04-09-2009, 10:24 AM
"I'm not cold," Sage whispered quietly.
Ashe couldn't really believe what she was hearing. It had to be below freezing at this point, and yet the blue haired girl was not only showing no acknowledgment to the chill, but her flesh was even a normal color. Peeling her hand from her thinly covered chest again for a moment to thrust her hoodie jacket to Sage, she shook it anxiously. "You have to be, it’s freezing!” she exclaimed, trying to push the jacket down over Sage's head while feeling her cheek with her other hand.
She felt as if someone had snuck up on her and flicked their finger's across her ears in a frozen snow.
Snatching her arm back, she let the jacket fall to the ground to land in the snow gathering at their feet. “I’m... sorry...” was the only thing the girl's emotionless voice said. Ashe was sure that it was a sincere apology, but... The response was almost the same as if it had come from someone talking in their sleep. It was so disconnected from the world that the pink haired girl took in a sharp arctic breath and kneeled down to snatch her jacket back up. Pressing the girl after what had happened to her sister was going absolutely nowhere, and Ashe knew when to just throw in the towel and let someone get their grieving time.
But she couldn't just let Sage freeze to death just because she couldn't get past her sister's death. Ashe was honestly upset as well and felt bad for her, but the girl was refusing all forms of comfort to the point of putting her own well being at risk. Ashe had been there. She couldn't stand watching someone else do this to themselves, not from the outside looking in.
She'd have to hope that Sage would recover before the elements took her.
She pulled the jacket back over her head, unable to take the temperatures any longer herself. “No, it’s okay,” she echoed emptily for Sage's benefit. She leaned back into the frozen over vehicle for a moment to snatch the plugs loose on the GPS system that had been inside of it. “We’ll just have to walk. We’ll have to deal with the cold, somehow, too.”
The other girl gave no response, no acknowledgment, to her friend's words, so Ashe gloomily stuff the tracking system into the pocket of her jacket and reached up, pulling her hair back over her frostbitten ears before pulling the hood over her head, tightening the drawstring until her head was barely visible in the jacket.
Since Sage was being fairly terrible in the conversation department, understandably, Ashe thought back to her mp3 player longingly. Aside from giving her something to listen to other than the increasingly howling winds in the middle of a jungle, which offered neither of the pair any comfort. Though Sage's casual yet somber stroll through the snow could argue differently. Not surprisingly, Ashe had a ton of music on her system that would be appropriate for helping Sage cope with her situation, but the girl had mentioned having her own music at one point, not that Ashe had seen it.
Pushing their way through a group of stiff jungle vines that had frozen hanging down, Ashe snatched her arm back suddenly as a cold snake fell from the tree above to hit the ground before them. She drew in a sharp breath while watching it with a wary eye before realization crept over her.
This snake was dead. Frozen to death. As if to support that, a burst of activity in the distance caught her attention, bringing to sight a large jungle tiger dashing away from the pair in the snow in search of warmer climate.
In the distance they heard a rushing river pounding against the rocks as they approached. Ashe couldn't really tell with the flurries of snow blocking the view of her Eskimo style peephole, but she decided to continue to guide her counterpart through the trees in hopes of finding a bridge to cross the river with. She didn't want to imagine wading through it in this cold.
As soon as she pushed her way through the trees, however, Ashe saw that there was no bridge anywhere in sight. Not only that, but the water itself was rushing fast, too quickly for them to try to swim over. "Sage, we need to go back," she began, reaching out to catch the zoned out girl's arm.
She received no real response as the girl continued her sleep walk forward, dangerously approaching the slowing rapids. "Sage!" Ashe called out loudly, reaching forward before snatching her arm back into her pocket, unable to handle the quickly lowering temperature. "The water is too rough!," she insisted, hoping that the girl would hear her over the screams of the frozen winds.
Lost in her thoughts, the girl wasn't going to stop, Ashe realized as she stood waiting for Sage to notice on her own. Her eyes went wide as she bit down, deciding that she'd have to somehow just deal with the cold to stop her friend. Her movements seemed to slow from just how cold her muscles were, nearly locking up, and panic swept over her as she realized that she was unlikely to reach her in time. "Sage, Sage stop!" she screamed, no longer even able to hear her own voice, so lost to the hungry maw of the arctic gusts that nothing could make a sound over it.
Her eyes stung painfully as a flurry of frozen moisture changed paths, blowing directly into her viewport of her jacket and forcing her to close her eyes and wander forward blindly. "Sage!" she cried as loudly as she could, her voice nearly tearing her throat in desperation.
