Bad Influences - Continued

He dumps a rather large hand full of coins into my open palms and I am torn. It is both a relief to see it, and a tragedy of my conscience to know how I had come to it.

We had decidedly surprised each other, though I clearly had the upper hand when I arrived in the room. It took me far less time to adjust to my arrival than it did him. 'How?! how did you get in here?' he had demanded of me, more than once. 'I have recently learned, sometimes, it is better not to know everything' was the only reply I would give him. The incident, left him glowering and mistrustful of me, and somehow, I enjoyed it. It felt good to have the upper hand again, if only briefly.

We pushed past my unannounced appearance, and I moved on to the fact that he was HERE instead of cooling his heels in a jail cell down at the city stockade. 'How did you get out?' I pressed, just as curious as he was, I too wanted to know just exactly what had gone on since we parted ways a few hours ago. His explanation was quick, practiced and plausible and so, I let him have his secret.

We both decided we had earned our rest, and he wandered off to wherever it was he laid his head for the night and I slipped into bed and was out before my head hit the pillow. Somehow, I had trouble sleeping, the bed itself seeming to be the problem and finally I ended up on the floor with the blanket for the last few hours of the night.

A sharp rap at the door jolts me awake, 'lunch!' the familiar voice calls through the wooden barrier and I hear his foot steps creaking down the hallway as he departs. I sigh, and stretch and rise to my feet, grimacing as I force away the stiffness of my muscles. He is waiting for me outside the front door, and he tempts me to the Wandering Monk with promises of better fare than 'piss and old veggies'. And so we take the long way around, wandering down quiet, residential, mid day streets, the rain lingering still, but in a moderate, steady mist that seems to paint the world grey.

My companion apparently knows the entire city by name, and makes it his business to smile, talk or interact with each and every one along our journey. For a guy supposedly trying to keep a low profile, he certainly is a sociable fellow. As we approach the gazebo, it is no different, for he calls to a young man beneath the shelter of the thorn covered building and draws his attention. And so it went until the young man was joining us for lunch and none too soon, for the militia soldier was paying far too close attention to the pair of us as it was.

We settled in, finally arriving out of the rain and into the shelter of the Monk, sitting along the bar, thick as thieves it would appear to anyone there. But between us, the young man and I tested our boundaries with each other while my friend subtly poked at his ego. I was not entirely sure why he would pick up yet another hapless lost soul of the city, and I was even more confused about the subject when only a few minutes later, he bolts from his stool and shouts at the top of his lungs, 'help! Guards! we have a thief here!!'.

On my feet already, an empty bowl in one hand and a half full mug of mead in the other, I look stupidly at the soldier who bursts through the door demanding to know what was going on, I simply shrug helplessly watching as our young companion knots his fist tight, bellows loudly, 'fuck you!' and lands a solid crack upon my companions jaw, sending him reeling backwards. That was enough for the soldier, for he is into the fray in just a few heartbeats and soon the three of them are tussling about in the middle of the room, while myself and the dismayed bartender watched.

The young man is the first to break free of the tangle and he bolts for the door, my friend is then hot on his heels. The guard with all his armor, struggles to his feet and makes after the pair as quickly as he can manage, all while I stand there mute and confounded. I am fairly certain I am still standing that way when my companion returns with a smug grin upon his face and without ceremony returns to his stool and orders every bottle of beer on the shelf.

'come on! we're celebrating!' he informs me, handing me a bottle, 'lets head home and take a few for the boys'. I watch as he downs a bottle in mere moments and I ask, 'do you mind explaining to me what that was all about?'. He laughs aloud and steps out of the building his arms full of bottles and a good buzz going, 'that was about giving the guards something else to do besides look for me' he says in a tone that hints perhaps that I might be somewhat of a simpleton.

I suppose he may be right, and I had to admit, and even said so out loud, 'that, was fucking brilliant' I concede and I watch as he drains two more bottles on our walk back through the city. Things seemed fine as we were passing the temple, until we moved just around the corner and suddenly my friend, stumbled. He stumbled, then he cursed, well it was kind of like cursing, accept it sounded as if he was trying to do it through a mouth full of cotton. Then, he simply face planted into the street.

The crash of glass bottles upon the cobblestones could have waken the dead, and it did draw some attention for who rounded the corner not a few moments later, but our young assailant from the Monk. I am caught that way, standing with a crooked head, and a bewildered expression as I stare at my inebriated friend as the young man approaches. 'don't blame me, I didn't do THAT to him' he assures me as he arrives. 'yes, I know...I was here' my smirk intact as I reply. I grab my friend by the heels, my intent, to drag him back home, when a stocky man wanders by doing his best to hide his dismayed curiosity as he hurries past the odd scene.

