@Prima Luce



"Gosh!" Boris first replies to the guards, "I sure am glad you think Boris is smart. I'm not as dumb as people think. But I think you're wrong about one thing, Mr. Guard, Boris isn't a baby at all...." He think for a moment, rolling his eyes around to carefully consider the situation. "I'm not really sure how old I am, but you can maybe see that Boris is much bigger than a baby. So maybe it's true that Boris is even smarter than you."

Boris keeps a pleasant smile while the guard then steps up close and asks him one last question, a question that made Boris think even more than before. He bites his lip mischievously, then answers.

"And no, sir, I am not Ovarin's friend at all, and Boris isn't naughty much any more. Boris used to be naughty, though, much more than now. I used to steal stuff and sometimes I'd eat parts of people if they were mean to Boris, but I haven't eaten anyone in a long time, so you don't have to worry about that anymore. No sir, nuh-uh - Boris is a true adventurer now!!" Boris pauses to think briefly on the other question. "But to answer your question even more betterer, Mr. Guard, Boris met a little miss earlier. She was invisible and everything. But the little miss was hurting bad with lots of blood and stuff. Even her private place was bleeding a lot. I'm pretty gosh sure she wants Boris to help her find the bad people who hurt her. So I am! Boris likes to help people, because that's what adventurers do! I also met another little miss who likes cookies a lot. Her name is Whiteleaf, but Boris just calls her Miss Leaf for short. I helped Miss Leaf with her push-cart, then she helped Boris by telling me about the man I'm meant to visit - and now, because of Miss Leave, I can help the other invisible miss." Boris sighs, and regrets to say with a dire shake of his head; "It sure does sound complemicated, especially to someone who isn't as smart as Boris. So I'm sorry if you're confused. I know how that feels a lot, Mr. Guard. So if you don't mind at all, I'd really like to see Ovarin right now. You can just wave me through for sure. And you can go ahead and watch if you want, Boris doesn't mind if your bored."

@Dartbored Fairy

Kura grins happily, accepting the cookie and munching on it. She would always accept cookies. Always. No exceptions. While eating, she began to talk again, although her speech was less than coherent, what with half a cookie stuffed into her mouth.

After a moment, she realizes she can’t talk good with cookie in her mouth, and swallows, then blinks a couple times, before breaking into a coughing fit, and wiping off her mouth afterwards. “Gahhh... daddy always said I should eat slower...” In a quick change of pace, she grins “But yeah you could probably recognize her pretty easily!” Kura leans in with a smile “She sorta looks a lot like me!”

@Quote5

The man nods as Karter begins to leave. "Alright, I wish you the best of luck, whatever it is you might seek to do here." He says as Karter walks away.

Swallowing the stone is easier than expected, it's more like gulping down some hard candy instead of a small stone. As he does so, Karter feels a strange sensation, almost like drinking a warm drink on a cold day. Perhaps a side-effect of the stone?

Whatever the case, besides this there is no noticeable effect of consuming the stone. At least, not yet.

---

@Lumiere

The girl begins to grin as Ahnciel begins to talk, though the girl's grin fades as she is asked to reveal not only her name, but also whether or not she knew something about 'Agartha'.

"You know it's rude to ask people for their name before introducing yourself, right?" She answers, frowning. "As for Agartha, it's the name of one of the many mines around town, it's a Gold Mine"

The girl sighs, and shrugs. "But that's all I can tell you, at least for now. Maybe if you tell me your name I'll tell you more..." She says, her voice trailing off as she glances at something behind Ahnciel.

---

@Zyngard

Whiteleaf smiles as Kura happily eats her cookie, before frowning as Kura reveals what the other person looks like. "They look like you... are they your sister or something?"

Seemingly lost in thought for a moment, the girl looks around as if expecting to see the person in question nearby. "I can't recall having seen anyone like you before... do you know roughly where she is? I could help you search..."

---

The rain, meanwhile, begins to die down again. The thunderstorm moves away and becomes more distant, as the rainstorm is slowly replaced with a light drizzle. Not long afterwards, the clock tower's bell begins to toll again - twelve times total, signalling noon.

