Adrift

[Syntaphar]

Well. Dario had a very important choice to make, one that could very well decide the fate of the contract. He could either abandon the girl, leaving him without a guide besides the map (which he honestly didn't put much stock in his ability to follow) and perhaps leaving her feelings hurt again. Or, he could hedge his bets on the hope that the phoenix mark could get him through the gates, one plus guest, which would give him access to the guiding he needed. He was willing to risk it. Putting on an air of purpose, he would beckon Emma to follow him if she so chose. Still carrying the chest fairly effortlessly in his left arm, he would brandish his right, hoping that the mark signified no-questions-asked entry.

Giving himself an almost conceited lustre to his voice, as he imagined most phoenix-arms would have, he would break into proper speech for the first time in a week or so. Standing up straight, he would speak loudly and clearly, but not so loudly that the people in nearby houses would hear: "Excuse me sirs, but I have need to enter the residential district. And my compatriot here " (gesturing to Emma) " Is to come along with me if she so chooses. Is there a problem with that?"

[Sage]

The girl was suspicious of her new friend as he beckoned her, and as she approached the line of well-armed men and mages, she was on her guard. Ready to run at any moment, she stepped directly in Prospero's footfalls, standing as much behind him as possible.

Any other situation, any other person with any other rank of identification besides the King himself, and they could have questioned Prospero endlessly. They might have asked what his plans were, how long he planned to stay, search his possessions, do and ask anything that might make him slip up and reveal or say something suspicious enough to disallow entry.

But the aura signature was infallible. The guards reluctantly stepped aside, regretting not being able to question a stranger, a non-citizen at that, dragging a young homeless girl into the Residential District. The massive gate, and all the layers of defense behind it exploded to life and separated in at least three different directions, allowing entry.

No one ever saw a barefooted girl move so fast. She was through the gate before it was even far enough up for her to walk through it while standing up straight. She ran around in circles once inside the Residential District, her arms straight out to either side as she enjoyed the cool breeze on her burned face. She had been trying to get into the Residential District for days, as that's where she was sure her sister was. Once Prospero was through, she would run to him, wanting to hug him, though resisting the urge as his warning. She stood before him, arms behind her back while she bit her lip. Quavering with excitement, and unable to stand still she rocked back and forth on her heels.

" Thank you so much, Mister. That was amazing, I've never seen anyone who could just walk right in here without any trouble from the guards before. At least not someone who didn't already live here, of course. " She spoke well for her age, though her childish pitch issues came through in a manner of near-squeaks and almost-cracks as she babbled excitedly. " There's a ton of neat stuff to do here, where did you want to look first? "

[Syntaphar]

Dario was honestly surprised at how simple that was. He also couldn't resist taking on an air of smugness, as it was always he who took flak from the guards, not the other way around. Made him feel more important than he ever had. It also made him feel bad that he had come here to kill a great war hero. He knew he wasn't supposed to have a conscience, but killing heroes always left him with a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. And missing limbs in one case of it. Nevertheless, he had a mission to do here. The night was still young enough though, and if he had to make any detours, he was sure he could pull it off. He wouldn't mind putting off the job for a little while longer, she supposed.

Once they were out of the guards' earshot, Dario would laugh at Emma's exuberant reaction. At her question, he would put down the chest, reach into it and pull out the map he was given through the town. "You know, this map leads me ta right where I wanna go. But I'm pretty lousy at reading maps, see I've lived in my city all m' life, and I never learned ta read a map o' the place. I just know where all of it is. Maybe you can help me out. Or, if there was something else ya wanted us ta do before we parted ways, I'd be happy ta follow along. Hmm... Ya know, yer right about tha guards. Even I wasn't expectin' 'em ta jus' let us through without so much's a question. But anyway, like I said, I got time ta kill, where are we goin'?"

'I got time ta kill.' Again with the ironic statements. Either way, he needed a guide to wherever he was going next, and he would pick up his box and bag, and follow. What else could he do?

