RP: Demon in the Garden

It's Tariday, Firetide 28 23:18:16 1018. The full moon is up. The tide is low and ebbing. The sky is grey-black, moonless and starless. It's hard for human eyes to see anything in the deep shadows round about, without a light. It's warm, still, and humid.

Lower Alexandrian Gardens District

Summary: Yelrona and Velothin are faced with a demonic foe, and they bravely run away.

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Having spent much of the afternoon exploring the Gardens, which reminded her in some ways of home, Yelrona had been surprised to find herself mostly alone in them once the sun went down and the shops closed... well, all but the hospital, whose occupants were either too busy or insufficiently mobile to take advantage of the gardens at night. So her explorations had grown more elaborate, and at the moment she is halfway up a straight-trunked ash that stood in relative shadow.

Despite the moonless and starless night that hangs overhead, the paths of the Garden District are still richly illuminated in the late evening hours. The Faerie-light lanterns cast a comfortable, soothing glow over all that they can reach. The soft, cool light of the lanterns fall across Velothin's face as he tilts his hat upward, allowing him to get a better look at the verdant area immediately around him. The lack of light is no bother for his almond-shaped eyes, but he does certainly wear a look of mild confusion on his face. Polite confusion, really, might be the best way to describe it. "Now, where..." His calm, smooth tone fades away into the evening air as he glances about himself somewhat, reaching up with two fingers to rub lightly and thoughtfully at his chin. He speaks to no one in particular as he notices no one around him, but the rest of the sentence was very likely to be 'the hell am I?' if the expression on the Shadow Elf's face is any indication.

Yelrona regards the new arrival. Tall... exceptionally so for an elf. Dark... though not exceptionally so for a Mul'niessa. Handsome? Well, she wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating lembas wafers, that's certain. Whipcord-lean despite his size, a smile on his face despite the lack of an audience... or an obvious one, anyway... and nattily dressed in a style Rona finds amusingly familiar, if a bit more overelaborated than she prefers... especially that hat! Still, he seems nice enough. On a whim, she quietly scrambles along a branch to a point almost right above him, and calls down "In the perfect spot to catch me!" before dropping. With luck he would, indeed catch her... if not, hopefully she would land safely enough.

Velothin blinked his eyes but once at the sound of a voice over his head, which he promptly tilted back in order to get a look at who or what had just spoken. Normally some dark shape falling out of the sky was cause for alarm, but given his current location in the heart of the city - and near a hospital, in case things went entirely sideways - he was not overtly startled. Quick reaction brought his arms up before himself, palms facing the sky, in order to actually catch whoever or whatever just fell out of the tree into his grasp. His left foot slid back, bracing himself slightly as his entire bobbed when he caught the falling person before slowly straightening back up with them successfully caught in both arms. "Apparently," he agreed, now that he'd actually realized what she had said when she came spilling out of the sky.

Yelrona laughs delightedly when caught, then slips easily out of his arms and onto the ground, still chuckling. "See? If you hadn't been standing right there, who knows what might have happened? Admittedly, most likely I wouldn't have jumped out of the tree in that case," she observes judiciously, "but who among us can predict the future? Well, besides the Diviner's Guild, of course. And augurers. But you don't strike me as the divinatory type."

Velothin lifts a finger as he adds, "Or if you had, you'd have hit the ground." And the ground, being ground and all, was a terribly hard thing. He seems to reflect on her question for a moment by looking thoughtful from underneath his hat, glancing askance before looking back to her and giving her a slight shrug of his shoulders which caused the jewelry involved in the process to chime and rattle gentle. "No, I'm not much at divining. I try to avoid gambling for that reason. Seems I've never been able to predict the future worth a damn." There is a slight pause on his part before he fixes her with a curious, yellow-eyed stare. "Are you a diviner? I haven't a clue what they look like, personally."

