[Kiel]

Kiel glared at the dark opening that led into the sewer tunnels.

“Like, I'm pretty sure these things should have, like, great big huge thick, like, doors over them or something, okay?” He was talking to one of the Purifiers who had been telling him about the latest monster attacks down there, even though she'd long since turned away to, like, find fascination with a cat or... Actually, he wasn't sure what the heck that thing was. It could be a cat, or it could just be, like, a giant rat or something. Beady eyes on a scraggly ball of fluff, that was all he could make out. “Like, you know, because of things getting in there that shouldn't be in there and stuff. Like, you know?”

When he realised he wasn't going to get any more response from her, Kiel totally continued talking as if he had listeners and stepped through the hole. Like, Alexandria was one of few places he'd been that actually made the sewer tunnels part of the architecture of the city, you know? Like, they were kinda almost as proud of them as they were of the buildings on the surface. Which kinda stood to reason and everything since they also made a huge deal out of the Crystal Caverns, but Kiel didn't think the sewers had anything that would attract tourists. Unless you counted the Nyads, which Kiel totally would because, you know, they were pretty and stuff, even when they were covered in... Well, Kiel didn't really want to think about what they got covered in. Maybe 'cause he was with Zeph and all, he just didn't find Nymphs quite that appealing, you know?

“Like, at least this time I'm totally equipped for bad-assery, you know?” he told a soggy piece of toilet paper as he stepped through a shallow trail of filth. He had remembered to bring his carsic acid in addition to all his knives and swords and even his replacement replacement replacement katana, 'cause the last time he was down here he'd run into serious trouble and, like, what were the chances of this thing really being another kumo but, like, just in case, you know? At least if it was a kumo it wasn't a gytrash, because, like, “Gytrashes are, like, the worst creation, like, ever, man.”

[Bay]

"Curiosity killed the cat, but where people are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance."

It had been a few weeks since Xanthmas had ended, and Bay's life had settled into a different but still rather harsh routine. He'd still been moving about the city, the regular kicks to the ribs courtesy of guards his usual wakeup call. His snatching of fruit was getting worse, too; while at first it had been easy to write off the occasional fallen apple as not being thievery, he knew in his heart of hearts he'd stooped to it now. But Fen needed food and seemed to eat far more than he would think she was able, and an apple that she'd eaten half of hardly made his stomach full. Bay was loosing weight fast, too, his originally moderately toned body feeling weaker.

It was cold tonight, and he hadn't found much to eat today, just a bell pepper that had fallen from a cart and been smashed in half. He'd taken the good half, but even then it still tasted a bit like street. The sewers had been dark and warm, and were quite free of guards from what he knew. It hadn't been a difficult decision to descend into them, when he'd found an opening in a small, closed off street. The alleyway's floor had collapsed, creating a set of rubble stairs. Bay assumed it had been created by the earthquake.

It had been over a month since his strange encounter with the guards that had acted like a bird and glared at him. It still stuck out as the nicest the guards had ever been to him, though he hadn't yet run into any that acted like birds again yet, either. He suspected the guard captain was probably alright with that, though. Still, a few weeks on...that had been a pretty good bird impression.

Far into the tunnel network, he'd sat near one of the sewer's supporting pillars, where there was a warm, dry and not smelly spot that was near a light, the first light he'd encountered. Bay was vaguely worried he was lost - it was dank and dark down here, and he'd navigated some sections by feel. He felt a tad ill down here, the darkness all around lit only by the faint glow of the distant lantern. It was probably the stale and smelly air, he decided. It was an odd sensation, the sickness. Maybe he just needed sleep and food.

"You mostly glide," he said to Fen, voice a hushed whisper. The small bat was practicing flying around him, Bay assisting the small animal with small gusts of wind to help her stay airborne. She chittered happily, her echolocation an odd echoing sound on the massive stone walls. The bat seemed to be in her element, and the sounds they made were soft but seemed to travel quite a distance in the deep dark sewer. He had the mysterious book that he'd found in a Xanthmas box open across his legs. He'd continued to try to read it, and had found some of the architectural motifs in the newer looking areas of the sewers.

[Kiel]

Kiel stopped mid-slosh when he heard something. Like, chittering. Like, “Dude, that so better not be a kumo, man. Or, like, a gytrash. Like, I maybe it's molvues. Or, like, naw, man, that would suck too. I mean,” he told the wall as his hand slipped on the stone. “They're kinda cute and all but, like, you get a bunch of them together and they could totally give a gytrash a run for its money in the creep department, you know?”

