Gates and Monsters for Daring Adventurers [Open]

[SuperMachinegun]

"I see you got to know the girls," Iedomee said from the other side of Helos. He walked around the other side. He was shirtless and quite wet from throwing buckets of water over his pet. The fine and toned muscled detail of his torso and arms was highlighted by the sunset's light flowing into the stable. Every heave from throwing a bucketful of water made the girls swoon aloud. Giggles were heard from outside the stable and silhouettes of girls peeking from every crack of loosely built walls shifted from panel to panel, following Iedomee's movements.

"Do they ever go away? The girls I mean." He asked Madaline, not being bothered by her seeing him like that.

[paganchick]

Madaline didn't seem as infatuated by Iedomee muscles as the other girls were. Yes, she had to admit, they were very nice, there were plenty of cowboys that came through that also had nice bodies. Plus she wasn't the type to fawn over someone.

Madaline looked from the girls to Iedomee, "Not as long as your shirtless," She said simply before looking at the mans pet. She hadn't ever seen anything like i9t really. It was much more fascinating than the man's muscles, which was something she had grown used to seeing. Well not his muscles per say, but a well build man.

"You know, teen girls, raging hormones, easily excited, and it seems you are exciting them... I would watch out, they might try to kidnap you and rape you or something, by the looks they are giving you," Madaline added with a hint of a chuckle.

[SuperMachinegun]

Iedomee let out a small chuckle as well. "I might disappoint them that I only plan to stay here for a night. I sure hope they don't have access to all the inns here."

Iedomee threw one last pail of water over Helos to finish rinsing him. And in an instant, Helos shook wildly and completely turned a half-wet Ideomee into a soaked one sending the girls into crazier phase as some of them started to whistle at him. Helos then gave him a big lick, which Iedomee seemed to be completely used to. He grabbed a small towel and stared to wipe his face and hair with it as he took a step to face Madaline directly across the stable. "If I heard correctly, your name was Madaline, I'm Iedomee by the way and I assume you haven't seen many Goromutts in this part of town, have you?"

[paganchick]

"My only advise would be to lock your door, and maybe barricade it a little," Madaline replied with a bit of a laugh. She was halfway being serious though, some of the girls there could get a little crazy when it came to new guys around.

Madaline flinched, trying to cover her face as she as well was covered in water. Madaline frowned at first, she didn't really enjoy being wet, but then let out a soft giggle as the girls started whistling at Iedomee.
"Can I see that towel?" She asked reaching out her hand.
"And yes my name is Madaline, and no, we don't see many... Goromutts? Out in this part of the frontier, mostly only horses," Madaline said, looking back at the giant dog.

[SuperMachinegun]

((OOC: Sorry for the late reply. Expect me to reply late during weekdays. ))

"I'm sorry about that. Here you go," Iedomee apologised as he tossed the small towel to Madaline, his body still dripping with water and his hair thick with moisture. He didn't seem to be bothered much by the girls outside peeking at them from outside. People in this part of the frontier were very much different from one's in L'doreth who still seem to partially embrace a small tribal aspect.

"Ah, goromutts are usually wild hunters in thick forests and grasslands. I guess they never wander around here too much because of the open space. Explore around the forests, outside the Frontier that is, and you'll see stranger animals than Helos here."

Helos barked in agreement with Iedomee and continued licking its own fur, sliding its paw above its head in a rather adorable way.

[paganchick]

(OOC: No problem)

Madaline shrugged, "It happens," She said before taking the towel. She ran it over her face, her exposed skin, there wasn't much it could do for her wet clothing though.
"So are you used to getting stared at by a mob of girls?" She asked as she looked between the girls and Iedomee.

"Well there aren't many forests here, or grasslands as a matter of fact, or at least that is what I can gather. Edanith is mostly desert, besides the cities and how the technology has greened things up," Madaline spoke as she looked at the dog.

"You don't have to go outside of the frontier to find odd animals, trust me," Madaline added with a sigh, remembering back when she had first escaped her slave holders and her days and nights spent in the desert.

[SuperMachinegun]

"It doesn't bother me too much," Iedomee replied as he looked around to see the hormonal girls peeking through. "Though this attention might be a problem as a high profile isn't what hunters like me find as an advantage."

Iedomee walked up and leaned on a wooden column closer to Madaline. There was something more to this girl than she was letting on. "It sounds like you know what's out there. I'd take a guess and say you have spent quite some time in the open Frontier. Did you use to be an adventurer, explorer perhaps?"