I really have no idea what to make of my new benefactor. Half the time, I truly suspect the man to be entirely unbalance, but still, I can not help but admire his approach to life. He goes through each day as if it is his last and he best enjoy it, and be damned and to hell with tomorrow. It is a lesson I will likely never learn myself, but perhaps...I might pick up a new trick or two in his company.

Bad Influences.

I knew the moment I agreed, it was a mistake.

'It just might be your way out', he had said to me. In theory, it sounded good, even if we failed and I ended up shackled and tossed into the stockade which, from the sounds of it was a real possibility, in the end, it STILL might get me out. And so, even as I pretended to weigh the decision over a vile mug of fermented swill, I knew I had to at least try. 'I'm more of an enforcer type' I had declared dryly, then gave him a ridiculous demonstration to prove it, something I would do again later.

I sat there a moment longer, pondering all the worst possible scenarios we might encounter on this little fiasco, when it occurred to me, he LIKES it. He likes the excitement of this hand to mouth existence. I had to admit, I did not worry where my next meal was coming from, I knew, always, that I would eat and survive, if I was free. And so, I could at least respect his choice to live as he did. Besides, he has so far, been the only kindness I have seen in this city. He did not have to help me when he found me, but he did.

This was the third time since I met the pain in the ass, that he had tried with his silver tongue and his friendly, persuasive intentions to capitalize on what he believes is an opportunity in me. At least, I think...that's what he thinks. I feel like somewhere along the line, I lost the ability to trust my own judgement. Even now, I was not completely sure this entire place was not some imprisoning dream that I had no way to wake from.

The bald man across the bar looks at me, "he has a point" he echoed, he who had only moments before taken my side, had so quickly turned on me and grinned while he did it. "I suppose he does". Did I say that out loud? Why am I even talking to these people? That is what I really want to know. Why am I not down in the dark places just waiting, out of the way causing no harm, waiting for my opportunity to flee? It was a good question.

I ask myself another, a series of many that would plague me that night. Why do I trust his word more than my own? To be honest, it's not much of a stretch to the answer to that one. I am completely out of my element, he seems to be basking in his life in this city. Such a care free, easy going, come what may spirit that leaves me feeling unsettled and yet I find it strangely appealing. I know...know to the marrow of my bones, that I am not one of those spirits. Perhaps that is why I watch him with a puzzled, perplexed scattering of thoughts. Just trying to follow what he says sometimes can leave me drained. Still, I have smiled in his company, something else I know truly, happens rarely in me.

Before I know it, I am following him out of the tavern and down the street in the pouring rain and I am sure to keep my hood up and my head low. Most likely think me male, which is fine by me, I'm as tall and easily weight as much as the average of their kind, so it is likely I would be misidentified in the dark, and where we are headed, that could come in very handy.

'I need you to talk to the guard, distract him while I pick the lock' his voice was low as we lingered around the corner. I looked at him like he was insane, for he clearly had never met me before. 'do I really strike you as a charming conversationalist?' my whispered reply was harshly insubordinate. 'think of something!' he insists through his teeth and shoves me around the corner and into full view of the City Militia posted at the gate. I stand there a moment, frozen which in of itself seems to surprise me as well, leaving me even more useless. It is the soldier's voice that snaps me out of my stupor, 'State yer business!' the command is barked and the tone clearly expects a reply.

It is enough to draw me forward, and again I keep low, stumble once, a light instability that deliberately shows and I offer the most feminine voice I can muster, 'Sir....' I offer from beneath my hooded cloak the sound weak and cracked, and almost immediately I see it in him, that sense of confidence, of letting down his guard as he realizes I am merely a woman. 'Sir...I need your help', and with that I nearly fall into the man at the gate, his spear raised and he reaches out to assist. Silly boy.

The uppercut started low, beneath the cloak as I leaned forward into my so called fall. I plant my foot into the stone street and shove my full weight upwards with my fist rocketing from my knees straight up, connecting with the underside of his chin as I reach to my full height in a jerking crack towards the sky. There is a crunch of teeth on teeth and the militia soldier topples backwards, hitting the iron barrier behind him with a clatter of armor. I have my hand around his cape and am dragging him away from the gate when my companion rounds the corner. 'you sweet talker you', he murmurs with a crooked smirk as he goes to work on the lock. I have just time enough to dump the guard behind a hedge and turn, and he is already leaning against the open gate, looking incredibly smug. 'must you dawdle?'

