Current
so does anybody know what conditioners aren't too rough on chlorophyll
2 mos ago
trying to find the "golden ratio" of weed and ozempic to cause my appetite to stack overflow and reactivate the long-dormant photosynthesis gene from that 50% of DNA we share with plants. will update
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3 mos ago
many people dont know this but a good cue for deadlifting is to bring your chest up and lock your lats for proper spinal stability. this also applies to interacting with gorillas i'm told. testing no—
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4 mos ago
yeah i work in area 51, it's pretty chill. usually you just get a tweaker roll by on a "spiritual journey" once a month. they tend to go away once you put a few AIM-9s downrange on their flying saucer
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5 mos ago
man is closest to god after an ice cold beer in the warm shower. his mind and body are freed. next closest is behind the wheel in a scool zone, also with an ice cold beer in hand. study this well.
Fresh as advertised, barely more than a day old at most— not even enough time had passed for the corpses to truly begin rotting beneath the now-setting sun. The violence that had been rendered unto the garrison spoke for itself, extending past the mangled and rent corpses and cloaking the air— by the time they'd drawn upon the keep proper, he had no need of Paladin Tyaethe's enhanced senses to all but taste the blood on the air.
As though a grand ritual of sacrifice had been conducted to desecrate the place. This would have already been enough to set his nerves on alert, the cause still undiscovered, but then things...
"Nothing but corpses."
Things took a twist.
A tiny woman, scarcely bigger than their captain, was nothing much—
"Hey, Fionn." he breathed, voice colored by a strange mix of suspicion and intrigue. He recognized this one, if not by personal meeting— in their shared circles, her reputation had carried a fair distance beyond her person.
Blue hair pulled tight into pigtails. Crimson eyes, though not radiant with the unnatural light that Damon, Paladin Tyaethe, or any other vampire possessed— as far as he knew, no clearer-sighted in the dark than his own. A long, jagged spear of reddened steel alloy, as clear a battlefield identifier as any— tall tales spoke of it stained by blood, others as pulled from the maw of some vicious beast off the coast. Regardless, it wasn't congruent with half the wounds on display here— and too clean by half to cause the ones it might have been able to match.
"Alette the Shark," he began, locking eyes with the diminutive lancer as the tip of his sword was held aloft, point catching the last of the sun as it leveled onto the general direction of her face. His head tilted to the side, matching hers. "and her band— They don't operate this far south normally, far as I remember. Closer to your side of Velt, right?"
A professional rival, of sorts— every band was one to the others, as tradesman working the same market. The Regiment's stomping grounds and hers had the vague overlap one would expect of damn near anybody that campaigned in Velt or Estival. While he had no real antipathy here, it was good sense to keep tabs on competition. That she was here was... alarming.
It was clear enough that her reputation's preceding her was some measure of mark towards character, rather than against— completely untrustworthy scum didn't last terribly long on the field, nor as a unit. Warfare was their business first and foremost: to join a band like hers or his meant that the enlisted troops trusted the leadership to get food into their bellies. If she could build up ranks at all, she needed that much at the least.
It'd be remiss of them to ignore that facet of her station. In looking for work, her martial prowess would speak for itself. In looking for company, though... no matter how much it weighed odds in one's favor, it was a foolish soldier of fortune to overlook the other questions he should present to his leadership.
Are you successful? Are you dependable? Do I trust you to side with me, or with the employer? Am I a comrade, or a pawn?
...
That last one bit at a thread he didn't quite like.
Regardless.
Your life was on the line when you made that choice. You were no patriot, nor champion, nor revolutionary. The question was whether you would be risking your life for someone who was worth trusting it with. That she had enjoyed continual success over the years meant she definitely needed to be doing something right on that front, near as he could tell.
Enough to hear her out. Enough to know she wasn't supposed to be so rock-brained as to bring the entirety of their order onto her head.
Lowering his blade, at the Captain's orders he stalked forward and began to inspect the nearest corpse, searching through for signs of... whatever it was she alluded to.
As he did so, his voice rang out to punctuate the point with direct address.
"Long way from home like this— The hell sort of take coulda coaxed you out?"
He asked his question bluntly, for the moment shedding his effortful airs of chivalry— pulling back from the five-year-deep well of experience that he'd dug in the common ground between them. He didn't expect to get a name from her— professionalism would dictate against that, but any hint would help them start to get a picture drawn.
