Dreadlords Study Abroad

[Davi]

Nora ditched her bartender to follow Davi once he had his drink to the polite cursing of the bartender. He'd seen how Davi had slipped the big mastiff a bit of jerky and knew she would be no bother to the lad. The initiate had had no real plan on wandering the room other than to get a feel for it but his feet ended up taking him to a large table where men were playing a game of dice. He'd never seen the game before.

"Five sixes," one man declared though Davi could see he definitely only had one.

"Yer a liar!" claimed another triumphantly and everyone turned over their cups. The original caller revealed his one five, but the man to his left had two and another two had one. The caller's smirk quickly turned sour and he swore much to the laughter of his comrades.

"D'yer wanna play lad?" a woman asked who sat amongst the group. Her skin looked like the hard leather soldiers favoured in their boots and she was missing several teeth when she smiled.

"Sure... but I've never played before," he shrugged and slipped into a seat.

 

[Edric]

The Music was now raucous and lively. Playing in a jaunty tune than drove men to dance and made women want to sing.

It was enough to almost sweep Edric away, almost.

Juliette was still cowering behind him like a wisp, trying to stick as close to his back as she possibly could without crawling into his shirt. A few men tried to speak to her, but the moment they did she seemed to jump away.

"Isn't this fun?" Edric called out over the din of the music, though Juliette's response was lost in a string of flustered curses and harrowing calls as she said something about Dreadlords not knowing proper decorum.

A wicked sort of smile flickered over Edric's face, and through the crowd he saw Noel draw closer.

He smiled wide, and called out to her over the music. "Hey Noel!"

Juliette's fingers tightened on his shirt as she saw the man behind the other Initiate.

"Whose your friend?" He asked.

 

[Noel]

A wide grin was affixed to Noel's face as she eyed Juliette from across the room and steadily made her way towards the half-elf. Edric made the job of finding the pair that much easier.

"This is Cesar," Noel said with a gesture towards the one-eyed man who trailed her. She was nearly positive that wasn't actually his name.

With a smirk she turned towards the bulky man and said, "and this is Juliette," she flashed a wink at their elvish friend who was clutching at Edric as if he was a raft in a vast ocean. "Cesar here would love the opportunity to dance with you, dear."

Juliette froze at the mention of that idea. Clearly she was in over her head and the charade had gone on long enough. Somehow, impressive as it was, she actually summoned the courage to shake her head. To refuse the giant of the man while in the presence of two Dreadlords who surely could've forced her to much worse than simply dance with someone.

"Aw, c'mon lass, I don't bite," Cesar prodded as tears welled up in the terrified girl's eyes.

"She said no," Noel's words were blunt and her face shifted from glee to apathetic almost immediately as she glared back at the eye-patch man. "Get yourself a drink," she tossed a coin towards Cesar and turned towards Edric and Juliette.

It was strange to feel sorrow for a girl who'd dismissed them as a bunch of dumb savages earlier in the day but they'd had their fun. At this point Noel was going to suggest they just find a quieter corner of the club so that Juliette could wait out the night in relative safety.

Instead, the lumbering oaf grabbed at Noel's arm. "I said I don't bite," Cesar spoke sternly, "now you and your half-elf friend are comin' for a dance."

 

[Henk]

As flustered as Henk was at being called out by a complete stranger about feelings he still was coming to terms with himself, he couldn't help but look over at the girl in question, speaking to one of the young students who they'd dragged with them accompanied by a man even more surly looking than the one sitting across from him. There was no easy explanation for why he felt the way he did about Noel. He knew when it started obviously; that single dance they'd shared, but... It had been months, and he still felt something akin to lightning shoot up and down his spine every time she looked at him.

There wasn't any time to explore those feelings. They were dangerous, she claimed. The longer this went on though, the less he found himself caring about the danger.

"Whas' she hangin' round Cesar for? Man's a righ' brute. Specially when he don' get what he wants." Henk didn't know if it was only because his drinking buddy had deduced his feelings for Noel, but a look of concern was resting on his bearded, drunken red face. It looked as though Cesar was trying to proposition Juliette for something, and needless to say, she didn't appear too terribly interested in whatever he had offered her.

Noel turned and glared at the brute, the kind of look she could give that made even some of their Proctors hesitate for a half-moment. A flipped coin and a grabbed arm later and Henk's new friend was pushing himself up from his seat to go interject in the altercation.

Henk released his mug, reaching out and grabbing the well-meaning patron's thick forearm.

"No. Watch. I love this part."

