Your little convoy makes it back to the Guild House without incident but the rising column of smoke behind you points to an interesting day ahead. You check in with a bleary-eyed Riben, but the real first order of business is washing up and getting everyone decent clothes, food, and room assignments. You head for the armory, looking to get your gear taken care of. Wouldn't do to have all the blood rust my wargear solid.

An hour and a half later, you put down the whetstone and shake the filings from your shirt. You could use a bath, and that probably means drawing water and boiling kettles if you want a hot one. So when you enter the bathing area, you are surprised. Segregated by gender, of course, but why the tile on the floor and the walls? And what the heck are those metal things? Knobs? And some sort of projection above head level? Where are the tubs? The kettles? You stand there utterly confused for some time before Riben wanders in.

"First time seeing a communal shower? Lockers are over here."

"Umm, what's a shower?"

Riben nearly slips on the tiles. "You come from the Jeweled Cities, and you've never even heard of a shower? How did you get clean?"

You shrug. "Streams and rivers mostly, the harbor was too salty. Inns and Taverns had tubs, but they cost too much for the same result. Nice and warm though."

Riben scratches his head. "Oh, right, docksider. Sorry, most of the Jeweled City-types we get out here are rich nobles or stuck-up merchants."

You laugh. "Same kind of person then. Mind showing me how to use one? And explaining how it works?"

Riben shrugs and starts undressing, placing his clothes in a locker. You follow suit. In short order, you learn how to work the shower, absorbing Riben's explanation of a few well-leveraged heating charms to generate hot water in tanks. "It's not infinite though, as it takes some time to heat up."

"Right. Red knob for hot water, blue for cold then?"

"You got it. Breakfast is being served soon, so don't linger too long."

You don't linger long in the shower, once you figure out that the hot water is actually rather hot. Drying off, you reclaim your things and follow your nose to the dining hall. Aflia and Talae are already there, and you gather up another mug of cherry bean tea and settle in. Aflia is in her usual robe, and Talae has found a loose-fitting brown shirt and pair of pants.

Talae looks at you over a small mountain of food and raises an eyebrow. between bites, she jumps right in to asking questions. "Not eating this morning Aris?"

You shake your head. "Not till lunch, perhaps dinner. I can't keep anything down after a fight. You on the other hand..."

Talae shrugs, a display of supreme indifference. "Haven't eaten properly in days, and I've probably seen more bodies than any three surface-dwellers combined. Comes with growing up on the fringes of the underdark I guess."

Aflia leans back, watching the by-play.

You shrug. "During the Westmarch winter war, I stopped even trying to keep track of the squadmates I lost, much less the number of dead. But the killing doesn't get any easier. Probably going to be sleeping poorly tonight."

Talae drops her fork. "Are all you surface dwellers so open about your weaknesses? If all it takes is a bit of bloodshed to soften you up, you'd have been spider-food where I came from."

You shake your head. "I don't fear the fighting, and I pity the fool who tried to kill me in my sleep. You tell me one of your fears, I tell you one of mine."

Talae plays with her fork, a look of indecision on her face.

Aflia chimes in, "for me, its water. Not the drinking kind, the lake-and-sea kind. My parents are Dragonborns, and I have a lot of fire-magic. None of which does me any good considering it won't work in water and I can't swim."

Little Bird comes in and joins you at the table, clothed in an odd-looking garment. It hangs down from her shoulders, and is clearly slit to allow her wings and tail freedom of movement. A belt gathers it at her waist, before it hangs in tassels below her knees. She sets her modest plate of food down on the table. "Icebreaker time, personal fears edition? Mine is petrification, getting turned into stone. We Aarakocra are airborne most of our lives. Most of us fear being grounded, But I've lived in forests for too long to fear that. I'm terrified of being stuck in one place, never moving ever again."

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You nod. "For me, growing up fishing in Sapphire Bay, it was the storms. They came right up off the Anvil and Tiassa Reef. Thunderheads to blacken the sky, winds to rip sails from masts and mast right out of ships, rainfall heavy enough to drown a man. The really bad ones didn't just rumble though all majestic-like. They got sadistic. They'd come roaring in out of nowhere and then just sit right over Sapphire for days. Gods help you if you weren't already on-shore when one of them came in."

Talae looks down at her food, no longer hungry. "Mine is my battle-rage. I lose track of what's happening, what's hitting me, what I'm killing. I feel like I'm losing myself."

You put down your mug and reach out to take one of her hands. "Been there, done that. Westmarch was like that. Everything was cold, or frozen, or numb. You couldn't think, you could hardly see, and the fighting just wouldn't end. The important thing is to know when the fighting stops, to know that you still have a squadmate, a friend, there with you when it all over."

