NorthernKraken

Cold Front: Antarctica (Completed)

April's gonna vote for Niels methinks

Cold Front: Antarctica (Completed)

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Glassy eyes stared up at April, singed fingertips stiff and curled upwards.

Reno.

A chill crept across her skin in spite of the thick layers of insulation she wore. Lauren was freaking out. Ana had thrown up the second she’d laid eyes on Re- on the body. It was hard to smell much with the biting wind crashing through the open door, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t imagine it. Ana had been right yesterday - they had to do something.

She looked up at Niels arrival, forcing her eyes away from the body. His question was almost snatched up by the cold. The other two were falling to pieces. April had to step up.

“Reno’s dead.” she sounded cold, she realised. Maybe a second too late. She turned to Ana, “You were right, yesterday. We need to figure out who’s doing this, before… before this happens again.” cold sweat pricked the curve of her back, the top of her brow, the back if her neck. She carefully studied the faces of the others. Lauren was a wreck. She didn’t trust Ana, but if the steaming pile of sick outside was anything to go off, she was genuinely surprised. That left…

“Niels. Would you mind letting us know why it took you so long to get here? Everybody else ran over as soon as we heard the bang.”

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Cold Front: Antarctica (Completed)

Gonna vote Ana I think

The Red Hoods: Initiates

Thank you!

The Red Hoods: Initiates

Please do :)

The Red Hoods: Initiates

errr... Zava? Where are you getting the net from? 😅

Cold Front: Antarctica (Completed)

Oh damn, I hadn't spotted that, well played 😅

Cold Front: Antarctica (Completed)

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April had seen death before.

Her grandmother, calm and still after years of sickness and torment. Her mum hadn’t wanted her to see, had told her to wait in the Costa coffee downstairs and help Mattie keep an eye on Leo and Hannah.

She hadn’t.

Morbid curiosity mixed with disbelief, and she’d ducked away when Mattie was distracted by one of the twins’ infamous scuffles. Her canvas pumps had squeaked as she walked, mostly unnoticed by the busy hospital staff, those that did assuming she belonged. To this day, the smell of disinfectant took her back there – peering through the crack in the door, hospital staff in pressed and starched uniforms unplugging and wheeling away the machines that had been hooked into her granny for months at that point, so long April could hardly remember what she looked like without them.

Gone were the tubes and the wires now though, the machine that had been her heart, and the one that had been her lungs wheeled away, chords wrapped around a leg, ready to keep somebody else’s Granny Jane alive. When April’s eyes finally fell upon the figure lying in the bed, it was as if a screen had been pulled away, and suddenly, she saw her granny for what she’d been all along.

She’d looked so unbearably small, all alone in that bed, and April couldn’t think of anything better to do than cry.

She hadn’t cried when she saw Jerry. Face bloated and pale, fingers slack in the arms of his chair, pink fidget spinner, abandoned, lying on the floor where it’d fallen. She hadn’t cried, because all she’d wanted was to run to the bathroom down the hall and heave her guts up.

April had seen death before, but never like this.

Death had been old and peaceful, not young and violent. Death left smiling pictures of your loved one before they’d gotten too old and sick to smile, not videos with terrified colleagues and ominous warnings. Death lived in churches. Crematoriums. Hospitals. Not the cafeteria, played out on the flickering projector that just months before had displayed the orientation speech.

April let the conversation wash over her. In her head, Jerry was laughing, watching their expressions as he switched on the disco lights for the first time. Then he was glassy eyed and cold. Then he was alive again. Scared for his life. The realisation that he knew he was going to die hit her. Christ. What had that been like?

She chewed on her bottom lip. It was dry, scabbed over from repeating that same habit far too many times. It was useless to try and resolve the three images she had of Jerry, at least whilst all three were so horrifically fresh. Instead, she got to her feet, walked over to where Jerry’s laptop was plugged into the projector. Closed the lid.

She turned to the others, specifically to Reno, consternation in her eyes, “I was in the lab,” she said, irritation dripping of her words because it was easier than the terror that wanted to be there instead,“I had some sequences I forgot to start, and I couldn’t sleep. So no.” her eyes hardened, it was an expression she was far more used to wearing when facing down aging academics who didn’t even know what eDNA was never mind why it was so important to her work, “I didn’t kill Jerry. In fact, I find your eagerness to place the blame elsewhere quite telling.” And that was mean. She had to stick to her guns though. After all, no one else was going to stick to them for her.

“The important thing though,” she moved away from Jerry’s laptop. Just touching it had felt wrong, she didn’t want to be near it anymore. She stopped when she reached the other end of the table where they’d all sat, rested a hand on her hip, trying to make herself bigger than she knew she was, “Is finding Dr. Van der Meer.” It felt wrong not using the woman’s full title, so she made sure she always did, “she can tell us who it is for sure, without our having to play at detective.”

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The Red Hoods: Initiates

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Outskirts of Stathford, Village of Traffyn Fenwd

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The rain sank, straight through Colin's linen shirt and the crisp yellow hood bandied about his shoulders, soaking him in seconds. A glance back, at the cart setting off back in the direction it'd come from, leaving them stood outside the inn alone, and something unpleasant sprouted, deep in his gut. Barely had their hoods a day, and already they were on their own. He flexed his fingers, cold and stiff already from the icy breeze that'd sliced through the slats in the wooden carriage, so he did his best to warm them up to a point where they were functional. He needed to be able to fight. They had a vampire with them and an unknown supply of pacifying blood, along with the dangers that surely waited in the dark shadows of the trees that towered above them.