It was pointless. Sage hadn't heard a word she'd said for a while now, and she would be lost to the river's unforgiving anger. Ashe continued pushing her way forward against the howling blasts, no longer even sure if she was headed the right direction or not.
Cold...
That's all that Ashe could even process at this point. It was so cold. That thought began replacing her friend, blocking it out with her body's own need for survival at this point. Her companion had just lost her sister, and now Ashe was forced to come to grips with the thought that Sage herself might now be lost to the cold. Even worse, the girl was so cut off from life itself at this point that she didn't even seem to realize the wracking pains that her body was going through.
Ashe couldn't even understand how the girl had not collapsed a mile back. The blood through her body should have frozen over by now. But thankfully, that hadn't happened. Continue forward... Keep moving... Don't stop moving or your muscles will lock up faster than you can shake the frost from them.
It wasn't until the wall of ice began to clear up just enough for her to notice a solid rock wall in the distance that she realized that she had somehow passed over the river. How? Even as cold as it was, the river had not frozen over yet, and there was no natural way that it would have frozen so quickly... Her icy blue fingers withdrew a bit to allow her to look at the GPS that she had pulled from the truck. "Lost Temple..." she read on the screen, her lips moving within her jacket but expelling no air. The dot where the ruins were was directly before her, near the stone wall in the distance.
Stuffing the machine back into her jacket, she pressed forward, feeling the chill begin to subside a bit more. It was still extremely cold, but it was warming up at an unnatural rate. The snow at her feet was already turning into slush as she stomped through it at an increasing pace in hopes of getting out of the drift. Her feet guided her down the pathway until she found herself walking towards a pair of stone monolithic statues built in the appearance of sacred animal spirits.
Her breath suddenly caught in her throat as she realized that there was another truck waiting outside of the ruins. Either there were other people here, or Kai himself was waiting for her. She angrily threw down her bag and pulled back around a large tree with it, listening intently as the winds died down. Not only did she hear voices laughing in the distance, giving no sign of maliciousness, she also seemed to have a gut feeling that they were other competitors.
Even still, it was better to be safe. Her hand slipped into her back and slowly pulled a smooth dagger from it, something that she had found left behind where Sebastian had detonated himself when she went to check for the other girl. With her gone, someone would need to protect Sage, and the pink haired girl took that responsibility herself. She'd take any weapon available to give her an advantage. It had been left up to her. I'm sorry Sage... I tried. I failed you, again, she thought grimly, looking back at how she'd lost the girl so quickly.
Pushing herself back to her feet, she strode the pathway with her dagger at her side, keeping her eyes and ears open for anything that might sound like an ambush. As she approached, however, she heard a yell. "Hey! Girl!" a voice called from down the path, causing Ashe to tense up, her fist gripping the dagger tightly. She could barely see them, yet he knew she was a girl already?
Coming closer into view, she saw the figure of the man that had shot at their pursuers back in Olde Towne, nearly saving them if they hadn't been shuttled their by a completely intoxicated old man at the wheel. "You ok?" he called to her, running his fingers through his greasy hair before extending the same hand at her with a dazzling grin. "That freak snowstorm came out of nowhere. It's a good thing you are ok," he continued as she cautiously slid the dagger into her jacket pocket behind the GPS before taking his hand. "I'm Kaden, by the way. I don't think I had a chance to introduce myself before," he apologized, paying no attention to her weapon.
Ashe wrinkled her nose at the dirty laundry smell that wafted off his clothes before returning his smile. He was a bit cute, in his own way, just not the type that she normally pursued. Idiot!, she suddenly chided herself mentally. Sage has wandered off on her own, and suddenly you are thinking about boys.
"I'm Ashe," she responded, wincing a bit when she realized that she'd sounded just a bit overly excited at telling him her name. Hopefully, he didn't take it the wrong way. "I, uh, had a girl with me," she began, pulling back her hand from his and looking around behind her. "Sage. We got separated in that blizzard and I'm worried about her," she voiced sadly.
"Don't worry about it," he comforted, looking over her shoulder before pointing up the trail to the other two women that had been with him. "We'll figure something out in a bit. I'm sure she's ok. We might be better off staying here in case she comes looking for us," he considered, guiding her up the path.
She shook her head in despair. "I doubt it. Her sister, Zena, was killed by the guy we were sent after," she exhaled, biting her lip. "They were very close," she answered honestly, fumbling her hand over the Emblem in her pocket. "I couldn't get her to really talk to me after that. Understandably," she added, glancing back over her shoulder for the girl.
"Understandable," he echoed sincerely. "That's unfortunate. We'll see what we can do to help her," he promised. "By the way, this is Piper and Sophia," he introduced, pointing at each of the girls before them. They both nodded at her as she followed with her own name shyly. Glancing past them, she saw a large pedestal nearly set into a massive slab of rock near what would have been a tunnel entrance.
