Fate - First Reply Sale On Ale

[Rhenn Willowood]

Rhenn opted to ignore her most pointed question at first, though he certainly heard it. Perhaps he didn't have an answer he wished to share, or perhaps he didn't quite know himself. Maybe both. Either way he was preoccupied at the moment; Willowood drove a stake down into the dirt stamping it down underneath his boot until it could barely be nudged.

"Vengeance. Pft, nothing so boring as that." He spat as he fashioned the stake into a post, seemingly for hitching their horses. "I wish for the freedom to do as I please, to them or anybody else I desire. My affiliation with them is a cage that stops my flight, and little else."

He kicked the wooden post. There was an undeniable rush of adrenaline coursing through him, for the sheer thought of the act he sought to perform in this quaint little town, a freedom he'd not allowed himself in some time that now he could almost taste. It came through in his voice, the extra bass making him sound louder, even. "We hitch here. Then, move down the hill into town quietly, find a way up onto the rooftops. These people are holding things that I want, and tonight, you're going to help me take them."

Willowood didn't look back to see whether she followed or not; he became a blurry figure in the darkness, snaking his way down towards a bevy of unsuspecting victims. It had been some time since he'd performed as his namesake, leaving little more than a shiver in the shadows as he had his way with any unsuspecting home he pleased.

The village, for it's part, was a cozy little place. No walls or guards to speak of, which meant they enjoyed a peaceful lifestyle. If Rhenn did his job, they wouldn't realize that had changed until he was far away. The church looked to be the most optimal way to ascend, a wall overgrown with vines and a roof with a slant that would allow him to walk up and over with little trouble.

Willowood reached out, gripping the vines with gloved hands and pulling to test the strength: It would hold. A smirk grew on his covered lips, as he turns to see whether his new companion had followed.

"Not going to burst into flames touching a holy place, are you?"

Mathalla

 

[Mathalla]

"Freedom, is a mortality's most precious gift." Mathalla purred as Rhenn lead them onward. Watching in quiet curiosity as he created a post for their horses, but never commenting or complaining as he continued to lead their journey.

The Devil seemed almost enthralled as he spoke and made his way, disappearing into the darkness and lurking behind the man as though she were his shadow. Any normal eye would have slipped over her as though she were not there, any ordinary man's gaze lost upon her bright red skin.

Curiosity pulled at her. Drawing her in and pulling her as long as though he had cast a leash about her neck. The Devil did not understand what it was her mortal companion desired, but that was the fun of this. The idea of following him the first place. Her magics were great and grand, but the world he and his lived in was so distant.

Despite the centuries she had spent within it.

As they slunk down near the church, Mathalla continued to follow, a small smile of amusement blooming on her features as they reached the side of the church. "Well."

She purred.

"That entirely depends on whose Holy Place I'm walking on." A toothy spread across her lips, and then suddenly fire consumed her. Dim dark flames bloomed within the night, raging over her body as she disappeared into a wisp of smoke. The same flames suddenly erupting atop the church, Mathalla's form appearing crouched and waiting. "Seems this one is fine."

The Devil called down with a smile.

 

[Rhenn Willowood]

Rhenn couldn't decide whether to scowl of smirk up at the lounging Devil, so casually confident in every act she performed. It was a shadow of what he'd once been, a mirror into what he'd lost, and what he desired her to help reclaim. Effortless prowess, and talent unmatched by any in his field. Willowood's hands tightened around the fibrous vines, pulling himself up to join her on the roof's edge.

"For all your pining for the gifts of mortality, you aren't doing much to sell me on the idea that we have it any better than you." Rhenn dusts his hands clean, casting the Devil woman only a brief, mildly amused look before carefully stepping up onto the slant of the Church roof. Though he'd lost much, he was still as adept a thief as one could find without magic to aid him. His boot fell flat against the tile, and effortlessly he ascended the incline as though it were flat ground. "After all, I can think of a few mortals I'm convinced would be set alight just coming near a place of worship."

Sad thing of it is, most of them worked there.

Once he'd reached the top, Rhenn held the steeple of the Church and used it to prop himself up as he leaned forward to scope out the town from above. Now that they had some height, travelling across the rooftops would be simple enough.

"That estate, at the opposite end of town." Rhenn pointed towards a sizable manor house, lit up brightly by strange, multicolored lanterns hanging from the walls, and small moving torches circling the grounds beneath, presumably guards. "Much as I'd like to take my time and steal from every person in this sorry town, we're on a schedule, and that place sticks out like a sore thumb."

Rhenn slowly slides down the roof to the other side of the church, stopping himself at the edge. "Those lanterns? Only mages can do that, and for them to burn all night, you'd need some good ones." He nods his hooded head towards the manor grounds. "That, plus the guards patrolling? This person is either rich, important or both."

He looks over at Mathalla, his grin nearly visible through his mask.

"Last chance to bail out, if you don't think you can keep up with me, O Unholy one..."

Mathalla

 

[Mathalla]

"Better is a matter of perspective." The Devil mused out loud as she watied for him to climb up onto the roof itself. She then quickly moved after him, stepping on the edges of the roof as though they were naught more but another flat surface.

He followed her to the peak of the roof, stepping alongside the steeple and slowly winding her way up.

