<font color='#000000'>()()(- Okay. I'm here. oO; This could get a little weird. ^^; B|(- "Where to go, where to go?" Chimed a sing-song voice as it mimicked Rallyn's words. The source of this softly haunting voice seemed to be coming from behind a group of frozen solid pendragons near the mid-section of the room. The skittering sound of talons upon ice fractured the crisp air as a slight figure moved from behind the group and quickly into view. A pair of yellow tinted inquisitive eyes peered at the two students, studying them as if they were an interesting new breed on insect. And what a sight they were. Looking lost and... a little burnt. This brought a tell-tale smile to the creature's - otherwise known as Kakosenas - lips. That's not to say she wasn't a sore sight herself. Her pelt was messy and matted the colour of a dark grey storm cloud, almost black, with lighter guard hairs at her nape. Long white hair with multitudes of dead ends adorned her head, giving her an even more scraggly look. Her tail was long and tapered, ending in a thick purple tuft. Similar to her tail tuft, each one of her elbows ended in a tuft of long purple hair. Strangest of all though were her forelegs. Up to about her elbows they were covered in tough reptilian scales which tapered off into long curved talons at her fingers, giving her the look of some oddly mutated olden day gryphon. Kakosenas grinned at the two pendragons and motioned to them with a taloned hand to come closer. "Merry meet you two. New blood? P'raps you'd like to be my new playmates." She said with a friendly enough smile. She exhaled softly, her breath coming out icy and visible as it curled back down and around her form as a fine mist.</font>
<font color='#810541'>OOC: You call that a little!!!!! IC: Cairn stared at the... thing ahead of him. It looked almost like a pendragon crosses with one of the larger bird species that occupied the lands, but scarier. He shrunk back when the thing grinned. It was a warm smile, but the words that went with it sent chills down his spine. Every hair on his body stood on end as he watched the ice lining the walls thicken. The maroon 'dragon tried to speak, but all that came from his throat was a slight squeak. He tried again, his voice worked 'somewhat' this time, coming out as a high pitched squeek. <span style='color:navy'>"You... your the one wh... who is causing thi... this?"</span></font>
<font color='#000000'>Usually, Rallyn would have been surprised, nervous perhaps, or even scared on meeting such a strange Pendragon, especially in the middle of a school. An Academy, where everyone looked more or less normal! Yet today he had seen so much things that had surprised him, from the unnatural cold to the missing staircase in the passage to finding out all of his schoolmates have been frozen. No wonder he didn't find any surprise withing himself now. Instead, taking up the question after Cairn's voice had died down, he repeated it: "It's you who's causing this?" He glanced at the icy statues and remembered Kakosenas's remark. An unpleasant shiver ran down his spine, causing him to shiver slightly despite his warm bubble. Fighting hard to keep his voice level and to keep the unsureness and fear in it to an untraceable level, he uttered: "Playmates. It really depends on what kind of game you like to play." He nodded his head towards the far end of the room. "If you enjoy freezing people, I don't think we're going to be that willing." Probably not the best choice of words, but it was the best answer Rallyn could manage under the circumstances. He wasn't able to keep the tell-tale quaver from his voice, though. Oh dear, he thought, furrowing his brow in worry, Now she'll know I'm scared to death. Who knows what will happen? Remembering all the so-called lucky charms that he had ever read about, Rallyn recited them in his head, as well as he could. It wasn't that he was superstitious, nope, far from it. But sometimes a lucky stroke wouldn't be bad.</font>
<font color='#000000'>()()( - She can get plenty weirder. Believe you me. :] B|( - "Am I the one who is causing this? Are we? We, she, did... yes." She murmured softly as her yellow eyes rested upon Cairn then shifted to Rallyn. Her face contorted into a puzzled expression as she wondered why Cairn seemed to be so petrified. After all, it wasn't as if she was up to her elbows in gore as she tried to tear someone's heart out from their rib cage and eat it. No... all she had done was lower the temperature in the school by a few degrees. Nothing much really to worry about. And was that a note of fear she sensed in Rallyn's voice as well? Kakosenas frowned, her tufted tail curling around to her side and laid twitching several times there. Kakosenas' frown was only short lived, however, and was quickly replaced by her former plesant smile. Leaning back upon her haunches, Kakosenas coiled her muscles, enjoying the strength that still coursed through them. With her talons outstretched—she sprung! Her short flight took her atop the head of a frozen, fairly large, and heavyset student's head. She