Lore of Leyuna RPG (FRPG)

[Hopeflower]

The assassins turned, with Brionna giving Septimus a look - not quite as severe a look as Vix might give someone who tracked mud all over the clean floors, but close. "Not all of us have six limbs," she said, jabbing a finger at him for emphasis. "You try cleaning up spilled tea and serving breakfast at the same time, without any help from magic." A moment later, she deflated a little and added, rubbing a hand over her face, "But apology accepted."

Dante snickered and said, "I'll take them, thanks. Akando's gone to make sure people know you were helping out. Said something about expecting we'll need extra hands."

[The Kingpin]

"It may not look it, but there's enough in the satchels that we'd need to move most of the tables out of the way if I were to put the supplies down here," warned the Scholar, adding jokingly, "I'm sure our resident innkeeper wouldn't want the extra work."

[Hopeflower]

Brionna's narrow-eyed glance snapped Dante out of the surprise that - in hindsight - he probably shouldn't have felt. They'd asked a dragon to help feed a village. There was bound to be more than they strictly needed.

"Then we find Akando and whatever help he's managed to get, and we start handing that out," he decided. It was a good thing he hadn't taken his coat or gloves off yet.

[The Kingpin]

With a nod, Septimus stepped aside and grabbed the door, pulling it open. "Lead the way then, Dante. You know your guildmaster's habits better than I do." He managed to do so without letting on the amusement he felt at the absurdity of the small-framed innkeeper's disproportionately substantial irritation. It was as though a cat had decided a hound needed to be put in place.

[Hopeflower]

As though to complete the comparison, though he had no way of knowing, Dante ruffled Brionna's hair affectionately. She shooed him away with a good-natured swat, and had disappeared back into the kitchen by the time he'd stepped out the door.

"I get the sense that this is gonna take a little while," Dante commented, "but maybe we can get through it without anyone resorting to using the food as improvised weapons."

[The Kingpin]

"I'm fairly sure the presence of a dragon, however friendly, will discourage that," joked the Scholar as he closed the door to the inn behind him.


It may not have been a chaotic process, but it was most certainly a time consuming one. The sun was steadily drifting away from its position above them by the time they were finished, the early hours of the afternoon bringing with it the closest thing to a respite from the cold they had seen yet. The Scholar remained until all the goods were distributed, and he'd made a point to get Beshayir involved above all else. While it was only a superficial detail, it was a memory that would stay with the people of the village. That Beshayir was a friend of theirs. The young elf enjoyed helping, of course, especially when she was able to see all her friends from earlier that year, the smiles on their faces and their parents' faces. But she wasn't entirely aware, at that time, just how long the memory would last. That was something she'd discover in years to come, when the day came that she returned to this place alone.


The Scholarly Quartet left the village behind them once their work there was done, and no more than an hour later, the darkened walls, spires and buttresses of Brodudika could be seen looming beyond the naked forest that had so often served as his brother's duelling ground.

[C S]

Rutgers learned that the village was called Potu from overhearing conversations that wafted by the workshop. A small name for a small place. The classic stories always told of sprawling kingdoms that incurred the mighty dragon's wrath, while the small villages were robbed of its cattle by the rare vagabond drake. Just for some shambles of fortune, Potu was made the dragon's vassal. It was true that the classic tales did not allow for the nuances of dragonkind, a fault that bothered the axeman, but for his purposes, the analogy of slaying the dragon assailing the village before it can attack the kingdom was a fairly fitting one. He was not overly concerned with the poetry of tying dragons to the twisted results of humanity's most undesirable traits. Fiends looked drastically different from one to the next but they were still fiends. It was this lack of nuance and conflict that Rutgers steeled himself with.

He finished his workshop preparations and set off to the trees around the village, setting the figurative stage. When those measures were completed, Rutgers decided things were set as well as they ever would be in his favor. It had taken too long for his liking any which way; by now, the village would be divvying up what it could for Morrelie's sake without knowing if its people would make it to spring without casualties.

Rutgers went back through the city gates, past the watermill and down the path that led to the gathering hall. He opened the doors and was greeted by curious gazes that turned to surprise, villagers that were fixing the first of Morrelie's meals. Rutgers looked to Morrelie, and saw that she had... changed. Her outfit was no longer ragged, but he was certain the people of Potu did not have a spare uniform for her.

