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@Eyas Amari

Hey, you! Gonna need you to get your ass over here to Yarrin, in Dunnstads. Got a task I need your help with. It'll get you out of Brisshal, at the very least. We'll kill things, steal stuff, and wreak some havoc on a group of assholes who have something of mine.

And by that I mean something that I saw that I decided I needed, and will be mine by the time we're through with them.

...Also, I hope you like fish.

- Maddy

Madison sent the message and closed down her palm menu, which had been floating above the pages of a trashy novel she picked up at a store in town. The woman quickly realized after spawning in Terrasphere that the NPCs of the game consider it pretty weird if they see you poking and scratching the palm of your hand with a look of serious concentration on your face, so she either menu'd in private or found ways to cover for what was otherwise considered odd behavior by those around her.

A serving girl quietly approached her, plate in hand. She set the sandwich down on the table and folded her hands in front of her. "Can I get you anything else, ma'am?"

Maddy shot her a polite smile as she shut the book. "No thanks, I'm set."

The young redhead nodded and left her to her meal. Arranged neatly on the plate was a grilled chicken sandwich on toasted sourdough bread, open-faced with lettuce and tomato on full display. A smattering of fries sat on one side, one of which she picked up with her spidery fingers and shoved into her mouth and chewed.

Madison's gaze drifted out the window as she enjoyed her meal. She picked out this particular restaurant mostly because it was on the shore, looking out to the ocean. Even as the cloudy skies threatened to dump another storm on the sleepy little village, she was enamored by the softly-rolling waves. They lapped against the rocky beach below her, sending small bursts of mist into the air that quickly settled.

Despite the cold reception she got when she first traveled to Dunnstads, Maddy fell in love with this region. It felt a bit like home to her. Living her entire life near the shores of Lake Ontario, she had always felt a sort of serenity being near a place where the water met the sky. It didn't hurt that the province was a hotbed of what she lovingly called the weird shit; content that she could really sink her teeth into.

There was always something about water that attracted the strange and the occult.

Picking up the sandwich in one hand, Madison took a bite. Delicious, as expected. You can't really keep players connected for hours and days on end if you offer them terrible food, right?

The witch felt the impulse to check her messages to see if her friend had responded yet. That would've required her to put down her food, so she decided it could wait.

She just hoped that Eyas was in the mood for a bit of the ol' ultraviolence, and would come hungry for action. Given that she'd learned enough about black magic that she'd be able to deal with a few of the inbred motherfuckers during one of their stupid little meetings, she wasn't entirely positive she could handle the monstrosity they prayed to. That's where Eyas would come in.

But one way or another, Maddy would have that accursed book.

 

"We'll kill things, steal stuff, and wreak some havoc on a group of assholes who have something of mine."

Eyas? Eyas was fucking DOWN for that shit. Murder, death, kill. That was always something she could be down for, yeah. So of course she hightailed it on over to the islands. There was a certain fury to her movements as she hauled as much ass as she physically could, stealing rides from carriages and borrowed horses. She was ready for a good fight, yeah.

With her stepping into town, the new black sheathe gleamed with a dangerous light on Eyas' hip. A weapon that looked both pristine and lived in. Like a relic of every battle she'd ever fought, hung low at her waist - a trophy and a warning. This person was dangerous, but there was a light about her - a pureness to her weight - that seemed to hint that her ire was something earned, not carelessly given.

And with but a simple request from Madison, that ire was ready to be turned on whatever monsters needed to be killed. Grabbing a drink off a table as she passed, Eyas went and slammed the drink, putting the glass down on a passing barmaid's tray as she made her way through the crowd, taking hints from some of her old favorite games and working through the crowd, taking a seat next to Madison. "So. I'm here. What's the sitch?"

@Madison Freebird

 

Bear asses.

What the actual fuck.

Madison spent much longer than she'd ever be willing to admit trying to figure out what the hell the scrappy, sassy girl meant by that.

Was she... trying to flirt with her? Unless Eyas opted for a natural layer of protection against cold on her cheeks during the character creation process, Madison was coming up short.

