The man led us into another room with a table already set for dinner, where another man - obviously the owner of the shop, what with his huge arms and soot streaked face - and a young girl sat.
Pleasantries were passed around about the same time as the plates.
"So what was all that about?" I managed to ask after staring at my plate for a good while.
"Hm?" Adonathiel hummed around a mouthful.
"The vampires. What was that whole thing about?"
A wry scoff escaped the blacksmith, startling me. "Don't pay them any mind. They're throwaways from Vorador's rabble."
"Father, please." The small voice at his side admonished, a glare that seemed a little too tired to be worn on a face that young leveled at him.
"I have somewhat of an agreement with them," Adonathiel interjected calmly, reaching for another chunk of bread. "and they like to harass me whenever I take ever so slightly longer than expected to complete my end of the bargain. They seem to take a certain kind of joy in forgetting that it takes a long time to travel cross-country on foot, especially considering many of their requests require me to go traipsing up and down the entire length of Nosgoth."
"What'd they threaten you with this time?"
She paused for a mouthful of roast, waving towards me as if starting a sentence before her mouth was actually empty. "It's not important. They're just being entitled and impatient. Not to mention," she addressed the rest of the table, "helping this one over here kind of put a dent in my usual pace. She had a dead wyvern land right on top of her."
"Dead? Who killed it?"
"Sarafan probably." The older man offered. "They've been attempting to clean up the mess the circle left behind when they died. All manner of beasts have been let loose, and they've doubled their numbers in an attempt to compensate. It's going to be harder to travel as well, they're scouring the populace for people who might pose a threat to their power. Leif over in Avernus was telling me about how all the leftover cultists and cenobites are being drafted into the Sarafan, probably because of their experience with dimension magic. Azimuth's old apprentice volunteered of course."
"That woman? I heard she's got a third eye just like Azimuth did, and that it travels around her head. Eugh." The girl shuddered.
Adonathiel laughed. "Well, you know what they say about having eyes in the back of your head..."
The older man quietly cleared his throat. "Is the food not to your liking?"
"Huh?" The staring contest I was having with my plate interrupted, I took a moment to realize that I was the one being addressed. And another moment to understand the question. One more to form words that could be understood as human speech and hopefully not the muttering of a bog monster, or something else with similarly slow and sticky lips.
"Oh. I'm just... I'm not all that hungry right now. I'm sorry if it seemed rude..."
"Are you okay? You seem a bit jumpy."
As if to illustrate the girl's point, I'd startled as soon as she began speaking.
I worked my mouth some more in an attempt to somehow make more words come out, but luckily Adonathiel rescued me before I could begin making noise.
"We've seen a little more than we would have liked today. I'm sure she's just tired."
A flicker of recognition went across the girls face, and she glanced at me with a tinge of concern before returning to her plate. "Oh."
I returned to quietly nursing my drink. It was a sort of weak ale, being that water was usually avoided for obvious reasons.
"Have you picked up anything new on the way here?" The older man quickly picked up another subject before silence could settle over the table.
"As a matter of fact, I have!" Adonathiel brightened, reaching down to dig through the pack at her feet. She brought up a fistful of delicate chains and thin leather straps, at the end of which dangled a multitude of pendants, trinkets and baubles. She set them down on a clear corner of the table and began arranging them.
"I got a lot of use out of the last one I bought from you, do you have anything else like it? I need something for special occasions." The young girl was already out of her seat and browsing.
"You mean Beguile? I've been practicing since then, I think you'll like what I've done with it~" Adonathiel plucked what looked like a pearl in the grip of a very small and delicate crow's foot sculpted from Hematite out of the pile of trinkets. She shook out the extremely thin chain before settling it over her head.
Immediately my whole body tensed, waiting for the screams.
"Is there, something wrong?" The young noblewoman with an extremely unremarkable face asked while I stared at her as though she were about to catch fire at any moment.
