RP Pirates of the Hard Nox 2



"Perhaps." Emryk replied, a gentle ripple of melancholy suffusing his features as he took the wisewoman's hand and gave a reassuring squeeze in return. He doubted he would pull her from her place in the sky. "To keep you at the estate would be to cage a nightingale to hear its song; a witness to beauty, and a warden to freedom." With gentle steps, he led her out to the dance floor-- a reassuring palm to her back, never forceful. "Tonight, at least, we are bound to the earth-- so we may as well dance upon it, hm? Like I'd shown you upon the ship. A simple waltz; allow me to take the lead, and I shall do the rest. Watch my footsteps, but do not follow them directly-- trace them as if you were my shadow, yes?"

Amongst the dancing masses, they stood out-- a scaled, monolithic unit of a man, and the petite date he brought to the ball. The talk of the room, they'd be, if the nobility of Leimor was anything like the Floating Isles. Best to give them a good show, then.

"If you find yourself tripping, remember what I'd told you. 1, 2, 3. A simple box-step waltz, to start, and we'll see if anything more elaborate is in the cards. Now." He held out his hand for her to take, arm lowered a bit to ensure that she'd be able to reach him. "Shall we?"

 
She had hidden, of course.

What else was she supposed to do? Naveen was there, and everyone else was... well, busy. Most of them were busy, and the ones that weren't were scary. So, Pris had kept an eye on him as much as she could, or Lady Fingers had anyway, even though she didn't have any eyes, and Pris had hidden away when Lady Fingers told her to.

One of them had to be good at listening, she guessed, and since it wasn't going to be Lady Fingers, Pris guessed it had to be here. She was pretty sure you weren't supposed to take orders from your construct and that she was probably doing necromancy wrong, but also she wasn't sure she wanted to ask about that, mostly because someone might say something like "Yes, you are definitely doing everything wrong."

So she'd hidden a lot and when she hadn't been hiding she'd tried to stay in the kitchen and do useful things with potatoes and sometimes eggs. She was learning about soup, but mostly so far she had learned that she was allowed to cut things up but she was not allowed, under any circumstances, to touch the soup.

That was actually okay with her. She didn't mind chopping up vegetables. It was easy, and Lady Fingers helped, and Naveen wasn't really interested in vegetables, so he usually stayed out of the kitchen. He'd been in a room with Mr. Leo, but that was okay. Mr. Leo was strong, and he could handle himself. He'd been on the Truth Teller, too, and Pris felt very bad about being glad that she had that in common with him. It wasn't something that you should be glad about, she felt, but it was one more person who'd been there, and she guessed that meant something to her, even if they hadn't really known each other while he'd been there.

And he smelled like soap. And that was strange, but not in a bad way. Naveen had wandered off to go bother someone else, and Lady Fingers had let her know that it was okay to be around again, so Pris went to the room to see if Leo needed help with anything, or maybe a potato.

There was a lot of blood all over the floor, and a dead body. Pris knew it was a dead body because living people did not have quite that many slices in them.

"Did Naveen do that, and do you have to clean it up?" Leo was always cleaning things. Naveen, not so much. "I can help. I know where the soap is, now."
 
Last edited:
Eliza had stumbled, but Aamir supposed that was to be expected, when someone brought up the Truth Teller in casual conversation. Some things just weren't done, even in Leimor. Of course, it did mean she had heard of it. That wasn't condemning in and of itself, but... she certainly knew at least a little something about the matter.

It could be all rumors, of course, but sometimes rumors had substance.

"To be honest, I am not certain," he answered the question. "That's part of the reason I'm here tonight. There are a number of interesting people here, after all. Someone will have ideas. Someone will have talents. And so we mingle, and we dance a little, and sometimes we meet someone very interesting who would like to put a boot up my great great grandfather's bony arse, and then we have something to go on."
 
UmbraSight said:
Ah, was he an old sailor then? Settled down once and now looking for a change of pace? It fit together she supposed, though was it a ship of the sea or the sky? The party, to her ear, had lost its shape some in the middle where the sounds pressed to one another and melded into a mass of indistinct bodies. Aamir and his current girl were a noise in the clatter, like a peach softened with age. She tapped her cane, three quick times in a tight triangle, and the mass untangled itself, to her relief.

“Never was one for staying too long, myself.” She joined the army for that problem of hers, and lost more than she cared to give. ”What sort of ship will you be sailing with?” she asked, lifting her cane.

“And heading somewhere that sees more sun I hope.” She added with a smile.
Click to expand...
He smiled, it was good to know he was talking to someone else who felt the way he did. He'd thought maybe this would ultimately be his home, but that wasn't the case, or well, it was no longer the case. Time to move on, onward and upward as they said. Literally this time.

