"I...don't think that speared devil took captives, not the way he came at us," Murphy responds, pensive. "If there's another 'her' Bowen was away after it's my thought he took her himself, and," he swallows hard on tension in his throat, dry from heat and loss of blood. "-and I truly hope he's been up here all that time, and that's as long a stretch as we've experienced.

He shifts a little with discomfort, causing his horse to take an uncertain step and turn an ear back, uncertain of what he wants from her. "I don't really believe Bowen's dead - you said Cadlow would run through what was in his way, and Calder couldn't touch the witch-ghosts, not this side o' dreaming. The Speared Man was speared; he had some part of here in his body and when that was out he went t'mush. His skin was unnatural hot, too, like hot metal - did Bowen give that kind o' heat, Jack?"

Ngarungadurung notes that the riding-beasts' smell is less sharp and unpleasant than that of the foreigners in general and he can only smell it from those nearby, suggesting at least that the other riding-beasts are downwind. He hasn't caught the thick stink of woollymen again. Flies land on him, as on all of them, and the bush yells with a thousand insects in all directions, blurring any sense but down and up.

Ngarunadurung advances a little way into the bush, using a spear tip to prod and sweep the bush ahead of him like a blindman with his cane.


Picking out some semblance of a trail he turns to face the group and waits.

"Sure, I sensed no heat from him, though I wasn't in contact with him but fer a moment. I don't think he was a ghost, though he looked unhealthy, like a plague victim, aye?"

Jack wipes his hands on his trousers and breathes deeply, preparing to try to keep up with the two horses.

The blood is already dried to the consistency of tar, loath to leave his hands and leaving scuff marks on his trousers. The back of his neck feels exposed.

"You go directly after him and help milady's horse," Murphy gestures Jack on. "I'll take the rear in case o' woollymen. Not sure what he's at but we'll trust him awhile on that - he might easy have cut me thigh-vein an' bled me out dead if he were minded to harm us."

Ngarungadurung leads on. Those that follow get a sense both of enclosure and of precipice where they go directly in his wake. It's harder for the horses, sometimes necessitating a tiny detour that leaves Brigitte or Murphy some seconds out of view and alone with the bush, instincts afire with the notion they should be plummeting, or crushed.

Giselle gets harder to negotiate with in these moments, eyes and nostrils wide, her motions sharp, and Brigitte is reminded that for all humanity's supposed mastery of the horse she is still sitting perched on a beast larger and stronger than herself. The presence of the dust-coloured horse behind them is half-comfort, half awareness of how the crash and crackle of mounted movement hides any such strong sounds that might come behind. The cicadas stop up all gaps of sound.

By the time Ngarungadurung stops before a thick ironbark, the whitefellas are half-sure they have made a broad loop to be scarce further than where they were. Murphy looks troubled and uncertain in the diffused and shifting light, aware of the westering sun yet unable to be confident in pointing to it. The urgency of deciding to locate the others, wait in Bowen's camp for the murderer to return or camp where they stood presses yet closer. Ngarungadurung stares at the tree.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:34, Mon 30 Nov 2020.

Ngarungadurung takes a deep breath and holds it, staring at the tree for a moment more. Then he exhales, lifts his left hand and stretches it carefully towards the tree's surface.

Jack steps up with murmurs of comfort for Giselle, his hand lightly gripping the cheek-piece of her bridle. He maintains that posture as best he can through the narrow way. He is attentive to her propensity to nip when upset, but keeps close as he can to avoid feeling that she might shoulder him over an invisible drop.

At a halt, he shakes out Peggy's scarf and ties it around his neck again, seeking in vain for any sniff of her scent, but there's only blood and red earth.

When the tracker stops and gestures at the tree, Jack takes the opportunity to let his cramping arm dangle while he watches every move the blackfella makes.

The cicadas surround them in the hot spaces, chanting. Jack has become popular with those flies that followed them and Brigitte can see him wearing them in dark and sickly-glittering constellations across his back when they pause; Jack feels them probe about his neck for some wound, edge and settle and fly, restless. Occasionally there comes the close burr of one near his ear or an impassioned buzzing as two fight or fuck and fall away to bother the horse. Giselle gives a heavy huff. Murphy edges up to join them.

Ngarungadurung stands and reaches, and his arm vanishes almost to the elbow in the tree.
Skin, bone, smeared paint and the living blood of the limb vanish without disruption into a surface that looks equally solid. He stands, apparently unhurt. Then the shift of his muscles in the visible part of his arm suggests he has found something else within...

[[That's a SAN check, observers.
Ngarungadurung, you're down a Magic point, though hopefully that'll never really be a concern.]]

Brigitte had been busy with the flies that crowded around the group when she hazards a look over towards the native. She stands a gape and then comforts herself that it is some trick of the light here under the trees as she continues to watch intrigued as to what the man has found ?


Brigitte d'Anjou rolled 34 using 1d100.  SAN = 59%.



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This message was last edited by the player at 22:41, Tue 01 Dec 2020.

"Gawd..." breathes Jack, "That can't..." His mouth gapes open until a fly buzzes in and he chokes and spits.

Jack Duggan rolled 58 for SAN check 36.

Murphy gestures flat-handed for quiet, trying not to look at the proof that either the tree or the Aboriginal man wasn't real, or physicality had become as uncertain as Time. "Let him concentrate," he murmurs, though he keeps half his attention on Jack to be sure he doesn't choke.

