twistedisciple

[twistedisciple]

There - the flames that raged beneath the stony facade finally flare up through a crack in Mauvier's composure. Griss' goading had done the trick, and he should pursue that flash of weakness. He knows he should. But he feels the indignation flare up in himself, too, and he can't stop himself from bristling, caught by his own trap. Quickening his pace to get ahead, he circles around and stops just a foot or two in front of Mauvier, his eyes peeled open to the whites, his fangs bared in a snarling grimace. The slope sets him some feet lower than this towering knight, but it makes him no less vicious. On this moonless night, he's a devil in the flesh.

What did Mauvier know about family? Zephia had loved them like a mother would.

"That was the best family people like us were ever gonna get," he growls, then lifts his chin in challenge. "What makes you think you know any better, huh? Lady Veyle? Marni? Zephia practically raised both of 'em! Anyway--"

Here he tries to gather himself back together, to make sure Mauvier doesn't get the better of him, but his voice still trembles with poorly-held restraint. In crooked angles, grimace seals itself into an unsteady smile.

"-- you look pretty alone. No family, good or bad, left. I was gonna offer to take you back as a brother but then you had to go and ruin it."

Suddenly the trees erupt with ferocious howls, not too close yet, but not quite far enough away to ignore. Griss shuts up to listen.

"... Sounds like a pack of the demonic beasts this continent's got prowling around. Here's an idea," he starts and sneers, "we go find you a nice new family with them. At least then when you chicken out, they get to tear you up and eat you! Can't think of a better use for a traitor, can you? Hahaha!"

Something Buried

Reunion | Griss & Mauvier

[twistedisciple]

This whole thing wasn't exactly Griss' idea of a vacation. Some of the kids he'd been tasked to escort into the hidden village of Burrowhaven were treating it like one though, since this was the first real academy mission after that depressing mess with the war, and it didn't involve fighting. They were supposed to get in good with the locals, try to find a few loose lips to spill some secrets about the soil and the village's prosperity, and then report back to the church. So, naturally, that sounded like a vacation to them.

Griss didn't like the lazy peace of it all though, splinter-like dissatisfaction making him restless ever since the return to the ruins of the monastery, but a job was a job. He'd always get a job done. Fortunately, if the kids felt like they were off on some kind of vacation, then that meant he wouldn't have to babysit them.

Of all the people to "get in good" with the locals, Griss was an odd choice. Friendliness and small talk didn't interest him much, but where he failed in philanthropy, he made up for in his ability to get information by other means. A shrewd little old nun (or former nun, as it would seem) had taken some kind of liking to him, although "like" had to be used in the loosest of ways. She'd whapped him good with her cane when she'd caught him snooping around in her garden, and that'd bought Griss' loyalty for the duration of his stay.

He was still sporting the streak of red across his shoulders from when she'd ordered him out on an errand that morning: her friend was hosting a fabric dyeing workshop and needed an extra hand or two in cleaning up the old courtyard, so naturally, being still fairly young and able-bodied, Griss was to help out on her behalf. He didn't make it easy, of course. She had to hit him three or four times before he was satisfied and agreed.

No one had shown up yet when Griss left the courtyard to hunt down a few more chairs, and he hadn't expected that to change any time soon. One half of the space was still filled with dirt and rubble from a wall that had recently collapsed, and he was trying to calculate the easiest way to clear it with the least amount of effort by the time he came back, dragging a stack of rickety wooden chairs behind him, but to his surprise, the lecture had already begun. Two of the tables on the newly-cleaned side were occupied now by two students. One of them, with candy cane hair, tensed her shoulders and burrowed her head down into the collar of her uniform, because she recognized who'd just come in. And he recognized her, too.

With a grin curling lazily across his lips, he hauled the stack of chairs off to the back wall and plucked two of them from the top. Then he dragged them over to where the princess was trying so hard to be invisible. He threw one underneath the table hard enough to make her workstation rattle when the chair's back collided with its edge, but he only smiled sweetly at her when she looked up.

