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Freedom in Many Ways; [Private: Logan]
Topic Started: Fri Nov 24, 2017 10:13 pm (520 Views)
Logan
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Not this again. It was a flash of a thought int he werewolf's mind as the small world of the room around them became quickly torn asunder. Splinters and bigger bits of wood exploded, accompanied by an invisible force that sent everything in the room flying back without any time to react. The best that even the experienced adventurer could muster was to cover his eyes and tuck into a fetal position before getting slammed against a wall and dropped to the floor. Logan found the pain dull, but the sudden shock more than enough to fuel a string of cusses as he hopped up to his feet to a low crouch, only going quiet to key in on the interaction between his employer and his ambusher.

"Bastard?" Logan cocked his head to the side, shooting a look of unfortunate surprise at her as things began clicking at least a little. It was one thing if she was some loyal servant that came off the streets before abuse, but she was born into what seemed like a whole family of bad, and he felt inclined to express that in the heat of the moment, "Vaska, your family sucks!"

It was not long after he said that before people came bursting into his room in a particularly bestial manner. They piled in, completely disregarding any privacy that the werewolf had expected from the establishment, covered in hideous muscle growth that surely could not have been natural. They seemed practically rabid, primal, haunting, and incredibly numerous.

"Nope!" Logan muttered, grabbing his backpack with one hand, reaching into his utility belt with the other, and pivoting clockwise to catch Vaska with the nook of his arm while his other hand drug the chalk circularly on the floor directly around them. As the circle came to a completion, the adventurer would hug the half-vampire close before stomping on the new doorway below and shouting out to his fairy dragon as it gave out from beneath them, "Twinkle!"

The descent was quick and straight down on top of one of the bare tables that, under better conditions, people would have been drinking at. Above them and before anything could follow, the chalk-created door shut on its own and vanished, with the small serpentine dragon just barely flitting through before getting caught by the closing. Logan would not let the half-vampire go until after hopping down to the floor and giving a quick scan of the surroundings to make sure there was no extra ambush awaiting them. Fortunately not, but all good adventurers kept a lot of tricks and trinkets close to the chest, so planning on a door chalk would be miraculous.

"This mess is gonna draw a Sheriff!" Logan huffed, standing tall and slinging the pack's straps over his shoulders, giving little hops of preparation. Honestly, if he was alone he could just portal gem out, but seeing as he had no intention of leaving Vaska to this mess on her own, he was going to have to his paws on the ground, "First thing's first, we can't stay flanked. Run! Out the back!"
Edited by Logan, Wed Jan 3, 2018 12:01 am.
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Vaska
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Under normal circumstances Vaska would have protested to being picked up, but everything was happening all at once and they were coming in from all sides, amped up on some concoction or another. The two of them fell through the floor, emerging in a newly abandoned tavern area. Vaska didn't need to be told twice to run. She still had her eyes on killing Artur, but not in a situation so badly pitched against them.

Light on her feet, the half-vampire tore off into the night at a good clip. From the angle they were running, a slight adjustment would put them right at the secret out-of-the-way corner where Vaska had parked her carriage earlier. "Onto the carriage! Save your energy!" As they made a beeline for it, she added a question that was shouted over to Logan so he could hear over the distant pounding of feet chasing them: "Any way for you to attack at range?!"

The half-vampiress was practically zippy compared to the werewolf. Logan followed her lead straight to the carriage, following her to ride crossbow on the driver's seat.

"Depends, can you melt snow?" Logan huffed, his normal response to danger being to just frown it, but there was definitely strategy in attacking him in Balefire during the Winter. Still, he was not without options, his paws disappearing into the air before partially pulling some weaponry from the void, "I've got a repeater and a harpoon shooter and, uhh-- not wasting that. Ah-Ha! Veteran's Quiver!"

With the announcement of the last thing, Logan shoved the quiver back into nothingness before pulling out the loaded repeating crossbow.

Vaska shouted a voice command to her carriage-horse even before she could get the reins untangled. It took off, first into a trot and then a full-blown gallop. The speed caused the carriage behind it to fishtail slightly, but that was the least of their concerns right now. Enhanced cultists tore through the night like a pack of hunting hounds, even slavering. They came pouring out of cross-streets, trying to tackle the speeding horse and attached carriage. A few leaped from the gutter, forcing Vaska at one point to duck as low as she could go on the driver's seat.

Three of the long, spindly cultists jumped down from the top of a nearby roof. One slipped off the side of the carriage roof while the other two managed to cling, holding on for dear life as they tried to claw their way toward the front of the vehicle in spite of its violent juddering.

There was no thought expended to the profane words Logan spat as the drugged-up cultists came dangerously close with their own practically primal fury. They were literally throwing themselves at the carriage to get at him, driven by single-minded purpose. Just trying to keep up with the ones in his vision was difficult enough, but this all felt like a nightmare. The only thing that convinced the adventurer that he was awake was the color that the dark world had, at least definitely more than any dream he ever had.

On the plus side, he could at least take the hits. Despite him, the cultists were not throwing any silver or bane his way, but he definitely wanted to no part in testing what their current leader had. Logan's crossbow, however, carried a more definitive impact on his enemies, shooting one that tried clawing him from the side with a forceful shot to the shoulder.

With audible clumps through the noise of their getaway, the adventurer did a double-take to consider the new riders they picked up. As much as he may have wanted to quip about them not paying fare, he twisted his way around from the seat to shoot them from the wagon.

Five count of bolts per magazine. Two shots left before he needed to reload. Looked like they brought a whole squadron of cultists to harass him this time.

"Got a plan?" Logan asked Vaska in a mix of panic and hope. His heart thrashing about in his chest as he kept golden eyes primed for more cultist jumpers.

Their bodies slid off the top of the carriage, then bounced off even more violently when they hit one of the streetside individuals. The horse was in such a panic that it was almost uncontrollable, even resorting to trampling people in a desperate attempt to get away. Vaska was so focused on driving the carriage, dodging or running over cultists, and preventing the vehicle from capsizing that she lost hold of one of her daily cantrips. A minor glamour lifted as her black hair blew in the wind. A pair of feline ears the same color as her hair were pinned back, adding to her look of consternation.

Her bright red eyes turned toward Logan. "We'll lose them in the swamps."

It almost sounded like a good idea in her panic-addled mind.

But it was winter in Balefire, and the backswamps outside of the City of Lanterns didn't take well to city folk. The swamps had a nasty tendency to devour the insufficiently prepared.

This was also assuming the carriage would make it all the way to the denser treeline. Numerous collisions with cultists was slowing down horse and vehicle alike. One of the metal braces around a carriage wheel was cracked and threatening to fall off at any time. The horse was bleeding from one leg, and now screamed as it ran.