"Blasted magical devilry," Rutgers growled before bringing an arm out from underneath his fur coat. He lobbed a small coin sack at Morrelie, and it fell limply at her side. Her dark eyes opened slowly, one brow arched. The villagers winced, cringed and gasped. Rutgers tuned them out as his hands went about, freeing his bow and retrieving an arrow from his coat. He raised the bow, arrow nocked, and drew back on the string before letting the projectile fly into the sack.

The arrow stuck itself into the floor paneling and burst the sack, showering Morrelie with a powder of ground up herbs.

"Uh... these cause numbing if ingested, and drowsiness afterwards. Why are you interested in them, again?"

"I will be completely honest for once in my life: I want to get rid of Morrelie. As much as I would like to explain everything else you may be confused about now, we don't have the time. Just trust that I can, or I will die trying."

"'Completely honest for once your life'. You've lived a tale of mischief, or a tale of wickedness?"

"Is there a difference?"

"Mischief comes to an end by choice or the executioner's axe. There is no rest for the wicked."

Morrelie huffed and puffed. Rutgers pulled out another arrow and sent it flying her way, only to have it stop midway between him and her and snap in half. At that, he turned tail and sprinted as fast as he could back the way he had came. Plan A was too simple. Good thing there was plan B: get back to his carry-on. He had made it a few yards away from the hall with a burst of light shone down on him. He did not stop to look back, so he did not see the mage fly out of the meeting hall on a line of glowing links, which disappeared at the highest point of her ascent. She twisted about in the air, waved her wand and sent another chain out to anchor onto a nearby building.

Rutgers drove his legs onwards, clearing the gate as Morrelie catapulted herself up and over the village streets. She soared high and glared down, spotting the black-pelted man and focusing all of her ignited anger on his fleeing form. "There's always ONE dumb ******* trying to test me!" she roared. Her wand lashed out, a chain latched onto the village gate, and Morrelie pulled herself downwards at a dizzying pace before swinging under the gate's arch and launching herself out after Rutgers.

The axeman thought he would have had a little more time than that when he was plotting things through. It wasn't farfetched to think that the tired old woman weary from her battles and travels would be a little slow on her feet. Rutgers knew at the moment that her foot made contact with his back, he was dead wrong.

As though he were hit by a titanic creature from a frontier he was not familiar with, Rutgers was blown off of his feet and launched several yards downrange. Much of his short flight was less than a foot over the snow, which helped to cushion his inevitable crash with a biting cold as he rolled and thudded against the frozen ground. The axeman coughed as he picked himself up, finding that he'd lost his bow. A quick glance to his side revealed to him that it had fared worse than him, broken in two and lying a few feet behind. He frowned at the loss and realization that he couldn't be too sure he was really any better. It may not feel like things were broken now, but in a little while that could very well change.

"Not going to be a little while at this rate," Rutgers noted, looking back to Morrelie. There was no urgency in her stride, and she walked with the grace of someone who hadn't just executed a high speed flying kick, augmented with magic. The possibility of her doing it again had Rutgers suitably concerned, so it was onwards with plan B while the adrenaline was still pumping through his veins.

"Oh, damn it. I really am not in the mood to chase after suicidal morons," Morrelie griped, looking through slitted eyes at the man stumbling away out of the rut his body had left. She waved her wand haphazardly, summoning crackling orbs and tossing them without care at Rutgers, who dove and rolled with the agility honed from his career as a hunter. The erratic magic soared past him and burst against the snowy ground and trees, making the shadows dazzle with each bright explosion, leaving vapors to rise from each scorched spot that burned the nostrils when inhaled.

"I should have known something was up with you when I saw you standing aside from everyone else. I thought you were special in the other sense of the word, and I have to say, I don't think I was entirely wrong," Morrelie said dispassionately as she followed after the axeman. She covered her mouth with her free hand when she began to yawn.

"Oh, as an aside, I can't say I appreciate being drugged" -- she yawned again -- "If you had any decency at all, you would have used that first shot on me. It wouldn't have worked, but at least you wouldn't die a cheater!"

