Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Imythess, the border between dreams and reality. We hope you enjoy your visit.

Imythess is a creative writing board where you narrate the story of a character in the medieval land of Imythess, on the planet Chaon. Each topic is an opportunity for your character to interact with the world and its peoples by cooperatively writing pieces of a story with other members, one post at a time. We call this role-playing, because you assume the identity of your character as if it were your own.

In order to play, you must register an account for each character you would like to write about, and begin their tale by filling out their basic profile information: Race (human, elf, demon, etc.), class (warrior, mage, etc.), physical appearance, and any other personal details you would like to describe. You are also encouraged to come up with some background history information for what your character's life has been like up to the point at which their story in Imythess begins.

There is no approval process or application required to join, so long as you follow the rules then you are free to write whatever character details you choose. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Create a character now!


If you're already a member, you can log into your account below:


Username:   Password:
Reply
[P] Refuge; Eliel
Topic Started: Sun Nov 22, 2015 8:06 am (313 Views)
♥Cordelia Brooks
Member Avatar


Twigs snapped under the pounding of her feet. The leaves shouted as she stepped on them, and the branches groaned as she pushed them out of the way. Braids snagged her cloak, imploring her to stay, but she whipped her cloak around body tightly and kept the good secured around her face. Even in the dark, even in the dense forest, the moonlight cutting through illuminated her clouds of breath.

If she could see it, could her pursuers see it, too?

Three days ago she had been standing outside a shop in Balefire when a man approached her, staring, investigating her appearance. She stared at him from the corner of her hard eye, and after what seemed like years but was in fact only moments, he asked if her name was Cordelia Brooks. She made the mistake of saying yes.

Guards were summoned at once. The man began to shout the word murderer over and over again. After he'd said it once, she turned and began to run. The streets were not crowded, but those who were gathered did not make an attempt to stop her. Balefire was not a righteous city. It did not care whether criminals found justice. But the guards pursued her, and though she had a decent start, she could still hear them shouting to each other when she entered the woods.

She had spent three days hiding here. Her skin pulsated with burns where her makeshift camps had been unable to protect her during the daylight hours. She had eluded them until tonight, when one of their hounds found her hiding place. It looked at her, snarling, and howled for a second before she slashed her teeth into its neck.

Had they heard the hound's cry? Could the dogs smell the blood that was still smeared around her mouth?

She saw the tower in the distance, and went on forward until she had to bend her neck upwards to see it. Some candles burned in the windows. She hoped she was in the right place; memory told her she had never been here, but the letters had described tower and its location. Though crumbling, this seemed to be it.

She could not hear anything. Not the hounds, not the sounds of shouting guards, not the sound of feet against the ground. But she did not feel safe. She flew to the door and, without knocking, pushed it open and thrust herself inside. She closed the door behind her and threw the lock closed.

Lowering her hood, so that her black hair spilled out from behind her ears and the burns on her face became visible, Cordelia turned from the threshold and looked inside.

"Eliel?" She called for him softly and took a step deeper inside, her lips parted, her fangs ready lest she find herself in the wrong person's home. "Eliel—it's me. I need help. I need—I need to hide."
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Eliel
Member Avatar


Jab.

Duck.

Jab.

Eliel tried to control his breathing, focusing the overwhelming sense of fury into each strike. He slammed his wrapped knuckles into the bag again and again on the same spot on the bag, pausing now and again to shake the ache out of his bones. With every hit, he could have sworn he could feel the blood wetting his skin, slick where fresh and crusted elsewhere. His rage ebbed bit by bit with the blows, trying his best to ignore the flashes of sensation left over. Using Iuroch had been tolling this evening's hunt, driving him ever closer to the edge of a demonic madness.

Sweat shone on his bared torso in the dim, warm light. His hair was cut shorter than he had once worn it, yet another change to his life to accomidate the constant training and honing for battle. His non-elven lineage was showing through, dark stubble growing along his jaw and cheeks with the occasional silvery streak. Loose pants rolled just below the knee kept his feet free, ducking and weaving around imaginary blows.

