“You mentioned your family owns this place, your mother, and father as well I imagine, where have they gone off too?”

Eliphas sat upon a heavy wooden bar stool, across from Maribel, her hands busy drying the inner walls of a line of drinking tankards as he spoke, an identical one of his own in front of him in one hand.

“Oh yes, both my father and mother have gone off to Gilla a few days back, trying to meet up with a new grain salesperson, hopefully. It’s easier to meet new people out there instead of here in the middle of nowhere.”

The prince nodded and flexed his cheeks downward, understanding more or less the common enough logistical challenges of running a business, or more in his case, a kingdom.

The tavern was completely empty, save for the trio of the warrior, barmaid, and the prostrated woodland creature, who lay on her back upon a vacant round table, arms sprawled and looking over at the pair as they talked, her head dipped over the side and her vision upside-down. They’d been alone for about an hour since the last customers had gone, though it wasn’t late into the night, just near the latter parts of the evening, and the humans at the bar had been speaking most of that time.

Daedra had consumed nearly every leftover or unfinished tankard of drink there was in the place, and though there weren’t as many as she had hoped, the Lyraxian was fully and shamelessly inebriated. She looked over at the two, glancing her eyes away or closing them when she thought Maribel might catch her spying on them.

Earlier, what she had said about the younger girl was true, she didn’t want Eliphas to mess with her, though it had seemed like at the time it was because she felt threatened by her pet warlord. The reverse, however, had been true. She was more threatened, it would seem, by a fellow female.

Talking seemed to come so easily to the barmaid despite her usual shy nature, evening now she was holding Eliphas' attention decently enough. Every so often she would giggle, brighten with a smile, or even make a small joke herself, and though Daedra was glad to see Eliphas was difficult to impress or bring to a grin, she couldn’t help but feel inadequate.

“Wait a minute,” the horned girl thought to herself, “Why am I glad he’s not smiling? Why am I thinking of him at all?”

After that she immediately shook her head, frustrated.

She had the answer, it was obvious, but she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself. That and she was the drunkest she had been in the last half a year. She could feel the pricks of jealously growing though, relentlessly, and she found she either didn’t try, or wasn’t capable of sending them away.

“I’m about done here, I just need to take these pitchers outback. Then, maybe I’ll go see what’s left around to eat, if you’d both like?” Maribel said with a quick glance to Daedra, who she’d definitely just now caught watching the pair at the bar.

The girl on the table sighed and heard the young human walk off and away carrying a crate of items, departing through a side door that lead outside to the back of the building, which had an attached store for supplies, and a small barn just to its rear.

Now was her chance, Eliphas was alone and sitting quietly at the bar, she wouldn’t get a better moment than this.

The human lord heard his captor get off the nearby table, clumsily knocking a cup or two onto the floor with a clang as she did so and barely managing to wobble over to a chair he sat adjacent to. She mounted it, with as little grace as she could muster, and sat quietly next to the large armored figure.

Daedra wasn’t thinking straight, so of course, she decided to speak, the drinks she’d put away themselves maybe giving her the courage to do so in the first place.

“What did Maribel?…W-what are you drinking?” she said as if in a slight daze, her head turning and eyeing him with those glowing yellow orbs of hers, still brilliant and bright. The area around her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were flush crimson and even though he didn’t want to, Eliphas answered reluctantly.

“It’s just water with lemon, if you must know.” He said flatly, hoping, but knowing full well that was not the end of their interaction. He had played this game before, unfortunately.

“Oh,” the horned girl said in a vain attempt to keep the conversation going, clearly uncomfortable with making small conversation.

Silence followed then. Eliphas looked straight ahead as if in trying hard to ignore the girl's arrival, though Daedra, in contrast, looked about the large room as if anxious, almost as if she was waiting for something to happen.

Dissatisfied by how things were going, and with about as much subtly as a giant girl smashing a tree with her foot, Daedra lifted her hips and scooted the chair she was sitting on over towards the man, the wood support legs grinding out with dull screeches twice, echoing through the empty hall loudly.

Eliphas shifted uncomfortably and rolled his eyes at this new development, but Daedra seemed not to notice either of those responses to her desire to be closer to him.

A noiseless air deadened the tavern once more, the two saying nothing and the prince quietly hoping Maribel would appear again soon to rescue him from whatever advances this passed for.

Daedra it would appear had other plans, however, and suddenly Eliphas felt her weight set upon his shoulder, his body tensing as her head came to rest against his right arm and pauldron. He glanced down quickly to check with his senses to see if his confusion was justified, and it was.

“What are you doing?” He said sternly, without any feeling.

“I’m tired…” the girl mumbled out, almost not loud enough to hear well enough, a mood or symptom of something that before now had been entirely unseen in her character.

