Nodding, Emlyn smirks, “He might have if I’d had to draw steel to get you out of there. I want to make sure that nothing like that happens again to any other dragon-blooded. I know what happened to Atres. I know how you came to be in the first place. Being forced into things can’t sit well with any of you. Some of Kethas’s kin are coming, too, but they’ve yet to arrive. I won’t see them subjected to the same treatment. I know that the king has been working to try to repair the relationship with all the clans. Something like this, trying to recruit people forcibly, is not how you do that.”
“How did you get them to obey you like that?” Rilgi asks.
“Before I was a paladin of Morrighu, I was a general,” Emlyn shrugs, “It’s mostly the tone of voice and the posture. Act like a general, and troops will respond to it, even if they’re not your own. Being a paladin with a powerful aura that makes people want to obey me doesn’t hurt either.”
Laughing, Kethas starts laying out food, “Come and eat. I’m sure it’s been a long trek down the mountain. You, too, bottomless pit. I’m willing to bet you can eat again, even though we just finished breakfast.”
“Oes, ewythr,” Emlyn grins while Atres shakes his head.
While everyone is eating, Emlyn gets an idea.
Grinning at Oso, Usurg, and Rilgi, Emlyn says, “Tell me what Atres was like when he was little. Thanks to my forge-fathers, he’s already heard about several of my childhood exploits, so I think it’s only fair.”
Winking at Atres, Oso starts telling Emlyn about Atres’s pranks, “Atres, I think you may have truly met your match. Gods! It’s good to see you happy again. Now, when we were younger, his favorite thing to do was to leave small creatures for people to find in obnoxious places. Lizards in shoes, frogs in beds, mice in pockets, but the best one was when he put earthworms in his Da’s boots. We were all up early, getting ready to go hunting, and his Da had put his boots next to the fire to get warm. We kept smelling something and couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally, we were ready to leave, but we still hadn’t figured out where the strange smell was coming from. We go to put our boots on, and his Da shoved his foot into some half-cooked earthworms.”
“Oh, Gods! I remember that,” Usurg laughs. “His Da was chasing him around the yard with just one boot on and yelling so much that the whole village came to see what was happening. Atres kept running until one of our other cousins stuck out her dainty little foot and tripped him. He’d left a mouse in her coat pocket a few days before.”
Atres ducks his head and chuckles, “She was terrified of mice. I thought if I could get her to touch one, she’d see that they’re not so bad.”
“Hrmph,” Usurg laughs, “I remember the time you sewed everyone’s pant legs up, right at the bottom. He must have been up all night, sewing, because every pair of pants we owned had the legs sewn shut. What’s the first thing you have to do in the morning? Get dressed so you can go out to the privy. Hard to get dressed when you can’t put on any of your pants.”
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Emlyn giggles, “I hadn’t figured you as a prankster.”
Shocked, Oso looks at her, “He hasn’t pranked you? Not even a little? Oh, my. Our Atres is definitely in love, then. He filled our entire house up with leaves one fall. We came home from gathering firewood, opened the door, and they just poured out like an avalanche. He’s pranked everyone in the village at one time or another, even our shaman, Sothra.”
Usurg nods, “He boiled all the eggs Sothra had stored and then put them back just like she’d left them. She went to crack one and realized what he’d done.”
Once the food is cleared away, Oso hugs Atres. “Gods! It’s good to see that spark back in you again. I was worried you might never get it back. Tell me, how did you meet this spitfire?”
Atres starts by telling his cousins about swapping with Harcin because his wife has gone into labor, and then goes on a recruiting run to several of the local fairs with Argonath. “We didn’t stay long at the first few because there wasn’t anyone new. We arrived at the one in Stonehaven and decided to stay for a bit, as it was larger. Argonath likes to set up near the knife-throwing and archery contests to see if anyone’s got any skills. We were hanging around watching and just getting ready to find some lunch, when I saw a very lovely girl plop her coins down on the counter at the archery contest. We’ve been to Stonehaven before, quite a few times, so I knew that she was new and maybe worth watching.”
Atres gives Emlyn a look, “Definitely worth looking at. There’s a boy there who was clearly plaguing her, and it looked like she wanted to get away from him. She caught Argonath’s eye when she started sorting through the bows and arrows to pick out the best ones.”
Chuckling, Atres explains, “That’s when my gift started to nudge me. It was so quiet at first, I almost didn’t realize what was happening. When she landed all six shots, Argonath wanted to recruit her on the spot. Argonath walks up to ask her to go hunting with us so he can see what she can do with real gear and to see how she interacts with others. The boy with her starts to kick up a fuss, and she passes us a hand signal to wait. She takes her leave of him and passes us another signal to follow. She wants to go deliver the prize from the archery contest to Oja, Benger’s mother, who’s all but adopted her. Argonath made some inquiries about what her relationship with Benger was, and they were phrased vaguely. She took them wrong and went stomping off to go punch a tree a few times, after accusing everyone of having filthy minds.”
“If you’d heard some of the comments from around the fair, her interpretation wasn’t entirely unfounded,” Benger shrugs, “Valgar spread some rather unflattering rumors about why she was there and why she went to talk to the Tinker Folk.”
“Now I wish I had punched him,” Atres fumes before returning to his story. “She had a bit of an unarmed match with Argonath and held her own. We go hunting, and she stops to climb a tree so she can scout the herd. She’s got these claw things, and she goes up the tree like a snowcat with them. Once she’s up there, she decides she needs to be in the next tree over to get a better look, so she jumps across to the other tree and starts climbing. My gift had been creeping up slowly, but when she did that, it was like someone pulling the rope on the alarm bell. My gift is screaming at me that I need her, that she’s important. I knew I had to flirt with her, but she asked us to circle around behind the herd to drive the elk toward her. That might have worked in my favor since I got a chance to work out what I was going to say while we herded the elk, instead of being a tongue-tied idiot.”
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The General's Aura: Emlyn explains how she dominated the guard post—it’s a mix of habit, posture, and a paladin’s aura that basically screams "Obey or Perish."
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The Prankster Revealed: Atres’s cousins (Oso and Usurg) spill the tea. Before he was a serious warrior, Atres was the village prankster—sewing pants shut, boiling eggs, and putting "half-cooked earthworms" in his father's boots.
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The Love Test: Oso points out that because Atres hasn't pranked Emlyn yet, he’s definitely got it bad for her. Usually, if he likes you, you find a lizard in your boot.
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The Origin Story: Atres retells the story of meeting Emlyn at the Stonehaven fair. We hear about her "claw things" (climbing spikes), her jumping between trees like a snowcat, and how Atres's "gift" started screaming like an alarm bell that she was The One.
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The Tall Obstacle Rating: 4.5/5 Tankards.
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Review: He loses half a point for being a "tongue-tied idiot" initially, but gains it back for the earthworm story. It’s good to know the big guy has a sense of humor buried under all that dragon-blood.
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Atres Watch - Special Note: He’s still fuming about some lad named Valgar spreading rumors at the fair. If I were Valgar, I’d start looking for a new kingdom to live in.
I must say, I’m feeling much better about my own chances of survival now that I know Atres has a history of mischief.
the Discord via this invite link.