Enter Lafayette

"Hail!" Severos called out. "Good day, sirrah!"

After the strange man hailed him and then just fled right afterward without any warning or waiting for a response, Lafayette blinked and shrugged. “That was weird huh, girl?” he said to Pepper, petting her feathered neck. “Well let’s get goi…” Before he could finish the sentence, Pepper took off in a full out run in the same direction as the man. “Slow...Down…” he stammered as he bumped up and down, his words coming out choppy. “He obviously has somewhere he’s got to be, and we don’t need to go chasing after him for no reason…”

Gaining on the man fast, Lafayette was surprised to see him trying to help a knocked down Kalena. Pepper charged up making loud sounds, avian growls and hisses, and stamping her foot threateningly at Severos before snapping her beak at him and trying to shove him away from Kalena with her long and muscular neck.

“Pepper what’s gotten into you stop?” Lafayette said, trying to pull her back before she caused any injury, even inadvertently. “Sir, I am sorry she’s not usually like this.” He turned to Kalena “Kalena, are you okay?”

“P-p-poisoned,” she managed, her voice increasingly slurred and difficult to understand. She was hardly able to stand and looked like she’d been in some kind of a fight.

“Merde!” Lafayette immediately swung down from the special custom-made saddle. He pulled an apple from his coat to keep Pepper distracted but the avian mount refused it, far too concerned for Kalena's well being. “Show me where,” he told her, as he examined her pupils. “Follow my nose with your eyes,” he said, moving his head back and forth. “Did someone slip the poison into your drink or was it on a blade?”

“It was… from...a Sarnian viper…” Kalena reached up weakly and pushed her thick mane of hair away from her neck to show him the tiny wound from the first dart, which was sore and felt swollen.

“Dieux bon sang,” Lafayette spat. “Sit, I’ll see what I have on me.”

Nodding, she slid down the wall into a half-sitting, half-slumping position, her head lolling. Lafayette undid several buttons of his large coat revealing he was in fact very skinny under the coat, it was filled with strange round paper globes, small glass tubes and a few ceramic pots with lids. He hurriedly checked the glass tubes one after another reading the small labels on each. Finally finding the one he wanted, he cried, “Merveilleux!” It was for Karavossian vipers, a cousin species to the Sarnian variety, but it ought to do the trick. He pulled the cork off and put a strange long device in the liquid inside. “Hold still. This will hurt,” he warned her, holding her hand with his free one.

“Pepper, Mama’s gonna be okay. Just stay calm,” he said over his shoulder before pushing down on a plunger device with the same delivery system as a poison dart with more control over the administered anti-venom.