shifted her weight, her talons digging lightly into the icy coating that covered the student's entire body, for purchase. She twisted her head down and around to peer upsidown into the student's eyes which blazed a fiery green back at her. Kakosenas' smile broadened and a giggling laugh spilt out. Her laugh closely resembling the sound of water within a babbling brook as it slithered softly over the wet rocks and was equally as strange and enchanted as her voice. After a few moments the sinewy female noticed that she was laughing alone. It was funny? Was it not? Couldn't the other two see the joke that was here? It was obvious that they didn't. Coming back to Rallyn's words, Kakosenas tilted her head in a quick bird-like movement as she watched him quietly. They would not be that willing? That was a concept that was fairly alien to this grey pelted creature. So she answered slowly, "Kakos likes playing all kinds of games. We do... I do. Have ye any in mind?"</font>
<font color='#810541'>The female was absolutly insane! Had she no comprehension of what she was doing. Not only had she frozen the entire school and student body, but now she was sitting atop a students head and lauging as she looked into his eyes! Cairn felt like he was going to be sick. He licked his lips uncertainly. Suddenly he got an idea and dropped both the heated "bubbles" from around Rallyn and himself. <span style='color:navy'>"So you like to play games huh? Well, we like to play games too, but its a bit cold in here. Maybe if you could raise the temperature back up to normal we could... play together? What do you say?"</span> Cairn glanced over at Rallyn hoping the younger 'dragon would play along with him. What they would do after Incendi rose the temperature, if she did, was an entirly new problem in itself.</font>
<font color='#000000'>"Yes, that's right. I mean, it's not really healthy to run around in the cold. If you'd just raise the temperature to a more bareable number, we'd enjoy a game or two... Kakos?" He smiled, catching Cairn's eye. He looked expectantly at Kakos as she balanced atop a Pendragon's head. The scraping of her talons against the ice echoed in the hall, making him feel quesy. "Are you sure... you aren't hurting him?" he asked uncertainly, shifting his weight from one foot to another. He though about the situation. If the female was eager to play any kind of game, it couldn't be that bad. Slowly, he was beginning to get it. She had just frozen the school because she thought it a game, a funny game perhaps. What a dangerous and yet strange Pendragon Kakos was... the thoughts raced around his mind, as he stood there, rooted to the spot, sometimes glancing swiftly at Cairn.</font>
<font color='#000000'>"Normal? Bearable? Nay, I know not what normal is. Bearable though, this is bearable to me. Nay, nay, not to you though? That is a pity. The cold ees' seeps into your bones and gnaws at the marrow, mm? Takes up residence there, bites..." Kakosenas said, then peered again into the eyes of the bulky student she was perched upon. She rapped her talons on her right paw against his head, creating a harsh knocking sound, as if to exercise her following point. "Nay. I'm not hurting him. Haven't hurt him. Jes' a little frostbite. Although... If'n I was to let the temperature rise, this fellow and the rest would begin the thaw slowly." She quipped, her eyes once again falling upon the two individuals as her voice took on a somewhat lower and hurried note. "Now do ye' see her predicament?"</font>
<font color='#810541'><span style='color:navy'>"Yes, Kakosenas. The cold does... seep into our bones and bite at the marrow..."</span> The words rolled off his tounge in an unnatural fashion. He had never heard anyone speak with such an 'in-your-face' attitude. It was more strtling than anything. Cairn took a few steps forward. <span style='color:navy'>"Well, Kakos cant you do anything? If you manage to warm them up then you'll have a whole bunch of playmates! Come now. Surly you can do something that will let us play with you?"</span> Cairn shivered violently. With the warm bubbles now gone he was feeling the true effect of the icy air.</font>
<font color='#000080'>"Predicament? What predicament?" Rallyn raised his eyebrows. "What did you mean by that, Kakos?" Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye he caught Cairn shiver with the feverishness of one freezing to the bone. Hurriedly, he turned back to Kakosenas. "OK, this temperature may be bearable to you. But if you keep it up, we are going to freeze like these pour souls around. And you'll have no one to play with then." His voice turned into a pleading whine, and he was shocked to hear something like that come out of his mouth. "Please make it warm. We're freezing!" He proceeded to jerk his foot up from the floor, for he had a nasty feeling that something was crawling up into the space between the pillows of his paws. With a start he realised that he was stuck. Slowly, almos rigid with fear and surprise, he tried to free his paw from the ice that was snaking up from the ground. But he couldn't. If he pressed on, he would tear the bottoms of his feet of, and even Rallyn would not have the guts to do that. "Cairn! Help! I'm stuck!" he managed to yell out, muscle spasms biting at his front legs. His second front paw was stuck too, being frozen alive into a form not unlike the Pendragons around. Rallyn looked like a dancer, kicking with his back legs (still free), while his front limbs rested on one spot, not moving an inch.</font>