Ahnciel slowly crossed his arms as the girl proceeded to tell them nothing other than how it was rude not to introduce themselves. This was an odd assertion coming from someone who may very well spend their time staring at strangers on a regular basis for all the knight knew, but they figured they may as well play along. Some bemused extant notion quickly grew suspicious of the girl who Ahnciel unfairly judged without knowing anything about them, suspecting this whole diversion to be a sort of aim at the contents of their pockets. Wouldn't they be disappointed.

"I am Paladin Ahnciel Kassadin ouf Ispar ehn yes, as you somehow already know, zehr vahz quite recently a grizzly murder at zeht inn...one vhich I haf taken upon myself to investigate," Ahnciel flatly explained, embellishing the claim of being a paladin, though they were simply trying out titles to see which one stuck, and with the emphasis and resolved chirp of the word so comfortably rolling off the tongue, they were almost convinced, themselves, of such a claim. "Zehr vahz a peculiar scrawlink of zee verd 'Agartha' outside ouf my room ehn eit vahz my intention to investigate eit's significance" Ahnciel continued, laying out their hand as they lifted their head enough for the dark grim of the rainy day's hazy sunlight to catch the shine of seriousness in their eyes.

"A man's innocence may require my haste, ehn 'maybes' vill hardly suffice," A coldness in their voice hinted to the sharp reality of Ahnciel's actual interest, not even bothering to look behind themselves. "Paerdon, my sternness iz hardly becomink, but you vill haf to understand me vehn I say zeht I haf found myself to be quite busy, today," Ahnciel sighs after a moment, lowering their head to the toll of the bells signifying half of the day having came and went.

It was not entirely that Ahnciel did not pick up on the cue, but crushing paranoia played the scene out in usually one of two ways. In the books, the hero turns around just in time to be clobbered by an astonishingly quiet foe. Alternatively, turning around gives the roguish observer just enough time to make a break for it, getting a head start absconding with the information the hero was intending to pry from them.
However, Ahnciel imagined themselves bafflingly clever by calling the girl's bluff as well as at least not seeming so dense by turning around to provide an incoming fist or club the luxury of a confused, dumpy expression.

Instead, Ahnciel reached up to tip their hood back down, offering a "Stay warm, staring stranger" before turning on their heels to walk back in the direction they came. Ideally, this would be the point where the girl would try to get his attention to aid in the vindication of a knight's honor or disappear like their types do in the books.
At the absolute least, Ahnciel would look like a total badass for about as long as it would take for the cheapshot to connect.

@Dartbored Fairy
Karter wanders around aimlessly around, no particular place to be. With the strange warm feeling, presumably from the stone, combined with the rain clearing up, he's starting to feel quite a bit better.

@Metatrooper@Prima Luce



Gosh! The Trios guards sure were nice to Boris. Boris had never met guards so very allowing before. Normally they were a little mean and sometimes even maybe made fun of Boris, but not these ones, not at all.

Boris was smiling wide as he made his way through the Guards Barracks and into the Processing room. There, he saw the armor on the racks above the crate. He recognized that armor right away, it belonged to the Tin Man Boris had met earlier. The Tin Man hadn't actually provided Boris a name at that time, so Boris figured he might as well just keep calling him the Tin Man, since he looked a lot like one. For a moment, Boris just stood and stared at the armor, wondering what the Tin Man might have done wrong to get himself locked up. He chuckled for a second or two, imagining the Tin Man stealing a cookie or something like that. After his little laugh, he used his keys to open the door to the cell block.

He pushed the key chain away into his trouser pant pocket, still holding an amused smile on his face as he strode down the walkway between cells. That was until he found two prisoners in two neighboring cells. One of them must have been the Tin Man, the Other one must have been Ovarin.... or… wait…. Maybe the Tin Man was Ovarin, Boris couldn’t discount that possibility. But that probably wasn’t true, and for the sake of making things easier for himself, Boris decided that believing the Tin Man and Ovarin were two different people helped a lot. Still, he had no idea what the Tin Man looked like without his armor on.

