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[twistedisciple]

Before the Scars

Bishop Mastery drabble: 682

cw: gore

Everyone had to be good at something. Otherwise, you would die. Get thrown out, technically, but in the snowy wilds of Elusia, everyone knew what that meant. Back then, fear had not yet hardened and calcified into a defective, useless organ inside of Griss. It used to pump his blood so full of adrenaline that he’d spend his nights praying that Lord Sombron not abandon him, spend his days with a desperate sleeplessness in his sunken eyes. 

Like the other monks in the monastery, he’d been taught magic under the priests’ whips, and he’d watched the older cohorts split into two groups as the years passed: those that were awarded some modicum of prestige and a minor title within the church, and those that turned into grey monuments in the snow, fingers and toes blackened, eyes frozen wide open, waiting for a spring that would never come for them. Death did not scare him, and indeed the fear of death was counted among a handful of cardinal sins, but the souls of those that had succumbed as the defects had were trapped within the rejected flesh for eternity, never to decay, never to be a vessel for their lord’s power, their existence immortalized in a pillar of shame. Eternity was a long time, Griss knew that, but he saw it hurtling at him faster than he could run.

Each day, angry red welts were added to his arms and back, and each day he had nothing to show for them. Sometimes, he could conjure a little bit of a breeze, enough to sway the scraggly grass under his feet. Sometimes, a spark. But always the whip’s fierce lashing. He lacked focus, one of the priests said. He didn’t know how when he prayed every night. He kept praying, because there was nothing else he could do. The flagellum had even started to lose its edge.

Torn flesh fascinated him. He ripped his own open, stitched it together in pretty red zigzags, dug his fingers into the wounds of others, plucked out splinters and fragments of bone like an archaeologist, and closed them all up again. Curiosity cultivated an uncommon fearlessness which bred an even greater curiosity for all the different ways the body could be bent and broken, the sensations that came with it. How it could be put back together again. His own. Others. It didn’t matter whose, in the end.

No great epiphany had preceded the glow of the Heal staff under his palm one morning in the monastery’s iron-scented infirmary. It’d been abandoned by one of his fellows for just a moment, and Griss had swept in to prod at the swelling around the patient’s mangled elbow, searching for a source like an explorer charting the frontier, ignoring sleepy moans of discomfort even as he pressed his thumb hard against a lump and pitched the cries louder. Then it gave. The cries subsided. The fever heat cooled. The man treating him returned and chased Griss away with a few solid strikes from the staff’s blunt end.

It came with no fanfare, this talent. From that day on, he intuited his way around a variety of staves without picking up a book, driven by a curiosity toward the flesh and a resonant listening gifted to few - a kind of perfect pitch that he would never recognize as a gift until years later, with Zephia’s observation. He could recognize each staff by a series of shapes. Heal was a single, simple triangle. Recover was a red thread, three loops, ringed by seven triangles. And these were inarticulate instructions his body simply knew. A gift he learned to take for granted.

His lessons with the priests and their whips never stopped though, and neither did their criticism. There was nothing special about learning to use a staff, but there was nothing really special about learning to cast spells either. These were givens. The expected minimum to allow one shelter within Lord Sombron’s grace. Everyone had to be good at something, after all. Otherwise, you would die.

Griss did not fear death, and he never would again.

[twistedisciple]

Disappointment casts a dark shadow across Griss’ face and deadens the playfulness in his eyes. He doesn’t try to hide it, but restrains the impulse to reach out and grab for Lady Veyle when she sweeps past him for the door of the church, to beg her to let him join her. They’d come all this way, and he’d been nothing but the best and most attentive escort for her birthday. An impatient part of him thinks that he deserves his reward by now, but the other part - the part that had been raised and molded into an unquestioning pawn of the fell faith - knows that he’s unworthy of making such demands of the princess. So he pouts, but he does as she tells him and withdraws a few steps from the storehouse.

”Give ‘em the best birthday present you’ve ever had,” he calls after her, flashing a bloodthirsty smile. With the slam of the rotting door comes a chorus of startled, but not terrified shouts, then a divine hush. Griss catches sight of figures moving about behind the dusty, candle lit window panes of the first floor, and can imagine how the congregation has to reorganize to accept Lady Veyle’s surprise visit. Whatever follows shouldn’t be so surprising, however - they have trained their whole lives for the day they would be recognized by their lord and his kin.