"Making something for your sis?" he taunted in lieu of a greeting, making it clear that he recognized her, and that he remembered Queen Ivy, too. "That color's gonna come out real dark and depressing."

nothing you could teach me

verdant rain moon; dye prompt

[twistedisciple]

The conversation began to dip toward a topic Griss was right at home in, and yet he was no better at talking about it. Pain had become something deeply personal, and deeply misunderstood by all those who dared try to understand, no thanks to him. If Lord Rafal decided to push forth on that path toward common ground, he would find himself lost in a forest of thorns. A den founded for survival, cultivated for defense, left to run wild and dangerous until even its owner couldn't remember how the trees had looked long ago. Or that the rest of the world was not also consumed in exactly the same way.

Curiosity changed sharply into concern, however. Not for this warped world view, but for the angry red product of it. Sharp stings radiated from the gash across Griss' palm with every twist and turn of the dragon's assessment, growing his smile wide and lazy as he watched. It was impressive. And it hurt. And here, surely a fell dragon could appreciate it. Could appreciate the offhand reverence for suffering that his disciple now offered to him like a tribute. Lord Sombron had never quite noticed him in the same way, but his son and heir -- he was different. He could see Griss, and feel his pain. That was why he was concerned.

"Don't worry," grinning, he drew out the vowel but didn't pull his wrist away from Lord Rafal's concern. "Infection's not gonna happen."

But then it was as if the dragon had ripped the cloth from the table, shattering everything on it for a revelation: the the prim and proper sheep was, in fact, a wolf dressed in its ill-fitting clothes. Griss stared back at him for a moment, the open, easy smile pinched back together into hard lines like the dragon had just struck him, but he waited still for some kind of correction. It wasn't who he thought. That wasn't what he meant. Anything. But eventually Griss pulled his hand back.

"Oh yeah? Tch. You gonna make believe a coward would even end up with any wounds to treat? Lemme guess," and now his voice turned childish and mocking, although still rough enough to cut, "li'l booboos like papercuts he went and asked you to make better."

✦ 𝐌𝐀𝐍'𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃 ✧

Non-Mission Board: Restoration, roommates

[twistedisciple]

What a thanks that was, Griss thought. He'd gone through all that trouble to be nice, and the guy couldn't even cry out in pain when the spell hit him.

"Not good enough for you, huh?" He shot back as the swordsman clashed with the bull. The man had managed to find shelter flankside, in the beast's presumable blind spot, but those ferocious horns curved from either side of its head at least three feet long each, and when it tipped its head to turn and impale its slippery victim, the bottom bend of one gouged the rocky earth. Hooves glinting as if made of diamonds stomped the ground, and its hot breath steamed from its nostrils with every snort growing more frustrated by the second. There was no fear in its body language, even though its dark hide had been scored by Raven's blade, and it spun in circles as if trying to get at a particularly annoying fly.

In the distance came the ear-splitting shrieks of more of those avian women, flying in by the dozens to check on a fallen comrade perhaps. Griss' eyes darted to the mountainous horizon where the dark cloud of them had gathered like black birds going home to roost, and then back to the dangerous dance of man and monster. He next move came without thought, only that seemingly ever-present snarl full of teeth.

The wind whipped around him in a gale more fearsome than the one he'd called on to knock Raven out of the way. Then one, two slices of his hands through the air concentrated the energy into fine blades that shot forward, one after the other, driving into the largest, freshest gash torn open by Raven's sword. What followed was the squelching spurt of arteries, the wet snap of tendons, and the rocky crunch of bone. The bull let out some confused little noise, the front half of it still ringing Raven in its futile circle, its small, red eyes finally lighting with realization, which faded as its body stiffened, slowed, and then its knees buckled and it collapsed face-first into the dirt. A smear of blobby colors trailed behind it in an arc to its hindquarters, which had fallen into a warm puddle by Raven's feet.

The look on Griss' face said he didn't mean to kill it. The suffering was over far too quickly.

"Coulda done that to you, if that's the kinda pain you wanted," he said, eyes snapping back to Raven without the same kind of threatening look the words seemed to convey - taunting, and yet curious, eager to please.

