cornyx HZD au snippet
Jan. 7th, 2019 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gigantomachyIt is incredibly hard attempting to remember to use DW after so many years away! This is something from earlier last year that got posted to tumblr; I think about it quite a bit, thought it's been pushed way down the to-do list.
Cor can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he's seen a Nora in the wild, often little more than flickers of lighter color at the edge of the treeline, figures just a little too large to be animal in the tall grasses. As a boy, out at Hunter's Gathering, he'd spoken to one of them as they'd huddled near one another in the fragile warmth of a blazing campfire to wait out a terrible snowstorm — at least he'd tried to, though he'd quickly learned his curiosity was no match for the hulking warrior's reticence.
Once, Cor had imagined all Nora in just this way.
The Nora curled around himself on the red rocks, here in the early morning shadow of the Daytower isn't particularly hulking. A man — maybe Cor's age, maybe a little younger, somewhere beneath the purple swell of bruises and scrapes marring what Cor can see of his face. A crust of blood tracking from nose and mouth, pooled and dried on the sandstone. More skin stripped from along the length of a bare arm, its fingers spread, reaching out towards nothing at all. A quiver half-full of arrows, fletched with blue-tipped feathers and bound with some sort of sinew strapped to the Nora's back, but no bow.
A short distance away, the campfire has long burned out.
Dead as the man on the ground, Cor thinks morbidly, and wonders why it is a Nora might seek out this miserable death so far from his sacred lands.
With nothing better to do in the moment, Cor studies the scene. No tracks around the body; Cor judges, then, by the scrapes on skin and scuffing on rock, that the Nora had been thrown. A glance further down the slope, toward the sluggish river reveals the scattered carcass of a snapmaw, and Cor glances at the body once more before heading in that direction. Not the killer — no, he's seen plenty of Carja caught between the jaws and claws of those machines, and the Nora is far too … complete for that.
The road bears the old tracks of a machine convoy, and, over that, the distinct footprints of a patrol, but Cor pays little attention to either as he vaults the raised stone wall edging the sandswept, worn down cobble, dodging clumps of cactus as well as hand-sized shards of armor plating and shorn components littering the ground. A pair of watchers lie in the sand only paces from one another, shot down by Nora arrows. The snapmaw carcass is likewise studded, and while Cor initially takes their number as a sign of panic shots or simple inaccuracy, he realizes quickly enough that there is strategy in the placement.
The Nora hunt machines for their components above all else and, true to form, not a single canister is damaged. The lens of the machine, along with a series of various cables and cores and braiding and machine viscera Cor couldn't begin to name, are arrayed near the imprint of hands and knees, next to a simple but well-crafted lance. The machine's chest cavity has been prised open, and its heart dangles from a few frayed wires — obviously, this had been the Nora's real prize when he'd met his end.
A few moments later, Cor comes across the deep gouges in the sandy earth — tracks to mark the passage of a trampler's hooves, spread wide enough to suggest the thing had been at a full charge. The remains of a primitive bow, shattered in the massive, uneven bowl of one of those gouges, tells the Nora's story plain enough.
Alas.
Curiosity sated, Cor leaves the carcass and its assorted trophies behind, returning to the dead warrior. He crouches down, pushing at a shoulder to turn the body on its back —
— the Nora groans pitifully, breath rasping wet in his chest, whistling through a shattered nose.
Ah. Not so dead as he'd first thought. In this, at least, Cor doesn't mind being wrong.
-
"I know who you are," the keeper says, wide-eyed as Cor approaches the array of lean-tos and supply stockpiles marking the heart of the hunting ground.
Cor grunts noncommittally, finally beginning to tire beneath the weight slung over his back and shoulders. Perhaps the Nora is smaller than his kind were in Cor's memory, but he's more than enough to make Cor's spine sing with the strain of exertion.
"But that one … I don't know." Suspicious, maybe even a little frightened. No more familiar with their sequestered eastern neighbors than anyone else, Cor supposes.
"Don't worry," Cor growls, tired and thirsty and entirely annoyed by the morning and his own inopportune, utterly ill-advised moments of softness, "you will. Get that merchant. Follow." And with that, he staggers toward the nearest shelter, one ear tuned to the wet rattle of breath next to his cheek to confirm the ill-fated bastard hadn't gone and died on him in the meanwhile.
Cor lays the Nora out on his back as gently as he can, idly hoping he's not wasting his time. He's no healer, though he's seen more than his share of horrific injuries — by comparison, the Nora doesn't look all that bad, but who knows what might lie broken inside? His skull seems whole enough, beneath the bruising. Peeling back an eyelid reveals a thin circle of cloudy gray-blue ringing the blown pupil, set in a sea of red. Unsettling, but no indication of anything more than a solid hit, and Cor had thankfully only seen blood in the sand.