Griss settles within the cool shadows of the nearby abandoned building sheltering the storehouse from the sun and smiles serenely, a prayer murmured under his breath.

Make It Up As We Go Along [Griss & Veyle]

[twistedisciple]

”See, that’s the thing - you did.” Griss grins like she’s just walked right into some trap he’d laid for her, but there’d been no such foresight. His arms, unbandaged and unclothed, are criss-crossed with myriad scars and marks, some stained crimson with dyes, others from the fresh, new blood, each one a story in his lengthy history with pain. He follows Celica’s head with unblinking eyes when she turns to discard the old, dirtied bandages and then turns back to assess the damage, studying her as she studies him, more interested in the subtleties of her expression than what her hands are doing. He waits for her to give him a sign of curiosity, of offense, or even just the flicker of a glance, but his excitement gets the better of him.

”Whenever I wore your ring and called on your power, it’d bite back. Just a little taste of thorny pain each time. It felt… exquisite.” Recollection softens his smile into something more serene, and for a moment, carmine eyes vacate as he makes his visit to the far-flung past. “Didn’t last long enough though. I tried seeing how far I could push it once. Spell after spell after spell, and still just a tiny bite each time. I remember your face right before I blacked out, too.” He laughs and his eyes blink back into sharp, watchful focus. “Never even changed! Not once!”

The Emblems had been under Lord Sombron’s power then, he knows. Stripped of their voices and probably their agency, too, but that didn’t mean the wearer couldn’t get attached still. He’d fondly called her Celly like she was an old friend, and he’d ramble to her about this and that when deployed alone with nothing but groaning, brainless Corrupted to keep him company. Of course, she was really hardly any different, but they were partners bound by pain and that was enough for Griss. And here was the real thing, even better than the Emblem, because she could chide him and make disapproving faces and maybe even hit him with Ragnarok herself one day, even when she says she won’t. Her ring had hurt him. There has to be something in her essence that liked it, too, Griss thinks.

He tilts his head and searches her face.

”So whaddaya say to that?”

care for us

mission board: recovery / infirmary prompt.

[twistedisciple]

✦ 𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐘: 𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐒.

—𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐞.

Initial Class: Sage Birthday: September 17th Basic Info: One of the Four Hounds. Pledged his loyalty to Zephia and remains by her side even now.

—𝐂 𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐤.

Likes: pain, gruesome injuries, scary stories, sewing, crafting, fishing, nature, animals Dislikes: training, extreme heat or cold, fluffy toys, bland foods, bugs, sweets

—𝐁 𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐤.

Hobbies: finding new ways to be punished Talents: making clothes, tattooing Background: Born to poor parents in Elusia who sold him to slave-traders. Later taken in by worshippers of the Fell Dragon. He was hand-selected by Zephia to join the Four Hounds.

—𝐀 𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐤.

Height: 5' 9" Ring Size: 8 1/4 | Q 1/1 Personality: Dangerously unstable and violent. Loves pain, both inflicting and receiving, and scaring others. A thuggish big brother type to his allies. Owns the most sharp objects in the army.

(resources used linked below the cut)

Ally Notebook entries for all playable Engage characters

Ring size chart

Font generator (Math Serif Bold)

Original meme

[twistedisciple]

”Huh?” Griss whirls around like he’s going to swing, stopping himself at the sight of a full suit of armor. No one ever talks to him that casually, or that familiarly, unless they’re one of his fellow Hounds, and this guy definitely isn’t. Griss didn’t usually keep company with the politely smiling, well-mannered sorts either. How’d he know his name…

He tilts his head, drops his hand back down to his side, but a mismatched smile spreads across his lips. “I dunno where you get off talkin’ to me like you know me.” He glances at the enchanted shield and the implication of what the man is asking cuts off the rest of the threat. A spectacle — he could do spectacles.

All around them, the streets of the Kingdom’s capital are alive with festival-goers and the tantalizing scents of seasoned meats and fried dough. A celebration of fellowship and the lifting of morale all in one, a much-needed distraction after the events of the past however-long the continent had been under Pasithee’s curse. And as Louis had pointed out, the students of the capital’s famous School of Sorcery had infiltrated the crowds to show off their tricks and recruit - or steal - mage hopefuls into their ranks. The evening sky flashes in all colors, and above the constant chatter rises the pop and boom of explosives set off every few minutes, many accompanied by unified oohs and ahhs.