"Oh," she gasped, pulling the amulet from her pocket. "There's not like, some kind of trap up there or something is there?"
"Not that we know of."
"Good," she confirmed, approaching the pedestal under their careful watch.
Before her lay a large wall of carved imagery on the slab, three guardian spirits having been etched into place upon the stone. Off to one side of the stone was a massive sapphire python, coiled as if ready to strike at any intruders that entered its lair. On the opposite side of the pillar was a large reptilian creature, its teeth flashing angrily in anticipation of anyone foolish enough to awaken it. The fact that this statue was made entirely of a single block of ruby made it worth millions. Above the carved imagery of the same guardians was a jade bird, its enormous wingspan stretching out wide and fierce in an effort to warn them away.
They were beautiful, she thought, taking a deep breath. Each seemed to be solidly carved from a mass of the gemstone of their choice, sparkling in the retuning sun as it melted the glistening snow from them. There was a trio of sockets in the slab before them, each large enough to hold the Emblem that matched the guardian closest to it. She saw that a smooth round orb had already been placed into one of the slots by Kaden's group.
Withdrawing the real Snake Emblem that she'd received from Sebastian before he had... attempted to take them all with him... the girl kneeled down, unsure if she should say a form of ritual or something before setting the amulet into its proper location.
A small light spread around the amulet as it slid down into its resting place, circling the medallion until Ashe realized that there was no longer any actual separation from the symbol of the snake and the rock it had been placed into. She rose back to her feet, unsure of what to expect. Would the guardians come to life and attack them? Would they slide back and reveal a hidden stairwell? Would they simply detonate, leaving Kai to sit on his throne of bones to gleefully count his blood money knowing that no one had survived?
Sage...
Where had that girl gone? A twinge of guilt passed over her as she turned around and walked back to the trio that had been waiting, anxious to know what had happened to her friend. They were talking as she approached, but she walked right up without saying a word, hoping not to interrupt them.
A grumble from Kaden's stomach was soon echoed by her own, leaving the girl to blush and apologize before opening her bag to look inside for a scrap of something to eat. Sage, wherever you are, be strong for me. I know you can be.
Ashe couldn't really believe what she was hearing. It had to be below freezing at this point, and yet the blue haired girl was not only showing no acknowledgment to the chill, but her flesh was even a normal color. Peeling her hand from her thinly covered chest again for a moment to thrust her hoodie jacket to Sage, she shook it anxiously. "You have to be, it’s freezing!” she exclaimed, trying to push the jacket down over Sage's head while feeling her cheek with her other hand.
She felt as if someone had snuck up on her and flicked their finger's across her ears in a frozen snow.
Snatching her arm back, she let the jacket fall to the ground to land in the snow gathering at their feet. “I’m... sorry...” was the only thing the girl's emotionless voice said. Ashe was sure that it was a sincere apology, but... The response was almost the same as if it had come from someone talking in their sleep. It was so disconnected from the world that the pink haired girl took in a sharp arctic breath and kneeled down to snatch her jacket back up. Pressing the girl after what had happened to her sister was going absolutely nowhere, and Ashe knew when to just throw in the towel and let someone get their grieving time.
But she couldn't just let Sage freeze to death just because she couldn't get past her sister's death. Ashe was honestly upset as well and felt bad for her, but the girl was refusing all forms of comfort to the point of putting her own well being at risk. Ashe had been there. She couldn't stand watching someone else do this to themselves, not from the outside looking in.
She'd have to hope that Sage would recover before the elements took her.
She pulled the jacket back over her head, unable to take the temperatures any longer herself. “No, it’s okay,” she echoed emptily for Sage's benefit. She leaned back into the frozen over vehicle for a moment to snatch the plugs loose on the GPS system that had been inside of it. “We’ll just have to walk. We’ll have to deal with the cold, somehow, too.”
The other girl gave no response, no acknowledgment, to her friend's words, so Ashe gloomily stuff the tracking system into the pocket of her jacket and reached up, pulling her hair back over her frostbitten ears before pulling the hood over her head, tightening the drawstring until her head was barely visible in the jacket.
Since Sage was being fairly terrible in the conversation department, understandably, Ashe thought back to her mp3 player longingly. Aside from giving her something to listen to other than the increasingly howling winds in the middle of a jungle, which offered neither of the pair any comfort. Though Sage's casual yet somber stroll through the snow could argue differently. Not surprisingly, Ashe had a ton of music on her system that would be appropriate for helping Sage cope with her situation, but the girl had mentioned having her own music at one point, not that Ashe had seen it.
