse. No visible cause of death, clothes were somewhat intact, faint hint of...magic. Delphi jumped back a couple of yards feet as the bones re-assembled in a swirling mess. Almost in unison more and more bones around the area started reanimating. Whatever put them down didn't do a very good job out of it, apparently! It wasn't like there was anyone around, but one taguel against seven skeletons wasn't a very fair match.

There wasn't anyone around so there was no point in crying for help, right? Delphi grabbed the stone dangling from her necklace and yanked it off, feeling the gentle pulse of the magic inside start to wash over her. Muscles and sinew tightened, and the patches of fur quickly covered her body. In a matter of seconds she was a fierce-looking wild beast, minus the bandages on her paws. Right as her transformation completed, the skeletons' did as well. They were moving in pretty fast for a bunch of shambling bones. The cat could leap right over them but she'd have to outrun them again and her stamina was a still drained from earlier. So she went for the best alternative: Delphi got a running start and with a little too much flair turned around mid-jump and toppled one of the skeletons by the chest. It didn't do all that much but it gave her some maneuvering room as she jumped out of the advancing circle.

[Kemti]

Kemti hummed to herself as she tried to balance, tip-toed on the crack running down the road. She had been using the fences but they had disappeared a while ago, leaving her bored once again. At times she found herself wondering what other people did when they traveled alone. She sighed and began a different song, dancing a little as she made her way down the road. Traveling alone was really boring, especially since she longed to talk with someone. There was no one around to sate her curiosity and felt as if she'd burst if she didn't talk soon. She considered changing her look just for fun when she looked up to find bonewalkers attacking someone up ahead.

"A kitty?" Kemti questioned aloud as she moved closer. She half skipped, half ran to find herself next to Delphi. "Hiya, need some help?" She considered transforming, but settled for punching the nearest one in the face. Which ended in a grimace and her shaking her hand. "I'm Kemti. What's your name?" She wanted to ask several more questions but settled for that one. At least for about five seconds.

"Where are you from? And why are you fighting bonewalkers all alone? What's that on your feet?" Kemti rattled off, somewhat eyeing the bonewalkers. "Where are you going? " A bonewalker swiped at her and she jumped back. Her immediate response was to punch in the face. Which was met with the same end. "Hey, wanna be my friend? If I save you that makes us friends, right? That's how humans do it." She did a hand stand and grabbed the bonewalkers face with her legs. There was a quick movement and a snap, and then she was on her feet again before gravity could take full effect on her dress. "Well that's one down. Only..." She stopped to count them for a moment but couldn't get past three. "A few left." Kemti smiled at the kitty, excited she'd found someone to talk to.

[Delphi]

The arrival of the...fox...girl...person suddenly shifted the battle into her favor. Two taguel against skeletons was just child's play. Now, if only they something to burn the corpses with, she wouldn't want to spend all afternoon breaking bones. Especially since some of the skeletons, despite being manufactured, had some bits and chunks of things she really didn't want to describe still clinging to them. The stench hit her like a metal fist in her beast form, while it would've only been a nuisance as an unshifted Taguel. The skeleton she had previously floored started to pick itself up, while the others that weren't incapacitated charged forward from their moment of hesitation. How was it possible that a non-living object could feel emotions, especially one so complicated like uncertainty? Maybe it had something to do with the magic that they were infused with at birth."I'm Delphi, it's a real pleasure!" she shouted back in her gutteral animal voice. "Help would be--" she paused to disarm a lance wielding skeleton getting dangerously close. "--real great right now!!" The scariest thing about them apart from the rotten chunks was the fact that their skulls never moved or showed any sign of emotion. That was what really made sentient beings special, being able to convey things like emotion. They did have eyes, in a way. A blue-violet colored ball of light sat in each eyeball socket of the skeletons. When the light went out after Delphi beat the first one, that must've meant it was incapacitated in a way.

"I'll be your friend if you help me kill these things, sure!" she replied in a matter-of-fact voice. Her name was Kemti, right? She looked more like a dancer than a taguel, but she'd really settle for anything at the minute. "Can you try to disassemble them? It'll give us some time before they reform, if they even can." Delphi shouted over the click-clack of the bones. That scissorkick Kemti did was a sight to behold, almost that she didn't notice the rest of the battle. She'd never seen a taguel do something like that, even if they were the most agile on foot of the races on Elibe. While she didn't really look like a taguel, more like a human, Kemti did have the smell of a fox taguel. An arrow sailed over her head, barely clearing her ears. As she turned around, the skeleton quickly fit another arrow to the bow it carried and fumbled the bowstring trying to get a good grip on it. It would never get the chance to fire as the girl tackled the flailing corpse and relieved it of its limbs and head, kicking them in different directions. "That's two down!" She said as she sprang back to the fox girl. Delphi could easily protect herself with that ability she had, but Kemti didn't really strike her as the type to get stricken.