He patted the wall in a friendly manner and then pushed away to cross to the other side of the tunnel and duck down, like, what, was it even called an alley if it was underground? It was narrower than the other tunnels, at least, kinda like a connector rod between main veins or something. Like, some miner lingo he'd kinda sorta picked up in Kyriake but not really because he spent too much of his time down in the mines talking or running or, like, you know. Yelling for other people to run.

He was getting closer to the chittering noise. Which, like, come to think of it, that probably wasn't the best of ideas, you know? Like, it was the whole intent of him being down here and all but he had vague thoughts that probably belonged to his survival instincts telling him to head back out and go fetch, like, Zeph or Pria or something. Like, he wasn't sure how exactly his survival instincts expected to get a fully grown dragon down here or whatever. Like, he was pretty sure even Zeph would complain about the lack of head room. Or, like, just refuse to go with him. Probably kick up a fuss and give him the stink eye about him going down alone, or whatever. “Like, it's not like I've got a death wish, okay?” he told his foot as he lifted it over a particularly disgusting pile of... something disgusting. What even was that? Kiel decided he'd rather not know. “Like, there's a huge difference between wanting to die and just, like, having a knack for getting yourself in places where you're likely to, okay?” His foot nodded as if it agreed, or at least as if it understood, before submerging once again out of sight. Kiel spoke to his knee next, since his foot had abandoned him. “And, like, okay so the dude has a point. Like, I guess I do get in kind of a pickle an awful lot, but, like, how is that my fault? Like, for sers,” he grumbled to his hand, since his knee had just gone about its business and ignored him. “How is it my fault that so many people want to kill me, you know?”

The filthy water sloshed around his ankles as he splashed to a halt, jaw gaping. “Like, dude!” The chittering wasn't from a kumo, at least. “Is that a bat? Hey, hey, is that a bird? Hey, hey, you're not meant to be down here, man, for sers!” Because he now had someone legitimate to talk to, except the dude was that non-Zanaryan from before - whom Kiel totally remembered because, like, wingless! Wingless non-Zanaryan dude with horns who had fallen out of a market canopy and, like, made a big hoo-ha about it being deliberate, and, like, “Hey, hey! Didja find the troupe? Did they tell you could be down here? 'Cause, like, it's dangerous, okay. There's, like, monsters and stuff.” He said the "monsters" part in a stage whisper meant to emphasise the enormity of the situation.

[Bay]

"Curiosity killed the cat, but where people are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance."

Bay had heard Kiel coming long before the man heard them, or so Bay assumed. The sloshing - and above all, the talking - gave away the Dracovari's presence, even if Bay hadn't really processed who that voice might be or why they were here - or even if they were humanoid. Still, even as Bay hurried shoved his book into his sleeve and tried to get Fen to come back to him, he kept hearing a single word in the gibberish that the huge stone tunnels turned Kiel's words into - like. It made him wonder, even as he caught Fen and pulled her close to him in cupped hands, if it was indeed the same guard ...or if it was a cultural verbal tic. He'd never heard it from anyone else, that was for sure-

Of course, he didn't get out of the way in time and manage to duck into the shadows. At Kiel's yelling, he restrained the automatic urge to sigh hugely. Was there anywhere in the damn city he was allowed to be? The possibilities seemed to be becoming fewer and fewer every day.

Bay had sprung to his feet at Kiel's yelling, Fen cradled against his shoulder. He was far above the sewage that Kiel was stomping through, perched on a stone ledge near the warm (and rather fragrant) top of the sewer tunnel, where the warm air rose to. He wasn't sure where to go from there, so he clung to the pillar with one arm, Fen in the other.

"What? No, no, she's a - she's a bat," he clarified, looking about. There didn't seem to be any obvious routes of escape. He wasn't sure if he should panic - instinct was saying yes, but the man's grumbling words were making him think twice. He looked at Kiel with unmasked caution, still gripping the pillar.

"Yes, I tried to. They don't want - they wanted Nereids," he said, with a tinge of bitterness, when Kiel asked him about the troupe. "Not - not someone like me." Thankfully - or perhaps sadly? - the turn down had been one of the nicer ones Bay had ever received. It had been a simple matter of him manipulating the wrong element, or at least had been presented that way.

Against his shoulder, Fen chittered again, and in the moment it took him to look at her, Kiel's words clicked. The panic rose again, as quickly as the denial. "Monsters? It's - this is a sewer, isn't it? Why would anyone care I'm down here? The only other things down here, are..." He looked at the sewage below, shaking his head. "There's nothing else down here! Not even - are there really monsters down here?"

