Fate - First Reply Showdown at the Bluebird

[Hahnah]

OUTSIDE THE BLUEBIRD TAVERN​

Night had come again.

And at last Hahnah could move freely. For three nights she had been trapped within the huge and formidable city called Oban. She wanted desperately to leave, but for two reasons she could not. The front gates of the city were watched all hours of the day and night, and Hahnah did not want to kill any innocent people in order to escape. The form of her birth, how she appeared now with eyes smoldering orange and midnight flesh and her Living Armor covering most of her body, many thought to be that of a monster. And they were right. She had done many terrible things in the past. Her heart was full of sin.

But she wanted to atone. To be more than just a monster in the wild. To be more than just a cleanser of profane things. Of sacred things, she could be the savior.

And that led to the second reason why she could not flee Oban just yet.

Hahnah stood cloaked in darkness inside of an alcove, only the burning orange spheres of her eyes visible through the veil. Across the small circular plaza of the street was the Bluebird tavern. Inside were the corrupt guardsmen. And among them, Redoric, the smiling man, their leader, the one who had taken Mina Stonemason from her family and left Hahnah beaten and bloody alongside the road leading to Oban. There would be no leaving Oban until Mina was liberated, until Redoric was dead.

A patrol of regular guardsmen started to walk through the plaza. Hahnah closed her eyes to hide their glow until she heard the guardsmen's clanking armor and conversational voices pass and fade.

Hahnah kneeled down on the cobblestone. Clasped her hands together and looked skyward. Her heart thudded with trepidation as she began to pray.

"May You protect the girl Mina Stonemason in the battle ahead."

Silence from the Dying God.

"May You see Mina returned safely to her family."

Always silence to her prayers.

"May You allow me suffer all of the wounds meant for Mina."

He had spoken to her three nights ago.

"May You give me the strength to see Mina freed."

And what He had said was haunting: See what they do to you.

"May You watch over Mina in her time of need."

While Hahnah was praying...

She was unaware that someone had overheard her tiny whispers.

 

[Lazarus of Minaris]

"Fashion a bit o' timba?" The man leaned away from the wall and approached the sentry, en route. "Must have left ma other bits of futtocks in the seabag." His accent was thick, as if he had just recently rolled away from the tar planks and cared little for brushing off the salt-spray. He didn't have the characteristic sailoresque look to him; instead, he wore the common black and white apparel of a tradesman, trying his best to offload some goods.

One of the guards stopped and approached, the sheering and clinking of his armor gave him away even in moments of low light. "Sorry?"

Lazarus reached into his pocket as the guard stepped back, hand on his pommel. From his vest, he held out a walnut pipe with a lacquered black tip. Feigning melancholy, he tapped the bottom of the pipe against his knuckled. "Of a dizzy age, she is. Properly seasoned but can't hold a light to save a life. Just need a bit of sticks to get her going 'less you expect me to stand on my tips for the lantern."

Taking a deep breath, the guard smiled and threw a thumb towards the Tavern. "They should have kindling in the tavern. Try your luck there." He turned to meet back up with the sentry before Lazarus had a chance to respond. "Luck's for bones and teeth and I'm..." Lazarus trailed off, clearly disappointed, and tapped his pipe again before absentmindedly chewing on the obsidian tip.

His route often took him to Oban, largely because it stood as appropriate station between Alliria and Elbion. The transit from the Erca'Ryt storage facilities on the base of the Seret Mountains meant that the Savannah and Amol-Kalit were as equally inconvenient for trade as the other. But his recent store and stockpile of precious stones meant that Oban was suddenly far more than just a pit stop. As far as trade towns went, it could be worse.

He kicked off the wall again and began his trudge towards the Tavern, the meeting spot for one of the local traders in the Western Quarters that served as a rare commodity exchange for mages and warlocks. And just as the he cleared the wall, whispers carried in the wind not unlike the whispered words of Marbas, promising wealth and fortune for the sake of a soul. But the content of the words and various phrases immediately told him that an episode was in the currently distant horizon.