The smallest hint of a smirk shone through on his face as his other hand gathered some light at the tips of his fingers, ready to jump in if Noel somehow wasn't ready for this goon of a man.

The chances of that were very slim.

 

[Edric]

Juliette practically clung to Edric, pressing herself into his side as though he were a wall that she could hide behind. For a brief moment he felt pang of guilt springing through his chest, an emotion that he did not often feel.

What had been meant as a jest to a girl who thought of them as oafs and barbarians suddenly felt like it had been a very bad idea.

While Henk saw a well meaning patron, Edric noticed something else. Predatory eyes flickering up at them, seeing not patrons, but victims. Lecherous gazes and stares of men and women both who saw not someone to make a few coins from, but people they could hurt and rob. Fuck me.

He thought to himself, letting out a loud sigh.

Even with the jovial song still playing from the minstrels behind him Edric could feel the shift in the air the moment the man grabbed Noel's arm. It was a telling change from those at the table around them, despite the violence the he had already shown.

This would go one of two ways.

Edric knew which. "Stay close to me."

He told the little Elf who somehow got even closer to him.

 

[Noel]

Flesh grasped at her arm and then a split second later an elbow collided with Cesar's nose.

"Ack," the brute recoiled back slightly, one hand still grasping tighter to Noel's arm whilst his other moved to comfort his broken nose. To the man's credit the grip was far tighter than the initiate had anticipated, he had the muscle to have easily broken her arm if he had even a fourth of the training the academy had put them all through.

Alas...

A knee was rammed into the man's gut, followed by a swift haymaker towards his jaw. The jolly sounds of the minstrel ceased, men and women placed their tankards down, and a few hands drifted towards the hilts of daggers. What had been a muscular cyclops that towered over most of the patrons a few seconds prior was now a man who had fallen to his knees, clutching at his face and stomach.

Noel manipulated a piece of her platinum to clump near her now freed arm, it happened quickly enough that those without magic or training likely wouldn't have noticed it at all, then a final swift blow followed. Her arm descended upon the man's head, knocking him unconscious.

"Why'd the music stop?" she said calmly as the metal reformed into the intricate design of her armor.

The Dreadlord student glanced towards Davi and Henk, noticing how far they were from the rest of the pack, before eyes settled upon Juliette and Edric. Hopefully everyone would go back to their festivities but if things escalated further she wanted to have a solid exit plan in her mind's eye.

 

[Davi]

Even his fellow innitates would have been able to hear a pin drop in the pregnant silence that followed Noel's question.

On a mission when Davi had been only 14 years of age, the fort he had been seiging had been caught in a turbulent hurricane. The storm had been relentless, destroying both allies and foes fortifications, weapons, food and shelter. Then, so suddenly he had thought for many months he had dreamed it, everything had stopped. The wind and rain vanished and brilliant blue sky had shone above their head. For a few moments people had believed they had escaped mother natures wrath. They had been wrong.

It was a memory that came to mind now as the man playing cards opposite him seemed to reach for a card in the middle of the table, a sign the trouble was over, but then he saw the glint of metal--

Davi flipped the table a second before the blade buried itself in the thick wood and chaos broke out across the room as people drew weapons - or made them - and fell upon the nearest target.

 

[Henk]

Henk could have stepped in between Noel and Cesar, but as he'd told his new friend stitting at his table, he was rather fond of watching her work. Once that beautiful bit of business had concluded though, the pressure in the room had built up to the point you could slice it in half with a knife.

The man sitting with him let out a low whistle. "Can see why you like her."

The initiate smiled but didn't let his guard down. Yes, everything seemed as though it would fall back into place, but Henk had learned the hard way not to let his guard down too easily. All it took was one spark to set a fire, and this place was full of flammables.

Suddenly, a crash from where Davi had been seated, the table upended, and a blade skewered through the now splintered wood. Like clockwork, every lowlife and thug in the establishment drew their weapons and looked for something that would give them an excuse to run them through. Usually, that excuse was that the person next to them had a weapon drawn, and fights broke out in short order.

Henk's friend sprung from the table, pulling a knife from his coat as he lunged at the filthy man who'd took a stab at Davi. It was the last time he'd ever see the stranger who'd brought him a drink and company. The brief friend he'd made was soon on his back with at least four others on top of him.

Things needed to stop before they went any further.

Henk pushed his own table over, his mug shattering on the ground as he quickly formed three small orbs of light between the fingers of his hand, using his other to pluck them from his fingers and toss them as best he could at his classmates, whom they would hover around erratically.

It was the best Henk could manage in the loud brawl to deliver them fair warning-- Cover your eyes.