Legend of Ransera

To get to the Enclave, oft called the Alienage by more xenophobic elves, Kastor Len'Ápeiros didn't have to walk far. His family lived in the outer Amforéon, a common suburb outside the historic walls of the Crown City. That district mostly encircled the place where foreigners were allowed to reside, though, of course, they were not encouraged to abide. But for a young, disaffected elf, it sang the siren song of strange and faraway lands only heard in the songs of poets and the chants of historians. It was one thing to hear, yet another to experience.

There was a thrill of danger to tread those streets. While they were patrolled by Hytori guards, it was known that they merely kept the crime, organized and disorganized, from getting out of control. If the foreigners couldn't police themselves, couldn't act appropriately, then it was just more proof that they ought to be contained therein.

Within the Enclave—Alienage if you're nasty—there was a thriving bazaar, a tarnished mirror to the Agora within the city walls. While the Hytori enjoyed the beauty of nature, often built along organic lines, the bazaar seemed to trend toward what came organically of too high a population attempting to coexist in too small a location. It was bursting with life. It also smelled—sometimes bad, sometimes merely of strange, exotic spices, animals, and the like.

Parts of it were familiar—ancient Hytori infrastructure, original buildings, metalwork, lighting. Parts of it were not. But even the familiar bits were taken over, repurposed, creatively or destructively.

An enterprising young elf could have fun, make money, and get into trouble all in the same day. If he was lucky, he could get himself out of the trouble, or at least catch the attention of his armed, armored, and magically empowered countrypeople where they were keeping the king's peace.

The Enclave was exciting in all the ways the outer Amforéon wasn't.

People crowded the bazaar. Vendors shouted their wares, screaming better prices than the competition - and customers bartered for less than that. Merchants polished jewels or fanned freshly grilled treats or modeled their own scarves and purses, all to entice potential buyers. Clever hands wandered into pockets or the shallows of stalls, and where light didn't reach, different kinds of bargains were struck.

The Enclave was busy, and foreign, and no one here concerned themselves with Castor. No one - save the Hytori guards - cared much that his ears were round, or that his eyes were brown. No one whispered things like tarnished gold or bothered themselves with trying to determine which of his parents had been Hytori, and which wasn't.

He took a breath, and his magic spilled from his being. A cloud of knowing. He could Know, now, of that which happened around him - and feel how the people here moved, and where they were moving. Castor walked accordingly, left and right, gracefully avoiding the spaces where someone was about to be. He was a leaf in the breeze of the crowd, and wouldn't run against someone.

It made exploring here easier.

The ginger human had used a different name when he first came to Silfanore, but that was a memory mostly consigned to the chaos of his nightmares from that time. With a new name and a new, adopted hometown, he was visiting on a lark, on a job, hoping to score some easy money, some easy intelligence. Now he was able to see Silfanore for what it was, not what it was, what it wanted to be, what it wasn't, and what people thought it was, all swirled together like some nauseating cocktail.

His tricks weren't mastered, but they were under control. His knowing trick was always sort of on, a thread of aether strung between it and his showing trick. Knowledge he didn't need wasn't constantly cascading through his mind, but it was like bits of metal and stone strung along that string of aether, a tripcord, a warning of people magically messing with him or the situation.

Almost every elf he had met or seen in Silfanore had magic of some variety. Almost every elf he had met or seen in Silfanore had a low opinion of their round-eared, red-headed (him literally so) stepchildren. Here in their Alienage, he wasn't dealing with so many elves, really. That kept him from gritting his teeth. He could bow and scrape to get what he wanted, but he hated being treated with universally polite condescension.

As soon as he managed to pickpocket the key from the merchant sipping coffee on the stoop outside his shop, he began to wind down the conversation with the Kishoi man. They parted ways on amicable terms, and Aurin turned to walk in a random direction that wouldn't lead back to where he was staying, where other things were going to go down, or anywhere suspicious or likely to come back to him. This wasn't the clever, fun bit of the confidence game, but it was a necessary step. Experience—specifically trial and error—had taught him to be more patient than his fiery hair and fiery personality wanted to be.

He nearly bumped into a young man, his tripwire of aether tensing, but not jangling. The young man, though, almost danced out of the way as if anticipating a collision. Having nowhere in particular to go, but rather to lead a false trail if anyone were to follow, he followed the lad until something would stop his whimsical journey.

The intention was there. Castor felt it cement between them, him and the much taller human. He side-stepped and the thread tied taunt.

