Wavering resolve.

[Reasey]

The rain continues to pour down the side of the Pretarian Tavern in sheets. Fogging the windows of Room 31 as Rease Hunter, wide eyed still from the events of the day that unfolded, crosses the room to gaze. He stands a mess, his shirt in a tuss upon the floor from the various beer and meade stains that covered it, and barefoot and unarmoured aside from his hat.

A lightning bolt cracks in the sky as he looks onward from his third story room. Looknig towards the unfinished pavement and unfinished homes of the settlers that moved here. "Wha' am I doin 'ere?" he wonders to himself. Surely being involved with this war goes against everything he's ever beleived in himself. Good? Evil? Neutrality? It all never mattered to him before when it was just him and his blade that he concerned about. But now......

"Bah..." he say's disgusted as he turn away. If he was himself 10, even 5 years before he would have gladly tooken on the role of Mercenary in this conflict and have played both sides for fools while making a tidy profit off of this conflict. His past with the Vandor Crime family made certain that he knew how to pull strings. However back then he was a different man. That was before he married and had 2 children of his own to look after. Before his wife ran off. Before he settled and started a Tavern. Before people started moving in. Before everything. Now, it was different. There were people now who looked up to him, who expected of him to provide for the town and to run it into a respectable locale. Did they expect to much of him?

All of this expectations was more than enough as he slammed his body into the wooden chair of his desk, his fist quickly following suite behind as it rocked the wooden furniture and clinking aside a few bottles of booze he bought off of Kalmir and Adrinus. Allready he's been somewhat forced to play host to Kilrain of the Cult in what he felt was a concealed threat against MarketVale. Whether he liked it or not, those people are still his responsibility, and his first priority is to make sure that no harm comes to whoever lives there, even if the stress of their expectations crushes him. And yet Damira Sunkarn has high hopes in MarketVale's help within this war, as she's allready lost Gorn, and before that everyone lost Eowernia of the Druids Grove.

Slowly, through the course of the night as he mulls over these facts. He beleives himself to come to a decision and a plan on what to do....

....and with that, he slowly climbs back to the safety of his bed, resolving to himself that tomarrow he shall make several orders to the various merchants within the city limits and stockpile on supplies.

[Fangedwolf]

In his own room Najaal sits, the candles still burning in the circle of power around him.  The circle is still high in power from the ritual earlier and he breathes in that air, knowing that such power should not be wasted.

He murmurs some words and his voice seems to whisper through the very air itself as if by several voices until the room is filled with the sound of layers of his murmuring voice.  The power of the circle infuses his words until they stay in the air, murmuring even when he falls silent.

As Rease falls asleep he would find himself once more sitting at a table in his house, as he had been earlier in the day.  There would seem nothing strange about this, it was his house after all.  Perhaps it would seem like it was earlier in the day when he had come back.  Accross the table from him he would notice a figure dressed in a simple shirt and trousers, hazel eyes watching him, a spark of something compelling in them.  The figure was handsome cut, the long dark grey hair cast over his shoulder in a tail. 

As is often in dreams, Rease would not feel compelled to speak, but the figure, whom he may recognise as being Najaal, High Priest of Lord Abraxius, though there was no feeling of threat from the usually so dark figure.  The man would begin to speak.

"So many burdens upon your shoulders.  I know all too well of burdens and not wanting to let people down.  I do not want this war and its bloodshed, but circumstances compell it."  His gaze would continue to watch the seemingly older man with a patience and a calm one might not expect from this figure.  "So many people rely on you in this place, to provide, to protect even, but if you join with the Sosarian Empire you will only bring war and blooshed to this land, of this I can garuntee.  Lord Abraxius is not a forgiving being, and he will spread death and corruption through your fair land if you oppose him, but this does not need to be." 

The gaze of the High Priest watches the male, someone whom in other circumstances he would have liked to get to know better.  Perhaps this was one of the reasons he spoke to him now, and not merely through duty.  Perhaps this was why he was making this offer.

"If you do not stand and fight with the Sosarian Empire I offer the peace you seek.  Peace from the fighting and bloodshed.  All that I ask in return is that we be welcomed as any other into your town.  You will find no trouble with us unless you start it."

He would stand, his hand running over the back of his seat as he looks down at the still silent male before placing a check down on the table.  "Take this as a sign of good faith.  I am sure you have need of it for your town.   I cannot stop the war from sweeping this land, but I could stop it from coming here.  Think on this.  When you decide, call my name to the ethor.  I will hear you."

For one reason or another, whether it was to glance at the check or merely to blink, Rease would find that the figure would no longer be standing there opposite him.  Soon after he would slowly wake, groggy from sleep.  But had it all been a dream?  When he would move about the house he would find that slip of parchment still sitting on the table where Najaal had left it in the dream.  The choice was in his hands now.