Or Perhaps We're Victims of Will...

[The Emerald Hind]

[Closed to The Cinderella Man. This is a continuation of Maybe We're Victims of Fate... (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=3140)]

Silence. Nothing more. No morning symphony, those complicated compositions played so artfully every morning by a full orchestra of birds. No snap and pop of the leaves and twigs as grazers made their way through the brush in search of tender shoots just freed by the soil. No sudden roar nor distant howl, or even a screech of a predator seeking out its breakfast within the fray. There was nothing but silence: an eerie thickness that filled the wood like smog. It was so thick that it seemed to consume all the world, to swallow any vibration that might stir the chords so that all that existed was a mute void.

This is what Kaia awoke to: an unnatural reticence that left her shivering despite the warmth of the sun pouring through the patchwork screen of leaf and sky. Besides herself, Victor, and the fawn, there was no life within this forest, this tomb. There was only death and decay, a creeping blackness that grew over the region like mold, digging deep into all that was green and lush and devouring that which made it thrive.

She rose to her feet unsteadily, body screaming and head pounding, with nothing more than the scratching of her breath and that of her companion to touch the air—sounds that seemed to violate the strange quiet of the wood. But violate it she did, and with grim despair, raping the calm that was only more proof of death with that which was of life. It enraged her to see so much destruction, and she was determined to balk against its oppressing presence. The only way to do so was to break that unending silence, and such she did. She did not tred softly into that quietus but barged through it, recovering her pack from where she had abandoned it near the poisoned creek the day before, and then set about her usual tasks, her pain-wracked body protesting with every move she made.

She busied herself with building a fire, then to the making breakfast, pulling from her bags what things were necessary to sketching out a hasty breakfast for both man and beast. But as she did these things she did not really think of what she was doing; rather, she thought of what she had to do to remedy to the situation that was before her. It was difficult to believe, but just the morning before she had been in good health and even better spirits, preparing breakfast for herself and the boxer, readying the two of them for a long day of harvesting plants straight from the forest's bossom. But then all had soured when her star-blasted Earth Stone imposed its will upon her and forced her to enter a parody of the wood she had frolicked in so many times before. It was black and dead and silent, and at its core was a dilapidated cottage in which an enslaved dwarf stood forging poisoned weapons for a band of goblins. Kaia and Victor had intended to save the dwarf, but they were thanked not by his release from bondage but by being tied up and left for dead. That horrid creature had set them up, commanding the goblins to restrain both of them. They then tossed Kaia into the cellar, then made mince meat of Victor up above. After that, the horrid dwarf and hi lackies the tiny building to flames and fled, leaving Victor and Kaia to make a very narrow—and very lucky—escape.

They were alive despite it all, and now she was doing as she had the day before. But where yesterday she tended only to Victor's wounds (those hard won in The Pit) she now had some of her own in desperate need of attention, not to mention far more to care for on Victor than what there was yesterday. It was laughable, the parallels betwen the two days, marred as they were by their gross differences, but she had not the mirth to even smile. There were too many dark thoughts marching through her head, stomping any chance for heartfelt joy deep into the soil of her mind.

First, there was the fact that this day had not yet begun. She would not eat her meager breakfast and dutifully care for both herself and the boxer, then go on as merrily as before back to harvest herbs or even go back to Underwood. No, the Stone would not allow her such a luxury, and instead filled her head with pain as its will unfurled from the confines of its mundane accomodations, a green and brown mottled stone looped about her neck on a simple chain. This pressure served as a reminder to the task at hand: Kaia must stop the poison from spreading and killing. No time for rest, not when all the trees and the grass turned as black as coal along the creek's course. And how was she to do all this? Well, she had not a single idea in her head, and for that she was tormented by the Stone and its relentless spirit.

Then there was Victor to consider. She had met him days before at The Peaceful Promenade, and from there the two had formed a business partnership, she agreeing to heal Victor between bells at his boxing match, Victor to splitting the profits with her. From that the two formed a sort of friendship, and so the next day the two ventured into the woods so that the fighter could see how the girl lived, but little did he know that she had a secret to hide, and so lured him into a trap she never meant to devise, much less spring upon the innocent man. And so he was dragged into all the ills of her geas, the force that bound her body and soul to the Earth Stone, and for her sake he was nearly killed. It was not something she could permit—not any longer—and it was something she intended to end this morning.

As if on cue she heard the man stir, and instantly she looked up from the task of feeding a mash of grass and travel rations to the famished little fawn, who lay in a tangle across her legs. The girl's hazel eyes—or eye, rather, considering the right was black and blue—fell upon him reluctantly and perhaps a little guiltily, but she had resolved herself to this end: it was the only way to keep him safe, from her and the Stone. Carefully, she removed the fawn from her lap then took up a bowl of a similar mash, this one accompanied by tough bits of cured meat, and brought it to Victor like an offering.

She knelt down opposite of him and set her gaze firmly upon his, hazel meeting that of deep brown. For some time she did not speak, merely looked upon him and his sad state: his shattered nose, his bruised face, and his tattered body. All this for a stranger? It was too great a price to ask anyone to pay, especially a man who had shown her nothing but kindness. A cruel thing this, and it had to end. Now.

"After I see to your hurts and you are well enough, Victor, you must go back to Underwood. You can seek better health from a healer there." She said this not as a question or even a request, but as a command, her voice solid and hard as she spoke, with eyes that were just as guarded. How he would react to this sudden shift in character she could not guess, but if it displeased him, well, it was all for the better. Then he could go with less care and leave her to her burden.

[The Cinderella Man]

The morning was cruel and unforgiving, bringing back the memories of the previous day through jolts of pain every time Victor tried to stir on the bedroll made of grass threads and rustling leaves. Sometimes it was a sharp pain, cutting through his abdomen like a spear tip, bringing back flashes of the mangled, green faces, crooked, yellow teeth and hairy knuckles that landed on his torso. Other times it was a dull pain with constancy of a pulsating heart that lodged itself somewhere in his skull, reminding him of that damned dwarf and his hammer that nearly knocked the boxer’s head off less then a day ago. Most of the times, though, it was just indeterminate pain, a random reminder that last night he had encounter with hell and that he came out of it with nothing but a lame story to tell.

Humphrel the Tricksy Dwarf had played them both like a fiddle. The bastard had been forging poison-imbued weapons and the fumes of his furnace were slowly killing the forest. And all of that would’ve been fine and dandy if he hadn’t told Kaia and Victor that he was forced to do so. Sure, he was forced, forced by his wretched nature and his heart as black as tar, forced to turn on the pair of wandering do-gooders and leave them for dead in a burning cottage. It had been blind luck that Kaia managed to break free of her restrains and somehow, through the blazing inferno, find the tied boxer. Together they stumbled out of the dwarf-made hell, stumbled out and proceeded to stumble through the forest and away from the balefire, supporting each other. Like two cripples they trudged, fighting the weakness, the pain, the anguish, the fatigue, the distance, until they finally reached the campsite. And there it didn’t take long for sleep to overtake them and lead them to the next morning.

Both of his eyes opened up to witness the luminance of the morning sun, and neither of the two were too pleased with the sudden change in brightness. It took several seconds of trial-and-error with his eyelids to finally succeed in keeping his eyes open. It was a grueling task, but it proved to be a child’s play when compared to putting the rest of his body in motion. His first attempt to sit up failed with a painful grunt. The second and third were pretty much the same, making him feel like most of his trunk was actually one big mush of minced meat and bone fragments. However, once he put his arms to use and made the elbows push against the dewy soil, Victor was able to pull himself up. He felt a bit like a rusty machine that was left out in the rain for many a season and now somebody was trying to use it without greasing it first.

By the time he emerged victorious over the pain and tiredness, Kaia was at his side. If the prizefighter didn’t know what they went through last night, he would consider her face to look almost comical, with a shiner that looked almost as if she was a jester that put on some black mascara to feign an injury. Only there was no faking here. And it wasn’t even the mild swelling on her visage that reminded him of that. It was her eyes, doleful and compassionate and apologetic, looking at him as if he was a beast whose leg just got caught in a bear trap. Still, despite all these reminders that rewound their thoughts to their inauspicious escapade, Victor couldn’t hide a mild smile. It was a good, warming feeling to look at something other then the ceiling after a rough night.

But what came with that black-eyed face wasn’t warming or comforting at all. As soon as Victor accepted the breakfast she offered, her words nearly made him choke on it. Or rather, it wasn’t her words that struck almost as hard as Humphrel’s hammer, but the tone with which she spoke them. It was stoic, relentless, almost cruel. Her words were telling him that he should get away from her so as not to get hurt any further, but her tone was showing him to the door in way a mother would when a child did some mischief. It was a kick in the proverbial nuts. He expected a good morning – or fair light as Kaia liked to say – maybe even an apology which he would dismiss as unneeded. Instead he was the one who was being dismissed. Whoever said that the morning was wiser then the evening was a real goddamn liar.

“Well, top of the morning to you too,” he said, his tone jovial and as fake as the smile he forced on his face. He set the bowl with his breakfast down; his jaw and his stomach weren’t too fond of chewing and digesting right now anyways. “I don’t know what you’re talking about though. I’m as healthy as a horse.” To demonstrate this, he used his own fist to strike his chest, and regretted it almost immediately, the blow making him cough and cringe in pain. “Well, as a lame horse anyways.”

But his jokes crashed against her cold visage like water on rock. Her eyes were telling him that it was no time for jesting, that she meant what she said, that she didn’t want him at her side anymore. But it wasn’t the rejection that struck the hardest, but rather the manner in which it manifested. It was as if there was a whole different Kaia before him; new but not improved. Seeing that his jokes failed to dissuade her, Victor tried a different approach, one more befitting a person his age.

“Look, I know you’re concerned, but it’s really not as bad as it looks. I’ve been in worse shapes after bouts.” This was a lie and he knew before he even voiced it. He was more tired then now perhaps – twelve rounds in a ring with a hulk that kept barraging you with haymakers sapped a person’s energy much more effectively then a night in the woods – but he was never this broken. But that was not something that Kaia needed to know. Perhaps they knew each other for only a couple of days, but during that short period of time she became a friend to the down-and-out pugilist. And Victor didn’t have many friends nowadays. “Besides, Humphrel and his gang are still on the loose. I can’t leave you out here all alone with those bastards on the prowl.”

[The Emerald Hind]

How it hurt her to be so cruel to a man who had offered every hospitality to her worthless sort. To see the surprise in his weary eyes and hear the vain attempts to counteract her savagery was nearly enough to break her from her resolve and send her sprawling for any attempt at saving this moment from sure destruction. But she could not, and even though it was all she could do not to appologize for her brashness, it was necessary and she would not change her actions now. Now the poor fighter would experience a side of Kaia he had only glimpsed upon in a faint flash upon their first meeting, that which made her as cruel and heartless as the very Stone that caused all this pain.

It did not take much thought, however, to know that this was how it had to be. If she were to simply request that he leave with the usual heart and kindness thick in her voice, he would refuse her and stay quick to her side for whatever reason he chose to follow. Victor was an honorable and seemingly devoted man, facets of his personality that would very likely be his downfall, especially if he kept company with the girl's sort. Kaia could not afford for this to happen, and so she had to be as hard and unyielding as unhewn stone, setting her lineaments with a craggy stubborness the man had yet to experience.

And, so, she did not falter as she continued to look at him through that stoic mask, the desire to explain herself locked behind that cheerless facade, a caged and tortured thing. All that could be seen was that even expression that drew her bruised and battered face in taut, crisp lines that highlighted the severity of her position. Here there was no compassion to be seen or friendly warmth to be found, even though it was that very grace that drove her to this means. For his sake she did that which had to be done, for his life and for her conscience. So even though she was just measures away from him, she had put miles between them, and so stared at him across the field, both grim and tired warriors with one last battle standing between them.

"You can leave me here, Victor, and that you will do." Her voice was ice and frost, her hazel eye as harsh as the winter sun, and this was how she met his questioning gaze. She struck his seeking eyes with one of pure stone and in that glance told him that she would not give in, that she would not permit him to stay. He was not wanted here. He was not welcome any longer. He had to go and he had to go now. The truth of the matter did not pass in that exchange, it could not find passage past the heavy bars in which she had caged all her true feelings. All that was left was that metallic adamancy that would bend not an inch to another's will. Go. Please, go...

Would he believe it was for the affection she had for him that drove her to this extreme? Would he even hear her words now that she had set this thing in motion and meant to follow it to its end? She would never know for she would never ask or attempt to explain herself. This was the course she had chosen, and like a spring river she would not stop. She was tenacious and once set on a particular path she would see it to the end. But was it worth losing Victor's friendship? He was the first person to show her any sort of benevolence since her mother died, and for two long years that had been all she had known. Now she risked throwing it all away.

