Daniyah

Daniyah

Wraithbinder
Weaver
Character Profile
Profile
Tracker
Tracker
Daniyah eyed the door like it might bite her. Daniyah stood at the threshold, boots muddy. She knocked with her knuckles. No answer. She clapped on the door flat-palmed, no patience. Louder this time. The kind of slamming that said: I know you’re in there, and no, I’m not some priest come to bless your doorstep.

“Hey!” She leaned in toward the door, voice pitched just loud enough to carry through. “Big guy home?”

She stood back, hands on her hips. Her hair, ash-blond and coarse from too many fights and too few mirrors, was tied back in a messy knot at the base of her skull. Strands had escaped, plastered damp to her temple and cheek. A pale figure of a woman, sharp-featured, the kind of face that always looked like it had just woken from a bad dream. Her eyes, cold blue, too light for comfort, almost silver in the right light. But just now they looked washed-out, rimmed in shadow and narrowed with irritation. Grime on her cheekbone, dried blood across her throat, soot in the creases of her collar.

Muttering more to herself now, voice rough like she’d been screaming the night before. "If you're in there bleeding or balls-deep in something with horns, please... make some fucking noise." Lifted her hand. Knocked again.

Her coat was long and heavy, waxed canvas gone grey with ash and salt. It hung open just enough to show the glint of etched brass, sigil-burned vials in worn leather loops, and the hilt of something sharp strapped flat along her ribs. A ghost blade rode against her thigh, and a charm dangled from her belt, made of iron nails and raven feet. Around her neck and across her chest hung a scatter of medallions and charms, iron discs etched with warding runes, silver coins, tiny pouches of grave-dust tied shut with red thread, a cracked mirror shard wrapped in wire, a string of onyx beads black as pitch. They clinked softly with her every movement. Some were old, clearly scavenged. Others looked fresh, newly blessed or blood-marked. None were decorative.

“You alive? A cough, a scream, a ‘get lost’... come on, give me something.”

She leaned back on her heels, arms crossed, smirk tugging at her lips. Over her shoulder, lashed in a custom rig across her back, was the crossbow. At her side hung a quiver bristling with bolts, some iron-tipped, some runed, some blackened and some entirely made of ash-wood.
 
He heard her before he smelt her; smelt her before he saw her. A voice he recognised, belonging to a certain Wraithbinder who had yet to learn her manners. Tusk could forgive her her bluster, even if his neighbours wouldn't.

'Would you please shut the fuck up!'

Tusk smiled to himself as he mounted the stairs leading up to the third floor. The hustle and bustle of the Den worked to distract him from the events unfolding outside his room - a room he had not occupied since the night before the night before.

Reaching the landing, Tusk turned to watch Daniyah as she bandied words and insults with the neighbour opposite. Clad in her hunting leathers, she looked every bit the intrepid adventurer he knew her to be. The talismans and charms were a nice touch. The kind of precautions only a seasoned Cazadore thought to bring, since the unseasoned usually ended up dead without them.

Putting some sound into his steps, the Keeper of Souls cleared his throat as the blonde-haired huntress turned to face him, surprise hidden behind eyes as haunted as they were captivating. 'No answer?' Drawing to a halt beside Daniyah, Tusk produced a key from his hip pocket, the burial urn balanced in the crook of his right arm bouncing as he slotted the key into the lock, turned it.

The darkness beyond retreated before the light of nearby shroud lanterns, and Tusk stepped through, bowing his head slightly to avoid dashing it on the lintel.

'What brings you to my humble abode?' He asked of Daniyah, placing the urn down on a small table beside the door, before shrugging out of his raincape.
 
“Oh, I’ll hush… right after you go fuck yourself!” She snapped back with one shoulder angled toward the neighbor’s door.

Daniyah turned the moment she heard Tusk clear his throat, her head snapping around with a sharpness that said she’d been waiting longer than her patience could handle. Surprise flickered behind her pale blue eyes, but gone as quickly as it came. “Seriously?” she said, stepping aside as he moved to unlock the door. “Yeah, no answer, because you weren’t fucking home."

