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Patrols are a Very Normal Sunday Thing for the motley, and so it is that the four are gathered on one of the trod paths leading out toward the center of the state, roughly. Vaguely toward Red Rose. Sorta. It can be hard to lay out where a Trod runs on a real-world map. That's ... kinda how Trods work.
June is clad in her armor, like she generally is when she's out on her patrols. Or in the hedge in general, aside from their Hollow. There's something routine to this trip, but even when it's routine, the hedge is also dangerous. It can throw the unexpected at you at any time, and those who let their guard down end up dead. She comes to a pause and tilts her head like she might have heard something, and glances around to see if anyone else did.
Sturm's lightly outfitted for the patrol this afternoon, dressed in what is effectively just tactical gear beneath an armored overcoat. She doesn't usually do the Full Suit of Armor when it comes to scouting, preferring to travel swiftly, and quietly. The Jotunn draws her bloody lip up into her mouth, sucking on it gingerly, but her token thrums with magical blue light beneath their cloth disguise.
Sigrun's riding her horse for this one. This is a long ranging out, and hauling the horse along means being able to haul camping and medical gear along, too, just in case. Accordingly, the pace of her horse is quite slow to keep up with her unmounted companions. She's got one of her spears with its attached banner resting in its holster. Quite the dashing profile, certainly, but not so good at maintaining stealth. But that's Sigrun for you.
Glitch nearly always is kitted up in full armor in the Hedge now, ever since Sigrun made his current set. It's not very cumbersome. He walks alongside Sigrun and the horse, keeping an eye on the path ahead and occasionally glancing back over his shoulder to check behind and to the sides. He's also apparently a sleepy sprite, as despite his attempts to look intimidating and mysterious, he's yawned at least four times now. The fifth comes quietly, as he tries to turn his head down towards his shoulder.
It's not that early for snow to start, outside of Philadelphia -- there have been blizzards in October more than once, and occasionally even snow in late September on weird occasions. (It never sticks around, but there has been.) There wasn't any snow on the forecast when they started out, but then, when has the Hedge ever gone by the rules of what's happening outside its gates?
It begins with a few snowflakes, and within a minute, heavy, wet white stuff is falling from the sky and coating the trod. The motley-subset leaves footprints in the snow, and the cold paints their breath on the air.
What did June hear before, what made her tilt her head? Did she (and the others) hear it again? A raven's cry, maybe?
June frowns, starts to stick out her tongue to catch a snowflake, and then realizes this is the hedge and thinks twice. "Am I the only one who heard that?" she asks. "I think I heard a bird. A crow or a raven, maybe?" She looks around, curious if anyone else caught it, or if she's just hearing things.
When you wear an overcoat all the time -- even when it's far too hot to do so -- one might almost consider a sudden onset of snow to be a good thing. At least for their internal body temperature. Sturm, however, is not a glass half-full type of person. When the raven's voice reaches her ears, the Jotunn's stony frown only seems to grow deeper. She inclines her head, fixing Sigrun with an almost worried look... but perhaps it's more confusion than worry.
However, June's statement is all the confirmation she needed to hear, and without saying another word, the Jotunn pulls a black bandanna up over the lower half of her face, and activates her Cloak of Night. Her shadow swells to encompass the party with the flick of a wrist.
With her memories starting to come back? Sturm's far too Norse Mythology for this to be anything other than a bad fucking omen.
Sigrun's horse whinneys nervously in the wake of the raven cry, and Sigrun steers her with her knees in a tight circle to try and triangulate the sound before facing her horse up the trod again. She shares a glance to Sturm with a small nod of the head and hefts her shield from a resting position to a ready one. "Raven," Sigrun assures June calmly. The snow doesn't bother her any. Really, it just feeds into her whole aesthetic.
Glitch isn't as up on his norse mythology as some, and seems to not understand what the big deal is. He glances between June and Sturm and shakes his head. "Just a bird," he says to the frost giant, in a somewhat ineffective attempt at comfort. Putting things together as he continues to trudge alongside everyone, he adds, "Ravens are all over. That asshole doesn't have them trademarked."
The snow thickens consistently, until it's threatening a good Minnesota-style blizzard. Visibility drops as snow sticks to eyelashes and coats trees, and it gets harder and harder to see much further than where their motleymates stand (or sit, in Sigrun's case).
The raven's cry sounds again, and there's a second, more distant sound, but growing closer: wolf (wolves?) howling.
