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Defiance

Dannisus shuddered at the thought of actually touching the gem. At a first glance, it looked a little different from what his mother had showed him. It had a distinct presence to it like it was possessed. He looked at her again. "With time, I might be able to figure something out. But I would need to take an even closer look at it," he slapped his book shut and tossed it back into his pack. "Certainly not on this hill, though." Dannisus' overwhelming desire to learn more about Lui's artifact had long since disappeared by now. He took a look around, only to notice a plethora of prying eyes all around them; A few of the guards near the jammed gate, several civilians passing by, and even a couple people that recently popped out of the tavern. He looked at Lui assuredly and nodded, offering the most sincere smile he could muster, despite how dishonest his next statement might have been. That smile quickly contorted into a disjointed look of pain and surprise.

"ץﻉٱค!" Dannisus screeched, suppressing his voice only slightly while he yanked his tail away from Aelih. "Please don't do that, ever." He looked at Aelih with a hint of anger in his voice for the first time since they'd met. It vanished quickly, and he offered a curt nod. _{"It's not funny."} His attention returned to Lui, reaffirming an air of contentment rather quickly.

"I'm certain I'll figure something out. I have to look around town for some supplies, but once I've built a ɭٱคกร, I should be able to tell you a lot more." Dannisus picked up his pack and quickly rose to his feet, suddenly overcome with a case of scholar's passion. "You're both welcome to come with me, but it'll be a while. You're better off meeting me..." He thought on that for a moment. There was no way in hell he'd be going back to that tavern, even if he'd already gotten a room. There had to be other buildings in town were they could get away from the gawking public. "Ah!" He pointed across town, "South gate, where I came in. There was a fairly nice looking inn near the side of the road. They have a sycamore tree growing in the field next door, and a big wooden sign out front that reads 'rest your weary soul' or something. We can meet there at sundown. For now, you'll likely pose no threat," he reassured, comforting Lui with a light pat of her head. By now, he'd recognized her as nothing more than an innocent child, and children didn't deserve to feel any kind of torment. torturing kids... That was the worst, the absolute worst thing anyone could do. Even if she wasn't a real person. "Don't worry yourself! There are a bunch of tough people around here..." He paused and smiled through the biggest lie he'd told anyone in years. "I'm sure that they'll protect you, and themselves if anything happens." Even if he preferred to think better of strangers, part of him knew that humans were far less selfless than the other races.

"They're nice people!"

He felt like scum. But he wasn't entirely wrong.

"Aelih," Dannisus chirped, "I don't mean to impose, but you seem keen enough on our company. Do you think you could keep an eye on Lui while I take a bit of a walk around the market stalls?" He wasn't sure if he could really trust Aelih, but he couldn't lie to himself. The fact that she wasn't human made him infinitely more at ease with the idea. The underlying issue was clear though. The markets weren't fully set up yet, probably wouldn't be until tomorrow, but he didn't know that. His eyes drifted towards Jack, Fauv and Gabriel again. He might've cringed at Fauve's display if he didn't originate from the forest. Still, at least his kin had the decency to cover themselves up. He spun back towards Aelih with a light smile.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

With his spear, Nexus let his body spin, and hopped off the ground, continuing until he made a full 360, and landed just after the wave of Ki passed underneath him. As soon as he landed, he pierced his spear into the ground and ran directly at Bruce, hoping to catch him off balance. Baby blue flames began to materialize around his right hand as he grew closer, growing and growing until they took the shape of a dragon's head.

"Flame Dragon..."

A Hero Tale {Complete}

The speed of Nexus' approach reached incredible velocity, shrugging off Bruce's attempt to upset his balance. BeforeBruce's mace could strike, Nexus passed him by, stopping hard on his right leg a few feet behind him. From behind, he swung his spear in a wide arc, summoning a burst of electricity from the weapon's tip that homed in on Bruce.

