What is it now? (Cait)

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

3077.02.14 | Nearly Midnight

Roar.

Roar.

T’kar slowly lifted his head, blinking. He could feel Ancalanath, both as a source of heat beside which he slept and as a mind to which his own was connected, likewise stirring slowly to wakefulness. It was completely dark out, but T’kar walked to the edge of the weyr anyway, eyes straining to pierce the darkness. He turned his head slightly to one side, leaning forward towards what looked like a flicker of motion in the Bowl.

A massive bellow split the night.

Behind T’kar, Ancalanath’s head snapped up, eyes already whirling orange. T’kar didn’t need to ask his dragon who’d just bellowed, the knowledge had jumped into his mind from fully formed, springing across the link between them. There were benefits to being not-quite-awake, it seemed. The knowledge burned out sleep though, and T’kar was spinning around to run out into the hallway. He had enough time to throw on a swordbelt, and then he was racing away towards the weyrs of the young queenriders.

[Cait]

A creature of the night, Dalonia was already awake and making her rounds, checking to see that the men and women of the guard were where they needed to be. Whers along the perimeters and one or two of the smaller ones in the lower caverns and the more traditional guards where they needed to be. She'd been checking in with one of the wherhandlers in the lower caverns, Dalosk far too large to join her, when an enraged dragon's bellow shattered the calm of the night and vibrated through the walls of the Weyr. She'd heard that bellow before. It had been a good year or more since that day but it was hardly something she could forget. And even if she hadn't been sure, a guard went tearing past her towards the records room.

A scowl settled over her features and Dalonia took off after the man. She couldn't bring to mind his name at the moment but he was in his early thirties and one of the better guards. Rarely complained and a good fighter. When he skittered to a halt at the door to the records room and cursed, Dalonia knew that something was wrong. Tension practically vibrated from her as she moved to shove past him but he was already off and running again. SHe spared only a moment to glance into the empty room--noting the small ankle boots--before taking off after him. Though she'd recovered from the Turnover incident her body still protested from time to time when she was too vigorous. She ignored it as they wove through he corridors. Dalonia signaled for three other guards to join them along the way.

However, by the time they reached the scene it had been almost too late. The little Abyssrider was stalking a man with a knife in her hand. It didn't take long for her to recognize the man dressed all in black with a knife protruding from his side and blood on his lips. Shouting orders, the first guard moved before she could even tell him to. He darted forward and caught Rekkora around the middle as she launched herself with all the ferocity of a feral cat at the man. "Get her out of here!"

The girl kicked and screamed and fought but the man did as ordered and dragged her back down the hall as Dalonia took in the situation. Two bodies on the ground and K'rad. A low growl escaped her as she gestured to two of the other guards who had come with her. They moved to take hold of the dragonrider. "Don't let him die. We're gonna have words." Looking to the last man, he shook his head. Just as she'd thought, both the guard and the old woman were dead. Somehow a queenrider was tied up in all of this and now she had the proof she needed. T'kar couldn't explain this away as being too jumpy. The man had killed!

Surveying the scene one last time, noting the small footprints in blood, the handprints on the old woman...dragonrider or no, K'rad would answer for this latest bit of violence. Turning on booted heel and barking an order over her shoulder telling the remaining guard to let no one touch the scene, she stalked down the corridor. Stopping a guard who had come running a bit behind the rest, she had him go and rouse some of the off-duty guards to be posted at all queenrider doors; two each. The man had just run off to do as he was told when another man came running through the corridors. This one she knew quite well and it looked as though he had been woken abruptly by the Abyss. "Care to see what that worm of yours has done now?" She snarled by way of greeting; her body was a study of tension and barely contained rage. Two people had died on her watch. TWO!

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

T’kar pulled up short, seeing Dalonia in front of him an instant before she saw him. The scene behind her, blood and bodies, looked out of a nightmare, but she didn’t have weapons drawn. Before the relief could finish washing over him, relief that the situation wasn’t out of control, couldn’t be out of control, Dalonia caught sight of him. Her snarled ‘greeting’ — for such her words had to be called, by virtue of being those first spoken in an encounter — cut through that relief, leaving it to wither abruptly, from contact with that poisoned blade.

