Hunted

[Sindaria]

The barkeep gave Sindaria a suddenly diffident expression which contrasted his earlier scowl in such a way that it would have made Sindaria laugh, had she not understood that the man was now weighing his options in the face of a potential government agent.

"Relax man, I don't wag *that* way, I'm just trying to ascertain if the two at the table do. They came asking my patron for help of a particular kind a few days ago, and being the wise man that he is, he decided it would be prudent to prove their loyalties before engaging in such risky endeavors."

Sindaria paused, catching a discrete nod of the man's head and his glance back toward the table she'd just left.

"Their drinks are going stale. You'd better serve them. And tell 'em that though they may be in the right place, your patron already missed his planned meet here with someone else last night."

Despite herself, Sindaria's face blanched slightly. It was totally unlike Cal to miss a meet, unless something had gone wrong - terribly wrong. She wanted to ask who Cal was supposed to meet here, but the barkeep had already disappeared once again into the back room. Collecting herself, she returned to the old woman and blond foreigner.

"Here are your drinks. The barkeep would have you know that you may be in the right place, but your contact missed his last scheduled meet here. You may be waiting for someone in vain ..."

[Saruna]

Saruna stilled and paled. It shouldn't come as a surprise that her movements were known, but. . .

She spoke after a pause. "I am not well bred for idle hands. I made a contact, but it has been made known to me that I trust too easily. I am looking for further. . .vintages to study." The sensation of draining blood was replaced by the hot tingle of a flush. She reached out for the beer, and used it to fill her hands. Saruna looked up at Sindaria.

"I was directed here. Here I am."

[Ran Azshmatha]

Ran fell into silence as they waited for the waitress to return. He did his best to understand the situation, though he wasn't quite able to follow the double-entendre when the waitress came back. What he did understand was that Saruna had been dismissed but was holding her ground.

He put on a resolute smile on his face. He could not support Saruna with words, but he could do so with his resolve.

[Sindaria]

With the old woman's words still hanging in the air, it was all Sindaria could do to not throttle her mark outright. Further vintages? The woman's cluelessness was the leading explanation for why Cal was suddenly absent without excuse, and now she was looking to pull more victims into her warped web of intrigue - if it could even be graced with such a complimentary descriptor. It was becoming more and more obvious that Sindaria was never going to see her promised coin - both because of the nature of her mark and the disappearance of her primary employer. Sindaria gritted her teeth in restrained frustration.

"Why would anyone serve you more when it is so obvious that you didn't appreciate the value of the first?" the girl hissed, cognizant of the unneeded attention she was drawing to herself. "I suggest you reconsider your plan, if that's what it can be called, and nurse your drink patiently as you were instructed."

Sindaria's mind raced as she tried to calculate the ramifications of what she'd seen and heard already. What did she need from these people?

Money.

"For a few bishani, I will see if I can find you another serving of the mead you had before, and I guarantee you, you'll find nothing else to your liking until we are satisfied that you are suitably appreciative of its vintage. Otherwise, begone. Forget this place as you so obviously have forgotten yourself and your role here."

[Saruna]

Saruna was hurt. A merchant's coolness slid over her face. Bargaining she understood, and while she didn't know the value of things in the tavern, to be so curtly insulted and, yes, dismissed by a girl likely young enough to be a granddaughter was enough to run her clean through. She had her pride, and she looked across the table to Ran.

"You told me most men live wretched, dear, and oppressed. How often might that be avoided were people to afford each other dignity, and the basic respect of proper valuation? Were we to rattle our chains towards our oppressors rather than each other?"

[Ran Azshmatha]

The whole time, Ran wanted to help Saruna badly. Yet, there was little he could do, ignorant to things as he were. It felt almost painful, but he smiled at her bold reply.

"Indeed, you speak well."

He thought for a moment then continued, for he had an idea. The old woman had inspired in him the same boldness in speech:

"But there are some who seek profit before justice," then turning to the raven-haired waitress he added, "but surely, not here?"

[Sindaria]

The blond one was quick to back up the ideological ramblings of the old woman, but neither argument did much to move Sindaria in her now unmovable condition. Dignity was something afforded with coin, not pretty words, and Sindaria had already lost a significant investment here. Moreover, these were the kind of childish consumers who believed that "justice" both existed and came without a pricetag, whereas Sindaria knew from years of experience that the pied piper of "justice" always exacted his fee, and those who fell victim to his pretty song were usually the first to disappear.

Sindaria gave the pair of them a week, tops, before they both conveniently ceased to be seen. The inner corners of Sindaria's eyebrows knitted together as she bit the inside corner of her lower lip, taking another deep breath.

