"Yeah, you'd think." Bull gives a rumbling chuckle, his ears lifting a little more from something neutral into something a little more friendly and alert. Maybe he should have tried harder to get the witcher this relaxed before now but he is starting to relax, and it's a relief to see. Makes things easier. "If you need the money, though, I know someone who could probably spot me something. Might be a little bit before I can talk to him, but I'm pretty sure he'll do it."
He'll bitch about it forever, Bull thinks, a little more wistfully than the thought actually deserves - smuggling people out of a place means the Chargers haven't been able to stay that long, so they haven't really gotten to talk - but he'll do it.
He focuses back on the witcher again, willing the wistful expression off his face and replacing it with a sly little grin. "You ever taken a job from a monster before? Maybe I could be your first time there, too."
"Well, I'm not exactly in a position to turn down coin and if I'm gonna potentially forfeit the mayor's money getting mixed up in this, I really won't be in a position to say no." He says, lazily scratching the shadowy stubble along his mastiff-heavy jaw. "So... supposing you're good for it, and supposing there's magic, summoning and shit involved, could look into it for you." He looks down at where Bull reclines, eyes glittering with amusement.
"Yeah, you'd be my first there. Done this before." He gestures to the tent, the comfortable space between them. "But never been hired by one in all the half century I've been doing this."
"I guess we'll have to work through it together," Bull says, his words themselves innocent enough but his tone all low and suggestive, and his tail starts a slow, almost reflexive curl, trailing itself up his thigh-
-and then thunder pierces his ears again, making them press flat to his head and making him twitch and grimace, take a slow breath in through his nose as the noise goes on one second, two, three. Once it's done he lets out a heavy, frustrated sigh, rolling off his hip to sit up. He should be thanking the crappy weather, shouldn't he, even if it's a pain in the ass when it gets loud like this. What the shit does he think he's doing?
"I'd offer you something to drink while we wait this shit out," he says, reaching toward the bundle at his feet, "but even if the kind of drink I'm trying to make was done fermenting, I'm pretty sure the stuff I used isn't going to be great for humans. Want some water, though?" He pulls out a canteen from the bundle, holding it out toward the witcher and giving it a little shake.
"Hm." Eskel says. "On the one hand, I'm not human and my poison tolerance through the roof. But if it's not guest-ready then that's alright." He shrugs, taking the canteen with genuine gratitude, tipping his head back for a drink. "Thanks. Long walk from town." He offers it back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Another strange moment had almost just passed between them. For half a moment he could swear the cloying floral-and-musk scent he associated with succubi had floated back to the front of his mind, but once again it seemed only an improbable sense memory for which he could find no trigger. For half a moment there had been an identifiable but surely misplaced tension. And then the creature had rustled himself and it was gone again. He oughtn't think too much about it, tearing his burning yellow gaze away from Bull.
"Alright. I'll go back to town when the weather lets up, see what I can find out. Pretense'll be that I need to do some more research in hopes it'll help me find the girls." He agrees.
"And you can tell them you don't know what I am," Bull offers, taking the canteen back and taking a drink out of it himself. Sure, he doesn't need food so maybe he doesn't need water either, but who knows, with him? No one knows how the shit he works anyway, not completely, so maybe he does need it. Drinking it feels better than not, anyway, and that's a good enough reason to do a lot of things.
Not everything, he reminds himself, leaning over to set the canteen where the witcher can get to it easily and then moving back into his own space again, sitting up on his hip, legs curled up and horns brushing the canvas where the ceiling of the tent starts to dip. He makes his ears stop pressing themselves against his head, giving them a little flick to try and work the tension out.
Feeling good's a good enough reason to do a lot of things. But a witcher who isn't even into him? Some things are just stupid, and he damn well knows that.
"Maybe you found more than one lair, underground tunnels or something, and don't know where to head first. Some of the villagers are going to know that's crap, unless they think there's another bloodthirsty monster around, but they're all gonna keep their mouth shut. So, maybe you need to do some more research to figure out what I am so you know what to do. That'll get you an in into a couple places, right? Maybe not everyone but, you know."
