[Her reaction to that is a bit slower than it might have been on another day, but it does come out... predictably defensive, summoning up some of her reserves of anger she might had thought lost to... something like self-pity, if she were being honest. (But she rarely was, not with this sort of thing.)]
And I do not hang out with horses. Where else do you expect a jinba to go?
[A house?
... But neither of those are necessarily what makes her unable, or unwilling, to leave. There's a moment when she almost doesn't say it. After a stumble, another flick of her dry, tangled mane across the bedding before she averts her gaze.]
... My hooves are cracking.
[It is painful to walk. There. Is he happy to hear it?]
[He peeks down at her hooves, surprised to have gotten the truth out of her, then back up to her face. She does look as rough as he feels, but at least he's able to get around with comparatively little trouble. He can only imagine that it would be difficult for her.
And while he's no expert, he can't just leave her like this, so:]
How about I track down a farrier? Would you let them take a look? Then I can go give Cyrus an earful for not giving you any proper accomodations.
[On instinct, she tries to hide them, even though she'd grudgingly admitted to the weakness, pulling her long dun legs in as close to her belly as she can. For the other members of their faction, brittle nails were an inconvenience, an eerie reminder of withering in their failure... yet to a woman with hooves? It was not crippling, but.]
- I already spoke to a... farrier.
[Like a fucking horse. Her lips pursing to try and prevent them from curling into a sneer (or something more pathetic), reaching into her waist pouch and pulling out a vial... that she tch's over.]
Their oils and salves aren't working.
[Because the cause... wasn't physical. A part of her knows that. But what is she supposed to do?
She doesn't even realize at first what else he'd said. These were proper accommodations. The stalls even had wooden shavings, unlike the plain dirt of her "home".]
[The worst he's had in that regard is dry skin, though it's more an inconvenience than anything, and not difficult to hide with gloves and the like. It's the chills, the sluggishness, the emotional effects he finds more troubling -- and they seem to feel worse the longer he spends here in the stable. Perhaps all of them are similarly suffering in the same way.]
Then, do you want anything to eat? Or drink? If moving around's a pain, I can bring you stuff.
[The chills, strangely enough… Hayame was familiar with. She had spent more than a month shivering and curling in on herself beneath useless blankets in the corner of her stall after the dryad had cursed her in the wake of those “trials” in the Tree, and this… it was a similar coldness.
One that just made her want to… to debase herself. To curl up with someone else. To bury her head in a warm chest and be not alone, or…
Except no. She doesn’t actually know how that feels. She’d never let herself do it- be that weak. She thinks… maybe once, she had let someone lay against her flank. But that man’s face and the circumstances of that touch were lost somewhere in the crack across her shard, and now…]
I do not need a nursemaid, or pity, or-
[… What?
The vial of oil is tossed angrily aside, she wishes he would just go away and leave her to her shake in peace, she wishes someone would stay so she wouldn’t ache by herself in this gods damned stable with its nosy horses and grooms, and just-]
… Why did you even come here? It has been six years.
[To him, apparently. Six years. She should be nothing but a distant memory of an ornery woman.]
It felt like someone with a Shard was in here. I wanted to check I wasn't imagining things, so I got curious.
[...And, yes, he did overhear the stablehands gossiping, but maybe he'll tactfully leave that part out that people are complaining about her.]
We were allies back then, right? As far as I'm concerned we still are, and allies look out for each other. Oh, and don't give me the-- [He pauses and tosses his head dramatically, as if he too has an majestic mane, but mostly just succeeds in flipping his hair slightly,] --"I don't need help, I'm super tough" thing, because I won't buy it.
[So she had been just a twist of luck. A curiosity that had been followed. ... Of course. It made more sense that way. There is a moment when he "tosses" his hair when she glares as if debating whether to take insult with his behavior, to make another issue of it... But she is so tired. And cold. And...
Lonely. She is lonely, and he hasn't been scared off as quickly as the others.]
... And what battle are we fighting now, ally, that you think I need you by my side?