"Normally I like it when the weather gets like this, but..." June sighs. "Not in the hedge, unexpectedly. We should probably make a decision on what we're doing before we get blinded by the snow, or snowed in. Or try to change it, and deal with the hedge resisting that."
Sturm is -- err, was -- a great hunter in Arcadia, and the muscle memory from her time there seems to take over. The falling snow might be a bad omen, but for a Jotunn -- and a Winter -- it's just another layer of protection from whatever might be lurking beyond the flurries. The swirling blizzard seems to wrap around her, aiding in concealing her comrades from prying eyes, rather than impeding their movements. Glitch's comment goes unanswered as she begins to unwrap her fists.
"I don't like this at all," her voice is a low grumble. "If I were plotting an ambush, this is how I'd do it."
Ominous.
"Briarwolves?" Sigrun wonders aloud with a scowl, "This is turning into an interesting patrol." She doesn't dismount, but she does lower her spear to rest on the ground so that she can remove the banner from it and stuff it back into her saddle bag. It's not helpful to stab your banner into someone. The blood takes forever to wash out. "It's only an ambush if they don't advertise their assault. Which they seem intent on doing. I vote for spinning back the storm and facing down what's coming. Either that or immediate withdrawal. I'd like to know what's out here, though, personally."
"This might be my paranoia getting the better of me, but we always hunted alongside wolves. If your quarry thinks they're just dealing with wild animals, it's easy to lure them into making mistakes." She rolls her shoulders, giving up the point to her companions. "... but let's clear out the blizzard. Having a proper field of vision can only help us."
This is now officially An Blizzard, and visibility has just... dropped. This helps Sturm, but doesn't help seeing, you know, whatever is coming. The snow is falling fast now -- pretty soon it's going to start impeding their movements in combat.
"I'm with Sigrun on trying to spin the storm back," June says with a wrinkle of her nose. "This is going to get bad if we don't, I suspect." She cracks her knuckles, since her fingers stick out from her gauntlets, bared to allow for the use of claws. "Shall we?"
Glitch shifts his hand up to the hilt on his back, drawing the blade just enough to let the steel glint in the waning light of the storm. "Let's rock."
June starts performing a kata in place, something that looks like it might fit into some stereotypes of kung fu that might be called tiger style, with clawed fingers. With a sharp cry and a spinning maneuver her claws seem to fully grab hold of the rising blizzard, pulling it in and around her, and then a roaring shout and a rapid spreading of her hands allows her to, somehow, in faerie dream logic, shred the entire storm with the razored tips of her fingers. Around her, as far as the eye can see, the rent edges of the storm unravel until the whole thing flutters away and vanishes on the breeze.
Sigrun keeps her spear down for the moment and continues rustling around in her saddle bag for her flint and steel. She strikes the two against one another and blows sharply through the sparks, causing a sudden billow of heat and light to spread around the group. At first, the heat is probably pleasant. A fine counterpoint to the wind, snow, and blustering winds. But it will absolutely wear on them all, given time. Like standing on blacktop in the middle of an August heatwave. But it achieves its purpose. The remnants of the falling snow fades into mist, and the snowpack begins to immediately melt away around them.
She shoves her gear back into the bag and readies her spear once more, hefting it up from the ground. "Good work, June."
Unlike June's hedgespinning, there's something far more brutal and direct about Sturm's. Wrestling a shredded piece away from the growing Blizzard, she attempts to set a trap for whatever might be approaching. Just past Sigrun's zone of heat -- at a critical juncture -- the snow knits into a glittering, intricate lattice of cord and knots. A net trap, and leverage enough to hoist an unwitting something high out of the fight now lies just atop the freshly fallen snow. Nearly invisible to the eye.
Glitch waits, and watches. June spins the storm away, Sigrun warms their party, if a bit intensely, and Sturm spins the snow itself into a trap. His hand stays on his swordhandle, waiting for what's to come...
The storm remains up the Trod and down the Trod, so getting home might require more work, but for now, at least, they've made themselves a little bubble of heat and the lack of snow means they can see what's coming.
The howl (howls? It's hard to tell) repeats itself, and with the blizzard peeled back, it's possible to see, perched high in one of the trees, a raven.
"I thought I heard a raven," June says when they spot the bird watching them. She squints at it, puts her gauntleted hands on her armored hips, and asks, "did you make the blizzard? Or were you just cauight in it like us?"