With the keeper's help, Cor manages to peel the Nora out of his hide tunic. The left side of his chest is a map of purple bruises, spreading along his side and back — fortunate, Cor thinks, as he runs his fingers over too-hot skin, prodding for breaks. One particular spot draws another pained sound from the Nora, and the warrior jerks as if attempting to curl up into himself once more. The sudden motion sends both keeper and merchant skittering backwards and away, like the Nora's about to surge to life like some dormant machine. He supposes it means the Nora's spine is intact, if nothing else.
Cor glares briefly at the keeper, then turns his attention to the merchant, who fidgets uncomfortably beneath the full weight of his scrutiny. "You have potions?"
She frowns. "Two left. The small ones. A group of aspirants—"
Cor cuts her off with an abrupt shake of his head. He reaches a hand out. "Give them to me."
The keeper makes a face. "To be wasted on a savage?"
"You'll need them for yourself, if you continue this." Cor ignores the keeper's scoff of dismay, attention swinging quickly back to the Nora, focusing this time on the vivid array of old scarring on the relatively unscathed half of his chest. There are plenty more, but no others half so interesting. The Nora … a hard-living people, to be certain, all the worse off for their insistence on superstition and enforced separation.
The merchant drops the crude vials into his hand, and Cor tucks one between his knees before uncorking the other, tilting the Nora's chin up toward the sky. "A Nora," he murmurs, "in the Sundom. Do you wonder why?"
"Not this much," the keeper mutters.
Cor snorts as he tilts the vial against the Nora's lips.
-
The sand is already echoing the worst of the sun's heat by the time Cor finishes tending what he can of the unconscious Nora's wounds, and he resigns himself to a day without a hunt. His quarry, a presumed pair of rockbreakers stranding travelers in the heights of Dawn's Sentinel, are unlikely to go far in a day's time. Lucky Nora, to have avoided that particular headache.
The keeper has returned to his seat by the fire, never quite crossing the line of insubordination, but wearing his disapproval plainly all the same. It matters little to Cor, one way or another; simply, if the Nora is strong enough to survive this, then Cor would see it so.
Cor uses the edge of the Nora's dirty tunic to scrub the second potion's slick residue from his fingers. Nearby, the merchant is cautiously examining the array of feathers decorating the Nora's quiver, her expression one of curiosity rather than greed. A good sign, considering the circumstances.
"He must not be moved for some time," Cor says.
The merchant startles, nearly dropping the quiver in her lap. Flushing, her eyes dart toward Cor for a heartbeat before dropping in deference. "This is a poor place to seek hospitality, Hawk."
"So it goes," Cor mutters. "Think of it as unexpected entertainment. The sun only knows how the two of you manage to stay sane up here."
"Quietly, Hawk — which is to say, Narokh will not appreciate the intrusion. He has little care for outlanders."
Cor shrugs. "Narokh will appreciate the healer I send even less, then."
For several moments, the merchant is silent, watching the uneven rise and fall of the Nora's chest. Then, "all this effort — do you act now as a Hawk, or a man?"
It's Cor's turn to be startled. He glances down at his folded hands, the vague smear of Nora blood beneath his fingernails. There is meaning in the fact that she does not ask if he acts as a Carja, but that is a battle fought well outside his domain. "I act," he says, slowly and deliberately, "as one who has seen too many cold faces turned to the Sun."
"You are not like most Hawks."
Cor snorts, then reaches over the Nora's body to pluck an arrow from the quiver. "I would also see the hand that peeled a snapmaw like maize with his arrows."
"Ah," she says, and Cor can hear the humor in her voice — better than that simpering deference, by far. "Not so different, after all."
-
Cor borrows the Nora's tattered cloak when he returns to the snapmaw's carcass; it serves well enough to contain the minor wealth of components and abandoned weapons. Too bad for the Nora, that Cor had already split his take between the keeper and merchant for their inevitable efforts. Then again, if he is half the hunter Cor suspects him to be — if he is not broken beyond fixing, it won't be terribly difficult to recoup his losses in the wake of recovery.
He leaves for the Daytower, jogging beneath the cold light of the moon, grateful to be moving with purpose once more. His arrival to the fortress coincides with the breaking of the dawn, and he considers it a good omen — better, even, when he finds an unattached apprentice healer in need of shards, willing to make the journey to the hunting grounds unescorted. The rest, Cor knows, must be left to fate and other hands.
