Titania was, as Titania was wont to be, on the move… again. She wouldn’t typically be leaving so soon after setting up a new camp if she didn’t feel it absolutely necessary— it could be such a massive hassle to up and move unexpectedly, especially when she’d just found a plentiful hunting ground with plenty of foraging opportunities nearby… but alas, here she was, hoofing it through the snow, in a forest, on the Knee, for Titan’s sake. The huge rucksack she currently had strapped to her back only served as a constant reminder of her unfortunate position.
This wouldn’t be so big of a deal if it wasn’t so clearly the interference of another witch she’d spotted when she came back to her camp, coming back from a particularly fruitful wild berry harvest. Titania didn’t have a great many enemies, but she knew not everybody liked her; the greatest threat to her at this exact moment, however, was the “distinguished” (she rolled her eyes) Golden Guard, the right–hand man to the well-known anti-wild-magic preacher Belos. She couldn’t stand either of them, to be honest; a fearmongering false prophet and his pathetic lapdog.
Titania had to admit they were determined in their beliefs, but that was about it. She couldn’t really admire it, not when they were… what, actively trying to wipe out people like her? She wasn’t about to pay them any compliments; if they wanted them, surely, they could give themselves a pat on the back. Or consult their leagues of already-devoted followers.
The sky was a dark blue-gray, the sky swarmed over with clouds. It wasn’t supposed to rain today—thank the heavens, since she planned on hoofing it down the Knee, and into the relative seclusion of the valley beneath the shin—but the very threat of it kept most people out of her way. She’d be fine any way it shook out, the combination of her fur and scales providing her with a buffer just long enough to get out of harm’s way.
It was... suspiciously quiet, though.
Her palisman sprung into action before she’d even heard anything, much less had time to react; in a flash, the wolf was off her shoulder and airborne with a guttural snarl. She heard a brief clash behind her and in that time had already whipped around, hand moving to instinctively draw a spell circle in the self-preserving interest of incapacitating, or at the very least disarming, her opponent.
A flash of red, and then a spell coming her way. With a scoff, she deflected it, sending it careening off into the snow and sending up a pillar of powder. She really didn’t have time for this. Titania and her cloaked attacker traded a close, fast flurry of spells, but they were obviously far less versed in wild magics than her, struggling to keep up with some of her more unorthodox attacks. She chuffed, sending out two blasts of energy; one big and obvious to draw attention to itself, and one small and discreet, blade-like in its form, snaking up behind her foe.
Two quick flashes, followed up immediately by an angry huff, like someone having the wind knocked out of them. Her opponent, whoever they were, had tried to teleport out of the way of those last blasts once more, but was obviously not fast enough. As the powder in the air settled, she saw just who had been attacking her, on his hands and knees in the snow, one hand covering his face, his hood having dropped in his ensuing stumble and both his mask and his staff having fallen by the wayside too. Also, he was absolutely covered in snow, though it was the least obvious thing about him given he was already wearing all white.
Just as he reached out semi-blindly in the direction of his fallen mask did Oberon find it first. The wolf palisman darted out just as quickly as he’d darted in, mask clamped firmly in his jaws, before deftly shooting up Titania’s outstretched arm to hang off of her shoulder like a pelt.
“Thank you, dear,” she cooed, giving the palisman a little scratch behind its ear as she took the mask from his mouth. She examined it in what little light was left outside, turning it over in her claws.
“Give that back,” growled the “Golden Guard”, still bent over in the snow.
Titania didn’t answer, but regarded him with a raised eyebrow and a lilting smirk. He still had a hand kept firmly over his face, but he was staring right at her through his fingers now, one pink eye fixing her with a very angry look; the harder she looked, the more she could notice a telltale large red slash across his face. How obvious. Heavens, he really did fumble that last dodge.
…Hmm. Something was amiss here. Was he really so insecure as to end their fight right here? Honestly, it was so short that in retrospect if she'd known this was the surefire way to beat him she'd have done it ages ago. ...Was he seriously going to refuse to do… anything, really, until she gave him back a mask, of all things? Why not… oh, she didn’t know, blast it out of her hands? Hell, even simply stun her and run?
Well. If he wasn’t going to fight back quite yet then she probably shouldn’t give him too much of an advantage over her when he did, all things considered, especially if she wanted to have the upper hand in making any sort of bargain with him. Her eyes darted to his staff, and then back, and no sooner had he realized what she’d commanded her palisman to do in that instant than he made a desperate one-armed grab for it in a bid to retain control of it and completely failed, almost-but-not-quite faceplanting in the snow as he forced his arm under him to keep him from doing so. Watching him flounder about in the snowbank was honestly sort of… sad, really; honestly, she had a hard time believing that this was the esteemed Golden Guard whose cool collectedness the commonfolk often gossiped about.
Oberon waddled over, staff between his teeth, doing his very best to stay relatively balanced even as the weight of the thing shifted from end to end. He promptly sat down in the snow right next to her boot, gingerly laying the staff down in front of him so that it rested in the crook of her footwear. Titania felt a smile curl at the edges of her lips, though she did her best not to let it evolve into an outright grin, especially under the… intense, to put it lightly, gaze of… hmm. It was getting a little tiring, and redundant, and honestly a little silly to keep calling him the Golden Guard, when the honestly-quite-pitiful man before her was… anything but that sort of stoic and imposing persona.
“...So…. are you just going to lay there in the snow all day, or… do you have something else to do?”
