A friends concern

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Alioik
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2018 5:53 pm
Guild: Barbarians

A friends concern

Post by Alioik »

Ali felt that he had forgotten something, so he went to go what he always did when he felt like this. He found himself deep in the woods, chopping away. He felt the exertion and rhythm of chopping wood lent itself to clearing his head. As he reached the apex of his chopping action, he remembered what he was needing to do. He let his axe sink into the wood one last time and turned to gather the logs he had created. He stacked the white birch high on a cart and moved to store it inside the Barbarians guild. He then rinsed himself off, and made ready to travel to Devardec. He needed to speak to a friend.

Ali was glad for the magic that made travelling much easier or it could have taken him hours to make it to Devardec from Frostfall. He made his way through the streets waving at people he knew from the locals bars, and found his quarry sitting in the middle of the city dipping her tail in the fountain. He yelled, “Fearecia, just who I was looking for, have a moment?”

The dragonkin looked over at the young barbarian, frowning a bit. “Can I help you, young Barbarian?”

Alioik felt it a bit strange that his friend would not call him by name, but chose to ignore it for now, “I was going to talk to you about some of the things I have been hearing in the bars of late about the more than normal amount of broken training dummies in your guild…”

A confused look crossed Fear’s face. “Broken dummies, you say.” She considered a moment, then nodded. “Seems word gets around fast. Let’s go somewhere quieter.” Moving away from the fountain, she gestured with her free hand, indicating he should take the lead.

Alioik smiled at his friend and as he walked past her, he noticed the sword that she was carrying in her hand. Suddenly, the bone handled dagger he had gained from fighting the Countess grew cold at his hip. Confused by this, he continued to walk away from the square.

Fear smiled a bit as they headed outside the city, the foot traffic steadily dying down as they got close to the ocean shore. “It’s always so lovely out here,” she grinned. Turning to Alioik, she returned to the topic at hand. “Now, what’s this concern about broken training dummies?”

“Well I’m just concerned that maybe you aren’t getting enough from the dummies in the Monks’ Guild, maybe you need something a little more realistic to burn off your energy? It seems you have been acting more animalistic lately, one might say feral…”

The dragonkin blinked in shock, and then shut her jaws on something, considering her words carefully. “Feral, you say? That is concerning…” She paused just a moment, then focused on Alioik. “And you think a spar will help settle this feral-ness that… I’ve been exhibiting?”

Ali seems to think for a bit, “Let’s just say that when I need to clear my head I chop wood, but when I’m full of energy or anger, I hunt live things. I’ve heard you complain many times about not having a good sparring partner, but I’ve grown much since our last combat. Perhaps I can help? I’m no Monk, but I’m no slouch. In the past you said next time we spar I could use my axe, but I think a birch club will suffice.”

She glanced down at the blade in her left hand, considering for several moments. “And as a Monk, I would fight without weapons,” she muttered, almost to herself. “And I would have so loved to watch you fight, too…” Sighing, she finally looked back up to Alioik, meeting his eyes. “Sounds like an excellent idea,” she said, starting to remove her various weapons harnesses. Last to go was the two handled blade, returned to its sheath before being set on the ground.
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fearecia
Posts: 340
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2014 2:09 pm

Re: A friends concern

Post by fearecia »

“He wants to have a spar with you. Good luck!”

What in the name of the heavens? Oh curses above, not again. Fearecia glanced around as she dropped down to all fours, trying to get her bearings. Water, sand, ocean birds; looked like she was just off the east coast road. And then there was that club coming at her head.

It was only through years of training that she managed to jerk her head back, the wood whistling past her nose. Alioik frowned at her as she backpedaled, trying to get some distance, feeling the wild energy rising. Dear gods, not now. She did not need this right now. Almost without meaning to, she growled at him, not having quite enough of her bearings to get the words out.

He must have taken that as an invitation, because the Barbarian decided to advance, coming at her again with that club. That sight of him, club raised and oncoming; the dragonkin lost what precarious grip on stable footing she had. Dropping into pure, feral instinct, she lunged at him, claws bared and pouring flame.

The next pieces of the fight quickly became a blur, lost to the overwhelming, wild rage of the animal. Alioik dodging the sudden gout of flame. Her chasing him, knowing she couldn’t gain the advantage of the sky at this close of range, trying to pin him down. The skilled Barbarian managing to knock her head about a few times with that cursed club, even as her claws went after his armor. At some point, she got the club in her teeth and crushed it, finally ridding him of the bothersome weapon. Or, so she thought.

Without missing a beat, Alioik grabbed the dagger at his belt, managing to jam the blade through the scales of her shoulder. That bloody hurt! The pain helped to sear through the fog of feral energy, giving the dragonkin a chance to claw back into control. Something was wrong… very wrong.

