RK Series Racing; Stage 3 Camp
NOVEL WARNING
The entirety of this post was written in collaboration with @Madrias. His post will seamlessly connect to mine as we have managed to barrel past the 32k character limit.
Duskriver Village Camp; about 2 sun
As the Anhultz Dione rolls up to the camp, it slows down and stops only a few feet short of impacting the Bricksley of team Shift Happens. By the time Connor had shut down the car, the three humans were already asleep, recovering from the rude awakening that was the battle with the Dyre the previous night.
The team gets up at a little after 2 sun the next morning, taking longer than usual due to the less-than-optimal sleeping position all three of them found themselves in.
Constantin, once again, wakes up first, but is pegged in the car by the still-asleep Valentin next to him, as his door and window won’t open to allow egress on that side.
About 20 minutes later, Tim wakes up as well, intensely stretching to loosen up a bit. This results in Valentin kind-of waking up as well, transitioning from true sleep to a state of half-asleep slumber.
Tim immediately exits the car to extend his stretching, the slam of the door kicking Valentin the rest of the way out of sleep.
The zombie that currently is in the rear right also more or less falls out the rear right door, managing to not hit the deck completely. He then joins the stretching session, though with substantially more structure behind it, starting at the neck and working his way downwards.
With the team now awake (mostly, anyway) they head out back and prepare breakfast, mostly in separation, as neither Tim nor Valentin seem mentally capable of meaningful conversation.
With that done, Constantin was the first to speak to the others, who in the meantime “warmed up” enough to be considered truly awake.
“I gotta go talk to the guys up front for a bit. I’ll be back soon.”, he exclaims, the others nodding in acknowledgement as he turns around and walks up to the Bricksley.
Back at the rear end of the Brick™, Valentin and Tim were once again discussing the events of last night, albeit with much less shouting…
“So you left all of us out there to die to save your own ass?”, Valentin accused Tim, still not happy about it.
“I was scared shitless and my brain went: here danger, need go, car can go. Thinking straight ain’t trivial when there’s a goddamn fight going…”, Tim replies. In hindsight, he knew that what he did was very much not cool with anyone. “And from what i know, you weren’t much better off, all curled up and such…”
“None of us were well-off… Can’t say i was mentally straight either.”, Valentin confirms, the thought of having his hair tugged halfway across the car prompts him to get his hairbrush out. He then starts going about trying to un-messify his hairdo as he always does.
Valentin and Tim were busy killing time and venting a bit by playing some Rummy (
;local names may include: 
Rommé; 
Rami; 
Jolly/ Rummy), when an enthusiastic Kaylie dragged Kayden and Malavera towards them.
“Oh umm… Hi.”, Valentin notes, being the first to see the group of three approaching. He still wouldn’t say that he’d be perfectly comfortable around them, but at least he knew some of them well enough to know that neither of them were an immediate threat.
“Well hello. Wanna join?”, Tim adds as he shuffles over to increase the available space in their little circle.
“Hope you have brought some chairs… we only have those two and the rear bumper…”
Kaylie stared at the table, recognizing all of the signs of a game in progress. “Don’t let us interrupt your game, we can wait. Plus, let’s face it, we don’t really know many card games. I’ve picked up Go Fish, but I know that’s a children’s game in the United States,” Kaylie admitted. “That, and no matter what we play, we’d have to teach Malavera, because he’s never really had a chance to play cards with anyone.”
Kayden settled down onto the ground, just glad to get off of his feet for a moment, and Malavera did the same. Kaylie looked around, then decided, tentatively, to sit on the Dione’s bumper, clearly testing to make sure she wasn’t going to break anything. Then, after a moment of thought, she looked at Malavera and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare shirt, would you?”
Malavera sighed, then shook his left head. “No. And I’m not giving you mine.”
Kayden chuckled and said, “Kaylie, you’re not going to scratch their paint. Your chrome is too smooth for that.”
