Garrod Arlette

Garrod Arlette

Fiend Bearer
Weaver
Character Profile
Profile
Could hear the crack through the shift of bones.

You really should, be more considerate of my needs, Oh Bearer Mine

How they snapped back into place as muscles fueled by fiend fire laxed and wound back up. Flexed against shattered pipes. Reworked hives of marrow.

All I do for you. All I give to you, laughter. Cruel and sharp as shattered glass. And you never even say thank you. A titter of hisses. It's no wonder she left.

Curled the claws of his white gauntlet tight about his spade. Wheezed breath, a rattle against fractured bones. Hiss. Scrape. Bail. Hiss. Scrape. Bail. Went the crude steel head of his trench spade.

Shame really. The fiend sounded deep in thought. She was a fun one, wasn't she? Horrid smile split across the black of his mind.

A piece of rib cracked into the jagged shape it belonged to. Breath shallow. Sweat drenched.

Hiss. Scrape. Bail. Hiss. Scrape. Bail.


A day's pathetic hobble from the bloody banks of the river. Garrod collapsed in a heap. Pack laden on his back. Most non essentials ditched. Armor worn, sword strapped. He pulled along a litter. A young, face, twisted and knit in fever and sweat. Breaths shallow. Features pained. All bundled up in a cocoon of woolen blanket.

Garrod pant. Choked on the dust cloud stuck in his throat. Shook his head as his right hand clutched at the dirt. Couldn't feel the grit through the claws of the pale armor.

Just let me in, the little more, Oh Bearer Mine. The fiend smiled wide and toothy fire in the black of his mind. You know I will take care of you. Make sure you, and the little mouse make it through all of this.

Tears ran down his face. Carved canyons through the crust of blood and grime that dried across his mask.

His bones kept on churning. Popping. Knitting themselves together. Bit, by agonizing bite. As the Fiend fed him its fire.
 
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Leo liked to keep her secrets.

She had been raised to be a performer, only to be this brilliant dancer all for show so that her parents could boast about her being the best dancer in Veya. It had meant at every ball, she was sought after, for no man wished to be seen with a lacking dance partner. Leo liked to spite them. Learned how to take the attention away from the men, and leave them stewing at being shown up.

That was the start of her rebellion, when she began to tell her lies.

It was the same within the Malcazadores, that Leo spun herself a character to play. The Spellbreaker. It gave hope, it gave the intrigue of a bargain and gamble. She could be the one to solve our problems.

That was what she wanted to hear.

But Leo was a capable wielder of shroudweaving. She knew all the right shroudspells and the critical thinking needed to get by. She became indispensable in a team, for it meant Leo had a role to play. No lock can stop the Spellbreaker.

But this... this was her true, and ultimate test.


"...the fuck happened to you?" She hissed, kneeling beside the body full of groans and shuddering. Leo could not see their face, could only hear sounds that made her wish to gag at the imagination of what could be happening to this being.

She looked down at them, frowning intensely. Where to start? How to determine where to begin?

"You need to tell me what's wrong. Why this is happening. I need to know." Leo raised her voice, giving them no time to hesitate from her questioning. It was important she knew what what going on. Perhaps that will guide her down a path to determine how to help.

Her hand reached behind her, to the knife sheathed in the leather vest.

If they were too far gone to help...
 
Heard the voice before he heard the footsteps.

Shit. Fuck. Grit his teeth. Clawed fingers of his white hand curled into a tight fist as breath and rage turned to throat rumbling grunt.

"Don't fucking touch me," he hissed. Fire like ophidian currents squirming through his veins.

Belephus laughed. Come now, would that be so bad, Oh Bearer mine? The fiend hissed. Might help you forget.

Worked himself up off the ground and leveled a watery eye onto the prober. "Don't worry about me," he said as he dragged a knee up under him. "Kid needs help," was too bleary eyed to make out the face at first. Blue eyes, and hair, the wrong color.

Eyes looked to the ground. Scanned for the mule tracks. The blood. Days old now.

"You didn't-" no. Course she didn't. Nudged his head over his shoulder, and to the sweating half dead youth bundled in wool. "Lost her arm," was all he would say on the how of it. "Three days ago," he added. "Was able to cauterize the wound, but she's caught a fever," he ran out of breath. Bones still stitching themselves together under his skin. Sounds dulled under cloth, chainmail and armor.

Loud in his own ears.
 
