RP Pirates of the Hard Nox 2

A blade was pressed against his neck. Emryk's gaze tightened, but he did not flinch-- not when he was this close, and not when he knew fear would be evident in any capacity. His knurled snout tightened, as did the grip around Naveen's neck. This was not worth it. This was not worth it. The baron sighed, one hand dropping to the man's shoulder as he looked away.

Only when he gazed sidelong down the alleyway-- eyes locking with the barely-awake woman who he had barely acknowledged prior, blood streaming down her neck and staining the collar of her blouse-- did he realize just how wrong he had been in that assumption. It took him a good, long moment to truly piece together the reality of the situation from intuition and assumptions-- Naveen leaving the alley, the little happy glint in his eye as they'd made eye contact, the woman bleeding from her neck-- but when he did, his gaze returned to Naveen, gaze creased with a blossoming fury. His posture straightened; the hand upon the vampire's shoulder tightened.

"Hrrhmh." He breathed, looking the man over. Taking in his stature, the blade at his neck. "You don't know when to stop talking, do you?"

In a flash, his free fist moved to sock Naveen in the gut-- the other smacked at the hand which held the blade, trying to bat it aside as he ducked away from its pointed end. Whether or not the fist struck, his hand grabbed at the vampire's jacket and pulled, yanking him to throw his body deeper into the alley and block his escape.
 
No minotaurs? None? Well, this was certainly a disappointment! At least it wasn't empty down here. The pirate tossed down the hay to the vicious beasts within, promptly introducing one of them as Jasmine.

A warrior's name if Rielle had ever heard one. She eyed the creature. Hooves, horns, teeth. All things she had experience with. "Right! No worries! I can take her." A spear was no good in close quarters, so Rielle propped hers on the staircase, cracked her knuckles, then rushed down the rest of the stairs to bash her forehead against that of the beast.

She staggered back, taking up a defensive position. "Good start, eh?"
 
Hester had been sitting with the goats. There wasn't much else to do aboard the ship just now. She couldn't go above-decks, and most of the rest of the crew was gone. And she was too miserable to bother with the medicine woman just now. And the goats were nice. They were loud, smelly, and stubborn, but they were also soft and intelligent, and they didn't mind it if you just sat in the corner watching them for hours at a time while your constructs patrolled the ship.

That all went horribly wrong when a fancifully dressed woman slammed head-first into Jasmine.

It took a full ten seconds for her to regain her composure.

"Sorry; have we been introduced?"
 
The dance, or imitation of one, definitely lifted Juniper's spirits, if only slightly. "I mean, a mask seems to be required. Really, I was going for the full ensemble. Haven't decided anything yet, but I'm sure someone will be willing to sell something, if I ask." They also hadn't decided if they'd even make theirself known, to anyone. Enjoying the night as some anonymous noble, or a well off merchant, a life they were somewhat familiar with, didn't seem all so bad, especially given how everything had been going with the crew as of late. Some time away, as someone else... maybe it help. Hard to say.

The smile dropped when they saw Ciaran. Alys fired off a question, a great start, so the changeling decided to investigate instead. It certainly looked like Ciaran, but... his arm. The prothesis. It was gone. That wasn't the most uncommon sight, but it was odd to see him on deck, just barely off shore, without it, especially considering he'd been cooped up on the ship while they'd been going through hell. Juniper figured he'd want to get away, like they did, not just... stand there. "Right, what Alys said. You promised us drinks, remember?"
 
Why, another poor soul down here! Well, Rielle should have expected it, really. Why, this sort of thing came up in far too many stories!

"Ah!" She straightened herself up, then removed her hat and made a sweeping bow to the woman. There was a distinct red mark on her head, but Rielle didn't seem to be particularly bothered by it. "Fear not, fair maiden! I am here to rescue you from these foul creatures! Certainly are a lot of them, aren't there? No worries, I do think I can take them all! And their enthralled poultry!"

