Mortim

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

A leathery tongue struts slowly over the lower, then the upper lip of Ahllasta's vicious mouth. Sharp canines are seen for a brief moment behind meaty lips. Feral eyes pace Anora's figure for roughly five seconds straight before speech again enters this encounter. Her vascular arms split from one another to place hands on burly hips.

"All I'll say is, I'd like to defeat Darsby. Before I could witness anything other than this reproachful form-" Ahllasta kicks at Darsby's limp leg, a light *crack* being heard from beneath his flesh as she does so. "-my partner shot him down. I'll help you, so long as you don't get in the way when I see fit to make good on my grudge." Each sentence passes quickly into the growls and sneers that follow her words. She sounds like an animal accustomed to speech only enough for it to look relatively natural, words being a tool she only employs when needed. She speaks just silently enough for her partner not to hear of any bargaining happening in the living room.

The grey-suited man can be heard from the living room. Sighs, "yes, I know" and "I get it, but this is big, I'm sure" can be heard on several occasions past the thin living room walls. One finger is lightly tapping against Ahllasta's hip to express urgency over time. The rest of her is motionless aside from animalistic facial features, making that one fidgeting appendage stand out.

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Darsby swims in a sea of dislocated words. He's taken to sorting out the sentences he's spoken to others after deciding he is physically somewhere entirely foreign. Words collide to form coherent statements about him; statements align to express when everything was said. Perhaps by understanding his own need to say what he said he can understand what pushed him into this state. Perhaps he'd be better off sticking to what he's most recently witnessed, either way, it's better to start somewhere specific than nowhere in particular. At least, he hopes he's taking a correct course of action.

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

Darsby feels his spirit slip from space and time alongside the sound of gently running rapids. He was here only moments ago during his bodies previous recuperation. Ebony and ivory collide as shadows strike surrounding lights with force against his unsubstantial form. Thoughts and relevant information struggle to formulate inside this flowing dimension just beyond the haze of our supposedly solid reality. Conflict over what it is that has just occurred fights for supremacy of importance. Darsby wrestles to regain proper sentience after having been forcefully tossed into this other realm while Anora resolves to stand for whatever semblance of life she may yet hold.

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This huntress tenses further, proving that this action isn't impossible despite her visibly flexed muscles. Ahllasta had taken notice of Anora and kept her reaction at bay. The creature before her had been subdued entirely without a struggle despite her previous wishes. She knew this man; she had a score with him.

Ahllasta had wished to perch herself atop Darsby's body, waiting for him to recover so she may derive the satisfaction of genuinely striking him down. The man in grey, Vince, had taken said luxury away. She cared for little else than prey and grudges; in our present scenario, he had stolen both.

Slowly, Ahllasta turns towards Anora. Though she reeks of aggression and ill-kept notions of hate, she didn't appear to be directing any of it towards our young human.
"Girl, you know this man?" Her words slip with the anger of a military instructor struggling to keep their louder vocalities at bay.

Ahllasta's posture would then change upon Anora mustering the strength to fabricate veritable hell-hounds. This alien huntress has one small but thick brown horn protruding its sharp surface from the center of her forehead, glittering by the faint specks of blood that splattered over its surface from the previous attack. Just below said feature dwells a newly revived outward mode of emotion. All at once this woman shifts from predator to aggressive negotiator. Her arms casually lace themselves beneath her breasts, her hips sway slightly to the left, her feet turn somewhat outwards. All that still held on to vicious dismay were her eyes, those heinous, beating eyes.

"He needs you for something, doesn't he? What if I said I'd help you get him out of here?" Her lips curled once more to release those leering words. She spoke like a beast turning to address some lesser animal impassionately.

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Darsby begins to recollect his fragmented self from within the spatial void he now occupies. The outside world comes to him in muffled waves of prismatic light and slurred sounds. Cognition begins to spin it's whirring gears again as method transcend logic, feelings collide to transcend expression, and finally, words arrive to make sense of the pieces at play.