Yelrona nods. "I would have! That's usually what happens when I jump from things. Which is all right... I imagine it's preferable to floating in mid-air. For me, I mean. Birds seem to be all right with it. But they have wings." She delivers herself of these observation for all the world as though she were making some sort of elaborate argument, though what it's ultimate conclusion might look like is anybody's guess. "And no, I'm not a diviner. Not a mage of any sort, in fact. But you know what they say... it doesn't take a weather-witch to know which way the wind is blowing." She tilts her head to one side, perhaps checking the way the wind is going. "And we never had a diviner back home, as far as I know anyway, so I'm not really sure what they look like either." She frowns thoughtfully and begins counting quietly on her fingers before adding "Mostly enchanters, as far as I know, among the specialists. I'm not sure why. Well, except for Adelyn," she adds darkly. "He liked to charm the girls."

Velothin tilts his head slightly at the remark about weather-witches, wondering idly if there might actually be any around. He'd often found, personally, that the old sailor's adages about the way the sky looked and what weather it meant to be demonstrably false. "Hadn't heard that before, but now I know," he replies, perfectly pleasant. "Can't say I've had much to do with mages at all though. Not many of them tend to like being on a boat overly long, in my limited experiences." His right hand goes to his hip, the other left to hang at his side as he gives the Elf in front of him the once over. There'd been no immediately negative reaction toward him, and so he counted it as a victory. "Ah, excuse me. Caught you from the sky, but didn't catch your name." The hanging hand is swept up, pulling his ostentatious hat from the top of his head so that he can give her a polite bow of it in her direction. "Velothin, newly arrived to the city. Lost too, actually. Haven't a clue where I am at the moment, other than in.. Some sort of garden."

Yelrona grins at the last question. Well, implied question. "Ah! That much I can help you with. This is indeed a garden! _The_ Garden, actually. Or rather, the Garden District. Apparently it's a local point of interest. I spent some time this afternoon chatting with an older human woman," and her face reveals a certain amount of puzzled distaste when thinking of that, though why exactly is unclear, "who taught me a certain amount about local weeds," she added with a chuckle.

"Anyway, a pleasure to meet you, Velothin. I'm Yelrona, late of Yles Namvadin in the Mythwood, which I will assume you're lying if you claim to have ever heard of." She smirks as he looks her over, then shrugs. "What you see is mostly what there is. I arrived here last night, which is about as new as it gets, I suppose. You spend most of your time on boats, do you?" She looks around as though to confirm the fact before adding in a conspiratorial whisper "I'm fairly sure this is solid ground."

Velothin glances around at the mention of weeds. Dandelions, perhaps? He sees none, but then he is not a botanist. He knows cabbage when he sees it and can tell flowers apart; beyond that, maters of the greenery and so forth are not his forte. The conversation moves on, however, and he is quick to keep pace with it.

"Well, you don't look as though you're planning to rob me. Though I must inform you that if you are, there's not really much to take. Other than my hat." A finger is directed upward, gesturing to the wide cavalier's hat upon his head. "And for it, I will fight to the death." There shall be no hat theft, not while he lives.

"Though, now I am somewhat embarassed. I've been wandering around this city a few days already, and I am lost while you are not. In my defense, I spent most of them down by the river flowing through the center of the city." He half-turns as he speaks, gesturing out toward the direction he had initially walked in from. "Been camping down there lately, because as you guessed I do spend most of my time on boats. Except, my boat is not so much a boat now." There's a bit of a pause as he tilts his head left and right, as though trying to knock the right words out of his skull with the motion. "It's more.. Timber. Unfortunately. But then that is life!" Always look on the bright side and all that.

Yelrona laughs. "One very useful trick to not becoming lost," she confides, "is to stay in one place for a very long time. As Mother wasted no opportunities to impress upon me. Of course, the problem with that is that it's most exceedingly dull. Another trick is to always intend to be content wherever you end up. I prefer that approach, myself." She sounds like she's quoting someone, now, and looks briefly sad before continuing. "I stayed at the Fernwood Inn last night, at the recommendation of a nice enough young man I met outside the gates, but I'll need to find somewhere more affordable if I'm to stay here long. I'm surprised you know so little of mages, though," she adds, apparently eager to change the subject of where she's staying, which seems to make her uncomfortable. "Aren't you -- your, er, people, I mean -- committed to magic?" She seems suddenly even more uncomfortable with the new topic than she had been with the old. "Er. No offense meant. I'm sorry about your boat?" she adds, by now seeming to be grasping for topics at random.

