Wandering Dachinst

[Nayt]

Continued from [this thread]

His name was Naius Irou. He came from a small village in Prompt, one mostly untouched by the End-- the calamity that wiped out most of his country and many countries like it. Somehow someway, his village managed to survive it all. Perhaps it was just a matter of size. The larger the city, the harder it was hit. Usually. Naius got this introduction out of the way once they cleared the campus, if only to make it easier on himself and Sedit.

"What about you, kid?" he asked once that was out of the way.

All he knew about Sedit was his first name, and that was good enough for Naius. Towards all the rest of the details, he was fairly indifferent. His question was an idle one. Hell, this was most of the reason he invited the kid along. Sedit was the first person he'd talked to in this academy so far, and it'd have been a little harder for Naius to take his mind off of things if he didn't have idle conversation.

They'd just left campus and stood side-by-side on the corner. It was like something of a four way intersection, except the most travel it saw anymore was a horse drawn carriage. Dachinst was cut off from the rest of Darokin since its liberation; foreign imports and exports, based entirely on what Dachinst itself could provide, had become its only source of trade income. The number of merchants traveling through was practically cut in half.

[Lemon]

Sedit stared forward silently, allowing his eyes to reflect back into his skull, to relive the past. What should he say about his lack of childhood? About being a living guinea pig from age -9 months? His very conception was a planned, calculated experiment. Oh! But he had died there, so it wasn't really relevant to say what had happened before his resurrection into reaperdom.

"I was stationed in a small village a few miles miles from here," his sense of distance, of course, being completely distorted. Getting more or less abducted from a place and thrown on the back of a horse charging at full gallop through the countryside tended to do that.

"It was really nice. I stayed in the wine cellar beneath a brewery house that exploded. Reminded me of when I was alive," he smiled fondly at the olfactory remembrance of alcohol, mildew, and cinders. "Did you live with other elves, Naius?"

[Nayt]

"Yeah," he nodded, "Prompt's full of 'em."

Which, of course, made perfect sense to Naius. Prompt used to be the largest elven nation in the world. Now it wasn't even a nation anymore, just a collection of ruins. There were towns left. Small cities, even. But they'd mostly become city-states anymore. All hope of reestablishing Prompt as a standing country was wiped out along with Drai City.

"Well, it was. After the End, well . . ." Naius shrugged his shoulders. "You could say us long-ears are starting to go extinct. And those mythics . . . well, they don't reproduce that much. No reason to. Put our lives to scale with mythics; someone like you or I has maybe two or thee kids in our lifetime. The same goes for mythics. Except they can potentially live forever and can't have children 'til they're eighty."

Naius looked down the road. A young couple down the road was looking at them strangely. Naius brushed it off and crossed the street without further thought on the matter.

They-- the cadets and their superiors --were going to get strange looks. It was just the nature of the beast. They represented something. They belonged to Darokin's invader, a clever ruse called "The Drunalan Empire." The Drunalan Empire now stood between Dachinst and the dictator these people known as Shenfald. They were these people's saviors, and they showed up with scarce few demands beyond space. This academy. That was all the Drunalan Empire asked of them, and it was common practice for the people of Dachinst to wonder what else they might ask for.

They were accustomed to tyranny.

"Needless to say, they were few and far between to begin with. Now they're even fewer," Naius concluded as he reached the other side of the street and continued on. He had a destination in mind, now. He really wanted a drink.

[Lemon]

"Still. That would be so cool! An entire city of elves. I can't even imagine it. So... so 'mythics' live forever? I... I thought all elves did," he admitted, a little embarrassed for knowing so little.

"But I don't know much about anything," he forced a small laugh. "I learned... I learned different stuff from my parents. Y'know. 'Practical' stuff."

His eyes flickered to the couple along the way as he followed the elf. The continued staring, even after Naius's back was turned. They would be looking at him, not Sedit. In a room full of soul-sensitives he had every right to be nervous about his ability failing, but out here where normal humans were in the majority... Sedit may as well have been Naius's shadow.

That practical stuff he'd learned from his mother weaseled into the back of his mind, making him uncomfortable. Body language, facial grimaces, she'd been able to tell exactly what was on his mind the second she looked at him, and then he was punished for being so obvious. They continued on down the road, Sedit's gut becoming more unsettled with every step.

[Nayt]

"It's fine," Naius shrugged again, "I get that a lot."

Which was true. He got that inquiry more frequently than he might have liked-- but humans didn't usually understand. Naius came to terms with that a long time ago. There were distinctions between long ears and mythics, but most humans saw them as mostly the same thing.

"We're just called long-ears," Naius said as he tapped at the back of his left ear, " Some . . . long time ago, I don't know when, we stopped being like mythics are started being more . . . human. Honestly, besides this and a few random bits of biology, there's not much difference between you and I."

That was a fact so rarely observed by humans, that not all elves theoretically lived forever. In fact, the bulk of Prompt was made up of long-ears. It just so happened that the aristocracy was wholly dominated by mythics, and with Prompt running under something of a dictatorship . . .

