Serenity in Ruin

Though that didn't seem real at all. This doesn't. Marni shifts her weight from one suddenly too-heavy greave to the other, eyes darting from one's godawful grin to the other's somehow worse glower.

"Uh, yeah... Yeah. I got it."

Grateful for the distraction, Marni pivots on her heel as directed. It's a real mess in here, all smoke and rubble and noises of pain too near to be ignored. She tries not to think too hard about the way her fingers tremble as they curl around a smaller chunk of what probably used to be a wall, to prevent herself from turning back and looking long enough at her old family to remember that she misses them.

With a huff, the debris is hefted up and into her arms. Eyes straight ahead, she walks it a few yards away before dumping it on the floor and returning for another.

Rinse and repeat. Easy. Just tune out their voices, pretend they aren't there. They aren't there. They aren't there.

Her fingers slip, the splintered corner of an old shelf falls from her arms with a crack. It's instinct to jerk her head to the left, to draw her shoulders closer and wait for someone to chide her.

For one miserable moment her gaze locks with Zephia's. Marni swallows. You're not hers to scold anymore.

She fumbles to find her hold once more, to look at anything other than her.

"What does it matter?" She grumbles, kicking the freshly discarded piece of wood. "We're not here to heal them, anyway. We're here to move all this crap."

"Or do you all just think me not kind enough to want to help?" She feigns a sorrowful expression, before starting to laugh, "I mean, we do not even have a full grasp on their situation here. They can't exactly... talk if they are so injured."

And she needed them to talk, if she were to be able to acquire their little experiment here for her benefactors. It certainly would not do her well to return empty handed. Beyond wanting to acquire this power for those aforementioned benefactors though, Zephia herself was quite curious. No one could blame her for that, could they?

"If you wish to dig about in the rubble all day, then by all means, don't let me stop you. I, however, do wish be finding some answers, at some point." She leans down, idly picking up a charred piece of rock and throwing it a few times between her hands. Not for no reason, of course, though it may have certainly looked like that. Magic still remained, left behind in the ruins of the failed experiment. Not enough to get a clear idea of what had happened without talking to someone, but enough to know that the spell that had caused all of this had been devasting - even if she had not already known that information beforehand.

From what he understood of this mission, it was to uncover the specifics of some weapon smuggling—first if it was true and what the mechanics were if so. It was interesting enough to him, though he could admit there were better uses of his time. (At the very minimum, it may lead to some degree of conflict, and that was always alluring.)

So far, he hadn’t picked up on much, but the darkest parts of people never showed themselves to the light. It would certainly take more than a cursory glance to bear witness to illegal activity, and that meant hunting for clues—trying to find incriminating evidence. (Not to invent something as an excuse for bloodshed, of course, but to do his job. As he always strives to.)

He can’t stand his partner though—if he may compare, she was even worse than Glen. (At least that man had an idea of his place.) She takes charge of the situation as if it is her rightful position, and the very notion irks him; he has the sense to remain quiet though, merely simmering from a distance.

Heels click against the stone of the alleyway, a return to form slinking about in the shadows coming easily back to her. She would be all too eager to destroy the little operation they were after, once they found it of course. Zephia did not care if her knightly companion would be inclined to agree with that approach, because he would have no say in the matter. Not that she would care to obey if he did.

"Hmph. Does such a noble knight not question what a woman like myself would want out of this? Or do you simply... yearn for the bloodshed as well? I do not intend to leave a single one of those arm dealers alive, once we are to find them. Such little rats, scampering around where they don't belong should be... exterminated."

Continuing to completely withhold information is getting her nowhere, though. Her lack of humanity is obvious enough even to the most normal of people, even if she herself doesn’t know exactly what she may be instead. If this stranger is as motivated to find out as she seems to be, it’s only a matter of time before she hears it from someone else if she doesn’t from Sothis herself. It’s not much of a secret anyway.

“What I may or may not appear to be is another matter entirely, but no, I do feel ‘human’ is one thing that can be easily stricken from the list of possibilities.” She sighs, absentmindedly fiddling with one of the ribbons in her hair. Every time she has to have this conversation is just another painful reminder of how little she actually knows.

