Fate - First Reply It’s Hard Out Here For A...Dog?

[Shisha]

Vel Amir was known as the city of humans. Shisha didn’t mind the place. It had its peculiarities like everything else, but it was a good place to look for steady work. Shisha was trying to make herself known as a bodyguard and mercenary, and now she finally had the armor that made her look the part. She had a helm over her strangely elongated head, accordioned steel over her ribs and muscular neck, and a padded piece along her spine to protect it. Even the chainmail along her pouch and stomach was surprisingly comfortable.

At the moment she was putting up her advertisements. She’d taken all night to write them, and had a small stack in her pouch. She pressed the paper to the notice board with her paw, and affixed it with a nail pressed in with her nose.

Perfect.

Shisha. Armored war companion. Good rates.

It was short and sweet, and would hopefully grab someone’s attention. She moved on to the next notice board, a few blocks down the street, to see if anyone had replied. Instead she saw her notice on the ground, torn down. She bared her teeth a bit and looked at the piece of paper. Who had the balls to..? She eyed where her paper had been.

Another mercenary’s notice was in its place. She lifted her head and tore it down, then ripped it up with her paws. She wouldn’t be bullied out of this place! Two leggeds were good at that sort of thing. Well, two could play at that game. She plastered her notices all over the board, and gave it a curt nod.

There.

 

[Tess]

Life was good in Vel Anir and, usually, fairly quiet insomuch as cities came and went. Merc work was plentiful, trade was good, and there was usually one war or another to keep the tradesfolk plugging away at their craft. It was city on a constant wartime footing, which explained the almost entirely human population. Humans were crafty, adaptable, and tough, but if you had enough of them in one spot long enough, you usually found they got cranky and cranky humans often enough conquered their neighbors.

The upside of a cranky species was that they usually had multitudes of ways to make themselves (usually) not cranky. The most common of these was the aforementioned conflict, both militarily and non-militarily, but another form was a human pastime: drinking. Inns and taverns were dotted all over the city and offered everything from watered down grog to the best imported wines and cordials from across the continent. Fortunately, drinking humans were (usually) not entirely alert and oriented to what was going on around them in a noisy tavern. Unfortunately, not all humans became un-cranky with the salve of drinking. Some became more cranky when inebriated than when sober.

Tess (also admittedly a human) was usually very good at finding this balance on when looking to redistribute funds and property during hard times. Unfortunately, she'd pushed her luck a tad further than intended. The positive note was that redistributing money and items was usually dealt with without the city guard and so she could (usually) not have to worry about losing her head or, worse, having to figure out how to blow a hole in the dungeon wall (again) to escape. The downside was the most minor reprimand for redistribution was to be bodily hurled like a discus from the front door of whichever venue the redistributor attempted to redistribute within.

Which is how Tess (still a human) managed to find herself flying through the air headfirst, missing the giant form of Shisha, and impacting against the mercenary job board headfirst (again). The last thought she had as she lost consciousness (again) was something that, even in her rapidly deteriorating state, would have been comical even for her.

Hey, I know that chick.

 

[Shisha]

Shisha made a loud honking noise of surprise. It sounded a bit like someone had stepped on a goose. A creature had slammed into the notice board...and sent all her notices fluttering to the ground. She looked around in dismay and began gathering them up, stepping around the prone figure on the ground. She carefully used her last nail to pin one up, and folded the others carefully into her pouch. Now she had to go spend more copper on more nails!

Shisha used her paw to flip over the unfortunate person, intent on deafening them with a good roar. Instead...it was a very familiar mage! She growled at the little thing, but it was unconscious. Again. Tess had a bad habit of conking her head didn’t she? Shisha rolled her eyes and grasped Tess gently in her teeth, working her into the pouch with a few jerks of her head.

When Tess awoke, she was dressed in a bathrobe. Her clothes had been whisked away to be washed, and Shisha was laying in a large bathtub. She’d spent a few gold from her last job on a good hotel room...a big fluffy bed just for her, big cuts of greasy meat, and servants to help her bathe. They’d been fearful at first, but Shisha had been putty in their hands when they’d begun washing her with those artful fingers. She had one paw casually flopped over the tub, the attendant sharpening her wicked claws one by one.

She lifted her head casually as Tess woke, rising from the bath so they could rub her dry. Then, the blessed curry comb. Oh...what a lovely invention the two legs had made. A comb that got all the dead skin and loose fur out.

Shisha stood in front of Tess, lips pursed disapprovingly.

