Anger Is:

[Belgar]

21 Winter, 511


Belgar wore the same coat he always had, and the same thoughtful scowl. It was the first time he had returned to this place since the nature of his crime had been clarified to him. Now that he was named innocent, he felt an emptiness that was impossible to fill; he used to come to admire the art and to appreciate this mark of civilization, and now he did not know what to make of it. The paths seemed contrived, drawn by a fool with greater concept for controlling nature than seeing it. His heavy steps carved deep lines in the soft morning snow, over the bare white spaces and the forested black ones alike, unheeding of the arbitrary trails set around him.

Nothing in particular drove him to take the direction he did. His stroll was mindless, purposeless—it was the perfect state of mind to snag by distraction. These days, that was not so friendly a thing.

He smelled it again, that thing which was nothing and something at the same time, which floated on the scents around it and yet was somehow more than them. At first he thought it was a fallen pine tree, still green before its death, and then he guessed it might be a storm brewing—but it was too concentrated, and it became stronger as he neared one spot, off the path and between the trees.

Then he saw him.

“You.” There was no ceremony, no salutations or reintroductions. He came to the man and took him by the arm, the one that had been pathetically limp the first time they had spoken. “What are you doing? Don’t lie to me, sneak.”

[Coren]

Coren was humming a happy upbeat song as he made his way through the boardwalk park towards some of the lesser visited parts of it. He had begged and pleaded with felix yesterday until the older man had given him the next day completely off. He had been slacking way to much with his magical practice these days so setting aside a full day In which he wouldn't be doing anything else then either looking over magical texts, writing his book on projection and practice magic as much as he could without crippling himself accidentally. Which probably wouldn't be that much if he was honest about it. Finally he had found a nice spot and set himself down on the groundand closed his eyes for a moment, feeling around in himself before taking a firm grasp of his djed and slowly began to push it outside around the area of his hand, trying to gather enough to form his shield with. After only a chime or two he opened his eyes and looked at the mist like djed floating around his hand, invisible foreverybody but him, or the people who knew the right magical disciplines to pick it up. Taking a deep breath Coren focused his will on the djed floating around his hand and slowly began molding it around his right hand, Pressing the djed together and smoothing it over his hand, before he could finish the molding of the shield and continue on towards the tasking of the shield somebody roughly grabbed him by his right arm and loudly demanded what he was doing. Coren looked towards the person, his eyes a strange mixture of dark red with a few specks of dull brown in it. Not recognizing the man who glaring down at him with that furios face. A look of bewilderment spread over coren's face as he really didn't understand why this man was furious at him. Though it quickly changed to rage, his eyes quickly shifting to pure yellow as his mood changed. “What do you think your doing? Let me go!” Coren demanded from the huge man as he sprung to his feet and glared straight into the man's eyes. Sure he was afraid of the huge man who looked as if he could break his arm without to much trouble, but he wasn't going to back down from some dumb moron who thought he could push him around for some reason he didn't even bothered to clear up.

[Belgar]

Belgar’s black eyes held a contained fury, one that concentrated in the stiffness of his jaw and manifested in the strength of his fist. This mage’s arm was like others he knew, among the ranks of Icewatch: physically weak because they claimed a strength of the mind, and yet theirs could be broken worse than any bone. It was true that Belgar could break the flesh within his grasp if he cared to, but his was not the anger of vengeance or violence. It was a petty offense that drove him, one he could not have fathomed before he learned the truth of his guilt’s weight.

“You lied to me. You put both of us in danger with your folly, and you hid it from me.” He spoke through this teeth, because it was the only way he knew how to express the insult that caught in his throat. An insisting spasm pulsed through his shoulder and shook the man, as if it would emphasize a point he could not otherwise explain. Nonetheless, he let him go; the compulsion to obey those aurora-kissed eyes trickled cold reason onto his hot temper. “I can smell it on you, sneak,” he said, and then remembered that the Vantha had introduced himself, a lifetime ago. “Coren,” he corrected.

Belgar paced mindlessly back a few steps, then approached him again in the next beat. He stood over Coren, trapped him beneath his height and his glare, if nothing else. A huff condensed white on the air beneath his nose. “Tell me what you were doing. Tell me the name of it, and pray for Oriana’s mercy if you choose to lie.”

