He does exactly that, allowing Ais to lead him through a series of winding streets—over balustered bridges and between stooping townhomes. He is not alone in following her, many eyes joining them along the way, despite their mutual desire for privacy.

Somewhat surprisingly, the amount of attention they are paid is relatively inverse to the size of the crowds which fill the streets. As they venture further from the main thoroughfares and deeper the byroads all eyes would turn to them, but once they again near the north-bearing street they slip back into anonymity. A faceless and evermoving crowd that could not care for those it could not see. He imagines it is hard to to recognize Ais when one might only ever grasp the briefest glimpse of golden hair.

Ais moves like the wind, slipping below elbows and around shoulders with an inhuman ease, flowing through the crowds seamlessly. Bell follows like a rolling stone; clunky and loud, but without the influence a boulder might have. Without his blessing he's nothing more than a face in the crowd, drifting at the whims of its pushes and pulls.

He would lose her as the tides of bodies closes in her wake. He darries one way then the other, yet is blocked in both. It is only for the fact that she would double back in search of him that he could make any forward progress. After the second time it happens, she takes to holding his hand in hers as she leads him through.

"There's so many people out today," Bell complains. His face was set in a grimace as he walked sideways in some vain attempt to make himself smaller.

He's tugged away from a group of merry goers and into an alleyway where Ais shrugs her shoulders. "Tonight is the Denatus," she explains, "It didn't used to be like this, but recently there have been a lot of refugees fleeing the conflict in Warusa to the east. This tends to happen nowadays."

"Denatus?" He's never heard of it.

"A council of the gods." She turns to look at him over her shoulder, holding a finger count on her free hand up where he can see them. "They host four annually on the thirteenth floor of Babel; today will be this year's third. It is where they determine the aliases for adventurers. The gods encourage people to take the day to celebrate the strengthening of our adventurers."

"So, does that mean you'll be getting an alias tonight?"

She shakes her head and leads him around a corner then up some stairs. "No. I have one already; it's Kenki. They only award titles to those who level up. I haven't in years, so until I do again my name won't be brought up." She pauses to consider a fork at the top, then goes left. "It's unlikely they would try to change mine anyway. Loki likes it."

Kenki. Sword Princess. It's a name that spans the tongues of the continent. He knows it and knows it well. He'd first heard it from the merchant his grandfather purchased unmentionables from; she'd broken the record for the fastest level up at the time. It's been so long now—and he knows so much more than he had—it only feels like a footnote in her story.

"What does Lady Loki's opinion have to do with anything?"

She stops walking and Bell follows suit. When he looks at her her brow is furrowed, though he can't tell from what. Her nose is upturned and her nostrils flaring as she scents the air, humming in disappointment when she doesn't smell what she wants. "It's like a war in there," she explains after doubling back the way they came and going down the other path. "The purpose of the aliases isn't actually to reward the adventurers, but to torment the newly descended gods of the upper world."

"Huh." That's nice, but he's starting to notice something different. "Hey, Ais?" She hums an acknowledgement as she deeply ponders a loose ceramic gutter. She looks between him and it frequently, as if debating whether he could climb it. It sounds ridiculous, he knows, but … "Are you lost?"

She deflates and suddenly the gutter is the last thing on her mind. "I usually take the rooftops," she admits to him, glum as a plum. "I don't know how anybody can navigate these streets."

"I think they probably stay on the main roads," her grip loosens and he slips his hand from hers, laughing lightly at her put-out expression. He spins and walks backward through the alleyway, hands clasped behind him. "You're an adventurer," he reminds her with a smile, "Let's have an adventure."

That does the trick and she bumps shoulders with him as she catches up. "Fine, but you should know I'm an expert."

He opens his mouth; the words that want to come out sound a lot like 'as am I,' but he's not stupid enough to say them. Instead, he chuckles and tells her, "It's not a competition," then together they walk shoulder-to-shoulder through the sprawling cityscape.