Morrelie's words trailed after Rutgers, and he took some satisfaction that plan A was not a complete failure. "One last gift from that faithful bow," he muttered to himself as he ran, careful of where he placed his feet. His carry-on was in sight. Before elation could set in, he heard a crack, and he dropped to the ground to evade the spell sent after him. As he had expected, a multicolored undulating oblate orb passed over him, which flattened further into a paper-thin disc. It hit a decently sized tree deeper in the woods and died in a spray of sparks and embers, followed by the gradual listing and subsequent collapse of the plant.

The prone, wide-eyed Rutgers couldn't help thinking, "What a day it will be when men can cut down trees like that without the use of magic."

"Ah, good. Now just stay right there..." Morrelie covered another yawn. "I want no mistakes when I cut you in half!" The mage called out as her vision began to swim, and everything in her field of view took on doubles. "Ugh, it's been forever since I was last drunk. Hey, idiot," Morrelie pointed at Rutgers, who had since rolled onto his back, "if I end up tossing your guts all over the place, that's on you."

"Duly noted. If I may, I think your comprehension of violence seems disturbingly rudimentary," Rutgers replied plainly as he shimmied away from the advancing mage.

"You kill one villain, you've killed them all. There is no honor or respect in it; you do it or you don't. I can't imagine why the hell you wouldn't, though."

Rutgers cocked his head. Villain, now? Was he missing something? He wasn't given any time to flounder in his thoughts. With the same candid execution as the ease with which Morrelie spoke her words, Rutgers felt an unnatural force wrap around him, constricting in nature. He wanted to yell out, but was certain that the moment he did, his chest would cave in. The axeman could only struggle in vain against the invisible hand that lifted him from the snow and tightened its squeeze.

"That isn't to say you can't enjoy ridding the world of evil. I've lived too long for my own good; every waking moment is a mix of exertion of the mind with the degradation of flesh with a dash of absolute agony to boot. The only thing keeping me from madness is a single goal that I keep getting sidetracked from by one ******** circumstance to the next."

Morrelie leered at Rutgers. The latest in her string of ******** circumstances.

"You take any joy you can get when you're in my situation."

Morrelie approached her captive axeman with the same patience of a spider closing in on a morsel caught in her web. Rutgers grunted and bared his teeth. It felt like the woman was stretching him out along his height. Getting ready to slice him in half like she had that tree.

"I haven't been happy in a long time." She yawned, then waved her hand. "And thanks to you, I have a bit of a temper boiling. That won't do at all. So, for the good of all those people back there, you're going to make me very, very happy, if only for a little while, and then I am going to regain my strength so I can go wring some information about worms from a death-loving demon-puppet. Deheldehpee, if you will."

There was a a tiny sensation that Morrelie did not register as she spoke, one of her feet falling upon the fateful tripwires that Rutgers had laid out. What she did heed was the telltale snapping some distance away, which had her swiveling her head from side to side to predict where the danger would be coming from. Reflexively, she raised her magical barrier, just in time to stop the two pike-fall traps Rutgers had set from impaling her with crude metal stakes he had milled in the workshop and tied to the branches. What she couldn't negate was the force of impact, which sent her tumbling backwards with the same intensity as her kick had sent Rutgers through the air, her full-body shield of light rippling with the concentrated blow.

The axeman fell to his knees and gasped for breath. Morrelie's shriek, "That does it, you're on my list too, you audacious son of a *****!" tore through the forest, her voice boosted by her magic.

"Likewise, you horrid banshee," Rutgers spat. He got to his feet and grabbed his carry-on. "Well, on with it, then!" he shouted back at her, then began to make his hustle.

There really was no rest for the wicked.

Nor was there any escaping for him. He'd only managed a few haggard steps before the shadows of the trees were replaced by overpowering light, and bright links of mana swirling with raw energy. The chains were spread out in between the trunks around Rutgers, forming a fence that closed off all routes forwards, and all routes back. The ex-ranger stood there, panting, as he took in the gravity of his situation.

"Locked in with the lion, it seems," he mused, taking inspiration from the tales of gladiators and their spectacles against captured beasts.