Maybe Eyas simply had a brain fart and misspelled bare? That unnerved her even more when she thought about it. Madison and Eyas had a perfectly acceptable working relationship, running around Brisshal for long enough to figure out a few combination attacks that were effective against mobs and scrub-tier enemies. They shared a few laughs, a few bar fights, a few campfires, and a hell of a lot of bloodshed.

But the thought of Eyas being forward and blunt enough to show that kind of skin to her... kinda made her want to throw up, actually.

Because nobody's milkshake brings the Maddys to the yard.

A quick shot of something strong, that's what she needed. So she was at the bar when Eyas rolled into town.

She made her entrance with the kind of swagger that Madison had come to expect. She snatch another patron's drink, finished it for them, and discarded the empty glass on a passing waitress's upheld tray. The bearded man she lifted the amber swill from shot Eyas a look, then gave Madison a similar glare. The witch discreetly held up a hand as if to stop him from trying anything dumb, and mouthed an apology and an I'll pay for it, fam.

"So. I'm here. What's the sitch?"

At least she didn't waste time getting right to it. Maddy appreciated that an awful lot. Nobody liked their time wasted, and the witch could imagine that the trip here left Eyas with a lot of pent-up energy that she was just itching to unleash upon some poor souls.

Madison closed the trashy little novel she was thumbing through and tossed it onto the table. Motioning for her companion to take a seat, she started to fill the brawler in with the details.

"So, I've been busy doing some research lately here in Dunnstads. Not sure what you've heard about this place, but there's so much weird shit along the coast that it's basically a Lovecraft wet dream. Lots of strange disturbances under the cover of fog, strange-ass people doing strange-ass rituals late at night. And then there's the fishmen--real Innsmouth Look kind of shit here."

She flagged down a waitress for a round for the two of them before continuing. "Anyway, I've been doing research on fungi, and caught wind of a pretty unique book that came up missing from some old fart's collection not too long ago. That's what we're here to get. The group that nabbed it is planning another ritual..." Flicking open her palm menu, she scrolled through until she found her notepad. "...tomorrow night, actually."

Eyas rested a hand on the hilt of her sword, ready to unsheathe it and get on with the fun parts. "Go in, kill 'em all, grab that book. Seems easy enough."

"I fuckin' wish," Madison mumbled quietly as she closed her menu. "Pretty sure they have the book locked up tight until then, and I don't know where. I got some leads on where the ritual's taking place and what they need it for, though."

The poor idiot she pried that info from couldn't give up any more before the violent fits of vomiting she cursed him with melted away his esophagus and she dumped his corpse in the water.

"Unfortunately," she continued, "if we just barge in with swords and spells at the ready, they'll just get the hell out of there and I'll lose that book forever."

"So you got any ideas, then?"

A dark, sick smile twisted her face. "As a matter of fact, I do. They're looking to draw in a fishman; we'll give them two."

Madison waited for Eyas to put the pieces together herself.

 

She most certainly did put the pieces together herself. Though, in all fairness, she did have a different idea. Going through her inventory, she pulled out an absolutely massive trenchcoat from seemingly nowhere. "Solution is found." Her jokes aside though, the trenchcoat went away, a small laugh in her chest as she thought of the two of them stacking on top of each other and just finding their way into the deep blue. But she knew the idea, for damn sure. They wanted to disguise themselves as these fishermen, and work themselves into the ritual somehow. If they were gonna be all sneaky like, which already wasn't part of her best work, she needed to have her mind in the right place. "So, miss bookworm. What's your big plan?"

 

Madison sat back in her chair, legs crossed and hands folded on her knee, while she watched Eyas connect a few dots. At least she hadn't made faces and gross noises and run out of the place. That was a good sign.

"Here's the short version: We're going to hit up the shoreline and see if we can't lure out one or two of the fishmen. Probably stop off somewhere and pick up bait, maybe rent a little row boat to lead one to land. We'll have to do this during the evening, when they're most active. Or, that's when I read they were active, anyway."

The waitress returned with a frosty mug filled with amber. Madison shot her a smile and a nod before getting back to business.

"But yeah, we grab one, kill it, and haul it back to this abandoned shack I scoped out this past week. We'll get some rest, and then tomorrow I've gotta' spend a good portion of the day preparing the ritual."

