Kestrel
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Posts: 319
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Post by Kestrel on May 20, 2019 17:49:21 GMT
Echo tried to slow her breathing. It was short, ragged, and beginning to make her head swim. She closed her eyes and tugged her scarf looser.
Why in the Nine Hells was she even there?
Another gasp. Her eyes opened. The tabaxi leaned hard against the post of an overhead balcony, claws digging deep into the wood, and she nudged off her hood to try and get some air. The street around her was crowded. Very crowded. All kinds of people shuffled and jostled and stood around, from the lone passerby to whole families and hordes of kids, and a steady stream flowed down Sail Street. Why were they all there? Same reason Echo was! Unfortunately. Damien and Rosie had told her earlier about a cool street fair going on in the city, during one of their fun little get togethers (this time involving a sweet game of catch, a lost chicken, and that one big Knight statue!). A small street fair. And, like, small or not, they were right – it was awesome! Jugglers and dancers and fire eaters. Stands filled with baked sweets and cool drinks. The occasional totally not rigged street game. Awesome and lots of fun! It could have been a great afternoon, really. The one part they had forgot to tell her about, though? The one teeny tiny detail? It was not in the Trades Ward!
It was in the Dock Ward. Like, right…at the edge…of the Dock Ward.
The moment Echo had first caught sight of the water she, uh…had nearly cried! Right then. But, by that point, it had been too late. Waaaaay too late. The steady stream of people was like a trap, pushing her along the narrow streets all on its own, and all the treasure hunter could do was pull up her hood and block out the awful watery glimmer and the awful roll of the waves. That, and breath a lot and try not to cry. That was hard! Thankfully, she had been able to at least duck down an alleyway and make her way to a side street. Away from the water. Here the crowds were also a little thinner, though the fair was still very much there. The problem? Echo’s ears twitched. Her nose wrinkled. She could still hear the cry of the gulls and the toll of the harbor bell, she could still smell the salt tinged air, and she still just…knew. Echo took one deep breath. Then another. Then she whimpered, but her tail stopped shaking so much. The pause had helped things at least. She closed her eyes again and that helped even more. But, what the tabaxi really needed? What would help her the most until she found a way out of the dang place?
A good distraction.
Something for her curiosity to latch onto and hold for dear life. Her dear life! And that meant moving on. Echo rubbed her face against the beam, took a third deep breath, and then pulled out her claws. It took a bit of a tug. She then opened her eyes and forced her legs to move. One foot. The other. One foot. The other. She plunged back into the flow, and the tabaxi kept her eyes open for something. Anything! Preferably on the non-water side, too! Echo also kept her ears perked and turning and, sooner than even she expected, she caught word of the something and anything she was looking for. The loud, booming voice of a man yelling above the noises of the crowd. Echo’s pace picked up. She nudged, slid, and danced her way from one person to the next until, with a final push, she half-jumped, half-stumbled into a small clearing of onlookers. Others bunched up around her. The yelling man stood in the center on top of an upturned bucket. He was a large human, with thick coarse black hair and a long beard, and his barrel chest bulged underneath a set of thick and worn leather garments. He grinned from ear to ear and waved his hands around.
“Gather round! Gather round! To see a sight to behold! Of a wonder from beyond the city!”
Echo wrung her hands and wrapped her tail around her leg, but she forced her eyes to focus entirely on the man and his company. Other than the ringleader himself, huddled around a road-stained wagon was a group of equally worn men: some were young, some old, but all were clothed in similar leathers as the human and chatted easily among themselves. A few held spears and crossbows. In front of them, just to the side of the still shouting man, was the biggest tarp Echo had ever seen. Green. Frayed. Covering something box-like underneath. The tabaxi shook her head and listened even closer.
“From a forest most dark and terrible! Captivating in its danger! Worthy of respect for its ferocity! Beautiful in its own abhorred exoticness! Gather round! Gather round! For a sight you will see nowhere else...but here!”
By now Echo was…genuinely a little curious, actually. Dangerous? Beautiful? Exotic? Big words for, like, a covered box! What was underneath that tarp? Echo’s heart still thumped loud in her chest like it was going to rip itself out, but…every tenth or so thump was now that of excitement and not fear. Well, tenth? Maybe every eleventh.
