[RE] Frozen is not forever

random event This thread is for Honey/Ronin who are cashing in 600 MP for a mythical companion! Softly the snow fell and the temperature dropped and the world was busy with preparation. But not all things were preparing to sleep. Some things...some things long buried and forgotten, were preparing to awaken. And so it was, that on a unremarkable and gray Deepfrost afternoon, the dream fish in the Oasis's seemingly bottomless pool started to thrash about. Normally not seen unless coaxed by those whose troubled thoughts could feed their telepathic bellies, the fish splashed and spluttered, their iridescent bodies catching the pale and cloud-filtered light in a beautiful but rather frantic looking dance. Water splashed loudly and though their mouths opened and closed the flailing of their fins upon the surface of the water was all the noise they were capable of making. Still, if one listened, their cries of help! help! could easily be heard in that splashy crescendo of waves.

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Ronin frequented the Glade and the Oasis with increasing familiarity these days, and even Deepfrost couldn't ward him away for long. He collected the little firewood there was to get from the forest floor and he meandered along the still and serene waters, marvelling at the way they remained somehow unfrozen by the snows. It was one such day when he had left an offering at the Shrine for Safrin and had some time to kill that he noticed a stirring at the edge of the pool.

The guildmaster drew close, frowning in confusion before hunkering down to peek in at the frenzied fish. "What's the problem, buddies?" he asked, tilting his head. Ronin Taliesin - monster hunter. Fish whisperer.

random event Instantly the fish stopped. As turned out there were five of the, with 10 eyes staring expectantly up at the bundled-up bounty hunter. The ripples around their beautiful bodies slowed as they gaped and gazed. From below, in the dark and un-mapped depths of the pool, something moved. Something large enough that it sent ripples upwards, slow and steady that burst the calm surface tension of the pool and made the fish begin to flounder again. Panicked they flailed, fins lashing the surface of the water as again something moved. With a look of sheer desperation, one of the fish flicked its tail towards the glow stones, then frantically dove downwards. Would he understand?

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Ronin blinked down at his new array of fish friends, tilting his head and glancing to the glowstones as one of their tails flicked and splashed at them. "Oh, of course." As if it was the most normal thing in the world to respond to pleas for help by a bunch of fish in a magical pond, Ronin padded across the shore to where a few of the glowstones lay, gathering a couple up and returning to the waters.

He frowned, able to see - sort of - the something shifting in the deep dark beneath the water, and (careful not to hit any of the fish) he reached out to drop in the glow stones. They landed, one after another, with a satisfying plunk, and began to sink.

random event Scattering around in a circle so that the bounty hunter could see, as the glow stones plopped one after another, softly sinking down...down...down... —clunk. A soft moaning sort of sound radiated upwards; not so much the sort of thing you heard with your ears, but instead felt the vibrations of with your bones. A bit of snow fell gently and noiselessly from a tree branch, and for a moment the fish were still and all was silent. After a moment the silence began to ring and that pesky-tingly-nauseous sort of fight-or-flight-response would rear up in Ronin's belly.  A tumultuous crack suddenly exploded from the darkened depths as something deep and low snapped. The glow stones which could still be faintly seen suddenly dropped away as if they'd been perched on something that was no longer there. Shards of ice began to shoot upwards towards the surface, cresting and then bobbing upwards a few feet before crashing back down on to the surface and sending the dream fish flying. Lighter than the heavy spears of ice, a handful of spheres began to make their way up as well. Four of them were broken or cracked, a few completely shattered into multiple pieces. Only one remained whole, its shell a gravely-sort of texture that looked like it might have come straight from a volcano, had that volcano spewed ice instead of fire. Gently it bobbed on the surface of the water, amidst the shattered remains of its kin and the ice that had held it prisoner for centuries.

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Ronin craned his head to peer over the side of the pool, eyebrows raising to watch as the fish swirled and scattered, as the glowstones plummeted further and further still, until...

The crack was deep and low and it rumbled in Ronin's very core, the guildmaster flinching back a touch with muscles bunched with adrenaline, prepared for nothing and everything all at once. "What...?" He could barely hear his own voice, eyes seeking desperately the light that the stones had provided when it dropped away into the abyss.

He didn't expect... ice. Scrambling back further as she shards bobbed, crested and crashed back down onto the waters, Ronin clenched his fists and took an automatically defensive stance that was bred from years of military training. But it wasn't some monster from the deep that came rising to the surface.

It was what Ronin swore, if he didn't know better, was an egg.

