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+--- Thread: Longing For Morning (/showthread.php?tid=3919)
Longing For Morning - Clownpiece - 02-25-2016
An orange tint painted the sky, casting from the sun onto the warm colors of the surrounding forest, and making the forest seem to be fire itself. Leaves constantly dropped onto the ground, at a steady enough pace that so the world didn’t become a storm of autumn shades. With the dying light of dusk coming, the breeze itself didn’t stir the cool air. If it weren’t for the singing of the birds, everything would have been deathly quiet.
“Night’s coming again,” a voice, spoken from behind Sonny, interrupted the relative silence. Despite the statement addressed to him, the spirit didn’t stir. Still as a statue, he stared out over the path they would have to keep walking.
“I don’t know, it looks like morning,” another voice responded, rough and sarcastic. A clone of his own voice in sound, but not in tone nor emotion. A sigh was the only answer to that remark, given by the one who had made the first comment. The forest floor crunched beneath someone’s feet, the air which had stagnated with Sonny’s prolonged pause again bearing the scent of dead and decaying leaves. Still, he remained silent and motionless.
The path they would need to take was not into the sun, neither in dawn nor dusk. Shadows danced between the trees, growing with the slowly-falling light. Even though they could keep walking until day had completely vanished from the air, it would probably be best if they were to set up camp before then. Especially since there were those in the group who didn’t have night vision, himself included.
“How long did yesterday’s night last?” Sonny finally spoke, voice as level and neutral as ever. His question was met with a resounding silence all around, no one knowing the answer. “And how long did today last?” He put forth part two, slowly turning around to meet the gaze of the group behind him.
“If this is some philosophical bullshit, I’m gonna kick in your knees,” the voice not unlike his own responded. Somerled Murdoch, his other half, stood somewhere near the middle of the group. With no pockets in the brown, non-denominational robes he wore, he resorted to crossing his arms across his chest angrily. It was an honest question that the sun spirit had posed, but he said nothing in response to the storm spirit’s accusation, instead casting his glance about to whoever might be able to answer.
“Day was long, night was longer,” a direct but not helpful answer came from the man standing slightly away from the group, leaning lazily against a tree. Christopher Hurst, or Chip as most people called him, God of the Squirrels. He hadn’t changed out his normal attire for anything they had found in their trek yet, still in the same red shirt and brown pants, his long red scarf still wrapped tightly around his neck. A brown flat cap hid his ginger hair, that way he wouldn’t have to bother with making it look presentable. His attire was absolutely covered in the eternal autumn leaves, almost as if he had rolled around in them earlier. Knowing better than to bring that up, Sonny quickly moved on to the next person.
“What he said,” yet another empty answer came through in the form of a smaller voice. Kasumi Murdoch, the spirit of mist and fog, stood in her usual spot right next to Somerled, her posture as arrogant as his as she pointed a finger towards the squirrel. Finding armor in her size was basically impossible, so she was dressed in garments they could nick or buy off villagers with daughters her size. In this case, it was a full-length, blue woolen dress. Her long, grey hair was as messy and filled with leaves as the squirrel was. Of course, she didn’t care enough to even try to just push the leaves out.
“Hasn’t it been the same since we got here?” came another non-answer, this time from the mouth of Charlotte Noir. The banner-bearing soldier stood just in front of Sonny himself, dressed in a strange amalgamation of several different eras of french armor. A large flag was strapped to her back, bearing the colors of the french flag and the gold of her own insignia. Though it was now hidden behind her well-built body, the flagpole was tipped with a spearhead. The perfect weapon for a zealot nationalist, both to inspire morale in her allies, and to strike fear into the hearts of her enemies. Her rusty blond hair was cut short quite crudely, hacked apart by her own bayonet so foes wouldn’t be able to use it against her. Seeing as how he wouldn’t get anything other than a question out of her, Sonny turned to the last person amongst them who might have some idea about it.
"Oh... I think it was twelve hours of night time when we got here. Now it’s closer to fourteen. Day time hasn't changed a bit though, because magic I guess." Finally, a good answer came, from the easygoing voice of the Black Knight, real name unknown. Though “knight” was in his code name, he wasn’t armored like a knight. With every change in scenery, what he was clad in was different. Currently, his armor was that of a Roman Centurion, or so he’d said, complete with silly broom-helmet and all. Sonny wasn’t exactly sure how he kept getting all these different sets of armors out here in the middle of nowhere, but he wasn’t gonna question it.
“Thank you, BK,” the sun spirit said, nodding slightly towards the knight. His answer was spot on, based on what Sonny himself had noticed. The nights were getting longer, but the days weren’t getting shorter. Autumn was showing no signs of stopping, either. Leaves had changed colors not more than a week previously, from a green summer forest to this forest on fire in less than a day. No matter how much the trees shed, however, they never looked any more bare.