Another jumper fell from the rooftops, this time hitting the mark. It landed square on top of Vaska, clinging to her back and making a triumphant hiss. The butler acted with the reflexes of a warrior, immediately propping one boot against the rail in front of her seat and slamming her back against the carriage car with all her might. A wet crunch opened up another opportunity. She let go of her reins and threw the jumper over her shoulder, whipping them spine-first into the rail. The cultist ragdolled off the front of the carriage and was trampled by the wheels.

Before sitting back down, Vaska looked around side of the half-ruined carriage. Her face paled even more than usual. "It's Artur on horseback, six o'clock! Aiming straight at us!"

She jerked the reins, forcing her horse to take a sudden turn to the right. The wheels screeched and creaked as they nearly rolled the vehicle over, straining both axles. Any worse timing than that would've been catastrophic. Vaska saw something glowing and green flying past their former location. As it hit a nearby building, it exploded into a fiery blaze that sent small silver pellets shooting in every direction. The back of the carriage took most of the initial shot.

Artur sat back down in the saddle to turn his horse, then stood up again so he could reload his crossbow.

The pitch-black edge of town seemed more distant than it ever had been in Vaska's entire life.
Edited by Vaska, Wed Jan 3, 2018 1:06 am.
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Logan
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How many of these damn things were there-- or were they just so stubborn that they were charging the wagon multiple times despite failures? One thing was certain, for the damage that they were taking, the berserk-like cultists were holding up better than the transportation was. Even the horse was getting injured from all the madness, but he kept running, pushing as hard and fast as it could, even if those were both diminishing things in the hectic chase. He founds his eyes watching the damaged wheel uncertainly as the half-vampire answered his hopes with at least something.

Logan shrugged without a better idea for a plan, he turned his attention back to Vaska to-- Ears! Cat ears! There was no mistaking it for him! The werewolf's eyes went wide and his expression changed in an instant from panic to surprise. Even with what the particularly dickish member of her family had been saying, he was not expecting ears! Now his mind was beginning to race, wondering how much else she was hiding. Did she have a tail? How about--

The thoughts and Logan's staring were both cut abruptly short by another jumper, this time tackling one of its targets dead-on. Yet despite appearances, the servant was quick to fight back, and rather skilled at it, too. Despite being ambushed she turned the unwanted hitchhiker into a bump in the road before announcing that they were being hunted by her cousin on horseback.

Logan looked over the back of the wagon, gripping tight and staying firm to keep his place on the wagon as he fed into morbid curiosity. The werewolf barely managed to duck in time as he saw the green explosion, not even aware that there was anything more to the launched alchemical until something a lot more pesky than some shrapnel tore through the top of one of his exposed ears, causing him to press himself down further as he screamed, "Oh, there's the [removed]ing silver!"

Honestly, he was not certain, but it seemed a safe bet since the cultists were set on killing him if he would not part with the Eye of Aquarius. It would be too pricey and time-consuming to enchant a bunch of pellets with bane.

"Hey, can you hear me?!" Logan called out behind the wagon as he deposited the repeater back into his pocket dimension before pulling his left arm back with a newly-applied and somewhat bulky bracer with three bulges to it.

"Of course I can, mutt!" Artur shouted back, leveling his crossbow on the back of the carriage.

"Good!" Logan shouted before pressing a trigger on the bracer, firing a spike from one of its bulging barrels forward and upwards. With that in the air, the werewolf turned around once again to settle eyes on Artur before extending his left middle finger towards the pursuer as far up and straight as it could go, "[removed] you!"

With that message delivered, it's postscript would follow shortly behind. From high in the air and with the gauntlet finally pointed at something, the spike's trajectory would change, small, fast, and glowing a distinct yellow-orange against a lightless sky, it was set on impacting against Artur like a large and angry firefly.

The spike came down faster than the naked eye could track and impacted the horse Artur rode. It screamed, collapsing in a violent tangle of legs, nearly rolling into the mixture of snow and mud that formed the outer roads of Balefire as flames whipped across the scene. Artur didn't even have a moment to cry out as his body joined the chaos of Logan's making.

Masses of cultists thinned out. Vaska kicked one persistent individual off of the driver's bench. By then, what few enemies remained were gone or retreating to regroup with their apparent leader. After looking around again, the half-vampire sighed as she slumped back onto her seat. The horse pulling the carriage slowed down to a limp. Pieces of the vehicle sloughed off, mingling with the ice and snow and mud that was increasingly forming the path ahead. Darktrees rather than buildings flanked either side of them.

Vaska tensed her shoulders and let out a sigh of relief. Her feline ears were still pinned back.

For now, things were calm. Logan slumped back beside Vaska, contemplative for a moment at what he just did, "I feel bad about the horse. It didn't deserve that."
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"It's quite alright, sir," the vampire said, loosening her cravat so that she could let out a ragged breath. "You're more well-armed than I expected. We'll need it for where we're headed."

The butler took one gloved hand off the reins to gesture forward. They had already pierced the veil of darkness outside the City of Lights with their rickety, barely-functional vehicle. Already the quality of the road was decreasing rapidly. They virtually limped by an abandoned river barge dock, continuing into deeper and darker forest. Vaska didn't make eye contact with Logan, instead keeping her concerned eyes on the road.

"Spellblade training. I mostly just learned it so I could store hats in a pocket dimension, but I keep spare weapons in there, too." Logan sighed with a half-grin towards the catgirl, leaning back against his pack trapped firmly between himself and the wagon. Just another exhausting day in the life of an adventurer, a brush with that old friend, Death, and off into the mysterious darkness where who-knew-what awaited, "Vaska, your cousin's an asshole."

"And the sun never rises." After a pause, Vaska realized the snippiness of her comment and cleared her throat. "Excuse me. Yes, you're correct. He is a very cruel person. Soon I'll have him back in the mansion, even if his body doesn't come with him."

"The sun rises if you go far enough into the horizon." Logan said, the snippiness rolling off of him with just how obvious of a statement it was. He had to pause for a moment, considering what he said, not for the literal logistics of it for a vampire, but rather for the unusual amount of optimism coming from his own mouth. Of course, he could not allow himself to settle on someting simply poignant and upbeat, following it quickly with, "Though you might want a Nocture before you see if that's true."

Vaska just shrugged at that. She used the ensuing silence to change the subject. "Well, the tables have turned. Hunter has become hunted, et cetera. I've never been in the backswamps before--" the butler nervously side-eyed Logan to read his reaction, "--but from my understanding, the roads will quickly become impossible to traverse. Or they'll be privately owned and therefore... impossible to traverse due to tolls."