He spied around the corner and found words spilling out from something that looked closer to a shadow than an actual person. He got the distinct impression that such skin tone and practice was not entirely natural. "Uhh..." The word escaped him, despite himself, and he turned back around the corner. And then, without thought, he cleared his throat.

Stupid.​

 

[Hahnah]

Noise.

Someone. There.

Hahnah let out a hushed gasp, having been snapped immediately out of her reverence. She jumped up to her feet and pressed herself to the back of the alcove's cold stone. The alcove was much like a natural cave that monsters and animals often dwelled in--providing shelter, but with no other exit.

Then she heard someone clear their throat. Close.

Or did she? She...she actually was not sure. Had her nerves gotten the better of her? Being trapped in the city called Oban had left her constantly in a heightened state of alert that she felt frayed, even when sheltering in a hiding place. It was not without warrant. She'd had a couple of close calls--people seeing her, glimpses of her. She'd also imagined hearing things that were not so.

The Bluebird tavern was right over there. Right across the plaza. But she didn't want to be discovered before she had even snuck inside.

Maybe...check?

Hahnah slid over toward the left corner of the alcove, where she thought she had heard the noise. Slowly she peeked her head around the corner, orange eyes emerging from the alcove's shadows.

A man there. A man whose hat made it appear to her that his head was enormous.

And in that moment, Hahnah froze. Fear and uncertainty gazing up at the man.

Lazarus of Minaris

 

[Lazarus of Minaris]

His eyes drifted over in response to the movement, though he did his best to not move his head. Instead, he feigned nonchalance as he patted down his pants and black jacket. Pausing, he sighed and smiled, pulling out a small wooden box. Shaking it, as if practicing some form of ritual, he extracted a single stick and pocketed the box. With a quick strike against the brick behind him, still warm from the days sun, he cupped the bowl of his pipe and brought the flame to life with cheeks puffed and deflated like bellows.

He sighed again and turned to look at whatever the creature was that currently stood just feet out from the alcove.

"Not to...uhh...prod or interrupt whatever it was ya were doin' but..." He waved the lit pipe around, gesticulating towards his ignorance on the matter. "I'm keen for a bit of stir-about or water's willin', some muck an' halfpenny afters...'pends on the foraging of this fine establishment." He pointed towards the tavern with the lit pipe.

"But not to judge a ship by its tattered sails..." He squinted, truly not understanding what currently hid from him against the stone. "I'm not particularly keen on mafficking about in the gutters, if you catch my drift. So if ya intent on me hopping a twig, might just get 'er out of the way now. Prefer not to wrinkle the coattails."

The thought of getting into a fight with whatever this person or thing was; it didn't particularly excite him. But neither did the idea of being potentially attacked while in route to the tavern. Turning and looking back towards the tavern, he nodded. "Mina must be important though, for ya to offer so much."​

 

[Hahnah]

An effect Lazarus had upon Hahnah, regardless of intention, was that he disarmed her fear and uncertainty at having been discovered. Her mind simply drifted away from it. Far too busy was she trying to puzzle out what the man was saying to her, and this effort was plainly visible on her bemused face.

What...did he want to stir? Neither of them had a pot of stew--the only thing Hahnah knew to stir. Water willing? Water could not will anything, it was not sentient. He desired some muck...also half of a type of currency. She understand that part! There were many special words called "slang" which many people of civilization used; only some of it she knew, like penny, much of it she did not follow. Foraging. Hahnah would have loved to go foraging. She was hungry, surviving only off of what she could get her hands on in the dark of night. But cities, unnatural as they were, were awful places for it, and the Bluebird tavern was likely not to be much better.

It didn't get much easier to understand the man.