Twelfth. Thirte-
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Post by moralhazard on May 21, 2019 14:41:54 GMT
“You can use the pump out back if you want,” Warren said, wincing. “I’ll clean your clothes. Just - set them - there.” He gestured a delicate hand at a nearby crate, then took a very deliberate looking half-step back.
Kara scowled at him.
They were standing in the back room of the bar, after what Kara had expected to be an easy, quiet midday shift. Warren’s shifts were usually easy and quiet, just a few people to scare off or shoo out. Today, a halfling had come in already sobbing, drank until he passed out, then, as Kara had carried him into the back room to sleep it off, shifted and vomited all over her.
Kara wasn’t even sure where it had all come from. It was -
Kara slowly stripped off her tunic and set it on the crates. Leggings next, very gingerly, although in all honesty it was already all over both her hands and her clothing, and being careful wasn’t really helping her. Finally, grumbling, the shirt underneath, since one sleeve was sopping.
Kara scowled one last time at Warren, who looked like he was either about to laugh or cry, and stalked her way out back with all that remained of her dignity in a breast band and underthings and a braid held out in one hand so it didn’t drip down her back.
An hour later, Kara was headed home. Her hair was still wet from the cold water of the pump, but she was freshly scrubbed, and her clothing was as clean as it had ever been, black shirt and leggings beneath a bright blue tunic, slightly warmed. Kara’s arms were bare - the wrappings weren’t worth saving - revealing tanned skin heavily marred with scars, from slots and slashes on her hands to thin chafed scars encircling her wrists, all the way up to the what looked like a knife wound disappearing into the sleeve of her shirt.
One hand gripped a heavy glaive, sturdy long wood used almost as a walking stick. A leather cover kept the blade hidden, and made the weapon street safe for Waterdeep - sort of like a scabbard for the glaive.
And Kara was nearly home too.
Except - streets that were normally mostly empty were packed full of people, thriving teeming masses of crowds nearly forming a wall, and impossible for the rather short human to see over. Kara scowled, rubbing her free fingers along the shaved parts of her scalp, and squinted. She knew the streets of the Dock Ward well, or well enough, but...
Standing around wouldn’t help. With a grumble, Kara plunged into the fray, walking strongly and steadily towards where she knew the cross-street she wanted had to be. It wasn’t there, or else she wasn’t; moving through the crowds was like swimming against a current. She found herself in an alley she didn’t recognize, and then she was through it. For moment Kara saw a shop she thought she recognized, but then she lost sight of it, and she was at the mercy of the crowd once more.
There was a voice shouting from up ahead, and what looked like a place where people had paused. Kara made straight for it. She would just wait here and catch her breath, and then she would - she would figure out how to get out of here.
Kara rubbed her face with her hand, and turned scowling attention to the man’s tarp. Despite herself, his words sank in a little and she relaxed, peering curiously at the exhibit. What could it be...?
