Escape From The Gingerbread Castle

"It's a good thing there's a handful of us, then. We stand a good chance, depending on what the beast actually is. When does it attack?" Cyprian doesn't know too much about what creatures live in this region, but hopefully he can at least narrow it down a little.

((please give me enough information so i can have him guess slightly and comically wrong (but not wrong enough to be fatal) ))

 

"So far it only comes out at night. It doesn't seemt o care for bright lights at all. I don't know what it is, but it's got tough, lumpy skin, and it stinks like a swamp!"

 

Aerian watches the werewolves abscond, then throws a careful glance to the remaining company of vampires (plus princess captain america), then absconds himself into the tavern. Maybe it's time for another drink... a strong one. And then some blood.

 

"Maybe it's a dragon! Dragons eat sheep, and they've got scales. I've never smelled one, though."

 

"Uhh. I don't think it's a dragon? It doesn't seems very dragon like. It hasn't got a tail or wings or nothin' like that."

 

"There a dragons that don't have wings, like a, like a, a wyvern. Or maybe it's an ogre. They're supposed to smell bad - do you suppose they eat sheep?"

 

"Oh, it could be an ogre! I don't know if ogres eat sheep, but they could I suppose." He looks considering.

 

"Seems like a lot of things eat sheep," Cyprian muses. "It could be anything, really."

((gonna try and go to sleep soon; i'll be gone in like an hour at most))

 

"Yeah, even humans eat sheep, it's like they think they taste good or something." Chance mutters as he and Ambrose follow them to the farm. While Ambrose may be up for this particular adventure, Chance isn't so sure. He's ready to go home and look at some of the scrolls he nicked from the fireplace in the castle, but when Ambrose decides Chance needs to get out, there's really no escape until Ambrose decides he's had enough.
"Maybe some breed of gargoyle?" Ambrose ventures.
"They generally don't smell swampish," Chance says.

 

"Don't gargoyles usually sit on buildings? I don't think this could sit on many buildings without breaking them." Barnaby tries to gesture and forgets for a moment that he's got his hands occupied. "It's err... it's big. I tired to scared it off and it threw a log at me!"

 

[I think it's perfect, thank you Jesse!]

Barnaby leads the whole lot down the well cobbled path. It slopes gently, almost unnoticeable until he turns down a fork that looks more dirt than stone and the incline becomes steeper. It's soon apparent that the path is one few travel; a hand full of farmers, a cart, and some sheep at most. This is probably the largest, and by far the strangest, group it's seen in years. Barnaby looks back over his shoulder and can't help his grin. He's being followed by a handful each of werewolves and vampires, one blessed princes, and one son of a witch. He smiles, happy, and thinks that this could not possibly have gone any better. Certainly his trouble is over now!

 

"How much farther to your family farm, lad?" Eva asks, her bare, callused feet scuffing easily through the dirt and her irritating shoes dangling from her fingers.
She'd shifted back solely because while travelling is easier on four paws, her shoes tasted terrible. She could never understand dogs' fascination with them.

"We're not to near on dawn, but our nightwalkers will need a place to hole up, and I dunno if your family is set to house the lot of us."

She snaps her fingers suddenly, remembering, and turns back to said nightwalkers. "Dunno if your Thear River pack looks like me or I them, but I probably have some flavor of kin down there. I'm not the first O'Brien to go walkabout by any means."

"Truth be told, we send a lot of older pups out around to foster when the home range gets too crowded, and they've been known to stay fostered," she remarks, pulling her heavy mass of auburn curls over her shoulder into a messy braid. "My cream belly is an O'Brien signature, especially if it goes down the insides of their back legs, and so's a red undercoat."

 

"This pack must foster from all sorts of others, their coats are a mixed bag. One little girl is almost a pure white, I think she's from one of the old families, but I'm none too sure. They're a bit shy around us, you see. But the pack itself is quite large, over eighty family groups at our last count. They're deep in the forest, near inaccessible for regular humans unless they know where to look. We generally meet them at the river, which is why we call them that, can't remember what they call themselves," Ambrose supplied.

 

"Honestly as far as two-legger names go, that's probably as accurate as you can get. Wolf names aren't so much words as a mishmash of sounds and scents, with sight mixed in for good measure. Like, my cousin's name is Moondance, but if I were to actually use her full name it'd take half an hour to get out, as it's got all of that with some of her personality mixed in."

"Met a wolf named Hopper once. Now that was a name. Couldn't begin to say it with a human mouth and get it right."

She grins cheekily at the pair of them and winks.

"Play your cards right and I might tell you mine."

 

"Could I get a wolf name?" Cyprian asks. "How would that work?"

 

Barnaby tilts his head to one side, listening to the chatter behind him. He's not sure that he wants a wolf name. Or more accurately, he's sure that he does want to hear what Eva calls him when she's furry and on all fours, it's just that he also thinks he shouldn't. He's never had such a hard time quelling the urges of his second nature. He tries to distract himself instead.

"We kind of are on the farm now. Flock grazes all these hills. Or it should be. Bit more of a walk to the house but not much longer." How if he even going to introduce all of these people to his family? barnaby is starting to realize he mgiht not have thought things through all the way.

 

She wrinkles her nose, shifting on her feet.

"It's not exactly something you give or get, see? It's who you are. Like, my uncle, f'r instance. He's been a big bruiser his whole life, an' dark as pitch. Pups don't have names so much as, y'know, 'Hey you' and 'That one' but the knew he was going to be Nightfang or something ridiculous, because he was a stupid yearling and they love drama.

So we're having a thin winter, right? Fall hunting had been terrible and everyone was getting too lean too fast. He decides to get his sibs together, whole mess of nameless yearlings on moondark and start a hunt for somethin' big to bring home. An' he was gonna get his name. They left singing for boar or elk, and disappeared for three days, and we had a hard snow that snap-froze to about shoulder-high solid ice.

They come back dragging a fat doe with my uncle's big forelegs tore all to shit, singing out the name 'Snowbreaker', 'cos he dug them out of a collapsed snow cave all on his own. But you'll know when you find it."

 

Cyprian grins. "Sounds a lot more interesting than human names." He likes his human name, but he knows a lot of people don't like theirs. They'd probably be happier with wolf naming.

 

Eva barks out a laugh at that. "Human names don't make any sense. My gran got so fed up with thinking up girls' names after she whelped her second litter without a lad among them that she gave up and started naming them after flowers since humans seem to like that, though the fastest way to piss off Auntie Wildfire is to call her 'Lily'."