Automatons, motion breathed into vague facsimiles of blessed, incarnate form, arose as a swarm around the Lions, a dervish within the tomb. Blades flashed, clattering and clicking artifice threatened to engulf the force, a death by a thousand cuts to herd their troop into the wooden golem the witch had chosen as her initial champion.
Iron whirled. Streaking comets fell upon the shadows. Sparks flashed as the dolls tore against a mighty shield, only to receive a crushing blow to scatter them in turn.
No matter how sharp or chaotic the wind that surrounded them, it would break upon a wall. Istvan knew well the value of harassing from the flanks, encircling, nipping at heels to tire and overwhelm a foe, pulling their attention and strength apart thread by thread. It was how he had built his prestige within the Demet lands, how he had wrangled common brigands into dedicated raiders, how he had hunted mighty stags in the forests, flanked by well-bred hounds.
He knew the game, and how it in turn was broken.
"I have your backs!" he called, bashing aside another of the lessers as he stomped over to guard the rear of the party, filling the hole left in the "vanguard's" rear line as they focused on the largest of this Witch's examinations. Between his large frame, crushing blows, and sweeping range, he was sure he could lock this area down.
"I smell it too. Garrisoned forts aren't this quiet— old massacres are." a tight-voiced affirmation floated in from behind as Gerard cautiously stalked forward, a wolf with hackles raised. He and those like him among their number, veterans of countless battlefields, knew this feeling well— an echo of bloodshed left upon the land. It hung in the air like smoke, deepening shadows, choking sound, turning the tawny palette of dusk into an oppressive blaze.
He had neither of their preternatural abilities, obviously, but half a decade of honed instinct and experience were a fair substitute.
Peeling away from their burning search through the monolithic walls of stone for a moment, the twin furnaces behind his golden eyes spared a glance at the slight form of Amy as he passed by. A newcomer, arriving within only the past week, he wasn't quite sure what exactly to make of her yet— a half-demon illusionist raised by Mayonite clergy, if memory served. A heady mix, that, for anyone like him to wrap their head around. He'd kept his distance until now, when the mission had brought her all but immediately into their ranks.
He was no authority to pass judgement, least of all regarding anyone's birth. As strange as it was to reconcile so many of those classically demonic features with an ally... she was an ally. One of their number. Accepted and vetted in spite of it by the same arbitrators he'd been blessed by. By the sound of things, her arguments were on their face better than his own, even.
Mistrust between soldiers would get both killed. There was no room for it here.
His eyes flickered back to the walls as he continued on. Unmarred, yet barren. No breach of the gates that he could see— this place wasn't besieged from the outside. That was clear enough to anyone— whatever caused this graveyard ambience did so from within. If it was an insurrectionary force, an infiltration, a coup, something human like that...
"Can't say I've ever known one to leave the place it happened so untouched, though. What the hell..."
His scowl deepened, and his hand floated to the hilt of his longsword as though reflex.
If the culprit was still here, horses in any appreciable mass like their own were loud enough to hear coming, the setting sun against the steel of their armor clear to see upon the flat plain. No chance the Roses would be here by surprise, if there was any lookout posted. No sense waiting for the welcoming heralds to get into position any further.
A puff of air through his nostrils, expelling trepidation and steeling nerves.
"May as well find out."
Blade sliding free, he marched slowly through the threshold, ready to scan the field.
"Yeah, no, the technique showed on its own." Gerard commented, eyes pulling in the sequence as Fionn relived his bout with their masterful forefather, reading the shadow the other man projected onto the void as well as he could— surprising in its fidelity. A testament to his peer's visualization and technical recall, sure... but funny as it was, the stanzas recounted the Mirror Knight's words as well. Like Agrahn calling me 'desperate'.
Gerard wasn't sure if that was what lent itself to the mind's eye here or not, but insight was insight.
"You don't play this slow a game with me, do you?" an observation, rhetorically made— both well aware already how the harmony of their spars registered, beyond opportunism's swinging tempo adding subtle variance. "You were keeping everything in tighter."
"I sent my knife through a spell-slinger's eye, that was one of the highlights." He countered, free hand whipping forth in the motion every mercenary knew, most were good at, and a select few fully mastered. Being in the second cohort was good enough for most anyone. Good enough for him, so far. "I couldn't get out of the way of all the arrows from the Talderians, but their ace couldn't get the dent from the Mordhau out of his helm. Bought me time to do the old gorget can-opener."