"You are as blind as your companion will be in a few more years, stranger - if you both survive that long. I have made my offer. It stands for as long as you two manage to keep up this charade. Once you find yourself in actual trouble - the kind of trouble your former contact has already met with - I will find other more profitable bagatelles to risk my neck for."

[Saruna]

Cal had cowed Saruna. He'd given off a murderous air that had quietly assured her of his ability. Compared to the sharp words from the slip of a girl in front of her he seemed a harrowing phantom. Sindaria? A child to be rebuked.

"I have survived that trouble, as you put it, before. I have other contacts in higher places who are ready to assist, and if you had known my former contact you would know that what resources I have are on the table. However, they will be doled out per my choosing, not in a foolish act of desperation. I will start over if I have to, and the only one who will lose out will be you.

"I am not easily swayed in my decisions, and I am a respectable enough women in the merchant circles. What I lack in experience I can more than make up in the places I can reach, places that many here could not. What's more, I am capable of earning bishani while doing it. However, if you are not experienced enough to see our worth, then I shall take my business elsewhere. Ran?"

Saruna stood, knees wobbling and injured pride in hand.

[Ran Azshmatha]

Despite the quick and arguably nasty tone the conversation had taken, Ran could not but marvel at the stubborn strength shown by both women in front of him. He nearly could not stop himself from laughing. Saruna had a surprising degree of pride, and so did the young woman standing over their table. Because of this, he began to understand also that nothing further would come out of their conversation.

He got up with Saruna, wincing a little at the wound on his abdomen; after having sat for so long, it felt stiff and sore. Once he stood, he turned and looked at the waitress. Her blue eyes, a striking contrast between her pale skin and black locks, were set in a defiant, stony gaze not unlike what Saruna's own face looked like at the moment. Ran again suppressed the urge to chuckle at this similarity.

The man knew that the young woman wasn't wrong in her attitude. He was familiar with the overbearing prevalence of injustice, which crushed him, his family, his people, and countless number of strangers he had met and seen on his travels. But Saruna wasn't wrong, either. She may be ideological, but she was courageous in her pursuit of justice. It may be blindness as the young woman believed, but that same blindness gave her the strength and clarity to continue her quest for justice in such a world as this. Ran wanted to explain all this to Sindaria, but he could not put together the words. Instead, he gave her a melancholy smile, hoping it would say enough.

[Sindaria]

The stranger's smile threw her off, and for a moment she stood dumbstruck in front of the two standing figures before her legs urged her to abandon this confrontation (curse her temper) and make her way to the tavern's exit (appearances be damned). She did not bother looking back to see what the response of her would-be marks was. She'd seen and heard enough to be relatively certain they weren't the government agents Cal had feared, but that point was rendered moot by his disappearance.

The task ahead of her was clear - find Cal so that she could get her money.

Despite her efforts to shake the feeling, she had a foreboding feeling in her heart that this task would bring her in contact with the embittered old woman and her light-haired, foreigner again. Experience told her, that like her physical premonitions, these hunches could usually be relied upon as versions of the truth - but they also hid darker, unseen consequences.

[Saruna]

Shaking her head, Saruna made her way to the door. "People talk," she said quietly, "and I don't like so many knowing my business. We'll need to find another avenue of inquiry, since it would seem my previous has. . ." She fluttered her fingers absentmindedly, shuffling to the doorway.

"Would you like to see Marn, Ran dear, or shall we head home?"

When Ran indicated heading back to her small home, she smiled sadly and obliged. The broken refuse of some tragedy or another was still in the middle of the road on the way back, and Saruna skirted it with some misgivings. It almost felt like a herald of some doom that was to befall her and her charge. The dread was expected, but no less comfortable for all that she'd lived with it on and off for what seemed like so long.

There was a note tacked onto her door when she returned, and she pulled it off, reading it slowly. Saruna looked up at Ran in delight, and she waved the note triumphantly. She hadn't known Fayane had left, but to have contacted her meant certain understandings were still well and good. Plus, it just felt good to know she had not been forgotten by all of her so-called allies.

"When we are done here we will go to the Red Chalice Inn," Saruna said, opening the door.

[Ran Azshmatha]

Ran followed Saruna silently as she led the way back to her house. The day was starting to age, and the afternoon sun lit all that it touched in a twilight glow, feeble, blinding, the dying crescendo of the day shouting its existence with all of its remaining strength. The force of the sun's gaze baked into the air a certain energy, so that there existed a tense, dream-like gloom; or rather, such was the state of Ran's heart. Outside, he was still. Inside, he was quaking.