[paganchick]

Raised an eyebrow, he was a hunter. The name made her a bit sick to her stomach. He didn't say what type of hunter, what if he was the type of hunter that hunted people. What if she hadn't killed her slave owners and she had just thought she had, what if her past was about to come back and haunt her. Pure terror lay behind Madaline's eyes. 

As Iedomee walked closer to her, Madaline took a step back, staying out of grabbing zone. Yes she could fry the man, but she still didn't want to be grabbed.

"You can say I went on one adventure and decided it wasn't really for me," She replied, her eyes now a bit suspicious of him.

[SuperMachinegun]

"I see, I see," Iedomee replied. It was obvious how Madaline's expression tensed up. Has he said something wrong? He knew something bothered her, but he was never the type to get into someone's business. And with the current situation of Lu being in town with many people, he did not want others to get up his business too.

"Why not give it another try? But from looking at you you seem to be fine being in this town. As for me, I travel out often to hunt game. Eventually it became a job. Selling exotic meat from various places to butchers can get you a fair amount of money too. And so travelling became a frequent necessity for me."

[paganchick]

Madaline breathed a heavy sigh of relief as Iedomee spoke of being a game hunter. Good, he wasn't hunting her. She started to grow more curious though, new people intrigued her once she got over her initial suspicion of them.
"What has got you out this way? There can't be much to hunt here, unless you are hunting dune lizards, and they are small, couldn't be worth your time to catch those," She asked, stepping back towards him.

She looked over his shoulder, the girls were struggling to see him, piling up to try to watch him, a few glaring in her direction. She was the same age as most of the girls, but she grew up a lot differently, she didn't fawn over anyone.
"At least if I am here life is stable. I know I will be able to eat and drink when I need to. Out on the frontier, there are no such guarantees.

[SuperMachinegun]

Now it was Iedomee who held was held back. Stupid. Why did he have to talk about travel? Now, Madaline is asking why they came that way. How is he going to explain about Lu and the monsters and the gates? Right. He doesn't.

"Well, it was a small trip out side the village. And you know with the current craze of treasure and prized artefacts lying in the Frontier, we just wanted to try our luck with it. We heard some treasure hunters have had their fair share of luck around this town. You don't happen to know any particular spot, you know with unusual artefacts or abandoned things? Ruins perhaps?"

[paganchick]

Madaline could see the slight hesitation, she wondered if there was something he left out, not too many people other than cowboys came to the town. There had been a few treasure hunters but they didn't stay for long, they got spooked by the cave.

"Well, there is a cave that I have heard about. I haven't ever been in it, no one from the town goes into it. It is eerie and most people here are pretty superstitious about things. The last set of treasure seekers barely made it into the cave before running off. Didn't even stay long enough to tell us what they saw," She informed him.

[SuperMachinegun]

Iedomee was silent for a while. A cave. Like one Lu mentioned in her dream. If this was it then a gate must be in there. If nothing strange had happened to the town, then the gate must not be completely open or was still closed. Lu just needs to seal the gate and they can move onto finding the next.

"About how far is this cave?," Iedomee asked. "Maybe Tara and I could try our luck in there." He was quick to save his question. No one was to know about Lu or what she can do. She would be in danger if any Mordecai found out. Iedomee could not risk having Madaline closing in on them if she ever found something off about their stop in town. Mordecai or not, she should not find out about it.

[paganchick]

Madaline shrugged, "Oh, not too far away, you can see it from on top of the general store. Still I wouldn't suggest going there, or at least if you are determined, go at night. The elders of the town, as I said are superstitious and will get upset if they know you are going. Especially after the last group ran away screaming and as pale as a ghost."

[SuperMachinegun]

"I see," Iedomee said. Obviously thinking to himself. His train of thought was cut off by a sudden opening of the stable doors. For a moment, Iedomee had thought the girls have decided to go for him like animals. But something worse than them stood on front of the door.

Tara walked in with eyes wide open, breath held back and her shoulders pulled up to her face. There Iedomee was, top off and still quite wet, standing in front of Madaline, who was wet as well. Redness welled up her face as her eyes jumped back from Iedomee to Madaline. Lu stood behind her obviously shocked as well, both hands clamped on her mouth.

"YOU DISGUSTING, PERVERTED, BOY!" Tara growled as she took slow steps as she threw her newly bought hat on the ground. "I oughta punch you right now! We spend a few minutes in town and here you are stripping off for random girls! And apparently hitting on them too!"