Constantin walks up once more and retrieves his equipment, namely bow and quiver, from the trunk which, to his surprise, was still broken, but not mentioned yet by anyone. Being in a self-imposed time crunch, he doesn’t mention it either, instead electing to report his intentions to the others:
“I’ll head into town to get some replacement arrows. I’ll be back later.”, he says, already on the way back towards Jayde waiting near the Bricksley.
“Copy. See ya!”, Valentin responds, unintentionally slipping into the communications code he usually uses when cycling out with some local friends.
Him and Tim return to the game, which Tim ends up winning my a small margin.
With Valentin having lost, he was in charge of cleaning up the playing field.
He then goes to sort the cars by back-face color, separating the two 52 card decks from each other.
“Go Fish? Never heard of that.”, Valentin remarks, still sorting blue back-faces from red ones.
“Me neither”, Tim adds, despite being in a better position of knowing it, being an American and all.
“If you wanna play that, you’ll need to explain”, Valentin says as he finishes sorting and holds the blue stack of cars up towards Kaylie.
Kaylie nodded, then said, “It’s really a fairly simple game, as far as I’m aware. Everyone gets dealt five cards, the rest go face down in a stack in the middle. Any matching numbers, you put in front of you, face up, in pairs. On your turn, you pick a card from your hand, pick a person, and ask if they have that number. If they do, they give you that card and you get another turn. If they don’t, they say ‘Go Fish,’ and you take a card from the deck. Then the next person goes. This might just be a variant we learned, but we’ve played by the rule that the game ends when one person runs out of cards, and whoever has the most matches wins. It leads to slightly quicker games.”
“So, then, who would go first?” Malavera asked.
“Typically, either oldest or youngest first. Then it’s either clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on table preference,” Kayden said. “Whenever we play,” he said, nudging Kaylie’s left arm, “we have to flip a coin for who goes first because we’re twins.”
“Let’s do youngest first,” Kaylie said, smiling. “I mean, Kayden and I are, well, both of us are 67 back home, but we’d be about 102 years old if we used Earth years.”
“I’m 51,” Malavera said.
“On Khalara Five, yes, you are. You’re 357 years old on Earth,” Kayden said.
Malavera groaned. “Fine, I’m the eldest, but I’m counting that as a technicality,” he said, shaking both heads. “I still think it should be who feels the oldest.”
“Says the guy who’s older than some countries,” Kaylie quipped with a smirk on her face.
“Tim’s starting then.”, Valentin remarks, setting the game up in the way Kaylie described instead of handing the deck over for her to do it. Strangely enough, the wildly disproportionate claim of age didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would. His mind simply went: “Well if they think they’re THAT old, so be it… With all the gender and sexuality stuff it isn’t surprising.”
A set of five cards was dealt to each player, with the remaining 32 cards forming the face-down drawing pile.
“Yeah… 19 does undercut 23.” Tim adds, marveling at what he thought was immense dedication to their roles.
“U got a King?”, he starts, looking up from his own set of cards and towards Kayden. He didn’t know his name, but also didn’t care enough to ask.
Kayden grimaced as he handed over the king he had in his hand.
Kaylie chuckled, then said, “Well, you get to go again.”
Malavera tried to relax, holding his handful of cards in his left hand and resting his right hand on the ground. Being around two strangers was mildly stressful for him, even if he loosely knew one of them from talking before.
Kayden fished around in his pocket and slid a slim, black rounded rectangle out of it, taking a quick scan of his cards and trying to get Nova, his AI assistant, to help him decide who would be best to ask when, or if, he got a turn.
Kaylie spotted this and lightly punched her brother in the shoulder. “Hey, Kayden, we’ve agreed on this on the ship, no AI assistance in card games!” Kaylie said.
Kayden set the smartphone-shaped device down on his right knee and rubbed his shoulder, mere moments before Nova herself materialized as a six-inch tall golden tigress in an elegant dress standing on the screen. Nova put her hands on her hips, looked over at Kaylie, and said, “Oh, I’m just the AI now? What did I do to you to lose the first name basis?”
