• Welcome to The Cave of Dragonflies forums, where the smallest bugs live alongside the strongest dragons.

    Guests are not able to post messages or even read certain areas of the forums. Now, that's boring, don't you think? Registration, on the other hand, is simple, completely free of charge, and does not require you to give out any personal information at all. As soon as you register, you can take part in some of the happy fun things at the forums such as posting messages, voting in polls, sending private messages to people and being told that this is where we drink tea and eat cod.

    Of course I'm not forcing you to do anything if you don't want to, but seriously, what have you got to lose? Five seconds of your life?

Frontier Town Traveller's Haus - Dining Hall

Reader mode
Given the electrike, I was expecting it to turn into a hasty rescue mission. Bellatrix hummed. "I've been wondering if the thing was sent by Terminal Two themselves to dispose of the wagon," she said. "The description aligns too well with the 'witching beasts' of Blaguarro. How far were you when it happened? Since if you were quite far away..."

She trailed off. A small look of horror flicking across her features at the possibility that it may have been contagious. "Whatever it is, it's nothing good but if we want to find it, it will have to be done in the typical way of investigating Blaguarro itself."
 
Inkedust said:
"I've been wondering if the thing was sent by Terminal Two themselves to dispose of the wagon," she said. "The description aligns too well with the 'witching beasts' of Blaguarro. How far were you when it happened? Since if you were quite far away..."
Click to expand...
Andre tilted his head. "'Witching beasts'...? Uh, I'm not sure. We had been travelling for some hours, and a scout of Las Picaras apparently saw us, and they were supposed to be at Blaguarro..."

Inkedust said:
"Whatever it is, it's nothing good but if we want to find it, it will have to be done in the typical way of investigating Blaguarro itself."
Click to expand...
Andre nodded. "Right." He sighed. "Honestly, I'm not excited to go back, but I'd hate the idea of sitting back and doing nothing more."
 
"Odd creatures that were sighted around Blaguarro. They've placed the locals on edge due to some strange happenings and sightings," Bellatrix explained. "Doesn't surprise me that the attack happened quite a ways into the journey if they're linked."

She looked back at Andre's leg with an appraising look. "You should definitely be in a much better shape when it's time to leave. That wound already looks like it's made far more substantial progress than any of the other injuries I've seen. Though I haven't had much chance to check in on the others. How'd you manage to avoid the worst of it?" she asked.
 
Inkedust said:
"Odd creatures that were sighted around Blaguarro. They've placed the locals on edge due to some strange happenings and sightings," Bellatrix explained. "Doesn't surprise me that the attack happened quite a ways into the journey if they're linked."
Click to expand...
"I see."
Inkedust said:
She looked back at Andre's leg with an appraising look. "You should definitely be in a much better shape when it's time to leave. That wound already looks like it's made far more substantial progress than any of the other injuries I've seen. Though I haven't had much chance to check in on the others. How'd you manage to avoid the worst of it?" she asked.
Click to expand...
"I..." Ran. Like a coward. "I didn't fight the charmeleon directly. They seemed all too strong, and I am a grass type. But I think luck also played a factor. That charmeleon seemed like it had the full intent to kill. I mean... you may have heard that our driver didn't make it." Which may have been deserved given he was involved in the trafficking of sapient beings.
 
A nod. "Wise," she Bellatrix replied. "Knowing how to pick your battles is an invaluable skill to have. Unfortunate for the driver but I don't have any clue how that may have been prevented."

She thought for a moment over another plate of hashbrowns. "Though that confirms my suspicions that any attempt at learning more about Terminal Two needs to be done via a more stealthy or subtle approach. Whatever is there is well beyond our scope in terms of power at the moment."
 
Andre nodded. "Right."

He made no attempt to continue the conversation, quite hungry by now. He chowed down his hashbrowns and then excused himself. He'd have to go and have a difficult conversation with his employer about needing an unspecified amount of time off in order to do some hero business. Hopefully he would understand. If not, well... he'd just have to find another job.

<><><><><>​
 
Chapter 2: A Tête-à-Tête Meal [ Lyle + Aige ]
  • Threadmarks
    • Lyle milled about the Dining Hall of the Traveller's Haus and searched about for a place to sit with a plate filled with as much food as his little Cyndaquil paws would allow.