Gathering the last of his strength, the elf growled and threw a hook into the worn spot. The four stitches immediately around the spot gave, leather cord finally surrendering. Sawdust puffed from the bag, coating his right forearm in a fine layer of dust. Eliel hissed with pain, inspecting the skinned and bleeding flesh where the wrap had ridden up. Approaching the washbasin, he poured a cup of water over his wounded knuckles, scrubbing them thoroughly before splashing water on his face and wiping down his dusty arms. He poured water over his hair several times and rinsed, lightening and turning the water an off murky color with dye. Inspecting his appearance in a palm·sized piece of polished metal, he winced. He'd need to make another run for dye.

Drying off his hair, Eliel pulled an unlaced tunic over his head and started up the stairs. He froze as the great doors opened above, letting a breeze down the stone stairwell. He reached for his belt on instinct before remembering he'd left his blades on their racks back downstairs. Ascending on the balls of his bared feet, he peered around the corner through an ajar door. A single figure in a cloak entered and shut the door behind her, dropping the bar. While her back was turned, Eliel advanced quietly on the carpeted floor and snatched a cooking knife off a table, the only readily handy weapon in the room aside from the old blade hanging above the fireplace where it buzzed with faint holy energy.

He flipped the blade in a backhanded grip and folded his arms, concealing it against his chest as he stood to her left, standing tall in the guttering candlelight. When she dropped her hood and spoke, he sighed in relief, unfolding his arms. “Oh thank the gods.” He said, alerting her to his position in the dim room. “You found it, then. I was hoping you would. I was going to go looking, but I've been... sidetracked.” He approached and gave her a concerned smile. Realizing he was still holding the knife, he tossed it onto a nearby shelf.

“What's wrong? Who's looking for you?” He approached carefully, like one would a frightened animal. Reaching out to clasp her shoulders, he fixed her in a golden-eyed stare, inspecting the burns. “You've been in the sun.” He winced in sympathy, beginning to reach out to touch her face before hesitation got the better of him. Finally the closeness got to him, forcing him to take a step back. “You're welcome here. We've been working on the tunnels, converting them. I've sort of taken to adopting refugees. You'd fit right in."

He offered a smile that showed most in his eyes, lips barely turning up. "You're always welcome."
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
♥Cordelia Brooks
Member Avatar


When she heard his voice, Cordelia’s eyes searched through the dark to find him. It was only then, once her eyes found him, that her other senses caught up to the moment. The scent of sweat on his body, the sound of his relieved breath. This was yet further evidence of her lost power—there was not a single moment when she did not feel its absence, but now, standing here at the mercy of a friend, she felt it even more sharply.

“I…” She took a breath, and as he touched her shoulders, her unbeating heart began to tremble. It wavered inside her chest, leaving her whole body fluttering with a mounting sense of fear. For days, she had been running. Now that she wasn’t, she felt that she was in even more danger; this was the safest place she could think of, but she wasn’t moving, and at some point the guards and their dogs would find her, find Eliel, and what would happen then?

“Something happened,” she wheezed. He reached out to touch her, but the pulsating of her burns forced her to flinch away. “Balefire—I was in Balefire, and someone recognized me—called me a murderer—and the guards, and the dogs, I’ve been running—I killed one of the dogs—” She raised a hand and gestured wildly to her mouth, still wet with blood, a trail of it dried on her chin and down her neck where it had dripped.

“I don’t know if they’re still after me,” she said. “I haven’t heard the dogs, or shouting, but—the blood—they can follow the scent—”

He stepped away from her. Cordelia closed the distance, grabbing him by his arms, the terror inside her creating ferocity and desperation.

“I can’t help you if they come here,” she said. “I can’t fight them. I don’t know how to do anything but kill. I didn’t even want to do it. The tunnels—”

She gestured toward the stairs and darted toward them, tugging Eliel after her. “Stairs, tunnels, down them, right? And we hide there? How many other people are there—will they… are they dangerous?”
She stopped short on the first step.