A small grin appeared on Velothin's angular features, his hair swaying as he let his head list to the side slightly at the slightly stammered remark about his people. "I'm committed only to the sea braze and the salty waves, to adventure and /gold,/" he replies, clenching a fist in particular emphasis at the last bit. "Magic though? Magic I'm not very good at. I can do a little, mind you. In the blood and all. But personally, I never spent much time among my people. I grew in Veyshan, along the Golden Coast, before hopping on a ship and then spending very little time at all on the mainland." He doesn't seem particularly perturbed in explaining the facets of his history, insofar as general details are concerned. "I miss the boat, certainly. But.. Well, it was right full of bastards at the end. So with the crew in mind, I don't miss it too terribly much at all. There'll always be more boats. Oh, and no offense taken. I'm used to reactions a lot worse than yours." There's a slight shrug of his shoulders again, a perfectly genial expression on his face; as Shadow Elves go, he seems perfectly personable by comparison to the standard.

Yelrona nods at his reference to magic being in the blood, then again at his reference to worse reactions. "I expect so," she replies seriously, then hesitates for a moment before continuing, with the air of someone who feels the need to explain herself. "My best friend back home, his family wasn't especially well-liked. Rumor was they had Mul'niessa blood. Some folks said you could see it in their eyes. Or the taint of sorcery in their auras. Or their skin." She shrugs, irritated. "I never saw it myself. I mean, _our_ family was darker-skinned than theirs! But, well, people say things. And then... well, his parents saved my life," she explains in a rush, "but I couldn't tell anyone. Not anyone back home, I mean." She frowns, thin-lipped, then shrugs it off. "Anyway. I guess it just left me irritated. I mean, yes, the Mul'niessa governments are... problematic. But, well... I'm guessing they don't run their policy proposals past you for approval?"

She shrugs again. "Not that there's any reason you should care about any of that. It's just, this is the first time I've been able to tell anyone about that."

Velothin listens to her with a subdued but politely curious expression on his face, yellow eyes following her lips as she spoke. He kept his comments to himself, however, throughout her story until it seemed as though she had finished saying her part. With a bit of a smile he pulled his hat from his head to fully expose the long lengths of white hair that spilled down from it, some captured inside of a series of silvery beads and other ornamentation. "Well, I appreciate your story all the same. T'is nice not to have someone point a finger at me, scream 'devil', and then either flee or try and club me about the ears with something heavy. My kind are not often treated well outside of our lands, and.." He trails off, sighing faintly as a bit of a crack in his otherwise rather jovial facade shows through. "It's not quite as though the reactions are undeserved. I know what sort of nastiness they get up to, even if I did not grow up in Charn or too close to it." His hat is returned to his head and adjusted adroitly. "But, what can I do about all that? Not terribly much, so I do my best to go about my day and try to come across as unvillainous as possible, mostly."

Yelrona nods emphatically. "Exactly! Sometimes people are so... hidebound! It infuriates me. You should have heard my mother's reaction when I told her that Kalniss and I were--" The rest of her story is cut off by a terrified cry and the shout of "Demon! Demon!" from the Market District to the North, and for a moment she nods as though they were part of her story, before reality catches up and she moves _extremely_ fast behind the tree she'd been climbing not too long ago.

The sounds of a small group of people running and knocking things over can be heard, followed by unearthly roaring sounds, still some distance away, but coming closer.

The two elves practically seem to disappear into the shadows, and a few moments later the garden doors to the hospital burst open as a cleric charges through them, looking for trouble.

