“Please, stop screaming now! We’ve landed!” Samantha mentally pleaded, a headache starting to materialize. The screeching finally stopped.
“That was terrible. I hated every moment.” he groaned.
“Oh, come on. I was holding you the whole time. It wasn’t even that high.” she teased.
“For you! For you, who is the size of a giant! For me…?”
Samantha stifled a chuckle at his assertion that her somewhat average 5’4” frame was ‘giant’ and pushed on, “I’m sorry it was so scary for you–if there was a better option I would’ve taken it. On the bright side, we won’t be doing it again anytime soon!”
Silas gave her an indignant sniffle and then nodded once, not offering further comment. The matter was apparently settled for the moment.
She untied the rope from her gear and her waist and packed it into the emptier of the two bags. While she did, Silas hopped around the immediate area, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings with a mix of curiosity and disgust.
“I thought you said Yivesh was nice! Were you lying? Or, is this what humans think is ‘nice’? If so…”
“No, this is just the worst part of town. I promise I’ll take you to see the ‘nice’ parts once I figure out how safe it is to move through the city.”
While he didn’t respond, she could feel his intense doubt and disappointment through their bond. She couldn’t blame him. She was having a hard time managing her own sense of revulsion at their current location.
The ground she could see under the trash and debris was inconsistently paved with cobblestones, gravel, and compacted dirt. Everything was generally filthy, and piles of garbage taller than she was were pressed up against several sections of the walls and buildings nearby. Her enhanced sense of smell was assaulted by a variety of rancid scents, but she refused to decrease [Prey’s Perceptions] sensitivity just to try and spare her nose. Being aware of her surroundings was more important than comfort.
Hoping that the environment would quickly improve as she moved further away from the wall, she pushed for them to get moving. Gesturing to the open bag where she had just placed the rope, she asked, “Are you confident you’ll be able to hide while we walk through the slums? Or would you prefer to hide in one of the backpacks?”
“Can I peek out of the bag? I want to see the city. Even if it’s gross.”
“Sure, just use [Translucence] when you do. If anyone spots you it could get back to the Braxands, and they’d figure out where we’re hiding.”
Signaling his agreement, he hopped into the open pack in a single bound. She loosely re-buckled the top flap of the bag so he could easily look out of it if he wanted, loaded both bags onto her back, then started exploring the area for a place to rest.
Given the time of night she would’ve expected nearly everyone to be asleep, but there were a surprising amount of people walking around. Most seemed to be wandering aimlessly and used only the ambient light offered by the moon and stars to navigate the narrow walkways. Their clothes were disheveled and ragged–much like her own–and hung off of their concerningly thin frames. Their hollowed out features and glassy expressions gave them a ghostly, listless appearance.
Though she did her best to avoid directly crossing paths with anyone, it wasn’t easy to entirely avoid attention. She caught more than one individual looking over her overstuffed bags and makeshift weapon as she passed. However, even when she saw their expressions light up with greed, none dared to approach her. In fact, whenever she neared, they either gave her a wide berth or skittered away like rats. At first, she wondered if they had caught sight of her bloodied clothing and were fearful of her. When she saw someone bow their head to her before scurrying off she realized what the true cause was: her cultivator’s aura.
Though she was not actively exerting her killing intent to intimidate anyone, she was not working to suppress her aura either. Remembering her own time as a mortal, she recalled how it felt to walk near a cultivator who was not ‘stealthing’. It was an odd sensation, like her instincts screamed at her that something dangerous was close by. And, the higher ranked the cultivator in question was, the more notable that inexplicable foreboding would be. It was difficult to ever get used to that feeling of being ‘prey’, even with the amount of cultivators she came into contact with while working at her parent’s shop. She imagined the effect was even more profound in the slums where there were much fewer cultivators around.
I’m still standing out too much.
Unlike projecting her killing intent, stealthing was something she had no clue how to accomplish. Pushing her feelings of anger towards enemies felt almost natural, but what did it feel like to suppress her aura? She experimented with methods like emptying herself of emotion or thinking peaceful thoughts, but was unable to tell if it made any difference. Giving up on stealthing for now, she redoubled her efforts to find a suitable hideout instead.
