He wastes no time; the man is late. Whatever he feels towards Osytha and the stars that were slowly fading in rainy-sky eyes from the feverish light is saved for later, but honestly, facing the monster was very much preferred to getting jumped by a woman and forced into slack-jawed compliance… and it is a dangerous job, but for the fleet footed it is far easier. The discarded satchel by the lights console is donned in a low crouch, the bandages snatched from the quaking floor, Vitri rides the incessant shaking like a wave and stalks as low as he can about the rim of the pit with a leveled tail for balance and all the focus of a hunter crawling up to its prey, slow and steady. The beast isn’t looking at him. The dumb creature still believes there are two of them upon the ledge, though it ceases in its attempts to give itself brain damage its downwards position means it cannot see either of them, the nose appears, falls, and appears again. Deep inhalations, snuffling, were they still there? Could they still be knocked free from flat-stone to tumble forth into jaws? It is thinking, but it thinks with an intelligence no greater than a hounds, tips its massive head side to side in curiosity and licks the wall in eagerness--

Vitri skids down the stone ramp at the furthest edge of the scarred pit, barely visible through the desert-like wavering of the air and the fog of the haze and makes a break for the terrible things back end, the heat is lesser back there, the sweltering comes from its jaws and though it is still hot there is no risk of burns or death-- unless it turns around-- but it would not get the chance to. About a tiny back toe the bandages are looped and pulled tight--

Blink.

It’s gone.

The Shroud turns from raging, swollen river rushing amidst a downpour to simmer into its usual soft rolling instantaneously, the light above ceases its disco-like flickering to glow constantly ever-white, the cavern stops its trembling; the beast has disappeared, and with it the temperature begins to tick down second by second. With the source of the heat finally removed the hot air begins to rise upwards, it remains awfully dry but it is the heat of a hot summers night and not the raging of flames in the daytime, below the ledge Vitri disappears and throws the bag out of sight, marked by the absolute silence now broken by the thumping of the bag against the ground. Words. Distant, fuzzy voices without distinction. It takes but a few moments for now two very humanoid forms to begin to climb the closer ramp, Rois is addressing the strings of a beige collared shirt to tie them into a quick bow (the black slip-ons have returned) with hands next pushing sleeves up in the characteristic way he often did, black harem pants billowing with the speed in which he was trying to catch up to the other… the endeavour almost sees the red-head tripping. Too fast, too soon. Vitri’s arms hug the bag to his chest, looking very much like he wanted to run but couldn’t, mouths move, a turn back from the horned one to bark,

“Just--”

“Stop--”

“--Leave me alone!!”

Now he does, now he runs to retrieve his weapons, they are stuffed violently and awkwardly back into their holsters with a free hand as Osytha is never addressed, never looked at, that expression is an attempt at neutrality but something is twisting it. Sadness, anger, pain, embarrassment, he flees the scene with the lightest tupping of feet and leaves his bedraggled boss behind at the top of the ramps to eagerly meet the darkness of the tunnels… up and away. Footsteps fade from gentle echos till the silence in the aftermath of it is all that remains.

Rois is… understandably tired. Such is the toll. The bandages had been hanging from his pocket, now rigid hands are looping them stiffly about his skull in a weak snare, even if he wanted to run after his employee… he couldn’t. The butcher moves like he’s been the victim of a severe accident and halfly limps over to her with narrowed eyes, the lines beneath them betray annoyance, but he no longer breathes steam. No longer is possessed by a violence that could really harm, just the usual, very human annoyance of the darker kind. And the knight knows a lecture is coming from the boss and his messed up hair and his pin-prick pupils by the way a finger is pointed in her direction, a light jab, the motion is miserably static,

“... You were supposed to observe… just observe.” Deep wheezes, the exhaustion of the steep climb still rattles him, but the want for the torrid air is not stronger than the need to berate, “Now I get told… Gods be damned.”

The half-beast comes to a stop but two paces away, the colour of stretches of golden skin seem so… pale. It is clear from the loose collar and the words that the burn mark against his shoulder has gone, his tongue no longer weeps, red glints weakly beneath the shadow of curled bangs,

“You may not care what your prying… does or whether people hurt or not, but I do.”

Fuck: he’s too tired for this. Words are barely even coming with anger, he has to keep plucking it up from somewhere, has to. Wants to. Eyes shift from where Vitri disappeared and back, a lidded gaze, the bridge of his nose crinkles with a lick of disgust.

“I am disappointed.”
 
“Right…” Whatever ire Rois manages to scrape together seems mostly lost on Osytha, who’s absently tying off a gauze wrap around her injured forearm. It’s the magitech array which truly has her focus; with her calculating blue gaze scanning along the wires that run from console up to filament-cluster, then back down again. “Should’ve made that rule number four, I suppose. And maybe also picked someone who isn’t the walkin’ embodiment of ‘unfit for duty’ to be your handler?”

A pallid hand hovers above dust-dulled brass knobs and wheels of the control system. Poorly-shielded energy gradients have aged the device beyond its time, with pale verdigris creeping lichen-like over its original burnished shine. The question of supply seems like a hard one to answer in general here in Munas Kuvak, and that’s before you consider how magitech like this has to be kept under wraps from Avak’dun and his cronies. Whoever jury-rigged this together had to keep it bare-bones, which, on one hand, makes deciphering the mechanism easier for her — most of the schematics Osytha researches in Cloud’s Keep are rather more intricate than this. On the other hand, however, it means that frivolous additions like ‘safeguards’ were sacrificed in the name of feasibility. Her wary eyes return to those coiled leads running out its back. Probably not a good idea to touch those bare wires, especially with the circuit closed.

“… but, aye. I fucked up, too.” Osytha sighs. She rustles her hand up in a length of cloak, and gingerly presses the back of her palm through its wool, onto one of the metal faucets. “I’ll take whatever you decide I'm owed — within reason. But first, we need to catch up with Vitri. I don’t like the thought of him out there alone… not with the state he’s in.”

Appearing satisfied at the lack of immediate, Shroud-overloaded (or otherwise) death coursing up her arm through the protective insulation of her mantle, Osytha adjusts her grip to properly close around the green-crusted brass spigot.

“Fairly straightforward half-cell Shroud differential circuit,” she murmurs, “with armonium plate diodes.” Then, she glances over her shoulder toward Rois. “Got everything you need?” she asks, speaking much more clearly. “’Cause it’s about to get real dark in here again.”
 
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“... Everything would have been ok if you had controlled your need to know everything.”

Maybe it was a woman thing. Maybe it was a knight thing. Maybe it was a her thing, his tense silence following the slowly spoken statement as she in turn speaks is him actually trying to decide whether or not she is owed any reprimanding. Peering down with critical eyes, Rois ponders the notion that he cannot chastise Osytha because she hadn’t known what effect those words would have, ergo, it was a mistake. Did it lessen the effects, knowing the cause had been accidental…? No, the sting would remain as prominent as if the knight had deigned to cause intentional harm; the once-beast decides that the loss of trust-- something that needn’t be spoken allowed, and something Osytha probably did not care about-- would be the ultimate outcome. Forward thoughts to the future and what would be obscured… and what wouldn’t. Words murmured darkly beneath his breath, turning eyes upon her back as she takes finger-tips to the control monitor,

“It is this sort of carelessness that got Lucero hurt.”

