[Center][H3][colour=2F4F4F][b]Gentle[/b][/colour][/h3][/Center][hr]

Once upon a time a time Gentle would have met such a casual, contemptuous dismissal like the one the half-elf just directed at him with full, insane, glorious, horrifying, beautiful violence. Wouldn’t even have thought about it, either. Instinct trumped thought everytime, and his was an instinct bone-deep, crawling back along the centuries to when his kind where birthed by a queen who lay with a God. He would have just dipped his horns and charged, like his fore-fathers of old, gored whichever idiot frail got in his way and to hells with the consequences, he would have bourne them all, just to display the simple fact that no one. [b]disrespects[/b]. [B]THE BULL[/B].

…

He grunted deep in the back of his throat, trying to clear the bitter, half-remembered salt-tang from his mouth. Felt a small wave of nausea when he realized he was salivating. There was a bloodless tremble in his hands that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with hot, desperate anticipation. Hands clenched white-hard around his quarter-staff, but that just seemed to make the shake worse. Was that the wood of his staff he could hear splintering, or his clamped teeth, tight as a sprung bear-trap? He backed off from the warrior woman, and got as far from her as he could in this suddenly all too small room. 

He was old now, he reminded himself, and with age come wisdom, the wisdom to feel out which battles were worth fighting, and which were better left unfought. At least that was the lie he'd tell anyone in the unlikely event they asked why he slunk away from the half-elf like a beat dog. The real truth of the matter was that he was scared. Scared? Terrified, more like. Deep-recessed fear of repeating fool-damned mistakes that he’d made a hundred times, a thousand times, in the past. Mistakes that it would be best for everyone, especially himself, if he left there in the past, where the only people they could hurt were his ghosts. He took some deep breaths, calming breaths, aiming to keep his blood down. He failed. In the deep distance he could swear he heard maddened braying, ancestors long dust demanding he stop disrespecting their legacy and do what he was born to do. What the Minotaur's where [b]made[/b] to do. And just below the bestial demands of his father's fathers, almost at the soft edge of what he couldn’t heard, at the meeting place where memory and imagination exist, the insistent, sonorous, all-powerful voice of an absent deity, the primarch who left but has since returned, urging him onwards, to give in to his base appetites, to give glory to Dread Minoas. 

He was only paying partial attention to the rest of the group. He needed to keep his efforts focused on keeping his monstrous blood in check. Desperately murmered prayers to Apollokeos, She Who Promises Clean Waters, for the strength seemed destined to go unheard, when salvation came from an unlooked quarter. Aoné referred to herself as a barbarian. Funny. He hadn’t expected the Elf to have a sense of humour. He’d always figured the Elves to be dry and brittle, like desert glass. He snorted a laugh. Not long and not loud, but it was enough to break the spell that the blood-madness of his people was weaving on him. He took another deep breath, the mingled scents of this group of strangers and castle life tainting the freshness, the stink of lavender heaviest of all, but it still revived him. He looked to Aoné. [color=2F4F4F]"Thank you."[/color] He murmured. He doubted she heard him. The thanks wasn't really for her anyway.

He directed his attention back to the group as the dwarf and the huntress re-introduced themselves, wondering at the pointlessness of it. Hadn’t they just done this for the king’s benefit? Shouldn't they be doing this on the road to [i]‘Mudshit’[/i], or wherever it was they were destined for. The ‘taur rubbed a big hand across his broad temple, trying, and mostly failing, to massage away the splitting headache that had been coming on him. Was this really what the God’s wanted him for?

The bit about the trees did catch his attention though. Stranger hating trees? He didn’t like the sound of that, not one little bit. He wasn’t a big fan of roofs of a kind, be it stone grey or leafy green, much preferring the trackless expanse of blue sky or crystal clear night. But combine a roof with an inhospitable tree? That, well that just sounded like a recipe for a failed quest to his mind. Sure, maybe they were just regular trees, and the half-elf had gone a little feral, but it sounded like portent to him, and if there was one thing they taught you in Achea, it was you should never ignore portent.

[color=2F4F4F]“These trees, they dangerous?”[/color] He directed his question at the huntress half-elf, [color=2F4F4F]“I could make a sacrifice to appease them? The God’s ain’t always in a listening mood, but if they are maybe they’ll have a word with the trees on our behalf, put a good word in for us. Reckon that will do us any good sister?”[/color]