Best fight of his life, even with all they'd done... Gerard wouldn't expect anything less. Even the Demonbreaker, towering, glimmering juggernaut of holy steel that toyed with he and Serenity like children... the wraith that he had been paled to his life, and paled to Agrahn as well.
"Florian... I would bet." he grunted, "Wish I'd gotten him, might have gone out something cleaner... Agrahn was a monster. Spent the whole time wrecking me with each swing. Took all I had just to keep him from cutting through me outright. I think the only thing I got in on him was..."
A finger brushed an errant lock of coal aside from his gaze. Long, he remembered thinking at the ball, longer than ever. The brow beneath echoed with a soreness it never earned.
A rough laugh, tension going slack as an all too familiar sentiment was shared. This was why he could loosen up 'round Fionn— they were, at their cores, the same kind of animal.
"Talderians, I think. The really really old style emblems gave 'em away and breastplates. They had an archer cohort, too. Never thought I'd get to see anything like that, but..."
He felt the rush of blood, the flicker of battle-flame in his breast. The showers of sparks as steel danced against steel. The grin he bore spread wider— pulling at the corners, showing fangs.
"Fun's the word for sure, our honored forefather's disdain aside."
His eyes slid up to meet Fionn's, preempting a half-turn of the head. Within the amber depths that greeted the Velt native, there wasn't any artifice to be seen— instead, a quirk of intrigue similar to his own. His suspicions were well-founded: it was something new, rather than slipped free from hidden depths.
"Too well, actually." he began, grimacing as he rolled his wrist, sending the held length of steel into spiraling patterns of infinity, an eight knocked to the side. Weak cuts, but perhaps sufficient to parry a lighter strike. Nothing sufficient to defend against him... but work for familiarizing the grip. These days, he thought often of sword and axe.
"A bowl of dust turning into a field of steel and blood. As if I'd gone back."
Between them, there was no need to elaborate where "back" meant. The sober recount continued.
"Only I woke after Sir Agrahn, straight out of the painting in the hall," he pointed with the tip. "Punched a hole straight through my gut. Felt the whole thing. Before that, felt how easily he could have crushed me at my best."
With a half-hearted wave and a pensive frown, Gerard sent the man on his way.
"Guess we've all been on edge," he huffed, fiddling around with the blunt as it laid in the sun-warmed grass, a bed of soft, forgiving green that made the long-stomped earth beneath find new life. It certainly seemed to hold true to his eyes, if nothing else— the exchange here, his own inability to get out of his own head accelerating to the point even Sir Renar seemed to note it as abnormal...
"Damned dreams."
It came as a mutter in undertone, happening to fall in a lull between the morning breezes as his grip closed around the hilt of his feder, holding it aloft ahead of him in a hand. The flashes ran through his mind— insurmountable pressure above, agony erupting from below. Cold words washing disdain over the burn of the rising thrill.
Back step and twirl. Quickstep across. Lean in, pause. Beat strikes and they jump. Heels clicking against wood flooring. Swing for effect and to evade. The crescendo of the band rises, and their movements exaggerate.
It crashes. They end.
…
The Brass Panther.
A middle-class establishment located in the bustling mercantile district of Aimlenn, it was well-known for its assortment of bite-sized entrees, designed for curated bites and broad palates. With a slender fork, one could tease out a variety of imported seafoods from their shells, or indulge in cubes of game meat wrapped in bacon or puff pastries. Soups were held in smaller cups, meant to be downed in a single go and experienced in its entirety as a medley of harmonious and contrasting ingredients and flavours.
Of course, all this ease-of-eating was so that its guests could be dressed to the nines without worrying about getting any food on their fancy outfits…which also meant that they would be encouraged to step out on the dance floor, perhaps snag a couple of non-complimentary drinks along the way. A woodwind quartet were present today, playing music of a different flavour and tempo compared to a string quartet’s sweeping waltzes, and it was for that reason that Serenity had brought Gerard out.
They had hit the dancefloor first, of course, for it was always sensible to work out before one dined, but after that, Serenity had handed Gerard the menu and let him have a go at it. Now, ten minutes had passed, her glass of chilled fruit juice was half-empty, and the lad was still staring at the first page.
His foot tapped beneath the table, following the time of the unfamiliar instrumentation as he let his eyes slide over the menu. It was a damned sight different from the slow, grandiose waltz that had dominated the background of the ball, but funnily enough, that had made it a quicker study by comparison— the more jaunty tempo was reminiscent of the folk tunes back home. It suited his sense of movement better. For all his affirmations of “using his brain now”, the half-decade of kineticism was hard to shake out of the system in full.
