(trying to be less) inactive

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The tall stone tower looms through a gap in the canopy.  Adrian shields his eyes against the rain dripping from the leaves as he peers up at it: sloping walls and conical roof grey as the clouds behind it, ivy, brown and withered, winding upward along the joins between the dull stone bricks.

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Red freezes in surprise for a moment before tipping his head forward to let the object slide off the bill of his cap and into his cupped hands: a bracelet made of knotted thread nearly the same shade of red as his cap, with a clear bead on one end and a loop on the other to serve as a closure.  He looks up at Green wide-eyed. "Figured you could start small, use a bracelet to get used to having something around your left wrist before moving your watch." 「Thank you,」 Red tells him, his movements a little awkward with the bracelet held between two of his fingers.

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"Have I mentioned you're kind of a weirdo?" Botts says.  "That's not a bad thing," he goes on, holding up his hands when Terry glares at him.  "In fact, it's kind of cute."

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He turns again as Camus draws even with him, and now, able to see his face clearly, he finds himself stopping short and his thoughts tumbling to a halt in his head while his breath does the same in his throat.  He doesn't hear what the man or Shadowheart say after that, their words washing over him unnoticed. It would be a lie if he said he remembers what the man looked like.  It was one evening, a hundred years ago, and though he's inherited his mother's lifespan, without the ability to enter Reverie, he doesn't nearly have her elven memory.  What he remembers is silver curls; an almost ethereal beauty that surpassed any he had seen—man or woman, elf or otherwise—in his fifteen short years of life; red eyes that glowed faintly when shadows fell upon them.  Even then, he had known that those eyes meant he was a vampire.  He hadn't cared. There is no way that this is the same man, not able to stand in the sun as he is.  But there is no shaking this visceral certainty that he is, that he knows him.

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A small, answering smile flickers across Xander's expression.  "And I'm grateful for that, but I still don't think we should go carelessly messing with Elnimster's… displays.  I doubt he had those crates blocking off this room for no reason."

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Adrian cuts his gaze away, back to where the skeleton sorcerer had stood, suddenly discomfited at the praise, at the earnest expression in Xander's pale green eyes. It's not as though his intentions were as noble as all that.  He just…  "I just felt sorry for them, honestly," he says.  "Just standing there, with no purpose…  Potentially for eternity."

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"Don't worry."  Adrian's voice cuts into his thoughts, and Mantides drags his gaze up from the pair of stakes in his hands.  "If they decide to go after you first, I'll stake you before you've even risen, assuming they don't get to me too before I've had the chance.  I know how much you Lathanderites hate the undead." Mantides swallows thickly.  "Right," he manages. With a nod, Adrian turns on his heel to head toward the door opposite the one they came in, turning his stake over in his hand with a certain sort of hunger.  "Now, let's find where those two keep their coffins.  I don't know about you, but I am not keen on giving them the chance to come after us again." As he follows after him, Mantides prays to no one in particular that he will only have to use the one stake.

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He casts a quick look about the room for signs of lurking enemies before jogging over to Daelan's side, removing the Rod of Resurrection from where he has it strapped to his pack and falling to his knees beside him.

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A brown blur streaks toward him, and Misao stumbles back from the sudden explosion of pain and warmth that blooms across the lower half of his face.  Blinking tears from his eyes, he daubs gingerly at his—no doubt broken—nose as he turns unsteadily to find Zarad now standing on the opposite side of the room.  The wizard’s bowed shoulders heave with his laboured breathing, his retrieved staff dangling loosely from the fingers of his left hand, the crazed fire burning in his eyes made all the madder by Misao’s blood smudged across his forehead and his own now dripping freely from his right hand hanging uselessly at his side, his sleeve plastered against his skin by a large, dark stain stretching from his elbow to his wrist. Was this how he himself looked, before, when it came to humans?  A hatred that consumed everything, leaving no room for reason, only the so-called “truth” that he himself had written upon the world before him.  He can see, now, why Zarad felt he had no choice but to kill him.  And now it is he who has no choice.  For Zarad’s earlier words were true: this time, only one of them will leave this observatory alive.  Zarad will have it no other way. “I should have chased you down and made sure of your death myself when you fled, Misao Aoki.”  The wizard’s voice is but a whisper, but Misao can hear it as clearly as if the man were standing at his side.  “Rest assured, I am not a man who makes the same mistake twice!”

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A shadow detaches itself from one of the nearby buildings, and Adrian has one of his blades halfway out of its sheath on instinct before he realises it's one of the Ebon Claws' wererats.  He forces himself to stand at ease as the creature approaches. "I have a message from Mistress Altama," the wererat informs him in an undertone.  "She bids you to come visit her at the usual spot to receive your reward.  The Night Masks have all been defeated, and the statue is now ours!" The worry that creases Mantides' brow morphs further and further into anger as their liaison speaks.  "We can see that for ourselves, vermin," he spits.  "Now tell of the part where your brethren abandoned us on the field of battle."  Huh, so it isn't about the statue?  Adrian noticed him tense as he watched Lathanderites disembark from the ship—he and Rinara hadn't exactly mentioned that part when they told him of the job, given to them when they swung by Altama's shop after raiding Leira's hidden temple with that treasure-hunter, Garrett—and while he hadn't acted rashly and earned himself one of Rinara's knives slipped between the plates of his armour, Adrian still figured he'd hold a grudge over it.  Full of surprises, this one.

