Saun 13th, Arc 716
Nightshade looped through the air trying to angle her body in a way that would allow her to do a loop de loop. Of course it wasn’t working very well and she spent another five minutes correcting her flight pattern so she didn’t smash face first into the ground. That tended to be something she did a lot as a kid, not really knowing the limits on her flying abilities. Now that she was older she knew what she could do in the air pretty well, and by no means was it much. She wasn’t very graceful even if you didn’t count being one of the worst Avriel at landing ever. Seldom did she actually curse her human blood, after all she was very proud of her humanity and often spent time cursing the Avriel half of her family (save for her father), however when it came to flying her human half only made it more troublesome. She wasn’t built to fly as perfectly as others of her Avriel kind. So it made getting the same tricks down a little harder. And by a little, she meant a lot. Night took another deep breath beating her wings and bringing herself higher into the air. She flew forwards before quickly making a steep incline and leaning back. Instead of just leaning back this time and trying to keep going she turned her body to the right as she made her slope downwards. On the second loop the turned upwards once more and did the same thing to right herself instead turning inwards to the left. She was able to fly away without crashing. “I did it,” she said quietly. “I did it!” She screamed a lot louder throwing her hands up into the air with a triumphant cry. She shot upwards as fast as she could before pulling in her wings and allowing herself to fall to earth. As celebration she was doing one of the more dangerous and somehow easier to accomplish maneuvers she learned as a little girl by sheer accident and failure to do any other trick. Before she got to close to the ground she threw her wings outwards and arced her body up. Using the momentum of the previous fall she was able to soar even higher than the point at which she had started her decent. She could see from miles and it was a little harder to breath with as high as she had gone.
Something caught in the corner of her eye. A group of merchants heading for the city. She silently watched for a couple of moments trying to assess what they were selling before something else caught her eye. A group of little specs in armor were following the group not too far away. Bandits? Of course they were bandits, bandits had to make a living too. That didn’t make it any better. “I should step in, shouldn’t I?” She mused to herself aloud tapping a finger against her chin. Of course she already knew the answer to be a resounding and definite yes deep in the heart of her very being. Her morals would never allow her to think well of herself again if she walked away from this little tiff without even trying. She couldn’t tell exactly how many bandits or merchants there were but she could tell there weren’t too many to deal with. Enough the merchants would have problems none the less. Her pride however was still a thing, and it made her outwardly question if she would actually help or not. The answer however remained unchanged by her quiet pondering the same as it would have if people had been there or not.
Her eyes trailed down the path the merchants were taking with their cart and she found a lovely little clearing down the road. \The perfect place for the bandits to ambush the merchants and take them off guard. It was also the perfect place for Night to do the same to the bandits. She swooped down low finding a tree with heavy leaves. She reached out for a branch near the top. Her claws grappled onto it and she actually stuck the landing. It was easier to land when one had something to grab onto, a trick she had learned with enough screw ups. She made sure to burrow herself into the leaves of the tree. She wasn’t the stealthiest person, but she could stay still for extended periods of time. She was a patient person. The merchants looked unobservant enough to pass her by (most likely this held reasoning as to why they had become targets) and the bandits would be far too worried about the caravan to notice something all black in the covers of a dark leafed tree. The tree itself was a rather large purple-leaved beech tree. And considering it was starting to get late shadows cast darkness inside the leaves of the tree.
She waited quietly for a while remaining completely still. She was starting to wonder if she had misjudged the situation and the bandits attacked earlier. But fortune was on her side and eventually she heard the gentle sounds of laughter and conversation from further down the path. A group of five came into view with a caravan. One was driving a horse which led the cart, a woman sat next to him. By the looks of the pair it was a married couple. Two armed guards flanked either side of the caravan. She couldn’t necessarily tell what was inside the caravan. But the guards made it seem far more important than what she originally thought. They looked well-armed and experienced. Maybe this had been a bad idea. A girl sat in the back of the caravan chatting up a storm with one of the guards. She looked as far as Night could tell to be flirting, but Night didn’t have much experience with that kind of thing so she thought it better not to make and actual call as to what was going on. Instead she continued to watch quietly. The horse at the front of the carriage suddenly seemed to hear something. It panicked and reared up trying to free itself from the situation. “Whoa, whoa!” The man shouted trying to calm down his horse. Both guards took prepared stances. For a second Nightshade felt her heard leap out of her chest, she thought that the horse had started to panic because of her. That was when she accidently through the darkened leaves met eyes with one of the guards. He parted his mouth in the beginning of a yell, but was cut off by a much louder battle cry that would have drowned any words out.