Back at the dimly lit tavern, when he had finished reading the Vitiable Paragon and Saruna had told him her story, Ran had made up his mind to tell her his. He had owed it to her for saving his life, but after she had opened up such an intimate part of her life, baring at him the pain that surely still ate at her, there was no doubt in his mind as to what he needed to do.

So for the entirety of the walk through the streets of Marn, across the Ofriyu Mar, and through the rough roads of Shim to Saruna's house, Ran began to gather the bits and pieces of his story together. It was painful. To his shame, the alchemist felt hot tears stinging his eyes, threatening to spill over. His uncle had told him many times before, smiling gently, that tears were no cause for shame. He had made it seem Ok when Ran could not contain the passions that boiled up in him. Slowly, with the courage mustered through thoughts of his departed uncle, Ran gathered himself. In him formed the newest iteration of a story he knew well, a story he had told repeatedly in his head.

At last, the pair stood in front of Saruna's house.

"When we are done here we will go to the Red Chalice Inn."

Ran smiled and nodded as he walked in behind Saruna. He looked around the room and found a spot where both he and Saruna could sit comfortably. The wound on his abdomen was throbbing lightly, but for the first time in several weeks it felt better than it had the day before. He silently thanked Rekkan. His treatment had worked quite well.

Enough distractions. It was time. For Saruna, for Oruhan, and for himself.

He began slowly.

"You have opened your home and your life to me, yet have asked me little. I'm grateful for this, but now I must tell you my story."

You must hear it, for our stories are now joined; Ran added this silently.

"I was born in the southern edge of Setkhantos, just above the channel you call The Great Scar. My people call ourselves the Hamil Kha."

It felt good to speak words of his own language again; he rolled his tongue around it, bit into the words with glee. It was a piece of identity he clung to desperately.

"The land around The Great Scar is dry and hostile. Not much food grows there, and water is scarce, despite how close we live to the ocean.

It's not just that. Whatever it was that made The Great Scar... it hasn't gone. The magic is still around, and it twists things. Nothing is stable there, not the land, the plants, or the animals. The land turns quicksand beneath your feet, the roots and vines come to life, spirits come out at night to haunt us; some come during the day, and those are the most dangerous. It is not like here, not like anywhere far from The Great Scar that I've seen."

"But we make do. The Hamil Kha survive where no others do, because we listen to anu hikhna, the Great Wisdom."

Ran paused for a few moments, deep in thought.

"It is difficult to explain. Perhaps you've heard of alchemy--it's like that, but different. If I can understand how something came to be, where it fits in this world, then I can understand. If I understand, truly understand... anu hikhna--it is power, and I float, skate on top of quicksands, go unnoticed by the beasts, and the spirits bide my commands."

Ran hoped he did justice to his people's art. If Oruhan was here, what would he think of his description? There was no one better at understanding the Great Wisdom than his uncle. Would he be proud? Or would he give Ran the same smile as he always did, the one that said 'you've got years to go yet'?

His mouth felt dry. He stopped and let his saliva coat his arid tongue.

"It took many generations, but my people began to grow. We had learned to live in the strange and hostile world we found ourselves in, and maybe even to thrive. I didn't know it, but word of my people and anu hikhna had spread throughout the continent, to the Imperial city of Semerkhet.

I was sixteen-years-old when Eyropan soldiers appeared at our settlement. My uncle Oruhan led the Hamil Kha at the time. The soldiers came in numbers, armed, and threatened us. They demanded that all those who practiced anu hikhna come with them."

Ran stopped and his eyes looked deep within his memories to that faithful day. Almost everyone in the village were terrified of these strange and imposing men and women. It was the first time most of them had seen anyone from outside the tribe, much less the region. He broke eye contact with Saruna. On his face was a look of bitter anguish that he could not hide, and he did not want to show it to her. He tried to continue the story, and found it impossible. He swallowed once, slowly, saliva, bile and the surge of emotion that accompanied the telling of this memory, and continued.

"My uncle tried to keep me with the tribe, hide the fact that I was an alchemist in training. The soldiers saw through that quickly; they tortured one of our men until he told them who knew the art of The Great Wisdom. They used their force to remove a dozen of us from our homeland, from our families and friends. It wasn't until months later that we found out what they wanted:

They wanted us to develop an alchemical compound using anu hikhna, one that could open up ordinary men to the astral plane; a compound that would let anyone use magic. A compound that could be mass produced."

