Highwayman's Nightmare

He met them with some old brownie armor, a tattered tunic, a large hunting knife, and the words "Yer coin and anyting else you have. Now!"

He spoke a rough tongue, but not an unfamiliar one. His grasp on the language was thorough, just not eloquent. And his disheveled look, with the scraped plate metal that once constituted an entire suit of armor and the ragged tunic made him look a bit down-on-his luck. Poor boy couldn't have been more than a few years above Simon. But all these observations came after the mugging had happened.

Or, rather, after it had backfired.

They met him as the odd pair they were. One was a tiny girl with reddish skin and large amber horns, a mane of tar-black locks trailing behind her. And the other was a nymph woman, standing at a height that more than doubled his, brandishing a hammer taller than himself and a demeanor that quickly turned from surprised to aggressive.

See, his stance alone suggested that he was about to lung at the younger of the two. Even though he hadn't intended to, and simply landed as he did after leaping from the wooded area along the country roads, he had pointed himself in the little red one's direction. And after belting out his familiar pre-mugging line, she immediately took quite a fright from him.

And in the rush, that oh so familiar rush he got, of all this, he hadn't taken into account just how large and just how carrying-a-massive-fuck-off-hammer the other woman was.

The entire affair reeked of ill-preparedness.

Immediately a powerful feminine hand shot out from out of view and clutched the arm holding the knife. One quick squeeze and he tried recoiling back in panic, but it did him no good. Before he even had a chance to put his back into pulling away, the hand's double came in quickly pried his fingers from the hilt, causing the dagger to drop to his feet. Then, as he tried his best to struggle in the opposite direction, that same free hand seized the back of his collar and hoisted him up.

He rose for an unbelievable amount of time, covering a height that was unheard of to him until then, before finally coming face-to-face with the taller of the two.

She gave him a stern look. He visibly recoiled, his legs squirming in midair. She still had a firm grip on one of his arms.

"Drop any other weapons you have on you, now." She demanded, gripping his wrist tighter.

"Ow! OW! Stahp! Tha' was all I 'ad miss. Honest!" He was trying to get a grip on the sudden turn of events. Just what in the underworld was this woman? He had known boggarts that gripped lighter than this.

"Knives? Pistols? Any poisons?"

"No! No! Please jus' stop. Yer crushin' me arm!"

She let up, but didn't let go, giving him another look, and then examining his tiny form. Scrawny. To her. A bit rough around the edges. Roughly shaven and kept. Tattered clothes. A few facial scars. She hoisted him up, to which he audibly yelped, and looked him dead in the eye.

As her father had said, the eyes can tell you a lot about a man. It was an old tactic of his whenever conflict appeared to be on the rise. Just how a man reacted when you gave him a glimpse. That's how he managed to find the location of a group of mobile archers in the war. Captured a whole outpost, then looked for the man who had the intel. It was the one that tried to look away after just a few seconds of staring. 

This boy, however, gave a terrified look back to her as she stared a hole in him, holding him by the back of his tunic high enough in the air that he'd probably fail to catch himself if he fell. And his expression, twisted and dreadful, tld her all he could think about was his impending destruction. Yeah. He checked out.

Immediately she seemed to soften as she turned to search the ground for the little one. And suddenly she realized that something that seemed to tremble was wrapped around her leg. She looked down and found the tiny little imp, clutching her leg and holding onto it as tight as she could, her face buried in the tangerine-colored fabric of the tall one's dress.

"It's alright Claire." She spoke softly, comforting the little girl. "It's over."

She checked over he shoulder for a moment, holding the hammer up over her shoulder. She'd been a few times by highwaymen. Sometimes roaming bands. But she'd be alright. 

"You okay, sweetie?" She leaned in as much as she could while keeping the boy aloft.

Claire looked up slowly, trembling as she did, and gave a skittish nod, tightening her hold on the leg.

"Could you please apologize?" She turned back to him, her tone still relatively calm.

"Wh-wha-"

"Apologize for giving her such a scare."

"....w-well miss I'm s-s-sorry fer tryin' ta' rob-"

"No. To her." She turned her head towards the tiny little demoness at her feet, and then dropped her arm to get him closer to her level.

He paused, held in the air by a stranger, standing before a trembling little girl, so shaken by his piss-poor attempt at a robbery.

"W-w-we''', ahm real sorry for tryin' ta steal from ya, C-c-claire.....?"

"Yeah, that'll do." Leona nodded before pulling the boy up to her height and taking a moment to think. Couldn't just let him go. Could they? Well, maybe. But that might have been unwise.

She looked down at Claire. Claire was looking back at her, no longer shaking like a leaf. Leona internally sighed.