“Nothing, Nova. Was trying not to freak out our new friends here,” Kaylie said.
Nova spun around on top of the sleek armor-glass screen, spotting Tim and Valentin in the process. “Oh. My apologies. I am Nova, a Class 3 personal assistant to Kayden,” she said, motioning to Kayden as she did so. “Forgive me for my diminutive stature, projecting myself at my preferred size would generate more heat than I can safely dissipate in this atmosphere, and I doubt that I could convince Kayden to assemble his armor frame for my personal use.”
“Yeah, not happening, Nova. You still haven’t apologized for kicking me in the ass the last time,” Kayden replied.
“To be fair, you did deserve it,” Kaylie and Nova said at nearly the same time. Nova followed up with, “See, even your sister agrees with me.”
“Deserve it for what?” Kayden asked.
“Trying to use me to gain an advantage in Go Fish. So, I guess that means when I get the chance next, I owe you another kick in the ass,” Nova said, giving a light laugh before sitting down on the screen. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just watch the game.”
“Got one!”, Tim cheerily shouts, placing his pair of Kings face-up onto the dirt in front of him.
“Need a seven”, he continues, now looking at Malavera.
As Kayden pulled out what looked like a phone, he didn’t really pay much attention to it until Nova appears on the screen. This also grabs the attention of Valentin, who isn’t all that surprised anymore that Nova assumed the shape of another Tigralian, though the digital nature made it far less unnerving than the initial contact with Kaylie was.
“Looks like you have your own, digitized spin-off of Connor, it seems.”, he notes, not really knowing what exactly Nova was other than some glorified form of Siri. “Well hello there.”, he speaks, leaning forward to get an idea of how detailed the projection of her was.
Upon hearing about Kaylie using Nova to cheat Go Fish, Valentin wasn’t exactly impressed, though didn’t say anything about it.
Malavera looked over his cards, then shook his right head. “Go fish,” Malavera said, watching as Tim reached to the pile of cards.
Nova seemed to pause for a split moment to ‘think,’ then responded with, “Cyberlife model RK 800, serial number 313 248 317 - 60. Designation, ‘Connor.’ I believe it is possible we have met, but that information would be on my better half. Sorry, my local storage is a little limited.” When Valentin leaned in to get a better view of her, and said hello, Nova smiled. “If you’d like to see me better, please, just ask. I don’t mind scaling up a little for a short time.”
Kayden chuckled. “If you need to, feel free to pick up Nova’s handheld. It may be a little bit warm, but at least then, you’re not bending over quite so far.”
“And don’t worry, I won’t use that to read your cards. And even if I did, I’d give Kayden the wrong information anyway,” Nova said, before turning momentarily to face Kayden. “Because you know better than to use AI support in games. Seriously, you’re never going to improve if you don’t try,” Nova said, pointing a finger at him.
Kaylie just chuckled as her brother grimaced and pulled his head backwards as if he’d just been scolded by their mother. “Yeah, this is classic Nova. We have to restrict her to her Class 3 mode for games because her Class 7 ship-board AI is a master strategist.”
Nova, not willing to let Kaylie steal the show, cocked her head with a smirk and said, “My other chassis is a starship,” in the same tone of voice one might read a bumper sticker in.
Duskriver Village; about 2 sun
The bed of the Bricksley stayed a complete disaster overnight, getting worse as various needed items were dragged out of it, often overturning items or spilling other boxes and bins in the process.
For the first time since they had started, all five tents were used and the Bricksley remained empty. Jayde and Kaylie’s tent remained shrouded in the translucent purple orb, blocking all sound from leaving their tent, though the two of them could still hear what was going on outside. Rukari slept lightly, on alert even though he was asleep. Kivenaal was exhausted and sleeping heavily, having barely gotten out of his clothes before collapsing on top of the sleeping bag. Kayden occasionally growled in his sleep, albeit quietly, and infrequently enough that it could be mistaken for snoring. Malavera, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep and spent a few long minutes pacing the camp until he eventually got tired enough to go to bed.
