Open Get Out of My Swamp

[Asher Vanak-Duth]

Asher looked down at the letter in his hand with its stamped seal, then up at the colorful banner hanging from the outpost wall. It was unmistakably the same. An armored hare on a burning background. Spurs and sunflower bared. That rabbit looked angry, even more so twisting in the breeze like that.

He couldn't read the letter, so Miss Heidi had him memorize it before he left:

Asher -- Got a job for you and a few others. One of the Baron's lordlings needs a guide through the marshes. Couldn't think of anyone better fit. They'll leave from Maullon Garde in two turns of the Fiend. If you're interested, don't be late.

The message had only been signed with the initials Q.M., which no one in the village could help him decipher. It didn't matter much to Asher. He wasn't here to find someone from his past -- he was here for money. The healer who'd saved his life had not done so for free. The old traveling weaver said she'd return in one year's time to collect her debt. Asher did not want to find out what happened when one didn't pay the healer.

Maullon Garde's gate was left half open. Nobody could close it even if they wanted to. Heavy wooden posts sagged and stuck a whole foot into the mud. Deep boot and hoof prints tread in and out of the place, turning the road to pock-marked puddle. More people here than there were quarters built inside the dilapedated fort. This was the last stop for supplies between Rodhan and Grennfell, a hollow place to eat and sleep before going somewhere else. It was used only by hunters and Baron's men. As of late it had been more of the latter. Extra supplies were stacked up on drier patches of land. Food and arrows. Asher didn't need a brain in his head to know the people here were getting ready for a battle. The battle had to be somewhere else, too. Nothing around was worth fighting over. Half a day to the South and the road faded into marshland, and it was just the birds and bandits out there.

"Hey, you!" A guardsman called out to him. A bristly fellow with a narrow face and thin, downturned lips. He smelled like tobacco smoke. Asher could tell even from this far away. "What'er you doing here?"

Asher stopped where he stood, about three steps into the outpost. He turned round to face the guardsman, one thumb hooked into his pack's strap, the other hand holding the letter loosly by his side.

"Working, I think," Asher responded.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

Two days.

Two entire days behind did the meat caravan lag, crippled by a splintered wheel, dragged slowly on by old nags far past their pulling days. When the ground had turned softer underfoot the wheels had spun with mud and chipped hooves had sunk deep against the sprawling array of moss and root-work, turning the usual ordeal into an agonizing, bumpy mess of swamp trawling… and Rois had said, plainly, clearly, ‘Catch me up, go around the marsh, I will scout ahead alone.’ The destination was marked upon a paper curled with humidity and blotched by the occasional dripping, a broken circle marked a flash of civilization amongst the mire, an outpost of sorts; men and scraps and exhaustion. Such places were the perfect location for one of two devious actions. Their isolated nature meant that they could be raided with relative ease-- to feed the beast--, or, should the good will of the celestials above bless them with a charitable mood, meat could be traded for anything of value.

And because it had been spoken plainly and clearly, the half-fiend had expected the caravan to drag itself listlessly over the soggy hills with some manner of triumph with the coming of the day, but that moment had not come. No hoof-fall from the south. Tired eyes swept from west to east, no, nothing, the blasted crew of half-wits, dead things and tired animals were somewhere, but Rois needed them to be here. Like a rose peering through a veil of absolute poverty, he did not fit into the scene, not leaning against the decayed stone walls in the relative shadows of cracked crenellations; through the gaps he spied men donned in steel and leather, and they moved with a purpose. He was wool and gold, donned in a red waistcoat, sleeve bottoms tied with silk straps and fancy britches licked with mud yet still bearing the bite of gleaming yellow by the way of his belt and boot inlets, no, he did not fit in at all. Suspicious. Tired.

And out of smokes.

Some of the men within had been puffing on something, and the heavy scent caught sparsely upon the wind was enough to make the man drool in excitement… but Rois knew he could not boldly saunter in. They would mistake him for something, anything but a travelling man simply in need of something to tar the insides of his lungs. Pointed nails caught the edges of his bandaged face to tug upon the patchy material in a fidget, desperation had caused him to scavenge at night in the shadows for anything flicked from the walls to the earth to huff on, but there had been little luck in the hunt. That hopeless chase of the buzz manifested at the tip of ones tongue, oh, to chew upon the bitter ends of a cigar in this meaningless moment! A shiver of sorts ran up the bronze man’s spine even thinking about it, well, what if he did boldly saunter in? Surely these crude, empty-headed knuckle draggers would not seek to harm an innocent-- but suspicious looking-- weaponless, tastefully dressed, handsome stranger in his frantic search for tobacco…?

The half-fiends legs were moving whilst his brain weighed the pros and cons of appearing, delivering the red-head to the front of the fort both swiftly and silently. It was not logic that drove him. The guardsman was talking to what appeared to be a mangled scrap of a person, and Rois pointedly took the chance to simply glide past both Asher and the guard in full view with an air of absolute arrogance about him, as if they didn’t even exist,

“I’ll pay the first person to fetch me some smokes well.” Rois’s loud announcement wobbled with a critical sense of urgency, whether people were listening or not.

 

[Asher Vanak-Duth]

"Oi, another one," the guard said, incredulous. He waved a bony hand at the newcomer to have him come over too, an ineffective motion as the red-eyed stranger kept walking to the center of the square. "Hey, you need to stop for inspection! This ein't a bed n' breakfast!"