After a few hours of exhausted slumber in a borrowed spearman's bunk, Cor sets out for Dawn's Sentinel.
—
Two months later, Cor finds himself once again on the road leading to the heart of the hunting grounds. A little worse for wear, perhaps — truthfully, he'd rather face a thunderjaw than rockbreakers, because at least those machines don't feel the need to swim beneath the land like confused salmon, or spit boulders with an unpleasant habit of becoming a cloud of shrapnel upon contact with the ground.
Still, it's mostly his vanity that stings now that the skin is finally starting to regrow in earnest along his cheek.
He's spent more time than he'd ever meant to thinking of his salvaged Nora, wondering if the man has made it back properly into the waking world. His Nora — he scoffs at the thought, bemused by its nature. If the warrior has any sense, he'll be long gone back to the unknowable embrace of his homeland by the time Cor arrives. Likely chased off by the keeper, if nothing else.
And yet, it's the hope of witnessing the fruits of his labor that adds energy to his steps as he slinks beneath the distant eyes of the glinthawks wheeling overhead. So many questions … it seems unlikely the Nora would deny him that much, though Cor knows that's a long assumption on his own part. He'd had a friendly face, beneath the swelling and smeared paint, the shape of the creases around his eyes and mouth marking a man more inclined to laughter than not.
Above, he hears the cry of one of those massive mechanical birds. He's playing a dangerous game, allowing himself to be distracted at all. The vague, familiar ache in his shoulders as he pulls himself up the side of the mesa brings his attention back to his present task, and the next several moments are given to total focus on the climb.
Cor smells the familiar scent of a brush-stoked campfire, ascending into the not-so-subtle odors of humans and their simple settlement spilling down toward the valley below well before he reaches the lip of the cliff: sweat and sage smoke. Low, rich laughter rising above unhurried conversation, followed moments later by the distinct chortle of a women and an unmusical honk he recognizes as the keeper's nasal tone.
Moments later, Cor heaves himself up over the edge of the cliff, and lifts his head to see his Nora crouched down in front of him, wearing a wide, welcoming smile as he holds out a hand. "Welcome to the party, friend," he says. "We've saved a place for you."
Cor glances past his fur-clad shoulder to see the keeper's look of mute shock, while the merchant does her best to hide her laughter behind her hand. Surprised — caught off-guard, even — Cor does the first thing that comes to mind: he takes the offered hand, and the Nora's smile flashes bright as sunrise cresting the distant horizon as he pulls Cor to his feet.
Cor can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he's seen a Nora in the wild, often little more than flickers of lighter color at the edge of the treeline, figures just a little too large to be animal in the tall grasses. As a boy, out at Hunter's Gathering, he'd spoken to one of them as they'd huddled near one another in the fragile warmth of a blazing campfire to wait out a terrible snowstorm — at least he'd tried to, though he'd quickly learned his curiosity was no match for the hulking warrior's reticence.
Once, Cor had imagined all Nora in just this way.
The Nora curled around himself on the red rocks, here in the early morning shadow of the Daytower isn't particularly hulking. A man — maybe Cor's age, maybe a little younger, somewhere beneath the purple swell of bruises and scrapes marring what Cor can see of his face. A crust of blood tracking from nose and mouth, pooled and dried on the sandstone. More skin stripped from along the length of a bare arm, its fingers spread, reaching out towards nothing at all. A quiver half-full of arrows, fletched with blue-tipped feathers and bound with some sort of sinew strapped to the Nora's back, but no bow.
A short distance away, the campfire has long burned out.
Dead as the man on the ground, Cor thinks morbidly, and wonders why it is a Nora might seek out this miserable death so far from his sacred lands.
With nothing better to do in the moment, Cor studies the scene. No tracks around the body; Cor judges, then, by the scrapes on skin and scuffing on rock, that the Nora had been thrown. A glance further down the slope, toward the sluggish river reveals the scattered carcass of a snapmaw, and Cor glances at the body once more before heading in that direction. Not the killer — no, he's seen plenty of Carja caught between the jaws and claws of those machines, and the Nora is far too … complete for that.
The road bears the old tracks of a machine convoy, and, over that, the distinct footprints of a patrol, but Cor pays little attention to either as he vaults the raised stone wall edging the sandswept, worn down cobble, dodging clumps of cactus as well as hand-sized shards of armor plating and shorn components littering the ground. A pair of watchers lie in the sand only paces from one another, shot down by Nora arrows. The snapmaw carcass is likewise studded, and while Cor initially takes their number as a sign of panic shots or simple inaccuracy, he realizes quickly enough that there is strategy in the placement.
