... Baedorn, Oribian
Close-up, Baedorn looked almost exactly as it had ten years ago when Akkali last departed the city shackled to her former master. She had come to find most humans, particularly the rich ones that found themselves at the top of their particular dominion, were not overly inclined to change things they thought worked perfectly fine. It could be glaringly apparent to the rest of the world that their system was broken, but so long as they remained firmly at the top, they tended to remain willfully oblivious that they were, in fact, nothing more than fat flies ruling over a pile of horse dung.
The city itself looked as though someone had erected a series of uneven but thick walls to serve as a basin, then upended a sack full of mismatched houses and stables inside just to fill up the empty space between the three gates. It was always bleak in color and damp with fog that rolled in nightly from the marshlands to the east—not exactly the type of place one would willingly travel to given a choice. The outskirts of the city smelled quite the same, too—like moldy wet bread and pig shit. There were fewer crows pecking at the corpses of convicted cutthroats swaying from the gibbets along the main road into the city, but other than that, it appeared not to have changed at all.
Baedorn was famous for its impregnable walls which had stood against more than a dozen attempted invasions over the past century; they did nothing if not keep everything unwanted out. Its surrounding countryside was just as infamous for the legions of loosely aligned cutthroats and professional highwaymen, most of which had been booted out of the city, and all of whom fell upon on anything they came across carrying so much as a copper bit like ravenous vultures to strip them clean of anything salable.
That they had made it all the way to the southern gate without once having been accosted by even a small group of foolhardy raiders made her worry. The Grand Gate, as it was usually called, was the largest entrance into the city and nearly all of Baedorn's trade passed through it—the road leading up to the archway of granite was usually crawling with beggars, pickpockets, and even the occasional bandit disguised as a crippled traveler. Today, there was not a single body outside the walls that wasn't dead or on guard duty.
Her traveling companion seemed equally uneasy. Drystan was more familiar with the city-state than even she was given the frequency of Antenox's dealings with both Baedorn and its northern neighbor and he looked none too happy with the lack of banditry. While the man was hardly what she could call a vengeful person, he likely had been wanting an excuse to smash in a few heads after their mark had escaped them in Gendelheim. If there was one thing he hated with a passion it was failing to finish a mission he had set himself on. Between the two of them they had wasted upwards of an entire month tracking down the man who had been pilfering dead bodies from crypts and coroners. Loosing him in an air shaft down into the Shalewarrens after nearly being blown up by an improvised barrel bomb was a failure of ridiculous proportions, the kind which neither he nor his partner could really stand.
Akkali, on the other hand, never found herself wanting for an excuse to perform some sort of physical violence. Her people had been suffering at human hands for generations; the way she saw it, every skull she cracked and neck she snapped was a grain of sand towards leveling the scales of celestial justice. Just as irritated about having wasted her time as Drystan, she had decided a few days prior that the first person to look at her wrong was going to involuntarily end their day with her fist to their face. She had been planning on those faces belonging to highway bandits and was now sorely put off that they had not even once been accosted so she could vent her frustration.
She cast a sidelong glance towards the Inferi. “So... demons. You don't say.”
“Well something's obviously not right.” Drystan yawned in boredom, looked over at her, and said in an exaggerated drawl, “Don't feel like no deeemuns though.”
“What say your better half?”
At this the man grinned slyly at her, the secrets they shared between them always proving more of an amusement than a burden. She used to think anyone who knew what she kept hidden would use it against her, but the Inferi at least had proven that assumption wrong rather quickly—and she had come to find that it was a relief to have someone else to speak with about the things the rest of the world could never know or understand. “He's on the fence about it.”
“Aaah,” she said with a sarcastic nod. “The revenant code-phrase for he just doesn't give a piss if it's not from Pandemonium.”
“You have him there.” Drystan chuckled. “Come on, let's get the lay of the land, shall we? It should prove interesting.”
“If you say so.” She re-adjusted her pack and continued trudging along the road with a bit of reluctance. “First time I came here I had to fight two duels of honor because Galenfyr got caught between the legs of one of the Ovan's betrothed daughters.”
“First time, hmm?” The man's head perked up slightly. She rarely spoke in specifics about her years spent enslaved to an Imperial Oratio so any information she did let slip he seized upon. “Tell me she was at least pretty.”
“Horse-faced and how.” She shrugged. “Amply gifted between the chin and waist however, which is all he cares about really. I think they sent her to the cloister to pray the urges away. Seems to be a habit with your zealots.” A smug smirk lifted up the corner of her mouth. “Habit! I kill myself sometimes.”
“My zealots, hmm?” He shook his head. “I'll wager that worked out really well.”