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Post by sojourn on May 22, 2019 0:47:15 GMT
Spring 1490 DR DOCK WARD | AFTERNOON T aking on students again had, at first, felt like a foolish endeavor for Kieran. Surely, he was hardly the person to fill his master's sandals, hardly adept enough to be teaching any interested young minds and bodies anything resembling self-discipline, stealth, or control over the body. He had so much still to learn himself, and yet he'd been left to his own devices for months now, mostly alone in the spacious two-story old storefront Tzul Droon had built into a place of hard work, physical training, meditation, and study. The downstairs in front of the window was an open place with woven mats for floors—floors Tzul had said were like his homeland in Kara-Tur—and various wooden weapons, training dummies, platforms, and a very carefully constructed climbing wall. Kieran had spent a lot of time helping build that years ago, Master Droon quite persistent that he get every handhold just right. What had once been a bitter memory was now a fond one, and as the half-drow dismissed the three youngsters he'd more or less snagged off the street with an offer of free food and an occasional place to sleep if they'd come stay out of trouble, learn to cook and take care of themselves, well, he found himself staring at the wall for several moments after the room had fallen silent. Sunlight danced through the dirty, old glass windows, dust motes stirred up in the air and sweat still clinging possessively to charcoal skin. It was the shadows that passed across his vision that first caught his attention, and then filtering through his thoughts came the sound of music and laughter— Was there a celebration today? Oh, gods, he'd forgotten. No wonder his three charges had been so eager to get through their lesson and scramble out the door! Stretching and rolling his shoulders to ease the tension between them, he turned on bare feet to make his way across the room and peer out the long windows, his spot down a side street not necessarily allowing him the best view of what was happening on Sail Street, but at least giving him a glimpse of the crowds as they began to filter past in hopes of catching sight of the parade. It was a worthy distraction, the half-drow decided, reaching up to rake fingers through unkempt hair tousled after a few hours of practice, tying it back up high on the crown of his head in a tight knot to leave the shaved sides visible. He found his shirt and slipped on his belts, making sure to sling his short sword into its comfortable position against the small of his back. Soft-soled boots were put back on from their place in front of his door while he fumbled for his keys somewhere on his person, locking up his home once he found them. A few small children herded past, unaccompanied by a mindful adult, dirty and eager-eyed. A couple crossed the street opposite, slipping down one of the narrow alleys that was a slightly faster route toward the celebration, hand in hand. Kieran's violet gaze caught a glimpse of them both before he found himself swept up in a crowd of musicians and revelers, singing loud and off-key, laughing and all but snatching him along for the short walk. Slipping away from the press of their noisy bodies and letting his narrow-framed, lithe self disappear between far busier people, the half-drow glanced at vendors selling food and games, smiling and considering his options. It was then that he heard a loud voice and felt the forming of a circle of on-lookers, himself stepping back to allow strangers room and give himself a glimpse, leaning to one side to allow a tabaxi to flow into the space he'd just occupied. Tilting his head up to catch a sidelong glance at the long form of a glaive to his other side, he smirked, somehow glad he wasn't the only one armed in the crowd. Surely, there was no reason for concern. In front of him a man introduced a curiously large box-like covered in an old green tarp. Kieran wasn't quite impressed yet—the man's volume spoke of some kind of trick, in his opinion—but he noticed one of his students across the way in the other side of the onlookers' circle and smiled, deciding to stay for the so-called mystery. |
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Kestrel
Approved
Icon by @ArtByRue on Twitter!
Posts: 319
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Post by Kestrel on May 27, 2019 23:00:01 GMT
-teenth? Every nineteenth heartbeat, probably. Okay…every twent-
“Gather round! Gather round!”
Echo shook her head. She inhaled, held her breath, and then slowly blew as she crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her shoulders. Okay! No more thoughts of, uh, water now. Waves. Gulls or boats or whatever dumb thing else. Just…the box-like something underneath the tarp and whatever awesome or lame or awesomely lame or lamely awesome thing was inside it! Another deep breath. The tabaxi peeked at the corners of her eyes. She needed more distractions, at least while the bearded guy did his bit.
The crowd by now had grown pretty big, a few dozen easily, and there were a few stands outs that caught her eye the most. An elf stood close by with…really dark skin, actually? Huh. Gray, blueish even, almost like springtime rain clouds. Echo hissed. No! Thinking about rain meant thinking about water some more. That was a bad head with bad thoughts! Okay…who else? The top of a polearm of some kind poked out among the bunch of heads, but it was too hard to make out who it belonged to as more crowded around Echo. A very round lady wearing a white dress elbowed her way through a group of kids on the other side of the impromptu gathering. A few more raggedy kids stood around - none of the urchin bunch, sadly! Damien and Rose were probably busy with something else. Echo dared a tail flick in the squirming mass of arms and legs. A halfling couple, the wife propped up on the husband’s shoulders, teetered a little just to the side of them. A bushy, gray-haired dwarf wearing rusted chainmail. A few other weirdos here and there. All interesting (and good distractions!) and Echo would have kept up her little people watching game, but, just as she shifted her gaze over, the yelling man hopped off his bucket and swept his arms around the whole of the crowd.
