It had taken just over a week to put it all to rest. She had finished her missions in Utah. She finished a job and solo climb in Nevada. She visited her sisters and avoided her mother in northern California. She canceled her camping plans in Oregon. For the first time in a long time, Sabine had opted to get a hotel room rather than sleep in her car, a tent, or a cabin. The email had come in on the road, and she'd grappled with a lot in the time in-between. Years of regrets and longings quarreled with one another in-between her ribs. They had cracked against her sternum and sunk into her guts and hounded her for days. Day and night. A loop of the blinding light fading into Eastern Brisshal's fields, the whistle of arrows slowly finding their marks with keener aim, scales wrapped tight enough to crush and then again gentle under palm. A march of cheering crowds, a lone chimeric hunt, the burning bars of volcanic arms, watching bodies crack in half from the force of sobs, the warmth of home and hearty stews, the sky blotted out under so many arrows, the thrill of a final strike, swords in her memory she could only imagine as black as the void between stars.
Starcalled, she had been and, like many others, Starcalled she was again.
Gwyn ap Herne felt the weight of ages when she logged in for the first time in three years? Four? There was no adjusting of her eyes to the brilliant light of a first spawn in Eastern Brisshal and there was no adjusting to the low, candle-lit interior of the bakery. Everything was black. Bladed black. The world flared to life when an instinct long thought lost kicked it. Gwyn watched with rankled nerves as the edges of the hallway and the decorations hung on the walls sharpened. The runner along the floor to dampen the creaking and the tapping of a wolf's claws gained color. She could sense the hollow of air behind her, where the bedroom's door stood open. Ahead, past a few closed doors, the stairs down to the bakery proper rather than the living quarters above.
Her honed ability guided every step. Overwhelming. Every creak felt like a gunshot. The peeling away of the darkness made her temples throb. The movement of air against her bared arms was icy and rasping. The scent of dust and wood rot was inescapable. Kyupin Felnya's home at the heart of her lands should have never felt like a crypt. In the beams of sunlight downstairs? It felt more like a ghost town.
There were bootprints in the dust.
She'd lost time after that. Racing through a deserted town, wooden boards half-fallen and vines climbing up their flanks. The trod of wagons down the dirt roads was long washed away by rain and disuse. So too were the prints, after long enough. Even the inhumanly sharp senses her build allowed her… she couldn't find the owner of the lost and meandering path she'd followed through Kyupin's home and into the streets, and then faded into nothing. Gwyn had raced herself ragged and finally buckled against a tree. The bark snared against metal-studded leather, catching as she slid down to a loose sprawl at it's base. She hadn't found Vulcan either, not even prints or hairs. No Nathair. No Hati, Skoll, Krait, or Irene. There hadn't been a recall in the UI before, but she brought up the Settings to enable her HUD and search through every option in her inventory and settings and commands and nothing. Nothing except a few red alerts. Notifications. Letters in a mailbox that didn't exist, but simultaneously couldn't weather under layers of dust.
"I'm a fucking idiot."
A few minutes of a wild heartbeat and she had her answer. And there was nothing else but an even wilder race to some lake and some campground and somewhere near Vintergard. She had no idea why she'd specified it as safe, the capital region had been secured a while after the founding - the quests had been many, but important. It didn't matter. What did was, after a handful of hours, blonde hair and a familiar blue and white outfit. Four fucking years. It didn't feel real.
"Kyupin?"
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