Chapter 3

Yaro brushed up against her prey, keeping her spacing to look like she had no choice if she wanted to make it through the crowd. The humi was old, skin wrinkled in age. Her cloak wrapped around the pouch, concealing it. With care, so he would not detect her ethereal hand with his sense of aura --if she overlapped her aura with his too much, he would very likely suspect something was going on-- she pushed it thin like a thread. Others could yank it and run, she was not strong in this way. What she was was dexterous. The motions were second nature for her. With a bit of effort for her ethereal hand -and much more concentration-, she opened the cap, drew out the golden flame and pulled them through the seams of her coat and into her closed palm, and closed the cap in one swift motion. She swam away from the elder; he would be none the wiser to his loss in fortune.

Yaro took a brief, deserved, sigh. It had been almost two years since Yaro had done this. One mistake, one person seeing the sudden gushing of light of the fuur... Memories sparked, with the previous repercussions of someone seeing too many times already. Those events when she had been discovered only reinforced the proper actions; she would never be caught again.

That was all before she had met her Atho. It seemed her muscles remembered more than she had. Or, at least, the memories were just dormant. I thought I left all this behind. Ellis would be ashamed. And he was right, it wasn’t right to take from others. He had put a concerted effort into making her a more empathetic person, for what little it was worth. But then again, she wanted to be better, to keep him from leaving her. And to be better, it meant giving up much of what she had learned that kept her alive.

But what else was she to do, it wasn’t like she could walk up to anyone and ask them for money. Any attention brought to her would lead to disaster. It always did. Hate-filled shouts, stones thrown, it was too much of a hassle. It held risk enough just to buy something, something that she’d have to do for the information.

Words of her old mentor, Natrai, came to her: the world isn't fair, so we need to make it.

No, the world wasn’t. It had taken Ellis from her and pushed her back into the pit of depravity; no one else could possibly be so far down it as she. Certainly not that pilfered old man. He wasn’t born to a life where your mere presence would have people attack you. To make things fair, he needed to be cut down a peg, or 5 fuur apparently. It wasn’t that much at all, he likely had it as change from an exchange for goods. But for her, it meant eating for a day or two.

No, that was not what she would spend this money on. The flame money needed to be saved, to buy information on Ellis’s whereabouts. And that meant stealing a bit more, as the commodity of sight brokers was in high demand and low supply. Not every farseer would be well equipped or talented enough to solve every mystery. But that didn’t stop them from taking one’s money upfront and keeping it after having failed. Yaro slipped a piece of dried ghrepul flank from one of the stands into her cloak. How much would I need? It could cost anywhere from twenty fuur to two hundred. Her best course of action would be to gain information on a more powerful sight broker, to minimize the headache of having to deal with glorified mind readers who only tell the customer what they want to hear.

Yaro made her way from the midtown district of whatever city and headed towards a more poverty-stricken district. There, her voice wouldn’t draw as much suspicion, allowing her to ask around for her needed information.

She took one wrong step and her leg erupted with pain. She fell to one knee, trying her best to force the pain back. Everyone walked around her fallen figure, uncaring. With laboured breaths, she heaved herself back up onto one leg. The ally welcomed the hobbling mess, darkness cast from one of the many-tiered streets that crossed up from ground level to three stories on the other side of the alley.

“Excuse me,” a voice came from behind her, “are you alright?”

A drake -a female keuh from its four trunk-like limbs and two wings, and twice her size- in a protector red uniform was edging closer to her, concern on her face and professed in her aura. Had Yaro been caught stealing? No, there was no way to know it was her. This was probably just some profiling based on Yaro’s humi figure. Drakes had a very large presence in the protectorate force, a clear evolution from the point the past empire nearly had dominance of the entire world. THey had to have some way of professing dominion on humi, even to this day. Yaro, unfortunately, had plenty of encounters of this kind, from only her stature. All protectors were deserving of distrust, it only took one reason.

Yaro righted her mask and glanced over her shoulder. A trail of blood followed on the dusted stone. “I am fine,” Yaro said with a thick Soakn accent. The common tongue, Lald, was easy, but she could only estimate on an accent. Lald was the only language she knew, or had desire to know. “I not like shoes, I may have stepped on something.”

The drake shook its head, two massive horns seeming to want to fall off, they were so big, “that is a lot of blood, I can take you to-” The scarlet red of their uniform said ‘danger’ rather than ‘aid’.

“Forgive me,” Yaro interrupted, “I not need, food… need bandage.”

The drake looked at her skeptically, green eyes shining behind blue scales, “you are sure about that?”

