Aaaaand...enter a certain short pig-loving kid (into Ivor and Petra's lives, that is; can you imagine how thrilled they're gonna be?)!
The sight of guards - whether positioned in plain sight or skulking in whatever hiding places they could find - strewn over just about any still-functional pathway was by no means an uncommon one. More than a few of them needed only a signal from Stella to draw back and let the group pass without comment. As for the others, the ring of Petra dropping iron into their hands was enough for them to think better of it.
Just as well, really. A pile of corpses at every other corner tended not to add much to the surroundings.
On one particular path, however, Stella put out a hand by way of a command to halt. "You see those ones?"
Ivor nodded to the two up ahead, whose coal-black attire wasn't exactly inconspicuous, even at this distance. "Oh, we've had a few dances together."
Stella looked down her nose at him (and silently gloated over finally being able to do so when he normally towered over her). "Then you'll know that they can't be bought, won't you?" she asked, with an eye roll that how disparaged seriously they took their jobs. Ivor almost snorted. What a hypocrite she was.
Petra pressed herself against the side of an adjacent ruin and thrust her head through a gaping, jagged hole in its crumbling walls. Her sharp eyes spied a rectangle of daylight spilling in through an opposite wall - which happened to lead to a road that intersected the one they'd planned to take. "Through here?" she suggested, though it was more statement than question. Ivor ducked straight under the hole without waiting for Stella's agreement.
It took some seconds for his eyes to adjust to the murky gloom, but he crept further, unperturbed. Something crunched underfoot - whether glass, remnants of wrecked furniture or something else altogether. Petra and Stella were on his heels, their mouths twisting almost instantly. It wasn't hard to understand why when a vile brew of odours assaulted Ivor's nose. Mildew, rusty metal, spoiled food...mingled with putrid breath.
Even swathed in semi-darkness, there was no mistaking the shambling footsteps of a seething carpet of Withered, whose chests heaved laboriously. Empty contorted shell after empty contorted shell that knew no more than their twisted teeth and black fingernails and the eagerness to sink them into guts.
With a battle cry, Petra sprang into action; her iron pickaxe (for lack of a sword) swished through the sour stifling air like a whip. Ivor took advantage of this distraction by uncorking one of his vials with his teeth and downing its pearlescent blue contents. Those monstrosities could still catch his scent when his form melted away into invisibility like this, especially the ones whose eyes had mouldered away and fallen into their heads, but as long as he maintained a light step, he could slip into the fray and drive his blade into their necks with few difficulties.
All was confusion, blind instinct; weapons slashed without stopping and the pool of carcasses at their feet grew until, at last, the demonic screeches and whimpers faded.
Ivor waded through the mass of purple and black, kicking them aside with a scowl. Twelve years had well accustomed him to rotting bodies. Even if, sometimes, the canker could only be found within inner recesses. In hearts poisoned and mind corrupted by something other than the Withersickness.
On happening to look up as the three of them made it back into open air (skidding several times on blackened entrails), he wasn't terribly surprised to see Stella perched neatly atop her llama again, like there'd been no interruption whatsoever. "I - we - want someone we can trust with a piece of business like this...I expect the pair of you will have to do. You look just about smart enough to take care of it. You'll both be paid quite handsomely for your time, your inconvenience, etcetera etcetera; don't get your underwear in a twist about that."
Ivor, now that his breath had caught up with him enough to indulge in a lengthy grumbling mutter, swiftly did so. As if he'd be at all inclined to sacrifice his hours, days - possibly weeks - over something so- so tedious unless there was some likelihood of ample compensation. Like a chest of gold at the end of the world's most onerous rainbow. Not that those were very frequent these days.
"That's just business, right, Stella?" Petra quipped darkly, not-so-playfully jabbing the other woman with a bony elbow. Though her expression fell into a slight frown upon Stella's outer jacket slipping to the side, revealing a deep crimson stain dampening the white fabric underneath. "Oh," she muttered. "What's with-?"
"Nothing," Stella snapped. Pursing her lips, she tweaked her jacket back into place as if tugging on a mask. One hand took a swipe at Lluna to wrest more speed out of her (earning a disgusted look from Petra) and she trotted on ahead, with a toss of her head like some sort of pinstriped princess.
The redhead cast her an up-and-down glance. "Not gonna collapse on us, are you?" The question was loaded with tinges of consternation as well as sarcasm. After all, Stella was meant to be steering her and Ivor towards whatever mission she had for them - and to the 'substantial reward' she'd alluded to. It went ignored by Stella all the same.
"She'd better not give us away," Ivor told his companion in an undertone, glowering at Stella's back. The woman clearly didn't like Aiden (well, neither did Ivor, but he was hardly going to be forming a Stella Fan Club anytime soon either), which was likely why she'd had few qualms about metaphorically tossing him to the wolves to further the ends of the Blaze Rods, or whatever that syndicate of Isa's called themselves. Really, there was nothing stopping her from taking it upon herself to do the same to Ivor and Petra - provided Isa didn't object. And why should she object?
