12-06-2016, 10:08 PM
Captain Tell scowled at the newest arrivals to their frosty little get-together. Not that anyone could tell— the frown lines of his face were about as creased and deep as the Grand Canyon, making it seem as if he was always angry about something or other. Which he was, more often than not.
“What’s going on here is none of your concern, Prime,” he grumbled, bracing his arms against the winter chill and the sheer stupidity of everyone standing around him, doddering about like a bunch of gossip-bugs at a cocktail party. Even the dogs seemed intent on goofing off, play fighting and yapping around their sled-ties. “Mind your own—“
“Primes!” Brandon exclaimed, leaping eagerly into the conversation and cutting the irate captain off with that megawatt grin of his. He clasped his hands together like some kind of Oliver Twist figure pleading for a spoonful more of gruel. “We would appreciate your help with a quest!“
Tell sighed, dragging a hand down the side of his face. That lily-livered, bum-bailey, pansy-ass astronomer was always butting into things he damn well shouldn’t. It was an absolute miracle he had been allowed to lead this little expedition, in Tell’s humble opinion. The kid was built like a soldier but devoted his life to books and star-gazing, for chrissakes! He’d gone practically owl-eyed from poring over scrolls and such all the time. A right shame it was.
(In truth, Tell had always been interested in books himself, he had just never quite gained enough schooling to pick it up. Oh, he could decipher enough to tell how much was being offered for someone’s head or who’d gone missing during the night when such evidence was presented to him, but he was by no means a learned man. He admired Brandon, in a way. Not that he’d ever let on about that.)
“Don’t tell them anything, you idjit,” Tell muttered lowly, dragging the foolish boy aside before he could blurt out anything else in front of these spooks. “They’ve got a pack of dwarves with ‘em, can’t you see?”
Indeed they did. Curly, wild-haired little men, clad in furs and with metal or clay beads laced through the silly braids of their beards. Some of them looked about as deranged as Captain Ahab, the scraggly fringe of their chins reaching nearly to their knees and making their gaunt faces appear stricken with some horrible sickness, sunken eyes seeming like two burnt holes in a blanket.
But that wasn’t all. Looking over their unwanted company again, the aged captain’s eyes at last rested upon a little girl with greasy dark hair, her arms slung around the neck of an enormous, white-furred hound. She smiled and giggled quietly to the dog as the two Primes conversed off to the side, her eerie yellow eyes glittering. He could’ve sworn by his mother’s grave that he had seen that girl on the bounty board; snatched from Rapture, as rumor had it, by a dark creature that had also dispatched some of Vimes' boys. This group was obviously up to no good.
One of the Primes, a girl whose red shoes and flashy garb stood out like a sore thumb against the whalebone-white snow, turned and grinned at them. She had apparently finished making her introductions with the other animal hybrid child. He recognized her as the first Prime to arrive on the scene, a bunch of scraggly dwarves trailing behind her like a troupe of ducklings. Now the dwarves were all staring at the gates of Dwarveholm, lost looks on their faces and their skin painted zombie pale, almost grey.
It appeared as if they’d been through hell and back while the Prime seemed none the worse for wear. Typical.
She approached with a slight flounce, unaccompanied by the crackle of snow— her feet scarcely touched the frozen ground when she walked. “Hi, uhm, you guys aren’t here to cause any trouble, right? Not that you seem bad or anything! It’s just, I was leading these poor guys home after saving them from a giant tentacle monster and it would really stink if we had any more problems...”
Upon seeing their disbelieving looks, the young woman twiddled her fingers and shrugged with a sheepish smile on her lips. “It’s a long story.”
Tell was about to tell her exactly where she could take her story (far, far away) when Brandon intervened. “One that we would be happy to hear all about, Miss…?”
“Jade Harley, at your service!” The young girl chirped, snapping off a completely incorrect salute. Her two front teeth were a bit too big for her mouth, Tell noted, and the pricked ears on top of her head wiggled with every word that slipped past her lips.
“It is an honor to meet you, Miss Harley! And you are…?” Brandon asked, looking at the other Prime. This one appeared less canine-like, her dark brown hair and cat ears being a dead giveaway to her nonhuman status. Both girls appeared small and almost fragile, but as Laurence Tell had come to understand more and more over the years, looks can be deceiving.
Her brightly-colored eyes slanted to the side, perhaps a bit distrustfully. Her jaw worked for a moment before they refocused on the astronomer, the alien color inside them filled with an unusual determination. She straightened to look him square in the eye, chin raised as she spoke her name, “Amber Veritz.”