“Let’s get moving,” Somerled said, knowing that his other half was going to suggest stopping for the night. His voice was accompanied by the leaves crunching beneath his feet as he started forward, regardless of whether anyone would follow suit.
“We’ll stop when we can’t see anymore,” Sonny addressed the rest of the group, making a point of ignoring Somerled. He could conjure up a ball of sunlight to illuminate their path, even through the darkest nights. That tended to attract Nightmares, however, a fact they had learned the hard way. The sun spirit turned away and began walking again, the group starting up again just behind him.
---
“Last one.” Chip’s voice broke a silence that had lasted not longer than a moment, followed by a dull thud as he dropped the corpse of who he had just slain. Sonny had been correct in his guess, his sunlight had attracted things. Though they weren’t Nightmares like he had thought they would be. A tribe of very lightly armored humans had jumped out them. Feral humans, if the blood that had been covering their faces was anything to go by.
“So it seems,” Sonny replied, apathetic. Somewhere along their walk, the eternally autumn trees had started mingling with pine forest. No longer would the world shine with the brilliant warm hues that had been their background for the past week. Though walking with his sunlight was dangerous, and attracting far too much attention, there wasn’t much they could do about it. The half moon floating high above just wasn’t bright enough to light their way, and it would still be a long while before the sun rose again.
The sun spirit turned slowly, gaze travelling to each person, making sure everyone was okay. If anyone was too injured then he might need to send them back. First his eyes fell onto the unharmed form of BK, who stretched out like that was a light warm-up. Chip was likewise completely fine, not even a speck of blood on him. His godly power definitely benefited him. Next was Charlotte, whose arm hung limply from her side as she tried to wrestle her flag out of a corpse. It seemed to be just dislocated, nothing serious. His gaze shifted over to Kasumi, who was absolutely covered in blood, a sword he didn’t remember giving her in her hand, and a very disappointed look on her face. From this distance, Sonny could faintly hear her mumble something about fragile bodies, which was enough for him to decide he really didn’t want to listen in on whatever else she had to say. Finally, he turned to his other half.
Somerled was in sorry shape, especially compared to everyone else. One arm hung on by only a few tendons, the rest of it cut away by something, his face had a new hole in it, straight through his forehead and back out the other side, and in general, he was covered in cuts of varying degrees.
“Christ,” the sun spirit found himself unconsciously saying. “What the fuck?”
“Eh, it’ll heal in a day or so,” Somerled dismissed. If his hand could move, Sonny was sure he would have been waving it off.
“I mean, what the fuck happened?” he growled. It wasn’t like his other half to get torn up like that.
“I called a banner charge,” Charlotte answered in a matter-of-fact tone, “He got excited and threw himself in the middle of everyone. He's an idiot.” She finished off her sentence in French, throwing a jab that she thought the monster would't understand.
“What the fuck did you just say?” the storm spirit replied in the same language, harsh and low, as he stepped slowly towards the soldier. “You called for the damn thing.”
“Even a blind man could see that was a terrible spot,” she shot back, flag finally sliding from the body with a sickening squelch. “Admit it. You are a complete imbecile.” Spitting venom with each word, she brought her flag to bear. Anything Somerled would have tried to respond with was cut off with a swift chop to his throat, courtesy of Sonny.
“Do not start anything,” he scolded, voice raised above the sound of the monster coughing. Quickly, he pointed over to Charlotte before she got smug or something. “That goes for you too.” His commands tended to defuse his other half quickly, but this was starting to get out of hand. If things kept going this way, he’d have to rearrange the teams again.
Somerled had a level of physical strength and battlefield control that greatly benefited the front lines. If only he actually got along with anyone. He wasn’t useful if he disagreed with everyone else. Charlotte, on the other hand, was fantastic at rallying the group and routing enemies. She already got along well with the GoN soldiers, and she acclimated well to most of the Council members, besides Somerled. Not to mention that she was much better at micromanaging people during fights, to a level that Sonny couldn’t even approach. At this point, if he had to choose which one to stay back, it would have to be Somerled. He’d already messed with the team composition so most of the people on the front line at least didn’t want to kill the storm spirit, sending him back would open up a lot of possibilities.
“Set up camp here,” Sonny’s voice rang out over the clearing, as he turned away from the small argument. “We’re gonna call in the reserves tomorrow, create a checkpoint, and switch things up a bit.”
His commands settled over the group, silence filling the air. BK hopped to it just about instantly, though more out of needing something to do than anything else. Everyone else took a few seconds before they got to work. A sigh escaped Sonny, this was going to be a long night.