"I'm... I've been put here?" He musters to say to himself, still many moments from making sense of current circumstance. He attempts to align an out-of-order sequence of memories. Gunfire, cars, smoke, a girl, conversation, a residence. He feels he's getting close, but this likely won't produce any externally visible results in an amount of time that Anora should reasonably bargain for.

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

What happened next would have happened fast, extremely fast. There's a realm which dwells outside of humanities visual capacities. This is the realm where the next four seconds transpire.

Darsby, still entirely unarmed by his standards, was caught off guard by the feminine huntress closing in on our farmhouse. He couldn't have heard, seen, or smelled this woman underneath the veil of her magic.

*Crash!* Through the window came an invisible mass. Reacting on instinct, Darsby turns left to face whatever hidden foe may have reared its fangs here. *Bang!Bang!-Crash!* Two rounds exit a worn revolver's chamber just before Darsby is thrown into the wall at his left with such force that he nearly breaks through it entirely. With a faint shimmer, our new opponent is revealed, one of her hands has wholly passed through the center of Darsby's chest.

Rippling muscles cascade down the exterior of heavily tanned arms sprouting from a grey tank-top. Loose fitting cargo shorts rest just above sandals — crimson hair jutts in many directions atop veined features contorted by beauty and habitual rage. Fierce orange eyes glow near Darsby's chest as she withdraws her arm from the gaping hole she's created to quickly strike both of his shoulders with a blur of punches. *Crack!-popop!* Bones snap under the weight of her near-invisible strikes.

The man and his grey suit stand just as this woman finishes her assault, her right arm drenched in chunks of bone and strips of flesh.

"Ahllasta! I told you to stay in the car!" He barks, though somehow still sounding unenthused by present circumstance.
"He's a Baron." She'd quietly say in a mist of rage while staring down at the sputtering form of her victim.

Darsby is again rendered as a mass of broken form. He's crumpled into the ground and left to sputter in effort to speak, both arms limp at his sides after having slid to the Earth below.

*Bang!* With one movement, so fast it escaped sight, the grey man had drawn a pistol and fired a round into Darsby's twitching head. With that, Anora's companion went silent.

"Then he's stuck in bureaucracy until his body's fixed. I'm making the call." He then pulls a cell-phone to his ear, sighing while stepping from the room to mumble silently at some unnamed superior.

The Huntress is all that's left in the room. Her lips are curled int a snear as she stares down upon what looks to be a corpse. She's openly furious, having been robbed of the ability to speak her mind to the figure at her feet.

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

I'll be responding to both of these posts soon hopefully. I've just been very ill lately and haven't been able to get myself to write these out properly. Sorry!

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

*Thump thump!* The rattling wood, first to come before unhindered footfall. These sounds blasted our agents heightened senses. He'd yielded his ears to higher energies. Said ethereal resource directed him to locate two targets on the uppermost floor of this agriculture estate. He felt he needed to use this perceptual magnification. Typically his sixth sense would be enough, the vague pressure that allows most magic users awareness of nearby sentient entity's. His instincts were right that it wouldn't help him here.

The echoes of one pair of shoes and another pair of boots clapping casually against wood echoed through several hallways and rooms until finally filtering down into the dusty living room this agent had wandered into. Above he could sense it via his inner being, unhindered waves of converted earthly energies radiating from a woman. She was likely uneducated in magic but not entirely inept in her ability to hold her powers. She wasn't the biggest oddity here, even though she was to be considered odd. The queerest factor was her companion.

Typically, anything with the ability to think or be self-conscious emits waves of ambient energy that can be faintly interpreted with a trained sixth sense. The woman above radiates both this and another form of some converted energy that is at home in her mostly human body; the other individual radiates nothing. They are presumed to be humanoid as they did give off the sound bipedal movement creates, but, while approaching there is another oddity. This humanoid isn't breathing. One could even say that its presence was sucking in small waves of ambient energy into some abyssal pocket of unreadable magic. Everything else indicated that this was, in fact, a human male aside from the lack of breath and conscious radiance. His smells, his heat, his movements, nothing was out of the ordinary in those respects. 'What is that thing?' Regrettably, the time that could've been expected to be spent mulling over this target was at an end.