Recognition hit her, but the other Cazadore drew her attention to the smaller bundle. She got up, only by half standing and crawling to move herself closer. Unwrapped the small body some, placing her hand to their feverish skin. "Alright, this I can help." Leo spoke lowly, pushing down what remained of the blanket.

"You're alright now, little one." Her voice turned soft and cooed, a distant memory of her holding her younger sister like so. Had rocked Madelief to help soothe her upset self... Leo did not embrace this child. She had left sentimentality behind when she realised she wasted it on the wrong people. Not wanting to be burned again.

The Spellbreaker traced fingers around the circumference of the heart and pulled upwards, as if invisible strings laid dormant there for a puppeteer to control. Leo felt the small body rise to her weaving, weak and ready to give out. She wound her shroudspell around her hand and wrist, rolling it through until she pulled it taut and drew a larger circle that encompassed the upper torso. She pulled the string taut again after unrolling some more length, and drew another circle.

She contined, until the string could capture the entirety of the body, in which she traced thrice before the small being began to ease.

Leo frowned once the first shroudspell begun to work, returning the body slowly to more temperate heat of a body. The youthful one was weak, and terribly so.

"What happened?" She asked, finally remembering she had not been alone.

The Spellbreaker determined her next shroudspell to cast. Leo pulled the hand of the girl to place palm against the earth, and Leo did the same with one hand before placing her other on the child's chest. What small energies the child took from the shroud, Leo paid it back in payment. It was best to keep these things balanced, filtered through the shroud to keep herself from puttkng back too much and rendering herself exhausted.
 
A moan escaped the kids throat. Head lolling like a ragdoll's in their rescuer's arms. She was small and spindly. All gangle and long limbed, in that way of adolescents. Malnourished, and underweight. Couldn't have been older than thirteen name days, but the bony little thing was stubborn. Her will to carry on, taking to the shroud like drought parched earth to freshly fallen rain.

Tossed and turned. But her breathing eased with the steady ply of Leo's work.

Garrod watched with a hard stare. Sword strapped and armored. His hands resisted the urge to reach for his knife. Remembered it was gone and wasted in the mud. Huffed a breath.

What happened?

Shook his head. "Bad luck, that's what fucking happened," he bit. Huffed a breath through his teeth as he turned away. Eye on the trail he had been following.

Broken up. Old.

Green eye came back to the Cazadore his eye was able to recognize. A bad omen had kept him from the job when last they met. He could not help but wonder. Was this the ill fortune foretold in the ink?

"Been a while, Spellbreaker," no love in how he said it.
 
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She snorted. "Took you that long to recognise me, hey? How many other purple haired women you've seen before?" But her work continued.

Leo drew water from the earth, enough to wet her finger and begin drawing runes on the child's forehead. The next rune drawn on her throat. The Spellbreaker did the same over the heart, in the remaining palm, and above each knee.

"Well. That should help her rest up. The fever is already lifting..." Now she turned her head to cut the Bearer a look. "Here's to not seeing you for another while." Words spoken before she moved to stand, unable to do anything for the earth that stuck to her. Her red elk waited patiently, lazily chewing some leaves from a low hanging branch as Leo made her way over and opened the saddle bag to retrieve a waterskein.

She was not before an audience, therefore the bright personality of a performer did not need to be worn like a mask. Leo was no fool. No need to stick around if her job was done. The child would recover, and whatever was wrong with the Bearer... gods, saints, and spirits help him if he didn't need her help.
 
Clicked his teeth. Grinned. "How'd you like to make a quick five Gold Dizia?" he called out to the purple haired Cazadore.

Grit his teeth at the thought.

"Give you a job," he said through his rough drawn breath. Pulled a bundle of eight moon moth silk out from his pack. unfolded it to show the midnight glow of a Widow's Heart. The prize and proof to a five gold maldizia gig.
 
When the water hit her tongue, it seemed to taste that little sweeter.

She lowered her drink, put it's stopper back in place before placing it back in her saddle bag. The dark purple hair whipped around in it's braid as Leo rounded on him with a narrowed gaze.

"Five?" Her voice held a question, an attempt to not sound so... intrigued.

Her eyes looked him up and down, considering a moment. Gaze went to the child before focusing back on him. To the Widow's Heart he now unveiled. "Are we splitting the reward?" Having coin was something she learned to go without, but the Dizia... that was where the real currency lay in this profession.
 