"Anyways-- what kind of practical stuff are we talking about, here?" Naius asked as an afterthought. He was done talking about Prompt and kind of wanted to change the topic more sooner than later.

[Lemon]

Slender fingers gripped the small knife hidden inside Sedit's sleeve. His father had made him observe countless operations and dissections; he was well studied on human anatomy.

"Uh... I don't think I can show you some of the things," he laughed nervously. "But... but I know people. That couple back there? He was a farmer, probably close to the school. He grows some type of root vegetable, 'cause he spends most of his time on his knees. He's really bad with money, and his father doesn't trust him to sell the crops in town but it's likely either his mother or father is sick and wasn't able to do it tonight. I know that because she was a very cheap prostitute--she hasn't washed in a while and her clothes are becoming ragged--but she knew the man and was acting affectionate toward him so he was probably a regular..." He trailed off, leaving out the part about both of them wanting to do Naius harm.

"Not that I can prove it!" he recovered, trying to cover up his omission. "My mom... she was, er... a really talented psychologist. She made me good at reading all the nonverbal stuff people do." Sedit left it there. This was the most he had ever said to another living person, but he could tell Naius didn't want to talk about himself, even though that's all Sedit could really think to ask at the moment. Sedit was in such high spirits that he was hanging out with a bonafide elf but he was terrible at small talk, or any conversation, so he would let the elf direct the flow.

[Nayt]

"Huh."

He didn't sound dumbfounded, impressed, or any of it-- but he also didn't sound wholly disinterested, either. Naius was interested, at the very least.

They'd come to a stop at Naius's destination, this bar he'd seen on the way in to the academy. It was the first and only place he'd seen that was so obviously a bar that it was the first place to check when in search of liquor-- like now. It was a tall place, three stories and probably packed with rooms for rent up from the first floor. It was surrounded by smaller structures that almost took the form of a city block. Almost. Naius had come here for a reason, but he'd suddenly found an idle interest in something else.

So he looked down the road and tried to find a different target. There weren't many folk out, not with the light of the sun about the extinguish any minute now, but he was at least able to spot one person. There was a young man in a blazer at the far corner of this makeshift city block, standing with his back to the wall and his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

"What about that guy?" Naius motioned down the road.

[Lemon]

The scene brought him back to the town he'd been stationed in. He'd seen both the bad and the good of that little hamlet, and he thought it was slightly funny even a larger city like this had the same generic characters milling around. He was especially keen to show the elf his worth, now that Naius had shown additional interest.

"He's part of the criminal element in this town. He's not dressed like any farmer or even any shop owner, and he's leaning against a wall trying very hard to act natural. He's not waiting to meet someone... all the shops around here are closing or already shut down besides the bars, and if he were going to meet someone for a drink he'd wait closer to the entrance. He's vigilant but not paranoid. Tensed but not afraid. I think he's the lookout for something happening in the alley across the street. He keeps checking both corners, and he's sneaked looks over at you twice when you had your head turned. I don't know... if it's drugs or not. That's always what it was where I was stationed. But it feels different... he should have run to warn the others in the alley already. You're obviously aware of him, a military cadet and so more likely than most to report suspicious activity, and you haven't gone into the bar yet because you noticed him... so that should have spooked him... maybe he thinks you're a potential customer! That could be it."

He nodded, his analysis as complete as it could be without meeting the man.

[Nayt]

"Well . . . I guess we'll just have to see if you're right," Naius replied, immediately before looking away from the man as casually as he could, "He's coming this way."

Needless to say, Naius was spot on. The young man pushed himself off of the brick wall and started to walk for Sedit and Naius. He had a casual strut in his step, punctuated by the way he held only his right hand in his pocket and kept his left arm hanging out from his side in a casual sway.

"Drunalan boys, eh?" He said once he was closer.

Once he was close enough, they'd both be able to get a better idea of how the young man looked. He was a little younger than he seemed from afar, barely old enough to grow the goatee on his chin, in fact. As soon as he was close enough to see them, though, he came to a stop.

"Whoooa, a long-ear with the Empire?" he almost sounded astounded.

Naius felt a twinge somewhere within his chest cavity. "Yeah?"

The man rolled his shoulders. "Unexpected is all. You don't see many elf folk just walking through Darokin, you know?"

"I've heard," Naius tried his best not to grumble. He only partially succeeded.

"You guys new to this city?" The young man asked. It was an open question to the both of them.

[Lemon]

The young criminal had gotten off the wall to walk toward Naius alone. Sedit hadn't released his ability, but he began to panic as the man closed in. There were a number of ways this scenario could have gone, very few of them any good. A criminal approaching a lone elf, a member of the invading army to boot, about to head into a bar--which would likely be against his superior's regulations, so the higher ups may have been in the dark on his little excursion. He could disappear, and they'd just call him a deserter. He released his ability as the man approached, allowing the Darokinian to be aware of his presence for the first time. The odds for mugging, rape, and murder all dropped rather dramatically if in a group.