This was shaping up to be quite the adventure indeed. Rielle replaced her hat. It was probably a wonder it hadn't fallen off during the headbutting incident, but perhaps it held on through sheer tenacity. "Rielle Martín, Professional Adventurer! Currently at the conveyance of these fine pirates. And you might be?"
 
Fair maiden? Foul creatures? Adventurers?

"... Hester Falmouth, of Leimor." She stood up and gave Rielle a slightly wooden curtsy, shooting Tirras an only-slightly-plaintiff glance. Handing out her real name was probably a bad idea, but with a head injury like that this woman probably wouldn't remember it anyway. "I don't suppose you'd stop harassing the livestock if I asked nicely?"
 
It took a fair number of seconds, Tirras wasn't sure exactly how many, for him to process the madness that'd occurred in front of him. The charge and attack on innocent Jasmine, the strange dead-looking girl sitting amongst the goats and their shit, maidens, foul creatures... madness. Fucking, introductions...

"Whit th' hell did ye dae that fur? Urr ye simple minded?" His voice started out low, like a growl, growing into something of a roar, causing the chickens to grow unruly. The sound of flapping wings and squawks began to grow, causing Tirras to become even more irritated. "Git th' fuck out, both o' ye!" He swung his arm almost violently towards the door, beckoning them out - at least, if they knew what was good for them. "I've git wirk ta do, fuckin' worthless wh..." His voice finally quieted into a mumble, his insults ever present but hidden beneath his breath.
 
What an odd person. First he had wanted Rielle to come down here, and now he wanted her to go back up. Could the man not make up his mind? Well, Rielle supposed they couldn't all be decisive. "Very well, I think they're quite subdued for now. Another victory!" She started up the stairs once more, grabbing her spear along the way and then stopping, turning around in a way that would be very quick if someone were coming up the stairs behind her, having also been banished from the hold.

"I say, surely not that Hester Falmouth? Why, there's stories about you!" Rielle considered this, then shook her head regretfully. "Kidnapped by livestock, a bit of an ignominious end. We shall have to improve that. Let me see... I've already got a sidekick. Still, we can find something. How do you feel about hats?"
 
And just like that, she'd been ejected from her newest hiding spot--sent off after the newcomer with nothing but a tirade of curses as a parting gift. Useless whore, was it? Well, they'd see who was feeling useless in a few days time. When she was through with him, he'd certainly never have cause to concern himself with whores again--

The hat lady came to a very sudden stop. Hester was too distracted to stop in time; there was a relatively minor collision, followed by a rapid retreat a few steps downward. That left the necromancer to grimace up at Rielle, exacerbating the already-very-apparent height difference between the two. If they stood like this much longer she was going to get a cramp.

"I wasn't kidnapped by anything," Hester said, putting a touch too much emphasis on it. Maybe rubbing her nose a bit would help to to hide her growing frustration; she could pretend she'd hurt it in the colision. "I was minding them. And--hats? They're alright, I suppose. In the right weather. She eyed the monstrosity perched on Rielle's head, warily. "They keep the sun off."
 
Oh, so he wasn’t one of the Nox then, no shock that perhaps, he didn’t have the feel of a hardened killer, and a pirate might know better than to tell a stranger their ship was heavy with riches, though the name alone was enough to tell one of that. Nox had her reputation, and Winter didn’t doubt it.

“Truly? I’m glad I could be of some help.” Winter said. The smell of salt and fish prickled in her nostrils along with the tang of damp wood. The tip of her cane still met cobble, though the ships were just beyond her, her imagination could race to fill in the gaps. Battle scarred and wind sheared, a fate similar to most ships that claimed the skies.

“Best to be careful, you know, the world is often not a kind place.” Winter said. She tilted her head, found a vague angle to face the taller man. “Do you have a plan for what you wish to do next? Winter asked.

——-

A soft step and distance were cover enough as Nessa followed after the man. There were others in the same white cloak, some greeted him, others simply entered the shack, but more than enough to hold Nessa’s interest. She closed in, carefully enough. Someone from outside the town, lost perhaps or simply wondering to see what was most interesting in a strange town.