<font color='#000000'>Kakosenas screeched, a high pitched and short lived sound that then came to a close with several yips. These yips then took the liberty of morphing into giggles. She tried to speak, but each time she tried, she'd start snickering or laughing again. Quite a pair these two were, quite the dynamic duo. When she finally got a hold of herself, Kakosenas tried her best to explain the situation, "Aye, see now.. if'n I do let them thaw out, they'll be rather upset, don't you think? They'll be howling for my spilt blood." She paused, "I s'pose Kakos could take the chance though. If say, you have something to give me?" With her last sentence lifting off into a questioning phrase, Kakosenas launched herself off of the head of the student she had taken for a perch and started toward the pair. She was after all, a bargaining sort of creature that could be reasoned with to some extent. Her fast paced leaping and bounding gait brought her quickly up alongside Rallyn whom she circled around two times. "Little bit bound are we?" She said, peering finally into the young pendragon's face.</font>
<font color='#810541'>Cairn eyed the female in disgust. He had felt bad for her before; somehting akin to pity. Now, however, he couldn't bring any other word than 'replusive' to mind at the thought of her. However, he felt even more disgusted with himself. He had greatly underestimated this female, even with the prime example of her power surrounding them. He had thought her simpleminded. It was a grave mistake he now knew. <span style='color:navy'>"Your lying Kakosenas. Its not a problem. You could be long gone from here before any of them were able to move even their heads."</span> His voice was low with fatigue. The cold only making his eyelids heavier and the fog in his mind thicker. "Cairn! Help! I'm stuck!" Rallyns frightened cry got Ciarns attention. His eyes opened in shock when he saw his friend. Ice crept up around his feet, effectivly anchoring them, and as a result Rallyn himself, to the ground. <span style='color:navy'>"R- Rallyn? Hold on!</span> He picke dup his own feet, gladly noticing that while they did stick to the flor he was not secured there. Cairn then focused a thin stream of heat into the ice below Rallyns feet. His eyes opened even further when nothing happened. Somehow the heat was being cooled before it could do anything to the ice. It was either Kakosenas or his own lack of energy/experiance causing it. Either way it wasn't good for Rallyn. <span style='color:navy'>"Kakosenas! Stop this! Nothing done deserves a retribution like this one! I- I dont know what I could give you in trade, but you name it and we, Rallyn and I, will try to get it for you. Just name it!"</span></font>
<font color='#000080'>"Ahhhh!" he screetched in terror, as her face peered at him closely. Seeing all the dead ends and dreadlocks so near his nose filled him with fear. He closed his eyes, then re-opened them, trying to wiggle back and out of reach. Ah, but he was caught of course. With some relief - he was rather surprised he could manage some relief at a time like this - he noticed that the icing had stopped on his paws, not really going up his forearms. "Yes, Kakos..." he stammered an echo to Storm's words. "Just name it... and we will give it to you... we'll manage..." the words were barely comming out of his throat, squeezed with unnatural terror and the fear of being frozen alive. He averted his gaze from the numerous statues around him and forced himself to look straight into Kakosenas's eyes. "Just name it..."</font>
<font color='#000000'>()()( - Sounds like Kakos is making up a grocery list here. lol. Just go along with what she says. I've got a plot in the making that will allow for two other people. Ah, and she won't hurt your characters when they participate in this "initiation". (Unless of course you want her to) :] You two can start another thread later on to look for two other people to go on this "adventure" and help your characters get the items that they need. They don't have to get all of them either. B|( - Kakosenas either didn't hear Cairn's accusation of her being a liar, or she chose not to hear it. Whichever was the case, she heard what she needed to. "Anything? Just name it?" Kakosenas smiled a slow conniving sort of smile, the same sort that many wished that they had never seen. Her yellow hued eyes seeming to brighten at some unforeseeable prospect. "We have a deal." Perhaps Mia wouldn't be so cold and lonely after all. "Now," she said as she pulled her left taloned paw up to hover just above Rallyn's icy bonds, "You'll have to listen to us closely." Then