"Mn. Yes, I am... not from Fodlan, but it will remain my home for the forseeable future." Not as if she had anything waiting for her back in Elyos anyway. Not that she ever wished to return there.

He does not fight when she tugs him forward, already feeling that coming onto this particular mission was a mistake. She tries to incite the crowd, and he remains silent even as the villagers murmur amongst themselves with this new information. Surprisingly, they remain calm… perhaps it was due to her own horns that they simply assumed that they were similar.

He smiles, calmly, as the villagers turn to him for a response- perhaps that was what they were searching for, mere entertainment in the form of two bickering on how to best help them. He does not rise to the bait- he knows when to take a step back and conserve his energy. Though, one hand rests on Creiddylad, at the ready.

"Well, for starters, a little less talking about the situation would do a little good." She towers over Sephiran, hand on her hip as she cocked it to one side. They just kept arguing and arguing around in circles (in that odd little way that humans did), and by the end of this, they would all probably just go home in disappointment and stew while doing nothing about it.

"Is my opinion already not quite... clear? Must I repeat it again to get it through to you?" She had already been annoyed, but she was beginning to lean closer and closer to being truly angry. Lightning crackles at the tips of her fingers as her annoyance continues to grow. At this rate, she would much rather kill all of the villagers than listen to them continue to argue. If all of them were dead, there would be no argument about which deserved the water - or whatever this squabble was about in the first place.

please specify if sender or receiver is doing the action, when sending in the prompt !

“Excuse you! My comprehension of humanity is perfectly adequate! More than adequate, thank you!” The answer is a little too quick. She doesn’t know why the professor would ask her something like this, but she’s not about to confirm whatever it is she’s thinking. “I… just do not understand the obsession with stylistic choices that will fade into obscurity within a matter of months at the most. I had assumed this was an attempt to ‘get ahead’, as it were.”

Though… maybe if her horns are as real as she claims, she may not be human herself? Maybe she’s just looking for someone who can relate, and is just going about it in an accidentally suspicious way. There’s nothing wrong with that. The Academy would never hire anyone who could potentially be a danger to the students, would they? She’s probably just being paranoid.

"I have never seen a human with horns myself, and I have lived for a... terribly long time. I believe it simply must not be possible, dear." With how divine this girl seemed, she most likely wasn't human either. They could have that at least in common in their misunderstanding of humanity.

Zephia sulks between dark alleys in the port town, a not so little shadow along with her. Fine, so they wanted her to uncover this arms dealer and accquire the weapons for them. That was fine. She could do that. It was simple, truly, compared to many of the things that she had done for her Lord Sombron.

However, what she truly dislikes is the man who she has dragged along with her, out of the pretense of needing someone else on such an... important mission. She had not been truly paying attention when picking her companion, just grabbing the first knight she had seen and going before anyone else could complain or stop her.

She had certainly not anticipated how... rancid his aura would end up being though. She's almost tempted to go back to the monastery, and find a new partner. But she is too stubborn to even think of doing so, so she is stuck with him. Perhaps she shall be able to find an excuse to get rid of him. For now though, she had to focus on finding those weapons. It would not do her... well to disappoint her masters in this world.

She stares down at the man, magenta eyes boring into his own cerulean ones. And she humphs softly to herself, creeping further into the alleyway while gesturing for him to follow. "Come now. We don't have any time to waste, darling."

Perhaps, in Elyos, the term ‘mage’ is one used to describe those with an affinity to magic of one’s own kind. Surely she was referring to this… and not that of the beorc invented one. Surely… right?

"I suppose the closest would be magic of our own making," She pauses, letting lightning crack idly at the tips of her fingers as a small showing her capabilities, "Latent magic runs through our veins from the very moment we are born. It is an inherent mastery of magic without even needing to train. Unlike human mages."

She doesn’t like it.

Yet without any reason as to why, she isn’t exactly in a position to do anything about it. Running would not only be rude if she ended up being wrong in her feeling and this really was just an innocent faculty member, but it would also prevent her from gathering more information if her intuition later proved correct. To her, the smartest thing she can do is feign ignorance to anything being amiss. Which isn’t exactly hard, since she doesn’t even know what ‘amiss’ means in this context.