With a scowl his attention is turned to the discarded hood and its layer of kicked up debris in the way of dust, picking it up in a rough snatch to tuck beneath a stiff arm, the console does not intrigue him and neither does any of her expertise in the matter. It is an old, rusted thing that bore the signs of being the earliest of magitech, from a time where experimentation was feverishly gripping the world at the prospect of a future eased by its existence. Cogs and exposed wires and a pressure gauge cracked, its needle ticking in place like a feverish pulse, the only reason Rois walks up to it is to take a weathered finger to a joint sticking out of a gear laid horizontal, when it is turned counter-clockwise it takes a few beats before click. Absolute darkness, Osy had been very correct in that (and laughably, she would have been able to turn the damn thing off simply, but he suddenly does not trust her to do that). The low humming of a circuit depleting of power rolls into an uneasy silence, eyes glint in the dark… half circles of red fall down upon the knights skull and then away--

“We’ll leave him; he’s still going to work, no matter how he feels. Someone has to take the payment to the pit owner, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me.” The butcher did not feel like roaming across Munas kuvak looking for him, not when he did not actually feel like even walking back-- and maybe it’s a little cold seeming. Rois cared, but hes experienced enough to know that Vitri would do nothing but yell and fight and snap and flee and its too much, raw, re-opened wounds would see the pain flow away eventually. Plus… they needed to talk. In another world where the timeline was different, this lapse into quiet would have been where the Suldazan would have apologized for the off-putting events of the room, but here in this one he does not feel the need to yet.

A subtle shifting of the Shroud like a wire pulled taught for a brief moment, the tips of his fingers catch fire to paint the pair orange-red with a flickering glow swept away when the large man turns and addresses the tunnels now revealed mouth in all its splintered, lopsided center.

“Stay close, or you’re going to get very lost and probably run into situations you do not want to find yourself in.” Dryly mumbled, beginning to wander and taking that low flame-light with him into the inky-black of the mountains jumbled intestines. Rois’s tone since turning back into a person again has been stuffed annoyingly with a confusing emotion, it’s part way scolding, part way distant, part way treating her like it’s just dawned upon him that she might actually be a complete idiot, like Lucero, “‘Cant help but notice you are very blasé considering what you’ve just witnessed. Maybe it is not as dangerous as I thought it was…”
 
Doing as she’s told, trailing a few careful steps behind Roi’s weary stride. Following him through the cramped passages, now revealing their hewn and chiselled facets in the warm flare of his finger-flame. “Stay close, or you’re going to get very lost…” He assumes Osytha can’t recall the route they took to get here, like she hasn’t been Sanctum-trained to hunt fell beasties through their lightless haunts of sewers, catacombs, caves, and such. Doesn’t feel like correcting him on the matter, though. Feels like she ought to reflect a little on her own assumptions she’s been making. The little ones, like why she didn’t think of just asking Rois to work the console in the first place. And the bigger ones. Assuming she knew the possible limits of a man’s grief and enmity, one whom she’d only just met.

“Cant help but notice you are very blasé considering what you’ve just witnessed. Maybe it is not as dangerous as I thought it was…”​

Osytha mulls that over for another few echoing steps, as the stink of mouldering wood gradually fades behind them. “No,” she replies, after the ponderous seconds have counted down. “You’re right. That manifestation is dangerous. Truth be told, it might be one of the most dangerous things I’ve laid eyes on.” More dangerous than I was expecting, and all. There: one more assumption on my part. “I just… well, that ain’t the same thing as fearsome. I suppose I just ain’t especially scared of it, however perilous it be.”

Is that foolish, and careless of her — to feel that way, let alone admit to it? But it’s the truth. Whatever other fuck-ups she has in store for them all, at the very least, Osytha can continue to be honest. “It is this sort of carelessness that got Lucero hurt.” Her error, perhaps, is forgetting how harmful truth can be. But unlike with Lucero, now it’s other people who’ve paid for Osytha’s mis-step.

She eyes what she can of Rois from his back. The light’s not much, but maybe thanks to Krava’quiloor’s ocular tweaks, Osytha can nonetheless tell how the lustre has seeped from his flesh. She can also hear something like resignation, perhaps, in his voice. But there’s no missing that fresh limp with which he walks, nor the stiffness of his movements. The fiend may be sated for now, but that transformation only seems to have taken something out of the Butcher left behind.

“Why do you think I asked?” Osytha spiers of him through the quiet dark. “About… them?”
 
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“... I see.”

A touch of uncertainty; he genuinely doesn’t know. Doesn’t know how ‘scary’ it might be, doesn’t know what it had been doing in that lapse of time in the white light of the claw-scorn pit, has never known its appearance; to some people it is a vile monster capable only of death, a thousand teeth and the heat of the sun come forth to bless whoever in front of it, but to two peculiar elves… it was just a weird crocodile-thing. Derpy creature with its rolling eyes and dog-like motions. Flame-kissed fingers are leading the way through the abyss of walls stained by moisture in streaks of grey and brown, an upwards march familiar in the opposite direction, the tunnel splits are revealed to have markers etched upon them and filled white: a cross, a triangle, a square, a diamond. It is remarkably simple to navigate once one can see,

“If you want to know things, you can just ask me. I am the one that decides what I want written in that little report of yours… and this is one of those things I do not want recorded. You can decide on whether you will or not, but from our last meeting I deduced that you have some honor and would be respectful of my asks, if anything.”

This wasn’t anything the northern knights needed to know, it was a private affair that happened on southern land amongst the bedraggled and quarreling ruins of the Arshakan empire, and so Rois is not telling her because he thinks it’s important. He is telling her because she was curious.

And maybe, if she knew, she’d know better than to bring it up again.

“Lord Chistan of Firelight is what happened to 'them'. He is a man who decided to call an established town his home, a lordling of the south that bought Fireside castle with daddy’s money.” Comes the tasteless drawl as the tale begins, as if saying the very name made him want to spit out whatever bad taste the words brought. A consideration at a diamond wall, a turn left, “When he bought the castle it came with the farmlands and all its inhabitants; and it isn’t big. A few stores, two or three hundred people, but it is in one of those important locations where large crossroads meet on trade routes. Lord Chistan decides there’s money to be made there, and he places a hefty tax on the roads within his territory. Suddenly traders-- like us-- have to queue to wander past this stupid little town and its ugly orange castle.”

The names ring no bells because they are insignificant, the usual corruption of the shattered south, the doings of wealthy men trading land and lives like they were wagers haggled over games of cards.

“And we’ve used these trade routes for years, but now we have to pay? I’m not paying, I say, and I’m scary so the first time… the guards let us go.” Rois is a little smug about this fact, but the emotion doesn’t last for long at all. “That marks us as ‘criminals’. The next time, we try to go around to avoid the affair of maybe having to fight… and lose four days in the effort of navigating trees with giant carriages. So, the final time, we have to go along the main road with the intent to pay and are surrounded by a company called the Knights of the Ever-torches. What a terrifying name for sworn in mercenaries in paid-for armor.”