The rest is kind of a blur it all happened so fast. The trip through the quiet of the District was without incident, no one saw a thing and we slipped in far deeper and easier into their jealously guarded paradise than anyone in power would care to know. He stops at a house, a big house, but then they are all big up here. I look at the opulence, the waste of wealth while down in the bowels of the city, there are many who will live their whole lives without such luxuries. Many of them, will die young because of it. It makes my blood boil, as I stand there, perhaps that is why I did not hear the soldier until it was too late. My friend steps back into the revealing glow of the street lamp, just at the soldier catches sight of us.

'Hey! You do not belong here!'

'Suggestions?', Another brilliant question I posed to my co-conspirator. He grins, something about getting caught lights a fire in his eyes, and he offers an equally brilliant answer. 'Run!', And with that, he is off.

Well, I did not need to be told twice, for just as he takes his first step away from the approaching soldier, a Triad Templar steps into view from the other direction. He must have been very surprised indeed when the pair of us bowled him over as we fled more or less right OVER him. The gig was up and shouts begin to form somewhere behind us, which seemed to encourage our speed as we ran through the gilded streets. We tear full tilt down the hill we climbed to get here, and screech to a halt as we find the gate, once again occupied, as a very unimpressed city militia with an aching jaw sees the pair of them come skidding in, looking perhaps a little less tolerant of our arrival than

'Now what?!', I blurt out as I look to my companion for another brilliant spur of the moment plan. He however, offers me a shock, not the first of the evening, but alas it was far from the last as well. He tackles the soldier, head on, 'Go!! I've got this!', he bellows, even as the butt end of the spear in the soldiers hand cracks him on the back of the skull, and he crumples at the guard's feet. I did not wait around, as he fell, I fled.

I am not proud of it, but I knew I would not help him if I went with him to the stockade, so instead, I fled back through the night. The rain covering the sounds of the boots upon the stone, as I fled to the only safe place I knew. It occurs to me as I burst through the door, that I had lost my friend, put myself on a wanted list on some bureaucrats desk, and at the end of it all, I am still locked behind these damned walls.

A Moment of Retrospect

There is a too thin cloak wrapped over my otherwise nude form, a scant barrier between myself and the chill of my surroundings. The hood is up, and as I sit against the cold stone to my back, I tuck my knees to my chest, and let the cloak fall to the ground around me, acting as a shield against the world that I inexplicably find myself in.

This is not my home.

My grey skin is cold to the touch, but I am barely aware of it, as I sit and listen to the skittering sounds in the darkness that ceaselessly rise and fall around me. My mind drifts, aimlessly, for I am truly lost. This...place..is not my home. I know this to my core, but where home might be, when...it was...I can not remember. I feel hollow, vacant, shattered. Something has gone terribly wrong, and somehow, I find myself huddled in the dark, among the vermin of a city I do not know.

They are human, of that much I am certain, though the uniforms, the street names, the smells, are completely unfamiliar to me. I struggle in the darkness beneath my impenetrable cloak on trying to recall how I got here. My mind begins to wander and attempts to settle for a time upon an abstract conversation I had with an infuriating man while I was perched upon a floating chair. But even as I knew this man had refused to part with anything but the most mundane information, for some reason, I could not clearly recall anything he specifically said. It was as if, I could recall the meaning of the conversation, I could lock in on the intent and message of the words, and yet not recall a single phrase spoken.

A low, frustrated growl rises from my downcast hood, and it scatters a few rats that had wandered unaware to my vicinity. I was getting no where sitting here and waiting for answers to miraculously appear. I was going to have to figure out exactly where I was, and how to ensure my continued survival. I may be able to live off of sewer rats if I must, but that will never suffice for long. I need to find a way out of this damned city, and soon.

The meaning of the conversation once more presses into my thinking, while the words escape me, I knew he told me, that my world was gone. Everyone, everything, that once had been, was no more and now, I am here. He refused to say why, he would not tell me where here is, just that here was all there was, and I best get used to it. He also mentioned that I would likely be despised in this world. Well, thanks for that. Just what I needed, to be unceremoniously dumped into a place where I do not belong nor will I be welcomed.

