1. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    The flames colored everything orange and red. Only the flames themselves were golden, eating through the prime material to keep that color from dying. What would burn where there was nothing more left? What was it that burned on empty ground, so brightly? Where the well ran dry and the hollow...
  2. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    The turning came like a soft wave, numbing every sense until it was gone with the overwhelming chill. Sword pierced the dirt, free of any hand to wield. A flask shattered in consonanse with the landscape chewing in on itself, clay shards fell at the lord's feet, the igniter liquid oozed heavy...
  3. Walter Thornley

    Open Surely we'll sing of no little thing

    The lord chuckled. It was a quiet, deep noise that was also somehow devoid of humor almost completely. A brief glance aside, following the angle of Agatha's eyes searching, searching, finding their stop on a woman that seemed momentarily adrift, and chose solitude to action. "Oh, take your pick...
  4. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    "You aren't on your own. I am right here," he let the words run out for the time being, they were not needed and he was resigning to taking records and following it up with blazes. The sounds of hammers from somewhere on the other side of the street, a large shape of furniture being moved...
  5. Walter Thornley

    Open Surely we'll sing of no little thing

    He leaned back, making the posture comfortable. Sharp eyes, used to spotting things, especially on the Captain and the lieutenants. Rested a hand over the mug, rather than to the side of it - someone was sitting too close on the left, he didn't know the name. The fingers of his other hand...
  6. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    The hand was warm. Walter stood there, quiet, for as long as the touch lasted. He could say a lot of words, to everyone who was hurting. A lot of words that had to be at least convictions. Half of them, familiar platitudes, caught in the throat, another good portion pinned down the tongue...
  7. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    The figure on the street watched the house go up in flames with Aelius still inside it. Beyond the flames' roar, an exclamation from the entry to quarantine, alarmed, a figure in greys and greens hurrying towards him, calling out after him and the paladin still inside. Walter's arm rose in a...
  8. Walter Thornley

    Open Surely we'll sing of no little thing

    To his relief, it was not too bright inside. A group of Huntsmen were drinking together. Cheers went up as they spotted him, the faces he knew by their names, a tiny island of familiarity. He'd start there. Walter spent a little time with them - quicker than most ways to ensure his thirty...
  9. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    The baron caught that all-too-quick reply. Did not smirk. Did not huff. Only his eyelashes lowered, gaze turned away from the radiant ember of foreign god towards the dreary townscape ahead. He was a product of a different atam, but he studied the ways of different cults, and how they formed...
  10. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    The mask was familiar. He wore it every day, and he knew that the currents of fear ran deeper than the flame could reach. So the flame had to be bright enough, always, to hide that. The act had to be loud enough. Never loose shoulders. Duty. Legacy. Whatever else they wanted to put on him. He...
  11. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    He saw it. The momentary yearning. The affront that followed. The revelation was no more than a shadow on the wall, but coupled with Walter's own words the son of Ko could infer the truth, in time. He knew someone, once, who... history certainly rhymed, didn't it. "I agree with you, even though...
  12. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    His eyes lingered on the hands touching the face of the patient, gently guiding their convalescence with gestures that had nothing to do with weaving. Oh the weaving. Heavy eyelashes fell with a slow tired blink, and Walter struggled within himself. He was so... so full of awe, and envy. He...
  13. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    Walter couldn't help but let a little relief seep into the monumental self-inflicted neutral stance that was not supposed to show emotion outside socially expected. His shoulders fell a little with a breath escaping parted mouth. He knew that gait very well. People walking that walk tended to...
  14. Walter Thornley

    Private Stillwater

    It started with some commonfolk who went out to the swamps. Days before anyone noticed the dark patches. Days more until some of the Shieldbearers and a few Bremen men noticed the green-brown marks on their own skin, specks of mud at first then bruises, then spaces that felt too soft to the...
  15. Walter Thornley

    Open Surely we'll sing of no little thing

    They had the local brew, bitter and tan but the one that dried the skin with its intensity. They had the barley brew in caskets with the hoble house's colors, on ten wagons. The dusk was setting, and the most brave would have all night until dawn, because the next one might not come for them...
  16. Walter Thornley

    Open Future in the Fog

    He knew she'd noticed. Better than his bones being tested by the squeeze on the hand. The weather was a bully already, and he'd have to stomach much worse soon. He huffed under his breath to the remark, smiling, but lowering his gaze for a moment. He understood the mercenary way, coin and...
  17. Walter Thornley

    Open Future in the Fog

    As Walter's hands unraveled the scrol, his attention flicked back to the paladin. The right eyebrow twitched ever so slightly at the man deciding to taunt him, or perhaps it was expression of interest in regards to his prolonged staring. Oh, right. His face, other than the irksome quirk of the...
  18. Walter Thornley

    Open Future in the Fog

    ~AGATHA~ He watched her set about business with a still face that read as heavy or intense to some, but all it was, was his facial muscles reflecting a semblance of relief. This was the level of discipline that he dreaded would be absent into whoever was sent here to this blighthole to fight...
  19. Walter Thornley

    Open Future in the Fog

    Out in the marshlands, once darkness fell, if felt so much like home, in a terrible way that he could not truly describe, because half the horrors belonged in the margins. The darkness of Bremen nights was like pitch, like a blanket that covered everything within the valleys and forests, a veil...
  20. Walter Thornley

    Open (Himbo)dy and Soul

    "You look... agreeable." A casual remark tinged with a hint of suspicion. Walter turned his gaze away from studying the landscape outside the carriage and trained it on his sister with a smile in the corners of his mouth. "It is an agreeable day," he echoed, tone almost questioning her sudden...
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