The generic (and somewhat pathetic) name of a company that had no history, that picked whatever sounded intimidating and ‘official’ enough to seem legitimate, such was the guise of many of the ‘knights’ of the free-states. They could huddle together and swear themselves over ale and proclaim promises, but their traditions were stolen, pale imitations of the real things afar; when Rois had mentioned in the basement room that he realized Osytha’s company were not the kind he held prejudice against, this is what the butcher meant. No matter how hard the southerners pranced upon their pretty ponies and brandished swords in the face of the common man, the thing that held them together… was naught but the pay. A turn right. The air is beginning to cool, the fairest brush of wind…

“They did not like us; they knew what we did. The fools were looking for a reason to spear us all for repeatedly skirting their little fees and took personal issue with our merchandise. Firelight-- which was once called Leirstara-- is a very… human settlement and proclaims itself a stronghold for the race amongst the rabble of the other towns. Lord Chistan demands it be as such.” Surprisingly not unusual in a land divided by the talons of Devahni rule its forced customs. Rois attempts to make his voice lax as they take a sharp turn right at a square, and there in the distance… a blue arch baring the ghost of moonlight, freedom from the low ceilings and stone stretching far, far behind them.

“Taani, our sweet cook from the southern shores and the only real human amongst us, offers to talk with his fellow kinsmen at the keep to negotiate a permanent lump sum for us specifically to use the route as we wish. They’ll relate to him the most he wagers, he was soft spoken and reasonable and he was a fishers boy, he knew how to haggle, and we let him go because we believed, truly, something could be worked out and we’d stop having those fucking knights breathing down our backs and trying to overturn our wagons, just because they could.”

A step into the open, a deep, deep breath in, fingers roll into smoke into normalness. It felt wonderful to be free of the maze… but the caging of the walls was not so easily shed from heavy shoulders. The moon is slowly reaching its apex above, Rois takes a moment to readjust the little string bow at the top of his chest but the moment is a fidget, uncomfortableness creeps into his posture, he has to wrestle to keep the same tone the rest of the story had been told in--

“... The next day the knights were accompanied by a horse-and-cart, which contained Taani’s body freed of his head. They had executed him for ‘crimes against humanity’, as well as carrying ‘illegal and taboo contraband’ and breaking trespass laws and resisting arrest and daring to threaten sworn officers and protectors of both the law and peace with a weapon. An unarmed fisher’s boy, a cook… they took all of our crimes, and put them all… on him. That, to them, was justice.”

No matter how hard the man tries, the words stick in his throat like glue, when he swallows the bitter taste lingers like the sharp twang of blood… and his expression is as calm as the pregnant moon above in all its blue serenity, freed from the forges dark clouds, glimmering down like a spotlight upon them both. A look over a shoulder, red eyes half closed in feigned peace, the question comes slowly,

“I am curious… syr Osytha, what would you do next? Imagine you are presented with the decapitated body of someone you love laying in a wagon-bed, a life stolen for crimes written up by some rich prick in a castle tripping upon power… what would be your next course of action?”
 
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Another heavy, thoughtful silence dogs at the knight as she weighs up Rois’ return question. She holds it in her mind, considering all its familiarities, marking too its differences from her own experience.

“I honestly don’t know,” Osytha confesses, at last. “Whenever I lose kin to the Chistans of this world… a part of me wants to repay that violence to them tenfold. But that sort of thing always catches other folk in it. Blameless sods in the wrong place at the wrong time, or with the bad luck of being on the wrong side of the line when it got drawn. And peace is always a fragile thing between the Knights of Anathaeum and the marcher lords. When it breaks down…”

Osytha thinks about the last round of bloody border feuds to grace northern Altalusia, some senseless game betwixt Hvithelm, Rodhan, and Lekander. All that death, all that destruction, the scars of loss still carved deep into land and people to this day. She shakes her head.

“… so we take it on the chin, most times. Cut their bodies down from the gibbets, and quietly take them back to Astenvale. To see them off properly.”

And there had been a couple just from that same awful conflict. The Knights never officially took part in the fighting, oh no; on paper, they were an uninvolved faction. But many in the order had worked clandestinely to funnel serfs out of warzones and into the protection of the peasant’s rebellion, Osytha included. An act the lordlings saw as theft since a serf is, effectively, property. And few things make a marcher lord happier than having legal recourse to execute a Knight of Anathaeum.

“But it’s different,” Osytha goes on, as the duo slowly continue their ascent to the waiting night air. “As Knights, we’ve chosen to take such risks. And we all have blood on our hands. It’s… harder to hold a grudge when we’re so often the judge, jury, and executioner ourselves.”

Harder, but not impossible. Some like Syr Grenmerrie care little for the hypocrisy of it all, and won’t hesitate to take lives in anger or vengeance. And many’s the Knight who’ll cut down Sightless without hesitation, after all the evils they’ve seen wrought in the Everwatcher’s name.

But what if it isn’t a fellow Knight she finds hanged by the roadside one day? What if it’s someone she loves — not in the friendly way she holds dear her fellows amongst the order, but someone she truly, deeply loves?

What if it’s Merifrith there rotting at the end of a hangman’s rope? What if she sees Leofric, crow-pecked and maggot-ridden, trapped in a gibbet’s iron cage?

What will she do, should Hector come back to her in pieces…?

“I think it’s very easy for me to stand here and say what I would and wouldn’t do,” Osytha concludes. “But I don’t think I’ve lost someone the way you’ve lost Taani. Not the way it seems Vitri has suffered loss. I’ll admit, though, if that should happen… I might well do something terribly un-knightly.”

Osytha lifts her eyes from their deliberation of the grit-carpeted ground, up toward the back of Rois’ head. “I’ll not report on this,” she confirms, “as you prefer. But… what was the answer, then, in Taani’s case?”
 

“How sad it seems, to have your wings clipped as such.”

A thought that should have probably been internal, the backwards notion that he could stare down upon her white-striped crown with muted licks of pity as she speaks, a life that sounded like a nightmare. An invisible chain ensnaring the neck of those who gave their lives to good and still managed to do bad, what sort of life was this? What sort of person would choose to have their freedoms stripped by law, was it the money hungry? Those who chased power like the curling of a dog upon its tail, never to grasp it betwixt slobbering jaws? To want to be judge, jury and executioner… was that not an unnecessary burden upon ones shoulders, why, even the act of joining convent or company baffled him, for it was not like family. It was not… love that held them together.

Rois does not barge into her sentences as Osy continues talking onwards, noting internally that whatever ‘marcher lords’ were would have to be studied and trying desperately not to catch a toe against the steepness of the ramps downwards to the familiar sprawl of the open space of static rock and stiller horses, mine-cart tangles and the shadows of buildings jutting from the sloping earth. The comment ‘terribly un-knightly’ actually causes him to laugh breathlessly, clenching the hood against his side as two hands disappear into pockets. Maybe they were not all slaves to writs and oaths.

But a cut bird could be given the world to roam, and still it could not fly.

“I do not think Vitri really understood… love before Taani. It’s why it makes him so volatile to the subject.” Once again the random and misplaced cruelty, as if their affection was a fault; woe, the dreaded ‘L’ word, it makes him crinkle his face in childish disgust, “Familiarity and feelings… bonds are chains, heavy and unshakable once they form. If they hadn’t been so close then maybe I would not have had to act so unknightly myself.”

