Dragon Attack!

Near the eastern side of the Southern Highbridge is a well-constructed guardhouse overlooking the Tornmawr. Near it, Yelrona is talking to one of the guardsmen and sighting with her bow, clumsily firing arrows into the river at the man's instruction. TWANG...PLOP. Some discussion. TWANG...PLOP. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Ga'Elian strides up the riverbank from the shadow of the bridge and over to Yelrona. Says, "Hey there. What's with jettisoning all that ammunition into the water?" He nods at the guardsman.

Yelrona smiles and waves. "Oh! Hi Elian. Well, it turns out that Guardsman Jonas here is an _excellent_ archer, and _ever_ so kind," she explains in an uncharacteristic simper, "and agreed to give little ol' me some pointers on how to hit things I aim at... which, you know me, can't hit the broad side of a barn, right?"

Yelrona says "Also he's kind of an idiot. But this is the best spot for spying on traffic on the Tornmawr into the Warehouse District, and I'm trying to nail down Diadem's shipping pattern to confirm my suspicions that they're involved in the Veyshan slave trade, and he's happy to let me sit here as long as I let him feel important and look at my boobs." <sildanyari>

Ga'Elian scarcely restrains a laugh, but responds, "Perhaps he enjoys the prospect of knowing more about archery than an elf, too." <sildanyari>

Ga'Elian then asks, "And what things are you aiming at in that river. I see no barns there." Then with a subtle gesture of his hands, the ranger uses the magic of his gloves to prestidigitate the guardsman's belt. buckle to spontaneously unfasten.

The guardsman, a tall broad-shouldered lunk of an Aesir, rolls his eyes behind Rona's back, looking to Elian in presumed solidarity and making a somewhat crude and suggestive gesture regarding Rona while she pretends not to notice, awkwardly mis-aligning her shoulders in a way that wastes most of the force of her pull and would make any halfway decent archer howl in anguish. "Well," he says in response to Elian, almost cartoonishly pompously, "she's _trying_ to hit one of those abandoned piers on the Southern Tornmawr... we use those for target practice all the time," he explains, "and _I_ can manage to called-shot individual buoys," he continues, puffing up in self-evident pride as he points out a mildly challenging target. "Just keep trying, Rona, you'll get it eventually! Practice, practice, practice! Why, when _I_ started out I -- eep!"

Whatever story Jonas was about to tell about himself is cut off as his uniform pants drop to the floor, and he hastily pulls them back up and turns his back on the pair to re-fasten them. Rona takes advantage of the opportunity to laugh quietly but intensely.

FaerieDragon has arrived.

Ga'Elian nods in understanding at Jonas's explanation, then while he turns his back to fix his unfortunate accident. Rolling his eyes, Ga'Elian softly exclaims, "Oh heavens! How emBareAss-ing." At that same moment, a red-scaled faerie dragon appears upon Ga'Elian's shoulder. The ranger looks genuinely surprised for a moment, then yells, winking at Yelrona, "HOLY TREE! A DRAGON, A DRAGON! ARGH!" The dragon hovers and watches the guard.

Yelrona is, in turn, genuinely surprised by the creature's appearance, but Elian's wink and the Faerie Dragons' reputation as essentially harmless pranksters keep her from taking any actual steps against it. Instead she grins at both the ranger and the dragon and gives a high-pitched, blood-curdling yell: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! A DRAGON!!!" before running about ten paces, "accidentally" knocking the startled and otherwise-occupied guardsman to the ground, before turning around and, with a great show of incompetent courage, launching a single arrow. "RUN, ELIAN! I'LL PROTECT YOU!!!" she shrieks, as her arrow strikes the ground a couple of inches from Jonas' head.

This draws the remaining guardsmen out of the guardhouse, of course, though most of them stop short, confused, at the sight of the butterfly-winged creature.

Sparklewing absolutely ADORES slapstick hijinx, and so invokes a 'Silent Image' of himself, but magnified to large size. The illusory dragon swoops and flies in attack position straight at the other guards. Concealing his actual self inside the illusion, Sparklewing then unleashes his euphoric breath weapon upon the hapless humans, but makes it look as if the illusory dragon has just exhaled upon them a cloud of sparkling glitter amid sky blue vapors. The guards would be intimidated into a panic, but for the euphoria, and instead buckle over and trip over each other in such manic laughter that several of them struggle to breathe while a couple of them actually vomit. Jonas wets himself.

Meanwhile, Ga'Elian grabs his whip out of his haversack and bravely starts attacking the large 'dragon' with it, adding the cracking sounds of a bullwhip to the loud scene of utter chaos.

