T - Gobbo, Satra, Bee, Lauryn

[Nathalia]

Amherst had been standing guard over a client in the Outer Bazaar as the man purchased dubious medicines.
A very sudden rush of mist and fog had engulfed them just as paniced screams reached their ears.
Byt the time the valliant Bird had managed to find his way back out of the cnfusing substance...
His client had vanished, without a trace.
However, he was able to spot Victor, looking quite the worse for wear, lying on his side in the middle of the now deserted street.
Poor Victor had just been purchasing some paint thinner for his blobby little friend, who seems to enjoy swimming in the stuff, when an odd smell had stolen over him, and he'd woken up here, his shoulder aching and his tail painful to move.

Tripsei, poor thing that she is, had been attempting to prove some willful disobedience to another Doe in her Warren. The other had not believed she could properly mime a Card, much less wander out and make a purchase for herself.
Perhaps she ought to have allowed her pride to take a fall, seeing as her entire body is no bloated and painful and her back feels like it's been stamped on.
At least her disguise held up, right?

The three are surrounded on all sides by a thick and painfully chilly mist on all sides. Visible around them are an old art shoppe, the one Victor had been trying to reach, and an abandoned warehouse...
Maybe there's help inside one of them?

[Old Gobbo]

Amherst choked and had his legs move faster, but there seemed to be no end to this damned unnatural fog. He buffeted his right wing wildly, hoping to move some of it, but it seemed to no avail. He went to buffet with both, but stopped himself. The halberd in his left wing might clip someone.

Amherst twirled around again, trying to get some bearing. Damn it all, he thought. What in the blazes is going on? Then, came the screams. The horrible screams. What is his client? What was happening?

The mist and fog finally cleared and Amherst looked all around him. His client was gone. For a moment, Amherst began to dash off to find them, but he caught himself. The card had clearly been purchasing goods of a dubious, possibly illegit nature. And his father's words echoed in Amherst's mind. A Guardian chooses his charge, not the other way around. Let the client find his own way home, there were others to take care of.

And, indeed there was. Two cards lay in the deserted street, but one was far worse off than the other. The feline card lay on its side, some sort of gash across his body. He rushed forward and knelt before the card. "Don't move. We don't want you to hurt yourself any more than you already are. What happened?"

[Satra]

Victor woke suddenly but painfully. He had immediate flashbacks of the last time this happened and a wave of panic swept over him. He yowled in a most cat-like manner in surprise to see someone standing over him suddenly. He tried to stand, but collapsed from the sudden pain in his shoulder. He looked up at the other Card, then promptly looked a little embarrassed. He adjusted his glasses and looked up at his new companion sheepishly. So much for not moving.

"I, uh... sorry. Just a little jumpy after waking up apparently beaten up in the middle of the street..." Well, at least he wasn't mugged this time, that was a plus! He would have been sad to have lost his spiffy green vest or his shopping money... or his messenger bag that contained a jar that kept said little pet he was buying the paint thinner for. (Victor couldn't help it! He didn't want to leave him home unattended! He felt bad for having to keep him in the jar when he took him outside, though. But there was a little corner he could peek out of and see the outside!)

"I don't know what happened. I was just going about my day when... when the fog just rolled in. Just... just like that day..." Oh please don't let there be another realmicide.

[Bee]

Tripsei floated like a soap bubble on the edges of consciousness, bumping here and there into reality, the filmy circle of her being dimpling and expanding. The soft daze of nothingness was short-lived, however--her bubble popped, leaving her face-first in the misty cobblestones. She felt so terrible everywhere that she thought she might have been popped for real, nothing left but a frothing mass of aching, but she saw her paws in front of her and the fluff of her fur and the weight of her eyelids.

She picked herself up. She was still kitted out in her disguise, her horns poking out of the silky scarf she had wrapped around her head and neck to hide her ears and lack of Ranksuit. She thought she might easily pass for some mouse-goat combination. It had worked. She had even bought a pretty flower, but it was gone now...

A short distance away from her were two Cards, talking about the mist. A Lowlander! They always did have such pretty swirls, like little vines and buds sprouting miraculously from dusty soil. How could anyone not treasure them?

I am a mouse-goat, she thought. I am a very good Card. They will be my friends and they will help me.

"Like what day?" she asked, bemusedly.

[Old Gobbo]

Amherst was shocked. The card didn't seem to be in much pain. Was the shock that great? Had the card gone paralyzed? And then Amherst truly saw.

