katabasis | [psl] dos rowdy boys

There is some other question on the tip of his tongue, to do with the letters, the shack and its current residents, a next task ahead of him. Instead, it stays there for now, a flicker of hesitance where his hand fidgets at the edge of the waterskin—

Turns by a few degrees, a gravelled exhale following that hand lifting, pulling his shirt collar. The speckling of burn-like marks are shiny and pink, one nesting up behind his jaw beneath his ear and dotted down from there before the edge of his collar had protected him from the rest, a smear of discolouration on grey linen but wetted down when he'd washed the area.

"They would have known this place was here for them," he says, looking towards where Buggie has insinuated herself closer, and then towards where Monster is still slaking her thirst, sooty wings folded in neatly and forefeet sunk into soft sand and water. "Could only be a waypoint, still."

Or a rendezvous, although only one cluster of Venatori had been sighted.

A low noise of acknowledgement around the knot of twine—yes, it seems reasonable to suppose that a party traveling must have a destination beyond this scraggly shed—is punctuated by some touch of his small finger against the edge of the pulled down collar. Thumb tucking back the flyaway strands of small hairs at the nape of Marcus' neck. Given a cursory assessment of the mottled angry flecks in the meager light, he smears some of the sticky dark salve up from out of the waxed packet and applies it in a broad stripe over the irritated skin. Crinkle of waxed paper. The bitter smell of whatever it is that's being dabbed on.

Whatever's left on his fingers, Flint wipes on the hip of his trousers. Refolds the edges of the envelope around the remaining slab of medicinal salve, and makes to fish the twine from the corner of his mouth with which to tie it shut again. If he makes the mistake of touching the salve on his thumb with his tongue in the process, the wrinkle of his nose is minor in the dark.

"One of the letters makes note of an outpost. Stop," comes with a stamp of a boot heel to spook off the griffon who's crept in to nip at his coat hem.

Tiny stinging wounds bite deeper under the salve until they don't. An odd little combination of feeling, slickened fingers and acute prickle, the soothing balm after that erases both the bite of venom and the slight tickle of Flint having touched his collar, his hair. Then it's done, and Marcus releases and re-sits the damp linen.

Pivots around but not back with a lazy step, chasing a glance to the chastened griffon, a minor twinge of amusement there as Marcus goes to offer Flint the waterskin to drink from. Something like gratitude, in it.

"What do you want to do?"

Mm, he answers, delaying acceptance of the waterskin in favor of finding an interior pocket to smuggle the salve's envelope into. Wiping his sticky fingers off a second time for good measure. They're not scouts. It will be full nightfall by the time the time they might expect to be scouring the foothills for this alleged destination. That might do them the most basic of favors in the sense that it's likely there will be a fire lit somewhere which will be visible from the sky by night, but what exactly will they see otherwise? They would need to weather the night and be prepared to take a second round of observations during the daylight. The equipment packed behind the griffons' saddles is scant enough so as to make the prospect of camping out less.than desirable.

But they likely would spot the place more easily in the darkness than in daylight. And the night might afford them the cover necessary to do so safely. And they will be the flying pair closest. And if the outpost expects to receive the scouting party, their turning up missing within the next few days will only raise alarm.

He takes the waterskin. Drinks from it, the contents slightly objectionable for being lukewarm, and works the plug back in before passing it back.

"See if you can't persuade this one to take water," he says, nodding to the naturally more ashen of the two griffons. "We'll move out and see what can be seen from the sky."

He'll read the rest of the papers first, though.

Looping the strap from the waterskin back over his shoulder, Marcus nods to that.

He'll only eat half his biscuit, then.

Steps back and around, collecting the lead tied off at Buggie's saddle, alerting her with a sharp whistle, one that has Monster lifting her head and turning to look, water streaming from her beak. He has, as a matter of good sense, lent some of his free time to the other griffons of the eyrie, supposing he might ever need to wrangle one and not come across as a complete stranger. Even if she has a preferred human, he can coax this one down to the pond.