Well, unlike Louis, Griss doesn’t care about any rival school. He’s not even really part of the Officers Academy, except when they need a man to accompany faculty and students beyond the monastery. But presented with this new offer, the gears start to turn anyway.

Suddenly, with only the way he draws his whole right side back as a warning, embers explode off of the shield in a firework array of their own, turning heads and eliciting gasps. Thanks to the School of Sorcery’s hands-on displays up until now, panicked chaos doesn’t grip the crowd as it would have during any other gathering, but a nervous sort of anticipation creates a ring around Griss and Louis.

”Not a bad hunk of metal,” Griss says, either unaware or deliberately ignorant of the attention the spell has drawn to him. He rolls the upper half of his body to one side, fixes Louis with a crooked stare, then unfurls a cheshire grin.  “I’m gonna break it.”

*bonnie tyler voice* i need a hero *griss ominously walks out of the shadows* *scary music plays*

[twistedisciple]

Bedrooms. Studies. Griss tucked the requests away for self-keeping, on the surface only half-listening to Knoll voice his thoughts, but now primed on a deeper, more subconscious level to satisfy someone else’s want. Bedrooms. Studies. Already, he was making judgments about the doors in the hallway that they passed. They'd have better luck upstairs.

The corridor opened up to a modest foyer furnished with sparse decor caked in dust: little wooden stands that had no purpose but to hold some bauble as expensive as it was useless up above the ground, vases with the brittle skeletons of long-dead plants, and a plain rug running from the wrought-iron double doors of the manor’s entrance (the official one, that was, and not the less trodden path through a window) all had their places. The walls, too, held a couple of oil paintings of nondescript countrysides. Griss swept his eyes over the collection. Nothing seemed to be missing, but the pieces didn’t look to be terribly valuable either. Trading a quick glance over his shoulder with Knoll, he started up one semi-circle staircase to the landing outlined faintly in the dark above them. Other than the creak of old wood and the empty, echoing thuds of their shoes, the manor was steeped in silence.

”There's an important lookin’ door up here,” Griss remarked once he reached the top. Fitted into the wall across from the second floor’s landing was a heavy mahogany door embossed with complex, floral designs set in four squares. He held his flame up as he tried the curved handle, and the lock gave without any resistance at all. The door swung up faster than he’d expected and slammed against the interior wall. Griss stared vacantly into the darkness for a second, trying to decide if he’d been shot by something, realizing only a split second after that it had just been the startling bang.

He held his light up higher, angling the ring of light into the room. It was well-furnished, from what he could see. Some sort of sitting room or library filled with plush chairs, rugs, and shelves. A heavy looking desk sat at the far end, marked by a speckling of white moonlight from the moth-eaten drapes behind it. Griss twisted his head to call over his shoulder with a grin.

"Found ya a study!” Probably.

A glass jar fell to the ground and rattled its way across the carpet to his feet. He knelt to pick it up with his free hand and then shook it. It rang with the clink of several small metal objects.

”Got a jar for ya to open, too.” His own hands were occupied with keeping the flame alight.

Shapeless in the Dark [Griss & Knoll]

Anniversary 2023 | Faith +1

[twistedisciple]

(angrily) Sorcerer: What do you know of suffering?

Tension mounts in the stretch of silence as lifelong rivals face one another for their final duel. Sorcerer invites Dragon to look at the destruction around them with arms flung wide. Every bridge has been burned. Every living person has been crushed beneath stone or driven away. Only they remain, trapped in this singular moment in time, the past set aflame, the future out of reach.

In the waiting shadows about the stage, a dozen masked faces watch in anticipation. They know this part by heart. They can recite the lines even before the actors.

And the Sorcerer will say: The victims caught in the flames of your self-destruction have nothing left, least of all pity for you.

Silence unfurls across the patchwork stage, over the slabs of rubble chalked with windows and doors, the weed-cracked tiled, and the twists of steel draped in tattered cloth. The ebony and cobalt dragon waits on one end, the sorcerer in rags of ash and graphite, tailored by a child’s hand, on the other. Square, cracked columns rise from floor to ceiling around them, and a dark ravine just beyond the bold yellow stripe marking the edge of the stage conceals a tin box full of eyes.

And the Sorcerer will say: The victims caught in the flames of your self-destruction have nothing left, least of all pity for you.

The silence deepens uncomfortably. Sorcerer looks at the masked audience. Crimson stain streaks out from beneath flaking makeup in unnatural angles down the left side of his face. This is where Dragon has struck him. The audience sees for the first time.