First it's a steep, cobbled hill they find. There are children at the top with three wheelbarrows sitting side-by-side. It's clear they're going to race, and Bell has to tug Ais back before she walks directly into their path.

"What is it?"

He points up at the children. "Look," he says, just as one of the barrows takes a nasty spill. The boy within, a bit older than the rest, jumps out and claps his bleeding hands, laughing and cheering and jeering in equal parts for the remaining two. The sound of their wheels is like thunder, loud and rolling and only growing louder as they near.

A wave in the lay of the stones sends them both careening left, but an old and shattered pot rights their course.

It's neck and neck as they reach the bottom of the hill, and then it's only a matter of who rolls further. At first it seems a girl with cheeks both muddy and ruddy would clinch it, but there's a hole in the road—a missing or sunken stone with only water to replace it. Her wheel goes down and never quite comes back up. Her cart flips, and she's sent soaring.

The landing would be harsh, he remembers thinking, so he doesn't hesitate to step in the way and catch her against his chest. An oomph! leaves him as she makes impact, but it's drowned out by the sound of Ais shattering the broken cart under heel before it could slide into his legs and send him crashing to the stone.

They leave the kids to pick up the pieces of their shattered pride and travel up the hill they'd descended. Some distance after its top there's a square and a fountain with yellowed waters.

After that is something of a park, one with a wide tree at its heart. There's a swing in its branches and a small family eating in the grasses. The daughter wears a dress that matches the stuffed animal she hugs; she's laughing at something the mother whispers to her—tickling her sides, and from a distance a father smiles through the factory soot that covers him.

It's hard to say where their path leads them after that. Left after the smoldering chimney, then right. It's a straight over there, and a double back just then. They run into a fiercely territorial pigeon that takes special offense with their hair. While strong enough to, Ais did not want to hurt it, was adamant in her refusal to— though Bell notably never asks—so they tried a canalside path instead.

A group of young men—perhaps only as old as he would have been at his own journey's start—flock to them when they see Ais, pushing out their chest with bravado in some strange attempt to impress her. They remind Bell of that pigeon, something he shares only once they've escaped.

He's not sure how it happens, but they find themselves on a rooftop terrace. He blames a raised bridge that he recalls going up, but never quite going back down.

On the terrace there's a garden, and in the garden kneels a kindly old woman with sharp ears. She doesn't seem to recognize Ais, so they stay there a while and listen to her talk about her husband. A beloved man now dearly departed. She speaks of the Orario of her youth, a city that now lives only in memory. Her home was her father's then, and the streets were far quieter.

"Back then," she tells them, "It wasn't Zeus or Hera as it is now, but Sobek and Set and Osiris. I didn't care for them," she tsks, "not one bit."

"It's Loki and Freya now," Ais reminds her, "Zeus and Hera are no more."

Bell stays out of the conversation as best he can; his reasons are his own. Still, he laughs as the old woman lays into the city's newest ruling parties and Ais leans back, obviously overwhelmed. They were both too young to know just what life under the ones who came before was like, but the picture the woman painted sure was pretty.

"Feckless," Ais complains sometime later, "She called us feckless."

They approach another fork in the road. This city really loved its converging and diverging paths, he's finding. Bell eyes one then the other. "She called you far worse than that."

Ais stops walking just as he pulls out a coin to flip. "She did?"

It's heads, so they go right. It's a dead end. "She did," he confirms. His companion gasps but he refuses to elaborate when asked. No good would come of her knowing.

"Maybe I should read as much as you and Tiona. Then mean old hags won't be able to secretly insult me."

His brow raises. "She was being the furthest thing from secret."

Ais elbows him lightly, but struggles to articulate her frustration verbally.

By some miracle, they find a road that leads somewhere helpful. It's mostly quiet as they walk. Ais is always more prone to silence than most, but this time is different. Bell struggles to fill the void his teasing opened.

The eyes are on them again when they emerge into a plaza, but Ais drags him into a clothing store and buys herself a shawl. It's green and flowery, and it suits her remarkably well. The dress she's wearing is elegant and white, similar to the ones Bell knows her mother favors. As Ais takes to captaining her hair into the bounds of her shawl, he finds a long belt and he's buying it before he can consider otherwise.