Defiance

Dannisus froze. A tingle ran down his spine, all the way through to the tip of his tail. He cursed under his breath, "ץﻉٱค ๓ѻฝչ," still rustling through his bag.. After quite the search, his hand emerged from his rounded leather pack with a small black notebook. Without delay, he tore the book open and sifted through the pages, moving his hands dexterously as not to not crease the thinly hewn pages. "Here," suddenly his finger slammed against several lines of script, written just beneath a small sketch of a triangular gem, "The facets, pigmentation, and fractals of your gemstone closely resemble something that my mother showed me when I was just a kit. Here, look-" He urged her to take a closer look at the sketch. The details were astounding on a second glance. Beneath the penciled lines that closely covered each and every facet of the gem, there were smokey grey fractals of a different shade. "The Myti have a word for them, ๓ٱคกɗٱคร ɭٱคɭค. Roughly translated, it means Blood Diamond, gems not uncommon in Sylsashia, much like other gemstone artifacts, but these..." Dannisus furrowed his brow and pulled the book back, looking intently at the sketch he'd made when he was barely old enough to climb a tree. The drawing was nostalgic, and fearsome, linked so dearly with the history of his people. After a long pause, he started up again.

"About 400 years ago, Myti used to wear them as jewelry. Sounds absolutely ridiculous, doesn't it?" He chuckled lightly. "But they weren't compliant little hunks of rock. They had effects on our women that were... Uh, rather dire. They ranged from anything from what you've just described, so nightmares, unwanted attention, to more serious ailments. Worst of all, it took a quite while for my people to realize it back then, that the blood diamonds we'd treasured as frivolous accessories were cause to mass hysteria, insanity, and mana drought." He looked at Lui curiously. "Like I mentioned, the only Myti affected were our females. I'm not sure if it had something to do with their magical affinity, or gender, or whatever, but I can say with quite a bit of certainty that you've got something tremendously dangerous there. Hell, it was dangerous enough to violently shift Myti culture a few centuries ago." Dannisus' ears twisted rightwards and he jerked his head back towards the path they took away from the tavern. He noticed one of the men from earlier glancing in their direction. Though he met Jack's eyes momentarily, Dannisus lowered his head and eventually returned his focus to the notes in front of him. "You're not like the Myti, though. You're not biological, and your false eye is embedded in your skull. The solution my people came to was simple, stop wearing the bloody things, but if you can't just tear the gem out, it might be a little more complicated than that."

Defiance

"I think it's cursed!" Dannisus blurted out cheerfully with an idiotic smile plastered across his dumb face. He'd never come across a cursed artifact of such pristine quality before! It looked as if it- "Oh, right. That's a bad thing, Lui. Very bad! Not just the type of bad you can get rid of, but maybe two millennia worth of souls, bad. That's- Well that's uh, kind of..." He stopped himself and fumbled with his fingers. "Yeah, it's kind of bad." He flung his tail side to side without noticing, whipping Aelih in the process.

He had a vivid memory of those gems from when he was a child. Sylsashia forest was a resting place for relics of all shapes and sizes. Only the Myti could access local tombs without worry of the wildlife, but unlike the forest that hosted them, ancient runes did not acknowledge Sylsashia's cat folk as anything less than pillagers. The artifacts that lay buried beneath her benevolent forest floor often held wicked enchantment that condemned the living. Weapons. Lui's eye, if he wasn't to be mistaken, may have been one such artifact. If that was the case, there was no telling just how much danger Lui was in; Dannisus worried for himself and everyone else in Nadska in a similar fashion, as there was no telling how dangerous Lui could be. He dropped his book into his lap and reached over his shoulder in a hurry.

"Ehm, yes," Dannisus grunted with one hand already rustling around deep in his pack, "Can you tell me, um- Ack! If there are any- Well, effects or anything? I mean, damn!" He leaned to his side and reached deeper, searching desperately for one of his small notebooks. "For example, constant pain? Visions? Unwanted attention from the ethereal, or otherwise?.. Um... Anything at all?"

Defiance

"Well," he moved slowly towards Lui and looked at her gemstone closely, "Do you mind if I look a little closer?" Without giving her a moment to acknowledge or grant his request, he moved his right hand towards her face and gingerly pulled it closer, while nearing the surface of her false eye with his left. The pupils of his eyes went narrow like darkened fangs as he peered closely at the intricacies within Lui's cursed gem. Light refracted behind the outer canopies, glistening brilliantly across thousands of carefully cut ridges. Dannisus' lower eyelids trembled at the sight of it. "This isn't a Mana sink," He growled, moving in even closer, and jostling Lui's head slightly. His right hand dug behind the side of her jaw firmly to hold her head still. Vivid transparency turned to an opaque reddish hue as he pried further with his sharpened eyes. Concentrating with as much diligence as he could muster, Dannisus' canine began to dig into his lower lip. But in only a few moments, he'd lost what little clarity he was able to garner from his first glance.