"And in all fairness," Eskel says, taking another drink. "I don't know what you are. I can identify bits and pieces but all together they don't make anything I know of." He considers his options. "So it's a good start, it won't look entirely like a ruse. Town doesn't have a lot of resources, but the temple has a library, I'd wager the mayor has one. I can start there." He thinks about it. "Maybe I'll rough myself up a bit. Not good for my pride but might put your friends at ease thinking you sent me packing before I hurt you. Or the guilty parties thinking I'm not as strong or clever as they'd hoped, take their eyes off me for a while." Eskel could pass for extremely oblivious when he had a mind to, though he prefers to confine such tactics to family disputes.
Bull nods. "Solid idea, make people underestimate you. Want me to help out with that? Could be fun, as long as you promise to keep that sword sheathed." He can't help but grin there, but the which isn't what I usually say to people does stay inside his head. Until and unless he's sure he trusts this guy, it still feels a little safer to keep him curious, not give him any more clues than he's already got.
"Might want to wait un-" He grimaces as thunder interrupts him, ears pressed flat to his head again until it's done, and when he goes on his voice has a frustrated, growling undertone to it. "Until this shitting storm's over, though, unless you want to keep getting wetter."
"Sure. A couple of rounds with you would do the trick." More convincingly even, since if it came down to raw swinging power Bull could best even his large, alchemically enhanced body. Bruises might last longer too.
"Yeah unless you want this to turn into a mud wrestling match, I better wait it out." He agrees. "So, much obliged for your hospitality."
He sits for a while longer, looking around now that he knows he'll be here a while.
"So...what are you, anyway? Something in the fiend family, be my guess."
Bull makes an amused noise. Amused at himself, mostly, the way he has to decide how squirrley to be about this and how much he wants to give away. It's kind of a funny position to be in. Important to be careful, important to keep things friendly, too - but a guy like this doesn't feel like the type to get too mad if Bull ends up having to explain just why he's being so cautious. So maybe he has a little wiggle room.
"Yeah, that was one of my guesses too," he admits, stretching out one leg and leaning back on his hand. "What makes you think so? Must be something about my pretty face, right?"
Bull, grinning, turns his head and looks up a little as he says it so the witcher can see his face in profile, inviting a good look at the stretched out, squashed down nose, the long pointy chin, the forehead and scalp all hardened and creased up from horns too big and heavy to leave room for normal skin and the lumpy, scarred up mess of his empty eye socket. Makes a pretty homely picture, if you're comparing to any of the succubi Bull grew up with. Which the witcher won't be, probably, because he doesn't know. Should make this little guessing game interesting.
"I mean, mostly the tail and the legs and the horns, but yeah, when you turn your head that way it definitely tracks." Eskel says, untroubled by the ruin of Bull's face. He has no leg to stand on there: the only reason he has two eyes in all the scarring is because the bitch who had saved his life had allowed him that small charity when she left him maimed for life. "But what I can't figure..." He rumbles idly. "Is what you smell like. Easy to track you by scent because it's so distinctive." He studies Bull carefully. "'Cause unless you got a girlfriend you haven't told me about, this tent reeks of succubus."
There we are. Bull leans his head back even more, aiming his amused grin up at the ceiling as his tail flicks over his thigh again, idly. "'Reeks', huh? You say that like it's a bad thing. I bet if more people could smell like you, they'd be into it."
Funny, that the tail and the legs weren't the giveaway he'd assumed they were - not in the direction he was expecting, anyway. The pants probably help, make it hard to tell how far up the fur goes. Looks like he picked a good day to keep the skirt put away.
"So, is that all this tent smells like? Just like a succubus? Cause that doesn't sound that distinct to me. I mean, weird, yeah, but-" He shrugs.
"Maybe I just had a bunch of friends in here helping me pass the time." But the last thing he wants is to risk a witcher thinking he might get ambushed by a monster he doesn't know is there, start getting twitchy, so Bull doesn't let that one sit for long. "I don't but, you know. If you were someone else hunting me, you wouldn't know that."
"No, not just succubus, which is the thing that's throwing me." Eskel says. "I tracked you here by fur caught on the trees, so it's clearly your scent. I smell fiend-- brimstone and metal-- and succubus-- flowers and musk-- on you." He leans forward, his expression amused and inquisitive. "C'mon, now I'm curious. I've never met a man that smells of succubus without touching one. And since I don't think you cohabitate with one, I think I'm right in assuming you haven't."
