sixthiterationlogs | the wild hunt (closed)

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the wild hunt (closed)

WHO: Helen Magnus
WHERE: The village, the forest
WHEN: 25 November - 11 December
OPEN TO: Jo Harvelle, Riza Hawkeye, Helen Magnus, Cougar Alvarez & Mark Watney
WARNINGS: mentions of death, some forensic investigation
STATUS: Ongoing

It had been a while since Helen had been part of a proper investigation but the discovery of Karen's body at the harvest feast along with all the animal deaths that had plagued the village over the past weeks led her to believe that possibly an Abnormal was behind these attacks instead of an animal. Very few animals would leave a body unmolested, truly, and the harvest feast accounted for all the people in their village and ruled out any sort of human involvement.

There were suspicions, naturally. It was only human nature to suspect one another in times of distress and Helen had been alive long enough to know the signs. Being trapped in such a small place, corralled and toyed with, it had an effect upon the population that wasn't entirely positive. She'd felt it too, over time, and even her cooler head didn't always prevail. In this instance, her cursory examination of the body led her to the conclusion that what was behind the attack was neither animal nor human but something different entirely. In this, at least, she'd be in her element.

After some discussion, she'd elected to follow the trail of blood back into the woods in an attempt to track and neutralize the culprit. She was one of the doctors in the village but with Ravi staying behind, should something happen to her he would be able to continue on with her work. Cougar, too, had been a natural choice as a tracker and hunter, as had Riza. Mark had come along as a fellow scientist and Jo, intrepid as she was, rounded out their team.

The lot of them made good pace through the woods and to the southern edge of the canyon, making it in a few days with only some minor weather delay. On the evening of the third day, decisions would need to be made as to how to continue on - Helen's experience was that climbing the canyon meant only frustration. Still, there seemed to be some sort of cave or alcove above them, just deep enough that a creature might reside there. Was that the nest, possibly? It would require a climb, yes, but she felt the five of them were more than capable of that.

"We should have a meeting, I think," she said, calling them all to attention. Helen tipped her head up toward the canyon wall and voiced her suspicions. "I vote we climb. Those depressions in the cliff face might be caves."

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"We could set it on fire, possibly, but there's no telling if it would even burn all the way. It's set back into this rock. Also, we don't know if there's anthracite or anything else that might set the whole cave system ablaze. I would be wary of it if only because I don't know the geology of the whole area."

Helen tapped her chin for a moment, thinking. "We could, however, take this paper research along with us. The computers are useless, without power, but the paper can be read. We could block the entrance of the cave mouth with stones. It doesn't solve if there's an additional entrance behind all of this, no, but we could at least prevent them from getting back out to where we are and perhaps halt their progress? There were some rocks near the front of the cave. If we could push them back here, where it narrows, we might be able to block and seal the entryway."

I look from Cougar to Helen, and then scan the inside of the pod again as I lift a hand to rub absently against the back of my neck.

"Speaking as a scientist, I have to say that the idea of destroying this by fire or otherwise doesn't sit well with me. Personally, I'd like to come back with more supplies, better lighting, and see what more I can learn from it before we damage it or block it off. And I'm not really convinced the people who used this thing would be all that upset to see it go, judging by the dust." I'm also not convinced that the people who used the pod would care if we blocked their view here, seeing as how they somehow are able to deliver packages seemingly out of nowhere.

"We do know one thing with a decent amount of certainty now, and that's that we're probably being watched. Maybe not from here, but I think a lot of us have been wondering for awhile. It's a place to start, at least. It's a heck of a lot more than we've had since we got here. And those papers... Maybe someone back at the village can understand them better."

Jo had remained, almost studiously quiet, through the details of Riza's other world. Some of which she'd known, but not as clearly as it all pieced together in this room, running over the coals of the idea, with the concept of being in it, even while not being in it. Given no one had turned into monsters, even all resources here that they trusted or had to use, lest starving or uncleanliness be the winner, were provided to them.

But that was definitely a tour stop on her travel through the multiverse she could miss. Anything like that.

