Out of Character:
Foul language ahoy, but only heavy for the first post. If any openings arise for someone to join in (assuming anyone would even want to), I'll toss up a post in the recruiting forum.
Rowan McCloud is, by most standards, an egomaniac.
Which is not to say he lacked the qualities of a Good Guy. He wasn't the sort of person who went out kicking puppies, taking candy from children, mugging little old ladies and tying attractive young women to train tracks while twirling his handlebar mustache. Point in fact, Rowan didn't even have a handlebar mustache.
What he had was ego. You can dress it up and call it pride, attach all sorts of noble little bits and pieces to it, but at the end of the day it's still just that: Ego. Self-importance. A motivating factor that makes men do things they otherwise would not.
A little over ten hours ago, Rowan's ego was bruised. To compound matters, the monks who'd judged him defeated had gone one step further and handed him a sort of magical recorder; a piece of paper that simply replayed the fight over and over again. It was set to expire come the end of the week, because in a wise old man's words, Those who do not pay attention to the lessons of their defeats quickly, will never pay attention to them at all.
Skip around a little bit now. Distance from the Pagoda; over to one of the hundred-odd inns that served as home-away-from-home for the thousands of men and women who passed through the city of Scara Brae every single day and night. Rowan's particular room was shoddy at best, which was just fine since he wasn't intent on staying in it for very long. There was a bed. There was a fireplace. That was it.
And in this bastion of luxury, Rowan sat and watched the fight replaying over and over again, always followed by the same short, blunt letter from the monks who presided over the fight. He focused on it; obsessed over it to an unhealthy degree. Every single detail went burning into his mind like hellfire. For all the time he spent staring, Rowan hardly ever blinked. His expression rarely changed, but for a twitch here or a squint there.
Look at him, he kept thinking, over and over. Look at him.
He studied the man-dragon, Jame Whitizard. Studied his movements. His eyes looked completely glazed, as if he was so far off in Nevernever Land that the man hadn't even been paying attention to the fight. When he spoke, his voice was distant -- mired in what Rowan took to be self-absorbtion. It was like he wasn't talking to Rowan; he was talking to someone else. When he moved, he seemed to do so in complete denial of the terrain around them; no concern for the bodies except to use them as weapons, and no concern for how his own wings -- huge things they were -- effected him.
He was awkward and selfish and completely undisciplined.
He was pathetic.
He was the winner.
"What the fuck?" Rowan finally muttered to himself. Admittedly, he'd said this same thing at the end of every repeat; always at some point right between I yield and the letter from the monks. "Were they even watching this guy?" And just like all the times before, he followed the second question by biting into his thumb. Not for the first time, he drew blood.
Your behaviour was unbecoming of a challenger, the letter read. Your words were harsh and unfitting. Your actions reflected this.
There was literally nothing else to it...
...and after ten hours of mulling it over in his head, around nine and a half of which were actually spent watching and reading, Rowan simply couldn't bear it anymore. He ripped the paper to shreds, spilling magic like rainbow-colored ink all over his bloodstained pants. When there was nothing left that was big enough to rip apart, he threw it all into the fire. When that didn't do him any good, he stood up, whipped around and kicked the bed.
The front-left foot ended up embedded in the ceiling. The bed slapped back down and sat lopsided for the rest of the night.
In the meantime, Rowan simply kept circling the same point in the room. It bears mention that, in all the ten hours and despite the courtesy offered by the monks, he had no bathed or changed clothes. Which explains the shoddy room, since few places in Scara Brae are going to take someone who comes in looking borderline psychotic while covered in blood and bruises.
"How?" Rowan asked himself, over and over again. Every single time, he just couldn't find an answer for it. "I can take losing on my own merits," he eventually told himself, "I can stand that...but he wasn't even fighting." At this point, his arms were up. He was half-shouting to himself from Common to Akashiman and back again. "For fuck's sake! Did he bribe the monks? Can you even bribe monks? It's a fucking conspiracy, has to be."
He stopped. Smashed hand into fist and practically frothed as he spoke, "You go into a fight to win."
...and maybe, in another time and place, and if Rowan was somebody else all together, he would've had some kind of epiphany right here. He would've gotten over the loss that someone else decided he deserved. Hell, maybe he would've thought about getting Whitizard a drink and trying to bribe war-stories out of him.
Here and how though, someone in the next room finally got tired of Rowan's melodrama and started bashing on the walls. "Keep it down, asshole!" shouted a man's voice.
"FUCK OFF!" Rowan replied, in Akashiman.
Silence followed.
Then a muffled, "Thank you."
This city is insane, Rowan concluded not two seconds later.
...and really, that has to say something when it's coming from the mind of a man completely covered in dried blood.
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