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Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on Apr 9, 2015 7:54:21 GMT -6
Ah yes, the dusty roads of Sacae. Usually empty, with little to no actual scenery to take note of. Unless you really, REALLY liked grass and the occasional hill. Her absolute favorite place in the world. Nayru quirked a small smile to herself at how sarcastic that sounded even in her head - it was more or less true, yes, but she couldn't really say it was all bad. She had met Elly near the Sacaen-Bernese border, after all, on a road very much like this one, and in many ways that had been a... turning point for her, the start of an adventure - a wild ride - that had taken her through previously-inexperienced ups and downs throughout.
...Sacae in general seemed to be somewhat of a catalyst of change for her, she realized. Certainly not the only place she went to have life-changing experiences, but it had provided both the opening and closing chapters for what was, perhaps, the first 'real' adventure she'd had; one that had changed her more than she had changed in a long time. Meeting Elly, the fracas in the bandit fortress and her subsequent transformation, and all the events bookending or being bookend...ed, assuming that was a word, by those events. The events at Veigue's hometown afterwards, her visit with Veigue to the destroyed farmstead along the Sacaen-Ilian border, the events of Salvation Point which had awakened her to the imminent danger that monsters posed to Elibe.
Actually... hadn't she met Veigue here too? It was almost easy to forget, locations tended to blend together a bit after you visited nearly literally everywhere worth visiting on the continent after a few hundred years of sightseeing, but the grassy plains and relative solitude, away from the hustle and bustle of civilization, were memorable in their own way. Yes, the burning village - her reunion with Elly - also the part where she ripped a beam out of a house and impaled some bandits with it. Good times. There was also the almost dying part though. She didn't really pay much attention to the road or her surroundings, besides the bare minimum needed to avoid walking into the occasional horse or other traveler, wrapped in thought for the most part.
That was the blessing and the curse of unending life - the more you experienced, the easier it was to live within those memories, to shut out the outside world and all its harsh realities. In her memories, Elly was still there, smiling as vibrantly as ever; Erim's quiet affection had not dimmed an iota; Aerious was still the wise and knowledgeable figure she had been coming to respect so strongly.
...But Elly wasn't there anymore. Erim wasn't there anymore. Aerious wasn't there anymore.
All she had left of them were the memories.
The flash of pink that distracted her was, in retrospect, a moment of empty hope for Elly - the thought of some sort of cosmic humor reuniting the two relatively near where they'd first met - but unless Elly had put on about a hundred pounds and wore actual armor now and was also like a foot taller put that idea to the kibosh pretty quickly. It was actually sort of amusing, in retrospect - no sane individual could ever mistake one from the other upon inspection, but the color pink was rare enough to draw attention and she had associated it entirely with Elly.
...Without seeing the other individual's face she wasn't actually sure, but it did look kind of familiar for some reason, actually, and not because of the Elly connection. Long pink hair. Hm. She wasn't sure if she recognized the armor - sort of familiar but less so, possibly changed entirely or just somewhat altered - but something about the figure looked familiar even from behind, and while her subconscious delicately steered her away from the conscious thought, she did sort of latch on to the riddle as a desperate escape from the trap that was her own mind.
The search engine that was her mind slowly chugged to life, rapidly filing through memories and faces lodged in her near-eidetic memory. What use was eternal life if you couldn't parse the data, after all? She might not be all that impressive of a dragon, what with the crippling self-worth issues, occasional social awkwardness, partially reverting to an impetuous teenager, aaaand actually she was going to stop thinking. RIGHT pink people. Hm. Filter out results from more than fifty years ago - human natural lifespan - Bern - Lycia - drunk outside stable in Ostia - thirty-seven years; too old - Sacae - Ilia - confluence?
The two streams crossed almost imperceptibly, but long years spent sorting through data had taught her those were rarely coincidences. She investigated, found the thread, followed it. Ilian-Sacaen connection - an Ilian in Sacae - war? Oh! Yes. Salvation Point. The two Ilians traveling to Bern to crush the Rebellion. It was coming back in much better detail now; the Baels, that Gaea-accursed gargoyle with the javelins, how satisfying it had been to break each and every one of the stupid things in the aftermath... ah yes, Richter and Clair. Feldsky and... Abend. No, Abend and Feldsky.
Clair had been tolerable - very patriotic though - she hadn't really spoken with the male much. It seemed Sacae was a country of surprises, of unions and reunions alike. They must have reached Bern long ago, it had been months; why was he back in Sacae? Where was Clair? Caught in the moment with her better judgement forgotten a few miles back, Nayru impulsively raised her right hand and shouted a name that pierced the intervening distance like an arrow - "Richter!"