The guard huffed. Turned back to Asher. "Are you two together?"

Asher shook his head in an emphatic no. That seemed to rile up the guard even more. It might have come to shouting and weapons drawing, were not for the appearance of a woman in an apron. She waddled out of a nearby doorway, fists pumping at her side as she fast-stepped into the action. Looking like she knew the what and how.

"Lay off them, will you Mandy!" She scolded the guardsman. "This was a proper trading post before you lot commandeered it for your witch hunt. So don't be scaring away the traders!"

The guardsman threw his hands up in surrender. "I'm jus' doing my job, Nell. Maybe you heard, but we're in the middle of a rebellion. Besides, do either of them look scared to you?"

They did not. The newcomer had just announced something absurd, and Asher had stepped closer to hear it, absorbed by the words.

“I’ll pay the first person to fetch me some smokes well.”​

Payment. Asher might not have many thoughts left in his cracked skull, but he did understand that. And happens of just-so-happens, old man Jathos had set him up with a box of tobacco as a going-away gift. Said it would do Asher good if he needed to trade for anything, or ask a favor. He'd be planning to use it on the guard as a bribe, but the idea of getting paid for something so easy was too enticing.

He set his pack down and rifled around until he uncovered the copper box. A pastoral scene of a farmer and horse pulling a plow was tooled into the cover, and words¹ that Asher couldn't read scrolled along the edges of the image.

"Here," he said flatly. He held the box of loose leaf out to the other man, grip soft and unprotected. "I don't have a pipe, but if you've got some paper I can roll it up."

Asher blinked in surprise at his own words. He didn't like the smell of tobacco. Couldn't remember smoking it. So what exactly had he been rolling, in his past life?

---

¹ The words were old Altalusian proverbs and other such folkisms, most too worn by passed hands to read. One of the more legible ones went, The chimney does not smoke from love alone.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

“Lady’s right.” Quipped with a sleazy smirk in her direction.

Rois paid no mind to Mandy’s squawking about inspections, as more often than not guards took their singular, simple job as law no matter where they were stationed. Feverish dog, spurred on by the urgency of ‘rebellion’, ha, the politics of some probably far-flung place rippling down to the dregs of humanity out here… it was desperation that let him wander through the front door, and for that, he was thankful.

But he was even more thankful for the whining of old hinges, and the fidgeting of the unusual one close to him.

Asher was an ugly sod, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was bestowing upon Rois what was essentially pure ambrosia in the moment, the half-fiend probably would have called him as such out loud. Eyes could scarcely keep themselves from peering down at the mangled skull of the younger, halfly absent of hair, oh, the skin there was so thin against the scarring one could simply lend a finger against the crown to bury deep against bone… and brain had a unique taste. Gelatinous, thick, lacking in the metallic touch of all flesh but deep in a sort of muted earthiness and a touch of sweetness not found anywhere else in the body-- and Rois snapped out of it with a wicked grin as he tried to be gentle in his excitement.

“You, my good man, have saved my life. Honestly and truely.”

Immediately fishing in the pocket of his debonaire waistcoat with the other hand to produce a small pipe, bone-carved with black scorch marks kissing the sides, and black nails came with restrained speed against the box to snatch it up with glittering red eyes. Ecstasy. It was packed with urgency, and with a single thumb against the leaf, slowly but surely smoke began to spill from the rim of the object (his only Weaving party trick); and the deep breath tasted bitter and muddy, but the swirling of mist in his lungs produced a quiet crackling that made Rois feel alive again. It was hard to give the box back through the bliss of nicotine’s sweet kiss, but it looked sentimental, and if he wanted to play buddy-buddy, it wouldn’t do to take. And so, the business man gave it back, slowly, with the same kind of wavering restraint that he had taken it up with.

“Celestial’s above… I could have killed someone for this.” Rois spoke gleefully through clouds, trying his pointed tongue against his fangs as he undid one of the buttons of his coat, it was a purse of sorts, but not the common kind. A long leather rectangle had been pinned against the silk insides of the waistcoat, stretching from shoulder to belt, circular indents indicating a vast wealth of goods within. Everything in their rightful place. Gold to gold, silver upon silver, copper kissing copper, and the top row revealed a line of seven gold coins… to which three were taken from their shallow holdings. Though they were standard in shape, each one was lacking in detail, the telltale sign of something haphazardly forged somewhere that did not want to be traced. A single ring, a simple ‘G’. That was the only marking they bore.

“Yes, it’s real gold,” A tacked on statement in case Asher got suspicious as the coins sat upon his palm, awaiting the youngers retrieval, “I’m a business man, not a crook. But I’m also a ‘fighter’ of sorts… is anyone here paying for any sort of ‘rebellion-aligned’ job?”

Rois pointedly looked about to the dilapidated mess of walls and used weapons, dented steel and then back to singular door guard. The thrum of the call to action, he knew nothing of actual battle but killing others was easy, and there was no weapons needed for that. Asher had the appearance of a sellsword after all, and where there was bought muscle, there was a job but a pace behind. The man’s caravan would run in circles to find him, and they would find him in good time, so was it so wrong to make a little bit of money in the meantime…? Surely not! There was no farmland around to sell from, even if they did catch up within a days notice…! This was the far less boring road to travel, the wicked and righteous one. His heavy hand came down to pat Asher twice upon the shoulder-guard roughly,

“Let me help in your ‘witch hunt’.” Drawled through a puff. A great, almost feral desire to stay close to the tobacco source… “... But only if there's money in it.”

