----
Earlier
----
It had all gone sideways.
That was the trouble with the profession, of course; sometimes things went well and it was as smooth as silk. A few days spent tracking down a target, then a couple more observing them before the final, glorious moment when the strike was made. Chained, dead, it made no difference; money was the goal, and terms set by the contract holder at the time of signing. They got what they wanted, and him and the others got what they wanted: money, exposure, and generally more clients.
This contract, however, had been one of the
other kind. Things going wrong right at the start, a wild chase through the woodlands and - the key point - they quarry had not even been contacted at that point. Then there had been a brief contact in some nameless village out on the plains, and it had eluded them.
And then there had been Alyse, and the story she had to tell of the beast.
Eijin did not particularly like the woman they had saddled themselves with, and did not necessarily understand why Serras had been accepting of her. The fact that she did not desire any of the bounty on that things head raised red flags in
his mind, but none to do with the mark. All of them had to do with a so-called bounty-hunter that refused payment.
And there was also the cold light in her eyes, the emptiness that had been filled with something else. Eijin did not wax philosophical often, but he had had the notion to do so then.
Should have. But the subject was different.
What is that thing? He had followed it after the others broke contact, and watched it die on the bank of the stream. Or thought it had; he had been about to go and drag the corpse back to Graniteholme so they could be done with this whole wild hunt when the other two had shown up. Even so, he'd been of a mind to eliminate them; just a couple more moldering corpses in the woods, an adventurer and his pet slain by the wild things. Neither intimidated him.
But then...then
it got back up.
In the former assassin's mind, when you stabbed something it stayed goddamned stabbed. Oh, sure, if you didn't kill it it might regen, or heal over time. But once down, they did not get back up. Of course, the woman Alyse had said that it had remarkable regenerative abilities, but that did not include from death.
Did it?
Regardless, this needed to be reported on. His task, as his boss had laid it out, was to track the beast and report back in a day or two. But, with the pair that had intercepted it, he dare not wait. It might become entangled with these new beings, and that would certainly create a problem.
And so, with stealth trained into him over his entire youth, he slipped away before the griffin had even slipped away to feed the beast.
----
She paid little mind to Elliot as he walked away, instead devoting her attention to eating supper without any consideration for the beast that had killed it for her. She had no scruples about what she ate of the beast; she consumed bone, blood, flesh, and even most of the viscera as she went about her grisly work. The stomach and intestines she left alone, but all else she consumed with the voracious appetite of something ten times her size.
In fact, it was hard to understand where all of it went. She wasn't particularly large, but she had eaten a fair percentage of her own weight already.
"No problem," Maranae answered the griffin around a mouthful of bones that she chewed up like someone would chew an apple. She paused long enough to look at the retreating back of the man, then back to
Nahlah.
"Grey-man not stab or hurt, so no problem. Not...friendly," she added after a moment of thinking her words through.
"But not mean to her, so not problem."
Magic seemed to waft off of Maranae, like a miasma, as she ate. The meat was being converted, now, into a different form of energy to be used later. She girl could feel the strength flowing through her limbs, though, the familiar thrum of power that she took for granted. The weakness of the revival had passed.
She looked up at the catbird, and cocked her head to one side.
"Night soon. Not good in open, must go to trees. Safer," she said to the griffin.
----
Elsewhere
----
"Two things, boss," the shrouded man told her, and Serras waited patiently for him to disseminate what he had seen.
The one was the presence of the dark elf and the griffin with the creature they hunted, and the fact that the goddamned thing wasn't dead despite half of her subordinates lying dead and without a burial in the woodlands. Something about the elf, though, tickled at her memory, but she could not dig up the stone that she could only see one corner of. It probably didn't matter, except for the fact that they were now in the company of that
monster.
"That man is a dead man," said the other woman present with them. Alyse cut an imposing figure despite her build, which wasn't very intimidating on its own. Serras turned to her, an eyebrow raised. Alyse looked back at her with hard, dead eyes. "I know of him. He was there when the monster escaped me and my brother." She was working the tip of her spear, her bow and arrows set on the ground beside her. In the flickering light of the campfire, her face had a haunted cast to it.
Great. Part of that Gordion Knot of hers, the bounty hunter thought to herself. Aloud, she said: "Your personal trouble with that man can wait until we capture the
chimera." Unlike so many that had tracked the beast, Serras had a leg up on them.
She had received her contract straight from the owner of the beast, and knew in great detail what its capabilities were. There were some sketchy areas, as even the Lord Azure - a pseudonym to be sure - was not entirely sure of the things complete abilities. But enough. The beast was a terrifying thing but, fortunately for them, a coward. She knew that they needed to down it, and capture and bind it while it was down. She even knew how to kill it, if the need arose. Or, at least, what Azure thought would kill it.
So many unknowns. The job was costing that fool noble a sum that could have ransomed kings, though.
"....Stannis is camped in town right now, bold as brass," said Eijin, and she blinked.
"Come again? I am sorry, but I was thinking of some other things," she said to him. She stared into the fire for a moment, then looked up at his shadowed face.
"I said Gloria Stannis is in town. I thought you might like to know that little tidbit," he said.
And then something clicked in her head.
Dark elf. Or, rather,
half elf, as it were. She recalled a posted bounty a while back for a fellow that matched, at least loosely, the description of the man that Eijin had seen streamside next to her mark. What was the fellow's name again? She remembered he had been wanted in connection with a murder in
Dornoch - quaint place, that - and the sum for his capture was hefty. Not hefty enough to make her desire chasing after him over her current prey.
"Ah, that was his name," she murmured to herself. Looking up, she saw Eijin looking at her with interest. Alyse was working with her weapons, sharpening and checking bowstrings and the like. "Elliot. Eliot Aldmar. Well, that would explain that Erdenian being here, if that man is close." She turned to look back into the fire.
Thinking.
"In fact..."
----
She stood in the gathering gloom, quite at home in the darkness. The night did not hold as many terrors as she herself was capable of producing; the watered elfin blood in her veins granted her remarkably sharp vision, day or night. It was one of the attributes that led to her notoriety as a bounty hunter, especially in the Aberresai and
Falwood, and in
Alliria beyond.
There was no such thing as formal attire for her, though; she wore plate forged of mythril, strong and light enough to grant her an impressive amount of mobility even if she lacked flexibility as a result. Plain leather-wrapped hilt of a workwoman's sword stuck out at her waist.
She did not have to wait long. The others were back at camp, because there was no need to bring Eijin into this, and Alyse was not even one of her own. Just a useful tool, a
weapon to be cast at her foe and if broken, not mourned.
The man that had intercepted her came back, and indicated that she follow him. She smiled, and followed him to the carriage.
"Ah, Gloria Stannis," she said as she approached the open door where that worthy was seated. "Your reputation precedes you. I am Serras Victoria," she said, and paused to gauge whether the woman in question knew of her as well, before resuming. "I believe I have found something you may be interested in.
Perhaps we....can be of mutual benefit to one another," she said. And then smiled.