[Sage]

The girl bounded up to a planter which held one group of the thousands of flowers and greens in the Trade District, so that she could read the map over his shoulder. She smiled when she saw the destination marked, and giggled to herself.

" I don't know all the houses in that grouping, but one was Saint Xavier's house, and one is the Master Jeweler the Royals commission. See, every year they pick the best of every type of crafter, and pay them extra just to do their job, with a few contracts from the King. It's an incentive they give for everyone to do an extra good job. "

If he could have seen her face, he might have caught another flash of grieving memory. The smell of sawdust and strong scent of paint temporarily overwhelmed her olfactory sense, pushing out the sweet scent of flowers. She shook her head, attempting to refocus on the map.

" Anyway, the last mark on this map is right on top of Xavier's statue. Maybe we should save that for last? "

As they sat there, taking their moment to study the crisp scroll, a man patrolling the area, rigged with a large pack and tray to vend goodies, with tiny tinkering bells suspended on thin poles above him. He wore a paper mask in the image of a fox, covering all but his mouth.

" Fire flakes for the folks? "

[Syntaphar]

Dario chuckled in amusement once again at Emma's exuberance. If she had given him just half a second longer, he would've handed her the mpa, and she wouldn't have to climb on the planters. Ah well. He was very intrigued at hearing that one was St. Xavier's house. That was Dario's best bet at his current position. but again, there was something in Dario that made him somewhat reluctant to finish this job. But finish it, he would have to. He turned his thoughts to the jeweler and the sheets of mineral in his downpayment box, but dismissed it as a priority because he hadn't the foggiest what to have made. He simply answered Emma's question, as he didn't want it explicitly confirmed in his mind that this St. Xavier and his target were one and the same. "Yeah, Emma, yer right. I think we oughta see the statue last too.

When the man came along with the cart full of sweets, Dario was way more interested than a well-adjusted adult of his age should be. Not only did candy give him a much needed rush just before a big job, but he had always adored it in general. And he had become somewhat of a connoisseur in recent years. He would deftly dart his hand into the box and pull out three silver coins, one resting between each pair of fingers on his hand. He would grin to the vendor and say "Fire flakes, eh? I'll take whatever this can get me."

He had no idea exactly how much these flakes were worth in relation to the coins, but however much he got, he would offer Emma half.

[Sage]

Her eyes were greedy for this treat, as the man approached. Fire flakes were central to the lives of many children in Algeroth, as frozen treats might be to children in other parts of the world. Most foreigners avoided it, as if one does not learn to breathe properly, and build a small tolerance to the heat in the dried flower petals of the solarose flower, it can be deadly. She marveled at Prospero as he handed over the glistening coins, revealing that he might have exaggerated the contents of his box a bit.

The amount of money he had put forth was not altogether unheard of, but definitely unusual. The process by which the treat was made caused them to have a long shelf life, though vendors selling it were so common, few people ever stocked up on them, despite how much they might enjoy partaking. The volume of said vendors also lowered the price a great deal, thanks to merchant competition, and this fact showed as the vendor handed over two nets full of tiny paper bulbs. He'd carefully counted them out to be equal, and representative of the amount of money he had been given. Each of the bulbs contained one serving, and there were at least a hundred swollen bulbs of paper between the two nets.

Her voice was shaky, and she was unsure if he was playing a trick on her, as some of the more wealthy people sometimes did on the less fortunate. " Are you sure, Ferri? That's a lot of candy. " She reached her hands out and carefully took the small netted bag from him, which took up slightly more room than a half a dozen oranges in the same type of container might. She thought it rude to not give him some warning before he made a mistake in his eagerness, so she quickly pulled one of the tiny bulbs out of the net and unwrapped it, revealing tiny red and gold flakes of dried solarose petals and leaves, which were coated in a sweet sauce that hardened somewhat while they were being cooked, giving the treat a light crunch.

