The forest has not been silent for a very long time.
No forest is — or at least, no forest should be; no living, healthy forest is silent, except when drowning in the terror of the worst predators, those that are a danger not only to mammals, avians, reptilians, insects and arthropods, but even the trees themselves, the bushes, the flowers and vines —
There's a piece of this forest where the forest is silent; those monstrous forces animating the endless tromping steps of those creatures circling a very specific hollowed-out tree are such a danger —
— over there.
Over here, the profoundly loud chorus announcing the progress of a party that Does Not Know the Ways of the Forest drowns out any attempts at subtlety — for most, at least; it's nice to see that at least one of those members of the party not racing ahead at a breakneck speed toward battle with demons is paying enough attention to know who he sees, and nearly manage a properly polite greeting.
"Hello, young nephew," says... a tree? A bird? Wait, no, that is a person, a wood elf much the same as Ize, his teals related to Ize's greens, so clearly as they stand face to face — and yet there is something unutterably ancient about this man, something that has nothing to do with the avian-predator influence to the cast of his skull, nothing to do with the wealth of feathers growing interspersed with his hair, nothing to do with the way his fingers — as he raises his hand in a brief gesture toward the group, as if collecting all of them together and greeting them at the same time — are tipped with talons, rather than nails; all of these things are equally true of Ize, after all, and he is one of their number, and has been since they appeared in a city besieging itself —
(no, no, since before that)
— there's something about his icy-grey eyes, though, something ancient, something dead, something that has gone far past Death and found Him wanting, and toppled him from his Tthrone on the way back, and then continued — and this world has had rumors for thousands of years, hasn't it, about an elf who made an eternal home in the midst of the most Hellish swamps imaginable, an elf whose neighbors feared him so much they wanted him destroyed, so much they tried to make a contract with the Shrikes, to kill the unkillable, to bring death to the Deathless — an elf who had lived, or at least resided, in those swamps long enough for them to take his name...
Augustin's head tilts to the side, very abruptly, in a way familiar to any who have ever spent time around birds, or elves, or Illarion-by-any-other-name, and he quirks one eyebrow in a way familiar to anyone who has ever been stuck conversing with the Saint of Patience, which is currently...
"Your dwarven friend does not appear to be tolerating the terrain well," he continues, smoothly, before flicking his gaze to the other two: a pair of... shrikes. Well. No doubt busy planning some sort of trouble; an expression suggesting the thought KIDS these days ghosts across his face, but fails to leave a lasting imprint.
"Are you all in such a hurry to tangle with demons?"
Ize, Slortus, Chara, Sweetroll
No forest is — or at least, no forest should be; no living, healthy forest is silent, except when drowning in the terror of the worst predators, those that are a danger not only to mammals, avians, reptilians, insects and arthropods, but even the trees themselves, the bushes, the flowers and vines —
There's a piece of this forest where the forest is silent; those monstrous forces animating the endless tromping steps of those creatures circling a very specific hollowed-out tree are such a danger —
— over there.
Over here, the profoundly loud chorus announcing the progress of a party that Does Not Know the Ways of the Forest drowns out any attempts at subtlety — for most, at least; it's nice to see that at least one of those members of the party not racing ahead at a breakneck speed toward battle with demons is paying enough attention to know who he sees, and nearly manage a properly polite greeting.
"Hello, young nephew," says... a tree? A bird? Wait, no, that is a person, a wood elf much the same as Ize, his teals related to Ize's greens, so clearly as they stand face to face — and yet there is something unutterably ancient about this man, something that has nothing to do with the avian-predator influence to the cast of his skull, nothing to do with the wealth of feathers growing interspersed with his hair, nothing to do with the way his fingers — as he raises his hand in a brief gesture toward the group, as if collecting all of them together and greeting them at the same time — are tipped with talons, rather than nails; all of these things are equally true of Ize, after all, and he is one of their number, and has been since they appeared in a city besieging itself —
(no, no, since before that)— there's something about his icy-grey eyes, though, something ancient, something dead, something that has gone far past Death and found Him wanting, and toppled him from his
Tthrone on the way back, and then continued — and this world has had rumors for thousands of years, hasn't it, about an elf who made an eternal home in the midst of the most Hellish swamps imaginable, an elf whose neighbors feared him so much they wanted him destroyed, so much they tried to make a contract with the Shrikes, to kill the unkillable, to bring death to the Deathless — an elf who had lived, or at least resided, in those swamps long enough for them to take his name...Augustin's head tilts to the side, very abruptly, in a way familiar to any who have ever spent time around birds, or elves, or Illarion-by-any-other-name, and he quirks one eyebrow in a way familiar to anyone who has ever been stuck conversing with the Saint of Patience, which is currently...
"Your dwarven friend does not appear to be tolerating the terrain well," he continues, smoothly, before flicking his gaze to the other two: a pair of... shrikes. Well. No doubt busy planning some sort of trouble; an expression suggesting the thought KIDS these days ghosts across his face, but fails to leave a lasting imprint.
"Are you all in such a hurry to tangle with demons?"