“Promise me I can trust you. Trust them.”
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
Eliel
Member Avatar




“They should know better than to come out here, but if they do we can take care of it.” The blood wouldn't be too great a worry. There was a small herd of goats below that two of the refugees took care of. If they went up to slaughter one, the dogs could be thrown off.

When he stepped back, she advanced, eyes wild. He tensed when she grabbed him, cutting off a reflexive grab for her arm, shifting his balance to throw her. His freeze thawed when she started speaking. “Cordelia Marion Brooks.” His voice was hard, reaching up to clasp her forearms. “You've come an awfully long way to find someone you don't know if you can trust.” He reached into his pocked and came out with a leather thong holding a ring. “You can trust me. Nobody's going to harm you here.” He draped the cord around his neck and tucked it under his shirt.

Eliel bit his lip and crossed the room to dig a clean rag out of a cupboard, dipping it into a water bucket. “There are fourteen of us. Fifteen, counting our newest, but he's not the most faithful to our tenets. Yet.” He returned and offered it to her, eying the trail of dried blood down her chin, a dark swath on ivory skin. His eyes tracked her lips and...

He let her move ahead of him, pointing out the way downstairs. Taking the time of heir walk to unwrap his arms, he blew on sore knuckles. “Nobody will die tonight. Not to say there won't be blood if things get rough.” He tossed the wraps next to the bloodied basin and approached a stack of crates in a corner. Sliding one off the corner of the rug, he pulled it back to show the trapdoor.

A wooden ladder led down out of sight through a cramped tunnel below. “It gets wider as you go. Comes out into my quarters below. We took over one of the outposts that you and I cleared out years and years back. Older buildings, but sturdy. They're cold, it's mostly stone, but I'll start a fire when things are settled.”
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
♥Cordelia Brooks
Member Avatar


As Eliel produced the ring, the trembling in Cordelia’s chest began to fade away, replaced by a strength that came from the reassurance of a years-old promise. In this new life of hers, love was a foreign object—she did not know what it felt like, and knew only that it was a capricious agent, something that could instill a person with both the capacity for kindness and cruelty—but after reading the tattered remains of their old letters, she knew she could trust him.

It was too late not to have faith in him. When the guards ran her out of Balefire, she came here.

“All right,” she said. And so her decision was made.

He handed her the rag, and she wiped off her mouth and neck. The half-coagulated blood was sticking to her, and it took some effort before she felt it coming away. Still, her skin felt sticky, but she made as much use of the rag as she could.

“Fifteen,” she said. “Sixteen, counting me.” Her brows came together, her mouth puckered. “There was a time when I could have handled this on my own. There was a time when no one would have come after me; they were all too afraid of what I could do.”

She could remember none of it. Not a single specific instant. But she knew it had happened. She knew, somewhere in her past, that her name had inspired a quiet dread, a hush as people held their breaths and prayed she would not come for them.

What was she now?

On nervous feet she descended the stairs, following the way Eliel had pointed out. She did not reply to what he had said; she could not think of bringing violence into his home. Twice already he had offered her safety, and all she could promise in return were the specters of her past coming back to haunt them both. She had known no one when she returned to Balefire, and was lucky that Eliel had found her before someone else did. Now she was in his home, seeking sanctuary, and she was putting him and his tenants in danger because of her past misdeeds.

She climbed down the ladder, and it came out into his quarters, as he’d promised. It was exactly as he’d described. “What do you mean, outpost?” she asked. “What did we clear it of?”

She turned to look at him, realizing—as she had realized so many times already—that she was a miniature version of what she used to be. She felt so small beside his memories of her; she was not that woman anymore. She didn’t know how to become her again, or even if she wanted to.

“I don’t know if I meant to find you,” she said quietly. “But I started running, and before I knew it my feet carried me to your door. As if they remembered the way. As if they knew I had to come to you, before I even did.”
Offline Profile Quote To Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Free Forums. Reliable service with over 8 years of experience.
Learn More · Register Now
« Previous Topic · Norwood Forest · Next Topic »
Reply

Top RP SitesVote for Imythess at Top Site List Planet
Top Site Lists
Misty Woods created by Helena & Cory of ZNR