Another cursory look around him gleaned that there was nothing to witness his end. No woodland citizen to pay their respects to the woodsman. Rutgers closed his eyes, took a steadying breath, then dropped his carry-on. He pulled off his pelt and let it fall over the bag. His hands then went to the hafts of the axes strapped to his back and he drew his weapons.

"No telling if I'll get to use you, but it was always the plan to die with you in my hands. Whether I take my own life or not."

"You can die stark-ass naked for all I care, as long as you do die. If you get out of this somehow, I swear, I will drop everything to find the primordial force acting against me and put an end to this mockery." Morrelie came to a stop several paces behind Rutgers, her wand held out to her side.

"It is a show of shortsightedness on my behalf, that I never imagined a beast such as yourself being able to speak, much less taunt me at my final moment." Rutgers turned to face Morrelie with the sternest glare of his hard life.

Morrelie's puzzlement showed in the fixture of her black eyes. "I don't follow. You calling me stupid, or...? Because as far as I know, this is the first time we've met and I'm quite certain you haven't seen anything like me before." She then shrugged, as if something had become clear to her. "You know what? I get it. I'm human too; we all like to pass our judgements first and so on so forth. Landed the knife-ears in some big trouble way back when, and it's going to cost you your life. Funny how these things go, huh?"

"You're... human." Rutgers sighed. "You may not look like any other fiend, but you are no less deluded."

Morrelie blinked a couple of times before she lowered her wand. "I've heard something almost exactly like this from Kristov, come to think of it. Something about mankind being cursed and arrogant or what have you. You call those things fiends, hmm? "

"You... Kristov...?" Rutgers replied with growing confusion, which Morrelie noticed with some degree of impatience.

"Yeah, yeah, you can wallow in your tiny understanding of things on your own time. I'm going to go out on a limb here and infer that you're the type to deaden those things all good and well, yeah?"

Rutgers nodded slowly.

"Excellent!" Morrelie's voice became airy. "You're not completely useless to me after all. Kristov is friends with these fiends. You aren't a friend of them. I'll let you live to go kill Kristov's friends. Maybe let you try your luck with Kristov himself." Her voice was decidedly grim again.

There were so many things going through Rutgers' head, so many questions he could have asked. But he had set out to save Potu, and he was dedicated to that objective. That drive, much like returning to the village, kept him from being swallowed up by the moment. That was why the conflicted axeman replied, "I will do this thing... but I have no idea where to begin. If I am to find this Kristov, I will need you to travel with me."

Morrelie shrugged. "Fair enough. I hold your hand and you serve as a meat shield next time I brawl with him. But I've been wandering around nonstop for ages now, and even I need to take a rest stop from time to time."

"We can rest in travel," Rutgers insisted. "The less ground we let them cover between us, the better." He spoke so earnestly that Morrelie took it to mean he was an addict for the thrill of the chase. She did not suspect that he was desperate to keep her away from the people of Potu.

"... Fair enough, I suppose. We hunt down Kristov, and you feed me along the way."

Rutgers begrudgingly nodded. Morrelie flicked her wrist and dispelled her chains.

At least he didn't have to find her new clothes to bewitch. Not yet. Not ever, if there was any benign force in the universe.

[Hopeflower]

As Arsenic jumped down from the back of his unconventional mount, he found himself automatically reaching out to pat the huge carnivore's shoulder. The animal sighed vapor, as though tired of his enthusiasm, but there was a simple pride in the way it lifted its head and shook out its thick fur. It had done its job and done it well - and had even been permitted to race between the drifts of snow the way its untamed cousins surely did. It was not as smart as Aviva, had no way of knowing that Arsenic had urged it faster for the thrill, but it was well aware that it had been doing what it was bred for.

His companions were less impressed with Arsenic's antics. Vix had given up trying to get him to stay with the rest of them after the third time they'd spotted him waiting for them, just within view. Rowan on the other hand had sighed, rolled her eyes, and been quietly glad that her friend still knew how to have fun. Even if it was his own idea of fun. And even if, as soon as she could reach him, she punished him for rushing ahead by locking her arm around his neck and digging her knuckles into his scalp. Arsenic retaliated by jabbing her between the ribs until she let go.