For a while, Boris stood at the point where the two cells met, looking back and forth at the two prisoners, biting his lip while thinking, trying really hard to decide which one was Ovarin and which one was the Tin Man. He would have just asked straight away, but prisoners aren’t very nice people, that's why they're in jail, and Boris knew that maybe they could lie to him. Really though, Boris knew that finding out which of the prisoners was the Tin Man would be the best idea to start, because that would mean the other man was Ovarin. Well, probably anyway.

Fortunately, Boris knew a little magic trick a young boy taught him a couple of years before. It sure was a good trick, and it hadn’t failed Boris yet. So, taking turns pointing at one prisoner then the other with each word of the spell, he started the magic chant:



Boris’s finger was pointing at Kaldalis with the final word of the chant, which was when the smile finally left his face, replaced by an expression of a very serious nature while he asked Kaldalis the question:

“Are you the Tin Man? I bet you are, my magic spell never lies.”

@Dartbored Fairy

Kura smiles and gives a happy nod to Whiteleaf "Yep! She's been here for a little while, should be inside some building or something..."

@Lumiere

The girl smiles as Ahnciel introduces herself, seemingly unconcerned with Ahnciel's title as Paladin as she listens to Ahnciel talk on.

Her smile fades, however, as Ahnciel turns around and bids farewell.

"Leaving so soon? The conversation was just getting started..." The girl asks, a hint of disappointment in her voice. "Well, I guess I'll be seeing you around then. Do try not to anger the crows."

Heading back in the direction from where they came leads her back towards the Inn once, though with the rain dying out the streets are slowly getting more crowded as people emerge from wherever they were hiding from the rain.

---

@Quote5

As Karter wanders aimlessly down the streets, a shiver goes down his spine. That's weird.

What's likely weirder however is the large amount of crows looking down on Karter as he walks down an empty street with nobody else in sight.

Then, footsteps, coming from behind him. Is someone following him? Or is it just someone else walking down the road. Whichever the case, they don't appear to be getting any closer.

Up ahead, the road forks into two directions. Taking the right road leads into a darker alley, while taking the left road would lead Karter down a road with more crows.

---

@Zyngard

"Inside a building huh? Well, let's get to searching then!" Whiteleaf says happily as she jumps off the cart, landing on the ground next to Kura as the cart she was on sinks into the ground, leaving not a trace of it ever having been there, nor does the road seem damaged in the slightest. Weird, that.

"So, what's your name? And what's your sister's name? That would help with finding her." She says cheerfully as she offers another cookie to Kura.

@Dartbored Fairy

The knight made it a whole four paces before stopping and disappointedly slumping their shoulders, having honestly expected there to be some kind of 'catch' behind the interaction with the girl. Ironically, the reality of a possibly innocent encounter shattered the expecting, story-telling mindset Ahnciel had been prepared for. Snuffing the fantasy and leaving it to dully smolder, they turned back around and sighed as they approached the girl once more.

"Two questions, if you vould not mind," Ahnciel quickly began, hands on their hips as they stared down at the worms squirming through the cobblestone to avoid drowning underground, "Vould you by chance be able to point me in zee direction ouf Agartha? Also...iz eit unrealistic to expect zee crows in zees parts to be different zehn ohzers?"

Ilyssa follows the morbid trail down the hallway, letting the information sink in. She lingers by the bloody word a bit longer, trying to place where she had heard it before. A few minutes pass with no sudden revelations, and the winged girl shrugs it off. Heading back into her room, she watches the guards escort an armoured someone out the building before pulling out one of her bags. Unzipping it, she pulls out the bottom, revealing a rather sizeable amount of coins in a pouch. Pocketing her earnings, she checked to make sure her knives were still on her before leaving the room.

Back on the street, she wandered past a couple stores, searching for one that perhaps had a map, or perhaps a book of the town’s history. She would even have been fine with another innkeeper, alive, preferably. Someone who could help explain a bit of this madness she had somehow came into.