She's actually a little surprised at Cougar's decree that it should go, and it's odd to find herself among the people not on the vehicle for burning down everything that could be other as fast as possible. But her's, and her kind's, path started with a lot of research. A lot of knowing exactly what they were going after, and why, and who, and how. The secrets of which might start in this very room, dust and forgotten.

(She'd try not to look at the idea this, as much as the ruins
and the feast and the spring, was left for them on purpose.
At least not until she wasn't standing in it.)

Maybe in the time when some of them could return, copy it all down, try to work through the whole of it.

"I have to agree." About the coming back, about taking things with them, about the whole of tapping more of their resources. This with a glance toward Mark, and then Helen, with a small affording tip of her head. She knows she doesn't often agree, or at least not often without caveats and comparisons they don't entirely understand. But this straightforward, she does agree completely. The answers outweighing the risks, the chance at knowledge that could help.

"Back to the tunnels, then?" Jo put out there, as a lent question about direction, if they weren't staying and there were plans to come back here. She didn't move, though she might have any other point, just charged as lead, but given the light of the flames she was throwing on everyone in here, and the papers scattered everywhere, she looked at them, and the room around them all.

Cougar raises an eyebrow at the insistence that it stay ready. He's seen what happens when scientists let their creations go on, seen the remnants of that destruction, but a quick check shows him that he's outnumbered and he's not the talker of the group. He's not going to convince anyone. Best to just take orders, then. He shrugs and nods, thinking that at least the papers might be some help. Maybe if there's some kind of coding or programming, he can bring Jake back out here and he can take a better look at it. "It's dangerous, leaving it," is all he warns, just to make sure that his opinion on the subject is out there.

Still, once he's given it, he shifts his weapon to head back to the mouth of the cave and take point again. Once he's five feet from the mouth, he nods to tell the rest of them that he's ready to give them cover as they move.

Riza stays silent during the discussion. Personally, she felt that the better option would be to get what information they could from this place first before destroying it. The place showed signs of being abandoned, so it was likely that whoever had been using this place wouldn't care. After all, if they hadn't wanted it being found there were ways they could have done that.

She picks up some of the files and offers them to Mark. He seems like the sort that would know what to do with them and she needs her hands free if she's supposed to be one of the lines of defense. "Here, there's no way of knowing if any of this is actually helpful, but it's a sample of the research to take back without taking every piece of paper in here with us," she says.

Riza then goes to stand near the entrance, "I'll take up the rear again if you all want to start heading out."

It's crowded inside the pod, so I decide to wait until we're all back outside to tuck the papers into my pack. I've just stepped past the door and am turning to hand them off to Helen so she can do the honors, when I feel a fluttering against my fingers and look down to see the papers disintegrating before my eyes. Unfortunately, my first thought was that they'd somehow caught fire, and by the time my brain catches up five seconds later, there's nothing left but some dust and the sound of my echoing yell of surprise.

For a moment, I can't properly speak.

"Did you see that? Did anyone else see that?" I ask, still staring at my empty fingers.

Surely the difference in air quality couldn't have been that vast between the pod and out here -- We'd let in air when we came in. This wasn't just the deterioration of an old document exposed to the air.

"How could that have happened?" Helen asked, watching as the documents crumbled into thin air. The pod might have been airtight before they opened it, yes, but they'd left the door open while inside; surely the air from the cave had gotten in while they were looking around. Helen wished she had a phone or something, had a way of taking video. She would simply have to rely on her memory to attempt to recreate the elaborate notes she'd read.

Making sense of it, however, would have been easier with the documents in front of her to examine, to hold, to cross-check. Now she had to hope that her own memory would be reliable and trustworthy and that was a quite dangerous assumption.

"So much for having something to study about this place. I wonder if that was by design, some sort of failsafe?" Helen voiced the question out loud, though it was for herself as much as anyone. Wouldn't she have done similar, if it was her research she sought to protect at all costs?

"I'll try to recreate as much as I can from memory when we return to the village," she said, trying to be as resilient as possible. "For now, back to the entrance and we'll start climbing back down.

Cougar's gaze darkens a little as he watches the paper disintegrate. He's starting to have a bad feeling about all of this, which is why he yanks the bow from off his shoulder in order to draw an arrow and have it at the ready. The pod had looked empty, but now that the papers have disintegrated, it speaks to a security system.