Not a pickpocket, he thought, his magic tracing the thread. It didn’t lead to his wallet, or to the human’s hands. His magic brushed against the shallows of the stranger. Immediately, he found nothing like greed or want. Nothing coiled in waiting to strike. There didn’t seem to be any danger - but there wasn’t curiosity either. If anything, the human felt evasive.

His magic flared and Castor side-stepped as another man - stinking of drink - stumbled through the crowd. And again, a merchant carefully navigated through the crowd, her arms full of cut flowers.

He’d been at this for years. His magic was an easy crutch. Castor could fit the flow of any crowd. Patterns were easiest to spot. A clumsy sort of person stumbling three steps at a time, hesitating before the fourth - and in that time, Castor took the free space, and was on to the next. It wasn’t anything as showy as what some of the more typical magicians did. But he wasn’t a performer, and he’d never cared to be. That had been Pollux’s talent.

He wondered how far the human might follow him. They weren’t far from the edges of the bazaar. Already the crowd was thinning and the world seemed all the more quieter, the smells and colors and noise less than it was at the center.

He reached up, as he moved, to cover his ears. Castor didn’t sense any ill-intent but you couldn’t be too careful. The guards would be slower to come if they saw his rounded ears. As it was, he looked Hytori enough that it might give the stranger some pause if he meant him any harm, and it would only encourage the guards to come help him, if he needed it, if he kept his own humanity hidden.

Aurin hadn't intended to be a creeper. It was a sort of a game, using just enough of his knowing trick to catch the younger man's drift and flow along in his wake. It was also a matter of following another person's intention, magically and mundanely covering his tracks. It was only after a while that he realized the lad was aware of him. It was the covering of his ears that caught at his attention, reminding him of another half-elf in another city far away.

The confidence man stopped in his tracks, rubbed at his jaw and signed. On a purely observational level, he got the sense the half-elf was sort of slumming it, whether to feel superior for his golden blood or more at home for his red blood. In either case, or even some other case of which he wasn't aware, he wasn't in the habit of scaring people off from whatever they were doing unless it conflicted with what he wanted.

He paused then, trying to figure out how the lad had been using his trick. Aurin had no formal magical education. He didn't even consider himself a mage, though he had his knowing and his showing tricks well in hand. He was less powerful than he was clever with what he had, and while he hadn't sussed the lad's power, he had recognized cleverness.

"I am a leaf on the wind," he murmured to himself, a snatch of some forgotten poem. Aurin wasn't the sort of man who recited poems. He seduced with honeyed words, perhaps, but they weren't profound. "Watch how I soar."

The human moved forward again, into the flow of foot traffic. While he wasn't trailing the lad anymore, he sensed the direction he had gone; he didn't follow. He fell in with the the rest of the resident aliens, the tourists, the thieves, and the whores. He was a leaf on that wind, a leaf upon that flowing stream. It was exhilarating.

When the stranger stopped, Castor slowed. He kept his own magic focused on the thread between them - he watched as it unraveled.

Curiosity bloomed, there, in that space between them, from both sides. He was sure there hadn’t been anything malicious about the human. Nothing wanting. He wondered why he followed him and why he’d stopped. Castor could feel the man retreat back into the crowd, away from the edges of the bazaar.

Step, step, side-step.

Castor fed the human’s aura. A bit brighter than it was. It would be easier to see now, in the sea of people.

Step, step, side-step.

This was easy. He felt the crowd breathe, and he matched it, flowing deeper into the crowd. Hands, clumsy and sly, reached for his pockets. Castor slipped aside, and forward, carefully moving around the stranger instead of towards. Then, alongside. The intention was his now, as a new thread spun together in between them.

The man didn’t look like a common thief or a whore; he didn’t move like a merchant or a tourist. Nothing seemed to distract him. He was focused on himself. He focused on his own movements. Castor was aware of his own curiosity, a mild sort, but decided it was harmless to indulge. The stranger burned with a confidence that could only be kindled by the familiar. He knew this place, and knew it well.

Castor trailed the stranger slowly, stopping here and there to handle some fruit or touch some cloth or for a small conversation with a merchant. Mindless things, so he could focus on everything else.

Step, step, side-step.

His practice of this new technique had progressed a bit before the stranger's own movements caught on that aetheric tripwire and brought him back to Aurin's attention. At first, he went cold, too used to being hunted not to have a bit of prey instinct. He didn't stop his floating through the crowd, though; he didn't want it known he was aware of the lad. Second, he went colder, his instinct to go on the offensive, to become the predator lest he become the prey. But finally, he calmed himself, drifted under a heavy awning at odds with the more delicate elven architecture of the shop it adorned, and waited, empty hands visible so he wouldn't seem threatening.