“Yes,” Yaro said, turning back to head up to the next tier of roads. THe hurt leg disapproved of her use of it, though she must, to feign that her lie was true. It seemed to work as she heard the drake stomp away.

That was close, I was nearly one of the rabbits beyond the door. The memory of her first time being hauled off to jail flashed in her mind. Protectors caught her during a heist carrying a bag of some lady’s jewelry. Five days behind electric bars, five days before they were able to break her out. She scoffed at the idea of them being ‘a position to keep law among civilized creatures’. The red uniforms were the sign of danger, a warning of terrible consequences should one get caught.

She resumed her hobbling while covering the open wound with her palms. The bleeding needed to be kept at a minimum. The thought of someone following her trail had her more worried than fainting from blood loss. If she fainted, well, she wouldn’t feel anything that would happen to her.

Her stomach growled as she slumped in a crevice under one of the buildings. It appeared that it had once connected to the underground portion of the city, but it was now closed off. It now only collects sewage and trash. The air was starkly different than just a few feet behind her. From the sweet smells of dry spices and fragrance paints to heavy and humid air with indescribable smells that stung her nostrils. A perfect place very few were likely to follow her to.

She collapsed on a small rock that was elevated above the rotting pool. After a quick survey and an effort to sense any presence, she decided she was alone. Her cloak opened to the smell of flesh that somehow was stronger than the crevice. The wound had re-opened and oozed with blood and puss.

With the slightest bit of hesitation, she stuck her tongue into the wound, to seal it off again. Something sharp brushed against her tongue during the first swipe.That kak muzoval must have done more than broken her bones, it must have shattered them. Why didn’t I notice this earlier? I’m going to regret this.. The older the wound, the harder it was to lick back together, wounds going long enough proved impossible. Hopefully, a day wouldn’t be too long. There was still a chance to repair the bone, or at least repair it enough to keep her leg in usable condition.

She would have to do this now while she still had enough energy left in her. Yaro dug her claws into the rift through her leg and pried it open. THe world darkened but only for a moment, then the wound came into focus. She couldn’t stop. The bone was indeed in splinters, having pieces nearly falling out of her leg now. Claws of both hands pried the leg open while she used all her focus to move the pieces back, slowly, with her ethereal hand. Lacking strength of her ethereal waned, it already had her head pounding with the effort she put into it. The head wasn’t quite right, it was more the part of her soul around her head as that’s what stretched and solidified part of her soul to create the ethereal hand force. 

She persisted, putting the larger chunks where they belonged and sliding shards into holes where they would fit. All the while, she would lick parts of the bone, having it seal back into one piece.

With each lick, she felt her mind slipping away from her. By the time it came time to seal her leg back up she’d been delirious. The loss of blood, the energy spent, the constant pain, it was too much. Breath seemed just out of reach, taking it would seal the end of her leg. Licking remained the only option, each brush of her tongue sending her further and further into oblivion.

Somehow, she finished awake. Hunger gnawed. Where was food? She looked to her hand, her robe had food earlier. Where did it go? Had she dropped it somewhere? She clumsily turned around to look behind her. The world dropped as she fell on her back, her mask splashed in the pool. No, she needed that. She flailed about, trying to retrieve the mask that kept floating away from her.

There, her stomach told her, next to it, food. The piece of ghrepul that floated next to her mask, so hungary, she stuffed it down her throat. No, her stomach said, and immediately vomited the piece of meat, returning it to float down the pool.

Yaro woke with a jump and a fit of coughing. Her right nostril was filled with rancid liquid which she tried to blow out. The liquid left, but the smell lingered. Her face, where did it go? She scrambled to her feet, then fell back down with a splash. Her leg thrummed in retribution. Arms burned as they lifted her out of the, more viscous than anticipated, liquid. “To Yon!”

The zuyg’s dim cerise light had crept its way through the crevice she’d come into the cesspool through. In the slick liquid -with chunks of who knows what floating in it- she found herself reflected; a hideous monster stared. Her red hair was soaked, tangled, and held bits of filth in its vines. Her snout was a wrinkled mess with creases that the stench clung to. Red scales grew in patches across her colorless skin. Neither one nor the other claimed a majority of her being. An unholy union of flesh which somehow continued to persist.

She smashed her fist into the demon, seeing the ripples of red and white shimmer outward. This should have been typical, common, patterned by now: finding herself covered in filth as society's wretch. If only Ellis could see her now, see her for how she truly was: a miserable beast that had no right to happiness.