"Nope!" I croaked. "Adonathiel, can I speak to you for a second?"
Leaving the others to peruse her wares, she led me into one of the back rooms.
"What's the matter? You've been acting strange the whole night. Well, I mean, I could take a very good guess, but is there something *new* bothering you?"
"Oh? Um, no, nothing like that. I'm just- Why are you trying to sell them fake magical items that won't work?"
"Fake?" She exclaimed, scandalized. "What makes you think that? They've been my best customers for years, I'd never sell them faulty merchandise!"
"Don't you remember what happened the other day? You tried to heal me and almost banished me to another dimension."
Her brow wrinkled in remembrance before recognition dawned on her face. She smacked her forehead in realization. "Oh goodness I'd almost forgotten about that. Look, you know I'm not from here, and I know that you're not from here either. It's a bit of a compatibility problem you see. Back home I was extremely powerful, but it took me YEARS to use magic again after I came here. At first I thought that I'd become weak, or maybe I was suddenly incapable of doing it at all. I came to realize it wasn't a matter of power, it's just that Nosgoth has it's own unique rules when it comes to magic, and I was still operating on the same rules as my homeland. This is probably true for you as well. I have found a workaround though. I discovered that my magical system is similar to Nosgoth's, except certain types of spells do the wrong thing. For example, I can't let anybody else attempt to heal me, because it translates to transformation magic. Luckily that time I'd turned into a horse instead of say, a bird, or an insect. And on that note, don't let anybody else heal you, or use magic on you if you can help it."
"Wait, if there's so much danger involved, why did you try it with me?"
"I made the mistake of assuming that you would be operating under similar rules, since we're... related. Just don't let anyone use magic on you if you can help it. It could have either minor consequences, like pain, or maybe your left eye won't work right for thirty minutes- "
"That's kind of a specific symptom isn't it?"
"Don't ask. Look, it could get pretty messy. It took me years to figure out what works and what doesn't, and how I can still practice my magic despite using a different system." She reached into her pocket and pulled out some folded, well-worn and yellowed papers. Shaking them out, she stood to my side to let me look at them. Several relatively simple magical diagrams covered them, each comparing what looked like the pillar elements along with another set of symbols I couldn't recognize. "We definitely don't have the time to figure out a working system for you. I'm not even sure if you're able to perform magic in the first place-"
A heavy hollow thudding reverberated through the walls, interrupting Adonathiel.
Alarmed, she cursed under her breath and dashed back into the other room. I followed, slightly slower, fear already crawling it's way up my spine.
I entered just in time to hear the end of a very unwelcome speech booming through the door.
"-under arrest for housing a known fugitive and by extension, participating in crimes against the circle, high treason among them!"
Adonathiel had shoved the rest of her pendants into her pack and had already secured it over her back. I got the distinct impression that we were about to leave.
"There is no circle!" The blacksmith spat, bracing against the door.
There was a tense silence, before several small thuds were heard above us.
"Torches! They intend to burn us alive!"
Mere seconds later, the door came crashing inwards, the man buried underneath a flood of armored feet as the rest of us scrambled for another way out.
The next few moments were a blur. I spotted the girl about to be bisected and yanked her out of the way, the soldier's sword clanging loudly off the anvil that was behind her. The both of us scrambled for the back door, only to have her trip just before reaching it. A downed soldier had caught her by the ankle, and dragged her as she desperately attempted to claw herself away.
Panicking, I reached for the first thing I saw and brought it down hard on him.
I could feel the sickening crunch through the handle of the hammer as his wrist and forearm crumpled. His scream was deafening.
She'd extricated herself from his now limp grasp and was already scrambling to her feet.
I burst outside, squinting against the already smoky air, pausing to watch her run towards the tree line.
Hearing a familiar shout, I turned just in time to see Adonathiel catch the butt of a sword on her temple. She staggered backwards, dazed, while the soldier advanced on her, sword arm drawn back to run her through.
