He had certainly chosen an interesting time to return home. Things were about to get interesting real quick, and the anticipation to start stuff with Armada was making him itch. He grinned as he sauntered towards the Orchard, though almost as soon as he arrived, he felt something was...off. Or different? He usually wasn't one to hesitate at all, but something definitely felt different. The evening seemed darker than normal, but he attributed that to it being Winter. That was normal, wasn't it?

He could feel the cold air against his skin more than usual, and as he stood there, the hairs on the back of his neck started to rise. He shivered, feeling a little uneasy, and as he took a few steps forward, he swore he thought he saw a shadow of movement between the trees. Everything was dead quiet. As far as he could tell, there wasn't anyone else around, and if there was, he couldn't hear or smell them. What the hell was going? Was he imagining things?

"Speech"

All the winters before, he couldn't remember being this dark this long. Now sure, he knew that he was missing a large chunk of his memory, but he didn't remember the night lasting this long before. Was it getting dark earlier or was the sun rising later? He hadn't really paid much mind, really, but as he left the Armada's borders and traveled west for no reason other than to walk he immediately noticed strange things. Blue fireflies, to start. That was definitely not here, if anywhere, before. Fireflies always looked like fire, these... did not. Skyflies maybe?? Were those a thing? They didn't really look like the daytime sky either, so he wasn't sure.

They seemed harmless though and so Magnus followed them. He didn't know where they were going, but they were moving at a slow enough pace that he could keep up. He followed them for a while too, until he crossed over the river on the other side of Ashen and even farther, until he was certain he would be crossing into some other packs land at some point. It wasn't until he saw another wolf that he stopped. The fireflies seemed to dissipate then, leaving only him to watch the other wolf who seemed like they'd just seen a ghost. Were ghost's even real?

Magnus approached cautiously, keeping some paces back when he stopped in case they hadn't heard his approach somehow. Being three legged didn't make for much of a sneaky approach, but who knows what that wolf saw. He let out a quiet snort, trying to get the others attention without startling them more than they had already been.

He remained rooted in place. Waiting to see if what he'd seen (or what he thought he saw) was real or just a figment of his imagination. He practically held his breath, waiting for something to happen or for something to appear, but nothing did. That is until he heard a faint sound nearby like someone was walking but it was uneven. And shortly after, a soft snort caused him to search out the source. It was another wolf, a man that looked worse for wear. Had that been him he had just seen through the trees? No...he would've noticed. Besides, the stranger would've had to make a huge circle to get where he was if he had been ahead of him...what he had seen was something else.

"Okay, that definitely wasn't you. Did you see that? Or am I high?" He definitely wasn't high, so that was a rhetorical question. He glanced at the guy and then back to the trees. He had half a mind to shrug it off and keep moving, but...he had to admit, he was very visibly hesitant. "Was probably just a squirrel or something," He muttered before turning his attention to the other guy. "So uh, fancy going for a walk there? Looking for some food, looks like you could use some anyway but everything seems to be, er...real quiet around here."

"Speech"

The other noticed him quickly and said exactly what he had been thinking. So the man had seen something, but even they weren’t sure what it seemed. Magnus didn’t understand what he meant when he asked if he himself was high, so he ignored it and glanced off in the direction of where he had previously been looking. His glance ended, shifting back to the man, but he did a double take. The fireflies were hovering in the area that the man had just been looking off to, as if telling him to follow. It sent an odd chill down his spine, forcing him to peel his eyes away from the ominous fireflies and back to the man finally to speak.

“I followed those fireflies and they led me here... They disappeared, and now they’re where you were looking off to.” Magnus spoke, his voice quiet yet hoarse from lack of use lately. The man mentioned he could use some food, yet he couldn’t help but agree. He was a bit hungry, but the eerie silence, extended darkness, and overall weird happenings made him suspicious about eating anything at the moment. “I don’t think eating anything we find here is a good idea, but I do want to follow the fireflies some more.” His purple gaze was lost back into the fireflies as they hovered around the clearing ahead of them.

"Speech!"

TABLE & CODE © SKELLE 2021

The three-legged man said he had been following some fireflies, and that they had disappeared but now...now they had appeared right in the spot where he swore he had seen something. Okay, shit was getting a little too creepy for his liking. Like what the hell was even going on?? The guy also stated that perhaps eating anything around here was likely a bad idea, and now that he thought about it, the stumpy-legged man was right. After seeing glowing mice in the barn back home, and now weird shadows and oddly colored fireflies, he wasn't so sure he even really wanted to be around in this neck of the woods.

"I dunno..you think following them would be a good idea?" He didn't know this guy, nor did he know what the fuck was going on. For all he knew, it could be a trap or something...and he wasn't particularly keen on finding out himself. "Okay y'know what, how about...you go first, and I'll follow. At a short distance...in fact, I'll probably just go around the tree, cuz I dunno, those fireflies look a little sketch. Not sure that I trust 'em. Sound good? Okay." Maybe it was his nerves, but he was feeling anxious. He didn't quite wait for the man to say anything before he started forward, keeping his senses peeled for anything unusual as he slowly followed the flickering fireflies that just seemed to go further the closer he tried to get.

Ares

You hear a voice that feels familiar to you, calling from far in the distance. You also find 2 mushrooms. Maybe these are worth keeping…