Alioik was standing just in front of her, ripping the dagger free of her shoulder with a single minded determination that was beyond that of a friendly engagement. There was a fire in his eyes; one she recognized all too well as he brought the dagger in for a strike at her chest. He was going for the kill.

Taking advantage of the weakness in her shoulder, she simply let the limb crumple, forcing the blade to glance off her scales instead of making a clean entry. Using the downward momentum, she lined up her skull, aiming to give the barbarian one heck of a head-butt.

The blow didn’t land squarely, but it did manage to impact the poor human’s head rather hard. Stumbling, he fell back into the sand, his hands flying to his head. Fear did not envy the headache he was going to have from that particular blow. She had horns to protect her skull; he didn’t. Even used to headbutts from his fellow barbarians, he wasn’t used to the power a trained Monk could inflict with that particular move. Taking several deep breaths, she leveraged herself back up to all fours, limping cautiously over to Alioik.

“Ali? You okay?”

He glanced up at her for a moment, that look of murder still creeping through the daze in his eyes, before promptly slumping over in the sand.
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fearecia
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Re: A friends concern

Post by fearecia »

The dragonkin cursed, finally noticing the blood pooling into the sand. His armor was in shreds, chunks torn out of him by her own claws. Come to think of it, she was bleeding from more places that she’d been aware of, and dang did he hit hard with that club! It also looked like she’d gotten him with her flame once or twice; there was patches of melted skin. She grimaced. It must have been an ugly fight.

Scowling at her idiocy for losing control like that, she sat down next to him, dabbing her fingers into the blood trailing down her arm. Thankfully, she was well aware of his particular curse, so at least an expensive trip to Randal wasn’t in his future. Clumsily, she rubbed the blood onto his face, mimicking the marks faded into his skin from previous kills.

She frowned, waiting for something to happen. Was that it? Had she done it wrong? After several more tense moments, the blood mist began to form, Alioik’s abused body steadily knitting itself back together. Breathing a sigh of relief, she picked herself back up, scooting away from him just in case he woke in the same murderous rage she’d knocked him out in.

Ali became aware of several things in a split second. First that he was in a massive amount of pain, but it was fading fast. Second, the attempt at a spar had gone awry; when he had first swung at Fear, she snapped like she didn’t know what was happening. It almost seemed as if she was defending herself from an unknown attacker instead of Ali. Third was when he grabbed his dagger, he tried to kill her. He didn’t know why he had aimed that dagger at her heart, but he did. He had even tried to drop the dagger in the moment so he wouldn’t make contact with the blow. He was very glad Fear’s scales had protected her. At least, he was glad knowing that he was still living, because for a while there he wasn’t sure if he was going to survive their spar.

Pain continued to leech from his body, the same way that it did when he performed his blood ritual. Interesting, he thought, she must have given me some of her blood to stop me visiting Naria. Then an idea came to him: he had once been able to view memories when he had been given blood. It had happened when Reint gave his blood willingly to Ali. Although at the time it was just images, nothing discernible. Like a life’s experiences, jumbled but still absorbed. He just hoped that since this blood, Fear’s blood, was given willingly that he would be able to experience the same thing.

Suddenly, he was bombarded by a wave of different emotions. He allowed these to wash over him and tried to understand each one separately. Anger, Hostility, and Joy, these were all easy to understand; he needed something deeper. Ali strived to reach deeper and see what was happening, why his friend had seemed to suprised about the sparring. He felt something odd: it was annoyance, but it didn’t carry the same signature that he felt from Fearecia’s other emotions. It seemed almost as if someone elses annoyance had been inserted into her. He “felt” around for other feelings that carried this other signature and found several others. After a while it looked as if there were two different sets of emotions coming from Fearecia. It was almost as if two people were inside of her for periods of time. It took considerable effort and patience but Ali managed to find the first time the foreign signature was attached to an emotion. It was joy, pure and unbridled. Ali focused on the feeling and tried to get the image or scenario attached to this joy. He drifted through the feeling and an image appeared to him. He saw a sword, beautiful and deadly held in his hands. However, the hands were not his, they were scaley and much larger. Why would there be such joy from Fearecia when she found this sword? It didn’t make sense, but after she found the sword is when the emotions started to split. Maybe the sword had something to do with this split? Or maybe the sword was itself living through Fearecia? He would need to ask her these questions. Just then the pain fled his body completely, it must mean that the blood had finished healing him.