"Ever think to leave a note? Anything to say ‘hey, not dead, just out’?” She followed him in as the door creaked open, charms whispering, glass, bone, rusted iron tapping softly like a wind chime in a graveyard. Crossbow shifting against her spine. Daniyah paused just past the threshold, taking in the space with a sweep of her gaze. Suspicious by default. Daniyah arched a brow at the urn as it thudded onto the table, then looked back at Tusk. Smirk creeping in.

"Are you collecting exes now?" she asked, nodding toward the urn. "Or is that your emotional support ghost?"

She leaned one shoulder against the wall, arms folding, expression just this side of serious. “Anyway. I am here because of a job... I need backup that doesn’t die in the first five minutes.”
 
The raincape found its way onto the coatrack beside the door. 'Jealous? Don't be. That's Askel. You remember Askel, don't you?' So-called the Thrice-Fucked, on account of being fucked thricely. Once, when his mother dropped him on his head as a baby; again when a certain Cazadore picked him up outside a poorhouse in Akkelon.

The third and final time had been when his camp had come under attack by Ravenors.

Last fucking he ever took, thought the ork, staring at Daniyah in the reflection cast by his mirror. Half a ghost herself, from the look of her. No wonder she needed help. 'What're we hunting?' It wasn't quite a yes, but the Wraithbinder knew better than to waste his time. She was good like that. He might've even gone so far as to call her a friend, though never to her face. Keep 'em guessing, keep 'em honest. An old adage, and not one he always lived by.

'There's wine, if you want some,' he said, sitting himself down on the bed, bastard sword laid bare across the bridge of his knees. 'Feel free to help yourself. You normally do.' Maybe he smiled; maybe it was a figment of her imagination.
 
Daniyah snorted softly, half-laugh, half-scoff, as her blue eyes flicked back to the urn again. “Askel, huh? What’re you gonna do with him?”

She strode over to the shelf where Tusk had left the bottle, grabbed it, uncorked it with a practiced twist. She poured a generous measure into a glass without hesitation. Did not swirl it. Did not sniff it.

“Mountains, fire, ruin. Whole passes gone to ash..." She muttered against the rim of the glass, before she drank in a few steady pulls. Her other hand toyed the white goose feathers on one of the bolts at her hip.

"It's a Cinderlord" Her voice low and flat. She drained the glass and immediately topped it off. Her fingers brushed the straps of her crossbow before tugging it free from her back. She set it aside, leaning it against the wall. Without hesitation, Daniyah swung her legs onto the bed and sank down beside Tusk. She flopped back, careful not to spill, eyes drifting over the mattress with a dry little whistle. “Fuck… this one’s nice,” she said, voice flat but amused.

“So,” she said, voice laced with curiosity, “what actually happened to Askel? Last time I saw him, he wasn’t exactly… walking on two good legs.”
 
A grunt, acknowledging. 'Perks of the job.' No point in them doing what they did otherwise. Vengeance tasted sweet, but it didn't fill your belly or sate your needs. And love only got you so far. Found that out the hard way 'Test it out later,' he said, deadpan, a hint of a smirk betraying him.

'Haven't hunted many Cinderlords. Should be fun.' At the very least they both stood to learn something from it. More tricks to help them with their trade.

Another grunt. Amused, this time. 'That's because the last time you saw Askel he didn't have any.' Ravenors were nasty little buggers. Burrowed right up under you. Askel had lost his legs that way. The rest of him hadn't fared much better. 'I fed what was left of him to the flames, gathered up his ashes.'

Tusk paused to examine the blade in his hand, the necklace of teeth he wore on a cord around his neck chittering in approval.

'He'll be joining us on our hunt,' the orkin nodded, glancing over his shoulder at Daniyah. 'One last outing for old time's sake. Will help his spirit to settle.'
 
Daniyah tilted her head toward him, pale blue eyes unreadable in that half-light, lips quirking into a smirk. She gave the mattress a pat, then a mock-inspecting look. “No lice, no straw rash, barely even smells like blood." She took another sip of wine. Wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist.“Test it out later?” she repeated, bone-dry. She stretched out her leg and gave him a loose, half-hearted kick. “You offering the bed or yourself, Soulkeeper?” she drawled.

She met Tusk's gaze when he peeked at her over his shoulder. “So. Askel joining us, huh?” Her tone didn’t change, but there was a flicker of something like respect behind it. Another smirk crept in, sharp and amused. "Fine. But he better not get the credit if we bring the bastard down..."