"This must be it," Vix said, resigning herself to dealing with their shenanigans until Arsenic burned off the strange energy that always seemed to follow him after an encounter with a big predator. She glanced from her map to the town just ahead of them, wondering why Viho had sent them here of all places. By all appearances, this place wouldn't have an especially extensive library, if they had one at all.... She supposed that bumped Calpurnia down a step or two from the historian she'd been imagining.

"And that must be the Red River," Rowan muttered, taking in the wide and deceptively serene expanse of water that lay beyond the town with some trepidation. She'd heard more than enough about it in her time. If the tales were to be believed, the river had earned its name. Sharks and crocodiles and who knew what else had been known to drag the unwary to watery graves. Only bits of the bodies were ever recovered, and that was if the person's loved ones were lucky. Some even said so many had met their end in that river that the silt itself was stained red.

Most of it was probably nonsense. She'd also heard more than a few of those stories begin with, "My brother's best friend's cousin lost his girl in that river." Even so, she found herself relieved that they didn't have to try and cross the river to get to Sarton.

Arsenic nudged them both gently. Their apprehension was a bitter tang at the back of his throat. 'Fun as it might sound to stand around staring at the scenery until bits start dropping off of us, our time would be better spent getting what we came for.'

Though its buildings were mostly plain and its roads little more than gravel, Sarton turned out to be an active, energetic sort of place. It smelled strongly of fish and salt air, as one might expect, and people bustled from place to place with either the day's catch or their company of choice. Here and there, a few people sat taking in what warmth the day offered while they played their favored game. Farther up the main road, a small crowd had gathered, though without getting closer, it was impossible to tell who or what they were watching.

[The Kingpin]

"It is a quaint little place, isn't it?" asked Andruil, a hint of appreciation in his voice that couldn't have been hidden if he had tried. He had always preferred the small villages to the larger places. Less chaos, less noise, less of a stink, and most importantly, less misery. This was one of those places that still knew how to smile; something that could not be said for most larger towns and cities.

"A village is a village. Full of people eager to use whatever they can to get ahead," grumbled Pyranex, in a particularly bad mood as of late. The time spent travelling had been split between flying and walking, and often had the gryphon stopping and leaving Andruil to go ahead. It turned out that gryphons weren't designed to spend extended periods of time moving on foot; their feet were designed for gripping jagged cliffs and rocky outcrops, perching there as they watched their prey from above, not for treading on flat ground like the similarly large but significantly heftier beasts that served as the other mounts in their company.

"Relax, Pyranex. Most people are wise enough to give a gryphon its due respect. Either because it is deserved or because they like their heads attached to their shoulders."

The storm gryphon snorted his distaste at that. "You're implying that their respect isn't deserved. You are aware that is false," he growled, tilting his head aside to meet Andruil's golden eyes with one of his own steely silver ones.

"Of course. That said, not all gryphons match your strength and presence, yes?" responded Andruil evenly, tilting his head slightly as the ruffle of feathers heralded Shiryaz's landing on his shoulder, the griffinhawk furling his wings as he stared down at the gryphon as if warning him not to antagonise Andruil, even weakened as the bird was from the events in Brodudika not too long ago.

"True. Some are little more than animals, unable to reason beyond food, drink, territory and breeding," admitted Pyranex, though he made sure to give the griffinhawk a brief warning growl before breaking eye contact, preferring not to waste his time and patience with a creature that seemed not to have the capacity to back down from a challenge.

[Hopeflower]

Arsenic gritted his teeth against the various responses he wanted to snap at the gryphon, some of his good mood disappearing. Instead of turning and commenting on the derisive tone, however, he forced himself to keep walking and remark, 'It feels a little like home.'

"Doesn't it?" Vix replied, turning on the ball of her foot to get a good look around them. Rowan caught her arm and steadied her when she stumbled.

Their approach didn't go unnoticed or uncommented upon. The curious stares they drew were accompanied by murmuring. Arsenic noticed more than one burst of surprised, even confused recognition - but by the time he turned his head to try and pin down who it came from, the groups of people closest to them had turned away to whisper urgently to one another.