"Haven't touched one?" Bull asks, watching Eskel as he sends his fingers tapping a brief trail down his side, makes an amused noise.
His arm settles over his hip again, and he thinks for a moment.
"You seem like a good guy," he says plainly, deciding to be at least some kind of honest. "I'm pretty good at reading people, so I'm pretty sure you're not planning on killing me. But I've known too many people to pin my life on that. Curiosity, though? Some people'll put up with a lot for that. Not saying I'm not going to tell you what I know, just - can you blame me for wanting to stretch it out a little?
"Besides, maybe you know stuff I don't. We don't have all those fancy books to memorise like you guys do. We just have word of mouth, and there's some stuff no one ever decided I needed to know. What do you know about, uh, breeding? You guys keep track of how new baby monsters get made, or just how to kill em?"
Eskel's not sure where that line of questioning is going but he considers it for a moment before answering.
"I mean, some stuff." He says. "Where monsters nest, what season there's likely to be offspring present. Do they lay eggs or not and all that. What monsters generate from raw Chaos, corrupted magic." He shrugs. "Why do you ask? Never got the talk in your impressionable youth?" He jokes, fairly sure Bull knows what he's doing in the bedroom. Or... wherever.
"I mean, not really." Bull reconsiders, tilting his head back and forth. "Maybe more and less than you're thinking. I learned what I needed to. But then, the people who did need to know couldn't figure me out either, so maybe there's not much point in asking you.
"Say I do tell you, you planning on writing it down? I'm going to be real, I kind of like the idea of getting my own page in some witcher book you guys are going to be looking at for the next fifty or hundred years, or whatever. And I guess if you take me out, you lose that chance I'm going to get you that extra payment..."
It's not a lot of security, but he also doesn't want to flat out refuse to tell the witcher at all, risk losing some of whatever goodwill he's got by sitting and talking like this.
He's still thinking about it.
"You meet a lot of succubi, knowing how they smell like that? How's that usually go?" If this guy's as relaxed about monsters as he says he is, those other meetings probably went okay for the succubus, usually. Probably he doesn't have an issue with the whole feeing on people's energy, going into their dreams thing. It'd still be nice to hear it from the witcher's own mouth.
"You know, I think I'd like that. Something to take back home to our library this winter."
The library, where it will probably never be read because there are no more children who are taught to read and write out of the bestiary as old as humanity's presence in this world. But still, it will feel like a contribution of some kind, and he can still talk about this with the three other witchers who will (if the world is not too cruel) be waiting there for him. "It'll have to wait til after whatever this is we're about to do in town is sorted though, didn't bring anything to take notes on." He tips his head back thoughtfully, considering Bull's question.
"I mean, we can track a lot of things by scent. So, I find some leg fur at a scene where a succubus was, sometimes I can find her that way. And usually I try to convince her to let her unfortunate human companions go and leave the area."
Once, this had resulted in...Eskel wasn't sure how it happened. Had he bribed her, traded himself for some unfortunate human knowing he was more likely to survive the encounter? Had she simply demanded his company for the promise to leave and not trouble the settlement? Had she just pounced on him? The fisstech and the exhaustion and a lot of mead and wine had robbed him of a lot of his memories of the encounter.
But Bull doesn't need to know about that, and Eskel tries not to remember what little he does. A witcher's body does not betray arousal easily but he would hate for some stray element of the succubus' memory to show in his face. He does his best.
"Yeah, usually goes alright. Only one or two encounters have ever come to blows."
"So, those unfortunate human companions are... what, victims or something?" He says it neutrally, curiously - the guy not killing the shit out of him's still a surprise, so he's not about to expect a witcher to see the whole thing the way he does. And it's important to sound neutral, anyway, try and get an honest answer so he can guess at where he's going to stand with this guy once the witcher finds out about Bull. If he's going to have to keep this dry spell going the whole time they know each other - not that that's going to be too tough, with things like they are - and if he's going to have to avoid him if they ever see each other after this. Not killing someone when they're in front of you having a conversation and being cool with the stuff they do afterward can be two totally different things, and it's pretty important that Bull figure out if that's the case here. The witcher's relaxed, but surely that only really goes so far. "The way I hear it, they usually really want to be there."
