[b][center]Zin - Rheinfeld[/center][/b] --- Though the meeting ground was nothing grand or special, Zin was quite relieved to see it. The journey had not been dangerous or exceedingly long, but it had been somewhat awkward from a social standpoint. Draza and Zayn were amiable enough and made for fine traveling companions, but the others were less agreeable for different reasons. She hadn't made any special effort to hide her vampirism, since she knew it would be discovered sooner or later anyway and trying to hide it would have been a bad idea; she did not hide her silver eyes with illusions, and that of course earned some negative attention and hostility from the Templar soldiers, but she had expected as much when she decided to join the group going to Rheinfeld. Laenaia was part of the group of Queen's Blades, and after their library chat had revealed that the other woman was apparently spying on Zin she hadn't felt comfortable around her fellow vampire. That led to her trying to avoid Laenaia without making it obvious that she was doing so, which was not an easy task whilst traveling, especially when the Blades were naturally somewhat segregated from the Templars they traveled with thanks to the mere fact of being outsiders. Awkward though it was, after a few days it felt quite insignificant compared to the larger irritant: Kasim. When they set up camp the first night, Kasim had approached her with flirtation and suggestion, which she tried her damnedest to deflect until he flat out propositioned her. He did not grow angry or threatening upon rejection, which Zin had experienced before with such forward men, but he was horribly persistent. Day and night, marching or in camp, the man was always nearby and ready with more flirtatious innuendos and boasts of his prowess in various skills, including of course his talents in bed. It was so constant and grating that once or twice Zin considered trying to fend off his advances with the power of her vampiric eyes, but she resisted the temptation and continued rebuffing him with neutral politeness and changing the topic whenever possible. That didn't always go over well, such as when she'd mentioned her views on the value of life and her own fear of death and he had lambasted her as a naive coward, but even that had been a welcome relief to the constant flirting and had sent Kasim away in apparent disgust, but only for a few hours, after which he had returned talking about how the best cure for cowardice was to lay with a brave man and take a portion of his courage in the form of his seed. There was a small silver lining to it all, in that the man was a fighter and offered suggestions of how to use illusions in combat to help those willing to actually wield weapons, but that truly did not outweigh the grating tediousness of his presence. Now, having arrived at their destination, Zin hoped that more professional behavior would be displayed. They were representatives of Renalta and on a mission to help Rheinfeld, so surely juvenile nonsense would be set aside until it was complete. Most of the others seemed absorbed with examining the nearby Crusaders as Taigyn and Davian finished speaking, but Zin had paid them her full attention. Alida's absence was worrisome indeed. If some ill had befallen her, then it would likely mean bad things for the meeting to come. Finding her and making sure she was safe seemed the most important thing to do, and sending only the man with an obvious grudge against her seemed a poor choice. "I'll help you find Alida." Zin stepped forth from the group of Queen's Blades and followed Davian, matching his pace but allowing him to stay ahead and lead the way as she adjusted her cloak's hood to make sure it still shielded her face well from the sun. "Better two sets of eyes than one, after all." That was the most diplomatic explanation she could offer to the man, to spare his pride. Saying she wanted to tag along to make sure he didn't say anything foolish and offend the Republican leader or start a fight would surely have been taken poorly. --- [b][center]Kasim - Rheinfeld[/center][/b] --- The sight of tents spread out around the meeting area was something of a disappointment to Kasim. He had hoped for something grand, a palace or cathedral worthy of a meeting of such import, but in truth the place was nothing special. Even the tents were boring, all orderly and neat and lacking ornamentation. Such was to be expected from the rigid Templar Order, of course, but that did nothing to make it less disappointing. The one thing that could be said for it was that it was in keeping with the rest of the mission so far. It had been boring disappointment all the way from Renalta, through the mountains, and to this little camp. The large temple they'd passed by had seemed promising, but of course that hadn't been the meeting place, for that would have been too