"A ship of the sky," he said. "And I suspect most places will hold more sun than this one." He'd watched her perform her trick with the cane but placed no particular meaning to it. It had meant something to her he supposed, and that was what mattered at the end of the day. No one ever did anything for no particular reason.
 
Caleb hadn't forgotten anything about that day, his nightmares wouldn't let him. It was a bit of a relief when she turned her back to him at that time, when there was no mask or hat to help hide his frown, that disappeared by the time her eyes were back on him.


"The fae nobility is awfully unoriginal." He said, unclipping his cape so he could spread his wings similarly to Alys, but a lot less gracefully. He flew to sit by her left side, legs hanging off the balcony. "They all live by the same rules, wear the same clothes, live in the same houses." He paused, looking not at her, but out to the garden. It was the end of spring, the bloomed white roses reflected the blue of the sky, almost the color of Aly's dress. At first he couldn't tell what the shimmery lights far away by the creek were, but after squinting a little bit he saw it. Fireflies. "But with this view… How could it be anywhere else?"
 
Last edited:
"My apologies if this is presumptuous, but did you say your great-great-grandfather? Am I meant to take that at face value, Amir, or are you just boasting about a claim no one could reasonably prove?" Gods, this ball was a mistake, and not even in the way they'd thought it would be. Were they truly dancing with the progeny of Solomon King? Did they really want to do that drunk? Or at all?

Hopefully the music would quiet soon, and they could remove theirself.
 
There was something missing.



Leo stared at the young giant’s still form as time trickled by like the small drops of blood that congealed around the boy’s wrist and throat. Leo could see every stitch in his shirt, every pore in his skin. Everything stood out in sharp relief, a world of detail somehow missed in his life before now. Another drop, a flutter of hair exposed to a soft breeze. If Leo could count so high he could number the boy’s eyelashes.



Something was missing.



Leo’s head turned, ever so slightly, as the sound of clawed feet against wood told the story of the rats that avoided the attention of the crew. A shuffling of hoofed feet and a muffled bleat from far below from the goats, the soft sigh of a hen as she roosted in the cages. He could hear the steady beating of each heart, unique to its owner in rhythm and tone to the point he felt as if he could almost picture their faces, could almost name them. A faster, somewhat softer beat accompanied the sound of hushed footsteps that indicated someone was coming his way.



What was missing?



A soft voice, concerned and innocent, joined the heartbeat, and Leo sucked in a sharp inhale of breath as if he had forgotten to breathe. Slowly he let the air through his nose. The rum he had covered Naveen in still hung in the air sharply, the smoke from the flame dancing through it heavy musk to very nearly cover the fresh, almost floral scent. Leo looked up from the corpse he had created, grin shifting to a facade of a friendly smile.



”Mmmm.” Leo groaned, or perhaps moaned in apparent satisfaction even while the flaming blade twisted in his gut. The gaze that studied Pris was not Leo’s softened gold, but a sharper, brighter yellow ringed in deep crimson. Slitted pupils expanded and contracted as he took in another deep breath. ”Pris.” His tone was pure honey as he reached a hand out toward the child. ”No.”



Each word he spoke was slow, drawn out lazily. Even from their distance he could feel her warmth on his palm as he reached out for the promise of the thudding within her chest. Just a little more and the hunger would abate. Just one more drink, maybe even just the smallest taste. Pris was always so kind and polite. She was so soft and warm. The rush of her blood through her veins filled his ears, drowning out the shuffling and the bleating, the scurrying and the sighing.



An image crossed thoughts muddled by the pain and the drive of his hunger; a child, an infant as innocent and pure as Pris. A memory from another life, a remnant of who he had been before. It caused him to pause, hand outstretched toward Pris but still not quite within reach. That child, the one he had spared, was in his past. A hint of his madman’s grin slipped through as he resumed reaching out for the child’s warmth. ”I’m still so hungry.”



It was his heartbeat, that steady thumping he had either heard or felt every day. That what was what was missing. That was what he traded for the power, and the hunger, that flowed through him.
 
“Oh? Well, I thought I didn’t smell any salt on you.” Winter said, sliding the leather strap back up to her wrist. With it sounding like Aamir wasn’t about to take a shift to the side, the elf turned her head to face the old sailor a little better. It was a little easier to hear the shape of him, so Winter made an effort to lift her head to try to find his eyes, though she felt certain she might still be focusing too low. It was what it was, really.

“Beaches were better back in my homeland, more sun, and they didn't smell so much of rotten fish.” She chuckled, lightly. “Will you be sailing with a merchant vessel? Military one?” Pirate lingered on the tip of her tongue, though she didn’t utter it.
 
Undoubtedly, the garden was beautiful; lush, teeming with life in an otherwise colourless city. And while Caleb admired it from his vantage point, Alys found herself looking at the profile of his face. How his lips and cheeks moved while he spoke, how his eye squinted as he peered at something in the distance. And before he finished his sentence, before he looked to her, she turned her head and rested it against his shoulder.