Pushing their way through a group of stiff jungle vines that had frozen hanging down, Ashe snatched her arm back suddenly as a cold snake fell from the tree above to hit the ground before them. She drew in a sharp breath while watching it with a wary eye before realization crept over her.
This snake was dead. Frozen to death. As if to support that, a burst of activity in the distance caught her attention, bringing to sight a large jungle tiger dashing away from the pair in the snow in search of warmer climate.
In the distance they heard a rushing river pounding against the rocks as they approached. Ashe couldn't really tell with the flurries of snow blocking the view of her Eskimo style peephole, but she decided to continue to guide her counterpart through the trees in hopes of finding a bridge to cross the river with. She didn't want to imagine wading through it in this cold.
As soon as she pushed her way through the trees, however, Ashe saw that there was no bridge anywhere in sight. Not only that, but the water itself was rushing fast, too quickly for them to try to swim over. "Sage, we need to go back," she began, reaching out to catch the zoned out girl's arm.
She received no real response as the girl continued her sleep walk forward, dangerously approaching the slowing rapids. "Sage!" Ashe called out loudly, reaching forward before snatching her arm back into her pocket, unable to handle the quickly lowering temperature. "The water is too rough!," she insisted, hoping that the girl would hear her over the screams of the frozen winds.
Lost in her thoughts, the girl wasn't going to stop, Ashe realized as she stood waiting for Sage to notice on her own. Her eyes went wide as she bit down, deciding that she'd have to somehow just deal with the cold to stop her friend. Her movements seemed to slow from just how cold her muscles were, nearly locking up, and panic swept over her as she realized that she was unlikely to reach her in time. "Sage, Sage stop!" she screamed, no longer even able to hear her own voice, so lost to the hungry maw of the arctic gusts that nothing could make a sound over it.
Her eyes stung painfully as a flurry of frozen moisture changed paths, blowing directly into her viewport of her jacket and forcing her to close her eyes and wander forward blindly. "Sage!" she cried as loudly as she could, her voice nearly tearing her throat in desperation.
It was pointless. Sage hadn't heard a word she'd said for a while now, and she would be lost to the river's unforgiving anger. Ashe continued pushing her way forward against the howling blasts, no longer even sure if she was headed the right direction or not.
Cold...
That's all that Ashe could even process at this point. It was so cold. That thought began replacing her friend, blocking it out with her body's own need for survival at this point. Her companion had just lost her sister, and now Ashe was forced to come to grips with the thought that Sage herself might now be lost to the cold. Even worse, the girl was so cut off from life itself at this point that she didn't even seem to realize the wracking pains that her body was going through.
Ashe couldn't even understand how the girl had not collapsed a mile back. The blood through her body should have frozen over by now. But thankfully, that hadn't happened. Continue forward... Keep moving... Don't stop moving or your muscles will lock up faster than you can shake the frost from them.
It wasn't until the wall of ice began to clear up just enough for her to notice a solid rock wall in the distance that she realized that she had somehow passed over the river. How? Even as cold as it was, the river had not frozen over yet, and there was no natural way that it would have frozen so quickly... Her icy blue fingers withdrew a bit to allow her to look at the GPS that she had pulled from the truck. "Lost Temple..." she read on the screen, her lips moving within her jacket but expelling no air. The dot where the ruins were was directly before her, near the stone wall in the distance.
Stuffing the machine back into her jacket, she pressed forward, feeling the chill begin to subside a bit more. It was still extremely cold, but it was warming up at an unnatural rate. The snow at her feet was already turning into slush as she stomped through it at an increasing pace in hopes of getting out of the drift. Her feet guided her down the pathway until she found herself walking towards a pair of stone monolithic statues built in the appearance of sacred animal spirits.
Her breath suddenly caught in her throat as she realized that there was another truck waiting outside of the ruins. Either there were other people here, or Kai himself was waiting for her. She angrily threw down her bag and pulled back around a large tree with it, listening intently as the winds died down. Not only did she hear voices laughing in the distance, giving no sign of maliciousness, she also seemed to have a gut feeling that they were other competitors.
Even still, it was better to be safe. Her hand slipped into her back and slowly pulled a smooth dagger from it, something that she had found left behind where Sebastian had detonated himself when she went to check for the other girl. With her gone, someone would need to protect Sage, and the pink haired girl took that responsibility herself. She'd take any weapon available to give her an advantage. It had been left up to her. I'm sorry Sage... I tried. I failed you, again, she thought grimly, looking back at how she'd lost the girl so quickly.
