Welcome to Gaia! ::

((*snickers* Does this mean we get the seizure-inducing battle transitions? surprised ))

Taking the proffered hand gently, Crev treated her with the customs he was most used to; bending over to lay a fleeting kiss on its back, before releasing it once more. "... You're a crafter of some sort, are you not?" His tone was one of pleasant surprise; he had taken Cadence for one who most likely took whatever profession she might follow as a serving girl or cleaning woman, but, though her hand certainly hadn't been that of a dainty lady, it hadn't been as heavily calloused as he had expected. She had gone up a level, in his eyes; those that created something through the toil of their hands, he could relate to them.

But these thoughts had to be brushed aside... there were other things for his mind to attend to.

"Mm... I do not think that I have anything that I will need, that I do not already carry," Crev replied to her inquiry, barely concealing an amused smirk. He was, of course, carrying every item he had come to this town with, and his only new acquisitions since he had arrived were contained solely within his coin purse. "Unless, of course, you are attempting to imply that you think I will be needing to pack something more...?" If his tone was slightly insulting, it was nothing that Crev had intended, or fully noticed. His mind was wandering down paths other than whether he was coming off as rude or not.

Between his tome of magic and his crossbow (and, of course, a few bolts packed for its use), he was confident that he wouldn't need anything more for matters of protection; and if the town was only a few hours away, it did not seem as if any other supplies would be necessary. But he would give Cadence the benefit of the doubt - she would know this place better than he, and if she thought that he was unprepared, he would have to take her at her word for it. That was, after all, the entire point of having a guide; to be assisted and advised by one who was better informed of whatever obstacles might fall in one's path.

Dominique squirmed slightly. She was getting a tad uncomfortable, sitting on the ground. The door next to her opened again, and the familiar scent of lavender swooped over her. It took Dom a moment to make up her mind. She didn't like breaking her habits, and it always took her a while to decide to do so.

She stood, and brushed off her skirt, before reaching down for a bag that had been on the ground next to her. It was the same colour brown as her skirt, and had only one strap. Dominique slung said strap over her shoulder, so the bag hung against the opposit hip. It didn't seem to be very full, an so the flap that hid the contents of the purse from view closed easily.

Dominique walked towards the door, and pulled it open. It was then that she felt a pair of eyes upon her, and with one hand still on the door, she turned and looked around. It was a man, with fiery red hair, the one who was with a different dame every day. She'd seen him around often, always with girls fawning over him, and hanging on his arm. Dom rolled her eyes and scoffed, before retreating in to the building.

"Pah! What a silly little man," Dom muttered to herself quietly as she walked down an aisleway between two shelves. The resembled book shelves, only they were cluttered with mainly jars. Some things she recognised like cooking spices, such as thyme and sage. There were other things, like dandelion ointmets and moth wings, which she recognised, but would never dare to take off the shelf. Then there were the things that were shrivelled, and looked like they had been pickeled, that Dominique could barely bring herself to look at.

She reached the end of the first aisle, and she turned making her way back up the second. In the middle there was a small section of bottles filled with lavender oil. Unable to stop herself, Dominique reached up and grabbed one of them, pausing only to unscrew the top and take a whiff before she dropped it in to her bag.

A brown mass of hair poked out from under the blankets on the bed in one of the rooms of the inn, and the mass of muscle and flesh and organs shifted underneath, rather uncomfortably, and then threw the sheets off of itself, stirred and sat bolt upright. The man's bright green eyes blinked repeatedly, and shook the sleep from his mind and then rubbed it from his eyes.

Though he was wearing his sleep clothes, the man still felt as nude as the day he was born. He glanced over to the heap of plate armor in the corner of his room, and hastily began putting it on, making sure buckles were secure and so forth, and then, satisfied with his armor actually put on right for a change, nearly walked out of the room, before remembering that he had forgotten his pride and joy.

Making his way back into his room, after fighting with the door, which apparently did not like him going back into his room as soon as he left, the man went over to the wall beside the door and gripped the handle of his axe, which was a massive, double-sided blade, fully metal instead of wooden parts, which could rot if they went unkept, not that this man would let it come to this. It was the finest steel, and though he was unaware, he was charged nearly double of what the normal going price would be on this kind of axe.