The Nora hunt machines for their components above all else and, true to form, not a single canister is damaged. The lens of the machine, along with a series of various cables and cores and braiding and machine viscera Cor couldn't begin to name, are arrayed near the imprint of hands and knees, next to a simple but well-crafted lance. The machine's chest cavity has been prised open, and its heart dangles from a few frayed wires — obviously, this had been the Nora's real prize when he'd met his end.
A few moments later, Cor comes across the deep gouges in the sandy earth — tracks to mark the passage of a trampler's hooves, spread wide enough to suggest the thing had been at a full charge. The remains of a primitive bow, shattered in the massive, uneven bowl of one of those gouges, tells the Nora's story plain enough.
Alas.
Curiosity sated, Cor leaves the carcass and its assorted trophies behind, returning to the dead warrior. He crouches down, pushing at a shoulder to turn the body on its back —
— the Nora groans pitifully, breath rasping wet in his chest, whistling through a shattered nose.
Ah. Not so dead as he'd first thought. In this, at least, Cor doesn't mind being wrong.
-
"I know who you are," the keeper says, wide-eyed as Cor approaches the array of lean-tos and supply stockpiles marking the heart of the hunting ground.
Cor grunts noncommittally, finally beginning to tire beneath the weight slung over his back and shoulders. Perhaps the Nora is smaller than his kind were in Cor's memory, but he's more than enough to make Cor's spine sing with the strain of exertion.
"But that one … I don't know." Suspicious, maybe even a little frightened. No more familiar with their sequestered eastern neighbors than anyone else, Cor supposes.
"Don't worry," Cor growls, tired and thirsty and entirely annoyed by the morning and his own inopportune, utterly ill-advised moments of softness, "you will. Get that merchant. Follow." And with that, he staggers toward the nearest shelter, one ear tuned to the wet rattle of breath next to his cheek to confirm the ill-fated bastard hadn't gone and died on him in the meanwhile.
Cor lays the Nora out on his back as gently as he can, idly hoping he's not wasting his time. He's no healer, though he's seen more than his share of horrific injuries — by comparison, the Nora doesn't look all that bad, but who knows what might lie broken inside? His skull seems whole enough, beneath the bruising. Peeling back an eyelid reveals a thin circle of cloudy gray-blue ringing the blown pupil, set in a sea of red. Unsettling, but no indication of anything more than a solid hit, and Cor had thankfully only seen blood in the sand.
With the keeper's help, Cor manages to peel the Nora out of his hide tunic. The left side of his chest is a map of purple bruises, spreading along his side and back — fortunate, Cor thinks, as he runs his fingers over too-hot skin, prodding for breaks. One particular spot draws another pained sound from the Nora, and the warrior jerks as if attempting to curl up into himself once more. The sudden motion sends both keeper and merchant skittering backwards and away, like the Nora's about to surge to life like some dormant machine. He supposes it means the Nora's spine is intact, if nothing else.
Cor glares briefly at the keeper, then turns his attention to the merchant, who fidgets uncomfortably beneath the full weight of his scrutiny. "You have potions?"
She frowns. "Two left. The small ones. A group of aspirants—"
Cor cuts her off with an abrupt shake of his head. He reaches a hand out. "Give them to me."
The keeper makes a face. "To be wasted on a savage?"
"You'll need them for yourself, if you continue this." Cor ignores the keeper's scoff of dismay, attention swinging quickly back to the Nora, focusing this time on the vivid array of old scarring on the relatively unscathed half of his chest. There are plenty more, but no others half so interesting. The Nora … a hard-living people, to be certain, all the worse off for their insistence on superstition and enforced separation.
The merchant drops the crude vials into his hand, and Cor tucks one between his knees before uncorking the other, tilting the Nora's chin up toward the sky. "A Nora," he murmurs, "in the Sundom. Do you wonder why?"
"Not this much," the keeper mutters.
Cor snorts as he tilts the vial against the Nora's lips.
-
The sand is already echoing the worst of the sun's heat by the time Cor finishes tending what he can of the unconscious Nora's wounds, and he resigns himself to a day without a hunt. His quarry, a presumed pair of rockbreakers stranding travelers in the heights of Dawn's Sentinel, are unlikely to go far in a day's time. Lucky Nora, to have avoided that particular headache.
The keeper has returned to his seat by the fire, never quite crossing the line of insubordination, but wearing his disapproval plainly all the same. It matters little to Cor, one way or another; simply, if the Nora is strong enough to survive this, then Cor would see it so.
Cor uses the edge of the Nora's dirty tunic to scrub the second potion's slick residue from his fingers. Nearby, the merchant is cautiously examining the array of feathers decorating the Nora's quiver, her expression one of curiosity rather than greed. A good sign, considering the circumstances.