Rapidly picking up speed, she jogged forwards to close the gap towards the man traveling some distance ahead of her, not so much an outright run, much less a charge, as a blissfully clueless young lady waving at someone she PROBABLY should have finished assessing her memories of before jumping haphazardly out of the frying pan and into the... lava.
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Post by Richter Abend on Apr 13, 2015 18:35:25 GMT -6
"Richter!"
The pink haired man's attention was grabbed by the distant but clearly audible greeting. Or was it a greeting? There was a friendliness to the way it was said, but in ways it seemed more like an accusation, like the way a lawman would yell "Stop that criminal!". It didn't help that the person who seemed to have exclaimed it, as they were the only person in sight, was bounding towards him with a hand held high in the air.
The person, feminine in figure and bearing hair the color of charred wood, grew more familiar to Richter as she came near, but for the life of him he could not seem to identify her. Her clothing looked very tribal, but it was clearly nothing Sacaen, which meant it was probably Nabatan. Maybe it was Valcrist's sister or something. No, Valcrist had blonde hair, so wouldn't his sister have at least a similar hair color? But why in the world would Valcrist's sister, a woman he didn't even know existed or not, be running towards him so excitedly? Hell, why would any woman? True, there was always Clair or Mary, but he doubted either of them would be all that pleased to see him after how he'd treated them. Maybe angry, which this woman very well could be, but he could clearly see it wasn't either of them. That was a relief.
But he really did not remember meeting a dark-haired woman in Nabatan-like garb. Richter didn't know all that many dark-haired women, at least not on a first name basis, much less Nabatan ones. Perhaps he had finally grown notorious enough that random people could identify him from a distance, knowing his name well before he knew theirs? That was an odd, and not entirely pleasing thought.
But Richter's internal questioning did little to slow the woman's approach. She continued forward, closing the distance between the two of them, leaving the Ilian to begin making guesses. Mana? No, it hadn't been so long that she'd have grown so much. That one woman he'd escorted to Edessa? Richter couldn't remember much else about her, but he knew she had possessed darker hair. Or was it was Clair, and she'd decided to dye her hair dark? The outfit was a bit much, for her, though... Maybe it was just a thankful wife of some man whose life he'd saved in the recent battle.
"Yes," he muttered as the woman closed in on him. "Hello?" His left arm in sling, only his right hand was available to scratch his chest. He'd recently made a bit of an effort to stop grabbing his sword when he felt uncomfortable after a number of people had pointed out the hostility of it. Rubbing the spot on his chest where he kept his hunting knife had taken its place, which had then become a general scratching of the chest.
"I don't believe we've met. It would be polite of you to introduce yourself." In the absence of any real knowledge, Richter's characteristic brusqueness took ove.
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Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on Apr 21, 2015 14:25:57 GMT -6
Blissfully unaware of Richter's train of thought, Nayru coasted to a walk as she approached him, stopping at the minimum safe distance to not intrude too much on someone she didn't exactly know; while her mind might be a bit lost in translation, she still had SOME instincts left. Not very good ones, granted. "It's me! Nayru!" The words came out as naturally and surely as if they were completely self-evident - as if it was obvious who and what Nayru was and there had been absolutely no change in appearance.
...No one said ALL dragons were wise.
Still, it didn't take a particularly intelligent individual to gauge the Ilian legend's reaction and realize, somewhere along the line, that she might need to provide a bit more than that. "Salvation Point? Broke-ass ruins, army of horrible arachnid acid sacs, those flying assholes? Clair and Elly and... Aerious..." her brain was finally kicking in as that whole minor temporal continuity thing came to mind. "Oh. Right. I uhh..."
Nayru's exuberance dissipated into thin air as she looked down at her body - it still seemed a little alien after so long. "...Was taller... among other things" Variations in chest size were clearly irrelevant and just a fluke. She looked back up, smiling sheepishly - eerily akin to a teenager trying to justify themselves to an adult. "Kiiiiinda forgot that part, sorry, it's been a - really weird couple weeks," she said with the kind of blunt honestly that barely began to plumb the depths of just how weird said few weeks - the last few months, really - had been. From her adventures with Veigue to that whole Remus adventure and the part where she turned into a giant dragon, mucked with the weather in the region temporarily, and accidentally started quite a few rumors and stories about the freak thunderstorm in the plains not long past.. good times.
She brought one hand up behind her head, rubbing the back of her neck without much thought for the gesture. "So, uhhh... how's it going?"
Nailed it.
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Post by Richter Abend on Apr 24, 2015 12:44:04 GMT -6
A blank stare was all Richter could muster up at first, which probably made him look a bit slow. But once the Ilian's brain began putting two and two together, the blankess gave way to a confused scrunch of the eyebrows and a mouth that was just ajar enough to be noticable, all together leaving him looking a bit...dumb.
