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Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)


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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Ceit's strained her hearing and sight to try and find some clue as to where her prey was hiding in the dank, stinking cave. The utter lack of reliable senses made it seem more and more that she was on an impossible task. She eventually made her way to the center of the cave, which seemed to rise ever so slightly. The footing was better here and she found herself able to move slightly faster.

Than in the shadows of the center she noticed an alter of some sort, not like one she had ever seen. The cross was rather prominently displayed and kneeling before it was a woman. She looked like she was praying yet she didn't seem to be moving, it was like she was asleep were she knelt.
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Ceit's breath caught in her throat as she saw the woman, and the cross. A shudder raked down her spine as her heart pounded in her chest. Carefully, slowly, she stepped towards the altar, eyes flicking around.

This had to be the creature. The one she was sent to end. Had a creature of the Fae turned to the White Christ? Is that why she was sent out here to end her? Lifting her sword slowly, Ceit moved as close as she dared, in order to bring it down on the woman's neck, aiming to sever her head.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

The woman looked almost like she had simply died where she knelt, their was no rise in her chest nor a cloud of breath in the chill air of the cavern. Ceit's arm raised silently above her head as she prepared to end the creature where it sat. Before her arm could move downward though the girl's eyes flickered open and she turned to look into Ceit's face fearfully.

Ceit's arm froze almost mid-swing as the woman looked at her, entrancing her with her beauty. The girl put her hands up as though begging and endearingly spoke to Ceit. "Please wait. I know why you have come. No doubt Sileas sent you to kill me and retrieve my sapling. Though she may be right in sending you to commit this task, as I am no longer fit to be considered a child of the Lhiannan. I only ask you to hear me out, please."
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Ceit stood with sword halfway down. She blinked, shaking her head, and slowly lifted the blade again to gain the momentum she would need for the strike.

"Speak quickly," she said, not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was that she seemed to accept the end she had coming. This place seemed, so wrong, so counter to this Lhiannon's beauty.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

The girl nodded though her soft brown eyes never left Ceit's as she quickly spoke. "I was like you once, before Sileas turned me into one of her kind. She used me then just as she is using you now, and yet I can't hold a grudge against her. There are so few of us left and every year more of us fall to the Christians of the south, it seemed sensible to try and fight back.

I just want to the fighting to end and to tend my forest, but that apparently won't work. Something has caused a blight in these lands, a blight that even the Christians fear. They were helping me to find it's source, but Sileas refuses to see reason and ordered me to kill them. I disobeyed and now she has sent you to replace me."

The girl looked back towards the altar once more and leaned her head forward with a whisper. "Neither of the two sides are right in their silly war, but I cannot change their minds. The forest is dying and I can no longer do anything to protect it. Perhaps you will prove more able in these seemingly insurmountable tasks, I wish you luck...sister."
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Of course she could be lying to garner sympathy. Or she could be telling the truth, which Ceit felt likely at this point. A low sigh escaped her lips as she moved slightly to make the kill cleaner, even as the woman's words slowly sunk into her mind.

She doubted she could fight against the path she had started down now. She wondered if she would get to bid farewell to her parents, her friends.

"I swear, that I will do all I can to save this forest. Donn guide you peacefully... sister," Ceit said, and brought the sword down to the back of the woman's neck.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Ceit heard a soft thank-you issue from the girl's lips as her blade came down sharply on the girl's neck. Her head came off cleanly and fell to the ground with a soft thud as her body fell forward. The most frightening occurrence though was the quick rotting that seemed to occur in the girl's corpse. It had only been a minute ago that she was speaking and now it looked as though she had been dead for at least a year.

Ceit was beginning to wonder if she were still dealing with the fae or if Sileas and this girl had been something else entirely. In many ways they were similar but something about the way they acted made her feel otherwise. More of an instinct than anything, but she had always trusted her instincts before. One needed good instincts to be a good hunter after all.