Hayame doesn’t know whether he’s a fool or he thinks she is. She stares (glares) at him from where she half lays on the bed of shaved wood, her blanket at least accurately thin. She knows (she thinks) what he wants, but why… Why did she want it, too? Why was the idea of refraining from it so offensive to her?
She does not know, and so… she bites. Or maybe it’s just a bark.]
Will you not win the battle far more easily with someone different at your flank?
This battle is to save a downed ally, and that ally is you. So it would defeat the purpose if I went off to battle with someone else, wouldn't it?
[She's running with his silly metaphor instead of telling him to get lost, so he decides to put his neck on the line and opens the stable door, shrugging off his heavy cloak as he does so.]
Here, you can have this. [And assuming she doesn't get up to stomp him to death, he'll drape the cloak around her shoulders and along her equine flank. It might not be jinba-sized, but it's something.]
[The semantics are grit out as if even she knows how arbitrary it is to argue them, but she just can't help herself. She also... can't help but be shocked that he just lets himself in to her stall. Hayame had been raised in one without a door, and somehow... even though a normal human would surely blanche at how little privacy there was in her current living arrangements, it had been a huge step up for her to even have that half-height door.]
Wh-
[But because she's laying down, she can't... he gets the cloak over her before she can protest or move out of the way, and though she grabs it as if she's about to rip it off... her hand clutches the heavy hem instead.
[Claude crouches down so they're at eye level, deciding he's more comfortable with that than standing over her.]
But it'll make you feel a little better. Even if it's just to get annoyed at me instead of focusing on feeling cold and miserable.
[He's still cold himself, and the absence of his cloak isn't making much difference to that, but he instinctively crosses his arms and hunches his shoulders as if to huddle up and keep warm regardless.]
So why don't we hang out for a bit? You have your own personal nuisance to distract you.
The chill is in our shards, not our bodies. Take it back, I did not ask for it-
[It is belated, yes, but she still tries to do it, awkwardly trying to shuck off his rather large cloak and maintain an angry look his way while also suppressing how much she wanted to just wallow in her misery.]
The dryad cursed me similarly before, so do not tell me I do not know what I am talking about.
[The cloak flies awkwardly and weakly at his head.]
[He fumbles to catch the cloak, startled, and draws it back around his shoulders.]
So are you saying jinba shards are different too? I don't think that's how it works. But if you're so worried about my fragile little human shard, how about we try this?
[He scoots over and sits down next to her, wrapping the cloak around both their shoulders.]
[She snaps it as if it should be obvious that she means resistance to the cold. Throw a human naked into the snow and they'll be dead within the day, but a jinba could last a week, if not more, as long as they could keep moving...
But if she meant to say more, it changes immediately when he just... sits next to her, as if she'd allowed it, as if she wanted someone that close to her, touching her-]
Who the hell do you think you are?
[Her first thought is to shove, and she does, sending him tumbling further down her flank.]
[People do not... play in a jinba breeding stable outpost. Even as a child, Hayame had never engaged in the sort of antics most young people indulged in when learning how to interact with their peers and form bonds. Games, playing different roles, little performances... the closest thing were perhaps races and contests of strength. But when those were twisted into ways to observe their growth and rank them for Exhibition Day...
Needless to say, Hayame is not a woman who knows how to react appropriately to this sort of... playful banter or dramatics.]
If I wanted to wound you, you'd actually be wounded!
[... But he's warm. Even to someone like her, whose body temperature ran higher than a human's, which makes it clear to her that... it was an unnatural sort of warmth. Shards. Being shard-bearers. Something. Something she is tempted not to let go of, even though it should be shameful to let a man touch her like this, in her stall of all places-]
Stay on my flank if you're going to be so audacious!
[She evidently doesn't have a sense of humour, so he'll stop feigning classic Fire Emblem death dialogue and instead get comfortable against the warmth of her side. He can already feel a little of the chill subsiding, the feeling of being alone ebbing away.
Then, nonchalantly, like he's just remarking on the weather:]
You know, a bowstring can't stay taut forever. The same is true of people.