Here, Buggie takes Monster's cue, remembering her thirst and dipping her down down to drink. Posted between them, Marcus has space and time to unfold his rations and eat, unsatisfactory in how dry it crumbles between his teeth, making lukewarm water a little tastier in contrast to wash it down.

Monster, satisfied, settles down on her belly, and imagines Marcus isn't looking when she angles her beak towards his boots. It's entirely predictable when he feels her take a surprisingly gentle grasp of the loose end of a bootlace and try to work it free, which he allows until she gives a less patient tug, and he jerks his ankle back with a tsk downwards.

If there's any objection in him for camping out in the wilderness away from the main body, it doesn't take root. He has bitched about the Anderfels, and why couldn't the ancient elves or whoever the fuck build their temples in more temperate locales, but there's something compelling about this much featureless space in all directions, the elegant hugeness of it.

Being in Flint's company and enjoying it without concern of stealing time neither can afford, of attracting attention neither want, should likely be even more tertiary than that to the very real importance of hunting Venatori cultists. But it isn't for him to decide what's important.

Posting back up on that soft slab of sand, it takes some minutes for Flint to work his way through the rest of the satchel's contents. One page he turns over and submits to the snub of charcoal he carries in a pocket, scrawling out a series of calculations so that when he communicates back their location and intentions by sending crystal, he may give a more exact assessment of their position. Send someone who knows animals to see to the dracolisks and whatever else may be waiting among the Venatori's effects; mind that one of the lizard mounts is free of the shed and liable to return. And so on and so forth, until there is nothing else to be done save to smuggle that charcoal back into his pocket, fold up the papers, and ignore the part of him that could wish to sit here in the warmth of the arcane runic ring. It will be cold in the air, and it will be a cold and hungry night wherever they end up making their camp. The unspoken possibility that there will be a warm body to sit beside doesn't do much to alter those facts.

Winding the satchel's strap about its body, he finally moved back down to the water's edge. Stows it there in Buggie's saddlebag and takes the moment to tighten the griffon's girth again while she stamps idly at the water's shallow edge, having apparently sated her thirst. Afterward, he leads her up out of the shallows and sets his knee against her elbow. This cue, at least, she is amenable to: folding down to her belly with that graceless crumple of joints so her rider might jam his boot more easily into the stirrup and swing into the saddle. She earns a pat for the trouble once she's successfully rocked back up onto all fours.

"Once we're in the air," he says, steering the heavy animal around with knee and heel; the buttons of his coat aren't meant to close, but he's forcing the topmost ones to anyway. "Fly higher than we have been, and keep your distance. If you make anything odd, report by crystal."

With the griffons' sense of smell to rely on, they're unlikely to become separated for long even in the dark.

Managing to hold off on finishing his rations as he listens in on crystal conversations and coordination, Marcus stows the rest into Monster's saddlebags, knowing a twinge of guilt at the way she turns her head to see if he's going to free her of her equipment, let her roll about in the lake. He pats her shoulder instead and retrieves his armor, securing it just as Flint is getting back up to his feet.

He is retrieving his staff again (faintly glowing runes vanishing, leaving behind a trace scent of campfire ash) as Flint hauls himself up into the saddle, hooking it into its harness as he stands in place, listens to instruction.

"Aye, Commander," he says, before turning his back.

Matter-of-fact treatment in pressing at Monster's shoulder to get her to bow for him, climbing up into the saddle despite some disgruntled clicking. Another good skritching pat at her neck seems to assuage misgivings enough for her to unfold her wings with an aggressive flap, a scattering of dust and soot. She is quick to lunge aside, a leap that lands and then launches up into flight on the kick up, a powering of wings that whorls up find dust beneath them as she begins the arduous task gaining altitude in dead, night-cold air.

If she can make it higher than Buggie, it will have been worth it, Marcus is sure. He encourages her with the press of his boots, glancing back down to where the outline of the shack is quick to shrink. If she burns up some energy now, it can be made up with gliding, later, riding the winds that are certain to greet them once high enough.

