The sheer racket the sergeant managed to conjure was what had drawn the attention of the young hunter, who not long after then found himself running almost headlong into the salted elder and his bizarre presence. [i]He[/i] certainly was not responsible for whatever was taking place, neither was the governor who appeared behind them, who too was seemingly drawn from the bowels of the keep as well and toward the noise of what was several men brawling with their superior to retain control of him. The official addressed the rest of those who found themselves present as they paid witness to the scene before them, not long after their events unfolded.

[i]"I realise this is an awful burden to ask you to bear, especially after all you have already done for us, but any of you has a better chance to defeat that... thing, than any of my militia have."[/i]

[i]Something[/i] had their attention and when Brannor laid eyes on it, he could see just why.

It was indeed a [i]thing[/i], neither quite a dragon or a man, almost as though the two were made one in an unsettlingly familiar way. What dark depths kept conjuring things like these tonight? The aspirant had gone the entirety of his life with seeing little more than men, dwarves, elves and those somewhere in between. There were stranger things afoot, but never so many had he bore witness to or even all at once. It was enough to set him on edge, just as the dragon did before in its first incarnation - hopefully these two fiends were not one in the same. After all, the grizzled man professed his admission that perhaps Brannor, the hunter and outlander to this lot, was perhaps the sole thing that could effectively fight it, going so far as to draw the rest of them in so he could speak more precisely his arcane logic.

[i]"Then this jaded rot will slowly engulf these lands and eventually the wild your feral eyes herald from.”[/i]

The bearded fellow's voice trailed off, about his mysterious ways but not without final words. Vanishing as he was, leaving them there with only the governor, the sizable swordsman shifted his eyes about in thought before leveling them at the man who lorded over this keep and its survivors. Brannor had come to trust the well dressed if not bloodied and battered fellow to an extent, enough to know he would not ask anything of them that he did not believe his men could do. And this? This monster and whatever it wanted, was unquestionably something that they could not triumph by the means of mere men alone, if ever at all.

With a deep breath and an unspoken prayer that came with subtle stroking of his silver pendant, the wilder addressed those present.

"Then if we are to do this, we will be wise about it..."

Brannor looked to the desperation that had consumed Sergeant Longwater, who had no doubt paused in exhaustion from the gang of his own men that were restraining him against all his worldly efforts.

"I will take the man's sword and shield as my tools to champion," The words as a gesture more symbolic than anything, "As well as any heavier armor you can spare that would further aid the cause."

The latter address had moved to Governor Nighthill, who the outsider hoped would be willing to spare what he could. Such tools were replicable, but life was not; if the paladin was to truly risk death, he would do so competently and with added plans made. Dying here to an apparent bout of amusement for that draconic humanoid was not going to further the greater cause, not just for four lives, but an effort all the same needed to be valiantly made. Failing to so much as try would unquestionably snuff out the last light of the few enkindled spirits here.

"And I will fight on the conditions that the duel is to submission, not death. Whoever falls and can no more resist has submitted... yet consider me wary of a dragon's notion of honor however," Brannor remarked, inferring that the men should keep their weapons trained upon it, lest it attempt a killing blow out of spite, "... and that the prisoners are released before, not after. So that if I might die, they needn't join me."

He approached the mob of men, that of which included the dwarf, pausing only to look back to the rest of his remaining compatriots and the man who called upon them once more in service to Greenest. Before them his sizable figure offered a glove toward Longwater, hopeful he would accept the effort the divine champion made to use his arms in the coming fight.

"Lastly, I ask for you not to fear the things I will do."

[@Hekazu][@Ryonara][@Lucius Cypher][@Gordian Nought][@Norschtalen]