Well, the goal was always gonna be synthesis.
More to the point, more worth concern, about five minutes ago he’d realised he’d not said a word nor really paid attention to the writing on the page in his grip. Looking, but not reading.
“Sorry about that.”
Quickly, he plucked out the names of three interesting-seeming entrees from the page as a whole, and set the thing down. Only path from there was forward— no sense stewing over the awkward silence and prolonging it.
“Just enjoying the music— thanks for the lesson, again.”
“I’m the one making these invitations,” Serenity replied. “For all you’d know, Gerard, I’m doing this just because it’d be unseemly for a lady to dine out alone.”
Not that she would ever care for such things herself.
She swirled her glass in her hand, a practiced manoeuvre learned from watch the members of her household, then took another sip before leaning in. There hadn’t been much time to talk about it, not when the assassination and the monstrosities within the crypt lended themselves much better for post-training conversation, but now? While they were waiting for baked snails, potato swirls, and chicken heart skewers?
“So, tell me. How was the ball for you?”
”Enlightening.” he admitted, leaning back for a moment. “In a lot of ways. Ran into Sir Sergio almost immediately.”
Within the tumult of that night, between assassins and crypts and Demonbreakers, the slow and careful burn of the Ball had practically become a footnote to the rushing chaos. Funny how he’d been so nervous that he’d spend the evening out of his element.
“We ended up swapping stories with some kids— he tried to sneak off on me halfway through, but I managed to wrangle him.” He chuckled softly, bringing his glass of water in for a drink. Lucky for that— his lead had proven a good example to follow.
“Being on the other end of the adoration was actually pretty humbling, to be honest— How about you?” he asked, setting the glass back down. “I don’t think I ever caught what you were up to— all I managed to keep track of before everything went tits up was Sir Renar’s duel, the Princesses arriving, and Fionn chatting up some Hundi pretending to be a noblewoman.”
“Felt like you weren’t deserving of their adoration?”
Serenity raised a brow.
“I was engaged with Lady Veilena Cazt for the evening. Some light conversation, a dance, and then we were off to introduce ourselves to the two Princesses.” Before everything else happened. She never did learn what it was that the Cazt heir wanted with Princess Elisandre, did she?
He couldn’t blame her for that one. Of all the knights he’d forged friendships with, Dame Serenity probably dealt the most in crushing those kind of doubts. Her and Fionn.
“I don’t think that’s for me to decide. In the moment, at least, it felt more like ‘wow, this is what it would have been like talking to me back then’. They were asking if I’d fought a dragon before, if Jeremiah was fallen divine, so on.”
He blinked plainly, then let his brow furrow, as a fourth image arose from that night, fading into focus. A moment and little more caught in the interstice between shrill voices and booming heralds, but something he had spotted from afar.
“Actually, one more. I only got a glimpse of it, but it looked like someone was giving the Captain a hard time right before the Princesses made landfall.” Idly, his index finger began to tap the varnished wood of their table as he sorted signal from the noise that had cloaked it. “Dark hair, slicked, carried himself noble. Wore a lot of black and a little silver. I think he shadowed her on the way over to greet them— Ring any bells?”
If he was to continue being introduced to the new skills expected of this station like this, then he figured it’d be wise to get a feel for the new faces he’d be keeping track of, too. A minorly alien sensation, but so was everything else.
“Edvard Velbrance,” Serenity said. It wasn’t as if ‘dark hair, slicked, carried himself noble’ was all that meaningful of a descriptor considering the current state of men’s fashion amongst the nobility, but it was easy enough to pick out who would catch the attention, and perhaps the ire, of the Iron Roses.
Still, what the Velbrance heir did was minor at best. If one picked a fight with every noble that found fault in the order, they would be starting off another War of the Red Flags.
“He hails from a House in northern Thaln, with three significant traits.” Better to make a list, for Gerard’s own sake. “One, their association with the wine trade. Not much to say there, you’re drinking one of their exports. Two, their loyalty to the crown. For a minor House as his, they’ve sent a fair number of soldiers to fight for the Royals during the War of the Red Flags. Three, their distance from religion as institution. They hold beliefs and visit cathedrals, but do not involve themselves in the more…political aspects of the Church.”
As if perfectly timed, Serenity’s points were punctuated by the arrival of the plates. Baked snails, the white wine bubbling within the shell. Chicken hearts, seasoned with sauces and spices in sequence. Potato swirls, deconstructions of a common vegetable fried in fat and arranged like a rose.
