Late-Night Snack

Vestibule -  -
 * This spacious common area - officially denoted as the Vestibule - has walls, columns and beams of polished cinnamon-colored biinwood timber supporting a high, angled rooftop with slate shingles.


 * Numerous animal heads - a Wild Boar here, a Snaplizard there - are exquisitely preserved and mounted on plaques that adorn the walls. A white Snow Bearskin rug is stretched on the hardwood floor between a cushioned biinwood sofa, two cushioned biinwood chairs, and a black marble fireplace.


 * The standard of House Mikin - a brown mongoose on a field of black - is displayed above the fireplace. The fireplace itself is flanked by a spear and a pike, attached to the wall.


 * A pair of large rectangular doors lead out into Dawnstar Forest. Smaller doorways - one to the north, and one to the south - lead off to a pair of bedchambers suitable for visiting rangers and guests. An elaborately ornate archway opens onto the illustrious Grand Hall of the Wolfsbane Lodge.

-

The lodge seems fairly quiet this evening, mostly dark and seemingly unoccupied from the outside. Only the glow of a small fire burning in the hearth of the vestibule gives any clue that there may be someone inside.

At least, until someone gets near the door. They'd likely hear what sounds to be a mudbear with a cold somewhere from within, the source actually being one Vhramis Wolfsbane, the man laying half on, half off the sofa, mouth agape, engaged in full on snoring.

Could he be drooling, too? Possibly just a trick of the dim lighting.

Clop-clop-clop...the unsteady beat of two horses coming down the dirt road at a trot slowly approaches the lodge until Ashlynn slows Conceit to a walk with a shift of her weight. "Even I'm itching for a hot meal and a warm bed by now," she sighs at the welcome sight of the lodge's silhouette...appending a light snort after a moment's wondering when she realizes what the additional night-sound emanating from the building is.

Reese reins her garron to a halt alongside the courier's mare, surveying their environs with a critical eye before turning a skeptical squint upon the Lodge itself. She says nothing, rolling the shoulder bearing Vice's weight, and puts heels to her mount to speed it along that last short distance.

From within the bear's den, Wolfsbane rubs roughly at his face with his palm, snorting out in his sleep. Twitching, he rolls to the side, but unfortunately, what with his already precarious position, he ends up thudding to the floor of the lodge.

Ashlynn allows Conceit to follow at a more sedate pace, though she is not so slow as to miss the ignominious thump of the wolfsbane's landing. Shaking her head, she slides to the ground and negligently flicks the reins over a nearby bush's branches; Conceit obediently cocking a hoof and settling into a hip-shot stance, nibbling half-heartedly at some leaves. "Well, at least he's home," she muses.

"Fort'nate," Reese allows, mostly to herself, her sights set dead ahead. Keeping ahold of the reins, the ranger dismounts in a swirl of black cloak and a soft jingle of ringmail, finally sparing an acknowledging glance Ashlynn's way while hobbling her horse.

That startles Vhramis awake. Slightly at least. "What?" he blurts out, lifting himself up slightly to separate his face from the floor. He blinks and looks about groggily, blurry vision eventually fixing on the fire, before he mutters something indecipherable and relaxes again, apparently deciding the floor isn't that bad a place at all.

Ashlynn flashes the pathfinder a crooked grin - crooked due to a cheek now blanketed by a livid bruise - before stomping inside as soon as she verifies that it is indeed the wolfsbane upon the floor. "Ho, there, Ranger! What entertainment has thou prepared for thy guests tonight?" she bellows in her best herald's voice.

When Reese follows, it is far more sedately; an unsmiling shadow cast by the boisterous courier. One eyebrow lifts sharply at the sight of the hunter on the floor, and a surreptitious glance is cast around the room's perimeter before she strides past Ashlynn to nudge his ribs with a boot.

"Oh, no," groans Wolfsbane aloud at the familiar booming voice, lifting an arm to gesture blankly in the direction of one of the cabinets about. "Wine," he grunts, before sweeping his arm around. "Chairs." With a thud, his arm drops to the floor again, the man laying still, at least until his ribs are prodded by the second woman. "What'd I do to deserve this?" he bemoans, rolling to his side to peer up at Caprice.

