Jack breathes in. Then out.

"Aye, Sergeant, I'll mind ye. But 'tis best, I'm thinkin', we root out what's happenin' here or quit this territory altogether. Anythin' in between is just dangerous folly."

"Did you kill Adam, Sean and Cara Ryan?" the sergeant asks in response, his voice soft and even as though asking if Jack had seen a dog or shut a gate.

"I didn't--" Jack stops, never taking his eyes from the other man's, "I don't think I did, Sergeant. I think I'd know if I'd done such work and there's nothin' like that in me heart at all. But I don't know where all that time went, y'see? I don't know if Cotton right now knows he's wand'rin' in these woods, or if he thinks he's settin' in his room sippin' tea."

His eyes are frightened now, scared of not knowing.

"But I give ye my word I'll stay th' course with ye an' not try t' run. Whatever we find here, I'll stay th' course all th' way through trial, if need's be. An' if I did them deeds, I'll take m' punishment. God help me."

Jack gets a long look from which little can be read, just squinting calculation and dirty blue. Wilkins does offer him a hand up when he stands, however. "God 'elp you indeed, my son." He swallows and looks over at the cliff. "God 'elp all of us. If 'e even remembers this place exists."

He shakes his head and the swordlike soldier's edge returns to his voice. "Right. So if it ain't you killed them kiddies it's either Daniels or the man we think is Bowen, who definitely used some bits of Ryan in whatever sorcery 'e got up to. Whatever devils live up 'ere, they've been up 'ere at least since them witches were alive - an' given the local tribes apparently knew about 'em and avoided the area that's a few generations, at least - an' probably since God put this land down and filled it with blacks and parrots."

"Calder stirred 'em up, Bowen listened to 'em. Maybe Cotton got 'is dreams tangled with 'em, I don't know. He'll come down or he won't. Me, I am doin what I ought: there's an 'ole continent of unknown out there, just savagery an' chaos, an' my job is to keep the little bit that's England safe."

"So I am going to catch that killer, bring him down, an' see 'im 'anged. Anything else...we don't need to dig nor disturb. Now come on, let's get out of 'ere."

Brigitte listened to Wilkins speech and then followed the man as he went to leave. She kept part of an eye on the trackers as they made their way through the undergrowth.



-

Ngamurudyin is simply standing by the rock face, by now looking mildly irritated. Seeing that Brigitte didn't want her after all and her compatriot is poking about at the edge of the foliage up top, not entirely keen to enter, she drops to a comfortable squat and watches the white folk to try and work out what they're doing now.

[Language unknown: “Llnesi’t oulillcon ureeveted ni,”] Ngarungadurung calls down, [Language unknown: “Stierslin ckil omstli th’o oul ic deras alssnc. Seolca ou redhouhas ossipo ioieni urpe e?”] He follows Ngamurudyin’s lead and sits on his haunches, peering over the edge of the cliff at the Europeans below.

Ngamurudyin gives an expressive shrug, then raises her head a little, listening. [Language unknown: "Fisom pafiee eveoerera u dinratera,"] she remarks. Ngarungadurung can already tell that's true. The cicadas sing in all their clumps around them but not here.

[Language unknown: “T’m u tra n O plica mosi pr’as ofsspa’me.”] Ngarungadurng scrambles for a vantage to one side of the cliff, seeking a spot hidden from and sightly higher than the dead man’s path.

The sergeant looks up at the sudden movement up there, squinting. The cicadas chant and chant and chant without relent.

[[Hmm...give me either a DEX roll or a Hard (half) Stealth, depending on whether Ngarungadurung is more concerned about getting a good position or staying unseen.]]

Brigitte stops as well and then moves over to Ngamurudyin and asks "Do you know what he is trying to do or why the scene keeps repeating ?" She did not question in her head what she had just said, instead hoping the native tracker might understand.


-

"Let's watch, Sergeant, and see can he do anythin' about this," Jack says quietly.

Vantage over stealth...
09:27, Today: Ngarungadurung rolled 28 using 1d100.  DEX 65.

Ngamurudyin understands about four words of Brigitte's query, letting the Frenchwoman get to a sensible talking distance before making a response. This close, Brigitte hears a thrashing and desperate flight through the bush above as Ngamurudyin looks up at her.

"He look," she says, though Brigitte feels there is more. The sounds above are clearly footsteps now.

---

Above, Ngarungadurung has pulled himself into a short snow gum, scrambling onto a chest-high branch to carefully grasp its upward curve and stand peering into the foliage.
Ngarungadurung doesn't have time to do any more than shout after the lad, should he be minded, before the whitefella has plunged far past, looked forward, then down, confused, too late in the aggregate of seconds those movements take.

