Rise of the Dragon Riders {CLOSED}

[Chloriosus]

Jorkvan pushed Sorgen into a corner. “What have you done, you little misfortunate?”, he asked rather exasperatedly, even though Sorgen was barely shorter than him. Sorgen shook his head. “I… don’t… know…”, he responded almost confused. How in Valhallas name had he managed to pull that off? For sure he was the unluckiest human known to man, woman, elf, dwarf, and dragon kind. “Can we catch her?”, he breathed. Jorkvan face contorted into an almost laugh. “I’m not doing it, that’s for sure.”, he said. “Also if you don’t light out of here Krolo will probably have your neck. He might keep your head as well. Oh well, it’s just as well for me, cause I got in a fight with him about uh something with the water bucket. Can’t remember, but it was unbearable really. I think this was three days ago, but he still remembers. Today I told him hello and he told me hey. He is definitely trying to think of a ludicrous plan, or else he wouldn’t give such a suspicious answer. You know what? I BET he RIGGED the door to open like that when you passed, just so that you would run into me, and then he could start a fight. Of course he did.” Jorkvan thought over his new theory for about two seconds, his thought chain growing at lightning speed. “And if so, that means after he beat you up, he expects I will take care of you, and he can get the water bucket first! That fox!” Jorkvan was now red with anger, and jumped out from the corner. “Fight me like a man, you excuse of a foxxes flea!!!”

[wingfeather]

''Why thank you,'' Harrow said smiling widely, ''we'ed love to,'' he glanced at his brother to give his confirmation on the subject.

[Chloriosus]

Arrow gave another very noticeable wink at his brother. “It would be my and my babe brothers honor.”, he said smirking slightly.

[tenebria]

Leilani had glanced back as her rider spoke the question, and was just in time to catch a large wink from one twin to the other. Her eyes narrowed again. Those two. They always seemed so suspicious! But so far nothing had gone wrong, so she simply tossed her head and shifted her wings slightly, impatient to get in the air and show off her "dazzling" moves.

Nuana gave the twins a scornfully gracious smile and turned to mount her dragon. In doing so, she tripped over the eager dragon's tail, which the creature had swished over in impatience. Stumbling over it, she barely managed to regain her balance and froze still, drawing herself up stiffly, and totally unaware that the bottom of her leather pants were now shredded quite raggedy. Leilani had turned her head as she felt the girls stumble, and gave a gasp of mortification as she saw the torn edges. What disgrace!!! Nuana was still oblivious and turned to give the twins a flashing smile, as if saying "That was just for you peasants amusement" before sticking one foot in the hold on her saddle and swinging herself up, slipping slightly and almost missing her foot hold before swiftly acquiring it and sitting up primly.

[wingfeather]

Harrow guffawed but quickly recovered, ''yes well, we cannot wait to watch as your soar across the heavens,'' he said fawningly, ''right little bro?''

[Chloriosus]

Firasko sat quietly watching first the elf and then the human boy apologize to each other. She stared down at her food and raised her eyebrows slightly. Then, finishing off the last bit of her food, she set the bowl down on the table to be collected and slowly sauntered out of the mess hall. She knew she should probably go train after a bit, but she decided to go visit her little part to the village garden patch. Her little piece of dirt, one might say, was rather at the end of the long furrows. She took a small pail of water with her, before walking over to her plant. She was trying to cultivate a Kultzberry bush, which produced a lucious reddish orange berry with slight blue coverings. Firasko had always been rather partial towards those berries herself, but she was not at all an experienced gardener. The plant was not really a native species, and grew little bushels of four leaves which released a rather bad smell when touched on the underside. Firasko had been sure the plant wouldn’t make it past the first month, but to her surprise, it had grown a vine. She watered it slowly, taking care not to get the leaves wet, then checked for potential unripe berries. There were none. Firasko would have sighed. Oh well, she thought, getting up slowly. Maybe there will be some tomorrow. She looked over the furrows at the other people’s patches. Some were full of green sprouts, some were carrying fruit. Some girls patches were full of useless flowers. Others were bare of living green, and some had as of yet remained untouched, and were a messy pile of dried grass and stones.