The cursemage took a sip of her brew. "I'm going to use the blood and flesh of the thing to cast an illusion spell on us, which will 'turn us'--" Madison threw up some air quotes-- "into fishmen. Or fishwomen," she quickly corrected herself.

Eyas's usually stone-cold facade cracked into a grimace.

"Not permanently," Madison said, rolling her eyes. "Just for the evening. Long enough to fool the cultists into believing that their chanting summoned something from the deep. And when they let us get close enough, we take them out as violently as possible, grab the book, make a break for it, and wait until the illusion wears off."

She drew the glass up to her lips and paused. "That's about it, really."

 

She wanted to turn them into fish fuckers. Honestly. Not the WORST plan that had ever come up with, but WHY did that have to be the plan? Eyas had... many questions. "So long as I don't look like a fish in front of Viv-" And then she promptly turned bright red. Yeah. She forgot that she hadn't exactly had Girl Time TM with Madison. She'd pretty much come straight here. "Right. Uh. Anyways. Let's go."

Eyas stood on up, pulling her drink with herself. "Yeah. Go. Let's." She was trying to avoid the topic of Vivian right now. Not out of any rational idea, but more out of just. Not wanting to talk about Vivian right now. "Without talking about stuff. Like. People." Hey she was awkward now. "Please." So she just stood up, putting on a purple and read headband and tying her hair back into a sloppy ponytail to keep blood from running it red. "Yeah. Please."

 

The cursemage couldn't help but watch bemusedly as Eyas fidgeted, stuttered, blushed, messed with her hair, and generally turned into a neurotic mess. Madison may be completely oblivious to anyone casting eyes in her direction; but there was no mistaking this sudden shift in attitude from the otherwise stoic and aloof brawler.

A thin smirk twisted her face as she wordlessly stood up. She tossed a couple coins on the table to cover her drinks and led Eyas out the door. On her way out, she dropped a few more pieces of gold onto the table of the patron who her comrade lifted the drink from, and offered an apologetic shrug.

The brisk air of Yarrin sobered her up a little as Madison shut the tavern's door behind her. The crisp, salty scent of the ocean, mixing with the tang of the daily catches being hauled in at the docks. It was a rather unique mix, but reminded her very much of her home in the real world. A small comfort that kept her grounded in Dunnstads.

Eyas made it clear that she didn't want to talk about people. Madison slowly slid a gloved hand into the crook of the fighter's elbow--less because it was something that friends out on a casual stroll would do, and more to let her know that ha ha ha there is no escape for youuuu~~

"So," Madison said warmly, her grin widening. "You've met someone, eh? That's great! You gonna' tell me about her?"

 

The docks, strangely, reminded her of home too. Except with less shipping containers and dead hobos and more fishermen and boats ready to ship. Her drink paid for, her gear ready, whatever was gonna happen was gonna happen. Honestly, murder death kill was kinda her thing. She wanted to just GET ON WITH IT. Instead, Madison decided to drag out the uncomfortable. Well. Whatever. "Her uh. Her name's Vivian. We kinda hooked up in Astorea. In more than one manner."

God. This sucked. And not in a way she didn't want to talk about it. She was fine with it. It was just a manner of how far she could go. And before she knew it, she'd spilled the beans. "She... was my first time. With a lady, anyways. And now it's just confusing." Shaking her head and looking down at the ground, her laser focus seemed rather dulled at the moment. "I mean. She's great. In every way that I could ask for. I just don't know what this all ends up as. I'm a little of a mess here."

And people did this for a living. Just talking about their daily lives? A nightmare. And one she didn't quite want to breach just yet. "God. I sound like a teenager."

 

"Vivian, huh?"

Madison knew a Vivian. They worked together for a bit in Astorea, during the fiasco with the Bandit King and Zeus. She was the one who kicked off the betrayal party. Shapely woman, a bit loud, skimpy dress (probably because everyone knows that the less a woman wears in an RPG, the better protected they are), neat hat, very good with magic.

Probably the wrong Vivian, though.

"Well, as long as you're happy, that's all that matters, right?" Madison offered Eyas a sincere smile. The witch let go of her friend's arm, and they resumed their walk in awkward silence.

