Open Chronicles Hear ye Hear ye All Bleeding Hearts (A Valentines Thread)

[Irman Harefoot]

Irman moved in an awkward manner through the crowd and out into the side streets. His gait was that of a man at war with himself. For as much as Irman wished to pull away from his Amorous draw, each moment of lacking focus drew him ever further along the path of tugging red thread.

All around, others bound by this affectionate magic united with their spellbound others in scenes varying from sweet to saucy. In similar fashion, the pairings ran the gamut of looking no different from normal romantic couples seen throughout the city, to extreme mismatches liable to turn heads if not for most gazes being locked by unshakable love.

Most, save for Irman who through his struggles could see all of this playing out around him and hear every sweet nothing whispered through his painfully acute hearing. The things he heard chilled him, terrified him, and blended with the ethereal image of his magically compelled obsession.

“Will my sweetheart whisper sweet nothings to me as well?” Irman blurted out before promptly slamming his head against a wall.

“Ugh, it’s like I’m fighting myself… and besides, if anyone’s going to whisper sweet nothings it’s me!” *Slam!*.

Once again, Irman’s head made contact with stone leaving a crack in the wall Anna bit of blood on his forehead. The rabbit-man staggered, nearly tumbling onward as his pace sped up and slowed down sporadically— Until all of a sudden, Irman turned a corner and saw the figure from his mind jogging down the street towards him.

“Six above…” Irman muttered, his heart aflutter with a pit drilling into his stomach.

 

[Vyx'aria]

The moment the tavern door slammed open, Vyx’aria felt it.

Recognition.

Her spine stiffened beneath the cloak as the presence snapped into focus. The voice followed a moment later, sharp syllables in a surface dialect she did not speak, the cadence aggressive, demanding.

Her mug was still half-raised when the woman’s gaze locked onto hers.

Red eyes met brown.

That was all the warning Thraah received.

Vyx’aria moved with predatory speed, the table between them overturned in a violent crash as she closed the distance. One long-fingered hand snapped up, iron-hard around the woman’s throat, and drove her backward with brutal precision. Wood splintered as Thraah’s back hit the tavern wall hard enough to rattle tankards and silence the room in a single collective breath.

The impact shook dust from the rafters.

Vyx’aria leaned in close, forearm pinning her there, boots planted wide and unyielding. Her hood slipped back in the motion, spilling a stark shock of chalk-white hair down her shoulders. Unnatural, unmistakable. Several patrons recoiled instantly.

A drow.

Whispers rippled through the tavern like a spreading stain.

Vyx’aria’s grip tightened just enough to promise what came next. “Speak,” she growled, her accent thick with venom as she forced the words into the common tongue by sheer irritation. “Plainly.” Her red eyes burned inches from Thraah’s face. Her thumb pressed into the hollow beneath Thraah’s jaw, calculating, clinical. Despite the fury, the touch of her hand on the woman’s skin sent an unexpected surge of heat through her.

“Explain why you are using tricks,” she hissed, voice low and lethal, “or I let you bleed out on this wall.”

Thraah

 

[Thraah]

"Me!?!?"

Thraah struggled under the dark elf's might. The whole display was kinda sexy in a way she knew would probably get her killed if she acknowledged it so she tried to keep her focus... even if the dark elf did smell good this close up.

"You put your face into my head..."

She raised her hand and lit a small flame in it.

"I am Thraah, Dreadlord of the 3rd rank of the 5th Vel Arin Republic Volunteers. Drop me."

Her brown eyes almost got lost in the red that close, so very close.

"Look, I know I'm short, you don't have to flex like this!"
She dangled her feet to prover her point. There was at least a foot between her and the floorboards.

Vyx'aria

 

[Samantha Black]

The moment that glamour dissipated gave the Anirian cause to arch those eyebrows even more. Beyond that, she did not move a muscle, rooted to the spot by the image of a creature deemed especially rare to see in the sunlight. He was certainly not the first elf she'd ever met, not by a long shot, but she'd never seen one of his kind before in person.

It was ... novel. As if seeing a unicorn which up until her last year at the Academy she'd been certain didn't exist. That was until she'd been taken in by a fae and discovered an entire realm of tall-tales living and breathing on the same world as she. All those years she'd rolled her eyes and sneered at Chasmine and her fairy stories.

She knew better now.

". . . well, now. I--" He sucked air through his teeth. "Oh -- hm. This is a little awkward."

"You don't say..." awkward for him, perhaps. Mostly she was transfixed by the curiosity of the moment, "is this another trick of your Lady?"

Part of her hoped not. He wasn't hard on the eyes at all.

 

[Magdalena Elbion]

If nothing else in all of Arethil were true, the fact that Magdalena Elbion slept like the dead was. Through scritching and scratching of quill across paper; the shuffling of parchment; the gentle hum of thought; the clinking of inkwell; the creaking of chair ... she dozed on.

The elf had yet to vacate her dream which was rather odd considering the lucidity of her dreams had a habit of morphing in tune to stream of consciousness. Idle thoughts and rememberings from the day lead the array of curious visions and phantasms of her mind while she slept. Yet here was this elf and though sober of thought but not especially aware, she had the faintest notion that she'd seen him somewhere before in passing.

When he moved he didn't make the gentle sound of shuffling material or tapping shoes, but the scritch-scratch of quill against parchment. As a matter of fact, his steps trailed handwritten notes, some of which caused dream-her to snort at the preposterousness of it (dozing her gave a light snort in tandem and mumbled something about literary constipation of thought).

This continued on for some time. 26 papers to be exact until the bell tower just beyond her open office window gonged the new hour. Magda startled awake, sitting bolt upright with a paper glued to her cheek with drool.

"Hassafuh!-" she stammered, blinking blearily around, "I told you... not to touch that book M-mack."

Her gaze finally landed on the elf. No such effort was made to remove the parchment clinging to her face, "You!"