Pushing herself back to her feet, she strode the pathway with her dagger at her side, keeping her eyes and ears open for anything that might sound like an ambush. As she approached, however, she heard a yell. "Hey! Girl!" a voice called from down the path, causing Ashe to tense up, her fist gripping the dagger tightly. She could barely see them, yet he knew she was a girl already?
Coming closer into view, she saw the figure of the man that had shot at their pursuers back in Olde Towne, nearly saving them if they hadn't been shuttled their by a completely intoxicated old man at the wheel. "You ok?" he called to her, running his fingers through his greasy hair before extending the same hand at her with a dazzling grin. "That freak snowstorm came out of nowhere. It's a good thing you are ok," he continued as she cautiously slid the dagger into her jacket pocket behind the GPS before taking his hand. "I'm Kaden, by the way. I don't think I had a chance to introduce myself before," he apologized, paying no attention to her weapon.
Ashe wrinkled her nose at the dirty laundry smell that wafted off his clothes before returning his smile. He was a bit cute, in his own way, just not the type that she normally pursued. Idiot!, she suddenly chided herself mentally. Sage has wandered off on her own, and suddenly you are thinking about boys.
"I'm Ashe," she responded, wincing a bit when she realized that she'd sounded just a bit overly excited at telling him her name. Hopefully, he didn't take it the wrong way. "I, uh, had a girl with me," she began, pulling back her hand from his and looking around behind her. "Sage. We got separated in that blizzard and I'm worried about her," she voiced sadly.
"Don't worry about it," he comforted, looking over her shoulder before pointing up the trail to the other two women that had been with him. "We'll figure something out in a bit. I'm sure she's ok. We might be better off staying here in case she comes looking for us," he considered, guiding her up the path.
She shook her head in despair. "I doubt it. Her sister, Zena, was killed by the guy we were sent after," she exhaled, biting her lip. "They were very close," she answered honestly, fumbling her hand over the Emblem in her pocket. "I couldn't get her to really talk to me after that. Understandably," she added, glancing back over her shoulder for the girl.
"Understandable," he echoed sincerely. "That's unfortunate. We'll see what we can do to help her," he promised. "By the way, this is Piper and Sophia," he introduced, pointing at each of the girls before them. They both nodded at her as she followed with her own name shyly. Glancing past them, she saw a large pedestal nearly set into a massive slab of rock near what would have been a tunnel entrance.
"Oh," she gasped, pulling the amulet from her pocket. "There's not like, some kind of trap up there or something is there?"
"Not that we know of."
"Good," she confirmed, approaching the pedestal under their careful watch.
Before her lay a large wall of carved imagery on the slab, three guardian spirits having been etched into place upon the stone. Off to one side of the stone was a massive sapphire python, coiled as if ready to strike at any intruders that entered its lair. On the opposite side of the pillar was a large reptilian creature, its teeth flashing angrily in anticipation of anyone foolish enough to awaken it. The fact that this statue was made entirely of a single block of ruby made it worth millions. Above the carved imagery of the same guardians was a jade bird, its enormous wingspan stretching out wide and fierce in an effort to warn them away.
They were beautiful, she thought, taking a deep breath. Each seemed to be solidly carved from a mass of the gemstone of their choice, sparkling in the retuning sun as it melted the glistening snow from them. There was a trio of sockets in the slab before them, each large enough to hold the Emblem that matched the guardian closest to it. She saw that a smooth round orb had already been placed into one of the slots by Kaden's group.
Withdrawing the real Snake Emblem that she'd received from Sebastian before he had... attempted to take them all with him... the girl kneeled down, unsure if she should say a form of ritual or something before setting the amulet into its proper location.
A small light spread around the amulet as it slid down into its resting place, circling the medallion until Ashe realized that there was no longer any actual separation from the symbol of the snake and the rock it had been placed into. She rose back to her feet, unsure of what to expect. Would the guardians come to life and attack them? Would they slide back and reveal a hidden stairwell? Would they simply detonate, leaving Kai to sit on his throne of bones to gleefully count his blood money knowing that no one had survived?
Sage...
Where had that girl gone? A twinge of guilt passed over her as she turned around and walked back to the trio that had been waiting, anxious to know what had happened to her friend. They were talking as she approached, but she walked right up without saying a word, hoping not to interrupt them.
A grumble from Kaden's stomach was soon echoed by her own, leaving the girl to blush and apologize before opening her bag to look inside for a scrap of something to eat. Sage, wherever you are, be strong for me. I know you can be.
![[Image: Ashe.jpg]](http://i1017.photobucket.com/albums/af298/symbiosychotic/Ashe.jpg)