Tess

 

[Tess]

The first thing she realized was the soft bed followed by the smell of soaps, perfumes, and water. For most, it would be a confusing shift from the smells of the bars and streets, but an overall pleasant experience. For Tess, however, confusion generally meant Bad Things and years of living rough and dangerous had ground inherent reactions into her psyche. Considering she'd been in this situation at least three times before (that she could remember), she felt that her reactions were warranted.

She sat straight up, hands already moving and lips already forming the words of power. The shield flickered to brilliance around her with a sound reminiscent of distant, angry bees filled the air.

"GodsdamnedBordelloBandits!" let fly from her mouth before two things registered in her brain.

First, there didn't seem to be any Bordello Bandits, a criminal group well known for abducting people, taking them to strange places, and enslaving those kidnapped into working brothels. Second, she spotted the disapproving visage of someone, or rather something, she knew well enough. These two realizations in place at the forefront of her brain, she dropped her hands and the protective wards they maintained to her sides, noting for the first time she was in a comfy bathrobe that she was now determined to tuck away into her bag later.

"... Oh, hi, @Shisha."

 

[Shisha]

Shisha gave her a look as she sat up sharply, shouting nonsense about...bordello bandits? Shisha didn’t quite understand what either of those two things were. She stretched and sent the attendants away with a flick of her newly sharpened claws. They left, and she grabbed a hunk of meat from the platter left for her. She ripped off a chunk, chewing thoughtfully while Tess adjusted to her surroundings. Hello? That was all she had to say?

Shisha licked her claws clean of grease and pulled down a chalkboard. The chalk was mounted on a long stick she could hold between two paw pads. You came out of nowhere and thumped into my notice on the board. She wrote. She had quite good handwriting with the proper tool. What trouble are you in now?

Tess

 

[Tess]

"This explains the concussion," Tess stated in a monotone voice as the headache slowly creeped into her consciousness. She wasn't sure why, but she was certain that any time the Devourer got involved Tess usually wound up concussed somehow.

"Not in trouble, actually," came the quick follow up as she sat back, slowly starting to enjoy the bathrobe while wondering where her clothes were, especially her hat. She brushed a lock of dark hair from her face as she looked over - and up at- her host. "At least, not anymore. Minor disagreement over the ownership of a few items is all. Not a big deal, though throwing me out head first was a bit much, I feel."

She yawned, winced, and rubbed the back of her head. Tess took in the relative extravagance of the room they were in and noted the softness of the bed as well as the comfy robe. Shisha had been doing well for herself since they last met after she'd fallen from a barn rafter onto the Devourer's head. Tess liked to think she'd done well for herself also, but couldn't quite shake the quiet realization that she'd been thrown out of a bar - again - in a city she'd randomly wandered into - again - after attempting to steal money - again - in yet another slapdash attempt to survive until the next day - again.

"You've been doing well, eh?" she said after a moment, focusing on the Devourer to shift her own brain onto something - anything - else. "How's the merc life going? Kill anyone interesting lately?"

 

[Shisha]

You are always hurting yourself. You’d be less hurt if you had a guardian. Shisha pointed out, a bit arrogantly. She listened, cocking her head, and wrote in the chalkboard with a flourish. Her handwriting was improving dramatically with these new tools. Devourers didn’t do well with the standard length of pen; they had long digits but what digits they had were heavy and thick. It made normal pens and chalk difficult. With a piece of chalk on a long stick she could manipulate, the problem was now more of fine motor skills.

You were stealing from the two legs. Shisha wrote with a disapproving look. That is why they threw you so hard.

The Devourer rolled her shoulders and wiped her words clean with a sweep of her paw. This is the last of the money from my last job. I will have to leave in the morning. I need to find work. She wrote with a shake of the head. I killed a Wargheit. She went to the bedside table and picked up something in her lips. She dropped a hideously long, curved fang from the creature in front of Tess.

Shisha’s chest swelled a bit in pride. By myself.
Tess

 

[Tess]

The fang thudded in front of Tess's eyes and she peered at it cautiously. Wargheit fangs, claws, fur, and even their innards fetched a high price on any market that even felt the mildest twinge of magical curiosity. Bones could be ground down and turned into alchemical reagents, organs could be used as is for potion ingredients, fangs and claws held magic almost as well as dragon materials, albeit only with far less complex enchantments. Tess's brow furrowed as she picked up and hefted the fang in her hand thoughtfully.

"I'm guessing they wanted the body as proof or some such? Was it a mage that had the bounty posted or the city guard itself?"