Soon, a broader spectrum of nighttime colours await. The curvature of the earth offers a brighter sheen of purple where the sun had sunk, setting off a gradient of cool indigo and blue across the desert beneath. Above, the broad dome of open sky begins to take on the ashier black of night.

Buggie is slower to ascend—takes her sweet time stretching her wings out before rocking back and leaping up into the air in an effort to pursue her sister. A heavy fhwump of wings, a shrill whistle, and then they're clawing up through the atmosphere. Flint double checks the buckles of the harness by habit as they climb. Satisfied by the tug on the line, he sinks his offhand in amidst the whirl of fur and fine downy feathers before the saddle and commits himself to ignoring the cold rush of air that sucks at his cost tails and shirt collar, rushing in the ear.

In short order, the Anderfels is rendered into a smoky blue variegated slab. Not featureless, but strange and dreamlike under the canopy of black sky and its brilliant netting of stars. The world becomes the largest map conceivable scrawled over the dark flesh of some animal hide, and they the roving eye measuring it league by league as they travel west.

They feel their way slowly in the dark, eventually given over from the rowing action of broad wings to coasting along the high wind's currents. Catching one spiraling stream to the next in a constant wandering series of switchbacks that is not unlike the tacking of ship except that the animal is agile and clever enough to manage the changes all on her own nearly before the wind's direction change prickles at his senses to order it.

It is cold and dark, and spying any glitter of light will be luck more than skill. It's possible this is a fool's errand; that they should have loosed the dracolisks and made a more thorough study of whatever else might have been among the scouts' effects. That the silver thread which eventually makes to intermittently stitches itself up through the landscape is not the hardpack sand of a semi-frequently traveled back road but rather some coincidence of the landscape which would be readily apparent if not for the hour.

But he would be irritated if he'd sent any two men out to deal with this issue and they'd chosen to wander back to Riftwatch's camp rather than attempt to chase the scent. To say nothing of the fact that, temperature and the looming future of sleeping on the ground aside, there are worse vantages from which to view the sprawl of the desert than here as a shape floating over it, permitted to glance intermittently in the direction of that silvery-grey mottle of a twin flying in distant tandem.

It's satisfying, climbing up high enough to where Monster can trade labourious flapping for spreading her wings and resting in the sky. In the star-speckled night, without the baking heat rising up off the craggy desert, gliding is more frequently interrupted with kicks of wings against the air to maintain itself, but there are pockets of time and strong enough currents to ride that there are long stretches of peace.

Sort of. The whistle of air, buffeting cold across armor, particularly chilled where still-drying salve paints his neck. It feels chaotic, and no amount of solidly secured harness or practice can quite rid one of the impulse to over-work oneself in service of staying in the saddle, all the instinctive, minor adjustments and flexes of muscle, tipping away from where the griffon angles in reflex.

Still. This is among the work he is gladdest to do, even if it feels a little foolish now to be scanning the swiftly darkening terrain below in hopes of catching sight of something. Tilted forwards, grasping on reins and feathers, straining to see any glimmer of light in enormous shadows.

Checks, too, what he can barely make of Flint's position in the sky. Although he trusts Monster and Buggie both to find each other in the dark, with the kinds of screeches that split heads when standing right next to them but are well designed to be heard over endless sky, with a keen sense of smell and keener sight, the prospect of letting enough darkness cloak between them that they lose each other is still trepidatious.

But also inevitable. Night thickens, and a few more minutes later, that's what happens. Rather than steer Monster closer in hopes of regaining visual, he directs her into an even broader circle. Might as well.

Not long after, Flint's crystal will glow.

"Anything?"