"Yeah, there's a trick to navigating the backswamps that I haven't quite mastered yet, but I can usually just trudge and feel my way around to-- crap." Logan sighed, feeling around past his body and patting his furry hands at his backpack, "My tent's back at the tavern. Uhh, this should be a safe spot, at least for a while, mind pulling over for a moment?"

The butler obliged, uttering a low whoa while bringing the horse's lines to her right. The tired, wounded animal was more than willing to follow directions. They rolled to a clunky stop on the shoulder of the road, leaving a few inches to spare before a precipitous drop into a frozen patch of swamp water. Dark cypresses rose from the gloom around them. Vaska tied the reins to the bar and folded her arms, ears flicking.

"Alright, putting off me being stupid for a bit. How are you holding up, Vaska?" Logan asked as he slipped his arms free from his pack and disembarked from the carriage. He was building up a list of priorities for retreat, reassessment, and retaliation, running a checklist of everything that had so far gone wrong. He wanted to put the slowly growing pain in the tip of his ear near the top but refrained, wincing and sucking sharply just a little with every twitch against the cold air, "I imagine at least some of this has gotta be unfamiliar territory for you."

"I'm unharmed." She stood and hopped down to ground level from the other side, holding her greatcloak and mantle close with one hand. "I could fix the carriage if we had enough parts. All I have is a spare wheel-rim bolted under the vehicle." Vaska watched Logan move around their stopping point. "You look like you're ruminating on a plan. I'll yield to the judgment of an experienced adventurer, if it pleases. Forgive me for assuming you've been in worse pinches in your career."

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"I'm unharmed." She stood and hopped down to ground level from the other side, holding her greatcloak and mantle close with one hand. "I could fix the carriage if we had enough parts. All I have is a spare wheel-rim bolted under the vehicle." Vaska watched Logan move around their stopping point. "You look like you're ruminating on a plan. I'll yield to the judgment of an experienced adventurer, if it pleases. Forgive me for assuming you've been in worse pinches in your career."

"The stories aren't very interesting, but there's a lot of them." Logan chuckled, slowly walking his way around to the front of the horse as he pulled something from his utility belt. In the beginning, each near-death experience was epic, but it was admittedly sad how commonplace it was becoming. He pulled a treat from his belt, an alchemical mixture to convince animals to get some healing, and held it flat against his palm to try convincing their poor horse to eat and recover, "It'll take some testing, some gambling, and probably some quick moving, but you remember I've got a Portal Gem, right? Usually it's an emergency escape or a time-saver, but in this case it'd be a quick backtracker. If I can use it with the carriage, I can grab my tent, we can find a bit of flatland out here, and move more reliably without the wheels, letting us move off of the roads"

The horse still harnessed to the carriage eagerly devoured Logan's offering, including trying to nibble on his fingers. Vaska finished her walk around the carriage and her intermittent bending over to examine various pieces of damage. Her feline ears proved much more expressive than her face once they were out of immediate danger. They were almost always in motion, flicking and turning or pulling back and forward depending on where her attention was focused. She approached Logan, but stopped at a safe distance. "Sounds like a plan. How may I be of assistance?"

"Need me to pick anything up for ya?" Logan asked, petting the agile lips of the silly eager horse before rubbing its muzzle. It struck him that it had been years since he last rode an actual horse, or even took care of one. This one seemed friendly enough, knowing kind being from those that wanted to cause it harm. Logan looked past the equine towards the catgirl, his eyes focusing on her ears as he let out a silent chuckle past his goofy grin.

"I'm quite fine, thank you for asking." Came a simple reply from Vaska.

The werewolf procured the gem in question from a different pocket on his utility belt, giving it an experimental look-over as if it could possibly be mistaken for anything else before considering the interior of the carriage. Within a moment and a soft opalescent light, he went from standing before the horse to having his weight settle in the cab it was pulling with a bit of a bounce from his weight within. Successful, he looked out the window to Vaska, knocking on the interior and giving a little wave and thumbs up before vanishing into another rainbow-like portal.

For a moment he was gone, returned to the tavern room he left, and then in another his return was once more announced by the gentle light. Whether or not there had been anything in his room, he could not say, for he did not waste enough time for either him or whatever could have been there to be aware of one another's presence. In his left hand he held a somewhat large tent roll, and in the right he pocketed the portal gem into his utility belt once more before opening the carriage door and exiting, giving another wave to Vaska, "Hi honey, did ya miss me?"
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Vaska barely had time to do anything before Logan was back. She nearly startled at his return, stiffening into a typical servant's posture. "Welcome back. Yes, sir, I missed you terribly," she deadpanned. "Are you planning for us to camp out here, sir?

"Here? Oh, no, this is terrible, all in the middle of the road and out in the open." Logan said with a chuckle, just happy that, even deadpan-- actually, especially deadpan, Vaska was playing along, "And don't call me 'sir'; I'll never be a knight at this rate. No! We'll need to find a place to stow the wagon and then hide it, then we'll have to lead Senor Voice-- I don't know if the horse has an actual name is and I didn't check the parts, but that's what I'm calling the horse for now, to a nice dry-ish placea bit further into the swamp to set up camp, ruminate safely on what we know, plan a counterattack, and pray that your cousin gets eaten by a swamp troll before we have to deal with him, again! Sound good?"

"As you wish, sir. I won't call you 'sir' anymore." The vampire offered a shallow bow. "Please help me select a suitable location for camping, as I've never done anything of the sort before." She climbed up onto the driver's bench and gave one last hesitant look over her shoulder. The vehicle was in really bad shape, so she hoped a good spot would be somewhere nearby.

"Your first camping experience, and me without marhsmallows. I could stop by a Hall real quick if you want to try s'mores." Logan chuckled as he tossed the tent roll back into the carriage, shut the door, and hopped leisurely back onto the edge of the seat next to the vampire cat-girl for her to start driving. Now that the situation had died down and there was no more point in thinking seriously about things, the werewolf eyed her for a long moment before finally voicing his thoughts, "Yours ears so adorable, they look so soft. Now I just want to pet your head as you are!"

Vaska jolted. She turned her head toward Logan, eyes wide. The experienced horse took to the road with almost no coaxing from her. "Beg your pardon? Ears?" An involuntary laugh came up from her throat, more defensive than anything.

"Yes, ears, on top of your head. That glamour got knocked off a while back, and I've gotta say, they really suit you. I've got references for the head massage I can provide if you want testimonies to how well I can provide it. I can also do very comforting full-body massages." Logan said, his expression neutral and his tone level as he returned Vaska's look, though he accompanied it with a few cascading scratching motions against the air with his right hand.