Unthinking, I blindly charged. He tumbled forward, roughly smacking his uncovered head on the cobblestones below. I put all of my weight behind my swing. Blood and small bits of gore flecked my face as his skull abruptly collapsed underneath the heavy blacksmith's hammer. I jarred my wrists as it went straight through him to strike the ground, forcing me to let go of it. Confident he wouldn't be moving any time soon, I went back to get Adonathiel and run before anyone noticed us.
The both of us hobbled away as fast as we could. The hand gripping my shoulder was strangely wet, and I belatedly realized that she'd been slashed up.
Only a few minutes into the surrounding forest and she started sagging against me, her eyes glazing. "That's the second time you've saved my skin." She slurred. She became heavier with each step, before my own legs felt as though they were going to give way, and I had no choice but to drop her.
Her clothes had worryingly large patches of inky red staining them.
"What can I do?" At the moment, I deeply regretted not taking that refresher in first aid.
"In the bag," She managed to grunt out. "the one... the one I used before."
"That amulet? Are you sure this is a good idea?" I said, already sifting through the pile of trinkets. She grunted in affirmative.
I finally pulled it out of the tangle of necklaces. I held it up, considering the snarling face, the eyes looking especially menacing in the muted moonlight. It's not as if I had much of a choice.
Carefully, I slipped it over her neck.
Visibly slackening in relief when nothing horrible happened, I walked back over to the pack to look for anything else that might help. I didn't recognize half of the things inside. I was carefully examining various small vials when I heard a horrible, gut-wrenching sound behind me.
*WWROW*
I looked back in time to see space bending around her.
"Fuck!"
*WUB*
I scrambled to get to her in time, to yank the damned thing off of her before she disappeared, but...
*FFTZZZKKT*
She winked out of existence as I stumbled and rammed my head into the tree she was against.
"FUCK!"
I stayed on the ground this time, clutching my head. Allowing myself a desperate roar of frustration, the weight of my situation caught up to me.
I was in Nosgoth, with no guide or allies, very little idea as to which time period I was in, and no way to get home. I lost the only person willing to help me, my only friend in this place, and it was all my fault. There were demons and vampires and Sarafan about, not to mention how horrible people themselves could be, especially in a place like this, as well as a giant squid that was ready to eat my soul once they had gotten to me, and that's IF the sluagh didn't devour it first. And I was a fleshy young human, with nothing but a crusty pocket knife and an overactive imagination.
I shook terribly, the smell in the clearing grated against my already shredded nerves. The heaviness of blood intermingled with the sting of faulty magic, the deeply disappointing smell of charred cake and something rubbery and acidic.
That goddamn amulet. A distinct memory of her scratching off one of the symbols surfaced in my mind, and I let out an exasperated groan.
I was ready to curl up in a hole and stay there.
Not having the energy to dig, I settled for the quickly cooling dip in the ground where Adonathiel once was. I couldn't think about this right now. I needed to lie down for a minute. Or maybe an hour. Yeah, that sounded good. Cocooning myself in the cloak she'd given me, I curled up against the chill night air.
I refused to move. Even when the Sarafan inevitably found me, since I didn't manage to get very far from the town.
0o0o0o0o0o0
A/N: Yyyyeah, it was kind of clear that those characters were basically throwaways and exposition devices, considering I didn't even give them any names before ushering them out. They may or may not be back if I can find a use for them later. This was just me half-assedly bridging the gap between what I'd already written here, and the things I wanted to actually get into. I'm excited for the stuff that comes later, but I've had to do a lot of re-modeling to actually make a coherent sequence of events out of the jumble of scenes I'd written. It'd probably be better if I just re-wrote the entire first half of the fic, since it's a mess logic-wise, but I'm lazy/don't have the energy for that, so I'm just working with whatever younger me had put on the table.
This is still an incredibly loose project, but advice and critiques are more than welcome. I want to get back into writing again somehow.