The Devil seemed to stick to the rooftop like a spider. Moving as though gravity itself would not drag her down to the earth. As Rhenn came to a stop, scoping out the town, the Devil peered over his shoulder with no small amount of amusement on her face. "You wish to steal from them?"

She asked curiously, having never much seen the point in such things.

Then again, Mathalla wasn't exactly the type to want for anything at all. She could snap her fingers and create most things, she didn't eat, and she most certainly didn't need a roof over her head. Thieving seemed rather pointless when you were the one fulfilling most desires.

"Keep up?" She echoed in amusement. "Darling, you couldn't be rid of me if you tried."

The Devil said with her trademark toothy grin. "Shall we?"

Mathalla asked, flame beginning to trail up her horns.

 

[Rhenn Willowood]

It was almost jealousy that gnawed at his gut as he watched the Devil so effortlessly clamber up the steeple of the church. There was a time not terribly long ago when he could move like that-- when every movement beyond the normal scope of a human's range didn't cause him such loathsome pain.

Rhenn swallowed it down with a hidden smirk. If this Mathalla was all that she said she was, then it wouldn't be lost to him forever.

"It's not about the stealing itself." He gently corrected her, perching both of his feet on the very end of the rooftop, on the lip of the small gutter used to collect rainwater. Nimbly, he leapt across the gap between the Church and the neighboring residence; It was lower to the ground, with a flat, wooden roof. Still, as his boots hit the surface, not a sound permeated the night air. "It's about the rush that comes with it."

Willowood had little doubt Mathalla could match pace with him. Hell, it was more than likely she would leave him in the dust in his current state. So he travelled quite leisurley across the next rooftop, towards a post extending out from the side, connecting to the adjacent home, clothes hanging in the wind beneath.

"To insert yourself into the space of another, to intrude into their own life and steal it away without them being any the wiser. That rush of adrenaline when you find your prize, the thrumming of your heart as you take your leave, knowing any eyes upon you must be forced shut... Theft is a vice far more invigorating than a bar or brothel can offer, if you have the talent."

Stepping out to balance on the bar, he looked back at the Devil with a final, challenging look before turning back into a sprint across the rooftops. Though his body ached, the motions of traversing this particular set of rooftops was a second nature to him, muscle memory carrying him through the pain as he rolled, climbed, and leapt from street to street.

To think he'd been born in this little shithole of a town was laughable, considering where he'd ended up.

Mathalla

 

[Mathalla]

Mathalla followed Rhenn along the rooftops like a shadow.

She seemed to slip out of syn with him, but never missed a step. Keeping at his leisurely pace, and yet seeming to appear and reappear within the shadows. An odd trick of the light, a strange flicker of her reddish skin appearing only in the brightest castings of the moon.

As he began to explain his vice, the Devil seemed to shift. Her pointed ears flickering, and her eyes growing in intensity as she listened to his words. "The Rush."

The Devil seemed to say the words almost in reverence, and perhaps it would click into place with what she had been saying all along. This was exactly what she wanted. Why she had made the bargain so free. A new experience was worth more than any amount of souls, at least to her.

"Wonderful." She purred as Rhenn took off into a sprint.

Her smile splitting into a wicked grin, as with a burst of speed she followed after him. Not shifting into the flames, but sprinting the same as he. Following his path like a mimic, and echoing with the mirthful laughter of a caged bird set free.

 

[Rhenn Willowood]

Rhenn had considerable doubts about the capabilities of this Devil, but he had to give her a margin of credit; she seemed to understand what he meant. The two of them did not trapeze from roof to roof, crossing over trecherous heights and risking the ire of an entire city for the safe of mere profit. They did it because they could, and so many others could not. Because it was in their power to go beyond the safety of the street, they were bold enough to cross the boundaries of society for their own entertainment.

Mathalla wasn't of this world. How could a creature like her appreciate such fine points, when the scope of her very existence spread so much wider? That had been his thought, until he heard that laughter leave her, somewhere from the shadows reflected in his path. If the slightest of errors did not mean injury, he'd have looked over his shoulder at the surprise of it, realizing what she truly was.

The Devil was not a creature of sin and desire alone. The Devil was wanderlust, boredom, the drollness of inaction and mundanity in a world with untapped potential. The payment she took so freely from him was a release from these things, a guiding hand towards new experiences not so similar to that endlessness she already suffered.

So it was with new eyes that Willowood looked upon her as they reached the grounds of that distant manor; an estate surrounded by tall brick, lined with iron fence and the dim lights of patrolling guards waving lanterns this way and that. The nearest rooftop stopped a whole block away from the gates-- there would be no leaping the fence to so easily enter this place.

"Do you see?" Rhenn waves a hand dismissively, disdainfully toward the defenses. "They think their status and wealth is protection. They shield themselves with wall and flesh in hopes of living in their own utopia." Reaching for his hip, Rhenn pulls a small wooden clup from a clip on his belt, seemingly wrapped with a long, black wire. "People like me... like us." Rhenn plants the narrow end of the club firmly under a tile in the roof they stood upon, placing his palm downward over the top and twisting. With a mechanical click, the wire launches outwards, flying over the fence and the heads of the guards, before latching onto the side of the manor.

"We exist to remind them of their humanity. That no being is invulnerable."

Mathalla