Velothin whips his head around the mention of demon, looking patently confused for an instant before good sense gets the better of him. Like Yelrona, he too makes for a hasty retreat somewhere dark and out of the way which is - given their position - behind the tree with his temporary chatting companion. The tree is not big, but then Elves are not exactly massive either; it provides decent enough cover for him to melt away into the darkness. Golden eyes peer out of that gloom, searching for whatever it is might be coming their way while he remains utterly silent.

Velothin glances at Yelrona and her tapping, his face showing he clearly has no idea what she is tapping about. He might have even commented, if the need for stealth hadn't seemed quite so necessary to him then which kept his lips firmly clamped shut. The voice of the cleric draws the Shadow Elf's attention however, a decidedly half-panicked look on his face as he attempted to move with the shadow and remain hidden.

"Who's out there?" the cleric shouts in the general direction of the tree. "Come out where I can see you!!!" It takes very little cleverness for Rona to realize that his reaction to seeing _her_ would be far preferable to seeing Velothin, so she steps out into the light. "I was just hiding from the --" she explains, before being cut off by the much louder roaring from the North, and the reddish infernal glow gradually becoming visible. "From that," she says, pointing.

A low but heavy breath of relief escapes from Velothin's lungs as he remains tucked away behind the tree, doing his best to remain hidden now that the focus of the cleric's attention was off of him. His relief at not being found though is short-lived in the wake of the roar that reverberates in the tree and in his very ribcage as it reaches him, his head practically on a swivel in order for him to look around in that direction. He reaches out a hand, grabbing at the air before finding the back of Yelrona's shoulder and clamping down on it. "I believe we should run. That seems angry."

The second roar that rattled the lanterns of the garden and rustled the green grass that carpeted the grounds led Velothin to believe he was right. The cleric appears to be of similar in mind the moment, gesturing with his hand towards Yelrona while his focus falls entirely upon the quickly-approaching hellspawn. "Quickly, at that," Velothin adds, his eyes in the direction of the glow but his feet poised to carry him very much in the opposite.

Yelrona nods in agreement, hoping the cleric will not take this moment to demonstrate the sort of hidebound thinking she was just talking about. Somehow, she is not confident that hiding behind a tree will work quite as reliably as an anti-demonic strategy as it does an anti-guard strategy.

The cleric is praying again... some sort of protection from evil spell, she infers from the snatches of Celestial roots she recognizes in his chant... which seems a far better solution. For a moment she considers standing her ground alongside the cleric, and then she thinks better of it, given how emphatically he seems to be gesturing them away. She heads towards the Garden's south gate, towards the Tornmawr and the Warehouse District that lines it, looking hastily over her shoulder to see if her companions are joining her.

Velothin is not the sort that hangs around when the odds are most decidedly not in his favour. He does, however, wait long enough to ensure that Yelrona has decided to make like a tree and bugger off exactly as he is planning to do. When she sets to moving, he is quick to follow after her at a hard pace, keeping even with her as the chanting of the cleric and demonic glow both fade away behind him. "Demons. Bloody demons," he mutters out between heavy breaths as they run along, the Dark Elf very eager to leave that whole mess behind. A godly man - Elf? - he was not, and demons were not even slightly in his realm of expertise. "This is why I hate cities."

She looks over her shoulder again as she reaches the Garden gate. Behind her, she can hear more roaring, rending, and chanting noises. "Well, one nice thing about city hospitals," she calls to Velothin, "they are well-supplied with clerics!" Even she isn't sure whether she's joking. She wonders if Tarien would approve of that. She wonders if He would expect her to fight. From what Kalniss parents have taught her, she doubts it. She wonders if He would be amused if she were eaten by a demon just over a day after arriving in the city. That seems more likely.

By the time she reaches the first line of warehouses, the sounds of battle are muted, and she has been separated from her companion. And calling attention to herself by calling out for him seems decidedly foolish. So she hopes he is all right, but devotes her attention to making her way unseen to the Fernwood Inn.