Opals in the Rough

[Aurin]

Hahseu, Kalzasi
85th of Searing, 124 of Steel

"...feeding ssssstrayzsss..."

The Rathari woman, too serpentine even in her zoan to pass as anything but what she was, chided him from the shadows of her cowl.

"Well, I fed you," he said, smirking up from where he had taken a seat on a relatively clean bit of the ground in order to coax the mutt closer with questionable bits of meat he had purchased legally from the vendor it had been eying greedily. "You've stuck around, and I don't mind at all."

She hissed her discontent, but she was always somewhat coldblooded. She probably shouldn't have stuck around now that he was largely a top-side dweller, but Elwes kept him appraised of what was going on down below, and he made sure she had anything she needed. Not everyone down here knew her face, strangely beautiful, Aurin had always thought, but most knew her hooded form and its swaying gait, knew Elwes could fence anything and, it was whispered, kill anyone, but that could just as easily have been slander.

It didn't hurt to be seen as dangerous, though.

Aurin wore his own face here. He had lived down here before he clawed his way to the surface. It wasn't like people down here would recognize him as the impresario at the Golden Peacock Theater. They knew a realer version of him, who, like Elwes, could get them things for a price, and make people disappear for a price, as well. Aurin still had a reputation as someone who knew what was going on, secrets, and such.

"The key?" she asked significantly.

"Still safe," he assured her. "Under heavier and heavier wards as I get better at making them. Hidden someplace difficult to find, as well, and nobody has access to it even if they knew it existed. The place. Or the key, I guess. Any other whispers or..." He barked an ugly laugh. "...screams about the Mad King returning?"

"No," she said, and he thought he saw the flicker of a tongue tasting the air, but they were in the shadows.

"Got your pendant at all times?"

"Yesssss."

"Good. If shit goes south, I can get you out. If I'm in town. If I'm not, Rivin's good enough to get down here and get you out with the traveling trick."

"I know the gargoyle."

"Even if things get too heated down here. Don't want you cooked in a slow boil. I can glamour you up and nobody will know who you are unless you want them to."

"Thissssss is my home, Aurin."

"I know, and I don't care. If your home gets too dangerous, I'm pulling you out and into my home."

She hissed, but did not disagree. She didn't have a death wish; she was just more comfortable in her old haunts. After a moment, she turned and left without a fare-thee-well. He was not offended, knowing she had a meet planned in the Old Bazaar and he didn't want to cramp her style. If he didn't know where she was headed, he wouldn't be offended. They were long past that stage.

"There's no more," he said to the dog, showing his hands, already a bit dingy just from existing down in the Midden for a few hours. He had a few hours to kill before he figured he would meet up with Elwes again. If he couldn't dig up some secrets on his own, he could at least take the pulse of the people down here. He was surprised they hadn't bubbled up and demanded more from the surface than they had, but he supposed the powers that be in Myria Manor were keeping the lid on.

[Uwyn]

He toiled he boiled he labored as the steam roiled. Over two medium sized pots, and one dented iron skillet, all racked over a fire built from debris and hard fungi, the smoke smarted the eyes and smelled acrid, but what options were there in the midden.

The dragonborn didn’t know why he liked cooking so much, only that it clicked with him, and that he hated hunger more than most anything. Things in the midden were not like they had been before the shadow plague, many had died to monsters, more to hunger from the siege that they’d had to endure with no support from kalzasi expected, or perhaps desired. He didn’t believe that they would have rejected a platoon of those royal winged bastards in the middle of an assault by shadow monsters.

Cooking had been a welcome distraction from the horrors of those events, and the gratitude of the starving was easy to bask in, It did not hurt that they were not exactly picky, in those times palatable had become cuisine.

The pots both contained boiling water and a small amount of green slime ooze for acidity. Boiled long enough the toxins denature… or so his experiences so far had proven… any ingredient from the midden could cause dysentery with ease. Still he kept his fires hot and his meals more often charred than bloody.

Speaking of the skillet, it’s contents chicken and a myriad of the middens more edible mushrooms and a rare harvest of onions from the surface, he’d had to cut off a lot a rot, but there was enough from the batch to be a significant presence in the dish. Were tossed into the pots before they could fuse to the skillet. Diced potatoes found their way into the pan that the chicken had vacated to crisp up in the chicken fat with a healthy portion of salt.