It tickled her to see the brawler all out of sorts for once. Usually she was quiet, guarded, fierce... But to see that she had actual human emotions locked away behind the facade was refreshing.

Probably could have done without the knowledge that it was her first time, with a lady or otherwise, though.

It was only a fifteen minute walk to the abandoned shack by the piers where Madison had set up shop. The interior was caked with the dusty and stink of time. Used to be a place where a small company cleaned their catches. The cursemage had cleared out a space in the middle, big enough to draw a ritual circle on the rotted floorboards. She motioned for Eyas to steer clear of it, not wanting to go through the process again.

"Once we catch a fishman, this is where we're going to drag it." Madison pointed towards several cleaning tools, a pile of unlit candles, a matchbox, a pair of paintbrushes, and a bucket. "We're going to need to drain as much blood as possible from the thing before we dump it back into the ocean. I've got the markings on the floor so we can trace over them with the blood. It's the only way I could figure out how to cast an illusion spell powerful enough to trick this pack of assholes long enough to grab the book."

Madison slid her hand behind a faded curtain and pulled it back an inch, gazing out into the empty streets outside. "We still have a couple hours to go before night. Let's head out, buy some bait, grab a boat, and get to it."

 

So they grabbed the boat. And a dude. The fishman would squirm and grunt under the hood and gag, but as the stronger of the two ladies here, Eyas kept him restrained pretty well. It was easy to do, really, since she just gave him a good smack every few minutes or whenever he struggled, and they were tired enough to be a feeble fight, hefted over her shoulder and kept in a big ol' burlap sack. Then they went on downstairs, and she dumped the squirming sack in the corner, away from most of the ritual markings. "You set?" She wasn't gonna ask how she was gonna do it, not worth figuring out the magic.

Still. She would probably need a ritual killing. So she took off the fishman's hood, eyes gleaming with a red light as she slowly unsheathed the katana at her hip, flipping it in her hand and holding it to roughly where she figured she'd need to cut. "Think the fucker's got a carotid? Or you think it's all different?" A valid question. A few methods for extracting the blood went through her head, but overall, the best idea was... well. "We need all his blood, we gotta hang him by his feet. I'll cut his throat. Then we go 'head and work his arms. Will get out most, if not all of his."

 

Madison eyeballed the dead uncooked, unbreaded fishstick on the floor. Boy, this was a terrible idea. It didn't take long for the shack to stink to high heaven. Regular fish always had a terrible odor, but it was at least manageable in small doses. This fucker? Picture in your mind's nose ten seafood sections of grocery stores, but the tanks were never cleaned and everything had been long dead. Then throw in some low tide oceanside odors as the cherry on top.

"Yeah," Madison muttered flatly, remembering at that moment that she'd be cooped up in this building for a hell of a lot longer than Eyas was going to be. "I haven't done much fishguy biology research, but it looks pretty humanoid to me. Only one way to know for sure, though. Let's string 'em up and slice 'em open."

The women went to work binding the abomination's legs together at the ankles and throwing the other end of the thick, musty rope over a support beam near the ceiling. Using every ounce of strength they could muster, they eventually got it into the air. The soft swaying of its corpse only served to circulate the rancid air around the structure, nearly causing Madison to gag.

She excused herself for a moment while Eyas drew her blade. The smell came with her, lingering in her nostrils as she tried to breathe in clean air. Several coughing fits and strings of violent cursing later, the witch decided to see how things were going on inside.

Madison was met with quite the gruesome sight. The fishman was nearly in pieces; throat severed, wrists sliced vertically, and armpits sliced open to reach the axillary arteries--just to make sure. Rivers of thick, dark blood ran down the elevated corpse, plopping harmlessly into the buckets below. Eyas sat on a pile of crates nearby, casually wiping the gore off her sharpened blade.

"Neat," Madison intoned, her eyes darting around and drinking in her murderbuddy's work. She made another mental note to never piss the brawler off, and filed it away next to the one she had leftover from when they escaped from a village of bloodthirsty maniacs.

"I can take it from here, if you wanna' go get some rest." The witch moved across the floor, peeking into the buckets of viscera to see how much she had to work with. "I'm going to be here all night and all day tomorrow, if you want to check in. I just need you here by sundown for the final steps, yeah?"