Taalia Giovanni


Taalia ascended the ghostly stairs with a cat in one arm and a hand on the pommel of her sword. Milo's relaxed mood does much to set the former slave at ease for she believed the animals had a way about them, a perception, a sense that detected the harms in the world before humans could discern them. Flighty and timid creatures who were only roused to fight when it was against a rival for territory, the feline mind avoided conflict and danger as much as it could, so that fact that her white-and-orange furball rested peacefully in her arm went far to draw Taalia into a sense of trust.

Not that she could really trust those stairscases, however. Her engineering-based mind boggled at the lack of visible substance, the mathematics at the back of her head, pondered over in Queekish, refused to accept the impossibility within the natural world that was clearly being invaded by the supernatural. Nevertheless, Taalia ascended, the rampart coming to surround her as she could peer through the decayed crenelles into the snow-blanketed Bretonnian countryside below. She was even able to spot the white-brown sheets of their tent through the branches, the small light within burning with a gentle warmth that the girl could picture Briant and Belle huddled about. It made her smile.

But, she was not alone up here.

You share this vista with a single sentinel; a ghost of a mountain of a man who must be seven feet tall. Cool, stoic stillness fills his features as he gazes out over the river and beyond. The ancient Bretonnian, or perhaps Bretonni, seems to take no notice of you for a minute or so before finally his ghostly gaze sweeps your person. He strikes you as sad; a little tired, even. Without explaining himself, he unlimbers a scabbarded blade with its shoulder strap from his person, and offers it to you. Or... the ghost of it, anyway; the scabbard and simple hilt of the longblade shimmering like hazy turquoise glass.

It took a lot to scare Taalia these days, and this was no exception. After her upbringing in the pits where she bore witness to mortal horrors of flesh and bone, to the lonely manor on the mountain pass between Tilea and Bretonnian and the forlorn spirit that used to reside there, ghosts and specters no longer frightened her. But in this case, she believed it didn't want to. There was something to the figure's gait, his resigned mien that offered no hostility or danger to the girl, his presence only a reminder that there was something more than the physical world around them, a spirit, a soul that lived on once the bodily functions had ceased.

Is that what this apparition wanted? When the specter in the lonely estate had born witness to the fate of his family, his grip upon the material world had slipped and it had passed on to whatever fate awaited them all in the next life. There had been an anchor, a physical deposit that tethered them to this world and kept them locked within like some type of prison from which they went mad trying to escape. Was that the intent of this spirit? Was that the purpose of its offering?

Remembering the manners imparted upon her by the nobles of Bretonnia, Taalia put Milo down and then curtsied in respect, before slightly bowing her hand and holding both hands aloft, palms facing upwards, to receive what was offered.