Ship? No, the ships were in the harbor, even Hahnah knew that. Maffick was a word in Common that escaped her: neither of her caretakers had ever spoken it, nor had she overheard it from others. It sounded similar in context to frolic. Why it was that this man's frolicking about in the gutters of the city depended upon her catching something she did not know. Furthermore, he thought she wanted him to hop over a twig? That was easy. He could do it. He did not need her permission or encouragement, but...maybe he wanted it anyway? Neither she nor the twig were in his way. So she thought. Coattails. That one she knew too. She had not worn a coat when she was blessed with the form of an elf, but she saw many others who did. Yes, it was considered rude to wrinkle coattails.

Then he spoke plain Common, and Hahnah understood perfectly.

"Yes. Mina is a friend, and she is in danger."

Hahnah wet her lips in a small nervous gesture. Some of that trepidation was coming back, but it was held mostly at bay by curiosity.

"You are not frightened?" After a second's pondering, she added, "And why do you talk so strangely?"

Lazarus of Minaris

 

[Lazarus of Minaris]

"A'feared? No..." He shook his head as the pipe seemed to wobble before coming to stop against his lips. He puffed and blew smoke out from the side of his mouth. "That requires a modicum of sense. As I'm currently unburdened by such paltry considerations, I find no reason ta abscond from m'usual proclivities, strangeness included. No return ticket, some have conjured..."

Just as he spoke, a man tumbled down the stairs of the tavern and landed in a slump just passed the first step. Belching loudly to the spectacle of others, he turned over an earthen vase to empty it's remaining contents in his wide open mouth. Finding nothing but drops and in an obvious state of frustration, the man threw the vase. It skittering towards the pair, bouncing a single time before smacking against the cobble and shattering into large red pieces of clay. The drunkard seemed to not notice either Lazarus or the being near him, loitering in the dark.

"'Sides, I've hardly known things worth fearing that had friends and better yet, could measure safety." He turned to look at her. "Ya query elicits notions of expectations. Am I ta fear ya, based on appearance and..." He gestured. "Glowing morbs and the like? I 'spect that threshold would leave my tail properly tucked beneath my legs as I scurried across all four corners of Arethil."

She was unusual, maybe more so than he. But the lands were covered in strange things, both in the dark and in the light. It would take a bit more to put him off kilter.

"So..." He took a long breath. "Mina, danger. Sounds exciting. She work in the uhh..." He squinted at the tavern. "A bunting? Bunting Tavern?" He couldn't, for the life of him, recall what the jewel vendor had called the tavern. Just that above the door, a bluebird hung.​

 

[Hahnah]

Hahnah gasped as the door to the Bluebird came open and the drunken man stumbled out. She ducked back into the shadowy alcove and closed her eyes. Not everyone was frightened by her, the man with the odd hat being the proof of that, yet she was reluctant to push her luck. She waited until the the new sounds from the drunken man faded, and then she opened her eyes again and peered out from the alcove to Lazarus once more.

So far as she could tell, he genuinely did not fear her. He was not like Edwin Griffin. He did not look upon her, and by that look alone, see a monster. A relief! Just being in the city, caged in by the narrow streets and clustered buildings and surrounding walls, avoiding the populace by day and stalking about carefully at night, she feared greatly that she would be discovered. That she would be hunted. That she would be forced to kill in order to live. There a terrible conflict. It would have satiated that everburning core of hatred for Humankind in her heart, yet left her ultimately devastated.

This man would prompt no such conflict. This man...wanted to help her.

Hahnah glanced about the plaza, worried that other passersby might come along. She reached out and gently took hold of Lazarus's sleeve with a slender hand, tiny tugs urging him to join her in the alcove.

"She does not work in the tavern that is called Bluebird," she whispered, wondering vaguely why the man had called it the Bunting Tavern. Slang, maybe, for bluebird? There was always more to learn, it seemed.

She spoke faster. With more urgency. "She has been kidnapped. She is being held there. I know it. I know it because I saw the man whose name is Redoric. He is an armored man--a soldier--and he is corrupt. He has taken Mina from her family and intends to sell her into slavery."

Pleading eyes looking up to Lazarus, hoping that he saw the truth in what she was saying.

Lazarus of Minaris