Brandon smiled warmly at the duo, reaching out to grace them both with a professional clasping of hands. “Well, to answer your question Jade, we are here strictly on business from the noble verse of Camelot. I am Brandon the astronomer. My companion and guard here, Captain Laurence Tell, thinks it wouldn’t be wise to associate with the both of you, but I believe otherwise! You seem like an honest pair,” his gentle brown eyes briefly flickered to the company of dwarfish folk. “If you have any pressing business to attend to, please, do! We’ll set up camp nearby in the meantime to shelter from this awful cold. You’re welcome to join us after.”
“Cool, thanks!” Jade replied, moving past their armed guard to look up at Dwarveholm’s gate and the mountainous lumps rearing up behind it. The group of perhaps thirty or more dwarves followed along behind with lurching steps, some assisting others in walking and their gaunt faces beginning to flicker with hope.
Captain Tell averted his gaze before he could begin to pity them. No one needed or wanted pity, not in a world such as this— it was the worst thing to offer by way of recompense.
He shifted into Brandon’s line of sight, waving towards his subordinates to begin plunging sticks into the permafrost-laden ground to set up camp. The lantern in his other hand shifted in his stiff-fingered grip, the flame inside having died swiftly once the screech owl wind reached it.
“What in the blue blazes are you doing?” the Captain spluttered gustily at the astronomer, his hand reaching reflexively for the sword buckled at his hip. In Tell’s ancestors’ time, there was no such thing as stinking insubordination. That got a fella hung over the side of a bridge with the sewer rats nibbling at his toes all night long.
In short, he was no Sun Tzu, but Captain Tell wasn’t about to shovel this star-gazer’s shit.
Brandon reached out in the blink of an eye, staying his hand with a pacifying pat to the forearm. The dark-shinned astronomer spread his hands in a clear ‘calm down there, pal’ gesture, his wide shoulders blocking the good Captain’s view of the front gates. “Hey, we can use all the help we can get. Besides, when was the last time you met someone who acted like they weren’t pursuing their own hidden agenda, huh? This is great!” He looked after the two Primes as they successfully gained entry into Dwarveholm, a slight smile on his face.
“Yeah, great if you’re looking to get killed,” Tell said sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he began to march off to oversee things in the campsite. Just as he reached the nearest sled and reached to unload a knapsack, he inclined his head to look at Brandon with a threatening stare. “Don’t touch my sword-arm again, boy, or I’ll whack you good. And it will hurt.”
A peal of nervous laughter was the stuttered reply. “Uh-huh. I mean, understood, captain!”
Tell shook his head with a rueful sigh. Kids these days.
“What’s going on here is none of your concern, Prime,” he grumbled, bracing his arms against the winter chill and the sheer stupidity of everyone standing around him, doddering about like a bunch of gossip-bugs at a cocktail party. Even the dogs seemed intent on goofing off, play fighting and yapping around their sled-ties. “Mind your own—“
“Primes!” Brandon exclaimed, leaping eagerly into the conversation and cutting the irate captain off with that megawatt grin of his. He clasped his hands together like some kind of Oliver Twist figure pleading for a spoonful more of gruel. “We would appreciate your help with a quest!“
Tell sighed, dragging a hand down the side of his face. That lily-livered, bum-bailey, pansy-ass astronomer was always butting into things he damn well shouldn’t. It was an absolute miracle he had been allowed to lead this little expedition, in Tell’s humble opinion. The kid was built like a soldier but devoted his life to books and star-gazing, for chrissakes! He’d gone practically owl-eyed from poring over scrolls and such all the time. A right shame it was.
(In truth, Tell had always been interested in books himself, he had just never quite gained enough schooling to pick it up. Oh, he could decipher enough to tell how much was being offered for someone’s head or who’d gone missing during the night when such evidence was presented to him, but he was by no means a learned man. He admired Brandon, in a way. Not that he’d ever let on about that.)
“Don’t tell them anything, you idjit,” Tell muttered lowly, dragging the foolish boy aside before he could blurt out anything else in front of these spooks. “They’ve got a pack of dwarves with ‘em, can’t you see?”
Indeed they did. Curly, wild-haired little men, clad in furs and with metal or clay beads laced through the silly braids of their beards. Some of them looked about as deranged as Captain Ahab, the scraggly fringe of their chins reaching nearly to their knees and making their gaunt faces appear stricken with some horrible sickness, sunken eyes seeming like two burnt holes in a blanket.
But that wasn’t all. Looking over their unwanted company again, the aged captain’s eyes at last rested upon a little girl with greasy dark hair, her arms slung around the neck of an enormous, white-furred hound. She smiled and giggled quietly to the dog as the two Primes conversed off to the side, her eerie yellow eyes glittering. He could’ve sworn by his mother’s grave that he had seen that girl on the bounty board; snatched from Rapture, as rumor had it, by a dark creature that had also dispatched some of Vimes' boys. This group was obviously up to no good.