He didn’t answer, just huffed. The unresolved tension in the air was utterly unbearable. It also really, really didn’t help that he was STILL staring at her, having just barely pulled himself up into a kneeling position, blood now dripping unceremoniously and with unnervingly little fanfare down the length of his glove and into the snow; and again, she was keen on reinforcing the fact that all of this was happening with little reaction on his part. Titania rolled her eyes. Okay. If he was going to be a complete freak, whatever, but she still didn’t feel like leaving him to bleed unceremoniously all over the ground; especially considering the fact that not doing anything might paint an even bigger target on her back for her enemies.
Instead, she hoofed it over to him, hanging the mask off of a free strap on her belt, and knelt down in front of him, eyes narrowed and fixing him with an intense scrutiny. She was noticeably taller than him, and up this close, she could see that by comparison she was husky compared to him; honestly, she’d never have expected someone this scrawny to hold the position he did. As she regarded him, she noticed his eyes were still trained on where she was previously standing, and where her palisman still sat. She chuffed.
“Anybody home?”
His attention immediately snapped to her, and he re-met her gaze.
“Yeah, there is somebody home. And he wants you to fuck off,” he growled.
At least he had a bit of fight left in him! For such an ungainly looking thing, she had to admit he had spirit.
“What, and leave you here? So you can bleed all over the snow and go whine to your master about how I tried to kill you?” Titania scoffed. “Word of advice from the wise… ‘tis a bit hard to take you seriously when you’re still cradling your face like a newborn babe. You can’t possibly be that ugly.”
“Definitely not as ugly as you.” he spat; Titania was so taken aback that she couldn’t even be mad, and only threw back her head and laughed.
“For such a tame owlkitten you’ve got quite the claws, guard,” she rebuffed, grinning. “Now, I’d love for this little verbal sparring match to go on all day, but unfortunately, I’ve got things to do, and you’ve just made yours my problem, too.” She extended a hand in… well, a sort-of peace offering, anyway.
In the boldest move she’d possibly ever seen, this was the exact moment he decided to pull his own hand away from his face and immediately slap his blood-covered glove against her own palm. She wasn’t even particularly grossed out, or anything—no, she’d handled her fair share of bloody corpses in her own time—rather, she was just completely, utterly baffled. And impressed!
Honestly, if he was this entertaining all the time, she’d already have liked him a lot more. His complete and utter strangeness was endearing, in a weird sort of way.
Now she had a clear look at his face, which he seemed to realize in the same instant she did, because he immediately scowled… though it almost seemed like he was already kind of doing that anyway. Titania didn’t really know if he had more or less scars than she’d expected for someone like him, but have scars he did. Three of them, in fact. One in particular went near perfectly vertically through his left eye, which she could see was stuck with a sort of permanent squint, probably because of it. Especially noticeable, though, was the new slice across his face, which partially ran through the existing scar across the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t incredibly deep, but which was still serious enough to still be bleeding. It probably also didn’t help that it was a magic-inflicted wound, from a spell she’d had been intending to do damage with. She almost felt bad now that she was looking at him properly. That said, it wasn’t something she couldn't likely fix up with a few well-picked healing spells.
She tightened her grip on his hand and started to rise to her feet, pulling him up alongside her—only for him to immediately lose his footing as his leg gave out under him, meaning she had to use her other arm to grab him around the forearm to prevent HERSELF from falling on top of him. Not because he was heavy, mind you, but because he was deceptively strong, something she could immediately figure out as he started pulling backwards on her arm during the split second he was falling and almost yanked her entirely off her feet. Unfortunately, she’d also grabbed him far more roughly than she’d honestly meant to. Being as oft-unaware of her own strength as she typically was, she only realized this after the fact, when he flinched, almost imperceptibly, in her grip. She… didn’t love that. She didn’t mention it.
…Okay. So she must’ve hit him a lot harder than she’d originally thought. Great. Now she was standing out on the edge of a forest on the Knee, with the Golden Guard, right-hand of the Boiling Isles’ current-most-favourite-prophet-totally-not-a-cult-leader… completely unable to walk. She was beginning to piece things together in her head. He hadn’t used magic since she’d taken his staff away from his general vicinity; honestly, he didn’t quite seem to be capable of it at all. If he was, she suspected he would’ve already found a way to weasel himself out of his current predicament; instead, here he was, acting like a complete and utter freak of nature like an Isles lizard might shoot blood from its eyes to ward off predators, in the interest of getting her to, in his own words, ‘fuck off’.
Which was still very much not happening. She wasn’t about to do that. Not if her name wasn’t Titania, THE designated ‘mom friend’ by her small group of friends (read: small group of two people), whatever the hell that meant. Again, she wasn’t particularly interested in giving Belos more reasons to hate her, outside of the obvious… but more importantly, even knowing who he was, she CERTAINLY wasn’t interested in leaving some guy to die out in the wilderness. On a bad day? Maybe. But not today.
Kneeling back down, her hands fumbled a bit when it came to how best to approach this. She knew she had to pick him up, but unfortunately, the awkwardness of it being exactly this person, of all the people in the world, was… palpable. He was watching her with a perplexed expression on his face as he watched her hands move about, until he caught onto what exactly she was trying to do and groaned exasperatedly.
“Ugh. Any way you do this is utterly humiliating, so just get it over with.”
Okay. With a last muttered rebuff of "watch it or I'll scruff you", what he'd said was basically all the invitation she needed to lean over and scoop him up in her arms, holding him close to her chest but refusing to look down at him, if only because she found this incredibly funny and was desperately trying not to plaster a shit-eating grin all over her face or bust out laughing. With that, she set off down her original path, Oberon hobbling after her, his snake-tail now doing all the work in dragging the Guard’s staff along behind him.