[The Dorms] A Perilous Acquaintance

[Kokuten]

The depths of an entire realm opened to Willow. As she neared the edge of the shattered bridge, the heartbeat of the world she felt at her feet became louder in her mind. Looking down at the shifting waves below brought the distinct sensation of fullness, like being at a churrascaria for magic. There was something primordial about it.

A distance longer than she could have leapt naturally spanned before her. It looked about as far out as the rafters in Creative's theater were tall.

Bjorn nervously chewed his cabbage as he watched Willow consider her options.

[Straken]

And consider her options she did, although her leaf was chewed pensively. She hated to admit it and shuddered to think about it, but her abilities had begun making her think logically. Right out of the gate months back she would have absolutely just leapt with complete confidence. While yes, she still made plenty of gut calls, she’d begun thinking of the other factors that went into these maneuvers. Drysi had said something along the lines of angular velocity and vectors, and had offered to help her learn the math involved; but that sounded boring so she’d started balancing a pen on her nose. Yet now here she was, considering how much force she’d need to get a high enough arc to span the gap, but shallow enough to not lose too much of her forward momentum. That wasn’t even taking into account the stone she’d be working with. It seemed smooth, and that increased the risk of either her or her coins slipping; especially when said smooth stone was wet. Given Bjorn’s nervousness, and the sheer presence she felt from the yawning void, Willow would bet on not getting a second chance.

“Thought exercise, Bjorn,” Willow said absently as she reached into her jacket and withdrew a couple of the struts Clever had given her. “One of my known abilities burns off all of my stockpiles without any effect from them.”

She was bending one of the struts, placing it near the lip of the destroyed bridge, and then adjusting the angle some more.

“What do you s’pose the opposite of that would be? I doubt it’d be burning all my metals but with effects, given that I can already do that. Perhaps suppressing a single metal? Seems a little inane, right? It’s weird trying to predict what my powers will do. I kinda envy my friends’ magic. They get to be a lot more freeform, while I’ve been given a box of tools and need to figure out how to use them.”

Both struts were angled and seemingly stable, and Willow began to deliberately step away from the ledge as she counted distance. Once she’d reached a point she was happy with, she removed her loose fitting boots before pulling out one of the copper-aluminum alloy nuts she’d also been given. She tilted it in her fingers a couple times before also retrieving the electrum coin Creative had given her. Two potentially new metals, but similarly two potentially debilitating mistakes. When had she begun thinking so much?

Pressing her hands together, Willow bent the coin against the nut. Then like she’d done with the Pewter figurine, once she was happy with the shape she ate it. Thanks to her Pewter she was able to force it down and not choke, but it still felt like swallowing a chip that was still too big. Standing stock still for a couple seconds, the Brit checked her reserves. A chuckle escaped her lips as she felt the new addition, and she mentally upgraded electrum to Electrum. She burned Electrum.

Immediately, so immediately in fact that she almost yelped, shadows split off and away from her. Flowing like smoke, these shadows began performing various tasks. Some ran towards the edge of the break and jumped. Some turned and walked away from the bridge. Others sat down, meandered aimlessly, or in one such case decided to do a handstand. As she observed them, she recognized they were all herself, precisely as she was down to the strangle mismatched apparel; albeit far more wispy and grey. They were performing actions she could or would consider taking, at least up to a couple seconds before dissipating.

“It’s like that one weird Nic Cage movie,” Willow said off-hand. The shadows shifted as time passed. “Gold showed me how I could have been if I’d made different decisions. Electrum shows me how I could be by making different decisions? Oh!”

Willow felt she had just had a big brain moment and that Drysi would be proud of her. She began to move the nut towards her mouth and thought about eating it, burning it, and using it while jumping with a Pewter flare. The shadows shifted towards a narrow scope of strong intended action, and Willow’s jaw dropped. Giving the nut an appreciative look, she noted that she would need to thank Clever, and upgrade the alloy to a capital letter… just as soon as she learned what it was called.

Eating the nut, Willow confirmed that a new reserve had been added, but didn’t follow through on the action of using it. The shadows faded as she also dropped the burn on Electrum.

“Hang on, Bjorn,” Willow cautioned. After a second to let the odinkine secure himself, Willow took off down the stone bridge empowered by flared Pewter. Her bare feet against the stone felt musical within the heartbeat of the world. The drew closer, and her final stride found her toes curl against the lip of the break between the two struts. She leapt, and then she pushed. Her body moved into the leg-forward leap of a standard long jump as she raced towards the far side; never looking down.