Garrod wrapped up the Widow's Heart. "All yours," he croaked, bones still popping in smoky sounds that churned like the roll of ash in a fire storm. "After I turn in the prize," he wouldn't give credit for their kill to anyone else. "You just have to make sure we make it there," worked himself up off the ground with a grunt. Pack on his back rattled and clanked as he set it down.

He lumbered toward the kid, watched how her small body heaved with each breath. Worked hard to stay alive. Face swollen where knuckles had dusted and cracked. Skin about her eyes jagged, and scarred, where the fiend in his right, had split open and through the veil of her personhood.

Arm a ruin. What little his nose could smell, through the acrid sulfur and ash he could taste in his mouth. Felt it reek off him. Like smoke through his pores. Still, he could smell the sweet burn of her flesh.

White claws curled and reached. For that pale strand of hair struck across her face. Same as the lifeless white of his own pallid roots.

Don't!

Armored hand flinched back. As if licked by a fire, too clean, and too pure. Saw the girl's eyes, cracked open, ever so. Green and brown and gold in their hazel. Hazed over with just broken fever. Fluttered and shut. Her skin still clammy, tears and blood crusted across her gaunt features. Garrod balled his pale hand into a fist.

"Both of us," he said with a smirk. "Nearest Den is some two days walking," if his bearings were right.

Pushed back her hair with his left hand. Tied up the bundle of wool just a bit tighter.

"Deal?"
 
It was too easy of a request, of an offer that would see her that bit richer.

Leo stared as he went to tend to the child that was faring better than she had minutes before. Was this a calculated move? Put the child before her in order to sway the way she would answer? Either way, it had worked on the Spellbreaker.

"As if you would think I would make her walk all that way". She scoffed and jerked a thumb to her red elk. "Once she is feeling up to it, she can ride on Dandelia." The red elk glanced up, recognising her name. When Leo did not acknowledge her, she turned to nudge the Cazadore's arm incessantly.

The Spellbreaker cleared her throat.

"Alright then. Fine. But..." Leo lifted a finger, wagging it slowly. "No fighting against any idea I have when it comes to ensuring our safety. I tell you to stay in the lines, you better listen. Spells don't protect those that sit on the fence."
 
A red elk.

Horrid creatures, Oh Bearer Mine. Belephus hissed within the miasmal darkness of Garrod's mind. Horns that catch the very winds of the shroud betwixt their tines, an fur, so laden by the mornings dew, no demon can touch them. A cruel laughter. How I hate them.

"Just get us to the den," Garrod said brusque as a wounded bull. His bones churning back together beneath his skin, slow as sap turning to amber betwixt his bones. His eye looked back down to the girl.

Veins full of fiend fire. Garrod would look like a beacon in the night to any and all things that fed on the twisted energies of the shroud.

Hungry, terrible things would be drawn to him. Like moths to a flame. Every intention to make the fire their own. Or gleefully join its tongues.

He would make ready to march. Drag the kid's stretcher if he needed to. His right hand, encased in its strange pale armor, flexed. Knuckle bones popping as sinew and muscle flexed what strength was still theirs.
 
She stared at him hard, wanting to leave him behind but Leo knew just by watching him he was not going to part from the child. Leo would have to bear it, to accept this shared mission, and see them back to the den.

Danger did not lurk at the edges around them, not yet at least. Nightfall was nearing, perhaps a few more hours, but Leo knew that they would have to endure a long night.

"Start moving then." She turned away from him, finally paying attention to Dandelia. The steed was easily coaxed to begin moving, nudging Leo in the chest in an incessant manner that had the cazadore sighing and retrieving a small handful of berries. Dandelia could always be bought with the promise of food, and despite thinking her red elk was a right old goof, how many times had this fixation gotten Leo to convince the elk to travel to places darkened with haunting?

Leo looked over her shoulder to her new party members. He made odd noises, was a little gruff and grumbled, but she had met worse figures than him. "If your arms get tired carrying her... I can hold her for a moment to let you rest."


Truthfully, she would weave a spell to keep the girl upright on Dandelia and let the elk carry her. Leo needed her hands. Weaving was always done best when her hands were able to connect with the shroud in the natural elements around her.
 
Dragged the kid behind him in the sling stretcher he had cobbled together all rough shod and wild craft. Wool blanket that wrapped the kid and held her, still filthy with the mess he and Daniyah had made, and all the filthier for the ceaseless march he had taken up from the Widow's river.