"Nayru?" he asked, tilting his head and scratching the end of his eyebrow with his free index finger. "You? But you're..." He looked the woman up and down, his hand unconsciously running itself through his hair as he thought of the last time he saw the woman, snowy white hair and all. Now her hair was dark and brown, and she was right, she WAS shorter. And aside from the two most obvious things, she also just looked different, but Richter couldn't put his finger on exactly what. It was wierd. He didn't feel like she was lying to him, that she was, indeed, the dragon woman he'd met back at Salvation Point, but she wasn't the same person at all. "...younger."
It was the best, and probably kindest, word the Ilian could come up with. They hadn't talked much before, but she had not given Richter the best impression. She had been strutting around with her nose in the air and a stick up her rear just like the superior, holier-than-thou arseface she had been with. But now the way she talked casual and relaxed, friendly really, which as far as dragons went reminded him more of Marcus than Aerious.
"Naryu, huh?" Richter restated the concept aloud while his brain continued to process it. He didn't really know what to say. The last time they had met they had parted on a very sour note, or at least that's how the Ilian remembered it, and now here she was acting all excited to see him while he hadn't given her a second thought since leaving the scorched out, monster infested ruins of Salvation Point. Were extreme personality shifts a thing dragons had? Knowing Marcus, Richter wouldn't be surprised if it was true.
"I've been well," the Ilian replied, his good hand having returned to rubbing his chest right where the strap that attached Boreas to his back crossed over his pectoral. It might as well have been a lie, because "well" was not the correct term to describe how his life had gone since the two had last seen each other. He'd been ambushed by Etrurian soldiers disguised as rebels, had fought the Crimson demon, had watched his good friend die, had abandoned his post and his second-in-command, had stood against hordes of monsters, had battle Hargus as a giant demon creature, and had, for the time being, lost complete use of his left arm which currently hung in a sling. But Richter had never been good at small talk, much less small talk with someone who might as well be a total stranger.
“I’m currently heading to meet someone. Let's talk while we walk.”
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Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on Apr 24, 2015 15:32:59 GMT -6
"Um - sure," she mumbled, dutifully falling in with Richter akin to a lost puppy. A multi-ton puppy that breathed lightning and ate people. Bad Fido. She didn't really know how to place Richter, much less appraise him... back at Salvation Point she had only met him after he was already arguing with Aerious, and neither side had exactly struck her as exceptionally cordial, whereas now he seemed... tolerable? Uncomfortable with her - around her - but not outright aggressive, and while she didn't entirely understand his reaction, at least he didn't do that whole 'oh god it's a dragon, the dragons are returning, someone call the army, die vile monster' thing, which was really quite rude when people did it.
And while she got the impression he didn't understand her new (old?) appearance, at least he seemed willing to accept it. Claire had mentioned that they had met dragons before, right? Certainly they seemed relatively comfortable with the concept, especially given their apparent military backgrounds, so Nayru supposed she should just count her blessings rather than trying to understand it. But she still felt like it was rude to leave the big pink guy totally in the dark, since he really seemed confused, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to kinda vaguely explain?
"Technically I'm the, uh, original me now, not - um - it's a long story, lots of lightning, pretty sure I stepped in a puddle. Of bandit." She coughed a little awkwardly. The freak lightning storm in Sacae recently, PURELY COINCIDENTALLY exactly where she had transformed, had made minor local news - no one had really known what to make of it, and given that no one except bandits were hurt, no one really seemed to care either. But she had heard a few people talking about it since then, which was part of the reason she was probably not going to be spending a lot of time in this part of Sacae for the next few months at least, probably years, but who knew how that would end up going?
"Sorry about the whole-" Nayru blurted it out before pausing, not quite hesitating so much as breaking to try to piece the words together. "The Aerious thing. I - sort of sided with him automatically without trying to find out what was going on." It was sort of a haphazard apology, but no less sincere despite its lack of coherence; Nayru had kicked herself ever since realizing what sort of person Aerious was and comprehending how she had acted - since he was the first dragon, and close to first friend, she had actually made in a long time, she had reflexively taken his side without even considering the other viewpoint, or WHY Richter might have been so gruff by the time she got involved. It was the exact kind of partial, short-sighted taking of sides that had divided human society since its inception, the same thing that had blinded dragons to humans being fellow stewards of Elibe rather than mere cattle, and normally she would have thought herself well above that sort of foolishness by dint of perspective.
Turned out it only took a minor tweak of perspective and a moment of bad judgement to go right down to that level herself as well.