(ooc: This might turn into them talking about consent, if that ends up not being where you want it to go let me know and I can edit)
"People really, really wanna do shit that will kill them." Eskel points out. "Me? I drink too much. Always seems good at the time, so my point is, humans might enjoy being reeled in by a succubus, might enjoy her attentions, but in my experience they tend to die or go mad as a result. So...gotta extricate them, if I can."
{{Alright with me! It's kind of nice to have it in a casual on-page conversation!}}
"Noble. Saving people who don't wanna be saved. Bet they don't ever thank you for it." Bull studies him, then tells himself to focus. Yeah he likes picking people apart, figuring out how they tick, but there's a specific direction he needs to take this in, here.
"So, the succubi you meet, they always kill people? Or, what, drive them out of their minds with lust or something? The girls all tell you that when you talk to them?" Because, guy like this, he does talk to them, Bull's mostly sure. He responded to Bull talking pretty well, although some of that might have been the curiosity thing, and most of the succubi Bull's known don't really tend to be quiet.
"Seen it happen. The guys come back all wasted, die of exhaustion or hunger or thirst. Or they do something to displease the lady and die that way. But sometimes they just come back messed up in the head: sex-addled, lust-drunk. Depends on the succubus I guess." He shrugs, his wolf's yellow gaze shifting away and over Bull's shoulder. An evasive expression amidst all his candor. "I've met one or two outright violent ones, but most of them seem...well, not harmless because the humans do die or get hurt but more like cats with mice. They cripple them, have their fun, get whatever they need from the experience and let them go, maimed but alive. Very...playful attitudes about it."
Bull frowns down at the floor, obviously not liking what he's hearing. His tail flicks hard enough to hit the hand draped over his hip. Sure, it's fine to hear that the witcher doesn't think it's safe in general terms, but once you start getting specific...
He sighs.
"I guess it's been a while since I've seen any of them work," he admits unhappily and then, because it's right there off the bare hint of what might have been an evasive look, off the topic itself, and because if there's any witcher who's not going to get violent the moment you aim for what might be a sore spot, it would probably be this one: "What's that code you mentioned say about letting them go? If you're right about all that crap, they're just going to move on and keep hurting people somewhere else. Your witcher friends back home let them go too, or you just really like a nice pair of tits?"
"I guess I'm just supposed to take them at their word." Eskel says. "I didn't say the Code always made sense, just that I'm supposed to follow it." And from what he's seen, even the most devout and studious witcher was known to bend the Code. "I mean...okay, let's say you have a panther, right? A panther needs to eat, it needs to hunt. Can't hold that against them. But when they come into a human settlement, you need to chase them off or, if they pose a real danger and can't be moved then sometimes they have to be put down. It's like that. I just try to convince them to go somewhere they can't hurt humans or maybe convince them to be more careful. Or ply their charms with other sentient nonhumans, who are usually stronger." Much stronger in some cases-- how long had he been in that succubus' lair before she'd finally exhausted him enough that he could no longer satisfy, but still healthy enough that he could stagger away with his life? Longer than any human man could ever hope for, certainly. He brow furrows and he shrugs. "And I guess it's like panthers too with the forests and caves and human settlements getting closer and closer by the decade, causing problems." He hangs his head, shaking it. Feeling bad that he's agitated his new companion, judging by the the tail. Not worried about him getting aggressive, but unhappy that he's offended.
"I'm not good at explaining this shit. These days I'm alone more often than I'm not, and a person kinda gets caught up in your own head, and the talking bit makes 'em sound like a halfwit." He sits back and heaves a sigh, reaching for a more light-hearted remark.
"And, in all fairness, I'll admit that they're real pretty for something so dangerous."
That last comment gets a low, appreciative chuckle out of Bull and he looks up at the tent, quiet a moment to give the agitation some time to start to fade.
"I know what that feels like, the caught up in your head thing. You know, there used to be this guy, came out here to hunt, tan, makes these beautiful furs and sells them to the higher ups in town, ships some of them out to cities. Fancy stuff. He's good. Has this place out at the edge of the wood, lets me stay in it to wait out bad weather."
Right on cue, more of that too-loud thunder makes Bull fold back his ears, grimacing a little until it's passed. This crap's a little quieter when you've got more between you and it than a little canvas.