Alioik opened his eyes slowly and looked around him. He saw Fearecia a ways away looking over at him, concern showing on her face. He looked at her, smiled, and was about to wave her over when he noticed something cold in his hands. He glanced over at the dagger still held in his hands, its spectral light captured his gaze for a second. As he looked from it to his friend, he was filled with white hot rage. He tried to stand, but was still too weak to do so. He started grunting incoherently and flailed around with the dagger; it seemed to want to plunge into Fearecia’s heart. The dagger was so cold in his hand it started to cause him pain. It was this agonizing pain that allowed Ali to focus on the situation. Why why he trying again to kill his friend? She had almost killed him, sure, but she also had saved him. “I will NOT do this,” he screamed in his own head. The pain became overwhelming and he managed to open his hand and let the dagger drop to the ground. He stared at the spectral dagger laying in the sand; it looked innocent. He then looked at his hand, so cold it was blue. Still weak, he managed to kick the dagger away from him, and crawled backwards away from it in the sand. He looked over at Fearecia, his friend, and smiled what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

She regarded him cautiously. Something very strange was going on; that much was clearly obvious. However, the rage was gone from his eyes and body. Worriedly, she asked, “Ali? You okay?”
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Alioik
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2018 5:53 pm
Guild: Barbarians

Re: A friends concern

Post by Alioik »

Ali looked over to Fearecia, “Yeah, I think I’m going to be just fine, one hell of a thing though right?”

She chuckled a bit, but it was laden with concern. “Yeah. I think we may need some stupid-visors next time.” Moving to her feet, she wandered back over to her discarded weapons, moving to return them to their proper place on her back.

Upon seeing Fearecia reach for the sword, every fiber of his being screamed at him to stop her. “FEAR, DON’T TOUCH THE SWORD!”

She froze, hand mere inches from the pommel. Somehow, she’d gone for it even before her katana, which was strange. The emotion in that shout; it cut her deeply, shocking her into dropping her hand. She turned back to him, leaving the weapons in the sand. “What’s going on, Ali?”

Ali moved as best he could nearer he her, “I don’t know how or why, but this blade is wrong. When I took in your blood I felt emotions, your emotions. I also felt another set of emotions, they were in you, but not yours. They started after you picked up that sword for the first time!”

Terror ripped through her at Alioik’s words. Had he…? No… he said it was after she’d gotten the blade. It had nothing to do with her other… issues. She frowned, focusing more closely on what he was saying.

“These feelings that you were having when you had the sword, they aren’t yours. It was like something or someone else was experiencing them, you were but a chalice they drank from. Do you have any idea what I am talking about? Did you start feeling less like yourself after you took up that blade?”

She took several moments, absorbing what he was saying, sorting through her thoughts. She’d been trying to keep the issues under wraps, keep the blackouts and the steady slip into wildness hidden. But, what if Ali had a point? He was right. She’d gotten the blade some time ago. The issues were all more recent, but she did always wake up with the blade in hand. Finally, almost shamefully, she admitted, “I’ve been having blackouts. Afterwards, there’s a… feral energy that follows. I’ve been losing control.” She averted her gaze from him, sure he could put the pieces together about why their fight went sideways.

Ali looked to Fearecia, and began to laugh, loud and hard.
She glanced back at him, hurt and anger in her gaze. With tears in his eyes from laughing, Ali managed to speak. “Sorry, but I’m just very happy that it wasn’t my friend trying to kill me back there, something else was going on!” He looked at Fearecia again, “Seriously, you were like the Gatekeeper in a cutlery shop. I didn’t stand a chance!”

She grimaced at the mental image, but was sure it was fairly accurate. Nothing like a large dragon going after you full force. Coughing a bit to clear her throat, she managed, “Yeah. Well, I was blacked out until right before you tried to hit me upside the head. I had no idea we’d agreed to a spar… though, come to think of it, something told me we had.” She frowned, thinking back on the voice she’d heard. Her mind roamed further over the events, remembering the rage in Ali’s eyes. “Had you gone berserk from the damage I’d done to you?”

Ali looked ashamed for a second and said, “I was just trying to get away from you at first. When you broke my club, I reached for the dagger I keep at my side.” Ali pointed to the discarded dagger in the sand. “When I drew it, I wanted to kill you, or rather, it wanted me to kill you. Even when I woke up it was seeking your heart.”

She glanced at the dagger, recognizing it immediately. “That’s the dagger from the Countess.” She frowned, considering the fact that her blade, the current suspect of so much trouble, came from the Count. “Ali… when did you get that?”

Ali glanced at the dagger, “I got it when I was trying to clear the name of Satyana and the Barbarians’ Guild. In trying to find out which coven of vampires attack Rhaegos, I came across another vampire who led me to some Countess. We found her, I was injured, but I think we won. I awoke in Devardec and this dagger was in my hands. My companion must have taken me back to Devardec to be healed.”

She remembered talking to Rhaegos after that attack, about how the vampires who had attacked them had come from Gallowhaven, judging by the weapons they’d been using. “I think…” Fear began, trying to put all the pieces together, “we may have a problem with vampires.”

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