It left him a little...unnerved. Maybe this place was less like home than he'd initially thought.

The group was met just outside of the town by a small-framed human woman, roughly in her forties. She stood as tall as she could, with her hands clasped behind her back, and surveyed them critically. "Welcome to Sarton," she greeted them, with the air of one ready to deny a request that she'd heard a hundred times in a hundred different variations. "You're a little early to be fishing for sport, I'm afraid."

[The Kingpin]

"Really? The weather seems perfect for it!" responded Andruil in a tone that was almost confusingly jolly. "It is a popular activity here, I take it?" he asked after leaning forward, his expression suddenly very serious, as if he was worried about making a false assumption. Pyranex gave a somewhat irritated grunt at that, wondering for a moment how the Knight had the energy or urge for theatrics, before remembering that he wasn't the one that had walked and flown the entire way here.

[Hopeflower]

"Popular enough that people assume they're clever enough to get around our rules about it," the woman replied, arching an unimpressed eyebrow. "I'll tell you the same thing I tell everyone else. There's no fishing for black-backed salmon at the mouth of the river, and no fishing upriver until the spring floods die down."

"With all due respect," Rowan cut in when the stranger paused, "we're not here to fish. We're looking for someone."

At that, unmistakably, the woman glanced at Arsenic. The corners of her mouth turned down with something dangerously close to sympathy. But she cocked her head in invitation, waiting for them to elaborate.

"We were told her name is Calpurnia," Vix continued cautiously, noting that look as surely as Arsenic did. "And that she knows a thing or two about Elvish history."

"Callie?" The woman seemed genuinely surprised. She glanced at Arsenic again. "You'll find her over there," she said slowly, gesturing at the crowd farther down the road. "I assume you need a place for your mounts to rest while you...talk to her," she added, snapping her fingers to get the attention of a couple of men and women hovering nearby. One of them stopped fidgeting with a large knife and straightened as though he hadn't expected their visitors to be welcomed into the town.

[The Kingpin]

Andruil's mouth parted in a small, understanding Ah. "I think I would prefer if Pyranex here came with me," ventured Andruil cautiously. "He dislikes being uh...handled."

As if reading more into the statement than was strictly necessary, the gryphon narrowed his eyes, looking at the woman, and then to the Knight, and then back to the woman. As Andruil suspected, however, he said nothing. Pyranex preferred not to let on that he could speak unless necessary.

[Hopeflower]

Her expression shifted from almost friendly concern back to severe, and after a moment's consideration, she nodded curtly. "If he causes any damage, you will answer for it."

And then she reached forward as if to take Arsenic by the arm, hesitated, and seemed to think twice about it. She tucked her hands behind her back and cleared her throat. "I hope you find what you came for," she said, an odd note in her tone that was hard to place. She turned and walked away more quickly than the situation strictly warranted.

Arsenic watched her go, his lips thinning. There had been a flicker of - something. Something she'd known to bury deeply before he could pin it down.

Fingers touched his sleeve. Rowan was looking up at him questioningly, her brown gaze flicking between him and the stranger. 'It's nothing,' he said softly. Nothing solid yet, at least.

[The Kingpin]

Andruil could not have known as much as Arsenic knew. He could not have felt what the Assassin had felt. But even he had heard, seen and sensed that something, whatever it may have been, was amiss. It put him on edge. The unknown was a tricky and troublesome thing, and he was one who did not like dealing with it. But he had no choice this time. Necessity required that he brave the tide, for Arsenic, for Vix, and, in a way he had been surprised to discover a few days earlier, for himself, too.

And for that, he would see it through. For better or for worse.

[Hopeflower]

Arsenic shook his head, setting the strange behavior aside to think about later. The mute's hand found Vix's shoulder, and he urged her forward with a gentle nudge. She was the reason they'd come, after all, not him - not for anything the residents might or might not have thought he needed. He lifted his chin and tried not to meet any of the curious stares.

As they drew closer to the gathered crowd, gentle but complex music gradually became audible. A few people, overcome by the cold, broke away, leaving the musician visible. Thick, wavy brown hair fell about her shoulders in a way that suggested she just let it do whatever it wanted. What was visible of her facial features gave the impression of sharp cheekbones and an almost delicate jawline. Her fingers were sure, her instrument well tuned, and she seemed completely relaxed even in the day's chill. Arsenic paused to watch, and she lifted her head to shake the hair out of her face.