" You have to be careful when you try them the first time. If you gasp, or inhale too sharply, they say you can burn your lungs. Just try a little at a time until you get used to the effect, and try to inhale through your nose. " She carefully slid half of the candy on the paper onto her tongue, and lined some of them up on her teeth, pulling her lips back slightly as she bit down, so that he could see the tiny sparks. She chewed two or three times, then lifted her chin up, and blew into the air. Tiny wisps of what looked like red smoke began to exit with her breath, and then they bursted into a tiny cone of fire which began an inch or so away from her mouth, and ended nearly a foot away from her face.

[Syntaphar]

Dario was expecting one of two reactions from the vendor. Either he would basically spit in Dario's face for offering such a pittance for such fine wares, or he would be exuberant that he was making such a huge sale. While it fell to neither extreme, Dario was happy it fell to the latter more than the former, and cheerfully thanked the vendor for offering it. He wasn't expecting to get quite so much, but there was no hurry to eat it all, and it looked like it lasted a while, as a dried vegetableish snack. After handing a bag to Emma, but before he could manage to pull one out, he was given a quick lesson on how to enjoy them. He appreciated this, because he certainly would have done something or other wrong and have to make another freaking demon deal for replacement lungs.

Either way, he was greatly intrigued by the performance before him. Fire is neat, candy is neat. Firecandy is at least double neat. He would take the petals from a bulb, sniff at it a bit, then try to imitate Emma, who had a good deal more practice. the first two bulbs would go badly, ending only with slightly burned lips. That was going to hurt over the next couple hours. the third resulted in sparks, and the fourth in only a small puff of smoke. Not fire, but getting closer. On the fifth try, finally, he achieved a small jet of flame. With a triumphant laugh, he would pull out another piece. He'd have to remember to keep some. He couldn't be eating all of them on... the... job.

His mind was brought back suddenly to the job and he had a vivid flashback to his meeting with the grandmaster. A tiny wisp of flame he used, and a large cone of flame shot out the other side of the obsidian sheet. What would it do if it were already a somewhat large cone. A look of bewonderment would come over him, and he would take the chest, the candy and himself over to a dark area, perhaps an alley, where he was out of sight. He wouldn't stop Emma from coming along if she wanted. He would look for a safe trajectory with darting eyes. He was no stranger to arson, and knew as much about not setting things on fire as he did about setting them. He would pull a sheet of obsidian out of the ebony chest with an excited grin and hold it in front of his face, facing the safest trajectory and making sure Emma was clear if she followed. He would then take a serving of fire flakes, chew and blow, just to see what would happen.

[Sage]

Inevitably, he made the same mistake many foreigners before him had. The candy was already spicy, though without proper understanding of the process by which the flame is made, he would fail. With the heat of the spice, came salivation, which drowned out the sparks necessary for the flame. Emma approached carefully, seeing and understanding immediately the contents of the box. Again, out of courtesy she made a clarification.

" The flower itself is magical, but the flame is actually pretty simple. You have to line it up with your teeth, and make sure you grind some of the leaves against the petals as you chew. There's enough of both, so that there's no problem there, you just have to work your jaw back and forth slightly as you chew. When the dust starts to build up, that's what you have to avoid inhaling. The stuff that's made when you get the sparks is what's flammable, and it burns when it hits the air. "

Once she done explaining, matter-of-factly, she blew another tiny flame from the other half of her first bulb and pulled out a second. She dropped her voice to a whisper, and soft and sweet as it already was, her words were nearly inaudible. " That black stuff, it's obsidian, isn't it? "

It made sense now, somewhat. Every now and then a rich individual who had come across some of the material would come here to get it crafted, and they would use whatever means at their disposal to get into the Residential District, to get access to it's master artisans. She watched as he made his attempt at something or another, and it was only after he failed that she realized what. She approached it slowly, watching as it reflected a dark image of herself in it's glossy finish and she reached out with a quavering hand, just short of touching it.

