eswareinmal | Hunting for the King

Entry tags:

Hunting for the King

Characters: All who are searching for the King!
Open? Yep
Where: Starting at the castle
When: RD 10
What: The heroes go hunting for the King.

The castle staff, as unhelpful as always, had no idea where the King had gone to. Some had guesses, of course, he went off to track down Prince Charming and drag him back home, he went out visiting the Giant Kingdom, he went across the sea, he went to see the state of the Old Capital, no, they hadn't actually seen him leave... they just knew that he had. This just happened every now and then, you see, one of the older maids explained. The King, being the King, just sometimes was elsewhere. Just wait a little while and he'd be back soon enough.

But that was hardly helpful now, now was it?

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"It is time for spellwork," he tells his companion(s), focusing primarily on Cho. "We must follow the King wherever he has gone, be it another world, or to the land of the dead itself. And we must retrieve him, come what may. He is the only hope this realm has."

He is completely serious.

Bakura nodded, fidgeting a little with his staff. He wasn't quite sure if the robes would help, but the gem in the staff he knew had some power to it... and anything that would help..!

Cho isn't late today. She's early, actually, up with the sun and with provisions packed and loaded onto Charlie, food and basic necessities, and her sword and quiver and bow all strapped in their proper places. Time is weird, arrivals are displaced - she doesn't really care how or why they lost her horse for a day, just that he actually turned up. The chances of finding another one here so immune to the unsettling presence of a magik on their back aren't good. Plus, she'd have started to miss the big baby.

She sits comfortably in the saddle, arms folded and resting on the animal's neck, chin resting on her arms, and she looks at their group. At first glance, not the most formidable bunch, but looks can be and often are deceiving. Hopefully that will hold true here. "I can't track a person I've never met," she tells Loki, the hint of apology in her voice. "Not with Sorcery." She doesn't feel too bad about it, though. She has other strengths. "But we can try and follow the magic. Temporal casting leaves tears, no matter how skilled you are."

Liara was up, too, for similar reasons, though she was a bit more out of the loop. She walked with a clear sense of purpose towards the castle, unarmed but armored. Her head, uncovered, made her certain to stand out in the city even if the white armor didn't, but that didn't seem to bother her in the least. As she came up on the group, she looked over, curiosity enough to slow her step. Still, she seemed ready to keep walking until a little light of recognition flickered over her face.

Stepping towards the group, she looked at the woman next to the horse. "Um. Excuse me, but you're...Cho, right?" They'd spoken, yesterday, and Liara wasn't willing to ignore a potentially important source of information outright. Years of habit made her take a moment to make a proper introduction.

"We don't know if the Hero was the one directly responsible for the King's disappearance." He sighs, aggravated. "I suppose, then, that we'll have to use my expertise, and your magic."

Loki turns, at the woman's voice, prepared to tell her off. Now is not the time for introductions; they are on a mission; she must not interrupt. But he sees her blue skin and his tongue stutters, falters. It is but a moment to realize that she is no Jotunn -- she does not resemble him, it is only the color -- and he gathers his words again.

"We have pressing business, as regards the King," says Loki. "There is no time to for niceties."

Cho rolls her eyes, just a little and with her face turned so that Loki can't see her. "Oh Captain, my Captain... you're being rude." Because he is. And while he may be a prince, if he is indeed that Loki (and she's pretty sure he is), these are not his people and they're working together by choice, not out of requirement.

So she leans off the side of the saddle, hanging there with one hand on the pommel to keep herself from falling, and puts her own face a little closer to Liara's. "I'm Cho, yes. Nice to meet you face to face. I never did get your name." She'd been far too caught up in the magic to remember those niceties Loki was currently putting down. Cho can understand that. "This is Charlie," she says, running her fingers through the horse's dark mane.

Rose arrived on the scene just a few minutes later than the others, having traded her heavy broadsword for a lighter short sword and a few knives. She didn't imagine she would need such a large thing for a simple search and rescue, even if they ran into trouble on the way. She ran the last few feet to catch up with them.

"What did I miss?"

Spell after spell gave the same result. Searching for the King showed a trail back to his throne, and nowhere else, as if he had been eaten by it.

It wasn't until someone had the idea to try having the spell search for The Avatar of Order that a reaction was gotten. A strong flare of magic, thousands of trails snaking through the rooms, out the castle doors, converging together to a solid mass, heading outside the castle walls.....

Cho gives Loki a look, teasing set aside now that there's something reliable to follow. He's a jerk, but he's a jerk who's at least faking a plan, and that's better than nothing. "Any idea what that means? I thought the king was the Avatar of Order." Still, it's a direction other than 'back to the throne room' for them to head in, so she does.

"So did I." His idea, to name the Avatar of Order. A new hypothesis has taken over -- perhaps Order has evolved into a different form to fight the time-turning.

He follows the paths quickly, outside of the palace. "But we're about to find out."

"Maybe there's another one?" Bakura suggested. "A back up, of some sort? Or maybe it is still him, and being king is only who he is when he's in this room?"

Liara simply ignores Loki for a momet, offering no reaction to his caustic tone whatsoever. "I owe you an apology, though now probably isn't the best time." She looked the horse over, but doesn't really try to get much closer to it. "Yesterday, we were preparing fir a battle likely to kill us all, and suddenly I was elsewhere. I was upset, and I am sorry for that. I am Liara T'Soni."

