Fable - Ask Monsters In A Cage

[Matias Vaquero]

Matias placed a gentle hand on Felice before she could walk over towards the tent, his head shaking. "No no..."

There was a slight frown on his face as he wondered how to put his words.

"That's not..." He glanced at Harlowe for a moment, as if searching for something, then he quickly continued. "Classy enough for us."

Also he was entirely sure that the moment they either stepped into that place or tried to leave they would be robbed and mugged. If their drinks weren't spiked with some sort of sleeping agent. Briefly Matias wondered if Felice never even considered that because of her upbringing.

Maybe she was just used to the rougher side of life. "Let's hit that one."

He pointed to another, slightly nicer tent that had a sign which read "Black Jack, Allirian Style" hanging over it.

 

[Harlowe]

Harlowe's gaze flickered between one shack and then the other.

Neither of them were places where she thought she could buy one of those cool outfits. So she merely shrugged; it didn't matter to her. Though...

"Matias' option has those cinnamon rolls," she sniffed and tried to stop herself from sneezing.

 

[Felice]

Felice frowned for a second as Matias held her back. The ramshackled spot reminded her of the slums in Cerak and she was confident she could win big in that environment.

”Really?” her mood was immediately lifted at the mention of cinnamon rolls. ”Why are we still standing around? Let’s go!”

The hair demon wondered if, maybe, she could afford a single treat before she began throwing the rest of the coin she’d been entrusted with into gambling.

 

[Matias Vaquero]

Matias headed into the tent without any further hesitation on his part.

He slipped inside, tossing the tent flap back and holding it in place for his two shorter companions before he turned to face the open 'room'. There were half a dozen tables inside, each of them with a dealer, and more than a few of them full.

A scantily clad woman with oddly scaled skinned walked around the room, a similarly dressed half-orc man making the opposite rounds.

For a few moments he peered around the room, and then selected a table on the far side of the room. The dealer appeared to be a human, though her skin was a dark olive and her ears were slightly pointed at the tip. "Hello there."

The Frost Giant said with a wide smile.

"My friends and I would like to deal in." He said.

 

[Harlowe]

"A drink?" Harlowe blinked at the woman who had snuck up on her when she was too busy looking around the tent.

"I... I'm trying to stay in character," she grinned and flashed her fangs. The woman's smile grew and with a wink she vanished leaving the vampire to follow after Matias. Soon she found herself at the table the giant had picked out for them and slid into one of the seats before the dealer could object. The woman arched her brows but smiled and nodded for the others to join.

"Buy in is 100 gold."

 

[Felice]

"A drink?" The same woman asked Felice.

Felice looked at the woman dismissively as the trio took their spots at the card table. "A whiskey," she belted out in the gruffest voice she could manage whilst folding her arms, "and a cinnamon roll," the latter half a whisper that caught the serving lady off guard. Ever a professional she didn't comment on the strange request and instead nodded before moving on to Matias.

The whiskey was there for intimidation. A friend back in Cerak had told her that poker was ninety percent bluffing. It was why Felice bluffed at every opportunity she had. The cinnamon roll was for eating.

"I'm in," the redhead said while dropping the required coins on the table. It was a little over half of what Harlowe had doled out to her and a voice in the back of her head suggested that she might've been better holding off on the food and drink.

 

[Matias Vaquero]

"Mead!" Matias called after the woman, deciding that he would save his meal time for after they had made their coin. If he was going to eat, he was really going to eat. Plus he tended to focus better when he was slightly hungry.

At least he always assumed so.

From the small satchel he had tucked the coins into Matias pulled out the stated price. The coins clattered neatly in a tower as he slipped them from his hand. "Let's play."

The frost giant said with a wide grin.

Blackjack was an easy enough game, and more importantly, easy enough to cheat. All one really had to do was count the cards, and of course not get caught doing it. Which was exactly what Matias would proceed to do. Well, at least the former, one couldn't really tell the latter until much later.

As the cards began to be filed out around the table the waitress came back into view. She slipped around Felice and Matias, placing their respective drinks in front of them.

"There you go, Handsome."

She said with a wide smile.

 

[Harlowe]

"And a Bloody Mary for you," the waitress beamed and set down a tall cocktail in front of the vampire. Harlowe blinked at it until she realised the waitress was waiting for a thank you or something. She slowly raised her eyes and offered a tiny, wobbly smile.

"O-oh thanks!"