[Kemti]

"Really?" Kemti almost squeaked, excited that she had found a friend. So excited that she almost transformed, but instead danced aside as one of the walkers attempted to impale her. She was still skittish at the thought of transforming in front of other taguel, even with all her pride and talk of the change  being fine. "It's really nice to meet you Delphi! I'm sure we'll be great friends." She grabbed the lance and arm attached to it and pulled, putting her foot on it's chest and trying to keep the other arm away. Kemti didn't quite understand all the words her new friend had used. She remembered hearing pleezure before, and she thought it meant something good. But she didn't know what disamble meant. 

"Of course I can disamble them," Kemti said over the cracking of the arm she was trying to pull off. It seemed a lot harder than she remembered, but then again she didn't usually have someone to talk to when she fought. There was snap as the arm and lance came off, causing Kemti and her assailant to stumble away from each other. She tossed them aside after catching her balance and found Delphi jumping back from pulling another apart.

"Wow, you're good," Kemti said, looking at the pile of archer. Maybe she should transform. She shook her head and dashed forward, kicking the head off the bonewalker from before. It bounced off somewhere as she jumped back to Delphi. "Three!" She said excitedly, grinning. She was having a great time, especially since she had a new friend. "This is fun,I hope we're friends forever!"

[Delphi]

"Hey, is that-ergng--what other taguel look li--eenught--like?" Delphi gibbered at the other girl's transformation in-between breaking a flimsy spear in two with her teeth. The spearhead came off with a snap of wood, splinters flying everywhere. The skeleton slashed at Delphi with the rest of the broken weapon anyway, bonking her on the head and stunning her. The feline cringed and flattened her ears as the skeleton whaled at her; Kemti was a little too pre-occupied with the others to lend a hand-paw thing unfortunately. Every blow made her a little angrier, and when the monster tried to snap at her neck with its rotting teeth the last straw fell. It wasn't really how Delphi planned to do it, but it still worked out to her advantage anyway. You couldn't tell under her fur, but she could feel veins pop. The taguel could feel the adrenaline rush, but what she couldn't feel was anything else at all. With a hiss she tackled the skeleton and tore its thrashing arms off, and pressed a paw through its skull while it kicked at her soft underbelly; if an animate-inanimate object could feel confusion, that was probably the last thought that passed through its artificial mind as its eye sockets' soft purple glow faded away.

"CAN'T HEAR YOU NOW SORRY" she yelled to the fox girl, if she had even said anything at all. With all the blood pumping in her head she could hear things about as well as if she was listening to them from below water. An arrow lodged in her back, but it was given no notice as another arrow grazed the top of her head and clattered on the ground. The archers dropped their bows and unsheathed swords, clearly not wanting to have any of her antics. She sweeped the first one's legs, but its sword did not fall to the ground along with it. These things had deathgrips on their weapons, for goodness sakes. A snap and a rip and a crush, and bones one was down. The other one had been lacerating her backside the entire time, but it went down just the same as the other archer. There were three left last she checked counting the four that were now piles of dust, but Delphi had forgotten about Kemti in her rage adrenaline rush.

[Kemti]

"Wh-art?" Kemti questioned, and immediately got her answer. She had been so excited she had transformed after all. Which frustrated her, she hated transforming when she didn't want to, especially against bonewalkers. It was just like that time she had been startled into showing her ears and tail in the middle of a crowd. 

"O-of course silly, lots of taguel look like this," Kemti said a little jumbled. She immediately glared at the nearest bonewalker and punched it in the face. This time it didn't hurt, and she watched as it hit the ground and fell to pieces. She waited a few moments to make sure it was down and then, with a grin, turned toward Delphi. Kemti only had a moment to react before one of the last of the walkers brought his sword to her face. She lightly stepped back, narrowly avoiding it. A small cut opened across her cheek. Fury lit up her eyes.

"STUPID BONEWALKERS!" Kemti bark-roared somewhat incomprehensibly just as Delphi yelled something. She immediately jumped onto the bonewalker and and began scratching and clawing as it lost its balance. Bones snapped and popped as they fell and one final crash and rattle of bones as they hit the ground. Its eyes went dark as Kemti got to her feet to search for Delphi. A quick look in the direction she had left her new friend left a sight to behold. The ground near her friend was littered in bones and Delphi her self looked even worse. Blood matted her fur and she seemed to not be aware of it. And then Kemti saw the last bonewalker.