" Can I see it? "

[Syntaphar]

Dario was disappointed that he had failed to make flame shoot out again. And he thought he had it too. But he was emboldened again when he heared that the plant these candies came from was indeed magical in nature. This would work, and he knew it now more than ever. He listened intently to her further explanation of the candy and the proper methods, and if this worked, he would be practicing a good bit more with it. And the candy itself was pretty tasty, even without the magical properties. This candy was a keeper, for certain.

He heard her voice drop to a whisper as he realized he had let the secret of the ebony box out of the bag. Whoops. Though certainly Emma was trustworthy enough to be discreet about it. He hoped. Anyway, all he could do was put on a mischievous and impish grin and say: "Why yes it is. And judgin' how much ya know about stuff round here, I think ya know exactly what I was plannin' ta do with it, and why I hid m'self from sight just now. And o' course you can see it. Just try to be careful with it. Nothin' personal, I once dropped a diamond n' had it shatter is why I ask. Dunno all the properties on this stuff. I know one though, and it was shown ta me with a little wisp of flame. I want to see what happens with this."

[Sage]

She took the material with a delightful grin on her face, and she stroked it several times with her thumb, admiring her reflection as she pulled it closer to her face. She giggled quietly as he explained that he'd broke a valuable gem, and again slightly louder when she realized he was tell her to be careful with refined obsidian. She rared back with the pane of glass and slammed it with all the might her tiny arms could muster against the brick wall of the alley, a wide grin on her lips.

She then showed the pristine nature of the obsidian before climbing the wall, using the natural ivy growing over it for footholds. She took a moment to empty an entire bulb of the candy into her mouth as she winked at him, and held the glass up and at an angle, halfway as far away from her face as she could reach. A large amount of sparks could be seen even through her cheek in the dark, and when she exhaled, a tiny, concentrated pillar of fire poured onto the glass, which received it and began to become completely consumed by fire, though the material was still cool to her hands.

And then it happened. From the other side of the glass, a massive fireball erupted into the night sky, perfectly rounded and absolutely destructive, potentially. The sight could be amazingly intimidating, though the trajectory used could easily be mistaken by a performing pyrokinetic, or a practicing mage. Fire was actually not all that rare in Toryn, with the prominence of pyrokinetics there.

[Syntaphar]

Dario was almost insulted by how she giggled that he had dropped an important gemstone, and a look of faux-indignancy in his face showed it. However, it was of course a stupid mistake, and he actually gained money on that deal from a well timed insurance policy. Either way. His eyes grew wide as Emma slammed the pane of obsidian into the wall, but was pleasantly surprised when i came off without a scratch. This stuff would be a lot more useful than he figured earlier. Could make some nice, albeit small protective plates out of that. Maybe even a mask of some sort. Once this was all over, the jeweler would be paid a visit, that was for sure.

He was pleasantly surprised at how deftly Emma climbed the wall. Sure the footholds were fairly good, but it was still a wall. Fairly impressive. Not one to be outdone, Dario would hold the ebony box under his left arm and keep the duffel bag strapped over his right. he would then put his years of skulking and parkour to use, climbing the wall with only his right arm and legs, always maintaining two points of contact, the first rule of urban climbing. Once at the top, he would watch Emma hold up the obsidian plate in much the way he had.

Dario had expected something dramatic to come out of this scenario, but nothing quite this much so. He had rarely seen fire such as that come out of someone that wasn't a mage, and the impressiveness (and utility) of this performance made him yell into the sky with excitement. Quickly, he would come back to a reserved smile, attempting to recoup his dignity. Exuberantly, he would say to Emma: "Wow, that was fantastic! I never thought it'd be such a dramatic effect! Wow!But maybe we oughta come down offa tha roof before someone comes askin' questions. I dunno, you be tha judge. Ya know a lot more about the workin's of this place than I do."