At 2 Sun, however, things were different. Malavera was the first out of his tent, followed by Rukari. Kivenaal woke up slowly and got out, sitting on a log and just trying to let his brain get up to speed. Kayden crawled out of his tent and looked over at the truck, half expecting to see Kaylie or Jayde crawl out of it. Instead, the purple bubble dissipated and Jayde could be heard grumbling, “Ow. Kaylie, get off of my arm.”
“Sorry, Jayde,” Kaylie said, getting up and getting dressed, this time in a light tan tank top and denim shorts before crawling out of the tent. Jayde took a few minutes more, wandering out in light brown linen pants and a light tan shirt, not caring that they didn’t exactly match.
“It’s fine, Kaylie,” Jayde said, sitting down and helping Rukari prepare breakfast, mostly by providing a surprising amount of supplies.
“How the hell do you have fresh bacon and eggs in that bag, Jayde?” Kayden asked.
“Standard bag of holding with a stasis enchantment. If it’s fresh when it goes in, it’s fresh when it comes out,” Jayde responded, while Rukari fried the bacon in the pan, transferred it to everyone’s plates, then whipped up some scrambled eggs. Between the bacon, scrambled eggs, and one of Jayde’s loaves of piping-hot fresh bread, the team had a simple but satisfying breakfast.
“Right. We really have got to clean up that damn truck bed,” Malavera said. “It’s a real mess.”
“I could do a basic like-to-like sorting spell. Anything similar ends up in the same spot,” Jayde said.
“As long as you don’t sort everything into ‘junk,’ that should work,” Kayden said, chuckling. He then yowled as Kaylie grabbed Jayde’s staff and hit her brother on the butt with it. “Ow! What was that for?”
“He’s offering to make the job easier and you’re teasing him,” Kaylie replied. She let go of the staff as Jayde grabbed it, walked over to the truck, and focused his energy. Sure enough, things rapidly shuffled around in the bed, sorting by truck parts, weapon parts, ammunition (unfired, primitive, and expended each in three piles), clothing, weapons, and finally, camping supplies. With everything made at least a bit neater, though it would still have to be sorted through later, the truck bed was made a bit more presentable. Jayde scooped up all the spent brass and decided the best he could do with it was to compress it into an ingot, making it somewhat useful and a lot less of a mess. After that, he grabbed up the arrows as Constantin walked up to the truck.
“Good morning… allies.”, he goes, deliberately avoiding names as he simply doesn’t know most of them. He immediately goes straight to the point, as is customary with military-grade efficiency.
“We kept the others safe in that… conflict yesterday. Has been an honor to fight alongside you, despite apparent lack of firepower on my part.”, he speaks in a powerful, but also sincere tone while standing sort-of at attention.
As Constantin mentioned that he thought it was an honor to fight alongside them, standing at attention, it was Rukari who responded first, turning to face Constantin, standing to his full height, pulling his heeled boots together with a quiet click, and snapping both fists up to cover the twin hearts on the left side of his chest with a light thump. His brass tags quietly clinked from the force of the action, before Rukari said in a quiet voice, honed from years of duty, “The honor was mine.”
Jayde looked a bit surprised, knowing that not many people at all would outrank Rukari. However, Jayde quickly recovered and said, “From my perspective, there was no lack of firepower from you. I’ve fought alongside archers. You matched the best I’ve seen for firing speed and surpassed them for accuracy, and I know that isn’t easy.”
Kaylie, on the other hand, went a bit pale and tried to turn to hide her chrome left arm, now marked with a bright golden scar. Jayde, however, saw this and pulled Kaylie closer so she couldn’t hide her arm. He turned to her and again reminded her, “That arm saved your life. Also, in all the time you shared with me, not once have you harmed me with it.”
