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Supermassive Black Hole (HighLordMhoram)

Started by Eckhart_Von_Musel, July 09, 2017, 11:55:51 AM

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Eckhart_Von_Musel

Emilia Black-Hearth walked through the town of Maplegrove, her tattered cloak dragging through the dirt behind her. 'Imbecilic humans can't even keep their accursed streets clean!" she thought as she gingerly stepped around a pile of horse manure. "I knew these animals were vile, but this? This is an embarrassment to their entire species."

After a few more minutes of walking, Emilia found what she had been looking for- a weapons shop. Emilia smirked. She had lost her old sword in what she'd come to refer to as "the accident", and Emilia felt it was high time she got a new one. Walking through the door of the shop, Emilia leaned against the door frame coolly. She pointed to the man at the counter. "You, human, give me your finest blade."

The shopkeeper gave Emilia an odd look. "... Do you have the coin?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "All of my weapons are forged from cyathil, so I don't sell them for cheap."

"Oh, you'll be giving it to me for free." Emilia said dismissively. "The quality of blade will likely be underwhelming as is, so just be happy I'm willing to accept it at all."

"... Get out of my shop."

Emilia sneered. "Make me, worm." The shopkeeper proceeded to pull a musket out from under the counter, and Emilia hurriedly stepped out the door. "Stupid human, how dare he? Doesn't he have any idea of who I am?" she thought angrily as she stormed down the road. "When I get my powers back, I'll kill him! Hell, I'll erase this entire town off the map!"

Emilia frowned. Her current predicament was not something she enjoyed dwelling on, and this time was no exception. "I can't be here anymore." Emilia decided as she took the road that led out of town. "These obnoxious creature are too moronic to understand their place."

As she walked through the forest that gave the town it's name, Emilia spotted a young human hacking away at one of the maple trees. "Will you cut that out?" she yelled at the boy. "You're making a dreadful racket! I can't hear myself think!"

After one last *CRACK*, the boy turned to Emilia and grinned sheepishly. "Haha, sorry! I'm training to be a knight when I get older, so I gotta work on my sword swings."

Emilia studied the human larva with great interest. "A knight, huh?" she asked. Emilia pointed to the wooden sword in the boy's hand. "And I suppose that's your practice blade?"

The boy beamed at her. "Yep! My dad made it out of the old teak tree in our backyard!"

Emilia smiled back, and stepped towards the boy. "Well then, how about a sparring match? That tree can't exactly fight back, now can it?"

The child gave her an confused look. "With you? But you don't have a- OW!" the boy shrieked as Emilia's clenched fist collided with his face. Collapsing, he dropped his sword- only for it to be snatched up by Emilia before he could retrieve it. "H-hey, that's not fai-" he began, but he was knocked unconscious when the woman brought the wooden blade down on his head.

Emilia looked down at her handiwork, and then at the blade. "It's not perfect- in fact, it the opposite of perfect- but I suppose it will do for now." she thought as she continued down the forested path. Emilia laughed. "What a rush! I almost forgot how good it felt being in control like that."

She would continue down the road, wooden sword slung over her shoulder.

HighLordMhoram

"So there I was," Garrett declared to the rapt attention of his young audience, "cornered by a mountain bear three--no, four--times my size! He reared back on his hind legs and bellowed a challenge at me. His voice was so deep and so loud, it shattered a boulder beside me like that!" He snapped his finger, and the children all gasped.

The drunk was seated on a stump in a small clearing beside the road, the youngsters gathered around him in a half circle. "What did you do?" One of them asked timidly.

Garrett grinned at him. "Why, I roared a challenge right back, of course. But he was a stubborn bast--er, bugger. He didn't back down. So I was forced to discard my spear and wrestle him hand-to-hand. Well, hand-to-paw, to be precise. For three days we fought, tearing pieces of the mountain down with us. But when the dust settled, I had a nice new bearskin cloak to wear." The children applauded appreciatively. "Where's the cloak?" one of them asked. "Can we see it?"

Garrett rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, ah, no, you can't." At the disappointed sighs that followed, he hurriedly added, "Because I lost it in my battle with mimolnir the dragon!" The children shrieked a little at the mention of a dragon. "D-did you kill it?" one of them asked, looking up at the sky nervously. Garrett reared his head back and laughed, then declared loudly, "Are you kidding, lass? I killed that dragon DEAD!"

