The impassive elf can’t help but flinch as he gets a taste of the thick brown spirit that’s poured for him. He gives a smirk at the man’s expression watching the foreigner taste the local beverage, but he presses on with his questions.

”Any idea what sort of ‘no good’ these witches are up to? Are they targeting a certain kind of traveler? Have any remains been found?”

He doesn’t turn to pay any attention to his conspicuous companion, instead letting Ghoul keep an eye on her from the rafters.

The mercenary that Caio is speaking with shakes his head.

"Not really. Seems pretty random. Folks go missing, never seen again, and superstitious country folk cry witchcraft."

Meanwhile, across the tavern, silence falls another table of glaring mercenaries. A rock gnome bouncer about half of Shiva's size sidles up to the tiefling and tells her that she's disturbing the patrons and should find somewhere else to drink.

"What?! I wasn't causing trouble! I-" Shiva looks from the gnome to the mercenaries eyeing her with angry suspicion and throws her hands in the air in submission. 

"Fine! Bunch of pricks, **** you!" Shiva gives the finger to the glaring strangers as she exits the establishment. Looking around once she's back out on the street, she sighs and posts up against the side of the building. Opening her coin bag, she slides around the few pieces left within. 

"Shit." 

Alaris leans back against the bar, watching over the rim of their stein as Shiva storms out under the withering gazes of the mercenaries. Turning their head, the paladin smiles toward the nearest bartender. "Can you send a round to those folks? I think my large friend has given some sort of offense, and I'd like to keep the peace if we can."

The withering gazes soon turn to cheers and toasts in Alaris's direction when the mercenaries are brought their next round on the house.

“Hm. Typical.” Caio remarks before shooting down the rest of his drink and standing. 

“I’ll go make sure she doesn’t pick any more fights.” he says in passing to Astrid and Alaris as he stalks out after Shiva.

With little money and fewer options, Shiva looks out onto the street, contemplating just what she can do. As colorful locals walk by and merchants sell their stock, a surprising calm comes over her, and she quickly decides that it may be best not to try to do anything. The others were better at getting info out of people, and she lacks the funds to make a return trip to the Scarlet Serpent. So maybe she could just take a second to breathe.

Remembering that she had left many of her things at the weapons shop, she sits up and takes a casual stroll back to Swords! For Everyone!

Ducking in order to step through the door, she finds the shop empty once more. Walking over to her things, she removes her guitar from its case and sits on the ground to practice. Cycling through chord shapes, she becomes frustrates as certain forms almost overextend her fingers and that the sound produces is disharmonious. But she continues, coming to find more comfortable ways to make the shapes as she plucks the strings. 

Eventually, she begins to hum as she focuses on the calming task.  

Practicing in the Shop

Quote from stormchaser6 >>

The withering gazes soon turn to cheers and toasts in Alaris's direction when the mercenaries are brought their next round on the house.

Alaris walks over with their own stein and speaks to the group in a low, serious tone, "I'm sorry my friend gave offense; we had a hard road here from Piotrgrad and we are all still recovering." Then their silver eyes flash with momentary frustration. "Be glad she is grieving and not angry. You wouldn't like her when she's angry." After a pause, they continue, "We're looking for hunting work, and trying to sort out truth from old wives' tales before we take a job."

"So are all of us, bogatyr," a white-haired Taneman tells Alaris. "That's the game that we play each time we leave the city hoping that we don't return empty handed... or that we return at all. Sometimes there's monsters, sometimes there's money. Rarely both. That's the life."

"Good - then we understand each other." Alaris claps the white-haired mercenary on the pauldron in a gesture of camaraderie. "Don't let the life suck the light out of you. The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." The bogatyr raises their stein to the group in a friendly toast and then waves for Astrid to follow them out.

As the evening draws near, Alaris, Astrid and Caio also return to SWORDS! For Everyone! Maeve potters about the shop for a little longer while she closes up, before heading upstairs to change. When she returns, the halfling is wearing a pale pink dress, atop which she throws on a dark overcoat.