And the Sorcerer will say:

(Expectant eyes had always compelled him. Insignificant mote. Please your mother. Your father. Your priest. Your god.)

And the Sorcerer will say:

Sorcerer swings his eyes back to the Dragon. Remembers his lines. Bares his teeth.

Sorcerer (shouting): You took everything from me. You forced me out of my home. You killed my friends, my family!

(who did?)

(you did.)

The lonely child. The ghost of a mother.

𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬.

[twistedisciple]

Fog like this smothered sound. Voices, screams, the violent breaking of a dozen branches over a pitfall - the heavy blanket of mist muffled and contained them so that they wouldn't reach the ears of a predator some distance away. But the forest, as ominous and labyrinthine as it was, did not change. Where prey had been sighted, prey would be found again.

In the wake of their commotion, silence settled over the trio: one on the ground, tripped by a wire, the other in a hole, and the third, most successful, caught between running on ahead and going back. The ancient trees stood in watchful stillness, the stagnant air muting their leaves. The forest did not speak.

Griss moves ??

Next: @ninisdance

Church-Sanctioned Horror

Recovery | Sword +1 | game instructions

[twistedisciple]

This was new. Swinging his eyes from one dragon to the other as they talked - argued? discussed? - the implications of the last month and the monastery's newest prisoner, Griss tried to find some sort of sensation to compare it to. He'd never witnessed the exchanges between Zephia and Lord Sombron, being just an ordinary human, and the Hounds never really had anything to discuss outside of orders. Even within the cold walls of the monastery that had raised him, there were the pawns-in-training, and those who told them when to eat, when to sleep, what to study, how to think. Some vestigial memory of a life long dead and buried offered the word familial. But was he a part of it? Glances toward him throughout the conversation said... maybe.

Heeding Lady Nel's advice this time, Griss sipped at the cup of broth more slowly, one arm draped over the back of the chair, hand swinging idly.

"You wanted to kill her?" he asked neutrally, head tilting, with a glance toward Lord Rafal to see if he agreed.

"There's no way to tell if we're still in an illusion or not, huh..." He raised his free hand and waved it front of his face, then fixated on the tendons flexing and stretching beneath his skin as he moved his fingers. The shape of bone. The white lines of old scars-- he shook his head and dropped his arm back over the chair to return to the conversation.

"Lady Nel's got a point. She might be chained up in a dungeon now, but she was chained back in the abyss, too."

Next: @rafent

Mortal Immortality [Griss, Nel, & Rafal]

Recovery | Infirmary task

[twistedisciple]

"A pain, huh?" Griss chuckles, a rasping, rumbling sound. "Sounds pretty good, if you ask me." And he almost seems a little proud of it, lifting his chin to angle his gaze more sharply downward, shadows falling ominously across a toothy grin. It's hard to tell if he's serious, but that's a talent few have ever managed to hone. Zephia, maybe, could distinguish play from threat, but anyone else had to stay on their toes around him if they didn't want those teeth snapped around their neck.

He gives Marni's forehead another flick, for good measure. She's real, alright. Same ol' whining. Same ol' Marni. Relief is something foreign, or at the very least, unrecognized, and Griss laughs it off as he retreats to his post with ambling, newly-spirited steps. He doesn't know how Zephia had done it, if she owed her life to Zephia at all, but he doesn't question. Real is real. He trusts his senses.

"So what're gonna do, now that you're stuck with me until daybreak?" He turns on his heel and settles casually against the wall again, grin closed into a lopsided line of a smile, contrasting predatory eyes twinkling in the flickering candlelight.

"You weren't here when this person was caught," he flicks a thumb at the heavy metal door, "but she's got powers you wouldn't even believe. Forget bangin' on the door. She could turn this whole dungeon into--" Brows knit briefly together as he studies Marni's face for something that might scare her, probing for a tangible fear, and not just missing praise. "--a spider's nest." Yeah, that'd probably do it. Probably. "Full of hundreds of little spider eggs with their little black eyes, and sticky, rotting web, and--"

garreg mach prison experiment

recovery: prison guarding

[twistedisciple]

The rumbling warning pulled Griss' glance sidelong, but not fast enough to catch the prelude of a wind-up on the dragon's face before a pistoned fist to the gut forced every muscle to contract with surprise. And pain, where they'd been torn open on the battlefield. He doubled over, instinctively wrapped an arm around his stomach, heart thundering, and shot a look that could only be described as besotted up at his ivory idol seconds before a nurse swept in between them. With the twinkle of fingers from over her shoulder, Lord Rafal was gone.