But he was worth it. She would rather lose him as a friend and as a companion if only that he would live on. Either way she would lose him as such, but if she were to allow him to remain in her presence then there would be no hope for retribution or reconciliation unless she followed him into the Great Darkness and somehow found his glow amongst the lights of so many forgotten faces. It was better this way, better to be so hard and ruthless that she would chase him away. Then he could live on to find some form of happiness in this world. If she did not do this, then she would have no choice but to lay him in an early grave and toss the dirt upon him.

If only she could make him see this, but it was too late and she had gone too far. All she could do now was brace herself for his inevitable reaction and try her best not to break before him.

[The Cinderella Man]

She was no longer the girl he got to know during the last couple of days. The change was so absolute that Victor felt like somebody snatched the real Kaia during the night and left this heartless, frigid creature that wore Kaia’s body like a suit. The bonhomie and fairness of yesterday were effaced, murdered while he slept and replaced by something callous and almost repulsive. This change confounded the prizefighter, crammed his head with so many questions that, when they all demanded to be uttered, he couldn’t make himself voice even one. He just kept looking at her, straining his mind, trying to read between the lines, trying to decipher the message she was sending him. But regardless of how much he scratched against the surface, there was nothing to be found beneath but metal as cold and tough as Salvarian icemold.

“Am I missing something here?” he finally queried, straightening out his back in spite of the constant hurt that insisted on lying back down. But the answer to his question was blatant; he was just too dumb to comprehend it yet. So he continued arguing his case, trying to prolong something that was already over in her eyes. “I thought we were friends, Kaia. I mean, sure, we took a beating yesterday, but we made it out alive. We made it out alive. Isn’t that supposed to mean something?”

If it did, she had a queer way of expressing it, because when Victor’s hand reached out to touch her own, the herbalist recoiled before his touch. There were no sentiments in her eyes, no explanations to be found on her visage, nothing but the iron-clad expression that stared down at him, grim and almost angry, awakening that cold, disquieting thing in his gut. And the more he looked at Kaia’s cutting eyes, the clearer the answer to this peculiar predicament became. It wasn’t his wellbeing that she cared about. She simply wanted nothing to do with him, not after yesterday’s fiasco and the events that made Victor not a hero, but a deadweight, a loser, somebody not worthy of having as a companion. She probably blamed him for the beating they took - because it was his plan that backfired – and for not coming to the rescue when rescue was needed. Instead, she wound up lugging him out of the inflamed cottage and through the forest. After such a mess that left her bruised and burned, it was a small wonder she didn’t want him around anymore.

“Perhaps I assumed too much,” was the only thing he said, finally forfeiting the debate that once again brought his true face to the surface. He didn’t blame Kaia, he wasn’t angry with her, he wasn’t even disappointed with her actions. It made sense what she was doing and she wasn’t the first one to throw him away like an apple core. There was only regret in the prizefighter, regret that he came up short once again, regret that once again he reached a dead end and he had to double-back to his regular, everyday misery all by his lonesome.

And Victor wanted to get there as soon as possible. He couldn’t stand Kaia’s eyes anymore, couldn’t stand feeling this harshness that radiated from her, threatening to inflict frostbite on his soul. His body begged him to reconsider, but despite all the pleas of his injuries, he put it to work, turning on his side and getting to one knee, looking and feeling as if he just got knocked out in a boxing ring. In a way, that wasn’t too far from the truth – he was knocked out, only Kaia used words to pound him into the canvas. He kept the grunts and groans locked between his clenched teeth, though, clinging to what little dignity this whole situation left him. Once he was on his feet, it was easier; it was always harder for him to get back on the horse then staying on it. He limped his way to the concealed duffel bag, fished it out of the shabby camouflage he applied yesterday and pulled it over his right shoulder slowly.

“I... I’m sorry for what happened yesterday,” Vic spoke, but despite the meaning of his words, his tone wasn’t soft and apologetic. He wasn’t trying to get into her good graces and make her change her mind anymore. Not after she made a pin cushion of him with all those piercing looks. Instead, it was an almost emotionless, indifferent tone that simply stated the facts. “I hope you stay safe, or at least find somebody more worthy to watch over you.”

Saying such words tied his gut in a knot and dried his throat, but Victor couldn’t stop himself from uttering them before he made a move to leave her presence. It was the story of his life; boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy gets rammed up the ass for being a goddamn good-for-nothing. Strangely enough, the boxer didn’t reminisce of Delilah as he plodded away from the sweet-turned-sour cleric and in the general direction of Underwood, despite the fact that sweet Delilah pushed him away in a very similar manner as Kaia. Instead he remembered his sister Yavannha – who was growing up to be quite a smartass and quite a bitch back in Scara Brae – who was the first person that spoke the sentence that seemed to mark his destiny.

Heroes only live in fairytales.

[The Emerald Hind]

It was done. Victor was gone, walking away from her after a few painful words, making his way back to a sanctuary of which he was unaware, escaping the danger he was not willing to notice. She had done a good thing in sending Victor back to Underwood: she saved his life and gave to him a greater gift than he would ever know. Now, there was hope for him, and he could carry on with his life, free of her and all the chaos she had reaped upon him. He could go on to win more matches at The Pit and perhaps to find some more dependable companionship than that which she offered, the sort that would not lead him into death's clutches at every turn. For that he would eventually be happy, and she should be thankful.

Then why do I feel as if I have committed a sin?

And why did it hurt so badly to watch him go? Why did that fleeting moment where his flesh brushed hers did she recoil not from disgust but from fear? It was not the sort of terrified fear she was use to experiencing when in contact with one of the male gender, but a sort of dread that left a hard knot in her throat and caused her stomach to summersault in surprise. The girl could not quite describe the emotion that suddenly washed over her in that moment when Victor fixed her with his questing gaze, but it was something that left her feeling guilty and ashamed. She was more confused than comforted to know that he was finally going home.

Perhaps it was because he had not put up the fight Kaia had expected, nor had he expressed the anger that was certainly due for her truculent dismissal of his person. Instead, there had been only confusion and hurt, reactions she was not prepared against and which nearly made her stone armor crumble like time-aged dust. His final attempts at reestablishing their relationship were agony to endure for she desperately wanted to sate his need with renewed amity between them, but to do so would be cruel and selfish. It would end only in his destruction, and his blood would be thick upon her hands, forever staining her tattered virtue with yet another reminder of life's greatest ill.

The truth of the matter, however, was that in those few days that she had been in the man's presence she had become accustomed to him. She had gone far too long without another soul around, she who enjoyed friends and family. She had grown up in a tightly-woven community where she was hardly ever alone nor had she ever wanted to be. But, now, there was only Kaia in a strange world far away from her homeland. Here she had endured persecution and cruelty in all its forms, chased away from one town or forced away by the Stone. There was nothing left of that firm, sturdy ground upon which she was nurtured. It had been one thing after another to shatter her simple way of life, and the only stability she had found since she took passage over the Wide Sea was what she found with Victor. He was there from the night they met at the inn and had been until that very moment, and even though so much had happened since they first struck their tenative partnership he had still been there. He had given her that which she had been seeking since she left her home—friendship and compassion. Yet, how did she thank him? By turning her back on him and sending him off like a lazy urchin, and not giving him so much as an idea as to why she did so.

She could no longer bare to watch as Victor plodded away, beaten and disspirited, and so Kaia turned away, looking out to the quickly dying forest. She tried to set her mind to the task laid before her—to the curing of the sickness that had taken this once mighty wood—but she could not shake Victor from her thoughts, nor could she refrain from feeling so absolutely terrible about what she had done.

She had never felt quite so wretched in all her life, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up in some dark, dank hole and sleep it all away. No more poisoned forest. No more Earth Stone. No more Victor. Just sleep and the sweet numbness it delivered, a limbo of peace and forgetfulness into which she could run and hide forever. But she could not be so cowardly as that, and she knew all too well what would happen if she did succumb to that weakness. The Stone would assert its dominance over her and fill her already battered and burned body with yet more pain and make her all the sorrier for having ever taken it from her mother's rigid neck. There was just too much work to be done.

To begin with, there was the fawn, who was in urgent need of some tending, as it had sustained a few scratches and burns of its own. She then looked down at the little creature, who had just finished its mash and was now leaning on her as if for support. It was the only friend she had now that she had cast Victor away and she wondered if she should not do the same with the poor animal. However, she could not bring herself to alienate two good souls in one sitting and so sat down beside the babe and pressed her head to its side, hugging on to it in an attempt to find some form of solace in its contact.

Beyond the clearing...

He watched the scene unfold in the clearing with agitation, finely sculpted ears pricked forward so as to pick up every word exchanged betwixt the humans. The female's voice was hard and guarded, hiding behind it a pain that the male could not sense, turning him away from their camp and back into the blackened forest without. This was an odd turn of events for when he had come upon the pair at the fire they had been most helpful to one another, hobbling back to their camp from their misdeeds, assisting one another flee the fire for which they were responsible. Now they were sundered, and one sent the other away.

Odd this, but it could not be allowed. Together they sparked the fire that fought to consume the wood and together they would pay for their callousness and stupidity, these arrogant humans and their lust for profit at the cost of innocence. As the Guardian of this forest Glas was responsible for imposing order and justice, and this he would do with an iron hoof. Already these two had poisoned the river and killed the life surrounding it, along with that of the Old Guardian, and for their crimes they would pay.

Thus he bisected the male's path, beautiful and graceful, alabaster form drawn taut as if for attack, neck arched at a seemingly painful angle with his deer-like head held low, that dangerous horn pointed squarely at the man's heart. Then he pawed at the earth with a cloven hoof and flicked his leonine tail with agitation, grunting angrily as he took a step forward, pushing the man back towards the clearing with unspoken threat. His long, gazelle-like legs carried him siftly forth, forging an unrelenting pace that threatened to topple the human over if he did not double back from wence he came. He herded the man into the clearing where his female companion sat beside a tiny fawn and then glared upon both bipedal monsters.

"You who have delivered your blackness and your fire upon this forest shall pay dearly for your misdeeds. You who have killed this land shall be held responsibile for your crimes. I give you but one chance to plea your case and so you must do or else pay with your life's blood." His voice boomed, holding the same rich, resonating tone as a temple bell and ringing just as clearly within the senses of both humans. Yet, his slight mouth never opened nor did his throat vibrate with sound. What they heard were his words projected into their minds, and with those words were transferred a taste of his emotions, the anger and the loathing he had for them and their kind that should destroy such a land for their own sake. But for all his ire he did not strike them immediately. It was not the way of his kind, for all their brashness they were good creatures, and so would hear out these two humans. And so the unicorn waited for their response, sapphire eyes boring into theirs with a barely contained savagery that was nothing from legend.

[The Cinderella Man]

“Holy crap! A talking horse.” Vic’s reaction was rudely uncouth, almost juvenile, but once the majestic creature stepped before him and shoved the reverberating words into his very brain, the boxer was genuinely stumped. It was one of those moments when you make a funny face and speak the first dumb thing that your vocal cords snatched from your chaotic train of thought, and in Victor’s case it was the fact that there was a talking animal standing before him. It took an additional several seconds for the limping pugilist to acknowledge the terribly obvious fact that the horse was in fact a unicorn, and then yet an additional several seconds to realize that the horned beast was threatening him. It spoke – well, at least a voice in Vic’s head did – with a voice of a king, the kind that usually echoed across stone halls in some castle, barraging him with accusations and bringing the visibly sharp horn a tad too close to his midsection for comfort.

With impalement waiting for him in front, Victor had no choice but to backpedal away from the obviously agitated unicorn. His hand made a move for his right hip, but found a disappointing nothingness in the holster. His right hip offered more of the same; it reminded the threatened man that Humphrel robbed him of both his revolver and his knife. This left the prizefighter with the bat he had stashed away in his bag, but by the looks of the cerulean eyes that already sought a perfect target for that ivory horn, he would get skewered before he even untied the laces that held his pack closed.

“Is this how you justify your misdeeds, human? You answer to a chance for redemption by going for your weapons!” Glas the Pissed Off Unicorn fired at the man telepathically. The sheer might of the voice was enough to give the boxer a monster of a headache, making him reach for his temples as if the touch of his fingers was the magical remedy that would allay some of the pain. Combined with the fact that he was coerced in backing up into the clearing and that he had no eyes on the back of his head, Victor’s foot eventually caught a tree root. With his balance already hammered askew – courtesy of Humphrel and the visit to his little funhouse – it was all that took to make the pugilist stumble on his back. Above him, the pearly animal towered, calmness in its taut, sinewy limbs a complete contrast to the mesmerizing wrath in his eyes. It wasn’t the lunatic kind, not the rabid there’s-nobody-home kind that beasts tended to be inflicted with from time to time. It was rather the vigilante kind that made it clear that this thing was here to set the records straight and it meant to start with him.

“Whoa, horsey! Easy! You need to get your facts straight,” Victor finally pleaded his case, dragging his sorry behind through the humus of the forest and away from the oncoming unicorn. The beast raised a single hoof at his words barely several inches from the earth below, not terribly convinced with neither the words nor the tone with which they were spoken. With a detonation of white flames in his eyes, Glas hit the soil with his hoof and a sonic boom spread around him like a momentary gale, sending a gust of wind in all directions. It was a message, Victor knew. Stop bullshitting or your nut sack is next. Seeing as he was still quite fond of both his nut sack and the rest of the body that was attached to it, the boxer tried to do better the next time he opened his yap.

