Author Topic: A Misadventure, Starring Mhairi Merula  (Read 481 times)

FoogooFish

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A Misadventure, Starring Mhairi Merula
« on: March 06, 2020, 01:42:52 PM »
She had been warned that the grey and gloom would change her, and - in her youthful defiance - she welcomed the challenge. She was energy; she was exuberance; she was joie de vivre given feminine form.

What happened was her own fault.

She'd taken the Slavich at night - a dumb thing, in retrospect, but a dumb thing that she'd done more often than she cared to admit. She'd learned where to step, when to use her spells, and when to engage the myriad of monsters that haunted the night. While there remained a twinge of fear deep within her thoughts, Mhairi had grown formidable enough that she tamped down that nagging, gnawing voice (that almost always sounded like Senna...) that warned her to be more careful.

She'd almost made it to Vallaki; the Grey Lady loomed in the distance. Eager to be back within the swirl of maddening chaos that she loved, Mhairi quickened her pace past the wooden structure - a home, perhaps? - and towards the section of road that sharply bent to take travelers to the outer farmlands. Her spells surrounded her, but she wasn't invisible, and that would be her biggest mistake.

She'd barely approached the hill before the turn when she saw the grotesque, vaguely humanoid silhouette come into view. She remembered dogs - no, wolves - gnashing their fangs at her as they charged. Her eyes widened in shock, and her hands fumbled for her longsword and buckler even as she tried to change tack towards the wooden structure she'd recently passed. Mid-turn, Mhairi's eyes met the wicked, deathly gaze of the undead creature, and then everything went dark.

In her recollection, it was around midnight when she'd lost consciousness.
By the time she somehow, miraculously, regained her senses, dawn had well-arrived. The terrors of the night had receded into the dark, empty places that hold them until they can once again be unleashed.

Her sword and shield littered the bloodied ground from where they had fallen from her lifeless grasp. Mhairi reclaimed them as well as a few other things that had fallen from her pockets. Her shield now had a dirty, smudged boot print at the edge of its otherwise gleaming surface. The undead and wolves weren't wearing boots, which meant...

Someone else had been there.

Someone else had been there, and that someone had continued their journey.

Someone else had left her there, bleeding and barely clinging to life.

Someone else had left her there to die alone on the side of the road.

Mhairi trudged, shoulders slumped, back to Vallaki. Senna, in her usual manner, fretted when she learned of what had happened. Mhairi smiled, reassured her beloved cousin that all was well, and then attempted to engage in some social butterflying. After all, Mhairi loved people! And people loved her... didn't they...?

It wasn't until later, when the first cough came from the damp and chill that had accumulated in her chest during her hours on the cold Barovian ground, that Mhairi came to the realization that brought the first jagged piece of grey and gloom into her colorful world: of all the monsters, all the nightmares, all the terrors of which she had been warned, no one had prepared her for the worst horror of them all.

People.
Player of:

Éverine Beaulieu - Portrait
Mhairi Merula Shuttleworth - Portrait