Once hacked up and spat out, the sodden fly struggles dumbly on Jack's palm, not understanding what has come to it. A couple of its fellows land on his wrist and thumb. The cicadas screech.


[[Jack understands that the fly is regretting its life choices, though that's probably unrelated to the loss of 1 SAN point.]]

Sweat beads Ngarungadurung's brow as he withdraws his arm with equal care, slowly, along the same line of transit. He watches it rematerialize, inch by inch, until his hand emerges, grasping... something. He looks down at the object in his palm.

It's a collection of sticks, carefully tied together into a shape not quite a pyramid nor a tree. Some of the cordage swinging loose below it is weighted by a large square bone - no, tooth - he doesn't recognise wrapped in a stained strip of cloth, its form flatter and more massive than a kangaroo's.

Looking up, he sees what the rest have already noticed - the tree has changed without transition and is as instinct says it always was, a fork that Ngarungadurung just reached into filled with the crazed precision of a stick-cradle for the marker he has just removed. The bark around this structure is marked with dark smearings:

                                   

Above these marks (and a few others the Europeans cannot parse, that bring an ache in the temples to stare at overlong) is a focusing of witchcraft so simple it is almost comical: a simple eye sketched in blood and slashed through. This shall not be seen. A crude device, yet linked to enough raw mind-affecting power to be effective.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:12, Wed 02 Dec 2020.

Amazed, Jack stops just short of applauding as he would a conjuror's trick at the fair.

"How can a feller 'ascend beneath'? Or have I got me words twisted-like?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:07, Sat 05 Dec 2020.

"Seems Bowen was goin on about angels n' "stars beneath the earth" from what I heard was written where he was witchin'," Murphy says, unable to stop staring now though he winces at a slight shifting of his mount. "Sounds like he's lost all sense of up or down...or holy."

"Then what is to be done to find this man and any of his potential victims ?" Brigitte was getting uneasy at the time they had stayed in one place and was eager to move off.


-

Ngarungadurung turns the talisman over in his hand and examines it from all angles. [Language unknown: "Pl thth rat p ngnc pro peli. Et m ngder ort armein m wi eston thevorpro ofwe."

"Redcoat ouitec k men."

"Urtili ameyin'astter llsa notwhiith nicon, any ectiv larpo, fo en Bowenfella."] The tracker points in a direction running deeper into the bush.

Despite the recent flush of fever and exhertion Murphy goes almost white at the tracker's words, making the darker spots of his speckled skin stand out like lichened bark. He can clearly feel the change himself, for he rubs at the bridge of his nose and visibly tries to arrange his thoughts faster.

"He says we can use these markers against the mazing," he translates to the others. "-but he thinks Bowen's killed Wilkins an' the others've gone after - I can only think he's made off wit' the baby."

Murphy looks in the direction pointed, then back to Ngarungadurung, tense as a bowstring and ready to be off with a moment's direction.

"Aye, up there," Jack points the way, though he doesn't understand how he knows, "Bowen wants th' babe fer some awful purpose. I'm with ye, Garungdun."

Murphy frowns at Jack's uphill pointing, decidedly at an angle to Ngarungadurung's gesture, but seems to trust the instinct behind it, or at least that others are seeing more than he. He looks up there as though it'll show him anything, the cicadas' chant scraping urgent seconds into the past. "...a'right, you two afoot go up there and set ambush in case I can't catch him headin' straight after. Madame, d'ye think y'can keep up wit' me if it's hard ridin?"

He looks to Ngarungadurung. [Language unknown: "N es, ho o stiiouant. A nc it Acliun, echat stipa wasratwil e n, ne at be, n e, liher n U ma tarea fiethi. Nd one pro ent mi it ut u ceritoosle, befi Bowenfella evul not, p ntort fi thathuess. Men alitti ess? U he?" ]he asks.

Ngarungadurung hands the small bundle of twigs up to the wounded rider. [Language unknown: "Sihis wilameine u atntpr nomoch ameiounte ng. Il hias heac tait lo sanat conoercom sanareestart. Ek urera ssroof asei."]

"Just a minute please, what if the note is about us, that he expected us to come. It was written sometime ago perhaps he is expecting us .... He seems to be delaying us for a reason as if he needs us at a specific time and place.... It's the same thing with keeping hostages, why would he do that considering the trouble it would cause ?"



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The furrow between Murphy's brows becomes more pronounced. "Then we'd better catch him b'fore he gets us there - or if he gets us there, make sure he can do us no harm," he concludes as best he can, freckled fingers curling around the offered sticks almost absently.

"If that's what it is then we're in the trap now an' we'll not get out by tryin t'retreat," he adds, swallowing on dehydration and another wince, or perhaps a shudder for what he holds, horse tooth and all. "Are you t'go wit' me, or up there for if I'm not fast an' tracker enough?"

He nods to Ngarungadurung. [Language unknown: "An tohe, e hass,"] he says, though he seems deeply troubled.

"Sure, I'll go with Garungdun, as best I'm able. God bless th' both o' ye an' keep ye safe. Am' us too, aye."

He gives Murphy a half-salute and Brigitte a bow of his head. Turning to the tracker, he smiles and nods to show willing.

In reply to Charles Murphy (msg # 104):

"I can keep up with you well enough, lead on>" She follows Murphy, but giving his horse enough space should something happen.



-

Murphy nods in response and leads off, even Giselle's pale haunches vanishing into dense and undistinguished foliage moments after. The leaves sway back to their normal pattern and the cicadas screech to each other in the vacated space as though they never were.