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Võ Kiều Ry

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[break][break]"I grasped at the singed soil. I lacked anything else tactile enough to help me keep my wits, and within the wide darkness of night was something I felt must be braced against. Much like I had been told—I paid no heed then—the bosom of an unstoppable cobra; and I lacked even the nerve to make for an escape with. With the sudden appearance of flame held captive I gazed upon the flaxen-haired witch. This inexplicable flame danced atop a seashell she held before her, and reflected all too coldly in her golden eyes. Her simple white top, terminating in a short black skirt, appeared faintly under the magick fire's glow. The clothes she wore were suited just as much for mobility as they were for inconspicuousness, it would seem. She wielded her 183 cm height with severity, making the treeline behind look as though it were shrinking out of fear, and the red ascot tied round her neck gave colour to my disquietude. She knew all from but a single stare. Her unchanging and unrelenting look afflicted me as she shattered the shell at my feet, initiating the end of my life with a powered inferno.

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[break][break]"She addressed me the moment I entered the den. I had yet to even express interest in her tutelage. She bore her pride, uncompromising. Bore plainly with no fear of consequence. Those who would infringe maliciously upon her clan be burnt. The particulars mattered not to her, no threat could stay her hand a second—they would burn all the same, and so on. She ignored my niceties, and, resetting some sprung traps at the base of varied trees, began inquiring into my background with replies limited to 'decent, decent.' The talk of her glacial mannerisms rang scarily true, moment by moment, and her sustained pointed questions did little to ease my anxieties. Sweat dripped indiscriminately and slowly from my brow. Terminate Võ Kiều Ry, I repeated mentally, over and over and over. She was, she noted, 'not one to fight losing battles.' Lazily she sauntered through the brush, declaring, 'Come, the clearing takes us to where is necessary.' vanished towards the No Man's Land with a small trinket, filled with some clear unknown solution, in hand. Following this she asked of me 'how I found her and'... I answered quickly. Nerves jumping, of course, and lies stacking as well. I was coming undone. 'A Lunarisclan acquaintance.' I exhaled. 'I've only recently made the trip south.' Everything I said only seemed to contribute to her faint smile. 'South,' she considered. 'See, I would liken it more to a vacation.' As the foliage began to fall to the wayside (the surface beneath my feet changed from squelching mud to grainy ash with neither warning nor much light remaining), I caught myself estimating how outlandish of a threat this lone hunter could truly pose. She was proud, dogmatic surely. As we pressed on I felt that to be too simple an assessment as a kind of unease she had carefully cultivated began to dawn upon me.

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[break][break]"Sooner or later she snarled, without breaking eye contact, 'Therein you will, with certainty, encounter Kiều Ry.' When I requested to know more about the hunter, she rattled off achievements both famous and infamous, both belonging to her and her lineage; but seeing my dismay upon hearing such acts, she bit carefully her lip, looking out the window, 'She is truly one in a million, not even a single living relative to advance some notion of redundancy.' The continuation of the briefing precipitated from further information telling of Kiều Ry's opportunistic joining of Solarisclan, with 'extreme subterfuge. She removed her cap. The population of the room was thoroughly silent. The burn patient writhed slightly.[break]"Quickly arrived a cacophony of Northern deputies and their trifles. They had entered the scene adjacent. The vociferous shrieks for justice carried all the way to the side room. Every one of them cried the same sentiment, with the cry for vengeance central to each of their slight variations of the same flowery requests.... She bared slightly her teeth. 'How very disrespectful.' she growled. She gazed upon the burn patient, and grimacing, commented, 'This was the previous scout we had sent for her.' Her antipathy at this point was visible. Now, continuing with the feats of the condemned with a click of the tongue, 'When those on high descend to right those lower, the lower descend themselves into hate—hate forged with fire the likes of which you would be quite fortunate to perish before ever experiencing.' She paused herself to stretch her neck. 'Upon encountering Kiều Ry" she proceeded, 'mention neither your origins here'—she brushed a heavy hand across the stone cairn—'nor details possibly pointing towards our clan. I can't imagine her failing to notice—given the spies we have lost contact with after assigning them this, this witch' She glared at the burn patient with marked disdain. 'Ask an elder, were she born some more decades ago, under similar conditions, we'd be naught but ashes beneath the heel of Solarisclan, or perhaps her own.'