"Here," he tells her as he offers it up as tribute.

Ais turns away from the mirror to face him. It's hardly necessary, considering her eyes had been tracking him in the pane as he approached. She sees the belt and her lips twitch. "What's this?"

"A gift," he decides. "It matches the … " But he trails off, tugging at the air beside his hair, as if he wore the shawl himself.

She takes it gratefully and wraps it around her waist. The belt is thin and cord-like, meant to be tied around the waist just above the hips, with a brass loop at one end for the excess to thread through. It only allows the dress she wears to fit her more beautifully. When he first catches sight of her he decides it was a mistake to buy it.

"You look—" Again, he loses his words. The one that comes to mind is 'beautiful,' but he flees from it like a man does a goblin. Pointlessly, but fast. And with a lot of screaming. "You look really nice, Ais."

Then and only then does the twitch of her lips become a full-fledged smile. "Thank you," she says. The rose of her cheeks only compliments the ensemble more. Crisis averted.

They continue out onto the streets and have a much easier time following the flow of traffic. Bell's stomach grumbles at one point or another, so Ais twirls around to his left side and grabs his hand again, hurrying them both along to her destination. The crowd is no longer thick enough for her to use it as an excuse, but that can't stop her.

"By the way," Bell wonders after a moment, "How did things turn out yesterday?"

Ais looks him in the eyes and sighs. When she speaks, it's quiet and soft. "Could we speak of other things today?"

It strikes him as odd, but he sees no reason to push it. "What would you like to talk about?"

A shrug. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Hm," she agrees, "Anything works."

It's Bell's turn to sigh, so he does. "You really have to give me more to work with than that."

"I trust in your capabilities," she tells him through her cheek, like a whispered conspiracy, and that just about seals the deal.

He settles on what should have been easy. "Where are you taking me?"

"That's a secret."

"You can't be serious," he groans, only half annoyed.

She nods gravely. "As the plague."

When a child sprints their way, Bell seizes the chance offered and separates their hands. It gives him a little more room to think and breathe, two things he finds rather helpful when making conversation. Ais jumps as her fingers lose her grip on him, whirling and frowning at where he'd drifted away to.

He tries to come up with something as they walk, only for an overheard conversation to steal his attention away entirely.

"A merchant says he's gone missing, nobody has seen him in months," a man tells his companion. His style of clothing betrays him as a desert dweller, current or former.

She looks at him and huffs. "And so … what? You think somebody killed him? Pah. Unlikely."

"Accidents can happen."

"To him?" Her eyes roll. "Be serious, it's Oberon we're talking about here. You saw him fight, we both did. Nothing could dream of taking him down. He's barely human, I tell you."

"Human, you say?"

"Oh, here we go," she sighs an almighty sigh. It hardly sounds like her first.

"He's not human at all. I told you, I saw his face. Oberon is an elf, through and through."

Their voices fade away as they head in opposite directions, and Bell is left with nothing but his curiosity. "Did you hear who they were talking about?"

"Oberon?"

That's the one. "Who is he?"

"An adventurer, I think. A lot of people consider him to be a hero."

Bell pauses. "A hero?"

"Hn." Ais spots a food cart on the horizon and picks up her pace. By the time they reach it, Bell is panting and unable to do anything except listen as she goes on. "He's very active outside the city. There are a lot of things he's given credit for."

Unbelievable; Bell wants to groan. To think there's been a hero outside this city he could've met, yet didn't. How, in all his years of travel, did he manage to miss this man? It wasn't fair—not in the slightest.

"Like what?"

"Many things," Ais replies, cryptically, then shrugs. And that is that.

This story will be updated on occasion, but there's no real schedule. I had a few prewritten chapters, but had to scrap the previous version of the 4th due to it not fitting the story's course. The next few are written already, so they will be quicker, but after that expect slow chapters again.