Sturm pauses amidst unraveling the cloth covering from her bloody stone knuckleguards. "... and that howl doesn't belong to a briarwolf. Too high pitched," she offers in a quiet voice. The pace quickens as she continues to unveil her weapons, and the howl sounds a second time. There's a visible change in her stance, and her combat-ready posture slackens ever-so-slightly. "... wolves usually howl to communicate with one another, but I think I only hear one. It almost sounds like it's... scared?" She goes quiet, brow furrowed in visible confusion.
Glitch turns his head silently towards Sigrun as June talks to the bird. He relaxes slightly too, but makes sure to turn his back on his companions so he can watch for any extra-tricky ambushes. "Could be a Beast," he says, glancing over to June in considered sympathy. "Could be a trap, too, but..." It goes without saying. Everyone here is paranoid enough.
Sigrun does not address the raven. She just maneuvers her horse beside June and watches it with a sincerely mistrustful scowl. Birds in the hedge? Sure. That happens. Ravens in the hedge? Not so much. And she remains justifiably suspicious of the creature. She's still got her eyes on the bird when her head bobs at Sturm's news. "I'm not at all a fan of this particular set of circumstances. Let's check it out, then get out of here. We're well out from our usual patrol grounds. Both help and safety are a long haul from here."
There's a sudden shriek and a yelp, both at the same time, as Sturm's trap springs. It's out at the edge of Sigrun's heat bubble.
Sturm, kind-hearted dumbass that she is, is going to bolt forward to check the trap. She's the one who set it, after all.
June follows Sturm's lead, since for all that she IS a Beast, June isn't really so great with animals. She nods agreement with Sigrun, though. "That storm was really unusual even for the Hedge, so I think that there's good reason for us not to stick around. In case someone did it to us on purpose, and still has nefarious ideas."
"There's never a good reason to stick around in the Hedge," Glitch helpfully grouses, as he brings up the rear, sword at the ready.
"There are plenty of reasons to stick around in the hedge. Just not here," Sigrun counters to Glitch with a grin. She keeps her horse and by extension herself back from the kerfuffle over the trap. Just in case something needs to be run down by a spear wielding, mounted valkyrie on short notice.
The trap hoists up as Sturm and June approach, and at first Sturm and June can see that there appears to be a second ... person? body? thing? in it. But the shape of the net changes _as they approach, leaving only a whimpering, snarling canid stuck in the swinging net, hanging right around Sturm's eye level.
Sigrun remains in the saddle, even if she's probably the one qualified for this work. The horse continues to criss-cross the field to maintain inertia in the event whatever was leading this wolf makes its reappearance. "Search the net. See if whatever disappeared from the net left anything behind. I'd love to get my hands on something like that. An excellent early warning system."
June frowns as the question of the collar comes up. "We do need to take that off. It's cruel, and it needs to go. But I don't think we can pull it off without hurting the wolf at least a little. I can help with restraining it long enough to do that, I suppose. I don't like holding an animal down like that, but it will better for it in the long run."
The raven in the tree continues to sit right there in that there tree, and it blinks.
The wolf curls up on the ground, panting and shivering.
"Fuck, that's what I was afraid of." Sturm offers a frown, looking over the collar. "Okay, hold her down, June. I'll see if I can get this awful thing off. Glitch, can you check the net for anything that might've been left behind? That fucking bird is making me uncomfortable as hell, and I want to get the fuck out of here..."
Sigrun's equestrian pacing does not abate in the least. As she wheels back around again, she squints up at the observing raven and shouts up at it. In a decidedly norse tongue, no less. "Viðmerk! Viðmerk!" She even goes so far as to flare her light at the bird to scare it off. Call it a warning shot.
Untitled Goose Admin (she/her)Today at 8:09 PM
Sturm turns away from the wolf, driving her fist deep into a snow bank with all the practiced ferocity of a professional fist-fighter. When she pulls back her snow-covered fist, there's a fist-ful of equipment in her mitt. Oh, The Hedge. Wild.
June breaks a branch off of a nearby tree and starts bashing it against her knees and punching it into shape. Somehow, in the process of doing this, she turns the branch into a pair of tinsnips, which she can use to try to help clip the collar off of the wolf. How? Who knows, it's the hedge. And then she approaches the dog, speaking tenderly and apologetically, before she grabs hold hold of its legs, flips it over, and pins it down like someone who knows exactly how to restrain a quadrupedal animal against its will. "I'm sorry," she says. "It's just for a moment. This will only hurt for a second, and then you'll be free. I'm so sorry."