Now it was just a matter of grabbing that sapling and escaping from the caves. Hopefully she would not have too much trouble finding her way out in the darkness.
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

The fast rotting startled her, and Ceit took a step back, before carefully wiping her blade clean upon the sleeve of her own shirt, and slowly sheathed it once more. Turning to find the sapling, she began to consider that she may be dealing with forces there were no tales for, at least not in her land. What were these Lhiannon? It was a question that roiled in the hunter's mind, refusing to reveal its answer, or to even dissipate entirely. Perhaps Sileas would finally give some solid answers.

Tracing her steps back to the last chamber, Ceit found the sapling, and using her hands and shards of loose stone, began to dig it up. As she continued her task, dipping beneath the roots reaching into the ground, she took off her shirt, leaving only wraps around her breasts. Carefully placing moist soil in her garment, she readied the sapling for the move.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

After several minutes of digging she was able to free the sapling from the wet soil of the cavern. Once it was safely secured within her shirt with moist soil packed around it's roots she began to look about for the way she entered the cave. A brief moment of panic set in as she realized there were multiple caves and in the darkness she had no way of knowing where she had come in. She hurried from one cave to another for several minutes.

Finally her eyes caught sight of a faint glow among the rocks and earth of the cave. Her forehead burned a bit where Sileas had drawn the bloody runes on her head and it occurred to her that they had to be her own trail leading her out of the darkness.
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Another sigh, of relief this time, and Ceit was following the glow, letting that burn in her skin pull her along. She did her best to shut out the worst of the pain as she scrambled over slick rock and through caves and tunnels.

What of the men outside though? Hopefully they had fled by now. Otherwise, she'd have a fight on her hands.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Coming to the entrance once more Ceit began to crawl back through the small entrance towards the daylight on the other side. The pain had distracted her from the odious smell of the caves on her trip upward, but it now faded and the odor of rotting vegetation greeted her once more. She had to push the sapling before her carefully as it was such a tight squeeze and warily she set it upon the ground while she finished crawling out of the small cave.

Just as she was about to emerge herself she noticed a gauntleted hand reach down and snatch the sapling away. She scrambled forward to get herself into a fighting stance as quickly as she could only to find herself roughly grabbed by another two men. The one holding the sapling laughed as he tossed it aside and asked harshly who she was and what she was doing here. Her fox companion was no where to be seen but only two of the men had returned to the clearing so perhaps it would still be possible for ceit to escape.
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

"Let me go and find out," Ceit said in Gaelic, pulling harshly against their grip, her eyes snapping to the sapling to try and make sure it was okay. Her elbows and forearms were bleeding from the crawl along the rocks, and her knees were bruised and scraped.

Fingers curling inwards to form tight fists, she glared at the men around her, and launched a kick to the inside of one man's knee, hoping to get out of his grip long enough to scramble out of the other's.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Ceit's kick caught the man to her left's knee perfectly and he let go of her as his leg buckled with a shout of pain. He fell in a heap to the side as he shouted something a foreign tongue she did not recognize.

Unfortunately the other man seemed to be ready for just such an occurence and he quickly twisted her arm behind her as she made her attempt to escape. He slammed Ceit's head sharply a few times against one of the stunted trees of the forest leaving her completely dazed as he dropped her to the ground. The forest seemed to spin uncontrollably as she lay there trying to make sense of the tongue the two men spoke, a thin trickle of blood running down her forehead into her eyes.
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

"Destroyers, murderers. Foul beasts of darkness," Ceit spat on the ground, vision swimming, eyes blinking to try and clear the blood the flowed over her brows. Dripped down her cheeks.

She tried to looked around, tried to spot any help, and feared her companion dead. She sucked in a deep breath, hoping that instead she got away, but it left her in no better a position.

"Go back to your homes, and pray to your God of white death," she said, twisting her head as she spoke to them, wishing they could hear her Gaelic words, that she could speak their tongue. With her arm twisted behind her, she was not in a good position to fight back, and the pain in her skull was not helping anything either.

She tried to think, tried to find a way out of this grip, to get a blade back in her hands again.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Her breath came in heaving gasps as she tried with all her strength and guile to escape the vile soldiers clutches. Rolling to the side she managed to twist her arm in front of her though the wrenching pain told her that her should was dislocated. Still she was free if only for a few seconds allowing her brace for the man as reattempted to grab her.