The wounds did not bleed and, in fact, seemed to have healthy skin over them, although in a weird and definitively non-Lowlands coloring. The card had not been grievously wounded.

Amherst stood up and hefted his halberd onto his shoulder. "No need to apologize. Soft tissue injuries, it looks like, nothing too bad." He held out a wing to help the card up, while he looked over at the other card.

How strange. At first look, he thought it was a ferret, but no, possibly a feline as well? And the horns. Maybe the card had some deer or goat in her as well? "What do you mean, 'what day'? The day of mists. The day of screams. The day a Realm was almost killed to a man. The day the dead walked. The Day of Woe."

[Nathalia]

A soft sound...thundering, perhaps? Began to slowly ring in the distance...getting closer with every second.
It almost sounded as though it were...circling the small group.
Amherst can hear what sounds like dry rustling in the mist...odd though, there wouldn't be any leaves on the ground this far into the city...so what's causing the noise?

[Old Gobbo]

Amherst did not like the sound of that, whatever it was. A thundering could be many things: equine or deer cards, cavalry, a series of carts being pulled, or maybe it was the mists playing tricks again like during the Day of Woe.

Amherst looked around him. With the mists on all sides and the thundering in all directions, it was hard to find a good defensive position should he need it. If the Day of Woe taught him anything, his first choice of refuge would not be an abandoned warehouse. That shop was promising, and maybe there were still patrons inside, though he hadn't heard any.

Amherst began backing himself towards the old art shop, keeping his eyes on the mists at all times. "Now, sir, lady," he said announcing to the two cards he had just met. "I know you neither know me nor have reason to trust me at this juncture, but I am Amherst, last of the Order of the Guardians. Until we figure out what's going on, might I suggest we take refuge in this shop here?"

[Bee]

Tripsei really had magnificently little idea what this bird was talking about. Did all Cards talk such nonsense all the time? If so, she suspected she might have been living with the wrong species. Clearly these fine people were more to her vision of reality. She tried to hop backwards in her brainspace to some Day of Woe, but nothing was forthcoming.

She remembered some time ago becoming very ill and then moving, but she had been making sandcastles out of stardust the entire time, bouncing around in a vast universe of delirium, and what had been happening on the true ground was something of a blur. She was not a sort of person to hold onto any idea of woe or Woe for very long. Unhappy things just sort of looked around, declared her mind not to be to their tastes, and wandered right back out.

Actually, upon reflection, that's what most thoughts did when encountering her mind.

She liked this Amherst bird, though, he was very bombastic. He had a good energy.

"I will follow you, Amguardian," she said, putting on her most serious voice. He seemed even more authoritative than a Jack, just shorter and not upright. Birdjack? Jackbird. Yes, this was correct. "Shelter us from this mist."

[Satra]

Victor gave a shy smile back. What a nice Bird (very attractive, too... Victor was starting to think he had the thing for teal and cerulean-coated Cards). How fortunate he was to wake up to this nice guy and not, say, someone who wanted to eradicate the last few remaining Lowlanders. He rolled his shoulder uncomfortably and his tail twitched from the pain.

"My shoulder and tail, too. It's not too bad, though. I can still move." Then he went on... My he was certainly... verbose. Still, he seemed a good ally to stick next to. And a young woman! ...what was with all these attractive Cards? Victor felt relief when the Benyan made no hint of any ill will toward the Selkie mix. Good. The last thing they needed was unfortunate social habits to hinder their survival chances at this time.

"Yeah, that's what I meant. I was awake for that one..."

"I know you neither know me nor have reason to trust me at this juncture, but I am Amherst, last of the Order of the Guardians. Until we figure out what's going on, might I suggest we take refuge in this shop here?"

"I have no issue with that. Really, I do have reason to trust you. We're the only ones around... Something's going on and we most likely need each other. My name is Victor. I don't really have any sort of title as prestigious as yours, but I have some decent defensive magic," he offered, "Lead the way."

[Nathalia]

The shoppe smells thickly of wood, paints, and oils.
AT least it's filled with curios.
As they enter, the mist closes behind them, leaving them with the odd sensation that their shoppe is closed off from the rest of the world, floating in a void.
An eerie sensation fills the air, like that which comes before a storm.
Might do well to search the shoppe, maybe there are more people, maybe somehting of use...