Eckhart_Von_Musel

As she walked down the road, Emilia inspected the sword she'd acquired. For something made of wood- an inferior material in her eyes- the quality of the craftsmanship was surprisingly decent. The blade wasn't sharp per-say, but it could easily become so with some filing. The handle had the letters "L.L." carved into it- the boy's initials, Emilia assumed. The entire thing had even been sanded and polished, which gave the weapon a surprisingly professional look. Emilia scratched the back of her head. "Why would somebody waste their time and effort on this?" she thought. "It's weak- something that should be tossed aside as soon as a superior blade is available. There's simply no sense in making it look nice."

After about ten minutes, Emilia heard the mewling of human children. "Sweet Nevira, more of them?" Eye twitching, she looked around for the source of the noise, finding it just a ways off the road. Six or seven human larvae had seated themselves around an older human, who was in the middle of telling a some ridiculous tale about a bear. Writing it off as nonsense, Emilia continued to walk down the road...

"Are you kidding, lass? I killed that dragon DEAD!"

Emilia came to a dead stop. Slowly she turned in the direction of the humans, a look of disgust plastered on her face. "No, that can't be right." she thought, eyes narrowed. "There is no chance in hell that a creature such as that could slay something infinitely superior like a dragon." She clenched her fists. "How dare he lay claim to such a feat?"

Walking towards the man, Emilia would sit cross-legged on the ground next to to the children, wooden sword on her lap. She stared at the man with a look of utter contempt. "Please sir," she said in a childish, mocking tone. "Won't you tell us more?"

HighLordMhoram

Well, that was different. Garrett blinked at the newcomer, rendered speechless for a moment. The children seemed surprised by her entrance as well, so she obviously wasn't someone they knew. Something about the woman set all of Garrett's instincts on edge, but she seemed innocent enough despite her glowering. And she was pretty. Forcing a grin back onto his face, he said, "Sure thing, lass." He adjusted his position on the stump, and all the children turned back to him as he continued his tale.

"I was standing atop a cliff one old day, whiling away the hours on guard duty, when all of a sudden I heard a piercing shriek in the distance, a scream like no other."

"The dragon!" A little girl gasped, her hands over her mouth in horror. Garrett nodded solemnly.

"Yes indeed, sweetheart. It came searing from the sky and whoosh! Right over my post." The children all whimpered in fear. "It banked around, clearly sensing that I was the only man alive who could provide it with a real challenge. It descended until it rested on the mountaintop with me, it's big, snotty nose not three feet away."

"It didn't speak, of course, and neither did I. I looked into its bleak, soulless eyes and knew that I had to beat it, then and there, or all of Serendipity would fall prey to its hunger."

"What did you do? What did you do?" A boy asked, hopping up and down until he lost his balance and put a hand on Emilia's shoulder to keep from falling down."

"I did what any man would do, my friend. I hefted my spear--" here he grabbed his spear from where it was leaning against a tree and leaped up onto the stump, causing the children to shriek, "---and I leaped onto its face! The bugger tried to shake me off, he did. He took off soaring into the air and tossed his head this way and that, like a dog trying to get off a stubborn flea. But this flea wasn't going anywhere. I clambered up the lengths of its snout, barely keeping a grip with one hand and both legs, and then..." he leaped off of the stump and brought his spear down with a cry--until it was less than three inches from Emilia's eye. "--I plunged my spear into its eye socket, killing it instantly. The fall was great and terrible, but thankfully the dragon's body softened the blow."

Relaxing, Garrett sat back down and chuckled at the awestruck gaze of his audience. "Unfortunately, the landing pulverized its body into dust, so I wasn't able to salvage any trophy from it. And the dust it left completely ruined my cloak." The children laughed at that, then immediately began to clamor for another tale, but Garrett was watching only the newcomer.

Eckhart_Von_Musel

The man's story seemed to get more obnoxious with each passing moment- as if it was specifically crafted to piss Emilia off. The terminology he used rang through her head, each word offending her more and more. "Snotty? Soulless? The audacity of this human, I swear."

Emilia flinched as one of the children grabbed onto her shoulder. She quickly scooted away, a look of disgust on her face. "Ew! Ew! That is so gross!"

Emilia grew increasingly uncomfortable as the story progressed, clearly upset with how one of her own kind was being cast as a villain. "This story is dumb." she thought angrily. "If I was telling it, the dragon would just eat the human. Also the human would have magic powers- like, a ton of them. Spears are boring."

It was just as she though this that the man demonstrated how he supposedly killed the dragon, nearly impaling Emilia's eye in the process. Emilia stared at the spear tip, then a the man. If looks could kill, this human would be dead ten times over.

Finally, the story was over. The children cheered and begged for more, but Emilia simply crossed her arms. "Well, I think that fabrication was entirely outrageous." she said snidely. "Really, do you expect me to believe a dragon would simply crumble into dust upon defeat? We aren't silverfish." Emilia closed her eyes, a small smirk on her face. "Really, you should know better than to make up such nonsense."