 

[Asher Vanak-Duth]

Yes, it's real gold...

Fingers were quick enough to pluck the coins from offered palm. Asher thought about biting one, but noticed the soft dents along the edges from a dozen other sets of teeth who'd had the same doubt. So he only nodded and slipped the coins into his left boot.

He was glad the gift was well received, but did the man have to pack his pipe and light up right here in the middle of everything? Asher couldn't stand the smoke. It coated his nose and covered his insides with that musty-sour reak and then it was all he could notice for hours afterward. He tried real hard to breath shallow and slow, timing his inhale for inbetween puffs.

"Listen, boys," Mandy the guardsman said, pushing past the woman Nell. He did not look any older than Asher was. His shoulders were off kilter, skewed by how he rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. "I empathize with wanting work, but Maullon Garde is under use by Lord Baron Rodhan in his efforts to keep our borders safe from rebels." Mandy sounded like he really believed that last part. It must have made the assignment in the middle of nowhere go down easier. "Nobody comes in or out unless they got a writ of approval."

Such a rule would have been easier to enforce if the soldiers hadn't got the gate stuck open in the mud. Asher kept that thought to himself. "A writ?" he said instead. "I've got some writing here." Another rifle through his pack, which still sat slumped between his feet. Produced the letter, re-folded and re-sealed, but with more crinkles than when it had first been received.

Mandy thumbed open the rabbit seal on the front, lifted the flap to scan the first few sentences of the letter. Nell crossed her arms and tried to look indignant at being ignored, but she was actually peering over his shoulder to snag a look-too. It took Mandy some time to mouth out all the words under his breath, but when he got there he smirked and let out an impressed whistle. "Asher Vanak-Duth," the guardsman changed his tone. "Well shit, you're one of the Baron's men. And a damn good tracker if I heard right. Why didn't'cha tell me that to begin with?"

"I didn't know," Asher answered honestly. The response was incoherent enough that Mandy chose not to acknowledge it at all.

"And what about the deva?" Guardsman Mandy peered suspiciously at the smoking one, with his towering height and unnatural eyes. Half devhani wasn't a bad guess, though Asher thought he looked askew of that.

Asher glanced back, considering the man who had just paid a month's worth of wages for a pipeful of tobacco. Weighed the potenial danger against the gold and silver nestled againt his chest. Decided to gamble.

"He's with me."

 

[Rois Sinclair]

Rois watched the scene play out before him with vacant eyes. Lords.

He was not a man who cared about titles, ranks and nobility; in fact, the further he kept away from fat, prized hogs sitting upon seats of power barking out orders the better. Self-importance spurred on battles upon fields that would never see a nobles boot upon them, and too often was the red-head neck deep in the mass graves of casualties slung aside like carrion, barely deep enough to stave off the wolves and crows. Those jagged, half-starved bodies did not belong to the patterned vestments of some house crying out for false justice, they belonged to youngin’s, twisted and poor and forgotten, to receive nothing more than a ‘thank you for your service’. Those who were not full of holes and already rotted down to the fats sometimes were useable in the business of butchering, but more often than not, the caravan was left to stare down at the consequence of loyalty with nothing but pity etched into their faces. Hollow eyes. Empty shells. More would come, and more would die for power… such was the bitter nature of the world.

Watching Asher produce the letter with calculated muteness, the idea of suddenly becoming tangled in whatever this mess became less about hunting down any target, and more about wondering who would die in the task. If this was of any political importance… did that mean there would be more men? Would they be rolled onto their backs and left for the mud…? Oh, their bodies would break down so fast there would be little profit in dragging them to the table, Asher himself was well equipped and it was hard to see what sort of build he had beneath the coat and steel, but as the half-Fiend let his eyes roam methodically about the others body without cares to who saw he saw value in organ meat. Young, fit, Rois had noticed the faintest crinkling of the youths nose at the pipes grey furling, a non-smoker. A tracker.

The leanness of these hunting types, built on barely cooked meat and bread… finely sliced, decorated with white cheeses and touches of fresh leek… Rois ran his tongue about his teeth and allowed himself to snort at being referred to as a Devahni, using the moment to once again halt his own internal monologue. So… so… delicious, it made his stomach pang with want. Slitted eyes rested upon the trackers head once again, albeit briefly,

If you die, I will eat you myself.

“Yes, I’m with this lovely lad right here.” The tall man allowed a smirk of sorts to play about his lips, resting a hand upon Asher’s poor head so that he could give the younger man’s scarred head a playful tussle. A sweeping gaze out at the guard, “I cannot believe you would take us for ruffians and vagabounds, in such dire times…!”

A foot forward, and then suddenly the letter was snatched out of Mandy’s grasp with a horrid sense of confidence. Learned eyes flitted across the paper with ease, sharp teeth hard against the pipe as smoke rolled prettily over his lips. To be but a band of hapless souls wandering through the mire, with little help in any direction…! The letter was returned to Asher, far, far more gently than it had been taken,

“Sorry, I just had to check again… there still hasn’t been any mention of pay. For talent such as us, I wouldn’t expect a Lord to leave us with shallow pockets, hm…?” Rois propped a hand upon his hip and regarded Mandy with a flat stare, looking down at him both metaphorically and physically, whilst placing himself closer to Asher…

“There's more than bandits and rebels betwixt these trees, good sir… there are monsters out there, too.”

