Lowfrost Point (Roleplay Thread, Private)

Myrick waved a forepaw dismissively and gestured to the houses to the left of the pathway through Lowfrost. “We just had some difficulties recently and Thorn is fuming about it.” He said. “Nothing that is a concern now, mind you.”

Myrick curled his lip and felt his shoulders sagging. “Kid...” He wanted to slap his forepaw over his forehead. Why did he have to deal with this? How much longer until Tray got back? “I’m sure. Just pick a house and don’t worry about it.”

Myrick puffed out a deep breath and looked at the billows as they clashed with the chilly air. He glanced at the house Fabio picked out and slouched his shoulders. “Fine.” He could see where this would go until Raken got back. Unless they found the woodlanders who’d fled, they would be doing nothing but getting food every now and then.

“Well, today you get to learn so you don’t have to bother anybody else with making a fire.” Myrick could think of many different uses for fire, not the least of which was as a weapon. “You can do a lot more with fire than just use it as a weapon.”

“Yeah, sure,” Myrick said. “Food.” He approached the house and tilted his head before forcing the door open and taking a look inside. He hadn’t taken the time to explore Lowfrost, not like Tray or Delph.

“Yes, I’m sure.” Myrick wanted to roll his eyes, but instead he walked over to the fireplace and saw that there was some wood already there. He could smell the strange rat’s scent. Another probably smelled like the rabbit, and the one toward the entrance to Lowfrost had smelled of badger. “The ones that lived here previously abandoned the place recently.”

“They left because we showed up.” Myrick didn’t delve into the subject any further than that, not because the wolverine wasn’t supposed to be told a great deal about it yet but because it angered him. Yes, they had Lowfrost, but there had been no fun in it, and one of their own had killed Delph and severely injured Alice. He started setting up the wood in the fireplace with one of his arrows and tilted his head to the side.

Sellie laid her greatsword on the long table in the main hall and looked sideways at slick trail of blood on the floor. The same blood dripped from her sword and sank into the cracks in the wood. She walked to one of the last storage rooms and reached down to pick up Rowe. The fox hadn’t even tried to get up from the place where she’d left him in the middle of the floor. Blood was still spreading from the spot where she’d stabbed him. “You’re free to die.” Raken had put her in charge of the group in his absence, not Joline.

“And I bet your group picked places that had more than a couple residents and ample defenses.” Myrick always found that to be the problem with hordes. They tried taking off more than they could chew. “This place had a couple of woodlanders living here, no walls, barely any weapons; they left because they knew they would lose. Hordes never know when not to pick a fight.” He glanced sideways at Fabio after propping up a couple of little logs in the fireplace. “I don’t know what horde you came from, but you’re smarter than the rest of them for leaving.”

Sellie dragged Rowe out of the room and into the main hall, then outside. She brought him out behind the main hall and kept going until they were a short distance outside the village. He’d be dead within an hour if she had to guess, and she didn’t want to slit his throat if she didn’t have to. Letting him die by himself in the snow would be easier for him and her.

“I suppose.” Myrick started looking for a piece of flint or a couple of decent stocks to get a fire going, but he didn’t see either of them directly in front of the fireplace. “Haven’t you started a fire before, or tried to get one started?”

Sellie left. He could hear the snow crunching, the sound it getting fainter and fainter until he could hear nothing but his own ragged breathes again. Rowe pulled his forepaws close and shuddered, unwilling to get up.

“Then we’ll be doing this with a couple of sticks and a particularly flat log.” Myrick reached over and grabbed a thin stick outside the fireplace, than grabbed a small but relatively flat log already charred underneath. “It could take a bit.” Flint would’ve made it much faster, and he had to teach Fabio useful so that he wouldn’t have to go knocking on everybody else’s doors later on to get a fire going.

Rowe’s ears flicked back and he lifted his head up, hiding his bleeding chest by tucking his forelimbs in and curling up. He could see the ferret, and for a moment he recalled who the ferret was, too. “Consider me dead.” He’d lose enough blood to bleed out before the cold got to him, and he was already at the point of welcoming the numbness reaching into his body.