Eliphas blinked and tried to stifle his rising irritation.

“Well get off me,” he said slightly louder, shaking the right side of his body and forcing Daedra to rise back up and mostly straight, closing her eyes and pursing her lips as if saddened or disappointed in herself.

The horned girl heard and then saw Maribel reappear a ways away, looking about for things dropped to the floor and discarded by patrons during the day’s business. The black lord looked over too and noticed her return, and Daedra saw him sit up and adjust his posture correcting his minor slouch.

“Why,” she started again without thinking, looking to Eliphas, “why do you like talking to her, and… and not to me?”

The human warlord regarded the woodland devil for a moment, if only just, and promptly turned back to face his body forwards, refusing to indulge her ridiculous question.

"Is it because I...Because I killed all your friends? And...And maybe cus I kidnapped you?"Daedra said almost apologetically, with a new pitiful look on her face.

Eliphas closed his eyes as his face turned to a frown, his grip tensing on his tankard in response to this latest comment, not a positive reaction she could tell, and a clear one. The horned woman felt as though she was making all the wrong moves, saying all the wrong things. Even now still messing up everything she touched.

Daedra watched him and felt hurt by his coldness he displayed at her honest attempt to interact pleasantly, though he clearly wasn’t concerned with her attempts nor her effort. Not even something like being sorry for what she had done to him, or at least admitting it in a roundabout way.

Daedra’s emotions became unstable, flooding from one spectrum of her heart to another in an instant. She looked over to Maribel and frowned, closing her eyes and rising from her stool slowly and unsurely.

“Fine…Go to hell, tin-man.” Daedra muttered as she took one unsteady step, Eliphas not even looking over to watch her go.

The girl misplaced her first trod, and then as she tried to right her balance, she fell to the cold wooden floor with a tumble onto her side into a crumpled heap, lying there for a moment and slow to rise to her hands and knees.

Her prisoner did watch her now. He gazed down at her and didn’t move. He didn’t make a comment, a joke, or even appear to regard her with any particular emotion, not even pity.

Daedra breathed hard through her mouth, her dark black hair falling over her face, obscuring her vision.

Carefully, the horned girl rose once more, and got hesitantly to her feet, propping herself up as slowly as she could manage before taking barely another couple of steps. Maribel was watching her go as well, trying to make her way to the same door she’d just come from herself.

“Mari, I’ll sleep in the barn tonight, if that’s alright with you…” Daedra said as she neared a table edge, her footing unsteady.

“Uh…Sure, Daedra, but do you want some-”

Daedra lost her balance another time and stumbled down into the table, knocking a couple of tankards and silverware loudly to the floor, falling back down to her knees and left hand, her right arm resting on the wooden edge, keeping her from impacting the floor completely again.

And still Eliphas just watched without a word.

Maribel looked to Daedra and back and forth to the Emorian, expecting, almost imploring him to rise and give the struggling woman assistance. He made no move to help though, and he wasn’t going too.

The sweet barmaid placed down her cargo and walked over to her horned, half-naked friend, leaning down and preparing to help her to her feet as she neared.

“Let’s get you ou-“She began to say as she touched Daedra’s forearm.

Without warning, however, the woman shouted at the top of her lungs, fury rising in a hot surge at the mere act of being helped by anyone else in the world.

Daedra jerked her arm away and hurriedly rose back to her feet, overflowing with anger that came from nowhere.

“Get the hell away from me, human! I don’t need your help!”

Maribel flinched and brought her arms close to her chest, reeling from the uncharacteristic outburst of the usually mischievous Lyraxian, edging back away towards the bar, some distance away.

Daedra struggled to move closer to the door, coming to one of the great set of six wooden pillars that helped hold the roof of the tavern’s structure in place. With great effort, she finally reached the square support, and leaned her back against it, facing her body towards the pair of onlookers.

Worryingly, the drunken woman could feel her stomach starting to undulate, the amount of alcohol she’d consumed now making her sick the more she stood on her feet despite her efforts to ignore and force it down. Her hair drooped over her face as she doubled over, but kept standing, resisting the urge to empty her bowels in the presence of others. A cold line of sweat rolled down her face as she lifted it, with one eye catching the unbelievably neutral stare of her black armored companion.

With an angry mumble, and staring back over at him, she utters, “What are you looking at, huh?”

She’s breathing hard still through her lips as if she’s just run a mile, and waits for a reply, but none ever comes. His eyes just stay fixed on her off in the distance.

“…Stop looking at me like that…” She whispers menacingly, her anger starting to crest again as the words come through clenched teeth.

Eliphas just stares, and nothing more, his refusal to comment and the noise it carries, deafening in the eerie calm he maintains.

“I said,” Daedra snarls out as her second eye comes open and locks onto his, her head still lowered and her hair sharp, concealing some of her face, “Stop looking at me like that!”She shouts over towards the bar.