Tara closed in on Iedomee, cracking her fists as she did so. There was something laughable about her expression. There she was infuriated by the sight of Iedomee topless in front of another girl but her cheeks were red form blushing. She obviously distracted by something on Iedomee, trying to keep her eyes fixated onto Iedomee's blank expression.

"Oooooh I need some stable to wash my dog" Tara mimicked Iedomee's voice. "You should have asked for--"

"Okay," Iedomee interrupted as he put both his hands on her shoulder. Immediately, Tara herself was shocked. "You need to calm down, there is nothing going on in here. Madaline and I were just talking."

"Too close! Too close," Tara thought to herself as she let her eyes moved down from Iedomee's face to his body. She immediately shrugged it off and turned her back on him. She was still blushing. "Yeah right, talking. It always starts out as talking."

[paganchick]

Madaline looked down at the floor, lost in her own thoughts for a moment herself. Thinking about what she was going to have for dinner more exactly, then came the loud noise. Madaline stepped back towards the large dog.

At first Madaline found the situation hilarious. It was clear the girl had some feelings for the guy, just by how angry she was and how red her face was getting. Her eyes bounce from Lu, to Tara, and back to Iedomee. A smile on her face, until her comment 'It always starts out as talking'.

Madaline's blood instantly started to boil, she stepped closer to the girl who now faced her. Madaline's face too was turning red, but from something completely different, rage. She didn't care if they were Mordecai or not, or if they would tell her secret, she simply didn't care.

"Now listen here!" She started, pointing a finger at the girl's chest.
"Just because you like him doesn't give you a reason to get all angry and start insinuating that he is doing something, especially with me!" She screamed, the temperature in the stall rising noticeably.

"I am not a hussy, though it appears you think I am. So if you are going to make accusations, I will show you what happens to girls you don't have the ass to back those accusations up!" She said, closing the small gap between them, a mixture of popping from both Madaline's knuckles and sparks filled the air.   

[SuperMachinegun]

Iedomee stepped back when Madaline went off at Tara. Tara's eyes narrowed with anger at the girl. Clearly the tension inside was rising, even the girls outside the stable were now silent.

"Wanna take this outside, little girl?" Tara taunted as she drew her sword halfway from its sheath. She pushed her face closer to Madaline's. Fire flickered from her left hand. She wanted to take out this girl so badly, especially after she said something about her liking Iedomee. How assuming! "Oh you don't know who you're messing--"

Iedomee shoved Tara away from Madaline. He had one hand on each girls' shoulder. He looked from left to right, trying to read their expressions. They were clearly annoyed with each other, but they can't make a ruckus in a place with many people. Now it was clear they were both mages. And with two mages fighting about with their powers would attract unwanted attention from Mordecais. Iedomee did not want that to happen.

"Cool it down, the both of you." Iedomee said sternly. He looked at Lu who was hiding behind Helos. She had half of her face looking at them. She seemed quite scared. Iedomee remembered the last time Lu was scared. If ever a gate was nearby, making Lu feel scared is never a wise idea.

[GIR]

Within the cave the pair had been discussing, cold as any winter despite the heat of the frontier, a serpentine creature stirred as a small animal, much too small to be from its own world, ran right over its burrow. A somewhat larger creature, bipedal from the sound of it, ran after the smaller creature, making an irritating racket. Some part of the serpentine Wyrm, a fragment of knowledge from some of the lingering partial minds that made up its own, identified the creatures: A human, and a canine animal humans sometimes kept and raised as pets. Without even moving, the Wyrm reached out with its mind and probed those of the creatures. The pet proved easy to overtake, and was ensnared quickly, stopping short enough that its former master nearly fell over it.

The human, however, was a different story. What would the Wyrm do with it? After all, it wasn't really hungry, not since it had devoured a shade wolf that had wandered out of the same gate that had brought it to this world. No, the human would not be food. Not quite. But she couldn't be released, either. So far, the ones that had escaped had apparently not alerted their fellows to it, but there was no telling how long that would last. No, the human could not be allowed to escape. But there was another option. As the Wyrm devoured the mind, rather than the body, of the human, it paid careful attention to learning everything the human knew, then sent her and her pet out again, this time to act as its eyes, ears, and, if necessary, fangs. The human would serve as an effective spy, and its first trip was to the town from whence she'd come.

