The Shadow Carnevale (RP)

This time, Lille is ready for the rush of the crowd. With her decision already in mind, she pulls out another stone from her bag and transfers the staff memory to it. Then she throws it hard to the side, past a tent to a mess of boxes and barrels, strewn with coils of rope. Pointing to their former prisoner, she says to Ezme, "We need them out of the way!" She motions to the trapper’s poi balls as she clambers onto the side of the coach, getting between the greedy eyed figure and the door. She spares a concerned glance for the crowd as she shouts, "I’m on!" to the ursine steed.

Roald twists the staff round the shadow cord. Once... Twice... It rolls up nicely and he keeps turning untill the cord is tight.
'' Ready when you are!'' He shouts.
'' It extends a little to the right in between those 2 green tents''

Strange how he can see the cords clear as day now, it must have been his visit to the urn that opened his eyes.

Ezme glances down at the poi at her feet. She had dropped them in order to free up her hands to grab the shadow ropes. Maintaining a firm hold on the end of the shadow cord in case Roald loses it, she shuffles her feet to kick the poi over to the young woman, then braces herself for the carriage's movement.

Albeart turns out to be a fantastic horse, in no time they pass between the green tents. Roald hardly can keep up with rolling up the shadow cord.
'' Take a left here, towards the rusty cage beside the striped wagon!''
He shouts over the rattling of the wheels.

Lille swings the poi balls in a simple circle, but as the coach lurches into motion the need for them drops away quickly. As the last few interested people are lost in a swaying turn, she lets the balls fall slack, and her body likewise deflates and leans against the door. All the effort she had put into maintaining a strong front seems to have caught up with her, and she looks more like the other adventurers had felt as they tired from existing in this world. Her grip remains strong; on the coach with one hand and the hanging balls with the other. She glances inside the window to see that her staff is still safely stashed, then looks ahead toward their last task.

The forest is dark, but Albeart's eyes quickly adjust to this environment. The coach is starting to get heavy though. This forest path is not the easiest place to pull such a wagon through and the uneven soil makes it a bumpy ride. After 5 minutes, they have slowed down to a pace that someone could keep up with on foot. "I don't know how much longer I can pull this thing. Do you think we're close?" He asks Roald who has been giving him directions.

Albeart tries to smell the air. As a bear this should be his kind of territory. Perhaps he would be able to smell his own body. The thought of it creates a bad feeling in his stomach. A realization that all of this is not right. He sniffs and indeed catches a whiff of sweat and clothing. "I think it's that way!" He motions with his head to a branching path, not thinking about the fact that they others may not be able to see it in the dark.

The darkness of the forest makes it hard for Roald to follow the shadow cord. He has to wait for the scarce clearings to see the cord in the dim light of the crescent moon.
But Albeart seems to keep on the right track, and the staff in his hand is pulling harder, tighter.
This is like reeling in a big fish

''We're getting close, I can feel it! Everybody keep your eyes open, he must be somewhere near.''

Ezmaray struggles to keep her footing as the wagon jostles through the dark woods. She is not super accustomed to taking such transportation, so it takes much of her concentration to do so...

As soon as she registers Roald's heartening cry, there is a sudden jolt as the wagon slams downwards into an unexpected ravine formed by a stream, narrowly avoiding crushing their surprised "steed" in the process. As she lurches forward, Ezme reaches out with one hand to try to protect the tumbling urn. It slips just out of reach, tumbling out of her view as she slams next to Roald at the front of the halted coach.

In the sudden silence that follows, Ezme lifts her head, her attention immediately arrested by something bright glimmering not six meters away. An inexplicable light beams down from above, spotlighting a still human form standing by the stream...

"It's me!" Albeart exclaims when he notices the man standing in the light. He backs out of the harness of the coach and slowly approaches his body. It appears to be looking up at a tree. Following his gaze, Albeart can spot an owl up in the trees. He decides to pounce the man. Surprise him with a big ol' bear-hug. Just to make sure he doesn't leave.

Lille lands heavily on the door as the carriage lurches under her. She reaches in for the urn, but it is beyond her reach and she gets only her tumbling staff. With a growl of frustration she lands in a heap on the ground. All she can do is call out, "Wait!" in Wildspeak to the standing figure. She echoes the loud shriek with a wordless cry of her own before collapsing down again.

"What do we do now?" she asks tiredly as she comes out of being dazed and struggles to her feet. She leans heavily on her staff and offers the poi balls back to Ezme. Her fatigue seems as much mental as it is physical. "And where did the urn go?"

Ezme watches with dismay as Albert's body shrieks and vanishes, the mysterious spotlight fading with him. Her heart sinking, she looks around at the falling faces of her companions, now pitched into mostly dark and shadows. As Lille hands over the poi, Ezme glances down at them. The trapper's brow furrows.

"Albert. Albert...." Ezme says urgently, clambering to her feet and making way toward the bear. "Your body left without you, but it is of no consequence. This is dream, and in dream you write your own story. You have seen me change. I was lion. Now I am..." she glances down at her mud-covered outfit, "... something different. You can do same. You can do anything." Next to Albeart now, she holds up a poi ball between them.

"See this?" Ezme stares with fierce determination at the poi. After a moment, it starts to sizzles and smoke, then finally, as Albert reaches out to touch it, it erupts into flames. She grins victoriously. "There. See, we light it with our minds! Look at those flames, Albert. The answers you seek, they are there... Raynor. God of Fire and Conquest. He sought you, yes? You do not know why, but he called you..."