[Kokuten]

"I would not begin to know what makes you work, Metal-eater," said Bjorn, whose talons began to sink tightly in her jacket as she began to pace around. They found even more purchase when the metal she ate granted her a sense of confidence that spelled trouble, "Perhaps we should consider the visions more. You could watch them for a DIFFERENT SOLU-."

Willow's valor drowned out the resounding caw that followed her across the chasm. For that moment in time, she flew, truly sailing across the span. More than any point before, safe terrafirma was far from below her, with no guarantee that the ocean of being below even had a bottom. Her boots bit into the opposite end of the stony bridge, and Willow found herself in the autumnal Floating Hills.

Arrayed before her was a massacre, in a clearing of trees that looked to be a fork in the road. There were the small bodies of spriggans and odinkine strewn about a familiar cart, cabbages tossed into the dirt. Willow could see the glimmer of a coin, nestled in the grasp of a dead Spriggan, curled around it.

"They were not so far ahead of us," said Bjorn, shaking himself out of the feeling of being flown, as opposed to flying, "How did they cross the bridge?"

The clawing marks of frantic, deathly fingers were everywhere. Willow had seen something similar on the beach when she was attacked after saving Clever.

In the increasing gloom of dusk, she could see a cave nearby, with a gentle glow flickering from within. Oddly she made out a set of hoofprints tracking from the disturbance to the cave entrance.

[Straken]

The young thrill seeker couldn’t help but hoot and holler as she sailed over the physical manifestation of an existential void. There was a grin plastered on her face, and she could feel her hair and coat whipping behind her as she cut through the air. One hand came forward to line up parallel with her outstretched right leg, and her other hand came up to secure her odinkine companion. As she arched downward she braced her right leg, and brought her left back to give her some flexibility upon landing. Once her heel made contact she slid a short way as she leaned forward to keep her balance. Spurred on by Pewter, her posture gradually shifted forward across the ball of her lead foot, and then brought her left foot forward to begin carrying her to solid ground.

Taking a moment to collect herself after the leap, Willow also took in the scene around her. Once again, this adventure tempered her exuberance. The excitement of her leap fell to a low burn, and the embers sat in her gut. Unlike back on the beach however, these embers didn’t flare and burn her chest with the desire for vengeance; instead, these embers felt more like justice. These spriggan didn’t deserve this fate; and even though Willow had strong armed them before, they had given her an incredible boon. Now they were dead. If she had left them squabbling back at the river would they still be alive?

“Between your wing, and these spriggan; starting to think I’m a perilous acquaintance,” Willow said as she knelt by the spriggan clutching the coin. Plucking another coin from her pouch, she placed it in the spriggan’s hands. It was sentimental, and the practical option would have been to take the first coin to give herself more ammunition; but this felt right.

“Two for the River Styx.”

Standing once more, Willow began a low burn on Tin to sharpen her eyes and her hearing. Bringing her burning metals to: Pewter, Steel, Iron, Copper, and Tin at low burns; and her burn of Electrum having ended at her jump across the bridge. From here on, she was on guard. She had no guarantee the horseman was an ally, and so began a technique she’d discussed with Miss Smith. A Steel Bubble. During another training session involving careening scrap metal, Willow had discovered she didn’t need to actually focus on an object to push with Steel. The push of course didn’t have the same force as a focused push, but this bubble of Steel Pushing could be maintained similar to her Copper Cloud. Then, when incoming Pushable metal met the edge of the Steel Bubble it would be deflected somewhat. That said, she’d only successfully done it once, and against scrap she had seen coming; to say nothing of the strain it put on her focus. If she wasn’t careful it could make her miss something, if she was surprised she would probably outright miss incoming metal, and she wasn’t even certain it could deflect something like an incoming bullet given that Miss Smith had refused to shoot at her to help test the theory.

For now, it was a stop gap up until she found the gunman, at which point she would drop the taxing technique. On careful feet and with Tin sharpened eyes she approached the cave entrance.

[Kokuten]

Orange clouds of leaves began to darken further into tones of gloomy blue above Willow's head. Light was fading more and more from the day, but it made the tall cave look all the more inviting. An amber glow wobbled at the cave mouth, a luminescence and a distinct crackle that only a fire could make. Willow could hear the barest noises of movement above the hill, like the sound of falling leaves. The wind was strong on these floating islands, but that could have been her enhanced senses. Her finely tuned hearing made the gusts sound like harried, hollow breathing.