    It... was honestly kinda disorienting not having to worry about having enough food to eat, much less not having to pay for it. Even when he was obviously taking large portions, nobody batted an eye at things, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

    Problems and worrisome stories from Forlas aside, he could honestly get used to this.

    He slid his plate onto a table and eyed his surroundings. His teammates the Voice had gathered apparently liked eating here, though for whatever reason, he hadn't had much luck running into them lately.

    Nobody else seemed to be seated here, at the moment, so maybe that was just the opening he needed for someone to come over.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Aige had started to wonder if she really was missing eating. Whenever she had nothing to occupy her time, she more often than not ended up in the dining hall, simply watching the food blankly. The Roggenrola was a little worried about unsettling diners, but she found that if she stayed perfectly still, most pokemon forgot that she was there. Another perk of not having eyes.

    Spotting the Cyndaquil, she wondered they were the same one she had ended up with when they had all first landed.

    She decided to chance it, walking over. "Hiya!" she said, her tone a little brighter than she had meant to make it. "Weren't we in the same group that ended up in the scrublands?"
     
    The scrublands?

    Lyle thought back to when he first arrived to Forlas at the bandit camp. He didn't remember talking with this 'mon much, but he did have memories of her...

    "Right, you were at the encampment too. You're... 'Aige', right?" he asked. "What have you been up to since we got dumped there? Since I actually just realized that we've never really talked all that much before."
     
    “Never a bad time to start,” Aige replied cheerfully. “Talking- that is,” she added.

    The Roggenrola looked at Lyle’s food a little enviously. “If I remember, you’re Lyle, no? Anyway, I’ve been up to nothing really.” She sounded a little sheepish. “As I’ve said to everyone who asked before in no uncertain terms, it’s been like a little vacation away from home for me.”

    “After the events of the gala though, I have been feeling a little unsettled. I’m feeling a little pressure to make myself useful- self inflicted that is.”

    “How about yourself?” Aige asked. “I’ve been hearing that there have been some significant ups and downs for others in the team.”
     
    Lyle blinked and tilted his head back at the Roggenrola. He could understand wanting to get away from home a bit, but there was something the Rock-type said that sounded strange to him.

    "... 'Vacation'? What exactly is one of those?" he asked. "But, it's 'Lyle', yeah. And as for me, I guess I've been doing alright. Better than I had been before coming over here, at least."
     
    "A vacation? In this case I take it to mean a break from my work back home," Aige replied thoughtfully. "Now that you mention it though, I guess the term's meaning hinges on a well defined conception of work, because vacation is a term of opposition!"

    The Roggenrola paused. "Um, to put it simply, it's when you don't work when you otherwise would have." She paused. "That didn't help."

    "But that's not important," she continued, tilting to one side. It's good you're doing better though! Mind if I ask what makes it better?"
     
    "Er... well, it'd be kinda hard to be doing worse than back in my home world," he explained. "There was a major war that had been dragging on longer than most 'mons had been alive back there and I was struggling just to keep myself fed properly sometimes."

    The Cyndaquil trailed off briefly, as he realized that he wasn't sure just how much he could take that for granted.

    "Er... I guess I could've been one of those Pokémon that Voclain was 'trafficking', I suppose," he said. "That'd probably be one way of doing worse than back home."
     
    “Maybe,” Aige murmured, “We don’t really know though. Certainly it’s not like he needs the benefit of the doubt- it’s trafficking either way, but if we don’t know the end goal, then who is to say?”

    The Roggenrola looked down. “Always caveats in service of progress. What progress means is left to you.”

    “Do you know what the war’s about back where you come from?” She asked. “Just curious, feel free to tell me if that’s not something you want to go into.”
     
    “Do you know what the war’s about back where you come from?” She asked. “Just curious, feel free to tell me if that’s not something you want to go into.”
    Click to expand...

    Lyle shook his head with a tired sigh and reached for his food.

    "Honestly, it's been long enough that I think most 'mons back home are starting to forget. A lot happens over the course of 70 years when your land's being invaded and then invading back in different cycles," he said.