Smirking, Ashlynn comes up behind the other woman, peering over her shoulder - a tow-headed pair whose features seem to be arranged, not as twins, but like the masks of theatre...one comically maniacal, and the other somber unto tragedy. "Come, now. You put up with all those itinerant foresters. At least we are intelligible *and* entertaining."

Caprice does not even bat an eye at her rambunctious companion, spreading five slim fingers with the intent of planting them upon the courier's face and shoving her back and out of immediate personal space. "Where be m' sister?" she asks in tones as soft as satin.

Sleep hazed, Vhramis stares blankly up at the two faces peering down at him, before he sits up with a grunt. "Right, your sister. It's all taken care of, then?" He climbs back up onto the sofa, dropping back into a seat on it before looking back up to his fellow Pathfinder. "Brought her to Wedgecrest Falls. She's fine there. Trayson's looking out for her."

"Ow - " the courier gives a muffled protest as she is shoved back, poking gingerly at the edges of her florid cheek. "Well, half-taken care of. Unless you count the fall of the tower. In which case, no, nothing was taken care of, really. Though I daresay there was some personal progress made," she finishes on a more sympathetic note and a glance toward Caprice before she is moving toward the larder with a peremptory air.

"She be in worse danger than afore," Reese overrides severely, pitching her voice to drown out Ashlynn's prattling.

"A tower fell?" Vhramis asks Ashlynn, watching her move across the room blankly, before back up to Caprice. "What's happening, anyway? She's got a full keep guard watching over her now, that'll make sure she's safe."

"Well, make sure the lambs don't stray, then," Ashlynn muses, but does not sound half so jovial as she had before. Rummaging through the shelves, she eventually emerges with some cheese, oily sausage, and half a loaf of bread. "A Mas - a man by the name of Wheatcutter. Still playing a Scourge with delusions of grandeur. He managed to escape us...he is not too happy with Caprice's family right now. He was trying - well, he succeeded in bringing down a Shadow-raised tower of green crystal in the middle of the forest."

Caprice gives her head a shake, eyes on the floor, fingers combing through silver-blonde hair. "There be more t' 't 'n tha', Ashlynn," she sighs, before rocking her head to one side in quiet consideration. "Wedgecres'. Milord Varal? Ah, thank th' Ligh'." That seems to lift a bit of the burden from her shoulders; but alas - not nearly all of it. "Weel 'xplain. Nae now. I'm a-need... I'm a-needin' a wash. Pardoons."

"I worked there once," Vhramis explains to Caprice, before mention of needing a wash causes him to lean forward slightly, subtly sniffing at the air. "We can head out there when you two are ready. Can go tonight, or tomorrow, depending."

Ashlynn shrugs at Caprice's correction. "Thought I would give the simplified version first," she murmurs, abruptly noncommittal as she nudges Vhramis' feet aside so that she may walk over and drop onto the unused couch herself. "Up to that one there," the courier motions vaguely after Caprice with her eating knife, untucking the item from her belt and beginning to cut slices of each food item to slap together in a makeshift snack. "What are you trying to catch? We only smell like dust and horse right now," she asks amusedly when she notices his sniffing.

Wolfsbane surrenders part of the couch for Ashlynn to sit upon, peering at her tiredly. The man lifts a hand to rub some of the sleep from his eyes. "Just was...well, nothing," he mutters by way of excuse, considering the courier closely. "Who'd you mouth off to?" he asks, gesturing at her eye.