Daniyah let the glass rest against her stomach, her other hand draped lazily across the pillow. Pale blue eyes half-lidded, she stared at the ceiling a moment before speaking. “So,” she said, “how’s your weaving these days?”

“Probably gonna need more than bolts and brute force to put this bastard down. Best shot we’ve got is driving it back into the mountain, to whatever old hole it crawled out of, and seal it off."
 
There was no laugh or smile to give the game away. 'Survive long enough and maybe you'll find out,' he replied instead, Daniyah's boot doing little to displace the orkin from his perch.

'Split the bounty right down the middle. Askel'll understand, I'm sure.'

A fair deal, he figured. Anything less than half would have been an insult, especially for something as nasty as a Cinderlord. Daniyah must've known, asking questions as to his potency.

'Passable,' he confessed, not wanting to get her hopes up, and so get her killed in process. 'Blackpowder will serve us better should we prove unable to vanquish it the old fashioned way.' Drop a mountain on its head and see if anything manages to crawl out. Risky, but better than throwing hands with the damned thing.

Though, if it comes down to it...

Pushing the thought from his mind, Tusk returned the sword to its scabbard.
 
Daniyah snorted, a sharp breath through her nose. She sat up with a grunt. “That’s your flirting?" She knocked back the last of her wine without ceremony, barely tasting it, and let the empty glass dangle from her fingers for a moment before setting it down on the table.

Split the bounty right down the middle. “Yeah. Fair’s fair." She would rather not argue over coin when they’re ankle-deep in ash and screaming. Boots hit the floorboards, charms at her belt giving a lazy jingle as she stood and stretched, spine cracking like dry timber. She rolled her shoulders once, loose and tense at the same time, and gave Tusk a look over her shoulder.

“It’s at least two, maybe three days' ride to the pass, depending on how bad the rains’ve wrecked the roads.” She reached without looking for her crossbow where it leaned by the wall. Her fingers found the worn leather strap like they’d done a thousand times before. Slung it over one shoulder with a practiced motion, the familiar weight settling against her shoulder blade. “You might want to start packing, Tusk"

She stepped toward the door, adjusting the strap of the crossbow across her back, bolts rustling softly in the quiver. “First light. I’m not waking you."
 
Tusk shrugged. 'Tis the stormy season.' Three days or thirteen, wouldn't matter so long as they prepared accordingly. Rains might even work to their advantage, should the Cinderlord decide to surface. Draw it out, box it in. Big didn't mean slow. Unwieldy, rather.

Daniyah was sure to have a field day with her crossbow. Feather the Lord until it learned to fly.

'Thank you for the suggestion, o' wise Cazadore!' Tusk answered brusquely, eyeing the Wraithbinder closely as she made ready to depart. 'First light,' he agreed, sparing Daniyah a nod. Part of a smile. 'Sweet dreams!'

---
​
Daniyah hadn't been far out with her estimation. Four days riding weather-beaten roads. Four days of monotony interrupted by the occasional downpour. Strong northerlies and drab skies. Enough to make a man grow weary of Mother Nature, beautiful and severe as she was. At least the company was alright.

'Nearly there.' Breaking the silence, Tusk shifted in his saddle in an attempt to ease the ache from limbs that longed to see some use. Up ahead, the Southern Mheara loomed, its lower slopes blotting out the horizon. All sharp angles and shadow. And light?

'Mountain's burning.'

Clad in a quilted gambeson and hauberk, Tusk turned in a swish of mail to regard the rider by his side. Pauldrons and vambraces of darkened steel protected his arms and forearms. Enough to keep him in the fight a little longer should the situation turn sour, as it so often did once the plan was put into action. Too much metal and the Cinderlord would cook him inside his own armour. Too little and its flames would eat right through him. But such was the job.

No risk, no reward. No thrill to feed the monster inside.

'What could've caused such a thing, I wonder?' Tusk's eyes glistened as he watched the distant flames dance across stone. 'You bring the Icebite?'
 