@Dartbored Fairy
What in the... Karter thinks to himself. What are these bird's problem?

Karter is getting a bit stressed. He looks behind him in an attempt to see who is behind him. Karter then looks back in front of him. These crows can not be a good sign, he needs to get out fast. As bad as the dark alleyway is... it's probably less bad than the crows. He heads down the dark path, picking up his paise as he does so. He hopes it's not too dark in there...

@Dartbored Fairy

Kura tilts her head curiously, watching the cart as it sorta sunk into the ground, before grinning widely "Woah! That's a pretty neat trick! How'd you do that one..?" ...She seems to have forgotten about her quest at the moment "Wait, right. I'm Kura! And my sisters name is Kira!"

She gratefully accepts the cookie, munching away on it and managing not to choke herself.

@Lumiere

A slight smile returns to the girl's face as Ahnciel turns around to continue the conversation.

"Well, Paladin Ahnciel," the girl began, looking up at the Knight. "It all depends on the crows. The crows that normally live here are fine, but a few... less regular ones have... temporarily migrated here to accompany their mistress."

"As for Agartha, do you simply want a direction, or do you want me to lead you there directly?" She says as she takes a small compass out of her pocket. It has at least six pointers, each pointing in a different direction, with some moving. "Agartha lies to the... west of here," she states, as she puts the compass away again. "Though it's on the other side of the town, so it'll be a decent walk."

---

@Quote5

As Karter turns around, he finds that the street behind him is empty, with the source of the mystery footsteps being nowhere in sight...

Going down the dark alleyway, Karter soon finds himself travelling on a downward slope. The alleyway is lined with houses of dubious quality, with equally dubious figures occasionally being found sitting in groups next to the doors, eyeing Karter with suspicion as the alleyway becomes darker and darker, to the point that lanterns are used to light the alleyway.

After a short while of walking, the alleyway leads into a tunnel lined with doors and windows. Did this alleyway truly lead underground?

---

@Zyngard

"That's a secret!" Whiteleaf says, grinning as she closes her bag and tucks it away under her cloak, strangely enough without causing the cloak to bulge. How could such a big bag fit in a small cloak?

"So then Kura! Tell me about Kira and yourself! I haven't seen you around before, so you must be new here, right?"

@Dartbored Fairy
Karter is pretty sure he took a wrong turn. I should really turn around and go back he said to himself, while not turning around and not going back. He really wished he had a lantern, or maybe have his eye able to glow or something. Sadly, neither ability is available to him.

He keeps walking down the path, trying not to make eye contact with the shady figures around him. "That luck stone doesn't make me feel all that lucky" He mumbles to himself.

@Hokum @Prima Luce

Kaldalis sat down on a bench on his cell, simply staring at the room where his armor and weapons are kept. Ignoring the other inmate's comments, he begins formulating a plan of escape, from both his cell and perhaps Trios. He then spots a hulking man enter the cell block, whom he recognizes as the same man he saw at the town square when the incident occurred, named Boris. He watches as Boris walks towards his and the other inmate's cell, before uttering a child's rhyme and pointing at Kaldalis, proclaiming that he is the tin man. Realizing that this could be his chance of escape, he rose and greeted him.

Kaldalis: Yes, I am the tin man, Boris. Why do you ask?

@Dartbored Fairy

She fidgets a little, then grins “Yep! I just got here today! Met this really big bald dude who gave me some cookies right before I met you... Also this weird girl who acted all mister-ious.”

That said, she turned away from Whiteleaf, glancing down the street “But more important matters to handle! Gotta find her before she eats all the cookies!”

@Quote5

As Karter wanders down the dark alleyway, a man steps out from another alleyway in front of him. Almost immediately afterwards, two other men move to stand behind him.

"Well well well, ya look like someone who ain't got any business bein' here." The man in front of him says, in the darkness Karter can barely make out the grin on the man's face. "Are you lost?" One of the two men behind him asks, followed by the other two laughing.