Suppressing her urge to jump off the carriage and run away to go hide somewhere, Vaska focused on maintaining her usual countenance. The butler muttered something under her breath and ran her fingers through her hair. When she lifted her hand up, which trailed faint hints of mana smoke, her ears were hidden again by a small cantrip. "Your offer is noted but ultimately unnecessary, sir. Although I understand it's no longer needed to hide them for the purpose of keeping my shameful lineage a secret, I must continue to hide them for the sake of my own propriety." Her tone of voice implied she already knew that Logan wasn't going to take to that whole idea very well. "Going around with my ears visible is a disgrace to the House Sykora, may they thrive for a thousand generations."

"Then don't be a disgrace to House Sykora. When you're operating away from the family you don't intend to kill, and you don't announce who you're working for, I doubt most people you'll come across will have heard of them, definitely not enough to spot you at a glance, or to recognize you with or without ears, especially not if you present yourself both ways." Logan argued logically, though his intention was likely clear to both of them.

He had to hide a bit of a pout as her ears vanished behind the cantrip's mana, though now that knew what to look for, he pulled the goggles back over his eyes to watch the top of her head, "I do kind of the same thing since I'm a werewolf. I use my original self seperate from my preferred oh-so-fluffy self to get access to different pieces of information or to keep things separated for the sake of others. Different people respond to you differently when they think you're someone or something different, plus it can allow you to go at the same person twice if you play it right. Go on, feel how fluffy I am."

"Interesting point. I suppose that could be useful." Vaska glanced at Logan, then back at the road, and then back at him. "I-- err..." She tentatively held up her hand. After a pause, she gave the top of Logan's head a single pat. "Keep an eye out for a campsite, sir."
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"So, what do you think?" Logan inquired with a big grin on his wolfish face, looking at her expectantly.

"You're... fluffy, sir. This is true."

"I am, indeed, fluffy. Went through Abyss just to keep myself this way, but that doesn't answer my question. What's your opinion on how the fluffiness feels?" Logan egged on, trying to coax an actual opinion from the girl beside him, "What do you think of how it feels? How soft it is? How warm I am? Be honest, without anybody watching, another secret that won't leave the backswamps, do you want to touch the fluffiness again?"

The catlike pupils in the middle of Vaska's pink eyes narrowed to thin slits when she made eye contact with him. "Mr. Logan, with all due respect, you are extremely odd. Even if you're fluffy or warm, I would much rather we maintain the strict societal boundaries that have kept this city afloat for centuries. Even minor breaches, like me touching your head, are difficult for me to tolerate. What place do you come from, where this is such a non-issue?"

"Strict social boundaries that kept this city afloat? The Taming had to happen, so apparently it was a leaky system." Logan noted with a sigh, resting back into his seat as he kept an eye out for some acceptable swamp-adjacent brush. Some odd benefit of the Darkest Gloomwood wereism that he could see in the dark without trouble, "Southern Taras, then Cascadia. I've spent some time at the Academies since those cheapskate finger-wagglers would rather trade lessons for work, but it's been educational. Kellen has exchanging what are pretty blatantly skritches and pettings as close friendly gestures, and depending on what tribe you're talking to, it can be pretty quick to make that close a friend. I'd imagine the Deep Cities taverns and pubs could get there pretty quick. Istan proper's a bit more conservative, though, but they might just think I'm weird for having such thick fur in the desert. Haven't spent much time in the Purple Lantern to see how the animalistic people there act about it, at least, I haven't gotten any behind a curtain, but then again I think I might've pissed off most Gloomwood weres in one fell swoop. I should really see how far it goes beyond Imythess's borders, huh?"

"You are truly a scholar," Vaska quipped.

"And I've barely written a word." Logan replied with a short chuckle, "Vaska, have you been to a tavern? A hall? A pub? A book club?"

"I've been to them. Participated, no."

"Then you haven't really been, you were just present. I've been a lot of places I haven't been." Logan shrugged, pausing to take a tentative look behind the carriage before returning his attention forward with a bit of satisfaction, "A House Family, that political-level people, is hardly represnetative to the majority of the population. There's a world under your nose that you haven't really discovered, opinions you've never even considered, and entire experiences that are alien to you. Pull up here, on the left, the foliage will do alright."

Vaska was quiet on the whole way to their stopping point. Her lips were pressed into a tight line, and she avoided looking straight at Logan. When it was time to disembark, she hesitated.

"Maybe that's why all the other Lakatos vampires in my colony left. They knew that, and I didn't." Her words were soft and she didn't much expect Logan to reply or even hear. Nevertheless, she stepped down from the driver's bench once again to help with the camp.

"It's never too late to learn, Vaska, and it's never too late to change. If it ever were, then redemption stories wouldn't be so popular." Logan said, his big, fluffy, wolfy ears catching the soft words. Beyond that, though, even his human ears could have picked up on the soft words, years of listening to footsteps on the floor to properly sneak around the house growing up had trained him well. He hopped from the seat with a slightly somber drop and started moving to collect some brittle frozen branches and loose bits of shrubbery, but did not let that stop him from talking over his shoulder to his companion, "Do you want me to stop this particular line, Vaska?"

"If it pleases."

"I'm not your House, I'm just a stray dog too far from home, so you can be honest with me, and you can be honest with yourself. Would it please you, Vaska?"

Vaska walked past him to scope out the foliage. "Yes, for now."

"Well, this is Gloomwood, so you'll have to make a deal with me for that." Logan said slyly, making sure that the foliage would cover the carriage properly, "You'll need to keep those ears and any other cat-parts you have out while doing this job wth me, and you'll have to let me pet you at least once; from the tip of your ears to your shoulders."

She stopped to look over her shoulder. "Only if, after I oblige, you never issue any more unsolicited petting requests." Some of the spark had returned to her eyes.

"Ooh, that looks like a serious haggle." Logan chirped with a chuckle, catching that beautiful shine in the dark of the vampire's eyes, "I can only promise no more unsolicited petting requests for the rest of the day, which I define as ending when I go to sleep."

"Ugh, fine. I feel like I just made a dirty bet with the Ethereal, but at least the only thing on the bargaining table is my dignity to a single person."

"Ooh, fantastic! It's a deal then, come here and let's shake on it." Logan said, pausing from the nearly-finished job of hiding their transportation to give a hopeful look towards the cat-girl. He was just happy to get her annoyed with him, since it was something that seemed genuine from her, a glimpse into the real Vaska.

Vaska turned back to extend her white-gloved hand. "Sir."

"I should've added 'no more sirring me' to the deal." Logan chuckled once more as he took her hand and gave it a hearty shake.
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I don't like this.

