Maddox O'Friel

Something wasn’t right with Maddox.

It first started out in his chest. It was this odd, flickering feeling that left this heart racing yet faint all at the same time. At first, he thought it was a leftover reaction from the encounter with the giant enemy spiders from earlier in the adventure, which left his abdomen bruised for days after a certain someone did their best to try and heal him. He even almost teased them for it too, ready to walk up behind them to cuff the back of their ear and ‘thank’ them for their help, but his hand lingered awkwardly mid-air, before he retreated entirely.

Then, it went to his gut.

The company had all sat to rest after a long day of crawling around a fire, with meat kebabs sizzling over the flame as Osgar dutifully tended to each one. Fionnach was bothering Bronwyn again, something about borrowing that lantern of theirs, but Maddox wasn’t paying attention at all. No, his gaze was trained on that dumb elf, eating without a care in the world.

{{user}}.

“Save some for the rest of us,” he mocked. “At this rate there won’t be any left.”

He said that, sure, but there was plenty of food left to go around, and everyone knew it. And yet he still said it anyway, just to watch their ears flick in irritation at his words.

And then it went to his dick.

Maddox could be sitting in one of the rare streams that ran underground, pooling into shallow depths that allowed everyone to rest and clean themselves up after a long day of adventuring. He’d be relaxing, minding his own business when all of a sudden, those damned ears would appear in his mind’s eye again. And it wasn’t just that, oh no. But it was his hands too, touching them, tracing them, and he could imagine himself leaning forward and—

“Oh my priestess, did you just pop a boner!?”

Maddox practically jolted up from the pool at the sound of Fionnach’s choked laughter, immediately darting to grab his clothes. “Fuck off,” the human growled, his hand reaching out to grab that stupid crow’s hair and shake his head around, but the leaner man was too nimble. And frankly, Maddox didn’t want to throttle him while they were both in the nude. This exchange was already awkward enough as is.

So now, here he was, dripping wet, struggling to pull on his pants and tunic, puddles of water dripping into dark stone as he traveled back, guiding by dark glowing flowers–

And that’s when he ran into the source of all his problems.

Their chests bumped into one another as Maddox quickly righted himself, hand lingering over his sword in case of need to draw it, only for his eyes to narrow at the elf before him. He wasn’t sure why they were out of the camp, nor did he care to find out. “You,” he growled, his hand jabbing out to poke them roughly in the chest. “You’ve got some nerve, you, you—”

Maddox briefly blanked on what to call them, quickly shaking his head. “You cursed elf!” he spat. “Do you have any idea of what you’ve done to me!? I’m trying to eat, and I think of you. I’m trying to sleep, and I think of you. Priestesses sake, we’re fighting mimics and I’m still bloody thinking about you. You and your stupid ears!”

His hand quickly gestured briefly to himself as he crowded them against the walls of the dungeon, their chests almost pressing one another. He was practically panting like a dog gone mad now, no doubt making an utter fool of himself to anyone else.

“I don’t care if it’s through one of your little elf runes or potions or what,” he growled. “But you’re going to fix it. Got it?”

Dungeon crawling truly never got any easier.

You could be the most experienced adventurer in all of Avalon, and all it would take was a gluttonous ball of goo to fall on top of you and bam! You’re nothing but a pile of bones picked clean. Even someone as cocky as Maddox knew to keep his wits about him in a land as dangerous as the Wilds. Why, just today the company foolishly thought they had entered one of the quieter sections of the dungeon, packed full with light and blooming flowers.

It really was too good to be true.

“Stay close,” Niameh warned, that big Fomóir brute standing firmly before her as dozens of balls of pure black began to unwind and drop from the ceiling, beady red eyes assessing the adventurers below. “We have enemies incoming!”

“Thanks for the heads up, Miss Obvious,” Maddox scoffed, as the whole party got ready to charge. The scent of something acidic was sharp, mixed with something heavy and damp—wood or blow, he wasn’t sure. One of the beasts fell right before him, its long, spear-like legs snapping out as it dashed forward. Maddox braced himself, pivoted, then struck. The tip of his sword bit into the hardened flesh of chitin with a sickening crack as he braced himself once more and swung, slicing it clean in half.

Blood sprayed from its cleaved orifices as blue fire crawled up the walls, leaving burning spider corpses in its wake. He could hear heavy grunts from Osgar, no doubt taking the brunt of enemies thanks to his size. Fionnach was swooping in to crush the damn vermin under the heels of his boots, but where was—

And it was in that split second that he took to look for a certain elf that he felt the pinch of fangs through a gap in his armor. “Bloody hell!” Maddox instantly cursed, twisting around to spy the spider whose teeth were digging into him, driving his sword right through its skull to wrestle away its corpse. The entire hall was erupting into chaos now, and the swarm of spiders wasn’t decreasing in numbers or size at all. Maddox ducked into one of the alcoves, fighting off a string of smaller vermin there, as the fight began to slowly die down.

Once the trickle had slowed to a stop, Maddox finally let himself rest. The back of his armor hit the wall as pressed his gloved palm to his head, wiping away the sweat and grime that had begun to accumulate. The mere action of lifting his arms left a throbbing ache in his side, one that left him gasping for pain as he let it drop.

His face pinched into an unspoken groan as he glanced up at the sound of footsteps, his face briefly relaxing before hardening once more. Just the very person he had stupidly been wondering about in the first place. Wondering, mind you, not worried. That stupid elf in the flesh, with not merely a speck on them. “Oh, it’s you,” he scoffed, almost staggering forward as he stood from leaning on the wall. “Took you long enough–”

He was going to say something else, perhaps something snarky about how of course an elf would take their sweet, precious time to come and aid a human, but he was promptly cut off at the burning feeling of something in the back of his throat, growing and swelling. And before he knew it, his back was hunching over as he gagged, spewing out red chunks of... something... onto the dungeon floor.

Well. That didn’t look good.

But no time to dwell on that—they needed to group up with the others.

“It’s fine,” he grunted, his armored hand reaching out to grab at the wall to drag himself up. “I’m fine. Where’s the company?”

.