The path less taken (Attn: Quill)

[Anonymous]

『Time』: Early Evening
『Locale』: The heart of La'marri, random road
『Current Characters In Play In Thread』: Bryce Eachan, Quill

Slow, stumbling, and careless: words that all well described the dragging foot  falls of Bryce. From one job to another she was making head way while in the back of her head trying to plot some excuse as to why she wouldn't be making it to her second job. The best that she could come up with was, "I'm dead, please do not disturb."

Sadly, in these times getting gradually darker, even death should not do one and their job part. Purposely taking any and all back roads, wishing bodily harm of most sorts on herself, Bryce sulked mightily more so each step she drew nearer to the wood and brick building that smelled of ale and failure.

As evening set, it tugged with it the usual blanket of vibrant colors and the twangy scents of nature; aspects of her place of birth that she secretly adored. From homes came the smell of dinner waiting, from the forest the cold air was drawn--despite how hard things were, she only thought of leaving once; the usual sob story of going to the big city only to live in poverty, waiting the time to send for family.
Some worried of becoming a statistic. Bryce worried of becoming a walking ray of hope and sunshine, which would be boring for her but great for her family she supposed.

Running her fingers through the tangled mass of purple that sat atop her hair, she heaved a sigh and ambled to a stop. Bryce was in no mood to make it into work at all, let alone in a timely manner.

(OOC: Sorry if this one sucked and was short, I'm being tugged at to watch House.)

[Anonymous]

Earlier that day, in the outskirts of La'Marri...

Hasty, nearly too smooth by far and needlessly careful: the exasperated hedge-magician exclaimed, pointing a gnarled wand at Quill's intricately-woven spell and muttering colourful expletives to herself. Quill winced at his mentor's scathing critique, and lost focus. The nifty pattern of light collapsed upon itself, casting a bright flash that sent the hedge-magician's harried-looking cat scampering between her owner's legs with a high-pitched screech.

Quill struggled to rein in his temper; the old crone wasn't his idea of a tutor. She was a village wisdom, a hag without any real discipline in the arcane arts. He had first pictured his future mentor to be a wizened sage, a true master of magic. Not an old, dog-faced crone in a decrepit hut out in the bushes that smelled of dubious herbs.

And so Quill told the hedge-magician.

It was not any surprise that the young lad found himself outside dazed upon his rump.

"Get out! Get out!" The witch's screeched just like her feline familiar; Quill could imagine her waving wand about energetically. "You youngsters are all the same! Rude and foul-mouthed, no respect for your elders!"

Quill dusted himself off, with a roll of his eyes. This was certainly a bad portent for his education as a magician.

Shit.


Present time...

"-and so the hag kicks me out of her hut, even without giving back my money!" Quill banged his fist angrily against the countertop. His red countenance was a testimony to the amount of vinegary wine he had consumed in the past few hours; that is if you could peer past his curls of black hair that obscured his face.

"Alright Quill, that's the fourth time you've told the story," the barrel-chested barkeep rumbled. "And while I like you, it's not going to win you another free drink. You've had enough."

The young scribe-potential-mageling waved his arms about in protest, his rolled-up black cuffs bouncing as he did so. He had most definitely did not have enough, this joke-of-a-tavern supplied the dodgiest drink ever anyway, and Quill told him so.

And so Quill once again found himself on the street, except this time with a few terrible bruises worse for wear. In a burst of sobriety, Quill checked his money pouch. And realised the innkeep must have robbed him of his last coppers...which were meant to have supplied him a room in the local inn for the night.

Things were most definitely not looking so great.

Ever since he had left the employ of the scribe, Quill had walked from one disastrous incident to another. Nothing in his life seemed to be working the way he had pictured it in his mind. Quill sighed. He wasn't like himself. In retrospection, maybe he shouldn't have been so rude to the old hedge-magician. Too late to feel sorry now.

With a groan, Quill somehow rose to his feet and began to stagger along the dark road, mindless of his own surroundings. Indeed, it wasn't like he was a common drunk, but Quill believed his current circumstances called for such recklessness.

He took another step ahead, unheeding in his self-pity and utter drunkenness, right into a tall, unsavoury-looking bravo. If Quill had an ounce of his intelligence and common sense remaining (not to mention his sobriety), then he'd have quickly apologised and backed away.