“What worm?” he asked neutrally. The term, from Dalonia, had not been wholly exclusive in use. However…T’kar groaned quietly, as a man might who suspects an answer that he isn’t much going to like.

“Are you referring to K’rad?” he inquired.

[Cait]

"Who else? I swear if that man doesn't die, I'll kill him myself." Practically vibrating with tension, she turned her back to T'kar to look over the scene again. It was a profound and yet rather subtle gesture that very few people would pick up on. In the depths of her mind, without realizing it entirely, she had come to trust the man. Pale eyes lingered on the old woman and down the hall she could still hear the Abyssrider shouting her grief and rage. Where the sight of the dead guard and old woman couldn't quite touch her heart, the outpouring of emotion from the queenrider unsettled her. Sometimes she felt like she wanted to scream and rage at the world but she couldn't. She didn't have that luxury and even if she did she wasn't sure she was physically capable of losing control like that. The last time she'd given in to fear...well now there were the children and things between herself and T'kar were...strange.

"I should have been here." She growled under her breath. If she'd just run a little faster or done her rounds in a different order; she was always switching it up so the guards were kept on their toes. She could have been here and then two lives could have been saved. She probably wasn't going to get more than a few minutes of sleep for the next few days as event unfolded. Then there was the queenrider to check on, if she'd been hurt as well...Closing her eyes she drew in a deep breath and tried to harness her anger and crush her guilt. Guilt didn't help anything. It made her weak. She needed to figure out what the hell had happened.

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

T’kar opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Dalonia turned to look over the scene. He stared at Dalonia’s back for a split second. Never, never, had she willingly allowed anyone at her back, to the best of his knowledge. Stepping closer to her, so that they stood almost side by side, he looked over the scene again with more careful eyes than in his initial startled appraisal.

The guard’s body lay near the middle of the hall, the old woman’s was closer to the wall. In fact, from the blood, it looked like the old woman had been rolled over. Probably by the still shouting and screaming Abyssrider Rekkora. There was a great deal of blood, both around the guard’s body, and further towards Artemis’s weyr, where the woman’s body lay.

T’kar’d seen K’rad fight. The young man would have been more than physically capable of this. Even if it was a gruesome thing to associate with anyone. Recalling the young rider’s story after the post training fight, T’kar wondered if maybe he should have pushed the youth harder then. Would that not have resulted in less danger now?

[Cait]

As T'kar stepped up beside her, she didn't even flinch. She knew it was him and not some mysterious assailant materializing out of thin air. Shifting, her booted feet scuffed the worn stone floor as she sighed. For a moment--a very fleeting moment--her shoulders slumped and there was a flash of the turmoil inside of her. Then footsteps sounded behind them and she was once more tense and her expression one of grim determination. Turning, she shifted so that her back was to the wall in the corridor as the guard from before came up with a bundle of sheets in his arms. She gave him a silent nod and he went to cover the bodies. No reason to have any more hysterical women--or men for that matter--running about than they already had.

"Divert any traffic. I'll send people to move the bodies soon. Try not to track the blood around." She said to the other guard. The queenrider's bare footprints weren't the only ones marked in blood. Of course she was already certain that K'rad had killed the old woman. She wouldn't put it past him to kill a guard as well; but why? In the distance the manic screams had turned to muffled sobbing and the wherhandler shifted uncomfortably.

"What is it about this place?" Dalonia muttered under her breath. She'd been sent down here because of a murder. Officially because they had needed more wherhandlers that were skilled enough to defend the weyr. Unofficially because Barrek and Tiberax wanted eyes and ears in the Weyr that was allied with the one they were laying siege on. Since she'd come though there had been kidnapping, death, crazed attacks and now this. Tellard was going to try and twist this on her somehow. Say that she was stretched too thin. Mention the children. Mention Misk. She hadn't thought it possible but the man was even more insufferable than T'kar! Snorting at the thought, not caring that it wasn't exactly the most appropriate time for sardonic laughter, she rubbed at the back of her neck.