If a local wizard or witch had put up the bounty, chances were that they could care less for the well-being of the city and more for harvesting components and parts for their work. If it was a city posting, chances were the body was somewhere laying around still. Either way, the realization was slowly dawning on her that, perhaps, she'd been too quick to part ways with Shisha in Alliria. Those who didn't know her, which was practically everyone, would probably assume she say nothing but coin. Those who did, which numbered perhaps less than three people, living or dead, would know that she saw not wealth, but knowledge and, for the first time, a glimmer of purpose.

Or at least something to occupy herself for a relatively long amount of time that would potentially keep her out of the worst of any trouble she could find.

 

[Shisha]

Shisha lifted her chin a little higher. Humans were attacked in their fort by monsters. I was getting a suit of armor. The humans panicked and many died. I killed it. She wrote, proudly waiting for Tess to read what she’d written. She had come in at the perfect time to solve the humans’ problem for them. She had wished the humans would be a little more grateful, but she was swiftly learning that gratitude was more of a Devourer quality than a two-legged one.

Ate the body. Wasted nothing. Shisha said proudly. The Wargheit wasn’t around anymore, but there was nothing that said she couldn’t kill one again if she was given the opportunity. Killing the beast had given her confirmation of what she’d always known; that she was good at what she set out to do. Tess had parted ways with her too early; she was a being who could get the little mage rare reagents if she asked correctly.

Tess

 

[Tess]

Tess thought a moment before setting the fang down. The body was gone, the bounty was less a bounty and more a happenstance of pure luck, but that didn't mean all was lost. Rather, there would be a bit more startup work than she'd hoped, but she was used to that by now.

"I have an idea," the diminutive mage stated after a moment, looking around for her bag. She spotted the thing propped up in the corner, the material just as weather stained and worn as she remembered. Her hands tugged an invisible string as she muttered the appropriate words of power and the oversized satchel bounced once, twice, three times across the room before hopping up into her outstretched hands. She deftly popped the flap on the bag open and, muttering the magical words quietly, dug around the contents.

A moment or two passed before she let out a quiet happy sound and yanked a smaller, even more weather stained leather pouch from the bag. She undid the knot tying the mouth of the bag open and dumped half the contents out into her hand, the mismatched coins in her palm glittering in various hues of gold from the different cities, countries, and continents she'd slowly collected them from.

"This should cover the room for another coupla weeks, I think. In the meantime," Tess bounced the pouch and its remaining contents in her off hand as she looked at the Devourer. "If you can hunt another Wargheit, I can use the rest of the money here to get some proper tools to harvest the thing and some containers to store parts and stuff. We peddle that on the local market and we can probably double our pooled money pretty quickly."

She thought a moment.

"If you're open to the idea, that is."

Shisha

 

[Shisha]

Shisha tilted her head, but took the fang back and slid it into her pouch. She wasn’t about to have that trophy nicked, not for the damn world. She eyed the bag suspiciously as it bounced towards the little mage and she withdrew what looked to be a coin pouch. Shisha had never known exactly what to make of the bag; it was enchanted, but it almost seemed to have a personality of its own. Shisha didn’t know what it’s limitations were, but she had an almost knee jerk fear of it folding over her head and suffocating her out of revenge.

She pawed through the coins, examining them. The two legs liked their yellow bits but these didn’t look all the same. Some of them were shaped differently or had different markings. She grabbed her board. Why don’t they all look the same? Will the hotel take them? She asked.

The devourer nodded to the plan. She would find another Wargheit. If I kill this thing for you, and you get magic components out of it...I want something that will let me speak. Verbally. Out loud. Many people cannot read. She tapped her words with a claw. Can you enchant this? Or know someone who can?

Tess

 

[Tess]

"They should," she said as she put the money back in the pouch. "Even if they don't know the accurate value of the coins, they can weigh the gold. Spends the same, even if they don't know the exchange rate, though if there's a money changer in town we can swap em out there."

Tess pondered a moment at the Devourer's request. Functionally, it wasn't that hard to do. Practically, it was very advanced magic with few work around or short cuts. A mistake would, at best, render whatever speech Shisha emitted as garbled noise. At worst, it would probably blow off Tess's hand mid-spell. Plus there was the component problem. Fortunately, most of the components she already possessed. Unfortunately, the two she didn't have were rare and expensive.

"I can do that sort of enchantment, sure," she started out, brow furrowing even deeper were that possible. "The enchantment frame is basic enough, but the resonant harness is the tricky part. There's a chance the frequency overloads and feedback loops until the item explodes, but more likely the charm fails to fully bond with the molecular..."