---

Those below hear an urgent voice above call out amongst the cicada screams: "The- -the speared man! Speared man! Run!"

"No!" the sergeant barks, but Cadlow does not hear him and does not obey, obeying only gravity as he buckles back in his attempt to save himself and slides. Momentum rolls him that one degree past saving as the sergeant turns away, eyes shut as though merely hearing would bear less certain witness.

Gravity remains certain and indifferent. Cadlow falls, and screams, and strikes the rock twice before the water takes him to itself.


"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGH~*"


There are no ripples. The water moves as it did before, and the wind blows and the insects screech. "No!" the sergeant says again, though it's not clear who or what he's trying to command. "No no no no! Enough!"

"God rest him," Jack says quietly and he crosses himself. This is what he expected. "'Tis sure there's no saving the lad."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:47, Mon 10 Aug 2020.

"'e was dead long before we got 'ere," the sergeant says, and calls sharply across to those still near the cliffs. "Are you satisfied, now?"

Brigitte was struggling with what she was seeing and struggling to believe. "Let us go there seems to be little we can do here."


-

Ngamurudyin looks at her a moment, considering, and calls up to the man from the bush: [Language unknown: "Alave! Con adalaiacit sonna of i ei ore mo Un ticthuess sta ro alieul. Cateun Di no prhe oeriveund orela ratvenart ngaspl? Ni osrat pr our essandugh int, urpr esred ateinc m peheto nti ne vir, El eauhatthe. Com olurpa llno eess?"]

"I say him you want go," Ngarungadurung confims to Brigitte, standing.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 15:23, Wed 12 Aug 2020.

"Yes, unless you think there is more to be learned ?" The moisture from her scarf had already disappeared and was quickly being replaced by sweat.



-

[Language unknown: “O nt lo ncelarugh prte eauhi ie thu itmaut. Ha urllmi Cotton-fella se mi outil m lat, p hi ceera somss,”] Ngarungadurung calls down, [Language unknown: “Pl in mo ain nt bein, e me outut.”]

[Language unknown: "Son, riat? El thikorrom-antsti? Aral paet, ou ulshe be pa wherutwasati k ble elpr of sial eau, was ntisel pe o niadlo,"] Ngamurudyin replies, backing enough for him to see her beckoning gesture.

She tries to tackle Brigitte's question whilst explaining: "He say Cottonfella go up, run away. Speared man hunt 'em. Maybe hunt us, too. I say him come down."

"Are you 'avin a picnic over there?" the sergeant calls over, tense and impatient as the insects screech.

Her reference to the repetitive ghost stirs Jack's interest.

"What is th' speared man?" he calls across to Ngamurudyin.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:17, Fri 14 Aug 2020.

Ngamurudyin raises her voice just enough to carry, wary of attention that might be drawn. "Man," she clarifies. "Spear," she says, miming grasping a haft before thumping the midpoint of her chest like impact.

Jack had never seen a fire-hard sapling spear pass through a man but he could imagine from that: the sudden shearing of muscle and bone into a new, brief reality of hot lost blood structured about the shaft that had interrupted the body and rendered its world so changed. He could imagine a speared man, certainly. It was harder to imagine a speared man that could stand, or to whom such mutilation was so natural a state he might continue to live, desire to draw others into that red, killed way of being; hunt.

"His dreaming," she says, gesturing at Budyirikaranga's nephew to indicate a thing not quite her story to tell.

The aboriginal man climbs down from the cliff, to stand near the Compass Woman. He watches the dialogue mutely, seemingly with little comprehension.

As he is turning at the top of the cliff, Ngarungadurung realises his own movements and the discussion with the whitefellas has masked other sounds; he glances up at pale motion swift approaching as Cadlow looks forward and sees him, too late, and braces low in his step for collision. None occurs. Their bodies occupy the same space but from the separation in time or reality or solidity Ngarungadurung's skin feels nothing and the running youth strikes nothing, overbalancing himself to fall a little sooner than he had before. Among the raw terror and the utter confusion at having run through a seemingly solid man, in the instant the young man's gaze meets Ngarungadurung's there is a distant flicker of recognition, like someone trying to place a face they'd seen before. Then he has rolled over the cliff and screams in fear, then in pain, and then stops screaming with a quick, hard crack.


"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGH~*"


There is a splash. The insects ignore the disturbance and the water flows. Ngarungadurung reaches the ground and it is a great relief. Ngamurudyin frowns upwards, then beckons native and European on alike, somewhere else that is away from this. The trees shift as the wind suggests and the water runs in its course, and the cicadas scream to their echoes and back again.