As she scanned the nearest ‘buildings’ she was met with disappointment. It seemed there was no restriction on where a person could choose to set up a space for themselves. Tents, lean-tos, and other temporary shelters appeared to be the most common this close to the wall, and were set up wherever there was a suitable open area. A handful of abodes were remnants of actual houses, but even those had broken out windows and crumbling walls. None of the structures in this area would suit her needs.
Picking up the pace, she traveled away closer to the center of Yivesh. After she had covered several blocks worth of distance, she finally began seeing some promising options. Eventually, she found an old two-story wood and adobe building with a slightly slanted roof. The first floor had a large hole in the wall and the inside was covered in settled dust, suggesting that the place had been abandoned for quite some time. A quick glance inside confirmed that there was no way up to the second floor from the first. At some point in the distant past there was a staircase or ladder that led up through a square hole in the ceiling, but that had apparently long since rotted away or been stolen. The edges of the hole looked warped from weather exposure, and she didn’t trust it would hold her weight if she tried to pull herself up through it.
Looking around the outside of the building, she found a window with broken wooden shutters that seemed like a possible entryway. Quickly warning Silas that she’d be climbing the building, she used the same method to scale the wall as she did to get into Yivesh. In seconds she was climbing through the window and landed on the rickety floors below. She set her bags down towards the center of the room–as far away from any openings as she could get–and felt Silas’s immense relief at once again being on solid ground. He wriggled out of the bag and began exploring their new temporary home.
The space was perhaps 20 feet by 20 feet, and completely devoid of any furnishings. The old warped wooden floorboards creaked loudly with every step, but seemed solid enough where she didn’t need to worry about falling through accidentally. The only two ways into the room were the window she had crawled through and the square hole in a corner that led down to the first floor. It wouldn’t be a comfortable stay, but it would do. Finding a relatively clean section to settle into and rest for the night, she placed an equally exhausted Silas in her lap and they both went to sleep.
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A series of boyish shouts and hollers woke her from her slumber, and she peeked through her window entrance to see if she could find the source. Down the street, she saw a short and lanky boy—perhaps aged 12—running from a pack of 4 older teens.
“Get ‘im!”
“Quit running, runt!”
They shouted obscenities and curses at the boy as he sprinted away, his racing legs and pumping arms slowly putting distance between himself and the enraged group. Samantha was quite impressed at the speed of his flight, and she speculated that his Agility was probably as high as hers was when she was mortal. She was debating whether to step in if the kid got into real trouble, when suddenly, he made a right turn down a narrow alley across from her. She watched in fascination as he leapt in-between the two buildings on either side of him, gaining height with each jump, until he was able to grab hold of a slanted roof. He scrambled up to the roof and lay flat against it, a huge smile spreading across his face as the other boys followed his path into the alley and were unable to locate him.
“Spread out! He can’t have gotten far. Bullseye, you take the left. Skipper and I will go straight. Spider, you take the right.” The largest teen ordered.
“You got it, boss!” the three others replied, each following their assigned task.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Samantha watched in growing amusement as they circled the area without ever catching sight of the lanky boy, eventually being led off the trail when he tossed a stone back towards the way they had come to lead them away from his hiding spot. They took the bait beautifully, following the sound and leaving the fleeing boy in the clear.
As he turned over and watched their departure, she saw that he was wearing a vest with a familiar crest painted on the back. The simple figure of a running man carrying a bag was the universal symbol for couriers. She hadn’t been sure before if the delivery and mail system functioned properly in this part of town, but it seemed even those in the slums occasionally needed to send mail. This gave her an idea.
“Hey, courier! I have a job for you.” she called out, and the boy whipped his head around to search for the source of her voice.
She held her hand out of the window and waved, “Up here.”
He squinted in her direction, then hopped down from the roof to approach her building. Not wanting him to get a good look at her face or feel her cultivators aura, she said, “Stand below the window. I’ll drop the package, payment, and address information down to you. Just give me a moment to write it down.”
