Completed Bibbity Boppity BAM (Coren)

[Sliver]

13th of Fall Patrols, Patrols. There had been this serious string of tension buzzing within the Icewatch ever since the death of one of their members. It wasn’t because of the death itself, that event was a natural part of living in these harsh conditions, not alien or unexpected at all. No it was the cause of it, the confusion surrounding it, how no one could understand it. There was no reasonable explanation, and what was worse, that wasn’t the first strange attack, nor would it be the last. Birds, wolves, rodents, everything was mad with fear or anger or…something. Sliver wanted desperately to know what was at the heart of this, but there wasn’t the time to explore there was only time for more frequent patrols. So that’s where she was. She didn’t have a set pattern yet, it was more of a Go where the gaps are. She filled in for injured members, the other day she had even gone by herself for a short time on part of the dead member’s routes. She had heard the name of the deceased several times now, but every time she did it seemed to drift from her consciousness as soon as it arrived, and she was just left with the empty hole of an individual she had never really known. Now she was filling in for a different individual, walking silently with their Vantha bondmate. Every now and then the somber woman would stop, checking down allies or checking up on stores. She was a quiet one, but kind and caring, though Sliver could tell she was uncomfortable having her around for back up as opposed to her bear bondmate who was getting treated for an injury. So they talked little, mostly just exchanging looks, nods, and hand gestures. Sliver was tense her muscles sore from being on edge for so long, too many strange things happening for her to cope with it. The hair on the back of her neck pricked, and though they were not what you could call friends, the two companions shared a look of mutual understanding as muffled noises drifted toward them. Sliver went first, ears trained. As they moved closer she could make out voices raised too high, cutting and bitter. She rounded the corner, ready for whatever spectacle was surely unfolding.

[Coren]

Coren stared at the two drunks that where blocking his way with distaste. He wasn't even listening to the insults the two men where hurling at him in bitter tones. He already knew the drill, some vantha with any problem just came over to him and began blaming him for anything to the djed storm last spring to the fact he or she just stubbed a toe on a rock. While the rest just looked and let them rant and rave until the icewatch turned up and guided them apart without as much as a warning to not harass other people just because their trade didn't sit right with you. He gritted his teeth as the two drunks made another snide remark about him and they both broke out in laughter. Why the hell did he had to go through this?.... as soon as that thought crossed his mind he smiled underneath, as if suddenly the heaven's had openend up and handed him a book on the very essense of magic itself. Why did he have to go through this indeed? He wasn't forced in anyway to keep himself quiet and just take it. If he was going to resist against them what could they do? The small smile formed into a full blown smirk as he straightened himself and looked both of them straight in the eye. Yes he would shut both of them up. He detached his gaze from both of the idiots and looked around for anything he could use to make sure they shut up for a long time, eventually his gaze fell on a lose cobblestone. He ignored the two drunks as they once again laughed for some reason. Probably because they thought he was flinching away from a confrontation. He put his right hand in his pocket and let his djed flare, slowly and carefully pushing out his astral body and reached out at the rather heavy cobblestone with it. Giving a slight grunt as he heaved the heavy thing in the air. He looked the two men once more in the eyes as he angled his astral right arm and swung the heavy cobblestone at the shorter of the two men. Hitting him in the shoulder with a sickening crack. The man yelled out in pain as he fell to the ground, clutching his shoulder. Letting his comrade fall silent as his alcohol addled mind tried to grasp what in morwen's name had happenend. “Ahh... finally you two shut up.” Coren said in a harsh tone. A big grin hidden underneath his mask. He didn't notice the icewatch guard rounding the corner. “Hey, lets not make any dumb moves here.” the other drunk managed to slur out in fear. The concept that a mage could do some harsh damage to him if he so wanted finally dawning on him.

[Sliver]

She missed the initial blow, but she heard the scream of pain, the satisfied comment of the attacker. There was confusion in her eyes as she tried to assess how the attack had gone down, but couldn’t visualize it. Whoever this figure was, he had only just started, which meant she was going to have to finish this for him. A surge of adrenaline flooded through her, and she was ready to go on the offensive, all her tension coiling into a ball of fury ready to lunge onto the strange, cloaked man at any moment. It was then that a hand dropped firmly onto her shoulder and she realized what they were here for. The woman’s steely grey eyes met hers, and Sliver knew that she knew exactly what thoughts were coursing through her mind. The Kelvic took in a deep and lengthy breath, and instead of leaping out to bodily tackle the perpetrator, she strode out of the alley and used that air to belt out, “Icewatch. Stand down.” Regardless of her mostly passive role as a guard, the Kelvic was clearly ready to get physical if push came to shove. Dark eyes bored into the stranger as if asking him to make the wrong move. She was no trained polar bear with a bondmate to keep her in check, and it took all of her self-control not to cross the street in three steps and take the fight to him. She hadn’t even given thought to the question her companion uttered after she was sure everyone’s attention was on the two of them. “What’s going on here?”