[Sage]

Emma sincerely wondered if the man knew exactly what he had. The panes were pretty thick, for a type of glass, and there were three of them. During crafting, the material would undoubtedly be thinned and folded, creating more material. He easily had enough for one large, or a number of small crafts on his hands, and many people who knew what it was would jump at the chance to work with it, whether to increase their skill, or their fame. Reluctantly, her tiny hands would move the object back toward it's owner, and once he took it from her hands, he would notice she delayed taking her hands off of it, dragging them across the surface if he took the object with any amount of force.

She missed his own impressive feat of agility. For a child growing up in a city setting, climbing things was natural, and she didn't even consider the fact that an adult of his size shouldn't have been able to do it quite so nimbly as her, and even more so. Instead she focused vacantly on the horizon in the distance, just barely visible from a higher elevation a few miles out, across the district and over it's walls. Freedom was out there for her, she just had to find the last remaining of her family.

She worked through her childish attention span to snap back to reality, sliding down the wall on a thick piece of vine as it swung down with her. " Oh, they'll come. But they'll be in no hurry. Street performers who employ fire to entertain are common, they'll likely be trying to push a fine on one of them for getting too exuberant with their act, if they can find one. "

[Syntaphar]

When Emma offered the obsidian pane back, he wouldn't mind her lingering on it, though he could only imagine why specifically this was of such value to all strata of society. Of course it was of high value, but there seemed an almost religious awe beyond that. Either way, Prospero would ensure that the bag and the box were secure, then grab a vine and slide down the side of the building. Part of the way down, he would let go, taking advantage of his inability to feel pain in his legs for a bit of convenience. In fact, an attentive observer would notice that when he hit the ground, Dario's knees would not bend nearly enough to fully absorb the fall. But, as long as nothing broke, he would be fine. And he certainly knew enough about when to drop to not break anything.

Dario would shrug happily as she explained that the guard wouldn't immediately be on their asses. That was certainly a pleasant difference from The City, one of many that had been piling up over the day. In fact, he may want to live here if it was at all a possibility, once he got out of The City he so disliked. Syndicate be damned. Either way, his thoughts would tur back to the map in his ebony box, and he would ask with a cordial grin: "Where to next? I still need a bit o' guidance here."

[Sage]

The girl considered the marks that had been made on the map. One was a popular restaurant just inside the secondary wall, that was built tall, and had a view of the Toryn River, after which the outer city was originally named, as it was the singular source of sustenance until the first crops came in, and was depended on heavily by the people. " I guess the closest mark on your map is The Talon's Grasp. It's a popular place to eat, and has several levels of access, just like the Districts. "

Each level of the building was accessible by a different type of admission requirement, and the open-air top floor was reserved for only the most important patrons. Foreign diplomats and rulers who didn't eat at the castle, royalty and nobles, the master artisans, and other high-ranking officials and soldiers. But the crystal bay windows from each other floor were pretty nice as well, save for the ones that were too low to see over the wall.

" I don't know what you might be looking for there, but it will be hard to see all the floors from the inside. "

[Syntaphar]

Immediately Dario wondered exactly why a fancy restaurant of all places would be marked on his map. He wasn't really listening when the map was explained, he supposed. Near as he could figure, the map was a series of locations where Xavier would hange out were he back in town. Which is pretty much all you could ask for in Dario's business. There was an old "business" axiom he had learned long ago at the start of his career. "Routines can get you killed."

Either way, Dario was interested to find out more about this restaurant. It was a popular tourist spot, which would make it easier to blend into a crowd. And if Xavier happened to be eating, Dario always had that curare in the hidden compartment of his bag. (At this point, he would try to hide his mischievious assassin grin, for fear of drawing attention to his motives.) He would present a cordial smile again to Emma and say: "Ya know? That sounds like a plan. Lead the way."