*Bang!* One magic projectile cleaves with force through the air, wood, and polished shoe leather all in one drastic swoop. A bullet had breached his footwear, just barely missing soft flesh, followed shortly by a powerful man's voice.

"The heart comes after the foot!" Whoever shouted this must be massive or grizzled beyond belief. Our agent wasn't looking forward to meeting them, but he fell to his knees and placed his hands behind his head nonetheless.
"Hopefully not.." Would be the response, he didn't plan to give up all at once. Even so, hearing/seeing things out would be better with so many unknowns at play. His heart and stomach had been lurching ever since he entered this house, keeping him from going on the offensive. Something more terrifying than his partner is nearby, he knows it.

Should anyone sprint downstairs, now that the spell is released, they'd find this man in all his present glory there. A disheveled individual in a black and grey pin-stripe suit of notable luxury is there. His left shoe radiates polish whilst his right smolders near the toes. His skin is practically white alongside his blondish-ivory hair that shoots as stress-born spikes in every direction from just the upper-scalp, the sides of his head have a faded cut. His eyes both have powerful red iris's, perhaps even luminescent similar to Darsby with deep suitaces underneath each of them. Unlike darsby, there was no pull to some strange form of profound and intrusive communication when meeting them.

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Darsby took the entirety of the time Anora gave him to gather himself further. Some deeper instinct born of combat told him to be ready for anything soon. He felt like eyes were watching him, or perhaps ears were listening. He couldn't correctly use his higher senses, or he's revealed to onlookers, so he relies on base animal sense. He squares his shoulders and descends the roof. Her words passed over him like mist; he's still held ajar by some mild form of shock that keeps him away from the real world.

Anora was waiting for him upon re-entering the attic. His return to the house was far more graceful than his exit, one acrobatic motion making use of his momentum and leverage to perform an entirely silent flip through the window once having gripped its edges. He'd land with a reasonably soft *Thump* upon one of his soles not three feet from Anora. Darsby then rose slowly, his body appearing mechanical in its ability to assume a standing position with minimal shift in posture. He half-turned towards Anora, to avoid eye-contact, an air of danger seeping into his voice.

"Stay still, something is in the house..-" Darsby quietly said. Strangely, if Anora had looked at him, she may have noticed that his lips hadn't moved, the whisper being generated by some other means. "-Try not to speak unless you notice something. Follow me." He then began descending the rickety attic stairs downward. His left hand held that polished revolver tight to his flank, his other hand gently reached back towards Anora in slight movements with each occasional shift in his targetted gaze as if he'd be ready to pull or push her away from danger should it be necessary. The whole process of his stride and protective posture looked trained in its graceful proficiency as if being an escort in times of risk was an activity he'd familiarised himself with. Images of him keeping watch over and transporting high-priority individuals under dangerous circumstance could be imagined after seeing him like this.

"Wait.." He'd project with posture and silent speech once reaching the stairway leading to the next floor down. He slowly, silently, and with much care aimed his revolver at an obscure spot on the ground beneath them. He was aiming back behind him; if Anora is in the way at this time, he will emit another unspoken whisper. "Out of the way." He'd fire between her legs if she didn't move.

*Bang!* One black bullet launched itself through floorboards and insulation into the center of the living room beneath them. Darsby would shout just after doing this. He was a predator, a warrior; perhaps it hadn't been revealed until now. Everything he did showed that he was used to these dangerous ways of living, trained for them. His voice was stark and demanded deep respect; its newfound authoritative verbality bled of someone who could make others obey merely by a single word. He didn't regard Anora during all of this; perhaps it hadn't occurred to him to do so. To him, she was his VIP, not something to be used as counsel.

"The heart comes after the foot!" He'd say, the meaning of these words made clear to the one who'd received the black round. It had struck with all intended accuracy, Darsby's gut sensations proving their worth after ages of being molded into their present state.

"Hopefully not..." A cold, faintly trembling voice would come from below. One muffled *Thud!* is heard alongside masculine suggestions in speech. The target had relinquished a spell of stealth and fell to its knees in surrender, a deal Darsby had understood after sensing our intruder's presence for the first time.