She came to that decision -- more of a clarification of what she already felt -- as she was checking the interior of her carriage for anything valuable that ought to be taken into the camp itself. So far, nothing about this job had gone correctly. Even finding Logan in the first place had been confounded by a simple trick. Now that the initial confrontation had resulted in a draw, it was anyone's guess when Artur would attack again.

But that was the part she could actually handle. The real point of contention was all this extra stuff. Vaska would have absolutely preferred to keep the job standard. Logan's constant attempts to befriend her were hard to anticipate and difficult to respond to. She hadn't even gone into this task expecting to converse with him about anything other than the job. Now, several personal conversations into it, Vaska felt more emotionally drained than anything else -- and dreading the idea of more earnest prying into her personal "life."

The half-vampire half-demon emerged from the decrepit remains of her carriage, overly aware of the fact that her ears were visible. She made her way to the huge tent that Logan had placed in the clearing, glancing in all directions. The black-leaved trees of the backswamps folded over them like curtains, preventing a solid view of the sky. Beyond the initial treeline, the swamps were dotted with connected puddles that were covered in a layer of clear ice.

"I'm afraid my usefulness in fire-making and other camp maintenance tasks is nonexistent," the butler said, folding her arms behind her back. "I have many obscure skills tailored for a specific environment. This is not within my sphere."
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What a deal to make, though. As for Artur the Asshole, Logan was only moderately worried with a few thoughts running through his head regarding the encounter, but trying to address those immediately and without any sign of eminent danger would just be a waste of effort, focus, and time. Logan freed the horse from the carriage and led it bit and rein towards the iced-over swamp with one hand while he hefted his tent with the other, his pack behind him with its lightening enchantment doing nothing to dissuade his sense of comfort from it gripping his shoulders. Staying near the road would invite trouble, making them easier to find, but through the darkness the werewolf spotted a patch of land jutting from the frosty ground where simple swamp water used to be.

"Slow across, I see a bit of dry land out of the way, just a short walk. Looks big enough for camp." Logan said with a grin, his face flashing the lights from his markings back at the catgirl before he continued forward. His steps were slow and cautious, testing the strength of the ice before leading the horse onto it. Clear, but unfortunately thick enough to be a sturdy floor, meaning that his supply of water for combat was still going to be limited unless he could somehow break or melt it in time for the inevitable second round.

At least there was no cracking beneath the clapping of the horse's hooves, but the slippery nature of the once-water's face meant that they needed to take things slowly and cautiously. Logan set the pace, going quiet as his ears turned in various ways, trying to catch any stray sound that was out of place. No snapping noises, no rapidly approaching clap of feet or more hooves on the ground, no indication of something coming. All was calm and eerily quiet, but welcome after the explosive noise of the chase.

When they reached the ground, Logan released their equine companion and double-checked that the ground was large enough for the tent tucked under his arm. Once satisfied, he gestured Vaska to move back before tossing the dense tent roll onto the ground near the center and moving swiftly by her side.

A few moments passed where nothing happened, where the roll simply lied there motionless, but when the enchantment set upon it decided that the area was, indeed, acceptable, it practically exploded into life. The hide covering quickly expanded, popping up and out with a series of rapid clackings of wood striking each other in assembly, securing themselves into place before it settled down. A door formed from secured pieces of all uniformly sized wood faced them when it was finished, secure in its frame. Logan simply held the reins of the horse to keep it calm from the sudden outburst of activity until it settled, confident enough that it was in no immediate danger.

With that finished, Logan unthreaded his arms from the straps of his pack and opened the door, tossing his bag to one side as he approached the fire pit set in the middle. While his guest made comments about her relative uselessness in camping, the werewolf merely knelt before the formed stack of lumber in the middle, set below a slight rise in the ceiling for venting the smoke that was to come. From his utility belt he procured the tools best suited for manually making a fire, clacked them together a few times with practiced movements, and within a moment a small flame caught on the tinder and began to take its first steps towards the dried wood in the pit.

Within the ger it was fairly spartan. A couple of soft bedrolls on the ground made up the bulk of the furniture, but until the werewolf could see about a proper storage enchantment for the portable structure, he was far from complaining about what he usually utilized as a checkpoint with his portal gem being understocked.

"Don't worry about it, just get comfy and warm yourself by the fire, I just have one more thing to take care of." The adventurer said confidently before moving back to his pack, procuring a fairly thick blanket, and exiting the structure for a moment to drape it over the horse's back. Once he secured the blanket to the horse with some string from his belt, and secured the horse to a nearby tree, he returned to the inside of the ger, "That's a Gloomwood horse, right; it should be fine in the cold unless there's a balestorm? If not, I might want to bring it in just in case."

Logan picked up his pack just long enough to drop it by one of the bedrolls before plopping unceremoniously down on his bottom, spending a moment to hug the warmth of the flame before reaching into his pack to bring out a journal, a pen, and an inkwell. He had to start strategizing for round two, and for all the information he had, there was a lot left to be gained.

"Can you actually hold your own in a fight? I need to know what you're capable of, and anything else that your cousin might be able to do. Even if it's old information, it's a good start." The adventurer explained, his demeanor fading to one of genuine seriousness as he began scratching shorthand onto his pages with the pen, "He screwed up when he failed to kill me the first time. Next time we fight's gonna be the last time. The smoother that goes, the happier I'll be."
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Vaska watched him start the fire as if it was the easiest thing in the world. As she took a seat cross-legged next to the firepit, Logan went off to attend to the House Sykora carriage-horse. "Yes, it will be fine out there."

The werewolf pulled out some writing materials and began to speak of their next moves. This was something she could definitely converse about on a level playing field, for once. "I'm extensively trained. Servants were supposed to be jacks-of-all-trades, capable of acting as a bodyguard in a pinch. My specialty is fighting without a weapon."

"Up close and personal, then? I've got some gauntlets you can borrow, if you want. They might be a bit of a loose fit, but they're enchanted to help deal with distance fighting." Logan said, scribbling notes down on his paper. A glance at his writing would reveal that it was shorthand and lists accompanied by a rough map of their campsite and the nearby road, with a small doodle of the carriage, "How are you with sneaking or closing the distance? If we can deal a lot of damage at the front-end of this fight, it'll knock him and his attack-people off-balance and let us end it quicker with less damage."

"Although I didn't receive professional instruction on sneaking, I learned to pick it up out of necessity, sir. And although my bat form leaves me vulnerable, it does allow me to hide better than most."

"Yeah, guess you didn't spend a lot of nights sneaking snacks or getting books off the shelves while your parents were sleeping." Logan commented, followed by a thoughtful sound, "So what about asshole-- ehh, Artur?"