[Coren]

Coren shifted uncomfortably as the man's black eyes bored right into him even he could tell that the man right in front of him was absolutely livid with him and probably was trying to restrain himself from breaking his arm or using other violent things to pull whatever information the man was looking for out of him and when the man began talking about how he put them both in danger with whatever he was doing and that he had been hiding something from him coren was completely confused. Though he was still happy that the man finally let go of his arm. He took a few steps out of the man's reach and began rubbing the sore spot on his arm. Coren nervously looked up at the giant man as he loomed over him, glaring. “Look, I honestly don't remember anything your talking about. So could you at least be more specific about when and how we met?” Coren said in an exasperate tone. “So we can clear up whatever misunderstanding we go there. Since I think I should remember when I pulled me and somebody else in danger thanks to something stupid I did.” Coren was silent for a while. “Why don't you start with giving your name, maybe that clears my memory up a bit?” Coren really hoped that the man would believe him he really had no clue what the man was talking about.. was he one of the people he decieved when he was almost caught when he had been practicing magic?

[Belgar]

Belgar huffed. The little man did not remember. Was it because he had offended the sanctity of their life’s forces more than once? Was it because he was a practiced deceiver who could not tell his lies apart? The old bear assumed as much as he stared down at the offender, now from a socially tolerable distance. Coren found his words well enough, as insulting as they were ignorant. Belgar wished he knew how to make his tongue work, to show Coren what about him was so offensive. What came to his mind was less eloquent than his thoughts.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he spat. There was a growl on his exhale. “You endanger your people and yourself every time you pervert our djed with your... your tricks. You ignored my questions. I am a bear of the Icewatch. Answer me or answer to the law.” He had never used that petty advantage over anyone before; she had said it was beneath them, that honest persuasion and patience were better tools for the citizenry. She was also dead. “What were you doing here, hiding in the stench of magic?”

[Coren]

Coren's face fell as the bear from the icewatch began his rant, so he was just one of those many people who where ignorant about what magic did and just stared themselves blind on the bad effects, most of the time not even knowing exactly what those bad side-effects were. “Oh really? There is nothing in the law that forbids me practicing magic here. And Since I was alone and not practicing magic that could bring others in danger the law doesn't require any answers from me.” Coren gave the kelvic in front of him a defiant glare. “So the only one who is demanding answers from me right now is somebody who is trying to lord his authority over people to force them to do what he wants and nobody would hold it against me if I refused that demand. So why don't you scamper away and take that unfounded hate and fear against mages with you and leave me be, I still am planning to practice some more magical disciplines and I'm not letting a bigot like you cut into valuable time.” Coren crossed his arms and glared at the kelvic in front of him. If the man attacked him in rage because of his words then he would be the one in trouble with the icewatch.

[Belgar]

“Nothing in the law,” Belgar repeated patiently, but the anger was apparent in his tense arms and bent brow. “You do not offend the law by practicing your evil, but by refusing to answer her agents. I asked you questions, Coren Skyglow. You test my patience with your evasions.”

The confidence brewed warm in his throat, like the heat of Morwen’s blessing burned just beneath his heart. In frustration he found the thoughts; in passion he found the eloquence. Unfortunately for the Vantha before him, his patience was thinner than it had been, when they first met. Dark red rage whirled through the blackness of is eyes, the way it did when he succumbed to the instinctual urges of the beast. His sigh was heavy and white as he stepped once forward, then paused in brief contemplation.

“Belgar,” he conceded. It was almost harder to say it, now that he had given her back to Dira, the name that she had given him. “My name is Belgar. A season ago, we met here. Or near here. You lied to me, as you put us both in danger. I could smell it, as I smell it now, but I was kind. Kinder than you, sneak. You... I deserve an apology.” He licked his teeth, looking away from the offending man as if it would calm him. “And an answer.”

