Questionable company. [Elaine]

Elaine had found herself in the most unlikely place. She had spent the day as normal, woke up alone in her empty house that Az had made sure to pay in full. Any photo of Az and Destiny had been removed from the wall, either smashed or burned and every photo discarded made the long winding mark on her back pulse and burn even more.
From her experience, emotion made the seemingly alive gift on her back even more angry. She had excepted that the dark mark curled around her shoulders and her butt, it normally didn’t go any further than that.

She spent most of her time on quests, coming back and forth from her guild, chatting and trying to seem as normal as possible. Smiling, nodding, accepting. Today she tried something different. A tavern. She had entered in her normal white dress, though she had been stopped for her young features. So she re-equipped, opting for black shorts, red cross chest top and black thigh high boots. Matching it with her black cloak and tying her hair up in a high ponytail.

She had been staring off at the bartender, hearing the chime of people walk in and out, as well as the banter of good friends and drunk locals laughing into the echoes of the bar. She was startled when a drunk was slid in front of her, spilling on to the bar.

“Great gods.” She moaned. She gave a look to the bartender, brown eyes steeling over, “who in the good name would-“ she started to stand up. Not menacing. 5’3. Her cloak fell the ground, she was not okay with being ‘that girl at the bar’.

“The man...at the end.” The bartender grunted, gesturing to the red haired man at the end, giving her a sly smile. *Oof*.

She sighed, looked at him dead in the eyes and downed it. Slamming it down on the bar and marching over to him, wobbling slightly, I realized she had spent 2hrs here and drank more than she thought. She stopped and leaned down, hooded eyes and she pushed a sigh.

“C-can I help you?” She muttered out.

She watched him rake his eyes over her, staying a while longer to examine the gap between her shorts and the boots. She rolled her eyes and thought about summoning her knife to teach this boy a lesson from where he should keep his eyes. She sighed and summoned her cape wrapping it around her as it fell heavily over her body.

‘A cute thing...?’ She groaned mentally, another man taking his shot. She couldn’t help but turn red though, even though she wanted to feign anger, she alcohol influenced stupeur wouldn’t allow her to do so. She just managed a small noise of disdain before plopping down next to him, crossing her legs and eyeballing him. He wasn’t unfortunate. Crimson hair, well built, much much taller than she was, and he held this knowing smirk. Like she had already fallen for a trap he had set.

The drinks he hailed fell in front of her and she motioned for a glass of water to sober her up a little. The red haired man introduced himself as Artemis Dagger. Dagger, she laughed, like straight out an action film. She shook her head letting a few stray hairs fly in front of her face; pushing a sigh away she gave him a little smile.

“Artemis. I’m Elaine, Elaine West. Lamia Scale mage. So, what’s a man like you doing in such a run down old place like this?”