It feels, a little, like an alarm. "Move," he says, sharply, nodding his head to try and get the rest of them out. "Get to the bottom, fast," he says, his eyes searching around them for any threat. "Then, we write whatever you remember."

The paper disintegrates in Mark's hand and Jo looks back down the once again darkened tunnel, past Riza, but there's nothing to see there. Her first complicated wonder being to all of it. Whether this was a process that made it so nothing in their spaces for the watchers could end up where they played their games, or whether the whole of everything would just vanish if brought outside.

That's a test for another day, though. One when they could return with their own paper and copy things down, when they could judge what wasn't possibly important enough to learn from to risk it, too, disintegrating if-when they crossed the threshold between the pod and tunnels.

Everyone's direction is the same though in the sight of it, and Jo slipped toward the front to help Cougar lead everyone back down the dark tunnels toward the outcropping at the front of the system that had been their entrance.

When Helen reached the front of the caves again, she motioned for everyone to gather around so they could make a plan for the descent. The snow had picked up again, making the climb down a bit more difficult than the climb up had been and it was likely best if they went one at the time; she was an experienced climber, yes, but things could always go wrong when the weather went foul.

"We'll go back down one by one. Call up when you're safe, since our visibility is reduced at the moment. Who wants to start? I'd rather go in the middle, if possible, but I don't mind going first. Never have."

Riza was glad they had only grabbed a few of the papers. The fact that they had disintegrated was disturbing, but not something that could be helped at this point. It was just another piece of the puzzle and not something they should probably test again. So she followed them out of the caves, their exploration cut short by that particularly shocking revelation.

She frowned at the snow but shifted her weapon to her back, rubbing her hands together to get the warmth in them again. She was once again grateful for the hair ties she had received, even if she hated herself for that. Still, she couldn't imagine climbing down with her hair flying every which way.

"I can take the lead down as before," she volunteered. Since this really wasn't the time for a debate, Riza crossed over to the ledge and maneuvered herself over the side. She had a decent memory, so hopefully she could retrace her way back down. That would be the easiest way -- though it was going to be trickier since the snow might have made some of the spots slicker than they had been before. When she was about halfway down the cliff-side she thought she heard a branch snap in the distance. She paused, but a branch snapping could be anything and she wasn't going to be able to do anything clinging to the side of the cliff. Riza continued down, her ears strained for more sounds. There were a few more sounds of movement, but with the wind in her face it was hard to tell if it was something concerning or the wind.

Riza reached the ground and dropped down into the ground in a crouch. She squinted out into the surrounding woods, hand resting on the harpoon at her back. Riza didn't like this, she felt like she was being watched and Riza had learned to trust her gut. But should she keep the others safe up there or call them down for support? Right, there was a chance in a group they could take whatever it might be. And, for all she knew, it could have been one of the other villagers.

Riza tilted her head back, not taking her gaze from the woods and her watch for movement, "I'm on the ground."

Hurry she thought to herself.

The arrow-torch is already guttering more and more as they get to the ledge, with its fiercer winds and harder, heavier snow that seemed to have started while they were gone. Jo stepped to one side, dashing out the flames with the snow-covered rock and her boot, doing her best to leave the shaft unbroken, in case it could be used later for anything else in their tiny prison of so few actual resources that could just be thrown away or used carelessly.

The harder chill runs down her spine looking between the dark cave behind them and the angry snow storm that almost seems to have sprung up in consternation at their trespass. Jo gave a faintly nerved look to the edge. She definitely was not an experienced climber, not without reason for more than trees even in that palce, and she had slipped a time or two getting up here. She could do it, because she had to.

Anything that needed doing to find the thing that mutilated Karen, and the animals, and toyed with the village.

"I'll go next," Jo said, with no hint aside from the long look at the iced ledge. It's a simple decision in the end, and nothing actually about the ice or even her skills. In the debate between which sniper she'd rather have left alone, without a second, should an attack come from either end, up top or down below, it's the fierceness in Cougar that would give her less trouble in not being as needed there to back up.