    The Cyndaquil trailed off a moment. He honestly wasn't sure if he could give a full summary of the war when so much of it just seemed to blur together with trying to get by.

    "It's a really long story, but my homeland back in my world, Varhyde, has... I guess we'll call it a 'rivalry' with this land across the sea called 'Edialeigh' that's lasted as long as anyone's known. 70 years ago, a war broke out between our two lands that wound up getting our patron gods involved... and a bunch of others that were sought out as allies," he explained. "They... kinda killed each other off early on, and ever since then, both Varhyde and Edialeigh have been trying to get a breakthrough for one or the other grind out a decisive victory."

    He took a berry from his plate and began to munch at it, even if now his appetite had weirdly faded. He supposed dwelling on heavy matters had a way of doing that...

    "I suppose it could've been going worse for us when I left, but things weren't exactly going well," Lyle said. "Enough so that I'd probably have been better off still being a Cyndaquil like this. It'd have made it a bit easier to not go to bed not feeling hungry."
     
    Aige was quiet as she mulled over Lyle's words.

    "Then they should just kill whoever is pushing the conflict along," she murmured.

    The Roggenrola seemed to jolt. "Ah! That's not a good way to put it, sorry, sorry!" she said apologetically. "It's just that if it's such a long running conflict, then it would seem like it's just a proxy war by those in power for one reason or another. A populace rarely carries sustained support for these things unless pressed to do so, at least from my experience. Realistically, I'd think that if you removed the governing bodies of both sides, it would stop the war."

    Aige paused. "In and of itself, that would cause it's own problems, but then you just have to decide if those problems are worth it."

    "Anyway, sorry to ask, this doesn't seem like a good conversation." Aige was sheepish. "How has everything been for you lately?"
     
    "Alright, I guess," the Cyndaquil said. "I'd mostly been trying to catch up with my glassblowing apprenticeship I'd picked up in town and get a feel for what this world is like. Forlas definitely isn't the world I thought it was when I first came here..."

    Lyle trailed off as he realized that something the Roggenrola had said was strange. It wasn't the suggestion about getting rid of the leadership to stop the war. The last time there was an uprising in Varhyde, it'd just led to the Edialeighers regrouping and invading again, but even so, how on earth did the idea even occur to Aige there?

    "Though out of curiosity, what was your world like and what did you do in it?" he asked. "Since you seem to know a thing or two about kingdoms going to war with each other."
     
    “Mine?” Aige rocked from side to side in thought. “There’s no kingdoms where I come from, just those in power and those not, it’s really quite similar in a few respects. We have a cabinet government- think of it like a whole group of a bunch of little kings all trying to get their way, ha!”

    The Roggenrola seemed upbeat. “I’m a commander, not for war though. More of a peacekeeper, though it’s not my prerogative to decide what peace is...” She ended on an odd note. “I don’t know much about how kingdoms go about their business differently from governments, so sorry if I seemed to act like an authoritative figure. Power is power though, so it tends to act a certain way most of the time.”

    “At least you’re doing better here,” she said, “Not a king in sight! Yet at least.”
     
    "Yeah, I'll say," Lyle said, giving a small chuckle. "Though what exactly does a 'peacekeeper' do? And how does it even work if you don't answer to a king?"

    He gave a puzzled tilt of his head over at the Roggenrola.

    "I mean, I suppose I've heard of stories of lands without kings, but they're always in really old tales," he said. "Ones that I'm frankly not sure aren't fairy tales."
     
    "Well you... keep the peace," Aige said, hesitating as she chose her words. "You suppress the negative element and take care of criminals. it's not something you necessarily have to answer to a king for. Does a king decide what peace means or how it's reached? Not in my world, don't know about yours. Have you ever spared a thought to if your countries just didn't have one? Like, just stopped having one, not in the power vacuum sense."

    The Roggenrola tilted forward. "I guess you could call me a knight? I don't set out to slaughter the enemies of the crown or anything, but I defend it so to speak. Does that make sense? What are the old tales about for you?"
     
    Reader mode
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Back
    Top Bottom