[Coren]

At the woman's demand coren looked up from the victim that was sobbing on the floor, a small glint in his sea green eyes. “Of course.” he replied dropping the heavy stone that he had been holding just a few inches above the ground on the ground with a heavy thud. There was no use in fighting the icewatch, so cooperation was his best bet at the moment, he pulled his astral body back to him, sliding it back into his arm without to much trouble. The drunk man stumbled over towards his still sobbing buddy and tried to figure out how bad his buddy had been hurt. Quite the task with the man's booze addled mind. When one of the pair icewatch soldiers asked what had been going on the remaining drunk man suddenly paid attention. “This maniac suddenly just attacked us!” he slurred out. “Lifted a rock with his mind and broke palyn's shoulder with it!” coren scowled, of course the fools would be giving their own version of the events. “I believe you forget mentioning the harassment, threats and insults that you two threw at me or the fact you both where rearing up to use voilence anyway.” Coren shot back, a pair of cold grey eyes looking out from underneath his hood. “So I just took the first blow to defend myself!”

[Sliver]

Sliver was almost disappointed by the cloaked man’s willingness to desist. Some of the anger drained from her body and she took a more relaxed stance, making sure she was still in front of her fellow Icewatch companion just in case. That was when she heard the accusation of…magic? Her nose curled. There were few things Sliver disliked more than magic, the very concept sat as something completely unnatural in the wild. For her she thought that magic was best left to the Gods and no one else, yet mortals had somehow unlocked its powers, that was how her race had come to be was it not? Regardless of this, manipulating currents that no one could see to glimpse into people’s minds, conjure the elements, and in this case lift things off the ground just sat uncomfortably with her. At least he wasn’t using fire: that would probably set her off the edge. She listened to both sides of the tale and glanced at her companion. To Sliver each of the story seemed vastly skewed, and she could see her own incredulity mirrored in her comrade’s eyes. After a long pause the woman signaled to the two drunkards. “You two are coming with me to the Whitevine Healing Center, we’ll see if your tune changes once you’ve sobered up.” She cast an almost reluctant glance at the Kelvic. “Sliver, you take the mage back to the barracks, they can decide what to do with him there.” Sliver was highly uncomfortable with this situation. She’d much rather have the brutish drunks than even the weakest mage, and was far more uncertain because she did not know the power this one had. The drunks muttered and grumbled complaints, but there was no denying that the injured one needed medical attention, and the Healing Center was closer than the barracks where they could contract the care of an Icewatch medic. In few a short moments the party of three had shuffled off and Sliver was left staring at the well covered individual. His appearance confused the Kelvic, for if he was a Vantha, he most certainly had no problems with the cold, and there was no reason to be covered so well, even she without any mark of Morwen, wasn’t so heavily covered as he. She stepped forward, hardening her gaze so that he hopefully could only see the thinly veiled disgust and not the fear of the unknown that lurked beneath it. “Come on then, to the barracks.” She gestured for him to move in front of her, body tensed for any resistance.

[Coren]

Coren scowled underneath his mask when he saw the reactions of the two icewatch guards when the man mentioned how he had lifted a rock with his mind. No matter how ridiculous that statement was, his magic simply didn't work like that. But he couldn't expect the normal simpletons to even work up the backbone to try and understand how it worked, they thought it a lot safer to live underneath the soothing veil of ignorance no matter how infuriating that was for him. He kept silent as the icewatch guard in the back was giving orders to her partner about what to do with the drunks and him. Coren took a deep breath to calm himself down when he heard that the other iceguard, was going to escort him towards the barracks where they where going to decide what to do with him. He really didn't want to go there and part of him wanted to cry out in rage at the injustice, but he guessed breaking somebody's shoulder was violence even if the moron did deserve it. The icewatch couldn't just turn a blind eye towards it and like it or not, he had to make sure he didn't go against the icewatch, else he would be locked up pretty quick. The other icewatch member quickly gathered up the drunks and began to shuffle of towards the healing centre, leaving him and sliver alone. When she looked at him with her disgust barely concealed he just let out another sigh. “You do realize that showing hatred for a mage in his face usually is one of the stupidest ideas one can have?” Coren said in an annoyed tone as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Especially since you saw the results of my anger.” When she demanded he would follow her to the barracks he just shrugged. “Yes the sooner we are there the better for the both of us.” He turned on his heel and started to walk in the direction of the barracks.