“Either that or the Ovan has a horde of bastards he's fostered out to every keep between here and Warsfenn.” She grinned at him. “From what I saw back then she was very benevolent with her good graces.”
This garnered a laugh from Drystan. “Suppose we'll find out. I think etiquette demands I go meet him first.”
“It's good to know one of us cares about that fool's parade. Too bad Arathron has to sit through it too.”
"Ah he just ignores most of it and harasses my patience by making comment after snide comment the likes of which I usually expect from our beloved Enkiri cynic."
Akkali chuckled at his snipe. "That's why I like him more than you."
"Oh, you wound me so!" cried the man with an exaggerated wave of his hand towards his heart. Seeing that she was not in the mood to join him in his theatrics he turned and eyed the gate wearily. "Come on, let's get this done and over with."
They came to the central gate into the city and were halted by the guards at the wall. They were all fancifully dressed in regalia that befitted a king's welcome, only there was no king to be seen. Beneath their polished winged helms not one of them could have been much older than eighteen or so summers—too young and bushy-tailed, in her opinion, to be manning the front door to one's oft-besieged city. Still, they looked quite proud in their blue-and-brown tunics and shiny chainmail jerkins, holding up everyone who crossed through the portcullis as if they were very important and the passers-by very dangerous.
Judging by the way some of them kept their swords at their sides she could dismantle all five of them in little more than a minute, the two nearest to her dying before they had time to draw their weapons. She wondered where they had put all the good, experienced guards that were actually worth their salt. They had probably been relegated to patrolling some out-of-the-way quarter of the city because their scarred faces were deemed too unsightly for public display despite being completely masked by face shields.
Drystan strode forward to have a conversation with the guard bearing the red band painted upon his mail-clad right arm. He must have been the captain, and he was quite impressed with the sandy blond-haired man carrying his traveling roll on the end of an oak staff looking very much like the vagabond knight from childhood tales if his wide-eyed expression were any indication. Akkali hung back far enough to have a full view of the gate and the arrow slits above and simply let him talk. She had very little patience for such things, and the captain looked around the right age to do something heroically stupid if the fact she had a rather hefty bounty on her head was known to him.
She looked beyond the portcullis and into the city. It was late enough in the morning that it should have been busy, but there were hardly as many people milling about the streets as she recalled seeing years ago. Baedorn was a city-state; anyone not working a farmhold generally lived and worked within the city walls. This meant thousands of people crammed into a relatively confined area where practically everyone knew of everyone else. That there was only a dozen or so merchants and twice as many customers near the main gate of the city was very, very odd. It did not sit well with her at all.
Drystan waved her forward once he finished speaking to the guard. Keeping the hood of her coat up to conceal her face she walked up to meet him. “This is Captain Arryth. He was just promoted last week. Can you believe it?”
“Not really, no,” she replied dryly. Right at that moment Akkali felt like reaching out and choking Drystan until his eyes popped cleanly of his skull. The only reason he had dragged the guard captain over to speak with her was to get back at her for her zealot comment not ten minutes earlier and they both knew it. “Well aren't you the paragon of sentinels there in your dapper colors and whatnot. Absolutely splendid job.”
Arryth laughed bashfully and his face became as red as the harvest moon. Obviously he mistook her comment as a flirtatious one. In the span of a heartbeat Akkali went straight from wanting to strangle Drystan to feeling as though she were about to throw up on his boots.
“Thank you, mi'lady,” he stammered with a smile. “Though it's hardly as heroic as they make it sound, watching the gates all day.”
Being referred to as 'mi'lady' made Akkali shudder. The word was what she had been forced to use for years to speak to the pretentious scheming women she had served as a slave, and hearing someone use it to refer to her put her on their level. It was utterly disgusting to think she was in any way similar to those jewel-laden bitches who hid their rotten cores beneath face paint and powdered wigs.
“Everything has a purpose.” She gracefully retained her composure even though every fiber of her being was screaming at her to turn and run. She locked her jaw to keep herself from speaking, but though Arryth's mouth moved his voice was drowned away by her own rapid-fire thoughts.
You make one move against me, you prattling little shit, and I'm going to gut you like a pig and use your carcass as a meat shield while I slaughter the ill-trained horde flanking you.
"Not a lot of Enkiri come through here these days," commented Arryth offhandedly, glancing back at his flanking guardsmen as though he expected them to do something. "You're traveling with an Inferi? It must be... an amazing adventure."
Akkali raised an eyebrow at the young man's blithe statement. He had an irrepressible grin on his face that said he really wanted to ask for a tale or two about those adventures but restrained himself from doing so out of some sense of responsibility. "Not many people find Inferi amazing so much as terrifying. Usually they shit themselves when they learn there's demons about."