Slowly, she looked back to room; at the airy curtains that moved against the wind, then the perfectly folded corners of the duvet. Yes, everything was beautiful and perfect here, like the garden - but unoriginal, and how awfully boring.

“Growing up, I used to play pretend. Pretended to be a princess in this beautiful fucking house, with the gowns and crowns and ponies. But it got boring, so I stopped playing.” Memories she hadn’t thought about for years upon years danced in her head, bringing a smile to her lips. “It was a lot more fun to be a pirate.”

Alys shifted, so that she could see the sky, yet her head still remained touching his shoulder. Names of constellations ran through her mind, names she hadn’t uttered out loud in ages. It was her garden, and unlike the one sprawled behind her, it followed her wherever she went.
 
She followed him out to the center of the floor, out to the center of the eyes, the center of the crowd, the center of the noise. This was not her place. This was not where she belonged. No, her comfort was in the background, in the quiet room, wrapped in blankets and sipping silently at a cup of tea, not in the bustling midst of a ballroom dressed in - dressed in something she'd never had thought she'd ever wear.

But he was there. Stalwart. Stoic. She focused on his face, instead of the hidden faces of those around her. She focused on his eyes. He was watching her -

And that was alright. She was safe.

Her fingers wrapped around his arm, and she began to move, hem of her dress swishing around her legs as she stepped in the pattern he'd directed.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

Like walking in a square, arm in arm. Once or twice, her foot stepped atop his, but he kept moving, and so she didn't stumble, quickly correcting herself while leaning against him.

"I think - I think I have it," she murmured, focusing intently. "It really is not that troublesome, once you know the pattern. No different than - knitting, in a way."
 
The fledgeling's voice murmured out to him, and Lucien pushed down a feeling that was worringly adjacent to concern. The door pushed open a hair more, enough for Lucien to smoothly slide inside, closing it softly behind him. The cabin was empty, save for the rustling of the pet bat that Nessa kept around. It was not difficult to find her, and that coiled feeling he dare not name was not lessened by the sight of her. That she should be this tired during the evening, when they were supposed to be most active, and the general look about her.

Lucien shook his head slightly at the comments. Of course he had heard the yell, but he simply did not care about whomever it was. His attention was fixed on Nessa, on the waxy pallor her face had taken on, the struggling eyelids. They had not raided in quite some time, and she did not seem to have fed during their time in the mountains. She had not come to him, and none would so willingly give their blood to her.

"You look ill." Lucien said, an uncharacteristic softness in his voice. "When did you last feed, my fledgeling?" An extra word, slipped into his phrasing unbidden, unnoticed, and unretracted.
 
"Regrettably, to the best of my knowledge, it's not a fabrication," Aamir told her, "I've found it best just to have out with it at the start. Otherwise it inevitably comes up at the worst possible moment, and then someone gets quite offended at all the secret keeping and there's a lot of tedious explanations to be had. Now, I'd like to put a boot up his bony arse myself, but these are hardly the right sorts of boots."

It was important to wear the proper footwear, both when dancing and arse-kicking, after all. "My mother was a whore, if that makes you feel better." Oddly, with the sort of people Aamir tended to be with, it usually did help. They were mostly pirates, after all, and plenty of were sons and daughters of whores. Or whores themselves, if they wanted to go back to the subject of the Nox. He rather wondered if the new Captain was going to keep that up, as well.

"Does it make you feel better?"
 
"O...kay?" It had come out as a question. Pris hadn't meant it to, but maybe it needed to be a question after all. Mr. Leo was not acting like... well, he wasn't acting like Leo. She'd expected him to tell her that yes, he did want soap, and a couple buckets of water while she was at it.

But he didn't do any of that, and his hand reached out for her like some strange and detached thing, or at least she wanted it to be detached, because it didn't seem to be any part of the Leo she knew.

Maybe she didn't know him very well, but she thought she knew him at least a little bit.

He said he was hungry. Maybe that was it. People were strange, when they were hungry. Lady Fingers perched on her shoulder, and Pris was glad to have her there, even if she didn't listen. It was good to have a... friend, maybe. Except Mr. Leo was supposed to be a friend, or at least friendly, and this was... weird.

Maybe it was just being hungry. "Did you... want a potato?"
 
"Your mother's profession hardly informs who your great-great grandfather is, but if you expect me to think lesser of you because of her, you're mistaken. Him, however, I think you can understand." Well, this was a right mess they got theirself into. The offspring of Solomon King, the monster who had not only imprisoned them for a short while, but who had forced upon them Naveen.

The very man responsible for the Captain's death.