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Post by Richter Abend on Apr 26, 2015 21:37:14 GMT -6
Richter wasn't usually one to feel awkward. Normally he cared too little about others' opinions to waste his own time feeling so, but something about this conversation just made him feel really, well, awkward. It wasn’t that Nayru was doing anything wrong, but she was acting like a completely different person. It wasn’t just an attitude adjustment. It was like he had met someone pretending to be Nayru at Salvation Point, and now he was meeting the real Nayru, and the real Nayru was really awkward. At least that’s what she made it sound like, but perhaps it was vice versa? No. For all the things different about her, there was something about her that let Richter know this was indeed the same dragon woman.
“Please, don’t apologize,” the Ilian said with a wave of his hand. The request was partially made in politeness, but was also because he would really rather not have her apologize. Apologizing meant reopening the grievance and talking about his feelings, and considering it had been all of ten minutes of his life over a year ago, Richter didn’t think it was worth doing the latter. Very little was. Besides, everything that had happened since then made a spat with a dragon seem very petty in comparison, and also kind of amusing considering most people never even saw dragons, much less get in arguments with them and live to tell the tale.
“So what brings a dragon to the City of Heroes?” Richter asked, changing the direction of the conversation. “More monster research, or whatever it was you were doing last time I saw you? Because there were a ton of monsters here a few days ago." The Ilian nodded towards his injured arm with a wry grin, and almost as if in response the axe on his back began to frost over, as if it were trying to remind its wielder of its contribution. “They're gone now, though. Killed most of them, routed the rest. It was quite the battle.”
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Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on Apr 26, 2015 22:36:10 GMT -6
"I don't really know anymore." Nayru returned the wry smile with one of her own in the wake of a pretty much reflexive response. She almost had to double back on it to make sure it was right - but no, it was the truth and nothing but the truth. She DIDN'T know what she was doing anymore. That social reworking plan she had discussed with Aerious, her own tendencies to just stay quiet and out of the limelight, even mere ruin exploration - all of them had kind of... fallen by the wayside in recent months. Ever since she had met Elly, and by extension the other people who had figured, minorly or prominently, in her life, she had become almost a different person - and that was BEFORE she got an impromptu boob reduction surgery slash transformation sequence!
...Note to self, never ever ever refer to it like that again. It was a good thing Richter wasn't a mind reader. "Just... living, I guess. It's a - work in progress." She cleared her throat a little awkwardly. "Though I was thinking of taking up monster hunting as a profession. I'd never really fought until recently - turns out it's pretty fun, and with the sheer amount of monsters spawning across Elibe, especially Lycia, I figure it's kind of a two birds, one... dragon... kinda thing." And the birds were gargoyles, because screw gargoyles. Man, she needed to move to a less literal world or all her metaphors and similes alike were gonna stop working at all. "I just heard about the battle like everyone else - sounds like I missed a lot of fun. If I got the dates right, it'd be right around the time I was recuperating. Probably for the best anyways; I don't do well in crowds."
It finally clicked what was bugging her - not bugging per se, but... something. While she and Richter didn't necessarily... sync very well, he just seemed so completely unconcerned with the whole 'dragon' thing that it was almost surprisingly easy to talk about. It was strange behavior for a human. Not that she was complaining, mind, but either he had the world's best poker face, or there was a story behind his seeming indifference. "So uh, usually I have to either save someone's life 20 times or almost eat them before we have the Talk(tm) about dragons, and I don't remember trying either on you yet. There'd probably be more slobber either way. Would it be a safe assumption someone beat me to it? People are generally more... bothered by the whole immortal murder hobo thing. Not that I mind. This way is a lot nicer than a barrage of rotten tomatoes."
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Post by Richter Abend on Apr 27, 2015 14:30:35 GMT -6
The furrowing of Ilian brows intensified more each second that the woman spoke. There was an odd juxtaposition of person and speech in the way Nayru spoke. Here in front of him was a dragon who had lived more years than he could probably imagine, and could no doubt killed him in a single swipe if it tried, but instead of being calm and in control, she spoke with an uncomfortable casualness filled with pauses and interjections. There was also the strange slang like… immortal murder hobo. In truth, he felt less like he was speaking to an ancient being of wisdom and power, and more like he was talking to some shaky-kneed child. He felt like the adult, the superior, which was completely different from before, and very odd. Even Marcus had always had an aged wisdom behind his antics, like a man too old to care about what people thought about him.
Though now that he thought about it, he had never seen Nayru’s dragon form. He had seen her powers when she had squashed that giant spider in the fort ruins, at least, but that had been before. Maybe after her transformation she was a really small, weak dragon when she transformed? Maybe she had no powers left? Could that happen? Marcus had lost all of his powers when Ariston had taken his dragonstone. Had Nayru lost hers? Richter wanted to ask, but it seemed like an inflammatory question.