HighLordMhoram

Garrett suppressed a wince at the girl's acid tone. "Easy there, lass. No need to try and spoil the fun. You don't see me going around...wait, we? what do you mean by that?" Had the girl really just grouped herself in with dragons? Garrett suddenly felt a bit better. Maybe this lass was just a bit crazy.

The children caught on to her words at the same time as Garrett did, and immediately they began to erupt in snide remarks. The kids already didn't like the way Emilia had looked down her nose at them and seemed repulsed by their very existence, so they were eager to get back at her. "You think you're a dragon? that's stupid!" "You don't have scales or anything." "Just 'cause you're so scrawny doesn't mean you have to play pretend." "Try to fly away. Fly away, dragon!"

Soon, that last taunt became a chant. "Fly away, dragon! Fly away, dragon! Fly away, dragon!"

"Alright, enough is enough!" Garrett snapped, coming to stand between Emilia and her newfound tormentors. The kids all looked at him with shock. "You lot oughta be ashamed of yourselves. Ganging up on a young lady like that. Where's your warrior's pride?" The children looked down, shamefaced. Garrett turned to Emilia and held out a hand to her, smiling charmingly. "You'll have to forgive the overeager little tykes, miss...?" He said, waiting for her name.

Eckhart_Von_Musel

Emilia could not have been more livid. Here she was gracing these humans with her presence, and they mocked her for it? As her eye began to twitch, the children began a chant.

"Fly away, dragon! Fly away, dragon! Fly away, dragon!"

Emilia recoiled. "Y-you're speaking insolence to me? Outrage! Don't you realize-"

It was at this point the man stepped in. Standing in between Emilia and the children, he scolded them for their behavior. To Emilia's surprise, it worked- the larvae stop taunting her. Some of them actually looked sorry! Emilia almost appreciated it- almost.

When the man offered Emilia his hand, she stood up and took a step back. "Black-Hearth. Miss Black-Hearth." Emilia said, still staring at the mans hand suspiciously. "And jokes on them- I can only take my true form at night." Glancing up at the sky, she smirked- it was high noon.

"Ha! That will shut them up."

HighLordMhoram

The implication of what she was saying wasn't lost on the kids, who all of a sudden looked a lot more scared than they had a moment ago. Garrett, on the other hand, only laughed. "Well kids, what do we say to the dragon lady?" The children all kept their gazes on the ground as they muttered tiny apologies. "Good. Now run along, it's almost lunch time. I'm sure your parents will be worried sick. I'll take care of the mean ol' dragon lady." The kids were only too eager to take off, bolting down the road with a chorus of shrieks and laughter.

Garrett watched them go, then turned back to Emilia. "You aren't too friendly, are you?" he said cheerfully. "The name's Garrett. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, miss Black-Hearth." He bowed low at the waist, flashing her a grin. "I haven't seen you around town before. Are you new here? I'll be happy to give you a tour of the place. I know the location of every pub and tavern by heart." As he spoke, he seized his spear, twirled it in his hand a few times, then rested it casually on his shoulder. "What do you say?"

He hoped she would say yes. Despite her apparent disdain for him, he rather liked this girl. Hopefully spending more time around her would get her to warm up to him somewhat.

Eckhart_Von_Musel

Garret managed to get the children to leave- always a good thing in her eyes. They even apologized! "Huh." Emilia thought. "Perhaps this one knows it's place. That's certainly a welcome change of pace.

"I haven't seen you around town before. Are you new here? I'll be happy to give you a tour of the place. I know the location of every pub and tavern by heart. What do you say?"

Emilia gave the man a long stare, mouth ajar. After a few moments, she burst into hysterics. "Pffffthahahahahahahhahaha! You- you think I want to spend time with you?" she said, her voice cruel. "You're a monkey to me, Garret. Would you want to spend time with a monkey?"

HighLordMhoram

Well, that was an unpleasant surprise. "Well, that's one way to thank someone for standing up for you," Garrett said blandly. "It's a wonder you're not surrounded by a pack of friends right this moment." He stretched his arms and grabbed up his spear. "Well, seeing as I've foolishly let you run off my audience, I suppose I'll have to ask you to leave so I can take a nap on this very comfortable stump. So why don't you....how did it go again? Or, right! Fly away, dragon." He leaned on his spear with an easy smile. "That is what you think you are, right? Me, I think you're a bit wrong in the head, seeing as you seem to have the same kind of monkey body as me."

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