[Kiel]

Kiel's mouth worked, his jaw flexing on words he didn't say yet as he listened to the not-Zanaryan's responses. Like, it was a total shame that the dude had been turned away, you know, but Kiel could kind of understand. Like, fire-dancers were so awesome, man, for sers! But then, he felt the same about Nyads and Ayads and Dryads, too. Like, if he could be born again he'd totally want to be a Nymph, you know? Or, like, maybe a Sidhe because he wasn't sure he wanted to be a girl. Although, like, sometimes he wondered if he was meant to be, since his voice still squeaked a bit well after puberty (like, when he was startled or scared, especially) and he shrieked and he liked girly colours and cuddles and all the stuff his family kept teasing him about. (The fact he liked Zeph didn't even enter into the equation. He kinda figured he'd like the dude no matter what his gender, okay?)

Kiel focused on the monster part of the conversation, though, 'cause that was what he was down here for, after all, you know? “Like, duh, man. Like, they like the caves and stuff, you know, but there aren't any around here so they use the sewers instead because they're dark and moist and monsters apparently don't have noses. Like, unless you count the Crystal Caverns, I mean,” he considered, going back to that whole "no caves" thing he'd mentioned. “But it's too touristy and bright and noisy down there, so I guess they stay away and probably aren't immune to the crystal curse or whatever. Like, you haven't seen any, like, signs of something down here, have you? Like, webs or something. I brought acid just in case, but I'm really hoping it's not a kumo because those things are super scary and awful and hairy and maybe I should have brought a Nereid with me now that you mention it because last time I ran into a nest of the things, we had a Nereid with us and she totally kicked ass, you know? Well, there wasn't really that much kicking involved, I guess, it was more burning and flaming and barbeque, and dude, even this crap down here smells better than burning hairy spider, okay?”

[Bay]

"Curiosity killed the cat, but where people are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance."

Bay couldn't help but silently question the wisdom of bringing a Nereid down into this sort of environment. Weren't there...gasses, or something? Things that lit on fire. His father had shown him that such things were flammable, once, and had thought it quite a riot. Bay didn't know many things for sure, but one of those things was very clearly that - was anything to explode down here, it would be bad news for anyone inside. And anyone hit by the shrapnel, come to think of it. At least the shrapnel would be soft.

Still - a kumo. Bay hugged the pillar a bit tighter, as if this would help. He didn't feel like getting eaten, but the entrance he'd used was far behind him in the dark, twisting maze of tunnels and he really wasn't sure where it was anymore. And the air here was making him feel worse. He'd have been less fearful had he still had his bow and arrows, but he'd sold them early on. The money was now gone, but he'd thought he wouldn't need them anymore - not in the civilized, safe city.

"Are you down here to kill it, then? The...whatever it is?" The guard didn't seem able to decide, though almost any option wasn't a good one. Bay considered his options. A night in the cells was at least a night someplace that didn't have monsters in it. Unless the plan was to arrest it...

"If I help you, will you show me the way out?" He asked, a little more timidly. "You can just arrest me afterwards, right?"

[Kiel]

“Yeah, I kinda gotta, you know? Like, we keep getting reports about all the monsters that have come out of the woodwork 'cause they've been disturbed by the quake and everything, you know, and they have this tendency to eat people and the Purifiers work down here but we need the guards topside because things kinda went haywire. After the quake, you know,” he repeated, just in case this guy, like most everyone else Kiel knew, struggled to keep up with him. He didn't stop to take a breath until then so he guessed it was possible.

“Dude, I wasn't going to arrest you, man.” His brain bypassed the offer of help at first. “Like, I dunno if there are laws against you being down here, just like, no way it's safe, you know. Like, even without the monsters, why would you be down here? Are you a Nyad? Like, if you're trying out for the Purifiers or something, I'm surprised they told you to come down here on your own because...” It was completely out of the realms of his understanding that anyone, even someone homeless, would choose to come down here.

Kiel's brain caught up then, and his eyes totally lit up. “Like, for sers? Man, dude, that'd be awesome! Like, Zeph's totally gonna kill me if I get hurt again because I went off on my own, you know?” Even though that's exactly what he'd done. “He's been crazy clingy since we got back from Acantha and, like, I'm pretty sure the dude would actually kill me. Just, like, throttle me or something and wrap my corpse up in cotton wool or something. Or, you know, like, tie me to the bed or whatever. Which, like, ooh.” Distracted by sudden kinky thoughts, Kiel tripped over something disgusting. Which was no small feat considering he'd been standing still. Or, like, as still as he could get when he was never actually still.