“Look, we have nothing to do with the fire or the poisoning.” The unicorn, unimpressed, snorted at the words and though his face didn’t frown – and, in fact, probably couldn’t frown – it didn’t need to. Instead, he launched another mind attack that seemed to rip though Vic’s brain synapses. This time it was an image Glas projected, the one with a nice little bonfire and a pair walking away from it. “Alright, so we have something to do with the fire. But we didn’t start it. We came to that wretched place to stop a goddamned dwarf that was forging poisonous weapons. And we nearly got killed in the process.”

Once again, the beast was unimpressed, unyielding, standing above the fallen man like an oddly animate statue made of white marble. However, for the time being, it stopped advancing threateningly. Victor, who’s backwards crawling nearly took him all the way back to Kaia’s side, spoke with a bit more tranquility in his voice now that he didn’t have a horn aimed at his chest. “I mean, do we look like we just set the forest on fire or do we look like the people that tried to stop some really nasty folk from setting the forest on fire?” the boxer asked, even managing to sport one of his sarcastic smirks. The magnificent creature once again failed to respond.

“Uhm, could you help me out a bit here?” Victor asked his former companion, almost too afraid to take his eyes off the vengeful unicorn this still wasn’t certain whether or not he should make a human kebab out of them. “Before this thing pins us both to a tree.”

[The Emerald Hind]

The fawn's nervous stirring and attempts to wriggle out of Kaia's grasp were first believed to be natural reactions from a creature that had grown in fear of mankind, and, thus, was most unaccustomed to being used as a means of solace by one lonely girl. But beyond trying to free itself from her, the little one did not express any fear or agitation; on the contrary, it pricked its large ears forward and stepped forth expectantly, as if it had seen its mother in the distance and wished to greet her, only the poor thing's dam had long since passed into the Dark. Before this, the half-starved fawn was timid and weak, moving only when necessary and usually only by force. Now, it pranced around happily, bounding forward with a grace all its own, bleating happily as it traced Victor's path into the rotting wood.

Upon seeing this, Kaia's heart sank for she was certain that the babe was leaving her to chase after Victor, thus, leaving her to a self-imposed loneliness. At least with the prizefighter she had been the one to do all the leaving, pushing him away as roughly as one would a foul smelling dog, but to see the fawn abandon her of its own will was difficult to endure. Then again, it would probably be the best thing for the little thing, as she would only lure it into the same dark, dank pit as she had Victor. However, unlike her former companion, the fawn was not able to fend for itself and required a warden. Kaia had taken that responsibility when she first discovered it trying to nurse from its mother's corpse, and it would be a terribly cruel thing to allow it to go off by itself. So, with a lurch, she got up to her feet and went after the fawn, groaning softly in reaction to spots of pain that flickered from infected wounds.

Kaia did not take more than a few exhausted steps, however, when an alien voice reverberated in her head, broadcasting the decidely masculine timbre's ire bright and clear with accusations and images of a burning cottage. She stopped, perplexed and frightened, unsure of what had just happened. Every muscle in her body tensed only to screech in protest as sinew knotted over fresh bruises and under scorched flesh. Then Victor burst into the clearing, backpedaling with awkward haste only to trip over an exposed root and falling flat against the soil, soon followed by the excited fawn. Kaia's first reaction was to drop to his side and help him to his feet, but she was stopped short when his pursuer leapt from behind a limp screen of ebony-touched bushes and landed above Victor, pinning him behind a cage of four slender alabaster pillars.

The girl's jaw did not drop exactly, but her one good eye did grow quite wide and her body tensed further with barely concealed shock. Oh, she had encountered her fair share of legendary beasts, including a very hungry manticore and a gaggle of silly dryads, but to see a unicorn standing over Victor with fire in its eyes and anger in its poise was not merely breath taking: it was heart stopping. For what seemed like an eternity, Kaia stared blankly at the beast, taking in its glorious form with childlike awe. Despite the dread the creature delivered with its resonant voice, an odd feeling of calm stole over the girl, and even as it flashed its enraged azure gaze her way she was transfixed, mesermized by its quiet menace.

In that moment when her eye met his, the Stone at her neck emitted a rather terse glow, which caught the creature's eye and made his ears flick forward in surprise. The geas then asserted its will upon Kaia, but not in its usual manner; instead, it gave forth its approval with a warm mental stroke across her rather blank mind and filled her with a subtle heat that was its way of rewarding a well behaved slave. This surprised the herbalist somewhat, as it had done nothing more than nag relentlessly at her since she first awoke, but before the magnificence of a unicorn it nearly hummed with joy. If she had not been so utterly pacified by the creature's presence she might have been angry with this development.

The Stone's reaction seemed to take the unicorn unaware, as well, for it seemed to forget all about poor Victor and looked squarely at the gem that hung at Kaia's breast. He snuffed at the thing, blowing hot air across the girl's flesh, then looked into her beaten face, all the ire that sparked in its eyes moments before evanescing before the might of question. The unicorn then tipped his head to the side and turned his stag-like visage in profile, examining her first this way and then that. After a few moments of this silent probing he found some form of truth in her character and rumbled appreciatively.

"I have not before met a human bound to The Mother as you are," he whispered in her mind, his voice as soft as down as it brushed across her thoughts in gentle understanding. The girl simply looked at the unicorn, dumbfounded, not sure of what to make of his words, much less of his sudden shift in temperament. Before she could ask him to elaborate, however, he had turned his focus to Victor.

"Do excuse my ardency, but I did not fully understand what happened to this forest. I had believed that you two were responsible for the death of this place and the Old Guardian..." The unicorn dipped his head bashfully, but offered nothing more in the way of appology for having nearly skewered Victor. Instead, he seemed to forget his actions as he turned his attention to the fawn that danced anxiously at his side, to which he extended his delicate head and nuzzled tenderly.

With the unicorn distracted and she no longer quite as mesmerized by the strange event that had just unfolded, Kaia glanced down at Victor and went to his side so as to help him back to his feet. She looked at him uncertainly, her face arranged in a slightly embarrassed grimace, and her body tense for reaction, obviously quite unsure of how he would react to all this. After all, just moments ago she had turned cold and sent him away, and, now, here she was trying to be as helpful as she was before just moments after a unicorn went from threatening to impale him to exchanging affections with a fawn.

[The Cinderella Man]

“What, you two know each other or something?” Victor tried to inject a question somewhere in between the two pairs of transfixed eyes and that odd radiating glow that seemed to be emerging from underneath Kaia’s shirt. But he was the fifth wheel right now. The unicorn and the herbalist seemed to be caught in a world of their own, inspecting each other, talking in an unspoken language which the boxer couldn’t understand. “Maybe they were both unicorns in past lives,” he thought offhandedly, in the unserious manner that was growing to be a trait for him, observing the odd exchange between the two. Glas spoke a lot of nonsense that Victor didn’t quite comprehend, something about some old one and guidance, but what the downed prizefighter did understand was the tone of that eerily voice in his head. It no longer tried to make his brain implode, but rather crept through his thoughts in an almost canorous manner. It was a lousy apology if Victor ever heard one, but it beat the hell out of having the sharp end of that horn aimed at his ribs.

The wrongly accused boxer had a thing or two to say about a thing or two regarding the brash introduction, but his phlegmatic nature silenced the justifiable rant as it always did. There was no harm done, little foul and on top of that, it wasn’t smart to hold a grudge against something that could call forth winds at whim. They were on the unicorn’s good side now, it seemed, and that was infinitely better then being on that other side on which Glas looked like something out of a dream gone terribly wrong. Besides, by the time he came up with some big words that would come with the condescending finger pointed at the unicorn, Kaia was at his side, trying to help him up, and there was a wholly different grudge his indifference had to neutralize. He wanted to be angry with her. He wanted to pay her back for flinching before his touch and push her aiding hands away. He wanted her to feel what it meant to be rejected.

He couldn’t.

An eye for an eye, blood for blood, life for life... Sometimes these simple ordinances seemed absolute, ultimate, something that had to be done in order to keep your own little world in balance. They were the satiation that your hungering pride demanded. But looking up towards the once again amicable face of the cleric lass, Victor knew there would be no satisfaction to be found in treating her the same way she treated him. Perhaps she didn’t want him around anymore. But that didn’t mean that the memory of him should be branded with the figurative slap in the face. He was better then that, he told himself, better then lingering on some petty grievances over things that simply didn’t work out. So he took her hand and made his ache-ridden body erect once again.

Dialogue ensued. Kaia gave her exposition on the yesterday’s events, retelling the story whose repercussions Victor still wore all over his body. There were some novelties in this version, though, most notable one being the mention of something called a Geas which apparently forced the girl into being a do-gooder. Hence all the weakness and imperatives and the puke that finished in Vic’s lap during their foiled mission to stop Humphrel. Victor would’ve been offended by the fact that Kaia kept the existence of this Geas thing secret, and yet spilled the beans to Glas the Dandy Unicorn easily enough, but by now he grew a Kaia-shield. As per her insistence, they were just acquaintances now, and he was just a bystander, a witness to a peculiar story. Or so he kept ensuring himself.

In return for this painful recollection, the cognizant beast offered his side of the story. “This dwarf and his band are a plague. I have followed the path of my predecessor and it guided me to the cottage and the black scar they made with their poison. I believe they are the ones responsible for the death of the Old One, for he would surely intervene if he was alive and I wouldn’t be sent here in his place, to remedy this mischief,” the unicorn’s mellisonant voice descended into their minds, eliciting sympathy and trust. There were no emotions visible on his horse-like face, but the tumult that raged inside the young Guardian of the forest latched onto his every word, introducing them to the pair of humans. And for the first time since Glas made his entry, Victor felt uncertainty in the beast that was almost human.

“So why don’t you... uhm, remedy it?” the boxer asked, simple and more blunt then usual. He stood with his back supported by a leaning elm tree, observing the alabaster horse creature and the tiny fawn that quickly grew fond of it. For some reason, whether it was the further ascendance of the morning sun or the presence of the majestic creature, everything in the proximity seemed to have an mystic, almost glittery glow, as if the nature itself shone brither. “I mean, you tracked us down easily enough. I’m pretty certain Humphrel and his jolly gang of goblins aren’t much better at covering their tracks. In fact, I’m pretty damn certain of it since they had a cartload of poisoned weapons to lug away from that cottage.”

“I have seen this trail you speak off, but it leads to the South Road and eventually to Underwood. I cannot venture there, for it is not my domain. I cannot find the remains of the Old One either, and since you obviously do not have them, I believe this dwarf has it in his possession,” Glas responded, his voice just a tad less kindly then it was when he spoke to Kaia. It seemed that the unicorn was significantly more fond of the nature-inclined herbalist then the fistfighting brute. But the words made Victor smirk all the same. There was bound to be a catch in all of this palavering, something that would make them part their ways with more then just a cliché ‘farewell’. These kinds of auspicious rendezvouses seldom did.

“And let me guess, you need somebody to pay a visit to our neighborly dwarf?” the boxer thought cynically, oblivious to the possibility that Glas’ telepathic connection worked both ways and that he could pluck words from the mind just as well as he can plant them there.

[The Emerald Hind]

After exchanging an enigmatic stare with Victor, Glas shook his head with a haughty snort and turned that sky tinted gaze upon Kaia. "I need you both to retrieve Selrean's horn as I cannot go beyond my domain. The Old One's horn has the power to neutralize the poison, which I do not possess. He is was far older than myself and even in death his token holds his strength."

The unicorns words caused the girl's stomach to knot around a cold, hard center, filling her midsection with a heavy illness that was just one manifestation of her growing anxiety. Again she would have to march forth into danger without thought or care, and Victor was expected to follow like an obedient dog. Just when she thought she had freed him from his pain he was bound to her once more, and now the forces that pushed her this way and that would play him for a pawn, as well. It was too much to endure any longer, and she longed to break away from her bond with the Stone and be free herself. She wanted to take back control and save the forest because she wanted to do so, not because she was commanded. Given the choice she would have taken this road, but without that chance she wanted nothing more than to say no, to balk against her restraints and tear loose from her tether. She wanted freedom. She wanted peace.

The girl closed her eyes for a moment and tried to find a moment of serenity amongst so much chaos, struggling to reestablish her handle on the actions that directed her life in over such rocky terrain, but found only despair and disappointment. It was too much. For too long she had obeyed the orders of others, abiding by the will of another's fancies like a slave. She was exhausted with constantly bowing down to some unnamed force and doing what it wished or else suffer for her folly in pain and agony. And now she was falling into the same trap with a sweet-faced legend, another power that wanted only to use her for his own purposes. She could stand it no more.