There was more than a hint of irony in Ran's voice as he recounted the purpose of their displacement. As far as he knew, he was the last of the Hamil Kha who carried in his head the remnants of the nine-year-long research. What would the puradynic government of Marn, who had torn apart Saruna's family for minor magical infractions, think of this? He hoped he would not ever find out.

"The soldiers escorted us from region to region; we sought rare ingredients, sought to understand more about the world, so that we could give Eyropa what they needed, so that they could return us home. Although, perhaps they never would have released us, especially had we been successful.

We came here for the same reason. To find new ingredients for experimentation, to create the compound that would allow all men to wield magic. But we were ambushed by bandits, too wild and too many. They killed... everyone."

It was hard to keep himself from growling the last few words. This time, Ran could not stop his emotions from bubbling up from inside of him. Before he realized, several seconds had passed by in silence as images of his kin's slaughter were displayed in a gruesome slideshow behind the lens of his eyes. He closed them, quickly and tightly. His heart began to beat rapidly, and blood rushed through his veins. He could not stop here. What would Oruhan say if he left the story without an ending?

He should not have thought of Oruhan, but it was too late. Behind the closed lids of his eyes, Ran returned the blank gaze of his uncle as he fell in slow motion. Blood and brain rained around those eyes. They were not benevolent, not kind, not wise, only dull and dead like the animals he had seen slaughtered for food. Suddenly, Ran fell out of his chair and onto his knees. The contents of his stomach churned violently up to his throat, leaving a sour, burning sensation and making him dizzy. He managed to keep it down, just barely.

Ran picked himself up and crawled back onto his chair. He hated himself for his weakness. For letting his uncle die, and for not being able to keep it together now. He wanted to apologize to Saruna for it, but he knew speaking was beyond him. Instead, he sat silently, slowly gathering pieces of himself, gradually building himself back up into the person that he was. It took a minute.

"Yes, everyone died... except me. Thanks to you, Saruna."

His voice was still hoarse, and he had to cough a sour, bitter cough to clear his throat of bits of what he had eaten previously. It was not the kind of ending he wanted to give the story, but it was all he could manage for the moment.

[Saruna]

Once Ran got to talking, there was no stopping him. Saruna considered putting a halt to the opening of a past that, despite his relative youth, had more than its share of pain and travesty. Watching him, she resisted the urge in spite of the uneasiness that welled up in her. She knew why his own pain should engender his own; in the telling he was making his own hurts her hurts, and she didn't know if she could handle it. They all were containers for their pain, and she was full of it.

So was he. And why not share their pain with each other? Because it would hurt in the end. Saruna felt her fate in her bones. Despite her age she was still as vulnerable to love and kindness as she'd been in her youth. Resist it though she may, it was in her, and she could no more stop her reaction than she could have so many years ago when any of her children had been in pain. Crying or no. She had played the role of mother far more thoroughly than daughter or wife.

His fall and subsequent struggle to get back into his chair sealed it for her. The effort and wrenching sorrow was too much for her to watch with any sort of neutrality.

That was why, Saruna would tell herself later, she walked to Ran and gathered him to her, his head to her chest, her fingers stroking his hair. "Shhh," she told him, because the catch-all "you're okay" of childhood hurts simply would not apply.

Saruna rocked him close to her, oblivious to any small discomfort he would have shown, murmuring small bits of nonsense comforts. The action centered and soothed her, returning her to a center she hadn't realized she'd been thrown from. To bully and manuever beyond bartering for normal everyday goods was anathema to her disposition, and it was upsetting no matter how badly she wanted it to know that she had to start over from square one. To know that she would drag Ran into it with her, and soon Fayane as well.

"We will get you back there, some day," she promised Ran with blind faith, though she was not entirely without the self awareness to realize she would place her own needs before his own. "Would you like to meet a friend of mine?"

[Ran Azshmatha]

In truth, Ran was too distraught to be surprised to Saruna's embrace, too lost in the thick of his emotions to protest. The comfort the old woman offered was close to maternal as Ran remembered, and though he did actively embrace her back, he allowed them to remain as they were until he was able enough to return, gently, to his own seat away from Saruna.

He drew a long, shallow breath, and let out a cathartic sigh. When Saruna assured him that he'd be able to return to the land of his birth, his own reaction surprised him; he had often assured himself of the same thing in the past, in moments of exquisite pain, loneliness, and passion. Yet the same statement, now expressed by the woman in front of him, felt far away and foreign. Ran pushed these thoughts to a corner of his mind, to consider later. He had been selfish long enough.

"Yes, I'd love to," he replied with the best smile he could manage.