[Sliver]

For a long time Sliver did not acknowledge the comment, just walked in silence. She wondered if the mage was aware how much fear he generated. The world was a scary place, and Avanthal had just begun a very horrifying period in its time. Citizens were dying left and right, and it was easiest to point blame to something and someone no one understood. Sliver was a bit ashamed of her own urge to rip this man apart, his appearance, his nature, it screamed to her something wrong, and it would be easy to lay all the problems upon him, this strange creature that wielded magic. These thoughts circled her mind. She tried to imagine if she would have had them before she had joined the Icewatch, if her proximity to these Dire Bears, so much more sophisticated than most of the Kelvic she had met, were already beginning to wear off on her. She snorted a bit to herself, but the thought was there, suspended in the back of her thoughts. Finally, after a long time she spoke, her voice calm. “I do not hate mages, I just do not understand them.” It was honest, the Kelvic did not enjoy deceit, and it did not seem fair to impose any upon the mage, even if his only wounds were those to his psyche. As they walked people turned and openly stared, some with the same look she had given the Mage just minutes before. Sliver returned gazes in kind. Her dark eyes and stoic demeanor left nothing to question, and no more harsh words were thrown towards the cloaked man, even if Sliver couldn’t prevent the ones said behind their backs in hushed whispers.

[Coren]

Coren was perfectly fine with the silence between him and sliver and didn't a lot of thought into the why she was being so silent, he just attributed it to him being a mage and her either refusing to speak to him because of it, or just being to plain scared to utter something after his comment, though if the latter was true the icewatch really needed to train their recruits better, since that would just pathetic. When she finally broke the silence and stated she didn't hate mages but just didn't understand them coren couldn't help it and let out a humorless laugh at that idea. “There isn't much difference between not understanding and fearing something. Most of the time there isn't any difference at all. The people who never manage to scrape together the courage to find out what lies beyond their realm of understanding always fear those who do have the courage for it.” There was an audible undertone of bitterness in his voice “So why don't you stop lying and say with words what your look already told me a few chimes ago. You despise magic and mages.” After he hadn't even stopped as he walked, nor did he give the people who whispered behind his back or gave him disgusted looks any heed. While he wasn't able to ignore direct confrontation, simple whispers and rumors didn't hurt him anymore.

[Sliver]

She had meant for her words to be comforting, or at the very least a sort of rationale. If anything they seemed to make the man more upset. Maybe if she had been a more eloquent creature she could have defended herself, but she wasn't, and so she didn't. He could take her silence as affirmation, which he probably would, in the end it was up to him. The wolverine glanced up at the grey sky as they walked, contemplating the role of magic in the world. It could not simply be to outcast those who wielded it, for it came in many different forms, but it seemed to her that is what the most common reaction to it was. Some people must surely be impressed by mages, but she was surely not one of them. After about a bell, reaching the halfway point in their journey, Sliver put a firm hand on Coren's shoulder to signal a stop, peering around her. Her stomach let out a tell tale grumble, and if the mage had been facing her, he would have seen her flush in embarrassment. Her nose pricked at the smells, the restaurants the most familiar places to her in the City. To the right, just down the alley was a little bakery shop, and they had recently passed a butchers place, a few taverns peppering the way in front of them. She had options, and now just tried to process the best way for her to get the food with her prisoner. "Hungry?" She removed her hand, sure that he wanted as little physical contact with his captor as possible.

[Coren]

Coren took sliver's silence as proof she couldn't form a rebuttal against his words and she either refused to answer to keep her beliefs intact or she was still trying to come up with a good rebuttal against his words. Whatever the cause, he just hoped she just continued it, he didn't enjoy trading words with people who where so radically against his profession like her anyway. When she suddenly grabbed him by the shoulder to get his attention he got annoyed. “What is it?” He asked in a deadpan voice. “We are only half...” He was cut of by the loud grumble in coming from her stomach, which just plain dumbfounded him. Here she was on duty and she wanted to interrupt her duty just to get a piece of food. “you want to take a break from escorting your charge just to take a bite to eat?” he said after a few moments of silence, finally have managed to just get over the pure audacity of what she just did. “Do you even take your job seriously?” Coren shook his head. “You know what I don't care how low the icewatch is sinking if their members think that is going to be a good idea. You may buy a snack or whatever, its not my skin if you are later then you should be.”