"Alright, let's go," she tells her four guests, leading them through into the back of the shop. They pass between a storage hall and a smithy that opens onto a yard behind the building, before arriving at a dead end corridor, where Maeve rolls up a rug revealing a trap door.

"Give me a hand with this? Most of you look like you could lift about ten of me."

Still feeling relaxed after taking time to herself, Shiva walks over wordlessly. She reaches out and grips the metal of the doorhandle to flip open the trap door with such force that she cringes as the wood and metal creak loudly against her strength.

"Sorry, still adjusting to this." She lifts up her right arm and flexes a little. 

Maeve arches an eyebrow, but doesn't comment. The trapdoor reveals a shaft with a ladder the leads down to a tunnel that looks like it's part of the sewer system.

Once at the bottom, Maeve lights a torch and turns to see if everybody is still with her. "Follow me."

The tunnels are a maze, but the halfling is a confident guide. After many twists and turns, the tunnel opens up into a larger cistern, where five others are waiting in place, spaced evenly around the edges.

A pink haired gnome girl dressed in black.
An old man in brown robes with a long, grey beard and a floppy, wide brimmed hat.
A pale elf wearing cream-coloured armour with green trim.
A bald man dressed in blue with a short, black beard and a cloak clasped together with a red jewel.
Finally, a dark-skinned dwarven woman with a long black staff topped with a bird's hooked beak.

As her charges step into the cistern, Maeve turns to face them.

"We are Six," she declares, suddenly exuding a much more mature and serious presence than before, to the extent that she almost seems taller. The other five voices speak in unison with the halfling. "Why do you come before us?"

“We are the Septem Mortale.” Caio declares, matching each of the members’ gazes in turn. “We were sent by Jonathon. He told us that you can help us take down the Morgensterns. They play at a dark game, and they’ve captured one of our own. We intend to stop them.”

"Jonathan Morgenstern plays a dangerous game," the dwarven woman cautions loudly, her voice echoing from across the cistern. "It would be foolish to put our faith in the son of Valentine."

"He knows that we cannot trust him," the gnome attests in turn, "so he sends these Septem Mortale before us. Many have given their lives to uncover what the boy would have us surrender to you. Who are you, who we should so freely grant that which came at such a price?"

"We are the ones able to use the powers Valentine manipulates against him." Shiva says, stepping forward.

"We will make him and his kin pay for what they have done. And I will tear an opening to the Abyss itself beneath his feet for the life he now threatens."

In her anger, she feels the demon focus its gaze, and the flesh at her collarbone briefly writhes of its own accord.

"She lacks control," the elf remarks, observing Shiva's outburst.

"She lacks knowledge," the man in the brown robes adds, stroking his long beard thoughtfully.

"Are you really so naive as to think that that is all that it would take?" Maeve asks the tiefling with something between scorn and pity.

"What power is it that you believe Valentine to wield?" Asks the man in blue.

"It's like talking to six Nikolai's at once."  Shiva mutters under her breath. 

"No, I don't think that's all it would take. That's why we've come before you this evening. Even powerful vampires talk about him in hushed tones, and as the armored one pointed out, I'm something of a liability at the moment."

Ordering the comments and questions in her mind, she continues. "I think he wields divine and infernal power. That's why I'm hoping that the powers possessed by myself and my friends can overwhelm him."

She takes a step towards the six, and her voice softens to a pleading tone. "Please share the knowledge to save my family."

"Were it so simple," the dwarf sighs, "the Undómiel and others like them would have succeeded long ago."

"Valentine Morgenstern is no mere vampire," the gnome explains, "nor is he a servant of the outer planes."

"He is a baelnorn," the elf declares.The statement has a sense of finality to it. "An elf who has surpassed the touch of time and death itself."

“Were it so simple, we wouldn’t have traveled all the way to bloody Five Towers.” Caio snaps back. “We may be lacking information but we are not stupid.” his tone sharp with its own sense of finality. 

“Tell us of the baelnorn, I’ve only heard the term in passing. You say he’s surpassed death, do you mean to say he is beyond execution?”