Private Tales Dragonhide

[Sagarus]

While she was giving the kick to the horses, he took a moment to step to what he felt was the invisibly boundary that marked the edge of their camp. Hands folded over the pommel of his sword as was his custom, he studied the treeline and then looked over his shoulder to her again with a thin brow arched sharply.

"Big, hairy. Climb pretty good." His shoulders lifted into a shrug as he turned his head back towards the direction of the roar.

"Wouldn't suggest running."

Breathing in slow and deep to center himself, he pushed his attention towards his mind rather than the tension building in his gut. If you didn't know fear, you were an idiot. If you ignored it, you may just wind up a hero.

Truthfully, you usually just ignored it to give you the best chance of not dying. Realizing it was a rather sizeable brown-furred beast, he relaxed a little. They hadn't started cooking any meat, so it was likely going to for what they'd left down by the pond.

"Generally, if you don't get between them and their food, they'll leave you alone." That didn't mean he was taking his eyes off it, especially since, for the moment, it was coming right for them. Letting out a breath into the evening breeze, he focused his ears to the rustle of the leaves in the surrounding woods. So peaceful, this, the moment before death. He hoped when it actually came time to pass from this mortal coil, it would be this kind.

Knowing his profession, he held onto that only when he was feeling particularly wistful. Usually, he just accepted it would be violent - perhaps crushed beneath the paws of a bear. It would be an experience, until it wasn't.

"Think it would be quick? Or you think it'd be one of those that tosses you around while roaring and shouting, not caring if it's killed you or not?"

 

[Samantha Black]

Had to admire how calmly he conducted himself. Ralene liked to think she maintained some semblance of calm in hairy situations, but she was still on edge in a way the older Dreadlord was not.

Or at least, appeared not to be.

Given that he was open to conversing how quickly a bear might maul him to death, she had to wonder if perhaps he wasn't fully sound in the mind. An attribute of the prior Dreadlord generations had always been something of a loose canon when it came to mental stability. How close she'd come to ending up like that.

"I suppose that depends on if you get between him and his meal."

The bear closed the distance, his hulking form at least twice as big as Sagarus if not moreso. It ambled down the forested slopes with a blundering sort of grace and an obvious wealth of power. It was impressive to watch, even through the trees. Ralene caught herself as still as a statue, every muscle and fiber of her being stuck between instinct and ... other directives.

Don't run.

Right.

Taking note of their presence, the beast paused in its descent to look at them, scenting the air and their own cache of meat. But a breeze from the lakeside picked up just as it seemed to lean into further investigation and it caught the full aroma of the carcass below. With a grunt and another sideglance toward them, the bear turned and passed them by to make way for the greater morsel down below.

Ral watched it go with wide eyes and palms itching as they hovered over her various array of weapons.

"...what if it takes the whole lure."

 

[Sagarus]

His eyes remained on the bear, though it never quite met his eyes. Since his return he found most animals preferred to avoid him, save the odd cat. Literally, the odd ones. His head rotated on his motionless frame as the bear continued towards their spoils below.

"That's not good." Muttering beneath his breath, he found his thin lips creasing into a frown before he turned, stiff, like a golem taking it's first step off a plinth in defense of it's castle.

A gathered breath was slowly released from his puffed cheeks as a sigh, and then he watched the bear. It was an admittedly fine specimen of a beast.

"Well, we kill it." He gave her a smile that had nothing to do with reassurance. "I've been told by a member of the Backwater Breakers that's what 'they in the business' call 'a fair trade.'"

Though, as the bear descended, he couldn't shake the feeling he was missing something. How did a wounded dragon disappear? How did it not eat? His palms itched. Something didn't add up.

 

[Samantha Black]

Ral felt something within her deflate on a wary exhale. Didn't sit right with her, killing a bear for taking the opportunity to eat. That this was not exactly the appropriate line of thought for a Dreadlord-in-training also didn't sit right with her.

Or, at least, she was conflicted on that line of thought. That Dreadlord's often had no sense of humanity and that she had begun to find her own after the Revolution had been something of a point of contention for her. She watched it descend upon the kill and begin to rifle through its option before settling for the belly, and then she turned her gaze to Sagarus. Something about his present demeanor and the weird expression on his face that made the Initiate's nose wrinkle.

Yeah, there it was, the appropriate Dreadlord train of thought. She realized in that moment she was beginning to dislike the man ... at least that's what she construed the clinching sensation between her lungs to be. Dislike.

"Let's give it more time," Ralene replied at length, fixing instead to delay the otherwise unecessary slaughter of a bear simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, "one predator on a kill often attracts others."

 

[Sagarus]

She was conflicted about something, he could tell. It lingered in her eyes like smoke in the air. Perhaps she was questioning how well this mission was going. He couldn't blame her for that as he was wondering too. Yet, for all the hallowed tomes in the archives there was scarcely enough pages on hunting dragons to fill a eulogy for a pauper who'd died, smelling of liquor, in a city gutter.

They were rewriting this now, and at the end all anyone would care about was that a dragon had killed them, gotten away, or been killed.

The starched pantomime of a smile dropped away, and he turned his head back towards the intruder as it reached the lakeside and began digging in with a growl he could hear even from here. "Voracious bastard," he muttered.

Yet that itch remained. They were missing something obvious, about the hills, woods and the lake. "Well, shit." It was clear from his tone he was annoyed with himself.

"Of course, it should run for the mountains if it lives in a cave. But a burrow is another thing entirely." He dug into a pouch before remembering he didn't have a map of the area - at least this far out.

"Map handy?" That owlish turn of his head occurred again. "If not I can attempt a summon."