Nearly forgotten ways of being had been recalled to Darsby through his shock with the car accident earlier. He hadn't acted this way in a longer time than he'd care to admit — something about having someone not ten feet away to protect brought this out in him, for better or for worse.

Darsby would wait several seconds after firing to confirm the target had only fallen to his knees. Afterward, Darsby would descend. Should Anora attempt to go down the stairs before him, he'd sprint down them after her, keeping not more than five feet from the girl.
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In an ebon car several hundred yards away, a throbbing form of muscular majesty had made the first ploy towards its target prey. Her partner had only said not to take any 'steps' anywhere. There was a gross lack of instruction here. A spell of higher potency than previously seen envelops our huntress in swathes of invisibility and stealth. With this, she places both of her hands on the ground just beyond the doorway of the car. In one smooth motion, she balances the entirety of her weight on both hands.

With incredible grace and strength, she begins walking, no, running with near-vehicular speed towards the nearby house atop the palms of her callous hands. Soon she would arrive, soon she'd know what that stinging smell was. She'd been bothered with familiarity ever since having first smelt it. She knew that scent and had a feeling she would be able to fulfill a long-held resentment once encountering who its retainer. Soon, a tide of inhuman prowess would explode on these premises. Hopefully those present survive the encounter...

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

Yeah, I'd like to apologize for being late again! It always feels like such a long wait for posts and then I end up taking six days or more myself lol. Hopefully, I didn't keep you waiting too long.

I'll try and post a picture or two of my sketches some time. It's mostly abstract stuff that starts at as realism. It doesn't look all that great though, its just fun to do while listening to music here and there. My favorite thing is sketching in this VR application I have on my computer. When I make a new video of one of my three-dimensional drawings I'll put the link on here.

She doesn't need to make anything of them lol, she hasn't even known him for a day. Realistically she won't have more than what her initial impressions yielded of him for a while. You've done a good job of that, I must say! :D

Well, the plot runs deep, and we're hardly even at the beginning of what I have roughly planned. I'm glad you've enjoyed it so far! I also greatly appreciate the compliment, your writing always does a good job of reminding of certain things I forget to put in or mention in previous posts. I have PLENTY left to learn of how to portray my tastes. xD

I wanted to mention, I really do enjoy the fact that you like to keep certain things like cursing and lewd scenes out of the RP. A lot of people rely on those to keep their story flowing and it's helped me to realize how unnecessary these things are the long term of a story to a higher degree than I once thought. Obviously, you know I won't keep out violence or nakedness out of things if they're necessary, but I know not to use these things as vehicles aside from the brief mention they require out of necessity for detail. Feel free to check me if I go too far, I kind of have a policy of going all out unless directed otherwise so know that you won't be offending me in the least over any corrections. I feel like you know this, but it doesn't hurt to say it again.

I hope I didn't control Anora at all in that last post. If I did, let me know! Darsby would have been moving kind of fast with everything so she might not have had time to interrupt too much of it. Just let me know if I need to edit anything! :D

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

Sorry for the wait there, the holidays have been a little stressful.

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

Darsby lent little effort to interpreting Anora's words, their sporadic birth unbound by laws of serious contemplation did little to ease a troubled mind such as his. He'd feel each notion and emotion they held, imagery and deeper meaning spilling as fluid-filled buckets over the empathic space he finds himself occupying. Regardless, being practically empathic and taking it's more profound enlightenment into account are two entirely different things. He who has a tool and knows little about how to use it is something commonly found in day-to-day life.

"When you said that you feared you were the only one who could use magic..-" Somehow Darsby had heard her intentions. He didn't take the time to realize this isn't common among humans. "-.. Have you ever looked up at the stars and wondered whether humanity is alone in the heavens?" The profound implications of that very question did little to stop him from continuing speaking.
"What we're up against are the people who know the answer to that question. I suspect an associate of mine is with them. That would resolve why I can already smell them." With that, Darsby took the liberty of standing from his sitting position.