Placing it in upon its sling on his back, the man strode down the stairs, thankfully without incident. Usually his heavy boots and armor off-balanced him. Of course, this man was no ordinary, thin and gangly man.

Comparatively speaking, he made the normal, thin man look like some sort of insect or kitten, or perhaps some other small animal. It wasn't a metaphor he had perfected, and there certainly weren't many that he had.

He was grossly muscular, hardly any of his body's mass comprised of fat. The most fatty region, some would venture to say, would be the area between his ears, being as that it was not full of the grey matter that most possessed and utilized in their daily lives. Not only was this man clumsy due to his size, he wasn't exaclty the brightest star in the sky, and not that he did much talking, but when he did he often said something completely tactless and something that would make a person with a quarter of a brain feel like the greatest thinker to ever exist.

But it wasn't exactly something this man needed. Though he was an adventurer, most he had fought hadn't taken much effort other than a nice swing of his axe, and perhaps one or two more to do the job, due to the fact that sometimes this man thought that if it was still twitching that it wasn't quite dead yet.

He made his way out of the inn, nearly forgetting before a contemptuous remark from the innkeeper that he had not turned in his key this morning and that despite the innkeeper's best attempts to extricate the man from his bed, he had slept in until later in the day. Of course before leaving the inn the man did in fact return his key, and nearly the doorknob for his room as well, as he had to fight to get the blasted thing out, forgetting that he was supposed to turn the key instead of the doorknob and pull.

But it wasn't this man's fault that he had been so exhausted, but it was because he had marched for nearly twenty-four hours from the neighboring town, the person describing the distance as a 'mere hop, skip, and jump.' This man of course took this quite literally and proceeded to do this the entire half of the journey in an attempt to get to this town, which winded him far more than regular walking would have.

But the brown-haired man did not blame the man in the other town for his misfortune, he figured he just didn't have the knack for that kind of travel.

And so he picked a street, and then proceeded to walk down it, wondering if there was any evil in need of smashing and bashing.

Oh, what fun that was!

(Feel free to bump into my character, anybody xd )

Cadence looked, from her vantage point on the ferry back toward the street they had been on. It seemed that Crev was not used to a place as busy at the docks, or perhaps even the town. He might have been from a place smaller than this, for he was not coping well with wading through the press of people.

She saw the sailor coming no better than the unfortunate mage, and only had time to ineffectively call out to him before he fell. He didn’t get up for a moment, and Cadence worried he might have actually been hurt in that fall, or perhaps he was not as recuperated as he had seemed. Moving quickly, she spoke quietly to the man she'd given her coin to. Back onto the busy street, she ducked beneath someone’s heavy load, twisting to the side to avoid being run over as soon as she cleared the box over her head.

Nearing the place she’d seen him last, she stood still, trying to locate him in the press and mill of the busy docks. Passing workers and tradesmen shunted her out of their way with little more than a shoulder knocking her aside or an elbow in the ribs. Finally she managed to spot Crev where he stood. A pier, alone and unmoved by the tide of people.

Cadence moved again so suddenly she almost knocked someone off the docks and into the water, causing several people to glare at her small back as it moved away. "Crev?" It was the first time she said it name. Though she did ask out of inquiry, she was testing the word in her mouth, strange to her. Reaching out, slender hands were placed on his forearm, near the edge of the book. Perhaps, after the near call, those pale hands were a bit too close for comfort. Knowing neither the importance of the boor, nor the significance of the man running into Crev, she didn’t move them, either. "Crev are you alright?"

((My reply would have come sooner. Stupid gaia...))

Having made brief eye contact with the girl, Rick glanced away, keeping watch of her out of the corner of his eye. He watched as she proceeded into the apothecary, doing his best to appear as though he was paying his attention elsewhere. As she walked in, she appeared to mumble something to herself. Something sinister, perhaps?

