Fracture

[Arcadia]

It was in the dying days of Espos that the world, our Vatialyn, was changed forever. Our world, bandaged from the strife of our creators, bound together like the thick muscle of a clenching forearm and poised to strike. The noon-day sun lazed high in a cloudy sky as life proceeded in the Crossroad. Life itself always did, no matter the internal struggle between the shady, alleyway dwellers and the law authority that had been put in place, or merchant struggles with council taxing. Life always continued.

However, in this day in Espos, normality changed. The day was ordinary as citizens completed their daily tasks, fetching water from the well, arguing with merchants over prices, or simply taking respite in the shade from the sun. Dust, however, seemed to wander aimlessly. Dressed in simple robes, he seemed to appear to others as a schola mage to the uninformed.

Not many knew about Dust, but the man himself did not come out of his quaint home in the Bronze District without purpose. Dust was a man wracked by visions. Of what, he only gleaned faint glimpses of, but he had been drawn toward the main square, where the market had taken up shop once more.

Something was going to happen there, he could feel it. But he was not sure what it could be.

All he knew was the market would be the place it would happen. But when?

He could not be certain.

@Dawn @Daices @HaloEliteLegend @Rainjay​

 

[Dawn]

Lamia, Tanis had concluded early on, were not a common sight outside of The Glade. The looks he'd attained in Ashi'que, curious in nature only, were quickly traded for ones of fear upon his arrival in the sister province Ysia. Pale men with piercings and tattoos, and of course lower halves of the body being that of a serpent, were apparently a terrifying sight. He'd quickly deduced that attempting to smile kindly in reassurance of his harmlessness simply did not stack in his favor because his face had a natural tendency to make him look angry and/or unapproachable and a smile added to that made him appear downright sinister.

He didn't need anyone thinking he was a monster and trying to slit his throat in his sleep simply because he had a resting face that suggested he plotted murder.

The ebony bow gifted to him by his goddess glistened in places like a night sky from whence it sat upon his back, hooked around the quiver full of arrows. More than once a thief had attempted to relieve Tanis of that bow and all of them had failed. Immensely. Failed with a dagger through the underside of their chins.

In Kiashi Citadel, he'd rolled the dice, attempting to make use of a skill he'd only just discovered and had been denied training in, for reasons best left in the past. He filled his porridge bowl with water, had plucked a strand of his hair, and had gazed into the reflection...

"Thisss mussst be the plac~e," Tanis said to himself as his golden eyes swept the market around him and he slithered his way through The Crossroad's town square with people trying desperately not to step on his emerald green tail. Yes, it certainly looked like the vision he'd seen in his porridge bowl. But the reason for his being here had yet to reveal itself.

 

[Daices]

Tae ducked under the shiv and reached her arm up to handlebar the man in one swift movement, slamming him back into the wall.

"Ya bloody foreigner, what's it to ya?! This ain't any o' yer business." The man snarled, baring bloodied teeth and spraying a mixture of blood and spit onto Tae's face.

"It's nothing personal." Tae muttered, the unfamiliar words ungainly on her tongue. "You are a bad man."

"Bad man my arse; what're we, five?! D'they not teacha to not stick yer nose in places where it don't belong?!" The man continued to bellow, his voice abruptly cut off with a choke when the armoured female pressed her forearm more firmly to the man's throat.

"I was asked to help. You have stolen money. You are a bad man."

Despite her doubts about the vernacular, the gist of what she said was clear, and before anyone could blink she had knocked him flat, fist connecting with his jaw and sending him to the ground in a heavy thump. Quickly tying his hands in twine, she spared one glance to the door -lock shattered, but still closed- before racing upstairs, quickly but efficiently going through the belongings in the man's room before finding an envelope filled with cheques and income reports that did indeed show that he was scamming the ones who came to his shop. Walking back downstairs and carefully placing the envelope next to the unconscious man's head, she pocketed the one cheque that she had slipped out of the envelope and slipped out the door, wincing slightly when the flimsy door cracked even more when she tried to close it.

Shoving the note into a pocket behind her breastplate, Tae started down the street, ignoring the glances she always got from curious onlookers surprised and intrigued by her armour and alien features.

"Meet by her booth in the marketplace when the job is done. Yes." She mumbled to herself, over and over, lost in her thoughts as she meandered towards her destination.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

Cosimo took in the smell of ginger ale and honey-brewed mead wafting from the large, oval-esque fire pit boldly staking the moon-lit center of the spacious, circular pub. Charred Dragon's Tail, a local delicacy prepared from the entrails and juicy hide of drakescale lizards, simmered in the heat as two broad-shouldered beasts slowly turned them over the flames. This tavern was said to have a specially infused ingredient in its mead -- moonlight! But every tavern has such local lore. Cosimo recounted his days in front of the hearth back home reading his uncle's "Compendium of Taprooms." It's this book he now pulled from his pack. Taking his time to thumb through the coarse ochre pages, he soon came to the entry he was looking for: The Lunar Wyvern of Caerea. A small diagram and caption were etched in the center of the page; "Where the heaven's lantern falls last, if passage ye seek, here be yer respite." He drew his cosmic insignia by the entry and secured it again with his belongings.

Observing the pure white rays falling laterally over the lip of the round skylight, he traced their final resting spot on the walls. It was an old merchants' trick that his uncle had come across. Swaying across the floor in time with the shadows, he knocked twice on the mortar wall. Glancing behind him, one of the beasts subtly nodded his direction.

At dawn's welcome, Cosimo strolled to the pier and boarded the farthest schooner, presenting to the captain a beautiful lizard tooth on which was engraved a strange symbol. Another subtle nod and they were off. Disembarking, the captain extended his paw upon which Cosimo placed the tooth for the next "merchant" at the Wyvern seeking free passage to the markets down south.

"Devilishly quiet last night. I come to inns seeking adventure, not being given it." Cosimo continued muttering all the way to the Census & Excise office where he igniting a lively discussion with the presiding officer on post-hypothermic medicinal syrup serving sizes, during which the man promptly forgot his charge and after which Cosimo waltzed onward.

"What forces conspire to summon a mere chronicler to this edge of the world? No one even likes chroniclers. Then again, no one can read" he muttered the rest of the journey. In the pale dusk, the opalescent hues of the grand market were laid bare to him. I suppose I can spare one moment to be awestruck. He charmed into a room at a guesthouse outside the gates and flopped onto the springy mattress. At midday tomorrow he would head for the square, as per his commission. With that, he let his tears lead him to bed.