Due to AI slop having infiltrated stock sites, I'm stopping immediately with images for the word game. They take me a lot of time every week, and I'm furious that I didn't see the note on today's image. Canva, you were really decent once. Thanks to the friend who caught it. The word game will be text only from now on.

“You’re the ‘pet artist,’ I take it?” he asks as he approaches. The man’s shoulders jump in surprise, and he turns almost reluctantly, but his eyes light with recognition when they land on Astarion.  Recognition, and—hope?  Oh, lovely. Gaze flicking about the cave, the artist leans in secretively and says, hushed and urgent, “Zarys may have welcomed you, but I can see you’re not one of her thugs.  You need to buy me.” Astarion feels one eyebrow creep up his forehead as he eyes the wretch up and down.  “Why are you selling yourself?” “Selling mys—!”  The artist sucks in a sharp breath, lips pinching as he wrests his emotions back under control after that outburst.  Or his volume, at least: when next he speaks, it’s in an undertone once more, though no less emotional.  “I am not some Lower City coinlad offering you a tumble.  I am an artist,” he proclaims, drawing himself up to his full, unimpressive height.  He’s hardly even taller than Astarion, himself.  “And my patron will reward you for my rescue—tenfold whatever ransom you pay, I guarantee it.” He actually pities him a little.  Even with every remain of his dignity gathered about himself, he’s still a pathetic sight.  Unlucky, too, that it wasn’t Camus and his silly, bleeding heart who stopped to talk to him—but, alas, he’s hardly vain enough to be enticed by the trader’s offer.  An affront to his draconic heritage, honestly.

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He kneels down beside Xanthar and wipes each of his blades clean of blood on the cloth of the assassin's garb before returning them to their sheaths at his hips and then getting to work searching the body.  But, of course, he comes up empty—Xanthar wasn't stupid enough to keep his orders or anything else that could identify his employer on him.  He pries the assassin's short sword out of his fingers next and examines it closely, turning it over in his hands and sighting down each of its straight, sharp edges.  No enchantments as far as his meagre skills can determine, and the make is no better than that of either of his own blades.  Perhaps worse—Forgehammer truly does do fine work.  With a small sigh, he lets the sword clatter disappointedly to the flagstones beside its owner's body and pushes once more to his feet. He finds Markius watching him from a few paces away, his eyes still gleaming just as intensely as they did during the battle and his greatsword held at rest against his shoulder, ready to be put to use at less than a moment's notice should any more trouble arise.  Now seems as good a time as any to allow his breath to be taken away by the man. "It is good to see you, Adrian Llir, son of Okaris Llir," Markius greets.  "I pray that you have not suffered any great injury at the hands of these fiendish assassins." His heart is still pounding from the adrenaline thrumming through his veins, and perhaps that makes him bold enough to let a bit of flirtatiousness bleed into his voice as he responds, "I'm all right… thanks to you," though if the older man notices it at all, he doesn't show it.

(Yes, "finally" counts!)

Shandra has been rescued, Zeeaire and her underlings slain, the githyanki threat, at least, neutralised, the silver shards secured and the one which has apparently been inside his fucking chest since he was a baby still safely in place, and Casavir has been sticking by his side more doggedly than his own bloody shadow. So Zeeaire nearly killed him twice—first with her psionically tugging on the shard lodged inside his heart, then immediately upon them finally destroying her interplanar bubble that prevented anything on the Prime Material from touching her.  He already healed him up. His chest hardly aches anymore. There is absolutely no reason for Casavir to be hovering as he is.  Adrian would be more annoyed if he weren't so sure he was this close to doing something stupid if he isn't careful.

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“You won’t like what I think,” he warns. “Tell me anyway.” “‘He was a good lad,’” he quotes sardonically, affecting Dorn’s drawl, “and yet he apprenticed himself to the Night Masks.  ‘A little off the rails, but that’s only normal in a lad barely in his seventeenth winter.’  It sounds like he was fully aware of his son’s shitty behaviour and was making excuses for him the whole time.  I mean, did you run off at sixteen to join a cult or cutthroat crime organisation or anything else of that ilk?” “I was completing my training to become a paladin of Lathander.” “Okay, bad example.  But even I wasn’t doing shit like that, and you know my morals are looser than many.  That isn’t normal teenage idiocy.  Were Jaek a few years older and a fully fledged Night Mask, Dorn would just have found some other excuse to justify him being ‘a good lad.’  Was he beyond redemption?  I don’t know.  Maybe he would have been another Rinara—or maybe he would have been another Viglor, who relished in torture just as much as Rinara did not.  You’re just going to have to accept that there’s no way to know either way, and that his present allegiances meant his death was just as deservèd as that of any other Night Mask.”