"Or, you know, used to. If I'd known the last time we talked was going to be the last time he wanted anything to do with me, I would have talked him into giving me one of those furs. A memento, you know? I have this friend, never lets herself stop and enjoy nice things, I was thinking maybe she'd like-"
He stops, sighs. "Doesn't matter now, I guess. So, these pretty little succubi, they just - don't know they're hurting these poor dumbshit humans, right? Or is it just that they don't care? Or a little of both, they just get led around by their wants too much? A panther doesn't know any different, but these succubi, they can talk to their meal first, right? You'd think that would make it different."
So Bull is...or at least was friendly with the locals. Something must have changed, and abruptly by the sound of it. Maybe something to do with Bull smuggling women and girls out of the village? But if things really were as suspicious-- if not outright bad-- as Eskel was starting to suspect, then surely that wouldn't be a bad thing? Then again, it's not like Eskel didn't know how quickly a human could turn on a nonhuman, usually to protect their own ass.
"Suppose some of them don't care. I don't know what motivates some to let the men go--damaged but alive with some hope of recovery-- and some to take from their prey until the body gives up and the human dies. But they do talk to them first, obviously. Get the guy to agree to go away with them. Don't just jump them right there in the road against their will and all that."
"So, no chance that changes things for the succubus at all? She talks to these guys, gets all intimate, spends that time giving them what they need, but there's no chance she just lets the guys go because she kind of likes them? Why those monsters do what they do, it's all just a big mystery?"
Yeah, he's leading the witcher pretty hard here. That's going to be even more obvious to the guy once Bull tells him what he is, what he does. But sometimes 'blunt' is the only way to make your point, and if Bull's going to tell him, it's a point that probably needs to get made. Even if it might make it even more obvious that, for Bull, this is getting personal. He guesses he'll find out what the witcher makes of that.
"You focus more on the what than the why when you talk to them, right? Makes sense, you want to make sure everyone's safe and get out. But you ever think maybe you just don't see the times when it goes right? I mean, if a succubus is good at what she does, there's no reason to stick with one guy at a time until she takes everything he has. Unless she's just... a mindless animal, like you guys think, taking just because that's what she is. You think there's not any other explanations?"
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He'll bitch about it forever, Bull thinks, a little more wistfully than the thought actually deserves - smuggling people out of a place means the Chargers haven't been able to stay that long, so they haven't really gotten to talk - but he'll do it.
He focuses back on the witcher again, willing the wistful expression off his face and replacing it with a sly little grin. "You ever taken a job from a monster before? Maybe I could be your first time there, too."
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"Yeah, you'd be my first there. Done this before." He gestures to the tent, the comfortable space between them. "But never been hired by one in all the half century I've been doing this."
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-and then thunder pierces his ears again, making them press flat to his head and making him twitch and grimace, take a slow breath in through his nose as the noise goes on one second, two, three. Once it's done he lets out a heavy, frustrated sigh, rolling off his hip to sit up. He should be thanking the crappy weather, shouldn't he, even if it's a pain in the ass when it gets loud like this. What the shit does he think he's doing?
"I'd offer you something to drink while we wait this shit out," he says, reaching toward the bundle at his feet, "but even if the kind of drink I'm trying to make was done fermenting, I'm pretty sure the stuff I used isn't going to be great for humans. Want some water, though?" He pulls out a canteen from the bundle, holding it out toward the witcher and giving it a little shake.
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Another strange moment had almost just passed between them. For half a moment he could swear the cloying floral-and-musk scent he associated with succubi had floated back to the front of his mind, but once again it seemed only an improbable sense memory for which he could find no trigger. For half a moment there had been an identifiable but surely misplaced tension. And then the creature had rustled himself and it was gone again. He oughtn't think too much about it, tearing his burning yellow gaze away from Bull.
"Alright. I'll go back to town when the weather lets up, see what I can find out. Pretense'll be that I need to do some more research in hopes it'll help me find the girls." He agrees.
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Not everything, he reminds himself, leaning over to set the canteen where the witcher can get to it easily and then moving back into his own space again, sitting up on his hip, legs curled up and horns brushing the canvas where the ceiling of the tent starts to dip. He makes his ears stop pressing themselves against his head, giving them a little flick to try and work the tension out.
Feeling good's a good enough reason to do a lot of things. But a witcher who isn't even into him? Some things are just stupid, and he damn well knows that.