Every part of the fool had wanted to spit those words out… but they stagger, come clumsily instead. Someone had cared. Someone had wept and locked themselves away, had refused to eat, had burrowed into the earth like a worm and dedicated his time to remaining in a hovel until he was but bones, and Rois would like to think he did what he did because he did not want to see his worker die over the death of another. That is how he’d rationalize it, all fact, shorn of humanity, as if he’d really get away with lying about something like this; no, he hadn't stood with eyes turned downwards upon a man who felt he really did not have nothing left and felt the tell-tale tug of something in his chest. Taani had just been another member of staff, replaceable, ordinary. The butchers absolute outrage had not spurred him on to be held back by many hands, he had not snapped and snarled, it was all a lie, he’d-- he’d cared--

“I… I did not want Vitri to die over something as silly as love.”

The red-head isn’t a good liar at all. The baritone of his voice wobbles, Rois clears his throat, cannot look at her, liar, you cared, you can’t admit it, but--

“-- So Fireside castle no longer stands. I ‘surrendered’, they took me behind the battlements, I took off my bandages… and when I woke up, the entire thing was rubble. ‘Blameless sods in the wrong place at the wrong time’ went down with it, burnt bodies, even more burned rock, the knight company had seemingly tried to fight back and roasted to death in their armor. The smell wasn’t terrible.”

There is no part of him that seems sad by the admittance of mass death (because this part isn’t a lie, he really does not care about randoms caught in the crossfires of his battles), in fact, the butcher is looking at her as if he expects some holier-than-thou kick-back, knowing Osytha was not the sort to get easily rattled. Searching for buttons to push. Always looking for an angle upon another, something that will cause them ill, he does it without thinking. Expecting betrayal at some point, Rois needs weaknesses to exploit when that time would eventually come around… but this one is a hard nut to crack. It would not stop him from trying none-the-less.

“The town was spared, though. They say Lord Chistan survived, but he was crushed. Can’t walk or speak any more and is missing a leg and a hand. I wonder how he feels, knowing his words and actions caused the deaths of the stewards and cooks and grooms and chambermaids alike? I wonder… if there was anyone he loved, and I wish I could have seen them smeared against the ground like pâté. That really does sound like justice to me.”

A cat-like expression of unfettered joy, Gods, that was freedom! But nothing changed-- True, pure freedom, to take a beast against a castle and to see their wooden beams catch fire all at once without flame, to see men writhe as they struggled to tear helms from melting skin, to see brick crumble like paper beneath claws! … But Taani was still dead-- ruin and redemption, the cruelty and unabashed consequences of horrid emotion in turn, you reap what you sow, you meet teeth with teeth-- but… it hadn’t made Vitri any happier. He’s tense, the man flexes a sore shoulder and pretends to walk like strong legs are not consumed by a dull pain as words come a touch quieter,

“And it wouldn’t have happened, if those two…”

… Love is not to blame, really, but... he fixates on it. The lordling was ultimately to blame, but this was a factor, the finding of a kindred spirit in a cold world to try to once again feel the warmth of tenderness again... an unforgettable aspect. If the boys had not loved each other he would have still lashed out, Rois knows this but he would deny it with his dying breath, no, this is what happens when you get too close to another. Death and destruction and anguish and pain. This is always the outcome, he scowls, keeps his eyes on the side buildings, searching for nothing in particular within darkened windows--

“... We are going north because we are running from daddy’s knights, who have been head-hunting us for a half-year. I hope to return back south at some point… but while we are here, I did tell everyone not to get friendly with anyone else. Not that they listened.”

Safya had been so desperate to talk to her, the girls would be overwhelmed by her presence, the orc guard who remained a mystery had laughed kindly at Osytha’s little posture at the door, they are desperate to reach out, to make connections, to form bonds, and he… he.

Their wings are clipped by him.

“It is why I haven’t asked anything about you. Not where you are from, not your history as a whole, I didn’t even ask for your name. It is for the best if we know as little of each other as possible during your stay; remain analytical.”

Suppression. The sharp edge of a cleaver dangling there as an unseen threat, Taani’s story is not the story of ones power, not the tale of a beast on a rampage burning fallen brick black and sending a great flame spiralling into the sky as people simultaneously burned to death en masse. It isn’t about the flight upon northerly winds to flee the pursuit of armed men masquerading as knights. It is not about taxes and roads and trade routes and caravans.

Aye, I'll be the best cook you've ever seen! Mr… uh, Crocodile, you can count on me-- M’ gonna’ show you how we do it ‘ere down south!​

It is about thoughts and feelings and kinship and love. It is about the fear of reaction, the intensity of adoration, the cons of friendship. It is about a man who holds others so tightly that he strangles them while doing so. Someone who saw pain and in turn, dealt it forefold; emotion that could not be controlled by herb-stuffed helms or bandages. It's his fault. If he had just paid the toll, if he hadn't let Taani go, then he'd still be there, they'd still be down there, it's all his fault and Rois knows this and doesn't know what to do--

‘Ey, boss? Don’t yell at me, now… I kinda’ burned… the deer. Fish issa’ lil’ different-- hey now, don’ joke about firin’ me, you’ll make me sad…​

Wall it off. Wall everyone off, keep your family within the keep and let no-one else in. It was better to keep everyone at arms length and remain in the cold than to ever feel that warmth-- and its loss-- again. A struggle to sound empty of feeling, a monotoned statement that barely sounds like it was still him speaking,

I know, s’only been a year since we’ve been datin’, but… I was wonderin’... dun’ laugh now, iffen’ we ever tie the knot… will you be-- wait, come back! I’m not kiddin’!​

“This sort of thing cannot happen again. I hope you understand… any coldness you might receive here, by anyone else. ”

By him alone.
 
That is… a lot.

Stewards, cooks, grooms, and chambermaids alike. Those poor hapless sods. The kind of collateral why, as Osytha said, her order has to think very hard about the consequences before doling out retribution. It’s damning enough to have just the blood of the ‘guilty’ on one’s hands. To knowingly, willingly shed the blood of innocents in order to reach the ones behind them, the ones who actually deserve to be brought to justice — it’s a line that should never be crossed.

But that’s easy for people like Osytha to say. Osytha, who was only ever raised with love and kindness and care, who was only ever shown the ‘right’ way to do things. It’s easy for her to be good, because she never had a chance to learn how to be bad. She’s never had to resort to the things Rois has in order to survive. She’s never had to live day after day with the boot of people like Chistan on her neck.

What if she had lived that life, though? Can she honestly say she’d try as hard as Rois is; would she willingly chain herself in a dungeon to go mad with boredom and hunger, so that she might keep those around her safe? Or would she simply not care what damage she does to a world she owes nothing?

“I’m sorry.” Sadness. That’s all there is in her voice. “That is an awful, awful thing that was done to you all. What you did in return… I won’t say it was right. But I don’t think it’s fair to blame you for making that choice. From the little you’ve told me, it sounds like you’ve had Chistans taking from you all your life. So when you finally have a weapon with which to fight back… it’s not fair to expect you wouldn’t.”

And now he’s learned the hard way why it doesn’t work. It didn’t turn back time. Taani’s still just as dead. Him, plus so many other Taanis besides, and what has it won Rois? Exile from the southern states with a bounty on their heads. Now they’re having to try their luck in the unknown north, with all its uncertainties. Well, if there’s one thing worse than the devil you know, it’s the devil you don’t.

The damage is done. What would be gained from condemning Rois over it? He’s been condemned all his life, and all that’s become of it is this tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy.