"Good one!" Griss barked with snapping fangs, pushing against the barricade of the stocky woman's arms to chase after him. To beg for more, or to hurry along the colors of the bruise on his face, not even he was sure.

"These wounds won't heal if you keep moving around like this," the nurse tutted, delivering a forceful press to a pressure point to make him relax. Griss crumbled down onto the cot without protest.

"Now hold still while I change these bandages. You're bleeding again--"

Acknowledgement came as an impatient snort, manic eyes fixed on the crowd that had swallowed Lord Rafal up again. That was a good one. He'd meant it. The nurse startled when he started laughing, pressed a hand to his forehead to make sure he wasn't delirious with fever. Then he frightened her again when he stopped, and closed his eyes with a sedate smile.

"Lucky me," he hummed.

Laughter bounced sharply within the soft and comparatively unsuited civilian confines, dissipating only for a strange ritual where hungry eyes mapped features, where hungry words trailed further. Briefly, the other's behavior attracted scrutiny in a wide radius - stares that could not help but to single out two pariahs, one by observation and another by association, yet nothing of that seemed to matter to the dragon. His own watchful gaze transmuted into something else. Irked and simmering.

'That's what it takes to make you throw in the towel?' Glowering sanguine narrowed and snagged on extended provocation as Griss stepped close, much too close, then away. The mockery; the threatening swagger; the proximity so close as to count pores and be counted in turn; all were tests of his dwindling patience and Rafal could not always exercise tolerance with the mutt he'd grown fond of. A low voice inevitably drawled its warning akin to a rattling tail.

"That is not wrong; you have not misunderstood me. However, Griss. This face also does not enjoy your pestilent breath rubbing all over it." Prod a snake enough times and eventually it will discern its indignation and acquire a taste for reprisal. Likewise, one step was not enough to place the other man outside that viper's reach. Lightning without thunder, silent and deadly, his knuckles shot out suddenly toward the mage's abdomen. Punch - twist - release. Within the next instant they fell back to his side, like nothing at all had occurred. And perhaps it hadn't.

So buried in their own affairs others scarcely noticed a thing; so obstructed by the angle of Rafal's back little of the split-second battery reached possible onlookers; doubtless the exchange would have passed without fanfare had he not called attention to it himself. A matronly cleric stopped on her way all whilst the whistleblower wore an innocent, distinctly Nil-like veneer: "—you there. This one is in woeful need of assistance. His wounds appear to have reopened out of nowhere! And to think he was doing so well. . ."

His mournful expression sealed the deal without repeal as the woman nodded and approached the cot. No going back for Griss. However, the Fell Dragon could continue to go anywhere that he pleased. As two feet pointed away, he nonchalantly flexed the fingers of one offending hand like a stubborn crick to joggle free. In another sense: a wave of departure. Bye-bye.

[twistedisciple]

"Different dragon woman," Griss remarked, but then furrowed his brow. No, that implied Zephia had told him anything about this guy to begin with, which she didn't. "I don't know any 'Lady Almedha.'"

He glanced ahead down the tunnel again, eyes flickering back and forth from one pool of crimson to the next, watching how they grew gradually larger and more noticeable as they continued down the tunnel - and quite leisurely, at that. The merchant was still a dark heap up ahead, and the fading hoofbeats of his horse had disappeared entirely, so the ambling pace and the not-so-easy conversation were a luxury - predators playing with their injured food.

"So you're not a dragon," Griss drawled after a beat, the skepticism still in his voice. Of course a dragon hiding from Lord Sombron would say that. But that thought stemmed from a paranoia and a distrust that the mage simply didn't have, so he didn't pursue it. With a shrug and a glance back, he added:

"You're gonna tell me you're just some human who knows how to use dark magic? Where I come from, that gives you away as a fell dragon's kid faster than the scales and teeth."

God, That's Good! [Griss & Pelleas]

Fracture | Riding +1

[twistedisciple]

The difference is like day and night. Where Griss had been guiding the expedition into the village until now, the new Lady Veyle swiftly takes the lead and he trots along behind her like the hound after his master, like he has only ever done with Zephia. He likes it better this way, and keeps expectant eyes trained on her back, ready for a signal.