Vaska hugged her knees while she watched the fire. She took a little while to reply, thinking. "He sought mastery over living things. It was... peculiar, even mad, even by the family's standards. The only thing I can think of other than his muddy alchemy hobby is his brief foray into grafts. However, I'm unsure what happened to those interests after he was caught mutilating one of his pet rats with a piece of iron. His mother disciplined him severely. I heard the screams from three rooms down."

"You're the normal, well-adjusted one of the family, got it." Logan said, the surprise clear on his face as almost everything she just said. He broke his shock with a couple blinks and a shake of his head before returning to his notes, "Then he's probably hiding grafts on him at the very least. Let's not have you engage him directly since your forte is hand-to-hand, those tricks can get nasty. He also seems to have picked up marksmanship at some point to apply alchemy at a distance, might even have some boosters on him for emergencies. The only thing I can't figure out from all this is why he joined a religion. They're trying to keep it quiet, so it's not like they're outsourcing, but he doesn't strike me as the religious type if he's trying to play god."

"If I may speculate, my cousin would do anything for power. Especially if the followers gave him permission to use his hobbies on them. This might have been the case with those who chased us earlier, sir."

Logan paused, the last bits of humor draining from his wolfish face as he lowered his pen and paper. He did not doubt that Vaska knew her cousin well, but that was what made it a miserable realization, "Then that means this is kind of my fault. The Tempaeris want the Eye of Aquarius, but engaging me directly hasn't been working out. From what I've seen they aren't bad people, but they can get desperate. I guess if there's one good coming out of this, it's that they're delivering Artur into a meat grinder, but what he's done to those other people is just. . ."

Vaska narrowed her eyes. "He will find his place back in the House. Perhaps as a servant with the body of a golem. My masters have spoken, and this is the fate they've chosen for them after all the times his callousness has stained the family name. The people he has negatively affected are yet more unfortunate byproducts of his depravity. We have no choice but to destroy them, sir."
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"Yeah, just. . . It's easier when the people trying to kill me actually want to kill me. Even mercy killings feel. . . I guess they just feel wrong." Logan sighed, taking a moment to process it before moving onwards in his own callous recovery, "Right, so, I'll lend you my Monsoon Gauntlets, you'll deal with the Jumpers, I'll focus on Artur. My gauntlets will let you push and pull things at a distance, control wind and create fog, and can shoot out a blast of water to do some damage, either scalding or chilling. If you get a chance or clean up what he's brought, you can assist me at a distance, but I'm more likely to survive whatever he throws at me, sound good?"

Vaska nodded. "Sounds like powerful artifacts, sir."

"Do you have any experience operating magical artifacts or do you need a crash course?" Logan asked, putting the planning materials back into his back with their usefulness done. He just needed some help keeping track of the information, but with that finished the plan seemed sound as it was simple.

The half-vampire looked away. "Can't say I've ever used one. It sounds like it isn't self-explanatory, either."

"Alrighty, then." The werewolf nodded, reaching once more into the void of air before pulling out a couple of crisp-looking steel gauntlets with a subtle blue tinge and arcane channels running across their surface, and straps along the wrists to help secure them to the wearer's forearms. The adventurer reached over the fire and offered the chill weaponized hand-wear to the half-vampire, "I got these custom-forged in Striberg. They work great when you really don't want anybody near you."

Vaska took them into her arms with some kind of reverence, holding them as if she'd break them. After an awkward pause, she set them on her lap and began to strap them on one at a time. She experimentally flexed her fists, then cracked a bit of a smile. "This will work well, I think. Thank you, Mr. Logan."

"'Mister'. Logan? Oh, now you're just reaching." Logan chuckled as he stood to his paws and gestured for the half-vampiress to follow him, "C'mon, you gotta get some practice in with those things, and if we get jumped soon then it's better to happen while you're halfway ready for a fight through training."

Reacting instantly to an order, Vaska was on her feet and hot on Logan's heels. She continued to flex her fists and adjust the way the plate sat on her hands and forearms. At one point she even slammed the fronts of her fists together. Even though she didn't say anything, she looked as close to pumped-up as someone as mild as her could be.

The werewolf looked over his shoulder at Vaska not only getting a feel for the gauntlets on her hands, but seeming to be getting a bit excited that she would get to try out such magical punching artifacts. Knocking her fists together in a fashion that seemed only natural, Logan turned away and gripped at the center of his chest, himself quickly recovering to absolute giddiness, "Oh, this girl! It hurts!"

With a deep breath to focus himself and remind himself of all the reasons he would, and probably should, remain forever alone, humbling himself enough to focus on the task at hand, the adventurer turned and moved to face his companion, "Now, these're powerful, but they're deceptively simple. When you strike something with an open palm, it will cause a gust of air to push it back, and when you make a fist and pull towards yourself, it'll pull them towards you, both ways pretty cold. Give it a shot on me."

The black ears on top of Vaska's head lowered until they were nearly flush with her hair. "Ah-- on you? Are you sure, sir? Surely the directions you've given are sufficient."

"Personally, I'm a kinetic learner, and you need to get some actual practice before you start relying on those. Besides, that's only a third of what those gauntlets are capable of." Logan said without an inch of concern in his voice. A hand gingerly went up to his injured ear, wincing a bit as he confirmed that damned silver's effect inhibiting his healing, "Don't worry, I'll heal from anything you do without silver pretty quickly, and those can't hurt me enough in one or two goes to keep me down for a real fight."

"Right." She cleared her throat. "Here goes, then." Vaska sunk into a fighting stance, opened her fist, wound it back, and thrust it toward Logan. As soon as she'd done that, her fingers clenched and she pulled it back to her as fast as she could.

The base strike was actually more than Logan had prepared himself for. Despite a natural inclination to expecting everybody to be more dangerous than they looked, he had lowered his guard a bit too much around Vaska, and when her palm struck him it knocked the wind out of his unsuspecting self. The werewolf stumbled back, almost knocked over by the accompanying wind that was not giving him much of a choice in footing, but before he could fall over the pulled him back with another gust, inadvertently bringing him to a very sloppy recovery as if he had just stepped out onto slick ice. He coughed as he recovered, golden eyes wide as he slowly straightened his posture, thinking to his words on pain from just a moment ago as he clenched at where she struck him, "Right, good. Ow. Hoo, okay. That was good. Ow. I'm good-- I'm good. Next, focus on one of the gauntlets and think of either burning hot, chilling cold, or somewhere in the middle, then when the channels on the gauntlet light up either blue, red, or purple, strike me with a closed-fist punch. Then we can move on to the less painful functions."