“You say you want to keep as much distance between us as possible. That’s understandable, I suppose.” Osytha’s walking stick tup, tup, tups evenly along the ground behind Rois. “I just disagree. I’ve walked both roads, and speaking from experience, the better I know you all, the better I know what sort of help I can actually provide. You’re going north, up into my neck of the woods. The information I give you about those lands, and what I report back to Astenvale — it could all affect your chances of success. So that’s why I asked about Taani. The more I understand of your troubles, well… the more I might be able to do to stop something like that from happening again.”

Not much time left, perhaps. They’re drawing close to the patient rectangle of starlight waiting for them at the end of these tunnels. Not quite in view yet, but once they’re back out in open air, surrounded by the shadows of Munas Kuvak and the threat of prying ears, it’s hard to say if Rois shall still be willing to carry on this sort of conversation. If there’s aught Osytha wishes to say to him alone, she needs to do it now.

Even from his back, Rois’ unease is palpable. Wary of letting her get too close. Worried that the people under him will do the same again; that he’ll see another messy, doomed sort of love blooming on his watch. They’re on the lam, heading up north where the entire caravan hasn’t dared travel before, with all its unknowns. Osytha doesn’t know if he’s afraid, as such — but anyone might at least be feeling a little trapped in his situation.

“I just, want to be realistic about it.” Gods, what damn-fool thing of her to say. And had Rois actually kept her at that distance, had he not told her as much as he has, then Osytha wouldn’t know why that was such a deluded sentiment on her part. She’s come here, telling him she wants to try and find some workable peace. But that requires trust, and only now does she see how unreasonable that is to ask of him.

He’d trusted these ‘Knights of the Ever-Torches’. Why would he ever want to make that mistake again?

But there is something Osytha can give him, first. Something she really, really ought not to share. Doing so would jeopardise the entire mission, and if it backfires… the order could lose their chance to hamstring their longtime foes. Who knows how much that will cost the Knights in the long run? She would be a traitor. Probably will be one regardless of the outcome.

For some reason, it feels like Osytha has known this day was coming for a long, long while.

“I’m not…” hesitation, uncertainty, slows her steps. Suddenly, it feels like she’s wading through tar. “… the order hasn’t sent me here to investigate your Shroud-fiend manifestation. We’re not even really concerned that your business deals in humanoid flesh. It’s your buyers we’re interested in. I was— I was ordered to find out if you’ve been supplying body parts to an organisation called the Sightless. That’s what Astenvale wants me to report back on.”

Osytha feels light-headed. A part of her is disconnected. Maybe it has to be, or else there’s no way she’d be able to divulge this.

“I should not have told you that. I can already think of one or two ways you could exploit that information. And if the order learns I gave it up willingly, I— I honestly don’t know what sort of punishment I’d be looking at. But… you have it, now. Hopefully that’s a little more power in your corner.”
 
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It does not work.

They say you cannot bite the hand that feeds, but you can bite the hand that harms; and it would come back to strike over and over in all its justifiable anger. That was the first lesson learned. Well, if you take off that hand entirely… the second lesson learnt is that there are always other clenched fists behind that one, revenge had a thousand arms and there was no mortal alive that could conquer them all. Rois wished he could. The other option had been staying south and fighting till the last man, onwards and upwards until there were none left to chase them, but… they’d lose. Something, someone, again and again, round and round--

‘I’m sorry’...?

And he knows deep down Osytha’s sadness is sincere, but his head tells him… it could not be. Yes it was a sad story, people died, but when people care the red-head always wonders why. Critical thinking, always questioning, empathy does not come easily to his tattered soul and so Rois always fails to understand it, if the roles were reversed and she instead was telling this tale of woe he would not give a damn in turn, he’d simply pretend to be polite. The tall walls again. When you exist behind such towering blockades you simply do not possess the ability to feel anything towards anyone else outside of them, you loom upon the barricades and from the distance all anyone standing below looks like a vague shape, a could-be threat, an enemy. He’d long since lost his sense of humanity, and it wasn’t the doing of a Shroud fiend.

She’s just being polite.

“Mhmm. The problem is the better you know us all, the easier it’ll be to tell others about us. Even if you pledge you won’t, that does not… mean much. We have a lot to lose.” It is so clear by the way he talks that the man really believes that any sort of interpersonal information could and would be used against them, as if a grand, ancient order of knights really cared about the personal problems of some vagabounds fleeing. The Knights of Anatheaum and their grand purpose-- plus their scale and inner workings-- absolutely elude him no matter what Rois has heard from the little-folk. They could be a police-like aspect that monitors the land like hawks, or they could be hands off problem-tacklers at the whims of the rich, it made every scrap of information a potential weakness. A soft chuff,

“Even the smallest truth can be turned into a terrible lie.”

Insinuation. And she hadn’t been rattled at all, instead, ‘feigned understanding’ had come, she’d never understand. Another angle would have to be taken, the man doesn’t know which kind, but there was time to try again.

So while Rois is adamant Osytha is lying and false in emotion, the reveal of what appeared to be a truth is surprising indeed; a slow come to a wandering stop as the woman's tempo changes, an unknown emotion peppers her words, a look back upon her with interest as she seems to struggle to convey-- or hold back-- something. A secret. A bone for a starved dog huddled afar, untrusting of hands lest they come to strike, and Rois does not really understand the gravity of the admission. Does not feel like stating anything about the now known organization changes anything, it isn’t the words she is saying that are important, it is the way Osytha is saying them with difficulty, this is a bargaining chip. Could this be false, too…? Though the butchers expression remains unchanged there is a eerie moment of silence that she would have become used to by now, the act of thinking, any time Rois was watching his words carefully these blank spaces appear so that that fanged mouth does not simply run and ruin everything. Calculating.

Her emotion seemed… real enough.

“... I have never heard of ‘the Sightless’.” An, as always, honest admittance. “As you probably would have deduced, a lot of our clients are entirely anonymous, but they usually aren’t private, either, because they make assumptions that we have our hands in the criminal world too. Most of our business comes from people physically coming to the stalls. But if you tell me what identifying markers we can use… it’ll be easy enough to simply not sell to them.”

A casual shrug. It… was real right? Her reluctance? The threat of punishment? This is power in their corner indeed--

“If they are your enemies then I suppose, in the pursuit of peace, they are now ours too. No-one’ll know you told me. I do not gain anything by running to this ‘Astenvale’ and getting you in trouble.”

Not the person attempting to reach out with fingers splayed in their direction, knowing of the bite but doing so anyway. And maybe there is the insinuation that he might, if there was a reward for Osytha’s so-so betrayal, but mentally he had thought about what a reward could possibly be-- money? Money not earned through actual work was pointless, they were rich. Protection? From who, a band of unknown knights tacked onto them by another band of unknown knights? Absolutely not. Thankfully the mans lack of trust in anyone upon the outside of psychological thresholds means hes a great keeper of secrets, and indeed, there was no trust there that anything handed out would even be delivered, whereas the woman before him, well. She could not fully be trusted, but… maybe… just a little…

He feels like he should give something back to her, he just does not know what. No, he doesn’t care, he’s just being polite, logical, when someone gifts you something it was manners that dictated you give them something in return, and if they did not care about the fiend and its capabilities what could be trusted to be ineffectual in the ways of backlash? What would not rock the boat, but shift the tides? Silence again, more thinking with a reappeared hand from the warmth of his pocket to touch his chin in thought.

A riddle-not-riddle.