[Even this... is so much. To her credit, Hayame almost tries to pretend that it isn't. That she was such a shameless woman that she let men lean their bodies against her all the time, this was nothing new, but. She is not a good actress. The longer he leans against her flank, his body moving slightly up and down along with the breath in her larger set of lungs, the more she...
Blushes.
To the point that she has to look away and hide her face, not wanting it to be seen even though the red flush can still be noted on the tips of her ears and the back of her neck. It's a perfect position to see her long bow laying against the wall of her stall... unstrung.
Perfect.]
- the least you could do is tell an entertaining tale if you are going to force your company on me.
[As if he hadn't said anything at all. As if it wasn't like... she didn't know. She just had to make it to her goal before she snapped, she was supposed to only be a single night away from her end, but then it became months in Horos, months in Kenos...]
[The blush doesn't escape Claude's notice even as she looks away, but he's still trying to be as respectful as possible despite... everything, so it goes unremarked. He's keeping his hands to himself and trying not to fidget to avoid annoying her, besides drawings his knees up up to try to better keep himself warm.]
An entertaining tale? I have plenty. How about the time I crossed a desert looking for treasure, and got way more than I bargained for?
[It's such a wild story she might just dismiss it as invention... but then again, she's been around Horos and Kenos long enough that believability has surely been stretched for her by now.]
[She asks him for a tale as if she likes stories, when in fact, she does not. Even from a young age, Hayame had seen the falsehood and exaggerated magnificence of such things as pointless, longed for something real to aspire for instead… even when her brother had asked her for them, she had sent him back to his stall alone without one more often than not.
But it was something to do. Something to fill the air to make it seem like there could be a reason she was letting this impudent human who was suddenly six years older (older than her, now), lean shamelessly against her side. Something that wasn’t the weakness of craving another’s warmth in the cold loss of an Oracle they didn’t understand.]
All right then. [This is possibly the most unenthused audience he's ever had for a story, but at least she's asking. She might find it even a little bit interesting, so he launches straight into the telling.]
It started when I started reading up on the lives of the four saints of the Church of Seiros. You don't need to know the details, except to know that one of them was a renowned blacksmith, and a great warrior in his own right. He was said to have died in a war a thousand years ago, according to official accounts, but others said he crossed the sea to the east to search for new lands. I did a little digging and my research pointed me to a desert in the Sreng region.
That's east of where Dimitri's from. You know him, right? [He has no idea, but as a fellow shardbearer, chances are they've bumped into each other by now. But he's getting sidetracked, so he continues on.] Anyway, in that desert was said to be the ruins of an ancient temple, which was supposedly built to worship a great beast. I had a hunch that beast was connected to the saint, and if I went there, I might be able to find some of his weapons.
When I got there, I found the ruins, some bandits with the same idea I had... and the beast. It was huge, with great big wings [He spreads his arms for emphasis,] and a beak like a bird, but it moved on all fours. It even talked!
[… She might be the most unenthused listener he’s ever had, it’s true. But it isn’t because she isn’t listening. She might be paying more attention to… him, rather than the words, but. Each little shift and gesture is something she’s hyperaware of, each breath, even, and more importantly—-
This sort of thing just didn’t happen to her. People didn’t risk life and limb to flip down against her nere they please, and they didn’t tell her stories. She’d almost just assumed he wouldn’t. That was for other people… like Matsukaze and his family, like the orphans in the village who had huddled by the fire and told themselves stories after dinner.
So what is she supposed to do now that he’s actually doing it? She grunts belatedly about this Dimitri- she knew a Dimitri, but was it the same one? Surely not, that man was ghastly pale of skin with hair like straw, and this man was dark of hair with sun-kissed skin. Not from the same place at all. But she’s not debating or wondering out loud.
Until he pauses as if he seems to be expecting some sort of input from her. Still mostly not looking, she vaguely supplies-]
And then you slayed the great beast?
[She doesn’t even know if she’s supposed to think this is real or not…]
Not quite, although he did want me dead the second he got a sniff of my blood, as a descendent of Riegan, one of the Ten Elites. [A whole other story in and of itself, but he'll skip over it for now.] He said if we killed him first, we could have all his treasure.