[wingfeather]

Elexian nodded briskly to Alalëa and was about to take his leave when the other younger rider came up and gave an apology as well, but before he could respond the young lad had already shot out of the mess hall. He shrugged, well I suppose the fellow has some manners at least, he thought to himself. After a little while of walking through the winding halls, caves, and passages of The Nest, Elexian entered the armory. The enclosure was large with high ceilings small windows nearer the top witch cast down dim sunlight upon the scared and stained stone floor. He walked past the rows of sheathed swords stacked neatly against a wall, then he passed many unstrung recurve and longbows lying beside their sheepskin quivers bristling with arrows, and after walking past some well oiled pieces of armor and hauberks he finally made it to the rear, where awaited him a pile of spears, daggers, and swords. Because Elexian was not a rider, and since he was too old to be a stable boy, he had to be given other tasks to help with keeping The Nest clean and orderly. Sometimes he was assigned to long hours on the fortress walls as a guard, or there were even times when the stable boys were short handed and he needed to help them out. Elexian sighed and after grabbing a polishing cloth, vigorously began attacking the pile of blades, all the while trying to keep the thought of how he was going to have to sharpen all of these afterwards.

[tenebria]

Alalëa swiftly completed the task of eating, wanting no more than to exit the increasingly crowded area and take refuge in the only place that would be quiet at this time. Pushing back from the table she stepped over the bench and headed out, her steps slow, almost sauntering as she glanced around the area furtively. It didn't seem anyone was watching. As soon as she exited the hall, she turned swiftly to the left, right by the main entrance to the mess hall. There hung a selection of plain oiled brown leather cloaks, of which were used during harsh weather to travel about undrenched. Sweeping one off the hook as she strode by, she swiftly flung it over her shoulders the cowl flipping over her brown hair and obscuring her face adequately. Her steps quickened as soon as she did so, her gaze kept steadily forwards and ignoring the noisy guards headed down from the ramparts. Her strides were sure as she wove through the corridors and halls, and finally heading up a large flight of stairs, which wound upwards into a well sized tower. Here was the quieter, unfortunately less used portion of the nest, The Scriptorium. A large oaken door barred her way, ornate gold designs blending in with the mottled wood. For a moment she paused, listening, but no sound was heard from within. Putting her hand to the door, she swung it open and stepped inside, closing it softly after her.

[tenebria]

Krolo's anger was mounting swiftly as his sharp ears caught the distinct sound of excited whispering from around the corner. OOOH whoever it was was going to get it, if not from him immediately, then from the dragon's rider later for sure! With a glare he began stomping forwards, only to jerk back in slight surprise as the dreaded stableboy Jorkvan leapt out, spouting quite the most ridiculous challenge. Krolo's eyes sparked with anger at the insult. "You misbegotten son of a leprous donkey! YOU LET OUT THE SHADOW DRAGON!" he said, with quick assumption, leaping forward with the full intention of giving his fellow comrade a throttling.

Visilva heard a commotion and paused in her shadow slipping to get a better view. Ah, it was caused by her! How wonderful! With a grin, if she could even grin in that form, which was really quite unknown, she moved closer, until she was in the long shadow of the stable, almost directly at Sorgen's feet. Her attention shifted to him for a moment. Hmm he would be wonderful to scare... but he had also let her out. Perhaps that was worth a free pass. The yell of Krolo caught her focus and her senses moved back towards the two stableboys in curiosity.

[Chloriosus]

Jorkvan was a brilliant talker, and full of spunk and himself, and his brilliantly overtime working mind tried putting even more together, like beating together together pieces from four or five completely different puzzles. “Ha, your trying to blame it on me! That gives me clear evidence that it was actually you, since your running out of people to pin it on!” He got docked to the side somewhat and stammered back up. “We’ll, your little mind numb pea sized lie isn’t working, not today! Why you little-“, he continued his onslaught ongeordend which was considerably more powerful than his physical capabilities of beating people up. He had completely forgotten Sorgen’ part in this, and as far as Sorgen was concerned, he was all the better for it, and ducked into the woods. He was going to apologize to Alalea yes, but tellingbher about this would be completly suicidal. He ran through some brush and away from the stables, finally reaching the garden patch, where Firasko was observing the patches of mostly sod. She looked up sharply when she heard somebody coming.

It was the novice from earlier, so much was clear, and it seemed he was in some sort of scrape, like always. She looked at him inquisitively. Sorgen really did not know what to do. “A dragon got out!” He panted. “The shadow one.” Girasko raised her eyebrows. “Whoever did that is going to have to see the healer for repaired eardrums, and probably a lot of other things.”, she thought to herself, and followed Sorgen into the direction to the stables. As they passed the barracks, she quickly stopped there to get the potion for Crimson. If she was going over there again, she would at least make it as resourceful as possible, she decided, and then ran back to the stables, where two stable boys were making apparent attempts on each others life.