So she denied him, shaking her head softly, silently turning down the beast, refusing him the opportunity to be yet another force to which she had to serve. By her will she would do this, not by that of others, and she would do it how she wished. Yet, she had no choice. The Stone would not allow her the luxury of attending to her own mind, and would force her to do this thing without thought. It seemed to give Kaia the opportunity to refuse was simply too risky, and rather than subside to a weaker strength, the Stone imposed its own with a relentless brutality. It pushed her towards Glas, encouraging her to follow his direction with a tender caress followed by a harsh, agonizing slash ripped across the back of her mind, then it bit down with teeth like razors, pain leaking past the mental wounds like blood. It retained its hold on her, digging its invisible fangs deeper into her mind, squeezing so hard that she could think of nothing but the pain and the promise of more to come should she not submit. Try as she might, she could not fight against the Stone and its immense power, and soon gave in, unleashing a mental screech of defiance that was her last attempt at retaining her own idenity before subsiding and eventually agreeing to what the Stone and Glas would have her do.

She stumbled forward slightly, a whimper of pain slipping past her lips as her hands reached instinctively for the base of her skull, tears leaking down her face as she opened her one good eye to those of fairest sky blue. Then she ducked her head low and took a deep sigh, giving her consent in the very same silence with which she had previously denied it. The beast whickered uncertainly then and she could feel his eyes searching over her, obviously confused by what had just transpired, but she did not grace with him an explanation. Rather, she struggled to take some form of control over what was happening by making the very same demands as she had before, and so set her lineaments behind a heavy mask.

"This task I will perform for it is mine to bare, but only will I do this with no other present. Victor must return to Underwood. He will not walk beside me this time." Again, her voice was ice and steel, as even as the surface of a frozen lake, all chance of warmth long since exstinguished. Even if she had to abide by the Stone's ruling, she would not give in when it came to Victor. She had made her decision prior to the Glas's appearance and she would not waver before him. She would not allow the man to go with her only to find his death. If such befell her, then it was all for the better, but for the soul of another she would not be held responsible. Kaia simply could not bare to be the cause of Victor's fall.

"He must go with you. Should a confrontation ensue you would not be able to defend yourself and all hope of saving this wood would die with you." His words trailed off with faint question that went without asking. He did not seem to understand what was taking place, did not grasp why Kaia should suddenly turn so aloof and stubborn, making demands and trying her best to push Victor away, yet again.

"Victor had been sent away in the time before you came. I had done this and will do this now. He is not in good health for the sake of me, and nearly died for the fault of me. This will not happen again. It will not be allowed..."

Once more she led the role of the cold-hearted wench, pushing away a man she held in high esteem and looking the fool for all her objections, but she would not bow and so stood strong against those probing looks, her body rigid and her face even with eyes as unyielding as mountain stone. No matter how perplexed the unicorn appeared or how hurt or angry Victor might seem, Kaia would not permit the man the chance for suicide. She would not act as his Bringer of Death, she would not watch as he wasted his life on one silly little herbalist. Far too many wrongs had been committed against him by fault of her own, and no more would be written upon that list.

[The Cinderella Man]

And there she went again, toppling over as if somebody punched her in the gut. There was no vomit this time – probably due to the lack of breakfast – but the pain was more then blatant, quaking through her just as it did the day before, making her wail like a beast whose leg got caught in a bear trap. Unlike the unicorn who seemed perplexed by this sudden spasm that shook Kaia’s body, Victor was familiar enough for it not to be surprising. It became clear to him now that it was the stone around her neck that was somehow doing this, because once again its light broke through the fabric of the girl’s blouse. Only this time, instead of the soft, soothing luminance, it radiated a more ominous glow. And in the wake of the pain it brought, Kaia’s tactless, almost ugly face reappeared, responding to the suggestion of the unicorn with the candor that cut like a knife.

“Women. As fickle as the goddamn weather.” This certainly seemed true for Kaia who seemed to emanate that scorching coldness once again. Still, this defense that she brought up like a tower shield wasn’t enough to stop him from returning the favor. He gimped to her side as fast as his injuries allowed him, waiting for her frostbitten words to stop massacring both Glas’ proposition and his own pride before he squatted next to her. It was an action that his body didn’t particularly like right now, but he did it all the same, offering a helping hand.

“Victor has a brain of his own, you know?” he said to the strangely volatile cleric, looking down at her with an amicable mixture of patronization and honesty. “Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I wanted to help both you and the forest? Perhaps I’m not as much of a tree-hugger like you or Mister Horsey over here, but I’m still not overly fond of people who kill things recklessly.”

His words were the sugarcoated truth. The bare, unabridged version was a tad more different. He did care for trees and animals and all the pretty colors that nature offered benevolently, but not much more then the next man. Not until she came along at least. By growing fond of her and her peculiar ways, a portion of her concern got reflected in him and what mattered to her started to bug him as well. Especially if that something that mattered had a bad habit of being the death of her, and this visit to Humphrel certainly seemed like one of those. Besides, Humphrel and Vic still had a score to settle. After the ordeal in the dwarf’s little shack of horrors, the prizefighter wound up owing quite a lot to the bastard and his goblin friends. And he meant to pay it back with a very steep interest rate.

“So here’s the thing. I planned to go after Humphrel anyways. I mean, that bastard still has my gun. And I like my gun,” the fistfigher spoke with a smirk inevitably creeping at the edge of his lips. In spite of all the rejection and slaps to his face that she masked in words, Victor couldn’t stay mad at Kaia for long. There was something about the girl that seemed to know a shortcut to the mellow stuff that rested somewhere deep inside of him. Sure, she had some screws loose in that pretty little head of hers, but then again, most people did too.

“So the way I see it, we can either work together again and try to do better then the last time or we can each bust our asses on our own, doing the same thing. It’s your call.” He finished by extending a hand towards her. It wasn’t a hand of reconciliation; for that Victor would first have to know what he did wrong the last time. As it stood now, Kaia either hated his guts because his plan failed or she was so terribly concerned for his wellbeing that she was willing to kick him in the ass just to put some distance between the two of them. Probably both. Either way, it was something that the boxer didn’t know how to remedy yet, so there was no point in holding on to that grudge. Kaia seemed to share at least a portion of his thoughts on the matter. Though her compliance seemed as confident as that of a child who just agreed to a proposition of a complete stranger, she accepted his hand and allowed him to help her up.

“There we go. Now, do you happen to know exactly where Humphrel went? Underwood is quite a big place,” Victor asked the mythical beast, kneeling on the ground and shuffling through his pack. The wooden bat he planned to use on a trio of goblin heads and a singular bearded face was easy to find in the chaos of items, the pair of enchanted knuckles weren’t.

“I followed their trail to the east outskirts. Beyond that point, I can offer you no guidance. However, I can offer you a different kind of aid, the kind you both seem in dire need of.” Even though the voice was rampaging through the synapses of his brain, Victor paid little heed to anything that followed after “...I can offer you no guidance.”. He was confident that Glas was about to provide them with some lame helping words of wisdom that were neither helpful not wise. Instead, he focused on not stabbing his fingers on something sharp and pointy in the darkness of his bag. Needless to say, he was surprised when the unicorn’s help turned out to be more then just idle chatter.

At first, he was certain that he was just tired and that cold sweat was oozing down his neck, following the line of his spine. When that sensation reoccurred, he started thinking he was being overtaken by a fever. When the sensation persisted, a big fat question mark appeared in his head. Not because he didn’t think it was a fever anymore, but because this queer feeling seemed to alleviate some of the pain from his body. Only it went further then that. He could almost hear his ribs mending, the strange, dull, bony sound almost creepy as it came from his torso. The swelling on his face diminished as if it was a balloon somebody deflated, leaving only the strange phantom ache that his brain still insisted on, unaware of the miraculous healing. Only once the sensation was gone and he started to feel as rejuvenated as if he slept for a week, realization rang in Victor’s head like a chapel bell. He looked at his hands, touched his face, his ribcage that oddly enough didn’t shift under the touch, and ultimately looked towards Glas with a smile that finally didn’t make his jaw hurt.

“You know, if you could bottle this stuff up, you’d make a fortune.”

[The Emerald Hind]

It took some few moments for Kaia to notice the transformation that had taken place within her body for she had become quite accustomed to the dull ache of muscles and the sharp prick of infected wounds that even with their healing the pain persisted, resisting its removal with a valiant last battle before fading into vague memory. If it had not been for the odd tingling ripples that had flashed through and over her body, she might not have known anything was amiss until she first took sight of a limb or her reflection, for her mind labored with other concerns. In fact, beyond the alien sensation, which she attributed to stress, she did not notice any change within her physical being until Victor spoke, catching her attention and reeling in her focus upon his restored body.

His face was set in proper alignment, no longer bruised and broken, not even his badly shattered nose. All the injuries he had sustained from his encounter with the goblins were gone, as were the burns and scrapes hard won from their escape. In fact, upon examining him a bit more closely, it seemed the boxer was in better even when she happened upon his table all those days ago. He was completely healed and looked all the better for it, and for a moment Kaia wondered if it had all been a bad dream, some terrible nightmare that had disappeared before the might of a new day. If only it were so.

Seeing that Victor was so repaired, she wondered of her own condition, and only then noticed that she had been looking at the man over through two good eyes rather than just one. Her hands went to her face, touching and probing, but no pain flared from the contact, and no disfigurement could be discerned by touch. Kaia checked over her arms and slipped her hands across the small of her back, areas that had been singed when she scrambled past the flaming beam that had been her savior, but she found all to be well.

She tilted her head slightly in confusion but realization soon dawned upon her and she looked up from her mended body and at the unicorn, who stood before them with a smug expression drawn upon his visage. He whickered at her and flicked his tipped tail coyly, but made no mention of what he had done. Instead, he reminded the two humans of the urgency of their quest, insisting that they go off at once so that they may find the dwarf and his lack wit goblins before the caused any more damage.

So they went, both taking what they would from their campsite, and leaving behind both Glas and the fawn. As they walked off, Kaia cast one last look over her shoulder at the two, sighing deeply as she did, then placed that gaze upon Victor. Another shake of her head and another deep sigh, but she remained silent for some time, not certain of what to say to him as they made their way back to Underwood. Rather than attempt to redeem herself she kept silent and busied herself with finding her way back to the main road. Unfortunately, it was a task that did not occupy her for long for she knew this portion of the wood quite well, and as they traveled from the creek and its poisoned waters the land became greener, making it easier to find her usual landmarks now that they no longer wilted.

The further they walked the more abundant life in the wood became, and soon enough air vibrated with joyous bird song, carrying along with it the sweet scent of wild flowers. They even chanced upon a rabbit munching happily upon a tuft of fresh grass shoots, which quickly bounded off when they came too near. A robin dove down from a tree and streaked past them, followed by a reprimanding mockingbird. And in the distance a fox scurried past, something small and brown dangling from its mouth, and it retreated into the dense, verdant foliage.

But even the beauty of this untouched domain did not keep her from glancing at Victor from the corners of her eyes, and soon she found herself worried over his well-being, yet again. Despite what he had said about taking on Humphrel for his own purposes, she could not help but feel that she was responsible for all the horrible things that had befallen him, and she wanted nothing more than to make him see sense and send him home. However, Victor was just as stubborn and relentless as she was, and with this new development he would be certain to keep to her side whether she willed it or not. It made her feel all the more guilty for how she had treated him before, and when they came to the road and took the short distance left between them and Underwood, she felt the need to explain herself.

"Victor..." she began tentatively, her accent quite apparent in that one utterance. "I...I did not mean to be so harsh before, but I did so with purpose: I, well, I did not want you to get hurt any longer. About the Stone and my geas I should have told you, but...I did not want you to think I was without mind. I did not think that all this would happen, and when it did I did not want to cause any more pain to you." She stopped in her tracks with Underwood well within sight but ignoring the city and all its promise of strife. Instead, she looked up at Victor with grief in her eyes and guilt in her heart, trying her best to explain herself as her thoughts blurred between languages, the result of her worry and stress.

"You are the first I would call friend in some time, Victor, and I did not want to be the end of you. There are enough faces upon which I look in the night sky, and I did not desire that yours be yet another... So, I did what I could to send you another way. Guilt is heavy within me for such a thing, but I do not apologize for it, for had it not been for Glas you would be well and safe, now. I only wish to tell you why and ask for what I commanded before..." The girl did not feel any better for telling him; in fact, she felt worse, and before his eyes she twitched and twittered uncertainly, but she dared not look away. She kept her gaze trained upon his, entreating him, begging him to take this last opportunity to turn away and return to where it was safe. But, in the end, she knew it was futile, she knew that he would not waver in his decision, either, and so she expelled yet another gusty breath and dreaded the fast approaching future.

[The Cinderella Man]

It was good to be well again. The change was so abrupt that it made Victor feel as if he could dash all the way to Underwood, as if he could bound from one tree to the next like some sort of a beast. Fatigue was like a burden, like an anchor that slowed you down, pulled you to the bottom. Now that it was gone, it was like being liberated, like stepping over that vague boundary between a nightmare and a pleasant dream. And suddenly everything you looked at was a bit more prettier, every thought that passed through your mind wasn’t as brooding as it would’ve been prior to this metamorphosis. This sensation almost made Victor believe that, if Humphrel and his goblin bodyguards walked in front of him right now, he would’ve been able to take them down with a single swipe of his bat. Luckily for his irrational, excess alacrity, Kaia was there to bringing his spirits down to a more realistic level.