"He must not be moved for some time," Cor says.
The merchant startles, nearly dropping the quiver in her lap. Flushing, her eyes dart toward Cor for a heartbeat before dropping in deference. "This is a poor place to seek hospitality, Hawk."
"So it goes," Cor mutters. "Think of it as unexpected entertainment. The sun only knows how the two of you manage to stay sane up here."
"Quietly, Hawk — which is to say, Narokh will not appreciate the intrusion. He has little care for outlanders."
Cor shrugs. "Narokh will appreciate the healer I send even less, then."
For several moments, the merchant is silent, watching the uneven rise and fall of the Nora's chest. Then, "all this effort — do you act now as a Hawk, or a man?"
It's Cor's turn to be startled. He glances down at his folded hands, the vague smear of Nora blood beneath his fingernails. There is meaning in the fact that she does not ask if he acts as a Carja, but that is a battle fought well outside his domain. "I act," he says, slowly and deliberately, "as one who has seen too many cold faces turned to the Sun."
"You are not like most Hawks."
Cor snorts, then reaches over the Nora's body to pluck an arrow from the quiver. "I would also see the hand that peeled a snapmaw like maize with his arrows."
"Ah," she says, and Cor can hear the humor in her voice — better than that simpering deference, by far. "Not so different, after all."
-
Cor borrows the Nora's tattered cloak when he returns to the snapmaw's carcass; it serves well enough to contain the minor wealth of components and abandoned weapons. Too bad for the Nora, that Cor had already split his take between the keeper and merchant for their inevitable efforts. Then again, if he is half the hunter Cor suspects him to be — if he is not broken beyond fixing, it won't be terribly difficult to recoup his losses in the wake of recovery.
He leaves for the Daytower, jogging beneath the cold light of the moon, grateful to be moving with purpose once more. His arrival to the fortress coincides with the breaking of the dawn, and he considers it a good omen — better, even, when he finds an unattached apprentice healer in need of shards, willing to make the journey to the hunting grounds unescorted. The rest, Cor knows, must be left to fate and other hands.
After a few hours of exhausted slumber in a borrowed spearman's bunk, Cor sets out for Dawn's Sentinel.
—
Two months later, Cor finds himself once again on the road leading to the heart of the hunting grounds. A little worse for wear, perhaps — truthfully, he'd rather face a thunderjaw than rockbreakers, because at least those machines don't feel the need to swim beneath the land like confused salmon, or spit boulders with an unpleasant habit of becoming a cloud of shrapnel upon contact with the ground.
Still, it's mostly his vanity that stings now that the skin is finally starting to regrow in earnest along his cheek.
He's spent more time than he'd ever meant to thinking of his salvaged Nora, wondering if the man has made it back properly into the waking world. His Nora — he scoffs at the thought, bemused by its nature. If the warrior has any sense, he'll be long gone back to the unknowable embrace of his homeland by the time Cor arrives. Likely chased off by the keeper, if nothing else.
And yet, it's the hope of witnessing the fruits of his labor that adds energy to his steps as he slinks beneath the distant eyes of the glinthawks wheeling overhead. So many questions … it seems unlikely the Nora would deny him that much, though Cor knows that's a long assumption on his own part. He'd had a friendly face, beneath the swelling and smeared paint, the shape of the creases around his eyes and mouth marking a man more inclined to laughter than not.
Above, he hears the cry of one of those massive mechanical birds. He's playing a dangerous game, allowing himself to be distracted at all. The vague, familiar ache in his shoulders as he pulls himself up the side of the mesa brings his attention back to his present task, and the next several moments are given to total focus on the climb.
Cor smells the familiar scent of a brush-stoked campfire, ascending into the not-so-subtle odors of humans and their simple settlement spilling down toward the valley below well before he reaches the lip of the cliff: sweat and sage smoke. Low, rich laughter rising above unhurried conversation, followed moments later by the distinct chortle of a women and an unmusical honk he recognizes as the keeper's nasal tone.
Moments later, Cor heaves himself up over the edge of the cliff, and lifts his head to see his Nora crouched down in front of him, wearing a wide, welcoming smile as he holds out a hand. "Welcome to the party, friend," he says. "We've saved a place for you."
Cor glances past his fur-clad shoulder to see the keeper's look of mute shock, while the merchant does her best to hide her laughter behind her hand. Surprised — caught off-guard, even — Cor does the first thing that comes to mind: he takes the offered hand, and the Nora's smile flashes bright as sunrise cresting the distant horizon as he pulls Cor to his feet.