"It's not a piece of headwear, dear," She gestures towards the horns that decorate her head. She presumes they were not there when she was born, and simply grew in as she aged, but she did not have enough memories of her early childhood to say for certain. Nor did she remember if this trait had been unique in her village or not, "They are simply a part of my body. Not so easily removed as a piece of clothing or the... like." She swats at one of the tassels, like some of the playful cats at the monastery liked to if she knelt beside them as she passed, still chuckling softly to herself.

"Why... whatever made you think it was some sort of trend? Do you see anyone else around with anything of this manner? Or is it something more... mysterious?" She frowns, still unsure why the idea of this girl felt familiar. It felt as though she should be doing something with her (of the variety of her... other employers), but she was completely unsure as to what.

“Obedient, but also very trustworthy and loyal” she added, staring at Zephia’s wyvern, who actually was very calm and relaxed, comparing to Frejya, who was a very free spirit most of the time, but she knew how to behave in front of strangers, especially if mommy wanted her to be cautious and attentive: even if they were two and well-equipped, you would never know if anything dangerous might happen all of sudden. Yet, besides that, the travelling was proceeding fairly good, no interruptions, no stops and midday was slowly approaching, as well as the hunger in her stomach.

As she gave a look around, she spotted a small clearing on the right side of their path and since they were highly on time for their schedule, she deemed to be wise and profitable to stop by to make a quick food-break. She halted the movement of her wyvern and as her companion noticed her sudden stop, she gave a small smile, pointing out the clearing.

“Look, since we’re marching for a while now, maybe we can get advantage of that clearing for a small break?” she tempted, not exactly knowing if her companion actually needed a break from their travelling or if she wanted to go on with the advancement –in the end, she was the one who wanted to stop by and have a quick lunch on the way.

(It was easier to care for her at times than anything else. A purpose, something to care about - long before Griss (and the other Hounds) had been there, long before they were even born - other than a wholeheartedly loyalty to a Lord who had not even been within the living world at the time.)

"A break would be lovely, dearest." She smiles down at the redhead, keeping a careful eye on their surroundings even as she walks to the clearing, leaves crunching underneath her feet. Cherche - ever the obdient girl - also stays on alert, sticking close to Zephia as she took a seat upon the stump of a fallen tree.

She decides not to take it back as she stares at the ingredients being placed out on the counter. Freyja stands and walks over, pointing at the "stove". She sighs "That thing sparks from time to time, I suggest lighting it from a far to reduce the chances of being burned. I could do it if you like" Freyja's hand hovered over the opening. She closed her eyes as small wisps of magic travel towards the center until a small flame appears.

Zephia smiles as Freyja lights the oven, a small hum of approval escaping her lips. "I could have done that dear. I do not fear being burned." Her talents laid much more with the crackling of thunder, but fire was not an abstract concept to her. Magic came far too easily to her anyway.

She grabs a small, rather dented bowl - nothing seemed to be in perfect shape down here, but she didn't mind all that much - tossing her dry ingredients inside and beginning to mix them.

"... My village is gone." There is no need to say more, if this child has any ounce of brain in his head, it would easy enough to infer what she meant from her words. There had been other mage dragons, of course, like Lady Veyle's mother, but she had never felt a sense of kinship with them, not truly. (Not in the way that she wanted.)

"I am from Goldoa, a country of dragons. Within the continent of Tellius. Though, I've only lived the majority of my life there..." He paused for a moment. Looking down at the dark beverage he held. Stirring it in contemplation.

"I was born elsewhere. Somewhere that's been swept deep within the ocean for several centuries now." He took a brief sip, His face remained neutral. As if a past tragedy was a simple fact and nothing more to him in this conversation.

"Mm. So your home is gone as well." Not that Zephia held any nostalgia or lingering regret for the village of her childhood. It was long gone, thousands of years in her past. (She wished she could forget entirely, that she had once had a true family, even if she could no longer remember what their love had felt like. She didn't need such feelings in her life anyway.)