Complicating things even further, a few thieves showed up with the same idea as us. They, uh... were pretty scattered, though, and the poor guys either got devoured by giant sandworms, or slain by the beast if they so much as got close. A few even attacked my own army.
[What a mess... He scratches the back of his neck and concludes the story with a grin.]
If you can believe it, though, after we fought the beast long enough, he just kinda got tired and dozed off, so we left him be and took his treasure. One of them was a sacred weapon. I can't say for sure if it was made by Saint Macuil, but we got something out of the whole expedition, either way.
[Thankfully? for Claude's storytelling flow... Hayame doesn't feel the need to interrupt and ask who the hell Riegan was, accustomed to the ballads and tales of her own world in which a warrior's lineage and achievements might be listed at length before they even began the story proper. ... Also, she barely is listening to the details, but.
Surely he knew that. She is more concerned with the unnatural chill that had come with their defeat... and the slight warmth of his form against her flank. The way his annoying insistence on forcing his company on her... has slightly eased her loneliness.
- She notes that he says "my own army", though. Just barely. Not "our army".]
You expect me to believe that it just fell asleep, after all that... ?
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[Her reaction to that is a bit slower than it might have been on another day, but it does come out... predictably defensive, summoning up some of her reserves of anger she might had thought lost to... something like self-pity, if she were being honest. (But she rarely was, not with this sort of thing.)]
And I do not hang out with horses. Where else do you expect a jinba to go?
[A house?
... But neither of those are necessarily what makes her unable, or unwilling, to leave. There's a moment when she almost doesn't say it. After a stumble, another flick of her dry, tangled mane across the bedding before she averts her gaze.]
... My hooves are cracking.
[It is painful to walk. There. Is he happy to hear it?]
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[He peeks down at her hooves, surprised to have gotten the truth out of her, then back up to her face. She does look as rough as he feels, but at least he's able to get around with comparatively little trouble. He can only imagine that it would be difficult for her.
And while he's no expert, he can't just leave her like this, so:]
How about I track down a farrier? Would you let them take a look? Then I can go give Cyrus an earful for not giving you any proper accomodations.
[The last part is a joke... at least for now.]
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- I already spoke to a... farrier.
[Like a fucking horse. Her lips pursing to try and prevent them from curling into a sneer (or something more pathetic), reaching into her waist pouch and pulling out a vial... that she tch's over.]
Their oils and salves aren't working.
[Because the cause... wasn't physical. A part of her knows that. But what is she supposed to do?
She doesn't even realize at first what else he'd said. These were proper accommodations. The stalls even had wooden shavings, unlike the plain dirt of her "home".]
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[The worst he's had in that regard is dry skin, though it's more an inconvenience than anything, and not difficult to hide with gloves and the like. It's the chills, the sluggishness, the emotional effects he finds more troubling -- and they seem to feel worse the longer he spends here in the stable. Perhaps all of them are similarly suffering in the same way.]
Then, do you want anything to eat? Or drink? If moving around's a pain, I can bring you stuff.
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One that just made her want to… to debase herself. To curl up with someone else. To bury her head in a warm chest and be not alone, or…
Except no. She doesn’t actually know how that feels. She’d never let herself do it- be that weak. She thinks… maybe once, she had let someone lay against her flank. But that man’s face and the circumstances of that touch were lost somewhere in the crack across her shard, and now…]
I do not need a nursemaid, or pity, or-
[… What?
The vial of oil is tossed angrily aside, she wishes he would just go away and leave her to her shake in peace, she wishes someone would stay so she wouldn’t ache by herself in this gods damned stable with its nosy horses and grooms, and just-]
… Why did you even come here? It has been six years.
[To him, apparently. Six years. She should be nothing but a distant memory of an ornery woman.]
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[...And, yes, he did overhear the stablehands gossiping, but maybe he'll tactfully leave that part out that people are complaining about her.]
