Freeshooter92

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

Alaira Taenn

She seems nice enough, I guess. She thought, looking her over with a quirked brow. Usually when she met someone they expressed either fear or a degree of revulsion. This one, however, seemed rather... well, normal. In the sense that she was not particularly upset with her presence. It was nice. She scratched at the back of her neck as she offered her other hand. "Alaira. Apprentice wizard, I guess."

The girl might notice something a little odd about her. Mainly that all the flesh below her head was well-covered. She wore very thin gloves, and while her simple peasant's clothes had short sleeves her arms were tightly bandaged, even her neck as well. She didn't look injured either, seeing as how she just shrugged off getting tossed to the ground. Could be hiding something.

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

Alaira Taenn

After a time, Alaira felt like she'd spent enough time on the roof. She hadn't had a whole lot to think about lately, stuck 'going through the motions' as she was. Get up, go to class, make hinges or something, piss around, go to bed. Day in, day out, with little in the way of higher purpose to guide her. She never used to think a whole lot, really. She'd just go from fight to fight, and if she couldn't find one, she'd make one. Didn't think about it, didn't need to. The violence itself was all that mattered. Now? Now she did a lot of thinking, tried to find some... point in it all. She still loved a good scrap but it was getting harder and harder to justify it to herself.

And that wasn't even the important question. The important question was... Why? Why did she suddenly feel this way? However, even with this newfound introspection she was still her, and the lack of any real activity was starting to leave her a bit stir-crazy. So, come to think about it, she did still have a lot to think about, but it was all questions she'd already asked and hadn't found any answers to. In any event, she's sure someone would throw a fit if she sat up here too much longer, didn't wanna ruin the shingles. So, she slowly began her descent. She was not adept enough with Aeromancy to survive simply jumping off and gliding to the bottom, so she simply lowered herself off the edge and kept her hand to the wall, using her magic to slowly slide down from roof to roof. The final drop to the ground was far too tall, however.

Alaira clicked her tongue as she looked over the edge... Looks like I'm above a hall... probably. She thought, looking over the edge again. There might be a window open, she could use that to get back inside. Sure enough, there was an open window. She smirked and cracked her knuckles, that would do just fine! She sure hoped nobody was sitting in front of it... She stretched a bit to the left, bit to the right, inhale, exhale... And jumped. During her descent she called upon a gust of wind to knock her back into the open window, curling and bracing for impact. It was pretty simple really, but it was going to hurt. Thankfully nobody was sitting right in front of the window when she came barreling inside, hitting the ground and rolling a short ways before collapsing in a heap. With a pained groan she slowly began to rise, looking up to see... Well, she figured the girl was a student. She hadn't seen her before, that's for sure. Red hair, green eyes, piercings. The most she could offer was a weak smile as she rose to her full height. Huh. The girl looked taller from the ground. "Heh. Uh... Hey. And you are...?"

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

Alaira Taenn

Silently, Alaira stood. Well. Perhaps not stood. No, one had to have their feet planted on solid ground. Alaira hung from a decorative gargoyle's plinth, quietly contemplating her next move. It didn't take long before she had leaped off with a slight grunt of effort, a burst of aeromancy gifting her with the momentum to continue her climb. It was good training for her, she thought. She could keep her body in shape and hone her magic at the same time. She caught the roof, groaning with effort as she heaved herself up. She rolled onto her back, panting as she looked up at the sky. "I... I bet Dervis would... would just fuckin'... fly right up... The prick..." She muttered inbetween breaths. She couldn't really do much with her Aeromancy apart from augment her momentum, so she had a habit of deriding some of the others with a better handle on it for 'taking the easy way'. This especially included the teacher, who she often teased on account of his height. Having her tossed straight into the air on gusts of wind did little to dissuade her.

After her little break she sat up, brushing her hair behind her shoulders as looked out over the horizon. She sat at the highest point on the keep, and it made her smile a bit every time she remembered that the Arch-mage's chambers were just under her. She quietly wondered how many gargoyles or other, less physical sentries were watching her? Apart from the exercise, she like to come her as, apart from the wind, this was the quietest spot in the entire grounds. For a mindlessly bloodthirsty brute, she spent a lot of time just... thinking. Today was comparatively uneventful. Sure she'd been smithing earlier, as evidenced by the fact that her tunic was still somewhat damp with sweat, but it wasn't anything exciting. Just horseshoes, nails, that sort of thing. Being a goddamn wizard tended to inflate one's ego, and of the very, very small population of students that could work a forge, most found the act of creating such things beneath them.

They wanted to spend their time creating mighty blades, or all manner of magical whatsits, and yes, so did she. The difference was that she understood the value of things like that. Someone has to make the nails and hinges and rivets, and if she does it that means that means she's paid instead of some random chump merchant somewhere. More money means she has an easier time putting together the materials to actually make something worth bragging about. Didn't mean it was any less boring, though. Looking up at the sky, she was reminded that of all the things she missed about her life before, it was probably the blue sky. Out here, it was always some reddish/purple-y shade even in the middle of the damned day. She sighed and rolled her eyes, leaning back against the conical roof and closing her eyes. She began to sing to herself, just a dwarven mining song she'd picked up a few years back. She really did have a beautiful voice, odd from such a brutish woman. Well, she was half-elf, after all.