”Now that sounds more like a birthday party,” he agrees and chuckles darkly. The lighter mood (as light as it can be in this shady alleyway tinted with the scent of spilled blood and the low thrum of chanting voices in the distance) tumbles the next comment from his lips without conscience: “Took ya long enough to make up your mind though. Coulda gone to see the bloodshed in the next town instead of hanging around this dump.”

He nods at the empty-eyed homes that they pass, quietly abandoned or left to fall apart in this forgotten part of town, away from the bustle of the market square and the thoroughfare taken by travelers through the mountains. It’s the only way worshippers of Lord Sombron have managed to congregate here in numbers great enough to warrant rituals like this one, he knows, but their gatherings are still small. 

As they round a corner, a dilapidated storehouse with candlelit windows comes into view. An eye, not unlike those stitched into Griss’ own clothing, marks the rotting door in a smear of crimson.

”Yep, that’s the church alright,” he says as they approach, grin curling his lips. “Lord Sombron’s very own daughter paying ‘em a personal visit! They gotta be real lucky.”

Make It Up As We Go Along [Griss & Veyle]

[twistedisciple]

“That’s what it takes to make you throw in the towel?” A sharp, bursting laugh  threw back his head. Griss had expected cracked ribs, deep cuts, hemorrhaged organs, things that hurt and kept hurting until the blood ran out or medicine made it stop. He’d asked to imagine the pain himself, a reward for his performance, to satisfy his craving for violence that Lord Rafal had - intentionally or not - stirred up again, but the merit of this one was in what he could see. Teeth clicked together, biting off his amusement just as abruptly as it'd come out, and he leveled Lord Rafal with his excitable stare again. He traced his nose for sign of broken bone, the curve of cheek for shattered jaw, but noted only flecks of crimson in the forgotten corners and pink-red skin. Tilting his head to the side, the corners of his mouth curled.

”It’ll make a pretty bruise,” he insisted with discordant sobriety. “Purple, blue… black, if you’re lucky. Injuries to the face are the best ‘cause they spread.” Eyelids flared hungrily, and he’d leaned a little bit forward despite himself. Lord Rafal didn’t care for blemishes to his charm, but to Griss, bruises and blood only accentuated it.

”Maybe it’ll reach your eyes.” He chuckled and didn’t blink. “I know a way to make it permanent, too, and the best part is that it’ll hurt twice as bad as the punch did.” The uncharacteristic seriousness cracked wide open with a fit of laughter and Griss staggered up from the cot, transforming levity into threat. He peered as closely at Lord Rafal as he'd let him.

”… But you don’t like anything messing up your face, huh?” With a sigh hissed between grinning teeth and a nonchalant shrug, Griss stepped back, the tension falling apart as quickly as it'd built up. “Too bad.”

Rafal knew that look as well-versed eyes might recognize the glint of a rusted nail. A pink flit of tongue as the hound licked his chops on a question and he understood it further; familiar signs flashed before him, those which preceded infinite possibilities for violence and sought for a reward come in only one form. Such likes were expected from Griss except neither were in any sustainable shape to weather that transaction or the battle meant for another year. Alongside that. . .

The medical tent beyond them bubbled with extraneous motion, the ongoing affairs of students, staff, healers, and wounded - a most curious observation for his mind to draw to the forefront. As if it mattered. Would the thirst for reward come to a head? Right here and now? His wary attention waxed and waned like the cyclical motions of a tide, retracted only once the topic did, and even then remaining merely dormant. Camaraderie with the mage meant always keeping on his toes, in constant season, though no doubt others likely said similarly of Rafal.

He regarded the change of heart with light suspicion, words dragged out slow and fingers straddling a cocked hip. ". . .Humph. If you insist on knowing the details, I suppose these ones. There was a student with gauntlets who deigned to aim for my face. Twice. The bruising is severe and the feeling of them is worse."

A proud lift of chin pointed out prominent wear and tear. Battered squarely on the nose and cheek, a single gander could point out the twin bullseyes another combatant had fashioned of the Fell Heir's countenance, made even starker when contrasted against the environs of a pallid complexion. The brutality of them, however, manifested on not only one but two fronts.

Not even dragons were strangers to pain, exactly as attested, but what pain could compare to the effects of two defacing blows? Naturally, he possessed no qualms in implying so. "At the very least, I have been told the color will fade within a week's time. A most fortunate prognosis." Hm-hm, came the sagely nod, all too understanding of its own outlandish troubles. "My charms are compelling, but not even they could weather such a storm unscathed."