Ashlynn arches a brow at his brush-off, patently disbelieving, before she is distracted by his question. "I did nothing of the - ! Well, all right, I was mouthing off," she scowls, pointing the knife - a piece of cheese and sausage still impaled upon it - at him. "But he deserved it! You should have seen the way - " She winces, glancing quickly over her shoulder before continuing quickly in a more cautious voice, "You should have seen the way he was treating Caprice! Someone had to remind him he is no better than any two-bit merchant grubbing a living in the Lightholder alleys! So he had one of his men slap me - wouldn't have even made much of a mark, I would guess, if he hadn't been wearing a gauntlet at the time." Warming to the subject, she sits up from her lounge with an almost feral gleam in her eyes and mouth pulling into an almost-straight grin. "Well, what did my brothers teach me? If someone hits me, I hit them back. So I planted a foot, swung up - bam!" she declares with a pump of her fist into the air. "You should have seen him flying back! The clatter of mail he made when he landed! Out cold!" she crows, before wincing and shaking out the same appendage. "Had some hard bones, though, in his face. My hand was sore for at least two days after."

"What were you two doing?" is all Vhramis can think to ask after listening to Ashlynn's explanation. "What is going on? I know nothing about any of this, save that her sister's life could be in danger, in some way."

"Well...it is a touch complicated, from what I gathered," Ashlynn hedges with a small gesture, returning her attentions to her makeshift meal. "But in simple terms? Wheatcutter was trying to blackmail Caprice into working for him by threatening her family. In a very high-handed fashion. And we happened upon him while he was laying siege to the tower with a catapult."

"Does she often get blackmailed by people with siege weaponry?" blinks Wolfsbane at that, leaning back on the couch. "What happened to him, then? You said he got away, or something? He wouldn't know where her sister is, anyway, after she passed her off to me."

Caprice appears in the threshold of the doorway connecting to the Lodge's easternmost chambers, stripped down to a quilted jack and leather pants, her armor shed like a second skin in whichever room she disappeared into. Damp argent-gold locks have plastered themselves to a face scrubbed pinkish pale, and she wrings them out, swiping long fingers through the tangles and knots to restore some sort of order.

Ashlynn shrugs helplessly. "I have only known her for...two months? Maybe three? And had personal interactions with her that would number fewer than the fingers I have on both hands? And one time, she shot me with an imaginary crossbow bolt while I was eating a peach," she asserts before taking a solemn bite and then waving as she notices the return of the other pathfinder. "Oh, welcome back," she mumbles around the bread.

Vhram twists about as Caprice returns, peering at her curiously, before grunting and slumping back again. "You want help finding this person?" he asks her. "You'd be best not going to see your sister until it's over, unless you're being followed. He'll know where she is, then."

Reese shakes out her hair one last time before giving her head a toss, leveling the a blue-eyed gaze burning with the intensity of the Light's chosen upon Vhramis. "I hae na intended ta," she assures him, propping a forearm on the doorjamb and shifting her weight into it. "Night's Edge be in danger, too." A distinctly unsatisfied curl of lip, and then she adds, "Kael were reckless. Whit in sin an' shades were th' man doin' there?"

"Seems to run in the family," Ashlynn mumbles noncommittally around another mouthful of her snack, eyes studiously pinned upon her meal as she chews. A saying involving kitchen cookware obviously does not take passage through her mind at all.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Wolfsbane protests as he receives the Light blessed stinkeye from Reese. "I don't know what he's reckless about, but I know people are trying to burn Night's Edge to the ground. And I don't know where 'there' was, aside from somewhere in the forest, as Ash told me."

Reese only arches an eyebrow higher. "T'were th' odd green tower wes' o' Aegisport, in th' wood," she clarifies for his benefit, before squinting even more suspiciously at her brother-at-arms. "Who be wantin' t' burn th' mon'stery?"

Ashlynn does not interrupt this time, just thoughtfully chewing away at her meal while she lifts a brow and holds up the remaining ingredients, silently querying if Caprice would like a share as well.

"Were mercenaries paid off by someone. We're going to go find more about it," Vhramis answers, eyeing Caprice back in kind. "We caught a few of them, and they're imprisoned, now. We may have to go to Gatetown or somewhere else in the Shadow District for it."

