Garrod cocked a brow as he stared down at the soup.

"Pumpkin," he thought aloud. Stirring the steaming bowl all counter to the turn of clocks. "Never really thought on making soup out of em," spooned some into his mouth. Liked how the bread had gone all soggy and mushy in the mix of it all.

Heard the clatter and clamor that came from the doorway. Eye shift over to spy the cause of the commotion. Took a long slurp of the soup.

A monster.

In a haunted waste like Tormeth.

Had his grin getting all big.

And you think I am the monster, Oh Bearer Mine, said the fiend nestled behind the patch that covered his missing eye. White gauntlet balled into an excited fist upon the table.
 
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"Oh, not the sheep!" Leo's voice was shrill in her mimicry of the shepherds. Her brows furrowed, eyes trained on the ornate ball she had liberated from some burning shop that was famous for rare treasures. Her eyes could see magic and it's trace, and this one stuck out to her in the moment.

It glimmered in gold and bronze, flecks of rust sometimes coming through when she turned it this way and that. It reminded her of the pumpkin soup that was being served, and although her stomach may rumble, Leo did not feel as if she deserved to eat just yet. Not until she found the end of the tightly wound spool of magical string. It curved and wrapped, lost in a weave of tangles only she could see. A puzzle, one that sparked her mind to illuminate.

To anyone else, it was a simple trinket. Looked like a bauble, gilded top and bottom halves only to be wrapped in painted ribbon of a deep emerald. It had a small pinhole keyhole, but no ordinary lock.

The sheep... she lifted her eyes, narrowed in their intense observation, and saw the shepherds. Bloody, uncommon to see on shepherds. Then the words played in her mind again. Ah... a commotion with the flock and the mention of Tormeth. Mention of a monster terrorising...

Leo's face began to relax from scrutiny, but not out of relief. Her features turned pout, eyes widening with attention as she tried to glean more information. A monster meant she would have to set aside her project, her trinket. She turned to find the innkeeper, arrange her face into something sheepish as she caught their attention. "On second thought... perhaps I should have some soup."

Whatever she could fit in before needing to leave eventually.
 
Daniyah shoved open the tavern door, letting in a rush of cool autumn air inside. She followed it inside, into the smell of smoke, boiled cabbage, and something sour she didn’t want to identify. Was that pumpkin? She held a chipped teapot in both hands like it was Plauge itself. The faded floral pattern dulled by soot and old blood stains.

“You’re talking about him as if he were a human being,” she muttered to the thing. “That part of him died years ago.” From the cracked spout came a soft, wheezing sigh that turned into words: “Nonsense. He owes me a drink!!" A few patrons glanced up briefly, then looked away, as if noticing her and the teapot was a mistake. She didn’t care. She’d dealt with worse than awkward stares and cheap ale.

Daniyah muttered, setting the teapot on the bar carefully. “He’s dead. All of him. Every bit that matters. Stop pretending.” The barkeep leaned forward, one brow raised. He was a squat man with skin like overcooked leather. "He wasn’t the clever one, that was....” The ghost’s voice trailed off, gurgling like tea left to rot inside.

The barkeep chuckled, polishing a mug. “Talking teapot now, is it?" He asked with a grin that looked like a slab of rotted cheese. The wraithbinder sighed. “Nah, it’s a ghost.” Daniyah said flatly, she took the stool at the bar, arms crossed. A faint mist curled like steam from the kettle: “Great. Absolutely splendid! Can we have wine?"

She raised an eyebrow as the tavern doors slammed open again. Two young shepherds stumbled inside, faces red and wild, clothes streaked with blood and dirt. The ghost in the teapot huffed from the spout: “Tormeth… yes, Tormeth! Or was it Torrin? No, no...that’s not right." Daniyah sipped her wine, letting the chaos wash over her. But the ghost seemed fascinated. “A creature...” it gurgled, trembling with excitement.

“Lovely,” the ghost said, exhaling a long, smoky sigh. “I’ve missed this part... the panic. The utterly useless flailing before they all die.”
 
Eye narrowed to knife's point. Watched the Wraithbinder, all parade through the Inn with her teapot. Felt his hand twitch.

"If I may be so bold... You are a cazadore, are you not?"

Grin all big as clawed fingers tapped on the old wood of the table.

Eight bless that fucking innkeeper.

He hefted up his pack, pulled out a black leather folio. An oiled roll there beside it. Laid them on the table, all Cazadore setting out his tools. Undid the roll. Showed a black feathered quill with its silver pointed nib. A bottle of ink. Suldazan. Of archival quality. Popped the cork, dipped the quill as his other hand opened the ledger.