A cautious Inquisitor would take this opportunity to back away from the scene, since her spying on Diadem's cargo ships is most likely over for the day, and

Murder has arrived.

A cautious Inquisitor would take this opportunity to back away from the scene, since her spying on Diadem's cargo ships is most likely over for the day, and the Guards will undoubtedly figure out sooner or later that they are being made fools of. Admittedly, this guardpost is not where Alexandria sends its greatest heroes, but still.

That said, Rona is far from cautious, and truly, what Tarienite worthy of the name could turn down the opportunity to join a Faerie Dragon in mayhem? She runs around, apparently aimlessly, shrieking and firing arrows in what seem like random directions. Somehow they all end up landing within a few inches of the supine Jonas, who is torn between artificial euphoria and quite genuine fear.

A small figure in blue stands just inside the expanding edge of chaos, her eyes narrowed as she surveys the hijinx. "Not my sister's doing, certainly, not enough mimes and clowns exploding.", she comments in a conversational tone. Which may be lost in the mayhem. She walks towards Yelrona, her expression one of curiousity. "So uh what exactly is going on, Yelrona? A stuck pig makes less complaint is all I'm sayin'." Grinning, she offers Yelrona and Ga'Elian a wave, seemingly heedless of the cause of concern.

The tiny dragon next summons a 'Ghost Sound' as from the maw of his larger figment of self. It is the volume of 12 full grown men laughing maniacally, almost cackling hysterically. The effect is both silly and a little creepy. He and his large figment fly at full run away over the river then suddenly 'POP' out of apparent existence in the silent illusion of an explosion of confetti and glitter.

Murder oooohs at the apparent explosion and glittery colours, and goes to the edge of the bridge to watch. "That was neat! Again, again!", the Gobbo yells out.

Ga'Elian watches the dragons fly off and vanish, and coils his whip. He says to Yelrona, in Sildanyari, "Sparklewing is still here, just invisible. He wouldn't miss the chance to witness the reception of such a fine performance by those it was perpetrated against, nor by any other spectators, for that matter." And this being a busy bottleneck of traffic, there is no shortage of bystandinf spectators. One, a teen boy, laughs loudly and says, in a mocking tone, pointing at the ranger, "Hail the dragon-whipping hero!" Some mothers out shopping with their children have it as all they can do to keep their kids from either crying in terror or trying to join in the chaos with ADHD delight.

Yelrona cries out in a loud and melodramatic voice "No! It's getting away!" and makes an elaborate production of trying to grapple with the no-longer-present dragon, losing her balance on the bridge railing, and falling off. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa--" she shouts as she falls, slowly, and pauses for breath before continuing "--aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....." Her fall eventually terminates in and anticlimactic -poof- sound on the abandoned piers below.

Ga'Elian looks over at the 'hail' of the teenager and takes a deep bow, like a stage actor might, then, as if his how was so deep as to tumble out of control, the ranger allows himself to fall forward over the edge of the bridge, landing on the riverbank below with a rolling tumblez

Once out of view of the guards and passersby, Rona finally indulges herself in a rollicking bout of laughter. "Oh, Singer's Grace, that was fine," she exults once she gets her breathing under control. "But wait... Sparklewing? You mean the dragon was not an illusion?"

Ga'Elian stands up with the grace of an olympic gymnast then prestdigitates himself clean again. As he strides over to the Llyranesi, he says, "Nah. He's real enough. He pops in when he wants to, but I can call him once a week. He's usually willing to cause a distraction while I take care of other business."

Yelrona laughs... well, to be honest, she hasn't really stopped laughing since they landed. "Well, he certainly is good at that! So, there's clearly a story I haven't heard yet... how did you come to befriend a Faerie Dragon?"

Ga'Elian explains, "We met on one occasion when I was teaching Erithamiel to dance with the dryads in the Druid Grove northeast of Wilderness Pointe. He was amused at watching the griffon dance." Then as the tiny dragon sheds his invisibility, Elian looks upwards and says, "Poor guards, I'd probably go help them out, lest some dutiful rookie among them comes down here to see what happened to the pair of elves that fell off the bridge after fighting to vanquish the mighty dragon."

Yelrona shrugs, seemingly unconcerned. "The climb down will do them good. Especially Jonas, that _twerp_ of a guardsman deserves all the extra duty he can get." To the now-visible dragon she gives a shallow bow. "An honor to be joined in revelry by a dragon," she adds, apppaenty seriously.

Sparklewing then says to Yelrona telepathically, "Yeah. I like Tarienites. Good fun." He does a single loop-de-loop in the air.