Something else sits with me though, something that was spoken, but not from the antagonist who beckoned me here, no, this was a kinder voice, who challenged me to continue on, and do what I have always done, but do it in a world, where I might make a difference. It is this concept that I finally settle on, and let my mind weave the idea into my consciousness. Words lift into the dank air, little wisps of vapor rising from my lips along with them as I speak with a quiet, stony resolve, "I am a Guardian". It was the only thing I knew for certain, and that I desperately ached for the green places. I could smell them from the streets above, but it quickly became clear the walls around this damned stone cage were meant to do precisely what they accomplish.

Oddly, the thought strikes me like a blow to the chest, and something brings a sudden sob to my lips that I can not explain. A pain in my chest of overwhelming loss just hits like an attacking mountain bear and I am unable to contain it. 'The Stone Cage', the words echo in my brain, I KNOW it means something, something important, but I can find nothing more than that in my misted memory, and suddenly it is too much, and without warning, I let rise a long, horrified howl of misery for those I could no longer recall, but ached for none the less. My strangled cry fades to another agonized sob, and leaves me exhausted. I do not know for whom I mourn, but it does little to wipe from me, the burden of their loss.

I linger there a time before I am able to struggle again to my unsteady feet. Focus, I MUST focus, I need to get out of here and back to where I belong. If I am discovered by those I was warned of, I may not last long here at all. As I begin to get my bearings, and map out my new hunting grounds, I am left to wonder if that infuriating man who left me in this foul smelling place, bothered to warn the world of exactly what he had released into it. For as I took each step, a renewed sense of self began to take hold of me, and I felt more and more at home in my own skin. He said, 'You will be despised here', and so I brace myself for it, but I think to be fair, he should have warned them as well, they may just bite off more than they can chew when they tangle with the likes of me.

The River of Souls

The world between the worlds, the place of grey between the pockets of reality, it is the fabric, the link, it is that which binds the existence of us all. In one of these little pockets, one of these realities, a mad soul sits upon a grey beach, staring at a surreal blue-grey river.

"I'm bored.", the words are not precisely spoken, but had anyone been near by, they would likely have been heard none the less. But alas, in this barren, lifeless place, a lone raven plucks idly at the river's edge, at the odd, thick ooze that slowly flows by.

"No.", the word vibrates and stretches across the river's surface, while the raven pecks at the pebbles along the bank, even as more words drift into the air around the large, sleek stygian. "I have dozen's of these" the tone becomes distractedly frustrated. The bird takes flight suddenly as if startled, a flurry of black feathers dislodge and float down as the creature makes it's way along the beach until it lands nearly as abruptly as it lifted off.

The wings of the raven stretch out and beat against the breeze and then the little winged beast begins to shift, dematerialize and then reform, until a fully formed, human male has taken claim of the space the raven once occupied. With a flick of his wrist, a hand lifts to dust off the shoulder of his black, wisped cloak before he stares out over the river from behind his half-moon mask.

"There must be something interesting here...", he murmurs with a distinctly bemused intonation. He strides slowly down the riverbank, his boots stepping along over soundless grey stones as the thick oozing river meanders by. He walks for some time, stopping a moment to poke at the river with a stick that just seems to materialize as he needs it, then he moves on, his expression listless and bored.

Finally, his feet stop and he looks out over the surface of the oozing river as something captures his attention. He tilts his head as he focuses intently at the distance, before he speaks again. "You. Come here.", the man in the half moon mask says aloud, and as he does, he lifts his hand and with a small deliberate draw of his index finger, he beckons the object of interest to him. In the distance, the surface of the river begins to churn and bubble and then the flow slowly begins to pull towards the beach and out of the current, moving to where the man's boots meet the river's edge.

"Now...this...is interesting", he says to himself with a rather assessing gaze and an ever present smirk upon his lips, "I think...I know where -you- came from", he nods as he plucks something from the river, a small, oozing, formless goo as he pulls the dripping stuff up before his eyes to observe it carefully. "yes...not too long ago", he idly mentions to the dripping translucent sludge, "I felt the destruction of your world, even from here...", he adds still nodding to himself as he speaks with a tilted head and a sly expression to the elongating slime that cloys at his fingers.

"Now I -know- we have nothing like you here my dear", he says suddenly letting out a rather giddy laugh, that lifts without echo or reply in the empty desolation around him. "oh my, what trouble could YOU cause I wonder?", he broods aloud to himself, allowing the mess upon his fingers to slide away to the pebbles below with a delighted expression.

"Excellent!! It's decided then!", he declares as he turns away, and the river begins to fade from existence. "Oh, and you...", he says from over his shoulder to the nearly forgotten puddle of ooze, "Come with me.", and with a snap of his fingers, the river, the goo and himself are gone and yet somehow the amused laughter manages to linger awhile.