"Delphi!" Kemti yelled. Her form blurred and for a moment seemed to disappear entirely. And then suddenly she was there beside her friend, and the bonewalker was flying away from where her fist had found its chest. Kemti was immediately covered in light that was then sucked in toward her wrist.

"Hey are you ok?" Kemti asked as she skip-walked over to her friend. She was now just the red-haired girl again, concern coloring her face. She didn't want her new friend to die. "Hello? Delphi? Kitty?" Blood trickled from the cut on her face. "You're kinda bleeding."

[Delphi]

The bonewalker sailed past the bleeding kitty and impaled itself on the only tree for miles around, turning to dust after its ribs cracked beyond repair. The one thing that didn't really work out for her after going "berserk" as her brothers liked to call it, was she felt insanely tired less than an hour afterwards. And hungry. She'd never actually fought beyond horsing around before, and certainly never bled like that before. The hairy form Kemti had been looking at shrank back into a young girl, small curled up in the fetal position. She picked herself off the ground and gingerly felt at the shafts sticking into her body in places they definitely should not have been stuck in.


The lack of feeling in her bones was slowly being replaced with numbness and a sense of blood. She wouldn't realize until much later that day, but the arrows were barb-shaped. Needless to say Delphi immediately regretted pulling them out. It was kind of like ripping off a bandage made of fishhooks. The taguel said nothing but growled and grimaced as she wrapped pulse-cutting amounts of cloth around her calve, arm, and shoulder. She could only use medicinal paste on her side; wrapping the whole bandage around her waist was too, well, waistful. Other cuts didn't really matter--well, they hurt like hell. But they were too shallow to worry about. Best she could do was not sleep in a tree if she even found one large enough. The bed of a guild sounded really good right now, as she gave a huge yawn in Kemti's face.

"Oh, sorry," Delphi gave a slight shrug and yawned again. The worst part was she had a bad habit of poor mouth hygiene. Even if it did come part and parcel with being a taguel. "I'm alright, just a bit sleepy... Did you get hurt, Kemti?"

[John]

John's hair was bristling. He could sense danger near by, but could not see it. Normally he would avoid this kind of situation, but he could smell something. It sort of smelled like him, but at the same time did not. He simply had to know what it was. In fact, he felt that it was his duty to figure out what that smell was. As he neared the top of the hill the sent became three scents, two unknown, one of monsters. He reached the top of the hill and saw the sources. Scattered parts of bone walkers were strewn about and two humans- no taguel. One was a fox taguel and the other was a... Something. John had never seen one before.

John hurried down the hill, taking in the carnage. As he got closer to them he sniffed each one, taking in their sent and putting them to memory. He then stepped back a little and after a short pause spoke in a friendly voice. "Well, looks like i missed all the fun. You OK? Are there more?" His instinct was still was going off, but it could be from the broken bone walkers.

[Kemti]

"Of course silly, it's just a scratch," Kemti said as her friend patched up. "Though you definitely look like you could use some sleep." The blood didn't bother her, but she did grimace when her new friend pulled the arrows out. "So where to now? More fighting? The giant city? Oh, I know, we could go adven-turing! Or we could go danc-" Kemti yipped and jumped behind Delphi as a wolf taguel came out of no where. She had missed his smell in all the excitement, but any anger she might of had because of it was lost in her need to survive.

"What wants?" Kemti spoke in a shaky voice, seeming to forget how to be literate. Her ears twitched, having appeared along with her tail at the sudden intrusion. Her wide eyes searched for others. Wolves always came in packs and few were friendly. "Delphi, we leave," she said tugging on her friend's shirt. The wolf came close and she had to keep herself from punching it in the face as he sniffed her. "Dead. Go away," she answered him, looking to see which way was the best to leave.

[Jinko]

She had first caught the scent of magic in the air. Thick and swirling around into multiples. A sign of monsters about. She had moved forward to locate them. Another sniff at the air, another caught scent. This one of a feline taguel. She started to move faster. Another scent, a fox this time. By the time she'd gotten there, the battle was over, she could tell that much from a distance. A wolf now came by as well, though this seemed to agitate the vulpine female.

Jinko casually walked along now, not really bothering with haste since the monsters were dealt with. She'd kept her hood lowered as well, though the cloak was still wrapped around her shoulders. As she began to crest the hill, the Tigress looked down at the former monsters.