Lifting one foot awkwardly out of the way so he could get a better look, Kiel totally used the blue glow from his COM to get a better look at the 'something disgusting'. Then totally regretted it. “Like, ew, dude, is that a head?” A skull with, like, goo covering it instead of skin and hair. Like it was partially digested or melted by acid or something. Kiel's shriek was totally manly. “Like, ewwwwwwww.”

[Bay]

"Curiosity killed the cat, but where people are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance."

Bay watched Kiel with an expression that shifted constantly, but in the end just landed at unmasked puzzlement and stayed that way. He...wasn't really sure what the man was talking about. He was glad he wasn't going to get arrested for being homeless too close to...well, too close to the city's waste. And what the man said about the monsters made sense - he wondered if it had been like that in the Forest, when the quake hit. Bay had been on the road when the tremors hit, the effects on his immediate area relatively minor, but the city of Alexandria itself had been testament enough that the effects to other places were hardly minor. And even animals had been hard hit...and probably benefited from the ruins.

The rest of what Kiel said just made Bay stare, wide eyed. He wasn't sure why someone would tie someone to a bed when they wanted to kill them. It was just faster to snap their neck, wasn't it? But Kiel seemed to like the idea, which made it stranger -

Maybe the man didn't mean literally kill. Bay flushed as his brain put two and two together and decided he didn't need to stick his nose into that.

The man hadn't answered Bay's original question, though. Bay decided that was alright, and secured Fen, jumping off the pillar down to Kiel's level. It was a long drop, and Bay's automatic reaction to that was to utilize his air power - drawing a huge amount of the tunnel's air towards him to slow his fall to a gentle jump, his bare feet landing softly on the cement walkway below. The blast of air didn't help with the smell any, but the small puffs of fresh air that came with it made him feel a little bit better. He looked at the object Kiel had just found, curiously.

"That does appear to be a skull, yes," he said, as the waste shifted it and the wild wind around him died down. It was lacking a jawbone. For someone who jumped and squealed at the sight of guards, he had little reaction to a skull. It was just a skull, after all; it wasn't like it was dangerous. "The rest of the skeleton may be nearby, yes?" More than anything, he seemed curious. He stroked Fen as she chattered on his shoulder. "Perhaps they drowned," he added, a bit more cheerfully than was really called for.

[Kiel]

“Drowned?” Kiel eyed the not-Zanaryan sideways. “Like, dude, are you for sers?” Eyebrows pinched, Kiel swivelled his head to look at the skull again, then kinda tentatively sorta nudged it with the tip of his boot. The water sloshed, already rippling from Bay's totally awesome display of air-manipulation (Kiel was totally going to flip over that later. Like, you know, when there wasn't a skull right in front of him, okay?), and the skull bobbed. “Like, I dunno, man, it looks half digested to me, you know? Like, I'm pretty sure bodies don't rot that way naturally, you know?” Well, maybe. Like, he'd seen corpses before, you know, but they were often picked clean already so it was kind of hard to judge whether this was natural decomp or, like, how a kumo digested things on the outside before chowing down, you know?

“Ummm, but, like. I'm thinking now is probably a great time to get outta here, you know? Like, you wanted to leave, right? Like, I think I'll come back with, like, an army or three, wahahahaha.” Like, if he was on his own, Kiel probably wouldn't think this hard about the danger, but he had learned some things recently, like that breaking bones really hurt and Zeph's face was scary when he thought Kiel was going to die, and like how he'd felt like he was being ripped down the middle by guilt when he thought Zeph was going to die. Because of him. Because he rushed into things and leaped before looking and then got his friends and his boyfriend in trouble because of it. And it was kind of his job as a kind-of guard to protect citizens and civilians and, like, Kiel wasn't sure if the not-Zanaryan dude was a drifter or, like, just a homeless Alexandrian down on his luck or something, but the guy was in his city (or, like, under it still counted, you know?) so it was his duty to keep the guy alive, you know?

Kiel had also learned that kumos didn't always live alone, and there was no way under Hel he was going to run into a nest of them without some serious backup, and now that he'd had time to stop and talk and see skulls, he was questioning his own sanity in coming down here alone. He may even be on the verge of a panic attack which was just, like, okay, so that was weird. Kiel was nothing if not full of bravado, you know, he didn't do panic.