“Still hate that I killed two Dyre,” Kaylie said. “I thought I was going to knock the first one out. The second one, I didn’t mean to tear his throat out.” Kaylie had tears in her eyes as she buried her face in Jayde’s chest, and Jayde just wrapped an arm over her back to support her, understanding.
“No one sane likes killing,” Kivenaal said, rummaging through the toolbox and putting some of their supplies away.
Malavera, likewise, looked over to Constantin and said, “If anyone was lacking effectiveness last night, it was me. I shot one and knocked the other one out.”
“I’ve never been in a battle before,” Kayden admitted, “and if I never have to face a fight like that again, I’ll be quite happy.”
Initially, Constantin is rather confused by Rukaris reaction, but it soon dawned on him that he was in the Military as well. He stiffens up his posture and executes a textbook salute, albeit “earth-style”. What he wasn’t sure of was Rukaris rank, as him saluting first indicates Constantin being of higher rank than Rukari. The fact that he did not wear uniform or other rank insignia did not help either.
He maintains posture during the time in which Jayde compliments his archery, nodding in acknowledgement once he is done doing so.
Constantin also took note of Kaylie and knew how it feels to be a murderer, even if it was in self-defense.
“You are very much not the only one mentally affected by this.”, he calmly states, taking a step aside and motioning to the remainder of the team sat near the Tangerine Tank, with Tim and Valentin apparently playing a card game of sorts. Though Constantin wasn’t sure as to what the others knew about what Valentin did during the battle.
Rukari gave a polite nod and left his salute first, and as Constantin mentioned to Kaylie that she wasn’t the only one mentally affected by the battle, he spoke up, “We all were in different ways, and all have our ways of handling the aftermath. I have seen many battles in my time, the worst are always the ones up close.”
Kaylie slowly started to relax as Jayde held her, and as she regained her mental strength, she tried to put a brave face on and just get through with this meeting. “Most of us were in the fight, trying to keep everyone safe,” Kaylie said, her voice still a little shaky. “I wasn’t expecting to be in the middle of it.”
Kayden stepped closer to his twin sister and rubbed her natural right shoulder lightly. “None of us expected to be in the middle of that, sis. Look on the bright side, no casualties on our side.”
“Depends on your definition of casualty,” Malavera said. “If you mean deaths or physical injuries, then yeah, no casualties. If, however, you mean everyone got out unharmed, even mentally? No, we have casualties. Kaylie killed two in self defense. Tim stole the Dione and went on a joyride mid-fight. Valentin’s had a rough night behind the Elbrus. Gods only know how fucked up Orlan’s going to be considering he started that mess. Aedan had to face one down as it tried to kill him,” Malavera added. When Kaylie, Kayden, and Rukari stared at him, he sighed. “Two heads, guys. I can look through a thermal scope and still see my surroundings. That and I barely did anything in that fight.”
Constantin knew that it would take a while for some people to truly recover from the fight, though standing there wailing about it after the fact surely ain’t helping.
“Let’s not get caught up in the past and look ahead.”, Constantin tries to motivate the others present.
“I see you even found the time to clean up afterwards. Commendable to stick to your own rules.”, he adds, looking at the bundle of arrows Jayde was holding.
“Cannot say that about myself, recently…”, Constantin continues even further, remembering how he lied to Valentin about having seen worse in the military.
Jayde nodded, then handed Constantin the arrows. “I can’t tell how good they are. I’ve done some archery in the past, but I’m not good at it. Took a few classes a long while back when I got disappointed in archers who couldn’t hit their targets, and learned a whole new respect for the art of archery,” Jayde admitted. “Had an instructor who was left handed. I’m ambidextrous, but learned to shoot left handed.”
Kaylie looked over at Connor, Tim, and Valentin playing cards. “I wonder what game they’re playing,” she said, thinking out loud.
“Considering you cheat at Go Fish,” Kayden said, smirking.