“I’m not a stranger to dragons,” Richter replied. His hand slid back down from his chest back to his side as his initial awkwardness gave way to his usual, unconcerned, confident air. It was definitely odd feeling like the senior when speaking to a dragon, but the Ilian couldn’t say he minded it. It was kind of nice given their previous encounter. “Including you I believe I’ve met four...five...six dragons?” He counted the numbers on the fingers of his good hand. There was Nayru, Aerious, Marcus, Aeros, that evil dragon that Aeros had fought back in Etruria all those years ago, and then that one that had showed up in Ilia. She had been Marcus’s friend, right? French, was it? No, Fran. “Three of those actually marched with me,” he continued, referring to Aeros, Marcus, and Fran. “You and Aerious were actually the most recent dragons I’ve met. I’d say it was probably my worst encounter with your kind, but there was that one that tried to kill me, Kenshin, and all of his friends.”
“One was actually a good friend of mine and he-” Richter began speaking of Marcus, but as soon as he did he was interrupted by the a humming on his chest. The dragonstone? Speak of the devil and she shall appear. The pink haired Ilian reached into his shirt, rummaged around a bit, and pulled out his old friend’s magic rock. Unlike when he retrieved it after Marcus’s death, when it had been cold and dull like any old rock, it now glowed with a faint, emerald light. There was also a slight warmth to it, but that may have just been Richter’s imagination.
“-he died,” finished the Ilian, now looking up at Nayru, stone still in his hand. “He was killed in Bern by a squad of wyvern riders. I recovered his dragonstone in the aftermath.” Richter bore a puzzled look on his face, then slightly extended the glowing stone towards Nayru. “I'm not quite understanding this. Do dragonstones normally glow around dragons?”
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Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on Apr 27, 2015 19:00:25 GMT -6
"Well, that's more than I've met since-" Arcadia, the legendary dragon city, by the way if you want to alert the entire human population there are a bunch of dragons still alive so you can go finish the job, here's the address "-a long time ago." Nailed it. How many had she met by now anyways? Obviously the Arcadian batch, not that she was gonna count those squares. Marcus fifty or so years ago, Taiel and Lynessa in Ilia in his home, Nax somewhere else in Ilia floating around like a loonie, Aerious was a given as well - not that she was particularly fond of those memories. Not all of them anyways. She did regret they hadn't found more common ground. Hoping to 'save' him would be a lost cause, but before their ideaologies had clashed so severely, it had been nice.
"Huh, yeah, I guess you beat me there. It's kinda funny - if most of Elibe knew their terrible overlords of yore walked among them, there would be widespread panic... until they realized the remainder are pretty much just harmless wanderers more interested in books and booze than global genocide, and most don't really care about the Scouring anymore in the first place. Outside of the pragmatic side of that."
And then there was Aerious.
"...And there's Aerious, I guess, but he's pretty harmless." She shrugged. "For certain definitions of the word, anyways." It was hard to call a living engine of destruction 'harmless,' especially after what she had seen him do to the ruins of Salvation Point, but danger was as much a function of intent as simply power. He talked a lot of crap, but didn't really seem all that interested in kickstarting a new Scouring. Then again, she didn't really know what the hell he did between bouts of unending rage over his hate-on for humanity. For all she knew, he had been the one who attached Richter... but that didn't really seem like a great subject for conversation.
Unfortunately(?) the conversation was interrupted somewhat by Richter producing a - dragonstone? She was suddenly struck by the question of what had happened to all those dragons mentioned, and how many of them he had the dragonstones of. Ehh. He was clearly dangerous, Nayru might not be a truly great fighter but her instincts were at least good enough to recognize Richter as an exceedingly experienced warrior, but she didn't really get the feeling of him being a threat to her. Not in terms of power - she had no idea how a fight would go - but again in terms of intent rather than ability; he had treated her fairly and evenly so far, and while lugging other people's dragonstones around was a weird hobby, she didn't see any reason to get too bent out of shape about it.
The dragonstone held a bit of a strange feeling attached to it... something she could almost recognize, though not quite. Well, part of it was clear - any thunder dragon could recognize that power. "A thunder dragon?" It didn't take supreme cosmic power or infinite wisdom to recognize the similar nature of that power, much as one experienced Anima magic user might recognize the power of another. Actually identifying much more than that, though, took much more intimate knowledge of the stone and its bearer, and she didn't have any 300 year blood oaths with other storm dragons. Still, there was some level of familiarity...
Nayru stared thoughtfully at the stone for a moment, then extended her hand, fingers outstretched - not to take the stone, the angle was wrong for that, but almost as if to touch it. A tiny jolt of lightning jumped between the two from around a foot away. She frowned a little. "...Dragonstones... react strongly to the presence of another dragon when attuned to a living..." she paused, trying to find the right word. "...Symbiote? We always know when another is present. I can't say I'm an expert on the soulstones of fallen kin, but this one recognizes me as someone other than its master. Unusual, but not abnormal if he held a strong bond to it and the severing of that bond was relatively recent."