“Like what?” Eliphas finally says at last, not skipping a beat from the girl’s final word.

There is a pause before Daedra replies, standing up straight again and rising to remove herself from the reassuring, solid form of the pillar at her back. She takes a pair of steps towards him, more sure of herself, fueled by anger and determination to maintain her stance and whatever pride she had left.

“Like you’re so much better than me!” she rages, “So PROUD! So NOBLE! So BRIGHT!” She roars over at him, Maribel closing her eyes and shuddering at her volume and tone, each description dripping with venom and harsh delivery.

“Look at you! You act so perfect and strong! You treat me like I’m nothing when really, it’s you who’s nothing, you fucking metal moron!

She was hurling insults now, at full charge and trying her best to get under Eliphas’ impassive skin. The poor girl was flooded with memories, painful and stinging so powerfully in her heart. The alcohol hadn't brought them up, but it had also failed to keep her past at bay. There was agony in there, fear, hatred, and more than anything, a feeling of inescapable truth. She was tapping into that now, everything that had ever befallen her in tragic, violent tides. She hated everyone, and she hated every thing at that moment as she stared into Eliphas’ eyes, and now, he dared look upon her and judge her for what she had become in life.

“I could have ground you into the mud with my foot, you disgusting thing. I could have crushed the life out of you like a pathetic worm writhing in the muck!” Her voice was rising and her ability to focus her words was increasing with her tirade, hot, dark passion giving her the will to articulate her loathing so that the target of her wrath could feel every syllable despite the effects of her drinks.

“I could have put your stupid tiny head in between my little fingers and popped you like the blood-sucking tick you are!”

Finally, Eliphas shakes his head and turns away, taking up his tankard and draining the sweet water into his mouth. He’s no longer completely neutral, and now Daedra sees he’s done tolerating her emotional berating.

This angers the Lyraxian even more. After all this truth and all her honesty, she still can’t seem to force him into action. She wants him to reply, to shout back at her, to defend himself like he always does. She wants to see more out of him, to feel his anger repay her for her own misdeeds, because no one else would, or could. Why isn’t he? Why? Why? Why?!

Daedra sighs and thinks silently to herself, “Come on, I know its in there… What’s it gonna take, huh, big boy?”

A horrid thought crawls its way into her mind then, something even she can’t help but find distasteful and cruel. She remembers before, back to when she first attacked Eliphas and his fellows, there was a human she’d killed, and in a particular way that she knows, if properly worded, has to get a reaction from him.

A dark smirk comes across her face as she chuckles lowering her head, looking back to the floor, deciding for sure that this is what she wants to do. It will all be over soon, she can feel it at last, she just needs to push him a little further, to the absolute edge of his admirable self-restraint.

She does feel guilty, about a lot of things, but particularly using Eliphas in this way, as not just an outlet, but a release. She was trying to get a good man to do a terrible thing for her own gain. He really is strong, and noble, and kind, and she hates more than anything the fact that by comparison, she is anything but.

Daedra raises her head and looks over to Eliphas with that fanged smirk, smiling darkly before saying, “I should have just eaten you, like the bite-sized meat bag you are… Just like your little friend during the battle. You humans, you’re all the same to me.”

This gets Eliphas’ eyes trained back onto Daedra, his cold stare now sharpened and full of intent, and she nearly sighs in relief that it does.

The horned Lyraxian takes a breath, raising her head and balling her hands into fists before bellowing over to the black warlord her ultimate act of betrayal, her eyes burning with passion, pupils dilated and fierce,

“I should have eaten you and shit you out with him like the rest of breakfast!”

And then it happened. The line had been crossed, and there was no going back.

Eliphas became thunder incarnate.

The great prince of Emoria slammed his gauntleted right fist into the bar with every ounce of his iron strength forced into the blow, smashing a huge crater into the hardened wood of the countertop, splintering the place beneath his strike. The crash of his assault echoes out into the tavern, even into the woods beyond, but its nothing compared to what accompanies the slam. His voice explodes from his lips, eyes wide with rage, no words finding a way into his release of fury, only a place of anger tapped into by Daedra's cold knife of cruelty and death.

In the mere instant it took Eliphas to cross the tavern floor and reach Daedra, his mind and body in a place of maddened wroth giving him unbelievable speed, a tiny smile cracked on one side of her lips, and tears welled up in her eyes. She could see just barely in that time, the razor-sharp edge of his knife clutched tightly in his fist, begging to taste the end of her life. She didn’t bring her fingers together to snap, nor did she attempt to draw a weapon. She didn’t even move as Eliphas came upon her in the span of a healthy heart’s beat.

Daedra just stood there and made no attempt to stop him from killing her.