The boy obediently stood below the window without protest. Apparently this sort of request wasn’t too far out of the ordinary–that, or he just didn’t care.
She quickly ripped a page out of the back of Eduin’s notebook and wrote a short letter to her cousin Thomas. Folding the paper, she listed his address and general instructions on how to get there for the courier. She then searched through her bag for an item that would make a suitable payment for the delivery, and settled on one of the partially used spirit pearls she had left over from Eduin’s belongings. After she had used a majority of the energy to heal herself from the Spitting Viper’s poison, the core’s power and size had decreased from around Rank 2- Mid to Rank 1 - Low. It was a gross overpayment for a simple letter delivery, but she didn’t have any coin on her person.
She tossed the note and core down to the courier, and he caught them with wide eyes, “T-this is…!”
“I expect discretion from you. If the recipient wants to meet with me, lead him back to this building. If not, he’ll give you some items to deliver back to me.” she stated firmly.
The boy looked up at the window with disbelief, “O-of course! I never saw you and this delivery never happened. You can count on me!”
He quickly turned and ran off towards the north, as if trying to escape before she changed her mind about the payment. She chuckled, then sat down to wait. She tried to cultivate to pass the time, but the ambient qi in the city was so abysmal she made little if any progress.
In a little over an hour she heard quiet, quick footsteps approaching her location. Peeking out the window, she saw the courier running with a small satchel under his arm. He certainly had made good time.
“Delivery!” he called up once he stood under her window.
She lowered a rope down and the boy tied it to the satchel so she could retrieve it. After pulling it up and checking the contents to see that everything she requested was present, she set it aside. “Thanks. That’s all I have for you at the moment.”
The boy looked a little downcast at this news, but nodded, “Pleasure workin’ for you! The name’s Aiden, and I’m the best courier in The Gutter. Come find me again if you need anything else delivered.”
She waved out the window at him as he left.
Pulling out the return letter Thomas had sent, she read through it.
Greetings, S. I was quite surprised to receive your note so early in the morning–it was a bit of a rude awakening. Though I’m glad to hear from you, I have to wonder what all this secrecy is for. You’ve certainly piqued my curiosity. I’ve packed what you’ve requested, and will be expecting a visit soon. Knock three times so I know it’s you. -T
She stripped down to her underclothes and immediately put on the fresh outfit that had come along with the note. The slightly-oversized work robes were a dull brown, and wouldn’t stand out as she traveled through the city like her patchwork clothes would. The best part was that these came with a hood, which would hide her lack of hair and eyebrows.
Now that she could travel more anonymously, she packed everything up and got ready to head over to Thomas’s home in the western residential zone. What she needed most at the moment was information about her status in town and what level of danger she currently faced. As a self-proclaimed “ladies’ man”, her cousin was always up to date on the latest and greatest gossip due to his frequent encounters with the socialites of the city. If he didn’t already know the situation with the Braxands, then she was certain he would be able to find out for her.
She departed as soon as the first rays of sunlight were beginning to turn the dark sky pink and the city was beginning to wake up. Many businesses were already having deliveries made or opening their doors, so walking through the streets would be much less suspicious than traveling in the middle of the night.
The further she got from the slums, the more the quality of the roads and surrounding structures improved. Makeshift shanties transitioned into simple wooden homes, which further transformed into modest manors that sat on small plots of land. Before long she stood in front of Thomas’s home, a single-story building with subtle architectural flourishes along the roofline. It was one of the smaller buildings in this area, but was well-kept with a manicured yard.
She approached his front door and knocked three times to announce her presence.
As if Thomas had been waiting directly behind the door for her arrival, it immediately whipped open. “Sam! You’re—” he took a step forward and then wrinkled his nose. Then, he took a step back, “Gods, you reek. When’s the last time you bathed?”
“I—”
“Never mind that. Come on inside, and we’ll set you right.” He stepped back from the doorway and urgently waved her inside.
She was a bit taken aback by the friendly familiarity he was showing her. She and Thomas had been close when they were both mortal, but he became distant after he became a cultivator. He even stopped associating with his own parents. She had assumed that, like many cultivators before him, he felt he was suddenly too good to be seen with mortals. She had reached out to him now because he was one of the only other cultivators in her family, but expected the same cold interactions that she’d become accustomed to. This almost seemed like he was back to his old self.