“I do not! Those cards were stuck together and you know it,” Kaylie shot back.
“I know,” Kayden said, chuckling. He knew it had worked, his sister was no longer thinking about the battle.
Malavera shrugged. “I’ve never played cards. Never really had anyone to play any games with, and no one to teach me.”
Kaylie grinned, then grabbed Kayden and Malavera by their hands and practically dragged them over to the trio, with Kayden protesting the whole way that he hardly knew them, didn’t want to scare anyone, and wasn’t dressed enough to play cards.
“Twin Suns, Kay, it’s not like they’re playing strip poker, you big wimp,” Kaylie quipped at her brother. “Sorry about this, Valentin, if he’s scaring you. He’s probably more scared of you than you are of him,” Kaylie said, teasing her brother.
Kayden sighed. “In front of new people, Kaylie? Really?”
Malavera chuckled. “Don’t worry about Kayden, Valentin. He’s big, but, well, he’s Kaylie’s brother, and I know him well.”
Back at the truck, after Constantin had taken the arrows from Jayde, it was Kivenaal and Rukari who both realized they had weapons to clean after last night, and decided the cab of the truck was out-of-the-way enough to start cleaning. Rukari swabbed out the barrel of his murdaira while Kivenaal disassembled his four Colt Peacemakers, grumbling the whole time that he should have brought bigger guns.
Jayde, on the other hand, looked at Constantin and asked, “Do you have any way to check those arrows, or are we just going to have to go into town? Because if you need new ones, well,” Jayde paused for a moment, rummaging in the messenger-bag-sized pouch hanging at his side, then pulled out a bag of coins and handed it to Constantin, “at least now you’ll be able to pay for them. Any extra, you can keep. Best if your team has at least some of the coin of the realm.”
Jayde knew that the bag contained 80 silver Syrkals, the currency used all across Crugandr, and that if they had to buy anything, that would almost certainly be enough. “And don’t worry about repaying me. I’ve got enough that I can afford to give a little bit of coin away. At least this way, I know the coin isn’t going straight into the local tavern for a mug of ale.”
Constantin accepts the bundle of arrows and shuffles through them. The coinage is also accepted and promptly is stored in one of the multitude of pockets of his combat uniform trousers.
“First off, you took more from the field than i shot. Some of those aren’t even mine.”, he explains, discarding three arrows noticeably shorter than the remaining ones. He then goes about the remaining five, taking each one individually and mildly bending it a few times.
“The very bad ones are easy to filter. If you bend them a bit, and they break, they would’ve broken when you shoot them, fucking your bow in the process.” Constantin explains, just as one of the remaining arrows breaks in twain under the load. “See? That one was unsafe, as i call it.”
The remaining four pass the bend-test, which leads him to the next stage of filtering.
“Normally, i’d trial-shoot the remaining ones to see if they still behave as i expect them to. Though it’d take the better part of an hour to test that, so i’ll just see if i can get replacements. They are consumables anyways.”, he continues, mentally flagging all of them as altered, which is his way of saying that the arrow’s characteristics don’t match his expectations anymore.
“Let me get my stuff and then we can go.”, he finally finished as he turns around on his heel to grab both his bow and quiver, together with the 8 remaining arrows stored within.
Jayde nodded as Constantin explained that he’d gathered up more than just Constantin’s arrows. “I didn’t have time to be picky, I just gathered up everything reasonably close,” Jayde mentioned. “Better to have cleaned up too much than to have not done enough.” As Constantin, however, explained how to spot bad arrows, Jayde smiled, glad to learn something new.
When Constantin headed back to the Dione, Jayde stayed near the Bricksley out of respect for Valentin, watching as Constantin got Kaylie to move at least enough that he could get his bow and quiver and not hit Kaylie with the hatch.
As Constantin returns back at the “pickup truck”, he took a few moments to free up both hands. To achieve this, his quiver is slung across his left shoulder, with it resting by his right thigh, just like he did when the Dyre battle happened. The bow, meanwhile, was also parked on the left, but was resting vertivally instead of going diagonally across his chest like the leather strap of his quiver does.