"Oh," he said softly - for what else was there to say when something so strange and wondrous occurred? It was with no small amount of trepidation, checking all the while that there would be no further movement from the depths, that Ronin would wade into the waters, trying to catch the single remaining sphere between his hands.

random event Aided by the Dream Fish who wanted absolutely no part in any more of these shenanigans, the bounty hunter would find that the egg drifted towards him quite easily. It pulsed both warm and cold at the same time, as if it had a molten core that still somehow could not permeate through the ice. Once in Ronin's hands however, he'd feel a scratching from the inside. Or was it a stretching? All that was clear was that there was something in it, pressing against the outside. One of the dream fish gave Ronin a pointed and disapproving stare (which to him, probably just looked like goopey fish eyes) before darting down back into the midnight depths of the pool. The egg was out of their waters and that was all they cared about. Gently the egg moved in Ronin's hands, whatever inside growing more frenzied and erratic in its stretching? scratching? biting?

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For something that had been floating in the depths of the Oasis for goodness knew how long and encased, it seemed, in ice, the egg was surprisingly warm in Ronin’s hands. He arched an eyebrow, flicking his eyes towards the dream fish giving him such a wide stare, and he blinked as it flicked its tail and swam away again into the dark waters. ”Sorry,” he murmured, unsure what he had done to offend it when he had rescued (or simply removed) the intrusion from their home. It was as he was wading back towards the shore, already shivering with his breath misting the air before him, that he felt the thing move.

The abrupt life that seemed to reside within it startled the guildmaster to say the least, and he had to fight not to drop the egg; luckily, he ended up cradling it closer against him, climbing out of the water with teeth chattering and fingers numb. ”What are you?” he muttered under his breath, staring down at the egg and whatever was trying to stretch and wriggle within it. Some kind of sea serpent?

random event The egg stopped moving, but in a very deliberate sort of way. The sort of way that would make the hairs on Ronin's neck stand up as if someone was looking at him. The creature inside gave a cursory and exploratory scratch against the egg, though the bounty hunter wouldn't see the effects of this on the outside of the shell. He wouldn't know this of course, but the centuries had severely weakened the creature inside, kept alive only by the freezing temperatures of the pool and the ice that had held it captive. It should have been able to break free on its own, but it could not. Again that silence descended, but through it, Ronin would feel a tickling in the back of his mind, almost like someone—or something—coaxing him to do something To help

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Ronin shivered with more than cold as the egg... uh, looked at him? That didn’t seem right but he had no other explanation for the way it stopped moving and the sensation that crept along his spine as it did so. He frowned, beginning to feel rather foolish in the snow with wet trousers and shoes (that were slowly forming a frost) holding what any other passer by would see as a large rock. Sighing, as if he had been hoping for some further explanation from the egg, he trekked a few feet back under the cover of the trees where he could sit and examine it further.

It was as he got moderately comfortable on a flat stone that he was seized with that strange itch in the back of his mind, that communication he could neither place nor respond to. He understood it well enough though, blinking down at the egg in his lap and glancing around for something he might use to help. Finding nothing that wouldn’t just smash the thing to pieces he eventually settled on using himself. His gauntleted hand gently rapped on the shell, Ronin hoping that the armour would help to create a crack that the creature might be able to work on. ”Knock knock,” he joked softly.

random event With an uncanny sort of intelligence, the creature paused, then made two croaks of sound probably meant to approximate the knock knock sound Ronin had made. As his gauntlet scratched at the surface, inside the frenzied motion began again. Small clawing sounds could be heard and felt through the reverberations of the shell as the thing inside seemed to animatedly renew its intentions to get out. Help, help, help came that strange unsaying voice in the back of Ronin's skull. The egg would begin to rock back and forth. If there was light to hold the egg up to the pair would be able to see spiderweb thin cracks appearing in the shell. But in the diffused gray light and beneath a tree, the situation currently looked the same as it had.

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Ronin couldn't help himself, letting out a laugh at the echo within the eggshell, holding the sphere carefully in his hands as the creature within began its frenzied escape anew. He watched carefully, unable to see the cracks from the shade of the tree, but the desperate plea reached him as if it was coming from his own head. Concern began to pull at him, wondering and worrying for how long the whatever-it-was could keep this up for.

It was with care and a hint of trepidation that he tapped along the egg where the scratching seemed most energetic, eyes widening as he fel the shell give a little. "Hey, that's it," he encouraged, knocking again here and there to help to weaken it further, until finally he saw the first real chips of shell begin to break away.

Grinning, the guildmaster carefully guided the break to open further, as if to show the creature inside where freedom was, until all at once it simply split open with a crack that sounded much louder than it likely was.

Within, coiled impossibly with sheer, leathery wings sheathed about itself, a tiny dragon croaked for victory. Ronin's jaw dropped.

The little creature's body would have fit within his two cupped hands, but that said nothing for its long, snowy tail, which flailed like a ribbon in the winter wind, like some sort of bird of paradise. Slowly and clumsily it - she, Ronin knew instinctively, somehow - freed herself from her wings, rolling out of the remnants of the shell onto four unsteady feet. Feet with claws that gripped on for dear life to the unfortunate guildmaster's leg.

He yelped and she raised a white, serpentine head dappled with grey scales about the nose, and chirped in return. Alright then.

{END THREAD}