Now her attention turned to Loki. "Since your king kidnapped me, I can't say I am terribly bothered by interuppting his business. In fact, I'm on my way to speak with him now, and if it interuppts his day, then his day is interuppted." She knows nothing about him being missing, in other words. Turning, she appraises the newcomer but says nothing else.

Liara, mostly silent due to her discomfort with the concept of magic, struggled to follow what had been occurring, but she hadn't given up out of exasperation, either.

"If the king was some form of manifestation," she said, slowly, choosing her words carefully. "Perhaps some power was simply taking the form of a man to work towards a purpose which that form no longer serves. Though if a king's form is not enough to control events in his kingdom, what else could be?"

"A figurehead?" Rose suggested. This king wouldn't be the first to take the throne just to look pretty and make people happy.

"Figureheads have their own advantages, even if they don't actually do anything."

A nod, to Rose -- good to know that she was somewhat reliable.

"He isn't my King." Loki has no King. He should be a King -- by Odin's eye, he would do better than the buffoon currently on the throne. "But he is missing, and I would rather avoid the collapse of this kingdom and possibly this section of reality. If you feel that politeness and decorum are more important, by all means, delay further."

Cho, meanwhile, has already followed the trails of magic out of the castle. Her horse is waiting just outside the door, and she raises her voice to be heard as she swings herself up onto his back. "It doesn't matter if we like him or why he's King or if he does anything we don't approve of. We still have to find him. This place needs balance, and without the Avatar of Order it won't have it."

Loki, too, mounts his horse, though now he can run near as fast as she. Not for as long, of course, and not as reliably. "She can hold another," he offers, "if any of you don't wish to make the detour to the stables."

Liara eyed the horse with suspicion. She drew a breath and straightened, stepping forward. "I doubt I could handle one by myself. And I certainly cannot run as fast or as far." Looking at Loki, she lifted an eyebrow. "If you're sure you wouldn't mind." she didn't particulary care for the king...but sitting around complaining wasn't getting her any information to change things. And even if she wasn't armed, she was still wearing her armor, with a great deal of familiarity. "I'll even try not pull you off if I fall."

The trail is much easier to follow once the group leaves the castle. A thick, solid line, as if the presence that is being looked for has walked the single path back and forth to the castle to the gates of the capital many times.

Once outside the walls, the line goes directly to the monastery with other trails leading back out and off into the woods. There was an odd sort of split, the fading remains of another path that seemed a different color going off in another direction entirely while faint echoes, fresher, but still faded lay on top of it. It the trails were likened to foot prints, it would be like someone with an identical boot, but a much lighter step.

"He's not our King. Fine. We can all agree on that. But as long as we're stuck here, his well being seems to be tied to ours." When all else fails, appeal to self preservation. It almost always works. She turns to Loki, calling her magic to her fingertips and preparing to cast or lend her power, if he has a way to tap into her. If not, they will have to figure something out for the future. "You say you know how to track him. Show me."

His skill isn't gone -- only his power. So he reaches out to her and touches her skin, murmuring a spell of transference. Gods, it's only drips of power that once moved through him in torrent, but he opens a narrow channel to her, a quiet, small path of power.

"Trust me," he urges her, softly, his eyes fixed on her.

Loki and Cho each had room for a passenger on their horses, and the stables had horses for anyone else who could ride on their own. Who knew how far they were going or how long it would take? But they had to get started if they were going to find the missing King.

Someone has to keep them moving, so Cho does. It's her magic that brightens the lines of the path, so it's her eyes that can see it the clearest. When they come to the fork, she urges Charlie to a stop. "There's a strong path going to the monastery, and a fainter one leading back this way," she says, pointing it out. "They're the same sort of trail. Which one should we follow?"

She asks the question of everyone, but she looks mostly to Loki. Everyone else seems to simply be going along with what the two of them decide. She doesn't mind. Sometimes it's easier, in a daunting situation, to not have the responsibility.

Trust him. Sure. He's done so much to earn it. Well... he didn't let her die, that's something. Of course, he could have just not wanted to deal with the corpse in his bed. He certainly hadn't left her on a high note or in the best of shape. Still, if her choices are to trust Loki or stay here being ineffectual--

"Carefully," she says, but she takes a deep breath and stares at him and lets go of a little bit of that control, keeping her magic tied up tight inside her. It makes her palms sweat, makes the skin on her shoulder tingle under his icy touch. But she doesn't push him away. And she can feel the power flowing out of her, like a thin stream of ice water being drawn up out of the ground by Loki's fingertips. It's only the tiniest portion of her power, but it's even and steady and strong.

Rose had learned long ago in the homelands how to ride a horse, so she didn't mind taking her own. For the most part she allows the horse free reign, letting it follow the others and only pausing to yank the reigns when it stopped to chomp a particularly delicious looking bush.

When they pause, Rose lets the horse eat. So it'll mostly get stuck in the bit, what did she care? She glanced between Cho and Loki, shrugging whenever one of them caught her gaze. How should she know?

Liara, of course, says nothing. She watches, but she also activates her omni-tool. Despite everything it's lost since she arrived (features she misses quite a bit), the sensor suite seemed at least somewhat functional, so that is activated even as the others link.

At the same time, she lets a soft blue glow surround her, and though her tool seems to take most of her focus, she is ready to step in and put Loki on the ground if he seems to be hurting Cho. Liara may not know either of them well (nor believe in magic), but she's not an idiot.

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Hunting for the King

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Okay, let's get this party started.

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May as well be late ICly AND OOCly ;A; sorry guys

Fast forwarding! Feel free to continue socializing above!

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I am late, too, so now worries.

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