[twistedisciple]

"Ha! You don't gotta tell me twice." With the waves of their conversation evening back down into to the lull of one shared between friends, Griss settled against the wall again, smile steady, eyes gleaming up at the dragon despite - or indeed because of his threats. He'd not even chafed against the warning to stay out of the way, should Lord Rafal and Zephia come to blows some day, accepted it instead with just a little bit of a pout. Pain was only good when he could be conscious and alive to experience it, after all, and he'd grown more than a little familiar with the way Zephia also barred him from the cliffside if she knew he'd plummet over it to his death.

"Next year, then," he said like a promise, or a challenge, eyeing the thin lines of the dragon's human form - the juts of fragile bone against skin beneath his collar, his wrists, and the sharp, but delicate angles of skinny waist and skinnier arms. Even Marni he thought was stouter, sturdier. He lifted his eyes back up to the ivory face when he'd realized they'd drifted, but his mind lingered a second longer on the axe he'd never witnessed. That he'd get to feel one day, maybe, if he was good.

He licked his lips. "But what about now? Since I got through the first round of the tournament just like you ordered."

Even if it might have all been because of that dragon he'd partnered with. Still, Griss needled Lord Rafal with a playful grin, a provocative gaze, trying his luck. The layers of gauze wrapping his bare torso, his shoulders, and criss-crossing his chest were already dotted with crimson blooms again, hardly helped by the way he lounged with his arms up above his head, and he could see a weariness in the other's face as well. No matter the discrepancy in their power on an ordinary day, neither of them were fit for another fight now. So Griss pivoted to another topic as casually as if it were about the weather--

"Tell me about the cut that hurt the most."

-- if the weather was a feast just out of reach of a starving man.

"Even a mighty Fell Dragon's gotta know what pain feels like, yeah?"

To Rafal's cursory amazement, whatever troubles he had anticipated from Griss did not make a showing, or at least not to the extent that he would immediately honor the other side. Their conversation remained neutral unrelative to expectation and no wedges surfaced for his threat. He accepted these developments - preferred the ease of them, really. Had the other expressed opposition to his stance, he would be an enemy by proxy, and Rafal was no stranger to turning fangs even upon 'friends'.

This time his smile aimed for Griss properly. Peace and pandemonium alike; amicable, even as not a single word went minced across intentions. "That remains to be seen. If matters escalate and a fight is required, then so will it be. Blood will be spilled. In that scenario, I would not recommend getting caught in the crossfire." The forecast for the future was indeed unclear, meant syllable for syllable, though the last advice was merely perfunctory.

A spat between two dragons mirrored the clashing of titans capable of crushing anyone from ants to humans underfoot, but what named itself as wise counsel to others was likely a different matter entirely to the mage. Glimmering eyes expressed amusement at the predictable enthusiasm, before guttering at a diverging strain of reflection.

"Perhaps," he agreed easily with the theory, surprised only in that unknown dragons attempted to stake claim over victory in their truest forms. Others did not require so unmistakable a guarantee. Others being Rafal. "However, attaining victory through means of transformation would be far too easy. Even one such as myself desires a healthy challenge."

And just like that, the remainder of some unseen tension quietly dispelled. Returned to normalcy on reflections as mundane as citing the time or weather; a knight and a lord, as well as everything packed in-between. After all, a true lord would not level a challenge at his knight as Rafal did now. "That said—if you perceive this body to be unreliable, Griss, I would be happy to show you otherwise. Next year that is, should you be dealt the greatest misfortune of facing me."

[twistedisciple]

Lord Rafal’s smile, though private, was contagious. Griss recalled their first meeting as well - quite fondly, in fact - and the wide splotch of yellow-green he’d sported across his chest for a week after like some trophy had represented his pledge to the fell dragon. A brand of ownership even, albeit recognized only by the lord and his knight. He sat up and leaned forward eagerly, scenting the promise of fresh blood. Whether the knife’s tip was leveled at the leader of the Four Hounds, or some insignificant nobody, it made little difference to him.

“Are you gonna fight her?” he asked, the words pressured by excitement, eyes gleaming. Maybe Zephia and Zelestia weren’t anything alike. Maybe he’d never take Gregory’s place. But there was no one else he wanted to be, and no one else he thought Zephia should be. He’d almost forgotten that she’d told him she was trying to be what Lord Rafal expected.