"I see arrived a bit late. Good job." She nodded to the feline and fox. "Certainly saved me some time."

[Delphi]

Now she had a full-sized group on her hands. Where were those two miles ago when she originally needed them? Even though she was agile like she was it was still painful to run that fast for so long. What was that old saying? "Devil's luck." She recalled her father using that in place of several other curses, and nearly mimicked his gruff tone out loud in front of her guests. "Not fun, that was not fun at all." She looked to the wolf with a half-hearted challenge in her eyes. Sure, she was quick to jump to conclusions, but no one likes a blood knight. She didn't give the other one more than a glance. She had a surly but clearly feminine tone in her voice, and she could faintly smell feline coming from underneath the cloak. "Not looking for a challenge. Just trying to get to Arcadia in one piece." It suddenly occurred to her that Arcadia might not accept the standardized currency of Western Elibe that she carried. This wasn't true, but she didn't know any better and didn't want to get into trouble with the practically near-useless police force. They were more like the brutality brigade, if a criminal wasn't dead by the time they came to the stocks, they'd die of their wounds.

"This is the right way to Arcadia right? I didn't come all this way to turn into target practice and find out I'm going the wrong way." Those mountains off in the distance? Those could be any mountains! How could she know what the Arcadian Rim looked like? She tightened the bindings on her shoulder, they just didn't want to stick in place for some reason. "What are you two here for anyway?"

[John]

Much to John's surprise the fox taguel sprouted a tail and ears when he drew near. She asked what he wanted and hid behind the other taguel, which was apparently a "Delphi". He had never hear of such a creature before. She was looking around for something and John looked too, and saw a new hooded arrival coming behind the group. The Delphi answered him in a gruff voice, but also seemed to be issuing a challenge to him. He was about to size the Delphi up when it dawned on him that he was intimidating the Fox. "My apology." He said to the fox and turned a walked a few paces away. To others it might have looked like he was giving the fox space, but he really was just separating himself from an unneeded fight.

He turned and faced the group, the hooded- tigress- had addressed them. He smiled as the scent registered. "So we met again" he thought. He called over to the group in a friendly tone. "I was just making sure you were fine. I meant and mean no harm."

[Jinko]

"Not fun, that was not fun at all."

Jinko chuckled at these words. And while she did smell of feline like Delphi, there was also something off about her scent. Something that was hard to place, but definitely off. The tigress looked over to the wolf as she heard his voice, recognizing him after a moment. "Ah, that wolf from the north."

"This is the right way to Arcadia right? I didn't come all this way to turn into target practice and find out I'm going the wrong way."

Jinko turned her head back towards Delphi after she spoke up again, nodding after the question was asked. "Quite. You're heading the correct way if that is your goal."

"What are you two here for anyway?"

"Exterminating some monsters in the local area. I'd finished up with some just before I caught the scent of more and made my way over here. You had finished them by the time I got here, though." Jinko shrugged, or would if she cared to. "Though I am curious what takes you to Arcadia. Most of our kind don't care for it." This time she did care enough to give a shrug, cloak rustling as her shoulders moved.

[Kemti]

"Of course it was fun, silly," Kemti said, ears and tail vanishing as she popped out from behind Delphi. Another kitty had appeared and the wolf had backed off, allowing her to continue as normal. "Hiya, I'm Kemti." She said with a giant smile, shaking the wolf's hand. She had seen many humans shake hands before and it seemed appropriate. And then she turned on her heel and did the same to the cat. "This is Delphi, my best-est friend." She then stepped back and looked around. Nope, no more bonewalkers. She turned back to the group.

"I'm going to kill a Bael," Kemti said fiercely when Jinko questioned. "There are guilds in Arkada that fight them all the time." She nodded knowingly as if she had been there before. "Plus, it is made of gold." She tilted her head and frowned. "Why wouldn't we wanna go there?" She shrugged at the thought. Now there was one question she didn't care an answer for; nothing would get in her way to kill a bael. 

[John]

So the group was heading to Arcadia. The fox seemed to have calmed and even shock his hand with a smile. She also addressed Delphi as a name this time. While that made more sense, it also put Delphi's species unnamed. Kemti then proclaimed something of interest.

"I'm going to kill a Bael,"

John's ears perked up. A Bael? He had never seen a live one before, But he had stories about them. The were huge spiders with venom that could melt steel and an attitude to match. He mulled over this in his head. He could not see this girl who was intimated by him killing one.

"Are you sure you know what a Bael even is?"

John kept his ground and continued to listen in.