But then, he had seen her. He knew what she was. Yet, by the grace of Ah, he had not only accepted her but loved her. Even Natrai, for all the kindness she showed, must not have loved her. Otherwise, she would not have left. Maybe, doubt crept in with its wet gate, he didn’t love you either, that’s why he left too. No, that wasn’t possible. Not after all they had been through, not after piercing the veil as they did. The thought didn’t leave her, it only slunk back into the recesses of her mind.

She was still alive, that was something. Even now, after falling unconscious from her stupidly trying to fix her leg in a place where she could have drowned in her sleep, she lived. What was she thinking, ripping her leg open like that in such a filthy area? She felt her leg in the onset darkness. It felt normal. Maybe a bit swollen, but whole. To her, it was so easy to just patch herself up with a swipe of her tongue. Sure, she had had gouges that had her fall asleep moments after the repair. And sure, she had broken bones as well. A splint and taking it easy for a couple of weeks fixed that. As easy as it could anyway. But this, well, it was nice to know that it wouldn’t kill her to do something like it again. She pondered, what are even my limitations? I can mend bone, apparently, but did that mean I can mend other organs, too?

Her yawn surprised her. Exhausting welled, there was no use bothering to try and pull herself out of the sewage yet. Her cloak was cold, wet, and clung to her body. She threw it aside. Useless. Coldness climbed her limbs from the liquid, it tried to drag her back down. With disobedience, she stood instead. The swollen leg was still tender, reminding her to not put too much weight on it.

She surveyed the area. Dark heaps lined the walls over the pool. A faint red glow underlined the more clear areas where the filth was less saturated. It seemed to be devoid of life as well, from what her sense of auras could tell. Maybe there were a few rats, insects, or rat that made their home in the heaps, but nothing she was able to sense.

Her stomach growled. WIth more focus and strain, life in the area came to a hazy view of her aural sense. Was anything edible? There, she thought she saw something move. A step towards it, she reeled at the sound of her foot sloshing through the liquid. No, there would be no hunting done here. Her stomach growled again.

She would have to leave this haven, walk through the city above without a good way of concealing her figure. A spare coat waited in her holder, there was always a spare. But that mask was hard to come by. She had stolen it from a traveling missionary from some nation far to the east. The mask was enchanted to further hide one’s body, as their practices forbade one from showing their physical form to those who they deemed unworthy. Care as to why this was felt pointless; what it meant for those people. What mattered was that it was exactly what she needed. 

I suppose I don’t really need it, she thought as she waded her way to the opening crevice. Years passed previous without it, it just made life that much less adversarial.

As she stepped to climb back up, she took one last look behind her. It was on her turning back around that she spotted it. 

My mask! 

Washed up against a pile of dirty cloth, the stained white paint glimmering in the red zuyg light. She held it up, admiring the one simple eye of blue and green embossment. She frowned. Whatever was in the liquid down here had left a line where it soaked into the paint. No one of the dreulbe faith would have a mask with a stain, they took care of their masks like it was their young. The mask made a squelching sound in whatever it had landed in.

She pulled out her spare cloak which first formed as a mist around her before congealing into place. Then, she climbed up out of the pit. It was late into the night, the sounds of laughing people and blaring of alarms predicating crimes. The stench of where she had been still stung her nostrils but was measurably less in the crisp air of the surface. Deep breaths filled the space.

Yaro hobbled silently, always keeping to the densest shadows, as she made her way out of the city. After some time traveling, buildings still engulfing her, Yaro met with the silence of the night as it welcomed her to the wild. She would have to find a river or pond during the day to wash herself free from the stink. But she was still so exhausted, she had to find somewhere safe to sleep first.

Some of the buildings faced with locked doors, some were in so much disrepair that they weren’t likely to be safe to stay, not without either something falling on her or her falling through the floor. Many of the buildings were simply impenetrable due to the sheer amount of vegetation they housed. And yet others held unseen dangers of wild plants or toxic creatures within them. Somehow, being out in the open felt safer this night.

One building had welcomed her with a silent gate meant to allow even the largest of creatures inside. The vegetation was manageable to get through, mostly vines sticking to the walls, roots of trees growing inside and out, and some grass on the floor. Nothing impeded her too much. She was even able to make it up a flight of stairs, higher areas safer more often than not. One room with an unhinged door bade her inside with an open maw, to which she sleepily obliged. Everything was so quiet, so peaceful. If there were any wild creatures, they either weren’t around at the moment or did not see her as a threat.

She curled up to a knot of roots that broke through the wall, ready to fall asleep. Before she allowed herself the pleasure, she took out her ring. She held it aloft with an ethereal hand, refusing to get any of her filth on it, letting the night’s light bounce off and play with the simple piece of metal. Hopefully, he had his ring and was thinking of her as well. She stared at the ring in the placid darkness. She would find him, no matter what.