—is barely audible in the hiss of the wind even with the faintly glowing stone pressed to the ear and cupped there. The reply is equally ragged, wind blown and muffled both as Flint shifts the rock from against his ear to pocketed at the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing." And some deeper darkness on the horizon suggests a wisp of passing cloud cover is soon to make their hunt from this elevation more difficult besides. "Eyes on what looks to be a plateau escarpment. South by West, the Voyager to your"—checking himself from the jargon that comes most naturally—"Right shoulder. Make for its base. I'll join you shortly."

"Alright,"

is the short answer, maybe half-lost over the method of communications, but the tone signals comprehension, compliance.

Not clear enough to transmit annoyance, if it was present. Unlikely. Even before that first time they found themselves trapped on muddy hillside, Marcus was not so given to complaint over the kinds of inconveniences that occur over the course of a mission. Here, whatever chafing he feels over having set out for a purpose and then failing to accomplish that is more or less soothed by the knowledge that as soon as rest is available to him, it won't matter much where it is.

Or so he can say to himself, up here, rather than down there, attempting to find some comfortable spot. He gives one last sweep over the endless craggy shapes and long empty stretches of the Anderfels. Say what you will about the experience of being gravity-bound, it's pretty from the sky.

He wheels Monster around. His impulse is to let her give a call-and-response cry, but resists on the off-chance a nearby cluster of Venatori desire an excuse to come hunting. He can feel her pull forwards with a surge of enthusiasm, as keen to rest as her rider. He imagines she is putting on good form specifically, lest he have her repeat a maneuver as though they were training.

The descent is a controlled spiral down, wary of accidentally slamming into rocky protrusions invisible in the dark. Big wings flap, dust lifting into a cloud around him, feeling the semi-gentle impact of her four feet on the hard ground through his bones. First back, he is slow and lazy to undo his harnesses, and is careful to slip out of saddle onto the ground.

"We've landed," he reports, turning a look up at the sky. Placing a hand on Monster's beak before she can start to pluck at the shiny temptation of bracer buckles.

The sky is a brightly spangled skirt of velvet, gleaming black and empty above the escarpment's red caprock. Maybe their wingmates are coming from some other direction obscured by the slab of the plateau overhead. Or—

A minute later, two, the crystal glows blue. Flint sounds measurably less windswept as he says, "Noted. Lay the same sigil if you can—something unlikely to travel far. I'm having a last look."

They must be perched somewhere at the plateau's head, that spyglass of Flint's at work now that he's been afforded the luxury of solid ground underfoot.

A few moments later, perhaps it will be visible from Flint's station: something like gentle reddish firelight, the intricate runic scrolling muddied into a broad ring marked on the black landscape. More visible from above than anyone landbound, and faint enough to need looking for.

Down here, his feet on the ground, Marcus sets aside his staff, and fishes through the saddlebags until he can dig out the stiffly cured strips of meat that has Monster immediately whipping her head around at the scent of their emergence. The clicking sound he makes is a formality as she readily snaps at the air as he throws her a few, one after the other. He suspects they'll make their camp, but doesn't go about freeing her from her equipment just yet.

Maybe Flint will see something. Maybe they will need to reposition. He doesn't want to scrabble around to correct himself in the event of either of these things. Still, he starts an idle process of drawing soot out from Monster's feathers, a magical tug of the element he is best attuned to as well as the more ordinary brushing of fingers through stiff quills and down.

Glancing up, now and then, stemming the small flicker of anxiety for distance. Senses keyed around them, trusting Monster will give alert to anything in need of worrying over.

A further stretch of minutes is eventually punctuated by the brief, "Finishing here," though he must not descend to join Marcus directly. For there is some further interval of time, during which the griffon on the ground in Marcus' care evidently feels no need to share his small measure of anxiety, and when eventually the second grey griffon comes spiraling lazily down out of the sky above them she arrives from a different direction than one might have assumed having first been circled around and landed at various points in the surrounding valley to be certain that the low glow of Marcus' rune work would likely go undetected by anyone coming up into the foothills.

But here, finally, the heavy crunch of small stones and the rattle of scrub brush as Buggie touches down beyond the margins of the glowing ring. Astride her, Flint slowly unclips himself from the saddle and mutters some demand to the animal that she's the animal grumbling and slowly kneeling to aid his dismount.