A group of 9 bandits came out of the shadows, sneering viciously. The girl who had been hanging out the back of the caravan instantly retreated into the innards of the caravan. The two guards were very much outnumbered, they wouldn’t last long. Especially not if one of them had to take on 5 people at the same time. The caravan drivers didn’t look like they were gonna be of much help to the pair of guards either. Of course that was why Night had shown up, was it not? She watched as the bandits started to circle around the caravan fanning out to either side, one being stupid enough to step under the branch she was hidden on. The guard who had seen her glanced up at her one more time and she smirked at him. Night made the loudest commotion she was jumping out of the tree and fanning out her wings to their full size. In the dimming light of sunset becoming night she looked like a horrifying beast. Of course this small amount of illumination causing large and vicious shadows made her look all the fiercer. She descended upon the man under her before he could actually get a chance to react. She pretended his neck was just like a tree branch, wrapping her feet around it and digging in as deep as she could with her claws. She beat her wings another couple of times to stay in the air while the body went limp with a satisfying crack. She dropped the limp corpse and managed to cause two of the less prepared bandits to flee. Most likely they had been in it for the money and didn’t quite understand the danger yet. Hopefully this little event could make them proper citizens if she was lucky.
The remaining six got a good look at her and didn’t seem all too frightened by the petite little thing that was Nightshade. She was tall at 5’6 but she looked like she didn’t weigh all that much. What was on her body was lean muscle without much meat or fat from years of living off little in the woods and working hard for her food. Unlike these men who stole the food out of the mouth of other men. One of the guards was shell shocked honestly trying to figure out where in the heck she came from and if she was going to try and attack them as well. The other guard looked relieved, having figured out if she wanted to kill them she would of attacked far sooner. The bandits quickly seeing that they lacked a distinct advantage attacked trying with all their might to down one of the guards at the very least. One made it his goal to go after Night, but unfortunately for him she was still in the air. She beat her wings a couple more times propelling herself out of range. She pulled out her sword and swooped down at him as steel clashed against steel. She pulled upwards again before the man could score a hit on her.
She swooped straight downwards once more actually managing to clip his shoulder. She was slowly building up a habit of going for the arm that held the blade. This of course led to a much slower swing. With this man that slower swing gave her the perfect opportunity to do a small aerial loop using the techniques she had learned before and turn right around to stab him. The man fell to the ground sputtering and coughing up blood before he fell to the ground. The guards in the time it had taken her to kill one had already killed two each and the last one was running at her. She cried out in pain as she dogged a little two slow and got a slash across her wing. It was nothing deep or drastic. But damn did it hurt, being as it was her wing and all. Wings could be compared to the head. They bleed profusely when cut and scar easy. Meaning even though it wasn’t by any means deep the wound was already sputtering blood and was certain to scar. Maybe not all too noticeably with the right arrangement of feathers, but still a noticeable mark. Night however found herself not really caring. It would be her first battle scar.
She turned quickly moving her sword to parry the other mans, she thrust slight moving under his blade and stabbing him in the throat while he wasn’t paying attention. The move hadn’t required all too much force. His attack left him wide up and he could really use his strength to prevent the stab since he was too busy with her parry, which due to the angle meant she needed less strength to force her blade against him than her needed to force his blade against her.
By the time the battle was over she found herself huffing slightly. One of the guards moved towards her with his sword still drawn, but the other held his hand out. “What were you doing out here?” He asked.
Oh great. An interrogation after Night so kindly saved their rear ends from being destroyed by bandits. And she did the most work! “I was out practicing my flying when I saw your caravan being stalked by a large amount of what looked to be bandits. I decided to hide out ahead in the area that was most likely for you to be attacked so that when the bandits came I could attack them to try and back up you two. So quite acting like I did something wrong,” she said sounding slightly offended. The guard that really didn’t seem to like her much didn’t seem fond of the tone, but the other guard had a slight amount of guilt painting his face at her explanation. It was obvious by her tone alone that she wasn’t lying. The fact she got herself into the fray attacked was all the proof the more reasonable guard needed. He shot a glare at his companion.
“You have a pretty good sword arm. What do you do for a job?” He asked.
“I help scout areas for a map maker. The wings make it easier to see certain things. Of course I’m not above knocking a couple heads together in order to protect other people,” she said not really being very tactful with her answer. If there was one thing Night wasn’t the best at it was tact.
“And, how did you know the bandits would attack us here? What logic led you to believe that,” he finally asked.
“I was taught general tactic when I was a kid. My dad was a ‘servant’ to a powerful man in exchange for my education and care,” she said a strange look clouding her eyes. The guard nodded quietly.
“You would be a good addition to the arm. We were actually on our way to Etzos to drop off some important supplies. I’ll make sure to mention you to our superior. That way if you ever decide to drop in, I’ll vouch for an extra fighter with that kind of valor,” he said with a small nod. “I hope you weren’t expecting to get paid though, we don’t really have any cash to spare.”
“Nope. No pay wanted or needed. Just being a good person. By the way I should really say my name is Nightshade, shouldn’t I?” she said with a dismissive shrug. The other guard’s eyes finally began to soften.
“I’ve never met an Avriel or half breed of one that I’ve liked. And I still really don’t like Avriel. But you don’t seem too bad. Confident and a little pompous, but not an ass. Hit me up some time, we’ll go drinking,” he said with a scowl. Though the tone of voice and the words said made Night feel like it was some kind of silent acceptance of her skill. She smile quietly and made a show of bowing before she took off. It was pitch black now and the land was hard to make out. But she still knew her way home. She was just ready to go home and finally get some sleep. It had turned into a really long day.
