User blog:Moritzva/Consortium Ep. 1: Valev Gets A Job

Did you know the average person spends over nine thousand, one hundred, and twenty-five hours asleep throughout their entire lives?

An overplayed jingle reverberated throughout the small tavern waiting room, the white paint on the walls worn and overly bright. It hurt his eyes, and by the looks on the faces around him, it surely did not light up a single man's day. He recalled the smell- the stench of still, bland air, reeking of paint, wood, and formerly smoked cigars. Rather rancid cigars, really. To add insult to injury, the chairs. The rough wood hurt his butt and odd angle made his back ache. A bullet he could take, but this was just torture. A prickly, misshapen chair far too small for him. He shifted and shook in his seat uncomfortably, grumbling under his breath, before looking up to notice the stairs of each soul in the isolated room, all focused on him.

"...What?" He responded with a facade of confident, defiantly crossing his arms despite the obvious discomfort, both physically and emotionally.

An old geezer sitting next to him scooted his chair away from him.

He groaned slightly and looked down at his clothes. It was rather cheap wear, but styled specially by him, to the best of his capabilities. Inexpensive leather ironed out and stretched a fair bit below the waist, dyed a clean white. Brown and gray was overused for adventurers, he thought. A band tightly tied the coat to his waist, the clothing hugging his rather athletic physique. His hair dyed red- not a dark red, but a vibrant and colorful red of emotion. He personally thought it fit himself far better his normal brown. His facial features were sharp and quite handsome. Not overly masculine, but with fair skin and a smile that bordered on both cute and seductive. Compared to the rustic interior of the building, he was more of a modern sight, albeit on a short budget.

In other words, he stood out. Badly.

Good looks meant little, and he perhaps overdressed. Just a tad. He could see it in the eyes of the woman behind the counter- she disregarded him as just another flamboyant rich boy. Oh, could she not be more wrong. Precisely, he was a flamboyant poor boy. Homeless poor, actually. With all this mind, he questioned himself why he was even there.

"Valev, come in!" A disembodied voice crossed the door and woke Valev up from his nap, the words as sharp and alerting as a dagger to the chest.

Oh yea, that was why.

Humming the tune to an 'ol pop song from his home, Valev pranced on into the room quietly, passing by a pissed off short fellow with a face of red and a tense stature of anger. One left the room, one came in. The office was actually quite pretty, compared to the waiting room. While the paint was still perfectly tacky, at least it was fresh. Valev let out a sigh of relief as he rested on a chair that didn't feel like a bed of thorns. Across the desk was a man likely just as old as Valev in looks, his eyes blue and hair brown, dressed in complimentary colors of brown and gray, the skin on his hands visibly as tough as leather.

Valev gave one last passing view to the short wizard that stormed off. "Guess someone didn't get to be the protagonist, huh?" He joked, getting a chuckle from the guy behind the counter. "Something like that. Welcome, Valev. My name is Naguib, and welcome to my offices. I assume you're here for a position within the Holy Stone Guild?"

"Well, it's either that or I just feel like wasting your time. It's nice to meet you, Naguib. You're the swordsman, I assume?" Valev guessed off the bat merely from eyeing up the person, up and down. Slim yet athletic figure, just like himself, but a bit more stocky and stern. Possibly just as pretty- if he bothered to smile more.

"Why, yes I am. How did you know?" Taken just a bit off-guard, he inquired further in Valev's guess.

"Because what kind of mages have biceps as big as mine?" Valev responded with pride, leaning back and showing off his arms.

"Prideful, aren't you?"

"Of course. I don't believe in being humble just for the sake of being humble- at least, not with teammates. When you're in battle, you don't have time to determine which of your allies are actually far stronger than they let on to be. When arrows are lodging themselves in your throats. it is not the time in which you suddenly need half the team to pull their unassuming badassery out of their butts in the most disjointed way possible." He responded quite bluntly and with resolve. His beliefs were strong and he wasn't afraid to show them.