He knew that truth well, for he was one of them.

 

[Asher Vanak-Duth]

Asher flinched at the raised hand. His reaction time was too delayed to avoid the hair tussle, but still he scrunched his shoulders up and tried to duck away, more out of instinct than annoyance. One could argue that Asher's half-head of hair was already ruined, but he still attempted to smooth it out after the heavy-handed gesture, running his own fingers through the mop a couple of times.

Didn't have much time to do the fixing as the letter was returned back to him. The words seemed valuable, the way they changed the tune of everyone who read them. Asher didn't put the paper back in his pack, this time disappearing it beneath the folds of his cloak. The smoking man wasn't the only one with hidden pockets.

“Sorry, I just had to check again… there still hasn’t been any mention of pay. For talent such as us, I wouldn’t expect a Lord to leave us with shallow pockets, hm…?”​

"No clue, I don't do the books," Mandy said, some of the brusqueness coming back into his voice when he addressed the smoking man. Does he not like deva, Asher thought absently. "You'll have to wait for the rest of the hunting party to arrive. They're 'bout a day behind schedule. Ain't that just the way of it? Us lot have to be on time, but the Lord can be as late as he likes."

It wasn't the taller man's proximity that bothered Asher. It was that leaky pipe so close to his face. He tried to glance politely away from the source of the smoke, but the smell kept creeping up on him.

“There's more than bandits and rebels betwixt these trees, good sir… there are monsters out there, too.”​

"The minotaur ain't a monster," the woman in the apron blurted out. She'd been standing nearby in the way that many serving women had perfected - unobtrusive until she wanted to be. "He's been in these woods longer than anyone, and he never menaced the roads before you soldiers moved in. Even one time, when Dellin's daughter got lost in the marsh, the kid swears on her mother's grave that it was the minotaur who led her back home. You won't find a gentler beast."

"Gentle or not, if it's harboring rebels, then this Minotaur will be taken care of along with the rest," Guardsman Mandy gave no ground.

"C'mon Mandy, he don't know any better, they could've lied about who they were to him. Please, capture your runaways if you must, but leave our poor hermit be."

Asher's eyes were watering from the smoke, and his nose hairs felt like they were withering into nothing. A tickle rolled all the way up behind his eyes. He couldn't hold his composure anymore. He was going to...!

It was a very small sneeze. Two sharp inhales followed by a stifled tch. But it was enough to shift everyone's attention onto him. The two Maullon Garde residents stopped what they were arguing about and both looked his direction.

Asher sniffed. "Sorry," he said.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

“I’ll bite my tongue before I speak of Lords, it has been known to get me in trouble.”

So Mandy wasn’t a total fool, then.

Rois had been about to offhandedly comment upon the delay of ‘help’, when the scene was unexpectedly stolen away by the simple woman with urgency in her voice; Minotaur? Outwardly a single eyebrow rose a touch towards the peak of his brow, but the more the strangers bickered, the more difficult it became to hide the rapidly mounting interest building within him.

Thoughts of trickery, thoughts of leading the bull to the slaughter, freeing its immense body of its heavy head and letting its thick blood pool into buckets for chilling, and its supposed kindness could be its downfall. Why, even a mere shaving from its always budding horns could be ground, men often told tales of licking such a substance to make their cocks swell for days with vigor; rows of firm, dark meat, the loud rattling of chains, forced low to the earth and greedily deprived of every inch of flesh from sturdy, aged bones… and even then said bones would be powdered and partitioned and snuffled upon silk mats by those who believed in chasing a false high. This creature, this gentle soul, could be worth multiple gold pieces per inch if it lived up to size-- and the thoughts made the half-Fiend’s own sizeable body stiffen. The hair upon the back of Rois’s neck stood up as he kept teeth firm against the bone-pipe, which threatened to crack against the pressure, his heart suddenly rattling against his ribs with an urgency even greater than Nell had rabbitted on with.

To swallow down even a measure of its blood…

Rois turned with an audible huff, partially to hide the blown out pupils he was suddenly sporting, and then partially still when Asher sneezed with a dark look like a storm cloud overcoming his expression. No. The butchering of something so rare would bring about trouble in the way of backlash. The caravan had promised to deal mostly in the dead and slaughter only the adverse, killing something that bore no harm to them would be against their personal ethics, but Celestial’s above he would not deny himself the dissolution of licking oozing, hot blood off of the still-twitching corpse of a myth made real. A delight not easy found again, rules, promises, urges, money, rules, calm, calm. The thoughts of his staff abandoning him. It was not worth their distrust.... no matter how pleasurable the thoughts.

“... I apologize. ‘Rare these days to find a man that doesn’t need nicotine these days.” A feigned apology. The fake, stifled chuckle was placated by a hand to his mouth as Rois partially turned back, now lacking in the ferocity of his feelings. The momentary mask slip had recomposed itself. He could make no comment on the Minotaur. If anything happened to that proud beast-- God’s forbid-- and it was remembered that he had even so much as shown a smidge of interest in the bull, then it could be linked back to him. And that simply wouldn’t do.

“Do… do you intend to let us use your holdings, then, if we are to amble about for a day?” Attention turned back to Mandy, only the slightest quiver of emotion in his voice. A desperate wish for his pulse to slow, a turning of his head so that smoke would no longer roll down upon Asher’s wheezing form.

“And what is your food situation? Or do you not deal with that, either.”