"You looking for work?" Leona relaxed as she decided to grip the boy by his arm instead. Wouldn't want him slipping away while she pondered the course of action.

"W-w-wat?"

"I said are you looking for work?" The tattered tunic. The worn armor. The only piece that didn't match was that knife. Distinctly brownie-designed. Large. It looked heavy. But his nappy orange locks and patched jacket told Leona more than enough about him.

"...uh-" He stammered.

"In need of some coin?" 

"...eh...no...aye mean...aye y-no. No."

Leona gave him a blank look for a moment. "You from around here?"

"...n-not really."

"Figured. By the look of that there dagger you're a long way from home." She bent down, keeping him suspended, and wrapped a hand around the knife, pulling it up in her free hand and feeling it's weight. With such dense materials this was definitely brownie work. Sharp, too. "Unless this...technically isn't suppose to be yours."

"...aye don't have ta' put up with this 'ere. Let me' go!"

"Mind if I keep this dagger?" She waved it before him.

"No! Wait!"

Leona silently went 'ah-hah', figuring this was the case. Brownie boy. Far from home. Probably a valuable dagger. The way he responded was frantic. Desperate, almost. Part of her was ashamed for wringing this kind of response out of the poor boy.

"...m'dad. It was his. But not...not anymore." He looked south towards the dirt below him.

Leona silently lowered him to the ground, taking a slightly more authoritative height relative to him. Honestly, the sub sequential 'what would he think of you doing this' seemed a bit brutal. She didn't release him, but she did lower the knife to her side.

"What're you doing here?" Leona asked.

"..." He looked away, sighing to himself.

"You looking for work? Because I know where you can get some."

He kept his gaze fixed on the dirt below him, mentally dragging himself through it.

"Honest work." She said, trying to appeal to the brownie in him.

"And why should aye care 'bout-"

"Because you're out here in the middle of nowhere holding up barmaids." Leona softened, leaning in and looking the boy over.

"...aye don't need yer business. Alright? I can handle m'self." He looked her dead in the eye.

She looked right back, and all of his aggression seemed to seep out of him in an instant. Leona began to kneel, dropping down onto a knee before the boy while still gripping his arm, the knife in the other hand. Claire backed herself up behind the amazonian nymph woman and continued to hide.

"I'm just sayin' you don't have to fall to mugging to live, alright?" She cocked her head, her tone balanced and gentle. Treating him like less of a thief and more of an equal. Though he didn't look like he had had much success up here. All of his things were distinctly from home. The fabrics. The scars. The stitches. All brownie made.

He looked at his feet, trying to hide his shame.

There was a long pause between them.

"You got a strong back?" Leona asked.

"...yes mam."

"Can you swing a hammer?"

"...yes I can..."

"There's a copper mine just a day's travel from here to the east. They'd pay a lot of coin for a strong brownie fellow like yourself. Us nymphs don't hold up the way you do."

He looked up at her and widened his eyes for a moment. She could see a glimmer. And the fading of something else.

All the fight was gone.

She could see it.

She let go of his arm and he simply stood, then, with little debate Leona gently held out the knife, hilt facing the boy, and he shakily took it. Then, she stood up at her full height and gave him gentle look. He backed up a bit, realizing again how tall she was, and then nodded to himself for a moment.

He lowered his head and nodded to her, starting to pick up that same skittish energy he had before, and began to slowly recede back into the woods.

"By the way if you ever pull that again I'll break your jaw with my hammer." She called out happily, then turning to Claire and giving her a smile.

Claire meekly looked up at her and took a deep breath before trying to calm herself. Leona crouched down and put a large hand on her shoulder, which Claire then leaned her head onto. "It's okay, Claire. I got it."

Claire stood for a moment, taking a few deep breaths in and out before look up at Leona again. "H-h-how'd you know he would just take the kn-knife, Miss Leona."

"It's not that hard." She reassured, wrapping an arm around the girl and hoisting her up as she rose from the ground, cradling the tiny demon ever so slightly as she carried her. "He didn't have it in his eyes.


How long did I spend writing this?

A few hours.

And boy did those just chug by at their own molasses pace.

The deal with Leona is that I'm trying to develop her well. She's got these sort of disadvantages socioeconomically not being able to perform any kind of magic and also being physically abnormal, but at the same time she's strong enough physically and mentally to power through that. She's adept at using what she can to get by. Taking the hand life dealt her and making the best of it.

I dunno. 

But she needs to have organic flaws. Setbacks. Shortcomings.

Okay. In writing this I realize I'm totally fried here and just can't be asked. So goodbye.