“... We are two children, a cripple, an invalid, an ex addict, and a slave. We do not want to cause trouble or gain more enemies.” … He has no idea Safya has already revealed she was a slave, she already knows Feliene, he hopes his involvement in the other terms stays to a minimum and Osy never gets the answers to figure out which one is him-- “You can ensure our full co-operation on this matter.”

So that it never happens again. A half-smile, the reason glinting fangs appear is about to be revealed as Rois turns again and begins to roam unafraid to the darkened streets uncaring, a call,

“Trot along, Filly. These aren't the sort of streets we should linger in.”
 
“… it’ll be easy enough to simply not sell to them. If they are your enemies then I suppose, in the pursuit of peace, they are now ours too. No-one’ll know you told me. I do not gain anything by running to this ‘Astenvale’ and getting you in trouble.”​

For a moment, Osytha can only stare wan-faced back into that sharp grin, Rois’ eyes hovering with a light all their own in the darkness. She thought she was feeling oddly faint before, but that sensation pales against the dizzy wave of relief which washes over her upon hearing his words. What Rois has just offered in return is probably the best scenario she could have hoped for. Even though he owes her nothing.

Of course, he’s not doing it for her. The reasons he gives, it’s all with the ultimate wellbeing of him, his business, and his employees in mind. Even so — trying to work with Astenvale isn’t the only option available to him, might not even be the most promising avenue he could pick, yet it’s the one he’s chosen.

Her white-knuckle grip on the walking stick relaxes, and she breathes out a slightly shaky breath. She’d betrayed the order. Maybe it was justified. Maybe it’ll work out for the best. Maybe it’s but a minor piece of treachery in the grand scheme of things, inasmuch as betrayal can be considered ‘minor’. Osytha still crossed a line she never imagined she would. It feels like… of all the certainties in her knighthood she’s been disassembling these last couple of years, this is the first time she’s pulled out something vital. The cornerstone, gone.

Can the rest of it all stay standing, now?

Osytha can’t keep looking the Butcher in his face. Instead, her eyes lower down to the hems of his baggy-bottomed trousers. “Thank you.” It’s not just her breathing which still holds the trace of a flutter. “I don’t think I can express how grateful I am to hear that.”

But she should try. There’s a lot she can do to help prepare them for their trek north, even if it’s just to get them started for now. Mind, already racing with ideas. It would be foolish indeed to give Rois a reason to regret hitching his wagon to Astenvale’s horse. Worse, it would be a betrayal of his trust.

“Trot along, Filly. These aren't the sort of streets we should linger in.”​

—to which Osytha’s head snaps back up again. She gawps at Rois, before her face cracks into a small, sheepish smile, and she hurries to catch up. ‘Filly’, ‘little hawk’, ‘badger’, ‘weasel’… she wishes people would just pick one animal to call her and stick with it.

“‘Filly’, eh?” she repeats, drawing up to his side now they’re free of the confines of those mining tunnels. Munas Kuvak awaits below them in all its inky blackness, lamp- and torch-dotted like the stars above, but oh so much more forbidding. “Funny you should say that. There’s a story there I ought tell you… maybe once we’re back, that is.”

But for now, and once again, Osytha falls silent as they make their way toward the streets of Munas Kuvak. Better that she keep her wits about her out there. And besides, maybe Rois has endured more than enough of her nattering. Let the man have a little peace and quiet — at least until they finally return to Safya and the others.
 
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So… she was being honest.

Relief overcomes her visibly like she had been dunked beneath water, had been holding her breath and now was suddenly yanked ashore and free from the threat of suffocation, maybe now he can somewhat grasp what it meant to go against orders. Somewhat is the key word. It seems the man still hasn’t figured out why it was of such importance-- ignorance of the matter keeps him in the dark-- but there was to be no fretting. It was an easy ask. They weren’t starving for customer or coin, so what if a few freaks got turned away at the door? Unknowing that Osytha had regarded the notion herself, Rois wholeheartedly believes the devil you know would always be better than the devil you don’t.

So… why did it worry her so? Were they horrid enough to chain her up (ha) and starve her (haha) and beat answers out of her, regard the woman as a traitor that no longer was deserving of whatever orders they gave, surely whoever sat upon the throne of the Aun… en…tum…erum knights would want co-operation and co-ordination. Or… was it not Filly and the order that were the enemy, it was simply just the company of knights itself that needed to have eyes narrowed upon it, scrutiny, this was the second knight he had come across that seemed to just abscond their teachings in favor of obtaining something else. Something private and sincere. Rois did not know why they bothered… but… he is (secretly) happy that they did.

It worked in their favour, after all.

The night has only grown stronger in the way of wicked wails and slurred words from the bustling inn, neither it nor the creatures huddled about the streets with backs turned phase him. Nobodies. But then again, he is a large man and he is not their prime target, on the way back anyone who took a look at Osytha looks harder now, was that a woman? They would not take action because he is there, but there is no doubt as they pass an opening bereft of street and moonlight alike there is the wanton sound of smacking, like a tongue drawn against wet lips, eyes glimmer. They do not move from the darkness.

“Filly… yeah.”

It’s a little awkward, but at some stage Rois had stopped calling people by their names after spending enough time in their presence. Saying them felt personal, and he avoided… the personal. Lamb, Rabbit, Fox, their names were little things in the back of his skull like glimmering things, prizes, maybe one day they’d be so close they could be called what the world named them thus; but with him… no. This is the first time he’s had to explain the meaning of the nickname, Fox was a fox, Rabbit accepted it reluctantly, Lamb’s frustrated him but he never vocally acknowledged it--

“... In Suldaza, a horse's star marking is called al-ghurrah.” He points to where a lock of his own crimson curls fell but was indicating her white blaze, hurriedly looking down and away. The sprawling white mark of an equines fur… it had reminded him of that against black, lithe-legged and little but hard working, the horses of the desert were the swords of justice but more importantly the finders of precious water-- loyal things, protected things. And the peoples of the desert preferred the quietness and tenacity of mares-- so she had to be a filly-- Rois is thinking all of this but he would not say it, instead, it is quite the severe turn to go from the mentioning of mass casualties in one breath to suddenly turn upon the subject of horse-lore,

“They say those horses who carry al-ghurrah cannot be harmed by the sun, because it has already touched them… which is important in the desert. Eh…” A shrug of the shoulder, why does this man keep trying to act like nothing matters, like this moment is not briefly somewhat soft (for the first time in their history!), thinking in Suldazan, speaking in common, “It means… ‘lucky’. A luck that cannot be burned away.”

There is an irony there of her talking to one who wielded fire and he is smart enough to realize it but does not want to discuss it, instead hoping to redirect the conversation immediately--

“I am sure you have many more stories more pleasant than the ones you have heard here.”

That is right, kill the light mood with a dark reminder of the encyclopedia of suffering that could be bestowed upon the poor Filly’s sun-licked head amongst the smoke marred ruins around them. It would be terribly unwise to announce a will to stay far away and then in the next statement close that gap by explaining the stupidity behind the little names he bestowed so coldly on others, the meaning was dehumanization, it wasn’t familiarity, Rois reasoned internally, it was because they were not people. They were things so far down below they no longer looked like humanoid beings but animals there against the walls, striding back and forth looking for access--

And the mood can’t stay dark because all of a sudden, there is a large figure waving at them both from the center of the road afar; the hooded orcs eyes sparkle, gleaming citrine, it is quite hilarious how visibly slower Rois starts walking. Slowing down to a crawl. A stop.