"No time for that now though." The flock of birds was a cacophony of screeching across the brilliant sky, near enough now that Griss could glimpse the handful or so at front dressed in some kind of golden armor that glared in the sun. The smile on Griss' face broke wide open with rough, goading laughter, arms flung wide for their approaching doom.

"Hahaha! Looks like fate's got death by pecking in store for us!"

No, I Don't Want Your Number. No, I Don't Want to Give You Mine.

[twistedisciple]

The scene opened to a sea of hand-painted signs. Unremarkable men and women dressed in nondescript brown tunics had gathered in the town square of this liminal space to chant the same thing over and over again: "Free the baylories!" Their signs bobbed up and down with the rhythm, and they were packed so tightly together in between the stony faces of too-tall buildings that they might have resembled on singular organism from far away. All of them faced the largest of the buildings that ringed the plaza, whose face was lined with blocky windows from which men and women in clean white shirts and green wigs peered out. To the chanting down below, they answered "the regabreas will be in danger!" Back and forth, back and forth, with neither side stopping long enough to hear the other, or notice that two men distinctly different than all of them had arrived on the roof of a squatty building behind the protesters.

Griss didn't know what to make of the scene. He surveyed it with a look on his face that plainly said he thought the whole thing seemed ridiculous. The portal he'd been sent to investigate on the edge of the Sealed Forest had not given any indication at all that this was what it would contain, and after his strange adventures with Raven in the Abyssal portal, he probably shouldn't have been too surprised. Still, the Knights of Seiros had mentioned (as a possibility, although Griss ignored that part) that it might be dangerous, and someone might get hurt, and that's why it was better to send someone like a knight to check it out. Griss didn't really hear anything else after that.

No one looked like they were getting hurt here though.

With a sigh, he glanced over his shoulder at the man who had arrived with him. He didn't know him, but aside from the green hair (which didn't seem to be a wig, anyway), he didn't look anything like any of the protestors, or the people cowering in the windows. If he'd arrived to check out the portal, too, it was probably right after Griss had stepped through it.

"Some party, huh?" he said with the curl of his lip, and tossed his head in the direction of the crowd below. It was mostly to test the waters - to make sure this guy wasn't one of them, and that he didn't know what 'baylories' and 'regabreas' were either.

"... huh...?" His eye caught on something shimmering in the distance, on the far side of the plaza, and he stepped to the edge of the rooftop to get a better look. It appeared to be some sort of hazy doorway - perhaps another portal - nestled in the alleyway between the largest of the buildings, and the one to its right. An entire, dense crowd of protesters stood between it and them, and however.

"Looks like that just might be our ticket outta here."

Room 1: Political Protest Weapon: Gauntlets

@jasperblion

Pandora's Box [Griss & Alm]

Excavation | Any Skill +1

[twistedisciple]

"Me?" The accusation catches Griss by surprise, his foot hooking and nearly stumbling on a raised root as they descend the mountain path. He's surprised by his own reaction, too. He'd made a show, way back on Elyos, of how little the family that they'd built had mattered to him. Turning his back on Marni's death, condemning Mauvier to a cruel one of his own, and hounding the princess for the side of her that kept rearing its head for the Divine Dragon had all been a kind of rebellion against the ill-fitting costumes Zephia had tried to dress them in. But it had been a symptom of his accepting them, too, and the only way he knew how to cope with the pain of falling apart.

Indignant, he made up the lost distance and stuck close to Mauvier - this time no longer a step behind, but snapping fangs now in his line of sight.

"I wasn't the one who fumbled the mission so bad he had to turn traitor just to save his skin."

If Lady Veyle hadn't been defective from the start, maybe Mauvier and Marni wouldn't have turned tail and ran from Zephia. Or maybe Zephia would have decided sooner that she had the means to get back at Lord Sombron, and then maybe they'd still be the Four Hounds, and it wouldn't have mattered whether Lady Veyle was the weak one or the fun one. And Mauvier wouldn't have gotten mad and--

He slammed the lid on all those circular thoughts that'd sneak in whenever he wasn't busy and snuffed them all out. Mauvier didn't need to know any of them. If he thought he was alone, then he'd make him eat that holier-than-thou attitude. He wasn't better than him because he still had Lady Veyle. Because they'd been on the right side. Because Zephia was gone. He wasn't.