The laughter doesn't last long, however, as the man in front of Karter pulls out a knife - a big one at that. "If you give us all your money, we'll tell ya how to get outta here. And if not..."

Karter then hears sounds of weapons being unsheathed behind him. "If not then we'll just take it from you by force, whaddya say?"

Not even five seconds later though, Karter and the men are lit up by a lantern. A group of guards have arrived, carrying a lantern. "HALT!" One of the guards shout, as he draws his sword.

The three men who confronted Karter do not obey him, however, and instead opt to do the exact opposite, running away in the direction Karter came from, pursued by three guards, one of whom carries the lantern. The fourth guard meanwhile approaches Karter.

"You're lucky we got here on time sir, are you alright?"

---

@Zyngard

"Oh! She has cookies? Then we really should find her! Anyone who has cookies is worth finding, especially if they're willing to share, right?" Whiteleaf responds, cheerfully. "But you say you met a bald guy and a mystery girl?"

Wandering down the street, Whiteleaf seems to be lost in thought for a few moments. "What was this mystery girl like? I mean, I know a lot of mystery girls, maybe I know this one too!"

---

@Hokum - Madison

As Madison sits in the tavern, drinking her Ale, a person eventually succeeds at approaching her without nearly passing out or throwing up.

"M-miss? S-someone asked to give t-this to you." The man stammers, hurriedly putting an envelope on the table in front of her and then walking away as fast as one can walk away without running.

The envelope appears to not have been opened yet, and while there is no name on it of any sort, someone has written on it.

"To she who seeks gold. Read this and reconsider." the text reads, written in a colour that itself looks very similar to gold.

@Dartbored Fairy

Ahnciel observed the device the girl held, unwilling to believe that the region could be so different that even cardinal directions varied wildly seemingly depending on the time of day by the way a few of the pointers moved. "Zee guards seem not to fancy inquisitive types ehn I vould be loathe to drag anohzer into my business. I understand if you vould not want to accompany me, zough directions, even, are a different beast in zeis place" the knight said, looking off the way she had indicated and softly musing.
"A city ouf bandits, a mistress ouf crows, a murder mystery...I feel like I should be writink zeis down," accented with a soft chuckle and an amused smirk as they let their hood down, the rain having subsided by now.

Keepa raised her head and stood up on Ahnciel's shoulders to stretch before noticing the girl and chirping a soft 'oo-roo-roo...' which was answered by a gauntlet gently mooshing their face and scratching behind their ears. "Adventure, Keepa. Adventure~" Ahnciel sang before remembering they had an associate to address. "Miss...hm...If you are certain zeht I can reach agartha in zeht direction, I vill be off vith my thanks, unless you vould suspect I vill need your aid" Ahnciel began, offering a small bow with a hand over their chest as their companion maneuvered themselves to face the other direction and nestle down once more. "...However, eit iz rude to expect a name from someone vithout offering your own in return. Iz how introductions should verk, ah?" the knight remarked with a slight turn of their head, hinting to perhaps having winked if it weren't for the veil having obscured such a gesture. Simply put, the paranormal notion of strange crows having a mistress that they answered to redoubled the paladin's enthusiasm and they were still hardly in a mood to press for more information, assuming nothing but more cryptic remarks and childish sass. There was only so much mystery that Ahnciel had the patience for in a single sitting before it was all merely riddle-speak and answer-less questions drifting from haughty lips. Ahnciel was all but certain that the girl was keeping information from them, but it was going to be quite a walk, from the sound of it, and there were only so many hours in the day.

@Dartbored Fairy
Karter was a bit stunned. Nearly getting mugged would do that to a person. He turns to the guard that remained.

"Yeah... Yeah, I'm good. Just a little shaken up. And I'm lost, as you might imagine. Thank you for that, I couldn't have taken them all on, especially in the dark.... Hey, um, could you by chance give me directions to.... I dunno. Not here, I know I don't want to stay here." He said. His eye was still in it's default color, he didn't want to consearn the guard. Way it it probably just looks like an odd glass eye, especially in the dark. or at least, that's what Karter hoped.