[color=goldenrod][i][h2][center]Gerard Segremors[/center][/h2][/i][/color]
[center][@VitaVitaAR][@PaulHaynek][/center]

What.

[color=goldenrod][i]What.[/i]

"What?"[/color]

With a trio of blinks in rapid succession, it all fell away. Beneath Jarde continuing with his account, his brother in arms had finally slipped.

[color=goldenrod][i]It's really more like extremely violent— Refined? What?[/i][/color]

Eyes that had just chased out the nonplussed precursors of panic now turned fully to Jarde, shining openly with amber bewilderment. It was a momentary thing, one that passed in undercurrent beneath the two swoons and a sigh, but it was still undeniable— for all Gerard Segremors had spent attempting to be the spitting image of a correctly polite and unflappable knight, that veneer [i]cracked[/i].

For just an instant, Jarde and any others still watching the black-haired knight would find a distinctly ignoble, naked confusion on display. 

It wasn't Jarde's fault— Gerard was certain that to him the difference between ruthless pragmatics and refined performance was much less clear than those more inundated in the art of swordsmanship. Rationally, there wasn't any reason for this to draw such a reaction— but rationality only made for so much of the mind, especially of the mind of a man still very much learning knighthood, with a self-image to match.

[color=goldenrod][i]I'm not there yet. I'm not even close. He couldn't see that? My skill is nothing compared to—[/i][/color]

"Ah!"

He shook his head free of the chains, shackles forged around his mind out of every mistake he knew he'd made.

[color=goldenrod]"Ah."[/color]

At Angenese's words, he just as hurriedly snapped back to attention, his focus [i]mostly[/i] regained.

"Good sir knights, have either of you ever seen a dragon?!"

[color=goldenrod]"A dragon? No. Never in my life."[/color]

He spoke a little too quickly, more than he'd meant.

He had faced smoke. He had faced flame. Streaking death from above, hundreds of fangs that bit out at he and his fellows from the stark heavens. Armor that all but the sternest of strikes bounced off of. He had fought a great many things emblematic of those ferocious beasts.

And all of them were his fellow man, at the end of the day. It was unfortunate for the shimmery-eyed young women, but he had no such tales left. Nothing thrilling as the black-clad one described it, and nothing worth telling.

Just days logged in red. 

It would be with this Order that he could pen a righteous and heroic story of the nature she seeked to hear, nowhere before. These were the threats the Roses had faced, not bands of swords for hire. He was in the right place now, but had not yet been present for the right time. How his heart leapt at the thought... The finest of a Knight's romances, and one's highest calling.

It would come to pass. And when it did, he would need to be ready for it— to be every bit as refined as his fellow apparently saw him now.

He cleared his throat, now conscious that the one-two punch of Jarde unwittingly challenging every self-assessment he had made in the past 48 hours and the noblewomen's excited questioning had left him, once again, off-balance in a sense. More than that, he was beginning to let it[i] get to him[/i]— he couldn't let that continue.

[color=goldenrod]"Should the opportunity arise I would leap at the chance to face one, that said, but I've not yet had the luck. But, I suppose that in its own way is lucky— Just as you said about Jeremiah, Angenese,"[/color] he inclined his head, a little less bluntly intoning his words now. [color=goldenrod]"That I [i]haven't[/i] just means they aren't terrorizing our people, right?"[/color]

The former mercenary hadn't noticed, however, that he had let a casual manner of address slip through the cracks.