A quick taste of the broth confirmed that underneath the flavors he desired was the familiar acrid taste of burnt protein. Still, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, or had been in the past.

The smells wafted from a small nook to the east of the Hahseu market, out of the way of the main traffic of the midden. The nook had a small entrance from which cookfire smoke and food smells rolled. Scrawled outside was,

Soup, I copper per bowl. Bring your own bowl.
But it had been shoddily scratched out.
then beneath it carved in more deeply.
SOUP. 1 COPPER per three ladles, FROM MY LADLE.
A BUCKET IS NOT A BOWL.

[Aurin]

Aurin strolled through the market, mostly killing time, though his ears were always perked up for interesting things to hear and to know. The mutt followed him, and from the way it kept to his ankles, he assumed it was used to getting kicks in the market and was banking on people thinking it was with him. Smart mutt, he thought, but he sighed. He was going to have to figure something out or he would feel bad. Of course, he would never admit to such feelings, but... fuck.

He paused amid the crush, alert for pickpockets; he wasn't dressed richly, but he was clean and that alone made him a mark for some. He could have glamoured soot stains and worse, but hadn't bothered.

Reading the dragonborn's sign and smirking at the corrections, he nodded approval. The kid seemed to have found himself a niche.

"How's business?" he asked.

He also reached into his clothes, reaching through a hidden tear in reality, and pulled a battered bowl from his cottage in the alley behind the Velvet Cabaret up above. He offered a copper and the bowl.

"Could I get three ladles, please? Promised my friend here lunch."

It wasn't meant as slander; fit for people, fit for a dog, though. He supposed beggars might gather if they saw his largesse, but, well, so be it. The purveyor of chow might be smart enough to keep his ears open, and Aurin would pay for secrets, sometimes even for news he didn't know. Elwes' attentions were sometimes specific and Aurin liked to widen his net.

[Uwyn]

Uwyn arched an eyebrow but otherwise didn’t react to the newcomer, and less new dog, who seemed to for the moment have a patron.

It was funny to think that between the two the man was far more unusual a site in his little hole in the wall than the dog with him. Still copper was copper, and he preferred a man’s copper to there steel most of the time. It didn’t hurt that he’d even brought a bowl, which was apparently a real fucking hard thing to find unbroken in the midden.

Ladling out the rations thoughtfully into a bowl he wasn’t particularly shattered to see his meal go to a dog, most things worth being around felt hunger the same way. Looking back to the pretty man with the dog he wrinkled his nose. The man smelled of soaps and… well little else really. He didn't really know how to handle the question the man asked, he couldn't tell if he was mocking him or just incapable of reading the room... or in this case, reading the crumbling hole in the wall.

“You stink” He said through a smile, “and you’re pretty ugly by hahseu standards… you didn’t get chased down here did you?”

He was teasing in his own awkward way, but also half genuinely afraid, it was not unheard of for the occasional lord or lady to commit a crime so heinous they fled to the underbelly of Hahseu for safety… which it did not necessarily promise. He was, for his own part an awkward wyrmling, scales sprouting seemingly randomly across his form like acnes, patches of skin where scales were developing red and bumpy as the formed beneath, raw places where he’d frustratedly picked them away. Those very same scales flickered and itched ever so slightly in the presence of the mage, not the Uwyn knew that, a strong mage could set off his scales just as easily as a shodily made artifact or dragonshard.
Thankfully the canine ate it’s meal without complaint as far as Uwyn could tell, he wasn’t sure his psyche could have handled the damage a dog refusing his cooking would have done to him.

[Aurin]

"Thanks," he said drily, for the 'compliments' and the slop. The dog didn't seem to mind the quality; first treats and now a more substantial meal, and she was one happy bitch. It didn't take much, simple creatures.

"Used to live down here. Managed to claw my way out a few years back, but my girl... She won't come with me. Sentimental or some shit. So I come down and visit her." He paused, then clarified, perhaps humorously, though that was subjective. "She's not the dog."

