"Hey. Wake up."
Ahken groaned. A dream hung in suspended animation, uncertainly waiting for something to happen, before bursting like a soap bubble. He buried his face further into the pillow.
"Wake up before I douse you in ice water."
Ahken opened his eyes.
His room came into focus. It was dark, but Ahken could see the sky beginning to lighten from outside the grimy window. Aherran sat on the foot of his bed, a small smile on her face.
Slowly, thinking that the cushion on his bed seemed a lot thinner than it did last night, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. "Damn, it's early," he said.
"Oh, don't be such a baby," Aherran said. "You'll be thanking me when I tell you why I woke you."
Ahken's eyes moved to the letter on his bedside table. It had not been moved, and he felt somewhat relieved. "Huh," he said. "Challenge accepted." He sat up on the edge of the bed and yawned. It really was early; the sun still hadn't come up over the wall, and the people of the Lower District, early risers by nature, still slept.
"Alright. Two words," Aherran said. "Crop. Circle."
Ahken's eyes widened. Crop circles were by far the most lucrative areas in the city. Implings clustered around the things like nothing else. "No way. Where?"
"Just outside the city." Aherran grinned. "Is that interesting enough to bother you?"
"That close?" Implings usually stayed as far away from cities as possible, and crop circles rarely formed anywhere but the most rural areas.
"Yeah. Not far from the tunnel, either."
The tunnel was really a patch of dirt on either end of the thinnest part of the wall made soft by endless use by people looking to leave the city without the guards knowing. It was hard work to excavate it, but it was invaluable to anyone who wanted to leave the city without the guards knowing.
It also attracted criminals in swarms, but Ahken liked to look at the bright side of things where possible.
"So? Ready to go?"
"Now?" Ahken asked.
"Sure. When else?"
Ahken considered this, and shrugged. "OK. I'll be right out."
Aherran left. As Ahken started to shed his armor, his eyes fell on the letter again. The words, burned into his mind by now, still made him uneasy to think of, but the letter itself looked frail in the morning light. On an impulse, he picked it up as he walked out the door.
…
When they arrived at the tunnel, it had already been excavated.
"Damn," Aherran said. "What do you think? Smugglers?" Her voice was tenser than usual.
"I don't think smugglers leave the tunnel open," Ahken replied. He knelt down to the mouth, and ran his hand along the edges. "I'd guess someone looking for the crop circle."
"Figures," Aherran sighed. "I should've covered my tracks better."
Ahken glanced up at her. "Well, the work has been done for us. We might as well use it, see what's left of the circle."
Aherran shrugged. "Yeah, alright."
Aherran went first. The tunnel was larger than it usually was, which was a blessing when Ahken had to move through it, but frightening when one considered the kind of man who'd need that sort of passageway.
Aherran reached the other side. "Your turn," she called through the tunnel. "Don't wriggle too much, this tunnel is shoddier work than ours."
Ahken groaned and started to crawl into the space. Anyone worth their brain-weight knew to dig the tunnel so that the risk of collapse was as small as possible. Big, dumb, and opportunistic, Ahken thought. Sure sounds like a smuggler to me.
He made it through the tunnel with no issues. He brushed himself off, and stared out over the grasslands. Silvarea loomed in the distance, and Ahken thought he saw the first gleams of snowfall on the mountains. "Alright," he said. "Let's see what's left of it."
The sun was fully raised by the time Aherran and Ahken found the crop circle.
It was large, larger than any he'd seen before. The wind whirled about it like a hurricane, and he spotted several implings already wandering about. They hadn't seemed to notice the two humans just yet.
It was not, strictly speaking, a crop circle. Most of Senntisten's farms had long been forced to relocate awkwardly inside the city, to avoid being destroyed by enemy forces. Instead, it was just grass that was flattened by the wind. The fairies usually appeared in fields of wheat or grain, but Ahken wasn't complaining now.
"Wow," Ahken laughed. "Wow! This isgreat! It doesn't look like any smugglers have gotten to it, either."
"Yeah," Aherran said heavily.
"How did you find out about this?"
Aherran shrugged. "I was wandering around outside the city. Just seeing if there was… anything of worth," she said defensively.
"Just wandering outside the city?" Ahken asked, frowning. Leaving the city was not illegal, but there was no reason to other than travel to a different city, and no one was insane enough these days to attempt that.
"Oh, come on, is this really the time to scold me? There are so many implings here!"
"That's not what I-" Ahken started, but Aherran was already gone. "-meant," he finished, and shrugged. If Aherran wanted to be mysterious, that was her prerogative.
He stepped into the outskirts of the circle and immediately felt the supernatural tug on his mind that pleaded with him to enter it. He resisted it. Everyone had heard stories of people entering and never returning, or changelings who came back not quite the same as they were before.
He found one almost immediately. It was a young one, nothing particularly special. Young implings didn't tend to amass the hoards that other implings did, but they were easier to catch, and Ahken didn't want his cough screwing up a longer hunt.
He centered on it. Most of the other implings had scattered into the wider field, with Aherran following, but this one stumbled about lazily, uncaring of its surroundings. Ahken didn't know if it was touched in the head or pursuing an arcane goal that he had no knowledge of, but whatever the reason, it was easy prey.
He followed it as slowly as he could. His heart rate pounded, even though hunting implings was a simple task. Around him, the grass whirled, flattened nearly completely by the comparatively gentle wind. The impling he focused on hovered uncertainly, and time stopped for a moment.
He lunged for it.
It ducked out of his reach, letting out a high-pitched cry, before disappearing. Ahken stopped, and scanned around patiently. Implings never went war when they vanished.