Not that it mattered, Arsenic realized after a moment. Her hazel gaze never fixed on any of the faces around her, and she never once glanced at her own fingers.

She was blind.

The musician wound down to the end of her tune, strummed one last chord, stood, and bowed to the polite applause. A few coins were pressed into her hands, which she pocketed. While the rest of the crowd dispersed, she took her instrument's neck in hand and walked right toward the companions.

Though her music had been soothing, her voice was almost rough. "You need something?" she asked Arsenic. "Or are you just here to gawk?"

'Forgive me,' he replied automatically.

He would have added more, but her shock and the first tendrils of rage hit him like a physical blow. A hand shot out and grabbed onto his coat.

"Hey!" Rowan barked, alarmed. She reached for her swords with one hand and the woman with the other, trying to pull her off of Arsenic.

She shook Rowan away, then dragged the mute down to be at her eye level. "Tell me," she started slowly, "that I've got some other psychomancer in front of me. Or did you come back here after twenty years of not talking to your own sister expecting that to be good enough?"

Arsenic stared at her blankly. Sister? 'Who...do you think I am?' he asked, prying her hand away from his coat. 'And who exactly are you?'

All of the fury seemed sucked out of her at once. She slumped, then chuckled, a single broken and humorless sound. "I knew it. Had to be someone else. Viho wouldn't come back." She straightened again, extending her hand to shake. "Sorry for the mix-up. Name's Callie."

Nobody moved to take her hand at first. Arsenic exchanged long looks with Vix and Rowan. Vix buried her face in the palm of her hand, massaging her temples gently. "Of course," she muttered. "Nothing's ever simple."

[The Kingpin]

"Of course not. Things would be too easy otherwise," responded Andruil, his hand squeezing the Innkeeper's shoulder this time. Pyranex stood behind the group, his silhouette lost on the blind woman save for the nearly imperceptibly small difference in temperature. The gryphon's plumage had pulled tight, previously soft-looking down having turned into jagged bristles that were steadily reverting again as matters settled.

[Hopeflower]

Arsenic took Callie's hand after another awkward moment of indecision and tried not to wince. Her grip wasn't quite bone-crushing, but it was strong enough to stir a flicker of worry for his fingers. 'Arsenic,' he replied, trying not to let any of his confusion bleed into his "voice". He felt unbalanced, like he'd had a drink too many and the second he tried to take a step forward, his face would become acquainted with the gravel road.

"That an alias?" she asked, cocking her head.

He started to shake his head, caught himself, and answered, 'No. It's...complicated.' And wasn't that the biggest understatement he'd ever made.

Now that Arsenic was looking for similarities, he supposed they were there - but they were so small, it would have been a stretch to connect her to Viho at all if she hadn't mentioned him by name. Her skin was darker, her hair not at all the same texture or color, and she was shorter by a fair margin...but even so, little things like the slightly impatient tilt to her head, the way she carried herself, and the shape and color of her eyes stood out.

She was family.

With a quick squeeze to Andruil's hand, Vix stepped forward to greet the musician. Maybe she'd picked up on a little of Arsenic's quiet distress. "Vixen Adsila," she introduced herself. Callie's eyebrows shot up in recognition, but she waited while Vix continued, "Viho...sent us here to find you, actually. We're looking into the history of my family, especially their connection to the Iupan. We were wondering if you might be able to help us."

"Yeah," Callie said slowly, clearly chewing on that information. "He would send you my way for that, wouldn't he?" She frowned. "Hey, tell you what. Answer me something and I'll give you a damned gold mine of information."

"Oh, good. How many children's riddles are we solving?" Rowan snarked, folding her arms. She still looked unsettled over how Callie had reacted to Arsenic.

Callie laughed shortly and pointed in her direction. "I like you," she said. "None, actually. I just want to know where my jackass of a brother is, and what he's been doing that's so important that he has no time to send a letter every once in a while."

