Arlen -- in the woods somewhere -- Open
Arlen had become a thrall 34 years ago, and since then, he hadn't aged a day. He felt like he should, though, even if his body was trapped at 21, full of potential. Arlen still paused as he moved in the morning, like he should be expecting pains that weren't there. When he stood after sitting on a stone floor, his back didn't ache, his knees weren't sore and creaky, and he didn't lose feeling in his legs; he just stood, gracefully as a youth, not at all like his mind expected his 55-year-old body to act.
Of course, once his active brain kicked into gear, he was able to remember that he'd never felt old, not for a moment, and the anticipation of invisible aches faded away faster than the dew under the sun. He'd go through his exercises with the ease of habit and the muscle memory of decades, throwing in a few mock sword forms in for variety-- even if Arlen had never held a sword in his life and didn't plan to. The mock forms were challenging on the core.
He sat down to grab a drink when Xeinixi called. <<Arlen.>> Her voice hissed in his head like a snake imitating a swarm of bees, a sound that made his skin break out in gooseflesh no matter how prepared he was for it and, being off guard entirely after his morning routine, the sound wormed its way through his spine causing a shiver to run icy cold all the way to his tailbone. <<Fetch.>> Arlen's patron was a Demon of few words and he threw himself onto the ground as the images flashed behind his eyelids, showing a path, a waterfall, a crumbling log cabin with a roof of birch bark. The pictures came dizzyingly fast and it was only because of his long years in Xeinixi's service --and the fact that he was lying face down in the dirt to ground himself-- that he could make sense of the Demon's directions at all.
"Thanks," Arlen grunted as the images faded. The Demon didn't understand sarcasm and it was the one weapon the Thralls could use to strike back at Xeinixi without running the risk of angering her. He felt her presence linger --in his soul? his mind?-- for a few heartbeats longer and then with a
moist pop like detaching a slug from a leaf the Demon was gone. He felt the wetness of the soil soaking through his shirt and sticking to the side of his face, but he stayed grounded until the dizziness of Xeinixi's passing fully subsided before he levered himself into a sitting position again, doing his best to brush off the dirt and grass.
[[ Arlen can be with anyone and going anywhere; him being a Thrall doesn't mean much until Xeinixi needs him for something. I have a lead here, but that could be as near or far as needed.
There's also a place for having someone be in the house, or another person trying to fetch the same thing for a different reason.
I took the demon's name from a random name generator's options squished together, but I was thinking it would be pronounced with the X's as shi/zee not Zeh/ks Not that it really matters how one reads this keysmash of a name, but just for ~flavor~ so like SHAY-ni-shi (not my english-centric zay-NIX-ee) ]]
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Camille -- a cabin in the woods somewhere, maybe a small village -- open
"Why did they have to use a moon-phase incantation?" Camille muttered, scraping the herbs off the plate with the side of her knife. "It would have been simpler to boil it." She gestured with the knife as she talked through her frustrations and Quinn's wide eyes followed the tip, looking worried. Then again, Camille's cat always had a worried look about him. Perhaps he thought it was a toy of some kind that she refused to let him play with.
She put the knife down on the cutting board and Quinn returned to the half-lidded doze only cats could master. With a irritated sigh Camille glared at the crumpled bits of leaves for a few more seconds, debating with herself if she really wanted to work more with them even if the simple potion had confounded her all morning. Deciding to cut her losses while she still had some sanity left about her, she left the workstation to clean for later and slammed open the door. Quinn jumped with a displeased meow, but when he realized the door was open he dashed outside and set about grooming his fur in the patch of sunlight on her porch like he asked to be let out all along.
The breeze was refreshing and Camille spread her arms and tipped her head up to enjoy it, basking as much as Quinn in the bright sunlight. "How about a quick run to town, hmm?" she asked her cat. Quinn paused mid-lick, his paw extended, as if pondering the question. "I should get some edible food for dinner." That was a word Quinn knew, and the silver tabby bounced to his paws, circling her ankles. "Yeah, a good dinner sounds perfect," she agreed. Camille fetched her hat from inside the door and sat on the porch to pull on her long boots --the path to town often flooded, and even when it wasn't shin-deep in cloudy river-water, it was often muddy for days after a rain.