They rolled along the floor of rotting vegetation in the forest for several minutes as they tried to establish dominance. Ceit was easily faster than the man in his heavier clothing and armor, though he was at least a little stronger. She had to get rid of him as fast as she could before his partner recovered however. Her sword had been tossed aside by the men and lay near the other man as he struggled with hiss broken leg. She also still had her quiver of arrows, though most of them were probably broken in the struggle still it was better than nothing. She only had a few minutes to decide as she managed to dive out of her opponent as he tried to tackle her once more.
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Feeling her joint pop out of place, pain flaring through her body, Ceit let out a scream of agony. She did not hold it in, she forced it out, pushed it at her opponents, like the Bean Sidhe.

She grasped an arrow from her quiver, the wooden shaft snapped in the middle, hanging by strips. Taking a firm hold just above the arrow head, she plunged it towards the neck of the man attempting to tackle her. Wound, kill, distract, either would work. Give her the time for her next movement.

Diving towards her sword, she was sure to roll at the injured man's leg as she grasped for the hilt, to come up to her feet as quick as she could.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

The broken arrow plunged deep through the man's neck as he dove towards her. His scream was cut short as he suddenly spat a gout of thick blood from his mouth and fell to his knees with a gurgling moan.

Diving towards her sword she reached it just a moment before the second man could recover. His own blade was quickly knocked aside as Ceit recovered from her dive and he soon lay quiet in the muck of the forest. Leaving Ceit alone with the sole survivor who vainly tried to staunch the blood flowing from his neck.
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

Getting to her feet, teeth gritted against the pain that flared through her, Ceit held her sword firmly in still working hand. A few steps towards the fallen foe, she put the tip of her blade against his neck, and pushed downwards.

Pulling her blade free, she turned to the man struggling to keep his blood inside his flesh. The gurgling sounds of a man clinging to life flecking his lips with crimson. Ceit limped to him, ready to kick if he attempted to strike at her, or trip her.

No words came. It was a smooth movement, bringing her sword down upon him. There was nothing for him to say. Nothing she wanted to her. She aimed to slay him, before moving to a tree to knock her shoulder back into place. A loud crunch in her flesh, and another scream ripped from her lips. Panting, on one knee, Ceit looked to the sapling that had fallen, roots still bound in her shirt.

Sheathing her sword, she carefully pulled it up to herself, and looked around. Where was her guide? Would she have to make her way back to Sileas on her own?

"Gods guide my steps, and see my task complete," Ceit whispered to the looming trees around her, and started walking around the little encampment, looking for her guide.
 
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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

The sapling seemed to be fine, though now that she had it in a better light she could tell it was no normal plant. The leaves were of a dark greenish color and they seemed to exude a reddish sticky substance in the few spots it had been damaged. The substance reminded Ceit more of blood than any sap she had ever seen.

She had little time to dwell on her strange mission however as there were more pressing matters at hand. Namely her shoulder, her head, and her missing guide. The shoulder was an easy enough fix and her head would be fine despite the pounding pain. She was most worried about her guide since despite being experienced in the woods of her homeland she had little idea where she currently was or how to get back.

Walking around the encampment she eventually came across the trail of the men who had chased off after the fox girl. If the girl were anything like the other foxes of the forest the men would be lost deep in the forest while she circled back to leave them behind. Ceit began to move slowly through the brush along the easy trail left by the men of the cross in the hope of finding her companion.
 

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Re: Furain an taoigh a thig, greas an taoigh tha falbh. (Ceit)

That blood like... sap, was starting to soak into the shirt, staining the cream coloured wool. Was this the blight that the girl had warned her about. Or if it was something else, much more sacred than that.

Should throbbing, head pounding, Ceit left the camp, fully aware of her sword tugging down slightly at her belt, of the stickiness from the sapling in her hands. She moved quietly, weight on her back foot, each step deliberate. Heel to toe, leaves scarcely rustling with her steps, avoiding twigs and branches when she felt them underfoot.

She not in much shape to run into the men again, but she kept her eyes and ears open, listening and looking for them, or better, her companion.
 
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