"Hah! Haven't been here long, have you?" Griss sneered. "Turns out the Divine Dragon and Lady Veyle weren't the only two of Lord Sombron's kids to survive. I found another one right here."

Something Buried

Reunion | Griss & Mauvier

[twistedisciple]

Never in his wildest dreams did he think he'd attend a wedding, much less play a role in one. Bonds, especially the permanent, life-changing sort, weren't all that popular within the fell church. Downright reviled, in fact. At least among those who took the sermons and scriptures as seriously as Griss did. And here he was, hired to help this rouged-up, perfume-soaked woman get her needle-sharp, lacquered claws around the man who'd hired someone else to get him away from her.

"I don't get it. If he's getting cold feet, just call the whole thing off, yeah?" Perched on the rickety, gabled rooftop of a small cuckoo clock-shaped residence built into the wall of the rocky ravine, Griss watched the fissure of speckled indigo overhead. The moon was full on this clear, autumn-chilled night - perhaps part of the plan for this bizarre wedding ritual. It blazed white and bright across the whole of the buried village of Burrowhaven, except where the steep rock faces shielded the darkest of the shadowed alleyways, offering a number of places a would-be kidnapper or a vigilante ambush could hide.

The winding, jagged ravine was narrow, however. The thin little houses that dotted either wall connected to one another with wooden planks and ramshackle stairs, most of which didn't even waste space with guardrails. At a glance, it was like a giant had thrown a fistful of lumber and boards into the pit, like they might dam up the scar that had split open the earth here. Any bird larger than a sparrow would have to pick its way around clotheslines, signs, and the scraps of houses that didn't quite stick in order to get from one side to the other, and that meant anything as big as a wyvern was out of the question. So Griss watched the sky with an arm draped over his knee, his other leg swinging off the side of the roof.

The dolled up bride-to-be paced the precariously laid shingles behind him with the confidence of a mountain goat.

"He's not getting cold feet," she snapped at her escort. "Just shut up and get me to him before he escapes."

"Uh-huh. I don't think you hear the words comin' outta your mouth."

"Quiet." She stomped her heel down hard enough to crack one of the shingles and send it tumbling down into the abyss in crumbling fragments. "I paid you for one thing."

"Don't get your panties in a twist, lady. I'll do what I said I would." Griss shrugged like it didn't much matter to him, but then his expression grew serious and he cocked his head to the whistle of the wind through the rock. Wingbeats in the distance.

"Speak of the devil, get ready to move."

The woman hiked up her skirts and hurried to the rope ladder hanging from a ledge above. Just then, a dragon silhouetted by the moon zipped by overhead.

Turn 1: Griss rolled 12

Griss leaned back to pull a butcher's knife from a wooden beam, then brought it down on a tethered slingshot in one decisive swing. A clothesline pulled taut snapped forward and shot a bundle of clothes, sheets, and rock-weighted snares at the passing shadow. Then up he went on the ladder behind the bride-to-be. They had to be fast to catch them, even if the snares managed catch on the wyverns wings.

@rozyrne

Til Death [Griss & Rosado]

Excavation | Gauntlets +1

[twistedisciple]

"A win's only a win if one of us gets killed." Griss shot her the look right back, bared fangs meeting bared fangs, only his weren't just to tease. It required no stretch of the imagination to understand that he'd kill her the second she stepped out from under Lord Rafal's protection, with or without reason. That was the trickiest part about the unpredictable Hound. But for now he'd just play - see how serious she was about being a fell dragon's new "knight."

This was how they managed to make it back to the medical tents mostly unscathed, despite the fact that the one who started it all had succumbed to his own injuries and hubris. Lord Rafal's arms and legs swayed like a limp doll across the shoulders of the one who'd put him out of commission as they crossed under the rolled up tarp that made the door. The alarm on the nurses' faces when they'd turned to see the state he was in didn't last long - they recognized the whites, pinks, and blacks of their difficult, proud patient from earlier, and so they turned a blind eye to the fate they thought he deserved. For now, anyway. The dangerous look in the eyes of the thug who dumped him unceremoniously onto an empty cot was enough to keep them away for a little while longer. He was breathing, at least.