If your arms get tired carrying her... I can hold her for a moment to let you rest.

Eye narrowed as he trudged after the Spellbreaker and her steed. Each breath a jagged reminder of his mistakes. Of how it all went down.

"I'll let you know when I'm tired," he huffed through his teeth. "You just keep your eyes and ears wide open," he said through a grin. Knowing too well what came after him in times like these. Times where his blood burned through him, and he stank of brimstone and molten glass.

Birds took wing at his approach. Squirrels and chipmunks skittered and screeched away. Or died with ruptured hearts, too full with fear.

But as they marched, his legs trembled. Joints felt they would tear themselves out of their sockets. Felt they already had, and were only stitched back together by the flame to be snapped through once more.

I will need to eat soon, Oh Bearer Mine, whispered sweetly his fiend's voice. Laughed, all jade babble over onyx brook. If you want to keep marching. If you want to keep going. Dragging your little mouse all the way home.

A missed step. A hard thump to the ground as he fell hard. Limbs trembling. Pack rattling, three swords clattering against the earth. Ribs jostling and stabbing all their little shards and snaps into lungs and inner walls. Pain choked at the base of his throat. Steadied his breath.

The fiend's fire slowly sputtering out inside him. The pain of all his broken self coming to surface in waves and pulses of shattered glass. Daggerous and stabbing. His eye squeezed shut. Opened wide and wild.

"Ok," he croaked through the dust. "Take the kid," he wheezed.

You need me. Oh Bearer Mine. his fiend laughed. You need me well and ready for all the things to come.
 
The sound of a crash, clanging, and wheezing breath made Leo turn. Concern was there at the forefront, for she was never able to shed that bleeding heart of hers. The Cazadore with plum coloured hair frowned and pulled back the emotion on her face, opted for something bordering on annoyance and frustration.

"What is wrong with you?" Why did he refuse her help?

Leo sighed and went to take the child from him, ensuring the bundle of blankets were wrapped well still before lifting herself with her legs and straightening. Did she expect him to even elaborate? "You know, I am starting to think you are not telling me the entire truth of it all. Don't I deserve that at least? To know what the fuck I am getting myself into?"

There it went again, her emotions. She had always struggled with it, from stifling it on stage during a performance or when her training was too hard the day before and she had to endure the aches and pains that always hit worse the following day. Leo could not help but show her frustrations of him. His unwillingness to talk, to explain.

It was the not knowing that got to her.

If he chose to divulge, perhaps she would apologise for any rudeness... but if he did not, Leo was not opposed to leaving him behind.
 
Garrod laughed against the dirt. "So many things, Spellbreaker" breath ragged. "I'm the Fiend Bearer, remember?!" He said with a cough cough and a wheeze. "That's not just," he grunt, growled as he pushed himself just enough to roll onto his side. All panting. "A bad poeticism,"

Worked out of the pack. One arm, then the other. Metal of his armor the only thing keeping him rigid, as all he wanted to do was curl up into himself.

"You use your," he waved his gauntleted hand about. "Shroud magicks on me right now and," let the armored thing fall. With a thump. "Who fucking knows what will happen," the jewel in the gauntlet gleamed. Hungry. Angry. Wicked and amused.

He reeked of too much old dark magicks. The kind of smell that drew in old and terrible things. Breath shallow. Every bit stung. Bitten by the jagged edges of half broken ribs.

"The bad of the world is drawn to me like buzzards to an old corpse, Leo." No lie in it. "Who knows what will show up in the night, or when." He pant. "If you want to help, bring me a fresh kill," he said through the pain. Dragging his dueling sword up. "The bigger the better," he breathed. Then drew up the black blade. All wince of pain and grit of teeth as it howled all it's moonless agony between his ears, even wrapped in the silk of the eight moon moth as it was. "And if you decide to ditch me," he grinned, breathing hard through his teeth. Clutched at the wrapped black blade with his left hand. Rattled it. "I'll fucking haunt you till the end of your days until you make sure the Wraithbinder gets this," because he didn't like the odds of surviving the night alone.

Finished rolling over. And dragged himself to sit up against his pack. Clutched the two swords closer to himself. Then dragged his monsterslayer up across him. The greatsword gleamed with all its earned malice.

"Your call, Cazadore," Garrod said with a dead man's grin writ across his pain carved face.
 
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