“Edvard himself is ambitious, but considering his family’s gradual rise in power over the last decade, it’s ambition with substance.”
“Hm,” came the reply, having the good decency to remain muted in its vexation— after all, Gerard wasn’t sure what he’d expected, if much of anything. It wasn’t like he had much with regard to the context of that sighting to begin with, so…
He plucked a potato swirl from the platter and popped it into his mouth whole, chewing the thought over as he did the golden, savoury morsel. On the face of it, none of that suggested any basis for stance in real opposition to the Order… As far as he knew. Adding in the consideration that Captain Fanilly herself hailed from a noble house, and thus was subject to personal ties atop those inherited by her rank? There was no telling. Not with so little to work with on the outset.
“Ambitious… Guess we’ll see if anything becomes of that.” For the time being, he’d commit what she told him to memory, inwardly thankful that it had broken down into a simply itemised list. “And what about Lady Cazt, then? My company kept north for most of the War, so I’m a bit out of touch— how’s a kid like that fronting the aftermath? Can’t be easy.”
He was no believer in inheriting the sins of ones’ blood, of course, but he also knew better than to believe the world was monolithic in sharing that ideal.
“A prodigious mage, as those of House Cazt are wont to be, and guarded by a knight like Sir Haelstadt.” Serenity grinned, an uncharacteristic smile that showed her canines. “Almost a shame that I didn’t have the same opportunity as Renar did, owing to the circumstances.”
She was certain she could put on a better show than he.
“Lady Veilena handled herself well enough in the aftermath, as the head of her household. I’d recommend you discard the notion that she’s a ‘kid’, unless you would apply the same moniker to our Knight-Captain or myself.” One could even say that Veilena had political power surpassing that of the Knight-Captain or the Arcedeen scion, after all. House Cazt may have fallen from grace, but their head still had a bond with one of the future rulers of the kingdom, and still had her place in the Mage’s College.
“But enough.”
She took a skewer of chicken heart, popping it in her mouth.
“Tell me about the ladies you conversed with. Surely you remember, at minimum, their names?”
Even only a month ago, he would have blithely answered the rhetoric in the affirmative. That the youth of the three examples presented before him trumped rank, trumped upbringing, trumped the necessities of station.
And yet.
At their age, he was off making war in foreign lands, contracted to a corps of soldiers-for-hire. Throwing the end of his boyhood to the tips of enemy swords— not much of a leg, if any to stand on there. Though their worlds were leagues apart, it would have been short-sighted to ignore this point of intersection. That growing up came swift and sudden, when the world decreed it was time.
But enough.
He nodded, and spoke.
“Angenese Tulburn, Tenessa Heinlein, and Violette Scarnsbek. Lady Angenese is the oldest of them, Daughter of a ‘Sir Galfont’ beneath the Crown. She described him as minor, but he’s recently taken out the captain of a slaving ring. Tells her stories of his exploits from time to time like that— I think she’s proud of him, and ought to be.”
Reaching for the platter of baked snails, a garden pest turned into an apparent delicacy, if the rest of the fare was anything to judge by. One that he was somewhat vexed in approaching, a frown crossing his expression as he contemplated the thing.
“Lady Tenessa’s a fan of histories and myth. She regaled Sir Sergio and I with a retelling of the Witch-Queen’s rise and fall. From the sounds of it she might get too carried away in the fanciful side of any story, but she doesn’t lack for enthusiasm. It was her that if I had fought a fallen divine, seen a dragon, and so forth.”
Was he supposed to crack it open, or just slurp it out? The latter seemed crass, but the former impractical.
“I couldn’t say the same for Lady Violette. I don’t think we got more than three sentences out of her through the entire conversation. She’s an enigma, and moreover one that seemed exasperated to be there. Like the other two had dragged her along when they caught sight of us. The commotion had begun before I could get a bead on the why of her dissatisfaction— My best guess is that I wasn’t the Princesses she had hoped to speak with.”
“Smallest fork,” Serenity spoke, before demonstrating. She took the slim silverware in one hand, one of the shells in another, and then slid the fork in, teasing out the meat in one quick wrist twist. Now loosened from its shell, the meat flowed easily out of the shell alongside the soup as she tipped its contents into the mouth. “If there’s something you don’t know how to do, look before you think.”
This was a restaurant, after all. There were plenty of others who ate similar dishes. She waited for him to try it out, before continuing.