 

[Asher Vanak-Duth]

Asher was deep in thought for several moments, a clarity come over him post sneeze. The fidgeting of the man beside him went unnoticed. He was looking at other things. Like the rustle of branches that swayed high above the spiked walls of the fort. Or the way the rain water flowed from boot print to boot print, following the slope of nearly unnoticeable hill the fort was built upon.

Mandy waved a hand dismissively at the questions asked of him. Oblivious that he was about to prove the other man's jab about not dealing with anything to be more or less true. "All I do is keep people out. Now that you're in, use what you need." A sentiment that the guardsman might well come to regret. "There's an empty room in the South building what which you two can stay in. Not pretty, but it's dry. Nell puts dinner out at seven. S'why we let her stick around and harp at us."

Nell had some protest about that, but Asher wasn't interested in their bickering anymore. He'd turned and wandered off a few feet away, to a water well built awkwardly in the middle of the muddy square. The bucket had already been pulled up by someone prior, and it looked mostly fresh, so Asher dipped his hands in. Felt his armhairs stand on end as the water chilled his veins. Oh, what he wouldn't do for a real bath. At the inn at Wend, there'd been a bathroom on the bottom floor, with a big brass tub and its own stove just for heating water. Asher made note of the thought: the first thing he'd missed since leaving home. That seemed like something important about himself.

Still, the bucket was a relief. He splashed a couple handfuls on his face, and rubbed some of the mugginess of the swamp off his skin. Came away looking just as disheveled as before, but a little less splotchy.

Now, let's see, if they were going to be working together, he should probably figure out that guy's name...

"Can I talk to you for a moment?" He asked the odd-eyed man, with a tap on the arm and a gesture towards the South building. Asher had not intended it to sound ominous, but intentions were like daffodils on the side of the road -- nice to look at, no good to eat.

The South building was a long, squat warehouse with a lot of old junk piled up against its walls. Rusty tools and empty sacks, stacks of splintered wood and other things that commonfolk had no more use for, but couldn't bear to burn. Asher didn't need to look inside to figure that the room they'd been offered would be full of the same things.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

‘Use what you need’ basically meant ‘take what you want’.

He’d make sure to do that at dinner time.

Despite being highly strung, Rois’s tenseness did not lead him to suddenly jump at the gentle contact at his arm, eyes rolling down to meet the innocent youths with a measured pause. A licking of a thumb pressed to the now sizzling tobacco killed the embers within-- he did not know if it needed to be rationed or not, for Asher’s kindness could have been a one-off-- so that the pipe could disappear within his jacket pocket with the wind sweeping the last of the thick, muggy smell away.

“... Of course. Let us go explore the poverty which will be our temporary living arrangements.” He did well to keep the bitterness out of his tone. It was best to get out of the way of the guard and his single-mindedness (no, Mandy was not given any response for his uselessness), if only for the sake of planned mischief… for indeed, there was never a scenario as delightful as being stranded alone in the quiet with a prey item, a wolf to lamb. ‘Mischief’ was the name of flashing teeth in the dark and the sparsest scent of blood catching on a dead breeze, the game was as psychological as it was physical, it called for the chase both internally and externally, and rare indeed was the man who did not let their mind run away with them once captured in the gaze of a monster in the dark.

As he and Asher took the uneventful walk over to the slanted side building, Rois wondered if the other had even an inkling of any kind of danger-sense. Murky places and isolated corners were usually hard to herd people into, but for the other to offer up the situation himself… the half-fiend gave a rough snort as he began to peer around into the darkness of the shed-like structure. Hay-dust heavy in the air, shafts of light bleakly peering through holes in the rotted wooden walls, threadbare sacks bearing the marks of rodent teeth and the red-black of mottled metal. The half-shorn entrails of a wagon rotting from moisture, weapons in the way of shovels and rakes and hoes bent and broken out of shape, when Rois stepped into the deep shade of the stillness of the old building he threw a glance towards the door of the fabled room and back to the yawning entrance of the building itself-- from the bright light outside, he appeared as a half-shadow characterized by two unmistakably glowing red eyes. The confinements of the room probably weren't even needed for the warehouse to become a den of intended sin.

“We can talk... but you must come in here.” Spoken gently but carefully, ominously, the big bad wolf in a wood-straw house, “If you’re going to ask me personal questions-- which is what I assume you'll do-- I don’t want anyone else to hear. You’ll know why when you hear the answers.”

Rois made sure to let a touch of unpleasantness colour his tone, though, part of him doubted Asher would even notice his attempt at sounding like he didn’t want to talk about himself. Poor thing. So close to the edge...

 

[Asher Vanak-Duth]

The man's eyes glinted in the dark like a cougar's. The big cats were probably the only creature in the woods that Asher was afraid of. Cougars climbed up trees, and they stalked for a long time, and even when they looked lazy dangling their paws in the sunlight, they still watched you.

Deva were like that. But did a Deva's eyes have such a hungry ring of glow around them?

“We can talk... but you must come in here.”​

Asher blink-blinked.

"Sure," he simply said. He had been going to do that anyway. Privacy was the point. And where else were they going to go? This was the place where the guard had told them they could set their things.

Sure steps led him through the junkroom maze. Asher didn't wait for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Instead he stuck a hand out, fingers brushing gently across bent up wagon wheels and rusted out ploughs. Something about his gait had changed. He listened for little shifts of fabric and heel-tap and metal, and kept his boots from crunching on even a single stray splinter. In this dark, cluttered place, he looked almost like what he had been, before. The man described in that letter stashed away in his pocket. A hunter.