Jo rubbed her hands together and started down the same way Riza had gone, and shouted up through the haze of white, obscuring her mostly. The way it obscured the top once she got started. Hard, angry winds, that almost sounded like snarling growls, throwing snow and biting ice at what little skin she had available for it. Throwing itself through her peacoat, and icing her ears and fingers for exposure, along with the remnants of her Viking braid.

It's her hands that find harder traction, and her heart pounds in her ears anytime she almost goes sliding, especially when she can only sometimes see how far up the top is or how far down she's made it. But she gets there all the same, more surprised than relieved when her shoes hit solid ground and she can see, and hear Riza, but she bites it down, against and into the cold. Pulling off her bow and readying it, as she calls up, loud as she can, in the wind. "Clear!"

Edited 2016-12-08 12:59 (UTC)

Cougar will go last, he knows. Beyond having a vantage point for the arrows, he knows that he can take care of himself on his own. He could have come out here on his own, with Jake as back up, but he's going this with the others because it's for the best and because nothing here is predictable. He squints against the snow, seeing movement that he attributes to the others, but he's already gesturing for Helen and Mark. "Down," he says. "Be careful," he warns, keeping his fingers on the arrow and the other on the bow in case he needs to shoot at any point from a moment's notice.

The storm doesn't seem normal, either, because there had been no actual signs of it before. It's just one more thing that makes him think an alarm has been set off. "Whistle, when you get to the bottom," he advises them.

The trip down the edge of the cliff manages to be even more precarious than the one up. For one, most of where you're going involves you hoping you're in the general vicinity of the foothold you think is there. Secondly, the weather has taken a turn for the worse, and I don't quite realize how bad it is until I'm already starting my descent. By then, it's too late to suggest that we just shelter in the cave until the storm passes.

It's a near thing at the bottom -- My foot slips, but there's only a foot or so to fall. Catching my balance, I huff out a breath, squint up at the cave and hope the wind doesn't carry the sound of my whistle away before Cougar can hear it.

Edited 2016-12-09 06:41 (UTC)

Helen followed, making her way down as quickly as possible even though her visibility was basically nothing about halfway down the cliff. By the time her feet touched the bottom, her breath was coming in short, sharp pants and she wondered if she'd ever regulate her heartbeat again. Foxglove wasn't going to grow in the middle of the damned winter, after all, so her tachycardia was going to have to be regulated through meditation and not medication.

She had little time to relax. Just as she was about to call out and start planning for the hike back to the village proper, she caught a whiff of something on the wind that smelled eerily like something she'd smelled once in the Himalayas long ago, something that she did not want to see here without high-powered assault weapons and tranquilizers at her disposal. The snow was blinding, the wind whipping about, but the dank scent was nothing to deny - there was a creature here, likely an Abnormal.

What did it look like, though? She couldn't get a good look at it considering the snow but the scent told her it clearly must be close or drawing closer. "Everyone! There's something here," Helen said, loud as she dared. She barely managed to get the words out before said something scraped at her, tearing at her jacket as she rolled away and into Mark.

"It's here!"

They are still one person out from their entire company when Helen touches down, what feels too long after Mark. They all feel too long when there is no way to see the outcropping above them, to know if they've heard, leaving her straining to hear up, eyes fighting the biting and blinding white for the faintest traces of movement coming down, and around them, too, in what was becoming considerably worse and worse.

There is a fetid scent on the air, not too unlike what had been on the fresh and bloodied corpses, clinging everywhere. Helen, the first one to say anything of it, on words that go from a warning to a clarion bell cry in an instant. Jo turning to fire one arrow, and then another, into the area from where Hellen'd suddenly jumped away from.

"Stay by the wall," she called out to Mark and Hellen, sizing up Riza's position, as she's squatting, just nearly missing getting swiped across the head and shoulder, changing up her weapons fast. Bows and arrows were good for distance, but she wanted speed, with no loss of seconds or ability to react, act, wound, instantly. Wanting a gun, she pulled knives from each the outer side, stitched in, pockets of her boots, and sprung toward the overly large, shaggy beast who'd just nearly struck her, with both ready.

