The driver was briefly stunned silent by Selena's quick, matter-of-fact reply; her cheerful confidence and Yasha's disarmingly sweet words left him slightly flustered. Justifiable paranoia had caused him to expect the worst, but this was a good start, even if he was still wary of the trio. His features softened, but he kept his hand firmly gripped upon the hilt of his concealed blade.
"A-Ah yes... Good morning!" He managed to haphazardly grumble out. His accent was heavy, earthy, and fraught with the long drawl only a layman could effect flawlessly--obviously not one educated in the upper echelons of society.
"The name is Lessig. Lessig Rhoun. I'd be troubled to leave you girls all by your lonesome. I have daughter your age. Can't help worrying sometimes." He cleared his throat before continuing. His guarded posture seemed to relax and his previously concealed hand came to groom the tip of his mustache in a sagely manner. He had sized up each of them at a glance, and knew he wouldn't have a good chance of escaping, let alone winning. As the wheels turned and he came to a decision, he silently recited a prayer to himself.
"May the gods and saints preserve me." "You have the right of it Miss," he said at last, nodding towards Yasha. " There's plenty of room in the back, so you won't be fighting for space. It'd ease my mind, if you'd join me 'til we at least reach the fort at Wolf's Run. I'll wager you girls are heading to Arcos no?"
Despite trying to keep a eye on all three of them, his gaze kept wandering towards the armored fighter of their group. He knew it was a woman; even the female knights carried their weight and postured differently than the men. Lessig was no stranger to mercenaries or warriors, but the prodigious horns and flicking tail had obviously caught his attention though.
"I beg your pardon miss-" His gaze was locked on Senna. "-but it's my first time seeing a dragon-blessed. I know the stories, but it's different seeing it in person. I heard about the horns, but never heard of one growing a tail. The dragon priests must be tripping over themselves to have you join the clergy."
Lessig's ignorance about demonkind was almost encyclopedic. Few merchant's ever survived an encounter with a demon and lived to tell the tale. Rumors of dragon-blessed humans, some with curious draconic features, living out in the world were much more common. It was something of a good omen to meet one, and there were a few who became folk heroes in the southern lands.
The rider had noticed the travelers approaching the road, and expertly guided his horse to narrowly avoid them. However, a terrifying presence stopped the horse in its track. While the horse may have came to an impromptu stop, gouging trails into the frost-bitten dirt as it slid sideways, but the rider did not. His right leg snagged the stirrup of his saddle and his shoulder hit the ground with a sickening crunch. He let out a terrible cry muffled by pain as momentum carried him further still. His hat and satchel flew from him as he rolled down the slope of the mountain trail in a wild tumble. He flailed helplessly to slow his descent but the steep grade was too much. He struck soundly against one of the lantern posts marking the trail, and very nearly fell off the ledge not more than a foot or two away. Another scream ripped from his lungs as his he caught the post with his injured arm, yanking hard against broken bone. His legs dangled dangerously over a sheer drop to a rocky outcropping dozens of feet below.
The post groaned against the man's impact and leaned precariously towards the ledge. An obvious crack had weakened it near its base.
The horse stood perfectly still, dreading what would happen if it moved even an inch, Its entire body was shivering in panic. Its eyes were wide as dinner plates and seemed as if, at any moment, it might simply fall over and die of fright.
This new YGGDRASIL certainly felt like reality, but Chau had a hard time coming to terms with it. She was determined to escape, but somehow she still couldn't believe it, rather she wouldn't accept that YGGDRASIL was real. Not even her own bestial transformations, strange magic, and heightened senses could shake her determination that it was all a hallucination she had yet to snap out of. Some sliver of herself clung blindly to that possibility, hoping against hope.
It was the vivid technicolor dreams that finally diminished her resolve. No player could dream in YGGDRASIL. But in this new world, it was all too easy wander through the halls of her own memories and find solace in them. Every night the people and places she knew and loved outside the game fluttered through her mind. However, it was always a bittersweet nostalgia that accosted her when she awoke. She had many wonderful memories she wanted to reconnect with it, but her dreams seemed to exist solely to taunt her with what she could not have in this world. It filled her with an unbearable longing. Perhaps if she weren't so fixated on it, she might have noticed sooner that the longing she felt wasn't just for her previous life.
In the few days since she and the others started their travels, her thoughts seemed more and more preoccupied with the weather and snow. She could smell it nearly a kilometer distant and could feel every tiny change in the boreal winds gusting across the mountains on the horizon. Anytime a cold wind blew past her, December felt light, airy, and serene; she yearned to burst into clouds of pure white snow and drift along with it. The more it happened the more she found herself wanting it. Just this morning, a frigid wind captivated her attention and before she realized it, her left hand had disintegrated into tiny motes of snow and ice, wafting in the air as if to join it. They reformed after her fascination was quickly replaced with sheer panic. Luckily, no one was around to see it. If it happened again, she wasn't sure if should could stop herself and simply be carried away on the wind, never to be seen again. Some part of her desperately wished for that. Which scared her more than anything else she had experience so far.
In YGGDRASIL's lore, the Winter Tyrant was quite literally a force of nature personified, and which often manifested as terrible blizzards and storms. December was slowly beginning to realize what she was becoming, or perhaps what she already was.
Wearing her heart on her sleeve would only cause the others to worry, she thought. They were all dealing with their own problems, so letting hers trouble them would only add fuel to the fire. Hiding her fear and anxiety behind a convincing facade of smiles might be unhealthy, but it seemed necessary, at least until there was a better time and place to deal with it.
~
Brightwing was no doubt the most urbanized sprawl she had yet seen in this world, but it had none of the glamorous appeal and liveliness she expected of a big city. Despite the pretty architecture in certain districts and the utilitarian layout of the city itself, something was missing. It seemed that everyone's morale had been worn down; the refugees especially, who hopelessly trudged along the sides of the road. There was an acrid tension in the air that drifted into her sensitive nose.
Fear... is it? How can I even smell that?December wrinkled her nose, having obviously caught a whiff of something unpleasant, and narrowed her eyes at a few of the passer-bys wearing haggard and vacant expressions.
"The first thing I'm going to do is to buy some decent clothing. Good heavens I know the stats are good on these things but now that its real, it's just downright embarrassing!" Danielle shivered a little when she felt a passing gaze from someone heading the other way.
"If we ever return to our world, I will never use skimpy equipment on a female character ever again."
"You poor thing. We'll buy you something a bit more... modest." December chimed in quickly, all too happy to be distracted by Danielle's complaints. She really did pity her circumstances, and placed a comforting hand on her back. It was no doubt difficult to adjust to the opposite gender.
"If you like, I can transmute your equipment into something else. We'll have to find a safe place for you to changes clothes though. I can't work on it, while it's equipped to you."A stray thought popped in her head.
"Oh! Speaking of buying things... Do they still use the same currency as YGGDRASIL? I wonder how much the raw crafting materials I have are worth?"She plucked a small piece of rough orihalcum from between the folds of her thin sash and held it to the light, eyeing it thoughtfully. The valuable shard of metal in her hand was one of dozens just like it. Only other players might guess that her sash functioned identically to an extradimensional storage box.