With dragon safely deposited in bed, although not quite with his dignity in tact, Griss stepped back to look him over again. If the Hound had any shred of concern of his master, it was in that split second, so fast that one could blink and miss it, his eyes lingering in that time on his face for a trace of something critical beneath the facade of sleep. But it didn't last long, because soon the horn for the battle sounded across the field outside.

His eyes darted up and narrowed when they met Yunaka's, who was standing nearby. In stark juxtaposition to the threat in that glance, he smiled sweetly.

"He's the only thing between you and all the ways I know how to make you beg for death."

For now, he'd have to trust that she wouldn't off another fell dragon when the opportunity lay defenseless right in front of her. So with that reminder lingering over the soft breaths of the one in repose, the guard dog reluctantly retreated to join those still on their feet for the final stretch of their little mock war.

✦ 𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✧

TOA Boel 2025, Griss vs. Rafal intermission ft. Yunaka

[twistedisciple]

"That's it? You just like Lord Rafal better than the Divine One?" What an anticlimactic and vague answer. Griss flashed her a look that said as much. But it reminded him of the conversation he'd had with Lord Rafal the year before, when dragon had drunkenly asked his hound if being born a worm would have influenced their relationship in any way. It sounded like Yunaka, this stranger to both the world of the fell and its much smaller enclave here in Fódlan, had reached 'yes' faster than he had. His expression deadened, but he rolled his shoulder to readjust Lord Rafal's weight across his shoulders and turned away to start his laborious trek back to the medical tent from here.

"Whatever." He brushed it away, his attention now on picking his way over roots and strewn branches. "You're chasing a fell dragon and you don't even know half of what it takes."

What it takes, meaning what goes into it. The discipline, the bloody rituals, the steadfast loyalty - all the things Griss had molded an entire life around. But also what it takes, and consequently leaves behind as blackened charcoal and broken fragments - all the things that didn't belong. Jealousy was an ugly weakness just as much as love, and he tore his heart out again and again until he'd come to revel in the self-mutilation as his devotion's reward.

She'd accused him of both, unaware that he'd already destroyed himself to root them out years ago.

"A 'knight,' he says," Griss muttered with a disdainful toss of his head, and cut a sidelong look at Yunaka. Surely, he didn't have to spell it out for her; it was obvious just by looking at him that he didn't possess a shred of chivalry or whatever other noble qualities defined the vassals that trailed their princes in fairytales. And he was a bloody shard of glass to the soft, plush thing the dragon missed.

"Next he's gonna start knighting the rats from the sewer. Lord Rafal gives the orders and I do 'em. That's all. And that means I can't smash you into a red 'n black pulp either."

✦ 𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✧

TOA Boel 2025, Griss vs. Rafal intermission ft. Yunaka

[twistedisciple]

And there he went, with neither of his supposed knights to catch him. This was what Griss had been trying to avoid. Well, he hadn't expected Lord Rafal to go and pass out completely, but it was just one of many things he could have done to show his belly to an enemy whose motives remained unknown. With a drawn-out groan, Griss waved his tome away and stalked over to the dragon's crumpled form. He was so thin that it wasn't hard to see the rise and fall of his chest, and even though his hand still clasped around the handle of his axe, his cheek pressed against the ground, setting his lips slightly apart, made him look just like he was sleeping. A not-so-comfortable dirt nap.

Pointedly ignoring Yunaka's goading for now, Griss hiked up his tattered, bloodstained robes to kneel beside his fallen lord. Neither delicate nor rough, he pushed strands of ivory hair aside and pressed two fingers beneath his jaw, listening to soft pattering against their pads, then with clinical decisiveness, stroked his hand down past the dragon's shoulder to the center of his back, between his shoulder blades. The air around his hand glowed softly with faint white light - a weak Heal spell at barely half its efficacy. Griss had always preferred the use of staves as conduits, so he'd neglected practice with Fódlan's naked casting. Still, it was enough to stop the internal bleeding.

