Thread: Across the Veil (NornSavant x Strangefate)

Yeah you are. Boss whispered and reached up to touch her shoulder letting go of her arm. The Scouts hustled her forward, one hand on her head to keep it low, hands on her arms keeping her upright and moving. Sketch reached out and touched her shoulder as they slid past him. It was a touch of reverence, a touch fit for a Madonna or a messiah. As she approached the exit, the slit where the leaf-net had been rolled away and the raw silver light of the morning forest poured in, the scouts took her over almost entirely sweeping her forward and up, popping out of the narrow opening and thumping her boots back onto the bare ground. Without the leaf net it was just dirt and slick soil patches leading into the brown woods like a road with no yellow bricks. Before them other scouts began to rise from the brush and bramble like ghosts, knife spirits of the wood, their faces smudged and marked with dirt, scars, an eye-patch. Each one reached out and touched her as she passed, a shoulder, a hip, her hair. Was this how they said goodbye, how they wished good luck? Without time to return even a single gesture the edge of the wood devoured the trio like a malicious surf and in a moment they were in the deep gold, the shadowy world between the fire lit canopy and the dark domain of night-crawlers and mole crickets. The scouts guided her between the thick boles of trees grown wild and feral, hard skin gone to a rough hide, their roots gripping individual worlds of jasmine stems and bright swaths of wort, slimy fungus ledges spiraled around the great trunks, inviting the casual climber. The sprinting minutes became a wolf pack's journey, a long loping run with the scouts quiet and deadly and Violet thumping through the brush and dodging wet limbs and roots. They ran crouched with swinging arms like jungle creatures, crossing her path back and forth, touching her arm to send her right or left. Did they run at night like this, mindless and driven by instincts, touches for words? Just as the ache started to creep into Violet's legs they broke free of the deep gold, bursting from a bramble wall parted with a single stroke of the big sword, the strands snapping back like barbed wire set free. Across the gentle incline another line of woods marched toward them with every step, trees with white trunks like planted ivory. Ash? Poplars? The hill sucked at Violets strength, vampiric, but Scar snagged her in an abrupt move like a martial arts throw hoisting her over a shoulder without missing a step. He thin shoulder dug into Violet like a knife but the pace kept up. She could feel the scout's breathing, controlled and even, disciplined like a machine. Blade led them now, running point. Violet could not see or hear him, but she knew he was there. The white trees whipped past them, thin. So different from the savage bulk of the deeper woods. The ground cover was just soft green shoots, lily-like fronds and ferns. New growth eternally spring in the soil, peeking up through the drifts of soft red leaves. She could feel the end coming, it was something about Scar's pace, her posture. She was getting lower, her steps becoming more defensive, more wary. In a moment the world spun to a stop, a jarring roller coaster moment and Violet was back on her feet while Scar knelt to one side still breathing deep and quiet. Blade stood at her other side taunt as a deer, eyes outward The woods ended behind them and at their feet a field-stone wall demarcating a drop off of some three feet to an asphalt road. Directly across the road, a field of sunflowers stood at attention, the warm sun just tipping their upraised blooms. The nearest ones turned slowly, winding on their thick green stems to face across an ancient chain-link fence at the trio. The notice slowly spread to every flower on the front row and then back into the field as row after row of the legion silently turned their great dark single eyes toward them. The motion continued out across the fields into horrible, misty infinity. The town squatted in its ruins to their left, houses tipped over, roofs laying shattered and spread out like a vase dropped amid walls untouched. And there in the Y intersection of the road leading into town, a horse drawn carriage that might have come out of some story book. Its dark bulb of a coach perched amid the four tall spoked wheels. There was no driver apparent but a dark horse stood very still in the tracings. Tall coach whips were cocked beside where the coachman's seat must have been. It was unnaturally dark with a hint or iridescent blue about it, but the distance kept it indistinct. Scar slowly rose and touched Violet's shoulder as did Blade. The touch of goodbye.