We were allies back then, right? As far as I'm concerned we still are, and allies look out for each other. Oh, and don't give me the-- [He pauses and tosses his head dramatically, as if he too has an majestic mane, but mostly just succeeds in flipping his hair slightly,] --"I don't need help, I'm super tough" thing, because I won't buy it.
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Lonely. She is lonely, and he hasn't been scared off as quickly as the others.]
... And what battle are we fighting now, ally, that you think I need you by my side?
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[He leans in over the door, voice lowered conspiratorially as if the horses might overhear.]
...The battle to be cosy. Somehow I don't think sleeping on the ground with a thin little blanket is going to cut it.
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Hayame doesn’t know whether he’s a fool or he thinks she is. She stares (glares) at him from where she half lays on the bed of shaved wood, her blanket at least accurately thin. She knows (she thinks) what he wants, but why… Why did she want it, too? Why was the idea of refraining from it so offensive to her?
She does not know, and so… she bites. Or maybe it’s just a bark.]
Will you not win the battle far more easily with someone different at your flank?
[It’s not an immediate “no”.]
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[She's running with his silly metaphor instead of telling him to get lost, so he decides to put his neck on the line and opens the stable door, shrugging off his heavy cloak as he does so.]
Here, you can have this. [And assuming she doesn't get up to stomp him to death, he'll drape the cloak around her shoulders and along her equine flank. It might not be jinba-sized, but it's something.]
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[The semantics are grit out as if even she knows how arbitrary it is to argue them, but she just can't help herself. She also... can't help but be shocked that he just lets himself in to her stall. Hayame had been raised in one without a door, and somehow... even though a normal human would surely blanche at how little privacy there was in her current living arrangements, it had been a huge step up for her to even have that half-height door.]
Wh-
[But because she's laying down, she can't... he gets the cloak over her before she can protest or move out of the way, and though she grabs it as if she's about to rip it off... her hand clutches the heavy hem instead.
It's warm. But her body is not-]
It is not that kind of cold.
[Idiot.]
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But it'll make you feel a little better. Even if it's just to get annoyed at me instead of focusing on feeling cold and miserable.
[He's still cold himself, and the absence of his cloak isn't making much difference to that, but he instinctively crosses his arms and hunches his shoulders as if to huddle up and keep warm regardless.]
So why don't we hang out for a bit? You have your own personal nuisance to distract you.
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[It is belated, yes, but she still tries to do it, awkwardly trying to shuck off his rather large cloak and maintain an angry look his way while also suppressing how much she wanted to just wallow in her misery.]
The dryad cursed me similarly before, so do not tell me I do not know what I am talking about.
[The cloak flies awkwardly and weakly at his head.]
You're the human, jinba don't get cold as easy.
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[He fumbles to catch the cloak, startled, and draws it back around his shoulders.]
So are you saying jinba shards are different too? I don't think that's how it works. But if you're so worried about my fragile little human shard, how about we try this?
[He scoots over and sits down next to her, wrapping the cloak around both their shoulders.]
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[She snaps it as if it should be obvious that she means resistance to the cold. Throw a human naked into the snow and they'll be dead within the day, but a jinba could last a week, if not more, as long as they could keep moving...
But if she meant to say more, it changes immediately when he just... sits next to her, as if she'd allowed it, as if she wanted someone that close to her, touching her-]
Who the hell do you think you are?
[Her first thought is to shove, and she does, sending him tumbling further down her flank.]
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Ahh, I'm mortally wounded! Woe is me. But I can't give up on my battle just yet...
[He still doesn't move, though. He's dying, Hayame. Have pity on him. (Also, she's warm.)]
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Needless to say, Hayame is not a woman who knows how to react appropriately to this sort of... playful banter or dramatics.]
If I wanted to wound you, you'd actually be wounded!
[... But he's warm. Even to someone like her, whose body temperature ran higher than a human's, which makes it clear to her that... it was an unnatural sort of warmth. Shards. Being shard-bearers. Something. Something she is tempted not to let go of, even though it should be shameful to let a man touch her like this, in her stall of all places-]
Stay on my flank if you're going to be so audacious!
