"Sixty percent. That’s how many of you poor, unprepared, classless, loners don’t come back from the sewers on the first trip. You get that? You have a sixty percent chance of being ripped apart by oversized rats in the dark. I understand you don’t have money for equipment. I understand you don’t have friends to go with. I understand you can’t get training. Fortunately for you we actually have another person going into the sewers."

The attractive receptionist lady pointed an elegant figure toward a long trestle table filled with adventurers breaking their fast.

"The girl with the horns, that's Jak. Go talk to her."

With that, the shutters were slammed shut, leaving Lioran to stare blankly at the window, then at the girl the receptionist had pointed out. She was a Tiefling of some sort. Lioran had only seen one other Tiefling in his life and they were decidedly less human looking. This girl was average in height by Tel’ani standards, on the short side by human. She had long onyx hair tied into a single braid at the back and small white horns at the temples that parted her bangs. Unfortunately, whether by birth or accident, she looked like she had been hit in the face with the flat end of a shovel. Like her face, her nose was flat and wide, the bridge practically non-existent. Her ears had a slight point to them and her sun soaked skin was dotted with a generous amount of freckles.

Lioran approached the girl who stared at him as if dumbfounded. He held out a hand to shake and with a smile said, "Hello Jak. I'm Lioran."

She blinked at him, looked down at his hand, then back at him before reaching her own hand out to shake with oddly rough fingers. Her eyelids folded the wrong way and the skin curved inward where the bridge of her nose should have been giving her eyes a squinty almond shape that honestly was a little creepy, but the little Tiefling girl had horns and that put her high above the hornless in his book.

"No Jak. Injung."

"Wow. You have a surname?" Lioran let go of the girl's hand as she stared at him with a perplexed look plastered across her wide face. "Oh, are you choosing a class? Looks like you've got a lot of options, I'm shooting for knight if I can manage it, you know, like in the old stories."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Huhaaa?"

Lioran looked up from the list of classes on the table. Nojak's eyes were as wide and they could probably go, her lips slightly parted, and her head moved in slight circles as if she were dizzy.

"Are you okay?"

She seemed to snap to attention as if he had just given her something she could grab onto. "Oh, I fine."

Lioran considered her thick and decidedly foreign accent. He looked down at the list of classes again and only now realized the descriptions were written in a script he'd never seen before. Next to that was a list of verbs followed by more weird script. Shit! This girl didn't understand a single word did she. He'd never seen a foreigner that wasn't a slave before.

"You don't understand what I'm saying do you?"

"Huhaaa?"

"That's a no." Lioran sat down at the table and thought for a moment. Pulling out the parchment with his first quest, he unfolded it and considered Nojak. "YOU, GO, SEWERS? KILL RATS?"

Nojak frowned and glared at Lioran. "You very loud."

"Ah, sorry. You, go, sewers, and kill rats?"

She stared considering-ly at him, her head nodding as if replaying his sentence in her head. "Yes."

"I go, with? We team?"

Nojak considered it, her dark, creepy eyes drifting down and to the left as if viewing the sword strapped to Lioran's hip through the table. She nodded. "Yes."

"When can we leave? Ahh. Go now?"

She stared at him for a moment then pointed at Lioran and made a gesture of bringing something to her mouth.

"Ahh, I suppose I should eat."

One, fairly pricey meal later Lioran found himself following the strange foreign Tiefling girl through unfamiliar streets to a large stone arch whose liquid contents dribbled in a small stream down the rocky slope and into the bay. Lioran watched as she set her things down and prepared a torch. Her face might have been ugly, but she had a nice ass and strange gait to her walk that he found he enjoyed.

With the torch lit, they entered the dark tunnel only to stop still within sight of the entrance. The tunnel split to the left and right, the straight path had two baited traps held down by large rocks. Nojack seemed annoyed and said something that sounded like baby talk to Lioran.

"Wanna go down this one?" Lioran asked, nodding to the left.

Nojack considered it, seeming a bit hesitant, but nodded.

With sword in hand, Lioran bravely went forth into the darkness to challenge his foes.