[Coren]

Coren's eyes slowly to a stone cold granite as the fury slowly began to build up inside himself as the man... no ignorant fool continued too talk, magic evil? Magic was just as evil as any weapon or tool in the hand of a man and then the bigoted fool even dared to demand an apology for something that would never even have happened? Sure he vaguely remembered him now that he had given his name and told a little bit more about how they met but he never brought him in danger.None of his magical disciplines would be able to harm anybody else but himself if he went over his limits and had a bout of overgiving. With shielding being completely unable to harm anything and his projection was about as dangerous as the average punch of a vantha. “There is nothing in the law against practicing magic,”Coren especially stressed the word magic, clearly showing the man that he didn't take kindly to his art being called evil. “You say so yourself, so why in morwen's name are you even still bothering me? I told you what I was doing, practicing magic, so I even answered the question you asked. Face it belgar, nothing what you are doing right now is following the law, your just trying to justify your own misbehavior by invoking it right now.” Coren paused for a few moments before he scoffed at belgar's idea of he owing him an apology. “So I owe you exactly nothing belgar, no apology for putting you into danger, because it never existed, I don't owe you an explanation for why I kept it hidden when I was practicing magic the last time we met because as long as something isn't against the law, I am allowed to keep things a secret. Besides nowhere in the law it say's that practitioners of magic have to let that be known to the icewatch or anybody else, not to mention anybody who has common sense would be able to figure out why I wanted to keep it a secret by himself right now Especially after hearing what you have to say. So why don't you stop testing my patience and leave? You don't have any business with me right now.” Coren stared the fool right into his face refusing to budge. If the man refused to go he would just go back to his hold and practice in his room. If he was still following on the way there he would just ask another icewatch member if he couldn't keep this brainless bigot in check.

[Belgar]

He could not help it; an ursine growl boiled at the base of his throat, and his tongue was as helpless as an uncovered crock to stifle it. Belgar roared his frustration, stirring a pair of birds from a nearby tree. As a bear, he might have shaken the ground; as a human, he served only to reveal how close he was to losing control. To some, the attempt might have seemed pathetic, but Belgar was nonetheless a tall and daunting man. Only the foolish dared to anger the unmovable beast.

His hands opened harshly and he flexed his fingers beneath his gloves. The last of his growls turned into a distracted hum, which melted into careful speech. “You warp my words with your silver tongue—or maybe it is the stones you have exchanged for brains. You speak redundancies, coward, and I can only assume it is to evade my questions. What are you hiding? What... magic? Prove to me you’ve endangered no one.”

He should not have used his supremacy as the law to get his way. It was irrelevant and he regretted it, but there was no turning back from it.

He repeated himself, rearranged his words so that he might be understood better. He had never been good with them, but he had long since moved beyond blaming his mistakes and faux pas on himself. It was Coren’s fault that Belgar felt angry, the Vantha’s fault that the Kelvic had assaulted him. He would not let himself believe he had done anything wrong. “You are allowed your secrets, unless it means you must lie to those who would protect you. If you will not apologize and explain yourself, you must admit to being a liar and a sneak. Then I will leave you be.”

[Coren]

Coren took a step back as the huge man in front of him let out a beastly roar in what was clearly frustration. It wasn't really the roar itself that managed to instill the beginnings of fear into coren. But roaring wasn't something vantha did when they got angry, nor did most of the other humanoid races roar in those situations. But there was one big group of people in avanthal that did act more like an animal then a vantha in situations. The polar bear kelvics. Still just because he was faced with a threat he wasn't going to bend over and give in to belgar. Straightening his back he looked straight at belgar. “I didn't warp anything, what you said was already warped from the beginning.” Coren said with steel determination audible in his voice. “Besides how should I even be able to prove to you that I didn't bring anybody other then me in danger with my magic arts? You are already set in the fact that magic is evil and vile. So you probably think that mages aren't to be trusted either, which will make you disregard everything I say on the subject of magic anyway.” Coren crossed his arms in defiance. As Belgar now gave him the choice between explaining himself and apologizing or saying he was a liar and sneak coren glared at him. A part of his mind said that he should just give him the damn apology already tell the big moron what he wanted to hear and get this entire situation over and done with. But the few shreds of pride that clung to his meagre mastery of the arcane blatantly refused that option. “Like I said before, I won't give you an apology that you don't deserve and while I lied sometimes I'm not a sneak. And like I said before it doesn't matter what I say on the subject of magic. You will assume I'm lying anyway.” Coren scoffed and shook his head. “Why the petch do you have a problem with magic anway? Or are you just bigoted against because you don't understand anything about it.”