Vaska frowned a bit, but didn't hesitate much longer than that. The channels on the gauntlet lit up until they were red-hot. She hurled her fist toward Logan, but aimed just enough off-center in what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to miss.

Logan took in another deep breath, preparing for what was coming, though this time would be a bit different. He focused himself and raised a hand, wanting to test something out that was a bit more difficult by himself. When Vaska threw her punch, the werewolf flinched but tried to focus his influence over the water as it came out. He found himself in a split-second of shock as it fired past him, and he quickly turned to trial his gaze after it before getting a good grip with his hydrokinesis and bringing the blasted water back to form into a sphere. He settled his golden eyes on his companion, figuring what had been done before commenting, "Thank you. Ahem, anyway, guess my hydrokinesis has some speed limits. Those gauntlets will pull moisture from the air to refuel. Could be quick, could be slow, but I've figured out that with a bit of water, you're essentially putting moisture into the 'air' around it. I've managed to hijack that function before with a little rain cloud in the past-- Oh! Oh! Idea! Hahaha, Artur's screwed if this works!"

Logan lowered the water he had accumulated from the gauntlets back around Vaska's hands while he used a free hand to dig a couple of things from his utility belt, two genuine Audfein Korso Coins. This was something he had wanted to do before, but never had a chance to. He held one out for her to take, "These wonderful little pranking devices should help me out with the two of us. They'll create a couple little rain clouds, and if we're lucky they won't turn to snow and I can weaponize them. Just focus a bit on them, similarly to the gauntlets, and a cloud will appear above the holder of the coin. To turn it off is pretty much the same way."
Edited by Logan, Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:54 pm.
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Vaska clutched the coin gingerly in her gauntlet-covered hand and held it up to eye height. Her pink eyes squinted in focus. Not long after that, the dark sky above her head coalesced with greyish water vapor. The cloud thickened before giving way to big, fluffy flecks of snow. They drifted down to cover the top of Vaska's head in a light dusting. She frowned, flicked the coin back at Logan, and stepped away. A quick shake of the head was enough to bring her state back to nearly immaculate. In fact, the mud and ice had barely touched her since entering the backswamps.

As the cloud dissipated, Vaska looked deep in thought. After making a decision to herself, the butler slipped off her gauntlets and tucked them under one arm. She gave a shallow bow. "It appears we'll have to do what we can, sir. If it pleases, the interior of the tent is likely warm enough to sleep now. I will stand watch."

Logan caught the coin with the same hand that held the one he kept, then looked at the two round pieces of flat metal with a look of dejection. He had really been hoping that would work, but it seemed that in his eagerness to get back to slinging water like whips, he forgot that the weather, despite how his fluffy Balefirian-designed fur kept him, would freeze it faster than he could weaponize it.

The adventurer sighed and shook his head before putting the coins back into his pocket, silently cursing his lack of pyric training before rolling on, "Nah, if we get jumped I'd rather be as awake as possible, and I doubt your cousin will be too far off, I've got a bit of alchemy of my own in my bag that'll wake me up. Plus we've still got a couple functions of those gauntlets left to run through, wind manipulation which will help throw off his aim with that crossbow, and fog generation which will probably reduce his visibility."

"I see. My apologies. I had no idea there were so many functions." She glanced down at the artifacts with even more reverence than before -- reflected a bit mildly on her face -- and set to putting them back on.

Teaching all of the functions was one thing. Then she got a quick lesson on combining and smoothly moving through the forms. Vaska had a sneaking suspicion that she wasn't nearly as efficient with the gauntlets as she could be with more practice. Part of her wondered if it was a wise decision to give them to her when a far more experienced user was afield. Rather than going through the trouble of bringing it up to Logan, she continued to practice for quite some time.
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Logan figured that loaning Vaska the Monsoon Gauntlets would be the best overall tactical solution. My maximizing what she was capable of, he could worry less about her and more about himself, as well as getting an extra boost to total team efficiency against the enemy forces. In addition to that, watching the normally neutral half-vampire light up with a newfound excitement, like seeing a light come on in a window with drawn curtains, a glimpse of genuine life in the dark. She took to figuring out the gauntlets quickly, clearly having an aptitude for their use, as the adventurer could not find it within himself to believe that he was a good teacher. Prior attempts with others had been more consistently deep-end, typically with horrible results.

"Good job, just don't pull any shots with Artur and we'll be good!" Logan commended his partner in the killing to come as they both went inside. He had a bit of worry for her mercy towards him in a simple training exercise, but if the line between hurting those who deserved it and possible friends was clearly defined, then he could rest easy when the time came. "Don't worry about lookout. He doesn't exactly seem subtle, nor do his rabid attack people, so as long as I'm awake and just a little paranoid I should be able to pick up on their approach."

Logan sat himself down in front of the fire and pulled a thermos of the previously mentioned drink and did not take long to drink some of the energizing liquid. With his body feeling reinvigorated for the time being and the hole in his ear being slowly regenerating by the effects of a healing source beyond his natural recovery, he could focus on the worst part of any job, the waiting. His ears twitched just to double-check that the only noise outside was a touch of wind and the horse outside.

Unsatisfied with the quiet, the werewolf once more reached into his backpack, this time procuring the small winged golden serpent. The dragon was still groggy, a deep sleeper who remained undisturbed by most of the adventurous shenanigans that her chosen pet-and-food provider.

Nooo, let me sleep. Protested the tiny golden dragon as she writhed her serpentine body in his grasp, coiling into a restful position as she tried to reclaim the threads of her slumber that were rudely being stolen from her.

"Speak up." Logan asked gently, setting down his thermos so he could prod a claw gently at her reptilian face, "Come on, Twinkle, we're going to need your help for this, too."

No; sleep.

"How about for food? Some jerky?"

What flavor? The Fly Dragon opened her eyes slowly, white eyes surrounding black slits dubiously looking up to the wolfish face, her curiosity peaked.

"Teriyaki." The werewolf smiled, rolling the dragon into his opposite hand as he reached into the pack for a container.

Fine. The dragon rose her head from the hand, watching the container intently, knowing well what waited within.

"Say it." Logan egged as he opened the box, revealing it filled about a quarter of the way with brown strips of dried meat. The rest he had eaten, but the problem with that was that he had only filled it earlier in the week at one of the stores in Nine Angels.

"Fine, give me the jerky." The lazy little creature begrudgingly gave in to the demand, her voice a soft and squeaky thing, but filled with attitude.

"Great, now introduce yourself." Logan said, gesturing towards Vaska with a small piece of jerky, sized well for his companion.

"Hi." Came a curt introduction before turning back to the jerky, "Now give me jerky."