"Maybe you found more than one lair, underground tunnels or something, and don't know where to head first. Some of the villagers are going to know that's crap, unless they think there's another bloodthirsty monster around, but they're all gonna keep their mouth shut. So, maybe you need to do some more research to figure out what I am so you know what to do. That'll get you an in into a couple places, right? Maybe not everyone but, you know."
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"Might want to wait un-" He grimaces as thunder interrupts him, ears pressed flat to his head again until it's done, and when he goes on his voice has a frustrated, growling undertone to it. "Until this shitting storm's over, though, unless you want to keep getting wetter."
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"Yeah unless you want this to turn into a mud wrestling match, I better wait it out." He agrees. "So, much obliged for your hospitality."
He sits for a while longer, looking around now that he knows he'll be here a while.
"So...what are you, anyway? Something in the fiend family, be my guess."
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"Yeah, that was one of my guesses too," he admits, stretching out one leg and leaning back on his hand. "What makes you think so? Must be something about my pretty face, right?"
Bull, grinning, turns his head and looks up a little as he says it so the witcher can see his face in profile, inviting a good look at the stretched out, squashed down nose, the long pointy chin, the forehead and scalp all hardened and creased up from horns too big and heavy to leave room for normal skin and the lumpy, scarred up mess of his empty eye socket. Makes a pretty homely picture, if you're comparing to any of the succubi Bull grew up with. Which the witcher won't be, probably, because he doesn't know. Should make this little guessing game interesting.
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Funny, that the tail and the legs weren't the giveaway he'd assumed they were - not in the direction he was expecting, anyway. The pants probably help, make it hard to tell how far up the fur goes. Looks like he picked a good day to keep the skirt put away.
"So, is that all this tent smells like? Just like a succubus? Cause that doesn't sound that distinct to me. I mean, weird, yeah, but-" He shrugs.
"Maybe I just had a bunch of friends in here helping me pass the time." But the last thing he wants is to risk a witcher thinking he might get ambushed by a monster he doesn't know is there, start getting twitchy, so Bull doesn't let that one sit for long. "I don't but, you know. If you were someone else hunting me, you wouldn't know that."
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Man, not monster.
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His arm settles over his hip again, and he thinks for a moment.
"You seem like a good guy," he says plainly, deciding to be at least some kind of honest. "I'm pretty good at reading people, so I'm pretty sure you're not planning on killing me. But I've known too many people to pin my life on that. Curiosity, though? Some people'll put up with a lot for that. Not saying I'm not going to tell you what I know, just - can you blame me for wanting to stretch it out a little?
"Besides, maybe you know stuff I don't. We don't have all those fancy books to memorise like you guys do. We just have word of mouth, and there's some stuff no one ever decided I needed to know. What do you know about, uh, breeding? You guys keep track of how new baby monsters get made, or just how to kill em?"
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"I mean, some stuff." He says. "Where monsters nest, what season there's likely to be offspring present. Do they lay eggs or not and all that. What monsters generate from raw Chaos, corrupted magic." He shrugs. "Why do you ask? Never got the talk in your impressionable youth?" He jokes, fairly sure Bull knows what he's doing in the bedroom. Or... wherever.
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"Say I do tell you, you planning on writing it down? I'm going to be real, I kind of like the idea of getting my own page in some witcher book you guys are going to be looking at for the next fifty or hundred years, or whatever. And I guess if you take me out, you lose that chance I'm going to get you that extra payment..."
It's not a lot of security, but he also doesn't want to flat out refuse to tell the witcher at all, risk losing some of whatever goodwill he's got by sitting and talking like this.
He's still thinking about it.
"You meet a lot of succubi, knowing how they smell like that? How's that usually go?" If this guy's as relaxed about monsters as he says he is, those other meetings probably went okay for the succubus, usually. Probably he doesn't have an issue with the whole feeing on people's energy, going into their dreams thing. It'd still be nice to hear it from the witcher's own mouth.
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The library, where it will probably never be read because there are no more children who are taught to read and write out of the bestiary as old as humanity's presence in this world. But still, it will feel like a contribution of some kind, and he can still talk about this with the three other witchers who will (if the world is not too cruel) be waiting there for him. "It'll have to wait til after whatever this is we're about to do in town is sorted though, didn't bring anything to take notes on." He tips his head back thoughtfully, considering Bull's question.