Kakosenas began to speak in a tone what was just above a whisper, her voice sickening sweet but at the same time rather pleasing to the ear. "The both of you are to come to an initiation for a rather... elite and prestigious group known as Shadowlack. Quite worthy I've found you to be... You are to bring two others with yourselves, doesn't matter who, just as long as you travel as a party of four. Any more or any less and you shall find yourself in trouble. Remember that hidden path the two of you stumbled 'pon earlier today? On the twenty-seventh of Mia, just as the sun starts to go down and the three moons become visible - It should be different then. I want you, and your party of four to go through that hidden passage. Follow it until you're at the location. You'll know where and when to stop. Kakos shall leave a trail for you to follow through the dark corridors that you shant be able to mistake." Kakosenas paused, surely this was a lot for the two of them to take in. She gently tapped the ice that held Rallyn captive, then continued once more. "Now, this is the most important part. We, she'd, like you to bring several things. Four Onye from an Onye Sjaa would suffice. The sweeter the better. They're easy to find this time of year. Fourteen Taap nuts, some dried and minced Fusaj Kjatt, the left paw of a Torber, the hide of a black Segan, four pairs of Chavvor eyes... and the venom of a Striped Swamp Tmuka. I believe that will suffice. Most you should be able to find around the school in... some teacher's private stores. The others you shall have to get on your own. The more of these items you have, the better your chances are, let us say. So, your party of four, the twenty-seventh of Mia, the passage way, and the items. One last thing that I demand is that ye not mention this or myself to anyone... besides the two that you decide to bring with you. You also must make them understand that they are not to tell anyone else either. I believe that is comprehendible. If you decide not to attend the initiation, or, well, it would be a shame and you'd regret it. I guarantee it." Kakosenas licked her dry lips, then smiled faintly. "You have your end of the deal, now here's mine." Kakosenas withdrew from Rallyn, the ice that previously held him fastened in place now seemed to slide right off of him as if it were liquid once more. Once off him it followed steadily in Kakos' wake as she pulled even furthere away from them. The ice that bound the rest of the students and coated the majority of the floor and walls also suddenly started to melt at a steadily increasing rate as the temperature rose, forming ever-widening puddles. "Just tell them that a water pipe broke as it—" Even before Kakosenas was able to finish her sentence, a loud creaking sound was heard beneath the flooring. An even louder creak followed that, then a loud snap was heard as something broke underneath their feet. A rather large portion of the floor, roughly 10 feet by 10, burst open and water from a broken pipeline started to pour into the room, "—sort of already has... Merry meet you two." With the room currently in shambles and the sounds of rushing water flowing everywhere as it sought and found drains that would take it to the underbelly of the school, Kakosenas made a furtive exit.</font>
<font color='#000080'>OOC: [Note to everyone 'cept Storm] OK, we're making the arrangements over PM, so this thread will be deserted for some while - it will depend on whether we go back to it after collecting the stuff or not. IC: He sighed with relief as the ice slipped away from his feet, feeling as if he could fly! He leaped forward, crashing into the burly Pendragon Kakos had just stood on. The bully snorted and wanted to lunge at the poor black 'dragon, but he slipped on the pool of water that had formed on the floor. The tiles clashed open and a torrent of water streamed into the air, showering everything nearby with lukewarm liquid. Feeling so merry... merry meet you... hehe... better not think about that... Rallyn danced out of the reach of various slipping pupils and shimmery water cascades, grabbing Cairn by the elbow. "Cairn... I want to thank you. You saved my life there, and you put up your own skin for me. Thank you very much." he grasped his hand and shook it, tears welling in his eyes. Embarassed, he brushed them away, muttering "american sentiment at the end of the film" under his breath. But it wasn't the end yet... not to this story... Turning towards the door, he told Cairn: "We should look up those things she wanted in the library scrolls. We won't feel so lost after that and it will give us something to do. Anyway, I feel we've got the rest of the day off..." He added, pointing to a teacher that had just yelled the news over a large loudspeaker. Then he skipped to the huge door and held one wing open for Cairn why he whistled a tuneless song... OOC: Sorry for all those dots at the end of sentences. I seriously have to learn how to end them, but I just love the questioning, mysterious aroma that three dots leave on the sentence.(.. j/k)</font>