Talae nods slowly. "I never really had a friend, not until I came to the surface two years ago and Little Bird found me."

You squeeze her hand, then collect your mug. "So you have someone to fight for as well as against." You turn to Little Bird, "I've been meaning to ask, is 'Little Bird' really your name?"

Little Bird shakes her feather-covered head. "No, it's Khuk" She makes a odd, guttural-sounding chirp, something that you'd be hard-pressed to reproduce. "But that's hard to say for many people, so Little bird is just fine by me." Thank the Gods I don't have to even try to reproduce that throat-breaker!

Aflia sips a dainty cup of tea. "So what brings an Aarakocra out on her lonesome? All the books I've read put you guys way up in the mountains, out of reach of nearly everyone else."

Little Bird pecks at her food. "Pilgrimage. I wanted to see more than a few places before going home to raise a nest. Then I found Talae, and religion."

You raise an eyebrow, "how can one go on a pilgrimage without a religion?"

Little Bird flexes her wings. Bird shrug? "We live fast and die young. I'm only three, but will only live to thirty. So I left home to see the world and called it a pilgrimage so my parents wouldn't come after me."

Aflia nods, "I wouldn't know how that feels. As soon as my magic started showing, my parents all but threw me to the tower, just to be rid of me."

You and Talae both raise eyebrows at this, but Talae beats you to the question. "Why? I'd have thought having a magic-user as a daughter would be a boon?"

Aflia takes a bite. "There's an old surface saying about Tieflings; One's a curiosity, two's a conspiracy, three's a curse. Somewhere way back in one of their bloodlines is a daemon, probably an incubus or succubus. Neither one wanted to admit it, so they wanted me out of the house just as fast as they could. When my scales started showing in my sixth winter, it was off to the mage's tower to learn spells. What about you?"

Talae shakes her head. "Ran away from home soon as I could. Too many siblings, too many daggers looking for backs. Found something of a cult to Kuko, though its an open temple up here on the surface, and joined up. They got discovered, and the local 'preachers' decided to send in the knives. Everything went to pieces, but I got out and made my way to the surface."

You almost do a spit take. "Kuko? She of life and love? Why in the nine hells would anyone object to her? I mean, isn't her faith fairly non-confrontational?"

Talae shakes her head. "Power games. Down in the Dark, no threat is tolerated, no insult is too small. We never had a real Cleric, so it surprised the hell out of me when Little Bird started glowing.”

Little Bird bobs her head. "It's an... unusual experience to have a Goddess speak to you."

You shake your head. "I know exactly how that feels." Instantly, everyone is looking at you. Sigh. Well, may as well lay out the essentials. "Talae, you noticed my reaction to snake-head back at the warehouse?" She nods. "Games within games at the highest levels, and someone picked me as a pawn the day Ironbark got massacred. Well, that was the day I found out anyways." Best not to tell them everything... "Figure in a dark robe jumps into my head, or pulls me into his while I was knocked out. Not sure which. Pretty much tells me I'm a pawn on one of the boards, and that Ironbark was wiped out just to get me, and that it was either find out who and mess their plans up, or end up messily dead in an alleyway somewhere. Snake-head had the same appearance as the guys who wiped out Ironbark, and he had a serpent brand or tattoo on his chest. I'm hoping some of the papers, or the contents of that safe will lead me back in their direction."

Aflia and Little Bird both lean back, questions clearly bubbling up. Talae shrugs and digs back into her food. "I'm along for the ride then. Got a score to settle with those child-breakers." Little Bird and Aflia both nod.

Whatever they saw in that back room, I'm glad I didn't. "OK. I head you call the little Elves 'princesses.' Of Althiem?"

Little Bird bobs her head. "Yes."

Aflia whistles. "A cult with that sort of reach?"

Talae nods, "and they got their fangs into three of royal blood who shouldn't even be out of the nursery yet. Someone has a massive security problem."

Little Bird holds up her taloned hands, "we can't just leave Chedal! Not with Orcs on the warpath!"

Aflia sips her tea. "The Bad Moon clan. Verra is already working on them." She sips at her tea again, hiding a grimace, "but that won't stop them if they decide to make a run at the town."

You rap your fingers on the table top. "Breakfast now, then rest and recover. I'm not planning on leaving until the Sirens are stomped out, and I've wrung every lead I can out of them first. That means we'll be going back out as soon as we have a target and a clear shot at it, so we should rest up and be ready. If the Orcs get in the way of that, then that's just too bad for the orcs."

Nods circle the table, and you finish your mug of Cherry Bean tea. You rise to get some real food, your stomach settled down by the talking.