RP:Be Still, My Chaos Beating Heart

Part of the The Savage Queen Arc

Part of the The White Hunt Arc

Part of the Agitation Arc

Summary: Dergious finds Josleen in Xalious and gives her a Chaos, still beating, heart in a box. She agrees to take it to Leone to see if it can be used to resurrect Hildegarde.

Meadow (Xalious)

Dergious stomps through the Wildlands muttering curses, alerting the local animals that a foul mouthed jerk is in the area. Huffing and puffing, he stomps over to Josleen, "Ah gots wind ye be needin a heart." he says in such a way that implies he thinks she is an idiot.

Josleen is weepy these days, eyes puffy. She smells Dergious before he sees him, and tries to avoid his stare to avoid his attention. Unfortunately he comes right over, and she treats him the way she'd treat a vagabond. "What do you know about it?" she sniffs.

Dergious shrugs amiably, the gesture would be disarming if one didn't look at his shrewd and cruel eyes. "It jes be happening I gots a heart, is all." he says as he sniffs his finger and blinks in alarm. He quickly wipes the finger on his chest and seems to be keeping it as far away from his nose as his stubby arm would allow. "Still beatin, an it has been since ah acquired it."

Josleen switches to mouth-breathing as a prophylactic against alarming finger smells. "How long have you had the heart? Where'd you get it?" She glances around for any Xalious guards, just in case this guy turns out to be crazy.

Dergious waves his non-smelly-finger hand in a fascinating way, it's distracting to most, and as he does so he mutters a halting and obviously untrue story about acquiring the heart from a fermin looking to buy food for it's seventeen starving children and the dwarf taking pity and purchasing it.

Josleen can't help but watch Dergious's fluid hand movements. It's a disgusting hand and she is as intrigued by its filth as by its motion. The story is obviously false, but the bard doesn't seem troubled by the lie. In her grief, Josleen simply wants the Steward's heart restored and such an profound longing has a way with erasing any fussing about the ethicalness of means to an end. "What species is the heart? And I assume you are looking to sell. Your price?" Judging a bookby its cover, she expects this foul dwarf to price gouge and take advantage of her suffering. Duergars are scum like that; everyone knows.

Dergious breathes deeply, and one might imagine they can see the stink go up his large, bulbous nose as he does so. "Ye see, ah gots no need fer it, ye see..." he trails off, and reaches into a pouch with his stinky finger hand and removes a box much too large to fit into it. "Dis be it here." he says, as he opens it. Sure enough, within the box is a fully formed and beating heart, The sound of each beat hangs in the air, each thump seems to be it's own echo, and each beat trails off only to thrum back to life Literally a heartbeat later. The world seems diminished, and then renewed, as if the entirety of existence is constantly being both deconstructed and reformed simultaneously. "So, ye innerested?" he says, his voice suddenly low and powerful, like stones grinding against one another.

Josleen blanches as the word beats with the heart. What? Any disturbance in the natural laws disquiets her very soul, and suddenly she is interested in the heart not only because it could help resurrect Hildegarde, but also because something so powerful cannot be in the hands of this disgusting duergar. She must get it to Leone. "How much? What is it?"

Dergious chuckles and slowly closes the box, and the world resumes as if nothing happened. He looks lost in thought, until he releases a high pitched squeaker and it is revealed he was only releasing a tightly held man-kegel. "Ye insult me!" he says as the stench wafts about the pair, "Ah be offerin out o' da kindness o' ... Me heart!" he says with a grin, enjoying his little pun as he holds forth box.

Josleen hesitates, reconsiders this too-good-to-be-true gift, looks the gift horse in the mouth, it smells terrible, the teeth are rotten, this is all a bad idea, but whatever, she takes it. "I see... Well, thank you. I will take it to Frostmaw myself. ...What is your name?"

Dergious gave Josleen 1 Beating-Heart-of Chaos.

Dergious bows, which was a mistake because the resulting expulsion gasses seems to have been accompanied by something altogether different, "Me name be unimportant, Ah be seekin' no reward nor notice." he turns to stomp off, and does so. A few steps away he can be seen awkwardly picking the back of his pants pulling it away from his backside with a sound not dissimilar to picking up a wet mop from a dirty floor.