Soulstones. Not the most common name for them, and not necessarily any more correct, but she had always liked it. Dragons, much like humans, differed greatly in opinion on the topic of souls. Some believed dragonstones were quite literally crystallized souls, while others believed them to be simply portals or engines to their natural power - a translator of sorts for one polarity of power to another better channeled by human bodies, nothing spiritual about it. She didn't really know where she stood on the subject, but it was a nice name nonetheless. She looked up to Richter, smiling sadly but gently. She didn't know the story there, but the simple fact that Richter had even bothered picking up his friend's stone spoke more of him than he knew. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Why did the stone seem a little familiar though? She didn't really know any thunder dragons except Aerious, and she was willing to bet her life that Richter and Aerious hadn't suddenly become the best of friends in the month or two since she parted from the other dragon. Hm. Well, no harm in asking. Probably. "Who did it belong to?"
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Post by Richter Abend on May 4, 2015 15:04:53 GMT -6
"It was only a couple months ago, so not too long," Richter replied, letting out a quick sigh as he tucked the glimmering dragonstone back into his shirt, "especially not for a dragon." His face was a whirlpool of mixed emotions. Seeing the stone glow, snap with electricity, brought strong emotions welling up in the Ilian's gut. It was almost like it had been reaching out for something as it touched Nayru's finger, almost like it was alive, like Marcus was still hiding somewhere inside of it. But the Ilian knew that wasn't true. It was just a rock. A special rock, sure, but still just a rock, and life it seemed to have was nothing more than a reaction to the dragon woman's unique presence. Marcus had died. Richter had made peace with that fact. There was no point in stirring up old hopes that somehow the opposite may be impossibly true.
"His name was Marcus," Richter stated, answering Nayru's question as he looked her in the eyes. "Marchamut? He used the name a few times. I assume it was his dragon name, or something. As good of friends as we were, we never really discussed his heritage much. He never seemed like he wanted to discuss it, and frankly I never cared to ask." His tone was more somber than it had been a few moments ago, but he was hardly weepy. "I'd ask if you knew him, but I imagine that would be just as silly as you asking me if I knew Elly just because we're both Ilian."
The warrior shook his head, his eyes drifting a bit up and to the left as he recalled their shared time together. When they'd first met in Sacae, when they'd marched to Salvation Point, when they'd fled from their attempted execution, when they'd stormed Ariston's fort, when they'd first practiced riding, then the time when Marcus had up and disappeared only to return and die in the arena... "He was an interesting man," the Ilian continued, placing his right fist on his hip, "or dragon. I don't know how you people refer to each other. He was always a man to me, just one that could turn into a giant, thunder breathing lizard." An ever so slight grin split his lips as he remembered their initial meeting, and Marcus's subsequent capture. "In fact we were marching into Sacae when I first saw him. I was still working under Kraft, and there we were, a whole army of both my men and a superior's, and out of nowhere, this big black creature of legend comes dropping out of the sky with a man on his back." Richter made a small gesture with his hand representing a dragon landing on the ground. "The man gets off, the dragon transforms into a man, then the dragon states that the both of them want to join the army and offers his dragonstone as a sort of peace offering." He shrugged. "No one really knew what to do other than demonstrate outright hostility, so needless to say Marcus soon found himself prisoner to Etruria. It wasn't until much later that we were able to get him his dragonstone back and wreak some real havoc."
Richter's smile grew just a bit bigger. It was a happy memory. Most were with Marcus. They had been comrades in arms, and had saved each other's lives on multiple occasions. Marcus had been one of Richter's only real friends, alongside Broos, Clair, and Mavick. But he was different. Broos had been like a second father to Richter. Clair had been his subordinate and beloved comrade-in-arms, but now she was a jilted lover, if even that. Mavick was a trusted advisor, but Richter had never cared to take the relationship much deeper than that. Even though he was hundreds of years older, Marcus had been like the similar aged brother that Richter had never had.
“Ah, I didn’t mean to ramble.”
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Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on May 4, 2015 20:16:31 GMT -6
Nayru's hand rose to her lips, almost ladylike for a brief instant - probably pretty weird given the her of now, but a habit learned over centuries of pretending to be a lady - to hide her growing smile at Richter's description of Marcus. Even knowing that was Marcus's dragonstone, and that in turn he was dead, almost seemed like a side note to the thought that Marcus had a flair for the dramatic and a tendency to crash-land everywhere he went. She had always assumed her own meeting with him had been a one-off, but the thought that he arrived everywhere like that threatened to overcome her composure entirely.