But Quill instead looked up, and took in the bravo's scarred arms and face, his strapping physique, a threadbare eyepatch and a ornate sword too well-forged to be in the lawful property of a thug; all marks of a never-to-do-well that did dirty jobs for the undesirable sort.

And so with a slight waver and a finger jabbed squarely into the bravo's muscular chest, Quill told him so, in a more or less rude and ineloquent fashion that belied Quill's normally placid and diplomatic deportment.

Things were most definitely not looking so great. At all.

(OOC: No problem! House is great. And I like quick posts; too used to being expected to pumping out 1000-word posts which drag on and only destroy my enthusiasm! Hope mine was okay. BTW, I personally don't mind a little powerplaying if it helps moving things along.)

[Anonymous]

One drink for the good times, two drinks for bad, and three on one's way out the door. Songs clucked while drowning in ale were the best as describing the slippery slope through the door and then out again. While those serving were full of smiles and sympathetic nods the first round or two, beyond that saying that your family was eaten by wilder beasts wouldn't get you more than a glass of ice water and a reminder to sleep on your side. Kinship could, often times, be as thin as the paper that one's ever growing tab was scribbled on.

The barkeep was known to be a careless man of another sort. As in: If you don't have the coin to pay he could careless. Such was the perk of being the <B>only</B> public tavern in the village. Some said that he meant well, that he provided a service. Even his own wife reserved the words "well meaning", which were almost always followed by the slight 'bastard'.

The streets of the village had become very acquainted with throngs of haunched over, hobbling, hedonists; their numbers growing every day, their pockets and purses quickly emptied into the grubby hands of the bar keep and his employ. Speaking of, Bryce had taken to dragging her feet to the point of hardly moving at all. Her hang over had, thankfully, cleared itself up more so after her evening meal and a chilly wash; which only made the thought of going to the tavern less appetizing, as she'd be tempted to drink until the point of bloat again.

She could just show restraint, but what would be the fun in that? It was more fun to give false hope to the bar boys, sock them one when it came time that they ask her for some means of repayment for the drink and food, only to stumble home bruised and laughing. It was no fault of her's that they could not see the obvious, that she had never taken up their offers to roll in the hay out back--and never would.

It was a small world after all, growing steadily smaller with each begrudged step forward. The over head lanterns swayed in the Summer current, the oil within washing the glass with a butter yellow light. The cobble stone roads wound their paths seemingly without care from one point to another, abruptly stopping before various hearth and home of assorted villagers. The back route contained mostly private homes, the occasional too small to be minded business, and the obvious orphans whom had ventured into town in hopes of finding something with which to take out their childhood energy on.
Another five houses or so and Bryce would have made it to her destination. Thus she stopped off and on to admire the same sights as before; a broken window, the whistle of the night air through a nearing chimney, and the spot where she stopped to vomit on her way home.

How sad, she had a routine at the age of nineteen! She should have felt worse about being able to see her day in a wet spot on the ground, but her attention suddenly shifted to two deep cracks in the distance.
Upon squinting she was able eventually to tell her ass from a hole in the ground, so to speak.
Muscles gone stiff in anticipation, she clung to the shadows and edged forward, her curiosity too strong to be cast aside by the mental mutterings of, "It is none of your damned business."

Thin eyebrows perking up, the girl could do nothing but watch (at first), as some one made very clear that they had a death wish. The swagger with which the smaller figure moved was another familiar sight, someone was drunk out of their bloody mind; and about to get their what's for thanks to a unbelievably bad choice to get brave.

<I>Today just was <B>not her day</I>, a selfish thought born from a moment of contemplated selflessness. Well, selflessness as well as the fact that she and every other person at in La'marri knew better than to try and have a battle of drunken wits with an armed man (one known to care not whom it was that fell under his blade).
Glancing around in hopes of finding another path to follow to the tavern, Bryce's stomach lurched as she was met with another obvious fact: right place and wrong time, there was only one road to take.

Leering up and at the star pocked sky from behind the mess of her bangs, Bryce groaned, "You fuckin' owe me."