No way, he thought. She's probably just reciting a shopping list, or something. Actually, she's probably talking about me and how creepy it was that I was looking straight at her, curiously... Great. It wasn't like Rick to screw up meeting a girl before he'd even said anything to her. In exasperation, Rick pushed his right palm into his forehead, and walked toward the store. His rather impromptu plan involved walking into the store, under the guise of making a purchase, bumping into her "by accident," as the store appeared somewhat cluttered with display stands and shelves, and thusly difficult to navigate with any degree of grace. Then, if all had gone well, he would use his natural talent as a smooth talker to exude a feeling of charming innocence, which would hopefully bleed over the creepy gawking from before.

It was an excellent plan, for him at least, but in walking towards the store, he failed to notice the man behind him who had grabbed him by the back of his collar and held a shank to his throat. Indeed, the proximity of vital body parts and sharp things is not conducive to the execution of already shaky plans. While most people would be worried or even panicked in such a situation, Rick gave a sigh of aggravation and annoyance, bundled conveniently into a package of exasperation. Judging by this man's manner of approach, he was likely one of many who had become fed up with him "...stealin' me girl from under me nose!" Death threats had become even less phasing to him than the dreaded possibility of hearing those four words: "We need to talk."

"Honestly, man, it's not like cutting my throat will make 'your' girlfriend like you any, nor will it do good to keep you out of the law's judgement. Besides, you're on the ground with an arrow pointed at your head. Would you like me to repeat that for you? I'm sure you missed some of that while I was putting you there." Had his assailant managed to keep his cool, Rick wouldn't have stood a chance, and likely would have needed to submit to whatever demands he had, or at least declare that he would submit as soon as possible. However, his complete lack of composure, coupled with Rick's familiarity with the situation, had led to a rather nasty throw over the shoulder, followed by Rick fluidly drawing his bow and nocking an arrow, retrieved from a pocket in his vest. Coincidentally, this turn of events reminded the young man that he needed to purchase a proper quiver, having torn a hole in his. He did make a legitimate living hunting wild game for meat and skin, after all.

Rick kept his bow drawn on this man as he got up and ran off. Judging by his speed, and the lack of his shouting, "You'll live to regret this!" he was probably off to fetch some friends and others whom Rick had wronged in his pursuit of the more complex pleasures of life. Restoring his bow and unused arrow to their proper places--well, maybe not the arrow, but he did as well as he could with what he had--Rick ducked into the store, hopefully dodging the impending search for him in the process.

The dark-haired spellcaster didn't react in the least when Cadence approached him, offering his name out to him as if it were a gift, trying to call his attention. Crev's thoughts had gone somewhere dark, where the sky was covered with inky clouds and the ground was covered with corpses and blood, where the pain he fought was personified into a mass of scars and screams, where those that should have been his allies, those who he worked to his very last breath to preserve instead hounded him, screaming threats and accusations and foiling his admittedly clumsy attempts to extinguish the threat against them all....

His eyes were filled with nothing but darkness when he felt a stranger's touch upon his arm. The only thing he could think of was that those damned fools were trying to hold him still, to keep him from his spellcasting and deprive him from his greatest weapon. He couldn't let them. If he let them, it would be the end of everything, and they would blame him.

With disturbing silence, Crev pulled away from the concerned woman. One hand struck out across her face, trying to force her to give him some room, while the other cracked open that mysterious tome of his. "You idiot! Are you trying to kill us all?!" He hissed, voice barely a whisper, his eyes scanning the texts in a panicked manner as he sought out a spell by which to bind his percieved assailant... then, he returned to reality. With frozen, halting movements, his gaze slowly slid up from the book, meeting with Cadence's.

"... nng," He enunciated quite clearly, arm dropping to his side before he doubled over, bracing as well as he could against the renewed pain in his chest. One hand grasped the cross, pressing it against the flesh of his chest in the hopes that it would help to abate the agony; what little effect it had, however, was not enough to present an escape. Perhaps, he thought, rather dryly so, I should have waited a bit longer to make sure there wouldn't be any after-effects.... It was too late for such regrets now, of course; the damage had been done, and no magic that he knew would repair it.