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!"

 

[Mirthwind]

Mirthwind smiled cheerfully as the Maester woke, wiping the ostrich feather dry and setting it neatly on the blotter.

“Ah! Good afternoon, Maester! I must say - I quite envy your third-years. Most seem quite engaged with the material! Many very astute analyses, some laudable leaps of logic. Well, save this fellow here….” The half-elf’s fingers nimbly flipped a dozen essays back in a blur, before lightly thumping the offending paper for emphasis. “If he’s cracked a book this term, it’s because he tripped over it…”

He paused, emerald eyes meeting hers, a chestnut tousle tumbling into the middle of his forehead as an eyebrow arched, then both eyes widened in surprise.

“You genuinely don’t know why I’m here at all, do you? And that makes me more than a little curious, and perhaps even a bit impolite - Mirthwind, Maester Ulman’s tenth-year, at your service. Shall I explain?”

He turned lightly in the chair to face her, legs casually crossed, leaning forward and reaching a hand toward her cheek with the paper stuck to it, but politely stopping short- “May I?”

Magdalena Elbion

 

[Zxandor]

With dynamic mechanism Zxandor skidded to a dusty halt inches before the target it was given and looked down on the smaller being. In the bustling city street.

"Irman Harefoot..."

Kneeling down to face Irman more directly Zxandor extended a glove hand.

"...come with me if you want to live!"

It said with genderless matter of fact sincerity.

Irman Harefoot

 

[Vyx'aria]

Vyx’aria’s lips peeled back in a snarl at the word Dreadlord. Not in fear. In irritation.

“Dreadlord,” she growled softly, the sound more beast than elf. “An elf hunter.” Her gaze flicked briefly to the small flame dancing in Thraah’s hand, unimpressed.

She could feel it now, the tavern shifting, the weight of too many eyes pressing inward. Whispers thickened, chairs scraping back, hands hovering near knives and prayer charms alike. Panic always smelled the same on the surface. Acrid. Weak.

With a sharp, decisive motion, Vyx’aria released her grip.

Thraah dropped unceremoniously to the floorboards, the impact loud in the sudden hush. Vyx’aria stepped back at once, boots planting with controlled distance as she loomed over her, red eyes blazing beneath the spill of white hair now fully exposed.

“I cast no spell on you,” she snapped, voice low but cutting, pitched just enough for Thraah alone.

Thraah

 

[Thraah]

Dropping like a sack of spuds Thraah rose to her full height which was just to Vyx'aria's chest level and rubbed her throat as she shook the flame to snuff it from her other hand.

"Yeah, I'm a Dreadlord... but I'm no Elf hunter."
In this instance she supposed that was not *technically* true, not entirely, not the way Vyx'aria meant it.

From between Vyx'aria and the wall she poked her human head out to let the other patrons know.
"And this is Dreadlord business so unless you all want trouble EYES ON YOUR DRINKS!!!"

The bar cowered a bit. Clearly the mixture of a Dark Elf and a Dreadlord at each other's throats provoked much fear and suspicion, which was fine with her so long as she could leverage it which seemed to work as the murmuring quieted and faces turned down towards their tables.

"Nosey cunts!"
She added half to herself as she adjusted her coat and then her hair before addressing Vyx'aria again.

"Okay tall, dark and se...eecretive!"
Nice save.

"You say you didn't do it fine. I didn't cast anything on you. Heck I didn't know you existed before tonight. So what happened?"

Something in her Dreadlord training sparked and she remembered how to identify an enemy.
"Who gains from letting me know you and you know me, do they want us to fight or..."

The unspoken word hung in the air like a bad smell for a moment as Thraah played it off by flipping her coat back and putting her hands on her hips.

"... or what?"

Vyx'aria