Nessa kept an eye on those as they entered the building, drifting close as it seemed that most had entered, an ear ready to listen for anything of interest as she crept close to the cultists’ compound.
 
Her ears turned outwards as her Kin sat down beside her customer. The motion could be just barely visible, under all the layers of feathers and hair, and positioned as her ear tufts were behind the hard arcing horns. She did not see her Kin sit down, closed as her eyes were, but she heard the shuffling of many shawls as she hummed pretended to work magic.

Until, of course, Captain Caleb interrupted, and she just barely huffed in exasperation. The sound was hidden among her hums. Her Kin spoke in the old language, and it had been so long since she had heard it... maybe, in Grodrock, she might have cried. Instead she pretended to close the meaningless hum and reopened her golden eyes to look at the woman who had sat down as Alexander rose to address the captain, sadly too polite to insist on his reading.

For a long time, Ruby was silent. She puzzled out the meaning of what the woman had said, and color climbed her cheeks under the patterns. Finally, she looked down at the table, averting her gaze from the shawled stranger. It may have been said lightly, in jest, but the quiet knot in her stomach twisted and tightened.

"Ní fhéachfadh an Spéir go cineálta dá bhfeicfeadh sé mé."
The Sky would not look kindly on me if it could see me.

She had not spoken the language in a decade, the language of her childhood. Her childhood was gone, but faltering scraps of the language remained, not lost to the worse memories that came in between. She couldn't bring herself to meet her Kin's gentle gaze. She could kill ogres and travel with assassins, but in the face of that kind smile, everything she had made for herself fell away, leaving her bare and raw. A flush of anger at her own weakness may have slipped into her tone.

"Ach maireann mé, sea. Ní gá dom a cheadú chun cónaí."
But I survive, yes. I do not need its permission to live.
 
The words were unpracticed, no doubt as seldom spoken as her own, but it seemed the winds blew even here. That alone brought a warmth to such a cold, grey place. Eyes softening, Emer let her hand move to rest in the middle of the table.

"The sky does not judge, dear. We do as we must for our folk. Is that not our purpose?"

She tilted her head. There was a shame in the fledgling's words, but also a pride. A defiance.

"I am Emer. I am wisewoman of the Hard Nox, skyship of the late Sinead Oiche." She glanced at Caleb, now talking to the quiet man about work. "He is Caleb O'Cain, its present captain. He and his crew are my folk."

Her eyes returned to the fortune teller.

"You and yours?"
 
A wisewoman. Of course she was. The tight knot of shame was burning away for the tight knot of anger to take its place, but anger was more familiar, and though it burned, the fire could be controlled. She closed her eyes for long enough to regain her grip on her emotions, and when she reopened them, her mask of mysterious neutrality had returned.

Emer's hand was on the table, but Ruby did not reach forward to take it, though she rested her own hands on either side of the crystal ball.

"They call me Ruby Songbird. My mother called me something else." She didn't specify either who they were, or what she had been before. Shame tried to ooze back, but she swallowed it down as she gestured to the instruments of her deception and added, "You are looking at mine."

I have no folk would probably have killed her to say to the kindly wisewoman. And she did not need to die yet again.
 
After a moment, the fledgling seemed to compose herself - expression returning to an unreadable mask. Emer understood that much. There were many ways to face the world, but for one without folk of their own, an arms reach was certainly one of the safest. Emotions could be seen as weakness. She'd had times when she'd thought like that, though the emptiness that came with it was a terror of its own.

Still, Emer withdrew her hand, letting it rest in her lap with its twin.

"I lost mine when I was young. Barely sixteen winters." Her ears twitched. "It is a terrible thing, to be alone."

She paused, considering. Would it be too crass, to ask if she wanted to come with them? She knew if someone had asked her to follow back when she was wandering alone, she would have shied away. It took time, to grow comfortable enough to want to settle, and even then, her settling was her choice, not at another's request. And yet - that look of shame still lingered in Emer's mind.