Scapegoats were, after all, convenient.
The sun was in full bloom now, and had been for a while; its light threw every deformity, every decaying half-structure hunched in straggles and every sliver of splintered glass carpeting the road, into sharp relief, down to the very dirt clinging to trailing cobwebs. No smoke billowed from a single one of those collapsed chimneys anymore. No lights or faces brightened the windowpanes, nor were there any hands left to wipe the smears from them.
Stella was the one to break the hanging quiet, as clumsily as if she'd taken an axe to it. "Here's the place." More relief slackened her taut shoulders than had any right to be there. It was growing harder with each step to bite her tongue and hide her winces at every bolt of pain shooting through her side.
How she recognised the building in a sea of so many like it, Ivor couldn't fathom. It was kept somewhat neater, perhaps, the cracks papered over time and time again - yet it was still little more than yet another fractured pile of wood and stone. For a moment, he was seized with summoned recollections of the ways certain builders and engineers could make the simplest of constructions something worth remembering...the ways she could...
No. Don't think about her.
Petra paused at Ivor's side, but wisely decided not to comment on how his hands had abruptly stilled. Stella, however, remained oblivious. In one movement, she leaned over (grimacing a little at the action) and unlatched the tarnished door. "Be our guest," she said, the ghost of a smirk on her lips, before gracing them with a dismissive wave of the hand.
"Can I assume you're going to drop the pantomime and get yourself cleaned up?" Ivor questioned with thoroughly mock curiosity, by way of wasting his breath on a goodbye. "Or have you outlived your usefulness too?"
Her hand instinctively went to where the wound was concealed beneath her jacket, no doubt bleeding steadily, but she merely rolled her eyes like he couldn't possibly be worth her precious time. "Ta-ta." She glanced back briefly, bent on having the last word. "Don't let the door hit you on the way, will you?"
The house - if it could be called that - was silent. Stagnant. Or so it could be assumed, before Ivor and Petra strode their way in. Sometimes the floor, partially laid with green carpet, would deaden their footfalls; at others, they were greeted with patches of bare stone.
At least, it was empty of the mangled groans of undiscovered swarms of Withered, the hisses of bloodthirsty spiders, whatever else had become commonplace in buildings like this one over the years. As though all the sounds of times gone by had retreated into the walls, or simply fallen off the face of the universe. Along with Isa, apparently. There was no trace of the leader to be seen.
For a haunt of someone like her, it wasn't much to look at, the feeble rays of light seeping in from outside notwithstanding. Low ceiling which traces of a recent scrubbing hadn't managed to rid of crawling damp. Small sofa half-buried under a tangle of blankets, evidently there to serve as a makeshift bed for someone of no great height - and then a shrill noise that sounded oddly animalistic and a hushed, distinctly unfamiliar voice.
"Reuben, Reuben-"
Unsurprisingly enough, it wasn't Queen Blaze Rod they came face to face with. Rather, it was some scrawny child, dark-skinned and with a cloud of black hair - save for one strip of magenta - that hung over their forehead. Both of their hands were currently occupied with a pig (of all things) that was watching Ivor with a frankly ridiculous imitation of a glare.
"Wow, Isa, you look younger every time we see you," deadpanned Petra, looking decidedly unimpressed.
Ivor uttered an irritated sound at the sight, raising a hand to greet his face and muttering into it. "Will this endless parade of useless babblers never cease?" In a harsher voice, he deigned to address this new nuisance. "Stella told us we'd be consulting with Isa, not- whatever you're supposed to be. Give us one reason why we shouldn't just walk out of here and go back to our peaceful little lives." Sour sarcasm enveloped the last few words.
"The payment?" muttered Petra pointedly. He opted to ignore that.
"'Cause Isa's on her way, I guess?" the kid ventured, greenish gaze darting between the two.
The man examined them cursorily. Certainly not worth trusting - though that wasn't saying much. Barely anyone was. Yet the prospect of the payment, as Petra called it, lingered quite insistently at the back of his mind. That being the case... "I suppose it wouldn't kill me to wait a few minutes longer." With that unceremonious announcement, he lowered himself into one of the chairs pushed up against an unsteady table. Petra, meanwhile, braced one foot to the nearest wall and leaned against it with tightly crossed arms. Her unruly red hair and striped bandana drew a stark contrast with the coarse wood.
As far as Ivor was concerned, the silence that stretched between them was a more than welcome one.
The kid didn't get the message, though. "So...uh..." Their voice died faster than a skeleton under dawn's light when their eyes met Ivor's hardened ones, but the urge to say something regardless seemed too great to bear. Ivor was on the point of searching the place for some duct tape when-
"Petra...Ivor." And out of the gloom that gathered in one of the most shadowy corners stepped a tall woman, dark hair hanging loose and windswept down her back. "I trust your wait hasn't been too unbearable."