“Okay, so, like, I'm pretty sure it's back this way. Like, ninety... eighty percent sure. Just, like, keep an eye out for moving shadows, okay, and cobwebs. The cobwebs suck. Like, I'm pretty sure literally, too, 'cause they're so sticky it's like... a sticky thing. Or something. So, like, why were you down here anyway?”

[Bay]

"Curiosity killed the cat, but where people are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance."

Bay stiffened up, blushing in embarrassment when the man disagreed with him. But it became quickly evident he wasn't being faced with the same sort of scorn that he'd been treated with at home for saying silly things, so he tried to let it pass. He didn't know enough, he was sure. As far as he knew, the man before him had a lot of experience with half-digested skulls. "I wouldn't know," he remarked, carefully. "All the half-eaten corpses I've seen are - they leave the bones alone. Mostly." Usually they'd gotten chewed on a bunch, or still had meat.

He couldn't imagine fitting an army in here. It was much too small. But the guard's general advice of let's get the hell out of here was agreeable enough to Bay, who nodded a bit more eagerly than was strictly called for. Fen chittered again, her tiny beady eyes looking at Kiel curiously. Bay shushed her, not wanting the tiny bat's chittering to attract whatever this monster was - kumo or not. He scooped her up, sliding her into his hood, the way it lay against his back forming a kind of pouch.

He started after Kiel, though the man's uncertainty as to the way back instantly worried him. Bay had to admit he probably couldn't have found his way out either.

"It was warm down here, and-" Somehow 'and there were no guards' didn't seem the best thing to say, given his present company. "It was quiet. T-there didn't seem to be anyone around, so..." So what? He'd curled up in the sewers to catch a few winks and try to read when he'd found a light. Somehow he didn't want to say that. What a dignified life he led...

------------------------------
Sorry for the delay...the new school ter,'s first projects are sort of overwhelming. x___x.

[Kiel]

OOC: No worries, hon. ^^;

“So, like, what?” Kiel asked, like, totally unaware he was mirroring Bay's own thoughts. “It kinda stinks, you know?” The dude wasn't as smelly as other Zanaryans he'd met, despite Mickey's nose-wrinkling that day in the market, but, like, Kiel figured they had just as good a sense of smell as any 'Varian, you know, so he couldn't imagine the appeal of the sewers even if they were warm. Which was kinda gross, when he thought about it, so Kiel just kinda glossed over the hows and whys of the sewers being anything but, like, tunnels.

Except, like, moving on from that thought made him collide with the realisation that, like, probably should have hit him before. “Dude! Like, dude, you're poor.” He wasn't being mean or pointing it out to humiliate the other dude. Like, Kiel was used to travelling a lot and didn't always get to stay in nice places with a roof over his head, so the whole squatting/camping thing didn't really faze him. Just, like, he rarely came face to face with people who were less fortunate than him, you know? At least, before the quake. After, there were more people on the streets begging or, like, trying to, and entire neighbourhoods in the poorer areas of town had just collapsed because wood and thatch just wasn't sturdy against that kind of violence, you know?

So the idea that this guy was squatting and sleeping in the sewer because he had no where else to go was kind of a shocker. Like, way more than it ought to be given that he himself had told the guy to move on. “But, like, I didn't mean you had to sleep in the sewer! Like, dude, that's kinda gross, you know?” Again, he didn't mean to be cruel. Kiel never did. It was just, like, horrifying to him to realise the guy was so bad off he had no other choice.

And then Kiel froze, mouth open around an invitation to, like, stay at his place or something, when he heard a splash down the tunnel to his right and caught a glimpse of a huge shadow cast by the blue glow of his COM. “Um. Like. Dude. You saw that, right? Like, I'm pretty sure that's the way we need to go, you know? Like, maybe let's go this way instead.” He hesitated, though, like, torn between the direction he was 90% sure of and the thought of getting lost if they went the definitely wrong way, versus heading into an almost definite battle with a creature he still couldn't determine just from its shadow. Like, the absence of cobwebs so far suggested it wasn't a kumo. This close to its apparent feeding grounds, they'd almost definitely have walked into something sticky by now. But that meant it could be a gytrash, or a naga, or, like, a bunch of other things Kiel couldn't even think of right now.

Yeah, leaving the not-Zanaryan to decide seemed like a great idea. And then it dawned on Kiel that he didn't even know his name. “So, like. I'm Kiel, by the way.”