Asher stopped when he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the lurking cat. Or, shoulder-to-chest, as it were. Looked up sideways at the taller man. "I only wanted to ask you your name." White irises hung big like moons on Asher's face. His pupils weren't dilated, even in the low light. "Or will even that bring trouble?"

Another step took him further in, his back turned now to the other man. The door to the room was already half ajar. Asher pushed it open, and a stream of light lit up pillars of motes all around them.

The room had a window, and outside the window was an immediate view of the rough-hewn palisade that surrounded the fort. Inside, it smelled like dry dirt, rust, and old pine resin. There was a regular straw mattress on the floor (at least it looked regular to Asher, whose concept of luxury started and stopped at a roadside inn in the middle of the Balewoods), shoved against one wall. The other wall had more shelves, stacked with a fine collection of dusty and broken crossbow parts. There were a lot of basketfuls of parts. Some past owner of the place must have been a collector.

He dumped his pack into an inconspicuous corner, and pulled the pin from his cloak. The heavy wool fabric slid off his shoulders as if it, too, were eager to rest after the long journey.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

And he didn’t care about names.

Internally, Rois wished to be the wolf, but externally he had no such precision and grace. The mark of the canine was the slow hunt, the patience of trailing some limping thing for days, the analytical stare of a creature fixated upon weaker spots to dive tidy rows of blunt teeth straight down to break shuddering bone, and he was not the wolf. Many became disillusioned with the image of the crocodile. Some big, terrible thing stock still in broad daylight, heavy head and massive maw dividing the tumbling light falling down upon a jagged body, and when they walked on by it did not move. Once done, a person would always amble past the statue of a creature with measured weariness but never with the discomfort they would the wolf or the lion or even the mere shadow of a snake composed of sticks and mud. The magic of the ambush was never knowing the exact moment such a hideous beast would choose to move on. So when Asher wandered past to lift moon-kissed eyes up to his own, a semi-ring of pale light touched by the frayed ends of wild hair, all Rois spared him was a guilty smile at the mention of trouble; because it was not the moment of the ambush.

When faced with a retreating back, when tailing the other slowly to spy his actions within the lowly room, it was also not the moment of ambush. Without a word the predator’s gaze flickered about the various features with feigned interest, not the least bit concerned with the holy square of sunlight catching the rising dust of now disturbed sleeping-things. It was only when the other relieved himself of his woolen coat with metal strands chiming softly that the hackles at the back of his throat rose in a sudden spur of excitement-- the paper-thin layer the other wore left nothing to the imagination. Maybe Asher was not scared. That was woefully disappointing, but it was not the fear that he wished to dance upon his tongue but the lengths of sinew in those toned arms, taught beneath dirt-kissed skin, warm muscle and the barest clingings of sweat-- and he had to pounce, he had to-- but there was no grace. No beauty, which leant itself to the felines dance from up high, to the canines rush across the flat-lands, no, it was only the weight of a beast that waited and waited and waited and then didn’t--

Asher was un-ceremoniously and simply turned around, and then shoved hard against the bed into a tumble.

He would not be given a moment to wiggle. Beneath them the half-damp straw gave a great wheeze as stray strands rose up in agitation to flit about the two as the smaller was pinned there beneath the larger, Rois straddled his waist to pin lighter hips down against the weathered material with his strong thighs eclipsing the others own. One of Asher’s wrists was restrained by a sprawled hand above his head, but the other was left free for both of them out of curiosities sake,

“I’m Rois. I may be trouble, but I am not going to hurt you.”

Unbelievably spoken whilst trapping the other there, his tone almost skirting upon the edge of being carefree, if it wasn’t growled lowly in his throat with a scary amount of depth to his own voice before. Peering down with red locks scraping his tanned cheeks, the half-beasts mouth was a smile, but it was not as maniacal as it could have been… the slightest whites of poking fangs. His breath stirred the others half head of hair as he leant himself lower, voice quieter still…

“As long as you’re alive, you can absolutely trust that I won't harm you at all, actually.”

His free hand was moving. In deliberate slowness it started at the bottom hem of Asher’s tunic and delved beneath the fabric so that heated finger-tips slid against the lines of the others belly, thumbing the edges of muscle there as they rose and rose and stopped, fanned out, and palm downwards against the dip of the hunter’s breasts at the center. The ever expanding and flattening of the others ribs as he breathed was intoxicating, but the thing that really made Rois want to shiver was the shallow beating of his poor victims heart, a bird in a cage, he applied the slightest pressure against the youths breastbone so he could feel it’s thumping better… and every inch of him wanted to take it, still throbbing and blood-hot, between his teeth. But he couldn’t. So he didn’t. The contact caused imagined embers in the way of heavy heat, far more than human-to-human contact would cause, a temperature that would send the others white skin pink in an ever-crawling flush in every direction…

“... But if your little heart stops during this little endeavour of ours, I want you to know that I’m going to steal away with your body. I’m going to eat you.” Murmured, oh, he wanted to greatly for his tongue to lap at the pulsepoint in the delve of the others throat, to break his pale skin just a touch, to have the feeling of another’s life between his jaws and to hold the moment there with the twang of blood against his gums. Rois swallowed hard, throat bobbing as he realized an unholy and inhuman amount of saliva had been gathering in his mouth as a result of the hedonistic thoughts, cat-like pupils blown wide.