“Welcome! Welcome! One and all! Welcome, I say!”
Echo grinned. It was starting! She was…kind of excited, really. Bearded guy had used a lot of neat words to describe the whatever was underneath that tarp and, even if it did end up lame or awesomely lame, she could probably at least look forward to a bit of fruit tossing or name calling or something. Like, other fun things!
The ringleader stooped low to the ground, his beard almost brushing the dirt, and smiled a black-toothed smile. Behind him, the rest of the leather-glad group had circled around the tarp. Those without anything grabbed onto its corners. Those with weapons held them at the ready not far behind.
“Are you prepared! Are you prepared, I say! To see creatures the likes of which none of you have ever seen before? Not one, but TWO beasts worthy of fear and legend? Limbs strong enough to tear apart a tree! Claws like the sharpest swords!”
A few of the men holding the tarp looked between themselves, frowning. Echo cocked her head.
“Beaks fit for tearing flesh and bone asunder!”
Wait – beaks? What? Echo, biting her lip, squinted. What, like, in the Nine Hells had claws and a beak? The men wielding spears took a step forward, weapons leveled, while the crossbows beyond them were raised. Grips on the tarp tightened.
“Now…behold! The untamed and ferocious wilds beyond your city!”
With a hard yank the tarp was pulled completely from the large iron cage underneath it. Echo’s eyes widened. The crowd collectively gasped, a few of the children squealed in fear and delight, and the very round lady was fanning her now pale face. Huddled together, at the center of the iron cage, were a pair of creatures: bushy but matted and tangled brown fur, long black claws which had scrapped marks into the metal, and black and yellow beaks which glinted in the sunlight. Four yellow and wide eyes blinked and flitted from one part of the crowd to the other. One of the creatures was quite smaller than the other and lay huddled inside the mass of the larger, though both were bound by heavy chains clasped on their back legs. It let out a sharp bird-like keen.
The ringleader’s smile grew as he walked over and patted the cage.
“Marvelous yet frightening creatures, no? Please! Please, I say! Approach if you dare, but! Be warned. These beasts are every bit as deadly as they appear – we hold no responsibility for lost fingers.”
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Post by moralhazard on May 27, 2019 23:40:11 GMT
The crowd was still very big and very busy. Kara was tense and a little twitchy, glancing back over her shoulder, then forward again. She had to press forward a little to see the tarp at all; if she were to stand here, she thought, she might as well be able to see. But – it wasn’t easy in a crowd like this; she was too short to see over anyone.
Someone off to the side jostled against her, his elbow catching her squarely in the ribs. It wasn’t deliberate, but there was enough force to it to nudge the small human towards what looked kind of like a dark elf but – not quite? Kara didn’t actually brush against him, catching her balance before she went that far. She planted her feet squarely, her small body tensing and her knees slightly bent. This time, when the large, drunk-looking human to her other side weaved into her again, Kara only had to bend slightly more and lean a little to the side; it barely looked like any motion at all, but it sent him stumbling off deeper into the crowd, half-falling into his companions, who caught up and pulled him back to his feet with a roar of amusement.
Kara gripped her glaive more tightly, and looked – very slightly – smug. She turned her attention back to the man in the center of the mass of people as he hopped off the bucket and spread his arms wide, looking attentively at the tarp. Claws like swords and… beaks? Kara tensed, thinking of the devil she’d fought not more than a few weeks ago in one of the Dock Ward’s alleys. The thing had been utterly vicious, enormous, a vulture-like creature which had ripped out a man’s belly as easily as breathing, and which had attempted very thoroughly to do the same to her.
With that in mind, Kara frowned at the tarp and –
It whisked away.
Kara scowled, brow knitting heavily together. The creatures were big, yes, but they looked – scared.
The smaller one especially.
