There was something in Juna's attitude every now and then that, to Annara, made her seem condescending, as if she thought she could do no wrong while everybody else was incapable of just about everything. The way the female elf spoke to Annara as she walked to the building could have been meant to convey helpfulness, or maybe she was urging her to be careful or let her take whatever risk may have been laying ahead, but just her manner of saying it made Annara feel stubborn and what was indeed a factual reply caught a cold undertone:
[color=orangered]"I'm more than capable of defending myself, thank you very much."[/color]

She might have meant well and it wasn't fair, for Annara didn't even care to turn and see what Juna's mimic said, but the woman didn't care for fairness at that moment. She was feeling reckless and agitated and just about anybody who tried to reason with her right then was bound to receive a curt answer at best. And that was before she descended to find Lothren and his unwilling companion.

Annara heard nothing after "Royal Knight of Areta". Her ears were filled with a buzzing noise, as if from a thousand angry hornets, drowning every sound but her own thoughts. The eyes she looked into were filled with nothing but hateful indifference towards her but the Eretol girl recognized them, recognized the face. It had aged a little bit, the stress of service and battle accelerating the process and deepening the wrinkles around the eyes before their time, but she had a good memory for faces and names and it was difficult for her to forget a knight.

It was a few years before, not too long before she left her tribe. It wasn't the first raid or the last but it was one of the most brutal ones in many years, the Aretan men attacking just before dawn and killing indiscriminately. She couldn't fight them, they were too fast, too overpowering on horseback; all she could do was try and hide those who were paralyzed by fear, cowering with them like a child. It shamed her to feel so powerless and as the cries and noises started to die down, she was one of the first to come out. And she saw him, sitting on his steed with his ventail open, his sword red and his face a mask of cruel serenity. He could have attacked but he didn't - they never killed too many, they [i]wanted[/i] them to spread the word of the massacres among the desert dwellers. The woman who had helped deliver her to this world lay slain behind him in the sand.

This image filled her head and her hands shook violently. Lothren had barely spoken the last of his words when she launched herself at the man and hit and kicked him in the stomach, the face, the side, just about anywhere she could reach, yelling insults in her people's language and the one they shared, like [color=orangered]"murderer"[/color], [color=orangered]"horse-fucker"[/color] or [color=orangered]"ya chara"[/color] - the last one was widely known to translate to "shit-eater". Still, despite not being the strongest person present, she managed to get a few good punches in before she felt hands pulling her a few feet away from him. In an effort to continue her assault, she spit at him, hitting him somewhere on his chin or chest - it was hard to tell in the twilight - and cursed [color=orangered]"I hope your cock rots off before you father children!"[/color] as she kicked him one last time, aiming at the bodypart she had just named. Nimble as she was, her kick connected, but the knight owed it to whoever was pulling her back that it missed the Aretan valuables by an inch or two.