[The Kingpin]

"I foresee a very long chat by a fireplace somewhere. And perhaps a couple of drinks. Of the sort that makes one cross-eyed," quipped the Knight, already expecting that Arsenic wouldn't want to finesse his way through that answer quite so promptly. Hell, a few months ago, he was quite certain no one here could have imagined the psychomancer being where he was or doing what he did now. Odds were, this was a story that was going to take some explaining...

[Hopeflower]

Callie hummed under her breath. "Well," she sighed, "it was already looking to be a long chat. Come on, then." She slung her instrument across her shoulder and remarked dryly, "Maybe I'll even learn the rest of your names on the way there."

The house that Callie led the odd companions to was outwardly no different from any of the others that lined Sarton's main road. The door that she unlocked was a perfectly ordinary, green door. The wood that the heels of her boots struck smartly as she led them inside creaked and groaned like any other wood. The smell of sea salt that hung in the air was present inside, too, accompanying a hint of something not unlike the dabs of heather oil Vix often wore. Down the short hallway, a rug and a few chairs occupied the open space in front of a small fireplace. A bookshelf nearby was stocked not with novels, but with delicate trinkets of many shapes and sizes. The house was, indeed, nothing remarkable.

And yet as soon as Arsenic set foot inside, he could feel his shoulders knotting. He quickly took note of the various exits and the routes he might take to get to them. Though its owner had invited them in, there was something...almost unfriendly about the place. A sense of danger, or perhaps simply hostility, that had lingered here for so long that it had bled into the very walls.

Unaware of the young psychomancer's growing tension, Callie said, "I guess we'll be trading long stories, so take a seat. Get comfortable."

"We'll try to be out of your hair before nightfall," Vix promised, exchanging a glance with Rowan.

Despite her blindness, Callie moved with such awareness of her surroundings that it was apparent that she had lived here long enough to get accustomed to the layout. She surely wouldn't have appreciated the observation, or the comparison to a person who didn't share her handicap, but Arsenic couldn't help noting that she went through the familiar motions of making tea and setting alcohol aside for later almost as quickly as Vix did. Her adaptability drew his admiration, even with his misgivings nagging at him. It was not, he told himself firmly, because of a sense of kinship. His disability was completely different from hers - and trying to compare their struggles was almost certainly something else she wouldn't have appreciated.

On top of that, he'd only just found out she was his aunt. They didn't know each other. To get attached was to set himself up for more pain. After the recent unexpected lancing of the pus-filled boil that was Arsenic's relationship with his father, he wasn't sure he wanted to go there.

Arsenic's musings and the somewhat slow path he was taking to one of the chairs were interrupted when a series of scratches, low on what looked to be the kitchen doorframe, caught his eye. He did a double take, curiosity aroused. Not scratches - two sets of deep gouges, deliberately carved with something not meant for the task. A kitchen knife, perhaps. Beside each mark was a single letter, followed by a number.

V - 10
V - 7
V - 6

C - 10
C - 7
C - 6

Without his permission, Arsenic found his legs carrying him closer. He reached out to touch the marks before he realized what he was doing. The edges of the scores in the wood were worn smooth, as though someone had run their fingertips over them in just this way many times. This, Arsenic realized with a tilt of his head and a wrenching sensation in his gut, was a record of someone's growth. Two someones.

A pair of siblings.

At some point when they reached their teens, both of them had stopped keeping track. Perhaps they'd lost interest. Perhaps life had intervened and insisted they give up childish habits and begin to take their place in the world.

He'd probably never know. With the unease churning more violently in his stomach, Arsenic stepped back and turned to join his friends by the fireplace.

And flinched.

Callie was standing behind him. He cursed himself - how hadn't he realized she wasn't with everyone else? Her slightly clouded gray eyes caught his gaze and held it, as piercing as any stare Viho had ever given him. For that instant, it was hard to believe she couldn't see him - and through him.

"You remind me of him. I can't place why," was all she said. Callie's tone wasn't quite flat, but it was close, and the implied yet had Arsenic's skin itching. The tilt of her head invited Arsenic to follow her, and - stinging a little from her comment - he did. "So," she added more loudly when they entered the sitting room, "do we play twenty questions until the tea is ready, or should one of us start talking?"