Marius

"I'm well aware of how you did nothing to help me," Yelena whispered as she clutched her knees to her chest in the corner of her cell. "You think it surprised me? The Everloft wouldn't call you a thief if you were an upstanding citizen of the world."

For some reason he couldn't quite pinpoint, this statement pissed him off.

He was sitting across from her inside her little cage, after helping her into the beige fatigues he'd procured from upstairs. Truly, he feared she might have simply rushed him and attempted escape right here and now. The fact that she didn't was something. It was progress - in a sense. She certainly wasn't trying to kill him. And she knew she'd have no chance if she went up against the security detail this place was packing.

Still, her sanctimonious air pissed him off, and he wasn't about to psycho-analyze his rationale for biting back:

"Oh yes, your fellow Argents I'm sure would've thrown themselves at the Don's feet and begged for you to be fairly treated. Or - no, no, lemme guess - they would've challenged the Don to a duel and fought for your honor. Is that what you wanted? Because you'd have watched me die up there, Yelena. And you'd be down here talking to nobody but rotten corpses."

"Is that how you justify your cowardice to yourself?" she scoffed. "All the gold, all the women, all the luxury of this hell didn't entice you, too?"

He licked his lips. "I'd be lying if I said it didn't. I'm a man - and a simple one at that. I like nice things. I like pretty things. Maybe if I stayed here long enough, proved myself loyal to the Don, I could get a piece of it all. But you know what I like more, Yelena? I like surviving. I like learning from my mistakes - and there's a lot of them, you can be damn sure of that. I like to think that all of mortal history is just everyone killing each other over some dumb cause that never put food in any starving kid's mouth. We ain't no different from animals in that way, y'know - the big eat the weak, the weak try and grow bigger, and eventually there's no food left. but I'm not trying to rise to the top - I just wanna stay in the food chain."

She threw her head back and regarded the cracks in the ceiling above her.

"So why even come down here?" she asked. "Why bother with me at all? You can join your thieving brethren and live up there, with them, for eternity. Robbing, plundering, drugging - their pleasures could all be yours while I rot down here."

His teeth grit themselves together at her every word.

You're pushing it, girl, he thought. But then his mind raced back to the power he'd seen emanate from her every limb before they were dragged out of Duskwood. That kind've power was something he'd never seen in his life.

And there was something there that was more valuable than money.

"Or could it be that there's the pangs of a consciousness growing in you?" Yelena asked.

He smirked. "Nothing so fancy."

"Then why?"

He breathed deep and licked his lips thoughtfully. This was a key moment. He couldn't mess it up. Too much unveiled, or too little held back, could cost him more than this meeting was worth. He'd had plenty of time to weigh this up. Yet, still, as the moment of truth came upon him, he found his spirit unwilling to proceed.

Has lying really become so natural at this point that I don't even know what's true?

He leaned forward and held his face in his hands. This all had to be communicated with absolute precision. No a movement out of place, not a tone out of line, and no persuasion skill to help him - not with a surface-born mortal.

And that was just the way he liked it.

"Because I need to go deeper," he said, almost choking the words out. "I need the same thing you do. My goal lies far beyond this place. And if I ever want to live a life that truly belongs to me, I need to delve further."

He stopped, making sure the dramatic pause was just long enough to arouse her curiosity. When he continued, staring at the toes of his feet in dejection, he knew she was looking at him now.

"And for that," he said.

Pause for effect...

"I need you."

If any of this theatricality had had some profound effect on her, he couldn't see it written in her eyes or her face. But he felt that it had done something, because she said this after about a minute of solid silence had passed between them:

"So there is a shred of honor in you, after all. I'm willing to bet that's probably the first thing you've told me since we met that was actually true."

I mean, you're not far off, but still...cold.

"You need to go below," she said, meditating on the words. "And you want me to help you."

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He nodded. Slowly.

"Because I'm a Guardian?"

"No," he answered. "Because you're you."

She narrowed her eyes at him. But she didn't look away. Nor did she hurl another rebuke.

Progress?

"You don't know me," she replied. "And don't pretend you care to. I'm not some drugged up slave you can just turn to your whims. And why should I agree to help you, anyway?"

He let her question linger for a moment, knowing that she herself must know the answer.

"Because you must have worked out that you can't do this alone," he said. "Hell, I was only down here for a few hours and the bloody tutorial dungeon showed me that."

"And you're the best help I've got, is that it?"

He double blinked.

"Girl, I'm the only help you've got."

She looked at him again in that hard, searching way. But there was something about her face he both liked and hated at the same time. There was a contradiction in her stare that both endeared him to her and infuriated him in equal measure. He'd felt it when he was up there with those she would call 'his own' - the thieves, the prostitutes, the rapists - those who belonged to the world that, he knew, she had placed him in - the little box in her mind that she'd fit him into to keep him knowable and so, ultimately, harmless.

And yet there was something else in those deep blue eyes, too, that told him she somehow knew exactly what he felt, and that she was trying - trying hard - to get past it.

"Even if I agreed to this...partnership you're proposing, what good is that?" she finally choked through her hoarse voice. "This Don wants me as his slave. Or his pet. And I meant what I said above - an Argent's oath is for life. I can't betray everything I hold dear."