"Whit were they after?" Reese asks next. "D'ye hae names?" She blinks a glance inches over to Ashlynn before straightening to cross the foyer to accept her offer of a late-evening snack. Placing herself between the couch's armrest and a shaggy stuffed bear in full feral rear, she leans back against the wall, slicing the stub of sausage with - her own dagger. Where did that come from?

Polishing off the last bite of her open-faced sandwich, Ashlynn surrenders what items Caprice wants, and then steals one more crumble of cheese before offering the remainder to Vhramis. "Looks like you were just as occupied. Guess it was just as well, then, that we did not haul you along with us."

"They just wanted to destroy it. They smashed all the stained glass windows of the monastery," Vhramis answers, looking somewhat solemn at that. He distractedly takes the cheese, rolling it in his hand. "Shame, really, but I think they're going to reconstruct it. I hope, at least."

"Who?" Reese presses further around a mouthful of cheese and sausage; she is, however, polite enough to shield the half-chewed food from sight with the knife-wielding hand. "Surely there be some leads? Whit o' th' Viscoontess?"

"May have been hired by a Zahir bar - I had sausage?" Vhramis peers at Caprice questioningly as he catches a bit of what she's eating, before turning to peer over towards the larder. "...hired by a Zahir baron. Think I was going to go with Varal, and Lucius, to check more about the company."

Ashlynn shakes her head in sympathy, solemn now as she sinks back against the couch's cushions once more. Undoing the lacings of her boots, she toes them off and stretches her feet gratefully from their confines. "You used to. This is what happens when you are not here half the time and other people are instead." At the mention of the Zahir name, her mood takes a slight turn for the sour, though she does not interject further.

Disconcert claims Reese wholly, and she turns her attention toward one last trim of the sausage before underhanding it unannounced toward Wolfsbane. "Master Wheatcu'er... mentioned th' mon'stery," she reminds Ashlynn, popping that last bite into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully.

Vhramis brightens somewhat as he's thrown what's left of the food, catching it and staring down at it and the cheese. "Guess we'll see what we can do about it," he reasons, not having much else to say on that. "Where are you all going to go?"

Taking pity on him, Ashlynn also tosses him the last heel of bread to accompany the rest. "He did," she agrees with a thoughtful frown. "But I thought it had only been in reference to Kael's residence. It is not a secret, where he lives, and Wheatcutter did not seem the type to simply stop at vandalism, when he has the men to do his bidding." She shrugs at Vhramis' question, gaze slanting reflexively toward Caprice. "Unless we gain another clue as to Wheatcutter's position...I do not know."

Caprice changes tack abruptly, now fingering the point of her dagger idly. "Wolfsbane. Be there word o' a r'surgence o' Church faithfool? Anywhere?" A dart of a look Ashlynn's way precedes her asking, "'r writ in th' criers' papers? Le'ers?"

"I don't know about a resurgence," Vhramis shakes his head, finding more food tossed to his lap. How lucky for he that people are about to give him scraps in his home. He'd likely starve, otherwise! "Don't know if all these troubles lately are a part of that, or what. Dead mages and everything, though? It all seems kind of related, doesn't it?" He looks up at Caprice, stuffing bread into his mouth.

Ashlynn spreads her hands helplessly. "Just what we have picked up along the way. If you will recall, I was stuck haring all over the countryside with you these last weeks," she notes before lifting a brow at Vhramis' surmisings. "Insofar as they all occurred in Fastheld? I suppose. There is still such a thing as coincidence, however. We even have a word to describe it, after all."

It wouldn't appear that Caprice is buying it, although she does not seem any more inclined to argue than she does to serenade the pair. "Donnae b'lieve I were summooned t' fin' Kael," she ventures, the point of her blade filing dirt from beneath her nails.

"I ummo," Vhramis answers, his mouth full of bread, crumbs falling as he speaks. "Sheems oh' coinsh'mit..." Gulp. "I'm just saying. I didn't hear about anything about the Church coming back, outside of Sun's Keep. And nobody really goes by that place anymore."

