For Miles

[Bohemia]

Suddenly, time had become very important to him.

The cover of night saw his flight into Corone's bazaar, a hood pulled across his face as he walked briskly past the ragged remnants of the daily crowds, snapping open the face of the slowly tarnishing silver pocket watch. Four to twenty, the time was running thin. Jon jammed the watch into a hip pocket as he veered off the dirty cobble stone streets into one of the shops with lights still glowing.

"I'm looking for a pair of knives," he began, long before he reached the counter, where the merchant seemed to be closing for the day. The light of the remaining lit lamps revealed his skin to be deathly pale, like a corpse pulled up from the bottom of a dark lake. The hood of his sweatshirt fell over his eyes, assuring him that this merchant wouldn't be blabbing his identity to the Guard this night. "Human forge, dwarven forge, iron, steel, plynt, whichever tends to be cheapest. Make the edges serrated, the worst kind, the kind of serrations that rip painfully, far worse than those things you have in the display cases. Give me the stuff that's almost against the law."

Jon lay his hands on the dark walnut of the counter when he reached it, and noticing how the solidity of his hands waxed and waned at the proximity of a healthy being with plenty of time on his cloak. Inside his cursed heart, that hunger bore it's ugly head and began to knock at the walls of his ribcage like a starved dragon. The hooded head fell slowly, and he turned his fading hazel eyes towards it. "Make it quick, too, or you may lose track of time."

[Raelyse]

"Dwarven is the best, I mean... Look at me? Would I Lie?" The storekeeper emerged from the back of the store, wiping his heads on an aged piece of cloth before throwing it away in a random direction. He was a plump little thing, almost the stereotypical dwarf. Big bushy beard, large muscular arms and half torn up clothing.

"Lose track of time?" He answered, his timing a few seconds too late. He cocked his head back and let out of a raucourous laugh. "Don't worry, boy... I may be a smelly old dwarven blacksmith, but I can read a clock. Gwahhahahahhaha!"

When he finally regained composure, he turned his head and pointed off to the left.

"Well, matey-o, if you want the cheapest, that would be a steel. Those knives are Dwarven made, the best and the cheapest. I can add those 'edges' for a total of 70 gold for each knife."

The dwarf smiled for a second behind his bushy beard, a glint forming in his eye briefly before he laughed out loud once again.

"And for an extra five, I can make them... 'extra illegal.'

[Bohemia]

Despite the time he was losing here, and the more detached from the world he was beginning to feel, he couldn't help but let a wide grin break his overly serious face. The dwarf's mood was infectious, as was his ignorance to the cursed shred of a being that stood before him now. His senescent gaze slid across the shop over towards where the dwarf was pointing, over to a pair of long knives with leather wrapped hilts and simple pommels, and long, sharp (but smooth) blades, extending down past where cross guards would be at an angle. "Yes...those will work well. Extra illegal, you say?" His voice was soft as he spoke those last four words, his hooded head swiveling backwards towards the dwarven merchant.

"I don't have much in the way of money these days; let's say that work for guys like me have been rather...sparse. However, I will part ways with this." Jon reached over his shoulder to the steel capped trakym staff that loay in the holster there. Withdrawing it, he laid it across the counter for the dwarf's scrutiny. "Used by one of your Althanian legends, Garen Kurotan, The Stavemaster, and handed down to me as his student. He told me I could be rid of it when I was sure that I'd learned all that it could teach me," he lied, though the lie didn't touch those paper pale lips.

((Staff))

[Raelyse]

"Ooooh, Stavemaster?"

The dwarf picked up the weapon from the counter, lifting it above his small frame and examining it. Fingers ran through his beard, before they scratched his back. The small creature yawned, cracking his knuckles before stuffing a dirty hand down his crotch to scratch his genitals. After an exuberant display of touching every other part of his body, the dwarf looked to his customer.

"Listen, boy... I'm a little short too, but I can't pull you too many favours. I can sell Valentina Snow's dildo for 1000 gold, but at least that's made out of something more sturdy than this thing. 100 gold, no more."

[Bohemia]

There was a few moments of silence after the merchant spoke when Jon simply stood there, mouth agape, seemingly shocked into silence. He simply stood there, still as a statue, all functions ground to a halt like clockwork with the lever pulled. Even if he didn't want to sell it, there was no way he was taking it back now. Not even every single ounce of the boiling waters in Fallien's hot springs could make the staff clean again. To think, he'd almost forgot why he was often bothered by the foul little men, but then again, who was he to point fingers? He wasn't precisely a saint in any definition of the word.

"Ah, that's ah...fine. I'm not entirely sure that I'd wanting to be buying Valentina Snow's dildo, but if it was that fabled stack of lesbian porn she had, I'd spend in a heartbeat. From what I heard, that woman had discerning taste and a thirst for orriental schoolgirls." The boy patted the side of his wallet, wincing. 'Twenty short, but this dwarf isn't getting any brighter by the moment. Then again, neither am I.' The weight of the silver watch weighed heavily against his thigh, a terrible reminder that his time anywhere was short. "So, a hundred forty, eh? Let me just inspect these again..." Jon's shoes thudded hollowly across the wooden planks, and praying that his inherent gracelessnes wouldn't fail, turned all thought away from walking.

It didn't.

His feet slid right out from under him, and he went head over heels onto the floor. He grabbed at his knee, screeching dramatically. "Oh, my appendix! I think I've sprained my appendix! Maybe it would feel better if I could buy those knives for one hundred and twenty gold! Ohhh, my lumbago! The pain! The horrific, terrible, soul rending PAIN!" Noticing a woman standing in the doorway, a passerby maybe, staring inside with wide eyes, he jabbed a finger towards her, a light of triumph in his eyes. "I got a witness too! Ohh, my solar plexus! I'll sue with all the lawyers in Raiaera, where I'm well known for rescuing orphans from burning shool carriages!"

[Raelyse]

Panic ran through the dwarves' mind for a moment as he saw the man writhe in the floor in pain, screaming words that were much too long for someone of his intelligence to understand. He grabbed his head, on the verge of screaming.

His customer was already gathering whatever people still remained in the Bazaar.

"ARGH!" the dwarf instantly acrobatically jumped over the counter, slamming the door shut before letting out a loud scream. "Closed, you perverted bastards! Nothing is going on in here!"

He then turned his attention to the man.

"Like to pull stunts don't you? Fine, give me 20 bloody gold, then fuck off with your stupid knives!"

[Bohemia]

Jon leapt to his feet, rubbing the knee that he actually banged in the process, and gave a wide, crooked grin. "That's right. That's because I'm awesome." Jon dropped two ten gold coins onto the counter, snatched the knives, and went dashing out of the shop, wooping like the collective of the Three Stooges.

[Raelyse]

( +60 EXP, -20 GP, Jon loses the staff from his equipment)