A Pain in the Neck

[Alain the Carnedge]

Following what he guessed was standard procedure, Alain followed the guard back into Darkshire after taking his well-earned money. "Uh...sorry to spring this on you, but we've got another job for you to do...We were originally going to send it to the new Primes, but they've gone on a peacekeeping quest with the Paladin. [color] The guard spoke with admiration in his tone, but still looked like he was going to jump out of his skin if anything nearby so much as twitched, looking left and right at every corner until they had walked into an alley. "Go on, what happened in my absence, what's-your-face?" Alain inquired, cracking his fingers before his escort spoke up. "Alright, so a Manticore's found it's way into the town-" "The hell? How'd your skeleton army miss a giant lion-human-winged-dragon hybrid flying in from nowhere?"

The guard scowled at being interrupted, though was apparently smart enough to not attack or insult the Prime in front of him."Okay, sorry. It was a poor choice of words. More accurately, it was a pet for someone in the town that, upon reaching maturity, went on a killing spree. Even the undead aren't safe, it'll eat their bones, anything. Your job is to kill or subdue it, just prevent it from killing anyone else. Can we trust you to do this?" The cloaked one gave an audible sigh as he cleaned some of the blood off his face. "Sure. If you all die, who'm I going to get pay from? I don't need it's location by the way." The protector took a few steps back. "What? Why?" Then the guard fell face-first, poisonous spines through his back, Alain's face barely registering a hint of surprise. "...Because I have enough blood on me to attract anything with a sense of smell for a few miles." Three more spines came heading his way so he jumped over them, grabbed the guard's paralyzed figure and continuously bursted down the streets, the Manticore letting loose a furious roar that could be heard all over Darkshire at the loss of it's prey.

Alain dragged the guardsman into the streets and to one of his buddies. "W-what happened to him!?" They raised their crossbow and the cloaked one rolled his eyes like he dealt with this all the time. "You know, a lot of people are idiots when they panic. That includes you. I'm not going to casually walk over dragging a body through the street if I'm the murderer, genius. But anyway, it was the Manticore. This guy's only paralyzed if you lucky." Alain kicked him and the guy groaned in pain. "He's alive." The guardsman merely sighed out of either relief or exasperation, though they did look like Christmas was canceled, which led to believe the guy wasn't popular. Well, isn't my problem. "Are there any open areas around with no civilians? I need to take care of the unwelcome guest, and while they might be useful as meatshields, I'll probably get paid less for using them for such a thing." The guard took a few deep breaths, then gave his directions very slowly as if he was talking to a child. "Go straight ahead and turn the corner. Go through the alley and turn right. There's an open area there near the uh, gambling ring. Just hurry up and deal with it, I'm going to have fun on my night off." Alain shrugged in his indifference and started to run, making sure to swipe the other man's crossbow as he ran past. "You can have it back later, dickhead."