"I were a Scourge's hoontin' houn' fer four years afore th' Silver Dawn," Reese counters. "Nae a peep hae I hear' oontil thi' le'er, nigh on two years. A coincidence, aye - mayhap. Boot I donnae ken whit ill," she sets her jaw, "if'n I were ta hoont fer Master Wheatcu'er once more."

"I'm not really tapped into the Church or what happens with them," Vhramis shrugs, throwing a piece of bread at Ashlynn idly. "We'll find out more, or we won't. In one way or another." All that sleep must have turned him into a philosopher.

Ashlynn fumbles only a little at the resurgence of the familiar game, and she almost reflexively tears off a piece to ball up in a palm and flings it back. "Well then, I suppose that means that we are supposed to get on with our lives and hope that something happens?"

Reese rolls her eyes with a snort to show just what she thinks of that, but goes right on cleaning her fingernails.

"Don't know why you think I meant that," Vhramis glowers at Ashlynn as bread plinks off of his forehead. "As I said, I'm following on stuff. And I'm sure you'll both figure something."

"Oh, that sounds so much better," the courier drawls with a wry grin, not giving an inch while another carbohydrate-packed missile sails toward his nose. "Stuff. Define stuff. By the way, did you manage to hurt yourself in this latest altercation too?"

Something about the turn of conversation has Reese eyerolling a second time, but somehow, it is infinitely more long-suffering.

"Mercenaries. Varal Valoria. Lucius. Gatetown," Vhramis recounts, batting away the incoming foodstuff and returning fire with his own. "Remember?"

"I had simply wondered if you did, with how vague you were," Ashlynn retorts, eating the next make-shift ammunition before creating another one. "What?" she directs suspiciously toward Caprice. "If you have nothing good to contribute, do not contribute an implication-laden snort."

Reese flicks an idle gaze Ashlynn's way, letting it skim to Vhramis before returning once more. "Far be it fer a weel-meanin' 'cquaintance t' introode on yer cloomsy attempts at courtship," she drawls out, wrapping her fingers around the supple leather of her knife's hilt before thrusting it into her belt. "Brigh'ness be. Shoul' bloody see y'selves."

Wolfsbane grunts at that, turning his fire onto Caprice. "With the amount thrown in this lodge, there'd be weddings breaking out everywhere if that were the case," he comments.

Ashlynn flushes, and then the remaining heel of the bread this time goes flying entire at Caprice's head. "I think you stretch the definition too far when applying the term 'well meaning' to yourself," she grumbles.

Ashlynn lands a headshot, bonking Caprice square in the temple. The Pathfinder retorts by glaring at her, then the bread, and then crouching to collect the fallen missile. She dusts it off with the soft tail of her gambeson, indulging in a bite as she rises. "Shoul' I take tha' as 'n woond t' m' honoor an' chastity?" she asks of them with no lack of dry humor, flashing the heel their way before tearing off a piece. "Thank y' fer th' bread."

"Have some sausage," Vhramis offers Caprice as he tosses the remaining bit at her as well, before rising to his feet with a grunt. "I'm going back to bed. Keep from making too large a mess, or I'll call Medivh," he threatens.

"Honor? You?" Ashlynn scoffs, shaking her head at Caprice's challenge as she stands as well; stamping her feet back into her boots. "I should go bed down the horses as well for the night. If I sit for much longer, it will only be doubly hard to make myself get up again. And do not pretend that you have any sort of authority over that bird," she retorts with a half-grin after the man.

Caprice rolls her eyes a third time, but faint amusement can be spied teasing at the corners of her mouth upon the sudden and flustered departure of both parties. Her hands cup at navel-height to catch the thrown snackage, her bread in her teeth - and another mouthful is ripped from the dry loaf and almost impishly chewed before she settles upon the couch for a little rest of her own.

A little too sensitive right now after Caprice's teasing, Ashlynn is all too quick to catch the remaining pathfinder's amusement. Expression set stiffly neutral, she mumbles on her way out, "I am dumping your gear by the door," before she ducks outside.

- Return to Season 7 (2008)