Peering past the edge, Willow could see a campfire made at the entrance, warding away the dark. Leaning further, she found her horseman, or rather she had found the man and the horse. They were one. There wasn't time to admire or gawk, as this centaur, a winged centaur, was also the rifleman. His weapon was aimed so true, that if she closed her eyes, she was sure she'd be able to see the bullet down the barrel.

He had been waiting, he had heard her coming, and her finely tuned ears could hear his finger squeeze the trigger. The mechanisms halted, though, as his eyes truly saw her. Mid-pull, he held the shot.

The man was young, with the features of his bronze face just older than her own. Blood streaked from his curly, black hair and threatened to blind the golden eye staring her down. He wore what looked like an officer's coat, wrapped in platemail, torn and dented.

A tense moment passed, until the wind blew again. Except it hadn't been the wind. The realization would come to Willow as she heard it, and to the rifleman as he saw them. He finished pulling the trigger. A bullet whizzed pass her and struck a legless Wraith of Vengeance in the eye, killing it. As he racked the slide, three flew into the cave, with the other three soundlessly coming down on Willow.

Their arms outstretched, they let out an ear-piercing shriek.

[Straken]

“Ding dang centaur,” Willow, at least, wanted to say if it weren’t for her entire body tensing up as she stared down the barrel of a gun. Her time with dad, gramps talking about hunting, and training with Miss Smith had well ingrained in her that the view she was seeing was the wrong way to look at a gun. Pewter flared as Willow prepared to dive, and the burn on Tin ceased as the tattoo of a rifle firing from a cave could be deafening even without enhanced hearing. Just as the burn dropped she thought she heard a familiar sound. Then the ding dang centaur fired, the wraiths lunged, and Willow dove.

Pushing herself away from the edge of the cave, Willow tucked low as she kicked backwards. Pulling free a handful of coins, she pushed one back towards the rock face by the cave to propel herself backwards with more momentum, and she loosed another coin as she swung her hand toward one of the wraiths. For good measure she also brought Brass up to a strong burn. The last Wraith of Vengeance had faltered when she had Soothed rage, so it was worth another go. This time however there were six or so wraiths, and Willow didn’t commit her focus to Soothing six specific targets; so the area was graced by a generalized zone that softened aggression.

Willow knew her next focus needed to be getting mobile and establishing a better position. The first wraith effectively shut her down just by grabbing her. If one of these wraiths could do that too, then she had little doubt that the other wraiths would move to finish her off. Coins flicking around her, Willow tumbled and regained her feet before pushing off with a flared Pewter jump.

Her eyes went wide with realization. Thinking back to the Electrum specter that had burned the Copper-Aluminum alloy. If it could theoretically do that to Pewter, what could it do to the other metals? Willow stopped burning all of her metals except for Brass, and while Soothing rage and anger Willow burned Clever’s alloy. In an instant, the alloy flared to full power while pulling Brass along with it. Both reserves were spent before Willow knew what happened, sended out a veritable wave of numbing Brass.

[Kokuten]

All at once, the shrieking stopped.

Before her, the wraiths had fallen to the ground, reduced and more stunned than she had seen before. Their shapes had softened into more recognizable forms, all of them warped-looking spriggans. They were all sitting, staring dumbly at the ground, confused, but calmed. Until one of them looked at their hands, covered in sap and blood. Slowly it began to melt back into its wretched form.

Then, the shooting started.

KRAK! The rifle snapped angrily in the peaceful silence, rocking back each of the calmed forms violently with a bullet. Each target picked by who looked like would turn back first. With five more shots, the wraiths were slain, and the world became quiet again.

Within the cave, the winged centaur reloaded his rifle from a bandolier of ammunition at his human waist. The horse form below that was a silvery white, and Willow could pick out two dark forms peering from below his bloodied, silvery white wings. A pair of once frightened, now calmed odinkine. Their bright eyes and dark wings were unmistakable. All three of them stared at the girl.

The centaur spoke first, his cloudy, golden eyes carefully watching her.

"Come in. There are more of them out there," his voice was distinctly Greek, with inflections of a steely grit, either from pain or experience. "Without the sun to temper them, the wraiths are mindful and violent. They hunt in packs, and kill anything they find on the roads."