She was finally that same herbalist lass that he’d met in the Peaceful Promenade, and when she spoke of the reasons behind her inclemency, she spoke with honesty that didn’t feel like a punch in the face. And things finally started to make sense. Kaia was a good girl, only in her case ‘good’ was elevated to a whole new level. On that level she was the martyr, the unlucky hermit that was forced to wrestle with issues some higher power set before her. And on that level she wanted to be alone. Because when you were alone, your actions could cause no harm to others. You fought alone, you hurt alone, you cried alone. You died alone. It was the simplest form of damage control, the defense that never lost the game. Victor knew. And he knew that it never won one either.

Looking at her fair face caught in this strangely coy upheaval was almost heartbreaking. She was trying to be a saint here, trying to get that large millstone of guilt and responsibility up on her shoulders. He decided not to let her. As stoic and courageous as she tried to be, it was bound to crush her, be the end of her. And Victor wasn’t ready to lose a friend. He had precious few as it was.

“You’re one strange bird, I’ll give you that,” he spoke, breaking the deadly seriousness she brought forth with a chuckle and a smirk. His hand was on the move. He intended it to make some sort of a comforting gesture, and it wound up venturing to the girl’s face and tucking one of her chestnut locks behind her ear. Finding this contact almost too intimate, Victor moved his hand down to her shoulder.

“I understand. But try to understand me as well. Just as much as you want to keep me out of harms way, I want to do the same thing. And I can’t do that by leaving you to deal with everything on your own. I guess it all depends on the way you look at it. I would rather give my life for somebody I care about then spend a lifetime wandering around on my own.” Without realizing, he was taking the conversation in the mushy direction, where thoughts heavily soaked with emotions were voiced. But it was the only way he could explain to her that her guilt was needless, that he valued their friendship in spite of all the possible drawbacks. That he was willing to suffer with her. For her. Perhaps he was taking it too far too early, letting his affection get the better of him, but that was how the boxer operated. He either gave it all he got or he threw in the towel.

“But I doubt it will come to that. Underwood may be a different kind of wilderness, but we can find aid there as well. I bet the authorities would be quite interested in hearing about Humphrel and his mischief.”


[Two very disappointing hours later...]

He was wrong. Underwood authorities were as eager to listen to them as if Kaia and Victor were traveling hawkers that just came to offer them some shoddy merchandise. The secretary of the Corone Armed Forces and the Underwood City Watch directed them to the Ranger outpost on the other side of the city. Apparently, since the crime happened in Concordia, it was under Rangers’ jurisdiction. Rangers, on the other hand, forwarded them to the City Watch. Since Humphrel was most likely residing in Underwood, it was up to the CAF to deal with it. Bureaucracy. It was heaven for the indolent, a refuge for all those who liked to put their feet up and point the finger of responsibility in the opposite direction. There was no help to be found with the authorities, just a lot of paperwork and thumb-twiddling.

So, with the noon being less then an hour away, Kaia and Victor stood before the closed gates of the compound of Underwood Rangers, clueless as to where to look next. Underwood was heedless towards their plight, pulsating like a living organism. Its veins – the cobblestone streets – surged with life which was embodied in the people that went about their daily jobs. It was business as usual under the vibrant sun, just another day in the metropolis where ignorance was worn like a cloak that kept everybody oblivious to the troubles of others. Underwood wasn’t as bad as Radasanth when it came to this indifferent mentality of the masses, but it wasn’t far either. That was the price the society paid for advancement. In return for the fake equality, you were stripped of your uniqueness and you were the part of the same muck as the rest.

Victor used to bask in that muck. He could get lost in it, evanesce into the crowd and be forgotten and all on his lonesome. Cities were a great place for being a loser; nobody paid attention to your decrepit state. But right now, as he looked over the countless thatched roofs that rose and fell before him like a sea of neatly arranged tents, he understood a little bit why Kaia preferred the untamed wilderness over this urbanized chaos. Here, everything was on a timer, as if everybody had to be somewhere five minutes ago. Sometimes, such a pace took your mind off of the fact that you were neck-deep in crud. Sometimes, like now, it made you crave some solace.

“Well, that was certainly time well spent. Good thing I’m not paying taxes, or I’d be seriously pissed off,” he jested, taking his eyes off of the webwork of streets and placing them onto his diminutive companion. “So, any ideas where to look next or should we just scour the entire place? I’ll take the hundred streets on the left.”

[The Emerald Hind]

The girl would have given anything to retreat into the woods and leave Underwood and all its filth and corruption behind. Here, the air was stale and fetid, congested with the stench of human habitation: garbage baking in the mid-morning heat, sewers filled to the brim with waste, unwashed bodies and thick perfumes lofting by as people passed. It was sickening. And to make it worse rather than better were the scents of baked bread and roasting meat trickling from bakeries and cook shops, blending in with the worst of it and giving the air a sickly tang. How people could withstand this day in and day out, Kaia could not guess.

It was not just the smell that made the girl long for her familiar wild, but the odd sensation of claustrophobia that always accompanied any visit into the heart of a bustling town. Buildings were built nearly on top of one another so as to make as much use out of open space as possible. The allies and streets were narrow, excepting only the main veins of traffic, and the spaces were made all the smaller by the various crates and barrels that were simply too large to fit into the smaller establishments. The large masses of people swirled by and passed through the roads like living rivers, writhing and churning with a single-minded determination, leaking into every outlet and slowly trickling through open doors. It made her feel even smaller to be jostled by the crowds as she was, and she felt lost amongst so many people, devoid of any identity: just one more nameless face within the throng.

What others might consider modern comforts, Kaia found disconcerting and confusing. Her past visits to the city did not make the latest venture any more bearable, and having to go from one building of authority to another was nearly as draining as having escaped a blazing fire. To make it all the worse, it was for nothing, and as she and Victor stood in the midst of failure she found herself wishing, yet again, that she could simply turn around and go back home, to that familiar cottage so far away in Avani where her father worked in the field and her mother at the hearth. Only, that little cottage had long since burned to the ground, and both her parents were gone, two more minuscule torches lighting the night sky.

Luckily, Victor was there to help alleviate that feeling of useless with another of his well-timed quips. It was enough to elicit a slight quirk of her lips as she glanced at him from the side, shaking her head in response to his half-hearted suggestion. She appreciatde his moment of lightheartedness as it gave her a momentary respite from the dreadful reality of their situation. Before, the girl was beginning to get quite depressed over the fact that every way they turned they found nothing in the way of help, and it was becoming very clear that they were on their own, once again. Having Victor there made that upset a little more bearable, and she wondered what she would have done if he had gone back home as she wanted. It was best not to dwell on such things—it left her with less of headache.

"It is not very likely, but the local apothecaries might know something of Humphrel." Her attention was turned to the city as she spoke, poking at its dreadful monotony skeptically. "A poison is what he used on the blades, and for that he must go somewhere. I do not think he would know enough of herb craft or alchemy to create his own. It is a very strong poison he used, and only a crafter would know its sort. If they do not know him, perhaps they will know the sort of poison he used, and so tell us where we can go next."

It was a long shot in Kaia's eyes, but it was something. What she said was true. She doubted very much that the smithy dwarf possessed the intimate knowledge of herb craft and lore needed to collect the ingredients and transform them into such a fast acting and devestating poison. That took deep understanding of how different herbs interacted with one another, and doubtlessly required careful tending and harvesting of special and most likely rare plants. For that, he needed an apothecary.

So, with a destination in mind, the two set off for the market district, Victor leading the way through the press of humanity with Kaia trotting along beside him. All around them people scurried to the cook shops, inns, and town homes for the noontime meal, giving them a little more room in which to navigate, and allowing for a bit more speed. However, despite their improved pace, it still took far too long before they reached a small unit fitted with a large window that displayed a number of herbs, both dry and fresh. Over the door way swung a small sign depicting a number of plant leaves and a potion bottle, accompanied with the label "Flann's Apothecarium" in neat lettering, into which the two entered. A bell tinkled merrily as they did so, announcing their presence, and welcoming them to a delightful shock.

Sitting behind a counter was a barrel-shaped man sporting a fringe of bright red hair and a bulbous nose the color of an over ripe raspberry. The apothecary was busy at work, sniffling and sneezing, bent to the task of grinding dried plants into a powder. So engrossed was he with the project that he did not immediately look up from his station, but, rather, continued to grind away with his mortar and pestle for some few moments more. He then took his time, uttering a gruff "Hello" as he pushed himself away from his work, then looked at his new customers with a pair of watery blue eyes. Those eyes suddenly grew quite wide and his face flushed pink, his nose purple, and he rounded the corner of his counter, grabbing a quarter staff from beside a desk as he passed. This he jabbed at the two, gesturing what he could not at first speak.

"You? You! How? What? How dare you two show yer faces here!" he managed to spit out. He then looked at Victor and most probably recalled the day he had shoved what the boxer called a "gun" in the apothecary's face as the red-faced man quickly dropped his weapon and began to insist he wanted no trouble.

"I meant tha girl no harm, mate. I promise ya that. I just wanted 'er away, takin' my customers like she wuz. I gotta make a livin', too." He no longer bothered looking at Victor, but at the girl, sneering at her with barely contained rage.

At this the girl merely raised a slim brow. Kaia was caught somewhere between apprehension and mirth, uncertain of how this volatile man would withstand her presence within his realm, but just as amused by the irony of their meeting. Of the many herbalists and apothecaries this city had to offer, she and Victor had to stumble into this man's shop, the very man who, just days before, had tried scaring her away from Underwood through threats and brawn. Perhaps he had not meant her any lasting harm, but he held no compunctions about pushing her around, and it was not until Victor happened by and rescued her that she was spared Flann's frustration. She was very tempted to return the favor, but she was not really one to bother with such petty things as revenge; at least, not of this apothecary's sort.

However, the girl could not help but glance Victor's way, trying to read his gestures and expression to determine what he thought of this little visit with Flann.

[The Cinderella Man]

The corpulent apothecary was only vaguely familiar to Victor, but once he opened his mouth and sputtered what started as a threat and wound up as a very lousy apology, the boxer remembered. A couple of days ago, Flann the Loudmouth Herbalist had come up with the brilliant idea to chase Kaia out of Underwood with more then just harsh words. The prizefighter had objected before Flann could use his sticks and stones. He decked the man, and when that bludgeoning message filed to reach the gray matter inside of Flann’s thick head, the prizefighter introduced him to the six-shot ‘Widowmaker’. It was the picture that spoke more then a thousand words and threats, a reminder that stuck with the uncivil herbalist even now. Seeing that the man was already intimidated, the boxer saw no reason to play on a different card.

“Look, Flann is it? I’m sure we’re both ready to make that little idiocy of yours become water under the bridge. All we ask in return is some information,” Victor started in a suave voice that was unbecoming to him, making him sound almost like some small-time gangster that just came to collect the protection money. Flann twitched at the ‘idiocy’ part, his pride clearly sustaining a wound, but the words of rebuttal got stuck in his throat when the muscular boxer placed the wooden bat on the counter. Oh yes, Vic could play a bad boy. He was no thespian, but being mean had nothing to do with acting. You just had to let go of your scruples and do what you usually considered unkind. And suddenly doors were opening where they usually didn’t.

“What kind of information?” Flann was a huge man - a plump continent of flesh and fat - but at that moment he seemed as large as a pea seed. Below all that minginess and unsympathetic demeanor slept a yellowbellied man that was ready to wave the white flag as soon as somebody pushed him into the corner. Victor knew his kind; Flann was the type of a person that was the first to speak as long as he had twenty people backing him up. On his own, he was as steadfast as a child before an angered mother.

“About a dwarf purchasing some specific herbs. Poisonous herbs. You couldn’t miss him. Humphrel is his name, he’s about this big...” the prizefighter explained, placing his hand just below his pecks. “...you can barely understand him speak. He has this... this braid thing in his beard. Ring any bells?”

“Never heard of ‘im. And even if I did, I couldn’t tell ya. I can’t give ya information about my clients,” Flann said, doing his best to make his words ring true. His eyes were turncoats, though, speaking a different story. Dodgy and restless, just like his hands, they disclosed everything that the apothecary tried to keep secret. It didn’t take a mind-reader to smell the stench of a lie in the air.

“Is that so?” Victor asked, his tone unnaturally inquisitive and intentionally so. The boxer’s brown eyes ascertained the establishment with agonizing slowness, as if they were measuring it. They passed over the shelves packed with translucent jars filled with a myriad of different herbs, continued to the porcelain ones that hid the contents behind their ornate exteriors, noticed mortars and pestles and a wide variety of other apparatus that seemed very expensive. Very breakable. The scent in the air was unmistakably herbal, invading the olfactory senses with so many concentrated scents that it was impossible to distinguish just one. It constantly seemed to keep Victor at that annoying brink of sneezing, but never quite getting him there.