He closed the door behind her and jogged past her towards the bathroom. She could hear a flint being struck and a stream of water hitting the bottom of some metal basin before her cousin reappeared in the front room.
Figuring that she might as well get all the shocking surprises out of the way now, she opened her pack to let Silas out and removed her hood, revealing her stubbled head and eyebrows. Speaking aloud for Thomas’s benefit, she said, “You can come out now, Silas. Thomas is my family, and he won’t let anyone know about you if I tell him not to. Right, Thomas?”
“Stars above… Your hair! Your eyebrows! And a… is that a bonded beast? I’ve never seen one like that before. Yes, yes of course I will keep it a secret if you want it to be. But why?”
Samantha opened her mouth to speak, but Thomas cut in before she could reply.
“Actually, hold that thought. Bathe first, then talk.”
Samantha closed her mouth, rolled her eyes, and marched dutifully to the bathroom. It seemed Thomas’s habit of interrupting others hadn’t improved any after becoming a cultivator.
“Silas, remember that chat we had about personal belongings?” she sent, “Please be on your best behavior and don’t eat anything that Thomas does not explicitly offer to you. Think of this whole house as his backpack–everything in it is his.”
“Aww. Fine. But I’m hungry.” he pouted.
“You’re always hungry.” she stated flatly.
“Hey Thomas, do you happen to have any vegetables or herbs? Silas says he’s feeling hungry, and I’d appreciate it if you could give him a snack.” she called as she entered the bathroom.
“Sure, I’ll take care of him.” she heard Thomas reply as the door closed.
Shortly after, she felt a burst of excitement and contentment come through their bond. She smiled. That little glutton was so easy to please.
Quickly undressing and hopping into the warm water, she enjoyed a sinfully blissful bathing experience. She turned off the spigot that was feeding the water into the basin so it wouldn't overflow, and practically moaned in delight at the sensation of hot water on her skin. Weeks of sweat, grime, and dirt were rinsed away as she soaked, and she spent a few heavenly minutes just enjoying the fact that she wasn’t squatting in some near-freezing stream or frantically searching for prowling beasts.
Thomas’s bathroom was fitted with a metal tub covered in heating talismans, as well as a toilet and a mirror. There were some scented candles that Thomas must have lit earlier, and the soft light they gave off created an atmosphere of coziness and comfort. Not wanting to waste too much time and keep Thomas waiting, she reluctantly began scrubbing herself down with sweet smelling soaps. Stepping out of the tub, she drained the now murky-brown water and thoroughly dried off with a plush towel folded nearby.
As she redressed, she gave herself a once over in the mirror.
Wiping the fog from the surface, sharp, upturned eyes the color of freshly tilled earth stared back from a vaguely familiar face. She swiveled her head left and right, absorbing all the changes that her appearance had gone through during her time away. Lush hair as black as midnight was now only hinted at through the dark stubble across her scalp. She noted with some joy that while only the ghost of her gently arched eyebrows remained, more had grown back by this point than she expected. Her cheekbones and jawline had sharpened to look more angular. She felt this made her look more intimidating, but it also gave her expression a regal or noble quality that she had previously lacked.
There was enough of her old appearance remaining where she had no trouble recognizing herself, but enough adjustments to make her do a double take when she first saw her reflection. She neither mourned the loss of what was nor rejoiced in what she had become, it simply was.
Samantha stepped out of the steamy bathroom to join Silas and Thomas in the sitting room, feeling better than she had in a long while. As soon as Thomas caught sight of her, he stood up and embraced her.
“Glad to see you’re looking more human now, cousin. You said you’ve just returned from your cultivation quest… does that mean that you haven’t seen your parents yet? They’ve probably been worried sick about you this whole time you know.”
“Yes, you’re the first person I’ve visited. You see, I may have gotten myself into a bit of trouble…”
“Of course, why should I have expected anything different?” He chuckled, lightly chiding her. “Well, spit it out then. Tell me everything.”