Kit, an old lycan, was slowly cleaning his tavern. His youthful days far behind him, he stopped to admire the little he had left from those bygone days. The only things that kept him attached to world were his son, his grandson, and the old tavern known as “The Nest”. He had less to his name than most but he was content nonetheless. He spent his days idly chatting with his patrons and had even taken in an interesting vagabond, whose odd behavior and drunken rants were the life of the tavern. He was at times trouble but useful about as often. He stopped his pondering to take in the smells of his home. He took smelled the old treated wood, the cheap brews, and the soap he was using to clean the tables.
“Hey Kit, look what I found lying about in an alley. Can you give me hand? He weighs enough that he may as well be 2 dwarves disguised in human clothes, Ha ha ha. Uff, no really, I need a hand here.” Kit’s peace was disrupted by the vagabond he was just thinking about. He was about to welcome Johnny as he walked in before he spotted what Johnny was dragging in. It was a bleeding man in strange and tattered clothes.
“Johnny, boy, you’re a good friend but I can’t have you bring any in from any syndicate. Just because you’re both human isn’t enough for you to stick your neck out for strangers. Now it’s too late to throw him out so I’ll help you but you’ll get us both killed if you’re reckless.” "Oh Johnny why do you this to yourself. Your idealist spiel will get you killed around here. Now what do we have here."
Kit began to help Johnny drag the bleeding man on to a table to better treat his wounds. Once on the table, Kit to a closer look at the man he had Johnny had just risked his life to save. "Now what did Johnny see in this boy. Johnny is a reckless madman but he ain’t stupid." At a closer look, the man was clearly different than most. He couldn’t place the feeling as he inspected the stranger.
He seemed not quite right or just simply not the same, as though his bones and muscles were just slightly off. He was clearly heavier than any man he ever saw before but after taking off his shirt, he could understand why. The man seemed to be endlessly covered in scars and muscles. Fewer muscles could be found in a brutish ogre that was two heads taller. He turned to Johnny for answers but Johnny had gone to get tools to stitch the man up.
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"Well might as well clean him up. If we’re doing this, we’re doing things properly." Before Kit could begin to clean up the bloody stranger however, his smell hit him harder than a sprinting dwarf. "He smells of an old, untouched forest, half of this blood isn’t even his. This blood, what is this? It smells of a powerful predator. His hands, no, his whole body smells of blood and steel. This smell is too fresh, as well as these wounds. Couldn’t have been more than a hour. The beast blood is still warm. WHAT IS THIS? There isn’t a forest near here for miles. This ain’t no syndicate grunt, no."
Kit, carefully checking the stranger was unconscious and no one was watching, stuck a finger in one of the wounds in order to check his magic resistance. It was a crude and old test that could measure one’s magic power. The blood of those lucky enough to be born with magic will naturally resist the influence of foreign magic. The greater the resistance to the magic injected, the greater the magic potential. One’s magic power was a very personal piece of information and what he was doing was considered something most would kill over.
"Please be a normal man, please be a normal man." Kit pleaded to the gods that the man Johnny had just dragged in wasn’t some sort of big shot that would get them both involved in some crazy conflict. However his prayers went unanswered as the stranger was completely unaffected from Kit’s magic. He tried to inject as much magic as he could muster, though a feeble sum it was, but the stranger was a fortress.
"Gods above, we are so fucked. This man is a monster of muscle and magic, and something actually got to him. We can’t kick him out now, if he dies, we die. If he lives, whatever got him will come after us. It doesn’t look like they had an easy fight. But the beast blood, maybe one of those new tamers you hear about now a-days. Is it still around? Oh Johnny." As Kit was cleaning the stranger's wounds, he thought about how they could possibly survive the situation.