Aurin was worldly enough he could recognize a dragonborn and wasn't likely to stare. The kid seemed to have hit the dragonborn version of awkward adolescence; he hoped for his sake it didn't last longer than a normal person's. Adolescence had been a bitch, at least back in Cathena City, but he didn't like to think about that too much; it made him paranoid.

"Never met anyone from Myria Manor," he mused, glancing back toward the 'palace' of the Hahseu's nominal overlords. "Not down here, not up there. I wonder if there are enough of us to storm the bastille..." He couldn't truly be considering that. Probably.

"Anything I'm missing down here?" he asked. "Rumors? More than rumors? Particularly nasty things coming out of the Waterworks to eat perfectly innocent dogs?" He fished a silver coin out of his ratty coat and held it out. Secrets were more valuable to him than food, even during the food shortages of the eclipse. The dog looked up, whether curious about these 'particularly nasty things' or hoping instead of silver, he would produce more dried, delicious meat.

[Uwyn]

Uwyn fixed the man with baleful jealous eyes. It must be nice, to just drop back in to a hellscape you left behind. He didn’t know much to sate the man’s curiosity either, he lifted a corner of his mouth in a half smile to the man’s joking about the dog.

“man if you’ve come for information you’ve absolutely come to the wrong place.”

Pausing thoughtfully, he lidded the pot. It was easy to be honest to a perfect stranger, too easy honestly, to unload on someone you feel you likely won’t be seeing again.
“I work just enough to afford drugs strong enough that they keep me from thinking about the time I do spend working… like right now… The manor has been pretty buttoned up since the shadow monster bullshite that went down, what they do, do, they keep to their selves and don’t help nor really harm the rest of hahseu. They certainly didn’t end protection to those that weren’t there own..”
Uwyn glowered at the pretty guest he liked the man’s bracers, but their quality belied a threat. He knew well enough that those on the surface who came to hahseu willingly with plans to leave again came well armed and skilled enough to deter or outright kill whatever tried to prevent their egress through the undercity, and he had no doubts the person in front of him was similarly abled. Which was a shame because Uwyn was fairly certain that successfully robbing the guy would net him enough coin to be comfortable and high for… a good few days.

“Unless you want more soup or want to hire me or something… I think you’ll quickly find me a waste of your time. Unless you wanted to be told that you look as robbable as you do dangerous… and… I think there is a small group of people that share that opinion beginning to gather outside of my little hole in the wall that may share that opinion… that or a lot of people suddenly want soup.”

341 words

[Aurin]

Aurin paid close attention to the 'nothing' that the dragonborn kid knew and deigned to share. Between that and the sharp eye watching Aurin's back was enough for him.

"Well, the soup is orgasmic," he said with a laugh. His voice dropped, his smile sharpening into a smirk. "Thanks for the heads up, but I know." The hairs on the back of his neck were raised, and even if they weren't, he had his Rune of Semblance resonating on a steady supply of aether so he was more aware of his surroundings than most.

"I'd give you a better tip if that wouldn't make you their target in future, but if you have a hidey hole, I can make a drop-off there. We could also set up a side hustle if you'd like. Coin or better quality drugs from up top for information. Not trying to send you off asking questions that could get you hurt, but keeping your eyes peeled and your ears open, right? Like you have to do just to survive down here. I can make that worth your while."

He could also have Elwes keep an eye on him, which would ensure some physical protection, but he didn't want to talk about that.

Myria Manor did seem to be the problem here. Granted, food had been scarce during the Eclipse, even with the powers that be using magic to increase yields. Some of those Senue farms could feed these people, filtered through their Myria magistrate, but no...

In any case, even his oldest clothes these days were too fine for Hahseu, and he was going to have to get better at glamouring them to seem worse. More illusory dirt, even a bit of a stench, perhaps; the better to fit in.

But Aurin was no folk hero attempting to uplift the masses. That didn't mean he didn't see the hypocrisy of the powerful. He was prone to offering clever kids a hand, though; he had been one of those clever kids, except when he was a dumb ass. He was still sometimes clever and sometimes a dumb ass. Perhaps one's core nature was immutable, after all.

"You know, assuming I survive the growing mob." He smirked.