Nova Peak silberkette

backdated to sept 6th, whenever u like <3

whenever he had been alone, mahler had taken the small bit of his regained strength and traversed the foothills. he could not remain as he was forever. not in the small cavern and its joyless impediments. and neither could he be far removed from the eyes of his children; three in sagtannet, one lost to the endless forests of the sunspire.
grief gripped him anew; mahler set his jaw harshly and forced himself into the waterlogged sedges growing newly upward. the ground remained churned and muddy despite the absence of a constant downpour, and though his claws bit firmly into the muck, the man slammed downward with a garbled swear. pain churned through his torn flesh; he felt its lancing slash and grunted, not daring to gather himself up until the worst had passed.
once upon his feet again, mahler stared balefully along the narrow path again. this peak, far less dangerous and dizzying — and still the eisen had failed at its base. mud clinging in smears to his graphite figure, he swallowed the nausea of anguish and began to force himself in an ascent once more.
@Phaedra. she had never come back to herself; mahler felt the strain in his gnarled lacework of scars. and perhaps she never would. forever he would treasure the day that they had watched the moose, and she had spoken in their language again. grief forced a tremble into his jawline. he sought purchase in the next struggling step, refusing to pause or or to breathe until the cavern and foothills were left below. but for now he could go no further; the man felt the bite of anger rise in a great conflagration, until an echoing growl of frustration vibrated velveteen and raw from the toothscored column of his throat.
all of it, blazing with a wildfire frustration along his hipbones; all of it, swallowed and etched into his marrow, and culminated now in the very weakness of his figure.

aaaa fak i only check my TL so i did not see this omfg i am das schlechteste ;~;

a fern stirred under a trembly breath as duskentide eyes watched her father labouriously negotiate with the terrain. his body was shorn, and his muscles wizened: the strength of him didn't appear to weather the long weeks of convalescence very well.

whisper-steps led phaedra alongside him from the slope above, in the cover of trees. her heart pounded, its beat a turbulent force like a storm, with her heart as a dreadnought placed within her slim breast, braced for wave after great wave against a minuscule dike.

their last meet prior to the events that led to his present ordeal had fashioned some anastylosis of their former bond, but weeks of being dismissed from his company had again cast her lower and lower until she was crushed altogether into the earth by the gravity of misunderstood rejection.

no amount of gilded-tongue charmed her through her mother's garrison; she was insulated from seeing her father's fresh traumas with uncompromising sentry detail, and it left her with lingering resentment. 

white ears tipped upwards at his fitful grunts, eyes widening any time his progress was thwarted by the unsurety of his footing. she was loath to encourage him, embittered still, but seeing her father struggle left her feeling troubled, with a sense of empathy that she couldn't shake.

she watched mahler in silence and kept pace from above even when he lost ground and, to that end, some of his progress as well. then he stopped, and phaedra thought he may never move from that spot ever again. 

thus so, as the irritated growl disenthralled from his ruined throat, the girl hesitated a moment before making herself visible to him (should his eyes intuit her presence). no effort at speech was made— there was nothing she could say to this father of hers that would hearten him now, anyway.

as she looked impassively upon his wounds, the purse of salves caintigern had given her was recalled to mind, though she was unsure how well it had kept in the the rain. after her mother's final refusal to let phaedra see her father in his palliative den, the girl hid the pack in the dry hollow of a bole, but who knew if that tree had made it through the storms. she feared whatever the purse contained was damaged beyond usefulness, but if not ...

süßer unsinn! <3

whilst his edelweiss looked him over, mahler studied the land above her pale head. he did not know what to say to his daughter, her miel-swatched stare finally leveling after so long a time.
mahler gathered up the potterycraft shards of any excuses, pain moving in a pulsating tier along his ravaged body.
phaedra continued to say nothing; a swallow bobbed the column of his throat, and mahler pushed aside his sense of wearying weakness.
"there vill come a day vhen you too, must fight for vhat you hold dear." he had gone immediately to battle not only for sagtannet, but each of them individually.
perhaps most of all for phaedra, whom mahler could not conceive of affecting so badly once more.
nothing else to say then, except for the truth — the shadowpriest knew quite intrinsically that he could offer no more than that. a sigh; lips thinning, tightening as he thought of the woman and her compatriots tearing at him.
a dismal tale, if not intriguing in the details. he still wondered who she had been, and why she had returned twice to those accursed cliffsides.
"vould you like to hear about it?" the gargoyle grunted, forcing himself another step as gaze caught and narrowed at the edges, pain fracturing the stalwart lilac of his expression a last time.