“I… want your organs. I want your flesh. I want to gnaw upon your bones. I want to share you with others, and I want the satisfaction of swallowing down every part of you still-twitching.” His jaw rattled, teeth making repetitive clicking noises, it was so hard to keep control, so hard, Asher was so close, Gods, he slowly snatched his hand back from the others chest to quite suddenly grab the smaller males free-hand within the winding clutches of his claws, nails threatening to bruise as he brought the hunters ensnared wrist against his lips and dragged a pointed tongue across the criss-crossing of multi-hued veins, no, the dirt did not matter, it and the aftertaste of leather combined with the sharpness of sweat made his huge body shiver with ungodly excitement. It tasted like divinity. Tasted like when the stars above looked upon the earth and birthed Eden from nothingness, life, the sweetness of a thing still yet to be aged by time itself, and he could have moaned as that taste coated the inside of his jaws like honey. A sigh was breathed out against moist skin, lips forming words tattoo’d against the heel of Asher’s palm,

“... But you are alive, and so I must resist, no matter how tempted I am to simply break my own rules.”

He did not relieve the poor victim of his weight against his lower half, but sitting straight upwards he unexpectedly allowed the other the freedom to wriggle away from the now looser clamping of his thighs, a wistful look rolling across his face. The hunter had both his hands back. Rois was staring at the beam of light that captured half of his body like a painting, sniffing indignantly, the taste was fading like flowers to winter, washing away with every moment down his ever-hungery throat…

“I hate it when everybody else eagerly follows the rules of other men, and yet I too am bound by them, even if they differ from what is normal. It is ironic... but at the same time, so painfully sad and dull.”

 

[Asher Vanak-Duth]

Instinct moved his forearm up to catch the snap of wild maw -- but there was no rows of teeth to meet flesh, just a big, heavy man putting all of his weight against him. Asher wasn't sure what to do about that. The flinching gesture was quickly caught and brushed aside. He was pinned on the bed. His wrist felt small, gripped by those black claws.

Asher's other hand, he kept at his side. Had a hold still on the pin that'd secured his cloak. The long, thin needle point of the penannular flipped outwards with a discreet push of his thumb. Waiting for an opening, a place where the pin could be thrust through fabric and slip between ribs...

"I’m going to eat you.” ​

"Yes, I think you would." It was very hard to brush someone off when they were right on top of you. Asher noticed details he had missed before. What the circles on Rois' bandaged face were drawn with. The eager curl to the man's smile. And that smell, the one beneath the acrid breath of spent tobacco. Burned shroud.

He thought he saw a chance. With his last free movement, Asher thrust the pin upwards, but his hand was snatched up in the roil of Rois' fervor. The pin dropped to the bed. The breath caught in Asher's throat. Pale eyes looked on with strange captivation at the creature who had him.

Disarmed of their last barb, his fingers moved on their own. Twisted and splayed to touch cheek and corner of jaw, as Rois pressed lips against open palm. Spoke words that should have chilled Asher to the marrow. But the man's breath was so hot, and Asher's chest was flushed with a touch that still burned across his skin.

All he could think about was how lonely it all seemed.

“... But you are alive, and so I must resist,"​

You could only eat someone once, and then they were gone. If that's the kind of creature you are...

The pressure holding him against bed and body softened. Asher's hands were released before he could remember to struggle. Wrists slipped free of loosened claw. He should have been afraid. If he hadn't gotten his brain splattered across the inside of a woodshed last winter, he would have been afraid. Unfortunately, Asher had already died. His second life had begun with blood and fat, woven in rivulets of shroud, channeled back into his body where it no longer belonged. The reassembling left some pieces put in odd order. Things like right and wrong. Person and monster. Fear and facination. Turned out, it was all red on the inside, and things like that could fit anywhere.

"My name is Asher Vanak-Duth," he introduced himself to the monster when he'd found his breath again. "I don't think following the rules makes you dull. If you have rules to follow, then you're still a man."

What did that make him, then? Asher, whose memory was only as long as the length of a sword. Asher, who knew nothing of a life before, except that there were people out there who loved him. Enough to risk everything to bring him back. And they deserved better than him dying again before the bill was even paid, and wasting all of that money.

"I have a rule, too: I'm not going to die in debt." Asher pushed one hand against the mattress, propping his top half up, closing the gap between them. He didn't bother squirming out from underneath Rois. Something told him that path had been designed, a false out. A way to put him at ease. One shouldn't be at ease when there was a wild beast pacing the room.

He raised his other hand and tapped a finger against his cracked skull. "You see this? It wasn't free to mend. In one year, the healer is going to come back and collect her dues and if I'm not there to pay, it'll be the rest of my village that does. So please, I need the whole year. After that--"

He hadn't thought beyond paying off his debt to the villagers of Wend. Didn't imagine he deserved any extra life to begin with. So what he'd been given already would be enough. In a way, Asher had been arranging his own funeral.

"After that, I don't care. You can eat me."

 

[Rois Sinclair]

“-- And what do you know about being a man?”