Things were suddenly not looking so wonderful for <B>either of them. One by choice the other by sheer luck of the drunk.
As she sprung from the shadows, doing her best to keep a careful watch and distance, she could see the well defined muscles of the Bravo's shoulders twitch into action....
What the fuck was she doing trying to help someone who was clearly suicidal!?

Then again, it did not look as though the challenger was the type to rumble. He looked more like a leaf a drift on raging rapids, at least at the moment. If luck was on her side, they would both live to forget they ever met.

More of a hunk of vein laced meat, a fist took flight in retaliation. She was already hating herself for her decision to act....
She was going to hate herself even more for it in the morning, when her whole body was going to scream in reminder of the evening. Her body tugging itself into action, she forced herself between the two men, the bone of her shoulder erupting into pain over flowing.

"Not fuckin' to'nite ass hole!"
For such a luckless night, at least he did not opt to use his sword as an opening to his sick joke.

(OOC: Ehe, thank you for being so understanding! And you're right, there is a place and time for everything, even in role playing. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Hopefully this one didn't power play you too much, if so, send me an IM and I'll re-write it)

[Anonymous]

Magic is a curious thing.

To the studious practitioner, it comes easily to one's fingertips; like a handsome courtier plying his deft turns of phrase at a masquerade. Yet to the ordinary mage it is a fickle force, as with this analogy a somewhat blunt charisma that only ever effected itself by equal parts luck and potential.

And in this case, a gracious portion of the drink.

Quill was a poor fighter with his fists and any weapon one could care to name. His forte lay in the battles of the mind and wits rather than that of sheer brawn. And so in his inebriated state, the young lad instinctively sought out the flows of magic coursing beneath the physical, roughly embracing that subtle power with all the charm of a dim-witted drunk. This, Quill would later muse self-deprecatingly, was most certainly the case that fateful night. He was so focused upon his spell that he didn’t realise the woman jumping to take the blow meant for him, instead carefully carving his sorcery by word and hand.

But what gods-forsaken spell he would have formed in his anger and drunkenness, Quill would never know. The childish voices echoed in the street, intermingling with the whispered words of power coursing from Quill’s lips.

�Hey, leave them alone!�

�Yeah! Pick someone else your own size!�

Pebbles were pelting his unsavoury attacker; a few poorly aimed projectiles struck Quill squarely across the forehead, causing him to cease his spell-working and fall to the earth with a most unmanly cry. But the majority of the rocks struck their intended target; the flurry of missiles was enough to drive the bravo off running for cover and away from Bryce and Quill.

At this point, Quill was almost unconscious for his relatively frail body could only take so much from the drink. Yet his ears could register the scrambling steps belonging to those of children; closer and closer they came until silence. Then-

�Hey, Quill? Big brother geek! Are you okay?� A cacophony of other diminutive voices added questions to the same effect, with the loudly-whispered "Man, he looks like crap!"[/color] from one of the cheekier ones accompanying their queries.

Quill opened one bruised eye. He recognised the voice, and the derogatory term they used to label him. "H-hey, little guys. W-what are you all doing here?"

There was a semi-circle of kids ringing him, whom he all recognised as children belonging to the Orphanage. They were a rather rough bunch, with scuffed tunics and little fists planted firmly on their hips; a few still carried rocks and warily watched for the possible return of the bravo. How they managed to extricate themselves from the crow-like vigilance of the Matron, Quill had no utter clue.

At that point, Quill didn't think he could manage another sentence, and fell asleep.

�Hey, wake up!� The kids nudged him with their feet, leaving dust marks on his worn black mantle. �Oh man.�

�He wasn’t drinking, was he?"[/color]

�Wait till we tell the Matron…"[/color]

"It's not like he could get in trouble. He's a big person now!�[/b]

"Whatever. We can't just leave him here.�[/b]

The kids, in a quite endearing manner, all slowly turned their chubby and angelic faces to the nice lady who had come to big brother geek's rescue. Albeit endearing and angelic kids still carrying plenty of rocks.


(OOC: Again, it's np =). Powerplaying is fine with me; it's inescapable if a story's to go ahead really. Like in this case - it's up to you what happens with Quill. Feel free to powerplay to make things smooth okay!)