His impassive face may not have shown it, but something certainly felt off. He couldn't quite place it in the realm of his five natural senses; this would make sense with the precautions the man approaching had taken. No, he felt something deeper within him. He stood in expectation of what that thing may be. He couldn't tell what it was that had made its approach. Regardless, one of the many faculties that this body had been constructed with was the ability to sense nearby predators, both magical and natural. This sense screamed for attention, meaning that something threatening was relatively close. More than likely, Darsby suspected, it was already in the house.

"These people, as I'd suspect they are, have detected my presence. They're after me, I'm a foreign element..-" Darsby swept the revolver from his pocket with one smooth motion that could easily go unnoticed if one wasn't actively watching him while talking. "-They probably sensed me when my body was damaged and forced itself into an uncamouflaged regenerative state." Darsby opened the chamber to his weapon, simultaneously exhaling a small cloud of what looked to be black smoke. This smoke slithered into all six chambers of his armament, hardening into usable rounds. *Click!* It was then spun into the active and entirely usable state Anora had feared it would be in. Though, just after Darsby had performed this profoundly practiced event, he turned towards Anora. Soft notions painted his features; one could even say he looked somehow pained.

"Y'know... Anora? I'm.. I'm sorry about all of this. I'd be right to guess you have a family and friends and a place where you occupy yourself to attain currency. I..-" He stopped, this would have been another one of those annoying pauses. Even so, this pause had the exception of his eyes twinkling alongside faint, understanding tears welling up at the corners of those glowing iris's. "-I'm going to take care of this. You're not a tool. You're a person." Perhaps he was saying this for her to hear, perhaps he was saying this so he himself could recognize it as true. Whatever the meaning, he meant it. His face would look wounded compared to its typically emotionless state. The cause of this could be interpreted as him internally hurting by personal notions, yet, perhaps he genuinely felt troubled that he was pulling Anora from what she had once called her own average life.

Anora would not have felt the presence entering the house; it's stealth-based magics had all but surpassed Darsby's honed senses. Our odd, magic man was merely acting on a gut feeling that something was off since he faintly perceived it to be that way.

Should Anora have met Darsby teary eye's, even for a moment, she would see and feel two strange events. On one end, she witnesses a tremendous green plain. People mill this way and that into and out of their huts. They look up to the sky above and give genuine notions of thanks to its great berthings of divine bounty. Each time these people thank the sky, Anora would feel an overflowing sense of gratitude to the point of crying joyful tears. On the other hand, gunfire and screams are heard. Anora would feel someone's hand going cold whilst held within her own. Life and emotion seep into those now cold fingers as lights flash left and right alongside explosions resounding in the distance. These two things would feel more like memories than feelings, and would quickly pass as Darsby himself turns hastily from the young girl next to him. He stares out at the fields ahead, gathering his thoughts as a drop or two of fluid pace his cheeks unhindered.

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'She just had to be right! Those aliens and their noses..' Upon approaching the calm-looking ranch home ahead, our callous gentlemen felt and thought something. This particular something was dark and heavy, however faint it may have been. He had secretly hoped that all to be found here was some damsel native magic user, unaware of the world at large and entirely susceptible to a memory-wipe. He'd be right in saying that all he could sense and smell was a woman his practiced instincts had expected to find. What told him that she wasn't the only target here was a briefly used spell, something unnatural and new to the air of America. He could feel the spell pace his spine in threatening tingles, like hot smoke filling his lungs. There's no way she could cast something like that; she'd have to be much more than she seemed for that.

He came to the front door, passing through it as an amorphous, invisible fluid. He hated that he was right to use the only high-tier invisibility spell he had in storage among the many others in his suit jacket. This whole day was going to be more than he cared to experience, he could feel it. Something deep down in his bowels told him he'd be right to kick back, throw off the spell and light up a cigarette in peace towards those above him.

His conscience stopped him from making alms with his assigned targets. His future self bucked endlessly at his choice to continue forward. Regretfully, he would have been right to stop right where he stood. Nevertheless, he didn't. The roof would likely be reached in the next minute or two; he took the time to analyze what's above him.