"All you came out here to do was yap, huh?" His eyes raised to catch Yunaka's gaze from beneath the shadow of his brow. She hadn't joined their fight. She'd tried to end it when it had just started getting good. And now she wasn't even going to help. Wasn't using this opportunity to try to kill him while he was down, either. Griss had theories aplenty by now, but one of the more childish ones rose higher than the rest.

With a snort, his attention dropped down again to focus on the job at hand. Shuffling around to stand in front of Lord Rafal's head, he slipped his arms beneath his shoulders and hoisted him up, staggeringly, to his feet like a big, floppy stuffed animal. He wasn't delicate here either, and if the dragon wound up sore in strange places the next day, it might not all be from the battle.

"You were so defensive... about your feelings... for Lord Rafal before..." he said, interspersed with grunts of effort as he maneuvered his boneless burden onto his shoulders. By now, he managed to loop an arm around one of Lord Rafal's legs, and held him secure across his shoulders with a firm grasp around his wrists. Slim and gangly though he was, what clung to his bones was nevertheless well-defined muscle - it was clear he'd hefted corpses, or near-corpses, a number of times before, and when he'd finally balanced the dragon's weight, he turned to Yunaka surprisingly stable on his feet.

The smile on his face was as mean as they come.

"If you're not here 'cause you wanna kill 'im, and you're not here 'cause you've converted, all that's telling me is what you really wanna do is fuck 'im."

✦ 𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✧

TOA Boel 2025, Griss vs. Rafal intermission ft. Yunaka

[twistedisciple]

"Okay. So what?" When Griss' turned his sights back on Lord Rafal, it was as the dragon was staggering back up to his feet, and yet it was like he didn't see it. Not a trace of concern shown across his face, nor did he make any move to help, as any other knight with their lord might. Instead, primed by the word 'blood,' his attention caught on the flick of ruby eyes back across the clearing to Yunaka. To a bandage brought into awareness. It was proof, then, that what Lord Rafal said was true, but it still answered Griss' questions in only the barest of ways.

"I'll take that as a yes. The Divine Dragon's too mushy and sensitive for you, huh? Welcome to the club." Again, his eyes swung back to Yunaka, probing for a crack in whatever facade she was wearing. Whatever it was that had allowed her to worm her way onto the other side. "I always knew something in you craved violence."

Although they had put away their weapons, they still traded blow-for-blow in a different kind of fight.

"Or maybe you just look like someone from Lord Rafal's world."

And just as Yunaka had not been immune to the fight shared between hound and master, the master himself was not out of range of theirs either. There was a hierarchy to be found among packs of dogs. and Griss had spent much of his life baring his teeth and snapping his fangs to ensure that, if not the leader, then he would be its second-in-command - irreplaceable in a world where a glimpse of the wrong emotion would make you less valuable than a mindless husk. Here in this thicket, alongside a different lord and a new hound, it would be no different.

The axe Yunaka tossed carelessly over her shoulder hit the ground a few feet away. If there was any fleck of blood on it after the day's events, none of it belonged to Griss, and so he looked longingly at it, envisioning the fantasy that had driven him this far through his battles. The crunch of bone and the ghost sensations of phantom limbs that he had spoke of earlier, and how fragile skin would split away beneath the dragon's artificial fang, layer by layer, until it spewed a geyser of hot blood, among other similarly gruesome scenes to consecrate loyalty in its most extreme.

But he snapped out of his vacant-eyed trance and turned his nose up at the weapon suddenly.

"Nah, you ruined it," he declined. A sidelong glance toward Lord Rafal assessed whether or not he was in agreement. "I'll just have my fun with whoever sent Lord Rafal to the medical tent. Anyone who can hobble a fell dragon ain't a slouch when it comes to delivering pain."

Next: @rafent

✦ 𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✧

TOA Boel 2025, Griss vs. Rafal intermission ft. Yunaka

[twistedisciple]

"Not anymore, I don't." And just like Mauvier predicted, Griss turns and follows a few paces behind, keeping to the shadows like a ragged stray afraid of the light, near enough still that he might feel his hungry, hot breath at his heels, or sense the heat of mange exuding from his coat.