She stopped and scrubbed her face a moment, realizing she was lapsing into a whole array of vocabulary she was simultaneously proud and annoyed she could spout at a given moment. The little mage paused, took a deep breath, and started over.

"I need to brush up on the books I have on the spells and the task itself will be difficult, but doable. If I mess up, it could explode halfway through or it just simply doesn't work. I have most of what we need, but there's two items we'll need to get and one item we have readily available for the final stages that I can procure when we get to that point."

"The first item is quartz infused ivory which will form the core of the item we'll be making. A high end mage shop or alchemist might have some, but its more likely we'll need to head to Amol-Kalit and hope we can find either a market that sells it or the raw item in the rocks there. The second is Moonwort buds, which only appear during a new moon and only in the Taagi Baara steppes. Again, might be in a shop somewhere between here and there, but more likely we'll find it among the Naghoon clans or somewhere in the region on the new moon. Once we have those, we can combine it with the last ingredient and, hopefully, it'll work. If it does, you get a voice."

Shisha

 

[Shisha]

Tess lost Shisha three sentences in to the explanation. Shisha had a grand command of the Common tongue, and she’d been rather proud about studying it from her mother, but some words were just...too complex. Two-legs had names for everything, sometimes five or six names for the same thing. Words that were far too long like molecular went completely over her head. Devourers simply didn’t have something that equated to it. She did catch the word explode, and gathered that the spell would be dangerous for the little mage to make.

Amol-Kalit. Then the Naghoon clans. It sounded like a long journey, but it would be worth it to Shisha. When do we set off then? We will need to start quickly if we are to do this before the night eye closes. Shisha wrote, and gathered up the coins in her mouth. She was going to go pay for another night in the room.

Hopefully the little mage would still be there when she got back. Tess was always rushing off to things. Usually head first. That never ended well.

Tess

 

[Tess]

"Well, we can head out in the morning. We just need to head north," she stopped, frowned, and started to pace the room in her borrowed, fluffy bathrobe. "Actually, we'd head South instead. There's a portal stone we can use to travel to the Steppes and we can start searching there. Shouldn't be more than a few days hike to one of the inlets, then hiring or stealing a boat to go the rest of the way to the stone itself. A week, maybe two, tops, then instantly in the Taagi Baara."

Tess rummaged in her bag a moment, hands digging through dimensional pockets as she searched. After a minute, she yanked out a pair of metal sticks set into handles at right angles. She held them aloft in mock triumph before setting them on the table.

"Dowsing rods. Magical ones. Both items we're after give of magical auras or fields which means this thing can find them once we're close enough. I figure if we hit the Naghoon lands first, we can take our time in the desert afterwards. Less pressure, plus if we find the Moonwort fast enough, we can go the long way to Amol-Kalit and sightsee along the way."

Shisha

 

[Shisha]

Shisha listened; the little mage seemed to have a brilliant sense of direction despite her scatterbrained nature. She was to be the navigator on this trip then. Shisha wasn’t sure about the portal stones; she’d heard of them, of course, but she’d never actually gone through one. Other devourers had, either by sheer curiosity or accident. There was supposed to be an aura of bad luck around such items.

The Devourer approached Tess’ bag, sniffing at the dowsing rods. Those were supposed to help them find magical objects? She didn’t see how. She wagged her tail, excited at the idea of travel. Of being able to speak to two-legs! She could finally jabber as they did instead of insisting they read everything.

Shisha leapt up onto the bed and settled her bull down. The bed groaned piteously under her metric-tonne weight, but held. We should get some sleep then. Tomorrow, we head south to this portal stone. She wrote, snuggling down in the covers. A loud rumbling noise came from her chest that sounded like a contented housecat...if a housecat were the size of a draft horse.

Tess

 

[Tess]

"Awesome! It'll be fun to have a road trip buddy for once," she said with a knowing nod of the head.

She stuffed the rods back in her bag, checked a few items and rearranged a thing or two. Satisfied, she closed up the bag, tucked it under an arm, and headed over to where she'd been unconscious a few minutes before. She poked around at the mattress and blankets a few moments before pulling the sheets, blankets, and pillows off the bed and chucked them on the floor.

Tess rearranged everything to her liking on the floor next to the bed and then dumped the bag on the litter. The little mage stretched, popping a wide variety of bones that normally don't pop, and then full body collapsed into the little pile of fabric with a heavy thud.

She was out cold before her head hit her enchanted bag she used as a pillow and snoring before the sound of her hitting the floor finished reverberating off the walls.

To put it lightly, she was a heavy sleeper and she needed a hefty amount of sleep for what lay ahead for the two of them.

Shisha