Damaged Dragons (closed to Storm Veritas)

[Erirag the Poet]

She’d risen from death, and this was the greeting she got? Before her, the Drakari was tapping long claws on his bicep as he blocked her path, arms crossed and a firm scowl on his face. They were two ugly mammoths, staring each other down. They both had bodies seemingly cobbled together of barrels, complexions slightly green and while Erirag’s was flecked with tiny scars that covered her like freckles, his shone with thin iridescent scales. It was hard to tell which was more brute.

“Gonna move now,” the orc bard growled, one fist scratching at her neck as she sneered.

“No,” the draconic guard answered, sniffing. “Not til ye tell me where it is yer goin’.”

Immediately she bristled. She may be a bard, but she was more orc than that. Where she went, she didn’t need names. Especially ones that were nigh impossible for her to wrap her tusked lips around, the syllables bumbling on her tongue.

“FAR-AR” she stuttered, guttural and angry. The Drakari guard raised a brow and stared her down with dark eyes that were overflowing with amusement.

“Never heard o’ it,” he said. “Now get gone.”

There was a moment just before Erirag’s vision seemed to burst with red, before the high pitched ringing in her ears started, when she thought about walking away and trying again later to find passage to the rainforest she so desperately wanted to go. That moment came and went, passing like a spectre in a graveyard, just out of sight and lost within a moment.

Her poetic fist launched at his jaw, landing with a sharp crack as clear as any church bell that rang in Salvar.

[Storm Veritas]

For a man of refinement such as Storm Veritas, Dheathain was entirely uncomfortable. He had at last escaped the jungles and swamplands of the southern parts of the isle, and finally arrived at the port town of Talmaidh. If the jungles and swamps were miserable, the port city was…

It’s still goddamned miserable. Looking forward to putting this shithole in my past.

The port was actually beautiful, not that he could enjoy it. The stoned streets fed to a surprisingly well crafted dock center, where wooden frames fed out to a series of small trading ships. Creatures of all sorts came in and out of these ships. Many were men, all were bipedal, but several were a variety of… other… things.

Storm used the flat of his hand to wipe the salty air off his face as he sat, amusingly watching for his opportunity. Some fool would say too much, speak of a trade, and give him the “in” to serve as liaison or ambassador to Corone. The story would be false on its face, of course, but the experienced traveler knew that when they got to port, the captain would have no leverage to negotiate with the powerful wizard.

To his right, the docks screamed for mercy behind the feet of several giant masses of overfed beastly things. Two large, snakelike monsters stared down a sloppy looking orc-thing. Veritas couldn’t help his instinct to feel as though he was watching lunacy; it was like two question marks harassing an exclamation point.

Big miscellaneous sub-humans. Always the biggest, scariest, and most indispensible. Don’t see much of this madness back home.

They barked and snorted at each other as he watched with a manic amusement, rocking back and forth on a crate which squeaked and creaked beneath his weight. These were angry monster things, he decided, and would probably lead to a looping, lazy punch.

“whuhCRAAACK!”

Storm was almost precisely correct; the punch was thrown with a little more precision and thunder than he expected. Excitement! He hopped up and began to skip over, as others gathered around the scene. He wasn’t sure which one of these… things he would help, but turning the tides on the quarrel would certainly grant him a ticket on the next northbound schooner.

And here… we… go.

[Erirag the Poet]

Both of the Drakari responded, and Erirag somehow wasn’t prepared for that. Sure, she realized en she threw the fist that she was going to end up face to bruised face with the dragonling before her, but when a second pair of hands reached out to subdue her, she jumped. The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention as if the world had become electrified.

They scuffled, they grasped and pulled and punched with grunts and curses. In a fraction of a second, Erirag was fighting and then suddenly the world topped and her legs were swept out from under her. Her dress hissed, the grasses shaking as she was born to the ground. Planks were under her cheek, warmed by the sun and covered in the sharp grit carried over by boots coming off the cobbled streets of the port city.

“Okurt!” she grunted, admonishing them. The drakelings and their lack of manners wouldn’t do, not at all. Why was it the closer she got to civilization, the less etiquette creatures of the realm practiced? Rolling to the side and letting her knee send one of the massive guards flying, she rose before the next. Their grins mirrored each other, and as they shifted as one before striking in a grapple, their arms interlocked and their foreheads smashed together.

