Nasij

Nasij
Reconnaissance

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Willowmane Deerling Familiar These pint-sized deer are the favored prey of Veilspun dragons. 0 Enchanted Candle Trinkets Just the sort of thing you wouldn't want to see floating on its own at the end of a dark hallway. 47

What's that, in the dark? Only Nasij, a little buzzing swirl of shadow, seeing who lurks in the night. Besides zimself, of course.

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[1 / 3564 unexalted, 1 / 9328 total lol]

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The grey-spotted veilspun laughed raucously. "I don't think that's how you're meant to kill them," ze said, voice a slithering hiss.

Juchu surfaced from beneath the mud, strangling a podid. "Well--YOU try it, then!" The podid thrashed admirably.

Nasij gasped. "Me? I am just a poor novice! I am here only to observe!"

"Hello, you two! How's it coming?" Tareya asked, coming down for a landing in a gap between the gnarled trees.

"Terribly! I have killed nothing at all!" said Nasij, taking off from zis perch atop a fallen log and buzzing around Juchu and the podid, which were still at each other's throats.

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Tareya. "Juchu?"

Juchu surfaced in a wave of mud. "I can't kill this podid," he admitted. "I think they're getting buffer or something."

Tareya took a running leap and punted the podid into a tree. "Naw," she said. "You just need to work on your technique. Remember, speed is key. Always get the first blow, so you can have the second and the third. And--?"

"Don't hesitate to cut your losses and move on," Juchu sighed, watching the podid frantically dive away.

Nasij laughed again. "How dismal!" ze cackled. "I would simply pin them in place with my superior willpower!"

"Feel free to demonstrate at any time," said Tareya acerbically.

"Oho, perhaps I will!" Nasij said, flapping up and landing on Tareya's antlers. Ze peered down at her face, upside-down, mane hanging down around them.

She made eye contact for a moment, then surveyed the surrounding area. "Let's see if we can't find a few cerdae. Bryferth's got a line on a deal with a petting zoo."

Juchu sighed, and hauled himself up out of the mud pool. The setting sun gleamed off the clean patches of his translucent wings. "Right. How hard can it be?"

Nasij hummed to zimself a little. The fireflies were coming out, pinpoints of light fading in and out all around the craggy trees. Juchu conjured a tricklight of swirling yellow flame, and held it aloft.

The pair forged ahead, wading through knee- or belly-high mud, respectively. Nasij floated behind them, darting to and fro, crickets chirping all around.

Ze paused for a moment, gauging their position.

Then: "Hello?" ze said softly. "Are you lost?" The words echoed more than they had any right to.

"Am I lost?" Tareya repeated, Juchu murmuring along.

"Am I lost..." she said to herself, puzzled. The pair stopped their sloshing about.

"Am I? Am I?" said Juchu, glancing about worriedly. He looked up at Tareya. "I think we're lost."

Nasij buzzed ahead and landed on the upraised branch of a fallen tree. Then ze broke the illusion. "You're lost! HA!" Ze danced about, sending zis mane swirling. "How sad! You lost your way!"

Both got the faintly perplexed look of the recently bewitched. Tareya kept looking at the ground, then back at the track of disturbed mud they'd made, and Juchu looked back and forth between Nasij and Tareya.

"Got you! Foxed you right out of your skins! All by myself I did!" Nasij trotted in a little circle on the branch.

Finally, Tareya got enough of a handle on herself to say, "And if you do it to an enemy, then we'll see about its usefulness."

"And if you do it to us again, I'll squash you!" roared Juchu. He made as if to lunge at Nasij, then checked himself, settling for sending a great spout of flame into the now-truly dark sky.

"Now, now," Nasij said, preening. "What's a little bewilderment among friends?"

"The cost of today's quotas," said Tareya, answering his rhetorical question. "Find us some cerdae and I won't mention this incident to Glwysed."

Sighing, Nasij took to the air. Ze shouldn't've done it, ze knew. But drawing the veil over the eyes of overconfident folk was such good fun. And it had only taken a few moments. Ze'd have the cerdae and zis little fun, too.

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