"We'll make camp and try again by daylight. No fire."

Marcus draws a wandered step nearer as Flint lands, a level of formal attentiveness of the same instinct that has kept him in his armor and Monster in her bridle. Any loosening of that tension at the news they're done for the evening (if anyone can be done while camping out in enemy territory, where hierarchy will click briskly back into place at any sign of complication) is invisible, at first, Marcus nodding acceptance at this decision.

But he isn't waiting to be told anything else as he turns to move back to where Monster is preening, seeing about loosening some of the straps on her so that she can rest more comfortably.

"These will only maintain themselves for an hour at a time, at most," he says, with a tip of his head to the warming runes on the ground. "I can keep them during my watch."

There are better glyph-focused mages out there that Flint can partner with next time, surely.

He'll keep it in mind.

Things being what they are, he makes do with stripping the saddle bags from behind his saddle and slinging them across his shoulder. Loosening Buggie's cinch and harness buckles, a hand short of warding off the griffon as she twists her neck and head around. Wrapping her heavy chin against his hip in an effort to nibble at the lacing of the forward saddlebag.

"I've some suspicion we can do without if it comes down to it," says the man currently making to extract himself from the hook of Buggie's feathered neck, shoving her off with a rough hand at the base of her heavy beak.

He passes Marcus a sidelong look across the tufts of Buggie's ear feathers.

Following suit in offloading the saddlebags, Marcus glances back to take measure of that remark—and cuts loose a breath of a laugh for the serpentine reach of Buggie's neck trying to herd Flint in closer.

"She's cuddly," he notes. "Is it that you spoil her?"

Having had her wings stroked through already, Monster is less desperate for attention—both immediately and as a rule—and, once she can sense Marcus has offloaded her as much as seems wise, she nibbles once at an errant bootlace then moves to a warm line of runic glow, settling down on it with a mild amount of put-upon drama. One big paw raking at more of the runes as if she could gather more of them to her.

"I told the stablemaster that every mount I have is always after a feeding," Marcus explains as he collects back his waterskin. Testing it with his fingers. It's gotten colder with the night time flight, so he spares it magic augmentation as he undoes the cap. "And he diagnosed me of doing it too often."

A last ditch effort to go nibbling after the flap of the nearer saddlebag is met with another forceful hand pushing her away, and so the slate colored griffon sighs. Makes due with—Flint catches her by the headstall before she can nip at his coat and forces her round, bullying her in the direction of joining her sibling.

"She bites," he explains, steering the heavy animal round and clicking at her in an an effort to encourage her to lay down alongside Monster. "But we've discovered my fingers are more useful to her while they're still on my hand."

Presumably '—and occasionally not petting her can be perfectly acceptable' is the next lesson on the docket.

With some encouragement, Buggie flops down perpendicular to Monster. Given her head, she makes to extend her beak out and nibble at the nearest recently smoothed feather. This, Flint takes no exception to. They can bother one another all they like so long as they do it in some approximation of quiet. Instead, he moves toward toward the opposite side of the low glowing ring and there dumps the saddlebags en route to rolling a medium sized slab of stone over on which he might take a seat.

No fire. Earth flecked with shale and fine little stones. Weather clear and chill for its purity. They're likely to share this first watch; he can't imagine being comfortable enough to sleep right at this moment.

Monster stays perfectly still as Buggie approaches, but doesn't disguise the way she tracks her with an open golden eye. Defensive, preemptively, of the warm spot she's claimed, but when approach amounts to no more than a nibble, she lifts her head, twitches that wing away before relaxing. The sound of what parses, to Marcus' ear, as a friendly croak from Monster rather than a warning has him leaving them to it as he moves towards where Flint is settling.

The dropping of saddlebags is loose in gesture, familiar. In his hand is the copper glint of cigarette case, rescued from his pocket, as he makes some doubtful evaluation of this use of a stone before he goes and tries to brush smooth a patch of ground with the edge of his boot. Doubts the efficacy of this too.