Daniyah clicked her tongue, eyes still on the bleeding red glow in the spine of the Mheara. "What could’ve caused it?" She shrugged her shoulders. " My guess, a pack of adventurers hoping to find some cursed relic." She glanced at Tusk, pale blue eyes squinting under the edge of her hood.“Somebody found something.” she said after a beat. “Some old vault. Something better left buried. And they pried it open like idiots.”

The mountain looked like it had been split open from within, stone bleeding ember and smoke. The sky above was bruised red where it touched the smoke. Tusk’s voice rolled out over the wind, and she let it hang for a beat before answering.

“Yeah, I brought the Icebite,” she muttered, voice dry and low. “Tucked in nice and tight beside three flasks of regret."
She glanced over her shoulder, eyes narrowing at the sight of Oscar, the mule, dragging a small, grimy scorpio on wheels behind him like he’d been born to do nothing else but toil for Daniyah's whims. The contraption creaked and groaned, metal joints protesting against the rocky road.

The trail narrowed as they rode higher, the wind clawing harder now, bitter with ash and old things disturbed. Oscar’s hooves crunched gravel and blackened bone with equal indifference, the scorpio clattering behind him. Daniyah's boots crunching down into volcanic grit.


Before them, carved into the mountain’s face, loomed the gates.

Massive, blackened stone doors half-choked in rubble and time. Once sealed, clearly. The kind of seal made in blood and purpose. But now… sundered. The arch above was etched in dead language, half-melted by heat, the script scorched and twisting like it had tried to rewrite itself while burning up.

“Place smells like a forge."

Oscar the mule gave a protesting bray as a warm wind blew from the hollow. The mule snorted and stamped once, uneasy. She gave him a firm pat on the neck. "You're fine, Oscar" she muttered. "You've seen worse." She stepped around to the back of the mule, gave the scorpio a once-over. Its limbs locked, trigger arm secured with thick leather wraps, the crank stiff from rain and ash. Heavy as sin, and meaner. It would take two to haul it across the threshold and set it proper.

“You pull, I’ll steer?" She glanced over at Tusk.
 
Adventurers, had to be. No Cazadore worth their salt would've made such a fool-ass decision. None Tusk could name, anyhow. 'Smells like a pyre.' Meat-stink. Close. Whomever or whatever had been dumb enough to smash the wards keeping this place locked away had clearly discovered more than they'd bargained for.

The withered corpses choking the entrance were proof enough of that.

'Cinderlord didn't appreciate being woken up, it seems.' Indeed, neither did the Cazadore, but at least he didn't take to burning folk alive. Yet. Stepping across jagged stone, careful of where he placed his feet, Tusk stared through the smoke and flame to the chamber beyond. Faded script etched the stone above his head. Words from a bygone era, he made no effort to decipher them; their intent was already clear enough in his mind.

A prison breached. An inmate let loose. Tale as old as time, that. So, too, was their quarry.

Sinking back on his heels, the 'keeper turned to gaze upon Daniyah, the trusty mule at her side. 'Mean to say I have a choice?' He asked, deadpan. A joke? Potentially. An answer? Most definitely.

Adjusting his twin swords where they rode high across his back, Tusk took up the slack as Dani manoeuvred them through the breach. Rubble constricted their path, and the orkin strained, heaving the scorpion up after him, sheer stubbornness serving to strengthen him, like the rage simmering in the depths of his soul.

'Couldn't invest in a levitation charm before carting this thing halfway across the continent?' He grumbled, low and to the side. 'Getting too old for this shit.'
 
Oscar the mule brayed behind them, stamping a hoof. Daniyah smirked as she gripped the Scorpio, pushing it forward just enough to let Tusk take a bigger share of the weight. “Getting soft in your old bones, Keeper?” she said, voice teasing. “And here I thought you still had the spine of a mountain troll... My bad." She cast him a sidelong look, pale blue eyes glinting.

Together, they inched the Scorpio through the jagged breach. The air shifted immediately inside, heavy with heat, smoke, and the scent of long-dead things. The chamber beyond the gates was vast, echoing, and impossibly dark, the walls slick with soot and scarred by veins of molten metal. The ceiling arched high enough that even a towering man like Tusk seemed small.

Daniyah nudged the scorpio into place with a grunt, stepping back to wipe sweat from her brow. “Alright,” she muttered, eyes scanning the uneven stone floor. Her pale blue eyes flicked back toward the shadowed far wall, restless, alert. “We camp somewhere and then we need to set this little bastard up right in a good spot... So, old man, you think you still got the muscle for scouting ... or do you want to set up camp?”