"Oh!-" He'd realized it a little late, that he'd been digging into the side of Lui's face with his hand. His face lit up and he pulled away quickly. "Sorry, sorry! I didn't mean to treat you like a doll- That gem just- I'd..." He stopped himself and shook his head. "I hope that didn't hurt. I was just trying to get a closer look, is all." Dannisus turned back toward Aelih and gestured towards Lui with his index finger, all too casually with a nervous smile, and then turned back towards the construct.

Defiance

Dannisus was smiling from ear to ear. His expression was only cut short by Lui's unorthodox comment. He chortled, and waggled his finger in objection. "No need for such nasty procedures- All we want to take out is your eye, right?" It sounded a lot simpler than it actually was. There was something nagging at the back of his mind about her little ruby eye, from the very first moment Dannisus laid eyes upon it. "Which may or may not be a type of Mana sink... They're much like Mana tags, but a lot less oppressive, and not compatible with biological creatures." He tapped the skin underneath his left eye and looked at Lui. "Your gemstone emits a very dull stream of magic that I can't really identify with my nose alone. Mana sinks have a habit of hiding themselves like that- Soaking mana at a persistent rate like a little sponge, but other than killing most people, they don't usually have many side effects." He stopped suddenly, quickly spinning towards a nearby patch of grass that overlooked Nadska's northern gates. A thought came to mind. With a small open mouthed smile, he glanced back at Lui and Aelih and gestured towards the small grass hill, quickly making his way over before they could react. "But I could be wrong!" Dannisus shouted whilst slamming into the side of the hill, rump-first. He patted the grass, still talking with the assumption that the two were listening closely. "Mana sinks are archaic. I couldn't even begin to understand why somebody would meld one onto a construct without at least modifying it to output mana. Even then, the energy they can store is finite! There's an-uh, well..." He paused and began to tap his forehead with one knuckle.

"You said that this person- The one who gave you that eye, he just found it?"

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Nexus released his chains, letting them freely cling to the floor and ceiling in conjunction with Bruce's. The resulting array shifted until it was completely taut, forming into a web-like array that covered nearly half the room. As the daggers fell from above, he rose his free hand again, and created a barrier, very similar to Oswald's technique, deflecting any shards that came too near. When his immediate position was safe, he brought his hand down, aiming towards Bruce, and creating a series of runes in front of him. "Momentum gate," he whispered, taking one step forward towards the floating symbols. As he neared them, they enlarged into pathways just large enough for him to fit through, three total. Stepping through the first, his speed increased. The second and third propelled him towards Bruce at an alarming speed, almost like a bullet, breaking the sound barrier in the process with a thunderous boom. Nexus thrust his spear forwards, aiming to impale Bruce, while he gathered energy in the center of his back. "...My abilities go beyond the omnipotent use of simple weapons."

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Nexus straightened his posture and lifted his right hand. His spear vanished with a brief pristine flash, and reappeared in his grasp an instant later. His eyes barely gleamed through the tiny slit in his helmet, obscured by the tower's mirrored interior. "Much quicker than I'd anticipated," Nexus bellowed from beneath his armor, the sound of his voice refracting like jagged crystals, "Your remarkable power reserve, focused so passionately, is a sight to behold. I dare say your control rivals my own in sheer intensity. But..." His spear spun round and round through the air until it stopped suddenly, its tip hanging a few feet above the ground behind Nexus. He charged forward with his right arm grasping the pole of his weapon tightly, letting it drag through the air behind him while he reached forward with his left. A glimmer, shining brighter than his armor, lashed out in all directions. A moment later, chains were sprawling out from the center of his hand, moving around to encompass Bruce from his left and right sides, joining behind him. The chains themselves sprouted spikes, and had an unusual figure 8 design to each link, unlike Bruce's version of the technique. Nexus clenched his hand, and from several points along the inside of his newly created cage, more streams of linked energy emerged, heading towards Bruce from both sides.

"Mimic"

Defiance

Dannisus smiled and looked back towards his book. "I've never met a wooden gole- Ehm, construct, before," He noted. He took the tip of his finger and slid it across a few phrases and he nodded. "Unfortunately, that means I know nothing about the more detailed inner workings of your eye, or you body!" He announced joyously, "But I might still be able to help with that eye of yours, fortunately." He began speeding up, assuming that both Aelih and Lui would follow closely behind as he scrambled through the first few sections of his notebook.

"Have either of you ever read about Couerthil Repositories?" He paused and blinked rapidly. "Erm, Mana Sinks?"