“Well, I can’t say that I believe you there, Flann. And I don’t think the authorities will believe it either.” Bluff was a fickle thing. If you used it at the right time, it could do wonders. If you didn’t, it would backfire at you and close all the doors you worked so hard to open. Right now, Victor hoped for the former. Regardless of what kind of an impression he made, there was no way he was going to smash Flann’s little herbal piece of heaven. If he did that, then he might as well join forces with Humphrel instead of chasing the bastard. Luckily, given the panicky look on the face of the apothecary, there would be no need for any kind of violence here. What little firmness the rotund man managed to gather crumbled before the bluff.

“The authorities? But... but I didn’t do anythin’ wrong.”

“Probably. But you know the Watch. They would close the place down during the investigation. Not very good for your business.” Victor had him hooked, he could see it by the look in Flann’s eyes that made the man look as antsy as if he had somewhere else he wanted to be. Anywhere else seemed like a good option for the herbalist right about now.

“Alright. Alright! Gods, ya just won’t let it go, would ya?” Flann caved in, ready to spill the beans. “I heard ‘bout some dwarf. He was buyin’ a lot of ingredients from a lot of other apothecaries. Hemlock, nightshade, mistletoe berries, rhododendrons, larkspur, everything that can do some damage. I didn’t sell ‘im any, of course.”

“Of course,” Victor repeated, sarcasm heavy in his tone. He turned towards his silent companion next. All these technical terms meant as much to him as a pair of boxing gloves did to her. “Is this the kind of stuff that could be made into the poison we saw?”

[The Emerald Hind]

She observed the men's exchange in a seemingly impassive stupor, her mask as cold and bland as the one she had turned upon Victor just hours ago, obscuring the thoughts that lurked just behind her eyes, the worry and the shock that skittered through her mind. It had taken every ounce of control and concentration to retain such a neutral expression during Victor's "talk" with the apothecary, a task that was made a bit more difficult by her amazement at how well suited the prizefighter was to this type of persuasion. His transformation was seamless as he abandoned his hard, direct mannerisms and melted into this calm, sleek, and nearly sinister veneer, a man who was better suited to shining a harsh light on his victims than to trading shots in a musty ring. It was impressive, in fact, if not a little more than unnerving, but he did not give into the implied threats that were left to linger just below his words. Kaia had doubted he would do so, but there was still that fear that slithered along the length of her numerous thoughts.

Even if all her companion implied was a bit of mayhem to happen upon the apothecarium itself, it was more than the girl could bare. It was destructive and cruel, and no matter how unpleasant Flann might have been, she could not stand there and let his shop be destroyed, for, as an herbalist, she understood what each and every one of those precious little bottles and viles were. Their worth was greater than the coin they turned over, for each container represented moons of untold labor and preparation—from tiny seed to compact pill or bitter elixir, each one was a child of labor, holding a story of its own. Perhaps Flann was not what one expected or desired in a proper herbalist, but he put forth just as much effort and thought into each one of his remedies as even she did, and through his darling creations he gave aide to the sick and the dieing. For that, Kaia could forgive him for having attacked her, even if he had gone against the very oaths that bound one to the root and leaf of the Wise Craft in that vulgar act.

Unfortunately, Victor and Kaia's need was dire, and they would come by the information they sought by any means necessary, even if that meant going against her better nature and allowing her companion to shatter and splinter Flann's store beyond recognition. It was a terrible thought to entertain, but she knew that there was no other choice if she was to do as the Stone demanded of her. As it was it remained forever with her, its invisible fingers snaked around her mind, clenching at her thoughts whenever they went astray, ready to reign her back to the proper course. If she did not do as it desired, then she would invite more than just agony upon her person, but a certain and most painful death as what should have been an inanimate piece of gaudy flash exacted its punishment. And Kaia did not want to die, not yet...

Before the herbalist could delve deeper into that river of thought, Victor pulled her back from her dark reveries with his question. She snapped back into attention, looking up at him as she rephrased his words in her head, thinking upon the list the Flann had given. She shook her head in the negative, though, and looked back at the man, eyeing the red-nosed herbalist skeptically.

"Poisons those are, but not what would have strength to do as this poison did. Strong enough to kill more than a few those plants are not." Her brows wove together into a tight mat as she poured over the possibilities, her eyes unfocused as she searched her own memories and knowledge, but found nothing of use. She was a good hand when it came to herbals, but she knew only the most common of flora, not the exotic sort that was indeed at fault here.

"Speak in truth, Apothecary. What is that Humprel wants? Where does it call home? Lie not this time, or else you will find the abilities of those herbs for yourself."

She then proved that she was just as capable of transformation as Victor, and so forced her voice to dip into a low, threatening purr as she traced out the last words, straining her lips into a grim smirk. She stepped towards the man then turned about, examining the neat rows of tinctures and powders so delicately arranged on the store's many shelves and tables. She picked up a bottle marked "Crabs Eye Peas" and took her time in inspecting its contents, giving the hard little beans inside it a shake before placing it back upon the table. Tracing a path with her fingers along the edge of the shelf she found another labeled bottle, this one labeled "Yew", which she also made show in handling. Flann winced both times, understanding full and well her warning.

She detested resorting to such a terrible threat, but it would strike deeper than any attempt at breaking his body by the usual means, for this man knew in intimate detail how true a poison could strike. Most plants of that sort would only leave a man in discomfort for short time, releasing him from its bondage as soon as it fled his body. But there were others, the sorts of herbs of which they now spoke, those meant not to inflict temporary pain but death. Of those there were plants that put one into a deep sleep, granting a peaceful passage into the Darkness of Death's Halls. And then there were those that made one purge all their contents and drank up all the life in a person's body before finally tossing them into the Shadow. But none of those were so terrible as the poisons with which Kaia threatened, those that if administered in the proper amounts would deliver day after day of eternal agony, tearing the body asunder as the mind watched on in horror, unable to react, but denying that one comfort any man would then seek: the splendor that was death after years of intense and unyielding pain. One could live on for years—decades, perhaps—without solace, their muscles screaming, their minds limp in the face of so much endless torture. It was a fate worse than death.

Such a prospect was more enough than enough to make the man twitter before Kaia's unrelenting gaze, and one more look at Victor and his equally dour expression and Flann could do no more than put a name to their fears.

"Hydra sap... It comes outta Raiaera, from The Red Forest. It kills anythin'. A bit expensive, but not so much as others. It's too easy to detect to have any real value." He paused, as if trying to weigh his options and determine if he should continue implicating himself or if he should just play stupid and give forth little else in the way of assistance. A glare from Victor was all he needed to goad him on.

"Look, I heard there's another shipment comin' in. One of my associates woz talkin' about it. Makes him good money. Seems more of the stuff's on its way. Ya can only get so much of the sap at a time, ya see? Comes up river from the port. It'll be in tonight. Don't know the name of the barge that's takin' it in, though."

Kaia had never heard of such a plant called Hydra, but she did not doubt that Flann was now telling them the truth. And as for its value, well, those who resorted to poison tended to use the subtler agents, those which were not easily detected, if any symptoms other than death were evident at all. To be so blatant as to kill anything and everything without discrimination was a fool's error, as such means were easily tracked, but it seemed that Humphrel and his goblin friends had little concern over such details.

Suppressing a shudder arising from thoughts of what such thoughtlessness on their prey's part meant, the herbalist turned upon her heel and left the store, the cheerful chime of the bell a stark contrast to her mood, which had gone quite sour in the face of her own actions, her own deceit.

She felt disgusting—dirty and tainted by the tactics she had employed to get the information from Flann. It was a wretched thing she had done, and she felt as black and spoiled as the forest she left behind. Even if it were necessary, it offered no comfort to have resorted to such a base device as her unspoken threats, and she desperately wanted to wash such filth away. She felt no better even when the Earth Stone brushed her mind with approving warmth; instead, she felt all the worse for having given in to its strident demands. If this continued, how much longer would it be before she was as vile as the dwarf she and Victor sought? Is this what the stone wanted of her? To do such good by any means necessary? It was a concern that she could not bare to analyze at that moment, so she shrugged away, leaving it for a day when her imminent death and that of an entire forest were not waying so heavily above her head.

Instead, she set her self to action and turned sharply as if to go to the docks directly—not that she knew where they were—but stopped as she realized that she had not so much as said a word to Victor before she left. Feeling guilty for such rudeness, she turned around and waited for him, lowering her eyes in wordless apology, her shoulders sagging with more than just the futility of their mission.

[The Cinderella Man]

Prior to awakening today, Victor believed that there was but one face that Kaia donned, one disposition of sympathy and benevolence that merely varied in intensity given the situations. Sometimes it was smothered and reserved, like when they first met in the Peaceful Promenade. On other occasions it was more blatant and off-the-cuff, but it was always present and if you beheld the cleric lass long enough or hard enough, you were bound to find that distinctive trait somewhere beyond the apparent veil. But a lot had changed on the morn. The boxer witnessed an emergence of a cold-hearted Kaia, one whose resolve overruled every other sentiment, one who could fortify herself with thick, tall ramparts. And before he managed to digest that disconcerting shift, the petite, benign-looking maiden turned into venomous hellcat. The serene ease with which she picked up and set down the pharmacist’s toxins, presenting them as a potential doom, almost made her look like a cold-blooded assassin. However, this particular metamorphosis was hardly as disturbing as the first one; for this one, at least, Vic was certain it was just a pretense, just like his bludgeoning coercion.

Whatever it was that Kaia pulled off the shelves and displayed to Flann, it struck the cord of fear better then his wooden bat. The apothecary’s lapse of memory was reversed in an instant and suddenly the man was spilling the beans as if he held a grocery store and not a pharmacy. According to his words, there was a barge coming upriver tonight with another batch of the extremely potent Hydra sap that seemed to fit the profile of the Humphrel’s poison. According to the sparkly perspiration on his wrinkly forehead, Flann was telling the truth. It was good enough to ensure Kaia at least who stormed out of the store as soon as the information was procured. Victor spared a sarcastic gesture on the terrified herbalist.

“See, that wasn’t so hard?” the prizefighter said with a smarmy smirk, tipping his invisible hat to the man. “Good day.”

After the powdery air filled with flower pollen and dry herb particles, the stale streets of Underwood’s sun-basked cobbles smelled like freedom. Victor breathed deeply as he stepped outside, scratching his itchy nose and finally succeeding in making himself sneeze out whatever irritated his nostrils ever since he set foot into Flann’s shop. Luckily, he got his hand up in time, so whatever came out wound up in his palm and not sprayed all over Kaia who was waiting for him while he concluded their ‘business’ with the apothecary.

“Well, that was intense,” Victor said to the diminutive brunette. From what he could ascertain from the lineaments of her visage, Kaia was back to her amicable, lovely self. It made him smile; he preferred this Kaia much more then the other, defective versions. “Good thing he caved in too. Otherwise you’d probably have to use whatever the hell was in those little bottles and I’d have to go caveman on his shop.”

There was a moment of apprehension between the two, their eyes negotiating the possibility of truth in those words. But theb Victor winked lightly and his not-so-pretty smile widened as he patted her shoulder. “You did good in there. You almost made me believe you’d do it.” It wasn’t really true. As good of a thespian as she was in that particular instance, Kaia simply didn’t have what it takes to be a genuine malicious vixen. There was too much honesty in her eyes, too much of that pacifistic mildness that was usually correlated to her real vocation. Somebody like Kaia could never murder somebody in cold blood, whether it was by blade or poison.

“Come on, let’s go the docks and ask around. Somebody must know something of this shipment that our good herbalist friend mentioned.”

The main plaza wasn’t far from the docks of Underwood simply because the marketplace was more of an extension of the docks. In the early days of Underwood, when the regional center of Concordia was no more then a small town populated with lumberjacks and hunters, the docks were amongst the first one to be constructed. Firewine River was a significantly faster way of delivering goods and lumber downstream, so it was only natural that a bazaar sprung up close to this new trading route. Since those early days Underwood grew hundredfold, but the basic outline of the initial settlement still remained, with a wide avenue leading from the heart of the plaza all the way down to the shoreline. The avenue, however, could barely be seen as Kaia and Victor struggled to make their way to the river. The noon had passed and the day began to die, so business picked up a notch, further amplifying the din of the streets and the density of the bodies that scurried down the streets. Sales were conducted with less bargaining now, merchandise changed hands almost in a rush; everybody wanted to be indoors and with their head in a mug or three by the time the sun departed from the sky.

It was hard to tell where exactly the market ended and the docks began. The half-empty stands and their fluttering awnings trailed the street almost all the way to the riverside. This close to the waterfront, however, it was mostly fishermen that pandered their goods. Fresh water fish and river crabs dominated the stands, spreading a not-so-redolent scent throughout the area. Several hawkers took a chance with the clams and oysters from the coastal areas downriver – swearing that their goods are fresh of the boat – but their stands usually smelled worse then usual. Not a very good way to promote oneself, Victor thought. Beyond the fish merchants, a multitude of wooden shacks and warehouses stood, arranged in no particular order, like houses made of cards by a child that played in a sandbox and had no talent for urbanization. And beyond this artificial landscape of brown wood and worn thatch, Firewine River flowed wide and strong.