Sturm isn't the most dexterous (or educated) vet in the whole wide world, but she's pretty good at making due. It's not easy to get her knife underneath the wriggling wolf's collar -- even though June is helping -- but she manages. She slips the blade underneath the band, and slices it free, before tossing the wretched thing aside in the snow.
Glitch sits in his tree, and stares across the distance at the Raven perched on the next tree over. He keeps his hand on his sword, and his attention focuses in on the bird. Crouched on the high branch like a gargoyle, he leans forward just enough to make it clear to the bird that it has his full attention and he's not afraid of it. That's right, bird, I see you.
The collar is a nasty affair, and when it comes away, it's clear there are wounds beneath to be healed; it looks like the sort of thing that was put on when the animal was smaller, and it grew to the point where it was digging in, grown in, to its flesh. It wails when the collar is taken away, when June holds her and flips her over (because when you flip a wolf over, sexing it is pretty easy!), she struggles for a moment to get away. The soothing words and the removal of the collar, though? She just sort of goes limp.
The bird sits still, even when the bright light hits it -- and there's a subtle glitter near or around the bird, something that catches the light; its little talons grip tighter to the branch for a moment, but then Glitch's focused attention from a high branch?
The bird turns its head, actually sees Glitch, and startles. It caws loudly, abruptly, and takes flight, heading up into the sky and then down the Trod.
When her kith blessing clearly impacts something more substantial than the bird's retinas, Sigrun gives her horse a kick of the heels and starts chasing after that raven as though it stole her lunch money. She's cursing vociferously in some language or other, spitting invective and asserting her dominance all the while. This is followed by a lance of fire and light splitting open the air and slamming into the bird's retreating keister. The words 'Freyja' and 'Vanaheim' stick out, given her familiar use of both around present company.
Sigrun's curses absolutely have their desired effect: in the Hedge, the curses she spits take on their own life, and tear into the body of...
... the falling body of...
... the screaming falling body of what's absolutely not a raven at all, but a young woman with raven-black hair and solid dark eyes.
She hits the ground hard, and struggles up to her feet, screaming back at Sigrun in that same language.
It's not the first time Sigrun has had a bellowing Sturm hurl a rock at something she's chasing after - and to be perfectly honest, because stories tend to be written in circles, it probably won't be the last. As the commotion begins, she looks about for anything that can be used as a weapon. Spotting a soccer ball sized rock, the Jotunn takes a few steps forward, hoping the muscle memory from high school track and field will come back to her by the time the rock leaves her hand. Her form is... shockingly good, and the shot put boulder flies over the racing Valkyrie's head, and nails the raven-girl center mass. Oof!
Untitled Goose Admin (she/her)Today at 8:56 PM
June takes off like a shot, which tends to to be the way she approaches a fight when it comes up, and she crosses the distance to their target in moments. Instead of tearing the woman in two she grabs an arm, spins her around by it, flips it over, and drops her on her back, where June comes down on her with the full force of her strength and her armor. There's a cracking of bones, and then the woman vanishes and June tumbles onto the ground, as their quarry gets yanked back to Arcadia in the blink of an eye. "I fucking hate that shit!" June yells at nobody in particular.
"Woo! Hell yeah! Did you see that shit!?" Boy howdy, Sturm's gotten a lot more animated without all her Trauma™️, huh. "Can you fuckin' believe I nailed that motherfucker? With a fuckin' rock?!" There's a moment of silence, and Sturm remembers where they are. She clears her throat. "Oh yeah, I hate that shit too." A beat. "Same thing happened last time we danced with a helldiver. Shit's fucking annoying."
The wolf slinks back and hides behind Sturm, not keen to engage with the tumbling raven-woman.
Sigrun's horse is already charging, so it continues to do so, the point of her spear passing right through the air the helldiver previously occupied. And when the woman escapes, Sigrun settles back down into her saddle and reins in her horse again, though rather than wheel around again to canter her way back, she lets out a shrill scream of frustration. "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"
June hops up and dusts herself off, then kicks the dirt where the woman had been. "Mother fucker," she mutters before heading back toward the others. "I guess not her. It's not her fault she's an obnoxious bitch. She didn't have a choice in it. So fuck the fucker who fucked her up." Then she pauses and looks at Sigrun and Sturm. "Was that... him? Well, one of his."
Glitch is left to slowly walk up behind the rest of his group, hand leaving his sword before it even has to be drawn. "I didn't trust that fucking bird," he beeps helpfully.