As the human wandered the town, an expression of deep thought plastered to her face, despite her blank eyes, she, or, rather the Wyrm controlling her, took note of the conversations the other humans were having. Most such conversations were nothing particularly noteworthy, random snippets of daily life, dinner schedules, make ups, break ups, dates, the usual daily BS, as the human's mind had told it, but a few were about the 'forbidden' cave, and the mystery, and superstition, surrounding it. The humans clearly knew of the cave, but, just as clearly, feared it. This was good. Fearful humans, several parts of its mind concurred, tended to stay away from places they feared. The fear, however, also presented a threat: Humans also tended to hire stronger and better-armed humans to get rid of dangerous creatures. Many of the weapons were of little concern. Conventional weapons were weak enough that the prey was usually dead by the time they mattered. Even the strong creatures that had mastered the Snapwyrm's homeworld, the large dragonlike creatures who knew themselves as Karmid, often had to resort to other methods if they wished to survive. No, the thing that presented the most threat was the magic-users. Those that could summon flames of magic were the most dangerous to the beast. Even psychics, with their raw destruction, were not as much a threat, as mages were both prey and predator to Wyrms, the snack that bit back just as hard, under the right conditions.

"... the ass to back those accusations up!". The words made the Wyrm halt the human and pet, its mind's eye able to see what the human puppet's could not. The telltale currents of red-orange converging on the stable from whence the sound had come. A magic-user. One who commanded flame, at that. The human puppet moved closer, and hesitated before entering the stable, looking around. Nowhere nearby were the empty areas that told of the presence of the ones the humans of the town called 'Mordecai'. Satisfied, the Wyrm ran the pet into the stable, then made the human chase in after. "Caylee! Wait up!", the human puppet was made to shout, its inflection similar to the annoying fuss it had made in the cave, "I'm so sorry. Caylee's still a puppy. She hears something, and she always has to go check it out...", the puppet was made to explain in an apologetic tone, keeping its head down to avoid allowing the humans to see its blank stare. The Wyrm did not need to have its puppet look at the humans in the room to study them, when it could simply shift its perspective into something akin to third-person view and look around that way. Through the human that had been shouting ran fire and lightning magics, mostly, though traces of others above the background magic of humans also existed. 'Mage.', the human fragment that had once been the puppet 'spoke', its whisper present only in the Wyrm's mind.

Through the male ran no magics beyond those of a normal human, though much magic pooled in pieces of his equipment. The Wyrm briefly noted the oddity of the non-mage armed with magic before moving on. The female the fire mage had been yelling at bore a different balance of magics, not quite human, also bore the telltale signs of fire magic, though the flow was different, constrained, as if this female knew not the power she possessed, or, perhaps, knew not how to use it well.

Through the smallest among them ran great spatial and temporal strength, though, like the novice female, it was constrained. Though it flowed more easily than the taller untrained female, the flow still spoke of power perhaps not fully touched upon. This one was, perhaps, as dangerous as the fire mage.

The novice mage had snapped a reply back at the fire mage, but was interrupted by the male. This interested the Wyrm greatly. It seemed that the male was the one who would keep the group from turning on each other, and that the fire mage's anger wasn't one-sided. This was good. Subduing the male, and turning the fire mages against each other would, it would seem, solve the issue of the dreaded fire magic.

[Dangit! I was hoping to post before you replied!]

[paganchick]

Madaline saw the flames in the girls left hand and laughed a bitter laugh. Even with the man holding her shoulder she could kill the girl.

Madaline leaned in close to the girl, her mouth right beside Tara's ear so only she would hear.
"I dare you to throw that at me, little girl. Your sword is no match, and neither is your novice attempt at magic. If I wished, I could burn you from the inside out, or worse. You have not seen war magic like I possess. If I were you, I would watch my step," She whispered.

[SuperMachinegun]

Tara was really tempted to skewer the girl with her blade, but her thought was stopped by Iedomee's frown. She put back her sword just as a random stranger and her dog came barging into the stable.

"I'm so sorry. Caylee's still a puppy. She hears something, and she always has to go check it out..." She said, keeping her head looking down.

Tara was quick to extinguish the flames dancing on her fingers as she turned around to look at the stranger. She gave Madaline a nasty look. It was definitely meant to say 'This isn't over yet.' Madaline was partly right about her liking Iedomee and Tara could not help but think that Madaline was after Iedomee even if she implied the absence of her interest to him.

"Okay, people have to stop barging in here," Iedomee said as Tara pulled her shoulder away from his hand. He walked to a stool where his under shirt was and put it on. Three adolescent girls in a stable with a shirtless guy was not the situation he wanted anyone seeing.