Thus equipped, Camille made sure the windows nearest her workstation were shut and then descended the steps to the path with Quinn quick on her heels. The cat wasn't content with following and made his way to the front, questing at the base of every leaf before dashing back ahead to lead the way. With a hum, Camille fell into step behind him, wondering what she would get for food and hoping someone had been out hunting recently. A hearty venison stew was just what she needed to finish this stubborn project.
[[ Again, lots of options! Also I picked the name Camille from league, but apparently it was also the name of one of the layers in the recent depp-heard case so that's pretty funny. ]]
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Rex / T -- the Husk of Andorra -- open
The Dragon rose above the cityscape like a spire, it's neck pointed to the sky with roofed peaks of its scaly nose and sharp angled face, eyes like windows or faces of a clock illuminated with embers beneath their lidless irises, painting the scales a bright crimson with the light reflected from the sun. Its claws held tightly to the ruins of several buildings, its tail sprawled through streets, its wings tented behind it in a backdrop of satin red curtains waiting to open the stage to its grand entrance.
Since it had landed in the heart of Andorra two weeks ago, the Dragon had not moved.
At first, no one had dared go near it, but as time passed the Dragon felt less like a threat and more like an organic-themed skyscraper that had been erected within minutes and did not yet have any tenants. Emboldened, the scavengers circled closer, tip-toeing back into the streets beside its scaly tail. "Don't touch it," the word got out, "it burns hotter than iron."
Rex hadn't seen anyone with the burns to prove it, but he was smart enough to leave sleeping Dragons lie.
T... wasn't. "Ronnie says Dragon's still got magic," they said. "I bet a single scale is like, a million pearls. Two million." They held out two fingers with a grin.
"If it's worth so much, how come nobody's done it yet?" Rex prompted and T stopped in the middle of the street to think about it forcing Rex to look around and make sure no one had a bead on them.
The city block was empty at this time of day, with the heat and all radiating up from the pavement, most scavengers tended to hole up until nightfall. They were a nocturnal sort after all. Rex was only out now because they'd been trapped on the wrong side of town at dusk the night before and it would be safer crossing the abandoned sectors while the pirates napped. Not that he expected anyone over here; the outskirts of the city have long since been picked clean and now that the Dragon looming overhead was old news, the pirate crews had begun moving back into old haunts nearer the city center where they could be closer to the... action.
He wished they could have been a little stealthier, but asking T to be quiet was like asking the Dragon to leave Andorra: you know it wouldn't listen even if you could yell loud enough to get into its head. The faster they could get into cover, the better. Finally, T must have come up with an answer to Rex's question because they started moving again. Whatever that answer was, however, they didn't enlighten Rex with their ideas. Instead, they complained about being thirsty, so Rex grudgingly handed over his bottle.
"Let's get moving, kid. Sun's not going to stay up forever," Rex warned when T slowed to admire the Dragon's wings, now visible as they moved out of the shadow of an overgrown building and into a crossroad. But even as he reprimanded T, he could hardly keep his eyes off the mesmerizing folds himself. The wings were so incomprehensibly large that it remained a backdrop until he looked above and saw the ridges and spines of the Dragon's neck protruding from the top, snapping everything into perspective in a dizzying snap. Red meets red meets sky blue between grey concrete, haloed by the blazing eye of the sun at its peak.
Rex shook his head and forced himself to check the windows of the buildings, pushing T forward with his hands: "go," he muttered, though confidence had left his voice, leaving it hollow and shaking. He blinked the red sun-spots from his vision and crossed the road, putting them back in shadow and out of sight of the Dragon's back. Even through heat so sweltering pirates hid from it, Rex shuddered.
