Xiomara responded with a wordless rumble. Anyone who had known the hermit for long enough would have sworn he wanted to be angry but Liu made it difficult. But that friendly smile had disarmed a world of warrior’s and was at least part of why Chen’s Tavern had become such a staple of Alexandrian life…

The other part was because of Liu’s ferocious strength but that was usually only reserved for the rowdiest drunks.

Xio traced Liu’s path with his eyes, head not moving, and when the first glass hit the counter top his fingers were already curled around it. Slender by nature Xio’s fingers were long but his hands were too large for the feminine face that he wore just as the breadth of his shoulders and the smoothness of his abdomen were. Soon the burn of Firedrake Whiskey was gliding down his throat, eliciting a burbling hiss from the man, before a half drained glass his the table top. With such technique one might think Xiomara was great with liquor but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. His sponsorship by Vorsours back on the Malsange homeworld had involved swearing off liquor, for all his vinegar and fire Xiomara was buzzed by his first glass and tipsy by the third, provided the liquor was strong enough. Combined with an amateur’s tendency to overestimate it wasn’t uncommon to find him sleeping in the alley beside Chen’s Tavern.

“It is this world,” Xiomara boomed. “We were summoned because we are champions and yet look how easily we’ve fallen into routine. This childish desire for structure, it disgusts me, but to see it from men and women who have dedicated their lives to the sword?" Xiomara shook his head sadly, uncaring of how seditious or ridiculous his words may have sounded, after all without an economy how could someone like Liu have run a tavern and supplied him with liquor? Fanatics often ignored these thoughts, “I blame that blasted Alexander, they say he’s a great warrior but I have never even seen his face, he has chained all of us to his throne. Someone needs to shake things up…”

Then there was Jen. Xiomara paid little attention to her sultry attire or attitude; this was not uncommon amongst women who liberated them with their own strength, a sort of exaggerated sexual freedom to make up for the standards placed on them before. But when she grabbed at the second glass his brows wrinkled up dangerously. “That is irrelevant. I am the Goddess chose to make me, in her own image.” When drunk Xio was erratic, not that he was yet, but his laughs were louder and his violence was vicious. But like a storm it was over shortly and he said… “Ah Liu, you know how I feel about coinage, but I promise you that when I next hunt I will save the largest carcass for you?”

Then he waggled his fiery red eyebrows as though he was actually doing the bear a favor.