“Art Durb!” Erirag roared. “Rule worth weight of gold – When orc come, move!” The Drakari barked a laugh, and released her, ducking to the side. For a split second, Erirag felt triumphant, until she whirled around to see the second come upon her, a crate in his arms. Muscles bulged as he hefted it, and in a moment a ton of wood was flying at her face. It cracked and shattered, planks giving way as it hit her. Born to the ground, amidst splinters and a roar of the few who’d stopped to watched, the world went tipsy.

She couldn’t focus, a hazy world shifting and lunging in front of her. As she sighed and laid back, staring blankly for a moment at the Drakari, she saw something behind them. Something moving with spark and shine.

“Mot-shara….” She mumbled. The Weather Man.

[Storm Veritas]

It was hard to not be at least a little amused by the scene. It was the female orc who had apparently started the fight; he could tell she was female strictly by the parted bosom that alluded to a trickle of maternal capability. She popped the first crocodile-faced fellow in the face, rocketing his head to the side for a moment. She then was summarily subdued, released, and…

Nope. Not gonna work.

…blindsided by a third man with a giant crate of splintering wood. In his travels, the wizard had afforded himself a grand leniency when it came to moral code, however there was something about gratuitous violence towards women… or at least females, as the case would be here, that consistently left him unsettled. When they hit the she-orc last, he felt compelled to put an end to it all.

“Enough! This is over now, get back and clear out. Show’s over, snake-face. My hand-maiden has clearly had too much to drink; it’s water under the bridge, now, right?”

He wasn’t sure if they bought his absurd lie, and it was quickly clear that there were no takers for his fabrication. When the serpent headed sadists stood tall, they really crooned quite high, with long, thick necks of scaled muscle. Their collective eyes both widened and then quickly focused back on him, and the first one spoke, dumbfounded in the foolish audacity of the mere human.

“Foolish human…” the tallest one spoke, a lisping hiss sound evident from the forked tongue. “You speak to Drakari here, and we take no orders from petulant meat like yourself.” The three dragon men closed in on him, looming taller and more foreboding by the second. They seemed to blot the sun from the sky when they closed in on the thin man.

Exactly what the hell are you doing here? Would have been easy enough to back your way out. This “nobility” horseshit always causes more trouble than it’s worth. You should have run away.

If relative anonymity was effective at hiding his powers and magical strength, it also kept him from being able to intimidate enemies based on reputation. Similarly, a human of merely average size would never escape an insurrection like this. His hands were tied; he would have to kill one.

Killing was the easy part. Storm held his hand before him, standing in front of the gargantuan female orc as the Drakari stared at him incredulously. His hands slowly raised, palms outrstretched to show that he was unarmed. As the hand hit waist height, he pushed his right hand to the middle Drakari, instantaneously generating and blasting a crackle-snap explosion of brilliant blue-white energy. The tiny bolt hit the tallest Drakari in the chest and sending him hurtling backwards some ten feet. Dumbfounded, his two comrades stepped instinctively back to check their newly felled friend.

Without another word, Veritas squatted, pulled high the orc woman, and motioned to her as he began to run away. There were several options of places to find shelter; specifically he was imagining anywhere that was not precisely where he had recently killed a Drakari without any damned good reason.

[Erirag the Poet]

He was so little, she thought. He stood a full foot shorter than she did, and yet he downed one of the drakes as easily as it were anything. Erirag was impressed, through the ringing in her ears and the headache that had begun to set in just behind her skull. He was quick, too. The orc struggled to follow him through the streets. They dipped and moved, sliding between piles of boxes and barrels that had been in an alley, awaiting loading at the docks, underneath a ladder and through an empty shop. The Mot-shara took her over a fence, splintering and cracking under her knuckles as she hauled herself over, though he’d lithely cleared it.

Finally, they stopped. The stranger ducked under a red curtain of an open shop, and Erirag followed. She had to duck a little to keep from banging her head against the stone archway of the doorway, and the curtains tried to catch the small skulls in her hair. When she fought her way into the building, the coolness of the room immediately rushed to soothe her. Incense hung in the air, the scent earthy and warm. The room was dim, with no windows to allow the sun in, and only a few small skylights and candles lit. Where light filtered down from the openings in the ceiling, dust motes lazily danced.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The first thing she noticed were the women waving large feather fans in the corner. The breeze was soft, and probably why the room was so cool despite the humidity and heat outside. The room itself was open, with hallways radiating out from it that led to closed doors beyond. Everything was red and gold, in thick, plush textures. The rugs on the floor looked more luxurious than any other she’d seen, and the tassels on the ends of the weave were dipped in gilt.