[tenebria]

Kloro was a bit occupied in the task of throttling Jorkvan getting in quite a good hit to the side of the other stableboys head. He was further enraged by the obvious attempts to pin it on himself. "I did no such thing! It was I who closed her door in the first place, and it was your shriveled wretch of a worms hide that opened it!" he said in quite the indignant angry tone, leaping on him again and grabbing him in a rather good choking grip.

Visilva watched from the shadows with delight as the two stableboys rolled and tumbled in the dust, just managing to keep enough focus on the shadow she was merged with to not allow herself to be seen. And so her pleasure grew... until she heard some rather firm footsteps heading her direction. For a moment she almost panicked, and the corner of a wing flapped out of the shadow before she recovered and focused as hard as possible on the shadow. It wasn't her rider, she could tell by the footsteps. And she couldn't be touched in this form. Now a wiser dragon may have slipped off and gotten a good free flight out of the whole deal... but Visilva's killing trait was her undying curiosity. So she did the opposite and hunkered down in the shadow, getting quite comfortable as she watched the scene unfold.

[wingfeather]

After Elexian had finished the pile of blades he started on smoothing out there rough and chipped edges with a whet stone, ''when they want to fight, they fight hard,'' he said to himself with a laugh. As the stone sung against the steal with a resounding ring his thoughts turned to other matters, What would happen if we were attacked? The idea of them being under siege was laughable, for one thing their gardens were within the fortress and they had a full scale irrigation system, ya there was no chance of a siege. But what about a sea invasion? Elexian imagined the sea absolutely black with evil ships from the North, the walls were lower on that side but they would have the advantage of seeing the enemy first. The thought of an attack by sky was immediately dispelled, the last Dragon War was about 100 years ago and those hated riders of the north had been beaten terribly, no one expected anything else of them. Soon he finished the blades and set to returning them to there proper places.

[tenebria]

Alalëa turned from the oaken door and took a deep calming breath as her gaze swept over the towering wooden shelves, bathed in a dusty golden light from the four large windows cut in the stone tower. The slightly sharp yet still musty scent of ink brought a soft smile to her lips as she moved forward into the silent room. Here was her peace. It was also her secret. Not one other human, elf or dwarf knew of her passion for the literature of the past. Only Visilva knew, and as she didn't understand the writings, she was as uncaring of the fact as any dragon would be. The elf reached up and swept off the cloak, hanging it on a handy large unlit candlestick, and moving to the bookshelves. Gently she ran her hand over the books and scrolls, smiling again as she remembered the many tales they held in their pages. Which should she delve into today?

[Chloriosus]

Sorgen stood in the middle way of the stables, very undecided on what to do now. Beside him stood Firasko, with an equal amount of ideas. She looked around the stables and other dragon stals just in case she would notice a trace of the formidable shadow dragon, but found neither trace of wing nor grin. Sorgen was frantically searching in the bushes, the notices that she was probably in shadow form now, so he began avoiding all shadows lest he step on her. He found it was considerably harder to look for omething when you are trying not to step on what it MIGHT be, so he didn't get very far. Firasko gave up her search to watch to two stableboys beat the stuffing out of each other, arms crossed. At the moment she was routing for the one that didn't have the messy hair. Jorkvan dramatically rolled to his side to pouce back, spewing useless words faster than flame reacts with grease, and doing a lot more talking than action. After a few minutes of this Firasko stepped in and grabbed Jorkvan firmly by the shoulder, hoisting him up, and pulled up Krolo with her other hand, pulling them apart and then letting them go.

[tenebria]

Krolo's ire was quite raised as the wriggling stable boy somehow managed to evade his grasp... multiple times. He was just flinging himself back on him, intending on ending it rather violently, when he felt himself hoisted up wit ha jerk. He let out an almost yelping sound, his eyes immediately fixating on the dark silent elf that stared at them with disapproval. He stumbled slightly as he was plopped to the ground, swiftly beginnning to mutter apologies while staring darkly at the instigating stable boy. "My apologies, just a mix up, very sorry to have disturbed you" he mumbled quickly.

Visilva grinned with joy as the fight commenced into quite a dusty brawl, but it was halted altogether far too quickly for her enjoyment as the silent elf broke them up with a swift movement. She hissed in slight disappointment, then snapped her jaws shut, if that can even be done in shadow form, realizing that the owner of the scraggling feather beaked storm dragon was approaching from behind the shadow which she was occupying. Not that she expected him to discover her. Her rider could hardly discover her in shadow form, much less a novice water kneed young boy.