"If Lady Veyle's still alive, why'd you come all the way out here by yourself?" Griss presses, glaring up at that broad wall of steel that had cultivated quite a talent for ignoring him on most occasions. Even with his back to the fanged points of that sneering smile, Mauvier would still be able to hear it in his raspy voice.

"Big ol' iceberg like you up and taking a new job just for fun? Nah, I don't believe it." Leaves crunch underfoot as they picked their way down the winding path away from the monastery and in the lull between unanswered questions, the wind whispers through dry, burnt branches overhead. It dampens Griss' voice in a rough whisper at Mauvier's elbow, a phantom dogging him with a past they both should have left behind by now.

"Was it the Divine One? Or maybe you heard about Marni? Aww, the big guy wants to come back to the family, huh?"

Something Buried

Reunion | Griss & Mauvier

[twistedisciple]

The fingers that caught weakly around Griss' ankle still had the strength to stop him mid-step, if not physically, then by the authority that manifested in every part of the dragon's body. Reluctantly, he relinquished his stance as guarding hound of this long-awaited ritual and looked away from the intruder that had come to defile it. In the moment that his eyes fell obediently upon his master stretched out in the dirt, they blinked away manic fury for something steadier and less volatile. Not once had he thought to curse Lord Sombron, not even for a lifetime of suffering and neglect, and so he would not turn his ire on a fell dragon now.

But that neutral standby didn't last long. His eyebrows twitched together, smile crumbling into a grimace, as Lord Rafal's words registered. A knight -- just like you.

"So... a fake one," he clarified, and his defensive posture collapsed into loose, gangly pieces. Orders were orders - he wouldn't lay a hand on anything his master forbid him to touch - so the fight was over, as far as he was concerned. He snapped his tome shut and raised it rest in the crook between shoulder and neck. To say he was over the whole ordeal would be an understatement, but the news had quieted him at least. Orders were orders. That was the way he lived. He was no knight, but a hound was twice as loyal with none of the questions of the faith-shaking kind.

The hatred that had broached the surface had sunk back down into an invisible simmer again, but his fingers drummed impatiently along the spine of his book. His eyes, even without their fury, still snapped toward Yunaka and his head fell back at a curious angle. But it was no innocent curiosity despite the suspiciously blatant innocence of his new smile.

"And this means you've given up following the Divine Dragon, yeah? Killing, bloodletting, fights to the brink of death... all that's just a day in the life of the fell. Exciting, huh?" With his head thrown back, his loud, rasping laugh could have distracted from unblinking, mirthless eyes that still watched Yunaka down the length of his nose. His next words came out incongruously jagged and hard.

"So you can't go stopping the fun just 'cause you see a little blood."

Next: @rafent

✦ 𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✧

TOA Boel 2025, Griss vs. Rafal intermission ft. Yunaka

[twistedisciple]

April Plotting Call

// I haven't put out a plotting call in ages since I keep telling myself I'll do it when I'm caught up with other things, but Griss is severely lacking in thread diversity right now and I'm never going to be caught up the way I want to be so I'm throwing this out here.

[Needs Golden Deer] Authority point fetch quest. I think getting from point A to point Z is something Griss would excel at. He takes orders well but does things in his own way. It'd be fun to play around with his quest chain to come up with ways our characters (Griss, at least) can cut corners to satisfy the request. This would be a "yes and-" thread. I don't have many ideas for it right off the bat.

[Needs Golden Deer] No magic allowed. tfw you're a mage who only knows how to do mage things. I'd like to take up this prompt mostly to worldbuild around this underground society, but also to explore Griss' resourcefulness when he's effectively declawed.

[Needs Golden Deer] Dye prompt. Griss, per Gregory, canonically makes clothes. Learning a new way to dye fabric would interest, albeit more like a bonus to being on this mission. Since this doesn't have a skill point attached to it, I wouldn't mind combining the concept with one of the other two prompts above.

Treasure hunt. We can come up with a game for this. Or at least put together an encounters list and some basic RNG. I'd prefer to take the sleeping/waking up part out of this and streamline it as just a series of doors. Maybe we can even do something conceptually like HSR's Simulated Universe. Ideas are going to be largely dependent on the muse who takes me up on this.