Cougar squints just enough to see through the haze of the snow, loosing one of arrows in order to use his height to shoot, but the snow and the wind make it near impossible without the speed of a bullet. Slinging it around his shoulder, he starts to descend, climbing down freely and slipping a few times before he grasps at the rock, scraped up and scratched in his speed to get down. When his boots hit the ground, he stalks around the creature's weak side, keeping his breath steady and calm as he uses Jo's fighting with the thing as an opportunity.

He gets an arrow ready, thinking that it won't pierce the flesh as well as he likes, which means that he needs to be face on if he wants the chance to get an arrow where he wants it. He waits, then whistles sharply, earning the beasts' full attention and a forward charge.

Sharply, he keeps the string of the bow at his cheek and waits for the right moment, letting the arrow fly when the thing is close enough. Cougar gets knocked back forcibly (he feels like he must go flying at least a few feet back), but there's an arrow sticking out of the creature's eye for his troubles. He grimaces as he tries to get back up, but the air has definitely been knocked out of him and the creature doesn't seem to be stopping, despite its vision being slightly impaired on its right side.

Things always go to hell so fast. One minute Riza was watching the woods for trouble and the next its there, among them. Riza was used to attacks like this and even being partially blind during them. Although in New York it had been dark sewer and subway tunnels -- the only warning you got was the click of claws and ungodly mandibles. Fighting in snow against a hairy beast was completely different, and yet, it was disturbingly familiar. She just wished they had guns to properly deal with a creature like this, especially since the arrows and knives were having so little effect.

Still, she wasn't about to sit out when she had a freaking harpoon on her back. Riza's hand had already been resting on it and she pulls it off her back in one deft motion. Cougar had just been sent flying past her and Jo was currently engaging the beast. Riza isn't known for hand-to-hand combat. She's hesitant to jump into the fray as Jo has, but she is good at one thing and that's targeting. The harpoon might not be her usual weapon of choice, but Riza trusts her ability to aim, even in a snowstorm. After all, she'd had to be a sniper in desert sand conditions and she had made a trip or two up to the Northern wall of Briggs.

Riza shifted her stance and took aim. She had to wait for Jo to be clear and---THERE! It's a short window, but the monster has distanced itself from Jo to go for a fresh attack. Riza gripped the harpoon's staff and hurled it towards the beast with a grunt of effort. Her aim, as always, is spot on and the harpoon lodges itself in the beast's chest. Of course, Riza couldn't be sure if its heart was located in the same place as most creatures -- but it was an educated guess to make and, if nothing else, she might have punctured a lung.

Whatever the case, the harpoon to the chest does seem to have more of an effect as the beast howled and stumbled forward.

It happens in an instant, and there's hardly time to realize we're being attacked before that attack is over. Thank god for Cougar and Jo and Riza, because let me tell you, NASA does not teach you how to kill monsters.

The beast -- Whatever it is -- lunges forward and then topples to the ground with a choking, sucking rattle of breath. I'm wary of any of us getting near enough to check that it's truly dead, but after a moment of watching it laying there prone, snow collecting on its dark fur, it seems safe enough.

"...fuck," I finally say, and realize I'd been holding my breath the entire time. "I don't know what I expected us to find, but it wasn't that."

Helen took a moment to get her bearings before drawing close, checking to see that the thing was well and truly dead. "I saw one of these once in the Himalayas, several years ago," she said, kneeling to examine it as best she could given the rapidly deteriorating conditions. They would need to bring the body back to the village if she hoped to examine it. There would be no chance of it back here.

"I can't be certain, though I wonder if this was what they were alluding to in those documents we found up above. What I saw in the Himalayas was a creature of natural origin, a cryptid that had been sheltered by geographic means. This isn't exactly the same but it bears further investigation. I think we ought to try to bring the body back with us."

Cougar nods as he picks himself back up, knowing that he'll have a good bruise for a few days, but it doesn't feel like anything permanent. "We'll carry it back," he agrees, casting one last look at the cliff they'd come from and wondering what they've unearthed and what they've done by going inside. He bends down to shoulder part of the weight of the creature, able to shift and walk along when the others take up the rest.

It will be a slower walk back to civilization, but at least they might have some answers about what was killing everything, including Karen. The only thing that's bugging Cougar, though, is how no one was able to notice. It's just one more thing to think about with every passing step back to the village after a long search.

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the wild hunt (closed)

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