“A fell dragon and a mage dragon… mmm. You gotta do it where I can watch.” It wasn’t because he was worried for Zephia’s safety, and he knew a mere human like himself would hardly stand a chance against anything she couldn’t take down, but to anyone who knew his proclivities, it was obvious he fantasized about being caught in the crossfire. Were he a little more shameless, he might have even had to wipe the drool from the corner of his mouth.

“Oh—” Remembering his own experience in the tournament cooled Griss’ excitement abruptly. “Actually, I fought with another woman who turned into a dragon out there. You shoulda showed off your full might, too.” His grin came back gradually, and he added with open honesty rather than sly needling: “Maybe you would’ve lasted longer.”

Belied by his devil-may-care attitude, Griss kept a steady eye on the dragon. Even with his face turned away from him, the lines of his body sharpened and fell and turned rigid again, subtly coloring the story of the mage dragon Zelestia in much the same way Lady Nel had when she'd given Griss the knight's name some months ago. Lady Nel, however, was intrinsically muted. Lord Rafal deliberately hid his vibrance.

Still, Griss was missing a part of the puzzle - namely Zephia and her endgame. He could guess that she desired to test the twins, but without Lord Sombron to render judgment on his failed offspring - then what? If Lord Rafal was looking for a promise, he had none to give, and pulled one hand out from behind his head to offer an open, empty palm.

"Well, if this one tried to hurt ya, it was probably a mistake. Sounds like your Zelestia to me."

He was getting into tricky territory. One master pitted against the other. He laced his fingers behind his head again and met Lord Rafal's hardened gaze with an easy smile.

"Where'd you run into her anyway? 'cause if she took a swing at you out there on the field, that's just part of the game."

[twistedisciple]

Belied by his devil-may-care attitude, Griss kept a steady eye on the dragon. Even with his face turned away from him, the lines of his body sharpened and fell and turned rigid again, subtly coloring the story of the mage dragon Zelestia in much the same way Lady Nel had when she'd given Griss the knight's name some months ago. Lady Nel, however, was intrinsically muted. Lord Rafal deliberately hid his vibrance.

Still, Griss was missing a part of the puzzle - namely Zephia and her endgame. He could guess that she desired to test the twins, but without Lord Sombron to render judgment on his failed offspring - then what? If Lord Rafal was looking for a promise, he had none to give, and pulled one hand out from behind his head to offer an open, empty palm.

"Well, if this one tried to hurt ya, it was probably a mistake. Sounds like your Zelestia to me."

He was getting into tricky territory. One master pitted against the other. He laced his fingers behind his head again and met Lord Rafal's hardened gaze with an easy smile.

"Where'd you run into her anyway? 'cause if she took a swing at you out there on the field, that's just part of the game."

Shuffling movements drew attention through the corners of watchful eyes, narrowed by suspicion, and attentive for their curiosity. Though undeniably insolent in the presence of a mighty Fell Dragon, said Fell Dragon could not deny that the other man's flippant attitude intrigued him. Or perhaps he was merely comforted by the symbolism of such loose posture, that informality akin to a readiness to listen. To stay. Reflecting that behavior, he defused in some unconscious measure - a drop of tense shoulders closer to neutrality.

"Only once," Rafal admitted in a voice that was quiet, in another sense; reminiscent. Clarification followed on a gaze that reached beyond the present scene, to a distant shore and two ragged twins whittled by winds and spit up by sea, moored on a patch of the Lythos littorals that ushered in all the rest. "When my sister and I first fled to Lythos, we were attacked by Zelestia upon our first meeting. Understandably, of course. Father put the Mage Dragons to death and of her village she alone survived."

Falsely adjudged ties were only the broad recounting of it, of course. Zelestia had attacked Nel and Rafal for instincts that could be readily understood; as it was Sombron who destroyed her village, the attack on his children honored intentions to preserve herself and to avenge what had been lost. More importantly, much had passed since then, casting upon their initial meeting a far-reaching shadow of a difference. Reminded of those differences in another form, the pale face darkened, its subdued stare sharpening from recollection.

"Zelestia is different. Plain and forthright, she would not harm Nel or I. My faith in her analogue is not even a fraction as steady." He crossed his arms and sealed his mouth shut as if daring Griss to challenge the observation.