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

While Anora grappled with Darsby's words, and immediately upon her looking away from him, he'd have lowered his arm back to its previous position upon denim-coated knee. He now resumed facing the Earth in its entirety from that ramshackle rooftop, less afraid of its shadows than he was of his own. That personal darkness crawled as a now living prison to insights awaiting rediscovery.

An ancient sensation was brewing within him, something youthful and simplistic. 'Innocence' had been one of the first words to come to mind, but it didn't belong to Anora by its origin, so from where had it come? Something colorful, perhaps even childlike had brewed it's unwholesome brew within him. Though, he somehow thought that he was wrong in aiming to be afraid or disgusted. These conflicts spawned further cascades of troubled self-reflection.

Had Anora looked back into Darsby's eyes before he began responding she'd, for a moment, be tossed back into that drowning current of emotions which consumes the soul on it's most profound levels. Images and sensations poured as plentiful, raging rivers of violent waters over her innermost facet. A parent, lovingly gazing at their child among others before picking them up at daycare, finding themselves suddenly troubled that this infantile human may take after one or more of their parents worse habits. A child staring into a marble, genuinely captivated by its spherical shape and inner-artwork, not letting a single detail escape his sharp young eyes. Someone not above the age of eight, innocent in their desire to leap into the smallest pond reflecting warm rays of morning sunlight before them. An old man troubled to discover he's lived his entire life without being so young as he could have been in spirit all along. A niece sick with the flu, vomiting into a bucket near you whilst you gently rub their shuddering back. Darsby's eyes become a spiritual and near-physical location where all of these things are made simultaneously true yet not at the same time. It's as if the human mind were grappling with some form of communication ardent in it's comparison to typical speech.

In his contemplation, Darsby had noted, but overlooked, the double-wide question presented. Anora is young; her heated heart must be troubled at the moment; despite her earlier words. He could smell it in her sweat, he could hear it in her heartbeat, he could taste it in the breeze surrounding them. She was stressed, and he kicked himself mentally for not noticing all the way up until this moment. 'How tired have I actually gotten..?' He questioned internally.

"I'm..-" He started, his mouth wrestling with itself to not immediately apologize as it had somehow intended to do. He quickly regained composure, though his words were still mildly painted in sprays of apologetic verbality and anxiously hurried speech. "-Well, you'd be-" Darsby paused again, his hands wrapping around the back of his head lacing fingers into wild tufts of hair to wrestle these sentiments from existence with no victory in sight. "-You would occasionally have to undergo a mapping spell that relies on small sums of blood to point us in their direction. Aside from that, I'll take some time to talk to you about that energy you so freely toss about. You're a bit off in how you're using it." It wouldn't, by tone, sound as if the mapping spell was what he felt apologetic or anxious about. Perhaps his outward conflict is outside of Anora herself.

Darsby sighed, without breath or air, into space before him. The engines fueling his lungs lay their calculated uses aside to express a troubled heart. Those hands remained, gently holding an organic head whilst it's inner-workings fold harshly upon one another.

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Half a mile away from Anora and Darsby an old car warped its polished exterior into existence. This teleportation was soundless and unnoticeable, shiny outer surfaces having been delicately hidden beneath a tree.

"Remember, don't set one foot outside this car without 'all three steps'." Hoarse, masculine vocals split the air between two stressed employees.
"I wouldn't dare." Came the overly-accentuated feminine response, sass, and disrespect blatantly clear by all accounts.

The man sighed as he stepped from an ebony vehicle, his body fading from sight under the guise of an invisibility spell. He knew better than to give into that vile woman's banter.

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

I cook, work out quite a bit, spend some time sketching and a good bit of the rest reading. I've been really into the whole self-improvement/taking-responsibility kick so it's been quite an enlightening past couple of weeks.

I can really appreciate that, it does set a lot of things into perspective and control.

Well, the problem is that his normal life differs to an immense degree from what most humans live. I won't spoil anything since you already know very little about him, but, let's say he might in some small way turn out to be quite different than you might expect. The car thing was certainly a good nudge in the right direction.

Also, I just want to say that I do enjoy the realistic image of Anora, you've done an excellent job of writing for her.