Sedit eyed the man wearily and unconsciously checked the knife hidden in his sleeve. His smooth talk fit Sedit's profile of him, from simply taking it in stride that the single elf suddenly had a comrade appear next to him to his snide remarks about an elf "just walking" through Darokin. He remained silent as the man talked, but slowly shifted himself in front of Naius, his new friend, so that he was closer to the threat.

[Nayt]

With Sedit partly standing in front of him, Naius looked upon the young man in the suit with an expression of indifference. He was already somewhat put off by him.

"Yeah," Naius replied.

"Don't suppose you'd want a guide to show you around?" the young man asked smoothly.

Naius glanced to the booze-house to his and Sedit's right, then back to the youth in the suit. Unless he could suggest something else, Naius had all but found what he was looking for.

"We'd just like some drinks," Naius said as if the decision that Sedit was drinking with him was already made. He was probably going to pressure Sedit into drinking with him, anyways. Drinking alone sucked. "Know of any good places?"

"Not this heap," the young man motioned to the bar Naius was thinking of stopping through, "The Townhouse is what you're lookin' for if you're lookin' for drinks and a good time."

"And where's that?"

The young man motioned backward, "Just got to head down this street 'til you reached Sixteenth. Take a right from there and walk a short ways. You can't miss it."

Naius looked past the young man, then back to him. He nodded in appreciation, before motioning for Sedit to follow behind him. He passed the young man in the suit by and hoped to leave him behind. That guy really did stink of organized crime. Best not to get involved, right?

Just as Sedit and Naius started off, though, the young man called out to them again. "I can do you one better, though!"

Naius slowed to a stop. He glanced over his shoulder, not so much curious but cautious.

"I just so happen to have somethin' great with me," he reached into the front pocket of his jacket. He withdrew a small vial of fluid. "Better than any liquor buzz, I assure you."

Naius glanced away, shut his eyes, and sighed to himself. Sedit was definitely right about this guy--and now he was trying to sell to the both of them.

[Lemon]

"What is it?" Sedit demanded. "I'll know if you're lying." He wouldn't even have to rely on his knowledge of people and their tells; he was much more comfortable with potions, concoctions, and drugs than he would ever really be with humanity.

Criminal or not, however, Sedit was relieved to discover he was just a drug dealer. There were far worse things in the unlawful world than sellers of illicit drugs. His father had dealt with many during the transitional years, when he went from being a respected physician to a sadistic graverobbing Voleur D'ame. The good ones were all outgoing, charming, and helpful out of necessity, after all, how could you not like them?

[Nayt]

"Pure night lotus extract," the man said with a smile and nod.

The young man hung the two vials out for Naius and Sedit to see.

"More potent than any alcohol known to man. Where it might take a couple of pints for you two to get a good drunk, all you need here is just a couple of drops," he said with another sagely nod, then held the two vials out in one hand and an open hand in the other, "And it's only one stone for two vials."

Stone-- Darokin's upper tier currency wasn't actually made up of stones, but the people of Darokin called them "stones," anyways. This came from the fact that Darokin's upper tier currency actually came from precious stones. They were coins fashioned from obsidian, a precious stone that was worth much more in Darokin markets than all stones before it. It was Darokin's gold standard, and seemed to be equally as valuable as a gold coin.

Naius recognized this routine, though. He was annoyed already.

"Snake oil," remarked Naius as he spun on his heels and started away again.

[Lemon]

Sedit looked from Naius to the phial, "Snake oils look different and have no mind altering properties. Of course, neither does night lotus extract; it's just an inexpensive perfume. Snake oil would actually be useful up at the academy, if you can find any. I'm sure marching and doing drills will make for sore joints," Sedit dipped his head goodbye to the con artist and fell back in sync behind Naius. He was extremely aware of what remained behind him, however. It would be foolish to turn your back on a criminal, no matter how low in the hierarchy, unless you were prepared to deal with the consequences. Sedit assumed they were still going to the pub, but would follow Naius wherever he went.

[Nayt]

The con artist grimaced as Sedit and Naius both started away. He was clearly put off by this show of both disapproval and unfortunate logic. The kid might have had a point. Actual snake oil might be a pretty high selling item to academy kids . . . but that didn't mean the kid had to go hurting his business right out of the get-go. He checked around him, eyeballing his surroundings to make sure no one was around to hear the kid--but he wasn't quite so lucky. A group of folk had just left the bar Naisu previously planned to enter.

For the con-man, this was bad news. He had to act quickly.

"Says the kid that hangs around a pig," the con artist said aloud-- very loudly, in fact --as if he stood to gain by publically defacing Sedit's credibility.

He did a little more than that, though. Naius stopped walking entirely. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, as if trying to get a better angle to listen to the con-man.

"What'd you just say?" Naius called out. The con-man might not have seen it, but Sedit sure would: Naius was tensed up all over.