"You're terrible at this." Logan said with a light chuckle, conceding to a job done technically right and hand-feeding the jerky piece to the fly dragon, "This is Twinkle, a Fly Dragon. We met in Norwood a while back, I shared some food with her, and she hasn't left me alone since. She can shoot some magic missiles out and help us in the fight. I might have a limited water supply, but I've got a lot of other things to help me out in bad encounters, and she's one of them. She can also make a decent healer, when she wants to be."

"You're. Fine." The dragon said in-between bites of jerky and happy little sounds from the delectable meat.
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"A pleasure to make your acquaintance," Vaska said, extending a hand and immediately feeling silly for doing so. "I would be happy to share my portion with you, if you're still hungry."

"More food?" Twinkle turned her head sharply to the guest in the tent before flying away from the werewolf she had been perched to and making her way to the woman's shoulder, "Hi, that sounds good."

Logan, meanwhile, could barely stifle his laughter to an odd-sounding chuckle and series of snerks. How quickly he was abandoned to the promise of more food, even from what the dragon knew as essentially a stranger. He knew that Twinkle only trusted Vaska because he did, but it did little to alleviate the humor for him.

"Don't let her have too much." The adventurer warned as he got control of his own breathing and laughter, "She'll get lethargic and lazy if full, then she'll be no help to us."

"I see. Well, you heard him, ma'am." The vampire ripped apart her piece of jerky and fed them tentatively to Twinkle one after another. She adjusted her monocle against her opposite eye, leveling her pink gaze on Logan. I can't believe I'm calling a dragon 'ma'am.' Actually, I'm not surprised. A bit uncomfortable with herself, Vaska cleared her throat. Her mind stretched for something business-related to talk about. She glanced at the floor of the tent, then decided to keep her eyes on Twinkle instead.

"You shouldn't. Be. I'm still. A dragon." Twinkle replied happily in-between bites of jerky, appreciating her new friend's respect to her and the provided food. She just casually read the half-vampire's thoughts, a natural effect for the fly dragon, and thought nothing of it. She never did.

"What? Twinkle, did you just read her mind?" Logan huffed as he learned back on his left hand, right bringing a piece of jerky up to his wolfish muzzle.

"I can't turn it off." The dragon stated matter-of-factly after swallowing a bite of the delicious dried meat, "And these thoughts are not very well buried. Want to hear them?"

Vaska froze in the middle of feeding Twinkle another piece of jerky, eyes wide and cheeks flushing. Reading my mind? They can do that? Keep up, Vaska, you ignorant, stupid piece of-- "That really won't be necessary, ma'am," the vampire said calmly, encouraging her to take another piece of jerky like some kind of desperate peace offering.

The more she was aware of and tried to suppress the constant stream of thoughts through her head, the more obvious they became to her. I've already said more about myself than I would have liked to. I've put too much of myself out there. Any more and he'll realize what a worthless, pathetic person I am. Or maybe that would be preferable? None of this mission has gone as I expected, but mind-reading has to be the proverbial icing on the cake. Damn it all. "So, err, Logan, do you happen to know how often storms roll through the backswamps? This might be relevant information to keep in mind for camp."

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The little golden dragon stopped momentarily to giggle psychically at the self-beratement that the woman felt upon this discovery. She had not meant for such a reaction, but even Twinkle could not let such sourness sit unaddressed, "Don't be mean to yourself. Not all dragons can do this, only Fly Dragons, like me. We're common to Norwood, not Gloomwood. But I will happily take more jerky!" I can also tell you what he's thinking. He's not even trying to hide it.

"They've been breaking a lot. I think Gloomwood's weather patterns are mostly affected by the outside world coming in, and it's been pretty rainy elsewhere with the seasons." Logan shrugged as he stood, his strip of jerky hanging out from between his teeth like a cigar as he moved to the door to check the weather. He had no magical devices to tell him, and only his own two eyes to gauge against the dark, "Looks like. . . Snow looks a bit heavier. Another storm might be ready to break, which means. . . Depending on how stubborn Artur is, we might be in a momentary relief from the hunt."

The half-vampire glanced at Twinkle with a mild look on her face. His thoughts? I wouldn't dream of such an invasion of privacy, ma'am! At any rate, I'm sure all he's thinking about is something like 'this jerky is tasty' and 'Vaska's little kitty ears are so cute,' she thought.

"Although the House Sykora is one of demons, I daresay they're not the most resilient of folk. I'm hoping he complains of the cold and lets the elements take their toll on us, confident he has his prey cornered." Vaska took the first bite of her light meal, having fed a portion of it to the little dragon. "Therefore, sir, you should get some sleep soon. As I've said before, I'm willing to keep watch."

You're close with his thoughts on your ears, but narrow-minded. I can also tell you how to make him stop talking and do what you want, he's very easy to manipulate when you know how. The dragon leaked a bit of extra information to tease at both of them, though only Vaska could hear the words. The werewolf spoke his mind so frequently that sharing those rare thoughts he kept to himself felt more to Twinkle like keeping him closer to a purity of actions. For her, there was rarely a separation between thought and speech, and she saw no reason to keep hiding things. She did, of course, happily take the jerky offered.

"I'll agree to sleep if you cuddle with me." Logan retorted with a quirk of his furry brow as he shut the door to the outside world, confident that the horse would be fine in the element, but he might want to check again if the coming storm got worse, "I've dealt with worse while going on less sleep, it just affects communication and logic for me, but I'm good for a fight and keeping watch. Are you used to staying awake and keeping watch, doing security for the family or your fellow servants?"

Vaska's ears pinned back and she shook her head emphatically. "No deal. I've already agreed to far more than I normally would. You'll have to be drowsy for the next fight if that's the case." She kept her eyes on him while he asked her about past experiences running security. "Yes. I used to do such things frequently. We were trained to go anywhere, even places where traditional bodyguards weren't allowed. We were taught to catch people off-guard with a sudden interdiction against a threat. Or, if necessary, perform other security tasks such as testing food for poison. This is nothing."

I won't say no to more food, but just think if you change your mind. Twinkle responded. If she had the muscles in her beak to pull her lips back into a smile, it would have been one full of mischievous nature, but as she was she could only tilt her head downwards to give that upward look and accept whatever she was fed.

"Drowsy it is, but those are good skills to have anywhere." Logan nodded, sitting back down at his place beside the fire, "Adventurers end up similar for different reasons. Never know when somebody's going to ambush you or turn on you, so we end up learning how to hide stuff and keep a bunch of capabilities secret. Usually only have ourselves to rely on, though. I guess that really explains how you learned hand-to-hand, maybe you could give me some pointers after this job is over?"
Edited by Logan, Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:21 am.
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