An unhidden and non-suppressed reluctance for them to meet, he squints at the figure with a decidedly critical eye, as if daring the other to move.

I hope you understand… any coldness you might receive here, by anyone else.​

“Boss… an’ miss! Welca’ back, ‘been-a waitin’... all tha’ time…”

… What coldness. Rakkar closes the gap between the parties in a few strides-- the warning had been missed-- and all though his face is cloaked the way the lemon hues of his eyes shorten a little are a tell-tale sign that the towering, mysterious, obviously armed man is squinting in happiness at the two of them. The mannerisms of his speech are upbeat, but those words are not accented per-se, the black hood he wears and the wheeze after every lengthy syllable beside their clipped nature reeks of someone who has taken many a-blow to the face. The sort of injury found on dead soldiers after the collision of armies upon a heated battlefield. Corroborated by the very heavy limp he wanders with, the clacking of armor disjointed and unharmonious… the list she had been given just got shorter.

The cripple.

“Aw, miss, ahm… sorry I aint… beena’ bout, was on shift… ya’ see.” A breathless yet slow medley of words, he had seen the wayward knight interacting with everyone and now it would be his chance, a large, mitted hand is being extended out to Osy-- it… stops half-way. The orc pulls it back tentatively and turns those round orbs onto Rois like a dog suddenly remembering a command, instead letting it slide against the hilt of his stupidly large sword,

“Uh… permis’on to… go ta’ bed, then…?”

The air is suddenly awkward and tense. Rois wants to be cruel. It could be seen in the roiling of his crimson gaze as it settles upon the guardsman, the ever-eager crinkling of his nose, furrowed brows, a hand raises to press against his forehead,

“Please go to bed. Your shift has ended. It has been ended, you have no reason to be waiting out here.”

Rakkar’s hand falls gently to the side as he gives his boss a nod, turning to Osytha with an unspoken apology glinting there betwixt the gaps in a tone that sounds roughly disappointed, half-turn to wander away to the distant door of their private lodgings,

“Ah… sorry, t’en. Ave’... a good night, missy. Boss.”
 
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“Al-gurrah, eh?” murmurs Osytha.

The inn’s silhouette is within sight, though without much in the way of defining features visible through the dark, it’s really just the way that shadow stands separate from the others which marks it as such. That, and the familiar hooded figure waving them down also clues Osytha in that they’re on the right stretch of street. Another surge of relief to see that good-humoured orckin waiting up for her and Rois.

“Maybe I am a bit lucky.” Luckier than a lot of poor bastards she’s come across, though rather than rely solely upon that theory, she casts a wary eye behind them even as they draw so close to safety. Those had been some rather predatory gazes following her through Munas Kuvak’s streets, and she’s of the opinion that the best luck one can have is the kind you don’t leave to chance. “… But I fear ‘cannot be harmed by the sun’ is very much false in my case. Skin starts peelin’ if I so much as look at a watercolour sunset.”

Did she have this al-gurrah the time she actually turned into a horse? Osytha doesn’t know. Even if she had managed to find a mirror, the logistic obstacles presented by equine anatomy to holding the damn thing would have been insurmountable. And if they weren’t, she’d likely have been too afraid to take a peek in any case. So she doesn’t actually know what she looked like while that transformation lasted, exactly. Could be something to ask Monroe when she returns to Astenvale.

At least it makes for a good tale, however unbelievable it might be. Osytha glances over to Rois at his remark about her repertoire of stories, and flashes him a small smile. “I’ve got a few,” she confirms, “silly little anecdotes. Enough to distract some heavy minds from their troubles, perhaps.”

To describe the land they’re about to enter, as well. Maybe teach them a few things without them realising that they’ve learned something. Things like exactly how cold the winters actually get, or how the formation of clear ice and glaze can take an erstwhile reliable road and turn it into the perfect way to break your leg. Why they ought to swap out their cotton for wool, and put hobnails through their boots.

“Boss… an’ miss! Welca’ back, ‘been-a waitin’... all tha’ time…”​

Osytha stops beside Rois when he does, for the trio’s awkward little soirée in the middle of the street. She returns Rakkar’s all-but-seen smile with her own, a smile which takes on a hint of befuddlement at the man’s abrupt shift toward reticence, but her confusion only lasts until she notices the way Rakkar’s looking to his boss for direction. Ah. “It is for the best if we know as little of each other as possible during your stay.” Of course; you don’t want more messy attachments than absolutely necessary.

When Rakkar makes his apologies, Osytha nods her head in his direction.

“Thanks,” she tells him. “See you in the morning.”

Before they go to follow him into the building, though, Osytha gives the great, dark stretch of road behind them one last look. Not for the tell-tale glint of greedy eyes, this time, nor the source of those disembodied, smacking lips. But searching for a charcoal-grey devahni, black-horned, palette-matched to the town’s soot-patina’d stones. She’s about to ask if Vitri will be alright out there, but really, what can she do about it? Going out looking for him will probably only cause more trouble. What’s more — if he does see her standing in the street when he finally comes back, Osytha has the sense Vitri will just turn right back around again.

So she instead hurries once more after Rois, toward the inn’s spill of welcoming light from out its threshold, and the fine aroma of a promised good supper.
 

“Well, you are lucky; that is the only consequence of the ‘more beautiful’ skin colour.”

This statement was not calling her beautiful, it was a nod to the constant chasing of the fairer skin that many corners of the world had decided was the minimum standard for beauty in humans, branching even further into orcish communities and revered excessively by elven kind. See, Rois has a little knack for being a tad depressing to be around, if a balanced person could always see even the littlest amount of good in something he is someone who has to fight to see the same glimmer, and so, he does not fight. Her little quibs are rooted in the every-day words of people just conversing, and yet the cue to simply converse back flies right over his fiery little head. It isn’t that the half-beast does not want to, it is just a struggle to figure out how, and what is the reward, everything had a reward, even something as simple as talking-- it is a clinical and long-standing kind of ‘wrongness’. Old dogs didn’t learn things easy.

And he wishes he could stay in a bad mood as his large, dismissed friend slinks through the doorway to disappear within the innings candle-lit abode, but frankly it is a little hard when the smell furling through the open windows makes the fiends mouth water, she is looking for his worker and he is busy pressing himself against the window like a damned idiot, a kid at a candy store,

“Safya, you little beauty…”

What a dutiful boss he was! Not that she’d know he knew where Vitri was. Not important, what was more important was the deliciousness scenting the breeze and the sight of a bird suddenly startled by her barbarian master’s exclamation, sparing him a little wave-- and to Osytha, another deep breath of relief. She was not burned or maimed or seemingly stripped of any dignity whilst they had quested into the lonely night. Upon the orcs word that the unlikely duo had been spotted, the beastkin had begun setting up that large stretch of stone the town liked to call a table with the sparkling whites of two plates possessing of something, a muddled mess of colour, hilariously Rois goes to barge in-- stops-- holds the clattering door open for Osytha’s entrance--

“... Do not waste any food. If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it.”