[The Emerald Hind]

Kaia looked down at her feet in untold shame as Victor offered what was meant to be a compliment. She felt awful for having threatened Flann so, but, more than that, she was terrified: terrified that she could possibly adopt such a means of persuasion with casual ease, and frightened by her ability to manifest into reality those fears which lurked deep within the girl's mind, donning the guise of one of the many dark shadows that wondered amidst nightmares. After all, any person who possessed the knowledge and ability to heal was just as knowledgeable and capable in the art of killing, if such a thing could ever be considered an art. And today she made that point quite clear before a man who knew in intimate detail the danger that lurked within a person bound to the Ways of the Wise. The girl had promised long ago that she would never do such a thing as give into the temptation of her Art's darker ventures, yet, she had danced along its edge in a mimic's foolish costume. Even if in her heart Kaia intended no harm on Flann, had he called her bluff and refused to divulge the information she so desperately needed, the girl might very well have made both their fears a reality, and so taken a life she had sworn long ago never to claim.

Would the cause for which she acted been worthy of such sacrifice? Would it make her less at fault? Would his blood cling to her hands any less? No good could be found in the murder of another. There was always another way, it was simply easier to take a course ripe in blood than to find another hidden amongst the kinder deeds. But would she have bothered with trying to negotiate a new path, which would be time consuming and tedious? Or would she have given in and made her threats more than just words but actions, and so watched a man die by her hand? There were too many questions to ponder, and just too little time, and, for now, she would have to be happy with the outcome of their situation, even if she felt more lost than ever.

With such worries on her mind and her spirits in such at such a low height, the little herbalist found no comfort in Victor's words. Instead, she sighed deeply and shook her head at his appraisal, and only after that did she look up at his rough face to see how he tried to draw her spirits up. His light pat to her shoulder and his endearing grin made clear his attempt at giving her a bit of comfort, and so she offered him a wan smile, the best she could offer given her state. Then, with so very little time to recover from their ordeal, they turned towards the docks and made their way through, and so Kaia fell back into her quiet melancholy, making her way past men and women busy with the daily task of living.

Once again they were thrust into contact with the town's populace, weaving their way around knots of people bunched together as they traded the latest gossip, or haggled with one another over some paltry bit of merchandise, each person deftly sown into the pocket of his own little world. Only a few looked up, but most kept their heads ducked down, so engrossed with their own affairs that little else of the world registered within their scope. They were prisoners to their self-isolation, extending their experiences no further than what was necessary to their survival, never permitting another to trespass upon their sacred realm where thoughts roamed in a selfish garden.

However, there were a few whose curiosity and predisposition towards gossip overruled any desire to focus on what was immediately before them, and so they peered over their shoulders and examined the passersby. Warily their eyes wondered as people passed, lingering upon a handsome face or a lovely body for just a moment before finding the next oddity to keep their attention. Perhaps some half-crazed old soothsayer, or even a rough-and-tumble beauty hiding amongst the dust and shambles? But as Kaia and Victor ventured past those faces to whom the eyes belonged tended to take on queer expressions, often accompanied by the raising of a brow or even a confused sneer. A few stared after them, while most turned back to their companions to whisper and cast odd glances back at the pair. Some were so rude as to point, but those were infrequent, the gestures usually quick and often obscured by the time movement caught the corner's of Kaia's vision. It was a bit unsettling, but the healer ignored such odd behavior, deciding that this was just the usual for this folk's curious ways.

Their critical looks were unnerving enough that Kaia kept close to Victor, a lesser shadow to the true one he cast, but a shade that was no less devout in following at his heels. She found more comfort in his solid familiarity than in the strangeness of Underwood's folk, and submerged as she was in this discorded flow, she was desperate to cling to whatever stronghold on which she could find purchase, and so keep from drowning in this swirling pool of human confusion. She kept so close to him, in fact, that she walked right into him when he was forced to stop to allow a man with a cart full of rotting fish pass by.

She cried out an apology to Victor and took a step back, her face flushed with embarrassment at her clumsiness. It was bad enough she had gotten him into all this trouble, but now she had to appear the fool before him, too, charging into the man like some newborn calf just finding her legs. Not at all intent on seeing the mirth that would surely glaze his features for Kaia had never been the sort to handle embarrassment well, she snapped her gaze down, looking him square in the chest rather than in the eyes.

But what she saw caused the high color in her cheeks to fade along with all thoughts or concerns over her visit into awkwardness, and her countenance traded expressions from that of shocked humility to thoughtful study. She took yet another step back and tilted her head to the side, looking the prizefighter up and down as she moved, her hazel eyes tracing over his muscular frame not in the usual appreciation for his fitness but in close scrutiny to the condition of his garb. Those eyes narrowed slightly and then she looked down at herself, an action that was soon followed by a soft string of oaths spoken in her birth tongue, all thoughts having reverted to the more familiar Avanin language. She touched her brow with a thin-boned hand and shook her head gently, the dark tresses shivering in response to the unexpected action. Thenm, without so much as a warning, she wrapped a cool hand around Victor's arm and guided him away from the avenue by which the came, stopping only when she steered him to the mouth of one of the lesser alleys.

"Victor, if to the docks we go now, we will be very easily spotted." She then gestured to their clothing with a sweep of her hand, meant to draw the eye down to their disheveled garments. For all the good Glas had done them in healing their bodies, his powers held no effect on the condition of their clothing, which had suffered a great amount of damage during their capture and subsequent escape. Unlike their numerous wounds, their clothes did not undergo any magical transformation back into good repair, and so remained burnt and bloody, not to mention covered in a fair amount of dust and soot. Even without the previous injuries, they still looked as if they had held more than just an interesting night. It was a wonder they had not attracted more attention than a few odd glances and whispers during their escapade through the town.

"Mayhaps we find new clothes? I left most of my own in the forest with Glas..."

[The Cinderella Man]

Even though a disguise was the farthest thing from the chugging train of his thoughts – which was currently hell-bent on cracking some dwarven bones and little else – Kaia’s suggestion made perfect sense the way most smart ideas did when you didn’t come up with them. Waltzing into the docks all haggard with an intention to ask questions, bust heads and take names was as good as drawing a bull’s eye on your back and walking into an archery contest: it was only a matter of time before somebody got you. Kaia saw the lack of wisdom in that, Victor naturally didn’t until the moment he was dragged into a shadowed alley and notified of quite the pickle they nearly walked into. It was quite clear who was the brain and who was the brawn in this little operation they were running.

“Yeah, I left my bag back in the forest as well,” the prizefighter admitted. Not that it would’ve done him much good, since the spare garbs his sack ‘o stuff contained were just as derelict as those on his person right now. That’s why they were spare after all, to be used in cases of utter emergency. Purchasing new attires seemed as an unlikely option as well, at least from Victor’s perspective. His stash, as miserably modest as it was, lay somewhere beneath the pair of gloves and his velvet fighting shorts in the same bag as his clothes. The most he could afford with the money in his shallow pockets was possibly a half-decent sock or an itchy shawl. And neither of those could be used to make one look inconspicuous. There was but one option left.

“Wait here. I’ll go fetch us some duds,” he assured his docile companion with a smirk that came out looking not-so-innocent. It still wasn’t by any means a malicious smile, but rather a grin stuck somewhere between goofy and enigmatic, a riddle best left unsolved. Because if she read through it and comprehended his intentions, Kaia probably wouldn’t have let him go through it. As it was, however, he strode away before she could throw in an objection and turned his attention to the hunt for some apparel.

Stealing clothes wasn’t as easy as believed, not even in an urban chaos of Underwood. People were smart animals, self-preserving, protecting their turf and their possessions with fervor. Most hanged their drying garments within earshot, in front of widely open windows that looked over backyards that offered no shadow or cover. And if that wasn’t the case, they strung it high overhead on clotheslines that stretched from one side of the alley to the other, so that you had to be at least ten feet tall in order to reach them. Victor was quite familiar with these difficulties, for he was somewhat of a wanderer for a while now, and when you’re down and out, that line between what you always believed was wrong and what you weren’t so sure anymore that was right became blurry in a rush. Especially when winter’s cold sank its teeth into your flesh and bone. Pride and scruples couldn’t keep you from turning into a human icicle, but a coat borrowed from some aristocrat who had a dozen of similar ones sure as hell could.

Today the reasons for larceny lacked the life-saving drama, but the ultimate goal behind them was good and that placated Victor’s mind enough to make him turn thief with a clear conscience. He swung around a few corners, crept past a couple of hole-ridden wooden fences that peeked into several backyards, but there were slim pickings to be found here. This was a mercantile district; chances were he would find a sack full of useless doodads before he’d find something to wear. Most yards were overgrown with grass or clogged with half-broken crates and decaying leftovers of the perishables that weren’t sold the day before.

Luckily for his quest, there were some living quarters nearby, mostly humble, wooden shacks of fishermen and woodcutters with their straw roofs and cockeyed windows, looking so poor that Victor nearly turned back after guilt decided to invade his mental process. However, by then he already got his hand on a waistcoat and a bandana, both of which could’ve been navy blue once, but were now bleached to a faint azure color. The drunken sailor that left then drying on the window probably wouldn’t miss then that much if he had enough coin to get inebriated. A pair of breeches he leant from an elderly gentleman who seemed far too busy skinny-dipping with a lass about four times younger than he. He would’ve gone for the girl’s dress as well, but by the time he repositioned himself behind the bushes, the pair started to make their return. The girl was a pretty sight, the old man definitely wasn’t.

He got lucky on his return from the waterfront, though. Whorehouses came a dime a dozen at the docks, always luring the blue-collar folk to squander their hard earned money on some very bland sex, watered liquor and bad lodgings. One of such places (that looked like a remodeled warehouse to Victor) had a rather shabby garden behind it, uncared for and unmoved for what looked like decades. The trees still served as supports for clotheslines laden with so much bed linen that they nearly dipped into the dry grass below. Amidst these fluttering sheets of white and pink and purple there were a couple of dresses as well, cheap, flaunty things of poor needlework made to reveal just enough to make a man unload that last coin from his purse. Victor snatched the first one he got his hands on and fled from the premises before he was spotted. It wasn’t like the unladylike ladies of the night needed much clothes given their calling.

He was back in the alley in little under half an hour, dressed like a sailor what with his unbuttoned waistcoat, rolled up breeches and an azure bandana that hid his hair. All he was missing was a talking parrot and a wooden leg. Possibly a jug of rum. There were two bundles of clothes underneath his arms; one was the dress he procured for his companion and the other was his old leather coat. Pants and the shirt he could part with. The coat had personality and the two of them had history. Not good history, but history nonetheless.

“Here, I got you a dress. I hope it’ll fit.” Now that he looked at Kaia, however, he wasn’t so certain. Now that he looked at her, he realized just how petite she was and how huge the dress looked with all the rosy creases. It wasn’t that the cleric didn’t have the curves where she was supposed to (because she very much did, and Victor made sure of that more than once during their time together with random glances), but rather that she merely lacked in height. But then again, given how lousy he was at estimating things, the thing might fit like a glove. “I’ll... uh... I’ll turn around and make sure nobody’s coming.”

[The Emerald Hind]

Kaia was more than a bit unsettled at being abandoned in the alley as Victor went in search of clothing, but she remained where she was upon his command, even if she were not in the least pleased with the situation. She longed for the fresh air and freedom of the forests and fields more than ever as she paced back and forth, awaiting her companion’s return. She could not bare the stench of decay and filth that lofted up from the many piles of trash heaped at odd intervals down the length of her passage way. It was enough to make her nearly heave up what little remained in her belly as chance breezes managed to snake their way through the crooked alley, delivering a putrid bouquet of rotting garbage and sunbaked fish.

However, it was not the smell that bothered the herbalist so much as the local populace. Although their numbers were steadily on the decrease as the day grew all the shorter, her encounters with their sort were increasing as the more street savvy individuals took to the alleys and back streets so as to bypass the bulk of the city traffic. Most had ignored her and gone on their way with little more than a cursory glance over her person, presumably heading home after a hard day’s labor and having very little interest in anything beyond the desire to return to their hearths. Yet, there were a few men who found Kaia’s presence a pleasant surprise upon turning the corner. Luckily, after assessing her rather tattered state and her encountering stout refusals to charm them deeper into the shadows, they left her be with nary more than a grumble. There were too many willing women to be had elsewhere, all of whom looked the proper part and were more eager with the plying of their wares, so there existed little sense in hassling one straggly girl just to land themselves in trouble with the city watch.