Words spontaneously spat… cold. An answer very much absent of the glowing warmth that was felt between their conjoined lower halves, spurred on by Asher’s new found position, thigh to thigh to leg to leg. In a fleeting moment Rois’s tone had turned like the falling of the sun come night, and though that fanged smile still lingered and desire still thrummed through his body, it seemed some abstract nerve had been touched upon, stamped upon, every muscle in his body wound itself tight… before relaxing with a deep, self-soothing sigh. A flickering of his gaze to the pin and back,

“Please do not try to harm me again, by the way. I’ve been very nice to you, and I can assure you everyone in this camp will die if you do.” Softer now, the sudden chill had passed, “I will make sure you watch them fade, knowing it’ll be your fault.”

The red-head unceremoniously removed himself from the youth’s persons without a bother, as if the entire affair had been rooted in normalcy and a casualness unfitting of the passions but moments ago. It would have been foolish to remain. The mask he wore was excellent at feigning nonchalance, but if Asher was the sort of victim that actively bridged gaps between them, then his resolve to stay calm would waver and shatter faster than the desperate cling he had upon it; indeed, moving to the window proved to him that the phantom heat could barely be cooled by the dead air. Rois wanted to openly pant like a deprived dog, wanted to wipe the sweat actively forming upon his furrowed brow and running to the sharp edge of his jaw, felt his own heart bruising his ribs in its ferocity, too much, too much, salt, skin, blood, in practised slowness he began to undo the golden buttons upon that dark waistcoat. Thoughts turned to his companion’s words and focused on them rather than the form they belonged to, keeping his eyes focused upon the haphazard brickwork of the neighbouring weapons-hold.

“Feh... you are in the wrong business if you want to earn real money, ser Asher Vanak-Duth.” Remarked quietly as he slipped the jacket off and tossed it afar to the other bed; it flew like a rock, burdened by the weight of the hidden pockets metallic contents, and produced a noticeable thud when it hit the worn hay mattress. Relief. Just a little. Rois turned black nails against the silver cuffs, releasing the clasps so that he could push the sleeves of his crimson shirt halfly up each muscular arm,

“Being a pawn in some nobles game will not relieve you of your debt. There is a hundred thousand people like you with a million other worries, and everyone is fighting like dogs in a pit for themselves; ‘cept they aren’t trapped by a time-frame like you are.”

With a free spirit Rois shifted his attention to the others discarded pack and began to shift through it with the confidence of a hound on truffles, but it became crystal clear that the man cared little about whatever resided there and was specifically for the copper box of tobacco when it was produced and held tight against his broad chest with a childish glee briefly shining in his eyes.

“You are naive, so I do not blame you for believing in good, honest work.” Coming to a stand, he spared Asher a snort of sorts, “Poverty and good intentions go hand in hand… your ‘healer’ understood this well.”

 

[Asher Vanak-Duth]

It was over.

Asher still wasn't quite sure what 'it' was. A sting was pulsing with his heartbeat across his chest, like he'd been sunburned, and the heat in his midsection was slow to dissipate. Muddy boots stopped him from turning into a lump. He wanted to pull his legs up and wrap his arms around them, but the mattress would get dirty. So he settled for sitting loosely cross-legged at the edge of it and tried not to fall apart.

When Rois crossed the room and leaned against the window, only then did Asher let his measured breathes go back to normal. Grateful for the reprieve he got from gleaming red eyes.

His own gaze fell down to look at his wrist, which was still all wet with spit. As of yet there hadn't been enough time to himself to imagine how another person's tongue felt, and he didn't like that this was the way he'd found out. Even so, Asher brought the heel of his palm up close to his face.

Gross. It tasted acrid, like smoke and hunger.

The rest was wiped off on his pant leg. Just in time for the beast to start pacing again.

“Being a pawn in some nobles game will not relieve you of your debt. There is a hundred thousand people like you with a million other worries, and everyone is fighting like dogs in a pit for themselves; ‘cept they aren’t trapped by a time-frame like you are.”​

"Yeah," Asher agreed. "I don't even have a horse." If he'd had a steed and knew his letters, he could go further and ask for more. Instead, he had a hole in his head a couple loose connections. "And I don't know what anyone wants out of me." A pause, as he churned over the last few moments and the strange few twists that his life had just taken. "Except for you, now."

Funny that the cannibal in the room would be the most honest among them.

"Suppose I should thank you for telling me ahead of time about..." He looked up and to the right, focused vaguely on a cobweb on the ceiling. "...all of that." His head turned back to Rois. It was really hard to tell if Asher's face was placid from earnestness, or merely chilly acceptance. "It would have been bad to find out in the middle of things."

His stuff were being pilfered. Asher watched as half his rations and some of his undergarments got strewn about the room.

Well, Rois had overpaid the first time for the pipeful of tobacco. He wouldn't say anything about the theft of the rest, nor would he reach for the purse pocket that thudded next to him on the bed. Asher felt he should say something to defend himself though, retaliation against the jabs thrown his way. The old man who had gifted Asher that tobacco box was full of little phrases which seemed to give him comfort. Things like, It's good to appreciate what we have, and There's nothing holier than labor. Neither of those felt like they suited the moment. Oh, the writing on the top. Asher remembered it.

"'Love doesn't keep the chimney smoking'," he recited, the words out of order but still in the spirit of things. "That's what it says on the lid, right?" Then, something happened that Asher hadn't done yet. He smiled. "You can keep it, Rois."

Asher pushed himself up off the straw mattress. It was dizzier standing than he expected, but he still managed to stay on his legs as he waited for the sparks in the dark to go away. His eyes would sort themselves out in a moment, and he would remember what he was looking at.

"Anyway, if you're alright now, I'm going to go see if Miss Nell needs help in the kitchen."