"Smart," he remarks. Wry.

Flint's answering huff is low, expressed without actually looking at him as dredges the saddlebags across the bend of his knee and begins to search the one side. Is it smart, or did he make more trouble for himself than it was worth?

"Softhearted," he suggests instead, and manages to keep a straight face during it. Though there's something to it; if he'd been sensible, he would have checked the griffon with a little slap or a tug on her line rather than ostensibly rewarding her for every little transgression.

He finds what he's looking for at the bottom of the saddlebag. Twisting free, and a small batter cup and a slab of a few hard biscuits is produced. The former, Flint blows some debris out of before offering it to Marcus in a clear request that he lend him a splash of water.

"Did your family not keep a dog that you remember? Before."

Once he's raked himself a spot in the sandy earth, Marcus settles. Angled so that he has a good view of the darkness past Flint's shoulder, and Flint his. Softhearted gets no argument, save for a fine and subtle twist at the corner of his mouth. Maybe that's it.

He leans, tips a helping of water into the cup.

Draws back, taking a sip for himself in place of a quick answer. A shake of his head as he swallows, sets the skin aside, thumbs open the cigarette case. "I don't think so," he says, drawing free a cigarette. In no rush, idling it between his knuckles. "Full enough house already."

He looks back to the two shapes of the griffons just nearby, where Buggie's tail idly lashes across the sandy ground. A rustling protest slightly further back where a paw is planted on a beak and lazily pushed aside.

"You?"

"Too few hours in the day to be minding a dog," he says, breaking off one of the biscuits and pushing it inside the small cup. Given some time in that measure of water, it might remember it had once been something other than the texture of sawdust glued into shape. "Though we'd a cat on every ship I've ever been on."

And a monkey, and sea turtle (before it'd been eaten), and a bird who'd sometimes screamed in the middle of the night for no reason that could be figured. There's nothing a crew loves more than the novelty of an animal aboard.

Setting his boots forward, he places their soles directly on top of that soft glow of the runic ring. Feels the warmth come ebbing through them. Were the dark about them less dark, and the threat of roaming Venatori less like a prickle at the back of the neck, and the food less crumbly, he might almost consider the arrangement comfortable. He's sat on less flat rocks.

After a moment, the biscuit is fished free of its bath.

The grunt from Marcus implies some amount of agreement—likely there was always a mouser in the kitchens, and it's more likely he could name them now rather than say with certainty if his family, before, ever had a dog. A thing contemplated but not said out loud, summoning a small flame between his fingers and dipping the end of his cigarette into it.

A fine white trail of smoke lifts, more delicate than the great gusts of black clouds that mark his presence on a battlefield, but just as sharp to the nose.

"Were you on ships as far back as that?"

(That smell in the air tempts some prickle of the senses; it had lingered for a long time in the bed linens of that apartment adjacent to the division offices.)

Despite soaking in the water, the biscuit is slow to separate into two pieces between the hand.

"By twelve," he says, catching crumbles across his thigh. It's a throwaway remark, as if this is the simplest question ever put to him or as if the answer is very easy to supply. These are distant, uncomplicated truths and he is more concerned with the mechanics of chewing through the soggy biscuit than eschewing this line of inquiry he'd started. "Which is typical, unless you've the money to false muster straight into the wardroom."

The smoke is good for discouraging an appetite, supposedly, and there is nothing about soggy biscuits that stir his hunger, but Marcus finds himself watching Flint's hands anyway. Maybe for their task, or maybe it's just a good place to rest his focus at this angle, sitting in the sand. He is just near the warming runes, settled on the inside of the circle, the air prickled warm where, a few feet away, it's sharply cold.

A pause implies either a silent wandering off the topic or a contemplation—it can truly go either way—but shows his hand as he asks, "Did you want to be?"

Less a contemplation and more an imagining, of that world at that age.

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