“I’m ready when you are”, Constantin states, now having finished the procedure and having both hands empty.
Jayde retrieved his staff from where he’d left it leaning against the Bricksley, then headed onward down the path to Duskriver Village, being careful across the wooden bridge crossing the river. “It’s slower here than down by Jaduvira, but try not to fall in,” Jayde said. “I can swim well enough to get you out again, but I’d rather keep dry if possible.”
He knew it was only a couple minute walk to get into the village, and knew that the fletcher and bowman were relatively close to the guard-house, which wasn’t far from the wooden wall they’d put up to keep the Dyre out. Almost instinctively, he found himself walking at Constantin’s left side, so that if he had a bad step and fell, he wouldn’t take Constantin down with him.
“Well… my workplace is a ship, so swimming capability is basically mandatory, as are rescue procedures if any seamen were to go overboard.”, Constantin chuckles, following the instruction of taking care to not break the bridge. Granted, he wasn’t overly heavy, but the bridge apparently wasn’t made with sturdiness in mind.
Not long after they cross the bridge, a violent sound, similar to someone breaking a 2x4 in half by jumping onto it, can be heard.
Said 2x4 wasn’t actually a 2x4, but instead Constantin’s bow, which after close to 4 years of near-constant use finally gave way.
As it breaks in half just above the grip-portion of it, splinters are sent away from the bow, most of which flying out back and away from him like tiny wooden pieces of shrapnel. Some, however, make their way into his skin on the back.
The bow’s string releases it’s tension, digging into his chest in the process.
After that, the bow leaves his shoulder entirely out the front, with the lower limb going out sideways and impacting Jayde’s walking stick as a result. It comes to rest in pieces, both limbs now only connected by the string at either end, the middle heavily splintered.
Immediately after, Constantin curly up in pain, the string having done substantially more initial harm than the splintering on the back near his left shoulder blade.
“[Swedish expletive]. Hnnngrgh…”, he groans, being caught completely off-guard by the sudden equipment failure, also curling up and crouching down to ease the pain just a little.
“Ah, a navy sailor, then,” Jayde said. “My apologies for assuming otherwise, I’ve met too many people who can’t swim.”
As Jayde heard the loud snapping crack, followed by the crash against his walking stick, Jayde swore in Valraad. “Skadu vi!” he said, moments before kicking the slightly-displaced end of his walking stick with his right foot, leading to an almost comical half-hopped step to keep his balance. As Constantin curled up in pain, and Jayde saw the broken bow laying on the ground, he put two and two together and realized what happened.
“Are you okay? If you need help getting those splinters out, let me know. I can’t do much for the pain,” Jayde said.
Constantin stays crouched down for the moment to recover from the pain.
A few Civilians roaming about the place look at the events from afar, without saying a word or offering help.
“I’m good… i think…”, he replies as the pain caused by the bow string subsides, though it left a very visible red imprint on his chest and parts of his shoulder. The splinters, though, were more of an issue.
He gets up and tries to reach for that one pesky splinter, managing to touch, but not quite extract it.
Multiple attempts with both arms from different angles prove futile, as his right arm isn’t long enough and his left one not getting there due to poor flexibility.
Not wanting to admit defeat, he keeps trying, but it was almost painfully obvious that he wasn’t getting that one out without outside help.
Jayde saw Constantin struggling with one rather troublesome splinter, then carefully removed it. “Friends do not let friends suffer,” Jayde said as a way of apologizing for not asking first. “If there’s any others you can’t reach, I’ll help,” he added.
As the crowd wandered around, Jayde sighed and shook his head lightly. “And this is why they need heroes,” Jayde muttered to himself, though loud enough that Constantin might be able to hear it, “No one wants to help each other. No one wants to get involved. Then evil takes root and someone has to cut it out.”