"Ruby. Are you happy, here?"
 
She doubted one who still called herself wisewoman still had been a foolish girl who was drawn away by the lies of strange men. When Emer said she had lost hers, the full tragedy of what must have happened - and the assumptions that Emer must have made - struck Ruby with full force. Her ears actually twitched back a little, almost like a canine's, but she did not let her expression waver.

"I am alive. That is more important." Happiness was relative, and while she was alone, she had been alone before. She still missed the quiet companionship she had shared with Drake while they traveled, but she had spent so long as a private person that to have Folk again seemed alien.

Yet another reason why she no longer belonged.

Emer was the wisewoman for a ship full of pirates. Caleb O'Cain had not denied it, and her instincts about Zadari led her to believe that he had been one of them, too. She knew what sort of men were pirates. But she could see in Emer's face, kind an innocent and guileless, that she was not that sort. Whether she tolerated that sort, because they were her Folk, was another issue.

"I was also sixteen winters." She surprised herself with the words, faltering though they were even in the Imperial common tongue, and soft. Her ear tufts pinned back further as her ears below twitched nearly all the way down. Her face, however, did not change. "I was a foolish girl, full of daydreams. The Sky did not see me when rough hands pulled me down to earth. Happiness is a foolish pursuit."

She wasn't being clear, but that was now her nature, what she had learned from the ground when the Sky no longer looked at her. She had not told anyone about that. She did not tell Emer that now. She did tell her, without telling, that she had no desire to be among men like that again.

"Alone is safer."
 
Sky didn't learn much, but one thing was obvious from that name carved in wood: the vessel was without its captain. The changeling had a choice to make; to stay and do some more digging or go back to his crew and share the news. Before he could make up his mind, the choice had been made for him. And it had to be by none other than Alys.

She knew he was close, all the more reason for him to be careful. The question was innocent enough, and even though her friend seemed to have noticed his missing arm, they didn't ask about it. If it was a good or a bad sign, he had no fucking clue.

"If I remember? Never trust a drunk's memory." He answered with a laugh, taking a step back. "I'll go get that ale right now, is there anything else you two want?"

***

Naveen relaxed, confident in the power of his threatening speech. It was true, he didn't want stains on his cloak, otherwise he might have acted on his impulses and ended the lizard right there.

He should've learned by now not to underestimate his enemies.

The woman screamed and the metal of the knife clanged over the cobblestones, but the utmost noise came from Naveen's body crashing over a pile of garbage. The smell and the humiliation angered the vampire and just as the translucent rapier was conjured in his hand he lunged forward, throwing himself at the lizard. As a bonus, small but sharp spikes of ice emerged from the ground, pointy enough to pierce through most shoes.
 
"Alive is alive, but is alive living?"

There was a flash of emotion again, sharp in the previous still, a sign that things were not settled - simply held down. Emer leaned in, shifting her hands from lap to table, folding them tightly.

Something had happened. That much was clear. Something that had stabbed distrust into this poor girl's heart, that had left her wary, cold, and hurt. Wounds never fully healed - they always left scars - but for her, it seemed as if she'd never even removed the knife in the first place. Emer's voice grew softer, gentler, a whisper between them only audible for how silent the inn was.

"Whatever came, it was not your fault, Ruby." The wisewoman stared intently into her fellow kin's eyes. "To betray a dreamer is not weakness on the dreamer's hand. It is a cruelty. To dream is to be free - is it not dreaming when we join the sky?"

She looked away, for a moment, shifting in her seat.

"A solitary heart is not a safe one. While you shield it from the storm, it suffocates. It yearns to care. To dream. To fly. But -"

She had to choose when to settle, back then. She had to be ready.

Emer sighed.

"But perhaps I am a fool to dream, here." She laughed, a quick, short breath. "That is the risk of flying, hm? Sometimes, you must fall."