"That's part of how it works," Garrod said to himself, and anyone who cared enough to listen. Smoothed the sheet of Arshakan paper.

Belephus laughed. Hungry as ever.

"A local like Tormeth carries a premium," he said, pulled quill from inkwell, and set its tip to his tongue with a dab dab. Put the silver to the parchment, black feather bobbing as he scrawled a notation down. "Gold coin, minimum, viable to change according to how it affects the conditions of the hunt," wrote another line. "I can't speak for my compatriots here but," he looked wicked. "My services are offered at a one gold minimum," marked the number, left room for variable costs.

Began scrawling the words that would bind a lord by Altalusian writ of law.

"Course, without further details provided, I'll have to add a fee of the unknown,"
 
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Laric said:
"And you two, you are as well?" he looked at the one at the bar, and the one with the purple hair. "I'm sure he'd pay you," he nodded towards Laric who was clearly bristling from the attention, "to take care of this little monster problem. That's how it works, isn't it? Once you finish your drinks and your soup of course."
Click to expand...

Leo looked at the others, colleagues she had met only in passing. Her eyes remained on Garrod, inking his quotation of the costs such a job would take in order for him to take on.

She cleared her throat, sat taller in her seat, and a gleam of wicked intent set in those cerulean eyes. "Oh, yes, I will have that soup before we go."

Spoken with confidence, Leo garnered some curious stares. She was used to performances, to playing a role before a crowd, just as she did now. She tossed up her little bauble, catching it back in her hand in which is disappeared right before their very eyes. "Good fortune there is for this community that you have in your presence right now the Spellbreaker." Leo placed a hand over her leather vest, strapped with throwing knives. "The Fiend Bearer, who deserves the price he states." She swung her legs over the bench seat, each kick something belonging to a show. Leo moved with grace, stood and played on a swagger as she rounded her table and came to sit on the edge of the one the Fiend Bearer occupied.

"I saved the best for last. The Wraithbinder."

The people looked hopeful, relieved that they indeed had good fortune to have three Cazadores this far up north.

"There you have it, moneybags." Leo cooed, eyeing the one the innkeeper called out. "I daresay Mother Luck would not bless you twice in a long while."

Leo, of course, knew just about that of the others. She heard plenty of stories be passed around, but remembered legendary sounding names best. It was all part of that performance, to get the audience on their side and hopefully turn their lordling's decision in the favour of Cazadores.
 
Daniyah did not rise to Leo’s pageantry. The teapot gave a brittle little wheeze, like a laughing spider dancing on cobwebs, as Leo strutted and twirled her bauble, making the patrons raise their eyebrows and sigh in relief... in turns.

“Spellbreaker...” Daniyah murmured under her breath, just loud enough for the teapot to hear. “Fiend fucking Bearer... The Eight help us.”

“Don’t be rude,” hissed the ghost from the spout. When Leo finished, basking in the flicker of the inn’s firelight and the hopeful murmurs of the patrons, Daniyah moved. She took her cup of wine and drank it to the dregs, then grabbed the one placed before the teapot.

The ghost made a sputtering sound of protest. “I was...” She downed it in one go, slammed it next to the first. “...too slow!”

The inn fell quiet enough to hear the wind scraping at the shutters. Daniyah wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She turned then, slow, deliberate. Eyes like stormglass, steady on Garrod, who was halfway through his elegant little ledger ritual, quill bobbing.

“Unlike One-Eye,” she said, “I don’t write contracts when good sheep are dying...” She gave him a once-over, pack, parchment, noble posture, the works. Her mouth twitched in something between a grin and a sneer. Just looked at him as she already had measured him and found him cute, in the same way a thunderstorm finds a matchstick cute. Floor creaked as she moved. The wraithbinder was dressed weather-beaten leathers, stained in ways that didn't come out. Whatever it was, it had coagulate, dark and permanent.

"My price?" She smiled when walking over to the young nobleman's table. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Old cazadore tradition." The ghost in the teapot let out a delighted bubble. “Ohhh, she’s doing the thing again,” it weezed. “I claim the Boon of the Unspoken."

"One day, Lord Fancyhair, I’ll ask you for something. A favor. A thing. Who knows... And you won’t say no. That’s the deal." She tapped his table with one finger. "I don't know the monster, you don't know the price." Glancing at the young noble lord. “You want it, pretty?”
 
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Garrod's white armored hand twitched. Ink nib snapped. Spilled black pool over the parchment.

Pageantry. Traditions. Names with stories. All doled out. For what?