Turkeese hunting. Like the prompt above, we can make a game out of this and give it a hard cutoff. I've headcanoned for a while that Griss is good at tracking, but I'm still on the fence about whether he's good at the actual hunting part. I'll probably let the outcome of this thread decide ha

If any of these interest you, feel free to DM me on Discord, shoot me a Tumblr IM, put a reply on this post, or ping me in the #plotting channel!

[twistedisciple]

garreg mach prison experiment

recovery: prison guarding

[twistedisciple]

For the first time since he'd returned to the medical tent, Griss acknowledges that Yunaka is here directly. No longer with barbed comments meant to cut on their way to the intended recipient, but how, spattered with blood, he gives in to the needling pressure of the knife against his neck and backs off of Lord Rafal. Flinty eyes fix themselves now on her face, as sharp as the blade she aims to cow him with.

Get up. Now. she says. He doesn't. He stays kneeling like an animal ready to spring. In the freewheeling hound with the devil-may-care attitude, fury of this caliber doesn't rise often to the surface. It sits at a constant simmer, like a stygian goop of hatred and despair, unseen beneath the skin except on rare occasions, like the blood in his veins. Alear had felt that ferocious snap of teeth at the very end, when play had been set aside to guard the only thing the Hound had left of value.

But, finally, he obeys and rises slowly to his feet to stare down his new opponent. Between them lies Lord Rafal - a treasure undivided between guard dog and thief. A dangerous, crooked smile splits Griss' face like a scar. His voice, too honey-sweet for the devil in his eyes, comes out in a rolling lilt, piece by piece.

"Oh, now you wanna play, too? This was supposed to be for me 'n Lord Rafal."

Griss 5/5HP hits Yunaka 5/5HP with Thwart [Roll: 19 - 2 = 17, -2HP; Yunaka 3/5HP]

"Hah! I'll just get rid of you myself."

He slaps her arm and her knife away with his tome, and the wind off the edge of his book slams into her like a hurricane.

Next: @rafent

✦ 𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✧

TOA Boel 2025, Griss vs. Rafal intermission ft. Yunaka

[twistedisciple]

"Yeah, you keep saying that." Each time Griss evoked Lord Sombron's name, his heir made a point to draw the line that differentiated them deeper and darker in the sand. It had never been made more apparent than now, as disciple unceremoniously straddled the very being he was made to respect. Roughhousing with Lord Sombron in this way had been out of the question - unthinkable even - but it had been months now since Griss had made such a comparison to his new lord. The dragon wiggled free just enough to grab a handful of dirt, but his hound swiftly pinned him by the arms again. The metal ring at the end of his collar swung just an inch above Lord Rafal's nose as Griss stared down at him with a look that lacked its usual manic pleasure in these situations.

The juice box bounced off his shoulder and Yunaka's voice followed after it, but they might have been just another part of the quiet thicket. Griss' eyes remained locked with Lord Rafal's, seemingly oblivious to them.

"Lord Sombron at least never went and performed his weaknesses for the enemy." He bore down on Lord Rafal, knees planted on either side of his hips, the metal rings around his fingers bearing nearly all his weight and imprinting marks into the dragon's slender arms. Maybe he'd always been right about him, and that this human form really was much too weak for his choice of weapon, but he'd spare him the goading now.

"She killed Lord Sombron," he repeated, even though it wasn't all her. Those that followed the Divine Dragon were all just parts of the same whole to him though. "And the Four Hounds--"

And Zephia.

With a sharp exhale, he sat back to snatch his tome up off the ground nearby. There was no time for Lord Rafal to struggle free, however.

Griss rolls 2 from the roulette. +2 dex to upcoming roll Griss 5/5HP critically hits Rafal 2.5/5HP with Thwart [Roll: 20 + 2 = 22, -4HP - 0.5 Res = -3.5HP; Rafal 0/5HP]

Griss slammed both hands back down against unguarded chest, where a heart beat within its cage. If he couldn't make him understand with words, he'd make him hurt. Just the way he did.

"-- are gone, too."

Next: @rafent

✦ 𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✧

TOA Boel 2025, Griss vs. Rafal intermission ft. Yunaka