exciting. Even the people had been unsatisfactory. Some of the Templar soldiers had been willing to chat and swap tales, but most were too stiff-necked to even crack a smile. The other Queen's Blades were alright in their own ways, at least. The women were the worst of it though, and they dragged his opinion of the whole lot of his traveling companions down a few pegs. A large portion of them were the unappealing sort he would only pursue after a night of drinking, thick or scarred or with faces so mannish that the only way to tell their gender was to look for tits, and he hadn't thought to pack any barrels of ale, alas. The rest were unwilling or uninterested, some claiming vows of celibacy and others simply rejecting him, even the few he paid particular attention to and worked his full charms on. The two vampire women of the Queen's Blades group were part of that group; the one openly showing her silver eyes was willing enough to talk to him all day but avoided all advances, and the more secretive one made all sorts of coy jokes and teased him but turned him away from her tent each night all the same. Even his telepathic abilities had been of no help, since none of them were the sort of lowly folks his more specialized talents worked on. It was quite frustrating, but Kasim had his pride and did not sink to bedding the horrors walking about in female guise. He did consider riding off to find the Republican forces and see if they might be more amenable to his desires, and if not then many of them were bedraggled enough that he could probably add some stealthy telepathic suggestions into the mix, but he was too stubborn to give up entirely on the women he'd already set his eyes on. Now that they were at the meeting place, however, could seek out other targets of conquest without implicitly admitting defeat where the others were concerned. The Templar commanders, Ty-something the leader and the grouchy one who was his second, were saying things, but Kasim was too busy searching for new prospects to pay them much attention. Though he didn't find much in the way of likely ladies, he did notice some oddities. Some of the soldiers around the large tent, from both factions at the meeting, were keeping away from the tent for some reason. The nearby Crusaders doing this seemed to be particularly interested in the new arrivals and their weapons. One of them, a woman, wore a cloak that seemed almost exactly the kind Free Holds assassins wore. Kasim could think of only a couple reasons for such behavior, and he didn't think it highly likely that these people near the main tent and not keeping others away were guards or sentries. The only other explanation he could think of was that some nefarious activity was afoot, and that could only mean bad things. The surly second was walking away by the time he came to this conclusion, and one of the Blades was following him. Kasim figured one more Templar and a pacifist vampire wouldn't make a huge difference if he was right about the loiterers around the tent being there for a bad cause, so he dismissed them from his mind and removed his gloves, tucking them away into his belt. Once that was done, he looked around the area again and put on a smile, a cocky upturn of the left side of his mouth, and headed for the cloaked woman. She looked like the most likely candidate for the leader of this odd group, and if his suspicions were completely wrong then at least she was a woman and didn't look horrendous from what he could see, so not matter what happened Kasim hoped to profit from a little chat. As something of an afterthought, Kasim reached out to his fellow Queen's Blades (minus Zin) and to the Templar leader with his telepathy and spoke to them as he walked toward the woman. [i]"Hi there, this is Kasim. Try not to get stupid surprised looks on your faces, it's just telepathy. These few soldiers eying our weapons are all keeping away from the meeting tent for no real reason I can see. Either they're oddly placed guards, or they're up to no good and waiting around to start trouble. I'm going to have a chat with the woman in the cloak and see what I can find out."[/i] When he neared the woman in question, Kasim flashed her a grin. "I noticed you staring at me. You've got good taste, I'll give you that. I'm Kasim." He held out his bare hand, offering it for a handshake. Hopefully she wasn't wearing gloves and would take the offer, which would let Kasim get a glimpse of her thoughts via his telepathy. If she was wearing gloves but went for the shake anyway he would feign some clumsiness and miss a clean grip, hopefully brushing some fingers over her bare wrist of lower forearm. If the woman was not at all inclined to shake his hand then he'd have to find some other way to try to touch her skin, and if it came by way of her falling for his display of lascivious intent then he wouldn't really complain.