Kara’s free hand lifted, tugging at the thong around her neck, and she wrapped her fingers around the bear claw that pulled free of her blue tunic, gripping it tightly against her palm. The point dug into her, hard and sharp enough that she had to shift her hand to keep from ripping open her skin. She clenched her jaw, staring at the creatures, hard enough that a vein was throbbing softly along the outer edge of it. It reminded her of nothing so much as the poachers she’d seen in the woods outside the city, poachers who’d wanted to trap two bear cubs and kill their mother. These creatures were bigger, but – seeing them in the cage made her think of the outgoing little cub, terrified and squalling for its mother as the three humans had worked together to bring her down.
Kara had killed two of them; the mother bear had taken care of the third. She regretted none of it. The hand on the shaft of her glaive tightened, but – Kara held herself still. What good could she do here? She wouldn’t have let bear cubs loose in the city either, and she didn’t doubt that the creatures were truly dangerous. All the same, she didn’t approach; she couldn’t bring herself to it.
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Post by sojourn on May 28, 2019 2:30:44 GMT
M aybe he should have kept walking. Maybe he should have woven his way further into the crowd. Maybe he shouldn't have stopped. But, instead, Kieran was nestled next to a halfling couple, one stacked on top of the other like tumblers in a circus and a few other interesting folks. Some of them were familiar, for the half-drow had lived all his life more in the Dock Ward than out of it. He caught a smile here, a sideways glance there, and at least one sneer. Nothing out of the ordinary, given what he was (or at least what he resembled). Those that knew him, for the most part, didn't really have poor opinions given that he took in street urchins, handed them work and taught them discipline, given that he sweat and bled to keep his Ward safe whenever asked, coin or not. The dark-haired man with a beard's voice was loud, booming, and he was making sweet promises to the audience now, promises of a pair of frights instead of just a singular beast. Kieran was, admittedly, suspicious now. There were men wearing thick enough leather protection to make him wonder what, exactly, they were about to gift their expectant audience with a sight of. Teeth toyed with the ring at his lip and his hips shifted slightly, a tension there coiling the lithe creature into a different sort of stance as if in anticipation of danger. The tarp was drawn away and the audience held their collective breaths, finally gasping or ooohing or aaahhing or booing once what was in the cage was revealed. Kieran, however, simply frowned. There was nothing scary in the cage for a man who'd been raised in squalor and desperation. He'd never been anyone's captive, not here on the surface and never in the Underdark, but he knew the look in the eyes of the clawed, beaked, fur-covered beasts held by chains and bars. Murmurs raised in the crowd: a few people genuinely horrified that such strange creatures existed, some actually concerned, and most of them wanting to heckle the man for more danger instead of just a pathetic show of mortal prowess that it must have taken to get these things away from their parents and into a cage. He wasn't a ranger of the field. He didn't stalk the wilderness, but that wasn't to say Waterdeep didn't have enough wildlife thriving behind its city walls. Also, he wasn't stupid. A little jaded, sure, but possessing of enough empathy to know a pathetic sight instead of a terrifying one. "Oh, please! I've seen far more frightenin' men an' women 'n Mistshore. Y' got anythin' else under another tarp?" The half-drow was more than happy to heckle, sauntering forward, pale eyebrows drew together with his sneer of disapproval, "What kinda trapper did y' buy these two younglings off of, anyway? Didn't even have th' balls t' bring an adult 'round here, did you?" Someone chuckled. Someone else whistled. A few people were more than happy to boo at him instead. Kieran stepped toward the cage, slow and measured like he'd approach a stray dog or a lost child, already small frame bending in a less threatening manner until his hands were on his knees and he was squatting before the cage, violet gaze taking in the body language of the strange creatures that weren't birds and weren't bears, either. Perhaps he knew the name of them, but for the moment, he just knew this wasn't where they belonged. He understood that feeling: he took in the strays, the unwanted, the urchins. Just as his teacher, his master, had before him. Because he'd been one, too. But that didn't mean he was about to touch them. "Y' hungry? I wonder how much this asshole paid t' have y' both stolen from your mama, eh?" The half-drow made sure that the bearded man and anyone else who wanted could hear his insult clearly, openly mocking the man and his less-than-exciting (in his opinion) display. Reaching for his satchel, he dug around for dried food, tossing it between the bars instead of reaching for the pair of creatures within. |
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