The wisewoman shook her head.

"The crew of the Hard Nox are good folk. I do not fear to fly, for I know they will catch me. You do not have that trust, nor that comfort. For that, I understand."

Sliding back in her chair, Emer rose.

"We will be leaving Leimor soon, I think. If you feel a need to fly, before then - we always need help, hm?"
 
"Good, you're hired." Caleb smiled, clasping his hand on the man's for a firm handshake. He didn't get a name, but that wasn't important. What's important was that it was the happiest he'd seen Emer in days. "Let's give them some privacy, shall we?"

Caleb walked over to an empty table, far enough away from the aos gaotha not to listen to their conversation. He then snapped his finger at Julian.

"Do you still make that pork stew you used to make? I'll have that."

***

"Not really…" Ronan lowered his head and shook it, pushing the bad thoughts away. He'd made his choice, it was better to just accept it. He smiled at Winter. "I need to go talk to someone, do you want to come in?" He asked, mostly to be polite. Surely, Caleb wouldn't mind.

***

A young elf woman with her pixie hair covered by a white hood walked over to the door to the shack to close it. There, she locked eyes with a girl that looked a lot like her, but paler. Was she sick? She wouldn't be the only one, not in that place.

"Are you coming in?" She asked, waiting for her response before closing the door so the meeting could begin.

"Welcome, my friends. I see a lot of new faces here today… Welcome." The voice came from another elf, pushing fifty, who was clearly related to the girl under the hood. She sat down near an empty seat and listened eagerly to her father's words.

"If you are here today, it's because you've had enough. Enough of struggling to scrape by to provide for your families, enough of paying absurd taxes for those who do nothing for our community, enough of always being lesser than.

If you took the time to come here today it's because, like me, you know the age of the fairies must come to an end."
 
Ciaran had hardly been walking for fifteen minutes towards the postal office before he heard a scream down an alley way and the clattering of a form on cobblestone. Without hesitating, he made way for the disturbance - although he had little for weapons beyond the knife in his boot and the single shot loaded into his arm. Still, he wasn't the kind of man to stand idly by.

When he came to the scene, he didn't have time to cast blame - he knew what he saw. Baron Emryk, his friend stood across from the icy vampire who had stalked the decks of their ship since they'd departed the badlands. A woman, bleeding from her neck stood aside the melee. His cuspids revealed themselves as a smile broke across Ciaran's eager face - nothing to break the monotony like a fight.

The vampire lunged for Emryk, rapier in hand. Without a second thought, Ciaran pushed in front, blocking the Baron and giving him an opportunity to try and catch Naveen's wrist with his metal hand and he lunged. With any luck, Ermyk would follow through on his partial disarm.
 
The golden eyes barely moved as she studied the face of the wisewoman. Ruby herself wasn't sure what she was searching for. A lie? The twist returned to her heart and stomach. Was she hoping that her Kin was lying to her? That these truths that could soothe her soul were pretty deceptions?

Alive is alive, but is alive living?

Ruby looked in Zadari's direction, then down at her sprawl of liar's tools, then over at the captain, conversing with the man who was her customer. What did she have to offer him? The wisewoman didn't know what she was capable of. Ruby, of course, knew she was a navigator by starlight, and well equipped with her talon and ogre-blade.

"I don't know how much help I could be. I do not fly, nor do I sail. I can-- chart the stars, and travel by them. And I can use a blade. But labor, I do not."

She could labor, of course. If asked, if needed. She had before, from time to time. There were few services she would never offer or participate in. Then, remembering that wisewoman was more than a title, she realized something else that needed to be clarified.

"I am also not a wisewoman," she clarified, although she doubted she needed to. She could deceive most untrained eyes, but Emer was herself a healer.

Sirideán could have been, in a better life. If the Sky had been kinder. She looked down, and found her frowning reflection in the crystal ball.

"My grandmother and mother taught me the ways, but I was very young. I have little to offer."
 
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