"I'm sorry, that's just - the most Marcus thing I've ever heard." Well, that cat was out of the bag; Richter would have to have been actively ignoring her to not grasp the inference of her comment - that she did know him. Not that it was really a big secret or anything, just the realization that it WAS someone she had known, and that the reveal had been made in such a... silly manner, was a sort of cosmic irony beyond compare. She allowed herself a light giggle. "He was the first dragon I met as well actually - in a while anyways - maybe fifty, sixty years ago, when he was a crazy hermit living in a witch's abandoned house. He asked me good places to visit, and I suggested Etruria because of the libraries... I wonder if he found the irony as complete as I before he was freed."
As her amusement subsided, though, it hit home a little harder than she had realized - or perhaps she had already known it would, and had just been acting like that to stave off the overwhelming realization that the closest she had met to someone with the same deal as her was dead, apparently horribly, and she'd never see him again. Nayru swallowed, her eyes not quite meeting Richter's anymore, and continued in a lower tone. "...That would explain the thunder aspect." Her time with Aerious had nearly wiped from her memory the fact that she HAD known another bearer of the storm.
Well - that was not how she had expected this conversation to go. "Hi" "hi" "sup" "Marcus is dead." She was almost afraid to ask if Richter actually had known Elly - for all she knew, the girl was really his daughter. They both had pink hair, after all, and she did have daddy issues... okay yeah no she wasn't going to follow that path to its conclusion. "I wonder if I should have stuck with him."
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Post by Richter Abend on May 11, 2015 16:16:57 GMT -6
"It wouldn't have done any good," muttered Richter. He shook his head, but there was a smile on his face. "He would have found some other way to get himself killed. He had an uncanny knack for getting himself in trouble." And Richter believed that too. The dragon was always disappearing, only to return under morally suspect circumstances. For example, there was the time in Edessa where he had disappeared for a day, only to return wearing guard armor that had notably been covered in blood. Or there was the time he had run off after Richter had gotten kidnapped, then reappeared weeks later with some story of how he had been raiding Etrurian towns with Ilian mercenaries. If it was a lie, which Richter suspected it was, he was quite the storyteller, but if true, well, that just spoke to the Ilian’s original point.
“So you’d met him?” Richter continued, slightly changing the subject to something a little less morose. It seemed a mighty coincidence that to him Nayru just happened to know Marcus, given how scarce dragons were, or were at least supposed to be. That said, if dragons were an insular group, one that lived for hundreds of years at that, then perhaps it made complete sense that they had all shaken hands at some point in time. Stick with your own, and all that nonsense. “And only sixty years ago at that? Yeesh, I'm not even thirty, and you make it sound like you'd met him just a few years ago,” Richter observed. Sixty years was a long time, so perhaps Nayru knew Marcus far better than he did. She made it sound like that was the case. It was odd thinking that she and Marcus had known each other since long before he had even been born, but dragons were long lived creatures so it made sense. “Were you good friends? Or just acquaintances?”
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Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on May 21, 2015 1:37:48 GMT -6
"Time is -" Nayru hesitated, rethinking her off the cuff response halfway through. She really wasn't sure how to word it. Not that she couldn't think of any appropriate words, just she wasn't sure how to string them all together right. The difference between dragon and human perspectives was not something that came up often, and truth be told she forgot it existed sometimes; in all her adventures with Veigue recently they had been in the 'now' and therefore important and relevant, but they were nothing more than a drop in the bucket in terms of her overall lifespan.
Not that that made the emotional bonds any less intense. "-A matter of perspective. It mostly blurs together after long enough... only the important moments - the ones you WANT to remember - people you like, bonds you share - that keep mattering for very long." She shrugged. "Different memory systems I guess. Humans usually start going senile after sixty years. I store information differently, efficiently enough that I won't eventually overload, but the important stuff is still the same. He was the first dragon I'd met in centuries, and we had enough in common to hit it off." Yeah, like both being crazy. Also, killing machines. Now THAT was romance!
...She actually couldn't imagine Marcus being romantic. Like, literally, at all. All Nayru could envision was the guy dropping out of the sky like a rock, holding a half-eaten deer, and then offering some kind of cave-man grunting... it was horribly inappropriate and a little mean given that he'd served her perfectly good tea and held a decent conversation, but first impressions died hard.
She was grinning like a retard wasn't she? God DAMMIT. "Sorry. Just - acquaintances," she finished, changing subjects mid-sentence almost well enough to make it sounds like she'd been talking about Richter's question from the start of the sentence, as compared to revealing the sordid truth that she'd been trying to envision Marcus in a tux. It hadn't gone well. "It's been around fifty years since I saw him last, and we never really..." she trailed off a little, "...at that point neither of us were really ready for... any kind of relationship." That was actually a pretty neutral way of saying they had both been batshit crazy. She was rather proud of herself. "If it's any consolation, you probably knew him better than I did. I hope he was happier by the time you met him. He deserved it. Sometimes... friends can make all the difference in the world." Speaking from experience there, heh.