“Good that you remember them. Sir Galfront’s contributions to the Crown aren’t as spectacular as those of Sir Adeforth’s, but there are more common criminals in Thaln than there are villains and heretics.” That, at least, shouldn’t be something Gerard was wholly clueless about. Dragons were wonders, orcs were monsters, but in the end, it was mountain bandits and highwaymen who offered the greatest worries for travellers and farmers. “You’ve any interest in these ladies?”
Mayhaps they could cover even courting, tonight. That’d certainly be fun.
He quirked an eyebrow as the adventurous morsel slid free from the shell and into his gullet, awash with tart wine and rich butter. That was a question that could be spun any number of ways.
”They were pleasant to talk to, the two that deigned to speak.” he allowed, placing the empty shell onto his plate. “Like my sister, if she were born to their circumstances. I suppose I’m also a little curious as to what it was that was on Lady Violette’s mind.”
He never did have an opportunity to get that answer— a mere moment was all that had passed before he was barking orders and urging them beneath cover.
“If our paths crossed again, I’ve no reason not to try and be friends.”
“You have their name and appear to have made a favourable impression.”
Serenity tapped her fork against the empty shell.
“Why leave it on an ‘if’?” Well, there was no value in forcing it. “Unless you were only interested in order to be polite.”
“I’ll admit it was mainly me not wanting to end up with an egg in my face, at the outset.” These talks had a way of sticking with him. He’d wished to prove they weren’t wasted, at the very least. “Beyond that… Hm.”
Another potato swirl. Salty, starchy, rich, the familiar wrapped in an exotic coat. He chewed it over.
“I’m a little unsure of how I would go about the alternative, for one.”
While he knew this was probably a symptom of his circumstances before the Order—a life following constant march, never settling long enough to make a proper friend outside The Unit— he knew too that invoking such would be allowing it to chain him to it, to build in an excuse. Those wouldn’t fly.
“I know some of our comrades write letters to keep in contact with people,” he ventured. Best to just rip the bandage free right now. “But those are often for friends already long made. Would it be appropriate in this instance too?”
He reached for a chicken heart.
She moved to extract the flesh from another snail shell.
It was a rare enough situation; even the more noble knights that she had the pleasure of speaking to saw such encounters and opportunities as conquests. And for all the female leadership that was present in the Iron Roses, there weren’t too many who could serve as good conversation partners in that regard either. The Knight-Captain needed to be better, the Paladin was simultaneously too old and too young, and Cecilia…well, Cecilia acted very much like a male in those regards.
Put in another light? Gerard’s hesitation was precious.
“Yes, it would.” Serenity put on a blase expression. “If they do not reply, then so be it. If they do, you’d be better than if you hadn’t.”
The lioness took a sip, then frowned. The waiter that had passed by to refill it had mistaken its contents for alcohol.
“By doing nothing, you protect your pride. By doing something, you may gain a friend.”
The way the scales tilted were obvious to her.
And it made for a simple, clear argument to him.
Gerard nodded, popping the spiced knot of muscle into his mouth and chewing, a medley of unfamiliar, interesting flavors bursting to life on his tongue. He was right to take the leap on these for certain— right to choose adventure.
“Then it’s something to be done, clearly. I’ll have to track down some ink. Sir Steffen and Renar are always caught up in balancing budgets and the like, I’m sure they’ve supply to spare.”
“And bother Fionn for proofreading your draft.”
”So long as I can keep him from editorialising.” He quipped. ”Goddesses love the guy, but he’s so damn insistent sometimes.”
It was a toothless one, as far as they went. It was quickly chased by the subtle rattling of coinage— Librans being fished for with one hand, as another went for one of the last disappearing morsels.
Serenity winked. An uncharacteristic move for her.
“Just shows he loves you.”
His eyebrows rose, just a bit.
”Careful, now. I don’t need that ex of his getting jealous of me.”
"I'm pretty sure everyone here has said attacking the legs is a bad idea to me today. Or at least not encouraged it."
Verloren Haufen were the front of the front lines. Tip of the spear. In any troop, if you had to throw men into an unwinnable situation for the chance of pulling it free from the brink, they were your charge. Double the pay, but so many more times the risk— A mentality that was impossible to break within its numbers was the primary necessity. Anything less, and facing death would make the unit crumble.
"If I promise I understand, can we move past it?"
Gerard, here, was starting to get concerned about the state of affairs. How'd we get here? He had been internalizing the lecture for little more than a minute, what happened?
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