Days Earlier...:
"You gonna sit there and mope all day, Bash? That earthquake sounded a little too close for comfort."
Ki'nae groaned, holding her hat on her head as though keeping her brains in. It had been a late night performance, a large one at that, and who would have thought that her theatrics would have gotten her bounty out of hiding to watch? She must have been good. Then again, it was her.
By the time Ki'nae finished hog-tying the rascal she'd already downed her first of many drinks. Now she was feeling them all at once, but that was the kind of pain she was familiar with. This new thing was something...too familiar. For all the ways she lived up to her nickname, it seemed she didn't do a good enough job the first time.
The ground rumbled, like a bad belch from a troll's gut. Is that what'd woke her up?
"Makes sense it'd take an earthquake to wake you up," Llarl went on like he owned the damn world as she stumbled to the pond's edge. Ki'nae'd only been traveling with this troupe for a couple of days. Thank the WEEP she would only have another day before she could drop this square peg.
She splashed a handful of pond water on her face as Llarl continued his beration. "Did you not hear that? You handers are all so self-possed. Why can't you just be more considerate? You'd never see one of us songsouls going about sleeping in the sun, waiting for an act of the very gods to shake us to action. In fact, the sun's not getting any higher, so if you could hurr-"
"Llarl," Ki'nae, from where she kneeled over at the edge of the pond, craned her neck like an angry owl. Some malevolent spirit crept to her shining, firesteel eyes. She shot that dark light to Llarl's impudent gaze.
"Just. Shut. Up."
The giant of a half-man backed away hands up. Ki'nae made sure he wasn't looking before she looked back to the water. Her reflection glared back at her. Sour-mouthed, flared nostrils, squished eyebrows. Just the way she liked to be. Unfortunate that it took a hangover to get there. A gloved hand moved to push her hat up, pull her loose blond locks back out of her face. A chill seized her spine as she saw the green birthmark, felt it, pulsating like a heartbeat's last pumps. What an unpleasantly fast way to sober up.
This mark hadn't been unfamiliar. She recognized its verdant luminescence, faint as stars in a city night. Looked like a star too, its upper spokes threatening to reach into her hairline. There was that faint worry she felt from back then, that the strange mark's touch would turn her blond hair into some sort of green. She was already her mother's throwaway, and a life competing for acceptance in the Courts of Guile filled her dish of disappointment to the brim. The last thing she'd needed was to look like one of those treehugging, twig-up-the-arsers to set her apart.
That's why twenty years ago, with a well-honed rock and a well-honed lie, she'd cut it out.
So why did it come back now?
"Dammit t'darkness, does my head hurt," Ki'nae moaned. It burned. Not in the way of holding her hand over a candle or taking a few barehanded whacks in the bonfire. That was the good, clean kind of burn. This pain was acute, precise. It was the pain of...destiny.
Why would I think this was destiny? Ki'nae bent down and plunged her head into the water. The cold slapped at her face with a wet fish's caress. Did little for the pain though. It just spread its aching behind her eyes, around her skull, to the base of her neck.
"Bash!" A hand came down on her shoulder. Reflexively Ki'nae pointed her pistol at the face before she saw whose it belonged to. Niyaji just looked at her over the barrel with wild eyes. "We've got to go!"
Ki'nae followed the thin gnome's frantic hands to the mountain in the distance. Just moments ago, the Earthspur mount had been a behemoth boulder. Now down its side came a wave of condensed flames, pouring out like pus gone bad in a young teen's face. That was the kind of zit you ran from.
Ki'nae stood up, brushing her knees off. "Well, well, wouldja look at that..." She knew their were villages clse to their. They were too close themselves. The smells of burning trees was already overpowering their dying cooking fires, and soon flesh would follow behind. There should have been more sorrow there, more disappointment that the snuffed lives were outside of her control. But something inside her pulled at something else. Something in the heat itself smelled like...
Smelled like home?
Ki'nae licked her lips.
"Ain't that some sh-"
"-yster?"
Ki'nae only partially committed to the inquiry. She was, for the third time, rubbing tinfin oil on her pistol just for the extra shine. Really, it was just to do anything to avoid the kid's constant questions. Nothing deterred the young girl's questions, and it's hard to run when they were responsible for leading your mule up the side of a mountain.
"Yeah, shyster." The little half-elf said. She sat on her own mule, the rope of Ki'nae's pack animal firm in her small-fingered grip.
"What's dat mean?"
"Where'd you here that from, honey?" Ki'nae asked, her cigarette dancing between her pursed lips.
"From daddy." Ki'nae frowned.
"Daddy said he was tired of no-good, sleepyfoot, lay'bout shysters who...mmm..." The little girl crinkled her face with thoughtful intelligence.
"Whose very presence...umm...buckles? Buckles, the eh-kaw-noh-mee of good in the world."
Ki'nae sighed, breathing out a puff of smoke.
"Shysters aren't t'be trusted, honey. Just make sure that if y'e'er MAKE A BET THAT Y'LOOOOSE AT!" Ki'nae's voice easily carried up ahead to the young girl's father, leading the way,
"that yer able t'follow through on yer gamble."
The little girl cocked her head, thoughtfully.
"What's a gamb-"
"Ask yer pa, sweet'eart." Ki'nae chucked her pistol into the air. It spun before landing perfectly in the holster at her hip as she took a long drag.
"Ask yer pa."
Ever since that earthquake, that Great Shake of Doom, Ki'nae's head had been killing her. The troupe she'd traveled with had kept moving to the nearest township, doing their part to spread their news through their performance. Ki'nae's head had hurt so bad it made her sick. She hadn't drank for
days!
It still took a little bit of weebling in the wrong direction before she could wobble in the right one. The Green Star Citadel. A big arse building with a big arse star on the door. Seemed about right.
She could see it now, its imposing frame filling her vision with...destiny.
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Thanks again, Pa!"
Ki'nae exaggerated her parting wave, much to the child's bemusement. Her father didn't bother looking back from where he dropped her off.
"Good riddance to you too, buddy," She muttered, putting out her cigarette beneath a wineblood-colored boot. She marched forward, hat tilted sideways over her eyes, chin stretched out as she entered the citadel. Like any good Guiler, she made sure to spit respectfully before passing along the threshold.
"Well met. I come seeking answers about the Green Star."
What the...? There were others here?
Who're all these freaks? She really didn't think of the term as an insult. Yet not a single soul looked completely...normal. There was a man so pale he looked like snow itself. Then there was one of those treehuggers that didn't hug trees (cavehugger?) A tall'un with a hat seemed just as curious as the rest of 'em, but the red eyes weren't exactly standard fare in these parts. In any parts really Some other brown-haired guy that looked too...Ki'nae didn't know. Him being in the same space as these guys already made him suspect, but his tawny skin and brown eyes were well...she didn't know.
The one talking now, the pretty boy with the red hair, had her full attention.
"Do any of you know about a mark such as that?"
"What'd you know 'bout it, pardner?" Ki'nae put her hands on her hips, pulling the heat out of her gaze enough to make her look less interrogative. Her stone-cold face was something she wasn't keen on fixing any time ever.
"Yew here fer a...healin', mayhaps?"
Ki'nae glanced about, looking about at each arrivee as though she was inspecting them.
"All yuns here fer somethin' mayhaps...ailin' ya?"
This message was last edited by the player at 11:59, Mon 05 Oct 2020.