She turned and watched the horse and Oscar. The mule stomped, kicking lightly at the stones outside. “We better let them loose. If we tie them up at a post and that Cinderlord decides to make a grand entrance, I don’t want either of them panicking and getting themselves grilled alive. Let them run if they need to."
 
'Aye.' No point in needlessly risking the mounts. They weren't bait, after all. 'Not like we'll be able to outrun the Lord, now that it's been roused.' Bloody adventurers. Glancing around, Tusk shrugged the long blades from his shoulders, set them down against the Scorpio.

'I'll scout. You set up camp.' Crimson eyes glimmered in the death-dark. Enhanced with shroud, they peeled back the layers of shadow, sweeping across pillars of brittle stone and piles of old, rust-wrapped bones. 'I won't be long, unless I've gone soft.'

Then, he wouldn't be coming back at all.

Smiling at the thought, Tusk picked up the sword on the left, the very same one he'd tended to back at the Den, where Dani had found him minding his own business. Good steel. Blade long as his arm. It would serve for a simple walkaround. Turning, he met the Wraithbinder's gaze, nodded as Oscar brayed a goodbye. Maybe. Tusk didn't speak Donkey. 'Try not to burn dinner,' he said, expressionless.

'And stay-' Safe? Hardly, not in a place like this. 'Alive.'

Walking away, Tusk ventured headlong into the gloom, his feet falling soft upon a bed of dust and ash. An hour passed. Another. Time slowed to a corpse-crawl. Around Daniyah, the empty entry chamber whispered, as if plotting her demise. Distant clicks and bangs broke the silence every now and then. Tomb sounds. Nothing to worry about.

Tusk didn't say nothing as he appeared from the black, like an apparition. A ghost of a man long since dead.

'Evening,' he spoke softly, settling down on a chunk of masonry opposite the blonde-haired huntress, who eyed him warily. He nodded. 'Place is as old as I feel,' he explained, as if that told her all she needed to know. 'The Cinderlord's withdrawn to the lower levels. Something's burning hot down there. And there're restless dead roaming the halls to West and North.'

Trouble, but nothing they hadn't handled before.
 
“Yeah, you stay alive...” she muttered under her breath. Daniyah watched Tusk disappear into the dark. She exhaled slowly, then turned her attention to the cavern. She stood still for a moment, listening... not just to the stone settling or the faint crackle of far-off heat, but for his fading steps.

She found a spot nestled behind a fallen pillar that still held the scorched remains of some ancient carving. Warriors or priests, maybe both, now nothing but melted stone. The broken architecture gave decent cover.

She started unpacking, flint, kindling, a bedroll, and a battered iron pot. The fire took a minute to coax to life, damp wood she had soaked in saltwater on purpose, just in case they needed smoke instead of flame. The result was a low, smoldering heat, nothing too bright. Just enough to warm a hand and cook a meal without screaming, we're here! to the thing below.

Dinner was ready long before Tusk returned, so she had pulled the pot from the flame and set it on the warm stones to keep while she waited. She drank quietly from her flask, eyes half-lidded, listening for his footsteps. When he finally did return, it was quiet as a ghost, all ash-dusted and unsmiling. Her eyes flickered up, and she snorted softly through her nose. "Evening stranger, you come here often?" she greeted him, smirking.

'Place is as old as I feel,' Daniyah just looked at him. One slow blink. Then another. She dipped her head slightly, lips pressed into a thin line, half disbelief, half amusement. Then, with exaggerated care, she reached for her flask, took a long drink, and offered it to him without a word... maybe it would help with the ancient curses of age he was clearly suffering under.

“Restless dead,” she muttered, flicking a bit of ash from her thigh. “Of course there are. One screaming fire demon wasn’t enough..."

She reached out, grabbed the pot with a thick wool cloth wrapped around the handle, and slid it across the stone toward him. “There,” she said. "Soup for the old man. Soft, warm, and easy on the teeth." Her smirk curled sharper while she grabbed a piece of bread from the bag. “You want this? If you ask real nice, I might chew it first for you.”
 
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