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

Hm. I suppose that, yes, my time machine does in fact work. Quaint. I wonder if my characters yet live. I guess it doesn't matter, I surrendered them a long time ago.

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

@Lucius Cypher

Don't do it, IT'S A TRAP

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

<Snipped quote by Demonic Angel>

Hullo :)

@May

Hi?

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

@Luna Konan is on too.

@Demonic Angel

Do not test me, WORM. I AM ALWAYS WATCHING EXCEPT WHEN I'M NOT.

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

*Glory kills @Demonic Angel for delicious health*

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

Alaira Taenn & Grey Onyx

Fwoosh. Fwoosh.
...
Hiss.
Fwoosh. Fwoosh.
...
Hiss.

"You're going too fast, you need to slow down." Came the gruff voice of the guardsman, frowning at the woman as she worked the bellows. "I've been doing this for fuckin' decades, I know how to do it..." the woman replied, wiping the sweat from her brow as she slid the blade into the forge again, stepping at the bellows exactly twice and waiting, and then removing it and cooling it with water. She was tempering the blade, heating and cooling it repeatedly to give the weapon the flexibility it needed to be durable. the final step in the process.

Grey held his hands up, shaking his head as he went back to polishing the set of armor he'd been working on. The upper half was beautifully designed, lightly engraved and adorned and polished to a shine, brass plating decorated the trim. The greaves were comparatively simple, leather boots making up the feet as opposed to the sabatons he normally made, owing to the fact that the lower segment had been rushed. Still, it was as sturdy as the rest. He frowned, sighing as he rolled his eyes.

Alaira looked over her shoulder as she finished cooling the blade a fifth time, clicking her tongue. "you can stop worrying about the legs. She's gonna like it or hate it regardless." She said, shaking her head as she went back to work. Grey looked up, and then simply sighed again. "I know, but... it just doesn't feel right." He said, shaking his head some again as he got back to polishing it. He felt that it made him look... lazy or something, part of it was simply worry for his reputation. How could he have ever expected that what had happened with Mar had... well, happened?

"So... remind me again why you're doing this? I didn't think you were close to them." Alaira chimed in, stepping at the bellows. Grey looked up for a moment, humming. "Remember way back when Athalus lost his hand?" He said, stroking his chin. "Yeah?" "Well, at the time I had felt like it was my fault, that I hadn't done enough to protect him or Mar. I got over that little bit of despair, but at the time I felt like I needed to make it up to them, somehow. I tried to think of something I could do for them, and I realized that all I could do was make something." He said, Alaira nodding along. "So I noticed-" "right, right. You noticed that Mar didn't wear any armor and that Athalus couldn't really do it so you started working on something for her." Grey nodded, tapping at the armor and smiling at the sound. "Exactly. I figured that she'd get hurt a lot less if she stopped going into fights with just a tunic on." He said, looking over to Alaira to find that she'd been polishing her blade now, as well as slotting the blade itself into the guard and the grip.

"And yours?" He asked. She smiled, wiping at the blade some with a soft cloth before she took out her engraving tools and got to work. "It's for Lyn. She's a big girl now, she can't just use that stick forever." She said cheerfully, referring to a wooden practice sword. She had made her a 'Hand-and-a-Half' sword, better known as a Bastard sword. It was a weapon sized so that it could be comfortably wielded one-handed or two-handed, as needed. Lyn was stronger than most so Alaira felt that a lighter weapon was wasted on her, but she was no brute so a big old greatsword wouldn't be able to take advantage of the girl's quickness very well. So she found that a middle ground was necessary. Even if she didn't use it, she'd made sure that the sword was pretty enough to be put on display, at least. She blew at the blade once she was done, polishing the segment now that the girl's name had been engraved into it, along with a few words. Grey stepped over, arching his brow. "Per aspera ad astra?" He asked. "Through hardship, to the Stars." She said, gingerly sliding the weapon into its sheath.

She said nothing more as she cooled the forge, watching Grey load up a small cart. "Ready then?" She asked, the man giving her a thumbs up and a nod as he placed a boot on the cart. "Ready as I'll ever be." He said, grumbling some to himself. {I hope those measurements Athalus got me were right... It'd be pretty embarrassing to give a gift that doesn't even fit.} He thought to himself. They walked through the halls, agreeing to stop by their room to deliver the armor, and they'd go their separate ways after.

Once they arrived, they found Leith standing in the doorway, prompting the two to look to eachother for a moment as they drew in closer, only catching the last bits of his words. "What's goin' on? What are we dealin' with?" Alaira asked, crossing her arms and arching a brow to him. Her tone was curious, not accusatory. Grey simply wheeled the cart to the wall and waved to Leith. "Hey there." He said quietly, leaning against the wall and simply standing by.