Ezme takes a moment to glance at Roald and Daryl, nudging Albert's longer-standing friends to come help Albert recall more details from his past.

Albeart blinks at the poi, now set aflame by his touch. He remembers a similar thing happening to a torch he was holding when surrounded by bees. Bees of ... Darkness... And the opposing force was light and fire. Raynor... That name meant something. Albeart closes his eyes, shaking off the feeling of being a bear and focussing on his human mind.

"I need to remember." he utters slowly, as if pained by the thought.

Albeart spotted the ravine and tries to avoid falling in making a hard left, unfortunately not being able to save the carriage from slipping in. When the carriage tumbles sideways off the bank of the stream, Roald - both hands still firmly holding the staff - is completely out of balance. He shifts his weight and uses the pulling force of Albert's body's shadow cord to keep him from slamming into the side. When ezme falls toward him he instinctively tries to prevent her from hitting the same wall and loosens one hand in an effort to slow her down.
But the shadow cord evaporates before his eyes and the pulling force disappears.

Losing both his anchor point and at the same time being pushed forward by the crashing coach and Ezme falling in the same direction, Roald gets launched from the wagon.
He hits the muddy ground hard. All the air is smashed from his lungs. Luckily the mud breaks his fall somewhat.
A couple of meters from where he landed he hears a 'tud'.
It's the urn, dangerously balancing on the water's edge.
Roald tries to get up but his legs are stuck in the mud. Normally it would be easy to break free from the suction but in his weakend state he's just not able to wiggle himself out.

'' Help, I got the urn but I'm stuck!"

A small wave touches the urn and spins it slightly, the opening now facing Roald.
Oh no, we're going to lose it
He grabs Albert's staff and stretches as far as he can, trying to get the staff into the opening to 'catch' the urn. Carefully he manoeuvres the staff into the urn, it isn't that hard to do, but hitting the ground hard has done a number on his shoulder, making his arm just a little unsteady.

The staff becomes warm in his hand, the tip lighting up the inside of the urn. The warmth spreads through his entire body, he feels strong... and free... free!

Ezmaray turns to look just as Roald makes his initial plea for help and watches as his actions set the urn alight. Roald, himself, seems to suddenly glow with renewed wellbeing and health. Ezme's eyes widen with surprise.

"Raynor...?" she whispers, to herself as much as anyone. This did appear to be the workings of his holy staff, after all...

Shouldn't she feel relieved? They were all in desperate need of some sort of intervention, and that last trick with making the poi smoke had cost her dearly. They needed to get out of here, and yet Ezme feels a shudder of trepidation run through her....

Why, oh why hadn't she tried calling on Larinia, lady of dreams and nighttime? Even as she asks herself this question, Ezme knows the answer: her own goddess had never before answered her prayers. Why would she start now?? Ezme simply wasn't special enough to garner the interest of gods... but for some mysterious reason, Albert was....

Awed, Ezme turns her wide eyes back to the bear beside her.

"Yes, Roald is doing something right," Lille tells Albert. "Look at that light, and remember what you told me about Raynor helping you in times of trouble." She still seems uncertain about the whole "god" concept, but relaxes visibly in the staff light. "I will help you back up," she calls to Roald, and motions to Daryl with her head to come help as she scrambles down the side of little ravine.

Albeart was still not completely sure what Raynor was, but he knew it gave him a good feeling. It was trustworthy and welcoming. Then, over where Roald was another glow started to appear. Where the poi made Albeart feel nice, Roalds glow did even more so. It was so warming that he just had to go over and touch it!

With strain he slowly moves his legs through the water and mud on his way to Roald. "Raynor's light shall guide the way!" The sentence came out of nowhere in his mind.

Ezme's eyes follow the bear as he pushes through the thick, cold muck of the stream. The staff steadily increases in brightness as he nears, forcing the trapper to squint to see. A meter or so away from the staff, the beast rises up on his hind legs to walk the rest of the way, and in that moment, something about his movements strike Ezme as suddenly far less bear and more human.

The increasingly luminous light also reveals that Lille and Daryl have altered too, suddenly looking solid, refreshed, and energized upon making contact with the staff.

While Daryl pulls with all his might at one end to help his friends exit the ravine, Albeart reaches one giant paw out toward the blessed weapon. As he does so, Lille suddenly looks Ezme's way, her expression alarmed. "Ezme!" she calls.

But the trapper is frozen in indecision, her legs refusing to move underneath her.

The bear's paw wraps around the staff, triggering it and the urn to shine even more brightly. Something grumbles deep in Albeart's throat. The rest of the crew looks her way. "Come on! Get over here!" they call, waving her toward them urgently.

Ezme shields her eyes and manages to stumble a few steps forward, then freezes up again. "I... I cannot!" she cries desperately, shaking her head.

All of a sudden, in the midst of her panicky crisis, Ezme's world is pitched into darkness. All the trapper hears is the sound of her friends' voices suddenly getting cut off... and then the splash and gurgle of the extinguished urn as it tumbles downward to finally surrender under the pooling waters of the stream.

"Guys?" Her stomach sinking, Ezme blinks her eyes as they readjust. Looking up, her fear is confirmed: the staff and all her companions are gone. She'd been left behind.

"Frack..."

The fire of Ezme's poi sputters out.