This job wasn't supposed to require violence unless everything went horribly sideways, and he wasn't looking for extracurricular violence.

"Hello," he said in Mythrasi when the lad was close enough to make eye contact. But he was hardly fluent and Common was more common here in the Alienage so he switched immediately, offering an amiable smile. "Sorry about that. I noticed you doing something I hadn't thought to do with the trick, and when I noticed you noticing, I left off to practice on my own. Didn't want you to think I was tailing you with mischief in mind. I mean, I often have mischief in mind." He smirked, but it was self-deprecating more than threatening. "But was just admiring your technique, I suppose."

When laying his eyes upon the lad properly, he was struck by certain similarities and differences with someone he had met in Antiris the season previous. That half-elf had hidden his ears as well, though his had been elegantly pointed in a land of a round-eared majority while this one seemed to want to fit in more with the cosmopolitan Enclave. And this one wasn't picking his pocket.

Castor watched from afar the aura bristle with cold awareness. It flowered in edges, each petal sharper than the last.

Castor watched, closer, as that awareness cracked into the ebbs and flows of a spring river. The harshness drowned beneath the sudden calm, but there it was, all the same. This, Castor thought, was a man accustomed to danger.

“Hi,” and Castor smiled, too, because he was flattered. He’d been seen, in a way, which he liked.

“Not many people notice it,” and his magic enveloped them both, testing the space between them. Warmth there, and the thread of something new. The stranger recognized something about him - but not him, specifically. The stranger’s eyes reflected his ears. That wasn’t so unusual. Half-elves like him weren’t so rare. “It isn’t the kind of thing I was taught, anyway. I don’t think most people are.”

Magic swirled in the depths of the human. He had power or a kind of it, anyway. Semblance clearly.

“I’m Castor,” he said, still smiling. “Who are you?”

He wasn't well enough known in Silfanore that he bothered with a full-blown illusion-enhanced persona here, so when the lad was entirely forthcoming, he was too.

"Hello, Castor," he replied. "I'm Aurin. I wasn't really taught anything... just initiated and then thrown into deep waters to see if I would sink or swim." There was a faint edge to his smile, but it was defensive, not meant to harm the lad. He had swum, obviously, though he still bore internal scars for his efforts. But his experience was that life left scars, internal and external.

"So, anyway, I pay attention. That way I can pick up tricks. You should be flattered." He winked. "Imitation is flattery in its most sincere form."

After giving Castor a once-over, then glancing around their immediate environs, he asked, "What sort of trouble are you getting into here in the Enclave? What do you do around here for fun?"

Other than creating a confusing trail, he hadn't anything in particular that needed doing immediately. It would be amusing to actually spend a bit of his business trip as if he were a tourist on holiday, and the best way to do that was to ask a native and a local. Castor seemed to be both.

The confidence man found himself mirroring the lad's use of his knowing trick; he didn't bother hiding his showing trick. While dual-initiation had nearly killed him, they did seem like two sides of the same coin, at least to him. Then again, his only connections were those he had made for himself. Magical theory was just what he had figured out on his own, whether it were true or not.

"I could use a bite to eat. If you show me someplace good, I'll return the favor with food and drink."

His Pollux had sunk and he, Castor, swam.

“You’re talented,” Castor said, as he dumbed his own aura, breaking the sharp pain of memory into something soft. He steered his thoughts away from the past.

He focused on Aurin’s face, instead. He was handsome, and Castor thought so, and he pulled on those impressions. Pink flowered at the surface, sweet and reaching, and this was a trick Castor learned, too. You couldn’t just make feelings disappear. Instead, you layered and stacked, and made different thoughts brighter than others. Magic only made this easier.

He didn’t mind if Aurin knew he thought him attractive. It wouldn’t be unusual, he thought, with a face like his.
“No trouble -,” he smiled, sly, “- not yet anyway. I was watching people. I used to come to gamble but I’m barred from playing. The locals figured out how I kept winning.”

He shrugged. He hadn’t felt bad about cheating. Castor didn’t believe there was honor among thieves. “There’s a few stands that sell spiced meats on skewers I like. Do you eat meat?” He asked, already turning to walk back towards the busy crowds.

“And for drinks - oh, there’s Lucky’s Tavern.”

Lucky’s Tavern was one of the more popular establishments in the Enclave. All kinds of business played out in the dark corners, and hidden booths. “It isn’t the best drink, but it’s cheap. How do you feel about drinking games?”

Castor’s smile widened - he had already had one in mind.