And because she is white, that is the warning she is given, a light scolding without the humor that would mark the statement as a joke! The sort distance afar reveals the plates roll lightly with steam, bathed in the warm light of a kitchen exposed by an open door to the far right, it is possessing of all the brutalist aspects that the town carries itself with; grey and more grey and sometimes the odd stretch of marble amongst chattering iron pans licked by a low flame. The exoticness of the dish she is offered betrays the core audience of the company (and its wealth to afford to dine on such things), but its freshness is testimony to the freezers they lugged along with them everywhere; when things could be flash frozen, the cuisine of ones homeland could come along for the ride for as long as they pleased. And the plate is the sort of thing that would probably kill a medieval peasant in its richness.

Char-grilled, shredded chicken scattered upon a bed of fragrant rice, which itself was a bed for a sort of pale sauce, but its flecking of greens and the ever-tenacious scent of garlic make its flavor evident. Scrambled amongst the concoction were scraps of fried flat-bread in shades of tan, contrasted against the brilliant, deep reds of pomegranate seeds to once again go honey-coloured beside toasted almonds, Rois regards it with a sort of besotted snort, the kind that could only ever be directed at a member of his team and never to outsiders with the thinnest thread of playfulness in his voice,

“Safya loves a table… whenever there is a table about, she starts making delicious things.” It isn’t a complaint, of course. He sits himself down unceremoniously and uses a leg to kick out the chair beside him for Osytha, the thing screeches noisily with movement,

“Sit, Filly. We have things to talk about. If you do not want fattet djaj, I’ll have her bring you something… less-ethnic.”

Safya pokes her head out of the kitchen with confusion scrawled upon her face, not quite understanding what ‘less ethnic’ meant as she fetches him a plain glass of water like a little maid, baring steel cutlery poking out of the white breast-pocket of her custom fitted apron. Regarding Osy in the same manner as she positions knife on one side, fork on the other for both plates,

“What would you be liking to drink, syr? There is… a lot of alcohol here.” A quirky, spry laugh, “I cannot read many of labels, but I can try!”
 
For the second time now Osytha has stepped through this familiar threshold and carried out the little ritual: walking stick (with its fresh scar) propped up by the doorway, face-mask relinquished, and thick russett mantle doffed. And every time she does it, she knows this space will feel just a little more comfortable.

Safya, you little beauty indeed.

The aroma strikes in full once she’s inside, and it’s nothing short of enchanting. Most of the olfactory orchestra’s notes are familiar to her; poultry, rice, garlic, almonds yoghurt, tahini, spices — she’s acquainted with all of those to varying degrees. But a good dish is greater than the sum of its parts, and as Osytha settles in with eyes wide upon the plate before her, she can already tell the composition which awaits will be a brand new symphony to her.

“If you do not want fattet djaj, I’ll have her bring you something… less-ethnic.”​

Osytha’s arms circle protectively around her bowl. “Don’t you dare,” she warns, glowering at Rois.

It looks absolutely wonderful. That it will be her first real, cooked meal in about a fortnight only serves to make this fattet djaj all the more mouth-watering. Beyond its considerable gastronomic appeal, however, is the important fact: Safya’s meal is a gift. A rare and precious bit of kindness in the otherwise deeply unwelcoming lands of Munas Kuvak.

The woman of the hour bustles back from the kitchen to make some finishing touches setting up. Osytha looks over as cutlery is clacked down on the stone counter top, and not for the first time today, gratitude lights up her face.

“It smells divine, Safya,” she exclaims.

“What would you be liking to drink, syr? There is… a lot of alcohol here. I cannot read many of labels, but I can try!”​

“Ee…?” Osytha blinks uncertainly back. “I’m not sure, sorry. Maybe I could take a stab at some of those labels, but… what would you usually pair with, er, fattet djaj?”
 

A hand raised; he would not take it! Though, such a statement from someone familiar would have caused him to snatch the plate in a spur of the moment splash of playfulness, the atmosphere doesn’t call for that. Actually, the atmosphere is a little odd; two not-friends, not enemies, one was a servant for good, the other admitted to mass murder not too long ago, being attended to as if they were in an upstanding, up-scale restaurant and not in the middle of a mining town simply because the place had been bought out. And Rois does not wait for her as she confuses his poor staff member, who cocks her head at the others statement and looks to the munching (strangely politely, considering what he was and how starving he had been) man with the gentlest touches of confusion. A soft uttering,

“You are too kind, but... forgive me, syr.” It is an apology for the next bundle of words that come from her beak in Suldazan, the language is somehow both rough and smooth, jutting like red-stone it rolls likewise as the sands of faraway sunbaked dunes did; and it is rude to talk to another in a language that they do not understand. The red-head had been absent-mindedly chewing and fetches a piece of stray rice from his lower lip with a flicked tongue before responding in the same language without missing a beat, a fork is pointed at the kitchen, to his water, understanding hits Safya like a runaway train-- the return of a sweet smile, and she is scuttling away in a flurry of wavering feathers, ever-eager to please.

“... She did not know the meaning of ‘pairs’.” The male comments lazily, crunching an almond between blunt teeth loudly, “This sort of food isn’t… fancy. It’s something your mother makes when you’ve come home after a day of work and she wants you to feel good.”

This is surprisingly not spoken in a condescending manner, rather, maybe there is the smallest inkling of something like humour for the actions of his mother-hen. The meal is something like cottage pie, or beef, gravy and potatoes, stuffed yorkshires and gammon; it felt fancy because they were at a large table with pretty, hand-crafted silverware and flickering candles and a swollen moon and the little bird, bless her, is doing her best to make it all so pleasant and welcoming. And speaking of welcoming, the little cook has reappeared with the soft clattering of a cart… a drinks trolley. Upon the top shelf is a plethora of different style drinking glasses from the usual tall curves of wine glasses to the shorter kind for shots, pints and even a mug, all it would take would be for her to request some of that fragrant green tea from earlier-- but the bottom row makes that a difficult option. A gang of cork-stuffed bottles are there in all their unbroken wax glory, spiced rum, sharp gin, wine in red and white from southern vinyards and brandy from the north. The decorative lettering upon their bespoke labels are too cursive for the beastkin to get a handle on, it is pulled beneath the moonlight for Osy to try and make sense of them.

“Take what you want, it’s all complimentary and only one of us drinks alcohol; he prefers ale over any of this.” Helpful commentary from the man and his simple glass of icy water, uncaring of whether the knight took the whole tray home with her if she wished; it cost no extra, and it was not going to be used anyhow. “Do not get drunk, though. I dislike dealing with drunkards.”

“No threats at the table, please.” Comes a short chirping from the working-bird, a half scold with a wing furling at her hip.

“... That wasn’t even a threat.” Rois gazes at her indignantly with his fork hanging from his mouth and puffed cheeks, very much like a scolded child would. It seemed he did not find her funny any more, but more so annoying in the moment. The unspoken law of table etiquette was something that the crowned bird took very seriously. A fleeting glance to his eager companion sitting close by and an attempt to keep irritation out of his tone, “... I am keen to keep your judgement making skills in check, especially when I’m about to tell you about the Lucero incident.”

Didn’t need her potentially getting upset and swinging walking sticks around in anger or sadness or frustration or all three at a time-- not that she’d be getting the full story. It had to be heavily redacted, not just because the pair are eating and grizzly details would see him scolded again… but because of the reason it happened in the first place. Rois turns his eyes out the window to watch the way the darkness crawled against blackened wood, thoughtful seeming.

He had had enough time since the admittal of the event to find a way to tell both the truth and keep vital information hidden at the same time.
 
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