[i]"And my name is Kyra, not priestess."[/i]

The man retorted, caring not if she heard him and the low way he spoke.

"A name... a title, they matter no differently. Both are tamed things."

It was true, quite true at that, that both in the outsider's experience were the works of people. He had never met a thing of the woods that cared any about what exactly it was called, just as long as the word had respectful meaning to it. This tamed town, with its sheltered soul, had proven it could not stand up to scaled vermin and bandits who had the audacity to think themselves anything more than armed thugs, so it came as no real surprise the way the young woman reacted as she did. It was clear she had never faced a challenge like this, a trial of faith, but something in her fought fiercely beyond the magic she wielded and what her patron seemed to embody.

Perhaps nature's touch, as with that he felt through her divine spell's blessing, had a deeper hold on her than she knew. Brannor could feel that magic's power, after all the very essence of it was born into him in ways he could not explain; other men hadn't these blessings inborn, at least to his awareness. So it was very possible, or so he thought it now, that when pressured Shepard's learning of the faith changed.

"Perhaps in that too you should embrace ferocity." He continued, said as obscurely and oddly as anything else he had prior in hushed tone.

The beast that was this man knew little other than that after all. It was why he was so partial to the half blood, even if the other man was touched in the head by what he could only imagine was the gods' doing. At least he, in his orcish rages, knew that and what it meant, so there was hope at least for a priestess with familiar magic, one that begged to be unleashed and unchained, to discover it too and free herself from the clouding anger in mind; there was a time and place for fury, both those rampant and cold and cunning, and more importantly a way to wield it.

"There will be time after to explain."

And yet... in spite of the ongoing concerns of the halfling and her pleadings, he did not find her argument grating. Rational, reasonable, respectable, it was all these things and more, but what it lacked was courage. It had not the resolve to turn its own fears into weapons. Assuming it was a trap, which even yet might be questionable, they had the time and opportunity to use that against their enemy now. There were no lives in peril, no city to save; the battle was already lost, the darkness won it, but not the war which they waged here and now. So what concern was there to be?

They had the time, the means and the opportunity to stalk their foes and cut them down in scores of bloodied shreds. Let the enemy lie in wait for their own death.

[hider=Rolls]
Brannor rolls a [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/rolls/2472]14[/url] for a Dexterity (Stealth) check as they remain slinking through the darkness.
[/hider]
[@Hekazu][@Ryonara][@Lucius Cypher][@Gordian Nought][@Norschtalen]