It even had a straw.

The woman moved off and Harlowe took an experimental sip then nearly wretched.

"Tomato juice?!" she spluttered, appalled someone had even thought to combine it with vodka.

 

[Felice]

"Vampires don't drink tomato juice," Felice said matter-of-factly. Everyone, even mortals, knew that vampires drank blood. Which was a meat product. Tomatoes were a vegetable. Or a fruit? Felice wasn't entirely sure but it was definitely not a meat item.

Why would anyone confuse it for blood? Because it was red? Insane.

"Bet."

The dealer looked at her with an odd grimace. Felice had simply assumed this was poker. Cerak Hold 'em. Apparently it was a modified version of blackjack and as the scent of Matias' mead came up to her nostrils she took a deep breath as she flipped her two cards.

"I mean, hit me."

A 4 followed. Felice was staring down a 16. The odds said she'd most likely lose if she stayed but she had more than a 50/50 shot of busting if she called once more. "Hit."

Another card, a 2. "Stay."

It wasn't the best hand but, it was as good as she could get. Without cheating of course.

 

[Matias Vaquero]

Matias let out a laugh as Harlowe found the taste of her 'blood' to be a bit too...vegetably. His head shook as his chuckle continued. "Maybe you should just ask for her neck."

The Frost Giant offered.

"Might be a bit tastier." As he spoke the dealer seemed to raise her eyebrow, lips turning to a slight frown as though he were trying to gauge his new players. After a moment she seemed to let it go, instead turning the cards as he was bade.

Matias glanced away for a moment, looking away just in time to miss the Dealer's odd swipe of a hand over her cards.

As he turned back, The Frost Giant followed along with the game. He hit on a six, then a thirteen. A seven landed on his table, equaling a neat twenty. He smiled for a brief moment, until the dealer flipped his own card and offered a straight twenty one.

A frown touched Matias' lips, but he shrugged and figured it was just a fluke.

Until Felice, Harlowe, and he lost again, then again, and then again.

 

[Harlowe]

Harlowe wanted to push the drink as far away from her as she could but she needed to keep up appearances so she joy played with the straw instead. Every now and then she would zip across the room and deposit a bit of it in one of the plants. She was back before a mortal could blink. In the meantime she simply watched the others play, content to let the heavy feel of her own third of the cash stay un-dwindling within her pocket. It was a good thing too it seemed. Or at least, that was what she thought after the first and second go. Even the third time. But by the fourth she was beginning to frown.

She wasn't a newbie to cheating, had seen that Matias should have one at least one hand but that the dealer was somehow still winning? Well that kind of luck was only from a fellow cheater.

"Maybe it's time to try another game..." she suggested with a small frown to the dealer gleefully pulling their latest losses towards herself.

 

[Felice]

"No," Felice said with the conviction of a stone. She couldn't blame her friends, they'd only known things like how to be a soldier or how to start a fire or other useless skills in their human lives. When it came to gambling they were both amateurs. "You can't quit when you're behind, you have to quit on a hot streak."

This was just how gambling worked.

The house kept winning until the average folk gave up. Then eventually you'd win a few hands, at a minimum you'd break even, the dealer would offer you a glass of wine, then he'd ask if you were single. She'd done this a thousand times!

"If we keep playing it's practically a guarantee that we'll win."

Felice was confident that this was true. The odds were always stacked in the house's favor, there was no doubting that, but the house wasn't allowed to cheat. That was against the rules of gambling.

 

[Matias Vaquero]

The trouble with cheating was that you couldn't really call someone out when they were better at cheating than you.

Harlowe spotted the issue, he could tell that much from what she said. Felice? Well Matias wasn't entirely sure that Felice had caught onto the fact that anything at all was going on. She seemed to believe that if you continued to dig a hole you would eventually come out on top of it somehow.

"Felice is right." Matias said. "We should definitely keep playing."

The Frost Giant stared at Harlowe for a moment. "We have to win sometime."

By which he of course meant they wouldn't.

He was certain that the dealer was cheating somehow, that she was doing something to the cards. The Frost Giant couldn't have said what, but she wasn't using the same tradecraft that he was. She wasn't counting or adding cards. This was...this was something else.

It was oh so curious.

 

[Harlowe]

Harlowe's openly distressed expression turned from one of her friends to the other, before her temper begun to rise.