The guard captain shrugged. "I don't know who started the rumors, but honestly I haven't seen anything demonic about anything going on."
"And you'd know this just by looking, would you."
"My father told me stories of what he used to see in Gendelheim, what he used to hear from the boys working patrols near the Ditch. It's why he moved my mother and I here, thought it'd be safer."
"So I see." She nodded her head slightly. "Wise move on his part."
"Not really, not for him anyway." Arryth frowned, his face slipping into the shadows of his helmet briefly. "He was killed by a werewolf some three, four years ago now. It's a bit of the reason why I find myself moved up to captain these days—seeing as how he was murdered by a demon the Ovan thinks I've some knowledge on the subject."
"Sounds like a moron," muttered Akkali. "Typical."
"Shut your teeth about the Ovan, vine-skin," hissed one of the guards from the back ranks.
Her eyes flitted across the half-concealed faces of the men flanking Arryth and locked gazes with the fool that had made the comment. He was barrel-chested and bowlegged, carrying an ax in addition to his broadsword, with a badly set nose that had been cracked in a fight and long since healed. On either side of him were two slightly shorter men who hadn't been paying much attention to the conversation until their compatriot had opened his mouth.
Through the eye and done. Second through the throat of the man on the right when he goes for his sword. Barrier should deflect the sword of the leftmost, with the right man as a shield from the guard captain's blade. Snap the neck of the leftmost, keep on until the portcullis to avoid the archers with his shield for cover...
Instantly picking up on her mood shift Drystan locked elbows with Akkali and pulled her along to keep her out of striking range of the guard that had made the comment. “Thank you for speaking with us, Captain. If I see you later I'll buy you a drink.”
“I'd like that very much, Ser,” replied Arryth with a small salute. “Good luck with the Seneschal. He's been in a bad mood for the past week.”
Drystan nodded and towed Akkali along until they were out of sight of the gate. “I thought you were going to rush the entire line of them."
She yanked her arm free of his grip but held off on the follow-up blow she dearly wished to give him so as not to give the guards a reason to come after them wondering what was wrong. “You put me in a position like that again and I'm leaving you a leaking corpse.”
Standing firm in the face of her fury he said, "If you were not so impulsive with your words things may turn out differently."
Her skin puckered beneath her coat as an icy chill ran down her spine. She could tell it was not entirely Drystan that was speaking to her right then. The part that made him an Inferi had come to the surface, though she hardly trembled in fear as others did. It was more an unsettling experience to her rather than a frightening one; as an Enkiri, she knewthat this other facet was not supposed to be there. It had its roots in the City, and nothing that came from the City was alive in quite the same way as things were on Eral.
She shook off her unease and reminded herself that it had been both of their choices. If neither of them had made it, the world may very well be crawling with all manner of half-demon beasts most men could never fight off. It was a sacrifice she honored—but she that did not mean she had to put up with his habit of turning Drystan into a righteous preacher whenever he felt the need to dust off his moral pedestal. “Back off, Arathron.”
The Inferi regarded her critically for a moment, eyes narrow and taking on a lighter shade of blue as the revenant within him pondered whether or not he was going to win out in their argument. “Have it your way, ash-in-born.” The man shrugged and the chill she felt when looking at him slowly disappeared. “He's just trying to help, you know.”
“I know. I appreciate it on occasion.” Casting a withering glare at him, she added, “Not this one.” She waved her hands from side to side and exhaled a long, calming breath to gather her wits back up in one place. “All right. I'll start with the taverns and you can visit the whore-siring Ovan. Where do you want to meet?”
The man looked up and down the street as he attempted to come up with an idea. If there was one thing Drystan was seriously lacking it was the ability to come up with and follow a plan to its finish. How he so often survived rushing into situations without weighing the options first was a bit of a curiosity to the severely pragmatic Enkiri. She never went into anything without at least two escape routes and a good idea of how many people she would have to go through to get to them. The Inferi's idea of a decent plan was to “pop in and have a look-see,” and if anything tried to kill him, figure out what to do only after steel had been drawn. She always found it remarkable that he had survived so long without Arathron's ability to mend his mortal wounds.
“There's an inn, Fiddler's Pipe. Not far from the keep.” He pointed off in a general easterly direction. “Say in about... three hours?”
“Three hours it is.” She patted the man on the shoulder and flashed him a sly grin. “I'm going to go open a tab in your name and start working off your debt.”
“You could come along, you know.”
“I can also gouge out my own eyes to fit in better with you humans. I don't see that happening anytime soon, either.” She picked a westerly direction and set off down the nearest, most narrow street. “Enjoy your time with the Ovan. And don't bed any of his daughters—they'll probably give you something itchy even Arathron won't be able to cure.”