"I mean, we can track a lot of things by scent. So, I find some leg fur at a scene where a succubus was, sometimes I can find her that way. And usually I try to convince her to let her unfortunate human companions go and leave the area."
Once, this had resulted in...Eskel wasn't sure how it happened. Had he bribed her, traded himself for some unfortunate human knowing he was more likely to survive the encounter? Had she simply demanded his company for the promise to leave and not trouble the settlement? Had she just pounced on him? The fisstech and the exhaustion and a lot of mead and wine had robbed him of a lot of his memories of the encounter.
But Bull doesn't need to know about that, and Eskel tries not to remember what little he does. A witcher's body does not betray arousal easily but he would hate for some stray element of the succubus' memory to show in his face. He does his best.
"Yeah, usually goes alright. Only one or two encounters have ever come to blows."
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(ooc: This might turn into them talking about consent, if that ends up not being where you want it to go let me know and I can edit)
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{{Alright with me! It's kind of nice to have it in a casual on-page conversation!}}
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"So, the succubi you meet, they always kill people? Or, what, drive them out of their minds with lust or something? The girls all tell you that when you talk to them?" Because, guy like this, he does talk to them, Bull's mostly sure. He responded to Bull talking pretty well, although some of that might have been the curiosity thing, and most of the succubi Bull's known don't really tend to be quiet.
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He sighs.
"I guess it's been a while since I've seen any of them work," he admits unhappily and then, because it's right there off the bare hint of what might have been an evasive look, off the topic itself, and because if there's any witcher who's not going to get violent the moment you aim for what might be a sore spot, it would probably be this one: "What's that code you mentioned say about letting them go? If you're right about all that crap, they're just going to move on and keep hurting people somewhere else. Your witcher friends back home let them go too, or you just really like a nice pair of tits?"
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"I'm not good at explaining this shit. These days I'm alone more often than I'm not, and a person kinda gets caught up in your own head, and the talking bit makes 'em sound like a halfwit." He sits back and heaves a sigh, reaching for a more light-hearted remark.
"And, in all fairness, I'll admit that they're real pretty for something so dangerous."
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"I know what that feels like, the caught up in your head thing. You know, there used to be this guy, came out here to hunt, tan, makes these beautiful furs and sells them to the higher ups in town, ships some of them out to cities. Fancy stuff. He's good. Has this place out at the edge of the wood, lets me stay in it to wait out bad weather."
Right on cue, more of that too-loud thunder makes Bull fold back his ears, grimacing a little until it's passed. This crap's a little quieter when you've got more between you and it than a little canvas.
"Or, you know, used to. If I'd known the last time we talked was going to be the last time he wanted anything to do with me, I would have talked him into giving me one of those furs. A memento, you know? I have this friend, never lets herself stop and enjoy nice things, I was thinking maybe she'd like-"
He stops, sighs. "Doesn't matter now, I guess. So, these pretty little succubi, they just - don't know they're hurting these poor dumbshit humans, right? Or is it just that they don't care? Or a little of both, they just get led around by their wants too much? A panther doesn't know any different, but these succubi, they can talk to their meal first, right? You'd think that would make it different."
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"Suppose some of them don't care. I don't know what motivates some to let the men go--damaged but alive with some hope of recovery-- and some to take from their prey until the body gives up and the human dies. But they do talk to them first, obviously. Get the guy to agree to go away with them. Don't just jump them right there in the road against their will and all that."
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Yeah, he's leading the witcher pretty hard here. That's going to be even more obvious to the guy once Bull tells him what he is, what he does. But sometimes 'blunt' is the only way to make your point, and if Bull's going to tell him, it's a point that probably needs to get made. Even if it might make it even more obvious that, for Bull, this is getting personal. He guesses he'll find out what the witcher makes of that.
"You focus more on the what than the why when you talk to them, right? Makes sense, you want to make sure everyone's safe and get out. But you ever think maybe you just don't see the times when it goes right? I mean, if a succubus is good at what she does, there's no reason to stick with one guy at a time until she takes everything he has. Unless she's just... a mindless animal, like you guys think, taking just because that's what she is. You think there's not any other explanations?"
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(Anonymous) - 2021-06-06 21:40 (UTC) - ExpandGod replying on mobile is a disaster, sorry.
it's all good I knew it was you
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