The winged centaur was still laying flat by the interior wall of the cave. He patted a small open spot near him, a bedroll bundled into a cushion. His rifle, and one eye, was kept on the cave opening.

[Straken]

Willow’s body tensed and she reflexively began to flare Pewter in preparation to dodge when the gunshots sounded. The steadying effect of the metal gave her enough clarity to recognize the centaur was solely striking at the wraiths. With Pewter quelling to a low burn once more, Willow in turn brought her other metals up to match; save for Brass and the alloy, which Willow confirmed were completely burnt out. Thankfully she had more of those alloy nuts, but she had no back up Brass to refuel. Jaw clenched, Willow didn’t argue with the rifleman as she moved into the cave, but that's not to say she didn’t have some coins in her hand and Steel at the ready.

Taking in the sight, Willow found she was, ever so slightly, getting desensitized to seeing odd entities. A winged centaur? She supposed that bypassed a normal centaur’s inability to use ladders. Beyond that, and noting the odinkine, Willow found she had brought Tin up to burn again as she sniffed the air. Blood was distinct, as was gunpowder, but what she was smelling for was the presence of food. She supposed she could quickly grab another cabbage, but cabbage alone could not sustain a budding allomancer.

“There always so many of those things? Or did I stubble into a beginning of the end scenario?” Willow asked as she pulled out another alloy nut. Popping it in her mouth she swallowed, and relished the weight in her stomach. A bit of imagination could trick her into thinking it was real food, even if her body wouldn’t digest it. Instead, the weight became a renewed well of energy for a different part of her.

[Kokuten]

The centaur was guarded, his hands not leaving the rifle as Willow approached. Whatever extended his hospitality to her, it had overrode his sense of caution. As Willow approached, her new cavemate looked the mix of a medieval knight and an 1800s British soldier, had he not looked so stunningly Greek. His rifle was actually a bit shorter than a normal weapon of its kind, a carbine that looked to fit on a holster at his hip. To top off the knightly motif, a banner of orange and gold leaned against the back wall, with a cracked helmet resting at its base.

Golden eyes dissected the Allomancer as she settled in, and there was a sense of intensity that wrapped the whole of the centaur's being. It was a testing look and even Bjorn sat stiffly in the face of the knightly creature. He combined the gravity of someone like Jane's demeanor, with the power of No Name's presence.

That is, until Willow forced down a piece of metal, and the look faded away into something softer.

He set his rifle down with abundant care, and grabbed her hand. After searching through a hefty bag set to his side, he placed a cloth-wrapped hunk of bread in her palms and closed her fingers around it

"It won't matter if it's the end of the world," said the Centaur, gently, "if you starve. I have a little more to spare if you're still hungry. I am Noble. Captain of the Navipolian Guard. Defender of the Lord's Realm. Sentinel of the Floating Islands."

He smiled, sadly. "That was not your question, though. I am sorry. You're not familiar with the Wraiths of Vengeance? They have haunted these woods since the world was young. Vengeance herself is wrapped in a cloak of trees miles from here, but she spreads suffering far and wide. You must have seen the massacre outside; I was too late, but thankfully I chose to make one more round before sunset."

His wings spread, painfully, revealing the couple of battered odenkine. "It seems all we can do now is wait for the sun to rise."

[Straken]

“M’name’s Willow. Pleasure, an’ I for sure wouldn’t…”

Willow plopped down against the opposing wall, and paused as the last several hours of travel seemed to catch up to her. An unexpected sigh interrupted her.

“Wouldn’t, uh, wouldn’t say no to some food. All Bjorn ‘n’ I’ve had was some cabbage… well, maybe, I didn’t ask if Bjorn had eaten breakfast.”

Her own rambling aside, this Noble guy had given another cluster of information. Navipolian Guard. Lord’s Realm? And did he just say Vengeance was a person? Willow had assumed the wraiths were just really angry, and it hadn’t crossed her mind that of Vengeance could have been possessive rather than descriptive. Once more, the naming conventions of this realm had tricked her.

“Oohvda Wowarda ohv…”

Oops, bread in your mouth, Willow.

Gulp

“Who’s the Lord of the Lord’s Realm?” Willow asked as she remembered back to the other individuals she had conversed with on the trek. “I’m an outlander, jus’ assume I either have a Pop Culture knowledge ranging from No Clue to The Bird On My Shoulder Might Have Mentioned It At Some Point.”

She eyed the carbine.

“Also, don’ s’pose your casings are made of Brass, are they?”