It appeared a distance away, and Ahken started to chase it again. So far, so good, he thought to himself. The cough had not started up again, and with any luck, he'd have what the impling had taken and be on his way.
It was finally in range again, and he made another try for it. Slowly, he increased his speed. The impling froze, and Ahken almost laughed. Young implings were easy. This time, as he clapped his hands around the creature, it hardly put up a fight, and Ahken found himself staring into its alien face as its eyes widened.
Ahken grinned in response. The impling suddenly burst into action and tried to wriggle free, but Ahken held it tight.
"Alright," he said. "You know the drill."
The impling glowered at him.
"Oh, come on. I know you have something. Give it to me, we'll call it a day."
"Bah," the impling said. It wriggled again, half-heartedly, and gave up, slumping in Ahken's hands. "Humans. Think ye're all great cause you have these big cities, an' we try to get in on it an' what do we get? Caught an' trussed an' robbed!"
"Fascinating. Tick-tock."
The impling's wide, unnatural eyes stared up at Ahken. It might have looked kind of cute if it weren't so… weird. Its ears flattened on its head, and it looked even angrier, if possible. "Humans," it repeated venomously. "I hate humans. 'Specially ones who pal around with the folk you do."
"Yeah, well-" Ahken stopped. "What do you mean?"
"The letter you're carrying around," the impling snarled. "What did ye think it is, an invitation to a sleep-over? Those're dangerous folk."
Ahken became acutely aware of the weight in his pocket, and he felt guilty for some reason that he didn't understand. "How did you know about the letter?"
"'S in my job description, isn't it?" the impling asked. "We can tell what people like to keep hidden. Eons of practice. 'S evolution, or something like that."
Ahken frowned. "What do you mean by dangerous?"
"Implings spend a lot of time around the city, ye know, and when we're not makin' off with whatever you lot ain't got the sense to nail down, we… observe."
Ahken wrinkled his nose.
"Don't have a dirty mind. We fly around, you know, and we look everywhere. 'Ent anywhere in the city humans don't leave some kind of trash lying around. And we watch humans -you're fascinating, ye know, you lot don't pay enough attention to yourselves- an' we see things, like the kinda people it was what wrote that letter in your pocket. And let me tell you," the impling said, leaning closer, "there's only blood down that road. Dangerous people."
"Who?" Ahken wrote, forgetting himself in his haste to listen.
The impling leered. "Let me go, an' then I'll tell you."
Ahken glared at the creature. "Right. I'll just-"
He paused. The cough was coming on. This was going to be a bad one, he could tell. It felt like razor wire pushing its way past his lungs as it rose up in his chest.
When it emerged, it lasted for almost half a minute, and when it ended Ahken's hands were empty.
He looked up. The impling floated languidly in the air, staring at him. "Humans," it said again, without so much of the anger that it held before, and vanished again, this time nowhere to be found.
Ahken found himself alone in the field. The implings were beginning to vanish, and the wind was dying. "Dammit," he said.
He heard Aherran laughing from behind him. He turned around. She was grinning widely and held out her hands. They were full with impling detritus. It was mostly old things that didn't hold anything but sentimental value for whatever person had lost it, but Ahken saw some arrowheads, herbs, and even a small gold ring nestled within.
"This," she said, still with the grin plastered on her face, "was the best idea ever, of all time, that I've ever had, if I say so myself."
Ahken tried a grin back. "Yeah, it was."
"Get anything?" Aherran asked, and Ahken's stomach plummeted.
"Er," he said.
Aherran frowned. "Nothing? Really? What happened?"
Ahken shrugged. "I was hunting one, and I had it, but the cough…"
"Oh," Aherran said, and Ahken hated the pity in her voice. "That's OK," she said after a moment. "I got enough for both of us." The grin returned, and it was as if nothing was wrong.
They set off back to the city once again. The crop circle had vanished completely at this point, the grass rising placidly back into place.
"A gold ring!" Aherran said. "We'll eat like kings for a week!" She laughed aloud. Ahken couldn't help but laugh with her. By the time they'd arrived at the tunnel, he'd pushed thoughts of the letter and of his cough to the back of his mind, and he laughed with Aherran as they talked about getting a dog with their new-found wealth. The sun shone down lazily, and Ahken felt content.
…
That night, as he lay in the too-thin bed and stared at the ceiling, Ahken looked at the letter again.
The words had not changed, of course, but Ahken felt as though he were reading them anew, his stomach churning with uneasiness. Dangerous people, the impling's voice echoed.
He turned over in his bed. Well, so what? There was hardly anyone in the Lower District who wasn't dangerous, and it's not like he had a reason to trust a squeaky little thing of indeterminate origin to be his informant, anyway. And if the letter was telling the truth…
Well, he and his family wouldn't have to scrabble at crop circles ever again.
Ahken knew he'd come to a decision.
He did not dream that night.
Well, gentlepeople, I hope you haven't forgotten about me! I'm pretty excited to be back. Sorry about the hiatus, but school's begun and I've been busy acclimating (not to mention I've had a bad case of writer's block, but that's not important right now).
Just a few notes. I know in-game implings don't really come from crop circles, but since crop circles do lead to Puro-Puro and it's not known where implings come from anyway, I thought I'd take the opportunity to peddle a little bit of headcanon.
Also, I have no idea of the actual practicality of farms inside of a major metropolitan area, so you'll just have to take my word for it on that one.
Finally, I expect to update faster from here on out. (No, really guys, stop laughing! I'm serious!) Since I'm mostly settled back into routine, my productivity will probably go up by quite a bit. Cheers, and have a wonderful day!