A smirk. All curve of the knife. "Bad omen," he said, simple as. Tore the paper out of his ledger. Crumpled it up, and burned it with a candle fire. Let the last bit of it sputter to death on the table. "I'm out," Packed up. Got up. "Good luck to you lot," shouldered pack and his monster slaying blade. Left.
 
Leo did not turn to watch him leave. As small as it was for a nib to snap, she felt the soft disturbance in the gentle way the Fiend Bearer's hand swept the short distance to write.

Ink had a way of letting truths become known.

The Spellbreaker swung a leg over the other, her perch on the table now freed up for her to lean back onto her hands as she weighed the offer being made. Coin rarely lacked anything to entice her, to motivate her. That was not to say she would not accept a fair payment, for she had expenses in need of taking care of.

What sparked her interest was the mystery. It often meant she would have to be quick to think, to move and adapt as the information became known.

Instead, she skewered the pretty faced lordling with a look. "Tell us more about these sheep. About Tormeth itself." Although unknown to her, Leo liked to gather as much intel she could before moving into action. She liked the procession of collecting information, and then setting it neatly down to review. "Then I will decided how I would like my coin paid."
 
Her grin sharpened, thin as a knife’s edge. “Smart man,” she said to the lordling.

Daniyah watched Garrod’s little flame eat its paper meal. Ink, parchment, pride, all turning to smoke. “Bad omen,” he had said. She snorted softly. "That’s the job description.” The innkeeper knocked his knuckles softly against the teapot’s lid to hush its offended bubbling. When the Fiend Bearer was gone, the murmur of the tavern began to rise again.

She walked back toward the counter, lifted the kettle by its handle. The ghost inside made a wet sound, like someone trying to laugh through coffee grounds. “Nothing for this one, M'lord” Daniyah said, looking back at Laric. “The spook’s got all it needs." She tilted the kettle slightly, and a puff of pale mist curled from the spout. The air turned cold enough to sting. The mist was languid, silvery, almost thoughtful, before it sank to the floorboards and slipped between the cracks. The candles within in arm’s reach guttered, their flames drawn thin and blue.

The teapot went still in her hand, utterly silent, hollow, dead in the way objects sometimes are. Daniyah set it down gently on the bar, a faint clink of porcelain against wood. The innkeeper’s face had gone the color of milk. “Did you just...?” he started. “Pour it out,” Daniyah finished for him, not looking his way. “Don’t worry."

She rolled her shoulders, eyes glinting. “We’ll take the horses, the provisions, and that escort." Always good to have extra bait if things got hungry. Daniyah leaned one elbow on the counter as the Spellbreaker spoke. When Leo’s last word fell into the quiet, the pair of pale eyes flicked toward the lordling.
 
There was always more to tell, but Leo had since learned that people unused to such work as the Malcazadores were capable of often forgot necessary details.

How many ruins, tombs, and spelled defences had she worked through before figuring out all the hazards in place?

Her eyes shot to the Wraithbinder, but did not keep eye contact for long before she placed her azurine stare back onto the lordling. "No, it does not. You are in luck that I have shroudspells to help glean information the closer we approach the site." She shrugged, her eyes cutting to a cook that now brought out a wooden tankard that was steaming. Seeing the Spellbreaker's furrowed brow, the cook smiled and showed her missing teeth.

"In tall mug! Yous can take it! Riding."

"Thanks." She took it with an apprehensive smile. Her appetite was going, the thought of consuming this now or even on horseback gave her a sickening thought. Leo would have to trust in her own rations then. Despite that, she took a tentative sip, the steam warming her face as she brought the rim to her lip. "Still hot!" She smiled, setting it aside.

Her eyes flicked between lordling and to the other cazadore.

"We best get on with it, no?"
 
She turned the teapot once in her hand. Empty now. Hollow. She placed it on the tavern counter and pushed it toward the innkeeper. Daniyah’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, not quite a sneer, something halfway between. The innkeeper flinched when she left it there. “Keep that safe, old man."

The tavern’s low light played across her pale features, half marble. Daniyah straightened as Laric finished, her hand slipping from its lazy perch to rest against the worn leather of her belt. Wool and sunflowers.. that was not the interesting part. Mad Devhani weaver. Burned land. Drained shroudstone. The lordling should’ve led with that.

"Aye. Night’s not getting any younger." Daniyah glanced toward Leo, chin tipping slightly. “We’ll ride for Tormeth, then."

“That kind of wound in the shroud doesn’t heal clean.” Her gaze flicked toward the Spellbreaker as they walked toward the door. "The sheep must be dying by something born of that ruin."
 
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