"Relax," he said. "You ain't really gonna pledge yourself to 'im at all. You're gonna tell that scale-face Nils you are. You're going to lie, Yelana. Scary concept, right? But one that, every now and then, saves your life."

"Thief," she said. "An oath is not just a bunch of empty, hollow words. I took that oath under the watchful gaze of the Prophet herself, in full view of all my Brothers and Sisters. If you think I'm going to sully those words now, then you have less than the slightest crumb of respect I saw in you."

"Great, well said," Marius replied with a sarcastic clap of his dry hands (he'd always wanted to use the slow clap routine at least once). "So you'll rot down here, then. You'll rot till you're nothing but a fly-ridden pile of limp muscle, shit, and bones. And all you'll have left of you is your honor."

He let the statement hang in the air like a dagger over her head.

"Are your oaths really more important than your quest? What is it you Argents say? In battle: victory. Yet here you sit, forsaking one oath for another because, what, it makes you look better?"

She narrowed her eyes at him again, but said nothing. So, he pressed his advantage:

"Look, there's a way out of this for us. Both of us. But for that to work you have to put your oaths aside. You have to be willing to lie. You have to be willing to kill. To kill innocents. Or, at least, look the part."

She stared blankly back at him, and he could see the cogs slowly starting to turn, flipping switches that had never once beamed with light, or that had lain inoperable for years.

"Look the part?"

"Little bit of theatre, my dear Yelena," Marius beamed. "Let me finish my little story, and then we'll see to the final act..."

...

"Rise and shine, little chick!"

Marius tried to. He really did.

"Early bird gits the worm, right?" his ever-present Yok'ra tormentor asked. The question, like most of Nils', was entirely rhetorical. As Marius hopped out of his bunk and was met, yet again, with a torso drenched with warm liquid, he resigned himself to the fact that Nils probably enjoyed the sound of his own voice even more than he did.

And, like all mornings, Nils had come to the servants' bunkhouse drunk.

"Oh, how 'bout that?" Nils practically screamed over him, as a few of the other boys pulled on their leather tunics and fastened their 'toolbelts' to their waists. "Looks like our ol' boy Maryweather had 'imself a wee accident again last night!"

He licked his lips as some of the other boys in the bunkhouse started their routine of dry chuckling at his expense. Through his slouching sigh, and Nils' incresingly loud laughter penetrating his eardrums, his eyes focused more on those who were otherwise occupied: some kissing photographs of loved ones, some palming each other in jovial salute - crossing palms seemed to be the proper way of wishing one well down here - and others still who were simply taking a swig of the bubbling, bile-ridden broth that was all they had to quench their thirst round here. And a few were simply staring out the rectangular window that served as their portal to the outside. They were looking past the golden spires of the palace, seeing the endless domain of the desert sands, and thinking thoughts Marius could scarcely even guess at.

Those boys were generally left alone. They had given up already.

"Now, Maryweather," Nils murmured in his ear. "I got somethin' real special for ya taday. Ye'll be serving the big Don 'imself, and in a capacity most lucrative, yes yes."

His scaly arm produced a thin, flea-bitten mop.

"Yer gonna clean the bunkroom privies, and then the guard chamber pots!"

Marius said nothing. He reached towards the mop and slowly, deliberately, Nils pulled back.

"Actually, ye can start by cleaning up yerself, ya filthy little humie. Here, I'll lend ye a hand!"

He threw the mop in his face and, amidst more cacophonous laughter from the other lads, began smearing the filth-ridden thing over Marius' clothes and face, making sure to get the yellowed tufts into his eyes and nostrils, pinning him down with his clawed feet and tail.

"There ya go, little man," he chuckled, "Spick and span, just like yer filthy humie mama would like."

He dropped the thing and savored Marius' look of embarrassment, supplication, and utter despair. He savored it more than the vile poison he sipped from his hip-flask at every opportunity.

"Alright!" he yelled over his fallen prey. "Rest of you, git goin' whiles the goin's good! We're gonna have ourselves a special little guest here soon, and the Don needs this place shinier than a blind Jilae's eyeballs!"

A few of the boys sniggered at the joke, and received hearty pats on the back from Nils between his sips of his drink. Marius kept his head bowed and gripping the battered mop. He was the very picture of the kind of image Nils had of all humankind in his mind: wretched and pathetic.

"Why the Don didn't jus' have ye killed is beyond me," he spat, before stumbling outside to bully another, more challenging victim.

But through his dripping, disheveled locks, Marius' characteristic smile had been shining this morning. He looked down at his right hand and, slowly, like a fisherman savoring his catch, opened his dirt-caked fingers:

Sleight of Hand: Success

Item Gained: Caer Akris Storehouse Key

"Another day, another chance, eh, Everloft?" he whispered.

For the past week, every time his torturer came to greet him, all he'd been waiting for was the right throw of the dice. And today was the day the odds were in his favor.

Infernal luck, eh? he thought to himself as he dusted off his drenched leathers and picked up the tattered tool of his trade.

"Time to clean up."