After a third round of such attention, though, Kaia took to the lengthening shadows, pressing her back to a corner fashioned by the meeting of the plastered brick wall and a tall stack of rotting crates. It left her visible only to the direction in which Victor had disappeared, allowing him the chance to see her upon his return, while making it so that she had only one side in need of protecting from potential problem males. Not that she was all that certain that she could defend herself. She had left her staff back in the forest with Glas and the fawn, having found it much to unwieldy for practical purposes. That left her with only the sickle, which was by no means designed for battle. The only way she could inflict harm with it was if she permitted her attacker close enough that he could do her equal damage, a situation that she could not bare thought. Still, she found herself repositioning the bladed object from its canvas sheath and allowing it to hang loosely at her hip.

She waited in such a fashion for what seemed like an eternity, even though the darkness advanced only by a few more measures than it had when her companion first disappeared around the corner. As patient as tended to be, though, she found herself wondering what was taking the boxer so long to procure those much needed garments. It drove her crazy that she was not with him, helping him in the selection of their disguises, but she also knew that his acquisition was far from legal, as she doubted he had any more coin on him than she did. It was probably better than she had been left behind, but, at the same time, she hated not knowing what was taking place. Or whether or not he was alright. After all, if he planned to obtain said garments through alternate means, there was a high chance of his being caught. Victor was not exactly small, and his ability to sneak about was certainly hampered by his considerable bulk. It would have been far better had she gone along to assist in such ventures, even if she were not much better at subterfuge than he, or the fact that she was very unlikely to steal in the first place. So immersed by her meandering thoughts was the girl that she was taken unaware when a tall figure swung around the bend and catch off guard by his sudden presence.

Much to her personal chagrin, the girl did not reach for her scythe as she should have, but, rather, squeezed back further into her corner, trying her best to find safety amongst the shadows. It was a most embarrassing response, and by no means one that would do her any good should the man try to do her some mischief, but she still remained still, shrinking away, an action for which she mentally berated herself as the man closed the distance between them. Maybe if she ignored him like she had the others he would leave her alone, but he seemed intent on her, his eyes locked on her figure as a small smile broke across his features. A rather familiar smile, when she considered it. Then the stranger passed under a spill of light, which broke over the man's face, tracing over all too much familiar features.

Very much relieved by his return, the herbalist scurried away from her hiding place to meet Victor only to stop mid-step as she took in his garb. A slim brow arched in silent question as she assessed his choice in costume, gliding over the maritime accouterments and faded apparel. After having seen him in nothing but a simple shirt and boxing shorts, Kaia was unprepared to see the man in anything else; she had half expected his disguise to be little more than what he usually wore with perhaps the addition of a hat or a different coat. To witness him in that which made him look the part of a secondhand pirate, however, was rather...amusing. It was almost enough to elicit a laugh, but she stifled the urge, choking back a giggle for the sake of his dignity; however, she was not quite able to suppress a rather ironic smile as she eyed his new attire. She never pinned him for the part of a sailor.

“You appear very...different,” she muttered, once again denying the urge to laugh at his expense.

However, sweet justice was extracted, even if Victor did so unknowingly, for when the man uttered the word “dress” Kaia all but groaned in response. But what had she expected? She was female, after all, and women were supposed to wear dresses. Not Kaia. Despite all her mother’s efforts, she could never get the girl into anything but her usual uniform of loose fitting tunics and breeches. Dresses simply were not functional, tending to get in the way while the girl tarried in the field. For Kaia, they served no purpose: you could not hunt while in a dress, you could not harvest herbs in a dress, and you certainly could not climb trees and rocks in a dress. They had not practicality, and in the end, that was what mattered. Over the years, such an outlook caused Kaia to develop a complete aversion to dresses. No longer was it simply the fact that dresses held little in applicable appeal, but that she hated the way they felt when she was forced to don them. It made her uncomfortable, and she felt exposed--naked--with so little between her and the sky. One wrong move or one unfortunate catch of the breeze, and every bit of modesty she possessed would be there for the world to see. How other women went about wearing them without such concerns was a mystery to Kaia. Poor Victor had no such knowledge of Kaia’s preferences, however.

Not wanting to seem ungrateful, the herbalist wiped away the look of horror that had surely stolen over her visage when her partner presented her with the rose-colored gown, and thanked the pugilist as kindly as she could behind gritted teeth. She only hoped the deepening shadows obscured the dread that shown in her eyes as she unfolded the dress and brought up to the failing light for inspection. Luckily, it was a simple thing. No large flower prints or untold miles of lace. Still, it was a dress...

Swallowing a sigh and simply allowing herself the luxury of shaking her head at her predicament, she retreated a few steps into the darkness as Victor ever so kindly turned his back to offer her some privacy. The healer then set about to the task of changing, exchanging garments as quickly as possible, for she felt quite vulnerable shedding her clothes in the middle of an alley where people had been wondering to and fro since her arrival. The last thing she needed was some half-drunken workman rounding the corner to see her freed of her garments. At least Victor was there, standing watch, but that was a bit unnerving, as well, albeit for far different reasons.

Once in her own disguise, the girl took her torn and battered clothes and--regretfully--tossed them on one of the nearby refuse piles. She then removed the bandanna from her hair and stuffed it under the hem of her bust-line, the only place she had to keep anything now that she had given up her more functional garments. Her scythe, which with she refused to part, was once again sheathed, but now it was strapped her leg by her belt, which she refused to leave behind as it was fashioned from sturdy leather, making it a valuable piece. Luckily, the bulge created by both items was barely noticeable under the flowing fabric of the cheaply made dress.

“There... I am...clothed... Partially...” This time, she could not bar the displeasure from her voice, having taken one look at herself and finding the sight unnerving.

Sure enough, the dress was not a proper fit, but it was not simply the length that was ill suited to the cleric’s rather curvaceous build. Rather than be over-sized all around, it was found to be far too small in key areas. The low cut neck exposed a generous portion of bust, smothering what little it did cover and forcing the rest to nearly spill over the neckline. It had taken some careful adjustments to tend to a possible disaster involving her exposed flesh, but it made it difficult to breathe, and should the girl need to run (a common enough situation over these last few days) she was certain to give onlookers an eye full. The dress fit comfortably enough around the waist, but when the fabric stretched across her hips it threatened to bust at the seems. The cloth wrapped tightly about her rear, exposing every curve, before falling away in a dramatic flow of rose-pink fabric right down to her toes, where it spilled across the ground, a few inches too long. Apparently, the dress’s original owner had been been both more slender and taller than the herbalist, or else she had a liking for garments of torture. At least she still had her boots, which the copious length obscured from view.

Kaia was uncertain as to whether or not she wished to glare at Victor when she was forced to present herself and the mockery that she was in such a getup, but in the end she merely flashed him a sheepish grimace as her arms moved around uncertainly, trying to find a means by which to cover her exposed body without appearing even more ridiculous than she already did.

[Yay for rustiness! xD I only hope I did a decent job... >_> This is literally the first time I've written anything more than a paragraph since before September...]

[The Cinderella Man]

((Your rust makes my rust feel ashamed :())

“Well, I'll be a son of a bitch! There’s a steaming hot chick beneath all that grime.”

It was an inappropriate, ill-mannered comment, of course, one that no gentleman would ever voice, and yet there it was, jumping straight into the mind of the prizefighter once Kaia stepped forth in her new attire. Victor’s eyes were traitors that refused to uphold his decency and instead fled to the exposed flesh of her bust. He whipped them back in order and to her chagrined face almost immediately, but the deep cut of the dress and the tanned skin it left exposed were a constant temptation, jumping at him from the corner of his eye, luring him to take another peek. And he undoubtedly wanted to. Gentleman or no gentleman, there were some basic instincts implanted in every male which had operational gear between his legs, and ogling female curves when they were out for display was one of them. It’s the control over this urge that separated the jerks from the decent people. And Victor was decent people. At least he thought himself to be.

He faked a cough, buying his brain some to conjure a remark that wouldn’t include the mention of her breasts. Or her sculptured behind. Or any part of her outlined anatomy for that matter. The best he could come up with was: “Aahem, yes, I’m afraid it’s a bit longish. I was never good at estimating sizes. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. To err was never more sweet and eye-pleasing,” a impudent voice in his head contested the statement, the sexist, desperately male part of him that fell into every possible gender-related cliché.

Luckily, Victor was good at keeping that part of himself subdued. Because he was decent people, and decent people didn’t add insult to injury. Commenting on anything that the kitsch dress may or may not reveal would serve no other purpose except further displeasing Kaia. And the girl was displeased with her new garb, there was little doubt about it. She refused to outwardly express dissatisfaction, but it seeped into her tone all the same, making it both caustic and abashed. It was enough to make Victor consider restarting his thievery run, but the sun above was already losing its power, making the shadows long and cool, which meant that time was running out. By the time he’d return with a new attire for Kaia, chances were that night would be upon them and the deal between Humphrel and the death traders would already be concluded.

“We should get going.” the boxer-turned-sailor said, offering the crook of his arm to the voluptuous cleric. She took it hesitantly, as uncertain about this little detail as she was about wearing the scandalous dress, looking a little bit like that lost little fawn she rescued the other day. “Hopefully, this masquerade will do the trick.”

It most definitely did. From the moment Kaia and Victor stepped out from the stuffy shadows of the alleyway and into the cobbled avenue that grew more orange with every inch of sun’s descent, they were two completely different people in the eyes of the onlookers. Most saw them as no more then another couple out for the night on the town, a sea-weary bluejacket fresh ashore and looking to squander some gold on one of the local harlots. Those that cast a more inspective glare at the two mostly wound up staring at Kaia’s bouncy attributes, regardless of the gender. Most men wound up wanting to be Victor. Most women wound up wanting to gouge Kaia’s eyes out with a rusty spoon. And in the midst of all the lusty glares and envious thoughts, nobody noticed the prizefighter and the herbalist that walked these same streets mere days ago. It was distraction at its finest, like when an illusionist waved his right hand in front of your face while he slipped the coin in his left and made you miss the obvious.

“We’ll hit the local beggars. If you want some information on the comings and goings in this place, the street beggars are the place to go,” Victor explained as the docks before them became more and more prominent. The struggle with the desire to stare at something other than Kaia’s eyes was invariable, partially satisfied with the accidental skims.

Stone and brick gave way to wood and thatch, cobbles to dirt and planks and gangways, and soon enough they were walking down the riverside, passing by inert frigates that floated lazily by the piers, restrained by half-a-dozen lengths of rope. Some of the more persistent fishermen concluded their day at the river, docking their single-sail vessels, casting their catch and their nets ashore and complaining to each other about the weather, the fish and every other bloody thing they could think of before they decided to drown their complaints in some cheap liquor. Victor and Kaia lookalikes - crewmen and their ladies - could be seen on every other corner, palavering, negotiating and eventually slipping into some unoccupied shadow. It was a shameless display of a rugged, crude and utterly simple existence where even the greatest worries usually lacked the deathly weight.

Beggars were a crucial segment of the local folklore, elders of the streets whose wrinkled asses knew every bump and crack of the pavement and whose glazed eyes and hairy ears caught random bits of information out of thin air. Most were quite useless, ravings of some ruined merchant or adulterous fondlings of a married barfly, while others made good bargaining chips. Like the information about the shipment arriving late that night. Victor had to toss quite a few gold pieces in the hats of quite a few cadgers to be pointed in the right direction. The last one - a bald ancient who smelled of dogs and urine, and wanted a kiss from Kaia as a reward – eventually settled for five gold pieces and pointed them to pier 17 and the The River Raider barge that docked less than an hour ago.

The seventeenth pier of the Underwood docks was mere minutes away, located at the outer edge of the entire district, where the trees of Concordia slowly invaded the city premises and bringing a whiff of freshness to the reek of fish and litter. It also provided means for the pair to sneak to the nearby vacant boathouse unnoticed. The darkness was already upon them by then, bland and murky as only twilight could make it, allowing Kaia and Victor to observe the ship through the broken window of the boathouse. There was no sign of the vicious dwarf yet, but judging by the four stalwart sentries posted on the main deck, the deal was yet to go through. Otherwise, they would’ve probably been half-drunk in some local tavern by now.

“Alright, we need to get on that boat somehow and take those guards out. That way, when Humphrel comes, we can ambush him.” It was a ludicrous plan, pieced together in about as much time as it took to voice it. There were four guards against two of them, and the pair was armed with a bat and a sickle, whereas there were falchions and flintlocks. It would’ve been a one-sided battle, comical even given Kaia’s clothing. They needed a distraction, something that would allow them to sneak onboard unnoticed and take the sentries by surprise. The answer to that predicament presented to Victor once his eyes unintentionally fell on the cleavage of the herbalist at this side.

“Maybe you could... you know... distract them,” the boxer said, cupping his hands before him in the shape of breasts and gesturing to what he had in mind. He wasn’t certain whose face was flushed more at that point, but he continued, doing his best to explain. “Just for a minute or so. I could board the ship unnoticed and take them from behind.”

For some reason, Victor Callahan expected a slap as a response. Women tended to be rather touchy when it came to flaunting their goods, even if it was for a good purpose.

((And the awkward moments keep on coming. ;)))