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Post by Richter Abend on May 24, 2015 10:22:49 GMT -6
Richter had always wondered just how memory worked for someone who lived so long. Having so many experiences and thoughts floating around in your head seemed like it would ultimately result in a downright mess, which the Ilian commander had always attributed to Marcus's mild insanity or Aerious's godlike reverence of himself. It made complete sense to him to think that humans had waged war on a race of violent lizards that grew just a bit more crazy or maniacal with every year, but now Nayru was telling him only the most important memories really stuck. It was odd to think about looking back on your life and seeing nothing but a sea of blurry memories, but it made them seem more human, and it made more sense than them keeping every last one. And if only the most significant, important memories stuck, that could explain why the dragons he'd met tended to have such polarizing personalities. If all you ever kept were the memories that shaped you the most, be they tragedy or celebration, your behavior would no doubt begin to become a reflection of that.
The Ilian looked down at himself. If he had been born a dragon, and yet still lived a similar life to the one he had, would he have been forever stuck in the hate and anger he had nurtured for so long? Would he have been doomed to forever become a victim of his passions? Was that the fate of dragons? Maybe, maybe not. But it made Richter think that maybe the short, harsh lives of humans, lives that were always lamented by his own kind as a sort of disease, were maybe a gift. They fostered change, encouraged self-improvment, and gave humans a reason to fight for what they believed in. Maybe that was the reason the powers that be had made humans to be so fragile.
"Consolation?" asked Richter, before shaking his head. "It would be nice if it was, but it really isn't. I only knew him for a few years, and all things considered, not very well. We were good friends, but there are a million things about him I probably don't know." A part of him had been hoping Marcus and Nayru had been good friends, if just to know that the dragon had had someone who really knew him, who he could really consider a close friend, but it was starting to seem like Richter was the closest to holding that title. Sad, because Richter didn't place himself very high on the list of close friend material. He wasn't good at getting close.
"So where do you plan on going from here?" the Ilian inquired, changing the subject entirely. "Going to stay in Sacae, or do you have other plans?"
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Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on May 26, 2015 2:42:36 GMT -6
Well... she wasn't a mind reader, but Richter seemed to be somewhat caught in thought by what she said, going by his actions before his started speaking. Probably, anyways. Maybe he was just trying to decide what to eat for dinner, whether it should be charbroiled dragon drumsticks or pegasus stew. ...Could you even make drumsticks out of a dragon? They were a bird thing, leg muscles or something - she wasn't sure if there was a dragon analogue, mostly because she wasn't a horrible cannibal jerk. Man, either Richter was thinking about super deep stuff and she was here wondering what the proper way to cannibalize a dragon was, or they were both thinking about food. She kinda hoped it was the latter so she would look like less of a jackass if it ever came out, but the former would make her feel smarter to have gotten that much out of him.
Without really knowing for sure if Richter had been thinking about her comments about draconic memory, though, there wasn't much she could add to the subject unless he reintroduced it. Not that she was particularly looking to, she just didn't like being kept out of conversations - a bit of petulant immaturity that was not nearly as dead as she liked to think. Unfortunately(?) Richter kept to the serious road in his eventual response, which was, to be fair, EXACTLY what she had expected from him, since that seemed to be what he did, like, permanently. It was a little... depressing, honestly, to hear how bluntly curt he was about it. Not disappointed in him, rather, that her hopes of Marcus having had a better friend than her in him had died stillborn.
Well, maybe he had, and it was just someone else than the two of them. But Richter had his friend's dragonstone, and those things weren't exactly eager to come by, and he DID seem to care. Richter seemed to be grieving in his own way... though he probably didn't see it that way. Nayru wasn't quite the pinnacle of intelligence in the cosmos, but even she knew better than to push that subject.
"I don't really do... stay," she responded, grinning a little as she did the air quotes that spoke volumes of her thoughts on the subject. TECHNICALLY, yes, she kinda did, she had spent a few years with people at times, but never for long. "...And even if I wanted to, I should probably stay the hell out of Sacae for a while. This place is seriously bad for my health." Though it wasn't all bad. She HAD gained control of her transformation, and accidentally discovered that she could breathe lightning and supercharge herself while in human form now. So it wasn't a total loss. "...Though it does also lead to some pretty cool stuff. Did you know human-form dragons can breathe their element? 'Cuz I sure as hell didn't. Or couldn't. Not sure on that one. There seriously needs to be a manual for this stuff."
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