One of the Primes, a girl whose red shoes and flashy garb stood out like a sore thumb against the whalebone-white snow, turned and grinned at them. She had apparently finished making her introductions with the other animal hybrid child. He recognized her as the first Prime to arrive on the scene, a bunch of scraggly dwarves trailing behind her like a troupe of ducklings. Now the dwarves were all staring at the gates of Dwarveholm, lost looks on their faces and their skin painted zombie pale, almost grey.
It appeared as if they’d been through hell and back while the Prime seemed none the worse for wear. Typical.
She approached with a slight flounce, unaccompanied by the crackle of snow— her feet scarcely touched the frozen ground when she walked. “Hi, uhm, you guys aren’t here to cause any trouble, right? Not that you seem bad or anything! It’s just, I was leading these poor guys home after saving them from a giant tentacle monster and it would really stink if we had any more problems...”
Upon seeing their disbelieving looks, the young woman twiddled her fingers and shrugged with a sheepish smile on her lips. “It’s a long story.”
Tell was about to tell her exactly where she could take her story (far, far away) when Brandon intervened. “One that we would be happy to hear all about, Miss…?”
“Jade Harley, at your service!” The young girl chirped, snapping off a completely incorrect salute. Her two front teeth were a bit too big for her mouth, Tell noted, and the pricked ears on top of her head wiggled with every word that slipped past her lips.
“It is an honor to meet you, Miss Harley! And you are…?” Brandon asked, looking at the other Prime. This one appeared less canine-like, her dark brown hair and cat ears being a dead giveaway to her nonhuman status. Both girls appeared small and almost fragile, but as Laurence Tell had come to understand more and more over the years, looks can be deceiving.
Her brightly-colored eyes slanted to the side, perhaps a bit distrustfully. Her jaw worked for a moment before they refocused on the astronomer, the alien color inside them filled with an unusual determination. She straightened to look him square in the eye, chin raised as she spoke her name, “Amber Veritz.”
Brandon smiled warmly at the duo, reaching out to grace them both with a professional clasping of hands. “Well, to answer your question Jade, we are here strictly on business from the noble verse of Camelot. I am Brandon the astronomer. My companion and guard here, Captain Laurence Tell, thinks it wouldn’t be wise to associate with the both of you, but I believe otherwise! You seem like an honest pair,” his gentle brown eyes briefly flickered to the company of dwarfish folk. “If you have any pressing business to attend to, please, do! We’ll set up camp nearby in the meantime to shelter from this awful cold. You’re welcome to join us after.”
“Cool, thanks!” Jade replied, moving past their armed guard to look up at Dwarveholm’s gate and the mountainous lumps rearing up behind it. The group of perhaps thirty or more dwarves followed along behind with lurching steps, some assisting others in walking and their gaunt faces beginning to flicker with hope.
Captain Tell averted his gaze before he could begin to pity them. No one needed or wanted pity, not in a world such as this— it was the worst thing to offer by way of recompense.
He shifted into Brandon’s line of sight, waving towards his subordinates to begin plunging sticks into the permafrost-laden ground to set up camp. The lantern in his other hand shifted in his stiff-fingered grip, the flame inside having died swiftly once the screech owl wind reached it.
“What in the blue blazes are you doing?” the Captain spluttered gustily at the astronomer, his hand reaching reflexively for the sword buckled at his hip. In Tell’s ancestors’ time, there was no such thing as stinking insubordination. That got a fella hung over the side of a bridge with the sewer rats nibbling at his toes all night long.
In short, he was no Sun Tzu, but Captain Tell wasn’t about to shovel this star-gazer’s shit.
Brandon reached out in the blink of an eye, staying his hand with a pacifying pat to the forearm. The dark-shinned astronomer spread his hands in a clear ‘calm down there, pal’ gesture, his wide shoulders blocking the good Captain’s view of the front gates. “Hey, we can use all the help we can get. Besides, when was the last time you met someone who acted like they weren’t pursuing their own hidden agenda, huh? This is great!” He looked after the two Primes as they successfully gained entry into Dwarveholm, a slight smile on his face.
“Yeah, great if you’re looking to get killed,” Tell said sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he began to march off to oversee things in the campsite. Just as he reached the nearest sled and reached to unload a knapsack, he inclined his head to look at Brandon with a threatening stare. “Don’t touch my sword-arm again, boy, or I’ll whack you good. And it will hurt.”
A peal of nervous laughter was the stuttered reply. “Uh-huh. I mean, understood, captain!”
Tell shook his head with a rueful sigh. Kids these days.
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Gamzee Makara Wrote:S’aight. After all, dogs have a tendency to motherfuckin’ bite.