Furniture was placed carefully in order to look casual, where reclining couches and round soft ottomans could fill the space but somehow never directly face each other. It gave the illusion of a public place of rest, but sitting on the couches would likely give at least some measure of privacy. The orc sniffed and walked over to the largest reclining couch in the room. It would have sat three men comfortably, maybe four. As she sat, the grass of her skirt crackling and hissing, she overtook the whole thing. Reclining back, the orc reached up and scratched at an itch under one of her exposed breasts.

After a moment, she saw the horrified look of a sparsely dressed maid standing against a wall. A bit of movement drew her gaze, and she found the room to be filled with women, all staring at her in slight wonder. There was more jewelry on most of them than clothes. While Erirag had little time for romance, she was no stranger to the wonders of flesh and she’d heard talk in the pubs and in the fields about places where humans went to seek them. The bard threw a glance towards the mage that had led her here.

“Mot-shara, what you do? Erirag not this kind orc.”

[Storm Veritas]

He knew that his decision to run her to the whorehouse was a dangerous one, but still it seemed as though the best of a string of terrible options available. After all, these places were ill-equipped to handle female threats like his gargantuan friend, and discretion was always the first order of business. The ability of Madame Bridgitte to handle a situation like this with discretion would be a genuine test.

His whispers came quickly and with anger, speaking tersely as he tugged on her arm.

“In case you haven’t figured it out, you’re wanted for assaulting the locals. And, having tried to keep your overgrown frog-looking ass from getting killed, I went and got myself on the local shit-list. Now relax, for the love of god, and keep it down!”

The women in the room were still shocked, looking on with some blend of confusion and disgust at the tandem which had arrived. Lonely, uncouth men were the sweet spot of the brothels upon Althanas, and couples would occasionally come by for some wilder fun. This was very different; none of the other species tended to wander in with frequency.

Okay, so how in the blue hell do we talk our way through this one!?

“Ladies, relax…” he began, unsure as to why the women would relax, trust him, or what yarn he could possibly spin. “My friend here is simply… security. You see, I’m new here to Dheathain, and male orcs are a little too temperamental to be trusted.”

It pained him to even attempt saying this with a straight face, but the quiet matron and raised eyebrows suggested the possibility that some seeds of this preposterous lie were taking root. Standing in front of the goliath, motioning back as he leaned on the pulpit which greeted guests, Storm continued with confidence and charm.

“She’s okay; I couldn’t leave her outside because, well… she’s somewhat memorable, and I’m sure you can understand I didn’t want to be recognized.”

There was a bit of rustling outside; nothing distinctive yet but certainly a possibility that unwelcome company would join them in the foyer of the home of ill-refute. None of the three fan-wielding harlots could be trusted with any type of secret, and it was unlikely the madam herself would be silenced without some effort.

Smiling with a relaxed façade to shield his abject terror, the slim magician “calmly” waited the response of the spokeswoman. When she gestured for him to choose a companion from the triumvirate of prostitutes, the decision seemed obvious. A beautiful young girl was juxtaposed to a prohibitively overfed woman, and the third girl simply seemed shy, awkward, and uncomfortable.

Storm responded with a giant grin and small chuckle.

“No, my dear, I couldn’t possibly choose. Look at all of this beauty!” He dug into his satchel, producing fifty golden coins – conservatively ten times the rate required for company. The bulging fistful of crowns caught the eyes of the entire crowd as though Veritas had produced a human head from his bag.

“Let’s all take a walk into that second room. There’s no reason we should quibble with trivial exclusions!”

It was hard to miss that all three women had taken residence in his immediate periphery. It was an easy enough trick, and would get them out of the attention of any local law enforcement. Cash had always effectively served as hooker-catnip.

[Erirag the Poet]

Shit list…

Erirag was contemplating the turn of phrase long after they’d been led to an inner room. The stone walls were draped with the same translucent curtains that wreathed the hips of the women around them. It masked as little of the poorly-masoned brick as it did the peeks of skin and manicured hair. Noticing a valley between thighs that had been trimmed down to a wisp, Erirag moved aside her grass skirts and examined her own jungles for a moment out of curiosity and then shrugged. She’d never known an orc to complain.

The women were fawning over The Mot-shara.

Bob

Bob help

Bob I don’t know what to do

Help

Seriously my Skype is allseamsfine