Ivor couldn't have bit back the snap in his voice if he'd wanted to. "Oh, don't strain yourself. Your...friend here almost soured the deal, is all." The child averted their gaze, glaring a little at the floor.
"Okay, out with it. Enough of all the cloak-and-dagger," declared Petra, eyes narrow. "What's this 'something' you want us to smuggle for you?"
"What's- what's the deal with these guys?" the kid interjected uncertainly, also turning to Isa for an answer. The woman held back on responding to either of them. Instead, she gave Ivor and Petra a significant look, which then shifted to rest on the kid.
The latter's eyes widened. They released their grip on the pig long enough to gesture towards the two strangers. "With...them? But...I thought you promised-"
The protest was sharply cut off by Ivor, who'd also put the pieces together. As it turned out, they formed perhaps the inanest idea he'd ever heard (and he'd spent many years having to listen to the things Magnus came out with...wherever the man was now). "No. Absolutely not. We're not saddling ourselves with another damn thing." The child flinched slightly, but he didn't bother to look at them. "I'm no babysitter, Isa," he continued in a low growl. "I did not sign on for this."
Isa heaved a low sigh, raising her eyes to the ceiling. "Neither did I," she replied simply, before adding, "Do you really think I'd take the time and the trouble to arrange something of this nature if it wasn't vitally important - to all of us?"
"'Us', or just you and your cronies?" Petra was eyeing the kid (who'd paled several shades in the past ten seconds) dubiously out of the corner of her eye - though Ivor couldn't help but notice that she was gnawing on her lip, evidently irresolute.
Isa must have perceived this too, for she pressed on. "Whatever Stella's promised you, you may have it. Consider it...a token of esteem. All I ask is that you allow Jesse to travel with you for a while. Keep them as healthy as you can and take them as far as Sky City; I've ensured that some of my people will already be there to await your arrival."
Ivor quirked up an eyebrow. "And then they'll be taken off our hands, I assume?"
Jesse, or whatever their name was, shifted awkwardly, mumbling something along the lines of 'I'm not that bad'. The pig now settled in their lap gave a soft oink, as if in support. And almost perfectly in unison, both person and pig raised an imploring gaze to Isa's face. "Can't you do it? And- and on the way, I can show-"
"Jesse." Isa sighed again, massaging her temples. "You're acting as though I want things to be this way. I haven't forgotten what I said to you...we can talk it over more fully afterwards." Maybe it was only Ivor who heard the waver in her voice. Not that it mattered an iota to him.
Petra lifted her chin a little, scanning Isa closely. "Aaaand how do we know all this 'handsome payment' talk isn't just some dirty trick you guys are trying to pull?"
The other woman's lips curved up faintly. "A fair enough question," she conceded. "If you must, you can stay back a while and I'll allow you to trust the judgement of your own eyes. And...Ivor can go on ahead with Jesse, I suppose."
Ivor opened his mouth to express exactly how he felt about such an arrangement, but a dirty look from Petra - who had leaned forward with interest while Isa was speaking - halted him. Accordingly, he settled for the most venomous eye roll he could muster. Idiot girl. Perhaps she read his thoughts or merely caught his expression; in any case, she displayed her great maturity in the face she pulled at him behind the others' backs.
Isa cleared her throat, brushing powderings of dirt and soot and dust off her clothes, and turned to the child hovering nearby. "Are you ready to go?"
They cast her another look in mute appeal, although she remained seemingly unmoved. At least they didn't look thrilled at the prospect either, Ivor distantly noted; their feet were visibly dragging somewhat. Especially as they were about to pass Isa. "Stay safe, okay?" they offered lamely.
"And to you as well."
The kid lingered a second or two longer, as though hoping for a further word of advice or reassurance from her. When none came, they sidled closer to where Ivor was now standing cold and stiff as the stone floor, their pig dutifully scampering after them. The top of their downy head barely came up to his throat. "'M cool if he's cool."
"It's settled, then," Petra cut in. She glanced from one to the other, fingers tapping a light rainfall against the wall at her back. "You're both cool."
Ivor did not particularly agree with this claim. In fact, his face was as dark as brewing storm clouds. Teeth clenched, he threw open the door and, sparing the kid - Jesse - and their pig a scowling glance, jerked his head in the direction of a world heavy with the stench of twelve years' death and decay.
"Get going, then."
Jesse appears to be very important to Isa and Stella's faction (and maybe even more people) in some way. What sort of events will ensue, I wonder…
It's not super often that I write this much dialogue, so please let me know how good of a job I did with this ;-;
Stay safe, my dears.
(*awkwardly tips hat*)
~ Rainy