"No doubt in my fucking mind," Sturm grumbles as she takes a knee beside the wolf. "Unfortunately." When she's satisfied that the wolf isn't a danger -- or in some way bugged/tethered -- she pulls herself back up, and paces over to Sigrun and June. "I'm going to assume we didn't kill her, huh? If not, that's... bad." A beat. "What's our next move?"
"Yes," Sigrun confirms before wheeling her horse back about to trot on back to the group again. "I was suspect of the raven at first, but didn't want to provoke a fight in the storm. When it stuck around through all of that, I figured it might have been a herald. Or something like that. She spoke Faroese. That's one of one eye's wolves. So. Yes. We should assume everything that just transpired? He now knows." Her frustration has been vented, but she's yet to resume her typical calm and confident demeanor. She's trying, it's just not working. "We need to get out of here and leave the hedge by the nearest gate. We can rent a car for the ride back, or something. But I'm not leading them back home."
"Do you think she was here to get the wolf?" June says with a glance the wolf's way. "If so, them I'm glad we rescued it. We should be sure we take a route home that isn't going to show any tails we picked up where to go, though. Time for us to be extra cautious for a little while, in general. I agree." She sighs and then looks at the wolf again, and at Sturm. "We should get out of here, though."
"I agree." Sturm offers at the end of a long, wordless grumble. Her fists disappear into the pockets of her overcoat, and she scowls. "Did you happen to get a good look at her, June? Anything we could use as an early warning system get caught under your claws, by chance?" It's a gristly thing to say aloud, but Sturm asks the question with all the blasé attitude someone asking if they had skim milk at the grocery store. She pauses, looking back at the injured wolf. It's still hiding behind her. "I'm glad we rescued it, too, but this is one of his hunting wolves. Obviously it wasn't a willing participant -- and I have no interest in leaving it here to be reclaimed -- but I'll... defer to your better judgement on the matter of whether or not we risk bringing it back with us."
"For the record," she adds. "I advocate for taking her. I know I wouldn't want to go back, and be put in one of those collars."
"We're not sending him back into captivity. No. And we're not abandoning him here. We can nurse him back to health, and if he acclimates well? So much the better. If not? We can decide what to do at that time. But we're not sending him back there." Sigrun's vote is spoken with an air of demand that's not typical of her. At all. But if she's going to be Fairest about something, it's going to be about her friggin' keeper. That stated, she plants her spear haft in the snow, dismounts from her horse, and fishes some bandages from her pack. She uses the bandage to daub up some of the blood on the snow pack, squeezing it until the snow melts and the blood permeates the bandage. Then she tucks it away in her pack again.
That will come in handy.
"We need to get back and warn the others. And probably warn Red Rose, too. And Old Iron. I'll call Enyo when we get back. Do any of you know anyone in Red Rose?"
"We're not making him go back to someone who would put that collar on him," June says adamantly, like she'll fight anyone who tries to say they should. "We can take care of him until we're sure he can take care of himself, and then let him decide if he wants to go back to the hedge on his own, or what. I guess. Right?" She shakes her head. "I don't know anyone there. Or in Old Iron, for that matter. But warning people is a good idea."
"Good. Didn't want to have to argue with anyone about it." She says this as if the matter is settled with Sigrun agreeing. "I don't know shit about Red Rose, but I'll circulate something, and see if I can't find someone from home that does. Alas, I only spent time in Patriarch's Tree and Old Iron."
Glitch studies the wolf in question, then shakes his head. "Don't look at me, I'm not gonna say we leave it here. Even if they didn't take it back it'd be stuck here in the shitty Hedge, get carted off and sold by the fucking goblins or whatever." He kicks at the snow, feeling a bit out of depth. "I wish we could wait for the bastards somewhere. I'm tired of being the one stalked and ambushed."
"Me fuckin' too," Sturm offers quickly. She kneels beside the wolf, placing a comforting hand on her flank. "... we'll have to keep an eye out for ravens, now."
"I never stopped," Sigrun admits as she steps up into the stirrup and swings her leg back over the saddle. She plucks her spear out of the snow, hikes it up to her shoulder, then sets the haft back into its holster. "Let's get moving. There may be others lurking about."
"Ready to go," June agrees. "Autobots, roll out."
"This is why I hate the fuckin' Hedge," Sturm grumbles. She shoves her hands back into her pockets as they turn to go, but she does her best to keep an eye on the injured wolf until they get back to safe-ish territory.
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