"You're wasting my... our money," she gritted out. She hadn't waded through corpses for the fun of it. Well. A little. Well, no, not fun. Very not fun. But necessary all the same. Or was-- She shook her head to stop her inner monologue and got back to focusing on the fact both her friends seemed to have recently suffered a blow to the head. Or at least Matias had, Felice was always this unpredictable.

She glared at the dealer when she begun to deal the next hand out innocently and then shook her head.

"I'm not going to watch," and with that she shoved back her stool and went to have a wander.

 

[Felice]

It seemed like Matias had definitely gambled before. Everyone knew that you had to keep going when you were in a drought because the odds it would continue were almost zero. Except for that one time when Felice got into a hole so big she lost her boots and had to tip-toe home in socks.

"I know what I'm doing," she tried to reassure her vampiric friend as the silver-haired woman stood and left. She could tell that her comrade was agitated and at this point there really was only one way to fix the problem.

Felice had to stay here until she earned a huge sack of coins to make up for all the losses Harlowe had been forced to witness.

Almost on cue a sweet aroma wafted through the gambling hall as the server delivered Felice's cinnamon roll. She savored every bit, in between losing hands of course, and before long had devoured the whole thing. It was really only a matter of time now until Felice brought the cinnamon-sugar treat back up her windpipe.

 

[Matias Vaquero]

”Wasting?” Matias said with a frown, playing as though he were genuinely upset with Harlowe for saying such a thing. ”No no, we’re on a roll to the top. Just need to get a start.”

The Frost Giant didn’t at all believe that of course.

Whatever the dealer was doing ti was most certainly not on the up and up, something he’d already determined. Now he simply had to nail down whether or not it was just a trick…or something else entirely.

He glanced briefly at Felice, who seemed to be holding a love affair with a cinnamon roll, and then looked back towards the dealer. He offered a quick winning smile, and then began yet another round.

Matias didn’t catch it on the next round, nor the one that came after, but the third…the third he spotted something interesting. It was that swipe over the cards. The woman didn’t touch it, didn’t even come close, but it was a pattern. Every win she would let her hand swipe over the card, every win she would move it across.

On the fourth hand Matias bet big, and motioned for Felice to do the same. Then when it came time for the dealer to flip he quickly reached out and snatched the woman’s hand. ”Oh, let me.”

The Frost Giant said, revealing a measly twelve total.

 

[Harlowe]

Harlowe muttered quietly to herself as she stalked away from the table. Both of them were out of their minds for staying. Felice for not seeing the obvious but Matias more so for catching that something was wrong and sticking with it anyway. If he uncovered something then what? Would he call the dealer out and get them thrown from the establishment or worse? The latter was what she was betting on, her own little wager with herself, so she planned to set herself up somewhere else to rescue the pair should it go sideways.

So she took up a position at the bar instead and pretended to nurse her wounds whilst watching the various security guards stationed round the tent.

 

[Felice]

Felice blinked rapidly as Matias reached forward and grabbed the dealer’s wrist. In Cerak that would’ve earned you two broken kneecaps and a lifetime ban at most gambling dens.

However, when she saw the twelve and it registered to her why they’d get a heavy purse on that hand, all the gears finally clicked into place.

”They’re cheating!”

She exclaimed a bit too loudly. Afterwards she’d have to bend the frost giant’s ear to learn how he’d realized it but for now she just wanted to collect her winnings and skedaddle from this hive of thievery.

 

[Matias Vaquero]

Felice's voice carried through the entire tent as she openly declared the dealer was cheating.

The Frost Giant slowly turned his head towards his fellow monster. For a brief moment he wondered if she was trying to get them killed. He had intended for this to be a small confrontation, a word under the table, their gold back in their pocket.

Now though?

Now everyone was watching them. "They are!"

Matias said, knowing that he had no choice but to speak the truth.

"Changing the cards!" It was some sort of magic, that much he was sure of, but Matias wasn't exactly sure how just yet. Not that it really mattered. "What do you think you're doing?!"

He demanded, though the dealer seemed entirely unbothered. She merely stared down at the Frost Giant, glancing to Felice for only a moment. A small, yet wicked smile, drew over her lips. An odd flicker moving through her eyes.

"Are you sure you want to push this, sir?"​

She asked, her voice practically a purr.

 

[Harlowe]

"Are you with them?"