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[She evidently doesn't have a sense of humour, so he'll stop feigning classic Fire Emblem death dialogue and instead get comfortable against the warmth of her side. He can already feel a little of the chill subsiding, the feeling of being alone ebbing away.
Then, nonchalantly, like he's just remarking on the weather:]
You know, a bowstring can't stay taut forever. The same is true of people.
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Blushes.
To the point that she has to look away and hide her face, not wanting it to be seen even though the red flush can still be noted on the tips of her ears and the back of her neck. It's a perfect position to see her long bow laying against the wall of her stall... unstrung.
Perfect.]
- the least you could do is tell an entertaining tale if you are going to force your company on me.
[As if he hadn't said anything at all. As if it wasn't like... she didn't know. She just had to make it to her goal before she snapped, she was supposed to only be a single night away from her end, but then it became months in Horos, months in Kenos...]
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An entertaining tale? I have plenty. How about the time I crossed a desert looking for treasure, and got way more than I bargained for?
[It's such a wild story she might just dismiss it as invention... but then again, she's been around Horos and Kenos long enough that believability has surely been stretched for her by now.]
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But it was something to do. Something to fill the air to make it seem like there could be a reason she was letting this impudent human who was suddenly six years older (older than her, now), lean shamelessly against her side. Something that wasn’t the weakness of craving another’s warmth in the cold loss of an Oracle they didn’t understand.]
That one, then. A desert.
[Not that she knew what that truly was.]
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It started when I started reading up on the lives of the four saints of the Church of Seiros. You don't need to know the details, except to know that one of them was a renowned blacksmith, and a great warrior in his own right. He was said to have died in a war a thousand years ago, according to official accounts, but others said he crossed the sea to the east to search for new lands. I did a little digging and my research pointed me to a desert in the Sreng region.
That's east of where Dimitri's from. You know him, right? [He has no idea, but as a fellow shardbearer, chances are they've bumped into each other by now. But he's getting sidetracked, so he continues on.] Anyway, in that desert was said to be the ruins of an ancient temple, which was supposedly built to worship a great beast. I had a hunch that beast was connected to the saint, and if I went there, I might be able to find some of his weapons.
When I got there, I found the ruins, some bandits with the same idea I had... and the beast. It was huge, with great big wings [He spreads his arms for emphasis,] and a beak like a bird, but it moved on all fours. It even talked!
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This sort of thing just didn’t happen to her. People didn’t risk life and limb to flip down against her nere they please, and they didn’t tell her stories. She’d almost just assumed he wouldn’t. That was for other people… like Matsukaze and his family, like the orphans in the village who had huddled by the fire and told themselves stories after dinner.
So what is she supposed to do now that he’s actually doing it? She grunts belatedly about this Dimitri- she knew a Dimitri, but was it the same one? Surely not, that man was ghastly pale of skin with hair like straw, and this man was dark of hair with sun-kissed skin. Not from the same place at all. But she’s not debating or wondering out loud.
Until he pauses as if he seems to be expecting some sort of input from her. Still mostly not looking, she vaguely supplies-]
And then you slayed the great beast?
[She doesn’t even know if she’s supposed to think this is real or not…]
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Complicating things even further, a few thieves showed up with the same idea as us. They, uh... were pretty scattered, though, and the poor guys either got devoured by giant sandworms, or slain by the beast if they so much as got close. A few even attacked my own army.
[What a mess... He scratches the back of his neck and concludes the story with a grin.]
If you can believe it, though, after we fought the beast long enough, he just kinda got tired and dozed off, so we left him be and took his treasure. One of them was a sacred weapon. I can't say for sure if it was made by Saint Macuil, but we got something out of the whole expedition, either way.
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Surely he knew that. She is more concerned with the unnatural chill that had come with their defeat... and the slight warmth of his form against her flank. The way his annoying insistence on forcing his company on her... has slightly eased her loneliness.
- She notes that he says "my own army", though. Just barely. Not "our army".]
You expect me to believe that it just fell asleep, after all that... ?
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