He stretched, trying to ease the way his shoulders twinged and his spine ached, almost as if someone had lodged tiny daggers in between each and every vertebra. Payment, he supposed, for the way he'd spent the carriage ride - wedged into the corner, discomfort rippling through tense muscles as he kept his eyes affixed to the thing he'd found himself sharing a space with. Sleep had been both sparse and poor. Something else he was paying for too - this time with the itching, crawling feeling that tugged at the back of his eyeballs and the fuzziness wrapped around each unwieldy though he managed to grind out.

Eliza's voice, calling from a little way away, caught his attention. It looked like they were moving off, so he quickly made to catch up, but by the time he did, it looked like she was already talking to someone else - a woman, amber eyes. The one he thought might've been a leech before dismissing the idea due to the rosey tinge of her skin. He decided to hang back, not wanting to intrude on their conversation, but also wanting to keep their whole group in his line of sight.

The leech and the other man - had it been Fendrel? - seemed to be heading towards the path that ran through woods, in the direction the driver indicated the village lay. Eliza and the woman, on the other hand, were headed towards the inn. Colin took off after Eliza. They'd been told to go to the inn after all, regardless of what the leech wanted to do.

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Village of Traffyn Fenwd - Forest Path

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@ZAVAZggg@Inertia

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The trees gathered, bushy and green, thick enough that only the occasional sliver of grey twilight made it through, rain hitting the canopy and rolling off like it'd hit leather. The ground was dry underfoot as Sadon and Vitius made their way along the path, interrupted by lumpy roots that burst up from the ground in front of them that they had to step over, the way made more difficult by the twists and turns the route took in order to avoid particularly dense thickets of trees and tangles of dark, impenetrable undergrowth.

It wasn't quiet.

Twigs, leaves, other detrital material crunched and shifted underfoot, accenting each footstep they made. Squirrels scrambled through the trees, branches creaking and shifting beneath their weight, cracking in their haste. Figures rustled in the darkened hedgerow. Probably birds. Other sounds that were definitely not birds, and definitely did not come from the hedgerow. Carried on the icy wind that sliced through the trees.

Something that might've been a moan.

Something that definitely was a voice. Harsh. Grating. Female.



The ground lurched beneath them.

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Village of Traffyn Fenwd - Beds For Ewe!

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@MsMorningstar@Damo021

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Kate watched as Meg paced, addled with tension, from one side of the small inn to the other. The barkeep had been eyeing them warily, but Kate had slid him some coin and uttered a quiet, “just leave ‘er be.” In his ear, after which he’d seemed satisfied to let the woman continue. Fortunately, there weren’t many patrons at the bar, despite the late hour, and before long those that were there started to drift off upstairs.

Being back here was hard for Meg, Kate could tell. She’d found herself looking out for her friend, more than she usually would. Not that she minded. In fact, if anything, she was glad she’d convinced Meg to let her help, not just for Meg’s wellbeing, but out of her own sense of curiosity. What kind of place had she come from? She rarely spoke of it, and when she did it was only of her sister, Llian. Apparently a bright child, Meg had high hopes for her.

It hadn’t been hard for Kate to hear the concurrent disappointment she had in herself.

She took a sip of her drink. Warm ale that had likely already tasted like piss before it’d been watered down. Still. It was all that was going right now, and it eased the hunger pangs, so she grit her teeth and bore it. This place was a dump, but it was all there was without journeying into the heart of the village, and Kate didn’t like their odds under those circumstances, at least not without waiting for the hoods to arrive. She’d never admit it, but that letter had shaken even her.

With a sigh, she pulled herself to her feet, made her way to the bar. Seemed like it was time to get started on something stronger. “Whiskey. Neat. And…” she glanced at Meg, stil pacing, “make it a double would ya?”

The barkeep raised an eyebrow, but poured the drink. In a wine glass. Kate handed over the coin, and took a fiery sip regardless, leaning one the bar to wait for the hoods to arrive.

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The Red Hoods: Initiates

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@ZAVAZggg@Inertia@MsMorningstar

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Several Days Travel Later
Outskirts of Stathford, Village of Traffyn Fenwd

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Beds for Ewe!

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The carriage set off as soon as the door slammed shut, the driver, an older man with a scraggly beard who didn’t appear to be a member of the hoods, barely saying a word as they trundled over lumpy roads. They veered out of central Duncaster with its opulent architecture and distinguished looking pedestrians as soon as they could, favouring side roads that soon led them directly out into the more agricultural land that marked the outer reaches of the province.

They stopped for a short break shortly after hitting Sinstead – the driver tossing rolls of bread, apples, and small blocks of cheese from a hessian sack in the direction of the three human members of the party, and a skin of what was presumably blood toward Vitius. Another driver then hopped aboard, continuing their journey throughout the night. This pattern continued for the multiple days it took to complete the journey, until, late one evening, they rolled up outside a small inn with ‘Beds for Ewe!’ scrawled on a heavy wooden sign in flecked green paint, a faded image of a disembodied sheep’s head floating beneath.

Rain was just beginning to dust the packed dirt ground as the driver hopped down from the perch, flinging open the door and looking at them all expectantly.

“Right,” he said, after a few moments of no one answering, voice carrying despite the wind whistling through the carriage, “Traffyn Fenwd’s just a twenty minute walk that way,” he gestured with a gnarled thumb toward a windy road that disappeared into a dense cluster of trees, “Ye’ve two rooms booked in this here inn for the next week under the name o’ the Red Hoods, after which someone’ll be back te pick you up, so no faffin’ about. The people what called us in’ll be waiting inside – go by Meg n’ Kate, but this spot ain’t too busy, so yer can probably expect them to spot you lot easy enough.”

And with that, he waited for the four to file out, before taking off back in the direction he came with a yelled, ”See you in a week! Try not to get yerselves killed!”, leaving them standing, alone, in the rapidly worsening weather.