Harlowe cringed and fought every instinct she had to slide further down in her chair. Instead she turned to the man who had spoken. Dressed in a jet black shirt and breeches, with an elegant frock coat over the top in a maroon the deep shade of blood, he would be deemed handsome by both men and women. But his eyes were dangerous hard shards of jet. She swallowed instinctively.

"Barely. We were travelling companions on the road but," she flicked her hair back off her shoulder with a sniff she hoped was convincing. His eyes followed the trail of silver before moving back to her. Studying her like an insect under a microscope.

"It's probably best if you find new companions."

 

[Felice]

This was unbelievable! It was one thing for the patrons to cheat, that was to be expected. But when the house had the odds stacked in their favor and still felt the need to cheat? That was a clear violation of the gambler's ethos.

Felice's eyes narrowed at the woman, "oh we're going to push alright! I can't believe you'd take advantage of hard working folk looking for a good time like this!"

How many other patrons had lost their cinnamon roll money because of these leeches? It was inexcusable and had the trio not been trying to pose as normal humans having a night on the town she would've already begun searching for the owners of this little tent.

"We need our coin back and then," her face contorted slightly as a rumble in her stomach began. Oh no... she though she had more time but the pastry in her gut was already starting to... "excuse me, I have to go and," her words failed.

They were replaced by a violent explosion of a chunky liquid from her throat. Aimed directly at the blackjack dealer.

 

[Matias Vaquero]

Matias watched in absolute horror as Felice spewed the contents of her stomach all over the dealer, his face contorting into a mask of complete disgust.

He very nearly joined the circus of chaos as he felt bile rise in his throat, a hand coming up to quickly clamp over his lips. Stomach roiling at the absolutely disgusting display that had been thrust in front of him. Head shaking.

"FELICE!" The Frost Giant called out. "What the fuck?!"

His voice was half a wretch.

The Dealer seemed to stand there, inanimate, covered in the monsters spew. What might have been a kidney sticking to the side of her face.

"ENOUGH!"​

The voice bellowed out from the figure besides Harlowe. The black eyes shifting slightly as his form seemed to contort, streaks of black and orange forming as he drew away from the Vampire and turned towards the two monsters at the table.

"You've caused more trouble than you're worth already."​

He growled, his lips thinning as his body continued to transform into something far more inhuman.

 

[Harlowe]

Harlowe became aware her mouth was hanging open when the demon next to her begun to shout. At least, she assumed he was a demon. She'd been around the Regiment long enough to know one even when they came in different types. They had a very distinctive smell like burning acid. It was hard to explain but as he begun to use his magic Harlow caught a whiff and grimaced. They'd certainly picked the wrong tent. Or maybe the whole place was run by him? Was he trying to just swindle humans out of their money or was this something... darker?

Her eyes flickered to Matias and Felice then she begun to slowly, subtly, slip from her chair whilst the demons attention was on her friends.

 

[Felice]

A sleeve rushed up to wipe away the... substance... from her chin and lower lip. Brown eyes looked up at Matias in an embarrassed defeat. "Sorry. I just love cinnamon rolls too much to give them up forever." His reaction was a lot kinder than Nazara's but it still felt bad to look so bad in front of one of her best friends.

Felice would've been scared in her human life when a proprietor was shouting. As a monster though she'd gotten over being pushed around by management who thought they were 'the law' simply because they owned a place.

"Sorry about that but I think we can forgive the cheating if we just get our coin back," she mused for a split second as her head tilted on her neck, "and maybe throw in a free cinnamon roll too."

She'd already embarrassed herself. Might as well down another of her favorite food.

 

[Matias Vaquero]

There was a long pause.

Matias was sure that they were about to be murdered, but at the same time he also couldn't keep the smile from his face. There was something...endlessly amusing about Felice's response. The brashness, the bravado. He wasn't sure if she was a genius or a moron.

Either way, Matias felt a roiling chuckle barely contained in his gut. "I uhh..."

He wanted to say that they weren't together, but that ship had probably sailed.

The demon only growled. His face flickered, the mirage around him suddenly failing completely. A creature of black and orange fur suddenly stood before them. A tiger, mixed with a man, his eyes bloody red and his size near twice that of Matias.

He wore ostentatious robes of silk, slashed with bright reds and greens that almost hurt the eye.

"Do you think this is a JOKE!?"​

His voice bellowed, and the inside of the tent seemed to shimmer. The dealer, covered in vomit, disappeared, as did the waitress and near everyone else inside save for a few random humans who had been sitting on their stools.