Maybe there was an ally to be found here. He certainly knew of them, and seemed to have a score to settle. The music drew to a close, and the dance stopped, though Eliza stayed close for a moment. Their voice dropped to a whisper, lacking song to hide the noise. "I can say, though, that I know some who share your... distaste. If we were to arrange a meeting, how would one go about finding you and your friends?" They'd need to talk this over with Caleb, first, obviously, but this... well, to an impaired mind, it seemed perfect.
 
It was a lot more fun to be a pirate. It wasn't true most of the time, but it had its moments, Caleb had to admit it. He felt Alys' head shift on his shoulder and like her, he looked up at the stars she liked so much.

"What's the story here? You and the stars." He asked, his hand went over Alys' lap to hold her waist in a half embrace.
 
"Oh, I'm sure if you ask around at the sky docks, someone can point you in the right direction." Aamir had grown up in the docks, running errands for a few paltry coins from the time he was old enough to find his way around on his own. Once he'd gotten big enough to start lifting things, he'd worked as a dock hand, loading crates of mysterious riches on and off of ships, things that he never could have afforded on his own. He'd made his own way, though, eventually signing on to a ship of his own. It had been a pirate ship, but he hadn't seen anything worse in the way the hands were treated from some of the more legitimate cruisers, and if he'd signed on to a regular job, he'd never have gotten anywhere. Certainly not here.

"And what about you? If I wanted to see you again."
 
A hand tugged her closer so that they sat side by side, hip to hip. Without looking down, Alys felt her own hand rest on top of his - as she’d done a few days ago, atop the monstrous ice totem. Then, it’d been a distraction; one that’d led to disaster. Now, although her mind briefly wandered back to the memory, the touch brought warmth and comfort. Her pointer finger began to circle his knuckles, the action itself initiated without thought, practically unconscious.

Yet instinctively, when a gentle gust threatened to blow away his hat, Alys snapped that very hand upward, tugging off the accessory and sliding it down onto the floor of the balcony. Her hand returned, back to where it belonged.

“We didn’t have much growing up.” Play pretend, homemade toys and carvings, imaginary stories, real stories… "My friend’s father, he knew the skies well. So he taught us. See that one-" She temporarily rose her hand to the sky. “- that’s coleoptera major. It’s supposed to look like a beetle. And that one there -“ Her finger glided across the night sky. “- vulpecula. The little fox.” Alys smiled and briefly glanced towards Caleb. “That was my constellation.”

And his was right beside her, just as he was the night she’d told Juniper about him. The swan, with his wings spread wide, unrestrained, soaring above them all.

“They’re always there. Constant, even when everything else is changing.” Free.

A brief silence passed. “I’m sorry, I could talk about this forever.”
 
The night's air was sobering, allowing Ciaran to focus more intently on his friend and the details of her story. A peacock mask, possible drugging and- he wouldn't ask for further details, it wasn't easy to address. Still, he found it all a bit surreal. He'd never known Alys to be careless, and had expected her to be in the company of Caleb - if not the others who'd come out tonight.

"I am so so sorry, Alys." Ciaran placed his hand on hers, hoping to calm the fidgeting and bring some small comfort. "This won't go unpunished, I promise you that." He looked back over his shoulder at the party and paused, then he turned to Alys. "Have you seen Caleb? Is he still about?"
 
'Good luck, I won't exist after tonight.'

"You may find some difficulty in that, but..." Eliza stopped for a moment, considering something unknowable to the great-great-grandson of Solomon King (or so he claimed), before a smile crept on to their face. "Ask around. I'm sure word will reach me, and then I can ask around about you." If he wanted to play coy about it, they would too. Besides, if what he was saying were true, Caleb would definitely want to speak with him.
 
UmbraSight said:
“Oh? Well, I thought I didn’t smell any salt on you.” Winter said, sliding the leather strap back up to her wrist. With it sounding like Aamir wasn’t about to take a shift to the side, the elf turned her head to face the old sailor a little better. It was a little easier to hear the shape of him, so Winter made an effort to lift her head to try to find his eyes, though she felt certain she might still be focusing too low. It was what it was, really.

“Beaches were better back in my homeland, more sun, and they didn't smell so much of rotten fish.” She chuckled, lightly. “Will you be sailing with a merchant vessel? Military one?” Pirate lingered on the tip of her tongue, though she didn’t utter it.
Click to expand...

He smiled a little. She was observant, he liked observant people. "I would hardly class any of the beaches here as being worthy of the name," he said. He shifted his hands on his cane. He wasn't used to carrying the thing, but there was something nice about it, something he thought might influence him to make it part of his daily attire.

"Anything but military, to be quite honest. The military life is not for me, nor a life subservient to the government. It's all well and good for those who enjoy either, or both, but I do not. An honest man is better finding honest work, and I rarely find the military to be honest work." It was as close as he'd get to speaking passionately on the subject. He wasn't in rebellion against the government by any stretch, but there was no love lost and the less he had to do with them the better.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top