Serpents and Scepters

Chapter 22: Into the Sea of Races

Ygritte's POV

I groaned for the nth time and slam the book with a force. But when I looked up I almost jumped into my seat when I saw the librarian glaring at me. Goodness, this is way harder than I thought. We've been here for hours!

Yoshaka and I agreed to split up, before we set out in this mission Orville already explained to us that we need to get the map of Porphyria so that we may be able to determine the tunnels and have our way through the underground city.

He believes that there must be an underground city where the General could be. I was just a diversion and fortunately the library is full of scholars! That makes it easier for us to sneak out as we grab some clothes from the Big market to fit in here. Bofur drop us off here as he went back to his boss to do some errands.

I stood up and made my way to the mid section when I saw a couple of dwarven scholars coming out of a room. When I looked at the sign above I already had the haunch that what we are looking for is inside it. I hid beneath the book shelves as I watched them coming out one by one, the last one, a human, locked the door and slid the key to his coat.

"Pssst!" I heard someone calling me and as I turn around I saw Yoshaka on the other side of the bookshelf looking from left to right. Trust me when he's doing that just to piss me. He gestured me to come and I reluctantly followed him.

"I need your help. Help me distract those guards and do it undetectably. We can't risk being caught Yosh. I have a big haunch that the map is inside that room." He nodded quickly as we made ourselves out of the library, he then walked away from me so that we wouldn't look suspicious enough to be arrested.

Easy peasy! I just need to steal the key to open it! I walked faster and followed them undetectably. I put my mask on my face trying to cover almost half of my face. It's a good thing that the dwarven soldiers didn't caught me,as they went straight to the big market. I sly smile filled my lips. Tsk tsk tsk, wrong move my friends.

The big market is filled with noise as the they celebrate the Jguela. Harreal said that the celebration lasts for about a week and the Big market is always crowded with different races to see the festive. I went into the sea of races and grab some color powders, these powders explodes the moment they are being thrown into mid air creating a drastic explosion of variety of colors. True enough I saw various races having a good time here. I saw a glimpse of Yoshaka grinning wickedly and I almost laughed at him when he tripled on a stone, gosh how stupid! The party is going wild and everybody's having a good time. The colors in the air and the loud banging of the sound from the band makes it a perfect place to go wild. I outpaced the group as they walked not too far away from the party.

I went to the other side making it look like I'm meeting them. The dwarven soldiers eyed me but I kept my look straight to the party. They must have thought that I was about to join it because of the color powders I have in my hand.

But something came in... an explosion of colors boomed in the place. Screams of delight and panic filled into the place. The people started running from different directions and I averted my eyes to the cause of explosion and saw Yoshaka running along with the people. He caught me looking at him and he winked at me like it was his way of saying, it's your time to shine!

I smirked at him and ran to catch up with the group who also panicked, but before they could even get away I used the color powders in my hand and threw it in the mid-air infront of them creating a distraction, the dwarves were squabbling and so is the dwarven soldiers. They were dragging the scholars along with the human out of the sea of races. But before they could even got out, I passed by the human scholar and stealthily grab the key from the pocket of his coat as I let myself disappear from the sea of races again. I blend in successfully and undectected. I'm a skilled larcenist, dang!