Welcome to Gaia! ::

As the man stared at him as if he'd just dropped from the sky, Jessie felt satisfied that he'd curbed the man's need to slaughter for the moment, at least. Then, his eyes went blank, and she slid to the floor like a demolished building.

"Oh, wonderful. Another invalid," he sighed, absently brushing a strand of hair off the uninjured side of his face.

He slid the dagger back into its hidden sheath, and drew Mergloth. The crowd, which had shuffled forward upon his collapse, drew back again, but the drow merely tapped the tip of the blade a couple of times against the man's shoulder plating. Satisfied, the rapier disappeared and Jessie bent to examine the man more thoroughly. He re-sheathed the man's twin swords and set about searching his pockets, pouches and person for any identification - but there was nothing.

His examination had told him one thing, though - and for him, it was an unpleasant discovery. The armour - the style, the markings, the buckle of his belt, the boots... this man was not dressed like a Gaian. With an inward groan, he realised the undesireable truth. This man was from Faerun, the land directly above his home. It explained why Jessie'd been attacked, certainly. While the Gaians, having never heard of his kind, treated the drow with the awe and respect due to a mystical creature, they were not a... kindly looked upon people amongst the surfacers of Faerun. In fact, the drow, along with most of their neighbours underneath the ground, were regarded as monsters. He was a member of a monster race in their eyes, and was to be treated as such.

Jessie got to his feet again, face grim. Who knows what this could mean for him here, amongst people who respected him?

"Sir," called the woman who'd spoken to him earlier "Are you alright?! That man is a madman...!" she remarked, more to the people around her than to him, "Did you see how he charged in and attacked the Captain?"

"Is he an assassin?"

"Why would anyone want the Captain dead?"

"This is terrible! We have to get him out of here!"

Jessie looked down, the humans' exclamations of concern washing over him. His worry abated. Here, he was respected. The colour of his skin and where he'd come from didn't matter to these people. They didn't know to hate him. The man who had come in and attacked him was the villain, just as he would have been if he'd attacked one of their own.

Jessie was one of their own.

"I don't think you should put him downstairs, or upstairs," the woman fussed, having bent down to get a better look at the assailant "It's too dangerous to put him in the quarters with everyone else."

She looked up at him, concerned. He hadn't said a word all this time. "Captain?"

"I'll take him to the mages' chambers, then," he answered, descending on the man and hefting him up. "Thank you for your concern. I'm fine."

The man was much larger than him, but it didn't pose a problem. Jessie set off at a brisk pace, out of the room and into the hallways. A couple of mages in the Practise Hall backed away as he swept through. He wasn't sure how he was going to get into Panda's study, but if worst came to worst he'd wait in the hall, isolated, with his eye trained on the man in case he made a move. There, with noone around, he might be free to deal with him more harshly if he proved to be a threat.

In the end he needn't have worried. He could hear voices as he came up the corridor to Panda's study, and the door was obviously open. His chest tightened a little. If they were back... where was-?

"Coline!" he gasped, managing to jump with surprise even beneath the armoured man's weight as the girl suddenly appeared from within the doorway, and they came face to face.

"I-" he breathed, and then took a proper look at her. She was bent under the weight of yet another man he didn't recognise. Silence spiralled for a few moments, and then, strangely, a certain hilarity about the situation overtook him. The Captain's lips broke into a grin, and he nodded a little clumsily at the man slung over her shoulder. "We match."